The Pattern Of Process Flow

Consider, just as one of many examples, Aviation Disasters Due to Mechanical Failures.

Now please consider this question. Do the following statements NOT sound vaguely familiar, for anyone who's observed multiple screw-ups in any discipline whatsoever?

"visual inspection by crew not required"

[one passenger's visual inspection noticed crack]

[possibility of cracks joining, to exceed limit, "not considered"]

Surely that makes one ponder the PATTERN OF PROCESS FLOW, across any and all examples of adaptive systems making context-specific adjustments.

Yes, for adaptive rate to stay the same across multiple, transient contexts, EVERYTHING must continue to change (at different rates).

Nevertheless, there is a timeless PATTERN always evident in those few systemic changes which are adaptive, vs the many optional changes which are NOT adaptive. If we have to select how to survive, surely there are some basic patterns that define our selection process? Sounds obvious & easy, once stated.

Just let easy happen? The solution to every declared challenge is eventually quite easy, but because we no longer provide ourselves ADEQUATELY DISTRIBUTED PRACTICE at letting easy happen, we quite literally have raised billions of PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOT LEARNED TO ACCEPT DISTRIBUTED EASY, and insist on individually working themselves to death doing what's systemically wrong.

In fact, we've come to the insane condition of despising those who resist industriously over-working at doing random wrong. (It usually involves personally, stupidly stockpiling static assets, while ignoring the far more valuable dynamic assets. Take our rampant individual capitalism ... PLEASE!)

Isn't it curious how the causes of disasters ..... are usually obvious in hindsight?

And how the generic solution is usually so insanely simple? They're always a reminder to simply seek, or actually re_sample - AND ACTUALLY LISTEN TO - all emerging feedback?

Is this not a basic part of the 150-year old theory of adaptive evolution?
Shouldn't the default biz-card logo for all humans read:

"HAVE SENSORY INSTRUMENTATION. WILL LEVERAGE IT." ?

The behavior of all adaptive systems always comes down to sampling theory?

(Expressed by all the nested layers of the analog-computing systems that make "us"? Aka, multi-atom molecules, multi-molecule cells, multi-cellular bodies, multi-body cultures and multi-cultural federations?*)

Whichever changing, total sum is appearing ...

... out of all the changing sensory/analytical/testing/ processes that we possess at a given time .... 

... then success simply means arriving at the obvious after we just adequately sample all permutations of "options space" that can be sampled?

What part of routine don't growing populations teach themselves, sooner rather than later?

i.e., TEST ALL BOUNDARIES ... to see which ones have moved?

How simple can this PATTERN OF ADAPTIVE PROCESS FLOW get, in operational practice?**

Isn't that what all humans do naturally as kids - until our various "education" processes beat it out of them?

Somehow, we are trying to make our current bureaucracies enforce Ludditism.

And damned if "WE" are not succeeding!!! (at current failure)

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* Say, even a multi-cultural federation? :) Even a European 'Union' might work - if it is federated as an agile union of differing parts, rather than a naively rigid union of presumed clones.

Businesses, corporations & institutions are cultural subunits, rather like organs in your body? They don't HAVE to be the same. In fact, they must NOT be. Rather, to create net agility - our required diversity absolutely must be allowed to operate within policy tolerance limits broad enough to allow return on agile coordination.

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** Several patterns of fully inter-dependent and fully interleaved, adaptive process flows are continuously proceeding in real-time, across all the multiple, nested layers in our national system. Our usual net description of the net process is called net auto-catalysis, and our standard view of the layered, repetitive applications are:

a) Context instrumentation and sampling (that covers constructing and using all means of adequately sampling distributed data, external as well as internal feedback, SOON ENOUGH TO MATTER). 

b) Context modeling (all means of adequately sampling recognizable patterns, "correlatable" to context-options, across all data flows, SOON ENOUGH TO MATTER) 

c) Context exploration (all means of adequately sampling distributed tests of our context-models, i.e., adequately re-exploring the changing range of emerging options, SOON ENOUGH TO MATTER)

d) Context updates (all means of re-assessing a-c, and starting again, WHILE making all suggested, distributed, adjustments, SOON ENOUGH TO MATTER).

Which adjustments? How soon? How?

Which adjustments:

Those dictated as most important, by the sum of distributed feedback. Presuming that there IS enough feedback to identify and construct a clear hierarchy .... in net, systemic benefit .... defined as increasing systemic options. The actual pattern of adjustments will be entirely context dependent, but the METHOD for selecting them will always be net auto-catalysis.

How soon?

As soon as available feedback PLUS available adjustment methods allow. The tempo of distributed adjustments will always vary in different populations, but the METHOD for achieving that speed will always be the sub-methods that support net auto-catalysis.

How?

By ALL emerging means possible? The sustainable glory really does go to those aggregates who find a systemically better way to steer systemic autocatalysis - and KEEP using it. All newly nested layers of auto-catalysis which occur, will always depend on the same a-d cycle, just expressed in the resilient diversity of nested "instrumentation" built into prior, nested, system layers:

- systemic self-instrumentation,
- systemic self-modeling,
- systemic option-exploration, and
- systemic self-assessment. 

Yes, there really is no exact answer, only a call for an adequate, distributed, probability function - of achieving "barely adequate" solutions to each context, while also maintaining adequate reserves - by scavenging & re-purposing all supposed "failures" - to face the next context. 

Do we have too many unemployed? Or ARE WE EXPLORING TOO FEW AGGREGATE, EMERGING OPTIONS? Glass half full, or half empty? It's the same situation, regardless of which perspective you choose to view it from. 

Practice making distributed, systemic adjustments to teamwork, often enough & soon enough that it remains the fall-back habit when surprises occur? And, then also always juggle enough time and resources and practiced staff in reserve, so that novel openings can be quickly & effectively pursued when they are finally recognized? That concept, of keeping adequate reserves, is ancient and uniform, from ant-nests to archaic armies. It's not just uninformed populations which fail. Overly-exhausted individuals or populations can also miss opportunities, and then must endure the agony of helplessly watching them go by (if they even recognize them at all).

We can’t predict what adjustments we'll have to make, to survive future challenges, but we can determine what adaptive kinetics we can generate - AND VIGOROUSLY PURSUE - when unpredictably distributed solutions to novel group challenges are recognized. [paraphrasing Joshua Chamberlain]

So, all cultural evolution boils down to just adequately re-mapping minimal patterns of net, adjustable cultural options .... to continuously changing contexts?

Re-sample context, re-sample optional (& increasingly distributed) adjustments. That's the endless race we're in. 

May the most agile populations stay in the race.