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We are products of complexity,
but our evolution has focused our
understanding on the situation of hunter gatherers on the
African savanna.
As humanity has become more powerful we can significantly impact
the systems we depend on. But we struggle to comprehend
them. So this web frame
explores significant real world complex
adaptive systems (CAS):
- Assumptions of randomness & equilibrium allowed the
wealthy & powerful to expand the size and leverage of
stock markets, by placing at risk the insurance and
retirement savings of the working class. The
assumptions are wrong but remain entrenched.
- The US nation was built
from two divergent political
views of: Jefferson and Hamilton. It also
reflects the development
of competing ancient ideas of Epicurus and
Cyril. But the collapse of Bretton Woods forced Wall
Street into a position of power, while the middle and
working class were abandoned by the elites. Housing
financed with cash from oil and derivative transactions
helped hide the shift.
- Most US health care is still
operating the way cars built in the 1940s did.
Geisinger is an example of better solution. But
transforming the whole network is a challenge. And
public health investment has proved far more
beneficial.
- Helping our children learn to be
effective adults is part of our humanity, but we have
created a robust but deeply flawed education system.
Better alternatives have emerged.
- Spoken language, reading and writing emerged allowing our
good ideas to
become a second genetic material.
- The emergence
of the global economy in the 1600s and its subsequent
development;
It explains how the examples relate to each other, why we all
have trouble effectively comprehending these systems and
explains how our inexperience with CAS can lead to catastrophe. It
outlines the items we see as key to the system and why.
Example systems frame |
Dietrich Dorner argues complex adaptive systems (CAS) are hard to understand and
manage. He provides examples of how this feature of these
systems can have disastrous consequences for their human
managers. Dorner suggests this is due to CAS properties
psychological impact on our otherwise successful mental
strategic toolkit. To prepare to more effectively manage
CAS, Dorner recommends use of:
- Effective iterative planning and
- Practice with complex scenario simulations; tools which he
reviews.
Complexity catastrophes |
E. O. Wilson reviews the effect of man on the natural world to
date and explains how the two systems can coexist most
effectively.
Adaptive ecology |
Barton Gellman details the strategies used by Vice President
Cheney to align the global system with his economics, defense, and
energy goals.
US vds alignment |
Kevin Kruse argues that from 1930 onwards the corporate elite
and the Republican party have developed and relentlessly
executed strategies to undermine Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Their
successful strategy used the credibility of conservative
religious leaders to:
- Demonstrate religious issues
with the New Deal.
- Integrate the corporate
elite and evangelicals.
- Use the power of corporate
advertising and Hollywood to reeducate the American
people to view the US as historically religious and
the New Deal and liberalism as anti-religious
socialism.
- Focus the message through evangelicals including Vereide and Graham.
- Centralize the strategy through President Eisenhower.
- Add religious elements to
mainstream American symbols: money, pledge;
- Push for prayer in
public school
- Push Congress to promote prayer
- Make elections more
about religious positions.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Strategy is the art of the possible. But it also depends
on persistence.
Inventing Christian America |
Charles Ferguson argues that the US power structure has become
highly corrupt.
Ferguson identifies key events which contributed to the
transformation:
- Junk bonds,
- Derivative
deregulation,
- CMOs,
ABS and analyst fraud,
- Financial network deregulation,
- Financial network consolidation,
- Short term incentives
Subsequently the George W. Bush administration used the
situation to build
a global bubble, which Wall Street
leveraged. The bursting of the
bubble: managed
by the Bush Administration and Bernanke Federal Reserve;
was advantageous to some.
Ferguson concludes that the restructured and deregulated
financial services industry is damaging to
the American economy. And it is supported by powerful, incentive aligned academics.
He sees the result being a rigged system.
Ferguson offers his proposals
for change and offers hope that a charismatic young FDR will appear.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory. Once the constraints are removed from CAS
amplifiers, it becomes advantageous to leverage the increased flows. And it is often
relatively damaging not to participate. Corruption and parasitism can become
entrenched.
Financial WMD |
Matt Taibbi describes the phenotypic
alignment of the American justice system. The result
he explains relentlessly grinds the poor and undocumented into
resources to be constrained, consumed and ejected. Even as
it supports and aligns the financial infrastructure into a
potent weapon capable of targeting any company or nation to
extract profits and leave the victim deflated.
Taibbi uses five scenarios to provide a broad picture of the:
activities, crimes, policing, prosecutions, court processes,
prisons and deportation network. The scenarios are:
Undocumented people's neighborhoods, Poor neighborhoods, Welfare
recipients, Credit card debtors and Financial institutions.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by
complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. The alignment of the
justice system reflects a set of long term strategies and
responses to a powerful global arms race that the US leadership intends to
win.
Aligned justice |
Jonathan Powell describes how the government of, the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair,
actually operated. Powell was Blair's only chief of
staff.
Mechanics of power |
H. A. Hayek compares and contrasts collectivism and
libertarianism.
Libertarianism |
John Doerr argues that company leaders and their
organizations, hugely benefit from Andy Grove's OKRs.
He promotes strategies
that help OKR success: Focus,
Align, Track, Stretch; replaces yearly performance
reviews, and provides illustrative success
stories.
Doerr stresses Dov Seidman's
view that employees are adaptive and will
respond to what they see being measured. He asserts culturally supported OKRs/CFR processes will be transformative.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them
framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Doerr's architecture
is tailored for the startups KPCB
invests in. It is a subset of the general case of schematic plans, genetic operators and Shewhart cycles that drive all
CAS. Doerr's approach limits support of learning and deemphasizes the
association to planning.
Startup PDCA |
David Bodanis illustrates how disruptive effects can take
hold. While the French revolution had many driving forces
including famine and
oppression the emergence of a new philosophical vision ensured
that thoughtful leaders
were constrained and conflicted in their responses to the
crisis.
Voltaire's disruptive network |
An epistatic meme suppressed for a thousand years reemerges
during the enlightenment.
It was a poem
encapsulating the ideas of Epicurus rediscovered by a
humanist book hunter.
Greenblatt describes the process of suppression and
reemergence. He argues that the rediscovery was the
foundation of the modern world.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the memetic mechanisms
are discussed.
Constraining happiness |
Isaacson uses the historic development of the global cloud of
web services to explore Ada
Lovelace's ideas about thinking
machines and poetic
science. He highlights the value of computer
augmented human creativity and the need for liberal arts to
fulfill the process.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agent networks and
collaboration are discussed.
Arts technology & intelligence |
Haikonen juxtaposes the philosophy and psychology of
consciousness with engineering practice to refine the debate on
the hard problem of consciousness. During the journey he
describes the architecture of a robot that highlights the
potential and challenges of associative neural
networks.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory is then used to illustrate the
additional requirements and constraints of self-assembling
evolved conscious animals. It will be seen that
Haikonen's neural
architecture, Smiley's Copycat
architecture and molecular biology's intracellular
architecture leverage the same associative properties.
Associatively integrated robots |
Good ideas are successful because they build upon prior
developments that have been successfully implemented.
Johnson demonstrates that they are phenotypic expressions of
memetic plans subject to the laws of complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Developing ideas |
A government sanctioned monopoly
supported the construction of a superorganism
American Telephone and
Telegraph
(AT&T). Within this Bell Labs was at the center of
three networks:
- The evolving global scientific
network.
- The Bell telephone network. And
- The military
industrial network deploying 'fire and missile
control' systems.
Bell Labs strategically leveraged each network to create an innovation
engine.
They monitored the opportunities to leverage the developing
ideas, reorganizing to replace incumbent
opposition and enable the creation and growth of new
ideas.
Once the monopoly was
dismantled, AT&T disrupted.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the innovation mechanisms are
discussed.
Strategic innovation |
Roger Cohen's New York Times opinion about the implications of
BREXIT is summarized. His ideas are then framed by complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory and
reviewed.
BREXIT |
Scott Galloway argues that Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google
are monopolists that
trade workers for technology. Monopolies that he argues
should be broken up to ensure the return of a middle
class.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on these arguments
assuming they relate to a complex adaptive system (CAS).
While Scott's issue is highly significant his analysis conflicts
with relevant CAS history and theory.
Monopoly job killers |
The IPO of Netscape is
defined as the key emergent event of
the New Economy by Michael Mandel. Following the summary
of Mandel's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted.
New economy |
Ed Conway argues that Bretton Woods produced a unique set of
rules and infrastructure for supporting the global economy. It was
enabled by the experience of Keynes
and White during and after the First World War, their dislike of the Gold Standard,
the necessity of improving
the situation between the wars and the opportunity created
by the catastrophe of the Second
World War.
He describes how it was planned
and developed. How it
emerged from the summit.
And he shows how the opportunity inevitably allowed the US to replace the UK at the center of the global economy.
Like all plans there are
mistakes and Conway takes us through them and how the US recovered the situation as
best it could.
And then Conway describes the period after
Bretton Woods collapsed. He explains what followed
and also compares the relative performance of the various
periods before during and after Bretton Woods.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of Complex Adaptive System (CAS)
theory. Conway's book illustrates the rule making and
infrastructure that together build an evolved amplifier.
He shows the strategies at play of agents that were for and
against the development
and deployment of the system. And The Summit provides a
key piece of the history of our global economic CAS.
Bretton woods |
A key agent in the 1990 - 2008
housing expansion Countrywide is linked into the residential
mortgage value delivery system (VDS)
by Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla. But they show the VDS
was full of amplifiers and control points. With no one
incented to apply the brakes the bubble grew and burst.
Following the summary of Muolo and Padilla's key points the
complex adaptive system (CAS)
aspects are highlighted.
Housing amplifiers |
Satyajit Das uses an Indonesian company's derivative trades to
introduce us to the workings of the international derivatives
system. Das describes the components of the value delivery
system and the key
transactions. He demonstrates how the system
interacted with emerging economies
expanding them, extracting profits and then moving on as the
induced bubbles burst. Following Das's key points the
complex adaptive system (CAS)
aspects are highlighted.
Derivative systems |
Johnson & Kwak argue that expanding the national debt
provides a hedge against unforeseen future problems, as long as
creditors are willing to continue lending. They illustrate
different approaches to managing the debt within the US over its history and of the
eighteenth century administrations of England and France.
The US embodies two different political and economic systems which
approach the national debt differently:
- Taxes to support a sinking
fund to ensure credit to leverage fiscal power in:
Wars, Pandemics, Trade disputes, Hurricanes, Social
programs; Starting with Hamilton,
Lincoln & Chase,
Wilson, FDR;
- Low taxes, limited infrastructure, with risk assumed by
individuals: Advocated by President's Jefferson & Madison,
Reagan,
George W. Bush (Gingrich);
Johnson & Kwak develop a model of what the US
government does. They argue that the conflicting
sinking fund and low tax approaches leaves the nation 'stuck in
the middle' with a future problem.
And they offer their list of 'first principles' to help
assess the best approach for moving from 2012 into the
future.
They conclude the question is still political. They hope
it can be resolved with an awareness of their detailed
explanations. They ask who is willing to
push all the coming risk onto individuals.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Historically developing within the global cotton value delivery
system, key CAS features are highlighted.
National debt |
Robert Gordon argues that the inventions of the second
industrial revolution were the foundation for
American economic growth. Gordon shows how flows of people
into difficult rural America built a population base
which then took the opportunity to move on to urban settings: Houses, Food in supermarkets,
Clothes in
department stores;
that supported increasing productivity and standard of living.
The deployment of nationwide networks: Rail, Road, Utilities;
terminating in the urban housing and work places allowing the workers to
leverage time saving goods and services, which helped grow
the economy.
Gordon describes the concomitant transformation of:
- Communications
and advertising
- Credit
and finance
- Public
health and the health
care network
- Health insurance
- Education
- Social
and welfare services
Counter intuitively the constraints
introduced before and in the Great Depression and the demands of World War 2
provide the amplifiers that drive the inventions deeply and
fully into every aspect of the economy between 1940 and 1970
creating the exceptional growth and standard of living of post
war America.
Subsequently the
rate of growth was limited until the shift of women
into the workplace and the full networking of
voice and data supported the Internet and World Wide Web
completed the third industrial revolution, but the effects were
muted by the narrow reach of the technologies.
The development of Big Data, Robots,
and Artificial Intelligence may support additional growth,
but Gordon is unconvinced because of the collapse of
the middle class.
Following our summary of Gordon's book RSS frames his arguments from
the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
American growth |
Carl Menger argues that the market induced the emergence of
money based on the attractive features of precious metals.
He compares the potential for government edicts to create money
but sees them as lacking.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from
the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
With two hundred years of additional knowledge we conclude that
precious metals are not as attractive as Menger asserts.
Government backed promissory notes are analogous to:
- Other evolved CAS forms of ubiquitous high energy
transaction intermediates and
- Schematic strategies that are proving optimal in
supporting survival and replication in the currently
accessible niches.
Emergence of money |
Economic complexity |
Sven Beckert describes the historic transformation of the
growing, spinning, weaving, manufacture of cotton goods and
their trade over time. He describes the rise of a first global
commodity, its dependence on increasing: military power, returns for
the control points in the value delivery system(VDS), availability of land
and labor to work it including slaves.
He explains how cotton offered the opportunity for
industrialization further amplifying the productive capacity of
the VDS and the power of the control points. This VDS was quickly
copied. The increased capacity of the industrialized
cotton complex adaptive system (CAS) required more labor to
operate the machines. Beckert describes the innovative introduction of wages
and the ways found to
mobilize industrial labor.
Beckert describes the characteristics of the industrial cotton
CAS which made it flexible enough to become globally interconnected.
Slavery made the production system so cost effective that all
prior structures collapsed as they interconnected. So when
the US civil war
blocked access to the major production nodes in the
American Deep South the CAS began adapting.
Beckert describes the global
reconstruction that occurred and the resulting destruction of the traditional ways
of life in the global countryside. This colonial expansion
further enriched and empowered the 'western' nation
states. Beckert explains how other countries responded
by copying the colonial strategies and creating the
opportunities for future armed conflict among the original
colonialists and the new upstarts.
Completing the adaptive
shifts, Beckert describes the advocates for industrialization in
the colonized global south and how over time they joined
the global cotton CAS disrupting the early western manufacturing
nodes and creating the current global CAS
dominated by merchants like Wal-Mart
pulling goods through a network of clothing manufacturers,
spinning and weaving factories, and growers competing with each
other on cost.
Following our summary of Beckert's book, RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory. The transformation of
disconnected peasant farmers,
pastoral warriors and their lands into a supply chain for a
highly profitable industrial CAS required the development over
time: of military force, global transportation and communication
networks, perception and representation control networks, capital stores and flows,
models, rules, standards and markets; along with the support at
key points of: barriers, disruption, and infrastructure and
evolved amplifiers. The emergent
system demonstrates the powerful constraining influence of
extended phenotypic alignment.
Globalization from cotton |
The structure and problems of the US
health care network is described in terms of complex adaptive
system (CAS) theory.
The network:
- Is deeply embedded in the US nation state. It reflects the
conflict between two
opposing visions for the US: high tax with safety net
or low tax without. The emergence
of a parasitic elite supported by tax policy, further
constrains the choices available to improve the efficiency
and effectiveness of the network.
- The US is optimized to sell its citizens dangerous
levels of: salt,
sugar, cigarettes,
guns, light, cell phones, opioids,
costly education, global travel,
antibacterials, formula, foods including
endocrine disrupters;
- Accepting the US controlled global supply chain's
offered goods & services results in: debt, chronic stress,
amplified consumption and toxic excess, leading to obesity, addiction, driving instead of
walking, microbiome
collapse;
- Globalization connects disparate environments in a network. At the edges,
humans are drastically altering the biosphere. That
is reducing the proximate natural environment's
connectedness, and leaving its end-nodes disconnected and
far less diverse. This disconnects predators from
their prey, often resulting in local booms and busts that
transform the local parasite
network and their reservoir and amplifier
hosts. The situation is setup so that man is
introduced to spillover
from the local parasites' hosts. Occasionally, but
increasingly, the spillover results in humanity becoming
broadly infected. The evolved
specialization of the immune system
to the proximate environment during development
becomes undermined as the environment transforms.
- Is incented to focus on localized competition generating
massive & costly duplication of services within
physician based health care operations instead of proven
public health strategies. This process drives
increasing research & treatment complexity and promotes hope
for each new technological breakthrough.
- Is amplified by the legislatively structured separation
and indirection of service development,
provision, reimbursement and payment.
- Is impacted by the different political strategies for
managing the increasing
cost of health care for the demographic bulge of retirees.
- Is presented with acute
and chronic
problems to respond to. As currently setup the network
is tuned to handle acute problems. The interactions
with patients tend to be transactional.
- Includes a legislated health insurance infrastructure
which is:
- Costly and inefficient
- Structured around yearly
contracts which undermine long-term health goals and
strategies.
- Is supported by increasingly regulated HCIT
which offers to improve data sharing and quality but has
entrenched commercial EHR
products deep within the hospital systems.
- Is maintained, and kept in
alignment, by massive network
effects across the:
- Hospital platform
based
sub-networks connecting to
- Physician networks
- Health insurance networks - amplified by ACA
narrow network legislation
- Hospital clinical supply and food
production networks
- Medical school and academic research network and NIH
- Global
transportation network
- Public health networks
- Health care IT supply
network
Health care |
Deaton describes the wellbeing
of people around the world today. He explains the powerful benefit of public
health strategies and the effect of growth in
material wellbeing but also the corrosive effects of
aid.
Following our summary of Deaton's arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory. The situation he describes is complex including
powerful amplifiers, alignment and incentives that overlap
broadly with other RSS summaries of adaptations of: The
biosphere, Politics, Economics,
Philosophy and Health care.
Improving wellbeing |
Donald Barlett and James Steele write about their investigations
of the major problems afflicting US
health care as of 2006.
Problems of US health care |
Glenn Steele & David Feinberg review the development of the
modern Geisinger healthcare business after its near collapse
following the abandoned merger with Penn State AMC. After an overview of the
business, they describe how a calamity
unfolding around them supported building a vision of a
better US health care network. And they explain:
- How they planned
out the transformation,
- Leveraging an effective
governance structure,
- Using a strategy
to gain buy in,
- Enabling
reengineering at the clinician patient
interface.
- Implementing the reengineering for acute, chronic
& hot
spot care; to help the patients and help the
physicians.
- Geisinger's leverage of biologics.
- Reengineering healing with ProvenExperience.
- Where Geisinger is headed next.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments on them. We
frame their ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory.
E2E insured quality care |
Robert Pearl explains the perspectives of a health care leader
and son who know that the current health care network interacts
with human behavior to induce a poorly performing system that
caused his father's death. But he is confident that these
problem perceptions can be changed. Once that occurs he
asserts the network will become more integrated, coordinated,
collaborative, better led, and empathetic to their
patients. The supporting technology infrastructure will be
made highly interoperable. All that will reduce medical
errors and make care more cost effective.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments on them. We
frame his ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
including synergistic examples of these systems in
operation. The health care network is built out of
emergent human agents. All agents must model the signals
they perceive to represent and respond to them. Pinker
explains how this occurs. Sapolsky explains why fear and
hierarchy are so significant. He includes details of Josh
Green's research on morality and death. Charles Ferguson
highlights the pernicious nature of financial incentives.
Bad medical models |
US healthcare is ripe for
disruption. Christensen, Grossman and Hwang argue that
technologies are emerging which will support low cost business
models that will undermine the current network. Applying
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory to these arguments suggests that the current power hierarchy can effectively resist
these progressive forces.
Disrupting health care |
Atul Gawande writes about the opportunity for a thirty per cent
improvement in quality in medicine by organizing
to deploy as agent based teams using shared schematic
plans and distributed signalling or as he puts it the use of checklists.
With vivid examples from a variety of situations including construction, air crew support and global health care Gawande illustrates
the effects of
complexity and how to organize to cope with it.
Following the short review RSS
additionally relates Gawande's arguments to its models of
complex adaptive systems (CAS) positioning his discussion within
the network of US health care,
contrasting our view of complexity, comparing the forces shaping
his various examples and reviewing facets of complex
failures.
Complexity checklists |
Friedman and Martin leverage the lifelong data collected on
1,528 bright individuals selected by Dr. Lewis Terman
starting in 1921, to understand what aspects of the subjects'
lives significantly affected their longevity. Looking
broadly across each subject's: Personality,
Education, Parental impacts,
Energy
levels, Partnering,
Careers, Religion,
Social networks,
Gender, Impact from war and
trauma; Friedman and Martin are able to develop a set of model pathways,
which each individual could be seen to select and travel
along. Some paths led to the traveler having a long
life. Others were problematic. The models imply that
the US approach to health and
wellness should focus
more on supporting
the development and selection of beneficial pathways.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory. The pathways are most
applicable to bright individuals with the resources and support
necessary to make and leverage choices they make. Striving
to enter and follow a beneficial pathway seems sensible but may
be impossible for individuals trapped in a collapsing network,
starved of resources.
Promoting longevity |
Gawande uses his personal experience, analytic skills and lots
of stories of innovators to demonstrate better ways of coping
with aging and death. He introduces the lack of focus on
aging and death in traditional medicine. And goes on to
show how technology has amplified
this stress point. He illustrates the traditional possibility of the
independent self, living fully while aging with the
support of the extended family. Central
planning responded to the technological and societal changes
with poorly designed infrastructure and funding. But
Gawande then contrasts the power of
bottom up innovations created by experts responding to
their own family situations and belief
systems.
Gawande then explores in depth the challenges
that unfold currently as we age and become infirm.
He notes that the world is following the US path. As such it will
have to understand the dilemma of
integrating medical treatment and hospice
strategies. He notes that all parties
involved need courage to cope.
He proposes medicine must aim to assure
well being. At that point all doctors will practice
palliative care.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agency, death,
evolution, cooperation and adaptations
to new technologies are discussed.
Agent death |
Sonia Shah reviews the millennia old (500,000 years) malarial arms race between Humanity, Anopheles
mosquitoes and Plasmodium. 250 - 500 million people are
infected each year with malaria and one million die.
Malaria |
Peter Medawar writes about key historic events in the evolution
of medical science.
Medical science events |
Using John Holland's theory of adaptation in complex
systems Baldwin and Clark propose an evolutionary theory of
design. They show how this can limit the interdependencies
that generate complexity
within systems. They do this through a focus on
modularity.
Modular designed systems |
Lou Gerstner describes the challenges he faced and the
strategies he used to successfully restructure the computer
company IBM.
Compartmented systems |
Grady Booch advocates an object oriented approach to computer
software design.
Object based systems |
Bertrand Meyer develops arguments, principles and strategies for
creating modular software. He concludes that abstract data
types and inheritence make object orientation a superior
methodology for software construction. Complex adaptive
system (CAS) theory suggests agents provide an alternative strategy
to the use of objects.
Software construction |
Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved
dramatically. W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred.
Tools |
Matt Ridley demonstrates the creative effect of man on the
World. He highlights:
- A list of
preconditions resulting in
- Additional niche
capture & more free time
- Building a network
to interconnect memes processes & tools which
- Enabling inter-generational
transfers
- Innovations
that help reduce environmental stress even as they leverage fossil
fuels
Memetic trading networks |
E O. Wilson argues that campfire gatherings on the savanna supported
the emergence of human creativity. This resulted in man
building cultures and
later exploring them, and their creator, through the humanities. Wilson
identifies the transformative events, but he notes many of these
are presently ignored by the humanities. So he calls for a
change of approach.
He:
- Explores creativity:
how it emerged from the benefits of becoming an omnivore hunter-gatherer,
enabled by language & its catalysis of invention, through stories told in the
evening around the campfire. He notes the power of
fine art, but suggests music provides the most revealing
signature of aesthetic
surprise.
- Looks at the current limitations of the
humanities, as they have suffered through years of neglect.
- Reviews the evolutionary processes of heredity and
culture:
- Ultimate causes viewed
through art, & music
- The bedrock of:
- Ape senses and emotions,
- Creative arts, language, dance, song typically studied
by humanities,
&
- Exponential change in science and
technology.
- How the breakthrough from
our primate past occurred, powered by eating meat,
supporting: a bigger brain, expanded memory &
language.
- Accelerating changes now driven by genetic cultural coevolution.
- The impact on human nature.
- Considers our emotional attachment to the natural world: hunting, gardens; we are
destroying.
- Reviews our love of metaphor, archetypes,
exploration, irony, and
considers the potential for a third enlightenment,
supported by cooperative
action of humanities and science
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames these from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory:
- The humanities are seen to be a functionalist framework
for representing the cultural CAS while
- Wilson's desire
to integrate the humanities and science gains support from
viewing the endeavor as a network of layered CAS.
Evening campfire rituals |
Brynjolfsson and McAfee explore the effects of Moore's law on the
economy. They argue it has generated exponential
growth. This has been due to innovation.
It has created a huge bounty of
additional wealth.
But the wealth is spread unevenly across
society. They look at the short and long term implications of
the innovation bounty and spread
and the possible future of
technology.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory.
Brilliant technologies |
Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is
inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling
students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane
roles. He highlights a radical and already proven
alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning
processes supported by technology and freed up attention of
teams of teachers. Building on his personal experience of
helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative,
Khan:
- Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging
short videos focused on content,
Converging on mastery,
With the help of
neuroscience, and filling
in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach
to the mainstream method.
- Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s,
Inducing holes that
are hidden by tests, Tests
which ignore creativity.
The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to
be supplemented with homework.
Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so
they could mentor them while they attended school, an
inversion that significantly improves the economics.
- Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service,
Working with a
real classroom, Trying stealth
learning, At Khan Academy full time, In the curriculum at
Los Altos, Supporting life-long
learning.
- Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with
a one
room school, a robust
teaching team, and creativity enabled;
so with some catalysis
even the poorest can
become educated and earn credentials
for current jobs.
- Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based
assessments, College
education;
- Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure
for creativity to
emerge and to support risk taking.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Disruption is a powerful force for
change but if its force is used to support the current teachers
to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the
current educational network?
Education versus guilds |
Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld's New York Times opinion based on The
Triple Package is summarized. Their ideas are then framed
by CAS theory and reviewed.
What drives success |
Peter Turchin describes how major pre-industrial empires
developed due to effects of geographic boundaries constraining
the empires and their neighbors' interactions. Turchin
shows how the asymmetries of breeding rates and resource growth
rates results in dynamic cycles within cycles. After the
summary of Turchin's book complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
is used to augment Turchins findings.
Warrior groups |
Through the operation of three different food chains Michael
Pollan explores their relative merits. The application of
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory highlights the value of evolutionary
testing of the food chain.
Natural systems |
E. O. Wilson & Bert Holldobler illustrate how bundled cooperative strategies can
take hold. Various social insects have developed
strategies which have allowed them to capture the most valuable
available niches. Like humans they invest in
specialization and cooperate to subdue larger, well equipped
competitors.
Insect superorganisms |
Computational
theory of the mind and evolutionary
psychology provide Steven Pinker with a framework on which
to develop his psychological arguments about the mind and its
relationship to the brain. Humans captured a cognitive niche by
natural selection 'building out'
specialized aspects of their bodies and brains resulting in a system of mental organs
we call the mind.
He garnishes and defends the framework with findings from
psychology regarding: The visual
system - an example of natural
selections solutions to the sensory challenges
of inverse
modeling of our
environment; Intensions - where
he highlights the challenges of hunter-gatherers -
making sense of the objects
they perceive and predicting what they imply and natural
selections powerful solutions; Emotions - which Pinker argues are
essential to human prioritizing and decision making; Relationships - natural selection's
strategies for coping with the most dangerous competitors, other
people. He helps us understand marriage, friendships and war.
These conclusions allow him to understand the development and
maintenance of higher callings: Art, Music, Literature, Humor,
Religion, & Philosophy; and develop a position on the meaning of life.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) modeling allows RSS to frame Pinker's arguments
within humanity's current situation, induced by powerful evolved
amplifiers: Globalization,
Cliodynamics, The green revolution
and resource
bottlenecks; melding his powerful predictions of the
drivers of human behavior with system wide constraints.
The implications are discussed.
Computationally adapted mind |
The stages of development of the human female, including how her brain changes and the
impacts of this on her 'reality' across a full life span:
conception, infantile
puberty, girlhood,
juvenile pause, adolescence, dating years, motherhood, post-menopause; are
described. Brizendine notes the significant difference in
how emotions are processed
by women compared to men.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the stages with
the evolutionary under-pinning, psychological implications and
behavioral CAS.
Evolved female brain |
The complexity of behavior is explored through Sapolsky
developing scenarios of our best and worst behaviors across time
spans, and scientific subjects including: anthropology,
psychology, neuroscience, sociology. The rich network of adaptive flows he
outlines provides insights and highlight challenges for
scientific research on behavior.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory builds on Sapolsky's
details highlighting the strategies that evolution has captured
to successfully enter niches we now occupy.
CAS behavior |
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
Emergence of time |
Consciousness has confounded philosophers and scientists for
centuries. Now it is finally being characterized
scientifically. That required a transformation of
approach.
Realizing that consciousness was ill-defined neuroscientist
Stanislas Dehaene and others characterized and focused on conscious access.
In the book he outlines the limitations of previous
psychological dogma. Instead his use of subjective
assessments opened the
window to contrast totally unconscious
brain activity with those
including consciousness.
He describes the research methods. He explains the
contribution of new sensors and probes that allowed the
psychological findings to be correlated, and causally related to
specific neural activity.
He describes the theory of the brain he uses, the 'global neuronal
workspace' to position all the experimental details into a
whole.
He reviews how both theory and practice support diagnosis and
treatment of real world mental illnesses.
The implications of Dehaene's findings for subsequent
consciousness research are outlined.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the brain's development and
operation introduce constraints which are discussed.
Conscious access |
Reading and writing present a conundrum. The reader's
brain contains neural networks tuned to reading. With
imaging a written word can be followed as it progresses from the
retina through a functional chain that asks: Are these letters?
What do they look like? Are they a word? What does it sound
like? How is it pronounced? What does it mean? Dehaene
explains the importance of
education in tuning the brain's networks for reading as
well as good strategies for teaching reading and countering dyslexia. But
he notes the reading
networks developed far too recently to have directly evolved.
And Dehaene asks why humans are unique in developing
reading and culture.
He explains the cultural
engineering that shaped writing to human vision and the exaptations and neuronal structures that
enable and constrain reading and culture.
Dehaene's arguments show how cellular, whole animal and cultural
complex adaptive system (CAS) are
related. We review his explanations in CAS terms and use
his insights to link cultural CAS that emerged based on reading
and writing with other levels of CAS from which they emerge.
Evolved reading |
Read Montague explores how brains make decisions. In
particular he explains how:
- Evolution can create indirect abstract models, such as the dopamine system, that
allow
- Life changing real-time
decisions to be made, and how
- Schematic structures provide
encodings of computable control
structures which operate through and on incomputable,
schematically encoded, physically active structures and
operationally associated production
functions.
Receptor indirection |
Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson describe a scientific
investigation of meditation's
impact on the brain. They introduce
the book by describing their experiences with meditation,
science and the research establishment, their friendship, how
meditation is now used in two distinct ways: deep - leading to altered
traits & wide - that can reach the multitudes; which
the book reviews as it critiques the claims and research used to
back them up.
Goleman and Davidson describe meeting as Harvard psychology
graduate students, interested in consciousness, and how minds
work. They rebel against the behavioral orthodoxy, visit Asia and discover the Eastern
tradition of exploring and altering the mind.
Goleman had travelled to Sri Lanka to understand an Asian model
of the mind, which he presented to the undergraduates at
Harvard. Goleman and Davidson developed it into a shared vision of
consciousness. It took over twenty years for
scientific theory and experimental data to catch up and align
with this model. Much of the prior
experimental data had to be abandoned.
They introduce meditation's
impact on the amygdala
responding to pain and stress.
They look at the changes in:
- Stress
- Compassion
- Attention
- Self-awareness; and the
potential for use of mediation
in psychiatry.
And they warn of the occurrence of dark
nights.
They detail how scientists were able to study the brains of Tibetan meditation masters,
starting with Mingyur Rinpoche,
and detect meditation altering
traits.
Finally they discuss the potential
benefits of meditation and strategies to distribute it
broadly to a busy America.
Meditating neurons |
Tara Brach was worried from
a young age that there was something terribly wrong with
her: she like many others felt unworthy. She responded
by developing Radical
Acceptance. Brach then explains the steps in
applying it: pause,
greet what happens next with unconditional
friendliness; allowing us to:
- Initially attend to the sensations
of our body,
- Accept the
wanting self and discover its source of boundless
love.
- Welcome
fear with a widening
attention, accept the pain of death and become
free.
- Use adversity as a gateway to limitless compassion for ourselves
and others.
- Focus on
our basic goodness to counter Western culture turning anger, at being betrayed,
towards ourselves. Extend observing this goodness in
everyone. This enables the use of loving-kindness.
- Leverage
friendships to understand more about our shared nature
and strengthen Radical Acceptance.
- Realize our Buddha nature.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory describes the emergence of
the dualistic self and the tree of life linked by the genetic
code and machinery. It provides an analog of the Buddhist
presence.
Compassionate CAS |
The influence of childhood on behavior is significant.
Enneagrams define personality
types: Reformer, Helper, Achiever,
Individualist, Investigator, Loyalist, Enthusiast,
Challenger and Peacemaker; based on the impact of
childhood driven wounds.
The Enneagram becomes
a tool to enable interested people to transform from the
emotionally wounded base, hidden within
the armor of the type, to the liberated underlying essence.
Childhood leaves each of us with some environmentally specific Basic Fear. In response each
of us adopts an induced Basic Desire
of the type. But as we develop the inner observer, it will
support presence and
undermine the identification
that supports the armor of the type.
The Enneagram reveals three sets of relations about our type
armor:
- Triadic self
revealing: Instinctive,
feeling, thinking; childhood needs
that became significant wounds
- Social style
groupings: Assertive, compliant, withdrawn; strategies for
managing inner conflict
- Coping styles: Positive outlook, competency, reactive; strategies for
defending childhood wounds
Riso and Hudson augment the Enneagram with instinctual
distortions reflected in the interests of the variants.
The Enneagram also offers tools for understanding a person's level of development:
unhealthy, average, healthy,
liberation; including their
current center of gravity,
steriotypical social role,
wake-up call, leaden rule, red
flag, and direction
of integration and disintegration.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the models
presented by the Enneagram with evolved behaviors and structures
in the mind: feelings, emotions, social behaviors, ideas; driven
by genetic and cultural evolution and the constraints of family
and social life. Emergent evolved amplifers can be
constrained by Riso and Hudson's awareness strategies.
Enneagram strategies |
Antonio Damasio argues
that ancient
& fundamental homeostatic processes,
built into
behaviors and updated by evolution
have resulted in the emergence
of nervous systems and feelings. These
feelings, representing the state of the viscera, and represented with general
systems supporting enteric
operation, are later ubiquitously
integrated into the 'images'
built by the minds of higher animals
including humans.
Damasio highlights the separate
development of the body frame in the building of
minds.
Damasio explains that this integration of feelings by minds
supports the development of subjectivity and consciousness. His chain of
emergence suggests the 'order of things.' He stresses the
end-to-end
integration of the organism which undermines dualism. And he reviews Chalmers
hard problem of consciousness.
Damasio reviews the emergence of cultures
and sees feelings, integrated with reason, as the judges of the
cultural creative process, linking culture to
homeostasis. He sees cultures as supporting the
development of tools
to improve our lives. But the results of the
creative process have added
stresses to our lives.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from
the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Each of the [super]organisms
discussed is a CAS reflecting the theory of such systems:
- Damasio's proposals about homeostasis routed signalling, aligns
well with CAS theory.
- Damasio's ideas on cultural stresses are elaborated by CAS
examples.
Emergence of feelings |
Robert Coram highlights the noble life of John Boyd. John
spent a lot of time alone
during his childhood.
He: excelled at swimming and was a lifeguard, enlisted in the
Army Air Corp while at school which rejected him for pilot
training, was part of the Japan occupation force where he swam;
so the US paid for him to attend University
of Iowa, where he: joined the Air Force Officers' training
corps, was accepted to be an Air Force pilot, and got engaged to
Mary Bruce.
Boyd trained at Nellis AFB to become a
combat ready pilot in
the Korean War.
While the US Air Force focused on
Strategic bombing, Boyd loved
dogfights. His exceptional tactical ability was
rewarded with becoming an instructor. Boyd created new
ways to think about dogfighting and beat all-comers
by using them in the F-100.
He was noticed and enabled by Spradling. As he trained, and defeated the top
pilots from around the US and allied base network, his
reputation spread. But he needed to get
nearer to the hot spring in Georgia, and when his move to
Tyndall AFB was blocked he used the AFIT to train in engineering at
Georgia tech. While preparing to move he documented his FWS training
and mentored Ronald Catton.
While there he first realized the
link between energy
and maneuverability.
At Eglin, in partnership with Tom Christie,
he developed tools to model the link. They developed
comparisons of US and Soviet aircraft which showed the US
aircraft performing poorly. Eventually General Sweeney
was briefed on
the theory and issues with the F-105, F-4, and F-111.
Sent to the Pentagon
to help save the F-X budget, Boyd joined forces with Pierre Sprey to
pressure procurement into designing and
building tactically exceptional aircraft: a CAS tank killer and a
lightweight maneuverable
fighter. The navy aligned with
Senators of states with navy bases, prepared to sink the
F-X and force the F-14 on
the Air Force. Boyd saved
the plane from the Navy and the budget from Congress, ensuring
the Air Force executive and its career focused hierarchy had the
freedom to compromise
on a budget expanding over-stuffed F-X (F-15). Boyd requested to
retire, in disgust.
Amid mounting hostility from the organizational hierarchy Boyd
and Sprey secretly
developed specifications for building prototype lightweight
fighters with General Dynamics: YF-16;
and Northrop: YF-17; and enabled by Everest Riccioni.
David Packard
announced a budget of $200 million for the services to spend on
prototypes. Pierre Sprey's friend Lyle Cameron picked a
short takeoff and landing transport aircraft and Boyd's lightweight fighter to
prototype.
Boyd was transferred to Thailand
as Vice Commander of Task
Force Alpha, inspector general and equal opportunity
training officer; roles in which he excelled. And he
started working on his analysis of creativity: Destruction
and Creation. But on completion of the tour Boyd was
apparently abandoned and sent to run
a dead end office at the Pentagon.
The power hierarchy moved to protect the F-15, but: Boyd,
Christie, Schlesinger,
and the Air Force chief of staff; kept the
lightweight fighter budgeted and aligned with Boyd's
requirements in a covert campaign. The Air Force
threw a phalanx of developers at the F-16, distorting Boyd's
concept. He accepted he had lost the fight and retired
from the Air Force.
Shifting to scholarship Boyd reflects on how rigidity must be destroyed to enable
creative new assemblies. He uses the idea to explain
the operational success of the YF16 and F-86 fighters, and then
highlights how the pilot can take advantage of their
infrastructure advantage with rapid decision making he
explains with the O-O-D-A Loop.
Boyd encouraged Chuck Spinney
to expose the systemic cost overruns
of the military procurement process. The military
hierarchy moved to undermine the
Spinney Report and understand the
nature of the reformers. Boyd acted as a progressive
mentor to Michael
Wyly, who taught the
Marine Corps about maneuver
warfare, and Jim Burton.
Finally, after the military hierarchy appears to have
beaten him, Boyd's ideas are tested during
the First Gulf War.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Boyd was Darwinesque, placing the art of
air-to-air combat within a CAS framework.
Air warrior |
Alfred Nemeczek reveals the chaotic, stressful life of Vincent
van Gogh in Arles.
Nemeczek shows that Vincent was driven
to create, and successfully
invented new methods of representing feeling in paintings, and
especially portraits. Vincent
worked hard to allow artists like him-self
to innovate. But
Vincent failed in this goal, collapsing into psychosis.
Nemeczek also provides a brief history of
Vincent's life.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Vincent creates |
Reginald Dwight, better known as Elton John, writes a hilarious
memoir, full of anecdotal and sometimes morbid humor and gossip, which describes his
immediate family, upbringing, development as a singer
songwriter, stardom and its support for his problems, collapse
and eventual recovery.
Elton stresses the serendipitous nature
of his emergence as a musician. He describes
the contributions of his parents, Stanley & Sheila, mother's
sister, and her mother Ivy;
who formed his early
childhood proximate environment which prepared
him for a job in entertainment: he
developed his performance in the club circuits, setup a
commercial partnership with Bernie Taupin to write songs;
entering a network based around Dick James Music.
And he almost got married.
DJM focused Elton and Bernie's initial song writing
while they studied the songs they admired and Elton did session
work, tightening his performance skills and paying for the
food. A first album supported touring and the formation of
a band. A second one sent them to the US where Elton became an
overnight sensation. And during this period of time
Elton's testosterone
level ramped. Life changed
dramatically.
Stardom provided many rewards but there
were still life's problems to deal with. Elton was
befriended by his idol, John Lennon; he achieved new heights of
success but, sensitive to any hint of failure and fraud, suicidally disassociated.
His career crested, he struggled with loneliness and drugs, and
foresaw a fearful vision of his future, as fame caged him idly
in hotels between concerts. His hair abandoned him.
But he was saved by the challenge of
transforming the collapsed Watford football club. He
retired from touring which allowed him the time to reconstruct his life.
Empowered by success, supported by the removal of constraints,
Elton dominates - limiting feedback, doing whatever he
hopes will bring him happiness:
trying new options, expanding the range and increasing the
quantity of mind altering substances; eventually hitting John Reid and marrying
Renata.
He allows his drug use to enter the recording studio. Problems stress him. He is
frightened by a cancer
scare, AIDS, inspired by
Ryan White, angered by the
Sun, and saddened at
breaking Renata's heart. But he was there for Ryan White's
final days. And his lover Hugh Williams confronted Elton
about his string of addictions.
Elton finally agreed he had a problem.
He went to rehab, stopped hating himself,
gave up his current addictions, accepted the influence of a
higher force, and began admiring the everyday world and other
people.
It seemed the higher force was
supporting Elton's progress: he wrote the music for the
Lion King, met David Furnish who accepted Elton warts and all;
they both enjoyed a friendship with Gianni Versace; until Gianni
was murdered. Princess Diana
died soon after, and Elton performed at the funeral.
He toured with Billy Joel and aimed to do the same with Tina
Turner. While his new records sold well he found
himself in debt and terminated the management relationship
with John Reid
Enterprises.
Elton and Bernie improved their
situations: Elton started writing film scores, he helped
turn the film Billy Elliot into a musical, Bernie lobbied Elton
to improve the way they were making records, Elton and David
entered into a civil partnership, and Elton made a record with
his seminal influence: Leon
Russell.
Elton and David became parents of
two boys: Zachary and Elijah; using their sperm a surrogate
mother and network in California. They quietly get married
when the UK allows.
Elton's mum remains
difficult and cruel to him, but he is sad when she dies, and many
at the funeral recall her fun side with him. Being parents
increases the long-term
stresses on their lives, forcing them to adjust, so they can be there for their boys.
But Elton needs to go out with a bang!
And everyone helps.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details
of the creative process from the perspective of complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
My song |
Richard Feynman
outlines a series of amusing vignettes, as he reviews his life story.
Richard's personality
encouraged him to patiently
seek out fun: performing Shewhart cycles
with electricity, in his childhood laboratory, and aligning theory, and
practice through building and fixing radios.
Leonardo's life inspired him to try
innovation, which he
concluded was hard. He played
with the emotion
in communications, a skill
which he used later at
Caltech. And he made a game of avoiding following
orders at MIT. Working during
the holidays revealed the benefit of joining theory and
practice.
Feynman enrolled as a graduate
student at Princeton, where the successful
approach to science was just like his.
His approach was based on
patience and fun: he used his home lab and other tools for
qualitative exploration. Overtime he added experimental
techniques. He would test
the assertions in articles with amusing investigations;
with his mind aligned by
feelings of joy. Everyone at Princeton heard he would want to be hypnotized.
He was driven to compare the challenges of complex subjects being
taught at Princeton to his current pick. In his summer
recess he explored biology.
Gathering problems in challenging areas of science, and then picking one to solve, supported his
creativity. And his practical
orientation and situation when growing up in Far Rockaway,
supported his desire for choices
and adolescent dislike for purely intellectual and cultural
pursuits. Being mostly self-taught, he
developed different approaches to problems than the
standard strategies provided by mass education.
Richard saw his skill set as very different to that exhibited by his father. But are they very
different?
While Richard was at Princeton, America became concerned about
the implications of the European war. After a friend
enlisted he decided to dedicate his
summer holiday to helping the war effort. Feynman got involved in the
Manhattan Project, and went to Los Alamos where he
experienced constraints, applied by: the military, the
physics of the project, him on Niels
Bohr; but was
freed from them by Von
Neumann. The records & reports of the project
were kept in filing cabinets. Richard explored the weaknesses of
the locks and safes deployed to secure these
secrets. Just after the war he was called up by the draft
board for a medical but was rejected for being mentally
unfit.
After the war, Richard was asked to become a professor at Cornell.
He initially struggled in this role: Too young to match
expectations, stressed by the demands of his new job and his
recent experiences; until he adopted an approach that focused on
fun. He enjoyed knowing
about numbers: using, learning about them and the tools to
use them, and competing with others; to calculate, interpolate
and approximate a value the fastest.
Traveling to Buffalo in a light plane once a week to give a
physics lecture before flying back the next morning wasn't much
fun for Richard. So he used
the stipend to visit a bar after each lecture to meet
beautiful women. Richard liked bars and nightclubs, spending a summer in Albuquerque
frequenting one, and later
ones in Las Vegas, as he explored how to get the girls he
drank with to sleep with him.
Richard reflects on various times when he made government
officials obey their parts of contracts: patent fees, limits on red tape;
Richard became frustrated with his life at Cornell, seeing more
things that interested him on the sunny west coast at Caltech. Both
institutions, and Chicago, offered him incentives to help his decision making,
but Richard began to find reevaluating the alternatives a waste
of time and he saw risks in
a really high salary, deciding he would move to Caltech
and stay there.
Richard is invited to attend a scientific symposium in
Japan. Each of the US attendees is asked to learn a little
Japanese. Richard takes lessons, persists, can converse
effectively, but stops when he
finds the cultural parts of the language conflict with his
individualism.
Richard was unhappy with his achievements in physics. He
felt: slower than his peers, not keeping up or understanding the
latest details, fearful that
he could not cope; as the community
worked to understand the laws of beta decay. But
Martin Block pushed him to question the troubling parity
premise. Encouraged by Oppenheimer the community focused
on parity and failures were discovered in a cascade of
reports. Richard attended a meeting where Lee & Yang
discussed a failure and a theory to explain it. Richard
felt terrified and could not understand what they said.
His sister pushed him to change his attitude: act like a student
having fun, read every
line and equation of their paper; he would understand it.
And he did, as well as developing additional insights about what
was happening and what still seemed conflicted. He
reported his ideas back to the community. After Richard
returned from Brazil he reviewed the confusion of facts with
Caltech's experimental physicists who made him aware of
Gell-mann abandoning another former premise of Beta decay.
Feynman realized his ideas were consistent: fully and simply
describing the details of beta decay. He had identified
the workings of a fundamental law. Years later he was awarded the Nobel
prize for physics. He was conflicted about the prize
and attending the ceremony, but eventually enjoyed the trip,
where he discussed cultural achievement with the Japanese
ambassador.
Richard was interested in the operation of the brain, modeling
it on a digital computer. He explored hallucinations and the reality of
experiences.
Richard lobbies for integrity
in science.
In aspects of his life that weren't focused directly on science,
Richard was quirky. He would tease those who asked for his
help: pushing bargains to their logical conclusion; insisting on everyone keeping to
their part of the agreement. And he paid no attention to the
logistical details of planning. He loved percussion,
playing: drums, bongos, baskets, tables, Frigideira; and became quite a success. He
eventually discovered art could be
fun, and tried to express his joy at the underlying
mathematical beauty of the physical world. He had a great
art teacher. But he discovered although he could
eventually draw well he did not understand art.
Many of the artists he met were fakers, and even the powerful,
who were interested in integrating art and science, did not
understand either subject. He found the situation was
similar in other complex adaptive systems: philosophy, religion and
economics; which he dabbled in for a while but found the
strategies of other people practicing the study of such subjects
made him angry and
disturbed, so he avoided participating in them. It seemed
ironic that he was eventually asked to help in bringing
culture to the physicists!
He discusses issues in teaching creative physics in Brazil. He gets
involved in the California public school text
book selection process which he concluded was totally
broken, but also reveals how his father
provided him with a vision of how our world works,
inspiring his interest in experimentation and physical
theory.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS reviews how his personality, family and cultural history supported
his creative development from the perspective of complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Richard draws |
Desmond & Moore paint a picture of Charles Darwin's life,
expanded from his own highlights:
- His naughty
childhood,
- Wasted
schooldays,
- Apprenticeship with Grant,
- His extramural
activities at Cambridge, walks with Henslow,
life with FitzRoy on the
Beagle,
- His growing
love for science,
- London: geology, journal and Lyell.
- Moving from
Gower Street to Down and writing Origin and other
books.
- He reviewed his position on
religion: the long
dispute with Emma, his
slow collapse of belief
- damnation for unbelievers like his father and brother, inward conviction
being evolved and unreliable, regretting he had ignored his father's
advice; while describing Emma's side of the
argument. He felt happy with his decision to dedicate
his life to science. He closed by asserting after Self &
Cross-fertilization his strength will be
exhausted.
Following our summary of their main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Darwin placed
evolution within a CAS framework, and built a network of supporters whose
complementary skills helped drive the innovation.
Darwin emerges |
Richard Dawkin's explores how nature has created implementations
of designs, without any need for planning or design, through the
accumulation of small advantageous changes.
Accumulating small changes |
Russ Abbott explores the impact on science of epiphenomena and
the emergence of agents.
Autonomous emergence |
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 |
|
|
Economic complexity
Summary
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 human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. is a system in
equilibrium, with complexity
economics in which the economy is modeled as a complex
adaptive system ( This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS).
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 are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for transforming matter, energy, and information from one state into another in pursuit of a goal or goals. The effects of nuclear and genetic physical technologies are already challenging. Beinhocker adds artificial intelligence and nanotechnology as emerging physical technologies that support access to huge new niches and introduce additional challenges. and
social
technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg. . And he identifies the interactors is evolutionary philosopher David Hull's term for the schematically specified, instantiated aggregated agent which can interact with the proximate environment and is subject to selection pressures. Dawkins's equivalent term is 'vehicle'. 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 is Rob's Strategy Studio explores his conclusions
and aligns Beinhocker's model of CAS with the This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS theory and evidence we
leverage.
The Origin of
Wealth
In Eric Beinhocker's book
'The Origin of Wealth' he argues that the global economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. is a complex
adaptive system (CAS) where he concludes wealth is knowledge.
That is a radical shift from the highly influential orthodox
ideas developed over the last century by traditional
economics.
A Paradigm Shift
How Is Wealth Created?
Beinhocker notes that wealth is instantiated in different ways
in different situations and cultures is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal. CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism. Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering. Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling. Damasio notes prokaryotes and social insects have developed cultural social behaviors. Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset. He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised. Culture: - Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation. Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain. Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes. Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach. And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations! PMS symptoms vary by culture.
- Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play. So parents try to control their children's peer group.
- Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc.
- Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate.
- Can transform dominance into honor. There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures. Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian.
- Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.
- Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire.
- Can provide varying levels of support for innovation. Damasio suggests culture is influenced by feelings:
- As motives for intellectual creation: prompting
detection and diagnosis of homeostatic
deficiencies, identifying
desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural
instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments
required by the cultural process over time
- Produces consciousness according to Dennet.
and changes in what it tangibly represents. Ultimately
Beinhocker wants to understand what wealth is and how more can
be created. And if so can it be used to benefit
mankind. But to do that he argues economics must be viewed
as a system. Today this system includes a network of vast
complexity. And no one controls this network.
Beinhocker proposes 2.5 million years ago as the economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. 's start point: when
two hominids traded tools. Fire and a broader range of
tools had emerged over the next million years. Homo sapien bands
appeared around 130,000 years ago with more sophisticated
tools and language. Then 35,000 years ago people settled,
there was division of labor and trade was observed between
these hunter-gatherer is a lifestyle organized around a band of relatives, evolved in humans focused on capturing the cognitive niche in the African savanna. It is of great significance in shaping our minds: behaviors, emotions, creativity, intelligence; and developing survival strategies including use of fire and language, according to evolutionary psychologists. It was practiced by all humans, for most of Homo sapiens existence, until the emergence of farming, and still is by some isolated bands: Ju/'hoansi, New Guinea: Gebusi, Mae Enga; & Borneo head hunters, Maasai & Zulu warriors from Africa, Amazonians: Waorani, Jivaro; Brazilian and Venezuelan Yanomamo. Since the band moves on when it has depleted the resources in an area of land, the soil remains vibrant, but the large animals were typically placed in a position of stress from which they did not recover.
groups.
Beinhocker compares the lifestyle of a present day Yanomamo is a tribe of contemporary Venezuelan hunter-gatherers. They are still isolated from modern societies (Nov 2018). They have been a popular model of historic hunter gatherers: discussed in Behave, and in The Origin of Wealth. hunter-gatherer
with a New Yorker. The economic choices available to the
New Yorker are astronomically larger than the Yanomamo.
The Yanomamo lifestyle by contrast is fairly similar to our
ancestors of 15,000 years ago. Around 1750
GDP is: - Gross domestic product which measures the total of goods and services produced in a given year within the borders of a given country (output) according to Piketty. Gordon argues to include products produced in the home & market-purchased goods and services, following Becker's theory of time use. Gordon stresses innovation is the ultimate source of all growth in output per worker-hour. GDP growth per person is equal to the growth in labor productivity + growth in hours worked per person. GDP has many problems. Gordon concludes that between 1870 and 1940 all available measures GDP is hugely understated because:
- GDP is a poor measure of:
- Value & wealth
- Who gets what
- Global supply chains
- GDP excludes:
- Reduction in infant mortality between 1890 (22%) and 1950 (1%)
- Brightness & safety of electric light,
- Increased variety of food including refrigeration transported fresh meat and processed food
- Convenience and economies of scale of the department store and mail order catalog and resulting product price reductions
- Services by house makers
- Time & health gains from having flush toilets, integrated sewer networks; rather than having to physically remove effluent and cope with fecal-oral transmission
- Leisure
- Costs & benefits of different length work weeks
- Speed and flexibility of motor vehicles - which were not included in the CPI until 1935, after the transformation had occurred. And competition from improved foreign vehicles, while it provides purchaser/user with improved standard of living (less breakdowns, repairs, etc.) is measured as reduced domestic manufacture
- Coercion and corruption to obtain resources
- Consumption impact of finite resources: coal, oil;
- Destruction impact of loss of entire irreplaceable species
- GDP includes items that should be excluded:
- Cost of waste - cleaning up pollution (single use indestructible plastic bags), building prisons, commuting to work, and cars left parked most of the time; should be subtracted
- Guanine-di-phosphate is a nucleotide base.
started to grow
exponentially.
Beinhocker builds a test to evaluate theories of the economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. . It must
explain how:
- The economy self-organized.
- Complexity and wealth are correlated and grew over
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time.
- The growth has been sudden and explosive.
Beinhocker suggests evolution
provides the only viable theory which is able to explain the
tests. But he notes care must be taken in framing
economics with an evolutionarly model. While evolution facilitates 'design' with no designer,
the ecomomy has lots of designers. Beinhocker argues human rationality &
creativity feed and shape the workings of the evolutionary
algorithm rather than replacing it.
Beinhocker views economic evolution as based on three interlinked
processes: (1) Physical
technology are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for transforming matter, energy, and information from one state into another in pursuit of a goal or goals. The effects of nuclear and genetic physical technologies are already challenging. Beinhocker adds artificial intelligence and nanotechnology as emerging physical technologies that support access to huge new niches and introduce additional challenges. evolution,
(2) Social
technology are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg. evolution: how to organize people to do things
including: agriculture, the rule of law, money, venture capital is venture capital, venture companies invest in startups with intangable assets ; fused together
by (3) businesses, which express these technologies as
products and services. Businesses similarly evolve.
This complexity economics
assumes the economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. is a
complex adaptive system. But he notes mainstream economics
is built on a conflicting assumption of an economy being an
equilibrium system.
If complexity economics holds, there must be an evolutionary explanation
for the creation of economic wealth.
Additionally as this paradigm shift becomes accepted Beinhocker
suggests how it will impact both
business and society.
Traditional
Economics - A World in Equilibrium
Business leaders have recognized that traditional economics has
not helped them predict and cope with crisis. It is
assumed that economic theory is highly idealized, using untested
data, and unrealistic assumptions. Central bankers such as
Alan Greenspan noted that they did not know how the economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. works.
But the huge wealth of developed nations is attributed to
leverage of traditional economics theories.
Beinhocker asserts the issue is that economics is not fulfilling
its true potential as a science:
- The big ideas are over 100 years old
- The formal theories and mathematical models are undermined
by unrealistic assumptions or directly contradicted by
real-world data.
Beinhocker outlines the conventional wisdom, history and key
concepts of traditional economics:
- Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations
- Suggested that wealth is created when people transform
raw materials into items that people want. Smith
realized that improving people's productivity is the efficiency with which an agent's selected strategy converts the inputs to an action into the resulting outputs. It is a complex capability of agents. It will depend on the agent having: time, motivation, focus, appropriate skills; the coherence of the participating collaborators, and a beneficial environment including the contribution of: standardization of inputs and outputs, infrastructure and evolutionary amplifiers.
will increase
wealth creation for each person. Smith concluded
that productivity is the efficiency with which an agent's selected strategy converts the inputs to an action into the resulting outputs. It is a complex capability of agents. It will depend on the agent having: time, motivation, focus, appropriate skills; the coherence of the participating collaborators, and a beneficial environment including the contribution of: standardization of inputs and outputs, infrastructure and evolutionary amplifiers.
could be increased with division of labor that allows
specialization.
- Smith suggested that the distribution
of resources and wealth should allow individuals to pursue
their own self-interest and choices. But resources
should be allocated to maximize the efficiency and total
wealth of the society. Smith asserted that
competitive markets allow this most efficient allocation
through the signal of price.
- Jacques Turgot argued that governments should minimize
their interference in the operations of markets. He
identified the law of diminishing returns which will drive
an economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers.
towards
stability and suggests a limit to supply.
- Jeremy
Bentham introduced the rational actor and utility which he
concluded shaped demand.
- Hermann Gossen developed Bentham's ideas and defined the
law of diminishing marginal utility, which suggested a limit
to demand.
- Leon Walras's
Elements of pure economics aimed to provide a mathematical
foundation for economics comparable to the work of Newton,
Leibniz, Lagrange, Euler and Hamilton in science.
Walras used equilibrium as the core model. And for the
first time he applied the sophisticated mathematics
developed for physics to economic problems.
- William
Jevons's Theory of Political Economy applied the equations
of field theory to Utility, and diminishing returns to
consumption to build a mathematical model of human
behavior. Trade enabled the redistribution that
allowed an optimal equilibrium to be achieved.
- Vilfredo Pareto enabled an estimation of utility by
developing a model of types of trade. He concluded
that markets would reach the Pareto optimum allocates resources measurably so that each change must make at least one person better off and make no one worse off.
when all trades that are win-win or win-no-loose (Pareto
superior) trades have occurred. Utility was shown to
be a relative measure.
- Alfred Marshall then bridged Jevon's single market in
partial equilibrium with Walras's model of interlinked
markets to define an economy in general equilibrium.
- John Hicks's Value and Capital integrated Walras, Marshall
and Pareto's ideas into a coherent theory.
- Paul Samuelson's Foundation
of Economic Analysis extended Hicks's theory into a
mathematical standard model. He equated observed
choices (preferences) with utility allowing it to be
measured.
- Kenneth Arrow & Gerard Debreu linked Walras's general
equilibrium with Pareto's
optimality allocates resources measurably so that each change must make at least one person better off and make no one worse off.
in a very general theory. They showed
how prices act as signals. Their general equilibrium
theory was based on a small set of axioms. But some of
these were hard to relate to observations.
Beinhocker notes that from Walras to Pareto the equilibrium
mathematics was best suited to studying the allocation of
wealth. Joseph Schumpeter was skeptical that this
approach would explain the growth of
wealth. Schumpeter observed that technological
progress happens in random streams of discoveries. He
concluded that wealth is created when entrepreneurs turn
technologies into commercially successful enterprises. But
he could not find an associated mathematical model that coped
with innovation's disruptive disequilibrium. Robert Solow
used equilibrium assumptions to provide that theory for
growth. He:
- Viewed the economy as being in a dynamic equilibrium
- By making the rate of population growth and the rate of
technological change as exogenous are changes to the external inputs of a traditional equilibrium economic model. The model does not change these variables but takes them as inputs. Typical exogenous variables include: Changes in consumer tastes, Technological innovations, Government actions, Weather; according to Beinhocker.
,
these two could drive the growth rate. His markets for labor and capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). then kept
everything in a Pareto optimal equilibrium. Solow's
model supported Smith's assertion that only improvements in
productivity is the efficiency with which an agent's selected strategy converts the inputs to an action into the resulting outputs. It is a complex capability of agents. It will depend on the agent having: time, motivation, focus, appropriate skills; the coherence of the participating collaborators, and a beneficial environment including the contribution of: standardization of inputs and outputs, infrastructure and evolutionary amplifiers.
increase wealth. Capital must be used productively to
do that.
- Paul
Romer doubted that technology was exogenous and
developed endogenous growth theory. He concluded that
knowledge about technology is an increasing returns, W. Brian Arthur's conception of how high tech products have positive economic feedback as they deploy. Classical products such as foods have negative returns to scale since they take increasing amounts of land, and distribution infrastructure to support getting them to market. High tech products typically become easier to produce or gain from platform and network effects of being connected together overcoming the negative effects of scale.
phenomenon.
These economic ideas had melded into a major influence on public
policy, business, and finance.
But the foundations
were very weak.
A Critique -
Chaos & Cuban Cars
Beinhocker outlines the main criticisms of traditional
economics. A multi-discipline group of scientists at the
Santa Fe Institute concluded that traditional economics was a
brilliantly developed framework, but:
- It was a throwback, based on 100 year old equations and
techniques that had been borrowed from physics text books by
Walras & Jevons. An Institute scientist having
recently visited Cuba likened the situation to the ancient
Packards and DeSotos that were cleverly maintained but still
vintage. Walras & Jevons leveraged developments in
thermodynamics. But they borrowed them before
- There was extreme use of simplifying assumptions by
economists which actually contradicted reality: perfect
rationality. A point that Henri Poincare had
made to Walras in 1901.
In 1953 Milton Friedman argued in The Methodology of Positive
Economics, that unrealistic assumptions do not matter if the
results of the theory are correct. Herbert Simon countered
that scientific theories are not developed to make predictions
but to explain things. The predictions must be tests of
whether the explanations are correct.
Beinhocker's list of troubling assumptions that make the
equilibrium mathematics work includes: Simplistic idea of 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, Interesting changes are exogenous are changes to the external inputs of a traditional equilibrium economic model. The model does not change these variables but takes them as inputs. Typical exogenous variables include: Changes in consumer tastes, Technological innovations, Government actions, Weather; according to Beinhocker. , Positive returns, W. Brian Arthur's conception of how high tech products have positive economic feedback as they deploy. Classical products such as foods have negative returns to scale since they take increasing amounts of land, and distribution infrastructure to support getting them to market. High tech products typically become easier to produce or gain from platform and network effects of being connected together overcoming the negative effects of scale.
are transient and can be ignored or don't exist, Smart people in
very simple worlds: No transaction costs, products are all
commodities, Companies are efficient, Consumers can always
purchase insurance reduces volatility in standard of living by compensating for losses of income during periods of unemployment, for catastrophic losses from disaster, or death of a family income earner as described by Gordon. Insurance companies must set aside reserves to handle such claims. Britain initially required that insurance buyers also have an insurable interest. That is required in insurance markets to ensure buyers of insurance don't destroy their asset just to obtain the insurance. Health insurance is treated separately being unusual, since the subscriber is likely to know more about their state of health than the insurer is and the subscriber is more likely to purchase the health insurance when aware of their increased risk. This behavior collapses the risk pool by: forcing the insurer to increase the premiums, and encouraging healthy individuals to opt out of health insurance coverage. ,
Decisions are always based on price, mostly by using an auction.
Beinhocker asks, how well does Milton Friedman's theory explain
reality? Alan Kirman argues it fits the data poorly,
focuses in the wrong area, with a misleading idea of
equilibrium. It predicts poorly and explains only its
self-contained models. Traditional equilibrium economics
has failed to match the operations of the financial markets or the
results of experimental economics. Markets are generally
out of equilibrium & are designed to cope with that.
Prices vary while microeconomics asserts there will be one price
(once transaction costs are removed). There are no laws of
supply and demand. Stock markets have to employ agents
that smooth demand and supply. Stock prices do
not follow a random walk. Walras & Jevons
asserted the economy was an at-equilibrium closed system where
as it is an open system. Beinhocker concludes that instead
of fitting patches onto the equilibrium model, it should be replaced.
Complexity Economics
Big Picture - Sugar
& Spice
Brookings Institution's Joshua Epstein & Robert Axtell built
a computer model with the aim of growing an economy from scratch
with simple agents in a simple landscape:
- Their initial conditions were:
- Sugarscape Island is a 50 by 50 grid, differentiated
into mountains, valleys, fertile areas and desert
areas.
- People (agents) with
a few basic abilities.
- An environment with
some natural resources - Initially just sugar. Each
square on the island is allocated a different amount of
sugar (0 - 4). They are distributed to create two
sugar mountains in the northeast and southwest
corners. Between the two are regions with no
sugar. As sugar is eaten it grows back at a rate of
one unit per turn.
- The agents:
- Were independent computer programs which take in
information about the environment and then makes decisions
about what actions to perform next. The actions are:
- Look for sugar
- Move - north south east or west.
- Eat sugar
- Include details specific to them describing their
ability. The specific values are randomly
distributed around the population of agents:
- Vision (How far it can see: 1 - 6 squares)
- Metabolism (How much sugar it burns each round: 1 - 4
units)
- How old they will get before naturally die
- What sex they are.
- Followed rules:
- Agents can look ahead as far as its vision will allow
in each of the directions of movement.
- Agents can determine which unoccupied square in its
vision has the most sugar.
- Agents will move to that square and eat the
sugar.
- Agents are given metabolic credit for eating sugar and
debits for metabolizing. It can build up a surplus
for use in future turns.
- Agents with no energy credits left are removed from
the game.
- Agents otherwise live until a predetermined
age.
- Genetic algorithm
- Agents of child bearing age, and with enough sugar
saved up can reproduce with an agent of the opposite sex
in an adjacent square.
- Children are given half of details of each of their
parent agents.
- Children are given half the wealth of each of their
parent agents.
- Children are born next to their parents in an empty
square.
- Initial game begins without operation of the genetic
algorithm, with 250 agents randomly dropped on the
Sugarscape. After initial chaos, order appears with
agents discovering the Sugar Mountains and coalescing
there. The distributed population stabilized around
the carrying capacity of the Sugarscape.
- Initial setup resulted in the rich getting richer based on
proximate access to the Sugar Mountains and agent
capabilities. The distribution of wealth followed a
Pareto power law driven by chance decisions interacting with
the dynamics of the game. Small differences based on
luck or bad position can lead to major differences in final
wealth.
- Subsequently the genetic algorithm was enabled.
Three things happened:
- Least fit members of the population died off while the
most fit had more and more offspring. Over time
average vision and metabolic efficiency increased.
Wealth increased.
- The altered birth-death dynamics introduced population
swings. Feast and famine occurred in repeated
cycles.
- The gap between rich and poor widened further. The
rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
- Epstein & Axtell extended the model world further:
- Added a second commodity: spice. Any square could
be growing both sugar and spice. Spice was also
concentrated into two mountains in the northwest and
southeast corners of Sugarscape.
- Altered the agents' metabolism to require both
commodities to survive. Again the individual
attributes varied and were manipulated by the genetic
algorithm.
- Agents rules were extended to allow them to trade.
If agents encounter others in adjacent squares they offer
to trade. They are programmed to barter
- When the
trading enhanced game was run the agents overall became
richer, as classical economics is the study of trade between humans. Traditional Economics is based on an equilibrium model of the economic system. Traditional Economics includes: microeconomics, and macroeconomics. Marx developed an alternative static approach. Limitations of the equilibrium model have resulted in the development of: Keynes's dynamic General Theory of Employment Interest & Money, and Complexity Economics. Since trading depends on human behavior, economics has developed behavioral models including: behavioral economics.
predicts. Trade:
- Allowed two neighbors that were near death, one starving
from sugar, the other from spice, to trade and both
survive. Trade expands the carrying capacity of the
landscape.
- Clustered geographically.
- Helps the rich get richer.
- Requirements for both commodities generated successful
movement dynamics associated with heavily trafficked trading
routes with agents moving between the spice and sugar
mountains.
- Adding borrowing and lending capabilities to the agents
transformed the situation. Agents would borrow, from
rich neighbors, when this allowed them to have
children. This resulted in emergent capabilities:
Beinhocker suggests Sugarscape illustrates a new approach to
economics with different: dynamics,
agents, networks, emergence, and
evolution;
from traditional
economics.
Dynamics
- The Delight of Disequilibrium
Beinhocker uses an economics context to review what This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS dynamic phenomena: booms, busts; mean.
Dynamic systems are:
- Represented by pools (stocks of: people,
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.
money, consumers'
confidence is John Maynard Keynes's description of his theory of the dynamics of the economy. Skidelsky writes it is founded on his early studies of probability theory, which left Keynes to conclude economics must look at morals not physics, because: the human mind has no way to determine the currently unknowable future, to cope with uncertainty it becomes logical to use caprice (animal spirits) drifting between optimism and pessimism to pick, the selection is not well grounded and can be upset by trivial new data, learning is leveraged but the process is erratic changing ignorance and uncertainty only slowly, the decision making includes both expectations and confidence in the expectations. This analysis left Keynes: skeptical of econometrics: limited applicability, and easy to miss-apply; it disconnected investment strategy from net present values, and long-run productivity; undermining classical economics with its assumption that: demand and supply are rapidly and directly equilibrated by price (value) adjustments (Say's law), reaching a Pareto optimum. Instead Keynes suggested consumption was funded by wealth and employment generated income, leaving any free money to be: invested, saved or kept as cash; depending on the person's homeostatic confidence, and the inducements to save or invest. Additionally, Keynes realized that the global trade network was improving supply, transforming the environment from one of repeated clyodinamic induced scarcity to plenty, although it was held back by the anchor of gold. When people lost confidence they would reduce investment, expanding their savings or hording cash, and then companies would respond by: slowing production leading to layoffs - further reducing income, but only reluctantly and belatedly to price adjustments (Amazon's personalized pricing transforms this constraint); impeding demand and keeping employment below the Pareto optimum. Rather than allow the economy to shrink down to the level of current consumption or worse collapse, Keynes argued that government can expand investment and demand in these situations by: keeping money cheap, its own purchasing programs, reducing the cost of borrowing from the wealthy (liquidity preference) by increasing their confidence in getting returns from their investments through the positive expectations of government policy. Keynes saw that investment, being liquid, could be deployed on companies and infrastructure produced and deployed anywhere in the world decoupling growth from national jobs, so he pushed for capital flow constraints at Bretton Woods. Outsourcing of jobs similarly disconnects investment from local job creation. ;) with Flows of different kinds are essential to the operation of
complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support
the emergence of the systems.
Examples of constraints are discussed.
flows
between them. The interconnections can support
positive and negative feedback loops which can include 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 delays. Long time
delays can make it very difficult
to control a complex flow.
- Often nonlinear. Beinhocker explains how the
dynamics of a nonlinear flow can make it sensitive to:
- Initial conditions - where he illustrates a flow B (t+1)
= rB(t) - rB(t)**2 where a rate r of
- 1.5 results in a fixed-point attractor equivalent to
the equilibrium assumed by classical economics.
But altering the rate to
- 3.3 generates the regular oscillations of a periodic
limit cycle. An increased rate of
- 3.5 generates a more complex quasi-periodic limit
cycle. And a rate of
- 4.0 generates a deterministic condition called chaos:
which is non-random, will never repeat, and is bounded
in where its values will reach. Chaotic systems
can't be solved analytically, but they can be modeled
with computers.
- History.
- Together these two features make nonlinear dynamic systems
difficult to predict.
- Beinhocker notes the economy is complex: nonlinear,
dynamic; but probably not chaotic. With more than 6.4
billion agents participating, forcasting is difficult except
over the very short term. He notes Sterman's
hypothesis that the irregular periodicity of different markets
(commodity cycles) could be due to time delays in buffer
stock updates and flows, price adjustments and demand
shifts. People find this type of scenario hard to
manage. Sterman concluded the system
must be changed instead: Reduce the time delays in the
system (make capacity less chunky), get more forward
visibility, increase transparency of the capacity in the
whole system (including under construction).
Agents - Mind Games
Beinhocker notes that the This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS agents in economies are mostly
humans. So economics must have a model of human minds that
provides a good map in that it reflects the regularities in human behavior.
It must do better than traditional economics with its Vulcan
like assumptions justified as normative models of how humans
should behave. Beinhocker uses the findings of behavioral
economics as his foundation. Beinhocker's regularities
include:
- Fairness
- Errors: Framing biases matter, Representation from small
biased samples, Availability of data drives decisions, Risk
and probabilities cause problems, Utilize proximate
explanations, People decide based on irrational budget
allocations.
- Computability constraints limit rationality
- Many economic problems have no fixed-point attractor
solution. People try to identify patterns and then use
them ignoring the times when the strategies
fail.
- Minds
as computers describes the aggregate ideas of: Alan Turing, Alan Newell, Herbert Simon, Marvin Minsky, Hilary Putnam & Jerry Fodor; that beliefs and desires are information, bound through sense organ triggered associations with neuronal or other symbolic representations that once triggered give rise to other symbols and muscular actions generating behaviors. For Steven Pinker the theory allows behavior to be explained by beliefs and desires and makes the beliefs and desires part of the physical universe.
John
Holland argued that induction can be defined
algorithmically:
- Goal state can be compared with the current state.
- Condition-action rules can link the current state to
actions to perform to get to the goal state.
- Feedback & learning
based on models that track which rules helped with
achieving a goal and which didn't.
- Rules self-organize into hierarchies based on the
regularities present in the environment. This enables
analogy making.
- Holland, Brian Arthur, Blake LeBaron, Richard Palmer, and
Paul Taylor, applied this inductive architecture in the
Santa Fe Institute Artificial Stock Market.
- The program is analogous to Sugerscape but
the genetic
algorithm is additionally applied to the strategies
about how to trade in the 'minds' of the agents. It
has
- A single stock paying a random dividend is traded on the
market.
- A hundred trading agents buy and sell the stock inducing
a price for the stock.
- The agents' goal is to make as much money as
possible. To do this each agent must decide when to
buy and sell the stocks.
- The agents have access to a stock model:
- Historical price patterns for the stock
- Historical dividend payouts
- Risk free interest rate.
- The condition-action rules were setup as schematic
structures to map patterns in the market to the agent's
expectation of the value of the stock.
- These rule of thumb strategies were a mixture of:
fundamental, trends or a mixture of the two.
- The agents were provided with a learning model that
allocated a fitness is, according to Dawkins, a suitcase word with at least five meanings in biology:
- Darwin and Wallace thought in terms of the capacity to survive and reproduce, but they were considering discrete aspects such as chewing grass - where hard enamel would improve the relative fitness.
- Population geneticists: Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, J.B.S. Haldane; consider selection at a locus where for a genotype: green eyes vs blue eyes; one with higher fitness can be identified from genotypic frequencies and gene frequencies, with all other variations averaged out.
- Whole organism 'integrated' fitness. Dawkins notes there is only ever one instance of a specific organism. Being unique, comparing the relative success of its offspring makes little sense. Over a huge number of generations the individual is likely to have provided a contribution to everyone in the pool or no one.
- Inclusive fitness, where according to Hamilton, fitness depends on an organism's actions or effects on its children or its relative's children, a model where natural selection favors organs and behaviors that cause the individual's genes to be passed on. It is easy to mistakenly count an offspring in multiple relative's fitness assessments.
- Personal fitness represents the effects a person's relatives have on the individual's fitness [3]. When interpreted correctly fitness [4] and fitness [5] are the same.
score to each strategy based on current conditions.
But the values allocated were adjusted based on historic
success of the strategies.
- The genetic algorithm was applied at random points to
the agents' strategies, removing the poorest 20% and
transforming the high performers by recombination and
mutation.
- They then ran the program with each agent only having
one and the same rule. The result was similar to the
predictions of traditional economics:
- Little trading volume, settling near to the predicted
equilibrium price based on the fundamental value of the
stock. But when they
- Ran the program with 100 rules per agent, with learning
and the genetic algorithm applied:
Beinhocker sees these results as in line with real human
behavior. And he argues, as cognitive science progresses
and modeling technology improves, our understanding of how
behavior drives the economy will improve too.
Networks -
Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave
Beinhocker notes that networks shape complex adaptive
systems. And they can contribute positive returns, W. Brian Arthur's conception of how high tech products have positive economic feedback as they deploy. Classical products such as foods have negative returns to scale since they take increasing amounts of land, and distribution infrastructure to support getting them to market. High tech products typically become easier to produce or gain from platform and network effects of being connected together overcoming the negative effects of scale.
that drive the system due to This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). Small
world and scale free networks are considered.
network
effects. Stuart
Kauffman concluded that Erdos & Renyi's random-graph
theory explains why, as it allows a tipping point when the
network shifts from sparsly connected to densely
connected.
Beinhocker adds that our social networks are a mix of
interconnected regular and random structures which allows the small
world effect. Beinhocker notes it is the random
friends that allow the lattice of social connections to bridge
to other lattices. These random bridges support the six
degrees connectivity of the small world. Hence, large
organizations should deliberately move a small number of people
across functions and businesses to enable this effect.
Beinhocker notes that Boolean networks, while influential, are
simply characterized:
- Number of nodes in the network,
- The growth of a boolean network allows the number of
potential novel states to expand exponentially.
Economic strategies can leverage these effects. So
Beinhocker asks: why do Silicon Valley's Davids regularly
beat the big, corporate Goliaths? He suggests it
depends on:
- How much every node is connected to every other
node,
- Complexity
Catastrophes is a dramatic breakdown in the operation of a CAS that results in general failure. Dorner in the logic of failure, sees the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as illustrative: typical human strategies were incorrectly applied by experienced operators, because they were overconfident and incorrectly modeled the current and immediate future state of the reactor. Beinhocker asserts positive effects generated in a large inter-connected network induce negative effects at other points in the network. Booch argues that increasing system complexity can overwhelm human designers, inducing catastrophe in software development. He recommends adopting object oriented hierarchy and modularity to limit complexity. But many CAS networks include huge number of agents, responding to internal and external signals, and effectively executing evolved, distributed schematic plans. Eventual loss of control, as in the case of cancers, is notable and highlights the effective agency of the more regular situation. Human developed systems suffer from complexity catastrophe. Democratic processes slowly search for representatives who will solve problems for the citizens, but Diamond in Collapse explains that democracy has struggled to cope with the tragedy of the commons. Cliodynamic cycles operate over multiple lifetimes leaving humans prone to fall into the traps that caught their grandparents. Evolved amplifiers support bubbles incenting dangerous deregulation, and encouraging broad participation, even though the rules ensure additional wealth accumulates to the legislative elite and aristocracy, who safely ignore moral hazard. Parasites undermine the detection of problems. RSS sees catastrophe enabled by a lack of rigorous schematic planning within most developed human systems.
- which he asserts are positive
effects developed in a large highly inter-connected
network inducing negative effects elsewhere in that
network. Meetings in a big organization explode in
number. Interdependencies are causing a complexity
catastrophe, by inducing conflicting constraints, slow decision making integrates situational context, state and signals to prioritize among strategies and respond in a timely manner. It occurs in all animals, including us and our organizations: - Individual human decision making includes conscious and unconscious aspects. Situational context is highly influential: supplying meaning to our general mechanisms, & for robots too. Emotions are important in providing a balanced judgement. The adaptive unconscious interprets percepts quickly supporting 'fast' decision making. Conscious decision making, supported by the: DLPFC, vmPFC and limbic system; can use slower autonomy. The amygdala, during unsettling or uncertain social situations, signals the decision making regions of the frontal lobe, including the orbitofrontal cortex. The BLA supports rejecting unacceptable offers. Moral decisions are influenced by a moral decision switch. Sleeping before making an important decision is useful in obtaining the support of the unconscious in developing a preference. Word framing demonstrates the limitations of our fast intuitive decision making processes. And prior positive associations detected by the hippocampus, can be reactivated with the support of the striatum linking it to the memory of a reward, inducing a bias into our choices. Prior to the development of the PFC, the ventral striatum supports adolescent decision making. Neurons involved in decision making in the association areas of the cortex are active for much longer than neurons participating in the sensory areas of the cortex. This allows them to link perceptions with a provisional action plan. Association neurons can track probabilities connected to a choice. As evidence is accumulated and a threshold is reached a choice is made, making fast thinking highly adaptive. Diseases including: schizophrenia and anorexia; highlight aspects of human decision making.
- Organisations often struggle to balance top down and distributed decision making: parliamentry government must use a process, health care is attempting to improve the process: checklists, end-to-end care; and include more participants, but has systemic issues, business leaders struggle with strategy.
and bureaucratic gridlock.
- Beinhocker notes that while hierarchy is
assumed to undermine adaptability, it actually allows a
boolean network to grow large without suffering from
diseconomies of scale. Beinhocker asserts that
biological systems include many hierarchies because of
this.
- Bias indicates how the outputs of a Boolean network node differs from an input stream of half 1s and half 0s. It the two have a similar mix then the node is unbiased. If the output has more 1s than 0s the node is biased towards 1s. A biased node is more regular. Beinhocker argues this additional predictability allows these nodes to be more higly connected without inducing complexity catastrophes.
in the
rules governing the behavior of the nodes.
- Derrida and Weisbuch found that bias altered the point
at which non-hierarchic networks suffer a complexity
catastrophe is a dramatic breakdown in the operation of a CAS that results in general failure. Dorner in the logic of failure, sees the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as illustrative: typical human strategies were incorrectly applied by experienced operators, because they were overconfident and incorrectly modeled the current and immediate future state of the reactor. Beinhocker asserts positive effects generated in a large inter-connected network induce negative effects at other points in the network. Booch argues that increasing system complexity can overwhelm human designers, inducing catastrophe in software development. He recommends adopting object oriented hierarchy and modularity to limit complexity. But many CAS networks include huge number of agents, responding to internal and external signals, and effectively executing evolved, distributed schematic plans. Eventual loss of control, as in the case of cancers, is notable and highlights the effective agency of the more regular situation. Human developed systems suffer from complexity catastrophe. Democratic processes slowly search for representatives who will solve problems for the citizens, but Diamond in Collapse explains that democracy has struggled to cope with the tragedy of the commons. Cliodynamic cycles operate over multiple lifetimes leaving humans prone to fall into the traps that caught their grandparents. Evolved amplifiers support bubbles incenting dangerous deregulation, and encouraging broad participation, even though the rules ensure additional wealth accumulates to the legislative elite and aristocracy, who safely ignore moral hazard. Parasites undermine the detection of problems. RSS sees catastrophe enabled by a lack of rigorous schematic planning within most developed human systems.
. The higher the bias the more
densely connected the network nodes could be before
catastrophe occurs.
Beinhocker argues that when boolean networks include hierarchy
and bias, the number of connections that can be supported before
catastrophe occurs is between six and eight which Beihnocker
notes is seen in human groups that needed to scale but could not
cope with the diseconomies of complexity.
Emergence -
The Puzzle of Patterns
Beinhocker notes economics has tracked a number of patterns:
Depressions, Recessions, Inflation, Long-run growth in wealth per
person, Distribution
of wealth; suggesting they reflect causes that are deep in
the workings of economies. Economists have modeled time
series data: Business cycles; but they have not been able to use
the patterns to predict future events accurately. And macroeconomics is the top-down view that starts with questions such as why there is unemployment and then drills down to find an answer, according to Beinhocker. has
not been able to meet up with microeconomics is a bottom-up view of the economy. It starts with individual decision makers and then builds up to markets and economies, explains Beinhocker. to
build a unified theoretical framework. So Beinhocker
compares how patterns are modeled by microeconomics,
macroeconomics and complexity economics:
- Microeconomics and business cycles - these exogenous
shocks are imported into the microeconomic model by Fynn
Kydland and Edward Prescott's work. The equilibrium
model then propagates the shocks and the models outputs are
then studied. But Beinhocker dismisses the approach
because it cannot generate the patterns seen in the real
world data from random input data. One can add the
patterns to the input data but then microeconomics does not
attempt to explain them. Such shocks include:
Political events, Changes in technology;
- Macroeconomics models of patterns - accepts the patterns
and attempts to explain them. Beinhocker notes that
after Keynes
observed the
great depression, he abandoned the equilibrium model
for a dynamic
framework in his General
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money is John Maynard Keynes's description of his theory of the dynamics of the economy. Skidelsky writes it is founded on his early studies of probability theory, which left Keynes to conclude economics must look at morals not physics, because: the human mind has no way to determine the currently unknowable future, to cope with uncertainty it becomes logical to use caprice (animal spirits) drifting between optimism and pessimism to pick, the selection is not well grounded and can be upset by trivial new data, learning is leveraged but the process is erratic changing ignorance and uncertainty only slowly, the decision making includes both expectations and confidence in the expectations. This analysis left Keynes: skeptical of econometrics: limited applicability, and easy to miss-apply; it disconnected investment strategy from net present values, and long-run productivity; undermining classical economics with its assumption that: demand and supply are rapidly and directly equilibrated by price (value) adjustments (Say's law), reaching a Pareto optimum. Instead Keynes suggested consumption was funded by wealth and employment generated income, leaving any free money to be: invested, saved or kept as cash; depending on the person's homeostatic confidence, and the inducements to save or invest. Additionally, Keynes realized that the global trade network was improving supply, transforming the environment from one of repeated clyodinamic induced scarcity to plenty, although it was held back by the anchor of gold. When people lost confidence they would reduce investment, expanding their savings or hording cash, and then companies would respond by: slowing production leading to layoffs - further reducing income, but only reluctantly and belatedly to price adjustments (Amazon's personalized pricing transforms this constraint); impeding demand and keeping employment below the Pareto optimum. Rather than allow the economy to shrink down to the level of current consumption or worse collapse, Keynes argued that government can expand investment and demand in these situations by: keeping money cheap, its own purchasing programs, reducing the cost of borrowing from the wealthy (liquidity preference) by increasing their confidence in getting returns from their investments through the positive expectations of government policy. Keynes saw that investment, being liquid, could be deployed on companies and infrastructure produced and deployed anywhere in the world decoupling growth from national jobs, so he pushed for capital flow constraints at Bretton Woods. Outsourcing of jobs similarly disconnects investment from local job creation.
. He
argued that a positive loop had driven demand down as the
situation became worse after the First World War into a
trap, away from the expected equilibrium. His solution
was for governments to spend their way out of the
trap. The solution was adopted by governments but
remained controversial in macroeconomics. Chicago's
Milton Friedman suggested this spending would not lead to
long-term growth but would generate inflation. During
the 1970s
the US economy's low growth and high inflation aligned
with Freidman's predictions. A mathematically
brilliant model by Chicago's Robert Lucas indicated that
government intervention was going to be a problem. But
Lucas's model, for which he was awarded an economics Nobel
Prize, had to assume consumers were totally rational and
perfectly informed! Berkeley's
George Akerlof highlighted these flaws in an alternative
model that showed Keynesian spending could be beneficial,
but time delays in the dynamics were significant.
Akerlof's model integrated with the work of Edmund Phelps,
Oliver Blanchard, and Gregory Mankiw, became New Keynesian
economics which was leveraged on Wall Street and in
Government. New Keynesian economics does not abandon
the equilibrium
model.
- Complexity economics models of patterns - Beinhocker looks
at three
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS patterns that are
emergent signatures of such systems, including economies:
- Oscillations: Economic
cycles, Commodity cycles; are seen to have persisted
through history. The exponential breeding of prey
and the interacting growth of predators results in an
oscillating expansion and reduction of the populations
effectively modeled by Lotka & Volterra.
Beinhocker notes that a simple economic network including
a producer, distributors, wholesaler, retailer and a set
of demand cards to model a consumer, interconnected by
flows of product, and demand, with buffer pools between
the different agents in the product delivery system, and
time delays; induces supply oscillations within the
system, after a single change in demand. Beinhocker
notes that human agents behaviors, including our
inability to cope with time delays induces the
oscillations, even when the network of agents has enough
information to do much better. The agents use anchor and
adjust is a behavior broadly adopted by human agents to inductively model the operation of a CAS network. Using patterns of past flow rates, the agents select a model that seems to match and anchor to that. When the actual operation diverges from the anchor model, the agents continue to leverage the model, but make adjustments to account for the differences. If a characteristic of the network, such as increased demand, has changed the model and adjustments will generate more divergence. In a network with buffer pools and time delays, the anchor and adjust strategy ensures both overshooting and undershooting.
behavior rather than deducing the future
requirements from the data about the inventory and time
delays. Beinhocker notes that the adoption of
computers and This presentation reviews just-in-time manufacturing with
analysis based on complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
just-in-time
inventory management has reduced these supply chain
oscillations.
- Punctuated
Equilibrium is Steven Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge's proposal about how evolution occurs. They suggested that most of the time 'nothing happens' and then there are intermittent rapid lurches. The idea is analogous to Schumpeter's waves of creative destruction. Complex adaptive systems will operate this way driven by the underlying slow mutations of the germ-line schemata and the action of infrastructure and evolved amplifiers.
: Just as biological evolution
likely includes periods of dramatic change followed by
more stability, Beinhocker argues that replacement of Keystone phenotypes are highly connected to other agents competing for resources and niches in the CAS. If they are removed from the CAS there are major impacts that could include mass extinctions. Jain & Krishna assume a Punctuated Equilibrium view of evolution, in three phases: Random - where mutations are slowly accruing, Growth - when some innovation induces a wave of growth, Organized - where changes are consolidated; with keystone phenotypes emerging at the highly connected nodes in the reorganized CAS. technologies
causes a wave of creative destruction in an
economy. He notes that:
- Power laws:
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS follow power laws,
as Benoit Mandelbrot is a probability distribution which occurs in real world economics, physics and earth science situations. The tail is fat because more extreme events occur than a random distribution about a mean would predict. There is clustering of events over time typical of a punctuated equilibrium. The statistics describing the data changes over time. The mathematics of this distribution is far harder to leverage in models than the thin-tailed normal distribution. So the normal distribution is sometimes inappropriately applied in fat-tail situations. and Vilfredo Pareto
noted. Economists had typically assumed that stock markets and
economies followed normal distributions of events.
In reality financial markets are far more volatile than
traditional economics suggests. Santa Fe Institute's
Doyne Farmer reasons the volatility is due to the two
types of order used on the exchanges: market order and
limit order; with the limit orders being buffered in a
book (pool) until they execute or expire. When a
market order matches a limit condition it will initiate
the execution of the limit order and may reveal the next
limit sell order that is priced far higher. The
shift in price was just an artifact of the pattern of
orders that had been stored in the limit order book over
time. Farmer found this circumstance is: quite
usual, can occur over long periods, and is not
random.
Beinhocker concludes complex emergent
phenomena likely have three
roots: Behaviors of the agents, Institutional
structure of the CAS, Exogenous shocks; while traditional
economics focuses on the exogenous shocks.
Evolution
- It's a Jungle Out There
Beinhocker asserts that evolution is a:
- General-purpose and highly powerful recipe for finding
innovative solutions to complex problems.
- Learning algorithm that adapts to changing environments
and accumulates knowledge over
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time.
He argues it is responsible for the order, complexity &
diversity of the natural world and the economic world.
He uses Tufts
University philosopher Daniel Dennett and Oxford biologist
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.
Richard Dawkins arguments as a
foundation. He uses Karl Sims's Block Creatures as an
example of applying
the genetic algorithm to artificial life to find good
tricks for survival.
Beinhocker explains Dennett's argument that evolution
algorithmically recursively applies a recipe to a
substrate-neutral rule driven process to generate outputs of
increasing value. The algorithm is defined by the logic
that it uses to transform information. He notes that evolution has
to search through the design space
of available configurations to identify those that increase
value. Noting that the
space is typically vast, evolution has to reliably and
quickly find good designs.
Beinhocker describes the model of evolution's algorithm to help
him review the search mechanism:
Beinhocker notes that this algorithm must be made emergent to
operate without support from designers. He uses biological
evolution's emergence mechanism as a model, where there is a
self-copying molecule. And the fitness function is
supplied by the physical and chemical constraints and the
competition of co-evolving organisms.
Beinhocker concludes the setup for evolution boils down to information
processing. In the case of life
this was dependent on thermodynamics and random chance.
For the economy it
was dependent on spoken language
and then writing.
Beinhocker argues that design spaces
with most small changes in schemata leading to small or no
changes in fitness is, according to Dawkins, a suitcase word with at least five meanings in biology: - Darwin and Wallace thought in terms of the capacity to survive and reproduce, but they were considering discrete aspects such as chewing grass - where hard enamel would improve the relative fitness.
- Population geneticists: Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, J.B.S. Haldane; consider selection at a locus where for a genotype: green eyes vs blue eyes; one with higher fitness can be identified from genotypic frequencies and gene frequencies, with all other variations averaged out.
- Whole organism 'integrated' fitness. Dawkins notes there is only ever one instance of a specific organism. Being unique, comparing the relative success of its offspring makes little sense. Over a huge number of generations the individual is likely to have provided a contribution to everyone in the pool or no one.
- Inclusive fitness, where according to Hamilton, fitness depends on an organism's actions or effects on its children or its relative's children, a model where natural selection favors organs and behaviors that cause the individual's genes to be passed on. It is easy to mistakenly count an offspring in multiple relative's fitness assessments.
- Personal fitness represents the effects a person's relatives have on the individual's fitness [3]. When interpreted correctly fitness [4] and fitness [5] are the same.
, but
some small changes having large effects will be roughly
correlated with the shape of the biological fitness
landscape. And this will mean evolution will be the ideal
algorithm for searching fitness landscapes. Without any
ability to look ahead, the risk that a search agent will descend
and be killed by natural selection, and the shifting nature of
the fitness landscape, one effective search strategy is the adaptive walk is a fitness landscape search strategy that picks its direction of search randomly, and then selects for ascending steps, and backtracks if it starts to descend. It gets trapped in local maxima and must be augmented with other strategies, such as a short random jump. , when
it is augmented with a different strategy such as short random jump is a fitness landscape search strategy that picks its direction of search randomly, and jumps a random distance in that direction. It is risky since it can jump into danger where the searcher may die. performed
by large numbers of replicated 'interactors'. Genetic
operators such as crossing over and mutation will spread the
interactors out, but with small mutations they will still be
relatively close together. Since the jump length can also
be changed evolution can both explore and exploit its current
situation. And Beinhocker notes if the environment
suddenly changes and puts the majority of interactors at risk,
the outliers will allow evolution to continue. Holland
concluded that evolution comes very close to achieving the
optimal balance between exploitation and exploration.
Dennett notes three attributes of roughly correlated fitness
landscape topography:
- Good tricks - are very attractive moves because they
result in interactor features that support fitness: eyes are major sensors in primates, based on opsins deployed in the retina & especially fovea, signalling the visual system: Superior colliculi, Thalamus (LGN), Primary visual cortex; and indirectly the amygdala. They also signal [social] emotional state to other people. And they have implicit censorious power with pictures of eyes encouraging people within their view to act more honorably. Eyes are poor scanners and use a saccade to present detail slowly to the fovea. The eye's optical structures and retina are supported by RPE. Eyes do not connect to the brain through the brain stem and so still operate in locked-in syndrome. Evo-devo shows eyes have deep homology. High pressure within the eye can result in glaucoma. Genetic inheritance can result in retinoblastoma. Age is associated with AMD. ;
- Forced moves - there is currently only one choice of move
for the interactor, due to dangers or constraints.
- Path dependence - results from the use of adaptive in evolutionary biology is a trait that increased the number of surviving offspring in an organism's ancestral lineage. Holland argues: complex adaptive systems (CAS) adapt due to the influence of schematic strings on agents. Evolution indicates fitness when an organism survives and reproduces. For his genetic algorithm, Holland separated the adaptive process into credit assignment and rule discovery. He assigned a strength to each of the rules (alternate hypothesis) used by his artificial agents, by credit assignment - each accepted message being paid for by the recipient, increasing the sender agent's rule's strength (implicit modeling) and reducing the recipient's. When an agent achieved an explicit goal they obtained a final reward. Rule discovery used the genetic algorithm to select strong rule schemas from a pair of agents to be included in the next generation, with crossing over and mutation applied, and the resulting schematic strategies used to replace weaker schemas. The crossing over genetic operator is unlikely to break up a short schematic sequence that provides a building block retained because of its 'fitness'; In Deacon's conception of evolution, an adaptation is the realization of a set of constraints on candidate mechanisms, and so long as these constraints are maintained, other features are arbitrary.
walk with
short random jumps. Where you are matters. So we
are all prisoners of our history.
Evolution results in continuous adaptation in evolutionary biology is a trait that increased the number of surviving offspring in an organism's ancestral lineage. Holland argues: complex adaptive systems (CAS) adapt due to the influence of schematic strings on agents. Evolution indicates fitness when an organism survives and reproduces. For his genetic algorithm, Holland separated the adaptive process into credit assignment and rule discovery. He assigned a strength to each of the rules (alternate hypothesis) used by his artificial agents, by credit assignment - each accepted message being paid for by the recipient, increasing the sender agent's rule's strength (implicit modeling) and reducing the recipient's. When an agent achieved an explicit goal they obtained a final reward. Rule discovery used the genetic algorithm to select strong rule schemas from a pair of agents to be included in the next generation, with crossing over and mutation applied, and the resulting schematic strategies used to replace weaker schemas. The crossing over genetic operator is unlikely to break up a short schematic sequence that provides a building block retained because of its 'fitness'; In Deacon's conception of evolution, an adaptation is the realization of a set of constraints on candidate mechanisms, and so long as these constraints are maintained, other features are arbitrary. , reflecting
the fitness function and its shifts. Knowledge, reflected
in the schemata, about the fitness function and environment
accumulates. Novelty emerges from the parallel search
discovering and instantiating the designs. Successful
schemata control more resources.
How Evolution
Creates Wealth
Design
Spaces - From Games to Economics
Beinhocker recalls the application of genetic algorithms to
search for winning strategies for the Prisoner's Dilemma is a game theoretical scenario explored by mathematicians and evolutionary biologists. Two prisoners are to be interrogated separately. They will benefit if they cooperate with one another - serving one year each. But if just one defects they will go free while the other will lose serving three years. If they both defect they will both lose serving two years each. If the game is played once it is best to defect. But if the game is iterative, cooperation can be beneficial using a Tit for Tat strategy. Bootstrapping cooperation can be induced: - When a small founder population first becomes isolated and kin-selection increases and then the group connect to the main population. The group can then use cooperation to out compete the other members.
- Through green-beard signals, driving cooperation and forcing non green-beards to shift to cooperation to compete.
.
Economists
are particularly interested in games like Prisoner's Dilemma
where cooperation between the parties is non-zero-sum --
cooperation results in benefits to both participants.
Holland had proposed the GAs use to Axelrod, who built an
initial model and published his results in 1987.
Beinhocker then introduces a recent contribution from Goteborg
University's Kristian Lindgren who
integrates two games: the Prisoner's Dilemma is a game theoretical scenario explored by mathematicians and evolutionary biologists. Two prisoners are to be interrogated separately. They will benefit if they cooperate with one another - serving one year each. But if just one defects they will go free while the other will lose serving three years. If they both defect they will both lose serving two years each. If the game is played once it is best to defect. But if the game is iterative, cooperation can be beneficial using a Tit for Tat strategy. Bootstrapping cooperation can be induced: - When a small founder population first becomes isolated and kin-selection increases and then the group connect to the main population. The group can then use cooperation to out compete the other members.
- Through green-beard signals, driving cooperation and forcing non green-beards to shift to cooperation to compete.
and the Game of Life, is a cellular automaton defined by John Conway. Cells of the automata are either on or off. An infinite two-dimensional orthogonal grid of cells allows each cell to interact with its eight immediate neighbors. The interactions follow set rules: Any on cell with less than two neighbors which are on turns off. Any on cell with two or three neighbors remains on. Any on cell with more than three on neighbors turns off. Any off cell with exactly three on neighbors turns on. A human watching the display of the cells executing the game of life rules can see 'gliders' move about the grid. .
In the composite:
- Lindgren altered the Game of Life's finite state automata
(agents) so they turn on
or off depending on the outcome of the Prisoner's Dilemma
game they play with their nearest neighbors. He
allowed each agent to use a different strategy. The
cell the agent occupied was colored based on the strategy
the agent was using. The scores for each of the games
an agent played with its immediate neighbors were summed and
averaged. The agent with the highest average score at
the end of a round was the winner. That agent would
take over (deploy its strategy to) the square at the center
of its neighborhood.
- To decide on a strategy for the Prisoner's Dilemma games
each agent looked back in a history of moves and counter
moves, and used the pattern to set an expectation of what a
successful move would be (cooperate or defect). When
the agents can only review one prior move, they only have
four potential strategies: Always Defect, Always Cooperate,
Tit for Tat is a winning iterative Prisoner's Dilemma strategy. Michigan political scientist Robert Axelrod programmed various proposed strategies into a program performing the Prisoner's Dilemma. Anatol Rapoport suggested the Tit for Tat strategy where the prisoner starts by cooperating but defects whenever the other prisoner has defected in the prior round. It is a simple strategy with little cognitive load. W. D. Hamilton worked with Axelrod adding real-world possibilities to the game situations. These included:
- Signal errors where the prisoner's intent was different to the signal's interpretation: They acted to cooperate but appeared to request defection. This undermines the Tit for Tat strategy and forces the establishment of trust.
- Cost of adding detectors to monitor for signal errors and sham emotions.
, &
anti-Tit for Tat.
- The agent's schemata were mutated with: Point mutations,
Duplications - which have the effect of expanding the
agent's memory, allowing the agent to remember and review
more move chains, Deletions - shrinking the memory size and
reducing the number of potential strategies.
- The action
recommended by the winning strategy (cooperate or defect)
was randomly inverted.
- The world was a 128 * 128 board, with an agent on each
square, allocated a random strategy.
- Once the
game was started and the genetic algorithm
was enabled, the:
- Strategies started mutating,
- High scoring strategies began replicating into
neighboring squares.
- Initial strategies: Tit for Tat is a winning iterative Prisoner's Dilemma strategy. Michigan political scientist Robert Axelrod programmed various proposed strategies into a program performing the Prisoner's Dilemma. Anatol Rapoport suggested the Tit for Tat strategy where the prisoner starts by cooperating but defects whenever the other prisoner has defected in the prior round. It is a simple strategy with little cognitive load. W. D. Hamilton worked with Axelrod adding real-world possibilities to the game situations. These included:
- Signal errors where the prisoner's intent was different to the signal's interpretation: They acted to cooperate but appeared to request defection. This undermines the Tit for Tat strategy and forces the establishment of trust.
- Cost of adding detectors to monitor for signal errors and sham emotions.
&
Always Cooperate; would support one another building high
scores in partnership while
- Always Defect developed into large collections.
Some of these collections surrounded islands of Always
Cooperates, protected by a barrier ring of Tit for
Tats. The islands weren't stable and could
collapse.
- Subsequently innovations occurred, reflecting the action
of duplication mutations. While many mutations were
selected against, the addition of more memory provided
agents with significant strategic opportunities: Simpleton emerged during his modified Prisoner's Dilemma game. If the two players selected the same move in the previous round Simpleton cooperates. Otherwise it defects. ,
Vengeful emerged during his modified Prisoner's Dilemma game. Begins by cooperating, but when an opponent defects it will defect twice. ,
& Fair emerged during his modified Prisoner's Dilemma game. It started out cooperating, but once the opponent defects, fair defects as well until the opponent resumes cooperating. If Fair's signal is mistaken, due to induced errors, it will cooperate until the opponent starts cooperating again. Fair is an advantage in noisy environments. .
- Beinhocker notes there was:
Having inspected Lindgren's
game exploring the strategy space of Prisoner's Dilemma is a game theoretical scenario explored by mathematicians and evolutionary biologists. Two prisoners are to be interrogated separately. They will benefit if they cooperate with one another - serving one year each. But if just one defects they will go free while the other will lose serving three years. If they both defect they will both lose serving two years each. If the game is played once it is best to defect. But if the game is iterative, cooperation can be beneficial using a Tit for Tat strategy. Bootstrapping cooperation can be induced: - When a small founder population first becomes isolated and kin-selection increases and then the group connect to the main population. The group can then use cooperation to out compete the other members.
- Through green-beard signals, driving cooperation and forcing non green-beards to shift to cooperation to compete.
,
Beinhocker asks: can evolutionary search be used to search the
design space of the global economy?
Beinhocker describes a design space of
all business
plans. He notes that with the matching management
team and business plan from the overall space a business can be
evolved as the plan's strategies specify. Economic
evolution consequently searches for fit designs in this design
space. The process is analogous to biological evolution:
- Variation occurs as people develop new business strategies
and organizational designs.
- Selection occurs at multiple points in the economy,
causing survival of some business plans.
- Replication occurs as successful designs are rewarded with
more resources and are copied.
- But Beinhocker asserts economic evolution occurs from the
coevolution of three design spaces: Physical
Technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for transforming matter, energy, and information from one state into another in pursuit of a goal or goals. The effects of nuclear and genetic physical technologies are already challenging. Beinhocker adds artificial intelligence and nanotechnology as emerging physical technologies that support access to huge new niches and introduce additional challenges.
, Social
Technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg. and Business Plans. This separation
is needed, he explains, because each space has a unique fitness function
reflecting the differing history of exaptation, initially termed pre-adaptation refers to the coopting of some function for a new use. .
Physical
Technology - From Stone Tools to Spacecraft
Beinhocker sees the integration of artifact creation and
teaching children about how to do it as:
He argues that economies are dependent on Physical Technologies
- that allow products & services to be traded and Social Technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg.
- that catalyze, an infrastructure amplifier.
cooperation between non-relatives to allow the trading.
Beinhocker presumes the initial tool making bootstrapped via
deduction. Successful
experiments then produced inductive rules of thumb.
These socially transmitted technology recipes then supported
Physical Technology evolution.
Beinhocker sees signs of speciation of related technologies:
Airplanes, hot-air balloons, dirigibles, hang gliders; judged a
phylum of flying. And technologies go extinct: Canal
networks that are no longer in service. He tests if
technology evolution is just a misused metaphor, requiring that
technology evolution be mapped onto a general model of
evolution already described. He concludes the job of
technology evolution is to find the workable physical
technologies in the vast overall physical technology design space.
And economic
evolution must then find the even-smaller subset of
physical technologies that have economic value.
A physical technology reader must be able to transform the
schemata in this design space into a real-world
instantiation. And the schemata must be
transmittable. Hence, Beinhocker argues language is a
catalyst of physical technology. He asserts physical
technologies are auto-catalytic. And Beinhocker argues they, and other
schemata, are: modular, building blocks; in
character. The addition of a new invention, reflecting the
realization of additional schemata, will add access to further
areas of design
space.
Beinhocker, asks if the design space of physical
technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for transforming matter, energy, and information from one state into another in pursuit of a goal or goals. The effects of nuclear and genetic physical technologies are already challenging. Beinhocker adds artificial intelligence and nanotechnology as emerging physical technologies that support access to huge new niches and introduce additional challenges. is rough-correlated. He notes that
since it was created by emergent creatures using evolutionary
search, it will reflect that character. Beinhocker asserts
that it is deductive tinkering that provides the evolutionary
search with variation. He argues that fitness for purpose
provides the selection process. Replication of 'fit'
physical technologies occurs through copying of successful tool
building by observation and deductive tinkering. The
presence of technology S-Curves also demands a rough-correlated
design space. A random fitness landscape would imply a
random effect of investment in a technology.
Beinhocker argues Christensen's
disruptive
innovations require a significant cascade of changes to
shift from one physical technology to another. Beinhocker
suggests it is very difficult for companies to make a long jump
from one technology area to another, especially when they are
astride a local peak. But many innovators searching the
proximate design space eventually results in someone finding an
attractive route up to a higher fitness peak.
Around 1750,
the accessible Physical
Technology space are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for transforming matter, energy, and information from one state into another in pursuit of a goal or goals. The effects of nuclear and genetic physical technologies are already challenging. Beinhocker adds artificial intelligence and nanotechnology as emerging physical technologies that support access to huge new niches and introduce additional challenges. grew exponentially, triggered by the
scientific revolution. This revolution began in the 1500s based on
rediscovered classical knowledge. By the seventeenth
century Bacon's scientific method and Galileo's highlighting of
experiments supported the work of Newton, Boyle and others.
Science hugely increased the success
rate of deductive insights. And it allowed us to program our own
search algorithm.
Social Technology -
From Hunter-gatherers to Multinationals
Beinhocker argues that Social Technology are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg.
is the most significant reason why one country is richer than
another. He refers to Institute of
International Economics' Easterly & Minnesota's
Levine study which found the key determinants were:
Rule of Law, Existence of property rights, Banking
infrastructure, Economic transparency; rather than: Availability
of natural resources, Government competency, and Physical
Technology are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for transforming matter, energy, and information from one state into another in pursuit of a goal or goals. The effects of nuclear and genetic physical technologies are already challenging. Beinhocker adds artificial intelligence and nanotechnology as emerging physical technologies that support access to huge new niches and introduce additional challenges. sophistication.
Further Beinhocker sees Social Technology are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg.
impacting industries and companies' performance. The rapid
improvement of productivity is the efficiency with which an agent's selected strategy converts the inputs to an action into the resulting outputs. It is a complex capability of agents. It will depend on the agent having: time, motivation, focus, appropriate skills; the coherence of the participating collaborators, and a beneficial environment including the contribution of: standardization of inputs and outputs, infrastructure and evolutionary amplifiers. of the US is the United States of America. in the late 1990s was found
by McKinsey
Global Institute to be due mainly to innovations is the economic realization of invention and combinatorial exaptation. Keynes noted it provided the unquantifiable beneficial possibility that limits fear of uncertainty. Innovation operates across all CAS, being supported by genetic and cultural means. Creativity provides the mutation and recombination genetic operators for the cultural process. While highly innovative, monopolies: AT&T, IBM; usually have limited economic reach, constraining productivity. This explains the use of regulation, or even its threat, that can check their power and drive the creations across the economy. in Social
Technologies: Wal-Mart's
logistical system and
large store format implemented during the 1980s were 40% more
productive than its competitors, forcing the competition to
respond. That retail shift accounted for 25% of the US
productivity improvement. Social Technology
innovation races in five other sectors accounted for most of the
other 75%. The prior deployment of networked computing
Physical Technology was an enabler but not a primary
factor.
Social Technology, like Physical Technology has a design space.
Its schemata are memetic, and have three major attributes:
- Self-feeding & Exponentially unfolding
- Modular,
and building-block like
- Fitness landscape is rough-correlated. So evolution
is a good search mechanism.
Beinhocker asserts that people develop new Social Technologies
through deductive tinkering. He notes that for Social
Technologies there is a higher ratio of tinkering than with
Physical Technologies.
He also notes that the landscapes of Physical Technologies and
Social Technologies interact.
The force driving the innovation for Social Technology is the added value of
non-zero-sum games. Beinhocker notes that biological
evolution leverages this type of cooperation a lot: Dogs
hunting in packs, Termites collectively building mounds, Fish
swimming in schools, most primates living in groups.
Beinhocker argues that Social Technology evolutionary search
requires:
- The possibility of non-zero-sum payoffs - which must come
from: Differences among people's needs & desires,
Positive returns to scale, Division of
labor, High benefit and low cost of sharing spoilable
large resources,
- Facilities to allocate the payoffs so that all
participants will be incented to start cooperating -
Beinhocker reviews Nash's
bargaining problem is how two bargainers come to agreement. John Nash concluded how they split up the gains from exchange depends on:
- How each values the benefits of the deal. He suggests all bargainers assume the others are looking for the best deal.
- What the alternatives are. Trade occurs at the Nash equilibrium when no one has any incentive to change position, given the actions of the others.
, noting that in a single round Prisoner's
Dilemma is a game theoretical scenario explored by mathematicians and evolutionary biologists. Two prisoners are to be interrogated separately. They will benefit if they cooperate with one another - serving one year each. But if just one defects they will go free while the other will lose serving three years. If they both defect they will both lose serving two years each. If the game is played once it is best to defect. But if the game is iterative, cooperation can be beneficial using a Tit for Tat strategy. Bootstrapping cooperation can be induced: - When a small founder population first becomes isolated and kin-selection increases and then the group connect to the main population. The group can then use cooperation to out compete the other members.
- Through green-beard signals, driving cooperation and forcing non green-beards to shift to cooperation to compete.
the Nash equilibrium would be where both
players defect, unless a powerful incentive was applied to
encourage initial cooperation, and defection was
managed.
- Management of defection - Beinhocker notes that coping with
cheating requires the development of sophisticated
strategies. Results from the Ultimatum Game is an economic game involving two players: One makes an offer about how to split a pot of money. If the offer is rejected neither party gets any money. The other player can accept or reject the offer. Rationality implies that any offer should be accepted by the recipient. Instead recipients are keenly aware of being unfairly treated. The longer the amygdala responds to the offer the more likely it is to be rejected. The rejection is mentally costly and must be encouraged by a dopaminergic reward, fueled by the amygdala and insula. When the offer is rejected the first player feels dissed, subordinated - especially if the result is shared with others, undermining status & reputation. Sapolsky notes that:
- People with damaged amygdalae are unusually generous because the BLA normally injects learned implicit distrust and vigilance into social decision making.
- People given testosterone before the game become more generous. Sapolsky notes the effect demands fancy neuroendocrine wiring.
- People from small-scale, non-Western cultures were less trusting and punished more. Joseph Henrich found three variables predicted how the play executed: Market integration, Community size, Religion; where large communities need ways to make strangers trustworthy. Communities that trade are also more likely to act fairly and punish unfairness. Sapolsky asserts that market interactions represent an impoverishment of human reciprocity with the total transaction having to be judged and occur in an instant. Small-scale cultures are more practiced at the nuanced judgements about their long term neighbors.
- Chimps can be trained to play the game. Max Planck Institute's Michael Tomasello found no evidence of chimp requirements for fairness. But De Waal & Brosnan found chimps will be fair but only if they see a downside in being unfair. Primates seem to reflect the same hypocritical strategies underneath any reciprocal altruism that humans display.
show people reject unfairness. Evolution has found
strategies that allow us to cooperate to capture the
riches of non-zero-sum games, but it also equipped us to be
sensitive to cheating, expectations of fairness, and a
willingness to punish those that cross the line.
Beinhocker asserts that as people have deductively tinkered
their way across the landscape in search of fit Social
Technologies, humankind has evolved increasingly complex and
sophisticated social structures for addressing these three
issues.
Beinhocker asserts that man climbed a social structure ladder:
Family related unit, Cooperative hunting band of kin, Farming community
- economies of scale allowing: Collective development of
buildings, Division of labor to create artifacts, & Trading across
communities. And he suggests the social hierarchy
naturally transformed into a socioeconomic status is a publically accepted, signal that one possesses assets: wealth, beauty, talent, expertise, access & trust of powerful people; to be able to help others. hierarchy of the Big Man Society providing
the typical stability humans seek. Beinhocker notes how
human hierarchy should
enable the network amplifier of information access &
transfer.
Inter-community trading requires trust and distrust are evolved responses to sham emotions. During a friendship where no sham emotions have been detected trust will build up. . Beinhocker notes
the grouping of us and them.
And he suggests the rule
of law allows this division to be overcome, amplifying
trade.
Beinhocker notes language development, including writing, also
provides access to a vastly expanded area of the design spaces:
mail, telephones is a device for capture of spoken voice signals, for their encoding and transmission over a signalling medium, initially the telegraph, but subsequently: microwave, optical links and networks and wireless networks; and the receipt and playing of the signals in the receiver. A variety of inventors saw the opportunity to add voice communications to the telegraph including: Alexander Graham Bell, Elisha Gray, Antonio Meucci; inducing significant litigation regarding the patent rights. , faxes
& email.
And Beinhocker argues that once large numbers of people could
form cooperative networks, and had the means to communicate and
record large amounts of data, human organizations could generate
emergent networked
computation.
The expansion of the accessible high points of the Social Technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg.
design space supported and leveraged the expansion of the
accessible high points of the Physical
Technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for transforming matter, energy, and information from one state into another in pursuit of a goal or goals. The effects of nuclear and genetic physical technologies are already challenging. Beinhocker adds artificial intelligence and nanotechnology as emerging physical technologies that support access to huge new niches and introduce additional challenges. design space.
Economic
Evolution - From Big Men to Markets
Beinhocker reflects that the three design spaces:
Business plans, Physical
Technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for transforming matter, energy, and information from one state into another in pursuit of a goal or goals. The effects of nuclear and genetic physical technologies are already challenging. Beinhocker adds artificial intelligence and nanotechnology as emerging physical technologies that support access to huge new niches and introduce additional challenges. & Social Technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg. ;
have provided support for most requirements of his test for
evolution: A design space for economic evolution, A schema for
the business plan designs, Building blocks that underlie the
designs (Physical are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for transforming matter, energy, and information from one state into another in pursuit of a goal or goals. The effects of nuclear and genetic physical technologies are already challenging. Beinhocker adds artificial intelligence and nanotechnology as emerging physical technologies that support access to huge new niches and introduce additional challenges.
and Social
Technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg. ), A schema reader, the management team, that
turns Business Plans into reality, An environment, the
marketplace, where evolutionary competition occurs; but he sees
the need for two additional
requirements:
- Define the interactors is evolutionary philosopher David Hull's term for the schematically specified, instantiated aggregated agent which can interact with the proximate environment and is subject to selection pressures. Dawkins's equivalent term is 'vehicle'.
in economic evolution - businesses, which Beinhocker asserts
are a person, or an organized group of people, who
transforms matter, energy, and information from one state
into another with the goal of making
a profit. These may exist within larger firms which
Beinhocker defines as one or more businesses controlled in
common by a person or group of people.
- Identify the units of selection. Beinhocker argues
that the business plan must contain the unit of
selection. To define what it is in the business plan
that gets selected Beinhocker reviews what makes a
competitive success of a business. But he notes it
must be whatever is helping the business be successful at
that competitive point in time. That leads him to
suggest it is a 'module'
of the business plan which is a component that has provided
in the past, or could provide in the future, a basis for
differential selection between businesses in a competitive
environment. Beinhocker asserts that the glue that
binds together the Physical Technologies and Social
Technologies that make up the modules of the business plan
is strategy
which Beinhocker argues is a hypothesis that combines Physical
Technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for transforming matter, energy, and information from one state into another in pursuit of a goal or goals. The effects of nuclear and genetic physical technologies are already challenging. Beinhocker adds artificial intelligence and nanotechnology as emerging physical technologies that support access to huge new niches and introduce additional challenges.
and Social
Technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg. in a way it assumes will win against the
competition. A Business Plan is where strategies allow
Physical Technologies and Social Technologies to meet, in
modules, as the plans are made real as operational
businesses.
Beinhocker sees business
execution as trying a lot of stuff and seeing what works.
He sees this as more deductive-tinkering by entrepreneurs and
managers. And they must be able to execute short (mostly),
medium and long jumps through the business plan design space
to stop evolution
getting stuck on local peaks.
And he argues that selection of the business is then performed,
initially by Big Men is used by anthropologists to describe an individual who captures resources and strives to build a following through generosity, but is never permanently successful, his influence being limited to his faction and the flow of resources. The term was coined in Native Melanesia. Beinhocker outlines a logical shift from big men to economic market operations. ,
with the aristocratic hierarchies of feudal Europe controlling
over 80% of economic output until about 300 years ago, and
subsequently by markets.
Beinhocker explains that a major achievement of traditional
economics was to show that the fitness function
that markets attempt to satisfy is the overall welfare of the
people participating in them. A market economy is
defined by markets selecting Business Plans, because to become a
Big Man is used by anthropologists to describe an individual who captures resources and strives to build a following through generosity, but is never permanently successful, his influence being limited to his faction and the flow of resources. The term was coined in Native Melanesia. Beinhocker outlines a logical shift from big men to economic market operations. is to have ones
Business Plans preferred by the market to the
others. Corporate hierarchies make visible decisions
selecting Business Plans and allocating resources to their
choices, but above these hierarchies is the market where the
hierarchies compete with one another. Beinhocker sees the
decisions of managers in the hierarchy as transforming one
Business Plan into the next. Then the winning options will
be executed in the market place where competition will decide
the winner.
Replication should be the measure of evolved success. Here
Beinhocker avoids the problem of the amorphous shape of his
interactors by comparing the total resources: money, people,
plant and equipment, brand, technical knowledge, customer
relationships; amassed by the business with the business plan
modules it executes. He
concludes evolved success is how its resources grow over Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time. In part this growth will
occur inside the corporate hierarchies as favored selections are
copied into other interactors inside the firm. Beinhocker
sees market
success being similarly copied and resourced by competitors
adding to the replication of the module.
Beinhocker notes that traditional economics justifications for
the value of markets are based on the assumptions of
equilibrium. Beinhocker replaces these assumptions with:
Beinhocker argues that around 1750 a set of innovations in
Social Technologies altered the speed of economic evolution:
- The scientific
revolution after 1500 transformed the ability to
search through the design space
of Physical Technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for transforming matter, energy, and information from one state into another in pursuit of a goal or goals. The effects of nuclear and genetic physical technologies are already challenging. Beinhocker adds artificial intelligence and nanotechnology as emerging physical technologies that support access to huge new niches and introduce additional challenges.
.
- Two centuries of Social
Technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg.
evolution resulted in the rise of
organized markets. Beinhocker suggests the two key
events were the:
- Emergence of parliamentary democracy in England:
Constitutional monarchy, Parliament controlled the budget,
Bank of England was established to manage the currency,
Petition of Rights of 1628 and Habeas Corpus of 1679; and
the
- American Revolution: Britain's cheap resourcing of the
colonies' infrastructure and its battles with other
European great powers allowed a populist culture to
develop in the colonies and economic freedom to generate a
GDP is:
- Gross domestic product which measures the total of goods and services produced in a given year within the borders of a given country (output) according to Piketty. Gordon argues to include products produced in the home & market-purchased goods and services, following Becker's theory of time use. Gordon stresses innovation is the ultimate source of all growth in output per worker-hour. GDP growth per person is equal to the growth in labor productivity + growth in hours worked per person. GDP has many problems. Gordon concludes that between 1870 and 1940 all available measures GDP is hugely understated because:
- GDP is a poor measure of:
- Value & wealth
- Who gets what
- Global supply chains
- GDP excludes:
- Reduction in infant mortality between 1890 (22%) and 1950 (1%)
- Brightness & safety of electric light,
- Increased variety of food including refrigeration transported fresh meat and processed food
- Convenience and economies of scale of the department store and mail order catalog and resulting product price reductions
- Services by house makers
- Time & health gains from having flush toilets, integrated sewer networks; rather than having to physically remove effluent and cope with fecal-oral transmission
- Leisure
- Costs & benefits of different length work weeks
- Speed and flexibility of motor vehicles - which were not included in the CPI until 1935, after the transformation had occurred. And competition from improved foreign vehicles, while it provides purchaser/user with improved standard of living (less breakdowns, repairs, etc.) is measured as reduced domestic manufacture
- Coercion and corruption to obtain resources
- Consumption impact of finite resources: coal, oil;
- Destruction impact of loss of entire irreplaceable species
- GDP includes items that should be excluded:
- Cost of waste - cleaning up pollution (single use indestructible plastic bags), building prisons, commuting to work, and cars left parked most of the time; should be subtracted
- Guanine-di-phosphate is a nucleotide base.
that was 40% of
Britain's in 1775.
New
Definition of Wealth - Fit Order
Beinhocker explains that Desmond & Moore paint a picture of Charles Darwin's life,
expanded from his own highlights:
- His naughty
childhood,
- Wasted
schooldays,
- Apprenticeship with Grant,
- His extramural
activities at Cambridge, walks with Henslow,
life with FitzRoy on the
Beagle,
- His growing
love for science,
- London: geology, journal and Lyell.
- Moving from
Gower Street to Down and writing Origin and other
books.
- He reviewed his position on
religion: the long
dispute with Emma, his
slow collapse of belief
- damnation for unbelievers like his father and brother, inward conviction
being evolved and unreliable, regretting he had ignored his father's
advice; while describing Emma's side of the
argument. He felt happy with his decision to dedicate
his life to science. He closed by asserting after Self &
Cross-fertilization his strength will be
exhausted.
Following our summary of their main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Darwin placed
evolution within a CAS framework, and built a network of supporters whose
complementary skills helped drive the innovation.
Darwin,
Teilhard de Chardin & Georgescu-Roegen observed two types of human evolution:
genetic & cultural;
with Georgescu-Roegen associating evolution & thermodynamic
entropy requires that the Boltzmann entropy of a closed system increases. . He argued that economic processes (1)
irreversibly transform high (2)
entropy to low entropy with some of the increased order
being useful to and able to be captured by human agents [for achieving their subjective goals.
Goals that may help them survive and reproduce by reflecting (3)
strategies to capture the cognitive niche is Tooby & DeVore's theory that reflects a flexible competitive strategy, described by Steven Pinker, which leverages the power and flexibility of intelligence to defeat the capabilities of genetically evolved specialists focused on specific niches. ],
and criticized traditional
economics for ignoring this.
Beinhocker notes that our current environments differ from the African savanna is the environment where hunter-gatherers primarily evolved. Its grassland supported large herbivores that could be hunted easily across the plains. Clumps of Acacia trees: with short trunks, and broad bows; & rocks supported places to hide from large carnivores. Streams, especially important in times of drought, and paths add to the signals enabling orientation. , creating opportunities
to exploit the
mismatch. But more generally he sees necessary economic
coevolution of businesses plans and humanity's current
environmental niches.
He argues wealth is a form of order: Patterns of economic order,
in the form of products and services, which compete with each
other to be needed, desired and
craved by consumers. The winners support the evolved amplification of the
business plans that defined their development. The
preferences of consumers and the plans then coevolve, defining
contingent wealth - fit order.
Beinhocker relates this This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS
representation of wealth to the ideas of traditional economic
value where: scarce factors of production met individual
preferences through the mechanism of markets. Value was
whatever two people were willing to trade for. The
equivalent CAS model has:
- Supplies of low
entropy having some intrinsic value.
- Human preferences determining the attraction of products
and services, stimulating demand.
- Markets allowing businesses plans to match scarce order
with individual preferences.
Beinhocker
adds that money
is a Social
Technology are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg. that enables score keeping during the
interactions.
Beinhocker argues economic wealth and biological wealth are
thermodynamically similar phenomena:
- Systems of low entropy, emerging through the constraints
of fitness functions as patterns of order.
- Forms of fit order
- Fitness functions for: Biology it is replication of genes,
Economy it is tastes and preferences; which are linked since
the economy is a
genetic replication strategy, built with big brains,
nimble hands, cooperation,
language, & culture is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal. CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism. Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering. Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling. Damasio notes prokaryotes and social insects have developed cultural social behaviors. Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset. He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised. Culture:
- Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation. Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain. Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes. Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach. And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations! PMS symptoms vary by culture.
- Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play. So parents try to control their children's peer group.
- Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc.
- Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate.
- Can transform dominance into honor. There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures. Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian.
- Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.
- Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire.
- Can provide varying levels of support for innovation. Damasio suggests culture is influenced by feelings:
- As motives for intellectual creation: prompting
detection and diagnosis of homeostatic
deficiencies, identifying
desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural
instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments
required by the cultural process over time
- Produces consciousness according to Dennet.
.
He concludes 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. is knowledge and its
origin is evolution.
He explains his conclusion: wealth being fit order corresponds
to knowledge, which he equates to useful information.
Evolution is a knowledge-creation machine or learning
algorithm.
What
it Means for Business and Society
Strategy -
Racing the Red Queen
Beinhocker concludes that complexity makes the economy too
complex, too nonlinear, too dynamic, and too sensitive to the
twists and turns of chance to be amenable to prediction beyond
the shortest of terms. But:
- CEOs are expected to determine which is the best business
strategy
- Investors expect to identify the highest returning
investment approach
- Political leaders are expected to select the best policy
Instead he argues complexity allows us to design institutions
and societies to evolve effectively. By understanding
evolution he suggests we can harness its power to serve
human purposes.
Beinhocker notes that Chandler's view was strategy is forward
looking, and used a plan for associating resources with actions
that fulfill desired long-term goals. The plan leverages
the development of a number of scenarios and seeks attractive
positions within those. Harvard's
Porter
argued that by reducing competition and increasing market power
through competitive advantage companies could capture
profits. And Harvard's Ghemawat noted that competitive
advantage's strategic moves are risky, is an assessment of the likelihood of an independent problem occurring. It can be assigned an accurate probability since it is independent of other variables in the system. As such it is different from uncertainty.
because they are costly to reverse. This irreversibility
is Georgescu-Roegen
condition (1).
Classically business
strategy makes two assumptions:
- One can make confident predictions about what strategies
will be successful in the future
- One can make commitments that will result in sustainable
competitive advantage; but Beinhocker
asserts both assumptions are false.
Beinhocker argues frozen accidents,
dynamic,
nonlinear flows amplify small events into significant
outcomes. Such uncertainty is when a factor is hard to measure because it is dependent on many interconnected agents and may be affected by infrastructure and evolved amplifiers. This is different from risk, although the two are deliberately conflated by ERISA. Keynes argued that most aspects of the future are uncertain, at best represented by ordinal probabilities, and often only by capricious hope for future innovation, fear inducing expectations of limited confidence, which evolutionary psychology implies is based on the demands of our hunter gatherer past. Deacon notes reduced uncertainty equates to information.
is associated with punctuated
equilibrium is Steven Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge's proposal about how evolution occurs. They suggested that most of the time 'nothing happens' and then there are intermittent rapid lurches. The idea is analogous to Schumpeter's waves of creative destruction. Complex adaptive systems will operate this way driven by the underlying slow mutations of the germ-line schemata and the action of infrastructure and evolved amplifiers. and power laws is a probability distribution which occurs in real world economics, physics and earth science situations. The tail is fat because more extreme events occur than a random distribution about a mean would predict. There is clustering of events over time typical of a punctuated equilibrium. The statistics describing the data changes over time. The mathematics of this distribution is far harder to leverage in models than the thin-tailed normal distribution. So the normal distribution is sometimes inappropriately applied in fat-tail situations. .
This leaves competitive advantage as rare and relatively
short-lived. Punctuated equilibrium and power laws leave human pattern-recognizers
flummoxed.
There are no safe, stable industries. Schumpeter's gales
of creative destruction are seen everywhere. Beinhocker
notes that this is also seen in biology where species are locked
in a never-ending
co-evolutionary arms race with no opportunity to
win. Sustainable competitive advantage does not
exist.
Beinhocker concludes that an excellent company must be one which
can string together a series of temporary advantages over Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time. Johnson
& Johnson & Merck
are judged examples of such companies.
Hannan and Freeman's studies on the organizational ecology of
markets led them to conclude that individual
companies do not innovate much. They found that
change was mainly due to companies entering and exiting the
market. Beinhocker adds that the process of
differentiating, selecting, and amplifying Business Plans works better at
the level of the market than inside the walls of most
companies.
Beinhocker argues it is possible to use strategy advantageously
within a company by:
- Avoiding the problems caused by committing
resources to a prediction that turns out to be wrong
- Testing out multiple options. Beinhocker asserts strategy
is a portfolio of experiments - competing business plans
that evolve over
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time.
Beinhocker discusses Bill
Gates approach when MS-DOS replacement products were being
developed in 1987. He suggests Gates setup a portfolio of
strategic options - six competitive business plans within
Microsoft that he felt reflected the competition going on in the
market:
- Invest in MS-DOS to leverage
its huge customer base. DOS had become more
powerful over time.
- IBM
was a seen as a huge threat. It was aiming to
recapture control of the OS-market. Gates got them to
agree to partner on PS/2 and OS/2 with Microsoft acting as
the developer!
- Microsoft negotiated with AT&T and other Unix
companies to participate in Unix development. Unix
workstations remained niche.
- Unix on PCs was led by Santa Cruz Operation (SCO).
Microsoft purchased a major part of SCO.
- Microsoft continued to invest in applications for DOS, Apple
Macintosh, Windows and OS/2.
- Invested in Windows.
Beinhocker argues this Gates story demonstrates a number of
general lessons:
- Management needs to create a context for strategy.
Constructing a portfolio of experiments requires a
collective understanding of the current situation
and shared aspirations among the management
team.
- A planning exercise allows the management team to build
a common frame
of reference: shared understanding of the facts, a
language for talking to each other; and ensures they
communicate.
- A planning process focused
on learning (instead of creating plans and making
decisions):
- Structuring in-depth discussion and debate
- Fuel with
facts and analysis - including all participants gaining
a shared understanding of the fact base.
- Other forums must be designated for decision making integrates situational context, state and signals to prioritize among strategies and respond in a timely manner. It occurs in all animals, including us and our organizations:
- Individual human decision making includes conscious and unconscious aspects. Situational context is highly influential: supplying meaning to our general mechanisms, & for robots too. Emotions are important in providing a balanced judgement. The adaptive unconscious interprets percepts quickly supporting 'fast' decision making. Conscious decision making, supported by the: DLPFC, vmPFC and limbic system; can use slower autonomy. The amygdala, during unsettling or uncertain social situations, signals the decision making regions of the frontal lobe, including the orbitofrontal cortex. The BLA supports rejecting unacceptable offers. Moral decisions are influenced by a moral decision switch. Sleeping before making an important decision is useful in obtaining the support of the unconscious in developing a preference. Word framing demonstrates the limitations of our fast intuitive decision making processes. And prior positive associations detected by the hippocampus, can be reactivated with the support of the striatum linking it to the memory of a reward, inducing a bias into our choices. Prior to the development of the PFC, the ventral striatum supports adolescent decision making. Neurons involved in decision making in the association areas of the cortex are active for much longer than neurons participating in the sensory areas of the cortex. This allows them to link perceptions with a provisional action plan. Association neurons can track probabilities connected to a choice. As evidence is accumulated and a threshold is reached a choice is made, making fast thinking highly adaptive. Diseases including: schizophrenia and anorexia; highlight aspects of human decision making.
- Organisations often struggle to balance top down and distributed decision making: parliamentry government must use a process, health care is attempting to improve the process: checklists, end-to-end care; and include more participants, but has systemic issues, business leaders struggle with strategy.
.
They must be linked to but separate from the learning
process.
- Management needs a process for differentiating Business
Plans that results in a portfolio of
diverse plans.
- The organization needs to create a selection
environment that mirrors the environment in the market
even as it changes over
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time.
Beinhocker notes that organizations will distort the market
signals. He argues that more detailed information
limits opinions and politicing. But he notes that key
selection decisions happen outside of
the top leadership's awareness. So aspirational
goals must be devised that reflect the impact of the
external environment, allow innovation is the economic realization of invention and combinatorial exaptation. Keynes noted it provided the unquantifiable beneficial possibility that limits fear of uncertainty. Innovation operates across all CAS, being supported by genetic and cultural means. Creativity provides the mutation and recombination genetic operators for the cultural process. While highly innovative, monopolies: AT&T, IBM; usually have limited economic reach, constraining productivity. This explains the use of regulation, or even its threat, that can check their power and drive the creations across the economy. , create
action and are supported with alligned incentives.
- Processes need to be established that enable the
amplification of successful business plans and the
elimination of unsuccessful ones. But Beinhocker notes
it is a mistake to apply the same performance metrics to all
businesses and strategic experiments. Beinhocker
supports development of a custom balanced scorecard.
And the front line businesses must have enough slack
resource that they can adapt and respond to opportunities
that appear. How do you rapidly spot those?
Beinhocker notes venture
capitalists is venture capital, venture companies invest in startups with intangable assets
use their
portfolios pragmatically to learn about the
future. They maintain lots of small low risk bets and
then support proven success with additional resources while
removing funding streams from market failures.
Organization
- A Society of Minds
Beinhocker argues that for companies to sustain themselves
through the inevitable
downturns they must have a strong culture is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal. CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism. Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering. Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling. Damasio notes prokaryotes and social insects have developed cultural social behaviors. Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset. He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised. Culture: - Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation. Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain. Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes. Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach. And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations! PMS symptoms vary by culture.
- Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play. So parents try to control their children's peer group.
- Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc.
- Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate.
- Can transform dominance into honor. There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures. Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian.
- Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.
- Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire.
- Can provide varying levels of support for innovation. Damasio suggests culture is influenced by feelings:
- As motives for intellectual creation: prompting
detection and diagnosis of homeostatic
deficiencies, identifying
desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural
instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments
required by the cultural process over time
- Produces consciousness according to Dennet.
& values
supported by an effective social architecture breaks down barriers to adaptability and allows organizations to obtain a better balance between near-term execution and long-term evolution. It is defined by Beinhocker as: - The behaviors of the individual people in the organization.
- The structures and processes that align people and resources in pursuit of an organization's goals.
- The culture that emerges from the interactions of people in the organization with each other and their environment.
.
He asserts that companies are organizations are goal directed, boundary-maintaining, and socially constructed systems of human activity, argues University of North Carolina sociologist Howard Aldrich. .
And organizations are:
So Beinhocker argues that firms are
organizations that develop and execute business plans with the collective goal of
making a profit. He notes Ronald Coase asked: why
form organizations? in 'The Nature of the Firm.' Coase
concluded it is a structure used when it minimizes transaction
costs. Beinhocker adds that it can also reach areas of
Business Plan design space
that freelancers can't:
- Incomplete contracts - because of complexity it is
impossible to cover all possible contingencies in a
contract. So freelancing is restricted to simple part
of business plan space.
- The holdup problem can occur - specific assets, that are
costly and only useful in a specific situation, must be held
by someone in the group of freelancers. If a freelance
relationship unravels no one will want to be that
person. Who ever does have the assets is in a weakened
negotiating position relative to the others.
- Cooperative structures can be developed and sustained,
supporting long term transactions, even if particular agents
change.
- Organizations allow collective learning. They build
structures that embed information that can be utilized by
other cooperating agents. Beinhocker differentiates
between:
Beinhocker applies evolution
arguing a firm must:
- Execute its current set of Business Plans to survive the
challenges of today, and
- Adapt those plans to survive the challenges of
tomorrow.
Beinhocker asserts organizations find it easier to execute than
adapt. Viewing them as CAS he looks at three levels at why
organizations find it hard to adapt:
- The individual agents find it hard to adapt based on their
mental models (behavior).
He argues:
- The structure of organizations inhibit adaptation in evolutionary biology is a trait that increased the number of surviving offspring in an organism's ancestral lineage. Holland argues: complex adaptive systems (CAS) adapt due to the influence of schematic strings on agents. Evolution indicates fitness when an organism survives and reproduces. For his genetic algorithm, Holland separated the adaptive process into credit assignment and rule discovery. He assigned a strength to each of the rules (alternate hypothesis) used by his artificial agents, by credit assignment - each accepted message being paid for by the recipient, increasing the sender agent's rule's strength (implicit modeling) and reducing the recipient's. When an agent achieved an explicit goal they obtained a final reward. Rule discovery used the genetic algorithm to select strong rule schemas from a pair of agents to be included in the next generation, with crossing over and mutation applied, and the resulting schematic strategies used to replace weaker schemas. The crossing over genetic operator is unlikely to break up a short schematic sequence that provides a building block retained because of its 'fitness'; In Deacon's conception of evolution, an adaptation is the realization of a set of constraints on candidate mechanisms, and so long as these constraints are maintained, other features are arbitrary.
:
hierarchies, complexity
catastrophes is a dramatic breakdown in the operation of a CAS that results in general failure. Dorner in the logic of failure, sees the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as illustrative: typical human strategies were incorrectly applied by experienced operators, because they were overconfident and incorrectly modeled the current and immediate future state of the reactor. Beinhocker asserts positive effects generated in a large inter-connected network induce negative effects at other points in the network. Booch argues that increasing system complexity can overwhelm human designers, inducing catastrophe in software development. He recommends adopting object oriented hierarchy and modularity to limit complexity. But many CAS networks include huge number of agents, responding to internal and external signals, and effectively executing evolved, distributed schematic plans. Eventual loss of control, as in the case of cancers, is notable and highlights the effective agency of the more regular situation. Human developed systems suffer from complexity catastrophe. Democratic processes slowly search for representatives who will solve problems for the citizens, but Diamond in Collapse explains that democracy has struggled to cope with the tragedy of the commons. Cliodynamic cycles operate over multiple lifetimes leaving humans prone to fall into the traps that caught their grandparents. Evolved amplifiers support bubbles incenting dangerous deregulation, and encouraging broad participation, even though the rules ensure additional wealth accumulates to the legislative elite and aristocracy, who safely ignore moral hazard. Parasites undermine the detection of problems. RSS sees catastrophe enabled by a lack of rigorous schematic planning within most developed human systems. , resource configuration;
(structure)
- Beinhocher references University
of Michigan political scientist Scott Page's
analysis which concluded structure matches the tasks being
performed. He viewed tasks as having parallelizable
aspects and sequential aspects. The more tasks that
must be sequenced, the more hierarchy is
required. This leads Beinhocker to see deep
hierarchies as supporting complex execution strategies but
inhibiting search processes that are best implemented by a
series of small parallel teams. He notes the
additional problem of effectively reintegrating the search
teams into the hierarchic business units.
- Beinhocker explains how Edith Penrose correlated
specialized resource commitments and constraints on where
an organization may search for opportunity. So to
exploit potential opportunities the company will change
its resource base. Business plans and resources must
co-evolve. But there are path dependencies that act
as barriers to these changes, as noted by Hamel &
Prahalad. That leads Beinhocker to conclude that
portfolios of strategic experiments are important because
they support additional resource diversity.
- Emergence
must be enabled by corporate culture (culture is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal. CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism. Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering. Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling. Damasio notes prokaryotes and social insects have developed cultural social behaviors. Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset. He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised. Culture:
- Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation. Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain. Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes. Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach. And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations! PMS symptoms vary by culture.
- Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play. So parents try to control their children's peer group.
- Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc.
- Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate.
- Can transform dominance into honor. There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures. Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian.
- Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.
- Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire.
- Can provide varying levels of support for innovation. Damasio suggests culture is influenced by feelings:
- As motives for intellectual creation: prompting
detection and diagnosis of homeostatic
deficiencies, identifying
desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural
instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments
required by the cultural process over time
- Produces consciousness according to Dennet.
)
- Beinhocker defines culture as an emergent characteristic
of a group of agents and is determined by the agents'
rules of behavior (or norms) for acting in their social
einvironment and for interacting with each other.
Cultural rules are socially transmitted and
learned.
- Organizations
then develop their own unique culture over time:
rules of behavior about interacting within a specific
organization. Beinhocker asserts there are traits
and norms that are associated with high-performing and adaptive in evolutionary biology is a trait that increased the number of surviving offspring in an organism's ancestral lineage. Holland argues: complex adaptive systems (CAS) adapt due to the influence of schematic strings on agents. Evolution indicates fitness when an organism survives and reproduces. For his genetic algorithm, Holland separated the adaptive process into credit assignment and rule discovery. He assigned a strength to each of the rules (alternate hypothesis) used by his artificial agents, by credit assignment - each accepted message being paid for by the recipient, increasing the sender agent's rule's strength (implicit modeling) and reducing the recipient's. When an agent achieved an explicit goal they obtained a final reward. Rule discovery used the genetic algorithm to select strong rule schemas from a pair of agents to be included in the next generation, with crossing over and mutation applied, and the resulting schematic strategies used to replace weaker schemas. The crossing over genetic operator is unlikely to break up a short schematic sequence that provides a building block retained because of its 'fitness'; In Deacon's conception of evolution, an adaptation is the realization of a set of constraints on candidate mechanisms, and so long as these constraints are maintained, other features are arbitrary.
companies:
- Performance orientation
- Honesty
- Meritocracy
- Mutual trust
- Reciprocity
- Shared purpose
- Nonhierarchical
- Openness
- Fact-based
- Challenge - always in a race. But he notes it is
hard to integrate them into the social fabric of a firm
and get all the people to adopt them.
- Beinhocker argues that with the
high-performance norms in place, companies don't
have to depend so much on hierarchy and processes, which
makes it easier to be flexible and adapt. He notes
that there are tensions among the 10 norms so they must be
effectively managed, by senior leadership, to ensure they
are all operating. An effective social architecture
requires structure, process and culture setup to be
consistent and mutually reinforcing. And the people
are selected for fitting within the company's social
architecture. Senior managers must consistently
signal their expectations. Constant repetition makes
them believed.
Beinhocker highlights Edith Penrose's conclusions regarding the
fundamental constraints on firm size and growth:
- Managing complexity
- Knowledge. Beinhocker suggests we are limited by our
innovation and knowledge-creating abilities. He notes
Marvin Minsky's observation that intelligence is an emergent
phenomena which Minsky terms "the society of mind."
Beinhocker wonders if creating "societies of minds" through
culture will free
the minds of their people to be engines of wealth creation.
Finance
- Ecosystems of Expectations
Traditional
economics support for finance theory uses equilibrium
based stock market operations. Black-Scholes can solve the contingent investment discount rate dilemma for pricing options. It establishes a tracking portfolio with the same payoffs as the option and dynamically tracks the portfolio as the stock price evolves, adjusting the value of the option. It is argued that the adjustment ensures the rate of return to a hedge position remains constant over time.
provides a mathematical instantiation. LTCM was Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund that used Black-Scholes quantitative models to trade in derivatives. The hedge fund's bets failed during the Asian and Russian debt crisis of 1998 and it had to be rescued by the Federal Reserve. 's failure provides us
with a high profile repudiation of the theory: Robert Merton
noted the day after the crash, "according to our models this
just could not happen." Stock market bubbles do not exist
according to traditional finance theory. The theories and
equations are rapidly applied in the real world: investors,
banks, corporate managers, & government policy makers; make
decisions based on the predictions. Beinhocker notes that
finances empirical testing of finance theory has not been kind!
In 1954 Paul Samuelson, adopted
Louis Bachelier's 1900 Theory of Speculation, which asserted
that stock prices perform a random walk over Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time. Samuelson's conclusion was
the cornerstone of the ideas of Traditional finance developed
over the next 30 years by: Samuelson, Paul Cootner, Harry
Markowitz, James Tobin, Franco Modigliani, Merton Miller,
Fischer Black, Myron Scholes, Eugene
Fama, William Sharpe, and Robert Merton. The
framework was popularized by Princeton's
Burton Malkiel, who published A Random Walk Down Wall Street,
which became a fixture
of MBA courses and deployed the models into the minds of a
generation of traders
and investors.
Beinhocker explains the efficiency of the market in digesting
information, into expectations and then into a consensus price
change is judged by traditional finance theory to cause prices
to move in a random walk. The random walk occurs because,
traditional economics assumes, the arrival of news occurs
randomly. To account for economic growth over time
economics argues the news has a slight positive bias: a random
walk with drift. Because information digestion is
efficient, it was assumed there is no useful information in past
stock price movements. If there was the rational investors
would translate it into price changes reflected in the current
equilibrium position. Chicago's
Eugene
Fama noted in the efficient-markets
hypothesis that rational investing and arbitrage means it
is impossible to beat the market and generate higher returns
than the market as a whole.
Beinhocker explains in this random walk model, investors who
win: Berkshire
Hathaway's Warren Buffett; are assumed to be digesting all
the information effectively and driving the price. Those
who loose did not bother to capture all the information
available and act on it and so transferred their money to
Buffett etc. Among the fully rational investors there
should be no winners and losers. The only way one can
stand out is to take on more risk, is an assessment of the likelihood of an independent problem occurring. It can be assigned an accurate probability since it is independent of other variables in the system. As such it is different from uncertainty. ,
or be lucky during the instant that the sample was
assessed.
There are three significant problems that mean a This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS approach must replace the
traditional economics infrastructure:
- Real-world investors look nothing like the idealized
investors of finance theory. They have biases, don't
discount as predicted, use heuristics and suffer from
framing problems. The price
of cotton was tracked by economist Hendrik
Houthakker. In 1960 his data was analyzed by Benoit
Mandelbrot who showed it had a fat tail is a probability distribution which occurs in real world economics, physics and earth science situations. The tail is fat because more extreme events occur than a random distribution about a mean would predict. There is clustering of events over time typical of a punctuated equilibrium. The statistics describing the data changes over time. The mathematics of this distribution is far harder to leverage in models than the thin-tailed normal distribution. So the normal distribution is sometimes inappropriately applied in fat-tail situations.
.
But Mandelbrot was an IBM
mathematician and CAS theory was not developed yet.
Economists continued to assume markets were random and in
equilibrium.
- Markets don't follow a random walk. Market data has
considerable structure with all the signatures of a
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS. Lo & MacKinley
noted two patterns that undermined a random walk:
- Correlation between prices and
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
- Variance of market prices did not align with a random
walk.
- Markets are not efficient, as predicted by traditional
economics. Beinhocker argues that instead they are
evolutionarily effective.
At the end of the cold-war, physicists, who had been working on
military problems switched over to Wall
Street finance. Doyne
Farmer & Norman Packard took Mandelbrot's arguments and
built a theory to explain them assuming an evolving
ecosystem. They noted that market signals predicted future
share prices and once identified, the signals remained for some
time instead of being arbitraged away. And even as these
signals were weakened by trading new one appeared. And the
successful strategies generating the signals depended on the
strategies of the other agents in the market.
Farmer built a simple model of a market
where only three basic types of investor existed:
- Value investors - who would buy & sell a stock based
on fundamentals
(earnings, growth, competitive position models),
- Technical
traders (who buy and sell based on past prices & trading
volume models),
- Liquidity traders (who
sell when driven by a need to gain access to liquidity);
along with a
- Market maker - who
reflected the details of how the market operates: buys and
sells in a continuous auction.
Farmer could customize the model:
- Initially he just deployed one fundamental trader
and a market maker.
But because of time delays the market did not match
traditional finance theory. The time delay caused
oscillations. The oscillations represented the rules
being followed by the trader and maker and the delays.
- Then he added a technical
trader, who purchased when the price was going up and
sold when it was going down, amplifying the
oscillations. And if the technical trader was
successful the agent would reinvest its gains adding to the
size of the oscillations.
- Subsequently Farmer set the fundamental value of the stock
to be constant. He added seasonal traders who bought
and sold alternately, creating an oscillating pattern.
He added technical
traders who used information on price trends in prior
periods to decide: if price went down and then up then buy,
if the price went down and then down again sell.
Successful traders could keep the money and reinvest.
While traditional finance theory suggests the technical
traders will find the oscillating pattern and then arbitrage
the seasonal trend out what Farmer observed was:
- As the technical traders found the oscillation pattern
they started to gain money. That allowed them to
make bigger trades. They almost arbitraged away all
the oscillations but then
- The larger trades of the successful technical traders
caused new volatility. The successful traders
started to capture profits from each other and generated
more wild oscillations. This mimicked the data Doyne
Farmer had seen on his company's trading floor. Some
technical traders were profitable.
The model explains why
hedge funds is an investment fund that accepts investments from a limited number of accredited individual or institutional investors. Hedge funds are able to use investment methods that are not allowed for other types of fund. can exist
and be highly profitable using arbitrage and technical
strategies. Farmer notes that
competitive investors don't always arbitrage profitable
opportunities. That is because it isn't possible to
recognize strategies that make abnormal profits, quickly (it
typically takes at least five years of observation), and they
may not have accumulated enough funds - or credibility to borrow
- to fully arbitrage the signals when they decide to do
so. But this scenario does mean that at a 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
particular time some people understand
the situation better than their competition and can gain for a
while.
Major banks and hedge funds are using statistical and modeling
techniques from complexity
economics in designing their investment strategies.
Business executives must also respond to these changes in
finance. Complexity based finance theory has three main
effects on business:
- Widely used methods for calculating the cost of capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). may be
wrong. Beinhocker notes the cost of capital influences
executives' major decisions and directly effects shareholder
returns. CAPM is Chicago economist Harry Markowitz's capital asset pricing model, the standard method of evaluating the cost of capital of a business. Beinhocker explains that it assumes investors are totally rational, fully informed, markets are efficient and economies operate in equilibrium. And Markowitz's assumptions about how to offset risk are questionable: CAPM assumes all investors hold portfolios of stocks that optimize the trade-off between risk and return. This allows the portfolios to be combined creating a market portfolio, allowing an individual stocks risk (beta) to be measured relative to the market portfolio. But no one holds such portfolios. That would require: Perfect information, unlimited capability to short stocks, matching time horizon for all investors, Continuous updating of the market portfolio -- which would drive up transaction costs prohibitively; so economists use a weighted average of all stocks in the market instead. These problems mean investment managers are actually evaluated against indices such as the S&P 500.
assumes the correctness of Traditional Finance. But at
present there is no This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS based
replacement.
- It suggests granting stock options for executive
compensation is inappropriate. The stock price can
deviate significantly from the value a company is generating
and for years. Typically these factors will be beyond
the executives' control. And the binding resulted in short-term
incentives that drove up executive compensation.
- Alters the nature of shareholder capitalism and the
purpose of corporations. Beinhocker argues that the
CAS goal of any replicator is Richard Dawkin's name for the genotype since it has the evolutionary goal of surviving long enough to reproduce its schematic plan effectively. The action of genetic operators means that the results of successful reproduction may be different to the parental genotypes and phenotypes (Dawkin's vehicle).
is to get
replicated. So a good business plan should
support the survival and amplification (growth) of its
business. Beinhocker associates this with:
- Capital being attracted to the enterprise &
providers of the capital obtaining a return that is better
than the other alternatives
- Employees must be attracted and incented to work
productively
- Suppliers must see profitable relationships with the
business
- The business must develop goods and services that people
want.
- Management must ensure the business meets its legal
obligations
Beinhocker concludes that a major CAS constraint is that
companies are profitable. Traditional
economics agrees but has driven executives to focus on
short term performance. He notes that DuPont has survived
and grown for over 200 years, transforming itself from a
start-up gunpowder maker to a major chemicals, materials, and
life sciences company. Long term survival and growth
requires a more balanced view and focus on variables they can
control.
Politics
& Policy - The End of Left Versus Right
Noting the close association between economics and politics
Beinhocker asks: what will be the impact of Complexity Economics on
politics?
The 1789 Revolution French National Assembly included: Third
Estate revolutionaries on the left and aristocratic First Estate
on the right. Over the next century economics was
integrated into this political divide with the communist
manifesto of Marks & Engels on the left and Adam Smith's capitalist
doctrines on the right. Following the collapse of
the USSR after 1989, Beinhocker notes the advent of the Third
Way championed by Bill
Clinton in the US is the United States of America. &
Tony Blair in the UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. .
They proposed to leverage the wealth generating power of
Capitalism and humanitarian objectives of Socialism.
Beinhocker argues the Third Way evolved into a set of tactics are goals and actions which respond to the actions of the enemy in a combat, rather than focusing on ones own strategic direction. for winning
elections from the center, rather than a new economic
paradigm. Beinhocker concludes that Complexity Economics
can fill this void.
Beinhocker notes the Left-Right divide reflects the alternative
views of human nature of: Rousseau/Marx
and Hume/Locke/Hobbes. Beinhocker notes that Adam Smith was more
in line with the modern understanding of man as both
self-interested and altruistic, is the property that since kin share genes natural selection will improve the replicator's selfish goals by supporting the survival of such relatives. Improving the chances of survival of non-kin is hard to explain with a gene preservation theory. Why help a competitive gene? Trivers explanation of reciprocal altruism shows the special conditions under which it can occur. .
There are two crucial distinctions that follow from this:
- Real people care about outcomes and the fairness of the
process.
- As the ultimatum
game is an economic game involving two players: One makes an offer about how to split a pot of money. If the offer is rejected neither party gets any money. The other player can accept or reject the offer. Rationality implies that any offer should be accepted by the recipient. Instead recipients are keenly aware of being unfairly treated. The longer the amygdala responds to the offer the more likely it is to be rejected. The rejection is mentally costly and must be encouraged by a dopaminergic reward, fueled by the amygdala and insula. When the offer is rejected the first player feels dissed, subordinated - especially if the result is shared with others, undermining status & reputation. Sapolsky notes that:
- People with damaged amygdalae are unusually generous because the BLA normally injects learned implicit distrust and vigilance into social decision making.
- People given testosterone before the game become more generous. Sapolsky notes the effect demands fancy neuroendocrine wiring.
- People from small-scale, non-Western cultures were less trusting and punished more. Joseph Henrich found three variables predicted how the play executed: Market integration, Community size, Religion; where large communities need ways to make strangers trustworthy. Communities that trade are also more likely to act fairly and punish unfairness. Sapolsky asserts that market interactions represent an impoverishment of human reciprocity with the total transaction having to be judged and occur in an instant. Small-scale cultures are more practiced at the nuanced judgements about their long term neighbors.
- Chimps can be trained to play the game. Max Planck Institute's Michael Tomasello found no evidence of chimp requirements for fairness. But De Waal & Brosnan found chimps will be fair but only if they see a downside in being unfair. Primates seem to reflect the same hypocritical strategies underneath any reciprocal altruism that humans display.
shows people punish unfair behavior.
Changing the core assumptions of human behavior causes radical
shifts in the economic and political frameworks. Christina
Fong, Samuel Bowles, & Herbert Gintis argue that social
policies should be specifically designed to mobilize reciprocal
values rather than offend them. Beinhocker views the
popularity of Social Security is the social securities act of 1935 was part of the second New Deal. It attempted to limit risks of old age, poverty and unemployment. It is funded through payroll taxes via FICA and SECA into the social security trust funds. Title IV of the original SSA created what became the AFDC. The Social Security Administration controls the OASI and DI trust funds. The funds are administered by the trustees. The SSA was amended in 1965 to include: - Title V is Maternal and child health services.
- Title XVIII is Medicare.
being due to its consistency with reciprocity norms.
Beinhocker continues that a combination of individual behavior
and institutional structures create the emergent behaviors of
the This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS. So he considers the
role of markets versus states.
Beinhocker reasserts his
earlier logic: large scale cooperation between strangers
has been facilitated by either hierarchies or
markets. Beinhocker notes that both capitalist and socialist
economies operate based on plans. He argues that the
difference is that in the capitalist instantiation the plans are
developed and operated by hierarchies inside firms within a
market where selection and amplification occur. In the
socialist instantiation they are developed and operated by
hierarchies directly or indirectly controlled by the state,
which is where selection and amplification occur. Hayek
notes that the socialist process suffers from: knowledge
coordination problems, perfectly informed planners.
Beinhocker adds that without markets providing the fitness
function, human planners must use deductive rationality, with
the limited success of any 'big
man is used by anthropologists to describe an individual who captures resources and strives to build a following through generosity, but is never permanently successful, his influence being limited to his faction and the flow of resources. The term was coined in Native Melanesia. Beinhocker outlines a logical shift from big men to economic market operations. ' approach.
CAS theory implies markets are not totally efficient. So
Beinhocker concludes to assume markets can solve every problem
is unrealistic. And Beinhocker notes that Pareto optimality allocates resources measurably so that each change must make at least one person better off and make no one worse off.
isolated from government influence, motivates the Right to
restrain taxes, government spending and regulations. But
Complexity economics is built with social technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg. :
Contract law, Consumer protection regulations, Worker safety
rules, Securities law; that engender cooperation and
trust. And antitrust regulations serve to maintain healthy
levels of competition. Frameworks developed and deployed
by Theodore Roosevelt.
Complexity Economics indicates that government
regulation is a significant part of the fitness function.
Beinhocker argues that as long as
selection and amplifying are performed by markets the
evolutionary process will innovate and adapt. The dynamic
nature of the system with its bounty of innovation undermines
the concerns about costs of regulation. Beinhocker notes
that such government action to support evolution should be
operated as a Walter Shewhart's iterative development process is found in many
complex adaptive systems (CAS).
The mechanism is reviewed and its value in coping with random
events is explained.
Shewhart cycle.
Complexity Economics operates through the rules enacted by
individual agents. So, individual behavior can have significant and
unexpected effects. This is hugely different from
classical microeconomic is a bottom-up view of the economy. It starts with individual decision makers and then builds up to markets and economies, explains Beinhocker.
assumptions of homogeneous rational actors.
Beinhocker notes that the world's national wealth is highly
unequally distributed. The Left and Right differ about the
causes:
- Left - colonialism, racism, capitalist exploitation, aid
problems
- Right - bad governments, corruption, lack of free markets,
dependency on aid, racial inferiority.
- Geography, Climate, Near-constant warfare in Africa.
Harrison & Huntington proposes a significant role for culture is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal. CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism. Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering. Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling. Damasio notes prokaryotes and social insects have developed cultural social behaviors. Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset. He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised. Culture: - Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation. Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain. Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes. Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach. And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations! PMS symptoms vary by culture.
- Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play. So parents try to control their children's peer group.
- Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc.
- Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate.
- Can transform dominance into honor. There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures. Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian.
- Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.
- Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire.
- Can provide varying levels of support for innovation. Damasio suggests culture is influenced by feelings:
- As motives for intellectual creation: prompting
detection and diagnosis of homeostatic
deficiencies, identifying
desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural
instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments
required by the cultural process over time
- Produces consciousness according to Dennet.
in the performance
of nations. This was at odds with traditional
economics and appeared racist. But it now has
additional scientific support. Beinhocker lists cultural
norms that contribute:
- Individual
behavior - Support a strong work ethic, Individual
accountability, believe hard work pays. Optimism about
the future & realism about the current situation.
- Cooperative
behavior - belief in non-zero-sum games and the payoff
of cooperation. Value generosity & fairness.
Sanction free riders.
- Innovation - Prioritizing
rational science, allowing experimentation,
Encouraging competition and celebrating achievement.
- Cultures that look backwards or live for today are less
productive than those with a high intergenerational savings
rate and long-term focus.
Beinhocker uses cultural analysis to find economic impacts:
- Harrison and Huntington correlate trust and distrust are evolved responses to sham emotions. During a friendship where no sham emotions have been detected trust will build up.
and GNP per
Capita. Beinhocker asserts a relationship between high
trust and economic cooperation. Except the US is an
outlier: highest GNP per Capita but middling trust.
Beinhocker advances two explanations:
- The US makes up for low trust with its powerful social
technologies.
- The US is living off the higher social capital of its
past.
- Beinhocker highlights Fukuyama's conclusion that broad and
strong family values limit the development of wider networks
of trust. Cultures with weaker family constraints are
able to leverage social technologies to build trust beyond
the family.
- He notes the World
Bank was setup as part of the Bretton Woods agreements, as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, to repair and reconstruct Europe after the Second World War and as the World Bank continues to provide reconstruction and development resources for projects in developing economies. It includes:
- International Finance Corporation
's Easterly's disappointment with the effect of $1 trillion in aid
to the developing world. Beinhocker assumes
culture will be one reason for the lack of
impact.
- Beinhocker views social
capital is the collective quantity of resources such as trust, reciprocity & cooperation according to Sapolsky. as the emergent
result of agents
creating cooperative networks,
with cultural norms being the micro rules of agent
behavior. He notes Putnam's
- Comparative analysis of Northern and Southern Italy,
reinforcing the Western narrative of a dynamic North and
an untrusting South.
- View of declining social capital in the US is the United States of America. . Beinhocker adds
Fukuyama's complementary conclusions of a Great Disruption
in the US between 1960 and 2000. They both see a
complex array of variables contributing including: Altered
family structure, rising divorce rate, Entry
of women into the work place; with a weakening of
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.
women's role in sustaining the
social fabric of society. They also include the
impacts of: suburban sprawl, and mass media; which
indicates to Beinhocker that a proactive approach must be
taken to helping social capital to grow.
- Inequality is evident
in the world. And Beinhocker notes it was similarly
distributed in ancient Egypt. With lots of recent
research on inequality an improved framework for
understanding inequality it has emerged:
- Lack of Social Mobility is evident but the causes are a
mystery asserts Beinhocker. He notes the answer may
lie in the contribution of culture and social
technologies. Parental behavior and cultural norms
are major influences on child behavior.
This leads Beinhocker to argue antisocial cultural norms
lead to networks with weak social capital.
- Leverage John Rawls's question: If we did not know
anything about our draw in the birth-lottery, what kind of
system would we want? Matt Miller's answer is to
design a system that combines equality of upside
opportunity with a downside social safety net. This
would have four policies:
- Universal health coverage
- Raise the quality of public education
- Leverage vouchers to delink education spending from
property taxes and raise overall spending.
- Federally guaranteed minimum living wage.
- Beinhocker notes there is a link between culture and
history. The legacy of 250 years of slavery and a
subsequent 100 years of racial isolation has affected the
culture. Cultures do change. Eliminating the
culture of poverty requires changes to the norms.
- Beinhocker accepts that large multi-ethnic communities
require more work to engender trust and cooperation.
He sees the ideal as a common layer of norms: supporting
democracy (right to freedom of expression, importance of
political participation), economic achievement (rewarding
hard work, innovation); that are broadly shared by society
as a whole. The common layer depends on the:
political system, education system, media; and will become
increasingly necessary. Beinhocker sees the US
constitution and Declaration of Independence as both
values and laws. Beinhocker argues the values were
effective until the Great Disruption. Many countries
must cope with similar stresses.
Beinhocker concludes that none of these issues are
left-right. Culture is what determines the success of a
society. Politics can change a culture.
Beinhocker sees many opportunities for Complexity Economics to
contribute:
- Strong reciprocity helps explain mysteries of traditional
economics: wages sticking during business cycles.
- Environmental issues: Human induced pulse of change in the
system. The coevolution of the economy and environment
can allow improved insights.
- Health care system reform
- Campaign finance reform
- Electoral system reform
- International trade
- Reregulation of industries
Beinhocker suggests that economic growth will continue for a
while. In particular he sees the economy benefiting from a
planet wide society of minds. Evolution of Physical
Technologies has exponentially
reduced the cost and increased the speed of human interactions.
Beinhocker sees the development of a global memory. But he
notes three potential issues:
- The global economy may be turning on life by devouring
resources and polluting the land and seas.
- The Physical Technology evolution has been far faster than
the Social Technology evolution.
- Clash of cultures used to happen at metaethnic
frontiers. Now they can collide on TV and the
Internet.
Beinhocker asserts that understanding human CAS will help fend
off these challenges. Adjusting the fitness function can
help drive evolution to encourage us to take a longer
view.
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS theory The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
models
an economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. as a This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). Small
world and scale free networks are considered.
network of Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schematic
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. Beinhocker critiques
& augments the models of traditional economic theory with complexity, M. Mitchell Waldrop describes a vision of complexity via: - Rich interactions that allow a system to undergo spontaneous self-organization and, for CAS, evolution
- Systems that are adaptive
- More predictability than chaotic systems by bringing order and chaos into
- Balance at the edge of chaos
and CAS
underpinnings.
Beinhocker leverages Sugerscape
as a vision of a CAS. The approach, of simple agents in a simple
landscape, has clear benefits but it deemphasizes other aspects:
- The model of an agent is
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.
overly simplistic. Human
agents are This page describes the consequences of the asymmetries caused
by eggs having to include resources required for the development of sexually
reproduced organisms while sperms do not.
The impact of this asymmetry is to force alternative strategies
on males and females. The strategies are outlined.
constructed sexually
with 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.
very different evolved
strategic behaviors as highlighted by Brizendine.
- The treatment of
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.
schemata
ignores genetic base, a nucleotide base is the side chain purine (A or G) or pyrimidine (T or C). A is a natural pair for T. G pairs naturally with C. These bases have multiple uses in cells including energy transfer, second messenger signalling as well as genetic data storage, transcription and translation. Deacon argues that the multiple uses are significant to the emergence of evolution.
chemical contributions to the development of new niches, and
the association between the bag of tools current agents have
access to and the This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergent
agents that This page describes the adaptive web framework (AWF) Smiley agent progamming
infrastructure's codelet
based Copycat grouping operation.
The requirements needed for a group to complete are described.
The association of group completion with a Slipnet defined operon is described.
Either actions or signals result from the association.
How a generated signal is transported to the nucleus of the cell and
matched with an operon is
described.
A match with an operon can result
in deployment of a schematic
string to the original Workspace.
But eventually the deployed string will be destroyed.
Smiley infrastructure amplification of the group completion
operation is introduced.
This includes facilities to inhibit crowding out of
offspring.
A test file awfart04 is included.
The group codelet and supporting functions
are included.
aggregate from them.
- The
This page discusses the potential of the vast state space which
supports the emergence of complex
adaptive systems (CAS). Kauffman describes the mechanism
by which the system expands across the space.
environment includes, and is
modified by, 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.
- The real world's rules
include the
This page discusses the physical foundations of complex adaptive
systems (CAS). A small set of
rules is obeyed. New [epi]phenomena then emerge. Examples are
discussed.
basic phenomena and
emergent constraints.
- Holland's
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 algorithm abstracts
evolution's schematic operators. The transformations
that become expressed and recorded in the Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agents are highly Rather than oppose the direct thrust of some environmental flow agents
can improve their effectiveness with indirect responses.
This page explains how agents are architected to do this and
discusses some examples of how it can be done.
indirect.
The RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio focus 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.
schematic plans and the details of This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergent This page describes the adaptive web framework (AWF) Smiley agent progamming
infrastructure's codelet
based Copycat grouping operation.
The requirements needed for a group to complete are described.
The association of group completion with a Slipnet defined operon is described.
Either actions or signals result from the association.
How a generated signal is transported to the nucleus of the cell and
matched with an operon is
described.
A match with an operon can result
in deployment of a schematic
string to the original Workspace.
But eventually the deployed string will be destroyed.
Smiley infrastructure amplification of the group completion
operation is introduced.
This includes facilities to inhibit crowding out of
offspring.
A test file awfart04 is included.
The group codelet and supporting functions
are included.
aggregating
agents, constructed from the schemata by This page discusses how Smiley can
support the start of the development
phase of an agent-based application.
Startup is an artificial operation not found in living
systems. But Smiley must do it and so we discuss an
example of starting
the development phase.
With the Smiley infrastructure and the application integrated
the application's development
phase is reviewed.
The association of structural Workspaces
for state representation is
discussed.
The aggregation of
schematic associations of codelets
defines a development
agent. At the application level it processes the
application's schematic strings.
The schematic nature of the data processed by the test
application suggests the use of an indirect integration
framework. This supports the binding of codelets to
the schematic data and detecting and responding to the control
operons.
An application
polymerase complex emerges.
The codelets and supporting functions are
included.
polymerases, This page discusses how Smiley
provides signalling to its agent-based applications.
Alternative strategies for initiating the signalling are reviewed.
The codelets and supporting functions are
included.
generating
signals, is the opposite approach to Epstein & Axtell.
This RSS focus is augmented with the collected descriptions
of games of grand master chess along with the
analysis. Chess highlights: Development is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete. phase,
Deployment to constrain the opponents opportunities.
Traps, Difficulty of evaluating the value of intermediate moves,
Collapse; as well as the limited benefit of playing chess
without recording the move sequences, since little modeling,
analysis or learning takes place. The businesses that
Beinhocker discusses usually do not document the detailed strategies their human 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 to execute on the high
level business goals.
This leaves them unable to understand their state and so induces them to avoid
complexity and enforce rigid
hierarchy.
Beinhocker's exploration
of dynamics
should include:
RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio judges the exponential growth
since 1750 as a stream of rewarding short term strategies that have E. O. Wilson reviews the effect of man on the natural world to
date and explains how the two systems can coexist most
effectively.
led to a problematic trap. This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS analysis
should allow us to avoid the trap. We have
recognized its presence, but the short term gains have pulled us
closer over Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time anyway. To be
valuable Beinhocker's economic framework must be able to
highlight the trap and drive avoidance.
Abandoning the equilibrium assumption of Traditional
Economics is central to Beinhocker's approach. This
makes sense but it is hard to do:
- Science has leveraged some of the same assumptions that
implicitly follow from the equilibrium framework.
People are seen as ubiquitous and interchangeable.
Subjective agency is removed by the classical scientific
method. History, amplifier and network impacts are
sometimes ignored. Developmental phase of the agents
is not always accounted for. And significantly samples
used in studying behavior often ignore genetic differences
which drive and constrain the available strategies of the
agents. Beinhocker refers to Harrison &
Huntington's comparison of GNP per Capita with culture is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal. CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism. Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering. Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling. Damasio notes prokaryotes and social insects have developed cultural social behaviors. Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset. He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised. Culture:
- Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation. Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain. Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes. Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach. And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations! PMS symptoms vary by culture.
- Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play. So parents try to control their children's peer group.
- Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc.
- Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate.
- Can transform dominance into honor. There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures. Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian.
- Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.
- Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire.
- Can provide varying levels of support for innovation. Damasio suggests culture is influenced by feelings:
- As motives for intellectual creation: prompting
detection and diagnosis of homeostatic
deficiencies, identifying
desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural
instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments
required by the cultural process over time
- Produces consciousness according to Dennet.
through its
association with trust and distrust are evolved responses to sham emotions. During a friendship where no sham emotions have been detected trust will build up. .
The 'societies' that Harrison & Huntington plot are This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergent entities are, according to Abbott, a class including people, families, corporations, hurricanes. They implement abstract designs and are demarcatable by their reduced entropy relative to their components. Rovelli notes entities are a collection of relations and events, but memory and our continuous process of anticipation, organizes the series of quantized interactions we perceive into an illusion of permanent objects flowing from past to future. Abbott identifies two types of entity: - At equilibrium entities,
- Autonomous entities, which can control how they are affected by outside forces;
. But
are they apples and oranges? For example the US is the United States of America. is an aggregate of states
from the two sides of the civil war, obeying a constitution
designed to maintain both sets of cultures and norms.
Norway does not have the same cultural, genetic or
regulatory constraints. That must impact the statistic
choice.
The following list supports the mapping of Beinhocker's CAS
approach into the details supporting RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio's:
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.
Steven Pinker describes the This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolutionary pressures on hominids
to
gain access, via a big brain and nimble hands, to the
cognitive niche is Tooby & DeVore's theory that reflects a flexible competitive strategy, described by Steven Pinker, which leverages the power and flexibility of intelligence to defeat the capabilities of genetically evolved specialists focused on specific niches. .
- Pinker argues this pressure resulted in our
hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
- Pinker describes how evolution shaped
our minds into organs of computation.
- Pinker notes that
This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution provided emotional responses to the
major challenges hunter-gatherers is a lifestyle organized around a band of relatives, evolved in humans focused on capturing the cognitive niche in the African savanna. It is of great significance in shaping our minds: behaviors, emotions, creativity, intelligence; and developing survival strategies including use of fire and language, according to evolutionary psychologists. It was practiced by all humans, for most of Homo sapiens existence, until the emergence of farming, and still is by some isolated bands: Ju/'hoansi, New Guinea: Gebusi, Mae Enga; & Borneo head hunters, Maasai & Zulu warriors from Africa, Amazonians: Waorani, Jivaro; Brazilian and Venezuelan Yanomamo. Since the band moves on when it has depleted the resources in an area of land, the soil remains vibrant, but the large animals were typically placed in a position of stress from which they did not recover.
experienced.
- Pinker argues it is unlikely
that evolution could provide hunter-gatherers with
direct access to scientific methods.
- Pinker accepts Rosch's view that
evolution built effective models for predicting the
situation on the African savanna is the environment where hunter-gatherers primarily evolved. Its grassland supported large herbivores that could be hunted easily across the plains. Clumps of Acacia trees: with short trunks, and broad bows; & rocks supported places to hide from large carnivores. Streams, especially important in times of drought, and paths add to the signals enabling orientation.
based on proximate history.
- Pinker suggests
a meaning for
life that is focused by 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.
.
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
Matt Ridley describes the division of
labor and development of trade.
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.
Deacon explains how evolution can
be enabled, by a process of emergent dynamics and
self-assembly, which he terms autogenesis. The
agency that is enabled instantiates the Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schematic plans Russ Abbott explores the impact on science of epiphenomena and
the emergence of agents.
binding the regularity of evolutionary
theory to an implementation based 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.
schema executing 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.
- Deacon argues that organisms
and the evolutionary process are not separable. Life
is a marriage between
the transmission of information and non-equilibrium
thermodynamics.
- Markets
provide:
This page discusses the benefits of bringing agents and resources to the
dynamically best connected region of a complex adaptive system (CAS).
centralization; to the
various Flows of different kinds are essential to the operation of
complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support
the emergence of the systems.
Examples of constraints are discussed.
flows.
- The difficulty
of
Flows of different kinds are essential to the operation of
complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support
the emergence of the systems.
Examples of constraints are discussed.
controlling CAS flows is 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.
described by Dorner.
The complexity of behavior is explored through Sapolsky
developing scenarios of our best and worst behaviors across time
spans, and scientific subjects including: anthropology,
psychology, neuroscience, sociology. The rich network of adaptive flows he
outlines provides insights and highlight challenges for
scientific research on behavior.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory builds on Sapolsky's
details highlighting the strategies that evolution has captured
to successfully enter niches we now occupy.
Sapolsky describes the best and worst
of human behavior.
- Agriculture
is seen as a significant, if
problematic,
This page reviews the strategy of setting up an arms race. At its
core this strategy depends on being able to alter, or take
advantage of an alteration in, the genome
or equivalent. The situation is illustrated with examples
from biology, high tech and politics.
amplifier
which
- Expanded population size and the likelihood of meeting
strangers with no trust and distrust are evolved responses to sham emotions. During a friendship where no sham emotions have been detected trust will build up.
model. This encouraged the 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.
development of written records
and a mechanism of enforcement.
- Additional amplifiers and
This page reviews Christensen's disruption
of a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism is discussed with examples from biology and
business.
disrupters
are evident in the Sven Beckert describes the historic transformation of the
growing, spinning, weaving, manufacture of cotton goods and
their trade over time. He describes the rise of a first global
commodity, its dependence on increasing: military power, returns for
the control points in the value delivery system(VDS), availability of land
and labor to work it including slaves.
He explains how cotton offered the opportunity for
industrialization further amplifying the productive capacity of
the VDS and the power of the control points. This VDS was quickly
copied. The increased capacity of the industrialized
cotton complex adaptive system (CAS) required more labor to
operate the machines. Beckert describes the innovative introduction of wages
and the ways found to
mobilize industrial labor.
Beckert describes the characteristics of the industrial cotton
CAS which made it flexible enough to become globally interconnected.
Slavery made the production system so cost effective that all
prior structures collapsed as they interconnected. So when
the US civil war
blocked access to the major production nodes in the
American Deep South the CAS began adapting.
Beckert describes the global
reconstruction that occurred and the resulting destruction of the traditional ways
of life in the global countryside. This colonial expansion
further enriched and empowered the 'western' nation
states. Beckert explains how other countries responded
by copying the colonial strategies and creating the
opportunities for future armed conflict among the original
colonialists and the new upstarts.
Completing the adaptive
shifts, Beckert describes the advocates for industrialization in
the colonized global south and how over time they joined
the global cotton CAS disrupting the early western manufacturing
nodes and creating the current global CAS
dominated by merchants like Wal-Mart
pulling goods through a network of clothing manufacturers,
spinning and weaving factories, and growers competing with each
other on cost.
Following our summary of Beckert's book, RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory. The transformation of
disconnected peasant farmers,
pastoral warriors and their lands into a supply chain for a
highly profitable industrial CAS required the development over
time: of military force, global transportation and communication
networks, perception and representation control networks, capital stores and flows,
models, rules, standards and markets; along with the support at
key points of: barriers, disruption, and infrastructure and
evolved amplifiers. The emergent
system demonstrates the powerful constraining influence of
extended phenotypic alignment.
evolution of
the cotton trade into the current global economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. .
- Jane
Goodall highlighted that chimps fashion tools and that
their children learn to do this by observation.
Sapolsky argues that humans have similar cultural
facets. The most significant difference is that
non-human tool use does not appear to advance over
time.
- Sapolsky explains how adolescents
are evolved to enable change, while adults are optimized
to execute.
- Sapolsky examines
child
development.
- Sapolsky details the bootstrapping
of cooperation and how it is evolutionarily
justified in related and unrelated groups.
- Sapolsky notes that many animals
have developed sophisticated
strategies to lie and detect lying. The size
of the neocortex is the main part of the cerebral cortex in mammals. It was originally thought to exist only in mammals but is also present in reptiles and birds buried behind other areas of the for-brain. The for-brain develops based on a genetic plan consistent across all vertebrates. The neocortex processes vision in the visual hierarchy V1, V2, V3 .. V5 ... V20; and language with areas including Wernicke's and Broca's with sensors in the inner ear. Primate species with bigger social groups have larger cortices. Human cortex size suggests traditional human cultures had an average size of 150 people.
correlates and humans are particularly
notable.
- Sapolsky
reviews hierarchy:
indicting it reflects the significant benefit obtained
from not fighting over every disputed situation.
- Sapolsky describes the human
confusion between tournament have asymmetric sizes, and musculature. Males may be much bigger and more muscular than females and have conspicuous facial markings. Sapolsky's tournament primates include: baboons, mandrills, rhesus monkeys, vervets, and chimps. And he additionally lists gazelles, lions, sheep, peacocks, & elephant seals. Selection has supported evolved capture of fighting skills and display. Such males:
- Use aggressive conflict to obtain high dominance rankings.
- A small percentage of high rank males do all the mating. They will mate with any female anytime. So they have evolved to invest in larger testes and higher sperm counts.
- Males do no investment in parenting of their children.
- Females look for signals of good genes. This encourages sexual selection of signals of male health, status and dominance.
- Females don't compete with each other since they will all breed with the high rank males.
and pair-bonding
species have similar body size, coloration and musculature. Sapolsky's list of pair-bonding primates includes: marmosets, tamarins, owl monkeys, gibbons; as well as swans, jackals, beavers, prairie voles. Selection has supported evolved capture of minimally aggressive strategies that do not depend on fighting muscle: - All males reproduce a few times.
- Males invest in parenting of the children - if he thinks they are his. That is costly so they are choosy about which females to mate with and may pair-bond.
- Females look for mates whose behavior is: stable, affiliative; and who have good parenting skills. Pair-bonding male birds are seen to display parenting skills during courtship.
- Females compete aggressively with one another to gain access to an attractive male. And they use cuckolding strategies to gain access to great genes and parenting skills.
.
- Sapolsky explains
cultures is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal. CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism. Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering. Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling. Damasio notes prokaryotes and social insects have developed cultural social behaviors. Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset. He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised. Culture:
- Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation. Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain. Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes. Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach. And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations! PMS symptoms vary by culture.
- Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play. So parents try to control their children's peer group.
- Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc.
- Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate.
- Can transform dominance into honor. There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures. Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian.
- Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.
- Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire.
- Can provide varying levels of support for innovation. Damasio suggests culture is influenced by feelings:
- As motives for intellectual creation: prompting
detection and diagnosis of homeostatic
deficiencies, identifying
desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural
instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments
required by the cultural process over time
- Produces consciousness according to Dennet.
impact on
individual's behaviors.
- Sapolsky details the behavioral
basis of 'Us
versus Them.'
- Sapolsky assesses the conflicting
claims
about conflict and cooperation of Hobbes & Rousseau.
- RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio notes that
This page describes the organizational forces that limit change.
It explains how to overcome
them when necessary.
hierarchy and tradition undermine
change.
- Arthur Samuel
described the
The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
evolved modeling and
learning framework. But his work indicates that
iterative planning and action is required to learn.
- Jon
Gertner
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.
describes the shift from tinkering,
exemplified by Thomas Edison, to experiment integrated
with scientific theory, as practiced by Millikan was an influential physicist, who determined experimentally the charge on the electron. He was influential in the Christian conservative movement, helping Hoover to battle the New Deal. He was president of Caltech. Millikan was a key node in the academic network linking it with AT&T's Bell Laboratories. and
Bell Labs.
- Muhammad
Yunus argues that without the distorting effect of
Capitalism, humans are natural entrepreneurs and can build
both profit oriented and social businesses. His view
is aligned with Sapolsky's
view of human behavior.
- Effective removal
of buffer stock and time delays is utilized in
This presentation reviews just-in-time manufacturing with
analysis based on complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
JIT manufacturing.
- RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio concludes
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS are ordered by the presence
of 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 &
amplifiers: This page reviews the catalytic
impact of infrastructure on the expression of phenotypic effects by an
agent. The infrastructure
reduces the cost the agent must pay to perform the selected
action. The catalysis is enhanced by positive returns.
infrastructure &
This page reviews the strategy of setting up an arms race. At its
core this strategy depends on being able to alter, or take
advantage of an alteration in, the genome
or equivalent. The situation is illustrated with examples
from biology, high tech and politics.
evolved.
- Baldwin
& Clark
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.
argue that
technology design operates within a CAS which is This page discusses the strategy of modularity in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). The
benefits, mechanism and its emergence
are discussed.
modular.
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS based This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
organisms, such as humans,
illustrate how huge networks, of chemicals and cells, can
develop under the powerful control of Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schematic plans. CAS can
leverage their shared
somatic, Schematic structures which are used to support the operation of the agent. They are modified as the agent's state changes unlike the germ-line schemata. plans to coordinate state transitions via signals, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance. In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively. A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form. Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell. Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state. Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals. Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich. Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors. In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. To be credible signals must be hard to fake. To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient. To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy. . But
they often need to compartmentalize to support the
representation of state. The development of
compartments can appear to be additional hierarchy.
Kauffman's complexity
catastrophe scenario does not match the progressive
development and effective operation observed, even as these
chemical and cellular networks become vast. Avoiding
complexity because of catastrophe is a dramatic breakdown in the operation of a CAS that results in general failure. Dorner in the logic of failure, sees the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as illustrative: typical human strategies were incorrectly applied by experienced operators, because they were overconfident and incorrectly modeled the current and immediate future state of the reactor. Beinhocker asserts positive effects generated in a large inter-connected network induce negative effects at other points in the network. Booch argues that increasing system complexity can overwhelm human designers, inducing catastrophe in software development. He recommends adopting object oriented hierarchy and modularity to limit complexity. But many CAS networks include huge number of agents, responding to internal and external signals, and effectively executing evolved, distributed schematic plans. Eventual loss of control, as in the case of cancers, is notable and highlights the effective agency of the more regular situation. Human developed systems suffer from complexity catastrophe. Democratic processes slowly search for representatives who will solve problems for the citizens, but Diamond in Collapse explains that democracy has struggled to cope with the tragedy of the commons. Cliodynamic cycles operate over multiple lifetimes leaving humans prone to fall into the traps that caught their grandparents. Evolved amplifiers support bubbles incenting dangerous deregulation, and encouraging broad participation, even though the rules ensure additional wealth accumulates to the legislative elite and aristocracy, who safely ignore moral hazard. Parasites undermine the detection of problems. RSS sees catastrophe enabled by a lack of rigorous schematic planning within most developed human systems.
is a popular idea: Grady Booch advocates an object oriented approach to computer
software design.
Grady Booch,
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.
Baldwin & Clark; but the
justifications appear misguided. Indeed to RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio, Beinhocker's example
of the emergence of Dell appears to illustrate the power of
imposing contragrade
regulatory constraints to encourage additional niches to be
made available. Arguably, the history
of IBM shows how
effectively the company was able to segment the computing
market to constrain and control the operation and success
of agents operating in each segment to IBM's advantage,
until it chose, under monopoly is a power relation within: - A state in which a group has enough power to enforce its will on other citizens. If this is a central authority with a cohesive military, it can overpower other warlords and stabilize the society.
- An economy in which one business has enough share in a market segment to control margins to its advantage. An economic monopoly can be broadly beneficial: AT&T monopoly, US patent monopoly rights;
scrutiny, to allow DEC and Apple
to enter new segments and develop freely. Instead of
complexity catastrophe, RSS sees This page reviews Christensen's disruption
of a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism is discussed with examples from biology and
business.
disruption
undermining
profit seeking companies and This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
extended
phenotypic alignment limiting options.
- Beinhocker states that
schemata are modular and building block like. RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio finds little evidence
to support this assertion in biology or in our
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.
development of schematic agents.
And the This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergent nature of 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.
schemata (which must detach the
strategies from any subjective goals that appear
associated), and schemata's use by This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution
to generate a grab bag of tools adds further doubt to the
claim. The ability of real organisms to
leverage huge somatic plans as operon controlled networks,
where strategies are reused and may have been generated by exaptation, initially termed pre-adaptation refers to the coopting of some function for a new use. ,
illustrates the lack of hierarchy and This page discusses the strategy of modularity in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). The
benefits, mechanism and its emergence
are discussed.
modularity.
- RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio example of a
This page discusses a complex adaptive system (CAS) implementation of a genetic algorithm (GA), Melanie
Mitchell's robot-janitor built as a set of Copycat codelets
integrated using agent-based
programming. The improvement in the operation of the
robots over succeeding generations of applying the GA is graphed.
The CAS that generated, and operated the robot is reviewed,
including the implementation
details and codelet operational
program flow, and the challenges and limitations of this
implementation.
The schematic strings which make up
the robot's genotype, as
well as the signals which are sent
to the nucleus of the
robot's agents so
that the agents can deploy the appropriate response strings
(which activate codelets) are listed. The Slipnet configuration required by the
system to associate the schematic strings with programmatic
forces (codelets) is also listed.
The codelets and supporting perl are also listed.
In the conclusion the
limitations of the robot-janitor abstraction in studying emergence and creative evolution are discussed and
alternative experimental frameworks are proposed. One
such, the schematic cell is the subject of a separate page in this web frame.
virtual robot, running on a This page discusses the interdependence of perception and
representation in a complex adaptive system (CAS). Hofstadter
and Mitchell's research with Copycat is
reviewed. The bridging of a node from a network of 'well
known' percepts to a new representational instance is discussed
as it occurs in biochemistry, in consciousness and
abstractly.
CopyCat architecture, illustrates
the limitations of these approaches to simulating This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution.
- Rather than
using Beinhocker's three
co-evolving processes, RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio
views any
This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergent CAS as
following Holland's
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
general framework. The RSS analysis
of the 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, one
of Beinhocker's social
technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg. , illustrates the value of having one
coherent framework for comparing and contrasting different
CAS.
- Different aspects
of the evolution of tools are described by:
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
Matt Ridley and Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved
dramatically. W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred.
Brian Arthur.
- RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio views the global economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers.
as emerging from the prior
cotton trading network. Easterly
& Levine's list of social technologies misses the
military
and 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.
financial weapons that the
English and subsequently US is the United States of America.
have used to facilitate, leverage and constrain this
trade. And the This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS This page reviews the catalytic
impact of infrastructure on the expression of phenotypic effects by an
agent. The infrastructure
reduces the cost the agent must pay to perform the selected
action. The catalysis is enhanced by positive returns.
infrastructure and This page reviews the strategy of setting up an arms race. At its
core this strategy depends on being able to alter, or take
advantage of an alteration in, the genome
or equivalent. The situation is illustrated with examples
from biology, high tech and politics.
evolved amplifiers that they list
do not include the brain
like contribution of the Liverpool Cotton Exchange.
Gordon
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.
notes the significance of standards
to further amplify the production line infrastructure
amplifier, two significant social
technologies are defined by Beinhocker as methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals. He views the three most significant social technologies as: markets, science, and democracy. A war example is Fuller & Liddell Hart's theory of high-speed tank warfare, subsequently instantiated by Guderian as Blitzkrieg. .
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.
Sven Beckert describes the
development of the present global
value delivery system from the early trading of
cotton.
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.
Charles Ferguson asserts:
- Thomas
Piketty demonstrates that tax structure has a major impact on
the allocation of resources in an economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers.
.
- Businesses
are
This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergent entities are, according to Abbott, a class including people, families, corporations, hurricanes. They implement abstract designs and are demarcatable by their reduced entropy relative to their components. Rovelli notes entities are a collection of relations and events, but memory and our continuous process of anticipation, organizes the series of quantized interactions we perceive into an illusion of permanent objects flowing from past to future. Abbott identifies two types of entity: - At equilibrium entities,
- Autonomous entities, which can control how they are affected by outside forces;
instantiated
by people acting as 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 who
respond to Agents use sensors to detect events in their environment.
This page reviews how these events become signals associated
with beneficial responses in a complex adaptive system (CAS). CAS signals emerge from
the Darwinian information
model. Signals can indicate decision
summaries and level of uncertainty.
signals including
resource flows, by directly or Rather than oppose the direct thrust of some environmental flow agents
can improve their effectiveness with indirect responses.
This page explains how agents are architected to do this and
discusses some examples of how it can be done.
indirectly
utilizing a Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schematic business plan and a business model to
decide on their subsequent actions.
- Abbott
Russ Abbott explores the impact on science of epiphenomena and
the emergence of agents.
describes autonomous
entities are entities which: - Are far from equilibrium
- Consume and save low entropy
- Can use accessible low entropy to maintain themselves
.
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS supplies may aid in
capturing niches. Biologically derived weapons, such
as teeth and claws, supported access to additional
niches. Similar tools: Axes, knives, guns, bombs,
bombers, rockets, drones, non-germ-line, a master copy of the schematic structures is maintained for reproduction of offspring. There will also be somatic copies which are modified by the operational agents so that they can represent their current state. seeds with
pesticide dependencies, 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
weapons; which allowed: the capture or killing of
prey, the removal of competitors or predators, and the capture of
females; extend the cognitive niche is Tooby & DeVore's theory that reflects a flexible competitive strategy, described by Steven Pinker, which leverages the power and flexibility of intelligence to defeat the capabilities of genetically evolved specialists focused on specific niches. .
Hard to produce (low entropy) resources may also become signals, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance. In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively. A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form. Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell. Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state. Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals. Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich. Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors. In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. To be credible signals must be hard to fake. To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient. To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy. for This page describes the consequences of the asymmetries caused
by genotypic traits
creating a phenotypic signal in males and selection activity
in the female - sexual selection.
The impact of this asymmetry is to create a powerful alternative
to natural selection with sexual
selection's leverage of positive returns.
The mechanisms are described.
sexual selection.
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS information has three
aspects: Shannon
information which ignores reference, Boltzmann
information requires that the Boltzmann entropy of a closed system increases. , & Darwinian
information; as 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.
discussed by
Deacon.
- Beinhocker
asserts the economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers.
is a Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
genetic replication
strategy. Pinker explains
that the mind is a computer that uses 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.
goal states that leverage the
sensation of pleasure to move us This web page reviews opportunities to find and capture new
niches, based on studying fitness landscapes using complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
CAS SuperOrganisms are
able to capture rich niches. A variety of CAS are
included: chess, prokaryotes,
nation states, businesses, economies; along
with change mechanisms: evolution
and artificial
intelligence; agency
effects and environmental impacts.
Genetic algorithms supported by fitness functions are compared to
genetic operators.
Early evolution
of life and its inbuilt constraints are discussed.
Strategic clustering, goals, flexibility and representation of
state are considered.
towards maximized fitness.
But the economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. 's
rapid evolution is Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
memetic rather
than genetic.
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.
Dawkins
explains the details of the main processes of This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution. Beinhocker's evolutionary
requirements list must include:
- Companies, such as the 20th century AT&T, are germ-line, a master copy of the schematic structures is maintained for reproduction of offspring. There will also be somatic copies which are modified by the operational agents so that they can represent their current state. and somatic, Schematic structures which are used to support the operation of the agent. They are modified as the agent's state changes unlike the germ-line schemata. extensions of
the
Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is
inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling
students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane
roles. He highlights a radical and already proven
alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning
processes supported by technology and freed up attention of
teams of teachers. Building on his personal experience of
helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative,
Khan:
- Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging
short videos focused on content,
Converging on mastery,
With the help of
neuroscience, and filling
in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach
to the mainstream method.
- Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s,
Inducing holes that
are hidden by tests, Tests
which ignore creativity.
The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to
be supplemented with homework.
Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so
they could mentor them while they attended school, an
inversion that significantly improves the economics.
- Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service,
Working with a
real classroom, Trying stealth
learning, At Khan Academy full time, In the curriculum at
Los Altos, Supporting life-long
learning.
- Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with
a one
room school, a robust
teaching team, and creativity enabled;
so with some catalysis
even the poorest can
become educated and earn credentials
for current jobs.
- Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based
assessments, College
education;
- Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure
for creativity to
emerge and to support risk taking.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Disruption is a powerful force for
change but if its force is used to support the current teachers
to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the
current educational network?
educational & pure
research 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 base. They
are superorganisms is a wealthy autonomous entity needing and controlling the richest niches in the proximate environment, that emerges from the bundled cooperation of schematically aligned agents. The term is based on the social insect model, used by: ants, termites, and bees; and identified by Holldobler & E.O. Wilson. These genetically identical insect superorganisms cooperatively limit their reproduction to align with the resources available in the niche. Wilson asserts these insects all developed nests to which they returned to raise their offspring, and when the nest sites were of limited capacity some family members responded by focusing on defending the nest and foraging while their mother became an egg laying queen, enabled by "a single genetic change which silenced the brain's program for dispersal and prevents the mother and her offspring from dispersing to create new nests," Wilson explains. He adds climate control of the nest and disease resistance, just like the human immune system, demand individually focused diversity. So the queen's genome consists of low variety alleles for the extended phenotypic 'robot' worker caste agents and their organization - queen and workers competing as one, with other colonies and individual insects - and other parts which are high where the genome includes significant diversity. For humans it is an evolved cultural strategy used when the environment is supportive, but it is dependent on our imperfect cognitive assessment of kinship as well as group selection driven emotions: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious; and group oriented pressures to conform and remain: religions. And the adjacent possible must be recreated and modeled culturally through the emergence of processes such as democracy. It depends on inter-agent signalling. In both insects and humans it allows specialization, and encourages operations and flows that are tightly controlled, limiting waste, leveraging parallel activity, supporting coherence. Superorganisms reflect cliodynamic flows. A superorganism has a development and operational phase. As additional agents are coopted into the superorganism they align, participate in supply and demand activities and so contribute to the evolutionary amplification. Damasio notes that prokaryotes, in rich environments, can similarly operate in a symbiotic fashion expressing cultural behaviors.
having 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.
industrial R&D labs,
with 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, protected
schematic records, and publishing papers,
sharing this knowledge, and releasing patents
highlighting successful ideas. Their germ-line
schemata allowed a next generation of companies to
form. Growth, which often correlates with
superorganisms, long life, pair-bonding is an increase in the strength of relationship between parents and parents and children in some species: prairie voles, bonobos - not monogamous, and humans. NIMH's Thomas Insel, Emory's Larry Young & Illinois's Sue Carter's research highlighted prairie voles, where pair-bonding is enabled by a genetic difference from montane voles in the operon controlling generation of the vasopressin receptor. Oxytocin is associated with pair bonding. There are: Higher levels of receptors in males (vasopressin) having lots of sex and in females (oxytocin) performing grooming & physical contact, Sex releases oxytocin in the nucleus accumbens of female prairie voles. Such pair-bonded males are less interested in other females. Insel, Young & Carter engineered: (1) Male mice brains to express the prairie vole version of the vasopressin receptor in their brains resulting in grooming and huddling with familiar females. (2) Male montane vole brains to add vasopressin receptors to the nucleus accumbens resulting in their being more socially affiliative with individual females. E.O. Wilson notes in humans the need to extend the bond out to support the long and costly development of their children has resulted in adjustments in genitalia and brains to encourage continued sexual activity to support and maintain pair-bonding. and sexual
reproduction enforces the mixing of current germ-line DNA of a male and a female organism, with a recombination process, to ensure the generation of new schematic recipes and phenotypes in their shared offspring. Matt Ridley argues that the cost of sexual reproduction is justified by the protection from parasites that long-lived organisms gain. strategies, is only one strategy for
capturing resources for surviving long enough to
reproduce. Prokaryotes, a single cell system with two main types: (1) Archaea, and (2) Eubacteria. Prokaryotes have their own DNA and infrastructure within a single enclosure. They are biochemically very versatile: Photosynthesis -> Electron transport & phosphorylation, Enzymatic regulation and catalysis of chemical reactions, Catabolize -> phosphate bond energy, ATP cycle, glycolysis, TCA cycle, Electron transports, oxidative phosphorylation, oxidation of fatty acids, oxidative degradation of amino acids; Biosynthesis & utilization of phosphate bond energy -> carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids, nucleotides, muscle & motile structures; membrane barriers & active transports, hormones; Replication, Transcription, Translation, Regulation of gene expression; self-assembly; They utilize cell membrane receptors and signalling to support symbiotic cooperation with other cellular entities, including: in the microbiome, and as chloroplasts and mitochondria within eukaryotic cells. ,
non-social insects and many other This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
organisms
survive in more constrained niches by limiting the need to
grow.
The structure and problems of the US
health care network is described in terms of complex adaptive
system (CAS) theory.
The network:
- Is deeply embedded in the US nation state. It reflects the
conflict between two
opposing visions for the US: high tax with safety net
or low tax without. The emergence
of a parasitic elite supported by tax policy, further
constrains the choices available to improve the efficiency
and effectiveness of the network.
- The US is optimized to sell its citizens dangerous
levels of: salt,
sugar, cigarettes,
guns, light, cell phones, opioids,
costly education, global travel,
antibacterials, formula, foods including
endocrine disrupters;
- Accepting the US controlled global supply chain's
offered goods & services results in: debt, chronic stress,
amplified consumption and toxic excess, leading to obesity, addiction, driving instead of
walking, microbiome
collapse;
- Globalization connects disparate environments in a network. At the edges,
humans are drastically altering the biosphere. That
is reducing the proximate natural environment's
connectedness, and leaving its end-nodes disconnected and
far less diverse. This disconnects predators from
their prey, often resulting in local booms and busts that
transform the local parasite
network and their reservoir and amplifier
hosts. The situation is setup so that man is
introduced to spillover
from the local parasites' hosts. Occasionally, but
increasingly, the spillover results in humanity becoming
broadly infected. The evolved
specialization of the immune system
to the proximate environment during development
becomes undermined as the environment transforms.
- Is incented to focus on localized competition generating
massive & costly duplication of services within
physician based health care operations instead of proven
public health strategies. This process drives
increasing research & treatment complexity and promotes hope
for each new technological breakthrough.
- Is amplified by the legislatively structured separation
and indirection of service development,
provision, reimbursement and payment.
- Is impacted by the different political strategies for
managing the increasing
cost of health care for the demographic bulge of retirees.
- Is presented with acute
and chronic
problems to respond to. As currently setup the network
is tuned to handle acute problems. The interactions
with patients tend to be transactional.
- Includes a legislated health insurance infrastructure
which is:
- Costly and inefficient
- Structured around yearly
contracts which undermine long-term health goals and
strategies.
- Is supported by increasingly regulated HCIT
which offers to improve data sharing and quality but has
entrenched commercial EHR
products deep within the hospital systems.
- Is maintained, and kept in
alignment, by massive network
effects across the:
- Hospital platform
based
sub-networks connecting to
- Physician networks
- Health insurance networks - amplified by ACA
narrow network legislation
- Hospital clinical supply and food
production networks
- Medical school and academic research network and NIH
- Global
transportation network
- Public health networks
- Health care IT supply
network
Health care demonstrates
the potential to exploit the features of a This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS.
- Beinhocker
asserts classical
business strategy makes flawed assumptions about
commitments and the nature of strategic advantage. RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio sees these assumptions
as evidence of mistaken ideas about military and business
strategy. We observe:
- The Red Queen
cooperative but competitive asymmetric amplifier is explored
by Matt
Ridley for significant scenarios:
In this page we summarize the arms race between hosts
and their parasites.
The deadly nature and adaptive
pressure of the relationship is introduced. How the
slowly reproducing hosts cope is
described. Cultural
hosts and parasites are discussed.
Parasite and host, This page describes the consequences of the asymmetries caused
by genotypic traits
creating a phenotypic signal in males and selection activity
in the female - sexual selection.
The impact of this asymmetry is to create a powerful alternative
to natural selection with sexual
selection's leverage of positive returns.
The mechanisms are described.
Sexual selection, This page describes the consequences of the asymmetries caused
by eggs having to include resources required for the development of sexually
reproduced organisms while sperms do not.
The impact of this asymmetry is to force alternative strategies
on males and females. The strategies are outlined.
Egg & sperm; showing it is an
important driver of change. Additionally:
- The niches, that are accessible to competing
Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schematic databases (genomes and
meme bases), each of which must sustain 'its'
reproduction, shape the competition within them. The
evolutionary pressure on the competitors supports
development of niche centric: Agents use sensors to detect events in their environment.
This page reviews how these events become signals associated
with beneficial responses in a complex adaptive system (CAS). CAS signals emerge from
the Darwinian information
model. Signals can indicate decision
summaries and level of uncertainty.
signals,
sensors, The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
models, Flows of different kinds are essential to the operation of
complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support
the emergence of the systems.
Examples of constraints are discussed.
controls and constraints,
weapons, armor; for the phenotypes is the system that results from the controlled expression of the genes. It is typically represented by a prokaryotic cell or the body of a multi-cell animal or plant. The point is that the genes provide the control surface and the abstract recipe that has been used to generate the cell. as well
as strategies to use
these capabilities. The phenotypic is the system that results from the controlled expression of the genes. It is typically represented by a prokaryotic cell or the body of a multi-cell animal or plant. The point is that the genes provide the control surface and the abstract recipe that has been used to generate the cell. 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 possess strategies which
support modification of this proximate environment.
- Our cognitive
niche is Tooby & DeVore's theory that reflects a flexible competitive strategy, described by Steven Pinker, which leverages the power and flexibility of intelligence to defeat the capabilities of genetically evolved specialists focused on specific niches. is accessed and sustained with strategies
captured directly by
This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution:
throwing,
speaking, planning of the cerebral cortex is at the front of the brain. It includes the: prefrontal cortex, motor cortex. Sapolsky asserts it makes you do the harder thing when it's the right thing to do. The frontal cortex supports working memory to sustain focus on a task. It also coordinates the strategic actions necessary to achieve success. It provides impulse control, regulation of emotion, and willpower. The prefrontal cortex maintains focus by deprioritizing currently irrelevant streams of information. The frontal cortex tracks rules. Over a lifetime, that builds into a costly activity. Once it tires, responses become less prosocial. But practice shifts operation of tasks to the cerebellum. The frontal cortex signals the tegmentum and accumbens with the conclusions of its expectancy/discrepancy calculations. The frontal lobe provides executive function, considering bits of information, assessing patterns and then prioritizing the strategies. The frontal lobe is the most recent part of the brain to evolve and involves a disproportionate percentage of primate-unique genes in its development and operation. It does not complete development until the mid-20s. It includes spindle neurons. It is easily damaged. Sapolsky (Nauta) notes that its ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a quasi-member of the limbic system. ;
or culturally is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal. CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism. Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering. Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling. Damasio notes prokaryotes and social insects have developed cultural social behaviors. Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset. He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised. Culture: - Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation. Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain. Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes. Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach. And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations! PMS symptoms vary by culture.
- Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play. So parents try to control their children's peer group.
- Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc.
- Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate.
- Can transform dominance into honor. There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures. Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian.
- Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.
- Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire.
- Can provide varying levels of support for innovation. Damasio suggests culture is influenced by feelings:
- As motives for intellectual creation: prompting
detection and diagnosis of homeostatic
deficiencies, identifying
desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural
instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments
required by the cultural process over time
- Produces consciousness according to Dennet.
enhanced: cooking,
Reading and writing present a conundrum. The reader's
brain contains neural networks tuned to reading. With
imaging a written word can be followed as it progresses from the
retina through a functional chain that asks: Are these letters?
What do they look like? Are they a word? What does it sound
like? How is it pronounced? What does it mean? Dehaene
explains the importance of
education in tuning the brain's networks for reading as
well as good strategies for teaching reading and countering dyslexia. But
he notes the reading
networks developed far too recently to have directly evolved.
And Dehaene asks why humans are unique in developing
reading and culture.
He explains the cultural
engineering that shaped writing to human vision and the exaptations and neuronal structures that
enable and constrain reading and culture.
Dehaene's arguments show how cellular, whole animal and cultural
complex adaptive system (CAS) are
related. We review his explanations in CAS terms and use
his insights to link cultural CAS that emerged based on reading
and writing with other levels of CAS from which they emerge.
reading, Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved
dramatically. W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred.
tool building & 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
trading; preparing us to cope
with the complexity of competition with
cooperation.
- The strategies deployed by animals that are alive today,
have proved successful over evolutionary time. Each
animal is a
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS, generating,
deploying and differentiating its cells under genetic
control, consistently enough that we know what a tiger and
a rabbit look like and which is safe to share a space
with.
- Organizations are
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
of human 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. They
may also be full CAS if they maintain shared germ-line, a master copy of the schematic structures is maintained for reproduction of offspring. There will also be somatic copies which are modified by the operational agents so that they can represent their current state. schematic
plans, directly or indirectly. General
Electric maintained
processes to support memetic planning. 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.
AT&T's Bell Labs formal
processes ensured their presence. Hoshin - Hoshin (direction) Kanri (management) is a planning process which was popularized by Professor Kaoru Ishikawa which helped align goals and objectives across an organization. It argues: - Focus on a few breakthrough ideas. As a method to focus an organization on lean management it can be used to drive cost cutting. However, if the measures are poor the results can undermine the operation of an effective system, as at Laguna Honda Hospital.
- Cascade of goals and strategies is developed by top down and bottom up discussions allowing detail to be added along with alignment and buy in. In Japan, lifelong employment supported this process. The individual focused merit ratings used in Western management practice undermines the process in Deming's view (deadly disease 3).
- The goals, strategies and success measures should be rigorously documented. In the original paper and fax processes in Japan each goal, its strategies, measures and resources were documented in a planning table. The whole activity became coordinated by a house of quality. In AWF the planning table is replaced by a bullet point infinite labelled goal in the execution schematic plan with a structured status block allowing easy visualization of the goal network.
- Regular review process based on a Shewhart cycle.
planning
processes can support germ-line plans. Venture
backed startups are encouraged to be operational agents
leveraging somatic, Schematic structures which are used to support the operation of the agent. They are modified as the agent's state changes unlike the germ-line schemata.
strategies of the execution team and avoiding the overhead
of sustaining germ-line plans.
- AWF is the adaptive web framework. provides tools to
support development of a common frame of
reference within an organization:
- Adaptive in evolutionary biology is a trait that increased the number of surviving offspring in an organism's ancestral lineage. Holland argues: complex adaptive systems (CAS) adapt due to the influence of schematic strings on agents. Evolution indicates fitness when an organism survives and reproduces. For his genetic algorithm, Holland separated the adaptive process into credit assignment and rule discovery. He assigned a strength to each of the rules (alternate hypothesis) used by his artificial agents, by credit assignment - each accepted message being paid for by the recipient, increasing the sender agent's rule's strength (implicit modeling) and reducing the recipient's. When an agent achieved an explicit goal they obtained a final reward. Rule discovery used the genetic algorithm to select strong rule schemas from a pair of agents to be included in the next generation, with crossing over and mutation applied, and the resulting schematic strategies used to replace weaker schemas. The crossing over genetic operator is unlikely to break up a short schematic sequence that provides a building block retained because of its 'fitness'; In Deacon's conception of evolution, an adaptation is the realization of a set of constraints on candidate mechanisms, and so long as these constraints are maintained, other features are arbitrary.
glossary source and generated is a Perl script, typically launched as a child process within the configuration editor, by clicking 'generate web', which executes frame configuration file instructions merging the configuration variables with an HTML template file to generate target web pages. The configuration instructions can be tailored by filters from the configuration file specified filter file.
glossary where terms can be agreed upon and
leveraged.
- Situation description where the key details can be
described, analyzed and a common understanding be
represented.
- Analysis can be recorded and reviewed.
- Sub organizations can represent their business plans
and strategies - maintaining secrecy as necessary, even
as at a higher level the alternative businesses are
competing
- Bringing
This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution inside the company
requires a:
- Long term distributed
Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schematic
plan that drives the detailed execution actions and
represents the effects of applying a
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.
Set of genetic operators,
- Selection process that tests the fitness is, according to Dawkins, a suitcase word with at least five meanings in biology:
- Darwin and Wallace thought in terms of the capacity to survive and reproduce, but they were considering discrete aspects such as chewing grass - where hard enamel would improve the relative fitness.
- Population geneticists: Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, J.B.S. Haldane; consider selection at a locus where for a genotype: green eyes vs blue eyes; one with higher fitness can be identified from genotypic frequencies and gene frequencies, with all other variations averaged out.
- Whole organism 'integrated' fitness. Dawkins notes there is only ever one instance of a specific organism. Being unique, comparing the relative success of its offspring makes little sense. Over a huge number of generations the individual is likely to have provided a contribution to everyone in the pool or no one.
- Inclusive fitness, where according to Hamilton, fitness depends on an organism's actions or effects on its children or its relative's children, a model where natural selection favors organs and behaviors that cause the individual's genes to be passed on. It is easy to mistakenly count an offspring in multiple relative's fitness assessments.
- Personal fitness represents the effects a person's relatives have on the individual's fitness [3]. When interpreted correctly fitness [4] and fitness [5] are the same.
of any
expressed instantiation. Application software test
suites provide a trivial example. Product quality
plans and experiments are more complex examples.
- The
This page reviews Christensen's disruption
of a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism is discussed with examples from biology and
business.
disruption of companies business models,
identified by Clayton
Christensen, separates profit oriented businesses,
which will be destroyed by their own innovative is the economic realization of invention and combinatorial exaptation. Keynes noted it provided the unquantifiable beneficial possibility that limits fear of uncertainty. Innovation operates across all CAS, being supported by genetic and cultural means. Creativity provides the mutation and recombination genetic operators for the cultural process. While highly innovative, monopolies: AT&T, IBM; usually have limited economic reach, constraining productivity. This explains the use of regulation, or even its threat, that can check their power and drive the creations across the economy. actions,
from market share oriented ones which can survive from one
generation of product to the next. Companies that
maintain portfolios of profit oriented businesses may
survive by continually initiating new businesses as
Christensen notes in The
Innovator's Solution. But these new businesses
will find it hard to compete with startups supported by the
far larger capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital).
supply of, and singular focus demanded by, venture
capitalists. Market share oriented companies can
build powerful positions including monopolies is a power relation within: - A state in which a group has enough power to enforce its will on other citizens. If this is a central authority with a cohesive military, it can overpower other warlords and stabilize the society.
- An economy in which one business has enough share in a market segment to control margins to its advantage. An economic monopoly can be broadly beneficial: AT&T monopoly, US patent monopoly rights;
.
Monopolies like 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.
AT&T, have been
initiators of core innovations which launched Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved
dramatically. W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred.
waves of technology transformation.
But without the balancing use of regulation to constrain
this concentration of power, the competitive drive can be
undermined, possibly leading to market collapse or a
sub-optimal This page discusses the methods of avoiding traps. Genetic
selection and learning to avoid traps are reviewed.
trap as is seen in The structure and problems of the US
health care network is described in terms of complex adaptive
system (CAS) theory.
The network:
- Is deeply embedded in the US nation state. It reflects the
conflict between two
opposing visions for the US: high tax with safety net
or low tax without. The emergence
of a parasitic elite supported by tax policy, further
constrains the choices available to improve the efficiency
and effectiveness of the network.
- The US is optimized to sell its citizens dangerous
levels of: salt,
sugar, cigarettes,
guns, light, cell phones, opioids,
costly education, global travel,
antibacterials, formula, foods including
endocrine disrupters;
- Accepting the US controlled global supply chain's
offered goods & services results in: debt, chronic stress,
amplified consumption and toxic excess, leading to obesity, addiction, driving instead of
walking, microbiome
collapse;
- Globalization connects disparate environments in a network. At the edges,
humans are drastically altering the biosphere. That
is reducing the proximate natural environment's
connectedness, and leaving its end-nodes disconnected and
far less diverse. This disconnects predators from
their prey, often resulting in local booms and busts that
transform the local parasite
network and their reservoir and amplifier
hosts. The situation is setup so that man is
introduced to spillover
from the local parasites' hosts. Occasionally, but
increasingly, the spillover results in humanity becoming
broadly infected. The evolved
specialization of the immune system
to the proximate environment during development
becomes undermined as the environment transforms.
- Is incented to focus on localized competition generating
massive & costly duplication of services within
physician based health care operations instead of proven
public health strategies. This process drives
increasing research & treatment complexity and promotes hope
for each new technological breakthrough.
- Is amplified by the legislatively structured separation
and indirection of service development,
provision, reimbursement and payment.
- Is impacted by the different political strategies for
managing the increasing
cost of health care for the demographic bulge of retirees.
- Is presented with acute
and chronic
problems to respond to. As currently setup the network
is tuned to handle acute problems. The interactions
with patients tend to be transactional.
- Includes a legislated health insurance infrastructure
which is:
- Costly and inefficient
- Structured around yearly
contracts which undermine long-term health goals and
strategies.
- Is supported by increasingly regulated HCIT
which offers to improve data sharing and quality but has
entrenched commercial EHR
products deep within the hospital systems.
- Is maintained, and kept in
alignment, by massive network
effects across the:
- Hospital platform
based
sub-networks connecting to
- Physician networks
- Health insurance networks - amplified by ACA
narrow network legislation
- Hospital clinical supply and food
production networks
- Medical school and academic research network and NIH
- Global
transportation network
- Public health networks
- Health care IT supply
network
the US health care network.
- Customers capture
value from the applications
they run on MS-DOS. To run on other operating
systems these applications would have to be ported by the
application developer. Maintaining and enhancing
MS-DOS, and providing compatibility in MS Windows,
maintained the customers' dependency on Microsoft.
Adding multi-tasking window based applications to MS Windows
would provide additional value. And those applications
were dependent on the infrastructure
amplification of the operating system, providing more
power over the application developers that competed with
Microsoft, once IBM
forfeited its OS2 development to Microsoft.
- RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio views Beinhocker's
'business plans' interactor is evolutionary philosopher David Hull's term for the schematically specified, instantiated aggregated agent which can interact with the proximate environment and is subject to selection pressures. Dawkins's equivalent term is 'vehicle'.
portfolio as instances of human 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
operating on the somatic
copies, Schematic structures which are used to support the operation of the agent. They are modified as the agent's state changes unlike the germ-line schemata. of their shared Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schematic
plans with alternative The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
models
prioritized. The portfolio
approach induces alternative
objectives, which helps to guarantee achieving an
objective. This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
Extended phenotypic
alignment will limit the piecemeal updates to the
somatic strategies. But any strategy from the complete
schematic set can be Rather than oppose the direct thrust of some environmental flow agents
can improve their effectiveness with indirect responses.
This page explains how agents are architected to do this and
discusses some examples of how it can be done.
indirectly
associated with To benefit from shifts in the environment agents must be flexible. Being
sensitive to environmental signals
agents who adjust strategic priorities can constrain their
competitors.
flexibly organized
subjective goals. Most changes will be epi-genetic represent state surfaces within cells and eggs which can be operationally modified so as to provide a heritable structure. DNA, histones and other stable structures provide surfaces where these states may be setup. Egg carriers are in a particularly powerful position to induce epi-genetic changes. Sapolsky notes [childhood] events which persistently alter brain structure and behavior via epi-genetic mechanisms including: pair-bonding in prairie voles, as they first mate, is supported by changes in oxytocin & vasopressin receptor gene regulation in the nucleus accumbens.
state updates. But the agents will adjust the
priorities of competing strategies within the overall
schemata, in effect allowing them to dynamically construct
and update Beinhocker's portfolio
of experiments.
- The current situation of
a CAS is difficult
to identify as
Dietrich Dorner argues complex adaptive systems (CAS) are hard to understand and
manage. He provides examples of how this feature of these
systems can have disastrous consequences for their human
managers. Dorner suggests this is due to CAS properties
psychological impact on our otherwise successful mental
strategic toolkit. To prepare to more effectively manage
CAS, Dorner recommends use of:
- Effective iterative planning and
- Practice with complex scenario simulations; tools which he
reviews.
Dorner explains.
RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio concludes it is
necessary to represent the iteratively developing:
- Powerful variables and adaptive in evolutionary biology is a trait that increased the number of surviving offspring in an organism's ancestral lineage. Holland argues: complex adaptive systems (CAS) adapt due to the influence of schematic strings on agents. Evolution indicates fitness when an organism survives and reproduces. For his genetic algorithm, Holland separated the adaptive process into credit assignment and rule discovery. He assigned a strength to each of the rules (alternate hypothesis) used by his artificial agents, by credit assignment - each accepted message being paid for by the recipient, increasing the sender agent's rule's strength (implicit modeling) and reducing the recipient's. When an agent achieved an explicit goal they obtained a final reward. Rule discovery used the genetic algorithm to select strong rule schemas from a pair of agents to be included in the next generation, with crossing over and mutation applied, and the resulting schematic strategies used to replace weaker schemas. The crossing over genetic operator is unlikely to break up a short schematic sequence that provides a building block retained because of its 'fitness'; In Deacon's conception of evolution, an adaptation is the realization of a set of constraints on candidate mechanisms, and so long as these constraints are maintained, other features are arbitrary.
flow
summarized - demonstrated
for US health care; supported by the underlying
details:
- Major parts of near term history of political,
economic,
socio-cultural
and technology
summarized events - demonstrated for US health care by AWF is the adaptive web framework. .
- Glossary
of terms of the shared language - demonstrated for
US health care by AWF.
- Analysis
of the CAS - demonstrated for US health care by AWF.
There are many details to monitor and describe. But
many of the aspects can be iteratively sourced
from specialist organizations and then merged with
business specific details developed within the
organization.
- AT&T Bell Lab's rejection
of the integrated circuit strategy left them
disconnected from the center of development of solid-state
technology innovation is the economic realization of invention and combinatorial exaptation. Keynes noted it provided the unquantifiable beneficial possibility that limits fear of uncertainty. Innovation operates across all CAS, being supported by genetic and cultural means. Creativity provides the mutation and recombination genetic operators for the cultural process. While highly innovative, monopolies: AT&T, IBM; usually have limited economic reach, constraining productivity. This explains the use of regulation, or even its threat, that can check their power and drive the creations across the economy.
.
- The formation
of new strategies by
Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic
operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination.
The nature of the operations is described.
genetic
operations of competing & cooperating Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agents, is highly constrained, to
ensure the influence of the Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
genes
& memes previously captured by This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolutionary action. Instead
like dog breeders, the organization is selecting for
schematically defined traits that it suspects are valuable
in the current situation.
-
The
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.
human mind developed to take
advantage of the cognitive
niche is Tooby & DeVore's theory that reflects a flexible competitive strategy, described by Steven Pinker, which leverages the power and flexibility of intelligence to defeat the capabilities of genetically evolved specialists focused on specific niches. . Pinker
explains how strategic
thinking supported capturing of niches previously owned by
This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolved specialists. Potential
structural differences are provided 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.
schematically,
seen in personality describes the operation of the mind from the perspective of psychological models and tests based on them. Early 'Western' models of personality resulted in a simple segmentation noting the tension between: individual desires and group needs, and developing models and performing actions. Dualistic 'Eastern' philosophies promote the legitimacy of an essence which Riso & Hudson argue is hidden within a shell of personality types and is only reached by developing presence. The logic of a coherent essence is in conflict with the evolved nature of emotions outlined by Pinker. Terman's studies of personality identified types which Friedman and Martin link to healthy and unhealthy pathways. Current psychiatric models highlight at least five key aspects: - Extroversion-introversion - whether the person gains mental dynamism from socializing or retiring
- Neuroticism-stability - does a person worry or are they calm and self-satisfied
- Agreeableness-antagonism - is a person courteous & trusting or rude and suspicious
- Conscientiousness-un-directedness - is a person careful or careless
- Openness-non-openness - are they daring or conforming
The influence of childhood on behavior is significant.
Enneagrams define personality
types: Reformer, Helper, Achiever,
Individualist, Investigator, Loyalist, Enthusiast,
Challenger and Peacemaker; based on the impact of
childhood driven wounds.
The Enneagram becomes
a tool to enable interested people to transform from the
emotionally wounded base, hidden within
the armor of the type, to the liberated underlying essence.
Childhood leaves each of us with some environmentally specific Basic Fear. In response each
of us adopts an induced Basic Desire
of the type. But as we develop the inner observer, it will
support presence and
undermine the identification
that supports the armor of the type.
The Enneagram reveals three sets of relations about our type
armor:
- Triadic self
revealing: Instinctive,
feeling, thinking; childhood needs
that became significant wounds
- Social style
groupings: Assertive, compliant, withdrawn; strategies for
managing inner conflict
- Coping styles: Positive outlook, competency, reactive; strategies for
defending childhood wounds
Riso and Hudson augment the Enneagram with instinctual
distortions reflected in the interests of the variants.
The Enneagram also offers tools for understanding a person's level of development:
unhealthy, average, healthy,
liberation; including their
current center of gravity,
steriotypical social role,
wake-up call, leaden rule, red
flag, and direction
of integration and disintegration.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the models
presented by the Enneagram with evolved behaviors and structures
in the mind: feelings, emotions, social behaviors, ideas; driven
by genetic and cultural evolution and the constraints of family
and social life. Emergent evolved amplifers can be
constrained by Riso and Hudson's awareness strategies.
types, which under the influence of
differing proximate environments, during development is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete. become
different strategic approaches.
To evaluate the strategies, The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
models
are setup by the brain including gut
feel.
Strategy is enabled by This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution
leveraging a billion years of 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.
But strategy is an This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergent functionalist
regularity operating on a platform is agent generated infrastructure that supports emergence of an entity through: leverage of an abundant energy source, reusable resources; attracting a phenotypically aligned network of agents. of the 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.
human brain. This allows
strategy to have 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
impacts far more
rapidly than the evolutionary mechanism.
- The development of strategy often occurs in the midst of
big problems, commitments and failing revenues, as in IBM's
near death experience
Lou Gerstner describes the challenges he faced and the
strategies he used to successfully restructure the computer
company IBM.
described by
Gerstner. But it must also reflect the nature of
the This page discusses the potential of the vast state space which
supports the emergence of complex
adaptive systems (CAS). Kauffman describes the mechanism
by which the system expands across the space.
proximate environment.
Microsoft, like IBM was competing to be a monopolistic is a power relation within: - A state in which a group has enough power to enforce its will on other citizens. If this is a central authority with a cohesive military, it can overpower other warlords and stabilize the society.
- An economy in which one business has enough share in a market segment to control margins to its advantage. An economic monopoly can be broadly beneficial: AT&T monopoly, US patent monopoly rights;
superorganism is a wealthy autonomous entity needing and controlling the richest niches in the proximate environment, that emerges from the bundled cooperation of schematically aligned agents. The term is based on the social insect model, used by: ants, termites, and bees; and identified by Holldobler & E.O. Wilson. These genetically identical insect superorganisms cooperatively limit their reproduction to align with the resources available in the niche. Wilson asserts these insects all developed nests to which they returned to raise their offspring, and when the nest sites were of limited capacity some family members responded by focusing on defending the nest and foraging while their mother became an egg laying queen, enabled by "a single genetic change which silenced the brain's program for dispersal and prevents the mother and her offspring from dispersing to create new nests," Wilson explains. He adds climate control of the nest and disease resistance, just like the human immune system, demand individually focused diversity. So the queen's genome consists of low variety alleles for the extended phenotypic 'robot' worker caste agents and their organization - queen and workers competing as one, with other colonies and individual insects - and other parts which are high where the genome includes significant diversity. For humans it is an evolved cultural strategy used when the environment is supportive, but it is dependent on our imperfect cognitive assessment of kinship as well as group selection driven emotions: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious; and group oriented pressures to conform and remain: religions. And the adjacent possible must be recreated and modeled culturally through the emergence of processes such as democracy. It depends on inter-agent signalling. In both insects and humans it allows specialization, and encourages operations and flows that are tightly controlled, limiting waste, leveraging parallel activity, supporting coherence. Superorganisms reflect cliodynamic flows. A superorganism has a development and operational phase. As additional agents are coopted into the superorganism they align, participate in supply and demand activities and so contribute to the evolutionary amplification. Damasio notes that prokaryotes, in rich environments, can similarly operate in a symbiotic fashion expressing cultural behaviors. .
Many companies are competing for far less rewarding niches
where the costs of the superorganism make that strategy
prohibitive. But they must still develop an 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.
effective schematic approach.
Gerstner needed to save a collapsing superorganism and
selected:
- Beinhocker's
abstract search mechanisms
appear to be
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.
genetically or
culturally associated with:
This page discusses the benefits of geographic clusters of agents and resources at the center of a complex adaptive
system (CAS).
Geographic clustering,
allowing sharing of execution strategies that implement
prized innovation is the economic realization of invention and combinatorial exaptation. Keynes noted it provided the unquantifiable beneficial possibility that limits fear of uncertainty. Innovation operates across all CAS, being supported by genetic and cultural means. Creativity provides the mutation and recombination genetic operators for the cultural process. While highly innovative, monopolies: AT&T, IBM; usually have limited economic reach, constraining productivity. This explains the use of regulation, or even its threat, that can check their power and drive the creations across the economy.
- Competition between geographic
and strategic niches with espionage to gain access
to valuable strategic technologies.
This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). Small
world and scale free networks are considered.
Network effects that 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.
bring ideas together from the
scientific, defense and commercial networks.
- Creativity which
leverages
Good ideas are successful because they build upon prior
developments that have been successfully implemented.
Johnson demonstrates that they are phenotypic expressions of
memetic plans subject to the laws of complex adaptive systems (CAS).
good ideas to enable
innovation.
- The evolution
of environmental niches and differences in the products and
services within them impact strategy and structure:
- Steve Jobs was an innovative entrepreneur who integrated art and culture with engineering, and is responsible for: the strong sexual selection force of the: Macintosh, iPod, iPad and iPhone; and their dedicated fan base. He cofounded Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak where Wozniak designed a particularly simple microprocessor based computer, the Apple 1 and Jobs made it elegant. Struck by the relative simplicity and ease of use of PARC's Alto, Jobs and Wozniak began building the Lisa. But Jobs decided it was flawed and took a small group aside to build the Macintosh which the whole team were happy to sign their names on the inside. Born February 24th 1955, Steve's birth mother Joanne Schieble was forced by her father to have the boy adopted rather than allow her to marry his Muslim Syrian birth father, Abdulfattah Jandali, the last of nine children of a hugely wealthy trader, Walter Isaacson explains. The baby was adopted by Paul Reinhold Jobs, a highly practical mechanic and a mild kind father, and Clara Hagopian, also sweet-humored, and when Steve was two they adopted Patty. The Jobs lived in an Eichler (a design inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright), in Mountain View, California, which had a strong influence on Steve, as he explained to Isaacson, "Eichler did a great thing. His houses were smart and cheap and good. They brought clean design and simple taste to lower income people. They had awesome little features, like radiant heating in the floors. You put carpet on them, and we had nice toasty floors when we were kids." Steve Jobs knew early on that he was adopted, which pained him supporting development of his Challenger personality type. It was also clear to Steve that he was unlike his adopted parents, Paul and Clara Jobs, who stressed to him that they picked him specifically and that he was special. They tolerated Steve's high risk activities and ensured he was safe when problems occurred. Paul Jobs impressed Steve as a child, with his valuing quality workmanship, and his practical capabilities. Paul could repair any car and Steve became interested in the electronics aspects. He was helped by neighbors who were electrical engineers: Larry Lang; the geographic cluster that formed around Hewlett Packard and Intel. And he then joined a neighborhood electronics club where he was introduced to Steve Wozniak. But the young Steve Jobs was shocked when he discovered his father did not correctly understand some aspects of the world, and Steve realized he was much more intelligent than his parents Paul and Clara. With their support he followed his curiosity and resisted any attempt to stop him. His powerful drive made his parents, teachers, local business leaders: Bill Hewlett, Nolan Bushnell; and coaches go along. At Reed College he pushed to attend courses he was interested in: calligraphy; rather than follow the syllabus, and they let him. They even allowed him to continue when he stopped his parents from paying more tuition. His stressed idealist continually sought out gurus: Shunryu Suzuki, Neem Karoli Baba; and visionaries who might help Steve understand who he really was.
's
integrated business model at Apple
supported the development of a phone architecture based on
a networked personal computer. In comparison This page describes the consequences of the asymmetries caused
by business model differences between Apple, Google and
Microsoft. This presents a highly visible demonstration of
the effects of sexual selection and
disruption.
The surprising success of the iPhone undermined well developed
strategies that had previously been considered successful.
Google's response to the classical Apple strategies is
described. The subsequent disruptive effects on
Microsoft's business model are reviewed.
Microsoft's eco-system was unwieldy.
- Amazon
responded to the iPhone
In this page we use CAS theory to review the asymmetric
challenges of the retailer Amazon.
with Fire.
But like the original 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.
AT&T,
its real power came from developing products for its
network, allowing it to see and deliver
on the opportunity of Echo.
- The limited
awareness the senior management has of decisions made within
their organization presents opportunities and challenges:
- Beinhocker's focus on
pragmatism must be supported by
The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
models
that identify potential This page discusses the methods of avoiding traps. Genetic
selection and learning to avoid traps are reviewed.
traps
and leverage historic feedback captured as associations
between This page discusses the potential of the vast state space which
supports the emergence of complex
adaptive systems (CAS). Kauffman describes the mechanism
by which the system expands across the space.
environmental Agents use sensors to detect events in their environment.
This page reviews how these events become signals associated
with beneficial responses in a complex adaptive system (CAS). CAS signals emerge from
the Darwinian information
model. Signals can indicate decision
summaries and level of uncertainty.
signals and appropriate
strategies. Additionally This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
extended
phenotypic aligment and This page reviews Christensen's disruption
of a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism is discussed with examples from biology and
business.
disruption
will constrain and
undermine
the most effective and pragmatic profit seeking
business.
- Satyajit
Das
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.
describes the operation of
financial traders.
- Bill Clinton's Third
Way track record is reviewed by:
- Matt
Taibbi
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.
detailing the impact
of his administration's social strategies and
- Charles Ferguson
describing his financial
impact.
H. A. Hayek compares and contrasts collectivism and
libertarianism.
Hayek's Road to Serfdom discusses
the implications of central and distributed planning.
- Isaacson
details the impact
of Steve Jobs was an innovative entrepreneur who integrated art and culture with engineering, and is responsible for: the strong sexual selection force of the: Macintosh, iPod, iPad and iPhone; and their dedicated fan base. He cofounded Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak where Wozniak designed a particularly simple microprocessor based computer, the Apple 1 and Jobs made it elegant. Struck by the relative simplicity and ease of use of PARC's Alto, Jobs and Wozniak began building the Lisa. But Jobs decided it was flawed and took a small group aside to build the Macintosh which the whole team were happy to sign their names on the inside. Born February 24th 1955, Steve's birth mother Joanne Schieble was forced by her father to have the boy adopted rather than allow her to marry his Muslim Syrian birth father, Abdulfattah Jandali, the last of nine children of a hugely wealthy trader, Walter Isaacson explains. The baby was adopted by Paul Reinhold Jobs, a highly practical mechanic and a mild kind father, and Clara Hagopian, also sweet-humored, and when Steve was two they adopted Patty. The Jobs lived in an Eichler (a design inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright), in Mountain View, California, which had a strong influence on Steve, as he explained to Isaacson, "Eichler did a great thing. His houses were smart and cheap and good. They brought clean design and simple taste to lower income people. They had awesome little features, like radiant heating in the floors. You put carpet on them, and we had nice toasty floors when we were kids." Steve Jobs knew early on that he was adopted, which pained him supporting development of his Challenger personality type. It was also clear to Steve that he was unlike his adopted parents, Paul and Clara Jobs, who stressed to him that they picked him specifically and that he was special. They tolerated Steve's high risk activities and ensured he was safe when problems occurred. Paul Jobs impressed Steve as a child, with his valuing quality workmanship, and his practical capabilities. Paul could repair any car and Steve became interested in the electronics aspects. He was helped by neighbors who were electrical engineers: Larry Lang; the geographic cluster that formed around Hewlett Packard and Intel. And he then joined a neighborhood electronics club where he was introduced to Steve Wozniak. But the young Steve Jobs was shocked when he discovered his father did not correctly understand some aspects of the world, and Steve realized he was much more intelligent than his parents Paul and Clara. With their support he followed his curiosity and resisted any attempt to stop him. His powerful drive made his parents, teachers, local business leaders: Bill Hewlett, Nolan Bushnell; and coaches go along. At Reed College he pushed to attend courses he was interested in: calligraphy; rather than follow the syllabus, and they let him. They even allowed him to continue when he stopped his parents from paying more tuition. His stressed idealist continually sought out gurus: Shunryu Suzuki, Neem Karoli Baba; and visionaries who might help Steve understand who he really was.
control and selection activities.
- Jared
Diamond describes scenarios where democratic
decisions lead to collapse of
the commons reflects the lack of incentive for individuals to cooperate to sustain a common good when there is no immediate disincentive, even when over time the result will be collapse of the resource base sustaining the group. Josh Greene notes the issue is how to jump-start and maintain cooperation. Sapolsky notes evolution has solved this problem by leveraging bootstrapping processes and helping groups to discourage individuals being selfish. Institutions: religion, nationalism, ethnic pride, team spirit; provide green-beard markers to support this process.
while 'big
men is used by anthropologists to describe an individual who captures resources and strives to build a following through generosity, but is never permanently successful, his influence being limited to his faction and the flow of resources. The term was coined in Native Melanesia. Beinhocker outlines a logical shift from big men to economic market operations. ' protect the resource base.
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.
Turchin notes the significance of
repeated cooperative acts supported by moral values in
building cohesive groups.
- David
Bodanis
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.
describes
Voltaire's disruptive leverage of Newton's scientific
ideas.
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.
Greenblatt describes the
rediscovery of On The Nature Of Things.
- Angus
Deaton
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.
reviews the divide
in wellbeing indicates the state of an organism is within homeostatic balance. It is described by Angus Deaton as all the things that are good for a person: - Material wellbeing includes income and wealth and its measures: GDP, personal income and consumption. It can be traded for goods and services which recapture time. Material wellbeing depends on investments in:
- Infrastructure
- Physical
- Property rights, contracts and dispute resolution
- People and their education
- Capturing of basic knowledge via science.
- Engineering to turn science into goods and services and then continuously improve them.
- Physical and psychological wellbeing are represented by health and happiness; and education and the ability to participate in civil society through democracy and the rule of law. University of Wisconsin's Ryff focuses on Aristotle's flourishing. Life expectancy as a measure of population health, highly weights reductions in child mortality.
between the rich nations and the rest. He judges
aid as corrosive to the recipients.
- Brynjolfsson
and McAfee
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.
explore the
exponential impact of Moore's law.
Beinhocker's insightful book details the history of Traditional
Economics and the nature of his replacement Complexity Economics.
The details include an enlightening description of 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. . But they
threaten the current economic power hierarchy and the responses
will be typical of an evolving This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS.
.
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Business Physics Nature and nurture drive the business eco-system Human nature Emerging structure and dynamic forces of adaptation |
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integrating quality appropriate for each market |
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