Trial and Error

We jumped through today’s topic and the connected concepts very fast which was overwhelming for me. What I understood is that rhizomes can be defined as botanical, philosophical, or techno-social.

The botanical rhizome refers to a “mass of roots”, meaning for example that multiple trees are connected through one big system of roots.

The philosophical rhizome refers to “a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is  always detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exists and its own lines of flight.” I understand how it means that the philosophical rhizome is never static and constantly changing and evolving; it is becoming. I think the main point is that the philosophical rhizome organises knowledge in a non-hierarchical way.

A techno-social rhizome is a “networked super-intelligence” that is both artificial and natural, referring to connections between humans and technology – which is basically our whole world today. The rhizome is an interesting metaphor: everything is connected even though the connection might not be visible. But I do think there are hierarchies. And I don’t think that humanity will survive without hierarchical organisation because we are selfish and, to be honest, maybe also a little too dumb. But mainly because I cannot imagine a world in which all hierarchies disappear and no new hierarchies are established. And are hierarchies inherently bad? Depends on who is at the top of it, right? I think what I will take from this class for my own life is that there are more connections than I might see.

Artificial intelligence is a complex topic. Especially when you don’t know a lot about it. The insights we got today made me realize how much I still need and want to learn about artificial intelligence – not only because I am interested but because it will inevitably be a big part of the future, we are destined to live in. And to get around in this world we need to understand the complex systems around us, one of which will be artificial intelligence.

The possibilities and dangers that come with AI are scary to me. If we as a species are able to create something that is smarter than us then this new intelligence will also be able to create something that is then even smarter than itself and so on and so on. And of course we cannot imagine something that is greater than our minds can fathom.

And will it be possible to teach an AI ethics? It has already been shown that AI will reproduce biases that are fed into the AI technology. If we feed an artificial intelligence with sexist and/or racist data then AI will act on sexist and/or racist biases. If such an artificial intelligence will be used it can have devastating impacts on society. This is especially dangerous because it is eassy to believe that a machine must be neutral like nothing else can be.

I believe that it is very important to be aware of the faults of artificial intelligences such as algorithms when using social media. Social media can lead you into a fixation that will make you spend hours scrolling through your phone. It is because the artificial intelligence used for social media is programmed in a way that it wants you to use the app as long as possible. It is scary how imperceptible the effects of AI can be in my own life. But I think, the more you learn about it and the more aware you become, the more you are in control and resistant to dangerous effects of AI on social media.

This week we talked about complexity and, surprise, the topic was very complex. I liked the challenge of diving into the topic and look forward to understanding it better and better. These are the thoughts I had after class:

There was only a short period of time between “DDT – So safe you can eat it” and the discovery of the treacherous effects DDT has on the ecosystem. It seems to me that it is characteristic for human beings to fall into the trap of promising ad hoc solutions and thus disregarding both the long-term consequences as well as the causes of the bigger problem we are trying to address with our ad hoc solutions. Yet, even with every major repercussion humanity has brought about, we somehow end up back in a state of homeostasis. Homeostasis means to maintain the same conditions, referring to the “process whereby a system regulates itself and its environment in order to achieve an optimal set of input state required to maintain its functionality and structure.”

I wonder now about the end of the climate crisis. I honestly do not believe that the earth and its ecosystems are able to just get back into a state of homeostasis by itself, especially not while human beings are doing everything to make it more impossible. Every individual can decide whether they want to consider themselves as “an independent observer who watches the world go by; as opposed to a person who considers oneself to be a participant actor in the drama of mutual interaction” (von Foerster & von Foerster, 2003, p. 289). We all have the task and opportunity to decide on our own role in this process. Then again, maybe in the case of the climate crisis, to return to the state of homeostasis might mean that human beings will have to go extinct, so that they can no longer disturb the sensitive ecosystems.

Do I want to take the blue pill or the red pill? Do I want to keep my limited view of the world, or do I want to connect the dots, see the whole picture and broaden my mind? Do I only want to see the individual parts or do I want to be aware of the patters that connect “you to me and the two of us to everything else around us”?  

When the professor explained that indigenous tribes came together for big decisions and discussed about how their actions could affect their children’s children and then their children and so on, I was reminded of intergenerational justice. Thinking about the long-time consequences is what intergenerational justice is about when it comes to climate change and how we react, or rather not react, to it.

The indigenous tribes saw the patterns and connections. They were thinking in systems, knowing that their actions could have a long lasting impact that they might not live to see. They not only knew it but took it into account when making decisions. We, today, have lost this ability. Or we threw it away carelessly, not thinking about consequences because we won’t be around to see them.

Anthropocene – “The proposed current geological epoch in which humans are the primary cause of permanent planetary change”, as stated in the trailer for the movie “Anthropocene: The Human Epoch”, that we watched in class. Sucks to be alive in the period where we get to deal with the consequences of the actions of the generations before us. I saw data from a study this morning: young people between 14 and 29 years old in Germany worry about the following things: 71% about inflation, 64% about war in Europe. 55% about climate change, 54% about the economic crisis, and 49% about energy shortage. One quarter is dissatisfied with their mental health. That not the adolescent life we imagined.

On another note: I feel very interested in the topics we have touched upon but it bothers me that we are not going into depth. I want to learn more. Every session is an introductory session on some topics but we never go deeper. It feels superficial to me. My question is: Will this change? Is there something I am not getting yet?

Today, we finally dived deeper into the topics of this course. I am excited to learn more and to attend the next classes because now I really feel like I can take something from them.

To me it is interesting that humans like to think of themselves as the most advanced species, looking down upon animals. But thinking of the video we saw today of the ants during a flood of the forest who found a way to survive it without one leader giving out directions and telling the individual ants what to do? – I don’t think that humans could ever do something like that without a leader that takes control.

That would mean that humans are not capable of self-organization when we define it as “a dynamical and adaptive process where systems acquire and maintain structure themselves, without external control” (De Wolf & Hollerith, 2005, p.7). If I understand correctly, the system of the ants floating over the water exhibits emergence because the whole of the ants together is greater than each individual ant, not implying that the value of the sum of ants is superior but simply acknowledging that the sum of ants has properties, for example the ability to survive on the water during a flood, that the individual ants do not have.

What I don’t understand is why we talked about reductionism. Our professor said that we will use the concept of reductionism to define emergence. Reductionism is to reduce on phenomena to another one that is simpler, it means to reduce everything to its parts. Reductionism argues that we have to study the individual parts of something in order to understand the whole. But how is that connected to emergence? Emergence means that the sum is greater than the individual parts. For me that entails that if you split something into its parts and just look at these individual aspects you cannot understand the whole because the whole is not just the sum but something different. So why do we need reductionism to understand or define emergence?

Is our course just the sum of its parts, of us, of the individuals that signed up for it? Or are we a system? What do the relationships between all of us look like and do they make us a system or just a collection? We learned that a collection becomes a system when there are interdependencies and synergies that connect the parts. I could argue that all of us in this course are interconnected because we interact with each other, we listen to one another and learn from what people have to say. Our collective knowledge is based on all people present in the seminar.

Then again we also learned that a system cannot work if there is any part missing. All part of a system must be present for the system to carry out its purpose optimally. But if a few people were to be sick would that mean that our course could not carry out its purpose? I am not sure, maybe that depends on how many people are missing and whether those are the people that mainly talk and discuss in class or whether those are the people that like to listen rather than participate.

I find it easy to understand why a toaster and a football team are systems and why a database of customer names and tools in a toolbox are not. But when it comes to complex examples that are simply not clear I am lost. But I guess that is what Kim (1999) meant when he wrote about the difference between living/natural systems and mechanical/human-made systems. He argues that “[n]atural and social systems can be far more difficult to understand than nonliving systems, because we can never know for sure what their purpose or design is” (p. 3, 4). He emphasizes the importance of understanding the purpose of a system. Let’s say our course is a system. What would be its and our purpose? Would it be to learn and build our knowledge? But why that purpose, what is the bigger objective behind it?

This question is still bothering me because I can’t get quite behind it’s answer.

I was going to start my post by saying that I did not learn as much as I expected to in our last class. But over the last few days I came to a different conclusion. I did not learn less, I just learned something different.

In our second class we spend most of the time getting to know more people in the course and connecting with them over stories about the country or town which we are from or a place in which we have spent some time for instance when we started studying. In our group we talked about what it is that makes these places special for us and we found that the feeling of being at home is more closely related to the people that live there than to the actual place itself. This was interesting to talk about but I was wondering about the sense of doing this in a class in university. I felt like I was in a summer camp. I kept asking myself what our professor was trying to show or teach us through this and now I have an answer to this question, at least for me personally.

I can imagine that it will end up being very helpful to have used the first two classes for getting a personal angle to the topic of systems theory. We might just end up understanding the theory that we are going to learn about better because we will have personal examples of how our individual ‘systems’ are connected from the first classes that we can refer to. Furthermore, I believe there lie great possibilities in experiencing a different teaching style than the one that we are (or at least I am) used to from our home universities. In our Systems Theory course we are practicing a form of interactive learning that is usually frowned upon in university because it is not what we consider ‘academic’. University often means talking about a pretentious topic in a sophisticated language barely accessible to people from all backgrounds (economic, social, cultural).

I notice how it bothers me that our class is not like the typical academic courses I am used to. Let’s see how this will change over the course of the semester. It will be my challenge for myself to stay open and as unbiased as I can be.

What I learned today is that “a system’s view of life” means to view oneself in relation to others and everyone in relation to everything that is around us. This view is critical in order to be and act more informed, to reflect on one’s own as well as others’, way of thinking and actions. The impact a system’s view has on how one thinks about certain issues became clear when we saw the video about the reintroduction of wolves into the Yellowstone National Park in the United States in 1995. The wolves did not only have an astounding impact on the animal population in the park but also on the ecosystem within it: the effects resulting from the reintroduction of the wolves stabilized the course of the rivers in the park and because vegetation stabilized, soil erosion diminished as well. This is a so-called ‘trophic cascade’, defined as “an ecological process that starts at the top of the food chain and tumbles all the way to the bottom”, as we heard in the video.

What I am wondering about now is how to connect this to social media as this is one of the three topics included in the course title. In class we said that “we shape technology the very moment we are shaped by technology”. But how does this connect to systems theory. Does it mean that we as individuals are systems, or part of systems, and that our behaviour affects the systems that is social media? That the way social media impacts us will again have impacts on how social media develops? Is that then why a system’s view of life is so important – because it raises our awareness on these processes? Let me know about your thoughts and ideas on that in the comments below! During class today I felt safe to express all my thoughts and ideas without worrying about being correct and I hope you all feel the same here on edublogs!