me and the system theory course

When I started the class system theory, social media and psychology in October I really had no idea what to expect. I only started the class in the second week, which felt a little like I would drop in in the middle of a conversation, but it was okay. I was expecting the class to go a little over the basics of psychology and how social media would influence this, mainly because I had a hard time picturing any sort of class by the concept system theory. The class seemed to be mostly about system theory in my opinion, which was great. Thursday afternoon felt like a different class than everything else, having time to think about the concepts we discussed and making space for discussion about the implications of certain topics.

I learned about a lot of new concepts, we discussed multiple definitions of a system. The idea of self-organization stuck to me as a spontaneous appearance of some form of order without being imposed by an external force or guidance and that some animals already enforce this. Among others, I learned about the concepts reductionism and emergence. I think a lot of the class described concepts that we as humans could learn a thing or two about. We would learn about another way of organization, which could make some snarky comments towards the way some things in our world work.

The complex system theory taught me a different way of looking at the same certain thing, concept or situation. It would ask the question if something can only be the sum of its part or if there is something bigger to it. Is a tree just roots, trunk and leaves? What about humans? It is like looking at the bigger picture, I think. Some of the articles I read seemed to focus mainly on arguments why a system point of view is ‘better’, but I think it is interesting to look at it as another perspective. Having multiple perspectives gives us the opportunity to see the problem form multiple sides, and think of solutions from different perspectives.

And then the class talked about AI systems like chatGPT. This topic was, in my opinion, interesting, refreshing and to be honest kind of cool. It is such a new concept, even if I could explain the current impact or result of chatGPT for my career and even personal life, I still would have no idea how this would change with any new form of AI. And everything is going to keep changing. We talked about the advantages and disadvantages right now, and how they could change over time, we asked how the systems could develop and what we might be expecting. How could this influence the way we teach people, how about the way we approach certain jobs and even governments? And this was a discussion I would usually continue after class, either in my head or with friends or roommates.

I had a conversation with a friend from my studies at home about how our university is treating this development versus my classes at Panteion university. She told me that she is actually scared of using AI at all, because of the way our university approached it. They apparently are trying the ban the use of chatGPT or any other AI systems for any projects or assignments, even threatening with expulsion. In my opinion that is such a stupid waste, the programs are out there anyways and it will be influencing the way we will be doing our future jobs, even if we don’t know how yet. I told her about this class and that I really like how this class tries to explore its possibilities, and with that our own personal abilities. I feel like it is useful to look at the way a program like chatGPT can influence our life and take the advantages of that, while being aware of the disadvantages. In that way we can start to explore what we can contribute to a society where AI systems exists.

In these discussions so many questions pop up in my mind. How will this influence my personal life, my professional life. I am studying to be in public administrations, will that be necessary in a couple years, or will me and chatGPT work together in harmony. Is it plagiarism when you ask a form of AI for help, even if I put in the input? Will chat gpt take over the world?

If I can share a little personal point: On the opening day of my high school the management showed me a video (unfortunately in Dutch, but I will link it down below anyways) made in 1998, which shows an interview of Frans Bromet asking people on the street if they would want a mobile phone now or ever. Everyone immediately answers with no, arguing that they think it would be terrible to be so reachable all the time, a woman saying that she really does not want anyone calling her when she is on her bike or in the train. They answer that if someone really needs something they can leave a message, or try again tomorrow, and they seem to really feel that would be enough.

One of the school principals responded that they did not want to teach us anything that would seem useful right now, anything that working people use right now. Instead, he said, “I will learn you how to adapt to changing environments, how to be good at learning new things and how to think openly about new situations and choices.” His point of view was that our environment and our world will be changing anyways, that learning eleven-year-olds anything about the current state of affairs would be useless. The video was made 15 years before that moment, and at the start of high school we will still be in school for about 10 to 15 years. So, by the time that we will reach a working job maybe everything will have changed. I, an eleven-year-old, was a little too stunned to speak, my dad just looked confused, and my mom amazed.

Right now, I think the principle could not have been more right. Cause nine years ago, who would have thought about the development of an AI system like chatGPT, so I am glad that in high school I learned more than just summarizing text and reproducing knowledge, because in a few more years I might not even need that.

In the classes we also touched the topic about schools and what to teach people in another class, on which I wrote another one of my blogs. That class the professor said: “Education should not focus on how intelligent or creative you are, but instead focus on how are you intelligent or creative.” I take interest in critically looking at our education system, trying to actually learn people something valuable. So, I do think we should reshape education, including primary school and universities into something that learns you to adapt, to learn new things, to think critical about everything surrounding you. So that everybody in the future will have the ability to see the development of a new system, maybe like AI, maybe nothing like it, and think critically about its consequences and advantages.

Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNwhIHqM60g

I recognized the video for this week instantly. Maybe four or five years ago, when I came into my fourth year of high school (we’re supposed to do six) I started taking physics. Frank, who ended up being one of my favorite teachers from the last couple years showed us this exact video, so when I saw the weird little strand of hair this ‘doctor’ had on his head it took me back to my classroom from back then. My teacher showed this to make us excited by physics, “why? How? What? I wanna learn!”, I guess is what he expected us to say, but most of us just looked confused about life for the next few days.

Even rewatching the little, tiny start of quantum physics that this video gives I still do not understand. I know the laws and I learned to do the maths to pass the high school exams, but the idea is such a crazy thing. How could something so small behave so weirdly that even to this day we still have not figured out what the hell is happening to these tiny little “marbles”, and that even though everything else we know is made up out of these little things. I think this loops back to the idea of system theory because it looks and even works differently when looked at the tiniest portion in contract to the bigger picture.

Do you think there is any way to achieve an objective observation? The video shows how the electron behave differently when observed. I don’t think there is such a thing as objective observation. Humans can experience this feeling of being watched, and might behave differently according to it, we tell answers we know the other person would like to hear or quickly tidy up the room when we have guests over.  And if humans, basically stupid animals, can do that, maybe something smart and small as an electron could do the same…

When watching the movie, I feel like the individuals are not in an argument over a specific content, but more over how the different people view the world. The mother and daughter at the beginning for example do not seem to be arguing about the mom not wanting to do an activity with the daughter that day, but about their different morals and how they want the world to act.

Afterwards I read a few little articles about the movie and how system theory is supposed to connect and be represented. The movie, like we did in the classes, shows the difference between the mechanistic or scientific view of the world versus a “system theory view”, and shows the system theory was as better. They discuss how this could be implemented in people’s lives and even public policies.

I think it is really useful and interesting to be thinking about what your view of live is, is it more pessimistic or optimistic, where do you see the world going and what will be your role in that? A movie like this, triggers me to think about stuff like that. I know I do not want to be stuck in one viewpoint and because of that having a hard time communicating to other people around me.

This week’s class was changed to an individual assignment where we had to read the article ‘Petros Polychronis and the epistemology of life’, written by our professor Alexios Brailas. I have to say that I liked the change of scenery this week. When I opened the email, I felt a bit disappointed because I did not want to read some boring article on capitalism or the meaning of life or something. But when I started reading, I realized that it wasn’t anything like that. Brailas started with a personal opening, which I really liked, made it feel more as work from a human rather than a collection of previous works, which an AI system could have collected as well. 

The article defined the idea of a system thinker, when thinking about things as a whole system and not just as its parts. I think this is a valuable way of thinking that we could implement more; a human is not just a collection of thoughts and experiences, but everyone is something as a whole, as are threes, as is the world. It feels a little reassuring for me, because it gives me the space to think of things and humans and myself as something big, something cool, something that it worth so much. 

The article seems to focus mostly on the system thinker way, but I believe that is such a valuable thing to see that there are in facts different ways of thinking about the same thing. That it is important that to look at something like a system AND look at the same thing as a collection of multiple parts. This makes me think of this image my secondary school used to show us when people were fighting too much. Unfortunately google was not helping me find it, however I did find this other one which has the same idea, I added it at the bottom of the page. I really like the idea that more than one way or one view can be ‘right’. I think that would be a mindset that can change arguments into a way more interesting discussion. 

There is one thing from last week’s class that is still replaying in my head. At one point the professor said:

“Education should not focus on how intelligent or creative you are, but instead focus on how are you intelligent or creative.”

I think this is such an interesting point, in my opinion school systems, even primary schools, try to make all the kids intelligent in the same way. A kid is only as smart as their grades in math, reading and writing. Instead of giving children the chance to explore what their strong point are and even how they should explore this, we try to push them into a corner to make them prove their value based on three “relevant” subjects. And starting this at six years old, giving them grades to compare to other kids their age.

Not to say that mats, reading and writing is not important, or that we should not teach this in primary school. But I do think that we should open the discussion on what ideas, norms, values and self-image we want to give kids. Is it not more important that they explore themself, look into what they value, what their bar is for success.

Last weeks class we talked about the rise of ChatGPT and how this might influence are future. It might give us more free time because work will be easier or faster with the help of an ai system? I do not think this is totally true, yes we will be able to do some things in different speeds, but that makes our knowledge of other things (like how to interact with people, or mindfulness) more important. Also I think the way capitalism works, that the moment we have less to do, we will have to take on more work in order to do the job right. But all of this is going to slowly emerge into our daily life, right now ChatGPT is mostly useful to summarise a text, give some notes on a paper you are writhing or find a source. But its already trying to promote itself as more part of your daily life (instead of your work life), like choosing an outfit. I feel like the AI systems are slowly integrating themselves in our lives, and there in going to come a time when we will feel like we cannot live without anymore.

Second half of the class the professor handed us a peace of paper and some colors, for us to make a little art peace, ours is named ‘dominance’:

We decided to make three planets, the first one being the one maybe 50 thousand years ago. This time stamp is suppose to be the planet, filled with nature and as many species as possible. Humans were also part of this planet, but they lived in a balance with the other animals and species. The second planet is the one now, or maybe a couple years ago. Humans dominate the  world, they build factories and take over lots of nature to make room for themselves. The third planet will be in the future. The moment humans lose their dominance to robots, ai systems and all forms of ChatGPT . The world will look completely different with this new form of dominance.

Todays class started with the definitions of the concepts: reductionism, meaning that in order to understand the bigger picture you would have to understand the individual parts; self organisation, a form of teamwork that is imposed and works without any form of (external) guidance; and emergence, that you can only observe anything by looking at the bigger picture, this is the opposite of reductionism.

The rest of the class focused on inspecting and discussing these topics in different forms. I think trying to implement these concepts more to specific situations or future problems would have made for more questions, interests and interesting discussions. One could wonder how far reductionism has to go to still make sense, I mean to say what are the individual ‘parts’ reductionism talks about. In a human body it would be interesting to have a look at the different organs, or maybe even the cells, but everything becomes a matter of emergence when you try to look at the molecules. This will not tell us anything about the organ or human as a whole. But I think the scale of these to two concepts can be an interesting line to play with.

We saw a short video about ants using self organization as their form of teamwork. Instead of spending years building hierarchy and bureaucracy, as us humans do when we try to work together, should we start implementing a different form of teamwork? Maybe self organization would be a little more efficient. This is an interesting question in my opinion, I am not sure if I believe that we are capable of forming a goal and just executing without the power struggle and all the nonsense we can think of. Maybe something for next week, we will see.

Where is your home? And why does a particular place feel like home to you? What makes a place feel like home?

Last Monday, class focused on these questions, we had to write about our home city, not in the touristy kind of way, but trying to put into words what it is in this specific city that makes it feel like home. I noticed that I was mostly describing specific memories I have about the place and pointing out the people who make the city feel like home. We shared these stories with the class and it was so fun to read other people’s stories. Afterwards I paired up with another girl in the class to whom I had never spoken before, and we had such a good conversation. We talked about how we were keeping in contact with people back home now that were on our Erasmus here in Athens and her look on that was slightly different than mine, where I feel like I need the support and the updates from particular people, even when I’m in a different country, I feel like she could press pause on some relationships more easily. Lastly, we had to write down the essentials for a perfect home in a group of six.

All three assignments made us think about quantifying the feeling we call home. Having to write in down was the hardest, but that made it interesting. How to quantify certain feelings or abstract concepts is something social sciences try to do on a daily basis.

Home, at least for me, is not a love-at-first-sight phenomenon. It will happen over time, I think you need memories, people around you, corners that have some sort of special meaning and you have to see yourself walking around in said city in the future to be able to call the city or place your home.

Last Thursday I joined the system theory, psychology and social media course. Due to unforeseen circumstances I had to pick a new class within two days in order to have the right course load for me and my studies at my home university. This resulted in an afternoon of reading about the other classes, until a friend of mine recommended this class and after last lesson I think I am pretty grateful that she did.

I was a bit apprehensive going into the class, but I walked out with a few new topics to think about. We were tasked to think about our definition of a system, first individually, then in pairs, in fours and in the class. We had to walk around, talk to a random person, taking deep breaths and standing still by the warmth of the classroom. The professor shared a refreshing view on the rise of generative AI systems. About how the work field and society will change with the rise of these new types of robots. Making me think about what we should actually learn while in university. This felt so refreshing and kind of funny because my home university is trying to figure out how to check and punish students who use AI like chatGPT.

I like that the class is going to focus on improving the skills we will keep using, because they make us humans stand out against the computers. I am hopeful that the class will stimulate my critical thinking and the ways to express this and do something goof for my mindfulness.  

Consider me excited to see what we will cross tomorrow and the weeks to come.

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