Self-reflexive discourse as catalyst for change

Requisite Meta-reflection on Engagement in Systemic Change? (Part #9)

In a period in which mapping of the globe down to street level is accepted as normal, it is remarkable how little effort is made to map systematically the variety of interacting perspectives which characterize global civilization and its dynamics. This has been a goal of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential. Despite investment and experiments to that end, this did not engender maps usefully supportive of discourse of a higher order. The situation remains one resembling that on the flat Earth of centuries past, marked at the edges with There Be Dragons. As in that period, any detailed maps which exist may even be considered a secret asset.

Use of citation analysis could be considered an approach to such a mapping, although it necessarily avoids the isolated villages and hamlets of knowledge space in concentrating on its urban centres -- avoiding the realms where dragons are held to dwell. Little use is made of social network analysis despite the technology now enabling it.

There is little reference to argument mapping or discourse analysis in relation to problematic strategic issues -- most notably in plenary debate. One notable exception, suitably caricatured as the Afghan Spaghetti Monster for that reason, took the form of a systems map of actors in the Afghanistan arena (Graphic Shows Complexity of US Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, The Huffington Post, 22 December 2009). There is thus currently little effort to transcend the dynamics of We are right; You are wrong, as reinforced by the seating arrangements for opposing factions in such venues. Conferences are typically exercises in (self-) selectivity whereby the most primitive dynamics are ensured. These preclude the kinds of ecosystemic sensitivity now recognized as fundamental to understanding of biological systems. Are psychosocial systems assumed to be of lesser complexity than metabolic pathways?

In a period of rapid technological innovation, the innovation in meeting processes is in no way comparable -- even when modest use is made of communication technologies. The unchanging pattern of keynote speakers, lectures/presentations, panels, Q-and-A, and workshops, cannot be said to reflect the rate of upgrading characteristic of information technology, as argued separately (Internyet Nescience? Self-referential upgrading of obsolete Internet conference processes inhibiting emergence of integrative knowledge, 2013). It is remarkable the obligation to listen to a presentation in extenso, before being able to peruse an argument rapidly in some more convenient form -- especially when no other format is available, or may only become so in the future and for a fee ("read my book"). The absence of active hyperlinks in academic journals is indicative of preference for an essentially obsolete mode of discourse via which systemic change is envisaged. Images are typically an embarrassment, especially given the issues of copyright. Metaphors may themselves becomes subject to copypright (Future Coping Strategies: beyond the constraints of proprietary metaphors, 1992).

It is in this sense that strategic discourse, as enabled by academia, can be said to be "on repeat" -- with every probability of little change anticipated by 2050 or 2100, whatever the risk of societal collapse. There is no Plan B. The argument can be extended to the environments in which strategic options are envisaged ("Tank-thoughts" from "Think-tanks": metaphors constraining development of global governance, 2003). Established comfort zones are in no way challenged -- especially when challenging perspectives have been carefully designed out as irrelevant or "not even wrong".

The challenge can be provocatively framed in terms of any encounter with extreme forms of otherness. Examples are offered by "talking with the Taliban" or "talking with ISIS". Potentially even more challenging is the encounter with hypothetical extraterrestrials (Meg Urry, When can we talk to aliens? CNN, 14 April 2015). Naively the latter are readily assumed to favour a mode of discourse consonant with that of academia -- in contrast with the Taliban. It is remarkable that science has elaborated techniques for engaging with the dangers of radioactivity but has been unable to develop techniques for psychoactively dangerous discourse, as in the case of "hot issues" (Overpopulation Debate as a Psychosocial Hazard: development of safety guidelines from handling other hazardous materials, 2009).

With the foreseen increase in use of intelligent agents in internet communications, other challenges are evident when an even more extensive array of messages -- notably tweets -- is generated by algorithms, as prefigured by algorithmic stock trading. Such developments of artificial intelligence, and its direct participation in strategic dialogue, will constitute a revolution in its own right, as separately explored (Forthcoming Major Revolution in Global Dialogue: challenging new world order of interactive communication, 2013). In the form of an array of tweets, rather than conventional phrasing, a question of interest is whether these would more readily pass the Turing test -- and be unrecognizable as such, perhaps in preference to humans.

The rapid uptake of Twitter points to the possibility that strategic discourse may be rapidly transformed into a multiplicity of succinct tweets, hashtagged in support of a narrow band of interests and short attention span -- both valued in support of the illusion of navigating information overload successfully. A key challenge may be the means of ensuring the emergence of patterns of global coherence from such communication dynamics (Re-Emergence of the Language of the Birds through Twitter? 2010).

Insights into more appropriate means of managing connectivity and disagreement are now suggested by exploration of higher orders of cybernetics (Maurice Yolles and Gerhard Fink, A General Theory of Generic Modelling and Paradigm Shift: cybernetic orders, Kybernetes, 44, 2015). These notably take account of self-reflexivity -- itself to be distinguished in varying degrees meriting exploration and recognition. As phrased by the authors:

First-order cybernetic feedback is typically seen to be associated with Newtonian mechanical objectivity. It is therefore positivist, centring on systemic objects being observed by some external objective observer
Second-order cybernetics embraces radical constructivism, allowing for instrumental learning and agnosticism towards objective reality..
Third-order simplex cybernetic spaces should be seen to represent the observed and observing systems together forming another system, from which a new relativistic interactive worldview arises from self-observing viewers that have self-observed worldviews. Third-order cybernetics is also characterised by the way it resolves undecidabilities, these being constituted in the logic of the present moment by the anticipations of the system.
It is possible to formulate a statement of fourth order cybernetics in terms of the higher levels of relationship between observed and observing systems.... However, a more pragmatic and satisfactory... approach allows one to respond to the variety in a complex situation with an invariant generic construct more capable of generating requisite variety. Higher orders of simplex modelling have this capability since they provide new ways of explaining complexity by representing external influences as internal imperatives, thereby creating greater complexity for the immanent agency dynamics, but reducing undecidability. To explain the use of higher order models, rather than use observers relationships, a more minimal way is to adopt a concept of generic loop learning..., even if this redirects us away from... adaptability. Here then, fourth order cybernetics could be represented as triple loop generic learning (beyond the double loop generic learning of third cybernetics), referring to the way in which knowledge is not only acquired but also identified.
On the way to developing our general theory, the paper gave examples of first, second, third and fourth order simplexity. Higher orders of simplex modelling under complexity exist through the conceptual generic concepts that define them. This is the result of conceptual emergence, important to processes of systemic modelling. So far we have not attempted to move beyond fourth order simplexity, awaiting for new concepts able to generate fifth and higher orders of simplexity. However, we have shown that higher order simplex models can be generated through the use of recursion

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Self-reflexive discourse as catalyst for change