My recent rethinking of the OODA, combined with:

• recent reading of Thomas Barnett’s The Pentagon’s New Map, and


• Steve DeAngelis’ latest post at Enterprise Resilience Management Blog, “Networked Civilization Revisited,” and


• ZenPundit Mark Safranski’s lastest focus on complexity, especially as it relates to civilizational resiliency ( by looking at DeAngelis’ ideas),

…has led me to rethink at least one idea I posited in my series on the Revised OODA; namely, my consideration of

the superstitious theory that we are all somehow “connected” via a “network” and able to act upon each other metaphysically or outside the realm of physics…

[“EBO is Everything in War — Almost”]

I am in no way dissuaded from this thought by the excellent thoughts of Barnett, DeAngelis, and Safranski, although I’ll admit that I hemmed and hawed in my last post in that series when I addressed the subject of networks and complexity there.  Part of the problem with that series vis-a-vis the subject of complexity lies in the fact that I addressed the subject in a manner some might think is too skeptical.  By stressing the difference between causes and reasons while insisting that we may only act physically upon the world, I left wide gaps in my analysis — necessarily.  There will be gaps.   (If not, then perhaps I am overfond of the idea of gaps and my knee-jerk dismissal of the superstitious faith in abstract constructs-as-concrete realities has…mystically guided my pen! Or else my abstract diagrams have shown me to be a hypocrite.)

The subjects of complexity and “networks” irritate me because they are so obviously a type of shorthand.  First, in writings addressing the subject, I often detect too much focus on those abstractions and a corresponding dismissal of the concrete.  This is the major irritation.  The minor irritation involves my suspicion — well-founded or not — that a consideration of the subjects will be very important for the future of humanity.  The major irritation is actually partly a result of the minor, since such broad dismissal of the concrete leaves me feeling as if the needs of the future will not be met by all the long trains of dialogue on the two subjects.

And yet, if my vision of the Revised OODA is accurate, then I must consider how any focused human act (the most conscious kind) will always follow a process of abstraction.  This gives me hope.

At the moment, I’m too afraid this post will turn into another long analysis, and the last three posts have already taken up much time and energy for this week.  So I’ll be exceedingly brief on the subject of this post — leaving a great many gaps, I am sure — and plan to take up the subject again at another time.

A few things from the linked sources caught my eye today and reminded me of another quibble I have had:  that the term “rule sets” can so easily be a frightful term.  Rules and rulership.  Thomas Barnett actually makes a point early in PNM of … ruling out that sort of rule, when he describes rule sets; and, Steve DeAngelis in his linked blog post speaks of “automated rule sets.”  And yet the talk about rule sets often reminds me of the movie The Matrix.  If not a tyrannical establishment of rules, nonetheless the rule sets will operate in the background largely out of our observational focus.  I.e., in reference to the Revised OODA, those desired rule sets will be so broadly agreed-upon, the acts flowing from their broad acceptance will be largely habitual or reflexive.  Whenever we must act, or whenever we choose to act, in a focused manner in any future world, those rule sets may be quite on our minds (along with a consideration of the punishments for breaking them.)  But as with many current and past rule sets, most people who have long ago agreed upon them will follow them habitually, perhaps without even being much aware that they are.  (Hence, my tenuous analogy with The Matrix.)  That is the ideal version of the future, at least in the way it is often described: “automated rule sets.”

And, that seems about right.

Another thing that has caught my eye today:  the broad subject of complexity, poured through the needle-hole of Dr. Yaneer Bar-Yam’s article, “Complexity Rising: From Human Beings to Human Civilizations, a Complexity Profile.”   Actually, I have not read that essay thoroughly —yet —but only skimmed it and looked at the diagrams.  But I have read Steve DeAngelis’ partial consideration of it, in the post linked above.  It is a fascinating subject.  This section of one of Bar-Yam’s diagrams caught my eye the most, especially in collusion with DeAngelis’ thoughts:



DeAngelis postulates a grid of rule sets — formal and informal — that will guide a healthy, happy, and civil networked society:

The most complex of [Bar-Yam’s] topologies depicts what I refer to as the global information grid. This is not to be confused with the Department of Defense’s Global Information Grid, which is global only in the sense that the U.S. military uses it around the world. The global information grid to which I refer includes all nets and all connections. The vastness of the grid, the enormity of its content, and the volume of its transactions are almost too great to imagine. The question is how does one maintain some sort of coherence in such a networked civilization?

I believe Bar-Yam lays out a clear and present need for automated rule sets that provide dynamic governance throughout the grid. I use the word “governance” with some hesitation since it conjures up images of big brother trying to exercise control of the grid. That is definitely NOT what I mean. I’m referring to a set of automated rules that help harness the power of the global information grid and optimize its operation. Every civilization has formal and informal rules that help it advance and avoid chaos. Automated rule sets would contain the minimum, agreed upon protocols necessary to make the networked civilization — for want of a better term — civil.

Here is where my hesitation enters.  For some time now, I’ve been uneasy with the quick analogies between humans and computers, via the term “network.”  However the term originated, it has grown to cover both, computers linked via electronic and optic signals and humans linked by……well, lots of things.  The similarities between both types of organization are fairly obvious at this stage of the game; I only worry about the tendency to forget dissimilarities in our quick rush to unveil the mystical   I have addressed my hesitation before, when I wrote about the tendency to name the objects being considered in metaphor identicals.

Computers, after all, only do what they are made to do.  (Even if, of course, we do not fully realize how we’ve made them.)  They operate totally by cause & effect, and are not yet able to reason.  This is a great mark against the analogy.

Another mark against the analogy involves how the two networks connect.  Because computers operate by cause & effect, whatever electronic/optic signals are sent between them will have a direct effect, and these chains of cause & effect can be diagrammed — kind of like the last figure in Bar-Yam’s diagram.  Humans “connect” in very similar ways when we use language: a signal is sent out (e.g., via sound or light), and another human observes/receives that signal.  But humans “connect” in many other ways, ways which cannot be diagrammed quite like computer networks.  For instance, I kick a ball, it goes over a fence and down a hill and splashes into the ocean; 3 months from now, someone finds that ball on a beach in South Africa.  This is not quite communication as we normally think of it, but it may be a type of connection.  What distinguishes this sending-out-of-ball from sending-out-of-sounds or sending-out-of-light (e.g., flares)?  In any case, human connectivity as it is often discussed, vis-a-vis globalization, involves many types of connection beyond linguistic communications:  essentially, how one human or a group of humans can be a cause for an effect another observes — even if the two groups are “connected” through many chains of cause & effect.  But these chains do not run in neat and predetermined lines like computer networks.

The third great mark against the analogy has already been mentioned twice.  If I unplug my computer from my phone line, it becomes “disconnected.”  The only way to disconnect a human is to kill that human.  (Granted, his energy and matter will still be “connected” into the system, thus to living humans, but he won’t be a human any more.)    Lock him in an American prison, and he’s still connected to the world; that world continues to “see” him and react from their observation.  And yet the simple Connected/Disconnected analogy requires such pseudo-scientific, pseudo-rational network analogies.

I didn’t meant to write a diatribe, when I began this post.  So I hope the above is not read as one.  In fact, the progression in Bar-Yam’s diagram seems very important, and particularly the prediction of the loosely-diagrammed “network” organization for human society.  Given what I have written above, however, I’m tempted to consider an alternate diagram for that image, although I have not actually worked out one; it would be something like this quick sketch:



Heh.  Each dot is a human, and the arrows represent their causation in the “network”, or on the Revised OODA, their Physical Acts and chains of cause/effect leading from those acts.  Of course, humans can agree to act within certain rules, like the rules of the road — necessarily, because if a car could come at us from any direction whatsoever, who would want to drive!  And we see in some examples (say, Iraq) that one individual can easily affect so many others in just such an outward-explosion of physical matter resembling these arrows…

Now that I’ve toyed with that diagram, I’m curious to see what would happen if we started as above and began to draw certain colors of arrows leading from different people, to represent similar actions…and then removed all arrows not of one color, say, and next time isolate another color.  Or, leave several colors while removing all others, and noting where lines crossed to form different hues.  Unfortunately, most diagrams of human “networks” are similar simplifications; and worse, their pathing is really intended to represent the effect of rule sets upon the decision-making process of persons — and through that decision-making process, the types of activities shared by them:  just like for highways, a commonly-accepted rule-set will organize at least some of the activities of all those who adhere to that particular rule-set.  But even if we could see similarities in activity, this would not mean that those people are connected in a particular way (like the dots are not connected in the above sketch.)  It would mean that they’re going (doing) the same way (things).

Now that I’ve segued all over the map in ways I did not intend, let me get to the main idea that occurred to me as I read the work of Thomas Barnett, Mark Safranski, and Steve DeAngelis  today.

“Automated rule sets” are of course no such thing unless they come from the concrete world.  What I mean by this is simply that they cannot be “automated” unless they are by origin non-human.  For instance, I personally always follow the rule that if I walk or run, I’m going to stay within the atmosphere of the Earth.  That’s an automatic rule-set that I don’t have to think about much, and it always guides my activity.  Interestingly, when we use the term “automated,” we usually think of machinery: i.e., non-human things, even if they have been created by humans.  This is interesting because much of PNM theory and DeAngelis’ business model suggests that whatever the rule sets are, they must be put in place by humans before they can be set to “automatic,” whether they are new laws, new security forces, new markets, etc.  But anything that can be created by a human can be destroyed by another human or else by non-human elements such as the weather, rivers, etc.  Thus, whatever non-human  forces are designed, created, and built by humans for maintaining rule sets will themselves need to be maintained.

Maintenance of markets and the like will require the efforts of humans — which is why I say that “automated rule sets” are not, most of the time.

Of late, much blogospheric discussion of rule sets never fails to include different types of security measures — whether well-armed and well-distributed and well-trained police forces or a unified Core with all the necessary institutions to enforce and maintain the “good” rule sets.  What caught my eye today, Bar-Yam’s diagram, threw a wrench into that consideration, because such an enforcer of rule-sets would by necessity sit somewhere at the top of the hierarchy — i.e., this would result in some  sort of organization similar to, if not identical with, one of the first four control structures in Bar-Yam’s diagram.

Now, of course, dreams of idealized democracy (and even, capitalism) promote the notion that a networked-society can self-maintain rule sets.  But are we really believing, when we dream such things, that an egalitarian society may emerge as that ultimate network?  Or will there always be hierarchies?  Will secure enclaves form egalitarian subcultures, with high walls and security measures between each enclave?  (I.e., do the squares and dots in Bar-Yam’s “networked civilization” represent enclaves rather than persons — or nations rather than persons?)

Bar-Yam does include this near the end of his essay:

In conclusion, the implication of the disappearance or dramatic changes in centrally controlled human organizations is that the behaviors of collections of human beings do not simplify sufficiently to be controlled by individuals. Instead of progressive simplification from an individual to larger and larger collections of individuals, we have the opposite:  an increasing complexity that is tied to an increasing complexity of the demands of the environment. This makes it impossible for an individual to effectively control collective behaviors.

That is an argument against totalitarianism, or even, one might suppose, state legislation of issues like morality, but I cannot help chuckle when I read “that the behaviors of collections of human beings do not simplify sufficiently to be controlled by individuals.”  Ha!  Controlled by……which individuals?  Themselves?  The dream of complexity-and-network theorists who have not given up on hope for humanity rests on the ideas 1) that humans can come together to solve complex social-dynamics problems and 2) that a resilient and healthy society will have individuals who are able to self-regulate.  They will be their own punishers.  In truth, however, there will probably be majority-minority imbalances, of those following different rule sets,  in which cases whatever anti-social behaviors (rule-sets) appear will be dealt a blow by the majority who are “social” — or, who are following and maintaining their own commonly agreed-upon rule-sets.  Even without the type of totalitarian domination we know from history, these “balanced” majorities will be the managers in the hierarchy although specific individuals elected to manage the whole network may change through processes like elections, etc.  So we are back to hierarchical systems, even if we also have networks, and it’s tempting to redraw Bar-Yam’s final diagram into a type of hybrid, with managers above and the “complex network” below — this, incidentally, brings to mind the image of Doc Oc trying to hold the fusion reaction together with his mechanical arms, in the second Spider-man movie.

But what if sufficient numbers of humans could actually come together to form networks resilient against the attacks of outsiders or other networks?  DeAngelis looks for a “singularity,” or a point at which such a self-maintaining system might occur.  In terms of the Revised OODA, this singularity would require that enough individual humans Act in such a way that however the concrete World is changed by their actions, others viewing the World would find reason to accept what they see.  The changed World would fit within the parameters of their already-formed mental constructs; or, at the very least, whatever unexpected changes occur would be quickly resolved into their mental constructs, enlarging their “worldview.”  However, when plenty of information does not match up to their expectations, and if it cannot be synthesized with what they already know, no resilient network can form:





In such a case, several things occur.  As with 3GW, much new information enters the abstract process and, like a blitzkrieg, can paralyze the observer into a constant Observe-Orient-Decide(Hypothesis) loop — vis-a-vis the new information.  Or, a person may act impulsively on that information he observed but did not expect, acting even outside the realm of his understanding; and this will lead to an Impulsive Act that changes the World —



— as physical acts do. Such changes may not bear much relation to Mental Constructs formed in the past, and this means that more new information will enter into the Abstract OODA when the person views that changed World, increasing “chaos.” At the same time, the person will act habitually or reflexively, or in a focused manner, on whatever within the world matches up with expectations; i.e., on old information such as ideologies or old world views.  If the World keeps changing, the observer may only wake up one day to find that his current operational rule sets — formed as they are on outdated information — are woefully inadequate.





Forced to see the changed world —




— he may not be up to the task of understanding it.  In fact, he may resist the notion that his rule-sets need reset:  If he just focuses on his familiar paradigm, does what he knows will work, everything will work out fine.  All that new information?  He forms some ideas about what it means, from his old understanding of the world, but continues to question these ideas; or, may act upon them as if everything “fits” together with what he expects, impulsively.

Eventually, knowing that the World is changing — and, often in undesirable ways caused by his own impulsive acts or his failure to act — he begins to re-set:





First, he stops acting impulsively, attempts more and better analysis and synthesis; eventually, he decides that his analysis is correct and forms an understanding or ideology. This information feeds back into Observe along with whatever new information the World is providing. If he acts, he acts with focus from this changed understanding and also may act habitually or reflexively from this understanding. He may have been wrong in his understanding; but when these mistaken decisions recycle into Observe — i.e., when he views the handiwork of his Actions — he re-analyzes this data and other new data and begins the process all over again.  The more his understanding proves true over time, the more likely he’ll begin to act habitually or reflexively in the world from that understanding.

These diagrams are intended to show individual reactions within and to the world.  But I have not designed a diagram for the hypothetical “singularity” for a resilient global society, which according to “rule set theory” would require that a significant number of individuals would have mostly common understandings of the world.  I suspect that such a diagram would not be what one might think — not a straight shot from World to Observe to Decide to Understand and then to mostly habitual and reflexive acts, with some focused acts also informed by that unchanging understanding.  The World is so very complex, and even if we could come to an excellent and comprehensive understanding of it, and even if a large percentage of humans could come to that understanding, forces beyond human control could still change it in extremely unexpected ways.  (Surprise asteroids, for instance; or, surprise visitors from outer space; or, who knows, but “alternate Universe ‘branes’ ” colliding with ours….)

Rather than a straight-shot GO! green, I would expect a necessity for a philosophy of change, or some system of thought shared by all which equally acknowledged the limits of human observation (and thus, reason.)  Bar-Yam came close to suggesting the same thing when he wrote “This makes it impossible for an individual to effectively control collective behaviors.”  That is the fear that all anti-authoritarians share.  One reason for this impossibility is very major:  Our limited observational capabilities.  Extreme insularity would serve as an example; but we are all insular to some extent, with very limited chances for viewing the world.  For instance, unless most everyone became a jack-of-all-trades and a master-of-all, the chances that career paths would continue to focus different people on different subsections of the world largely to the exclusion of other subsections increase dramatically.  These observations of our niches — even niches within the geography and biosphere of Earth — feed into our OODA and lead to mental constructs, or understandings, of the world based in large part on those observations.  Some of this difference in observation histories can be offset with grand ideologies — philosophies, religions, etc. — that anticipate the relationships between concrete particulars we have never before witnessed; but we have seen, also, the dangerous way that an orthodox and unchanging ideology can work — as in the first OODA diagram above, occupying our activity while we largely ignore facts that do not match our ideologies.

No, I suspect that a resilient ideology or religion (call it what you will; call it an understanding if you like) would resemble something like the last Rule-Set Reset diagram above.  Is there such a thing as a perpetual Rule-Set Reset, which nevertheless does not impede our ability to Act with understanding?  I think that maybe skepticism comes close — but not the variety that dismisses all knowledge as impossible and all observations as being suspect.  As stated above, some common understanding of the world — beyond an understanding of our limitations — would be required.  Actions within the world resulting from that understanding would lead to changes in the world that are not major shocks to other observers; thus, I am not suggesting the pseudo-RSreset of blind multiculturalism and nihilism.

Oh look! I wasn’t as brief as I thought I’d be…! ;)

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See also:  Social OODA Loops / Networks

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Update: added link to the next related post.