SystemsWay Community 

Enabling discourses that creates epistemic value. Primary focus on business, management and software development. 
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FAQs - Joining The Community

How do I join this community ?

Two way to join SystemsWay community. 
1. Easiest way is  send a connect request to  SystemsWay on LinkedIn. In the connect message, tell us you are interested in joining community. Important to note that you provide an email address and that address would be invited to our slack channel. It's that easy.  
1. Ask an existing member to invite you. They can directly invite you from  slack. 

I am existing member, shall I invite others directly from slack?

Answer is 'Yes'  provided you know the person.  Once the person joins, we will ask them to verify them using linkedin, so we know the person is who they claim to be.  If someone is asking you to invite them to community, but you don't want to, just ask them to self join from LinkedIn and point them to FAQ - "How do I join this community"

FAQs- Epistemic value and Discourse

What do we mean by epistemic value

Epistemic means about knowledge. We create something of epistemic value when we acquire new knowledge. But how do we know if we have acquired new knowledge. With so much non-sense around us, how we can trust ourselves  that what we know is of any sense. Your rational cannot be that it makes sense to  us because that is the same rationale is provided by a non-sense spewing people too.  So how do we know what we know is knowledge. This question  belongs to field of epistemology. There are good and bad epistemologies . In this community, we primarily believe in epistemology of Karl Popper  which is named conjectures and refutations, of Davide Deustch named good explanations and of Systems  epistemology.  Therefore to produce of something epistemic value , we have to enter into discourse where you shared your thoughts and are open to be refuted because we believe we can only produce knowledge in the process of defending the refutation with good explanations and not via justifications. 

What is a discourse?

A SystemsWay discourse is a recursive collaborative argumentation in two or more people for the purposes of developing knowledge and expanding the boundary of our knowledge. There are three main attributes of a discourse.  

1. You boot strap a conversation to understand the nature of the systems to which conversation belongs to
2 People both use full fire power of reason, logic, argumentation etc. The idea is that if you are not doing that you are being disrespectful of other participants.
3.The participants wish that they lose the discourse because they have fundamental belief that learning only happens via being proven wrong so if they lose the discourse, they have won because they learnt.  

Because of conjecture and criticism mode of dialogues , either one participants learnt or every participants learn or at time they learn nothing new because they already aware of nature of systems to which conversation belonged to but listeners learnt.

What is the difference between discourse and debate

Seemingly minor but has humongous implications. In debate each party uses the full fire power of reason, logic and argumentation but the objective is to WIN, however in discourse we still use full fire power of reason, logic, and argumentation but objective is to lose. Though good reason, logic and argumentation are difficult traits to be found, it's very easy for them to become bad reason, logic and argumentation in because of two seemingly same but very different reason if you look from systems perspective. The person who wants to win end up using bad reason, logic and argumentation for their own benefits and the person who is loosing end up doing much worse reason, logic and argumentation because of psychological phenomenon involved. At times both parties know that they are doing bad argumentation to the point of spreading lies but there is no way to get out of it. The system of debate unless moderated and judged by highly qualified judge tends to be bunch of non-sense. In most debates, most people do not learnt, change sides but listeners may, but nowadays even the audinace pick the side before the start of of debate, so no one changes sides. To be wrong specially ublicly is chasticized. SystemsWay discourse is based on basic principle of that only proven wrong develops learning. So in SystemsWay discourse, participants uses their full firepower , they do not retort to poor and bad arguementation becuase they know it would deteriorate discourse which is a system and they will lose. 

Now that you know differene between Discourse and Debate, the diffenfece gets further amplified because SystemWay is based in different epistomology so people who have take the SystemsWay base course understand that richness of SystemsWay discourse is much deeper than well inteded normal discourse and debates because they fail to see world a systems. This si difficult concept to explain unless you have taken our curse. 

Why discourse is so difficult than debate ?

Objective of discourse is losing by proven wrong. Proven wrong is something set in our psyche as humiliating. Being inferior to someone , being incompetent. This is worse when beliefs that you hold in you mind as eternal truth are proven wrong. I can keep on going, but there is nothing harder for a human who have raised with current societal belief to be proven wrong and there are consequences in society for being proven wrong. So despite all the talks in linkedin , executive leadership and training, it's easy to prove it's mostly talk. So it's emotionally hard. Schools are society has failed tremendously in developing epistemic humility amongst people. People are epistimically humbel to gain new data , information, knowledge but not very epistimic humble in developing understanding which primarily developes via provlem wrong. 

How do you know if people are discoursing, debating , chit-chatting?

Chit Chatting is easy to detect. At times chi-chat can involve discourse or debate but fundamental idea of chit chat is not to seek contentious topic rather at times actively avoid contentious topic. Nicety is the goal. At times we explicitly in private and implicitly in public express agreement to white we disagree or simply ignore and change the topic to something else. Altercation, confrontation nd conflict of thoughts are to be avoided. Therefore chit-chatting happens among people who already share the same or similar view.

Debate if it's formal is easy to detect. Each person take turn as defined by the system of debate. There are judges or at times also audiences. However debates vs discourses are difficult to detect when there no formal e.g. corporate meeting. Because primary difference between the two mode is if you objective win or lose. In debate we want to win. In Discourse you want to lose. So if a debate a person would never say "oh that makes sense, I was wrong' , "oh that makes sense, I never thought it this way" , "oh I was wrong", "oh, I never thought", in discourse it's a very normal things to say. In debate you counter the other persons points even if you know your counter is baseless. At times counter is baseless, useless or total crap. But loosing is not acceptable. In corporate setting , if people are debating or discoursing becomes very difficult to detect mechanistically primarily because both uses full fire power of reason, logic and argumentation. So visually debate and discourse is similar. The fundamental way to detect the different is if you can conclude that someone is holding on to their position thought the collaborative pattern has clearly thrashed that position. It means a person holds two incongruent view in this head. So in debate, because winning is goal when a person is wrong, they wold start to support non-sense because it supports their position.

Let me give you an example. One day I was having a conversation with my friend who is a staunch believer of Jain religion. I myself is born into Jain family and studied in Jain school. My friend started the conversation about how Jainism is not like other religions, rather Jainism is not even a religion it's a way of life and it's based on scientific principle. It started with a chit chat and as I said chit-chat is a great tool for disseminating knowledge whether is real or pseudo. Because they were agreeing on Jainism as scientific principle, I wanted to turn it into a discourse. So I asked them, as per Jainism, how many years ago first Jain trithankar was born. They told me the number and after calculation we all agreed that it happens to be about 1.85 quintillions year ago. So my question was as per science earth is only 4 billion years ago and universe is 16 billion years ago. So how do you reconcile the two facts. Now the guys I am talking about , all hold engineering degree from India's premier universitities and Masters from USA's premier universities. Now I just created a a conflict and I am open to then reconciling the conflict. I would have been okay if they used some conjecture that speed of light was slower at the start of of the universe so time moved faster then it would have been okay and would have challanged that theory. But they did not. They had no way of reconciling two contradictioary statement and each of the person tool different stand. One said, how does science knows that earth is only 4 billion years agao and homo sapiens is only few century old, one said, I do not beleive in evolutions. One said this is just perspective. One perspective is 1.8 trillion years ago and another 4 billion years ago, So both are right, we shall not call a perspective outright wrong. I can give more of their position. A high schooler kids , born and raised to jain family and born and raised in USA, he said to his dad, your position make no sense, but then succumbed under pressure of authority 


First, are two people going back an forth. 

People who chit-chat at times will tell you, stop debating, don't argue

Debate vs 

1. You boot strap a conversation to understand the nature of the systems to which conversation belongs to
2 People both use full fire power of reason, logic, argumentation etc. The idea is that if you are not doing that you are being disrespectful of other participants.
3.The participants wish that they lose the discourse because they have fundamental belief that learning only happens via being proven wrong so if they lose the discourse, they have won because they learnt.  

Because of conjecture and criticism mode of dialogues , either one participants learnt or every participants learn or at time they learn nothing new because they already aware of nature of systems to which conversation belonged to but listeners learnt.



FAQs- Posting in Community

What shall I post about ?

The purpose of the community is to create epistemic value via discourse. Epistemic means 'Of Knowledge'. So our objective is to create knowledge, and we believe that the fundamental way to create knowledge is via refutations and testing someone's boundaries of knowledge. You should post any topic that you agree with but others disagree on, or post any topic that you disagree with but others agree on. That way, it enables a discourse. We want you to take a position on a post so that you make yourself vulnerable to refutation, and people who engage in refuting you become vulnerable to your and other people's refutations.

Can you give some example of good posts ?

TO be provided

Can you give some example of poor posts ?


TO be provided

What is a discourse?

A SystemsWay discourse is a recursive collaborative argumentation in two or more people for the purposes of developing knowledge and expanding the boundary of our knowledge. There are three main attributes of a discourse.  

1. You boot strap a conversation to understand the nature of the systems to which conversation belongs to
2 People both use full fire power of reason, logic, argumentation etc. The idea is that if you are not doing that you are being disrespectful of other participants.
3.The participants wish that they lose the discourse because they have fundamental belief that learning only happens via being proven wrong so if they lose the discourse, they have won because they learnt.  

Because of conjecture and criticism mode of dialogues , either one participants learnt or every participants learn or at time they learn nothing new because they already aware of nature of systems to which conversation belonged to but listeners learnt.

What is the difference between discourse and debate

Seemingly minor but has humongous implications. In debate each party uses the full fire power of reason, logic and argumentation but the objective is to WIN, however in discourse we still use full fire power of reason, logic, and argumentation but objective is to lose. Though good reason, logic and argumentation are difficult traits to be found, it's very easy for them to become bad reason, logic and argumentation in because of two seemingly same but very different reason if you look from systems perspective. The person who wants to win end up using bad reason, logic and argumentation for their own benefits and the person who is loosing end up doing much worse reason, logic and argumentation because of psychological phenomenon involved. At times both parties know that they are doing bad argumentation to the point of spreading lies but there is no way to get out of it. The system of debate unless moderated and judged by highly qualified judge tends to be bunch of non-sense. In most debates, most people do not learnt, change sides but listeners may, but nowadays even the audinace pick the side before the start of of debate, so no one changes sides. To be wrong specially ublicly is chasticized. SystemsWay discourse is based on basic principle of that only proven wrong develops learning. So in SystemsWay discourse, participants uses their full firepower , they do not retort to poor and bad arguementation becuase they know it would deteriorate discourse which is a system and they will lose. 

Now that you know differene between Discourse and Debate, the diffenfece gets further amplified because SystemWay is based in different epistomology so people who have take the SystemsWay base course understand that richness of SystemsWay discourse is much deeper than well inteded normal discourse and debates because they fail to see world a systems. This si difficult concept to explain unless you have taken our curse. 

Why discourse is so difficult than debate ?

Objective of discourse is losing by proven wrong. Proven wrong is something set in our psyche as humiliating. Being inferior to someone , being incompetent. This is worse when beliefs that you hold in you mind as eternal truth are proven wrong. I can keep on going, but there is nothing harder for a human who have raised with current societal belief to be proven wrong and there are consequences in society for being proven wrong. So despite all the talks in linkedin , executive leadership and training, it's easy to prove it's mostly talk. So it's emotionally hard. Schools are society has failed tremendously in developing epistemic humility amongst people. People are epistimically humbel to gain new data , information, knowledge but not very epistimic humble in developing understanding which primarily developes via provlem wrong. 

How do you know if people are discoursing, debating , chit-chatting?

Chit Chatting is easy to detect. At times chi-chat can involve discourse or debate but fundamental idea of chit chat is not to seek contentious topic rather at times actively avoid contentious topic. Nicety is the goal. At times we explicitly in private and implicitly in public express agreement to white we disagree or simply ignore and change the topic to something else. Altercation, confrontation nd conflict of thoughts are to be avoided. Therefore chit-chatting happens among people who already share the same or similar view.

Debate if it's formal is easy to detect. Each person take turn as defined by the system of debate. There are judges or at times also audiences. However debates vs discourses are difficult to detect when there no formal e.g. corporate meeting. Because primary difference between the two mode is if you objective win or lose. In debate we want to win. In Discourse you want to lose. So if a debate a person would never say "oh that makes sense, I was wrong' , "oh that makes sense, I never thought it this way" , "oh I was wrong", "oh, I never thought", in discourse it's a very normal things to say. In debate you counter the other persons points even if you know your counter is baseless. At times counter is baseless, useless or total crap. But loosing is not acceptable. In corporate setting , if people are debating or discoursing becomes very difficult to detect mechanistically primarily because both uses full fire power of reason, logic and argumentation. So visually debate and discourse is similar. The fundamental way to detect the different is if you can conclude that someone is holding on to their position thought the collaborative pattern has clearly thrashed that position. It means a person holds two incongruent view in this head. So in debate, because winning is goal when a person is wrong, they wold start to support non-sense because it supports their position.

Let me give you an example. One day I was having a conversation with my friend who is a staunch believer of Jain religion. I myself is born into Jain family and studied in Jain school. My friend started the conversation about how Jainism is not like other religions, rather Jainism is not even a religion it's a way of life and it's based on scientific principle. It started with a chit chat and as I said chit-chat is a great tool for disseminating knowledge whether is real or pseudo. Because they were agreeing on Jainism as scientific principle, I wanted to turn it into a discourse. So I asked them, as per Jainism, how many years ago first Jain trithankar was born. They told me the number and after calculation we all agreed that it happens to be about 1.85 quintillions year ago. So my question was as per science earth is only 4 billion years ago and universe is 16 billion years ago. So how do you reconcile the two facts. Now the guys I am talking about , all hold engineering degree from India's premier universitities and Masters from USA's premier universities. Now I just created a a conflict and I am open to then reconciling the conflict. I would have been okay if they used some conjecture that speed of light was slower at the start of of the universe so time moved faster then it would have been okay and would have challanged that theory. But they did not. They had no way of reconciling two contradictioary statement and each of the person tool different stand. One said, how does science knows that earth is only 4 billion years agao and homo sapiens is only few century old, one said, I do not beleive in evolutions. One said this is just perspective. One perspective is 1.8 trillion years ago and another 4 billion years ago, So both are right, we shall not call a perspective outright wrong. I can give more of their position. A high schooler kids , born and raised to jain family and born and raised in USA, he said to his dad, your position make no sense, but then succumbed under pressure of authority 


First, are two people going back an forth. 

People who chit-chat at times will tell you, stop debating, don't argue

Debate vs 

1. You boot strap a conversation to understand the nature of the systems to which conversation belongs to
2 People both use full fire power of reason, logic, argumentation etc. The idea is that if you are not doing that you are being disrespectful of other participants.
3.The participants wish that they lose the discourse because they have fundamental belief that learning only happens via being proven wrong so if they lose the discourse, they have won because they learnt.  

Because of conjecture and criticism mode of dialogues , either one participants learnt or every participants learn or at time they learn nothing new because they already aware of nature of systems to which conversation belonged to but listeners learnt.



FAQs- Posting Anonymously

Do you allow for posting Anonymously ?

Short answer is 'yes' . Though we are open community and we know each members's details via their linkedin profile, there are multiple situations where members wants to convey their thoughts anonymously.  However, we are well aware of people can behave badly behind the anonymity of, we have designed interesting process via which a legitimate person can post anonymously while bad behaving people can't hide behind anonymity. Please check the FAQ, how to post Anonymously.. 

How to post Anonymous message 

1. Join #anonymous -channel. Post an anonymous message using Anonymous bot.  Someone in the community will forward the message or share the link in the proper channel.   So the community member who forwards or shares the message, their name will be public, but not of the the person who posted the original anonymous message. This allows poster to remain anonymous but community members is responsible in judging if message meets SystemsWay community guidelines. 

What if no one pick up and forwards my anonymous message ?

You yourself can forward or share the link to your own anonymous messages to proper discourses. If you are an active member of the community and you have been forwarding others anonymous messages to channel, no one will be able to connect the anonymous message was posted by you. You need to be little smart. Do not create anononymous message and forward it the sametime as this would indicated that poster and forwarded or anonymous message was same person. 

How anonymous is anonymous message ?

We use free version of Anonymous bot. You can read their documentation here. But we can tell you that we the creator and administrator of SytemsWay have no idea who the creator of anonymous message is. 

Why not allow AnonymousBot in each discourse ?

Please read our community design goals and methods designs to pursue that goals.  In short, anonymous community like Blind are nightmare to manage. We are a learning community, enabling discourse that creates epistemic value. We are critical thinkers and deeply criticize every thoughts including our own. We avoid criticizing people thought someone can take crticism of their thoughts as criticism on themselves. It take real courage and it's not easy to engage in such discourses. If made anonymous, such discourse turn into non-sense conversation like on other social media. Our design, though creates friction , allows for anonymity but puts responsible for forwarding that anonymous message on person whose identity is know so there are pressure in people to apply judgement and only forwards the messages if it make sense to them. 

FAQs Others

The community demands knowing your linkedin identity. It's high friction. The community will not grow.  

Our goal is not to grow the community. We would rather have low number of community members engaging in high quality discourses than too many members and poor quality discourse.  We want courageous people who are fallibilist and refutations, but not only just refutations for sake of refutations, but refutations that uses reason , logic a and think in systems. Your assumption that growth is good thing, not alway true. We are not seeking growth, not at the cost of qualiyt of discourse that we are seeking. 

Discourses in slack are deleted after 90 days, are we archiving them for future reference. 

All discourses 

FAQ 3 title

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