Primary Question:

How can we entice auspiciousness into complex systems?

Some notes (by John Wood) after inviting Prof. Mark D’inverno to our meeting on 2/2/07

some of our assumptions

(please feel free to challenge):

• In the age of climate change + economics of self-interest we need a paradigm shift.
• Loosely speaking - a miracle is needed
• A situated mathematics of the 'thinker-inclusive whole' may be helpful

3 QUESTIONS

..

1) Is there a situated, context-inclusive mathematics?

• i.e. one that is observer/player inclusive?

E.g. Polanyi (1963) said, ‘all human knowledge can be considered to be tacit knowledge if it rests on our subsidiary awareness of particulars in terms of a comprehensive unity’

2) How might this work?

(assuming that:

• maths is poor at mapping reasonably comprehensive holistic relations
• maths is observer independent
• maths is context-independent
• maths is not intended to facilitate serendipitous outcomes

Mark mentioned Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson's work on 'Relevance Theory'...

3) Could it be used to turn vicious circles into virtuous circles?

• Positive feedback is important issue.
• Actual dystopian or quasi-utopian situations are open systems that sustain/augment (i.e. positive feedback) their own momentum.
• This means that wars, poverty, droughts, etc. often self-perpetuate until external factors (e.g. local resource depletion) force an end.
• Perhaps we could metadesign (micro-)utopian conditions that self-sustain (with a little co-cultivation)
• This may mean that metadesigners would need to attune themselves to the auspiciousness surrounding us (c.f. weak signal theory)

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