antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:26 pm on June 29, 2018

Kenneth Sayre, “Cybernetics and the Philosophy of Mind” (Routledge, 2015) – with podcast

KENNETH M. SAYRE

Cybernetics and the Philosophy of Mind

ROUTLEDGE 2015

June 21, 2018 Tom Scholte

The cybernetics community owes a great debt of thanks to the editors of Routledge Library Editions: Philosophy of Mind series, for bringing to light a neglected classic of the field in 2015. It was then that their reprint of Kenneth M. Sayre’s Cybernetics and the Philosophy of Mindappeared. Originally published in 1976, Sayre’s book proffers cybernetics as nothing less than a solution to the mind/body problem through a kind of “informational monism” reminiscent of the thought of Gregory Bateson. As such, it provides as fulsomely developed a cybernetic theory as one is likely to find anywhere; one that most certainly deserves a place in the canon of the field’s most substantial works. In my in-depth conversation with Dr. Sayre, now Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Notre Dame University, we explore the relationship between the “two entropies” of information theory and thermodynamics, parse the notion of feedback into even more fine-grained categories of homeostatic, heterotelic, sentient, and anticipatory, and trace the role of these various types of feedback in processes of evolutionary adaptation, behavioral conditioning and consciousness as well as the development of social structures, language and reasoning leading to the maximization of “negentropic flexibility.” The result is a deeply thought-provoking glimpse of a rigorously argued cybernetic framework deserving of considerable attention within and beyond the field.

Podcast link in source: Kenneth Sayre, “Cybernetics and the Philosophy of Mind” (Routledge, 2015) |

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:25 pm on June 29, 2018

Systemantics – Wikipedia

Systemantics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

General Systemantics (retitled to Systemantics in its second edition and The Systems Bible in its third) is a systems engineering treatise by John Gall in which he offers practical principles of systems design based on experience and anecdotes.

It is offered from the perspective of how not to design systems, based on system engineering failures. The primary precept of treatise is that large complex systems are extremely difficult to design correctly despite best intentions and so care must be taken to design smaller less complex systems and to do so with incremental functionality based on close and continual touch with user needs and measures of effectiveness.

Continues in source: Systemantics – Wikipedia

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:24 pm on June 29, 2018

The Wisdom and/or Madness of Crowds

an interactive guide to human networks

Source: The Wisdom and/or Madness of Crowds

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:30 am on June 28, 2018

The march of self-reference – Felix Geyer (pdf)

Via Ivo Velitchkov

The march of self-reference
Felix Geyer
Honorary President, Research Committee on Sociocybernetics,
International Sociological Association

Keywords Cybernetics, Individual behavior, Social systems Abstract Focuses on the issue of increasing environmental and societal complexity, and its effects on the individual, especially visible in the increase of self-reference (the commonalities between man, animals and machines). Distinguishes three meanings of self-reference and discusses the interrelationships between self-reference, alienation, and growing societal complexity: states that, especially in the last few decades of this secular age, there has been increasing incidence of self- reference. Also discusses the relationship between self-reference, constructivism, and modern brain research. Asserts that the march of self-reference is likely to continue, but that it will change in character.

Link (pdf): https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/75d4/bb694865222f7e5b1d09576215a3fb21656f.pdf

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:25 am on June 28, 2018

Hasan Ozbekhan’s 49 problems – proposal to the Club of Rome (1970) (pdf)

Contains a definition of the ‘problematique’ and 49 illustrative continual critical problems, with the prophecy that unless tackled quickly, they would become so entangled as to be impossible to distinguish.

THE CLUB OF ROME
THE PREDICAMENT OF MANKIND
————
Quest for Structured Responses
to Growing World-wide
Complexities and Uncertainties
A PROPOSAL
1970

link: https://demosophia.com/wp-content/uploads/Predicament-Club-of-Rome-1970-1.pdf

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:18 am on June 28, 2018

Sturgeon’s Biases – Quietstars – Medium

Adrian Howard

Vacillates between Impostor Syndrome & the Dunning-Kruger effect. Helping organisations build great teams & products with quietstars.com

Apr 13

Sturgeon’s Biases

How communities of practice lie to themselves & everybody else

There are a couple of biases I see around how folk inside and outside communities of practice perceive each other. Something I’ve seen often enough that there is probably a name for it.

But I don’t know what that name is.

Some smart social psychologist, anthropologist or sociologist probably wrote about this seventy years ago. So I’m just going to ramble about it here for a bit, and hope that somebody smarter than I am can point me to that paper. So I know what to call it.

Let’s start with the people inside a community of practice. They can be managers, user researchers, developers, product managers, lawyers — it doesn’t matter.

Now in any community of practice some people are going to be awesome practitioners and some folk are going to be terrible — along with everything in-between. For the sake of simplicity let’s use Sturgeon’s Revelation usually stated as “ninety percent of everything is crap”.

If I look around at other people in my role in a company there are going to be some folk who are better and some folk who are worse.

The problem is that this picture is a lie.

Because the distribution of people in a community of practice isn’t random. Good people in a field tend to seek out other good people. They tend to hire other good people. They tend to talk more to other good people.

They cluster.

They also tend to either raise up the folk near them through influence and education, or push them away if they can’t / don’t want to.

Which means that the best practitioners in a community of practice get a really, really inaccurate view of the general level of ability. They see this:

Whereas most people see this:

The best people in a community experience it as 90% awesome, when the reality is 10% awesome.

But it’s worse than that. Way worse.

All the voices in a community of practice are not equally prominent. Who speaks at the conferences? Who writes the articles? Who works on the most exciting and influential projects? We hear the voices of the high performers much more frequently. They have much, much more visibility than everybody else.

The external presentation of a community is 90% awesome, when the reality is 10% awesome.

Continues in source: Sturgeon’s Biases – Quietstars – Medium

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:16 am on June 28, 2018

CoCreative Consulting (Twitter): seven “system conditions” that we believe must be met in order to achieve sustainable prosperity for all.

The foundation of our work at @WeAreCoCreative is our belief in the need for Shared Prosperity and Ecological Sustainability. This page summarizes the 7 “system conditions” that we believe must be met in order to achieve sustainable prosperity for all. #CollabInn #SystemsChange pic.twitter.com/hw5yWXyu7C

— CoCreative (@WeAreCoCreative) June 23, 2018

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:14 am on June 28, 2018

Make Cybernetics Great Again (David Chapman on Twitter)

Startling window into pre-bureaucratic science, when the leading physicists, psychiatrists, statisticians, anthropologists, computer geeks, and neuroscientists talked to each other as equals. A lost world, recalled in a 1976 @stewartbrand interview:https://t.co/9xds056m0h pic.twitter.com/O0hHecXRvd

— David Chapman (@Meaningness) June 22, 2018

Click on link to see full twitter chain: https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1010283825333784576

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:02 am on June 28, 2018

Methods for Measuring Viability and Evaluating Viability Indicators

Complexity Digest

Life and other dissipative structures involve nonlinear dynamics that are not amenable to conventional analysis. Advances are being made in theory, modeling, and simulation techniques, but we do not have general principles for designing, controlling, stabilizing, or eliminating these systems. There is thus a need for tools that can transform high-level descriptions of these systems into useful guidance for their modification and design. In this article we introduce new methods for quantifying the viability of dissipative structures. We then present an information-theoretical approach for evaluating the quality of viability indicators, measurable quantities that covary with, and thus can be used to predict or influence, a system’s viability.

Methods for Measuring Viability and Evaluating Viability Indicators

Matthew D. Egbert and Juan Pérez-Mercader

Artificial Life
Volume 24 | Issue 2 | Spring 2018
p.106-118

Source: www.mitpressjournals.org

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:58 am on June 28, 2018

Human Nature: our (four) Human Social Instincts

Colin Talbot - my blog

It is often said that “human’s are social animals” without really thinking what that implies. Many creatures are social, in the sense that they live in groups, but there are wide differences in what ‘social’ means – from the simple semi-chaos of herding for cattle or deer through to the elaborate, regimented, division-of-labour society of the termite or the honey bee.

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 12:31 am on June 25, 2018

Twenty years of network science

Complexity Digest

The idea that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by just six degrees of separation was explained by the ‘small-world’ network model 20 years ago. What seemed to be a niche finding turned out to have huge consequences.

Source: www.nature.com

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 12:20 am on June 25, 2018

Predicting perturbation patterns from the topology of biological networks

Complexity Digest

High-throughput technologies, offering unprecedented wealth of quantitative data underlying the makeup of living systems, are changing biology. Notably, the systematic mapping of the relationships between biochemical entities has fueled the rapid development of network biology, offering a suitable framework to describe disease phenotypes and predict potential drug targets. Yet, our ability to develop accurate dynamical models remains limited, due in part to the limited knowledge of the kinetic parameters underlying these interactions. Here, we explore the degree to which we can make reasonably accurate predictions in the absence of the kinetic parameters. We find that simple dynamically agnostic models are sufficient to recover the strength and sign of the biochemical perturbation patterns observed in 87 biological models for which the underlying kinetics is known. Surprisingly, a simple distance-based model achieves 65% accuracy. We show that this predictive power is robust to topological and kinetic parameters perturbations, and we identify key…

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:19 pm on June 20, 2018

‘four quadrants of systems thinking threats’

A lighthearted and conceptual piece intended to communicate something important, was developed at a SCiO board meeting but I take responsibility for any offence or error…

‘four quadrants of systems thinking threats’ https://www.dropbox.com/s/y36i3t9tu9kcgia/four%20quadrants%20of%20systems%20thinking%20threats.jpg?dl=0

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:17 am on June 20, 2018

The Systems Approach and its Enemies Helps Us Find the Morality of a Revised Democracy | van Gigch | 2006

In brief. David Ing.

In a book series celebrating C. West Churchman, John P. van Gigch digests (and portends to extend) The Systems Approach and its Enemies.

On enemies …

4.1 A MATTER OF DEFINITIONS: ADVERSARIES VERSUS ENEMIES
I note the similarity/difference between the words ‘enemy’ and ‘adversary.’ Other authors use the word adversary (ies) to denote all the forces that impede the progress of his/her own discipline.
In the Oxford dictionary (1976), the concepts of adversaries and enemies are considered synonyms. However other sources show a distinction between these two concepts.
An enemy is seen as a hated opponent and is usually considered a person who hates another and eagerly seeks his/her defeat. Words used in lieu of ‘enemy’ include: opponent; hostile army or nation, an alien.
An adversary is an opponent who is not hated; an adversary is someone who is ‘in front of, opposed, coming from another direction, averse…

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:01 am on June 20, 2018

Managing in complexity – an interview with Prof. Dave Snowden – Richard Atherton

[This should be interesting – I haven’t had time to watch yet but I bet it is good and entertaining, and as one who might have used the ‘curmudgeon’ (and other) tags for Snowden, it will be interesting to see his response. He also looks increasingly like Mandy Patinkin playing Saul Berenson in Homeland]

By Richard Atherton on 17 June 2018

In this interview, FirstHuman Partner Richard Atherton takes a walk and a tea with Professor Dave Snowden.

Dave Snowden is the creator of the Cynefin complexity framework. His Harvard Business Review paper on this topic is one of the most downloaded HBR papers of all time. Dave has forged a career through is early non-profit work to becoming a leading thinker in knowledge management at IBM. He went on to found the company Cognitive Edge, a pioneering firm in the field of ‘sense making’ within organisations and in applying complexity science to organisational challenges.

In this in-depth interview, Dave shares the philosophy underpinning his work. He talks through how people can apply his insights to leading and managing organisations. He also responses to claims that he can sometime to be seen as something of a curmudgeon!

Source: Managing in complexity – an interview with Prof. Dave Snowden – First Human