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p.2 when we function well... it is because we evolved to directly perceive a somewhat overlooked form of information: the structural organization that brings each system into existence, makes it what it is, determines its functions, and reveals its properties.
This book argues that the information that reveals these systems is structural rather than symbolic and comes packaged in dynamic spatial configurations that echo each system's organization... form not only follows function, it doubles as accurate and comprehensive structural information.
p.3 The ants' interactions are local, but their results are global.
p.5 Since information specifying the world originates in the world and not in our minds, consider why we fail to look before we leap into acting on untenable theories. One reason is that our perceptions typically occur below the level of our conscious awareness and unless we trust our "intuitions" (which are simply our perceptions of structural information), we can easily default to acting on a theory.
p.7 this book is not about us and our ideas; it is about the world and the structural information its complex systems display, which stand alone without human interpretation or analysis
[JLJ - What if we wrote a computer program to detect certain critical cues, and from that raw information construct a useful diagnostic test...? We might then be able to unlock secret "structural" information useful for playing a complex game of strategy. 'Structural information' is and can only be an intelligent interpretation, a clever isolation and extraction, an intelligent reduction from the real, and as such it 'totters' on the edge of things that ar real versus imagined. It becomes 'real' if it impacts our ability to 'go on', if a focus of attention on it can somehow benefit us or others, or lead to a measurably better decision, versus ignoring it.]
p.9-10 in the real world, things are not assembled from parts. They self-organize into complex systems, and the information that specifies those systems is produced by the interactions of all the components that make up that system, not by a subset that we arbitrarily choose.
p.10 Throughout this book, I will compare the real-world outcomes... of using mentally abstracted and reassembled content information (e.g., theories about the world) to the outcomes of using directly perceived structural information that specifies a complex system in the world.
p.12 Current theories of brain organization suggest that we are hardwired to respond to the structural information that specifies many worldly phenomenon, especially those that are critical to our survival.
p.12 We evolved to perceive and comprehend the structural information that specifies worldly phenomena and is critical to our survival. Yet despite its availability, our conscious minds often ignore the information we perceive and default to theories we have conceived, which lead us astray.
p.17 In sum, the phenomena of the world do not reveal themselves using the words, pictures, and theories that we use to communicate with one another, to create mental images, and to think about things that are no longer in evidence. Instead, each phenomenon displays the emergent structural information that reveals its own inner workings. That information is what our perceptions parse to know the world. Everything else is hearsay.
p.22 A simulation is not the situation itself. It is only a theory of the situation.
p.23 In this book, the term theory has broad applications. It refers to ideas about the world that originate in someone's mind, rather than from observable evidence.
p.25-26 Ironically, the feature information we are aware of and consciously abstract from phenomena is often unreliable, leading us to make uninformed, error-filled decisions, while the structural information that we are largely unaware of is far more precise and supports more informed and accurate decisions. Fortunately, this curious situation does not affect most of our behavior, even though 95% of our actions are guided by such information, because they also occur on autopilot
p.26 To recap, recognition is a direct perceptual act that relies on structural rather than content information.
p.27 in most cases, all the information we need to make an accurate decision is visible from the situation at hand... The key point to take away from this analysis is that th e structural information the world displays and our content-driven representations of that information are considerably different... Because the world and the complex systems that constitute it are under constant transformation, the information it displays does not come packaged as static assemblies of features and parts from which we construct theories. Rather it reveals itself in dynamic configurations that emerge from the self-organized interactions of each system's constituent components.
p.28 Because the bulk of our behavior operates on autopilot, our lack of awareness of this structural information may stem from the fact that we typically detect such spatial organization subliminally.
p.29 we evolved to perceive structural information
[JLJ - Yes, and this structural information might be hidden, revealed only in carefully constructed diagnostic "stress" tests. Consider a job interview. There is no visible "structural" information for a job candidate with a degree, sitting in front of you, smiling, in a suit and tie. You need to ask specific questions about experience, perhaps volunteer work, maybe even give a short test. Consider a "scrimmage", where a sports team practices against another team, perhaps even the second-string players, in order to detect and reveal hidden structural information related to preparedness for an upcoming game. This structural information emerges from the simulated game, where otherwise it might lie hidden.]
p.29 What is important to consider is that we cannot think about things without first seeing the information that specifies them.
p.30 self-organizing systems act on their own without instructions from a central command center.
[JLJ - Yes, without immediate instructions from a central command center. A central command center might exist which instructs each member how to act in the event of a crisis - perhaps with standard operating procedures which are approved in advance. Each member figures out what his or her role is, surveys the situation, and acts accordingly.]
p.34 Intuition is simply the act of directly detecting structural information on a subliminal level.
p.37-38 we know things because we directly perceive their invariant structural configuration
p.38-39 Gibson... says "we must perceive in order to move and move in order to perceive," and our environment provides the structural information that allows us to do both.
p.41 We do not perceive things. We perceive the structural information that reflects an entity's organization and reveals multiple layers of information. This distinction is even more important when there is information that specifies something that we cannot actually see.
p.42-43 Systems are not complex simply because they have a great many components interacting simultaneously, but because their complexity is organized. And its organization is displayed as structural information.
p.43 As neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga points out, "A vast amount of research in cognitive science clearly shows that we are conscious only of the content of our mental life, not what generates that consciousness."
p.51 Information is meaningful and specific to the dynamic patterns that biological systems produce. -J.A. Scott Kelso
p.64 Our current belief that the world is made of separate parts obscures the reality that it is composed of complex systems.
p.76 The claim made in this book is that our perceptual systems, in league primarily with our spatially adept right hemisphere, are structured to detect and comprehend the structural information that specifies the world with which we coevolved.
p.79 The human capacity to recognize the dynamic structural patterns produced and displayed by the things around us is reciprocal to the patterned similarities we ourselves produce with our motor movements... Indeed, we humans... are structured to resonate to the structures of our world.
p.79-80 To recap, our brains are physically organized along dynamic neural networks that may be tuned by shape-changing molecules in our synapses to respond to the world's dynamic structural information. Because we coevolved with and adapted to that world, our neural networks enable us to reflect and respond to the patterns that the world displays and our senses evolved to detect.
p.91 In complex systems... the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
p.99 Meandering leads to perfection. -Lao Tzu
p.100 Complex objects, whether living or not, are produced by evolutionary processes in which two kinds of factors are involved: the constraints that, at every level, specify the rules of the game and define what is possible with those systems; and the historical circumstances that determine the actual course of events and control the actual interactions between the systems. -Francois Jacob
[JLJ - The above quote is from Jacob, The Possible and the Actual, 1982, p.31, with minor corrections made by me to match Jacob text]
p.111 An affordance, according to perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson, who first pointed them out, is an "opportunity for action" for a particular creature... it is the reciprocal fit between your invariant structure and the invariant structure of an item in your environment, and is specified by structural information. As such, an affordance is not a physical entity such as a tree; it is the information that reveals all the useful properties of that tree that support various actions... Affordances specify the reciprocal relationship between invariant structures - one belonging to the environment, the other to a person or animal - that fit together like a hand in a glove or a jigsaw piece in the larger puzzle.
[JLJ - Perhaps an affordance is also a "maybe move" that becomes a "thing" of itself when it passes a test of relevance such as possibly satisfying a need - as in, how much should I "care" about it. For me, a gas station fails a test of relevance when my car's gas tank is full and is in good mechanical shape, but as it nears empty (or starts making noises) I begin to pay attention to passing stations as possible solutions to the problem of running out of gas or breaking down.]
p.112 "to detect affordances is to detect meaning". As Scott Kelso, director of the Center for Complex Systems, points out, "What could be more meaningful to an organism than the information that specifies the coordinative relations among its parts or between itself and its environment."
An affordance can even tell you something that seems intangible
p.113 From infancy on we are primed to know much of the world with which we coevolved without having to think about it... a great deal of our behavior occurs successfully on autopilot.
p.122 While the ability to parse the structural information that reflects the game is critical, random influences such as timing or weather can still be the deciding factor. Nonetheless, perceiving structural information is the more important factor because it gives the players the ability to adapt to changing situations.
p.124 Structural configurations that specify the continuous, overall actions of a... game, including those interactions that can often reveal a player's intentions, are the most efficient source of information that is available to the players. These visual patterns of play integrate the contributions of all the game's components into a coherent whole. Sports psychologist Bruce Abernathy at Australia's University of Queensland calls such configurations "minimally essential information."
p.125 Because experts focus on structural layouts, rather than on separate parts, they are better at distinguishing relevant and irrelevant information and making faster, more informed decisions.
p.126 an entity's organization or structure produces the information that tells us what it is and what it does.
p.126 Darwin, an amateur naturalist, saw the sweep of evolving species by observing differences between separated groups of Galapagos finches. His exploration of evolution came from his noticing and understanding the spatial, temporal, and structural parameters of evolving life.
[JLJ - McCabe carefully notes academic or position status of each source she cites, and since Darwin held no academic position, he becomes an "amateur". Perhaps he is better classified as an "independent scholar", as I am.]
p.127 evolution is a tinkerer, not a planner, it ceates change from whatever is at hand
[JLJ -Idea taken (stolen, actually) from Page, 2011, or more likely the source in Jacob, 1977. Perhaps, but what it 'tinkers' with is 'tinkerable' by nature, with a real possibility of producing refined improvement in the original product.]
p.134 Errors are not unusual in pathology.
[JLJ - Errors are not unusual anywhere perfection is not demanded, and time and cost are usually impending constraints. Amazingly, errors do not imapct our ability to 'go on,' and we usually consult multiple sources for insight when determing what to do. We accept that things are often not what they appear to be, and that our intelligent assessments, however well intentioned, informed and carefully constructed, might just be wrong.]
p.148 Theories are supposed to be about the world, but they do not originate in the world. We construct them in our minds. Although we typically use information that we perceive from the world in our constructions, we filter and sometimes distort that information to fit our preconceptions and beliefs.
p.148 Gazzaniga views the left hemisphere [JLJ - of the brain] as the gatekeeper that determines which information is retained and projected into our consciousness and which gets tossed out. He calls this gatekeeper "the interpreter." From this view, our conscious awareness is orchestrated by our left hemisphere.
p.153 The biologist and philosopher Jean Rostand once remarked that theories come and go, the frog remains.
[JLJ - Yet with each successive theory, the frog that remains is better understood.]
p.154 When we do not have accurate information, our interpreter easily comes to conclusions on the basis of what we believe, not what is actually the case.
p.155 these patterns are frames that structure how we see the world and therefore understand reality.
p.156 we rarely listen to people with views that differ from ours, and we devote ourselves to promoting the point of view consistent with our moral system.
[JLJ - I would say that we listen to those with views different from ours when we want to learn.]
p.157 One difficulty we have in thinking outside our frames and interpretations is that they are inextricably tied to the words we use to express them.
p.159 The world is not only complex; it is continuous. Yet we keep attempting to separate it into the discrete parts we "see" with our mind's eye.
p.166 Philosopher Karl Popper reminds us that there is no final proof for any theory. It can always be disproved by conflicting data or by another theory that fits the existing evidence better. The key word here is evidence. When new evidence surfaces that challenges the claims of an existing theory, the whole investigative process is supposed to begin again. But, in reality, the acceptance of new evidence may be delayed as proponents of a prevailing theory try to preserve the territory they have fenced off with their particular frame.
[JLJ - This is why I hold that, the truth is - there are only truth claims.]
p.176 The immediate role of cognition is to control behavior... The point of that control is to deal with environmental complexity. -Peter Godfrey-Smith
p.176 We evolved in a world of complex systems and our lives are lived within them. I have argued that our species has survived because our perceptual systems are tuned to detect the structural information that reveals the properties of these systems.
p.179 Given that our perceptual systems respond to the structural information that reveals the properties of our world's complex systems, what happens when our culture provides us with theories that distract us and obscure that information?
p.180 If we want to understand what is happening around us, we need to realize that the world's natural unit of analysis is not the separate object or variable. It is the multi-component, complex system. When we adopt theories that reduce those systems to their components and then manipulate or eliminate those components, we destabilize and often destroy these systems.
p.184 Complex systems such as economies are self-organized and self-sustained by the interactions of their many components, and can easily be destabilized when those interactions fail to support the larger system or are paralyzed by a powerful rogue component.
p.193-194 you have to have an ideology in order to operate in the world. An ideology is an untested theory.
p.206 Keynes points out that using mathematical models to reduce reality to representations fails to reflect the interdependencies and complexities of real-world systems and cannot be relied on to predict real-world outcomes.
p.214 Complex systems are dynamic and nonlinear in that they continually change in ways that are not necessarily predictable and thus require constant tracking.
p.214-215 this book's thesis... our minds and the simulations and models they construct are ill equipped to help us understand the properties of the dynamic, nonlinear complex systems that constitute our world. Rather, structural information in the form of nonlinear dynamic patterns that emerge from operations of complex systems is the province of our perceptual systems.
p.227 William of Ockham, whose realistic "razor" urging parsimony in thinking we still use today to judge and constrain our scientific enterprises from flights of excess, distinguished between "intuitive" and "abstractive" cognition. He warned that "human reasoning should start with our direct perception of reality... one should not call on hypothetical entities to explain empirical evidence unless there is no alternative."
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