the odd question

[Phil Henshaw-2]

Oh, no question, there are a few details to check out.  One of the
problems is with the way we check out details though, using models
that we project into the future.  

Models can be projected infinitely, unlike physical systems.  
Absolutely anyone can easily paint a picture of George Washington on
an electron, for example, just as easily as Zeno might imagine his
wife taking endless half steps toward the door to his study and never
getting there!  It only takes a tiny bit of wishful thinking.   It's
getting the 'real' part of reality into our models that is especially
difficult.

There are a variety of kinds of control and guidance involved in any
complex system.  The idea that 'all systems are cybernetic' is, I
believe, the very broad consensus of every general theory of systems
that has developed.   How much of the organization and stabilization
of the economic growth system is of human design is not clear perhaps,
but you can be sure a system that coordinates the actions of several
billion demanding autonomous agents, allowing it to act as a whole,
has to have some network of something responding to the signals.

One case in point is the role of science in discovering the effects of
our expanding presence on the earth.  Scientists spotted the ozone
hole, and then found that the replacement cooling fluids were, I
think, cheaper than the originals.  That happy coincidence has not
been the result of discovering other problems of growth.  Fusion
didn't work, for one of many examples.  The investments that enable
the wealth of investors to grow the fastest aren't necessarily
sustainable in any way.

The object of pointing out that speed becomes profoundly confusing
regardless of any other intent, capacity or potential, is to trump all
other arguments for the efficacy of endlessly exploding the earth and
human societies, as we are presently doing.   It's not the aesthetics
that is the problem.  It's the systemic failure of our life-support
system that seems quite likely to be under way.  It's a slow curve
problem.

Of course there's also some selfish motivation.  I'm very proud of my
discovery that growth systems are, in themselves, organizationally
unstable, essentially exploding ways of 'cheating' the rules of the
behavioral systems they came from.  The 'cheat' comes due though, in
that they only fail to self-destruct, and produce new orders instead,
if something within them breaks the rules again.  The tricky part of
the puzzle is the 'choices' made from 'inside' the systems.  I've been
checking it out for quite a while.  If it's not the secret of living
systems it's an open door very close to it.


> Quoting Phil Henshaw <sy at synapse9.com>:
>
> > It's been a couple months and there's still no
> > comment on my various suggestions here that growth is an explosive
> > process of developing complexity, and that as a process necessarily
> > overwhelms its own guidance systems if not checked by anything
else.  It
> > unavoidably would reach a limit when repercussions explode and
adaptive
> > responses get misdirected or collapse.
>
> One could invent a variety of metrics for tracking growth.  For
example, is it a
> rate of reproduction per time, a change in GDP per time, or a per
capita quality
> of life indicator?
>
> In economics, there's the view of Adam Smith's `invisible hand'
where collective
> selfishness leads to the most benefit for all. [1] In this
philosophy there is
> no `guidance system' by design.  Actually most of the examples of
growth that
> occur to me are guidance-free, and at some point are limited by the
environment
> of the growth, e.g. the population that gets too big will be forced
to reduce
> itself as resources are exhausted or adapt to find new kinds of
resources.  But
> I don't see why simple unconstrained reproduction need show
`complex' dynamics.
>  Human/intelligent adaptation may involve a cognitive reflective
process and
> create complex patterns, or in ecological systems they may evolve or
co-evolve.
>  In an extreme via, as in the Gaia hypothesis. [2]
>
> The growth dynamics you mention seem like they'd could be found in
some general
> way, but I think more details are needed to check.  Perhaps
modelling innovation
> economic networks would be one situation where these dynamics could
be found.  

> Something along these lines of this agent-based model:
> http://ideas.repec.org/p/aug/augsbe/0267.html
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand
> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_theory_(science)
>
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--
Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
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