ᛕᎥᕼᗷᗴᖇᑎᗴ丅Ꭵᑕᔕ @Kihbernetics@qoto.org

#HvFoerster on the origins of #computational_neuroscience

>For reasons that still baffle me, it was the pragmatic American engineers and scientists, not the romantic Europeans, who began to toss anthropomorphic sand into the gear box of evolving notions and ideas. To name two such cases, the computer people began to talk about a machine's storage system as if it were a computer's #memory, and the communication engineers began to talk about signals as if they were #information.

>Perhaps these were the precursors for the second derailment which, ironically, was the inverse of the first. lt worked as follows. The first phase was #anthropomorphization: mental functions projected into machines. However, we knew how these machines worked because we built them and wrote the programs. Consequently, an appropriate "#mechanomorphization," the concepts dealing with computer hard- and software were projected back into the workings of the brain and, presto!, we knew how the #mind worked.

*Heinz Von Foerster
*To know and to let know - an applied theory of knowledge*
Canadian Library Journal, Vol. 39, No. 5, October l982.*

Some pretty obvious and standard things are described here as novelties:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/re-wilding-leadership-seven-threads-rich-watkins?trk=news-guest_share-article

Basically:

1️⃣ #Leaders exist because they have #Followers,
2️⃣ Leaders are here to provide #Guidance within the #Regulation and #Control "hierarchy"
3️⃣ All #Measurement is personal and beneficial only to the measurer
4️⃣ The "hated" #Matrix organizations are connecting silos
5️⃣ Removing what is #NOT determines what IS #Possibile (the cone of possibilities)
6️⃣ Groups of people will form #Living systems that cannot be engineered but can only be maintained as a "garden"
7️⃣ #Negative feedback is the only useful #feedback. A "pat on the back" never helped anyone. 😀

Also, this is all set backward:

> How can we ensure there are useful leadership Artefacts (tools, processes) and leadership Heuristics (rules of thumb, ways of doing things) - as well as Skills, Experiences and (of course) Natural talent.

I understand that as a consultant you have the "urge" to sell something tangible (a product) but you always have to start with the #People and their experience, skills, and natural talent, then identify the #Processes, what they do, and how are they connected (collaborate). Selecting the #Products (tools, SW, forms, space, facilities) that will support that is the last and the least important thing.

Btw, a process is not an #artifact (product). Only the "rule book" that describes the process is, and there is a huge difference between the two.

Another very interesting passage showing a deep understanding and appreciation of Pattee's work:

>This is how the two processes that necessitate symbolic description connect in Pattee’s theory: **the biological function of #measurement is to #control**. Living organisms are able to form many kinds of such measurement–control networks. The outcome of the measurement process may feed directly into the control network (as in tropisms). But, according to Pattee, for control to be displaced in space and time (e.g., delayed with respect to measurement), a symbolic coding must exist. **The two processes of measurement and control fulfill the difficult ‘‘cementing’’ role between the #symbolic and the #dynamic, the discrete and the continuous, the static and the time-dependent**. Even though the measurement process may be a dynamical one, its function, according to Pattee, cannot usefully be described by the same dynamics it is measuring. It is only in this sense that dynamics and symbols (the informational record of a measurement) are irreconcilable’’ or complementary

Not all #control in real #life requires an immediate response of the dynamical #system to what's happening in its environment.

>Constraining the behavior of a system in a functional way, i.e., control, can be exerted here and now—by the specific parameters of environments. Such is the case of tropisms: a plant turns in the direction of a light. However, in cases in which control is displaced in time, the functional ‘‘freezing’’ of some degrees of freedom has to be written somehow and somewhere (i.e., some form of memory must occur), and—if one wants to have a physical description of this memory process—according to Pattee, one has to employ an alternative sort of description in the form of time-independent constraints. This description is "symbolic’’ in the sense of consisting of timeless structures, having external significance, that—themselves—form a system, being non-arbitrarily linked together by certain rules. According to Pattee, the two kinds of description (symbolic code and physical laws) are incommensurate. Neither is reducible to the other.

J. Rączaszek-Leonardi building on #HH_Pattee's work on Reconciling #symbolic and #dynamic aspects of #language

https://www.academia.edu/899225/Reconciling_symbolic_and_dynamic_aspects_of_language_Toward_a_dynamic_psycholinguistics

A #hierarchy is an #emergent property of an otherwise "flat" #network composed of randomly connected elements.

>"The craze with all things #quantum is not just because of its inherent weirdness. It’s motivated by a #reductionist impulse that has been animating science from Robert Hooke in the 17th century to Stephen Hawking in the 21st."

https://iai.tv/articles/reality-is-not-revealed-by-quantum-mechanics-auid-2512

@jimdonegan

#Panpsychism is the #fallacy of equating mere physical #structures that abide ***inexorable, universal, and incorporeal*** natural #laws with #systems such as an observer that is also enforcing its ***particular, arbitrary, and local*** #rules that are the #emergent result caused by the interaction of its parts.

Any #measurement is an #experiment that entails #intention or selection of what is measured, and its comparison *against* some predefined #expectation depending on the current #knowledge state of the system.

There is no #information outside of a system. Information must be *created* by the observer system from external #data structures. Two observers will always create *different* information from the same set of data depending on the state they are in.

Read the pdf here if interested in this kind of stuff:

https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/08/10/disorder-order-discovery-or-invention-von-foerster-1984/

@Clarity

How do you define #existence?
Do the thoughts we obviously have in our heads exist even if no one else can attest to that?

#H_v_Foerster defines #complexity as
>"the number of #cycles it takes to compute the arrangement from the description".

When the description is much shorter than the arrangement it describes, we have #order, and when the length of the description is the same as that of the arrangement we have #disorder.

>"If the length of the description approximates the length of the arrangement, it is clear that *we do not understand this arrangement*."

😀

I see more and more individuals doing "organizational change in complex systems" frowning on the mention of "best practices", documentation, and planning, because:

> "in an increasingly interconnected world where technology, information, and customer expectations evolve at an accelerating rate, insights from past performance quickly become irrelevant in many scenarios"

https://medium.com/topology-insight/best-practices-are-useless-in-complex-systems-f7797a12071

All such "modern approaches" to dealing with *complex systems* forget that the *insight from past performances* is the **only** thing we can actually rely on while preparing for the uncertain future.

They also forget that organizations normally work, not in any one of the *clear, complicated, complex, and chaotic domains* at any point in time, but they are rather *in and out of all of those situations all the time*, and different parts of the same organization can also be in different situations at the same time.

Best practices are also not "silver bullets" as they would like you to believe. Best practices are the default (only possible) response the system can produce to par the current situation because it depends primarily on the #knowledge_state the system is currently in.

Having *diverse perspectives*, allowing time for *experimentation*, and maintaining short and direct *learning loops* are not some new and "improved" methods the organization should start adopting when things get complicated or complex, but should be rather part of the (documented and planned) very ***best practices*** an organization adopts as the *normal way of doing business*.

>"It’s not just Love Island: “fake British accent” videos have over 188,000 views on TikTok, where young people say they use the voice whenever they feel uncomfortable."

Maybe a way of unconsciously adopting a "Keep Calm and Carry On" perspective in unexpected circumstances?

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-are-so-many-young-americans-adopting-fake-british-accents

>"If time didn’t have a direction, it seems to me that would make time into just another spatial dimension, and if all we’ve got are spatial dimensions, then it seems to me nothing’s happening in the universe."

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-defense-of-the-reality-of-time

The use of the terms #transformer and #transducer seems somehow different in #AI than in other #engineering disciplines.

In engineering a "transformation" means altering the #form of the same #substance and "transduction" is used when the form is "produced" in another (different) substance.

For example, a #transformer will change (reduce or increase) the voltage "pressure" of an AC current source while a #transducer such as a microphone will change an **acoustic** pressure (wave) to an **electric** signal.

https://www.assemblyai.com/blog/an-overview-of-transducer-models-for-asr/

#Hallucination is defined as "an #experience involving the apparent #perception of something not present". Consequently, it requires a #sensory apparatus.

Because an #LLM does not have the ability to experience its surroundings except through user-provided prompts, an erroneous statement generated by the model should be called a (computational) #mistake, not a hallucination.

It cannot be a #lie because there is no #intention involved in the generation of the statement.

>All received cellular information must be analyzed to be deployed as cellular problem-solving to maintain homeorhetic equipoise. However, the effective implementation of information is definitively a function of orderly information management. Consequently, effective cellular problem-solving is information processing and management.

Cellular information is not *received* and *processed* or *implemented*, it is *created* and *used* by the cell to regulate its internal autopoietic (growth) processes. Cells don't *solve problems* and I don't know what the *function of orderly information management* stands for.

I had to look for the meaning of *homeorhetic equipoise* and it turns out that *homeorhesis* stands for *steady flow* and *equipoise* stands for *balance*. So why just not use those words?

Revised central dogma? This sounds more like a bunch of BS written by a chatGPT.

https://comdig.unam.mx/2023/06/06/a-revised-central-dogma-for-the-21st-centuryall-biology-is-cognitive-information-processing/

>The Cambridge Dictionary reports that #charisma is “a special power that some people have naturally,” but this association with individual influence is criticized as just another tedious expression of the **Great Man Theory** and overlooks much interconnected complexity. In her book, “Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leaders,” Erica Edwards argued that this view has “privileged charismatic leaders, from Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King Jr., over the arduous, undocumented efforts of ordinary women, men and children to remake their social reality.” This uncritical faith in charisma as a motor of history, she wrote, “ignores its limits as a model for social movements while showing us just how powerful a narrative force it is.”

https://www.noemamag.com/the-secret-history-and-strange-future-of-charisma/

#Democritus (Greek: Δημόκριτος, Dēmókritos, meaning *chosen of the people*) claimed that everything starts from *atoms*, in a *bottom-up* #causation.

#Democracy (Greek: δημοκρατία, dēmokratiā, from dēmos 'people' and kratos 'rule') can be described as #emergent *top-down* #control mechanisms based on the free association and decision of autonomous individuals.

All #causation is *bottom-up* or from the *inside-out*. There is no such thing as *top-down causation* imposed from the outside. There is only an emergent (internal) level of constraints and other control mechanisms generated by the interaction of individuals fulfilling a common need or objective.

>"If we teach only the findings and products of #science ... without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from #pseudoscience? Both then are presented as unsupported assertion."

>"Science is far from a perfect instrument of #knowledge. It’s just the best we have. In this respect, it’s like #democracy. Science by itself cannot advocate courses of human #action, but it can certainly illuminate the possible #consequences of #alternative courses of action."

>"Every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition."

From #Carl_Sagan's *Baloney Detection Kit - Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking*

https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-kit-carl-sagan/

@Pat
I believe that is just a #record of an interaction between two (or more) physical #structures.

Memory requires an entire physical #system able to preserve the #information contained in this record from one moment in time to another until it is retrieved (by the system) and used for something else.

According to #HvFoerster, the "integrated functional circuit" for #Cognition requires three things:

1⃣ #Perception
2⃣ #Memory, and
3⃣ #Prediction

Prediction is essential for drawing (memory-based) #inferences

>" without which perception degenerates into #sensation and memory into #recording".

See pp 105-106 in the quite interesting collection of his thoughts *Understanding Understanding*

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/b97451