Posted by
Phil Henshaw-2 on
Sep 07, 2007; 4:45am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/politics-and-cliques-tp524626p525051.html
Glen,
> Since I'm putting forth an unjustified thesis (a.k.a.
> hypothesis), I'm not really making detailed claims about the
> control systems being measured. I'm merely trying to justify
> taking the data in the first place. And part of the
> justification for taking the data can be toy models arguing
> for/against the hypothesis. Just to keep it straight, the
> hypothesis is that there's an IPL between the extent and
> number of variables controlled by any given control system.
>
> And just to reiterate, _if_ that turned out to be true, then
> I have an ethical dilemma w.r.t. particular variables that
> come under the heading of "healthcare", "abortion", etc.
Yes, that's the point you're going to notice for certain that a one
fixed control modality may be inappropriate when dealing with things
that are naturally out of your control. That's where I think a more
conscious effort to think of complex systems as independent entities
with independent behavior is needed, and moving away from treating them
as statistics. There are lots of situations where the design objective
might be to get things to fit as if engineering a handshake (a *mutual*
homing device) between independent things. I'm not sure if that departs
entirely from the notion of 'control', though it's rather different from
the narrow sense that quite ignored the presence of complex systems in
the environment which we all inherited.
>
> > I guess bending my mind to directly think about the distributed
> > 'process ecologies' of complex systems, leaves me to make
> occasional odd errors
> > in math... No, I do mean to be talking about Pareto
> distributions and
> > the inverse power law family or relationships.
>
> I gathered as much. But I just wanted to make it clear.
>
> > I think my point would be that outside perspectives are highly
> > naturally subjective in a hidden way, causing there to be a big
> > difference between inside and outside views. Your premise
> seems to be
> > that your observer is all seeing.
>
> Well, to some extent I want it to be. On the one hand, if we
> had the budget to take the data (even if only with the
> maximum scale set at something like city ordinances and a
> minimum scale set at some small number of human attributes),
> we'd have to settle on some concrete measures that will, by
> definition, be limited in what they measure. And all
> subsequent observations would be similarly limited. So, any
> feasible observation or experiment will be practically limited.
>
> But, I have in mind a limit process where _if_ we executed
> some large number of observations (from neighborhood
> association, village, town, city, county, state, all the way
> up to the feds or perhaps the globe), then I imagine the
> whole gamut would show the IPL. (This statement is partially
> circular because invariance to scale is part of the
> hypothesis.) And in that limit, then, yes, I'm suggesting
> the accumulated measures are "all seeing".
But every node in the network of your model will represent a hive of
complex behavior at another scale, and the model as a whole will be a
greater complex environment. I think the fact that all system
structures are embedded in larger complexities, that can't be described
by the same mode of description, is part of what I was suggesting made
finding an implied 'all seeing' observer in an augment raise questions.
> > For a real outside observer of any independent cell of
> relationships,
> > the relationships are not participated in and the existence of the
> > system they are part of is thus completely invisible. It's
> only when
> > the observer steps inside the system, getting into the
> loop, that they
> > suddenly become aware of the whole other world of
> > relationships it represents. We see this over and over,
> that systems
> > develop in secret from us and then our awareness of them
> bursts into
> > our attention. I think that's a direct effect of systems
> developing
> > as truly independent cells of relationships.
>
> I can see the picture you're drawing and agree in the
> abstract. But, I still don't know how this applies to the
> dilemma. Sorry for being dense.
It does seem to take getting used to, but a large portion of the complex
systems of interest are of that type. They're the systems as 'things'
that are organized around a continually evolving networks of relations
that are original to them, and follow a developmental history of growth
and decay as if organisms. ??.?? ? `?.?? Such a system's network of
relations is hidden because it is largely self-referential, i.e.
internalized. As in stepping into an unfamiliar conversation, you
suddenly begin to see the complex relationships. That nature is full
of these kinds of systems, and doesn't bother to provide bodies for
them, is one of the curious surprises. :,)
> > Wouldn't it be nice to have a heuristics machine to convert
> pure syntax
> > in to meaningful gobbely gook for any particular inside view...!
>
> LoL! Thanks for that joke. It's the first laugh I've had today.
>
> > I'm not sure how, but this might connect with the
> structural dilemma
> > that nature's design is deceptive because we all think the world we
> > see is the one that's there, and we all see different ones, partly
> > because of the inverse power law distributions of network
> connections
> > as I was describing to Bill.
>
> Yes, it certainly is related. Any control has a "surface" of
> levers and measures by which it manipulates the controlled
> system. That surface is limited to and a function of the
> controller. It's the controller's "world view". And to the
> extent that the controller consists of humans or human
> artifacts, it embodies the world views of those humans. And
> those humans _do_ tend to think that their world view is
> _true_. And when world views conflict, the opportunity is
> there to revise the conflicting world views; but, that
> opportunity is often lost on those who hold the world view.
> This is especially acute where the world views are fossilized
> into laws, rules, or policy. And it's worsened by the design
> by committee feature of most policy setting bodies. Indeed,
> the world view embodied by a policy is probably _not_ held by
> any of the members of the committee that created the policy,
> making the policy even more removed from reality than the
> original world views of the humans on the committee.
>
> But, I don't think this point is critical to finding and
> using a hypothetical IPL between the extent and objectives of
> a controller (policy + enforcer). It might become critical
> in the resolution of any conflict that IPL would present with
> an ethical standing, however. And if that's your point, then
> I'm starting to get it. Thanks for sticking with it.
Thanks, Well, your 'controller' is based on a model of some sort, that
will be 'wrong' from the start in many ways and you want it to operate
in a real and changing world of much higher complexity than the original
model. I think what I can tell of your approach sounds like a
sophisticated way to improve the controller's 'efficiency'. Maybe a
key step to addressing the larger problem is to get the 'controller' to
ask questions, to become a learning controller, maybe to recognize
unfamiliar situations, or even recognize the presence of other emerging
systems and things, perhaps...
Cheers,
Phil
>
> - --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846,
http://tempusdictum.com> Know ten things. Say nine. -- unknown
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla -
http://enigmail.mozdev.org>
> iD8DBQFG4GPaZeB+vOTnLkoRAl97AJ4qpqnNn/rQf1KMu4JGSU7paHApRQCdH5Df
> 2mkaETatgPu9a//vaH6VgPA=
> =so80
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org>
>