In the above picture we see a balance of four weights of equal size.\u00a0 See if you can use your imagination to expand this picture to millions of weights on millions of strings arranged at millions of angles on the above balance wheel.\u00a0 You can look at any one of these strings with weights on both ends as a single model of one of the forces in the economy.\u00a0 Whether or not that string tilts the balance wheel toward one side of the other\u00a0 surely depends on the sizes of the weights on both ends of that string.\u00a0 If these weights dominate all the other weights in size, then measuring the size of the weights on this particular string will tell you which way the wheel tilts.\u00a0 However, if the weights on this particular string are very small compared to the other weights, then they will have very little impact on the tilt of the wheel.<\/p>\n There are even more complicated problems about the small\u00a0 difference in weights in a set of very large weights, but we don’t need to get into that to understand the issue.\u00a0 When you discuss systems involving people, as opposed to ones that are only composed of inanimate objects, then there are even more complications which we don’t need to consider here.<\/p>\n Even if the weights you are\u00a0 concerned with don’t change much, all the other weights can be undergoing huge changes.\u00a0 If you think your particular economic theory explains all economic behavior in all possible circumstances, then you will be mystified by real world behavior which varies wildly even when the parameters you measure hardly change at all. In another circumstance, the factors you measure may change wildly, but the behavior of the system doesn’t change much at all<\/a>.\u00a0 That could be because the sum of the other weights and their changes are much larger than the changes in the weights you are looking at.<\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/lockhaven.edu\/~dsimanek\/scenario\/labman1\/forctabl.gif\")
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