Self-organisation is used to describe a system
that gets more complex and/or
orderly over time without any plans, leadership or any outside force.
If no
one is planning or leading it, exactly how
does it happen?
The way the individuals or things within are connected causes unexpected
results to arise from the population as a
whole. This can be seen in flocking birds and schooling fish. One set
of rules for flocking is this: 1) Fly towards the centre of
the group. 2) Try to match the speed of your neighbour. 3) Don't bump
into anyone or anything.
Even you knew that individual birds flew
according to these rules, would you have predicted flocking before
knowing about it? Few would.
That is
why it is unexpected.
Does a
self-organisational system need to be made up of living beings or not?
It does not matter at all. It works equally well whether the population
is made up of computer code, bits of robots, birds or people.
What is the
difference between
self-organisation with and without a goal?
A system self-organising without a goal may simply become
orderly or take on a specific characteristic. For example, a snow flake
is water molecules self organising
themselves in accordance to their nature, but that system is
not trying to solve
a problem.
This is a video of ferrofluid self-organising.
A system self-organising towards a goal is something else entirely. In
such a system, an individual's performance is measured against
their
peers in a specific task. Over time, successful traits and
organisations are empowered while unsuccessful ones are diminished.
Individuals within such a system
rarely notice these forces because they usually
act outside
their
normal awareness.
This is a video presenting the findings of a researcher working with
goal driven self-organisational systems (evolutionary systems) using
inanimate objects.
Ignore the rather sensational 'self-aware' tag.
Are there
any practical uses for
self-organisation?
Absolutely. They are capable of solving problems that no other method
can. For example, click here to read a news report of a
revolutionary new way to manufacture solar cells using
self-organisation.
Explaining the uses of goal driven self-organisational systems is a
little more complicated. Basically, this kind of system is best at
optimising performance in a complex environment.
For those of you of a more rigorous nature, the video to the right
does slowly and technically explain the benefits and pitfalls of such a
system. The subject is neural networks for Java.
How do you direct a goal seeking self-organisation system?
In
a goal seeking system, any advances towards the goals are rewarded. In
Hod Lipson's system he rewarded robots that were able to move the best
by letting them populate the next generation the most. This way, the
most successful traits become the most common traits in the next
generation. Then the best of the best populates the next generation.
Whatever
empowers the individuals within the system becomes the evolutionary
imperative. That imperative can be anything. In Lipson's system it
was moving robots. In Hillis' system (see Note lower down in the
sidebar) it was number sorting programmes. For academics it is
citations. For polical parties it is votes.
So what has
this to do with us?
We think society has entered a goal driven human
self-organisational
process. Just as Lipsons's robots are rewarded for movement and Hillis'
programmes are rewarded for sorting numbers, societal organisations are
being rewarded for
their ability to accumulate money. The most successful become
the most empowered and their practices and values quickly propogated
throughout society. Others strive to mimic the most monetarily
successful people and organisations.
Any person or
organisation that fails to accumulate money becomes disempowered and
their practices and values become effectively extinct. Who seeks to understand and
duplicate the economic practices of Zimbabwe or the Kogi? In fact, how
many people know who the Kogi are?
As simple as this is, the implications are profound.
Part 2: Society's
Goal and Its Implications
What
are the implications of society becoming self-organised?
When
self-organisation works towards a goal it will relentlessly change
itself and all its population to best satisfy that goal over
all other considerations. It has proven
itself capable of generating solutions outside human
comprehension (Source: see NOTE on the right).
Whenever we try to counter the societal goal using our normal means of
intervention (willpower, planning, policy, law, popular vote, awareness
campaigns etc) even though we can frequently win the battle, we constantly
lose ground in the war.
If
we have entered a self-organisational process, it would seem to many
that some invisible but impossibly strong power were somehow
controlling us, programming us, manipulating us towards some hidden
goal.
What
is society's self-organisational goal?
To organise society so that it is the most monetarily efficient over all other factors.
What
is wrong with monetary efficiency?
Nothing if everything else remained equal. But everything else does not
remain equal.
Over
the generations, our society is driving towards efficiency over all
other things. That includes any other life on earth (see extinctions),
over the happiness of other people (1 billion hungry is only one
example), over
happy childhoods (see the unrest in schools), over the health of
our planet's ecoculture and the list could go on
and on.
Why
don't we simply use policy and law or create a popular movement to get
rid of the bad effects?
In any goal seeking self-organisational system, thousands of battles can be
won while the war is lost.
Recently,
many in power have become aware of just how important our ecoculture is
to our wellbeing and how damaged it was becoming. It was
so important that an international agreement was signed by 200
countries in 2002 to get rid of this 'bad effect'. Click here
to see how that worked out. In a nutshell, it didn't work. As a
result, world leaders decided to solve the problem by signing an
agreement ...
Action that interferes with the goal of a self-organising system will
be nullified using solutions that can be beyond human
comprehension (remember Hillis). Consider: would protecting society
against even a low possibility of climate change be such a problem if
economic efficiency wasn't an issue?
You
can see this in action in your own neighbourhood. Any initiative that
somehow
makes money is empowered. On the other hand, projects tremendously
help people or nature but make no money fade and die over time.
The way we have been doing things has not worked. Doing more of the
same it will continue not to work. We will
continue to win important
battles
and
while still losing the war. The forces defending the
self-organisational goal cannot be underestimated. It can even make us
not see any problem.
Here is a
stand up comic revealing the absurdity of some of what is going on right now in the area of climate change. Caution: bad
language.
What
can we do about this?
First
of all, you need to decide for yourself whether we are right or not.
The only way to do that is to have a look for yourself. We believe the
evidence for this is literally all around us.
We think you can
see it influencing government policy at all levels and that all of
our perceptions are altered, especially in regard to what is 'good for
us'. Awareness is key.
But then what? We have been criticised
for not precisely saying what action we should take. There are a number
of very power steps we can take.
In the 1900's the
US Forestry service began looking for the answer to lower the
incidence of forest fires. The correct answer was to light more forest
fires as has been proven correct over the last century. However, if you
told them this correct answer before they spent 20 years finding
out for themselves, they would think you were mad. There are power solutions available to us. However, they will not
make sense without a basic awareness of how human self-organisation
forces influence our daily life, our thoughts and our opinions.
The first step is awareness.
Hold on! Did you not just tell us awareness campaigns do not work?
Yes. In case you missed it, here is where we said it.
See how quickly things stop making 'common' sense when dealing with complex systems?
Whenever
an awareness campaign challenges the human self-organisational
problem-solving system, it will eventually fail. Even if a
campaign appears to win a huge battle, self-organisation will still win
the war. Just ask the people involved in the 'Feed the World' awareness
campaign.
The trick is that we are not challenging the
human self-organisation imperatives. What we are hoping is that you
will help us transform the human self-organisational imperative to
one that empowers life (or whatever is chosen) instead of money accumulation.
The first
and most important step to this is that you make an effort to
better understand human self-organisation and to tell others about it.
This
is a deceptively powerful move. If successful, it will have tremendous
ramifications that would be difficult to explain in this short space.
What
specific steps can I take?
At this stage, all we are asking is to take the time to try to
see how human self-organisation may be playing out in your life. We have
a blog where you can explore this with us.
Once you begin to understand, try to involve other people. Understanding
at all levels will likely come in stages.
Practical steps will become self-evident as the understanding deepens.
If we succeed, what will happen? Is it worth it?
This is the most exciting part of all.
If
we are right, by changing the goal of human self-organisation, the entire
quality of life will change with almost no effort.
The reason it seems so hard to do the
right thing today (not pollute, not make species extinct, not buy or do
things that create some horror in the world) is that doing so
goes against the goal of human self-organisation. As such, the
entire environment of society creates a 'reality' that resists the kind
of behaviour that we know is ultimately good for us.
Change the
goal and the path of least resistence also changes. Instead of being hard not to cause
damage it will become hard not to cause good. In other
words, the path of least resistence will lead to life, not death. The
path of least resistence will lead to long-term prosperity, not an
inevitable destruction of much of the life on earth.
The right goal could
benefit everything living on earth. Humanity could become a nurturing
force instead of an extinction event. Individuals would have to work
hard to cause damage because doing so would be going against the
human self-organisational goal.
The path of least resistence could lead us to a level of life that right now only exists as whispers in our hearts.
This
is Hod Lipson's graph showing how different 'species' of robots
appeared and then how many went 'extinct' as time goes on.
The beginning
of time is at the top of this chart. (source)
The video
below shows some of the 'species' that emerged.
Video
explaining neural networks for Java.
NOTE for text in the left: In The Pattern on the Stone
Danny Hillis describes how he created an artificial goal seeking
self-organisational system to organise random computer code to
create a programme that would beat human programmers at a specific
task. As Hillis set the system's evolutionary imperative (the goal), it
was no surprise that his system created a formidible solution.
However when he looked at how the resulting programme worked, he says
that he believes no one could comprehend how it did so. We know it
works because when we run it, it does exactly what it is supposed to
even though we don't know how it does it.
Hillis' experiment is also described in Steven Johnson's popular
science book Emergence.
This
is a very simple example of human self-organisation. It is not evolving
towards a solution.
This is a busy intersection with no central control
such as traffic lights. Notice how the pedestrians mix freely with the traffic.
