Complex class, day 2
Too much complexity for one day. But it was a good day, and very productive in terms of my obsession with networks v. hierarchies and how to govern the internet.
The key insight from today (after a few hours on the benefits of networks, all of which I am confident you know about already) (or you wouldn't read a single blog) has four steps:
1. There is always a tradeoff between scale and complexity. Systems that are highly complex at fine-grained scales are not as complex at coarser scales. (Bar-Yam says that complexity is the amount of entropy in a system.) Example of this might be a human being — it takes less information to describe a human being at full size (someone you're talking to from a foot away) than it would take to describe the vat of atoms that is that human being once you grind him up. (sorry for grisly image – it's standard).
2. Both environments and systems have measures of complexity at different scales. So: an ocean is not very complex when seen from above at a low resolution — it's uniform across the earth. And a tanker, as a system, is not very complex. But a coastline is complex, and a group of guerrilla fighters is complex. A rigid hierarchy is not very complex, because it can't be any more complex than the individual who's at the top.
3. If there's a mismatch between the complexity of an organism and the environment it's dealing with, it's in trouble. This is why pure hierarchies can't deal well with complex business environments. (and as time goes on those environments get more complex as everyone reacts to everyone else). This is why trying to control food distribution centrally doesn't work.
4. Once you've discovered the gap or the mismatch, the next step is synthesis: the only way to create systems that are more complex than what an individual can understand is evolution. Free markets do this; you can also set up frameworks that prompt evolutionary processes.
The big news today was the Charter decision by the 8th Circuit. Some nice gratuitous statements about the constitutionality of the entire subpoena process. Bravo to all.
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While I very much appreciate Bar-Yam's scheme, as an anthropologist his characterisation of hunter-gatherer society as a simple hierarchy is very wrong. In fact anthropologista have a saying: the chief said what was to be done and everyone went on doing just what they wanted to do. The point being that the chief (if there is one) has at best a completely symbolic role. These societies are usually very network organised and this is expressed in their complex kinship systems. Within the kin network there may be a certain authoritarian patterning between some pairs of actors: Father to child, mother's brother to sister's daughter are often control relations, but most are equal to equal.
I think control hierarchies arose with the formation of the state systems, but even in these the vast majority of day-to-day relations at the local level remained network control. As the state became more complex, as in Rome, the control hierarchies began to displace the local level networks.
Well, I just had to say this as I do like Bar Yam's general approach.
John