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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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;
- 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
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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.
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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 |
| 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 |
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
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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.
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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?
|
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
|
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.
|
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.
|
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 |
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 |
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.
Constraint based phenomena |
|
|
The malarial arms race
Summary
Sonia Shah reviews the millennia old (500,000 years) malarial This page reviews the strategy of setting up an arms race. At its
core this strategy depends on being able to alter, or take
advantage of an alteration in, the genome
or equivalent. The situation is illustrated with examples
from biology, high tech and politics.
arms race between Humanity, Anopheles
mosquitoes and Plasmodium. 250 - 500 million people are
infected each year with malaria and one million die.
The Fever
In Sonia Shah's book 'The
Fever' she introduces Plasmodium, a human and mosquito parasite is a long term relationship between the parasite and its host where the resources of the host are utilized by the parasite without reciprocity. Often parasites include schematic adaptations allowing the parasite to use the hosts modeling and control systems to divert resources to them or improve their chance of reproduction: Toxoplasma gondii. which developed
from a single cell plant like an algae. She postulates
that in that form it found itself cohabiting on ponds with
mosquitoes. Eventually it was introduced into animal blood
streams and thrived. But it is only certain of the
Anopheles among the many types of mosquito that Plasmodium
survives successfully.
Plasmodium has a complex life cycle with about seven
stages. It replicates rapidly and generates huge numbers
of offspring. There are a number of species, including
malariae, vivax and falciparum. Plasmodium spends part of
its life within humans. Introduced into the blood stream
with the secretions of a feeding female Anopheles, they must
avoid destruction by the immune system has to support and protect an inventory of host cell types, detect and respond to invaders and maintain the symbiont equilibrium within the microbiome. It detects microbes which have breached the secreted mucus barrier, driving them back and fortifying the barrier. It culls species within the microbiome that are expanding beyond requirements. It destroys invaders who make it into the internal transport networks. As part of its initialization it has immune cells which suppress the main system to allow the microbiome to bootstrap. The initial microbiome is tailored by the antibodies supplied from the mother's milk while breastfeeding. The immune system consists of two main parts the older non-adaptive part and the newer adaptive part. The adaptive part achieves this property by being schematically specified by DNA which is highly variable. By rapid reproduction the system recombines the DNA variable regions in vast numbers of offspring cells which once they have been shown not to attack the host cell lines are used as templates for interacting with any foreign body (antigen). When the immune cell's DNA hyper-variable regions are expressed as y-shaped antibody proteins they typically include some receptor like structures which match the surfaces of the typical antigen. Once the antibody becomes bound to the antigen the immune system cells can destroy the invader.
, and
find the liver is an emergent cellular system providing metabolic: Dietary compound metabolism and signalling: After gorging on sugar-rich foods the liver releases FGF21 hormone to dampen further eating activity; Detoxification, Regulation of glucose through glycogen storage (asprosin signalling from white adipose tissue); clotting, immune, exocrine and endocrine functions. It is supplied with oxygen-rich blood via the hepatic artery and blood rich in semi-processed foodstuffs from the intestines & spleen via the hepatic portal vein. It is constructed from: Hepatocytes which swim in the blood to process it, BECs, Stromal cells, Hepatic stellate cells, Kupffer cells, and blood vessels. The embryonic endoderm cells invade the mesoderm to form the liver bud. Subsequently the liver bud vascularizes and is colonized by hematopoietic cells. The liver operates on a daily cycle (Aug 2018) allowing it time to recover from the stress of processing toxic substances. In a healthy adult liver cells do not divide significantly. But in a damaged liver, the liver cells shift back to a neonatal state to re-enter the cell cycle and rebuild the liver. There are over 100 disorders of the liver. Obesity and diabetes are associated with increased prevalence of these liver disorders worldwide.
. Here
they breed and transform into a form that can enter red blood
cells. Hiding in dead liver cells they invade the blood
stream. Most are destroyed by the immune system, but a few
survive to enter red blood cells where they feed on
hemoglobin. Animals respond by destroying the infected
blood cells in the spleen. This gives rise to the
typically distended spleens of infected humans. With their
oxygen supply diminished and toxic products of the hemoglobin
breakdown present, humans with malaria are weak and suffer
fevers. Children and old people especially may die.
As is typical in arms races, the combatants have developed 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.
asymmetric adaptations in evolutionary biology is a trait that increased the number of surviving offspring in an organism's ancestral lineage. 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 each
other:
- Plasmodium induces infected female Anopheles to change
their behavior. Because of the risk of death, female
Anopheles typically seek blood meals only when ready to
breed. Once infected the females become initially more
cautious, giving the Plasmodium
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
- Humans developed various mutations, which made it
difficult for the Plasmodium that was parasitizing them to
attack the hemoglobin. Duffy-less blood cells, those
missing the Duffy chemokine receptor, in biological cells these proteins are able to span the cell membrane and present an active site which is tailored to interact with a specific signal. When the receptor pairs with its signal, its overall shape changes resulting in changes in the part internal to the cell which can be relayed by the cells signalling infrastructure. In neuron synapses one type of receptor (fast) is associated with an ion channel. The other (slow) is associated with a signalling enzyme chain and modulates the neuron's response.
, were
effective against vivax attack. Hemoglobin E was
harder for the parasite to digest, although Plasmodium
falciparum has a mutation that enables it to digest E.
Sickle cell
trait is a dominant single gene mutation where the hemoglobin is not metabolized by the plasmodium parasite. Offspring of people with sickle-cell trait risk developing sickle-cell anemia.
can limit the impact of even P. falciparum,
although it carries the potential for generating sickle cell
anemia is a recessive single gene disease where the sufferer's hemoglobin causes the red blood cells to distort. It is a side effect of the evolved protection from malaria provided by sickle cell trait. Potential treatments include gene therapy and drugs that block the sickling of red blood cells. Carrier screening was undermined by there being no effective prenatal test limiting the benefit of the information and because the white doctors were not trusted by their black patients. In the future iPS cells could have the problem mutations replaced with ex vivo gene therapy.
. Humans also migrated out of Africa, to
climates where Anopheles hibernates during the winter
season. That was too long a period for Africa's
Plasmodium to survive initially. Eventually Plasmodium
developed a dormant stage where they could wait out the
winter too. Plasmodium vivax entered southern Europe
2000 years ago and northern Europe in the Middle Ages.
As Europeans sailed to the Americas they acted as a vector
for Plasmodium vivax, which found niches in places like
Panama, the Carolinas and Virginia.
- As humans alter the environment around them varieties of
local mosquitoes find their relative competitiveness
changed. In Africa, the Bantu created clearings to
grow their diet of vegetables. Without farm animals
any mosquitoes in this new environment would have to focus
primarily on humans. Anopheles operate in species
complexes which encourage evolution of new sub types.
Anopheles gambiae focused totally on humans improved the
infection rate of Plasmodium falciparum. This created
an important advantage for Bantus with the sickle cell
mutation when competing with other humans.
Over time the effects of the arms race would be reduced lethal
impacts of the local malaria which became chronic
with all the typical attributes of such disease states.
The results of the race are certainly not clear cut:
- Plasmodium falciparum is still a devastating killer of
more than one million sufferers a year - and it is not known
why this subset of infections is lethal.
- There are advantages for the chronically infected since
human raiders are likely to be killed by the same
malaria. Bantu farmers with chronic malaria were able
to overcome all other human groups in Africa.
Similarly European invaders to Africa between 1570 and 1825
were driven back by African malaria. But as Bantu
slaves with falciparum malaria were brought to the new
world, malarial infections in the West Indies, Virginia, and
the Carolinas made Europeans and natives permanently
anemic. Bantu slaves were not so impacted. The
militarily powerful Europeans found themselves dependent on,
and threatened by, 'healthy' Bantu slaves. In New
England the climate, environment and local mosquitoes
inhibited Plasmodium infections, until infected soldiers
returning from the South provided a reservoir, and water
mill deployment altered the ecology encouraging Anopheles
species that supported malarial infections. Once coal
replaced water mills as New England's power source malaria
disappeared.
- But mining, logging and farming typically transform
mosquito environments creating access to new niches and
destroying others, and wars are powerful catalysts, an infrastructure amplifier. for malaria
when they converge infected humans, and transform
environments. Shah
explains that in England from 1400, malaria was endemic to
Kent and Essex, with death rates as high as sub-Saharan
Africa, but in the 19th century improved drainage and four
crop rotation agriculture wiped it out. Stopping the
use of fallow fields, and not killing all the farm animals
each winter, reduced the habitat for the mosquitos, while
leaving animals as targets for the mosquitos reducing the
probability of Plasmodium being vectored from one human to
another.
Evolved resistance to plasmodium exists in a variety of
species. Two plants: the Cinchona tree, and the Artemisia
wormwood; have developed sophisticated counter measures, quinine and artemisenin,
that have been optimized and made robust during the long
malarial arms race.
Quinine
Shah describes how the Dutch used their knowledge of
horticulture to isolate Cinchona trees producing high quantities
of quinine. It was a significant achievement, since they
had to understand the constrained growing conditions, extraction
process and obtain the closely guarded trees from the Spanish
Andes. But having a monopoly is a power relation within:
- A state in which a group has enough power to enforce its will on other citizens. If this is a central authority with a cohesive military, it can overpower other warlords and stabilize the society.
- An economy in which one business has enough share in a market segment to control margins to its advantage. An economic monopoly can be broadly beneficial: AT&T monopoly, US patent monopoly rights;
on high volume quinine production the Dutch priced the quinine
so highly that mass treatment was cost prohibitive. With
the additional confusion about effective dosing most supplies
were too weak to provide protection. Some governments even
reserved effective doses for important people. When
effective doses were deployed the patients disliked the
dangerous side effects and often refused treatment. This
typically left enough malarially infected humans to sustain the
disease.
Once war demonstrated the threat to America of the loss the
Dutch monopoly quinine supply, US is the United States of America.
chemists were tasked with building synthetic quinine
equivalents. These solved the cost problem and the
products had limited side effects. They were deployed
prophylactically but they were simplistic attacks.
Plasmodium, which has evolved so as to maintain diverse
populations which coexist and rapidly responded to the selection
pressure, responded with increased presence of resistant
forms. Scientists were surprised, initially assuming that
the target populations were avoiding treatment. Forced
treatments built resentment and anger is an emotion which protects a person who has been cheated by a supposed friend. When the exploitation of the altruism is discovered, Steven Pinker explains, the result is a drive for moralistic aggression to hurt the cheater. Anger is mostly experienced as a rapid wave that then quickly dissipates. When it is repressed, for example by a strong moral sense (superego), it can sustain, inducing long term stress.
as the treatments failed to protect.
Artemisinin
China, responding to the Vietnam War, isolated Artemisinin is a highly effective anti-malarial. It was initially identified by Tu Youyou in China, where it was extracted from sweet wormwood. Berkeley professor Jay Keasling subsequently programmed yeast to make artemisinin. Sanofi started to manufacture the yeast engineered artemisinin in 2014.
. It
was highly effective as a treatment, but its biological basis
and initial Chinese identification left it ignored by western
health experts for 20 years. Eventually it was leveraged
by Novartis
but the price was high and black markets deployed low strength
solutions which have allowed Plasmodium to stockpile resistant
mutations.
An effective drug treatment strategy would need to take account
of local geographic niches, types of Anopheles, and local human
culture is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal. CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism. Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering. Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling. Damasio notes prokaryotes and social insects have developed cultural social behaviors. Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset. He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised. Culture: - Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation. Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain. Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes. Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach. And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations! PMS symptoms vary by culture.
- Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play. So parents try to control their children's peer group.
- Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc.
- Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate.
- Can transform dominance into honor. There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures. Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian.
- Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.
- Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire.
- Can provide varying levels of support for innovation. Damasio suggests culture is influenced by feelings:
- 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
- Produces consciousness according to Dennet.
. A complex
research problem, but otherwise the results of drug treatment
would, and did, appear chaotic.
DDT
The initial success and simple method of deployment, of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) is an organochloride insecticide. in destroying the Anopheles
vector also diverted interest from solving the many complex
research and deployment problems with Plasmodium drug
treatments. Its success drove a global malaria eradication
plan. However, complications soon emerged. Saved
populations death rates fell, but birth rates didn't leaving the
recipients countries with exploding populations. DDT's
effect on insect populations caused unpredictable effects.
Its concentration in the food chain was also found to impact
primary predators. US is the United States of America.
funders cut DDT eradication budgets. Anopheles adapted!
Community
response to malaria
Shah explains that the interaction with malaria varies between
communities:
Shah describes
how Western science struggled to define malaria due to its
complex adaptive nature. A holistic strategy was required
to understand the total system and how it emerges. The Peter Medawar writes about key historic events in the evolution
of medical science.
traditional scientific method works
poorly in this situation. Only in countries, such as
Italy, where the impact of malaria and the various scientific
capabilities: experimentalists, clinicians, naturalists; were
all present could authorities and powerful, impacted, businesses
focus a This page discusses the program strategy in a complex adaptive
system (CAS). Programs
generate coherent end-to-end
activity. The mechanism is reviewed.
cross domain strategy.
But This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
phenotypic alignment in science
ensured the individual domains resisted this approach and its
discoveries. Most money was allocated to large research
labs in first world cities far from the communities suffering in
the third world.
As the world has become more interconnected, and man has
reshaped the environment malaria has benefited.
Eradication strategies ebb and flow, as the financial system
cycles (Nov
2018). So far our ability to align the cross field
resources to iteratively undermine Plasmodium in key hot spots
has been weak. Shah warns against the ever popular big
push currently promoted by the Gates foundation and Jeffrey
Sachs.
Complex adaptive system This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory is positioned relative to the natural
sciences. It catalogs the laws and strategies which
underpin the operation of systems that are based on the
interaction of emergent agents.
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
should apply directly to malarial systems. The issues Shah
identifies are exemplars:
This page reviews Christensen's disruption
of a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism is discussed with examples from biology and
business.
Parasite and host is in an This page reviews the strategy of setting up an arms race. At its
core this strategy depends on being able to alter, or take
advantage of an alteration in, the genome
or equivalent. The situation is illustrated with examples
from biology, high tech and politics.
arms race. 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.
Asymmetric responses drive the
race. Epistasis ensures
robustness of the system across many niche situations.
- 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.
sequencing describes methods of DNA sequencing, that replace traditional Sanger sequencing, which have been implemented in commercial DNA sequencers after 2000. The methods include: - Base-by-base is stepwise sequencing where there are 3' removable blockers on the DNA arrays.
- Pyrosequencing,
- Sequencing by synthesis,
- Sequencing by ligation,
- SMRT,
- DNA colony sequencing,
- DNA nanoball,
- Nanopore sequencing,
- MPSS was the first of the next generation sequencing methods,
- Polony sequencing.
is enabling
a powerful attack on Malaria.
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 amplification by
forestry, agriculture and 3rd world malarial clinics.
This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
Extended phenotypic alignment
occurs naturally within complex systems. But it
typically acts as an inhibitor of change. To The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Samuel
modeling is described as an approach.
model a malarial system within a
shifting environment and coadapting human population
requires This page reviews the strategy of architecting an end-to-end
solution in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its costs and benefits are discussed.
end-to-end insight of
the platform is agent generated infrastructure that supports emergence of an entity through: leverage of an abundant energy source, reusable resources; attracting a phenotypically aligned network of agents.
, from a
broad set of cooperating 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.
- Chronic diseases provide a significant challenge to
sufferers and health care providers. There are
Rather than oppose the direct thrust of some environmental flow agents
can improve their effectiveness with indirect responses.
This page explains how agents are architected to do this and
discusses some examples of how it can be done.
indirect problems and benefits,
which have This page reviews the strategy of setting up an arms race. At its
core this strategy depends on being able to alter, or take
advantage of an alteration in, the genome
or equivalent. The situation is illustrated with examples
from biology, high tech and politics.
resulted in responses
built into our 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.
genetic and
memetic plans which complicate the sufferer's
participation in medically designed treatments. The
direct issues are in most cases low priority relative to
urgent challenges like hunger. But without commitment
from the sufferer, and their adopting effective strategies
global efforts will fail chaotically and wastefully.
The Fever highlights the adaptive nature of the malarial system
and the consequent issues with depending on simplistic
approaches and treatments.
Politics, Economics & Evolutionary Psychology |
Business Physics
Nature and nurture drive the business eco-system
Human nature
Emerging structure and dynamic forces of adaptation |
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integrating quality appropriate for each market |
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