How to Change Behavior Without Telling Anyone What to Do

Every parent learns this: telling kids "don't run by the pool" doesn't work. But put a garden between the gate and the water? Kids slow down naturally. You never said a word. You just changed the landscape.

This is the deepest insight in coordination science: you can't control agents directly. People, teams, markets—they go where they want to go. But you can shape the terrain they navigate.

Attractors are like valleys in a landscape. A ball released anywhere on a hillside will roll down into the nearest valley—not because something pushed it, but because that's where the shape of the ground leads. The ball "chooses" to go there.

Organizations work the same way. Culture, incentives, process, architecture—these create the landscape. People flow toward whatever behaviors the terrain makes easy and away from whatever it makes hard. Want different behavior? Don't give a motivational speech. Reshape the landscape.

The instrument below makes this tangible. The colored regions are "basins of attraction"—areas where agents naturally flow toward a central attractor. Drag the attractors and watch agents spontaneously switch allegiance. You never touched them. You just moved their incentives.

Try it: Drag an attractor across the screen. Watch agents flow to the new position without any direct intervention.

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Attractors

Control

Attractors 2
Agents 30
Basin A 0
Basin B 0
Mode: Move Attractors
30
5

Shape the Landscape, Not the Agents

You cannot directly control agents—only shape the geometry they navigate. Attractors are stable states the system tends toward. Agents fall into basins, not because you pushed them, but because the landscape pulls them.

Drag the attractors to reshape the basin boundaries. Watch agents spontaneously switch allegiance as the landscape changes beneath them. You never touch the agents—yet their behavior transforms.

This is the core insight for coordination design: create the right attractor geometry, and desired behavior emerges. Fight the agents, and you exhaust yourself against entropy.

The Physics

Attractor basins are regions of state space that flow toward stable points. The same mathematics describes magnetic domains, market equilibria, neural decision-making, and organizational culture. Change the attractors, change everything—without touching anyone.

Operator O1

Attractor: Pattern stability. The operator that creates stable states and basins of attraction. Without attractors, coordination has no persistent form—only transient alignment.