It's all a conspiracy!

Recently I had a link to the “light bulb conspiracy” presented to me. Basically it has for a subject “programmed obsolescence”. The term “programmed obsolescence” refers to the industrial practice of designing for failure. Manufactures produce items at the minimum level of quality they feel they can get away with, but not too high a quality, so that items fail; thus people have to go back to buy replacement products. The film then calls this a “conspiracy”. I disagree. Yes, manufactures do indeed produce items to fail but that does not equate to a conspiracy. The word “conspiracy” means:

• Conspiracy (civil), an agreement between persons to deceive, mislead, or defraud others of their legal rights, or to gain an unfair advantage
• Conspiracy (crime), an agreement between persons to break the law in the future, in some cases having committed an act to further that agreement
• Conspiracy (political), the overthrow of a government

[source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy]

Thus, we can define the essential elements of a conspiracy as a plot, normally in secret, to carry out something illegal or to gain an unfair advantage. “Programmed obsolescence” does not fall into the category of something illegal (no government makes it so) nor into the category of “gaining an unfair advantage” as all manufactures either practice it or have the opportunity to practice it.

It seams to me that calling things a conspiracy has come into vogue; from 9/11 to NWO to the 2012 Olympics. Whether its alien, lizards or the a secret society. Sometime it appears to me as if the expressions “think for yourself” and “get educated” means “believe in the latest conspiracy theory without question”!!!

Where others see plots carried out in secret to do something illegal I see multi-agents interacting. I see self organising networks of individuals at work but most of all I see emergent phenomena.

Have a look at a dot and see what properties it has. Then arrange a number of dots in an arc and see what properties we then have. Dots arranged in an arc have properties such as length and angle that the single dot does not. These new properties emerge from the way we have ordered the dots.

Emergence: dots in a line have properties that no individual dot has.

Dots in a line forms a very simple example of emergence. Society forms a more complex example of the same phenomena. Here, instead of dots, we have people and instead of arranging them in a line we have dynamic social interactions forming networks; people know other people. We have on average six links between us and almost everyone else on the planet! Some people have more power to effect the world we live in than others. Some groups also have such power but the world doesn't run according to the plans of any one person or group but instead as a result of the interactions of many people and many groups.

Everybody interacts with other people through following a set of rules. Rules that define acceptable social behaviour, laws or arrangements and even rules that tell you how you can break other rules; like a kind of game. All these rules form what we call the socioeconomic system that we live in. This, like programmed obsolescence, emerge out of this interaction. To play the game in our current socioeconomic system companies must make profit. One way to do that would involve getting people to come back and buy a new product again and again. Making the product to fail after a certain time gets people to come back and buy them again. Our socioeconomic system has other means to get people to buy and buy again with fashion coming to mind first; throw away perfectly good clothes so you can buy this years fashion.

Our socioeconomic system produces a number of other undesirable emergent phenomena from concentration of wealth in the hands of a minority to enforced poverty to environmental damage. We can even see “dumbing down” of TV and the education system as emergent phenomena of our (free) market economy; you want to maximise profits you need to appeal to the majority and intelligent people form a minority (don' forget, half the population fall below average intelligence to start with) so you have to appeal to the “dumb” majority of society through “dumbing” down; TV reflects the type of society we live in!

We also have another interesting emergent property of our current socioeconomic system; conspiracy theories. In a (free) market economy where we can't trust manufactures to tell the truth ( “buy brand X, its much better than brand y, honest”! ) we find people having to exercise the paranoid aspect of their nature. In a society that breeds distrust does anyone wonder why we have so many conspiracy theories?

We get the society we deserve!

Instead of looking for conspiracies and the imaginary evil groups behind them we instead should realise what we see around us results from the socioeconomic system we live in. If we don't like the destruction of the environment, the level of distrust, the dumbing down of our education and TV, the enforced poverty and the hindrance to our own advancement we need to redesign and build a new system. A system that has a new set of rules; one without money, without profit seek behaviour and without the need for paranoia.

EOS works on the design for an alternative socioeconomic system. A moneyless system that gives everyone equal access to what they need. One that maintains a balance with the ecosystem. What to know more, see: www.eoslife.eu.

An undiscovered island

Imagine, if you will, that we have landed on the sandy shores of an undiscovered island. Not just us but a number of other expedition shave also landed on the same golden shore line. Before us lies the think green undergrowth that marks the edge of a deep dark forest beyond which lies a mountain, the highest point on the island. All the expeditions, each with their own characteristics and peculiarities, decide that we should explore the island and head towards the distant mountain. But how to get there? Each group has their own ideas of which ways they should go; head in land from where we first landed, explore the coast line more, look for a river or just head into the

We each set of on our different route but we agree to keep in contact with each other via radio and to help each other if we can. As the expeditions advance, each on their own route following their own ideas, we make progress into the unknown. As we learn new things about the island we pass on the information; the animals we find, the lie of the land, food and water supplies. Each group makes progress but each runs into problems. When a group has difficulty the other try and help them out. Some times it can mean change in course as one group find an easy path and informs groups that have met with impenetrable forest. So times it just advice; look out for a eye plants!


I see a future society working like this; one that does not fear differences and has to make everyone the same but acknowledges deliverances and see the advantages they can bring. A society that lets people live their own life but bring them together when needed to help each other.


Although each group has its differences we all have a common goal. Through acknowledging our differences we gain strength. Knowledge learnt in one group helps another and visa verse. As no one group knows the right way forward having differences allows us to search different alternatives as we all head for the same goal. Through working together on the points we have in common allows to maximise our resources on a focused area. Through networking we gain the advantage s of multiple approaches and strength though numbers.

In engineering we would call this approach of exploring the unknown prototyping. In software engineering we would call it forking.

Cooperation

Cooperation poses a bit of a problem; when selfishness represents the optimal strategy why would entities op to cooperate, especially if it means losing out in the short term and opening up oneself to exploitation? We can show acting for one's own self interest, regardless of anyone else's, represents the optimal strategy through game theory, especially prisoner's dilemma which shows defecting as the optimal strategy. This forms the foundation in classical economics of the "economic man"; a rational entity that seeks to optimise personal gain. Yet such a model doesn't fit with reality. Experiments and real world applications of the prisoner's dilemma has demonstrated that it doesn't model real world human interaction in either a social or economic sense and it fails (actually, it works well for psychopaths and economists but not for the rest of us). Psychology has show that the foundation of economics, the "economic man", also fails to model reality well. In reality we tend to favour cooperation over purely selfish actions. Why?

Why should we cooperate? Axelrod and Hamilton looked at the evolution of cooperation through the application of multiple prisoner's dilemma. They found that if rational entities could meet again and play prisoner's dilemma over and over that tit-for-tat represented the optimal strategy. They ran hundreds of trials with many different strategies and although tit-for-tat didn't come top it came second more time than other strategies meaning that overall it represented the best strategy. In tit-for-tat, cooperation gets rewarded with cooperation and defecting gets punished with defection, thus each entity has a vested interest in cooperating. So long as entities have a chance of meeting again and so long as defecting or freeloading gets punished cooperation represents to optimal strategy for self interested entities, which matches closer what actually happens in the real world.

The real world example of reciprocal altruism comes close to theoretical model of tit-for-tat from game theory. Examples include symbiosis between different animals such as cleaner fish or human actions such as voluntary charity work. This strategy can give greater benefits to those involved if those involved meet multiples times and can spot free loaders and punish them.

In the end, cooperation can work as the optimal strategy for selfish entities giving them greater benefits, especially in the long run, than purely selfish actions provided the entities interact multiple times over time and freeloaders or those that would explode the cooperation get pushed and thus, do not gain from the exportation.

Cooperation forms an important part of the socioeconomic design of EOS. We propose a network multiple autonomous entities working together and cooperating on common tasks. These entities remain separate with their own ideas doing their own things but as each works towards a common overall goal they can come together to form common project as needed. This results in entities forming higher entities to work on a common project in a holonic system of cooperation.

Fixing the facade

Once there was a man who had a house. One day he noticed a crack in the walls of the house so he patched it up and gave in new coat of paint and all looked well. Some months later he saw another crack so he did the same; filled in the crack and painted it over. Some weeks later he saw two more crack so, again, he filled them in and painted them over. It wasn't long before a friend pointed out that he had a number of cracks in the wall of his house. His friend said it looked bad and that he should do something about the problem. The man told him he was working on the problem and they both went out to patch up the wall and paint it over and all looked well. Some time after more cracks appeared and the man got busy working on the problem. He was annoyed that more cracks appeared but he was happy that he was doing something to address the problem. However, the more he patched up the house the more the cracks would appear. Soon cracks were appearing faster than he could patch them up and it wasn't long before the whole house collapsed. Then the man realised the problem wasn't the cracks in the wall but what was causing the cracks to appear! The house was rotten to the core and while he had spent his time tackling the cracks the real problem got worse. Even worse for the man, because he had spent his time fixing cracks he had felt he was doing something about the problem so didn't look further into the problem. As the cracks had got worse he had spent all his time and energy on fixing the cracks that he didn't have any more time for investigating the problem.

I look at today's society and what we do and I see a man fixing the facade of a rotten building. We have things like ISO 14000 and 20-20-20 attempting to address the problem but do nothing about the core problem so they become filling in the cracks. Are we doing something? Do things like ISO 14000 and 20-20-20 make a difference? Yes, we do do something and ISO 14000 and 20-20-20 do make an impact but do we do anything about the core problem? No, we don't. Sooner or later the good things that might come out of ISO 14000 and 20-20-20 will get lost when the building collapses.

It appears to me the term "sustainable development" forms an example of an oxymoron!

The Venus Project in Stockholm, Sweden

 

Preparations before the talk

The big event for EOS this year : The Venus Project in Stockholm. I organised the lecture that Roxanne Meadows and Jacque Fresco gave at the Clarion Hotel in Stockholm.

The event when really well. I got to meet with a lot of like minded people. Everything went smoothly and we had over 300 people at the event.

Afterwards we had a meal that Jim from Rent-a-chef organised and we also had a BBQ on the following day, that Jim also arranged.

All in all, I think we can say the event turned out a big success and that everyone involved really enjoyed.

Thanks to all those who helped.

Roxanne Meadows

Jacque and Roxanne talking to member of the audience during a break

The meal afterwards

Experiments with green stuff

I have worked on a few experiments; one with growing hydroponics, one with permaculture and one with oil algae.

At the moment they all look as if they have worked and will continue to work well. I've managed to grow some lettuce in the hydroponics and plant the pernamculture plants and I have some algae growing in my photo bio-reactors.

For the hydroponics, next year I want to start looking at producing my own nutrients. For the permaculture I need to see if the plants last the winter. I don't know of anyone who has tried permaculture this far north (63 deg). For the algae I now need to see if I can harvest them and produce some oil.

Energy Accounting Design ready for review

I think I now have the energy accounting design ready for review. If you would like to look at it and comment.

Energy Accounting Design

NB, if you don't like the idea of ECs and would prefer the TVP idea then just ignore that bit. With or without ECs we would still need the second part of the system of "expert management".

Thx

ui