Scientific Form Over Function: Co-Opting From The Start, vs Bridging The "Context Gap" Using Cultural Hybridization.

UK State of the State session in Parliament:

‘On all sides barely an honest word will be ­spoken.’

You mean politics is the same everywhere?  Why?

You know, reading this article, the obvious finally hit me about why indirection and active misdirection and outright lies & propaganda are still universally tolerated in aggregate politics. It's not a bug ... it's still a feature.

"Policy formation for aggregates will forever require the active pursuit of short-cuts and active mis-direction (lies), in a never-ending struggle to ... gracefully ... accelerate the always-emerging steps of re-organization in rapidly evolving aggregates."  Me.

One aggregate step forwards, one staggeringly long polynomial series of adjustments ... just to maintain - let alone increase - agility, in an aggregate that is always expanding as well as evolving.

It's funny how trivial this is ..... and not funny how deeply such an obvious topic is skirted in the training programs for all "system-science" disciplines.

All data is meaningless without context.  

Going further, most data is meaningless even TO context.

Plus, some data relevant to last context is irrelevant to the next, and vice versa.

Hence, over time, progressively greater amounts of extant data are INCREASINGLY MEANINGLESS to the subsequent cascade of contexts.

So what IS the actual relevance of the scientific method? What is its adaptive PURPOSE?

To continuously coax the most coordinated relevance from the excess of data we already have, and continue stockpiling!

We rarely need more data about existing components, and in fact, we spend most of our time actively ignoring already relevant bits of data.

So-called "advancement" in every discipline is actually a stubborn exercise in form over function, ...

... even as the overwhelming majority of aggregate "value" comes from making & tweaking frankenstein hybrids from already existing data & components. 

Snowmobiles? New species? New cultures? By statistics alone, re-combination explores more options than discipline-specific invention does. Hybridization is not limited to plant species. Human cultures hybridize too.

The most important question in every science field - in fact in every human discipline - from day 1, may well be: 

"how do we coordinate current & emerging knowledge in each discipline, with current & emerging knowledge in all disciplines?"

Without such continuous re-modeling of changing FULL context, we continue accumulating meaningless data - minus changing context!  Forget our economic Output Gap, our Cultural Context Gap represents a far deeper gap between us and our potential Adaptive Rate.

Our Cultural Context Gap represents the greatest gap between us and our potential Adaptive Rate.

Why isn't FACING all this social angst - and all our social taboos - a key axiom in all Science-X01 courses at undergraduate and graduate level training programs? Is it a lack of honesty, a lack of courage, a lagging intelligence, simply a lack of distributed involvement ... or all of the above?

Perhaps because most faculty couldn't survive doing as poor a job as they presently do? 

Science Faculty: "Students, our honored task is to examine every phenomenon except the recombinant elephant in the room. To this axiom, we shall forever hold true. Honesty shall be our guide." [Doh!]

WTF? If students actually used their heads coming in, they wouldn't stand for existing education, from day one.

It seems that the Erbles are in secret league with all sheltered Luddites, in all disciplines. How do you say "guanxi" in every discipline-specific jargon, in every language? 

And to think that in the past several years I've been deluding myself, actually thinking that economics was unique in this depth of self-fraud. Today's "stain" of orthodox macro-economists may briefly lead in the application, but they're not as uniquely exceptional as they may think they are (if they truly "think" at all). There are new vistas of baffling bullshit to explore, in all fields. The pie in the sky's the limit.

"Science which is not taught naked of all taboos is the greatest fraud of all. For then the very application of reason is hidden - from day 1- behind the recombinant taboo of the day. That is a mockery of the scientific method at it's most fundamental core ... when we pretend to practice science, while lying to ourselves from the start, about net adaptive relevance." Me.

Scientific form over function. Selling out from the start. Usually by systematically ignoring dynamic or "recombinant value" while over-valuing static value. That's just phenotypic persistence writ large.

Every day, every generation and every context, we can't see our novel, emerging aggregate for the current components!

Nor our expanding, aggregate options worth exploring.

Our social parasites don't need to even try to baffle people with bullshit, when aggregates willingly co-opt themselves coming out of the gate.

Does anyone think that even autocatalysis is immune to Natural Selection? Not all that auto-catalyzes is equally adaptive across local, regional or national scales, nor are all hybrids. Gresham's Dynamic is one proverbial (mal-adaptive) exception, and Gresham's dynamic is always hiding, by default, in all the various sub-disciplines practiced by members of all aggregates - always in plain sight for those who won't look.

Inter-Nation and inter-group competition as a FEEDBACK-DISCOURSE CONTEST

John Boyd wrote his DESTRUCTION AND CREATION essay after wondering why some people invented novel things like snowmobiles out of spare parts from other devices, while others - notably the typical Pentagon & MICC bureaucrat - remained resistant or hostile to creative thinking.

Boyd's prior background was an early BS degree in economics, a stint as a USAF fighter pilot, a masters degree in Industrial Engineering, then continued USAF fighter-plane design.

After writing the essay about his frustration, he supposedly abandoned all interest in fighter planes, and focused on battling Pentagon bureaucracy from within the Pentagon. He apparently refused association with any non military corporations or think tanks. Boyd also never took steps to organize platforms to further disseminate his own, strong beliefs - e.g., starting any consulting firms, think tanks or foundations.

His essay shows remarkable insight into superficial aspects of systems thinking, yet also mentions nothing about neurophysiology, psychology, sociology or mass education. Hence, it - very curiously - stops short of obvious suggestions for how to initiate and leverage leaner/faster/better tools and practices for optimally maneuvering a large system constantly destabilized by it's own ratio of destruction/creation, and then constantly nudging it even further along adaptive versus mal-adaptive re-organization paths.

Many scientists from other fields would read Boyd's essay and say, "YES. SO WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT? WHAT ABOUT THE DOMINANT MISMATCH ALLUDED TO, OUR LAGGING RATIO OF DESTROYING OBSOLETE GROUP PATTERNS (BUREAUCRACY) AND CREATING NEW GROUP PATTERNS BASED UPON ONGOING FEEDBACK ABOUT EMERGING GROUP OUTCOMES?"

It's a valid question. So where DO we go from here? Here are some observations and suggestions.

We're dealing now with destruction/creation of group, national and cultural patterns of behavior - i.e., cultural competition.

Cultural discourse is where group-patterns of creation and destruction are embodied. It seems rather obvious that if we don't practice "group practice" itself, then our national ratio of destruction/creation can rapidly slow to a crawl. Any group not actively and continuously re-shaping it's own cultural discourse to optimize group outcomes will, by definition, increase it's probability of dissolution, and increase it's likelihood of failure.

Do we have metrics for adequately conceptualizing, tracking and managing our net, national level of group-discourse? NO.

Do we have ADEQUATE diverse and actively fluctuating platforms for eliciting and intermediating existing public discourse? NO.

Do we have existing models for tracking and managing the number of catalyst platforms necessary for eliciting and accelerating adaptive rates of creation and destruction in our group-discourse patterns? NO!!

John Boyd summarized fighter-plane combat as an energy-maneuverability contest, and he reduced real-time plane performance models first to those component features affecting energy-maneuverability, and secondly to the FastTransients that affected the time required to initiate re-deployment of component features in different combinations and sequences - i.e. the agility of planes and pilots. He apparently stopped after analyzing only the 1st two catalyst levels affecting system outcomes - having already revolutionized a moribund field. Examples of FastTransients for fighter pilots would be low latency servo-motors for wing-flap controls, instead of sluggish and tiring hydraulic controls, as well as the physical agility and decision-making latency of trained pilots. 

Not surprisingly, these general concepts have long been discussed in other fields, in terms of system, species or cultural resiliency, agility, AdaptiveRate, etc, etc, etc. Nevertheless, much of that fragmented discourse is at present walled off in specialized literature, and expressed in jargon not portable across disciplines, nor to the bulk of our electorate - and therefore NOT adequately conceptualized as a whole!

Hence, it might be worthwhile to borrow John Boyd's terminology and describe the outcome-managment for any group contest, from local team tactical-agility to national policy-agility, in simplistic terms similar to those he pioneered while revitalizing air combat modeling and plane design.

International and inter-group competition as a FEEDBACK-DISCOURSE CONTEST.

Group agility determined by constantly mutating and emerging FastTransientPlatforms able to initiate, alter and re-deploy further variants of all existing group-discourse patterns (the secret to OBT&E).

Group "jerk" - the derivative of group agility - is determined by Social Liquidity, allowing steadily increasing diversity of tools and practices from which FastTransientPlatforms may initiate agile selection and re-deployment, in any combination necessary.

Most specialists in various fields may recognize some - but not all - of these highlighted features as crude metaphors for already familiar cultural features, such as markets, market-research services, regulatory agencies, political bodies, sensory systems, integrative systems, motor systems, etc, etc - yet all will find it easy to agree that we lack consensus models allowing agile application of ALL these concepts from all, narrow fields to our general, group agility needs. Without consensus models, large-group agility is difficult to manage and slow to adjust.

The continuous process of tuning both the patterns and latency of nationwide feedback/response cycles constitutes our net Cultural OODA LOOP. Keeping our COODA LOOP inside that of other nations is our goal, so that our survival chances remain in our own hands. If, for “Decide,” we slip in some other letters, to represent, say, "Upscaling, Largescale Decisionmaking," then we have an even more easily recognizable useful, nationwide, COOULDA LOOP. At any instant, our national Output Gap is obviously a function of our COOULDA LOOP, further helping us zero in on lagging Cultural Agility as a direct consequence of lagging CulturalFastTransients and finally lagging Social Liquidity, itself a function of hoarding fiat to excess instead of putting fiat to work. 

We can then end with the not surprising observation that successful cultural innovation rates track the quality of distributed liquidity provisioning.

Once stated, it's clear that we as a nation can easily do this - far better than we've done at any time during the last 67 years. We need only the vision, will and practice to succeed faster. Alternatively, we can simply continue to dissociate further, and let the USA fail at some point, all for want of continuously increasing our group discourse, group direction and group practice.