Big ships are really cool. Knowing how to steer is not automatic, but
everyone has the experience and understands the concept. The thermostat can
register only the set point, or it can read the rate of approach to it, or it
can combine a reading of that rate of approach with the history of
responsiveness of the system in the past, giving you: control of the scale, 1st
& 2nd derivatives. Makes it smooth. For steering complex systems I don't think
people need theories so much as just reasonably reliable curves for them to
respond to, each in their own way.
Whatever gets ya goin' I guess. I myself do occasionally enjoy pushing the
fine line between play and danger, but in manageable doses. I don't think that's
exactly what the complexity people refer to as the creative 'edge of chaos' but
there are real places like that. The games of pushing your stabilizers to the
point where only panic would save you, if you happened to miscalculate, does get
the creativity and adrenalin going! Games that are only fun for some shouldn't
be imposed on others to the point of abuse though. My first model for 'fun' is
still what you do when letting loose after something's accomplished and the
risks and struggles are all gone.
One case in point is the universal principles for 'steering' anything
reasonably predictable. I happened to spend a couple days canoeing, and was
teaching my son how to do it, which gave him pride and confidence. Everyone who
steers things knows that making mid-course corrections early in a divergence
allows you to make small and graceful adjustments to stay on course, and making
them late inevitably produces big, miscalculated and dangerous ones. The problem
with the future is we don't know how to read ahead on the curves, not that we
don't know to steer.
No doubt that's partly because politicians perpetually zoom from one end of
the response range to the other, insisting "there is no curve, there is no
curve" until disaster approaches and panic sets in. That lets them blame their
opponents for it and take credit for saving the day with some horribly mangled
response. People know the 'rocket science' part already I think, but are largely
just getting bad information. They'd do better with the raw data than the
self-serving analysis. The wisdom of democracy is that you have a guidance team
that can potentially think creatively about problems from every side. They may
mostly just need help learning how to read ahead on the curves.
It's a riot to
think of steering the 'ship of state' under the guidance of modern politics.
I'm just coming back from a canoeing holiday with the observation that
litterally every person who manages anything predictable knows a lot more
about 'steering' than our institutions of government. And there's a clear
reason.
It's a marvelous
principle, crystal clear in canoeing, that early mid-course corrections can be
small and graceful, and late ones are inevitably drastic and miscalculated.
The whole point of government, it seems sometimes, is to hide useful
information about our real divergence from the path, as the predictable
directions of the future turn back and forth ahead of us, until the situation
is despirate and a panic can be announced, the opponent blamed, and the
incompetence hidden in a flury of confusing and wasteful actions with large
harmful side effects that everyone soon wants to forget. It comes from not
trusting the people with the truth.
Gaging the curve
ahead is the essence of steering, and you need good information. The further
ahead you can read it, the less steering (the less 'government') you have to
do. Business people read trends of responses to their product lines,
ecologists read population curves, economists read supply and demand curves,
public health offices read the turning points of disease and nutrition
trends. We all, at home and the office, read the moods and the realities
around us to guide our group's on the road ahead. When we
have friends regularly making bad course corrections late in the game, it's
common courtesy to let them know.
Sometimes
the failure to steer the course is called 'denial', and it seems more
institutionalized in government, what we use to steer the nation, than
anywhere I know of. Global warming is a case in point, along with all
other cases where investor profit clearly built an unsustainable future. Our
delays in finding better choces in Iraq is a case in point. Our growing
reliance on public and private borrowing (giving away assets) for current
consumption, is a case in point. Our huge delay in asking why western
culture is clashing with Islam is a case in point. Our many problems of
endless accelerating economic growth on a finite earth are a case in point.
Not all problems
can be forseen, but that's the class of problems we seem to have the worst
trouble with. I think we're sort of skilled at shooting from the hip.
We're just not good at steering. We're just not looking ahead on the curves
in the road and appropriately turning the wheel. Most things would take
only small adjustments, given the lead time, and bigger things we'd get to
think through instead of panic.
The whole point
of democracy is that if the people have good information, collective decisions
will reflect the insight gained from looking at problems from all sides. I
don't think democracy is not primarily for 'fairness'. I think it's primarily
so that the conversation at 'the top' can be informed by the insight of people
who see the world from every side. The reverse is what we get,
though. People very largely get their information from other people slanting
the facts to feather their own image. When the people are only shown faked
images of the problems they will give you misguided answers......
unfinished
'Millennium Bug'. Yea, it's a little bigger... there
might need to be some detours.