by josuter

Will anything come of the recent demonstrations around race?  There seem to be few lighted pathways out of the darkness. Maybe some government programs and legislature will help, but if not, will it lead to the same frustration and anger? 

If justice is defined as somebody going to jail and somebody else getting a pile of money, that won’t be enough.  We must have social learning and social change.  

Are we asking the right questions?  Are we telling the stories we need to make change or are we re-telling the old stories in ways that do not quite fit?  In the last few decades we have had a Black President, two secretaries of state, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, plus Black and Hispanic supreme court justices, not to mention all the minorities who occupy key positions in academia and business. Something has changed. 

In a democracy, civilians rank higher than the military and higher than the police at the local level.  Take the initiative.  Invite a policeman or policewoman over for dinner.  Everyone on the police force, including the chief, should share a meal at a home of some of the people they serve, and do it every 6 months.  Get to know them.  If they can’t come to dinner maybe they should find some other line of work.  Act as if you have power and you may be surprised. 

What is a good definition of “strong”?  It’s not a bully or a big man.  It’s someone who identifies a specific problem and pushes toward a solution, someone with purpose.  In my mind things will only change when those in the black community can do something for someone else, either in their own community or outside their community.  Then you are strong.  Others know it and you know it too.   

Take the initiative to know neighbors, even – or especially – in high crime areas.  If you don’t feel safe, ask for a police escort to knock on doors.  This is not simply an act of being nice.  You don’t have to be friends, but ask and expect neighbors to be part of some local project. Get them involved in doing something for others. 

Courts dispense justice mostly by setting boundaries.  They must also be concerned about fairness, but that can be a hindrance toward progress. One neighborhood might be ready to change and the next one not.  Efforts by local groups can focus their efforts and push the one that is ready. 

Government can’t know everything and do everything.  They can’t know when people are fighting over drugs or abusing others in their family or neighborhood.  Beware of the media, both in the mainstream and social media, who make more money when they fan flames of conflict.   

As individuals we may not feel so strong. Finding solutions will take more than listening however.  A belief that good ideas already exist means we must discover them, from anywhere or anyone.  Our success in doing this will depend on our ability to find and move useful ideas within the group that we are in.  

Organize more than demonstrations.  Organize projects, organize your room and the space around you. We organize our thinking or music on a page.  Learn and teach organization skills.  Don’t wait for detailed directions from leaders who may or may not be able to hear what is going on.  Working side-by-side on a task can be more valuable than trying to sympathize or feel someone’s pain.  Projects have a beginning, middle, and an end.  Then it’s time to push further or move on.

There are many other issues in modern day life that beg attention, including histories of other people.  We need help to move forward on climate change and the environment, education, health issues, or technical questions like how to install solar panels. Think and debate the importance of Internet openness and privacy issues.  These are issues that affect all people.  Read a lot, talk and listen.  Help think through the issues of joblessness, why they are disappearing, and what people without jobs might do.  Talk, listen, debate respectfully.  Act. Gather feedback. In any community there are people who don’t feel like leaders but can take the lead on some specific project of their own choosing.  

Ask about education and get involved.  Your child may have a nice teacher, but are children getting a good education?  What should a 3^rdgrader know? What should a 6^thgrader be able to do?  This may require many changes and a division of tasks, but maybe not.  Maybe a change in the length of class time or when to review can make a big difference.  All kids in the class must do better. Kids should be able to teach others what they learned.  Put away the screens for a while.  Use time alone to read and reflect.  

Don’t just organize to demonstrate.  Organize to take care of each other, to challenge others, both within and outside the community.  Identify problems and find solutions.  If that doesn’t work, then try something else.  The question will always be where to push and how far.  But push, experiment, get useful feedback.  Set a distance.  Set some goals and work on them.   

INSTITUTIONS GET STUPID

Summary: Institutions get stupid when they have inadequate information filters leading them to make poor decisions.  Size and structure are two things that influence the flow of information, along with external factors that may be destabilizing. Withdrawal of positive reward, social stigma, or fear of being punished can all inhibit the flow of useful information. Max Weber identified a fundamental organizational factor of the nation-state as the monopoly on use of coercive force (MCF).  This includes the power to create currency.  By extension this power belongs to any institution that can hire and fire people.  This may be an organizing force in society but without good feedback the chance of costly mistakes increase.  Small group structures created outside the MCF hierarchy can re-establish some balance and lead to smarter decisions.

Institutions Get Stupid 

Modern life is very complex.  With all the new problems that face us today we should be asking more questions and fundamental questions.  In the 1970’s the Detroit Auto makers were too stupid to keep up with changes in the auto industry but they survived their near death experience. Today it’s the White House and Center for Disease Control that acted stupid.  Their delay in taking the pandemic threat seriously will cost many thousands of lives.  The federal government will paint it as a victory but credit should go to state and local leaders who acted early.  5 years ago Bill Gates and others warned of the growing possibility of a pandemic. Why were we unable to hear and act on that warning?

What drives of this behavior?  Much of it is fear, but fear for a good reason. The ability to hand out salaries creates a hierarchy within all institutions resembles a Marionette Doll with strings.  This tension helps to create social hierarchy but it also makes people afraid to speak up when they see something wrong.  At an even more fundamental level, it is fear of being outside the protection of the social hierarchy.  Max Weber identified it as a Monopoly on the use of Coercive Force (MCF).  It is an instrument and motivator used by most institutions and all branches of government, including the treasury as the keepers of the currency. Courts can throw people in jail or confiscate property for breaking the law, breech of contract, or even ignoring a policy. This extends to all branches of government and, by extension, any institution that use money and contracts.  It is a subtle but powerful force.

If one makes a visit to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, there is a bronze statue of prehistoric man who might be 5 feet tall if he were standing upright, but he is not.  Instead he is crouched, with eyes ablaze and teeth bared, a poignant statement of the struggle it took simply to stay alive.  How far we have come from that, and not so many generations ago, to a more civilized existence.

With civilization comes an organized social hierarchy and a drive to create order – or maybe it’s the drive to create order that creates civilization.  Empires subdued many smaller and less ambitious civilizations.  Those who were conquered may not have liked it, but some of their lives improved and became more organized in some sense of the word.  The pharaohs who ruled Egypt for three thousand years must have told stories that did not push for change since there was no need to change.  But now we see limits to our existence.  We need new stories that touch reality.

The Apollo tragedy, in which 3 astronauts died before the rocket even took off, was a series of stupid mistakes. The design engineers decided to test the capsule with pure oxygen under pressure with an escape hatch that could only be opened inward. The janitor could have told you that was a stupid design.  Apparently no one asked the janitor, or if they did, it is unlikely that they would have waited for the janitor to respond.  He would not have been given the time to think or the resources to reflect on the options.  Being smart and educated only gets you part of the way for a complex task. The other part is the social structure through which the information must move.

In the more recent Challenger disaster there were warnings about the O-Ring but those warnings were buried in a stack of paper on someone’s desk.  It was a needle in the haystack for which we had no process or filters to find it.  Years after these accidents another astronaut wondered if such a horrible accident was necessary as the only way to change such a rigid organization?  No. It was not.  But it would require a change of how information and ideas flow, both within and between levels.

The 2008 financial crisis was predicted by some economists, yet the leaders seemed to only listen to people around them with no serious discussion outside or in the media.  If they knew the risks but could not convince constituents then it may have been their lack of leadership skills.  More likely it was a fear of getting too far from what they perceived as common knowledge.

Two decades earlier, the Savings and Loan Crisis caused another great financial loss. Reporters like James Fallows blamed the public, stating that leaders actually knew the risk but that the public was turned off by details of numbers.  No, the leaders were stupid.  So were the press who listened only to those leaders.  The structure of their social hierarchy helped them take in only what they wanted to hear, making them unable to see and think clearly.

Those who actually know the risks describe watching a slow-motion train wreck.  Of course we are always bombarded by shysters who say the sky is falling and then take your money to build a shelter that never appears.  Still, it’s a problem of finding and moving useful information, something that requires good estimations followed by a more rigorous and systematic search.

So now we are reaching these walls and limits.  Our atmosphere contains too much carbon that retains heat from the sun. Oceans are loosing significant amounts of marine life.  A growing population puts more pressure on resources and it seems there is nowhere else to move.   Climate change moves slower than a pandemic but over the years will be much worse.  Many of our leaders don’t really understand the risk of climate change because they surround themselves with only those from whom they want to hear.  Their system of filtering information is inadequate and it makes them stupid.

EF Schumacher pointed out that any economic system that relies on continued growth cannot go on forever.  This is true for gross size but not true for growth of complexity.  Biological systems show us that plants and animals have more complexity at the cellular and subcellular level where mitochondria function in fundamental ways to keep the whole organism alive.  It’s not symmetrical growth and it’s not directed from a central location like the brain.  The economic parallel here would be growth of complexity at the local level where many people can work to gain the basics of food, water, and shelter, even if there is no growth in overall size.

Congressional Offices serve only their own constituents.  That seems natural.  When a leader takes charge or a new congressman comes into office, they hire a chief of staff and personal assistant to create filters for visitors and incoming information.  Even the person at the front desk has power.  Of course they are right most of the time, but stupidity creeps in and leaders become unaware of the ground shifting beneath them.  Their proximity to MCF power will cause them to miss useful ideas and information from the office next door or from the people walking past their office, from those same people who could have given Detroit automakers useful feedback.

Stupid is not simply a state of mind or IQ.  It is a consequence of bad information plus the structure of the organization and maybe being too comfortable.  The sludge of bureaucracy is due to lack of good feedback, not stupid people.  Most people can solve difficult problems if they have good information.  A true learning structure has some tension, but not too much, and mostly temporary.  It not only creates spaces for people to meet and talk but allows time for creative privacy where ideas can germinate. Good leaders think about these structures and the need to capture useful information.

Feedback, Surveillance, and Whistleblowers

There would be no need for whistleblowers if institutions had better feedback.  Edward Snowden would never have made it into the news if intelligence agencies had listened to the previous whistle blowers, some of who made great sacrifices for their action.  Since Snowden, intelligence gathering by public and private agencies has doubled down.  Why would they not?  This momentum is a push toward a China model of total surveillance.  From a citizen’s point of view, surveillance capitalism may look the same as surveillance communism.

Many employees of the intelligence agencies are good and dedicated people.  From the inside however, the institution is so large that it is difficult to get the larger picture of what is going on. Those who criticize Snowden still have not answered the questions that he was addressing – because they don’t have to. It’s not their job.  They are not stupid as individuals but act stupid when put into an institutional structure where they fear making a mistake.

Is the Internet making us stupid?  Probably not.  But there is a significant amount of collateral damage.  If we are to tame the Internet and social media, it will require either a change in the revenue model, a change in the law, and/or structural changes of the end-user.  Searching for specific Useful Information to a specific Question to share with friends or team members can provide alternate ways to engage viewers.  This will help us move away from attention-for-ads revenue model, something that will not happen on its own.

A Way Forward – Group As Actor (GAA) and Group As Filter (GAF)

If the problem is a structural one, then at least part of the solution must be structural.  We can create structures that can provide better feedback.  Loss of feedback leads to corruption.  Direct opposition to the social hierarchy or mass demonstrations or voting out the current party in power may get temporary results, but the structural problems that lead to bad decisions will still exist.

There are many situations in which time to confer with a group (without formal meetings) results in better information.  Conferring with a group casts a wider net and creates a multiplier of what one individual alone might bring to the table.  This can be used both for face-to-face meetings and online.  Social media would benefit if part of the bandwidth were reserved for groups to interact as groups.  This creates a filter both for sending and receiving.  It gets us higher quality info.

Even our money has no meaning apart from our social group.  Money not only represents the value of goods and services, but is some measure of the integrity of an agreement between two people within the expectations of the larger group.  This expectation separates real money from play money and currency that is losing value. A change in the value of currency, for whatever reason, can damage the integrity of that agreement.

It is important to define “community” and it’s connection to morality (“morality” being defined as that which leads toward the survival of the group).  The function of an online community is different than that of a local geographic community (geo-com) where people can meet face-to-face. Online communities can be great resources for information and friendship, but online communities can disappear with one click.  The geo-commmunity is where one finds the Maslow basics of food, water, and shelter, not to mention the support of family.  It contains a basis of a morality that one can feel, not a morality that depends on signing a contract or giving a pledge.  It is this geo-community that must be pushed up the hill toward greater security and sustainability.

There are at least 4 interconnected structures that could help.  All of these start small at the local level and are designed to help find Useful Information and better feedback.  They also interconnect since each structure can be used to develop the others.

1. Games. Think sandlot game of baseball or soccer. Small teams compete for best information or ideas to answer a specific discussion question.  Judges come from the same pool of participants.  Teams can be re-mixed and repeated to further develop the question and answer.  Outsiders can be invited but should be mixed in with the teams.  If people are not interested in playing, then find someone else, just like baseball.

Offering a prize is a way to bootstrap some issues that need to be examined more closely. It can also engage participants in subject matter that might be tedious.  Prizes may come from outside sponsors or from the players themselves. It is easiest to simply start with a few people and see if it can grow to a dozen or more, then split into two Games to address the same or independent issues.  One can use a Game itself to further the creation of more games.

The effort to organize Games can be monetized but of course the transfer of money must be transparent, or that game will not carry any weight with the outside world and not be supported.

2. Pushups. When climbing a steep path it can help to have others point out the next foothold.  Pushing information gathered by teams in Community A towards Community B may give them the useful information and the feedback that Com B  needs to make changes.  Com B might be next door but might also be across the world.  Prize money can stay within Com A and results shared with Com B. However, mixing and re-mixing teams with players from each community will accelerate the process and create winners on both sides.

Pushups is a new method and different in important ways from other methods. It may be one of the few ways to gain control over a system based primarily on MCF.  Fortunately, challenging an outside group is often easier than making changes within one’s own community, a point made by Joseph Campbell in his study of heroes and myths.  The alternative is to wait in line for someone else, some faceless person or computer algorithm to make the decision.

There are people at all places and all levels who are smart and may have something to offer, but no one listens to them, and they remain in a small world.  Games provide a place where people must listen to each other if they are to win the competition. Those who get good at pushing others up the hill will find that they themselves have more influence and power.  This is not done simply out of altruism but as a way to establish communications with better feedback.

3. Focus on a Few. A variation of the Game can offer results of many games from outside a target community to focus on different aspects of making that one community self-sufficient, though maybe not totally off the grid. This allows that one community to be more secure and flexible. Each community that has such an inflow of ideas is a learning opportunity for other communities as well.
4. 10:2 If a group of 10 breadwinners can find a way to support 2 of their own group of 10, it will provide a buffer in times of economic downturn. This also allows flexibility for the group to decide what tasks those 2 will do and for how long.  Each group of 10 may be different.  It will require though that the group take responsibility for deciding consequences for those not doing their job or whatever is expected. The group may decide to revert to contracts that are valid in court, but in so doing will give up power to the MCF system.

Games can be very efficient and may last only half an hour.  More complex issues might require an overnight recess to search for information and ideas.  Teams can be re-mixed to do a series of Games in order to further explore a specific game question.  Multiple simultaneous Games provide a division of labor, depending on the interests of whoever starts or sponsors the game.

Games could allow leaders in Congress to engage constituents in the search for solutions, to be problem solvers, either for others in their own district or for those outside their district.  This can be done without taking extra time and resources from those leaders or their staff.

The concept of groups as actors (GAA) can be used to check voting results.  A group of 5 vote as a block for only for one candidate based on the majority within that group (either self-checked or checked by a panel of 3 judges.)  This allows a combination of public transparency and privacy.  Each result can be announced immediately but individuals within the group still have deniability.  A similar structure can function as a filter for whistleblowers.

Groups as Filters (GAF) can be used to filter fake news, both from the listener’s point of view and in re-posting group results.  There are people who cannot be convinced and won’t be convinced under any circumstance.  It is important to remove one’s self from between them and their adversaries.  Simply challenge them to join a Game that discusses that issue or some related issue.

Group structures can be applied to difficult political issues to find better solutions.  How do we make headway on the abortion issue when there is a fundamental disagreement on when human life begins?  This seems to be an impasse.  Games and group dynamics may offer insights into human behavior that can lead to better solutions.

Stories have a powerful influence on what we think about and how we interpret the world.  But sometimes stories lead to group-think based on faulty information or some good information that never arrives.  This can lead to disastrous results.  The aluminum tube story that drew the US into war in Iraq was a powerful story supported by leaders across the aisle.  But it was wrong.  How many lives did this story cost?  How much suffering?  It was a failure of the media too, even though there were voices that warned against it.  This will happen again and again if we rely only on a system with MCF to guide our decisions.

We Are So Social

Altruism alone will not be enough.  We may love our neighbors and share what we have while lawmakers use MCF to give themselves a raise.  A change in the party in power may offer temporary change, but the system based on MCF will again lead to bad decisions made on half-truths. It will take a combination of altruism and competition to push other communities up the hill toward sustainability, security, and toward low carbon energy use.

Governments are instituted, in part, because we at the local level cannot always get along. Yet we all have a vested interest in the health and security of our community. We don’t want tyranny of the crowd but we do want to use all resources and ideas from any level.  Games can work to clarify the half-truths and so work against this tyranny or any other.

Each of us only live on this earth for a short time.  Our lives become meaningful if we make a difference in the life of someone else. It can be a steep climb and difficult to push someone else up the hill. But then it’s all OK, no matter what waits for us at the top.

 

HOW DO YOU KNOW?                    

How do people search – or refuse to search – for useful information and ideas?

How do you know what information is trustworthy?   Is it simply a matter of searching and sorting? Bigger decisions require reflections from self and others.

In my work as a physician I became intrigued by how people find the pathway they need to take toward health.  Some people actively search.  Some don’t. Some have the tools and support systems they need to make a change.  Others read the writing on the wall but don’t know how to find their path toward change.

We developed a game, an Information Game, to address the issue.  It was fairly simple – think sandlot baseball.  Several teams of 3-5 people and a panel of judges were randomly picked from the pool of participants.   A Discussion Question was given by a moderator.  Teams went to their corner to plan, then present a response.  Judges picked the winning team and awarded prizes.   If a Question could use more development, teams were re-mixed for the next round.

What is the end point to a series of games?  Depending on the Discussion Question, an end point could be a specific action.  It might be growing the group as a goal in itself, maybe for providing useful feedback to a politician.  If neither of these happen, then drop it and do something else.   Prizes can be small, just enough to engage the mind.  Players and judges can include family and friends, some of whom might have good ideas but otherwise have no skin in the game.

Of course, an outside sponsor can choose the Discussion Question, but if players pitch in with small amounts of money or some other non-monetary prize, they can choose the Discussion Question themselves.   A few games may be played to grow the group size if the Discussion Question is worth carrying forward and developing.

Recently I made a simple power point presentation (see “Info Games 1-Learning Methods”) that could be used to learn foreign languages in high school, a notoriously weak subject area.  With two sons in high school, I was motivated to try something new.  (The Target Learners in the foreign language program are simply a way to test ideas in the real world and not an essential element of Information Games.)

Finding better learning methods for a foreign language is hopefully not a hot political topic, but the method does provide an outline or template for other issues, some of which can be very political: abortion, immigration, financial waste in government, energy waste by local government and businesses managers.  The number of applications is limited only by one’s imagination.

These are all questions around the process of finding useful information.  The real power of this method may be using it to interact with other groups and individuals, giving feedback or eliciting problem-solving behavior in people who may not have the time or resources that are available to us.  I’m thinking here of the opioid crisis in communities that bear that heavy burden.

Bias in the media does not seem to be apparent to those in the media.  We all have our bias, however.  Balancing it is not simply a question of simply giving equal time to people who disagree, but using this tension to push toward some solution. One is tempted to throw combatants into room and see what comes out, but we can’t do that in a democracy.  Yet there are other ways to find those ideas and find something useful without use of coercive force or creating countless new laws.

Smart people with a healthy self-esteem will often push their boss to be a better boss or a parent to be a better parent.  If mainstream media is not going to push President Trump to be a better President, then we may need extra methods for communication and testing and filtering information and ideas.   Here is where an Information Game can be a useful tool.

A few possible starter DQ’s – “How to support Trump when the media are trying to take him down?”; “How do we think clearly through the risks of Corona Virus?”; “How do school kids get some exercise if there is no school?”; “How do students help each other learn the material even better than in class?”

In education, teachers may know the material and have good teaching methods.   On the receiving end however, students must be aware and think through their own learning methods.  What learning method helps them understand and remember material that is essential and make it stick?  An Information Game should not be simply composed of students but include a mix of students, parents, and teachers.  The students may have new ways of looking at the material but it would be unwise to throw away years of experience.   Barbara Oakley’s book “Learning How to Learn” can itself be the object of a game – dissecting, analyzing, and sharing key points.   The same for Cal Newport’s books on how to study.

On an immigration-emigration issue, it is useful to realize that many people leave their home towns in another country do so only when they see no other choice.  What would it take to keep them at home?  This is a multifaceted problem and so requires many solutions, something that leadership in other countries may be unable to provide, especially if their only approach is a top-down, one-size-fits-all.

Players may not know or even care about specific individuals who they don’t know but yet may still have useful ideas.  Some IG groups could mix with locals via the internet to form Cyber Teams. Focus many on the few. Learn from failures.  The lack of face-to-face meetings may initially be a problem for team meetings but players will create ways to make up for that.

Information Games can be efficient.  The purpose is not to get to know or like other players but to discover new information and ideas.  Challenge an outside group – but try to mix the players together.  Much of nature is about competition.  People who love games and sports realize that there is something of value beyond the final score.  What could be better than an Information Game for something to do at home during these Corona days?

Parliament in the Dark

I have been a fan of Peak Prosperity ever since Chris spoke at Parliament about the connection between the 3 E’s (Energy, Economy, Environment).   Members of Parliament seemed unable to act however. They did not have the tools to test the information they were given or even to ask good questions. The esteemed British journal of finance and economy, The Economist, an organization that thrives on gathering and printing important information, was also in denial – or in the dark.

Are the issues too complex? Are they mixed too closely with other, less important issues?   Maybe we are afraid of the crowd, or maybe we have a fear of being left out.   Even if the crowd seems to be going the wrong direction it is difficult to break away. This fear is subtle but powerful and it inhibits the asking of important questions.

What can we do when nobody listens? Follow the lead of children and play games.  The play of puppies and kittens is instinctual and has survival value, not only for themselves but for their group.  We humans can create games around almost any goal.  Why not a goal of finding, filtering, and moving useful information and ideas?  Communities that thrive will find ways to do this.

Much of nature is competition and we must learn how to use it constructively.  It can be a simple game like sandlot game of baseball with a combination of transparency plus the semi-privacy of team meetings.  A game is a temporary social structure for the achievement of some goal whether or not that goal is artificial, like putting a ball through a hoop, or a more concrete goal like finding which homes would benefit from better insulation.

Trying to change one’s own community can be frustrating and time consuming.  Making the next neighborhood (NH) as the target learner can be more productive.   A competitive game to find ideas for another community requires no salesmanship, no apologies.  Start with a Discussion Question (DQ), divide a dozen people from your own neighborhood into several teams with a few to act as judges.  They can play just for fun.  That means they can come from any part of the political spectrum.   Re-mix frequently to minimize bias.  Repeat to refine the question until there is some result that can be acted upon by people in the next NH.

NH1 can ask any Discussion Question (DQ) about the next neighborhood (NH2).   The DQ could be  “where is NH2 wasting energy?”   The bonus of the game can be useful information for people in NH2.  They do not have to accept results but are more likely to trust results if they can see the process – and it may save them money.  Players can come entirely from NH1 to start the process but then it can be a mix of players from NH1&2.   Since only about a dozen player-judges are required for one DQ, other people and other groups can address other Discussion Questions.

A community or NH of 10 breadwinners can also use tools of Information Gathering to support 2 of its members.  Those 2 can then work on any job they want.  This is real power and can change the job market for the better.  This type of organization may become more important as more jobs are lost to automation.  It requires social structure changes at the local level, not just government policy changes at the top.

Moving the process forward . . .

Information Games can even be extended to a third neighborhood (NH3) by NH1 crafting a Discussion Question for NH2 such as  “How would you get this process started in NH3?”   If NH1 (or sponsor) can provide enough prize incentive and ask the DQ, then NH2 can provide the players and judges.  The goal of the game is to provide information that might be useful for NH3 (4, 5, etc).  This is real power too.

We are all on a steep mountain and need to point out footholds and give feedback to other climbers. This is true no matter what our own situation might be.  We must engage others in the search and testing of new models that work.  Whoever puts up the prize money can ask the DQ (as usual), but judges should be chosen from the pool of participants.  To accelerate the method there can be many games, each with only a dozen people but focused on finding sustainable ideas for one NH.

Victor Frankl pointed out that finding meaning in life is an important key to survival.  We must search for meaning, not simply be nice people waiting for social justice.  Games and competition can add to the purpose we find each day. Athletes know this.

“Bringing out the pitchforks” may be a metaphor, but in reality all national governments have a monopoly on the use of coercive power (Max Weber).  National governments can use force, if needed, to keep the currency intact and counterfeiters at bay.  This also means the Fed will play with the economy simply because they can.

It’s not about the science anymore.  It’s about turning the social hierarchy to find pathways of sustainability.  If society is a biological model, then the Internet is the nervous system that already extends to most of the earth. The next step should be to look at the cellular level, the community level, and create communities that work.

 

Social Structures for Social Change with Applications for Climate Issues

It’s an awkward time in history to be a leader.  Many are unsure where power lies, unsure of information.  Ironically, the wearing away of the social fabric is made worse by Information Technology.  An obvious question is “How do we re-connect?”  Media that use an ad-model for revenue may be insufficient without the creation of information receiving structures to find and filter useful information.

Nobel Laureate Herbert A. Simon studied how individuals within institutions make decisions.  His book, Sciences of the Artificial, described the science of things made by humans, or artifacts.   He noted that we humans are not very good at predicting the future.  Who knows exactly where or what we will be doing one hour from now?  As Simon points out however, we are very good at receiving and processing feedback from people and the environment.  A good story can start an action but it takes good feedback to keep it on track.

Feedback can be any signal or any useful information.  Feedback can be temporary.  It connects people to get things done.  Systems with good feedback need relatively small signals.  Money spent can be feedback too.  In many cases placement of the money is more critical than the amount. Feedback does not have to follow the paths of power but may come from outside observers.

Democracy as a Problem-Solving Structure

Is democracy a structure for problem solving or is it simply another way to divide the spoils?  The difference may lie in the integrity and usefulness of feedback information.  Tobacco companies were essentially pushed out of the US by the legal system and by a flood of cases brought by smokers and health departments.  The tobacco companies simply moved overseas.  Smoking was a nasty habit that people wanted to quit, but fossil fuel does wonderful things for us all.  A gallon of petrol can do an amazing amount of work.  It integrates into our lives in ways from which it will be difficult to separate.  Fossil fuel companies too will go overseas unless we find more creative ways to help developing countries leapfrog the carbon phase of their development.

Getting off of the fossil fuel habit on a world wide scale will take new and creative cross-border structures to effect change.   Organizations like the UN may or may not help.  Courts seem to have power.  Arguments are made in public as if the speaker were in a court of law presenting proof beyond reproach.  In the court of public opinion however, decisions are made on probabilities.  Crossing the street is a decision based on probability. Courts are slow and must also wait for legal questions to be brought to them.  This limits the court’s ability to look forward.

Failure of Capitalism? 

Is the current climate dilemma a failure of capitalism?  If we had applied capitalism and a business model to climate change when we first knew about the problem there would be fewer calls for large scale government programs today.

Capitalism, along with the business model, can do many amazing things: it can organize and create a division of labor.  It can achieve efficiency pushed on by fair competition. It can achieve time-constrained goals with local control, all by itself.    We want to keep these functions.  Yet, as seen with the tobacco industry and the more recent opioid epidemic, the final product might not be in the best interests of the community. These might be business successes but moral failures.

Failure of Media Structures

The media give feedback and information to citizens and leaders alike.  They are the nervous system of this grand experiment.  We knew cigarettes caused lung disease.  Research by the tobacco companies showed that 90% of smokers wanted to quit.   Yet it took 30 years to achieve what should have taken 3 years.  The media were either not asking the right questions or asking the right people.  They were not showing pathways that more successful quitters had taken.  This was a structural failure related to the media’s business model of selling ads directed at getting the most eyes for their advertising clients.  It precluded discussions about anything difficult and ignored the problem.  A sin of omission.

The structure of ad-media is not new.  Misuse by giant tech companies today make us more aware of its drawbacks, yet that structure is unlikely to change.  We can still get a lot of useful information from the media but it may require outside structures to find and put that information to use as part of real problem solving.

Even the structure of language can be important.  An “online-community” is not the same structure as a local “geographic-community”, though both are communities.  Each has its own purpose.  This important difference can be key when looking for solutions to problems.  It may be the local geo-community where questions to be addressed are hammered into better questions through face-to-face meetings.

The Missing Part of Social Media – The Receiver

Social media enhances extreme views.   It also tends to divide people because there is no information processing structure at the receiving end.   Anyone can join the discussion but few real problem-solving conversations take place.  A temporary structural change here might increase the value of information by creating a “group comments” section written (and filtered) by a group of readers instead of simply individual comments.  Competition for best group comments, as judged by another group of readers, would encourage even more serious thought about some discussion question.  Creating this missing part may be something that social media companies cannot do by themselves without initiative taken by end users.

Competition

Every day millions of people old and young participate in sports, trying to get a ball through a hoop or over a line.  It is the structure and process of the competition that make it engaging. Sports are both abstract and simple, almost artificial in the same sense that Herb Simon wrote about.  Yet people throw their heart into it, often for little external reward.  If there is a level playing field and a well-structured game, competition can bring organization, efficiency, division of labor, and time limited goals.   Climate leaders don’t yet know how to engage that tremendous energy.

As with sports, competition for finding and filtering useful information can be done  with small groups very efficiently.  A group can start with three people, two of them playing against each other and the third acting as judge in a short game.  Invite an additional person each day to be player or judge and continue until a dozen or so people are participating, then spin off another group.  This division of labor can give useful feedback to decision makers on large and complex issues.

Players and judges can be mixed and re-mixed to neutralize bias.  The goal of the game is not to find friends but to find useful ideas and information.  The local group decides what, if any prizes can be given for winning ideas.  This requires some person-to-person contact, not simply online games through social media.

Competition helps to create a gradient or tension in a general direction that can help to find and move useful information without forcing a pre-determined outcome.  Without a gradient, people feel no need to search for answers.  Positive gradients can be formed by natural tensions of human interactions but other things as well.  This includes the use of money or other prize incentive.  Human emotions such as love and loyalty are certainly very powerful motivators in creating a gradient but less predictable.

More on Feedback

The Income Gap debate sounds like an argument over money.  The more important issue is the omission of news that may be inconvenient to owners of the media.  Lack of key information in such a system leads to slow response times when events and the environment require attention, leaving citizens and decision makers in the dark.

Waiting for citizens to take the lead on climate issues is like asking passengers on the Titanic to vote on the risks of hitting an iceberg.  The crew of the Titanic knew they were taking a risk.   Their judgment may have been clouded by group-think or poor feedback.  They rolled the dice and lost.  Without good feedback, evaluation and action on long term risks is a real weakness of democracy itself.  But if a good story does not move the dial, good feedback can still slowly turn a ship.

Feedback loops do not need central coordination.  Local level groups can create their own competition on any topic, choose the Discussion Question, do the judging, and supply their own prizes.  The resulting information may be useful to other people, even if it is a byproduct of the competition.  Results can be built upon by other groups.  Disagreements can be re-tested by anyone with a similar process.

The ability of local level groups to find and move useful information is a real source of power.   Example:  Ten houses in a neighborhood may benefit from better insulation.  Gathering this useful information can be the goal of a competitive game, even with players that don’t live in that neighborhood.  Data can be gathered by using  an infrared scanner commonly used by contractors.  If the group of home owners work together to first insulate the home that needs it the most, then the savings on the first home’s heating bill can be used to buy insulation for the next home.   These are extra savings that may not be realized if they work separately.  None of the homeowners need to use the results but a competitive game between players, some of whom may not care much about energy savings, can still discover useful information.  The players may gain a prize, the homeowners might gain useful information – and save money too.

Loss of jobs to automation will be an increasingly important issue requiring better communication at the local level.  This type of competitive game structure can work here too.  If a community of 10 people can support 2 of their members, that gives them a freedom to invest work hours in anything they believe is important.  This is a real power that is not available without better communication at the local level.  This communication requires a process to find and filter information that is trusted.

DQ in a Box – How to Start a Competition

One way to start the process is to have players or the organizer put any question into a box, then draw one for the competition’s Discussion Question.  For climate issues it could be a question focused on energy usage and finding where we are wasting it.  It could even aim toward Whole Community Sustainability using feedback from outside the community.  To get the process started any kind of Discussion Question will work, even a question unrelated to climate issues.

How do people know what information is Useful Information and what they might do with it?   They may be able to figure it out themselves but can do it much faster with other people and the right structure.  For people who have little time, competition with a level playing field will help sort it out in an efficient manner.

Complacency or Competition?  

On the surface the average person seems complacent about climate change.  We avoid talking about climate issues in the same way that we avoid someone who asks for money.  For most people there are no marching orders, no Dunkirk. Yet people are still listening and thinking.

Life has great momentum at the local level.  We all keep doing what we know how to do.  But people like competition too and we should use that part of our nature.  There are structures all around that can help process information if we know how to use them.  The best ones are simple, like a sandlot game of baseball, that can create a safe space where people are more likely to think out-of-the-box, ask any question, and have semi-privacy within team meetings.

We should be kind to one another, but altruism alone will not get us there.  Neither will a multitude of new laws and policies that stop at our border.  Building a bridge often requires temporary “pre-structures” to help create the final product.  With the size and scope of the climate crisis, it will be helpful to create pre-structures for finding and moving useful information.

John Suter                        jsuter@sbcglobal.net                                  josuterdotcom

 

Structures do more than Stories

by josuter

Anand Giridharadas (“Winners Take All”) is talking to the wrong audience.  He talks to billionaire philanthropists.  He talks to managers and to people who work for billionaires.  These are people who cannot think outside the box.  They made it.

By only talking only to these people Anand is falling into the same trap he describes.  He would do well to spend time talking to people at the bottom too, alternating with presentations to people at the top.   Questions and comments between the two groups will likely be different, and through this process he may learn how those at the bottom can get out from under Tolstoy’s man on their back.

He is correct that some of the problem lies in the language used.  We all use models and metaphors to create conversation and build ideas.  New stories might help, but who will author these stories?  New structures for finding and filtering useful information would be more helpful. The stories will follow.  Throwing the man off our own backs may be impossible but we can certainly help a neighbor throw off their burden by giving them ideas and feedback for those things they don’t see.

We must also re-think the measuring stick of morality that keeps us together.  If I start a cigarette company I will provide jobs for town A, but town B will justly criticize me for death and disease brought to their town by the cigarettes.  As a first approximation, morality must be connected to our geographic neighborhood.

A philanthropist could make real changes by focusing a big prize on a few people.  $10K prizes for the winners.  Make the competition real.  Let players be the judges.  Others will learn from them.  Take Anand’s thirty fat kids in a community and challenge them – not for performance – but for ideas and information on how anyone could stay in shape. Create teams so that they must talk to each other.  Do a series of competitions to develop better questions.

Feedback from other members of a community is essential for learning and generally requires only tiny amounts of energy.  A group learning process requires good information filters that can work efficiently to sort through the misinformation and spin that has taken over.  Mainstream media is supposed to function as feedback but their business model of selling ads has decreased the value of their information.

Anand’s “distortion of what is possible” requires a search and filtering process to discover what is possible.  People at the bottom need information gathering structures to make up for what people at the top already have.

If political parties are not uncovering fundamental problems, then we must go beyond the traditional functions of a political party.  We don’t know what is possible without gathering information and ideas followed by a filtering process.  We cannot do it by simply having more journalists or activists, and not by legislation alone.

My son and I visited his new school yesterday.  We walked into the registrar’s office and sat down.  She was helpful and we got our classes for the new year.  During our conversation she mentioned that some of the students practiced handshakes and other formalities that they might need when out in the real world.

It occurred to me how simple a handshake can be.  It conveys a lot about the attitude of each person, their expectations of the business-like interaction that may follow.  If one pays attention to the nuances of the handshake it also conveys the social status or imagined social status of each person.

What could a simple handshake do in the ongoing struggles of the Middle East?  Women probably have the most to gain.  If they practice their handshakes with each other and with the men around them, they will be able to approach other men too and take the initiative of the handshake.  Even if their handshake is rejected, it sets the tone that the woman expects a business-like interaction and that she has already taken some power.

Florida: A Failure of Community

After the Florida shooting President Trump spoke words of comfort to the children. “We will be there for you if you are lost, alone, confused, and even scared. You will never be alone . . . “   Was he talking to the survivors of the tragedy? Obviously the FBI wasn’t there, even with a prior warning.

Maybe Trump was talking to young men, the young men who are lonely and confused and angry. Maybe he was telling them that they don’t have to do this kind of violence in order to get attention. But neither the president nor any government official can make angry young men feel part of a community.  Only the community can do that. It was a failure of community – not an online community, but a failure of a real community in real time and in a real place. Maybe such a community wasn’t even there. It’s not just up to law enforcement who, practically speaking, can only react to something gone bad.

I saw again the still photo, black and white, of two boys in the Columbine classroom, the killers in that massacre. Angry, lonely, fearful. They must have known they would not survive the day.

High School can be a place where hormones make growing teens feel off balance, disoriented, easily moody. The pressure to fit in with the crowd is a top priority in lives lived minute to minute, often doing things that are risky. Our pre-programmed biology creates a kind of dance, pushing us to establish a social hierarchy. There are top dogs and then there are the rest of us. It can be cruel. Many subdominant males get left behind. Some get cast out.

This story is not new. It has been written about in books such as Lord of the Flies and A Clockwork Orange, worlds of youth gone sour and turned violent. One can feel the youthful passions present in popular music of the day and then reflected back again in Stravinsky’s Dance of the Adolescents. In the Lord of the Flies there was no one to guide them, no clues on how to get along with other children, and so their situation brought out the worst. Social pressure on young people without guidance from an older generation is definitely high stakes. It writes a warped and cruel drama.

Older people forget these passions. We’ve found our parking spot and turn our attention to the next thing.   Ever since Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone there have been warnings of what weak community bonds can look like, though it is often from a sociologist’s point of view more than what is experienced by the individual.

Girls don’t do these violent things as much as boys. Girls seem to form friendships with other girls that carry them though. Girls are not to blame for the violence but neither are they passive observers. Girls have their own special power over boys. Some of them are aware of this while others have their own self-concept challenges, but they too have this special power.

Teenagers seem driven – or maybe expected – to make fun of others, teasing, ignoring, saying cruel things to the weirdo, the kooks (whatever the current lingo), to the guy that stares at them and then tries to smile. It’s a Lord of the Flies, over and over again, a competitive field for the business of constructing and climbing the social ladder.  It’s serious stuff. Kids seem to know that, but I’m not sure they can see or sense a loneliness in others.

The Florida killer was reported to be an autistic young male. This does not mean that he was not sensitive to the pressures that build social hierarchies. He had recently lost his remaining parent. I would guess that outside of school he spent most of his time in front of a screen, playing violent video games or expressing his anger on social media, probably feeling even more alone. He didn’t want to go to school on Valentine’s Day, the day of the shooting.

Last year a flash mob in Oakland used their cell phones to coordinate the entrance into a subway car, told everyone to hand over their wallets and then left with their loot. The newspaper account was straight up news but still upsetting to read.   This was Clockwork Orange. It will be a challenge to the elders of Oakland, the parents, teachers, political leaders and police force.  What will the elders do? Simply catch and punish? Bring them to justice? Or somehow bring them back into the community?

How do we create a community where it is weak or non-existent? How do we find and bring in the angry, fearful young men?   Where is a place for them to connect?   Being alone is not bad. We all need some time alone. But inability to form friendships should be a warning sign.   When we see this, why are we unable to act?   One does not have to be their friend, but we can say hello, and maybe indirectly through other people help to find a place for the guy to fit in, to find some purpose in his life. That’s what leaders do.
In many ways the world of public school is not real, not real in the same sense that an apprentice might feel when learning a trade or learning skills from a parent.   High School students should work on real world problems, not just a hypothetical problem for extra credit. By themselves, students may not have enough experience to know how to connect and how to work on real issues, but their input may be critical to finding solutions.  Education, after all, is essentially about survival.

Where to start? Notice where students go when class is over and see if they have friends. Get to know the people around you and the neighbors too, but don’t limit it to neighbors. Go the distance to find someone (probably a young man) who doesn’t seem to fit in. If you find someone, don’t simply be nice. Ask them to do something. Give then a hammer or wrench and get them involved in a project. Help them find some place that itself has a real need. Sometimes just listen.

Influence of social media, violent videos, or overuse of drugs and medications are questions that a community should face up to. The lucky ones have extended families to help deal with it all. Many others among us have a nuclear family or a few close friends. Those outside the circle must become more than just “others”.

July 2019.  Climate One with Greg Dalton at the Commonwealth Club of California.

Guests included Jonathan Foley of Project Drawdown, Lois Quam of Pathfinder International, and Kate Brandt of Google.

I wonder whether the American people seem to be so unconcerned about climate because they don’t see the elite or leaders of this country cutting back on their flying.  Jonathan Foley said that flying is only about 1% of CO2 emissions.   Kate Brandt said yes, it was about the same level as energy consumed by data centers.  I think that these numbers are low.  With a smart audience they may be hurting their own credibility. (see the Rhodium report). Even Greg Dalton said that flying is on the rise.

But the main point is not about the numbers that we all throw out when asked such a question.  It’s the attitude.  Yes, Parliament has already declared a climate emergency and Congress may soon follow, but no one really acts like it is an emergency.  The pilots that I talk to don’t seem to think much about climate change.  Most politicians follow the polls.  That is why we need a Flying Sabbath (a NoFlyWednesday) in which all commercial planes worldwide take a day of rest.  It would get many more people thinking and talking about the true emergency that we do have.  The savings to the airlines would be significant too, though the prices would go up. It’s a flying habit, but this issue must get into the public sphere.

It may be that we need to “push” people – people at any level – to address one specific aspect of the climate and help them find something to do about it.  Not everyone needs to understand details of the science in order to contribute to making their local world a more energy efficient place.  Information Games is one such way to push them.

Jonathan Foley and Lois Quam both expressed frustration at the cultural momentum that makes us not talk about issues that need to be addressed.  Here again, Information Games can help provide that push.  More specifically it gives people a structure in which people can talk and question and be creative.

Parallels with the battle against cigarette smoking are only partly useful.  Most smokers wanted to quit. That battle against the tobacco companies was primarily fought in court and still took 20-30 years. Since then, the tobacco companies have moved their target market overseas only to be slowed down – in some cases – by health departments who have kept up to date on the science and on the damage that smoking can do.

Jonathan Foley quoted Amory Lovins: “the stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stone”.   Sounds good, but stones don’t provide the incredible amount of energy contained in a gallon of jet fuel or diesel.  With earth-moving equipment a gallon of diesel can do the work of a hundred people – and much faster.  Plus it keeps us warm and cooks our food that we get shipped in from all over the world. That is what we are up against, not stones.

“Pushing people” does not have to be unpleasant, but it must be a specific challenge or a specific question to a specific group of people.  Whatever results can be further refined by the same teams or other small groups of people.  It is a social learning structure that can accelerate our learning curve.  Much of the work may end up changing ways in which we construct our daily lives and jobs. If that happens, social learning tools can help people see the next step ahead and feel secure when taking it.

Crime of The Central Bankers –

Using the Power of the State to Mix the Real Economy with the Casino.

   -published on josuterdotcom, October 20, 2016

Social hierarchies and division of labor are essential to modern life. Our power as humans cannot be separated from the ability to create social hierarchies since, as individuals, we cannot do much aside from subsistence farming or hunting. The glue that bind us together includes language and the ability to create stories, some of which hopefully will reflect reality.   The other key ingredient is currency.   If we destroy the currency we destroy our ability to interact in a reasonable and kindly manner. Without a stable currency things fall apart.

Imagine what early currency might have been. A farmer and herdsman trade a bushel of apples for a goat. The apples are not yet ripe, so the farmer writes an IOU to the herdsman. This IOU is a form of currency.   It not only represents the value of the apples but is also a sign of the integrity of the agreement between two people. Suppose the owner of this IOU now makes many more copies of the IOU. It not only changes the value of the original IOU but possibly destroys a trusted relationship.   Counterfeiters of such IOU’s would not be looked upon kindly by the community.

Nineteenth century political scientist Max Weber observed that the nation-state is that entity which has gained a monopoly on the [legitimate] use of physical force. In modern society, central bankers and congress are responsible for maintaining the integrity of the currency and loss of this integrity harms our relationships with each other. This power of the state is what the Fed and other Central Banks use to enforce financial laws and regulations. They can do this by printing money or forcing interest rates to zero to save institutions who have bet too much.

Central Bankers misuse our trust by allowing a mixing of the real economy with the casino economy, then using the power of the state to enforce this connection.   Evidence for this connection is seen in the sky high Price to Earnings ration (PE).   A reasonable PE might be 10 or 15 to 1. Ten dollars invested in a growing business represented on Wall Street should earn one dollar more over a reasonable period of growth. But PE ratios are now as high as 60 to 1. No one expects that money to be paid back merely by growth of an honest business. Money invested at this level is made simply by staying ahead of other investors. Real and healthy investments are forced to support gambling.

Casinos have their separate economies with bouncers at the door who can spot persona non grata, clients who have not paid their gambling debts. Everyone who goes into a casino knows this.   The risk to the real economy is that this casino effect has been allowed to become entangled and mixed up with the casino economy. Congress, the Fed, and other Central Bankers use the power of the state to enforce this charade when they print money to bail out the banks. Retirement and honest investment funds will be brought down along with a casino that crashes because it is impossible to separate the two lines of investment.