@Bodhi, I wonder if Chaisson's approach is at all related to Priogine's dissipative systems? Thanks for the tip. My basic definition of complexity is based on Simon's hierarchical depth, but I've tried to incorporate the energy flow/embodied energy perspective as well. I'll send you something on this via e-mail attachment for your comments. Also, Melanie Mitchell's "Complexity: A Guided Tour" covers various approaches/definitions to/of complexity. ----------------------------------- @Oliver, Actually the progress is very promising. Had you heard of the recent developments in encoding data in DNA molecules? Here is a news story about it. My own hope is to find a way to compress knowledge in the form of systems science. That is I am looking for a basic description of systemness that can then expand into its application to systems the new people will find in nature. And then to systems they might create - like governance. Woring on the book is really helping me think about this. I liked Carl Sagan's version of this kind of encoding that he described in "Contact". Really COOL! The only real problem now is readout of the DNA molecules in some distant future where the technology we have now is long forgotten (mercifully much of it!) I'm searching for a genetics engineer who can figure out how to develop an organism that under the right conditions will express the seed knowledge - like a few symbols emerging on the leaves of some kind of plant. I'm pretty confident that we can find a self-extracting mechanism like that, but it will take a lot more consideration and knowledge and talent than I can bring to the table. If you know anyone interested in tackling a non-tenurable research program...! George

@Brian, I'll have to dig a bit to see what Odum said about this. Levels of complexity usually means the hierarchy levels from the "atoms" up through the highest observable level (as in the figure above). The lowest level could start with individual humans (for example) in a society. Economists have long believed one did not need to decompose them beyond the assumptions of rational agent theory. Now we know that isn't the case, at least as far as psychological behavior is concerned. ------------------------------------ @Tom, In the book we examine complexity, first in a chapter all its own, and then as part of the chapters on emergence and evolution. Yes as complexity increases in systems there is a point at which there are diminishing returns on increases in complexity, ala Joe Tainter's treatment of civilizations (we use that as an example in the book). Eventually the system either goes into a steady state with no further development (no new complexity) or goes into decline (more often) as complexity usually causes more trouble internally. However, if the system evolves to find a new source of energy to exploit, then it can undergo a reorganization and a new level of emergence giving rise to an actual reduction in complexity at lower levels and new potentials within the new level. The figure above attempts to show how higher levels of organization effectively consolidate lower levels' complexity. It is sort of like abstraction - subsuming numerous bits and pieces under a new structure. This is what the discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels got us. Civilization could actually generate yet newer levels of complexity by utilizing machines to take over human labor. I suppose if by some miracle someone discovers a new even more powerful source of high potential energy, then we, as a species, might actually be able to transcend our current conundrum and achieve some higher level of organization in spite of being not so sapient on the whole. In the book I certainly cover thermodynamics and energy flow in several different chapters, namely the one on dynamics (now titled "behavior") and in the two chapters I've briefed you on here. Notice in two of the figures I explicitly show waste heat emerging from the processes. As for heating the environment from global warming, we are on the fence on making that explicit. There are so many books on the subject already. However we do mention environmental impacts of energy flows through man made systems (i.e. machines). Perhaps an example box showing how low frequency photons are absorbed by greenhouse gasses might be in order. Thanks for the suggestion. ------------------------------------ @Bodhi, First let me say I was excited when I saw your name on the program for the environmental economics meeting in June. I was looking forward to meeting you in person at long last! But then I saw that you were only represented by your paper on Thermodynamic Footprint. That was a disappointment. As to your question, in my experience only living systems that have achieved a holistic organization, usually formed by cooperating agents, actually settle on homeostasis. That is individuals (organisms) have internal mechanisms that keep them from growing boundlessly as individuals. But populations and organizations do not have such internal mechanisms. They are evolvable and in order to evolve the first element in my list above has to be operative. And the only way biological systems have to generate many redundant components is reproduction. Reproduction (especially where parental protection is involved) immediately carries with it the need to extract more resources and in competition with both conspecifics and other species. In my prior post on envisioning a future Homo eusapiens I posit that we have evolved our interpersonal communications, empathetic feelings, and understanding of regulatory structures to the point of realizing a more ideal hierarchical control system that would make our population (and societies) more like an individual being. The forces that are at work are the same ones that led some prokaryotes to learn to cooperate to produce eukaryotes (endosymbiosis) and some insects (and naked mole rats) to form eusocial societies. We humans, our populations and social units are just at the threshold of eusociality. We have some of what it would take to be non-automaton cooperators, but still some of the more individualistic propensities (magnified in the current republican party!) that keep us in a kind of limbo. We want to form societies, but we can't give up our feelings that we, as individuals, are the most important things in the universe. Our species is an unfortunate mix of selflessness and selfishness. Of course, my conjecture about how we evolved this way is that we were on the trajectory toward developing stronger cooperation tendencies when we stumbled into technology and especially agriculture. These required and exploited the level of cooperativity we had achieved, but now put emphasis on merely operational and logistical/tactical level management thinking and forewent strategic (big picture, long term) thinking which I claim is part of the evolution of eusapience. Good description of the exploitation of energy gradients. Have you read Harold Morowitz? Energy Flow in Biology. Of course others have taken up this theme, but Morowitz was foundational. George

@Oliver, Thanks for the link. Just with a broad brush, quick reaction, it seems to me he might be right, if the world you want is the one we have! Also I think he may be playing a bit fast and loose with the definition of psychopathy. Other than that, I think yes, these are the depths. George

@Tony Thanks for the link. I will try to get to it soon. As for promiscuity, I do not see pluerisexuality as the same thing. Among bonobos, as I understand it, they limit their sexual encounters to just those near and dear to them in the tribe. I think that what we see a promiscuous behaviors are a result of the psychoses brought about by repression of sexual urges. Promiscuity involves sex with many anonymous persons rather than a loving relationship. I suspect balance would come naturally to a pleurisexual species unbound by invented moral conventions. But, it is just a guess. George

@Oliver, I can't say it had to be this way. There may be many paths to the point of the emergence of eusapience and resulting eusociality in humans. My point is more that given how sapience and cleverness did evolve on this globe, the ensuing over expansion and overshoot were probably inevitable. But, like you, my thinking often goes to contra-positives that ask what we might have been like if only. That train of thought is what led me to consider sapience in the first place. --------------------------------------- @John, My approach is biophysical. Capitalism is based on a false premise about the nature of profits, namely that they can grow infinitely as the capitalized engine so-grows. But this is not possible in a finite world. No matter how good it sounds or feels, you cannot change the laws of nature, especially not on a wish. ------------------------------------ @Brian, Thanks for the observation. ------------------------------------ @Robin, Don't forget, though, hypotheses are also a form of speculation. ------------------------------------ @@Makati1, Regardless of the time scale, Homo sapiens is guaranteed to go extinct. For me the real question is: What about the genus? ----------------------------------- @ Ron, I will have to watch that one. I would have thought that the biomass of bacteria (even just land-based) would have exceeded that of humans let alone the biomass of all land-based plants and animals. But his point is certainly taken. Thanks for the link. George

@Oliver, As I am sure you are aware, there are so many factors involved in nature-nurture kinds of problems. While personality traits are generally highly heritable it does not follow that you will end up like one of your parents. Many of the contributing factors to brain development do not need to be homozygotic in order to be expressed. A dominant factor (gene or control element) that one parent possessed need not have been passed on to offspring. Of course developmental environment plays a crucial role in shaping whatever personality qualities one inherits. There just is no simple or single thing that we can afford causal blame to in how we come out! Sapience (the strength of it) is like the other main psychological constructs (intelligence, creativity, and affect) in having a large range of variation within the species. I reserve the notion of eusapience for a future potential species of Homo that has crossed an essential boundary of mentation just as our species crossed into sapience (abstraction, language, and higher order judgments and intuitions). I would not expect to meet a eusapient individual today, by that definition. What I do see today is a range of sapience strength that seems to be distributed to the low end of a sapience strength scale. Most people have very modest sapience (and as a result little real wisdom). But there are a few who seem to me to have relatively high sapience by virtue of the kinds of judgements they make. It is people like this latter group that I hope make it through the bottleneck to see a future population with some really good genetic material! In the meantime, as to the question of education, I think that, as with intelligence and creativity, whatever propensity toward sapience a child has, living in a sapience-nurturing environment will surely help bring out the best in them. We cannot make geniuses of our children through education, but we can help them achieve a maximum expression of their inherent intelligence. So I think it goes with sapience. It certainly couldn't hurt! What I envision is one or more colonies of highly sapient beings having children and rearing them in a highly sapient culture; something we clearly do not have now. Those higher sapient beings would more likely make the preparations for the bottleneck because they are just wise enough to see it coming and smart enough to find ways to survive. There is a beauty in that idea for me: it means I do not have to take responsibility for making something happen. There either are such beings or there aren't. They either will or won't. For me it is an intellectual exercise - perhaps if I were a younger man... Anyhow, genetics, development, culture, etc. are all too complex to try to ferret out a simple causal connection. All that really counts is the outcome. I'm glad you came out the way you did! ------------------------------------ @k256 Thanks for the link and contribution to discourse. I, myself, would like to ban the word "unnatural" from the language! What you describe is un-normal or sub-normal, but is actually a "natural" outcome of the conditions described. And my thinking is that the conditions that produce more of these sub-normal behaviors are part of our culture (esp. in the USA). In fact, my point is that all of our obsessions are in fact an outcome of sub-normal living conditions. I'm speculating that removing the constraints, e.g. a more healthy sexual attitude in society, would allow us to escape those obsessions. But that may not happen in our society which I think is stuck in the mud. It will take an evolutionary event such as the bottleneck to break our genus free from the now ossified beliefs that keep us mostly nuts. BTW: I had to dig your post out of the spam bin for some reason. ----------------------------------- For All. More posts are ending up in spam and I don't know why. Neither do the service people at Typepad. In some cases it might be because you are not a registered reader/commentator and some little turn of phrase gets caught in the spam filter. In other cases it might be that you failed the posting test. In any case I will routinely go to my spam folder as often as I can and try to publish the legitimate posts. Patients would be appreciated. George

Dear readers, I apologize for this action but I have relegated Bruce's comments to the spam filter. I have tried to be patient and offer him an opportunity to bring evidence to whatever his arguments have been. He has failed to address my requests re: explain his own (apparent) definition of sapience. The last post he made was next to unreadable. This is the first time I have felt it necessary to take this action in all the years I have been blogging. But I am committed to maintaining a scientific-based discourse on this blog. This is not a blog that allows unsupported claims, especially those based on personal knowledge that is never brought out into the light of day. I hope this action does not offend any of you. I promise that it is not something I wanted to do. I hope to keep an open forum for discourse. Nevertheless, goodbye Bruce. George

@Bruce, ... the coming crash in China-Asia, eventual war with China, and mass die-off are not accidental or unpredicatble events; they are integral to the metanarrative of "globalization", i.e., empire, which can't be said. What is planned for the next 20-30 years... I'm sorry but this is now starting to sound like ranting and conspiracy theory. If you really understood the nature of nature and evolution you would not make comments like this. You leave me little choice but to filter your comments and possibly sequester them. I think you have provided some insights in the past, and some things to think about, but now it seems to me you are going over the edge. Evidence, not mere speculation. That is what you will need to bring to further discourse.

@Bruce, I have had for a couple of decades what might be described as a unique opportunity to observe from a distance many of the important discussions and deliberations; therefore, my perspective is informed/biased by this experience. You seem to be claiming an authority based on a privileged position. I hope you will understand that this is not a truly acceptable argument in discourse. You claim knowledge that no one else here can have access to and thus you assert that you have the "truth". I would prefer it if you would offer something more solid in the way of evidence than "I know this because I alone have seen it." You see my point I hope. Fundamentally the process you claim to have special knowledge about, even if it were true, would be doomed to failure I think. There is no mechanism of control that anyone, no matter how smart, could bring to bear to assure the outcome would be in their favor. Unless you are imagining that they are seeking a world in which they have a few slaves and they live essentially as masters without anything like modern technology (and the creature comforts they afford) - just food and shelter - then your claim that they are planning this for their benefit makes no sense at all. We do not yet have the kinds of robots and their maintenance infrastructure that would let them live as they do now. We won't have the energy sources to run the robots even if we had them. There is simply no physically plausible scenario in which a 0.01% of the population today will live comfortably in the future. So if THEY are planning as you claim, they are planning something totally absurd. Now as it turns out I do know a few people who probably fit into this category of the obscenely rich. Its a very small sample, true, but I can tell you that while very brilliant when it comes to capitalizing on capitalism, they have no clues whatsoever about physical reality. Bottom line: if you are going to continue posting this claim you will need to bring better evidence to the conversation. I haven't yet banned anyone and I do not wish to start doing so, but I do insist that claims of knowledge be backed up with presentable and verifiable evidence. That is science and that is what I want this blog to be based on. I hope the whole QE community will continue to think outside the box of conventional wisdom and suggest whatever alternative hypotheses they wish. But even speculations should be subject to verifiability, at least in principle. My own speculations in this blog are based on a road map for how to investigate sapience genetically, neurologically, and behaviorally. And it turns out that much of that work is getting underway in various laboratories. So even though I speculate on the bigger picture, and meaning, I do not make any claims of "special knowledge" that means people should listen to me. Quite the opposite. I put stuff out there and everyone who reads it is free to do with it as they will.

Sorry I can't keep up. Many excellent comments. I just have a few things to insert. @Bruce: It seems to me that you are using a very different definition of sapience from what I produced in my working papers. That is fine as long as you are clear that we are talking about different attributes/behaviors. As per my version of the definition, first there are no eusapients extant today. That is the species name I give to a future evolved species of Homo. Second, every human alive today is a sapient by definition. It is just that there are greater and lesser degrees of sapience as there are greater and lesser degrees of all human traits. There is variation in the degree of sapient qualities with very few people having a high degree of sapience and most having relatively low degrees. I can assure you that the kind of people you seem to want to elevate to a high sapient position are anything but highly sapient by my definition of the term. And using different species nomenclature does not clear up the meaning. The top 1% that seem to have your craw may be very clever, but they are almost certainly very low on the sapience spectrum. I have known a few of these types over the years and that is one of the reasons I began to realize there was a significant difference between simply being clever (and hence accumulating wealth to oneself in what is becoming a zero-sum game) and being wise, especially in understanding the effect of wealth hoarding on the lower 90% and being able to see subsequent consequences. Oliver said it well from my perspective. @stepback All of us have a desire to continue our own existence, but I am unfamiliar with a similar concern for the species as a whole. As I understand the reproductive urge it is to continue ones own sense of self (a kind of immortality). My own sentiments lean more toward continuance of the genus (not even the species per se) because it is the only game in town in terms of symbolic thinking sentience. @Bodhi, Understand your hierarchy but for many the term teleology implies a God-intended cause (the pull up described by Teilhard de Chardin). When my book is substantially complete, I'll send you the chapters on emergence and evolution which give a more detailed description of the processes that you will recognize as your hierarchy above.

Just received an e-mail from James Inhofe, senator from Oklahoma, chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and major naysayer of global warming: Nah nah nah nah nah!

The word "surplus" seems to be a sticking point as several people appear to be interpreting it differently and applying different contextual meaning to it. As I used the term in this work, it refers to a tendency shared by all animals to accumulate more energy resource when it is available than they strictly need at a given point in time. Animals, though most particularly mammals, will hoard or stuff themselves when the resources are abundant for the very simple reason that the seasons change and resources will not be abundant for other periods of time. This is what I meant by the behavior being hard-wired into our brains. And this is what I meant by a tendency to accumulate a surplus. Hunter-gatherers who live in moderate climates where resources are continually available do not need to preserve game or vegetable matter since it is not an issue. They do not need to waste energy on the work needed to do the preserving. Many, perhaps most of our contemporary examples of "primitive" H-G peoples live in such conditions, so are not necessarily examples of the range of H-G behaviors. Those who have lived in less favorable (more seasonally variable) climates, however, have developed numerous methods for preserving and storing food stuffs for when those foods are not available. Pacific NW native Americans with their smoking of salmon, and Asian peoples who buried and fermented vegetables are examples of cases where seasonal variability provided impetus to stock up. This, BTW, includes overeating to store surplus as fat as indigenous peoples in extreme climates have done. So a natural behavior of acquiring and storing surpluses when available is a biological function. It is simply supplying a buffer against harder times. In man's case the elimination of the normal sorts of constraints on preserved foods and the ability to have more control over the availability of surpluses through the invention of agriculture is what is at issue. Perhaps we should call these "excess surpluses" so as to distinguish them from ordinary surpluses. The tendency to take advantage of normal surpluses is built into biology. But remove the normal balancing constraints and what happens? Some mammalian species (like some squirrels) have been known to gather and cache far more nuts and seeds than they will actually eat during winter if there is a particularly large yield in some years. They are simply responding to the stimulus of abundance. Some bears have been known to overeat when getting ready for hibernation when they have access to human garbage sites. It seems to be the stimulus of excess that prompts a response to overindulge. I submit that we humans are doing the same thing. Only now we, through our cleverness, control the production of excess and have blindly (i.e. without wisdom) proceeded to create those excesses and then blindly respond to them as if they were just a nature-produce windfall. So, while statements made in these comments (and referenced links) are true, they are so in a specific context. There are surpluses and there are SURPLUSES. The key is understanding why the later case exists as well as what the consequences are. The why, in my view, is an extension of naturally evolved biological tendencies (behaviors) where the normal biological constraints have been removed. The consequences include a belief in unlimited growth and capitalism! George