When it comes to the sustainability and/or survival of a system, especially of the type addressed in the context of cognitive dynamics under Otoom, several criteria become apparent:
- the more harmonious the system is within itself, the greater the potential for growth; or, the larger the system the greater the need for congruence within its domains (in other words, rational thinking is favoured over ideology);
- it is a measure of a system's quality whether it is capable of organising itself according to the above;
- the larger the extent of a system's congruent domains, the higher the probability that useful information can be gathered, processed, and disseminated;
- in addition, the larger the extent the higher the probability of useful abstraction processes taking place, which in turn feed back into the general information stream;
- defining a system's value in terms of the above, its inherent potential is directly proportional to: (1) the environmental resources, (2) the number of functional elements, (3) the inherent variance of those elements, (4) the degree of connectivity between its elements, (5) the variance of its informational units (in other words, the units' granularity in relation to the entire information volume).
Expressed less technically it means that a large-scale population in a resource-rich environment, its members understanding each other with reference to commonly recognised standards, a well-organised infrastructure covering education, health, and welfare, a minimal amount of censorship, a self-administered control over the growth of ideology, and a lively language, are the recipe for long-term success.
All of these criteria are independent of what has been termed culture or race under conventional views. For that reason the term 'demographic' is preferred since it refers to what a domain actually does at the moment of observation, rather than what some label presumes it would do.
It shouldn't be too hard to find examples of viable systems and others more or less dysfunctional.
3 comments:
Martin,
I think it is fitting that I leave the first comment.
You wrote: - the more harmonious the system is within itself, the greater the potential for growth; or, the larger the system the greater the need for congruence within its domains (in other words, rational thinking is favoured over ideology).
Do you mean the "or" in the above to be an either/or? If growth is undesirable or impossible but the system is large, there is need for congruence within its domains. What do you mean by congruence within its domains? Conguence with what? Does ideology preclude rational thinking? If so, we have a problem. Anything you say is certain to have an ideological component. But, is ideology a bad thing? Why?
Tom Waybutn
http://dematerialism.net/
Tom,
Welcome!
The "or" is meant as in "or, to put this another way..". So it's not a logical proposition.
Growth is linked to environmental resources, a factor I pointed out. All five factors are neither mutually in- or exclusive; in complex systems strict delineations are impossible anyway.
Ideology causes you to mould reality according to its tenets, hence I would say it's bad.
As to congruence, I'll put up an example within the next couple of days.
mw
Tom,
Re complex systems - I just read the article Are you nothing but genes or neurons? you mentioned elsewhere.
I couldn't agree more! It's exactly the sort of thing I have trouble convincing people about (and that includes scientists). It's not as if complexity had just been looked at yesterday.
mw
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