Talk:Viable system model

Cleaning up
How about some references eg Brain of the Firm, Heart of Enterprise and Diagnosing the System for Organisations. e.g see Stafford Beer memorial page at the Cybernetics Society.--Nick Green 22:07, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Diagrams
How about some diagrams?

How about some critique?
Beer does not exactly show how to measure variety and how to operationalize the concept as to make it a useful measure. The axioms do not really help in this. This goes along with critic voiced by others that Beer's work often does lack scientific rigor (compare e.g. Rivett, P.: The case for cybernetics. A critical appreciation. European Journal of Operational Research 1 (1977) 33-37). Although it is quite clear to me that variety is a subjective concept, we still need guidelines on how to measure it. otherwise, it will never be an inter-subjective measure, and as such, no measure at all.
 * I believe that Beer does most of the above in his accessible Platform For Change
 * Janosabel (talk) 09:43, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

The VSM as a cybernetic theory is so general that it will be hard to test it according to hypothetico-deductive logic (falsification), as it will always apply to a system if the observer tries to match observed system and VSM. As such, perhaps it is perhaps more an interpretive framework? (compare Harnden, R.J.: Outside and then: an interpretive approach to the VSM. In: Espejo, R., Harnden, R. (eds.): The Viable System Model. Interpretations and Applications of Stafford Beer's VSM. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK et al. (1989) 383-404)

Although the 'muddyness' and 'fuzziness' of the typical diagrammic convention of the VSM is reportedly intended by Beer (compare Beer, S.: Diagnosing the System for Organizations. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK et al. (1985)), others argue that a more formal specification and notation would help in applying the VSM in practice (e.g. Anderton, R.: The need for formal development of the VSM. In: Espejo, R., Harnden, R. (eds.): The Viable System Model, Chichester, UK et al. (1989) 39-50)
 * Apologies, I should have responded earlier to you. Isn't the number of bits needed to represent performance a bottom line for variety? In general the number of bits represents the number of choices. Chaitin is dealing with some of these kind of issues in his Algorithmic Information Theory (the longer the program the more precise the result). The interplay of bounded and infinite processes is constraining much of this. On the other point. As Pask has it we compare and contrast to produce a result or product (coming from Wiener's work of servo systems, for example. That is surely falsifiable e.g. a spontaneous creation theory, if proved, would falsify Pask's position. To us mere mortals all observations are bounded and finite but nature's forces of interaction seem to be eternal (infinite in duration). In signaling a pure sine wave cannot be observed unless the observation period is infinite. These are tough constraints to work with! Viability puts a bound on the duration of an observation and a few extra bits in variety adds the necessary redundancy to put reliability back in the system- but that needs more work.--Nick Green (talk) 17:17, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Note
The outbound comment is reporting 404 -- ( http://artsandscience.concordia.ca/edtech/ETEC606/viablesystem.html ) -Urgen 20:02, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Link not used in article? Anyhow, it is available using the Wayback Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20061006212105/http://artsandscience.concordia.ca/edtech/ETEC606/viablesystem.html Jonpatterns (talk) 16:05, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Transduction
Should Beer's concept of transduction be linked to the engineering concept of Transducer or to the cell biology concept of Signal transduction or both? --RichardVeryard 03:09, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Think you made the right choice here, but let's keep it under review. Beer's use of Transducer may well be worth an article on its own e.g. Transducer (Cybernetics). Wiener, via von Neumann self-reproducing automata, says some fairly startling things in the 2nd ed. about non-linear transducers making white boxes out of black boxes. Does any one know of any other discussion of transducers in (pure) cybernetics? Pask, it should be said, regarded the normal state of any stable system as reproductive (of itself) and incidentally productive (if excited, of a new coherence) but he insisted that strictly cybernetics was conducted at an interface (boundary, or hard carapace) -itself a transducer. A foundation for a Molecular assembler or nanoassembly rears its pretty head--Nick Green (talk) 00:21, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Paul Stokes
The reference to "Homo Gubernator: Emotions and Human Self-Steering" is broken, and I can't find a good one anywhere. Simon Grant (talk) 06:55, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed using the Wayback Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20080209180202/http://www.ucd.ie/sociolog/sociologyinfo/html/pstokesbio.htm Jonpatterns (talk) 15:55, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for finding the old bio, but unfortunately that doesn't have an active link to the actual article. I have written to humiliationstudies.org and will update here if I receive a reply. Simon Grant (talk) 10:39, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 2011

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The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:01, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Viable System Model → Viable system model –

Per WP:CAPS ("Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization") and WP:TITLE, this is a generic, common term, not a propriety or commercial term, so the article title should be downcased. Lowercase will match the formatting of related article titles. Tony  (talk)  10:45, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The "Viable System Model" is not the same as a "viable system model"
I disagree strongly with the earlier request to change "Viable System Model" to "Viable system model". The term "viable system" is self-explanatory (within the context given in this article) and refers to any viable system. Lower case is therefore appropriate when referring to a viable system or a viable system model. The term "Viable System Model", however, is a specific model that can be applied to any viable system and the capitalization should be retained (as has been the convention for several decades). This should be changed back as soon as possible.

Juanaguas (talk) 10:59, 7 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Agreed, this doesn't make any sense. It's not a common-use term and the sources clearly use it to refer to a specific entity, the Viable System Model. To extent imply this article represents is a viable system model is the general sense is disingenuous and confusing to readers. The argument that WP:TITLE mandates a move because "this is a generic, common term, not a propriety or commercial term, so the article title should be downcased." is not sound, that's patently clear from reading the guidelines. - Rushyo  Talk  11:48, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree, it is a proper name. I shall move it back. Leutha (talk) 21:30, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

VSM Diagram
The alleged VSM diagram provided in the article is not Stafford Beer's VSM diagram. It is a distortion of Beer's VSM and, in particular, disguises the variety-engineering homeostats that connect the components of the VSM to each other, and in labeling the boxes misrepresents the functions of the component systems (S1 through S5). Far from being mappable "onto aspects of organizational structure," Systems 1 through 5 and their connections represent decision points and flows of information that generally only coincidentally map onto ordinary notions of organization structure. Any individual role within an organization usually, and often should, function in more than one VSM system, for the system as a whole to remain viable. To imagine the VSM constructed in terms of existing organizational boxes is to prevent oneself from understanding the essence of viability. References in the article to Brain of the Firm, misleading as they are, should be supported by the VSM diagram in that source, not by an unacknowledged, corrupted version. Suppressing the irreducible complexity of the VSM in this way is no compliment to Stafford Beer and no service to the uninitiated. Atpearson (talk) 03:27, 9 October 2012 (UTC) Alan Pearson

Requested move 2013

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Moved. Nathan Johnson (talk) 01:03, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Viable system model → Viable System Model – Proper noun is required to distinguish the subject of this article from the generalised phrase. Existing name is ambiguous between two concepts (a specific model and the general concept of such a model). It is necessary to change the name to preserve the subject (see WP:CAPS) and it is the term used by sources when referred to the subject (the common name, see WP:TITLE). This is the necessary level of precision required to not be ambiguous. Rushyo  Talk  11:54, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
 * support per nom. Mdd (talk) 14:47, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Title capitalization
I'm pinging top contributors to this article who have also been active on Wikipedia in the last month. just moved this article from Viable system model to Viable System Model. I propose that the title of this article, like other articles about a specific idea or model or system or philosophy, should not be capitalized; therefore it should follow the sentence case naming convention of articles such as: and not the title case naming convention of articles about things or commercial products such as: Please share your thoughts. Thanks, Biogeographist (talk) 01:19, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Active shape model
 * Biopsychosocial model
 * Capital asset pricing model
 * Extended parallel process model
 * Gateway belief model
 * Health belief model
 * Managerial grid model
 * Model–view–controller
 * Neuman systems model
 * Organon model
 * Psychological continuum model
 * Stereotype content model
 * Transtheoretical model
 * America's Next Top Model
 * Beechcraft Model 18
 * Ford Model A (1927–31)
 * Lockheed Model 10 Electra
 * Remington Model 870
 * Smith & Wesson Model 1905


 * It's a textbook case of an article title needing to be downcased. Tony (talk)  02:25, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * lower case -Snowded TALK 04:18, 10 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Is there a guideline for this? I don't care much either way, but most of the sources I've consulted use the capitalized form, and Google's n-gram viewer says that's the most frequent. For coherence, is being a theoretical model relevant for titles, or is it overshadowed by consistency with the sources? Diego (talk) 09:07, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Answering my own question, WP:NCCAPS is the relevant policy. Viable System Model is not a proper name, so it should not be capitalized. But this implies that the name in the body of other articles should be changed to lowercase as well: "This convention often also applies within the article body, as there is usually no good reason to use capitals. Outside Wikipedia, and within certain specific fields (such as medicine), the usage of all-capital terms may be a proper way to feature new or important items. However these cases are typically examples of buzzwords, which by capitalization are (improperly) given featured status." Diego (talk) 09:16, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Correct. How it is capitalized in the literature does not dictate how articles are capitalized in Wikipedia. More examples come from systems of psychotherapy: acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) are more often than not capitalized in the literature, but they are not capitalized in Wikipedia except in quotations where they are capitalized in the quoted source. Biogeographist (talk) 11:07, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Adding "sensemaking" to the "see also" section
I suggest to add a link to "sensemaking" from this page as it seems to me the VSM *is* basically a framework for organisations to make sense of their internal status and external environment. The VSM also relates a lot to Karl Weick's work. Maybe add something in that vein too?Hvgard (talk) 08:18, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Have you got a reference that would directly support the link? A quick google search indicates that the first google hits are to some of your own work where you seek to make the connection which should make us cautious.  A search on Google Scholar shows both VSM and sensemaking (if we use Weick's neologism) used in the same articles and there were some that talked about using VSM as a sense-making tool.  So if other neutral editors think it (sic) makes sense I would not oppose the addition of a link, but original research and promotion of your own ideas would be more problematic.   Having flagged up the issue I will leave it to other editors to resolve   -Snowded TALK 08:24, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * It is not incorrect, but it is vague, like adding a link to Philosophy in the "See also" section of Critique of Pure Reason or Ethics. I'm not sure what the point would be of adding such a vague connection to the "See also" section. Are you also going to add a link to Sensemaking to the "See also" sections of Management cybernetics, System dynamics, Systems engineering, etc.? Biogeographist (talk) 13:08, 13 May 2018 (UTC)