A concept · How Systems Behave · Systems
Feedback Loops
Outputs loop back to amplify or to dampen themselves.
The argument starts over something small. One sharp remark earns a sharper one, that earns a colder one, and ten minutes later neither of us can remember what it was about. Or the diet: we cut hard, the weight comes off, we relax, and it comes back with interest. Each time we pushed, the pushing seemed to make it worse. If the effort was real, why did it keep turning against us?
What Feedback Loops means
A feedback loop is any arrangement where the result of what we do comes back round to shape what we do next, so the effect becomes a cause. Some loops amplify, more leading to more; some dampen, pulling things back to a level. The definition takes a sentence. Owning it changes where we look. We stop treating a problem as a line, do A and get B, and start asking what B does to A afterwards. We start noticing which loops we are inside: the sales bonus that drives discounting that drives the bonus, the thermostat that quietly holds the house steady. Before, we pushed harder when a thing resisted. After, we ask what is pushing back, and whether pushing harder is feeding it.
Not to be confused with
A feedback loop is not just a vicious or virtuous cycle, though those are the loud examples. Those are loops that amplify. Just as many loops dampen: the thermostat, the price that falls when the shelves are full. A loop is any output that comes back round as an input.
Feedback Loops examples: where it shows up
- At work: a team that is behind works late, gets tired, makes mistakes, and falls further behind.
- With money: a rising house price draws buyers, whose demand lifts the price, until the same loop runs the other way.
- In a relationship: one defensive reply invites a sharper one, and the row soon outgrows whatever started it.
Where it sits
Concept 1 of 5 in How Systems Behave, a journey in the course How the World Works.
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