The Engineering and Medical Approaches to Fixing Broken Systems
Newsletter 324 - February 21, 2025
Note: All our newsletters are also available on the BI Newsletter Archive.
For this post, we want to explain a key idea that we have a video about in our Conflict Frontiers Seminar, but we have never made it into a newsletter, nor an essay. Like our earlier newsletters on The Google Maps and Adopt-a-Highway Approach to Systems, and Sharp and Fuzzy Feedback, this post also focuses on the difference between complex and complicated systems, and how the two need to be approached very differently.
Here, we want to explain two fundamentally different troubleshooting (and system fixing) strategies. One is appropriate for complicated mechanical systems, and the second is appropriate for complex, adaptive, organic, social, and ecological systems. For complicated mechanical systems, our society has developed very sophisticated engineering models for designing, operating, and maintaining these systems. For complex organic systems, the best available model is the approach developed by the field of medicine to deal with the human body.
The Engineering Model Works for Complicated Systems
The engineering model works for systems that are consciously designed by humans: complicated mechanical systems. They may be computers, airplanes, cars, assembly lines, space stations—all sorts of complicated devices, large and small. Complete plans for those systems are available; they're deterministic systems. They work the same way every time - at least, unless they're broken, and then in a sense, the system is just functioning differently, but it still is deterministic. That's why you can troubleshoot things so effectively. If you've got enough money and sufficient will, you can troubleshoot and repair just about any mechanical system, unless doing so will cost more than the repair is worth. In that case, you junk the machine and replace it with a new one.
The Medical Model Works for Complex Systems
The engineering model does not work nearly as well, however, for complex systems because they are not deterministic. Here you are dealing with systems that have evolved through natural and social evolution. The human body is one example of what systems theorists call a "complex adaptive system. So, too are biological ecosystems, social systems, economies and conflict systems.
There are no plans for these systems, because they weren't designed. The closest we can come to "plans" are observational studies about how particular aspects of the system actually work. So doctors understand the basic elements of the human body, and how all the "parts" are connected. Much of their work focuses on treating as many injuries and diseases as possible. For some kinds of ailments, doctors are usually able to produce a complete cure. They can give you penicillin for a strep throat, and your sore throat will go away. They can set a broken bone, and it will heal correctly. For other problems, the best they can do is provide partial or symptomatic relief. You can take Tamiflu to lessen the duration of the flu, but doctors can't cure it, as they can strep throat. They can suggest Claritin or Zyrtec for hay fever in the spring, but that just reduces symptoms, it doesn't get rid of them. Other kinds of problems doctors can't treat, but they can help you live with. That's what the whole movement which produced the Americans with Disabilities Act was about: helping people live with incurable chronic conditions. Yet, there are still other conditions which are terminal, for which modern medicine does not have a cure. Many cancers are like that, as is heart disease. We can reduce risk factors by eating well and exercising, but doctors cannot entirely prevent heart attacks or cancer.
This continuum of treatments applies to conflicts, as well. We can't prevent conflict; indeed, as we have explained elsewhere, we need conflict as it is what Guy calls "the engine of social learning." But we do want to prevent conflicts from becoming destructive, and to limit their destructiveness, if we fail to prevent it. And just as we try to reduce medical risk factors by eating well and exercising, we can try to learn conflict management and resolution techniques such as learning how to listen to others effectively, or identify interests to find win-win agreements.
Just as is true with medicine, conflict outcomes can range from complete resolution to complete failure. Sometimes, there are misunderstandings that can be cleared up entirely with a good, honest conversation. Or apparently irreconcilable positions can have compatible interests underneath, allowing for a win-win interest-based resolution. In many other cases, what you're providing is symptomatic relief. You help people who have irreconcilable differences learn to live with chronic conflict, but to do so in ways that limit casualties and costs. This is what dialogue facilitators do, when they get people who have fundamental moral differences to learn how to listen to each other and treat each other with respect, even if they don't change their minds about the moral issue being discussed. And just as is true in medicine, there are some conflicts that are, in essence, terminal. We do not now have the tools that enable us to deal with these constructively. (Although some of our colleagues likely disagree, we would put the Israel/Palestinian conflict in this category).
Why Does This Matter?
Our students often wondered why this distinction matters. It matters because you cannot "fix" broken complex adaptive systems the same way you can fix complicated mechanical systems. In fact, complex social systems don't "break" in any conventional sense of the term. What they do do, however, is operate in ways that people living in those systems find more or less desirable. The constant tension between people with different goals who have different images of how they would like to see the social system operate is what makes conflict so ubiquitous and intractable. That said, there are instances in which the vast preponderance of individuals recognize the system has gone off on a bad and quite destructive track — something that most everybody agrees needs to be fixed (though they may not agree about how to fix it). At the extreme, this includes economic depressions, wars, and revolutions. More commonly, you have large majorities telling pollsters that they believe that their society has "gone off on the wrong track."
Grand utopian solutions that will completely fix these problems are no more realistic than a magic pill that will make you totally healthy. Still, there are some approaches to conflict problems that will help in some situations, while other approaches will help in others. In societal level intractable conflicts — the kinds we study and write about here — there is no one "solution" that can possibly "fix" it all. The best we can do is to identify some of the many things that are going wrong, or are not working as well as we hope they would, and devise plans to try to make things go better. Since these aren't deterministic systems, we can never know if our plans will work or not. The best we can do is try, and to watch carefully to see what happens. If things get better, great! If they don't, try to figure out what went wrong and develop another approach that might work better next time.
And, as we wrote about in our recent post on sharp and fuzzy feedback systems, it can even be hard to figure out whether a specific intervention helped or whether it made things worse. The number of things going on at any one time makes it very hard to separate all of the different causes from all of the different effects. That doesn't, however, mean that we should quit trying. Rather, by objectively and rigorously doing all that we can to assess the effectiveness of our efforts, we can do much to improve our chances of a more desirable outcome. This is what doctors do every day and this is why we find their approach so useful.
Developing a Medical Approach to Conflict
Again, we want to stress that although we advocate a medical approach to conflict, that does not mean with think conflict is a disease. Conflict is actually characteristic of healthy societies — authoritarian societies that suppress conflict to the point where it seems like it doesn't exist are actually very unhealthy. Eventually people will get so angry that the pent up conflict will explode in extreme violence, or the society will be so unable to adapt to changing conditions that it will be destroyed by external events. Healthy conflict — and the societal learning that results from it — is completely necessary for a healthy society.
But when conflict becomes destructive, as it does, for example, in hyper-polarized political conflict, then conflict is no longer healthy. It needs to be treated in some way, just as diseases need to be treated. Just as medicine has long lists of different injuries and diseases, Guy has developed a list of destructive conflict dynamics that we need to be able to identify and treat, so that they do not become extremely harmful or deadly. Better yet, if we can figure out ways to prevent these problems, just as a healthy diet and exercise can stave off many diseases, that's even better. Unfortunately, this is just a "starter" list of things that we ought to be trying to fix. There are, as we have tried to outline in our massively parallel problem-solving framework, a great many other areas in which the widespread application of more sophisticated approaches to conflict problems could yield major benefits.
Conflict Traps
Several of the conflict "diseases" Guy has identified he has also called "traps," because they are tempting dynamics that tend to pull us in, and get us in trouble. If we see the traps before we fall in avoiding harm is much easier than having to try to get out of the trap, once in it.
"He Who Has, Gets" Trap
One of his traps is the "He Who Has, Gets" trap. This is the tendency of those with wealth and power to use that wealth and power to obtain even more wealth and power. This is the sort of thing that drives US and global inequality. Kenneth Bolding used to call it Matthew's Law, from the line in the Biblical Book of Matthew: "To whomsoever hath, to him shall be given." Other people have called it the Golden Rule (but not the one you are probably thinking about). This "golden rule" says "s/he who has the gold makes the rules." When we fall into this trap, we are likely to end up with high levels of wealth and power inequality which tend to lead to dissatisfaction and unrest among those at the bottom. While complete equality is likely impossible (and has other problems such as lack of incentives to work hard or solve problems), developing mechanisms to limit this trap is likely to reduce destructive conflict over the distribution of wealth and power.
The Tragedy of the Commons Trap
Another conflict trap is the tragedy of the commons, a term coined by Garret Hardin, to describe a situation where everyone in a community (or a society or the world) share a common property (such as the town square where cows were grazed in Hardin's example). If everyone tries to graze as many cows as possible on the square, thereby (supposedly) maximizing the amount of benefit they get out the shared resource, then the square will be overgrazed, and all the grass (and then the cows) will die. This same dynamics applies to any shared resource whether it is grazing land, clean air, a cool climate, or even a healthy economy. If everyone tries to maximize their exploitation of the shared resource for their own benefit, it is likely to be destroyed for themselves and for everyone else. . Climate change is a gigantic tragedy of the commons problem. The defunding of affordable public education is another one, especially for people from lower socioeconomic groups. A first step in avoiding this problem, however, is to recognize it exists. Then ways can be figured out to decide what level of use of the common resource is available to everyone if stability is to be achieved, and what is to be done if and when someone violates those fair use rules.
The Into-the-Sea Trap
Guy named this trap years ago after Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat vowed to drive Israelis "into the sea." Though Arafat is now gone, Hamas is still trying to do that. Some would argue that Israel is reciprocating in kind. We all, in reality, fall into this trap when we think in terms of completely vanquishing or somehow getting rid of our "enemy." This is the way many American Democrats seem to think of and speak of Republicans, and the Republicans do the same about Democrats. They both seem to imagine their problems will end when the other party just completely surrenders and meekly goes off into the corner, understanding that they were wrong and they' have been completely defeated. Or, better yet, maybe they will just just disappear. They've been pushed into the figurative sea and they're gone. Yet, the unconditional surrender model of conflict resolution happens very rarely. The end of World War II might be an example of this. But mostly, it's necessary to learn how to live with your enemies over the long term. Yet that's something people often don't think about. Political victors don't tend to think how to create a society in which the losers, too, would want to live. Rather, they try to "stick it" to the losers as much as possible, as is evidenced by the Republican phrase "own the libs" and Trump's saying "I am your retribution." That isn't the way to de-escalate conflict or hyper-polarization. Rather, it is throwing a match into a puddle of gasoline, or put another way, trying to drive Democrats into the sea. This is not a recipe for a healthy society (or community, or organization, or family, for that matter).
The Escalation Trap
Another closely related trap is escalation. This is the tendency of provocations to generate counter provocations in an intensifying cycle that can lead to extreme violence. Guy argues that this is the most destructive force on the planet. During the cold war, escalation dynamics could have led us to global thermonuclear war. Fortunately, calm heads in crises (such as the Cuban Missile Crisis) prevented that outcome. Now, frighteningly, we are looking at the possibility again, as more and more countries are obtaining nuclear weapons, and by at least one account, (former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster), China maybe be laying the groundwork for a first-strike nuclear capability against the United States." Maybe we shouldn't continue to escalate the conflict between the U.S. and China?
The Boiled Frog Trap
This trap gets its name from a kind of gross (and well known, but apparently apocryphal) story, which illustrates an important concept. The story says that if you put a frog in a nice cool pan of water on the stove, and turn up the heat slowly, it won't notice that it's getting intolerably hot and jump out. Instead, it will cook to death. It sounds crazy (and apparently is), but we are falling into a similar trap, ourselves, all the time. While our conflict problems (particularly political polarization) are getting steadily more severe, each year is seen as being not that much worse than last year. Some of our colleagues even argue that we really aren't very polarized after all — the pot isn't very hot at all, or, they say, being hot is good, because heat spurs change.) So, it's doesn't produce the panic response (like jumping out of the pot) that we need to protect ourselves. Instead, we're slowly cooking ourselves. We need to break out of this complacency, realize the depth of the threat and start taking actions to jump out.
The Hard, Positional Bargaining Trap
Another conflict trap is positional or hard bargaining, where you're just so focused on winning and having your position prevail that you don't explore opportunities for mutually beneficial agreements—or worse, you are totally focused on making your "enemy" suffer, even if this results in your suffering too. This, too, is the kind of trap that we can design ways around.
And More...
And there are a lot more such traps. We are compiling a list of these in our soon-to-be coming (we hope!) Guide to Constructive Conflict. If we identify the traps and the destructive conflict maladies, then we can figure out ways to avoid them in the first place ( as we do with preventive health care) and treat them when our preventive efforts fail (as we try to do with acute health care). But we need to understand that we need to use this complexity-oriented medical model for addressing our conflict challenges, not the overly simplistic engineering/mechanical approach that assumes either that there is a technical fix to conflicts, just as there is a technical fix for broken machines, or that there is a simple "one kind fits all" or even one kind fits this solution to problems. Complex adaptive systems need complex adaptive solutions. This is what massively parallel problem problem solving and peacebuilding is and why we think it is the only way we are going to be able to surmount our ever growing intractable conflicts.
Something to Think About
What do you think are the most important and treatable conflict traps? The things that often go wrong? What mistakes do you — or others — make, especially mistakes that they, in hindsight, will think of as mistakes? This, in a sense, is the low-hanging fruit. If we can develop systems to help people avoid these traps and avoid making these mistakes on a large scale, our conflicts will be reduced in number and intensity, and we can start to build a lot deeper and stronger public support for efforts to promote more constructive conflict at all levels of society.
Lead Photo Credit: Engineering drawing – Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schl%C3%B6rwagen_-_Construction_drawings.jpg; By:DLR German Aerospace Center; Permission: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic; Date Acquired: February 21, 2025
Medical Operation: Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/man-in-white-dress-shirt-wearing-white-goggles-KrsoedfRAf4; By: National Cancer Institute; Permission: Unslpash License; Date Acquired: February 21, 2025
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