There are other posts that I should be writing, the sticking point is that I’m struggling with a ‘whats the point – this is just about Command-and-Control creating false statistics’. I think that there has been a focus upon information and processes/rules, but the Context or framework containing the information-process has been lost. Mainly due to the assumption that the context is credible, actually I’m talking subjectively I don’t know what anyone else thinks about it. The Context is a relatively new aspect for me, maybe its that awareness that the residing credibility or legitimacy (within the context) is lost, gone, or dubious.
Reflection; Context Of Assange
There I was pondering whether anyone else was considering Context and up pops the Assange event. Its taken a little time to realise that there is a definite Contextual awareness amongst the general population, but it is clearly discernible. A case for First-Order cybernetics, and the affects by way of Second-Order Cybernetics. The Observer, and the knowingly Observed.
What I was looking for, as a curio for satisfying abductive reasoning primarily, was the ‘debate’ which for some reason Tories seem to think they are really good at whilst failing to make a rational argument. The irony is that the shortened version [below] makes no points, no argument, just Ad Hominem. As an additional piece of insanity, its billed on the Conservatives Twitter account as ‘calmly dismantling Dianne’s dodgy defence’. The next layer of Bonkers has a David Buik commenting “good, concise uncompromising comments…”. Ugh.. PR consultant and committed to the City of London, apparently.
More to the point, Javid in the Sun version [first video] mentions that he won’t debate the reasons due to the non interference with legal proceedings. What I want to do, is draw out an overview of the comments before looking at the Context. The comments or arguments being discussed are:
The failure to attend a Court
Sex offence charges in Sweden, which may be restarted.
Leaking of Official Secrets
Leaks defining war crimes, but also casualties due to those leaks.
Illegal War, no WMD.
The context is about Government manipulation. Which is also known as Oppression. Its not historically the worst form, somewhere on a sliding scale, but as a second-order awareness and well presented. To use a mathematical analogy, the awareness of Government manipulation is the Determinant of conversations, perspectives, arguments and malaise.
Definitions will be needed, although what I am conscious of is always having used one definition, whilst having a new ‘working’ awareness of another. Really, the difference is just a change of cross-section: Horizontal, vertical and line-of-sight. A couple of these I want to elaborate, which was as clear as day a few days ago, I’m not so sure now, but thats the outline.
Using the above case, the first definition is a horizontal cross-section of events, say the WMD thing. There were chemical weapons used on the Kurds in the North, possibly some on the Iraqi populace in the South, and I seem to recollect Iran going to the UN Security Council to Complain of Chemical Weapon use on their citizenry. Also, I seem to recollect that a French firm in particular was supplying plant of such limited use as to imply chemical weapons being made. It wasn’t the only company involved. The details of this expand the events leading to the WMD assumption, and as an example of expanding the boundary of events equates to Context. This would be my definition, usually, and I suspect most other peoples definition.
Ordinarily I’d be happy enough with that, but there must be at least two others, from Deutero-learning diagrams. The first as a vertical cross-section, from these diagrams. Also, there must be from information – an emitting process AND a contextual nucleus. Which suggests a line-of-sight version looking in. Anyway, standard definitions or other perspectives:
A system context can be used to define a SoI and to capture and agree on the important relationships between it, such as the systems it works directly with and the systems which influence it in some way. When this approach is used to focus on part of a larger system, a balance of reductionism and holism is applied. This balance sits at the heart of a systems approach. A systems context provides the tool for applying this balance, and is thus an essential part of any systems approach and hence, of systems engineering (SE) as well…”
â…A holistic view of, say, a bicycle means to see the bicycle as a functional whole and to understand the interdependence of its parts accordingly. An ecological view of the bicycle includes that but it adds to it the perceptions of how the bicycle is embedded in it natural and social environment â where the raw materials that went into it came from, how it was manufactured, how it use affects the natural environment and the community by which it is used and so on.â (7)…”
“…As problems become more complex and ill-structured, they are defined by intertwining technical and contextual elements. We cast technical elements as the specific objects, tools, knowledge, and processes employed to transform inputs (e.g., problems and resources) to outputs (e.g., solutions and consequences). This broad view of the technical elements of problems encompasses both modern constructions of technologies as scientific or engineering devices and theoretical conceptualizations of technologies. The latter, borrowed from the field of organization studies, is more inclusive, considering both system and task-level transformational processes (Hatch & Cunliffe, 2013). In contrast, contextual elements refer to the environment in which these technical elements are embedded, including social, cultural, political, legal, ecological, and economic features (Forester, 1984).
The definitions are a bit harder to come by than I imagined, and seem to mostly replicate my original singular meaning. No diverse interpretations so all good.
Lenses form a description of a frame of reference to enable a distinct cognitive shift in viewpoint that amount to an improved understanding of the events or interactions or rhetorical bias as a subterfuge. I leave the choice of improved understanding verses illusion as an unresolved dilemma.
Lens – Category view
There are any number of descriptions for the category view. I almost chose a dictionary quote, but instead opted for a much more fluid passage from Wikipedia regarding Kant’s interpretation.
“… The word comes from the GreekÎșαÏηγοÏία, katÄgoria, meaning “that which can be said, predicated, or publicly declared and asserted, about something.” A category is an attribute, property, quality, or characteristic that can be predicated of a thing. “âŠI remark concerning the categoriesâŠthat their logical employment consists in their use as predicates of objects.” Kant called them “ontological predicates.” …”
Whats important from this Lens point of view is that a collection of objects is defined by a particular characteristic, where other characteristics or attributes may just as easily apply. This is assuming legitimate categories and not false characteristics erroneously applied to create a larger or smaller category for performance illusions.
Lens Description
From a purely subjective viewpoint, I don’t think that the failing of the category view has ever been more apparent or as infuriating. In particular the category of immigration, and of that rather large set, the Windrush category.
“…Almost 600 people have wrongly claimed to be part of the Windrush generation and have had their application for citizenship or leave to remain rejected, Sajid Javid has disclosed.
While some 3,674 had been granted citizenship by the end of January, 597 were refused including 262 who applied from overseas, the Home Secretary revealed in a letter to Yvette Cooper, chair of the Home Affairs Committee.
The Home Office indicated reasons for rejecting the applications included criminal records of four more years in prison that made them ineligible, that they had not come to Britain during the Windrush period or had not spent sufficient, or in some cases any time in the UK….”
This is excruciating, and effectively just category manipulation and subversion. My malaise, I suspect, is formed from the way the information is being presented. I know not to expect much from the Torygraph (owned by the Barclay twins with a Rees Mog sister as a Journalist and tory mouthpiece). Its the 3rd order cybernetics, effectively, and the problem-completion presentation. There, fixed.
3,674 given citizenship – of whom had it taken away, had no process to access their lawful right. Where their lawful right was removed long after (in most cases) the individuals removal. I suspect that most would have gone to a Court Tribunal and have still been found to be illegal.
262 applied from overseas – What information would they possess that would make their claim? Would they have been dispossessed?
597 refused – were of the criminal category or not in Britain during the Windrush period, or not spent sufficient time in the U.K.
of the criminal category which requires four or more years in prison. How many were of the criminal category that hadn’t been to prison or even convicted?
There have been cases over what constitutes sufficient time.
There are questions as to the category lens being used. They are very much epistemological, and therefore requiring a different Lens. However, the Category Lens needs to be exhausted first and some of its methods elaborated.
Framing
Its been a few days since the initial incitement to riot from the published article. I haven’t been happy about some aspects of this post and wanted to take some time to reflect upon the shape of this post. The article was one of the places that needed an elaboration. The concern is the Message-Receiver information, thats all it really is; with the potential to alter behaviours. In hindsight I now recognise the message as an example of Framing. A meme example of which turned up on the Conservatives twitter account, describing the Conservatives use of information.
Framing meme.
The only real-world example of Framing that I can think of is with the Reuters news agency whom deliberately remove adjectives from their articles to make them seem more believable. It seems somewhat odd that when I wonder as to how to explain an interpretation that it would turn up from Group Consciousness and elaborated, correctly, as Framing. So what does this mean holistically?
Information Framing to Consciousness flow.
The argument is that the framing of the message is inadequate. It is not a Category argument. It is a process or system argument from the errors or manipulation from the system. I have no doubt that there will be plenty of people that take the Category Lens, as a default understanding, and the event could be laid to rest with this as a vanishing point.
“…The title “The Medium Is the Massage” is a teaserâa way of getting attention. Thereâs a wonderful sign hanging in a Toronto junkyard which reads, ‘Help Beautify Junkyards. Throw Something Lovely Away Today.â This is a very effective way of getting people to notice a lot of things. And so the title is intended to draw attention to the fact that a medium is not something neutralâit does something to people. It takes hold of them. It rubs them off, it massages them and bumps them around, chiropractically, as it were, and the general roughing up that any new society gets from a medium, especially a new medium, is what is intended in that title…”
Marshall McLuhan – Medium is the Message. Wikipedia
This is a deception that is so brazen – a ‘Category Mistake’? I have to wonder as to the social affects. Firstly, I can’t remember having seen so many examples writing about the Dunning-Kruger effect as a meme to generally describe the Government. Secondly, while wondering about altering my writing style from first-person, which I find really uncomfortable, and noting a peripheral commentator on emotive system-agent states. I thought I should leave the reaction as is, especially upon finding the following:
“…MP for Manchester Central, Lucy Powell, has said that the government would be making her constituent effectively “stateless” and asked why Javid could not use his discretion as he has done before in similar cases. MPs and the public have questioned the integrity and thoroughness of the deportations as the shambolic policy has already seen the resignation of former Home Secretary Amber Rudd MP, as well as many wrongful deportations and deaths. David Lammy MP, who has been extremely vocal on his disdain at the scandal, has accused the government of âpandering to the far-rightâ. He highlighted the 11 deaths of those who had been wrongly deported to the Caribbean, as well as the 36 British children who would be without a parent if this particular flight were to go ahead.
…..This has urged the government to reconsider this policy, but not without exposing the deep wounds potent in current British society and government…”
Aptly titled “The Dark Truth of the Windrush Deportation”. A distinct sense of sinister disgust – in keeping with a Contempt Triad of Understanding -cognitively speaking. Also, bringing into the open of a more recent category of manipulation by the Government – the Criminal type.
Category Metaphors
Categories don’t exist in a vacuum. They require a process to discriminate and the environment of processes would define a system. To try to elaborate this expand this categorical existence, I have put some metaphoric fragments for consideration of category-process-system interactions.
Metrics/Statistical Metaphor
This wasn’t something that immediately came to mind, mainly because the descent into nonsense with the use of poorly considered metrics has become the new normal.
The author, James C. Scott, opens the book with an extended anecdote about the Normalbaum. In the second half of the 18th century, Prussian rulers wanted to know how many ânatural resourcesâ they had in the tangled woods of the country. So, they started counting. And they came up with these huge tables that would let them calculate how many board-feet of wood they could pull from a given plot of forest. All the rest of the forest, everything it did for the people and the animals and general ecology of the place was discarded from the analysis.
…
German foresters got very scientific with their fertilizer applications and management practices. And the scheme really workedâat least for a hundred years. Pretty much everyone across the world adopted their methods. Then the forests started dying. âIn the German case, the negative biological and ultimately commercial consequences of the stripped-down forest became painfully obvious only after the second rotation of conifers had been planted,â Scott wrote. The complex ecosystem that underpinned the growth of these trees through generationsâall the microbial and inter-species relationshipsâwere torn apart by the rigor of the Normalbaum. The nutrient cycles were broken. Resilience was lost. The hidden underpinnings of the world were revealed only when they were gone. The Germans, like they do, came up with a new word for what happened: Waldsterben, or forest death.
From here may just as well mention Campbell’s Law –
“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
Whoooooaa…. the metrics that have been used, which I haven’t seen for some time now, are quantitive to measure categories. If they were designed for processes there would be alarm bells and red lights flashing all over the place. Its not possible to have a Windrush category, and a non-criminal set to go through any process and claim that the ‘social indicator’ is to monitor the processes. Clearly not. To create desirable category output-outcomes, and accompanying warped or manipulated processes, yes.
Computation metaphor
The usefulness of attributes of characteristics to form a bistate logic has a certain craving I have too admit. To take an object with static characteristics and pass it into the main program, via a suitably designed interface describing the static attributes required to be sorted or acted upon.
Ugh…sanity. For the sake of brevity, we shall call the concrete strategies categories, characteristics, or attributes and an interface to run the system (the context) based upon those static characteristics. If category A fails and the interface description (+execute) is not present its a simple category failure. The category function (+execute) has not the code for the interface or the interface does not have an interface connection to the main context for that category. However, if category B also fails the problem lies with the interface being incomplete or missing. In the computational realm both category A and B could have poorly written functions (+execute), as a counterpoise argument, but if the categories are later examined to be functional? Additionally, what would throw run-time error or would not compile?
This is wonderful mainly because computers can’t run in any other way than there mechanical program dictates, people can interfere with the program. The context can obscure the interface, can remove the interface function (+execute). The categories can learn what functions (+execute) are required, they may have multiple functions crossing several categories.
Discussion
Windrush as an analogy then. The narrative being sold is that the interface function (+execute) was, firstly, ignored by those cases that occurred prior to the 2009-2010 removal of the interface category (+execute) function. Secondly, those that were removed between 2009 and 2014 were due to the interface function (the register held by the Home Office of Windrush names) was destroyed/lost. Thirdly, the removal of those between 2014 and 2018 were due to the context having changed. Their Lawful right was removed in the 2014 immigration Bill.
Lets say that this amounts to unintentional negligence. There will therefore be no other categories with functional failure of the +execute interface. However, if there are other instances of categories that are due to the manipulation of the interface +execute function, the Category Lens fails and a Systemic or Process Lens arises. In other words, the errors are not due the category of Windrush alone and with allowing some black swan events as existential quantifiers. They are definitively due to the system, the way the system interacts, manipulates or discriminates. That in categorical terms, like it or not, is a Universal Quantifier. The system is in error not a singular category.
Biological Metaphor
Could take any number of analogies here, Linneus sprang to mind,
“…In April 1735, at the suggestion of Sohlberg’s father, Linnaeus and Sohlberg set out for the Dutch Republic, where Linneus intended to study medicine at the University of Harderwijk. While tutoring Sohlberg in exchange for an annual salary. At the time, it was common for Swedes to pursue doctoral degrees in the Netherlands, then a highly revered place to study natural history. On the way, the pair stopped in Hamburg, where they met the mayor, who proudly showed them a supposed wonder of nature in his possession: the taxideried remains of a seven-headed hydra. Linnaeus quickly discovered the specimen was a fake cobbled together from the jaws and paws of weasels and the skins of snakes. The provenance of the hydra suggested to Linnaeus that it had been manufactured by monks to represent the Beast of Revelation. Even at the risk of incurring the mayor’s wrath, Linnaeus made his observations public, dashing the mayor’s dreams of selling the hydra for an enormous sum. Linnaeus and Sohlberg were forced to flee from Hamburg…”
I want to take a quick holistic, or synoptic view of the social use of categories, or perhaps more pertinently, how characteristics can be abused to effectively stratify a social system through there interactions. The easiest way to do this would be to use Jane Elliot’s brown-eyes and blue-eyes experiment with racism.
Jane Elliot’s use of characteristics to stratify a social group.
What I always find most striking about the video is the increased functionality of the in-group and the decreased functionality of the out-group. Its the foreknowledge of studies in education, in particular those under the rubric of Transference of Beliefs that makes the experiment most stand out. Does this form a framework of the social/psychic field for the U.K.s Hostile Environment ? I believe it does, but this is not the discussion. The discussion is the use of categories and how there attributes or characteristics are acquired or used. This is the discriminator and stigmatisation mechanism. The counter argument being its legitimacy and misuse.
Insights 