ᛕᎥᕼᗷᗴᖇᑎᗴ丅Ꭵᑕᔕ @Kihbernetics@qoto.org

>One of the main themes of the present book is the confrontation
between Norbert Wiener and John von Neumann, Wiener embodying the ideas of control, mastery, and design, von Neumann the ideas of complexity and self-organization. Cybernetics never succeeded in resolving the tension, indeed the contradiction, between these two perspectives; more specifically, it never managed to give a satisfactory answer to the problems involved in realizing its ambition of *designing* an autonomous, self-organizing machine.

>"The aim of cognitive science always was - and still is today- the mechanization of the mind, not the humanization of the machine."

*Jean-Pierre Dupuy*
***The Mechanization of the Mind:***
*On the Origins of Cognitive Science*
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/On_the_Origins_of_Cognitive_Science/gDoiEAAAQBAJ

Ashby's principle of requisite #variety states, in fact, that the variety of the #controlling system must be large at least as the variety of the #controlled system .

As an *external* #observer can never have the full picture of the *internal* variety of states the controlled system can find itself in, it is obvious that, for control to be #effective, the controller must be an integral part of the same self-organized (controlled) #system.

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.

>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**

Source:
Maturana H. R. & Guiloff G. D. (1980) The quest for the intelligence of intelligence. Journal of Social and Biological Structures 3(2): 135–148. https://cepa.info/555

A compelling approach to #Intelligence back from the 80's that does not rely upon #ProblemSolving or #GoalOrientedBehavior as do most of the contemporary doctrines of #AI and #AGI.

#HRMaturana #Autopoiesis #DynamicalSystems #Communication

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"