— SIX —
ー六个ー
Leverage Points—
Places to Intervene in a System
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IBM . . . announced 25,000 new job cuts and a large reduction in spending on research. . . . Spending on development research is to be lowered by $1 billion next year. . . . Chairman John K. Akers . . . said IBM was still a world and industry leader in research but felt it could do better by “shifting to areas for growth,” meaning services, which need less capital but also return less profit in the long run.
—Lawrence Malkin, International Herald Tribune, 19921
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So, how do we change the structure of systems to produce more of what we want and less of that which is undesirable? After years of working with corporations on their systems problems, MIT’s Jay Forrester likes to say that the average manager can define the current problem very cogently, identify the system structure that leads to the problem, and guess with great accuracy where to look for leverage points—places in the system where a small change could lead to a large shift in behavior.
那么，我们如何改变系统的结构，以产生更多我们想要的东西，而减少不想要的东西呢？麻省理工学院的杰伊 · 福雷斯特(Jay Forrester)与企业就系统问题进行了多年合作，他喜欢说，一般的管理者能够非常令人信服地定义当前的问题，识别导致问题的系统结构，并非常准确地猜测在哪里寻找杠杆点——系统中的哪些地方，一个小小的变化就可能导致行为的巨大转变。
This idea of leverage points is not unique to systems analysis—it’s embedded in legend: the silver bullet; the trimtab; the miracle cure; the secret passage; the magic password; the single hero who turns the tide of history; the nearly effortless way to cut through or leap over huge obstacles. We not only want to believe that there are leverage points, we want to know where they are and how to get our hands on them. Leverage points are points of power.
这种杠杆点的概念并不是系统分析所独有的——它植根于传说之中: 银子弹; trimtab; 奇迹疗法; 秘密通道; 神奇密码; 扭转历史潮流的单一英雄; 几乎毫不费力地穿越或跨越巨大障碍的方式。我们不仅希望相信存在杠杆点，我们还希望知道它们在哪里，以及如何获得它们。杠杆点就是力量点。
But Forrester goes on to point out that although people deeply involved in a system often know intuitively where to find leverage points, more often than not they push the change in the wrong direction.
但 Forrester 接着指出，尽管深入参与一个系统的人们通常凭直觉知道在哪里找到杠杆点，但他们往往把改变推向了错误的方向。
The classic example of that backward intuition was my own introduction to systems analysis, the World model. Asked by the Club of Rome—an international group of businessmen, statesmen, and scientists—to show how major global problems of poverty and hunger, environmental destruction, resource depletion, urban deterioration, and unemployment are related and how they might be solved, Forrester made a computer model and came out with a clear leverage point: growth.2 Not only population growth, but economic growth. Growth has costs as well as benefits, and we typically don’t count the costs—among which are poverty and hunger, environmental destruction, and so on—the whole list of problems we are trying to solve with growth! What is needed is much slower growth, very different kinds of growth, and in some cases no growth or negative growth.
这种倒退直觉的典型例子是我自己对系统分析的介绍，也就是 World 模型。罗马俱乐部——一个由商人、政治家和科学家组成的国际团体——要求他们展示全球性的主要问题，如贫困和饥饿、环境破坏、资源枯竭、城市恶化和失业是如何相互关联的，以及如何解决这些问题，因为 rester 建立了一个计算机模型，得出了一个明确的杠杆点: 增长。增长既有成本也有收益，我们通常不会计算成本——其中包括贫困和饥饿、环境破坏等等——我们试图用增长来解决的所有问题！我们需要的是非常缓慢的增长，非常不同类型的增长，在某些情况下没有增长或负增长。
The world’s leaders are correctly fixated on economic growth as the answer to virtually all problems, but they’re pushing with all their might in the wrong direction.
世界各国领导人正确地将经济增长视为解决几乎所有问题的答案，但他们却在朝着错误的方向竭尽全力。
Another of Forrester’s classics was his study of urban dynamics, published in 1969, which demonstrated that subsidized low-income housing is a leverage point.3 World Bank, The less of it there is, the better off the city is—even the low-income folks in the city. This model came out at a time when national policy dictated massive low-income housing projects, and Forrester was derided. Since then, many of those projects have been torn down in city after city.
Forrester 的另一个经典之作是他在1969年出版的城市动态研究，该研究表明，低收入补贴住房是一个杠杆点。3世界银行，资金越少，城市就越富裕，甚至城市中的低收入人群也是如此。这个模型出现的时候，国家政策规定了大量的低收入住房项目，Forrester 被嘲笑。从那时起，许多这样的项目在一个又一个城市被拆除。
Counterintuitive—that’s Forrester’s word to describe complex systems. Leverage points frequently are not intuitive. Or if they are, we too often use them backward, systematically worsening whatever problems we are trying to solve.
反直觉——这是 rester 用来描述复杂系统的词。杠杆点常常不是直觉的。或者如果它们是，我们经常反过来使用它们，系统地恶化我们试图解决的任何问题。
I have come up with no quick or easy formulas for finding leverage points in complex and dynamic systems. Give me a few months or years and I’ll figure it out. And I know from bitter experience that, because they are so counterintuitive, when I do discover a system’s leverage points, hardly anybody will believe me. Very frustrating—especially for those of us who yearn not just to understand complex systems, but to make the world work better.
我没有想出任何快速或简单的公式来找到复杂和动态系统中的杠杆点。给我几个月或者几年的时间，我会找到答案的。我从痛苦的经历中知道，因为它们是如此违反直觉，当我发现一个系统的杠杆点时，几乎没有人会相信我。非常令人沮丧——尤其是对于我们这些不仅渴望理解复杂系统，而且渴望让世界运转得更好的人来说。
It was in just such a moment of frustration that I proposed a list of places to intervene in a system during a meeting on the implications of global trade regimes. I offer this list to you with much humility and wanting to leave room for its evolution. What bubbled up in me that day was distilled from decades of rigorous analysis of many different kinds of systems done by many smart people. But complex systems are, well, complex. It’s dangerous to generalize about them. What you read here is still a work in progress; it’s not a recipe for finding leverage points. Rather, it’s an invitation to think more broadly about system change.
正是在这样一个令人沮丧的时刻，我在一次关于全球贸易体制影响的会议上提出了一份干预体系的地点清单。我非常谦卑地把这个清单提供给你们，并希望为它的发展留下空间。那天在我心中涌现出来的东西，是从许多聪明人几十年来对许多不同系统的严格分析中提炼出来的。但是复杂的系统是复杂的。对它们进行概括是危险的。你在这里读到的仍然是一个正在进行的工作; 它不是一个寻找杠杆点的处方。相反，它邀请我们更广泛地思考体制变革。
As systems become complex, their behavior can become surprising. Think about your checking account. You write checks and make deposits. A little interest keeps flowing in (if you have a large enough balance) and bank fees flow out even if you have no money in the account, thereby creating an accumulation of debt. Now attach your account to a thousand others and let the bank create loans as a function of your combined and fluctuating deposits, link a thousand of those banks into a federal reserve system—and you begin to see how simple stocks and flows, plumbed together, create systems way too complicated and dynamically complex to figure out easily.
当系统变得复杂时，它们的行为会变得令人惊讶。想想你的支票账户。你开支票，存钱。一点利息不断流入(如果你有足够大的余额) ，即使你的账户里没有钱，银行费用也会流出，从而造成债务的积累。现在，把你的账户连接到一千个其他账户上，让银行根据你的存款总额和波动性创造贷款，把一千个这样的银行连接到一个联邦储备系统中——你就会开始看到，简单的股票和流动汇集在一起，创造出的系统过于复杂和动态复杂，难以轻易理解。
That’s why leverage points are often not intuitive. And that’s enough systems theory to proceed to the list.
这就是为什么杠杆点往往不是直观的。这就是足够的系统理论继续列表。
12. Numbers—Constants and parameters such as subsidies, taxes, standards
12. 数字ー补贴、税收、标准等常数和参数
Think about the basic stock-and-flow bathtub from Chapter One. The size of the flows is a matter of numbers and how quickly those numbers can be changed. Maybe the faucet turns hard, so it takes a while to get the water flowing or to turn it off. Maybe the drain is blocked and can allow only a small flow, no matter how open it is. Maybe the faucet can deliver with the force of a fire hose. Some of these kinds of parameters are physically locked in and unchangeable, but many can be varied and so are popular intervention points.
想想第一章中的基本存量和流量浴缸。流量的大小取决于数字以及这些数字的变化速度。也许水龙头变硬了，所以需要一段时间才能让水流动或者关掉它。也许下水道被堵住了，只允许少量的流动，不管它有多开放。也许水龙头可以用消防水管的力量传递信息。这些参数中的一些在物理上是固定不变的，但是很多可以变化，因此是流行的干预点。
Consider the national debt. It may seem like a strange stock; it is a money hole. The rate at which the hole deepens is called the annual deficit. Income from taxes shrinks the hole, government expenditures expand it. Congress and the president spend most of their time arguing about the many, many parameters that increase (spending) and decrease (taxing) the size or depth of the hole. Since those flows are connected to us, the voters, these are politically charged parameters. But, despite all the fireworks, and no matter which party is in charge, the money hole has been deepening for years now, just at different rates.
想想国家债务。它可能看起来像一只奇怪的股票; 它是一个金钱窟窿。这个窟窿加深的速度叫做年度赤字。税收收入缩小了赤字，政府支出扩大了赤字。国会和总统大部分时间都在讨论增加(支出)和减少(税收)漏洞的大小和深度的许多许多参数。由于这些资金流与我们选民息息相关，这些都是充满政治色彩的参数。但是，尽管有这么多的烟火表演，而且不管是哪个政党在掌权，这个资金缺口几年来一直在加深，只是速度不同而已。
To adjust the dirtiness of the air we breathe, the government sets parameters called ambient-air-quality standards. To ensure some standing stock of forest (or some flow of money to logging companies), it sets allowed annual cuts. Corporations adjust parameters such as wage rates and product prices, with an eye on the level in their profit bathtub—the bottom line.
为了调节我们呼吸的空气的污浊程度，政府设定了环境空气质量标准。为了确保一定数量的森林(或者一些资金流向伐木公司) ，政府设定了允许每年削减的数量。企业调整诸如工资率和产品价格等参数，关注利润水平——底线。
The amount of land we set aside for conservation each year. The minimum wage. How much we spend on AIDS research or Stealth bombers. The service charge the bank extracts from your account. All of these are parameters, adjustments to faucets. So, by the way, is firing people and getting new ones, including politicians. Putting different hands on the faucets may change the rate at which the faucets turn, but if they’re the same old faucets, plumbed into the same old system, turned according to the same old information and goals and rules, the system behavior isn’t going to change much. Electing Bill Clinton was definitely different from electing the elder George Bush, but not all that different, given that every president is plugged into the same political system. (Changing the way money flows in that system would make much more of a difference—but I’m getting ahead of myself on this list.)
我们每年拨出用于保护的土地数量。最低工资。我们在艾滋病研究或隐形轰炸机上花了多少钱。这项服务收取银行从你账户中提取的费用。所有这些都是参数，对水龙头的调整。所以，顺便说一下，解雇员工和雇用新员工，包括政客。把不同的手放在水龙头上可能会改变水龙头转动的速度，但是如果它们是同样的旧水龙头，探入同样的旧系统，按照同样的旧信息、目标和规则转动，系统行为不会有太大的改变。选举比尔 · 克林顿无疑与选举老乔治 · 布什有所不同，但鉴于每位总统都与同一个政治体系紧密相连，所以也并非完全不同。(改变资金在这个体系中的流动方式会产生更大的影响——但是我在这个名单上超前了
Numbers, the sizes of flows, are dead last on my list of powerful interventions. Diddling with the details, arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Probably 90—no 95, no 99 percent—of our attention goes to parameters, but there’s not a lot of leverage in them.
数字，资金流动的规模，在我强有力的干预措施清单上排在最后。处理细节，安排泰坦尼克号上的躺椅。我们大概90% 的注意力都集中在参数上，但是这些参数并没有太多的杠杆作用。
It’s not that parameters aren’t important—they can be, especially in the short term and to the individual who’s standing directly in the flow. People care deeply about such variables as taxes and the minimum wage, and so fight fierce battles over them. But changing these variables rarely changes the behavior of the national economy system. If the system is chronically stagnant, parameter changes rarely kick-start it. If it’s wildly variable, they usually don’t stabilize it. If it’s growing out of control, they don’t slow it down.
这并不是说参数不重要——它们可以是重要的，尤其是在短期内，对于直接站在人流中的个人来说。人们非常关心诸如税收和最低工资这样的变量，因此为了这些变量而展开激烈的斗争。但是改变这些变量很少能改变国民经济系统的行为。如果经济体系长期停滞不前，参数的改变很少会启动它。如果它变化很大，他们通常不会稳定它。如果它正在失去控制，他们不会减缓它。
Whatever cap we put on campaign contributions, it doesn’t clean up politics. The Fed’s fiddling with the interest rate hasn’t made business cycles go away. (We always forget that during upturns, and are shocked, shocked by the downturns.) After decades of the strictest air pollution standards in the world, Los Angeles air is less dirty, but it isn’t clean. Spending more on police doesn’t make crime go away.
无论我们对竞选捐款设置什么样的上限，它都不能清理政治。美联储对利率的操纵并没有使商业周期消失。(我们总是忘记在经济好转的时候，我们会被经济衰退所震惊经过几十年世界上最严格的空气污染标准之后，洛杉矶的空气污染减少了，但并不清洁。在警察身上花更多的钱并不能消除犯罪。
Since I’m about to get into some examples where parameters are leverage points, let me stick in a big caveat here. Parameters become leverage points when they go into ranges that kick off one of the items higher on this list. Interest rates, for example, or birth rates, control the gains around reinforcing feedback loops. System goals are parameters that can make big differences.
因为我将要进入一些参数是杠杆点的例子，所以让我在这里坚持一个很大的警告。当参数进入某个范围时，它们就变成了杠杆点，从而开启了列表中较高的项目之一。例如，利率，或者出生率，控制着增强反馈循环的收益。系统目标是可以产生巨大差异的参数。
These kinds of critical numbers are not nearly as common as people seem to think they are. Most systems have evolved or are designed to stay far out of range of critical parameters. Mostly, the numbers are not worth the sweat put into them.
这些关键数字并不像人们想象的那样普遍。大多数系统已经进化或者被设计成远离临界参数的范围。大多数情况下，这些数字并不值得我们为它们付出那么多汗水。
Here’s a story a friend sent me over the Internet to makes that point:
我的一个朋友在网上发给我一个故事来说明这一点:
When I became a landlord, I spent a lot of time and energy trying to figure out what would be a “fair” rent to charge.
I tried to consider all the variables, including the relative incomes of my tenants, my own income and cash-flow needs, which expenses were for upkeep and which were capital expenses, the equity versus the interest portion of the mortgage payments, how much my labor on the house was worth, etc.
I got absolutely nowhere. Finally I went to someone who specializes in giving money advice. She said: “You’re acting as though there is a fine line at which the rent is fair, and at any point above that point the tenant is being screwed and at any point below that you are being screwed. In fact, there is a large gray area in which both you and the tenant are getting a good, or at least a fair, deal. Stop worrying and get on with your life.”4
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11. Buffers—The sizes of stabilizing stocks relative to their flows
11. 缓冲器ー稳定库存相对于其流量的大小
Consider a huge bathtub with slow in- and outflows. Now think about a small one with very fast flows. That’s the difference between a lake and a river. You hear about catastrophic river floods much more often than catastrophic lake floods, because stocks that are big, relative to their flows, are more stable than small ones. In chemistry and other fields, a big, stabilizing stock is known as a buffer.
考虑一个巨大的浴缸，缓慢地进出。现在想想一个流速非常快的小浴缸。这就是湖泊和河流的区别。你听说灾难性的河流洪水比灾难性的湖泊洪水更频繁，因为相对于它们的流量而言，大的股票比小的股票更稳定。在化学和其他领域，一个稳定的大库存被称为缓冲器。
The stabilizing power of buffers is why you keep money in the bank rather than living from the flow of change through your pocket. It’s why stores hold inventory instead of calling for new stock just as customers carry the old stock out the door. It’s why we need to maintain more than the minimum breeding population of an endangered species. Soils in the eastern United States are more sensitive to acid rain than soils in the west, because they haven’t got big buffers of calcium to neutralize acid.
缓冲的稳定作用就是为什么你要把钱存在银行里，而不是靠口袋里的零钱过活。这就是为什么商店持有库存，而不是在顾客把旧库存搬出门的时候要求新库存。这就是为什么我们需要保持超过最低限度的濒危物种繁殖数量。美国东部的土壤比西部的土壤对酸雨更敏感，因为它们没有大量的钙来中和酸。
You can often stabilize a system by increasing the capacity of a buffer.5 But if a buffer is too big, the system gets inflexible. It reacts too slowly. And big buffers of some sorts, such as water reservoirs or inventories, cost a lot to build or maintain. Businesses invented just-in-time inventories, because occasional vulnerability to fluctuations or screw-ups is cheaper (for them, anyway) than certain, constant inventory costs—and because small-to vanishing inventories allow more flexible response to shifting demand.
你通常可以通过增加缓冲区的容量来稳定系统。但是如果缓冲区太大，系统就会变得不灵活。它的反应太慢。而且某些类型的大缓冲器，如水库或库存，建造或维护成本很高。企业发明了准时库存，因为偶尔容易受到波动或失误的影响(至少对他们来说)比确定的、不变的库存成本更便宜——还因为小到消失的库存允许对需求变化做出更灵活的反应。
There’s leverage, sometimes magical, in changing the size of buffers. But buffers are usually physical entities, not easy to change. The acid absorption capacity of eastern soils is not a leverage point for alleviating acid rain damage. The storage capacity of a dam is literally cast in concrete. So I haven’t put buffers very high on the list of leverage points.
在改变缓冲区的大小方面有杠杆作用，有时甚至是神奇的。但是缓冲区通常是物理实体，不容易改变。东部土壤的酸吸收能力不是减轻酸雨破坏的杠杆点。大坝的储存能力实际上是用混凝土浇筑的。所以我没有把缓冲放在杠杆作用点的最高位置。
10. Stock-and-Flow Structures—Physical systems and their nodes of intersection
股票和流量结构——物理系统及其交叉节点
The plumbing structure, the stocks and flows and their physical arrangement, can have an enormous effect on how the system operates. When the Hungarian road system was laid out so all traffic from one side of the nation to the other had to pass through central Budapest, that determined a lot about air pollution and commuting delays that are not easily fixed by pollution control devices, traffic lights, or speed limits.
管道结构、库存和流量以及它们的物理安排，可以对系统如何运作产生巨大影响。当匈牙利的道路系统被铺设出来时，所有从国家一边到另一边的交通都必须经过布达佩斯市中心，这决定了很多空气污染和通勤延误问题，这些问题不容易通过污染控制设备、交通灯或速度限制来解决。
The only way to fix a system that is laid out poorly is to rebuild it, if you can. Amory Lovins and his team at Rocky Mountain Institute have done wonders on energy conservation by simply straightening out bent pipes and enlarging ones that are too small. If we did similar energy retrofits on all the buildings in the United States, we could shut down many of our electric power plants.
修复一个布局糟糕的系统的唯一方法就是重建，如果可以的话。落基山研究所的 Amory Lovins 和他的团队在节能方面创造了奇迹，他们只需简单地把弯曲的管子弄直，然后把那些太小的管子放大。如果我们对美国所有的建筑进行类似的能源改造，我们可以关闭我们的许多发电厂。
But often physical rebuilding is the slowest and most expensive kind of change to make in a system. Some stock-and-flow structures are just plain unchangeable. The baby-boom swell in the U.S. population first caused pressure on the elementary school system, then high schools, then colleges, then jobs and housing, and now we’re supporting its retirement. There’s not much we can do about it, because five-year-olds become six-year-olds, and sixty-four-year-olds become sixty-five-year-olds predictably and unstoppably. The same can be said for the lifetime of destructive CFC molecules in the ozone layer, for the rate at which contaminants get washed out of aquifers, for the fact that an inefficient car fleet takes ten to twenty years to turn over.
但是物理重建往往是系统中进行的最慢和最昂贵的改变。一些存量和流量结构是不可改变的。美国人口的婴儿潮首先给小学系统带来了压力，然后是高中，大学，工作和住房，现在我们正在支持它的退休生活。我们对此无能为力，因为5岁的孩子会变成6岁的孩子，而64岁的孩子会变成65岁的孩子，这是可以预见并且不可阻挡的。对于臭氧层中具有破坏性的氟氯化碳分子的寿命，对于污染物从含水层中被冲走的速度，对于一个效率低下的汽车车队需要10到20年才能转运的事实，也可以这样说。
Physical structure is crucial in a system, but is rarely a leverage point, because changing it is rarely quick or simple. The leverage point is in proper design in the first place. After the structure is built, the leverage is in understanding its limitations and bottlenecks, using it with maximum efficiency, and refraining from fluctuations or expansions that strain its capacity.
物理结构在系统中是至关重要的，但很少是一个杠杆点，因为改变它很少是迅速或简单的。杠杆点首先在于正确的设计。在结构建成之后，杠杆作用在于了解其局限性和瓶颈，以最大的效率使用它，并避免使其能力受到限制的波动或扩张。
9. Delays—The lengths of time relative to the rates of system changes
9. 延迟——相对于系统变化率的时间长度
Delays in feedback loops are critical determinants of system behavior. They are common causes of oscillations. If you’re trying to adjust a stock (your store inventory) to meet your goal, but you receive only delayed information about what the state of the stock is, you will overshoot and undershoot your goal. The same is true if your information is timely, but your response isn’t. For example, it takes several years to build an electric power plant that will likely last thirty years. Those delays make it impossible to build exactly the right number of power plants to supply rapidly changing demand for electricity. Even with immense effort at forecasting, almost every electricity industry in the world experiences long oscillations between overcapacity and undercapacity. A system just can’t respond to short-term changes when it has long term delays. That’s why a massive central-planning system, such as the Soviet Union or General Motors, necessarily functions poorly.
反馈回路中的延迟是系统行为的关键决定因素。它们是振荡的常见原因。如果你正试图调整库存(你的商店库存)以达到你的目标，但是你只收到延迟的关于库存状态的信息，你将会超出和低于你的目标。如果你的信息是及时的，但是你的反应却不及时，情况也是如此。例如，建造一个可能持续30年的发电厂需要几年的时间。这些延迟使得建造正确数量的发电厂来满足快速变化的电力需求变得不可能。尽管在预测方面做出了巨大的努力，世界上几乎每个电力工业都经历了产能过剩和产能不足之间的长期振荡。当一个系统有长期的延迟时，它就是不能对短期的变化做出反应。这就是为什么一个庞大的中央计划系统，如苏联或通用汽车，必然运转不良的原因。
Because we know they’re important, we see delays wherever we look. For example, the delay between the time when a pollutant is dumped on the land and when it trickles down to the groundwater; or the delay between the birth of a child and the time when that child is ready to have a child; or the delay between the first successful test of a new technology and the time when that technology is installed throughout the economy; or the time it takes for a price to adjust to a supply-demand imbalance.
因为我们知道它们很重要，所以我们在任何地方都能看到延迟。例如，污染物倾倒在土地上与流入地下水之间的时间延迟; 或儿童出生与该儿童准备生育之间的时间延迟; 或新技术首次成功试验与该技术在整个经济中安装之间的时间延迟; 或价格调整以适应供需失衡所需的时间。
A delay in a feedback process is critical relative to rates of change in the stocks that the feedback loop is trying to control. Delays that are too short cause overreaction, “chasing your tail,” oscillations amplified by the jumpiness of the response. Delays that are too long cause damped, sustained, or exploding oscillations, depending on how much too long. Overlong delays in a system with a threshold, a danger point, a range past which irreversible damage can occur, cause overshoot and collapse.
相对于反馈回路试图控制的库存变化率，反馈过程中的延迟是至关重要的。过短的延迟会导致过度反应，“追着你的尾巴跑”，反应的跳跃性会放大振荡。过长的延迟会导致衰减、持续或爆炸性的振荡，这取决于过长的时间有多长。在一个系统中，如果存在一个临界值、一个危险点、一个可能发生不可逆损害的范围，那么过长的延迟就会导致过度延迟和崩溃。
I would list delay length as a high leverage point, except for the fact that delays are not often easily changeable. Things take as long as they take. You can’t do a lot about the construction time of a major piece of capital, or the maturation time of a child, or the growth rate of a forest. It’s usually easier to slow down the change rate, so that inevitable feedback delays won’t cause so much trouble. That’s why growth rates are higher up on the leverage point list than delay times.
我会列出延迟长度作为一个高杠杆点，除了延迟通常不容易改变的事实。事情需要多长时间就需要多长时间。对于一个主要资本的建设时间，或者孩子的成长时间，或者森林的生长速度，你不能做很多事情。通常情况下，放慢变化率更容易，这样不可避免的反馈延迟就不会造成太多麻烦。这就是为什么增长率在杠杆点列表上高于延迟时间的原因。
And that’s why slowing economic growth is a greater leverage point in Forrester’s World model than faster technological development or freer market prices. Those are attempts to speed up the rate of adjustment. But the world’s physical capital stock, its factories and boilers, the concrete manifestations of its working technologies, can change only so fast, even in the face of new prices or new ideas—and prices and ideas don’t change instantly either, not through a whole global culture. There’s more leverage in slowing the system down so technologies and prices can keep up with it, than there is in wishing the delays would go away.
这就是为什么在 Forrester 的 World 模型中，放缓的经济增长比更快的技术发展或更自由的市场价格是更大的杠杆点。这些都是加快调整速度的尝试。但是，全球的实物资本存量、工厂和锅炉，以及工作技术的具体表现形式，即使面对新的价格或新的想法，也只能发生这么快的变化——而且价格和想法也不会立即发生变化，不会通过整个全球文化发生变化。放慢系统的速度，让技术和价格跟得上，比起希望延迟消失，有更多的优势。
But if there is a delay in your system that can be changed, changing it can have big effects. Watch out! Be sure you change it in the right direction! (For example, the great push to reduce information and money-transfer delays in financial markets is just asking for wild gyrations.)
但是，如果你的系统中有一个可以改变的延迟，改变它可以有很大的影响。小心！一定要改变它的正确方向！(例如，为了减少金融市场中的信息和资金转移延迟，金融市场正在发生剧烈的波动
8. Balancing Feedback Loops—The strength of the feedbacks relative to the impacts they are trying to correct
8、平衡反馈循环——反馈的强度相对于他们试图纠正的影响
Now we’re beginning to move from the physical part of the system to the information and control parts, where more leverage can be found.
现在我们开始从系统的物理部分转移到信息和控制部分，在那里可以找到更多的杠杆作用。
Balancing feedback loops are ubiquitous in systems. Nature evolves them and humans invent them as controls to keep important stocks within safe bounds. A thermostat loop is the classic example. Its purpose is to keep the system stock called “temperature of the room” fairly constant near a desired level. Any balancing feedback loop needs a goal (the thermostat setting), a monitoring and signaling device to detect deviation from the goal (the thermostat), and a response mechanism (the furnace and/or air conditioner, fans, pumps, pipes, fuel, etc.).
平衡反馈回路在系统中无处不在。自然进化了它们，人类发明了它们作为控制手段，将重要的股票保持在安全的范围内。恒温器回路就是一个典型的例子。它的目的是保持被称为“房间温度”的系统储备相当稳定，接近理想的水平。任何平衡反馈回路都需要一个目标(恒温器设置) ，一个监测和信号装置来检测偏离目标(恒温器) ，以及一个响应机制(炉子和/或空调、风扇、泵、管道、燃料等)。
A complex system usually has numerous balancing feedback loops it can bring into play, so it can self-correct under different conditions and impacts. Some of those loops may be inactive much of the time—like the emergency cooling system in a nuclear power plant, or your ability to sweat or shiver to maintain your body temperature—but their presence is critical to the long term welfare of the system.
一个复杂系统通常有许多平衡反馈回路可以发挥作用，因此它可以在不同的条件和影响下进行自校正。这些循环中的一些可能在大部分时间是不活跃的——比如核电站的紧急冷却系统，或者你为了保持体温而出汗或发抖的能力——但它们的存在对系统的长期利益至关重要。
One of the big mistakes we make is to strip away these “emergency” response mechanisms because they aren’t often used and they appear to be costly. In the short term, we see no effect from doing this. In the long term, we drastically narrow the range of conditions over which the system can survive. One of the most heartbreaking ways we do this is in encroaching on the habitats of endangered species. Another is in encroaching on our own time for personal rest, recreation, socialization, and meditation.
我们犯的最大错误之一就是去掉这些“应急”反应机制，因为它们并不经常使用，而且似乎很昂贵。在短期内，我们看不到这样做的效果。从长远来看，我们大大缩小了系统能够生存的条件范围。其中一个最令人心碎的方法就是侵占濒危物种的栖息地。另一种是侵占我们个人休息、娱乐、社交和冥想的时间。
The strength of a balancing loop—its ability to keep its appointed stock at or near its goal—depends on the combination of all its parameters and links—the accuracy and rapidity of monitoring, the quickness and power of response, the directness and size of corrective flows. Sometimes there are leverage points here.
平衡回路的强度——保持指定库存达到或接近目标的能力——取决于其所有参数和环节的组合——监测的准确性和快速性、反应的快速性和力度、纠正流程的直接性和规模。有时这里也有杠杆作用点。
Take markets, for example, the balancing feedback systems that are all but worshipped by many economists. They can indeed be marvels of self correction, as prices vary to moderate supply and demand and keep them in balance. Price is the central piece of information signaling both producers and consumers. The more the price is kept clear, unambiguous, timely, and truthful, the more smoothly markets will operate. Prices that reflect full costs will tell consumers how much they can actually afford and will reward efficient producers. Companies and governments are fatally attracted to the price leverage point, but too often determinedly push it in the wrong direction with subsidies, taxes, and other forms of confusion.
以市场为例，平衡反馈系统几乎被许多经济学家所崇拜。它们确实可以成为自我修正的奇迹，因为价格变化可以调节供给和需求并保持平衡。价格是给生产者和消费者发出信号的核心信息。价格越是清晰、明确、及时和真实，市场运行就越顺畅。反映全部成本的价格将告诉消费者他们实际上能负担多少，并将奖励高效率的生产者。企业和政府对价格杠杆点有着致命的吸引力，但往往通过补贴、税收和其它形式的混乱，坚决地将其推向错误的方向。
These modifications weaken the feedback power of market signals by twisting information in their favor. The real leverage here is to keep them from doing it. Hence, the necessity of antitrust laws, truth-in-advertising laws, attempts to internalize costs (such as pollution fees), the removal of perverse subsidies, and other ways of leveling market playing fields.
这些修改通过扭曲有利于市场信号的信息来削弱市场信号的反馈能力。这里真正的杠杆作用是阻止他们这样做。因此，有必要制定反托拉斯法、真实广告法、试图将成本内部化(如污染费)、取消不正当的补贴，以及其他平衡市场竞争环境的方法。
Strengthening and clarifying market signals, such as full-cost accounting, don’t get far these days, because of the weakening of another set of balancing feedback loops—those of democracy. This great system was invented to put self-correcting feedback between the people and their government. The people, informed about what their elected representatives do, respond by voting those representatives in or out of office. The process depends on the free, full, unbiased flow of information back and forth between electorate and leaders. Billions of dollars are spent to limit and bias and dominate that flow of clear information. Give the people who want to distort market-price signals the power to influence government leaders, allow the distributors of information to be self-interested partners, and none of the necessary balancing feedbacks work well. Both market and democracy erode.
由于另一套平衡的反馈回路——民主的反馈回路——的削弱，强化和澄清市场信号(如全成本会计)如今不会取得太大进展。这个伟大的系统是用来在人民和政府之间放置自我修正的反馈信息的。人民知道他们选出的代表做了什么，他们的反应是投票选举这些代表进入或者退出办公室。这个过程取决于选民和领导人之间自由、完整、公正的信息来回流动。花费数十亿美元来限制、偏见和支配这种清晰的信息流。如果给那些想要扭曲市场价格的人以影响政府领导人的力量，让信息发布者成为自私的合作伙伴，那么所有必要的平衡反馈都不会奏效。市场和民主都会受到侵蚀。
The strength of a balancing feedback loop is important relative to the impact it is designed to correct. If the impact increases in strength, the feedbacks have to be strengthened too. A thermostat system may work fine on a cold winter day—but open all the windows and its corrective power is no match for the temperature change imposed on the system. Democracy works better without the brainwashing power of centralized mass communications. Traditional controls on fishing were sufficient until sonar spotting and drift nets and other technologies made it possible for a few actors to catch the last fish. The power of big industry calls for the power of big government to hold it in check; a global economy makes global regulations necessary.
平衡反馈回路的强度相对于其设计用于纠正的冲击而言很重要。如果影响力增加，反馈也必须加强。在寒冷的冬天，自动调温系统可以正常工作，但是打开所有的窗户，它的校正功率无法与系统所承受的温度变化相匹配。如果没有集中的大众传播的洗脑能力，民主会更好地发挥作用。传统的捕鱼控制已经足够了，直到声纳探测、漂网和其他技术使得少数人能够捕到最后一条鱼。大工业的力量需要大政府的力量来控制它; 全球经济使得全球规则变得必要。
Examples of strengthening balancing feedback controls to improve a system’s self-correcting abilities include:
加强平衡反馈控制以提高系统自我修正能力的例子包括:
• preventive medicine, exercise, and good nutrition to bolster the body’s ability to fight disease,
• integrated pest management to encourage natural predators of crop pests,
• the Freedom of Information Act to reduce government secrecy,
• monitoring systems to report on environmental damage,
• protection for whistleblowers, and
• impact fees, pollution taxes, and performance bonds to recapture the externalized public costs of private benefits.
7. Reinforcing Feedback Loops—The strength of the gain of driving loops
7. 加强反馈回路ーー驱动回路增益的强度
A balancing feedback loop is self-correcting; a reinforcing feedback loop is self-reinforcing. The more it works, the more it gains power to work some more, driving system behavior in one direction. The more people catch the flu, the more they infect other people. The more babies are born, the more people grow up to have babies. The more money you have in the bank, the more interest you earn, the more money you have in the bank. The more the soil erodes, the less vegetation it can support, the fewer roots and leaves to soften rain and runoff, the more soil erodes. The more high-energy neutrons in the critical mass, the more they knock into nuclei and generate more high-energy neutrons, leading to a nuclear explosion or meltdown.
平衡反馈回路是自校正的，增强反馈回路是自增强的。它工作得越多，就越有能力工作得更多，驱动系统行为朝一个方向发展。感染流感的人越多，感染其他人的就越多。越多的婴儿出生，越多的人长大后会有孩子。你在银行存的钱越多，你赚的利息就越多，你在银行存的钱也就越多。土壤侵蚀得越多，它能支撑的植被就越少，软化雨水和径流的根和叶子就越少，土壤侵蚀得越多。临界质量中的高能中子越多，它们撞击原子核的次数就越多，产生的高能中子也就越多，从而导致核爆炸或熔毁。
Reinforcing feedback loops are sources of growth, explosion, erosion, and collapse in systems. A system with an unchecked reinforcing loop ultimately will destroy itself. That’s why there are so few of them. Usually a balancing loop will kick in sooner or later. The epidemic will run out of infectible people—or people will take increasingly stronger steps to avoid being infected. The death rate will rise to equal the birth rate—or people will see the consequences of unchecked population growth and have fewer babies. The soil will erode away to bedrock, and after a million years the bedrock will crumble into new soil—or people will stop overgrazing, put up check dams, plant trees, and stop the erosion.
强化反馈回路是系统增长、爆炸、侵蚀和崩溃的源头。一个不受约束的强化循环系统最终会自我毁灭。这就是为什么它们这么少的原因。通常情况下，平衡循环迟早会出现。这种流行病将耗尽可感染人群——或者人们将采取越来越强有力的措施来避免被感染。死亡率将上升到与出生率相等的水平，否则人们将看到人口增长不受控制的后果，生育的婴儿将会减少。土壤会被侵蚀成基岩，一百万年后，基岩会变成新的土壤——或者人们会停止过度放牧，建起防护堤，种植树木，并停止侵蚀。
In all those examples, the first outcome is what will happen if the reinforcing loop runs its course, the second is what will happen if there’s an intervention to reduce its self-multiplying power. Reducing the gain around a reinforcing loop—slowing the growth—is usually a more powerful leverage point in systems than strengthening balancing loops, and far more preferable than letting the reinforcing loop run.
在所有这些例子中，第一个结果是如果强化循环继续下去会发生什么，第二个结果是如果有一个干预来减少其自我增殖的能力会发生什么。在系统中，减少强化回路的增益(减缓增长)通常比强化平衡回路更有力，也远比让强化回路运行更可取。
Population and economic growth rates in the World model are leverage points, because slowing them gives the many balancing loops, through technology and markets and other forms of adaptation (all of which have limits and delays), time to function. It’s the same as slowing the car when you’re driving too fast, rather than calling for more responsive brakes or technical advances in steering.
世界模式中的人口和经济增长率是杠杆点，因为通过技术、市场和其他形式的适应(所有这些都有限制和延迟) ，减缓它们会给许多平衡循环带来发挥作用的时间。这就好比当你开得太快的时候减速，而不是要求更灵敏的刹车或者转向技术的进步。
There are many reinforcing feedback loops in society that reward the winners of a competition with the resources to win even bigger next time—the “success to the successful” trap. Rich people collect interest; poor people pay it. Rich people pay accountants and lean on politicians to reduce their taxes; poor people can’t. Rich people give their kids inheritances and good educations. Antipoverty programs are weak balancing loops that try to counter these strong reinforcing ones. It would be much more effective to weaken the reinforcing loops. That’s what progressive income tax, inheritance tax, and universal high-quality public education programs are meant to do. If the wealthy can influence government to weaken, rather than strengthen, those measures, then the government itself shifts from a balancing structure to one that reinforces success to the successful!
社会上存在许多不断加强的反馈循环，这些反馈循环奖励竞争的获胜者，让他们获得下一次更大的胜利所需的资源——“从成功到成功”的陷阱。富人收集利息，穷人付钱。富人付钱给会计师，依靠政客来减少他们的税收; 穷人不能。富人给他们的孩子继承遗产和良好的教育。反贫困计划是一个薄弱的平衡循环，试图对抗这些强有力的强化循环。削弱强化循环会更加有效。这就是累进所得税、遗产税和普及高质量公共教育计划的意义所在。如果富人能够影响政府削弱而不是加强这些措施，那么政府本身就会从一个平衡的结构转变为一个强化成功的结构！
Look for leverage points around birth rates, interest rates, erosion rates, “success to the successful” loops, any place where the more you have of something, the more you have the possibility of having more.
寻找出生率、利率、侵蚀率、“通往成功的成功”循环周围的杠杆点，任何你拥有的东西越多，你拥有的可能性就越大的地方。
6. Information Flows—The structure of who does and does not have access to information
6. 信息流动ーー谁能获得和不能获得信息的结构
In Chapter Four, we examined the story of the electric meter in a Dutch housing development—in some of the houses the meter was installed in the basement; in others it was installed in the front hall. With no other differences in the houses, electricity consumption was 30 percent lower in the houses where the meter was in the highly visible location in the front hall.
在第四章中，我们研究了一个荷兰住宅开发项目中电表的故事——在一些住宅中，电表安装在地下室; 在另一些住宅中，电表安装在前厅。在没有其他差异的房子里，电表在前厅显眼位置的房子的耗电量要低30% 。
I love that story because it’s an example of a high leverage point in the information structure of the system. It’s not a parameter adjustment, not a strengthening or weakening of an existing feedback loop. It’s a new loop, delivering feedback to a place where it wasn’t going before.
我喜欢这个故事，因为它是系统信息结构中高杠杆点的一个例子。它不是参数调整，也不是现有反馈回路的加强或削弱。它是一个新的循环，把反馈传递到一个以前没有的地方。
Missing information flows is one of the most common causes of system malfunction. Adding or restoring information can be a powerful intervention, usually much easier and cheaper than rebuilding physical infrastructure. The tragedy of the commons that is crashing the world’s commercial fisheries occurs because there is little feedback from the state of the fish population to the decision to invest in fishing vessels. Contrary to economic opinion, the price of fish doesn’t provide that feedback. As the fish get more scarce they become more expensive, and it becomes all the more profitable to go out and catch the last few. That’s a perverse feedback, a reinforcing loop that leads to collapse. It is not price information but population information that is needed.
缺失的信息流是系统故障最常见的原因之一。添加或恢复信息可以是一个强有力的干预，通常比重建物理基础设施更容易和更便宜。正在摧毁世界商业渔业的公地悲剧之所以发生，是因为鱼类种群状况对投资渔船的决定几乎没有反馈。与经济观点相反，鱼的价格并没有提供这种反馈。随着鱼越来越稀缺，它们变得越来越昂贵，出去捕捉最后几条鱼就变得越来越有利可图。这是一个有悖常理的反馈，一个导致崩溃的强化循环。我们需要的不是价格信息，而是人口信息。
It’s important that the missing feedback be restored to the right place and in compelling form. To take another tragedy of the commons example, it’s not enough to inform all the users of an aquifer that the groundwater level is dropping. That could initiate a race to the bottom. It would be more effective to set the cost of water to rise steeply as the pumping rate begins to exceed the recharge rate.
重要的是，缺失的反馈必须以令人信服的形式恢复到正确的位置。再举一个公地悲剧的例子，仅仅告诉含水层的所有用户地下水位正在下降是不够的。这可能会引发一场到底的竞赛。随着抽水速度开始超过补给速度，设定水的成本急剧上升会更有效。
Other examples of compelling feedback are not hard to find. Suppose taxpayers got to specify on their return forms what government services their tax payments must be spent on. (Radical democracy!) Suppose any town or company that puts a water intake pipe in a river had to put it immediately downstream from its own wastewater outflow pipe. Suppose any public or private official who made the decision to invest in a nuclear power plant got the waste from that facility stored on his or her lawn. Suppose (this is an old one) the politicians who declare war were required to spend that war in the front lines.
其他引人注目的反馈例子并不难找到。假设纳税人必须在他们的报税表上详细说明他们的税款必须花在哪些政府服务上。(激进的民主假设任何一个城镇或公司在河里放置了一个取水管道，而这个取水管道必须立即从它自己的排水管道下游放置。假设任何一个决定投资核电站的公共或私人官员得到了存放在他或她草坪上的废物。假设(这是一个老问题)宣战的政客们被要求在前线打仗。
There is a systematic tendency on the part of human beings to avoid accountability for their own decisions. That’s why there are so many missing feedback loops—and why this kind of leverage point is so often popular with the masses, unpopular with the powers that be, and effective, if you can get the powers that be to permit it to happen (or go around them and make it happen anyway).
人类有一种系统性的倾向，即避免对自己的决定负责。这就是为什么有如此多的反馈回路被遗漏——也是为什么这种杠杆作用经常受到大众的欢迎，不受当权者的欢迎，并且是有效的，如果你能够得到允许它发生的权力(或者绕过他们，无论如何都要让它发生)。
5. Rules—Incentives, punishments, constraints
规则ーー激励、惩罚、约束
The rules of the system define its scope, its boundaries, its degrees of freedom. Thou shalt not kill. Everyone has the right of free speech. Contracts are to be honored. The president serves four-year terms and cannot serve more than two of them. Nine people on a team, you have to touch every base, three strikes and you’re out. If you get caught robbing a bank, you go to jail.
这个系统的规则定义了它的范围，它的边界，它的自由度。不可杀人。每个人都有言论自由的权利。合同应该得到尊重。总统的任期为四年，不能超过两年。一个团队里有九个人，你必须触及每个基地，三振出局。如果你被抓到抢银行，你就会进监狱。
Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union and opened information flows (glasnost) and changed the economic rules (perestroika), and the Soviet Union saw tremendous change.
米哈伊尔 · 戈尔巴乔夫在苏联上台，开放了信息流通(开放) ，改变了经济规则(改革) ，苏联发生了巨大的变化。
Constitutions are the strongest examples of social rules. Physical laws such as the second law of thermodynamics are absolute rules, whether we understand them or not or like them or not. Laws, punishments, incentives, and informal social agreements are progressively weaker rules.
宪法是社会规则最有力的例子。像热力学第二定律这样的物理定律是绝对规则，无论我们是否理解它们，是否喜欢它们。定律、惩罚、激励和非正式的社会协议是逐渐弱化的规则。
To demonstrate the power of rules, I like to ask my students to imagine different ones for a college. Suppose the students graded the teachers, or each other. Suppose there were no degrees: You come to college when you want to learn something, and you leave when you’ve learned it. Suppose tenure were awarded to professors according to their ability to solve real world problems, rather than to publish academic papers. Suppose a class got graded as a group, instead of as individuals.
为了证明规则的力量，我想让我的学生们想象一下一所大学的不同规则。假设学生们给老师打分，或者互相打分。假设没有学位: 当你想要学习某些东西的时候，你来到大学，当你学会它的时候，你离开。假设授予教授终身职位是根据他们解决现实世界问题的能力，而不是发表学术论文的能力。假设一个班级是作为一个群体而不是作为个人来评分的。
As we try to imagine restructured rules and what our behavior would be under them, we come to understand the power of rules. They are high leverage points. Power over the rules is real power. That’s why lobbyists congregate when Congress writes laws, and why the Supreme Court, which interprets and delineates the Constitution—the rules for writing the rules—has even more power than Congress. If you want to understand the deepest malfunctions of systems, pay attention to the rules and to who has power over them.
当我们试图想象重组后的规则，以及我们的行为在它们之下会是什么样子的时候，我们开始理解规则的力量。它们是高杠杆点。凌驾于规则之上的力量才是真正的力量。这就是为什么说客们在国会制定法律时聚集在一起，也是为什么解释和描述宪法的最高法院——制定规则的规则——比国会拥有更大的权力。如果你想了解系统最深层次的故障，请关注这些规则以及谁对它们拥有权力。
That’s why my systems intuition was sending off alarm bells as the new world trade system was explained to me. It is a system with rules designed by corporations, run by corporations, for the benefit of corporations. Its rules exclude almost any feedback from any other sector of society. Most of its meetings are closed even to the press (no information flow, no feedback). It forces nations into reinforcing loops “racing to the bottom,” competing with each other to weaken environmental and social safeguards in order to attract corporate investment. It’s a recipe for unleashing “success to the successful” loops, until they generate enormous accumulations of power and huge centralized planning systems that will destroy themselves.
这就是为什么我的系统直觉在向我解释新的世界贸易体系时发出了警报。它是一个由公司设计规则的系统，由公司运营，为了公司的利益。It 规则几乎排除了来自社会其他部门的任何反馈。它的大多数会议甚至不对媒体开放(没有信息流动，没有反馈)。为了吸引企业投资，信息技术迫使国家加强循环，“竞争到底”，相互竞争，削弱环境和社会保障。这是释放“成功到成功”循环的配方，直到它们产生巨大的权力积累和巨大的中央计划系统，将自我毁灭。
4. Self-Organization—The power to add, change, or evolve system structure
4. 自组织ーー增加、改变或发展系统结构的能力
The most stunning thing living systems and some social systems can do is to change themselves utterly by creating whole new structures and behaviors. In biological systems that power is called evolution. In human economies it’s called technical advance or social revolution. In systems lingo it’s called self-organization.
生命系统和一些社会系统能做的最惊人的事情就是通过创造全新的结构和行为来彻底改变自己。在生物系统中，这种力量被称为进化。在人类经济中，它被称为技术进步或社会革命。在系统术语中，它被称为自我组织。
Self-organization means changing any aspect of a system lower on this list—adding completely new physical structures, such as brains or wings or computers—adding new balancing or reinforcing loops, or new rules. The ability to self-organize is the strongest form of system resilience. A system that can evolve can survive almost any change, by changing itself. The human immune system has the power to develop new responses to some kinds of insults it has never before encountered. The human brain can take in new information and pop out completely new thoughts.
自我组织意味着改变这个列表中较低的系统的任何方面ーー添加全新的物理结构，例如大脑、翅膀或计算机ーー添加新的平衡或加强回路，或新的规则。自我组织的能力是系统弹性的最强形式。一个可以进化的系统几乎可以通过改变自身而在任何变化中生存下来。人类的免疫系统有能力对一些以前从未遇到过的侮辱做出新的反应。人类的大脑可以接受新的信息，产生全新的想法。
The power of self-organization seems so wondrous that we tend to regard it as mysterious, miraculous, heaven sent. Economists often model technology as magic—coming from nowhere, costing nothing, increasing the productivity of an economy by some steady percent each year. For centuries people have regarded the spectacular variety of nature with the same awe. Only a divine creator could bring forth such a creation.
自我组织的力量似乎是如此神奇，以至于我们倾向于认为它是神秘的、奇迹般的、天赐的。经济学家经常把技术描述为神奇的东西——无中生有，不花一分钱，每年稳步提高一个经济体的生产率。几个世纪以来，人们一直以同样敬畏的眼光看待自然界的壮观多样性。只有神圣的造物主才能创造出这样的造物。
Further investigation of self-organizing systems reveals that the divine creator, if there is one, does not have to produce evolutionary miracles. He, she, or it just has to write marvelously clever rules for self-organization. These rules basically govern how, where, and what the system can add onto or subtract from itself under what conditions. As hundreds of self-organizing computer models have demonstrated, complex and delightful patterns can evolve from quite simple sets of rules. The genetic code within the DNA that is the basis of all biological evolution contains just four different letters, combined into words of three letters each. That pattern, and the rules for replicating and rearranging it, has been constant for something like three billion years, during which it has spewed out an unimaginable variety of failed and successful self-evolved creatures.
对自组织系统的进一步研究表明，神圣的创造者，如果有的话，不一定要创造进化的奇迹。他，她，或者它只需要为自我组织写出非常聪明的规则。这些规则基本上控制着系统在什么条件下，如何，在什么地方，以及从自身中添加或减去什么。正如数以百计的自组织计算机模型所证明的那样，复杂而令人愉悦的模式可以从非常简单的规则集演变而来。DNA 中的遗传密码是所有生物进化的基础，它只包含四个不同的字母，每个字母组合成三个字母。这种模式，以及复制和重新安排它的规则，已经持续了大约30亿年，在这期间，它涌出了各种难以想象的失败和成功的自我进化生物。
Self-organization is basically a matter of an evolutionary raw material—a highly variable stock of information from which to select possible patterns—and a means for experimentation, for selecting and testing new patterns. For biological evolution, the raw material is DNA, one source of variety is spontaneous mutation, and the testing mechanism is a changing environment in which some individuals do not survive to reproduce. For technology, the raw material is the body of understanding science has accumulated and stored in libraries and in the brains of its practitioners. The source of variety is human creativity (whatever that is) and the selection mechanism can be whatever the market will reward, or whatever governments and foundations will fund, or whatever meets human needs.
自我组织基本上是一种进化的原材料ーー一种高度可变的信息库，可以从中选择可能的模式ーー和一种实验手段，用于选择和测试新的模式。对于生物进化来说，原材料是 DNA，多样性的一个来源是自发突变，测试机制是一个不断变化的环境，其中一些个体无法生存繁殖。对于技术而言，原材料是科学积累和储存在图书馆和实践者大脑中的理解的主体。多样性的来源是人类的创造力(不管是什么) ，选择机制可以是任何市场将会回报的东西，或者任何政府和基金会将会资助的东西，或者任何满足人类需求的东西。
When you understand the power of system self-organization, you begin to understand why biologists worship biodiversity even more than economists worship technology. The wildly varied stock of DNA, evolved and accumulated over billions of years, is the source of evolutionary potential, just as science libraries and labs and universities where scientists are trained are the source of technological potential. Allowing species to go extinct is a systems crime, just as randomly eliminating all copies of particular science journals or particular kinds of scientists would be.
当你理解了系统自我组织的力量，你就开始理解为什么生物学家崇拜生物多样性甚至超过经济学家崇拜技术。经过数十亿年的进化和积累，各种各样的 DNA 储备是进化潜力的来源，正如科学图书馆、实验室和受训科学家的大学是技术潜力的来源一样。允许物种灭绝是一种系统性犯罪，就像随机删除特定科学杂志或特定类型的科学家的所有副本一样。
The same could be said of human cultures, of course, which are the store of behavioral repertoires, accumulated over not billions, but hundreds of thousands of years. They are a stock out of which social evolution can arise. Unfortunately, people appreciate the precious evolutionary potential of cultures even less than they understand the preciousness of every genetic variation in the world’s ground squirrels. I guess that’s because one aspect of almost every culture is the belief in the utter superiority of that culture.
当然，人类文化也可以这样说，它是行为的储备，不是几十亿年，而是几十万年积累起来的。它们是社会进化的源泉。不幸的是，人们对文化宝贵的进化潜力的认识甚至比对世界上地松鼠每一种遗传变异的认识还要少。我想这是因为几乎每种文化的一个方面就是相信这种文化的绝对优越性。
Insistence on a single culture shuts down learning and cuts back resilience. Any system, biological, economic, or social, that gets so encrusted that it cannot self-evolve, a system that systematically scorns experimentation and wipes out the raw material of innovation, is doomed over the long term on this highly variable planet.
对单一文化的坚持阻碍了学习，削弱了适应力。任何系统，无论是生物系统，经济系统还是社会系统，如果因为太过坚固而无法自我进化，一个系统性地蔑视实验并消灭创新的原材料，那么从长远来看，在这个高度变化的星球上注定要失败。
The intervention point here is obvious, but unpopular. Encouraging variability and experimentation and diversity means “losing control.” Let a thousand flowers bloom and anything could happen! Who wants that? Let’s play it safe and push this lever in the wrong direction by wiping out biological, cultural, social, and market diversity!
这里的干预点是显而易见的，但不受欢迎。鼓励多样性、实验性和多样性意味着“失去控制”让一千朵花开放，任何事情都有可能发生！谁想要那样？让我们谨慎行事，通过消灭生物、文化、社会和市场多样性，把这个杠杆推向错误的方向！
3. Goals—The purpose or function of the system
3. 目标ー系统的宗旨或功能
Right there, the diversity-destroying consequence of the push for control demonstrates why the goal of a system is a leverage point superior to the self-organizing ability of a system. If the goal is to bring more and more of the world under the control of one particular central planning system (the empire of Genghis Khan, the Church, the People’s Republic of China, Wal-Mart, Disney), then everything further down the list, physical stocks and flows, feedback loops, information flows, even self-organizing behavior, will be twisted to conform to that goal.
在这里，推动控制的多样性破坏后果证明了为什么一个系统的目标是一个杠杆点优于一个系统的自组织能力。如果我们的目标是将世界上越来越多的地方置于一个特定的中央计划系统(成吉思汗帝国、教会、中华人民共和国、沃尔玛、迪斯尼)的控制之下，那么，下面的所有东西，实体库存和流动、反馈循环、信息流动，甚至自组织行为，都将被扭曲以符合这个目标。
That’s why I can’t get into arguments about whether genetic engineering is a “good” or a “bad” thing. Like all technologies, it depends on who is wielding it, with what goal. The only thing one can say is that if corporations wield it for the purpose of generating marketable products, that is a very different goal, a very different selection mechanism, a very different direction for evolution than anything the planet has seen so far.
这就是为什么我不能进入关于基因工程是“好”还是“坏”的争论。就像所有的技术一样，它取决于谁在使用它，有什么目的。人们唯一能说的是，如果企业利用它来生产可销售的产品，那将是一个非常不同的目标，一个非常不同的选择机制，一个非常不同的进化方向，比这个星球迄今为止看到的任何东西都要不同。
As my little single-loop examples have shown, most balancing feedback loops within systems have their own goals—to keep the bathwater at the right level, to keep the room temperature comfortable, to keep inventories stocked at sufficient levels, to keep enough water behind the dam. Those goals are important leverage points for pieces of systems, and most people realize that. If you want the room warmer, you know the thermostat setting is the place to intervene. But there are larger, less obvious, higher-leverage goals, those of the entire system.
正如我的单循环小例子所显示的，系统内的大多数平衡反馈回路都有自己的目标——使洗澡水保持在合适的水平，保持室温舒适，使库存保持在足够的水平，保持大坝后面有足够的水。这些目标是系统各部分的重要杠杆点，大多数人都意识到了这一点。如果你想让房间变暖，你知道恒温器的设置是干预的好地方。但是还有更大的，不那么明显的，更高杠杆的目标，那些整个系统。
Even people within systems don’t often recognize what whole-system goal they are serving. “To make profits,” most corporations would say, but that’s just a rule, a necessary condition to stay in the game. What is the point of the game? To grow, to increase market share, to bring the world (customers, suppliers, regulators) more and more under the control of the corporation, so that its operations becomes ever more shielded from uncertainty. John Kenneth Galbraith recognized that corporate goal—to engulf everything—long ago.6 It’s the goal of a cancer too. Actually it’s the goal of every living population—and only a bad one when it isn’t balanced by higher level balancing feedback loops that never let an upstart power-loop-driven entity control the world. The goal of keeping the market competitive has to trump the goal of each individual corporation to eliminate its competitors, just as in ecosystems, the goal of keeping populations in balance and evolving has to trump the goal of each population to reproduce without limit.
甚至系统中的人们也不经常意识到他们所服务的整个系统的目标。大多数公司会说，“为了获得利润”，但这只是一个规则，一个必要的条件，留在游戏中。这个游戏的意义是什么？为了增长，为了增加市场份额，为了使世界(客户，供应商，监管机构)越来越多地处于公司的控制之下，从而使公司的运营变得越来越不受不确定性的影响。约翰 · 加尔布雷斯早就认识到企业的目标——吞噬一切。6. 这也是癌症的目标。事实上，这是每个现存人口的目标——只有当它不能被更高层次的平衡反馈回路所平衡时，它才是一个糟糕的目标。这种平衡反馈回路永远不会让一个由权力回路驱动的暴发户控制世界。保持市场竞争力的目标必须胜过每个公司消灭竞争对手的目标，就像在生态系统中一样，保持种群平衡和进化的目标必须胜过每个种群无限繁殖的目标。
I said a while back that changing the players in the system is a low-level intervention, as long as the players fit into the same old system. The exception to that rule is at the top, where a single player can have the power to change the system’s goal. I have watched in wonder as—only very occasionally—a new leader in an organization, from Dartmouth College to Nazi Germany, comes in, enunciates a new goal, and swings hundreds or thousands or millions of perfectly intelligent, rational people off in a new direction.
我不久前说过，只要球员适应同样的旧系统，改变系统中的球员是一种低级别的干预。这个规则的例外是在顶端，一个玩家可以有权力改变系统的目标。我曾惊奇地看到——只是非常偶然地——一个组织中的新领导人，从达特茅斯学院到纳粹德国，走进来，阐述一个新的目标，把成百上千甚至上百万非常聪明、理性的人们推向一个新的方向。
That’s what Ronald Reagan did, and we watched it happen. Not long before he came to office, a president could say “Ask not what government can do for you, ask what you can do for the government,” and no one even laughed. Reagan said over and over, the goal is not to get the people to help the government and not to get government to help the people, but to get government off our backs. One can argue, and I would, that larger system changes and the rise of corporate power over government let him get away with that. But the thoroughness with which the public discourse in the United States and even the world has been changed since Reagan is testimony to the high leverage of articulating, meaning, repeating, standing up for, insisting upon, new system goals.
这就是罗纳德 · 里根所做的，我们看着它发生。就职前不久，总统可以说: “不要问政府能为你们做什么，问问你们能为政府做什么。”。里根一遍又一遍地说，我们的目标不是让人民帮助政府，也不是让政府帮助人民，而是让政府放过我们。人们可以说，我也会说，更大的体制变革和企业对政府权力的上升让他逃脱了惩罚。但是，自里根总统以来，美国乃至全世界的公共话语已经发生了彻底的变化，这证明了阐明、意义、重复、坚持、坚持新体系目标的高杠杆作用。
2. Paradigms—The mind-set out of which the system—its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters—arises
2. 范式——系统的目标、结构、规则、延迟和参数产生的思维模式
Another of Jay Forrester’s famous systems sayings goes: It doesn’t matter how the tax law of a country is written. There is a shared idea in the minds of the society about what a “fair” distribution of the tax load is. Whatever the laws say, by fair means or foul, by complications, cheating, exemptions or deductions, by constant sniping at the rules, actual tax payments will push right up against the accepted idea of “fairness.”
Jay Forrester 的另一句著名的系统格言是这样的: 一个国家的税法是如何制定的并不重要。关于什么是税负的“公平”分配，社会上有一个共同的想法。无论法律如何规定，通过合理的手段或不合理的手段，通过并发症，欺骗，豁免或扣除，通过对规则的不断抨击，实际的纳税将正好与公认的“公平”观念相冲突
The shared idea in the minds of society, the great big unstated assumptions, constitute that society’s paradigm, or deepest set of beliefs about how the world works. These beliefs are unstated because it is unnecessary to state them—everyone already knows them. Money measures something real and has real meaning; therefore, people who are paid less are literally worth less. Growth is good. Nature is a stock of resources to be converted to human purposes. Evolution stopped with the emergence of Homo sapiens. One can “own” land. Those are just a few of the paradigmatic assumptions of our current culture, all of which have utterly dumbfounded other cultures, who thought them not the least bit obvious.
社会头脑中的共同观念，这些巨大的未说明的假设，构成了社会的范式，或者说是关于世界如何运作的一套最深刻的信念。这些信念之所以没有被阐述，是因为没有必要去阐述它们——每个人都已经知道它们了。金钱衡量的是一些真实的东西，有着真实的意义; 因此，那些收入较低的人实际上价值较低。增长是好的。自然是一种可以转化为人类用途的资源。随着智人的出现，进化停止了。人类可以“拥有”土地。这些只是我们当前文化的一些典型假设，所有这些假设都让其他文化感到完全无语，他们认为这些假设一点也不明显。
Paradigms are the sources of systems. From them, from shared social agreements about the nature of reality, come system goals and information flows, feedbacks, stocks, flows, and everything else about systems. No one has ever said that better than Ralph Waldo Emerson:
范式是系统的来源。从它们中，从关于现实本质的共同社会协议中，产生了系统目标和信息流、反馈、股票、流以及关于系统的其他一切。没有人比拉尔夫 · 沃尔多 · 爱默生说得更好:
Every nation and every man instantly surround themselves with a material apparatus which exactly corresponds to . . . their state of thought. Observe how every truth and every error, each a thought of some man’s mind, clothes itself with societies, houses, cities, language, ceremonies, newspapers. Observe the ideas of the present day . . . see how timber, brick, lime, and stone have flown into convenient shape, obedient to the master idea reigning in the minds of many persons. . . . It follows, of course, that the least enlargement of ideas . . . would cause the most striking changes of external things.7
7 Ralph Waldo Emerson,
The ancient Egyptians built pyramids because they believed in an afterlife. We build skyscrapers because we believe that space in downtown cities is enormously valuable. Whether it was Copernicus and Kepler showing that the earth is not the center of the universe, or Einstein hypothesizing that matter and energy are interchangeable, or Adam Smith postulating that the selfish actions of individual players in markets wonderfully accumulate to the common good, people who have managed to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm have hit a leverage point that totally transforms systems.
古埃及人建造金字塔是因为他们相信有来世。我们建造摩天大楼是因为我们相信市中心的空间是非常宝贵的。无论是哥白尼和开普勒证明地球不是宇宙的中心，还是爱因斯坦假设物质和能量是可以互换的，或者亚当 · 斯密假设市场中个体行为的自私行为奇妙地积累到共同利益，那些设法在范式层面上干预系统的人们已经达到了一个杠杆点，完全改变了系统。
You could say paradigms are harder to change than anything else about a system, and therefore this item should be lowest on the list, not second to- highest. But there’s nothing physical or expensive or even slow in the process of paradigm change. In a single individual it can happen in a millisecond. All it takes is a click in the mind, a falling of scales from the eyes, a new way of seeing. Whole societies are another matter—they resist challenges to their paradigms harder than they resist anything else.
你可以说范式比系统的其他任何东西都更难改变，因此这个项目应该是列表中最低的，而不是第二高的。但是，在范式转变的过程中，没有任何物理的、昂贵的、甚至是缓慢的东西。在一个人身上，它可以在一毫秒内发生。它所需要的只是头脑中的一声轻响，眼睛里的天平下降，一种新的视觉方式。整个社会就是另一回事了——他们抵制挑战自己的范式比抵制其他任何东西都要难。
So how do you change paradigms? Thomas Kuhn, who wrote the seminal book about the great paradigm shifts of science, has a lot to say about that.8 Clyde Haberman, You keep pointing at the anomalies and failures in the old paradigm. You keep speaking and acting, loudly and with assurance, from the new one. You insert people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power. You don’t waste time with reactionaries; rather, you work with active change agents and with the vast middle ground of people who are open-minded.
那么，如何改变模式呢？托马斯 · 库恩写了一本关于科学伟大范式转变的开创性著作，对此他有很多话要说。8克莱德 · 哈伯曼，你一直在指出旧范式中的异常和失败。你不断地说，不断地做，大声地，自信地，从新的模式出发。你把拥有新范式的人安插在公众视野和权力的地方。你不会在反动派身上浪费时间; 相反，你会和积极的变革推动者以及思想开放的广大中间派人士一起工作。
Systems modelers say that we change paradigms by building a model of the system, which takes us outside the system and forces us to see it whole. I say that because my own paradigms have been changed that way.
系统建模师说，我们通过建立系统模型来改变范式，它将我们带到系统之外，并迫使我们看到整个系统。我这么说是因为我自己的模式就是这样被改变的。
1. Transcending Paradigms
1. 超越范式
There is yet one leverage point that is even higher than changing a paradigm. That is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to stay flexible, to realize that no paradigm is “true,” that every one, including the one that sweetly shapes your own worldview, is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe that is far beyond human comprehension. It is to “get” at a gut level the paradigm that there are paradigms, and to see that that itself is a paradigm, and to regard that whole realization as devastatingly funny. It is to let go into not-knowing, into what the Buddhists call enlightenment.
还有一个杠杆点甚至比改变范式还要高。那就是让自己在范例的舞台上保持独立，保持灵活性，认识到没有任何范例是“真实的”，每一个范例，包括那个美妙地塑造了你自己的世界观的范例，都是对一个远远超出人类理解的巨大而神奇的宇宙的极其有限的理解。它是在一个直觉层面上“获得”范式，即存在范式，并且看到这本身就是一个范式，并且认为整个实现是毁灭性的有趣。让我们进入无知，进入佛教徒所谓的开悟。
People who cling to paradigms (which means just about all of us) take one look at the spacious possibility that everything they think is guaranteed to be nonsense and pedal rapidly in the opposite direction. Surely there is no power, no control, no understanding, not even a reason for being, much less acting, embodied in the notion that there is no certainty in any worldview. But, in fact, everyone who has managed to entertain that idea, for a moment or for a lifetime, has found it to be the basis for radical empowerment. If no paradigm is right, you can choose whatever one will help to achieve your purpose. If you have no idea where to get a purpose, you can listen to the universe.
那些坚持模式的人(也就是说，我们所有人)看到了一个广阔的可能性，那就是他们认为的所有事情都注定是无稽之谈，于是他们迅速地朝着相反的方向前进。当然，没有权力，没有控制，没有理解，甚至没有存在的理由，更不用说行动了，包含在任何世界观中都没有确定性这一概念中。但是，事实上，每一个曾经设法接受这个想法的人，无论是一时的，还是一生的，都发现它是激进赋权的基础。如果没有一种模式是正确的，你可以选择任何一种模式来帮助实现你的目标。如果你不知道从哪里获得目标，你可以倾听宇宙的声音。
It is in this space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.
正是在这个掌控范式的空间里，人们摆脱了成瘾，生活在持续的快乐中，打倒了帝国，被关起来或者被烧死在木桩上，或者被钉在十字架上或者被枪杀，并且产生了持续数千年的影响。
There is so much that could be said to qualify this list of places to intervene in a system. It is a tentative list and its order is slithery. There are exceptions to every item that can move it up or down the order of leverage. Having had the list percolating in my subconscious for years has not transformed me into Superwoman. The higher the leverage point, the more the system will resist changing it—that’s why societies often rub out truly enlightened beings.
可以说，有太多的地方可以限定这个名单的地方干预一个系统。这只是一个试探性的清单，它的顺序很滑溜。每个项目都有例外，它可以按照杠杆的顺序上下移动。这些清单已经在我的潜意识里渗透了很多年，但这并没有把我变成超女。杠杆点越高，系统就越抗拒改变它——这就是为什么社会经常淘汰真正开明的人。
Magical leverage points are not easily accessible, even if we know where they are and which direction to push on them. There are no cheap tickets to mastery. You have to work hard at it, whether that means rigorously analyzing a system or rigorously casting off your own paradigms and throwing yourself into the humility of not-knowing. In the end, it seems that mastery has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly, letting go and dancing with the system.
即使我们知道它们的位置和推动它们的方向，神奇的杠杆点也不容易获得。没有廉价的门票可以让你精通。你必须努力工作，不管是严格地分析一个系统，还是严格地抛弃你自己的范例，把自己投入到无知的谦卑之中。最后，掌握似乎与推动杠杆比率关系不大，而更多的是战略性的、深刻的、疯狂的放手，与体系共舞。