Tuesday, 19 March 2024 ------------------------ Hello. All is well. The third chapter talks about resilience, self-organization, and hierarchy in systems. In systems, resilience is about a system's ability to dynamically adapt in a changing environment. A system can have multiple streams of inflow and outflow, making it more tolerant to disruptions. In the sake of stability and productivity, we may forget the importance of resilience. Instability, oscillating stock levels may very well be a sign of well-functioning system that can respond efficiently to changing constraints. Attempting to stabilize a system may cause a system to lose its resilience, causing worse outcomes long term. Likewise, sacrificing the heterogeneity of a system for productivity may yield higher and consistent returns in the short term but cause the breakdown of the system long term. For example, replacing diverse forest ecosystems with homogeneous tree plantations. I think that's why degeneracy is common in biology. It gives a system redundancy while allowing for variation in its execution of functions. For our brain, it allows neurons to participate in multiple functions and tailoring each execution to its context. This brings us to self-organization. The rules that govern the mechanisms in a system allow for varying degree of resiliency. A system that has greater flexibility to adjust its mechanisms can allow greater resilience. The brains ability to construct concepts is a self-organizing mechanism which may come about from simple rules. As I wrote in a previous writing, in software programming, you can find simple algorithms that output lots of complexity. I guess you could say it allows for more self-organizing, allowing it to expand or vary more on the inputs given. The book also gives an example which is fractal geometry that allows for the variation in snowflakes, and ultimately rules that form efficient structures for moving or diffusing stuff by large surface area to volume. If there's one thing I remember from my biology class in school, it's the teachers constant mention of large surface area to volume. It's a great example to show how simple rules govern the mechanisms of systems all around in nature. With self-organization, a system can process more information by forming a hierarchical structure. A hierarchy of levels with subsystems processing small pieces of all information in the system, that'd otherwise be impractical to process on a single-level, centralized manner. The levels in hierarchy begin from the bottom-up, where the purpose of higher levels is to serve the lower levels. This makes sense when you look at evolution from single-celled organisms to people, and our society where the purpose of higher levels of organization is ultimately to serve the people that make up the society. If at any level of this hierarchy, a part diverges from this purpose, it can jeopardize the system, for example cancer in a human or corruption in a society. That's why it's important to understand a system holistically, as issues in the system may be caused by other parts of the system, or multiple parts in combination creating unintended effects. More levels to the hierarchy allow possibility for more delay and distortion of feedback and response to feedback to occur. An example could be a company with a long chain of command between strategy and operation, causing misalignment between the two to the company's detriment. This is also something the last book touched on. How we traditionally have separated mental and physical health, but we now better understand they're part of one system. For example how I had inflammation without physical damage but because of chronic stress induced from poor regulation. I'm glad I was reluctant of taking pain medication as that would distort the underlying reason that was treatable if one looked more holistically. In the case where my shoulder pain was too unbearable to use but I had to for a group assignment I went to the doctor. The doctor gave me prescription for OTC pain relief but never told me anything about stress or regulation, simply accepting the rationalization I had. I reasoned it was a sports related injury. It's usually during those activities I'd be effected most. Overall, from doctors to teachers, unable to understand mental issues, ultimately made society's investment in me up until I left Denmark a full loss. This is one person, but on a societal level accounting for all people, the loss may be substantial. The cost may also be distorted by increase consumption of medical treatments and products that increase GDP but may be unnecessary or harming people. In boarding school, I witnessed students who'd casually take pain relief medication daily to get through the day. It's interesting to think about but it seems like a difficult problem to solve in practice. Just as we learned that in single-stock system with stabilizing feedback loops, if A causes B, then B can cause A too, same applies to physical health and mental health (regulation) which can result in a cycle of deteriorating health. For example, regulating poorly by overeating, then the overeating deteriorates physical health, then the deteriorating health signals for more regulation, and the cycle repeats. I don't know how accurate this example is but I think it's inline with the idea. Likewise a physical health issue can cause regulation to deteriorate by giving bad input for prediction of regulation, either by bad signals or poor rationalization of affect. The brain is a physical organ like the rest of our organs. I think we should avoid external dependencies where possible but be pragmatic about it. Everyone is dependent on oxygen. Every time you take a breath, you're reseting a never ending ~5 minute countdown to death. We use glasses for poor vision as we deem the cost of dependency to be less than the benefit of it. Likewise with medication, I take stimulant medication because I find the benefits to outweigh the costs of dependency. The distinction between mental and physical health is just an abstraction that if taken as reality will cause more confusion.