How Should Humanity Steer the Future? -- Sideways! by Thomas Howard Ray

Tom,

One misses concrete examples. For instance the Lim quote ("Violence arises due to the structure of boundaries between groups rather than as a result of inherent conflicts between the groups themselves") sounds meaningful, it makes linguistic sense, but what happens if it's applied to, say, Israel-Palestine or Northern Ireland? What are the "structures of the boundaries" as differentiated from the "inherent conflicts between the groups themselves"? More specificity please.

The sideways idea is interesting. It has a warrant in the structure of societies in mid-evolution (say the feudal period in Western Europe ... distributed nodes were definitely the game). Studying the history trading routes is always fascinating. Why do societies become increasingly hierarchical and centralized? Actually, Marx had some thoughts about that. So does Pitteky more recently. It has a lot to do with initial conditions plus the fact that accumulation tends to accumulate accumulatively.

A TV show my wife and I watch (we even record it when we're not home) is "Down East Dickering" on the History Channel. I see it as a sideways model even though I'm not conned by the scripted quality of some of the narrative. Anyway you observe wealth being created and consumed on a very elemental level by imaginative exchange of goods and services by skilled and decent people who know what they're doing. It makes one proud to be a human being.

Actually it's Pikkety.

Nick, I agree about concrete examples. The Science article referenced has them -- I think it's available online without charge; if not, ping me and I'll shoot you a copy.

The portion of Lim et al quoted in my essay continues: "Violence arises due to the structure of boundaries between groups rather than as a result of inherent conflicts between the groups themselves. In this approach, diverse social and economic causal factors trigger violence when the spatial population structure creates a propensity to conflict, so that spatial heterogeneity itself is predictive of local violence. The local ethnic patch size serves as an 'order parameter,' a measure of the degree of order of collective behavior, to which other aspects of behavior are coupled. The importance of collective behavior implies that ethnic violence can be studied in the universal context of collective dynamics, where models can identify how individual and collective behavior are related."

So as one expects, the scholarly technical treatment to follow is pretty heavy sledding for an essay format.

Thanks for the historical example; it sounds like something I'd like to look into. Though I agree with Popper about "the poverty of historicism," which is the Marxist-Leninist weakness. I think that the sideways view of history permits self-similarity in historical patterns over time scales, though it denies historical causality, i.e. dialectical materialism. It also seems capable of being the foundation of a true science of history if my own favorite definition of 'science' is true: "All science is the search for unity in hidden likenesses." (J. Bronowski)

I'll also look up the TV show if I get a chance. Thanks for the kind words; I think a committed rationalist cannot but appreciate the harmony of life; local conflict dampened by local self determination.

Best,

Tom

Tom,

I found an article in WIRED that summarizes the New England Institute study specifically re: Switzerland.

CH isn't a good example to counterpose to Israel-Palestine and Northern Ireland. Ethnic conflict in those two locales carries a history of invasion in the Ulster case and an internationally-sanctioned ingathering (against the wishes of many indigines) in the other. In both instances conflict was inevitable because one ethnic group had the power. Switzerland's history is one of successful resistance to foreign incursions in which all the language groups and both religious groupings were involved.

What would have happened in Switzerland without the cantonal system? Impossible to say. Linguistically there might have been issues but religiously not necessarily. Take the Netherlands which is close to evenly-balanced between Protestant and Catholic but where all citizens speak the same language. A monument to national stability. Take neighboring Belgium, in which almost everyone is Catholic but the country is linguistically and ethnically divided between Flemish and French. And effectively cantonized as well. The nation's barely hanging together.

My real problem with the general systems and complexity theory approach to just about everything is that it tries to smooth away distinctions in the quest for common patterns. Everything becomes isomorphic. Quote from Bar-Yam: "The propensity to violence is not that different between Switzerland and Yugoslavia." Actually, yes, it is, very much so. The Ottoman invasion (remember the Field of Blackbirds) and creation of an Islamic South Slav population in Bosnia made a hell of a difference for the fate of the future Yugoslavia. So did invasions from the West which created a Catholic population using the Latin alphabet in Croatia and Slovenia in opposition to the Orthodox/Cyrillic culture of Serbia. Historical memory matters. In Switzerland it's unifying across ethnicities and in the NL it's at least benign. In many other places not so much.

Cantonization in Switzerland supposedly promotes local cantonal identity at the expense of ethnic (German, French, Italian) identity and makes Swiss-ness possible. But if you tell that to the Swiss they smile. The cantons were simply there before the country was, they say. There are other reasons Switzerland works. Thoughts of being governed from Berlin, Vienna, Paris or Rome for instance.

I understand that network systems are individually self-similar in approximately the same sense that a Mandelbrot pattern is self-similar and unlike others ... but still they're all Mandelbrot sets and there are meta-rules defining what those are and governing their emergence. (Sidebar: do you see merit in Tegmark's belief that the actual information content of the universe is minimal?)

Anyway, I'm judging here entirely by the results of the NECSI approach. I have the 2007 Science article now as well as the 2011 "Good Fences" piece from the ArXiv. My beef is that the authors take some extraordinarily complicated socio-cultural situations (in South Asia, Former Yugoslavia, Switzerland) with deep, complex, individual histories and evaluate them essentially in terms of physical, including topological, boundaries between communities (as described using a certain one-size-fits-all set of standards) and the presence or absence of local autonomy as they define local autonomy. As though geographical and political boundaries were the essential or only contributing factor to communal violence wherever it arises and if you can just manipulate those factors in an appropriate manner violence will diminish. I just feel something's missing.

Yes, what is it with the Login?

Tom,

Hierarchical certainly has not worked through the ages. Many models of the future do point to decentralization, but these are doomsday -- more primitive without trade and networking.

Capitalism seems to give lip-service to individualism but the model tends to work toward subjugation of the individual for the purpose of control and profit. The self-interest at the top and its control of government oppresses all else. Certainly your reference to 85 controlling half the world's wealth indications the distortions of the current systems - I cite the same example.

Your model seems to bring light and breath into the levels where genius and self-determination can flourish. The problem is that current power structures won't melt to allow this transition.

Jim

"Nick, the Mandelbrot construction is a set. A complex network is a system of independent sets."

The point is, in relation to self-similarity, that the slightest alteration of the set's algorithm changes everything. In the case of a network the disappearance of one component set alters the interaction of the remaining component sets and the network's configuration. The question then becomes one of how this global change is expressed in terms of the individual component sets. How much separate freedom do they possess? And if that varies between them, why and how? And to what extent is this approach relevant to human affairs?

Remember Ned Block and the China Brain. Ought to be required reading in all systems theory classes.

Re: Tegmark. The question is of interest only if universes are algorithms because AIT is the context in which he frames the issue. The belief that they are is a belief. It's interesting that Tegmark is a quasi-acolyte of Chaitin's while still believing in the possibility of a ToE, which of course official Chaitinism says just ain't gonna happen.

I am not anonymous.

"Capitalism seems to give lip-service to individualism but the model tends to work toward subjugation of the individual for the purpose of control and profit. The self-interest at the top and its control of government oppresses all else. Certainly your reference to 85 controlling half the world's wealth indications the distortions of the current systems - I cite the same example."

We need to distinguish between capitalism as a system of regulated entrepreneurialism (the social democratic model) and capitalism as a system that permits accelerating accumulation of individual wealth resulting in increased inequality and denial of opportunity. The latter is political and social, the former economic. Command economies didn't work and not simply because many of the people in charge weren't too bright. A lot of them were pretty bright (look at Gorbachev). Those economies didn't work because stuff was manufactured that people didn't want to buy and there was no feedback system to explain this to the apparatchiki.

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for writing this essay. Your ideas are interesting and writing is very good, but like others have commented the essay takes a while to get going. In particular I felt like the first four pages at least were essentially a political manifesto which is not a bad thing, but felt a tiny bit out of place for me (I realise it gave context to your ideas). Of course 'steering' is a partly political task (my entry has a tiny bit of politics here and there) but I would have loved the 'future' part to be a larger part of the essay. None-the-less thanks for your essay and your creative ideas!

Ross

Tom

Your essay is wide in scope and creative in its proposals. It reflects your justified pride and concern with what I like to think of as the good side of the global phenomena that comprised the American Century. You propose your country somehow steer the world into an ideal future. Alas your love of country may have blinded you to the 'bad side': the amount of havoc US policies and those of its partners, Israel for example, have wreaked in key portions of the globe, disqualifying it in most ways as a global role model. Do not get me wrong I recognise the wonderful achievements of individual Americans, universities and other institutions working within the democratic system, but that has not translated at all well beyond its borders when it came to squashing the natives who stood in the way of U.S. 'interests'.

I am not sure how the theoretical recommendations of your report "Applying Complex Adaptive Systems Research to Countering Terrorism, Insurgency, Regional and Ethnic Violence" will translate into policies on the ground. But if the history of the Middle East with its history of oil-hungry US state terrorism in Iraq, for example, or the ongoing U.S. sponsored Israeli State terrorism and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, is any measure, I for one would say, thanks but no thanks.

As to US leadership in resource management, have you seriously considered what the American Association for the Advancement of Science has reported about America, with its small fraction of the world population:

"For many resources, the United States of America is the world's largest consumer in absolute terms. For a list of 20 major traded commodities, it takes the greatest share of 11 of them: corn, coffee, copper, lead, zinc, tin, aluminum, rubber, oil seeds, oil and natural gas. For many more it is the largest per-capita consumer"

Of course, considering its technical prowess, creativity and willingness to 'do something', I hope that policy leaders in the U.S. and also others in Israel and the Arab World etc.learn from the tragic mistakes of the past that have led to the present mess.

Sincere best wishes

Vladimir