Dear Pedro
regarding social openness: "very tenuous rumor may destroy an entire company,
or put a sector on its knees.. " This can only happen if there is a
fundamental reason for the company or the sector to get into trouble (e.g. time
before the collapse the WorldCom had been in financial troubles but was
corrupting its accounting data to hide it). Therefore, a rumor is only a
trigger, and if it is "rumor" only, nothing will happen to the system.
When I refer to {biological {sociocultural }} constraints in understanding and
managing complexity I primarily have in mind the nature of constraints as such,
in terms that certain things cannot or are not likely to happen under their
influence. For example, our brains cannot handle more than 3 or 4 variables at
one time and grasp their causative interrelations, so we have a natural
heuristic process that cuts trough the "many" and reduces it to few. This
results in oversimplification of the reality and overemphasizing of the
variables that were not left out. A lot political and economic reasoning
suffers from that bias. Mathematical procedures and modeling can help us with
this biological constraint but math, unfortunately, did not prove itself yet to
be helpful to deal complex social problems. Artificial societies may be a
hopeful way, but this is yet to be seen.
Another biological constraint on our capacity to manage complex social reality
is that we intermittently use rational procedures and emotions, so a situation
which may be solved by an analytic process can erupt in conflict only because
certain words have been uttered or misinterpreted, which steers the whole
interaction and the problem solving process in a different direction. This
biological trait is only partially controlled by the culture at the next
integrative level, trough norms and rules of behavior (institutions).
The impact of sociocultural constraints on managing complexity is evident form
my last example on managing the energy sector: there is no reason as why the
energy sector could not be managed in a fully planned and rational way by a
group of experts who would optimize the production and transmission processes.
Did we need the market process to send the spacecraft to the Moon or it was a
large-scale project carefully managed for years before it succeeded? Or, is the
carbon trading the best response to climate change problem? However, the
primacy of markets is part of our dominant worldview, so we have the propensity
to exclude other options that may do the job better or with less uncertainty.
So I have the feeling that as we continue to build more socio-economic
complexity our biological and cultral capabilities to manage it are lagging
seriously behind.
The best
Igor
Original Message -----
From: Pedro Marijuan
To: fis@listas.unizar.es
Sent: Friday, February 16, 2007 2:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Continuing Discussion of Social and Cultural Complexity
Dear Igor and colleagues,
I have the impression that there is an agreement about the existence of
biological and sociocultural constraints that impact on our ability to
understand and manage socioeconomic complexity. These constraints are organized
hierarchically, as Stan puts it, {biological {sociocultural }}.
I would agree that this is the way to organize our explanations. But
dynamically the real world is open at all levels: very simple amplification or
feed forward processes would produce phenomena capable of escalating levels and
percolate around (e.g., minuscule oxidation-combustion phenomena initiating
fires that scorch ecosystems, regions). Socially there is even more "openness":
a very tenuous rumor may destroy an entire company, or put a sector on its
knees... Arguing logically about those hierarchical schemes may be interesting
only for semi-closed, "capsule" like entities, but not really for say
(individuals (cities (countries)))... My contention is that we should produce
a new way of thinking going beyond that classical systemic, non-informational
view.
To some extent, it may be a sign of diminishing returns to complexity in
problem solving that Joe addressed in his book "The collapse of complex
societies"... If we cannot manage the energy sector to serve certain social and
economic goals, how can we hope to be able to manage more complex situations
like the climate change, poverty reduction and population growth in the South?
Did we reach the limits (cognitive and cultural) to manage our complex
world?
After the industrial revolution, on average every passing generation (say
each 30 years) has doubled both the material and the immaterial basis of
societies: social wealth, income, accumulated knowledge, scientific fields,
technological development, social complexity... provided the environment could
withstand, maybe the process of generational doubling would continue around
almost indefinitely, or maybe not! Euristic visions like those mentioned by
Igor on energy policies by the UE or the US have been the usual and only tool
during all previous epochs: the case is whether after some critical threshold
human societies cannot keep their complexity any longer... Joe might agree on
the "necessary" collapse of complex societies.
best
Pedro
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