A couple decades ago it occurred to me that the dynamics of disagreement often tend toward polarization rather than toward unification at a higher level of understanding.

Further, it seemed (to me) that this might be analogous to the behavior of a feedback loop out of control and going to one or the other of its extreme rails.

And further, this seemed (to me) to be the behavior of a system finding its lowest energy/information state, associated with lack of requisite variety.

This behavior seemed (to me) generalizable in principle across systems based on electronics, mechanisms, …, human individuals, and groups.

At that time I was active in a forum of Very Smart People, and when I ventured this observation/opinion it received no interest or engagement.

I'm wondering whether now, twenty years later, with polarization in politics being grossly apparent, whether anyone reading this might be able to recommend some sources of more extensive thinking on the question of such a general principle…?

#agreement #disagreement #polarization #systemsTheory #controlTheory #systemsThinking #politics #leastEnergy #leastInformation #requisiteVariety

Most fields have only a few laws.

I've been diving into #StaffordBeer over the past few days, #cybernetics guru of the 1970s-90s. His concepts of #AshbysLaw of #RequisiteVariety, and of #ViableSystemsModel get toward this. Notably, a model should be as simple as possible, but no simpler (Einstein).

An overly complex model invites #overfitting

Breakthroughs in domains occur where an accumulation of many complex rules can be discarded for a small set of simpler ones. Physics: Newton on gravity, motion, and optics. Chemistry: Mendeleev on chemical elements (valance electrons and atomic masses), Biology: Darwin and evolution (and genetics and DNA). Geology: Wegener and plate tectonics. Information; Shannon. Computer science: Turing & Church.

The social sciences have been approached repeatedly by their core truth but to date have rejected it.

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