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xi The unifying theme of the discussion is that the development of our knowledge in a complex world is critically shaped and conditioned by the incidence of that world's complexity and increasingly brings it to light. Life in a complex environment presents a difficult challenge to us
xiii Complexity is at once [a] bane and a blessing - a blessing because it is the unavoidable accompaniment and indeed prerequisite of progress, and a bane because it is both a negativity in itself and a burden that impedes the smooth realization of further progress. The aim of this book will be to examine the nature of complexity and to consider its bearing on our understanding of the world and on the management of our affairs within it. [JLJ - corrected typo]
xv We use thought to explore the domain of its own creation: the realm of possibility.
xv-xvi this social world - the realm of our interrelationships among fellow humans... here too complexity comes on the scene. The patterns of affinity interdependencies and social interrelations are enormously complex... with enlarged opportunities there comes the need for ever more choices. Alternatives multiply in every direction... And this expansion of opportunity calls for ever greater discrimination... The community confronts a situation of a profusion and variety that is to all interests and purposes chaotic but out of this chaos individuals must fashion a manageable order for themselves.
xvii People yearn for solutions - and the simpler the better. Few of us are pleased to hear that the problems that confront us may well prove too formidable for our limited powers - that frequently the best we can do is simply to muddle through in a spirit of hopeful determination.
Chapter 1: The Ways of Complexity, p.1-24
p.1 The world's complexity is a fact of life that has profound and far-reaching implications for us. Complexity is first and foremost a matter of the number and variety of an item's constituent elements and of the elaborateness of their interrelational structure, be it organizational or operational. Any sort of system or process - anything that is a structured whole consisting of interrelated parts - will be to some extent complex... In greater or lesser degree, complexity is present throughout the domain of the real.
[JLJ - ...and so? What if we intelligently developed complexity-reducing schemes which work, which otherwise enable us to 'go on' with ease in such a predicament? Your point is now... what exactly?]
p.3 the operations of a complex system tend by their very nature to make for yet further complexity (whose management, cognitive or otherwise, becomes increasingly difficult).
[JLJ - ...yet those who choose to operate such systems do so willingly, because they see a gain of some kind, or a goal that is accessible.]
p.7 it is clear that the world's complexity has important implications and ramifications throughout the entire realm of our concerns... It impacts profoundly on our understanding of the world - as regards both our knowledge of its doings and the management of our affairs within in. The complexity of the things and situations we confront throughout our experience is one of reality's most significant and portentous aspects, affording both opportunities and prospects of frustration for us.
[JLJ - Yes, for example, Mr. Rescher has had the opportunity with each book he has written to hire an editor to correct the many errors present in each work. Has also has had the opportunity to create second editions of his works. He has chosen not to do so. We the readers are left with the consequences.]
p.8 whenever present, complexity coordinates with difficulty in cognitive and operational management: the more complex something is the more difficulty we have in coming to grips with it and the greater the effort that must be expended for its cognitive and/or manipulative control and management.
[JLJ - Not necessarily so - one simply arms oneself with simple and effective schemes to reduce complexity to manageable levels. We have the DOW Jones stock average, the federal reserve rate, yards passing, runs/hits/errors, penalties/yards, fumbles/lost - we are a society awash in metrics which assume a life of their own in reducing the complexity we face to acceptable levels. One simply constructs the metrics, such as EBIDTA, before deciding to loan money to a business. The difficulty comes in deciding which metrics apply and whether there are any rare details which will throw off a metric.]
p.8 complexity is itself a markedly complex idea.
[JLJ - Is it not our efforts to understand the interaction of things, which leads us into the realm of complexity? We can conceive of things complex, because we ourselves are complex. Performance, or efficiency in extended operation, requires to some extent complexity.]
p.13 does greater capacity really require greater complexity? ...Perhaps so - but only because it is a part of a vastly more complex system of process... complexity has the tendency to make for a destabilization that tends toward potentially surprising results. Still, one of the principal ways in which operational complexity can manifest itself is by way of impredictability... It deserves note that a process characterized by very simple operating principles can yield a very complex product
p.14 The examples of games like chess or go... serve to indicate that systems whose constitutional complexity is relatively modest can in their operations engender products whose structural and operational complexity is very great.
p.14-15 To function effectively, systems of greater compositional complexity generally exhibit greater structural complexity... And systems of greater structural complexity are generally more complex in point of their operational modalities.
p.17 As a rule, an item's complexity is indicated by the extent to which we encounter difficulty in coming to adequate cognitive terms with it.
[JLJ - Perhaps we see complexity wherever someone or something has struggled against driving forces to achieve a position of dominance or acceptability, against other competitors or competing plans. What exists typically exists because the demands of the situation allowed or permitted the complexity, and which typically allows a flexible or performance-based response.]
p.20 Complexity is something that we always have to reckon with as we try to come to cognitive terms with the world. Since reality is indeed complex, we shall inevitably encounter difficulty with it - which is to say that more time, effort, energy, etc. will have to be expended in its cognitive domestication.
[JLJ - Yes, but our life is made simpler by complexity-reducing schemes which we develop ourselves or borrow from others, that help us move about and maneuver in a complex world, often with ease and comfort. After intelligently categorizing what type of position we are in and what resources we have, we form plans and fallback plans, then execute them. Most of the time we move through reality with ease, occasionally stumbling and having to resort to fallback plans. We take positions or stances in life that offer multiple options forward and rely on our resilience when things do not go our way. We see the multiple paths, perhaps not the exact path that the future will bring.]
p.21 Complexity, in sum, creates challenges for us in every area of human endeavor, serious and frivolous alike.
Chapter 2: The Complexity of the Real, p.25-54
p.26-27 Natural systems can be classified into two types: the linear and the nonlinear. Linear systems admit of approximation. If we oversimplify them we change nothing essential: the results we obtain by working with their simplified models will appropriate the condition of their more complex counterparts in the real world. Small-scale departures from reality will make no big difference. But nonlinear systems behave otherwise. Here small variations - even undetectably small ones - can make big differences. Accordingly, simplification - let alone oversimplification - can prove fatal: even the smallest miss can prove to be as good as a mile as far as outcomes are concerned.
p.30-31 The limitlessness of the world's descriptive complexity does not mean that we cannot say how things stand by way of a "reasonable approximation." We can, for example, specify how things normally and usually comport themselves within a range of our observation. And so, while we cannot present the full details, we can provide a somewhat approximate account of the real via a characterization of the usual and ordinary course of events.
p.31 It is exactly because reality is too complicated to be captured by our facile generalizations - is too full of vagaries and quirks - that we must constantly resort to qualifying locutions such as "generally," "standardly," and the like.
[JLJ - Yes, but considering what "typically" or "generally" happens can be one strategy aimed at practically reducing the complexity of our world or predicament to the point where we can trial-and-error-construct schemes and plans to "go on" within it. Where our tricks-of-sorts confront others also playing tricks-of-sorts (think of a store manager trying to make money by selling items in demand at a profit, and a customer entering the store aiming to purchase them for the lowest price), we need instead a strategy which considers a broad spectrum of behaviors, and opt for a general maneuvering or sequential positioning, in order to "go on" within our current predicament. We aim at a high level for our improvisations and plans of today to lead directly into our plans and improvisations of tomorrow, with much foreseen, and a practically useful capacity to deal with the unexpected or unforeseen.]
p.31 there is a need for different disciplines in the study of a complex world. All epistemology is local (as all politics is said to be): our proper modus operandi in matters of inquiry must always allow for the local conditions that prevail in the particular public area at issue.
p.32 there is reason to think that once things are so complex that further new facts about them can always be found out, then there can be no complete inventory of the facts about something even if we are prepared to contemplate listings of infinite length.
p.33 It follows from these considerations that we can never justifiably claim to be in a position to articulate all the facts about a real thing... The descriptions that we can ever actually provide for real particulars are never complete.
[JLJ - All the more reason to develop a practical and general-purpose capacity to adapt, useful in rare but real circumstances when we are confronted with the unexpected and critically important.]
p.35 emergence is not one of the features of things, but one of our unfolding information about them.
p.35 one of the most striking and characteristic features of reality in general - and indeed of anything in particular that is real - is its complexity... No account... can ever manage to tell us everything there is to know about something real... this means that our knowledge of reality is incomplete - and invariably so, now or ever.
[JLJ - Perhaps cognition developed as a result of a critical need to understand complexity - and further, perhaps the practically effective schemes to reduce or manage complexity, when competently executed, produce the appearance of intelligence. But one does not need complete knowledge to decide how to 'go on.' One merely needs to practice, then execute effective tricks that work - both in preparation and in performance, which might call for some degree of adaptive capacity, a vision of multiple paths forward, and an ability to improvise.]
p.38 a thing is what it does
[JLJ - A thing is what it is - we can classify it by type according to what it does. A thing's thingness is usually revealed by what it does, but things can pretend to be other things. That's the thing.]
p.39 Real things are cognitively opaque - we cannot see to the bottom of them... In view of the cognitive opacity of real things, we must never pretend to a cognitive monopoly or cognitive finality.
[JLJ - What is real for you is not necessarily what is real for me.]
p.40 It is a crucial facet of our epistemic stance towards the real world to recognize that every part and parcel of it has features lying beyond our present cognitive reach - at any "present" whatsoever... to be realistic we must take the stance that our conception of real things, no matter how elaborately developed, will always be provisional and corrigible. Reality has hidden reserves; it is "deeper" than our knowledge of it ever is - or can be - at any particular juncture.
p.41 The inescapable fact of the matter is that reality everywhere outruns our knowledge of it. As the history of science amply shows, for the impact of later, fuller knowledge, shows that matters are always more complex than we currently think them to be.
p.43 Only by bringing appropriate coordination concepts to bear can we discern the laws at issue... There is no end to the new levels of functional complexity of operation that can be investigated with such a system. Coordination phenomena have a life of their own... When we change the purview of our conceptual horizons, there is always in principle more to be learned
p.45 Whatever the known character of a series of phenomena that we examine may be, we can never rule out the possibility that yet further patterns of relationship exist... Confronted with repetitive phenomena of any description, inquiry will always in principle find new grist for its mill among the phenomena arising at higher levels of productive operation.
p.46 we can only learn about nature by interacting with it... Everything depends on just how and how hard we can push against nature in situations of observational and detectional interaction... our capacity to effect control is bound to remain imperfect and incomplete, with much in the realm of the doable remaining undone.
p.47 The existence of unobserved phenomenon means that our theoretical systematizations may well be (and presumably are) incomplete... Fundamental features inherent in the structure of man's interactive inquiry into the ways of the world thus conspire to ensure the incompleteness of our knowledge - and moreover, will do so at any particular stage of the game.
p.48-49 The finitude of actual knowledge in the face of the unlimited cognitive depth imposed by nature's complexity means not only that our science is always incomplete but also that it is always of questionable correctness.
p.49 The things that populate the real world are always - both individually and in the aggregate - of an inner complexity so deep that inquiry and cognition cannot get to the bottom of it. There is always more to be done
p.49 the circumstance that perfection is unattainable does nothing to countervail against the no less real fact that improvement is realizable - that progress is possible.
p.49 There are two ways of looking at progress: as a movement away from the start, or as a movement towards the goal.
[JLJ - Yes, but you ought not measure movement away from the start without the ability to estimate general-purpose progress, of some strategic and practical kind. For example, one might move 3 feet away from the start line in a race, but unless you measure the distance in the general direction of the finish line, this 3 foot distance might be in the opposite direction, and of no use in a race. Measurement and judgement of all types must be called for and initiated or executed by a practical, intelligent, and therefore competition-tested scheme of some kind, a scheme that is sensitive to the concept of progress, and sensitive as well to common and uncommon tricks that aim to distort the measurement, and therefore misgude any future choices made as a result of the measurement. In fact, is not a measurement simply part of a practical and intelligent way to decide or determine how to 'go on'? Why measure, if there is no decision on how to proceed, somehow based on or indexed by, the result? From a high level, is the execution of a computer program simply just part of a scheme to 'go on', where the one scheme (deciding how to 'go on') calls for obtaining the results of the other scheme (the one embedded in the executed program), the results of which have been elevated in importance in advance, and are therefore pre-decided and ready to guide action? I wonder.]
p.50 Where arrival at a definite destination is impossible, all we can ever do is to make advancement-progress - to make still further improvements on the already attained position.
[JLJ - Nevertheless, we can construct diagnostic tests of our ability to adapt to the driving forces which change over time, and intelligently prepare ourselves for the future - whatever it is. We prepare for a future where we have the ability to seize multiple goals - the specific goals pursued and the actual ones achieved might not be foreseeable now. That does not mean that we cannot be underway on our journey. Initial progress does not need a fixed final destination to get underway - a portfolio of developed, practical capacities and a ponderment of multiple objectives is often a good enough posture for the present, our initial determination of how to 'go on'.]
Chapter 3: Cognitive Progress in a Complex World: Destabilization and Complexification, p.55-74
p.56 We naturally adopt throughout rational inquiry - and accordingly throughout natural science - the methodological principle of rational economy to "try the simplest solutions first" and then to make this do as long as it can. And this means that historically the course of inquiry moves in the direction of ever increasing complexity.
p.57 Rational inquiry... strives for comprehensiveness... We make do with the simple, but only up to the point when the demands of adequacy force additional complications upon us.
p.58 The Occam's razor injunction, "Never introduce complications unless and until you actually require them," accordingly represents a defining principle of practical reason that is at work within the cognitive project as well.
[JLJ - Never say never - "Occam's razor" is an excuse that lazy, arrogant and yes, ignorant people use to dismiss ideas that do not agree with theirs. It has stopped the advancement of science in areas that have shown great promise and has been used to silence dissent. It is an excuse for the closing of the mind, for intellectual nap time, where others - including myself - have proposed promising new directions for discovery.]
p.59 When something simple accomplishes the cognitive tasks in hand, as well as some more complex alternative, it is foolish to adopt the latter.
[JLJ - Not so fast, strategy might occasionally call for a complex response in order to throw off a competitor. It is not foolish to use anything if it is (or can be) part of an ethical, lawful, respectful, truthful and practically effective strategy.]
p.64 Simple tools or methods can, suitably used, create complicated results. A simple cognitive method, such as trial and error, can ultimately yield complex answers to difficult questions... Our commitment to simplicity in scientific inquiry accordingly does not, in the end, prevent us from discovering whatever complexities are actually there.
p.64 Progress in natural science is a matter of dialogue or debate in a reciprocal interaction between theoreticians and experimentalists. The experimentalists probe nature to discern its reactions, to seek out phenomena. And the theoreticians take the resultant data and weave about them a fabric of hypotheses that is able to resolve our questions. Seeking to devise a framework of rational understanding, they construct their explanatory models to accommodate the findings that the experimentalists put at their disposal.
p.65 The history of science is a sequence of episodes of leaping to the wrong conclusions because new observational findings indicate matters are not quite so simple as heretofore thought.
p.66 We are driven in the direction of ever greater complexity by the principle that the potential of the simple is soon exhausted and that high capacity demands more elaborate and powerful processes and procedures... What we discover in investigating nature always must in some degree reflect the character of our technology of observation. It is always something that depends on the mechanisms with which we search... the history of science is an endless repetitive story of simple theories giving way to more complicated and sophisticated ones... scientific progress is a matter of complexification because over-simple theories invariably prove untenable in a complex world.
p.71 complexity... is an unavoidable concomitant of progress... The struggle with complexity that we encounter throughout our cognitive effort is an inherent and unavoidable aspect of the human condition's progressive impetus to doing more and doing it better.
p.71 The mind of a being able to achieve knowledge of a complex object can hardly be simpler than that object whose complexities it must encompass... To whatever extent we can achieve mental adequation to a complex environment we ourselves must be intellectually complex beings.
[JLJ – There are degrees of understanding, so this statement is not entirely correct. A simple cognition can nevertheless place a complex object in the correct "action" category (things to fear and freeze hoping it doesn't see you, things to eat, things that have seen you and that you need to run from, things you can ignore) without a complete understanding of the object in question. Perhaps the baseline function of cognition is to categorize, and then execute an action strategy to deal with that object or situation, based on that categorization.]
p.72-73 And so, we face in the human sciences a situation different from that of the natural sciences. Here, the prominent role of phenomenological novelty due to innovation makes for a different situation with respect to the objects at issue... The comparative anarchy (i.e., lawlessness) of the social sciences in point of strict universality is thus best explained obliquely through their volatility - the fact that chance and change propels us into the region of quasi-laws. For the fact is that deliberate innovation and functional destabilization pervades this domain. The complexity of social science lies in the final analysis not so much in the multiplicity of its internal parameters as in the changeability of their interrelationships.
[JLJ - Yes, as in chess, a lower-valued piece generally constrains a larger-valued piece from moving to certain squares. But this is a quasi-law which can and is broken in tactical positions.]
Chapter 4: Complex Knowledge: The Growth of Science and the Law of Logarithmic Returns, p.75-90
p.77 En route to knowledge we must begin with information.
p.78 While information is a matter of data, knowledge, by contrast, is something more select, more deeply issue-resolving - to wit, significant and well-consolidated information.
[JLJ - Knowledge is information that is timely, relevent and actionable, or more simply, it is pre-packaged, pre-decided action, ready to be grasped in a predicament.]
p.79 Knowledge commonly develops via distinctions (A vs. non-A) that are introduced with ever greater elaboration and sophistication to address the problems and difficulties that one encounters with less sophisticated approaches.
p.79-80 Two ideas...
- Knowledge is distinguished from mere information as such by its significance. In fact: Knowledge is simply particularly significant information...
- The significance of additional information is determined by its impact upon pre-existing information.
p.81 Intellectual progress... when we extract knowledge... from mere information of the routine, common "garden variety,"... Initially a sizeable proportion of the available is high grade - but as we press further this proportion of what is cognitively significant gets even smaller.
p.83 increasing complexity is the unavailable accompaniment of scientific progress as ever more elaborate processes are required to engender an equimeritious product.
p.84 the growth of knowledge over time involves ever escalating demands. Progress is always possible - there are no absolute limits. But increments of the same cognitive magnitude have to be obtained at an ever increased price in point of information development and thus resource commitment as well... The more knowledge we already have in hand, the slower (by a very rapid decline) will be the rate at which knowledge grows with newly acquired information. And the larger the body of information we have, the smaller will be the proportion of this information that represents real knowledge.
p.87 The world's inherent complexity renders the task of its cognitive penetration increasingly demanding and difficult.
[JLJ - Yet consider: whatever complexity exists in our world, there is likely a method to reduce it to simpler terms so that we can 'go on' within our current predicament.]
Chapter 5: Technological Escalation and the Exploration Model of Natural Science, p. 91-104
p.91-92 How is it that we humans are actually so competent in coping with matters of cognitive complexity? ...Basically, we are so intelligent because this is our place in evolution's scheme of things... the evolutionary instrument of our species is intelligence
[JLJ - Actually, for whatever complex matter than we face, there is an intelligently developed and available scheme or technique for managing it that usually can be mastered, with moderate effort, or failing that, someone can be hired to do this managing for us. For example, one merely hires a real estate agent when buying and selling real estate. One sees a doctor when one is not feeling well. You do not have to master the complexities of these professions to benefit from their expertise.]
p.94 We are as intelligent as we are because that is how we have had to evolve to achieve our niche in nature's scheme of things.
p.95 A brain that is able to do the necessary things when and as needed to sustain the life of a complex and versatile creature will remain underutilized much of the time.
[JLJ - Yes, and perhaps turning to complex games of strategy for amusement...]
p.96 Intelligence is the evolutionary specialty of Homo sapiens... Intelligence constitutes the characteristic specialty that provides the comparative advantage which has enabled our species to make its evolutionary way into this world's scheme of things.
[JLJ - Yawn. Poor Nicholas Rescher. We all cannot sit in our libraries and write Philosophy and ponder matters of deep importance.]
p.98 The discoveries of today cannot be made with yesterday's equipment and techniques.
p.100 With the progress of science, nature becomes less and less yielding to the efforts of further inquiry. We are faced with the need to push nature harder and harder to achieve cognitively profitable interactions.
Chapter 6: The Theoretical Unrealizability of Perfected Science, p.105-128
p.107 Any adequate theory of inquiry must recognize that the ongoing process of science is a process of conceptual innovation that always leaves certain theses wholly outside the cognitive range of the inquirers of any particular period. This means that there will always be facts (or plausible candidate-facts) about a thing that we do not know because we cannot ever conceive of them... what is at issue is not an emergence of the features of a thing but an emergence in our knowledge about them. The blood circulated in the human body well before Harvey; uranium-containing substances were radioactive before Becquerel.
[JLJ - Perhaps knowledge emerges from general purpose cues which suggest that we proceed in thus-and-such a way, where we again arrive at more cues. We invoke certain classifications which have worked in the past in similar situations, and presto, we have knowledge where moments before we had only vague indications and premonitions.]
p.109 any judgment we can make about the laws of nature - any cognitive model we can contrive regarding how things work in the world - is a product of theoretical triangulation from the data at our disposal. And we should never have unalloyed confidence in the definitiveness of our data base or in the adequacy of our exploitation of it. Observation can never settle decisively just what the laws of nature are.
p.109-110 No matter how comprehensive our data [or] how great our confidence in the inductions we base on them, the potential inadequacy [of] our claims cannot be averted.
p.112 The possibility that "just around the corner" things will become unstuck can never be eliminated. Even if we "achieve control" to all intents and purposes, we cannot be sure of not losing our grip upon it
p.113 control hinges on what we want, and what is conditioned by what we think possible, and this is something that hinges crucially on theory - on our beliefs about how things work in this world. And so control is something deeply theory-infected. We can never safely move from apparent to real adequacy in this regard... While control does not help us with perfection, it is crucial for monitoring progress. Standards of assessment and evaluation are such that we can implement the idea of improvements (progress), but not that of completion (realized perfection).
[JLJ - IMHO, and very specifically, a machine can never truly be said to play a complex game of strategy, such as chess, because it can never be said to come up with beliefs about control. It will be forever executing code - tricks of classification and trial-and-error-exploration that work and that have cleverly been elevated to schemes - written by a programmer, with the machine never rising to truly scheme about controlling what emerges in the future from the imagined tension in the game.]
p.115 Science itself sets the limits to predictability - insisting that some phenomena... are inherently unpredictable. And this is always to some degree problematic.
p.116 from our point of view the possibility of further change lying "just around the corner" can never be ruled out finally and decisively. No matter how final a position we appear to have reached, the prospect of its coming unstuck cannot be precluded... We can never claim with assurance that the position we espouse is immune to change under the impact of further data - that the oscillations are dying out and we are approaching a final limit... We can never achieve adequate assurance that apparent definitiveness is real.
p.118 We yearn for absolutes, but have to settle for plausibilities; we desire what is definitely correct, but have to settle for conjectures and estimates... The absolutes for which we yearn represent an ideal that lies beyond the range of practicable realizability. We simply have to do the best we can with the means at our disposal.
p.119 Existing science does not and never will embody perfection.
p.122 we have little alternative but to take the humbling view that the incompleteness of our purported knowledge about the world entails its potential incorrectness as well.
p.124 Given the necessity of recognizing the claims of our science to be tentative and provisional, one cannot justifiably take the stance that it depicts reality. At best, one can say that it affords an estimate of it
Chapter 7: Extraterrestrial Science, p.129-150
p.131 Everything depends on how nature pushes back on our senses and their instrumental extensions.
p.134 Because it determines what is seen as an appropriate question and what is judged as an admissible solution, the cognitive posture of the inquirers must be expected to play a crucial role in shaping the course of scientific inquiry itself.
p.134 The most characteristic and significant difference between one conceptual scheme and another arises when the one scheme is committed to something that other does not envisage at all - something that lies outside the conceptual range of the other.
[JLJ - All the more reason to develop alternate conceptual frameworks, even as thought experiments. All science is likely wrong to some degree - why not try alternate ways of thinking in order to focus current research on likely areas?]
p.135 Our minds are the information-processing mechanisms of an organism interacting with a particular environment via certain particular senses (natural endowments, hardware) and certain culturally evolved methods (cultural endowments, software). With different sorts of beings, these resources would differ profoundly - and so would the cognitive products that would flow from their employment.
p.137 Our alien colleagues scan nature for regularities, using (at any rate, to begin with) the sensors provided to them by their evolutionary heritage. They note, record, and transmit those regularities that they find to be useful or interesting, and then develop their inquiries by theoretical triangulation from this basis.
p.144 The workings of evolution... are always the product of a great number of individually unlikely events... The result eventually reached lies along a route that traces out one particular contingent path within a possibility-space that encompasses an ever divergent fanning out of alternatives as each step opens up yet further eventuations. [A]n evolutionary process is a very iffy proposition - a complex labyrinth in which a great many twists and turns in the road must be taken aright for matters to end up as they do.
Chapter 8: Are There Any Limits to the Problem-Solving Capacity of Computers, p.151-164
p.152 The history of computation in recent times is one of a movement from triumph to triumph. Time and again, those who have affirmed the limitedness of computers have been forced into ignominious retreat as increasingly powerful machines implementing increasingly ingenious programs have been able to achieve the supposedly unachievable.
p.152-153 Problem Solving by Computers
First some important preliminaries. To begin with, we must, in this present context, recognize that much more is at issue with a "computer" than a mere electronic calculating machine understood in terms of its operational hardware. For one thing, software also counts. And, for another, so does data acquisition. As we here construe computers, they are electronic information-managing devices equipped with data banks and augmented with sensors as autonomous data access. Such "computers" can not only process information they can obtain it as well. They can not only work with givens but also with takens. Moreover, the computers at issue here are, so we shall suppose, capable of discovering and learning, able significantly to extend and elaborate their own initially programmed modus operandi. Computers in this presently operative sense are not mere calculating machines, but general problem solvers along the lines of the fanciful contraptions envisioned by the aficionados of artificial intelligence. These enhanced computers are question-answering devices of a very ambitious order.
[JLJ - Rather than "solving" problems, Rescher should first consider that the central problem of cognition is, "What should I do right now, considering that I am in such-and-such a predicament, and have this-and-that resources available to me, and am confronted by so-and-so forces, arrayed in such-and-such a way, and I have previously prepared thus-and-such a plan in advance, including this-and-that options, to deal with this situation?" What we truly need is not a computer-produced "answer", but instead a set of options for how to proceed, right now, in our present predicament (and a reasoning to go along with each) and a set of timely reminders (when it appears that we are straying into behavior, places, or predicaments that are not in our best interest).]
p.155 Often the information needed for credible problem-resolution is simply unavailable.
p.155-156 One clear example of the practical limits of computer problem-solving arises in the context of prediction... the process of providing rationally appropriate answers to certain questions can be led astray not just by the incorrectness of information but by it incompleteness as well. The body of information that is actually at hand is not just important for problem resolution it is crucial. And we can never be unalloyedly confident of problem-resolutions based on incomplete information, seeing that further information can always come along to upset the apple cart.
p.157 To solve problems about the real world, a computer must of course be equipped with information about it. But securing and processing information is a time-consuming process and the time at issue can never be reduced to an instantaneous zero. Time-constrained problems that are enormously complex - ones whose solution calls for securing and processing a vast amount of data - are bound to be intractable for any computer.
[JLJ - Yes, but what if we are only after a computer "answer" that is "good enough" for "playing" a complex social game of strategy? Remember, our opponent has the same problem we do. We just need to come up with moves that "usually work" in a time-constrained environment. What we seek is a bag of practical tricks and techniques - a clever reduction of real-world complexity to the effective level of a child playing with blocks, and that practically involves trial-and-error explorations aimed at efficiently and cleverly resolving the long-term effects of the driving forces present on the game board - nothing more.]
p.158 a computer's modelling of the real will never capture the inherent ramifications of a natural universe that effectively is, to all appearances, infinitely complex in its detail and its machinations. The result is that the inherent make-up of reality exceeds the complexity of detail that computers are able to capture.
p.158 Now the modelling by means of finite and discrete representational resources of what is, in effect, an unendingly complex system is always imperfect... Artifice cannot replicate the complexity of the real; reality is richer in its descriptive constitution and more efficient in its transformatory processes than human artifice can ever manage to realize.
p.158 The fact of the matter is that reality is too complex for adequate cognitive manipulation.
[JLJ - When I go to the grocery store, I do not need to predict in advance exactly what will happen. I know generally how I will go about getting what I want, the fact that I will likely buy other things, and that it will take a certain amount of time. I will improvise the rest of my visit, perhaps even leaving the store early if I find out about an emergency elsewhere. I might bump into another shopper, but I will apologize. I likely will not get shot at, or arrested, or kidnapped by space aliens. Someone might run into my car on the way to the store, but I have insurance and my car has an acceptable crash rating. And so on. The complexity of reality does not hinder most of what we do because we can execute schemes which reduce the level of the world's complexity to that of a child playing with blocks. We plan, yes, but we plan with options, with adaptive capacity, and we plan to effectively and successfully improvise from our set of effective options whenever things do not go according to plan.]
p.160-161 Let us contemplate a supposedly perfected hypothetical predictive machine Pythia... Now suppose we ask Pythia "What will be the next unanticipated predictive question that you will be asked?"
[JLJ - Smoke and mirrors. If you have a degree of adaptive capacity, it does not matter that you were unable to predict exactly what comes next - you just use your adaptive capacity to reconfigure yourself or your stance. We do not need to predict exactly what comes next, we just need to be ready for it and ready to adapt to it. We can construct diagnostic tests of our adaptive capacity to mobilize coercion in a complex social game of strategy, and use the results to construct a stance that is practically ready for whatever might come next.]
Chapter 9: Coping with Cognitive Limitations: Problems of Rationality in a Complex World, p.165-172
p.167 In any and every domain, the rational resolution of problems is highly context-sensitive to the information in hand in such a way that what is a patently sensible and appropriate resolution in a given data-situation can cease to be so in the light of additional information - information that does not abrogate or correct our prior data, but simply augments it. Often as not, additional ramifications complicate matters by destabilizing seemingly obvious resolutions... The fact is that the rationally appropriate resolution of a problem on the basis of one body of evidence or experience can always become undone when that body of evidence or experience is not actually revised but merely enlarged.
p.168 when we operate in complex situations, we are constantly involved in learning new facts about them - facts which can all too easily upset the apple cart of our previous ideas. We thus confront the situation generated by the confluence of two considerations: that the rationality of a problem-resolution is "information-sensitive," and that amidst the complexities of the real world our information is always incomplete and open to supplementation.
p.168 In cognitive and practical contexts alike, even the most rational of problem-solutions can misfire in situations of incomplete information.
[JLJ - It also depends on your degree of paranoia. Consider: is it rational to buy a home that is a good value in an area that has a slightly higher crime rate than average? One could argue that yes, it is a good decision, because the odds are that you will not be impacted by a major crime. But what if you are robbed the week after you purchase the home and move in? Rationality does not easily apply to areas of personal risk, where you will might suffer physical consequences that are not easily calculable. One must strategically decide on a level of paranoia, and then act accordingly. How "rational" is it to buy a car with a 4-star crash rating, when an equally-priced car is available with a 5-star crash rating? What if you buy the 4-star car, then are run over by a 27,000 pound RV, suffering severe injuries? Rationality turns instead to degree of paranoia when the odds are small but the consequences are large. Perhaps - practically and strategically that is - one should always operate with options available, and effective mitigation plans, just in case the situation and odds suddenly change in a way that does not favor you.]
p.170 But all we can ever actually manage to do is to be rational in the circumstances as best we can determine them to be.
[JLJ - <long_rant>Being rational will not tell you how to profitably run a store, coach a sports team to a winning season, or manage a large corporation in ways that increase the stock price. One must establish and defend a business or game plan which addresses the actions and likely actions of the nearby competitors, and argues how customers will come into your store and not theirs (or how more points will be scored in the game), because of _________. As I have said before, Rescher's devotion to the cause of rationality is kind of irrational. The world is too complex, and contains too many people of ill-repute, fighting among themselves for money, prestige, love and power, to worship at the alter of the church of rationality. The minute you upset someone's gameplan, the minute you show up on a competitor's radar, they will begin to scheme for clever ways to outmaneuver you, and your devotion to rationality could be your undoing. Offering a double-discount for coupons is kind of an irrational thing for a business to do (it loses money), but if it draws customers away from your competition it might be a strategic move. Of course, be rational in the many cases where it makes sense to be rational. But be strategic where it makes sense to be strategic. Absolute devotion to the cause of rationality does not rise, in the end, to the level of profound wisdom, as a director of all actions, and the source of 'how might I proceed?'. Rationality itself does not generate ideas, nor does it scheme to bring more people into a store, nor itself bring a superbowl trophy to the mantlepiece. The winner of a marathon 26.2 mile competitive race rarely says, upon completion, 'I owe my success to acting rationally.' More than likely, it is owed to a tireless, fanatical, but in the end a practically effective execution of a training scheme which calls for a certain number of practice runs, interval training, proper diet, and resolve when a desire comes to skip some training or an injury requires rehabilitation. Runner's World publishes a training scheme to enable you to intelligently and practically train for a marathon, but actually executing it is not so simple as to press a button. Did long distance runner Pete Kostelnick, who averaged over 72 miles a day in crossing the US in 42 days to break a record, act 'rationally'? What if he damaged a knee or shin in the effort and required surgery? The winners are usually not entirely "rational", they are lucky fanatics who planned, schemed, then tirelessly used their available practice time wisely, creatively and intelligently. Few have "He lived rationally" carved on their tombstones. Few men have tried pick-up lines at a bar along the lines of "Hi, I'm Nicholas, and I'm a rational kind of guy. Can I buy you a drink?" </long_rant>]
p.172 in a complex world our knowledge is bound to be of a changing, dynamic, progressive character, so that our presently available knowledge is imperfect - at any and every present.
[JLJ - Yet such imperfect knowledge can still "point" us in the directions necessary to improve it through trial and error efforts. Imperfect knowledge can be useful as a self-improvement mechanism - such knowledge effectively "pulls itself up by its bootstraps."]
Chapter 10: Technology, Complexity and Social Decision, p.173-190
p.175 Complexity is the inseparable accompaniment of modernity.
p.177 To address more complex tasks more sophisticated operations are necessary. But more sophisticated operations require more elaborate processes and more elaborate processes require more sophisticated control and thus more elaborate management... sometimes the functional complexities of a system make its effective control virtually unrealizable.
p.178-179 the fact remains that computers do just exactly what they are programmed to do.
[JLJ - But what exactly is a computer? It is a complex system of logic gates which can be commanded to gather and process information in specific ways which meet the needs of our predicament. When these ways are elevated to the level of tricks that work, seemingly intelligent behavior can be observed. But are we not just executing tricks that work, to some degree, and are we not just seeing the results of such an execution, rather than the nuts-and-bolts details?]
p.179 Granted, computer automated problem solving is one of the wonders of the age... Despite the enormous advantages that they furnish to intellectual efforts at complexity management, computers nevertheless do not and cannot eliminate but only displace and magnify the difficulties that we encounter throughout the realm of increasing complexity... In some ways, humans are better at managing complexity than are computers as we know them.
[JLJ - Yes, but computers can only get better at the tasks they are designed to accomplish, because scheming humans are behind the Wizard-of-Oz curtain, making the tricks that work, work even better, often through equally clever performance testing.]
p.181 All along the line, the law of unintended effects comes into operation... We continually confront problem situations within which we not only cannot determine optimal solutions, but where even the identification of desirable solutions becomes problematic and imponderable.
[JLJ - ...which is why we usually need to be strategic in our behavior. There are few predicaments that have not been faced by others at other times, and few that do not have at least a fair solution already available.]
p.182 Ideally complex systems should be managed on simple principles. But this is possible only up to a point... Complex systems are inherently less amenable to successful comprehension, management, and control
[JLJ - Is it not the desire for a better performance the driving force for elevating the management to a more complex level? Where the simple solution is usually or often adequate, the complex often allows more thoughtful positioning, in a way that can lead to better performance.]
p.184 when changes occur in highly complex systems, the consequences are often unpredictable. It becomes somewhere between difficult and impossible to say in advance just what the result of modifications and innovations will be. We all too frequently cannot see our way clearly through the accompanying ramifications to grasp the implications of innovations for their management. For effective decision making requires the timely processing of full information. And both of these factors - readily acquiring and speedily processing information - tend to be more difficult and cumbersome in contexts of complexity.
p.185 The difficulties of rational problem solution in complex situations engenders a variety of plausible but competingly alternative possibilities... When people confront more complex problems they find it difficult and sometimes impossible, to think their way through to satisfactory solutions.
[JLJ - When tricks that work confront tricks that work, the result is often a determination of which tricks work better. But with tricks that work we have at core only tricks that work today, and for the moment, and only as long as it takes for someone to construct a variation or new trick that works even better. Many athletes practiced and perfected techniques for the high jump in preparation for the 1968 Olympics, only to be confronted by an athlete, Dick Fosbury, who had perfected a new trick that happened to work better than their tricks, for clearing the bar. All one can do rationally is to arm oneself with an array of tricks that ought to work when executed, and then intelligently select among them, improvising where necessary, if necessary, or even simply executing them.]
p.189 Where calculation based on theory is impracticable, the best we can usually do is to keep an eye on the broad tendencies of the case and let the course of experience be our guide in responding to them.
p.189 The fact is that in situations of unmanageable complexity, practice in matters of public policy is often guided more effectively by localized experimental trial-and-error than by the theorizing resources of an intellectual technology unable to cope with the intricacy of interaction feedbacks and impredictable effects.
Chapter 11: Complexity's Bearing on Philosophical ANthropology, p.191 210
p.191 a prime index of a system's complexity is the extent to which effort - intellectual and physical - is needed to come to adequate cognitive grips with it.
p.193-194 How is one to respond to the reality of human limitation? ...The line of realistic acceptance is surely the only sensible course... One simply struggles along to do the best one can. Though doubtless far from ideal, this is clearly the most sensible course - the best alternative within a hard option of choices.
p.194-195 Few and far between are those who are modest - or candid - enough to insist upon facing up to the ominously problematic implications of the world's complexity.
p.195 The fact is we live in a world where intractability and unpredictability are uneliminably rooted in a complexity of functioning... A developmental disposition to increasing complexification is at work throughout the realm of human artifice... In our practical affairs as in our theoretical endeavors we can always compare of performance. But we can never perfect it... The real world is a manifold of complexity... A realm so complex that we cannot ever manage to provide a really adequate cognitive model of it is thereby also such that our cognitive control of it is bound to be imperfect. Where we cannot fully describe, neither can we fully explain or predict. And of course a realm that we cannot adequately explain and predict is for this very reason also one where our ability to control the course of things remains partial at best.
p.197 The world's complexity is such that we simply cannot get to the bottom of it.
[JLJ - All the more reason to strategically develop adaptive capacity.]
p.199 Complexity cannot emerge and persist without order.
p.200 Complex systems through their inherent mode of operation generally engender further principles of order that render the development of additional complexities both possible and likely.
p.200 Our knowledge of nature cannot be perfected. In this domain we have no choice but to do the best we can - to "give it our best shot" - in the full realization that in a highly complex world our best shot may not be good enough.
p.201 Problem solutions developed on an imperfect basis are always vulnerable; they are themselves likely to be imperfect. And this means that in our complex world human reason is unable to issue any guarantees.
[JLJ - As above, all the more reason to strategically develop adaptive capacity.]
p.201 Complexity creates difficulties for us throughout its presence in the realms of nature and artifice. The management of our affairs within a social, technological, and cognitive environment which, through our efforts, we do ourselves and must render increasingly complex is for this very reason increasingly challenging... Life in a realm of complexity is fraught with greater risks of disaster... the answer to the question of how to conduct life in a complex world is: very carefully.
[JLJ - Carefully yes, but also strategically.]
p.202 Complexity is now still an obstacle to overcome, but not an insuperable one - a troublesome nuisance rather than a decisive obstacle.
[JLJ - One simply expends resources in choosing a mechanism to reduce the complexity to acceptable levels. I choose an investment fund that meets my needs, then I forget about the complexity of the business market. This is now someone else's problem.]
p.204 "Project your philosophical views and theories on the basis of a reasonable grasp or the customary course of things - leaving aside concern for bizarre and unusual situations that fly in the face of established patterns and normal circumstances." This variant, standardist mode of philosophizing based on generalities rather than universalities opens up new and far more promising prospects... philosophical standardism opts for practicable modesty in a complex world.
p.206 What shapes and orients the intellectual perspective of this newer style of thought is a recognition of the self-generation of order in a universe of chance... this recognition of self-organization and the natural emergence of complex order from chance and chaos has come to pervade the landscape of science.
p.207 The reality of the situation is that we nowadays find unfolding throughout contemporary science a flourishing project of accepting the world's complexity and devising the cognitive instrumentalities needed to come to grips with it.
[JLJ - More importantly, we need to develop techniques where we can function in society, as a community of individuals with this same problem, not merely as an individual 'coming to grips' with and against the Universe.]
p.207 We do indeed inhabit a chaotic universe of chance. But the mathematical and conceptual instruments of modern science enable us to make it possible to see such a world as the stage for the self-generation of order. In such a world order and the coherence rational intelligibility that go with it are by no means lost altogether. It only requires more powerful cognitive instrumentalities to find them. The pathway to understanding is not blocked, it only becomes more challenging to pursue.
[JLJ - How do we function rationally as an intelligent human - in a daily and changing predicament to some degree of our own choosing, and which we can control to some degree, living a life where we ultimately advance in years, and will die? Rational behavior must begin with answers to basic questions about life, the universe, and everything - answers which themselves form a foundation to our actions and represent the origin of the driving force behind our behavior. How do we decide what to do today, tomorrow, and tomorrow's tomorrow? We critically must develop tricks that work in unraveling the complexity of our present predicament, so we can arrive tomorrow in a today where we have the resources to improvise our way to tomorrow's today, and to the one after that, always blind to that one very uncomfortable tomorrow which inevitably will come to others, and which we nevertheless prepare for, and plan for, but will not come for us...]
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