**Links to**: [[Noise]], [[Speed]], [[Cybernetics]], [[Power]], [[Representation]], [[Niklas Luhmann]], [[Stafford Beer]], [[Signal]], [[Control]], [[Feedback]], [[W. Ross Ashby]]’s [[Law of requisite variety]], [[Epistemology]], [[Mechanism]], [[Norbert Wiener]], [[Gordon Pask]], [[Warren McCulloch]], [[Shannon]] and [[Weaver]], [[Macy conferences]]. >“What is it that controls variety? The answer is dead simple: variety. Variety absorbs variety, and nothing else can.” (Beer, 1993, p. 12). ### [[Postulate]]: Systems present us with the [[Model]]ling problem time and time again. All things we call ‘systems’ are fluidly _dynamic_, but we tend to simplify them as _mechanic_ because this allows us to track specific components we are interested in, in an always chaotic moment. Systems-thinking is an attempt to temper and/or equalize speed(s). As Beer argues in “Designing Freedom“ (1993), in order to think about dynamic self-organizing systems at the societal scale, we _need_ to think of them as evolving processes. Traditional modes of thought in thinking social systems, which think of, e.g., institutions as rigid hierarchies of departments and reporting structures, fundamentally misrepresent how these organizations actually work. While established static visions of institutions as discretizable, moving-parts entities might be useful for assigning responsibilities or doing a general division of labor, they fail to capture the dynamic, living nature of institutions, which are built on human relationships with different processing speeds, rather than mechanical connections (which coincide precisely because all parts “agree” on a specific processing speed). The essence of a surviving system lies in its performance —“if you like, its speed” as he passingly says, which is fundamental to our arguments, see also: [[Speed]] and [[Scale]]—and in human system these speeds are driven by complex psychosocial forces: conflicts, loyalties, formal and informal networks, ulterior connections: all processed and exhibited at different rates of variability. These phenomena, given their nature is covertness, change, inability, friction, are naturally irrepresentable. They work _against_ representation. A dynamic system is, by nature, in constant flux; “and the higher its variety [i.e., its number of variables], the greater the flux.” (ibid., p.5) Possible system survival or stability depends on returning to some equilibrium, or set-point, after a perturbation. “The time this process takes is the relaxation time.” (ibid.). Its varying degrees of relaxation times all the way down.^[“If there are _n_ people in a system, and each of them has variety x (each can adopt x number of possible states), then the variety of the total system thus defined will be x$^n$. So if there are only forty people (n = 40), each of whom has only two possible states (x = 2), there are still 240 possible states of the system. 240 = 1, 099, 511, 627, 776. ... The relaxation time of the institutional system is now on the average longer than the average interval between perturbations, with the result that the institutional system is permanently unstable. Since permanent instability feeds on itself (because there is no recognizable stable condition on which to base learning and adaptation), this instability is likely to become, like the wave’s instability, catastrophic.” (Beer 1993, p. 10).] Therefore, another way in which a social system works **against** representation is by reducing its possibility space and equalizing speeds: >“The number of possible states of a system is called its variety ... All our major societary institutions are high-variety systems; all of them need to have a finite relaxation time; but all of them are subject to constant perturbation ... There is only one way to cope, and all institutions use it—although they use it in many forms. They have to **reduce the variety of the system**.” (ibid., p.5). This reduction can be the implementation or rules, the elimination of perturbations, the changing of the landscape of possibilities. All of these are different political strategies. >“Our institutions were set up a long time ago. They handled a certain amount of variety, and controlled it by sets of organizational variety reducers. They coped with a certain range of perturbations, coming along at a certain average frequency. ... As time went by, variety rose ... and more states became accessible both to that population and to the institutional system. This meant that more variety reducers were systematically built into the system, ... Meanwhile, both the range and the frequency of the perturbations has increased. But we just said that the systemic variety has been cut. This produces a mismatch. The relaxation time of the system is not geared to the current rate of perturbation. This means that a new swipe is taken at the ball before it has had time to settle. Hence our institutions are in an unstable condition. ... there is no way of recognizing where an equilibrial outcome is located. ... If we cannot recognize the stable state, it follows that we cannot learn to reach it—there is no reference point. If we cannot learn how to reach stability, we cannot devise adaptive strategies—because the learning machinery is missing. If we cannot adapt, we cannot evolve. Then the instability threatens to be like the wave’s instability—catastrophic.” (ibid., p. 6). Failing to understand the highway we’re on (as a metaphor for technology), with no speedometer and basically blindfolded, truly is catastrophic. >“One trouble with our institutions is that they do not admit that the only full solution would be ridiculous and that therefore it is not done [i.e., electronic-cybernetic communism]. They should acknowledge, at least to themselves, that they are satisfying Ashby’s Law by variety attenuation. And the reason they do not admit it is that it sounds bad in the ear of [American neoliberal] culture. Our culture insists on the uniqueness of the individual, but our society cannot live up to that. This is no criticism, it is a scientific fact. Our culture also insists on the absolute freedom of the individual, but our society cannot live up to that either. That too is a scientific fact. Then look at the mess we get into by our pretences.” (ibid. p. 13). ### Footnotes