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@kihbernetics.bsky.social
150 followers 160 following 390 posts
The art and science of #dynamical (non-trivial) systems that grow, learn, and generate #complexity. Integrating the work of Shannon, Ashby, Maturana and other thinkers in a theory that brings forth the original promise of #cybernetics and #systems_thinking
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kihbernetics.bsky.social
1️⃣ Kihbernetic system
2️⃣ basic processes, a recursive Autopoiesis, and a linear Allopoiesis, distributed in
3️⃣ control levels Regulation, Control, and Guidance, using
4️⃣ variables Input, Output, Information, and Knowledge connecting
5️⃣ functions, Reaction, Perception, Integration Prediction, and Control
kihbernetics.bsky.social
Stafford Beer's POSIWID needs a qualifier saying " ... what it does *for the larger system* it is part of," or something similar.
No system exists in a vacuum. They are all part of some larger system in which they play a *role*.
People in systems either find their purpose or it's imposed from above.
kihbernetics.bsky.social
But on the current US government gutting USAID under the direction of his fellow oligarch, not a peep?

Why is it that all those rich people are very keen to tell others what the "right" thing to do is instead of fixing things in their fiefdom first?
Dousa Responds to Gates' Criticism on Sweden's Aid Budget Shift | Sweden Herald
Sweden reduces the aid budget and directs more money to Ukraine and its own defense
swedenherald.com
kihbernetics.bsky.social
Social networks are incredibly important for democracy. The US example shows they are the only thing that can stop a society from sliding into fascism.
It is interesting to see how not even "X" with all its trolls, bots, skewed algorithms, and a demonstrably fascist owner can suppress the real truth
defenddemocracy.bsky.social
President Macron: “Europeans, let's wake up!

We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks.”

defenddemocracy.eu/macron-democ...
kihbernetics.bsky.social
Protesters with signs can do little in this situation except provide a pretext for escalation, but individual, city, and state-level service providers can do a lot.
They can stop providing food, water, electricity, and other necessary services to those facilities unless they play by the rules, no? 🤷
kihbernetics.bsky.social
No serious philosophical or scientific discussion about #consciousness or #cognition in general can ignore #phenomenology, because all our knowledge is gained solely through lived experience.
See in particular Aron Gurwitsch’s "Field Theory of Consciousness"👇
journals.openedition.org/hel/3541?lan...
kihbernetics.bsky.social
🫳🎤
kellyscaletta.bsky.social
The Democrats should "bargain" with the Republicans and say that they will give up fighting for healthcare for undocumented migrants if the Republicans agree to extend the ACA and Medicaid for citizens.
kihbernetics.bsky.social
This IS a state space representation of dynamical system. You can use it to model a single neuron a whole society.
The trick is in selecting the variables.
kihbernetics.bsky.social
Also good read:
"If humanity cannot live with the dangers and responsibilities inherent in freedom, it will probably turn to authoritarianism
... a landmark work by one of the most distinguished thinkers of our time ... as timely now as when first published in 1941"
www.goodreads.com/book/show/25...
Escape from Freedom
If humanity cannot live with the dangers and responsibi…
www.goodreads.com
kihbernetics.bsky.social
A dynamical (adaptive) system 👇 in which its current (knowledge) #state determines input perception (what information or meaning is constructed from it) and the production of an output that best suits the current situation.
The state is historically maintained through the integration of information.
kihbernetics.bsky.social
"Cogito, ergo sum,"-"I think, therefore I am," is a foundational philosophical statement by René Descartes about the human condition.
No other animal or living thing has shown a similar level of awareness about their own "existential" conditions, and only a few can be said to have a mind.
Forget AI.
kihbernetics.bsky.social
Jackson's Knowledge Argument is invalid because knowledge comes from #experience.
While confined within the room, Mary's experience from "reading books and watching lectures on a black-and-white TV monitor" wasn't "the complete physical truth of colour vision" which includes the experience of color.
kihbernetics.bsky.social
And who (what) is making those rules and who (what) is making the selection?
kihbernetics.bsky.social
Now it's time for me to be puzzled.
Care to describe the generative mechanism for how a thermostat can gain "organizmal" autonomy in a selective environment?
kihbernetics.bsky.social
Autonomy means that you make your own "rules of engagement." A thermostat can't do that.
kihbernetics.bsky.social
Subjective to the system.

bsky.app/profile/kihb...
kihbernetics.bsky.social
The question about the origin of #life should be adjusted to include what needs to happen for a mere physical #structure abiding by universal, inexorable, and incorporeal #laws of physics to become a living #system ally enforcing their incidental, local, and private #rules of asymmetric engagement.🤔
kihbernetics.bsky.social
In Pattee's terms, "structural constraints" are determined and obeying inexorable physical laws, while "functional (control) constraints" are private, subjective and largely arbitrary, so that they have to be enforced by "the will" of the system.
kihbernetics.bsky.social
Pattee should also be required reading for politicians and everyone else holding an "office."

The majority don't realize that the reason they are "in charge" is that we, as a group, agree to follow the rules.

"The Physical Basis and Origin of Hierarchical Control."
www.academia.edu/863851/Hiera...
kihbernetics.bsky.social
An excerpt from Howard Pattee's "The Physical Basis and Origin of Hierarchical Control."

His work should be required reading for anyone who wants to debate the origins of life, cognition and consciousness, free will vs. determinism, or #complexity in general.

link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...
kihbernetics.bsky.social
But you need extrinsic rewards from the environment like food and recompensation for your extrinsic work to function, no? The point I was yrying to make was that artificial reinforcement learning (if it can be called that) is just relying on external validation, there is no internal "drive" to learn
kihbernetics.bsky.social
Learning is primarily a work for intrinsic #rewards (what Gene Bellinger calls work for #results), an exploratory work to increase knowledge, as opposed to work for extrinsic environmental rewards that is exploting that accumulated knowledge. Not sure AI has the former kind🤔
bsky.app/profile/kihb...
kihbernetics.bsky.social
There is another dimension to this. Learning is primarily #work that is done internally to get some "results," or intrinsic reward, like in computation, the notorious "aha! moments."
It is not something that is necessarily done to get an external (substantial) reward in the form of matter or energy.
kihbernetics.bsky.social
The"Extended Mind" thesis claims that cognitive processes can be instantiated in resources that are distributed across the brain, the body, and the environment.
That may be so, notwithstanding the fact that a notebook can't maintain a cognitive process by itself and a body without brain has no mind.
kihbernetics.bsky.social
Interesting! Thanks for the lead.

Seems very close to the approach taken by PCT (Perceptual Control Theory)
CC: @warrenmansell.bsky.social

I'm completely in line with all theories of mind that are "non-computational," "embodied," and "enactive," but I'm not quite convinced by the "extended" part🤔
kihbernetics.bsky.social
Google Gemini's key takeaways from:

"Beyond the extended mind: new arguments for extensive enactivism"
by Sganzerla, Hutto & Kirchhoff

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Accurate?