This page describes the organizational forces that limit change.
It explains how to overcome
them when necessary.
This page uses an example to illustrate how:
- A business can gain focus from targeting key customers,
- Business planning activities performed by the whole organization can build awareness, empowerment and coherence.
- A program approach can ensure strategic alignment.
This page uses the example of HP's printer organization freeing
itself from its organizational constraints to sell a printer
targeted at the IBM pc user.
The constraints are described.
The techniques to overcome them are implied.
The constraints are described.
The techniques to overcome them are implied.
Exploring real complex adaptive systems
Summary
This web frame introduces example real world 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.
complex adaptive systems
(CAS): John Holland's framework for representing complexity is outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory discussed at the site are presented.
- 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 is the United States of America. 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.
- 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;
Examples ranging from the global biosphere to little insect communities
These example systems vary in scope from the global biosphere and geo political systems, through economic is the study of trade between humans. Traditional Economics is based on an equilibrium model of the economic system. Traditional Economics includes: microeconomics, and macroeconomics. Marx developed an alternative static approach. Limitations of the equilibrium model have resulted in the development of: Keynes's dynamic General Theory of Employment Interest & Money, and Complexity Economics. Since trading depends on human behavior, economics has developed behavioral models including: behavioral economics.and philosophical systems to aspects of these including technology networks, housing and finance systems, businesses and biological networks. Prominent
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 will
be discussed including details of how such systems initially John Holland's framework for representing complexity is outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory discussed at the site are presented.
This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Key research is
reviewed.
emerge. The earth abounds with systems that adapt to changes in their environment. The systems and the components they contain are emergent. This allows these system's
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 to be composed of other
agents. It can be hard to know where to draw the
lines. 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.
The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Samuel
modeling is described as an approach.
Models of significant
emergent networks such as those including Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved
dramatically. W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred.
technologies help provide
clarity. Ideas are viewed as 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. Their emergence is discussed by 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).
Steven Johnson and a real world
example, Bell Labs, is 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:
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.
summarized.
The presence of re-combinable genotypes is the set of control structures and recipes which describe how to construct an emergent system such as a cell or body. The constructed system is the phenotypic expression of the genotype. - The evolving global scientific
network.
- The Bell telephone network. And
- The military industrial network deploying 'fire and missile control' systems.
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.
and phenotypes is the system that results from the controlled expression of the genes. It is typically represented by a bacterial cell or the body of a multi-cell animal or plant. The point is that the genes provide the control surface and the abstract recipe that has been used to generate the cell. supports the emergence of agents as illustrated by the Perl testing framework.
A hierarchy emerges
Initially there was no obvious bridge between biology and economic is the study of trade between humans. Traditional Economics is based on an equilibrium model of the economic system. Traditional Economics includes: microeconomics, and macroeconomics. Marx developed an alternative static approach. Limitations of the equilibrium model have resulted in the development of: Keynes's dynamic General Theory of Employment Interest & Money, and Complexity Economics. Since trading depends on human behavior, economics has developed behavioral models including: behavioral economics.systems. But with the development of the
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.
science
of consciousness, described by Dehaene
as well as his 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.
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.
reading in the brain,
Pinker's
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.
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.
how the mind works, Haikonen's
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.
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.
consciousness and robot sentience
and Beckert's
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.
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.
Empire of Cotton (Cotton
exchange), it is becoming possible to see how the
architecture of CAS repeats at each level from simple cells, to
people's brains and bodies, and into nation states and their economies is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. 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.
.
Complexity, M. Mitchell Waldrop describes a vision of complexity via:
- Rich interactions that allow a system to undergo spontaneous self-organization
- Systems that are adaptive
- More predictability than chaotic systems by bringing order and chaos into
- Balance at the edge of chaos
catastrophes
While humanity has become increasingly powerful our innate ability to
comprehend the systems that we can affect has remained
limited. When we are able to correctly frame the situation
with insights gained from our collective learning we are often
helped in understanding the implications of our actions.
But that is not always true and often we respond intuitively.
Infrequently this results in catastrophe is a dramatic breakdown in the operation of a CAS that results in general failure. Dorner in the logic of failure, sees the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as illustrative: typical human strategies were incorrectly applied by experienced operators, because they were overconfident and incorrectly modeled the current and immediate future state of the reactor. Beinhocker asserts positive effects generated in a large inter-connected network induce negative effects at other points in the network. Booch argues that increasing system complexity can overwhelm human designers, inducing catastrophe in software development. He recommends adopting object oriented hierarchy and modularity to limit complexity. But many CAS networks include huge number of agents, responding to internal and external signals, and effectively executing evolved, distributed schematic plans. Eventual loss of control, as in the case of cancers, is notable and highlights the effective agency of the more regular situation. Human developed systems suffer from complexity catastrophe. Democratic processes slowly search for representatives who will solve problems for the citizens, but Diamond in Collapse explains that democracy has struggled to cope with the tragedy of the commons. Cliodynamic cycles operate over multiple lifetimes leaving humans prone to fall into the traps that caught their grandparents. Evolved amplifiers support bubbles incenting dangerous deregulation, and encouraging broad participation, even though the rules ensure additional wealth accumulates to the legislative elite and aristocracy, who safely ignore moral hazard. Parasites undermine the detection of problems. RSS sees catastrophe enabled by a lack of rigorous schematic planning within most developed human systems. . It is likely that the frequency will increase since we are making the world more connected, our
Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved
dramatically. W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred.
tools
are 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.
improving and they allow our
ideas to interconnect globally and rapidly and there are more of
us. Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory.
Various CAS scenarios facilitate catastrophe.
- 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.Evolved amplifiers induce bubbles:
- 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,
- 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.Real estate,
- E. O. Wilson reviews the effect of man on the natural world to date and explains how the two systems can coexist most effectively.Human population explosion where the Green Revolution refers to a set of social technologies: new methods of cultivation; initially used in Mexico during the 1950s to 1970s and then deployed globally, during the 1970s, that increased agricultural production worldwide, and acted as a political constraint on famine and Communism. It was sponsored by Mexico, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, with leadership from Norman Borlaug and it built on the work of geneticist, Nazareno Strampelli. The improved production leveraged the development of:
- High yielding varieties of wheat and rice based on:
- High rates of nitrogen metabolism (cross breading, genetic engineering) allowing high yield when combined with
- Strong short stems to resist bending and
- Supplied with
- Chemical fertilizers, and agro-chemicals
- Irrigation
- Disease resistance based on cell level breeding and genetic engineering
until we have utilized the World's huge natural buffers - Falling into historically known traps that facilitate collapse:
- Collapse of Europe after the First World War helped
induce the Second World War generating a response, the 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.Bretton Woods agreements. But
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.
- After 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.2008 the disintermediated is the shift of operations from one network provider to another lower cost connected network provider. The first network provider leverages the cost benefits of the shift to increase its profitability but becomes disrupted. The lower cost network provider gains revenue flows, expertise and increases its active agents. Over time this disruptive shift will leave the higher cost network as a highly profitable shell, but the agents that performed the operations that migrated to the low cost network will be ejected from the network. For a company that may imply the costs of layoffs. For a state the ejected workers imply increased cost impacts and reduced revenue potential which the state are trading off for improved operating efficiency.
poor have been left trapped by debt, once again inducing tribalism.
Study of CAS allows us to create better models of how these systems work. But that does little to make them more intuitive to us. A different approach - iteratively gaining experience with these systems - as
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:
promoted by Dorner
can help here. The benefits of specialized practice are
demonstrated by chess grand masters
and successful business executives like - Effective iterative planning and
- Practice with complex scenario simulations; tools which he reviews.
Lou Gerstner describes the challenges he faced and the
strategies he used to successfully restructure the computer
company IBM.
Lou
Gerstner. Additionally Dorner's approach focuses on
the perspective of people struggling to intuitively comprehend
CAS. A conflict of world views
A variety of real world systems are historically viewed as random in nature. The modeling of systems according to the physical laws of nature is evident in 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
and du Chatelet's arguments. Such approaches have
repeatedly ignored the effects of emergent agents. The economist is the study of trade between humans. Traditional Economics is based on an equilibrium model of the economic system. Traditional Economics includes: microeconomics, and macroeconomics. Marx developed an alternative static approach. Limitations of the equilibrium model have resulted in the development of: Keynes's dynamic General Theory of Employment Interest & Money, and Complexity Economics. Since trading depends on human behavior, economics has developed behavioral models including: behavioral economics.
Eugene Fama's argument that the stock market was inherently random and hence efficient is much quoted, even though every so often a 'tsunami' aligns all the actors and the market seems all but random. Human experts operate the stock market. These are agents following
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.
plans, gathering Agents use sensors to detect events in their environment.
This page reviews how these events become signals associated
with beneficial responses in a complex adaptive system (CAS). CAS signals emerge from
the Darwinian information model. Signals can indicate decision summaries and level of
uncertainty.
market signals, leveraging The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Samuel
modeling is described as an approach.
models and executing strategies.
It is not that Fama, Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman, amongst others, weren't aware of the financial reality and implications of Mandelbrot's 'fat-tail is a probability distribution which occurs in real world economics, physics and earth science situations. The tail is fat because more extreme events occur than a random distribution about a mean would predict. There is clustering of events over time typical of a punctuated equilibrium. The statistics describing the data changes over time. The mathematics of this distribution is far harder to leverage in models than the thin-tailed normal distribution. So the normal distribution is sometimes inappropriately applied in fat-tail situations.
', they just accepted the usefulness of the inherently random market model, for want of anything else which was nearly so quantitatively leveragable.
The initial successes that occurred were able to be leveraged through
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.
financial and political
amplification. But as the network of financial, economic is the study of trade between humans. Traditional Economics is based on an equilibrium model of the economic system. Traditional Economics includes: microeconomics, and macroeconomics. Marx developed an alternative static approach. Limitations of the equilibrium model have resulted in the development of: Keynes's dynamic General Theory of Employment Interest & Money, and Complexity Economics. Since trading depends on human behavior, economics has developed behavioral models including: behavioral economics. and political agents
Charles Ferguson argues that the US power structure has become
highly corrupt.
Ferguson identifies key events which contributed to the transformation:
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.
became 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
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.
This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
aligned, these strategic effects, 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.
amplified through a shift in incentives,
ensured the subsequent massive failure of the approach.
The catastrophic is a dramatic breakdown in the operation of a CAS that results in general failure. Dorner in the logic of failure, sees the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as illustrative: typical human strategies were incorrectly applied by experienced operators, because they were overconfident and incorrectly modeled the current and immediate future state of the reactor. Beinhocker asserts positive effects generated in a large inter-connected network induce negative effects at other points in the network. Booch argues that increasing system complexity can overwhelm human designers, inducing catastrophe in software development. He recommends adopting object oriented hierarchy and modularity to limit complexity. But many CAS networks include huge number of agents, responding to internal and external signals, and effectively executing evolved, distributed schematic plans. Eventual loss of control, as in the case of cancers, is notable and highlights the effective agency of the more regular situation. Human developed systems suffer from complexity catastrophe. Democratic processes slowly search for representatives who will solve problems for the citizens, but Diamond in Collapse explains that democracy has struggled to cope with the tragedy of the commons. Cliodynamic cycles operate over multiple lifetimes leaving humans prone to fall into the traps that caught their grandparents. Evolved amplifiers support bubbles incenting dangerous deregulation, and encouraging broad participation, even though the rules ensure additional wealth accumulates to the legislative elite and aristocracy, who safely ignore moral hazard. Parasites undermine the detection of problems. RSS sees catastrophe enabled by a lack of rigorous schematic planning within most developed human systems. impact of these failures was mitigated for a time by the
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 agreements and
infrastructure described by Ed Conway.
But eventually it too failed and the attempt at management was
abandoned. The unconstrained expansion of economies is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. 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.
during each up cycle will be amplified generating bubble opportunities,
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.
described by Satyajit
Das, and risks. As the global cycle proceeds the
bubbles will be deflated: Brazil (May
2016). If the models avoided assumptions of randomness and equilibrium they would likely be more robust as described by Eric Beinhocker. If that is not possible the contextual adoption of appropriate models certainly is. Indeed CAS architectures, such as the Perl testing system do this explicitly. This approach to
First describes the dynamic
nature of any complex adaptive system (CAS).
It then introduces the broad effects of change which includes opportunities and risks/uncertainties.
As a CAS grows opportunities become undermined so they must be acted on quickly.
Uncertainties are also transformed and relayed by the dynamic network. In particular the recombination of current and new ideas brought in from the network is discussed.
opportunity and risk, seems essential
since the emergent nature of CAS systems requires a sustained
flow of resources. Removal of the resources will result in
a potentially irreversible collapse of the system - analogous to
death in humans. It then introduces the broad effects of change which includes opportunities and risks/uncertainties.
As a CAS grows opportunities become undermined so they must be acted on quickly.
Uncertainties are also transformed and relayed by the dynamic network. In particular the recombination of current and new ideas brought in from the network is discussed.
A related two thousand yearlong real-world
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 conflict This page describes the organizational forces that limit change.
It explains how to overcome
them when necessary.
between advocates of mono-theistic power
hierarchies and Epicurean This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Key research is
reviewed.
emergent
This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). Small
world and scale free networks are considered.
networks is 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.
outlined
by Greenblatt.
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.
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:
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.
Kevin Kruse's One Nation Under God
outlines how ever since the 1930s the US is the United States of America. corporate elite has tried to
benefit from integrating traditional mono-theistic hierarchies
into the US nation - 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.
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. John Holland's framework for representing complexity is outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory discussed at the site are presented.
Political systems
The presence of strategic levers, which alter the operation of amplifiers, presents an opportunity to agents in a position to use the levers to obtain a benefit. Kevin Philips develops the argument of Robert Heller's 1988 Washington Post article on the U.S. President's 'plunge protection team', the working group on Financial Markets. Protected by a presidential proclamation, he argues the secretive group was able to affect the global economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers.through a wide variety of actions including futures markets transactions is an operation which guarantees to complete a defined set of activities or return to the initial state. For a fee the postal service will ensure that a parcel is delivered to its recipient or will return the parcel to the sender. To provide the service it may have to undo the act of trying to deliver the parcel with a compensating action. Since the parcel could be lost or destroyed the service may have to return an equivalent value to the sender.
, as well as altering liquidity and U.S. short term interest rates. The U.S. residential
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 market
was a major focus. The investment banks creation of 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.
derivatives provided a key
lever. The
This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
alignment of agents across a The complex adaptive system (CAS)
nature of a value delivery system is first introduced. It's a network
of agents acting as relays.
The critical nature of hub agents and the difficulty of altering an aligned network is reviewed.
The nature of and exceptional opportunities created by platforms are discussed.
Finally an example of aligning a VDS is presented.
value delivery system typically
reinforces strategic amplifiers. The critical nature of hub agents and the difficulty of altering an aligned network is reviewed.
The nature of and exceptional opportunities created by platforms are discussed.
Finally an example of aligning a VDS is presented.
Charles Ferguson argues that the US power structure has become
highly corrupt.
Ferguson identifies key events which contributed to the transformation:
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.
Charles
Ferguson's Predator Nation details the alignment of the
political elite from 1980s to 2012. The development
of short term incentives
in response to the enhanced flow of capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). into investments
has helped sustain and broaden the effect. The impact on academia
undermines the impartiality of their 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
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.
The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Samuel
modeling is described as an approach.
models
of reality. Barton Gellman details the strategies used by Vice President
Cheney to align the global system with his economics, defense, and
energy goals.
Barton
Gellman's Angler illustrates former Vice President
Cheney's actions to increase the coherence of the US is the United States of America. government and its satellite
states. Jonathan Powell describes how the government of, the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair,
actually operated. Powell was Blair's only chief of
staff.
Jonathan Powell's The New
Machiavelli shows the effective but contrasting style of
Tony Blair. 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.
Matt Taibbi's Divide
demonstrates the alignment process occurring in the US justice
system. 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.
The whole issue of how to efficiently apply planning processes remains politically charged with
H. A. Hayek compares and contrasts collectivism and
libertarianism.
Hayek's
association of central planning and totalitarianism.
CAS theory demonstrates the distributed nature of emergent 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.
plans, but also highlights how This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
strategic alignment can still impact
freedom. 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.
John Doerr's Measure What
Matters describes a framework for developing goal networks
and managing alignment. Johnson & Kwak illustrate the
long standing political conflict over 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.
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:
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.
how
to manage the national debt. 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);
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.
Hayek argues generally 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 that
'all it can do is to show how complex structures carry within
themselves a means of correction that leads to further
evolutionary developments which are, however, in accordance with
their very nature, themselves unavoidably unpredictable.'
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.
Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve
illustrates the 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.
This page discusses the benefits of bringing agents and resources to the
dynamically best connected region of a complex adaptive system (CAS).
centralization of
philosophical plans in the western world between 400 AD is Anno Domini also referred to as common era (CE). and 1400 AD but the failure
to totally destroy a competing 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.
meme
encapsulated in the poem On the
Nature of Things. 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:
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.
Kevin
Kruse's One Nation Under God demonstrates the US corporate
elite's development of new alleles, one of multiple alternative forms of a schematic sequence with the same address on a schematic string. - 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.
used to strategically recapture global power and wealth is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker. It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche. . The elite's understanding of the power of such rules led to their opposition to the IMF is the International Monetary Fund developed as part of the Bretton Woods agreements to provide liquidity to national gold denominated reserve banks at times of stress in the global financial network - a shortage of a particular currency which was inhibiting trade; in support of a broader Bretton Woods framework designed so as to ensure that currencies did not become misaligned with one another, and were a fair representation of what things were worth. The IMF removed the need for nations to depend on private loans from commercial banks, such as Britain's dependence on J. P. Morgan during the 1920s and 30s. The agreement required each Bretton Woods signatory to provide a capital investment or 'quota' into the fund which would subsequently correspond to the amount that the country could borrow from the fund in times of financial stress. The top four countries and their quotas were set by IMF architect, Harry Dexter White, to match FDR's priorities:
- US - $2.9 billion, an amount the FDR administration could transfer from Exchange Stabilization Fund without any need to ask for Congress for funds.
- UK - $1.45 billion
- USSR - slightly less than UK quota
- China - less than USSR.
Hayek sees individuals of a species as operating to a pre-determined plan but he sees species & types as driven by a separate process of evolutionary history. The
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 strategies of CAS agents
reflect the unique nature of their history. Schemata are
not pre-determined. They enable rules and amplifiers that
support additional emergence without requiring causal
linkages. The limitation to well-defined species in
biology casts some doubt on Hayek's species argument, while This page discusses the impact of random events which once they
occur encourage a particular direction forward for a complex
adaptive system (CAS).
frozen accidents provide 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 with a consistent
explanation of the unpredictable results of CAS operation.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory discussed at the site are presented.
The presence of emergent systems implies a hierarchy of physical, chemical, molecules obtain chemical properties from the atoms from which they are composed and from the environment in which they exist. Being relatively small they are subject to phenomena which move them about, inducing collisions and possibly reactions with other molecules. AWF's Smiley simulates a chemical environment including associating the 'molecule' like strings with codelet based forces that allow the strings to react based on their component parts, sequence etc.
, and complex environments. These systems have
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.
self-assembled and include Russ Abbott explores the impact on science of epiphenomena and
the emergence of agents.
sophisticated models representing
their local environment. 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.
Sapolsky's
Behave describes how behaviors involve complex evolutionary
flows stretching across massive Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory builds on Sapolsky's details highlighting the strategies that evolution has captured to successfully enter niches we now occupy.
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
time
spans, geographies and cultures 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. 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: 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
- 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
- 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.
- Produces consciousness according to Dennet.
and into adulthood. He stresses the influence of early environmental signals.
Health care
The problem of effectively coping with disease and lack of resources has induced the formation of The structure and problems of the US
health care network is described in terms of complex adaptive
system (CAS) theory.
The network:
health
care 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.
This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). Small
world and scale free networks are considered.
network structures of
great complexity, M. Mitchell Waldrop describes a vision of complexity via: - Rich interactions that allow a system to undergo spontaneous self-organization
- Systems that are adaptive
- More predictability than chaotic systems by bringing order and chaos into
- Balance at the edge of chaos
Angus Deaton presents a
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.
great escape
from poverty and early death of the rich countries of the
world based on public
health is the proactive planning, coordination and execution of strategies to improve and safeguard the wellbeing of the public. Its global situation is discussed in The Great Escape by Deaton. Public health in the US is coordinated by the PHS federally but is mainly executed at the state and local levels. Public health includes: 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.
- Awareness campaigns about health threatening activities including: Smoking, Over-eating, Alcohol consumption, Contamination with poisons: lead; Joint damage from over-exercise;
- Research, monitoring and control of disease agents, processes and vectors by agencies including the CDC.
- Monitoring of the public's health by institutes including the NIH. This includes screening for cancer & heart disease.
- Development, deployment and maintenance of infrastructure including: sewers, water plants and pipes.
- Development, deployment and maintenance of vaccination strategies.
- Development, deployment and maintenance of fluoridation.
- Development, deployment and maintenance of family planning services.
- Regulation and constraint of foods, drugs and devices by agencies including the FDA.
. Peter Medawar describes, and frames,
Peter Medawar writes about key historic events in the evolution
of medical science.
significant
historical developments in medical science, including the
early phase (pre-Insulin)
interactions between suffers and doctors illustrating the
strategic contribution of 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.
evolved
amplifiers, The position and operations of different agents
within a complex adaptive system (CAS)
provide opportunities for strategic advantage. Examples of
CAS agents leveraging their relative positions are
described.
value chain position,
and This page discusses the strategy of confusing the control system
of a complex adaptive system (CAS).
unbalancing the mind. With
the development
of antibiotics a unique huge and transformative
infrastructure investment in US is the United States of America.
hospitals occurred, as
described by Atul Gawanda and set in historic context: 1920s,
1940s;
by Robert Gordon. Sonia Shah focuses on humanity's
responses to chronic problems, by looking deeply at the 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.
results of 500,000 years of coadaptation
in the 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 man and Plasmodium. Howard Friedman and Leslie
Martin show that personality differs in at least five key ways: - Extroversion-introversion - whether the person gains energy from socializing or retiring
- Neuroticism-stability - does a person worry or are they calm and self-satisfied
- Agreeableness-antagonism - is a person courteous & trusting or rude and suspicious
- Conscientiousness-un-directedness - is a person careful or careless
- Openness-non-openness - are they daring or conforming
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.
sustained health and
longevity - at least for affluent Americans. Atul
Gawande discusses the tension between 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.
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.
curing
and palliative care in old age in modern societies.
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.
The emergent nature of each human being from a set of billions of cells, constrains deterministic assessments of what the human and pathogenic interactions are in any disease process. Consequently
This web page reviews opportunities to find and capture new
niches based on studying fitness landscapes using complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
niche exploration has
been generally used. When a particular strategy appears
successful it is retained by the individual, family or network
of medical specialists. But that depends on the
effectiveness of the selection The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Samuel
modeling is described as an approach.
models
which seems limited. So the This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). Small
world and scale free networks are considered.
network
will depend for effectiveness on This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
selection
to abandon poor strategies and retain, and distribute effective
ones. 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.
Sapolsky's Behave
explains how long term stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory builds on Sapolsky's details highlighting the strategies that evolution has captured to successfully enter niches we now occupy.
- The short term response to the stressor
- activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. But when the stressor is
- long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:
- Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
- Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.
- Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
- BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.
- Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
- Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
- Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
- Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)
- During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
- Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.
This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
Phenotypic
alignment should be expected to support inefficiency if
the selection process is ineffective. Robert Pearl 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.
highlights the models induced in health
care. It is not surprising that the most significant
improvements in health have resulted from 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.
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 amplifiers such as
water treatment, and piped water supply operations, and changes
in agricultural and energy strategy which have, by chance,
undermined the environments supporting key disease
vectors. Barlett and Steele report on their investigations of the
Donald Barlett and James Steele write about their investigations
of the major problems afflicting US
health care as of 2006.
problems of the US health care network as
of 2006. The emergence of multiple 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.
evolutionary amplifiers, within this
network, supporting both
parasitism 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. , and conflicts between different amplifiers,
reduces overall efficiency. But the evolved amplifiers
also support This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
phenotypic alignment
which explains the persistence of the major nodes. Johnson
& Kwak argue that the aging and retirement of the baby
boomers will increase the problem of funding
the national debt. These cost pressures encouraged Geisinger
to leverage its control of a health care payer include four types: - From the 1930s the insurers Blue Cross and Blue Shield catalyzed health care activity by paying a daily per diem to hospitals for the diagnoses and treatments the hospital's dispensed. At their inception in 1966 Medicare and Medicaid followed this reimbursement model.
- From 1983 Medicare and Medicaid switched to the PPS reimbursement mechanism.
This forced alignment of the
supplier, diagnosis, treatment, billing and reimbursement
processes. The health care network is still
structurally aligned around PPS. Under scrutiny of
ProPAC and its successor MedPAC,
as well as pressure of the BBA
after 1997, the payments per DRG
have been steadily reduced until it was below the cost of
care, forcing hospitals to seek margin from their other
payers. Medicare outlier
payments benefited hospitals that inflated charges and
thus became eligible.
- Employers as they experienced cost shifting from the hospital's increased product charges moved their employees over to managed care based payment.
- Private payers pay hospitals directly for their diagnosis and treatment. Typically this group has little power. There are default rates for private payers - typically 40% of billed charges that are not covered by a fixed payment or a fee schedule. For the uninsured poor until 2004 they obtained little discount on the hospital's chargemaster list price, because insurers and CMS required to be charged the lowest value offered to any patients. Medicare has now relaxed this constraint.
This presentation reviews just-in-time manufacturing with
analysis based on complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
JIT concepts in a 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:
Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments on them. We frame their ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
radical reengineering of its business.
The implementation of the ACA is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Obama care). In part it is designed to make the health care system costs grow slower. It aims to do this by: increasing competition between insurers and providers, offering free preventative services to limit the development of serious illnesses, constraining patients' use of expensive services, constraining the growth of payments to Medicare providers and piloting new ways for PCPs to manage patient care to keep patients away from costly E.D.s. It funds these changes with increased taxes on the wealthy. It follows an architecture developed by Heritage Action's Butler, Moffit, Haislmaier extended by White House OMB health policy advisor Ezekiel Emanuel & architect Jeanne Lambrew. The Obama administration drafting team included: Bob Kocher; allowing it to integrate ideas from: Dartmouth Institute's Elliot Fischer (ACO). The ACA did not include a Medicare buy in (May 2016). The law includes: - 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.
- Alterations, in title I, to how health care is paid for and who is covered. This has been altered to ensure
- Americans with preexisting conditions get health insurance cover - buttressed by mandating community rating and
- That they are constrained by the individual mandate to have insurance but the requirement was supported by subsidies for the poor (those with incomes between 100 & 400% of the federal poverty line).
- Children, allowed to, stay on their parents insurance until 26 years of age.
- Medicare solvency improvements.
- Medicaid expansion, in title II: to poor with incomes below 138% of the federal poverty line; an expansion which was subsequently constrained by the Supreme Court's ruling making expansion an optional state government decision.
- Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) which was enforced by CMS mandated rules finalized in 2011 and effected starting Oct 2012.
- Medical home models.
- Community transformation grants support the transformation of low income stressed neighborhoods to improve their lifestyles and health.
- Qualifications for ACOs. Organizations must:
- Establish a formal legal structure with shared governance which allows the ACO to distribute shared savings payments to participating providers and suppliers.
- Participate in the MSSP for three or more years.
- Have a management structure.
- Have clinical and administrative systems.
- Include enough PCPs to care for Medicare FFS patient population (> 5000) assigned to the ACO.
- Be accountable for the quality and cost of care provided to the Medicare FFS patient population.
- Have defined processes to promote: Evidence-based medicine, Patient-centeredness, Quality reporting, Cost management, Coordination of care;
- Demonstrate it meets HHS patient-centeredness criteria including use of patient and caregiver assessments and individualized care plans.
- CMMI Medicare payment experimentation.
- Requirements that pharmaceutical companies must report payments made to physicians (Sunshine Act).
- A requirement that chain restaurants must report calorie counts on their menus.
act has encouraged adaptation 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. of the network but many of the problems identified still persist.
Critical variables include: tax policy, reduced dependency of US elites on the people, education cost & access, smoking (life expectancy is a measure of the average life time of a new born baby. Without public health assistance many children die in the first five years of life significantly lowering the life expectancy of the whole group. There are representational and data capture problems with the model:
- Not knowing the risk of dying in the newborn's future, demographers use the risks present at that time to predict impacts in the future of the person. No adjustment can be made for increased wellbeing.
- Saving the lives of children has a far larger effect on increasing life expectancy than extending the lives of the elderly
- Impacts that occur in a particular year, such as a epidemic or pandemic, are treated as permanent effects for that years life expectancy even though they may be handled by public health strategies and hence be transients. For life expectancy calculations in subsequent years the impact is ignored.
- Programs that reduced the impacts of infectious diseases, such as antibiotics and vaccine deployment, have reduced the variability of life expectancy following their introduction.
- Vital registration systems gather accurate data for life expectancy. But most countries do not have the infrastructure and instead estimates are generated from demographic and health surveys.
consumption, parasitic & structural prioritization of health care over public health and infrastructure, mass production transactional health care architecture, strategic avoidance of profit control affecting: hospital pricing, drug pricing, technology deployment arms race, private company dominance; unstable hierarchy and yearly health insurance contracts.
Education
Humans have evolved to educate their children as Steven Pinker explains. This Matt Ridley demonstrates the creative effect of man on the
World. He highlights:
intergenerational
transfer of memes, processes and tools, supports
increasing living standards suggests Matt
Ridley. An elaborate - 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
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.
evolutionary
amplifier has developed to support education within nation
states, but the infrastructure 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:
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?
needs
some rework as explained
by Sal Khan & by
Christensen, Grossman & Hwang. Sapolsky
describes how the complex adaptive nature of human behavior can limit
the benefits of education due to inequality induced long term stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. - 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?
- The short term response to the stressor
- activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. But when the stressor is
- long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:
- Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
- Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.
- Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
- BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.
- Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
- Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
- Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
- Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)
- During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
- Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.
Creativity & Innovation cycles
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).
Good ideas are defined by Steven
Johnson as integrations that enhance creativity and
leverage innovation is the economic realization of invention and combinatorial exaptation. While highly innovative, monopolies: AT&T, IBM; usually have limited economic reach, constraining productivity. This explains the use of regulation, or even its threat, that can check their power and drive the creations across the economy. . Walter Isaacson
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.
agrees noting the
significant contribution of liberal arts. Douglas
Hofstadter promotes understanding how imagination
works. Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agent networks and collaboration are discussed.
The capturing of ideas and strategies is performed by
Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic
operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination.
The nature of the operations is described.
schematic operators which integrate
the best into the 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.
germ-line schemata.
That enables the development 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,
built to implement and execute the strategies and promote the
ideas. Dehaene
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.
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.
explains how writing and reading were
sculpted to fit with our evolved mechanisms for 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.
This page discusses the interdependence of perception and
representation in a complex adaptive system (CAS). Hofstadter
and Mitchell's research with Copycat is
reviewed.
perception & representation.
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:
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?
Successful education
reflects this. Books sequestered in libraries store - 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?
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.
memes allowing for their epistatic reemergence 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.
as illustrated by Stephen
Greenblatt. 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.
Adults have
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.
evolved to cope rapidly
and effectively with life's problems.
Developmental is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete. strategies are
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.
typically shutdown in
adults to support the optimizations needed to respond
fast. Increasing impacts to the global economy
The ' 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' was a popular focus
of attention in business during the boom and bust of the tech
bubble. In defining the system that supports the new economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. some insights emerge of what happened to build the bubble and subsequent collapse. Sven Beckert explains how the global economy emerged from the
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.
transformation of cotton goods production
and trading as Europe projected its power and influence
across the globe. Robert
Gordon 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.
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:
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.
details the economic 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.
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 within the US is the United States of America. . Sal Khan
explains how 19th century political and social engineering
helped Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support the emergence of the systems. Examples of constraints are discussed.
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:
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?
transform the German and
American population into ubiquitous compliant industrial
workers. Ed Conway
describes how in 1944 - 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?
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.
memes This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolved
to support the This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Key research is
reviewed.
emergent global
economic leadership aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group. John Adair developed a leadership methodology based on the three-circles model. by the American state. These memes compete successfully by displacing alleles, one of multiple alternative forms of a schematic sequence with the same address on a schematic string.
evolved to defend the waning English state and the previous merchant bank based
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.
catalysts.
Charles
Ferguson explains how Charles Ferguson argues that the US power structure has become
highly corrupt.
Ferguson identifies key events which contributed to the transformation:
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.
from the
1980s deregulation, financial engineering and information
technology enable financial services based 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
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.
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.
evolved amplifiers to empower &
enrich the financial and political global elite. Matt
Ridley argues that the Matt Ridley demonstrates the creative effect of man on the
World. He highlights:
emergent
innovation of specialists in trading networks is a
rational reason to be optimistic of continued progress over the
next century. Counter-intuitively he argues that innovation
supported
by fossil fuel resources has reduced the stress on the
environment even as he undermines
the currently popular green energy strategies. Brynjolfsson
and McAfee - 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
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.
highlight the way
"Moore's law" is exponentially increasing the impact of
technologies. Disagreeing with Gordon they assert this
should increase wealth is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker. It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche.
creation. But the wealth and power concentrates in the
major network nodes. And the huge expansion of the human
population has resulted in what E.O.
Wilson terms a Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory.
E. O. Wilson reviews the effect of man on the natural world to
date and explains how the two systems can coexist most
effectively.
resource bottleneck
which will be a challenge to overcome. Confidence is
further diminished when one considers how Wilson's goals and
strategies and Barton Gellman details the strategies used by Vice President
Cheney to align the global system with his economics, defense, and
energy goals.
Cheney's seem so
disjoint. The US is the United States of America. economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers.
sits within a constraining national network. Various influential aspects of this joint structure have been altered since the 1970s concentrating power with the wealthy is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker. It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche. :
- The education network has become increasingly costly to attend. Academics advocate for education, but the majority of students has to take on so much debt they become captive to the economy to just maintain their debt financing commitments. Economists and their wealthy is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker. It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche. patrons leverage equilibrium models of the economy that hide the true nature of the restructuring.
- Little transport infrastructure integration with poor
& collapsed areas. Freeway
network was setup to integrate with wealthy suburbs.
Poor, inner city centers were left mostly isolated from the
upgraded transport infrastructure. Investment in
public transport was replaced by a focus on road and
automobile development.
- The justice system's 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.conservative shift and leniency to powerful corporations and increasing controls over the poor: TANF is the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program of the PRWORA. It provided temporary assistance while encouraging people to seek employment by requiring them to get a job within 24 months of receiving aid. Some states allow children to receive aid for longer periods.
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.
shifted federal cash welfare away from the poor to a shrinking state controlled block grant, no complete employment contract clauses, forced arbitration. - Union power was undermined by: individualism,
deregulation that increased industry competition using
non-union lower pay labor, offshoring, 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.automation, court action; leaving collective power weakened.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory.
- Super-power competition collapsed and dependence on the
masses to fight wars was 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.transiently removed. Politicians' dependence on large campaign donations: Citizens United; to capture and maintain office, ensures all political parties hear the wealthy speak, undermining democratic ballot pressure. Tax policy has shifted public capital back to private hands. The tax cuts and jobs act of 2017 is the Republican tax cut signed into law by President Trump. The act includes:
- Permanent tax cuts for corporations
- Temporary tax cuts for individuals expiring in 2025; and will increase the size of the economy 0.7% between 2018 and 2028. It will add $1.8 trillion to the deficits during that period from reduced tax revenue and higher interest payments.
- Repeal of the individual mandate of the ACA.
- Limiting deductions for state and local income tax and property taxes - impacting high tax Democratic leaning states
- Reducing the AMT for individuals and eliminating it for corporations
- Reducing the number of states affected by the estate tax
- The civil war occurred across a meta-ethnic frontier
between the Hamiltonian industrializing states and the
Jeffersonian 'pastoralists'.
- Following the amplification of the northern industries by the civil war, the first Grant administration allowed wealth and power to concentrate in senators associated with industry: Roscoe Conkling, Oliver Morton, Zachariah Chandler, Simon Cameron; within northern states, associating these senators with reconstruction. As the traditional northern 'Brahmin' senators became threatened by the new wealth, they joined with southern senators, focusing their political animus on black 'threats.' Eventually progressives: Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft; weakened the industrial rings and their senate power brokers.
- US economy transformed between 1870 and 1920 leveraging
land grants to support development of literate, highly
mobile, men who worked in the newly developed urban
factories having moved into network
connected homes. These homes acted as 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 amplifiers: supporting purchase and use of recently developed
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.time saving devices.
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
- 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
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- 1920s
to 1950s were exceptionally high growth:
- Great Depression encouraged the US to constrain immigration
- New Deal was FDR's political platform to help the poor, support the economy and reform the banking system. The architects included Henry Morgenthau, Harry Hopkins, and Frances Perkins, who leveraged Al Smith's social welfare reform program plan. The New Deal:
- Included liberal legislation: Emergency Banking Relief Act, Banking Act, SSA, Securities Act, Securities Exchange Act, National Housing Act, NIRA, National Labor Relations Act, FLSA, RTAA, Wealth Tax Act;
- Used Presidential executive orders,
- Enhanced the role of federal government in promoting economic growth with programs supporting:
- Reformed trade policy with the RTAA.
- Blocked deflation by limiting economic competition with the NRA.
- Rural standard of living through electrification with the REA and TVA.
- Reduced unemployment with the WPA and CCC.
- Made taxation progressive through the Wealth Tax Act, capturing private wealth and allowing income to flow to the emergent middle class.
- Included liberal legislation: Emergency Banking Relief Act, Banking Act, SSA, Securities Act, Securities Exchange Act, National Housing Act, NIRA, National Labor Relations Act, FLSA, RTAA, Wealth Tax Act;
- Second World War encouraged owners, managers and workers
to partner in improving efficiency and effectiveness of
manufacturing processes. And lack of labor
competition encouraged paying of living wages, which then
supported purchasing of goods helping the economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers.
grow further.
- Destruction of Europe and Japan in the Second World War
provided an additional market for US goods after the
war. Marshall Plan surplus capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). transfer catalyzed, an infrastructure amplifier. the flow
of US goods into Europe and Japan.
- Development of German manufacturing limited US access to
the European market during the 1960s and early 1970s and
trapped dollars in Europe undermining the 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.Bretton Woods system. Once President Nixon floated the US currency, floating exchange rates destabilized the European economies.
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.
- During Carter's presidency Middle East oil shocks caused
inflation in the US and Europe. Federal Reserve chair
Volcker responded by abandoning the New Deal was FDR's political platform to help the poor, support the economy and reform the banking system. The architects included Henry Morgenthau, Harry Hopkins, and Frances Perkins, who leveraged Al Smith's social welfare reform program plan. The New Deal:
- Included liberal legislation: Emergency Banking Relief Act, Banking Act, SSA, Securities Act, Securities Exchange Act, National Housing Act, NIRA, National Labor Relations Act, FLSA, RTAA, Wealth Tax Act;
- Used Presidential executive orders,
- Enhanced the role of federal government in promoting economic growth with programs supporting:
- Reformed trade policy with the RTAA.
- Blocked deflation by limiting economic competition with the NRA.
- Rural standard of living through electrification with the REA and TVA.
- Reduced unemployment with the WPA and CCC.
- Made taxation progressive through the Wealth Tax Act, capturing private wealth and allowing income to flow to the emergent middle class.
- Push American interest rates up much higher than those of other linked economies, attracting global free capital to the US dollar.
- Ensure that Wall Street offered a more lucrative market for investors than London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, or Paris.
- Support US business that was impacted by this costly high interest rate environment by supporting the reduction of wage costs. Once Volcker became chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1979, he executed the strategies.
- Included liberal legislation: Emergency Banking Relief Act, Banking Act, SSA, Securities Act, Securities Exchange Act, National Housing Act, NIRA, National Labor Relations Act, FLSA, RTAA, Wealth Tax Act;
- Centuries old, persisting, political constraints limited
black and Latino access to housing and education (May
2016) amplifiers, leaving a lasting wealth gap, making
these poor communities especially prone to collapse.
- The deregulated
financial network encourages predatory schemes focused
on poor: 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.homeowners, renters (Aug 2017), students - have taken on $1.4 trillion in education debt, debtors (Jul 2016), injured (Jun 2018); limiting opportunities to escape poverty and maintaining collapsed niches.
Charles Ferguson argues that the US power structure has become highly corrupt.Financial weapons of mass destruction destabilize the capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). infrastructure, but by ignoring moral hazard involves responding to a generalized problem by rewarding those who caused the problem.
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
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.
- In health care it includes the over use of subsidized treatments and medicines.
- For the US economy it includes using tax revenue to underwrite the losses induced by the reckless behavior of financiers and the politicians and regulators who enabled them.
behavior.
- High health care prices: suck
state funding away from public education, and increase the
risk to the majority of becoming indebted. Foreign
born nurses & doctors are encouraged to work in US
health care increasing labor competition. And
- Corporate outsourcing, offshoring, and shift to the 'gig'
economy have increased the competition to US workers
employed directly.
We hope you enjoy the site and look forward to your comments.
.
 Politics, Economics & Evolutionary Psychology |
Business Physics |
 |
integrating quality appropriate for each market |
This page looks at schematic structures
and their uses. It discusses a number of examples:
As a working example it presents part of the contents and schematic details from the Adaptive Web Framework (AWF)'s operational plan.
Finally it includes a section presenting our formal representation of schematic goals.
Each goal has a series of associated complex adaptive system (CAS) strategy strings.
These goals plus strings are detailed for various chess and business examples.
Strategy |
Design |
- Schematic ideas are recombined in creativity.
- Similarly designers take ideas and rules about materials and components and combine them.
- Schematic Recipes help to standardize operations.
- Modular components are combined into strategies for use in business plans and business models.
As a working example it presents part of the contents and schematic details from the Adaptive Web Framework (AWF)'s operational plan.
Finally it includes a section presenting our formal representation of schematic goals.
Each goal has a series of associated complex adaptive system (CAS) strategy strings.
These goals plus strings are detailed for various chess and business examples.
This page uses an example to illustrate how:
Program Management |
Home
- A business can gain focus from targeting key customers,
- Business planning activities performed by the whole organization can build awareness, empowerment and coherence.
- A program approach can ensure strategic alignment.
Profiles | Papers | Glossary | E-mail us