My World of “Ought to Be”
by Timothy Wilken, MD










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Monday, October 21, 2002
 

This is a repost of essay first posted in September with comments by two scientists.


DYMAXION: More with Less

When we examine the biological needs of a number of single celled organisms surviving as individuals versus the needs of the same number of cells working together within the body of an organism, we find the cells working together are able to reduce their biological needs by 100 to 1000 times. The bodies of all living systems are organized synergically. That means the cells work together and solve the problems of survival as a unified team.

These facts from biology were the basis of my prediction in my description of ORTEGRITY, that humans organized synergically could expect 100 to 1000 times increases in productivity and efficiency. As you know, Ortegrity is designed to insure that all members win and internal conflict is eliminated.

Recall that the larger a tensegrity is, the more powerful it will be. Synergic science predicts this will also be true for human organizations structured as Ortegrities. Therefore, I would expect a trend towards very large organizations.

Imagine, what could be possible if the entire human species were a single organization. The synergic strategies of Ortegrity could be used to organize all of humanity into a single level 12 Ortegrity up to a limit of 13,841,287,201 humans.

In our present world, with its obsession with growth and growing larger, whenever I have presented the ORTEGRITY to business people, they have been excited by the possibility of increasing production. However, they tend to overlook the point that these systems could be 100 to 1000 times more efficient.

Now being more productive doesn't mean you have to produce more. It also means you could produce what you need in less time and then have more time for yourself and your family. Being more efficient means you can do with a lot more with less energy and matter. If these biological truths hold up for humans organizing synergically, we could do much more with a great deal less.

This morning I realized there was another way to look at this synergic power.

What this efficiency means is that the ecological footprint of 6 billion synergically organized humans could be as low as that of  60 million to 6 million of today's adversary-neutrally dis-organized humans.

Now how we would live we would be very different. There would be very few people moving in powered vehicles. Most of today's products would disappear. We would focus on creating a few great products that met our individual and collective needs. Human wants would be serviced only after energy analysis and cost to benefit ratio determined that such wants were acceptable. 

There would be a continuing competition to design the best of any type of tool, and then only that "state of the art" tool would be created and shared by groups of humans working and living together. There would only be one brand of any device. Competition would occur in the design studio. Prototypes would be made, but only the very best would be manufactured.

Energy wasting hobbies and activities would be greatly curtailed if not completely eliminated. All activities would be examined for energy requirements, and the only activities allowed would be those with acceptable cost to benefit ratios.

This change to synergy with energy responsibility could bring a major resurgence in music and the arts, writing, poetry, theater, singing ,dancing, debate, discussion, lectures, etc., etc.. But, I expect, we would see no one taking a joy ride in a vehicle powered by an internally combustion engine.


Response from Chris Lucas, CALResCo 
Subject: Regarding the Synergic Organization of Humanity and the Efficiency of...

Dear Chris,
 
I apologize for the length of time it has taken me to respond to this note. I am too busy. Your note was written nearly a month ago in response to my epaper reposted above:
This morning I had an insight that I feel is very important. When we examine the biological needs of a number of single celled organisms surviving as individuals versus the needs of a similar number of cells working together within the body of an organism, we find the cells working together are able to reduce their biological needs by 100 to 1000 times. The bodies of all living systems are organized synergically.
 
These facts from biology...
Chris: What was the source of these facts, anything online ?
 
When I originated the Organizational Tensegrity it was 1984. So the internet did not exist at least not for me. I came to this conclusion from my extensive readings in Living Systems Theory. I think from something I read in James Grier Miller's work. I was reading lots of other writers at about the same time so I may be crediting the wrong scientist. I will see what I can find.
There would only be one brand of any device.
Chris: Whoa ! Humans are NOT identikit objects, our needs are individual. What you suggest here is a bureaucratic nightmare scenario - one size fits all (and suits nobody, even Macdonalds understand they need more than one sort of hamburger...) ! We have such standardisation nonsense already in the European Community and want shut of it :- A better way would be to emphasise modularity, so that each 'device' could be custom assembled to meet individual needs (much as the early PC allowed cards to be inserted to customise it to infinite different configurations of hardware and software), i.e. a 'quality' ingredient approach not a single dish menu. Nobody would even consider standardising painting or gardens I hope (even though the components are fairly standard), 'devices' are no different ;-).
 
I think we need to think outside the box. Today our adversary-neutral culture creates millions of lousy products and even brands of products. Do we really need 30 different kinds of toilet paper. Now when functional differences exist, we may need a different product to accomplish a different function, but as the ideal we should seek, the best product to accomplish a single function. I see a continuting design competition to continually create and recreate the state of art solution to any particular problem, but once that design is found only the best product should be manufactured.
 
Now let us examine the most successful living system. The human body. We don't find 12 different kinds of hearts in 12 different people. They all have the same heart at least in terms of design. Synergic organization seeks the dymaxion solution to any functional problem. What solves the problem with the greatest elegance. What does more for less. The human heart is continually redsigned by the process of evolution to ideally best fit with the environment, but there are not 12 brands of the heart.
 
The same is true for the white blood cells. There are many different white blood cells but they differ by function. There is only once design for each function. Evolution continually refines and improves that design.
 
This dymaxion principle is what allows for 10 to 100 orders of magnitude in increased efficiency. Working together means working together.
Energy wasting hobbies and activities would be greatly curtailed if not completely eliminated.
Chris: Welcome Stalin or is it Orwell ? No thank you, Mr Dictator... I, for one, am human not a machine ! I'm sure you don't intend it to be like that, but enforcing such edicts will require coercion, people will always say their activities are 'efficient' and necessary whilst claiming those of others are neither (and no activity is NOT energy wasting, that is what 'dissipative' means).
 
Yes, all activities will use energy. But some activities to accomplish similar functions will be more efficient than others. Today, I can go the store in a SUV at 10 miles to gallon or I can go to the store in a Toyota Corolla at 30 miles to the gallon. Both use energy, but the trip in the Corolla is much more energy efficient.
 
In any case energy in an extrinsic variable, so any cut-off-point would be arbitrary (what I'd call a systemic disvaluation of an extrinsic value). From the point of view of the synergic veto, if someone doesn't agree with you then you don't do it I presume. I'd say some 90% of the worlds population currently would veto any attempt to restrict them in such a way, but would deny your 'right' to do the same to them. What then ?
 
This is a misunderstanding of the synergic veto. The only basis for a synergic veto is to prevent someone from losing. Those exercising their right to synergic veto are required to explain to remainder of the heterarchy who and how someone is losing. Then that individual vetoing is equally responsible for finding a solution to the problem that works for everyone.
Those activities that are not a squandering of matter-energy and that don't injury others would not be restricted. So I would expect you could fly your gliders and build your green house.
Chris: People have been hurt by gliders, and constructing 'optional' buildings does waste energy... We always need to compromise between risk and benefit, and also between work (exergy) and benefit. The 'footprint' concept is perhaps valuable here in that the risk we cause to others and the exergy (resources) we consume should be sustainable overall. If we nominally accept equal shares for all (to be used as they wish to meet their many needs) there are big discrepancies to smooth over to do this (U.S. 10.3 ha/cap, China 1.2 ha/cap, Bangladesh 0.5 ha/cap - 1997 figures for ecological footprints) and little sign of any willingness to do so (in the U.S. particularly nowadays).
 
We agree!
The best will be chosen by design competition.
Chris: Hm. If you have ever tried to get people to agree to anything like this you will have found out that it is impossible - e.g. beauty contests. This is not a matter of just allowing more time to gain a full consensus, there is NO ideal solution, and this is proved by complexity experiments in multiobjective optimization. There are MANY equally optimized possibilities typically, and the choice between these is lifestyle dependent and cannot be reduced to a single option (doing so actually harms the fitness of the synergic whole), see http://www.calresco.org/lucas/pmo.htm
 
I think we may be talking about apples and oranges. I envision  a continuous design competition to create an ever changing state of art solution to various problems. The best solutions--those that solve the problem the most elegantly, i.e. ergometric fit, efficiency, beauty, etc. etc.. would win.
 
The best ten would be prototyped and then compared in the real world, the best prototype would be manufactured until a new design comes along to make it obsolete. Ortegrity is a single system. All members are provided the best possible tools for every function.
 
I expect in the future there will be little need for automobiles. But as an example, let us imagine that the Ortegrity of all humanity would have various automobiles based again on function. There might be two person commuters, family station wagons, pick-up trucks, twenty-passenger buses, etc., etc., but just one state of the art model for each function. There is no advertising expenses. No showroom expenses. Access to these would be by reservation from a community centered garage. These are the kinds of changes that can lead to marked increase in efficiency and access to high quality services.
 
In a sense this relates to the idea of Ortegrity, where an heterarchical group agrees on a plan, and forms an hierarchy to implement such. Here the 'device' is the result of that plan (even if those involved are not personally involved in creating it). In complexity terms, the 'device' is an emergent phenomenon and once created applies a 'downward causation' to the creating group, and this applies just as much to physical devices as to teams or worldviews. In complexity dynamics a system of many 'parts' will self-organize to create not just one emergent property but many simultaneously, and these will not be fixed properties of necessity but will typically ebb and flow, in space and in time - which rather reminds me of the idea that an hierarchical team (once the task is complete) will flow back into the heterarchy in readiness to form as a new team for a different task. This idea of a multiple choice dynamic, rather than a static agreement, is I think crucial to the success of an evolving synergic world since it is the combinatorial interaction of these diverse emergent properties that will generate the next level of synergy. This fractal structuring in both space and time (varying sizes and persistences of structures) together with the multiple level emergence should be what permits unlimited size syntegrities, since it naturally operates as a hierarchy of interacting smaller groups, but in my view each of us would need to be simultaneously members of multiple teams, since we all have multiple simultaneous roles and values to consider (i.e. team memberships would overlap dynamically).
 
I would agree with you that the process is very dynamic. But some tools i.e. a hammer or screwdriver haven't changed much in thousands of years. My continuing search for the ideal tools, upgraded whenever design is proven in prototype is a very dynamic process.
 
Whilst Utopian thinking is all very nice, any practical implementation of synergic thinking must take into account the behaviours of real humans and today's situation. Still see little sign of that I'm afraid in the lack of consideration of how stability would be maintained without coercion, i.e. the effects of perturbations on the dynamics. Recall that the body requires a rather elaborate and clever 'police force' to deal with threats to stability from both inside and out, what would be the social equivalent under Ortegrity ?
 
See Life Trust Guardians as discussed here: 3) Synergic Containment: Science & Rationale, and 4) Synergic Containment: Protecting Community
 
Timothy

 
Response from Win Wenger, Project Renaissance
Subject: Regarding the Synergic Organization of Humanity and the Efficiency of...
 
Dear Win,
 
Please see the above letter to Chris. I think it speaks to some of your concerns.
 
Win: I think I have to pretty much agree with Chris Lucas here.  Most of this refers to things I wouldn't give others the power to decide for me, so why should anyone give me (or anyone else) the power to decide them for them?
 
Today, we all buy products we don't want. Because we are all forced to choose from the products that get manufactured and offered for sale. When you see your physician, he chooses which medication you should take, because that is his expertise. A synergic design and prototype studio would seek to offer us the best choice. Then having limited choice is not a problem, especially when the offered best choice is a state of the art solution to a functional problem.
 
Win: We need the diversity - biology itself, evolution itself, favors the diversity.  If one thing turns out to be a bad mistake, not everyone dies from it and some life goes on.  Fortunately, we do live in a time when information technology makes it even cheaper to custom-fit than it used to be to mass-produce, as Chris noted. 
 
Ortegrity is modeled after living systems. See my above comment about the design of biological organs. 
 
 I have no argument against modularity and custom-fit. It may well be an approprate part of a dymaxion design. Different sizes for different people is not a different brand.
 
Win: Two other considerations:
 
1) We need badly to accelerate and expand the development of space.  So long as we're all stuck on one planet, we're forced toward one model, one destiny - see http://www.winwenger.com/part60.htm    With the opening of space we can be living out a million different destinies instead, some of which will be HUGELY better than anything devised now for us all on one planet even by the wisest and most brilliant planners.
 
I would love to move out into space. But I feel we will have to come to synergy here on Earth first, or we will never work well enough together to get off this planet.
 
2) Agreed there are quite a few products and activities whose consequences are known to be harmful; others which are known to be beneficial.  It is hell if anyone forces us all to conform to even the beneficial ones ...
 
I don't think that once we understand the health risks of cigarette smoking and the cost of this activity to both Humanity as Community as well as to Humanity as Individuals. Any act that deliberately hurts another is an adversary act. All adversary acts are prohibited. If I sell you a pack of cigarettes when I know those cigarettes will hurt you, that is an adversary act.
 
, but freedom is preserved if we but recognize the costs and benefits in our tax structure and use incentives to encourage people toward the beneficial and away from the harmful.  Even the father of market economics, Adam Smith, clearly recognized a number of areas, including indivisibilities, cost externalities and benefit externalities, where the market's "invisible guiding hand" steers people away from, rather than toward, the common good.  There is a lot which can be accomplished toward incentives.  My book "Incentives As A Preferred Instrument of Corporate and Public Policy" might be of some interest to you in such regards (reviewed in "Book Reviews" at http://www.winwenger.com). It's a heck of a lot easier to get people to do the desired thing if they do it for their own personal reasons, especially their own positive personal reasons.
 
Incentives certainly could be a powerful tool, but not to control and contain adversary events. I have discussed this much more completely here: 1) Beyond Crime and Punishment, 2) Synergic Containment: Protecting Children, 3) Synergic Containment: Science & Rationale, and 4) Synergic Containment: Protecting Community and 5) Synergic Disarmament: Wisdom, they shouldn't have
 
Sorry to join the discussion so late - I've been away several weeks teaching in South Africa, and my email arrangements trhere weren't working; lot to catch up on now.   ...win
 
Sorry it took me so long to respond to your letter.
 
Timothy
 
 

5:56:59 AM    


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