Thriving In "OptionSpaces"

(Atoms, Individuals, Societies)

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Supremacy of Potentia

The Integrity of a system crucially depends on the entropic distribution of whatever sub-components it is built upon. In social commerce, it is the entropy of money: having it stay in kinetically stable distribution throughout the devised system. And, the ability of the larger system to redistribute currency, as conditions require...as it is contrived to be able to respond to currently not-yet-existing situations.

Systems, organic systems (and "social" systems being no less "organic" than interconnected protoplasm) require constant energy/information interchange in order to survive. If bank interest rates are attractively low so that borrowers evaluate it to be advantageous for themselves and their potential to do so, yet, the lenders restrict their lending only to those who can absolutely guarantee to reimburse the system without any risk of failure (let alone "minimal" risk), that level of required deterministic behavior also strangles the social organism. Terminates its
functioning, as surely as some overt hemorrhage where money (or blood) does not get rechannelled back into the "body" of the organism. That is why "balance of trade" is so important in commerce. If there is an imbalance beyond which equitable flow cannot be restored, something drastic will always be the result.

In the overall picture of kinetic systems, what is at work here is the Bridge... the ffunctional potential of every atom, organism, system or thing to perform at some future unspecified place or time, in response to a possible range of conditions (as yet unknown or fixed) ... and survive ... potentially enhancing the next responses, and the next, and so forth. Until we can incorporate fluidly open "conditional" factors (non-Gödel factors) that affect each system's behaviors we will never comprehend what the universe is all about. To pre-judge that having all "prior" knowledge is the way to predict behaviors in an ultimate clock-work like deterministic way, as the only acceptable measure for understanding things or having a complete and valid mathematical system, is to miss the point of what the universe IS.

Even a quantized Schroedinger atom has a "f functional behavioral range"... beyond which it can no longer handle the energy/information it encounters in its environment...and it will disrupt. "Limits", per se then, should be viewed not so much as a wall or barrier to how systems behave, but should be recognized for what it tells us about what goes on "within" those limits...and whether those limits are mutable in any way...and under what other external or internal conditions. When we find any system at a given moment in time, place and energy states...the more important question is to determine the condition it is in relative to its other possible states of existence. Then and only then can we speak reasonably about what will happen or "might happen" next.

I ascribe no anthropomorphic "consciousness" to atomic particles. I do promote evaluating them in terms of cognatively-responsive-bounded-systems. Even if they are seen as following highly specific mathematical regularity when reactions occur. The primal quality of their construction is as much the potential to be in those possible states, as it is the realization of those states.

The subtle distinction is not that we know where and how things are at a given instant, but, what the latitude of behavior available is... from that moment on! Where as, having more and more information is tantamount to an entropic process that grounds stability in sure predictability (a system may exhibit stable plateau states), its overall functional Stability (capital S) resides in the range of energy/information it can ever process. And that includes "rates" of energy/information transcription. If the rate of information flow is too fast, relative to constructive capacity, there could be a system overload. Similarly, the capacity to hold and store energy or information might also be over-taxed for a given system, before the information could be processed or utilized.

Of prime importance then, are the capacities and structures of the systems themselves. How much can the organization handle? Can sub-processes shunt or redirect or control the flow rates .... into the system, through it and back out again? Can the system "re-organize" itself? Can it grow, adjust, adapt, restrict? Do potential growth states enhance the system? Do they cancel or negate prior functionings? How much affect does a single action have on the whole organization, and does that vary over time or sequence? These are things that Zadeh Logic can handle better that Boolean logic. At the very least, both techniques must be simultaneously applied to achieve the best ends.

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Life - Exploring "Compentence" possibilities

A mammalian embryo in vivo has a very specific bio-construction that assures its survival in the womb environment. Dynamic balances are simultaneously at work in the mother's body -- at the placental interface, "inside" the fetus, and in its immediate amniotic fluid environment -- that ensure the safety and ongoing vitality of the fetus. Eventually, relational biochemical states are reached that cause the expulsion of the baby from the womb (or cause a hatchling to break out of its shell). Conditions that at one moment represented safety and life, now become life threatening as certain barrier limits are reached. If the child or young organism stays in the womb too long, both the parent and its potential replacement risk death.

Larger environment and conditional changes then come into pre-eminent consideration. A baby now must adjust the way in which it processes energy/information from its "environment"...relying upon pre-existing potential to handle the changes. Changes which were unpredictable for their specificity: not knowing if birth would be into a congenial gaseous environment -- since such birth could take place in cold air, hot air, dense sea-level air, Himalayan rarified air, moist humid air, dry desert air, clean air or polluted air. However, the constructive ability to draw stability and growth and maintenance-supportive energy from an anticipated range of gaseous oxygen-nitrogen-carbon dioxide possibilities...that latitude of behavior based on non-specific yet anticipated conditions...is what is important to recognize. Being prepared with the capacity to deal with the unknown, things unpredictable from individual past experience alone.

What happens next is something that we can only appreciate if we consider the boundary of an individual to be something beyond their own physical condition. The physical structure of an individual exists only because of the adapted-to experiences of previous generations of individuals - which adaptively survived in the spectrum of oxygen rich environments - and ended up passing along forms and organs and processes and skill potentials with the ability to deal with a whole varying stream of possibilities.

After "birth", each subsequent breath, each subsequent intake of biochemical food nourishment, not only stablely maintains the organism, but in some cases alters it in some substantive way, that leads to growth and new levels of stability and different levels of abilities...that need to be holistically evaluated at those new plateaus. Certain levels of complexity are required in a cortex for example before information/energy can be processed in a more complete way. Potential precedes the capacity to act. The net value of any Potential can only be evaluated by survival after the conditions are encountered. And a Potential can never be underestimated ... because we may not be familiar with the range of conditions that will bring out the best available response of that Potential. Or even if the Potential is in its final form, or is only at one plateau in its evolution that might not be fully actualized until a thousand generations have passed and other modifying conditions have been encountered.

Again, it is crucial to acknowledge that the "environmental bound" will affect the import of exactly which Integrity-dynamic takes precedence. Destruction of the placental interface will (at one "organism-need-process" matrix) result in the failure of the infant organism to survive. Destruction of the placental interface at some alternative "organism-need-process" matrix will result in assurance of the survival of the organism.

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Societies   -  exploring human Potentia.

Goals are merely rest-stops along Ongoingness. 

Dynamic systems may also be in metamorphic transition. If the mathematical formulas cannot model that kind of extremely substantial alteration - specifying the conditions required for alteration and what the resulting changes will be (like predicting a butterfly from a caterpillar), then the models cannot help but fail. Relationships and Potentials may be only nascent and inconsequential in certain Matrices that we evaluate, yet are the "seeds" of fundamentally different crucial behavior determiners in some future Matrix.

Vis a vis conceptual modeling, our mathematical language must change to accommodate Temporality, and must be as organically open to adjustment, change and potential alteration as the physical reality functions it parallels.

To comment again about information, Integrity, and social organic organizations: as social creatures, humans have built crucial cultural institutions based on "ignorance" ... relying on the potential to respond to situations (environmental conditions in the broadest possible sense) as they occur.

Insurance organizations are based upon "what if". So is our social order in general. "What if" I can't take care of or feed myself? We strive for survival together. What if I get sick? There will be resources to help you get better. I have some extra money and I want to make more. So I will invest it in a merchant vessel sailing to the Indies. But it sure would be nice if others joined the venture. My exposure to loss would be minimized "if" anything untoward happened. And others would profit equally "if" things go well.

It is not "sure knowledge" of things that created the social institutions of our world. It was "anticipation" in deference to the unknown. Great armies are built when there are ambitious aims. But great armies have also been built in anticipation of "possibility". Potential created upon Potential. To achieve aims in light of unknown adversaries and what they will or will not do.

Most of the pleasures we seek are in games of chance. Testing our skills, our knowledge resources, against the possible outcome of a given competition, or the surety of the performance of a mechanism like a motor car, or plane, or of the muscular effort of an athlete, or whether a company will produce its product well enough or whether people will want such and such a product and buy it and allow the workers to get paid and the producers to make a profit so that they can share with investors.

 

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