Reinventing cybernetics

Power measures the extent to which one can control one's environment. Control can only be accomplished when one understands the environmental system one wishes to control. Understanding of a system can only be had if one has the power to control for some variables while observing changes in others. power enables more science, science brings greater understanding, greater understanding yields more power. This amplifying feedback loop gives rise to the all too familiar and seemingly inevitable tendency of power to concentrate itself.

Couldn't a device be contrived to operate according to these principles? A tool that becomes more powerful with time? The answer, is yes. These miraculous devices are already produced in bulk all over the world. You already possess one, in your very skull.

The nervous system of Homo Sapiens may or may not operate according to different principles than the rest of the animal kingdom, but one thing is certain: there is a runaway feedback system at play. We become exponentially more powerful with the passage of time.

Consider a simple system S in an unknown environment with three inputs, a b and c and three outputs, x y and z.

The inputs are wired up to different sensors which each measure some unknown property the environment and represent it as a real number. now each of the outputs takes the form of a real number which is under the systems complete control. changing the number has some unknown effect on the environment, possibly through the action of a motor.

It is possible to design a subsystem of S, call it T that runs tests on each of the output variables x y and z individually and measures their effects on one of the input variables, a until enough information has been collected that the previously uncontrolled input variable a comes under virtual control via the intermediate output variables x y and z. S may now command a to change and the subsystem T will convert the instruction to commands for x y and/or z to produce the desired result.

The purpose of T, in a nutshell, is to bring more variables under S's control. Only one more thing needs addressing: the short supply of input variables for converting. some system must be designed to usefully subdivide them to add more members to the set of uncontrolled input variables. if a system could add useful inputs, then T could continue to convert them to virtual outputs, and S could steadily increase its control over its environment. there are a few more bugs to work out, but that is my idea of how to create a self empowering tool.