Paradigm Shift

There is a paradigm shift that has been emerging with the introduction of the Internet into human culture.

For the past four or five thousand years, humans have adopted a Rule-Based Model for socio-political self-regulation.

Sometimes the rules were said to come from Divine Sources, as expounded and promulgated by Monarchs or Theologians. Giambattista Vico noted a 3-phase cycle among a triumvirate of authorities.

The Viconian cycle consists of three recurring phases:

(1) The Theocratic or Divine Age, represented in primitive society by the family life of the cave, to which the thunderous voice of God has driven mankind; 

(2) The Aristocratic or Heroic Age, characterized by incessant conflict between the ruling patricians and their subject plebeians; 

(3) The Democratic Age, in which rank and privilege have finally been eradicated by the revolutions of the preceding age.

Currently, we are ensnared in the Fourth Age, as anticipated by Vico, and as explicated by any number of modern sources:

(4) The Chaotic Age, characterized by the bewildering collapse of democratic society, which is inherently dysfunctional and therefore riddled with a panoply of hellish and baffleplexing problems: conflict, violence, oppression, injustice corruption, poverty, ignorance, alienation, abuse, despair, suffering, and terrorism.

The resolution of this nightmare age of unrelenting chaos is to evolve to the Fifth Age where we master the art of taming the ill-mannered recursion laws that define and characterize the Chaotic Age:

(5) The Cybernetic Age, in which the otherwise mind-boggling math of recursive loops is tamed and tuned to gracefully converge to the long-dreamed-of Omega Point.

To emerge from the Chaotic Age and evolve into the Cybernetic Age, we are going to have to conscientiously educate ourselves in the STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) with a concentrated effort to master the fractious mathematics of recursive systems.

The key to mastering the Fifth Age is to embrace the Fifth Discipline of Peter Senge. The key is to master Systems Thinking.

Once STEM fully integrates Systems Thinking into our tools for thought, we can then team up with Artists who can shape this work for public consumption as part of the evolving Canon of Western Media. Once STEM is teamed up with the Artistry, we’ll be on our way to the Cybernetic Age with a full head of STEAM.

So, how does the emergence of the Internet help pave the way?

The Internet introduced a major paradigm shift that evolved above and beyond the traditional Rule-Based Paradigm.

Here is the progression embraced by the architecture of the Internet:

1. Heap of Rules ~ The stuff of children's games as played by scheming adults 

2. Suite of Protocols ~ Carefully crafted sequences of agile rules with feedback and alternate branchings 

3. Library of Functions ~ Continuously variable responses employing the mathematical tools of the Calculus (e.g. Gradients and Optimization) 

4. Collection of Models ~ Collections of Functions instantiating a System Model 

5. Ecology of Systems ~ The application of Cybernetic Concepts to the overall architecture and functioning of a complex system comprised of multiple interacting sub-systems and components.

Employing and applying the tools for thought of Systems Thinking, we can begin to make real progress in solving humankind’s long-festering Systemic Problems: Conflict, Violence, Oppression, Injustice, Corruption, Poverty, Ignorance, Alienation, Abuse, Despair, Suffering, and Terrorism.

Our Place In the Cosmos

Symphony of Science
Our Place In the Cosmos

Two years ago, Wired Magazine reported that Neil deGrasse Tyson would host a sequel to Carl Sagan's Cosmos which aired on PBS three decades ago.

The producers of the new sequel say the new series will tell “the story of how human beings began to comprehend the laws of nature and find our place in space and time.”

This also creates a parallel opportunity to review our place in the story known as “The Advance of Civilization.”

We can pick up where Giambattista Vico, James Joyce, Warren McCulloch, Gregory Bateson, Douglas Hofstadter, Benoit Mandelbrot, and Harold Bloom left off in The Canon of Western Literature.

The hardest law of nature to apprehend is the mathematical nature of recursive systems. We live in a physical universe, a biological niche, and socio-political culture all governed by recursion laws which we struggle to discover, understand and reveal.

Per Vico and Bloom's model, we have, over the past 4000 years, repeatedly passed through three recurring ages:

The Viconian cycle consists of three recurring phases:

(1) The Theocratic or Divine Age, represented in primitive society by the family life of the cave, to which the thunderous voice of God has driven mankind;

(2) The Aristocratic or Heroic Age, characterized by incessant conflict between the ruling patricians and their subject plebeians;

(3) The Democratic Age, in which rank and privilege have finally been eradicated by the revolutions of the preceding age.

Currently, we are ensnared in the Fourth Age, as anticipated by Vico, and as explicated by any number of modern sources:

(4) The Chaotic Age, characterized by the bewildering collapse of democratic society, which is inherently dysfunctional and therefore riddled with a panoply of hellish and baffleplexing problems: conflict, violence, oppression, injustice corruption, poverty, ignorance, alienation, abuse, despair, suffering, and terrorism.

The resolution of this nightmare age of unrelenting chaos is to evolve to the Fifth Age where we master the art of taming the ill-mannered recursion laws that define and characterize the Chaotic Age:

(5) The Cybernetic Age, in which the otherwise mind-boggling math of recursive loops is tamed and tuned to gracefully converge to the long-dreamed of Omega Point.

To emerge from the Chaotic Age and evolve into the Cybernetic Age, we are going to have to conscientiously educate ourselves in the STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) with a concentrated effort to master the fractious mathematics of recursive systems.

The key to mastering the Fifth Age is to embrace the Fifth Discipline of Peter Senge. The key is to master the Ninth Intelligence of Systems Thinking.

Once STEM fully integrates Systems Thinking into our tools for thought, we can then team up with Artists who can shape this work for public consumption as part of the evolving Canon of Western Media. Once STEM is teamed up with the Artistry, we'll be on our way to the Cybernetic Age with a Full Head of STEAM.

Cybernetic Systems

A correspondent asks:

If you had the task of reinventing the legal system, what would you propose?

I would replace it with a functional regulatory structure.

When I say 'functional' I mean that in a technical, mathematical sense, not in a rhetorical sense.

If you are a student of literature, you may be aware of the writings of Harold Bloom. He is the Yale University academic who has written extensively about the characters in Shakespeare. He also wrote a book analyzing the canon of western literature. He divides the canon into four chronological ages: Theocratic, Aristocratic, Democratic, and Chaotic. One might ask what comes after the Chaotic Age?

I would nominate the Fifth Age as 'Cybernetic'.

Cybernetic Systems are found both in nature and in high technology.

In living systems, Cybernetics explains how organisms regulate themselves through subtle feedback control processes.

In technology systems, Cybernetics explain how complex nonliving systems maintain self-regulation through carefully designed feedback control processes.

The mathematical modeling process that characterizes Cybernetic Systems is the same process in either case.

In a functional feedback control process, the component in the feedback loop cannot be chosen arbitrarily. The feedback unit is obliged to model the mathematical inverse of the main system.

In the analysis of feedback control, legal systems operate as primitive Zeroeth Order Controllers. There are very few systems that can be effectively regulated with a simple Zeroeth Order Controller.

The next most sophisticated feedback controller is called a First Order Controller, or Differential Controller. In a First Order Differential Controller, the feedback unit models the mathematical inverse of the First Derivative of the System Model. This is often simplified to a linear proportional controller. In economics, this corresponds to a fixed unit price for the consumption of a rare commodity. In a salad bar, you can pile as much salad on your plate as you like, and then you pay by the ounce. The optimal price to charge is the price that is neither too low nor too high; the salad bar runs out of salad just as the last customer is being served (supply exactly balances demand at the optimal price).

Higher Order Controllers fold higher order derivatives of the System Model into the solution, and are thus more graceful. Zeroeth Order Controllers are either altogether dysfunctional, or herky jerky, see-saw.

First Order Differential Controllers are smoother, but not altogether graceful. Think of an elevator that travels at a constant speed between floors and jerks to a stop. That's typical of a First Order Differential Controller. If you want your elevator to gently slow down as it arrives at a floor, you need at least a Second Order Controller.

Nature is full of feedback loops, some of which are more graceful than others. Buffered Aspirin is a Second Order Pain Controller. Regular Aspirin is First Order. Shooting the horse with a broken leg is a Zeroeth Order Pain Killer.

Hammurabi hardly knew anything about mathematics, system modeling, feedback control processes, and the like. He introduced a Zeroeth Order Control Structure and admonished us to put our faith in it. It was a mathematical mistake. I call it Hammurabi's Original Logic Error. Theologians call it Original Sin. There are very few systems which can be successfully managed with a Zeroeth Order Regulator. Human society is not one of them.

We need at least a Second Order Regulator, which means we have to wrap our brains around some serious system models of human socio-cultural dynamics and some serious calculus for solving those models for the optimal regulatory structure.

The Law, as defined by the disciples of Hammurabi, cannot possibly rise to the challenge, since it never rises above Zeroeth Order Control Architectures.

My correspondent continues:

Is there any type of existing prototype or model of this system (second order regulator) as it relates to human interaction (or the law)?

Yes, there are several alternative models. The oldest known alternatives to Hammurabism were proposed by the founders of the world's great religions. Figures like Moses, Buddha, Confucious, Lao Tsu, and Jesus recommended radically different practices from those contemplated by Hammurabi and his adherents.

Similar ideas can be found in Secular Humanism and Ethics. If you study Lawrence Kohlberg's model, he outlines six stages of moral development. His student, Carol Gilligan, proposes a seventh stage, which she calls the Ethics of Care.

In the 20th Century, figures like Gandi, King, Mandela, Thich Nhat Hanh, and the Dalai Lama helped bridge the gap between traditional religious teachings and secular teachings on ethical methods for solving the problems of conflict, violence, oppression, injustice, corruption, poverty, ignorance, alienation, suffering, and terrorism.

In the meantime, the Humanities were contributing to the challenge of modeling human characters and human socio-cultural dynamics. Shakespeare and Dostoevsky both made major contributions to the art of modeling human systems.

Sociologist Victor Turner made seminal contributions to this process as well, with his pathbreaking notions of Communitas and Liminal Social Drama.

René Girard extracted an insightful model of human socio-cultural dynamics through his insightful analysis of Dostoevsky's novels.

If you solve Girard's System Model for the optimal strategy, you get practices remarkably similar to the teachings of the founders of the world's great religions. But it's not grounded on faith. It's grounded in analytical system modeling, with scientifically valid models of human socio-cultural dynamics.

Is this a realistic possibility?

In theory, yes. But it will take a major paradigm shift in our beliefs and practices. We're gonna have to let go of some long-standing mythologies and dysfunctional practices — a transformation that carbon units have not demonstrated much ability to achieve, with the notable exception of a few rare individuals.

Probably the only way such a paradigm shift can ever take place is through the medium of storycraft. Our core beliefs are those which we embed in the stories we tell ourselves. Every culture and every age has its characteristic myths — the stories we tell ourselves to define our beliefs and practices. That's why dramatists like Sophocles, Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Dostoevsky are so important. They reflect the cutting edge in the crafting of stories through which we define ourselves.

I studied Engineering, so I'm not a storymaker; I don't have that talent. But I recognize that the tragedies which bring us together are recurring tragedies because we have failed to capture them in a compelling story.

My favorite modern storymaker is JK Rowling. Her heroes are highly functional adolescents. And among the adults in their storybook lives, only Dumbledore appreciates that in order for them to solve the problems in a functional manner, they must necessarily break every rule in the book. Were Harry Potter and his friends to obey the rules, they would be utterly dysfunctional and ineffective.

In the Harry Potter stories, magic is a metaphor for functional solutions. Arthur C. Clarke said it best: "Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic."

Were humankind able to evolve into the Age of Functionality, it would be a magical transformation.

If this model has been explored, why do you think it has not been accepted? And do you think that will ever change?

Not that many people are aware of it. I estimate that fewer than one person in 500 knows about these system models at all, and even fewer have digested them. Keep in mind that most people have never heard of Systems Theory, let alone any specific system model.

I expect it will change ever so slowly. Look how long it took for the Copernican model of the Solar System to overthrow the Ptolemaic Model, or for Newton's model of gravitational mechanics to take root. Similarly, it's been a century since Einstein published his Theory of Relativity. And while almost everyone has heard of it, almost no lay person understands it. Even though Einstein's iconic formula is widely recognized, few people can explain what it really means.

I've always believed that the study of history is necessary to prevent society from repeating past mistakes. I don't quite see the connection with story telling — and how that relates to implementing a new legal system. How do you connect the two?

History is His+Story. Stories are how we understand sequences of events and discern the underlying cause and effect linkages that renders a story coherent. Until modern times, almost all cultural learning was mediated by stories.

The story of the Hammurabic Method of Social Regulation is a woeful tragedy in slow motion. The story has been slowly unfolding for nearly four millenia.

I was born in 1945, the year the Second World War ended, and the year the world first began to learn of the horrors of the Holocaust, during which time the Nazis were incinerating Jews at the rate of 2 million a year.

I long thought the Holocaust was an abberation. But then I looked at the statistics for genocide and political violence for the entire 20th Century. During the 20th Century, the governments of the world killed some 200 million people. That's an average of 2 million people a year, year in and year out. That's the price humankind is paying for our lust for political power and our belief in the rule of law. If that's not a tragedy, I dunno what is.

And yet the oldest story in the canon of western literature — the story of Adam and Eve and the Apple — predicted that very outcome. It's a story everyone knows and almost no one appreciates for its insightful prediction.

What that tells me is that carbon units are woefully learning disabled.

Nor do I know a functional solution to that problem.

The First Book of System Design

A creation story for the Cybernetic Age from the Post-Apocalyptic Seminary of Neuro-Mathematical Systems Theology.

The First Book of System Design

Principia Cybernetica, 1999

If God were enamored of Model-Based Reasoning, The First Book of System Design might look something like this:

---

In the beginning, God created an open loop system. The system was without witness or controller, so God created a small-minded controller. God carefully avoided clueing in the small-minded controller on the finer details of the theory of feedback control systems.

Even God was amused, and so ended the first day.

And God said, “Let the small-minded controller draw up a goal statement.” And behold, the small-minded controller identified the desirable goal states for the system. And God thought it sounded pretty good.

And evening and morning were the second day.

And God said, “Let the small-minded controller determine corrections and adjustments and engage in determining rules of guidance and control.” Unfortunately, a debate about the sanctions and punishments to be inflicted in the event of a rule violation pre-empted almost all of the third day.

And evening and morning were the third day.

And God said, “Let there be a university in which the small-minded controller can envision system concepts and engage in discovering the deeply hidden laws of feedback control theory.” The small-minded controller considered adjustment of rules and sanctions and more intelligent alternatives to rules, and God saw that this was good. And God thought that it was even worth all of the adrenalin, serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins he had to supply.

And so ended the fourth day.

And God said, “Let the small-minded controller’s policies be implemented with long-range vision and insightful strategies.” The small-minded controller considered insights and feedback loops and state-space measurements and sampling theorems, and comparative analysis and simulation models. And God saw that this was very ingenious and fruitful.

And so would have ended the fifth day, except for the unintentional renewal of the debate about the choices amongst rules and sanctions.

On the sixth day the small-minded controller devised criteria for classifying and assessing trajectories converging to the goal states and the associated rates of convergence. This wasn’t the thesis topic that God had planned. God wasn’t able to read the thesis, however, because he had to take the afternoon off to create day and night and heaven and earth and seas and plants and stars and trees and seasons and years and sun and moon and birds and fish and animals and human beings and the invisible karma economy.

On the seventh day God rested and the small-minded controller submitted his model and analysis. It turned out that the recommended system model was nearly identical to the way that God had created the world, so the small-minded controller gave thanks to God for his implementation according to the integrated system model. There was, however, some opinion expressed that humans should have been created in the mimnetically reflected image of the small-minded controller’s recursive system model.

And God caused a deep agnosimnesia to fall upon the model-based reasoner …

---

CopyLeft 1999 by Barsoom Tork Associates and The Orenda Project in association with Zazen Enterprises and the Post-Apocalyptic Seminary of Neuro-Mathematical Systems Theology.

This partial Gnosimnesic recovery of things deeply hidden since the beginning of the world may be freely kerygmatized, mimneticized, or semiotically mapped. Or not.