What Shapes a Culture's Cognitive Capabilities?

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)



Contrary to what naive economists believe, existing systems are NOT collections of fully independent, calculating agents. Rather, each is an incomprehensibly tuned syncytium, with incredibly densely engineered and deeply tuned, seemingly endless lists of interdependencies. Everything depends upon everything else. The insanely great return on coordination is the logic that drives all social species, including humans - and ESPECIALLY humans.

Therefore, the following is the type of question we should be asking about our culture, and it's political economy policies.

What Shapes a Child’s Sense of Humor?

[Hat tip to Sanjeev Kulkarni.]

This is a useful question to pose. At this stage of inquiry, the particular cognitive capability being examined almost doesn't matter. All examples are instructive when it comes to considering what aspects of context, Desired Outcomes and practice is shaping a given system's cognitive capabilities.

Next, consider the following, and keep asking the same type of questions.

A human brain is just a network of neurons.

A human culture is just a network of humans.

Does a culture have a sense of humor? How does it develop? How about all the other cognitive capabilities that both physiologies and cultures develop?

After all, a group intelligence is a terrible thing to waste. So why not examine our own, and consider how to keep adaptively shaping it?

Language, Memory, and Cognition in Infancy and Early Childhood

Old topics, by now, even if deeply neglected.

What about "Cultural Language, Cultural Memory, and Cultural Cognition in Cultural Infancy & Early Cultural Childhood?"

When does an evolving culture ever exit "childhood?" When it has stopped changing fast enough, has therefore started to die, and has spawned descendent cultures - whether it knows it or not?

Is the very fact you have to tell some adults the following ... a sign of how badly our culture has failed?

Read and talk to your kids, to enrich their cognitive development.

If we have to tell our own citizens that group & cultural & national intelligence is held in their body of national discourse, and not intrinsically in the citizens itself ... then we've already failed on an epic scale?

What Aspect Of SCALE & Aggregate Degrees of Freedom Don't We Teach To Enough Kids, In All Schools, Everywhere?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



(Photo: walking towards, instead of away from, an impending tsunami of context changes.)

Why is it that group intelligence always seems to recede just before devastating changes in group context? Ordinary humans are clearly talented enough to devise many practical applications for exploring perceived options. There are countless examples, from sublime to mundane, such as this one.

Most Pet Lovers Don't Perceive Equal, Parallel Need To Help A Handicapped Middle Class

Do we have to practice austerity, or can we achieve everything we can imagine, and more?

Application of our talents is clearly gated by the process of recognizing and orienting to local, regional or systemic context. Perceptions & practice then drive us to optimize an increasingly complex combination of actions, so that we can all sail through that thicket of micro-to-macro contexts. Social species work exactly BECAUSE recombinant member interactions provide compounding group resiliency.

Please ask every talented person you know, to design some Automatic Stabilizer policies, for a struggling and starving Middle Class.

We are what we practice, even at a cultural scale. So what triggers do we need, to get more of ourselves to perceive our own, constrained, self-handicapped electorate?

Too few seem to see a MiddleClass limping down the road to oblivion, right into the path of another set of predatory sociopaths, whether "Brits" in India, or an Upper Looting Class that eventually self organizes everywhere.

To avoid these self-inflicted constraints, we need an electorate that practices simultaneously perceiving the full spectrum individual needs, AND team dynamics, AND social interdependencies. To maintain Adaptive Rate, a working culture has to juggle all available input, and keep all it's increasing options available.

What aspect of SCALE don't we teach enough kids, in all schools, everywhere?

Instead of hoarding static assets as rent, why aren't we seeing the value of employing everyone to explore our full range of cultural options, so that we can practice achieving even more than what any individual can currently imagine?

Join a citizen's army? Be all that, together, "we" can be?

Support cultural intelligence? A group mind is a terrible thing to waste?

Why don't more emerging students grasp the scale of the group options to be explored? What methods do we need, in order to change our re-emerging electorate back towards a more adaptive path?

Methods drive results?

  Milestone goals drive methods?

    And Desired Group Outcomes drive milestone goals?

      And interacting imaginations drive Desired Outcomes - aka, Group Imagination?

We can't get there by having everyone wishing to hoard above average amounts of static assets. The reality of the boring outcome actually achieved from that dream has repeatedly been trivial compared to increasing our dynamic assets, an alternate outcome which is available to any organized aggregate - but only if they first recognize it.

Factional Politics: Includes Furthering The Myth That Economics Is Ever Separated From Political Policy

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson; hat tip to Chuck Spinney & Tom Hickey)



There IS no pure economics, only political-economics, aka, factional policy or, rarely, aggregate-policy.

Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

Gareth Porter on the true history of Iran’s nuclear program

By Andrew Cockburn, Harpers

The emerging evidence about rampant & pervasive myths in both the social sciences and ongoing policy processes should trigger us to simply close down all economics departments ... or at least re-label them as "propaganda" departments set up purely to serve the interests of existing political campaign donors.

The whole premise of economics is to "study the human mind stripped of culture" ?

Impossible. Anyone saying that has never cracked open a biology-101 textbook, or even read many newspapers. At least not honestly.

Just google "feral children." People raised isolated from culture are NOT capable of developing what we think of as the human mind. For Pete's sake!

And orthodox macro-economics purports to study group behavior stripped of aggregate policy? Look, just quit bullshitting me. We are not an aggregate of feral-hermits or feral-communities. Aggregates operating isolated from Public Purpose are also NOT capable of developing what we would consider a group-brain or group intelligence. None of us is as smart as all of us, right?

Unless you flat out lie about the myth of Central Planning, while persisting in paying lip service to democracy.  (All Central Planning is equally fatal? It's just that Upper Class Central Planning is less fatal than than others? Is that the rationalization, among porkers feeding at the common trough?)

To me, them's fightin' words. It's past time to drive the stale numbskulls, rascals & idiot savants out of the temple of Democracy. The only survival option is to save them from themselves .... again. Anything less is long past boring. Their act was pathetic from the start. In fact, it's never been clear why an electorate this smart ever had any interest in the trap of gang, er "party" politics from the beginning.

It's amazing to consider how much ideological momentum it took to keep so much common-sense logic bottled up for hundreds of years, in so many fields.

It's simultaneously fascinating, frustrating & heartening to see these 3 articles in print, precisely for the rarity of seeing simple, straightforward, real thought actually slip through both "scientific," "political" and "journalism" industries.

It's nice to know that that can still happen - even if by accident. :) Yet it is also sobering.

One conclusion? Whenever something starts to be catalogued and systematized, then functionally adaptive wormholes through that catalogue-space begin to be denied, through sheer structural momentum alone.

Such institutional denial can have a strong effect on the herd minded.

Yet for evolution to continue, every herd must keep both it's conservatives and progressives operating safely within - not outside - adaptive tolerance limits. If all of us are smarter than any subset of us, then we need ALL of ourselves, to find ways to utilize ALL of our distributed talents, ALL of the time.

So does that mean having so-called conservatives sitting back and helping to CAREFULLY select from all the insanely great inventions generated by so-called progressives? Ya think? 

What on Earth is there to squabble about? We're staring at an expanding smorgasbord - one that can't run out, only grow, unless we knock the tables over while brawling - and it feels awfully stupid to waste time arguing about which dishes to taste first. As many as possible, ASAP? Then just share feedback, also ASAP, about how all the endless options taste? 

And then? Just follow the feedback momentum, instead of trying to grab some arbitrary option, and hoard it? This ain't rocket science. Hoarding slowly growing static assets instead of leveraging exponentially growing dynamic assets is a strategy of extreme ignorance. We're better than that ..... right?

Basing Policy on "GPD" - Group Public Discourse As A Dynamic Measure of Cultural Adaptive Rate

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)




How useful is GDP as a policy metric? Not very. Even the most rudimentary analysis shows that reliance upon GDP as a metric is embarrassingly naive.

In fact, even the simplest thoughts constantly remind us of the utter failure of the economics field to stay relevant to national demands, let alone national options. Let's try some added perspective. Look at our situation this way.

The culture of a nation-state is an organism, as alive as any one of it's citizens.

How do nation-states survive? By the agility of their national behavior, of course.

Given of course, that the agility of other nations changes, how do we keep the Adaptive Rate of our nation chugging along, within striking distance of the leaders in this endless marathon of human evolution?

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

And A Market-Culture Is A Projection Of All The Operations That Generate Economic Paradigms?

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

[Simplified] Simulations back up theory that Universe is a hologram

The emerging paradigm they're talking about here is not just a fusion of not just the wave & particle duality of physical information. Rather, the authors are discussing fusing the Relativistic and Quantum-mechanic nature of our physics paradigms into one perceptual lens, and thereby modeling all data gathering whatsoever as effectively looking at a hologram constructed from all incident information.

Abstract stuff, but conceptually simple once you wade through the layers. Just reflects a large number of inter-dependencies, rather like a market or human culture.

So, by analogy, what's that make a human culture? A group-feedback-o-gram? Always one step short of a growing whole-o-gram?*

Makes you wonder where we keep the backup copy? :) (A hologram image, if erased, is re-created from the incident data that feeds it. In our case, our emerging behaviors and cultures are constantly rebuilt, from our ongoing operations, REGARDLESS of how we interpret them.)

And where does the universe keep it's backup! In it's fundamental operations too?

And how out-of-date is each whole-o-gram projection, at any one paradigm?

Believe it or not there is a simple, relevant message buried in this, for Jane & Joe Sixpack. To understand a human culture, we must understand the multi--component nature of group intelligence (the spectrum from dumb-to-genius nature of paradigms)?

Data is useless without context. 

Further, even context is useless without paradigm. (Ever look at an image and not see anything ... until you finally look at it the right way? Whole groups do that too. ESPECIALLY economists, it seems. They almost define those who refuse to look at the basic operations at all, let alone from diverse perspectives.)

What we see & do is a reflection of what we expect. 

Yet we have zero predictive power. Ergo, the only thing worth expecting ... is the value of resetting our individual and group expectations, without bias or prejudice. 

Emerging success and survival is a simple matter of accurately reflecting ALL emerging feedback?**

Comically, that is exactly the last thing most of us expect! And we're still actively training our offspring to BE that way.

Gag me with a restricted-paradigm. We're all Luddite's tomorrow.

* (for those who don't know, TJ called that a "more perfect union"-o-gram). It's an ongoing thing.

** (And re-projecting that whole-o-gram through our net actions? The whole-o-gram is in front of our faces all the time. We just have to keep dabbling our projections in it, and see which ones don & don't get burned. Those that do that fast enough, come square back to tripping over Darwin's paradigm of Adaptive Rate.)

Where are GI Jane and GI Joe When We Need BOTH of Them?

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

And, has GI Adaptive Rate Reached Zero Yet?

Do enough schools - or parents - teach students that policy matters? And voting decisions too?

Merchants, take our industry and Middle Class capabilities-set. Please! And while you're at it, start ramping up the policy civil wars, so we can shoot enough of our own feet to stage a real boondoggle.

NSA Spying Crushes US Tech Companies in Emerging Markets (“An Industry Phenomenon,” Says Cisco’s Chambers)

NSA Revelations Kill IBM Hardware Sales in China

A study in early August estimated that the spying scandal would cost US tech companies $35 billion

In response, a tech-industry worker writes: "Meanwhile those same American companies use Chinese suppliers and manufacturers."

Why, you finally ask?

Why, to support "free" trade, of course! Yet why "Of course?" Do any citizens even stop and think - at all - about the buzz words they hear from advertisers any more? How many citizens even know that there are alternate outlooks? How many are even familiar with and comfortable with uncertainty, doubt, and the practice of critical thinking, and audacious problem solving ... when it comes to national policy?

Free Trade? That Just Means That The Large-Scale Merchants Are in Control of Tax Policy.

And why? Apparently, only for lack of our full group bothering to set rational, group outcomes for the whole nation, and then actually assessing it's full-group progress. The result is that some merchant inmates are running the asylum. Again, why? Only because everyone else just wandered off in a daze? Another Central Planner economy did something like that too, more than once, just a few decades back.

These headlines above reminiscent of parents putting Sugar Smacks on the table & turning on the tv or video-games ... so that the parents can watch NASCAR & drink beer uninterrupted by the kids they're supposedly RAISING! Or, schools hosting football games, so the Athletic Director can get paid ... .

Conclusion? Our various Wars, including the supposed War on Drugs, have themselves degenerated into a War BY Our Net Selves, ON Our Net Selves? And if any foot anywhere squeaks up, it gets shot? Put yourself in our nation's position. Is that any way to win a war against yourself?

Or, we're repeating an alternate type of Prohibition, this time prohibiting citizens from the routine practice of critical thinking? Gotta hope for some novel variants of SpeakEasies. ThinkEasies? Anyone? Again, put yourself in your nation's position. Would it really help to avoid thinking carefully?

It gets more bewildering every year. Only pattern I can see is that our numbers are increasing faster than our methods for coordinating & mobilizing Group Intelligence (GI) are evolving - so that our national group intelligence is decelerating, rather than accelerating. Can you imagine the look on, say, a basketball lobbyist's [coach's] face, when presented with the overwhelming need for radical change beyond his ability to comprehend?

Basketball lobbyist: "Look, kids, basketball is a simple game. There are two teams with 5 players each."

Kids: "Uh, coach? We just counted again. There are 150million players on each end of the court. What do we do now?"

Basketball lobbyist:  ........  

Kids: "Looks like his brain locked up. Or else he's dead. Same thing. Whaddya wanna do now? ... Hey, there's this game called Lord of the Flies." :(

Has GI rate of change decelerated back to zero yet? Has GI itself sunk past the point where THIS size population cannot recover enough GI to survive? Where are GI Jane and GI Joe exactly when we need BOTH of them to work together - more than ever? Do we really HAVE to start anew, and rebuild this country from scratch?

How the hell would we even know? Literally no one is even discussing that question rationally, let alone comparing methods for assessing either our situation or our methods for surviving it! 

It is in the merchant inmates of the world that we must place our hope for organizing on a larger scale? Fate have mercy! And gag me with a buffoon! If this is the best we can do, then let's hope the current merchant inmates die off quick, and that their recombinant kids express more GI than Jane & Joe Sixpack did. Either that, or else it's Sayonara USA. We need to get back to having the merchant inmates work for the US Middle Class. NOT the other way around.

Glimpse of Sanity ... From The Bureacracy, Not From Politicians

Commentary by Roger Erickson

U.S. Peace Corps Adopting OpenEMR for use in 77 Countries World-wide

I'm telling ya ... only intelligent people in gov anymore are in the career bureaucracies... NOT in the politicians or their political appointees. Who would have thought that bureaucracy would become a reservoir of group intelligence, hiding out from the deadly influence of politics?

Congress & lobbyists likely let this slip ONLY because they're working on closing down the Peace Corp anyway, and in their arrogance, didn't sense the danger from any positive impact it might generate in the interim. In their minds, it's a "Dead Agency Walking." Let's hope it keeps coming back, as the Undead Group Intelligence.

Zombie Bureaucracies as the nth Coming of Group Intelligence? History is chock full of such stories. Often, the damaged social undead are more adaptive than the living, fatcat social killers.

Don't Look Now - But Some Zombies Are Recognizing the Return On Coordination

Commentary by Roger Erickson

This is like a segment from "Night of the Living Duh" movie series, where a fraction of the zombies actually start to mutate, & develop rudimentary cognitive skills. That's right, undead thinking. Given enough time, who knows where this might lead to?

Costliest 1 Percent Of Patients Account For 21 Percent Of U.S. Health Spending

You don't say? So the highest cost is the cost of coordination?

If we don't interrupt their train of thought, they might ... just MIGHT ... realize the obligate corollary. The highest investment return, by far, is the return-on-(investment in) coordination.

You can lead even a species of diverse molecules to be social, but you can't make 'em use their group intelligence? At least not at any impressive Adaptive Rate. 

How long has it been? 3.5 billion years? 

Guess we can wait a bit longer for our current species' train of thought to start loading at the station. There seems to be this National Semantic Debt clock that ISN'T ticking. No wonder our cultural train of thought is conflating "loading at the station" with "getting loaded at the station." Cognitive Prohibition, unwittingly (to say the least) imposed by Merchants?

"Why-Fidelity" Always Matters More Than All Tactical Information Combined. We need Why-Fi hotspots far more than just Wi-Fi.

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Why is it that we don't know that? :(

Google Knows Every Wi-Fi Password in the World?

Should we panic? Even if they do?

What's the ancient saying? Without context, data is meaningless? Anyone with a superior paradigm will always be able to operate in complete secrecy, while operating in plain site, using all the right symbols predicted by their own parasites. That's how evolution works, through domestication and assimilation. For optimal utilization, hosts allow parasites to see literally EVERYTHING, simply because they understand NOTHING that matters critically to future survival.

Rest assured. No one knows all the emerging Why-Fi passwords. There are none!

Look at it this way. How many conversations have you had where you slowly realize that two or more people are carrying out a seemingly coherent discussion exchanging the same words ... but it, only slowly to you, if at all to them, becomes apparent ... that they are assigning entirely different meanings to the shared words they're both seamlessly using! And neither knows the full extent of what they THINK they are really saying and hearing?

Ok, leave out the glaring example of Deficit Hawks talking with those capable of rational thought. That's a skewed example. Think of other, less critical cases.

It's called semantics, and it occurs - intended or accidentally - everywhere from comedy to philosophy to propaganda and now, of course, for decades in daily policy discourse, entirely unintended we assume. Without defining terms, however, group discourse does NOT hold or express potential group intelligence.

And so, in our endlessly divisive arguments over who's got the fiat, where public initiative comes from, and who's got what ... is our net search for gorup meaning getting warm yet?

No? Then perhaps it might help to heat up the national intelligence with a few Why-Fi hotspots, not just Wi-Fi transimission of data missing context?

Throughout history, Elders, then Shamans, then Libraries and Universities served as early Why-Fi hotspots.

Where can you find even one now, that logically discriminates context from just data? Is the Center of the Universe really found at the Harvard Economics department - or is it unwelcome there by the elite, Sophist residents?

How to NOT Understand Tuning and Adaptation of Recombinant Systems!

commentary by Roger Erickson

Russell Huntley forwarded an article from ZeroHedge, prompting the following question.

With a declining innovation premium, will innovation only be able to exist as "open source"?

Wrong, question, really. This is just a belated restatement of Walter Shewhart's famous axiom about the statistics of complex systems.

"The highest cost, by far, in any complex system, is the cost of coordination." Walter Shewhart

The inescapable corollary was considered so trivially obvious that it was left unstated by Shewhart, Deming, Shingo, Boyd and the entire statistical process management field: "The highest return, by far, in any complex system, is the return on coordination."

That's simple system dynamics.  Call it auto-catalysis if you want, but the simplicity of the logic remains the same.  What's the innovation premium on writing the US Constitution, going off the gold std in 1933, or launching NASA?

With a steady source of uneducated beginners, however, it's absolutely necessary to restate the obvious, every day. Yes, it's rather comical to see how it takes these ZH guys to catch on, but they simply reflect the average situational awareness of students coming out of our schools. Face it, 99% of the electorate is about 4 decades behind logic, just in the field of computer software alone.

The innovation premium has always been this way! For about 3.5 billion years, just for life on planet earth!

It's called optimal "recombination" - quite literally

ZH is just defining "return" as personal return - to components in a supposedly organized system - in the form of personally hoarding static assets. Once they grow up enough to recognize the far greater return as group return-on-coordination, they've at least approached the logic of primeval biology. Social species invented alternate hoarding strategies: distributed hoarding of dynamic assets, i.e., the methods for tapping return on coordination.  That's how social species and organized teams leave Libertarian hermits in the dust.  EVERY organized system is based on the principle of optimizing recombination. Every coach or instructor tries to teach the value of teamwork, but apparently mostly in entertainment areas like sports, music, dance & drama.  Once grown up, of course, we also practice organized war.

Sheesh!

Something is terribly wrong with our education system. Are we purposely TRYING to dissociate? Or is distributed situational non-awareness just a coincidental byproduct of growth in numbers?

We better hope that that temporary group-clumsiness post rapid group-growth is a transient phenomenon, or else we'll find ourselves a cliff to clumsily fall off of.

This is not so different from any adolescent going through a growth spurt, and getting clumsier before they can get agile again. The only difference between one growing adolescent and one growing nation is that growing systems, including human cultures, are ALWAYS going through a continous growth spurt. Subsequently, they are ALWAYS desperately trying to re-establish group agility, and keep it within shouting distance of group growth.

This ain't rocket science, just simple system dynamics. There's no reason why every kid shouldn't have completely absorbed this by age 10, as their fall-back habit.

Up Against the Wall, Orthodox Ma's

commentary by Roger Erickson

Where does a lowly citizen go to get transaction liquidity? A local dealer or bartender?

"Bartender, gimme a case of liquidity."

Forget School Drug Sweeps. How About Congress Common Sense Sweeps?

Instead of complaining about rising stupidity, we can simply replace it, and crowd it out with adaptive suggestions, which are always more attractive, by definition. It's purely a matter of phrasing, and taking the time to know your audience (i.e., each other). We're all motivated, but the more of us there are, the harder it is to keep up with shifting communication channels and currently distributed themes.

So how about some Congressional Common Sense Sweeps? Ditto for school boards, blog discussion boards, and conversations in general? Surely it's possible to come up with - and use - an OpenSource index for how adaptive a discussion process is? Can we achieve a common taxonomy for describing adaptive discourse? That's one way to embrace accelerate use of escalating diversity.

Tom Hickey, in a recent comment, reminded us of an eternal truth, which I'll state even more generally. ALL information exchanges in organized networks boil down to attempts to parse, and then enlarge, "policy space." Warren Mosler calls this simply "exploring options." Charles Darwin said it's what adaptive species do, and William Thomson said it's what reverse-entropy networks do.

Shoot! We could do that.

We always do ... eventually ... in our spare time ... when we're not pursuing orthodoxy. All morons, no matter how credentialed or orthodox, eventually stop beating their heads against the walls of change, at a speed we refer to as Adaptive Rate. It really does feel better. We should try it more often, and even consider measuring it in real-time. Just as individuals use biofeedback, groups use culturofeedback, including terms like liquidity, Output Gap and group intelligence.

Policy Space Sweeps?

If we don't do such sweeps, then too often, when we trip over an adaptive option, we may just dust ourselves off and go about our orthodoxy as though nothing new had happened.

Here's a suggested theme song for a "Save Our Policy Space" campaign, to help people willing to cross dangerous lines.

"Up Against the Wall, Orthodox Ma's"

Where's the Pete Peterson Foundation HQ? I'll volunteer to walk in and order a case of liquidity. What's the worst they can do? Revoke my voting license for 6 months?

"Hey Gomer, gimme a case of that there leeeeQuidiTee! Pronto."
"We got a bunch of hairyAudacious citizens waitin' ta grease some option exploration. Wait'll ya hear the record. You won't recognize it at all, but I guarantee you're gonna like it."

Ever had your whole community beat up by a bunch of dumb-ass banksters?  We've all been there.  It's their mama's fault.  It's the way they was raised, but times are a'changin, as usual.  In 50 years, they'll be obsolete, and singing our tune along with us.

Statute of Monopolies: so Royalty Invented Royalties!

commentary by Roger Erickson

Why am I not surprised?

The whole concept of Royalty is simply taking tribal temporary leadership posts and inventing excuses for making them permanent and, later on, hereditary. Just another bad idea that took on it's own momentum. It's truly amazing how long it takes for group intelligence to ponder the obvious. What part of this wasn't obvious from the beginning? It's all a result of effective marketing - 1700 years of propaganda - all started by some conniving Pope selling desperate ideas to Attila the Hun and later tribal war chiefs.   Today, similar people still claim they're doing God's work, and banking on it.

Curtailing Intellectual Monopoly

Now if we can just break curbs on extending facile understanding of currency operations. Another set of Control Frauds would see their functional monopoly broken.

Keep from All Thoughtful Men: How U.S. Economists Won World War II

commentary by Roger Erickson

Keep from All Thoughtful Men: How U.S. Economists Won World War II
    (Hat tip to Hoonose at Warren Mosler's blog)

"Jim Lacey has overturned nearly 60 years of sloppy work by historians."

This thread of actively suppressing information comes up repeatedly. From the colonial currencies of Ben Franklin's time, to Abe Lincoln's greenback advisors, to Marriner Eccle's time, to the current time of Warren Mosler, Bill Mitchell, Randy Wray, Wynne Godley, William Vickrey, and countless other, largely ignored authors pointing out obviously emerging operational realities (I've compiled a partial list, but there's still no telling how large it really is - an OpenSource repository of neglected works is sorely needed).

Is our 1-step forward, 2-step regression due to overt conspiracies, innocent frauds, or simply institutional momentum of outdated professional staff refusing to die off fast enough?

Whatever the cause, the time constant for re-acquainting existing theory with emerging operations formerly outside the "pure" theory area is obviously hampering us. And it may kill us.

Our first step should be to OpenSource this book, and many more like it, and invest to send a pdf copy to every citizen in the USA. The delay in distributing needed information is critically harmful. In any social species, the net value of key information is defined by how far and wide it spreads, not by how much static value a parasitic group member tries to extract in return for their participation. Best way to succeed is to keep your team alive and protecting you. We lose track of that.

It's not just that HP doesn't know what HP collectively knows. The "winners" occupying dominant institutional staff positions are actively resisting adequate sampling of already emerging operations that would cause faster turnover of theoretical frameworks. We're seeing a perfect storm of income fears, neglect of basic needs, fueling desperation to hold on to turf. That kind of distributed, institutional panic is exactly NOT what team members in a democratic republic want to see.

In short, the difference between policy-oriented theory and operations is diverging in many if not all arenas. That can only happen if a populace allows itself to be inadequately connected, inadequately practiced at managing change, and simply off the pace of contingency management. Scary stuff.

What are we going to do about it? We have more than adequate precedents for rising to such occasions, from Ben Franklin's famous table talk on to Marriner Eccles forgotten testimony to the US Senate. Our operational problem seems to be that most of the population is missing adequate exposure to these key lessons that would enable rapid development of adequate situational awareness. "We can do it," yet most of us don't seem to know that.

Sending inadequately trained staff into a democratic battlefield is a recipe for disaster.

We don't need cynics saying that any attempt to foster coordination is "paternalism."

We don't need arrogant "theoretical experts" in one field refusing to talk with operational experts in other fields - which they may not even know exist!

We do need trust and will to scramble through the current mess.
Then we need systematic planning to ensure another generation doesn't see themselves in the same situation yet again, this time with 600 million, not just 300 million people.

Seems to me that our problems are largely problems of scale. How do we maintain and actually increase group-intelligence when group size is rapidly scaling? That's a mobilization task, and we have plenty of people already familiar with such tasks.  Every system model known says that required inter-connectivity always scales far faster than population size. Lessons from all known examples of development - "ontogeny" - indicate that rapid re-mixing of connectivity patterns is the winning approach, allowing us to formally search for transiently successful "team patterns" while also knowing full well that we must soon disassemble them and re-assemble them in novel ways to meet accelerating change. We've been there & done that, but are acting like we don't have to do it again.  Get real!

Future shock already rolled past us. It looks like an intractable problem, yet every intractable task has a solution, and that solution will involve another level of indirection. Our #1 problem is that too many "experts" are actively resisting - not accelerating - indirection. Grandparent hubris & parent stubbornness is putting the kids at dire risk, just when all co-existing generations should be working together more fluidly, not less.

What was the literature major's take? "If we want everything to remain the same, everything must change." Why are we letting ourselves be afraid to stabilize our succession path by accelerating change?