David Krakauer

I consider the many ways in which evolved information-flows are restricted and metabolic resources protected and hidden — the thesis of living phenomena as evolutionary cryptosystems. I present the information theory of secrecy systems and discuss mechanisms acquired by evolved lineages that encrypt sensitive heritable information with random keys. I explore the idea that complexity science is a cryptographic discipline as “frozen accidents”, or various forms of regularized randomness, historically encrypt adaptive dynamics.

Submission history

From: David Krakauer [view email] 
[v1] Thu, 7 May 2015 15:27:25 UTC (15 KB)

source:

[1505.01744v1] Cryptographic Nature

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor#Strange_attractor

Strange Attractor

Strange Attractor – an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

Inspired by a question in the Ecology of Systems Thinking facebook group from Helena Luisa Pms – https://www.facebook.com/groups/ecologyofsystemsthinking/permalink/3670574453021672/

And a response from Marc Rettig (his link at bottom), here are my recommended links for ‘evaluation’:

http://www.bobwilliams.co.nz/systems.html

And there’s a lot here, much of which leads to blogs and/or people with an ongoing consistent interest in evaluation (from ‘complexity’ – CECAN and Human. Learning. Systems., to international ‘development’, to ‘systems change’ – Tamarack Institute, SSIR etc) – I would say it’s worth opening each of these for a quick scan:
https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/11/20/human-learning-systems/
https://ssir.org/articles/category/measurement_evaluation
https://www.hpma.org.uk/2021/01/13/webinar-thoughts-on-system-leadership-wednesday-17th-march-at-10am/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/12/27/palladium-how-to-design-better-programmes-in-complex-systems-andrew-koleros-american-journal-of-evaluation-2018/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/11/08/system-thinker-notebook-james-shelley/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/11/05/qualitative-process-evaluation-from-a-complex-systems-perspective-a-systematic-review-and-framework-for-public-health-evaluators-mcgill-et-al-2020-and-another-take-on-systems-and-vs-comple/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/10/14/evaluation-in-a-systems-perspective-of-planning/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/10/09/cecan-webinar-capturing-social-dynamics-for-evaluation-trajectory-based-qualitative-comparative-analysis-11-november-2020-1300-1400-gmt-with-lasse-gerrits-and-sofia-pagliarin/
https://www.tamarackcommunity.ca/library/topic/evaluation
https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/09/16/inclusive-systemic-evaluation-for-gender-equality-environments-and-marginalized-voices-ise4gems-a-new-approach-for-the-sdg-era-un-women-headquarters/
https://www.tavinstitute.org/projects/systems-thinking-at-the-tavistock-institute-past-present-and-future/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/08/27/evaluating-system-change-a-planning-guide/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/08/14/we-cant-include-everything-and-everyone-so-what-to-do-on-boundaries-evaluation-uncertainty/
https://evaluationuncertainty.com/2020/07/29/looking-for-input-on-next-steps-what-do-research-and-theory-in-complexity-and-systems-tell-us-about-evaluation-practice-and-evaluation-theory/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/07/19/covid%e2%80%9019-how-a-pandemic-reveals-that-everything-is-connected-to-everything-else-sturmberg-2020-journal-of-evaluation-in-clinical-practice-wiley-online-library/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/06/16/developing-a-systems-perspective-for-the-evaluation-of-local-public-health-interventions-theory-methods-and-practice-nihr-school-for-public-health-research/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jep.12065

Notes on Principles-Focused / Developmental Evaluation What is it like to bring rigor to evaluation when working in complexity and uncertainty, with emergent approaches? Marc Rettig Following Oct 24, 2017 · 13 min read This is a place for me to gather and organize notes, which I’m making public in case it helps someone else. These notes (which will keep changing over coming months) are an input to a further process of synthesis.

Notes on Principles-Focused / Developmental Evaluation | by Marc Rettig | Rettig’s Notes | Medium

So many interesting ideas here, I’ve posted the whole blog entry – but I urge you to subscribe at the link below!

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Improvisation Blog: Ashby on Reconstructability

What do education, cybernetics, music, technology and philosophy have in common?

• Improvisation Blog

Friday, 22 January 2021

Ashby on Reconstructability

The following quotes are taken from the introduction by George Klir to Roger Conant’s “Mechanisms and Intelligence: Ashby’s writings on Cybernetics”, which can be downloaded here: http://www.rossashby.info/Ashby-Mechanisms_of_intelligence.pdf

The balance between the reduction of complexity to a model and nature itself was a key point for Ashby. Datafying things “throws away information”, as he puts it, but on the one hand, this is essential for science, whilst on the other hand, good science cannot lose sight of the ways in which a model might be used to reconstruct the complexity from which it is derived. 

In most data analytic work today, there is much reduction. And then it stops – and assumes that the reduction can be used to shape the reality – that is the mode of Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, etc. But reconstruction is essential, otherwise, how are we to know that it is these variables and not those that we should be attending to?

This also means that a “system” is not a thing-in-the-world, but rather an idea. As Ashby puts it, it is a “set of variables”:

“At this point we must be clear about how a ‘system’ is to be defined. Our first impulse is to point at the pendulum and to say ‘the system is that thing there.’ This method, however, has a fundamental disadvan­tage: every material object contains no less than an infinity of vari­ables and therefore of possible systems. The real pendulum, for in­stance has not only length and position; it has also mass, temperature, electric conductivity, crystalline structure, chemical impurities, some radio-activity, velocity, reflecting power, tensile strength, a surface of moisture, bacterial contamination, an optical absorption, elas­ticity, shape, specific gravity, and so on and on. Any suggestion that we should study ‘all’ the facts is unrealistic, and actually the attempt is never made. What is necessary is that we should pick out and study the facts that are relevant to some main interest that is already given. …The system now means, not a thing, but a list of variables.”

And then here is the problem of reconstructability: 

“systems models which have recently been developed in many different areas are almost invariably constructed from subsystems. While the subsystems, each associated with a subset of the set of variables of the overall system, are often well validated models of the phenomena involved, the question of the ability to reconstruct the overall system from the given subsystems is almost never raised. It seems that there has been a tendency among many systems modellers to take the reconstructability for granted. It is clear that without an analysis by which the reconstruction ability of systems model is determined, the model is likely to be fundamentally incorrect and might be vastly misleading.”

But I think this is the remarkable thing: the whole enterprise is not about “complexity”, but “simplicity”. Reflecting that the variety of the scientists will always be overwhelmed by the variety of nature, he suggests that the whole point of science is to find effective approaches to simplification:

“…system theory (is) the attempt to develop scientific principles to aid us in our struggles with dynamic systems with highly interacting parts, possibly exceeding 10^100 who faces problems and processes that go vastly beyond this size. What is he to do? At this point, it seems to me, he must make up his mind whether to accept this limit or not. If he does not, let him attack it and attempt to find a way of defeating it. If he does accept it, let him accept it wholeheartedly and con­sistently. My own opinion is that this limit is much less likely to yield than, say, the law of conservation of energy. The energy law is essentially empirical, and may vanish overnight, as the law of conserva­tion of mass did, but the restriction that prevents a man with resources of 10^100 from carrying out a process that genuinely calls for more than this quantity rests on our basic ways of thinking about cause and ef­fect, and is entirely independent of the particular material on which it shows itself. If this view is right, systems theory must become based on methods of simplification, and will be founded, essentially, on the science of simplification. …The systems theorist of the future, I suggest, must be an expert in how to simplify.”

source:

Improvisation Blog: Ashby on Reconstructability

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Ben Sweeting: Architectural roots of ecological crisis – Systemic Approach to Architectural Performance

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JANUARY 22, 2021 BY SYSTEMICAPPROACHTOARCHITECTURALPERFORMANCE Ben Sweeting: Architectural roots of ecological crisis

Ben Sweeting: Architectural roots of ecological crisis – Systemic Approach to Architectural Performance

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Welcome to the 2021 SCT Conference

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Systems-Centered Training  Annual Conference March 13-19, 2021  In a Different World: Dealing with Differences Differently SCTRI is presenting this online conference through its Training and Resource Center

Welcome to the 2021 SCT Conference

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The VSM Guide: Case Study 3 – One Mondragon Co-operative

Case Study 3:

ONE MONDRAGON CO-OPERATIVE

BACKGROUND

My visit to Mondragon was primarily to study the way that they manage to get 173 different co-ops to collaborate. However, the structure of their manufacturing plants has been changing recently, and these changes were of direct relevance to the conclusions I have been coming to through VSM diagnosis.

Mondragon are the most successful group of co-ops that I know, and during the visit I made in February 1991 I was continuously impressed by their commitment to both co-operative ideals and to state-of-the art production techniques. All the factories are full of computer controlled machine tools and robots. They have huge warehouses run entirely by computer. And most of the steel presses and control gear are made by other factories within the Mondragon group.

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The VSM Guide: Case Study 3 – One Mondragon Co-operative

What ‘systems thinking’ actually means – and why it matters for innovation today

What ‘systems thinking’ actually means – and why it matters today | World Economic Forum

…and quite some critique of this piece when someone shared it on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/systemsthinkingalliance_what-systems-thinking-actually-means-activity-6757182084651061248-yss8

Impact Lab Open Series: Demystifying Systems Change

Impact Lab Open Series: Demystifying Systems Change – YouTube

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Radical Uncertainty and Critical Systems Thinking | LinkedIn

Radical Uncertainty and Critical Systems Thinking

• Published on January 15, 2021

Dr Mike C Jackson OBE

Centre for Systems Studies

This article discusses similarities between Kay and King’s approach to ‘radical uncertainty’ and ‘critical systems thinking and practice’ (CST).

Radical Uncertainty: Decision-making for an unknowable future (Bridge Street Press, 2020), by the distinguished economists John Kay and Mervyn King, has deservedly received glowing reviews. The book argues that radical uncertainty is everywhere in our world; analyses the limitations of models in getting to grips with the phenomenon; and proposes a ‘narrative paradigm’ as a better way of thinking about how we exercise judgement and take decisions in the context of radical uncertainty.

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Radical Uncertainty and Critical Systems Thinking | LinkedIn

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ASC Speaker Series #2 – Lombardi/Clough/Pangaro – YouTube

ASC Speaker Series #2 – Lombardi/Clough/Pangaro

18 Jan 2021

American Society for Cybernetics – ASC

Cybernetics and humans’ knowing: A present past toward a future Jude Lombardi will facilitates a conversation with Patricia Ticineto Clough and Paul Pangaro, all three connected to cybernetics for decades. The session is an opportunity to introduce Pangaro as the new ASC President and who started in cybernetics with Lettvin and Pask in the 1970s, and to explore Clough’s history with the storied Biological Computer Lab from 1971-1976 with Heinz von Foerster, Humberto Maturana, Herbert Brün, Gotthard Günther, and others. The conversation explores how each became associated with cybernetics, who they knew and know as cybernetic thinkers influencing their work, how cybernetics has oriented their practice since those earlier days, and where the field may go.  The first 50 minutes of this 90 minute session will be Lombardi in conversation with Pangaro and Clough, followed by 40 minutes of questions and comments from the audience.

[www.isss.org and https://asc-cybernetics.org/ are doing some really amazing events at the moment – as are http://cybsoc.org/ and www.systemspractice.org (I’m on the Board of SCiO).

I regularly share from the latter two as they are free or cheap events, but some ISSS events and ASC are members only – so while membership is good value, I often don’t share. But I encourage you to look at their websites and get involved if interested!]

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Beyond the modern synthesis: A framework for a more inclusive biological synthesis – ScienceDirect

Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology

Volume 153, July 2020, Pages 5-12

Peter A.Corning

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2020.02.002Get rights and content

Highlights

It is argued here that the time has come to replace the Modern Synthesis. Many recent developments go beyond or contradict this venerable paradigm. The case against the Modern Synthesis is briefly summarized. An alternative called an “Inclusive Biological Synthesis” is proposed. Tinbergen’s four key questions are advanced as a common research agenda.

Abstract

Many theorists in recent years have been calling for evolutionary biology to move beyond the Modern Synthesis – the paradigm that has long provided the theoretical backbone for the discipline. Terms like “postmodern synthesis,” “integrative synthesis,” and “extended evolutionary synthesis” have been invoked by various critics in connection with the many recent developments that pose deep challenges – even contradictions – to the traditional model and underscore the need for an update, or a makeover. However, none of these critics, to this author’s knowledge, has to date offered an explicit alternative that could provide a unifying theoretical paradigm for our vastly increased knowledge about living systems and the history of life on Earth (but see Noble 2015, 2017). This paper briefly summarizes the case against the Modern Synthesis and its many amendments over the years, and a new paradigm is proposed, called an “Inclusive Biological Synthesis,” which, it is argued, can provide a more general framework for the biological sciences. The focus of this framework is the fundamental nature of life as a contingent dynamic process – an always at-risk “survival enterprise.” The ongoing, inescapable challenge of earning a living in a given environmental context – biological survival and reproduction – presents an existential problem to which all biological phenomena can be related and comprehended. They and their “parts” can be analyzed in relation to ethologist Niko Tinbergen’s four key questions. Some basic properties and guiding assumptions related to this alternative paradigm are also identified.

source:

Beyond the modern synthesis: A framework for a more inclusive biological synthesis – ScienceDirect

pdf: https://www.sciencedirect.com.sci-hub.se/science/article/abs/pii/S0079610720300109

Some comments prompted by John Seddon’s book “Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: the failure of the reform regime – and a manifesto for a better way” … based on some comments initially prepared for a seminar among those promoting
The Learning Society (Scotland))
(www.learningsociety.org.uk)
John Raven
Version Date: 19 December 2008

pdf http://eyeonsociety.co.uk/resources/sedncommntsart.pdf

Raven, J. (2020). ‘Closing the gap’: Problems with its philosophy and research – A keynote address prepared for BPS Education Section Conference, September 2019 The Psychology of Education Review, Vol. 44, No. 3, Special Issue, 2020 pages 2 – 40. ISSN: 1463-9807. https://shop.bps.org.uk/the-psychology-of-education-review-vol-44-no-3-special-issue-2020-0 also available at: http://eyeonsociety.co.uk/resources/CAT-2376.pdf

John says this paper was originally titled “Some abuses of science, logic, and authority illustrated from research and policy in relation to early childhood education”. It ends up as a critique of non-systemic (reductionist) science.

Raven, J. (2020). Diving in where angels fear to tread: Pre-requisites to evidence-based interventions: Initial Paper. The Psychology of Education Review, 44 (1), 4-17. Also available at http://eyeonsociety.co.uk/resources/diving-in-main-article.pdf

Raven, J. (2020). Diving in where angels fear to tread: Pre-requisites to evidence-based interventions: Continuing the dialogue. The Psychology of Education Review, 44(1), 48-56. Also available at http://eyeonsociety.co.uk/resources/diving-in-continuing-the-dialogue.pdf

And also:

Raven, J. (2019). “Toward a Sustainable Society: Science, Public Management, and the Role of the University”: an address to the Rektor and Senate of the Katholic University of Lublin on the occasion of the granting of the title Doktor Honoris Causa. Page 95-111 in Profesor John Raven. Doktor Honoris Causa, KUL, Lublin, Poland. Also available at http://eyeonsociety.co.uk/resources/KUL19.pdf