Blog of class 11.12 #emergence

When I was in primary school, the teacher recommended a book called The Cool Ant Antel. It tells about different division of ants and lots of fascinating stories they had been through. There is one chapter when they hug each other to form a ball to across the fire, which is similar to the video we watched during class. In some ways, human society is pretty much like the ant colony, if you want to study a certain type of ants, it is inevitable to use reductionism as a tool. Getting to know the function of each specific division and how they interact with each other, and therefore have a better understanding of the whole system.If you think about it, it’s the same process when it comes to getting to know an alien country.

One the other hand, although each one of us have a role in the society like ants, the inner motivation is still different. Unlike human, ants won’t have thoughts like:” Nah, I don’t feel like going to work, just not today.” That is probably because ‘working’ is written in their DNA. But as for us, the emergence of this functioning world is in constantly change. At first, all we did to survive was hunting and collecting, and now we all believe in a new set of story which includes: education, money, marriage and so on. Sometimes we believe in the story a little too much that the stress we feel could eat us alive. As a tiny part of this system, maybe it is necessary to remind ourselves that both whole and parts are equally real, we are not a screw spike on a giant machine and we need to find the purpose that keeps ourselves functioning.

The final blog|1.29 #emergence

Before I could realize, this unique semester had ended. Although I didn’t get to experience the classes unusually, the course was still very inspiring to me.

It is said that the first step in acquiring knowledge is to admit one’s ignorance. Our knowledge of the world is far less than most people are willing to admit. Taking the environment, which we have been discussing a lot during classes for example, the gradual disappearance of tropical rain forests and the continuous extinction of earth species. We don’t know how human behavior will affect the world. The problem is not the disappearance of rain forests and the extinction of species, because changes will always be there. The problem also does not lie in human behavior itself, because changing the world is one of the essence of human beings. In fact, the success of human beings stems from their ability to transform the world. The problem is that this ability must be kept within a controllable range. 

With the continuous success of our science and technology, we are changing the world faster and faster. But we are not particularly clear about the impact behind these “successes.” At the moment, we just saw some terrible clues. Because of the “success” of science and technology, it has brought to the world complexity that science and technology themselves have not revealed. In order to cope with this complexity, system thinking is extremely important. 

As opposed to Reductionism, system thinking requires that no matter what people do, they should always base themselves on the whole, and understand the whole from the interaction between the parts, and the whole and parts, and the whole and the environment. The wholeness of system thinking is determined by the wholeness of objective things. The wholeness is the basic feature of system thinking mode. It exists in the whole process of system thinking and is also reflected in the results of system thinking. Integrity is built on the basis of the dialectical relationship between whole and part. The whole is inseparable from the parts. The attributes and functions of the whole are caused by the interaction and interconnection of the parts in a certain way. And the whole also is according to this kind of interconnection and interaction way to implement the domination of the part.

The object of study must be recognized as a system, which means the object of study must always be investigated and analyzed in the system. There are two implications here: first, it must be clear in thinking that any research object is a system composed of several elements; The second is that in the process of thinking we must put each specific system within the larger system to examine. For example, if we are trying to solve the urban traffic problem, we should take the urban traffic problem as a system composed of several elements to investigate, not only to investigate the parameters elements of the system, such as vehicles, passenger flow and roads, but also to investigate the operation of vehicles. At the same time, the traffic problem should be brought into the urban municipal construction of the large system to be investigated. Only from the whole point of view of municipal construction to investigate and solve the problem of urban traffic this subsystem, is the fundamental and effective way to solve the problem.

From the point of view of system theory, “self-organization” refers to the process in which a system, driven by internal mechanisms, develops from simplicity to complexity, from roughness to refinement, and constantly improves its complexity and refinement. What I understand as self-organization is actually a state full of vitality. A basic self-organization is just like a seed taking root and sprout to grow into a tree. A powerful system can also grow out of a simple organization. Perhaps, variability and disorder is the best argument for vitality. During the process of growth, we will certainly encounter all sorts of problems and situation, if we could think systematically, the problems are the raw materials, and these materials are going to help us complete self evolution after the experiment, mutation and test. Therefore “self-organization is the expression of system that has the highest resilience”. A system with the characteristics of self-organization is an open, developing and changing system. Based on a simple self-organization rule, an organization or a person could change and evolve themselves.

A complex system is defined as one consisting of a large number of interacting parts, without central control, where rules that operate simply give rise to complex collective behavior and complex information processing, and adaptation through learning and evolution. Such as things like the brain, the immune system, cells, insect society, the global economy. We can also think of complex systems simply as systems between the boundary of order and chaos, it is neither as orderly as code or integrated circuit boards, nor as unpredictable as hurricanes or avalanches. It is closer to a game of controlling a small ball that I played on my phone. You need to keep tilting the phone to keep the ball in the center of the seesaw and not fall. Perhaps this state of constant motion is the state of a complex system.

In the movie mind walk, Sonia made it clear that she opposed Descartes’ theory. It is undeniable that the “simplification paradigm” proposed by Descartes, including the principles of separation, reduction, and abstraction, has promoted the development of philosophy and science since the 17th century. But its harm has only been revealed since the 20th century. For example, under the principle of separation, physics, biology, and human science are fundamentally separated from each other; under the principle of reduction, complex things are reduced to simple things, complex phenomena is restored to eternal law by the efforts of classical science. The result of this is that all objects are isolated from their environment, and the integrity is cut. Under the guidance of this methodology, people have achieved a sort of “blind intelligence”. Therefore, in order to avoid this “blind intelligence” and to understand complexity, we cannot eliminate complexity before thinking. While thinking, one should get used to entanglement, uncertainty and contradiction. 

For the part of Singularity, in my opinion, the pace of human creation of technology is accelerating, and the power of technology is also increasing exponentially. Exponential growth is deceptive. It starts with very small growth and then explodes at an incredible rate. If one does not pay attention to its development trends, this growth will be completely unexpected, just imagine linear growth and exponential growth. At this stage, the human body, brain, digestive system, and blood circulation system have been redesigned and manufactured based on genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. The singularity will enable us to overcome the problem of human aging and greatly liberate human creativity. We will maintain and strengthen intelligent evolution to overcome the limitations of biological evolution. If human intelligence can be completely transferred to the computer, then death will become meaningless. If humans are completely integrated with the machines they produce, then the world will be totally different. But I define this “difference” from the perspective of good and bad.

All in all, our brain tends to think in one direction. When we encounter a problem, we always feel that there must be a fundamental reason behind it. The problem will be solved if we could find this reason. However, most problems in the real world are not linear, and there may be interaction and dynamic effects between problems, problems and results, and results and other results. Therefore, when it comes to systemic complex problems, we must pay attention to the integrity, structure, relevance, variability and purpose, and gradually establish a system thinking mode to add a way of solving complex problems for ourselves.

Living in the 21st century, we have such a huge pool of information, but our behavior and interpretation of information is not always correct. Backgrounds, biases, occupations, and limited horizons often lead to loopholes and biases in our thinking and interpretation. More importantly, in reality, the delivery of various interest groups leads to the possibility that even perfect information could be misused and misinterpreted, intentionally or unintentionally. Beyond this, it requires people to be sufficiently knowledgeable and broad-minded to embrace the challenges and terminology of all dimensions (economic, financial, religious, political, environmental, scientific, engineering, etc.), and to integrate these disparate and sometimes opposing disciplines in an inclusive attitude, to delineate and undefined boundaries, and build a complete, prudent, and systematic thinking model. This experience of learning system theory made me aware of the loopholes and deficiencies in my knowledge. It also made me feel how difficult it is for people who think in a simplistic way to accept new ideas.

However, system thinking certainly has shortcomings itself. It is only a method and point of view for us to understand the world. Various models are only an approximation of the objective world and can never replace the real and rich reality. What we have to do is to pass System thinking provides methods to better understand our world, grasp its characteristics and trends, and follow the flow instead of trying to control the system.

Blog of class 1.07 #emergence

The movie mind walk is about a discussion between three people: Sonia (a physicist who is opposed to Cartesian and plays the role of a spokesperson of system theory), Jack ( an American politician who represents the pragmatist’s perspective) and Thomas (a poet who is also a former political speech writer).

I think this is the best movie to watch for anyone who is new to the area of system thinking. Sonia explain the basic theories in a vivid way and tried to connect the theoretical things with our social life. When watching this movie, I find myself quite similar with Jack, the politician, those questions he asked might seem argumentative, but still extremely practical.

Also, I couldn’t agree more with Sonia on how the world is putting the cart before the horse, like when people would rather spending so much money on medical care than changing into a healthy diet. And there should be certain interference to stop this situation from getting worse. On the other hand, I just can’t help thinking of this in a skeptical way. Like Sonia mentioned, the whole world is a self-organized and self-renewed system. We human, as a part of this system which has been constantly making negative impact, wouldn’t the system deal with this itself? Just like shaking off a bad case of fleas. Because after all, the planet has been existing for 4.6 billion years, it is not going anywhere, but that might not be the case for human beings.

Even though, people are coevolving with the system, but how to define “evolution could be another question”. Because, unlike the progress bar of a movie, there is no such thing as a destination for the whole system, so there is no way to tell what direction we are heading to. Besides, are people really evolving at all? Perhaps we are only evolving on a cognitive level, it will take much more time for our action to keep up with our thought.

Blog of class 12.17 #emergence

The philosophical rhizome is a system which has no organization or levels and defined solely by a circulation of states. There is no such thing as beginning or ends for a rhizome, it is always in the middle, like when you are reading a map, there is not a specific starting point.

The picture made up of many messing lines seems familiar to me. I was shown pictures like this, and it is said that the number of faces you spot in that picture is directly related to your IQ. But this is the first time that I’ve learned that pictures like this has its meaning in philosophy.

According to Deleuze and Guattari, the tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. It makes me think of our society, can our relationship with people around us be considered a rhizome? Each time when we reach out to a person, does that mean we are a part of each other’s alliances?

Blog of class 12.10 #emergence

We are entering an era of acceleration, it seems that every stage of life brings new pressure, forcing individuals to move forward, therefore the whole society evolves. When you saw a person trotting, you wold know that he’s going to a specific place. But when a giant group of people moving forward together, somehow it is hard to tell where is the destination.

When we talk about utilitarianism academically, it is easy to hold an adverse opinion, but there is no denying that it has became the methodology of contemporary society. Every life could be put on a price tag and it seems to be our nature ability to analysis cost and benefit.

The concept of technology singularity is also intriguing, it is generally assumed that the technological singularity arises from the emergence of machine intelligence or some other form of super intelligence that transcends humans and can evolve on its own. Because it is so much smarter than today’s humans, technology will evolve so far beyond humanity’s ability to understand it and there isn’t going to be a warning when it happens.

For example, from Tesla cars to Google cars, the new generation of internet and 5G technologies will support cars to become more “intelligent” and “autonomous” to a certain extent. But how to realize the benefit of everyone and avoid the phenomenon of “digital divide” in the field of transportation; How to satisfy people’s dependence on automatic driving without losing their subjectivity?

Recently, Tesla released the “fully autonomous driving computer”. The smooth launch of this hardware can fully support the “fully autonomous driving” of the car in theory. In the future, owners only need to update the software level to make the car reach the level of autonomous driving. Although this new car has not been fully put into the market so far, the rapid iteration of technological products has been stepping up to force the reflection and improvement of technological humanity. What do we really need?

Blog of class 12.03 #emergence

I don’t know if it is just me, but when it come to the group discussion part, I just feel like I could use a bit more time to digest those information and then begin sharing my thoughts.

Among all the questions, the forth one ( How can I utilize this in my life?) is always the trickiest. Because it is easy to think of something universal which applies to anyone, but it could be contemplative to relate those concepts with my personal life. I guess it is probably because of my education background, I am used to the fact that every question has a unified and standardized answer.

During the course last week, we had a discussion on the pandemic. In my opinion, at chaotic times like this we almost instinctively turn to science for help, regarding doctors, scientists and relatively intelligence ones as lifeline. But to remember, the task isn’t just for them, it is a challenge to all of us. Sometimes even mathematical equations doesn’t work as well. Any error, no matter how small, will take long-term predictions vastly inaccurate. Otherwise, this quarantine period will not be extended again and again.

Blog of class 11.26 #emergence

Have you ever feel like lying down and have a rest after having a full meal? That is how I feel every time after the lessons. But surprisingly, when I managed to understand the meaning of those terminologies, nothing complicated or profound came to my mind. All I came up with are something practical or superficial. But I am pretty sure, it is going to affect me somehow, just like how systems are changing dynamically because of the variables.

As human beings, we are probably one of the most chaotic systems. If you think of everything that took place in your life, none of them made an impact on you in a linear way. For example, when I eat too many donuts in one day, I won’t become fat immediately, they are just going to quietly convert to fat, and surprise me in the next morning as I weigh myself. Also, as the most emotionally complex animals, we are easily motivated, irritated, encouraged or frustrated… Each decision we made driven by those complex emotions which could affect us in both short and long run.

Besides, each individual influences one another and made this world so complicated that it requires thousands of subjects to explain it, including this one. Complex systems may adapt and evolve in numerous ways, learning is just one of them. In these constantly changing systems, the consequence of each change is unpredictable. Even the brightest among us could only make assumptions about how the future would be. So, maybe there is no need to be anxious about not having a full control of things because the ability to evolve and adapt is carved in our DNA.

Blog of class 11.19 #emergence

The title that our group came up with was “The Bridge Between Two Worlds”. The first world refers to the world within us, the second one is the world that we live in. With the spreading of consumerism and developing life cost, the bridge between these two worlds is getting shakier every minute.

Although I have seen thousands of public service advertisements about saving nature, it still remains a blurry concept to me. Until the class of yesterday, I have never thought about the relationship between me and nature in such a comprehensive way. We are living in a consumer driven-economy and material driven society. Every single act of our consumption could cause the butterfly effect. Perhaps for the sake of a sustainable future, a new consumerism should be brought up: the conception of an economy focused around buying and selling services and goods focused on our higher needs. Get people busy with their minds and give nature a rest.

To change another life style may not be as hard as we thought, the difficult part is to inject the idea into people’s mind, to convince everyone that living in a consumerist society means not only paying prices for the products we bought but also for the natural resources we lost.

Blog of class 1105 #emergence

It seems a bit ironic to talk about system and connections during the pandemic, especially when we are all experiencing the lockdown. But if you think about it, because of the social media and internet we are still affecting one and other virtually. In another word, this disaster is forcing us to seek new modes of maintaining the existing system. Perhaps when the outbreak of Covid-19 is over, people will need to readjust to communicate with each other without having their mask on. And that will become the new normal.

However, I was deeply fascinated by the video How Wolves Change Rivers and it reminds me of a theory called the Butterfly Effect. Who could have thought that a single variate could end up changing the whole system. But the thing is, as one of the variates in our society, we are constantly unaware of the changes happening around us, especially when we are immersed in it.

Taking social media as an example, when it was first created, the intension was to bring people closer, but somehow the result is not satisfactory. As more and more people taking cell phone as their external organ, the side effects also started to kick in. Everyone was affected more or less by cyber bully and the split of attention. But we have already taken root in this system, not knowing what to do with it.

Anyway, the first class is really provoking and it shows me a different perspective of system thinking, as our chatting group concluded: no one is an island, all actions has consequences on others.