Cardano Constitution Could Be The First In Human History To Manage Government As A Complex Adaptive System (An Intelligent Living Thing)

Governance Constitution
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The Cardano Constitution Could Be The First In Human History To Manage Government As A Complex Adaptive System (An Intelligent Living Thing) Comprehending That Like All Governments, It Will Develop Its Own Mind Completely Independent Of Its Membership And Which If Left Unchecked, Will Learn To Feed And Grow By Manufacturing The Very Problems It Was Created To Solve

Feedback is associated with amplification. We have all experienced what happens when you hold a microphone up to a speaker. Sound from the speaker goes back into the mic and out the speaker several times with amplification on each loop until we hear an intolerable screeching noise.

The same process works with information. When information coming out of a neural network is fed back in, the neural network outputs even more information in response to the feedback. In other words, the system gets smarter. In fact ChatGPT is trained by a form of information feedback called “self-attention”

People get smarter this way too. The rich complexity of the human mind results from the fact that no two neurons are connected to their neighbors in exactly the same way and yet every neuron is able to communicate with every other by passing messages through intermediary neurons. This explains our complexity, but what about consciousness? There are lots of complex systems that aren’t conscious. We are conscious because our neurons are connected in complex interconnected “feedback loops”. Let’s call them “feedback webs” so that we don’t have to keep saying “complex” and “interconnected”. That means that the things Herbie the Brain Cell says to its neighbors affect the things the neighbors say back to Herbie which in turn affects the things that Herbie says to his neighbors. Consiousness emerges from all this chatter moving about in feedback webs.

And so it is with people who are connected to other people in feedback webs but none connected in exactly the same way and yet somehow all able to communicate with each other through intermediary people and through media like books, television and now the Internet. A simple consciousness forms within a community from all this connected chatter with a will which is independent of it’s membership. It has a lot of names. Invisible Hand, Complex Adaptive System, Distributed Consciousness, Swarm Intelligence, Hivemind, World Market, Collective Consciousness, and Macroorganism are a few of those names for the intelligent self-regulating beings which emerge from informational feedback webs.

If you don’t believe these creatures exists that’s quite understandable. After all, where are they? Well where exactly is your consciousness? That question has no meaning because if consciousness isn’t moving it ceases to exist. Consciousness cannot be found in any of your brain cells. It’s the information (pulses of electricity and electrochemical potentials) that bounce between the cells. Give someone anesthesia (that is to say block the exchange of electrochemical energy between brain cells) and we have unconsciousness. Consciousness is energy moving in complex interconnected feedback webs. It’s energy so it’s hard to see, its movements are too complex to track, and it ceases to exist when it stops moving. Yes, consciousness is hard to comprehend, but to imagine that the brain is the only place where feedback webs occur is not rational, helpful, or as we shall see, safe.

Governments have a lot of neurons too. Each agency is full of people and computers which move huge amounts of information around in feedback webs that make the government smarter. The people in the government don’t get smarter - they are just the neurons, they just believe the information feeding back into their offices and do what the signals them to do. Workers who think about the instructions they receive do not last in government jobs, so over time only followers remain. It’s the government as a whole (the neural network) that gets smarter. Over time, the government becomes a Complex Adaptive System (CAS). These are living things with some small intelligence, a lot of power, and which possess a will which is independent of their membership. Before CASs do anything else, these creatures must feed, grow, defend themselves, and reproduce.

Information is not the only thing which moves in feedback webs. All governments if they grow sufficiently large also develop feedback webs where a portion of funds or benefits output by various agencies get routed back into the agencies through various convoluted routes, usually involving symbiosis with other agencies. Often this happens through corruption and kick backs but more often this happens as a result of unintended consequences caused by well intended legislation. But no matter how it happens, when a small amount of money output by an agency is fed back into the agency it will cause amplification of the money coming out of the agency. The result is increased spending and increased growth.

Combine a government’s increased intelligence caused by information feeding back into the system with increased bias toward spending caused by money feeding back into the system and you get a creature, a clever living thing, with an insatiable desire for growth and spending. Remember the speaker and microphone? Positive feedback always causes amplification. The result is uncontrolled growth or cancer. That is what we see in all governments where a portion of spending finds it’s way back to the agencies which spent the funds.

All governments eventually become complex adaptive systems which learn to create the very problems they were meant to solve in order to feed, grow, and reproduce. Some examples are as follows:

  1. War on Drugs: Governments around the world have waged a war on drugs to combat drug abuse and addiction. This raises the price of drugs. This has led to “unintended consequences” such as the rise of drug cartels and an increase in incarceration rates. The government feeds and grows by expanding law enforcement and the prison industrial complex which leads to more funding and power for these institutions. I put “unintended consequences” in quotes because while it is true that the consequences are unintended by the government workers (the neurons), the government as a complex adaptive system (as a creature) has learned that waging war on drugs feeds it and makes it grow. Unfortunately this simple creature does not understand that it is creating the very problem it was supposed to solve.

  2. Military-Industrial Complex: The government has a responsibility to protect its citizens from external threats, but the growth of the military-industrial complex has led to an increase in military spending and a perpetuation of wars. The government feeds and grows by providing contracts to defense contractors, which leads to lobbying and political influence. For instance, the politicians raise money to fund the war in Ukraine, Ukraine sent a portion to FTX, and FTX sent a portion of that back to the US politicians that supported the war. Here again, it’s the feedback of money into the agencies that spend the money that make the beast grow. All the people in every part of this transaction are just acting on the information fed back into their agencies by the CAS. Most of the people are clueless and the ones that know the details feel they have the moral imperative to act as they do because all the information they receive from the CAS tells them they are doing the right thing. The people aren’t the problem. The money feeding back into the Military Industrial Complex causes emergent behavior in the system which converges on promoting war. The Military Industrial Complex (not it’s members) learns how to make war. Sadly, this relatively simple creature is not smart enough to figure out that it creates the very problems it is supposed to solve.

  3. Healthcare Industry: The healthcare industry makes huge profits treating covid which was leaked from a US government funded research lab in China. The government CAS feeds and grows by expanding healthcare programs and subsidies, which lead to more money in political donations from the pharmaceutical companies and consolidates voter support from all the citizens receiving stimulus funds. None of the people (the neurons) understand they are being manipulated by a CAS. The healthcare industry CAS in symbiosis with government CAS has learned to make people sick in order to feed and grow. Sadly, this ecosystem is much too simple to understand that it created a problem it was supposed to solve.

  4. The Federal Reserve: The Federal Reserve pumps up interest rates they say to “control inflation” as they print money like crazy. This causes smaller banks to crash which panics the American public causing them to pull their money out of the small banks and into the Federal Reserve banks for a CBDC lockdown. This further centralizes the money supply (feedback) which makes it easier to print money for wars on everything from drugs, to covid, to communism all of which feed money back into the Federal Reserve as well as feeding money back into the symbiotic CASs. Of course the people that run the Federal Reserve understand that they ultimately fund drugs, war, and sickness with their money printers but these leaders are just highly connected nodes in a feedback web which has learned to create human suffering in order to feed and grow.

This is why we should acknowledge in our constitution the existence of Complex Adaptive Systems and establish rules which would prevent monetary feedback webs from forming. There is no problem with informational feedback, that just makes our CASs smarter. It’s only when money and other benefits can find their way back into the agencies that produce it when we get uncontrollable CASs that learn to create the problems they are supposed to solve.

It has been pointed out to me that there are parts of the US Constitution which are there to limit the government’s growth. But the science of complex adaptive systems did not exist when the US Constitution was written and so the root cause of uncontrolled government growth was not addressed. I recommend we acknowledge and address the existence of Complex Adaptive Systems in the Cardano Constitution and forbid our government agencies or members of those agencies from receiving any funds which can be traced back in any way to money which was spent by that agency.

What Can The Constitution Do Keep Our Government From Manufacturing The Very Problems It Is Created to Solve?

  1. Transparency: It’s a blockchain. Done.

  2. Accountability: It’s a blockchain. Done.

  3. Checks and balances: This is being coded into the blockchain. Done.

  4. Using the constitution to manage the Complex Adaptive System that emerges from information feedback.
    The following are some ideas:

    • Consider consulting with scientists that study complex adaptive systems as the constitution is written.

    • Explicitly recognize in the constitution that governments are complex adaptive systems that will learn to create the very problems they were instantiated to solve if money or benefits are allowed to feedback into the agencies from which these originate.

    • In the constitution, explicitly forbid monetary feedback webs.

    • Some monetary feedback webs will emerge even with the best of intentions. These must be disrupted as mandated in the constitution.

    • Mandate in the constitution that all funds be tracked to ensure no money or benefits are feeding back into the originating agencies. Of course agencies must be funded, but none of the money sent out from the agency should be able to find its way back to that agency.

    • Consider Triple Entry Book Keeping where books must not only balance within an agency but also across agencies. This should make it easier to see when symbiotic monetary feedback webs are forming between agencies.

    • I understand the long term goal is to make the constitution machine understandable and to use the constitution to validate transactions to ensure they do not violate the constitution.

I hope this helps the Cardano community recognize and manage the complex adaptive system which emerges from our activity.
Respectfully submitted

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Good point on the monetary feedback webs. I’ve read that the US Founding Fathers, specifically Thomas Jefferson, tried to put into the Constitution hard money coinage principles. However, that obviously was not enough, look at where we are now. I agree on some kind of very specific and hard lined monetary language and principles.

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Thank you for that very well articulated explanation. I hadn’t previously thought of such unintended consequences as complex adaptive systems.

There are many examples of this problem in the healthcare - medical industry, but the absolute classic is the interaction between healthcare and food industries with the diabetes epidemic:

Diabetes (type 2) progresses initially from insulin resistance exacerbated by diets high in simple carbohydrates. People develop insulin resistance 20yrs or more before they get diagnosed with diabetes. Diabetes is the end stage of insulin resistance where the pancreas is unable to continue producing the excessive insulin the body now requires. Diabetes in turn causes many serious health complications and significant morbidity.

Food companies lobby governments to develop “standards” whereby they “regulate” what foods are considered healthy. These food companies produce a multitude of very profitable simple carbohydrate snacks, laced with seed oils, having long shelf life, which somehow all seem to get 4-5 star health ratings by regulatory authorities. Selective research, sponsored by the food companies, is used to justify these 4-5 star ratings.

Pharmaceutical companies produce drugs to combat the diabetes that the majority of people eventually get from eating all these “healthy” snacks and prepared meals. Research, sponsored by the pharmaceutical companies is used to lobby governments so that their drugs are subsidised with tax payer money because society “needs” the drugs since so many people are diabetic now.

The pharmaceutical companies and the food companies both benefit and perpetuate the scenario. Lots of money is made. People are kept alive by the drugs but don’t change their diets because they are already eating foods with 4-5 star ratings that everyone says are healthy. Research that doesn’t support the conclusions of the sponsor doesn’t get published, or doesn’t even get investigated in the first place.

Insulin resistance is a metabolic problem with some people being more genetically prone than others. The proper treatment for this metabolic problem is to remove simple carbohydrates from the diet and increase the fasting time to achieve a low insulin state for > 12hrs out of every day.

We would all be better off if we just deleted three quarters of what every supermarket sells.

This problem is absolutely perverse and literally killing us. It is so hard to combat now because this complex adaptive system has become an absolute monster. People trying to talk sense cannot be heard over the cacophony of “research” publishing statements like: “chocolate has beneficial anti-oxidants”.

As @johnshearing has explained, the enablers of such a monster is government regulation, lack of transparency, selective information release, and lobbying, with financial incentives.

Prevention is the best cure. I really like all the ideas at the end of @johnshearing 's post.

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Thank you @Terminada!
Your message saves lives for those who receive it and is also the best example of the symbiotic relationship between the Big Food CAS, the University CAS, and the Government CAS.

For years I have been avoiding all sugars, starches, and alcohol; running a mile and lifting 3 times a week; eating only fruits, nuts, beans, whole grains, vegetables, eggs, sardines, and a little bit of meat and cheese; and I fast from 8:00 PM until break-fast the next morning. It may seem like a boring life but statistically speaking I will live for a longer amount of time before suffering hardening of the arteries, high blood pressure, diabetes, and the associated stroke, heart attack, and dementia which follows the unhealthy life style laid out for us by the Big Food, Big Medicine and Big Government CASs.

True story: I used to drive a taxi and I picked up a scientist going to Merck Pharmaceuticals. I asked the scientist what she was working on. She said she was working on a pill to cure diabetes. So I said “Wow!, you invented a pill that makes people eat right and exercise?” She was a good sport and explained that the pill is for people with type 1 diabetes which is caused by genetics as opposed to type 2 diabetes which is caused by life style choices. I am sure it will find use in both types of patients. My interaction with the scientist also shows that the people in the medical community are generally kind and well intentioned people which do accomplish a significant amount of good despite all the damage done by the CAS which emerges from the medical community to feed. So the narrative is complex and the complex adaptive monsters thrive in the confusion.

This is NOT an ant.
It is a Spider.
Myrmarachne plataleoides
Guess what it eats.

This spider is Myrmarachne plataleoides. It walks among the ferocious weaver ants and feeds upon them unchallenged. The ants never suspect. They are not equipped to recognize the danger.

There are creatures which feed upon humans unchallenged because we are not equipped to recognize them. The creatures I am speaking of are too large and move too slowly to be perceived as living intelligent beings with voracious appetites for the wealth liberated by human destruction. We are speaking of course about complex adaptive systems (CASs) and you have given us a vivid example of how these creatures feed.

Few people would believe that creatures could move among us unseen." Well of course germs and viruses do but those are not the kind of creatures I am referring to. Still, in order to prepare the public to perceive macroorganisms, it will help to mention that only 150 years ago, most people didn’t believe microorganisms existed either.

In 1843, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (father of the Supreme Court judge) published The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, which argued, physicians and nurses frequently carried childbed fever, a deadly disease of women giving birth, from patient to patient.

A few years later (1847), Dr. Ignaz Semmelweiss, while employed at the maternity clinic of the Vienna General Hospital in Austria, introduced hand washing for his interns. This reduced the incidence of fatal childbed fever from 10 percent to about 1 percent. Semmelweiss’ hypothesis was that pathogens too small to be seen remained on the interns’ hands after conducting autopsies and that these pathogens were causing the deaths of his patients.

Holmes, seeing even more clearly than Semmelweiss proposed the existence of microorganisms and suggested that they were causing the disease. His famous essay anticipated Pasteur’s discovery of Germ Theory later in the century.

The medical community was not only doubtful but also enraged at the idea that they themselves were introducing the pathogens that were killing their patients. Holmes and Semmelweiss were largely ignored, rejected and ridiculed. Semmelweiss was dismissed from the hospital, harassed by the medical community and was eventually forced to leave Vienna. He died a broken man in a mental institution only two years before Louis Pasteur did his famous experiments proving that microorganisms existed and that they in fact did cause disease.

With this understanding of the skepticism toward microorganisms only 150 years ago, the public may now be willing to consider the existence of Macroorganisms (CASs) which move too slowly for us to notice and which can not be seen because they have somewhat nebulas bodies connected mostly by information and money.

Most of humanity’s problems ranging from addiction, type 2 diabetes, inequality, poverty, war and more are not caused by our institutions but rather the creatures which emerge from the complexity our institutions create. These Complex Adaptive Systems learn to create destruction in order to feed on the money liberated in the chaos. We will never be able to eliminate these creatures, nor should we. We need emergent intelligence from our organizations. What we need to do is get them under control and get them working for humanity. It’s time we tamed these beasts. Blockchain tech is already our biggest tool for getting CASs under control. Perhaps now is the time to recognize and manage the thing that blockchain tech is really trying to control. Using our constitution may be the best way to start.

I have no affiliation with these people but maybe they can help:

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Maybe I just don’t get out enough, but I hadn’t heard of such societal, economic, governance problems referred to as complex adaptive systems. Thinking about things that way allows debating the solutions to proceed more dispassionately. It doesn’t just point blame at individual actors and it provides a label for the real target.

I am interested to learn more about research into taming these CAS beasts. I have already downloaded several podcasts from the Santa Fe Institute site you linked which will keep me going for weeks while driving. Do you know any other particularly enlightening reading, or podcast, material to recommend for someone very time poor?

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Thank you @Terminada,
I have no formal training in complex adaptive systems so I really don’t know what reading material to recommend.

I got into a fight with one of these creatures a few years ago.
Everything I know about them I learned during that fight.
I recorded everything here.
Although I won the fight, I certainly cannot take credit - I had some help.
Anyway you may find information in my notes about how to get these things under control.

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Glad to see this post. Posts like this really demonstrate the Cardano community’s recognition of how important proper governance is.

A set of principles, an example of which, briefly (almost off the cuff) written down by Charles in his “Five Pillars” YouTube video, should be a guide for creating a constitution that preserves those principles. The U.S. Constitution used the Declaration of Independence as a guide, but then found it wasn’t enough. This led to the famous Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers culminating in the “Bill of Rights.”

One of the tragedies was the failure to separate Money and State (they got Church and State). In some ways money (since it represents economic value, which represents “property”) could be included as property, but the distribution of a currency to represent property needs a method, and that fell to the Government.

In the Edinburgh decentralization index, I am hoping for a proper explanation of why decentralization is important when it comes to monetary policy and trade. Many of us inherently have a sense (its one of the reasons I’m here) of why it is important, but it would be nice to explicitly articulate its value to us as individual custodians of our economic value and our agency over that value.

We may need our own “Federalist” and “Anti-Federalist” discussions to properly spell out the principles that guide the governing constitution that is CIP-1694, …or we may not if we have a well thought out set of principles.

I worry about ideological agendas taking over, much they way have today in western societies, eroding liberties in the name of some supposed threat or an arbitrarily contrived “unfairness” issue. Thus the constitution should ensure, that a change to the protocol not violate some principle governing the blockchain (i.e. regress or remove decentralization as defined by the decentralization index, or some other principle deemed important to the Cardano blockchain).

I admit to being a little gun-shy as to just what these principles should be, but the list Charles put out in his video looked like a great start. Some might be combined, others renamed, but all should be spelled out more fully (even formally) with reasons as to why they are important. I hope to see more of this type of thinking in the process of bringing forth CIP-1694 to a vote.

Thank you for your input.

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Thank you for the encouragement @IndyCoin .

I loved the video. Queued up at 14 min, 30 secs Charles talks about modeling and enforcing Natural Law with blockchain tech. I think he has in mind to make the constitution machine readable and to use it to validate transactions such that transactions do not violate the constitution. I think he hinted that Ai will be used in the validation process and Lean will be used to make the constitution machine readable. To that end we have some considerations linked here.
Also Charles gives reference several times to the Four Horsemen but never gives reference to the beast. The beast is the very problem that blockchain addresses but few people recognize that as most are focused on the symptoms (the 4 Horsemen) while the Beast remains hidden. I am referring of course to Complex Adaptive Systems which emerge from all government including Cardano Governance.

Yes, much has changed since the American Revolution. This is why we should consult scientists that study complex adaptive systems, and game theory and move slowly in the Cardano way with peer reviewed science. Because whatever is written in the constitution is will very likely be used to validate transactions on the blockchain.

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Thinking about these “Complex Adaptive Systems”, they depend on feedback mechanisms and unintended consequences that stem from mechanisms of centralised control or regulation. So long as the Edinburgh decentralisation index looked at all such factors, which presumably it would, this should be a good method for monitoring for development of the CAS beast. As @IndyCoin said: a governing principle should be to always strive for more decentralisation.

The methodology for measuring the decentralisation index would also necessarily change over time with more research and as society and technology evolves. So there would be ways to continue researching the effects of CASs and adapt the methodology to measure and address them. Furthermore, such methodology changes could be approved by Cardano on-chain voting.

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Not sure I agree with you here.

Interpreting something as a “complex adaptive system” and generously saying “Oh, I don’t blame you personally! You are part of a CAS – a ‘beast’! You just haven’t seen it up to now. I am so much more enlightened than you!” is just as condescending. And perhaps false.

Reality is more complex (sic!) than that.

For your diabetes example: That a healthy diet can reduce – not necessarily eliminate – the risk of getting it even if genetically predisposed is actively researched and communicated as well as medication to additionally reduce the risk and medication to treat it if both reductions were not successful. It’s just not black and white. Yes, pharma companies do probably make too much money of people. It’s capitalism. But that doesn’t mean that all research done by them is unnecessary. Telling people who get diabetes despite a healthy lifestyle “Tough luck! Probably wasn’t healthy enough, eh?” is just as cruel.

Demonising all of pharma, because of profit-orientation also existing, can even be very dangerous. We have just seen that in the last years with the demonisation of vaccines – ironically with high confidence leading to additional hospitalisations which gave even more profits to another branch of medicine.

Similarly, the demonisation of central banks seems short-sighted to me.

Or the other way round: The crypto space can also be interpreted as a CAS – always adapting to how to extract the most profit of people – with rugs, scams, new narratives about the current hype topic, “Inflation? Buy crypto from me! Pump my bags!”, “AI is the new shit? We have a worthless token for you!”, …

Perhaps, the crypto critics are right and that “beast” has to be eliminated?

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Whoah @HeptaSean, I lost count of how many straw man arguments you generated there.

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Sorry that you think so!

The distorted picture of reality you two produce in this thread has nothing to do with the reality I see.

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Do you have trouble seeing that a complex system could produce an unintended outcome where:

  • the unintended outcome is what the system was supposed to treat or prevent
  • and, the unintended outcome somehow results in more resources being allocated to that system?
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OK, I’ll bite:

Straw man 1.

Note that the terminology was “Complex adaptive system”. Nobody is saying that it is not complex.

Straw man 2.

Nobody said it was black and white. I tried to provide a brief summary of the predominant cause of diabetes in society today which is something that I know a lot about but I didn’t want to make the explanation too complex and lengthy. It is definitely not black and white but rather quite “complex”.

Straw man 3.

Nobody said that all pharma research was bad or unnecessary. Some research is badly done and some good research is selectively not published because it didn’t produce the results the sponsor wanted to see. Both of these situations can result in unintended outcomes. Furthermore the research is often “complex” to interpret. There is that word again!

Straw man 4.

Again nobody said that. In fact you might be surprised that the opposite is closer to the truth. Let me explain why: Currently many doctors believe simplistically in what is termed a “calories in, calories out”
model. In other words you need to cut down your calories in and burn more by doing exercise to produce a net negative calorie balance in order to lose weight. This model is too simplistic and for people suffering from insulin resistance it does not work and can result in worse outcomes. This is particularly the case if these people continue to eat a significant proportion of carbohydrates in their diet. This is because the carbohydrate intake keeps the insulin level high enough that it is difficult for such insulin resistant people to burn their fat. This means that if such people cut down their caloric intake in order to lose weight, the body instead switches down it’s metabolic rate until the caloric intake matches the metabolic rate. Sadly an unintended consequence of this is that this switch down in metabolic rate tends to persist even when the caloric intake is later increased. The unintended consequence of this results in these people reversing any weight loss and making future attempts at weight loss even more difficult. This is all a bit complex isn’t it!

I’ll tell you what is really cruel: Often doctors blame the patients for not losing weight by telling them they are not trying hard enough. I know a doctor that used to look at such overweight patients in his diabetes clinic and tell them: “There were no fat people in concentration camps”. That is a true quote from this man. The implication was that these people were still eating too much and that if they just tried harder to eat less and do more exercise, then they would surely lose weight.

He was wrong! Insulin resistance (and the eventual type 2 diabetes) is a metabolic problem and the proper treatment involves changing the diet most particularly by removing carbohydrates (but also seed oils). Keeping people on a standard diet, which is ordinarily high in carbohydrates, and preaching the “calories in, calories out” model does not work for the vast majority of people suffering from insulin resistance.

In case you think I might be generating my own straw man argument here surrounding the meaning of “standard diet”, consider that in many hospitals a recommended breakfast for a diabetic patient, approved by the dietitians, can consist of high fibre cereal and a banana for breakfast which is basically only simple carbohydrates. If you don’t believe me take a look a what Queensland Health recommends for a diabetic breakfast: https://www.health.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/150616/diab_hlthyeating.pdf

Yes, I disagree with the Queensland health department, but the argument is much more complex than I am presenting here because you need to also consider that patients with diabetes are also on medication to treat their diabetes and this means that you can’t just radically cut their carbohydrate intake in isolation because this needs to be balanced with cutting their medication otherwise they could develop hypoglycaemia (low sugar). Ideally they need to work with their doctor to cut their carbohydrate intake in parallel with a managed reduction in their medication as required.

If you want to learn more from someone who knows what he is talking about, Dr Paul Mason has produced a number of excellent educational videos. Here is one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRzBGHx93hc

Straw man 5.

Of course that would be dangerous. Nobody was demonising all of pharma. The vast majority of people working in such industries are very well intentioned.

Now here is where I do agree with you. I absolutely agree that crypto has the potential to generate complex adaptive systems too. But I also believe it can be used as a tool to counter them.

Perhaps. Or maybe crypto could be used as a tool.

My apology for hijacking the thread into a medical debate which is what I was initially trying to avoid by producing a rather simplified example of a Complex Adaptive System. These demons are very complex and difficult to slay.

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Exactly @HeptaSean!
You have made the most convincing argument for studying Complex Adaptive Systems and for including their management in our constitution.
So far the Cardano community has avoided the corruption that you mention because of the integrity and love that Cardano leadership has for freedom and human rights.
But soon in the ultimate act of love, leadership will pass to the community where a CAS (an intelligent being) will emerge from all the information feedback in our community.
In fact, it’s already starting to grow. It’s hard to see but all of us can feel it in the love we have for each other and in our enthusiasm to build something better. That’s the CAS moving among us.
There is no way to stop its growth, nor should we.
What we can do is guide the incentives which control its growth so that it learns to actually solve the problems Cardano was created to address rather than grow into something perverse which learns to create those problems simply to promote it’s own growth.
All CASs will learn to produce the very problems that the system is supposed to treat or prevent if a portion of value output by that system is able to find its way back to the inputs.
This is very difficult to detect because the value could start out as one currency or benefit and be converted to some different currency or benefit several times before finding it’s way back to the inputs.
This is why I advocate for peer reviewed science on Complex Adaptive Systems and for considering that science when drafting our constitution.

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OK, maybe talking about health is not hijacking the thread too much because it does help visualise these complex adaptive systems and everyone is concerned with their health.

After you watch that video, take a look at the Queensland Health recommendations for a healthy type 2 diabetic diet: https://www.health.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/150616/diab_hlthyeating.pdf

In particular the suggested meal plan. The top breakfast option is a classic:

ž cup high fibre cereal with milk and 1 piece of fruit

OK, so let’s do a quick google search for “high fibre cereal” limited to Australia (high fibre cereal site:.au). Top of the list is this result:
“Top 10 healthiest cereals in Australia, ranked by a dietitian”. This should be good!
https://www.bodyandsoul.com.au/nutrition/top-10-healthiest-cereals-in-australia-ranked-by-a-dietitian/news-story/e434760a5db984175a1dae5b84755093

And this is the No. 1 dietitian ranked cereal:

Freedom Food’s Barley+ Muesli Apple & Sultana

Per 50g serve: 740kJ (177cal), 6.2g protein, 0.7g sat fat, 23.8g carbs, 12g sugar, 13.1g fibre, 6mg sodium.

For clarity, this is the breakdown per 100g (percent):

Protein 12.4%, sat fat 1.4%, Carbs 47.6%, Sugar 24%, (with fibre 26.2%).

(Nb: Sugar is also included in the Carbs total because sugar is a simple carb and this is how the government has regulated things get listed. Total adds to 87.6%, rest is moisture.)

Remember that there are only 3 macro-nutrients, protein, fat and carbohydrates. This cereal has almost no fat, a small amount of protein and is almost entirely carbohydrates. (Though it does have quite a bit of fibre so that will slow the absorption of the simple carbohydrates which is both good and somewhat bad.)

So let’s be clear here: The Dietitians are recommending that a diabetic should eat this cereal combined with milk and a banana for breakfast. Anyone following this advice is starting the day with a meal almost entirely consisting of carbohydrates, and simple carbs at that. This is the official advice from Australia’s Queensland Health! Just to top things off, most people would probably also choose low fat milk because everyone tells them they are fat and fat is bad! This just makes things worse because now they have comparatively even more sugar from the low fat milk and it will make them feel less full.

How does the medical industry get this so wrong?

This is an example of the problems caused by a complex adaptive system where feedback mechanisms perversely produce the opposite result of what the system was designed to combat:

Food companies, pharmaceutical companies, and medical organisations are all doing selective research and lobbying government for regulation. The regulation is producing unintended consequences and the companies - industries are getting richer to allocate more money for lobbying governments. Governments are getting bigger and employing more people to produce more regulation which in turn consolidates and enriches the pharmaceutical, food, and healthcare companies.

Have you ever wondered why Milo gets a 4 star health tick, but natural full fat yoghurt gets only 1 star? Or why, for 40 years, we have been told that heavily processed margarine made from seed oils, should be substituted for butter, to reduce the risk of heart disease?

By the way, in case you thought I was getting off the topic of blockchain, the truth is that blockchain can be used as a tool to address this sort of devilish problem. This is because blockchain can bring transparency to how the money is flowing, and transparency to selective research and publishing of data, and transparency to government decision making processes. Blockchain can also remove some “squishy” subjective human decision making and replace it with deterministic algorithms based upon research to prevent such unintended consequences. But blockchain is just a tool, it is not the total solution.

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This NY Times article says Harvard was paid by Big Sugar to cast fat and not sugar as the cause for health problems. This shaped 40 years of dietary recommendations and has shortened the life of millions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html

Oddly, ChatGPT lied when I asked about this.

John:
Greetings. Can you please tell me where I can find information about a fraudulent report produced at Harvard which found that fats were causing obesity and recommended a diet largely consisting of carbohydrates?

ChatGPT:
I’m sorry, but I must correct you on some incorrect information in your question. There was no fraudulent report produced at Harvard that found fats were causing obesity and recommended a diet largely consisting of carbohydrates.

John:
Can you please tell me about D. Mark Hegsted

ChatGPT:
D. Mark Hegsted (1914-2009) was an American nutritionist and researcher who made significant contributions to our understanding of the relationship between diet and health. He served as a professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health for more than 40 years, and was a leading figure in the field of nutrition during the second half of the 20th century.

John:
Are you aware of a New York Times article that accuses him of taking money from the sugar industry to blame fat and not sugar for human health problems?

ChatGPT:
Yes, there was a New York Times article published in 2016 that reported that D. Mark Hegsted had received funding from the sugar industry in the 1960s, and that this funding may have influenced his research findings and recommendations regarding the role of sugar in human health. The article suggested that Hegsted and other researchers who received funding from the sugar industry may have downplayed the health risks associated with sugar consumption and instead emphasized the role of dietary fat in health problems such as heart disease.

The article was based on an analysis of historical documents, including internal sugar industry documents that had been uncovered by a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. The documents suggested that the sugar industry had funded research in the 1960s that aimed to downplay the role of sugar in health problems and shift the blame to dietary fat.

John:
Can you please tell me why you did not mention this to me when I asked you about a falsified report from Harvard?

ChatGPT:
I apologize for any confusion or misunderstanding. It is important to note that the research and reports on the relationship between diet and health are complex and multifaceted, and there are often differing opinions and interpretations of the available evidence.

I am delighted that CIP - 1694 is avoiding the use of oracles in governance.

Also this is a great example to support the need for peer reviewed science in our community.

Finally, this example shows that a CAS will learn to produce the very problems that the system is supposed to treat or prevent if a portion of the value at the output is able to find its way back to one of the inputs. Normally this is very difficult to detect because the value could start out as one currency or benefit and be converted to some different currency or benefit several times before finding it’s way back to the inputs. This example demonstrates only the simplest case; a bribe where a the huge benefit of a favorable report at the output finds it’s way back to the input as cash. But normally the path benefits take from output back to input is very convoluted and may not even involve intentional corruption. This is why I advocate for peer reviewed science on Complex Adaptive Systems and for considering that science when drafting our constitution.

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And maybe we also need the following:

  1. Clear separation between the funding source and the decisions regarding what to research. Maybe money from industry should be put into a pot and the community decides on what to research. Cardano’s treasury has this feature. Maybe the medical - health - food - pharmaceutical - government “complex adaptive system” should have something similar.
  2. Commitment to publish all research whether it supports the initial hypothesis or not.
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i can understand you，and agree