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We are products of complexity,
but our evolution has focused our
understanding on the situation of hunter gatherers on the
African savanna.
As humanity has become more powerful we can significantly impact
the systems we depend on. But we struggle to comprehend
them. So this web frame
explores significant real world complex
adaptive systems (CAS):
- Assumptions of randomness & equilibrium allowed the
wealthy & powerful to expand the size and leverage of
stock markets, by placing at risk the insurance and
retirement savings of the working class. The
assumptions are wrong but remain entrenched.
- The US nation was built from two
divergent political views
of: Jefferson and Hamilton. It also reflects the development of competing
ancient ideas of Epicurus and Cyril. But the
collapse of Bretton Woods forced Wall Street into a position
of power, while the middle and working class were abandoned
by the elites. Housing financed with cash from oil and
derivative transactions helped hide the shift.
- Most US health care is still
operating the way cars built in the 1940s did.
Geisinger is an example of better solution. But
transforming the whole network is a challenge. And
public health investment has proved far more
beneficial.
- Helping our children learn to be
effective adults is part of our humanity, but we have
created a robust but deeply flawed education system.
Better alternatives have emerged.
- Spoken language, reading and writing emerged allowing our
good ideas to
become a second genetic material.
- The emergence
of the global economy in the 1600s and its subsequent
development;
It explains how the examples relate to each other, why we all
have trouble effectively comprehending these systems and
explains how our inexperience with CAS can lead to catastrophe. It
outlines the items we see as key to the system and why.
Example systems frame |
Dietrich Dorner argues complex adaptive systems (CAS) are hard to understand and
manage. He provides examples of how this feature of these
systems can have disastrous consequences for their human
managers. Dorner suggests this is due to CAS properties
psychological impact on our otherwise successful mental
strategic toolkit. To prepare to more effectively manage
CAS, Dorner recommends use of:
- Effective iterative planning and
- Practice with complex scenario simulations; tools which he
reviews.
Complexity catastrophes |
E. O. Wilson reviews the effect of man on the natural world to
date and explains how the two systems can coexist most
effectively.
Adaptive ecology |
Barton Gellman details the strategies used by Vice President
Cheney to align the global system with his economics, defense, and
energy goals.
US vds alignment |
Kevin Kruse argues that from 1930 onwards the corporate elite
and the Republican party have developed and relentlessly
executed strategies to undermine Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Their
successful strategy used the credibility of conservative
religious leaders to:
- Demonstrate religious issues
with the New Deal.
- Integrate the corporate
elite and evangelicals.
- Use the power of corporate
advertising and Hollywood to reeducate the American
people to view the US as historically religious and
the New Deal and liberalism as anti-religious
socialism.
- Focus the message through evangelicals including Vereide and Graham.
- Centralize the strategy through President Eisenhower.
- Add religious elements to
mainstream American symbols: money, pledge;
- Push for prayer in
public school
- Push Congress to promote prayer
- Make elections more
about religious positions.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Strategy is the art of the possible. But it also depends
on persistence.
Inventing Christian America |
Charles Ferguson argues that the US power structure has become
highly corrupt.
Ferguson identifies key events which contributed to the
transformation:
- Junk bonds,
- Derivative
deregulation,
- CMOs,
ABS and analyst fraud,
- Financial network deregulation,
- Financial network consolidation,
- Short term incentives
Subsequently the George W. Bush administration used the
situation to build
a global bubble, which Wall Street
leveraged. The bursting of the
bubble: managed
by the Bush Administration and Bernanke Federal Reserve;
was advantageous to some.
Ferguson concludes that the restructured and deregulated
financial services industry is damaging to
the American economy. And it is supported by powerful, incentive aligned academics.
He sees the result being a rigged system.
Ferguson offers his proposals
for change and offers hope that a charismatic young FDR will appear.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory. Once the constraints are removed from CAS
amplifiers, it becomes advantageous to leverage the increased flows. And it is often
relatively damaging not to participate. Corruption and parasitism can become
entrenched.
Financial WMD |
Matt Taibbi describes the phenotypic
alignment of the American justice system. The result
he explains relentlessly grinds the poor and undocumented into
resources to be constrained, consumed and ejected. Even as
it supports and aligns the financial infrastructure into a
potent weapon capable of targeting any company or nation to
extract profits and leave the victim deflated.
Taibbi uses five scenarios to provide a broad picture of the:
activities, crimes, policing, prosecutions, court processes,
prisons and deportation network. The scenarios are:
Undocumented people's neighborhoods, Poor neighborhoods, Welfare
recipients, Credit card debtors and Financial institutions.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by
complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. The alignment of the
justice system reflects a set of long term strategies and
responses to a powerful global arms race that the US leadership intends to
win.
Aligned justice |
Jonathan Powell describes how the government of, the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair,
actually operated. Powell was Blair's only chief of
staff.
Mechanics of power |
H. A. Hayek compares and contrasts collectivism and
libertarianism.
Libertarianism |
John Doerr argues that company leaders and their
organizations, hugely benefit from Andy Grove's OKRs.
He promotes strategies
that help OKR success: Focus,
Align, Track, Stretch; replaces yearly performance
reviews, and provides illustrative success
stories.
Doerr stresses Dov Seidman's
view that employees are adaptive and will
respond to what they see being measured. He asserts culturally supported OKRs/CFR processes will be transformative.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them
framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Doerr's architecture
is tailored for the startups KPCB
invests in. It is a subset of the general case of schematic plans, genetic operators and Shewhart cycles that drive all
CAS. Doerr's approach limits support of learning and deemphasizes the
association to planning.
Startup PDCA |
David Bodanis illustrates how disruptive effects can take
hold. While the French revolution had many driving forces
including famine and
oppression the emergence of a new philosophical vision ensured
that thoughtful leaders
were constrained and conflicted in their responses to the
crisis.
Voltaire's disruptive network |
An epistatic meme suppressed for a thousand years reemerges
during the enlightenment.
It was a poem
encapsulating the ideas of Epicurus rediscovered by a
humanist book hunter.
Greenblatt describes the process of suppression and
reemergence. He argues that the rediscovery was the
foundation of the modern world.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the memetic mechanisms
are discussed.
Constraining happiness |
Isaacson uses the historic development of the global cloud of
web services to explore Ada
Lovelace's ideas about thinking
machines and poetic
science. He highlights the value of computer
augmented human creativity and the need for liberal arts to
fulfill the process.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agent networks and
collaboration are discussed.
Arts technology & intelligence |
Haikonen juxtaposes the philosophy and psychology of
consciousness with engineering practice to refine the debate on
the hard problem of consciousness. During the journey he
describes the architecture of a robot that highlights the
potential and challenges of associative neural
networks.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory is then used to illustrate the
additional requirements and constraints of self-assembling
evolved conscious animals. It will be seen that
Haikonen's neural
architecture, Smiley's Copycat
architecture and molecular biology's intracellular
architecture leverage the same associative properties.
Associatively integrated robots |
Good ideas are successful because they build upon prior
developments that have been successfully implemented.
Johnson demonstrates that they are phenotypic expressions of
memetic plans subject to the laws of complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Developing ideas |
A government sanctioned monopoly
supported the construction of a superorganism
American Telephone and
Telegraph
(AT&T). Within this Bell Labs was at the center of
three networks:
- The evolving global scientific
network.
- The Bell telephone network. And
- The military
industrial network deploying 'fire and missile
control' systems.
Bell Labs strategically leveraged each network to create an innovation
engine.
They monitored the opportunities to leverage the developing
ideas, reorganizing to replace incumbent
opposition and enable the creation and growth of new
ideas.
Once the monopoly was
dismantled, AT&T disrupted.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the innovation mechanisms are
discussed.
Strategic innovation |
Roger Cohen's New York Times opinion about the implications of
BREXIT is summarized. His ideas are then framed by complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory and
reviewed.
BREXIT |
Scott Galloway argues that Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google
are monopolists that
trade workers for technology. Monopolies that he argues
should be broken up to ensure the return of a middle
class.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on these arguments
assuming they relate to a complex adaptive system (CAS).
While Scott's issue is highly significant his analysis conflicts
with relevant CAS history and theory.
Monopoly job killers |
The IPO of Netscape is
defined as the key emergent event of
the New Economy by Michael Mandel. Following the summary
of Mandel's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted.
New economy |
Ed Conway argues that Bretton Woods produced a unique set of
rules and infrastructure for supporting the global economy. It was
enabled by the experience of Keynes
and White during and after the First World War, their dislike of the Gold Standard,
the necessity of improving
the situation between the wars and the opportunity created
by the catastrophe of the Second
World War.
He describes how it was planned
and developed. How it
emerged from the summit.
And he shows how the opportunity inevitably allowed the US to replace the UK at the center of the global economy.
Like all plans there are
mistakes and Conway takes us through them and how the US recovered the situation as
best it could.
And then Conway describes the period after
Bretton Woods collapsed. He explains what followed
and also compares the relative performance of the various
periods before during and after Bretton Woods.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of Complex Adaptive System (CAS)
theory. Conway's book illustrates the rule making and
infrastructure that together build an evolved amplifier.
He shows the strategies at play of agents that were for and
against the development
and deployment of the system. And The Summit provides a
key piece of the history of our global economic CAS.
Bretton woods |
A key agent in the 1990 - 2008
housing expansion Countrywide is linked into the residential
mortgage value delivery system (VDS)
by Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla. But they show the VDS
was full of amplifiers and control points. With no one
incented to apply the brakes the bubble grew and burst.
Following the summary of Muolo and Padilla's key points the
complex adaptive system (CAS)
aspects are highlighted.
Housing amplifiers |
Satyajit Das uses an Indonesian company's derivative trades to
introduce us to the workings of the international derivatives
system. Das describes the components of the value delivery
system and the key
transactions. He demonstrates how the system
interacted with emerging economies
expanding them, extracting profits and then moving on as the
induced bubbles burst. Following Das's key points the
complex adaptive system (CAS)
aspects are highlighted.
Derivative systems |
Johnson & Kwak argue that expanding the national debt
provides a hedge against unforeseen future problems, as long as
creditors are willing to continue lending. They illustrate
different approaches to managing the debt within the US over its history and of the
eighteenth century administrations of England and France.
The US embodies two different political and economic systems which
approach the national debt differently:
- Taxes to support a sinking
fund to ensure credit to leverage fiscal power in:
Wars, Pandemics, Trade disputes, Hurricanes, Social
programs; Starting with Hamilton,
Lincoln & Chase,
Wilson, FDR;
- Low taxes, limited infrastructure, with risk assumed by
individuals: Advocated by President's Jefferson & Madison,
Reagan,
George W. Bush (Gingrich);
Johnson & Kwak develop a model of what the US
government does. They argue that the conflicting
sinking fund and low tax approaches leaves the nation 'stuck in
the middle' with a future problem.
And they offer their list of 'first principles' to help
assess the best approach for moving from 2012 into the
future.
They conclude the question is still political. They hope
it can be resolved with an awareness of their detailed
explanations. They ask who is willing to
push all the coming risk onto individuals.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Historically developing within the global cotton value delivery
system, key CAS features are highlighted.
National debt |
Robert Gordon argues that the inventions of the second
industrial revolution were the foundation for
American economic growth. Gordon shows how flows of people
into difficult rural America built a population base
which then took the opportunity to move on to urban settings: Houses, Food in supermarkets,
Clothes in
department stores;
that supported increasing productivity and standard of living.
The deployment of nationwide networks: Rail, Road, Utilities;
terminating in the urban housing and work places allowing the workers to
leverage time saving goods and services, which helped grow
the economy.
Gordon describes the concomitant transformation of:
- Communications
and advertising
- Credit
and finance
- Public
health and the health
care network
- Health insurance
- Education
- Social
and welfare services
Counter intuitively the constraints
introduced before and in the Great Depression and the demands of World War 2
provide the amplifiers that drive the inventions deeply and
fully into every aspect of the economy between 1940 and 1970
creating the exceptional growth and standard of living of post
war America.
Subsequently the
rate of growth was limited until the shift of women
into the workplace and the full networking of
voice and data supported the Internet and World Wide Web
completed the third industrial revolution, but the effects were
muted by the narrow reach of the technologies.
The development of Big Data, Robots,
and Artificial Intelligence may support additional growth,
but Gordon is unconvinced because of the collapse of
the middle class.
Following our summary of Gordon's book RSS frames his arguments from
the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
American growth |
Carl Menger argues that the market induced the emergence of
money based on the attractive features of precious metals.
He compares the potential for government edicts to create money
but sees them as lacking.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from
the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
With two hundred years of additional knowledge we conclude that
precious metals are not as attractive as Menger asserts.
Government backed promissory notes are analogous to:
- Other evolved CAS forms of ubiquitous high energy
transaction intermediates and
- Schematic strategies that are proving optimal in
supporting survival and replication in the currently
accessible niches.
Emergence of money |
Eric Beinhocker sets out to answer a question Adam Smith
developed in the Wealth of Nations: what is wealth? To do
this he replaces traditional
economic theory, which is based on the assumption that an
economy is a system in
equilibrium, with complexity
economics in which the economy is modeled as a complex
adaptive system (CAS).
He introduces Sugerscape
to illustrate an economic CAS model in action. And then he
explains the major features of a CAS economy: Dynamics,
Agents, Networks, Emergence, and
Evolution.
Building on complexity economics Beinhocker reviews how evolution applies to
the economy to build wealth. He explains how design spaces
map strategies to instances of physical and
social
technologies. And he identifies the interactors and
selection mechanism of economic
evolution.
This allows Beinhocker to develop a new definition
of wealth.
In the rest of the book Beinhocker looks at the consequences of
adopting complexity economics for business and society: Strategy, Organization, Finance,
& Politics
& Policy.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS explores his conclusions
and aligns Beinhocker's model of CAS with the CAS theory and evidence we
leverage.
Economic complexity |
Sven Beckert describes the historic transformation of the
growing, spinning, weaving, manufacture of cotton goods and
their trade over time. He describes the rise of a first global
commodity, its dependence on increasing: military power, returns for
the control points in the value delivery system(VDS), availability of land
and labor to work it including slaves.
He explains how cotton offered the opportunity for
industrialization further amplifying the productive capacity of
the VDS and the power of the control points. This VDS was quickly
copied. The increased capacity of the industrialized
cotton complex adaptive system (CAS) required more labor to
operate the machines. Beckert describes the innovative introduction of wages
and the ways found to
mobilize industrial labor.
Beckert describes the characteristics of the industrial cotton
CAS which made it flexible enough to become globally interconnected.
Slavery made the production system so cost effective that all
prior structures collapsed as they interconnected. So when
the US civil war
blocked access to the major production nodes in the
American Deep South the CAS began adapting.
Beckert describes the global
reconstruction that occurred and the resulting destruction of the traditional ways
of life in the global countryside. This colonial expansion
further enriched and empowered the 'western' nation states. Beckert explains
how other countries
responded by copying the colonial strategies and creating
the opportunities for future armed conflict among the original
colonialists and the new upstarts.
Completing the adaptive
shifts, Beckert describes the advocates for industrialization in
the colonized global south and how over time they joined
the global cotton CAS disrupting the early western manufacturing
nodes and creating the current global CAS
dominated by merchants like Wal-Mart
pulling goods through a network of clothing manufacturers,
spinning and weaving factories, and growers competing with each
other on cost.
Following our summary of Beckert's book, RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory. The transformation of
disconnected peasant farmers,
pastoral warriors and their lands into a supply chain for a
highly profitable industrial CAS required the development over
time: of military force, global transportation and communication
networks, perception and representation control networks, capital stores and flows,
models, rules, standards and markets; along with the support at
key points of: barriers, disruption, and infrastructure and
evolved amplifiers. The emergent
system demonstrates the powerful constraining influence of
extended phenotypic alignment.
Globalization from cotton |
The structure and problems of the US
health care network is described in terms of complex adaptive
system (CAS) theory.
The network:
- Is deeply embedded in the US nation
state. It reflects the conflict between two
opposing visions for the US: high tax with safety net
or low tax without. The emergence
of a parasitic elite supported by tax policy, further
constrains the choices available to improve the efficiency
and effectiveness of the network.
- The US is optimized to sell its citizens dangerous
levels of: salt,
sugar, cigarettes,
guns, light, cell phones, opioids,
costly education, global travel,
antibacterials, formula, foods including
endocrine disrupters;
- Accepting the US controlled global supply chain's
offered goods & services results in: debt, chronic stress,
amplified consumption and toxic excess, leading to obesity, addiction, driving instead of
walking, microbiome
collapse;
- Globalization connects disparate environments in a network. At the edges,
humans are drastically altering the biosphere. That
is reducing the proximate natural environment's
connectedness, and leaving its end-nodes disconnected and
far less diverse. This disconnects predators from
their prey, often resulting in local booms and busts that
transform the local parasite
network and their reservoir and amplifier
hosts. The situation is setup so that man is
introduced to spillover
from the local parasites' hosts. Occasionally, but
increasingly, the spillover results in humanity becoming
broadly infected. The evolved
specialization of the immune system
to the proximate environment during development
becomes undermined as the environment transforms.
- Is incented to focus on localized competition generating
massive & costly duplication of services within
physician based health care operations instead of proven
public health strategies. This process drives
increasing research & treatment complexity and promotes hope
for each new technological breakthrough.
- Is amplified by the legislatively structured separation
and indirection of service development,
provision, reimbursement and payment.
- Is impacted by the different political strategies for
managing the increasing
cost of health care for the demographic bulge of retirees.
- Is presented with acute
and chronic
problems to respond to. As currently setup the network
is tuned to handle acute problems. The interactions
with patients tend to be transactional.
- Includes a legislated health insurance infrastructure
which is:
- Costly and inefficient
- Structured around yearly
contracts which undermine long-term health goals and
strategies.
- Is supported by increasingly regulated HCIT
which offers to improve data sharing and quality but has
entrenched commercial EHR
products deep within the hospital systems.
- Is maintained, and kept in
alignment, by massive network
effects across the:
- Hospital platform
based
sub-networks connecting to
- Physician networks
- Health insurance networks - amplified by ACA
narrow network legislation
- Hospital clinical supply and food
production networks
- Medical school and academic research network and NIH
- Global
transportation network
- Public health networks
- Health care IT supply
network
Health care |
Deaton describes the wellbeing
of people around the world today. He explains the powerful benefit of public
health strategies and the effect of growth in
material wellbeing but also the corrosive effects of
aid.
Following our summary of Deaton's arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory. The situation he describes is complex including
powerful amplifiers, alignment and incentives that overlap
broadly with other RSS summaries of adaptations of: The
biosphere, Politics, Economics,
Philosophy and Health care.
Improving wellbeing |
Donald Barlett and James Steele write about their investigations
of the major problems afflicting US
health care as of 2006.
Problems of US health care |
Glenn Steele & David Feinberg review the development of the
modern Geisinger healthcare business after its near collapse
following the abandoned merger with Penn State AMC. After an overview of the
business, they describe how a calamity
unfolding around them supported building a vision of a
better US health care network. And they explain:
- How they planned
out the transformation,
- Leveraging an effective
governance structure,
- Using a strategy
to gain buy in,
- Enabling
reengineering at the clinician patient
interface.
- Implementing the reengineering for acute, chronic
& hot
spot care; to help the patients and help the
physicians.
- Geisinger's leverage of biologics.
- Reengineering healing with ProvenExperience.
- Where Geisinger is headed next.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments on them. We
frame their ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory.
E2E insured quality care |
Robert Pearl explains the perspectives of a health care leader
and son who know that the current health care network interacts
with human behavior to induce a poorly performing system that
caused his father's death. But he is confident that these
problem perceptions can be changed. Once that occurs he
asserts the network will become more integrated, coordinated,
collaborative, better led, and empathetic to their
patients. The supporting technology infrastructure will be
made highly interoperable. All that will reduce medical
errors and make care more cost effective.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments on them. We
frame his ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
including synergistic examples of these systems in
operation. The health care network is built out of
emergent human agents. All agents must model the signals
they perceive to represent and respond to them. Pinker
explains how this occurs. Sapolsky explains why fear and
hierarchy are so significant. He includes details of Josh
Green's research on morality and death. Charles Ferguson
highlights the pernicious nature of financial incentives.
Bad medical models |
US healthcare is ripe for
disruption. Christensen, Grossman and Hwang argue that
technologies are emerging which will support low cost business
models that will undermine the current network. Applying
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory to these arguments suggests that the current power hierarchy can effectively resist
these progressive forces.
Disrupting health care |
Atul Gawande writes about the opportunity for a thirty per cent
improvement in quality in medicine by organizing
to deploy as agent based teams using shared schematic
plans and distributed signalling or as he puts it the use of checklists.
With vivid examples from a variety of situations including construction, air crew support and global health care Gawande illustrates
the effects of
complexity and how to organize to cope with it.
Following the short review RSS
additionally relates Gawande's arguments to its models of
complex adaptive systems (CAS) positioning his discussion within
the network of US health care,
contrasting our view of complexity, comparing the forces shaping
his various examples and reviewing facets of complex
failures.
Complexity checklists |
Friedman and Martin leverage the lifelong data collected on
1,528 bright individuals selected by Dr. Lewis Terman
starting in 1921, to understand what aspects of the subjects'
lives significantly affected their longevity. Looking
broadly across each subject's: Personality,
Education, Parental impacts,
Energy
levels, Partnering,
Careers, Religion,
Social networks,
Gender, Impact from war and
trauma; Friedman and Martin are able to develop a set of model pathways,
which each individual could be seen to select and travel
along. Some paths led to the traveler having a long
life. Others were problematic. The models imply that
the US approach to health and
wellness should focus
more on supporting
the development and selection of beneficial pathways.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory. The pathways are most
applicable to bright individuals with the resources and support
necessary to make and leverage choices they make. Striving
to enter and follow a beneficial pathway seems sensible but may
be impossible for individuals trapped in a collapsing network,
starved of resources.
Promoting longevity |
Gawande uses his personal experience, analytic skills and lots
of stories of innovators to demonstrate better ways of coping
with aging and death. He introduces the lack of focus on
aging and death in traditional medicine. And goes on to
show how technology has amplified
this stress point. He illustrates the traditional possibility of the
independent self, living fully while aging with the
support of the extended family. Central
planning responded to the technological and societal changes
with poorly designed infrastructure and funding. But
Gawande then contrasts the power of
bottom up innovations created by experts responding to
their own family situations and belief
systems.
Gawande then explores in depth the challenges
that unfold currently as we age and become infirm.
He notes that the world is following the US path. As such it will
have to understand the dilemma of
integrating medical treatment and hospice
strategies. He notes that all parties
involved need courage to cope.
He proposes medicine must aim to assure
well being. At that point all doctors will practice
palliative care.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agency, death,
evolution, cooperation and adaptations
to new technologies are discussed.
Agent death |
Sonia Shah reviews the millennia old (500,000 years) malarial arms race between Humanity, Anopheles
mosquitoes and Plasmodium. 250 - 500 million people are
infected each year with malaria and one million die.
Malaria |
Peter Medawar writes about key historic events in the evolution
of medical science.
Medical science events |
Using John Holland's theory of adaptation in complex
systems Baldwin and Clark propose an evolutionary theory of
design. They show how this can limit the interdependencies
that generate complexity
within systems. They do this through a focus on
modularity.
Modular designed systems |
Lou Gerstner describes the challenges he faced and the
strategies he used to successfully restructure the computer
company IBM.
Compartmented systems |
Grady Booch advocates an object oriented approach to computer
software design.
Object based systems |
Bertrand Meyer develops arguments, principles and strategies for
creating modular software. He concludes that abstract data
types and inheritence make object orientation a superior
methodology for software construction. Complex adaptive
system (CAS) theory suggests agents provide an alternative strategy
to the use of objects.
Software construction |
Joseph Tainter introduces
the problem of collapse and then develops a theory of complexity and
reviews prior theories of collapse
of societies. He then builds a general
explanation of collapse and explains declining
marginal returns in significant aspects of complex societies,
and evaluates the theory by examining its
applicability to historical examples. He then subsumes other explanatory
themes into his marginal
returns logic and applies it to our current situation.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS frames these from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory: CAS entities provide an effective emergence and
collapse point. The history of
events which results in each emergence point Tainter reviews
introduces constraints
on the aggregate entity. These constraints can help
define the emergence and collapse point and remove
inconsistencies from the analytic framework. Tainter's economic framework,
conforming to the equilibrium proposed by Walras and Jevons, can
benefit from alignment with complexity
economics.
Fall of societal entities |
Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved
dramatically. W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred.
Tools |
Matt Ridley demonstrates the creative effect of man on the
World. He highlights:
- A list of
preconditions resulting in
- Additional niche
capture & more free time
- Building a network
to interconnect memes processes & tools which
- Enabling inter-generational
transfers
- Innovations
that help reduce environmental stress even as they leverage fossil
fuels
Memetic trading networks |
E O. Wilson argues that campfire gatherings on the savanna supported
the emergence of human creativity. This resulted in man
building cultures and
later exploring them, and their creator, through the humanities. Wilson
identifies the transformative events, but he notes many of these
are presently ignored by the humanities. So he calls for a
change of approach.
He:
- Explores creativity:
how it emerged from the benefits of becoming an omnivore hunter-gatherer,
enabled by language & its catalysis of invention, through stories told in the
evening around the campfire. He notes the power of
fine art, but suggests music provides the most revealing
signature of aesthetic
surprise.
- Looks at the current limitations of the
humanities, as they have suffered through years of neglect.
- Reviews the evolutionary processes of heredity and
culture:
- Ultimate causes viewed
through art, & music
- The bedrock of:
- Ape senses and emotions,
- Creative arts, language, dance, song typically studied
by humanities,
&
- Exponential change in science and
technology.
- How the breakthrough from
our primate past occurred, powered by eating meat,
supporting: a bigger brain, expanded memory &
language.
- Accelerating changes now driven by genetic cultural coevolution.
- The impact on human nature.
- Considers our emotional attachment to the natural world: hunting, gardens; we are
destroying.
- Reviews our love of metaphor, archetypes,
exploration, irony, and
considers the potential for a third enlightenment,
supported by cooperative
action of humanities and science
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames these from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory:
- The humanities are seen to be a functionalist framework
for representing the cultural CAS while
- Wilson's desire
to integrate the humanities and science gains support from
viewing the endeavor as a network of layered CAS.
Evening campfire rituals |
Brynjolfsson and McAfee explore the effects of Moore's law on the
economy. They argue it has generated exponential
growth. This has been due to innovation.
It has created a huge bounty of
additional wealth.
But the wealth is spread unevenly across
society. They look at the short and long term implications of
the innovation bounty and spread
and the possible future of
technology.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory.
Brilliant technologies |
Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is
inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling
students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane
roles. He highlights a radical and already proven
alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning
processes supported by technology and freed up attention of
teams of teachers. Building on his personal experience of
helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative,
Khan:
- Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging
short videos focused on content,
Converging on mastery,
With the help of
neuroscience, and filling
in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach
to the mainstream method.
- Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s,
Inducing holes that
are hidden by tests, Tests
which ignore creativity.
The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to
be supplemented with homework.
Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so
they could mentor them while they attended school, an
inversion that significantly improves the economics.
- Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service,
Working with a
real classroom, Trying stealth
learning, At Khan Academy full time, In the curriculum at
Los Altos, Supporting life-long
learning.
- Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with
a one
room school, a robust
teaching team, and creativity enabled;
so with some catalysis
even the poorest can
become educated and earn credentials
for current jobs.
- Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based
assessments, College
education;
- Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure
for creativity to
emerge and to support risk taking.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Disruption is a powerful force for
change but if its force is used to support the current teachers
to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the
current educational network?
Education versus guilds |
Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld's New York Times opinion based on The
Triple Package is summarized. Their ideas are then framed
by CAS theory and reviewed.
What drives success |
Peter Turchin describes how major pre-industrial empires
developed due to effects of geographic boundaries constraining
the empires and their neighbors' interactions. Turchin
shows how the asymmetries of breeding rates and resource growth
rates results in dynamic cycles within cycles. After the
summary of Turchin's book complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
is used to augment Turchins findings.
Warrior groups |
Through the operation of three different food chains Michael
Pollan explores their relative merits. The application of
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory highlights the value of evolutionary
testing of the food chain.
Natural systems |
E. O. Wilson & Bert Holldobler illustrate how bundled cooperative strategies can
take hold. Various social insects have developed
strategies which have allowed them to capture the most valuable
available niches. Like humans they invest in
specialization and cooperate to subdue larger, well equipped
competitors.
Insect superorganisms |
Computational
theory of the mind and evolutionary
psychology provide Steven Pinker with a framework on which
to develop his psychological arguments about the mind and its
relationship to the brain. Humans captured a cognitive niche by
natural selection 'building out'
specialized aspects of their bodies and brains resulting in a system of mental organs
we call the mind.
He garnishes and defends the framework with findings from
psychology regarding: The visual
system - an example of natural
selections solutions to the sensory challenges
of inverse
modeling of our
environment; Intensions - where
he highlights the challenges of hunter-gatherers -
making sense of the objects
they perceive and predicting what they imply and natural
selections powerful solutions; Emotions - which Pinker argues are
essential to human prioritizing and decision making; Relationships - natural selection's
strategies for coping with the most dangerous competitors, other
people. He helps us understand marriage, friendships and war.
These conclusions allow him to understand the development and
maintenance of higher callings: Art, Music, Literature, Humor, Religion,
& Philosophy; and develop a position on the meaning of life.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) modeling allows RSS to frame Pinker's arguments
within humanity's current situation, induced by powerful evolved
amplifiers: Globalization,
Cliodynamics, The green revolution
and resource
bottlenecks; melding his powerful predictions of the
drivers of human behavior with system wide constraints.
The implications are discussed.
Computationally adapted mind |
The stages of development of the human female, including how her brain changes and the
impacts of this on her 'reality' across a full life span:
conception, infantile
puberty, girlhood,
juvenile pause, adolescence, dating years, motherhood, post-menopause; are
described. Brizendine notes the significant difference in
how emotions are processed
by women compared to men.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the stages with
the evolutionary under-pinning, psychological implications and
behavioral CAS.
Evolved female brain |
The complexity of behavior is explored through Sapolsky
developing scenarios of our best and worst behaviors across time
spans, and scientific subjects including: anthropology,
psychology, neuroscience, sociology. The rich network of adaptive flows he
outlines provides insights and highlight challenges for
scientific research on behavior.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory builds on Sapolsky's
details highlighting the strategies that evolution has captured
to successfully enter niches we now occupy.
CAS behavior |
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
Emergence of time |
Consciousness has confounded philosophers and scientists for
centuries. Now it is finally being characterized
scientifically. That required a transformation of
approach.
Realizing that consciousness was ill-defined neuroscientist
Stanislas Dehaene and others characterized and focused on conscious access.
In the book he outlines the limitations of previous
psychological dogma. Instead his use of subjective
assessments opened the
window to contrast totally unconscious
brain activity with those
including consciousness.
He describes the research methods. He explains the
contribution of new sensors and probes that allowed the
psychological findings to be correlated, and causally related to
specific neural activity.
He describes the theory of the brain he uses, the 'global neuronal
workspace' to position all the experimental details into a
whole.
He reviews how both theory and practice support diagnosis and
treatment of real world mental illnesses.
The implications of Dehaene's findings for subsequent
consciousness research are outlined.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the brain's development and
operation introduce constraints which are discussed.
Conscious access |
Reading and writing present a conundrum. The reader's
brain contains neural networks tuned to reading. With
imaging a written word can be followed as it progresses from the
retina through a functional chain that asks: Are these letters?
What do they look like? Are they a word? What does it sound
like? How is it pronounced? What does it mean? Dehaene
explains the importance of
education in tuning the brain's networks for reading as
well as good strategies for teaching reading and countering dyslexia. But
he notes the reading
networks developed far too recently to have directly evolved.
And Dehaene asks why humans are unique in developing
reading and culture.
He explains the cultural
engineering that shaped writing to human vision and the exaptations and neuronal structures that
enable and constrain reading and culture.
Dehaene's arguments show how cellular, whole animal and cultural
complex adaptive system (CAS) are
related. We review his explanations in CAS terms and use
his insights to link cultural CAS that emerged based on reading
and writing with other levels of CAS from which they emerge.
Evolved reading |
Read Montague explores how brains make decisions. In
particular he explains how:
- Evolution can create indirect abstract models, such as the dopamine system, that
allow
- Life changing real-time
decisions to be made, and how
- Schematic structures provide
encodings of computable control
structures which operate through and on incomputable,
schematically encoded, physically active structures and
operationally associated production
functions.
Receptor indirection |
Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson describe a scientific
investigation of meditation's
impact on the brain. They introduce
the book by describing their experiences with meditation,
science and the research establishment, their friendship, how
meditation is now used in two distinct ways: deep - leading to altered
traits & wide - that can reach the multitudes; which
the book reviews as it critiques the claims and research used to
back them up.
Goleman and Davidson describe meeting as Harvard psychology
graduate students, interested in consciousness, and how minds
work. They rebel against the behavioral orthodoxy, visit Asia and discover the Eastern
tradition of exploring and altering the mind.
Goleman had travelled to Sri Lanka to understand an Asian model
of the mind, which he presented to the undergraduates at
Harvard. Goleman and Davidson developed it into a shared vision of
consciousness. It took over twenty years for
scientific theory and experimental data to catch up and align
with this model. Much of the prior
experimental data had to be abandoned.
They introduce meditation's
impact on the amygdala
responding to pain and stress.
They look at the changes in:
- Stress
- Compassion
- Attention
- Self-awareness; and the
potential for use of mediation
in psychiatry.
And they warn of the occurrence of dark
nights.
They detail how scientists were able to study the brains of Tibetan meditation masters,
starting with Mingyur Rinpoche,
and detect meditation altering
traits.
Finally they discuss the potential
benefits of meditation and strategies to distribute it
broadly to a busy America.
Meditating neurons |
Tara Brach was worried from
a young age that there was something terribly wrong with
her: she like many others felt unworthy. She responded
by developing Radical
Acceptance. Brach then explains the steps in
applying it: pause,
greet what happens next with unconditional
friendliness; allowing us to:
- Initially attend to the sensations
of our body,
- Accept the
wanting self and discover its source of boundless
love.
- Welcome
fear with a widening
attention, accept the pain of death and become
free.
- Use adversity as a gateway to limitless compassion for ourselves
and others.
- Focus on
our basic goodness to counter Western culture turning anger, at being betrayed,
towards ourselves. Extend observing this goodness in
everyone. This enables the use of loving-kindness.
- Leverage
friendships to understand more about our shared nature
and strengthen Radical Acceptance.
- Realize our Buddha nature.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory describes the emergence of
the dualistic self and the tree of life linked by the genetic
code and machinery. It provides an analog of the Buddhist
presence.
Compassionate CAS |
The influence of childhood on behavior is significant.
Enneagrams define personality
types: Reformer, Helper, Achiever,
Individualist, Investigator, Loyalist, Enthusiast,
Challenger and Peacemaker; based on the impact of
childhood driven wounds.
The Enneagram becomes
a tool to enable interested people to transform from the
emotionally wounded base, hidden within
the armor of the type, to the liberated underlying essence.
Childhood leaves each of us with some environmentally specific Basic Fear. In response each
of us adopts an induced Basic Desire
of the type. But as we develop the inner observer, it will
support presence and
undermine the identification
that supports the armor of the type.
The Enneagram reveals three sets of relations about our type
armor:
- Triadic self
revealing: Instinctive,
feeling, thinking; childhood needs
that became significant wounds
- Social style
groupings: Assertive, compliant, withdrawn; strategies for
managing inner conflict
- Coping styles: Positive outlook, competency, reactive; strategies for
defending childhood wounds
Riso and Hudson augment the Enneagram with instinctual
distortions reflected in the interests of the variants.
The Enneagram also offers tools for understanding a person's level of development:
unhealthy, average, healthy,
liberation; including their
current center of gravity,
steriotypical social role,
wake-up call, leaden rule, red
flag, and direction
of integration and disintegration.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the models
presented by the Enneagram with evolved behaviors and structures
in the mind: feelings, emotions, social behaviors, ideas; driven
by genetic and cultural evolution and the constraints of family
and social life. Emergent evolved amplifers can be
constrained by Riso and Hudson's awareness strategies.
Enneagram strategies |
Antonio Damasio argues
that ancient
& fundamental homeostatic processes,
built into
behaviors and updated by evolution
have resulted in the emergence
of nervous systems and feelings. These
feelings, representing the state of the viscera, and represented with general
systems supporting enteric
operation, are later ubiquitously
integrated into the 'images'
built by the minds of higher animals
including humans.
Damasio highlights the separate
development of the body frame in the building of
minds.
Damasio explains that this integration of feelings by minds
supports the development of subjectivity and consciousness. His chain of
emergence suggests the 'order of things.' He stresses the
end-to-end
integration of the organism which undermines dualism. And he reviews Chalmers
hard problem of consciousness.
Damasio reviews the emergence of cultures
and sees feelings, integrated with reason, as the judges of the
cultural creative process, linking culture to
homeostasis. He sees cultures as supporting the
development of tools
to improve our lives. But the results of the
creative process have added
stresses to our lives.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from
the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Each of the [super]organisms
discussed is a CAS reflecting the theory of such systems:
- Damasio's proposals about homeostasis routed signalling, aligns
well with CAS theory.
- Damasio's ideas on cultural stresses are elaborated by CAS
examples.
Emergence of feelings |
Robert Coram highlights the noble life of John Boyd. John
spent a lot of time alone
during his childhood.
He: excelled at swimming and was a lifeguard, enlisted in the
Army Air Corp while at school which rejected him for pilot
training, was part of the Japan occupation force where he swam;
so the US paid for him to attend University
of Iowa, where he: joined the Air Force Officers' training
corps, was accepted to be an Air Force pilot, and got engaged to
Mary Bruce.
Boyd trained at Nellis AFB to become a
combat ready pilot in
the Korean War.
While the US Air Force focused on
Strategic bombing, Boyd loved
dogfights. His exceptional tactical ability was
rewarded with becoming an instructor. Boyd created new
ways to think about dogfighting and beat all-comers
by using them in the F-100.
He was noticed and enabled by Spradling. As he trained, and defeated the top
pilots from around the US and allied base network, his
reputation spread. But he needed to get
nearer to the hot spring in Georgia, and when his move to
Tyndall AFB was blocked he used the AFIT to train in engineering at
Georgia tech. While preparing to move he documented his FWS training
and mentored Ronald Catton.
While there he first realized the
link between energy
and maneuverability.
At Eglin, in partnership with Tom Christie,
he developed tools to model the link. They developed
comparisons of US and Soviet aircraft which showed the US
aircraft performing poorly. Eventually General Sweeney
was briefed on
the theory and issues with the F-105, F-4, and F-111.
Sent to the Pentagon
to help save the F-X budget, Boyd joined forces with Pierre Sprey to
pressure procurement into designing and
building tactically exceptional aircraft: a CAS tank killer and a
lightweight maneuverable
fighter. The navy aligned with
Senators of states with navy bases, prepared to sink the
F-X and force the F-14 on
the Air Force. Boyd saved
the plane from the Navy and the budget from Congress, ensuring
the Air Force executive and its career focused hierarchy had the
freedom to compromise
on a budget expanding over-stuffed F-X (F-15). Boyd requested to
retire, in disgust.
Amid mounting hostility from the organizational hierarchy Boyd
and Sprey secretly
developed specifications for building prototype lightweight
fighters with General Dynamics: YF-16;
and Northrop: YF-17; and enabled by Everest Riccioni.
David Packard
announced a budget of $200 million for the services to spend on
prototypes. Pierre Sprey's friend Lyle Cameron picked a
short takeoff and landing transport aircraft and Boyd's lightweight fighter to
prototype.
Boyd was transferred to Thailand
as Vice Commander of Task
Force Alpha, inspector general and equal opportunity
training officer; roles in which he excelled. And he
started working on his analysis of creativity: Destruction
and Creation. But on completion of the tour Boyd was
apparently abandoned and sent to run
a dead end office at the Pentagon.
The power hierarchy moved to protect the F-15, but: Boyd,
Christie, Schlesinger,
and the Air Force chief of staff; kept the
lightweight fighter budgeted and aligned with Boyd's
requirements in a covert campaign. The Air Force
threw a phalanx of developers at the F-16, distorting Boyd's
concept. He accepted he had lost the fight and retired
from the Air Force.
Shifting to scholarship Boyd reflects on how rigidity must be destroyed to enable
creative new assemblies. He uses the idea to explain
the operational success of the YF16 and F-86 fighters, and then
highlights how the pilot can take advantage of their
infrastructure advantage with rapid decision making he
explains with the O-O-D-A Loop.
Boyd encouraged Chuck Spinney
to expose the systemic cost overruns
of the military procurement process. The military
hierarchy moved to undermine the
Spinney Report and understand the
nature of the reformers. Boyd acted as a progressive
mentor to Michael
Wyly, who taught the
Marine Corps about maneuver
warfare, and Jim Burton.
Finally, after the military hierarchy appears to have
beaten him, Boyd's ideas are tested during
the First Gulf War.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Boyd was Darwinesque, placing the art of
air-to-air combat within a CAS framework.
Air warrior |
Alfred Nemeczek reveals the chaotic, stressful life of Vincent
van Gogh in Arles.
Nemeczek shows that Vincent was driven
to create, and successfully
invented new methods of representing feeling in paintings, and
especially portraits. Vincent
worked hard to allow artists like him-self
to innovate. But
Vincent failed in this goal, collapsing into psychosis.
Nemeczek also provides a brief history of
Vincent's life.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Vincent creates |
Reginald Dwight, better known as Elton John, writes a hilarious
memoir, full of anecdotal and sometimes morbid humor and gossip, which describes his
immediate family, upbringing, development as a singer
songwriter, stardom and its support for his problems, collapse
and eventual recovery.
Elton stresses the serendipitous nature
of his emergence as a musician. He describes
the contributions of his parents, Stanley & Sheila, mother's
sister, and her mother Ivy;
who formed his early
childhood proximate environment which prepared
him for a job in entertainment: he
developed his performance in the club circuits, setup a
commercial partnership with Bernie Taupin to write songs;
entering a network based around Dick James Music.
And he almost got married.
DJM focused Elton and Bernie's initial song writing
while they studied the songs they admired and Elton did session
work, tightening his performance skills and paying for the
food. A first album supported touring and the formation of
a band. A second one sent them to the US where Elton became an
overnight sensation. And during this period of time
Elton's testosterone
level ramped. Life changed
dramatically.
Stardom provided many rewards but there
were still life's problems to deal with. Elton was
befriended by his idol, John Lennon; he achieved new heights of
success but, sensitive to any hint of failure and fraud, suicidally disassociated.
His career crested, he struggled with loneliness and drugs, and
foresaw a fearful vision of his future, as fame caged him idly
in hotels between concerts. His hair abandoned him.
But he was saved by the challenge of
transforming the collapsed Watford football club. He
retired from touring which allowed him the time to reconstruct his life.
Empowered by success, supported by the removal of constraints,
Elton dominates - limiting feedback, doing whatever he
hopes will bring him happiness:
trying new options, expanding the range and increasing the
quantity of mind altering substances; eventually hitting John Reid and marrying
Renata.
He allows his drug use to enter the recording studio. Problems stress him. He is
frightened by a cancer
scare, AIDS, inspired by
Ryan White, angered by the
Sun, and saddened at
breaking Renata's heart. But he was there for Ryan White's
final days. And his lover Hugh Williams confronted Elton
about his string of addictions.
Elton finally agreed he had a problem.
He went to rehab, stopped hating himself,
gave up his current addictions, accepted the influence of a
higher force, and began admiring the everyday world and other
people.
It seemed the higher force was
supporting Elton's progress: he wrote the music for the
Lion King, met David Furnish who accepted Elton warts and all;
they both enjoyed a friendship with Gianni Versace; until Gianni
was murdered. Princess Diana
died soon after, and Elton performed at the funeral.
He toured with Billy Joel and aimed to do the same with Tina
Turner. While his new records sold well he found
himself in debt and terminated the management relationship
with John Reid
Enterprises.
Elton and Bernie improved their
situations: Elton started writing film scores, he helped
turn the film Billy Elliot into a musical, Bernie lobbied Elton
to improve the way they were making records, Elton and David
entered into a civil partnership, and Elton made a record with
his seminal influence: Leon
Russell.
Elton and David became parents of
two boys: Zachary and Elijah; using their sperm a surrogate
mother and network in California. They quietly get married
when the UK allows.
Elton's mum remains
difficult and cruel to him, but he is sad when she dies, and many
at the funeral recall her fun side with him. Being parents
increases the long-term
stresses on their lives, forcing them to adjust, so they can be there for their boys.
But Elton needs to go out with a bang!
And everyone helps.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details
of the creative process from the perspective of complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
My song |
Bob Iger writes about his leadership strategies based on his
life experiences, which describes his immediate family,
upbringing, development
as a weatherman,
production studio
supervisor, divisional: ABC Television,
Disney Media - where he had the
challenge of integrating a centralized and a distributed
corporate culture; and enterprise leader at ABC, Capital Cities and Disney: COO, and CEO.
He describes the struggle
Disney CEO Eisner had with giving Iger the COO role, explaining
how he learned to approach this challenge. When the board
concluded Disney was floundering and forced out Eisner, Iger had to convince them he
was the solution to their dilemma.
Iger was chosen as the
next CEO by the board but also had to convince Roy Disney,
and signal the world that he could revitalize the company and partner with
Steve Jobs.
Jobs was a catalyst in Iger's
acquisition of Marvel, and
Lucas Film, and he became a friend and advisor who died
too young.
Iger had to
respond to the disruption of Disney's mainline
businesses. He transformed Disney's loose aggregate of
businesses into a platform based on BAMTech's streaming media
platform which supported the delivery of emotionally charged
content direct to the consumer.
Rupert Murdoch agreed with Iger's response to the disruptive
environment and decided
to sell Fox to Disney, but there
were complications.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS places Iger's creations
within the phalanx of global forces buffeting Disney using the perspective
of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Bob's global technology marvel |
Richard Feynman
outlines a series of amusing vignettes, as he reviews his life story.
Richard's personality
encouraged him to patiently
seek out fun: performing Shewhart cycles
with electricity, in his childhood laboratory, and aligning theory, and
practice through building and fixing radios.
Leonardo's life inspired him to try
innovation, which he
concluded was hard. He played
with the emotion
in communications, a skill
which he used later at
Caltech. And he made a game of avoiding following
orders at MIT. Working during
the holidays revealed the benefit of joining theory and
practice.
Feynman enrolled as a graduate
student at Princeton, where the successful
approach to science was just like his.
His approach was based on
patience and fun: he used his home lab and other tools for
qualitative exploration. Overtime he added experimental
techniques. He would test
the assertions in articles with amusing investigations;
with his mind aligned by
feelings of joy. Everyone at Princeton heard he would want to be hypnotized.
He was driven to compare the challenges of complex subjects being
taught at Princeton to his current pick. In his summer
recess he explored biology.
Gathering problems in challenging areas of science, and then picking one to solve, supported his
creativity. And his practical
orientation and situation when growing up in Far Rockaway,
supported his desire for choices
and adolescent dislike for purely intellectual and cultural
pursuits. Being mostly self-taught, he
developed different approaches to problems than the
standard strategies provided by mass education.
Richard saw his skill set as very different to that exhibited by his father. But are they very
different?
While Richard was at Princeton, America became concerned about
the implications of the European war. After a friend
enlisted he decided to dedicate his
summer holiday to helping the war effort. Feynman got involved in the
Manhattan Project, and went to Los Alamos where he
experienced constraints, applied by: the military, the
physics of the project, him on Niels
Bohr; but was
freed from them by Von
Neumann. The records & reports of the project
were kept in filing cabinets. Richard explored the weaknesses of
the locks and safes deployed to secure these
secrets. Just after the war he was called up by the draft
board for a medical but was rejected for being mentally
unfit.
After the war, Richard was asked to become a professor at Cornell.
He initially struggled in this role: Too young to match
expectations, stressed by the demands of his new job and his
recent experiences; until he adopted an approach that focused on
fun. He enjoyed knowing
about numbers: using, learning about them and the tools to
use them, and competing with others; to calculate, interpolate
and approximate a value the fastest.
Traveling to Buffalo in a light plane once a week to give a
physics lecture before flying back the next morning wasn't much
fun for Richard. So he used
the stipend to visit a bar after each lecture to meet
beautiful women. Richard liked bars and nightclubs, spending a summer in Albuquerque
frequenting one, and later
ones in Las Vegas, as he explored how to get the girls he
drank with to sleep with him.
Richard reflects on various times when he made government
officials obey their parts of contracts: patent fees, limits on red tape;
Richard became frustrated with his life at Cornell, seeing more
things that interested him on the sunny west coast at Caltech. Both
institutions, and Chicago, offered him incentives to help his decision making,
but Richard began to find reevaluating the alternatives a waste
of time and he saw risks in
a really high salary, deciding he would move to Caltech
and stay there.
Richard is invited to attend a scientific symposium in
Japan. Each of the US attendees is asked to learn a little
Japanese. Richard takes lessons, persists, can converse
effectively, but stops when he
finds the cultural parts of the language conflict with his
individualism.
Richard was unhappy with his achievements in physics. He
felt: slower than his peers, not keeping up or understanding the
latest details, fearful that
he could not cope; as the community
worked to understand the laws of beta decay. But
Martin Block pushed him to question the troubling parity
premise. Encouraged by Oppenheimer the community focused
on parity and failures were discovered in a cascade of
reports. Richard attended a meeting where Lee & Yang
discussed a failure and a theory to explain it. Richard
felt terrified and could not understand what they said.
His sister pushed him to change his attitude: act like a student
having fun, read every
line and equation of their paper; he would understand it.
And he did, as well as developing additional insights about what
was happening and what still seemed conflicted. He
reported his ideas back to the community. After Richard
returned from Brazil he reviewed the confusion of facts with
Caltech's experimental physicists who made him aware of
Gell-mann abandoning another former premise of Beta decay.
Feynman realized his ideas were consistent: fully and simply
describing the details of beta decay. He had identified
the workings of a fundamental law. Years later he was awarded the Nobel
prize for physics. He was conflicted about the prize
and attending the ceremony, but eventually enjoyed the trip,
where he discussed cultural achievement with the Japanese
ambassador.
Richard was interested in the operation of the brain, modeling
it on a digital computer. He explored hallucinations and the reality of
experiences.
Richard lobbies for integrity
in science.
In aspects of his life that weren't focused directly on science,
Richard was quirky. He would tease those who asked for his
help: pushing bargains to their logical conclusion; insisting on everyone keeping to
their part of the agreement. And he paid no attention to the
logistical details of planning. He loved percussion,
playing: drums, bongos, baskets, tables, Frigideira; and became quite a success. He
eventually discovered art could be
fun, and tried to express his joy at the underlying
mathematical beauty of the physical world. He had a great
art teacher. But he discovered although he could
eventually draw well he did not understand art.
Many of the artists he met were fakers, and even the powerful,
who were interested in integrating art and science, did not
understand either subject. He found the situation was
similar in other complex adaptive systems: philosophy, religion and
economics; which he dabbled in for a while but found the
strategies of other people practicing the study of such subjects
made him angry and
disturbed, so he avoided participating in them. It seemed
ironic that he was eventually asked to help in bringing
culture to the physicists!
He discusses issues in teaching creative physics in Brazil. He gets
involved in the California public school text
book selection process which he concluded was totally
broken, but also reveals how his father
provided him with a vision of how our world works,
inspiring his interest in experimentation and physical
theory.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS reviews how his personality, family and cultural history supported
his creative development from the perspective of complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Richard draws |
Desmond & Moore paint a picture of Charles Darwin's life,
expanded from his own highlights:
- His naughty
childhood,
- Wasted
schooldays,
- Apprenticeship with Grant,
- His extramural
activities at Cambridge, walks with Henslow,
life with FitzRoy on the
Beagle,
- His growing
love for science,
- London: geology, journal and Lyell.
- Moving from
Gower Street to Down and writing Origin and other
books.
- He reviewed his position on
religion: the long
dispute with Emma, his
slow collapse of belief
- damnation for unbelievers like his father and brother, inward conviction
being evolved and unreliable, regretting he had ignored his father's
advice; while describing Emma's side of the
argument. He felt happy with his decision to dedicate
his life to science. He closed by asserting after Self &
Cross-fertilization his strength will be
exhausted.
Following our summary of their main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Darwin placed
evolution within a CAS framework, and built a network of supporters whose
complementary skills helped drive the innovation.
Darwin emerges |
Richard Dawkin's explores how nature has created implementations
of designs, without any need for planning or design, through the
accumulation of small advantageous changes.
Accumulating small changes |
Russ Abbott explores the impact on science of epiphenomena and
the emergence of agents.
Autonomous emergence |
Constraint based phenomena |
|
|
Dynamic constraint based phenomena
Summary
Terrence Deacon explores how constraints on dynamic flows can
induce emergent phenomena
which can do real work. He shows how these phenomena are
sustained. The mechanism enables
the development of Darwinian competition.
Incomplete Nature
Terrence Deacon's book
'Incomplete Nature' is structured as four parts:
- The problem of end-directedness.
- Problems with previous
approaches to explaining end-directedness.
- Deacon's alternative
approach.
- Applying Deacon's approach to enable an
expanded science.
End-directedness
Deacon introduces a number of benefits and problems of
end-directedness. The functional design of living things
appears well matched to the task of survival, competition and
reproduction. But explaining how the end-directed
functional designs were achieved has been difficult. The
end-directed nature seems to imply some purpose to existence and
the presence of a designer. The conscious mind seems to
peer from within us. The nature of these functions,
values, information, purposes and references appeared
ill-defined and incomplete.
Problems
of previous approaches
Deacon sees merit in the study of failed approaches which he
asserts can highlight what to avoid in a replacement strategy.
Deacon reviews a number of historic and currently used
approaches to explaining or coping with the existence of
end-directedness. His classes of approaches are: homunculi, golems,
teleonomy and emergence;
Homunculi
Deacon demonstrates that history is littered with explanations
of end-directedness which depend on a designer. But the
possibility of creation by a higher being results in a recursive
trap. Who created the creator? Teleology identifies
an origin, but could not provide a mechanism for the operation
of the origin. When science becomes able to explain the
mechanism it has eliminated the need for the teleological
logic.
Golems
Deacon argues that a second approach is to ignore the designer
and his end-directed effects. Scientists unhappy with the
nature of recursive self-reference, dualism and creationism have
focused their studies on material aspects of systems. They
adopted methodologies which ignore end-directed phenomena, or
identify them as place-holders to be replaced with physical or
statistical mechanisms.
Unfortunately, this approach limits the scope of
scientific research and can result in confusion. By
ignoring sources of final cause scientists do not apply the
scientific method to end-directedness. As such the domain
remains mysterious. No scientific models or methods are
expanded to account for the effects.
When science has misdiagnosed these phenomena the failures
remain, and can introduce confusion. Deacon outlines how DNA (DNA), a polymer composed of a chain of deoxy ribose sugars with purine or pyrimidine side chains. DNA naturally forms into helical pairs with the side chains stacked in the center of the helix. It is a natural form of schematic string. The purines and pyrimidines couple so that AT and GC pairs make up the stackable items. A code of triplets of base pairs (enabling 64 separate items to be named) has evolved which now redundantly represents each of the 20 amino-acids that are deployed into proteins, along with triplets representing the termination sequence. Chemical modifications and histone binding (chromatin) allow cells to represent state directly on the DNA schema. To cope with inconsistencies in the cell wide state second messenger and evolved amplification strategies are used. has been viewed as a
recipe, and a blue-print. But neither model advances a
mechanism for how DNA emerged as a source of information
controlling evolution, or explains the nature of that
information. End-directed properties of the This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
organism are associated with the DNA
without explanation of the process involved. Natural
Selection results in the emergence of ententional
phenomena. But scientific explanations have been
limited. Information has been viewed as shorthand for true
mechanistic operations.
Chomsky argued language was based on a deep grammar. But
what interprets this grammar?
Artificial intelligence aims to use large numbers of stupid
machines to create intelligence mechanistically. But
algorithms are programmed by human programmers, to operate
according to their designs. IBM's
chess playing computer Deep Blue extends this approach including
applying Bayesian is an iterative form of statistics invented by Thomas Bayes. It uses a 'prior' statistic to represent the prior situation and then performs a calculation that integrates the probability of new events occurring into a 'posterior' probability. This posterior becomes the prior for the next iteration with the application of the Bayesian identity xpost = xprior*y/(xprior*y + z(1-xprior)). The magic in Bayesian statistics is in accurately generating the prior xprior and the current event probabilities y and z. R. A. Fischer was so skeptical of the legitimacy of the prior that he advocated an alternative statistical framework and experimental process.
statistics to Internet data. Again any intelligence seems
to be provided by the Deep Blue designers and creators of the
Internet data.
Teleonomy
Deacon describes Teleonomy, which by only specifying the way a
mechanistic process can be organized so that it converges toward
a specific state, rather than behavior for the sake of an
end. This conception avoided sneaking mentalistic
assumptions about teleology back into biological design.
If evolution can also be understood as nothing more than
retained and reproduced accidental organization then
end-directedness can be reasonably viewed as mechanistic.
But Deacon argues that Teleonomy's mechanism agnosticism just
hides the existence of the end-directedness. The
mechanistic programs are still designed by humans. He is
concerned that natural selection includes replication which is a
self-referential loop.
Consequently Deacon asks 'What kind of system properties are
required to transform a mere physical pattern embedded within
that system into information that is both able to play a
constitutive role in determining the organization of this system
and constraining it to be capable of self-generation,
maintenance and reproduction in its local This page discusses the potential of the vast state space which
supports the emergence of complex
adaptive systems (CAS). Kauffman describes the mechanism
by which the system expands across the space.
environment?'
Additionally Deacon argues reproduction and generation of This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
organism forms are necessary
requirements for Desmond & Moore paint a picture of Charles Darwin's life,
expanded from his own highlights:
- His naughty
childhood,
- Wasted
schooldays,
- Apprenticeship with Grant,
- His extramural
activities at Cambridge, walks with Henslow,
life with FitzRoy on the
Beagle,
- His growing
love for science,
- London: geology, journal and Lyell.
- Moving from
Gower Street to Down and writing Origin and other
books.
- He reviewed his position on
religion: the long
dispute with Emma, his
slow collapse of belief
- damnation for unbelievers like his father and brother, inward conviction
being evolved and unreliable, regretting he had ignored his father's
advice; while describing Emma's side of the
argument. He felt happy with his decision to dedicate
his life to science. He closed by asserting after Self &
Cross-fertilization his strength will be
exhausted.
Following our summary of their main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Darwin placed
evolution within a CAS framework, and built a network of supporters whose
complementary skills helped drive the innovation.
Darwin's
evolutionary logic, even though how this is accomplished is
largely irrelevant to the existence of natural selection's
consequences. This disconnect makes the process
non-teleological. But natural selection
depends on lower layer ententional properties. These
are not a product of natural selection even if preserved by
it.
What sort of physical process is necessary for evolution to take
place and locally overcome the second law
of thermodynamics requires that the Boltzmann entropy of a closed system increases. ? Besides the genetic string there
must be a system to utilize and copy the pattern and itself, and
a way to counter the thermodynamic degradation. That
necessitates specific molecular substrates, potential difference
in energy to synthesize and drive reactions, work required to
generate the structures and processes that get reproduced with
variation. Deacon notes that most computer based systems
take the physics for granted, including the computer's physical
architecture implicitly, and hence fail to represent the
essential physical constraints of the real world.
Emergence
By the mid-nineteenth century, a mechanistic and statistical
approach to natural philosophy had begun to coalesce and
displace the previously more teleological and platonic forms of
explanation. Deacon comments ... Nature's designs,
including living and mental processes, were now viewed through
the lens of materialism. A methodology, reductionism, for
analyzing nature's designs was adopted. Decompose the
whole into parts. But what is a part is not always
obvious. Reductionism pulls the focus away from the
contribution of the interaction complexity, M. Mitchell Waldrop describes a vision of complexity via: - Rich interactions that allow a system to undergo spontaneous self-organization and, for CAS, evolution
- Systems that are adaptive
- More predictability than chaotic systems by bringing order and chaos into
- Balance at the edge of chaos
within
systems.
Emergentists focused their attention toward the details of
emergent functional properties. Deacon outlines Roger
Sperry's logic about a wheel having key translational properties
which its disassembled components do not have.
Two perspectives were developed by emergence researchers:
- Ontological - Emergence changes the causal landscape by
introducing discontinuous functional properties.
- epistemological - Discontinuities arise from our intrinsic
inability to predict emergent properties from the lower
level laws. Non-linear features of chaotic systems
illustrate this alternative.
Deacon explains that Jaegwon Kim showed that if all higher-order
causal interactions are between objects is a collection of: happenings, occurrences and processes; including emergent entities, as required by relativity, explains Rovelli. But natural selection has improved our fitness by representing this perception, in our minds, as an unchanging thing, as explained by Pinker. Dehaene explains the object modeling and construction process within the unconscious and conscious brain. Mathematicians view anything that can be defined and used in deductive reasoning and mathematical proofs as an object. These mathematical objects can be values of variables, allowing them to be used in formulas. constituted by
relationships among these ultimate building blocks of matter,
then assigning causal power to various higher-order relations is
redundant. Deacon accepts that this totally undermines the
ontological emergence of functionalism. But he continues
that our understanding of physics has not identified ultimate
particles or simple atoms devoid of lower-level compositional
organization. Instead, he suggests, the particulate
features of matter are statistical regularities of a dynamically
unstable substrate.
Deacon asserts that the dynamics are irreducibly process like
and thus are by definition organized. Following Mark
Bickhard he argues if process organization is the irreducible
source of the causal properties at a particular level, then it,
to quote Bickhard, 'cannot be de-legitimated as a potential
locus of causal power without eliminating causality from the
world.' Static notions of part and whole are for this
reason suspect since the wholes we are interested in are
dynamical and the parts are constantly in flux. The parts
are constantly being synthesized, damaged, and replaced, while
the whole persists. Deacon sees this framework as
compatible with Stuart
Kauffman's emergence work. Deacon argues that once
part/whole distinctions and their supervenience indicates that a high level property does not exist as and of itself but because lower level properties determine the higher level property, which Abbott views as epiphenomena. Deacon argues that instead of supervenience relations Bickhard's dynamic processes allow the emergence of high level phenomena.
relations are replaced by Bickhard's dynamic processes emergence
of discontinuous properties becomes legitimate.
Deacon's
alternative approach - a process based mechanism of emergent
dynamics and self-assembly
Deacon argues for an alternative scientific strategy which
accepts the existence of end-directed phenomena. He models
how they emerge, and illustrates how the approach allows science
improved access to key aspects of our world including: work, information, significance, evolution, self, sentience and consciousness.
Constraints
Deacon's theory relies on the effects of constraints on
flows. Deacon views constraints as the physical
characterization of a habit allow higher organisms: humans, rats, flies; to perform important behaviors automatically, without involvement of consciousness. Habits are adaptive, being promoted by the release of dopamine into the PFC and striatum, generating a feeling of pleasure and conditioning us. As the dopamine detaches from the synaptic receptors in the PFC and striatum the motivation to perform the behavior subsides. If the dopamine remains at the synapse for an extended period, because it is not removed as occurs when cocaine is present, or when too much dopamine is generated, the habit can become an addiction.
(a regularity of behavior) following Charles Peirce.
Peirce argued that emergence is instantiated as some form of
realism with dynamic constraints. This contrasts with
Nominalists, such as Occam who viewed all universals as mental
groupings mistakenly viewed as real based on specific individual
instances. As such Deacon aims to show how real physical
effects emerge. He outlines how constraints can:
- Generate real classes of process based on exclusion.
The constraint removes any components from the process which
do[n't] contain, particular properties. This allows an
emergent general class of dynamic process to exist based on
exclusion of components with particular properties.
The objects in the class have not been assessed by any
positive attribute. Deacon writes 'The concept of
constraint is, in effect, a complementary concept of order,
habit and organization, because it determines a similarity
class by exclusion. Hence abstract properties do not
have to have physical potency, but certain general
properties can produce other general properties as causal
consequences. ' ... 'If certain physical interactions also
tend to drop out selective details, then there can also be a
purely physical analogue to the abstraction process.'
And Deacon argues that constraint can also account for
concrete abstractions since what something doesn't exhibit,
it can't impose on something else via interaction. To
the extent that differences in one system can produce
differences in the other, those variations not expressed in
one will not be transferred to the other during their
interaction. It is precisely by virtue of what is not
enabled, but could otherwise have occurred, that a change
can be forced.
- Support the capacity to perform work.
- Appear as increased statistical likelihood. With
assent of scale micro effects typically average out, while
highly constrained, and consequently stable, interactions
become much more likely to be expressed in any interactions
with other components.
- In massively componential dynamical systems where there is
the possibility of extensive non-linear interactions (for
example in systems persistently maintained far from
equilibrium), constraints can amplify to become
macroscopically expressed. The emergence of new
constraints at the macroscopic level can be a source of new
forms of work.
The effects of constraints are amplified by scale
hierarchies. Vast numbers of low level dynamics occur
extremely rapidly, relative to higher level processes.
Averaging, and coherence effects tend to average out so that
only generalized attractor features have causal influence at the
higher level. Conversely this means that reductionistic
analysis cannot recover these differences.
Deacon argues that constraint is relational to
the other dynamic options. States that are not
realized or that occur only improbably in a given process can
play the critical causal role in the formation of further
constraints at higher levels.
Deacon analyses both near equilibrium
homeodynamic processes, and far from equilibrium dynamical
conditions (morphodynamics and teleodynamics).
Only far from equilibrium conditions enable spontaneous change
of macroscopic state. When things change in
non-spontaneous ways, they must be caused to do so
extrinsically, by a force and through doing work. Using
fuel uses up its capacity to do work, but conserves the energy
transforming it from one form to another more widely distributed
form, and reducing the difference in the distribution of some
quantity of some constrained physical property of the
fuel.
Homeodynamics
Our universe mostly consists of near equilibrium
conditions. Deacon's homeodynamics describes these
conditions as generally as possible. He distinguishes two
contrasting dynamics (orthograde
and contragrade) within any
homeodynamic process.
Orthograde dynamics
The second
law of thermodynamics requires that the Boltzmann entropy of a closed system increases. is represented by Deacon's
orthograde dynamics which reduce the spontaneous asymmetry of a
constrained ('ordered') state to a less constrained
('disordered') state of dynamic change by filling the maximum
number of microstates.
Contragrade dynamics
The reverse direction of change (Deacon's contragrade process),
which does not tend to occur spontaneously is a response to the
imposition of highly constrained external work. While the
action of each component in the orthograde dynamic is fully
reversible, the gross redistribution of microstates populated
shifts irreversibly from the highly constrained towards the
average. The general applicability of the second law to
our universe is due to the universe's deeply asymmetric
predisposition concerning any process involving many
components. Contragrade change is the natural consequence
of one orthograde process influencing (constraining) another
orthograde process through some medium, each process in some way
undoing the other's effects.
Constraint
and ortho/contragrade dynamics
Deacon redefines constraint in orthograde/contragrade terms.
Constraints are defined with respect to orthograde maxima (when
orthograde dynamic change is no longer asymmetric). A
constrained orthograde process is one in which certain
dimensions of change are not available. This may be due to
a barrier (wall) or a contragrade process countering the
orthograde change. A contragrade process at one level can
generate conditions for a higher-level
orthograde process of constraint generation.
Deacon regards entropy as an inverse measure of
constraint. He argues that the dissociation of macro- from
micro-processes that characterizes thermodynamic systems means
that we cannot attribute the asymmetry of thermodynamic change
to the properties of individual molecular collisions
alone. Molecular collisions are necessary for any change
of state of a typical thermodynamic system, but they are not
sufficient to determine its asymmetric direction of
change. This is ultimately due to the highly asymmetric
'geometry' of the possible distributions of molecular properties
and trajectories of their movements.
For Deacon homeodynamics, in comparison to thermodynamics, more
generally describes the most basic orthograde dynamic. It
is a dynamic that spontaneously reduces constraints to their
minimum and thus more evenly distributes (reduces asymmetry)
whatever property is being changed. He sees thermodynamic
entropy increase as a more specific case of this focusing only
on orthograde statistical mechanics. In contrast Deacon
highlights a key principle of general homeodynamics: orthograde
and contragrade dynamics reverse in dominance in adjacent layers
of process. The special contragrade relationships that can
be generated by the juxtaposition of different orthograde
processes can produce complex forms of constraint. For
Deacon homeodynamics is thus the engine of emergence.
In contrast to spontaneous homeodynamics Deacon's morphodynamics
operates in far from equilibrium systems which do not occur
spontaneously.
Morphodynamics
Deacon views understanding the [morpho]dynamics of inorganic
order-promoting processes as offering hints that can be carried
forward into explorations of causality supporting life and
mind.
So long as extrinsic constraints are continually imposed,
creating a contragrade dynamic
to the spontaneous orthograde
dissipation of intrinsic constraints,
new forms of intrinsic constraint can emerge and even
amplify.
Morphodynamics characterizes the dynamical organization of a
diverse class of phenomena which share in common the tendency to
become spontaneously more organized and orderly over Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time due to constant perturbation, but
without the extrinsic imposition of influences that specifically
impose the regularity (teleodynamics).
W. Ross Ashby defined a self-organizing system as one that
spontaneously reduces its entropy, but not necessarily its
thermodynamic entropy, by reducing the number of its potential
states. Deacon argues functional complexity, M. Mitchell Waldrop describes a vision of complexity via: - Rich interactions that allow a system to undergo spontaneous self-organization and, for CAS, evolution
- Systems that are adaptive
- More predictability than chaotic systems by bringing order and chaos into
- Balance at the edge of chaos
and synergy
of This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
organisms ultimately depends on
Ashby's logic of self-simplification.
Deacon explores a Benard cell (Rayleigh-Benard convection) as a
morphodynamic exemplar. He explains that there are
intrinsic biases available (buoyancy differences, viscosity
effects and geometric distribution constraints in this
case). The persistent imposition of constraint (constant
heating) will tend to redistribute this additional constraint
into the added dimensions of potential difference of the
intrinsic biases. The additional dimensions are boundary
conditions. Because the additional dimensions are system
wide and ubiquitous they are on a higher level of scale than the
constraints of molecular interaction. The transfer of
constraints from molecular-level differences to global-level
differences also increase the propagation of constraint from
lower- to higher-order dynamics.
Deacon concludes these are common dynamic features that
characterize morphodynamic phenomena, and make them an emergent
level removed from subvenient homeodynamic
processes whether at the thermodynamic or sub-atomic
level. In each case he explains we find a tangled
hierarchy of causality, where micro-configurational
particularities can be amplified to determine
macro-configurational regularities. Where these in turn
further constrain and/or amplify subsequent cycles of this
process, producing a compounding. The special reflexive
regularities and the recurrent causal architecture of the cycles
of interaction have come to overshadow the system's lower-order
orthograde properties. These systems must be open to the
flow of energy and/or components, which is what enables their
growth and/or development, but they additionally include a
higher order form of closure as well. Such flows propagate
constraints inherited from past states of the system, which
recurrently compound to further constrain the future behavior of
its components interactions. Deacon continues 'The new
higher-order orthograde dynamic that is created by this
compounding of constraints is what defines and bounds the higher
order of constraints that we identify as the system. This
centrality of form-begetting-form is what justifies calling
these processes morphodynamic. The generation of new
orthograde dynamical regimes is what justifies describing
morphodynamic processes as emergent from thermodynamic
processes.'
Teleodynamics
Deacon argues there is an additional This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergent
transition which is dynamically supervenient indicates that a high level property does not exist as and of itself but because lower level properties determine the higher level property, which Abbott views as epiphenomena. Deacon argues that instead of supervenience relations Bickhard's dynamic processes allow the emergence of high level phenomena. on morphodynamics and
thermodynamics. Morphodynamic processes generate order,
but not representation or functional organization and they lack
any normative (or evaluative) character because there is nothing
like a self to
benefit or suffer. Deacon's teleodynamics has
characteristic end-directedness and consequence-organized
features.
Living processes create protected local domains in which orthograde increase in entropy is effectively reversed by
contragrade processes that generate order and new structural
components at the expense of a net entropy increase in their
surroundings. Living processes persistently decrease
entropy within themselves and their progeny over the course of This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution, by developing and evolving
complex supportive correlations between structures and processes
for maintaining bodies and ecosystems.
Deacon regards evolutionary diversity as key. He argues
the most dramatic expression of the This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergent
nature of life's distinctive dynamic is the generation of
increasingly diverse and complex forms of This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
organisms that have evolved during the
past 3.5 billion years of Earth history and have adapted to an
ever-increasing range of This page discusses the potential of the vast state space which
supports the emergence of complex
adaptive systems (CAS). Kauffman describes the mechanism
by which the system expands across the space.
environmental
conditions. This process is spontaneous based on its
dynamic This page introduces a series of asymmetries which encourage
different strategic approaches.
The differences found in business, sexual selection, gamete
structure, as well as in chess encourage escalations in the
interactions.
And yet the systems including these asymmetries can be quite
stable.
asymmetry, and hence is orthograde. The global
asymmetric dynamic of evolution is only an indirect higher-order
product of the work done by This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
organisms
resisting degradation long enough to reproduce. It is the
result of formal asymmetries in the This web page reviews opportunities to find and capture new
niches, based on studying fitness landscapes using complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
CAS SuperOrganisms are
able to capture rich niches. A variety of CAS are
included: chess, prokaryotes,
nation states, businesses, economies; along
with change mechanisms: evolution
and artificial
intelligence; agency
effects and environmental impacts.
Genetic algorithms supported by fitness functions are compared to
genetic operators.
Early evolution
of life and its inbuilt constraints are discussed.
Strategic clustering, goals, flexibility and representation of
state are considered.
space
of options (niches) for adaptation in evolutionary biology is a trait that increased the number of surviving offspring in an organism's ancestral lineage. Holland argues: complex adaptive systems (CAS) adapt due to the influence of schematic strings on agents. Evolution indicates fitness when an organism survives and reproduces. For his genetic algorithm, Holland separated the adaptive process into credit assignment and rule discovery. He assigned a strength to each of the rules (alternate hypothesis) used by his artificial agents, by credit assignment - each accepted message being paid for by the recipient, increasing the sender agent's rule's strength (implicit modeling) and reducing the recipient's. When an agent achieved an explicit goal they obtained a final reward. Rule discovery used the genetic algorithm to select strong rule schemas from a pair of agents to be included in the next generation, with crossing over and mutation applied, and the resulting schematic strategies used to replace weaker schemas. The crossing over genetic operator is unlikely to break up a short schematic sequence that provides a building block retained because of its 'fitness'; In Deacon's conception of evolution, an adaptation is the realization of a set of constraints on candidate mechanisms, and so long as these constraints are maintained, other features are arbitrary. that
spontaneously arise over Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time for
living systems. This higher-order break in orthograde
symmetry is a defining characteristic of an emergent dynamical
transition.
Deacon explains that living systems incorporate morphodynamic
processes at nearly every level of their organization, from
complex cycles of catalytic, an infrastructure amplifier.
molecular reactions to the embryonic cellular interactions which
determine the elaborate theme-and-variation organization of
plant and animal body architecture. But he says organisms
as whole dynamical systems, evolving lineages or embedded within
ecosystems exhibit properties that differ radically from those
characterizing morphodynamic processes:
- Organisms depend on and utilize energetic and material
gradients to perform work to sustain constraints on their
persistent, far from equilibrium dynamics.
- Organisms actively reorganize their internal dynamics and
relationships with the environment to counter or compensate
for any depletion of necessary gradients.
- Many organisms have evolved means of gradient assessment
and spatial mobility that enable them to anticipate and
avoid conditions of depleted gradients.
- Organisms and ecosystems evolve toward forms of
organization that increase the indirectness of the
'dissipation-path-length' of energy and material throughput
in order to extract more work from the available
gradients.
Deacon concludes the ways that these processes all serve to
maintain the capacity for self-repair and self-replication
exemplify a clear inversion of the typical features of
morphodynamic systems. So an additional inflection
separates living processes from morphodynamic processes.
This higher order dynamical form of organization promotes its
own persistence and maintenance by modifying these dynamics to
more effectively utilize supportive extrinsic conditions.
Deacon identifies an open orthograde recursive
self-reconstitution and reproduction of the systems of
constraint.
Deacon argues organisms and the evolutionary process are not
separable. Explaining life requires explaining its
evolutionary predisposition, because it must have emerged
coextensive with whatever form of molecular teleodynamic process
characterized the dawn of life. Deacon focuses on
accounting for the phase change in dynamical organization that
necessarily occurred with the origins of life, irrespective of
any specific molecular details. Living and mental
processes orthograde tendencies are triply complicated compared
to the orthograde asymmetry of thermodynamic
processes. This is what provides their final causal
character. To resist the spontaneous degrading of
thermodynamics requires work. The maintenance of
non-equilibrium conditions is essential, both for stabilization
and for the generation of replacement components. The work
required is not merely energetic. The incessant need to
replace and reconstruct organism components depends upon
synthetic form-generating processes, not merely resistance to
breakdown.
For Deacon reproduction is the construction of a dynamical
physical system which is a replica of the system that
constructed it, in both its structural and functional respects,
though not necessarily a faithful replica in every detail.
Self-reproduction is thus an end-directed dynamic in which the
end is only a potential general form represented within the
dynamical system that produced it, but which is a physical
system with the same general properties of its progenitor.
Finally Deacon reviews Schrodinger's
dual characterization of life as a marriage between
transmission of information and non-equilibrium thermodynamics,
the informational functions of life are emergent from and
dependent on more basic non-equilibrium dynamical
processes. Generalizing the notions of metabolism supports the conversion of complex bonded structures present in food stuffs into simpler molecular structures and high energy molecules which can later be used to supply the energy needed to build complex bonded structures. Nucleotide bases such as Adenosine (A) are used by biological cells as high energy 'intermediate' molecules. Metabolism emerged in prokaryotic cells and in eukaryotic cells mitochondria provide this function. and
containment, respectively, these processes can be described in
terms of their roles in countering two thermodynamic challenges:
- There must be a mechanism that counters the incessant
tendency for component elements of the system to
degrade--either by repairing damaged components or by
synthesizing new ones.
- There must be a mechanism that resists the degradation of
constraints on potential interactional relationships among
components, such that the critical synthetic processes are
reliably achieved.
Deacon argues that this approach (autogenesis)
is compatible with explaining the origin of teleodynamics since
both approaches assume that the informational functions of life
emerge from simpler dynamical foundations.
Autogenesis
Deacon comments the Richard Dawkin's explores how nature has created implementations
of designs, without any need for planning or design, through the
accumulation of small advantageous changes.
logic of evolution
must have emerged in the transition to ententional phenomena (teleodynamic processes).
Ententional properties like function and information will only
be explained when we can demonstrate how they emerge from
non-ententional precursors (thermodynamic/morphodynamic) through autocatalysis and self-assembly.
Deacon proceeds to do this.
Autocatalysis
A cooperative set of catalysts, an infrastructure amplifier.
for a series of reactions results in autocatalysis. Deacon
comments that there are many analogs of autocatalysis in living
cells. It can arise spontaneously as a transiently locally
deviant, non-equilibrium process. But it requires a
remarkably coincidental coalescence of reciprocally interlocking
molecules, multiple atoms bonded together. The physical and chemical phenomena associated with the molecule such as charge, size, shape, and potential energy reflect the constituent atoms, the types of bonds between them and the topology of the bonding. Charged molecules dissolve in aqueous solutions (water). Uncharged molecules dissolve in lipid bilayers. , which is rare
and seems on first thought improbable. But Stuart Kauffman
disagrees - he thinks in a polymeric soup many of the precursors
will be somewhat catalytic. Increasing the network
connectivity will increase the catalysis of this set. Then
catalysis increases the key nodes and their products increasing
the homogeneity of the reaction set. Still eventually the
success of the process will make the soup more homogeneous first
amplifying and subsequently undermining the basis of the
catalysis.
Containment and
self-assembly
Self-containment is a ubiquitous feature of life because life
depends on the structural contiguity of its molecular systems
remaining intact and unchanging. The cell membrane, formed from a lipid (fat) bilayer which creates a barrier between aqueous (water soluble) media. In AWF a key property of membranes - their providing a catalytic environment and supporting the suspension of enzymatically active proteins within the membrane; is simulated with a Workspace list where 'active' structures can be inserted and codelets can detect and act on the structure's active promise configured as an association in the Slipnet. is a boundary
distinguishing a continuously maintained self-similar milieu
inside from a varying and unconstrained outside. The
finiteness of contained materials also makes the state space of
their interrelationships manageable. But a closed
thermodynamic system quickly and inevitably runs down to a
maximum entropy state. Deacon consequently is interested
in partial or periodic containment.
Containment of This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
organisms and viruses is a relatively small capsule containing genetic material: RNA, DNA; which utilizes the cellular infrastructure of its target host to replicate its genetic material and operational proteins. David Quammen explains the four key challenges of viruses: Getting from one host to another, penetrating a cell within the host, commandeering the cell's infrastructure, escaping from the cell and organism; Single-stranded RNA viruses: Coronavirus, chickungunya, dengue, Ebola, Hantas, Hendra, Influenzas, Junin, Lassa, Machupo, Marburg, Measles, Mumps, Nipah, Rabies, Retrovirus (HIV), Rhinovirus, yellow fever; are subject to more mutation events than DNA viruses, but limits the size of the genetic string. Double stranded DNA viruses: baculoviruses, hepadnaviruses, Herpesviruses, iridoviruses, papillomavirses, poxviruses; can leverage relatively far larger genetic payloads. The relationship with the reservoir host is long-term, a parasitic or symbiotic relationship, developing over millions of years. But opportunistically, it may spillover into a secondary host, with the virus entering the host cell, leveraging the host infrastructure to replicate its self massively and then exiting the host cell by rupturing it and killing the organism. is generally achieved
by a ubiquitous molecular process of self-assembly. The
growth of multi-unit macromolecular structures is an expression
of the intrinsic geometry of component molecules, the collective
symmetries these offer in aggregate, and the lower energy state
of the resulting form. It is in this sense an expression
of a thermodynamic orthograde
tendency to reduce total entropy. The influence of their
structural and charge characteristics may contribute to the
amplification of constraints, thereby generating regularities in
the ways they form aggregates; a morphodynamic
consequence.
Synergy
Autocatalysis and self-assembly are
self-limiting. But the limitations are a source of
synergy. Together the two properties are reciprocally
supportive.
Self-assembly provides the conditions that are most critical for
sustaining autocatalysis: the proximity of reciprocally
interdependent catalysts, an infrastructure amplifier. .
Reciprocally autocatalysis complements self-assembly. The
major consequence of autocatalysis is the continual production
of identical molecules in the same region, whereas self-assembly
is most robust if the concentration of component molecules is
maintained despite depletion due to this process.
Autogens
Deacon concludes the complementarity of the morphodynamic processes of self-assembly and autocatalysis produces a special
kind of emergent stability, unavailable to either process
alone. The reciprocal complementarity of these two
self-organizing processes creates the potential for self-repair,
self-reconstitution, and even self-replication in a minimal
form.
An autogen is an empirical type determined only by the
continuity of those dynamic constraints which are themselves
expressions of dynamical limitations - potential modes of change
not expressed.
Autogenic organization only exists with respect to a relevant
supportive This page discusses the potential of the vast state space which
supports the emergence of complex
adaptive systems (CAS). Kauffman describes the mechanism
by which the system expands across the space.
environment. So
autogenic individuation is also only defined with respect to a
particular type of environment.
The character of autogenic systems is a functional
property.
Autogenic evolution
Requirements for autogenic natural
selection:
- Sufficient substrates to enable catalysis, an infrastructure amplifier.
, but not so
much as to disperse the catalytic set.
- Competition among the autogenic lineages
- Variation among lineages
The self-reconstitutive dynamical synergy
is the essential ingredient that precedes and underlies
life. This suggests that natural selection is ultimately
an operation that differentially preserves certain alternative
forms of morphodynamic processes compared to others, with
respect to their synergy with one another, and with respect to
the boundary conditions that enable them. Selection is not
then fully defined only with respect to replication of genetic
information. A self-maintaining formative power is
critical. This requires processes that generate, preserve
and propagate constraints. Morphodynamic processes are the
only spontaneous processes that generate and propagate
constraints, and autogens demonstrate that reciprocity between
morphodynamic processes can preserve and replicate
constraints.
The ratchet of life
Autogens are not alive. They are
missing the ability to actively accumulate and mobilize energy
within themselves. But Deacon argues they do support a
higher level ratchet effect which limits the increase in entropy requires that the Boltzmann entropy of a closed system increases. .
Teleodynamic processes are
constituted by the interactions between morphodynamic processes. But
the entropy flow maximization of these component processes is
not additive in this interaction. This is because the
attractor basins toward which morphodynamic processes tend are
specifically structured, and thus constitute constraints in
their own right. The complementary constraints that each
generates with respect to the other are self-undermining.
Their progression toward optimal entropy production rate is also
to a state where dynamical change ceases. Regularity is
built up, only to be frozen by closure. Full dissipation
is prevented at a point where optimal conditions for rapidly
reinitiating the process are achieved. An autogen is a
negative entropy ratchet.
The emergence of teleodynamics
Autogens mark the transition from
maximum entropy production to constraint production and
preservation, and from orthograde
processes characterized by self-simplification to orthograde
processes exemplified by self-preservation teleodynamics. It's an
emergent transition in the sense that the new orthograde
organization is contrary to what proceeded.
Deacon highlights the emergence of function. The autocatalysis, the container, and the
relationship between them are generated in each replication
precisely because they are of benefit to an individual autogen's
integrity and its capacity to aid the continuation of this form
of autonomous individual. It is the teleodynamic
organization that causes this, and not merely some collection of
interacting molecules, multiple atoms bonded together. The physical and chemical phenomena associated with the molecule such as charge, size, shape, and potential energy reflect the constituent atoms, the types of bonds between them and the topology of the bonding. Charged molecules dissolve in aqueous solutions (water). Uncharged molecules dissolve in lipid bilayers. ,
since these are replaceable. Each component autogenic
process is there for the sake of the autogen integrity.
Different features of the surrounding molecular This page discusses the potential of the vast state space which
supports the emergence of complex
adaptive systems (CAS). Kauffman describes the mechanism
by which the system expands across the space.
environment contribute. These
are not glosses provided by a human observer, but intrinsic and
functionally relevant features of the consequence-organized
nature of the autogen itself.
Deacon
uses the identification of common logic in the hierarchy of
emergent transitions to define emergence: An emergent dynamical
transition is signaled by a change in the topology of the phase
space of probable dynamic trajectories. He writes
'Emergence is, in effect, defined by a polarity reversal in orthograde dynamics
with ascent in scale'.
Autogen dynamics demonstrates that there must be a morphodynamic
intermediate between thermodynamics and living system
dynamics.
Ground
work for an expanded science
Deacon applies his framework to various aspects of the world: work, information, significance, evolution, self, sentience and consciousness.
Deacon's
expanded conception of work
Contragrade change requires
work utilizing a potential difference in entropy. Deacon
argues that how much things change from what would have
otherwise occurred spontaneously is a reflection of the amount
of work exerted to produce this change. So long as
contragrade change persists, work is involved, and thus it can
accumulate over Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time and distance.
Deacon argues that the generation of higher-order emergent dynamics depends on work at a
lower order. To understand the emergence of novel forms of
causality, Deacon's argues you must explain the emergence and
nature of higher-order forms of work.
Deacon explores the nature of work broadly seeing it stretching
into the realm of information. Deacon views energy and information as
analogous leveraging Gregory Bateson's ideas regarding Shannon, Claude Shannon was a key figure in information theory and computation. He developed an electronic circuit using Boolean algebra which simplified the design and operation of a digital computer system enabling architectures such as Von Neumann's to become practical. He also developed the mathematical models of information transfer which support information entropy. 's theory
of communication, which interpret information as a measure
of variety or difference. Information is not an actual
thing. Deacon suggests the generation of information might
also be understood as a form of work. While energy was
initially viewed as a substance such ideas have been abandoned
being replaced by a dynamic relational conception. Work
involves something that doesn't tend to happen spontaneously
being induced to happen by something else that is happening
spontaneously.
Deacon argues that all forms of work as activity needed to
overcome resistance to change. Work can be seen as
resulting from an orthograde
process difference which creates the focus of a contragrade process which
does work. Macroscopic (orthograde) work depends on
microscopic (thermodynamic) work being distributed in a very
asymmetric way throughout the system.
Deacon identifies a general principle of causality that shows
how work and the constraints that make it possible are to be
understood in terms of levels of scale and supervenient
organization. He continues framing a theory of morphodynamic work and of teleodynamic work.
Teleodynamic work is dependent on morphodynamic work is
dependent on thermodynamic work. In any context,
orthograde processes will continue until they reach a state in
which there is symmetry in the probable directions of change, or
until the supportive conditions change. This dynamical
terminus of an orthograde process is its attractor, which may or
may not be a quiescent state.
Morphodynamic work
Morphodynamic orthograde processes are
dynamically supervenient on incessant lower-order stable contragrade dynamics: the
balance (symmetry) between incessant extrinsically introduced
forms of destabilization, which introduce constraints, and the
incessant spontaneous (orthograde) dissipation of these
constraints. Asymmetry arises under these conditions as
constraints compound non-linearly. As long as new
extrinsic constraint is introduced faster than it is dissipated
subsequent stages of change will exhibit progressively reduced
ranges of variation.
Teleodynamic work
Teleodynamic orthograde processes
are more complex because they supervene on morphodynamic
processes. Teleodynamic patterns of change emerge from the
contragrade interactions between morphodynamic processes.
Autocatalysis does thermodynamic work by asymmetrically
increasing the local concentration of substrates for
self-assembly, and self-assembly does thermodynamic work in
impeding catalyst, an infrastructure amplifier.
diffusion. In addition the interaction involves
countervailing constraint generation processes, and thus
morphodynamic work. But morphodynamic regularities are
rare under natural circumstances except in living systems.
The self-organizing processes impede the chaotic interactions
which undermine other morphodynamic processes. The
process of biological evolution has discovered both how to setup
a vast array of morphodynamic work processes and complex
synergies and reciprocities between them that enable repeatable
cycling. Teleodynamic work is the production of
contragrade teleodynamic processes.
Deacon identifies what constitutes orthograde and contragrade
processes in the teleodynamic domain of living This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
organisms:
- Orthograde -
- The actions of organisms that function to maintain them
against degrading influences such as thermodynamic
breakdown.
- Processes of growth, differentiation and reproduction
which are involved in producing backup copies of the
organism.
- Contragrade - teleodynamic processes that are organized so
as to impede or contravene the orthograde processes.
- Deacon argues that these should be 'in some way' bad for
the organism. Reproductive competition from other
members of the species is used as one example.
Deacon argues that natural selection then allows teleodynamic
work to transform one form of teleodynamic process into another,
and to generate emergent phenomena at a higher level. He
argues that work done to acquire resources, mates, and so on is
also work that degrades the teleodynamic efficacy of competitors
with respect to these same arrangements. This work is both
directly and indirectly a source of distributed contragrade
effects on other organisms.
Deacon concludes the power to affect change at all levels is
interconnected and interdependent. Although the
fundamental constants and laws of physics do not change, and
there is no gain or loss of mass-energy during any physical
transformation process, there can be quite significant
alterations in the organizational nature of causal
process. Work can restructure the constraints acting as
boundary conditions that determine what patterns of change will
be orthograde in some other linked system. The universe is
open to organizational constraints on formal cause and the
introduction of novel forms of efficient cause. New forms
of work can and are constantly emerging. There is no limit
to higher order forms of teleodynamic processes. Thus the
possibility of generating increasingly diverse forms of
non-spontaneous dynamics can produce causal relationships that
radically diverge from simple physical and chemical
expectations, and yet still have these processes as their
ground. This is the essence of emergence, and the creative
explosion it unleashes.
Deacon's
expanded conception of information
Shannon, Claude Shannon was a key figure in information theory and computation. He developed an electronic circuit using Boolean algebra which simplified the design and operation of a digital computer system enabling architectures such as Von Neumann's to become practical. He also developed the mathematical models of information transfer which support information entropy. 's entropy
and information model ignores reference.
Deacon focuses on omissions, expectations and absences.
Regularities (expression of a constraint) allow omissions to
become significant. Hence Deacon concludes information is
a feature of teleodynamic work.
Specific details of a sign's embodiment can be largely
irrelevant. Change of state requires a model that
interprets it.
Two entropies
Deacon introduces Boltzmann entropy, the association of
thermodynamic entropy with increasing disorder and Shannon, Claude Shannon was a key figure in information theory and computation. He developed an electronic circuit using Boolean algebra which simplified the design and operation of a digital computer system enabling architectures such as Von Neumann's to become practical. He also developed the mathematical models of information transfer which support information entropy. entropy a measure
of how much information a medium can possibly carry. He
notes that Boltzmann's conception is a dynamic property while
Shannon's is structural. Deacon goes on to explore dynamic
properties of information. He argues that work and
selection can both be applied to signal dynamics. He notes
that reduced uncertainty is when a factor is hard to measure because it is dependent on many interconnected agents and may be affected by infrastructure and evolved amplifiers. This is different from risk, although the two are deliberately conflated by ERISA. Keynes argued that most aspects of the future are uncertain, at best represented by ordinal probabilities, and often only by capricious hope for future innovation, fear inducing expectations of limited confidence, which evolutionary psychology implies is based on the demands of our hunter gatherer past. Deacon notes reduced uncertainty equates to information.
equates to information - in the form of a referential sign about
the nature of the work done in filtering the signal.
Reference implies that the receiver has some redundancy with
what is already known (context) about the information conveyed
by the signal.
Deacon argues that though the external factors that alter a
system's entropy are not intrinsic features of the medium, the
signal constraint is an intrinsic feature. Referential
information is in this sense inferred from the form of the
constraints embodied in the relationship between unconstrained
possibility and the received signal. In this way, Shannon
information, assessed in term of this constraint, embodies a
trace of the work that produced it. Shannon information
and referential information are not the same because the
constraint is both intrinsic and yet not located in the signal
medium. Its a relationship between what is and what
could be.
Deacon suggests the capacity to reflect the effect of work is
the basis of reference. In the case of classic information
theory, the improbability of receiving a given sign or signal
with respect to the background expectation of its receipt
compared to other options defines the measure of potential
information. In the case of classic thermodynamics, the
improbability of being in some far-from-equilibrium state is a
measure of its potential to do work, and also a measure of work
that was necessarily performed to shift it into this
state. The linkage between the two theories hinges on the
materiality of communication (e.g. the constitution of its sign
and/or signal medium). So in a paradoxical sense, the
absent content that is the hallmark of information is a function
of the necessary physicality of the information process.
Deacon's
conception of significance
Interaction is required for a physical difference to become information.
Interpretation requires special forms of physical process to be
produced. It organizes work in response to the state of a
sign medium and with respect to some normative consequence
(valued over others).
Information describes physical changes that get propagated from
component to component in a designed or evolved feedback circuit
only because the resultant attractor dynamics itself played the
determinate role in generating the architecture of this
mechanism.
Deacon argues the capacity for one form of work to produce the
constraints that organize another, independent form of work is
the source of the amplifying power of information. It
provides the means for using the presence of a small energy
gradient to create constraints that are able to organize the
depletion of a much larger energy gradient. Information
can serve as the bridge linking the properties of otherwise
quite separate and unrelated material and energetic
systems. Information expands the dimensions of Kauffman's adjacent
possible in almost unlimited ways.
What determines that a given constraint is information is that
the interpretive process is organized so that this constraint is
correlated with the generation of work that would preserve the
possibility of this process recurring under some (usually most)
of the conditions that could have produced this
constraint. The interpretive capacity is to generate a
specific form of work in response to particular forms of system
extrinsic constraints so that it generates intrinsic constraints
that are likely to maintain or improve this capacity. Only
morphodynamic processes
spontaneously generate intrinsic constraints. Teleodynamics is needed to maintain
the far from equilibrium conditions that maintain the
morphodynamic processes.
Interpretation
With the inclusion of reference a potentially infinite term is
included in the quantification of information. There must
be interpretation to decide when the reference is fully
resolved. Interpretation must pick one factor in the trail
of causes and effects leading up to the constraint reflected in
the signal medium. In different contexts and for different
interpreters, the same sign or signal may thus be taken to be
about very different things. Resolution depends on the
interpreting system, its intrinsic information-carrying
/producing capacity and its involvement in the same causal
chain.
The causal history contributing to the constraints imposed on a
given medium limits, but does not specify, what its information
can be about. That point in this causal chain that
is the referent must be determined by and with respect to
another information process. All that is guaranteed by a
potential reduction in Shannon, Claude Shannon was a key figure in information theory and computation. He developed an electronic circuit using Boolean algebra which simplified the design and operation of a digital computer system enabling architectures such as Von Neumann's to become practical. He also developed the mathematical models of information transfer which support information entropy.
entropy of a signal is a possible
linkage to something else. This is an open-ended set of
possibilities, only limited by processes that spontaneously
obliterate certain physical traces or that block certain
physical influences.
An expansion of analytic tools effectively increases the Shannon
entropy of a given physical trace - the interpretive process
identifies a limited set of interpretable states from the total
set. Hence the interpretive process is also a signal
producing process with its own potential Shannon entropy.
The maximum information that can be conveyed is the lesser of
the Shannon entropies of the two processes.
Noise versus error
Information can be in error but this can be mitigated:
Darwinian information
Evolution can be seen to use these error mitigation correspondences
to generate information. Noise becomes an additional
signal:
Information emerging
Deacon sees three nested conceptions of information. Shannon, Claude Shannon was a key figure in information theory and computation. He developed an electronic circuit using Boolean algebra which simplified the design and operation of a digital computer system enabling architectures such as Von Neumann's to become practical. He also developed the mathematical models of information transfer which support information entropy. information
is the most minimal and basic. Referential information
(Boltzmann) is emergent from Shannon information, and
significant--or useful--information ( Desmond & Moore paint a picture of Charles Darwin's life,
expanded from his own highlights:
- His naughty
childhood,
- Wasted
schooldays,
- Apprenticeship with Grant,
- His extramural
activities at Cambridge, walks with Henslow,
life with FitzRoy on the
Beagle,
- His growing
love for science,
- London: geology, journal and Lyell.
- Moving from
Gower Street to Down and writing Origin and other
books.
- He reviewed his position on
religion: the long
dispute with Emma, his
slow collapse of belief
- damnation for unbelievers like his father and brother, inward conviction
being evolved and unreliable, regretting he had ignored his father's
advice; while describing Emma's side of the
argument. He felt happy with his decision to dedicate
his life to science. He closed by asserting after Self &
Cross-fertilization his strength will be
exhausted.
Following our summary of their main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Darwin placed
evolution within a CAS framework, and built a network of supporters whose
complementary skills helped drive the innovation.
Darwinian)
is emergent from referential information.
Deacon concludes the ability to use extrinsically generated
events and objects is a collection of: happenings, occurrences and processes; including emergent entities, as required by relativity, explains Rovelli. But natural selection has improved our fitness by representing this perception, in our minds, as an unchanging thing, as explained by Pinker. Dehaene explains the object modeling and construction process within the unconscious and conscious brain. Mathematicians view anything that can be defined and used in deductive reasoning and mathematical proofs as an object. These mathematical objects can be values of variables, allowing them to be used in formulas. as
information derives from the special dynamics of living
processes. The maintenance of intrinsically unstable,
far-from-equilibrium conditions entails mechanisms that
effectively anticipate the possible variations of This page discusses the potential of the vast state space which
supports the emergence of complex
adaptive systems (CAS). Kauffman describes the mechanism
by which the system expands across the space.
environmental conditions by not
excluding them.
Representation
He continues constraints don't do work, but they are the
scaffolding upon which the capacity to do work depends.
Even simple functional and representational relationships emerge
from a nested interdependence of generative processes with
constrained dynamics. At the intersection of
thermodynamics, natural selection and information theory entropy
reduction and constraint generation allow the emergence of
representation, reference and normativity (usefulness).
Deacon's
conception of evolution
Deacon argues that an adequate theory of This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution
must include self-organization and selection. Deacon
comments that Desmond & Moore paint a picture of Charles Darwin's life,
expanded from his own highlights:
- His naughty
childhood,
- Wasted
schooldays,
- Apprenticeship with Grant,
- His extramural
activities at Cambridge, walks with Henslow,
life with FitzRoy on the
Beagle,
- His growing
love for science,
- London: geology, journal and Lyell.
- Moving from
Gower Street to Down and writing Origin and other
books.
- He reviewed his position on
religion: the long
dispute with Emma, his
slow collapse of belief
- damnation for unbelievers like his father and brother, inward conviction
being evolved and unreliable, regretting he had ignored his father's
advice; while describing Emma's side of the
argument. He felt happy with his decision to dedicate
his life to science. He closed by asserting after Self &
Cross-fertilization his strength will be
exhausted.
Following our summary of their main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Darwin placed
evolution within a CAS framework, and built a network of supporters whose
complementary skills helped drive the innovation.
Darwin's theory of
natural selection leaves out nearly all mechanistic
details. The ends justify the means by preserving them
retrospectively. True functional generality emerges from
the process. An adaptation is the realization of a set of
constraints on candidate mechanisms, and so long as these
constraints are maintained, other features are arbitrary.
Transmission of conserved constraints is critical (not energy,
material or behavior). In excluding the least helpful,
evolution creates a critical break in causal synergy that makes
the concept of biological function an emergent general physical
property.
Still, Deacon comments, evolution must overcome the:
- Degeneration of material by the second law of thermodynamics.
- Absence of a mechanism for generation, preservation and
transmission of biological information.
- Requirement for a set of emergent teleodynamic systems to support
the evolutionary process.
He concludes that these are present in abiogenesis. He
uses autogenic theory to act
as a bridge from non-living to living processes. It shows
why spontaneous generation is so exceedingly rare.
Conditions that make it possible are highly precise and atypical
of thermodynamically driven processes that are all but
ubiquitous excepting life.
Genetic information
Genetic information provides separately sequestered constraints
embodied in some non-dynamic attribute, which can be preserved
unmodified across changes in dynamics, so that earlier dynamical
achievements will not be continually undermined. It
sequesters an independent source of constraint that is partially
redundant to that intrinsic to the dynamics of the This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
organism itself (Conserves and
innovates). In Deacon's earlier analysis of
information it is associated with the transmission of
constraints, exemplified by some physical medium linking a
teleodynamic system with its This page discusses the potential of the vast state space which
supports the emergence of complex
adaptive systems (CAS). Kauffman describes the mechanism
by which the system expands across the space.
environment.
Deacon argues it is therefore a derived feature of life.
This he concludes undermines Dawkin's
Replicator is Richard Dawkin's name for the genotype since it has the evolutionary goal of surviving long enough to reproduce its schematic plan effectively. The action of genetic operators means that the results of successful reproduction may be different to the parental genotypes and phenotypes (Dawkin's vehicle).
approach. He views the DNA (DNA), a polymer composed of a chain of deoxy ribose sugars with purine or pyrimidine side chains. DNA naturally forms into helical pairs with the side chains stacked in the center of the helix. It is a natural form of schematic string. The purines and pyrimidines couple so that AT and GC pairs make up the stackable items. A code of triplets of base pairs (enabling 64 separate items to be named) has evolved which now redundantly represents each of the 20 amino-acids that are deployed into proteins, along with triplets representing the termination sequence. Chemical modifications and histone binding (chromatin) allow cells to represent state directly on the DNA schema. To cope with inconsistencies in the cell wide state second messenger and evolved amplification strategies are used.
sequence as analogous to
Shannon information only.
With an alternative autogenic interpretation Deacon explores a
scenario where the semiotic status of autogens is extended with
bonding, there are different types of chemical bonds. Ionic bonds stabilize two oppositely charged ionized atoms when the negative atom gives up an electron to the positively charged atom. Covalent bonds stabilize the two reactants when they adopt a more stable structure with electrons shared between them. Hydrogen bonds stabilize charged groups when they are surrounded by water molecules. In Copycat codelets can bond two Workspace objects together. In the Smiley implementation a bondbuilder adds a bonding descriptor to one of the objects bonding it to the other. of relevant
substrate molecules, multiple atoms bonded together. The physical and chemical phenomena associated with the molecule such as charge, size, shape, and potential energy reflect the constituent atoms, the types of bonds between them and the topology of the bonding. Charged molecules dissolve in aqueous solutions (water). Uncharged molecules dissolve in lipid bilayers. from
the local environment to the autogens surface. Deacon
argues that if this increases the frequency of containment it
also implies selective response to its environment (an adaptation in evolutionary biology is a trait that increased the number of surviving offspring in an organism's ancestral lineage. Holland argues: complex adaptive systems (CAS) adapt due to the influence of schematic strings on agents. Evolution indicates fitness when an organism survives and reproduces. For his genetic algorithm, Holland separated the adaptive process into credit assignment and rule discovery. He assigned a strength to each of the rules (alternate hypothesis) used by his artificial agents, by credit assignment - each accepted message being paid for by the recipient, increasing the sender agent's rule's strength (implicit modeling) and reducing the recipient's. When an agent achieved an explicit goal they obtained a final reward. Rule discovery used the genetic algorithm to select strong rule schemas from a pair of agents to be included in the next generation, with crossing over and mutation applied, and the resulting schematic strategies used to replace weaker schemas. The crossing over genetic operator is unlikely to break up a short schematic sequence that provides a building block retained because of its 'fitness'; In Deacon's conception of evolution, an adaptation is the realization of a set of constraints on candidate mechanisms, and so long as these constraints are maintained, other features are arbitrary. ).
Binding of substrate becomes information about the suitability
of the environment for successful replication. Deacon
concludes that this information is specifically about the
environment for the maintenance of this interpretive
capacity.
Deacon goes on to extend the scenario to generate an additional
level of referential
information. He argues that if the binding substrate
is a nucleotide its monomeric features (energy transfer and
signalling) once leveraged by the autogen allow the later
emergence of the information conveying capability. He
argues that autogen catalysis and/or self-assembly is
potentiated by the bound nucleotide. Subsequently during
the reconstitution/replication phase of the autogen energy from
the nucleotides is used as fuel. Such augmented autogen
systems would have an evolutionary advantage through energy
leverage. Significantly the autogen's inherent constraints would then
be beneficially affected by the sequestering of 'spare'
nucleotide in a compacted separated but internal phase allowing
the autogen to conclude its general cycle.
Deacon argues that the sequestration of nucleotide independently
enables the additional functions based on sequence when these
support needed constraint
creation/preservation/replication. Deacon concludes
morphology reproducing autogens with energy cycling can enable
the emergence of information replicating semeota.
Deacon's conception
of Self
Deacon's central thesis is that the core property of self is a
special form of dynamical organization: teleodynamics. All
teleodynamic processes are implicitly individuated. They
are closed with respect to other dynamical features of the
world. Each component function contributes to the
continued existence of the whole and the whole is required to
generate each component function.
Deacon comments that the source of agency can be described as
the generation of interactive constructions which do work to
perpetuate the reciprocal maintenance of the constraints that
maintain the organism.
Deacon sees evolution as freeing agents from nominalism.
Physical responses, perceptions and mental categories aren't
merely passive reflections on the world; they exist to structure
adaptation in evolutionary biology is a trait that increased the number of surviving offspring in an organism's ancestral lineage. Holland argues: complex adaptive systems (CAS) adapt due to the influence of schematic strings on agents. Evolution indicates fitness when an organism survives and reproduces. For his genetic algorithm, Holland separated the adaptive process into credit assignment and rule discovery. He assigned a strength to each of the rules (alternate hypothesis) used by his artificial agents, by credit assignment - each accepted message being paid for by the recipient, increasing the sender agent's rule's strength (implicit modeling) and reducing the recipient's. When an agent achieved an explicit goal they obtained a final reward. Rule discovery used the genetic algorithm to select strong rule schemas from a pair of agents to be included in the next generation, with crossing over and mutation applied, and the resulting schematic strategies used to replace weaker schemas. The crossing over genetic operator is unlikely to break up a short schematic sequence that provides a building block retained because of its 'fitness'; In Deacon's conception of evolution, an adaptation is the realization of a set of constraints on candidate mechanisms, and so long as these constraints are maintained, other features are arbitrary. to the
world. For this reason Deacon argues the mere resemblance
of an object is a collection of: happenings, occurrences and processes; including emergent entities, as required by relativity, explains Rovelli. But natural selection has improved our fitness by representing this perception, in our minds, as an unchanging thing, as explained by Pinker. Dehaene explains the object modeling and construction process within the unconscious and conscious brain. Mathematicians view anything that can be defined and used in deductive reasoning and mathematical proofs as an object. These mathematical objects can be values of variables, allowing them to be used in formulas. to a
perceptual class can be what causes the object to be modified in
a particular way by an animal or person. This augmented
efficacy of generals is a feature that emerges from
teleodynamics. It is an attribute of life itself.
Individuation and agency are intrinsic features of teleodynamics
which brains have evolved to generate, because of the dynamical
closure, constraint generation, and self-maintenance that
defines teleodynamics. Deacon argues that the brains
'self' has a higher order teleodynamics since it must model
itself. As such the self is embodied by dynamical
constraints.
Deacon's
conception of sentience
Deacon follows William
James's view developed by William James & Carl Lange who, independently proposed that humans decide how they feel based on interoceptive signals, rather than from external ones. Sapolsky notes the theory reflects these signals influence on behavior where social emotion processing areas receive lots of projections from interoceptive networks. The most notable is pain. But he writes it fails to support specificity or speed of reactions since autonomic responses are too slow to precede awareness of an emotion. of the background 'feeling are subjective models: sad, glad, mad, scared, surprised, and compassionate; of the organism and its proximate environment, including ratings of situations signalled by broadly distributed chemicals and neural circuits. These feelings become highly salient inputs, evolutionarily associated, to higher level emotions encoded in neural circuits: amygdala, and insula. Deacon shows James' conception of feeling can build sentience. Damasio, similarly, asserts feelings reveal to the conscious mind the subjective status of life: good, bad, in between; within a higher organism. They especially indicate the affective situation within the old interior world of the viscera located in the abdomen, thorax and thick of the skin - so smiling makes one feel happy; but augmented with the reports from the situation of the new interior world of voluntary muscles. Repeated experiences build intermediate narratives, in the mind, which reduce the salience. Damasio concludes feelings relate closely and consistently with homeostasis, acting as its mental deputies once organisms developed 'nervous systems' about 600 million years ago, and building on the precursor regulatory devices supplied by evolution to social insects and prokaryotes and leveraging analogous dynamic constraints. Damasio suggests feelings contribute to the development of culture: - As motives for intellectual creation: prompting detection and diagnosis of homeostatic deficiencies, identifying desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments required by the cultural process over time
of being here'
which is seen as a distinctive quality of experience that is
private, internal and self-referential and with which the
non-self content is discriminated, as being sentience.
Because organisms are teleodynamic systems, they do not merely
react mechanically and thermodynamically to perturbation, but
generally are organized to initiate a change in their internal
dynamics to actively compensate for extrinsic modifications or
internal deficits. Feeling is in this basic sense
active.
Deacon asserts that complex intentional features that
characterize our thoughts and objective experiences emerge from
a background of neurological morphodynamic and homeodynamic
processes. Moreover, these lower-order subvenient
dynamical features must also inevitably constitute significant
aspects of our mental lives. Deacon believes that once a
mechanistic and computational framework for intentional content
is abandoned its characterization will be open to empirical
analysis linking cellular-molecular processes to intentional
features of mental experience.
As with Deacon's analysis of emergent constraints
on evolution he sees the brain's mechanistic properties as
being necessarily constrained by emergent requirements.
The relevant interpretive process must be intrinsic.
Deacon assumes that neurons, specialized eukaryotic cells include channels which control flows of sodium and potassium ions across the massively extended cell membrane supporting an electro-chemical wave which is then converted into an outgoing chemical signal transmission from synapses which target nearby neuron or muscle cell receptors. Neurons are supported by glial cells. Neurons include a: - Receptive element - dendrites
- Transmitting element - axon and synaptic terminals. The axon may be myelinated, focusing the signals through synaptic transmission, or unmyelinated - where crosstalk is leveraged.
- Highly variable DNA schema using transposons.
have been adapted, over the course of evolution, to use some of
their otherwise generic metabolic and intercellular
communication capabilities for the special purpose of conveying
point-to-point signals between one another. The mechanisms
are unruly, noisy and only modestly reliable transducers and
conveyers of signals. Neurons still have to perform a
great many non-signal transmission tasks that are necessary for
any call to stay alive.
Deacon adds that most brains, from simple to large and complex
appear to be deployed based on a broadly similar amount of
genetic material. Replication of architecture appears to
allow for increases in size and complexity, M. Mitchell Waldrop describes a vision of complexity via: - Rich interactions that allow a system to undergo spontaneous self-organization and, for CAS, evolution
- Systems that are adaptive
- More predictability than chaotic systems by bringing order and chaos into
- Balance at the edge of chaos
. Hence
Deacon argues brains are not well suited to be digital computing
systems, which require predictability, and reliability.
Instead mammalian brains are astronomically huge, highly
interconnected, highly reentrant networks, where noise is likely
to get wildly amplified.
Deacon suggests instead noise must be a design feature of
brains, rather than something to be eliminated. Deacon
sees the network of neurons as supporting emergent dynamic
processes. Deacon suggests whole brain sentience is a
function of dynamical regularities at a more global level than
signals within individual nerve cells, which equate more to the
homeodynamic flow's
individual components discussed earlier.
Deacon suggests that brains specifically evolved in animate
multicelled creatures because being able to move about and
modify the surroundings require predictive as well as reactive
capabilities. He argues that the evolution of this
'anticipatory sentience' -- nested within, constituted by, and
acting on behalf of the 'reactive sentience of the organism --
has given rise to emergent features that have no
precedent.
As with his analysis
of evolution Deacon extends the autogen.
This time to support a minimal sentience. He proceeds to
use this approach to explore the implications for John Searle's influential thought experiment implied to him that
computers cannot understand. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory indicates that this is
not the case.
Searle's Chinese Room. Deacon
concludes Searle intends to illuminate the difference between a
mechanistic (homeodynamic) process and an ententional (teleodynamic) process. The
Chinese room can be augmented to precisely identify what is
missing which should be a metric for determining whether a given
brain process is merely computational or is also sentient.
Just as it was necessary to stop trying to identify the
teleodynamics of life with molecular dynamics alone but instead
one had to attend to the constraints embodied as well,
computational mechanics alone cannot be viewed as mapping to
intentional properties of mentality.
Deacon argues that first it is necessary to understand the
teleodynamic features that emerge in a tangled hierarchy within
nervous systems. Deacon describes starting this process in
his final chapter on consciousness.
Deacon's
conception of consciousness
Deacon views consciousness as a second order emergent sentience
- a sentience of sentience.
As such it is able to constrain, detect and alter the first
order emergent functions of sentience. What results is a
sentience of the normative features of sentience: pleasure is the outcome of the dopamine reward system, argues UCSF professor Robert Lustig. He, like the early Christians, contrasts [addiction oriented] pleasure with serotonin driven happiness & contentment. , pain emerged as a mental experience, Damasio asserts, constructed by the mind using mapping structures and events provided by nervous systems. But feeling pain is supported by older biological functions that support homeostasis. These capabilities reflect the organism's underlying emotive processes that respond to wounds: antibacterial and analgesic chemical deployment, flinching and evading actions; that occur in organisms without nervous systems. Later in evolution, after organisms with nervous systems were able to map non-neural events, the components of this complex response were 'imageable'. Today, a wound induced by an internal disease is reported by old, unmyelinated C nerve fibers. A wound created by an external cut is signalled by evolutionarily recent myelinated fibers that result in a sharp well-localized report, that initially flows to the dorsal root ganglia, then to the spinal cord, where the signals are mixed within the dorsal and ventral horns, and then are transmitted to the brain stem nuclei, thalamus and cerebral cortex. The pain of a cut is located, but it is also felt through an emotive response that stops us in our tracks. Pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so. Fear of pain is a significant contributor to female anxiety. Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US. Pain is mediated by the thalamus and nucleus accumbens, unless undermined by sleep deprivation. , joy and suffering.
Deacon argues that any teleodynamic
system generates an emergent sentience. Higher animals
develop a multi-layer ententional hierarchy. He sees neuron networks, a network of interconnected neurons which perform signalling, modeling and control functions. In Cajal's basic neural circuits the signalling is unidirectional. He identified three classes of neurons in the circuits: - Sensory, Interneurons, Motor; which are biochemically distinct and suffer different disease states.
as
providing a low level teleodynamic substrate. It is based
on morphodynamics and thermodynamics. Deacon presents the
flows of blood to the neurons, specialized eukaryotic cells include channels which control flows of sodium and potassium ions across the massively extended cell membrane supporting an electro-chemical wave which is then converted into an outgoing chemical signal transmission from synapses which target nearby neuron or muscle cell receptors. Neurons are supported by glial cells. Neurons include a: - Receptive element - dendrites
- Transmitting element - axon and synaptic terminals. The axon may be myelinated, focusing the signals through synaptic transmission, or unmyelinated - where crosstalk is leveraged.
- Highly variable DNA schema using transposons.
,
and control of these as essential thermodynamic characteristics
and constraints. Attractors emerging from these
teleodynamic and morphodynamic flows support higher level
morphodynamics and teleodynamics.
Deacon writes 'There are emergent sentient properties produced
by the teleodynamics of brains that are not produced by simpler,
lower-order forms of sentience. Crucially, these are
special normative properties made possible because the sentience
generated by brain processes is, in effect, a second-order
sentience.' He further explores the implications of having
a teleodynamic process include within itself a representation of
its own dynamical final cause tendencies. 'For animals
with brains, the organism and its distinctive teleodynamic
characteristics will likely fail to persist (both in terms of
resisting death and reproducing) if its higher-order
teleodynamics of self-prediction fails in some respect.'
He concludes 'Generation of a projected future self-in-context
thus can become a critical source of constraints organizing the
whole system. But generating these virtual selves requires
both a means to model the causality of the This page discusses the potential of the vast state space which
supports the emergence of complex
adaptive systems (CAS). Kauffman describes the mechanism
by which the system expands across the space.
environment and also a means for
modeling the causality of the teleodynamic processes that
generate these models and act with respect to them.' ...
'In an animal with a brain that was evolved to project
alternative future selves-in-context, such an assessment [of
overall integrity] becomes a relevant factor. A separate
dynamical component of its teleodynamic organization must
continually generate a model of both its overall vegetative
integrity and the degree to which this is (or might be)
compromised with respect to other contingent factors. A
dynamical sub process evolved to analyze whatever might impact
persistence of the whole organism, and determine an appropriate
organism level response, must play a primary role in structuring
its overall teleodynamic organization.'
Deacon argues pain is how neural teleodynamics reorganizes in
response to its sensory assessment of vegetative damage.
Its effect is to interrupt less critical neural dynamics and
activate specific processes to stop this sensory signal.
To do this it must block the differentiation of most
morphodynamic processes that are inessential to this end, and
rapidly recruit significant metabolic and neural resources to
generate action to avoid continuation of this stimulus.
Deacon views the expanded notion of science as enabling a fuller
understanding of the architectures and operations of conscious
brains. He writes even though this is a theory which
defends the thesis that intentional relationships and sentient
experiences are not material phenomena in the usual sense of
that concept, it nonetheless provides us with a thoroughly
empirical set of predictions and testable hypotheses about these
enigmatic relationships.
Complex adaptive system This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can illuminate and clarify complex situations and
be applied flexibly. It can be used to evaluate and rank
models that claim to describe our perceived reality. It
catalogs the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of
systems that are based on the interaction of emergent agents.
It highlights the constraints that shape CAS and so predicts
their form. A proposal that does not conform is
wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
(CAS) theory
depends directly on the Flows of different kinds are essential to the operation of
complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support
the emergence of the systems.
Examples of constraints are discussed.
dynamic flows,
constraints, self-assembly
and This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergence which Deacon
explores.
He demonstrates key relationships between interacting flows,
constraints on these flows, and the emergence of higher
level dynamic phenomena. This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
Evolution
gains mechanistic support and remains essential to the
development of CAS.
Our conception of Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agents
intrinsically bound to Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schematic
structures while consistent with Deacon's theories places
more significance on their impact on higher level emergent
systems. Deacon argues that genetic structures ensure
successful dynamic systems persist across generations.
We
similarly extend Blackmore's
Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
memetic The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
model
to include dependencies on the This page reviews the catalytic
impact of infrastructure on the expression of phenotypic effects by an
agent. The infrastructure
reduces the cost the agent must pay to perform the selected
action. The catalysis is enhanced by positive returns.
infrastructure
that supports the Flows of different kinds are essential to the operation of
complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support
the emergence of the systems.
Examples of constraints are discussed.
flows, constraints
and associative signaling, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance. In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively. A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form. Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell. Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state. Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals. Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich. Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors. In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. To be credible signals must be hard to fake. To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient. To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy.
that enables the This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergence of
memetic systems. We view books, Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is
inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling
students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane
roles. He highlights a radical and already proven
alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning
processes supported by technology and freed up attention of
teams of teachers. Building on his personal experience of
helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative,
Khan:
- Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging
short videos focused on content,
Converging on mastery,
With the help of
neuroscience, and filling
in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach
to the mainstream method.
- Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s,
Inducing holes that
are hidden by tests, Tests
which ignore creativity.
The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to
be supplemented with homework.
Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so
they could mentor them while they attended school, an
inversion that significantly improves the economics.
- Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service,
Working with a
real classroom, Trying stealth
learning, At Khan Academy full time, In the curriculum at
Los Altos, Supporting life-long
learning.
- Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with
a one
room school, a robust
teaching team, and creativity enabled;
so with some catalysis
even the poorest can
become educated and earn credentials
for current jobs.
- Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based
assessments, College
education;
- Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure
for creativity to
emerge and to support risk taking.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Disruption is a powerful force for
change but if its force is used to support the current teachers
to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the
current educational network?
educational
processes and neuronal long term memory in the brain includes functionally different types: Declarative, or explicit, (episodic and semantic), Implicit, Procedural, Spatial, Temporal, Verbal; Hebb suggested that glutamate receptive neurons learn by (NMDA channel based) synaptic strengthening: short term memory. This was shown to happen for explicit memory formation in the hippocampus. This strengthening is sustained by subsequent LTP. The non-real-time learning and planning processes operate through consciousness using the working memory structures, and then via sleep, the salient ones are consolidated while the rest are destroyed and garbage collected. structures as
persisting valuable dynamic processes across generations of
brains.
Deacon's frustration with computer based 'evolutionary systems'
failing to represent the essential physical constraints of the
real world seems justified. The failure distorts the
representation of the This page discusses the potential of the vast state space which
supports the emergence of complex
adaptive systems (CAS). Kauffman describes the mechanism
by which the system expands across the space.
environment
and the pressures on the Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agents,
making it difficult to explore the adjacent possible.
AWF is the adaptive web framework. 's agent programming
framework This page describes the Adaptive Web framework (AWF) test system
and the agent programming framework (Smiley) that supports its
operation.
Example test system statements are included.
To begin a test a test statement is loaded into Smiley while
Smiley executes on the Perl
interpreter.
Part of Smiley's Perl code focused on setting up the
infrastructure is included bellow.
The setup includes:
- Loading the 'Meta file'
specification,
- Initializing the Slipnet,
and Workspaces and loading them
- So that the Coderack
can be called.
The Coderack, which is the focus of a separate
page of the Perl frame then schedules and runs the codelets
that are invoked by the test statement structures.
Smiley's: chemical
foundation, barriers to bonding, there are different types of chemical bonds. Ionic bonds stabilize two oppositely charged ionized atoms when the negative atom gives up an electron to the positively charged atom. Covalent bonds stabilize the two reactants when they adopt a more stable structure with electrons shared between them. Hydrogen bonds stabilize charged groups when they are surrounded by water molecules. In Copycat codelets can bond two Workspace objects together. In the Smiley implementation a bondbuilder adds a bonding descriptor to one of the objects bonding it to the other.
based on This page describes the Copycat
Slipnet.
The goal of the Slipnet is reviewed.
Smiley's specialized use of the Slipnet is introduced.
The initial Slipnet network used by the 'Merge
Streams' and 'Virtual Robot' agent-based applications is setup in
initchemistry and is included.
The Slipnet infrastructure and initialization functions are
included.
Slipnet properties, salience, Douglas Hofstadter controlled the amount of attention a Workspace object in Copycat would receive from codelets via its salience. The more descriptions, analogous to geons, an object has and the more highly activated the nodes involved therein, the more important the object is. Modulating this tendency is any relative lack of connections from the object to the rest of the objects in the Workspace. Salience is a dynamic number that takes into account both these factors. In Smiley the instantaneous salience of a Workspace's objects is calculated by itsalience. In the brain salience is modeled by the salience networks. requirements of
the This page describes the Copycat
Coderack.
The details of the codelet architecture are described.
The specialized use of the Coderack by the adaptive web
framework's (AWF) Smiley is discussed.
The codelet scheduling mechanism is discussed.
A variety of Smiley extensions to the Coderack are reviewed.
The Coderack infrastructure functions are
included.
Coderack, the This page discusses how Smiley
provides deployment guarantees to its agent-based
applications.
Smiley's transaction
services are reviewed.
The complex interactions of codelets
participating in a deployment cascade are discussed
including:
- The implementation of schematic switches.
- The cooperative use of goal
suppression.
- Evaluator codelets promotion
of other siblings.
Challenges of initiation of a cascade are discussed.
Tools to associate transaction protection to an operon deployed
codelet are described.
Special support for sub-program codelets is described. Completion
of transactional sub-programs presents special
challenges. Priority and synchronization support
includes:
- Delaying the
operaton of the cascade sponsor.
- Delaying
the notgcompleting
cascade participant.
- Waiting for completion of
parallel operations with the wait and relay
service.
The need to sustain resource pools is reviewed.
The use of signals to coordinate
siblings is described.
The structural binding operon
for the wait and relay service is included.
The codelets and supporting functions are
included.
cascading flows of codelets
and its consumption of free
energy as the codelets operate starts to add back these
constraints.
Deacon's opus provides a vision of an expanded science that
includes frameworks for emergent systems. He demonstrates
how dynamic processes can synergistically constrain entropy,
self-assemble and auto catalyze inducing the emergent and
evolutionary properties of real CAS systems.
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