Saturday, February 1, 2014

For Those Who Can't Grasp Democracy - Consider the 2nd Derivative of Disruption

   (Commentary by Roger Erickson)




There is plenty of evidence that large human "democracies" of this sort existed in multiple sites worldwide, in between cultural "development" cycles.

Evidence: large population or temple sites showing outcome of large-population labor, absence significant, long-term evidence for present-day combinations of agriculture, weaponry and/or warfare - e.g., Stonehenge, Catal Hyuk, Harappa, and many paleolithic & neolithic sites in South/North America, Asia, Africa & Europe.

One simple, unproven hypothesis is that it is our rate tool invention itself that stresses us.

When a subgroup of humans invent a new tool, practice or process ... they invariably misuse it (typically against their neighbors) for a long time, before settling into an optimal pattern of adaptive, distributed use (i.e., common sense slowly becoming common & obvious, through reverberating feedback).

Then another game-altering tool/practice/process is invented, which allows some parasites to bully the system again ... just 'cuz they can ... until we all wise up again.

You'll even hear this from experienced businesspeople: "I finally learned that just because you can ... doesn't mean that you should."

A core question for ORGANIZED systems is how to invent new tools, and AVOID misusing them before adaptively using them. This boils down to be the 2nd derivative of disruption. Just because some entire system has to be rebuilt per an altered design, doesn't mean that burning it down and starting from scratch is ALWAYS the most adaptive procedure. 

Rather than eradicating prior clans and clones before repopulating a new niche, a key advance invented by social species is to RAPIDLY scavenge, rescue and reuse existing populations, for immediate application to new tasks while accelerating exploration of new options in new niches. Whether you call it re-deployment or reorganization doesn't matter.

There are ways to titrate that path which produces the most new options, soonest. That titration method requires FULL-GROUP FEEDBACK, and we call it Democracy. Following that path requires continuous, real-time, statistical evaluation of the complex moment of adaptive power in a distribution of lost-vs-gained, net+local option-exploration.

Such titrated evaluation requires a statistical evaluation of a 2-stage optimization process. Keep the components well fed PLUS grow the net systemic options. Neglecting either stage feeds disparity, but not net adaptation.



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