The Best Asset To Accumulate Is A Toolkit Of Aggregate Coordination Skills

How do we fool ourselves? Let me start counting the ways, including a new way every year ... by default, since "Past performance does not predict future results."

A Science Perspective On The Decline Of Innovation

(restricted; precursors may be viewed here)

As another bit of next-epoch or supposedly "long-term" investment advice, this recent pdf contains some helpful perspectives and commentary, although the author sounds as though he's squarely within the NeoLiberal camp (see "Living the Lie" - or why they think that Social Democracy is to blame for current G7 economic & cultural ills).

This line caught my eye as the author's central premise.

"... the next revolution will be based on understanding and developing quantum mechanics, quantum chemistry and quantum biology and all that it entails."

That's a credible hypothesis to test, yet many will either disagree, right off the bat or just chuckle. The author is not specifically wrong in his comments, it's rather that he's missing the bigger context, and therefore missing the overall point. Here are just 3 counter-indicators.

1) Biology has been harvesting quantum mechanics, quantum chemistry and quantum biology for ~3.5 billion years, just on planet earth. It's called photo-synthesis, and other forms of energy-transfer. As you will see, we're not doing anything new, although some things are subtly different.

2) The author's initial premise - that occupying many possible ecological niches is indicative of an "efficient" pass-through ecology or economy - is highly subject to local conditions. As Walter Shewhart famously said, "data is meaningless without context."
(Pick 40 islands or other micro-habitats around the world, and you can find ecologies ranging from near mono-cultures to the dense, pass-through ecologies/economies the author seems to expect. Location, location, location - or context, context, context.)

3) IF one's hypothesis is that increased energy handling (efficiency) equates to evolutionary adaptive strength, then it would seem logical to expect the next stages of human evolution to reliably follow where we can go from here, energy-handling-wise. Yet there are already many well-known flaws in that argument. Even if it were true, we'd still expect surprises. In 1870, the same author might have predicted expanded development of hydro-carbon chemistry, which would have missed the expansion of all forms of telecommunications, including the internet, not to mention quantum mechanics itself. :) Don't presume it's over.

a) Energy-handling efficiency has not reliably predicted survival across niches. In fact, the opposite is exhaustively documented. The most "efficient" (i.e., "successful") species in all archeological contexts invariably disappear from subsequent or later contexts, and are labeled as species that over-adapted to transient contexts. Ditto for corporate history. Proverbial dinosaurs go belly up. Quite literally, over-investing in efficiency has been the death of most species and investors. 

b) In contrast, the recurring lead in both ancient biological as well as current economic evolutionary races are overwhelmingly documented to go to the most agile, and NOT the most efficient. Time after time.

That discrepancy between a) and b), is amply discussed in biology, ecology, military doctrine, and systems theory.

Aggregate Adaptive Rate soon trumps efficiency, every single time. Some barely-adequate mix of efficiency plus resiliency always wins. It's just a question of when.

Which calls our attention to some subtler questions.

If it's not energy efficiency, then what is it that we ought to be smart enough to be looking for? One pat answer is "survival paths," no matter how unpredictable. Next, how do we keep ourselves on unpredictable survival paths, or at least within striking distance?

If there's a unending race, in all disciplines and all economic or cultural wars, to RAPIDLY explore emerging options, based on insufficient data, then survival follows some well-known rules of thumb, and the main competition seems to be executing these principles on increasingly larger scales, which brings up unending "problems of scale."


[As members of a social species, we're now well aware that Aggregate Agility (teamwork) trumps individual agility (contrary to NeoLiberal economic doctrine). Aggregate size matters, and the scale of aggregate-agility represents the Golden Fleece. :) ]

c) pattern recognition trumps energy-handling (the minute you know what NEW signal you're looking for, it's a race to briefly ignore the noise; agile focus beats raw power, every time) ... 

d) then adaptive "recruiting efficiency" trumps energy-handling, and that combination [c & d] determines aggregate response agility (from motor-neuron pools to military "maneuver warfare" to business marketing to cultural mobilization). Serial survival of the fittest. Or, as it's termed in education theory and military doctrine, "Outcomes-Oriented Training & Education" or OBT&E.

It's remarkable how much of military doctrine consists of concise restatements of the theory of evolution. See "Return On Coordination."

Yet so-called socialists and capitalists seem to have scared each other with irrelevant details, and keep uselessly throwing their own baby out with their own, shared bathwater.

The more I think about these issues, all roads lead to a consistent answer.

How do we invest in a democracy that ensures the highest National Adaptive Rate,

... not just energy or military or business efficiency?

Remarkably, that same question is central to the history of biology, military doctrine, democracy and the onset of the US Constitution. Our consistent goal is seemingly to "make a more perfect union."

If that goal is kept in mind, then most economic issues become incidental. There seems to be a simple, 2-step optimization occurring in all surviving aggregates. Sum(i+j), while looking for those combinations that are greater than the sum of the parts.

Where i+j are respectively:

i) Keep the components alive, and adequately provisioned (it's not a functional army if the generals hoard all the weapons)

PLUS

j) Grow the Aggregate (by expanding Net or Aggregate Agility, not just agility of some sectors, nor merely aggregate size alone)

This easily falls under the category of Group Capitalism, with tolerance limits separating it from narrow Personal Capitalism (i.e., NeoLiberal orthodoxy). I predict that the intelligence to see the difference will trump efficiency at pursuing the latter, even though the latter forms of parasitism will always follow, in unpredictable patterns. Part of survival agility includes being able to harvest what's necessary, when necessary, while also leaving tools unused in expanding toolkits when not specifically needed.

We can't provide for our grandchildren by sequestering more resources. That is, quite simply, a naive idea. Few want the heirlooms passed on by their grandparents, except as mementos, because they're hopelessly obsolete.

The best assets to accumulate are Coordination Skills. If you don't believe me, ask a Neanderthal ... if you can find a survivor. Yet instead of investing in Democracy, we're killing the Golden Goose, by hoarding current fiat instead of future options.

Here's my investment advice.

The next evolutionary leap in human culture is more likely to be based on understanding and developing "quantum perspective" on our own, aggregate context, and all that that entails.

If you can help more precisely define "quantum" - i.e., subtle - aspects of human cultural or aggregate perspective, you'll not only be rich and have a busy, fulfilling life, you may well save the human species.

Cultural Development at 31st Week of Democracy

9 Democrats who are selling out on Social Security cuts

  (Hat tip, Al_the_Electrician ‏@aldaelectrician)

So, as usual, things have to get worse before they can get better?

In health science, we'd call that a neuropathy ... a degraded ability to sense pain (until it does significant damage), which is essentially a failure to KEEP rebuilding systemic instrumentation to fit changing contexts.

You can picture that outcome, and even how it occurs, in both human physiology and human culture.

Which Trisequester is YOUR democracy in?

Is there a term for aggregate-neuropathy or even "Cultural-Neuropathy" ?

Organizational degradation?

A slowing ability to detect, parse & adaptively respond to increasing levels of useful feedback?

A constant struggle to see the signals for all the noise?

That describes all human aggregates, all the time? Ya think?

Unless, that is, we take up thoughtful arms against an always rising sea of emerging interdependencies.

I keep coming back to the analogy of adolescent growth spurts. All growing aggregates have to get clumsier before they can regain or increase aggregate agility.

With growth comes a corollary challenge. We always need newer, more refined methods for solving the task of HOW to grow, gracefully. Why? So we can have our growth, and be it too.

It's not a challenge we can ignore ... unless we choose to abort our future.

This was the America we all knew post 1776.

 
Will there be another cultural growth spurt? Here? In the USA?

If so, what will it look like?

Investing In Aggregate SELECTION MARKETS. Not Just Financial Capital Markets

How? Just keep doing what we've been doing, when we bother. What, exactly, you ask? Answer: practicing molecular, sexual & cultural recombination AND selection, of course. Everything else is just noise in the system.

Can we do it? Of course we can. Someone or something always does, eventually. Why not us?

Let me explain. Someone just wrote to me, saying that the Supreme Court shares blame for Wall Street’s (and Congress') drastic descent into pervasive fraud.

Yes, but the roots of Judicial corruption go back to politics of appellate appointments, which goes back to campaigning, which goes back to ethics & education ... which has it's own roots & control functions, in regional & local culture.

The best place to fix any outcome is at the prevention stage. Repairs are affordable only briefly, as stop-gap emergency efforts.

If you fix fundamentals, the fix soon sweeps through all symptoms, at all levels.

Yet without top-down support, it takes much martyrdom to slowly recruit momentum in whole aggregates. The bigger the aggregate, the more - & more protracted - the distributed, self-martyrdom.

If we're LUCKY, another Hoover-FDR or Marshall-Patton will come along & quickly, temporarily patch things up without our aggregate fully understanding how or why. Yet that would most likely be short term lucky & long term unlucky, because we just put ourselves at greater risk, while still not understanding how to manage mounting risks.

If we're not even short-term lucky? Then it's civil war, between classes, until our own governance is more permanently reconquered, and reshaped into less obsolete forms. Isn't that what the American Revolution was all about? Didn't the founders advise is to keep up continuous revolution, or at least continuous cultural evolution? There's nothing going on now that didn't occur in the lead-up to 1776, or to the Magna Carta, or to Athens first citizens revolt, 2300 years ago - or in any tribal council throughout the last 60,000 years.

The most fundamental change is the scale of our aggregate, which we are NOT handling well.

It's a pity that across the entire sub-discipline of exception-handling, we're loathe to handle our own aggregate growth as the most constant "exception" to be continuously handled! Go figure!

For our evolutionary path to extend, EVERYTHING has to undergo recombination and subsequent selection. Even literature majors eventually grasp that timeless reality.

What evolving, adapting cultures always need are rapid, enabling adaptations to SELECTION MARKETS. Not just capital markets.

What is a Selection Market? So far, our most common term for it is "evolution," but only because the process is so infrequently discussed.

What things are bartered, recombined & selected in Selection Markets? A widening range of disappearing, existing & emerging sub-components, components and super-aggregates of existing aggregates (e.g., colonial "states" transitioning to the United States of America, or, more pathetically so far, European States TRYING to transition to the United States of Europe).

Are capital markets robust enough to mediate the SELECTION already going on within ad hoc Selection Markets? Of course not. Just start listing for yourself the things which we normally don't (or, for some things, ever) try to list for sale or purchase on capital markets. For example, dynamic & intangible essentials, from trust, motivation, affinity (love) & spouses to understanding ... and on to generalized forms of return-on-coordination, like family, friendship, tribes & supra-tribal culture (aka, teamwork & solidarity & democracy).

Yet Selection-Markets for all those things DO exist, and exert a far more dominant effect on our personal, national and cultural outcomes than mere capital markets do.

So why aren't we more actively investing our human & social & cultural capital in improving what matters most, our real Selection Markets? We clearly possess the native intelligence, since we've been discussing the elements of Selection Markets since before recorded human history - just never quite pervasively enough to keep up with escalating demand, by right-sizing our selection efforts.*

Is that lag simply for lack of putting our heads together, and trying? In our recent feudalism/"economics" textbooks, "capitalists" demean historical natives for trading away lands & other resources for "blankets & beads," and yet here we are, hundreds of years later, trading our own aggregate future for our own trinkets. It's as though we've traded lazing about with a jug of wine & a loaf of bread .... for lazing about with designer drugs and video games.

Really, should not every discipline include practice in contributing to evolution of national strategy & net, cultural outcomes. ow to be relevant, not just specialized.

Most of us here in the USA may think that nothing's changed, but that just means that another aggregate less distracted with designer drugs & video games is about to loot our resources, en route to exploring insanely great new aggregate options, a future whole which will literally leave the sum of our personal options behind, in the dustbin of history.

Are we that easily distracted? So far, yes. We're raising yet another generation of students beaten into hoarding data and ignoring the changing context that applies meaning to data.

Aunt Samantha says it's up to YOU to either start re-inventing American ingenuity, or jump ship with the other rats.

The only other choice is to head back where we came from, with the other Luddites, who never see either direction of causality coming down the pike.

* How to right-size selection efforts? The efforts involved in architecture, molecular biology & engineering in general are good examples. More is always different, and with more of anything, then some previously negligible inter-dependencies always become critically important, requiring feedback-triggered catalysts to separate tuned from un-tuned system-engines. In short, to invest in Selection Markets, invest in right-sizing aggregate regulation, neither too much, nor too little, but always just enough, just as needed and just in time to respond to changing context. This is a drop-dead fundamental corollary of all system logic. It's amazing that so many capitalists want their bodies and bankers to be agile, while simultaneously missing the overriding need to keep their aggregate culture agile.
  Not too long ago, this was simply called providing citizens with a "Liberal Education" - as in a broad education. That term has proven to be too amorphous. New terms are always needed, as tools helping aggregates self-recruit, in order to tune their growing selves with tempo adequate to the accelerating demands of context_times_"more."

Let's Get Back To Building National Adaptive Rate, Instead Of Constraining Group Intelligence

Is the USA becoming as corrupt as Europe or, even worse, Russia?

"When we [grow] we shall become as corrupt as Europe."  Thomas Jefferson

An old worry. Is it coming true? Our escalating NSA boondoggle offers one insight into constructing an adequate assessment mechanism.

"You've got [to view] the federal government and the rest of the world to understand what happened. Among experts and journalists, there has been no doubt as regards the operation of the NSA, the Five Eyes and many other intelligence agencies in the field of electronic surveillance. Nevertheless, it makes a difference whether one suspects anything or if you can prove it. And in many places Edward Snowden has revealed a level of supervision [such] that even those who have been working on it [were] taken by surprise. The Internet industry has promised secure encryption standards, but they do not exist. The code will be handed out either under legal threat [to] the industry [from] the NSA and the GCHQ, or they are cracked or stolen. This is the same for other intelligence agencies. I am waiting impatiently for a whistleblower from France, Great Britain, Russia and China."

Notably, and quite aside from all the technical theatrics, this whole story reflects a very fundamental change of perspective within the USA. We in the USA didn't formerly think of ourselves as paranoid. For long periods, it was completely obvious that it was more important to build more than any could initially imagine - through the coordination achieved by "a more perfect union" - than it was to regress to trying to constrain & hoard what already exists. That was a given. Not any more. Our national IQ has been reduced.

Our present mood - with our NSA/gov/public all adopting KGB mentality - is clearly a regression, a step back from our founding, very public, purpose.

Why did this happen? It was inevitable.

In all growing systems, when growth outraces the pace of inventing organizational methods, the result is a period of clumsiness - before system agility is regained ... if it is regained at all. That is the same system phenomenon seen in every adolescent whose nervous system is racing to catch up to it's suddenly expanded body size. When that happens, distributed coordination methods fall behind, not just Central Planning "Command & Control" systems. Every system that undergoes growth spurts has to get clumsier before it can regain agility. When individuals or groups fall a bit behind events, it matters whether they throw out the best or worst methods, old or emerging.

Is our current mess just a transient growth spurt by the USA, or long term regression into a clumsier state?

That depends on how hard we work on which adjustments.

1) Do we invest in improving the quality (including tempo) of distributed decision-making, i.e., in our Democracy Methods, or ...

2) do we desperately try the NSA/KGB approach, where random variants of Central Planning idiocy seek to constrain the patterns of distributed decision-making?

At heart, this boils down to a question of ensuring stability by investing more in superstructure or foundation.

The democracy approach involves MORE data shared as OpenSource, for all to parse and MORE education and training. That way, all become more capable of selectively utilizing what little group-data is relevant to them, for unpredictably emerging national as well as local options. For a Nation to Maneuver with Agility, all of it's citizens must be able to change everything that goes on beneath the surface, and also be free to instantly tailor decisions to the optimal mix of local-PLUS-national goals. Systemic agility follows speed of realigning all components to consensus goals. For that to occur, an ounce of distributed preparation (in a better cultural foundation) is worth a ton of concentrated cure. Especially when we find ourselves pouring endless cure onto superstructure lacking an adequate foundation.

The Central Planning approach always involves some of us trying to trap all of us into expressing no more Group Intelligence than some subgroup of Central Planners can muster. That is mathematically impossible, and that conclusion was logically clear long before it was described in math equations. It is abjectly embarrassing and frustrating to watch our public agencies, government and electorate straying down this path.

If the NSA, our government, and our electorate has unlimited fiat to invest, surely it can invest in BUILDING the quality of it's own, distributed decision-making, rather than in seeking to constrain what little decision-making is allowed. The winning strategy is to run circles around competitors, by out-deciding them, rather than constraining our group intelligence by trying to reduce the decision-making capabilities of the rest of the world. That path leads to the madness of trying to build more by destroying more - a path that always destroys democracy. The NSA approach is equivalent to a sports team trying to win not by it's own level of practice and innovation, but by trying to disrupt the other teams training facility. Ample experience has proven that the glory always goes to those who find a better way forward, not backwards.

Let's Get Back To Building National Adaptive Rate, Instead Of Constraining the Group Intelligence of ourselves, and others?

That requires investing our unlimited public initiative in the cultural foundations that allow a more resilient and more adaptive nation. We can do that by repurposing the NSA budget to better/faster/leaner methods for educating, training and informing all of our own citizens. With that sort of, smarter effort, we could achieve and maintain a markedly higher level of Situational Awareness across our entire citizenry. Group agility tracks Group Situational Awareness. By building our cultural foundations first, we can also become more secure, knowing that we can always outmaneuver competitors, instead of getting distracted trying to prevent their maneuvers. The highest form of agility is to preclude a fight even starting, and head it off through intelligent, productive coordination.

Such an effort would fulfill the prescient tasks set down by the writers of the US Constitution, as well as heeding their warnings.

"EDUCATE AND INFORM THE WHOLE MASS OF THE PEOPLE... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." Thomas Jefferson 

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." James Madison

"Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people." John Adams

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." James Madison

"Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws." John Adams 

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories."  Thomas Jefferson

No mention of spy agencies (or more than one) in the US Constitution? Certainly no mention of 5-10% of national GDP going to a MICC armaments lobby, including unnamed budget allocations? The sheer size of US GDP makes this affordable. The better question is why we're investing so much in armament superstructure, while neglecting to invest even more in our cultural foundations. What will the return be on our pattern of investment?

So far, we're investing in everything EXCEPT democracy.