Month: July 2019

(P2): Weak Constraints Can Change Future CAS Behavior

Black and White photo of a small child trying to move a large boulder.
High Hopes

In addition to the obvious effect of weak constraints on the target system described earlier, we also need to understand weak constraints as fulcrums for coordination, in the same manner, that our bones, joints, and muscles serve as fulcrums for our movement, even the most sophisticated.

If there are no such constraints the system seems freer than it is when these constraints to movement are present. But, this freedom is like that of an amoeba. You can move anywhere but without any sophistication. You are “free” to do much less than you could do if the “constraints” were present. This idea of using constraints as fulcrums for sophisticated advocacy is the key to understanding how we can use the weak constraints (and sometimes the strong constraints) in a system to leverage change. What constraints enable, among other things, is the coordination of our advocacy work to achieve meaningful impact.

Because strong constraints are well defended in target CAS, it can be difficult to change them directly. But the strong constraints still represent fulcrums that the target must respect. So they can be used in much the same way as Aikido or Jiu-jitsu, by channeling the investment in energy that the target CAS must provide in order to prevent damage to itself, into “forced” change. This is different from trying to eliminate or replace strong constraints, which, frankly, almost always ends very badly.

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(P2): Weak Signals as Weak Constraints

Drawn picture of black slaves fighting off white slavers trying to recapture them.

  • I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
    -Jeff Bezos
  • The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.
    -Igor Stravinsky 
  • Problems are hidden opportunities, and constraints can actually boost creativity.
    –Martin Villeneuve

So, how do we use weak signals as a basis for changing Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS)? We must look carefully at the weak signal to understand how or if this signal represents a weak constraint, and what the constraint means to the Target CAS.

Earlier I pointed out that weak links buffer the wildness of CAS. This buffering is a form of constraint, and that’s why buffering works. The buffer acts a bit like the banks on a river, constraining the flow of the river without dictating the movement of individual water molecules.

Our usual understanding of system constraints mimics the beliefs of the homeless community and uber-rich communities. Constraints are barriers to the safety or freedom of these communities, and so they are eliminated. Successful elimination of such weak constraints makes those social communities brittle and hyper-responsive to small disturbances.

The image above is a drawing of the effect of the Underground Railroad during and around the Civil War. The Underground Railroad functioned as a weak constraint on the Southern Slave System It was largely ignored when it was small but was attacked (ineffectively) when it expanded and began to operate as a sign of the weakness of that Southern Slave System.

The Underground Railroad was more than a simple barrier. It actively forced the Southern Slave System to respond to it. In the same way, weak constraints do more than provide simple barriers to the system of which they are a part.

Target systems for our advocacy have many weak constraints that are a normal expected part of their day-to-day experience. They are usually ignored or tolerated because the behavior of the weak constraint is a small local cycle that doesn’t threaten the larger system’s normal behaviors. If the weak constraint begins to expand its impact on the larger system, it will trigger a response of some kind from the larger CAS.

In Part Three, I’ll talk more clearly about how we use weak constraints (and sometimes strong constraints) to produce advocated change in CAS.

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(P2): Activism as Bricolage

Theatre showing Tosca with a phrase projected onto the screen curtain, 'Power is always temporary'

Bricolage is rightly viewed as one of the “Powers of the Weak”. Elites typically view power as something exerted by a predictable machine of propaganda, sanctions, and punishments, and they view insurgents trying to change this as working to replace their machine of power with some other one.

So, bricolage, used as a tool of subversion, misdirection, or organizing, is hard for elites to see, or target. This is especially true if the bricolage is used to solve a local problem.

The point of using bricolage rather than using the system is to avoid having the problem-solving bricolage subjected to the services logic of the system.  This system services logic includes assumptions of:

  • Spending scarce resources to detect fraud
  • Using “failure demand” as a tool for managing system work rather than actually providing the service
  • After an initial period of seeking out persons eligible for the support, gradually turning the point of the system increasingly toward denial of supports.
  • Etc.

Bricolage allows a more coherent connection between support purpose and behavior. This coherence is lost once the support is subjected to the support logic of the system.

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(P2): Tinkering and Bricolage

A room full of various unexpected things for you to play with and make something new

Tinkering is standard behavior for anyone who is curious. Bricolage is a French word defining tinkering as finding a solution to a problem with whatever is in your immediate environment. Bricolage makes problem-solving local and personal and is more than just playing. Bricolage reliably produces solutions that are inexpensive, easier than managed solutions to implement, and well matched to the actual reality of the problem rather than the “planned” reality of the problem. In fact, in modern life, bricolage is a common response to solutions that are imposed by organized management.

I suspect bricolage was a primary way our hunter-gatherer ancestors engaged the problems of their daily lives. Adequate solutions would become part of a multi-generational exploration of what possibilities these solutions held, a kind of socially organized exaptive process. Bricolage speaks to the personal “engineering” drive we all have.

My father was an extremely capable chemical engineer who worked for Dow Chemical for 45 years. His primary focus over the course of his career was something called “process engineering”. His task was to take a reasonably successful research project and find out if the project had commercial potential. Researchers tend to think that you scale their successful research by simply making it a bigger version of what they used as their research methodology.

In reality, designing and building a commercial pilot that is a million times larger than the research process, respecting the physical environment of seasonal temperature changes, the length of pipes, the delivery of chemical components at the right temperature and with the catalysts and pre-product components at the right time, so the next step in the process can be successfully initiated, and so on. Process Engineering is a particularly large form of bricolage, and the difference between ideology (research) and engineering (bricolage) has many lessons for any attempt to change any CAS.

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(P2): Environmental Scanning

Wildly diverse images of pollen types in black and white

Environmental scanning is not monitoring. It is a deliberate activity designed to increase the possibility of surprise. It assumes you already have a commitment to changing your current view of reality by exposing yourself to what you couldn’t anticipate.

So, having a rigid procedure for environmental scanning won’t work. Over time, you’ll find less and less novelty and more and more repetition. You need an approach that has enough noise in its scan to produce stuff you didn’t expect or even know might exist.

I use a variety of ways of accessing information, including ones that I am uncomfortable with, or frankly disagree with, in order to maximize the possibility of surprise. This approach requires scanning a lot of useless crap. But I’ve gotten faster and more accurate in my scanning for crap over the years, so I still get a fair amount of surprise. I also add and subtract sources regularly to maintain the surprise. I use the criterion that a particular source is no longer surprising to me.

Since anybody’s experience of surprise is conditioned by the personal path they have followed in all its eccentricity and uniqueness, a useful environmental scanning approach will be customized to that anybody.  The vagaries and dynamic of our personal purpose and meaning will also influence what we find surprising, and that will change over time as we change. Our ecosystem always includes ourselves.

The way that this kind of environmental scanning helps us detect weak signals is best understood as similar to a kind of process called stochastic resonance. Stochastic resonance happens when you add noise to a weak signal. That part of the noise that matches some part of the signal will boost the “volume” of the signal. That part that doesn’t match will cancel out through interaction with other parts of the noise.

We often try to remove noise if we are dealing with a weak signal because we believe that will make the signal clearer. So it is surprising to find out that noise can help us understand weak signals. This reality is an interesting metaphor/framework for interaction with any CAS.

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