Systematization

From Unfocusgroup.org

Civilisations are largely defined by the systems that they operate by. Early civilisations develop systems of law and order, commerce and agriculture for the benefit of its people. As a population grows, its systems tend become more general and abstract. Here I shall argue that such systematization has a dehumanising effect on people, and that most modern societies would benefit from having fewer rules and fewer systems in place.

Themes

systems tend to replace thinking. People become unthinking automata with no creativity. It is like people obey, like they are reading from a script. There are a huge number of people who do not have the faintest clue about what they are doing. The system tends to make people go through ritualistic motions, blindly following a process without actually thinking about what they are doing.
systems have to work for people. Otherwise, they are just systems. They become faceless, inhuman bureaucracies.
"broken britain"? it's not the people who are broken; it's the system
To me, it seems just as odd to submit to a system as it does to submit to the will of others.
Replacement of context-dependent thinking with systems.
back in the day we had people called systems analysts, who did a lot of work to make sure they were doing the right thing
Systems that are complex and intractable tend to fall apart
There seems to be a prevailing belief that you have to have a system in place for everything
the credit crunch has shown that database checks cannot prove creditworthiness. And they cannot prove trustworthiness with kids either (vetting) - it is a false sense of security
systematization has a dehumanising effect
far from supporting us, the systems have begun to enslave us. They even enslave the government - it is beyond control.
Civilisation has come to rely on systems
Systems tend to work far from perfectly.
early-civilisation systems required more human intervention
"playing the system" vs sticking to beliefs (and having beliefs/principles in the first place)
systems lead to rigid binary interpretations of human concepts such as right or wrong, trustworthy or not-trustworthy, rather than having more fluid interpretations of things
systems are there to define how people who don't know each other interact
pre-systems societies are vulnerable to attack from neighbouring tribes
system has become over-complicated. Everything is too complicated - partly because bureaucrats like it that way,because they are the gatekeepers and want to keep the mystique surrounding their jobs.
nowadays, decisions are being taken out of the hands of people into more abstract systems and machines and database checks
early civilisations - money, law and order
on a smaller scale, people know each other, but on a larger scale, situations have to be resolved between people who do not know each other
society is so highly systematized that people fail to challenge the system where it fails, and are powerless to make context-sensitive decisions
systems have become so abstract, that they do not have much attention to detail. But it is up to individuals to fill in the detail, by challenging systems where they fail, and making decisions for themselves.
I am not a classical "libertarian" as such. One does require government, and the government does need to impose rules, have taxes etc. What I am asking is that those rules are less abstract and make more sense, rather than throwing people into a "sausage machine" system that takes no account of people's individual situations. The rules must be more humane.
As our systems become more and more abstract and ludicrous, humanity starts to go through a form of unrenaissance: the rebirth of stupidity, as people stop thinking things through for themselves.
The system is completely out of control. Not even the government control it. Every so often, a story prompts shock, and a media frenzy ensues. Government is forced to implement new legislation to appease the most vocal. The system reacts to random events, and gets worse every time. The "machine" has no off button.
system is an emergent phenomenon that nobody understands and nobody has overall control of. But it's true, that there are some people who know how to play the system and exploit it for its own gains. The key objective is to smash the system.

Political Systems

It's rooted in our psyche that some political ideologies work better than others.

Argue that a lot of the time, it's not about the system itself, but the lack of, and how the simpler systems are implemented (i.e. better) - so, e.g. centrally-planned economies tend to fall apart, because they are too complicated.

Law and order

Laws and rules have side-effects.

Do we really need wigs and gowns to make our law courts work?
Banning things does not make them go away. Often, it causes the invention of new hiding mechanisms.

Systems of control

Organizational systems tend to become bureaucracies. People shuffle paper around because "that's the way it's done", rather than through conscious choice.

They become so intractable that nobody knows what's going on any more, particularly the faceless bureaucrats who act more like automata every day.

Are the laws of science really laws?

It is a prevailing belief that science is a rigorous search for fundamental truths about our universe. However, science nowadays is highly systematized, and as such the sciences suffer from orthodoxy and groupthink. The problem is exacerbated by the assumption that peer-reviewed science is beyond reproach. Here I shall argue that the scientific world is not nearly reflective enough and not large enough to challenge its own assumptions in the way that it should, and that the sciences need an intake of fresh thinking that will best come through better education and greater open-ness.

seems to be a belief that science is an authority - high priesthood
Peer Review=groupthink
Rationalism and pragmatism - the idea that if something is "scientific", then it is a search for truth.
just a model, not a search for truth - science is not a search for fundamental truths
Scientists are not nearly as reflective as they believe that they are. They tend to assume that peer review is a "safety valve" that stops stupid theories from being published, and that there is sufficient open-ness such that anybody can challenge any theory if they present their evidence correctly. They believe that over time, scientific knowledge will "evolve", in a darwinian manner, towards correctness, and that eventually, we will increase our knowledge of the universe such that the fundamental questions will all be answered.

This does not seem to be happening. Whereas some areas of science have made terrific - albeit incremental - progress, other areas are being ironed out of existence. For example, there seems to be a prevailing belief that human consciousness is all but wrapped up: that consciousness is an illusion that has been created through evolution. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, consciousness is one of the fundamental mysteries of the universe.

In addition, science has yet to understand the true nature of things like magnetism, gravity and matter. Why do they act as they do, and why do they exist at all? Who made the rules? There may come a time whereby we can explain such things in terms of lower-level phenomena, but there seems to be little possibility of a "grand unifying theory" emerging that will wrap it all up. Besides, there would need to be an explanation for why the grand unifying theory holds true, if this is the case.

the world of science is not reflective enough - assumption that peer-reviewed science is beyond reproach, but unfortunately the system is flawed

the idea is that scientific papers can be challenged - but the closed peer-review process is not a challenging enough environment. Open peer review is the only way. Decisions about scientific papers should not be done by a handful of high priests, but by a wide group of people.
new people, fresh thinking, better education
MHRA and their vetting of medical claims = oppressive regulation (e.g http://www.mhra.gov.uk/Safetyinformation/Generalsafetyinformationandadvice/Adviceandinformationforconsumers/Usingherbalmedicines/CON019609)
progress in the sciences is now more iterative/cautious/incremental, rather than the leaps forward that we have seen in the past. Prevailing belief that we have a lot of things "wrapped up" and now just need to iron out the details, whereas in fact we have mountains of things untouched and undiscovered, because there is little will to change things. E.g. consciousness, mental health. Large Hadron Collider is a rare good thing, but we need more of these things.
"forensic" truths such as evolution, archaeology etc - a "forensic" truth is a "prediction about the past", or a search for a certain truth. It is different from a "fundamental truth", which is absolute.
- the existence of fundamental truths is disputable; forensic truths are real. A forensic truth is, for all intents and purposes, true. But a fundamental truth is something that perhaps guides morality e.g. whether humans are conscious. And are dogs sentient beings? If they are, then it is a more fundamental truth and should guide our morality (there are perhaps degrees of fundamental-ness)

Fundamental and Forensic Truths, and Models

The true nature of magnetism is a fundamental truth. The explanation of magnetism in terms of (e.g.) string theory is a model. The theory of evolution is a forensic truth.

Dawkins speaks of genes being the unit of evolution. But the the-ness implies that we are talking about a fundamental truth, whereas in fact we are talking about a model. And models work on multiple levels. There is a prevailing belief in reductionism, but a lot of this is extrapolatory, and hence not reductionism at all, but conjecture about the role of genes etc. There is no conflict between observing behaviour at a group level, and searching for genetic factors. But somewhere along the line, the group behaviour does have rules of its own that are not explained at lower levels. This is because groups have histories and external influences that are far worthier of consideration than the gene-based view which says "either it's a gene, or it's part of the environment". Models need to have explanatory power in order to be useful, and often, the group-based explanation has far better explanatory power.

For example, you could explain the rise of the Beatles in terms of genes and environments. But it's really about the fact that their music was really good.

Systems in the workplace

Factories are amazing. Goods can nowadays be manufactured to amazing standards of quality, performance and reliability, with very high precision and on a massive scale. This has been achieved by the automation of mundane tasks through industrialisation.

However, many non-mundane tasks have also become systematized. Huge armies of health and safety drones are nowadays employed to tick boxes

"It's company policy"
"Computer says no"

Systems that require some human intervention are generally preferable to completely-automated things, unless those automated things work perfectly.

Equality laws have unintended consequences (e.g. maternity rights lead to fewer women being employed, and "ethnic minority" employees are considered a liability as they could abuse racial equality laws)

The intractability of human rights

Human rights has noble aims - but when it becomes a system, it becomes a tyranny.

As noble as the aims of many human rights system are, they often end up in a quagmire of conflicting rights.

Rights vs freedoms - expressed as a "right not to be tortured" is more convoluted than having simpler rules that prevent people from harming others.

Race equality system - can non-racism be enforced?
Rights to welfare etc

Punishments mainly based on restrictions of freedoms (rather than e.g. death penalty)

The "I know my rights" brigade who try to abuse rights laws for their own ends.

Religion

Here, I will define religion as being a doctrine that purports to explain fundamental truths.

The root cause of religious beliefs is the valid-unknown, e.g. the mysteries of the true nature of the universe, the origins of the universe and the phenomenon of human consciousness and qualia.

However, many religions replace these unknowns with a kind of systematized belief. Rather than being mysteries for which individuals have their own theories, we end up with groups of related beliefs, sucking in ideas about morality and even whether you should have a beard. This is, to some extent, inevitable - for example, if you believe that human consciousness is real, then your moral intuitions may be guided by that. But to clump beliefs together in a systematized, forced manner that are propagated through holy texts etc - ok it might be practical in some societies to have a "rule book", but in a more enlightened era we perhaps could do better.

Note that militant scientists tend to see science as a religion, by the definition above (a doctrine that claims to answer fundamental truths)

Religion=submission. Submission to authority, submission to "God", and submission to a system. They tend not to emphasize freedom of thought.

Databases and automation

Credit reference agencies.

Some databases can be useful, but not necessarily as a means of vetting people.

As with all systems, computer systems work well at automating clearly circumscribed tasks, provided that users are given enough control over the system and don't have to say "computer says no". E.g. the online ordering system, whereby things can be overridden, largely results in efficiency.

Soft Authoritarianism to Soft Totalitarianism

The systems often start to take on a mind of their own, and are often beyond political control, and certainly way past the power of citizens to change them.

These systems themselves start to own everything. The machine comes alive.

The System itself becomes a totalitarian dictator. Beyond the control of the government.

even in computer science

The focus on methodology rather than practicality has led to sub-optimal solutions. And in particular, software failing to keep up with hardware (note that software is generally written in english-speaking, first-world countries, whereas hardware is manufactured in the east where they focus on more pressing concerns - one of the reasons why hardware is ahead of software)

General theories of everything

Part of the reason for this madness is the human desire to generalise, and to like to have single, easy-to-understand principles for everything. The trouble is that this does not work, because there are always edge-cases that require judgement. Over-abstraction leads to rules that are meaningless to everyone.

feature-creep

Systems tend to work well when applied to clearly circumscribed tasks. The mistake that many people make is to try to stretch or over-generalise a system to extend to other areas. It then becomes too abstract, and intractable, such that nobody actually understands it any more.

dumbing down?

I would not argue that society has become "dumbed down" as such, but rather that we tend to rely upon systems being "in place", when in fact those systems can't really cope with the things that are thrown at them.

motivating factors behind systematization

Systems can be seen to be a "fair" way of dealing with things. E.g. the exam system may seem to be a "gold standard". However, life is more subtle than that. Some standards are important, but also judgements and interpretations matter too.

systems as a means of learning

To some extent, systems can help to form discipline. Martial arts fighting, for example, is a form of system - a set pattern matching given inputs to given responses. It makes learning easy.

So too, systems and disciplines in fields of study can have their uses. Scientists who think too deeply at the early stages of learning about things often get nowhere, as they begin to question everything. Systems (such as the atomic "shell model") are a way for scientists to "get over it" and begin to treat the model as, for all intents and purposes, the Truth. This helps a lot when trying to solve simple or common problems that have been worked out before.

appeal to qualification

(The idea that you have to be qualified to do a particular thing, and can be sued if you are unqualified and make a mistake) - qualification is a form of authority-deciding whether someone should be allowed to do a thing

hard and soft infrastructure

The hard infrastructure - hardware - has to follow certain principles of natural or mathematical law. Or it doesn't work.
The human "soft" infrastructure - legal systems etc - can afford to be more flexible than they are. In fact, people need flexible systems

Control of resources and capitalism

Accumulation of wealth/resources is related to the resources that you already control.
Cost savings
Arbitrage
Outsourcing
They call this "moving up the value chain", whereas I call it fannying around with money.

Smash The System

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