ᛕᎥᕼᗷᗴᖇᑎᗴ丅Ꭵᑕᔕ @Kihbernetics@qoto.org

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

“The paradox Kant had linked to teleology (or to internal purposive forms or natural purposes) is related to the fact that a purposive system has to move or develop towards a purpose before that purpose is present, apparently even before a purpose can be conceived of. A genuine purposive system does not only possess a representation of the purpose towards which it is moving, but it also has to construct that representation itself.”

#cybernetics #teleology #purpose #purposivesystems #constructivism

Gertrudis Vijver - New Perspectives on Cybernetics - Self-Organization, Autonomy and Connectionism

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-015-8062-5

#Determinism and #FreeWill

<According to the Santiago theory, the behavior of a living organism is determined. However, rather than being determined by outside forces, it is determined by the organism’s own structure – a structure formed by a succession of autonomous
structural changes. Thus, the behavior of the living organism is both “determined” and “free.”>

Fritjof Capra - The Organization of the Living: Maturana’s Key Insights

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

"The #authority relation of the #hierarchy is often popularly expressed by referring to #DNA as the "#MasterMolecule" of life, but here again we must emphasize that there is no intrinsic chemical property of DNA that allows it to hold this office. It is the integrated collection of "ordinary" molecules we call the cell that endows DNA with this authority. We should not expect that a more detailed study of DNA, enzymes, and hormones would reveal other than ordinary molecules anymore than we would expect that a detailed study of presidents would reveal other than ordinary men."

#HHPattee
"#HierarchyTheory: The challenge of complex systems" - Published back in 1973, but many people still struggle to understand it.

It affects everything, from the #OriginofLife to #Democracy, #Control, #FreeWill ...
This matter is so fundamental that it should be taught in schools as part of a standard high school curriculum, along with physics, chemistry, and biology.

https://www.academia.edu/863851/Hierarchy_theory_The_challenge_of_complex_systems

The real problem is #humans, not #AI.

"People are often irrational and behave in ways that contradict their values, and values can change over individual lifetimes and generations. After all, it’s not clear whose values we should have machines try to learn."

https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-does-it-mean-to-align-ai-with-human-values-20221213

#Anticipation IS #Computation.

The #Model used by a computing #System to anticipate the #State of affairs in its #Environment depends heavily upon the #Knowledge state of the anticipatory system.

Knowledge is the #Integral result of the system's #History of all previous computations. The same system will anticipate different outcomes depending on its current knowledge state

An anticipatory system does not need to be a #purposeful system.

#Purpose and Anticipation are only necessary for #Control.

There is no anticipation in #Evolution.

Apart from that, a very interesting article:

https://www.academia.edu/5729941/Anticipation_and_dynamics_Rosens_anticipation_in_the_perspective_of_time?email_work_card=view-paper

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.

"Silicon Valley’s culture of “move fast and break things” meant business leaders were less concerned with reliability and more focused on game-changing discoveries."

Why it always has to be "Either-Or"? What happened with "And"?

#ChangeManagement #sixsigma
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/whatever-happened-to-six-sigma

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

"#Causal #analysis goes one step further than standard #statistical analysis; its aim is to infer not only beliefs or probabilities under #static conditions but also the #dynamics of beliefs under changing conditions, for example, changes induced by treatments or external interventions."

"There is nothing in the joint distribution of symptoms and diseases to tell us that curing the former would or would not cure the latter."

J. Pearl - Causal inference in statistics

Statistics Surveys Vol. 3 (2009)
p. 99

https://ftp.cs.ucla.edu/pub/stat_ser/r350.pdf

"#Correlation does not imply causation, but #causation implies a specific pattern of correlations, and that must count for something."

"Testing a #hypothesis is actually not so much about trying to confirm it, but about trying to falsify it."

http://www.the100.ci/2022/11/18/causal-inference-hypothesis-testing-all-at-once/

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

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

It's interesting that Ashby never uses the phrase "control system" in the book. For him, it seems, the #observer is also the (potential) #controller.

Complexity is in the eye of the beholder (observer)

Ashby: "In this book I use the words “very large” to imply that some definite #observer en, with definite resources and techniques, and that the system (is in) some practical way, too large for him; so that he cannot observe completely, or control it completely, or carry out the calculations for prediction completely. In other words, he says the system (is) “very large” if in some way it beats *him* by its richness and #complexity."

p.62

"#Cybernetics might, in fact, be defined as the study of systems that are open to #energy but closed to #information and
control—systems that are “information-tight”."

W. Ross Ashby (1956): An Introduction to Cybernetics, (Chapman & Hall, London): now available electronically.

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html