Marcus G. Daniels wrote: > I thought we were sort of talking about large units, e.g. sustainability > efforts as it relates to survival of governments or the even the human > species?
Yes, we were. But, you cut out the context of my original comment, which was that: It's true _some_ entities can seem, post hoc, to have been pre-adapted to some context. I.e. Some entities may seem to have successfully used _commitment_ to a single model (or small set of models). But commitment and pre-adaptation are not an effective _tactic_. Then you said that "it" can be effective, wherein you conflated tactics and strategy. Pre-adaptation and commitment to a single model (or small set of models) is NOT an effective tactic for achieving an explicit objective. On the contrary, however, agnostic multi-modeling can be a strategy for achieving vague, abstract, or implicit objectives. "Sustainability" is, as yet, vague and abstract. And if we buy Rosen's argument, it must be implicit. > It seems to me a government or large company can be agile by > through use of non-agile specialists (and more powerful) than small but > agile groups -- economies of scale. Only _if_ the overwhelming majority of those specialists are sacrificed (or "re-used"). And only _if_ there are plenty of those specialists. Which means pre-adaptation is not an effective tactic for an overwhelming majority of those specialists. You're talking about a strategy, not a tactic. And, at that composite (army, population, collective) level, you're also NOT talking about a strategy of pre-adaptation/commitment. You're talking about a strategy of agnosticism and multi-modeling. At the individual unit level (even if the unit is composite), the most relevant tactic for surviving potentially catastrophic change is maximized agility, not commitment to a given model. If you want to draw a _metaphor_ between "collective agility" and agnostic multi-modeling, then go ahead. But be clear that it's a metaphor. Agility comes from embeddedness and a tight feedback loop with the environment. Large collectives cannot both be a very abstract unit/entity _and_ be tightly coupled to the environment. Hence, saying something like "Intel is an agile multi-national corporation" is either a self-contradiction or an equivocation on the word "agile". -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. -- H. P. Lovecraft ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
