We're All Studying The Wrong Things

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



Or at least too much isolated detail, and too little context.

What'd Walter Shewhart say? "Data is meaningless without context."
Take our aggregate fiscal policy ... please!

The details in this essay by Bill Mitchell are depressingly astounding.

How Two Nations That Drove The Renaissance Eventually Joined At The Hip And Then Purposely Shot Both of Their Own Feet

I'll mention just one. "France was determined to stop Germany ever invading it again."

So, armed with that fixation, France ended up guaranteeing that German export industries would invade France, armed with THEIR fixation on a pegged Fx. And now they profess surprise.

Have A Steady Stream Of Changing Contexts

And Won't Explore Them Without Prejudice?*

Humans have been "Context Nomads" since before we were modern humans. Given that long habit, it is simply amazing that countries with such a history of brilliant physiologists, physicists and chemists can't figure out the rudimentary demands of the dynamic system we call a currency supply.

For heaven's sake! Amoebas figured this out a billion years ago! Even bacteria did. Just follow the damn operations, and keep them going, and evolving?

What should we be studying? How to systematically control the frictions that cause entire human cultures to take one giant step backward for every two aggregate steps forward.

Otherwise, how do we manufacture adaptive Public Purpose? Not just randomly diverted consent?


* We are Context Nomads: human nomads migrating through contexts with UNPREDICTABLE characteristics. Just explore without prejudice? Life is no more difficult than Kindergarten, where we first learn OBT&E. 

Keeping Up With FULL Context: OpenSourced Hardware AND Software As One Key To Distributed OBT&E

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

NVIDIA Unveils First Mobile Supercomputer for Embedded Systems

I wonder if ARM licensees can keep up? Or other CPU mass producers. Maybe CPU will also soon become Open-Sourced commodities, rather like grass for cattle, or ants for insectivores. :)

Regardless of hardware vendors, cheaper data-intensive hardware will allow more distributed access to serious data-crunching and complex model simulations.

Full context simulations? We're nearly there with sophisticated gaming, even though developing gaming technology is still mostly applied to culturally trivial distractions.

Sophisticated, full-context modeling could nevertheless soon follow. Simply by using real-time, real data feeds, instead of only artificial-reality imaging engines.

This will slowly make it more feasible for more people in all settings and all disciplines to begin to model their entire supply chains or "eco-systems" - as well as the full context (the whole that grows as less/equal/more than the sum of all sub-eco-systems).

The "Singularity" is more likely to accelerate human coordination. Enslavement of humans by their smart-phones/watches/glasses still seems improbable. :)

Keeping up with context is how all organizations reduce internal frictions to low enough levels that all sub-members aren't simply fighting one another. That's what OBT&E is all about. Outcomes-Based-Training-&-Education, aka, cultural evolution.

Making it harder for citizens to work at cross-purposes is always a function of processing key data flow. Just running enough model simulations (i.e., thinking) to even keep recognizing minimal-data short-cuts for given contexts is itself a considerable task.

Distributed awareness of full context - aka, an informed public. It's not just the data that matters. Without context, any amount of data is still meaningless. So getting slowly improving, full-context models in front of more people is the name of the game.

Real-time, full-context awareness, across full groups? That requires:

streaming even far more data flows, in real-time, 

RAPID pattern recognition within and across more data flows, 

massively parallel testing of distributed tuning steps (local actions), 

and most of all ... an ongoing ASSESSMENT model ("Public Purpose" as the agile, floating Desired Outcome).

All inter-linked, through massively parallel feedback data flows, of course. No, corporate owned advertising & propaganda channels will NOT suffice. Don't even ask. It's already just in the way, and a significant paywall obstacle that is slowing the evolution of the USA.

How about personal "Citizen Dashboards" able to serve distributed citizens as well as the cockpit data displays serve airplane pilots? That should help +320 million people run a more agile culture and country. It might even save our collective butts. The aggregate return on coordinating REQUIRED distribution of nearly all available info to nearly all "tribal" or citizen members ... will be a far higher return than ANYTHING any individual can currently imagine. Even legendary King Midas - or anyone else from 2000 years ago - couldn't imagine the distributed wealth we argue over today. Why should we constrain even our own, following grandchildren, let alone the 7th generation yet unborn?

Why NOT OpenSource our survival ... the challenge is wide open, and not yet sourced. Supposedly, none of us is as smart as all of us, so lets just figure out ways to USE all of us?

As Ben Franklin (and every tribal member throughout history) said, it seems we still must all hang together, or we'll surely experience a common demise.