Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

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Qazwer
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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by Qazwer »

@iDave - from your work background, I am curious as your thoughts/how you would characterize complexity risk. Simple risks of failure of relying on one thing (money) is easy to see. But there is also a risk of when you build something more complex that you do not see all the interconnections. This can possibly cause systematic failure from the unknown small change. How do you think about that balance when you look at a project?
I have had hammered into my head KISS. So I am trying to see under what circumstances that does not hold.

IlliniDave
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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by IlliniDave »

Qazwer wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 8:32 am
@iDave - from your work background, I am curious as your thoughts/how you would characterize complexity risk. Simple risks of failure of relying on one thing (money) is easy to see. But there is also a risk of when you build something more complex that you do not see all the interconnections. This can possibly cause systematic failure from the unknown small change. How do you think about that balance when you look at a project?
I have had hammered into my head KISS. So I am trying to see under what circumstances that does not hold.
First, I'm not sure the ere usage of complexity corresponds one-to-one with how a system architect in the engineering profession might think about it.

Complexity is usually driven by need/desire for performance. Complexity tends to increase costs so there tends to be a balance when it comes to producing stuff. I think in the broad sense it does introduce new potential failures (in 1970 few people had to worry about computer failure making their vehicles inoperable). But the same complexity, having an onboard computer, can alert the operator of pending problems so they can be addressed before they become catastrophic. So I suppose how it is designed/implemented is more the driver in reliability than degree of complexity.

My aversion to complexity is that I don't want to sink any more time into keeping things functional than I have to. Not much in the real world operates like a perpetual motion machine. One might get a permaculture system, for example, into place, but there's always work to be done to keep it functioning at a "good enough" level.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@iDave:

I always find your perspective interesting because in many ways we are almost exact peers and in other ways we are very different.

Prior to ERE and/or integrating global climate change/peak oil etc., my ideal lifestyle design was entitled The Adventure Cottage Library. IOW, not that different from yours if you sub out Adventure for Contentment and rational take on money as fungible with optimistic take on own ability to “come up with something” as semi-infinitely tappable :lol: (Actually, the difference might be further split due to fact that identifying a new bug on walk to ice cream shop is often my idea of Adventure.) Now, it is more like The Adventure Cottage Library: Pre-Apocalypse Semi-Primitive Technology version, which also works because making a radio out of a tree is obviously something that could be done within the confines of The Adventure Cottage Library.

Anyways, I’m not trying to put you on the spot, just genuinely curious with this question. What if you find yourself in relationship with a younger SO who wants the two of you to lower household spending level to Level 7 for reasons related to climate change etc. ?

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by jacob »

IlliniDave wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 9:11 am
First, I'm not sure the ere usage of complexity corresponds one-to-one with how a system architect in the engineering profession might think about it.

Complexity is usually driven by need/desire for performance. ...
I'd expect ERE designs would usually be very different from typical performance based engineering.

With ERE systems you're always looking to do 2+ (homeotelic) (side-)effects for each action($). This way if one flow or even one node fails, the other actions are not rendered ineffective by the missing effects. In that sense, damaging a web-of-goals more like snipping strands in a spider web(*) in that the spider web will stick be sticky and catch stuff.

A web of goal is designed for systemic redundancy and adaptability. (Redundancy in the alternate pathways, not in the backup or backups for the backup sense.)

(*) Caveat, I don't know if spider webs need to be perfectly formed to catch the preferred prey, but they'll certainly catch other stuff almost as well.

($) From an engineering perspective, this idea would be a @$#$^ nightmare to deal with. Usually engineering aims to reduce the number of degrees of freedom to make the product more comprehensible to humans and humans using computers to simulate such products. Weinberg's book has more on this.

IlliniDave
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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by IlliniDave »

jacob wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 9:31 am

($) From an engineering perspective, this idea would be a @$#$^ nightmare to deal with. Usually engineering aims to reduce the number of degrees of freedom to make the product more comprehensible to humans and humans using computers to simulate such products. Weinberg's book has more on this.
Yep, when human factors are involved complexity is rarely a good thing, irrespective of what's going on on the other side of the man-machine interface. But it's an interesting observation to type on a computer or cell phone. :)

And yep, the two birds-one stone approach will typically do neither task optimally. Doesn't work designing a race car. But you do wind up with things like an SUV that can do some hauling/towing, tote all 5 kids to soccer, provide a reasonably comfortable road trip, and with more fuel efficiency and safety than it's predecessors. Depends on what you ask the engineer to do.

I get the point about spider webs, they won't fail instantaneously over the loss of a part of it but in time repair/replacement is mandatory.

I would agree that engineering as it exists in the type of business I am in (make cool things that aren't day-to-day consumer items) doesn't correspond particularly well to an ere-type endeavor. The alternate perspectives may or may not be useful.

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by IlliniDave »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 9:14 am

Anyways, I’m not trying to put you on the spot, just genuinely curious with this question. What if you find yourself in relationship with a younger SO who wants the two of you to lower household spending level to Level 7 for reasons related to climate change etc. ?
Most likely I'd wind up at status = unattached. :lol:

Medical insurance alone for just me will be ~$10K per year for the next 7 years starting 18 months from August.

Scott 2
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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by Scott 2 »

I suspect many read "system" and think of a rube goldberg style machine, some brilliant feat of engineering.

Such a deterministic system won't work for the stated problem (scaling ERE wheaton levels). It will "trap" a player at lower levels.

Caveat - I don't claim to or strive for a specific ERE level. I find the framework interesting, as a possible feedback mechanism in my lifestyle design. My perspective here is from 20 years working in complex systems.


Systems involving people need to be flexible. The complexity does not appear from a carefully designed, top down solution. Rather, it is emergent from simple rules and patterns, which facilitate adaptation to reality. Decision making is pushed as closely to the point in time (node) as possible.

Node construction needs to facilitate system flexibility. Think loosely coupled, with resources mutable between adjacent nodes. Even better if the nodes can be transient, temporarily existing to meet a need. This helps address continuity risk, without a massive sink of resources.

The challenge when designing such a system is avoiding known pitfalls - getting stuck in a sub-optimal maxima, locally optimizing to the detriment of the overall flow, running the primary constraint at 100% capacity, producing single points of failure through tight coupling, etc.

It's impossible to predict the future, so the rules need a learning mechanism - a way to try some stuff, keep what works. Generally, the shorter the feedback cycle, the more rapidly the system can iterative, the more effective. This is particularly true with known unknowns.

However, there also needs to be a larger macro level view of "try some stuff", to escape those local maximums. Learning from the diverse experiences of a broader system set (ie the community) is essential. This is where unknown unknowns are tackled.

The learning mechanism even applies to the rules themselves. This is essential.


In the tech field, I've seen Goldratt's "Beyond the Goal" talk held up as the seminal work. It's echoed in the devops community, with senior practitioners emphasizing culture (the adaptive system) over any specific technology (the emergent mechanism).

Copying someone else's complex, emergent solution doesn't work. IMO this is what people are hung up on with the idea of an ERE system. A solution needs to meet the practitioner where they are at, today. For an individual, playing at level 3 might be a GREAT answer to their problem.

What can be shared, is a baseline set of proven adaptive rules (for the techies - SCRUM, Kanban, etc.). Because the system is designed to adapt, and the rules are included in scope, a solution can emerge for the individual's problem space. The challenge is getting participants in a system to think this way.

Adopting an adaptive and continuously mutating rule set is HARD. People often get stuck here. There is a tremendous unwinding of cognitive biases required, doubly so if someone has thrived in modern western society. The concepts are simple, but accepting the culture change... it's tough.

IMO, this is the problem level 7 is getting at.

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

“Scott 2” wrote: Systems involving people need to be flexible. The complexity does not appear from a carefully designed, top down solution. Rather, it is emergent from simple rules and patterns, which facilitate adaptation to reality. Decision making is pushed as closely to the point in time (node) as possible.
Like the 12 design principles and 3 ethics of permaculture? I remember encountering a similar infinite iterative process when I was briefly studying data science. Difference being that the permaculture design principles aren’t as orderly.

For instance, simple rule for Principle 10 “Use and Value Diversity” would be “Anything you plant should have three purposes and every important purpose should be covered by three different plants.” Obviously, Jacob describes this in terms of tensegrity and resilience of activities in Chapter 5. This is one of the easiest principles/rules for me to understand, so I even attempted to apply it to sex through polyamory. The problem, as I believe IDave implied, is that reduction of possibility of complete failure of system may come with significantly increased maintenance costs. However, this would/should be addressed by application of other permaculture principles. For instance, Capture and Store Energy could help with the maintenance costs of increased resilience. To continue my analogy, the more Sexual Energy you have stored in Zone 00, the easier it is to maintain multiple lovers roaming into Zone 0 or accessed at Wilderness boundary.

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by Alphaville »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 12:59 pm
Like the 12 design principles and 3 ethics of permaculture?
when you look at the holy holzer who is the supra-being in the original eco-scale, you realize that all he wants to do is increase his farm's prosperity by working with nature and not against, and he likes to keep water in the ground. that's what it all boils down to.

i think with permaculture people sometimes make up complicated stuff in order to sell courses. holzer just wants a prosperous farm. "bring your car into my farm, i'll weigh you on the way out." lol, smart farmer.

when you have a clear goal and some basic principles you can develop ways to get to your destination. it's the same principle behind gtd: you dont script out every micro-move, you set your goal and take the next step.

soviet style planning doesn't work.

so, where is it that you want to get to? concretely speaking i mean.

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by jacob »

An ERE system is more like an industrial conglomerate than a complicated gadget(*) or a computer program. As the manager, each entity (module in the ERE book) in the conglomerate should ideally feed from as well as into some other module(s). This avoids bottlenecks and builds tensegrity.

(*) Gadgets are rarely complex (contains many parts with fuzzy non-linear interconnections<- an engineering design failure) as much as they're complicated (contains many parts with much fewer linear interconnections). You can trace failure in a complicated gadget (see the fixit adventures of Sclass) whereas a complex systems failure will often have wide disagreement as what caused[ its failure because they're no single cause.

I suppose one can draw the corporate structure of a conglomerate, but I doubt that's how they're designed. Instead design an ongoing process with drawing being useful for monitoring. If some entity begins to look like it could do better on its own, it's spun-off (for example, I don't bother to lay down my own roof shingles). An entity also has to justify its ongoing maintenance costs (this is why I still haven't bought a 3D printer or set up a home forge).

Conglomerates often seek to capture efficiencies by using resources that are market inefficient. For example, a waste company may capture value in its garbage by fermenting it into propane to run its garbage trucks. That's an example of "closing the loop".

As the manager of your ERE system you're ideally suited to capture these otherwise wasted resources (for an example of how non-system consumers waste their resources, see Ego's thread on capturing goods from their waste stream). The reason is that if you built your own and are familiar with all the flows and yields (from stage WL6) you know everything that's going on. In an industrial conglomerate this effort is often thwarted by sublevel middle-managers trying to optimize their own division at the expense of others or the CEO wanting to grow the system as large as possible or simply fail to maintain balance. Homeotelicity ensures that none of the entities begin to act as a parasitic entity being on life-support by other entities which is another risk of industrial conglomerates, e.g. one division providing cheap credit to another division.

WL7 is more about the ERE chap 5 principles becoming part of conscious competence. When I wrote the book, there were already partially unconsciously competent, so I had to flesh out how I was thinking. I really don't see how it's possible to do this w/o understanding all the "ingredients" (yields and flows) first. It would be so abstract to the point of being useless. You can't jump from WL5 to WL7 by constructing a clever machine and WL5-optimizing it for your particular situation. IOW, pedagogically speaking, this ain't "object oriented"-programming.

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by Alphaville »

jacob wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 1:19 pm
so you want a personal circular economy?

--

eta: that's probably the idea behind the hdpe recycling im assuming

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by IlliniDave »

Alphaville wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 1:13 pm

so, where is it that you want to get to? concretely speaking i mean.
This question wasn't addressed to me, but it reflects what seems to be missing in a lot of these discussions. Seems like there exists a great solution in search of a problem sometimes. That's why I threw out some very shallow, simpleminded placeholder goals for myself. Apparently my thought process and M.O. are incorrect, but I'm going to take my vision such as it has evolved to be and try to assess it's cohesiveness qualitatively relative to my ability to grok the proposed architecture.

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by jacob »

Alphaville wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 1:24 pm
so you want a personal circular economy?
A circular economy is just being self-reliant. That ignores the time-component as well as the access and optionality aspects. I suppose you could use material flow as a concrete example, but you should add other flows as well.

The other aspect I think I see being ignored is that we're designing for living (see infinite games WL10) and not for a dead product with material design-constraints. Design is an ongoing process with the aim to keep designing. Once design stops, the system starts dying. I'll refer to Scott2's latest post.

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by Alphaville »

jacob wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 1:51 pm
A circular economy is just being self-reliant. That ignores the time-component as well as the access and optionality aspects. I suppose you could use material flow as a concrete example, but you should add other flows as well.
a personal circular economy that incorporates time/life as ymoyl made clear way back when, and also because it's personal and limited by obvious personal constraints unlike industrial processes; but that's the right model, yes?

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by jacob »

No, that's a limited [static] version of the right model which lacks several aspects such as side-effects, homeotelics, tensegrity, access, optionality, and contingencies. I'm too lazy to write it up again.

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by IlliniDave »

jacob wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 1:51 pm

The other aspect I think I see being ignored is that we're designing for life (see infinite games WL10) and not a product with material design-constraints and a deadline. Design is an ongoing process with the aim to keep designing.
That gets a lot of engineers shot! Figuratively speaking ala the old adage, "It's time to shoot the engineers..."

I think I now see a key distinction. I see my solution to the niche in my existence that would be filled by FatFIRE or FIRE or conventional retirement (ere increasingly appears like unobtanium for me), as something outside my life, not as my life (in the vocation sense). The leisure part of my CLL aspiration is the environment where my own personal "grow or die" evolution will play out. I am too self-centered. And should probably take what I am doing out of this topic to another spot.

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by Alphaville »

jacob wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 2:02 pm
No, that's a limited [static] version of the right model which lacks several aspects such as side-effects, homeotelics, tensegrity, access, optionality, and contingencies. I'm too lazy to write it up again.
yes, but it's easier to add to the known.

considering that the goal is to reduce or eliminate waste of time, energy, resources, life, biosphere, etc.. and reduce fragility,

one can see that at the "personal conglomerate" level there would be multiple such processes that could integrate/overlap/supplement/substitute/generate emerging loops/etc etc. and require constant redesigns and adaptation.

and it's possible to imagine it as well integrating into a social economy or ecology with more emerging processes etc.

and maybe we lack a clear model for that state, but it's not difficult to imagine from the basic component under continuous iteration in multiple domains and interrelations over time. eta: i mean the biosphere already operates like that.

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by Scott 2 »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 12:59 pm
“Anything you plant should have three purposes and every important purpose should be covered by three different plants.”
I'm not familiar with the permaculture domain. The rule itself could be a starting point. In a good adaptive system, the pattern itself is fractal. At each level of abstraction, the actors are empowered to iterate. So the learning can begin anywhere. Bottom up is often easier.

Some concerns do jump out:

1. This is really 2 rules
2. A hard number indicates something that may benefit from iteration
3. There is no feedback mechanism - a measurable outcome - a goal

I'd ask the actor to define the goal, then iterate rule permutations, to see how they impact it. There's a good chance the goal is wrong. That's ok. The defined baseline invites feedback from other parts of the system, which could cause iteration of the goal itself. That may cause a total abandonment of the initial rules, because with a clarified goal, they have nothing to do with the likely constraints.

At this level of detail, the individual rules don't matter at all. It's the pattern of iteration that counts. Most of the time, you don't know the best answer. Decisions are often arbitrary, based on assumptions the actor can't articulate. That's ok. Try a change and see what happens. Design is a collaborative process of discovery.

Working with others - I found it's better to let someone try an answer I already "know" to be wrong, in the long term interest of facilitating the pattern. Often, the answer works. I didn't know after all.

As someone gets comfortable with the pattern at a detailed level, they can try applying it to something more abstract. It might naturally propagate (as in clarifying the goal). Greater impacts do happen at higher abstractions, but often the accompanying uncertainty is unacceptable. This is when feedback from a broader community can be especially useful. External data points might reduce uncertainty around a change to the tolerable level.


Something I've found interesting - when acting on a multi-person system, often the most powerful effect of iteration is facilitating communication. People struggle to set aside their ego, acknowledge uncertainty, ask for help, put their work up for criticism, etc. An effective feedback loop makes it safe to be vulnerable. Often the answer is already obvious, but people are too scared to collaborate. That's part of why culture change can be so hard.

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by ertyu »

@Scott 2, what you're saying is fascinating but I have trouble taking the theory and understanding the reality it applies to. Could you come up with an example of how one would apply what you're writing about to life design? For instance, what would be a good goal? What would one then do? Etc. Thanks

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Re: Systems!- Level 6 towards 7

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Scott 2:

There was a lot of innovative thinking and design work going on in the 70s in a variety of fields, inclusive of computer science, cultural change dynamics and ecology, so I think you will recognize aspects of some of these principles in what you wrote above:

Image

Mollison and Holmgren, the originators of permaculture, were ecologists. They studied successful sustainable patterns in nature and thought about how to apply these patterns as improvement over unsustainable practices of industrialized agriculture. Another great book from that era is "A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction" which is a collection of basic human needs expressed or fulfilled through patterns in architecture (I don't want to go off on a tangent, but this book recognizes human aesthetic and emotional needs as being as valid as functional needs, and integrates these into higher level "blocks" or "modules", so this alternate integrated design approach might also be helpful for some with ERE.)
Some concerns do jump out:

1. This is really 2 rules
2. A hard number indicates something that may benefit from iteration
3. There is no feedback mechanism - a measurable outcome - a goal

I'd ask the actor to define the goal, then iterate rule permutations, to see how they impact it. There's a good chance the goal is wrong. That's ok. The defined baseline invites feedback from other parts of the system, which could cause iteration of the goal itself. That may cause a total abandonment of the initial rules, because with a clarified goal, they have nothing to do with the likely constraints.
It can be difficult to know how to apply the Permaculture Design Principles, so somebody came up with the rule I mentioned/paraphrased, " Every plant (or structure) should have 3 purposes and every important(critical) purpose should be fulfilled by 3 plants (or structures)" as a bit of a hack. As you observed, it is really 2 rules. The second rule is more directly derived from the principle "Use and value diversity", which is also sometimes simplified/explained as being like unto "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." So, the goal of following this principle or the more straightforward rule, would be the avoidance of severe or catastrophic failure of system to provide critical flow. Example of extreme downside of not following this rule would be Irish Potato Famine. Obviously, the hard number 3 could be replaced with something like "more than one towards as many as possible given other resource and design constraints." For instance, you could extend the rule over time as well as space (acreage) with practice of planting potatoes and corn towards critical flow of kilocalories every year, but keeping your third acre in continuous experimental rotation of other high caloric crops. This clearly can also be scaled down and/or sideways, because, for example, you could plant 3 different varieties of corn and 3 different varieties of potatoes or you could use different methods of planting the same crop, etc. etc. etc. Since with this example, the Principle or the Rule is only being applied to critical flow of dietary kilocalories to the system, it can be evaluated annually on practical basis (or theoretically in design) of how hungry or skinny the inhabitants of your system (if close looped for kilocalories, see Principle 6: Produce no Waste, which is often also expressed as "Close loops") have become :( !

However, since you are devoting valuable resources to these crops, it would be better if you designed so that other purposes were also being met in alignment with first rule. So, you might choose one of the 3 varieties of corn you are choosing because it provides kilocalories, it tastes delicious, and it is low maintenance. I might plant a hedge of blueberries at my property line because they are delicious, they provide antioxidants, they feed my bird friends, they have lovely fall color, and they will deter trespassers in hedge form. I might maintain my black walnut tree because provides essential dietary fat, provides kilocalories, provides shade over picnic table, delicious in homemade ice cream, cracking nuts good exercise for my old lady hands. If I keep applying this first rule to all elements I give space/resources in my system, it becomes more likely that eventually I will also fulfill the second rule. For instance, with my examples offered, I already have 3 flows of "deliciousness." I think this might also speak to what you mentioned about the client re-evaluating goal. If your stated Goal or Value is Nutrition, but you keep adding elements with quality of Delicious, then that is likely your true Goal or Value. Or as Jacob expressed it, that is what you deserve to get. So, being and remaining self-aware about the negative and positive flows from all of your modules/activities is important first step. That is why "Observe and Interact" is the first principle of permaculture. You can't decide whether or not to keep a black walnut tree on your property until you first notice that you have one and you can't decide which plants should merit most sunny spot in garden until you notice which spot is the sunniest.

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