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

Sat Oct 26 22:59:33 CEST 2024

Dear All,

Thank you for the comments!

Gordana, I am happy to learn of your interest in the trilogy. However, I don't think I should use this forum for more self-promotion. Maybe we can find other opportunities for more interactions.
Arthur: Thank you for the link to Systemspedia!
Joe: Thanks for giving the context to Gian-Franco Minati!

+++++ I try to provoke some more responses. I will remain at the general approach level.

Cause and effect

      Common sense thinking and problem-solving often adopt the concept
of a single cause and a single effect. The proverb you reap what you sow
reflects that previous actions generate future consequences. A cause tells us
why something happens. An effect tells us what happened. We have all heard
Newton’s story and know that the apple fell because of gravitation.

      Circular causality, in essence, is a sequence of causes and effects
whereby the explanation of a pattern leads back to the first cause and either
confirms or changes that first cause. For example, A causes B, and B causes C,
which modifies A. The concept itself had a bad reputation in scientific circles.
Arguments and processes that did not have a well-defined end, in other words,
if they ’went nowhere,’ were described as vicious circles. People who could
not progress were characterized as “going in circles”. In conventional logic,
circular reasoning was considered pathological and to be avoided. Circular
causality was reintroduced to science by a then-new field cybernetics, which
emphasized feedback and self-regulation. In a feedback system, there is no clear discrimination between causes and effects since the output influences the input.

All the best,
Peter

________________________________
From: Gordana Dodig Crnkovic <gordana.dodig-crnkovic at chalmers.se>
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2024 4:07 PM
To: Peter Erdi <Peter.Erdi at kzoo.edu>
Cc: Jerry LR Chandler <jerry_lr_chandler at icloud.com>; fis <fis at listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re: [Fis] New Discussion Session--Complexity & feedback. Loops (OFF-LINE)

Dear Peter (if I may)

To get an introduction to the current discussion I found several of your interviews on YouTube very useful.

One of them is https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw1Y0SlvP7E__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Qxs7fk3X-qNWUaS9as2OdWHQZ1ySOTgEbKEH_Naq9BQmyT0BmZgKvEwbWmMc4FUlPxYPRoYb0evarm-DyJNuzxgW$ 
Peter Erdi about Budapest and the trilogy (Ranking, Repair, Feedback)

As your new book on Feedback is not yet available, can you give us a broader introduction about your trilogy,
and how the new book connects to the previous ones.

Thank you! I find this topic extremely important.

Best regards,

Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.chalmers.se/en/staff/Pages/gordana-dodig-crnkovic.aspx__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Qxs7fk3X-qNWUaS9as2OdWHQZ1ySOTgEbKEH_Naq9BQmyT0BmZgKvEwbWmMc4FUlPxYPRoYb0evarm-DyHVJKC9t$ 

https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.es.mdh.se/staff/37-Gordana_Dodig_Crnkovic__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Qxs7fk3X-qNWUaS9as2OdWHQZ1ySOTgEbKEH_Naq9BQmyT0BmZgKvEwbWmMc4FUlPxYPRoYb0evarm-DyAC5tsW7$ 

https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://gordana.se/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Qxs7fk3X-qNWUaS9as2OdWHQZ1ySOTgEbKEH_Naq9BQmyT0BmZgKvEwbWmMc4FUlPxYPRoYb0evarm-DyBa-0o6l$ 

From: Fis <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es> on behalf of Peter Erdi <Peter.Erdi at kzoo.edu>
Date: Thursday, 24 October 2024 at 21:23
To: Jerry LR Chandler <jerry_lr_chandler at icloud.com>, fis <fis at listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re: [Fis] New Discussion Session--Complexity & feedback. Loops (OFF-LINE)

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>
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2024 10:18 AM
To: fis <fis at listas.unizar.es>
Cc: Peter Erdi <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> 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!Qxs7fk3X-qNWUaS9as2OdWHQZ1ySOTgEbKEH_Naq9BQmyT0BmZgKvEwbWmMc4FUlPxYPRoYb0evarm-DyFkjQAsY$ <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<mailto:karl.javorszky at gmail.com>>
Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2024 5:29 AM
To: Peter Erdi <Peter.Erdi at kzoo.edu<mailto:Peter.Erdi at kzoo.edu>>; fis <fis at listas.unizar.es<mailto: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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