This is not as simple as most may jump to assume. It's actually very puzzling. So what's the autocatalysis model for this dilemma?
As an aggregate grows, there is no mathematical way for any citizen to know what every other citizen knows.
The resulting dilemma can be viewed two ways:
1) As a mathematically unsolvable dilemma, and a hopeless race to make adequately informed voters; or
2) As an obviously solvable dilemma (given evolution, physiology, & the huge aggregate of cells that makes each of "us"); namely that we needn't be universally informed. Rather, we need only to constantly re-develop ways to regulate affinity, trust and "fidelity" across all the delegated parts of a growing aggregate (our nation), which can only survive through common purpose.
We have to know much, but not all. Only how to maintain coordination.
#2 is the only rational approach to all calls for an "adequately informed" electorate.
EVERY citizen needn't be universally informed, but EVERY CITIZEN MUST BE ABLE TO COORDINATE WITH ANY OTHER CITIZEN, WITH AGILITY.
However, there's a catch. A corollary of #2 is that we must learn to trust and delegate, and NOT to assume we know the operations or context of operations outside of our own area of expertise. Otherwise delegation to teammates doesn't work. A group of ignorant people each assuming they know it all is even worse than an uncoordinated group of fairly knowledgeable people!
Make no mistake. It takes extra work to become fully immersed in the full context of more than one discipline. Most never achieve that. We all are constantly assuming things that we should verify, before committing our aggregate as much as we do.
Many people learn just enough to make themselves dangerous, as misguided voters. It truly is a dilemma, neither as trivial as most think, nor as insolvable as others think. If the tens of trillions of cells in the human body can automatically grow, organize and mobilize themselves - starting from a single egg cell - then so can a nation of mere hundreds of millions.
There obviously has to be some constant balance between education of citizens, and their methods for regulating affinity, trust and fidelity (loyalty to nation).
We know tolerance limits always come in at least pairs. In this case, we can't survive if the average citizen knows too little, yet at the same time we cannot ever achieve the nirvana of every citizen knowing everything. There'd be no time to act, even if the latter were possible, and we'd succumb just for lack of group agility.
So where is the dynamic compromise, and how do we maintain it, as it shifts in all it's countless facets?
War, for example, is too important to be left to the generals. By extension, EVERY process is also too important to be left to the presumed process owner!
Simultaneously, the quality of distributed decision-making includes the factor of tempo, and all of us must constantly act, quickly enough to matter, based on insufficient data, just in order to keep informing the aggregate about changing context! An approximate solution today is better than a supposedly perfect solution next year .. which never comes, because EVERYTHING always changes by the time next year rolls around.
The solution lies in our diversity. By delegating many example processes simultaneously, our numbers eventually define all measures of success, by surrounding success with enough failures to recognize it! Then we, as a social species, rescue most or all of those delegated to tasks with negative results, and accelerate further progress by reassigning them to new exploration, instead of having to grow new citizens from scratch. That's how social species outdo non-social species, and how teams outdo any hermit, no matter heroic the hermit.
Where does this leave us, as a constantly growing aggregate? We're left with a need for large numbers of teams with overlapping areas of expertise. No citizens can be left in isolation, uncoordinated or "left" to own un-aligned cultural processes. And, no "Central Planners" can be allowed to try to micromanage all of us.
The solution is for every set of process experts to be involved with AND ANSWERABLE TO - at least a few other disciplines, and actually an entire spectrum of other process owners. That's the only way to keep all processes dynamically oriented and aligned with unpredictably shifting group or Public purpose. That spectrum of interactions must be non-negligible, different for every discipline, and span everything from nearly complete oversight from "neighboring" disciplines, out to minimal feedback exchange with a "long tail" of citizens in other disciplines. And, that feedback and oversight spectrum must be flexible, able to change at will, in real time.
We could make a cultural regulation song, modeling the total number of cultural parts as the cultural "alphabet," or a-z.
Except the shifting, regulatory connections of an agile aggregate would be better illustrated by a collection of amorphous, social amoebas rather than a fixed-form skeleton.
However, there's a catch. A corollary of #2 is that we must learn to trust and delegate, and NOT to assume we know the operations or context of operations outside of our own area of expertise. Otherwise delegation to teammates doesn't work. A group of ignorant people each assuming they know it all is even worse than an uncoordinated group of fairly knowledgeable people!
Make no mistake. It takes extra work to become fully immersed in the full context of more than one discipline. Most never achieve that. We all are constantly assuming things that we should verify, before committing our aggregate as much as we do.
Many people learn just enough to make themselves dangerous, as misguided voters. It truly is a dilemma, neither as trivial as most think, nor as insolvable as others think. If the tens of trillions of cells in the human body can automatically grow, organize and mobilize themselves - starting from a single egg cell - then so can a nation of mere hundreds of millions.
There obviously has to be some constant balance between education of citizens, and their methods for regulating affinity, trust and fidelity (loyalty to nation).
We know tolerance limits always come in at least pairs. In this case, we can't survive if the average citizen knows too little, yet at the same time we cannot ever achieve the nirvana of every citizen knowing everything. There'd be no time to act, even if the latter were possible, and we'd succumb just for lack of group agility.
So where is the dynamic compromise, and how do we maintain it, as it shifts in all it's countless facets?
War, for example, is too important to be left to the generals. By extension, EVERY process is also too important to be left to the presumed process owner!
Simultaneously, the quality of distributed decision-making includes the factor of tempo, and all of us must constantly act, quickly enough to matter, based on insufficient data, just in order to keep informing the aggregate about changing context! An approximate solution today is better than a supposedly perfect solution next year .. which never comes, because EVERYTHING always changes by the time next year rolls around.
The solution lies in our diversity. By delegating many example processes simultaneously, our numbers eventually define all measures of success, by surrounding success with enough failures to recognize it! Then we, as a social species, rescue most or all of those delegated to tasks with negative results, and accelerate further progress by reassigning them to new exploration, instead of having to grow new citizens from scratch. That's how social species outdo non-social species, and how teams outdo any hermit, no matter heroic the hermit.
Where does this leave us, as a constantly growing aggregate? We're left with a need for large numbers of teams with overlapping areas of expertise. No citizens can be left in isolation, uncoordinated or "left" to own un-aligned cultural processes. And, no "Central Planners" can be allowed to try to micromanage all of us.
The solution is for every set of process experts to be involved with AND ANSWERABLE TO - at least a few other disciplines, and actually an entire spectrum of other process owners. That's the only way to keep all processes dynamically oriented and aligned with unpredictably shifting group or Public purpose. That spectrum of interactions must be non-negligible, different for every discipline, and span everything from nearly complete oversight from "neighboring" disciplines, out to minimal feedback exchange with a "long tail" of citizens in other disciplines. And, that feedback and oversight spectrum must be flexible, able to change at will, in real time.
We could make a cultural regulation song, modeling the total number of cultural parts as the cultural "alphabet," or a-z.
"The i-zone's regulated by the S[j-z-h]-zones,
and the j-zone's regulated by the S[k-z-i]-zones ...
the ... t-zone's regulated by the S[u-z-r]-zones ...
and that's how we survive at all!"
Except the shifting, regulatory connections of an agile aggregate would be better illustrated by a collection of amorphous, social amoebas rather than a fixed-form skeleton.
Does everyone have to know everything? Impossible.
However, can every delegated process owner, in turn, regulate enough of their neighbor's processes to ensure fidelity to group function? Sure. That's how we got this far.
Did anyone expect it could be any other way? That's what a social species does.
This represents the most primitive levels of mathematical grouping, developed centuries ago and considered trivially obvious in many disciplines. The fact that this minimal expression of aggregate logic is not a requirement for either politics or theology is simply astounding.
We cannot survive as a nation if our very politics are dominated by the absolutely most systemically ignorant people among us. If we don't improve politics as-is, it's failings and lacking will be the death of our nation.
3 comments:
Roger, just so you know, I spent 2 seconds looking at your meme and didn't actually read your post.
Guess you prove the rule, Dan! :)
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