Our task. Rightsizing Adaptive Cultural Signals From Human Cultural Noise.

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

It finally hit me, as a conceptual summary. This is what Context Nomads do.

Our task.

Rightsizing adaptive cultural signals from human cultural noise.

Does our nation have an aggregate-OODA-Loop?  Of course.

AOODA-Loop?

Do we know how to tune it?

How? Through group practice?

What are we waiting for?

Aggregate, perceptual clarity? About our context, and major, not just trivial, challenges?

Where would that be aggregate perceptual clarity be formed, if not in the body of public discourse?

And where would it be expressed, if not in our Desired Outcomes, milestone goals, policies, strategies, tactics and tools?

As the US Marine Corp says, the scale of our organizational demands change, but it's always about ...

staging, linking, sequencing

... to master successive aggregate challenges.

Where are those challenges played out?  On a field we call Policy Space.

Using what toolkit?  The one we call Policy Agility, and it's cascade of component parts, down to individual skills & characteristics.

So what ARE we waiting for? Adequate preparation, in K-12 schools? Doh!

If you're worried about where your national vehicle is going, carping from the back seat is pretty inefficient, and there's a known cascade of ways to help arrive intact. 

Participate in setting the Desired Destination. Get involved in the decision process, at the decision point.

Pick your stage, and participate in leveraging the steering wheel, or the brakes, or the turn signals, etc, etc.  

And, participate in making sure that every component hears about every other component, so that poor maintenance of wheels, oil, brakes, coolant, exhaust, steering, heat, AC, ABS, fuel filter, generator, etc, etc don't derail the progress of the whole.

This is the greatest organizational challenge in human history ... but having made it this far, we're obviously capable of taking one more, even more distributed, step.  Only if we act together, and adequately provision all parts of our increasingly distributed whole.

Same Reason Our Schools Are Failing Our Students? Mismanaging Planet Kindergarten.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Eventually, knowing"WHY" to work/fight/learn ... (motivation) ... always trumps "HOW" to work/fight/learn.

Since motivation drives continued innovation.

The law of multi-level selection? Those who know why they work/fight/learn will always run circles around those who only know how?

If there is no consensus Desired Outcome, then aggregates display lagging orientation to why or how to accomplish ... what? The awesome return on net coordination is possible only when aggregates are working towards a consensus Desired Outcome.

Meanwhile, past history repeatedly shows that all individuals learn best & fastest via unbiased exposure to emerging context. So success tracks instilling optimal learning habits as a prerequisite, BEFORE setting off to master endless strings of emerging tasks.

That's why Froebel invented Kindergarten.

A similar lesson applies (on a different scale) for individual aggregates, not just the individual components of given aggregates.

Surely that reminds you of biology (including, eventually, the human species), which was left - initially unbiased - in a (relatively) safe environment (planet earth), where it could learn all on it's own - without outside bias or micromanagement?

Which sadsack ever said there was any conflict between religion & the scientific method?

For gods so loved the world ... that they didn't try to micromanage it's development? Hopefully.

Yes, everything we ever needed to know we're learning here, from one another. Only one question. Will humans ever stop fighting, and graduate from planet Kindergarten?

What Do We Call People Who Hoard Coordination Skills, Rather Than Merely Static Assets?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

We're universally familiar with the concept of a billionaire.

It denotes hoarding of significant STATIC assets.

Yet it's obviously better to have DYNAMIC assets vs static assets. Evolution - and wars - have already proven that without a doubt.

So what would we call people who hoard coordination skills, rather than static assets?

Coordinairs?

How would we differentiate skill levels?

Community organizers? CoordiMillionairs? 

Regional organizers? CoordiBillionairs ? 

National organizers? CoordiTrillionairs?

Or just leaders?

Statespeople = ???

Yet in this context, what's the significance of another decimal point in a given metric, or another order of magnitude in whatever the assessment system is?

Do we focus on the size of the asset hoarded, or focus on the implications of the Desired Outcome?

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.

The Snowden Saga Heralds A Radical Exposure Of Expanding National Options Worth Exploring, Not Just A Shift In Capitalism

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



Pandora's new, virtual box has been open for decades. People are just beginning to grasp a fraction of what that means.

Seems to me that capitalism is not the real point either. We have huge populations creating new methods for group discourse, the basis of Group Intelligence ... and yet national groupings are not yet selecting fittingly audacious Desired Outcomes to achieve, through use of our newly emerging methods.

Our Capabilities Gap is so large, we can't see it.

The Snowden saga heralds a radical shift in capitalism by Evgeny Morozov

They're A Bit More Honest In Canada? Maybe ETI Will Contact Them First?

(commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Generation Screwed: Youth [have no purpose] struggle for jobs, home ownership

That's telling it like it is. Luddites are winning? Winning what?

Nevertheless, even Canadians are only a bit more honest than us here in the states. After all, what kinds of "experts" totally miss the point like the experts quoted in the next newsline from Canada?

BMO job cuts have little to do with sky-high profits
"Technology, sluggish economy mean job losses would occur despite how much banks make, experts say."

Huh?

Translation: We're squeezing water from a stone ... because we don't know what else to do with our citizens and nation. Might as well extract rising rents from our own citizens .. until our nation withers and dies. Our mantra is to do ANYTHING EXCEPT set new goals worthy of re-dedicating our nation, culture and populous to.

Why?

Is there a endgame plan at work here, even by default? I mean, other than parasites consuming the host they THINK they own? That's a dead-end game, not an endgame leading to expanding options. What on Earth has happened to homo sapiens? They used to be a social species, but seem to be reverting to hermit, cultural cannibals before our very eyes. Maybe we're lacking a cultural mirror ... more than any other missing piece of technology? Maybe banksters could hire all those citizens they deem "useless" to work on a cultural mirror system, and thereby help us regain group intelligence?

Until then, we'll continue with unchecked, purposeless rent extraction? Simply because we can? What is the Desired Outcome behind that?

That kind of pea brain outlook is equivalent to a parent saying they ate half the neighborhood children because technology made it possible ... and because they couldn't imagine any other options.

A little more imagination might be called for?

Personally, I'm sure that youth of this age have plenty of imagination - since they always have had, or else evolution wouldn't have occurred. Just because you CAN do things, that doesn't mean you SHOULD. Imagine being more adaptively selective! Isn't that what homo sapiens was named for? Are homo sapiens being replaced by NeoLiberals, or just stuck, temporarily in the no-evolution land between feudalism and further evolution? Growing an Output Gap for three thirds of us doesn't seem like much of a "way."

Adequate youthful imagination would likely be expressed quickly enough, as further cultural evolution ... if only the old farts would quit trying to hoard REAL national options that they can't take with them to the grave? Ya think? These are our kids, grandkids and great-grandkids we're talking about here. Why aren't we managing THEIR options, instead of uselessly trying to constrain OUR current fiat?

What kinds of "experts" miss that point? Those designing their own extinction? Like dinosaurs? Perhaps the kind that never interacted enough with their own kids to notice that there's no adaptive point in economic cannibalism?

We haven't seen such an anal, "bankster" outlook this widespread since ... well, really, since the pre-Christian era in Europe, or the pre-Buddhist & pre-Jain era in Asia. Certainly not since the Reformation and Renaissance. The bankster mentality has degenerated all the way back to class war and the culture of class-based vs nation-based mercantilism. Do we really want to return to squabbling subunits that pit "our" classes, clans, castes and tribes against all others ... INSTEAD of at least sticking together by national allegiance, reaping the insane return-on-coordination, assimilating all citizens, and creating even more, newer cultures, more ethnic diversity and more, newer mythologies?

Sure, we may envision a time when there is once again guaranteed mobility, at least for honest, non-toxic individuals & sub-groups whose negative reputations don't precede them. But do we really want to let a tiny cabal of existing uber-merchants (instead of Communists) Centrally Plan and rush this transition, without more careful consideration? Are we to trust Merchant Central Planners, just because they claim to be OUR central planners? Something seems amiss in the message they promote. Every prior rush to deregulate without re-regulating even more productively - by decentralized consensus - has only ushered in a chaotic period of rampant looting by whomever can get away with the initial deregulation. Somehow the CP-deregulators themselves never get around to decentralized re-regulation again. By definition, it's beyond them. It's simply not in their repertoire.

Well, gag me with a Luddite and call me stupid! 'Cuz I don't see the point in being NON-SELECTIVE about deregulation. At all. We're throwing our entire next generation out with the nominal, fiat bathwater this time. Tune the damn system, carefully, rather than just looting components willy nilly?

There is no way to hoard static assets without growing a group Output Gap.

And tempo matters. 50% cultural degradation this year is FAR, FAR worse than 100% cultural growth next year.

Why? Because the evolutionary value of Dynamic Assets leaves the value of Static Assets in the dust. That's why social species succeed, and why homo sapien cultures outstripped other primate species. It's far smarter to stay fully invested in growing dynamic assets, than to stupidly hoard static assets. That means investing in Democracy, NOT just in personal ownership of more static assets. The whole strategy of social species is 2-stage optimization: keep the components alive AND grow the system (faster than either can grow when working at cross purposes). Instead, humans in NeoLiberal regimes are reverting to negative rates of interest in expanding group intelligence.

"Banksterism AND Busted Evolution" - that's become our motto. Some twisted minds even posit that as doing the work of one or more gods. SETI results are suggesting otherwise.

The Sad Death Of An Adjunct Professor Sparks Some, But Too Little, Labor Debate, Possibly Too Late

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Here is another example of how more people in more professions every year are "just eking out a living" - without any explanation for why we should settle for that outcome.
The Sad Death Of An Adjunct Professor Sparks A Labor Debate
   (hat tip John Leonard)

With this kind of dis-coordination, our Output Gap must be - voluntarily - off the charts. We've been slogging away at our current course for over 30 years now. Isn't it past time to stand up, look around, and consider other options more carefully?

As a start, who are they, exactly, who are volunteering us for this suicide mission? Why? And to what purpose?

And if both their motives and desired outcome are suspect, where are the legions declaring "Hell No, We Won't Go" quietly into a state of total dis-coordination? If reducing our Output Gap is an alternative goal, then halting compliance with the anarchists is an obvious, early step. They can't volunteer us for self-assisted suicide if we simply refuse to cooperate.

If return-on-coordination - i.e., teamwork - is the highest return, by far, why are we throwing it away, instead of discarding stuff we DON'T need anywhere near as much? What other selections might we be making, instead? If there are so many options, why aren't we exploring them?

This is natural selection at work, folks, and at the moment WE are not selecting wisely. Is the sad death of the entire US Middle Class really our choice?