My song
This page describes the organizational forces that limit change.  It explains how to overcome them when necessary. 

Power& tradition holding back progress
This page uses an example to illustrate how:
  • A business can gain focus from targeting key customers,
  • Business planning activities performed by the whole organization can build awareness, empowerment and coherence. 
  • A program approach can ensure strategic alignment. 
Be responsive to market dynamics
This page uses the example of HP's printer organization freeing itself from its organizational constraints to sell a printer targeted at the IBM pc user. 
The constraints are described. 
The techniques to overcome them are implied. 
Overcome reactionaries
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:
  1. The evolving global scientific network. 
  2. The Bell telephone network.  And
  3. The military industrial network deploying 'fire and missile control' systems. 
Bell Labs strategically leveraged each network to create an innovation engine. 
They monitored the opportunities to leverage the developing ideas, reorganizing to replace incumbent opposition and enable the creation and growth of new ideas. 
Once the monopoly was dismantled, AT&T disrupted. 
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the innovation mechanisms are discussed. 

Strategic innovation
Roger Cohen's New York Times opinion about the implications of BREXIT is summarized.  His ideas are then framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory and reviewed. 


BREXIT
Scott Galloway argues that Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google are monopolists that trade workers for technology.  Monopolies that he argues should be broken up to ensure the return of a middle class. 

Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on these arguments assuming they relate to a complex adaptive system (CAS).  While Scott's issue is highly significant his analysis conflicts with relevant CAS history and theory. 

Monopoly job killers
The IPO of Netscape is defined as the key emergent event of the New Economy by Michael Mandel.  Following the summary of Mandel's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted. 
New economy
Ed Conway argues that Bretton Woods produced a unique set of rules and infrastructure for supporting the global economy.  It was enabled by the experience of Keynes and White during and after the First World War, their dislike of the Gold Standard, the necessity of improving the situation between the wars and the opportunity created by the catastrophe of the Second World War. 

He describes how it was planned and developed.  How it emerged from the summit.  And he shows how the opportunity inevitably allowed the US to replace the UK at the center of the global economy. 

Like all plans there are mistakes and Conway takes us through them and how the US recovered the situation as best it could. 

And then Conway describes the period after Bretton Woods collapsed.  He explains what followed and also compares the relative performance of the various periods before during and after Bretton Woods. 

Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments from the perspective of Complex Adaptive System (CAS) theory.  Conway's book illustrates the rule making and infrastructure that together build an evolved amplifier.  He shows the strategies at play of agents that were for and against the development and deployment of the system.  And The Summit provides a key piece of the history of our global economic CAS. 

Bretton woods
A key agent in the 1990 - 2008 housing expansion Countrywide is linked into the residential mortgage value delivery system (VDS) by Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla.  But they show the VDS was full of amplifiers and control points.  With no one incented to apply the brakes the bubble grew and burst.  Following the summary of Muolo and Padilla's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted. 
Housing amplifiers
Satyajit Das uses an Indonesian company's derivative trades to introduce us to the workings of the international derivatives system.  Das describes the components of the value delivery system and the key transactions.  He demonstrates how the system interacted with emerging economies expanding them, extracting profits and then moving on as the induced bubbles burst.  Following Das's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted. 
Derivative systems
Johnson & Kwak argue that expanding the national debt provides a hedge against unforeseen future problems, as long as creditors are willing to continue lending.  They illustrate different approaches to managing the debt within the US over its history and of the eighteenth century administrations of England and France. 

The US embodies two different political and economic systems which approach the national debt differently:
  • Taxes to support a sinking fund to ensure credit to leverage fiscal power in: Wars, Pandemics, Trade disputes, Hurricanes, Social programs; Starting with Hamilton, Lincoln & Chase, Wilson, FDR;
  • Low taxes, limited infrastructure, with risk assumed by individuals: Advocated by President's Jefferson & Madison, Reagan, George W. Bush (Gingrich);
Johnson & Kwak develop a model of what the US government does.  They argue that the conflicting sinking fund and low tax approaches leaves the nation 'stuck in the middle' with a future problem.  And they offer their list of 'first principles' to help assess the best approach for moving from 2012 into the future.  

They conclude the question is still political.  They hope it can be resolved with an awareness of their detailed explanations.  They ask who is willing to push all the coming risk onto individuals. 

Following our summary of their arguments RSS frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  Historically developing within the global cotton value delivery system, key CAS features are highlighted. 

National debt
Robert Gordon argues that the inventions of the second industrial revolution were the foundation for American economic growth.  Gordon shows how flows of people into difficult rural America built a population base which then took the opportunity to move on to urban settings: Houses, Food in supermarkets, Clothes in department stores; that supported increasing productivity and standard of living.  The deployment of nationwide networks: Rail, Road, Utilities; terminating in the urban housing and work places allowing the workers to leverage time saving goods and services, which helped grow the economy. 

Gordon describes the concomitant transformation of:
  • Communications and advertising
  • Credit and finance
  • Public health and the health care network 
  • Health insurance
  • Education
  • Social and welfare services

Counter intuitively the constraints introduced before and in the Great Depression and the demands of World War 2 provide the amplifiers that drive the inventions deeply and fully into every aspect of the economy between 1940 and 1970 creating the exceptional growth and standard of living of post war America. 

Subsequently the rate of growth was limited until the shift of women into the workplace and the full networking of voice and data supported the Internet and World Wide Web completed the third industrial revolution, but the effects were muted by the narrow reach of the technologies. 

The development of Big Data, Robots, and Artificial Intelligence may support additional growth, but Gordon is unconvinced because of the collapse of the middle class. 

Following our summary of Gordon's book RSS frames his arguments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. 

American growth
Carl Menger argues that the market induced the emergence of money based on the attractive features of precious metals.  He compares the potential for government edicts to create money but sees them as lacking. 

Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  With two hundred years of additional knowledge we conclude that precious metals are not as attractive as Menger asserts.  Government backed promissory notes are analogous to:
  • Other evolved CAS forms of ubiquitous high energy transaction intermediates and
  • Schematic strategies that are proving optimal in supporting survival and replication in the currently accessible niches. 

Emergence of money
Eric Beinhocker sets out to answer a question Adam Smith developed in the Wealth of Nations: what is wealth?  To do this he replaces traditional economic theory, which is based on the assumption that an economy is a system in equilibrium, with complexity economics in which the economy is modeled as a complex adaptive system (CAS). 

He introduces Sugerscape to illustrate an economic CAS model in action.  And then he explains the major features of a CAS economy: Dynamics, Agents, Networks, Emergence, and Evolution. 

Building on complexity economics Beinhocker reviews how evolution applies to the economy to build wealth.  He explains how design spaces map strategies to instances of physical and social technologies.  And he identifies the interactors and selection mechanism of economic evolution. 

This allows Beinhocker to develop a new definition of wealth. 

In the rest of the book Beinhocker looks at the consequences of adopting complexity economics for business and society: Strategy, Organization, Finance, & Politics & Policy. 

Following our summary of his arguments, RSS explores his conclusions and aligns Beinhocker's model of CAS with the CAS theory and evidence we leverage. 

Economic complexity
Sven Beckert describes the historic transformation of the growing, spinning, weaving, manufacture of cotton goods and their trade over time.  He describes the rise of a first global commodity, its dependence on increasing: military power, returns for the control points in the value delivery system(VDS), availability of land and labor to work it including slaves. 

He explains how cotton offered the opportunity for industrialization further amplifying the productive capacity of the VDS and the power of the control points.  This VDS was quickly copied.  The increased capacity of the industrialized cotton complex adaptive system (CAS) required more labor to operate the machines.  Beckert describes the innovative introduction of wages and the ways found to mobilize industrial labor. 

Beckert describes the characteristics of the industrial cotton CAS which made it flexible enough to become globally interconnected.  Slavery made the production system so cost effective that all prior structures collapsed as they interconnected.  So when the US civil war blocked access to the major production nodes in the American Deep South the CAS began adapting. 

Beckert describes the global reconstruction that occurred and the resulting destruction of the traditional ways of life in the global countryside.  This colonial expansion further enriched and empowered the 'western' nation states.  Beckert explains how other countries responded by copying the colonial strategies and creating the opportunities for future armed conflict among the original colonialists and the new upstarts. 

Completing the adaptive shifts, Beckert describes the advocates for industrialization in the colonized global south and how over time they joined the global cotton CAS disrupting the early western manufacturing nodes and creating the current global CAS dominated by merchants like Wal-Mart pulling goods through a network of clothing manufacturers, spinning and weaving factories, and growers competing with each other on cost. 

Following our summary of Beckert's book, RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory.  The transformation of disconnected peasant farmers, pastoral warriors and their lands into a supply chain for a highly profitable industrial CAS required the development over time: of military force, global transportation and communication networks, perception and representation control networks, capital stores and flows, models, rules, standards and markets; along with the support at key points of: barriers, disruption, and infrastructure and evolved amplifiers.  The emergent system demonstrates the powerful constraining influence of extended phenotypic alignment. 

Globalization from cotton
The structure and problems of the US health care network is described in terms of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. 

The network:
  • Is deeply embedded in the US nation state. It reflects the conflict between two opposing visions for the US: high tax with safety net or low tax without.  The emergence of a parasitic elite supported by tax policy, further constrains the choices available to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the network.  
    • The US is optimized to sell its citizens dangerous levels of: salt, sugar, cigarettes, guns, light, cell phones, opioids, costly education, global travel, antibacterials, formula, foods including endocrine disrupters;
    • Accepting the US controlled global supply chain's offered goods & services results in: debt, chronic stress, amplified consumption and toxic excess, leading to obesity, addiction, driving instead of walking, microbiome collapse;
    • Globalization connects disparate environments in a network.  At the edges, humans are drastically altering the biosphere.  That is reducing the proximate natural environment's connectedness, and leaving its end-nodes disconnected and far less diverse.  This disconnects predators from their prey, often resulting in local booms and busts that transform the local parasite network and their reservoir and amplifier hosts.  The situation is setup so that man is introduced to spillover from the local parasites' hosts.  Occasionally, but increasingly, the spillover results in humanity becoming broadly infected.  The evolved specialization of the immune system to the proximate environment during development becomes undermined as the environment transforms. 
  • Is incented to focus on localized competition generating massive & costly duplication of services within physician based health care operations instead of proven public health strategies.  This process drives increasing research & treatment complexity and promotes hope for each new technological breakthrough. 
  • Is amplified by the legislatively structured separation and indirection of service development, provision, reimbursement and payment. 
  • Is impacted by the different political strategies for managing the increasing cost of health care for the demographic bulge of retirees.  
  • Is presented with acute and chronic problems to respond to.  As currently setup the network is tuned to handle acute problems.  The interactions with patients tend to be transactional. 
  • Includes a legislated health insurance infrastructure which is:
    • Costly and inefficient
    • Structured around yearly contracts which undermine long-term health goals and strategies.  
  • Is supported by increasingly regulated HCIT which offers to improve data sharing and quality but has entrenched commercial EHR products deep within the hospital systems.  
  • Is maintained, and kept in alignment, by massive network effects across the:
    • Hospital platform based sub-networks connecting to
    • Physician networks
    • Health insurance networks - amplified by ACA narrow network legislation
    • Hospital clinical supply and food production networks
    • Medical school and academic research network and NIH
    • Global transportation network 
    • Public health networks 
    • Health care IT supply network
Health care
Deaton describes the wellbeing of people around the world today.  He explains the powerful benefit of public health strategies and the effect of growth in material wellbeing but also the corrosive effects of aid. 

Following our summary of Deaton's arguments RSS comments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  The situation he describes is complex including powerful amplifiers, alignment and incentives that overlap broadly with other RSS summaries of adaptations of: The biosphere, Politics, Economics, Philosophy and Health care. 

Improving wellbeing
Donald Barlett and James Steele write about their investigations of the major problems afflicting US health care as of 2006. 
Problems of US health care
Glenn Steele & David Feinberg review the development of the modern Geisinger healthcare business after its near collapse following the abandoned merger with Penn State AMC.  After an overview of the business, they describe how a calamity unfolding around them supported building a vision of a better US health care network.  And they explain:
  • How they planned out the transformation,
  • Leveraging an effective governance structure,
  • Using a strategy to gain buy in,
  • Enabling reengineering at the clinician patient interface. 
  • Implementing the reengineering for acute, chronic & hot spot care; to help the patients and help the physicians.  
  • Geisinger's leverage of biologics.  
  • Reengineering healing with ProvenExperience.  
  • Where Geisinger is headed next. 

Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments on them.  We frame their ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. 

E2E insured quality care
Robert Pearl explains the perspectives of a health care leader and son who know that the current health care network interacts with human behavior to induce a poorly performing system that caused his father's death.  But he is confident that these problem perceptions can be changed.  Once that occurs he asserts the network will become more integrated, coordinated, collaborative, better led, and empathetic to their patients.  The supporting technology infrastructure will be made highly interoperable.  All that will reduce medical errors and make care more cost effective. 

Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments on them.  We frame his ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS) theory including synergistic examples of these systems in operation.  The health care network is built out of emergent human agents.  All agents must model the signals they perceive to represent and respond to them.  Pinker explains how this occurs.  Sapolsky explains why fear and hierarchy are so significant.  He includes details of Josh Green's research on morality and death.  Charles Ferguson highlights the pernicious nature of financial incentives. 

Bad medical models
US healthcare is ripe for disruption.  Christensen, Grossman and Hwang argue that technologies are emerging which will support low cost business models that will undermine the current network.  Applying complex adaptive system (CAS) theory to these arguments suggests that the current power hierarchy can effectively resist these progressive forces. 
Disrupting health care
Atul Gawande writes about the opportunity for a thirty per cent improvement in quality in medicine by organizing to deploy as agent based teams using shared schematic plans and distributed signalling or as he puts it the use of checklists. 

With vivid examples from a variety of situations including construction, air crew support and global health care Gawande illustrates the effects of complexity and how to organize to cope with it. 

Following the short review RSS additionally relates Gawande's arguments to its models of complex adaptive systems (CAS) positioning his discussion within the network of US health care, contrasting our view of complexity, comparing the forces shaping his various examples and reviewing facets of complex failures. 
Complexity checklists
Friedman and Martin leverage the lifelong data collected on 1,528 bright individuals selected by Dr. Lewis Terman starting in 1921, to understand what aspects of the subjects' lives significantly affected their longevity.  Looking broadly across each subject's: Personality, Education, Parental impacts, Energy levels, Partnering, Careers, Religion, Social networks, Gender, Impact from war and trauma; Friedman and Martin are able to develop a set of model pathways, which each individual could be seen to select and travel along.  Some paths led to the traveler having a long life.  Others were problematic.  The models imply that the US approach to health and wellness should focus more on supporting the development and selection of beneficial pathways. 

Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory.  The pathways are most applicable to bright individuals with the resources and support necessary to make and leverage choices they make.  Striving to enter and follow a beneficial pathway seems sensible but may be impossible for individuals trapped in a collapsing network, starved of resources. 

Promoting longevity
Gawande uses his personal experience, analytic skills and lots of stories of innovators to demonstrate better ways of coping with aging and death.  He introduces the lack of focus on aging and death in traditional medicine.  And goes on to show how technology has amplified this stress point.  He illustrates the traditional possibility of the independent self, living fully while aging with the support of the extended family.  Central planning responded to the technological and societal changes with poorly designed infrastructure and funding.  But Gawande then contrasts the power of bottom up innovations created by experts responding to their own family situations and belief systems. 

Gawande then explores in depth the challenges that unfold currently as we age and become infirm.  He notes that the world is following the US path.  As such it will have to understand the dilemma of integrating medical treatment and hospice strategies.  He notes that all parties involved need courage to cope. 

He proposes medicine must aim to assure well being.  At that point all doctors will practice palliative care. 

Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agency, death, evolution, cooperation and adaptations to new technologies are discussed. 

Agent death
Sonia Shah reviews the millennia old (500,000 years) malarial arms race between Humanity, Anopheles mosquitoes and Plasmodium.  250 - 500 million people are infected each year with malaria and one million die. 
Malaria
Peter Medawar writes about key historic events in the evolution of medical science. 
Medical science events
Using John Holland's theory of adaptation in complex systems Baldwin and Clark propose an evolutionary theory of design.  They show how this can limit the interdependencies that generate complexity within systems.  They do this through a focus on modularity. 
Modular designed systems
Lou Gerstner describes the challenges he faced and the strategies he used to successfully restructure the computer company IBM. 
Compartmented systems
Grady Booch advocates an object oriented approach to computer software design. 
Object based systems
Bertrand Meyer develops arguments, principles and strategies for creating modular software.  He concludes that abstract data types and inheritence make object orientation a superior methodology for software construction.  Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory suggests agents provide an alternative strategy to the use of objects. 
Software construction
Joseph Tainter introduces the problem of collapse and then develops a theory of complexity and reviews prior theories of collapse of societies.  He then builds a general explanation of collapse and explains declining marginal returns in significant aspects of complex societies, and evaluates the theory by examining its applicability to historical examples.  He then subsumes other explanatory themes into his marginal returns logic and applies it to our current situation. 

Following our summary of his arguments, RSS frames these from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory: CAS entities provide an effective emergence and collapse point.  The history of events which results in each emergence point Tainter reviews introduces constraints on the aggregate entity.  These constraints can help define the emergence and collapse point and remove inconsistencies from the analytic framework.  Tainter's economic framework, conforming to the equilibrium proposed by Walras and Jevons, can benefit from alignment with complexity economics. 
Fall of societal entities
Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved dramatically.  W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred.
Tools
Matt Ridley demonstrates the creative effect of man on the World. He highlights:
  • A list of preconditions resulting in
  • Additional niche capture & more free time 
  • Building a network to interconnect memes processes & tools which
  • Enabling inter-generational transfers
  • Innovations that help reduce environmental stress even as they leverage fossil fuels

Memetic trading networks
E O. Wilson argues that campfire gatherings on the savanna supported the emergence of human creativity.  This resulted in man building cultures and later exploring them, and their creator, through the humanities.  Wilson identifies the transformative events, but he notes many of these are presently ignored by the humanities.  So he calls for a change of approach. 

He:
  • Explores creativity: how it emerged from the benefits of becoming an omnivore hunter-gatherer, enabled by language & its catalysis of invention, through stories told in the evening around the campfire. He notes the power of fine art, but suggests music provides the most revealing signature of aesthetic surprise. 
  • Looks at the current limitations of the humanities, as they have suffered through years of neglect.  
  • Reviews the evolutionary processes of heredity and culture:
    • Ultimate causes viewed through art, & music
    • The bedrock of:
      • Ape senses and emotions,
      • Creative arts, language, dance, song typically studied by humanities, & 
      • Exponential change in science and technology.  
    • How the breakthrough from our primate past occurred, powered by eating meat, supporting: a bigger brain, expanded memory & language. 
    • Accelerating changes now driven by genetic cultural coevolution.  
    • The impact on human nature.  
  • Considers our emotional attachment to the natural world: hunting, gardens; we are destroying. 
  • Reviews our love of metaphor, archetypes, exploration, irony, and considers the potential for a third enlightenment, supported by cooperative action of humanities and science

Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames these from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory:
  • The humanities are seen to be a functionalist framework for representing the cultural CAS while 
  • Wilson's desire to integrate the humanities and science gains support from viewing the endeavor as a network of layered CAS. 

Evening campfire rituals
Brynjolfsson and McAfee explore the effects of Moore's law on the economy.  They argue it has generated exponential growth.  This has been due to innovation.  It has created a huge bounty of additional wealth.  But the wealth is spread unevenly across society.  They look at the short and long term implications of the innovation bounty and spread and the possible future of technology. 

Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory. 

Brilliant technologies
Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane roles.  He highlights a radical and already proven alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning processes supported by technology and freed up attention of teams of teachers.  Building on his personal experience of helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative, Khan:
  • Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging short videos focused on content, Converging on mastery, With the help of neuroscience, and filling in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach to the mainstream method. 
  • Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s, Inducing holes that are hidden by tests, Tests which ignore creativity.  The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to be supplemented with homework.  Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so they could mentor them while they attended school, an inversion that significantly improves the economics. 
  • Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service, Working with a real classroom, Trying stealth learning, At Khan Academy full time,  In the curriculum at Los Altos, Supporting life-long learning. 
  • Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with a one room school, a robust teaching team, and creativity enabled; so with some catalysis even the poorest can become educated and earn credentials for current jobs. 
  • Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based assessments, College education;
  • Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure for creativity to emerge and to support risk taking. 

Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  Disruption is a powerful force for change but if its force is used to support the current teachers to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the current educational network? 

Education versus guilds
Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld's New York Times opinion based on The Triple Package is summarized.  Their ideas are then framed by CAS theory and reviewed. 


What drives success
Peter Turchin describes how major pre-industrial empires developed due to effects of geographic boundaries constraining the empires and their neighbors' interactions.  Turchin shows how the asymmetries of breeding rates and resource growth rates results in dynamic cycles within cycles.  After the summary of Turchin's book complex adaptive system (CAS) theory is used to augment Turchins findings. 
Warrior groups
Through the operation of three different food chains Michael Pollan explores their relative merits.  The application of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory highlights the value of evolutionary testing of the food chain. 
Natural systems
E. O. Wilson & Bert Holldobler illustrate how bundled cooperative strategies can take hold.  Various social insects have developed strategies which have allowed them to capture the most valuable available niches.  Like humans they invest in specialization and cooperate to subdue larger, well equipped competitors. 
Insect superorganisms
Computational theory of the mind and evolutionary psychology provide Steven Pinker with a framework on which to develop his psychological arguments about the mind and its relationship to the brain.  Humans captured a cognitive niche by natural selection 'building out' specialized aspects of their bodies and brains resulting in a system of mental organs we call the mind. 

He garnishes and defends the framework with findings from psychology regarding: The visual system - an example of natural selections solutions to the sensory challenges of inverse modeling of our environment; Intensions - where he highlights the challenges of hunter-gatherers - making sense of the objects they perceive and predicting what they imply and natural selections powerful solutions; Emotions - which Pinker argues are essential to human prioritizing and decision making; Relationships - natural selection's strategies for coping with the most dangerous competitors, other people.  He helps us understand marriage, friendships and war. 

These conclusions allow him to understand the development and maintenance of higher callings: Art, Music, Literature, Humor, Religion, & Philosophy; and develop a position on the meaning of life. 

Complex adaptive system (CAS) modeling allows RSS to frame Pinker's arguments within humanity's current situation, induced by powerful evolved amplifiers: Globalization, Cliodynamics, The green revolution and resource bottlenecks; melding his powerful predictions of the drivers of human behavior with system wide constraints.  The implications are discussed. 

Computationally adapted mind
The stages of development of the human female, including how her brain changes and the impacts of this on her 'reality' across a full life span: conception, infantile puberty, girlhood, juvenile pause, adolescence, dating years, motherhood, post-menopause; are described.  Brizendine notes the significant difference in how emotions are processed by women compared to men. 

Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the stages with the evolutionary under-pinning, psychological implications and behavioral CAS. 

Evolved female brain
The complexity of behavior is explored through Sapolsky developing scenarios of our best and worst behaviors across time spans, and scientific subjects including: anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, sociology.  The rich network of adaptive flows he outlines provides insights and highlight challenges for scientific research on behavior. 

Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory builds on Sapolsky's details highlighting the strategies that evolution has captured to successfully enter niches we now occupy. 

CAS behavior
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time. 
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
  • A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
  • Events are only partially ordered.  The present is localized
  • The difference between past and future is not foundational.  It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears particular to us
  • Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
  • Time's rhythms are due to the gravitational field
  • Our quantized physics shows neither space nor time, just processes transforming physical variables. 
  • Fundamentally there is no time.  The basic equations evolve together with events, not things 
Then he explains how in a physical world without time its perception can emerge:
  • Our familiar time emerges
    • Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred, quantum indeterminate
    • The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
    • Directionality of time is real but perspectival.  The entropy of the world in relation to us increases with our thermal time.  The growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in traces and memories
    • Each human is a unified being because: we reflect the world, we formed an image of a unified entity by interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective of memory
    • The variable time: is one of the variables of the gravitational field.  With our scale we don't register quantum fluctuations, making space-time appear determined.  At our speed we don't perceive differences in time of different clocks, so we experience a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is helpful to our decisions

Emergence of time
Consciousness has confounded philosophers and scientists for centuries.  Now it is finally being characterized scientifically.  That required a transformation of approach. 
Realizing that consciousness was ill-defined neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene and others characterized and focused on conscious access. 
In the book he outlines the limitations of previous psychological dogma.  Instead his use of subjective assessments opened the window to contrast totally unconscious brain activity with those including consciousness. 
He describes the research methods.  He explains the contribution of new sensors and probes that allowed the psychological findings to be correlated, and causally related to specific neural activity. 
He describes the theory of the brain he uses, the 'global neuronal workspace' to position all the experimental details into a whole. 
He reviews how both theory and practice support diagnosis and treatment of real world mental illnesses. 
The implications of Dehaene's findings for subsequent consciousness research are outlined. 
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the brain's development and operation introduce constraints which are discussed. 

Conscious access
Reading and writing present a conundrum.  The reader's brain contains neural networks tuned to reading.  With imaging a written word can be followed as it progresses from the retina through a functional chain that asks: Are these letters? What do they look like? Are they a word? What does it sound like? How is it pronounced? What does it mean?  Dehaene explains the importance of education in tuning the brain's networks for reading as well as good strategies for teaching reading and countering dyslexia.  But he notes the reading networks developed far too recently to have directly evolved.  And Dehaene asks why humans are unique in developing reading and culture. 

He explains the cultural engineering that shaped writing to human vision and the exaptations and neuronal structures that enable and constrain reading and culture. 

Dehaene's arguments show how cellular, whole animal and cultural complex adaptive system (CAS) are related.  We review his explanations in CAS terms and use his insights to link cultural CAS that emerged based on reading and writing with other levels of CAS from which they emerge. 

Evolved reading
Read Montague explores how brains make decisions.  In particular he explains how:
  • Evolution can create indirect abstract models, such as the dopamine system, that allow
  • Life changing real-time decisions to be made, and how
  • Schematic structures provide encodings of computable control structures which operate through and on incomputable, schematically encoded, physically active structures and operationally associated production functions. 
Receptor indirection
Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson describe a scientific investigation of meditation's impact on the brain.  They introduce the book by describing their experiences with meditation, science and the research establishment, their friendship, how meditation is now used in two distinct ways: deep - leading to altered traits & wide - that can reach the multitudes; which the book reviews as it critiques the claims and research used to back them up. 

Goleman and Davidson describe meeting as Harvard psychology graduate students, interested in consciousness, and how minds work.  They rebel against the behavioral orthodoxy, visit Asia and discover the Eastern tradition of exploring and altering the mind. 

Goleman had travelled to Sri Lanka to understand an Asian model of the mind, which he presented to the undergraduates at Harvard.  Goleman and Davidson developed it into a shared vision of consciousness.  It took over twenty years for scientific theory and experimental data to catch up and align with this model.  Much of the prior experimental data had to be abandoned. 

They introduce meditation's impact on the amygdala responding to pain and stress. 

They look at the changes in:
  • Stress
  • Compassion
  • Attention
  • Self-awareness; and the potential for use of mediation in psychiatry. 
And they warn of the occurrence of dark nights. 
They detail how scientists were able to study the brains of Tibetan meditation masters, starting with Mingyur Rinpoche, and detect meditation altering traits. 
Finally they discuss the potential benefits of meditation and strategies to distribute it broadly to a busy America. 

Meditating neurons
Tara Brach was worried from a young age that there was something terribly wrong with her: she like many others felt unworthy.  She responded by developing Radical Acceptance.  Brach then explains the steps in applying it: pause, greet what happens next with unconditional friendliness; allowing us to:
  • Initially attend to the sensations of our body, 
  • Accept the wanting self and discover its source of boundless love.  
  • Welcome fear with a widening attention, accept the pain of death and become free.  
  • Use adversity as a gateway to limitless compassion for ourselves and others.  
  • Focus on our basic goodness to counter Western culture turning anger, at being betrayed, towards ourselves.  Extend observing this goodness in everyone.  This enables the use of loving-kindness.  
  • Leverage friendships to understand more about our shared nature and strengthen Radical Acceptance.  
  • Realize our Buddha nature. 

Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory describes the emergence of the dualistic self and the tree of life linked by the genetic code and machinery.  It provides an analog of the Buddhist presence. 

Compassionate CAS
The influence of childhood on behavior is significant.  Enneagrams define personality types: Reformer, Helper, Achiever, Individualist, Investigator, Loyalist, Enthusiast, Challenger and Peacemaker; based on the impact of childhood driven wounds. 

The Enneagram becomes a tool to enable interested people to transform from the emotionally wounded base, hidden within the armor of the type, to the liberated underlying essence. 

Childhood leaves each of us with some environmentally specific Basic Fear.  In response each of us adopts an induced Basic Desire of the type.  But as we develop the inner observer, it will support presence and undermine the identification that supports the armor of the type. 

The Enneagram reveals three sets of relations about our type armor:
  1. Triadic self revealing: Instinctive, feeling, thinking; childhood needs that became significant wounds
  2. Social style groupings: Assertive, compliant, withdrawn; strategies for managing inner conflict
  3. 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
Jeff Hawkins develops a theory to explain the systemic logic of the repeating structure of the cortical columns of the neocortex.  He shows each column supports modeling of objects mapped via internal reference frames. 

Hawkins divides the brain logically into the old brain and the neocortex, highlighting the latter's contribution to human intelligence: vision, language, music, math, science, engineering, high-level thinking; the neocortex is doing most of the cognitive interpretation. 

Hawkins uses his theory to develop minimal criteria for intelligence and to critique current developments in Machine Intelligence.  He sees the need for a general purpose AI solution, inherently conscious being based on the brain's architecture, rather than the current highly specific technologies that demonstrate no intelligence.  He outlines the broad way forward, and concludes machine intelligence will not become an existential risk for humanity. 

But Hawkins is less sanguine about human intelligence, noting the shortsightedness of emotions, the acceptance and impact of false beliefs and the existential risks enabled by intelligence.  He explores for potential solutions to the dilemma: the potential of integrating brains and machines, preserving what we have discovered, prophylactic actions to limit the damage. 

Finally Hawkins issues a call to arms. 

Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory provides an organizing framework within which organisms and knowledge emerge.  CAS theory equates cortical columns to CAS action agents. 

Cortical columns
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
My song
Bob Iger writes about his leadership strategies based on his life experiences, which describes his immediate family, upbringing, development as a weatherman, production studio supervisor, divisional: ABC Television, Disney Media - where he had the challenge of integrating a centralized and a distributed corporate culture; and enterprise leader at ABC, Capital Cities and Disney: COO, and CEO. 

He describes the struggle Disney CEO Eisner had with giving Iger the COO role, explaining how he learned to approach this challenge.  When the board concluded Disney was floundering and forced out Eisner, Iger had to convince them he was the solution to their dilemma. 

Iger was chosen as the next CEO by the board but also had to convince Roy Disney, and signal the world that he could revitalize the company and partner with Steve Jobs.  Jobs was a catalyst in Iger's acquisition of Marvel, and Lucas Film, and he became a friend and advisor who died too young. 

Iger had to respond to the disruption of Disney's mainline businesses.  He transformed Disney's loose aggregate of businesses into a platform based on BAMTech's streaming media platform which supported the delivery of emotionally charged content direct to the consumer. 

Rupert Murdoch agreed with Iger's response to the disruptive environment and decided to sell Fox to Disney, but there were complications. 

Following our summary of his main points, RSS places Iger's creations within the phalanx of global forces buffeting Disney using the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. 
 
Bob's global technology marvel
Richard Feynman outlines a series of amusing vignettes, as he reviews his life story. 

Richard's personality encouraged him to patiently seek out fun: performing Shewhart cycles with electricity, in his childhood laboratory, and aligning theory, and practice through building and fixing radios.  Leonardo's life inspired him to try innovation, which he concluded was hard.  He played with the emotion in communications, a skill which he used later at Caltech.  And he made a game of avoiding following orders at MIT.  Working during the holidays revealed the benefit of joining theory and practice. 

Feynman enrolled as a graduate student at Princeton, where the successful approach to science was just like his.  His approach was based on patience and fun: he used his home lab and other tools for qualitative exploration.  Overtime he added experimental techniques.  He would test the assertions in articles with amusing investigations; with his mind aligned by feelings of joy.  Everyone at Princeton heard he would want to be hypnotized.  He was driven to compare the challenges of complex subjects being taught at Princeton to his current pick.  In his summer recess he explored biology.  Gathering problems in challenging areas of science, and then picking one to solve, supported his creativity.  And his practical orientation and situation when growing up in Far Rockaway, supported his desire for choices and adolescent dislike for purely intellectual and cultural pursuits.  Being mostly self-taught, he developed different approaches to problems than the standard strategies provided by mass education. 

Richard saw his skill set as very different to that exhibited by his father.  But are they very different?

While Richard was at Princeton, America became concerned about the implications of the European war.  After a friend enlisted he decided to dedicate his summer holiday to helping the war effort.  Feynman got involved in the Manhattan Project, and went to Los Alamos where he experienced constraints, applied by: the military, the physics of the project, him on Niels Bohr; but was freed from them by Von Neumann.  The records & reports of the project were kept in filing cabinets.  Richard explored the weaknesses of the locks and safes deployed to secure these secrets.  Just after the war he was called up by the draft board for a medical but was rejected for being mentally unfit. 

After the war, Richard was asked to become a professor at Cornell.  He initially struggled in this role: Too young to match expectations, stressed by the demands of his new job and his recent experiences; until he adopted an approach that focused on fun.  He enjoyed knowing about numbers: using, learning about them and the tools to use them, and competing with others; to calculate, interpolate and approximate a value the fastest. 
Traveling to Buffalo in a light plane once a week to give a physics lecture before flying back the next morning wasn't much fun for Richard.  So he used the stipend to visit a bar after each lecture to meet beautiful women.  Richard liked bars and nightclubs, spending a summer in Albuquerque frequenting one, and later ones in Las Vegas, as he explored how to get the girls he drank with to sleep with him. 

Richard reflects on various times when he made government officials obey their parts of contracts: patent fees, limits on red tape;
 
Richard became frustrated with his life at Cornell, seeing more things that interested him on the sunny west coast at Caltech.  Both institutions, and Chicago, offered him incentives to help his decision making, but Richard began to find reevaluating the alternatives a waste of time and he saw risks in a really high salary, deciding he would move to Caltech and stay there. 

Richard is invited to attend a scientific symposium in Japan.  Each of the US attendees is asked to learn a little Japanese.  Richard takes lessons, persists, can converse effectively, but stops when he finds the cultural parts of the language conflict with his individualism. 

Richard was unhappy with his achievements in physics.  He felt: slower than his peers, not keeping up or understanding the latest details, fearful that he could not cope; as the community worked to understand the laws of beta decay.  But Martin Block pushed him to question the troubling parity premise.  Encouraged by Oppenheimer the community focused on parity and failures were discovered in a cascade of reports.  Richard attended a meeting where Lee & Yang discussed a failure and a theory to explain it.  Richard felt terrified and could not understand what they said.  His sister pushed him to change his attitude: act like a student having fun, read every line and equation of their paper; he would understand it.  And he did, as well as developing additional insights about what was happening and what still seemed conflicted.  He reported his ideas back to the community.  After Richard returned from Brazil he reviewed the confusion of facts with Caltech's experimental physicists who made him aware of Gell-mann abandoning another former premise of Beta decay.  Feynman realized his ideas were consistent: fully and simply describing the details of beta decay.  He had identified the workings of a fundamental law.  Years later he was awarded the Nobel prize for physics.  He was conflicted about the prize and attending the ceremony, but eventually enjoyed the trip, where he discussed cultural achievement with the Japanese ambassador. 

Richard was interested in the operation of the brain, modeling it on a digital computer.  He explored hallucinations and the reality of experiences. 

Richard lobbies for integrity in science. 

In aspects of his life that weren't focused directly on science, Richard was quirky.  He would tease those who asked for his help: pushing bargains to their logical conclusion; insisting on everyone keeping to their part of the agreement.  And he paid no attention to the logistical details of planning.  He loved percussion, playing: drums, bongos, baskets, tables, Frigideira; and became quite a success.  He eventually discovered art could be fun, and tried to express his joy at the underlying mathematical beauty of the physical world.  He had a great art teacher.  But he discovered although he could eventually draw well he did not understand art. 

Many of the artists he met were fakers, and even the powerful, who were interested in integrating art and science, did not understand either subject.  He found the situation was similar in other complex adaptive systems: philosophy, religion and economics; which he dabbled in for a while but found the strategies of other people practicing the study of such subjects made him angry and disturbed, so he avoided participating in them.  It seemed ironic that he was eventually asked to help in bringing culture to the physicists!

He discusses issues in teaching creative physics in Brazil.  He gets involved in the California public school text book selection process which he concluded was totally broken, but also reveals how his father provided him with a vision of how our world works, inspiring his interest in experimentation and physical theory. 

Following our summary of his main points, RSS reviews how his personality, family and cultural history supported his creative development from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. 
 
Richard draws
Desmond & Moore paint a picture of Charles Darwin's life, expanded from his own highlights:
  • His naughty childhood, 
  • Wasted schooldays,
  • Apprenticeship with Grant,
  • His extramural activities at Cambridge, walks with Henslow, life with FitzRoy on the Beagle,
  • His growing love for science,
  • London: geology, journal and Lyell. 
  • Moving from Gower Street to Down and writing Origin and other books. 
  • He reviewed his position on religion: the long dispute with Emma, his slow collapse of belief - damnation for unbelievers like his father and brother, inward conviction being evolved and unreliable, regretting he had ignored his father's advice; while describing Emma's side of the argument.  He felt happy with his decision to dedicate his life to science.  He closed by asserting after Self & Cross-fertilization his strength will be exhausted.  
Following our summary of their main points, RSS frames the details from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  Darwin placed evolution within a CAS framework, and built a network of supporters whose complementary skills helped drive the innovation. 
 
Darwin emerges
Richard Dawkin's explores how nature has created implementations of designs, without any need for planning or design, through the accumulation of small advantageous changes. 
Accumulating small changes
Russ Abbott explores the impact on science of epiphenomena and the emergence of agents. 
Autonomous emergence
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
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My song

Summary
Reginald Dwight, better known as Elton John, writes a hilarious memoir, full of anecdotal and sometimes morbid humor and gossip is an evolved mechanism to enforce: fairness, indirect reciprocity, and avoidance of despotism.  It allows: reality testing, transfer of news, and consensus building; to maintain norms.  Barkow notes reputation is determined by gossip, with casual conversations of others affecting a person's relative standing and acceptability as a mate and partner in a social exchange.  It is a favorite passtime. 
, which describes his immediate family, upbringing, 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. 
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 is a complex emergent capability supported by sexual selection and generating pleasure.  It transforms the sensing of epiphenomena: Contour, Rhythm, Tempo, Timbre; to induce salient representations: Harmony, Key, Loudness, Melody, Meter, Pitch, and perceptions: Reverberation - echo; which allow musicians: Elton John, Elvis Presley; to show their fitness: superior coordination, creativity, adolescent leadership, stamina; true for birds and humans.  Levitin showed that listening to music causes a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: auditory cortex, frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, and finally the mesolimbic system, culminating in the nucleus accumbens.  And he found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout the session.  He argues music mimics some of the features of language and conveys some of the same emotions.  The brain regions pulse with the beat and predict the next one.  As the music is heard it is modeled and generates dopamine rewards for matching each beat and noting creative jokes in the rhythm.  The cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized. 
.  He describes the contributions  of his parents, Stanley was Reg's father, who worked in the Royal Air Force, but also played trumpet in a band, through which he met his first wife Sheila - who came to watch.  He also loved football (soccer) and his nephews were professional footballers.  He was often away from home, was stubborn and rule bound when he was there, had a terrible short temper, was always critical of Reg, and arguing with his wife.  After they divorced he remarried and had four more boys who adored him.  But he was never able to show any affection to Reg.  He died in 1991 and Reg could not bring himself to attend the funeral. 
& Sheila was Reg's mother, who was a shop worker.  When she wanted to she was fun, and loved music: Billy May and His Orchestra, Ted Heath, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine, Nat King Cole, Guy Mitchell; and dancing, but she liked people to fear her.  She looked for arguments, was stubborn and had a terrible short temper.  After she left her first husband, Stanley, she married Fred and life became more tranquil for a while. 
, mother's sister, and her mother Ivy was Reg Dwight's maternal grandmother.  He recalls her as: no nonsense, hard-working, kind, funny, a great cook, loved a drink and a game of cards.  She always had music playing, from the radio, record player or their piano.  After her first husband died of cancer, she had remarried Horace Sewell, who was a gardener, introverted, had lost a leg in the Great War and was kind. 
; 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 (DJM):
  • Is a music production company in New Oxford Street, London
  • Administered Ray Williams of Liberty Records, production company
  • Employed Caleb Quaye as in-house engineer.  And Steve Brown as studio manager. 
  • Dick James funded Elton John and Bernie Taupin's song publishing, paying Elton extra to sing and play piano on the demo recordings.  Once James realized the potential of Elton & Bernie's second album he drove it and them through the evolved amplifier of American entertainment and communications. 
  • Tony King worked on publishing and promotion for George Martin's association of independent record producers (AIR) from a desk he rented from DJM.  He influenced Elton's style, introduced him to his network of friends, and helped him find work as a session musician. 
.  And he almost got married. 

DJM is Dick James Music:
  • Is a music production company in New Oxford Street, London
  • Administered Ray Williams of Liberty Records, production company
  • Employed Caleb Quaye as in-house engineer.  And Steve Brown as studio manager. 
  • Dick James funded Elton John and Bernie Taupin's song publishing, paying Elton extra to sing and play piano on the demo recordings.  Once James realized the potential of Elton & Bernie's second album he drove it and them through the evolved amplifier of American entertainment and communications. 
  • Tony King worked on publishing and promotion for George Martin's association of independent record producers (AIR) from a desk he rented from DJM.  He influenced Elton's style, introduced him to his network of friends, and helped him find work as a session musician. 
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 is the United States of America.   where Elton became an overnight sensation.  And during this period of time Elton's testosterone is a hormone secreted by the testes, ovaries, and adrenal glands, in response to stimulation from the hypothalamic/pituitary/testicular cascade, that makes humans more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status, according to Sapolsky.  That means players of the Ultimatum Game, if previously given testosterone can become more generous.  High testosterone in a fetus masculinizes the brain.  Males generate 10 times the amount.  It is the trigger for sexual desire in males and females, stimulating the hypothalamus.  Testosterone's effect is highly socially contextual so it may encourage acts of kindness or aggression (when challenged).  The level of testosterone does not predict which individuals will be aggressive in: Birds, Fish, Mammals including primates.  Genes impact the potency of testosterone by altering the enzymes that: Construct it, Convert it to estrogen, code the androgen receptor.   This androgen receptor includes a variable polyglutamine repeat which alters the sensitivity to the testosterone signal.  The more potent form is associated with boys showing more dramatic 'masculinization' of the cortex.  But the detected genetic influences are small.  Testosterone decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex and its functional coupling to the amygdala while increasing the coupling between the amygdala & the thalamus.  Testosterone shortens the refactory period of amygdaloid & amygdaloid target neurons.  This results in impulsive risk taking and more focus on unfamiliar faces and distrust of them.  Testosterone increases activity in the ventral tegmentum projecting dopamine to enhance place preference.  Winners of fights become more willing to fight in part due to testosterone increasing confidence and optimism and reducing fear and anxiety.  And winning at: Chess, Athletics, Stock trades; induces the BNST to add testosterone receptors increasing its sensitivity to the hormone.  People become overconfident and overly optimistic. 
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 signals the power to hurt a rival.  Maynard Smith & Parker explain that in group situations females compete for food and males compete for females.  Maleness is a huge factor for violence.  Fighting to the death is costly for all participants so instead they indicate:
  • Size and weapons to demonstrate who will win.  Males who are, or look like, better fighters: Large heads, Big men, Height; gain in dominance. 
  • Political acumen to demonstrate they won't be pushed around and have the support of other powerful groups.  Dominant males push other rivals aside and gain interest of females, enabling themselves to replicate more.  Being a signal its authenticity can be challenged and so must be defended to remain credible.  Hotheads leverage the doomsday machine to constrain rational challenges.  Bands and cultures leverage honor.  Youth and lack of resources reduce the power of rivals' political constraints. 
- limiting feedback, doing whatever he hopes will bring him happiness is an emotion which functions to mobilize the mind to seek capabilities and resources that support Darwinian fitness.  Today happiness is associated with Epicurean ideas that were rediscovered during the renaissance and promoted by Thomas Jefferson.  But natural selection has 'designed' happiness to support hunter-gatherer fitness in the African savanna.  It is assessed: Relative to other's situations, Based on small gains or losses relative to one's current situation; and so what makes us [un-]happy and our responses can seem a counter-productive treadmill.  For Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in the savanna there were many ways for losses to undermine fitness and so losses still make us very unhappy.  Smoking, drinking and excessive eating were not significant and so don't make us unhappy even though they impact longevity.  : trying new options, expanding the range and increasing the quantity of mind altering substances; eventually hitting John Reid is an outrageous, gay Scotsman.  He grew up as a tough guy from Paisley, but is also funny, ambitious, confident and the UK label manager for Tamla Motown.  He convinced Motown to release Tears Of A Clown as a single.  He and Elton John became a couple and he became Elton's manager.  After they split up, John managed other stars including Billy Connolly and Queen.  Once again he picked out Bohemian Rhapsody as a huge hit.  John continued to manage Elton's financial affairs, while Elton generated revenue and royalties from record sales and performances and spent exorbitantly.  After Elton agreed with Reid to sell his historic and future royalty stream for a lump sum, Elton's revenues did not cover his expenses and spending.  Elton disputed the fairness of John Reid Enterprises' management of his accounts, demanded that Reid return some capital, and terminated the management relationship.  John Reid returned $5 million to Elton, gave up his share of Elton's future royalties, closed down his management company and retired. 
and marrying Renata. 

He allows his drug use to enter the recording studio.  Problems stress him.  He is frightened by a cancer is the out-of-control growth of cells, which have stopped obeying their cooperative schematic planning and signalling infrastructure.  It results from compounded: oncogene, tumor suppressor, DNA caretaker; mutations in the DNA.  In 2010 one third of Americans are likely to die of cancer.  Cell division rates did not predict likelihood of cancer.  Viral infections are associated.  Radiation and carcinogen exposure are associated.  Lifestyle impacts the likelihood of cancer occurring: Drinking alcohol to excess, lack of exercise, Obesity, Smoking, More sun than your evolved melanin protection level; all significantly increase the risk of cancer occurring (Jul 2016). 
scare, AIDS is acquired auto-immune deficiency syndrome, a pandemic disease caused by the HIV.  It also amplifies the threat of tuberculosis.   Initially deadly, infecting and destroying the T-lymphocytes of the immune system, it can now be treated with HAART to become a chronic disease.  And with an understanding of HIV's mode of entry into the T-cells, through its binding to CCR5 and CD4 encoded transmembrane proteins, AIDS may be susceptible to treatment with recombinant DNA to alter the CCR5 binding site, or with drugs that bind to the CCR5 cell surface protein preventing binding by the virus.  Future optimization of drug delivery may leverage nanoscale research (May 2016). 
, inspired by Ryan White, angered is an emotion which protects a person who has been cheated by a supposed friend.  When the exploitation of the altruism is discovered, Steven Pinker explains, the result is a drive for moralistic aggression to hurt the cheater.  Anger is mostly experienced as a rapid wave that then quickly dissipates.  When it is repressed, for example by a strong moral sense (superego), it can sustain, inducing long term stress. 
by the Sun, and saddened is a feeling, which can induce empathy and compassion.  It can last for days, in contrast to the emotions, fear & anger.  Mild sadness induces a beneficial state in the brain: improved judgment, memory, motivation, and more socially sensitive and generous. 
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 results from changes in the operation of the brain's reward network's regulatory regions, altering the anticipation of rewards.  Addictive drugs mediate the receptors of the reward network, increasing dopamine in the pleasure centers of the cortex.  The learned association of the situation with the reward makes addiction highly prone to relapse, when the situation is subsequently experienced.  This makes addiction a chronic disease, where the sufferer must remain vigilant to avoid relapse inducing situations.  Repeated exposure to the addictive drug alters the reward network.  The neurons that produce dopamine are impaired, no longer sending dopamine to the reward target areas, reducing the feeling of pleasure.  But the situational association remains strong driving the addict to repeat the addictive activity.  Destroying the memory of the pleasure inducer may provide a treatment for addiction in the future.  Addiction has a genetic component, which supports inheritance.  Some other compulsive disorders: eating, gambling, sexual behavior; are similar to drug addiction. 
.  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 is an outrageous, gay Scotsman.  He grew up as a tough guy from Paisley, but is also funny, ambitious, confident and the UK label manager for Tamla Motown.  He convinced Motown to release Tears Of A Clown as a single.  He and Elton John became a couple and he became Elton's manager.  After they split up, John managed other stars including Billy Connolly and Queen.  Once again he picked out Bohemian Rhapsody as a huge hit.  John continued to manage Elton's financial affairs, while Elton generated revenue and royalties from record sales and performances and spent exorbitantly.  After Elton agreed with Reid to sell his historic and future royalty stream for a lump sum, Elton's revenues did not cover his expenses and spending.  Elton disputed the fairness of John Reid Enterprises' management of his accounts, demanded that Reid return some capital, and terminated the management relationship.  John Reid returned $5 million to Elton, gave up his share of Elton's future royalties, closed down his management company and retired. 
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 is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.   allows.  Elton's mum was Reg's mother, who was a shop worker.  When she wanted to she was fun, and loved music: Billy May and His Orchestra, Ted Heath, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine, Nat King Cole, Guy Mitchell; and dancing, but she liked people to fear her.  She looked for arguments, was stubborn and had a terrible short temper.  After she left her first husband, Stanley, she married Fred and life became more tranquil for a while. 
remains difficult and cruel to him, but he is sad is a feeling, which can induce empathy and compassion.  It can last for days, in contrast to the emotions, fear & anger.  Mild sadness induces a beneficial state in the brain: improved judgment, memory, motivation, and more socially sensitive and generous. 
when she dies, and many at the funeral recall her fun side with him.  Being parents increases the long-term stresses is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels.  Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight.  As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate.  A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance.  The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. 
  • The short term response to the stressor
    • activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response.  The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated.  The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail.  In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area.  The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC.  But when the stressor is
  • long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues.  Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in.  Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status.  It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition.  Sustained stress:
    • Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment! 
    • Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala. 
      • Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful. 
      • BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning. 
    • Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory.  Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala.  And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces.  Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers.  A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand.  The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds. 
    • Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression. 
    • Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive.  It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.  
    • Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017) 
  • During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.  
  • Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness. 
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 is Rob's Strategy Studio frames the details of the creative process from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS)
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory frame.  The theory provides an organizing framework that is used by 'life.'  It can illuminate and clarify complex situations and be applied flexibly.  It can be used to evaluate and rank models that claim to describe our perceived reality.  It catalogs the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems that are based on the interaction of emergent agents.  It highlights the constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form.  A proposal that does not conform is wrong. 

John Holland's framework for representing complexity is outlined.  Links to other key aspects of CAS theory discussed at the site are presented. 
theory. 
 
Me
In Reginald Dwight/Elton John's autobiography 'Me', he recalls chronologically the key points in his life, once he has described his pivotal shift of identity. 

Prologue
Working in the backing band for Long John Baldry was an exceptional British 12-string guitarist and entertainer, who had the misfortune to become popular because of 'Let The Heartaches Begin,' an orchestral arrangement with a female chorus that became a number one hit.  Baldry was suddenly in demand at high paying supper clubs.  He was an important catalyst in Reg Dwight's emergence as Elton John: hilarious, eccentric, openly gay, told Reg that he was also gay, that Reg should not get married, and Baldry moved Bluesology from performing at rhythm & blues clubs to the supper club circuit; so even Reg could see he needed a change. 
, as the organ player in Bluesology was a second rate British blues band, which became Long John Baldry's backing band, after the breakup of Steampacket.  The lineup included: Stu Brown - singer, Pete Gavin, drummer Mick Inkpen, Elton Dean - jazz sax player, Reg Dwight on electric-piano & house organ.  It was funded and managed by Soho jeweler Arnold Tendler. 
, while rock music was transforming popular 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. 
, it became apparent to Reg Dwight, already rejected by Liberty Records was a progressive rock label.  Ray Williams was scouting for talent but rejected Reg Dwight.  However, Ray gave Reg the details of a lyricist, Bernie Taupin, and later helped the song writing pair produce records through his own publishing company which was administered by Dick James Music. 
, that he must change - everything!, to achieve dominance signals the power to hurt a rival.  Maynard Smith & Parker explain that in group situations females compete for food and males compete for females.  Maleness is a huge factor for violence.  Fighting to the death is costly for all participants so instead they indicate:
  • Size and weapons to demonstrate who will win.  Males who are, or look like, better fighters: Large heads, Big men, Height; gain in dominance. 
  • Political acumen to demonstrate they won't be pushed around and have the support of other powerful groups.  Dominant males push other rivals aside and gain interest of females, enabling themselves to replicate more.  Being a signal its authenticity can be challenged and so must be defended to remain credible.  Hotheads leverage the doomsday machine to constrain rational challenges.  Bands and cultures leverage honor.  Youth and lack of resources reduce the power of rivals' political constraints. 
as a performer.  He, resigned from Bluesology, assumed the identity of Elton John (Elton from Elton Dean and John from Long John Baldry) and partnered with, a far superior lyricist to him, Bernie Taupin with the goal of making a business out of writing and supplying songs to Denmark Street in Central London was Britain's Tin Pan Alley, a value delivery system, transforming song writer's creations into sheet music and recordings of singers and musicians performing them.  With the advent of Bob Dylan and the Beatles, this network started a Schumpeterian collapse. 
. 

9 One
Reg explains that his mom was Reg's mother, who was a shop worker.  When she wanted to she was fun, and loved music: Billy May and His Orchestra, Ted Heath, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine, Nat King Cole, Guy Mitchell; and dancing, but she liked people to fear her.  She looked for arguments, was stubborn and had a terrible short temper.  After she left her first husband, Stanley, she married Fred and life became more tranquil for a while. 
introduced him to Elvis Presley was a singer and entertainer who, according to Elton John, transformed southern US black blues and rock & roll music and introduced the result: Heartbreak Hotel - raw, sparse, slow, reverberating and eerie; to white audiences who felt the 'energy' Elvis signalled.  Presley's appearance: clothes, hair, stance; was as striking and remarkable for the time as his music. 
's Heartbreak Hotel.  After work each Friday, she liked to bring home new records, exploring new musical is a complex emergent capability supported by sexual selection and generating pleasure.  It transforms the sensing of epiphenomena: Contour, Rhythm, Tempo, Timbre; to induce salient representations: Harmony, Key, Loudness, Melody, Meter, Pitch, and perceptions: Reverberation - echo; which allow musicians: Elton John, Elvis Presley; to show their fitness: superior coordination, creativity, adolescent leadership, stamina; true for birds and humans.  Levitin showed that listening to music causes a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: auditory cortex, frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, and finally the mesolimbic system, culminating in the nucleus accumbens.  And he found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout the session.  He argues music mimics some of the features of language and conveys some of the same emotions.  The brain regions pulse with the beat and predict the next one.  As the music is heard it is modeled and generates dopamine rewards for matching each beat and noting creative jokes in the rhythm.  The cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized. 
genres, which he loved.  On this occasion, taking in Presley's power deeply impacted Reg.  He had an eye for performance, already inspired by Winifred Atwell was a Trinidadian pianist and performer.  She entertained on stage with two pianos: baby grand for light classical music and an upright for ragtime & pub songs; which, according to Elton John, she performed with glee, giving the impression she was having the best time in the world. 
, but Presley's presence changed everything for him and many others. 

His 'love 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. 
' of music is a complex emergent capability supported by sexual selection and generating pleasure.  It transforms the sensing of epiphenomena: Contour, Rhythm, Tempo, Timbre; to induce salient representations: Harmony, Key, Loudness, Melody, Meter, Pitch, and perceptions: Reverberation - echo; which allow musicians: Elton John, Elvis Presley; to show their fitness: superior coordination, creativity, adolescent leadership, stamina; true for birds and humans.  Levitin showed that listening to music causes a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: auditory cortex, frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, and finally the mesolimbic system, culminating in the nucleus accumbens.  And he found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout the session.  He argues music mimics some of the features of language and conveys some of the same emotions.  The brain regions pulse with the beat and predict the next one.  As the music is heard it is modeled and generates dopamine rewards for matching each beat and noting creative jokes in the rhythm.  The cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized. 
was enhanced by playing records and the piano, including rock and roll when his father was out, with positive, 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. 
feedback from the family when he performed during their sing-songs.  He took piano lessons, and his teacher encouraged him to test for the Royal Academy of Music, part of the University of London, located on the Marylebone Road in London, teaches music composition, conducting, musicianship and performance, including singing and playing instruments.  It has a Junior Academy where young musicians under the age of 18 train, and a Senior Academy teaching for degrees. 
, which he attended most Saturday mornings from age 11.  The Academy focused only on classical music is a complex emergent capability supported by sexual selection and generating pleasure.  It transforms the sensing of epiphenomena: Contour, Rhythm, Tempo, Timbre; to induce salient representations: Harmony, Key, Loudness, Melody, Meter, Pitch, and perceptions: Reverberation - echo; which allow musicians: Elton John, Elvis Presley; to show their fitness: superior coordination, creativity, adolescent leadership, stamina; true for birds and humans.  Levitin showed that listening to music causes a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: auditory cortex, frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, and finally the mesolimbic system, culminating in the nucleus accumbens.  And he found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout the session.  He argues music mimics some of the features of language and conveys some of the same emotions.  The brain regions pulse with the beat and predict the next one.  As the music is heard it is modeled and generates dopamine rewards for matching each beat and noting creative jokes in the rhythm.  The cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized. 
and was very intimidating to Reg, who admits to being a lazy student.  But he liked singing in the choir, and playing melodic music: Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin; and had a motivating teacher Helen Piena.  While he was more interested in improvisation and didn't have the large hand-span of a concert pianist, he notes that his subsequent music compositions were all influenced by the classical ideas he learned there: collaboration, chord structures, how to construct a song, and writing songs with more than three or four chords.  And he collaborated with talented people from there: the producer Chris Thomas, the arranger Paul Buckmaster, harpist Skaila Kanga and percussionist Ray Cooper. 

Reg's dad was Reg's father, who worked in the Royal Air Force, but also played trumpet in a band, through which he met his first wife Sheila - who came to watch.  He also loved football (soccer) and his nephews were professional footballers.  He was often away from home, was stubborn and rule bound when he was there, had a terrible short temper, was always critical of Reg, and arguing with his wife.  After they divorced he remarried and had four more boys who adored him.  But he was never able to show any affection to Reg.  He died in 1991 and Reg could not bring himself to attend the funeral. 
worked for the RAF and was often away from home.   So Reg grew up with his mom was Reg's mother, who was a shop worker.  When she wanted to she was fun, and loved music: Billy May and His Orchestra, Ted Heath, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine, Nat King Cole, Guy Mitchell; and dancing, but she liked people to fear her.  She looked for arguments, was stubborn and had a terrible short temper.  After she left her first husband, Stanley, she married Fred and life became more tranquil for a while. 
, aunt Win, maternal grand-mother was Reg Dwight's maternal grandmother.  He recalls her as: no nonsense, hard-working, kind, funny, a great cook, loved a drink and a game of cards.  She always had music playing, from the radio, record player or their piano.  After her first husband died of cancer, she had remarried Horace Sewell, who was a gardener, introverted, had lost a leg in the Great War and was kind. 
and her second husband.  Reg loved his grand-mother, who was the matriarch: cook, and always surrounded by visitors and music: on the radio, record player, or sing-songs around the piano.  This helped Reg develop an affinity for music. 

Reg's father, Stanley was Reg's father, who worked in the Royal Air Force, but also played trumpet in a band, through which he met his first wife Sheila - who came to watch.  He also loved football (soccer) and his nephews were professional footballers.  He was often away from home, was stubborn and rule bound when he was there, had a terrible short temper, was always critical of Reg, and arguing with his wife.  After they divorced he remarried and had four more boys who adored him.  But he was never able to show any affection to Reg.  He died in 1991 and Reg could not bring himself to attend the funeral. 
never showed any affection towards him.  Strongly critical, stubborn, short tempered and angry is an emotion which protects a person who has been cheated by a supposed friend.  When the exploitation of the altruism is discovered, Steven Pinker explains, the result is a drive for moralistic aggression to hurt the cheater.  Anger is mostly experienced as a rapid wave that then quickly dissipates.  When it is repressed, for example by a strong moral sense (superego), it can sustain, inducing long term stress. 
most of the time, he did however, praise Reg for his performances in family sing-songs.  And he encouraged Reg's supporting and attending Watford Football Club.  Even after Stanley had died in 1991, Elton writes that he was still "trying to show my father what I'm made of." 

Reg's mother, Sheila was Reg's mother, who was a shop worker.  When she wanted to she was fun, and loved music: Billy May and His Orchestra, Ted Heath, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine, Nat King Cole, Guy Mitchell; and dancing, but she liked people to fear her.  She looked for arguments, was stubborn and had a terrible short temper.  After she left her first husband, Stanley, she married Fred and life became more tranquil for a while. 
ensured that as a child, Reg was terrified of her is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful.  The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger.  There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amygdala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala.  Tara Brach notes we experience fear as a painfully constricted throat, chest and belly, and racing heart.  The mind can build stories of the future which include fearful situations making us anxious about current ideas and actions that we associate with the potential future scenario.  And it can associate traumatic events from early childhood with our being at fault.  Consequent assumptions of our being unworthy can result in shame and fear of losing friendships.  The mechanism for human fear was significantly evolved to protect us in the African savanna.  This does not align perfectly with our needs in current environments: U.S. Grant was unusually un-afraid of the noise or risk of guns and trusted his horses' judgment, which mostly benefited his agency as a modern soldier. 
.  As often happens he worried that he was the cause of her rage is a doomsday machine emotion of uncontrollable righteous anger. 
.  But her sister, Win, assured Reg that his mother had always been angry is an emotion which protects a person who has been cheated by a supposed friend.  When the exploitation of the altruism is discovered, Steven Pinker explains, the result is a drive for moralistic aggression to hurt the cheater.  Anger is mostly experienced as a rapid wave that then quickly dissipates.  When it is repressed, for example by a strong moral sense (superego), it can sustain, inducing long term stress. 
.  His mom supported Reg leaving school early to become a musician is a complex emergent capability supported by sexual selection and generating pleasure.  It transforms the sensing of epiphenomena: Contour, Rhythm, Tempo, Timbre; to induce salient representations: Harmony, Key, Loudness, Melody, Meter, Pitch, and perceptions: Reverberation - echo; which allow musicians: Elton John, Elvis Presley; to show their fitness: superior coordination, creativity, adolescent leadership, stamina; true for birds and humans.  Levitin showed that listening to music causes a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: auditory cortex, frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, and finally the mesolimbic system, culminating in the nucleus accumbens.  And he found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout the session.  He argues music mimics some of the features of language and conveys some of the same emotions.  The brain regions pulse with the beat and predict the next one.  As the music is heard it is modeled and generates dopamine rewards for matching each beat and noting creative jokes in the rhythm.  The cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized. 
. 

Reg's mom was Reg's mother, who was a shop worker.  When she wanted to she was fun, and loved music: Billy May and His Orchestra, Ted Heath, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine, Nat King Cole, Guy Mitchell; and dancing, but she liked people to fear her.  She looked for arguments, was stubborn and had a terrible short temper.  After she left her first husband, Stanley, she married Fred and life became more tranquil for a while. 
and dad was Reg's father, who worked in the Royal Air Force, but also played trumpet in a band, through which he met his first wife Sheila - who came to watch.  He also loved football (soccer) and his nephews were professional footballers.  He was often away from home, was stubborn and rule bound when he was there, had a terrible short temper, was always critical of Reg, and arguing with his wife.  After they divorced he remarried and had four more boys who adored him.  But he was never able to show any affection to Reg.  He died in 1991 and Reg could not bring himself to attend the funeral. 
did not get on, making them difficult to live with and hard to please.  His dad discouraged Reg's interest in becoming a performer while his mother supported it.  Once they divorced, Reg stayed with his mom and when she remarried, to Fred, who Reg: liked, rapidly accepted as his step-dad and nicknamed Derf; they all moved in together.  Derf also encouraged Reg's interest in performing, collecting tips for him as Reg sang and played piano at the pub: the Northwood Hills Hotel public bar; where, as the alcohol flowed, fights broke out.  But that audience appreciated Reg's performance: Jim Reeves songs, Johnnie Ray, Elvis Presley was a singer and entertainer who, according to Elton John, transformed southern US black blues and rock & roll music and introduced the result: Heartbreak Hotel - raw, sparse, slow, reverberating and eerie; to white audiences who felt the 'energy' Elvis signalled.  Presley's appearance: clothes, hair, stance; was as striking and remarkable for the time as his music. 
, Al Jolson, and British pub songs; which they loved.  Reg got great tips. 

Focused on music is a complex emergent capability supported by sexual selection and generating pleasure.  It transforms the sensing of epiphenomena: Contour, Rhythm, Tempo, Timbre; to induce salient representations: Harmony, Key, Loudness, Melody, Meter, Pitch, and perceptions: Reverberation - echo; which allow musicians: Elton John, Elvis Presley; to show their fitness: superior coordination, creativity, adolescent leadership, stamina; true for birds and humans.  Levitin showed that listening to music causes a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: auditory cortex, frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, and finally the mesolimbic system, culminating in the nucleus accumbens.  And he found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout the session.  He argues music mimics some of the features of language and conveys some of the same emotions.  The brain regions pulse with the beat and predict the next one.  As the music is heard it is modeled and generates dopamine rewards for matching each beat and noting creative jokes in the rhythm.  The cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized. 
, especially performance, and supporting Watford football club, Reg's school work suffered, so when his professional footballer cousin, Roy, got him the offer of a job in the music industry in Central London was Britain's Tin Pan Alley, a value delivery system, transforming song writer's creations into sheet music and recordings of singers and musicians performing them.  With the advent of Bob Dylan and the Beatles, this network started a Schumpeterian collapse. 
Reg took it, with the support of his mom and headmaster.  He guesses his father disapproved. 

33 Two
Reg loved Denmark Street in Central London was Britain's Tin Pan Alley, a value delivery system, transforming song writer's creations into sheet music and recordings of singers and musicians performing them.  With the advent of Bob Dylan and the Beatles, this network started a Schumpeterian collapse. 
even though his own job was mostly logistical: packaging sheet music and taking it to the post office.  There were lots of young, keen musicians is a complex emergent capability supported by sexual selection and generating pleasure.  It transforms the sensing of epiphenomena: Contour, Rhythm, Tempo, Timbre; to induce salient representations: Harmony, Key, Loudness, Melody, Meter, Pitch, and perceptions: Reverberation - echo; which allow musicians: Elton John, Elvis Presley; to show their fitness: superior coordination, creativity, adolescent leadership, stamina; true for birds and humans.  Levitin showed that listening to music causes a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: auditory cortex, frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, and finally the mesolimbic system, culminating in the nucleus accumbens.  And he found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout the session.  He argues music mimics some of the features of language and conveys some of the same emotions.  The brain regions pulse with the beat and predict the next one.  As the music is heard it is modeled and generates dopamine rewards for matching each beat and noting creative jokes in the rhythm.  The cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized. 
, instrument shops, and fun.  He notes the business model of writers, and producers creating songs for entertainers, was clearly being
This page reviews Christensen's disruption of a complex adaptive system (CAS).  The mechanism is discussed with examples from biology and business. 
disrupted by the new generation of player-composers: Bob Dylan, Beatles; who did not need writers to create songs for them. 

Reg became part of a band, playing his electric-piano in Bluesology was a second rate British blues band, which became Long John Baldry's backing band, after the breakup of Steampacket.  The lineup included: Stu Brown - singer, Pete Gavin, drummer Mick Inkpen, Elton Dean - jazz sax player, Reg Dwight on electric-piano & house organ.  It was funded and managed by Soho jeweler Arnold Tendler. 
.  With a little funding and lots of bookings from its manager, the group performed on the blues circuit in the UK, and went over to Germany's Reeperbahn.  Reg notes the wild life of Hamburg passed him by.  He was totally focused on playing and buying records and was very ambitious.  Bluesology was a second rate British blues band, which became Long John Baldry's backing band, after the breakup of Steampacket.  The lineup included: Stu Brown - singer, Pete Gavin, drummer Mick Inkpen, Elton Dean - jazz sax player, Reg Dwight on electric-piano & house organ.  It was funded and managed by Soho jeweler Arnold Tendler. 
provided backing to top-rate entertainers from the US, who Reg observed closely, learning the form of the art. 
But Reg also observed other bands: The Move with guitarist and writer Roy Wood; who were much better than Bluesology.  And he knew he wasn't an organist: it was a complicated instrument played by specialists: Brian Auger, Steve Winwood; that often left him flummoxed when it misbehaved. 
For a while, when Long John Baldry was an exceptional British 12-string guitarist and entertainer, who had the misfortune to become popular because of 'Let The Heartaches Begin,' an orchestral arrangement with a female chorus that became a number one hit.  Baldry was suddenly in demand at high paying supper clubs.  He was an important catalyst in Reg Dwight's emergence as Elton John: hilarious, eccentric, openly gay, told Reg that he was also gay, that Reg should not get married, and Baldry moved Bluesology from performing at rhythm & blues clubs to the supper club circuit; so even Reg could see he needed a change. 
leveraged Bluesology was a second rate British blues band, which became Long John Baldry's backing band, after the breakup of Steampacket.  The lineup included: Stu Brown - singer, Pete Gavin, drummer Mick Inkpen, Elton Dean - jazz sax player, Reg Dwight on electric-piano & house organ.  It was funded and managed by Soho jeweler Arnold Tendler. 
as his backing band, Reg found him such great company that he could ignore his dissatisfaction with his career progress. 

Eventually, he resigned from Bluesology, adopted the persona of Elton John, and responded to a talent advert by Liberty Records, which initiated his partnership with Bernie Taupin.  Elton found Bernie's lyrics magical and their disjoint way of working: composing separately, lyrics produced first by Bernie with music subsequently added by Elton; invigorating.  Liberty was a progressive rock label.  Ray Williams was scouting for talent but rejected Reg Dwight.  However, Ray gave Reg the details of a lyricist, Bernie Taupin, and later helped the song writing pair produce records through his own publishing company which was administered by Dick James Music. 
's Ray Williams agreed to publish their songs through his own company, which leveraged the resources of Dick James Music (DJM):
  • Is a music production company in New Oxford Street, London
  • Administered Ray Williams of Liberty Records, production company
  • Employed Caleb Quaye as in-house engineer.  And Steve Brown as studio manager. 
  • Dick James funded Elton John and Bernie Taupin's song publishing, paying Elton extra to sing and play piano on the demo recordings.  Once James realized the potential of Elton & Bernie's second album he drove it and them through the evolved amplifier of American entertainment and communications. 
  • Tony King worked on publishing and promotion for George Martin's association of independent record producers (AIR) from a desk he rented from DJM.  He influenced Elton's style, introduced him to his network of friends, and helped him find work as a session musician. 
: Caleb Quaye worked as the in-house engineer at Dick James Music.  He focused his time and DJM's resources on developing recordings of Elton John & Bernie Taupin's songs.  Against company rules, he secretly worked on them at night, bringing in session musicians to try out arrangements and production ideas.  When discovered he played the tapes to Dick James who offered to fund Elton and Bernie's productions. 
, Tony King worked in the offices of DJM, renting a desk where he did publishing and promotions for George Martin's association of independent record producers (AIR).  Elton explains he was notable for his style: suits, velvet trousers, satin items, from the hippest tailors in London, antique silk scarves, dyed hair with blond highlights; was openly gay.  He had worked for The Rolling Stones, Roy Orbison and was friends with The Beatles.  Elton found Tony hilarious and wanted to be like him - stylish, exotic, and outrageous.  Tony included Elton in his dinner parties with friends including John Reid.  And through his network of connections at AIR and Abbey Road, Tony helped Elton become one of their session musicians.  Later when Tony was general manager of Apple Records' US operation he introduced Elton to John Lennon.  Tony went on to focus on helping the Rolling Stones and Elton make their tour shows exceptional. 
; who helped with the 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. 
and got Dick James to agree to fund them.  Elton & Bernie focused on writing two types of songs: those targeted at middle of the road performers, those extending the musical forms they liked to listen to: The Beatles, The Moody Blues, Cat Stevens, Leonard Cohen; numbers that they emulated and
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. 
iteratively
This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).  The mechanism and its emergence are discussed. 
evolved; which eventually led to them writing Skyline Pigeon - their first unique sounding song. 

While still performing with Bluesology was a second rate British blues band, which became Long John Baldry's backing band, after the breakup of Steampacket.  The lineup included: Stu Brown - singer, Pete Gavin, drummer Mick Inkpen, Elton Dean - jazz sax player, Reg Dwight on electric-piano & house organ.  It was funded and managed by Soho jeweler Arnold Tendler. 
, Elton met Linda Woodrow who was independently wealthy and decided to become Elton's wife.  She admired Buddy Greco and worked to shape Elton in this image.  She purchased a flat in Islington and Elton and Bernie moved in.  Even when Elton feigned suicide, Linda persisted with her goals.  But Elton's mom was against the arrangement, and Bernie felt bullied by her, and that she was a threat to the developing business partnership with Elton.  Elton suggests his stubborn nature and dislike for confrontation led him to go along with Linda and set a date for the marriage.  It took Long John Baldry was an exceptional British 12-string guitarist and entertainer, who had the misfortune to become popular because of 'Let The Heartaches Begin,' an orchestral arrangement with a female chorus that became a number one hit.  Baldry was suddenly in demand at high paying supper clubs.  He was an important catalyst in Reg Dwight's emergence as Elton John: hilarious, eccentric, openly gay, told Reg that he was also gay, that Reg should not get married, and Baldry moved Bluesology from performing at rhythm & blues clubs to the supper club circuit; so even Reg could see he needed a change. 
, surrounded by other notable musicians at the Bag O' Nails to convince Elton: of his homosexuality, that he liked Bernie more than Linda; to break off the relationship. 

55 Three
Initially there was no interest in either type of song that Elton and Bernie were writing.  They made the best of a bad situation:
DJM is Dick James Music:
  • Is a music production company in New Oxford Street, London
  • Administered Ray Williams of Liberty Records, production company
  • Employed Caleb Quaye as in-house engineer.  And Steve Brown as studio manager. 
  • Dick James funded Elton John and Bernie Taupin's song publishing, paying Elton extra to sing and play piano on the demo recordings.  Once James realized the potential of Elton & Bernie's second album he drove it and them through the evolved amplifier of American entertainment and communications. 
  • Tony King worked on publishing and promotion for George Martin's association of independent record producers (AIR) from a desk he rented from DJM.  He influenced Elton's style, introduced him to his network of friends, and helped him find work as a session musician. 
's Steve Brown reviewed the song writing progress and concluded they should make records of their own style of composition.  Empty Sky didn't sell well but it allowed Elton to perform and form a power trio with drummer Nigel Olsen and bass player Dee Murray.  That format allowed them to improvise, play solos, and Elton to perform with the aggression of Jerry Lee Lewis combined with Winifred Atwell was a Trinidadian pianist and performer.  She entertained on stage with two pianos: baby grand for light classical music and an upright for ragtime & pub songs; which, according to Elton John, she performed with glee, giving the impression she was having the best time in the world. 
's bonhomie!  Elton and Bernie's material was getting better and better, and the process had really clicked: Your Song was developed in less than an hour; leveraging all their prior experiences. 

It became clear to Dick James (DJM):
  • Is a music production company in New Oxford Street, London
  • Administered Ray Williams of Liberty Records, production company
  • Employed Caleb Quaye as in-house engineer.  And Steve Brown as studio manager. 
  • Dick James funded Elton John and Bernie Taupin's song publishing, paying Elton extra to sing and play piano on the demo recordings.  Once James realized the potential of Elton & Bernie's second album he drove it and them through the evolved amplifier of American entertainment and communications. 
  • Tony King worked on publishing and promotion for George Martin's association of independent record producers (AIR) from a desk he rented from DJM.  He influenced Elton's style, introduced him to his network of friends, and helped him find work as a session musician. 
that the second album: Elton John; was going to be a big hit in the UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.   and US is the United States of America.  .  While Elton argued and protested, James leveraged a
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. 
US partnership with UNI to prime the sales channels, promote the album, and have Elton perform at the Troubadour, where the top US artists, producers and music press, came to see & hear.  They concluded the increasingly flamboyant performer was a star.  Elton, now 23 years old and suddenly getting a burst of adolescent in humans supports the transition from a juvenile configuration, dependent on parents and structured to learn & logistically transform, to adult optimized to the proximate environment.  And it is staged, encouraging male adolescents to escape the hierarchy they grew up in and enter other groups where they may bring in: fresh ideas, risk taking; and alter the existing hierarchy: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates & Paul Allen; while females become highly focused on friendships and communications.  It marks the beginning of Piaget's formal operational stage of cognitive development.  The limbic, autonomic and hormone networks are already deployed and functioning effectively.  The frontal cortex has to be pruned: winning neurons move to their final highly connected positions, and are myelinated over time.  The rest dissolve.  So the frontal lobe does not obtain its adult configuration and networked integration until the mid-twenties when prefrontal cortex control becomes optimal.  The evolutionarily oldest areas of the frontal cortex mature first.  The PFC must be iteratively customized by experience to do the right thing as an adult.  Adolescents:
  • Don't detect irony effectively.  They depend on the DMPFC to do this, unlike adults who leverage the fusiform face area.  
  • Regulate emotions with the ventral striatum while the prefrontal cortex is still being setup.  Dopamine projection density and signalling increase from the ventral tegmentum catalyzing increased interest in dopamine based rewards.  Novelty seeking allows for creative exploration which was necessary to move beyond the familial pack.  Criticisms do not get incorporated into learning models by adolescents leaving their risk assessments very poor.  The target of the dopamine networks, the adolescent accumbens, responds to rewards like a gyrating top - hugely to large rewards, and negatively to small rewards.  Eventually as the frontal regions increase in contribution there are steady improvements in: working memory, flexible rule use, executive organization and task shifting.  And adolescents start to see other people's perspective. 
  • Drive the cellular transformations with post-pubescent high levels of testosterone in males, and high but fluctuating estrogen & progesterone levels in females.  Blood flow to the frontal cortex is also diverted on occasion to the groin.  
  • Peer pressure is exceptionally influential in adolescents.  Admired peer comments reduce vmPFC activity and enhance ventral striatal activity.  Adults modulate the mental impact of socially mean treatment: the initial activation of the PAG, anterior cingulate, amygdala, insula cortex; which generate feelings of pain, anger, and disgust, with the VLPFC but that does not occur in adolescents.  
  • Feel empathy intensely, supported by their rampant emotions, interest in novelty, ego.  But feeling the pain of others can induce self-oriented avoidance of the situations. 
testosterone is a hormone secreted by the testes, ovaries, and adrenal glands, in response to stimulation from the hypothalamic/pituitary/testicular cascade, that makes humans more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status, according to Sapolsky.  That means players of the Ultimatum Game, if previously given testosterone can become more generous.  High testosterone in a fetus masculinizes the brain.  Males generate 10 times the amount.  It is the trigger for sexual desire in males and females, stimulating the hypothalamus.  Testosterone's effect is highly socially contextual so it may encourage acts of kindness or aggression (when challenged).  The level of testosterone does not predict which individuals will be aggressive in: Birds, Fish, Mammals including primates.  Genes impact the potency of testosterone by altering the enzymes that: Construct it, Convert it to estrogen, code the androgen receptor.   This androgen receptor includes a variable polyglutamine repeat which alters the sensitivity to the testosterone signal.  The more potent form is associated with boys showing more dramatic 'masculinization' of the cortex.  But the detected genetic influences are small.  Testosterone decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex and its functional coupling to the amygdala while increasing the coupling between the amygdala & the thalamus.  Testosterone shortens the refactory period of amygdaloid & amygdaloid target neurons.  This results in impulsive risk taking and more focus on unfamiliar faces and distrust of them.  Testosterone increases activity in the ventral tegmentum projecting dopamine to enhance place preference.  Winners of fights become more willing to fight in part due to testosterone increasing confidence and optimism and reducing fear and anxiety.  And winning at: Chess, Athletics, Stock trades; induces the BNST to add testosterone receptors increasing its sensitivity to the hormone.  People become overconfident and overly optimistic. 
, was more interested in John Reid is an outrageous, gay Scotsman.  He grew up as a tough guy from Paisley, but is also funny, ambitious, confident and the UK label manager for Tamla Motown.  He convinced Motown to release Tears Of A Clown as a single.  He and Elton John became a couple and he became Elton's manager.  After they split up, John managed other stars including Billy Connolly and Queen.  Once again he picked out Bohemian Rhapsody as a huge hit.  John continued to manage Elton's financial affairs, while Elton generated revenue and royalties from record sales and performances and spent exorbitantly.  After Elton agreed with Reid to sell his historic and future royalty stream for a lump sum, Elton's revenues did not cover his expenses and spending.  Elton disputed the fairness of John Reid Enterprises' management of his accounts, demanded that Reid return some capital, and terminated the management relationship.  John Reid returned $5 million to Elton, gave up his share of Elton's future royalties, closed down his management company and retired. 
. 

78 Four
The first US tour was transformational:
95 Five
Elton and John Reid is an outrageous, gay Scotsman.  He grew up as a tough guy from Paisley, but is also funny, ambitious, confident and the UK label manager for Tamla Motown.  He convinced Motown to release Tears Of A Clown as a single.  He and Elton John became a couple and he became Elton's manager.  After they split up, John managed other stars including Billy Connolly and Queen.  Once again he picked out Bohemian Rhapsody as a huge hit.  John continued to manage Elton's financial affairs, while Elton generated revenue and royalties from record sales and performances and spent exorbitantly.  After Elton agreed with Reid to sell his historic and future royalty stream for a lump sum, Elton's revenues did not cover his expenses and spending.  Elton disputed the fairness of John Reid Enterprises' management of his accounts, demanded that Reid return some capital, and terminated the management relationship.  John Reid returned $5 million to Elton, gave up his share of Elton's future royalties, closed down his management company and retired. 
moved from London to a bungalow they purchased in Virginia Water.  It was near Bernie's new home.  And Keith Moon and Ringo Star's homes were close by too.  The bookshop in town was owned by Brian Forbes and Nanette Newman.  Brian and Nanette would invite Elton and John is an outrageous, gay Scotsman.  He grew up as a tough guy from Paisley, but is also funny, ambitious, confident and the UK label manager for Tamla Motown.  He convinced Motown to release Tears Of A Clown as a single.  He and Elton John became a couple and he became Elton's manager.  After they split up, John managed other stars including Billy Connolly and Queen.  Once again he picked out Bohemian Rhapsody as a huge hit.  John continued to manage Elton's financial affairs, while Elton generated revenue and royalties from record sales and performances and spent exorbitantly.  After Elton agreed with Reid to sell his historic and future royalty stream for a lump sum, Elton's revenues did not cover his expenses and spending.  Elton disputed the fairness of John Reid Enterprises' management of his accounts, demanded that Reid return some capital, and terminated the management relationship.  John Reid returned $5 million to Elton, gave up his share of Elton's future royalties, closed down his management company and retired. 
to meet their high society friends.  And the whole family would go on holiday with Elton and John.  Brian introduced and coached Elton on collecting art.  And, as usual, Elton became an addict results from changes in the operation of the brain's reward network's regulatory regions, altering the anticipation of rewards.  Addictive drugs mediate the receptors of the reward network, increasing dopamine in the pleasure centers of the cortex.  The learned association of the situation with the reward makes addiction highly prone to relapse, when the situation is subsequently experienced.  This makes addiction a chronic disease, where the sufferer must remain vigilant to avoid relapse inducing situations.  Repeated exposure to the addictive drug alters the reward network.  The neurons that produce dopamine are impaired, no longer sending dopamine to the reward target areas, reducing the feeling of pleasure.  But the situational association remains strong driving the addict to repeat the addictive activity.  Destroying the memory of the pleasure inducer may provide a treatment for addiction in the future.  Addiction has a genetic component, which supports inheritance.  Some other compulsive disorders: eating, gambling, sexual behavior; are similar to drug addiction. 
.  Brian and Nanette's friends included the Queen Mother.  After Elton and the band performed for Princess Margret, they were invited back for supper.  But, after Lord Snowdon arrived home, and demanded his dinner, the party collapsed. 

Apart from the bungalow, expanding art collection and Aston Martin, Elton's newly acquired 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.    allowed him go shopping, again developing into an addiction.  He had always loved to explore for presents to give people.  He was also able to tour the US is the United States of America.   in a chartered Boeing 720, previously configured for Led Zeppelin.  He admits to often locking himself in the private bedroom, sulking.  On one birthday he was angrily refusing to come out, while the rest of the tour organization was waiting to celebrate with him.  Eventually, they convinced him to begrudgingly come out.  Stevie Wonder had been waiting patiently to sing happy birthday to him! 

Elton demonstrated workaholism results from changes in the operation of the brain's reward network's regulatory regions, altering the anticipation of rewards.  Addictive drugs mediate the receptors of the reward network, increasing dopamine in the pleasure centers of the cortex.  The learned association of the situation with the reward makes addiction highly prone to relapse, when the situation is subsequently experienced.  This makes addiction a chronic disease, where the sufferer must remain vigilant to avoid relapse inducing situations.  Repeated exposure to the addictive drug alters the reward network.  The neurons that produce dopamine are impaired, no longer sending dopamine to the reward target areas, reducing the feeling of pleasure.  But the situational association remains strong driving the addict to repeat the addictive activity.  Destroying the memory of the pleasure inducer may provide a treatment for addiction in the future.  Addiction has a genetic component, which supports inheritance.  Some other compulsive disorders: eating, gambling, sexual behavior; are similar to drug addiction. 
, touring and recording albums constantly.  The band was able to use studios at exotic destinations: Kingston, Jamaica, Rocky Mountains; Elton recorded even when ill with glandular fever.  He would throw tantrums: sulking, eye 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.   rolling, swearing; and refuse to sing songs he didn't like such as Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me, and fought the release of Benny And The Jets as a single in the US is the United States of America.  , even after being told it was a top play on Detroit's African American radio stations.  It became a major hit in the US and UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.  .  Elton's performances while touring developed into grander and grander spectacles.  Bernie felt are subjective models: sad, glad, mad, scared, surprised, and compassionate; of the organism and its proximate environment, including ratings of situations signalled by broadly distributed chemicals and neural circuits.  These feelings become highly salient inputs, evolutionarily associated, to higher level emotions encoded in neural circuits: amygdala, and insula.  Deacon shows James' conception of feeling can build sentience.  Damasio, similarly, asserts feelings reveal to the conscious mind the subjective status of life: good, bad, in between; within a higher organism.  They especially indicate the affective situation within the old interior world of the viscera located in the abdomen, thorax and thick of the skin - so smiling makes one feel happy; but augmented with the reports from the situation of the new interior world of voluntary muscles.  Repeated experiences build intermediate narratives, in the mind, which reduce the salience.  Damasio concludes feelings relate closely and consistently with homeostasis, acting as its mental deputies once organisms developed 'nervous systems' about 600 million years ago, and building on the precursor regulatory devices supplied by evolution to social insects and prokaryotes and leveraging analogous dynamic constraints.  Damasio suggests feelings contribute to the development of culture:
  • As motives for intellectual creation: prompting detection and diagnosis of homeostatic deficiencies, identifying desirable states worthy of creative effort.
  • As monitors of the success and failure of cultural instruments and practices
  • As participants in the negotiation of adjustments required by the cultural process over time 
 this was detracting from the music is a complex emergent capability supported by sexual selection and generating pleasure.  It transforms the sensing of epiphenomena: Contour, Rhythm, Tempo, Timbre; to induce salient representations: Harmony, Key, Loudness, Melody, Meter, Pitch, and perceptions: Reverberation - echo; which allow musicians: Elton John, Elvis Presley; to show their fitness: superior coordination, creativity, adolescent leadership, stamina; true for birds and humans.  Levitin showed that listening to music causes a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: auditory cortex, frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, and finally the mesolimbic system, culminating in the nucleus accumbens.  And he found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout the session.  He argues music mimics some of the features of language and conveys some of the same emotions.  The brain regions pulse with the beat and predict the next one.  As the music is heard it is modeled and generates dopamine rewards for matching each beat and noting creative jokes in the rhythm.  The cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized. 
. 

John Reid is an outrageous, gay Scotsman.  He grew up as a tough guy from Paisley, but is also funny, ambitious, confident and the UK label manager for Tamla Motown.  He convinced Motown to release Tears Of A Clown as a single.  He and Elton John became a couple and he became Elton's manager.  After they split up, John managed other stars including Billy Connolly and Queen.  Once again he picked out Bohemian Rhapsody as a huge hit.  John continued to manage Elton's financial affairs, while Elton generated revenue and royalties from record sales and performances and spent exorbitantly.  After Elton agreed with Reid to sell his historic and future royalty stream for a lump sum, Elton's revenues did not cover his expenses and spending.  Elton disputed the fairness of John Reid Enterprises' management of his accounts, demanded that Reid return some capital, and terminated the management relationship.  John Reid returned $5 million to Elton, gave up his share of Elton's future royalties, closed down his management company and retired. 
introduced Elton to cocaine, which soon became a compulsive addiction results from changes in the operation of the brain's reward network's regulatory regions, altering the anticipation of rewards.  Addictive drugs mediate the receptors of the reward network, increasing dopamine in the pleasure centers of the cortex.  The learned association of the situation with the reward makes addiction highly prone to relapse, when the situation is subsequently experienced.  This makes addiction a chronic disease, where the sufferer must remain vigilant to avoid relapse inducing situations.  Repeated exposure to the addictive drug alters the reward network.  The neurons that produce dopamine are impaired, no longer sending dopamine to the reward target areas, reducing the feeling of pleasure.  But the situational association remains strong driving the addict to repeat the addictive activity.  Destroying the memory of the pleasure inducer may provide a treatment for addiction in the future.  Addiction has a genetic component, which supports inheritance.  Some other compulsive disorders: eating, gambling, sexual behavior; are similar to drug addiction. 
.  Elton notes it was an unfortunate decision to keep taking it: Without it he was full of energy, inquisitive, had a strong sense of humor and possessed a thirst for knowledge, but his situation had become so unusual he didn't feel he belonged.  Cocaine made him feel accepted, but also to become self-obsessed, unreasonable, irresponsible and demanding - my way or the highway.  Elton recalls being invited on stage at a Rolling Stones concert, but befuddled by cocaine he outstayed his welcome by three or four songs, eventually noticing Keith Richards getting very upset. 

Elton was happily pair bonded 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.   with John Reid, but like most males John is an outrageous, gay Scotsman.  He grew up as a tough guy from Paisley, but is also funny, ambitious, confident and the UK label manager for Tamla Motown.  He convinced Motown to release Tears Of A Clown as a single.  He and Elton John became a couple and he became Elton's manager.  After they split up, John managed other stars including Billy Connolly and Queen.  Once again he picked out Bohemian Rhapsody as a huge hit.  John continued to manage Elton's financial affairs, while Elton generated revenue and royalties from record sales and performances and spent exorbitantly.  After Elton agreed with Reid to sell his historic and future royalty stream for a lump sum, Elton's revenues did not cover his expenses and spending.  Elton disputed the fairness of John Reid Enterprises' management of his accounts, demanded that Reid return some capital, and terminated the management relationship.  John Reid returned $5 million to Elton, gave up his share of Elton's future royalties, closed down his management company and retired. 
was very promiscuous, making Elton unhappy is an emotion which functions to mobilize the mind to seek capabilities and resources that support Darwinian fitness.  Today happiness is associated with Epicurean ideas that were rediscovered during the renaissance and promoted by Thomas Jefferson.  But natural selection has 'designed' happiness to support hunter-gatherer fitness in the African savanna.  It is assessed: Relative to other's situations, Based on small gains or losses relative to one's current situation; and so what makes us [un-]happy and our responses can seem a counter-productive treadmill.  For Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in the savanna there were many ways for losses to undermine fitness and so losses still make us very unhappy.  Smoking, drinking and excessive eating were not significant and so don't make us unhappy even though they impact longevity.  .  Worse John was violent: he punched various people who angered is an emotion which protects a person who has been cheated by a supposed friend.  When the exploitation of the altruism is discovered, Steven Pinker explains, the result is a drive for moralistic aggression to hurt the cheater.  Anger is mostly experienced as a rapid wave that then quickly dissipates.  When it is repressed, for example by a strong moral sense (superego), it can sustain, inducing long term stress. 
him during the tours, getting jailed in New Zealand; eventually he is an outrageous, gay Scotsman.  He grew up as a tough guy from Paisley, but is also funny, ambitious, confident and the UK label manager for Tamla Motown.  He convinced Motown to release Tears Of A Clown as a single.  He and Elton John became a couple and he became Elton's manager.  After they split up, John managed other stars including Billy Connolly and Queen.  Once again he picked out Bohemian Rhapsody as a huge hit.  John continued to manage Elton's financial affairs, while Elton generated revenue and royalties from record sales and performances and spent exorbitantly.  After Elton agreed with Reid to sell his historic and future royalty stream for a lump sum, Elton's revenues did not cover his expenses and spending.  Elton disputed the fairness of John Reid Enterprises' management of his accounts, demanded that Reid return some capital, and terminated the management relationship.  John Reid returned $5 million to Elton, gave up his share of Elton's future royalties, closed down his management company and retired. 
hit Elton during an argument so Elton broke off the relationship.  But he kept John is an outrageous, gay Scotsman.  He grew up as a tough guy from Paisley, but is also funny, ambitious, confident and the UK label manager for Tamla Motown.  He convinced Motown to release Tears Of A Clown as a single.  He and Elton John became a couple and he became Elton's manager.  After they split up, John managed other stars including Billy Connolly and Queen.  Once again he picked out Bohemian Rhapsody as a huge hit.  John continued to manage Elton's financial affairs, while Elton generated revenue and royalties from record sales and performances and spent exorbitantly.  After Elton agreed with Reid to sell his historic and future royalty stream for a lump sum, Elton's revenues did not cover his expenses and spending.  Elton disputed the fairness of John Reid Enterprises' management of his accounts, demanded that Reid return some capital, and terminated the management relationship.  John Reid returned $5 million to Elton, gave up his share of Elton's future royalties, closed down his management company and retired. 
as his manager. 

115 Six
Tony King worked in the offices of DJM, renting a desk where he did publishing and promotions for George Martin's association of independent record producers (AIR).  Elton explains he was notable for his style: suits, velvet trousers, satin items, from the hippest tailors in London, antique silk scarves, dyed hair with blond highlights; was openly gay.  He had worked for The Rolling Stones, Roy Orbison and was friends with The Beatles.  Elton found Tony hilarious and wanted to be like him - stylish, exotic, and outrageous.  Tony included Elton in his dinner parties with friends including John Reid.  And through his network of connections at AIR and Abbey Road, Tony helped Elton become one of their session musicians.  Later when Tony was general manager of Apple Records' US operation he introduced Elton to John Lennon.  Tony went on to focus on helping the Rolling Stones and Elton make their tour shows exceptional. 
became Apple Records US general manager, based in Los Angeles, where he introduced Elton to another of his idols, John Lennon.  Lennon, then separated from Yoko and divorced from Cynthia, began palling around with Elton.  They were remarkably similar: focused on musical is a complex emergent capability supported by sexual selection and generating pleasure.  It transforms the sensing of epiphenomena: Contour, Rhythm, Tempo, Timbre; to induce salient representations: Harmony, Key, Loudness, Melody, Meter, Pitch, and perceptions: Reverberation - echo; which allow musicians: Elton John, Elvis Presley; to show their fitness: superior coordination, creativity, adolescent leadership, stamina; true for birds and humans.  Levitin showed that listening to music causes a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: auditory cortex, frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, and finally the mesolimbic system, culminating in the nucleus accumbens.  And he found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout the session.  He argues music mimics some of the features of language and conveys some of the same emotions.  The brain regions pulse with the beat and predict the next one.  As the music is heard it is modeled and generates dopamine rewards for matching each beat and noting creative jokes in the rhythm.  The cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized. 
achievement, efficient in the studio, worried they would fail at their next goal, funny, both fun seeking, Potential for tantrums, addicted results from changes in the operation of the brain's reward network's regulatory regions, altering the anticipation of rewards.  Addictive drugs mediate the receptors of the reward network, increasing dopamine in the pleasure centers of the cortex.  The learned association of the situation with the reward makes addiction highly prone to relapse, when the situation is subsequently experienced.  This makes addiction a chronic disease, where the sufferer must remain vigilant to avoid relapse inducing situations.  Repeated exposure to the addictive drug alters the reward network.  The neurons that produce dopamine are impaired, no longer sending dopamine to the reward target areas, reducing the feeling of pleasure.  But the situational association remains strong driving the addict to repeat the addictive activity.  Destroying the memory of the pleasure inducer may provide a treatment for addiction in the future.  Addiction has a genetic component, which supports inheritance.  Some other compulsive disorders: eating, gambling, sexual behavior; are similar to drug addiction. 
to buying things, and they shared a passion for cocaine.  Elton played and sang with John on two of the tracks for Lennon's new album.  Lennon was worried that one of these songs, What Ever Gets You Through The Night, would not be a hit single.  Elton bet him it would.  When it reached Number One, Lennon agreed to accompany Elton and the band at the Thanksgiving performance at Madison Square Garden.  It was a fantastic experience for Elton.  Elton had helped John out by escorting Cynthia & Julian to New York on the SS France. 

During each lunch period on the SS France, Elton composed, and consolidated is the process by which memories are made more stable and long lasting.  Short-term memory traces maintained by attention supported working memory become represented by transduction cascades of kinase signalling pathways.  Long term memory formation starts when these cascades successfully induce transcription, translation and protein synthesis and transport to synapses to support strengthening.  Subsequently salient memories are further consolidated during sleep. 
in memory in the brain includes functionally different types: Declarative, or explicit, (episodic and semantic), Implicit, Procedural, Sequence, Spatial, Temporal, Verbal; Hebb suggested that glutamate receptive neurons learn by (NMDA channel based) synaptic strengthening: short term memory.  This was shown to happen for explicit memory formation in the hippocampus.  This strengthening is sustained by subsequent LTP.  The non-real-time learning and planning processes operate through consciousness using the working memory structures, and then via sleep, the salient ones are consolidated while the rest are destroyed and garbage collected.  , the music to Bernie's new lyrics.  The result was Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, a chronology of Elton & Bernie's lives.  They recorded it at Caribou along with: a cover of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds that John Lennon sang backing vocals and played guitar on; and Philadelphia Freedom written by Bernie and Elton for Billie Jean King's tennis team which they both adored.  Captain Fantastic became the first album to enter the US charts at Number One. 

Elton was still evolutionarilly driven to achieve more, and discarded Dee and Nigel from the band, seeking a funkier and more hard-driving sound.  He replaced them with session musicians: Caleb Quaye worked as the in-house engineer at Dick James Music.  He focused his time and DJM's resources on developing recordings of Elton John & Bernie Taupin's songs.  Against company rules, he secretly worked on them at night, bringing in session musicians to try out arrangements and production ideas.  When discovered he played the tapes to Dick James who offered to fund Elton and Bernie's productions. 
, Roger Pope, James Newton Howard, and Kenny Passarelli; but since Bernie's wife Maxine had left him for Passarelli there were built in problems with Elton's plan.  These were made worse by the interest everyone in the new band had in drugs.  Elton was deeply unhappy: after breaking up with John Reid is an outrageous, gay Scotsman.  He grew up as a tough guy from Paisley, but is also funny, ambitious, confident and the UK label manager for Tamla Motown.  He convinced Motown to release Tears Of A Clown as a single.  He and Elton John became a couple and he became Elton's manager.  After they split up, John managed other stars including Billy Connolly and Queen.  Once again he picked out Bohemian Rhapsody as a huge hit.  John continued to manage Elton's financial affairs, while Elton generated revenue and royalties from record sales and performances and spent exorbitantly.  After Elton agreed with Reid to sell his historic and future royalty stream for a lump sum, Elton's revenues did not cover his expenses and spending.  Elton disputed the fairness of John Reid Enterprises' management of his accounts, demanded that Reid return some capital, and terminated the management relationship.  John Reid returned $5 million to Elton, gave up his share of Elton's future royalties, closed down his management company and retired. 
, he had repeatedly fallen in love with men who didn't love him, and used and discarded many other lovers.  He became obsessed with observing group gay sex - a habit that kept HIV is human immunodeficiency virus, an RNA retrovirus which causes AIDS.  It infects T-lymphocytes helper cells slowly destroying the host's immune system.  The main pandemic form of HIV is HIV-1 M which has been traced back to a spillover to Cameroon/Congolese forest Chimpanzees of SIVs that weakly infected proximate humans and then was amplified by social conditions in expanding towns: Ouesso, Brazzaville, Leopoldville; down river from these forests during the 1900 - 1920s.  Additional amplification occurred through public health programs: Trypanosomiasis, STDs; which cross-infected subpopulations of Leopoldville/Kinshasa around the same time.  UNESCO organized Haitian support for the DRC in the 1960s vectored HIV-1 M back to Haiti where the blood plasma trade provided an evolved amplifier for HIV-1 M infected plasma to flow into the US healthcare supply chain through Miami.  Some HIV's enter the lymphocytes by leveraging the T cells CCR5 protein.  The HIV X4 variant leverages CXCR4. 
at a distance.  He used suicide as a cry for help multiple times.  Things got even tougher when he miss-designed a huge Wembley show where he committed to playing Captain Fantastic all the way through.  He persisted even when it was clear he had lost the audience and people were leaving.  Still, Rock of the Westies followed Captain Fantastic straight to Number One in the US charts and the mayor of Los Angeles declared Elton John Week, so he flew his family and friends over to LA, held a big party and then attempted suicide again.  He still performed the Dodgers Stadium shows and they were both huge hits but he felt there was no place to go but down. 

137 Seven
Elton could see his career cresting.  Worse, when he and his mum was Reg's mother, who was a shop worker.  When she wanted to she was fun, and loved music: Billy May and His Orchestra, Ted Heath, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine, Nat King Cole, Guy Mitchell; and dancing, but she liked people to fear her.  She looked for arguments, was stubborn and had a terrible short temper.  After she left her first husband, Stanley, she married Fred and life became more tranquil for a while. 
went backstage at an Elvis was a singer and entertainer who, according to Elton John, transformed southern US black blues and rock & roll music and introduced the result: Heartbreak Hotel - raw, sparse, slow, reverberating and eerie; to white audiences who felt the 'energy' Elvis signalled.  Presley's appearance: clothes, hair, stance; was as striking and remarkable for the time as his music. 
concert, he could imagine himself as the drug addled, bloated, super star, surrounded by hangers-on, that they met.  Sheila was Reg's mother, who was a shop worker.  When she wanted to she was fun, and loved music: Billy May and His Orchestra, Ted Heath, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine, Nat King Cole, Guy Mitchell; and dancing, but she liked people to fear her.  She looked for arguments, was stubborn and had a terrible short temper.  After she left her first husband, Stanley, she married Fred and life became more tranquil for a while. 
was right when she commented that Elvis would be dead within a year. 

Elton's love life continued with a string of unhappy failures.  He and Bernie were still making successful records, but the songs became more jazzy, and darker, reflecting what was going on in their lives.  And although he enjoyed performing, fame left him trapped in his hotel between concerts.  It seemed like a good time to retire. 

His thinning hair became a popular topic of the tabloid press.  And most of it fell out after a problem dye job.  After hair transplants failed he opted for a wig.  He finally admitted to a journalist, working for Rolling Stone, that he was bisexual and that his love-life was a disaster.  It turned out that few people cared, except once he bought Watford Football Club and became its chairman; the opposing team's supporters would sing hilarious bawdy songs to & about him. 

Turning round Watford football (soccer) club, gave him a new goal to achieve and helped ground him.  The board and manager, Graham Taylor, would not tolerate his being drunk or an embarrassment to the club.  He funded Taylor's player purchases, staffing, and infrastructure upgrades, and was repaid with rapid success that led to bigger gates, an FA cup final, international competitions, and profits. 

156 Eight
Having retired from performing, Elton had a lot more free
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 to organize his life and take drugs.  Woodside, his recently purchased estate, in Old Windsor, was large enough to justify paid help.  And he also invited his mother was Reg's mother, who was a shop worker.  When she wanted to she was fun, and loved music: Billy May and His Orchestra, Ted Heath, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine, Nat King Cole, Guy Mitchell; and dancing, but she liked people to fear her.  She looked for arguments, was stubborn and had a terrible short temper.  After she left her first husband, Stanley, she married Fred and life became more tranquil for a while. 
and Derf to manage the house and his personal expenses.  Elton hoped this would bring him closer to his mum and make them both happy is an emotion which functions to mobilize the mind to seek capabilities and resources that support Darwinian fitness.  Today happiness is associated with Epicurean ideas that were rediscovered during the renaissance and promoted by Thomas Jefferson.  But natural selection has 'designed' happiness to support hunter-gatherer fitness in the African savanna.  It is assessed: Relative to other's situations, Based on small gains or losses relative to one's current situation; and so what makes us [un-]happy and our responses can seem a counter-productive treadmill.  For Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in the savanna there were many ways for losses to undermine fitness and so losses still make us very unhappy.  Smoking, drinking and excessive eating were not significant and so don't make us unhappy even though they impact longevity.  .  He was mistaken: visibility into his extravagant spending - gifts for his friends, and furniture, art and oddities he purchased for the house - and his ever changing series of romantic partners; enabled her anger is an emotion which protects a person who has been cheated by a supposed friend.  When the exploitation of the altruism is discovered, Steven Pinker explains, the result is a drive for moralistic aggression to hurt the cheater.  Anger is mostly experienced as a rapid wave that then quickly dissipates.  When it is repressed, for example by a strong moral sense (superego), it can sustain, inducing long term stress. 
.  And she also imperiously attacked the other staff.  Eventually Sheila was Reg's mother, who was a shop worker.  When she wanted to she was fun, and loved music: Billy May and His Orchestra, Ted Heath, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine, Nat King Cole, Guy Mitchell; and dancing, but she liked people to fear her.  She looked for arguments, was stubborn and had a terrible short temper.  After she left her first husband, Stanley, she married Fred and life became more tranquil for a while. 
and Derf moved away to the south coast.  He setup his Grandmother was Reg Dwight's maternal grandmother.  He recalls her as: no nonsense, hard-working, kind, funny, a great cook, loved a drink and a game of cards.  She always had music playing, from the radio, record player or their piano.  After her first husband died of cancer, she had remarried Horace Sewell, who was a gardener, introverted, had lost a leg in the Great War and was kind. 
in a self-contained apartment in the grounds of Woodside, where he introduced her to the Queen Mother. 

Left alone again by a failed romance, Elton recalls hearing Janet Street-Porter interviewing the Sex Pistols.  He loved punk, the latest adolescent in humans supports the transition from a juvenile configuration, dependent on parents and structured to learn & logistically transform, to adult optimized to the proximate environment.  And it is staged, encouraging male adolescents to escape the hierarchy they grew up in and enter other groups where they may bring in: fresh ideas, risk taking; and alter the existing hierarchy: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates & Paul Allen; while females become highly focused on friendships and communications.  It marks the beginning of Piaget's formal operational stage of cognitive development.  The limbic, autonomic and hormone networks are already deployed and functioning effectively.  The frontal cortex has to be pruned: winning neurons move to their final highly connected positions, and are myelinated over time.  The rest dissolve.  So the frontal lobe does not obtain its adult configuration and networked integration until the mid-twenties when prefrontal cortex control becomes optimal.  The evolutionarily oldest areas of the frontal cortex mature first.  The PFC must be iteratively customized by experience to do the right thing as an adult.  Adolescents:
  • Don't detect irony effectively.  They depend on the DMPFC to do this, unlike adults who leverage the fusiform face area.  
  • Regulate emotions with the ventral striatum while the prefrontal cortex is still being setup.  Dopamine projection density and signalling increase from the ventral tegmentum catalyzing increased interest in dopamine based rewards.  Novelty seeking allows for creative exploration which was necessary to move beyond the familial pack.  Criticisms do not get incorporated into learning models by adolescents leaving their risk assessments very poor.  The target of the dopamine networks, the adolescent accumbens, responds to rewards like a gyrating top - hugely to large rewards, and negatively to small rewards.  Eventually as the frontal regions increase in contribution there are steady improvements in: working memory, flexible rule use, executive organization and task shifting.  And adolescents start to see other people's perspective. 
  • Drive the cellular transformations with post-pubescent high levels of testosterone in males, and high but fluctuating estrogen & progesterone levels in females.  Blood flow to the frontal cortex is also diverted on occasion to the groin.  
  • Peer pressure is exceptionally influential in adolescents.  Admired peer comments reduce vmPFC activity and enhance ventral striatal activity.  Adults modulate the mental impact of socially mean treatment: the initial activation of the PAG, anterior cingulate, amygdala, insula cortex; which generate feelings of pain, anger, and disgust, with the VLPFC but that does not occur in adolescents.  
  • Feel empathy intensely, supported by their rampant emotions, interest in novelty, ego.  But feeling the pain of others can induce self-oriented avoidance of the situations. 
transformation of music is a complex emergent capability supported by sexual selection and generating pleasure.  It transforms the sensing of epiphenomena: Contour, Rhythm, Tempo, Timbre; to induce salient representations: Harmony, Key, Loudness, Melody, Meter, Pitch, and perceptions: Reverberation - echo; which allow musicians: Elton John, Elvis Presley; to show their fitness: superior coordination, creativity, adolescent leadership, stamina; true for birds and humans.  Levitin showed that listening to music causes a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: auditory cortex, frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, and finally the mesolimbic system, culminating in the nucleus accumbens.  And he found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout the session.  He argues music mimics some of the features of language and conveys some of the same emotions.  The brain regions pulse with the beat and predict the next one.  As the music is heard it is modeled and generates dopamine rewards for matching each beat and noting creative jokes in the rhythm.  The cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized. 
, and was ecstatic to hear Johnny Rotten declare 'Rod Stewart is a useless old fucker.'  He informed Rod, who was then 32, of the comment, and contacted Street-Porter, who became a long-term friend. 

He left DJM is Dick James Music:
  • Is a music production company in New Oxford Street, London
  • Administered Ray Williams of Liberty Records, production company
  • Employed Caleb Quaye as in-house engineer.  And Steve Brown as studio manager. 
  • Dick James funded Elton John and Bernie Taupin's song publishing, paying Elton extra to sing and play piano on the demo recordings.  Once James realized the potential of Elton & Bernie's second album he drove it and them through the evolved amplifier of American entertainment and communications. 
  • Tony King worked on publishing and promotion for George Martin's association of independent record producers (AIR) from a desk he rented from DJM.  He influenced Elton's style, introduced him to his network of friends, and helped him find work as a session musician. 
, resulting in an acrimonious lawsuit, which Elton won.  But Dick James (DJM):
  • Is a music production company in New Oxford Street, London
  • Administered Ray Williams of Liberty Records, production company
  • Employed Caleb Quaye as in-house engineer.  And Steve Brown as studio manager. 
  • Dick James funded Elton John and Bernie Taupin's song publishing, paying Elton extra to sing and play piano on the demo recordings.  Once James realized the potential of Elton & Bernie's second album he drove it and them through the evolved amplifier of American entertainment and communications. 
  • Tony King worked on publishing and promotion for George Martin's association of independent record producers (AIR) from a desk he rented from DJM.  He influenced Elton's style, introduced him to his network of friends, and helped him find work as a session musician. 
died of a heart attack is an AMI. It can induce cardiac arrest.  Blocking the formation of clots with platelet aggregation inhibitors, can help with treating and avoiding AMI.  Risk factors include: taking NSAID pain killers (May 2017).  There is uncertainty about why AMI occur.  Alternative hypotheses include:
  • Plaques started to gather in the coronary arteries and grew until no blood flow was possible.  If this is true it makes sense to preventatively treat the buildup with angioplasty. 
  • Plaques form anywhere in the body due to atherosclerosis and then break up and get lodged in the coronary artery and start to clot.  If this is true it makes sense to preventatively limit the buildup of plaques with drugs like statins or PCSK9 inhibitors. 
which his son Steve asserted was due to the stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels.  Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight.  As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate.  A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance.  The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. 
  • The short term response to the stressor
    • activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response.  The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated.  The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail.  In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area.  The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC.  But when the stressor is
  • long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues.  Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in.  Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status.  It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition.  Sustained stress:
    • Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment! 
    • Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala. 
      • Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful. 
      • BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning. 
    • Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory.  Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala.  And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces.  Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers.  A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand.  The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds. 
    • Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression. 
    • Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive.  It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.  
    • Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017) 
  • During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.  
  • Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness. 
of this case.  And in bad faith, to fulfill a contractual commitment, Elton provided UNI with an album of his interpretations of other people's disco music. 

He agreed with Bernie that they should split up to try working with other people.  But then he was jealous is an emotion driven by the large investment by parents in their children's development combined with a human sexual asymmetry: fertilization occurs inside the female's body, so a male can't be sure it is supporting its own ofspring. 
when Bernie and Alice Cooper made a great record together, supported by Dee Murray and Davey Johnston.  Elton experimented with soul/disco, started collaborating with Tim Rice, and even wrote the lyrics to some of his own songs. 

After changing his mind about retirement on multiple, expensive occasions, he did start touring small clubs accompanied only by Ray Cooper.  That demanded razor sharp play and concentration.  He found the apprehension and excitement before each performance exhilarating.  And Ray would get the audience involved in the performance, which was particularly useful when they performed in the Soviet Union: they had to get the fans involved and out of their seats which were always behind those of the dignitaries sleeping at the front.  Re-motivated, Elton decided to do another global tour with a full band and outrageous costumes.  But part way through the tour, Elton learned that John Lennon had been brutally murdered by a total stranger!  Instead, Elton remembers Lennon by his surreal, biting, satirical humor - John would have loved Mr. Creosote exploding. 

178 Nine
Meeting Duran Duran on the way to the bar in his hotel, Elton is introduced to Vodka Martini, which when consumed in excess makes him aggressive, exhibitionist and without any recollection of these events.  He has previously removed most of the
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. 
constraints on his 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. 
, so Elton dominates signals the power to hurt a rival.  Maynard Smith & Parker explain that in group situations females compete for food and males compete for females.  Maleness is a huge factor for violence.  Fighting to the death is costly for all participants so instead they indicate:
  • Size and weapons to demonstrate who will win.  Males who are, or look like, better fighters: Large heads, Big men, Height; gain in dominance. 
  • Political acumen to demonstrate they won't be pushed around and have the support of other powerful groups.  Dominant males push other rivals aside and gain interest of females, enabling themselves to replicate more.  Being a signal its authenticity can be challenged and so must be defended to remain credible.  Hotheads leverage the doomsday machine to constrain rational challenges.  Bands and cultures leverage honor.  Youth and lack of resources reduce the power of rivals' political constraints. 
, and his friends let him proceed to avoid the "Dwight temper." 

Elton is seeking happiness is an emotion which functions to mobilize the mind to seek capabilities and resources that support Darwinian fitness.  Today happiness is associated with Epicurean ideas that were rediscovered during the renaissance and promoted by Thomas Jefferson.  But natural selection has 'designed' happiness to support hunter-gatherer fitness in the African savanna.  It is assessed: Relative to other's situations, Based on small gains or losses relative to one's current situation; and so what makes us [un-]happy and our responses can seem a counter-productive treadmill.  For Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in the savanna there were many ways for losses to undermine fitness and so losses still make us very unhappy.  Smoking, drinking and excessive eating were not significant and so don't make us unhappy even though they impact longevity.   with the strategies that have helped him achieve stardom.  He got back together with Bernie.  They created exceptional recordings with an expanded team of record producers, and a full orchestra.  But having contracted with a new US is the United States of America.   label, Geffen Records, Elton didn't like the experience much. 

Out of control, he went to a session to record a video for I'm Still Standing, where, blind drunk he stripped naked, hit John Reid is an outrageous, gay Scotsman.  He grew up as a tough guy from Paisley, but is also funny, ambitious, confident and the UK label manager for Tamla Motown.  He convinced Motown to release Tears Of A Clown as a single.  He and Elton John became a couple and he became Elton's manager.  After they split up, John managed other stars including Billy Connolly and Queen.  Once again he picked out Bohemian Rhapsody as a huge hit.  John continued to manage Elton's financial affairs, while Elton generated revenue and royalties from record sales and performances and spent exorbitantly.  After Elton agreed with Reid to sell his historic and future royalty stream for a lump sum, Elton's revenues did not cover his expenses and spending.  Elton disputed the fairness of John Reid Enterprises' management of his accounts, demanded that Reid return some capital, and terminated the management relationship.  John Reid returned $5 million to Elton, gave up his share of Elton's future royalties, closed down his management company and retired. 
and subsequently smashed up a hotel room.  The experience didn't change his approach, or make him happy. 

He heard from his step-brothers that his father was Reg's father, who worked in the Royal Air Force, but also played trumpet in a band, through which he met his first wife Sheila - who came to watch.  He also loved football (soccer) and his nephews were professional footballers.  He was often away from home, was stubborn and rule bound when he was there, had a terrible short temper, was always critical of Reg, and arguing with his wife.  After they divorced he remarried and had four more boys who adored him.  But he was never able to show any affection to Reg.  He died in 1991 and Reg could not bring himself to attend the funeral. 
was ill and needed surgery.  He offered to help and took his father to a football game, where they spent time with the directors and managers of Watford Football Club.  But it made no difference.  His father refused his offer, was as cold as ever, and they never saw each other again. 

Elton started to pursue a quiet German recording engineer, a girl named Renata Blauel.  They married on Valentine's Day.  Elton recalls the telegram from his close friend Rod Stewart: "You may still be standing, dear, but the rest of us are on the fucking floor." 

194 Ten
Elton's power over his life becomes totally destructive as he starts using drugs at the recording and production of Leather Jackets.  His judgment is undermined allowing poor quality material onto the record. 

Elton started to be affected by health issues: 
To add to his stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels.  Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight.  As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate.  A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance.  The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. 
  • The short term response to the stressor
    • activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response.  The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated.  The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail.  In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area.  The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC.  But when the stressor is
  • long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues.  Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in.  Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status.  It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition.  Sustained stress:
    • Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment! 
    • Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala. 
      • Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful. 
      • BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning. 
    • Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory.  Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala.  And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces.  Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers.  A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand.  The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds. 
    • Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression. 
    • Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive.  It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.  
    • Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017) 
  • During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.  
  • Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness. 
, the Sun ran an expose on Elton, accusing him of participating in, and funding, an underage gay orgy.  It happened to be fabricated.  Against Mick Jagger's advice, Elton sued the Sun.  They increased the pressure with additional reports, leaving Elton developing bulimia and worrying about the impact on his mother was Reg's mother, who was a shop worker.  When she wanted to she was fun, and loved music: Billy May and His Orchestra, Ted Heath, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine, Nat King Cole, Guy Mitchell; and dancing, but she liked people to fear her.  She looked for arguments, was stubborn and had a terrible short temper.  After she left her first husband, Stanley, she married Fred and life became more tranquil for a while. 
and grandmother was Reg Dwight's maternal grandmother.  He recalls her as: no nonsense, hard-working, kind, funny, a great cook, loved a drink and a game of cards.  She always had music playing, from the radio, record player or their piano.  After her first husband died of cancer, she had remarried Horace Sewell, who was a gardener, introverted, had lost a leg in the Great War and was kind. 
.  But he persisted and they settled out of court, paying a huge penalty and printing a full page apology. 

After four years of marriage, Elton's 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
problems: anger is an emotion which protects a person who has been cheated by a supposed friend.  When the exploitation of the altruism is discovered, Steven Pinker explains, the result is a drive for moralistic aggression to hurt the cheater.  Anger is mostly experienced as a rapid wave that then quickly dissipates.  When it is repressed, for example by a strong moral sense (superego), it can sustain, inducing long term stress. 
, drug binges; drove Renata to accept a divorce.  He still loved her and she unconditionally loved him, but he had broken her heart. 

211 Eleven
Elton indulged his passion for shopping until he had filled every bit of free space at Woodside including the squash court.  After Renata left he decided to auction off almost everything in the house, so he could start over!

With no one powerful enough to stop him, he further distorted his judgment with drugs and alcohol.  Even the other rock and roll stars found his behavior increasingly bizarre!  But he pressed on, and had more career success with the album, Sleeping With The Past, themed for the old soul music he played at nightclubs in the sixties, which included Sacrifice, his first British solo Number One.   But he finally allowed himself to perform while intoxicated.  He knew he was making mistakes but couldn't stop. 

He got involved with Hugh Williams, who lived in Atlanta, so he spent more time in the US allowing him to see more of Ryan White.  And he was there for Ryan White's final days, after which, comparing himself to friends, including Elizabeth Taylor, he became convinced that he wasn't doing enough to help others.  His lover Hugh, told him he was going into rehab, which Elton tried to stop by throwing a terrible tantrum.  Hugh went anyway and Elton followed him to the rehab and caused another scene demanding Hugh leave.  Hugh continued with the program and then moved into a halfway house.  Elton, back in London, collapsed into total misery and degeneracy: drugs, alcohol, porn, binge eating and bulimia.  Desperate to see Hugh and terrified of what he was doing to himself, Elton agreed to an intervention.  Hugh and his counselor confronted Elton about his string of addictions results from changes in the operation of the brain's reward network's regulatory regions, altering the anticipation of rewards.  Addictive drugs mediate the receptors of the reward network, increasing dopamine in the pleasure centers of the cortex.  The learned association of the situation with the reward makes addiction highly prone to relapse, when the situation is subsequently experienced.  This makes addiction a chronic disease, where the sufferer must remain vigilant to avoid relapse inducing situations.  Repeated exposure to the addictive drug alters the reward network.  The neurons that produce dopamine are impaired, no longer sending dopamine to the reward target areas, reducing the feeling of pleasure.  But the situational association remains strong driving the addict to repeat the addictive activity.  Destroying the memory of the pleasure inducer may provide a treatment for addiction in the future.  Addiction has a genetic component, which supports inheritance.  Some other compulsive disorders: eating, gambling, sexual behavior; are similar to drug addiction. 
.  Elton, burst into tears, and finally agreed he had a problem and wanted to get better. 

227 Twelve
With so many addictions results from changes in the operation of the brain's reward network's regulatory regions, altering the anticipation of rewards.  Addictive drugs mediate the receptors of the reward network, increasing dopamine in the pleasure centers of the cortex.  The learned association of the situation with the reward makes addiction highly prone to relapse, when the situation is subsequently experienced.  This makes addiction a chronic disease, where the sufferer must remain vigilant to avoid relapse inducing situations.  Repeated exposure to the addictive drug alters the reward network.  The neurons that produce dopamine are impaired, no longer sending dopamine to the reward target areas, reducing the feeling of pleasure.  But the situational association remains strong driving the addict to repeat the addictive activity.  Destroying the memory of the pleasure inducer may provide a treatment for addiction in the future.  Addiction has a genetic component, which supports inheritance.  Some other compulsive disorders: eating, gambling, sexual behavior; are similar to drug addiction. 
Elton struggled to find a suitable rehabilitation center.  He checked in to the Lutheran Hospital, at Park Ridge, Illinois.  He had to do chores himself which he began to enjoy.  The treatment program used a twelve step process which forced Elton to abandon his current addictions, confront the shameful is an emotional reaction to being discovered cheating on a friend. 
creature that he had become, understand other addicts' lives and compare himself to them.  This allowed him to: realize that he has always seen himself negatively, to accept the struggles of his childhood, and to befriend Reg Dwight.  He wrote I AM WORTHY, I AM A GOOD PERSON on the folder in which he took notes. 

Part of the twelve step program was to accept God, which Elton notes was a problem for him and many other addicts that he later helped recover.  They did not want to accept the dogma and bigotry of the
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. 

Moral Majority.  Eventually he rationalized the serendipitous aspects of his life with the influence of some higher force.  But this aspect of rehabilitation had left George Michael, for example, unable to follow Elton's path and avoid self-destruction. 

Once he completed the rehab program Elton, stopped working for a year, lived alone, got up early each day, did his chores, went to 12 step programs for each of his addictions daily, and related to the ordinary people who described their lives and their struggles, and he admired the everyday world as he walked his rescue dog, Thomas. 

All this
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 life was proceeding.  Stevie Ray Vaughan, on tour with Eric Clapton, died in a helicopter crash, while Elton was in rehab.  It had been difficult to find out if Ray Cooper, who was performing with Eric on the tour, was also dead.  And Elton's father was Reg's father, who worked in the Royal Air Force, but also played trumpet in a band, through which he met his first wife Sheila - who came to watch.  He also loved football (soccer) and his nephews were professional footballers.  He was often away from home, was stubborn and rule bound when he was there, had a terrible short temper, was always critical of Reg, and arguing with his wife.  After they divorced he remarried and had four more boys who adored him.  But he was never able to show any affection to Reg.  He died in 1991 and Reg could not bring himself to attend the funeral. 
died.  He did not go to the funeral. 

248 Thirteen
Elton concluded that the higher force was supporting his post rehabilitation progress:
Gianni was murdered by a serial killer.  It was a terrible blow to Versace's family and to Elton and David.  Elton performed a duet at the funeral with Sting. 

271 Fourteen
While Elton found it strange and interesting to mix with the Royal Family, he noted that Princess Diana was the most down to earth.  But she was also a focus of interest and desire, and after her divorce from Prince Charles, would attend Elton and David Furnish's dinner parties where media stars: Stallone & Gere; would fight for her attentions.  Elton and Diana fell out but became friends again after Gianni Versace's murder.  But soon after, Diana died, and Richard Branson asked Elton to construct a tailored version of Candle In The Wind, and perform it at the funeral.  Elton and Bernie did this, and the version was released with the profits going to Diana's charities. 

To cope with the sad series of events, Elton focused on touring.  He and Billy Joel would tour around the world, singing each other's songs.  Elton aimed to do the same with Tina Turner, but it turned out their personalities did not align.  Elton loved to improvise, enjoying the reward is a synaptic signal supporting generalized goal-directed behavior & anticipation of reward.  Its significance is that the receptors that detect the signal are of the slow acting type and are used to alter (modulate) the response of fast acting dopaminergic neural circuits in which the receptors are deployed (LTP).  The signal detects significant changes including predictions of models and actual results which differ unexpectedly.  Dopamine is released primarily by neurons of the ventral tegmental area and the substantia nigra.  The dopamine network architecture is designed to signal the possibility of any type of reward: Norm violation punishment, Winning a lottery, & Misfortune of an envied competitor.  Dopamine signalling:
  • Rescales continuously to accommodate the range of intensity offered by different stimuli.  So dopamine's responses to any reward habituate.  GABA is released by some tegmental neurons to induce habituation.  This allows addictions to develop. 
  • Reflects the anticipation of reward.  It supports establishment of a relationship between a signal, working for a reward and obtaining the reward, but subsequently dopamine is mainly released encouraging the work, right after the signal supporting anticipation of the reward.  Anticipation requires learning and is reflected in hippocampus activity.  That explains context dependent cravings.  And the learning architecture means reliable cues become rewarding.  The accumbens supports willpower.  And dopamine
  • Promotes goal-oriented behavior needed to obtain & likely to achieve the reward - through the dopamine projections to the prefrontal cortex.  That makes dopamine central to:
    • Motivation.  This binding fails in depression - due to stress and in anxiety - due to signals from the amygdala.  
    • The prefrontal cortex's mesocortically stimulated support for willpower to act to delay rewards.  To sustain work for delayed rewards additional dopamine is released based on the length of the delay and the rewards uncertainty (modelled in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - which promotes the long term and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex - which promotes the short term) and the anticipated size of the reward (modelled in the accumbens).  Impulsiveness in ADHD is reflected in abnormal dopamine processing.  Addictive drugs bias the dopamine network towards impulsiveness.  
  • Is lowered by certain gene variants which induce: less dopamine in the synapse, fewer receptors, lower responsiveness of receptors; associated with (as tiny effects in hugely varying social scenarios): sensation seeking, risk taking, attentional problems, extroversion; where:
    • The receptor D4's gene shows high variability.  The D47R form is relatively unresponsive to dopamine.  
    • Dopamine is degraded by COMT.  The COMT gene includes a variant which is highly efficient reducing dopamine signalling but with complicating gene/environment interactions.  
    • Dopamine is removed from the synapse by a reuptake transporter DAT. 
of hearing a clever new musical is a complex emergent capability supported by sexual selection and generating pleasure.  It transforms the sensing of epiphenomena: Contour, Rhythm, Tempo, Timbre; to induce salient representations: Harmony, Key, Loudness, Melody, Meter, Pitch, and perceptions: Reverberation - echo; which allow musicians: Elton John, Elvis Presley; to show their fitness: superior coordination, creativity, adolescent leadership, stamina; true for birds and humans.  Levitin showed that listening to music causes a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: auditory cortex, frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, and finally the mesolimbic system, culminating in the nucleus accumbens.  And he found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout the session.  He argues music mimics some of the features of language and conveys some of the same emotions.  The brain regions pulse with the beat and predict the next one.  As the music is heard it is modeled and generates dopamine rewards for matching each beat and noting creative jokes in the rhythm.  The cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized. 
idea from one of the band.  Tina wanted everything to be accurate and each performance to be identical.  They could not work together. 

Elton had no interest in his financial affairs.  He left all that to John Reid is an outrageous, gay Scotsman.  He grew up as a tough guy from Paisley, but is also funny, ambitious, confident and the UK label manager for Tamla Motown.  He convinced Motown to release Tears Of A Clown as a single.  He and Elton John became a couple and he became Elton's manager.  After they split up, John managed other stars including Billy Connolly and Queen.  Once again he picked out Bohemian Rhapsody as a huge hit.  John continued to manage Elton's financial affairs, while Elton generated revenue and royalties from record sales and performances and spent exorbitantly.  After Elton agreed with Reid to sell his historic and future royalty stream for a lump sum, Elton's revenues did not cover his expenses and spending.  Elton disputed the fairness of John Reid Enterprises' management of his accounts, demanded that Reid return some capital, and terminated the management relationship.  John Reid returned $5 million to Elton, gave up his share of Elton's future royalties, closed down his management company and retired. 
Enterprises.  Elton had sold records and toured successfully since he was twenty and assumed that revenue would cover his expenses and excessive spending.  He accepted Reid's plan to sell his current and future record royalties for a lump sum of capital.  Elton used this to buy four houses, and pay off his team's mortgages.  Elton and David were shocked to discover they were deep in debt.  They terminated the management relationship with John Reid is an outrageous, gay Scotsman.  He grew up as a tough guy from Paisley, but is also funny, ambitious, confident and the UK label manager for Tamla Motown.  He convinced Motown to release Tears Of A Clown as a single.  He and Elton John became a couple and he became Elton's manager.  After they split up, John managed other stars including Billy Connolly and Queen.  Once again he picked out Bohemian Rhapsody as a huge hit.  John continued to manage Elton's financial affairs, while Elton generated revenue and royalties from record sales and performances and spent exorbitantly.  After Elton agreed with Reid to sell his historic and future royalty stream for a lump sum, Elton's revenues did not cover his expenses and spending.  Elton disputed the fairness of John Reid Enterprises' management of his accounts, demanded that Reid return some capital, and terminated the management relationship.  John Reid returned $5 million to Elton, gave up his share of Elton's future royalties, closed down his management company and retired. 
Enterprises and had a lawyer claw back some of the funds Elton had paid Reid.  Another significant relationship had died. 

291 Fifteen
Elton started writing film scores, which turned out to be an interesting technical challenge, and the film Billy Elliot reminded Elton of his struggles with his dad was Reg's father, who worked in the Royal Air Force, but also played trumpet in a band, through which he met his first wife Sheila - who came to watch.  He also loved football (soccer) and his nephews were professional footballers.  He was often away from home, was stubborn and rule bound when he was there, had a terrible short temper, was always critical of Reg, and arguing with his wife.  After they divorced he remarried and had four more boys who adored him.  But he was never able to show any affection to Reg.  He died in 1991 and Reg could not bring himself to attend the funeral. 
, driving him to help it become a musical. 

Bernie was so frustrated with their recent records he travelled to France to lobby Elton, to change the process they were using.  Bernie felt their recent records had been disasters, and inconvenient to make.  So they agreed to make the next ones in Los Angeles, near where Bernie lives, to
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. 
explore and extend the musical is a complex emergent capability supported by sexual selection and generating pleasure.  It transforms the sensing of epiphenomena: Contour, Rhythm, Tempo, Timbre; to induce salient representations: Harmony, Key, Loudness, Melody, Meter, Pitch, and perceptions: Reverberation - echo; which allow musicians: Elton John, Elvis Presley; to show their fitness: superior coordination, creativity, adolescent leadership, stamina; true for birds and humans.  Levitin showed that listening to music causes a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: auditory cortex, frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, and finally the mesolimbic system, culminating in the nucleus accumbens.  And he found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout the session.  He argues music mimics some of the features of language and conveys some of the same emotions.  The brain regions pulse with the beat and predict the next one.  As the music is heard it is modeled and generates dopamine rewards for matching each beat and noting creative jokes in the rhythm.  The cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized. 
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). 
ideas they had worked on in their early twenties.  This resulted in creations: Songs from the West Coast, Peachtree Road, The Captain and the Kid, The Driving Board; they felt are subjective models: sad, glad, mad, scared, surprised, and compassionate; of the organism and its proximate environment, including ratings of situations signalled by broadly distributed chemicals and neural circuits.  These feelings become highly salient inputs, evolutionarily associated, to higher level emotions encoded in neural circuits: amygdala, and insula.  Deacon shows James' conception of feeling can build sentience.  Damasio, similarly, asserts feelings reveal to the conscious mind the subjective status of life: good, bad, in between; within a higher organism.  They especially indicate the affective situation within the old interior world of the viscera located in the abdomen, thorax and thick of the skin - so smiling makes one feel happy; but augmented with the reports from the situation of the new interior world of voluntary muscles.  Repeated experiences build intermediate narratives, in the mind, which reduce the salience.  Damasio concludes feelings relate closely and consistently with homeostasis, acting as its mental deputies once organisms developed 'nervous systems' about 600 million years ago, and building on the precursor regulatory devices supplied by evolution to social insects and prokaryotes and leveraging analogous dynamic constraints.  Damasio suggests feelings contribute to the development of culture:
  • As motives for intellectual creation: prompting detection and diagnosis of homeostatic deficiencies, identifying desirable states worthy of creative effort.
  • As monitors of the success and failure of cultural instruments and practices
  • As participants in the negotiation of adjustments required by the cultural process over time 
, that would stand the test 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 which had less commercial success. 

The UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.   was finally ready to provide LGBTQ people with legal rights including civil unions.  Elton and David Furnish entered into a civil partnership and almost everyone came to celebrate: people lined the streets heading to the Windsor Guildhall, and handed out flowers and food, 600 friends attended their party at Woodside, and David's parents flew over from Canada.  But while his mother was Reg's mother, who was a shop worker.  When she wanted to she was fun, and loved music: Billy May and His Orchestra, Ted Heath, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine, Nat King Cole, Guy Mitchell; and dancing, but she liked people to fear her.  She looked for arguments, was stubborn and had a terrible short temper.  After she left her first husband, Stanley, she married Fred and life became more tranquil for a while. 
and Derf attended, it was to protest the union and David's parent's acceptance of it.  It hurt Elton, but he was now in a committed long-term relationship with David, that wasn't built around codependency. 

Elton discovered that Leon Russell was ill and had fallen upon hard times.  Leon was still Elton John's early inspiration, and an exceptional singer and piano player.  Elton got in contact with him and they agreed to make a record, The Union, together.  It was a success, helping Leon get a new record deal, be made a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, make money and tour until he died in 2016. 

313 Sixteen
Elton was befriended twice by orphans at centers supported by his AIDS is acquired auto-immune deficiency syndrome, a pandemic disease caused by the HIV.  It also amplifies the threat of tuberculosis.   Initially deadly, infecting and destroying the T-lymphocytes of the immune system, it can now be treated with HAART to become a chronic disease.  And with an understanding of HIV's mode of entry into the T-cells, through its binding to CCR5 and CD4 encoded transmembrane proteins, AIDS may be susceptible to treatment with recombinant DNA to alter the CCR5 binding site, or with drugs that bind to the CCR5 cell surface protein preventing binding by the virus.  Future optimization of drug delivery may leverage nanoscale research (May 2016). 
charity: First, Noosa, in Soweto, South Africa, and then Lev in Donetsk, Ukraine.  The effect is transformational on Elton making him as interested in parenting as David already was.  So they decide to have a family: Zachary and Elijah; using their sperm, a surrogate mother and network in California. 

Elton and David quietly get married when the UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.   allows.  The only attendees are Zachary and Elijah, as ring bearers. 

Elton's mum was Reg's mother, who was a shop worker.  When she wanted to she was fun, and loved music: Billy May and His Orchestra, Ted Heath, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine, Nat King Cole, Guy Mitchell; and dancing, but she liked people to fear her.  She looked for arguments, was stubborn and had a terrible short temper.  After she left her first husband, Stanley, she married Fred and life became more tranquil for a while. 
remains difficult and cruel to him and David.  He takes to avoiding her because he still becomes as terrified as when he was ten when she is present.  He is sad is a feeling, which can induce empathy and compassion.  It can last for days, in contrast to the emotions, fear & anger.  Mild sadness induces a beneficial state in the brain: improved judgment, memory, motivation, and more socially sensitive and generous. 
when she dies, and many at the funeral recall her fun side with him.  Uncle Reg breaks the silence as her body is driven away: 'you can't answer anyone back now, can you, Sheila?'

331 Seventeen
Elton enjoys being a father and coach to the boys: cinema, football, dinner at Pizza Express, exploring the department store Daniel's in Windsor, school work; which allows him and David to get to know the other parents with children attending Zachary and Elijah's school.  It is a pragmatic and grounded group like the managers at Watford Football Club. 

Elton is often away touring, or working in the studio with a new generation of artists, or performing at his show in Las Vegas, or doing private shows to finance his charities, and when he is not David is enveloped in the chaos provides an explanation for the apparently random period between water droplets falling from a tap.  Typically the model of the system is poor and so the data captured about the system looks unpredictable - chaotic.  With a better model the system's operation can be explained with standard physical principles.  Hence chaos as defined here is different from complexity.   of living in the public eye with him, while doing much of the parenting.  To cope with the long-term stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels.  Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight.  As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate.  A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance.  The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. 
  • The short term response to the stressor
    • activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response.  The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated.  The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail.  In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area.  The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC.  But when the stressor is
  • long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues.  Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in.  Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status.  It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition.  Sustained stress:
    • Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment! 
    • Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala. 
      • Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful. 
      • BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning. 
    • Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory.  Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala.  And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces.  Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers.  A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand.  The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds. 
    • Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression. 
    • Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive.  It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.  
    • Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017) 
  • During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.  
  • Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness. 
David starts to depend on drink.  Soon he has to seek treatment and join alcoholics anonymous.  Empowered by his sobriety, David becomes Elton's business manager driving forward a variety of projects: Rocketman biopic, the set and accompanying animations for the farewell tour; and reducing costs. 

Adding to the stress, group bassist Bob Birch commits suicide, very close friend Ingrid Sischy dies of cancer is the out-of-control growth of cells, which have stopped obeying their cooperative schematic planning and signalling infrastructure.  It results from compounded: oncogene, tumor suppressor, DNA caretaker; mutations in the DNA.  In 2010 one third of Americans are likely to die of cancer.  Cell division rates did not predict likelihood of cancer.  Viral infections are associated.  Radiation and carcinogen exposure are associated.  Lifestyle impacts the likelihood of cancer occurring: Drinking alcohol to excess, lack of exercise, Obesity, Smoking, More sun than your evolved melanin protection level; all significantly increase the risk of cancer occurring (Jul 2016). 
, and Elton has a variety of health scares:

351 Epilogue
David ensured the retirement tour started lavishly and stunningly with the help of Tony King worked in the offices of DJM, renting a desk where he did publishing and promotions for George Martin's association of independent record producers (AIR).  Elton explains he was notable for his style: suits, velvet trousers, satin items, from the hippest tailors in London, antique silk scarves, dyed hair with blond highlights; was openly gay.  He had worked for The Rolling Stones, Roy Orbison and was friends with The Beatles.  Elton found Tony hilarious and wanted to be like him - stylish, exotic, and outrageous.  Tony included Elton in his dinner parties with friends including John Reid.  And through his network of connections at AIR and Abbey Road, Tony helped Elton become one of their session musicians.  Later when Tony was general manager of Apple Records' US operation he introduced Elton to John Lennon.  Tony went on to focus on helping the Rolling Stones and Elton make their tour shows exceptional. 
. 

Elton found the simple actions of parenting were enjoyable.  Previously, these were things he would avoid, things that reminded him of being unhappy is an emotion which functions to mobilize the mind to seek capabilities and resources that support Darwinian fitness.  Today happiness is associated with Epicurean ideas that were rediscovered during the renaissance and promoted by Thomas Jefferson.  But natural selection has 'designed' happiness to support hunter-gatherer fitness in the African savanna.  It is assessed: Relative to other's situations, Based on small gains or losses relative to one's current situation; and so what makes us [un-]happy and our responses can seem a counter-productive treadmill.  For Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in the savanna there were many ways for losses to undermine fitness and so losses still make us very unhappy.  Smoking, drinking and excessive eating were not significant and so don't make us unhappy even though they impact longevity.  , of being Reg Dwight.  But now he could see they were a connection to reality.  Elton John hid from Reg and things went horribly wrong.  But overall, he found joy by a most unexpected and
This page discusses the impact of random events which once they occur encourage a particular direction forward for a complex adaptive system (CAS). 
unpredictable path.  And he asserts 'The only question worth asking is: what's next?'


This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory frame.  The theory provides an organizing framework that is used by 'life.'  It can illuminate and clarify complex situations and be applied flexibly.  It can be used to evaluate and rank models that claim to describe our perceived reality.  It catalogs the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems that are based on the interaction of emergent agents.  It highlights the constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form.  A proposal that does not conform is wrong. 

John Holland's framework for representing complexity is outlined.  Links to other key aspects of CAS theory discussed at the site are presented. 
CAS analysis suggests various contributors to Elton John's creation of 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. 
songs and striking musical is a complex emergent capability supported by sexual selection and generating pleasure.  It transforms the sensing of epiphenomena: Contour, Rhythm, Tempo, Timbre; to induce salient representations: Harmony, Key, Loudness, Melody, Meter, Pitch, and perceptions: Reverberation - echo; which allow musicians: Elton John, Elvis Presley; to show their fitness: superior coordination, creativity, adolescent leadership, stamina; true for birds and humans.  Levitin showed that listening to music causes a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: auditory cortex, frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, and finally the mesolimbic system, culminating in the nucleus accumbens.  And he found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout the session.  He argues music mimics some of the features of language and conveys some of the same emotions.  The brain regions pulse with the beat and predict the next one.  As the music is heard it is modeled and generates dopamine rewards for matching each beat and noting creative jokes in the rhythm.  The cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized. 
performances:

Elton John's light hearted auto-biographic study chronicles the formative experiences and creative life of an enthusiast achiever. 




























































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