ᛕᎥᕼᗷᗴᖇᑎᗴ丅Ꭵᑕᔕ @Kihbernetics@qoto.org

People often interpret *Ashby’s Law* (after W. Ross Ashby) as if the *system*'s internal states must have the ***same level of variety*** as its *environment* in order to survive, which implies that the system should be able to *respond* (react) to every little disturbance from the environment.

This is not completely true because, on the lowest, #regulation, level, the system blocks #variety from an (environmental) #disturbance reaching the (internal, system protected) #EssentialVariables in two ways:

1️⃣ #Passive isolation (sheltering) from most environmental disturbances, and

2️⃣ #Active reaction to (parring with) the remaining disturbance that managed to *break through* this passive protection.

from "Intro to #Cybernetics"
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html

Except for the fact that nothing in the content of the article explains the preposterous title of **Known Unknowables** (*if a thing is unknowable how can one know about it?*) the article is an excellent read about the evolution of #skepticism or what #Maturana calls ***Objectivity in Parentheses***.

https://aeon.co/essays/four-scepticisms-what-we-can-know-about-what-we-cant-know

Natural #Language evolves from #Thinking, not the other way around, so it is rather naive to expect #Artificial_Intelligence may somehow "spring out" from a #LLM, no matter how good they become at producing sophisticated and grammatically correct wordings.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/01/chatgpt-ai-language-human-computer-grammar-logic/672902/

Stages of #Learning according to #Kihbernetics:

4️⃣ #Unconscious Incompetence: I think that I know what I'm doing, but I don't;
3️⃣ Conscious #Incompetence: I know that I don’t know;
2️⃣ #Conscious Competence: I know that I know;
1️⃣ Unconscious #Competence: I am doing it without thinking.

@Harishjosev

I see #leadership as a forceful forging ahead creating a vortex or #vacuum of #opportunities to be "filled in", as opposed to #management that is all about applying #pressure on selected points to #support or move things forward.
I wrote a little bit about this difference inspired by a couple of *Gene Bellinger’s Mental Model Musings* on his *systems thinking archetypes*:
https://kihbernetics.org/?p=1071

>In a society dominated by commoditized relations and alienated values, the attempt to close science off from its relations with the values of its contexts makes a tortuous kind of sense. All the same, however, this undialectical and decontextualizing activity seems ultimately to betray an implicit allegiance to a now venerable religious, psychological, and philosophical tradition: THE QUEST FOR THE ABSOLUTE (as the early nineteenth century phrased it). Indeed, this particular characterization of *the impotent in pursuit of the impossible* may fittingly stand as an epitome of the Imaginary and even morbid quest of the academic discourse for what we might call the *System of Systems* — for the ultimate closed system where desires are facts and All is One. 😀

A truly remarkable thinker
**Anthony Wilden** - ***#System and #Structure***
*Essays in Communication and Exchange* - Second edition (1980)

A classic on #AL and #AI from #HHPattee written back in 1995 when polymer folding was still a *computationally intractable problem*😀.
Still, his thoughts are as powerful as ever.

"Artificial Life Needs a Real Epistemology"

https://www.academia.edu/3075569/Artificial_Life_Needs_a_Real_Epistemology

#HA_Simon's watchmaking parable about #Tempus (a lousy artisan) and #Hora (an industrial manufacturer) is missing the third watchmaker, #Aeon, that, after many years of trying, has found a way for the watches to build themselves.

Like #Tempus, #Aeon is also an #artisan because the watches are built from scratch using raw materials, rather than being assembled from prefabricated modular components.

Despite being blind, Aeon is a much better artisan, because these watches, besides (self)building themselves, are all in working order right from inception, and have the ability to preserve their best, *stable intermediate forms*.

The quest for new *"#limitless"* energy sources isn't (or shouldn't) be about *hoarding* and having more of something even if it is not needed.
It is about the #power to do ***more with less*** which is essential for both groups of people mentioned in this piece: the ones that depart on the #exploration of new worlds as well as the ones that remain to deal with the problems on this one.

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023-01-19/why-understanding-limits-is-the-key-to-humanitys-future/

>Furthermore, anthropologists report that many of the remaining hunter-gatherers are “fiercely egalitarian”, deploying humour to subdue the ego of anyone who gets out of line: “Yes, when a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors,” one Kalahari hunter told the anthropologist Richard B Lee in 1968. “We can’t accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle.”

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/12/humans-were-not-centre-stage-ancient-cave-art-painting-lascaux-chauvet-altamira

Hunter-gatherer, #DemandSharing societies, in which there is no reason to hoard more than one currently needs, are highly #individualistic as well as #egalitarian.

From:
*Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots* by **James Suzman**

@systemspractitioner

I understand many people are comfortable with VSM but I never used it and I find it cumbersome and complicated to understand. I worked with companies using #CMMI, #ISO, #6Sigma, #SCRUM, along with a few other standards and frameworks and, apart from my #DynamicalSystem model, which I use to explain practically everything these days 😀, I try not to have strong preferences for specific tools and frameworks and try to learn first how what the company is currently using and familiar with can be re-used, tweaked or augmented to achieve their goals for the future.

@systemspractitioner
Interesting question. I don't know what he would be thinking if still around today, but I hope he would be using a less "cybernetic" and more "organic" approach in which there is no one fixed hierarchy of "systems" imposed from above, but where "higher" levels are created spontaneously, as needed, by the interaction of the elements on the "lower" level to satisfy some of their emergent needs for more efficient communication and coordination.

@Inquiry @Harishjosev

I only recently found out about him while reading *Behavior and Culture in One Dimension* by DP Waters which largely expands upon HH Pattee's work. I really enjoy Pattee's clear-cut writing style and he is also one of the few people I have a hard time finding any flaw in their line of reasoning. For example, his distinction between Laws vs Rules fits perfectly with my own effort of trying to explain to my engineering friends the difference between developing a Product (Structure) and a System as they would regularly confuse the two. 😀

I don't know about the *disconnect between dyadic and triadic frames of reference* as you put it, but here is a doodle I made a few months ago while reading Pattee and Waters that you may find interesting:

@Inquiry @Harishjosev

Yes, another version of #CSPeirce's triad is #WRAshby's distinction between #Machine (object, observed phenomenon), #System (a finite set of variables and their relationships selected by the #Observer), and the #Model created by the observer to describe or/and #Control the machine.

However, I was speaking about the different phenomena (machines) and their *controllability*.
Mere #Physical (static or dynamic) #Structures driven by known (discoverable, invariant) #NaturalLaws as opposed to emergent #DynamicalSystems that are under the influence of arbitrary, local #Rules as explained by #HHPattee.

@Inquiry @Harishjosev

Physics and other "exact" sciences are "easy" as they deal with #Structures and the invariant, universal and inexorable #NaturalLaws that make them #controllable by inputs from the outside.

#Systems are different. Their main purpose is to enforce their own local set of temporary and arbitrary system #Rules which are not applied from the outside, as Laws are, but are rather the emergent result of the system's organization, history, and operation.

@Harishjosev

The problem with 2nd order #cybernetics, as I see it, is that the process of "observing how an observer is doing the observing" presumes that another (external, 2nd-order) observer has more to say and a better understanding of the original observing process than the (1st-order) observed observer itself that is actually ***doing*** the observation.

It seems to me like the tacit re-introduction of #behaviorism and *control* vs. *controlled*.

@systemspractitioner

Below is my impression of the #VSM. Too much "overhead"😀

I believe Beer himself recognized somewhere that of all the subsystems making the VSM, only System(s) "of the first kind" are truly viable systems (can survive on their own). All the other systems are just "coordinators" relying on the existence of System 1.