Thought on reorganization

[bleach]

My first comment on reorganization is that I believe that, within mammals at least, the system that would comprise what we would call the reorganization system is undoubtedly vastly more complex than any of us would suspect.

For those of us old enough in the engineering world to have worked with pneumatic and mechanical control systems, reorganization would be defined as what the engineer does to the system when properly functioning components fail to produce proper control. In those days there were few changes that could be made to an existing system. That is, without introducing new hardware, reorganization was limited to such things and input and/or output gain, and mixing in derivative and integral signal components. Mechanical control systems were even more limited in what could be changed without new hardware. The addition of additional hardware would of course also be a potential component of a reorganization strategy those an engineer would be quite reluctant to make such changes until convinced beyond any doubt that doing so was the only possible solution.

In today's engineered control system world, with the huge amount of computer power, measurement, data collection and storage, and analytical power available, control systems are able to analyse their own performance and often times do a much better job of reorganization than the engineer of old could achieve. In spite of occasional catastrophic failures, these systems are improving at what is now a staggering rate. Because much of what formerly was always achieved with physical hardware in an engineered control system is now achieved using software these more advanced systems can create entirely new control loops as needed as well as change the existing connections between control loops.

I believe that much of what modern engineered control system design have might well exist in living control system though implementation would likely be almost unrecognizably different. Despite what many claim about the brain and nervous system being a like a digital computer, I think a computer comparison is only valid if you are talking about an analog computer. And in that respect the brain and nervous system is so far advance as an example of an analog computer that we don't have anything that even remotely emulates it.

I also believe that Bill's random (or at least pseudo-random) change is certainly a part of that system. His work on modelling e-coli behavior using a random walk resulted in a correlation that is hard to deny.

With respect to what I often see referred to as intrinsic systems (which I take to mean internal systems such a blood pressure, blood chemistry composition and the like), I believe that any sort of random changing is very restricted if allowed at all.

Of course such random changes in the face of sustained failure to achieve satisfactory control might well be the explanation for those unexpected deaths that occur where the medical community is absolutely baffled as to why the person died.

"Survival of the species" is conclusion for a more specific term, at least for mammals, which is that each individual living being has a biological system that has a reference for surviving. Even for those that commit suicide their intrinsic systems were and will continue to try to survive until they fail completely.

So, I see the idea that reorganization for intrinsic system is limited based on the idea that reorganization methods that occurred where the individual died are ultimately removed from the gene pool. I think that idea is further supported by education studies that have shown that the attitudes and experience of up to 5 generations of ancestors have a statistically measurable effect on the studied individual. While I know of no studies that expand that observation into other areas I don't think it is completely unreasonable to presume that such effects could well exist for other aspect of control.

As many discussions on the net have pointed out the reorganization system must have a perception of the magnitude (and probably direction for at least some systems) of error present and a reference for the maximum allowed error. It is also reasonable to presume that there also must be some integrator function so that large but short duration error spikes do not drive the reorganization system into action prematurely.

Again as suggested on the net, there is also likely a hierarchy of change methodologies so that changes gradually become more drastic as the error either increases or is sustained for longer periods of time. And I think it is likely that the references for these are highly dependent on the specific system(s) that would be acted upon.

I also suggest that one of Rick's demonstration programs shows that directed reorganization clearly exists and that the same demonstration shows us that for any person performing the demo for the first time, will not be using a directed method when the first overwhelming error happens.

bill

[MartinT]

[Martin Taylor 2019.02 17.14.14]

To my way of thinking, what Bill Leach says about reorganization

makes good sense. Rather than critique it, I would like to put it in
a larger context. The context in which we typically think of
reorganization is that the perceptual control hierarchy is “inside”,
and the intrinsic variable system (whatever it may be) is “outside”,
as is the external environment. A big, wide, multi-variable feedback
loop links the inside and the outside in such a way that organisms
that keep functioning long enough to have descendants will transmit
their feedback loop organization in more copies than the
organization used by those that are less good at surviving. The loop
“control hierarchy - environment - intrinsic variables - control
hierarchy” is self-stabilizing, in an evolutionary sense (of it’s
huge multiplicity of strands, some do not go through the environment
at all. The braids of the loop that do go through the physical
environment are likely to be the most stable. The “internal loops”
can work usefully only so long as their results help the organism to
live in the external environment.

In a larger context, everything that is within the skin of a living

entity is “inside” and the rest of the world is “outside”. This
“rest of the world” includes other living things. There is a
feedback loop between “inside” and “outside” here, too. This loop
incorporates the first one in the same way that control of a
high-level perception incorporates control of lower level
perceptions that contribute inputs to the higher level perceptual
function. Like the first loop above, this one can be partitioned,
this time into loops through other living things and loops that
include only non-living things. The loop strands through other
living things are like the internal loops between the perceptual
control hierarchy and the intrinsic variable part of the “outside”
in the first kind of loop. The structure of the loops through other
living things can vary, but only insofar as they help the organism
to survive long enough to propagate that structure through their
descendants.

In this context, the "other living things" has the place that "the

intrinsic variables" had in the first feedback loop. We have a name
for it in this context: “the ecology”. I tend to think of the
intrinsic variables also as being an ecology, which includes the
interactions of our microbiome, our cellular structures that we call
“organs” and so forth. Both are dynamic, full of little feedback
loops and big ones. too. Both matter to our survival, individually
and collectively.

In a yet larger context, we can bring "other living things" into the

“inside”, perhaps in stages, starting with “other people in our
community”, “other people”, “other animals”, etc. but eventually
bringing all other living things into the big tent. Here we have the
feedback loop simply between the living “inside” and the physical
“outside”. The ecosystems of the inside are continually reorganized
over billions of years by the feedback loop between the living
inside and the physical outside. If the Grand Reorganization process
works, life will continue. When it doesn’t. life will stop. Just as
the reorganization feedback loop between intrinsic variables and the
perceptual control hierarchy creates ever more complex perceptual
structures to control, so the Grand Reorganization has been creating
ever more complex ecologies, and the “Middling Reorganization” that
separates living things from the physical environment has been
creating ever more complex life-forms (and a greater variety along
with increasing complexity)

The mechanisms of these reorganizations at different levels

presumably differ, but functionally, are they not all the same? I am
reminded of Richardson’s frequently quoted ditty from nearly a
century ago: “* Big whirls have little whirls/ That feed on their
velocity/ Little whirls have little whirls/ And so on to viscosity* .”
The relationship is the same between levels of eddies, between
levels of “inside-outside”, and between levels of the perceptual
control hierarchy, always until we get to the most microscopic
level, where things change. Always the littler item is powered by
the greater, its structure supporting the structure of the greater
in a different kind of feedback loop.

None of this suggests how reorganization is implemented at any of

these levels of inclusion, but the notion of evolution as a
weeding-out process is very similar to the idea of “use it or lose
it” in individual skill in perceptual control. I find that
suggestive.

Martin

···

On 2019/02/17 5:50 AM, Bill Leach
( via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

wrleach@cableone.net

  My

first comment on reorganization is that I believe that, within
mammals at least, the system that would comprise what we would
call the reorganization system is undoubtedly vastly more complex
than any of us would suspect.

  For those of us old enough in the engineering world to have worked

with pneumatic and mechanical control systems, reorganization
would be defined as what the engineer does to the system when
properly functioning components fail to produce proper control.
In those days there were few changes that could be made to an
existing system. That is, without introducing new hardware,
reorganization was limited to such things and input and/or output
gain, and mixing in derivative and integral signal components.
Mechanical control systems were even more limited in what could be
changed without new hardware. The addition of additional hardware
would of course also be a potential component of a reorganization
strategy those an engineer would be quite reluctant to make such
changes until convinced beyond any doubt that doing so was the
only possible solution.

  In today's engineered control system world, with the huge amount

of computer power, measurement, data collection and storage, and
analytical power available, control systems are able to analyse
their own performance and often times do a much better job of
reorganization than the engineer of old could achieve. In spite
of occasional catastrophic failures, these systems are improving
at what is now a staggering rate. Because much of what formerly
was always achieved with physical hardware in an engineered
control system is now achieved using software these more advanced
systems can create entirely new control loops as needed as well as
change the existing connections between control loops.

  I believe that much of what modern engineered control system

design have might well exist in living control system though
implementation would likely be almost unrecognizably different.
Despite what many claim about the brain and nervous system being a
like a digital computer, I think a computer comparison is only
valid if you are talking about an analog computer. And in that
respect the brain and nervous system is so far advance as an
example of an analog computer that we don’t have anything that
even remotely emulates it.

  I also believe that Bill's random (or at least pseudo-random)

change is certainly a part of that system. His work on modelling
e-coli behavior using a random walk resulted in a correlation that
is hard to deny.

  With respect to what I often see referred to as intrinsic systems

(which I take to mean internal systems such a blood pressure,
blood chemistry composition and the like), I believe that any sort
of random changing is very restricted if allowed at all.

  Of course such random changes in the face of sustained failure to

achieve satisfactory control might well be the explanation for
those unexpected deaths that occur where the medical community is
absolutely baffled as to why the person died.

  "Survival of the species" is conclusion for a more specific term,

at least for mammals, which is that each individual living being
has a biological system that has a reference for surviving. Even
for those that commit suicide their intrinsic systems were and
will continue to try to survive until they fail completely.

  So, I see the idea that reorganization for intrinsic system is

limited based on the idea that reorganization methods that
occurred where the individual died are ultimately removed from the
gene pool. I think that idea is further supported by education
studies that have shown that the attitudes and experience of up to
5 generations of ancestors have a statistically measurable effect
on the studied individual. While I know of no studies that expand
that observation into other areas I don’t think it is completely
unreasonable to presume that such effects could well exist for
other aspect of control.

  As many discussions on the net have pointed out the reorganization

system must have a perception of the magnitude (and probably
direction for at least some systems) of error present and a
reference for the maximum allowed error. It is also reasonable to
presume that there also must be some integrator function so that
large but short duration error spikes do not drive the
reorganization system into action prematurely.

  Again as suggested on the net, there is also likely a hierarchy of

change methodologies so that changes gradually become more drastic
as the error either increases or is sustained for longer periods
of time. And I think it is likely that the references for these
are highly dependent on the specific system(s) that would be acted
upon.

  I also suggest that one of Rick's demonstration programs shows

that directed reorganization clearly exists and that the same
demonstration shows us that for any person performing the demo for
the first time, will not be using a directed method when the first
overwhelming error happens.

  bill

[bleach]

Very interesting perception Martin. I'll have to work through some of what you said more than my initial reading. In general it really does make sense. After, as you point out, the various micro-biota are in one sense, independent organisms even though they are wholly dependent upon us to survive. And as rather recent research has demonstrated much of this biota, especially 'gut biota' actually provide chemical signal to our bodies which appear to change reference setpoints within our own control loops and well as neurochemicals that appear to alter loop gain within some other control loops.
Certainly anyone that has been married, is well aware that an 'independent' living control system can have significant influence on our own reference levels for many things!
BTW, where I lost you is in the second paragraph near the end. I don't have time to ponder it just now but hope to later.
I will comment that in the case for sentient beings, or at least for humans, they are fully capable of controlling for perceptions that have nothing to do with either procreation or survival (either their own or someone else's).
bill

···

On 2/17/19 1:00 PM, Martin Taylor (<mailto:mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net>mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

[Martin Taylor 2019.02 17.14.14]

To my way of thinking, what Bill Leach says about reorganization makes good sense. Rather than critique it, I would like to put it in a larger context. The context in which we typically think of reorganization is that the perceptual control hierarchy is "inside", and the intrinsic variable system (whatever it may be) is "outside", as is the external environment. A big, wide, multi-variable feedback loop links the inside and the outside in such a way that organisms that keep functioning long enough to have descendants will transmit their feedback loop organization in more copies than the organization used by those that are less good at surviving. The loop "control hierarchy - environment - intrinsic variables - control hierarchy" is self-stabilizing, in an evolutionary sense (of it's huge multiplicity of strands, some do not go through the environment at all. The braids of the loop that do go through the physical environment are likely to be the most stable. The "internal loops" can work usefully only so long as their results help the organism to live in the external environment.

In a larger context, everything that is within the skin of a living entity is "inside" and the rest of the world is "outside". This "rest of the world" includes other living things. There is a feedback loop between "inside" and "outside" here, too. This loop incorporates the first one in the same way that control of a high-level perception incorporates control of lower level perceptions that contribute inputs to the higher level perceptual function. Like the first loop above, this one can be partitioned, this time into loops through other living things and loops that include only non-living things. The loop strands through other living things are like the internal loops between the perceptual control hierarchy and the intrinsic variable part of the "outside" in the first kind of loop. The structure of the loops through other living things can vary, but only insofar as they help the organism to survive long enough to propagate that structure through their descendants.

In this context, the "other living things" has the place that "the intrinsic variables" had in the first feedback loop. We have a name for it in this context: "the ecology". I tend to think of the intrinsic variables also as being an ecology, which includes the interactions of our microbiome, our cellular structures that we call "organs" and so forth. Both are dynamic, full of little feedback loops and big ones. too. Both matter to our survival, individually and collectively.

In a yet larger context, we can bring "other living things" into the "inside", perhaps in stages, starting with "other people in our community", "other people", "other animals", etc. but eventually bringing all other living things into the big tent. Here we have the feedback loop simply between the living "inside" and the physical "outside". The ecosystems of the inside are continually reorganized over billions of years by the feedback loop between the living inside and the physical outside. If the Grand Reorganization process works, life will continue. When it doesn't. life will stop. Just as the reorganization feedback loop between intrinsic variables and the perceptual control hierarchy creates ever more complex perceptual structures to control, so the Grand Reorganization has been creating ever more complex ecologies, and the "Middling Reorganization" that separates living things from the physical environment has been creating ever more complex life-forms (and a greater variety along with increasing complexity)

The mechanisms of these reorganizations at different levels presumably differ, but functionally, are they not all the same? I am reminded of Richardson's frequently quoted ditty from nearly a century ago: "Big whirls have little whirls/ That feed on their velocity/ Little whirls have little whirls/ And so on to viscosity." The relationship is the same between levels of eddies, between levels of "inside-outside", and between levels of the perceptual control hierarchy, always until we get to the most microscopic level, where things change. Always the littler item is powered by the greater, its structure supporting the structure of the greater in a different kind of feedback loop.

None of this suggests how reorganization is implemented at any of these levels of inclusion, but the notion of evolution as a weeding-out process is very similar to the idea of "use it or lose it" in individual skill in perceptual control. I find that suggestive.

Martin

On 2019/02/17 5:50 AM, Bill Leach (<mailto:wrleach@cableone.net>wrleach@cableone.net via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

My first comment on reorganization is that I believe that, within mammals at least, the system that would comprise what we would call the reorganization system is undoubtedly vastly more complex than any of us would suspect.

For those of us old enough in the engineering world to have worked with pneumatic and mechanical control systems, reorganization would be defined as what the engineer does to the system when properly functioning components fail to produce proper control. In those days there were few changes that could be made to an existing system. That is, without introducing new hardware, reorganization was limited to such things and input and/or output gain, and mixing in derivative and integral signal components. Mechanical control systems were even more limited in what could be changed without new hardware. The addition of additional hardware would of course also be a potential component of a reorganization strategy those an engineer would be quite reluctant to make such changes until convinced beyond any doubt that doing so was the only possible solution.

In today's engineered control system world, with the huge amount of computer power, measurement, data collection and storage, and analytical power available, control systems are able to analyse their own performance and often times do a much better job of reorganization than the engineer of old could achieve. In spite of occasional catastrophic failures, these systems are improving at what is now a staggering rate. Because much of what formerly was always achieved with physical hardware in an engineered control system is now achieved using software these more advanced systems can create entirely new control loops as needed as well as change the existing connections between control loops.

I believe that much of what modern engineered control system design have might well exist in living control system though implementation would likely be almost unrecognizably different. Despite what many claim about the brain and nervous system being a like a digital computer, I think a computer comparison is only valid if you are talking about an analog computer. And in that respect the brain and nervous system is so far advance as an example of an analog computer that we don't have anything that even remotely emulates it.

I also believe that Bill's random (or at least pseudo-random) change is certainly a part of that system. His work on modelling e-coli behavior using a random walk resulted in a correlation that is hard to deny.

With respect to what I often see referred to as intrinsic systems (which I take to mean internal systems such a blood pressure, blood chemistry composition and the like), I believe that any sort of random changing is very restricted if allowed at all.

Of course such random changes in the face of sustained failure to achieve satisfactory control might well be the explanation for those unexpected deaths that occur where the medical community is absolutely baffled as to why the person died.

"Survival of the species" is conclusion for a more specific term, at least for mammals, which is that each individual living being has a biological system that has a reference for surviving. Even for those that commit suicide their intrinsic systems were and will continue to try to survive until they fail completely.

So, I see the idea that reorganization for intrinsic system is limited based on the idea that reorganization methods that occurred where the individual died are ultimately removed from the gene pool. I think that idea is further supported by education studies that have shown that the attitudes and experience of up to 5 generations of ancestors have a statistically measurable effect on the studied individual. While I know of no studies that expand that observation into other areas I don't think it is completely unreasonable to presume that such effects could well exist for other aspect of control.

As many discussions on the net have pointed out the reorganization system must have a perception of the magnitude (and probably direction for at least some systems) of error present and a reference for the maximum allowed error. It is also reasonable to presume that there also must be some integrator function so that large but short duration error spikes do not drive the reorganization system into action prematurely.

Again as suggested on the net, there is also likely a hierarchy of change methodologies so that changes gradually become more drastic as the error either increases or is sustained for longer periods of time. And I think it is likely that the references for these are highly dependent on the specific system(s) that would be acted upon.

I also suggest that one of Rick's demonstration programs shows that directed reorganization clearly exists and that the same demonstration shows us that for any person performing the demo for the first time, will not be using a directed method when the first overwhelming error happens.

bill

[MartinT]

[Martin Taylor 2019.02.17.16.09]

Thanks.

If you can articulate where or why you got lost, maybe I can write
it better, or correct i if it is wrong.
I wonder how true that is, at least in the “nothing to do with”
aspect. Remember side-effects, and the old saying “What goes around
comes around”. Might it not perhaps be better worded as “controlling
for perceptions that have nothing intended to do with…”?
Martin

···

On 2019/02/17 4:02 PM, Bill Leach
( via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

wrleach@cableone.net

…

Very interesting perception Martin.

    BTW, where I lost you is in the

second paragraph near the end. I don’t have time to ponder it
just now but hope to later.

    I will comment that in the case for

sentient beings, or at least for humans, they are fully capable
of controlling for perceptions that have nothing to do with
either procreation or survival (either their own or someone
else’s).

bill

    On 2/17/19 1:00 PM, Martin Taylor (

via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net

[Martin Taylor 2019.02 17.14.14]

    To my way of thinking, what Bill Leach says about reorganization

makes good sense. Rather than critique it, I would like to put
it in a larger context. The context in which we typically think
of reorganization is that the perceptual control hierarchy is
“inside”, and the intrinsic variable system (whatever it may be)
is “outside”, as is the external environment. A big, wide,
multi-variable feedback loop links the inside and the outside in
such a way that organisms that keep functioning long enough to
have descendants will transmit their feedback loop organization
in more copies than the organization used by those that are less
good at surviving. The loop “control hierarchy - environment -
intrinsic variables - control hierarchy” is self-stabilizing, in
an evolutionary sense (of it’s huge multiplicity of strands,
some do not go through the environment at all. The braids of the
loop that do go through the physical environment are likely to
be the most stable. The “internal loops” can work usefully only
so long as their results help the organism to live in the
external environment.

    In a larger context, everything that is within the skin of a

living entity is “inside” and the rest of the world is
“outside”. This “rest of the world” includes other living
things. There is a feedback loop between “inside” and “outside”
here, too. This loop incorporates the first one in the same way
that control of a high-level perception incorporates control of
lower level perceptions that contribute inputs to the higher
level perceptual function. Like the first loop above, this one
can be partitioned, this time into loops through other living
things and loops that include only non-living things. The loop
strands through other living things are like the internal loops
between the perceptual control hierarchy and the intrinsic
variable part of the “outside” in the first kind of loop. The
structure of the loops through other living things can vary, but
only insofar as they help the organism to survive long enough to
propagate that structure through their descendants.

    In this context, the "other living things" has the place that

“the intrinsic variables” had in the first feedback loop. We
have a name for it in this context: “the ecology”. I tend to
think of the intrinsic variables also as being an ecology, which
includes the interactions of our microbiome, our cellular
structures that we call “organs” and so forth. Both are dynamic,
full of little feedback loops and big ones. too. Both matter to
our survival, individually and collectively.

    In a yet larger context, we can bring "other living things" into

the “inside”, perhaps in stages, starting with “other people in
our community”, “other people”, “other animals”, etc. but
eventually bringing all other living things into the big tent.
Here we have the feedback loop simply between the living
“inside” and the physical “outside”. The ecosystems of the
inside are continually reorganized over billions of years by the
feedback loop between the living inside and the physical
outside. If the Grand Reorganization process works, life will
continue. When it doesn’t. life will stop. Just as the
reorganization feedback loop between intrinsic variables and the
perceptual control hierarchy creates ever more complex
perceptual structures to control, so the Grand Reorganization
has been creating ever more complex ecologies, and the “Middling
Reorganization” that separates living things from the physical
environment has been creating ever more complex life-forms (and
a greater variety along with increasing complexity)

    The mechanisms of these reorganizations at different levels

presumably differ, but functionally, are they not all the same?
I am reminded of Richardson’s frequently quoted ditty from
nearly a century ago: “* Big whirls have little whirls/ That
feed on their velocity/ Little whirls have little whirls/ And
so on to viscosity* .” The relationship is the same between
levels of eddies, between levels of “inside-outside”, and
between levels of the perceptual control hierarchy, always until
we get to the most microscopic level, where things change.
Always the littler item is powered by the greater, its structure
supporting the structure of the greater in a different kind of
feedback loop.

    None of this suggests how reorganization is implemented at any

of these levels of inclusion, but the notion of evolution as a
weeding-out process is very similar to the idea of “use it or
lose it” in individual skill in perceptual control. I find that
suggestive.

    Martin

      On 2019/02/17 5:50 AM, Bill Leach (

via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

wrleach@cableone.net

      My

first comment on reorganization is that I believe that, within
mammals at least, the system that would comprise what we would
call the reorganization system is undoubtedly vastly more
complex than any of us would suspect.

      For those of us old enough in the engineering world to have

worked with pneumatic and mechanical control systems,
reorganization would be defined as what the engineer does to
the system when properly functioning components fail to
produce proper control. In those days there were few changes
that could be made to an existing system. That is, without
introducing new hardware, reorganization was limited to such
things and input and/or output gain, and mixing in derivative
and integral signal components. Mechanical control systems
were even more limited in what could be changed without new
hardware. The addition of additional hardware would of course
also be a potential component of a reorganization strategy
those an engineer would be quite reluctant to make such
changes until convinced beyond any doubt that doing so was the
only possible solution.

      In today's engineered control system world, with the huge

amount of computer power, measurement, data collection and
storage, and analytical power available, control systems are
able to analyse their own performance and often times do a
much better job of reorganization than the engineer of old
could achieve. In spite of occasional catastrophic failures,
these systems are improving at what is now a staggering rate.
Because much of what formerly was always achieved with
physical hardware in an engineered control system is now
achieved using software these more advanced systems can create
entirely new control loops as needed as well as change the
existing connections between control loops.

      I believe that much of what modern engineered control system

design have might well exist in living control system though
implementation would likely be almost unrecognizably
different. Despite what many claim about the brain and nervous
system being a like a digital computer, I think a computer
comparison is only valid if you are talking about an analog
computer. And in that respect the brain and nervous system is
so far advance as an example of an analog computer that we
don’t have anything that even remotely emulates it.

      I also believe that Bill's random (or at least pseudo-random)

change is certainly a part of that system. His work on
modelling e-coli behavior using a random walk resulted in a
correlation that is hard to deny.

      With respect to what I often see referred to as intrinsic

systems (which I take to mean internal systems such a blood
pressure, blood chemistry composition and the like), I believe
that any sort of random changing is very restricted if allowed
at all.

      Of course such random changes in the face of sustained failure

to achieve satisfactory control might well be the explanation
for those unexpected deaths that occur where the medical
community is absolutely baffled as to why the person died.

      "Survival of the species" is conclusion for a more specific

term, at least for mammals, which is that each individual
living being has a biological system that has a reference for
surviving. Even for those that commit suicide their intrinsic
systems were and will continue to try to survive until they
fail completely.

      So, I see the idea that reorganization for intrinsic system is

limited based on the idea that reorganization methods that
occurred where the individual died are ultimately removed from
the gene pool. I think that idea is further supported by
education studies that have shown that the attitudes and
experience of up to 5 generations of ancestors have a
statistically measurable effect on the studied individual.
While I know of no studies that expand that observation into
other areas I don’t think it is completely unreasonable to
presume that such effects could well exist for other aspect of
control.

      As many discussions on the net have pointed out the

reorganization system must have a perception of the magnitude
(and probably direction for at least some systems) of error
present and a reference for the maximum allowed error. It is
also reasonable to presume that there also must be some
integrator function so that large but short duration error
spikes do not drive the reorganization system into action
prematurely.

      Again as suggested on the net, there is also likely a

hierarchy of change methodologies so that changes gradually
become more drastic as the error either increases or is
sustained for longer periods of time. And I think it is
likely that the references for these are highly dependent on
the specific system(s) that would be acted upon.

      I also suggest that one of Rick's demonstration programs shows

that directed reorganization clearly exists and that the same
demonstration shows us that for any person performing the demo
for the first time, will not be using a directed method when
the first overwhelming error happens.

      bill

[MartinT]

[Martin Taylor 2019.02.17.16.22]

Also, in evolution considered in terms of genetic mutations, not all

mutations have the same relative value for reproduction into the
following generations. Most are lethal, some are beneficial, and
many are neither very beneficial nor very harmful. To a great extent
it is these “neutral” mutations that collectively lead to
“evolutionary drift” and sometimes to the splitting of species. Diversity is a great aid to evolutionary development, and the sort
of controlled perceptions that have no direct intentional connection
to survival or procreation and that have no or neutral side-effect
consequences are likely to lead to the splitting of cultural
communities. Sometimes the combination of these “nothing to do with
procreation or survival” controlled perception produce big changes
that benefit one side of the split more than the other, in the way
that one mutation seems to have given our ancestors but not the
contemporaneous ancestors of the modern Great Apes the physiological
ability to produce vocal language – a considerable survival
advantage (to date).
Martin

···

PS…

[Martin Taylor 2019.02.17.16.09]

  I wonder how true that is, at least in the "nothing to do with"

aspect. Remember side-effects, and the old saying “What goes
around comes around”. Might it not perhaps be better worded as
“controlling for perceptions that have nothing intended to do
with…”?

  Martin

    On 2019/02/17 4:02 PM, Bill Leach (

via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

wrleach@cableone.net

…

      I will comment that in the case for

sentient beings, or at least for humans, they are fully
capable of controlling for perceptions that have nothing to do
with either procreation or survival (either their own or
someone else’s).

bill

      On 2/17/19 1:00 PM, Martin Taylor (

via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net

[Martin Taylor 2019.02 17.14.14]

      To my way of thinking, what Bill Leach says about

reorganization makes good sense. Rather than critique it, I
would like to put it in a larger context. The context in which
we typically think of reorganization is that the perceptual
control hierarchy is “inside”, and the intrinsic variable
system (whatever it may be) is “outside”, as is the external
environment. A big, wide, multi-variable feedback loop links
the inside and the outside in such a way that organisms that
keep functioning long enough to have descendants will transmit
their feedback loop organization in more copies than the
organization used by those that are less good at surviving.
The loop “control hierarchy - environment - intrinsic
variables - control hierarchy” is self-stabilizing, in an
evolutionary sense (of it’s huge multiplicity of strands, some
do not go through the environment at all. The braids of the
loop that do go through the physical environment are likely to
be the most stable. The “internal loops” can work usefully
only so long as their results help the organism to live in the
external environment.

      In a larger context, everything that is within the skin of a

living entity is “inside” and the rest of the world is
“outside”. This “rest of the world” includes other living
things. There is a feedback loop between “inside” and
“outside” here, too. This loop incorporates the first one in
the same way that control of a high-level perception
incorporates control of lower level perceptions that
contribute inputs to the higher level perceptual function.
Like the first loop above, this one can be partitioned, this
time into loops through other living things and loops that
include only non-living things. The loop strands through other
living things are like the internal loops between the
perceptual control hierarchy and the intrinsic variable part
of the “outside” in the first kind of loop. The structure of
the loops through other living things can vary, but only
insofar as they help the organism to survive long enough to
propagate that structure through their descendants.

      In this context, the "other living things" has the place that

“the intrinsic variables” had in the first feedback loop. We
have a name for it in this context: “the ecology”. I tend to
think of the intrinsic variables also as being an ecology,
which includes the interactions of our microbiome, our
cellular structures that we call “organs” and so forth. Both
are dynamic, full of little feedback loops and big ones. too.
Both matter to our survival, individually and collectively.

      In a yet larger context, we can bring "other living things"

into the “inside”, perhaps in stages, starting with “other
people in our community”, “other people”, “other animals”,
etc. but eventually bringing all other living things into the
big tent. Here we have the feedback loop simply between the
living “inside” and the physical “outside”. The ecosystems of
the inside are continually reorganized over billions of years
by the feedback loop between the living inside and the
physical outside. If the Grand Reorganization process works,
life will continue. When it doesn’t. life will stop. Just as
the reorganization feedback loop between intrinsic variables
and the perceptual control hierarchy creates ever more complex
perceptual structures to control, so the Grand Reorganization
has been creating ever more complex ecologies, and the
“Middling Reorganization” that separates living things from
the physical environment has been creating ever more complex
life-forms (and a greater variety along with increasing
complexity)

      The mechanisms of these reorganizations at different levels

presumably differ, but functionally, are they not all the
same? I am reminded of Richardson’s frequently quoted ditty
from nearly a century ago: “* Big whirls have little whirls/
That feed on their velocity/ Little whirls have little
whirls/ And so on to viscosity* .” The relationship is the
same between levels of eddies, between levels of
“inside-outside”, and between levels of the perceptual control
hierarchy, always until we get to the most microscopic level,
where things change. Always the littler item is powered by the
greater, its structure supporting the structure of the greater
in a different kind of feedback loop.

      None of this suggests how reorganization is implemented at any

of these levels of inclusion, but the notion of evolution as a
weeding-out process is very similar to the idea of “use it or
lose it” in individual skill in perceptual control. I find
that suggestive.

      Martin

        On 2019/02/17 5:50 AM, Bill Leach

(
via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

wrleach@cableone.net

        My

first comment on reorganization is that I believe that,
within mammals at least, the system that would comprise what
we would call the reorganization system is undoubtedly
vastly more complex than any of us would suspect.

        For those of us old enough in the engineering world to have

worked with pneumatic and mechanical control systems,
reorganization would be defined as what the engineer does to
the system when properly functioning components fail to
produce proper control. In those days there were few
changes that could be made to an existing system. That is,
without introducing new hardware, reorganization was limited
to such things and input and/or output gain, and mixing in
derivative and integral signal components. Mechanical
control systems were even more limited in what could be
changed without new hardware. The addition of additional
hardware would of course also be a potential component of a
reorganization strategy those an engineer would be quite
reluctant to make such changes until convinced beyond any
doubt that doing so was the only possible solution.

        In today's engineered control system world, with the huge

amount of computer power, measurement, data collection and
storage, and analytical power available, control systems are
able to analyse their own performance and often times do a
much better job of reorganization than the engineer of old
could achieve. In spite of occasional catastrophic
failures, these systems are improving at what is now a
staggering rate. Because much of what formerly was always
achieved with physical hardware in an engineered control
system is now achieved using software these more advanced
systems can create entirely new control loops as needed as
well as change the existing connections between control
loops.

        I believe that much of what modern engineered control system

design have might well exist in living control system though
implementation would likely be almost unrecognizably
different. Despite what many claim about the brain and
nervous system being a like a digital computer, I think a
computer comparison is only valid if you are talking about
an analog computer. And in that respect the brain and
nervous system is so far advance as an example of an analog
computer that we don’t have anything that even remotely
emulates it.

        I also believe that Bill's random (or at least

pseudo-random) change is certainly a part of that system.
His work on modelling e-coli behavior using a random walk
resulted in a correlation that is hard to deny.

        With respect to what I often see referred to as intrinsic

systems (which I take to mean internal systems such a blood
pressure, blood chemistry composition and the like), I
believe that any sort of random changing is very restricted
if allowed at all.

        Of course such random changes in the face of sustained

failure to achieve satisfactory control might well be the
explanation for those unexpected deaths that occur where the
medical community is absolutely baffled as to why the person
died.

        "Survival of the species" is conclusion for a more specific

term, at least for mammals, which is that each individual
living being has a biological system that has a reference
for surviving. Even for those that commit suicide their
intrinsic systems were and will continue to try to survive
until they fail completely.

        So, I see the idea that reorganization for intrinsic system

is limited based on the idea that reorganization methods
that occurred where the individual died are ultimately
removed from the gene pool. I think that idea is further
supported by education studies that have shown that the
attitudes and experience of up to 5 generations of ancestors
have a statistically measurable effect on the studied
individual. While I know of no studies that expand that
observation into other areas I don’t think it is completely
unreasonable to presume that such effects could well exist
for other aspect of control.

        As many discussions on the net have pointed out the

reorganization system must have a perception of the
magnitude (and probably direction for at least some systems)
of error present and a reference for the maximum allowed
error. It is also reasonable to presume that there also
must be some integrator function so that large but short
duration error spikes do not drive the reorganization system
into action prematurely.

        Again as suggested on the net, there is also likely a

hierarchy of change methodologies so that changes gradually
become more drastic as the error either increases or is
sustained for longer periods of time. And I think it is
likely that the references for these are highly dependent on
the specific system(s) that would be acted upon.

        I also suggest that one of Rick's demonstration programs

shows that directed reorganization clearly exists and that
the same demonstration shows us that for any person
performing the demo for the first time, will not be using a
directed method when the first overwhelming error happens.

        bill

[bleach]

[Martin Taylor 2019.02.17.16.22]

PS...

[Martin Taylor 2019.02.17.16.09]

...

I will comment that in the case for sentient beings, or at least for humans, they are fully capable of controlling for perceptions that have nothing to do with either procreation or survival (either their own or someone else's).

I wonder how true that is, at least in the "nothing to do with" aspect. Remember side-effects, and the old saying "What goes around comes around". Might it not perhaps be better worded as "controlling for perceptions that have nothing intended to do with..."?

With very little thought required to decide, I'll grant you that your suggestion is an improvement to what I was attempting to say. After all just relaxing and enjoying the moment has been shown to have significant health (survival) benefit in our present world of high stress for just one example.

bill

···

On 2/17/19 2:34 PM, Martin Taylor (<mailto:mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net>mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

On 2019/02/17 4:02 PM, Bill Leach (<mailto:wrleach@cableone.net>wrleach@cableone.net via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

Also, in evolution considered in terms of genetic mutations, not all mutations have the same relative value for reproduction into the following generations. Most are lethal, some are beneficial, and many are neither very beneficial nor very harmful. To a great extent it is these "neutral" mutations that collectively lead to "evolutionary drift" and sometimes to the splitting of species.

Diversity is a great aid to evolutionary development, and the sort of controlled perceptions that have no direct intentional connection to survival or procreation and that have no or neutral side-effect consequences are likely to lead to the splitting of cultural communities. Sometimes the combination of these "nothing to do with procreation or survival" controlled perception produce big changes that benefit one side of the split more than the other, in the way that one mutation seems to have given our ancestors but not the contemporaneous ancestors of the modern Great Apes the physiological ability to produce vocal language -- a considerable survival advantage (to date).

Martin

Martin

bill

On 2/17/19 1:00 PM, Martin Taylor (<mailto:mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net>mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

[Martin Taylor 2019.02 17.14.14]

To my way of thinking, what Bill Leach says about reorganization makes good sense. Rather than critique it, I would like to put it in a larger context. The context in which we typically think of reorganization is that the perceptual control hierarchy is "inside", and the intrinsic variable system (whatever it may be) is "outside", as is the external environment. A big, wide, multi-variable feedback loop links the inside and the outside in such a way that organisms that keep functioning long enough to have descendants will transmit their feedback loop organization in more copies than the organization used by those that are less good at surviving. The loop "control hierarchy - environment - intrinsic variables - control hierarchy" is self-stabilizing, in an evolutionary sense (of it's huge multiplicity of strands, some do not go through the environment at all. The braids of the loop that do go through the physical environment are likely to be the most stable. The "internal loops" can work usefully only so long as their results help the organism to live in the external environment.

In a larger context, everything that is within the skin of a living entity is "inside" and the rest of the world is "outside". This "rest of the world" includes other living things. There is a feedback loop between "inside" and "outside" here, too. This loop incorporates the first one in the same way that control of a high-level perception incorporates control of lower level perceptions that contribute inputs to the higher level perceptual function. Like the first loop above, this one can be partitioned, this time into loops through other living things and loops that include only non-living things. The loop strands through other living things are like the internal loops between the perceptual control hierarchy and the intrinsic variable part of the "outside" in the first kind of loop. The structure of the loops through other living things can vary, but only insofar as they help the organism to survive long enough to propagate that structure through their descendants.

In this context, the "other living things" has the place that "the intrinsic variables" had in the first feedback loop. We have a name for it in this context: "the ecology". I tend to think of the intrinsic variables also as being an ecology, which includes the interactions of our microbiome, our cellular structures that we call "organs" and so forth. Both are dynamic, full of little feedback loops and big ones. too. Both matter to our survival, individually and collectively.

In a yet larger context, we can bring "other living things" into the "inside", perhaps in stages, starting with "other people in our community", "other people", "other animals", etc. but eventually bringing all other living things into the big tent. Here we have the feedback loop simply between the living "inside" and the physical "outside". The ecosystems of the inside are continually reorganized over billions of years by the feedback loop between the living inside and the physical outside. If the Grand Reorganization process works, life will continue. When it doesn't. life will stop. Just as the reorganization feedback loop between intrinsic variables and the perceptual control hierarchy creates ever more complex perceptual structures to control, so the Grand Reorganization has been creating ever more complex ecologies, and the "Middling Reorganization" that separates living things from the physical environment has been creating ever more complex life-forms (and a greater variety along with increasing complexity)

The mechanisms of these reorganizations at different levels presumably differ, but functionally, are they not all the same? I am reminded of Richardson's frequently quoted ditty from nearly a century ago: "Big whirls have little whirls/ That feed on their velocity/ Little whirls have little whirls/ And so on to viscosity." The relationship is the same between levels of eddies, between levels of "inside-outside", and between levels of the perceptual control hierarchy, always until we get to the most microscopic level, where things change. Always the littler item is powered by the greater, its structure supporting the structure of the greater in a different kind of feedback loop.

None of this suggests how reorganization is implemented at any of these levels of inclusion, but the notion of evolution as a weeding-out process is very similar to the idea of "use it or lose it" in individual skill in perceptual control. I find that suggestive.

Martin

On 2019/02/17 5:50 AM, Bill Leach (<mailto:wrleach@cableone.net>wrleach@cableone.net via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

My first comment on reorganization is that I believe that, within mammals at least, the system that would comprise what we would call the reorganization system is undoubtedly vastly more complex than any of us would suspect.

For those of us old enough in the engineering world to have worked with pneumatic and mechanical control systems, reorganization would be defined as what the engineer does to the system when properly functioning components fail to produce proper control. In those days there were few changes that could be made to an existing system. That is, without introducing new hardware, reorganization was limited to such things and input and/or output gain, and mixing in derivative and integral signal components. Mechanical control systems were even more limited in what could be changed without new hardware. The addition of additional hardware would of course also be a potential component of a reorganization strategy those an engineer would be quite reluctant to make such changes until convinced beyond any doubt that doing so was the only possible solution.

In today's engineered control system world, with the huge amount of computer power, measurement, data collection and storage, and analytical power available, control systems are able to analyse their own performance and often times do a much better job of reorganization than the engineer of old could achieve. In spite of occasional catastrophic failures, these systems are improving at what is now a staggering rate. Because much of what formerly was always achieved with physical hardware in an engineered control system is now achieved using software these more advanced systems can create entirely new control loops as needed as well as change the existing connections between control loops.

I believe that much of what modern engineered control system design have might well exist in living control system though implementation would likely be almost unrecognizably different. Despite what many claim about the brain and nervous system being a like a digital computer, I think a computer comparison is only valid if you are talking about an analog computer. And in that respect the brain and nervous system is so far advance as an example of an analog computer that we don't have anything that even remotely emulates it.

I also believe that Bill's random (or at least pseudo-random) change is certainly a part of that system. His work on modelling e-coli behavior using a random walk resulted in a correlation that is hard to deny.

With respect to what I often see referred to as intrinsic systems (which I take to mean internal systems such a blood pressure, blood chemistry composition and the like), I believe that any sort of random changing is very restricted if allowed at all.

Of course such random changes in the face of sustained failure to achieve satisfactory control might well be the explanation for those unexpected deaths that occur where the medical community is absolutely baffled as to why the person died.

"Survival of the species" is conclusion for a more specific term, at least for mammals, which is that each individual living being has a biological system that has a reference for surviving. Even for those that commit suicide their intrinsic systems were and will continue to try to survive until they fail completely.

So, I see the idea that reorganization for intrinsic system is limited based on the idea that reorganization methods that occurred where the individual died are ultimately removed from the gene pool. I think that idea is further supported by education studies that have shown that the attitudes and experience of up to 5 generations of ancestors have a statistically measurable effect on the studied individual. While I know of no studies that expand that observation into other areas I don't think it is completely unreasonable to presume that such effects could well exist for other aspect of control.

As many discussions on the net have pointed out the reorganization system must have a perception of the magnitude (and probably direction for at least some systems) of error present and a reference for the maximum allowed error. It is also reasonable to presume that there also must be some integrator function so that large but short duration error spikes do not drive the reorganization system into action prematurely.

Again as suggested on the net, there is also likely a hierarchy of change methodologies so that changes gradually become more drastic as the error either increases or is sustained for longer periods of time. And I think it is likely that the references for these are highly dependent on the specific system(s) that would be acted upon.

I also suggest that one of Rick's demonstration programs shows that directed reorganization clearly exists and that the same demonstration shows us that for any person performing the demo for the first time, will not be using a directed method when the first overwhelming error happens.

bill

[FredNickols]

From Fred Nickols (2019.02.17.1851 ET)

It would be difficult to point to something that, in one way or another, doesn’t tie to food, shelter or clothing.Â

···

Fred Nickols
Solution Engineer & Chief Toolmaker
Distance Consulting LLC
“Assistance at A Distance�
www.nickols.us

[bleach]

Painting, music, crafts that do not produce anything having a utility value. It is true that some do these things for the money that they can make but there are many more that engage the activity just because they enjoy doing it.

Even for myself, any participation in csgnet has no monetary or professional benefit for me. Why do it? Other than just an intense interest, I can't think of another reason.

Indeed one of the reasons that I have not been on the net much is that as I prioritized my activities, I realized that my participation did not further any of my goals, took up a great deal of time on occasions and because of the frequent 'cat fighting' could be very upsetting for me, so I stopped participating but did not unsubscribe.

bill

<snip>

···

On 2/17/19 4:53 PM, Fred Nickols wrote:

From Fred Nickols (2019.02.17.1851 ET)
It would be difficult to point to something that, in one way or another, doesn’t tie to food, shelter or clothing.

[bleach]

[Martin Taylor 2019.02.17.16.09]

Very interesting perception Martin.

Thanks.

...
BTW, where I lost you is in the second paragraph near the end. I don't have time to ponder it just now but hope to later.

If you can articulate where or why you got lost, maybe I can write it better, or correct i if it is wrong.

I will comment that in the case for sentient beings, or at least for humans, they are fully capable of controlling for perceptions that have nothing to do with either procreation or survival (either their own or someone else's).

I wonder how true that is, at least in the "nothing to do with" aspect. Remember side-effects, and the old saying "What goes around comes around". Might it not perhaps be better worded as "controlling for perceptions that have nothing intended to do with..."?

Martin

bill

[Martin Taylor 2019.02 17.14.14]

After writing the below comments, I reread your paragraph one and quickly realized that there is a major reason why, at least part, of what you were talking about did not make sense to me. In paragraph one you state ".......". When I was using the term intrinsic with respect to control I was talking about systems entirely within the subject such as blood chemistry control, blood pressure control, heart rate, RNA transcription, etc. Even though some of the intrinsic system ultimately do, at least potentially, involve other control loops, such as those involved in finding and eat food, I do not consider the latter to be intrinsic as they are very heavily influenced by references that we might call preferences. In any event, a great deal of volition is involved in the latter sort of system.

Again, I think I failed to see that you were including loops that have a feedback path that is physically outside of the subject, with for me and the discussion I brought up in this thread is not the case.

That said, there are still points made below that I believe I'm failing to understand.

bill

In a larger context, everything that is within the skin of a living entity is "inside" and the rest of the world is "outside".

Absolutely comfortable with the proceeding.

This "rest of the world" includes other living things. There is a feedback loop between "inside" and "outside" here, too.

Again, absolutely comfortable with the proceeding.

This loop incorporates the first one in the same way that control of a high-level perception incorporates control of lower level perceptions that contribute inputs to the higher level perceptual function.

Not sure what you are saying here. What is the '...first one...''?

Like the first loop above, this one can be partitioned, this time into loops through other living things and loops that include only non-living things.

OK, no problem with that. The partitioning is not essential at all but since the living control systems can produce disturbances that are actually conflicts, I think the partitioning is useful.

The loop strands through other living things are like the internal loops between the perceptual control hierarchy and the intrinsic variable part of the "outside" in the first kind of loop.

Here, I think you are saying that in all cases dealing with any living systems, multiple control loops are involved with each. I don't agree with what I think you are saying and of course my interpretation can well be wrong.

In addition you seem to be adding "intrinsic variable" for something that is outside of the subject. While I recognize and agree that another living control system has a intrinsic references and control loops, I do not see them as intrinsic for the subject. A tree has an intrinsic reference for continuing to live but that has no bearing on a subject that comes along with a chain saw. What am I missing here?

The structure of the loops through other living things can vary, but only insofar as they help the organism to survive long enough to propagate that structure through their descendants.

Here I don't necessarily agree as I do not believe that all human behavior is supportive or even intended to be supportive of survival. I do agree however, that when survival is involved in either the subject or another human, attempts to control something that adversely affects the perception of probability of survival will likely be very strongly resisted.

···

On 2/17/19 2:16 PM, Martin Taylor (<mailto:mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net>mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

On 2019/02/17 4:02 PM, Bill Leach (<mailto:wrleach@cableone.net>wrleach@cableone.net via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

On 2/17/19 1:00 PM, Martin Taylor (<mailto:mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net>mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

[bleach]

Oops! I forgot to complete the quote of paragraph one that I mention below so I'm correcting that now by inserting the quote where it belonged...

[Martin Taylor 2019.02.17.16.09]

Very interesting perception Martin.

Thanks.

...
BTW, where I lost you is in the second paragraph near the end. I don't have time to ponder it just now but hope to later.

If you can articulate where or why you got lost, maybe I can write it better, or correct i if it is wrong.

I will comment that in the case for sentient beings, or at least for humans, they are fully capable of controlling for perceptions that have nothing to do with either procreation or survival (either their own or someone else's).

I wonder how true that is, at least in the "nothing to do with" aspect. Remember side-effects, and the old saying "What goes around comes around". Might it not perhaps be better worded as "controlling for perceptions that have nothing intended to do with..."?

Martin

bill

[Martin Taylor 2019.02 17.14.14]

After writing the below comments, I reread your paragraph one and quickly realized that there is a major reason why, at least part, of what you were talking about did not make sense to me. In paragraph one you state "...the perceptual control hierarchy is "inside", and the intrinsic variable system (whatever it may be) is "outside",....". When I was using the term intrinsic with respect to control I was talking about systems entirely within the subject such as blood chemistry control, blood pressure control, heart rate, RNA transcription, etc. Even though some of the intrinsic system ultimately do, at least potentially, involve other control loops, such as those involved in finding and eat food, I do not consider the latter to be intrinsic as they are very heavily influenced by references that we might call preferences. In any event, a great deal of volition is involved in the latter sort of system.

Again, I think I failed to see that you were including loops that have a feedback path that is physically outside of the subject, with for me and the discussion I brought up in this thread is not the case.

That said, there are still points made below that I believe I'm failing to understand.

bill

In a larger context, everything that is within the skin of a living entity is "inside" and the rest of the world is "outside".

Absolutely comfortable with the proceeding.

This "rest of the world" includes other living things. There is a feedback loop between "inside" and "outside" here, too.

Again, absolutely comfortable with the proceeding.

This loop incorporates the first one in the same way that control of a high-level perception incorporates control of lower level perceptions that contribute inputs to the higher level perceptual function.

Not sure what you are saying here. What is the '...first one...''?

Like the first loop above, this one can be partitioned, this time into loops through other living things and loops that include only non-living things.

OK, no problem with that. The partitioning is not essential at all but since the living control systems can produce disturbances that are actually conflicts, I think the partitioning is useful.

The loop strands through other living things are like the internal loops between the perceptual control hierarchy and the intrinsic variable part of the "outside" in the first kind of loop.

Here, I think you are saying that in all cases dealing with any living systems, multiple control loops are involved with each. I don't agree with what I think you are saying and of course my interpretation can well be wrong.

···

On 2/18/19 12:26 AM, Bill Leach (<mailto:wrleach@cableone.net>wrleach@cableone.net via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

On 2/17/19 2:16 PM, Martin Taylor (<mailto:mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net>mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

On 2019/02/17 4:02 PM, Bill Leach (<mailto:wrleach@cableone.net>wrleach@cableone.net via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

On 2/17/19 1:00 PM, Martin Taylor (<mailto:mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net>mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

In addition you seem to be adding "intrinsic variable" for something that is outside of the subject. While I recognize and agree that another living control system has a intrinsic references and control loops, I do not see them as intrinsic for the subject. A tree has an intrinsic reference for continuing to live but that has no bearing on a subject that comes along with a chain saw. What am I missing here?

The structure of the loops through other living things can vary, but only insofar as they help the organism to survive long enough to propagate that structure through their descendants.

Here I don't necessarily agree as I do not believe that all human behavior is supportive or even intended to be supportive of survival. I do agree however, that when survival is involved in either the subject or another human, attempts to control something that adversely affects the perception of probability of survival will likely be very strongly resisted.

[EetuP]

[Eetu Pikkarainen 2019-02-18_14:35:19 UTC]

This message of Martin resonates in me two broad thoughts. The firs on is connected to the first paragraph and I would call it “phenomenological�. I mean that when I
think about “me� I am thinking about my perceptual hierarchy. In a respective way I think also other people as their perceptual hierarchies. The perceptual hierarchy is the concept which has taken the place of psyche or personality or subjectivity. This “personal
identityâ€? is conditioned from two directions: from outside and inside. It is connected to external environment and acts upon it and in the conditions and possibilities that it affords. On the other hand it is – or I am – conditioned by and connennected with my
internal variable system, my “body�, which also causes often surprises like emotions, needs like hunger, and is thus not under my control but often an other way around. There is an otherness or outside also inside my skin as well as outside. Somehow this
is similar figure of thought as traditional thoughts about body, soul and world.

The other thought is that the reality forms a complex whole where all the time happens change, reorganization and learning in different scales: in individual level which
we call learning, in the level of societies as social development or history and in the level of species and ecology which we call evolution. Probably there is some common principles in all these levels and cases but in detail there must be very much variation.

···

Eetu

[Martin Taylor 2019.02 17.14.14]
To my way of thinking, what Bill Leach says about reorganization makes good sense.
Rather than critique it, I would like to put it in a larger context. The context in which we typically think of reorganization is that the perceptual control hierarchy is “inside”, and the intrinsic variable system (whatever it may be) is “outside”,
as is the external environment. A big, wide, multi-variable feedback loop links the inside and the outside in such a way that organisms that keep functioning long enough to have descendants will transmit their feedback loop organization in more copies than
the organization used by those that are less good at surviving. The loop “control hierarchy - environment - intrinsic variables - control hierarchy” is self-stabilizing, in an evolutionary sense (of it’s huge multiplicity of strands, some do not go through
the environment at all. The braids of the loop that do go through the physical environment are likely to be the most stable. The “internal loops” can work usefully only so long as their results help the organism to live in the external environment.
In a larger context, everything that is within the skin of a living entity is “inside” and the rest of the world is “outside”. This “rest of the world” includes other living things. There is a feedback loop between “inside” and “outside” here, too. This loop
incorporates the first one in the same way that control of a high-level perception incorporates control of lower level perceptions that contribute inputs to the higher level perceptual function. Like the first loop above, this one can be partitioned, this
time into loops through other living things and loops that include only non-living things. The loop strands through other living things are like the internal loops between the perceptual control hierarchy and the intrinsic variable part of the “outside” in
the first kind of loop. The structure of the loops through other living things can vary, but only insofar as they help the organism to survive long enough to propagate that structure through their descendants.
In this context, the “other living things” has the place that “the intrinsic variables” had in the first feedback loop. We have a name for it in this context: “the ecology”. I tend to think of the intrinsic variables also as being an ecology, which includes
the interactions of our microbiome, our cellular structures that we call “organs” and so forth. Both are dynamic, full of little feedback loops and big ones. too. Both matter to our survival, individually and collectively.
In a yet larger context, we can bring “other living things” into the “inside”, perhaps in stages, starting with “other people in our community”, “other people”, “other animals”, etc. but eventually bringing all other living things into the big tent. Here we
have the feedback loop simply between the living “inside” and the physical “outside”. The ecosystems of the inside are continually reorganized over billions of years by the feedback loop between the living inside and the physical outside. If the Grand Reorganization
process works, life will continue. When it doesn’t. life will stop. Just as the reorganization feedback loop between intrinsic variables and the perceptual control hierarchy creates ever more complex perceptual structures to control, so the Grand Reorganization
has been creating ever more complex ecologies, and the “Middling Reorganization” that separates living things from the physical environment has been creating ever more complex life-forms (and a greater variety along with increasing complexity)
The mechanisms of these reorganizations at different levels presumably differ, but functionally, are they not all the same? I am reminded of Richardson’s frequently quoted ditty from nearly a century ago: “* Big whirls have little whirls/ That feed on their
velocity/ Little whirls have little whirls/ And so on to viscosity* .” The relationship is the same between levels of eddies, between levels of “inside-outside”, and between levels of the perceptual control hierarchy, always until we get to the most microscopic
level, where things change. Always the littler item is powered by the greater, its structure supporting the structure of the greater in a different kind of feedback loop.

None of this suggests how reorganization is implemented at any of these levels of inclusion, but the notion of evolution as a weeding-out process is very similar to the idea of “use it or lose it” in individual skill in perceptual control. I find that suggestive.

Martin

On 2019/02/17 5:50 AM, Bill Leach (wrleach@cableone.net via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

My first comment on reorganization is that I believe that, within mammals at least, the system that would comprise what we would call the reorganization system is undoubtedly vastly more complex than any of
us would suspect.

For those of us old enough in the engineering world to have worked with pneumatic and mechanical control systems, reorganization would be defined as what the engineer does to the system when properly functioning components fail to produce proper control. In
those days there were few changes that could be made to an existing system. That is, without introducing new hardware, reorganization was limited to such things and input and/or output gain, and mixing in derivative and integral signal components. Mechanical
control systems were even more limited in what could be changed without new hardware. The addition of additional hardware would of course also be a potential component of a reorganization strategy those an engineer would be quite reluctant to make such changes
until convinced beyond any doubt that doing so was the only possible solution.

In today’s engineered control system world, with the huge amount of computer power, measurement, data collection and storage, and analytical power available, control systems are able to analyse their own performance and often times do a much better job of reorganization
than the engineer of old could achieve. In spite of occasional catastrophic failures, these systems are improving at what is now a staggering rate. Because much of what formerly was always achieved with physical hardware in an engineered control system is
now achieved using software these more advanced systems can create entirely new control loops as needed as well as change the existing connections between control loops.

I believe that much of what modern engineered control system design have might well exist in living control system though implementation would likely be almost unrecognizably different. Despite what many claim about the brain and nervous system being a like
a digital computer, I think a computer comparison is only valid if you are talking about an analog computer. And in that respect the brain and nervous system is so far advance as an example of an analog computer that we don’t have anything that even remotely
emulates it.

I also believe that Bill’s random (or at least pseudo-random) change is certainly a part of that system. His work on modelling e-coli behavior using a random walk resulted in a correlation that is hard to deny.

With respect to what I often see referred to as intrinsic systems (which I take to mean internal systems such a blood pressure, blood chemistry composition and the like), I believe that any sort of random changing is very restricted if allowed at all.

Of course such random changes in the face of sustained failure to achieve satisfactory control might well be the explanation for those unexpected deaths that occur where the medical community is absolutely baffled as to why the person died.

“Survival of the species” is conclusion for a more specific term, at least for mammals, which is that each individual living being has a biological system that has a reference for surviving. Even for those that commit suicide their intrinsic systems were and
will continue to try to survive until they fail completely.

So, I see the idea that reorganization for intrinsic system is limited based on the idea that reorganization methods that occurred where the individual died are ultimately removed from the gene pool. I think that idea is further supported by education studies
that have shown that the attitudes and experience of up to 5 generations of ancestors have a statistically measurable effect on the studied individual. While I know of no studies that expand that observation into other areas I don’t think it is completely
unreasonable to presume that such effects could well exist for other aspect of control.

As many discussions on the net have pointed out the reorganization system must have a perception of the magnitude (and probably direction for at least some systems) of error present and a reference for the maximum allowed error. It is also reasonable to presume
that there also must be some integrator function so that large but short duration error spikes do not drive the reorganization system into action prematurely.

Again as suggested on the net, there is also likely a hierarchy of change methodologies so that changes gradually become more drastic as the error either increases or is sustained for longer periods of time. And I think it is likely that the references for
these are highly dependent on the specific system(s) that would be acted upon.

I also suggest that one of Rick’s demonstration programs shows that directed reorganization clearly exists and that the same demonstration shows us that for any person performing the demo for the first time, will not be using a directed method when the first
overwhelming error happens.

bill