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.

Everyone's "Looking for a Better Way" - How Do We As A People Actually Achieve It?

There's a steady stream of articles every year on this topic, everywhere EXCEPT the front page of your local, corporate media outlet.

Example: Ethics and Complex Systems

Key passage for me was this. "The reason [for] the lack of concern with ethics as a focus is that ethics are an important, perhaps the most important, guide for managing complex systems. One of the points that John Kay argues persuasively in his book Obliquity is that most systems are so complex that we cannot map an efficient path through them. He’s taken pairs of companies in the same industry, similarly endowed, one of which focused on maximizing shareholder value, the other which set a richer set of goals which seldom included making shareholders wealthy. The ones with the loftier aspirations also did better for stockholders."

These discussions of "group mission" by non-biologists or non-anthropologists always strike me as searching for higher meaning, while leaving more to search for and summarize.

Of COURSE every succeeding context is MORE complex than the last one. If it isn't, nothing is changing or evolving.

Seen from the light of additional disciplines, EVERY discipline in isolation is, of course, lacking as it faces each new context. Overall, just like war is too important to leave to the generals, EVERY old and emerging process of an evolving, WHOLE SYSTEM is too big to be left to the PRESUMED process owners. (Surely that holds for often-obtuse, rules-based application of the law as well?) Not surprisingly, every additional bit of perspective improves sustainable pathway - aka, policy - selection. This is just like benefiting from a higher ladder in the middle of a corn maze. It's also called "democracy," remember that quaint subject?

So what members of any & all social order always need is more perspective? We always need an even better sense of a bigger system in transition, traveling along an endless, meandering pathway, and one tasked with not straying too far off course? From past situations to our current one, and on to unpredictable future situations? That always puts things in perspective, like widening a peephole to a window, and then climbing a hill to look down on your camp (or context).

One immediate conclusion is that we as a growing population are always neglecting a core task? And that task is "How to build, then keep, then accelerate achievement of MORE net-situational awareness among our entire electorate?" Let's call it "Group Context Awareness."

My gut feeling is that our Founders called this outcome an Informed Electorate, and worried about it a lot. They also called their response the teaching of Civics. Said that way, it also drives home the fact that humans have been discussing this as a critical topic throughout the history of organized culture. Certainly longer than recorded history, and back to the onset of even moderate-size tribal systems.

The question we're now facing is how to grow and keep growing group-context-awareness even as our population doubles again, from 315 million to somewhere past 600 million. Once put that way, it comes down to discovering and adopting new methods, fast enough. That's what Adaptive Rate means. Since we have zero predictive power in such complex systems, we have to fall back on adaptive power, and do enough trial & error exploration to keep our growing tribe together.

Why keep it together? To reap the insanely large return-on-coordination possible IF we can coordinate on a larger scale. WWII certainly demonstrated that, and we did all that purely with pencil & paper! We could be doing astounding things today, if we would only commit to mobilizing ourselves to tilt at windmills worth achieving.

We always have our own, growing tiger by the tail, and we must either hold on to our growing mobilization skills, or let go and die. To me, holding on as a group means instilling a sense of purpose into emerging generations, so that they are aware of this challenge, and therefore align and APPLY their millions of distributed decision-making paradigms to solving it, by orienting all their local adjustments to common, AS WELL AS personal, goals. Organizing on a larger scale is always a 2-stage optimization task - our current stage (already achieved) PLUS the emerging stage (our bigger scale).

Even while it's irritating enough already, common goals are much easier to enunciate than the methods themselves. All we can do is enunciate past organizational principles, and challenge kids to get better at what I'll call "Mobilization Games." If evolution is occurring, and we're in an Adaptive Race, then lets just be honest with all kids, and give them safe Mobilization Games platforms that allow them to safely prepare for the future.

As DoD-rebels repeatedly say, quoting Froebel, group discovery works faster when we don't FURTHER prejudice and thereby constrain practice or play groups with our own suggestions. Let 'em PRACTICE generating and selecting from their own diversity. Make self-mobilization their fall-back habit. That's how they'll get good at it, and stay good at it once we're gone.

Yet we need to safely challenge our emerging population. So we're still left with a challenging conundrum, how to recruit our constituents to practice exploring their [Local+Net] group options without instilling bias or prejudice.

After some consideration here's what imagination suggests. Act like unbiased "Kindern" ourselves, and just try many platforms that recruit citizens to organize themselves, NOT for us, or under our aegis?

Then we can TEST those platforms as "electoral Kindergartens." That way we can safely - with care to avoid prejudice - continuously work on recruiting our electorate to challenge THEMSELVES without prejudice.

The hard part will be to protect ourselves & our electorate from our own, inevitable prejudices! :)

Luckily, Natural Selection removes us all pretty quickly, so how much damage can we do? Certainly not as much as we've BEEN inflicting, by NOT practicing at accelerating our own, net mobilization!

One outcome of this train of thought is the old suggestion that we need fewer politicians, and more "parents" interested in encouraging but not owning national policy - so we can enlarge our Policy Space, and increase our Policy Agility. Considering the new methods always required only brings us back to ENCOURAGING kids to invent their own methods, ones that help electorates improve the net, adaptive quality of distributed decision-making. Then we need to quit constraining them. It's a delicate process, but we've been doing this for 3.5 billion years. It sure as hell ain't gonna stop without us. It's OUR TASK to get in paradigm, or continue aiding and abetting self-suicide.