At 10:14 PM 9/4/98 -0700, you wrote:
>"It is far from clear that 'each part of the organization doing what is
>right for itself' is a bad thing. I think Stuart Kauffman, in "At Home In
>the Universe" describes the idea of "patches" as a way for an organization
>to adapt efficiently to a fitness landscape. Each group ("patch") does
>what it sees as best for itself, while at the same time watching to see
>what works for others. When a patch finds a good solution, it changes the
>problem faced by neighbors..."
>
>At the Patch level of the system:
>Do individuals within each "Patch" have to learn in order for the "patch" to
>learn?
Surely, but each patch reaches consensus about what is best for the group.
But I should add that applying this to intelligent agents is an
extrapolation. He is studying unintelligent agents, in the sense that
genes are unintelligent, unaware of the bigger picture. However, Kauffman
is working with quite a few economists, who are applying these ideas to
human systems.
>How 'bout if the "patch" has selection mechanisms which change the
>populations of individual within the patch?
I'm not sure if you're asking if there is competition within a patch or if
the makeup of a patch changes. I haven't seen anything from Kauffman
looking at those twists.
>Is what the "Patch" learned the same as that learned by the individuals
>within the "Patch"?
That is partly a practical and partly a philosophical question. In the
practical sense, since the patch can only make one choice as a group, it
has learned whatever it needs in order to make the choice. The
philosophical question is whether or not individuals have learned
something that the group has learned. They're certainly aware of the
process and outcome. Can a group know something that the individuals
don't? I'm coming to believe that idea is quite importatnt in a new way
of thinking about systems.
>Do the individuals in the "Patch" have to be aware of what the "Patch"
>learned?
Same question, essentially, but I'd even ask the question of whether a
group can learn and know things that remain unknown to the individuals.
The stock market "knows" how to set the price of stocks, but no one seems
to know how it does it, for example. At a much smaller level, cell
differentiation seems to be something that the genome "knows" as a whole,
but no individual gene has information about.
Nick
--Nick Arnett <listbot@mccmedia.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>