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Seen this before, just wanted to capture.

The EEM Institute – “Institute for Augmented Intelligence in Entrepreneurship, Engineering and Management” is the evolved public face of the (Russian) Systems Management School, where Systems Thinking is now one of the courses under the EEMI.

“Open-Endedness” is an aspect of the wider curriculum at EEMI and below are the slides and a recording of the presentation on that topic by Anatoly Levenchuk their “Head of Science”.

(I consider Anatoly a friend after some years of working together for Russian infrastructure projects on generic systems information modelling aspects, where Anatoly also invited me to speak at a couple of INCOSE events in Moscow and Nizhny-Novgorod on those knowledge modelling standards aspects. Anatoly was chair of the INCOSE Russian chapter at the time when I was working with him and his colleague Victor Agroskin in their “TechInvestLab” information systems consultancy.)

Previously here I have reviewed his book “Systems Thinking 2020”

Below I have some comments on his latest presentation (which unfortunately I missed in real time).

Slides – “Open Endedness Curriculum at EEMI”

The presentation itself:

(PLEASE NOTE: The following review is preliminary based on early sub-titled version of the presentation which has since been updated above. I will update the review in the line with the improved captions and in the light of clarifying dialogue with Ivan and Anatoly.)

All OK, up to the point he talks about the “singularity”. I’m more sceptical that the kind of AI that could ever overtake humans exists at all (yet) – but I’m absolutely on-board with the idea that as “Cyborg” AI-Augmented Humans we are already behind our own curve in dealing mentally / cognitively / organisationally with the systems complexity of human reality on the planet we call home. Very pleased to see “Engineering” defined as the human endeavour intended to “improve” that. It’s how I’ve always seen the point of my being an engineer.

Interesting to see Tononi’s IIT referenced, much referenced here. Also, Graziani’s “Standard Model of Consciousness”? Not sure I understand what that is, but I have a strong position on the reality of consciousness anyway.

Love the idea that the customers of EEMI training are seen as these Augmented Intelligence Cyborgs – both the individual humans and the organisations. Quite right. Education and training as part of “our” evolution. (Not introduced the topic in the title yet ~17:20 Open-Endedness?)

Like the Intelligence Stack (some errors in the subtitle captions).
Not sure why the distinction of human vs agent activity in the applied stack – just more generic? Deontic modality? No applied engineering at the human level – not sure I understand. Isn’t that what Systems Thinking is? (For any thinking agent, including humans?) Ah, this is at the level of the whole of humankind, not individuals and organisations OK. The Applied-Level Stack makes sense too.

(I completely agree with this information systems levels view of the entire stack of evolutionary levels.)

Bayesian decision theory based. Good (but errors in captions again). Recognition that this is bleeding-edge unproven approach for “elite” learning “not the whole peleton”.

Bertalanffy, Checkland systems theory basis – not simple “lifecycle” view – systems evolve from systems. Ah, hence the “3rd Generation” claim in terms of what people understand by cybernetics and systems. Not such a concern for my “Deflationary” approach – I just see this a focussing on the fundamentals of the original first-generation theories.

Constructor Theory (Deutsch and Marletto) lifecycles are in the intelligent agent level – agreed – hence dropping use of “lifecycle” language for the “physical” systems. Again, this is just linguistic baggage to me, so less concerned. Understood. (As I posted on INCOSE LinkedIn “Systems Engineering is first and foremost about humans”)

The evolution of systems is continuous. Systems engineering / thinking is top of the stack. 20 key “State of the Art” references all VERY recent.

Memome ->Phenome distinction. I like it.
Constructors construct constructors. Multi-level evolution. Smart evolution (is still evolution, but more than extended modern Darwin synthesis.) Systematic is not systemic. Agreed. Affordances view. Decomposition by attention. Functional systems view. Disruption comes from below.

Doxatic (?) modality, not (strictly) requirements, but more like “hypotheses” or “best guesses”- hypothetical / proposed “affordances”. Functional definition. (Already made this implicit translation when using orthodox “requirements” language.) Entrepreneurship?

Still never mentioned “Open Endedness”?

A lot in there, (lots of common references) – not all clear / agreed, but fascinating. Needs dialogue.

I have a different tactic, I understand the need for changing the words used, but would be nervous about an approach that relies on understanding a radical new technical language – much prefer to evolve usage of recognisable language, even words that have old baggage. Applying Systems Thinking to the body of systems thinking? But I think this is tactical rather than fundamental, once the processes are understood the language will also evolve.

I aired my interest in IDEF0 as a diagramming language in May and August this year. First time in passing as one of the needs slowing my own writing progress, second time as a kind of “spec” for what I might expect from a community interested in systems thinking (the Active Inference group killing two birds with one stone?)

Nothing’s changed, and I’d kinda given up on better tools, resigned to simply “drafting” the diagrams in standard drawing tools. It’s an old language (late-70’s / early-80’s) in the earliest days of “CAD” and it was back in the mid-80’s I first discovered I was a fan. A drawing standard – symbology and layout conventions – for representing functional “systems”. What’s not to like? But I’ve found very few people who use or recognise its value in my 45 year career.

Today I found another present-day fan – Aaron Gillespie with his “AaronGillie” blog. Now even Powerpoint and Visio have pallettes of boxes and arrows with sticky connectors, so “drafting” has never been the problem if you understand the language and the system you’re representing. Indeed drafting is part of the thinking tools to improve the understanding and representation.

AaronGillie has a simple summary – and suggests one of its strengths is its simplicity, so advises against creating additional symbology and semantics. It’s a fair policy when it comes to standardisation but, in this case, I rarely see people actually using it in practice and indeed later standards (eg Archimate) claim greater power and interest. So I am keen to extend it for my own needs.

For purely practical drafting and sharing / communicating purposes one of the conventions is to limit system decompositions to 2 levels only, with the occasional 3rd level, and 3 to 5, max 6 modules per level. It’s about how much a human can get their head around in one diagram, one large “page”.

IC(C)OM – Inputs, Controls, (Calls), Outputs and Mechanisms – are really just different classes of Inputs and Outputs, in terms of what they do and in terms of how their state and/or identity change during the process(es). So, I’d prefer an I/O taxonomy that reflected that even more generically. Why? Because I want to represent “the whole word” in such a process model.

Which leads to my second problem. I can’t have any arbitrary limits to breadth and levels of decomposition. All taxonomy is binary at root – this / not-this – repeated as many times as we need. So, what I need to exploit are decomposition rules so that any level of abstraction / compression of any part of any such model can be presented or not by selection in the user interface. I want “one model” but I don’t ever want to see “the whole on one page” except at a one-page level of abstraction.

AaronGillie has a wonderful, manually drawn, worked example on his IDEF0 page – which is scarily (meta-)close to my whole project – (Maslovian) “Actualisation” of a human life. The aim of this human life is a process model of the whole world. I need both drafting tools and presentation tools (or one tool with edit and present modes, how hard can it be) that exploit the decomposition rules horizontally and vertically.

I’m more convinced than ever that the “IDEF0 Style” will do the job for me, even if I have to tweak the previously standardised conventions. Anyone who could programme through API’s to PowerPoint, Visio, Sparx-EA, MagicDraw, Modelio, Archi … more?

Another present-day fan here on LinkedIn says:

“There is much formalism in the IDEF0 spec, which is great as it can therefore be used in a formal way when needed. I tend to use it in a slightly looser way, keeping to the core principles but not worrying too much about the decomposition rules and process numbering”

That’s my essence too. I just want a tool that can implement more generic rules, rather than the standard set of conventions.

In a break from writing, one or two pieces in need of reading and listening caught my attention. It’s all related.

In an ISSS context there has been some debate between two schools, between many different aspects of systems definition, complex detail for systems of different types in different real-world applications versus abstraction of systems aspects common to systems thinking generally. Obviously, I’m for the more generic conception – being clear what we mean when we call something a “system” and what we mean by “systems thinking”. The angels are in the abstractions, even though the devil will always be found in the details of many different types of system of different types of things. Gary Smith “collecting” together the many different historical attempts at “defining” systems, and Bruce McNaughton’s response seeking the generic systems fundamentals. (Membership discussion board links)

Also from an ISSS source – Dennis Finlayson – a summary of Mo Constandi’s book, an article with the click-baity title “Is the body key to understanding consciousness?” – No idea what the original ISSS context was, but obviously embodiment is fundamental to evolutionary views of consciousness and our minds. Most successfully recently by Mark Solms and Iain McGilchrist. The piece has lots of the surgical reports on experiencing phantom limbs and other propriocentric effects – the stuff I got originally from the likes of Damasio and Sacks (et al) – which force you to think where conscious experience really lies. Damasio famously rejected any algorithmic, computational, systems view until he eventually came on board.

And talking of Mark Solms – two things came up via social-media. One an Aeon paper – shared by Dan Dennett no less – on “blind-sight” that makes the distinction between the “qualia” – the affective impression – of seeing, and any actual objectively detailed “image” of the seen. When I’d made the Solms connection he referenced a JCS paper by Dennett that includes a sympathetic review of Solms book. Love it when a plan comes together. “Who’d have thought” – The convergence is upon us.

And just to round things off a conversation between Mark Solms and Michael Levin on “The Meaning Code” YouTube channel. Not the greatest premise for dialogue, but some interesting content. (Accuracy comes at the cost of complexity. When it comes to systems, less is more. “Deflationary” Friston. Consciousness as “raw feeling”.)

Michael Levin is relatively new to me – a colleague / collaborator / protégé of Dennett at Tufts – here a joint paper “Cognition All the Way Down” from 2020. The intentional stance at all levels / scales. Here Levin’s introductory video – “What Matters to Me and Why?” Love this selected quote on his Tufts page:

“Computer science is no more about computers
than astronomy is about telescopes.”
—Michael R. Fellows

Absolutely. Reminds me of the register-assembly computation exercise – it’s a fundamental process – fundamental to physics, life and consciousness.

I’ve claimed to be “in writing mode” once or twice recently …

[But got stalled by an earlier “strained conversation” post – a car crash that proved fascinating – and it’s not over yet. Fascinating because the advancement of reason and knowledge (in the widest sense) is the point of everything I do, and dialogue is pretty fundamental to that process. A learning opportunity.]

… Anyway, it’s a week since I posted, so this is just a diary note to record, that I really do seem to have got some writing momentum recently.

• • 1. The Position – a statement of what I believe, in brief.
    2. The Thesis – the whole formal “how and why” development of that.
    3. Good Fences – an essay on one corollary of the whole.
    4. Sacred Naturalism – an essay on another corollary of the whole.
    5. Primary Sources – an acknowledgement of the main originators.
    6. Time and Tide – a fictional narrative inspired by the whole.

I have working drafts / chapters / outlines of all now. Progress.

1, 3 , 4 and 5 are a matter of honing / refining and I’ll probably share early versions sometime soon. 2 and 6 are just early sections / chapters and outlines – but motivation is there to plough on. But, also progress.

Wish me luck.

Unrelated, but I just watched two unplanned programs the last couple of days.

Netflix had Lawrence of Arabia available, and it turned out to be the full 4.5 hour long director’s cut, complete with blank screen audio overture and intermission. The film that impressed me as a small schoolboy aged 6 back in 1962. Everything I remembered it for, even though I’ve read Seven Pillars of Wisdom multiple times since, supplemented by scenes and dialogue cut from the original cinematic release. Sound by Maurice Jarre I probably wouldn’t have noticed then. [Watching in HD, despite actually owning a DVD copy of the same version, one or two visual artefacts in view, but not enough to detract.] Flawed human, obviously, but lots of heroic intent in his words if not necessarily the action. Allenby is the real star. There but for grace, etc …

And, BBC Four TV had the Arena episode on James Joyce’s Ulysses. Long after Bloomsday, so no idea of the original timing, but apparently delayed due to the recent attack on Salman Rushdie, with him being a major talking head contributor. Guessing from his age it was maybe a few years old. Anyway, magical. So much to follow-up. The women that made it possible for the rest of us.

Opening Gambit

[Links being added]

[Q (21 Aug)]: “I understand that you have a professional engineering background and a strong interest in systems theory …  If you would like to discuss this very important topic one on one I would be interested.”

[A (22 Aug)]: “Sure, I most recently I summarised my interest here (18 Aug): [Opening para only] Cybernetics, like anything else, evolves, so I’m never talking about specific systems theory(ies). I’ve described my own journey every which way through systems engineering to systems thinking under the cybernetic umbrella. I have a nothing new under the sun attitude to any topic, whereby changing language may change the focus on details, but for the main part it’s really expressing a different view of the same underlying conception”

Trajectory Expected

I have some knowledge of systems theories, so, when you say cybernetics and systems thinking, but no particular systems theory(ies)- what do you mean by the same underlying conception(s)?

Me: Yes, cybernetics has just remained a broad umbrella term for my evolving thoughts. Cybernetics – simply meaning the processes of governance. Systems – meaning those things involved in those processes of doing and being. And that underlying conception of a system as any “thing” considered in terms of its functional relations with other internal or external, things (systems). For me Systems Thinking simply says pretty much anything and everything can be, and benefits from being, thought of that way.

So, where you go on to say … have you thought about … etc.

Actual Trajectory

[Tirade of angry expletives and personal insults – deleted.]

Breaking every rule of discourse with an added helping of whataboutery – name-dropping lots of additional historical sources without any apparent relevance given for any of the content of these to the content of the dialogue or anything I’ve said previously?

Me: bemused.

[Context – I’m only engaged with this person because I was impressed by some questions they’d asked about aspects of Iain McGilchrist’s work in a community channel about his work – and that their profile / introduction included this:

“I have been on a lifelong mission to convince scientists to abandon mechanistic materialism by fighting the battle from within […] I am abd [sic] on a PhD in mathematics. My intent was to be able to learn any area of science where there was a nascent awareness of the wrongness of reductionism and mechanistic materialism.”

Me too, essentially. Except in my case I’ve not (yet) embarked on a PhD, though my intent is that one of my writing projects is a PhD standard thesis, and rather than “learning the sciences” I’ve embarked on a broader focus including the philosophy of science and philosophy more generally from pragmatism to metaphysics.

The reference to “from the inside” is significant too. The “Church of Reason” being policed by academic organisations is one reason there is so much factional division – rivalry over resources and citations and who (doesn’t) cite who – between different schools of thought in science as well as philosophy. My focus is on building-bridges – a synthesis between the best of each.]

Live to Fight Another Day?

[6 to 10 Sept]

Independently, but in a small sub-group of the McGilchrist Channel, a conversation started on “computation” when someone posted a PBS Video on computation in the universe. Long story short, after I’d expressed some of my information-based metaphysics views in support of some key points in the presentation, primarily the point about scale – that a computation can describe something much larger (and more complex) than itself, and that given that it was possible to make the (possibly megalomaniac) claim that the whole world could be described in terms of information processing.

That drew one long response:

Leaving aside the issue of megalomania, there is a basic distinction between holism and reductionism. Friston and Solms published an article “How and why Consciousness arises” where they attempt to use the free energy principle to justify turning humans into fancy robots. The do have a disclaimer that what they are doing will almost certainly not answer the hard problem mentioned by Thomas Nagel and David Chalmers but full steam ahead anyhoo. Dr. McGilchrist is very clear on rejecting such ideas and openly advocates the pragmatism of William James in rejecting any notion of a final theory like Markov blankets. There is a BIG difference between Process philosophy of which pragmatism is an example. I use Google Scholar to find out who is doing work in unlikely areas. For instance if you do a search using the expression Solms + McGilchrist the are only about 80 hits and almost all of them are about clinical psychology. NONE on philosophy or consciousness. There is at this time very little about the use of mathematics in the study of process philosophy. I do NOT see Solms as doing Holistic science. I see him and Friston as trying to sneak materialism into the subject and saying don’t look to closely as we do our shell game with you. Daniel Dennet is an ultra cheap version of this song and dance. Don’t let them fool you. To say a process is a computation is just another way to say all processes are just fancy machines. Caveat emptor!!!!!

Plus:

Also, a note, I did a search in TMWT for both Friston and Solms. The result? Neither were mentioned by name anywhere in the text proper and only a handful of articles in the very extensive bibliography where almost all the articles(less than 10) were about the neuroscience. It is a VERY safe bet that Dr. McGilchrist is very well aware of their alleged attempts to do philosophy. It’s kind of funny in that Friston is often touted as referenced more than any other scientist let alone neuroscientist and Dr. McGilchrist felt no need to mention him even once in the main text of TMWT. In my view a very wise choice!

And:

So obviously, none of them are stupid, right? Do you believe you are so much smarter than them and you are going to show them why they are wrong to ignore each other? I am a nobody, so no one gives a damn what I say. I am sure none of them want to start a war by stating explicitly what they think of each other. I see the lack of publications which refer to both (Friston and/or Solms vs McGilchrist) of them as very clear evidence of seriously hostile camps. To me, Friston and Solms are clearly left brain dominant!

So, in the spirit of progress, let me address the content of the actual critical response. (I have a 3 strikes and you’re out rule in discourse where if people ignore the content of exchanges 3 times, I block and stop the discourse. This is our second exchange. Life’s too short.)

Firstly overall tone & style. I don’t want to spend any more time tone-policing, but it has to be said that overall it’s criticisms of people and their imputed motives. ie not related to the content of anything actually said – by me or them.

Let’s start with:

“Leaving aside the issue of megalomania,
… Caveat emptor!!!!!”

Ironically, it was I who’d already mentioned possible megalomania in making any fundamental metaphysical claims (or worse still “Theory of Everything”) as a caveat. And the more general caveat emptor? I’m a human individual in dialogue giving my good faith views, with the hope we all might learn from them being challenged in good faith in context, me included. My specific formal qualifications don’t bar me from holding opinions of what I’ve read and heard in good faith – in fact as I’ve often pointed out it’s an occupational hazard of multi-discipline research to bump up against limits to one’s formal and/or certified knowledge. (Ironically, systems thinking itself provides a solution to this problem of boundaries between disciplines – but I’m getting ahead of myself.)

I have bigger writing projects which this dialogue is distracting me from, but any new /  alternatives / corrections / inputs are always welcome. That’s the point of public dialogue.

“there is a basic distinction between holism and reductionism”

I’m not at all sure what point is being made in the context of this particular “computation” dialogue, but I’ll say (!) this is in fact what I’d hoped would be the content of the initial dialogue [21 Aug above]. Holism and reductionism are two sides of a coin / two ends of a spectrum. Systems, systems-theories, systems-science(s) and systems-thinking generally rose to prominence in the mid-20th C (eg Macy conferences) precisely because it brought to the sciences (and more) a solution to “wrongness of reductionism and mechanistic materialism”. Let’s talk about that?

“Friston and Solms published an article “How and why Consciousness arises” where they attempt to use the free energy principle to justify turning humans into fancy robots.”

So, these are relevant – to dialogue with me – because Solms is one of my recent sources exploiting both computation and systems-thinking views. The suggestion theirs is an “attempt to justify turning humans into fancy robots” is spurious and facetious – and irrelevant. They’ve written several papers together and Solms has written an excellent book since then. Anyway – I only came to know Friston through Solms but have subsequently taken an interest. I spent a whole day watching and writing-up some notes from watching a 4 hour (!) interview of Friston suggested by this interlocutor, though I’ve still seen no response to my efforts? I’ve also taken interest in Friston through my wider systems interests at INCOSE and ISSS, where systems-thinking is gaining wide traction across industry and human endeavours in the widest sense AND a whole school of “Active Inference” computation has grown out of Friston’s ideas in real time. As well as following his work, I also addressed a (now infamous) paper of criticisms of the “movement” created by his work. This is part of the process of progress in human knowledge.

“Dr. McGilchrist is very clear on rejecting
such [computing / machine] ideas”

He is, as I’ve noted several times. It’s the main cause for my integration project. It’s not that anything McGilchrist has claimed is “wrong” just that (imho) he’s missing a trick about where his work can be integrated into wider work on brain / mind knowledge. As I’ve said many times – this is partly a problem where the language of “computing machines” (and the geeks that use it) invokes that mechanist / reductionist impression in minds of hearers and experience of “users”, but where more recent (organismic) systems language is achieving traction not just in the physical / thermodynamic level but through biology, sociology and culture (see ISSS above).

Particularly baffling support for rejection of fundamental computation ideas from someone whose response to the original PBS video that started this second conversation was “I knew about parts of what he said but there was more that I did not know about and to see it all put together in one place was exhilarating!”

“[McGilchrist] openly advocates the pragmatism of William James in rejecting any notion of a final theory like Markov blankets.”

This is good. Me too. James’ pragmatism pretty fundamental to my journey, and I’ve acknowledged where McGilchrist shares many references with mine. James and Whitehead I’d add. I’m avoiding the idea of a final theory (of everything) too. See above. Science itself cannot be like that. It’s why the cybernetic language has morphed to “systems thinking” – a way of thinking about things – different systems of xxx – rather than a single system driven by one theory. The claims are actually metaphysical. I’ve not seen McGilchrist mention Markov-blankets specifically (?) – if I had to guess I’d say any rejection was in the context above – wider rejection of mechanistic-sounding ideas. (Solms is a must read.)

“There is a BIG difference between Process philosophy of which pragmatism is an example.”

Sure, but an interesting statement here. Not sure of the relevance? Depending exactly whose theories we’re talking about, they are different “systems of thought” that overlap both ways I’d say.

“if you do a search using the expression Solms + McGilchrist the are only about 80 hits and almost all of them are about clinical psychology.”

Not remotely surprising? Solms work in the area closest to McGilchrist’s is pretty recent. Neither references the other as we’ve already seen.

“There is at this time very little about the use of mathematics in the study of process philosophy.”

I know mathematics is a particular interest of yours, but can’t see the relevance of this statement here?

“I do NOT see Solms as doing Holistic science. I see him and Friston as trying to sneak materialism into the subject and saying don’t look to closely as we do our shell game with you.”

Apart from the spurious and facetious reference to motives again – which I’ll ignore – I very much see Solms using systems thinking to produce a holistic view of brain-mind processes. That’s almost exactly what he IS doing in his book. We can progress this only if we agree to discuss actual work of his and any words you or I have related to these.

“Daniel Dennet (sic) is an ultra cheap version of this song and dance. Don’t let them fool you.”

Ha, you obviously know Dennett is a “hero” of mine – but this is just a facetious jibe, again? We can talk turkey only if you want to relate it to specifics (relevant to my interest).

“To say a process is a computation is just another way to say all processes are just fancy machines.”

Not “fancy machines” – more of your pejorative rhetoric – but (many layered) organismic systems – complex adaptive systems, as you said yourself in an earlier exchange.

That’ll do for now. If you engage on the content of any of the discourse I will continue to engage in good faith.

OK, just one more (others are in the community platform already) relevant to McGilchrist’s main thread:

“Friston and Solms are clearly left brain dominant!”

Absolutely. Any “scientists” describing their science formally in symbolic or prosaic language is primarily using their left-brain tools, McGilchrist included – in fact it’s the main problem dominating discourse about McGilchrist’s work. You will only find the right-brained aspects in the specific content and embodied intent. Solms in fact, I can’t speak for Friston, is at great pains to make the same point – orthodox scientists need to make the leap to valuing the intuitive and subjective aspects of their work as well as the explicit and objective. He calls it “crossing the Rubicon” – he doesn’t use the language of “left & right brains” (obviously), but I think you’d find it fits very well with your own mission of correcting the reductive mechanistic errors of science generally?

If not, we’ve reached 3 strikes and you’re out 🙂

[Update added 12 Sep]

So, Round 3

Not quite given up yet.

Apparently I’m beyond contempt and there is no value discussing any of my words, so as I’ve already suggested several times, let’s discuss content which you have suggested:

From the above:

• • • Let’s talk about your “there is a basic distinction between holism and reductionism” and where it fits with our systems subject and the “wrongness of reductionism and mechanistic materialism”?
    • Let’s talk about why you found the PBS cosmic computation video “exhilarating” and clarify why you nevertheless appear reject the idea of fundamental computation?
    • Let’s clarify your “difference between process philosophy [and] pragmatism” in our McGilchrist & systems context.
    • Let’s clarify in the context of this processes & systems dialogue what you intended by “There is at this time very little about the use of mathematics in the study of process philosophy.”

And from assorted community threads:

• • • If you prefer let’s start with clarifying your “it’s about holism over reductionism” … where I said I agree in our systems context – in fact I responded “my systems thinking take … is absolutely is about holism over reductionism”. (Same as the first bullet above? already came up in earlier exchanges. The central point for me).
    • I liked your suggestion of “complex adaptive systems” as a good summary of my own interest. Let’s clarify where this fits in our McGilchrist context?
    • You said “I found a history of cybernetics paper published in 2020. I will send the url tomorrow.” An opportunity I missed amidst a longer para which I rejected – I was rejecting another longer piece of reading given all the other points we had already raised as discussion points and the fact you’d already ignored my responses to a full pdf book and a 4 hour interview you’d already shared. Anyway, you said you stopped studying Cybernetics in 1980 – I only started after that – so this might be interesting – You never did share the URL and I’m very much interested in the so-called first and second cybernetics?
    • You shared a “test” of your mathematics “bona-fides” and asked me to do the same. It felt like a pissing contest, but I complied with your request – apart from one word “promising” you never really followed that up. I guess I’m intrigued by the fourth bullet above, why you see mathematical prowess as so crucial to this systems dialogue?
    • At one point you said “you have refused to help me understand what you are saying”. For me this is the point of having the dialogue, to share mutual understanding, but I guess you were referring to my rejection of your very general earlier request to “define my terms”? Rather cryptically I said “eventually” (*). Happy to clarify specifics as they arise in the dialogue – I did suggest some – eg Cybernetics, Systems and Systems Thinking. Ask away, achieving shared understanding is the first phase of any dialogue in my book (of rules) 🙂 [(*) My take on definitions is quite specific to my systems thinking, so I prefer to think of definitions in terms of their usage, (a la Wittgenstein) rather than as detached objective statements – I have a long history in “definitions” which I have elaborated elsewhere.]
    • At one point you did say “I will reread that post [first link at the top] in light of our exchanges” but you never did respond to any of it, not even the first para. I’d be happy if you did.
    • I suggested a dialogue reset based on: an earlier conversation we spoke about Maslow’s Hierarchy and disagreed about “Self-Actualisation”. You wanted to take me back to the history of what he meant at the time and what people (who agreed or disagreed) said he meant during the past century. Systems thinking says – what I should be interested in is the best use of the gist of what he said – now, for the best future. [Part of what I call “deflation” – after Friston – a lot of the detail is deflated, discounted, embedded in layered structures that have evolved since.] I’m still happy to switch to that?
    • And many more … but pick any one (or more) you fancy?

Meantime – not holding my breath – back to the writing.

“Every surgeon knows the quality of evolved functionality comes with lousy interfaces”

(Street in NYC. Hat tip <somebody> on Linked In
– but there are thousands out there.)

Compared with …

(Hat tip the following tweet.)

Ha, reminds me of this quote I highlighted back in 2006:

“Every surgeon knows the quality of evolved functionality comes with lousy interfaces”https://t.co/8OkZFnVhnW

— Ian Glendinning (@psybertron) August 29, 2022

Which is a reference to this old “Designed Evolution” post of mine from 2006 -one of my earlier round-ups of Cybernetics / Systems influences, including John Dupré.

I’ve declared I’m in “Just Write Something” mode and am avoiding reading wherever I can until I’ve broken the back of the writing projects.

Still, I keep adding new references to my book list, and people commenting on what I’ve said or written often share some other paper or video link “have you seen this?” – with or without any obvious relevance to anything I’ve said or written. That long Friston interview was an example. 4 hours running time (!) a full day of listening, thinking and capturing notes to discuss with the person that shared it. In a sense, all dialogue is distraction, but it is also creative – of evolving ways of expressing the ideas. But reading is always a distraction from writing and is only worth it if there is also creative input.

As well as the book list, there are always references to papers and articles – I always try to bookmark or download, even if I have no intention of an immediate read. With the books, adding to the list is usually it for now, but one or two are irresistible, so I acquire a copy, even if with no immediate plan to read. Expanding the “Library of Unread Books”.

These four fell into that category:

Actually, the Bertalanffy I’d acquired back in London a while ago, but had simply filed in the library until digging it out a week ago.

And I thought I really ought to own a copy of this. With “We Are As Gods” premiering already in the US, tatty second hand copies are getting more expensive to acquire. One on it’s way.

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Post Note: Lo and behold, this from “We Are As Gods” just a few days later.

Dust off those Whole Earth Catalogs you’ve been saving. You’ll definitely want to thumb through them after watching WE ARE AS GODS, the @StewartBrand documentary coming out Sept 6 in US & CA to rent or buy on iTunes, Prime Video etc. Did you pre-order yet? https://t.co/O63yX1gJpX pic.twitter.com/C5FjnvSx1U

— We Are As Gods – On Digital Sept 6! (@WeAreAsGodsFilm) August 30, 2022

 

An old quote, given my threads on formal logic vs chaotic approach to knowledge, from The Secret History by Donna Tartt (p.28) :

I was charmed by his conversation, and despite its illusion of being rather modern and digressive (to me, the hallmark of the modern mind is that it loves to wander from the subject) I now see that he was leading me by circumlocution to the same points again and again. For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless. It is not a quality of intelligence that one encounters frequently these days. But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.”

A direct copy of a post from way back in 2001 – but deleted to avoid a weird amount of spam traffic on the original post title. Nothing if not obsessive.

(Nope – update – marking as deleted, deleting the content and changing the title hasn’t stopped the spam hits, so these are not new search hits on the text, but must be externally indexed links to the permalink – so now hard-deleted. And – update – that appears to have worked – so I can leave this post to rest in peace.)

Donna Tartt a recurring input to my Amor Vincit Omnia thread.