A feedback loop is the part of a system in which some portion (or all) of the system’s output is used as input for future operations.
Since everything is interconnected, there are constant feedback loops and flows between elements of a system. We can observe, understand, and intervene in feedback loops once we understand their type and dynamics.
The two main types of feedback loops are reinforcing and balancing. What can be confusing is a reinforcing feedback loop is not usually a good thing. This happens when elements in a system reinforce more of the same, such as population growth or algae growing exponentially in a pond. In reinforcing loops, an abundance of one element can continually refine itself, which often leads to it taking over.
A balancing feedback loop, however, is where elements within the system balance things out. Nature basically got this down to a tee with the predator/prey situation — but if you take out too much of one animal from an ecosystem, the next thing you know, you have a population explosion of another, which is the other type of feedback — reinforcing.
Understanding feedback loops is about gaining perspective of causality: how one thing results in another thing in a dynamic and constantly evolving system (all systems are dynamic and constantly changing in some way; that is the essence of life).
Cause and effect are pretty common concepts in many professions and life in general — parents try to teach this type of critical life lesson to their young ones, and I’m sure you can remember a recent time you were at the mercy of an impact from an unintentional action.
Causality as a concept in systems thinking is really about being able to decipher the way things influence each other in a system. Understanding causality leads to a deeper perspective on agency, feedback loops, connections and relationships, which are all fundamental parts of systems mapping.
The smallest unit of learning is a feedback loop. In the physical world feedback loops exist between particles and waves, in the chemical world feedback loops exist between atoms and molecules, and the in the biological world, feedback loops exist between cells, and also at all larger levels of scale – and then there are feedback loops between all these levels of scale.
Persistent feedback loops that endure across the life spans of one or more generations of living organisms gives rise to relationships between living beings.
The dynamic process of life is a fractal web/cycle of feedback loops that uses the energy of the sun to play creatively with the second law of thermodynamics.
A visual language for describing wellbeing | Autistic Collaboration
The organisms of each species have evolved to occupy a particular niche in space and time, including the species specific average lifespan – the time between being conceived and being composted into basic building blocks for new life. In a very literal sense living organisms give rise to conditions conducive to life, as part of the virtuous fractal system of feedback loops that includes all living beings. Death is as much part of the wonder of life as is birth.
A visual language for describing wellbeing | Autistic Collaboration
Planetary intelligence is achieved by creating a feedback loop of mutual learning between the rapid learning cycles (mutations) of viruses and learning cycles at human scale, which are now amplified via a global digital network at super-human scale. Humans are learning the hard way that messing with that network for misinformation and attempts of hierarchical control works against humans and the entire planetary ecosystem.
The relational complexity of life can’t easily be condensed into words. Instead a visual language provides more possibilities for describing the nuances and the context of specific constellations in succinct diagrams. Each of our relationships is a feedback loop that can be visualised as a circle, and each of these circles are part of a larger evolving systems of concentric Circles of Care at larger scales:
- Intimate life partner
- Household
- Human scale ecology of care
- Bioregional ecology of care
- Planetary ecology of care
Feedback loops of information flows between people are the atoms of collective learning. The SECI (socialisation, externalisation, combination, internalisation) model (Takeuchi and Nonaka 1986; Nonaka et al. 2008) is a useful conceptual tool for understanding learning and creative collaboration amongst humans.
Feedback loops across different levels of scale and time are hard for humans to identify and understand, but that does not mean that they do not exist.
Use feedback loops to create learning systems
Establishing Feedback Loops
A simple advice process establishes the vital feedback loops that enable organisations to learn and adapt in a timely manner, even in a highly dynamic context.
All successful non-hierarchical organisations replace management hierarchies with a simple advice process (Laloux 2014) that establishes the vital feedback loops that enable the organisation to learn and adapt in a timely manner, even in a highly dynamic context.
Externally, experienced software companies develop fast paced collaborative feedback loops with customers in order to minimise misunderstandings and to gain a deeper understanding of the commonalities and the variabilities of customer needs in specific niches and geographies, which is fed into the evolutionary process that shapes the future scope and functionality of the product line.
Software product design conducted in isolation, without giving customers the ability to shape the design, is a form of social engineering, whether intentional or not.
Hierarchy and Power Gradients Dampen Feedback Loops
Healthy societies have cultural practices that actively maintain a psychologically safe environment and thereby catalyse the free flow of new knowledge, new questions, and new ideas. All social power gradients dampen feedback loops and thereby compromise learning and the development of collective intelligence.
All social power gradients systematically dampen feedback loops, they constitute a collective learning disability. Economists Arjun Jayadev and Samuel Bowles describe the effort needed to maintain social power structures as guard labour.
The social architecture of collective intelligence | Autistic Collaboration
“Civilisation” can be thought of as a social operating system that is afflicted by a collective learning disability induced by primate dominance hierarchies, which dampen feedback loops and flows of valuable knowledge. The result is a cultural inertia that perpetuates social power gradients and that discriminates against the discoverers of new knowledge that might undermine established social structures.
The declining marginal returns of hierarchical organisation and complex bureaucracies ultimately lead to social tensions that make it harder and harder to maintain established institutions, and the dampening of feedback loops in hierarchical organisations ultimately reduce collective intelligence to a point where collapse becomes inevitable.
Understanding human collective behaviour | Autistic Collaboration
The smallest unit of learning is a feedback loop. Power is the privilege of not needing to learn.
The dampening of feedback loops within hierarchical social structures further reduces collective intelligence. Hierarchical forms of organisation are inherently incompatible with the construction of trusted relationships within and between groups. Anyone who attempts to establish trusted relationships outside the hierarchical tree structure implicitly questions the effectiveness of the hierarchy, and thereby undermines one or more authorities within the structure.
The social architecture of collective intelligence | Autistic Collaboration
Any form of hierarchy or power indicates dampened feedback loops. Power can be understood as the privilege of not needing to learn.
Hierarchical forms of organisation significantly limit and weaken the feedback loops within society, i.e. they induce a collective learning disability that reduces the ability of a group to adapt to rapid changes in its operating environment. This is not a problem during times of environmental stability but it can become a deadly threat during times of rapid environmental changes.
The declining marginal returns of hierarchical organisation and complex bureaucracies ultimately lead to social tensions that make it harder and harder to maintain established institutions, and the dampening of feedback loops in hierarchical organisations ultimately reduce collective intelligence to a point where collapse becomes inevitable.
“Civilisation” can be thought of as a social operating system that is afflicted by a collective learning disability induced by primate dominance hierarchies, which dampen feedback loops and flows of valuable knowledge. The result is a cultural inertia that perpetuates social power gradients and that discriminates against the discoverers of new knowledge that might undermine established social structures.
By definition, hierarchies confer power on specific groups and individuals, with immediate effects on the ability of a group to learn and adapt to a changing environment. Any form of hierarchy or power indicates dampened feedback loops. Power can be understood as the privilege of not needing to learn.
Feedback Loops and Neurodiversity
Education in neurodiversity is fundamental to create the feedback loops needed to minimise misunderstandings and to replace management by fear with mutual trust and the courage to bring individual agency and all available knowledge and insights to work. In a good company coordination and organisational learning happens via a simple advice process, without any need for social power structures.
Arguably the Achilles heel of civilisation lies in the acceptance of social power gradients as a legitimate or even essential tool for coordinating human social affairs. The resulting dampening of feedback loops within social groups leads to a collective learning disability that prevents civilisations in their normal configuration, i.e. civilisations with “functioning” social power hierarchies, from acting in a timely manner to address existential risks such as climate change and ecosystem collapse. This is precisely why climate activists and environmental activists have for decades been calling for systemic change in the way human affairs are conducted. The normal civilised bureaucratic channels for initiating changes invariably lead to co-opting of the objectives of social movements. Preservation of established social hierarchies becomes the main concern of the dominant elites, to the extent that all changes remain symbolic.
Autistic people can be considered to be the cultural immune system of human societies. At this point in time Greta Thunberg is perhaps the most widely recognised example. Autists are less influenced by socially transmitted and subconsciously absorbed beliefs and opinions (category 5 in the classification of beliefs introduced in the previous section). Laws and rules that depathologise autism and that protect the rights of neurodivergent people could go a long way towards re-establishing a healthy cultural immune system within society that is capable of containing and stamping out social diseases such as neoliberal ideology.
Attentional feedback loops in those of us identifying as autistic seemed to lead to more pronounced interests, which could be mistaken for a lack of social interest by misattributing the frequency of states of mind, at odds with a typical interest profile, to a stable trait. We turn to these states of mind next showing that they actually showed, like trust, commonalities throughout the human spectrum.
