Merge branch 'main' into main

contents/english/03-01-living-in-a-plural-world.md

@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@ If the defining idea of 19th century macrobiology (concerning advanced organisms
 
      Yet, whatever level of explanation is chosen, actors are almost always modeled as atomistically self-interested and planners as coherent, objective maximizers, rather than socially-embedded intersections of group affiliations.  The essence of understanding social phenomena as arising from a “network society” is to embrace this richness and build social systems, technologies, and policies that harness it, rather than viewing it as a distracting complication.  Such systems need, among other things, to explicitly account for the social nature of motivations, to empower a diversity of social groups, to anticipate and support social dynamism and evolution, to ground personal identity in social affiliations and group choices in collective, democratic participation and to facilitate the establishment and maintenance of social context facilitating community.  
 
-     While we do not have the space to review it in detail, a rich literature provides quantitative and social scientific evidence for the explanatory power of the pluralist perspective.  Studies of industrial dynamics, of social and behavioral psychology, of economic development, of organizational cohesion, and much else, have shown the central role of social relationships that create and harness diversity[^SocialDynamics].   Instead, we will pull out just one example that perhaps will be both the most surprising and most related to the scientific themes above: the evolution of scientific knowledge itself.
+     While we do not have the space to review it in detail, a rich literature provides quantitative and social scientific evidence for the explanatory power of the pluralist perspective [^Assemblage Theory]. Studies of industrial dynamics, of social and behavioral psychology, of economic development, of organizational cohesion, and much else, have shown the central role of social relationships that create and harness diversity[^SocialDynamics].   Instead, we will pull out just one example that perhaps will be both the most surprising and most related to the scientific themes above: the evolution of scientific knowledge itself.
 
      A growing interdisciplinary academic field of “Science of Science” (SciSci) studies the emergence of scientific knowledge as a complex system[^SciSciField].  It charts the emergence and proliferation of scientific fields, the sources of scientific novelty and progress, the strategies of exploration scientists choose, and the impact of social structure on intellectual advance.  Among other things, they find that, relative to the most efficient ways of discovering existing knowledge (in chemistry, as an example), scientific exploration is biased towards topics and connections related to social connections and previous publications within a field[^TopicBiasInScience]. It finds strong connections between research team size and diversity and the types of findings (risky and revolutionary v. normal science) developed and documents the increasingly dominant role of teams (as opposed to individual research) in modern science [^TeamScience]. The largest innovations tend to arise from a strong grounding in existing disciplines deployed in unusual and surprising combinations[^ScientificInnovation].  It illustrates that most incentive structures used in science (based e.g. on publication quality and citation count) create perverse incentives that limit scientific creativity and has helped produce new metrics that can complement and offset these biases, creating a more pluralistic incentive set [^ScienceMetrics]. 
 
@@ -99,6 +99,7 @@ If the defining idea of 19th century macrobiology (concerning advanced organisms
 [^RelationalReality]: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/05/the-big-idea-why-relationships-are-the-key-to-existence
 [^MultilevelSelection] Wilson, David Sloan et al. “Multilevel Selection Theory and Major Evolutionary Transitions.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 17 (2008): 6 - 9.
 [^NeuroscienceComplexity]: Here are some examples of these properties in neuroscience: **Sensitivity**: In neuroscience, sensitivity refers to the ability of the brain to detect and respond to small changes in its environment. One example of sensitivity in the brain is the phenomenon of synaptic plasticity, which is the ability of synapses (connections between neurons) to change in strength in response to activity. This sensitivity allows the brain to adapt and learn from experience. **Chaos**: Chaos is a property of complex systems that exhibit unpredictable behavior even though they are deterministic. In neuroscience, chaos has been observed in the activity of neurons in the brain. For example, studies have shown that the firing patterns of individual neurons can be highly irregular and chaotic, with no discernible pattern or rhythm. This chaotic activity may play a role in information processing and communication within the brain. **Sensitivity and chaos together:** Sensitivity and chaos can also interact in the brain to produce complex and adaptive behavior. For example, studies have shown that the brain can exhibit sensitivity to small changes in sensory input, but this sensitivity can also lead to chaotic activity in neural networks. However, this chaotic activity can be controlled and harnessed to produce adaptive behavior, such as in the case of motor control and coordination. The brain's ability to integrate sensitivity and chaos in this way is a hallmark of its remarkable complexity and adaptability. 
+[^Assemblage Theory] In assemblage theory, as articulated by Manuel DeLanda, entities are understood as complex structures formed from the symbiotic relationship between heterogeneous components, rather than being reducible to their individual parts. Its central thesis is that people do not act exclusively by themselves, and instead human action requires complex socio-material interdependencies. DeLanda's perspective shifts the focus from inherent qualities of entities to the dynamic processes and interactions that give rise to emergent properties within networks of relations.  His book "A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity" (2006) is a good starting point. 
 [^SocialDynamics] Page, S. E. (2007). The difference: How the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies. Princeton University Press.; Hidalgo, C. A. (2015). Why information grows: The evolution of order, from atoms to economies. Basic Books.; Acemoglu, D., & Linn, J. (2004). Market size in innovation: Theory and evidence from the pharmaceutical industry. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119(3), 1049-1090.; Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2017). The enigma of reason. Harvard University Press.; Pentland, A. (2014). Social physics: How good ideas spread—the lessons from a new science. Penguin. Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon and Schuster. Granovetter, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380. Uzzi, B. (1997). Social structure and competition in interfirm networks: The paradox of embeddedness. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42(1), 35-67.; Burt, R. S. (1992). Structural holes: The social structure of competition. Harvard University Press.; McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27(1), 415-444.
 [^SciSciField]: See a summary in Fortunato et al. (2018)
 [^TopicBiasInScience]: Rzhetsky et al. 2015

contents/english/03-02-the-lost-dao.md

@@ -77,7 +77,7 @@
      All of these critiques and directions of thought are suggestive, but none seems to offer clear paths to action and further scientific development.  Could the understanding of the plural, networked nature of social organization be turned into a scientific engine of new forms of social organization?  The hypothesis that was the seed from which Norbert Wiener sprouted the modern field of "cybernetics", from which comes all the uses of "cyber" to describe digital technology and, many would argue, the later name of "computer science" given to similar work.  Wiener defined cybernetics as "the science of control and communication in (complex systems like) the animal and machine", but perhaps the most broadly accepted meaning is something like the "science of communication within and governance of, by and for networks". The word was drawn from a Greek analogy of a ship directed by the inputs of its many oarsmen.  
 
 
-*      Wiener's scientific work focused almost exclusively on physical, biological and information systems, investigating the ways that organs and machines can obtain and preserve homeostasis, quantifying information transmission channels and the role they play in achieving such equilibrium and so on.  Personally and politically, he was a pacifist, severe critic of capitalism as failing basic principles of cybernetic stabilization and creation of homeostasis and advocate of radically more responsible use and deployment of technology.  He despaired that without profound social reform his scientific work would come to worse than nothing, writing in the introduction to *Cybernetics*, "there are those who hope that the good of a better understand of man and society which is offered by this new field of work may anticipate and outweigh the incidental contribution we are making to the concentration of power (which is always concentrated, by its very conditions of existence, in the hand of the most unscrupulous.  I write in 1947, and I am compelled to say that it is a very slight hope."  It is thus unsurprising that Wiener befriended many social scientists and reformers who vested "considerable...hopes...for the social efficacy of whatever new ways of thinking this book may contain."  
+*      Wiener's scientific work focused almost exclusively on physical, biological and information systems, investigating the ways that organs and machines can obtain and preserve homeostasis, quantifying information transmission channels and the role they play in achieving such equilibrium and so on.  Personally and politically, he was a pacifist, severe critic of capitalism as failing basic principles of cybernetic stabilization and creation of homeostasis and advocate of radically more responsible use and deployment of technology.  He despaired that without profound social reform his scientific work would come to worse than nothing, writing in the introduction to *Cybernetics*, "there are those who hope that the good of a better understanding of man and society which is offered by this new field of work may anticipate and outweigh the incidental contribution we are making to the concentration of power (which is always concentrated, by its very conditions of existence, in the hand of the most unscrupulous.  I write in 1947, and I am compelled to say that it is a very slight hope."  It is thus unsurprising that Wiener befriended many social scientists and reformers who vested "considerable...hopes...for the social efficacy of whatever new ways of thinking this book may contain."  
 
      Yet while he shared the convictions, he believed these hopes to be mostly "false".  While he judged such a program as "necessary", he was unable to "believe it possible".  He argued that quantum physics had shown the impossibility of precision at the level of particles and therefore that the success of science arose from the fact that we live far above the level of particles, but that our very existence within societies meant that the same principles made social science essentially inherently infeasible.  Thus as much as he hoped to offer scientific foundations on which the work of George, Simmel and Dewey could rest, he was skeptical of "exaggerated expectations of their possibilities."
 

contents/english/03-03-technology-for-collaborative-diversity.md

@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@
 
      In deep time individuals were born into families rooted within kin based institutions. Kin based institutions that provided everything, livelihood, sustenance, meaning, and that were for the most part inescapable. No "official documents" were needed, they didn't make any sense because you were born in one place in a social universe and remained there interacting with people you knew and who knew you your entire life. These kin based institutions began to be broken up in Europe beginning around 500 with the imposition by the Catholic Church of their Marriage and Family Practices that banned cousin marriages. This is what Joseph Henrich lays out in his book the WEIRDest People in the world: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous [^WEIRDest] as a germinal event in creating the west as we know it today.
 
-     By 1100 new types of voluntary associations that formed institutions started, monasteries, universities, charter towns, guilds began to emerge in the void left by the disillusion of kin based institutions. The plague where 1/3-of all people died also did a lot to disrupt the social order. These new social forms also gave rise to the emergence of a new psychology where people saw themselves as "individuals" (who could leave there family entirely and go to a far away chater town or join a monsteary) Impersonal pro-sociality emerged and became the norm because people were primarily interacting with non-kin. These new instiutions and extensive interactions with non-kin also lead to the emergence pre-capitalist markets, early contract law and governance processes rooted in abdstract rules.
+     By 1100 new types of voluntary associations that formed institutions started, monasteries, universities, charter towns, guilds began to emerge in the void left by the disillusion of kin based institutions. The plague where 1/3-of all people died also did a lot to disrupt the social order. These new social forms also gave rise to the emergence of a new psychology where people saw themselves as "individuals" (who could leave their family entirely and go to a far away chater town or join a monastery). Impersonal pro-sociality emerged and became the norm because people were primarily interacting with non-kin. These new instiutions and extensive interactions with non-kin also led to the emergence of pre-capitalist markets, early contract law, and governance processes rooted in abdstract rules.
 
      Who you where and where you fit was not "obvious" based on your kin relations anymore. So, as people began to move around more and new institutions formed paper based systems to document who belonged to them emerged, who was baptized by the church, who was a resident of a town, who was a member in a guild, who was a soldier in the army, who was a patient at the hospital etc. Identity systems in liberal democratic countries are rooted in historic practices originating from the church practices of keeping baptismal records in a log book. Beginning in the 1500s there was a shift over several centuries towards becoming state run systems where births were registered and birth certificates were issued to parents. This document, the birth certificate, is still the root breeder document that all other state issued identity documents (drivers license, national ID, tax/pension number, passports) are derived.
 
@@ -229,4 +229,4 @@ OSS, embodied most notably in the Linux operating system, underpins most public
 [^hwang_shaw__rules_on_wikipedia] Hwang, S., & Shaw, A. (2022). Rules and Rule-Making in the Five Largest Wikipedias. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 16(1), 347-357. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v16i1.19297
 [^vincent_hecht__wikipedia_and_search] Vincent, N. and Hecht, B., 2021. A deeper investigation of the importance of Wikipedia links to search engine results. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 5(CSCW1), pp.1-15.
 [^mcmahon_etal__wikipedia_and_search] McMahon, C., Johnson, I. and Hecht, B., 2017, May. The substantial interdependence of Wikipedia and Google: A case study on the relationship between peer production communities and information technologies. In Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 142-151).
-[^benkler_linux] Benkler, Y., 2002. Coase's penguin, or, Linux and "The Nature of the Firm". Yale Law Journal, pp.369-446.
+[^benkler_linux] Benkler, Y., 2002. Coase's penguin, or, Linux and "The Nature of the Firm". Yale Law Journal, pp.369-446.