Are there environmental/physical limits to humanity? Based on the Are There Limits? blog post by Tom Fiddaman.

When endeavoring to develop an understanding of the nature of something it is generally useful to create a model of some type to aid in surfacing that understanding.

A quick example for creating a simulation in Insight Maker.

Based on a sound realization of reality we need an effective approach to dealing with situations which promotes the requisite understanding to develop a strategy that deals appropriately with the situation. A strategy which also is explicitly designed to minimize unintended consequences and puts in place responses to them should they arise.

This is a model depicting the interactions of the Aesop's Fable "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."

Developing a strategy for dealing with a situation begins with a description of the situation and the preferred state for today, not in some distant future, and the perceived implications of not doing anything. There is a also a video for this insight.

Joe P. is currently managing a project that's behind schedule and he's experiencing substantial pressure to get the project back on track.

The three common recurring structures.

To develop insights regarding a situation of interest there are a number of things should be considered to ensure a view of the relevant influences.

Introduce the concept of modeling and simulation.

Clone of IM-752 map for working simulation model This model is derived from "Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened: Creating and Sustaining Process Improvement" by Nelson P. Repenning and John D Sterman. An expanded map is at IM-1918.

As long as A and B are equally successful everything will remain stable. Though if either A or B receive more resources than the other, or A or B is more successful than the other, the imbalance will result in greater success of A or B accordingly and promote even more success of the one that demonstrates greater success.

Influences which work in opposition to sustainable capitalism and influences that might work to further promote it.

The Home Heating System can be used to demonstrate how we get caught in dilemmas and become victims of ourselves.

A Tragedy of the Commons situation exists whenever two or more activities, each, which in order to produce results, rely on a shared limited resource. Results for these activities continue to develop as long as their use of the limited resource doesn't exceed the resource limit. Once this limit is reached the results produced by each activity are limited to the level at which the resource is replenished. As an example, consider multiple departments with an organization using IT resources, until they've exhausted IT capacity.

There are limits to what one can infer from a qualitative model.

Introduce the concept of modeling and simulation.

The causal loop form for a balancing loop.

The interaction of a population of Moose and Wolves.

Influences which work in opposition to sustainable capitalism and influences that might work to further promote it.

There are about a dozen known systems archetypes with an interesting set of relationships among them. Watch Video

CLD of Eric Wolstenholme Syst. Dyn. Rev. 23, 371–389, (2007) See IM-1008 for a stock flow version.

There are limits to what one can infer from a qualitative model.

The interaction of a population of Moose and Wolves.