Observing how the present diverges from the past should be useful, both for becoming better able to control or capitalize on how nature works, but also for better controlling ourselves to stop repeating past choices that would be in error.
I'm trying to share something of my experience and verifiable knowledge of that, that is of some importance. Some only see a fine line between learning someone's tricks for making your own discoveries, and repeating back the words they use to describe their own discoveries, but there's a world of difference, of course. I don't want to hear my empty words back, I want to hear your full words reflecting your having made some of the same observations. Words are only meaningful if they represent shared experience. I think science can help us compare notes on our independent observations of the divergent processes in nature, and to really learn something by that. Growing rates and kinds of learning occur within relationship networks as they multiply their organizational scale and complexity. That applies to projects that start small at home or work, to software, building plans or businesses, industries, societies, etc, that get endlessly bigger in scale and incorporate changes in kind ever faster. I observe that when a complex multiplication of relationships like that runs into an unexpected rush of complications, it's often just before serious widespread failures occur. It looks to me to be a signal that marks crossing a line toward unmanageability for the system as a whole, marking an internal 'breaking point'. Do any of you notice that rush of complications as a signal of self-controls becoming, overextended, unresponsive and systems about to go "out of control", like over driving the slop in your steering system? It's also a little like a juggler being thrown just one too many balls to keep in the air all at once, and not dropping just the one but nearly all of them. I think it's a general property of divergent learning systems. Do you guys recognize any cases where organizational instability arises due to exceeding the learning responses of the parts? If there were such a property of instability in growth, and if you considered cybernetics to be the science of control, a principle of self-control to avoid pushing learning responses out of control could be called its "principal principle", i.e. don't overshoot. That's what I dubbed it anyway, the prudent choice to not push the learning demands of a system beyond the responsiveness of its parts. Does that make any sense in terms of what you observe? Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] explorations: www.synapse9.com "it's not finding what people say interesting, but finding the interest in what they say" ============================================================ 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
