Carlos,
> > > Well, yes, that's the advantage of creative homeostatic systems > > like the > > global economy. The question, though, is whether pushing such a > > system > > to grow exponentially toward critical response time failure is > > dangerous > > or not. > > It would be difficult to tell, because we don't know how the future > will be. But taking the sandpile avalanche analogy, if things break > down every now and then, there will be a low probability that they > will have drastic effects, because they "release tension" (the same > with earthquakes). steady shower of sand being added to the top of a pile and occasional collapses of the sides. That's not a model of growth though. If a natural system considered to allow continual growth is involved then you're talking about successive jumps in organizational state as successive scales of system domain are crossed and the explosively expanding web of relationships evolves. Biological evolution, economic systems, languages and thought processes do that sort of thing, jumping numerous levels of organization one after another sometimes. > Maybe it is not such a correct analogy, but my > guess is that there will be failures through history, lots of small > ones and only few big ones. And since the probability of having a > failure would be inversely proportional to its size, the probability > of having global-scale failures almost vanishes. I think that assumes that cause and effect for any one system is statistical across all systems. I don't believe that to be the case. Given a cellular system like an economy, where you can't really transcend the basic cells, the humans with all our gifts and failings, there seem likely to be response time failure thresholds where ever bigger repercussions get ever slower and less reliable corrections, and stabilizing the rapidly changing internal and environmental relationships fails. And if something > that big comes, anyway we wouldn't be able to do anything about it > (e.g. huge asteroid smashing against our planet). Asteroids might be a problem, and failures of imagination might be of seeming equally stubborn nature. I mean, if we've gone and built an entire civilization, business plan and government financing structure that relies on continual exponential increases in the complexity of the system,... and that turns out to be really dangerous, it's quite a major failure of imagination it seems to me. > > > I do systems design too, designs for government competence, > > self-correcting health care, etc. There's most certainly a > need. > > Are > > your models designs for adaptive business systems or something? > > Last week I submitted a paper on "Self-organizing > bureaucracies": http://uk.arxiv.org/abs/nlin.AO/0603045 > maybe you would find it interesting. make government competent by design. There are lots of do's and don'ts regarding performance measures, but if departments developed concepts of productivity beyond just bean counter efficiency, having internal groups competing would be highly very productive. If you also wanted to attract people who enjoyed the creative challenge of providing good adaptive service you'd need to make government a stimulating place for just such people and collaboration. You'd need to give them time for professional research and involvement, giving them status when their work gets used, etc. Creative people like money, but really need a place to feed their curiosity and express themselves it seems to me. Phil > Best regards, > > Carlos Gershenson... > Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel > Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium > http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ > > ?Tendencies tend to change...? Phil Henshaw ????.?? ? `?.???? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com explorations: www.synapse9.com |
> I think that assumes that cause and effect for any one system is
> statistical across all systems. I don't believe that to be the case. > Given a cellular system like an economy, where you can't really > transcend the basic cells, the humans with all our gifts and failings, > there seem likely to be response time failure thresholds where ever > bigger repercussions get ever slower and less reliable corrections, > and > stabilizing the rapidly changing internal and environmental > relationships fails. I think that it is common to think that human society is fragile. Well, the fact that we're still around shows that we aren't. Last week, I learned about two competing "doomsday theories" from LANL people: bird flu, and peak oil. They both assume that small catastrophes trigger chaos. But even if nuclear war breaks out, that wouldn't erase mankind from the face of the earth. It would suck, for sure, and all these scenarios make profitable blockbusters, but we humans are a persistant little vermin... In any of these cases society would change, for sure, but precisely that is part of the adaptation. It wouldn't collapse. It hasn't collapsed, and there have been plenty of wars, famines, plagues, and all other things mentioned in the Apocalypse... and we're still around. So I find it extremely unprobable that something would wipe us out. I am not suggesting that mankind will be forever on Earth, but that evolving into something else seems to me more probable than extinction by catastrophe. > Asteroids might be a problem, and failures of imagination might be of > seeming equally stubborn nature. I mean, if we've gone and built an > entire civilization, business plan and government financing structure > that relies on continual exponential increases in the complexity of > the > system,... and that turns out to be really dangerous, it's quite a > major > failure of imagination it seems to me. If the complexity growth would fade away, I don't see civilization collapsing, so I don't understand why do you say that we rely on increasing complexity, nor why this might be dangerous. > I definitely think we should > make government competent by design. There are lots of do's and > don'ts > regarding performance measures, but if departments developed > concepts of > productivity beyond just bean counter efficiency, having internal > groups > competing would be highly very productive. Indeed, there are many things to be improved. Some people might think that there is no pressure for improving services. That is the case when there is no political choice (like in dictatorships or pseudo- democracies). But if there are competing political forces, they will try to improve government to gain more votes. So, slowly (maybe too slowly), but surely, we're getting there... Best regards, Carlos Gershenson... Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ ?There is no game in which you cannot cheat? |
1) We have large parts of earth working with non-evolved systems. A recent description I saw of women in the Congo for example, carrying 200 lb. bags on their backs. Perhaps they are the future if our complex oil-based economy collapses. Darwinism isn't very predictive, it just says the winner was the best. But it seems unlikely that any calamity would result in complete global significance, whatever the scenario. 2) While we try to improve our governments, perhaps we should at times look at the possibility that this is about as good as it gets, that a middlin' compromise or a small swing between not very enlightened poles is our optimum equilibrium. It's undoubtedly better than the worst we've seen out of human systems in the last 100 years (or even the last 10), yet I don't see any quantum leap over say Britain's government in 1870. Perhaps it's the people who might evolve more than the governments, but that remains to be proved as well. Carlos Gershenson wrote: >> I think that assumes that cause and effect for any one system is >> statistical across all systems. I don't believe that to be the case. >> Given a cellular system like an economy, where you can't really >> transcend the basic cells, the humans with all our gifts and failings, >> there seem likely to be response time failure thresholds where ever >> bigger repercussions get ever slower and less reliable corrections, >> and >> stabilizing the rapidly changing internal and environmental >> relationships fails. >> > > I think that it is common to think that human society is fragile. > Well, the fact that we're still around shows that we aren't. > Last week, I learned about two competing "doomsday theories" from > LANL people: bird flu, and peak oil. They both assume that small > catastrophes trigger chaos. But even if nuclear war breaks out, that > wouldn't erase mankind from the face of the earth. It would suck, for > sure, and all these scenarios make profitable blockbusters, but we > humans are a persistant little vermin... > In any of these cases society would change, for sure, but precisely > that is part of the adaptation. It wouldn't collapse. It hasn't > collapsed, and there have been plenty of wars, famines, plagues, and > all other things mentioned in the Apocalypse... and we're still > around. So I find it extremely unprobable that something would wipe > us out. I am not suggesting that mankind will be forever on Earth, > but that evolving into something else seems to me more probable than > extinction by catastrophe. > > >> Asteroids might be a problem, and failures of imagination might be of >> seeming equally stubborn nature. I mean, if we've gone and built an >> entire civilization, business plan and government financing structure >> that relies on continual exponential increases in the complexity of >> the >> system,... and that turns out to be really dangerous, it's quite a >> major >> failure of imagination it seems to me. >> > > If the complexity growth would fade away, I don't see civilization > collapsing, so I don't understand why do you say that we rely on > increasing complexity, nor why this might be dangerous. > > >> I definitely think we should >> make government competent by design. There are lots of do's and >> don'ts >> regarding performance measures, but if departments developed >> concepts of >> productivity beyond just bean counter efficiency, having internal >> groups >> competing would be highly very productive. >> > > Indeed, there are many things to be improved. Some people might think > that there is no pressure for improving services. That is the case > when there is no political choice (like in dictatorships or pseudo- > democracies). But if there are competing political forces, they will > try to improve government to gain more votes. So, slowly (maybe too > slowly), but surely, we're getting there... > > Best regards, > > Carlos Gershenson... > Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel > Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium > http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ > > ?There is no game in which you cannot cheat? > > > > ============================================================ > 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 > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060604/57446e29/attachment-0001.htm |
Bill, see also my reply to Carlos, 1) We have large parts of earth working with non-evolved systems. A recent description I saw of women in the Congo for example, carrying 200 lb. bags on their backs. Perhaps they are the future if our complex oil-based economy collapses. Darwinism isn't very predictive, it just says the winner was the best. But it seems unlikely that any calamity would result in complete global significance, whatever the scenario. [PH] One of the fascinating complex system application attempts is the UN program called MDG, (Millennium Development Goals) which envisions both that new technology ladders can be built which will have a better organic fit with the societies of primitive peoples in the BOP (bottom of the pyramid) the modern world has left behind, that that 75% of humanity can be the main economic growth resource for the world in the century (paraphrasing). I give it high very marks for serious wishful thinking. 2) While we try to improve our governments, perhaps we should at times look at the possibility that this is about as good as it gets, that a middlin' compromise or a small swing between not very enlightened poles is our optimum equilibrium. It's undoubtedly better than the worst we've seen out of human systems in the last 100 years (or even the last 10), yet I don't see any quantum leap over say Britain's government in 1870. Perhaps it's the people who might evolve more than the governments, but that remains to be proved as well. [PH] It's hard to accept such disappointing truth, but people do occasionally find ways to show up and do useful things when they're in a jam. One certainly wonders though. I saw a HBO series on Rome, Cesar's game of invading the great republican civilization it was with it's own army, and was just fascinated by the seemingly well researched up-close and personal portrayal of life on the streets and in the houses of Rome. Certainly there could be some failure of both the writers and myself in trying to imagine anything but modern ideas about human relations. Still the strong impression is that in a great many ways nothing in human experience has changed. I guess the upside of that may well be that we are indeed 'safe' from having life drastically altered by what changes around us. Carlos Gershenson wrote: I think that assumes that cause and effect for any one system is statistical across all systems. I don't believe that to be the case. Given a cellular system like an economy, where you can't really transcend the basic cells, the humans with all our gifts and failings, there seem likely to be response time failure thresholds where ever bigger repercussions get ever slower and less reliable corrections, and stabilizing the rapidly changing internal and environmental relationships fails. I think that it is common to think that human society is fragile. Well, the fact that we're still around shows that we aren't. Last week, I learned about two competing "doomsday theories" from LANL people: bird flu, and peak oil. They both assume that small catastrophes trigger chaos. But even if nuclear war breaks out, that wouldn't erase mankind from the face of the earth. It would suck, for sure, and all these scenarios make profitable blockbusters, but we humans are a persistant little vermin... In any of these cases society would change, for sure, but precisely that is part of the adaptation. It wouldn't collapse. It hasn't collapsed, and there have been plenty of wars, famines, plagues, and all other things mentioned in the Apocalypse... and we're still around. So I find it extremely unprobable that something would wipe us out. I am not suggesting that mankind will be forever on Earth, but that evolving into something else seems to me more probable than extinction by catastrophe. Asteroids might be a problem, and failures of imagination might be of seeming equally stubborn nature. I mean, if we've gone and built an entire civilization, business plan and government financing structure that relies on continual exponential increases in the complexity of the system,... and that turns out to be really dangerous, it's quite a major failure of imagination it seems to me. If the complexity growth would fade away, I don't see civilization collapsing, so I don't understand why do you say that we rely on increasing complexity, nor why this might be dangerous. I definitely think we should make government competent by design. There are lots of do's and don'ts regarding performance measures, but if departments developed concepts of productivity beyond just bean counter efficiency, having internal groups competing would be highly very productive. Indeed, there are many things to be improved. Some people might think that there is no pressure for improving services. That is the case when there is no political choice (like in dictatorships or pseudo- democracies). But if there are competing political forces, they will try to improve government to gain more votes. So, slowly (maybe too slowly), but surely, we're getting there... Best regards, Carlos Gershenson... Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ ?There is no game in which you cannot cheat? Phil Henshaw ????.?? ? `?.???? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: <mailto:pfh at synapse9.com> pfh at synapse9.com explorations: <http://www.synapse9.com> www.synapse9.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060604/ec5ff3bb/attachment.htm |
In reply to this post by Carlos Gershenson
Carlos
> > > I think that assumes that cause and effect for any one system is > > statistical across all systems. I don't believe that to be > the case. > > Given a cellular system like an economy, where you can't really > > transcend the basic cells, the humans with all our gifts > and failings, > > there seem likely to be response time failure thresholds where ever > > bigger repercussions get ever slower and less reliable corrections, > > and > > stabilizing the rapidly changing internal and environmental > > relationships fails. > > I think that it is common to think that human society is fragile. excesses do and don't matter. > Well, the fact that we're still around shows that we aren't. The evolutionary record is chock full of things with long successful track records that suddenly disappear. Statistics on past performance is not necessarily a good predictor of future results. (as they say in the market) > Last week, I learned about two competing "doomsday theories" from > LANL people: bird flu, and peak oil. They both assume that small > catastrophes trigger chaos. But even if nuclear war breaks out, that > wouldn't erase mankind from the face of the earth. It would > suck, for > sure, and all these scenarios make profitable blockbusters, but we > humans are a persistant little vermin... Absolutely agree. Our tiny appreciation of the power and durability of complex systems hides from view a great deal of what is really happening to us. > In any of these cases society would change, for sure, but precisely > that is part of the adaptation. It wouldn't collapse. It hasn't > collapsed, and there have been plenty of wars, famines, plagues, and > all other things mentioned in the Apocalypse... and we're still > around. The thing that's different now is that we're in what has become a strongly institutionalized 600 year exponential growth process, and have not asked whether taking that to its natural limits is benign or dangerous. The earlier limits to growth investigation usually used a 'stock & flows' analysis and failed because economies are organized around 'values flows'. My approach is different. So I find it extremely unprobable that something would wipe > us out. I am not suggesting that mankind will be forever on Earth, > but that evolving into something else seems to me more probable than > extinction by catastrophe. Certainly, I'm just pointing out that one general vulnerability of all homeostatic systems, whether relying on stocks and flows, or creative evolution, or organizational complexity, is that they can probably all be pushed to a crisis in which the entire network of corrective systems can fail at once, like Katrina. One fairly easy way to understood that vulnerability is from considering human learning and response patterns and whether they are capable of making ever more rapid competent decisions about ever more far-reaching environmental impacts, for example. The direct cause of the present global warming crisis is just that, after all, a learning/response lag in which the way investors chose how to build our economies over the last 200 years did not take into account what would be sustainable on earth. The good science on the subject is that the time available for redirecting those investment decisions to redirect the evolution of the whole life support system without significant harm occurring has been exhausted, and for avoiding major harm is quite short, 5-20 years. These are things no government or group of governments has ever done before, consistent long range science led aggressive economic planning that successfully exploits the dynamism of the free market. It's all got to work, or we're in deep trouble, and it's just one of many such problems I think. > > > Asteroids might be a problem, and failures of imagination > might be of > > seeming equally stubborn nature. I mean, if we've gone and > built an > > entire civilization, business plan and government financing > structure > > that relies on continual exponential increases in the complexity of > > the > > system,... and that turns out to be really dangerous, it's quite a > > major > > failure of imagination it seems to me. > > If the complexity growth would fade away, I don't see civilization > collapsing, so I don't understand why do you say that we rely on > increasing complexity, nor why this might be dangerous. At present stability requires constant % increases in investment and returns = exploding complexity. That's what growth is, and has been for a few hundred years. Humans being creatures of habit and unable to imagine the complexities of the physical systems that were doing it get used to such things. There's also an interesting special deception, that throughout the growth process it has appeared 'the sky is falling', to conservatives and older people because economic growth is a continuously revolutionary process which upsets old ways of doing things without clearly displaying what new ways are being built. I get my comfort in discussing growth system dynamics from 30 years of closely watching all kinds and figuring out why its so hard to build models of them. > > > I definitely think we should > > make government competent by design. There are lots of do's and > > don'ts > > regarding performance measures, but if departments developed > > concepts of > > productivity beyond just bean counter efficiency, having internal > > groups > > competing would be highly very productive. > > Indeed, there are many things to be improved. Some people > might think > that there is no pressure for improving services. That is the case > when there is no political choice (like in dictatorships or pseudo- > democracies). But if there are competing political forces, they will > try to improve government to gain more votes. So, slowly (maybe too > slowly), but surely, we're getting there... response lags failure is the 'stop fixing it' movement of the new right over the past 40 years. People had the choice and were drawn into the illusion that the intrusiveness of government response to the complexity of the world we're building would be solved by dismantling the government response, rather than finding a better way to address our growing problems. My observation is that every complaint has some validity and should be constructively combined rather than separated. Trusting investors in a free market guided by maximum profit to make all the important design decisions for mankind's permanent occupation of the earth isn't working right. There's really no softer way to say it that's truthful. I'm still waiting for truthful observations and useful knowledge to become relevant in politics. Perhaps the old Missouri mule solution is more appropriate, since the real world seems to be getting too complicated and putting people to sleep. > > Best regards, > > Carlos Gershenson... > Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel > Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium > http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ > > "There is no game in which you cannot cheat" > > > |
Phil wrote:
> Carlos > > >> If the complexity growth would fade away, I don't see civilization >> collapsing, so I don't understand why do you say that we rely on >> increasing complexity, nor why this might be dangerous. >> > Oh yes, there are options if we respond to the danger on the horizon. > At present stability requires constant % increases in investment and > returns = exploding complexity. That's what growth is, and has been for > a few hundred years. efficiency, workflow, best practices, processes, etc. Part of the quality movement is about gains made in eliminating waste and eliminating reviews, and instead having quality as an up-front and intrinsic effort. Major layoffs by large companies these days are often a sign of improved efficiency (and sometimes go hand-in-hand with additional hiring of different types of positions). Certainly there's the traditional investment-driven growth, but I think a lot of people are trying to reduce complexity while maintaining the gains and responding faster as a result. I remember Leary commenting that in 2012 all this exponential growth would come to a head, but I don't see it as just willy-nilly growth. > Humans being creatures of habit and unable to > imagine the complexities of the physical systems that were doing it get > used to such things. There's also an interesting special deception, > that throughout the growth process it has appeared 'the sky is falling', > to conservatives and older people because economic growth is a > continuously revolutionary process which upsets old ways of doing things > without clearly displaying what new ways are being built. I get my > comfort in discussing growth system dynamics from 30 years of closely > watching all kinds and figuring out why its so hard to build models of > them. > > The US has been doing a pretty good job of adapting to that change, and getting more used to continual obsolescence. In some ways we're reaching a philosophical outlook antithetical to traditional Amero-European society, in that stability becomes a barrier to progress. I'm not sure that old people are that worried anymore - I sense more of an attitude of wonderment and possibility. But also to put things in perspective, the developments from around 1860-1920 impacted the lives of Westerners much more radically than anything since. >>> I definitely think we should >>> make government competent by design. There are lots of do's and >>> don'ts >>> regarding performance measures, but if departments developed >>> concepts of >>> productivity beyond just bean counter efficiency, having internal >>> groups >>> competing would be highly very productive. >>> >> Indeed, there are many things to be improved. Some people >> might think >> that there is no pressure for improving services. That is the case >> when there is no political choice (like in dictatorships or pseudo- >> democracies). But if there are competing political forces, they will >> try to improve government to gain more votes. So, slowly (maybe too >> slowly), but surely, we're getting there... >> > Yes, but only half way. One of the fascinating aspects of our societal > response lags failure is the 'stop fixing it' movement of the new right > over the past 40 years. People had the choice and were drawn into the > illusion that the intrusiveness of government response to the complexity > of the world we're building would be solved by dismantling the > government response, rather than finding a better way to address our > growing problems. My observation is that every complaint has some > validity and should be constructively combined rather than separated. > > dampening political cycles. I think we're farther away from over-idealistic impressions of what government can do, which is good, but now we have idealistic impressions of what government can't do. Instead it would be better to have good models of what factors make for effective government in the real world, including the recurring motions of balances and corruption of power, . I imagine it would also fall into the "sky continually falling" motif, and without too much stasis or unilateral motion. If that's true, a biparty system tends to drift off into the extremes too often in the cycle, whereas a multiparty system would be better at balancing and instead of a heavy pendulum, the weight stays towards the center of the zone. But then maybe that's our odd advantage vs. Europe, where we tack radically left and right and move much faster than if stayed a center course. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060604/08143c1e/attachment.htm |
Bill
Phil wrote: Carlos If the complexity growth would fade away, I don't see civilization collapsing, so I don't understand why do you say that we rely on increasing complexity, nor why this might be dangerous. Oh yes, there are options if we respond to the danger on the horizon. At present stability requires constant % increases in investment and returns = exploding complexity. That's what growth is, and has been for a few hundred years. There's a good amount of growth these days based on trying to improve efficiency, workflow, best practices, processes, etc. Part of the quality movement is about gains made in eliminating waste and eliminating reviews, and instead having quality as an up-front and intrinsic effort. [PH] That's good and bad. Refinement is wonderful in itself in lots of ways, but it's inherently a diminishing return endeavor, like polishing. You do the easy gains first and then successively smaller gains take increasing work. Major layoffs by large companies these days are often a sign of improved efficiency (and sometimes go hand-in-hand with additional hiring of different types of positions). [PH] That's the magic of the serendipitous growth we've had for the past 500 years, that putting people out of work by innovation has had an net effect of putting everyone to work at higher wages. That stopped in 1970. Check the charts. Certainly there's the traditional investment-driven growth, but I think a lot of people are trying to reduce complexity while maintaining the gains and responding faster as a result. I remember Leary commenting that in 2012 all this exponential growth would come to a head, but I don't see it as just willy-nilly growth. [PH] If I get your meaning I think I generally agree. There are always going to be many kinds of currents heading different directions, not just open ended and dead ended paths. One of the usual ways in which apparent dead ends have been overcome is by reconceiving the game. Remember in the 80's when it seemed Japan was the winning empire and America was stumbling. Then we made up a new game with new rules and started having fun and they had no idea what the hell we were doing with it. I'm cautious because 1) I know the reasons you can't bank on being able to do that, and 2) see strong evidence that the growth drivers (investment institutions) are quite clueless as to the danger ahead, and 3) the general human learning mechanism seems to be responding to the information overload with a narrowing focus to the point of shutting down... Humans being creatures of habit and unable to imagine the complexities of the physical systems that were doing it get used to such things. There's also an interesting special deception, that throughout the growth process it has appeared 'the sky is falling', to conservatives and older people because economic growth is a continuously revolutionary process which upsets old ways of doing things without clearly displaying what new ways are being built. I get my comfort in discussing growth system dynamics from 30 years of closely watching all kinds and figuring out why its so hard to build models of them. In some ways, the sky is falling, and falling faster and faster. [PH] yes, but what does that mean? I see it perhaps as meaning the sorcerer's apprentice can reasonably decide that once things become a complete blur there's nothing more to worry about... The US has been doing a pretty good job of adapting to that change, and getting more used to continual obsolescence. In some ways we're reaching a philosophical outlook antithetical to traditional Amero-European society, in that stability becomes a barrier to progress. [PH] yes sort of, if it were an infinitely extendable game. Only our images of it are purely a game, however. For example, the US is presently transferring the ownership of our productive assets overseas in exchange for current consumption at an accelerating rate now my rough guess around 3% a year (a state and a half). It's bringing us a lot of prosperity. Is that good? I'm not sure that old people are that worried anymore - I sense more of an attitude of wonderment and possibility. But also to put things in perspective, the developments from around 1860-1920 impacted the lives of Westerners much more radically than anything since. [PH] well there's a mix of course, and a scattering of 'dynamists' even in nursing homes. You could also imagine that most people who are not very plugged in these days are just mostly out of the loop, and their dazed wonder in it all to be taken is many ways. I definitely think we should make government competent by design. There are lots of do's and don'ts regarding performance measures, but if departments developed concepts of productivity beyond just bean counter efficiency, having internal groups competing would be highly very productive. Indeed, there are many things to be improved. Some people might think that there is no pressure for improving services. That is the case when there is no political choice (like in dictatorships or pseudo- democracies). But if there are competing political forces, they will try to improve government to gain more votes. So, slowly (maybe too slowly), but surely, we're getting there... Yes, but only half way. One of the fascinating aspects of our societal response lags failure is the 'stop fixing it' movement of the new right over the past 40 years. People had the choice and were drawn into the illusion that the intrusiveness of government response to the complexity of the world we're building would be solved by dismantling the government response, rather than finding a better way to address our growing problems. My observation is that every complaint has some validity and should be constructively combined rather than separated. We've done a better job at dampening economic cycles than we have at dampening political cycles. I think we're farther away from over-idealistic impressions of what government can do, which is good, but now we have idealistic impressions of what government can't do. Instead it would be better to have good models of what factors make for effective government in the real world, including the recurring motions of balances and corruption of power, . [PH] Little will help if the complex systems we're driving ever harder to perform miracles go turbulent. No doubt better government would result from combining the insights into common problems from different points of view. I think it's directly symptomatic of our being pushed over the edge mentally by the collision of growth and earth that we've settled on a government that builds grand fantasies from a single view instead of investing in research and planning. The business cycles of the past were irritating but they gave us pause and a chance for change. The fact that now we can go ever faster without interruption has a hidden drawback in that it lets things get much further out of whack before the correction. I imagine it would also fall into the "sky continually falling" motif, and without too much stasis or unilateral motion. If that's true, a biparty system tends to drift off into the extremes too often in the cycle, whereas a multiparty system would be better at balancing and instead of a heavy pendulum, the weight stays towards the center of the zone. But then maybe that's our odd advantage vs. Europe, where we tack radically left and right and move much faster than if stayed a center course. [PH] I haven't had a lot of chance to observe those systems but, didn't Germany have a parliament and get a little carried away a while back? I think the core problem is not entirely solved by having an open hearing of diverse points of view. If social movements develop with a winner-take-all attitude powered by a long term campaign of character assassination for its opposition, no structure will protect. My hope is that when we realize our radical error in expecting unlimited exponential growth it will knock some sense into us, whether it comes soon enough for us to avoid the worst of the consequences or not. I think the core problem is we tend to think the world is imaginary, since nearly every thing we see in our minds is, and that it's just as boundless as our greatest fantasies. How can you tell the difference? You can tell that mathematical functions are imaginary, for example, because they have absolute continuity with no grain. They're projections, not things, like all images. Every real thing in nature requires different models of description at each natural scale of behavior because natural continuity is built and not absolute, essentially being thorough ally fractured and layered in every way... It takes a little adjustment, but I find things end up looking more natural that way. The long tradition of trying to prove the opposite has been productive in lots of ways, but maybe its giving us local solutions to a more general problem. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060604/10b7679b/attachment-0001.htm |
In reply to this post by Carlos Gershenson
I'm just now picking up this conversation, so forgive me for coming
in late. This all reminds me of a book I'm sure other people here have read, Tainter's "The Collapse of Complex Societies." His thesis, basically, is that societal complexity, however you measure it (diversity of artifacts and technology, education and specialized skill sets, social structures), represents an investment of energy that allows for more intensive exploitation of resources. As this investment increases diminishing marginal returns are unavoidable and the surpluses required to address new problems disappear, making the society susceptible to collapse. He also talks about how collapse can be the rational decision on the part of a societies members. He gives the example of how Romans living on the frontiers of their empire would invite in hoards of marauding tribes because they were less of a blight on their lives than the Roman tax collector. In this conceptual model, the only thing that can at least temporarily increase these marginal returns and hold off a society's collapse is the discovery of additional sources of energy. One thing I felt was interesting was his sometimes detached view on whether or not complex societies are good or bad things. He had criticized lots of other work on collapse as being too heavily laden with value judgments to be scientifically credible, so I guess he was being extra cautious about his own. But one thing it did impress upon me, is that humanity has spent the vast majority of its time in very simple, band level societies. As such, we should probably think of complex societies as deviations from this norm, an experiment. From this perspective, I think we, as humans, are pretty robust, but the complex societies we're so enamored of are extremely fragile. Since we are the very bacteria inhabiting the metaphorical Petri dish of this experiment, its hard to take such a detached point of view. Rich BTW, Since we currently put more energy into agriculture than we get out, I wonder if agricultural energy crops and byproducts can really save us. Does anyone out there have an opinion? On Jun 4, 2006, at 7:42 AM, Carlos Gershenson wrote: >> I think that assumes that cause and effect for any one system is >> statistical across all systems. I don't believe that to be the case. >> Given a cellular system like an economy, where you can't really >> transcend the basic cells, the humans with all our gifts and >> failings, >> there seem likely to be response time failure thresholds where ever >> bigger repercussions get ever slower and less reliable corrections, >> and >> stabilizing the rapidly changing internal and environmental >> relationships fails. > > I think that it is common to think that human society is fragile. > Well, the fact that we're still around shows that we aren't. > Last week, I learned about two competing "doomsday theories" from > LANL people: bird flu, and peak oil. They both assume that small > catastrophes trigger chaos. But even if nuclear war breaks out, that > wouldn't erase mankind from the face of the earth. It would suck, for > sure, and all these scenarios make profitable blockbusters, but we > humans are a persistant little vermin... > In any of these cases society would change, for sure, but precisely > that is part of the adaptation. It wouldn't collapse. It hasn't > collapsed, and there have been plenty of wars, famines, plagues, and > all other things mentioned in the Apocalypse... and we're still > around. So I find it extremely unprobable that something would wipe > us out. I am not suggesting that mankind will be forever on Earth, > but that evolving into something else seems to me more probable than > extinction by catastrophe. > >> Asteroids might be a problem, and failures of imagination might be of >> seeming equally stubborn nature. I mean, if we've gone and built an >> entire civilization, business plan and government financing structure >> that relies on continual exponential increases in the complexity of >> the >> system,... and that turns out to be really dangerous, it's quite a >> major >> failure of imagination it seems to me. > > If the complexity growth would fade away, I don't see civilization > collapsing, so I don't understand why do you say that we rely on > increasing complexity, nor why this might be dangerous. > >> I definitely think we should >> make government competent by design. There are lots of do's and >> don'ts >> regarding performance measures, but if departments developed >> concepts of >> productivity beyond just bean counter efficiency, having internal >> groups >> competing would be highly very productive. > > Indeed, there are many things to be improved. Some people might think > that there is no pressure for improving services. That is the case > when there is no political choice (like in dictatorships or pseudo- > democracies). But if there are competing political forces, they will > try to improve government to gain more votes. So, slowly (maybe too > slowly), but surely, we're getting there... > > Best regards, > > Carlos Gershenson... > Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel > Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium > http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ > > ?There is no game in which you cannot cheat? > > > > ============================================================ > 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 |
In reply to this post by Phil Henshaw-2
Phil wrote:
> > There's a good amount of growth these days based on trying to > improve efficiency, > workflow, best practices, processes, etc. Part of the quality > movement is about gains > made in eliminating waste and eliminating reviews, and instead > having quality as an > up-front and intrinsic effort. > [PH] That's good and bad. Refinement is wonderful in itself in > lots of ways, but it's inherently a diminishing return endeavor, > like polishing. You do the easy gains first and then > successively smaller gains take increasing work. > ways it sounds like the complaints about Total Quality Management from the Six Sigma crowd - that the former focused on the easy gains in a localized area (technical only, say), while ignoring the organizational needs as a whole. So you might have a spruced up assembly line that runs really well but the organization needs a better sales force. Combine this with an approach that gets IT focused on business processes with enterprise systems, improved supply chain, better mobile access to sales support in the field, better customer ability to configure and order... Certainly the progress from dragging a hoe, letting a yak do it, letting a machine do it has been more than "diminishing returns". It's been exponential returns. If you extend the refinement to across-the-board: getting the crops to market (Kenyan roses through Amsterdam to the US and Britain), improved crop survivability through fertilizer and genetic modification, etc., better handling of the company's finances through other methods, better user service through automated info & purchases via the Internet, etc., you get something completely opposite of "smaller gains taking increasing work". Now, at some point maybe that efficiency process hits a wall, but 10 years ago that wall would have been predicted as much closer. Watch microprocessor development. Yes, its current way of improvement has some expected diminishing returns, but combining those with hybrid techniques, going off into nanotech, biocomputing, etc., there are still a few tricks up their sleeves. Progress may stop being linear - it may become much more discrete as we shuffle around looking for disruptive methods vs. enhancements - but it will quite likely continue. I remember hand-soldering shops 25 years ago, which were completely replaced by wave soldering, which is now being replaced by reflow soldering. Aside from the little issue of inhaling lead fumes, it makes the electronics business much more flexible and affordable. Steel was one area where we'd supposedly hit technological peaks. During the 1980's world production levelled off at 40 million tons/month, in the 1990's at a bit over 60 million tons, and now we've jumped to 100 million tons. But often the old players aren't set up to take advantage of new methods and technologies - they have too much invested in the older tech and too many relationships, so that innovation would be cannibalizing their own profits. Instead, it's the new players that are often able to reach new levels of efficiency that allow them to compete with the entrenched leaders. If they didn't, they'd never get off the ground. But improvement can mean efficient in production, size, location, response, quality, diversity, etc. > > Major layoffs by large companies these days are often > a sign of improved efficiency (and sometimes go hand-in-hand with > additional hiring > of different types of positions). > [PH] That's the magic of the serendipitous growth we've had for > the past 500 years, that putting people out of work by innovation > has had an net effect of putting everyone to work at higher > wages. That stopped in 1970. Check the charts. > continues. I won't say it's all roses, but in general, it's producing wealth and more better-paying jobs. We're also putting the rest of the world to work at better wages. Maybe we'd rather be sending them charity checks, but this version is more sustainable, and they get to grow their own economies as well. But it's not evenly spread. > The US has been doing a pretty good job of adapting to that > change, and getting more used to > continual obsolescence. In some ways we're reaching a > philosophical outlook antithetical > to traditional Amero-European society, in that stability becomes a > barrier to progress. > [PH] yes sort of, if it were an infinitely extendable game. Only > our images of it are purely a game, however. For example, the US > is presently transferring the ownership of our productive assets > overseas in exchange for current consumption at an accelerating > rate now my rough guess around 3% a year (a state and a > half). It's bringing us a lot of prosperity. Is that good? > (IMHO), so I'll leave it to the side. > > >> Yes, but only half way. One of the fascinating aspects of our societal >> response lags failure is the 'stop fixing it' movement of the new right >> over the past 40 years. People had the choice and were drawn into the >> illusion that the intrusiveness of government response to the complexity >> of the world we're building would be solved by dismantling the >> government response, rather than finding a better way to address our >> growing problems. My observation is that every complaint has some >> validity and should be constructively combined rather than separated. >> >> > We've done a better job at dampening economic cycles than we have > at dampening political > cycles. I think we're farther away from over-idealistic > impressions of what government can do, > which is good, but now we have idealistic impressions of what > government can't do. Instead > it would be better to have good models of what factors make for > effective government in the > real world, including the recurring motions of balances and > corruption of power, . > [PH] Little will help if the complex systems we're driving ever > harder to perform miracles go turbulent. No doubt better > government would result from combining the insights into common > problems from different points of view. I think it's directly > symptomatic of our being pushed over the edge mentally by the > collision of growth and earth that we've settled on a government > that builds grand fantasies from a single view instead of > investing in research and planning. The business cycles of the > past were irritating but they gave us pause and a chance for > change. The fact that now we can go ever faster without > interruption has a hidden drawback in that it lets things get much > further out of whack before the correction. > start it again, unless it needs repair or particular maintenance. I would think we'd want less cross-coupling of different parts, and instead to have some pieces changing while others are quiescent. Do we all have to take off on Sunday for society to function? Or do we all simply need a day or two of rest every week or so, and stagger the particular days? Is there an innate problem with the world going faster? The earth is spinning some 1000 miles/hour, and yet I hardly notice it except when the sun goes down. > > I imagine it would also fall into the "sky continually falling" > motif, and without too much > stasis or unilateral motion. If that's true, a biparty system > tends to drift off into the extremes too > often in the cycle, whereas a multiparty system would be better at > balancing and instead of a heavy > pendulum, the weight stays towards the center of the zone. But > then maybe that's our odd advantage vs. > Europe, where we tack radically left and right and move much > faster than if stayed a center > course. > [PH] I haven't had a lot of chance to observe those systems but, > didn't Germany have a parliament and get a little carried away a > while back? I think the core problem is not entirely solved by > having an open hearing of diverse points of view. If social > movements develop with a winner-take-all attitude powered by a > long term campaign of character assassination for its opposition, > no structure will protect. > non-critical-crisis governments, i.e. since 1952 or so. As far as modeling governments, I think it has less to do with open expression and more to do with competing sets of beliefs or even power-bases and how they align, and how the system allows them to align. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060605/2e72b518/attachment-0001.htm |
In reply to this post by Phil Henshaw-2
> Trusting investors in a free market guided by maximum profit to
> make all > the important design decisions for mankind's permanent occupation > of the > earth isn't working right. There's really no softer way to say it > that's truthful. I'm still waiting for truthful observations and > useful > knowledge to become relevant in politics. Perhaps the old Missouri > mule solution is more appropriate, since the real world seems to be > getting too complicated and putting people to sleep. > I agree completely. I really don't think that many countries (especially those depending strongly on spoiling the planet for their economy) will do the necessary changes to stop global warming until it is "too late". By too late I mean when victims will start falling (well, you could count Katrina already here...). What I mean, we already see lots of effects of global warming, but there's little change in the way we spoil the planet. But finally, when our cities are all flooded, the people left will adapt... It would be great, as you say, if we could come up with mechanisms to change the decisions before it's too late, but we humans tend to learn by spoiling. We need to burn our hand to learn to keep it away from the fire. I mean, how many wars and millions of lifes it took to have the UN. And not that it prevents all wars... So maybe after doomsday (tomorrow? it's 06.06.06... the day of the beast...), we'll do something about it... Best regards, Carlos Gershenson... Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ ?Tendencies tend to change...? |
I half agree. Jared Diamond would say that merely the fact that this
conversation is taking place on a listserve puts us in a different state than in prior, historical catastrophes, with *potentially* different actions and outcomes. See "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." I've been trying to start a non-profit called the Center for Social Enterprise Technology, to enlist scientists in crafting solutions to urgent problems. (Tried to get SFI involved with no success.) Is there anything the FRIAM community can do to help avoid a catastrophic outcome? David dba | David Breecker Associates, Inc. www.BreeckerAssociates.com Abiquiu: 505-685-4891 Santa Fe: 505-690-2335 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Carlos Gershenson" <[hidden email]> To: <sy at synapse9.com>; "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <Friam at redfish.com> Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 1:31 PM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] ** this Wednesday** Lecture May 31 12:30p - CarlosGershenson: A General Methodology for DesigningSelf-Organizing Systems >> Trusting investors in a free market guided by maximum profit to >> make all >> the important design decisions for mankind's permanent occupation >> of the >> earth isn't working right. There's really no softer way to say it >> that's truthful. I'm still waiting for truthful observations and >> useful >> knowledge to become relevant in politics. Perhaps the old Missouri >> mule solution is more appropriate, since the real world seems to be >> getting too complicated and putting people to sleep. >> > > I agree completely. > I really don't think that many countries (especially those depending > strongly on spoiling the planet for their economy) will do the > necessary changes to stop global warming until it is "too late". By > too late I mean when victims will start falling (well, you could > count Katrina already here...). What I mean, we already see lots of > effects of global warming, but there's little change in the way we > spoil the planet. But finally, when our cities are all flooded, the > people left will adapt... It would be great, as you say, if we could > come up with mechanisms to change the decisions before it's too late, > but we humans tend to learn by spoiling. We need to burn our hand to > learn to keep it away from the fire. I mean, how many wars and > millions of lifes it took to have the UN. And not that it prevents > all wars... So maybe after doomsday (tomorrow? it's 06.06.06... the > day of the beast...), we'll do something about it... > > Best regards, > > Carlos Gershenson... > Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel > Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium > http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ > > ?Tendencies tend to change...? > > > > ============================================================ > 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 > |
In reply to this post by Bill Eldridge
Bill Phil wrote: There's a good amount of growth these days based on trying to improve efficiency, workflow, best practices, processes, etc. Part of the quality movement is about gains made in eliminating waste and eliminating reviews, and instead having quality as an up-front and intrinsic effort. [PH] That's good and bad. Refinement is wonderful in itself in lots of ways, but it's inherently a diminishing return endeavor, like polishing. You do the easy gains first and then successively smaller gains take increasing work. Wow, that's a pretty low expectation for efficiency and quality. In some ways it sounds like the complaints about Total Quality Management from the Six Sigma crowd - that the former focused on the easy gains in a localized area (technical only, say), while ignoring the organizational needs as a whole. So you might have a spruced up assembly line that runs really well but the organization needs a better sales force. Combine this with an approach that gets IT focused on business processes with enterprise systems, improved supply chain, better mobile access to sales support in the field, better customer ability to configure and order... [PH] Well our scenarios are different. You seem to be describing a constant resource being used to enable growth produced by creating emergent levels of reorganization. I was assuming that the difference between growth (positive exponent increase) and refinement (negative exponent increase) was clear and you seem to be using good English in a way that makes it unclear which we're talking about. My description was meant for the later. Certainly the progress from dragging a hoe, letting a yak do it, letting a machine do it has been more than "diminishing returns". It's been exponential returns. [PH] Right, of course not, it's leveraging a fixed amount of labor using quantum shifts in technique. If you extend the refinement to across-the-board: getting the crops to market (Kenyan roses through Amsterdam to the US and Britain), improved crop survivability through fertilizer and genetic modification, etc., better handling of the company's finances through other methods, better user service through automated info & purchases via the Internet, etc., you get something completely opposite of "smaller gains taking increasing work". Now, at some point maybe that efficiency process hits a wall, but 10 years ago that wall would have been predicted as much closer. [PH] Well, yes, that's related to my mention that historically it has always appeared that the new system taking over the old one was on shaky foundations. I fully accept that there are deep perceptual problems in judging where the limits to explosive change actually are. I'm just quite convinced from what I think is an set of principles that completely avoid the perceptual problems, that pushing a growth system as a whole to a point of failure is highly dangerous. [PH] Can you say that pushing exponential growth to failure is a benign means of approaching our limits on earth? Watch microprocessor development. Yes, its current way of improvement has some expected diminishing returns, but combining those with hybrid techniques, going off into nanotech, biocomputing, etc., there are still a few tricks up their sleeves. Progress may stop being linear - it may become much more discrete as we shuffle around looking for disruptive methods vs. enhancements - but it will quite likely continue. [PH] As I understand it there is still considerable room for increases in raw computational power, even without the radical increases some talk about conceptually. That may facilitate a greater ability to respond the the exploding side effects of growth, or just help explode the side effects leaving everyone in the dark as to how to respond. It really depends on our intent. [PH] Think about what limits the growth of living things. An animal's organs don't stop growing because they grow till the animal starves or can't walk, or because the skin gets so tight it prevents animals from eating. It's not from outside causes. Living systems very largely stop their growth at some internal point of completing the design, when they do in fact switch from explosive growth to maturation and refinement. It's that 2nd step after the 1st that our global system is built to be unable to take. The unified world master plan is to encourage investors to build whatever they think maximizes their profits, compounding returns to build their wealth exponentially. It's that magical trick for creating revolutionary change, the compounding of returns, that I think is truly dangerous to push to it's natural failure limit. I remember hand-soldering shops 25 years ago, which were completely replaced by wave soldering, which is now being replaced by reflow soldering. Aside from the little issue of inhaling lead fumes, it makes the electronics business much more flexible and affordable. [PH] yes, we can see long chains of positive sign exponential increases in productivity from emergent new systems. It's been going on for 5-600 years ( with an accumulative productivity increase on the order of 1 billion!! ) and we're kind of used to it. Still, I think I can build a case of physical necessity as strong as the ones for entropy or conservation of energy that it's a dead end into an impenitrable wall of complexity if we pursue it to failure. Steel was one area where we'd supposedly hit technological peaks. During the 1980's world production levelled off at 40 million tons/month, in the 1990's at a bit over 60 million tons, and now we've jumped to 100 million tons. But often the old players aren't set up to take advantage of new methods and technologies - they have too much invested in the older tech and too many relationships, so that innovation would be cannibalizing their own profits. Instead, it's the new players that are often able to reach new levels of efficiency that allow them to compete with the entrenched leaders. If they didn't, they'd never get off the ground. But improvement can mean efficient in production, size, location, response, quality, diversity, etc. [PH] all absolutely correct, but we still can't find peace as the sorcerer's apprentice. We've got to know when to cool it. Major layoffs by large companies these days are often a sign of improved efficiency (and sometimes go hand-in-hand with additional hiring of different types of positions). [PH] That's the magic of the serendipitous growth we've had for the past 500 years, that putting people out of work by innovation has had an net effect of putting everyone to work at higher wages. That stopped in 1970. Check the charts. I've checked the charts - computer wages are rising even as offshoring continues. I won't say it's all roses, but in general, it's producing wealth and more better-paying jobs. We're also putting the rest of the world to work at better wages. Maybe we'd rather be sending them charity checks, but this version is more sustainable, and they get to grow their own economies as well. But it's not evenly spread. [PH] It's the average wages I was thinking of. Women's wages, though still lower than men's, have a mildly positive exponential shape over the past 35 years, but real men's wages are virtually flat. Of course an aggregate figure hides many stories, but the lofty theory that making investors rich by putting people out of work actually makes everyone richer was only true before 1970. We've continued to pour money into the hands of investors for them to fix the problem, ignoring that they seem not to be investing in that way anymore... The US has been doing a pretty good job of adapting to that change, and getting more used to continual obsolescence. In some ways we're reaching a philosophical outlook antithetical to traditional Amero-European society, in that stability becomes a barrier to progress. [PH] yes sort of, if it were an infinitely extendable game. Only our images of it are purely a game, however. For example, the US is presently transferring the ownership of our productive assets overseas in exchange for current consumption at an accelerating rate now my rough guess around 3% a year (a state and a half). It's bringing us a lot of prosperity. Is that good? This is more a political issue that's separate from the complexity issue (IMHO), so I'll leave it to the side. [PH] I don't think the trade deficit is that political. No one is rooting for it, for sure, and no one seems to know what to really say about it either except it is very strange to have something so fundamental go so suddenly lopsided. It doesn't seem like a fluctuation that'll flip back the other way, but something that reverses as a consequence of major events. It's just odd that we're balancing the books by giving away assets and not doing much to stop it. Yes, but only half way. One of the fascinating aspects of our societal response lags failure is the 'stop fixing it' movement of the new right over the past 40 years. People had the choice and were drawn into the illusion that the intrusiveness of government response to the complexity of the world we're building would be solved by dismantling the government response, rather than finding a better way to address our growing problems. My observation is that every complaint has some validity and should be constructively combined rather than separated. We've done a better job at dampening economic cycles than we have at dampening political cycles. I think we're farther away from over-idealistic impressions of what government can do, which is good, but now we have idealistic impressions of what government can't do. Instead it would be better to have good models of what factors make for effective government in the real world, including the recurring motions of balances and corruption of power, . [PH] Little will help if the complex systems we're driving ever harder to perform miracles go turbulent. No doubt better government would result from combining the insights into common problems from different points of view. I think it's directly symptomatic of our being pushed over the edge mentally by the collision of growth and earth that we've settled on a government that builds grand fantasies from a single view instead of investing in research and planning. The business cycles of the past were irritating but they gave us pause and a chance for change. The fact that now we can go ever faster without interruption has a hidden drawback in that it lets things get much further out of whack before the correction. One of the most stressful things you can do to a machine is stop it and start it again, unless it needs repair or particular maintenance. [PH] Well, an explosively expanding machine being run by rather short sighted humans may be a special case. Our machine is essentially blind and groping along. At the moment were about 50 years behind in responding to global warming. It's not because the problem wasn't understandable from a 20's 30's 40's 50's or 60's point of view, but because we just were not thinking that we might need to look anywhere near the horizon of our impacts. That concept was surely well within the sophistication of business planners even well before that. We just didn't do it. I would think we'd want less cross-coupling of different parts, and instead to have some pieces changing while others are quiescent. Do we all have to take off on Sunday for society to function? Or do we all simply need a day or two of rest every week or so, and stagger the particular days? Is there an innate problem with the world going faster? The earth is spinning some 1000 miles/hour, and yet I hardly notice it except when the sun goes down. [PH] The marvelous thing to me about natural systems is their flexibility and resilience and how they work so smoothly even while networking vast collections of disconnected parts. They mostly work with an 'any ol time' delivery schedule and use it with amazing efficiency where every last thing gets used. We don't know how to do that yet, but the potential is there. Our approach tends to be to focus on a single output and pull out all the stops, use it up and build something else. I guess I'm making both a kind of aesthetic value judgment and just a simple practical observation. If you're not in a hurry, everything's relaxed, but most humans are always in a big hurry,... How that tendency translates into our having built a life support system designed to change ever faster until we make enough mistakes to stop it is very concretely traceable. It could, if anyone wanted, be redesigned with some free market complex systems design to work in new ways that would be both more creative and actually sustainable. We get back to Al Gore's question. We've got the knowledge and a clear mission with otherwise unacceptable consequences. Why does that not provide us with the information we need? I think it's partly that no one is yet saying we should also correct the underlying. Investing for sustainability is not an investment objective. I imagine it would also fall into the "sky continually falling" motif, and without too much stasis or unilateral motion. If that's true, a biparty system tends to drift off into the extremes too often in the cycle, whereas a multiparty system would be better at balancing and instead of a heavy pendulum, the weight stays towards the center of the zone. But then maybe that's our odd advantage vs. Europe, where we tack radically left and right and move much faster than if stayed a center course. [PH] I haven't had a lot of chance to observe those systems but, didn't Germany have a parliament and get a little carried away a while back? I think the core problem is not entirely solved by having an open hearing of diverse points of view. If social movements develop with a winner-take-all attitude powered by a long term campaign of character assassination for its opposition, no structure will protect. Re: Germany, I think I was referring to modern Western-like non-critical-crisis governments, i.e. since 1952 or so. As far as modeling governments, I think it has less to do with open expression and more to do with competing sets of beliefs or even power-bases and how they align, and how the system allows them to align. [PH] I look at the complex system glue that animates and holds together power centers and social movements as a definite physical reality. My observation method does not tell me everything, but provides a framework on which other particulars and generalities can be hung and connected. It's how I organize system observation based on the rudimentary model for the four developmental curves. [ ????.?? ? `?.???? ] It works pretty well. Cheers, Phil Henshaw ????.?? ? `?.???? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060605/0ee3ee16/attachment-0001.htm |
In reply to this post by Richard Harris-2
Rich,
> > I'm just now picking up this conversation, so forgive me for coming > in late. > > This all reminds me of a book I'm sure other people here have read, > Tainter's "The Collapse of Complex Societies." His thesis, > basically, > is that societal complexity, however you measure it (diversity of > artifacts and technology, education and specialized skill sets, > social structures), represents an investment of energy that allows > for more intensive exploitation of resources. As this investment > increases diminishing marginal returns are unavoidable and the > surpluses required to address new problems disappear, making the > society susceptible to collapse. He also talks about how > collapse can > be the rational decision on the part of a societies members. > He gives > the example of how Romans living on the frontiers of their empire > would invite in hoards of marauding tribes because they were less of > a blight on their lives than the Roman tax collector. there are several natural causes for sudden system failures and deaths, and we don't know much about them. My two favorites are the collapse of the USSR and the collapse of the NYC crime wave in 1991. They booth just seemed to go whoosh. The system failure I've been talking about is when stress is pushed to overwhelm the internal response mechanisms of a system driven to endlessly grow. The demands on the response network increase exponentially and it fails, something like the response to Katrina, but in slow motion is what I'd expect. > > In this conceptual model, the only thing that can at least > temporarily increase these marginal returns and hold off a society's > collapse is the discovery of additional sources of energy. In fact there are lots of things that can change the course of growth system events. That's the problem with the older Limits Of Growth studies. They used stocks and flows of measurable commodities, and there are lots of important immeasurable commodities. > > One thing I felt was interesting was his sometimes detached view on > whether or not complex societies are good or bad things. He had > criticized lots of other work on collapse as being too heavily laden > with value judgments to be scientifically credible, so I > guess he was > being extra cautious about his own. Well, was it probing story telling, just good journalism? That counts a lot. Malcolm Gladwell does pretty well playing with simple ideas and telling stories about real world systems of different kinds. > But one thing it did impress upon me, is that humanity has spent the > vast majority of its time in very simple, band level societies. As > such, we should probably think of complex societies as deviations > from this norm, an experiment. > > From this perspective, I think we, as humans, are pretty > robust, but > the complex societies we're so enamored of are extremely fragile. > Since we are the very bacteria inhabiting the metaphorical > Petri dish > of this experiment, its hard to take such a detached point of view. apart so they couldn't harm anything. I don't think there's any chance of our discarding cities though. This behemoth occupation of the planet might be another question perhaps, but I think we like cities. What do you think will be the end of our explosively accelerating economic expansion, figuring out a way to let it ease off that's healthy and sustainable, or letting it go to systemic collapse? Phil > Rich > > BTW, > > Since we currently put more energy into agriculture than we get out, > I wonder if agricultural energy crops and byproducts can really save > us. Does anyone out there have an opinion? > > > > On Jun 4, 2006, at 7:42 AM, Carlos Gershenson wrote: > > >> I think that assumes that cause and effect for any one system is > >> statistical across all systems. I don't believe that to > be the case. > >> Given a cellular system like an economy, where you can't really > >> transcend the basic cells, the humans with all our gifts and > >> failings, > >> there seem likely to be response time failure thresholds where ever > >> bigger repercussions get ever slower and less reliable corrections, > >> and > >> stabilizing the rapidly changing internal and environmental > >> relationships fails. > > > > I think that it is common to think that human society is fragile. > > Well, the fact that we're still around shows that we aren't. Last > > week, I learned about two competing "doomsday theories" from LANL > > people: bird flu, and peak oil. They both assume that small > > catastrophes trigger chaos. But even if nuclear war breaks > out, that > > wouldn't erase mankind from the face of the earth. It would > suck, for > > sure, and all these scenarios make profitable blockbusters, but we > > humans are a persistant little vermin... In any of these > cases society > > would change, for sure, but precisely that is part of the > adaptation. > > It wouldn't collapse. It hasn't collapsed, and there have > been plenty > > of wars, famines, plagues, and all other things mentioned in the > > Apocalypse... and we're still around. So I find it extremely > > unprobable that something would wipe us out. I am not > suggesting that > > mankind will be forever on Earth, but that evolving into something > > else seems to me more probable than extinction by catastrophe. > > > >> Asteroids might be a problem, and failures of imagination > might be of > >> seeming equally stubborn nature. I mean, if we've gone > and built an > >> entire civilization, business plan and government > financing structure > >> that relies on continual exponential increases in the > complexity of > >> the system,... and that turns out to be really dangerous, > it's quite > >> a major > >> failure of imagination it seems to me. > > > > If the complexity growth would fade away, I don't see civilization > > collapsing, so I don't understand why do you say that we rely on > > increasing complexity, nor why this might be dangerous. > > > >> I definitely think we should > >> make government competent by design. There are lots of do's and > >> don'ts > >> regarding performance measures, but if departments > developed concepts > >> of productivity beyond just bean counter efficiency, > having internal > >> groups > >> competing would be highly very productive. > > > > Indeed, there are many things to be improved. Some people > might think > > that there is no pressure for improving services. That is the case > > when there is no political choice (like in dictatorships or pseudo- > > democracies). But if there are competing political forces, > they will > > try to improve government to gain more votes. So, slowly (maybe too > > slowly), but surely, we're getting there... > > > > Best regards, > > > > Carlos Gershenson... > > Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel > > Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium > > http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ > > > > "There is no game in which you cannot cheat" > > > > > > > > ============================================================ > > 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 > > > ============================================================ > 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 > > |
In reply to this post by Phil Henshaw-2
Phil wrote:
> > If you extend > the refinement to across-the-board: getting the crops to market > (Kenyan roses through Amsterdam to the > US and Britain), improved crop survivability through fertilizer > and genetic modification, etc., > better handling of the company's finances through other methods, > better user service > through automated info & purchases via the Internet, etc., you get > something completely > opposite of "smaller gains taking increasing work". Now, at some > point maybe that > efficiency process hits a wall, but 10 years ago that wall would > have been predicted > as much closer. > [PH] Well, yes, that's related to my mention that historically it > has always appeared that the new system taking over the old one > was on shaky foundations. I fully accept that there are deep > perceptual problems in judging where the limits to explosive > change actually are. I'm just quite convinced from what I think > is an set of principles that completely avoid the perceptual > problems, that pushing a growth system as a whole to a point of > failure is highly dangerous. > > [PH] Can you say that pushing exponential growth to failure is > a benign means of approaching our limits on earth? > > [PH] As I understand it there is still considerable room for > increases in raw computational power, even without the radical > increases some talk about conceptually. That may facilitate a > greater ability to respond the the exploding side effects of > growth, or just help explode the side effects leaving everyone in > the dark as to how to respond. It really depends on our intent. > > [PH] Think about what limits the growth of living things. An > animal's organs don't stop growing because they grow till the > animal starves or can't walk, or because the skin gets so tight it > prevents animals from eating. It's not from outside causes. > Living systems very largely stop their growth at some internal > point of completing the design, when they do in fact switch from > explosive growth to maturation and refinement. It's that 2nd > step after the 1st that our global system is built to be unable to > take. The unified world master plan is to encourage investors to > build whatever they think maximizes their profits, compounding > returns to build their wealth exponentially. It's that magical > trick for creating revolutionary change, the compounding of > returns, that I think is truly dangerous to push to it's natural > failure limit. > > [PH] yes, we can see long chains of positive sign exponential > increases in productivity from emergent new systems. It's been > going on for 5-600 years ( with an accumulative productivity > increase on the order of 1 billion!! ) and we're kind of used > to it. Still, I think I can build a case of physical necessity > as strong as the ones for entropy or conservation of energy that > it's a dead end into an impenitrable wall of complexity if we > pursue it to failure. > > [PH] all absolutely correct, but we still can't find peace as the > sorcerer's apprentice. We've got to know when to cool it. > we're trying to grow until we explode. Many would think of growing until it stops pleasing. I like a big car but I hate finding parking. I like a big house but I hate cleaning. I see us as growing, refining, culling. I don't see problems on the horizon as "failure" - I see them as more issues to deal with in normal progression. Nuclear war between governments is less a problem, global warming is more of one. But if we run out of fossil fuels, global warming's not a problem. In any case, possibly half the world's population understands that fuel supply and global warming are important issues, which should be enough to get something useful happening. Other than that, I'm not convinced fast growth is a problem. I'm waiting for digital paper to make my books more portable (I'm halfway there, half my books are digital, but my laptop's too bulky). I'm looking forward to the next more usable wave of search engines, Web 2.0 features, mobile devices and electronics. Cheaper, better color printing - that would be good. Banking is solved, I have ATM's and on-line banking. Secure, honest digital voting with a paper trail - that will help. Faster, more modern trains would help (mag-lev in every pot?). Other than that, needs are basic, and little more rushed than those of 100 years ago. When I want to walk or go to the country, I go. When I want a city scene, I stay here. >> Major layoffs by large companies these days are often >> a sign of improved efficiency (and sometimes go hand-in-hand >> with additional hiring >> of different types of positions). >> [PH] That's the magic of the serendipitous growth we've had >> for the past 500 years, that putting people out of work by >> innovation has had an net effect of putting everyone to work >> at higher wages. That stopped in 1970. Check the charts. >> > I've checked the charts - computer wages are rising even as > offshoring continues. > I won't say it's all roses, but in general, it's producing wealth > and more better-paying > jobs. We're also putting the rest of the world to work at better > wages. Maybe we'd > rather be sending them charity checks, but this version is more > sustainable, and they > get to grow their own economies as well. But it's not evenly spread. > [PH] It's the average wages I was thinking of. Women's wages, > though still lower than men's, have a mildly positive exponential > shape over the past 35 years, but real men's wages are virtually > flat. Of course an aggregate figure hides many stories, but the > lofty theory that making investors rich by putting people out of > work actually makes everyone richer was only true before 1970. > We've continued to pour money into the hands of investors for them > to fix the problem, ignoring that they seem not to be investing in > that way anymore... > choosing to stay home in a return to 1960's norms? Are we prospering not through pay but through more lifestyle choices, better access to health care, more gadgets and information? I remember having about 1-2 pairs of shoes at a time in a middle class family. Now my kids have 8 or 9, though it's affordable (okay, a lot come from second hand shops, but that's wealth as well). My, kids now have skateboards, snowboards, ice skates, roller blades, bikes. Every house has 2-3 TVs, a hundred channels, walkmans with large music collections, DVD & VHS players, computer games, etc. There are even large health food supermarkets now, much more affordable than the small vitamin-focused shops of 20 years ago. Ain't progress grand? Wages may be flat, real purchasing power isn't. A 2006 van blows away a 1970 van in so many ways. And while we may not appreciate it, the work that we do in 2006 is a lot less sweaty. Part of our wealth went into security. I'm here in Prague, there's no worry about Russian troops from the east, and there's little need to worry about a general all-encompassing conflict. Any terrorist attack is pretty well assured to be small potatoes in the scheme of things - painful for those affected, but much less than an Indian Ocean tsunami in both intensity and duration. A Russian invasion or similar wouldn't have been. >> The US has been doing a pretty good job of adapting to that >> change, and getting more used to >> continual obsolescence. In some ways we're reaching a >> philosophical outlook antithetical >> to traditional Amero-European society, in that stability >> becomes a barrier to progress. >> [PH] yes sort of, if it were an infinitely extendable game. >> Only our images of it are purely a game, however. For >> example, the US is presently transferring the ownership of >> our productive assets overseas in exchange for current >> consumption at an accelerating rate now my rough guess around >> 3% a year (a state and a half). It's bringing us a lot of >> prosperity. Is that good? >> > This is more a political issue that's separate from the complexity > issue (IMHO), so I'll leave it to the side. > [PH] I don't think the trade deficit is that political. No one > is rooting for it, for sure, and no one seems to know what to > really say about it either except it is very strange to have > something so fundamental go so suddenly lopsided. It doesn't > seem like a fluctuation that'll flip back the other way, but > something that reverses as a consequence of major events. It's > just odd that we're balancing the books by giving away assets and > not doing much to stop it. > technology growth, that it has more to do with politics in DC, and I don't really want to talk politics of that sort. > >> >> > One of the most stressful things you can do to a machine is stop > it and start it again, > unless it needs repair or particular maintenance. > [PH] Well, an explosively expanding machine being run by rather > short sighted humans may be a special case. Our machine > is essentially blind and groping along. At the moment were about > 50 years behind in responding to global warming. It's not > because the problem wasn't understandable from a 20's 30's 40's > 50's or 60's point of view, but because we just were not thinking > that we might need to look anywhere near the horizon of our > impacts. That concept was surely well within the sophistication > of business planners even well before that. We just didn't do it. > > [PH] The marvelous thing to me about natural systems is their > flexibility and resilience and how they work so smoothly even > while networking vast collections of disconnected parts. They > mostly work with an 'any ol time' delivery schedule and use it > with amazing efficiency where every last thing gets used. We > don't know how to do that yet, but the potential is there. Our > approach tends to be to focus on a single output and pull out all > the stops, use it up and build something else. I guess I'm > making both a kind of aesthetic value judgment and just a simple > practical observation. If you're not in a hurry, everything's > relaxed, but most humans are always in a big hurry,... How that > tendency translates into our having built a life support system > designed to change ever faster until we make enough mistakes to > stop it is very concretely traceable. It could, if anyone > wanted, be redesigned with some free market complex systems design > to work in new ways that would be both more creative and actually > sustainable. > > We get back to Al Gore's question. We've got the knowledge and a > clear mission with otherwise unacceptable consequences. Why does > that not provide us with the information we need? I think it's > partly that no one is yet saying we should also correct the > underlying. Investing for sustainability is not an investment > objective. > First, Al's focused on 1 problem - good for him, but... 1) If you're in the Congo, you've got more pressing problems than global warming - you have a war that's killed more than 3 million people in the last 6 years, rapes every day, literally backbreaking work, extreme poverty, etc. Global warming also might help most of Africa's climate if it brings more rain, which it seems to be doing. And you might have little to change to effect Global Warming. 2) If you're in Europe, Global Warming seems to be bringing more rain and more cold. Kind of odd, but seems to be not the most beneficial change for the economy (as well as people's comfort, including mine). But if you use mostly public transportation and recycle and pay $6/gallon of gas, what else are you supposed to do? 3) If you're in Indonesia, even though rising waters would be a big problem, earthquakes and tsunamis are more pressing, as well as economic development. 4) If you're in China, you're spewing out gasses but you've got a mostly backwards undereducated poor population to deal with. Cut back on growth and you might easily get revolution, and not necessarily a pro-democracy everybody-happy-now one that leaves people more prosperous. And you already cut back on number of children. I'm also not sure why you place this at the investor's feet. That's only one part of the cycle. Who's the buyer? How about "sustainable buying"? If your liver were failing, you'd stop buying alcohol. A free market is not the only "institution". John Dunning notes that it's expensive to maintain a proper free market, and that there are structural and endemic problems in markets to deal with. Structural problems should be solved if possible, whereas endemic ones should be fixed only if the costs of fixing are less than the cost of the problem. An externality like global warming is an endemic problem, but the issue with fixing it is that you incur costs in other areas. The solution is non-obvious and painful even if the problem is pressing. Sometimes the government should step in, sometimes not. What are the market costs and market gains of Sarbanes-Oxley? What are the costs vs. gains on the new hazardous substance law (RHoS) that's now in place in the EU? Was that the right thing to do for an economy that's been plagued with slow growth? How many jobs will be lost, how many products will be denied, how will that decrease competitiveness and lifestyle - these are the real questions that have to be answered in formulating policy. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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In reply to this post by Phil Henshaw-2
Phil wrote:
> > Bill > > Phil wrote: >> >> There's a good amount of growth these days based on trying to >> improve efficiency, >> workflow, best practices, processes, etc. Part of the quality >> movement is about gains >> made in eliminating waste and eliminating reviews, and >> instead having quality as an >> up-front and intrinsic effort. >> [PH] That's good and bad. Refinement is wonderful in itself >> in lots of ways, but it's inherently a diminishing return >> endeavor, like polishing. You do the easy gains first and >> then successively smaller gains take increasing work. >> > Wow, that's a pretty low expectation for efficiency and quality. > In some ways it sounds like > the complaints about Total Quality Management from the Six Sigma > crowd - > that the former focused on the easy gains in a localized area > (technical only, say), > while ignoring the organizational needs as a whole. So you might > have a spruced > up assembly line that runs really well but the organization needs > a better sales force. > Combine this with an approach that gets IT focused on business > processes with > enterprise systems, improved supply chain, better mobile access to > sales support in > the field, better customer ability to configure and order... > [PH] Well our scenarios are different. You seem to be describing > a constant resource being used to enable growth produced > by creating emergent levels of reorganization. I was assuming > that the difference between growth (positive exponent increase) > and refinement (negative exponent increase) was clear and you seem > to be using good English in a way that makes it unclear which > we're talking about. My description was meant for the later. > processes. China's spewing out steel. Will it grow till it stops? or refine, target new markets, find new uses, cut costs, leverage the technology and factories onto something else? I'd bet the latter. Most innovation is incremental, not disruptive, but both types are useful - 2 products can look almost identical, but one flies off the shelf and one stays. I can't be sure that refinement means negative exponent increase unless you're defining the two tautologically - that refinements are negative exponent increases. Otherwise, a refinement can possibly lead to exponential growth with little to no extra effort. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060606/97eecf7f/attachment.htm |
In reply to this post by Phil Henshaw-2
Phil wrote:
> > Bill > > Phil wrote: >> >> There's a good amount of growth these days based on trying to >> improve efficiency, >> workflow, best practices, processes, etc. Part of the quality >> movement is about gains >> made in eliminating waste and eliminating reviews, and >> instead having quality as an >> up-front and intrinsic effort. >> [PH] That's good and bad. Refinement is wonderful in itself >> in lots of ways, but it's inherently a diminishing return >> endeavor, like polishing. You do the easy gains first and >> then successively smaller gains take increasing work. >> > Wow, that's a pretty low expectation for efficiency and quality. > In some ways it sounds like > the complaints about Total Quality Management from the Six Sigma > crowd - > that the former focused on the easy gains in a localized area > (technical only, say), > while ignoring the organizational needs as a whole. So you might > have a spruced > up assembly line that runs really well but the organization needs > a better sales force. > Combine this with an approach that gets IT focused on business > processes with > enterprise systems, improved supply chain, better mobile access to > sales support in > the field, better customer ability to configure and order... > [PH] Well our scenarios are different. You seem to be describing > a constant resource being used to enable growth produced > by creating emergent levels of reorganization. I was assuming > that the difference between growth (positive exponent increase) > and refinement (negative exponent increase) was clear and you seem > to be using good English in a way that makes it unclear which > we're talking about. My description was meant for the later. > processes. China's spewing out steel. Will it grow till it stops? or refine, target new markets, find new uses, cut costs, leverage the technology and factories onto something else? I'd bet the latter. Most innovation is incremental, not disruptive, but both types are useful - 2 products can look almost identical, but one flies off the shelf and one stays. I can't be sure that refinement means negative exponent increase unless you're defining the two tautologically - that refinements are negative exponent increases. Otherwise, a refinement can possibly lead to exponential growth with little to no extra effort. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060606/ac6c4382/attachment.htm |
In reply to this post by Phil Henshaw-2
I forgot from whom I heard the following argument:
The problem with understanding economics is that commodities are not a conserved quantity (such as energy), but it can always increase... Thus, it would be difficult to reach a point where we "ran out" of money, simply because the market generates new niches and opportunities that generate more money... Best regards, Carlos Gershenson... Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ ?Tendencies tend to change...? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060606/4a2cd747/attachment.htm |
There are several issues particularly relevant when evaluating the "new economy". You can run out of oil or titanium, and you can run out of new ideas, but they mean slightly different things. People sometimes equate offshoring manufacturing with offshoring IT, but you can create a useful, sellable program in a coffee shop, while it's hard to produce a car without a factory. It's difficult to increase production of steel, but I can sell the same version of Excel a billion times once it's produced once. But software inherently creates obsolescence if done right - my car will fall apart, but a 1995 version of Excel will pretty much do everything I've ever needed a spreadsheet to do, and may last me the rest of my life. But software is not necessarily interchangeable. I can buy 10 pieces of software and still have room for #11 if it does something different, but my ability to accomodate manufactured goods is much less. And Financial Services is even more bizarre than the software field. Carlos Gershenson wrote: > I forgot from whom I heard the following argument: > The problem with understanding economics is that commodities are not a > conserved quantity (such as energy), but it can always increase... > Thus, it would be difficult to reach a point where we "ran out" of > money, simply because the market generates new niches and > opportunities that generate more money... > > Best regards, > > Carlos Gershenson... > Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel > Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium > http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ > <http://homepages.vub.ac.be/%7Ecgershen/> > > ?Tendencies tend to change...? > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > ============================================================ > 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060606/7adf78f7/attachment-0001.htm |
In reply to this post by Phil Henshaw-2
I matters, but it's just an opening... I do hope the question of
whether explosive change is naturally unstable will be useful, of course. I actually got the idea from noticing that almost anything of interest in the world seems to begin with it. I'm really here to trade notes though. I use the normal sequence of growth phases (????.?? ? `?.????) as a framework for organizing observations of complex systems, rather than theories. It just seems to work for me. I've read a little about computer worlds with evolving cellular automata, but I have a hard time understanding it. I read Lewin's 'Complexity' and he made it seem like there were global principles behind it somehow that the researchers he talked to didn't mention or something, but demonstrated with their experiments they had some good control of. I'm fascinated that people with strong exposure to natural systems have been able to invent virtual worlds that don't appear to involve any physical things of any kind, but apparently display natural system behaviors. I guess my first question is why do you think it works? Do you know if emergence in a computer involves growth? Phil Henshaw ????.?? ? `?.???? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060606/e74faecb/attachment.htm |
In reply to this post by Phil Henshaw-2
Sorry I missed a couple days... someone installed (me) an overactive
spam filter.. Responding to Bill .............From 6/4/06 #1 > [PH] all absolutely correct, but we still can't find peace as the > sorcerer's apprentice. We've got to know when to cool it. > There are different definitions of "failure". You seem to take it that we're trying to grow until we explode. [PH] Not that we're trying to, but that we're pushing growth with a real contempt for the hazards, which amounts much the same thing. There's a global consensus growth policy, a master plan to change our lives and the Earth ever more rapidly, making ever bigger decisions ever faster, what they call "steady state". Assuming we succeed in the plan otherwise, the limit of growth is pushing the limits of decision making until we make enough mistakes for it to stop. It's a direct formula for disaster by unexpected causes, like the surprise that we're facing in global warming. Many would think of growing until it stops pleasing. I like a big car but I hate finding parking. I like a big house but I hate cleaning.I see us as growing, refining, culling. I don't see problems on the horizon as"failure" - I see them as more issues to deal with in normal progression. Nuclearwar between governments is less a problem, global warming is more of one. But if we run out of fossil fuels, global warming's not a problem. In any case, possibly half the world's population understands that fuel supply and global warming are important issues, which should be enough to get something useful happening. [PH] Sure, changing your mind about things as you go along is not necessarily any kind of *failure*. I'm more meaning 'failure' in the traditional sense of things you're trying to hold together, falling apart despite your best sincere efforts. If you're a teacher and your kids ask questions one at a time it's OK because you can answer them one at a time. If their rate of asking questions increases exponentially you'll have a hard time saying when the class went out of control or way, even though the actual point was where you failed to be able to respond to so many questions in rapid succession. Try it if you don't believe me. Other than that, I'm not convinced fast growth is a problem. I'm waiting for digital paper to make my books more portable (I'm halfway there, half my books are digital, but my laptop's too bulky). I'm looking forward to the next more usable wave of search engines, Web 2.0 features, mobile devices and electronics. Cheaper, better color printing - that would be good. Banking is solved, I have ATM's and on-line banking. Secure, honest digital voting with a paper trail - that will help. Faster, more modern trains would help (mag-lev in every pot?). Other than that, needs are basic, and little more rushed than those of 100 years ago. When I want to walk or go to the country, I go. When I want a city scene, I stay here. [PH] It's not a problem for the things we're paying attention to. Those are what it is responding to. The problem is with the things we're not attending to, from which we're distracted or took for granted but were wrong, or just didn't get the message, or that our limited world view prevents us from considering... >> [PH] That's the magic of the serendipitous growth we've had >> for the past 500 years, that putting people out of work by >> innovation has had an net effect of putting everyone to work >> at higher wages. That stopped in 1970. Check the charts. >> > I've checked the charts - computer wages are rising even as > offshoring continues. > [PH] It's the average wages I was thinking of. Women's wages, > though still lower than men's, have a mildly positive exponential > shape over the past 35 years, but real men's wages are virtually > flat. Of course an aggregate figure hides many stories, but .... So are men subsidizing women in the workplace? Cool. Are more women choosing to stay home in a return to 1960's norms? Are we prospering not through pay but through more lifestyle choices, better access to health care, more gadgets and information? I remember having about 1-2 pairs of shoes at a time in a middle class family. Now my kids have 8 or 9, though it's affordable (okay,a lot come from second hand shops, but that's wealth as well). Part of our wealth went into security. I'm here in Prague, there's no worry about Russian troopsfrom the east, and there's little need to worry about a general all-encompassing conflict.Any terrorist attack is pretty well assured to be small potatoes in the scheme of things - painfulfor those affected, but much less than an Indian Ocean tsunami in both intensity and duration.A Russian invasion or similar wouldn't have been. [PH] What's hardest to keep straight in social evolution is the dynamics. Mostly the images we call up don't provide reliable indicators of change. They're mostly one shot pictures of an evolving system taken from shifting perspectives. I do agree with many of your separate observations, though I wouldn't connect them the same way. For one I don't think they eliminate the curious phenomena of the splitting of the world in two with a shrinking middle and expanding upper and lower. Among other things that means the influence of money in decision making is continuing to grow exponentially and the influence of people is not. That's only one of several ways in which decision making (the critical homeostatic mechanism) appears to be failing as an unexpected side effects of growth. ... > It's just odd that we're balancing the books by giving away assets and > not doing much to stop it. > I meant that I don't see it as having to do with complexity theory or technology growth, that it has more to do with politics in DC, and I don't really want to talk politics of that sort. [PH] That's fine, I just note the trade deficit as an absolutely huge sudden structural change that no one seems able to say or do anything about. We don't seem to have any good idea of what it represents, and are silent in response, a system phenomenon that I think is of considerable significance. ........ but most humans are always in a big hurry,... How that > tendency translates into our having built a life support system > designed to change ever faster until we make enough mistakes to > stop it is very concretely traceable. It could, if anyone > wanted, be redesigned with some free market complex systems design > to work in new ways that would be both more creative and actually > sustainable. > > We get back to Al Gore's question. We've got the knowledge and a > clear mission with otherwise unacceptable consequences. Why does > that not provide us with the information we need? I think it's > partly that no one is yet saying we should also correct the > underlying. Investing for sustainability is not an investment > objective. First, Al's focused on 1 problem - good for him, but... [PH] but not just any problem. It's a special problem of economic development. The investment decisions of the last 100 years have led us to a showdown where we have to try to use government led by scientists to make major changes in our life support system. Our old design principle, every man for himself, failed to build a sustainable structure. I don't think we'll find the door unless we face that wall. It's only one of a torrent of similar failures on the path of making ever bigger changes to the earth ever faster, because with that plan there's physically no way we can see the consequences of what we're doing. It's not that *trying* to look at the consequences isn't good, It's just that you can be certain, following our practice of multiplying change, that such attempts will fail to reveal what the real consequences are. 1) If you're in the Congo, you've got more pressing problems than global warming - you havea war that's killed more than 3 million people in the last 6 years, rapes every day, literally backbreakingwork, extreme poverty, etc. Global warming also might help most of Africa's climate if it brings more rain, which it seems to be doing. And you might have little to change to effect Global Warming. [PH] The projections seem to say drought I think, but whatever, I think teaching them competence in managing their own affairs is tricky business, more likely to succeed by our demonstrating competence in our own. 2) If you're in Europe, Global Warming seems to be bringing more rain and more cold. Kind of odd,but seems to be not the most beneficial change for the economy (as well as people's comfort, including mine). But if you use mostly public transportation and recycle and pay $6/gallon of gas, what else are you supposed to do? [PH] The Gulf Stream slowed dramatically last year and stopped delivering as much equatorial heat to Europe. It's a predicted effect of global warming in some scenarios, but I haven't heard anyone saying that what's now happening follows any prediction. I heard an interesting comment from fishermen in the north sea that the huge funnels of cold water heading for the deep they used to see don't seem to be there, which would correspond directly to the cold water over warm water cause of the European climate shift now being observed. Some things do go beyond the point of no return you know. Once you're beyond the point of no return, there's no point anymore. 3) If you're in Indonesia, even though rising waters would be a big problem, earthquakes and tsunamis are more pressing, as well as economic development. [PH] I think they may be concerned with even more provincial matters than those, and that failing to think globally, about how the whole system fits together is just as big a mistake no matter how compelling your narrow interests may be. 4) If you're in China, you're spewing out gasses but you've got a mostly backwards undereducated poor population to deal with. Cut back on growth and you might easily get revolution, and not necessarily a pro-democracy everybody-happy-now one that leaves people more prosperous. And you already cut back on number of children. [PH] Just turning the steering wheel to your vehicle around one corner doesn't mean you won't immediately run into another corner, no, of course not. Just because that might happen is still not a good reason to give up and just run off the road. My general point is that when you accelerate change it brings about ever sharper corners to navigate. I'm also not sure why you place this at the investor's feet. That's only one part of the cycle. Who's the buyer? How about "sustainable buying"? If your liver were failing, you'd stop buying alcohol. A free market is not the only "institution". John Dunning notes that it's expensive to maintain a properfree market, and that there are structural and endemic problems in markets to deal with. Structuralproblems should be solved if possible, whereas endemic ones should be fixed only if the costs offixing are less than the cost of the problem. An externality like global warming is an endemic problem,but the issue with fixing it is that you incur costs in other areas. The solution is non-obvious and painfuleven if the problem is pressing. Sometimes the government should step in, sometimes not. [PH] Yea, and really smart money is on the real sustainable future. Without knowing it the consensus of investors for a hundred years was to build an unsustainable future. The really really curious part is that one of the unsustainable practices is building wealth by reinvesting earnings to make change and profit grow exponentially. As long as we do that we'll surely build things for which we fail to understand the consequences. We're stuck. What are the market costs and market gains of Sarbanes-Oxley? What are the costs vs. gains on the new hazardous substance law (RHoS) that's now in place in the EU? Was that the right thing todo for an economy that's been plagued with slow growth? How many jobs will be lost, how manyproducts will be denied, how will that decrease competitiveness and lifestyle - these are the real questionsthat have to be answered in formulating policy. [PH] And the complexities of continually accelerating development are throwing issues at governments and their consultants that were never dreamed of before and for which they have no track record of being able to respond to. .............Responding to Bill From 6/4/06 #2 >>> There's a good amount of growth these days based on trying to >>> improve efficiency, workflow, best practices, processes, etc. Part of the quality >>> movement is about gains made in eliminating waste and eliminating reviews, and >>> instead having quality as an up-front and intrinsic effort. >>> [PH] That's good and bad. Refinement is wonderful in itself >>> in lots of ways, but it's inherently a diminishing return >>> endeavor, like polishing. You do the easy gains first and >>> then successively smaller gains take increasing work. >>> >> Wow, that's a pretty low expectation for efficiency and quality. >> In some ways it sounds like the complaints about Total Quality Management from the Six Sigma >> crowd - that the former focused on the easy gains in a localized area >> (technical only, say), while ignoring the organizational needs as a whole. So you might >> have a spruced up assembly line that runs really well but the organization needs >> a better sales force. Combine this with an approach that gets IT focused on business >> processes with enterprise systems, improved supply chain, better mobile access to > sales support in >> the field, better customer ability to configure and order... >> [PH] Well our scenarios are different. You seem to be describing >> a constant resource being used to enable growth produced >> by creating emergent levels of reorganization. I was assuming >> that the difference between growth (positive exponent increase) >> and refinement (negative exponent increase) was clear and you seem >> to be using good English in a way that makes it unclear which >> we're talking about. My description was meant for the later. >> >I think the growth and refinement are very closely coupled in many >processes. China's spewing out steel. Will it grow till it stops? or refine, target >new markets, find new uses, cut costs, leverage the technology and factories onto something else? >I'd bet the latter. Most innovation is incremental, not disruptive, but >both types are useful - 2 products can look almost identical, but one flies off the >shelf and one stays. I can't be sure that refinement means negative exponent increase >unless you're defining the two tautologically - that refinements are >negative exponent increases. Otherwise, a refinement can possibly lead to exponential >growth with little to no extra effort. [PH] yes, essentially defining it differently. My use of the term is to refer to processes leading to the perfection on one emergent form rather than to the creative leap-froging from one emergent form to another. The latter is what I gather your sense to be. My usage is tied to a scientific method. I'm using the terms to help refer to the general phase sequence of rapid evolution that any natural system displays, positive exponent increase (growth), negative exponent increase (refinement), positive exponent decrease (collapse), negative exponent decrease (decay). Mostly my attaching a special scientific meaning to these common English terms helps, but with your usage my use sounds confused. Traditional business development used to proceed from start-up to cash-cow by growth and then refinement. More modern practice is to use the cash-cow phase as a seed bed for new start-up's, like you're suggesting. When you look at almost any consistent measure for any business over time you see the organizational development phases and can recognize the dynamics associated with the structural progressions throughout its history. The same is true for constituent and encompassing systems. Growth gives birth to things. That's its job. Whatever it gives birth to, growth always gives up its own structure in doing so. That's an absolute (assuming a relatively agreeable understanding of the terms of course...). Regards, Phil -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060610/5e671fd0/attachment-0001.html |
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