This is available as part of a book offering that is free for community members of Cyb3rSynLabs. Please check here (https://www.cyb3rsynlabs.com/c/books/) for Second Order Cybernetics Essays for Silicon Valley. The e-book version is available here (https://www.cyb3rsyn.com/products/soc-book)
Always keep on learning… In case you missed it, my last post was Observations on Observing, The Case Continues:
Discover more from Harish's Notebook - My notes... Lean, Cybernetics, Quality & Data Science.
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Harish's Notebook - My notes... Lean, Cybernetics, Quality & Data Science. 
Reblogged this on Systems Community of Inquiry and commented:
Brilliant from Harish.
LikeLike
Again well written. Thanks.
The word “gages” triggers me. Smith and Berg describe in their Paradoxes of Group Life four paradoxes – a paradox is also in the eye of the beholder – called engagement (I prefer the verb “engaging”). Very interesting, because “complexity” results from engaging of systems with complex systems – Ashby’s Law. Very simply put: structural coupled natural or organic “systems” induce organically complexity in structurally coupled systems (or the other way around). The “gages” of living systems engage themselves.
They’re calling the four paradoxes paradox of disclosure (disclosing – as a verb), trust (trusting), intimacy (intimating – to communicate delicately and indirectly), regression (regressing). This are intergroup paradoxes: the paradox of living in groups consist of our resistance with disclosing ‘secrets’, like (dis)trusting other members in certain situations, with which we are close and then “regress” – act implicitly more childishly (angry, dissatisfied, saddened, … You can see how these complications will lead to complex situations, where we say one thing while meaning another thing.
They – Smith and Berg – connect this paradox with the intergroup paradox of what they call perception (perceiving). We see members from other groups through the lenses – templates – of our group. .Sometimes called “projecting”.
In my view, ;-), life itself is paradoxical. So I can project the intergroup paradoxes on my organs – members of my body-as-a-group; they are engaged, trust each other and – in the long run – regress. My perceptual organs – skin, eyes, ears, nose, … – perceive while projecting their “inner views” on the outside. These processes process themselves in my brain, thereby structurally coupling body with mind, sensing with acting.
The problems we’re having with understanding (non-)linearity come from using a linear structured tool in engaging with our domains (the word I prefer over environment): language. I’m sure we fully understand complexity when we’re engaged in engaging – we’re able to absorb complexity when driving a car, gathering food, building buildings, …. When engaged with each other in conversations using language, we run into trouble, because we have been instructed that words carry meaning (conduit metaphor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conduit_metaphor)
I’m currently developing a model based on a double metaphor: one generated by our senses – metaphor-in-use – and one induced by the group we’re being adopted by – metaphor-espoused. The metaphor-in-use we’re realizing when we’re (inter)acting (“when you want to perceive, learn to act”), while we cannot realize ourselves the processes of realizing. The metaphor-espoused we can “hear” when we’re referring (in language) to a metaphor-in-use as perceived through the lenses (templates) of our group. I suppose we’re still thinking that spoken words can control reality, like using spells.
LikeLike
Thinking about this reply, I noticed your remark: “I have discussed this concept at length before.” This is a kind of “recursing”, referring to what has been said or done before.
You also wrote:”complexity science has done is to draw our attention to certain features of systems’ behaviours which were hitherto unremarked, such as nonlinearity, scale-dependence, recursiveness, sensitivity to initial conditions, emergence “. Nothing in behaviour of systems has changed, except for our not unmarking, or “perceiving”.
“Complexity is not an option”.
Ashby’s Law states that only complexity – complex systems – can absorb complexity – complex systems. So complexity induces – produces, invents, projects – complexity in itself – recursively – as well as in other “systems” – pro-cursively. Complexity – like paradox – is self-propagating, self producing, autopoietic, autonomous … . In this way, I can explain why what we’re calling complexity cannot be exclusive and has to be included in any (complex) system . (With the general exception of systems of thought, theories, *-ism’s, because we need them to be general, accurate, complete and (preferably) simple)
“Complexity produces one-self, here and now”
For instance, any animal “absorbs” – abducts – complexity from its “environment”, (I like the French milieu, as it refers to being in the middle of the place (lieu)) while producing complex products, like its environment of ‘milieu’. Any animal both produces and is being produced, shaped by its so-called environment. (this is why I like to call “environment” domain. Domain comes from “domus”, house. One build one’s house oneself).
“machine are not complex, their complex is”
Because we build our machines – and theories – ourselves, still, they can only be complicated and will never become complex. However, the system of machines and theories becomes complex, as these domains induce each other. Emerging economical, social, cultural and political systems – as complexes inducing, producing, evolving each other – from technical – https://www.etymonline.com/word/technology – inventions in reproducing text facilitated “itself”. Interestingly, text comes from textile, weaving. We’re weaving patterns of language.
Extending Ahby’s Law: only ambiguity begets ambiguity; only volatility becomes volatile and only uncertainty remain uncertain.
LikeLiked by 1 person