2020-02-10
February 10 (the second Monday of the month) is the 76th meeting for Systems Thinking Ontario. The registration is on Eventbrite at https://ontology-of-becoming.eventbrite.com.Systems Thinking and an Ontology of Becoming
What are the systems changes in which we’re interested? Answering the question of “what is” generally involves ontology, the physical study of being. Human beings are living systems who anticipate (and are sometimes surprised by) a world that is becoming less or more to their preferences.This February session of Systems Thinking Ontario will take advantage of lecture materials prepared as introductory for the “Systemic Design” classes of the Master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation. As an alternative to a presentation (i.e. the first 35 slides delivered within timebox constraints, given the graduate students have other content to learn, towards course and degree requirements), we will have a leisurely conversation paced to the interests of regular Systems Thinking Ontario attendees. (We will start on slide 36, and move forward collectively).
This agenda is guided by partially based on directions discussed at the January 2020 meeting. If the February meeting goes well, we may continue with a series of topics following the Systemic Design course material.
Venue:
OCADU, sLab (Strategic Innovation Lab), 205 Richmond Street West, Room 410
Suggested pre-reading:
The blog post following the SFI class includes slides, audio recordings and web video of the lecture (i.e. the first 35 slides). These are not a pre-requisite for attending, but are highly recommended.“Are Systems Changes Different from System + Change?” | January 23, 2020 at http://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/are-systems-changes-different-from-system-change/
Agenda
Recent Updates
John Von Neuman: Complexity – From Representation to Performativity
In his Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata John Von Neuman one of the father’s of the modern computer tells us:
there is … this completely decisive property of complexity, that there exists a critical size below which the process of synthesis is degenerative, but above which the phenomenon of synthesis, if properly arranged, can become explosive, in other words, where syntheses of automata can proceed in such a manner that each automaton will produce other automata which are more complex and of higher potentialities than itself.1
This notion that complex systems can at certain thresholds begin to degenerate, but that at other boundary lines suddenly shift into gear and begin to create more complex systems with greater potential and adaptive capabilities is now a cornerstone of certain forms of computing. It’s upon this very principle of complexification that many of the popularizers of a singularity and AI theoretic base their claims.
One…
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Is the System Badly Named? Noise as the Paradoxical (Non-)foundation of Social Systems Theory Justine Grønbæk Pors (2015)
Cybernetics and Human Knowing. Vol. 22 (2015), no. 4, pp. 75-89
Is the System Badly Named? Noise as the Paradoxical (Non-)foundation
of Social Systems Theory Justine Grønbæk Pors
Through an analysis of the concept of noise, this paper argues that Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory is not only a theory built on binary oppositions such as system/environment, but also a theory full of paradoxical third things that challenges any idea of systems as stable, systematic entities. To revitalise the concept of noise I trace the concept back to the sources that Luhmann draws on, namely Heinz von Foerster and Henri Atlan. Moreover, I introduce Michel Serres’s theory of noise to emphasis that noise is not just an outside to orderly systems, but the unstable ground of always changing orders. Through this synthesis I conclude that systems should not be understood as predictable entities or identities with pre-given boundaries, but rather as autopoietic processes driven by indeterminacy and paradoxes.
Keywords: Niklas Luhmann, noise, Henri Atlan, Michel Serres, social systems theory
http://www.chkjournal.com/sites/default/files/Article_75-89_0.pdf
What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain (1959) – IEEE Journals & Magazine – Lettvin, Maturana, McCulloch, Pitts
What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain
Publisher: IEEEAuthor(s)
J. Y. Lettvin ; H. R. Maturana ; W. S. McCulloch ; W. H. PittsAbstract:
In this paper, we analyze the activity of single fibers in the optic nerve of a frog. Our method is to find what sort of stimulus causes the largest activity in one nerve fiber and then what is the exciting aspect of that stimulus such that variations in everything else cause little change in the response. It has been known for the past 20 years that each fiber is connected not to a few rods and cones in the retina but to very many over a fair area. Our results show that for the most part within that area, it is not the light intensity itself but rather the pattern of local variation of intensity that is the exciting factor. There are four types of fibers, each type concerned with a different sort of pattern. Each type is uniformly distributed over the whole retina of the frog. Thus, there are four distinct parallel distributed channels whereby the frog’s eye informs his brain about the visual image in terms of local pattern independent of average illumination. We describe the patterns and show the functional and anatomical separation of the channels. This work has been done on the frog, and our interpretation applies only to the frog.
Published in: Proceedings of the IRE ( Volume: 47 , Issue: 11 , Nov. 1959 )
Page(s): 1940 – 1951
Date of Publication: Nov. 1959
ISSN Information:
DOI: 10.1109/JRPROC.1959.287207
Publisher: IEEE
via What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain – IEEE Journals & Magazine
pdf https://hearingbrain.org/docs/letvin_ieee_1959.pdf
pdf reprinted from: “The Mind: Biological Approaches to its Functions”
Editors: William C. Corning, Martin Balaban, 1968, pp 233-258.
CHAPTER 7 https://neuromajor.ucr.edu/courses/WhatTheFrogsEyeTellsTheFrogsBrain.pdf
and
In a Frog’s Eye
A poet at heart, Jerome Lettvin changed our understanding of visual perception.
by Conor Myhrvold
Jan 2, 2013
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/508376/in-a-frogs-eye/
The Past-Future of Cybernetics: Conversations, Von Foerster, and the BCL Paul Pangaro (2003)
(pdf) https://www.pangaro.com/Past-Future-of-Cybernetics-von-Foerster-BCL.pdf
On Self-Organizing Systems and Their Environments by Heinz von Förster (Complete Article) (1959)
Full pdf: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2384/d37ee804cfed6b56cc286d407ffec3bcc3b3.pdf?_ga=2.225389854.548608583.1579960117-2042921225.1568038417
via: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1-On-Self-Organizing-Systems-and-Their-Environments-H../2384d37ee804cfed6b56cc286d407ffec3bcc3b3
Full article in html:
ON SELF-ORGANIZING SYSTEMS AND THEIR ENVIRONMENTS
Heinz von Förster
May 5, 1959 Click here to see all 3 quotes from this document.
An adaptation of an address given at The Interdisciplinary Symposium on Self-Organizing Systems in Chicago, Illinois, originally published in Self-Organizing Systems. M.C. Yovits and S. Cameron (eds.), Pergamon Press, London, pp. 31–50 (1960).
via “On Self-Organizing Systems and Their Environments” by Heinz von Förster (Complete Article)
also:
self-organizationin cybernetics (wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization_in_cybernetics
Self-organizing Systems – Wolfgang Banzhaf Published in Encyclopedia of Complexity, 2009: http://www.cs.mun.ca/~banzhaf/papers/sos.pdf
blog – Heinz von Foerster: Self-Organization as the reduction of entropy in a System (2015) https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/heinz-von-foerster-self-organization-as-the-reduction-of-entropy-in-a-system/
Ignorance, a skilled practice – Carcinisation
Carcinisation
One of nature’s many attempts to evolve a crab.
Ignorance, a skilled practice
Containment protocol: None. Words can’t hurt you. Words aren’t real. Philosophical ideas don’t affect reality. You won’t notice any changes after reading this. You won’t find yourself, in conversation and in your own thoughts, ceasing to reach for institutionally certified sources of aggregate information of universal applicability. You won’t find yourself reaching instead for personal anecdotes or any tangentially-related connection to your own experience. You won’t gradually cease to expect that positive knowledge exists for new questions you encounter. You won’t notice the words squirming beneath your feet with their sense gelatinized, like cobblestones turned to jellyfish. “Hermeneutic” doesn’t count.Description: “Ignorance, A Skilled Practice” is a guest blog post written by a literal banana. The banana’s tiny cartoon arms barely span the keyboard, and as a result the banana is only able to press one key at a time with each hand or foot. The blog post is offered here as an example of what bananas can accomplish when given proper access to technology.
Since Harry Frankfurt’s essay taking a rather negative view of bullshit as a category (“On Bullshit,” 1986), some philosophers have attempted to redeem “bullshit” from its negative connotations (see, e.g., Joshua Wakeham, “Bullshit as a Problem of Social Epistemology,” 2017).
What follows is my attempt to articulate the subset of bullshit that I think is bad, because I think most bullshit is good. The skillful practice of ignorance cannot be reduced to the avoidance of bullshit. It would be self-defeating to deprive oneself of bullshit completely, for bullshit is the air we breathe, and we could not learn or accomplish anything without it. Here I try to bring to salience a particular quality of a particular kind of knowledge, such that in recognizing it, much harmful bullshit can be appropriately classified, and a state of skillful ignorance can be maintained.
Continues in source Ignorance, a skilled practice – Carcinisation
