🚀 go-pugleaf

[From Fred Nickols (990429.1730) ET)] --

One of the more important learnings in my life is something I learned in
the Navy when I was being trained as an organization development (OD)
consultant.  The something I learned is that the measure of an intervention
is what happens afterward.  From my perspective, the posting of the
ant/Herbert Simon bit from another list qualifies as a lousy intervention
because I haven't seen much productive come of it.  In coarse old Navy man
terms, about all it's led to is everyone pissing in everyone else's soup.
Be that as it may, I've stayed out of the discussion/debate/diatribes but I
am prompted to make this comment:

From my perspective, Bruce Abbott is not getting a fair shake regarding the
following remark:

>I don't care what Simon may
>have thought the mechanism was.  I've only been defending Simon's insight
>that complex actions may reflect complexity in the environment rather than a
>complex internal organization.  You haven't convinced me that this insight
>is wrong.

Instead of responding to this remark, the discussions seem to have gone
down the path of reading Simon's mind and, worse, interpreting what has
been read (said interpretations, of course, being performed by those who've
done the reading that they're interpreting).  I find that a little bizarre.

It seems to me that the only reasonable responses to the remark above are
as follows:

   1)  Simon's insight, as stated by Bruce, is not evident in the Simon
snippet I posted or it is.

       1.1)  Simon's insight, if not evident, offers no ground for further
discussion.
        1.2)  Simon's insight, if evident, is valid or it isn't.

              In either case, the ensuing discussion should focus on why that
insight is valid or not.

              Instead, it's been an "in your face" argument.

Bruce Abbott claims to be one of the few who's actually read "Sciences of
the Artificial."  Well, so have I, although it was a long, long time ago.
I still have my copy but I'm not inclined to go dig it out and read it
through to determine just what Simon did or didn't say the mechanism was
that accounts for the ant's erratic/complex actions.  I don't know what
Simon thought; I doubt Simon knows what he thought back then (recollections
are notoriously unreliable).  I don't know that what Simon thought back
then is even relevant to the point above.  So, allow me to plagiarize it
and pose it as Nickols' first theorem or postulate (or whatever it is you
scientific folks call such a thing):

        "Complex actions can reflect complexity in the acting entity's
 environment
and do not necessarily
        reflect a corresponding complexity in the acting entity's internal
organization."

Now, in PCT terms, is that assertion (which is what I call it)
reasonable/unreasonable, true/false, valid/invalid, or whatever?

Thanks for any light you can shed...

Regards,

Fred Nickols
Distance Consulting "Assistance at A Distance"
http://home.att.net/~nickols/distance.htm
nickols@worldnet.att.net
(609) 490-0095