have you ever felt that rain is just one big negative feedback loop?
when it's raining, people are generally upset at the absence of sun. but they have to go out regardless, so they exit their residence and quickly discover (if they are a stanford student, anyway,) that they cannot bike due to the rain. ultimately, rain causes people to be later than they would otherwise be-- and so lateness, in this case, can be viewed as a negative feedback signal that tells you "it's raining."
but then, since you can't bike, you're walking to class. your reduced speed means you're spending even more time out in the rain, despite the fact that you dislike rain more than you dislike sun and thus, would rather spend less time outdoors when it's raining.
as you're walking, your shoes kick up water and your pants drag a little on the ground. you get wet, and because of water cohesion, your pants get wetter and wetter as the water absorbs upwards. more time spent outdoors (which you don't want to be spending anyway), means wetter pants.
and then, since your pants are soaking up more and more water, they're increasingly heavy. which means that they drag more and pick up water at a much faster rate.
by the time you finally get inside, your pants legs are so wet, that it's almost more irritating to be indoors than to be outdoors. which means that rain has spoiled even the initial positive option: that one would prefer indoors to outdoors.
and of course, you and everyone else have tracked the outdoors into the indoors, which means that all this negative feedback has actually changed the system and deteriorated it. things are slippery, dangerous, and dirtier. wet umbrellas are annoying and everywhere. i can't think of a single thing that is positively introduced to the indoors on rainy days...
the point of all this is to say that there are a lot of systems out there that are modeled like this. computer/tech interfaces come to mind (i.e. error messages that just interrupt you to tell you, alarmingly, that things are wrong but not how to fix it). i think we all get to a point where we just accept it.
but wouldn't it be great if we were able to deal with systems like that and actually do something different and insightful? or at least avoid creating rainy day systems in the first place?
2 comments:
sometimes(in the right context) people like the rain, the way it feels, the way it smells, the soft dim light of a rainy day, the cool air, and how it can make being inside with a cup of coffee a gratifieing experience, the contrast between in and out makes both stronger experiences.
perhaps in the feedback loop you describe, the system is a bit more complex; the same perturbation can bring different individuals to different equilibrium points... maybe because different individuals have different initial conditions
a note to self:
"linear causality gives way to recursive relations in which effects are disproportionate to the causes from which they emerge" (143)
[from The Moment of Complexity]
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