Complexity

Tidbits on Vital Issues 382 (sent)
Sam Clarke

A mega-scientific instrument -- The Large Hadron Collider:
Built into a tunnel underneath the Jura Mountains on the French-Swiss border the function of the Hadron Collider is to send two beams around the ring in opposite directions at close to the speed of light and then smash the particles (protons) together in a tremendous release of energy and fundamental subatomic particles.

Its purpose is to learn the fundamental structure of matter. The Collider accelerates protons around a 17 mile corridor at 99.999999% the speed of light, causing ½ billion collisions per second.

Importantly they hope to verify the Higgs boson theory, among other questions. The Higgs force is presumed to exert a drag force that could explain the origin of mass. The accelerator could chip of f a chunk, a Higgs particle [all elements of nature – light, time, physical entities, forces have a particle nature].

The Hadron Collider (Large Hadron Collider or LHC) is arguably the largest-ever scientific collaboration:
· 2,900 authors of the system
· 100,000 computers to process its data
· 150 universities contribute scientific teams
· Over 10,000 scientists and engineers involved
· 10,000 magnets
· 38 nations

The Collider was made possible by new instruments (e.g. blogs, wikis, shared databases) and other institutions that generate global cooperation. Research groups formed themselves into democratic cooperatives with bottom up systems of decision-making. [WSJ: 11/20/09]

Complexity requires self-organizing systems:

Top-down decision-making cannot manage complex systems of the modern age, such as the Hadron Collider, national economic systems, health care, the environment, feeding the world. The answer lies in collaborative systems -- self-organized collaborative teamwork. The Hadron Collider exemplifies such a collaborative system. The free enterprise system is another.

Societies form to collaborate in common aims. For this purpose they establish institutions -- governance, laws, economic, social, education. Such institutions form an intelligible framework, guides to efficient behavior that facilitate collaboration, and discourage dysfunctional behavior.

Though we have a common nature and similar aims our motivations and talents are individual, deriving from individual needs, wants, interests and talents. Thus the motivational energy [power] and ingenuity of a society derives from individuals who pursue their interests (self-interests) in cooperative relationships. This power cannot be efficiently or effectively imposed (controlled) from above, because the variables are infinite. Necessarily it must rely on autonomously-generated collaborative behavior formed at levels where the problems, variables and talents are understood.

Since wants are unlimited no society can provide all of them, i.e. society will always be limited in achieving its aims.

Thus power emanates from individuals, enhanced synergistically through teamwork. Leadership can facilitate this leadership, but inherently it is limited by access to information within the collaborative system (the team), including all of the physical and mental tools in individuals. As systems get larger the scope of leadership influence can be enhanced by institutional tools, such as communication (e.g. internet), procedures and other management systems. But, as endeavors get larger and more complex they become more vulnerable to the uncertainties inherent in complexity. – conceptual, communicative, informational, interdependencies and motivational. Errors and dysfunctions proliferate, undermining achievement of objectives.