Ray Podder seems to have conclusive evidence in the endless debate over Worse Is Better vs The Right Thing.

Categories of Complex Systems

I will here debunk the dogma of systems dynamics, the pathetic discipline dominant amongst those pretending to be systems designers.

First, what are complex systems? Complex systems are those that are difficult to understand. It is systems dynamics dogma that complex systems are impossible to understand.

It is systems dynamics dogma that all complex systems are alike in that they are all impossible to understand. And that each of them is unique as "understanding" (computer simulations) of one complex system doesn't transfer to another.

I will debunk this by proving that there exists categories of complex systems, that each of them has a basis of common knowledge, and that any highly trained half-wit is capable of understanding a complex system.

PHYSICAL SYSTEMS

Consider a simple chemical system of a liter of pure nitric acid added to a liter of pure hydrochloric acid at a temperature of 20 degrees centrigrade. What is the mass of this system? What is its density? How much energy do you need to accelerate it to half the speed of light? These questions are easily resolved by anyone half-trained in physics with internet access.

Notice that "what is the mass of a solution of 1:1 nitric and hydrochloric acid?" is a perfectly meaningful question which can be answered by the information given about it. Information in chemistry solves questions of physics. This is in contrast to such completely meaningless questions as "what is its information capacity?" and "what is its value?"

Physics and Chemistry are thus tightly related in a way that chemistry and computer science, or chemistry and economics ... are not! In fact, physics and chemistry are so tightly related that they share a foundational concept between them: energy!

It is thus obvious that physical systems are a category of complex systems, and their foundational field is mechanics. The defining characteristics of the category are the presence of matter and the absence of value.

It is equally obvious that any highly trained half-wit, such as the typical physicist, is capable of fully understanding a complex physical system and that understanding of one such system helps enormously towards understanding of another.

SOFTWARE SYSTEMS

It is widely believed that the foundation of software systems is computability, or temporal math as I call it. This belief is WRONG. Computability has nothing to do with any software systems, in practice or in theory.

The foundation of software systems is computer science. The defining characteristics of the category of software systems is the absence of matter in favour of pure information, and the absence of value.

Computability is a branch of pure math, which lies entirely outside of the four categories of complex systems dealt with here. The systems here while complex compared to the human mind, are miniscule compared to math.

Shannon's information theory and quantum theory are both on the edge of both software systems and physical systems. I'm not even talking about quantum computing or computational QM here, but simply QM.

These are not the only hybrid complex systems. And as with all hybrid complex systems, in order to do any interesting work in them, you must be competent in BOTH categories of complex systems.

Quantum computation by itself is uninteresting. Quantum computation that breaks public key cryptography is very interesting. Quantum computation that proves Many-Worlds correct is equally interesting.

MENTAL SYSTEMS

The category of mental systems includes psychological and political systems. The defining characteristics of this category is the absence of matter in favour of pure information, and the presence of value. Value provides strong coupling. Stickiness.

Psychologists do so little good at best that the worst among them do far more harm than good. Many of their greatest "insights" are entirely circular reasoning (Stanford Prison Experiment) or fraudulent crap (Six Degrees Of Separation).

The fact that psychologists are operating on the same basis as alchemists before Mendeleev created his table adequately explains why they are all without exception incompetent clueless nitwits.

I say this authoritatively since the basis of all mental systems is micro-psychology, the field that describes the construction of minds and their functioning from second to second.

A field I invented out of nothing, with no reference whatsoever to anything known as psychology. Asch's conformity experiment for instance while extremely insightful properly describes mindlessness, not minds.

I am the first and so far only even half-trained psychologist in human history. And I'm a systems designer, not a psychologist, by vocation.

My understanding of human minds is precisely why I despise most of the human population and grieve for the rest.

Finally, yes this does mean that I am the only person on Earth even half-qualified to talk politics, let alone design political systems. So, you really all should elect me tyrant over the Earth.

?HARDWARE? SYSTEMS

Industrial, ecological, and biological systems all fall into one category. The defining characteristics of this long unnamed category are the presence of matter and the presence of value.

I have no interest whatsoever in such systems. As such, I can only guess that the foundational concepts of this category of complex systems have to do with niches and flows of matter & energy. Also flows of value (price or fitness). And of course (value) selection & evolution on the meta-level.

Urban systems are hybrid ????-mental systems. I might be able to figure out whether they're the edge between two categories or whether they're an implementation of one on top of another, if I knew what the fuck ???? was about.

The fact that micro-psychology had not been invented, and that a foundation for ???? lies undiscovered, explains adequately why urban designers are all evil-minded destructive morons. Even the best of them such as JH Crawford are regressive idiots.

A provisional exception is drawn for Jane Jacobs who wrote The Life And Death Of Great American Cities as an indictment and condemnation of everyone working in her field.

DIFFICULTY OF MASTERY

In order of descending difficulty to master are, 1. mental systems, 2. software systems, 3. ???? systems, and 4. physical systems.

The conservation laws which matter is subject to (energy, momentum, inertia) all conspire to slow everything down while greatly simplifying it.

Spacetime, a static 3+1 dimensions in which events are uniquely located, has the same effect of vastly slowing down and simplifying everything.

And then of course is causality, another law which software systems designers consider strictly optional, although greatly desirable, as it greatly simplifies everything.

Value, like a high coupling constant in physical theories, causes every calculation to rapidly become intractable. Value causes things to stick together. Different values causes different kinds of things to stick together.

Another reason why value complicates things is that systems which process the value of their own elements are meta-circular. And meta-circular systems are inherently more complicated than those not.

Note that meta-circularity alone does not value make, and processing value adds another layer of complication above and beyond meta-circularity.

Thus, it's easy to see why physicists and their ilk are the intellectual midgets of the systems design world. And equally, why physical systems are the best designed by far. They're simply the most easily designed.

MY SPECIALTY

On the border of mental systems and software systems are AIs, well-designed OSes, well-designed FSes, and well-designed UIs.

The fact that a systems designer needs to be equally competent in mental systems and software systems BOTH in order to work on the edge of those fields is the reason why every implementation of UIs and OSes felches excrement through a straw.

There is only ONE systems designer on Earth with mastery of mental and software systems both, me. Everyone else is woefully incompetent and should be put out of the misery I feel watching them pretend to know what they're talking about.

Notice that unlike that fourth-rate pathetic excuse for a creative genius this hell-world has spawned, Albert Einstein, or the third-rate creative genius Nikola Tesla, I did not create a new scientific discipline. I created a new FOUNDATION of science. While working alone. In the most difficult of all categories of complex systems. And I count Tesla as third-rate only because my apprentices have yet to exceed the rank of Leonardo da Vinci. I assure you they will.

Sins of Google

Google has always been evil. This fact has actually been encouraged by its corporate slogan of 'do no evil'. Because corporations as per the laws of systemantics accept reality as it's reported. And reporting oneself as not being evil entrenches the self-belief of not being evil, in contravention to any and all facts presented.

Google's evil oozes out in its evil design. The latest sin it's committed is the redesign of google calculator, with buttons and shit. What can be said about this except vomit-worthy?

Prior to that was google's redesign of gmail into something feature-cluttered and again vomit-worthy.

Prior to that was google's redesign of its search page, again into something feature-cluttered. With a taskbar to the left that nobody used nor wanted. It took them forever to rip that shit out and I never even noticed until now when I consciously thought about it, presumably months later. Meanwhile, they ripped out the second search bar at the bottom of search results, something that I missed the very instant it was removed.

Poor design all across the board, always aimed at capturing the retarded idiots from among the general population. All about "ease of learning" for Cletus the retarded yokel. 80% of the general population wasn't enough, they feel the need to capture the 20% with an IQ below 80. Or perhaps it's simply about designers securing their jobs with makework projects at the expense of the company.

6 Paradigms of Computing

There are 5 general meta-levels of thinking (indirection away from raw senses):

1. infant (senses) -- Digital Signal Processing
2. toddler (rules) -- Assembly & Procedural
3. child (hypotheticals) -- Functional & Logic 
4. juvenile (agents) -- OOP
5. adult (cost-benefit) system forces -- Patterns?
6. celestial (core values) territory in N-dimensional Idea-space -- System Design Principles?

At first I put Actors in Agents, and Functional in Rules.

If #6 is accurate then it completely explains why nobody does systems design principles, and why they seem incomprehensible to the average programmer.

If #5 is accurate then it explains why Patterns required maturity of the programming field. And also why they grew out of OOP rather than Functional.

General Purpose Self-Improvement

It's often said that the human brain is a computing machine, and this is blatantly true. It's less often said that the human mind is an operating system or programming language. And when it is said, it's assumed to be some kind of metaphor. It isn't a metaphor, it is exactly true. (Consciousness though has no exact analogue.)

The Mind as Programming Language

That's because the mind (and I use this word in preference to 'consciousness' advisedly) is where signals from different modules converge and are converted into back-propagation. Back-propagation in neural networks is the equivalent of reprogramming of FPGAs. This is how consciousness can touch and even alter the bare metal. The mind is also where concept disassembly and revaluation occurs - the equivalents of non-behaviour preserving refactoring.

Conscious attention directly causing the reprogramming of the lowest-level neurons is an observed, well-documented and reliably measured empirical fact. The fact there is nothing similar to this in the Harvard computer architecture only proves what limited dim-wits so-called computer scientists actually are. Equally dim-witted are anyone thinking to analogize the brain or the mind to Harvard architecture computers. Something that is frequently done.

The mind is also where logic occurs, but not where thinking in general does nor synthesis of new concepts. Nor is it where concept valuation occurs, though valuation is supposed to be behaviour-preserving but cannot for reasons I won't go into. The almost behaviour-preserving nature of general valuation is an important feature necessary for mental evolution to occur at all. Finally, the mind is not where action or decision-making occur at all, contrary to self-delusion. 

Rather, the mind is where elaborate modeling occurs for the purposes of inhibition of self-actions. "Don't go there for you will die" isn't something you can learn by experience or mimickry since all deaths are final and usually unobserved. It can only be learned by explicit modeling of hypotheticals. It makes one think, doesn't it? "Action-oriented -> weak-minded" is literally true, something that was hinted at in the correlation between impulse control and IQ. But I digress.

Improving Your Mind

There are two general-purpose psychological self-improvement techniques. And strangely enough, they correspond to two paradigms for programming languages in computing. The two paradigms that admit not only thinking (programming), but thinking about thinking (meta-programming), and thinking about thinking about thinking, and ... to infinity (homoiconicity). Computing is about thinking precisely. OO and Functional are about improving your thinking by thinking about thinking.

I think I'm on the right track that this wonderfully unexpected correspondence exists. And I think I'm on the right track that the Core Values paradigm I invented is the one that 'happens' to correspond to the computing paradigm I like (OO). And I think I'm on the right track that the common features between my paradigm and the computing paradigm I like ... are also the same things that make this computing paradigm understandable and natural for the overwhelming majority of programmers.

The OTHER general purpose self-improvement technique is to pretend to be the kind of person you would like to be. And the guy whom I learned this technique from (the writer of Self 2.0) considered it too dangerous to use past a certain point. Myself, I consider it anathema.

Everything short of these two completely general-purpose self-improvement techniques is worthless ad hoc crap. Software? Tools? Methodologies? Processes? Self-help books? Motivational speakers? Seminars? Coaches? Therapists? Fucking Lamas? All worthless ad hoc crap that rarely works. Good thing I avoided nearly all of that. Too bad I wasted time on some of it.

And I particularly ... appreciated the bitch therapist whose article infantilized anarchists' need for self-determination. Because playing mommy is a great way to treat people who hate being subjugated. The worst part is this worthless bitch was the only one with an inkling of a clue. And also the endless numbers of morons saying to force yourself to do stuff ... which turned out to be not just anathema but also the exact opposite of what's effective. The key is avoiding forcing yourself to do stuff.

Why This Is Important

How is this relevant to this blog? Well first of all, (re)designing one's own mind certainly qualifies as 'design'. Secondly, a designer's mind is their most powerful tool, by far. It's almost their only tool because the other general tools are

1. virtual desktops
2. versioned gedit with 20+ tabs across 4 windows
3. a lightweight tagging notetaker that doesn't exist
4. an outliner that doesn't exist
5. zigzag that doesn't work. (useful for project management and 4D data)

I'm using gedit as a notetaker and zigzag. It blows. I don't count a better than Smalltalk IDE capable of debugging events. This is far too specific to programming. Just like OO CAD is too specific to architecture.

Upgrading one's own mind by converting it to a more powerful paradigm, one that's been proven to vastly improve productivity and sheer power in the computing world ... is something every sane designer should desire.

Meta-computing is incredibly powerful and it shouldn't surprise that meta-thinking is powerful as well. It shouldn't surprise that by leveraging, by thinking on higher levels, one gets more important stuff done more easily and reliably. Even practical stuff out in the real world. The only question is how much does the conversion job cost in time and effort? How much work is it to convert your mind to a better paradigm?

Fortunately for all you lazy assholes, after having personally paid and paid and paid to almost random walk towards a solution, the SHORT way to do it takes only an hour to see real progress and maybe two dozen hours to see major dividends. Even better, unlike all the academic crypto-fascistic fuckers I despise, I'm quite eager to give away the solution in the shortest, most understandable manner possible.

Unfortunately, I'm not willing to talk openly about it to people who are hostile towards or resentful of the process. Which includes nearly everyone who can't go through it. About 90% of the general population. I am talking about a transition in mentality as profound as (juvenile -> adult). Considering how many people are stuck as juveniles, that's not promising.

I call my, revolutionary, psychological self-upgrade technique the Core Values paradigm. And I call what it produces Angelic minds. And I call this the 5th solid piece of evidence that I'm well on my way to being the best, most productive and most powerful creative genius in all of human history. And if you've got a problem with that? Kindly fuck off.

Response to Response to How today's popular culture is actually making us smarter

Donald Norman is an excellent designer and broadly knowledgeable but this essay he wrote is laughable. Especially this paragraph which represents his viewpoint and is the meat of the essay,

Even if his hypotheses are correct, there is no evidence — nor does Johnson pretend there is — that the enhanced problem-solving skills come along with advanced understanding of how to create a logical argument, how to reason from evidence, and how to reach sustainable, justifiable conclusions.

which is ironic since it's a fallacy and specious in the extreme. Yes, Donald is defending logical reasoning using fallacious reasoning! WTF? Seriously!

It doesn't MATTER if modern computer games create advanced understanding or logical arguments, blah blah blah. All that matters is whether computer games are better or worse than the alternative. And since the alternative is board games like Monopoly and Risk, as well as games of chance like Solitaire, Poker, and Bridge. Or pure recall like Scrabble. Well, it's pretty obvious they're superior.

Moreover, NOTHING will promote logic since you can't teach analysis. Those who have it, need precious little to be taught the rules of thinking. And those who don't have analysis will NEVER learn, no matter how ritualistically they try to use it or he tries to teach it. The same thing for understanding and synthesis. So not only is "but does he look good in leather?" completely irrelevant, and asinine in the extreme, but you can't teach it period.

Too bad there is no comment system or any possible way to respond to anything on Donald Norman's website.