[FRIAM] ** this Wednesday** Lecture May 31 12:30p - Carlos Gershenson: A General Methodology for Designing Self-Organizing Systems

[Bill Eldridge]

1) We have large parts of earth working with non-evolved systems.
A recent description I saw of women in the Congo for example, carrying 
200 lb. bags
on their backs. Perhaps they are the future if our complex oil-based economy
collapses. Darwinism isn't very predictive, it just says the winner was 
the best.
But it seems unlikely that any calamity would result in complete global 
significance,
whatever the scenario.

2) While we try to improve our governments, perhaps we should at times look
at the possibility that this is about as good as it gets, that a 
middlin' compromise
or a small swing between not very enlightened poles is our optimum 
equilibrium.
It's undoubtedly better than the worst we've seen out of human systems 
in the
last 100 years (or even the last 10), yet I don't see any quantum leap 
over say
Britain's government in 1870. Perhaps it's the people who might evolve more
than the governments, but that remains to be proved as well.

Carlos Gershenson wrote:
>> I think that assumes that cause and effect for any one system is
>> statistical across all systems.  I don't believe that to be the case.
>> Given a cellular system like an economy, where you can't really
>> transcend the basic cells, the humans with all our gifts and failings,
>> there seem likely to be response time failure thresholds where ever
>> bigger repercussions get ever slower and less reliable corrections,  
>> and
>> stabilizing the rapidly changing internal and environmental
>> relationships fails.
>>     
>
> I think that it is common to think that human society is fragile.  
> Well, the fact that we're still around shows that we aren't.
> Last week, I learned about two competing "doomsday theories" from  
> LANL people: bird flu, and peak oil. They both assume that small  
> catastrophes trigger chaos. But even if nuclear war breaks out, that  
> wouldn't erase mankind from the face of the earth. It would suck, for  
> sure, and all these scenarios make profitable blockbusters, but we  
> humans are a persistant little vermin...
> In any of these cases society would change, for sure, but precisely  
> that is part of the adaptation. It wouldn't collapse. It hasn't  
> collapsed, and there have been plenty of wars, famines, plagues, and  
> all other things mentioned in the Apocalypse... and we're still  
> around. So I find it extremely unprobable that something would wipe  
> us out. I am not suggesting that mankind will be forever on Earth,  
> but that evolving into something else seems to me more probable than  
> extinction by catastrophe.
>
>   
>> Asteroids might be a problem, and failures of imagination might be of
>> seeming equally stubborn nature.  I mean, if we've gone and built an
>> entire civilization, business plan and government financing structure
>> that relies on continual exponential increases in the complexity of  
>> the
>> system,... and that turns out to be really dangerous, it's quite a  
>> major
>> failure of imagination it seems to me.
>>     
>
> If the complexity growth would fade away, I don't see civilization  
> collapsing, so I don't understand why do you say that we rely on  
> increasing complexity, nor why this might be dangerous.
>
>   
>> I definitely think we should
>> make government competent by design.   There are lots of do's and  
>> don'ts
>> regarding performance measures, but if departments developed  
>> concepts of
>> productivity beyond just bean counter efficiency, having internal  
>> groups
>> competing would be highly very productive.
>>     
>
> Indeed, there are many things to be improved. Some people might think  
> that there is no pressure for improving services. That is the case  
> when there is no political choice (like in dictatorships or pseudo- 
> democracies). But if there are competing political forces, they will  
> try to improve government to gain more votes. So, slowly (maybe too  
> slowly), but surely, we're getting there...
>
> Best regards,
>
>      Carlos Gershenson...
>      Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
>      Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium
>      http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/
>
>    “There is no game in which you cannot cheat”
>
>
>
> ============================================================
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>
>
>   

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