Starting Points 🔗
- Systems are everywhere: human bodies, the global economy, cloud computing, corporations, etc.
- System behaviors are often counter-intuitive. For example, destroying parts can significantly benefit the system (think about the immune system killing cancerous cells). Too many good things can hurt the system (many lottery winners end up with a worse life with poor management). It is possible to do more with less (small startups often outperform large companies).
- Because of the counterintuitive behavior, you may experience unintended consequences without careful system analysis (not that it is perfect). For example, consuming abundant nutritious foods can harm your health, while fasting helps your body gain agility. Or, poor minimum wage or tariff policy can hurt the exact people that the law wishes to protect.
Writings 🔗
About 20 years ago, I was into problem-solving and hated systematic complexities that were hard to reduce – unlike DP problems, NP problems couldn’t get scaled down without losing their core characteristics. After two decades, I’m more intrigued than frustrated by the system as the pattern rhymes everywhere in real life. So, I’m dedicating this page (and its subpages) to touch on various topics from the first principle, and here are links to the related writings.
General Analysis:
- 2024-02: Intro to System Analysis
- 2022-09: Framework for Strategy
- 2015-08: Framework for Decision Making
Tech / Finance:
- 2022-10: Intro to Software Business Valuation
- 2023-04: What is Dev Productivity?
- 2015-08: Shareholder Capitalism
Health:
- 2024-06: Engineer’s Approach to Physiology