I didn't verify Last's claims either. But it's not the truth or falsity of it that matters so much as it *triggers* in me an emotional response (the hope that Trump loses, is indicted, and maybe seeks asylum in Russia to wallow in rotten offal like Seagal and Depardieu). That's the mechanism of fake news, even if the news is not fake.
Snowden is a different story. I'm torn. I generally like your gist that [hol|hier|heter]archy is not a strict disjunction between top-down, bottom-up, or middle-out, though I almost always argue for middle-out ... or, at least, start looking where your focus is the best. In that sense, diffusion limited aggregation strikes me as the best constructive algorithm for the *-archies. I don't *think* I agree that posets belong in that category, though. They seem a bit like abstractions, much like my rejection of Jon's goal-function construct. The accidental, stigmergic, accumulation of the *-archy can be optimized into a poset. But I don't think arose as a poset ... but I'm not sure of that. There's something akin to canalization in posets ... path of least resistance, historical-but-necessary dependence on past state. But the idea that corporations are self-organized is dissonant. Keeping my (tiny) company going all these years (we turn 20 next year!) has been anything *but* self-organized ... or even organized at all. 8^D It's very much an extension of my will power, from the state of OR trying to fine me $60k for claiming my out-of-state contractors were actually employees, to having years long negotiations collapse because we (apparently) don't use "standard accounting procedures", it's an *intentional* act at every turn. Now, a behemoth like Google or Bechtel might have some self-organizing elements somewhere in the middle scale, where bureacracy meets bureaucracy in the same corporation. But even there, I'm skeptical. It definitely has that stigmergic accumulation. But intention/will is ubiquitous in such beasts so that it doesn't feel like what we mean by "self-organization". On 8/4/20 8:24 PM, Steve Smith wrote: > I didn't fully verify your Bulwark link, but my first impulse was to think it > was an Onion <https://www.theonion.com/> or Borowitz > <https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report> article. Fascinating that > absurd things like this can go right past us in the torrent of nonsense that > this administration has brought to us. Lost in the cacophany of > dog-whistles, as it were? > > Interesting juxtaposition of Trump, Seagal, Depardieu (/Zherar Depardyo!) > /and Snowden... among other things, both Seagal and Depardieu's movies > have been put on a banned list in Ukraine > <https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/02/19/ukraine-bans-movies-starring-zelenskiy-seagal-depardieu-over-national-security-a69342>, > and I'd guess Trump is not a very welcome person there either. I don't > know what they feel about Snowden... he's more likely to be a hero than > antihero there, in spite Russia being his bolt-hole location? > <https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/02/19/ukraine-bans-movies-starring-zelenskiy-seagal-depardieu-over-national-security-a69342> > > These links remind me of several of the other frayed threads here... you > referenced yet another previous thread discussing "means of production" and > whether I acquiesced openly to your grumbling about that at the time, it did > set me on a different tangent internally. > > It also juxtaposes with the various lines of discussion around > self-organization and hierarchical systems. Many of us think first of > political power structures when we think hierarchy. To the extent that > these systems maintain their own coherence through a certain amount of > top-down control (i.e. exercise of authority) we tend to associate > hierarchies as "top-down" systems, but I think that is somewhat of an > illusion, or an edge case among the many examples of hierarchy in > self-organized systems. > > Heterarchy <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterarchy> and holarchy > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holarchy> come to mind, as does the generic > poset <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partially_ordered_set>. > > Snowden's rhetoric, which I generally approve/agree-with, includes an > "othering" of gub'mint and corporations that doesn't seem to overtly take > into account that both of these are self-organized, emergent structures, even > if from an oft-individual point of view they seem antithetical to the good of > the individual. -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
