On a Global Foresight thread Tom Abeles asked if scientific models, based on a reliable “bandwidth” for natural systems, might somehow have predictive properties. He noted:
The problem we have is exemplified by the poem, “The Theory that Jack built” which was published in an insightful set of “nonsense” poems called The Space Child’s Mother Goose: This is the theory that Jack built; this is the flaw, this is the constant covering the flaw; this is the “x” justifying the constant. . . und so weiter.
Tom,
That’s a great insight and question. Part of the paradox seems to be in the word “like”. It is exactly models made “like” the ones for deterministic systems that don’t work well at all to imitate accumulatively self-organizing systems.
For new “unlike” models to still be useful, I think we need to no longer use models only as something we build to independently represent nature. I think we also need to use models for the opposite,
Many feel frustration about the failure of our “guardians” to act on the needs of our environments. They display, our own frozen helplessness when facing obvious threats. That’s great as just the kind of observation that is the stimulus for new kinds of thinking. “Changing Normal” for a planet stuck in the past, you might say.
In acknowledging Steve’s frustration with the crime of silence by our guardians was reserving the possibility that “masters of the universe” responsible might not be “the usual suspects”. It could also refer to anyone who thinks of their being a “master of their own fate”.
Frank then offered a nice way to prompt his students,
“Hmmm, each year for the past 20 or so, in orientation week, i greet my new crop of students with: “i am a green but the wilderness i am interested in is not in East Gippsland (Oregon?) but behind the eyes looking at me across this room. If i can make you wilder, i.e. LESS predictable to me, by the time you leave this room, i have done my job.” Continue reading Turning takers into healers….→
re: Mr. Soddy’s Ecological Economy NY Times Op-Ed, Sun 4/12, mentioned by Tom in a LinkedIn “Global Foresight” conversation.
Tom,
Thanks for mentioning the Times Op-Ed, It’s just great some mention of Soddy and the “physical world problem” finally appeared in the Times. As I find so often, I agree with his analysis of the problem, about 110%, but that I find is as far as it goes!
You might be interested to know that J.M. Keynes and Kenneth Boulding also came to very similar end conclusions. Each used their own language for it, but each at least would agree firmly that 1) economies are physical systems, and 2) at natural limits something would need to be done about excess savings of financial capital.
Post to LinkedIn’s Global Foresight discussion 4/11/09
Tom,
I guess the problem is that we’ve been steering the development of the earth as if expanding our vehicle with our windows painted over with out of date explanations, having a party and not watching the earth’s responses as we crashed into things. Our blind procedures, then, have not been doing what we intended them to do.
“Truth cannot be out there – cannot exist independently of the human
mind because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is
out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of
the world can be true or false. The world on its own – unaided by the
describing activities of human beings – cannot.”
From MAKING TRUTH: METAPHOR IN SCIENCE, by TL Brown (2003).
is interestingly “garbled” in the usual way self-consistent language has problems referring to inconsistent things.
I’m not talking about the difficulty of even narrowing down what “truth” means. I’m talking about a suspicious distortion that his thinking seems to add in the process.
It’s that in emphasizing how the meanings in our minds are distinctly our own, and different from the organization of the “world out there”, he ends up seeming to say that the outer world has no language of its own. What would make more sense is that the rich world of natural languages that systems evidently develop on their own, seem incompatible with what we are able to fit in our minds.
When you look at the world “money game” as having been a bit too successful in multiplying other people’s obligations, measuring the degree of distortion and resetting the whole game seems quite necessary. It would also be the best bet for something guaranteed to work and work quickly.
One of the more curious omissions in the neo-Darwinian interpretation of evolution, still, is to account for learning. Every kind of ‘foraging’ and ‘risk avoidance’ behavior is clear evidence of an individual complex system engaged in learning essential to its wellbeing.
It’s already part of our understanding of how things survive and thrive around us, but not considered as having a role in evolution.
That humans don’t appreciate how crutial that process of local environmental discovery is, seems to be one of those mysterious omissions we call “hidden in sight”.
It would greatly advance our knowledge of evolution and the world around us to realize just how very many kinds of natural complex systems:
a) are individual animated things that behave as a whole,
b) engage in active learning about their surroundings and
c) foil the universal tendency of decay to thrive instead by doing learning creatively
There’s a lot of important dissent on the economic “recovery” plan, and you’re not doing it justice at all.
From the “physical world” community, the scientists who study the economics of the environment and physical economy, the flaw in the plan is believing the phrase “lasting economic growth”. Those who study how popular views are misguided seem always to be mostly unpaid or underpaid, for failing to support what is popular of course.
Spokespeople for the real world are treated as an annoyance.
As a community we also don’t really ‘do’ political speech well, tend to speak with original scientific thought, don’t have a “down pat” story line to offer, and have no particular soap box to get your attention from. We do ‘thinking’ and ‘observing’ instead. Continue reading Unheard dissent – the “real world” problem→
Editor Tom Siegfried’s comment emphasizes that the main subject of science is understanding a world of change, but one might not know that from asking scientists.
Scientists have built their whole culture around finding fixed rules for things. We call it “determinism” and the whole community is so set in its ways it still only adjusts the standard fixed rules by adding a little random variation to explain why things of the past keep changing the rules they work by.
Even after half a century of all fields intensely studying how complex systems evolve, we are still not publicly acknowledging that they do.
Complex systems frequently have independently changing individual parts, that express new behavior in new situations, and we keep following our rules of the past for them. That seems just disgraceful! Continue reading Science yearning for rules in a world of change…→
Phil, What evidence do you have to claim that my well-being is dependent upon
me “multiplying other peoples obligations” to me? Steve
—-
Steve,
It’s mainly a kind of “generosity” and show of “trust” that becomes an onerous multiplying obligartion.
We typically all act to multiply the obligations others have to us for performing financial and resource exploitation around the world in two ways. You and I and everyone else buys products that are made by businesses that are given financing only if they return a profit.
It has to be a level of profit that assures their investors a rate of compounding returns, too, better than or equal to what is generally available. Secondly You and I and nearly everyone else, have money in the bank or in the markets earning compound interest, acting in to be the enforcer of the first process from the investor side of it.
It has no limit but for those so obligated breaking their trust and failing to be able to do so, as when the economy as a whole ceases to provide net returns.
We choose to receive compounding returns better than or equal to what is generally available, or we move our money elsewhere to get a better compounding return. With each choice we opt for using the surpluses of business to create real multiplying obligations for others to fulfill. Continue reading Ever multiplying obligations – the “Gold” rule→
New systems science, how to care for natural uncontrolled systems in context
