Re: The Law of Unintended Consequenses

[Myron Tribus <mtribus@home.com>]

At 6:07 PM +0000 12/17/00, David Kerridge wrote:
>
>My question is: does anyone know who first used the term
>"The Law of Unintended Consequenses"? A quick search
>of the WWW has found a range of papers quoting it, but
>no pointer to the original source.

David:
My earliest recollection of this "law", which did not then have a 
name, is in the writings of Jay Forrester, in connection with the 
introduction of "Industrial Dynamics".  For the first time, using his 
method to simulate complex industrial systems, it became possible to 
explore systems with feedback loops within feedback loops with 
non-linear interactions.  Forrester pointed out that very often the 
existence of a dozen or so feedback loops created results which were 
completely counter-intuitive.  Sometimes you got the opposite of what 
you intended.  That was around 1961.

Myron Tribus,  350 Britto Terrace,  Fremont, CA 94539
Ph:510 651 3641  Fax: 510 656 9875   e-mail: mtribus@home.com
If you put good people in a bad system, the system will win every time.