In my post today, I am looking further at the idea of variety in Cybernetics. Cybernetics, as Ross Ashby, put is interested in all of the possibilities of a phenomenon as in what all it can do, rather than what the phenomenon actually is. Here, the possibilities align with the number of possible states of the phenomenon. This would mean that Cybernetics is based on distinctions and these distinctions are based on an observer. Stafford Beer explained variety as the measure of complexity of a situation or phenomenon. The more distinctions an observer can make, the higher the perceived complexity. In order to manage a complex situation, the observer has to be able to come up with enough variety to match the variety of the situation. This is also known as Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety (LRV), a key principle in Cybernetics. LRV simply put states that