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In this page we:
- Introduce some current
problems of complexity for humanity
- Explain how to use
the site.
There are two main starting points:
- The example systems
frame and
- The presentation
frame.
- And then there is how
we use the site.
The site uses lots of click through. That's so that you
can see the underlying principles that are contributing to the
system being discussed. We hope that as you internalize
and reflect on the principles the system should appear in a new
light. At this site clicking is good!
Opportunities frame |
This web page reviews persistent business challenges with
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory.
Exploring opportunities |
Dark webs can enhance
individual creativity, local operational autonomy, enterprise
strategic alignment and organizational learning. In this
page we summarize the opportunity.
Dark webs |
The productivity of
complex adaptive system (CAS) is reviewed highlighting the most
significant variables: access to raw
materials, agency based leverage of additional wage
laborers/consumers to build a SuperOrganism during
cliodynamic up-cycles, wealth
amplifying infrastructure build-out,
trading
network time capture offset by instability of amplifier
driven bubbles requiring strategic management and extended
phenotypic alignment and disruption; when they expand markets
for goods & services. The CAS and classical economic
approaches are compared.
Important CAS aspects are highlighted:
- CAS reflect the history of
all the events of the network of agents and their environment
- The relevant economic
history is reviewed demonstrating the contribution of
power, politics, war...
- Chemical
structures capture and preserve important recipes that
allow agents to increase search/operational effectiveness
and wealth & the
system to be robust
- Environment matched
to system strategy: Superorganism
and beetle
- Cliodynamic models of historical agent networks allows a
realistic assessment
of productivity over a full network cycle
- The models must be matched
to the proximate environment
- Internal failures
of the agent network
- Existential
threats to the agent network
Human agents must dedicate: focus, time,
coherence and skills; to productively generate wealth. And they could
do much more - learning to develop
and use formal schematic plans
during their education, and using the skill when participating
in a superorganism.
CAS level
productivity improvements are due to:
- Collective solidarity ensures evolved amplifiers are fully
expressed
- Valuable schematically defined, emergent actions must be
accessible to resource controlling and allocating schemata
and their agents
- Meta ideas that can be reused and recombined
- Distribution of these ideas allow parallel searching
- Trading to gain time
- Isolated agents can be integrated into the current network
during each growth phase, but cliodynamic assessments show
agents are dropped again from the network during the decline
phase of the cycle
- Network
effects and leverage of power drive productivity
improvements.
Human agent level productivity
- Agent level productivity
improvements of significance
- More time: Increased light,
reduced moving & travelling, quicker & better
eating, reduced rework, motivated & effective
- Broader utilization with adoption of standards &
undermining of monopoly
constraints
- Weapons & armor
- Power available: Driving
flows &
actions in required direction
- Iterative theory & practice
- Infrastructure & tools: catalytic
reduction in cost of repeated operations
- Agent level productivity improvements of
limited effect
Productivity of CAS |
Representative democracy's robustness is dependent on emotional
and cultural
aspects of humanity. The impact of YouTube's
recommendation engine on the adolescent mind has
undermined the genetic
operators provided by culture. Typical parental constraints on
the associations allowed to adolescents are undermined and
emotional links are built to the most emotive ideas, based
simply on their capacity to sustain attention to YouTube.
An outline
mechanism is described that reintroduces 'parental'
constraints. Legislative enforcement of the capability is
required.
Details of the theoretical complex adaptive system (CAS)
requirements of genetic operations are introduced. The
minds implementation of the schematic operators is
explained. Traditional cultural constraints limiting large
changes in the schema base are outlined.
Aligning YouTube & democracy |
Leveraging creativity |
In Gray Matter Michael Graziano asks Are we Really
Conscious? He argues that we build inaccurate models of
reality and then develop intuitions based on these problematic
models. He concludes we can't use intuitions to understand
consciousness. Instead he promotes 'brain science' as more
accurate and argues it suggests we are not conscious. In
this page we summarize his article and then use complex adaptive
system (CAS) theory to review his
arguments. Constrained by CAS theory and mechanisms of
emergence we see a requirement for consciousness.
Graziano's consciousness |
Consciousness is no longer mysterious. In this page we use
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory to describe the high-level
architecture of consciousness, linking sensory networks,
low level feelings and
genetically conserved and deployed neural structures into a high
level scheduler. Consciousness is evolution's
solution to the complex problems of effective, emergent,
multi-cellular perception based strategy.
Constrained by emergence and needing
to avoid the epistemological
problem of starting with a blank slate with every birth,
evolution was limited in its options.
We explain how survival value allows evolution to leverage
available tools: sensors, agent relative position, models, perception
& representation; to solve the problem of mobile
agents responding effectively to their own state and proximate environment.
Evolution did this by providing a genetically
constructed framework that can
develop into a conscious CAS.
And we discuss the implications with regard to artificial
intelligence, sentient robots,
augmented intelligence, and
aspects of philosophy.
On the nature of conscious things |
John Searle's influential thought experiment implied to him that
computers cannot understand. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory indicates that this is
not the case.
Understanding the Chinese room |
In his talk 'The Science of Ending Aging' Aubrey de Grey argues
we should invest more in maintenance of our bodies. In
this page we summarize his video comments and then use complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory to
review his arguments. Focusing the lens of CAS theory and
mechanisms of emergence on the system we highlight the pros and
cons of ending aging.
Ending aging |
The essence of
a library complex adaptive system (CAS) is defined.
Implications
for the future development of contemporary libraries
are reviewed.
Libraries evolving |
This web page reviews opportunities to benefit from modeling
agent based flows using complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Agent based flows |
This web page reviews opportunities to find and capture new
niches, based on studying fitness landscapes using complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
CAS SuperOrganisms are
able to capture rich niches. A variety of CAS are
included: chess, prokaryotes,
nation states, businesses, economies; along
with change mechanisms: evolution
and artificial
intelligence; agency
effects and environmental impacts.
Genetic algorithms supported by fitness functions are compared to
genetic operators.
Early evolution
of life and its inbuilt constraints are discussed.
Strategic clustering, goals, flexibility and representation of
state are considered.
Fitness landscapes |
This web page reviews opportunities to enhance computing theory
and practice by using biological mechanisms and complex adaptive
system (CAS) theory.
Biologically inspired computing |
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Leveraging creativity
Summary
Organizations can benefit from understanding and leveraging
creativity. In this page we review what creativity is,
highlight the
opportunity - including when it is
appropriate to apply, how to do
that organizationally, and when it might
be avoided, and the challenges with
enabling it when it is desirable.
We introduce the aspects of the creative process.
Introduction
Creativity is a complex phenomenon, M. Mitchell Waldrop describes a vision of complexity via: - Rich interactions that allow a system to undergo spontaneous self-organization and, for CAS, evolution
- Systems that are adaptive
- More predictability than chaotic systems by bringing order and chaos into
- Balance at the edge of chaos
.
But its contribution can be highlighted with This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS analysis. Here we explore
the potential to understand and to leverage creativity in: education, scientific research,
businesses, other organizations,
economies and nation states;
typical cultural superorganisms is a wealthy autonomous entity needing and controlling the richest niches in the proximate environment, that emerges from the bundled cooperation of schematically aligned agents. The term is based on the social insect model, used by: ants, termites, and bees; and identified by Holldobler & E.O. Wilson. These genetically identical insect superorganisms cooperatively limit their reproduction to align with the resources available in the niche. Wilson asserts these insects all developed nests to which they returned to raise their offspring, and when the nest sites were of limited capacity some family members responded by focusing on defending the nest and foraging while their mother became an egg laying queen, enabled by "a single genetic change which silenced the brain's program for dispersal and prevents the mother and her offspring from dispersing to create new nests," Wilson explains. He adds climate control of the nest and disease resistance, just like the human immune system, demand individually focused diversity. So the queen's genome consists of low variety alleles for the extended phenotypic 'robot' worker caste agents and their organization - queen and workers competing as one, with other colonies and individual insects - and other parts which are high where the genome includes significant diversity. For humans it is an evolved cultural strategy used when the environment is supportive, but it is dependent on our imperfect cognitive assessment of kinship as well as group selection driven emotions: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious; and group oriented pressures to conform and remain: religions. And the adjacent possible must be recreated and modeled culturally through the emergence of processes such as democracy. It depends on inter-agent signalling. In both insects and humans it allows specialization, and encourages operations and flows that are tightly controlled, limiting waste, leveraging parallel activity, supporting coherence. Superorganisms reflect cliodynamic flows. A superorganism has a development and operational phase. As additional agents are coopted into the superorganism they align, participate in supply and demand activities and so contribute to the evolutionary amplification. Damasio notes that prokaryotes, in rich environments, can similarly operate in a symbiotic fashion expressing cultural behaviors. ,
using CAS theory and examples from lower levels of the CAS hierarchy: chess, microorganisms,
animals including
humans; to develop a robust framework for utilizing
creativity and highlight challenges and current best
practices. Key
aspects of creativity:
- Behavioral
propensity for
To benefit from shifts in the environment agents must be flexible. Being
sensitive to environmental signals
agents who adjust strategic priorities can constrain their
competitors.
flexibility.
- Childhood
and 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.
development
that introduce, through being Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic
operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination.
The nature of the operations is described.
schematic
operators, diverse ideas, different The influence of childhood on behavior is significant.
Enneagrams define personality
types: Reformer, Helper, Achiever,
Individualist, Investigator, Loyalist, Enthusiast,
Challenger and Peacemaker; based on the impact of
childhood driven wounds.
The Enneagram becomes
a tool to enable interested people to transform from the
emotionally wounded base, hidden within
the armor of the type, to the liberated underlying essence.
Childhood leaves each of us with some environmentally specific Basic Fear. In response each
of us adopts an induced Basic Desire
of the type. But as we develop the inner observer, it will
support presence and
undermine the identification
that supports the armor of the type.
The Enneagram reveals three sets of relations about our type
armor:
- Triadic self
revealing: Instinctive,
feeling, thinking; childhood needs
that became significant wounds
- Social style
groupings: Assertive, compliant, withdrawn; strategies for
managing inner conflict
- Coping styles: Positive outlook, competency, reactive; strategies for
defending childhood wounds
Riso and Hudson augment the Enneagram with instinctual
distortions reflected in the interests of the variants.
The Enneagram also offers tools for understanding a person's level of development:
unhealthy, average, healthy,
liberation; including their
current center of gravity,
steriotypical social role,
wake-up call, leaden rule, red
flag, and direction
of integration and disintegration.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the models
presented by the Enneagram with evolved behaviors and structures
in the mind: feelings, emotions, social behaviors, ideas; driven
by genetic and cultural evolution and the constraints of family
and social life. Emergent evolved amplifers can be
constrained by Riso and Hudson's awareness strategies.
behavioral approaches and curiosity
about events that can be leveraged into a: set of
tools, network of creative associations, systematically
coherent model; to expand
the adjacent possible replacing hierarchic
constraints with dynamic flows 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. products,
services and ideas
- A rich problem and application network:
parents,
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?
teachers, academics, managers;
- Environmental forces that encourage
This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergence of a This page discusses the benefits of geographic clusters of agents and resources at the center of a complex adaptive
system (CAS).
geographic cluster interested in
one or more important problems, and discussing and valuing Good ideas are successful because they build upon prior
developments that have been successfully implemented.
Johnson demonstrates that they are phenotypic expressions of
memetic plans subject to the laws of complex adaptive systems (CAS).
good ideas.
- A vision that drives activity forward, for the lucky a
situation without 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.
, but that's not necessary or usual, and
with challenging problems to focus on
- Thought experiments to stimulate building of new
associations
Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic
operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination.
The nature of the operations is described.
Recombination enabled by a slow hunch and extended
by, meat
sharing originated, trade networks
- An emotion are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism.
This page discusses the benefits of bringing agents and resources to the
dynamically best connected region of a complex adaptive system (CAS).
centered process coupling the
recipient's perception are internal appearences of the external world and the body according to Haikonen. RSS views them as evolved models that are: - Associated schematically with the signals generated in response to epi-phenomena detected by sensory receptors and
- Acted on by emergent agents.
to the ideas signalled, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance. In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively. A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form. Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell. Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state. Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals. Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich. Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors. In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. To be credible signals must be hard to fake. To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient. To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy.
by the creator, enabling This page reviews the strategy of setting up an arms race. At its
core this strategy depends on being able to alter, or take
advantage of an alteration in, the genome
or equivalent. The situation is illustrated with examples
from biology, high tech and politics.
evolved
amplification from This page describes the consequences of the asymmetries caused
by genotypic traits
creating a phenotypic signal in males and selection activity
in the female - sexual selection.
The impact of this asymmetry is to create a powerful alternative
to natural selection with sexual
selection's leverage of positive returns.
The mechanisms are described.
sexual
selection. It helps when the target's interest
in the creation has been peeked by the creator's 'star'
reputation.
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 made
available to iterate around an exploratory Walter Shewhart's iterative development process is found in many
complex adaptive systems (CAS).
The mechanism is reviewed and its value in coping with random
events is explained.
Shewhart cycle, to help develop
instances of the creative idea. Clear documentation of
the schema allows for its replication. Argyll
& Mivert's
competitive threats to 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's
origin
encouraged a review of the threats and a response that
strengthened Charles's published arguments.
- A fulfilling creation, an expression of a good idea, built
on a platform is agent generated infrastructure that supports emergence of an entity through: leverage of an abundant energy source, reusable resources; attracting a phenotypically aligned network of agents.
of
prior successful developments, constructed from simple
components including real or virtual Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agents.
- A signature
that highlights, and reinforces, the creative idea to the
signalled recipient
- Constraints,
needed to sustain any
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS,
provide a limit on falling into 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. , but introduce the
risk, is an assessment of the likelihood of an independent problem occurring. It can be assigned an accurate probability since it is independent of other variables in the system. As such it is different from uncertainty. of becoming stuck in
the current, sub-optimal niche.
- A delivery process that ensures the creation
breaks through the
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS Flows of different kinds are essential to the operation of
complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support
the emergence of the systems.
Examples of constraints are discussed.
constraints and reaches its
appreciative audience, transforms creativity into 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. .
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. is a core
capability of all This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS, providing
access to This web page reviews opportunities to find and capture new
niches, based on studying fitness landscapes using complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
CAS SuperOrganisms are
able to capture rich niches. A variety of CAS are
included: chess, prokaryotes,
nation states, businesses, economies; along
with change mechanisms: evolution
and artificial
intelligence; agency
effects and environmental impacts.
Genetic algorithms supported by fitness functions are compared to
genetic operators.
Early evolution
of life and its inbuilt constraints are discussed.
Strategic clustering, goals, flexibility and representation of
state are considered.
new competitive niches.
Creativity provides the Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic
operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination.
The nature of the operations is described.
schematic operators that support cultural 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.
access to new
niches. This includes both the reason based and emotional are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism. facets needed by
the innovation process, introducing additional competitive
amplifiers when it is done well.
The differences, built into people's brains during development is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete. , through neuroplasticity is lasting change to the brain that occurs throughout life. It is also termed neural plasticity. The changes include:
- The strength of dendritic input alters due to genetic,
neural and hormonal signals
- Hebb notes that memories
require strengthening of preexisting synapses. Glutamate
responsive neurons' post
synaptic dendritic spines have two types of receptor:
non-NMDA and NMDA.
NMDA channels are responsible for this strengthening
mechanism. LTP then occurs
to prolong the increase in excitability of the
synapse.
- The LTP operation results in calcium diffusion which
triggers new spine formation in adjacent parts of the
dendrite. Eventually that can stimulate dentrite
growth enabling more neurons to connect.
- Short term stress promotes hippocampal
LTP.
- Sustained stress promotes:
- Hippocampal & frontal
cortex LTD &
suppresses LTP. Subsequent reductions in NCAM then reduce dendrite and
synapse density.
- Amygdala LTP and
suppresses LTD boosting fear
conditioning. It increases BDNF
levels and expands dendrites in the BLA.
- Depression and anxiety reduce hippocampal
dendrite and spine number by reducing BDNF.
- The axon's conditions for
- Initiating an action
potential.
- Progesterone boosts GABA-ergic neurons response to GABA
decreasing the excitability of other neurons over a
period of hours.
- Duration of a neuron's
refractory period. Testosterone
shortens the refractory period of amygdala and amygdala target
neurons over a period of hours.
- Synaptic connections being
constantly removed and recreated
- Synapses being created or destroyed. Stimulation
generates additional dendritic spines which become
associated with a nearby axon terminal and within weeks a
synapse forms. The synapse then contributes calcium
diffusion through LTP triggering more spine
formation. When dendritic spines recede synapses
disappear.
- Cortical maps change to reflect alterations in the
inputs and outputs from the body.
- Birth of brain cells in many areas of adult brains: the
hippocampus (where 3% are
replaced each month) and olfactory bulb and lesser amounts
in the cortex.
- Restructuring after brain damage including axonal plasticity.
Distant rerouting of axons is observed but no mechanism
has been identified yet.
- Vision is plastic in predators, where the eyes are moved
during final development. Dehaene
argues for neuronal
recycling supporting reading.
reflecting our different
early environments, can be accounted for and leveraged in:
Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is
inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling
students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane
roles. He highlights a radical and already proven
alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning
processes supported by technology and freed up attention of
teams of teachers. Building on his personal experience of
helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative,
Khan:
- Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging
short videos focused on content,
Converging on mastery,
With the help of
neuroscience, and filling
in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach
to the mainstream method.
- Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s,
Inducing holes that
are hidden by tests, Tests
which ignore creativity.
The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to
be supplemented with homework.
Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so
they could mentor them while they attended school, an
inversion that significantly improves the economics.
- Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service,
Working with a
real classroom, Trying stealth
learning, At Khan Academy full time, In the curriculum at
Los Altos, Supporting life-long
learning.
- Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with
a one
room school, a robust
teaching team, and creativity enabled;
so with some catalysis
even the poorest can
become educated and earn credentials
for current jobs.
- Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based
assessments, College
education;
- Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure
for creativity to
emerge and to support risk taking.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Disruption is a powerful force for
change but if its force is used to support the current teachers
to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the
current educational network?
Education can benefit by taking
account the 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
type
of the pupil in customizing materials, and making
assessments about them. Additionally, while they are
still developmentally 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.
primed for accepting new The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
models
of the world, the This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergent cognitive is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen. framework
of race can be dismantled, presented for what it is, and the
political leverage
of the underlying
cognitive fear is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful. The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger. There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central 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. of anyone different
to our own family can be understood and learned.
Including a representation of This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS
theory highlighting the 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.
operation
of This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution can help
integrate the sciences and humanities are the study of humans as a collection. It now includes philosophy, history and literature. At the time of Pogio Bracciolini its limited focus was on ancient artifacts and ancient texts that illuminated details of Latin language. E.O. Wilson argues it represents the human capacity for symbolic language, coevolving with the structure of the brain. He asserts this freed the mind to be creative, entering any imagined world. This is empowering, except we retain the emotions of our ancient primate ancestors. and build
enlightenment,
- Biological
and social sciences can remove 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. from sampling by
taking into account gender differences,
developmental is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete.
stages and 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
types.
Nation
states have contributed to the expansion of creativity. Their
political policies have generated 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
that focused different groups within their control This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). Small
world and scale free networks are considered.
network to search for different
opportunities: the Irish flowed to the US is the United States of America. to escape Malthusian, Thomas Robert Malthus was an English cleric, East India Company economist and scholar. He described the geometrical expansion of populations supported by sufficient resources and the population's subsequent collapse as the land used to grow the resources became fully deployed. Initially concerned by England's leaders' fears of a French style revolution and disagreeing with William Godwin's visions of utopian progress and the idea of the Noble Savage, he argued for harsh treatment of the unemployed poor, denouncing charity. Subsequently he softened his position accepting that emigration, education, and celibacy could constrain the impact of exponential population growth. He socialized with the Wedgwood and Darwin families. His ideas influenced Charles Darwin. English
constraints, while the Jews flowed to the US to escape Prussian,
Habsburg, and Russian constraints. Nation states' economies is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. have encouraged a
search for labor, supplies and productivity is the efficiency with which an agent's selected strategy converts the inputs to an action into the resulting outputs. It is a complex capability of agents. It will depend on the agent having: time, motivation, focus, appropriate skills; the coherence of the participating collaborators, and a beneficial environment including the contribution of: standardization of inputs and outputs, infrastructure and evolutionary amplifiers.
improvements. Their economically is the study of trade between humans. Traditional Economics is based on an equilibrium model of the economic system. Traditional Economics includes: microeconomics, and macroeconomics. Marx developed an alternative static approach. Limitations of the equilibrium model have resulted in the development of: Keynes's dynamic General Theory of Employment Interest & Money, and Complexity Economics. Since trading depends on human behavior, economics has developed behavioral models including: behavioral economics.
driven education policies: Prussian, English
or French; support the construction of a slow hunch platform is agent generated infrastructure that supports emergence of an entity through: leverage of an abundant energy source, reusable resources; attracting a phenotypically aligned network of agents. of ideas in the Computational
theory of the mind and evolutionary
psychology provide Steven Pinker with a framework on which
to develop his psychological arguments about the mind and its
relationship to the brain. Humans captured a cognitive niche by
natural selection 'building out'
specialized aspects of their bodies and brains resulting in a system of mental organs
we call the mind.
He garnishes and defends the framework with findings from
psychology regarding: The visual
system - an example of natural
selections solutions to the sensory challenges
of inverse
modeling of our
environment; Intensions - where
he highlights the challenges of hunter-gatherers -
making sense of the objects
they perceive and predicting what they imply and natural
selections powerful solutions; Emotions - which Pinker argues are
essential to human prioritizing and decision making; Relationships - natural selection's
strategies for coping with the most dangerous competitors, other
people. He helps us understand marriage, friendships and war.
These conclusions allow him to understand the development and
maintenance of higher callings: Art, Music, Literature, Humor,
Religion, & Philosophy; and develop a position on the meaning of life.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) modeling allows RSS to frame Pinker's arguments
within humanity's current situation, induced by powerful evolved
amplifiers: Globalization,
Cliodynamics, The green revolution
and resource
bottlenecks; melding his powerful predictions of the
drivers of human behavior with system wide constraints.
The implications are discussed.
minds of the pupils.
The guild system, a set of 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
limiting competition for prized jobs, was extended in Western
Europe to the early universities and the aristocrats' feeder
schools, such as Eton, Harrow, Rugby,
and Winchester in the UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. ,
adding constraints to education infrastructure from schools to
universities. When mass
mobilization became an economic necessity this constraint
on access to higher education was maintained. Streaming of
the mass education flows allowed some pupils in the top streams
to access the universities. 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,
always attached
to his position of status is a publically accepted, signal that one possesses assets: wealth, beauty, talent, expertise, access & trust of powerful people; to be able to help others.
near the top of the scholarly
hierarchy, heavily weighted Malthusian, Thomas Robert Malthus was an English cleric, East India Company economist and scholar. He described the geometrical expansion of populations supported by sufficient resources and the population's subsequent collapse as the land used to grow the resources became fully deployed. Initially concerned by England's leaders' fears of a French style revolution and disagreeing with William Godwin's visions of utopian progress and the idea of the Noble Savage, he argued for harsh treatment of the unemployed poor, denouncing charity. Subsequently he softened his position accepting that emigration, education, and celibacy could constrain the impact of exponential population growth. He socialized with the Wedgwood and Darwin families. His ideas influenced Charles Darwin. competition
and hence natural
selection. But with effective constraints on
breeding, the superOrganism is a wealthy autonomous entity needing and controlling the richest niches in the proximate environment, that emerges from the bundled cooperation of schematically aligned agents. The term is based on the social insect model, used by: ants, termites, and bees; and identified by Holldobler & E.O. Wilson. These genetically identical insect superorganisms cooperatively limit their reproduction to align with the resources available in the niche. Wilson asserts these insects all developed nests to which they returned to raise their offspring, and when the nest sites were of limited capacity some family members responded by focusing on defending the nest and foraging while their mother became an egg laying queen, enabled by "a single genetic change which silenced the brain's program for dispersal and prevents the mother and her offspring from dispersing to create new nests," Wilson explains. He adds climate control of the nest and disease resistance, just like the human immune system, demand individually focused diversity. So the queen's genome consists of low variety alleles for the extended phenotypic 'robot' worker caste agents and their organization - queen and workers competing as one, with other colonies and individual insects - and other parts which are high where the genome includes significant diversity. For humans it is an evolved cultural strategy used when the environment is supportive, but it is dependent on our imperfect cognitive assessment of kinship as well as group selection driven emotions: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious; and group oriented pressures to conform and remain: religions. And the adjacent possible must be recreated and modeled culturally through the emergence of processes such as democracy. It depends on inter-agent signalling. In both insects and humans it allows specialization, and encourages operations and flows that are tightly controlled, limiting waste, leveraging parallel activity, supporting coherence. Superorganisms reflect cliodynamic flows. A superorganism has a development and operational phase. As additional agents are coopted into the superorganism they align, participate in supply and demand activities and so contribute to the evolutionary amplification. Damasio notes that prokaryotes, in rich environments, can similarly operate in a symbiotic fashion expressing cultural behaviors.
strategy highlights a way
to maximize the capabilities and leverage of all contributing Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agents.
The US is the United States of America. expansion of its school
and university system, subsequently
supported by the GI
bill is the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944 (G.I. Bill) which provided benefits to soldiers returning from the Second World War: tuition payments and living expenses, low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans to start businesses and one year of unemployment compensation; acting as a major catalyst in generating human capital. , expanded the creative potential of the education
infrastructure. But, making education a business
introduced access constraints limiting the creative potential of
those lacking 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. .
Additionally policies constraining the funding of the public
education system in the
Old South provided constraints on the education of
non-whites. Similarly, the farming emerged several times and various places, probably first around 11,000 years ago. It depends on and supports evolved amplifiers which introduce instability and problems with sustainability of the populations that depended on it, unlike the earlier hunting and gathering. Today the uncertainty can be hedged, although third world farmers' businesses are undermined by first world agricultural policy. J.R. McNeill explains the sustainability issue: "all farming is a struggle against the depletion of soil nutrients. Crops absorb nutrients; these are eaten by people or animals; then they spend shorter or longer periods of time in human or animal bodies, before returning to the soil. If these nutrients, in one manner or another, return to farmers' fields, then a nutrient cycle can last indefinitely. If they do not, then those fields gradually lose nutrient and over time produce less and less food - unless some intervention such as fertilizer counteracts the nutrient loss." However, McNeill notes three notable exceptions: Egypt until the Aswan High Dam, Southern China, Medieval Europe; "each ecologically successful over long periods of time." Their success resulted from trial and error and favorable circumstances. regions, now in
Ukraine, were resourced by policies
of the Hapsburg's and later by Stalin, policies which
discouraged education and movement of the mass of farm
workers.
What is presented to the children and adolescents in the school
system to build the platform of ideas, must be revealing about
the subject, and
presented effectively. Typically in
public education that is not the case. Sal Khan
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?
describes a powerful set of
strategies that do work.
The inventors
of the catalytic, an infrastructure amplifier. This page reviews the strategy of setting up an arms race. At its
core this strategy depends on being able to alter, or take
advantage of an alteration in, the genome
or equivalent. The situation is illustrated with examples
from biology, high tech and politics.
infrastructure of 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, displayed mixed
levels of education. Building on prior art, and imagining
An epistatic meme suppressed for a thousand years reemerges
during the enlightenment.
It was a poem
encapsulating the ideas of Epicurus rediscovered by a
humanist book hunter.
Greenblatt describes the process of suppression and
reemergence. He argues that the rediscovery was the
foundation of the modern world.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the memetic mechanisms
are discussed.
the potential for success, with personalities 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
driving
them to achieve, they 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
experimented, supported by government
through the patent process and This page reviews the strategy of setting up an arms race. At its
core this strategy depends on being able to alter, or take
advantage of an alteration in, the genome
or equivalent. The situation is illustrated with examples
from biology, high tech and politics.
evolved
amplification from
the Sven Beckert describes the historic transformation of the
growing, spinning, weaving, manufacture of cotton goods and
their trade over time. He describes the rise of a first global
commodity, its dependence on increasing: military power, returns for
the control points in the value delivery system(VDS), availability of land
and labor to work it including slaves.
He explains how cotton offered the opportunity for
industrialization further amplifying the productive capacity of
the VDS and the power of the control points. This VDS was quickly
copied. The increased capacity of the industrialized
cotton complex adaptive system (CAS) required more labor to
operate the machines. Beckert describes the innovative introduction of wages
and the ways found to
mobilize industrial labor.
Beckert describes the characteristics of the industrial cotton
CAS which made it flexible enough to become globally interconnected.
Slavery made the production system so cost effective that all
prior structures collapsed as they interconnected. So when
the US civil war
blocked access to the major production nodes in the
American Deep South the CAS began adapting.
Beckert describes the global
reconstruction that occurred and the resulting destruction of the traditional ways
of life in the global countryside. This colonial expansion
further enriched and empowered the 'western' nation
states. Beckert explains how other countries responded
by copying the colonial strategies and creating the
opportunities for future armed conflict among the original
colonialists and the new upstarts.
Completing the adaptive
shifts, Beckert describes the advocates for industrialization in
the colonized global south and how over time they joined
the global cotton CAS disrupting the early western manufacturing
nodes and creating the current global CAS
dominated by merchants like Wal-Mart
pulling goods through a network of clothing manufacturers,
spinning and weaving factories, and growers competing with each
other on cost.
Following our summary of Beckert's book, RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory. The transformation of
disconnected peasant farmers,
pastoral warriors and their lands into a supply chain for a
highly profitable industrial CAS required the development over
time: of military force, global transportation and communication
networks, perception and representation control networks, capital stores and flows,
models, rules, standards and markets; along with the support at
key points of: barriers, disruption, and infrastructure and
evolved amplifiers. The emergent
system demonstrates the powerful constraining influence of
extended phenotypic alignment.
global cotton VDS.
The continuously
This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolving democratic process, reached
a point in the UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. , in the 1850s
,and US is the United States of America. , each responding to
the French and American revolutions, where Locke &
Montesquieu's ideas and the need to limit 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. within the nation,
broadened the voting base to include most males. The
resulting architecture supported:
- The people voting, based on their feelings 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
regarding
their situation, for their leaders now aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group. Pinker notes the evolved pressure of social rivalry associating power with leadership. Saposky observes the disconnect between power hierarchies and wisdom in apes. John Adair developed a modern leadership methodology based on the three-circles model. within a
lower house - linking the emotions are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism. of the
electorate to the choice of leaders, while
- The politically savvy wealthy is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker. It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche.
elite controlled the 'rational' upper house - introducing a
strategic element to
the 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.
; an architecture analogous to the human brain's
pairing of the rational dlPFC is dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which is:
- At the heart of decision
making - highly rational, unsentimental
- A major agent of working
memory
- The most recently evolved part of the prefrontal cortex.
- Mainly interconnected with other parts of the cortex.
- Must be inhibited or it constrains right brain creativity.
and emotional vmPFC is ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is:
- Focused on the impact of emotion
on decision making
- A participant in limbic
system operations
- Many human behaviors involve interactions between the
vmPFC, the limbic system & the dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex. Part of decision making is
for the limbic system to internally simulate (often with
the help of the sympathetic nervous system) what
alternative outcomes of a decision will feel like with the
results of these somatic
marker analyses being reported to the vmPFC.
- Damage to the vmPFC results in bad decision making: Poor
judgement in choosing friends & partners, Failure to
respond to negative feedback; because they can't feel the
issues; and are overly controlled by the logical
contribution of the DLPFC.
.
A Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schematic constitution with
mechanisms to support and enforce the use of conforming Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
genetic operations, allows
democratically elected lawmakers to be creative through the
development of new strategies and priorities, while applying
enough 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 to H. A. Hayek compares and contrasts collectivism and
libertarianism.
limit tyranny.
The emotions reflect the Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
genetic
representation of the proximate environmental signals, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance. In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively. A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form. Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell. Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state. Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals. Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich. Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors. In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. To be credible signals must be hard to fake. To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient. To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy. and the This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
organism's homeostatic is, according to Damasio, the fundamental set of operations at the core of life, from the earliest and long-vanished point of its beginning in early biochemistry to the present. It is the powerful, unthought, unspoken imperative, whose discharge implies, for every living organism, small or large, nothing less than enduring and prevailing. Damasio stresses that the operations that ensure prevailing ensure life is regulated within a range that is not just compatible with survival but also conducive to flourishing, to protection of life into the future of an organism or a species. Prevailing implies mechanisms for monitoring and modeling the state of the organism, controlling and constraining the flows of energy and resources through schematic agency, and to facilitate exploring the environment and acting on signals of modeled opportunities and threats. Global homeostasis of multi-organ animals requires endocrine, immune, circulatory and nervous 'systems' and results in the emergence of minds, feelings, consciousness, machinery of affect and complex movements. The emergence of feelings allowed the homeostatic process to become enhanced by a subjective representation of the organism's state and proximate environment within the mind. Feelings operating in minds allowed conscious decisions to extend homeostasis to the sociocultural domain. state,
which Damasio
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.
describes being bound into the 'images'
leveraged in Consciousness is no longer mysterious. In this page we use
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory to describe the high-level
architecture of consciousness, linking sensory networks,
low level feelings and
genetically conserved and deployed neural structures into a high
level scheduler. Consciousness is evolution's
solution to the complex problems of effective, emergent,
multi-cellular perception based strategy.
Constrained by emergence and needing
to avoid the epistemological
problem of starting with a blank slate with every birth,
evolution was limited in its options.
We explain how survival value allows evolution to leverage
available tools: sensors, agent relative position, models, perception
& representation; to solve the problem of mobile
agents responding effectively to their own state and proximate environment.
Evolution did this by providing a genetically
constructed framework that can
develop into a conscious CAS.
And we discuss the implications with regard to artificial
intelligence, sentient robots,
augmented intelligence, and
aspects of philosophy.
consciousness and used
creatively
by artists: 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.
Van Gogh; musicians:
Joni Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson, called by Joan, in 1942 in Regina Saskatchewan explains Sheila Weller, to father William Anderson: whose family had come from Scandinavia to Alberta to farm, who was a manager at a supermarket chain, was a very easygoing person and played trumpet; and Myrtle McKee who was: upwardly driven, a controlling mother, from poor Scottish Canadian farmers where frustrated mothers were trapped raising children in difficult marriages, a creative school teacher and bank clerk; who also enjoyed music, both parents encouraged Joan to behave as an artistic princess only child, as she worked to improve on her constrained 'reality:' a highly attractive girl, with a compartmentalized and determined personality. She was also touched deeply by hearing certain pieces of music. She always enjoyed competing in beauty pageants and modeling. Myrtle's obsessive cleaning and being an only child increased the risk of Joan having a serious case of polio. She pushed herself to recover. Struggling with a vaginal discharge from an antibiotic, she was accused by the family's PCP of being sexually active and was shocked that her mother sided with the physician. At school and college she gravitated towards writing, art and performance. Even by 13 she had developed a secret defiance of her parents, sneaking out to watch burlesque shows. As her singing became more appreciated than her art she focused more intently on performing music. She was advised to focus her writing on her own experiences by Arthur Kratzmann while an art teacher Henry Bonli's surname induced her to refer to herself as Joni. The secret rebel side of Joni liked drinking, drugs and sex, resulting in her becoming pregnant. She left Saskatoon with the father of her baby, Brad MacMath, ostensibly to perform in Toronto, but actually to have the child, Kilauren Gibb (originally Kelly Green), in secret as an unmarried mother. At the same time Joni wrote and performed her songs in the coffee house folk clubs while waitressing and carefully observing the techniques of other performers. This highly traumatic emotional experience generated lots of ideas for songs which Joni worked hard to craft. Conflicted about keeping the baby or having it adopted, Joni married American folk singer Chuck Mitchell, who she was then able to blame for the adoption of the baby. Within two years Joni had developed a reputation as a beauty, and an exceptional song writer with leading performers covering her songs, and had left Chuck to focus on building her career. ; and business
people: Steve
Jobs was an innovative entrepreneur who integrated art and culture with engineering, and is responsible for: the strong sexual selection force of the: Macintosh, iPod, iPad and iPhone; and their dedicated fan base. He cofounded Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak where Wozniak designed a particularly simple microprocessor based computer, the Apple 1 and Jobs made it elegant. Struck by the relative simplicity and ease of use of PARC's Alto, Jobs and Wozniak began building the Lisa. But Jobs decided it was flawed and took a small group aside to build the Macintosh which the whole team were happy to sign their names on the inside. Born February 24th 1955, Steve's birth mother Joanne Schieble was forced by her father to have the boy adopted rather than allow her to marry his Muslim Syrian birth father, Abdulfattah Jandali, the last of nine children of a hugely wealthy trader, Walter Isaacson explains. The baby was adopted by Paul Reinhold Jobs, a highly practical mechanic and a mild kind father, and Clara Hagopian, also sweet-humored, and when Steve was two they adopted Patty. The Jobs lived in an Eichler (a design inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright), in Mountain View, California, which had a strong influence on Steve, as he explained to Isaacson, "Eichler did a great thing. His houses were smart and cheap and good. They brought clean design and simple taste to lower income people. They had awesome little features, like radiant heating in the floors. You put carpet on them, and we had nice toasty floors when we were kids." Steve Jobs knew early on that he was adopted, which pained him supporting development of his Challenger personality type. It was also clear to Steve that he was unlike his adopted parents, Paul and Clara Jobs, who stressed to him that they picked him specifically and that he was special. They tolerated Steve's high risk activities and ensured he was safe when problems occurred. Paul Jobs impressed Steve as a child, with his valuing quality workmanship, and his practical capabilities. Paul could repair any car and Steve became interested in the electronics aspects. He was helped by neighbors who were electrical engineers: Larry Lang; the geographic cluster that formed around Hewlett Packard and Intel. And he then joined a neighborhood electronics club where he was introduced to Steve Wozniak. But the young Steve Jobs was shocked when he discovered his father did not correctly understand some aspects of the world, and Steve realized he was much more intelligent than his parents Paul and Clara. With their support he followed his curiosity and resisted any attempt to stop him. His powerful drive made his parents, teachers, local business leaders: Bill Hewlett, Nolan Bushnell; and coaches go along. At Reed College he pushed to attend courses he was interested in: calligraphy; rather than follow the syllabus, and they let him. They even allowed him to continue when he stopped his parents from paying more tuition. His stressed idealist continually sought out gurus: Shunryu Suzuki, Neem Karoli Baba; and visionaries who might help Steve understand who he really was. ; suggesting the possibility for the democratic
architecture to obtain similar creative leverage.
The Blair government's leadership now aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group. Pinker notes the evolved pressure of social rivalry associating power with leadership. Saposky observes the disconnect between power hierarchies and wisdom in apes. John Adair developed a modern leadership methodology based on the three-circles model.
team was setup to reflect this decision making architecture as
chief of staff Jonathan
Powell Jonathan Powell describes how the government of, the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair,
actually operated. Powell was Blair's only chief of
staff.
explained:
This powerful executive team was committed to moving the Labour
Party from its historic ties to the poor and the unions that
provided their power, to "New Labour's" business friendly focus
on advancing the aspirations of the middle class. Without
an This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
integrated systematic theory to
constrain Blair's strategies, he achieved his goals, but left
the Labour Party subsequently struggling to cope with the disintermediation is the shift of operations from one network provider to another lower cost connected network provider. The first network provider leverages the cost benefits of the shift to increase its profitability but becomes disrupted. The lower cost network provider gains revenue flows, expertise and increases its active agents. Over time this disruptive shift will leave the higher cost network as a highly profitable shell, but the agents that performed the operations that migrated to the low cost network will be ejected from the network. For a company that may imply the costs of layoffs. For a state the ejected workers imply increased cost impacts and reduced revenue potential which the state are trading off for improved operating efficiency.
of its middle-class and working-class voters by the global economic is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. network they had
integrated with.
Blair's team was keen to transform aspects of policy which were
failing the electorate. If the team had received an 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 framed by This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS theory, rather than Dialectic Wilhelm Friedrich developed an influential philosophy including: - Dialectic includes thesis, antithesis and synthesis
- German
- History
- Knowledge
- Logic is the same as metaphysics for Hegel - he emphasizes that Reality can be deduced from the sole consideration that it must be not self-contradictory, where he leverages the dialectic. Since an ordinary predicate when qualifying the whole of Reality is self-contradictory, he applies the dialectic until consistency is reached with the Absolute.
, they would
have been able to respond to history with proposals that seek to
provide their people: curious,
creative, leaders now aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group. Pinker notes the evolved pressure of social rivalry associating power with leadership. Saposky observes the disconnect between power hierarchies and wisdom in apes. John Adair developed a modern leadership methodology based on the three-circles model. ; and
businesses with access to the adjacent possible.
Such an 'offer' will also draw innovators 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. from other
societies where constraints are being extended, just as happened
in the past: Germany in the 1930s, Ireland in Queen Victoria's
reign; as
described above. The challenge is to: expect and
encourage instability, accept that fitness is, according to Dawkins, a suitcase word with at least five meanings in biology: - Darwin and Wallace thought in terms of the capacity to survive and reproduce, but they were considering discrete aspects such as chewing grass - where hard enamel would improve the relative fitness.
- Population geneticists: Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, J.B.S. Haldane; consider selection at a locus where for a genotype: green eyes vs blue eyes; one with higher fitness can be identified from genotypic frequencies and gene frequencies, with all other variations averaged out.
- Whole organism 'integrated' fitness. Dawkins notes there is only ever one instance of a specific organism. Being unique, comparing the relative success of its offspring makes little sense. Over a huge number of generations the individual is likely to have provided a contribution to everyone in the pool or no one.
- Inclusive fitness, where according to Hamilton, fitness depends on an organism's actions or effects on its children or its relative's children, a model where natural selection favors organs and behaviors that cause the individual's genes to be passed on. It is easy to mistakenly count an offspring in multiple relative's fitness assessments.
- Personal fitness represents the effects a person's relatives have on the individual's fitness [3]. When interpreted correctly fitness [4] and fitness [5] are the same.
is always relative
to the current proximate environment, and protect the divergence
of views that expand
the edge of chaos.
A master level chess game provides a far simpler
example of a This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS being
instantiated. The alternating play where only one piece is
moved allows easy Agents use sensors to detect events in their environment.
This page reviews how these events become signals associated
with beneficial responses in a complex adaptive system (CAS). CAS signals emerge from
the Darwinian information
model. Signals can indicate decision
summaries and level of uncertainty.
observation of the
development phase, the opening as each of the players tries to 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.
constrain and Flows of different kinds are essential to the operation of
complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support
the emergence of the systems.
Examples of constraints are discussed.
control
the flow of pieces across the board. And the less
visible aspects of the CAS: Openings are This page discusses the tagging of signals
in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
Tagged signals can be used to control filtering of an event
stream. Examples of CAS filters are reviewed.
tagged
with names, This page discusses the methods of avoiding traps. Genetic
selection and learning to avoid traps are reviewed.
Traps are set, The page discusses the search
dilemma. It describes how evolution
solves the dilemma. It introduces some problems that
impact non
evolutionary searches and suggests some strategies for
such situations.
Search, The page describes the SWOT
process. That includes:
- The classification
of each event into strength weakness opportunity and
threat.
- The clustering
process for grouping the classified events into goals.
- How the clusters
can support planning and execution.
Operational SWOT matrices and clusters from the Adaptive Web
Framework (AWF) are included as examples.
SWOT
and other The page reviews how complex systems can be analyzed.
The resulting analysis supports evaluation of system
events.
The analysis enables categorization of different events into
classes.
The analysis helps with recombination of the models to enable
creativity.
The page advocates an iterative approach including support from models.
analysis that make the This page looks at how scenarios allow people to relate to the
possible evolution of the business and its products and
services. The Long view process is highlighted.
Value based customer
segmentation is reviewed. Keirsey's psychological
categorization and 'crossing
the chasm' are highlighted.
Three alternate systems are framed as long view scenarios (1)
development of a billing
mediation business, (2) development of the Grameen Bank the
first micro loan bank and (3) some classic chess games.
Some of the scenarios will be referenced in the SWOT and planning
pages of this frame. In particular the complex adaptive
system (CAS) goals used will be
referenced by the planning pages schemetic
goals.
situation clear to these two Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agents; have been instantiated within
the This page introduces some problems that make it hard for a
business to execute effectively.
It then presents a theory
of execution.
It describes what the theory says must be done
to execute effectively.
It reviews General
Electric's use of adaptive planning to support effective
execution.
Then it details the execution
requirements.
master-level play and prior 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. of the two
players.
The players detailed understanding of the documented and
analyzed chess game Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schemata, allows
them to mentally The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
model the This page discusses the potential of the vast state space which
supports the emergence of complex
adaptive systems (CAS). Kauffman describes the mechanism
by which the system expands across the space.
state of the board and Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic
operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination.
The nature of the operations is described.
use schematic building blocks to
execute their strategy and
respond tactically are goals and actions which respond to the actions of the enemy in a combat, rather than focusing on ones own strategic direction. when
engaged by the other player. Using their deep awareness of
the current situation, from the models they have learned and
developed during their apprenticeship, and the prior practice of
the current strategy they become aware of weak moves by their
opponent. That opportunity can be leveraged. And
some masters: Fischer; creatively
rearrange the building blocks during practice so that they can
surprise their adversary forcing them into unexplored
territory. Masters seek to undermine the attention is the mutli-faceted capability allowing access to consciousness. It includes selective attention, vigilance, allocating attention, goal focus, and meta-awareness. of their
foe. Short would use less studied openings: Trompowski; to
induce a sense of 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. .
This model of the chess CAS highlights some important aspects of
effectively enabling creativity:
- Chess is a model of a SuperOrganism is a wealthy autonomous entity needing and controlling the richest niches in the proximate environment, that emerges from the bundled cooperation of schematically aligned agents. The term is based on the social insect model, used by: ants, termites, and bees; and identified by Holldobler & E.O. Wilson. These genetically identical insect superorganisms cooperatively limit their reproduction to align with the resources available in the niche. Wilson asserts these insects all developed nests to which they returned to raise their offspring, and when the nest sites were of limited capacity some family members responded by focusing on defending the nest and foraging while their mother became an egg laying queen, enabled by "a single genetic change which silenced the brain's program for dispersal and prevents the mother and her offspring from dispersing to create new nests," Wilson explains. He adds climate control of the nest and disease resistance, just like the human immune system, demand individually focused diversity. So the queen's genome consists of low variety alleles for the extended phenotypic 'robot' worker caste agents and their organization - queen and workers competing as one, with other colonies and individual insects - and other parts which are high where the genome includes significant diversity. For humans it is an evolved cultural strategy used when the environment is supportive, but it is dependent on our imperfect cognitive assessment of kinship as well as group selection driven emotions: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious; and group oriented pressures to conform and remain: religions. And the adjacent possible must be recreated and modeled culturally through the emergence of processes such as democracy. It depends on inter-agent signalling. In both insects and humans it allows specialization, and encourages operations and flows that are tightly controlled, limiting waste, leveraging parallel activity, supporting coherence. Superorganisms reflect cliodynamic flows. A superorganism has a development and operational phase. As additional agents are coopted into the superorganism they align, participate in supply and demand activities and so contribute to the evolutionary amplification. Damasio notes that prokaryotes, in rich environments, can similarly operate in a symbiotic fashion expressing cultural behaviors.
,
all the pieces working in coordination to achieve a common
goal. Move order is significant ensuring a vast
creative space. The loss of pieces only lasts for the
present game. No piece is driven to act as an
individual. So the game is more like an ant collony
than a human organization.
- Chess masters deeply understand the regions of the chess
games schema database where they play. Competitions at
all levels of play have provided a selection
mechanism. And developing players are able to learn,
model and practice effectively through coaching from more
experienced players.
- Initially when the record of play around a particular
region of chess is sparse, mistakes are common, but due to
the rigorous recording of tournament games it becomes clear
that some opening moves are superior. This is the
mechanism of
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.
natural selection
in action. It is used by life, and in the American
legislative process and criminal legal systems, but not by
most businesses. The exception is Toyota, and acolytes
such as 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.
Geisinger. John
Doerr 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.
promotes a light
version for other businesses. Without schematic
agency, as a business grows complexity
catastrophe is a dramatic breakdown in the operation of a CAS that results in general failure. Dorner in the logic of failure, sees the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as illustrative: typical human strategies were incorrectly applied by experienced operators, because they were overconfident and incorrectly modeled the current and immediate future state of the reactor. Beinhocker asserts positive effects generated in a large inter-connected network induce negative effects at other points in the network. Booch argues that increasing system complexity can overwhelm human designers, inducing catastrophe in software development. He recommends adopting object oriented hierarchy and modularity to limit complexity. But many CAS networks include huge number of agents, responding to internal and external signals, and effectively executing evolved, distributed schematic plans. Eventual loss of control, as in the case of cancers, is notable and highlights the effective agency of the more regular situation. Human developed systems suffer from complexity catastrophe. Democratic processes slowly search for representatives who will solve problems for the citizens, but Diamond in Collapse explains that democracy has struggled to cope with the tragedy of the commons. Cliodynamic cycles operate over multiple lifetimes leaving humans prone to fall into the traps that caught their grandparents. Evolved amplifiers support bubbles incenting dangerous deregulation, and encouraging broad participation, even though the rules ensure additional wealth accumulates to the legislative elite and aristocracy, who safely ignore moral hazard. Parasites undermine the detection of problems. RSS sees catastrophe enabled by a lack of rigorous schematic planning within most developed human systems. results from increasing chaos, and
learning from proximate history becomes difficult.
- With a detailed schema of the opening of a game, and
collected analytic models of what is happening, learned
during development, masters can leverage their
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.
mind's ability to chunk
details so that the schemata can be Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic
operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination.
The nature of the operations is described.
operated on to create new
strategies.
- The success comes to those players who are emotionally are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism.
interested
in winning at chess, who dedicate time and focus on
learning, practice and competing. They use SWOT to
analyze each position in the game, so they can leverage
opportunities and limit introducing weaknesses. And
they plan; looking at their opponents games, study their
approach: aggressive attackers, strong defensive position
builders, use of rapid combinations; and their 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
.
But chess is not only far simpler than other complex systems, it
is also designed to start at near equality, which is almost
never the situation in life, where 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
must abound, and incumbents have great wealth is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker. It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche. and power, for most
of each 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.
cliodynamic cycle.
Microorganisms
have existed and This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolved for a vast
amount 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 we
discovered them: viruses is a relatively small capsule containing genetic material: RNA, DNA; which utilizes the cellular infrastructure of its target host to replicate its genetic material and operational proteins. David Quammen explains the four key challenges of viruses: Getting from one host to another, penetrating a cell within the host, commandeering the cell's infrastructure, escaping from the cell and organism; Single-stranded RNA viruses: Coronavirus, chickungunya, dengue, Ebola, Hantas, Hendra, Influenzas, Junin, Lassa, Machupo, Marburg, Measles, Mumps, Nipah, Rabies, Retrovirus (HIV), Rhinovirus, yellow fever; are subject to more mutation events than DNA viruses, but limits the size of the genetic string. Double stranded DNA viruses: baculoviruses, hepadnaviruses, Herpesviruses, iridoviruses, papillomavirses, poxviruses; can leverage relatively far larger genetic payloads. The relationship with the reservoir host is long-term, a parasitic or symbiotic relationship, developing over millions of years. But opportunistically, it may spillover into a secondary host, with the virus entering the host cell, leveraging the host infrastructure to replicate its self massively and then exiting the host cell by rupturing it and killing the organism. , prokaryotes, a single cell system with two main types: (1) Archaea, and (2) Eubacteria. Prokaryotes have their own DNA and infrastructure within a single enclosure. They are biochemically very versatile: Photosynthesis -> Electron transport & phosphorylation, Enzymatic regulation and catalysis of chemical reactions, Catabolize -> phosphate bond energy, ATP cycle, glycolysis, TCA cycle, Electron transports, oxidative phosphorylation, oxidation of fatty acids, oxidative degradation of amino acids; Biosynthesis & utilization of phosphate bond energy -> carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids, nucleotides, muscle & motile structures; membrane barriers & active transports, hormones; Replication, Transcription, Translation, Regulation of gene expression; self-assembly; They utilize cell membrane receptors and signalling to support symbiotic cooperation with other cellular entities, including: in the microbiome, and as chloroplasts and mitochondria within eukaryotic cells. and
eubacteria; recently. And then we studied them where we 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
them most: disease,
food spoilage; seeing
a clear enemy - us and
them, so we worked to remove them with antibiotics are compounds which kill bacteria, molds, etc. Sulfur dye stuffs were found to be effective antibiotics. The first evolved antibiotic discovered was penicillin. Antibiotics are central to modern health care supporting the processes of: Surgery, Wound management, Infection control; which makes the development of antibiotic resistance worrying. Antibiotics are: - Economically problematic to develop and sell.
- Congress enacted GAIN to encourage development of new antibiotics. But it has not developed any market-entry award scheme, which seems necessary to encourage new antibiotic R&D.
- Medicare has required hospitals and SNFs to execute plans to ensure correct use of antibiotics & prevent the spread of drug-resistant infections.
- C.D.C. is acting to stop the spread of resistant infections and reduce unnecessary use of antibiotics.
- F.D.A. has simplified approval standards. It is working with industry to limit use of antibiotics in livestock.
- BARDA is promoting public-private partnerships to support promising research.
- Impacting the microbiome of the recipient. Stool banking is a solution (Sloan-Kettering stool banking).
- Associated with obesity, although evidence suggests childhood obesity relates to the infections not the antibiotic treatments (Nov 2016).
- Monitored globally by W.H.O.
- Regulated in the US by the F.D.A. who promote voluntary labeling by industry to discourage livestock fattening (Dec 2013).
- Customer demands have more effect - Perdue shifts to no antibiotics in premier chickens (Aug 2015).
and public health is the proactive planning, coordination and execution of strategies to improve and safeguard the wellbeing of the public. Its global situation is discussed in The Great Escape by Deaton. Public health in the US is coordinated by the PHS federally but is mainly executed at the state and local levels. Public health includes: - Awareness campaigns about health threatening activities including: Smoking, Over-eating, Alcohol consumption, Contamination with poisons: lead; Joint damage from over-exercise;
- Research, monitoring and control of: disease agents, reservoir and amplifier hosts, spillover and other processes, and vectors; by agencies including the CDC.
- Monitoring of the public's health by institutes including the NIH. This includes screening for cancer & heart disease.
- Development, deployment and maintenance of infrastructure including: sewers, water plants and pipes.
- Development, deployment and maintenance of vaccination strategies.
- Development, deployment and maintenance of fluoridation.
- Development, deployment and maintenance of family planning services.
- Regulation and constraint of foods, drugs and devices by agencies including the FDA.
strategies. Now we realize, as This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS
theory indicates, they are also our partners is a long term situation between two, or more, different agents where the resources of both are shared for mutual benefit. Some of the relationships have built remarkable dependencies: Tremblaya's partnership with citrus mealybugs and bacterial DNA residing in the mealybug's genome, Aphids with species of secondary symbiont bacteria deployed sexually from a male aphid sperm reservoir and propagated asexually by female aphids only while their local diet induces a dependency. If the power relations and opportunities change for the participants then they will adapt and the situation may transform into separation, predation or parasitism. : microbiome, the trillions of bacteria and viruses that live inside higher animals' guts, on their skin etc. These bacteria and viruses seem to play a role in: immune responses, digesting food, making nutrients, controlling mental health and maintaining a healthy weight. The signals from the gut microbiota are relayed by major nerve fibers: vagus; to the central nervous system. The symbiotic relationship must be actively managed. Human armpits include glands which provide food favoring certain symbionts who build a defensive shield above the skin. In the human gut: Barriers are setup: Mucus secretions form a physical constraint and provide sites for bacteriophages to anchor and attack pathogenic bacteria; Symbiont tailored nourishment: Plant-heavy food creates opportunities for fibre specialists like Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron; is provided, Selective binding sites are provided, Poisons are deployed against the unwelcome, and Temperature, acidity and oxygenation are managed. High throughput sequencing allows the characterization of bacterial populations inside guts. Beginning at birth, as they pass down the birth canal infants are supplied with a microbiome from their mothers. If they are borne via cesarean they never receive some of the key bacteria: Bifidobaterium infantis which is also dependent on oligosaccharides in breast milk; from their mothers. A variety of diseases may be caused by changes in the microbiome: - Eczema can be related to changes in the skin microbiome.
- Obesity can be induced by changes to the gut microbiome.
- Chronic inflammation
- Allergies
- Type 1 diabetes
,
fermentation; and integrated deeply within all eukaryotes is a relatively large multi-component cell type. It initially emerged from prokaryotic archaea subsuming eubacteria, from which single and multi-celled plants, multi celled fungi, including single-cell variant yeast, drips, protozoa and metazoa, including humans, are constructed. A eukaryotic cell contains modules including a nucleus and production functions such as chloroplasts and mitochondria. : mitochondria are the energy molecule generating production functions of eukaryotic cells. They are vestigial blue-green bacteria with their own DNA and infrastructure. Unlike stand-alone bacteria they also use the eukaryotic host DNA and infrastructure for some functions. The high energy molecules are nucleotides with a high energy phosphate bond. The most used high energy molecule is Adenosine-tri-phosphate. and chloroplasts are the light energy capturing production functions of eukaryotic plant cells. They are vestigial blue-green bacteria with their own DNA and infrastructure. ; where
their chemical creativity
supports our basic operations, while we supply a powerful Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
genomic control system, create and
reach additional niches and enable This page describes the consequences of the asymmetries caused
by genotypic traits
creating a phenotypic signal in males and selection activity
in the female - sexual selection.
The impact of this asymmetry is to create a powerful alternative
to natural selection with sexual
selection's leverage of positive returns.
The mechanisms are described.
sexual
selection.
Integrating chemists with engineers, physicists and control
system designers provides the power to create and innovate 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. , as A government sanctioned monopoly
supported the construction of a superorganism
American Telephone and
Telegraph
(AT&T). Within this Bell Labs was at the center of
three networks:
- The evolving global scientific
network.
- The Bell telephone network. And
- The military
industrial network deploying 'fire and missile
control' systems.
Bell Labs strategically leveraged each network to create an innovation
engine.
They monitored the opportunities to leverage the developing
ideas, reorganizing to replace incumbent
opposition and enable the creation and growth of new
ideas.
Once the monopoly was
dismantled, AT&T disrupted.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the innovation mechanisms are
discussed.
Bell Labs demonstrated.
Microorganisms offer vastly improved chemical tools if we are
willing to partner. So far, E. O. Wilson reviews the effect of man on the natural world to
date and explains how the two systems can coexist most
effectively.
we are
destroying their niches at an accelerating rate as we
reach blindly and catastrophically into the last recesses of the
biosphere we have not already shaped. If we chose to see
beyond the
self we have more creative potential.
Large animals,
including humans, had to resolve the problem of modeling and
capturing niches in the world they live in as they worked to
maintain homeostasis is, according to Damasio, the fundamental set of operations at the core of life, from the earliest and long-vanished point of its beginning in early biochemistry to the present. It is the powerful, unthought, unspoken imperative, whose discharge implies, for every living organism, small or large, nothing less than enduring and prevailing. Damasio stresses that the operations that ensure prevailing ensure life is regulated within a range that is not just compatible with survival but also conducive to flourishing, to protection of life into the future of an organism or a species. Prevailing implies mechanisms for monitoring and modeling the state of the organism, controlling and constraining the flows of energy and resources through schematic agency, and to facilitate exploring the environment and acting on signals of modeled opportunities and threats. Global homeostasis of multi-organ animals requires endocrine, immune, circulatory and nervous 'systems' and results in the emergence of minds, feelings, consciousness, machinery of affect and complex movements. The emergence of feelings allowed the homeostatic process to become enhanced by a subjective representation of the organism's state and proximate environment within the mind. Feelings operating in minds allowed conscious decisions to extend homeostasis to the sociocultural domain. .
They must construct a mental
model of the adjacent possible and natural and This page describes the consequences of the asymmetries caused
by genotypic traits
creating a phenotypic signal in males and selection activity
in the female - sexual selection.
The impact of this asymmetry is to create a powerful alternative
to natural selection with sexual
selection's leverage of positive returns.
The mechanisms are described.
sexual selection. Extending the
nerve
net managing
the stomach, an additional network focused
on sensing the environment: finding food, reproducing and
responding to danger, and sensing the internal state; by This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolving Consciousness is no longer mysterious. In this page we use
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory to describe the high-level
architecture of consciousness, linking sensory networks,
low level feelings and
genetically conserved and deployed neural structures into a high
level scheduler. Consciousness is evolution's
solution to the complex problems of effective, emergent,
multi-cellular perception based strategy.
Constrained by emergence and needing
to avoid the epistemological
problem of starting with a blank slate with every birth,
evolution was limited in its options.
We explain how survival value allows evolution to leverage
available tools: sensors, agent relative position, models, perception
& representation; to solve the problem of mobile
agents responding effectively to their own state and proximate environment.
Evolution did this by providing a genetically
constructed framework that can
develop into a conscious CAS.
And we discuss the implications with regard to artificial
intelligence, sentient robots,
augmented intelligence, and
aspects of philosophy.
consciousness.
Smell was easily supported with all the Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schematic
control structures for Agents use sensors to detect events in their environment.
This page reviews how these events become signals associated
with beneficial responses in a complex adaptive system (CAS). CAS signals emerge from
the Darwinian information
model. Signals can indicate decision
summaries and level of uncertainty.
sensing of
signals built by evolution to support microorganisms,
and it allowed clear indications of relatedness. Touch and
vision, which
leveraged much of the control structure of touching, extend
niche access but are less effective at identifying
relatedness.
Geography, providing temporary Barriers are particular types of constraints on flows. They can enforce
separation of a network of agents allowing evolution to build
diversity. Examples of different types of barriers: physical
barriers, chemical
molecules can form membranes, probability based,
cell membranes can include controllable
channels, eukaryotes
leverage membranes, symbiosis, human emotions, chess, business; and
their effects are described.
barriers,
has supported the extension of the adjacent possible,
highlighted by the rapid
evolution of the cichlid fishes: divided in some periods
in the African great lakes, allowing differentiation into local
niches, and remixing at other times. Guns, Germs
and Steel describes how continental geography allowed the
open expanse of China to support within the growing proximate
human bands, the development of a large hierarchic
control structure which focused resources, and gathered
knowledge, but limited competition to the decisions of the
elite. Instead as Terrence Deacon explores how constraints on dynamic flows can
induce emergent phenomena
which can do real work. He shows how these phenomena are
sustained. The mechanism enables
the development of Darwinian competition.
constraints
tightened, internal adaptations in evolutionary biology is a trait that increased the number of surviving offspring in an organism's ancestral lineage. Holland argues: complex adaptive systems (CAS) adapt due to the influence of schematic strings on agents. Evolution indicates fitness when an organism survives and reproduces. For his genetic algorithm, Holland separated the adaptive process into credit assignment and rule discovery. He assigned a strength to each of the rules (alternate hypothesis) used by his artificial agents, by credit assignment - each accepted message being paid for by the recipient, increasing the sender agent's rule's strength (implicit modeling) and reducing the recipient's. When an agent achieved an explicit goal they obtained a final reward. Rule discovery used the genetic algorithm to select strong rule schemas from a pair of agents to be included in the next generation, with crossing over and mutation applied, and the resulting schematic strategies used to replace weaker schemas. The crossing over genetic operator is unlikely to break up a short schematic sequence that provides a building block retained because of its 'fitness'; In Deacon's conception of evolution, an adaptation is the realization of a set of constraints on candidate mechanisms, and so long as these constraints are maintained, other features are arbitrary.
would be blocked, eventually allowing competitive bands from the
edge of the Chinese empire to replace the elite in repeated 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.
cliodynamic cycles. In contrast,
Europe's geography placed mountainous barriers to the
development of centralized control. Multiple fiefs
developed, each in conflict with their neighbors, even as they traded ideas and goods.
Any attempt at constraint resulted in Flows of different kinds are essential to the operation of
complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support
the emergence of the systems.
Examples of constraints are discussed.
flows
shifting across to neighboring kingdoms.
Fire provided man with a unique tool which we have used and
coevolved with. 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.
It shaped us
into a huge brained cultural 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.
superorganism is a wealthy autonomous entity needing and controlling the richest niches in the proximate environment, that emerges from the bundled cooperation of schematically aligned agents. The term is based on the social insect model, used by: ants, termites, and bees; and identified by Holldobler & E.O. Wilson. These genetically identical insect superorganisms cooperatively limit their reproduction to align with the resources available in the niche. Wilson asserts these insects all developed nests to which they returned to raise their offspring, and when the nest sites were of limited capacity some family members responded by focusing on defending the nest and foraging while their mother became an egg laying queen, enabled by "a single genetic change which silenced the brain's program for dispersal and prevents the mother and her offspring from dispersing to create new nests," Wilson explains. He adds climate control of the nest and disease resistance, just like the human immune system, demand individually focused diversity. So the queen's genome consists of low variety alleles for the extended phenotypic 'robot' worker caste agents and their organization - queen and workers competing as one, with other colonies and individual insects - and other parts which are high where the genome includes significant diversity. For humans it is an evolved cultural strategy used when the environment is supportive, but it is dependent on our imperfect cognitive assessment of kinship as well as group selection driven emotions: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious; and group oriented pressures to conform and remain: religions. And the adjacent possible must be recreated and modeled culturally through the emergence of processes such as democracy. It depends on inter-agent signalling. In both insects and humans it allows specialization, and encourages operations and flows that are tightly controlled, limiting waste, leveraging parallel activity, supporting coherence. Superorganisms reflect cliodynamic flows. A superorganism has a development and operational phase. As additional agents are coopted into the superorganism they align, participate in supply and demand activities and so contribute to the evolutionary amplification. Damasio notes that prokaryotes, in rich environments, can similarly operate in a symbiotic fashion expressing cultural behaviors. .
The flexibility to rapidly digest different food sources was
improved once evolution could be augmented with creativity. Today
fire's transformative potential is counterbalanced by its
enabling the total destruction of the remaining biomes.
Like us, crows are social, watching the interactions of the
other members of the local group and observing the signals and
activities of neighboring groups, but without: fire, standing
erect, and having hands; they have not developed the ability to
Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved
dramatically. W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred.
make and use tools and trade them.
To strategically leverage creativity: its systemic supports can
be enhanced, and personality types best able to adapt to the
problem space can be selected:
- From the process of brain evolution it is clear that 'images'
are tagged with feelings that
Consciousness is no longer mysterious. In this page we use
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory to describe the high-level
architecture of consciousness, linking sensory networks,
low level feelings and
genetically conserved and deployed neural structures into a high
level scheduler. Consciousness is evolution's
solution to the complex problems of effective, emergent,
multi-cellular perception based strategy.
Constrained by emergence and needing
to avoid the epistemological
problem of starting with a blank slate with every birth,
evolution was limited in its options.
We explain how survival value allows evolution to leverage
available tools: sensors, agent relative position, models, perception
& representation; to solve the problem of mobile
agents responding effectively to their own state and proximate environment.
Evolution did this by providing a genetically
constructed framework that can
develop into a conscious CAS.
And we discuss the implications with regard to artificial
intelligence, sentient robots,
augmented intelligence, and
aspects of philosophy.
provide
scheduling for our emotions are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism.
to focus around.
Allowing individuals to recreate the emotional state where
they were previously collecting ideas about the problem and
other interests will help. For some, such as 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, that is quiet.
For 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.
Boyd it was loud opera.
Sleep facilitates salient memory formation and removal of non-salient memories. The five different stages of the nightly sleep cycles support different aspects of memory formation. The sleep stages follow Pre-sleep and include: Stage one characterized by light sleep and lasting 10 minutes, Stage two where theta waves and sleep spindles occur, Stage three and Stage four together represent deep slow-wave sleep (SWS) with delta waves, Stage five is REM sleep; sleep cycles last between 90-110 minutes each and as the night progresses SWS times reduce and REM times increase. Sleep includes the operation of synapse synthesis and maintenance through DNA based activity including membrane trafficking, synaptic vesicle recycling, myelin structural protein formation and cholesterol and protein synthesis. Sleep also controls inflammation (Jan 2019) Sleep deprivation undermines the thalamus & nucleus accumbens management of pain. is important
although Boyd worked hard at night.
- Limiting the centralized concentration of power helps
enable adaptation and creativity. Democracy
provides one mechanism to do this, although it can be
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.
circumvented by parasitism is a long term relationship between the parasite and its host where the resources of the host are utilized by the parasite without reciprocity. Often parasites include schematic adaptations allowing the parasite to use the hosts modeling and control systems to divert resources to them or improve their chance of reproduction: Toxoplasma gondii. .
And competition between businesses will undermine
constraints on adaptation. Hence it is essential to
enable and protect the competitive process with regulation
of monopolies is a power relation within: - A state in which a group has enough power to enforce its will on other citizens. If this is a central authority with a cohesive military, it can overpower other warlords and stabilize the society.
- An economy in which one business has enough share in a market segment to control margins to its advantage. An economic monopoly can be broadly beneficial: AT&T monopoly, US patent monopoly rights;
,
trusts and cartels, and the redistribution of wealth is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker. It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche. when it becomes
trapped and its power is used primarily to constrain.
Trade
makes an essential contribution to creativity. The This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergence of an economic is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. superOrganism is a wealthy autonomous entity needing and controlling the richest niches in the proximate environment, that emerges from the bundled cooperation of schematically aligned agents. The term is based on the social insect model, used by: ants, termites, and bees; and identified by Holldobler & E.O. Wilson. These genetically identical insect superorganisms cooperatively limit their reproduction to align with the resources available in the niche. Wilson asserts these insects all developed nests to which they returned to raise their offspring, and when the nest sites were of limited capacity some family members responded by focusing on defending the nest and foraging while their mother became an egg laying queen, enabled by "a single genetic change which silenced the brain's program for dispersal and prevents the mother and her offspring from dispersing to create new nests," Wilson explains. He adds climate control of the nest and disease resistance, just like the human immune system, demand individually focused diversity. So the queen's genome consists of low variety alleles for the extended phenotypic 'robot' worker caste agents and their organization - queen and workers competing as one, with other colonies and individual insects - and other parts which are high where the genome includes significant diversity. For humans it is an evolved cultural strategy used when the environment is supportive, but it is dependent on our imperfect cognitive assessment of kinship as well as group selection driven emotions: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious; and group oriented pressures to conform and remain: religions. And the adjacent possible must be recreated and modeled culturally through the emergence of processes such as democracy. It depends on inter-agent signalling. In both insects and humans it allows specialization, and encourages operations and flows that are tightly controlled, limiting waste, leveraging parallel activity, supporting coherence. Superorganisms reflect cliodynamic flows. A superorganism has a development and operational phase. As additional agents are coopted into the superorganism they align, participate in supply and demand activities and so contribute to the evolutionary amplification. Damasio notes that prokaryotes, in rich environments, can similarly operate in a symbiotic fashion expressing cultural behaviors. catalyzed, an infrastructure amplifier. an 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.
explosion of 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. . This
global economy was successful in: gaining access to, collecting,
and leveraging many of the world's resources. Some of the
This page reviews the catalytic
impact of infrastructure on the expression of phenotypic effects by an
agent. The infrastructure
reduces the cost the agent must pay to perform the selected
action. The catalysis is enhanced by positive returns.
infrastructure development it
encouraged resulted in the creation of catalytic, an infrastructure amplifier. platforms is agent generated infrastructure that supports emergence of an entity through: leverage of an abundant energy source, reusable resources; attracting a phenotypically aligned network of agents. : coffee shops
which supported discussion by artists and performance by 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. . It developed
The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
models to understand its interactions
with the environment. But many of the early attempts
needed significant improvement to accurately reflect the complex
situation. Due to having become This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
phenotypically
aligned they are locked in, resisting 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.
PDCA acts: traditional
'classical' economics is the study of trade between humans. Traditional Economics is based on an equilibrium model of the economic system. Traditional Economics includes: microeconomics, and macroeconomics. Marx developed an alternative static approach. Limitations of the equilibrium model have resulted in the development of: Keynes's dynamic General Theory of Employment Interest & Money, and Complexity Economics. Since trading depends on human behavior, economics has developed behavioral models including: behavioral economics. ;
generating suboptimal responses, to sustain the power hierarchy.
The entrenched representation still views the situation, now
incorrectly, as one of scarcity and responds accordingly.
It highlights our evolved
sensory representation even though the situation has
changed and we know
how key aspects can be extended: 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.
complexity
economics, This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS theory;
integrating This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolutionary theory into
developmental is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete. 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. The
misrepresentations have allowed problems to grow. The
developing This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). Small
world and scale free networks are considered.
network must be:
- Robust: able
to defend itself against attack by predators and parasites is a long term relationship between the parasite and its host where the resources of the host are utilized by the parasite without reciprocity. Often parasites include schematic adaptations allowing the parasite to use the hosts modeling and control systems to divert resources to them or improve their chance of reproduction: Toxoplasma gondii. -
necessitating immunity has to support and protect an inventory of host cell types, detect and respond to invaders and maintain the symbiont equilibrium within the microbiome. It detects microbes which have breached the secreted mucus barrier, driving them back and fortifying the barrier. It culls species within the microbiome that are expanding beyond requirements. It destroys invaders who make it into the internal transport networks. As part of its initialization it has immune cells which suppress the main system to allow the microbiome to bootstrap. The initial microbiome is tailored by the antibodies supplied from the mother's milk while breastfeeding. The immune system consists of two main parts the older non-adaptive part and the newer adaptive part. The adaptive part achieves this property by being schematically specified by DNA which is highly variable. By rapid reproduction the system recombines the DNA variable regions in vast numbers of offspring cells which once they have been shown not to attack the host cell lines are used as templates for interacting with any foreign body (antigen). When the immune cell's DNA hyper-variable regions are expressed as y-shaped antibody proteins they typically include some receptor like structures which match the surfaces of the typical antigen. Once the antibody becomes bound to the antigen the immune system cells can destroy the invader.
,
fault tolerant using multiple routes and This web page reviews opportunities to enhance computing theory
and practice by using biological mechanisms and complex adaptive
system (CAS) theory.
duplication of functionally
equivalent hub
autonomous
entities are entities which: - Are far from equilibrium
- Consume and save low entropy
- Can use accessible low entropy to maintain themselves
, and able to self-assemble when
under threat. The supply chain must be developed conforming
to these robustness requirements, or the whole economy may
collapse when threatened. AT&T's
Shewhart promoted quality control including the 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.
PDCA cycle to build supply chain
robustness. Dorner
describes the value
of buffering. Damasio
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.
notes the This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
organism is an integral whole,
where episodic
memory is the memory of conscious experiences. The entorhinal cortex's place cells record both space AND time details so that the memory stream can be reconstructed episodically. Damasio notes that feelings are indirect aspects of the recalled stream, and how positive or negative the memory is can alter over time. includes feelings 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
which help make the 'images'
robust. And there are also robust symbiotic is a long term situation between two, or more, different agents where the resources of both are shared for mutual benefit. Some of the relationships have built remarkable dependencies: Tremblaya's partnership with citrus mealybugs and bacterial DNA residing in the mealybug's genome, Aphids with species of secondary symbiont bacteria deployed sexually from a male aphid sperm reservoir and propagated asexually by female aphids only while their local diet induces a dependency. If the power relations and opportunities change for the participants then they will adapt and the situation may transform into separation, predation or parasitism.
relationships. Shah
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.
highlights the This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution of robust protective
responses: Quinine, Artemisinin; by plants during the long 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.
malarial arms race, in a war where both sides use the strategy of development and use of advanced weapon systems to gain an advantage, each advance induces the other side to respond with its own asymmetric advances. Neither side will necessarily gain the upper hand in which case the weapon systems themselves advance rapidly with little direct benefit for the combatants. .
- Responsive to policy: Signals, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance. In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively. A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form. Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell. Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state. Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals. Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich. Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors. In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. To be credible signals must be hard to fake. To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient. To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy.
to network Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agents must generate the desired
response, enable coordination and be actionable.
Strategies which don't fail when the signals are mangled
should be available to be prioritized: Fair emerged during his modified Prisoner's Dilemma game. It started out cooperating, but once the opponent defects, fair defects as well until the opponent resumes cooperating. If Fair's signal is mistaken, due to induced errors, it will cooperate until the opponent starts cooperating again. Fair is an advantage in noisy environments. -
in the modified
Prisoner's
Dilemma is a game theoretical scenario explored by mathematicians and evolutionary biologists. Two prisoners are to be interrogated separately. They will benefit if they cooperate with one another - serving one year each. But if just one defects they will go free while the other will lose serving three years. If they both defect they will both lose serving two years each. If the game is played once it is best to defect. But if the game is iterative, cooperation can be beneficial using a Tit for Tat strategy. Bootstrapping cooperation can be induced: - When a small founder population first becomes isolated and kin-selection increases and then the group connect to the main population. The group can then use cooperation to out compete the other members.
- Through green-beard signals, driving cooperation and forcing non green-beards to shift to cooperation to compete.
. Gawande
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.
describes how shared Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
plans, checklists are signals which remind the reader of highly significant aspects of a process. They are designed to be consulted at a point in the process where forgetting about the aspect will have a significantly detrimental effect. Often the processes are being used to respond to failures in the regular operation. Atul Gawande argues that effective use of checklists is vital to coping with situations that are complex. and
autonomy provide such robustness, analogous to the DNA
library distributed among a reproductive pool of
emergent agents. Khan
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?
promotes team
teaching. Shannon, Claude Shannon was a key figure in information theory and computation. He developed an electronic circuit using Boolean algebra which simplified the design and operation of a digital computer system enabling architectures such as Von Neumann's to become practical. He also developed the mathematical models of information transfer which support information entropy.
detailed
the information theory of signals and how they can be
made robust.
The emotional are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism. 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.
basis to organizing thoughts can be
leveraged so the economy's dynamics
are used to advantage:
- Fun is important to certain creative personalities 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
: Feynman was a Nobel laureate in physics, who developed methods to describe the behavior of electrons and photons, formalized as QED by Freeman Dyson, and formulated quantum mechanics in terms of Hugh Everett's histories. His personality enneagram, is typed as an enthusiast, which aligns with his seeking fun, but with coaching in science from his father, a joking mother, and an early drive to read, understand and apply: engineering, science and mathematics; to have fun, he was able to slow down his thoughts and integrate into a creative, productive investigator. , Shannon, Claude Shannon was a key figure in information theory and computation. He developed an electronic circuit using Boolean algebra which simplified the design and operation of a digital computer system enabling architectures such as Von Neumann's to become practical. He also developed the mathematical models of information transfer which support information entropy. ; who mentally
associate best and are most motivated in fun
environments. Companies will benefit from working and
playing hard.
- Gardens suppress stressors 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.
and align our minds
with the pleasure of the African savanna is the environment where hunter-gatherers primarily evolved. Its grassland supported large herbivores that could be hunted easily across the plains. Clumps of Acacia trees: with short trunks, and broad bows; & rocks supported places to hide from large carnivores. Streams, especially important in times of drought, and paths add to the signals enabling orientation. .
- The quality, especially the reliability, of
This presentation reviews just-in-time manufacturing with
analysis based on complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
lean manufactured products can
remove fear is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful. The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger. There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central 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. and uncertainty is when a factor is hard to measure because it is dependent on many interconnected agents and may be affected by infrastructure and evolved amplifiers. This is different from risk, although the two are deliberately conflated by ERISA. Keynes argued that most aspects of the future are uncertain, at best represented by ordinal probabilities, and often only by capricious hope for future innovation, fear inducing expectations of limited confidence, which evolutionary psychology implies is based on the demands of our hunter gatherer past. Deacon notes reduced uncertainty equates to information. from
the consumers' lives.
- The SuperOrganism is a wealthy autonomous entity needing and controlling the richest niches in the proximate environment, that emerges from the bundled cooperation of schematically aligned agents. The term is based on the social insect model, used by: ants, termites, and bees; and identified by Holldobler & E.O. Wilson. These genetically identical insect superorganisms cooperatively limit their reproduction to align with the resources available in the niche. Wilson asserts these insects all developed nests to which they returned to raise their offspring, and when the nest sites were of limited capacity some family members responded by focusing on defending the nest and foraging while their mother became an egg laying queen, enabled by "a single genetic change which silenced the brain's program for dispersal and prevents the mother and her offspring from dispersing to create new nests," Wilson explains. He adds climate control of the nest and disease resistance, just like the human immune system, demand individually focused diversity. So the queen's genome consists of low variety alleles for the extended phenotypic 'robot' worker caste agents and their organization - queen and workers competing as one, with other colonies and individual insects - and other parts which are high where the genome includes significant diversity. For humans it is an evolved cultural strategy used when the environment is supportive, but it is dependent on our imperfect cognitive assessment of kinship as well as group selection driven emotions: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious; and group oriented pressures to conform and remain: religions. And the adjacent possible must be recreated and modeled culturally through the emergence of processes such as democracy. It depends on inter-agent signalling. In both insects and humans it allows specialization, and encourages operations and flows that are tightly controlled, limiting waste, leveraging parallel activity, supporting coherence. Superorganisms reflect cliodynamic flows. A superorganism has a development and operational phase. As additional agents are coopted into the superorganism they align, participate in supply and demand activities and so contribute to the evolutionary amplification. Damasio notes that prokaryotes, in rich environments, can similarly operate in a symbiotic fashion expressing cultural behaviors.
strategy, implemented in post-World War 2 Japan, confronts Malthusian, Thomas Robert Malthus was an English cleric, East India Company economist and scholar. He described the geometrical expansion of populations supported by sufficient resources and the population's subsequent collapse as the land used to grow the resources became fully deployed. Initially concerned by England's leaders' fears of a French style revolution and disagreeing with William Godwin's visions of utopian progress and the idea of the Noble Savage, he argued for harsh treatment of the unemployed poor, denouncing charity. Subsequently he softened his position accepting that emigration, education, and celibacy could constrain the impact of exponential population growth. He socialized with the Wedgwood and Darwin families. His ideas influenced Charles Darwin. arguments
for punishing the poor. Birth rates can be managed
through increasing education and cultural 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.
signals.
Downturns are inevitable, but do not need to induce fear of
destitution. The emergence of new and or different
niches will alter which strategy is optimal.
Production of rice initially demanded intense cooperation
across the community. It supported a cooperative
culture that recently found the Toyota
production system easy to accept. Where wheat
could be grown by individual
families it enabled emergence of a culture that
allowed Elon Musk to capture enormous wealth is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker. It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche. and focus it on
Tesla within an economic network that lacks robustness.
- Social media enables emotional alignment of groups of
individuals. But the architecture of the services must
be improved to beneficially take account of man's Paleolithic emotions
and mediaeval institutions. When personal travel
was enhanced by the automobile, society applied
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 to how we could use
and abuse the technology. But when interaction was
extended with the Internet, legislation and regulation
lagged. We can: shout loudly and bully is a complex childhood adversity. Sapolsky explains that targets of bullying aren't selected at random. And bullies often come from families with single mothers or younger parents with low educational and economic prospects. Sapolsky notes that someone who bullies and is also bullied is likely to be a real mess as an adult. , gang-up on
others, signal with attention grabbing but misleading
details; to influence and gain power and status is a publically accepted, signal that one possesses assets: wealth, beauty, talent, expertise, access & trust of powerful people; to be able to help others. . Emotions
support creativity, along with education about the problems
to be solved, and networking. So the focus of
creativity will be shifted by the architecture of social
media and the constraints that help define the adjacent
possible. With automobiles, driving licenses and
traffic police support society's constraints. Similar
capabilities can and should be architected and applied to
social media.
Digitization
makes everything network accessible. But the 'cloud'
ownership model forces personal data to be made available to
powerful corporations. That enables these businesses to
transform clusters
of data into powerful classifiers, but leaves the
originators of the details in a virtual animal farm.
The situation is analogous to the mitochondrial are the energy molecule generating production functions of eukaryotic cells. They are vestigial blue-green bacteria with their own DNA and infrastructure. Unlike stand-alone bacteria they also use the eukaryotic host DNA and infrastructure for some functions. The high energy molecules are nucleotides with a high energy phosphate bond. The most used high energy molecule is Adenosine-tri-phosphate.
deployment of blue-green bacteria within eukaryotic is a relatively large multi-component cell type. It initially emerged from prokaryotic archaea subsuming eubacteria, from which single and multi-celled plants, multi celled fungi, including single-cell variant yeast, drips, protozoa and metazoa, including humans, are constructed. A eukaryotic cell contains modules including a nucleus and production functions such as chloroplasts and mitochondria. cells.
But the eukaryote and mitochondria are in a symbiotic is a long term situation between two, or more, different agents where the resources of both are shared for mutual benefit. Some of the relationships have built remarkable dependencies: Tremblaya's partnership with citrus mealybugs and bacterial DNA residing in the mealybug's genome, Aphids with species of secondary symbiont bacteria deployed sexually from a male aphid sperm reservoir and propagated asexually by female aphids only while their local diet induces a dependency. If the power relations and opportunities change for the participants then they will adapt and the situation may transform into separation, predation or parasitism. relationship
whereas the 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.
new architecture and
business model is currently more parasitic is a long term relationship between the parasite and its host where the resources of the host are utilized by the parasite without reciprocity. Often parasites include schematic adaptations allowing the parasite to use the hosts modeling and control systems to divert resources to them or improve their chance of reproduction: Toxoplasma gondii. .
Beneficial balance is obtained by judicial use of the anti-trust
constraints by the democratic
process. Dismantling of the upper chambers, or
limiting its strategic nature, undermines this teleodynamic.
Products and
services targeted at consumers may benefit from including emotional are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism. linkages using
creative design.
Proven examples include: Nokia mobile phones, iPhones, super and
muscle cars, imposing hospital atria. Industrial products
with totally functional requirements will not be so
improved. The difference is explained by the tension
between the two underlying mechanisms: 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.
natural
and This page describes the consequences of the asymmetries caused
by genotypic traits
creating a phenotypic signal in males and selection activity
in the female - sexual selection.
The impact of this asymmetry is to create a powerful alternative
to natural selection with sexual
selection's leverage of positive returns.
The mechanisms are described.
sexual selection:
- Poly genes promote pleasure is the outcome of the dopamine reward system, argues UCSF professor Robert Lustig. He, like the early Christians, contrasts [addiction oriented] pleasure with serotonin driven happiness & contentment.
in both the display & observation of signals, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance. In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively. A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form. Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell. Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state. Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals. Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich. Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors. In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. To be credible signals must be hard to fake. To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient. To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy. that are
associated with the genes. Creativity appears to coopt
those signals.
- The use of sexual selection will develop positive returns, W. Brian Arthur's conception of how high tech products have positive economic feedback as they deploy. Classical products such as foods have negative returns to scale since they take increasing amounts of land, and distribution infrastructure to support getting them to market. High tech products typically become easier to produce or gain from platform and network effects of being connected together overcoming the negative effects of scale.
.
If the selection mechanism is tightly associated with
expression then selections will feedback with positive
returns, since females are essentially selecting for copies
of themselves. Expression resulting in even a hint of
possession will allow sexual selection, which will select
for increased expression of the indicator Agents use sensors to detect events in their environment.
This page reviews how these events become signals associated
with beneficial responses in a complex adaptive system (CAS). CAS signals emerge from
the Darwinian information
model. Signals can indicate decision
summaries and level of uncertainty.
signal.
- Eventually the force of positive returns will be offset by
natural selection pressure. Any phenotypic distortion
of a feature supporting a competitive advantage will be
limited by natural selection pressure to obtain the
utilitarian optimum. But in contrast males who express
the utilitarian optimum will have a harder time finding and
attracting mates, so equilibrium will result.
The Walter Shewhart's iterative development process is found in many
complex adaptive systems (CAS).
The mechanism is reviewed and its value in coping with random
events is explained.
Shewhart cycle characterizes all
aspects of This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution of This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS into four components: 1. This page looks at schematic structures
and their uses. It discusses a number of examples:
- Schematic ideas are recombined in creativity.
- Similarly designers take ideas and
rules about materials and components and combine them.
- Schematic Recipes help to standardize operations.
- Modular components are combined into strategies
for use in business plans and business models.
As a working example it presents part of the contents and schematic
details from the Adaptive Web Framework (AWF)'s
operational plan.
Finally it includes a section presenting our formal
representation of schematic goals.
Each goal has a series of associated complex adaptive system (CAS) strategy strings.
These goals plus strings are detailed for various chess and business
examples.
planning - both the genetic and cultural 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.
aspects, 2. doing,
3. checking on what happened against the available The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
models and 4. acting to improve the
plan. It is during this last part that creativity is
applied. The improvement in the models used to represent
and understand the CAS is always contentious. Investigator personalities 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
find the
details but the changes threaten the This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
alignment
of the current This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). Small
world and scale free networks are considered.
network and power
hierarchy.
Businesses have
demonstrated the application of mechanisms which support creativity. Innovators 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. , who built superOrganisms is a wealthy autonomous entity needing and controlling the richest niches in the proximate environment, that emerges from the bundled cooperation of schematically aligned agents. The term is based on the social insect model, used by: ants, termites, and bees; and identified by Holldobler & E.O. Wilson. These genetically identical insect superorganisms cooperatively limit their reproduction to align with the resources available in the niche. Wilson asserts these insects all developed nests to which they returned to raise their offspring, and when the nest sites were of limited capacity some family members responded by focusing on defending the nest and foraging while their mother became an egg laying queen, enabled by "a single genetic change which silenced the brain's program for dispersal and prevents the mother and her offspring from dispersing to create new nests," Wilson explains. He adds climate control of the nest and disease resistance, just like the human immune system, demand individually focused diversity. So the queen's genome consists of low variety alleles for the extended phenotypic 'robot' worker caste agents and their organization - queen and workers competing as one, with other colonies and individual insects - and other parts which are high where the genome includes significant diversity. For humans it is an evolved cultural strategy used when the environment is supportive, but it is dependent on our imperfect cognitive assessment of kinship as well as group selection driven emotions: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious; and group oriented pressures to conform and remain: religions. And the adjacent possible must be recreated and modeled culturally through the emergence of processes such as democracy. It depends on inter-agent signalling. In both insects and humans it allows specialization, and encourages operations and flows that are tightly controlled, limiting waste, leveraging parallel activity, supporting coherence. Superorganisms reflect cliodynamic flows. A superorganism has a development and operational phase. As additional agents are coopted into the superorganism they align, participate in supply and demand activities and so contribute to the evolutionary amplification. Damasio notes that prokaryotes, in rich environments, can similarly operate in a symbiotic fashion expressing cultural behaviors. to
take full advantage of an This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emerging
rich niche, have added research labs:
- Thomas Edison was a prolific inventor contributing to the emergence of electric power generation, mass communications, sound recording and movies. He invented the electric light bulb, phonograph, and motion picture camera. Born in Milan, Ohio, in 1847, Thomas was the seventh child of Samuel Edison and Nancy Elliot. He contracted scarlet fever as a child which is attributed with causing his deafness from the age of 12. His mother was a school teacher who taught Thomas to read, write and do arithmetic. He had almost no formal education, until he was 28, but taught himself by reading about anything that made him curious. He was interested in technology and did experiments at home. At 28, Thomas enrolled in a four year chemistry course at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Edison was entrepreurial from age 13 when he sold candy, newspapers and vegetables on the trains flowing from Port Huron to Detroit, to finance his electricity and chemistry experiments. After saving a three year old boy from being hit by a train he was rewarded by the boy's father with training as a telegraph operator. By working night shifts he used this time to read and experiment, which got him fired. He teamed up with Franklin Pope another inventor and telegrapher and developed a multiplex telegraphic system, which he sold financing his further business ventures. He used the funds to setup the first industrial research lab at Menlo Park, New Jersey. This allowed Edison to gather together materials and leverage other employees: mathematicians, engineers; to work together on analysis, inventions and technological innovations: telephone, phonograph, electric railway, iron ore separator, electric lighting; which Edison patented. He founded a large number of companies including: G.E.; enabling innovation.
setup the first industrial research lab at GE,
demonstrating the benefit of the structure. The
company also developed
an effective 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.
PDCA process,
which encouraged adoption of 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.
similar
processes at Intel.
- Mervin
Kelly while managing
A government sanctioned monopoly
supported the construction of a superorganism
American Telephone and
Telegraph
(AT&T). Within this Bell Labs was at the center of
three networks:
- The evolving global scientific
network.
- The Bell telephone network. And
- The military
industrial network deploying 'fire and missile
control' systems.
Bell Labs strategically leveraged each network to create an innovation
engine.
They monitored the opportunities to leverage the developing
ideas, reorganizing to replace incumbent
opposition and enable the creation and growth of new
ideas.
Once the monopoly was
dismantled, AT&T disrupted.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the innovation mechanisms are
discussed.
ATT's
Bell Labs, setup
the building infrastructure so that it supported
creative networking:
- Reflecting a university setting rather than a
factory. And all aspects were connected so as to
inhibit departments becoming silos. Kelly aimed for a
structure that would
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.
encourage free
interchange of ideas. So he put the scientists'
labs and offices on different floors. There were 700
foot long corridors. Offices had modular
reconfigurable walls.
- Bill Hewlett & Dave Packard setup a research lab at
Hewlett-Packard. It was initially run by Barney
Oliver, and then Joel Birnbaum who commented
on its value to the innovation process:
Products & services are
This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emergent outgrowths of invention
which aim to be efficient and effective for the users. But
this target of 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.
process is obscured by 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
built into the structure of the The complex adaptive system (CAS)
nature of a value delivery system is first introduced. It's a network
of agents acting as relays.
The critical nature of hub agents and the difficulty of altering
an aligned network is reviewed.
The nature of and exceptional opportunities created by platforms are discussed.
Finally an example of aligning a VDS is presented.
value
delivery system interacting with the properties of the
product. The evolved
flexibility humans obtain from our: visual orientation and,
relationship dynamics; enables the development of alternative business entities and
encourages our creative
searching for ways to overcome their inherent compromises:
- At the height
of its power IBM
was a computer systems developer which leased its products
and services to customers in markets where it aimed to
capture the majority of the revenue. The customers
were attracted by the modularity
of the IBM solution, which was sustained by an
This page reviews the strategy of architecting an end-to-end
solution in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its costs and benefits are discussed.
end-to-end system architecture,
and This page discusses the strategy of modularity in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). The
benefits, mechanism and its emergence
are discussed.
modular components.
This demanded compromises, where the pace of product
development was slow enough to allow the architecture to
evolve appropriately. Innovations in the technologies
which transformed the components were hard to
leverage. Pricing power was protected by This page reviews the strategy of bundling multiple products
within a single offer in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). The
mechanism is discussed with examples from biology and
business.
bundling and limiting the ability
of third parties to integrate with the systems. The
sales channel focused on the top of the hierarchy of the
customer's organization leaving the IBM development process
disconnected from the end users' activities and needs.
It is an archetype for Google's cloud business and Amazon
web services (AWS).
- Hewlett-Packard (HP) was formed with the opposite
approach: lots of discrete product, and profit, focused
businesses were loosely coupled together by central initial
funding, mission allocation and
oversight. Reinvestment of profits within each
business limited the need for external bank finance which
the founders had seen destroy effective businesses during
the banking collapse of the great depression. But HP's
engineering customers, interested in the test and
measurement tools, expected to deal with a single well
briefed sales organization and products that
integrated. The profit orientation and iterative
addition of features means the businesses can suffer from
This page reviews Christensen's disruption
of a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism is discussed with examples from biology and
business.
disruption, unless protected by
the innovator's solution. Overtime HP added structures
to align sales channels and subsets of businesses and to
align the architectures of products to improve
integration. This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
Extended
phenotypic alignment and other constraints highlighted
the impact of these compromises. The sales forces were
careful to protect 'their' customers from the product
divisions limiting the alignment of product goals and
customer needs.
- HP general
manager, Tom
Perkins, liked the discrete product focus of the early
HP businesses and developed a VC is venture capital, venture companies invest in startups with intangable assets
framework that virtualized the HP organizational
model. It linked free capital to innovative creations,
but integrated the resulting businesses to stock market
quarterly measures, and selected for businesses with the
potential for rapid exponential growth through positive returns, W. Brian Arthur's conception of how high tech products have positive economic feedback as they deploy. Classical products such as foods have negative returns to scale since they take increasing amounts of land, and distribution infrastructure to support getting them to market. High tech products typically become easier to produce or gain from platform and network effects of being connected together overcoming the negative effects of scale. .
This drives companies like Facebook and Alphabet to avoid
architectural constraints to growth: accurate identity
management; and to the This page reviews the strategy of setting up an arms race. At its
core this strategy depends on being able to alter, or take
advantage of an alteration in, the genome
or equivalent. The situation is illustrated with examples
from biology, high tech and politics.
evolved
amplifier of advertising revenue capture. For
the winners, massive revenues and profits support a period
of expansion before the share of the business within the
market and through market extensions, makes additional
growth incremental in scope disappointing investors who seek
cost reductions.
A government sanctioned monopoly
supported the construction of a superorganism
American Telephone and
Telegraph
(AT&T). Within this Bell Labs was at the center of
three networks:
- The evolving global scientific
network.
- The Bell telephone network. And
- The military
industrial network deploying 'fire and missile
control' systems.
Bell Labs strategically leveraged each network to create an innovation
engine.
They monitored the opportunities to leverage the developing
ideas, reorganizing to replace incumbent
opposition and enable the creation and growth of new
ideas.
Once the monopoly was
dismantled, AT&T disrupted.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the innovation mechanisms are
discussed.
AT&T illustrates the
network focused product strategy and business model, now
leveraged by In this page we use CAS theory to review the asymmetric
challenges of the retailer Amazon.
Amazon. The
tight focus on the "network," close access to its problems,
and the conversion of monopoly is a power relation within: - A state in which a group has enough power to enforce its will on other citizens. If this is a central authority with a cohesive military, it can overpower other warlords and stabilize the society.
- An economy in which one business has enough share in a market segment to control margins to its advantage. An economic monopoly can be broadly beneficial: AT&T monopoly, US patent monopoly rights;
profits into creative engineering, supports innovation
across the network. But it increasingly monopolizes
its markets unless constrained by regulation.
- IBM developed an ecosystem of 3rd party value added
businesses leveraging its IBM PC platform is agent generated infrastructure that supports emergence of an entity through: leverage of an abundant energy source, reusable resources; attracting a phenotypically aligned network of agents.
.
Microsoft maintained and supported this ecosystem and
extended it to original equipment manufacturers (OEMS)
building compatable PC hardware. Apple
developed a similar platform business and ecosystem for the
iPhone. But previously
- Apple's products and business organization developed and
sold integrated systems, allowing Apple the flexibility to
repeatedly transform its product line with new cascades of
technologies.
Internally businesses are also mostly hierarchic
structures which allow power to threaten This page describes the organizational forces that limit change.
It explains how to overcome
them when necessary.
progress,
risk taking and creativity. So steps must be taken
to limit these constraints: Jony Ive actively
hid early creative projects, his team was working on, from
Steve Jobs was an innovative entrepreneur who integrated art and culture with engineering, and is responsible for: the strong sexual selection force of the: Macintosh, iPod, iPad and iPhone; and their dedicated fan base. He cofounded Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak where Wozniak designed a particularly simple microprocessor based computer, the Apple 1 and Jobs made it elegant. Struck by the relative simplicity and ease of use of PARC's Alto, Jobs and Wozniak began building the Lisa. But Jobs decided it was flawed and took a small group aside to build the Macintosh which the whole team were happy to sign their names on the inside. Born February 24th 1955, Steve's birth mother Joanne Schieble was forced by her father to have the boy adopted rather than allow her to marry his Muslim Syrian birth father, Abdulfattah Jandali, the last of nine children of a hugely wealthy trader, Walter Isaacson explains. The baby was adopted by Paul Reinhold Jobs, a highly practical mechanic and a mild kind father, and Clara Hagopian, also sweet-humored, and when Steve was two they adopted Patty. The Jobs lived in an Eichler (a design inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright), in Mountain View, California, which had a strong influence on Steve, as he explained to Isaacson, "Eichler did a great thing. His houses were smart and cheap and good. They brought clean design and simple taste to lower income people. They had awesome little features, like radiant heating in the floors. You put carpet on them, and we had nice toasty floors when we were kids." Steve Jobs knew early on that he was adopted, which pained him supporting development of his Challenger personality type. It was also clear to Steve that he was unlike his adopted parents, Paul and Clara Jobs, who stressed to him that they picked him specifically and that he was special. They tolerated Steve's high risk activities and ensured he was safe when problems occurred. Paul Jobs impressed Steve as a child, with his valuing quality workmanship, and his practical capabilities. Paul could repair any car and Steve became interested in the electronics aspects. He was helped by neighbors who were electrical engineers: Larry Lang; the geographic cluster that formed around Hewlett Packard and Intel. And he then joined a neighborhood electronics club where he was introduced to Steve Wozniak. But the young Steve Jobs was shocked when he discovered his father did not correctly understand some aspects of the world, and Steve realized he was much more intelligent than his parents Paul and Clara. With their support he followed his curiosity and resisted any attempt to stop him. His powerful drive made his parents, teachers, local business leaders: Bill Hewlett, Nolan Bushnell; and coaches go along. At Reed College he pushed to attend courses he was interested in: calligraphy; rather than follow the syllabus, and they let him. They even allowed him to continue when he stopped his parents from paying more tuition. His stressed idealist continually sought out gurus: Shunryu Suzuki, Neem Karoli Baba; and visionaries who might help Steve understand who he really was. .
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
Healthcare struggles with the
partitioning of: research, management, and operations; resulting
in developmental is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete.
activities that
stifle creativity, and operational constraints and uncertainty is when a factor is hard to measure because it is dependent on many interconnected agents and may be affected by infrastructure and evolved amplifiers. This is different from risk, although the two are deliberately conflated by ERISA. Keynes argued that most aspects of the future are uncertain, at best represented by ordinal probabilities, and often only by capricious hope for future innovation, fear inducing expectations of limited confidence, which evolutionary psychology implies is based on the demands of our hunter gatherer past. Deacon notes reduced uncertainty equates to information. of
outcome which reward following current practice and specialization.
It also illustrates the distorting influence of profit seeking
and constraints of the
research grant allocating hierarchy, reinforced by This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
extended phenotypic alignment except
in a major crisis. Development must prepare the Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agents to take advantage of the
'freedom' that such a crisis brings.
Large organizations,
which are fundamental to an economic is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers.
superorganism is a wealthy autonomous entity needing and controlling the richest niches in the proximate environment, that emerges from the bundled cooperation of schematically aligned agents. The term is based on the social insect model, used by: ants, termites, and bees; and identified by Holldobler & E.O. Wilson. These genetically identical insect superorganisms cooperatively limit their reproduction to align with the resources available in the niche. Wilson asserts these insects all developed nests to which they returned to raise their offspring, and when the nest sites were of limited capacity some family members responded by focusing on defending the nest and foraging while their mother became an egg laying queen, enabled by "a single genetic change which silenced the brain's program for dispersal and prevents the mother and her offspring from dispersing to create new nests," Wilson explains. He adds climate control of the nest and disease resistance, just like the human immune system, demand individually focused diversity. So the queen's genome consists of low variety alleles for the extended phenotypic 'robot' worker caste agents and their organization - queen and workers competing as one, with other colonies and individual insects - and other parts which are high where the genome includes significant diversity. For humans it is an evolved cultural strategy used when the environment is supportive, but it is dependent on our imperfect cognitive assessment of kinship as well as group selection driven emotions: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious; and group oriented pressures to conform and remain: religions. And the adjacent possible must be recreated and modeled culturally through the emergence of processes such as democracy. It depends on inter-agent signalling. In both insects and humans it allows specialization, and encourages operations and flows that are tightly controlled, limiting waste, leveraging parallel activity, supporting coherence. Superorganisms reflect cliodynamic flows. A superorganism has a development and operational phase. As additional agents are coopted into the superorganism they align, participate in supply and demand activities and so contribute to the evolutionary amplification. Damasio notes that prokaryotes, in rich environments, can similarly operate in a symbiotic fashion expressing cultural behaviors. and so
must persist, can benefit from creativity but This page describes the organizational forces that limit change.
It explains how to overcome
them when necessary.
it will conflict with the command
and control hierarchy and This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
extended
phenotypic alignment that will be undermined by the change
induced. In an illustration of the tension Robert Coram
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.
highlights that for the Pentagon to
create and build the F-16 is a US Air Force fighter, developed to reflect the single engine light weight fighter concept. The Air Force resisted Boyd's conception, and enhanced it, to protect the F-15's niche, to be a multi-mission hybrid, including a nuclear bomber.
required:
- Defense
Secretary Schlesinger's desire to leave a legacy, his
association with Pierre
Sprey was a McNamara Whiz Kid, who, according to Robert Coram, entered Yale at fifteen graduating with a double major in French literature and mechanical engineering, then studied statistics and operational research at Cornell before running the statistical consulting shop at Grumman Aviation, before working for McNamara under Alain Enthoven. Sprey became an expert on the history of warfare and tactical aviation. He developed a report on interdiction bombing which asserted it would not deter Soviet forces from invading Western Europe and that the US Air Force should focus on CAS and providing tactical air cover. He was asked to manage the program to develop the A-10, where he leveraged John Boyd's E-M theory and data. Sprey was a vocal critic of the Pentagon's expensive, complex procurement process, and especially the computer model based vulnerability testing of tanks and armored vehicles, since the models weren't validated by field testing. He helped Jim Burton to develop a live-fire test program to provide the validation.
's mentor, Colonel Richard Hallock who proposed
the F-16 and A-10 Warthog CAS aircraft. It was promoted and developed by Pierre Sprey who ensured it matched the requirements of Vietnam war US CAS pilots and reflected the observations of top German Stuka pilot Hans Rudel. in
response,
- Pierre Sprey &
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.
John Boyd
who initiated and drove the creation of the CAS is: - Close Air Support by the Air Force of ground troops. CAS aircraft: US A-1, A-10 , Cheyenne helicopter, Stuka; target tanks, bridges etc. to limit the operations of the enemy ground forces and enable movement by friendly forces.
- Complex Adaptive System is an emergent, complex system which leverages evolution to iteratively plan and execute activites by agents.
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.
program
which conceived the A-10,
and the light
weight single engine fighter,
- Deputy Defense Secretary Packard
to incent prototyping, against the objections of the
large incumbent defense contractors and the military
hierarchy, which allowed the YF-16
prototype to demonstrate its superiority over the
defense establishment's preferred F-15 is a US Air Force fighter, built as the F-X program, and re-designated F-15 after it was forced to become a fixed wing aircraft. Robert Coram explains that for John Boyd it epitomized the multi-role, master of none, 'addiction' of the Air Force bureaucracy and its aligned defense contractors. This extended phenotype's need to add features: tail hook, nose wheel steering, maintenance ladder, huge radar; expanded its weight, making it impossible to maneuver in a dogfight while retaining usable energy.
- Christie was born in Pensacola on the 28th May 1935, the first of five children of a wife beating, gambler, drunkard, and womanizer, according to Robert Coram. When Tom tried to defend his mother he was beaten too. Tom learned to survive, coping with his father in a poor family, by avoiding the notice of those who could harm him. He enjoyed his education, excelling academically and at baseball. He studied mathematics at Jesuit Spring Hill College, graduating in 1955 and got a civilian job at Eglin AFB. Unusually, the US Air Force financed his graduate degree studies in applied mathematics at New York University. Back in Eglin by 1962 he was assigned to the Air Force Armament Center's Ballistics Division, tasked with quantifying the bombing tables. Christie's quiet, self-effacing personality helped him achieve his goals within the military bureaucracy, staying undetected by those who would block his projects. He was keen to make a difference to science and the Air Force which he did through an informal partnership, adding his complementary skills to John Boyd's, so together they would systematize aircraft maneuverability, with Boyd's E-M Theory. Christie's success as a leader led to his running the Tactical Air Program at the Pentagon in the OSD. While there he protected Boyd and Spinney, helped keep the Light Weight Fighter project in the Air Force budget, pushed the readiness issue within the DOD budget process, and helped bring the F-111D revelations to the Secretary of Defense. When Boyd retired Christie remained in communication. Christie became one of the top non-appointed civilians at the Pentagon, where he was able to provide Boyd with: a consulting role at Tac Air, an office and infrastructure; after Boyd retired. But Christie's salary was still never sufficient to cope with his daughter's medical expenses.
to help Schlesinger protect
the F-16 budget
- Boyd to reveal to US allies that the F-16
would have a longer range than any other fighter
operated by the Air Force; and even then the Air Force leadership now aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group. Pinker notes the evolved pressure of social rivalry associating power with leadership. Saposky observes the disconnect between power hierarchies and wisdom in apes. John Adair developed a modern leadership methodology based on the three-circles model.
transformed it from a light weight fighter to a bomber to
protect the budgets
and careers
associated with the F-15!
In this illustration a systemic theory (E-M Theory is Energy-Maneuverability Theory, John Boyd's quantification of how thrust and drag ratios define the flying characteristics of aircraft, at a particular altitude, airspeed, temperature, angle of bank, and G-load. In air-to-air combat a pilot wants to know the aircraft's current specific energy rate (p sub s) relative to his adversary. At a given: altitude, G, velocity; an aircraft has a defined drag. And at that altitude and temperature the engine has a maximum potential thrust. Boyd was quantifying how quickly the pilot could gain specific energy: which depends on the difference between the engine's available thrust and the airplane's current drag, P sub s = ((thrust - drag) / weight) * velocity; to understand what was the reserve of energy available to support a maneuver. Boyd normalized the result relative to the weight of the aircraft to allow comparisons of different types of aircraft. ) is being
broadcast, and instantiated in the creation of the lightweight
single engine fighter prototype: YF-16; with the support of a covert
network of Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agents to overcome
the resistance of the organization's structural hierarchy.
Even with the organizational leadership now aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group. Pinker notes the evolved pressure of social rivalry associating power with leadership. Saposky observes the disconnect between power hierarchies and wisdom in apes. John Adair developed a modern leadership methodology based on the three-circles model. 's support
they are not able to totally overcome the organizational
resistance and truly innovate 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 the situation becomes progressively more 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.
constrained as phenotypic alignment helps a 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.
predatory elite to exert
federal legislative power and increase and leverage wealth is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker. It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche. . But there are
various ways in which the constraints may loosen again, so the
organization should retain the Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schematic
structures and Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agency to
respond.
Existential external competition can provide the incentive for
the leadership to focus on progress. And it can also be
encouraged when the organization has a business model and it
requires progress, as in A government sanctioned monopoly
supported the construction of a superorganism
American Telephone and
Telegraph
(AT&T). Within this Bell Labs was at the center of
three networks:
- The evolving global scientific
network.
- The Bell telephone network. And
- The military
industrial network deploying 'fire and missile
control' systems.
Bell Labs strategically leveraged each network to create an innovation
engine.
They monitored the opportunities to leverage the developing
ideas, reorganizing to replace incumbent
opposition and enable the creation and growth of new
ideas.
Once the monopoly was
dismantled, AT&T disrupted.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the innovation mechanisms are
discussed.
AT&T's
monopoly bargain with Congress. But it can also be
sustained by leaders creating internal competition within their
organizations. This last alternative runs the risk, is an assessment of the likelihood of an independent problem occurring. It can be assigned an accurate probability since it is independent of other variables in the system. As such it is different from uncertainty. that the competing
organizations will shift the goal from progress to fighting each
other, as Coram 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.
describes occurring
between the US is the United States of America. Air Force, Navy
and Army.
The leadership will be best able to support creativity if they
understand the proximate environment, so they can respond when
necessary:
- An external threat from an adjacent, feared 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.
, superorganism
encourages the leadership's focus on progress. When
this is removed: for America, by the fall of the Soviet
Union, for ancient Rome in the subjugation of Carthage; this
focus is lost and leaders may encourage constraints that
consolidate and reinforce the hierarchy and their place in
it.
- In the F-16 example,
when the threat from the parallel
civilian hierarchy: Schlesinger, Sprey; is removed,
the Air Force leadership adjusts: a phalanx is focused on
transforming the fighter to a multi-purpose bomber, and
training entry points: Air Force Academy, Air Command and
Staff College; allow the leadership's relatives, and 'water-walkers,'
accelerated access to executive positions.
- The effective understanding of the proximate environment
is enabled by creation of applicable
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS theories, which are then
introduced to future leaders, and or their strategic advisors,
during their 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.
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. ; but
the leadership's support for creativity is also limited by
the nature of future uncertainty is when a factor is hard to measure because it is dependent on many interconnected agents and may be affected by infrastructure and evolved amplifiers. This is different from risk, although the two are deliberately conflated by ERISA. Keynes argued that most aspects of the future are uncertain, at best represented by ordinal probabilities, and often only by capricious hope for future innovation, fear inducing expectations of limited confidence, which evolutionary psychology implies is based on the demands of our hunter gatherer past. Deacon notes reduced uncertainty equates to information. .
Future uncertainty can be managed to
an extent with parallel activities exploring different
approaches:
- The
Sven Beckert describes the historic transformation of the
growing, spinning, weaving, manufacture of cotton goods and
their trade over time. He describes the rise of a first global
commodity, its dependence on increasing: military power, returns for
the control points in the value delivery system(VDS), availability of land
and labor to work it including slaves.
He explains how cotton offered the opportunity for
industrialization further amplifying the productive capacity of
the VDS and the power of the control points. This VDS was quickly
copied. The increased capacity of the industrialized
cotton complex adaptive system (CAS) required more labor to
operate the machines. Beckert describes the innovative introduction of wages
and the ways found to
mobilize industrial labor.
Beckert describes the characteristics of the industrial cotton
CAS which made it flexible enough to become globally interconnected.
Slavery made the production system so cost effective that all
prior structures collapsed as they interconnected. So when
the US civil war
blocked access to the major production nodes in the
American Deep South the CAS began adapting.
Beckert describes the global
reconstruction that occurred and the resulting destruction of the traditional ways
of life in the global countryside. This colonial expansion
further enriched and empowered the 'western' nation
states. Beckert explains how other countries responded
by copying the colonial strategies and creating the
opportunities for future armed conflict among the original
colonialists and the new upstarts.
Completing the adaptive
shifts, Beckert describes the advocates for industrialization in
the colonized global south and how over time they joined
the global cotton CAS disrupting the early western manufacturing
nodes and creating the current global CAS
dominated by merchants like Wal-Mart
pulling goods through a network of clothing manufacturers,
spinning and weaving factories, and growers competing with each
other on cost.
Following our summary of Beckert's book, RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory. The transformation of
disconnected peasant farmers,
pastoral warriors and their lands into a supply chain for a
highly profitable industrial CAS required the development over
time: of military force, global transportation and communication
networks, perception and representation control networks, capital stores and flows,
models, rules, standards and markets; along with the support at
key points of: barriers, disruption, and infrastructure and
evolved amplifiers. The emergent
system demonstrates the powerful constraining influence of
extended phenotypic alignment.
global cotton network,
which expanded into the global economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers. , benefited from
creativity and supported
innovation, driving
the results into the networked home. But as the
wealth has 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.
shifted to financial
services the current network is disintermediating is the shift of operations from one network provider to another lower cost connected network provider. The first network provider leverages the cost benefits of the shift to increase its profitability but becomes disrupted. The lower cost network provider gains revenue flows, expertise and increases its active agents. Over time this disruptive shift will leave the higher cost network as a highly profitable shell, but the agents that performed the operations that migrated to the low cost network will be ejected from the network. For a company that may imply the costs of layoffs. For a state the ejected workers imply increased cost impacts and reduced revenue potential which the state are trading off for improved operating efficiency. ,
pushing the potential to innovate towards the Chinese
manufacturing hubs.
- VC is venture capital, venture companies invest in startups with intangable assets
operations provide
this facility but tend to be driven towards positive return, 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.
situations, which can become distorted through maximizing
investor returns to generate sub-optimal, monopolies is a power relation within: - A state in which a group has enough power to enforce its will on other citizens. If this is a central authority with a cohesive military, it can overpower other warlords and stabilize the society.
- An economy in which one business has enough share in a market segment to control margins to its advantage. An economic monopoly can be broadly beneficial: AT&T monopoly, US patent monopoly rights;
.
- Company research
labs, an innovation of Thomas Edison was a prolific inventor contributing to the emergence of electric power generation, mass communications, sound recording and movies. He invented the electric light bulb, phonograph, and motion picture camera. Born in Milan, Ohio, in 1847, Thomas was the seventh child of Samuel Edison and Nancy Elliot. He contracted scarlet fever as a child which is attributed with causing his deafness from the age of 12. His mother was a school teacher who taught Thomas to read, write and do arithmetic. He had almost no formal education, until he was 28, but taught himself by reading about anything that made him curious. He was interested in technology and did experiments at home. At 28, Thomas enrolled in a four year chemistry course at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Edison was entrepreurial from age 13 when he sold candy, newspapers and vegetables on the trains flowing from Port Huron to Detroit, to finance his electricity and chemistry experiments. After saving a three year old boy from being hit by a train he was rewarded by the boy's father with training as a telegraph operator. By working night shifts he used this time to read and experiment, which got him fired. He teamed up with Franklin Pope another inventor and telegrapher and developed a multiplex telegraphic system, which he sold financing his further business ventures. He used the funds to setup the first industrial research lab at Menlo Park, New Jersey. This allowed Edison to gather together materials and leverage other employees: mathematicians, engineers; to work together on analysis, inventions and technological innovations: telephone, phonograph, electric railway, iron ore separator, electric lighting; which Edison patented. He founded a large number of companies including: G.E.; enabling innovation.
,
can be focused on problems with a This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). Small
world and scale free networks are considered.
network
oriented niche encouraging a drive for progress and
supporting creativity and some innovation.
- University research explores the universe detailing its
solutions to the problems of complexity. But humanity
is
E. O. Wilson reviews the effect of man on the natural world to
date and explains how the two systems can coexist most
effectively.
rapidly destroying eco-nets
that have taken millions of years to construct through This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution and the funding process
used to incent and constrain the direction of research has
been coopted by the
incentives of the predatory financial network.
- Education can
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?
support the developing brain's
creative strategies and integrate the brain with the
network of knowledge and expertise; but This page discusses the impact of random events which once they
occur encourage a particular direction forward for a complex
adaptive system (CAS).
frozen accidents are difficult
to manage. Pandemic disease and wars repeatedly
occur but their timing, scope and impact are hard to
predict. Instead impacts are often minimized and
responses are delayed in all the planning scenarios.
Public and commercial organizations supporting platforms is agent generated infrastructure that supports emergence of an entity through: leverage of an abundant energy source, reusable resources; attracting a phenotypically aligned network of agents. : Junior Theatre;
which enable performance providing essential support for 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. .
In the situations when it is appropriate
for an organization to apply creativity
to its offerings: the conditions of the proximate adjacent possible,
The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
modeled by the Computational
theory of the mind and evolutionary
psychology provide Steven Pinker with a framework on which
to develop his psychological arguments about the mind and its
relationship to the brain. Humans captured a cognitive niche by
natural selection 'building out'
specialized aspects of their bodies and brains resulting in a system of mental organs
we call the mind.
He garnishes and defends the framework with findings from
psychology regarding: The visual
system - an example of natural
selections solutions to the sensory challenges
of inverse
modeling of our
environment; Intensions - where
he highlights the challenges of hunter-gatherers -
making sense of the objects
they perceive and predicting what they imply and natural
selections powerful solutions; Emotions - which Pinker argues are
essential to human prioritizing and decision making; Relationships - natural selection's
strategies for coping with the most dangerous competitors, other
people. He helps us understand marriage, friendships and war.
These conclusions allow him to understand the development and
maintenance of higher callings: Art, Music, Literature, Humor,
Religion, & Philosophy; and develop a position on the meaning of life.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) modeling allows RSS to frame Pinker's arguments
within humanity's current situation, induced by powerful evolved
amplifiers: Globalization,
Cliodynamics, The green revolution
and resource
bottlenecks; melding his powerful predictions of the
drivers of human behavior with system wide constraints.
The implications are discussed.
mind, reflecting the The complex adaptive system (CAS)
nature of a value delivery system is first introduced. It's a network
of agents acting as relays.
The critical nature of hub agents and the difficulty of altering
an aligned network is reviewed.
The nature of and exceptional opportunities created by platforms are discussed.
Finally an example of aligning a VDS is presented.
VDS of the organization, generate the
signals, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance. In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively. A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form. Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell. Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state. Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals. Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich. Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors. In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. To be credible signals must be hard to fake. To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient. To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy. ; the leadership now aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group. Pinker notes the evolved pressure of social rivalry associating power with leadership. Saposky observes the disconnect between power hierarchies and wisdom in apes. John Adair developed a modern leadership methodology based on the three-circles model. must help the
change Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agents find the edge of 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. .
It must contain individuals who can shape and inspire an
organization to develop and explore the vision. It must
include gathering adults and adolescents interested in the area
and keen to contribute. Who should they be? 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.
Charles Darwin, Douglas Hofstadter, 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, Leonardo
da Vinci, 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 van Gogh, Steve Jobs was an innovative entrepreneur who integrated art and culture with engineering, and is responsible for: the strong sexual selection force of the: Macintosh, iPod, iPad and iPhone; and their dedicated fan base. He cofounded Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak where Wozniak designed a particularly simple microprocessor based computer, the Apple 1 and Jobs made it elegant. Struck by the relative simplicity and ease of use of PARC's Alto, Jobs and Wozniak began building the Lisa. But Jobs decided it was flawed and took a small group aside to build the Macintosh which the whole team were happy to sign their names on the inside. Born February 24th 1955, Steve's birth mother Joanne Schieble was forced by her father to have the boy adopted rather than allow her to marry his Muslim Syrian birth father, Abdulfattah Jandali, the last of nine children of a hugely wealthy trader, Walter Isaacson explains. The baby was adopted by Paul Reinhold Jobs, a highly practical mechanic and a mild kind father, and Clara Hagopian, also sweet-humored, and when Steve was two they adopted Patty. The Jobs lived in an Eichler (a design inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright), in Mountain View, California, which had a strong influence on Steve, as he explained to Isaacson, "Eichler did a great thing. His houses were smart and cheap and good. They brought clean design and simple taste to lower income people. They had awesome little features, like radiant heating in the floors. You put carpet on them, and we had nice toasty floors when we were kids." Steve Jobs knew early on that he was adopted, which pained him supporting development of his Challenger personality type. It was also clear to Steve that he was unlike his adopted parents, Paul and Clara Jobs, who stressed to him that they picked him specifically and that he was special. They tolerated Steve's high risk activities and ensured he was safe when problems occurred. Paul Jobs impressed Steve as a child, with his valuing quality workmanship, and his practical capabilities. Paul could repair any car and Steve became interested in the electronics aspects. He was helped by neighbors who were electrical engineers: Larry Lang; the geographic cluster that formed around Hewlett Packard and Intel. And he then joined a neighborhood electronics club where he was introduced to Steve Wozniak. But the young Steve Jobs was shocked when he discovered his father did not correctly understand some aspects of the world, and Steve realized he was much more intelligent than his parents Paul and Clara. With their support he followed his curiosity and resisted any attempt to stop him. His powerful drive made his parents, teachers, local business leaders: Bill Hewlett, Nolan Bushnell; and coaches go along. At Reed College he pushed to attend courses he was interested in: calligraphy; rather than follow the syllabus, and they let him. They even allowed him to continue when he stopped his parents from paying more tuition. His stressed idealist continually sought out gurus: Shunryu Suzuki, Neem Karoli Baba; and visionaries who might help Steve understand who he really was. , Joe
Gebbia, Sal Khan, Robert Moses, John Meynard Keynes,
Albert Einstein, Mervyn Kelly,
Claude Shannon, Claude Shannon was a key figure in information theory and computation. He developed an electronic circuit using Boolean algebra which simplified the design and operation of a digital computer system enabling architectures such as Von Neumann's to become practical. He also developed the mathematical models of information transfer which support information entropy. , William Shockley,
Edward. O. Wilson and Jared Diamond; are all exceptionally creative in their own
way. This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
Evolution has placed a
set of Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic
operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination.
The nature of the operations is described.
genetic operators within the
developmental process 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.
of each new generation of humanity. The process depends on the
diverse proximate environments within which the Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
genetic, memetic and epigenetic represent state surfaces within cells and eggs which can be operationally modified so as to provide a heritable structure. DNA, histones and other stable structures provide surfaces where these states may be setup. Egg carriers are in a particularly powerful position to induce epi-genetic changes. Sapolsky notes [childhood] events which persistently alter brain structure and behavior via epi-genetic mechanisms including: pair-bonding in prairie voles, as they first mate, is supported by changes in oxytocin & vasopressin receptor gene regulation in the nucleus accumbens.
mixing and instantiation of the new organism occurs. That
must be hard to manage but, the result can be leveraged by
infrastructure that supports and enables the creative
process.
The startup eco-system is well supplied with creative adolescents 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.
, who have
already shown their determination to develop a good idea: Joe
Gebbia; but it is less clear that Darwin or E.
O. Wilson's creative approach aligns well.
The neighborhood
where children grow up can provide support that has proved
transformative: neighbors who are part of the This page discusses the benefits of geographic clusters of agents and resources at the center of a complex adaptive
system (CAS).
geographic clusters of 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 are
inclusive, clubs and community centers providing coaching by
experts; introducing the children in the neighborhood to the
details. This opportunity can be enabled by supporting
travel: roads, rail; as occurred in the US is the United States of America. through the railway
boom and following Robert Moses
innovative
parkways
program and their planned extension by FDR is President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He is notable for his contributions to the US CAS: - New Deal strategies including:
- Lend-lease which pushed the US and Japan into World War 2 and helped the US to become the world's predominant military power.
- Bretton Woods's agreement which economically constrained any politically driven collapse of the world economy after the war and helped the US to become the world's predominant economic power.
instantiated
by Eisenhower across the nation driving motor cars into
the middle class communities.
Proximate counter 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.
,
can provide Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic
operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination.
The nature of the operations is described.
genetic operations with
mixing opportunities: As adolescents 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.
look for ways to move away from 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
of their parents, they will be attracted to the rebellious emotive is according to Damasio, a process including a collection of actions: release of specific chemicals in sites of the CNS or their transport, by neural signalling to varied regions of the nervous system and body. Endocrine glands are signalled and produce molecules capable of altering body function; altering viscera, that changes the homeostatic state of the organism, and may change the spontaneous feelings too. A cascade of spontaneous homeostatic changes: metabolism, nervous system, immune response, mind builds 'images'; becomes an ensemble of actions each represented in the mind, summarized as a provoked feeling. Attention to the feelings varies depending on the current state of the mind. Emotive responses are generated non consciously by specific nuclei in the brain: - Hypothalamic nuclei
- PAG
- Amygdala nuclei and nucleus accumbens; each nuclei activated by particular streams of signals, from the senses or memory, enabling responses to vast numbers of sensations, objects and circumstances with drives, motivations and emotions.
ideas of
other near peers. That can be enough in some areas of creativity, such as art or
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. , but to associate with
Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved
dramatically. W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred.
tools and high technology,
integration between tools and youth culture: Whole Earth; can be
transformational.
Education 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?
provides a significant opportunity to
enable the creative process and build diverse paths to encourage
innovation. But today the process is mostly destructive,
designed to crush the curiosity from the attendees.
Business's The complex adaptive system (CAS)
nature of a value delivery system is first introduced. It's a network
of agents acting as relays.
The critical nature of hub agents and the difficulty of altering
an aligned network is reviewed.
The nature of and exceptional opportunities created by platforms are discussed.
Finally an example of aligning a VDS is presented.
value delivery systems concentrate Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agent based expertise in the various
aspects of 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. .
Concentration of these experts within This page discusses the benefits of geographic clusters of agents and resources at the center of a complex adaptive
system (CAS).
geographic
clusters in neighborhoods where enabling curiosity and
creativity are important, supports mixing of entrepreneurs and a
support network to carry creative ideas into delivered products and services.
By the 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,
human's This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emerged from the
evolutionary competition of our ape ancestors, 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.
minds had already responded
successfully to the task of re-implementing the constraints and
competitive strategies of lower level This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS.
Consciousness is no longer mysterious. In this page we use
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory to describe the high-level
architecture of consciousness, linking sensory networks,
low level feelings and
genetically conserved and deployed neural structures into a high
level scheduler. Consciousness is evolution's
solution to the complex problems of effective, emergent,
multi-cellular perception based strategy.
Constrained by emergence and needing
to avoid the epistemological
problem of starting with a blank slate with every birth,
evolution was limited in its options.
We explain how survival value allows evolution to leverage
available tools: sensors, agent relative position, models, perception
& representation; to solve the problem of mobile
agents responding effectively to their own state and proximate environment.
Evolution did this by providing a genetically
constructed framework that can
develop into a conscious CAS.
And we discuss the implications with regard to artificial
intelligence, sentient robots,
augmented intelligence, and
aspects of philosophy.
Consciousness provides each
individual with the facilities to:
- Analyze the proximate situation, formulating
Consciousness is no longer mysterious. In this page we use
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory to describe the high-level
architecture of consciousness, linking sensory networks,
low level feelings and
genetically conserved and deployed neural structures into a high
level scheduler. Consciousness is evolution's
solution to the complex problems of effective, emergent,
multi-cellular perception based strategy.
Constrained by emergence and needing
to avoid the epistemological
problem of starting with a blank slate with every birth,
evolution was limited in its options.
We explain how survival value allows evolution to leverage
available tools: sensors, agent relative position, models, perception
& representation; to solve the problem of mobile
agents responding effectively to their own state and proximate environment.
Evolution did this by providing a genetically
constructed framework that can
develop into a conscious CAS.
And we discuss the implications with regard to artificial
intelligence, sentient robots,
augmented intelligence, and
aspects of philosophy.
plans, making decisions integrates situational context, state and signals to prioritize among strategies and respond in a timely manner. It occurs in all animals, including us and our organizations: - Individual human decision making includes conscious and unconscious aspects. Situational context is highly influential: supplying meaning to our general mechanisms, & for robots too. Emotions are important in providing a balanced judgement. The adaptive unconscious interprets percepts quickly supporting 'fast' decision making. Conscious decision making, supported by the: DLPFC, vmPFC and limbic system; can use slower autonomy. The amygdala, during unsettling or uncertain social situations, signals the decision making regions of the frontal lobe, including the orbitofrontal cortex. The BLA supports rejecting unacceptable offers. Moral decisions are influenced by a moral decision switch. Sleeping before making an important decision is useful in obtaining the support of the unconscious in developing a preference. Word framing demonstrates the limitations of our fast intuitive decision making processes. And prior positive associations detected by the hippocampus, can be reactivated with the support of the striatum linking it to the memory of a reward, inducing a bias into our choices. Prior to the development of the PFC, the ventral striatum supports adolescent decision making. Neurons involved in decision making in the association areas of the cortex are active for much longer than neurons participating in the sensory areas of the cortex. This allows them to link perceptions with a provisional action plan. Association neurons can track probabilities connected to a choice. As evidence is accumulated and a threshold is reached a choice is made, making fast thinking highly adaptive. Diseases including: schizophrenia and anorexia; highlight aspects of human decision making.
- Organisations often struggle to balance top down and distributed decision making: parliamentry government must use a process, health care is attempting to improve the process: checklists, end-to-end care; and include more participants, but has systemic issues, business leaders struggle with strategy.
and acting on them.
- Represent and perform creative
Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic
operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination.
The nature of the operations is described.
operations
on its ideas, including plans.
- Introduce
The influence of childhood on behavior is significant.
Enneagrams define personality
types: Reformer, Helper, Achiever,
Individualist, Investigator, Loyalist, Enthusiast,
Challenger and Peacemaker; based on the impact of
childhood driven wounds.
The Enneagram becomes
a tool to enable interested people to transform from the
emotionally wounded base, hidden within
the armor of the type, to the liberated underlying essence.
Childhood leaves each of us with some environmentally specific Basic Fear. In response each
of us adopts an induced Basic Desire
of the type. But as we develop the inner observer, it will
support presence and
undermine the identification
that supports the armor of the type.
The Enneagram reveals three sets of relations about our type
armor:
- Triadic self
revealing: Instinctive,
feeling, thinking; childhood needs
that became significant wounds
- Social style
groupings: Assertive, compliant, withdrawn; strategies for
managing inner conflict
- Coping styles: Positive outlook, competency, reactive; strategies for
defending childhood wounds
Riso and Hudson augment the Enneagram with instinctual
distortions reflected in the interests of the variants.
The Enneagram also offers tools for understanding a person's level of development:
unhealthy, average, healthy,
liberation; including their
current center of gravity,
steriotypical social role,
wake-up call, leaden rule, red
flag, and direction
of integration and disintegration.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the models
presented by the Enneagram with evolved behaviors and structures
in the mind: feelings, emotions, social behaviors, ideas; driven
by genetic and cultural evolution and the constraints of family
and social life. Emergent evolved amplifers can be
constrained by Riso and Hudson's awareness strategies.
personality typing,
induced by the strengths and weaknesses of the parents
actions as they struggle to cope with their proximate
environment, ensures diversity in the creative approach of
their children.
And for humans our conscious
facilities extend into the cultural 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.
domain.
Creativity opens This web page reviews opportunities to find and capture new
niches, based on studying fitness landscapes using complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
CAS SuperOrganisms are
able to capture rich niches. A variety of CAS are
included: chess, prokaryotes,
nation states, businesses, economies; along
with change mechanisms: evolution
and artificial
intelligence; agency
effects and environmental impacts.
Genetic algorithms supported by fitness functions are compared to
genetic operators.
Early evolution
of life and its inbuilt constraints are discussed.
Strategic clustering, goals, flexibility and representation of
state are considered.
new niches at the edge of
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. . It leverages
the human complex adaptive system ( This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS)
which allows CAS theory to highlight important aspects of
creativity. Comparing different creative personalities 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
allows us
to identify the systemic aspects, which also apply in other CAS,
including businesses, economies and nation states.
For those
applying 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 to a This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
CAS, creativity can
present a challenge, changing the operations in ways that
undermine the system. In startups the need to complete the
initial product can demand focus. And when management
works to build a long term business out of a successful startup,
more uncoordinated change presents a challenge. Applying
top down control structures, power can be maintained by driving
out creativity. But the achievement of control comes with
a loss of This web page reviews opportunities to find and capture new
niches, based on studying fitness landscapes using complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
CAS SuperOrganisms are
able to capture rich niches. A variety of CAS are
included: chess, prokaryotes,
nation states, businesses, economies; along
with change mechanisms: evolution
and artificial
intelligence; agency
effects and environmental impacts.
Genetic algorithms supported by fitness functions are compared to
genetic operators.
Early evolution
of life and its inbuilt constraints are discussed.
Strategic clustering, goals, flexibility and representation of
state are considered.
access to new niches and
adaptability in evolutionary biology is a trait that increased the number of surviving offspring in an organism's ancestral lineage. Holland argues: complex adaptive systems (CAS) adapt due to the influence of schematic strings on agents. Evolution indicates fitness when an organism survives and reproduces. For his genetic algorithm, Holland separated the adaptive process into credit assignment and rule discovery. He assigned a strength to each of the rules (alternate hypothesis) used by his artificial agents, by credit assignment - each accepted message being paid for by the recipient, increasing the sender agent's rule's strength (implicit modeling) and reducing the recipient's. When an agent achieved an explicit goal they obtained a final reward. Rule discovery used the genetic algorithm to select strong rule schemas from a pair of agents to be included in the next generation, with crossing over and mutation applied, and the resulting schematic strategies used to replace weaker schemas. The crossing over genetic operator is unlikely to break up a short schematic sequence that provides a building block retained because of its 'fitness'; In Deacon's conception of evolution, an adaptation is the realization of a set of constraints on candidate mechanisms, and so long as these constraints are maintained, other features are arbitrary. . This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
Evolution has accepted this tension
providing 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
types
that champion these conflicting aspects.
 Politics, Economics & Evolutionary Psychology |
Business Physics Nature and nurture drive the business eco-system Human nature Emerging structure and dynamic forces of adaptation |
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integrating quality appropriate for each market |
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