Constraining happiness

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.

We are products of complexity, but our evolution has focused our understanding on the situation of hunter gatherers on the African savanna. As humanity has become more powerful we can significantly impact the systems we depend on. But we struggle to comprehend them. So this web frame explores significant real world complex adaptive systems (CAS): Assumptions of randomness & equilibrium allowed the wealthy & powerful to expand the size and leverage of stock markets, by placing at risk the insurance and retirement savings of the working class. The assumptions are wrong but remain entrenched. The US nation was built from two divergent political views of: Jefferson and Hamilton. It also reflects the development of competing ancient ideas of Epicurus and Cyril. But the collapse of Bretton Woods forced Wall Street into a position of power, while the middle and working class were abandoned by the elites. Housing financed with cash from oil and derivative transactions helped hide the shift. Most US health care is still operating the way cars built in the 1940s did. Geisinger is an example of better solution. But transforming the whole network is a challenge. And public health investment has proved far more beneficial. Helping our children learn to be effective adults is part of our humanity, but we have created a robust but deeply flawed education system. Better alternatives have emerged. Spoken language, reading and writing emerged allowing our good ideas to become a second genetic material. The emergence of the global economy in the 1600s and its subsequent development; It explains how the examples relate to each other, why we all have trouble effectively comprehending these systems and explains how our inexperience with CAS can lead to catastrophe. It outlines the items we see as key to the system and why. Example systems frame
Dietrich Dorner argues complex adaptive systems (CAS) are hard to understand and manage. He provides examples of how this feature of these systems can have disastrous consequences for their human managers. Dorner suggests this is due to CAS properties psychological impact on our otherwise successful mental strategic toolkit. To prepare to more effectively manage CAS, Dorner recommends use of: Effective iterative planning and Practice with complex scenario simulations; tools which he reviews. Complexity catastrophes
E. O. Wilson reviews the effect of man on the natural world to date and explains how the two systems can coexist most effectively. Adaptive ecology
Barton Gellman details the strategies used by Vice President Cheney to align the global system with his economics, defense, and energy goals. US vds alignment
Kevin Kruse argues that from 1930 onwards the corporate elite and the Republican party have developed and relentlessly executed strategies to undermine Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Their successful strategy used the credibility of conservative religious leaders to: Demonstrate religious issues with the New Deal. Integrate the corporate elite and evangelicals. Use the power of corporate advertising and Hollywood to reeducate the American people to view the US as historically religious and the New Deal and liberalism as anti-religious socialism. Focus the message through evangelicals including Vereide and Graham. Centralize the strategy through President Eisenhower. Add religious elements to mainstream American symbols: money, pledge; Push for prayer in public school Push Congress to promote prayer Make elections more about religious positions. Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Strategy is the art of the possible. But it also depends on persistence. Inventing Christian America
Charles Ferguson argues that the US power structure has become highly corrupt. Ferguson identifies key events which contributed to the transformation: Junk bonds, Derivative deregulation, CMOs, ABS and analyst fraud, Financial network deregulation, Financial network consolidation, Short term incentives Subsequently the George W. Bush administration used the situation to build a global bubble, which Wall Street leveraged. The bursting of the bubble: managed by the Bush Administration and Bernanke Federal Reserve; was advantageous to some. Ferguson concludes that the restructured and deregulated financial services industry is damaging to the American economy. And it is supported by powerful, incentive aligned academics. He sees the result being a rigged system. Ferguson offers his proposals for change and offers hope that a charismatic young FDR will appear. Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Once the constraints are removed from CAS amplifiers, it becomes advantageous to leverage the increased flows. And it is often relatively damaging not to participate. Corruption and parasitism can become entrenched. Financial WMD
Matt Taibbi describes the phenotypic alignment of the American justice system. The result he explains relentlessly grinds the poor and undocumented into resources to be constrained, consumed and ejected. Even as it supports and aligns the financial infrastructure into a potent weapon capable of targeting any company or nation to extract profits and leave the victim deflated. Taibbi uses five scenarios to provide a broad picture of the: activities, crimes, policing, prosecutions, court processes, prisons and deportation network. The scenarios are: Undocumented people's neighborhoods, Poor neighborhoods, Welfare recipients, Credit card debtors and Financial institutions. Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. The alignment of the justice system reflects a set of long term strategies and responses to a powerful global arms race that the US leadership intends to win. Aligned justice
Jonathan Powell describes how the government of, the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, actually operated. Powell was Blair's only chief of staff. Mechanics of power
H. A. Hayek compares and contrasts collectivism and libertarianism. Libertarianism
John Doerr argues that company leaders and their organizations, hugely benefit from Andy Grove's OKRs. He promotes strategies that help OKR success: Focus, Align, Track, Stretch; replaces yearly performance reviews, and provides illustrative success stories. Doerr stresses Dov Seidman's view that employees are adaptive and will respond to what they see being measured. He asserts culturally supported OKRs/CFR processes will be transformative. Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Doerr's architecture is tailored for the startups KPCB invests in. It is a subset of the general case of schematic plans, genetic operators and Shewhart cycles that drive all CAS. Doerr's approach limits support of learning and deemphasizes the association to planning. Startup PDCA
David Bodanis illustrates how disruptive effects can take hold. While the French revolution had many driving forces including famine and oppression the emergence of a new philosophical vision ensured that thoughtful leaders were constrained and conflicted in their responses to the crisis. Voltaire's disruptive network
Constraining happiness
Isaacson uses the historic development of the global cloud of web services to explore Ada Lovelace's ideas about thinking machines and poetic science. He highlights the value of computer augmented human creativity and the need for liberal arts to fulfill the process. Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agent networks and collaboration are discussed. Arts technology & intelligence
Haikonen juxtaposes the philosophy and psychology of consciousness with engineering practice to refine the debate on the hard problem of consciousness. During the journey he describes the architecture of a robot that highlights the potential and challenges of associative neural networks. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory is then used to illustrate the additional requirements and constraints of self-assembling evolved conscious animals. It will be seen that Haikonen's neural architecture, Smiley's Copycat architecture and molecular biology's intracellular architecture leverage the same associative properties. Associatively integrated robots
Good ideas are successful because they build upon prior developments that have been successfully implemented. Johnson demonstrates that they are phenotypic expressions of memetic plans subject to the laws of complex adaptive systems (CAS). Developing ideas
A government sanctioned monopoly supported the construction of a superorganism American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). Within this Bell Labs was at the center of three networks: The evolving global scientific network. The Bell telephone network. And The military industrial network deploying 'fire and missile control' systems. Bell Labs strategically leveraged each network to create an innovation engine. They monitored the opportunities to leverage the developing ideas, reorganizing to replace incumbent opposition and enable the creation and growth of new ideas. Once the monopoly was dismantled, AT&T disrupted. Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the innovation mechanisms are discussed. Strategic innovation
Roger Cohen's New York Times opinion about the implications of BREXIT is summarized. His ideas are then framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory and reviewed. BREXIT
Scott Galloway argues that Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google are monopolists that trade workers for technology. Monopolies that he argues should be broken up to ensure the return of a middle class. Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on these arguments assuming they relate to a complex adaptive system (CAS). While Scott's issue is highly significant his analysis conflicts with relevant CAS history and theory. Monopoly job killers
The IPO of Netscape is defined as the key emergent event of the New Economy by Michael Mandel. Following the summary of Mandel's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted. New economy
Ed Conway argues that Bretton Woods produced a unique set of rules and infrastructure for supporting the global economy. It was enabled by the experience of Keynes and White during and after the First World War, their dislike of the Gold Standard, the necessity of improving the situation between the wars and the opportunity created by the catastrophe of the Second World War. He describes how it was planned and developed. How it emerged from the summit. And he shows how the opportunity inevitably allowed the US to replace the UK at the center of the global economy. Like all plans there are mistakes and Conway takes us through them and how the US recovered the situation as best it could. And then Conway describes the period after Bretton Woods collapsed. He explains what followed and also compares the relative performance of the various periods before during and after Bretton Woods. Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments from the perspective of Complex Adaptive System (CAS) theory. Conway's book illustrates the rule making and infrastructure that together build an evolved amplifier. He shows the strategies at play of agents that were for and against the development and deployment of the system. And The Summit provides a key piece of the history of our global economic CAS. Bretton woods
A key agent in the 1990 - 2008 housing expansion Countrywide is linked into the residential mortgage value delivery system (VDS) by Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla. But they show the VDS was full of amplifiers and control points. With no one incented to apply the brakes the bubble grew and burst. Following the summary of Muolo and Padilla's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted. Housing amplifiers
Satyajit Das uses an Indonesian company's derivative trades to introduce us to the workings of the international derivatives system. Das describes the components of the value delivery system and the key transactions. He demonstrates how the system interacted with emerging economies expanding them, extracting profits and then moving on as the induced bubbles burst. Following Das's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted. Derivative systems
Johnson & Kwak argue that expanding the national debt provides a hedge against unforeseen future problems, as long as creditors are willing to continue lending. They illustrate different approaches to managing the debt within the US over its history and of the eighteenth century administrations of England and France. The US embodies two different political and economic systems which approach the national debt differently: Taxes to support a sinking fund to ensure credit to leverage fiscal power in: Wars, Pandemics, Trade disputes, Hurricanes, Social programs; Starting with Hamilton, Lincoln & Chase, Wilson, FDR; Low taxes, limited infrastructure, with risk assumed by individuals: Advocated by President's Jefferson & Madison, Reagan, George W. Bush (Gingrich); Johnson & Kwak develop a model of what the US government does. They argue that the conflicting sinking fund and low tax approaches leaves the nation 'stuck in the middle' with a future problem. And they offer their list of 'first principles' to help assess the best approach for moving from 2012 into the future. They conclude the question is still political. They hope it can be resolved with an awareness of their detailed explanations. They ask who is willing to push all the coming risk onto individuals. Following our summary of their arguments RSS frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Historically developing within the global cotton value delivery system, key CAS features are highlighted. National debt
Robert Gordon argues that the inventions of the second industrial revolution were the foundation for American economic growth. Gordon shows how flows of people into difficult rural America built a population base which then took the opportunity to move on to urban settings: Houses, Food in supermarkets, Clothes in department stores; that supported increasing productivity and standard of living. The deployment of nationwide networks: Rail, Road, Utilities; terminating in the urban housing and work places allowing the workers to leverage time saving goods and services, which helped grow the economy. Gordon describes the concomitant transformation of: Communications and advertising Credit and finance Public health and the health care network Health insurance Education Social and welfare services Counter intuitively the constraints introduced before and in the Great Depression and the demands of World War 2 provide the amplifiers that drive the inventions deeply and fully into every aspect of the economy between 1940 and 1970 creating the exceptional growth and standard of living of post war America. Subsequently the rate of growth was limited until the shift of women into the workplace and the full networking of voice and data supported the Internet and World Wide Web completed the third industrial revolution, but the effects were muted by the narrow reach of the technologies. The development of Big Data, Robots, and Artificial Intelligence may support additional growth, but Gordon is unconvinced because of the collapse of the middle class. Following our summary of Gordon's book RSS frames his arguments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. American growth
Carl Menger argues that the market induced the emergence of money based on the attractive features of precious metals. He compares the potential for government edicts to create money but sees them as lacking. Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. With two hundred years of additional knowledge we conclude that precious metals are not as attractive as Menger asserts. Government backed promissory notes are analogous to: Other evolved CAS forms of ubiquitous high energy transaction intermediates and Schematic strategies that are proving optimal in supporting survival and replication in the currently accessible niches. Emergence of money
Eric Beinhocker sets out to answer a question Adam Smith developed in the Wealth of Nations: what is wealth? To do this he replaces traditional economic theory, which is based on the assumption that an economy is a system in equilibrium, with complexity economics in which the economy is modeled as a complex adaptive system (CAS). He introduces Sugerscape to illustrate an economic CAS model in action. And then he explains the major features of a CAS economy: Dynamics, Agents, Networks, Emergence, and Evolution. Building on complexity economics Beinhocker reviews how evolution applies to the economy to build wealth. He explains how design spaces map strategies to instances of physical and social technologies. And he identifies the interactors and selection mechanism of economic evolution. This allows Beinhocker to develop a new definition of wealth. In the rest of the book Beinhocker looks at the consequences of adopting complexity economics for business and society: Strategy, Organization, Finance, & Politics & Policy. Following our summary of his arguments, RSS explores his conclusions and aligns Beinhocker's model of CAS with the CAS theory and evidence we leverage. Economic complexity
Sven Beckert describes the historic transformation of the growing, spinning, weaving, manufacture of cotton goods and their trade over time. He describes the rise of a first global commodity, its dependence on increasing: military power, returns for the control points in the value delivery system(VDS), availability of land and labor to work it including slaves. He explains how cotton offered the opportunity for industrialization further amplifying the productive capacity of the VDS and the power of the control points. This VDS was quickly copied. The increased capacity of the industrialized cotton complex adaptive system (CAS) required more labor to operate the machines. Beckert describes the innovative introduction of wages and the ways found to mobilize industrial labor. Beckert describes the characteristics of the industrial cotton CAS which made it flexible enough to become globally interconnected. Slavery made the production system so cost effective that all prior structures collapsed as they interconnected. So when the US civil war blocked access to the major production nodes in the American Deep South the CAS began adapting. Beckert describes the global reconstruction that occurred and the resulting destruction of the traditional ways of life in the global countryside. This colonial expansion further enriched and empowered the 'western' nation states. Beckert explains how other countries responded by copying the colonial strategies and creating the opportunities for future armed conflict among the original colonialists and the new upstarts. Completing the adaptive shifts Beckert describes the advocates for industrialization in the colonized global south and how over time they joined the global cotton CAS disrupting the early western manufacturing nodes and creating the current global CAS dominated by merchants like Wal-Mart pulling goods through a network of clothing manufacturers, spinning and weaving factories, and growers competing with each other on cost. Following our summary of Beckert's book, RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory. The transformation of disconnected peasant farmers, pastoral warriors and their lands into a supply chain for a highly profitable industrial CAS required the development over time: of military force, global transportation and communication networks, perception and representation control networks, capital stores and flows, models, rules, standards and markets; along with the support at key points of: barriers, disruption, and infrastructure and evolved amplifiers. The emergent system demonstrates the powerful constraining influence of extended phenotypic alignment. Globalization from cotton
The structure and problems of the US health care network is described in terms of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. The network: Is deeply embedded in the US nation state. It reflects the conflict between two opposing visions for the US: high tax with safety net or low tax without. The emergence of a parasitic elite supported by tax policy, further constrains the choices available to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the network. The US is optimized to sell its citizens dangerous levels of: salt, sugar, cigarettes, guns, light, cell phones, opioids, costly education, global travel, antibacterials, formula, foods including endocrine disrupters; Accepting the US controlled global supply chain's offered goods & services results in: debt, chronic stress, amplified consumption and toxic excess, leading to obesity, addiction, driving instead of walking, microbiome collapse; Is incented to focus on localized competition generating massive & costly duplication of services within physician based health care operations instead of proven public health strategies. This process drives increasing research & treatment complexity and promotes hope for each new technological breakthrough. Is amplified by the legislatively structured separation and indirection of service development, provision, reimbursement and payment. Is impacted by the different political strategies for managing the increasing cost of health care for the demographic bulge of retirees. Is presented with acute and chronic problems to respond to. As currently setup the network is tuned to handle acute problems. The interactions with patients tend to be transactional. Includes a legislated health insurance infrastructure which is: Costly and inefficient Structured around yearly contracts which undermine long-term health goals and strategies. Is supported by increasingly regulated HCIT which offers to improve data sharing and quality but has entrenched commercial EHR products deep within the hospital systems. Is maintained, and kept in alignment, by massive network effects across the: Hospital platform based sub-networks connecting to Physician networks Health insurance networks - amplified by ACA narrow network legislation Hospital clinical supply and food production networks Medical school and academic research network and NIH Global transportation network Public health networks Health care IT supply network Health care
Deaton describes the wellbeing of people around the world today. He explains the powerful benefit of public health strategies and the effect of growth in material wellbeing but also the corrosive effects of aid. Following our summary of Deaton's arguments RSS comments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. The situation he describes is complex including powerful amplifiers, alignment and incentives that overlap broadly with other RSS summaries of adaptations of: The biosphere, Politics, Economics, Philosophy and Health care. Improving wellbeing
Donald Barlett and James Steele write about their investigations of the major problems afflicting US health care as of 2006. Problems of US health care
Glenn Steele & David Feinberg review the development of the modern Geisinger healthcare business after its near collapse following the abandoned merger with Penn State AMC. After an overview of the business, they describe how a calamity unfolding around them supported building a vision of a better US health care network. And they explain: How they planned out the transformation, Leveraging an effective governance structure, Using a strategy to gain buy in, Enabling reengineering at the clinician patient interface. Implementing the reengineering for acute, chronic & hot spot care; to help the patients and help the physicians. Geisinger's leverage of biologics. Reengineering healing with ProvenExperience. Where Geisinger is headed next. Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments on them. We frame their ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. E2E insured quality care
Robert Pearl explains the perspectives of a health care leader and son who know that the current health care network interacts with human behavior to induce a poorly performing system that caused his father's death. But he is confident that these problem perceptions can be changed. Once that occurs he asserts the network will become more integrated, coordinated, collaborative, better led, and empathetic to their patients. The supporting technology infrastructure will be made highly interoperable. All that will reduce medical errors and make care more cost effective. Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments on them. We frame his ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS) theory including synergistic examples of these systems in operation. The health care network is built out of emergent human agents. All agents must model the signals they perceive to represent and respond to them. Pinker explains how this occurs. Sapolsky explains why fear and hierarchy are so significant. He includes details of Josh Green's research on morality and death. Charles Ferguson highlights the pernicious nature of financial incentives. Bad medical models
US healthcare is ripe for disruption. Christensen, Grossman and Hwang argue that technologies are emerging which will support low cost business models that will undermine the current network. Applying complex adaptive system (CAS) theory to these arguments suggests that the current power hierarchy can effectively resist these progressive forces. Disrupting health care
Atul Gawande writes about the opportunity for a thirty per cent improvement in quality in medicine by organizing to deploy as agent based teams using shared schematic plans and distributed signalling or as he puts it the use of checklists. With vivid examples from a variety of situations including construction, air crew support and global health care Gawande illustrates the effects of complexity and how to organize to cope with it. Following the short review RSS additionally relates Gawande's arguments to its models of complex adaptive systems (CAS) positioning his discussion within the network of US health care, contrasting our view of complexity, comparing the forces shaping his various examples and reviewing facets of complex failures. Complexity checklists
Friedman and Martin leverage the lifelong data collected on 1,528 bright individuals selected by Dr. Lewis Terman starting in 1921, to understand what aspects of the subjects' lives significantly affected their longevity. Looking broadly across each subject's: Personality, Education, Parental impacts, Energy levels, Partnering, Careers, Religion, Social networks, Gender, Impact from war and trauma; Friedman and Martin are able to develop a set of model pathways, which each individual could be seen to select and travel along. Some paths led to the traveler having a long life. Others were problematic. The models imply that the US approach to health and wellness should focus more on supporting the development and selection of beneficial pathways. Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory. The pathways are most applicable to bright individuals with the resources and support necessary to make and leverage choices they make. Striving to enter and follow a beneficial pathway seems sensible but may be impossible for individuals trapped in a collapsing network, starved of resources. Promoting longevity
Gawande uses his personal experience, analytic skills and lots of stories of innovators to demonstrate better ways of coping with aging and death. He introduces the lack of focus on aging and death in traditional medicine. And goes on to show how technology has amplified this stress point. He illustrates the traditional possibility of the independent self, living fully while aging with the support of the extended family. Central planning responded to the technological and societal changes with poorly designed infrastructure and funding. But Gawande then contrasts the power of bottom up innovations created by experts responding to their own family situations and belief systems. Gawande then explores in depth the challenges that unfold currently as we age and become infirm. He notes that the world is following the US path. As such it will have to understand the dilemma of integrating medical treatment and hospice strategies. He notes that all parties involved need courage to cope. He proposes medicine must aim to assure well being. At that point all doctors will practice palliative care. Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agency, death, evolution, cooperation and adaptations to new technologies are discussed. Agent death
Sonia Shah reviews the millennia old (500,000 years) malarial arms race between Humanity, Anopheles mosquitoes and Plasmodium. 250 - 500 million people are infected each year with malaria and one million die. Malaria
Peter Medawar writes about key historic events in the evolution of medical science. Medical science events
Using John Holland's theory of adaptation in complex systems Baldwin and Clark propose an evolutionary theory of design. They show how this can limit the interdependencies that generate complexity within systems. They do this through a focus on modularity. Modular designed systems
Lou Gerstner describes the challenges he faced and the strategies he used to successfully restructure the computer company IBM. Compartmented systems
Grady Booch advocates an object oriented approach to computer software design. Object based systems
Bertrand Meyer develops arguments, principles and strategies for creating modular software. He concludes that abstract data types and inheritence make object orientation a superior methodology for software construction. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory suggests agents provide an alternative strategy to the use of objects. Software construction
Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved dramatically. W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred. Tools
Matt Ridley demonstrates the creative effect of man on the World. He highlights: A list of preconditions resulting in Additional niche capture & more free time Building a network to interconnect memes processes & tools which Enabling inter-generational transfers Innovations that help reduce environmental stress even as they leverage fossil fuels Memetic trading networks
E O. Wilson argues that campfire gatherings on the savanna supported the emergence of human creativity. This resulted in man building cultures and later exploring them, and their creator, through the humanities. Wilson identifies the transformative events, but he notes many of these are presently ignored by the humanities. So he calls for a change of approach. He: Explores creativity: how it emerged from the benefits of becoming an omnivore hunter gatherer, enabled by language & its catalysis of invention, through stories told in the evening around the campfire. He notes the power of fine art, but suggests music provides the most revealing signature of aesthetic surprise. Looks at the current limitations of the humanities, as they have suffered through years of neglect. Reviews the evolutionary processes of heredity and culture: Ultimate causes viewed through art, & music The bedrock of: Ape senses and emotions, Creative arts, language, dance, song typically studied by humanities, & Exponential change in science and technology. How the breakthrough from our primate past occurred, powered by eating meat, supporting: a bigger brain, expanded memory & language. Accelerating changes now driven by genetic cultural coevolution. The impact on human nature. Considers our emotional attachment to the natural world: hunting, gardens; we are destroying. Reviews our love of metaphor, archetypes, exploration, irony, and considers the potential for a third enlightenment, supported by cooperative action of humanities and science Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames these from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory: The humanities are seen to be a functionalist framework for representing the cultural CAS while Wilson's desire to integrate the humanities and science gains support from viewing the endeavor as a network of layered CAS. Evening campfire rituals
Brynjolfsson and McAfee explore the effects of Moore's law on the economy. They argue it has generated exponential growth. This has been due to innovation. It has created a huge bounty of additional wealth. But the wealth is spread unevenly across society. They look at the short and long term implications of the innovation bounty and spread and the possible future of technology. Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory. Brilliant technologies
Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane roles. He highlights a radical and already proven alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning processes supported by technology and freed up attention of teams of teachers. Building on his personal experience of helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative Khan: Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging short videos focused on content, Converging on mastery, With the help of neuroscience, and filling in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach to the mainstream method. Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s, Inducing holes that are hidden by tests, Tests which ignore creativity. The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to be supplemented with homework. Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so they could mentor them while they attended school, an inversion that significantly improves the economics. Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service, Working with a real classroom, Trying stealth learning, At Khan Academy full time, In the curriculum at Los Altos, Supporting life-long learning. Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with a one room school, a robust teaching team, and creativity enabled; so with some catalysis even the poorest can become educated and earn credentials for current jobs. Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based assessments, College education; Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure for creativity to emerge and to support risk taking. Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Disruption is a powerful force for change but if its force is used to support the current teachers to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the current educational network? Education versus guilds
Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld's New York Times opinion based on The Triple Package is summarized. Their ideas are then framed by CAS theory and reviewed. What drives success
Peter Turchin describes how major pre-industrial empires developed due to effects of geographic boundaries constraining the empires and their neighbors' interactions. Turchin shows how the asymmetries of breeding rates and resource growth rates results in dynamic cycles within cycles. After the summary of Turchin's book complex adaptive system (CAS) theory is used to augment Turchins findings. Warrior groups
Through the operation of three different food chains Michael Pollan explores their relative merits. The application of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory highlights the value of evolutionary testing of the food chain. Natural systems
E. O. Wilson & Bert Holldobler illustrate how bundled cooperative strategies can take hold. Various social insects have developed strategies which have allowed them to capture the most valuable available niches. Like humans they invest in specialization and cooperate to subdue larger, well equipped competitors. Insect superorganisms
Computational theory of the mind and evolutionary psychology provide Steven Pinker with a framework on which to develop his psychological arguments about the mind and its relationship to the brain. Humans captured a cognitive niche by natural selection 'building out' specialized aspects of their bodies and brains resulting in a system of mental organs we call the mind. He garnishes and defends the framework with findings from psychology regarding: The visual system - an example of natural selections solutions to the sensory challenges of inverse modeling of our environment; Intensions - where he highlights the challenges of hunter gatherers - making sense of the objects they perceive and predicting what they imply and natural selections powerful solutions; Emotions - which Pinker argues are essential to human prioritizing and decision making; Relationships - natural selection's strategies for coping with the most dangerous competitors, other people. He helps us understand marriage, friendships and war. These conclusions allow him to understand the development and maintenance of higher callings: Art, Music, Literature, Humor, Religion, & Philosophy; and develop a position on the meaning of life. Complex adaptive system (CAS) modeling allows RSS to frame Pinker's arguments within humanity's current situation, induced by powerful evolved amplifiers: Globalization, Cliodynamics, The green revolution and resource bottlenecks; melding his powerful predictions of the drivers of human behavior with system wide constraints. The implications are discussed. Computationally adapted mind
The stages of development of the human female, including how her brain changes and the impacts of this on her 'reality' across a full life span: conception, infantile puberty, girlhood, juvenile pause, adolescence, dating years, motherhood, post-menopause; are described. Brizendine notes the significant difference in how emotions are processed by women compared to men. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the stages with the evolutionary under-pinning, psychological implications and behavioral CAS. Evolved female brain
The complexity of behavior is explored through Sapolsky developing scenarios of our best and worst behaviors across time spans, and scientific subjects including: anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, sociology. The rich network of adaptive flows he outlines provides insights and highlight challenges for scientific research on behavior. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory builds on Sapolsky's details highlighting the strategies that evolution has captured to successfully enter niches we now occupy. CAS behavior
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time. Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time: A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist Events are only partially ordered. The present is localized The difference between past and future is not foundational. It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears particular to us Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel Time's rhythms are due to the gravitational field Our quantized physics shows neither space nor time, just processes transforming physical variables. Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations evolve together with events, not things Then he explains how in a physical world without time its perception can emerge: Our familiar time emerges Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred, quantum indeterminate The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty Directionality of time is real but perspectival. The entropy of the world in relation to us increases with our thermal time. The growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in traces and memories Each human is a unified being because: we reflect the world, we formed an image of a unified entity by interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective of memory The variable time: is one of the variables of the gravitational field. With our scale we don't register quantum fluctuations, making space-time appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive differences in time of different clocks, so we experience a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is helpful to our decisions Emergence of time
Consciousness has confounded philosophers and scientists for centuries. Now it is finally being characterized scientifically. That required a transformation of approach. Realizing that consciousness was ill-defined neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene and others characterized and focused on conscious access. In the book he outlines the limitations of previous psychological dogma. Instead his use of subjective assessments opened the window to contrast totally unconscious brain activity with those including consciousness. He describes the research methods. He explains the contribution of new sensors and probes that allowed the psychological findings to be correlated, and causally related to specific neural activity. He describes the theory of the brain he uses, the 'global neuronal workspace' to position all the experimental details into a whole. He reviews how both theory and practice support diagnosis and treatment of real world mental illnesses. The implications of Dehaene's findings for subsequent consciousness research are outlined. Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the brain's development and operation introduce constraints which are discussed. Conscious access
Reading and writing present a conundrum. The reader's brain contains neural networks tuned to reading. With imaging a written word can be followed as it progresses from the retina through a functional chain that asks: Are these letters? What do they look like? Are they a word? What does it sound like? How is it pronounced? What does it mean? Dehaene explains the importance of education in tuning the brain's networks for reading as well as good strategies for teaching reading and countering dyslexia. But he notes the reading networks developed far too recently to have directly evolved. And Dehaene asks why humans are unique in developing reading and culture. He explains the cultural engineering that shaped writing to human vision and the exaptations and neuronal structures that enable and constrain reading and culture. Dehaene's arguments show how cellular, whole animal and cultural complex adaptive system (CAS) are related. We review his explanations in CAS terms and use his insights to link cultural CAS that emerged based on reading and writing with other levels of CAS from which they emerge. Evolved reading
Read Montague explores how brains make decisions. In particular he explains how: Evolution can create indirect abstract models, such as the dopamine system, that allow Life changing real-time decisions to be made, and how Schematic structures provide encodings of computable control structures which operate through and on incomputable, schematically encoded, physically active structures and operationally associated production functions. Receptor indirection
Antonio Damasio argues that ancient & fundamental homeostatic processes, built into behaviors and updated by evolution have resulted in the emergence of nervous systems and feelings. These feelings, representing the state of the viscera, and represented with general systems supporting enteric operation, are later ubiquitously integrated into the 'images' built by the minds of higher animals including humans. Damasio highlights the separate development of the body frame in the building of minds. Damasio explains that this integration of feelings by minds supports the development of subjectivity and consciousness. His chain of emergence suggests the 'order of things.' He stresses the end-to-end integration of the organism which undermines dualism. And he reviews Chalmers hard problem of consciousness. Damasio reviews the emergence of cultures and sees feelings, integrated with reason, as the judges of the cultural creative process, linking culture to homeostasis. He sees cultures as supporting the development of tools to improve our lives. But the results of the creative process have added stresses to our lives. Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Each of the [super]organisms discussed is a CAS reflecting the theory of such systems: Damasio's proposals about homeostasis routed signalling, aligns well with CAS theory. Damasio's ideas on cultural stresses are elaborated by CAS examples. Emergence of feelings
Alfred Nemeczek reveals the chaotic, stressful life of Vincent van Gogh in Arles. Nemeczek shows that Vincent was driven to create, and successfully invented new methods of representing feeling in paintings, and especially portraits. Vincent worked hard to allow artists like him-self to innovate. But Vincent failed in this goal, collapsing into psychosis. Nemeczek also provides a brief history of Vincent's life. Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Vincent creates
Richard Dawkin's explores how nature has created implementations of designs, without any need for planning or design, through the accumulation of small advantageous changes. Accumulating small changes
Russ Abbott explores the impact on science of epiphenomena and the emergence of agents. Autonomous emergence
Terrence Deacon explores how constraints on dynamic flows can induce emergent phenomena which can do real work. He shows how these phenomena are sustained. The mechanism enables the development of Darwinian competition. Constraint based phenomena

Primary Navigation

In this page we explain how to use the site.
There are two main starting points:

The example systems frame and
The presentation frame.
And then there is how we use the site.

The site uses lots of click through. That's so that you can see the underlying principles that are contributing to the system being discussed. We hope that as you internalize and reflect on the principles the system should appear in a new light. At this site clicking is good!

Opportunities

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.

Theory

We are products of complexity, but our evolution has focused our understanding on the situation of hunter gatherers on the African savanna. As humanity has become more powerful we can significantly impact the systems we depend on. But we struggle to comprehend them. So this web frame explores significant real world complex adaptive systems (CAS):

Assumptions of randomness & equilibrium allowed the wealthy & powerful to expand the size and leverage of stock markets, by placing at risk the insurance and retirement savings of the working class. The assumptions are wrong but remain entrenched.
The US nation was built from two divergent political views of: Jefferson and Hamilton. It also reflects the development of competing ancient ideas of Epicurus and Cyril. But the collapse of Bretton Woods forced Wall Street into a position of power, while the middle and working class were abandoned by the elites. Housing financed with cash from oil and derivative transactions helped hide the shift.
Most US health care is still operating the way cars built in the 1940s did. Geisinger is an example of better solution. But transforming the whole network is a challenge. And public health investment has proved far more beneficial.
Helping our children learn to be effective adults is part of our humanity, but we have created a robust but deeply flawed education system. Better alternatives have emerged.
Spoken language, reading and writing emerged allowing our good ideas to become a second genetic material.
The emergence of the global economy in the 1600s and its subsequent development;

It explains how the examples relate to each other, why we all have trouble effectively comprehending these systems and explains how our inexperience with CAS can lead to catastrophe. It outlines the items we see as key to the system and why.

Examples

This page presents a search result list covering each linked region of rob's strategy studio.

Search

Rob's Strategy Studio aims to celebrate and illuminate complex adaptive systems (CAS) just as an art studio does art.

By way of introduction it notes the complex interactions that led to the partnership that discovered the DNA double helix and genetic code.

The page introduces the RSS vision 'I act, therefore I think' approach and the RSS mission.

It describes how many key aspects of the world are CAS including businesses.

Finally the page explains each of the framed pictures displayed at the studio including the other aspects explored in this vision frame.

Vision

This page introduces the programs that the Adaptive Web Framework (AWF) develops and uses to deploy Rob's Strategy Studio (RSS).
The programs are structured to obey complex adaptive system (CAS) principles. That allows AWF to experiment and examine the effects.
A production program generates the web pages.
A testing system tests the production program. It uses a framework to support the test programs. This is AWF's agent programming framework as described in the agent-based programming presentation.
An example of the other AWF agent-based programs that are also described in the frame is the virtual robot.
Finally a strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats assessment is presented.

Perl

This page introduces a series of asymmetries which encourage different strategic approaches.
The differences found in business, sexual selection, gamete structure, as well as in chess encourage escalations in the interactions.
And yet the systems including these asymmetries can be quite stable.

Asymmetries

This web frame includes a set of presentations about complex adaptive systems (CAS)

Presentations

Constraining happiness

Summary

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.

The Swerve

In Stephen Greenblatt's book 'The Swerve' he explores how an epistatic

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, in the form of a classical Latin poem 'On The Nature Of Things',

This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena. Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the emergence of equilibrium and autonomous entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution to operate broadening the adjacent possible. Key research is reviewed.

reemerged after a thousand years of societal exclusion, due to the serendipitous adventures of Pogio Bracciolini an apostolic secretary to Pope John the 23rd. Greenblatt argues this reemergence was a foundation of the world becoming modern.

Pogio was from Arezzo, near Florence in Italy. Following the imprisonment of John 23rd Pogio spent

Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:

A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
Events are only partially ordered. The present is localized
The difference between past and future is not foundational. It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears particular to us
Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
Time's rhythms are due to the gravitational field
Our quantized physics shows neither space nor time, just processes transforming physical variables.
Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations evolve together with events, not things

Then he explains how in a physical world without time its perception can emerge:

Our familiar time emerges

Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred, quantum indeterminate
The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
Directionality of time is real but perspectival. The entropy of the world in relation to us increases with our thermal time. The growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in traces and memories
Each human is a unified being because: we reflect the world, we formed an image of a unified entity by interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective of memory
The variable time: is one of the variables of the gravitational field. With our scale we don't register quantum fluctuations, making space-time appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive differences in time of different clocks, so we experience a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is helpful to our decisions

time travelling across Germany looking for ancient manuscripts maintained at monasteries. Greenblatt explains he was following in the footsteps of Petrarch searching for accurate copies of classical Latin masterpieces.

In 1330 the scholar Petrarch had pieced together Livy's History of Rome. It sparked an interest in the study of 'humanities are the study of humans as a collection. It now includes philosophy, history and literature. At the time of Pogio Bracciolini its limited focus was on ancient artifacts and ancient texts that illuminated details of Latin language. E.O. Wilson argues it represents the human capacity for symbolic language, coevolving with the structure of the brain. He asserts this freed the mind to be creative, entering any imagined world. This is empowering, except we retain the emotions of our ancient primate ancestors. '. It made him famous and interested contemporary Italians in book hunting. It was realized from references in the recovered texts that many of the once famous books were missing. For example Quintilian wrote "Macer and Lucretius are certainly worth reading."

The prime hunting ground for discovering lost books were the monasteries spread across Alpine Europe. This was because:

In general after the collapse of Rome there was a loss of interest in
Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane roles. He highlights a radical and already proven alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning processes supported by technology and freed up attention of teams of teachers. Building on his personal experience of helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative Khan:
- Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging short videos focused on content, Converging on mastery, With the help of neuroscience, and filling in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach to the mainstream method.
- Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s, Inducing holes that are hidden by tests, Tests which ignore creativity. The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to be supplemented with homework. Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so they could mentor them while they attended school, an inversion that significantly improves the economics.
- Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service, Working with a real classroom, Trying stealth learning, At Khan Academy full time, In the curriculum at Los Altos, Supporting life-long learning.
- Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with a one room school, a robust teaching team, and creativity enabled; so with some catalysis even the poorest can become educated and earn credentials for current jobs.
- Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based assessments, College education;
- Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure for creativity to emerge and to support risk taking.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Disruption is a powerful force for change but if its force is used to support the current teachers to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the current educational network?
education
and books. The educated were thrown out of work.
Prior to printing, the building or maintaining of a library required an emergent system. The copying of the texts must be without errors. Scribes were discouraged from understanding the texts because it was found that this encouraged changes.
The monasteries were required by holy orders to have libraries and scribes who were tasked with making copies of the many old manuscripts to 'keep them alive'. This made sense since the church was a very 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. landlord. Monks protected their power and assets by force. They were expected to know how to read. They were allocated time to read and one monk was required to read to the others during meals. This resulted in a requirement for books. Since the parchment collapsed when handled they were copied by monastic order.
The unsearched areas were Switzerland and Germany.

Pogio was a particularly effective book hunter because he:

Knew what he was looking for.
Was credible enough to gain access to the monastic libraries.
Could recognize a masterpiece when he saw it.
He could personally produce a perfect copy relatively quickly.

In 1417 Pogio came across a copy of Titus Lucretius Carus's 'On the Nature of Things.' Greenblatt asserts that this document destroyed the dark middle ages.

Lucretius died in 50 BC is Before Christ also reffered to as before common era (BCE). . There are no details of the man. St. Jerome suggested he was mad. It is known that for greater than 200 years after 27 AD is Anno Domini also referred to as common era (CE). the poem was celebrated. Cicero disagreed with but conceded the power of On the Nature of Things. Virgil, Rome's greatest poet admired the poem. His Aeneid is an attempt at an alternative being pious rather than skeptical, patriotic and sober rather than pacifist and seeking pleasure is the outcome of the dopamine reward system, argues UCSF professor Robert Lustig. He, like the early Christians, contrasts [addiction oriented] pleasure with serotonin driven happiness & contentment.
. Ovid argued "The verses of sublime Lucretius are destined to perish only when a single day will consign the world to destruction." Pogio and other humanists were probably aware of Ovid's comment.

Greenblatt explains that in the 1700s a private library was unearthed at Herculaneum preserved by the ash from Vesuvius. It was a specialized library containing the ideas of Philodemus, a contemporary of Lucretius and another representative of the Atomist school of Epicurus. Greenblatt asserts that the influential Roman owner of the library and his friends lived and died at a time when 'they found themselves in the peculiar position of choosing among sharply divergent visions of the nature of things and competing strategies for living'. He says they chose the vision of Epicurus 'a Greek who triumphed not through force of arms but through the power of intellect. '

As a student of Democritus's idea that everything was built from atoms Epicurus thought deeply about the implications. To him it implied there could not be godly effects but instead a natural order. This freed his followers from religious constraints including Hell. Consequently they were free to pursue pleasure is the outcome of the dopamine reward system, argues UCSF professor Robert Lustig. He, like the early Christians, contrasts [addiction oriented] pleasure with serotonin driven happiness & contentment.
. This appears to have been a philosophical exercise with him and his followers living simply and frugally. But his enemies associated pleasure with hedonistic excesses. These enemies benefited from maintaining rules, punishment and fear is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful. The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger. There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amydala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala.
to constrain their followers and enemies.

Epicurus wrote prolifically. At the time the expensive process was typically financed by a 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. patron who received a dedication in the book. That process was the main funding mechanism until patent protection in the 18th century.

Epicurus argued that:

The soul is mortal. This undermines the Christian concept of mortality.
Gods would be interested in themselves and their pleasures. Hence the incarnation was absurd. Why would Gods focus on a Jew? The whole idea was too human and self-centered to be plausible to the Epicureans.

Christians were teaching that God was focused on humanity. Pleasure is the outcome of the dopamine reward system, argues UCSF professor Robert Lustig. He, like the early Christians, contrasts [addiction oriented] pleasure with serotonin driven happiness & contentment.
was a vice. This was consistent with the bad situation within the Empire as Rome collapsed. It was clearly God's wrath. Christians promoted the view that Epicurus was mad and or a fool for the next 900 years.

By 384 AD is Anno Domini also referred to as common era (CE). Saint Jerome argued that he loved Cicero's elegance but was dismayed at his skepticism towards dogmas -- including the claims of religions. He similarly loved Latin's elegance in comparison to the dreadful guttural Hebrew. Christian scholars attempted to make improvements to the Jewish ideas. They adopted Platonism to develop the soul is an ancient concept that was eternal according to Plato. In his cave analogy he promotes the ideal and the sensory which highlights the dualism of soul and body. The soul was eternal - being simple, pure and generated by the creator. Bodies were associated with souls by gods at birth. Epicurus argued that souls were constructed from atoms, were complex and died. CAS theory likens:

'souls' to schematic strings, and 'bodies' to organisms, and
'souls' to the mind's well known entities: amygdala, insula etc, and the 'bodies' to the percepts & representations that the well known entities become conscious hubs for; which agrees in part with both positions.

, Aristotle's prime mover is Aristotle's explanation of what causes all other movement. He argued that everything that moves was moved by something else and proposes that some immortal non-mover was the initial cause. He was comfortable with calling this god.
and Stoicism's providence is the idea that the world is ruled by blind fate, originally developed by the Stoic philosophers. Its association with a divine plan was noted by the Greek historian Herodotus. Stoicism's divine providence was contested by Epicurus.
. But key doctrines exalted divine humiliation and pain emerged as a mental experience, Damasio asserts, constructed by the mind using mapping structures and events provided by nervous systems. But feeling pain is supported by older biological functions that support homeostasis. These capabilities reflect the organism's underlying emotive processes that respond to wounds: antibacterial and analgesic chemical deployment, flinching and evading actions; that occur in organisms without nervous systems. Later in evolution, after organisms with nervous systems were able to map non-neural events, the components of this complex response were 'imageable'. Today, a wound induced by an internal disease is reported by old, unmyelinated C nerve fibers. A wound created by an external cut is signalled by evolutionarily recent myelinated fibers that result in a sharp well-localized report, that initially flows to the dorsal root ganglia, then to the spinal cord, where the signals are mixed within the dorsal and ventral horns, and then are transmitted to the brain stem nuclei, thalamus and cerebral cortex. The pain of a cut is located, but it is also felt through an emotive response that stops us in our tracks. Pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so. Fear of pain is a significant contributor to female anxiety. Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US. Pain is mediated by the thalamus and nucleus accumbens, unless undermined by sleep deprivation.
and arrogant triumphalism. Epicurean ideas were particularly challenging to these dogma.

Julius Caesar first proposed a public library which was built on Aventine hill. Augustus Caesar built two more. Emperors founded 28 by the 4th century AD. It became the fashion all across the empire for 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.    to have a private library. It was surely one of these that had been preserved by volcanic dust.

The drive to build and maintain libraries eventually collapsed. Greenblatt uses the development, maintenance and collapse of the Alexandria library in Egypt to illustrate the process. From 300 BC is Before Christ also reffered to as before common era (BCE).   Ptolemaic kings gave life appointments, including free food and lodging, to leading scholars, scientists and poets such as Galen, Euclid and Archimedes. But following a war and the growth of monotheist sects including Jews and Christians, libraries were viewed as pagan shrines.

When Constantine transformed the Empire to follow Christianity the anger is an emotion which protects a person who has been cheated by a supposed friend. When the exploitation of the altruism is discovered, Steven Pinker explains, the result is a drive for moralistic aggression to hurt the cheater. Anger is mostly experienced as a rapid wave that then quickly dissipates. When it is repressed, for example by a strong moral sense (superego), it can sustain, inducing long term stress.
of the monotheists became sanctioned by leading religious leaders 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.
who argued that pagan shrines should be converted to churches.

Patriarch Cyril expanded the attacks by Christians on other groups to include Jews. Leading scholars such as Hyapatia refused to expel Jews from the Alexandria system. Christian mobs tore her apart as a witch in 415 AD is Anno Domini also referred to as common era (CE).  . Cyril was canonized. It was the downfall of Alexandrian intellectual life.

In general the Romans abandoned serious reading.

In 476 AD the Christian Goths entered the western empire and sacked Rome. There followed a thousand years where pain emerged as a mental experience, Damasio asserts, constructed by the mind using mapping structures and events provided by nervous systems. But feeling pain is supported by older biological functions that support homeostasis. These capabilities reflect the organism's underlying emotive processes that respond to wounds: antibacterial and analgesic chemical deployment, flinching and evading actions; that occur in organisms without nervous systems. Later in evolution, after organisms with nervous systems were able to map non-neural events, the components of this complex response were 'imageable'. Today, a wound induced by an internal disease is reported by old, unmyelinated C nerve fibers. A wound created by an external cut is signalled by evolutionarily recent myelinated fibers that result in a sharp well-localized report, that initially flows to the dorsal root ganglia, then to the spinal cord, where the signals are mixed within the dorsal and ventral horns, and then are transmitted to the brain stem nuclei, thalamus and cerebral cortex. The pain of a cut is located, but it is also felt through an emotive response that stops us in our tracks. Pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so. Fear of pain is a significant contributor to female anxiety. Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US. Pain is mediated by the thalamus and nucleus accumbens, unless undermined by sleep deprivation.
seeking overcame pleasure is the outcome of the dopamine reward system, argues UCSF professor Robert Lustig. He, like the early Christians, contrasts [addiction oriented] pleasure with serotonin driven happiness & contentment.
seeking. Curiosity was a mortal sin. Life was governed hierarchically and

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.

rigidly.

Pogio invented a highly effective writing script and discovered and replicated a copy of Lucretius's poem On The Nature Of Things as described by Steven Greenblatt.
grew up outside of Florence. In the Fifteenth century Florence was a typical medieval city with no open spaces and no 'Roman' architecture. There were constant power struggles within the city and with other cities including Venice, Milan, Naples and the Papacy in Rome. The Duce, aristocracy/Guilds/Church and poor artisans of Florence all struggled for power. In general the rigid societal hierarchy limited mobility. However Pogio leveraged a number of enablers to rise up:

He had developed exceptional hand writing. He and a partner had taken Carolingian miniscule and developed it into a script that was clear and simple, italic and roman for copying manuscripts. Pogio's contribution was truly innovative. But he was also a master of this new writing style. This skill allowed Pogio to rise up the hierarchy within Florence.
He became a Latin scholar. A generation after Petrarch, Pogio shared his contempt for the corruption, triviality and ignorance of his time. He wished to recover Italy's classical Roman heritage. Added to his skills as a scribe Pogio was especially enabled to become a book hunter. Petrarch had proposed a 'resurrection' of the ancient body -- a Christian justification for his objective. Pogio thus became an accomplished Latin scholar.

He attracted the attention of Florence's chancellor Salutati.

Salutati was an exceptional leader 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.
and scribe. He was a follower of Petrarch and searched for antiquities. But he used his interest in antiquities to create something new. His dispatches, protocols, manifestos and letters were read and copied throughout Italy. They demonstrated that the ancient rhetoric was alive. He presented Florence as a modern republican Rome.

Salutati cultivated a group of young followers including Pogio. He trained them to continue his fight for Florence.

Pogio and his colleagues were not aiming to be creative like Salutati or Petrarch for they were interested in obtaining accurate copies of the ancient texts. And since Pogio did not have inherited 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. he needed employment. Salutati was pleased to help.

The Lie Factory

To initially become an apostolic secretary to the Popes, Pogio first gained access to Cardinal Bari in Rome using a reference from Salutati. Subsequently Salutati pulled strings giving Pogio the position of scribe to the Pope Boniface 18. Scribe was a secular business position assisting the Pope in governing the towns in central Italy. The Pope's challenge was to:

Limit the power of competitive states, defend if attacked, and make war.
Set theological doctrine influencing all Roman Catholics of the Christian west. This doctrine affected the fate of their souls. Papal dispensations, exceptions from the rules of Canon law, could be granted. He needed to process over 2000 requests a week!!

All of which required a large governmental apparatus. Pogio was valued for his rational administrative skills and legal acumen. The papal court was rife with bribery and corruption. Most of the members of the court were clerics but Pogio chose to remain a layman. He viewed the churchmen as totally controlled -- A corrupt hierarchy of hypocrites with vast power. Pogio argued they would be punished in the afterlife.

Pogio rose from scribe to one of the six papal secretaries with direct access to the pope. This access provided the secretaries with indirect power. It protected the scribes and secretaries and led them to conclude they were better than the prelates they served. It also made them insular. In 1410 Pogio accepted the post of apostolic secretary to Baldosar Cossa who became Pope John the 23rd. It was a highly lucrative position since for payments the secretary arranged pardons freeing the payer from Purgatory.

As apostolic secretary Pogio was involved in the pope's strategies including dealing with:

Neighboring powers focused on taking papal territory.
Heretics in Bohemia
Two rival claims to the papal thrown maintaining a three way schism. One group based in Avignon was backed by France. Another by much of Italy, England and the German states.
The Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund the king of Hungary, intent on ending the schism.

John 23 was an effective general but he was forced to flee the attacks of Naples, weakening the authority of his claim to the Papacy.

In 1414 Sigismund called together the council of Constance drawing secular and church leaders 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.
from all over the west. It had three stated goals:

End the schism
Reform of ecclesiastical government.
Repression of heresy. Bohemian princes were protecting Jan Hus a follower of English heretic John Wycliffe who argued for: vernacular translations of the Bible, the primacy of Scripture-based faith over works; and who attacked clerical 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. and selling of indulgencies. Hus further argued that the secular states should supervise the church.

The council was a major threat to Pope John 23rd. His strategy was to have the council focus on the repression of heresy to limit the risk of his being removed from power. Sigismund had encouraged Hus to meet the council, offering him safe passage. But once within the councils grasp he was tortured and cruelly executed.

The council also moved against the three popes. John 23rd panicked and fled only to be captured, returned and imprisoned.

Pogio was out of a job. He made the best of a bad situation travelling through Germany book hunting and succeeded in rediscovering 'On the Nature of Things'.

Lucretius's On the Nature of Things is 4,700 lines of hexameters imitating Homer's Greek. It covers:

Lyrical beauty, Philosophy, Religion, Pleasure is the outcome of the dopamine reward system, argues UCSF professor Robert Lustig. He, like the early Christians, contrasts [addiction oriented] pleasure with serotonin driven happiness & contentment.
and Death.
Complex theories of the physical world,
Evolution of society,
Perils and joys of sex,
The nature of disease.

Greenblatt notes that its language is difficult and its syntax is complex. But he writes it would take an understanding of the whole thing for Pogio to grasp that it threatened his whole world view.

It argues that:

Everything is made of invisible particles which means:

They are eternal, once created they are not destroyed.
Things are combinations made according to a code which could be understood.
Matter is particles and void.
The soul dies. It is made of particles.
There is no afterlife. Death is nothing.

The universe has no creator or designer. No end or purpose. Particles' positions are indeterminate due to the Swerve is Epicurus' theory that atoms randomly swerved creating a method of introducing free will.
which creates free will is the subjective assessment of one's ability to make decisions and perform independent actions. Philosophers note that causal chains linking physical phenomena with conscious decisions would undermine the idea of independent free will. RSS views the architecture of CAS agency as requiring indirect associations between phenomena and agent's models. Evolution captures these associations within the genetic structures of the emergent agents, removing any epistemological or complementarity constraints. Sapolsky concludes that this evolved agency severely limits the potential contribution of free will. .
Nature is a set of continuous experiments. Humans are not unique but part of a tree of life.
Human society began in a battle of survival. Language - shared sounds slowly developed to designate the same thing.
All organized religions are superstitious delusions. They are invariably cruel focusing on retribution. There are no angels, demons or ghosts.
The highest goal of human life is enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain emerged as a mental experience, Damasio asserts, constructed by the mind using mapping structures and events provided by nervous systems. But feeling pain is supported by older biological functions that support homeostasis. These capabilities reflect the organism's underlying emotive processes that respond to wounds: antibacterial and analgesic chemical deployment, flinching and evading actions; that occur in organisms without nervous systems. Later in evolution, after organisms with nervous systems were able to map non-neural events, the components of this complex response were 'imageable'. Today, a wound induced by an internal disease is reported by old, unmyelinated C nerve fibers. A wound created by an external cut is signalled by evolutionarily recent myelinated fibers that result in a sharp well-localized report, that initially flows to the dorsal root ganglia, then to the spinal cord, where the signals are mixed within the dorsal and ventral horns, and then are transmitted to the brain stem nuclei, thalamus and cerebral cortex. The pain of a cut is located, but it is also felt through an emotive response that stops us in our tracks. Pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so. Fear of pain is a significant contributor to female anxiety. Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US. Pain is mediated by the thalamus and nucleus accumbens, unless undermined by sleep deprivation.
. The great obstacle is delusion.
The implication is wonder. Human insignificance is good news. Desire and fear of death are obstacles to happiness is an emotion which functions to mobilize the mind to seek capabilities and resources that support Darwinian fitness. Today happiness is associated with Epicurean ideas that were rediscovered during the renaissance and promoted by Thomas Jefferson. But natural selection has 'designed' happiness to support hunter-gatherer fitness in the African savanna. It is assessed: Relative to other's situations, Based on small gains or losses relative to one's current situation; and so what makes us [un-]happy and our responses can seem a counter-productive treadmill. For Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in the savanna there were many ways for losses to undermine fitness and so losses still make us very unhappy. Smoking, drinking and excessive eating were not significant and so don't make us unhappy even though they impact longevity. that can be overcome by reason by anyone.

The logic stimulated the painting of Botticelli's Venus. It was however anathema to Christian orthodoxy.

Pogio's copy was recopied 50 times and eventually printed as the version in use today.

After his successful book finding Pogio accepted a job in England with Henry V's uncle. But he was disappointed at the state of English society and the lack of ancient books in its churches.

In 1422 Pogio accepted a job at the Vatican. He became 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.    and a collector of antiquities. He accepted the role of chancellor of Florence.

By the early 1500s Florence was becoming more fundamentally Christian and held a bonfire of the Vanities. But Lucretius's ideas surfaced wherever the renaissance bloomed.

The 50 copies of Pogio's 'On the Nature of Things' were important in enabling this reemergence. Greenblatt explains that Machiavelli had a copy which is now in the Vatican library. Indeed the authorities read the poem so as to undermine its ideas. In 1516 the Florentine synod banned the reading of Lucretius in schools. They effectively halted the printing of the poem in Italy. But copies showed up in Paris, Bologna and Venice. In England Thomas More's Utopia argued that England had become corrupt. He described an imaginary island 'Utopia' focused on pleasure. More imagines an entire society that makes the pursuit of happiness is an emotion which functions to mobilize the mind to seek capabilities and resources that support Darwinian fitness. Today happiness is associated with Epicurean ideas that were rediscovered during the renaissance and promoted by Thomas Jefferson. But natural selection has 'designed' happiness to support hunter-gatherer fitness in the African savanna. It is assessed: Relative to other's situations, Based on small gains or losses relative to one's current situation; and so what makes us [un-]happy and our responses can seem a counter-productive treadmill. For Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in the savanna there were many ways for losses to undermine fitness and so losses still make us very unhappy. Smoking, drinking and excessive eating were not significant and so don't make us unhappy even though they impact longevity.   the collective goal. However More's arguments were inconsistent. He demanded Utopians punish anyone who denies divine providence and the afterlife. Both More and Machiavelli felt that punishment was a necessity to governing.

Greenblatt argues that Lucretius is reflected through Montaigne into Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' and on to Spencer and Bacon. Ben Johnson had a copy of Lucretius.

A century after Hus his followers: Luther, Zwingli and Calvin's Protestantism was a major threat to the church establishment.

Catholic orthodoxy reacted at the Council of Trent. While the major threat was Protestantism it saw Epicurus and Lucretius as a problematic second front. It responded by proposing a nature of truth totally incompatible with Epicurus. Atomism was made inconsistent with the key distinction made between substance (Christ's flesh) and accidents (Bread). The inquisition was asked to detect atomistic lies. The Jesuits prohibited and condemned the doctrine of atoms in 1632. The inquisition attacked Galileo. His 'Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems' was declared heresy but there were powerful humanists who protected him.

Newton argued in the Opticks that he is an Atomist, but stated that atoms were created by God.

Empirical science allowed a new basis for Atomism. Greenblatt comments that the foundation was influenced by the philosophical speculation of Epicurus as Einstein acknowledged. Still the empirical method was able to replace 'On the Nature of Things' and allow it and Pogio Bracciolini to be almost forgotten in scientific method.

However Greenblatt notes that Thomas Jefferson had five Latin editions of On the Nature of Things. Jefferson included the central pursuit of happiness is an emotion which functions to mobilize the mind to seek capabilities and resources that support Darwinian fitness. Today happiness is associated with Epicurean ideas that were rediscovered during the renaissance and promoted by Thomas Jefferson. But natural selection has 'designed' happiness to support hunter-gatherer fitness in the African savanna. It is assessed: Relative to other's situations, Based on small gains or losses relative to one's current situation; and so what makes us [un-]happy and our responses can seem a counter-productive treadmill. For Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in the savanna there were many ways for losses to undermine fitness and so losses still make us very unhappy. Smoking, drinking and excessive eating were not significant and so don't make us unhappy even though they impact longevity.   in his visionary Declaration of Independence. He wrote to John Adams in his old age about the meaning of life reflecting the ideas promoted by Lucretius.

Complex adaptive system

(CAS) theory applies directly to the

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.

genetic operations on

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 which Greenblatt details in his exploration of the influence of On the Nature of Things.

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 use

The agents in complex adaptive systems (CAS) must model their environment to respond effectively to it. Samuel modeling is described as an approach.

models to describe their

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.

environment. Epicurus and Christian philosophers developed contrasting models of the world. Beginning with Constantine the Roman world increased the priority of the Christian models while abandoning the Epicurean ones.

Epistasis sustains the poem in the meme pool even as it is deprioritized by the

This page discusses the benefits of bringing agents and resources to the dynamically best connected region of a complex adaptive system (CAS).

centralized society of post Constantine Rome and the West until the enlightenment. The monotheistic (Christian) memeplex was reinforced by its

This page discusses the benefits of constraining the flows in a complex adaptive system (CAS) until you are ready to act.

maintaining restrictions, its

This page reviews the strategy of collective punishment of agents who game agreements in a complex adaptive system (CAS). The mechanism and its consequences are discussed.

guardian morality and its leader 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.
's

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. Christianity

This page reviews Christensen's disruption of a complex adaptive system (CAS). The mechanism is discussed with examples from biology and business.

disrupted competitive memes as it connected with their

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.

This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the expression of new phenotypic effects within an agent.

Extended phenotypic alignment destroys the agents actively promoting the poem during the leadership of Patriarch Cyril.

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 support the

reemergence of the ideas of Epicurus. And then as Greenblatt notes the support of atoms by the scientific method was promoted by Newton.

David Bodanis illustrates how disruptive effects can take hold. While the French revolution had many driving forces including famine and oppression the emergence of a new philosophical vision ensured that thoughtful leaders were constrained and conflicted in their responses to the crisis.

Voltaire's

Barriers are particular types of constraints on flows. They can enforce separation of a network of agents allowing evolution to build diversity. Examples of different types of barriers: physical barriers, chemical molecules can form membranes, probability based, cell membranes can include controllable channels, eukaryotes leverage membranes, symbiosis, human emotions, chess, business; and their effects are described.

isolation and championing of Newton's ideas then cascaded to the adoption of Epicurean ideals by Jefferson.

The Swerve is an astonishing book demonstrating key aspects of

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.

genetic operations and

This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the expression of new phenotypic effects within an agent.

phenotypic alignment via the history of the West from the time of the ancient Greeks until the birth of the USA is the United States of America. .

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integrating quality appropriate for each market

This page looks at schematic structures and their uses. It discusses a number of examples:

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.

Strategy | Design |

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.

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