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)
Please maintain social distance, wear masks and take vaccination, if able. Stay safe and always keep on learning… In case you missed it, my last post was The Open Concept of Systems:
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. 
Great post! But the map is not all we have: we also have a (moral) compass, frameworks from the past that have proved useful in dealing with complex issues….
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Systems Community of Inquiry.
LikeLiked by 1 person
As tests test tests, so codes code codes. Hmmm. I’m making this up, as I’m going along. Feel free to correct any mistakes.
I’ve been talking Monday with a good friend of mine, also a physicist. He had been asked – in the late ’70’s – to support making an computer application (“code”) to schedule (“coding”) for students in classes in rooms at a school. Many constraints: timeslots, rooms, teachers, and amongst it, the higher classes with individual students having options for lessons. They couldn’t figure out a “best way”. It took at least a week to come up with a schedule. He looked at the situation and concluded: a schedule constraints the constraints, so the schedule is the constraint. Just make a schedule using some heuristics (“cutting some corners”, he called it) and that’s it. Apply and adapt if necessary. Within a day, one now could make a viable schedule using this software. The software became a great success and is still being used. (Unfortunately, the software house went bankrupt, and he was never paid). Constraints constrain constraints.
—
When code codes code, codes codes “them-selves”. A coding code cannot code itself directly, as coding requires “decoding” and decoding “destroys” the code. Like an answer “destroys” the question. It can be called “annihilation”. However, a code could code for a(nother) code*, which code* could code for “it self”, that is, the code.
In codes, errors don’t exist. These codes are not “wrong”, they just don’t work. I like to call them “mistakes”. They’re not “wrong”, they don’t “fit” or they just don’t work. Any code will ignore these “non-coding” statements. Detecting and correcting (or coding for learning) implies a(nother) code – called code* – to detect “error”, as within a code there can be no errors.
So In becoming self-coding codes codes (code and code*) “comes into being”. So I could say, that every being codes “self-correcting codes”. Every organism organises it-self organically while being undistinguished from its error-correcting coding code*.
Using Murphy’s law – anything that can go wrong (= making errors), will go wrong – I would suggest that if a code could code for a (another) code* coding again for the code, it will (after some time) do so. A code coding a(nother) code* to correct errors in its coding — and vice versa – could work.
Making “errors” – I’ll call them “mistakes” *) – constrains the coding codes. Like the school schedule, it doesn’t have to be perfect (“optimal”, “efficient”, “the best”, … these are human codes for behaviour), as long as they work. Just work with it and working will work. Work works. (In Dutch and German, reality is called “werkelijkheid” (Wirklichkeit) or “what works”) So in becoming self-coding codes a “system of codes” “comes into being”. Like RNA and proteins invoking each other. And from there on to all organically organising organisms. Codes of behaviour.
—
So I could say, that every (living) being codes “it self” through living. This is equivalent to – what I’ve been saying a long time – that every organism organises it-self organically. Life doesn’t distinguish between good and bad, right or wrong (error), as “errors” or mistakes . Only our “codes of conduct do”. (Long shot: here we’re having the story of Adam and Eve in paradise with the Tree of Knowledge: good code / bad code).
The process of organizing I can call “coding”. The whole of the coding system I’ll call “system”. (And, I may have mentioned this before: with “organism” one uses a Greek word coding for “work” or “erg”. One also uses it in “en-ergy” or “at-work”.) One (being, organism, system, … ) codes both ones “community” – code of behaviour – and one-self. Work works work.
In order “to work”, self-coding codes have to become what we’re calling error-correcting codes. As one learns from making and correcting (= coding) ones codes, codes or better code-decode “systems” will become self-correcting codes. (I’ve always liked writing: … codecodecodecode… code codeco decode code code codeco … )
Another approach: self-correcting code require processes to produce it-self and will (or “must”) code for (another) code* producing its code. One coding system produces another coding system* producing (the) one coding system producing (the) other … Infinite regress, so a paradox. Both these kind of coding systems code each-other as “self-correcting codes” AND produce a “metacoding code”.
—
In working like this, codes code self-constrained “selves” or coding systems. They construct and constrain each other. Constraints constrain constraints.
For example: … RNA codes for producing proteins. These proteins produce proteins coding for producing RNA AND for RNA error correcting proteins. … These protein/RNA coding systems will also produce a constraint (or better, “constrain themselves”) with a “cell” boundary to contain itself. Once code produces (I do have to point out that the letters c o d e are reproduced in produce) code*s, codes will constrain each other, producing constraints.
Constraints constrain constraints, like code codes codes.
I suddenly remember an interesting explanation for the double helix – enabling error correction – and DNA coming into being as a kind of back-up code for RNA to check against. If the RNA had made a “mistake” or – more plausible – protein production was overtaken by a rogue code (virus): producing errors – the code could be checked against a “copy”. The other way around: viral RNA “drives” learning to code for (more) error-correcting codes, as “errors” are codes that don’t seem to contribute to error-correction. Mistakes mistaken for mistakes.
—
“Means becoming an end” is one of the often ignored rules of Darwinian evolution theory (= code) on biology. For instance, hairs (means) may insulate a body, protect against cold or predators (end), feather-like hears will do a better job (and impress the girls), and – in the end – feathers (end) may become wings (means) to fly. Off course these shifts started out as “mistakes” – ‘no, boy, these wings are not for flying, they’re to keep you warm’ and then “unnoticed” (with predators) and noticed (with others)’. Coats coding code. (Or models modelling models…)
( I’ve always mend “meaning” is not the end of communicating using language (= code). The end of language was sharing priorities, coordinating actions, warning. It’s again the means (meaning) becoming an end. Not trying to code/decode meaning in communications would improve communicating). Think about Watzlawick’s axioms on pragmatics of human communication.
Now – I cannot find the quote, perhaps you know where -, Shannon has proven that, given enough time, any code will become an error-correcting coding or “system”. He just didn’t notice (or I didn’t) that any coding system codes for another coding system. Perhaps this is because he didn’t include meaning in communication theory. He was only interested in the means and not the ends.
(So, given enough time – will 5 billion years suffice? – any ergodic system will produce a living ergodic system. Based on statistical mechanics and the Fokker-Planck equation).
—
Error correcting coding systems all use the same: “trick”: they’re applying the same (inherent) structures over and over again. These structures are like patterns (usually visualized as matrices), which, when transposed, produce the same pattern. Any error in the transposition, will show up as “defect”. To be corrected. (See: Zhengbing Hu et al.: I-Ching, dyadic groups of binary numbers and the genologic coding in living bodies).
I’ll come back to this later.
LikeLike