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> 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. I appreciate that, and wonder where it (this variation of fake/not-fake, fake news) fits in the realm of rhetoric? It seems to be something of an admixture of irony and satire with trace elements of many other things which get under the skin and are hard to let go of. > Snowden is a different story. I'm torn. Me too... right from the beginning really. His predicament (was one I imagined for myself many times after obtaining an SCI clearance... my DOE-Q never put me at (significant) risk of learning the kinds of things he had to sort, but the SCI was fraught with those risks). He must be walking a strange tightrope in Russia... I haven't heard much lately from/about Assange, a parallel but (for me) much less sympathetic character. From wikipedia it seems he's still in prison in the UK on a bail-jump thing, but due out any time now? And this article (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/19/donald-trump-offered-julian-assange-pardon-russia-hack-wikileaks <https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/19/donald-trump-offered-julian-assange-pardon-russia-hack-wikileaks>) had some ominous notes in it, with this (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/27/us-attorney-general-julian-assange-extradition-case-political-ends-uk-court-told) providing an update with COVID19 playing an oblique part (delaying his hearing until at least Sept 2020?) > 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. My instinct/experience (which is limited to what it is, and what it has been informed by) is that hierarchies are an *easy* way to satisfice multiple goals and constraints by developing scale free-structure. I also believe, however, that multiple hierarchies intersect or conjoin in complex emergent systems, sometimes in obvious ways (the root and branch systems of a pinon tree growing within the landscape of an arroyo system, the former mildly constraining the latter (erosion control) and the latter providing constraints (suitable conditions water/shade/soil chemisty for germination and continued growth). A more muddled but poignant example might be mammalian (or any living system really) physiognomy: The cardio-vascular system doing primarily material, energy and heat transport, the lymph system augmenting the vascular system with policing functions, the neural system running comms, and other systems like skeletal, kidney/liver/spleen organs mostly providing support to the vascular, gastro-intestinal/lungs/skin providing chemical interfaces to their embedded environment, and the sensory mechanisms/organs interfacing with "information", etc. Multiple *-archies evolved with ?obvioius? (in hindsight) goals and constraints criss-crossing to yield yet-more-complex function than any strict hierarchy could likely support by itself? > 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. *This IS* what I'm interested in recognizing/discovering... a key perhaps to part of the holy grail of characterizing form/function duality. > 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. I agree with the intuitive dissonance, both as a small-business (though only a "corporation", LLC in form) owner myself (3 times in 3 different phases of life), and as an observer/critic of the larger field of corporativity. The early history of incorporated (ad)ventures may be illustrative. Recently (re)reading Moby Dick, the references to the financing of whaling ventures in fractional parts owned by everyone from primary owners and captains to little-old-ladies-in-Nantucket to Ahab and Queequeg similar sailors/harpooners, I am reminded that corporations have a history, somewhat embedded in the history of mercantilism and subsequent industrialization. The mercantile-centric megacorps like Dutch East/West Indian and Hudson Bay company come to mind and I suspect proto-corporate examples from a millenia or more before with the Silk Road and other stylized trade routes presage what was more formalized with the Amsterdam Stock Exchange formed around commodities but then expanded into more abstract things... To the extent that corporations (latin /corpus/ - body of people) were formed under the permission/encouragement/regulation of existing political bodies (monarchies, oligarchies, parliaments, etc.) by and for individuals or small groups of individuals, I agree that there is a huge element of *will* involved. > 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". I suppose what I'm gesturing at is the extent to which it seems like corporations represent an emergent structure that channels that "will", with more tangible/tractable/concrete (yet still abstracted) concepts like money/currency and political influence. Perhaps in all (or most) cases, one can find that corporations are actually in the service of, and under the direction of, one or a small number of willful individuals. I suppose this is what founders, officers, boards, major shareholders are, while the rest of us, if we have a stake at all are simply pawns and tools in their games. Add an extra level of indirection through mutual funds, pensions, etc. and it all gets yet more muddy, though that is where the emergent structures might seem to form? Maybe it is another one of my (in)famous tangents, but I remember someone doing a fairly thorough analysis (over 10 years ago) on Apple fanBoi's, demonstrating (through a spreadsheet) if instead of purchasing an Apple Product in say 1984 or 1990 or 2000, that if they had invested the same $$ into the Apple Corporation, they would now (in many/most cases) be millionaires. The inverse of "for want of a nail, the war was lost"? "Forgoing a nail and purchasing a tiny share in the nail factory...". To all who read this far: I realize that my larding style/nature combined with my fecund (if not actually fertile) style generates multifurcating threads like Borges "Forking Paths", and am used to only one (if that) of my fraying subthreads getting picked up. mumble, - Steve > > 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. >
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