Category Archives: Natural systems

scientific methods & principles for natural systems research

Natural Economy, Natural systems

Noticing change, through the fixed world illusion

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From Jim Maendel on a Linkedin Foresight group

Phil,
[I was] just looking for smart people to join our group. After checking out your site, I believe you may be overqualified. Your stuff is brilliant. I found this portion on the market pundits fascinating, from The Bump on a Curve Notepad:

“Well, I’ve been wondering for a long time why the flows of change are so hard for people to see, and do think there’s some kind of “fixed world illusion” to contend with. There’s a list of reasons why we don’t update our information regularly and so miss the flows of change because of that.

It’s a little speculative, but another detail caught my attention recently, that even when repeated changes in “normal” are quite dramatic, people often only have to “sleep on it” to readjust and see even very short lived situations as if they were permanent and a brand new permanent “normal”.

Nearly every pundit and media source from 2007 to the present has radically changed their stories about the economic collapse nearly every week… for example.  They always seeming very comfortable with the “ever present” finality of their quickly changing stories. It’s like there’s a “reset button” that they all keep using, in their sleep, that completely hides the facts of accelerating change. Continue reading Noticing change, through the fixed world illusion →

Mail & Comment, Natural Economy, Natural systems

Who’s Changing our Natural Laws!!?

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A reply to Bill Dixon on Global Foresight regarding Soddy and the need for changing assumptions in economics.

++++

I do agree with you generally, but it seems that the specific forms that things take come from how they individually develop *within* the possibilities allowed by “the laws of nature” as limits on their individuality.

Economies and ecologies are obvious examples of things that develop individualistically

So, though I don’t expect the system of the universe to alter it’s more general laws any time soon, :-)  like maybe… upset the conservation laws for example.   I see those “fixed laws” as sound explanatory principles, that still offer very diverse possibilities for individual developments within them.

Economies and ecologies are obvious examples of things that develop individualistically.  They develop their own consistent “local laws of nature”, or as others call them “emergent properties”, serving as laws of the system developing them.

Continue reading Who’s Changing our Natural Laws!!? →

Mail & Comment, Natural systems

Predictably exploratory maybe?? But is that “irrational”?

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In response to a post by Marshall Goldsmith of Harvard Business review on Dan Arley, the author of “Predictably Irrational”, for which Marshall posted a thank-you note.

There’s a great way to actually trace a lot of these phenomena as they happen

December 26, 2008 at 1:32 PM (w/ minor edit)

Marshall,

There’s a great way to actually trace a lot of these phenomena as they happen, and learn how to recognize some of the early signals that people who don’t know how to read complex processes get tripped up bye. It’s by considering them as complex system learning processes.

Recognizing that many system processes are back and forth response patterns between a local system and an environment helps a lot. The changes in direction of accumulative change then read as reflecting changes in what each is ‘learning’ about the other, and opens lots of doors to understanding what they are learning.

I have a number of approaches. Watching learning curves (records of developmental change generally) takes learning to ask questions about derivative rate signals of diminishing returns and things, but quite helpful. Curvature reversal points signal whole system changes in developmental directions.

In any developmental process from first beginning to final end there are always two principle inflection points (with curvature reversals) that point to reversals in the rate of return, the accumulative environmental response or the the accumulative system assembly or disassembly process, ¸¸.•´ ¯ `•.¸¸, or both.

Best, P.F. Henshaw

 

Natural systems, Scientific theory

natural vs. artificial – more than semantics.

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Stan later replied “Nice.” and Nick “A nice perspective”.  to my reply to both their insightful comments on how vagueness in science is replaced by precise definitions, that leave out important questions from the earlier discussions.   It’s something I’ve been trying to say in a way that avoided the usual pitfalls for many years actually.

a very special new sort of ‘fuzz’ we really must reattach to our equations Continue reading natural vs. artificial – more than semantics. →

Natural systems, Scientific theory

What’s wrong with Science? – glad you asked

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–In a longer post to TheGreatChange Lorna had asked:

What is this list about? Attacking science or solving environmental problems? And if you do the former, how can you address the latter?

–I responded:

Lorna, There are serious problems with the design of the scientific method. The problem is not with what it has found, but what the design of the method prevents you from looking for.

One good examples are the learning processes of distributed systems, cultures, economies, weather.  That’s what we’re in trouble with.  Growth for organisms or economies, would appear to be the principle learning process of complex system organization and development.

Growth for organisms or economies etc., is a principal organizational process for complex systems Continue reading What’s wrong with Science? – glad you asked →

Natural Economy, Natural systems

Did a fallen tree grow in the woods??

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In my journals I have page after page of large and small ideas, research ideas, notes to myself, and occasionally share them. Here’s one from today.

– The philosopher’s puzzle of whether a tree that falls in the woods makes a sound, posits that someone walking in the woods discovers a fallen tree, and wonders whether it had made “a sound” when it fell.  It presents it as a general question about unanswerable questions.

Endless discussions on subjects like that still consume philosophical discussions.  What they seem to miss is whether it matters, whether what we can conclude about a lack of information makes any difference.  It can, but it might also be only a difference in what we know, and in how we observe it.

That’s the “two realities” problem, that what nature does and what we make of it ourselves are very different. Continue reading Did a fallen tree grow in the woods?? →

Natural Economy, Natural systems

Red Flag in our Usual Theories

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Brad mentioned Catton’s theory of response to overpopulation as “We must learn to live in harmony with natural systems…”, which is true enough.

In the details he talks about human values and not about how nature physically works, though.

It’s a major “red flag” to talk about solving physical system problems in terms of human system values.  Our values are what we should use to motivate our learning about how the systems of nature work.   Organizing to live by our own values is to act as if our social systems supersede nature’s systems.

That’s the very error that got us into all our environmental problems, and won’t change them! Continue reading Red Flag in our Usual Theories →

Natural Economy, Natural systems

Growth Friendly? – natural v. compulsive growth

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James Greyson said:

Phil, Do you think it helps to distinguish between modest returns (which could be part of a flow of money) and big accumulations of wealth (which seem to take money out of circulation and to often redirect flows of money destructively)? I wonder whether a slight tweaking of the language here and there could make the writing more engaging and less bleak.

For example the harvesting of renewable resources such as solar is low only because we don’t bother and it is maybe not limited to being steady if we expand nature? You must be thinking of ways forward, as well as how growth as usual is ending?

Diminishing returns and complexity make an excellent introduction. Have you tried wiserearth as a community for posting and discussing ideas and solutions? I’ve been surprised at how well it functions and the sense of being among supporters. See for example the comments on the Dubai talk (linked below).  Of course if you have criticisms please feel free to add those too!

Hang in there Best wishes, James

James,

The difference is that allowing “modest” returns really needs to mean “responsive” instead, since returns are measured in %’s.

Even a 1% return if reinvested for continual growth is still exponential and will exceed any limit and be “immodest”.

It’s not that 1% is “big”, it’s that the right thing to regulate is not growth rate but the response, to growth accumulation, at whatever rate.   So, the real issue is “when” to say a relative change in scale has become an absolute change in kind.    Continue reading Growth Friendly? – natural v. compulsive growth →

Mail & Comment, Natural Economy, Natural systems

Harvard Business School, searches its soul

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There’s been a real “soul searching” discussion within Harvard Business School about it’s responsibility in having trained many of the people whose business practices got the world into our present still worsening economic crisis.  It was reported today on NPR.

It seems they have discovered they should teach business leaders to take some responsibility, not just make as much money as humanly possible and push the risks on others… That’s great if you believe it.   I wonder it is even possible for people making money not to want to push their risks on others, to not “optimize” the making of money?  That is not being asked yet as far as I can tell.

Another thing not being asked yet seems even more telling. Still clearly missing from the public eye, and the professional soul searching all around, is the question of why our economic system produces catastrophic systemic risk at all.

missing from the professional “soul searching” is asking why making money has always so regularly created systemic risk

You simply can’t pop a bubble that isn’t under a lot of accumulated pressure, is the physics principle. There’s got to be a pump, with pressures not being relieved. Continue reading Harvard Business School, searches its soul →

Mail & Comment, Natural Economy, Natural systems

Everyone feels it in the making!

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On a ClimateConcernGroup thread, “Can 350.org save the world?

In response to Maria Guzman’s:

Admirable efforts, but of dubious efficacy. Nothing is likely to make a real difference until everyone in the industrial societies personally feels the impact of a disaster in the making. How long this will take is hard to predict.

http://tinyurl.com/pobspv   Maria Guzman

Maria,
Yes, that seems more and more likely, if even then.   I think what will make people personally feel the problem is feeling that we have all been entirely misled on the limits of our current path.   We’ve been misled about the real limits of growth.  We can now it’s for all parts of the system to come into conflict with each other.

We’ve been misled about the real limits of economic growth,
all the parts of the system coming into conflict with each other.

Almost anyone who logically thinks about a system of independently growing things in a confined space can see and make sense of that.   It’s more the scientists who can’t (1).    Continue reading Everyone feels it in the making! →