Ross Ashby was one of the pioneers of Cybernetics. His 1956 book, An Introduction to Cybernetics, is still one of the best introductions to Cybernetics. As I was researching his journals, I came across an interesting phrase – “destruction of information.” Ashby noted:
I am not sure whether I have stated before my thesis – that the business of living things is the destruction of information.
Ashby gave several examples to explain what he meant by this. For example:
Consider a thermostat controlling a room’s temperature. If it is working well, we can get no idea, from the temperature of the room whether it is hot or cold outside. The thermostat’s job is to stop this information from reaching the occupant.
He also gave the example of an antiaircraft gun and its predictor. Suppose we observe only the error made by each shell in succession. If the predictor is perfect, we shall get the sequence of 0,0,0,0 etc. By examining this sequence, we can get no information of about how the aircraft maneuvered. Contrast this with the record of a poor predictor: 2, 1, 2, 3… -3, 0, 3 etc. By examining, this we can get quite a good idea of how the pilot maneuvered. In general, the better the predictor, the less the maneuvers show in the errors. The predictor’s job is to destroy this information.
As an observer, we learn about a living system or a phenomenon by the variety it displays. Here, variety can be loosely expressed as the number of distinct states a system has. Interestingly, the number of states or the variety is dependent upon the system demonstrating it, as well as the observer’s ability to distinguish the different states. If the observer is not able to make the needed number of distinctions, then less information is generated. On the other hand, if the system of interest is able to hide its different states, it minimizes the amount of information available for the observer. In this post, we are interested in the latter category. Ashby talks about an interesting example to further this idea:
An insect whose coloration makes it invisible will not show, by its survival or disappearance whether a predator has or has not seen it. An imperfectly colored one will reveal this fact by whether it has survived or not.
Another example, Ashby gives is that of an expert boxer:
An expert boxer, when he comes home, will show no signs of whether he had a fight in the street or not. An imperfect boxer will carry the information.
Ashby’s idea can be further looked at from an adaptation standpoint. When you adapt very well to your everchanging surroundings, you are destroying information or you are not demonstrating any information. Ashby also noted that adaptation means “destroying information.” In this manner, you know that you are adapting well, when you don’t break a sweat. A master swordsman moves effortlessly while defeating an opponent. A good runner is not out of breath after a quick sprint.
The Performance Paradox:
My take on this idea from Ashby is to express it as a form of performance paradox – When something works really well, you will not notice it, or worse you will think that it’s wasteful. The most effective and highly efficient components stay the quietest. The best spy is the one you have not ever heard of. When you try to monitor a highly performing component, you may rarely get evidence of its performance. It is almost as if it is wasteful. Another way to view this is – the imperfect components lend themselves to be monitored, while the perfect components do not. The danger in not understanding regulation from a cybernetics standpoint is to completely misread the interactions, and assume that the perfect component has no value.
I encourage the reader to read further upon these ideas here:
Edit (12/1/2020): Adding more clarity on “destruction of information”.
The phrase “destruction of information” was used by Ashby from a Shannon entropy sense. He is indicating that the agent is purposefully reducing the information entropy that would had been otherwise available. Another example is that of a good poker player, who is difficult to read.
Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning…
In today’s post, I am looking at Locard’s Exchange Principle, named after the famous French Criminologist, Edmond Locard. Succinctly put, the exchange principle can be stated as “every contact leaves a trace.” This is perhaps well explained by Paul L. Kirk in his 1953 book, Crime Investigation: Physical Evidence and the Police Laboratory:
Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves, even unconsciously, will serve as a silent witness against him. Not only his fingerprints or his footprints, but his hair, the fibers from his clothes, the glass he breaks, the tool mark he leaves, the paint he scratches, the blood or semen he deposits or collects. All of these and more bear mute witness against him. This is evidence that does not forget. It is not confused by the excitement of the moment. It is not absent because human witnesses are. It is factual evidence. Physical evidence cannot be wrong, it cannot perjure itself, it cannot be wholly absent. Only human failure to find it, study and understand it can diminish its value.
In other words, the perpetrator involved in a crime brings something into the scene and at the same time takes something with them. They both can be used against the perpetrator as forensic evidence. As a huge fan of mystery stories and shows, I was very interested when I first heard about this principle. Rather than the applications in the forensics science, I was thinking about it from a cybernetics standpoint. When two people converse with each other, their interactions can be viewed in the light of Locard’s exchange principle. Both of them bring something into the conversation, and in turn take something with them. There is a cross-transfer of ideas with successful conversations. To quote the late German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer:
The true reality of human communication is such that a conversation doesn’t simply enforce one opinion over and against the other, nor does it simply add one opinion to another, as a kind of addition. Rather, true conversation transforms both viewpoints.
It may be challenged that true conversations do not always take place. However, this is something that we can strive for. At the same time, we need to be mindful not to treat information as a commodity that can be passed around. Just because we convey a message by speaking it out aloud, it does not mean that the message is conveyed. As the great cybernetician, Heinz von Foerster, would say – the hearer not the utterer determines the meaning of a message.
Claude Shannon, the father of Information Theory, looked in depth on successful transmission of messages. He noted:
The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is, they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that they are selected from a set of possible messages.
Shannon’s model had a source (a sender of a message), a transmission medium (a channel with noise and distortion) and a receiver. The sender had to encode the message and sent it through the medium. The receiver had to receive the message and decode the message and reconstruct the message. The receiver had to have a set of possible messages so that they were able to properly decode the message such that any distortion or noise introduced in the medium can be compensated for. Shannon came up with a quantitative measure for the amount of information in a message – entropy. This is also a measure of surprise. For a message with low entropy, there is little surprise. For a message with high entropy, there is a lot of surprise, and this requires redundancy to ensure that the message is properly conveyed. For example, if the sender is sending a message, “011”, then the sender can repeat the message three times. “011 011 011”. Thus, if the message gets distorted such as “011 001 011”, the receiver is able to still decode the message as “011”. Curiously, if the message has a full amount of surprise, then the receiver will not be able to decode the message. Thus, if the message was entirely new information, the message will not be decoded successfully, no matter how much redundancy is entered. This is the whole point of cryptic messages.
We are autopoietic entities, which means that we are informationally closed. No information can come into our organization from the outside. We are closed to information coming in. Any information is generated from within when we are exposed to perturbations from the outside. I have previously talked about this before. See here and here. We generate the information based on the perceptual network evolved specifically for us. We cannot pass information around as a commodity. Autopoeisis is the brainchild of Humberto Maturana and Francesco Varela. They noted:
Autopoietic systems do not have inputs or outputs. They can be perturbated by independent events and undergo internal structural changes which compensate these perturbations.
When we are communicating as part of being at the gemba, we have to keep in mind that we may not completely understand the meaning as the way the utterer intended. In a similar way, the hearer, the other person, may not have understood the meaning as we had intended the meaning to be. Even though we both may have heard each other 100%, we may not have communicated 100% (the way we think at least). Instead, I am interpreting what the other person is saying, and trying to respond to what I think the other person has said. The same applies to the other person. We are both interpreting each other. We are both trying to perturb each other with the hope that the meaning that is being generated has some similarity to what we want to communicate. It is here that I appreciate Locard’s Exchange Principle. We are coming in and leaving something (not the entire thing) at the scene, and at the same time, we are taking something (again not the entire thing) with us as we leave the scene. When we communicate, we are hopefully inspiring each other. Communication is never achieved 100%, but some transfer of ideas takes place resulting in transformation of existing ideas. As Gadmer indicated, when we communicate, the ideas do not get added on top of each other in an additive fashion. Rather, the ideas get transformed. When we are at the gemba, we should be keen on listening with intent. We should be open to receiving the ideas from others and be willing to transform. We should be mindful that what we are saying will not be understood the way we want it to be. We should also be mindful of our non-verbal communication. Most of the time, we can tell a lot by how a leader acts. A leader often talks the talk that we want to hear. However, their actions often talk the loudest.
I will stop with the great George Bernard Shaw’s wonderful quote on communication:
The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred.
Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning…
I recently came across Dr. Donald Hoffman’s idea of Fitness-Beats-Truth or FBT Theorem. This is the idea that evolution stamps out true perceptions. In other words, an organism is more likely to survive if it does not have a true and accurate perception. As Hoffman explains it:
Suppose there is an objective reality of some kind. Then the FBT Theorem says that natural selection does not shape us to perceive the structure of that reality. It shapes us to perceive fitness points, and how to get them… The FBT Theorem has been tested and confirmed in many simulations. They reveal that Truth often goes extinct even if Fitness is far less complex.
Hoffman suggests that natural selection did not shape us to perceive the structure of an objective reality. Evolution gave us a less complex but efficient perceptual network that takes shortcuts to perceive “fitness points.” Evolution by natural selection does not favor true perceptions—it routinely drives them to extinction. Instead, natural selection favors perceptions that hide the truth and guide useful action.
An easy to way to digest this idea is to consider our ancient ancestors. If they heard a rustling sound in the grass, it benefitted them to not analyze and capture the entire surrounding to get an accurate and true model of the reality. Instead, they would survive only if they got a “quick and dirty” or good-enough model of the surrounding. They did not gain anything by having an elaborate and accurate perception. Their quick and dirty heuristics such as “if you hear a rustling on the grass, then flee” allowed them to survive and pass of their genes. In other words, their fitter perception did not comprise of a true and accurate perception of the world around them. They gained (they survived) based on fitness rather than truth. As Hoffman noted, having true perception would have been detrimental because it avoided shortcuts and heuristics that saved time. As complexity increases, heuristics work much better.
The idea of FBT aligns pretty well with the ideas of second order cybernetics (SOC) and radical constructivism. From an SOC standpoint, the emphasis for the representation of the world is not that of a model of causality, but of a model of constraints. As Ernst von Glasersfeld explains this:
In the biological theory of evolution, we speak of variability and selection, of environmental constraints and of survival. If an organism survives individually or as a species it means that, so far at least, it has been viable in the environment in which it happens to live. To survive, however, does not mean that the organism must in any sense reflect the character or the qualities of his environment. Gregory Bateson (1967) was the first who noticed that this theory of evolution, Darwin’s theory, is really a cybernetic theory because it is based on the concept of constraint rather than on the concept of causation.
In order to remain among the survivors, an organism has to ‘‘get by” the constraints which the environment poses. It has to squeeze between the bars of the constraints, to coin a metaphor. The environment does not determine how that might he achieved. It does not cause certain organisms to have certain characteristics or capabilities or to be a certain way. The environment merely eliminates those organisms that knock against its constraints. Anyone who by any means manages to get by the constraints, survives… All the environment contributes is constraints that knock out some of the changed organisms while others are left to survive. Thus, we can say that the only indication we may get of the ‘‘real” structure of the environment is through the organisms and the species that have been extinguished; the viable ones that survive merely constitute a selection of solutions among an infinity of potential solutions that might be equally viable.
Nature prefers efficient solutions that does the work most of the time, rather than effective solutions that work all of the time – solutions that prefer least energy expenditure, least number of parts etc. This approach also resonates with Occam’s razor. It is always advisable to have the least number of assumptions in your model. Another way to look at this is – the design with the least number of moving parts is always preferred.
The idea that true perceptions are not always advantageous may be counterintuitive. As complexity increases, we lack the perceptual network to truly comprehend the complexity. How we perceive our world around us depends a lot on our perceptual network, which is unique to our species. Our reality consists of omitting most of the attributes of the world around us. As Hoffman explains – the reality becomes simply a species-specific representation of fitness points on offer, and how we can act to get those points. Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know.
Complexity also favors this approach of viable solutions/fitter perceptions. Hoffman notes:
We find that increasing the complexity of objective reality, or perceptual systems, or the temporal dynamics of fitness functions, increases the selection pressures against veridical perceptions.
I will add more thoughts on the FBT theorem at a later time. I encourage the readers to check out Hoffman’s book, The Case Against Reality.
Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning…
In today’s post, I am looking at ideas of the famous Algerian-French philosopher, Jacques Derrida. Derrida is often described as a post-structuralist philosopher. His most famous idea is deconstruction. Deconstruction is often associated with analyzing literary works. The basic notion of deconstruction can be loosely explained as when a text is produced, the author dies, and the reader is born. A text is presented as a coherent whole with a basic idea in the center. The language in the text is all about the idea in the center. The assumption is that the central idea has a fixed meaning. The point of deconstruction is then to disturb this coherent whole, and challenge the hierarchy of the coherent whole. The intent of deconstruction is discovery; the discovery of what is hidden behind the elaborate plot to stage the central idea. It is an attempt to subvert the dominant theme.
Deconstruction is taking the text apart to understand the structure of the text as it is written, and to determine the meaning in several different ways by challenging the hierarchy put in focus by the author. Derrida believed that in language we always prefer hierarchies. We prefer good over bad, or day over night etc. Most often this behavior of focusing on hierarchies results in believing them to be the ultimate truth. We tend to think in terms of false dichotomies. It has to be “this” or “that”. If I don’t do “this”, I am “bad”. Deconstruction always pushes us to look at it from another side or perspective. Deconstruction challenges the notion that language is a closed system – that the meaning is fixed. Derrida viewed language to be an open system, where meaning is not fixed and can depend on the context, the culture and the social realm in which it was constructed. Every perspective is an attempt to focus on certain ideas. But in the act of doing this, we are forced to ignore certain other ideas. The act of deconstruction is an attempt to look at the ideas that lay concealed in the text.
Another important idea that Derrida put forward was differance. Derrida came up with this as a play on words. Derrida is putting two different ideas together into one word. The two different ideas are that of difference (how one word get its meaning by being different to another), and deference (how the meaning of a word is provided in terms of yet more words). The idea of differance is that the complete meaning is always deferred (postponed) and is also differential. The dictionary is a great example to explain differance. The meaning of a word is given in terms of other words. The meaning of those words is given in terms of yet another set of words, and so on.
Derrida’s most famous quotation is – Il n’y a pas de hors-texte. This is often translated as “There is nothing outside the text.” This idea is misrepresented as all ideas are contained in language and that you cannot go outside the language. Derrida was not saying this. A better translation is – There is no outside-text. Here the outside-text refers to an inset in a book, something that is provided in a book as a supplement to provide clarity. We can see this as an outside authority trying to shed light on the book. Derrida is saying that there is no such thing. The meaning is not fixed, and what is presented as a closed system is actually an open system. We have to understand the historicity and context of the text to gain better understanding. Derrida is inviting us to feel the texture of text. As Alex Callinicos explained it:
Derrida wasn’t, like some ultra-idealist, reducing everything to language (in the French original he actually wrote ‘Il n’y a pas de hors-texte’ – ‘There is no outside-text’). Rather he was saying that once you see language as a constant movement of differences in which there is no stable resting point, you can no longer appeal to reality as a refuge independent of language. Everything acquires the instability and ambiguity that Derrida claimed to be inherent in language.
Derrida says that every text deconstructs themselves. Every text has contradictions, and the author has written the text in a forceful manner to stay away from the internal contradictions. Derrida is inviting us to challenge the coherence of text by pulling on the central idea and supplementing it to distort the balance. Paul Ricoeur wonderfully explained deconstruction as an act that uncovers the question behind the answers already provided in the text. The answers are already there, and our job then is to find the questions. We cannot assume that we have understood the entire meaning of the text. We have to undo what we have learned and try to feel the texture of the relations of the words to each other in the text.
Derrida was influenced by the ideas of Ferdinand de Sassure, who was a pioneer of a movement called Structuralism. Structuralism presents language as a self-enclosed system in which the important relationships are not those between words and the real objects to which they refer, but rather those internal to language and consisting in the interrelations of signifiers. Ferdinand de Sassure stated that in language, there are only differences. Derrida went a step further this. He challenged the idea of the continuous movement of differences and postponement of meaning that came as a result of structuralism. Callinicos explained this beautifully:
There is no stable halting point in language, but only what Derrida called ‘infinite play’, the endless slippages through which meaning is sought but never found. The only way to stop this play of difference would be if there were what Derrida called a ‘transcendental signified’ – a meaning that exists outside language and that therefore isn’t liable to this constant process of subversion inherent in signification. But the transcendental signified is nothing but an illusion, sustained by the ‘metaphysics of presence’, the belief at the heart of the western philosophical tradition that we can gain direct access to the world independently of the different ways in which we talk about and act on it…
He (Derrida) believed that it was impossible to escape the metaphysics of presence. Meaning in the shape of the ‘transcendental signified’ may be an illusion, but it is a necessary illusion. Derrida summed this tension up by inventing the word ‘differance’, which combines the meanings of ‘differ’ and ‘defer’. Language is a play of differences in which meaning is endlessly deferred, but constantly posed. The idea of differance informed Derrida’s particular practice of philosophy, which he called deconstruction. The idea was to scrutinize texts – particularly philosophical classics – to expose both how they participated in the metaphysics of presence and also the flaws and tensions through which the limitations of this way of thinking were revealed. As a result, these texts would end up very different from how they had seemed when Derrida started on them: they would have been dismantled – deconstructed.
Deconstructing Systems:
At this point, I will look at deconstructing Systems. The idea of a System is very much aligned to the ideas of Structuralism. A system is viewed as a whole with interconnected parts working together. The focus is on the benefit of the whole. The whole is the central idea of Systems Thinking. The whole is said to be more than the sum of its parts. The parts must be sub-servient to the whole.
When we approach systems with the ideas of deconstruction, we realize that every system is contingent on who is observing the system. There is no system without an observer. This makes all systems to be human systems. We have to consider the role of the observer and the impossibility of an objective world. As the famous Cybernetician, Klaus Krippendorff said – whatever is outside our nervous system is accessible only through our nervous system, and cannot be observed directly and separated from how that nervous system operates. We may refer to and talk about the same “system.” However, what constitutes the system, its complexity and what we desire its purpose to be all are dependent on the observer. All systems are constructed in a social realm. After all, meaning is assigned in the social realm, where we bring forth the world together through “languaging.” What the whole is and whether a part should be subservient to the whole depends upon who constructs the system as a mental construct to make sense of the world. If you consider the healthcare system, what it means and what it should do depends on who you talk to. If you talk to the healthcare provider or the insurance company or the patient, you would get different answers as to what the healthcare system means and what it should be doing. There is no one objective healthcare system. We can all identify the parts, but what the “system” means cannot be objectively identified. We must look at this from different perspectives to challenge the metanarratives. We should welcome multiple perspectives. Every perspective reveals certain attributes that were hidden before; the process of which knowingly or unknowingly requires hiding certain other attributes. From the discussion, we might say that – The center does not hold in systems.
There are many similarities between the hard systems approach of Systems Thinking and Structuralism. We talk of systems as if they are real and that everyone can objectively view and understand it. Gavin. P. Hendricks sheds some light on this:
Structuralism argues that the structure of language itself produces ‘reality’. That homo sapiens (humans) can think only through language and, therefore, our perceptions of reality are determined by the structure of language. The source of meaning is not an individual’s experiences or being but signs and grammar that govern language. Rather than seeing the individual as the center of meaning, structuralism places the structure at the center. It is the structure that originates or produces meaning, not the individual self. Meaning does not come from individuals but from the socially constructed system that governs what any individual can do.
Derrida’s ideas obviously rejected the notions put forth by Structuralism. Derrida’s ideas support pluralism. There is no outside-text doesn’t mean that there is no text for us to process. It means that the text can be interpreted in multiple meaningful ways. And of course, this does not mean that all of them are valid. This would be the idea of relativism. As Derrida said, meaning is made possible by relations of words to other words within the network of structures that language is. The different meanings generated through deconstruction (pluralism) are meaningful to those who generated them. This idea is something that we need to bring back into “the front” of Systems Thinking. Derrida invites us to dissolve the hierarchy of the whole in the system that you have created, and look at the part that you have marginalized in your system. When we view the part from another perspective, we suddenly realize that the center of our system does not align with the center of the new different view.
I will finish with wise words from Richard Rorty:
There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.
The corollary of course is- there is nothing out there giving us meaning or purpose, except that which we have constructed ourselves.
Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning…
In today’s post, I am looking with more depth at the ideas of Cybernetics with relation to Ross Ashby, one of the pioneers of Cybernetics.
In particular, I am looking at one of the Ashby aphorisms:
When a machine breaks, it changes its mind.
This is a very interesting observation from a Cybernetics standpoint. Ashby defined a machine as follows:
It is a collection of parts which (a) alter in time, and (b) which interact with on one another in some determinate and known manner.
A designer designs the machine specific to an environment. This means that the designer has encoded a model of the environment into the machine so that when certain perturbations are encountered, the machine reacts in a certain manner. The variety that is estimated to be “thrown” at the machine is captured by the designer, and appropriate responses are encoded into the parts or the circuitry of the machine. The external variety is attenuated to a successful degree by the information conveyed by the machine in terms of affordances and signs on the machine. For example, a vending machine has signs on it along with pushable buttons that convey information to the user.
Ashby viewed this as the machine being successfully adapted to its environment. Ashby spoke of adaptation as being in a state of equilibrium. He referred to the stable state of equilibrium as “normal” equilibrium.
Normal equilibrium has some special properties which we must notice. Firstly, the system tends to the configuration C; so, if it is disturbed slightly from C, it will automatically develop internal actions or tendencies bringing it back to C. In other words, it opposes any disturbance from C. Further, if we disturb it in various ways, it will develop different tendencies with different disturbances, the tendencies being always adjusted to the disturbances so as to oppose them.
it must be noted that an equilibrium configuration is a· property of the organization… The equilibrium states of a machine are defined by the organization only.
From this point on, Ashby explains what the “break” means with regards to the machine.
Let us imagine a machine has “broken.” The first observation is that no matter how chaotic the result, it is, by our definition, still a machine. But it is a different machine. A break is a change of organization.
The specific organization entails what the machine can do when it is perturbed. The machine only has the initial information to deal with perturbations. When a new scenario arises, it cannot deal with it because it cannot generate new information (unlike humans). The difference with us humans is that we can generate new information as needed to deal with the new perturbation. Sometimes, this can be in the mode of the basic fight or flight response. The reaction is indeed an effort to get an equilibrium. As Ashby put it:
The drive to equilibrium forces the emergence of intelligence.
Information is described as the reduction in uncertainty. When the environment is dynamic and constantly changing, we can say that there is a usefulness quotient for the freshness of the information on hand. This is something like a “best by date” that is on the carton of milk. As Ashby put it – Any system that achieves appropriate selection (to a degree better than chance) does so as a consequence of information received. From a second order Cybernetics standpoint, information is generated by the autopoietic being. It is not something that can be transmitted in the form of a physical commodity from one person to the other. We should work on improving our ability to generate new information as needed when new perturbations arise. This provides us the requisite variety to deal with the new variety that is thrown at us. What worked in the past, and what worked at another organization may not be meaningful with the new perturbations. The generation of new information requires updating the model of the environment to some degree. This updating corresponds to isomorphism, the idea that there is a corresponding one to one relationship between the various states of the model and the environment. The better this correspondence, the better the model.
Another aspect of the statement that the machine changes its mind, is that the “mind” is embodied in the physical body also. There is a famous debate in philosophy that looks at how much the mind is separate from the body – is the mind embodied in the body or is it separate? It is believed that the mind is part of the body as much as the body being part of the mind. There is no use trying to separate the two. Ashby may be giving a gentle nod to this idea that the mind should not be separated from the body. When a machine breaks, it changes its mind!
Ashby’s approach of tying adaptation/intelligence to the idea of stable equilibrium is unique. I will finish off with his explanation regarding this:
Finally, there is one point of fundamental importance which must be grasped. It is that stable equilibrium is necessary for existence, and that systems in unstable equilibrium inevitably destroy themselves. Consequently, if we find that a system persists, in spite of the usual small disturbances which affect every physical body, then we may draw the conclusion with absolute certainty that the system must be in stable equilibrium. This may sound dogmatic, but I can see no escape from this deduction.
Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning… In case you missed it, my last post was Cybernetics Ideas from a Thermostat:
The thermostat is a simple device that is often used to describe the basic ideas of Cybernetics. Cybernetics is the art of steering. Simply put, a goal is identified and the “system” acts to get closer to the goal. In the example of the thermostat, the user specifies the setpoint for the thermostat such that when the temperature goes below the setpoint, it kicks on the furnace and stops when the internal temperature of the house meets the desired temperature. In a similar fashion, when the temperature goes above a setpoint, the thermostat kicks on the air conditioner to bring down the internal temperature. The thermostat acts as a medium for achieving a constant temperature inside the house. This is also the idea of homeostasis. In order to achieve what the thermostat does, it needs to have a closed loop. It needs to read the internal temperature at specified frequencies, and act as needed depending upon this information. If it was an open loop, no information is fed back into the system, and thus no homeostasis is achieved. An example of an open loop is a campfire without anyone to manage it. The fire continues to burn until it goes out.
Ernst von Glasersfeld, the father of radical constructivism, talked about these ideas in his short paper, Reflections on Cybernetics (2000):
The good old thermostat, the favorite example in the early literature of cybernetics, is still a useful explanatory tool. In it a temperature is set as the goal-state the user desires for the room. The thermostat knows nothing of the room or of desirable temperatures. It is designed to eliminate any discrepancy between a set reference value and the feedback it receives from its sensory organ, namely the value indicated by its thermometer. If the sensed value is too low, it switches on the heater, if it is too high, it switches on the cooling system. Employing Gordon Pask’s clever distinction (Pask, 1969, p.23–24): from the user’s point of view, the thermostat has a purpose for, i.e. to maintain a desired temperature, whereas the purpose in the device is to eliminate a difference.
The idea that the thermostat’s purpose is simply to eliminate a difference is most important here. I have written about this here.
Von Galsersfeld continues:
This example may also help to clarify a second cybernetic feature that is rarely stressed. Imagine a thermostat that has an extremely sensitive thermometer. If it senses a temperature that is a fraction below the reference value, it switches on the heater. The moment the temperature begins to rise above the reference, it switches on the cooling system –and thus it enters into an interminable oscillation. This would hardly be desirable. Therefore, it is important to design the device so that it has an area of inaction around the reference value where neither the one nor the other response is triggered. In other words, rather than a single switching point, there have to be two, with some space for equilibrium in between.
Homeostasis does not refer to a fine line it needs to maintain. It is often a band or a range. The wider the band, the easier it is to maintain homeostasis. It is more efficient to define the “stable conditions” to be between a range of values. A good example for this is a bicycle lane. It is not easy, if not impossible, to ride a bicycle in a straight line. However, it is easy to ride a bicycle in a somewhat wider lane. With the thermostat, this region is sometimes referred to as a “deadband.” This is the range of the temperature, within which the thermostat does not act (stays OFF). Below the lower limit, the thermostat will kick on the furnace, and above the upper limit, the thermostat will kick on the air conditioner.
Another important lesson from a thermostat is that if you want to change the room temperature, there is no point in moving the thermostat value to an extreme setpoint. Let’s say that you want to cool the room down. It is of no use if you put the thermostat value at 40 degrees F (4.44 degrees C). The house will not get colder faster with this approach. The thermostat controls the temperature inside the house, but not the speed with which it achieves this.
To be economically efficient, the thermostat must be aligned with the external temperature. For example, in colder weather conditions, the heat setpoint should be reduced (for example 67 degrees F or 19.4 degrees C), and similarly during warmer weather conditions the cool set point should be raised. Even though, the thermostat is the regulator, the user determines how this regulation is achieved. The thermostat as a regulator must also follow the Good Regulator Theorem. All good regulators must be a model of the system that it tries to regulate. The model of how to maintain the internal temperature constant (within the deadband) is programmed into the thermostat. It also follows the law of Requisite Variety. The thermostat must have the requisite variety to adjust the internal temperature based on the external perturbations. The thermostat must be able to differentiate the states of “below the setpoint temperature” or “above the setpoint temperature” to achieve the requisite variety and maintain the internal temperature. Both the Good Regulator Theorem and the Law of Requisite Variety are at utmost importance in Cybernetics, and they are both the contributions of one of the pioneers of Cybernetics, Ross Ashby.
I will finish this with some great aphorisms from Ross Ashby:
The drive to equilibrium forces the emergence of intelligence.
That the brain matches its environment is no more surprising than the matching of the two ends of a broken stick.
Every piece of wisdom is the worst folly in the opposite environment. Change the environment to its opposite and every piece of wisdom becomes the worst of folly.
The rule for decision is: Use what you know to narrow the field as far as possible: after that, do as you please.
Any system that achieves appropriate selection (to a degree better than chance) does so as a consequence of information received.
Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning…
In today’s post, I am looking at the “house” of Toyota Production System. The TPS house is shown above (Source: Toyota Europe website).
The two pillars of the house are Jidoka and Just-In-Time (JIT). I have been thinking about why Jidoka and JIT are the two pillars, and why it is not kanban or kaizen. Jidoka was developed from the ideas of Sakichi Toyoda, father of Kiichiro Toyoda. Kiichiro Toyoda founded the Toyota Motor Corporation. Sakichi Toyoda invented an automatic loom that stopped immediately when the thread broke. He viewed it as automation with human intelligence. Jidoka in Japanese means “automation”, but Toyota’s Jidoka has a human character included in the script such that it still pronounces as “jidoka” but it now means “autonomation”. The emphasis of Jidoka is quality. We can view Jidoka as not passing defects along or ensuring that the quality of the product is maintained as it flows through the line. The second pillar of the TPS House is JIT. JIT was the brainchild of Kiichiro Toyoda. The idea of JIT is also quite simple – have only what is needed, only in the right quantity, and only when it is needed. Perhaps, one might view that the two pillars of the TPS house are Jidoka and JIT to show respect to the Toyoda elders. I think there is more to this than just showing respect to Sakichi and Kiichiro Toyoda.
One way to explain the two pillars is to view them as two lofty goals – Jidoka as a call for maximizing quality and JIT for minimizing inventory. I again think there is more to this. Toyota in their 1998 little green & white book explained Jidoka as:
The principle of stopping work immediately when problems occur and preventing the production of defective items is basic to the Toyota Production System. We call that principle Jidoka… we design equipment to detect abnormalities and to stop automatically whenever they occur. And we equip our operators with means of stopping the production flow whenever they note anything suspicious. That mechanical and human jidoka prevents defective items from progressing into subsequent stages of productions, and it prevents the waste that would result from producing a series of defective items… The most fundamental effect of jidoka, though, is the way it changes the nature of line management: it eliminates the need for an operator or operators to watch over each machine continuously – since machines stop automatically when abnormalities occur – and therefore opens the way to major gains in productivity. Jidoka thus is a humanistic approach to configuring the human-machine interface. It liberates operators from the tyranny of the machine and leaves them free to concentrate on tasks that enable them to exercise skill and judgment.
Similarly, they explained JIT as “doing it all for the customer”. They noted:
JIT is making on what is needed, only when it is needed, and only in the amount that is needed. JIT production eliminates lots of kinds of waste. It eliminates the need for maintaining large inventories, which reduces financing costs and storage costs. It eliminates the waste that occurs when changes in specifications or shifts in demand render stocks of old items worthless. It also eliminates the waste that occurs when defects go undetected in the manufacturing of large batches. JIT production, though simple in principle, requires dedication and careful, hard work to implement properly. Once managers and employees have mastered the basic concept, they learn to devise various tools and techniques for putting this concept into practice… (leveled production, pull system, continuous-flow processing and takt time).
The two principles also link to another House of Toyota called the Toyota Way. The two pillars for the Toyota Way are Continuous Improvement and Respect for People. This is explained very well by the architect of the Toyota Way, Fujio Cho:
Toyota is planning and running its production system on the following two basic concepts. First of all, the thing that corresponds to the first recognition of putting forth all efforts to attain low cost production is “reduction of cost through elimination of waste”. This involves making up a system that will thoroughly eliminate waste by assuming that anything other than the minimum amount of equipment, materials, parts, and workers (working time) which are absolutely essential to production are merely surplus that only raises the cost. The thing that corresponds to the second recognition of Japanese diligence, high degree of ability, and favored labor environment is “to make full use of the workers’ capabilities”. In short, treat the workers as human beings and with consideration. Build up a system that will allow the workers to display their full capabilities by themselves.
Toyota Production System is a result of decades of trial and error to find solutions for unique problems faced by Toyota. Toyota did not have luxury to have the state-of-the-art machines or carry large inventory to support the then prevalent mass production system. Taiichi Ohno, the father of TPS, was able to come up with a framework that incorporated the principles of Jidoka and JIT to ensure that Toyota was able to keep the cost low for its customers, increase productivity and yet at the same time provide them high quality products. Jidoka and JIT are aligned very well with the principles of continuous improvement and respect for people. Ohno was famous for asking to do more with less (less people, less inventory etc.). He created conditions where the human capital was nurtured such that they learned to see wastes and came up with ingenious ways to remove them. Ohno created a framework for cultivating capable leaders and for providing employees with necessary practical skills. The idea of Jidoka ensures that quality is not compromised (quality is built-in). The operators can take pride in what they are doing and ensure that it is value-added. The work of the machine is separated from the operator such that they can focus on utilizing their creative skills to remove further waste.
Toyota Production System’s framework can be viewed as a closed system, in the sense that their framework is static. At the same time, the different plants implementing the framework are dynamic due to the simple fact that they exist in an everchanging environment. In a cybernetic sense, information can be processed (meaning can be generated) only in a closed system. And viability requires an open system. Thus, you need to be closed and open at the same time.
The basic concepts of the Toyota Production System are unchanging. But companies implement those concepts differently. One of the great advantages of the Toyota Production System is its adaptability. Yet common threads are apparent in the experience of the companies that have implemented the system successfully. Just-In-Time manufacturing and other elements of the Toyota Production System work best when they are a common basis for synchronizing activity throughout the production sequence. This an egalitarian arrangement in which each process in the production flow becomes the customer for the preceding process and each process becomes a supermarket for the following process.
I will finish with some strong words from Taiichi Ohno:
Those who decide to implement TPS must be fully committed. If you try to adopt only the “good parts” you will fail.
Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning…
“Gemba” is an important concept in Toyota Production System (TPS) and Lean. Gemba, the Japanese word, can be translated as the actual place. The etymology of Gemba stems to “gen” (meaning “actual”) and “ba” (meaning “place”). One might say that the first lesson in TPS is to go to the gemba. This is often expressed as “genchi genbutsu” or “Go and See to grasp the facts from the source.”
My take on gemba is that it is to do with reality as the word suggests. From here, I will ask the question – whose gemba is it anyway? I am asking this from a post-modernist/Constructivist angle. We are all meaning generating, sensemaking autopoietic creatures. We are organizationally closed, and this means that we generate meaning from the many interactions based on our internal meaning-generating framework. Reality as we perceive it exists in a socially constructed realm and each one of us have our own take of this. There is no objective reality in practice, simply because we do not have direct access to it. Our meaning-generating framework is an emergent property of our brain that has to rely on our sensory organs to make sense of the sensory input coming in. The meaning-generating framework or schemata is ever-evolving and conditioned by our ongoing experiences.
From this standpoint, when we say that we are going to gemba, we need to realize that the gemba as we perceive it is not the same as the gemba perceived by the operator on the floor. Normally, in the manufacturing world, gemba refers to the production floor where the work is taking place. We go there with our preconceived ideas and notions. Thus, the first step is to realize that the gemba as we see it is not what we need to be seeing. The gemba that we need to visit and understand is that of the employee engaged in the actual work. Our role at the gemba is to develop the others and in the process develop ourselves. This circular nature of gemba, understanding and sharing our understanding; developing others and developing ourselves, is very cybernetic in nature. When we try to reflect on our understanding, we are also required to view it from the eyes of the operator who is doing the actual work. Taiichi Ohno, the father of Toyota Production System explained these ideas really well.
Taiichi Ohno described the production floor as a “silent” space that always heightened human awareness and stimulated our imagination. Ohno advised:
When you give an order or an instruction to a subordinate, you have to think as if you were given the order or instructions yourself… You have to struggle together and think about the problem together.
Ohno advises that we should challenge our team members, and in the process challenge ourselves. We should be aware of what we are asking, and in fact we should be able to understand what is doable and what is not doable. If our team member says that the task is impossible, we should be able to counter that. Ohno says:
If you want your subordinate to feel so squeezed that they believe saying “It is impossible” is not an option, you must feel the squeeze and struggle just as hard with it yourself when you give your subordinate the problem.
Here the phrase “feel the squeeze” refers to the challenging process where the employee is pushed to see the problem and come up with a resolution. It is this challenging process that aids in the development of the employee. Ohno wants us to destroy our various preconceptions on a daily basis to further our understanding of gemba. He said:
Another way of stating the essence of the Toyota Production System is to say we are doomed to failure if we do not initiate a daily destruction of our various preconceptions.
Ohno challenged the then prevalent Ford’s Mass Production system with his ideas of a Limited Production system. He offers one more aspect of “whose gemba? thinking”. He noted:
The real waste is making products that don’t sell. Even quality products, if they don’t sell, must be discarded. This waste, in fact, is the most crucial because it is not just a loss to the company – it is a loss to society… The original concept behind Toyota Production System was the total elimination of waste. Carrying this to its logical conclusion, it follows that the function of industry is to accept orders not from an abstract clump known as “the masses,” but from individuals with unique preferences, and to produce similar items accordingly. Waste and high costs occur when we try to produce similar items in large quantities. It is cheaper by far to produce unique items one by one.
Final Words:
Being aware and recognizing that the we are in a social realm and that our perspective of reality is not the only one is of utmost importance. There are multiple perspectives of gemba, and the one that is most important is that of the actual employee most engaged with it. At the same time, we should engage with them in bettering their understanding of their gemba.
I will finish with a very insightful anecdote from the linguist Lera Boroditsky:
Kuuk Thaayore, are an Australian people living primarily in the settlement Pormpuraaw. Boroditsky talks about an experiment that she did with the Kuuk Thaayore. She gave them a set of photographs of her grandfather, ranging from youth to old age, and asked them to order them in the correct sequence. She repeated the test different times. Each time, the sequence of the order was correctly placed, however, the orientation was different. For most of the wester world, we would say that the correct order is from left to right, where the “left side” represents the young age, and as you move towards your right, the subject gets older and older. The Kuuk Thaayore oriented the photographs sometimes left to right, and sometimes top to bottom, and other times diagonally. Boroditsky realized that in their culture, their spacial meaning differs from us. She noted:
“their arrangements were not random: there was a pattern, just a different one from that of English speakers. Instead of arranging time from left to right, they arranged it from east to west. That is, when they were seated facing south, the cards went left to right. When they faced north, the cards went from right to left. When they faced east, the cards came toward the body and so on. This was true even though we never told any of our subjects which direction they faced.”
If we were to see the orientation, we might say that the Kuuk Thaayore got it wrong. We might say that the correct order is always left to right. It does not matter if we are facing north or east or west, we would always place it left to right. Boroditsky says that perhaps we are so self-centered that we always assume that orientation is based on our self-reference whereas Kuuk Thaayore people are externally-centered that their orientation depends on whether they are facing north or east or west.
The next time you go to gemba, ask yourself “whose gemba is it anyway?”
Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning…
Harish's Notebook - My notes... Lean, Cybernetics, Quality & Data Science. 