He also argues for not attempting to understand the inner workings of systems but to observe their behavior (a key element of cybernetics) and suggesting we may have to give up on explaining why things happen or holding individual people accountable for things they neither control nor understand. "Accountability sinks" are a useful concept: the customer service agent who can do nothing to help yet must receive the signal from the customer that something is wrong
Much of this is represented in the catch phrase of cybernetics:
"The Purpose of the System is What It Does"
If you try to look inside the system, you will see a lot of people who think their job is about producing petroleum products. On the outside, you will see an entire industry hell-bent on making the earth unlivable. This is the result of the overall economic system that focuses on this quarter's share price to the exclusion of nearly all else.