Thanks to both Jochen and Glen ...
I appreciate the calling out of Atavism in this context/light as well as
Glen's delineation between teleology and teleonomy and the relationship
to *absolute*/*idealized* authoritarianism, heirarchies and pecking orders.
I'm on my third flock of chickens over 20 years, restarted fresh each
time from chicks and watching learning them as individuals as a flock
and as a pecking-order hierarchy. The first group were a dozen who
stayed 11 for the duration when I gifted them forward to someone when I
moved to Berkeley in 05 for a year, the second were a dozen who also
dropped quickly to 11 and then 8 when we gifted 3 forward to keep our
egg obligations down to something reasonable and to support a young
friend who thought they might like the experience (including fresh
eggs)... the current are 6 we adopted (very young) to thin someone
else's flock to manageable. They are about 3/4 mature now and
developing their pecking order...
They are definitely a holarchy which can present their hierarchy
(actually multiple, overlapping contextual versions) when such ordering
is important. The first flock (05) were the ultimate free rangers who
never chose to use their coop for anything but laying and brooding
(because we never locked them into it). They roosted on our garden
fence even in the cold! But they had almost no evident "pecking
order"... they shared the property (with not fowl-resistant border) with
4 geese who were also very egalitarian until one morning when one of the
2 females went missing (a whole other tangent) when the two males
determined their relative dominance immediately one over the other and
both over the remaining female. They also heightened their attempts to
dominate me (which mostly involved me working on or cleaning *their*
pond) and visitors (guard geese extra-ordinaire) and our 100lb lab who
they quit allowing to chase them a while back and at that point turned
the tables and began to chase her (at least pro-forma to demonstrate her
place on the pecking order). They ignored the chickens but the chickens
avoided them, recognizing how it might turn out.
My limited experience with real-time control systems (circa 1980) did
involve both acutely centralized/hierarchical organization of control of
distributed parts within high-energy physics experiments but a move to
highly distributed systems with very specialized deferential and
synthesizing heuristics. The latter was known/demonstraed to be more
efficient and error-tolerant and complexity-managing than the former but
many oldSkool Physicists/Engineers hated the idea that they couldn't
possibly anticipate every error condition and pre-define the response.
I can't imagine any organization of humans being truly effectively
hierarchical (authoritarian?) in the extreme.
Both Yuval Harari and Timothy Snyder in the recent History-perspectived
books on information theory harp on the early-mid Soviet Union era and
how tragic their attempts (Stalin mostly) were in trying to build the
ultimate centralized control system of people, their processes, material
consequences, etc.
- Steve
On 10/20/24 3:31 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
I agree that the hype in conservative news sources about great CEOs is
an example of the Great Man theory. The hype about AI godfathers is an
example too. Nevertheless I still believe that authoritarian
organization is the rule in social systems. In almost all companies
and corporations the CEO has the last word, in armies the general at
the top, in families traditionally the father.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
In hierarchies there are two ends of a spectrum: at the one end we
have an authoritarian system and a top-down hierarchy where people at
the bottom are doing what the leader at the top wants. At the other
end we have a democratic system and a bottom-up hierarchy where
elected people at the top are doing what the people at the bottom
want. In between are authoritarian systems that pretend to democratic,
and democratic system that have authoritarian tendencies.
An example of the spectrum would be a Navy vessel vs a pirate ship in
the 18th century. Mutiny is one form of transition between the two types.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance_in_18th-century_piracy
Another example is the Catholic church vs protestantism. In the
Catholic church officials are appointed from the top, in protestant
culture they are elected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestantism
The question why people are shifting from one form of organization to
another is intriguing. I am not sure if we have clear answers to this
interesting question. Nick argued that "groups capable of shifting to
an authoritarian organization in response to a perceived existential
threat survived in greater numbers than those that didn't" but this
argument alone is not fully convincing, or is it?
-J.
-------- Original message --------
From: glen <geprope...@gmail.com>
Date: 10/18/24 9:47 PM (GMT+01:00)
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] On Evolutionary Atavism
I can't help but feel that the sentiment that authoritarian
organization is the rule is an example of (or sibling to) the Great
Man theory. Ultimately, it's something akin to a psychological
investment in teleology - which I'm using to mean when the appearance
of purposeful behavior is often treated as an indicator that processes
do have purpose (as opposed to teleonomy - where processes merely seem
to have purpose, behave as if they have purpose, or perhaps purpose is
emergent). But it's not merely the attribution of purpose, but also
the attribution of unity or fusion into a bounded whole.
I'd challenge anyone to present an organized system that is *actually*
unified in this way. Even political systems we name and accept as
authoritarian, are not completely fused, atomic, centralized. The
extent to which the nominal leader is actually the leader is a graded
extent, never perfect. Each particular authoritarian system will be
more or less authoritarian than another. And, worse, each particular
system will be more authoritarian in some dimensions and less in others.
So if I read this generously, what I hear is that we're very used to
... comfortable with ... the attribution of leader-controlled
organization, as in corporations with chief executives, etc. And we're
less used to ... facile with ... comfortable with ... distributed
organization and quantifying the extent to which organization is
centralized or distributed.
If I read it less generously, it sounds like reification - pretending
like some illusory property is actual.
On 10/17/24 10:21, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Interesting thoughts. The use of "atavism" in the context of social
systems is interesting, but it is not new. Joseph Schumpeter has used
the term atavism to explain the outbreak of World War I
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atavism
>
>
> I believe authoritarian organization is not the exception, it is the
rule. A pecking order or "dominance hierarchy" is the most common
order in social groups and almost all organizations, corporations and
companies. Even among chickens in farms or apes in zoos.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy
>
>
> The opposite of authoritarian organization is an egalitarian society
where everybody is equal. In his book "Warlike and Peaceful
Societies", Agner Fogar agues that people tend to prefer one of these
two types depending on the situation. His regality theory says "people
will show a psychological preference for a strong leader and strict
discipline if they live in a society full of conflict and danger,
while people in a peaceful and safe environment will prefer an
egalitarian and tolerant culture"
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regality_theory
>
>
> -J.
>
>
>
> Inters-------- Original message --------
> From: thompnicks...@gmail.com
> Date: 10/17/24 12:08 AM (GMT+01:00)
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
<friam@redfish.com>
> Subject: [FRIAM] On Evolutionary Atavism
>
> On Evolutionary Atavism
>
> My so-called mind is still churning from our conversation about
evolutionary atavism, the idea that current behavioral systems may be
ill-suited to contemporary circumstances. As an evolutionary
psychologist I should be for it; however, as a survivor of the
instinct wars of the 1950’s, I should be against it. Where am I?
>
> The problem with evolutionary atavism arises when people start
attributing any necessity to it. Natural selection would not be
possible if organisms did not offer up structures and behaviors that
are maladapted. Evolution could not have occurred if organisms did
not respond to these maladaptations with adaptive changes. Evolution
is a dynamic between change and stability and the interesting question
is why some things change while others don’t, and why some changes
occur more rapidly than others. Asserting that some things are the
same as they were a million years ago because they didn’t happen to
change is just silly.
>
> Still, evolutionary atavism does play a role in my thinking. Let’s
work an example together and see what that role is and whether it is
justified. I listened with guilty pleasure to Obama’s address
ridiculing MAGA thinking. My pleasure was guilty because I thought
his speech would make Trump more likely to win the election. This
conclusion arose from an evolutionary hypothesis about the origins of
charisma. The logic, such as it is, goes like this.
>
> 1. *The modern human species arose 160kyrs ago from a very small
number of small groups. *That the human species passed through a
severe bottleneck at it inception is probably true; that it was
composed of small group at that time is a plausible surmise.**
> 2. *Those groups were engaged in intense competition at the
bottleneck. *This statement is reasonable but not supported by any
data I can think of. **
> 3. *Therefore, they survived or failed as groups. *Again, merely
plausible.**
> 4. *Those /groups/ survived that were capable of rapid concerted
action. *This is based on the idea that in emergencies it is most
important for every to do some thing, rather than for them to wait and
work out the best thing to do.**Barely plausible. Not even clear how
one would go about researching it. **
> 5. *Groups capable of shifting to an authoritarian organization in
response to a perceived existential threat survived in greater numbers
than those that didn’t.*
> 6. *Humans, therefore, are inclined to put their faith in a single
person when they perceive an existential threat. *Let’s call this the
“Charismer Response”**
> 7. *The person most likely to be selected for this role is
apparently single-minded and decisive. *This gives us the
characteristics of a *Charismer*, **
> 8. *Charismees relinquish their capacity for independent rational
thought in favor of the Charismer’s decision-making. *
> 9. *Charismees receive benefits from the group in proportion to
their demonstrations of surrender of rationality.*
> 10. *Charismees demostrate their surrender by the repetition of o
or more flagrantly irrational beliefs. (virgi birth, stole election ,
etc.)*
> 11. *Challenges to these beliefs only increase charismees allegiance
to the group*
> 12. *Therefore, Obama should have kept his smarty-pants mouth shut. *
>
> You all ca*n* evaluate the heuristic, rationality, a*n*d probability
of this argument. I am going to stop *n*ow because my keyboard has
stopped reliably producing “*n’s” * ad is drivig me uts. At best, I
think evolutionary atavism is a source of plausible hypotheses about
why organisms are not adapted to their current circumstances. See
some of you tomorrow.
>
> Sicerely,
>
--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: 5/2017 thru present
https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p
Zoomhttps://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: 5/2017 thru presenthttps://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
1/2003 thru 6/2021http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
