Pictures can bring back vivid and specific memories, and the same can happen when listening to music – for that matter, any sensory input can trigger this. Spend enough years listening to heavy metal, and overlap those same years with motorcycle riding, and the odds of them converging increase. Certain riffs have now become time machines to relive specific motorcycling experiences.

Listening to the opening riffs of Opeth’s Bleak rewinds to that 2:00 AM lonely highway ride, to this small college town to see them live. Jazz-fusion-like bass lines in Beyond Creation’s Surface’s Echoes bring back late autumn rides and glimpses of Olympic Peninsula sunsets. Deafheaven’s Honeycomb recreates early summers spent exploring the backroads and forts around Port Townsend. Frankly, it’s not an exhaustive list; somehow, these experiences got overlaid in memory. One begets the other. But this is not intentional, and it doesn’t happen all the time.

Often, such recurring patterns motivate the study of the underlying causes. In the past, we were satisfied with merely discovering that correlation. Just like how animals keep returning to a spot where they got food, but without knowing the underlying reason. Similarly, primitive men were satisfied with different degrees of correlation. For example, natural medicines associate certain herbs with symptoms and cures, or certain actions like freezing food or using spices as preservation mechanisms. But they never investigate the structural properties of herbs or the underlying mechanisms causing that effect.

The modern scientific mentality was not satisfied with those mere correlations. It sought to discover causes, theorize, and apply those mechanisms in multiple diverse contexts. For instance, insights from discovering the causal mechanism for overlapping memories may lead to other insights. An understanding of the underlying structure that causes this may lead to new theories — how certain neural pathways can be intentionally activated. That may have unrelated applications, such as motivational tools or strategies for mitigating depression. Transforming it into a generic theory that finds relevance in diverse psychological contexts.

If we abstract further, then the concurrent activation of neural signals may have applications in computing circuit designs. The logic embedded in such circuits is driven by changes in their internal state triggered by external stimuli, similar to how the mind itself operates. If we abstract further, a neural layout may provide inputs to design efficient factory workflows. They both process input stimuli through a series of dependent steps to produce an output.

Eventually, a complex system will have encapsulated layers and substructures. Studying and isolating those structures generates abstract, reusable information. In short, if we iteratively examine and identify an intelligible structure in overlapping memories, then its utility might extend beyond motorcycling metalheads. To paraphrase Louis Rougier, it’s a mentality that moves from specific to the abstract.

“Rising from the concrete to the abstract, Greek geometry disengaged the intelligible essence from the particular observable details, or accidents, as such particulars were later to be called. In this it exercised the proper function of intelligence: the faculty of abstracting, of grasping the unity of a concept in a number of particular cases, the constancy of relationships and permanence of structures amid the diversity of sensible patterns; in a word, finding unity in multiplicity and harmony in discord. With the Greek language was born the language of abstraction.”— Louis Rougier

That Greek language of abstraction can be applied across disciplines and structural layers – from theoretical psychology to institutional economics. That means, the same process scales beyond individual reasoning into the design of institutions themselves. For instance, moving from specific rules to the abstract Rule of Law illustrates the same concept. Instead of directing everyone to specific duties, we created laws that satisfied certain properties, leading to an efficient social order. An obvious example would be — the vehicles on the road are never directed to destinations, instead the expectation is to just follow the rules of the road. We basically abstracted the essence of efficient navigation into the impersonal Rule of Law.

Movement from Magna Carta to American federalism is sort of that steady evolution from specific to the abstract. In fact, Federalism adds one more layer to that dispersed rule-of-law framework. Sort of a higher-level instrument to institutionalize the development of good laws. An attempt to automate the generation of efficient laws itself. As James Madison explained, all the checks and balances should lead to good legislation. The results of this experiment can be debated, but there is an interesting scientific argument for an approach like Federalism. We can see parallels to that in modern scientific methods.

In fact, Federalism is structurally very similar to scientific frameworks such as ISO 21434, ISO 26262, etc. Just as in Federalism, these standards enforce internal consistency of information against a set of goals by subjecting the system to diverse external pressures. The V-model refines engineering details, while federalism refines legislation. ISO26262 may have a narrow goal, but it still does not dictate the nature of the vehicle to be engineered; following it just enforces systemic consistency of whatever the engineers want to design. Federalism has a relatively more open-ended goal and, as a result, introduces greater personnel and role dependencies in the outcome. But they are both structured approaches to stress test epistemological foundations. They both abstracted the properties of the process of reasoning that leads to truth, then designed an impersonal framework to enforce it.

Instinctive exploration and abstraction enable the development of reusable cognitive tools and functions. They allow the development of higher-level mental models to deduce meaningful information from complex life experiences. But improving their explanatory power requires repeated application in real-world encounters, followed by refinement through feedback. This process is illustrated in the next chapter.

Republished at ridersmodel.com

It has been almost a month since it rained, so it feels like the Pacific Northwest is going through a serious drought. Quite sure the Seattle natives are reminded of that arid 2017 summer — the region endured two full months without rain. To make matters worse, last month had a heat wave weekend. I know exactly where I was when Seattle broke temperature records – on a motorcycle, right outside the city, on the scorching I5 tarmac. Can confirm it takes at least 2 days to recover from moderate dehydration.

Less rain also translates to more riding on the weekends. It’s sort of comforting to know we have that choice to work, make a living, and invest our spare time as we wish. Even if it’s something extreme like motorcycling at 105° F. The investment in motorcycling is my choice while also working within the reality of various personal constraints. Drawing an extreme parallel, the private sector space race can also be considered an adventure driven by entrepreneurial choices. Both belong to the same class of problem, differing only in degree. Enduring the 105°F I-5 furnace or launching ourselves to space are both choices that divert valuable resources from alternate uses.

A critique of prioritization in most cases will defy the first principles of the relatively successful market system we have. In fact, a comprehension of the market system will make us realize it’s a machine to discover and reconcile emergent priorities. That goal is necessary because prioritization is unknown. Costs are a critical input to prioritization; they are unknown as well. Hence, imposing unaligned external goals will disrupt internal consistency.

To share a larger perspective — this choice to work and earn a living, at the standards we see in the Western world, is a luxury and unprecedented in human history. Even now in several parts of the world, an individual does not have that option. But unlike the past, material poverty shouldn’t be immediately considered the default state. Even when it’s a consequence of various historical accidents stemming from pre-market social orders of strife and plunder, attempts can still be made to address it through institutional changes.

Eventually, every choice can be voluntary or involuntary. Someone remaining in poverty for personal or religious reasons is voluntary. Some belief systems just promote simple living. The unfortunate involuntary state is the one that needs explanation – situations in which the individuals are explicitly constrained. They manifest in several forms, but all their incarnations come down to restrictions on the use of life and property. Systems built on such restrictions tend to inhibit adaptations that lead to wealth creation. This is discovered through trial-and-error hindsight, yet it provides a coherent explanation.

Institutional frameworks that allowed prosperity to emerge were never engineered for this goal. Instead, they were meant to simply protect property and life. But that simple goal introduced a motivational strand encouraging voluntary exchanges. Now transactions create mutual value; it is no longer a life of zero-sum or negative-sum exchanges anymore. The goal was the protection of the universal right to property, but the unintended consequence was prosperity. General system architecture and its internal dynamics are the reasons for this outcome.

Architecture determines the arrangement of various building blocks in the system, and this in turn shapes information flows. Rapid adaptation depends on efficient flows – just like how signal integrity between sensory neurons and the spinal cord determines our reflex time. At the most granular level, if sensory neurons weren’t built for efficient response to stimuli, then reflexes wouldn’t function as expected. Generalizing this — if all the building blocks do not play their role efficiently, then the organism suffers.

Individuals are the building blocks in a social order, and freedom with property rights provides the incentives to voluntarily respond to external needs. Rewarding ownership is the ideal approach to incentivizing the use of resources to solve a problem. This includes cognitive resources as well. That means, in the long term, self-interest tends to maximize employment of individual effort. Also, based on the general goals of a social order, psychological implications of ownership always beat something like a top-down command-style design. To emphasize, when the general goal is internal coordination of building blocks, a system will need multidirectional information flows. This information-based order requires individuals to be motivated to efficiently process and respond to external stimuli.

The need for multidirectional flows and why prosperity cannot be engineered are related. Specifications for general prosperity, or the specs of various available building blocks, aren’t known to any one person or group. In other words, no one knows what everyone wants, nor the optimal way to achieve it. So, this demands a trial-and-error discovery process. The system is expected to adapt to emerging dispersed needs by reorganizing itself in optimal ways.

A simplified view of this multidirectional flow would be top-down information reconciled with bottom-up data — top-down provides dispersed consumer needs, and bottom-up signals the available building blocks and possible arrangements of those blocks. Friedrich Hayek famously said, “It is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.” For example, consider a top-down need for a motorcycle spare part; the bottom-up information to be discovered is the economically viable fabrication model for such a part.

Most things can be engineered in several different ways, so entrepreneurial motivations are expected to discover this information and align it with top-down demands. If a spare part is not viable within the price constraints, then the top-down spec will need to be revisited. It’s a constantly running process of adjustment to the best-known means and arrangements possible. Discovering this information is expensive, and property ownership and profit are integral motivational factors for keeping this process alive. To summarize, the system exists to reconcile dispersed needs with dispersed options to satisfy those needs. A continuous multidirectional information flow is needed to discover this alignment across time.

This means both consumers and entrepreneurs have the autonomy to make choices. Facing the consequences of their own choices, both good and bad, is the price everyone pays. This also means the system can generate decisions that may not align with the majority, because that, on its own, is not the criterion for the choice calculus involved.

In fact, both consumers and entrepreneurs can make unpopular choices. For example, the majority of consumers may not enjoy motorcycling, but that does not stop entrepreneurs from selling to the minority. The same applies to space exploration – common pushbacks include: Why go to space when we don’t have universal healthcare, or we still have hunger, or when there isn’t world peace yet. But if everything were decided through popularity votes, Nikola Tesla would have found it difficult to invent and establish AC current, Benz would have found it difficult to design automobiles, and, for that matter, anyone attempting something not perceived as valuable by 50% of the population would have found it difficult.

Consumer choices are typically attributed to personal decisions, but entrepreneurial choices can sometimes roil the masses. An effective critique of entrepreneurs would analyze the incentives that caused this unacceptable choice. For example, a subsidy for space exploration or a tax write-off for space travel R&D are possible variables that were factored into this private sector space race. Such an analysis is more scientific – it accounts for the rules and constraints of the system, provides visibility into actual trade-offs, and, more importantly, it might just improve consistency of the framework. Eventually, preservation of this system also demands cultural support and a compatible institutional order.

Republished at ridersmodel.com