[Fis] New Discussion Session--Complexity & feedback. Loops (OFF-LINE)

Arthur Wist arthur.wist at gmail.com
Thu Oct 24 22:33:02 CEST 2024 

Dear Pedro, Dear All,

What synchronicitous timing. I was about to send something similar, which
I've now all deleted as it became redundant with your mail — leaving us
with only the pointer I had wanted to include for everyone to consider in
the interest of avoiding what would become situationally highly ironic
amplification of accidental mutual miscommunication:
Systemspedia, the online version of the second edition of the International
Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (which sadly compared to the print
version lacks all the references), has QUITE a few articles on the words
"feedback", and one on the word feedforward — certainly a very useful
resource for everyone to (re)consult as part of the discourse here, here:

https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.systemspedia.com/?letter=F__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!UkC8e1HI_0d4yiML-scDAVL2UK2rWxrOLoyly3-4UDwkHjGLGEV-9yvr4hqlHmwnKXY8ZpJul70J5sRHfluZx80$ 

Best,


A

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024, 22:14 Pedro C. Marijuán, <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear Peter and FIS colleagues,
>
> Just a very brief point to you and the list, and it is to be patient along
> the discussion, for the diversity of views generates quite interesting
> contrasts and we all can learn... so please, let us go ahead. And let us
> see how the discussion self-organizes. Recently a lovable French quotation
> came to my view: "On ne règne sur les âmes que par le calme." Personally I
> am very interested in your argumentative strategy in the book, but that
> should be left for more advanced time of the discussion.
>
> Best--Pedro
>
> El 24/10/2024 a las 21:22, Peter Erdi escribió:
>
> Dear Jerry and All:
>
> Thank you for your comments. The mathematics of the feedback process is
> related to Control Theory, a branch of applied math that is applied to
> technological systems as well as biological and social systems. I hope I
> understood and answered your question briefly.
>
> Your comments on language... Of course, a newcomer (sort of) should know
> and accept the community's explicit and implicit rules. Still, I
> respectfully disagree. Cybernetics and information theory opened a new
> world using a new vocabulary;. At the same time, physics is based on
> concepts such as mass, force, energy, velocity, etc., and the new fields of
> the ninety forties introduced concepts such as feedback, control,
> communication, information, code, etc. We also have systems theory.  Simple
> systems transform input into output., while complex systems characterized
> by circular causality use feedback loops. I might be wrong, but I don't see
> why chemical systems cannot process or even create information.
> Autocatalysis in chemical kinetics implements positive feedback, and as you
> know much better than I do, it is an elementary building block in evolution.
>
> Apologies, I skip the question related to model logic and ... The
> correspondence is already too diverging, and ...
>
> I am inclined to accept that my introductory text did not generate a
> helpful, converging discussion, so if the community or Pedro himself feels
> that we should stop, let's do it. Otherwise, I am open to continuing the
> correspondence.I have already learned a lot.
>
> Kind regards,
> Peter
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Jerry LR Chandler <jerry_lr_chandler at icloud.com>
> <jerry_lr_chandler at icloud.com>
> *Sent:* Thursday, October 24, 2024 10:18 AM
> *To:* fis <fis at listas.unizar.es> <fis at listas.unizar.es>
> *Cc:* Peter Erdi <Peter.Erdi at kzoo.edu> <Peter.Erdi at kzoo.edu>
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] New Discussion Session--Complexity & feedback. Loops
> (OFF-LINE)
>
> Peter, List:
>
> This discussion is unfolding rather strangely from the perspective of 3 rd
> Order Biocybernetics as well as 2 nd Order cybernetics.
>
> Peter, it would be very helpful to explicitly express the mathematical
> foundations that you are alluding to in the overlapping semiologies of
> cyclic processes.  In particular, it is unclear to me what, when, and where
> the termini are interacting in the looping processes.
>
> Secondly, FIS traditional usage of language is referenced to engineering
> physics.  In general, participants use concepts “baked into” physical terms
> and concepts and philosophical history (e.g. entropy).  Any usage of either
> chemical or biochemical semiology is a priori rejected as irrelevant to
> information theory.
>
> Thirdly, an obscure question related to AI.  What are your views on modal
> logic with respect to your philosophy of cybernetics? More precisely, do
> these circumscriptions of (natural?) processes admit the usage of double
> negations?
>
> Cheers
> Jerry
>
>
>
> On Oct 23, 2024, at 8:31 PM, Peter Erdi <Peter.Erdi at kzoo.edu>
> <Peter.Erdi at kzoo.edu> wrote:
>
> Thank you, Joe! Thank you Karl!
>
> Joe: could you summarize what we should learn from Gian-Franco Minati in a
> paragraph or two? I knew the name, but don't really know his works. He is
> young (b. 1951.), but I don't find newer items since 2008"
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.geocities.ws/lminati/gminati/index.html__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!UkC8e1HI_0d4yiML-scDAVL2UK2rWxrOLoyly3-4UDwkHjGLGEV-9yvr4hqlHmwnKXY8ZpJul70J5sRHKnQySbU$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.geocities.ws/lminati/gminati/index.html__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Sm8PbLyGbeJ14NVMsUO1jrVsS0ccT6ZcHc963C8IEqeRBlmijxp34VaHyM-MQz3TOnpRP22X9Hc4bVKF3g-qvP5-$>
>
> Karl:  oh, "circular algorithms"! I should read more closely.
> +++
>
> I am somewhat disappointed; it looks like I did not manage to elicit a
> more focused discussion. Using the language of feedback control: the actual
> outcome deviates from my expectations, so I should improve my input to get
> a better result.
>
> To be more specific, let's see whether or not several paragraphs from the
> chapter about Feedback Control in the Economic Process will initiate more
> responses. I promise I will not copy more large items from the book:
>
> +++
>
> *Feedback is the transmission and return of information about the “state”
> of a system, i.e., about the amount of “stuff” accumulated in each of a
> system’s stocks over time. This information travels throughout a system and
> eventually returns to the flows that fill or drain the stocks, thus closing
> the system’s feedback loops. Generally speaking, the information being
> transmitted via feedback loops is used by agents to make decisions that
> alter a system’s flows and cause the system to adapt its behavior over
> time.*
>
> *Positive feedback represents self-reinforcing processes and is generally
> responsible for systems’ growth or decline. **Economic growth trends,
> multiplier processes, accelerator relationships, wage-price spirals,
> speculative bubbles, bandwagon effects, increasing returns, path-dependent
> processes, and anything that can be described as a vicious or virtuous
> circle can be represented with positive feedback loops. Financial panics
> and market crashes are examples of positive feedback in markets that head
> in a negative direction. Bubbles are positive feedback loops that instead
> send prices higher. From a psychological perspective, reinforcing feedback
> is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is a form of reinforcing feedback
> that results from the interaction between the economy and agents’
> perceptions and expectations.*
>
> ...
>
> *Negative loops, on the other hand, represent goal-seeking processes and
> many types of purposeful behavior. They can either stabilize systems or
> cause them to oscillate when their corrective action is delayed (by
> stocks). As such, negative loops are responsible for such phenomena as the
> “invisible hand” equilibrating processes of well-functioning markets and
> the unstable behavior of macroeconomic cycles.*
>
> *++++*
>
> All the best,
> Peter
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Karl Javorszky <karl.javorszky at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 23, 2024 5:29 AM
> *To:* Peter Erdi <Peter.Erdi at kzoo.edu>; fis <fis at listas.unizar.es>
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] New Discussion Session--Complexity & feedback. Loops
> (OFF-LINE)
>
> Dear Péter,
>
> Years flow by, and we keep discussing the same basic question of how our
> concepts are related, and how the relationships among our concepts picture
> the relationships we assume to be present in Nature.
>
> The improvement in the discussion since 1995 is, in my eyes, that we can
> now name in detail what our problems are. We have found the relations among
> natural numbers which are depicting an interdependent interaction among the
> symbols as such. Whether we use the natural numbers as a kind of Laws
> Carved In Stone, as Nature certainly seems to do, is our decision.
> Pythagoras is heavily behind the idea.
>
> Alex gives a tour d'horizon about the philosophic-theological background
> of our time. What I read out of his essay is that a great paradigm change
> is overdue.
>
> To Joseph, with great respect. The circularities that undeniably affect
> our habitat (et nos in illis) should be accepted as fundamental rules for
> our physiology, neurology. (breath, eat, sleep are periodic - circular). It
> looks like a clever idea to embed our psychology in the factual limits -
> constraits - structure that physiology and neurology build. If a fish has a
> philosophy, according to which it uses legs and a tail to hunt on treetops,
> that fish gives too much credence to its reasoning and not enough credence
> to its observations.
>
> In my latest summary,
>  Liaisons Among Symbols, Javorszky, K. (2024). Liaisons Among Symbols.
> Curr Res Stat Math, 3(3), 01-08,
> this is explained in more detail.
>
> The paradigm changes have already happened. It is possible to exchange
> ideas about circular processes and which inbuilt patterns of coincidences
> one can expect. In fact, one-armed bandits operate day and night eg in Las
> Vegas. Only the mathematics behind the empirical existence of concurrently
> operating cycles has not been publicly discussed yet.
>
> A great intellectual revolution worth it's name comes always with the aha!
> experience of something of course easy, self-evident and trivial, once one
> gets the principles.
>
> In our case, the perspective change is like that one initiated by Copernic
> and Galileo.
> 1. Use a collection of related individuals
> 2. Use eg the values a, b of the sentence a+b=c
> 3. Order and reorder the collection
> 4. Find cycles
> 5. Organise the cycles
> 6. Use the numeric facts of there being different support-demand
> situations for statements about the collection that refer to observations
> enumerable by using identical units (Sumerian type of counting) relative to
> the statements about the collection that refer to observations enumerable
> by using different units (Akkadian type of counting).
> 7. Once there is too much space for so much diversity, once the diversity
> doesn't fit in the space.
> 8. This is all in tables, comparable to the trigonometric tables.
> 9. Your students can write a Tautomat in less than two weeks.
>
> Thank you for bringing up classic cases wherein the relationship between
> parts and wholes can only be discussed if one has a symbol set made up of
> different units.
>
> As to the eye-catcher of how mistakes, misallocations and the like happen
> during the functioning of a feedback based system, may I politely pose the
> following suggestion :
>
> Let us build a feedback based circular system that functions, at first.
> Let us investigate in a subsequent step, what are critical components of
> that system.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Karl
>
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