Date: Wed, 18 Jan 1995 23:06:10 +0000 (GMT)
From: Gordon Joly <gordo@dircon.co.uk>
To: Gordon Joly <G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: Quote of the day (fwd)
Message-Id: <Pine.SCO.3.91.950118230559.3797B-100000@tdc.dircon.co.uk>
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<A HREF="http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/people/gordo/">Gordon Joly
Email Address: gordo@dircon.co.uk</A>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 1995 05:50:01 -0700
From: Quote of the day <qotd-request@ensu.ucalgary.ca>
To: qotd@ensu.ucalgary.ca
Subject: Quote of the day


"When you are confronted by any complex social system, such as
 an urban center or a hamster, with things about it that you're
 dissatisfied with and anxious to fix, you cannot just step in and set
 about fixing with much hope of helping.  This realization is one of
 the sore discouragements of our century.  Jay Forrester has
 demonstrated it mathematically, with his computer models of cities in
 which he makes clear that whatever you propose to do, based on common
 sense, will almost inevitably make matters worse rather than better.
 You cannot meddle with one part of a complex system from the outside
 without the almost certain risk of setting off disastrous events that
 you hadn't counted on in other, remote parts.  If you want to fix
 something you are first obliged to understand, in detail, the whole
 system, and for very large systems you can't do this without a very
 large computer.  Even then, the safest course seems to be to stand by
 and wring hands, but not to touch.

"Intervening is a way of causing trouble."

 Lewis Thomas, from the essay "On Meddling" in the collection "The
 Medusa and the Snail", The Viking Press, New York, 1979:


    Submitted by:   harvey@acf2.NYU.EDU (harvey)
                    Nov. 7, 1994
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