Chapter 38 7.4 Self-Activity

The strangely counterintuitive behavior of complex circuits is rooted in the compound logic of loops nested and connected end to end.Well-designed circuits seem to work reliably and reasonably, but suddenly, they beat their own drum and take a veer without warning.Electronics engineers are paid high salaries to figure out all the horizontal causality in the loop.However, for a robot of this level of complexity, the abnormal behavior of the circuit cannot be eliminated.If you reduce it all to its simplest form—the feedback loop—circular causality is the paradox that is everywhere. Where does the ego come from?Cybernetics offers this bewildering answer: it emerges from itself.And there is no other way.Evolutionary biologist Brian Goodwin told journalist Roger Lewin: "An organism is both its own cause and its own effect, both the cause and the effect of its own inherent order and organization. Natural selection is not the cause of the organism. Genes are not the cause of the organism. There is no cause of the organism. The organism is self-agency.” Thus, the self is actually a form of self-planning.It emerges to transcend itself, just as a serpent eats its own tail and becomes Ouroboros, the mystical ring.

According to Jung, ouroboros is one of the most classic projections of the human soul on the concept of eternity.The ring formed by the snake biting its own tail originally appeared in Egyptian sculpture as an artistic decoration.On the other hand, Jung developed a point of view, arguing that the nearly chaotic images of all kinds that visit human beings in dreams are easily absorbed on stable nodes to form important and universal images.If you use modern terms, this is very similar to the situation where interconnected complex systems can easily settle on "attractors".And a whole bunch of these attractive, singular nodes form the visual vocabulary of art, literature, and certain types of therapy.Among the most persistent attractors, an early schema was "things that eat their own tails," often pictorially represented simply as a perfect circle formed by a linnosaurus eating its own tail.

Ouroboros' loop is clearly a symbol of a feedback concept, and I'm having trouble identifying who was the first to use it in a cybernetic context.As a true prototype, it has perhaps more than once been seen independently as a symbol of feedback.I have no doubt that when any programmer is using the GOTOSTART loop, he will have the faint image of the snake eating its own tail in his mind. A snake is linear, but when it turns around and bites itself, it becomes the archetype of a non-linear object.In the classic Jungian framework, the ouroboros biting its tail is a symbolic illustration of the self.The integrity of the circle is the self-control of the self, which derives both from one thing and from competing parts.In this sense, the flush toilet, the most prosaic embodiment of a feedback loop, is also a mysterious beast—the beast of the self.

The Jungian scholars believe that the self (self) should actually be regarded as "a primitive psychological state before the birth of the ego's consciousness", that is to say, "it is the original mandala state, and It is from this state of mind that the individual ego emerges."So, when we say a stove with a thermostat has a self, we don't mean it has a me.The so-called ego is nothing more than a ground state, an automatically contrived form through which, if its complexity allows, a more complex self emerges. Every ego is a tautology: self-evident, self-referential, self-centered and self-creating.Gregory Bateson said that a living system is a "tautolog slowly restoring itself." He meant that if the system is disturbed or interfered with, its self "seeks toward the tautology." Solve"—to sink into its basic self-referential state, its "necessary contradiction".

Every ego is a struggle to justify its own identity.The thermostat ego is always debating whether to turn up or turn down the furnace temperature.Helen's valve system would argue incessantly about the only, isolated action it could perform: Should that float be moved? A system is anything that can talk for itself.And all living systems and organisms must eventually be reduced to a set of regulators, chemical pathways and neural circuits, in which this stupid dialogue is always going on: "I will, I will, I will; no , No, you can't have it." Seeding selves into our constructed worlds provides a home for control mechanisms to drip, accumulate, overflow, and burst.The emergence of automation in three phases has also incubated three almost metaphysical changes in human culture.Every system in the field of control is driven by a gradual deepening of feedback and information flow.

Energy control initiated by the steam engine was the first stage.Once energy is under control, it achieves a kind of "freedom".No matter how much energy we release, it won't fundamentally change our lives.At the same time, as we need fewer and fewer calories (energy) to achieve a certain goal, our most significant technological achievements are no longer directed towards further control of powerful energy sources. On the contrary, our current achievements have been achieved by increasing the precise control of matter.The precise control of matter is the second stage of the control system.Using a more advanced feedback mechanism to infuse information into matter, just like the function of a computer chip, makes matter more powerful, and gradually less matter can be used to do the same work as a larger amount of matter without information input.With the advent of motors the size of a mote of dust (a successful prototype was produced in 1991), it seemed that anything of any size could be made at will.Molecular-sized cameras?Yes, why not?House-sized crystals?as you wish.Matter has been brought under the control of information in the same way that energy is now, and the method is just as easy—just turn a dial. "The core event of the twentieth century is the subversion of matter." Technical analyst George Gilder said.This is a phase in the history of control, a phase of control in which we live.Fundamentally, matter—whatever shape you want it to be—is no longer an obstacle.Matter is almost "free" already.

The third stage of the control revolution is the control of information itself.The seeds of information were sown two centuries ago when it was applied to coal-fired steam.From here to there, the control of energy and matter is exercised by miles of electrical circuits and information loops that inadvertently fill our environment with signals, bits and bytes.This unchecked data frenzy has reached pernicious levels.The information we produce has exceeded the scope of our control.More information than we ever dreamed of has become a reality.But so-called more information is like an uncontrolled steam explosion—useless unless self-contained.We can paraphrase Gilder's epigram like this: "The central event of the twenty-first century is the subversion of information."

The conquest of information is heralded by the tools required for genetic engineering (information that controls DNA information), and electronic libraries (information that manages information in books).The first to feel the impact of information control is industry and commerce, which is the same as the impact of energy and material control, and it will gradually penetrate into the individual sphere later. Control over energy subjugates the forces of nature (making us fat); control over matter brings about easy material wealth (making us greedy).So, when comprehensive information control blossoms everywhere, what kind of chaos will it bring us?Puzzled?brilliant?Restless?

Without ego, almost nothing happens.Motors, millions of them, have been given their own and are now running factories of all kinds.Silicon-based chips, billions of silicon-based chips, are endowed with themselves, and will design themselves to be smaller and faster to manage the motors.Soon, slender networks, infinite in number, endowed with egos, will reimagine chips and rule everything we let them rule.If we try to harness the vast treasure trove of energy, matter, and information by controlling everything, we will fail. As fast as we can, we are equipping our built world to command it to govern itself, to reproduce itself, to know itself, and to give it an irreversible self.The history of automation is a one-way passage from human control to automatic control.The result is an irreversible shift from the human self to the second self.

And these second selves are outside our control, out of control.This is the key reason why the brightest minds of the Renaissance failed to invent a self-regulating device that surpassed that of the ancient Helen.The great Leonardo da Vinci built controlled machines, not uncontrolled machines.The German historian of technology Otto Mayer said that Enlightenment engineers could have built some kind of adjustable steam power using the technology they already had at the time.But they didn't, because they didn't have the guts to let their creations do their thing. The ancient Chinese, on the other hand, possessed a correct no-mind mentality of control, although their creations never went beyond the compass chariot.Listen to what the mystical scholar Lao Tzu wrote 2,600 years ago, translated into the most authentic modern discourse:

Lao Tzu's wisdom can be used as the motto of enthusiastic Silicon Valley start-up companies in the 21st century.In an era of sophistication and superintelligence, the most intelligent control method will be reflected in the lack of control.Investing in machines that adapt themselves, evolve toward their own goals, and grow without human supervision will be the next great technological advance.The only way to achieve intelligent control is to give machines freedom. What little time remains of this century is rehearsal time for the overarching work of psychological reengineering in the twenty-first century: let go, let go with dignity.