ᛕᎥᕼᗷᗴᖇᑎᗴ丅Ꭵᑕᔕ @Kihbernetics@qoto.org

In #Kihbernetics we distinguish between three control functions (levels):
1️⃣ #Regulation the purpose of which is maintaining the system's #homeostasis,
2️⃣ #Control for finding an optimal path (and way of utilizing the regulators) to fulfill a given #goal, and
3️⃣ #Guidance (governance) providing direction.

According to #WRAshby, #Regulation is blocking the flow of #Variety from the (environmental) #Disturbance to the (internal, #System protected) #EssentialVariable. There are two primary forms of blocking the effect of the disturbance on the system:
1️⃣ Passive (by sheltering from), and
2️⃣ Active (on par with)
From:
W. Ross Ashby (1956) - An Introduction to Cybernetics, (Chapman & Hall, London) - available electronically from:
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html

Systems thinkers use a number of different terms for the three basic concepts in the "system's triad" so that we have a "real system" as opposed to the "conceptual system" which is sometimes also called the "mental model" which is again different from the (real) descriptive or simulation model. In #Kihbernetics we make the distinction between #Machine, #System and #Model unambiguous following the rules specified in the works of #WRAshby and #HRMaturana

Ashby warns us against our first impulse to point at the pendulum and say 'the system is that thing there' because this has a fundamental disadvantage in that "every material object contains no less than an infinity of variables" from which "different observers (with different aims) may reasonably make an infinity of different selections."

Therefore, there must first be given an #observer, and a #system is then defined as "any set of variables selected by that observer from those available on the real ‘machine‘".

#HRMaturana defines a #system, as "a #configuration of #relations that an #observer abstracts in the flow of #interactions and #transformations of a #collection of #elements distinguished in the observers daily living" that is "spontaneously or artificially #conserved" in its #dynamic within some "#domain of concern" of the observer.

So, in Kihbernetics, the triad looks like this:

Reading this recent (2022) article from Fritjof Capra:
The organization of the living:
Maturana’s key insights
included in the latest Constructivist Foundations volume 18(1): 005–011

https://constructivist.info/18/1/005

and I am continually bewildered by the fact that no one in the #Constructivist field figured out yet that #Autopoiesis, although necessary, is not the sufficient condition for #Life.

All #LivingSystems are in fact #DynamicalSystems with memory made of #Material, #Energy, and #Information structures participating continually in both auto- and allopoietic processes.

In fact, the recursive, #Autopoietic processes of learning and growth depend only on (are "structurally coupled" with) the linear #Allopoietic work processes dealing with all the things (resources, waste) in the system's environment and producing the externally observable #behavior of the living (dynamical) system.

The (Newtonian) #Physics or #ClassicalMechanics of #ChangeManagement according to the #kihbernetic worldview:

The #Force required to put the change in motion is proportional to its #Mass or how large the change is; because the bigger the change the more #Friction it creates. The #Gravity, or how immediate the necessity to change is, will also increase the friction of the #ResistanceToChange.

However, once the change is put in motion, the #Acceleration produced by the mass's #Inertia will start "pulling" the change by itself and only minimal force will need to be applied to #Control that the change is moving in the right direction and/or with the right speed of change.

Another reason (among many) why I became disenchanted with #Cybernetics and had to “invent” #Kihbernetics.

Warren Sturgis McCulloch, the co-inventor of the first computational model of a #Neuron that was the precursor for #AI and #DeepNeuralNetworks, uses a racial slur to incorrectly suggest that Cybernetics is somehow the result of the “interbreeding” between the Natural and the Artificial in the preface he wrote for Gordon Pask’s book:

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/3965798-an-approach-to-cybernetics

Back in the days (early 2000s) I tried to "sell" to a well-known aerospace company this "three-legged stool" approach of stable continuous organizational #changemanagement, where #sixsigma stands just as one of the many different tools one can choose from in dealing with the different #products of the organization, along with tools and methods more appropriate to deal with the other two aspects of the organization #people and #process.
As one could have expected, those "black belts" on the other side of the table didn't like it 😀.
They went with a strategy where a version of six sigma was used as the "foundation" for all process improvement efforts and everything else was subordinated to it.

I've drawn the picture below as a reaction to the current inclination of prominent #ChangeManagement the(r)orists frowning at "military" style #CommandAndControl or #C2 organizational methods while promoting #FlatOrganizations without #MiddleManagement and with no need for #Planning (everything will change anyway), as a far better, more #Agile way of dealing with #Complexity.

This may be true if the organization is operating and struggling to survive on the left side of this "complexity plane", but if it wants to mature and "get somewhere in life" it better starts aiming for the other side by collecting, documenting and using "lessons learned", planning for and working towards wherever it wants to be in the future.

A momentous recent paper from the most consequential thinker on the matter of the #originoflife, #information, and #biosemiotics has only 124 views and I must be responsible for at least a dozen.

#HowardHPattee

"Folding is entirely a lawful physical process, leaving neither freedom nor necessity for interpretation. Similarly, the initial converse action-to-symbol conversion of sensory inputs also leaves no freedom for interpretation until after the action-to-symbol conversion"

https://www.academia.edu/66621846/Symbol_Grounding_Precedes_Interpretation_Commentary_to_the_target_article_by_Terrence_Deacon_2021

A #control #hierarchy is just the folded "#flow" of #information.

#Causation is #linear, while #control requres #recursive #feedback loops.

The 1, 2, 3, and 4 of #dynamical_systems:
1️⃣ one #system with a purpose
2️⃣ two #processes (linear work and recursive growth)
3️⃣ three #functions (selection, storage, and production)
4️⃣ four #variables (disturbance, difference, control, and output)