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.
Korzybski's famous remark that "the #map is not the #territory" because people regularly confuse conceptual models of #reality with reality itself, and its derivatives such as "all models are wrong" originates from regarding the #model as a #blueprint or picture ***describing*** that reality.
The #model is instead a #recipe (instruction) or a #tool for helping us navigate the terrain, what Maturana would call a #GenerativeMechanism with which each one of us is able to create our own image of reality depending on what we "want" from the terrain we are navigating through.
#Problem Dissolution, #RAckoff
"A #PhilosophicalSolution of a problem proceeds by showing that the troublesome questions rest on #MistakenAssumptions."
#BRundle (2004) - "Why there is Something rather than Nothing"
>As business struggles to adapt to a rapidly changing world, managers are bombarded with a bewildering array of schemes for how to be a boss and make an organization tick. It’s tempting to be seduced by *futurist fantasies where every company has the culture of a startup, and where employees in wacky, whimsical office settings, liberated from hierarchies* and bosses that oppress them, are the foundation for breakthrough performance.
>
>***“Get real,”*** warn Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein. These fads ironically lead to micromanaging and, often, to disaster. Companies and societies, they show, need authority and hierarchy to coordinate work, including creative work. And, *counterintuitively, Foss and Klein illustrate how the creative use of authority and hierarchy helps companies to be more agile and flexible*, enabling educated, motivated people and teams to thrive.
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Why_Managers_Matter/e6ddEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
"The Turing test is not a good test for testing the supposed "intelligence" of an artificial system. This is well known in the Artificial Intelligence scientific community (I analyze this issue in my book “Cognitive Design for Artificial Minds”, Routledge, 2021). Trivially, one of the problems of the test concerns the fact that it is entirely "behavioral": that is, it looks only at the final behavior (the output) of a system without analyzing what are the mechanisms that led to that output."
Translated with: "Simple Translate" Extension for Firefox:
https://simple-translate.sienori.com/
#Life is a necessary condition and comes before #Intelligence which is in turn necessary for the acquisition of #Language:
>Language use is an aspect of human collective behaviour, and it only makes sense in the wider context of the human social activity of which it forms a part (*Wittgenstein, 1953*). A human infant is born into a community of language users with which it shares a world, and it acquires language by interacting with this community and with the world it shares with them.
Trying to "reverse engineer" intelligence from LLMs seems like a futile endeavor. Instead of #AI, it may be more useful to redirect efforts to building #ArtificialLife (#AL)
When we say that
>we are asking the model to remind us of the lyrics of a well-known nursery rhyme, ... what we are really doing is asking it the following question:
>>Given the statistical distribution of words in the public corpus, what words are most likely to follow the sequence “Twinkle twinkle ”?
To which an accurate answer is “little star” 😀
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
“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
<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
"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:
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
#Kihbernetics is the study of #Complex #Dynamical #Systems with #Memory which is very different from all other #SystemsThinking approaches. Kihbernetic theory and principles are derived primarily from these three sources:
1️⃣ #CE_Shannon's theory of #Information and his description of a #Transducer,
2️⃣ #WR_Ashby's #Cybernetics and his concept of #Transformation, and
3️⃣ #HR_Maturana's theory of #Autopoiesis and the resulting #Constructivism
Although applicable to any dynamical system with memory (mechanisms, organisms, or organizations) we developed our Kihbernetic worldview mostly to help people navigate their #organization through times of #change.
We define* an organization as:
"An integrated composite of people, products, and processes that provide a capability to satisfy a stated need or objective."
*Definition of the word "system" in MIL_STD_499B
#People are at the forefront of our thinking (the #who and #why are we doing this for and/or with?).
We then focus our efforts on understanding all the functions or #Processes in your organization (#how and #when something happens or has to happen?).
Finally, we get to analyze the #Products and/or services that you put on the market but are mostly interested in the tools that you use or may need to buy or develop in order to fully integrate your production system (the plan for #what and #where things will happen?).
Our goal is to make the people of your organization self-reliant to the point that they shouldn't need our assistance with the continuous maintenance and adaptation of the system.
In any case, we've got your back while you do the heavy lifting of establishing a better future for your organization!