antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:01 pm on December 20, 2021

Requisite Variety with BEER – YouTube

A little know concept, Requisite Variety, from Cybernetics packs a lot of punch as one of the most important laws of the Universe. It is a very powerful thinking tool, that you should be familiar with. This video guarantees that you will start observing how the world around you is shaped by Requisite Variety. When that happens, you will be on your way of thinking like a Cybernetician. SHOW LESS
Requisite Variety with BEER – YouTube

facilitationguru 12:23 pm on December 21, 2021

Very poor explanation of the so called “Law of the Requisite Variety”. Correctly it’s stated that Self-regulating processes naturally acquire attributes which are self-regulating. Dynamical, living systems control themselves: organic organisms organize organs organically.

Then in the video, the law of RV is being applied in all kinds of “control” situations, using artificial attributes – like the stick of the ape and the space ship in 2001. Only then one has to organize organisations (management) to organize organisations. Management needs an organisation to organize and not the other way around: organizations don’t need management to organize themselves. Your organs are proof of this. You’re not managing them.

When one reduces variety, like when one structures a situation and applies human laws, one can longer “absorb” natural variety. Control cannot absorb enough variety, as it tries to control variety. It would be a kind of Von Münchhausen achievement. And therefore control begets chaos.

This is why complexity can be associated with entropy: in every process entropy is being produced. The more one tries to reduce entropy – by using power -, the more entropy is being produced. That’s how this natural law works. In every natural process, variety is being produced. Variety is the mother of variety. (And the father, the pater or pattern, emerges through structural coupling. One doesn’t need a (god) creator).

So imposing rules on systems to control it (= reducing variety) leads to more complexity, requiring more laws to be imposed. And more force to enforce these. This is why we see more and more “police” and law “enforcement”. And more riots, requiring enforcement … It’s how the law of RV works.

Only complexity can absorb complexity. Nature is “out of control”.

When one tries to “obtain control”, the self-regulation doesn’t break down. It doesn’t resist “control” or backfires. It just uses it to to speed up itself. More laws and laws about laws and judges about judges and policing police, is what Variety requires. That’s how legislation to reduces chaos leads to more riots.

One can try to enforce our rules using more and more complex control mechanism, even in the name of “requisite variety”, in the end, “chaos” will emerge. Look around: trying to control a virus leads to chaos in society. What will happen when one tries to control a society, nations, a climate?

Like a map is not the territory, the statement of a law (‘only complexity can absorb complexity’, or the variety of a regulator, … ) is not the way it works. It’s mentioned that the law is an abstraction, which it is, it’s a human law. All laws are human laws. There’s no “variety police”, requiring you to be different. You just are.

The structure of a map accounts for its usefulness: the structure of a law, accounts for its usefulness. The Law of the Requisite Variety rules because it is structured like nature: she cannot be controlled.

(Why do we think we can? Because of time: time separates events and prevents everything to happen at the same time. The “arrow of time” can be associated with entropy production and therefore with variety productions. As we can learn from cybernetics, systems can be described by feedback loops. These loops have different cycle times, so adapting (= absorbing) to chaos “takes time”).

Gut Yuketide.

PS: the Law of the Requisite Variety is the “ring to rule them all”.
- facilitationguru 12:25 pm on December 21, 2021
  
  When one reduces variety, like when one structures a situation and applies human laws, one can longer “absorb” natural variety.
  
  must be: When one reduces variety, like when one structures a situation and applies human laws, one can NO longer “absorb” natural variety.
The Hawk 2:19 am on December 23, 2021

Thank you. I agree with your reservations of Beer’s approach to requisite variety. His widely referenced definition of it seems steeped in the arrogance of humanism. Being artificial, it does not naturally translate into making the natural understandable. There is an openness in natural variety beyond the artificial that insist on lawful order while rejecting the human interpretation of legal order. Its like a human order versus a natural order. There is a difference in the meaning of control between the two.

My research into why we were incapable of avoiding climate change, done in the 1975-77, made use of the above distinction. I believe I was thinking consistently with your ideas. Maybe not?

Back then, I posed that legal order, and the deeply-seated human need for it, due to human limits in understanding, was an impediment. Via it, humans failed to appreciate (Vicker’s terminology) that nature is not susceptible to rules of the artificial about management of variety. This can be seen more clearly in the structure of industrialization via Aristotle, Babbage, et.al. Churchman joined the Vicker’s idea in his 1979 depiction of the non-rational and why it was 90% of the reality we didn’t comprehend.

My proposal back then was for a negotiated order that could emphasize self-regulation. As a more natural process it could help in the redesign of the industrial to avoid climate change consequences of human thinking. Then, Rapaport’s rethink of the cybernetic sense of Prisoner’s Dilemma, as needing to be non-strategic, was an enlightened doorway into a more natural understanding of variety.

Seems we missed that boat.
- facilitationguru 11:18 am on December 23, 2021
  Thank you too.
  
  Your ideas may be consistent with mine, however, my ideas are not consistent with me. As Gödel showed, a complete system (of thoughts) must be inconsistent. Any consistent system (of thoughts) is incomplete. So, also see Paul Watzlawick, Russell, Spencer-Brown, one needs to ground one’s thinking in paradoxes or (internal) incosistencies (I like the spelling error). So I agree with my ideas, but my ideas disagree with me.
  
  I’ve studied Biophysics in the mid ’70s at Leiden University. I then got the idea that this universe works inherently paradoxical. I “saw” how paradoxes and energies are equivalent and, as energy is conserve, so is paradox. The Law of the Requisite Variety states this paradox, so it’s useful. Only paradox absorbs paradox.
  
  This is not a problem, because, unlike problems, paradoxes cannot be solve. Trying to solve problems is also inherently paradoxical, as “not solving problems” doesn’t solve them either. Nature – metaphorically – knows no problems (challenges, goals, …). Or rather nature natures by resolving solutions. (As I said, the often ignored Darwinian observation: evolution works by applying solutions for problems the solutions were not intended for. Every innovation, I used to say, is the wrong solution for the right problem.)
  
  Now, “nature”, naturally, by her very nature, can only be complete and therefore inconsistent. Nature is “out of control”. (It’s called “climate or energy or CO2 crisis”). Life, in my view, just manifests this inconsistency (see).
  
  Like time dividing past from future, so life divides no-thing from nothing. Like from the song “always look at the bright sight of life”:
  # what have you got to lose?
  You know, you come from nothing
  
  you’re going back to nothing.
  
  What have you lost?
  Always. (Nothing) #
  The “Law of the Requisite Variety” says nothing. Naturing nature knows no variety, no good, no bad. Like we nowadays say, “she is what she is”. Nature requires no variety, she requires nothing. That’s why human beings where expelled from paradise (= naturing nature) – metaphorically – , because one knows to distinguish between good and bad. And one looks for excuses – the other – as one doesn’t own this. Leadership, in my vocabulary, means also being responsible for the unintentional (“bad”) consequence of my actions.
  
  Culture, as it’s being natured, must be consistent: one either belongs to one or not. This leads – see Smith and Berg, Paradoxes of Group Life – to the paradoxes of Belonging (identity, individuality, involvement and boundaries) in each and every (human) culture. Every current human “problem situation” offers examples: “gender / sex”, “democracy /autocracy”, “religion / science”, even “Corona/Covid and for instance freedom (individual vs collective)”. The latter I think is interesting, as people who claim individual freedom act as a collective tolerating no exceptions to their rule.
  
  As the structure of the model (map) accounts for its usefulness, as Korzibsky continues, the structure of language accounts for its usefulness. Because we use our language to structure our culture – do you belong to us? – you either in or out, good or bad, yes or no, … . One’s use of language acquired a command-and-control or linear structure. This proves to be inadequate.
  
  In Dutch, we use “behoren” for “belonging”, which has been derived from “horen” or to hear. So one can “hear” if one belongs or not. Also in England, I’ve noticed, people are separated by a common language. We’ve invented a “command- and-control” structure. We’re using language to unambiguously share meaning. This can be considered harmful. Language is a poor substitute for sharing meaning.
  
  Because we’re using a “rule based structured model” nature appears to be Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. because she doesn’t fit the model. Of-course (or rather, off course). Not because she is, but because of our model-espoused (yep, Chris Argyris) by language makes it appear so. Language, like any model, models reality according to the model. One sees, what one is modelling to see.
  
  Most people have been instructed (modelled) to think one thinks in language. What to believe, what to think is true. Using expulsion from us as a method. One has been told what to think. Not how one thinks; because one doesn’t need to be told. One’s body “knows how”. One thinks with one’s body. The brain is the organ with which we think we think. A body organically organizes her organs. This is why one needs to be told what to think over and over again (culture) and NOT to listen to one’s body (nature).
  
  Most people have been instructed to think one thinks in language. I don’t think so. One doesn’t even “think” in pictures, images, or “models” or maps. One uses one’s domain (aka environment) as map(s) or model(s). Thinking – in language – is just one aspect of the way one’s brain works. One uses one’s brain in perceiving and judging. One cannot think without perceiving (or making distinctions) and one cannot perceive without judging (or making distinctions about these distinctions). What you see is what you get, if you get me.
  
  Thinking in language is just a simple way of judging, by rules. The rules-of-thumb – heuristics – have been replaced by the rules-of-law – algorithms. The Law of RV suggest one should use both.
  
  The territory “is” the map, so to say, and thinking – perceiving and judging – uses the way one behaves through territories, uses territory as a map. Or, trying to be more accurate, mapping is thinking (perceiving and judging) and thinking is mapping. One is aware of the uses of one’s territory.
  
  One recognizes the variety of uses of things one thinks one sees. Like with different maps for different uses of the same territory – street view, satellite, public transport, weather, traffic, …. – one can “switch” maps based on what one requires from the situation. (Now, that was a clever way to use variety and requirement.) Thinking – perceiving and judging – requires varying uses of maps.
  
  The Law of the Requisite Variety can be restated: “U’s capacity to use maps (models, manage, …. regulate), cannot exceed U’s capacity as a mapmaker (model maker, … regulator)”. Only users can use uses. One fun fact: the name “Descartes” comes from “maps maker”. So actually “Cartesian thinking”, using a variety of maps, is the way one thinks. When in doubt, just use any map. “It’s thinking, Jim, but not as we know it”)
  
  I’m still working on a meta-model on modelling models (mapping maps) incorporating both maps-in-use and maps-espoused.
  
  —
  Thanks for (re)directing my attention on Tit-for-Tat. It’s the only feasible (non-)strategy. It also shows how written records actually have become the main source of our current predicaments. Learning new things requires learning to forget (or, forgive) ; to forgive and forget is more important than learning new things.
  
  Gut Yulitide
- The Hawk 1:54 pm on December 23, 2021
  
  Gut, you have too many insights for this world, or this site….ha..ha. Time for you to move on? I’m not used to reading what I agree with so much…its almost hurts. It gives me a false impression that there is still hope out there, somewhere….
  
  Final note on Beer. In 1975 he visited a Russell Ackoff class I was in. He was presenting his upcoming book “Platform for Change.” (Maybe his best book as it dumped on much that he had written before.) At the end of his class lecture, he was asked to explain his interpretation of requisite variety. It was messy, of course. He was trying to define that which was best left undefined, even unsaid, instead of ill-defined. His examples were unhelpful to we poor dumb students, that knew nothing. ha..ha.. I, in a spirit of meekness offered to help with a funny example: “Requisite Variety – is that why married couples need to have an abundance of boyfriends and girlfriends waiting on the side?” It was not appreciated. I then explained how it was consistent with those simply ideas in one of my favorite books: The Devils Dictionary. Therein Bierce defined love as “A temporary mental disorder cured by marriage.” That killed the class. That killed the class. Was I mean, as well as dumb…ha..ha. So much for variety that is required, but always in measurable limits of human rationality ideas of the time.
  
  Relative to maps and territories. Each summer my best friend, Gunnar Hedlund, and I would be flown deep into Lapland to spend two weeks trying to walk the 200 kilometers back to the rational, ugly, world. We soon learned to stop looking at maps which we had been told we were required to use. They said: “If you don’t know where you are, how can your way out?” We found “traveling” to be very simple, fun and natural without maps for life. This is why I can’t use GPS, in addition to GPS not having either of my two houses on it. ha..ha.. humans and their technologies. It only gets worse in the 4th dimension.
  
  I sometimes find dimensional existence to be helpful to explaining humans and what they are up to. My passion for much of my life has been understanding the forth dimension, as it gives a clearer sense of what is wrong in the third dimension, as well as why flatland, of the 2nd, is so funny, and human. The 1st dimension is restricted to work of politicians with the 0th being for their early education as lawyers. The rest is pointless. The elaboration on this view of restricting rationality to dimensions is in a forthcoming book “Short-term Gains, Long-term Pains: Climate Change, a Faustian Dilemma then Tragedy.” I’ve spent three months on changing its “preamble.” ha.ha
  
  In 1979 some fellow students published my dissertation: “Regulation of Environmental Deterioration.” It was republished forty years later as “Too Early, Too Late, Now what?” After a year Amazon put it into their humor section as nothing could be as bad as I implied by human creation of climate change. To clarify Amazon concern I then redid the first 90 pages and it will appear next year as “Humans are Fucked.” The new publisher of it, has softened the clarity with “Sorry, But Humans are Fucked: Climate Change from Human limitations.” Oh well it goes on, for a little while……
  
  I’m trying to get to the 5th dimension just now…ha.ha. Please keep up your work, I care.

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