Staying in the Loop

I sometimes travel to San Jose for work. On the ride from the airport to my hotel I always look out the window at the rising mountains to the east. Looking at the vastness of the mountains gives me a sense of how indifferent the landscape is to human scale. This feeling reassures me. I try to carry it with me, because during the work events there is always this omnipresent sense of manic energy. But compared to the mountains, the work energy feels small. It’s a good perspective. Grounding.

You have to be somewhere, so your view is always a matter of perspective. There is no view from “outside.” For hundreds of millennia humans saw the world and ourselves solely through our own eyes. Only what was apparent could be understood. Everything opaque seemed magical, the realm of the gods. Accordingly, our ancient technology was pragmatic. We searched not for universal truths, instead we simply built what extended our leverage over external forces. Or at least, what we thought gave us leverage. We often expended vast and precious resources on projects that we now know were based on superstition or ignorance. We tried to predict future outcomes, but nature is extremely complex.

Then science provided us a rigorous methodology. We figured out that mathematics could model reality well. This gave us leverage that could be repeated across many domains. We made rapid advancements. Along the way we began to shed our tether to place and time. Many people, particularly powerful ones, adopted a universalizing mentality where, despite gaps in understanding, we believed we were discovering an objective universe rather than merely engaging within a subjective one.¹

Today most people have internalized the objective mode despite it tearing at the seams. Mathematical models may be very useful, but that doesn’t make them right. For example, I write this from the beach, on vacation, where I sit on sand imported from somewhere else, almost certainly a poorer and less powerful place than the country I am currently in. We use engineering to build the beach with precision, which results in a compelling illusion of naturalness. The beach town I’m visiting has three types of people: tourists like myself, rich “second home” types, and poor locals whose job it is to maintain the illusion for the tourists and rich people by installing the imported sand (not to mention cleaning up after us, serving our food, repairing our Air BnBs, and so on…) What’s objective about this scenario? Nothing, and yet we still carry on doing it. Our proprioception is totally distorted. We have advanced mathematics and physics, but most of the time we aren’t using them to help us discern what’s actually real.

The epitome of this distorted view is the phenomenon of “luxury bunkers” as apocalypse insurance. Silicon Valley billionaires have taken to building luxury underground bunkers as a hedge against societal collapse. They’ve even hired experts to train them on things like how to keep their staff from killing them.² What’s ridiculous about this is, for the entirety of human history, given the choice people have survived in times of crisis by relying on community. Isolation is certain death. When looked at rationally, the risk of going unhinged in a sealed off, claustrophobic bubble far outweighs any benefit of safety (and let’s be real — if a global societal breakdown actually happened, all bets are off. Most likely the staff will just kill them).

So the idea that it is possible to view the world objectively from outside of it is a fallacy. At least while we are alive, we are in it, we are it. We exist within a multiplicity of feedback loops we can’t extricate ourselves from. In fact, we are so inextricable from them that we essentially are the thresholds that influence them, and through this influence is how we exercise free will and express our unique identity.

It may be hard to conceptualize what I’m saying abstractly, so picture a guitarist who is standing in front of an amp with an electric guitar. They pluck a note, and the sound comes from the speaker. Then the sound from the amp is itself picked up and sent back through the amp, creating a feedback loop. The guitarist can ride the balance between runaway feedback and silence by positioning their finger, their body, and the guitar just so in order to create a sweet sustain. If they get it right, they can ride the sustain indefinitely. This example illustrates the “threshold self.” The guitarist exists at the exact point in the loop where things could go one way or another, and exerts influence over this threshold in order to express themselves in a way that feels good to them, feels right.

Mathematically speaking, the phenomenon can be described as “steering the eigenvalue.” Imagine a virtual landscape of ridges and valleys imposed on a grid. These represent stability and instability within a system. At the bottom of the valleys are attractors, and their scope of influence extends across the entire valley (called a basin).³ Things within attractor basins tend to stay there, it takes a lot to get them out. At the top of the ridges are thresholds where things can go one way or another depending on how they are steered. What is “happening” at any scale (individual, organizational, global) can be understood as an increasingly complex set of nested feedback loops. Reading eigenvalues continuously allows us to steer the whole set of nested loops. The eigenvalue can be understood as the steepness of the slopes on either side of a threshold that tip us into attractor basins. Riding the eigenvalue is the art of using balance and leverage to continuously course correct and stay in the right spot, which usually is on the desired side but close to the ridge, not too deep in the basin. This lets us stay flexible.

The mentality shift from “outside observer” to “threshold observer” is the key to unlocking a future where humans can exert maximal influence over our fate. And as we shall soon see, recent technological advances now allow us to steer at the scale of organizations, communities and the world.

Threshold-self steering at organizational scale can already be found today in command and control systems such as battleships. What unlocks coordinated action in a battleship is nested feedback loops at different timescales. The captain says “engage” but what’s really happening is a decision making process based on nested feedback loops that converges toward a collectively desired outcome. The bridge extends the proprioception of the crew, with the captain positioned exactly at the threshold.

A challenge that has thus far prevented us from applying “proprioception extenders” more broadly is the failure of predictive mathematical models to work reliably in unpredictable situations. Battleship maneuvers are limited to relatively stable conditions. They are highly flexible within them, but can’t adapt outside of them. A battleship cannot maneuver if there is no water. This is because battleships are constrained by physical limits. Once a ship leaves port, hardware changes stretch to long timelines. Architecture design changes are impractical. But information-technology based governance systems are not bound by such constraints. Everything is on the table for threshold-based adaptation. Virtual systems can re-architect themselves continuously. This plasticity, plus recent advancements within software development that allow small teams to realistically build and maintain enterprise-grade software much more rapidly, finally allow us to move at the speed of human governance. In fact, nested feedback loops at different timescales is the secret sauce of algorithm-based platforms used by billions across the globe (social media, curated search engines, artificial intelligence platforms, etc). The technology is already being used on us, I’m proposing we use it for us.

So how to steer the eigenvalue at scale for cybernetic governance? Without getting too technical (I’m preparing separate pieces for practitioners on the architectural specifications for such a system and how to secure it), you achieve it using the principles I’ve described: nested feedback loops at different timescale, applied to distributed participation within an adaptive structure.⁴ Via this technology architecture, along with continuous delivery practices developed by cloud computing technology, we can extend our proprioception beyond the skin, beyond attunement, and as far as we can possibly go.

The foundation of this architecture is built on the words we use to describe ourselves and our surroundings. In information technology metadata tags describe attributes of components within a system. So too, in human communities we use names and other descriptors to identify our unique and shared attributes. These descriptors allow us to create associations and drive workflows. Importantly, these descriptors are permeable — like our skin which defines what is “us” versus “not us” by what’s inside or out, descriptors are boundaries but they are more like membranes than walls. They too can be subject to feedback loops and we re-define them at thresholds.

Descriptors don’t always have to be attributable to essential identity to be effective. For example, to verify voting eligibility one only needs to know whether a voter is a resident of a specific place. Here is a descriptor of a hypothetical resident of precinct 301 in Richmond, Virginia: [us-virginia-richmond-city-precinct-301]. No one’s name, or any personally revealing attribute needs to be exposed broadly in order to verify eligibility. This is the concept of least privilege applied to the social body.

Descriptors describe our roles and our relationships. But they don’t do anything by themselves. For that we need policies. Policies describe the topology that allows proprioception to extend. In a lot of ways existing governance functions illustrate how policies work, we just don’t typically think about them cybernetically. But the constitution and bill of rights are examples of immutable policies. Mandatory quality standards are examples of threshold-based policies. Legislative processes are decision policies. And judicial processes are escalation policies.

Descriptors and policies have the power to transform governance. But systems ossify. Foucault aptly noted that sophisticated power doesn’t silence dissent, it absorbs it. “Your concerns will be reviewed in the order they are received” says the answering machine of the congressperson who supposedly represents me. Receptiveness and responsiveness must be enforced continuously too. This can be achieved via the system being completely open, transparent, and verifiable. Since the system is actual code, anyone can execute it. Unlike natural language law, which is interpretable, code is self-evident. But verifiability is not enough. Participants may also request specific changes, again transparently, and adjudication can be democratically decided. And there’s a built in incentive structure for people to participate. Those whom the system disenfranchises (their descriptors are wrong, a policy unfairly impacts them, a loop cycles too slowly) are most inclined to participate and make changes. Importantly, this includes the ability to bake in education about how to participate directly into the system itself. Rules about who can directly modify code can be informed by processes developed by the open source community such as competence-based authority, lotteries and term expiration. Of course, none of these rules actually solve the many political and social issues being debated. What they do is provide a framework and a platform for nonviolent, transparent adjudication that moves much faster and more effectively than any democracy currently does.

This may not sound sexy, but it has the potential to be revolutionary. Imagine that everyone had a curated feed just like we do now on social media platforms. But instead of a feed that manipulates you, it is designed to inform you and facilitate participation in collective decisions that affect you. For example, local decisions around schools, regional decisions around who pays to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, or global decisions around the terms of the next pandemic response. These decisions could be presented in a straightforward way, everyone getting a personalized equivalent of the “president’s daily brief” on the topics that affect us so we are able to make decisions right there on the platform, which are democratically adjudicated based on policy prescribed cadences, which are themselves adjustable. And if you don’t care about issues like the Chesapeake, you probably still care about waiting in line at the DMV or spending hours filing your taxes or years gaining citizenship. Imagine a platform where all of these things happened automatically. For people who work long hours and come home to family obligations, the benefit of time saved alone is life changing.

You may be thinking, all of this sounds great, but why is this important right now? As noted earlier, something that is rarely acknowledged in public discourse is that the luxury bunker types have already built a global cybernetic infrastructure similar to what I’m describing. The main difference is that this private infrastructure serves their narrow interests. The same political issues are being debated on social media platforms today, but these platforms are secretly biased toward certain societal and behavioral outcomes by design. Moreover, those who own the platforms and define the directionality do not necessarily see themselves as “us.” Their actions indicate that they believe themselves to be positioned outside the loop, a category error that we will all pay the price for if we do not course correct. Norbert Wiener, the creator of cybernetics, warned that cybernetic technology could either liberate or enslave humanity depending on whether it was decentralized or centralized. Right now it is centralized. The only way to save democracy, rights, freedom, or frankly any ideals at all other than the ones the tech owners decide for us, is by empowering governance to move at cybernetic speed.

Two important clarifications: The first is that my architecture doesn’t prevent people from forming independent communities. Nested loops don’t have to be subjected to direct governance from some centralized governance model. Boundaries can be encoded the same way sovereign and legal boundaries exist today. The only thing that is genuinely impossible is the idea that boundaries can be utterly impervious. More than ever, we all exist at the thresholds of global feedback loops. Just as a luxury bunker isn’t insurance against human frailty, societies aren’t completely impervious to outside influence either. Second, elite or mass participation isn’t a prerequisite for anyone to start extending proprioception regardless. The beauty of this architecture is that it works at any scale. We can apply leverage by positioning ourselves at the thresholds within loops and steering true by reading the eigenvalues. For individuals and organizations who aren’t owned by someone with a bunker, this is probably a wise thing to do.

On my work trips, when I’m done with my day I go up into the mountains overlooking San Jose, the same mountains I passed by while driving from the airport. Up there the perspective is magnificent. I can see the whole city. I can also see animals, a pond full of frogs, and other people with smiles on their faces and awe in their hearts, inspired by the undeniable profundity of the beauty all around us. For those of you who read to the end, maybe we can hike together next time.

References

Thresholds and Critical Transitions

1. Scheffer, M., Bascompte, J., Brock, W.A., et al. (2009). "Early-warning signals for critical transitions." Nature 461, 53-59.
2. Scheffer, M. (2009). Critical Transitions in Nature and Society. Princeton University Press.
3. Holling, C.S. (1973). "Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems." Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4, 1-23. doi:10.1146/annurev.es.04.110173.000245
4. Strogatz, S.H. (2015). Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos (2nd ed.). Westview Press.

The Objective Turn

5. Bacon, F. (1620/2000). The New Organon. Cambridge University Press.
6. Descartes, R. (1641/1996). Meditations on First Philosophy. Cambridge University Press.
7. Newton, I. (1687/1999). The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. University of California Press.

Cybernetics, Power, and Governance

8. Wiener, N. (1948/1961). Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (2nd ed.). MIT Press.
9. Wiener, N. (1950/1954). The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (rev. ed.). Doubleday Anchor.
10. Beer, S. (1974). Designing Freedom. CBC Publications / Wiley.
11. Beer, S. (1972/1981). Brain of the Firm (2nd ed.). Wiley.
12. Foucault, M. (1976/1978). The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Trans. R. Hurley. Pantheon.

Reporting

13. Osnos, E. (2017). "Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich." The New Yorker, 30 January 2017.
14. Rushkoff, D. (2018). "Survival of the Richest." Published on Medium, July 2018; later expanded into a book of the same title.

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1. For the roots of this historical trajectory, see: Bacon, The New Organon (1620); Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641); Newton, The Principia (1687). ↩

2. For the reporting behind this, see: Osnos, “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich” (2017); Rushkoff, “Survival of the Richest” (2018). ↩

3. For more information, see: Holling (1973); Scheffer et al. (2009); Scheffer, Critical Transitions in Nature and Society (2009); Strogatz, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos (2015). ↩

4. For more on the cybernetic governance tradition, see: Beer, Designing Freedom (1974); Beer, Brain of the Firm (1972/1981). ↩