Talk:Conducive to Life

Denise/Norbert February 5th Discussion

--Norbert 15:15, 5 February 2007 (EST) Denise was particularly intrigued by Maibritt's eco-system principle "8. Ecosystems tend to create conditions favorable to sustained life

Production and functioning tends to be benign

Ecosystems tend to enhance the biosphere"

Questions raised by Denise are directly relevant to how principles differ from patterns:

• What about counter-examples, such as predator/prey relationships or defenses against predators (anti-bacterial/-fungal compounds, interference with bacterial signaling as practiced by some kelp.
  • --Fil Salustri 11:52, 7 March 2007 (EST): We can close the loop, sort of, by including a group of predator/prey (really, sink/source) relationships. Example: prey eats vegetation, predator eats prey, both predator and prey replenish the soil, so that with some sunlight, we get more vegetation. This goes to the notion of system-wide balance.
  • What exactly do we mean by life? Is it a specific organism or species, or is the context more at the ecosystem level?
    • --Fil Salustri 11:52, 7 March 2007 (EST): Depends on context. Contexts can be nested. Earth is one context. A particular ecosystem might be a sub(subsubsub...)context of it.

--Norbert 20:20, 15 August 2007 (EDT)** How do you know if you are successful? Is it survival of an organism/species, or has it more to do with creating a diverse, rich, vibrant and healthy environment? Other attributes discussed were adaptable, complex, resilient and robust.

• • • --Fil Salustri 11:52, 7 March 2007 (EST): I suggest success can only be measured in hindsight. Evolution seems to be working (modulo humanity's mucking about with it). Evolution favours adaptability. Complexity works only if it leads to better adaptability. Resilience and robustness are aspects, I think, of adaptability.
• Does 'enhance the biosphere' imply a positive feedback mechanism that encourages 'growth at all costs'?
  • Another interpretation might be creating order out of disorder, where 'enhance' refers to non-material growth.
    • --Fil Salustri 11:52, 7 March 2007 (EST): I think "enhance" is an artificial term, defined with respect to a value system. I don't think nature has a value system. Philosophically, humanity needs to decide if it's willing to accept the responsibility of artificially changing nature. If yes, then "enhance" is with respect to what we think is right; if no, then "enhance" is with respect to trends observed in nature minus any value judgements of our own.

Linked to this pattern is "6. Ecosystems tend to be made up of interdependent cooperative and competitive relationships

Emergent effects tend to occur

Systems tend to be self organising and distributed"

which suggests a shift away from developing specific solutions to creating conditions in which solutions can emerge. This raises questions about the desire for control and the difficulty of accepting uncertainty, a topic on which Jeremy Eddy has waxed eloquent.

• --Fil Salustri 11:52, 7 March 2007 (EST): This suggests to me the lack of intent I see in nature. Nature is a set of conditions. Things happen because nature is dynamic - physics and chemistry just happen all on their own. Sometimes, things happen that form self-sustaining loops. Humans are in such a loop. Because of our instinct for survival, we value the balance that the loop provides because it helps ensure our survival. IMHO, anyways.

As an aside, Denise mentioned the book Socrates Cafe: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy that promotes philosophy as something you do. According to Plato, "without wandering around and examining everything in detail one is unable to secure understanding." (Parmenides). I think this describes both an approach to developing patterns as well as a goal for the patterns themselves. Effective patterns should engage the reader in a dialog, encouraging them to think about 'What do you mean?' and 'How do you know?'

We also discussed how and when patterns become 'self-evident', in the sense of 'naturalizing Biomimicry in the culture'. Jared Diamond suggested in Collapse that the attributes that made societies successful in their youth often directly lead to their subsequent demise. Is our intelligence preventing us from 'seeing' and accepting patterns that seem to work quite nicely in nature without the benefit of intelligence.

Denise/Fil/Norbert February 6th Discussion

As Denise pointed out, there are numerous exceptions to 'Life creates conditions conducive to life'. Allelopathic plants release toxins that inhibit the development of other plants. Although not 'Red in Tooth and Claw', organisms need to carve out a niche and protect it from competitors, otherwise they will not pass on their genes and maintain the species. The paradox may be resolved by looking at the larger context rather than a specific example. Balanced competition may result in a proliferation of niches that in turn increase complexity and order in the face of the increasing entropy/disorder of the universe. Kelp blocking bacterial signaling may help create a balanced ecosystem by preventing the bacteria from overwhelming other organisms. This principle may be related to "Nature curbs excesses from within", in the sense of avoiding unconstrained growth.

• --Fil Salustri 11:52, 7 March 2007 (EST): Another way to look at the kelp behaviour: that kelp evolved in an environment with lots of competition for resources. But even with the kelp's toxins, there's other organisms around it - right? So that ecosystem evolved to find a balance that accounted for the toxins. Also, so long as the toxins don't kill all the other plants, then the plants that do die provide nutrients for the kelp. This could be the same as the predator/prey thing I mentioned above.

Part of the contradiction or paradox may arise out of inconsistent definitions - it is important (and acceptable) to clearly define what terms such as 'Life' mean early in the pattern.

Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics

--Norbert 20:20, 15 August 2007 (EDT): I believe the thread started by Martha and follow-on investigation of self-organizing hierarchical open (SOHO) systems helps explain the apparent contradictions in the Conducive to Life Pattern. I have started a Concepts page to capture these ideas, since they are likely also related to other ecosystem principles.

Possible Problem Statements

Target: Elementary Student Learning About Ecosystems

Definition of Life: balanced, rich, diverse and vibrant community of species. Creating increasing order complexity.

It may be necessary to define order, since a single-species situation might be seen as demonstrated increased order. Information theory concepts may be useful. Bryon S. Coffman in Weak Signal Research provides two definitions of order. Weiner refers to the degree of organization of a system with respect to the amount of information it contains or carries. In contrast, Shannon defines information as the degree of uncertainty in the next message to be received (if the message where predictable, then there would be no need to send it.

Problem: How can increased complexity and opportunity be created if the universe as a whole is running down (increased entropy)? If natural selection is a process that selects inheritable traits of organisms that are best suited for a specific environment, why do we not see many situations were a single species overwhelms all others?

Context: I believe we need to be working with an open system that has the ability to overcome increasing entropy. The system needs to be of large enough to support multiple niches, species and interactions. Landscape Ecology may provide insights on size considerations.

-Martha I was remembering something I read in Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan. (--Norbert 20:20, 15 August 2007 (EDT): moved to Nature Abhors a Gradient, referenced by Concepts).

Looking back on this, I am laughing. The target is elementary school learning about ecosystems. This was a fun little mental journey for me, but I don't know how well this can be distilled into concepts for elementary students.

Target: Design Firm

Definition of Life: I believe we should stay away from definitions that suggest 'saving the environment' - it sounds too much like philanthropy. From a business perspective, a 'living business' could be defined as one that thrives over an extended period of time, successfully dealing with challenges such as changing customer requirements, competition, government regulation, erosion of the 'social contract', resource constraints (material, financial, information, people).

Problem: My initial thought is that businesses are like tight-rope walkers - they constantly need to find the right mix between tactics (staying balanced) and strategy (moving to the other end of the rope). Businesses that focus on one aspect (say, price competition) may last for a short period, but ultimately will disappear. Sustained innovation is another aspect - how do you keep ahead, but not too far ahead. The linkage to ecosystems may be through the concept of niches - how as a business can I create a niche that protects me from rampant competition but at the same time does not isolate me from the larger environment.

Context: We could talk about a 'business ecosystem' that a specific business is embedded in. For practical reasons, that ecosystem needs to be bounded, otherwise information overload sets in.

--Fil Salustri 11:08, 8 March 2007 (EST): Some comments below.

While I get the tight-rope walkers analogy, there's a connotation of risk that we may prefer to avoid.

I agree we should avoid defs like "saving the environment."

Businesses already understand, at least in principle, the notion of balancing product lines, cost vs sales vs profit, near-term vs long-term. We should build on that to bring in sustainability.

Note that above, I noted pairs & triplets of conflicting goals. That's what balancing is all about. So if we want sustainability added to the mix, we need to know what opposes it. Sustainability vs what? Planned extinction? That can't be it. But you see what I mean.

Targeting zero-impact or even net zero-impact is not, IMHO, rational. The 2nd law of thermodynamics says zero-impact just ain't gonna happen. We might take something from continuous quality improvement here - the notion of constantly lessening impact. Businesses often see the constancy of CQI as a perpetual cost burden, which can drive them away from it. The cost burden usually arises from the tendency to change and then entrench the New Way as a constant; this guarantees higher "cost" the next time things have to change. The issue then is to develop adaptable organizations that are easier to change.

This means working at a slightly more abstract level. At that level, things may just be constant. Analogy to evolution: organisms evolve even though their underlying biochemistry is constant. We need to find the biochemistry of organizations.

--Martha. I'm trying to wrap my head around this. I don't know much about business. But I thought I might could help with the biochemistry angle. I'm coming up short though. I think because I respectfully disagree with Fil's statement regarding the constancy of organisms' underlying biochemistry. It is mutations (or acquisitions) in biochemistry that make evolution possible. The way I see it an organism is like an ecosystem on a smaller scale. I see that Fil perhaps means that, say, essential gene for say, serotonin production will be present in every organism of the species. Yes, but my point is that that gene may be highly variable. But anyway.. the main point was about the biochemistry of organizations. Perhaps an individual in an organization is like a single protein functioning in an organism. That protein might be redundant. That protein can respond to the environment. I can develop this further but right now I have another obligation.

SOHO and the Design Process

John Reap 3:18, 29 August 2007 (EST): While discussing SOHO systems, you state that the "design process" will change if one takes a non-equilibrium perspective to heart. I doubt that the process will or needs to change. We will still identify goals, develop concepts, attempt to embody them, test prototypes (though simulation and modeling may become the norm) and iterate in this cycle. However, I believe non-equilibrium thinking will change and add to the list of goals designers, developers and manufacturers set for their products or services. The bounds of systems analyzed during the design phase will likely expand, and I believe those involved in the design process will take a greater interest in the n-1, n and n+1 hierarchical levels influenced by their product, where n represents the hierarchical level of the product.

To my mind, this means design will need increased support from those working in inductive (modelers) and deductive (principle hunters) fields of analysis.

References Added to Article:

Lotka, A. J. (1922). "Contribution to the Energetics of Evolution." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencies 8: 147-151.

--Norbert 20:53, 30 August 2007 (EDT) John, I agree that at an abstract level, the design process will not change. However, I believe that in practice, designers would act quite differently if they took the message of SOHO to heart. John Busby of Busby Perkins+Will made two interesting comments at a lecture he gave on green buildings:

• Facilities invariably 'screws down' a lot of the features he includes that allow building occupants to regulate heating and cooling, even through these features have been shown to save energy and increase occupant satisfaction
• Busby has only recently started doing Post-Occupancy Reviews, often coming up with shocking results - PORs are still rare within the architectural community

These two stories suggest that designers need to spend more energy making their designs 'fit', and conditions encouraging adaptable designs are still in their infancy. Kay talks about narratives or scenarios as a key tool, which I think fits with your comment on 'modelers'. He also suggests that design has to consider not just the natural ecosystem, but also needs to strive for a lasting 'fit' within the human ecosystem. Lastly, he takes about the need to make design a dynamic, long-term process, which is quite foreign to the 'get out of here so fast that the door does not hit our rear ends' school. How does a design organization consciously stay 'near the edge of chaos'?

Comment: biologically inspired robots

Thanks to Norbert for posting the info under Applications. One comment: these distributed robots can be analogized to any large system. Couldn't, say, an eco-industrial park be modelled as a kind of robot? I think it can. So, can we use the principles in these robots in other systems? Or are they already known principles just applied differently? Sounds like an interesting area to investigate. This is consistent with the systems perspective: small items with distributed intelligence should be able to group into larger entities with even more distributed intelligence.

The distributed "intelligence" in these robots is analogous to the human body too; e.g. it turns out much of the computation of walking is done in the spinal cord, not the brain. The brain appears only to coordinate general activities and give general orders. There's a lot of work on distributed control of robots, esp for walking. You can google "distributed control walking robot" to get a taste.

--Norbert 13:52, 26 February 2008 (EST) Fil, it would be very interesting to have an expert in industrial ecology assess if the principles from embodied robot design provides insights into how industrial ecology sites work. I vaguely recall an analysis of industrial ecology based on 'connectedness' principles gleaned from food webs - the results did not pan out. With complex systems, there could be any number of reasons why a single-dimensional analysis fails to yield results. Another article (that I cannot find at the moment) pointed out that it can be very difficult to define a relevant null hypothesis. Maybe this is why Kay was arguing for a structured narrative approach.

Comment: swarm smarts

I'm not sure where to put this but when I read about Regen and then also saw the discussion of the lack of applying interedependence to telecommunications and other human-made systems in the paper John uploaded, I wondered if this Swarm Smarts [1] would fill any gaps. It's from Scientific American and its about using ant-agents to solve problems with peak use of communication networks and also to solve The Traveling Salesman problem in math. In addition they describe how banks are using swarm knowledge. I know this is in the Conducive to Life discussion --isn't that where the mention of Regen using swarm theory was? Feel free to move this elsewhere if it fits better. --Martha 13:25, 29 February 2008 (EST)

System Costs

Eileen send the following comments:

... something clicked between what Fil said about "design without intent" in nature and your comment about humans cutting back attempts to be redundant after a while because they're too expensive - in nature, "costs" are irrelevant because the system is serving countless masters/servants (the various species) - as long as one species is being served, the cost has value and redundancy exists. In our design with intent, we're designing only for ourselves, and if it's costly to us, then we cut it. Is that idea important somehow?

--Norbert 23:31, 23 March 2008 (EDT) I am not sure what a 'systems cost' is. The overall system is made up of many parts that interact with each other in numerous ways. The implication is that the costs are incurred by the parts, which drives them to change themselves or their interactions. The system is affected by these individual changes, although not always in predictable ways. Self-organization (SOHO) and non-equilibrium thermodynamics (NET) imply that systems of increasing complexity will form, but do not specify the particular form these systems will take. Schneider/Sagan hint that some sort of mutualism seems to occur, but I do not think there is enough research on the forms this mutualism takes. So far, I have not seen any clear 'sustainability' message in either SOHO/NET.

The idea of 'balance' keeps coming up. Kay, Schneider and Sagan suggest that the survival imperative modulates the imperative to dissipate energy. I read an interesting article on invasive species from a researcher at the Royal Ontario Museum. He suggests that our attempts at controlling these species (assuming we can even identify them accurately) can be worse than doing nothing. He states that non-native species often increase diversity, rarely wipe out native species (I am sure there are exceptions), and often change in ways that reintroduces a balance. So zebra mussels in the Great Lakes are becoming the favorite food of shore birds and fishes. The cane toad in Australia is becoming smaller and less toxic (less predation pressure) while native snakes are becoming larger in areas where they interact with cane toads.

In our case, we have tapped into what appears to be cheap energy, only because we do not factor in what it takes to replace fossil fuels. By externalizing costs, we have been able to 'live large' and do things no other species has been capable of. I think we are being to see the consequences: our energy demands are so great that it is unclear what can reasonably replace petroleum when new reserves become harder to tap. At a more global level, our large population makes us vulnerable to a range of threats, both internal and external.

What is unclear is how other species learned to live within the limit. I think most organisms live 'close to the line'. It costs a lot for cane toads to 'plump up' and make poison, so they evolve to a more benign form where predation is less. Gribbin talks about interesting things happening at the edge of chaos. Schneider/Sagan indicate that there is a range of opinion on how far living systems are from a state of equilibrium. Co-evolution likely also plays a part at maintaining a dynamic state of balance.

--Eileen 3/25/08 10:20AM ET Norbert: LOVE the fact that I can get here through your VOX page! Thanks again for setting that up.

I guess what I was trying to say is: because we humans design with just one relatively homogeneous target audience [humans] in mind, for whom we believe there is a singular, most efficient route/path toward a goal, we progressively eliminate other, redundant paths since we perceive them to be wasteful [ie costly]. In contrast, within the larger ecosystem, there are countless players making up a highly heterogeneous target audience, who will each take the path/route that is most efficient/effective for their particular situation/characteristics/etc. From this perspective, redundancy is not considered "costly" because it adds real value. Maybe I'm just restating the obvious here.

Re: your statement "unclear [] how other species learned to live within the limit"...I don't think they *learned* anything - instead the species butted up against certain death [when their their local environment could no longer support the population in its current numbers/forms] and only the ones that happened to have specialized characteristics survived. That goes back to "design without intent" or "design by iterative accident". We humans are trying to sidestep that certain death through proactive anticipation and design adjustment. Again, I guess I'm just restating the obvious...

--Martha 16:38 ET 29 March 2008 I think it is interesting that this is under Target: Design Firm in Conducive to Life and we are discussing some of the same things that have come up in Interdependence talk. Perhaps this overlap will help with our goal of linking the patterns. All the way back to the tight-rope analogy Norbert posted and Fil's repsonse about businesses looking for balance and pointing toward the biochemistry of business, which leads to looking at redundancy and costs. Hmmm, Interdependence is Conducive to Life? Hee, hee. Anyway, this recent discussion between Norbert and Eileen has helped me see this whole project as part of nature and not some objective thing outside of it. Here we are, a species that is capable of learning, designing by intent, and trying to help ourselves and in so doing, we want to mimic species, many of which don't "learn", that operate in a large systems that obstensibly evolved without intent (except perhaps the "intent" of obeying laws of nature if you can tolerate that). My head is spinning and the only thing that is gelling for me right now is that consciousness is really really weird. No wonder humans escape to drugs and/or use meditation that either numb the pain (the former) or encourages one to be in the moment like those other (lucky?) animals (the latter). I'll take a break before I become a suicidal migraine-sufferer like that fellow Ludwig Boltzmann (as described in Into the Cool) who also is reported to have said "Philosophy gets on my nerves." I think I'll name my next cat after him.