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.

The Unexpected Effect of Monnet on Money

Monnet's Brandy and Europe's Fate

For most citizens of the Western Hemisphere, this is a fascinating essay on the legacy of Jean Monnet.

It is certainly curious that the convictions of a person whose personality was set before WWI, would come to dominate European events 2 world wars and 100 years later.

This is all so foreign to US citizens - and various of the many details are both unsettling and enlightening.

Compare Monnet to Marriner Eccles. You have to wonder whether they ever met.

Monnet & Europe saddled with so much baggage?

While Eccles, FDR & the USA were so innocently free to get on with pragmatic responses to changing context?

The bigger issue seems to be how both zones are adapting, at what Adaptive Rate, and why the Adaptive Rates of both zones are fluctuating differently.

For comparison, one can't help but ask how many Australian citizens know much of, or care about, the cultural dynamics on the European mainland?

And, this brings up a question about Aggregate Tempo.

How much do any of us need to know about the spurious history of one another ... versus just learning - and then KEEPING - the habit of QUICKLY seeing how to coordinate new success, in any new, unpredictably varying context?

"Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore SELDOM ADOPTED FROM PREVIOUS WISDOM, but forced by the occasion."  Benjamin Franklin

Maybe FutureShock shows that we tend, in practice, to non-selectively over-weight ALL input from elders, in our currently accelerated cultural settings. Don't we need to be just as selective about which bits of elder-advice to keep, as we are about selecting which inventions to keep?

Since methods drive results, which methods might allow us to enter every new context with a fresh, unbiased approach to sampling both our emerging options plus the optional feedback/analysis/test methods we may use to achieve our next desired outcome?

Although it might seem harsh, perhaps Europe, and the whole world, would have been far better off if Monnet had retired earlier, or had been more quickly forgotten? :) Or are efforts such as Monnet's the historical norm, rather than the exception?

Or is Monnet simply unfairly remembered?  For example, was his regret of the unfair reparations against Germany following WWI mistakenly repressed? If Monnet were still here, would he be insisting that the MiddleClass be treated more fairly, across all of Europe, and especially in southern Europe?

There is no way to tell for sure? Yet it doesn't hurt to ask those questions.

It seems that Monnet's "Action Committee for the United States of Europe" and the later European Parliament reconstituted everything about USA democracy except Ben Franklin's famous "Table talks" - i.e., the crucial method which actually delivered the beneficial function, not just the constraining form.

"When a broad table is to be made, and the edges of planks do not fit, the artist takes a little from both, and makes a good joint. In like manner here, BOTH sides must part with some of their demands."

So far, most people in southern Europe feel that only one side, the Middle Class, is parting with anything. There will be no progress without fairness, regardless of which methods are employed?

Have we merely distracted ourselves with the topic of "money," while failing to adopt adequate responses to the demands of an occasion that is still ongoing, largely unchanged, since Monnet's youth?