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 case you missed it, my last post was The Toyota House – Why Jidoka and JIT?

The Toyota House – Why Jidoka and JIT?

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.

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In case you missed it, my last post was Whose Gemba Is It Anyway?

Whose Gemba Is It Anyway?

“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…

In case you missed it, my last post was Notes on The Good Regulator Theorem:

Pluralism and Systems Thinking:

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 and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning… In case you missed it, my last post was The Contingency and Irony of Systems and Cybernetics Thinking:

The Contingency and Irony of Systems and Cybernetics Thinking:

In today’s post, I am using the ideas of the great American pragmatist philosopher, Richard Rorty. Rorty’s most famous work is Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. Rorty as a pragmatist follows the idea of an anti-essentialist. This basically means that there is no intrinsic essence to a phenomenon. Take for example, the idea of “Truth”. The general notion of Truth is that it can be found independent of human cognition. Rorty points out that this idea is not at all useful.

Rorty states:

Truth cannot be out there – cannot exist independently of the human mind – because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true of false. The world on its own – unaided by the describing activities of human beings – cannot.

The suggestion that truth, as well as the world, is out there is a legacy of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a language of his own.

A key idea that Rorty brings up is the contingency of language. We may see language as this wonderful thing that enables us to communicate. Rorty describes language as contingent. This means that language is actually something we invented rather than discovered. And that language is really a tool we use to describe what is around us and our ideas. It is contingent because it is historically and geographically based. It is also contingent because we are engaged in language games, and meaning is an emergent phenomenon from our language games. This idea of language games is inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein. If we see language as contingent, then we can prepare ourselves to not fall prey to the idea that truth is out there in the world, and that it is something that we can find. When we realize that language is contingent, we stop believing in dogmas and doctrines stipulated to us. We stop asking questions such as “What is it to be a human being?” Instead we ask, “What is it to inhabit a twenty first century democratic society?”

The idea of contingency slowly reveals us that sentences are no longer important. We should focus on vocabularies. Rorty explains that vocabularies allow us describe and re-describe the world. It is a holistic notion. When the notion of a “description of the world” is moved from the level of criterion-governed sentences within language games to language games as wholes, games which we do not choose between by reference to criteria, the idea that the world decides which descriptions are true can no longer be given a clear sense. It becomes hard to think that, that vocabulary is somehow already out there in the world, waiting for us to discover it. Languages are made rather than found, and truth is a property of linguistic entities (sentences).

As a pragmatist, Rorty’s view is that language, and in turn vocabulary, is a tool that is useful in a particular context. It does not have an intrinsic nature on its own because it is contingent on us, the users. Rorty wonderfully explains this as – the fact that Newton’s vocabulary lets us predict the world more easily than Aristotle’s does not mean that the world speaks Newtonian.

Another idea that Rorty proposes is that of the final vocabulary. Rorty says that we all have final vocabularies. All human beings carry about a set of words which they employ to justify their actions, their beliefs, and their lives. These are the words in which we formulate praise for our friends and contempt for our enemies, our long-term projects, our deepest self-doubts and our highest hopes… It is “final” in the sense that if doubt is cast on the worth of these words, their user has no noncircular argumentative recourse. Those words are as far as he can go with language; beyond them there is only helpless passivity or a resort to a force. A small part of a final vocabulary is made up of thin, flexible, and ubiquitous terms such as “true,” “good,” “right,” and “beautiful. ” The larger part contains thicker, more rigid, and more parochial terms, for example, “Christ,” “England,” “professional standards,” “decency,” “kindness,” “the Revolution,” “the Church,” “progressive,” “rigorous,” “creative.” The more parochial terms do most of the work.

Let’s look at what we have discussed so far and look at systems thinking. Pragmatism is not foreign to systems thinking. The pioneer of soft systems approach, C. West. Churchman was a pragmatist. He advised us that systems approach starts when we view the world through the eyes of another. The general commonsense view of systems is that they are real, and everyone sees the “system” objectively which helps to address the problem. The “system” can be drawn and described accurately. The system can be optimized to achieve maximum performance. This is the “hard systems” approach which utilizes a mechanistic view. However, as we start applying the pragmatist ideas we have looked at, we start to challenge this. “Systems” are not real entities but mental constructs by an observer to aid in understanding of a phenomenon of interest. “Systems” no longer become a necessity, but become contingent on the observer constructing it. When one says that the “healthcare system” is broken, we no longer look at the sentence in isolation, but rather we start looking at the vocabularies. The idea of contingency brings the non-objective nature of reality into the front. How one sees or experiences something depends on his or her contingency and their final vocabulary. From this standpoint, a system has nothing that the observer does not put into it. The intrinsic nature of a system is actually the properties assigned by the observer and contingent on his or her final vocabulary.

Similar ideas are present in Cybernetics and Systems Thinking:

We exist in language using language for our explanations- Humberto Maturana 

The environment as we perceive it is our invention. – Heinz von Foerster

If contingency of language is an issue, then how does one do systems thinking then? Here I will introduce another idea from Rorty. This is the idea of an “ironist”. Rorty said:

I shall define an “ironist” as someone who fulfills three conditions : ( 1 ) She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered; (2) she realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts ; (3 ) insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself. Ironists who are inclined to philosophize see the choice between vocabularies as made neither within a neutral and universal metavocabulary nor by an attempt to fight one’s way past appearances to the real, but simply by playing the new off against the old.

Rorty adds:

The ironist spends her time worrying about the possibility that she has been initiated into the wrong tribe, taught to play the wrong language game. She worries that the process of socialization which turned her into a human being by giving her a language may have given her the wrong language, and so turned her into the wrong kind of human being. But she cannot give a criterion of wrongness. So, the more she is driven to articulate her situation in philosophical terms, the more she reminds herself of her rootlessness by constantly using terms like “Weltanschauung,” “perspective,” “dialectic,” “conceptual framework, “historical epoch,” “language game,” “redescription,” “vocabulary,” and “irony.”

From a second order Cybernetics standpoint, the idea of an ironist is self-referential. The observer is aware of their final vocabulary. Moreover, they are aware that their final vocabulary is perhaps incomplete or incorrect. They are historicist in the sense they understand that their language is contingent based on the time, place and society they were born into. They are also aware that others do not share their vocabulary. From this standpoint, what they can do is to seek understanding and ask leading questions to expose others to their contingencies of their vocabulary. They understand that truth is a function of agreement within language games. They don’t look at sentences in isolation, but at vocabularies in a holistic fashion. They realize that ideas are dynamic and do not have a fixed essence because vocabularies themselves are dynamic. They are open to changing their vocabularies without the fear of going against ideas they once held on to. They understand in a pragmatist sense that all models are wrong but the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful. (George Box)

I will finish with a quote from Fredrich Nietzsche:

“Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.”

Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning…

In case you missed it, my last post was Cybernetic Explanation, Purpose and AI:

Cybernetic Explanation, Purpose and AI:

In today’s post, I am following the theme of cybernetic explanation that I talked about in my last post – The Monkey’s Prose – Cybernetic Explanation. I recently listened to the talks given as part of the Tenth International Conference on Complex Systems. I really enjoyed the keynote speech by the Herb. A. Simon award winner, Melanie Mitchell. She told the story of a project that her student did where the AI was able to recognize whether there was an animal in a picture or not with good accuracy. Her student dug deep into the AI’s model. The AI is taught to identify a characteristic by showing a large number of datasets (in this case pictures with and without animals). The AI is shown which picture has an animal and which picture does not. The AI comes up with an algorithm based on the large dataset.  The correct answers reinforce the algorithm, and the wrong answers tweaks the algorithm as needed with the assigned weights to the “incorrectness”. This is very much like how we learn. What Mitchell’s student found was that the AI is assigning probabilities based on whether the background is blurry or not. When the background is blurry, it is more likely that there is an animal in the picture. In other words, it is not looking for an animal, it is just looking to see whether the background is blurry or not. Depending upon the statistical probability, the AI will answer that there is or there is not an animal in the picture.

We, humans, assign the meaning to the AI’s output, and believe that the AI is able to differentiate whether there is an animal in the picture or not. In actuality, the AI is merely using statistical probabilities of whether the background is blurry or not. We cannot help but assign meanings to things. We say that nature has a purpose, or that evolution has a purpose. We assign causality to phenomenon. It is interesting to think about whether it truly matters that the AI is not really identifying the animal in the picture. The outcome still has the appearance that the AI is able to tell whether there is an animal or not in the picture. We are able to bring in more concepts that the AI cannot. Mitchell discusses the difference between concepts and perceptual categories. What the AI is doing is constructing perceptual categories that are limited in nature, whereas what we construct are concepts that may be linked to other concepts. The example that Mitchell provided was that of a bridge. For us, a bridge can mean many things based on the linguistic application. We can say that a person is able to “bridge the gap” or that our nose has a bridge. The capacity for AI, at this time at least, is to stick to the bridge being a perceptual category based on the context of the data it has. We can talk in metaphors that the AI cannot understand. A bridge can be a concept or an actual physical thing for us. For a simple task such as the question of an animal in the picture carries no risk. However, as we up the ante to a task such as autonomous driving, we can no longer rely on the appearances of the AI being able to carry out the task. This is demonstrated in the morality or ethics debate with regards to AI, and how it should carry out probability calculations in the event of a hazard. This involves questions such as the ones in the trolley problem.

This also leads to another idea that has the cybernetic explanation embedded in it. This is the idea of “do no harm”. The requirement is not specifically to do good deeds, but to not do things that will cause harm to others. As the English philosopher, John Stuart Mill put it:

That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

 This is also what Isaac Asimov referred to as the first of the three laws of robotics in his 1942 short story, Runaround:

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

The other two laws are circularly referenced to the first law:

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The idea of cybernetic explanation gives us another perspective to purpose and meaning. Our natural disposition is to assign meaning and purpose, as I indicated earlier. We tend to believe that Truth is out there or that there is an objective reality. As the great Cybernetician Heinz von Foerster put it – “The environment contains no information; the environment is as it is”. Truth or descriptions of reality is our creation with our vocabulary. And most importantly, there are other beings describing realities with their vocabularies as well. I will finish with some wise words from Friedrich Nietzsche.

“It is we alone who have devised cause, sequence, for-each-other, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we project and mix this symbol world into things as if it existed ‘in itself’, we act once more as we have always acted—mythologically.”

Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning…

In case you missed it, my last post was The Monkey’s Prose – Cybernetic Explanation:

The Monkey’s Prose – Cybernetic Explanation:

Imagine that you are on your daily walk in the park. You see a monkey on a park bench, busily typing away. You become curious as to what is happening. You slowly approach him from behind, and try to see what is being typed on the paper. Strange enough, what you see typed on the paper so far is legible prose; complete with grammar and semantics. What could be an explanation for this phenomenon?

This example was given by the great anthropologist cybernetician, Gregory Bateson. He used the example to explain “cybernetic explanation”, as he termed it. He said:

Causal explanation is usually positive. We say that billiard ball B moved in such and such a direction because billiard ball A hit it at such and such an angle. In contrast to this, cybernetic explanation is always negative… In cybernetic language, the course of events is said to be subject to restraints, and it is assumed that, apart from such restraints, the pathways of change would be governed only by equality of probability. In fact, the “restraints” upon which cybernetic explanation depends can in all cases be regarded as factors which determine inequality of probability If we find a monkey striking a typewriter apparently at random but in fact writing a meaningful prose, we shall look for restraints, either inside the monkey or inside the typewriter… Somewhere there must have been a circuit which could identify error and eliminate it.

Bateson’s use of the word “restraints” is comparable to “constraints”. Larry Richards notes that Bateson used the term “restraint” referring to the approach of Cybernetics as “negative explanation”, focusing on what is not desirable, rather than what is. When there are no constraints, we can say that all events are equally likely. If we have enough chances, we will see at least one event, where a monkey can type out a work of Shakespeare (sometimes referred to as Infinite Monkey theorem). But here, we are looking at cybernetic phenomenon where constraints are present, and they guide the outcome. In the case of the monkey’s prose, one possibility could be that the typewriter is programmed in such a fashion that no matter what key is pressed, a preprogrammed prose is generated. This would be an example of a circuit that Bateson referred to.

Let’s consider another example. Let’s say that every hour you take two measurements, measurement A and measurement B. What you find is that measurement A goes up and down, while measurement B remains fairly steady. From this dataset, what correlation can you determine between A and B? Without any additional knowledge, the general consensus would that there is no correlation between the two measurements. What if we consider the mechanism of a thermostat? The thermostat does not turn ON until the temperature goes outside a tight range. Only when the temperature goes outside the range does the thermostat turn ON. It maintains the internal temperature of the house based on how the external temperature impacts the internal temperature. In the example above, the external temperature was A and the internal temperature was B. Without a knowledge of thermostat, if we were given just the two datasets, we would not be able to see any connection between the two datasets. This idea is sometimes referred to Friedman’s Thermostat after the American economist, Milton Friedman.

The thermostat is a very basic example of cybernetic explanation. Even though, we may perceive that the thermostat’s goal is to maintain the room temperature at a constant value, the thermostat does not have a goal per se. It does not stay ON to ensure that the temperature is maintained at a constant value. Instead, it turns ON when the temperature goes outside a limit. The thermostat negatively “moves away” from the outside range value of the temperature and stays ON until it is inside a determined range. The thermostat acts only when it hits a constraint or it is guided by the restraint, to use Bateson’s language. It is not a movement towards a goal temperature of say 70 degrees F, but rather a movement away from a current temperature of say 68 degrees F. Larry Richards explained this wonderfully:

Any system with constraints appears to have a purpose as there are outcomes precluded from the set of possibilities. 

Another example we can consider is that of driving a car. When you drive a car, you apply gas or brake only when needed. You don’t steer the car to try to keep it running in a straight line. You engage when the car is moving towards the edges of your lane. To continuously work towards a goal requires high energy, and a person driving is not suitable for this.

This idea of cybernetic explanation brings forth valuable insights when we look at social systems such as an organization. Richards proposes that assigning or designing a purpose for a social system can lead to problems.

I suggest avoiding or suspending… the idea of purpose. The idea of teleological systems – that systems have a purpose first, with structure following – implies that systems are created or evolve to achieve a goal or objective.

The problem in Second Order Cybernetics arises when the observers/designers specify the purpose of their designs, giving conscious intent to their actions. Gregory Bateson (1972a, 1972b) warned of the dysfunctions of conscious purpose when the actions taken do not and cannot account for all the ecological circularities of the situation and the unanticipated consequences inherent in taking such actions. Yet, humans have needs, desires, preferences and values; we are self-aware of our actions and alternatives; and, we can act with intent to satisfy our needs and desires. To act without self-awareness of our desires and the possible consequences of our actions would be irresponsible. 

 Richards advises to look for present constraints that guide actions.

Specifying a set of constraints treats desires as a spatial concept, focusing attention on the states we wish to exclude from happening, leaving open a space of possible outcomes deemed currently acceptable. This approach is present-oriented, merging ends and means: the set of constraints that represent our desires and the actions we take to avoid what we do not want are here and now, and our evaluation of possible consequences is based on current best available knowledge. Our desires, actions and evaluations can change as we experiment, learn and change, making it important to be careful about excluding outcomes that could become useful as circumstances change. Treating desires as constraints and intention as an awareness of desires as constraints opens the door for an alternative to the consciousness of purpose about which Bateson was concerned.

The idea of cybernetic explanation and constrains raise the importance of dialogue amongst the coparticipants of the social realm. Rather than going after a narrow purpose, we may be better served if we can explore the space of constraints to identify conditions that promote outcomes that we desire. When we utilize a constancy of purpose, we are utilizing a narrow view that is not able to accommodate the various interpretations and desires of the many coparticipants of our social realm. Bateson viewed the pursuit of conscious purpose as being damaging to the very ecology that supports being human. (Klaus Krippendorff). Krippendorff came out with an Empirical Imperative to support this idea:

Empirical Imperative: Invent as many alternative constructions as you can and actively explore the constraints on their affordances.

I will finish with more wise words from Richards that provides further insights about cybernetic explanation:

If I know what I want and I know it is possible to achieve it, I do not need cybernetics—I just go and do what I need to do to achieve the outcome. However, when I only have a vague idea about what I want or do not want and I do not know how to pursue or avoid it in the current society, the vocabulary of cybernetics can be useful. Cybernetics is not about success and the achievement of goals; it is about the reconfiguration of constraints (resources) in order to make possible what was not previously possible, including the avoidance of what was previously inevitable. 

Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning…

In case you missed it, my last post was Complexity – Only When You Realize You Are Blind, Can You See:

Complexity – Only When You Realize You Are Blind, Can You See:

In today’s post, I am looking at the idea of complexity from a second order Cybernetics standpoint. The phrase “only when you realize you are blind, can you see”, is a paraphrase of a statement from the great Heinz von Foerster. I have talked about von Foerster in many of my posts, and he is one of my heroes in Cybernetics. There is no one universally accepted definition for complexity. Haridimos Tsoukas and Mary Jo Hatch wrote a very insightful paper called “Complex Thinking, Complex Practice”. In the paper, they try to address how to explain complexity. They refer to the works of John Casti and C. H. Waddington to further their ideas:

Waddington notes that complexity has something to do with the number of components of a system as well as with the number of ways in which they can be related… Casti defines complexity as being ‘directly proportional to the length of the shortest possible description of [a system]’.

Casti’s views on complexity are particularly interesting because complexity is not viewed as being intrinsic to the phenomenon. This is a common idea in Cybernetics, mainly second order cybernetics. There are two ‘classifications’ of cybernetics – first order and second order cybernetics. As von Foerster explained it, first order cybernetics is the study of observed systems, where the basic assumption is that the system is objectively knowable. The second order cybernetics is the study of observing systems, where the basic assumption is that the observer is included in the act of observing, and thus the observer is part of the observed system. This leads to second order thinking such as understanding understanding or observing observing. It is interesting because, as I am typing, Microsoft Word is telling me that “understanding understanding” is syntactically incorrect. This obviously would be a first order viewpoint. The second order cybernetics is a meta discipline and one that generates wisdom.

When we take the observer into consideration, we realize that complexity is in the eyes of the beholder. Complexity is observer-dependent; that is, it depends upon how the system is described and interpreted. If the observer is able to make more varying distinctions in their description, we can say that the phenomenon or the system is being interpreted as complex. In their paper, Tsoukas and Jo Hatch brings up the ideas of language in describing and thus interpreting complexity. They note that:

Chaos and complexity are metaphors that posit new connections, draw our attention to new phenomena, and help us see what we could not see before (Rorty).

This is quite interesting. When we learn the language of complexity, we are able to understand complexity better, and we become better at describing it, in a reflexive manner.

What complexity science has done is to draw our attention to certain features of systems’ behaviors which were hitherto unremarked, such as non-linearity, scale-dependence, recursiveness, sensitivity to initial conditions, emergence (etc.)

From this standpoint, we can say that complexity lies in the interactions we have with the system, and depending on our perspectives (vantage point) and the interaction we can come away with a different interpretation for complexity.

Heinz von Foerster remarked that complexity is not in the world but rather in the language we use to describe the world. Paraphrasing von Foerster, cognition is computation of descriptions of reality. Managing complexity then becomes a cognitive task. How well you can interact or manage interactions depends on how effective your description is and how well it aligns with others’ descriptions. The complexity of a system lies in the description of that system, which entirely rests on the observer/sensemaker. The idea that complexity is in the eyes of beholder is to point out the importance of second order cybernetics/thinking. The world is as it is, it gets meaning only when we assign meaning to it through how we describe/interpret it. To put differently, “the logic of the world is the logic of the descriptions of the world” (Heinz von Foerster)

The idea of complexity not being intrinsic to a system is also echoed by one of the pioneers of cybernetics, Ross Ashby. He noted – “a system’s complexity is purely relative to a given observer; I reject the attempt to measure an absolute, or intrinsic, complexity; but this acceptance of complexity as something in the eye of the beholder is, in my opinion, the only workable way of measuring complexity”.

The ideas of second order cybernetics emphasize the importance of observers. The “system” is a mental construct by an observer to make sense of a phenomenon. The observer based on their needs draw boundaries to separate a “system” from its environment. This allows the observer to understand the system in the context of its environment. At the same time, the observer has to understand that there are other observers in the same social realm who may draw different boundaries and come out with different understandings based on their own needs, biases, perspectives etc.

A phenomenon can have multiple identities or meanings depending on who is describing the desired phenomenon. Let’s use the Covid 19 pandemic as an example. For some people, this has become a problem of economics rather than a healthcare problem, while for some others it has become a problem of freedom or ethics. If we are to attempt tackling the complexity of such an issue, the worst thing we can do is to attempt first order thinking- the idea that the phenomenon can be observed objectively. Issues requiring second order approach get worse by the application of first order methodologies. The danger in this is that we can fall prey to our own narrative being the whole Truth.

As the pragmatic philosopher Richard Rorty points out:

The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that.

If we are to understand complexity of a phenomenon, we need to start with realizing that our version of complexity is only one of the many.  Our ability to understand complexity depends on our ability to describe it. We lack the ability to completely describe a phenomenon. The different descriptions that come about from the different participants may be contradictory and can point out apparent paradoxes in our social realm.

In complexity, if we are to tackle it, we need to have coherence of multiple interpretations. As Karl Weick points out, we need to complicate ourselves. By generating and accommodating multiple inequivalent descriptions, practioners will increase the complexity of their understanding and, therefore, will be more likely to match the complexity of the situation they attempt to manage. In complexity, coherence – the idea of connecting ideas together, is important since it helps to create a clearer picture and affords avoiding blind spots. This co-construted description itself is an emergent phenomenon.

In second order Cybernetics, there are two statements that might shed more light on everything we have discussed so far:

Anything said is said BY an observer. (Maturana)

Anything said is said TO an observer. (von Foerster)

A lot can be said between these two statements. The first points out that the importance of the observer, and the second points out that there are other observers, and we coconstruct our social reality.

Our descriptions are abstractions since we are limited by our languages. All our biases, fears, misunderstandings, ignorance etc. lie hidden in the “systems” we construct. We get into trouble when we assume that these abstractions are real things. This is the first order approach, where we are not aware that we do not see due to our cognitive blind spots. When we realize that all we have are abstractions, we get to the second order approach. We include ourselves in our observation and we start looking at how we make these abstractions. We also become aware of other autonomous participants of our social reality engaging in similar constructions of narratives. As we seek their understanding, we become aware of our cognitive blind spots. We realize that everything is on a spectrum, and our thinking of “either/or” is actually a false dichotomy.

At this point, Heinz von Foerster would say that we start to see when we realize that we are blind.

Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning…

In case you missed it, my last post was Causality and Purpose in Systems:

Causality and Purpose in Systems:

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 and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning…

In case you missed it, my last post was The Conundrum of Autonomy in Systems: