p.s. I have wondered if the polarization we see goes back to the razor-thin Kennedy victory in 1960. Republicans were very unhappy and resented the Johnson administration. Eventually Nixon was president but Watergate was a disaster. They wanted revenge. To make a long story short, now Democrats investigate Republicans and vice versa leading to a cycles of retaliation. Is history professor John Dobson on the List?
----------------------------------- Frank Wimberly My memoir: https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly My scientific publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 Phone (505) 670-9918 On Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:53 PM Frank Wimberly <wimber...@gmail.com wrote: > Maybe an experiment that leads to a horrible results makes society > (voters) decide, "We don't want to do that again". > > ----------------------------------- > Frank Wimberly > > My memoir: > https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly > > My scientific publications: > https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 > > Phone (505) 670-9918 > > On Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:48 PM Ron Newman <ron.new...@gmail.com wrote: > >> Stepping back to 40,000 ft. for a second... >> >> '[Morality] is an evolutionary process in which societies constantly >> perform experiments, and whether or not those experiments succeed >> determines which cultural ideas and moral precepts propagate into the >> future.' If so, he says, then a theory that rigorously explains how >> coevolutionary systems are driven to the edge of chaos might tell us a lot >> about cultural dynamics, and how societies reach that elusive, >> ever-changing balance between freedom and control. >> >> 'Witness the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union...the whole >> situation seems all too reminiscent of the power-law distribution of >> stability and upheaval at the edge of chaos. 'When you think of it', he >> says, 'the Cold War was one of these long periods where mot much >> changed...But now that period of stability is ending...in the models, once >> you get out of one of these metastable periods, you get into one of these >> chaotic periods where a lot of change happens..It's much more sensitive now >> to initial conditions.' >> >> 'So what's the right course of action?' he asks. 'I don't know, except >> that this is like punctuated equilibrium in evolutionary history. It >> doesn't happen without a great deal of extinction. And it's not >> necessarily a step for the better. There are models where the species that >> dominate in the stable period after the upheaval may be less fit than the >> species that dominated beforehand.' >> >> 'And now suppose it's really true that coevolving, complex systems get >> themselves to the edge of chaos...if we imagine that this really carries >> over into economic systems, then it's a state where technologies come into >> existence and replace others, et cetera. But if this is true, it means >> that the edge of chaos is, on average, the best that we can do...You can go >> extinct, or broke. But here we are on the edge of chaos because that's >> where, on average, we all do the best.' >> >> - Doyne Farmer, Chris Langton, and Stuart Kauffman, in that order, quoted >> in "Complexity", M. Mitchell Waldrop, p. 319-322. >> >> I wrote a layman's blog post on a similar idea, "On the Importance of >> Idiots", speculating that societal chaos might be moving the solution space >> out of local minima into novel areas in the solution space, and that the >> process might be solving for long-term resiliency of the system as a whole, >> in opposition to short-term sanity. I did filter it through Norm Johnson >> at SFI to remove egregious errors, but make no claim for completeness or >> rigor: >> https://blog.ideatreelive.com/?p=481 >> >> Ron Newman, M.S., M.M.E. >> Founder, IdeaTreeLive.com <http://www.Ideatreelive.com> Knowledge >> Modeling >> Piano <https://www.ronnewmanpiano.com> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
