Radical Uncertainty

 

Perhaps you will agree that doing business in a society which is being disturbed by geopolitical conflict is not easy. When circumstances, rules, regulations can change overnight or geographical shifts are probable, long term commitment to or investments in alternative energy sources may be unwise. When you are following my columns, you will understand that I always ask Aristotle’s question: ‘seek knowledge of cause’. Uncertainty in information theory is also understood as the ‘information we don’t have’. Basing investments on information we don’t have causes uncertainty. At this moment I am observing that long term commitment into development of the Hydrogen bubble (I believe that would be the correct nomenclature) are gradually decreasing. An hydrogen hub connecting Rotterdam with the German Ruhr Industrial Area has been postponed.  Automakers don’t invest fully in cars running on hydrogen and already are rethinking investing in electrical vehicles, because of uncertainty about the availability of rare earth mineral resources and their costs, including so called ‘externalities’. Externalities are costs to society, the environment or to life that usually are not included in prices for products or services. If that were the case most things we’d take for granted would cost a lot more. Uncertainty means the inability to know everything fully. It is a fundamental property of complex systems (our industries, society, our planet or environment). Separating our industries from other ones is impossible because they are always interconnected and due to their interdependency, complex. One person in a government, may directly influence decisions we have to take. One incident in the shipping industry directly correlates to safety precautions in international ports. One oil spill in Alaska, directly impacts the entire world. A large number of unknowable elements directly affect our industries. A question to answer would be: can we control our industries ourselves, and if yes, how are we tackling radical uncertainty? The answer is; we can’t control uncertainty nor complex systems, but we can ‘steer’ them by using feedback. Based on Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Theory and Ross Ashby’s law of requisite variety, we can build and maintain maximum resilience by building variety in our systems; this means to develop awareness, knowledge and skills and add tools such as PPE’s, gas detectors, alarm systems etc. These are called ‘attenuators’ or dampers of risks. Top down managed industries are often not aware of cybernetical tools by which maximum viability is feasible. Managers I spoke to do not have the requisite variety they could have and rely on their operators and other staff who they believe they ought to know. But, then I will ask: ‘Are you sure that your people are doing the  right things or the wrong things right?’ ‘Can you be certain that you have built enough variety in your system to absorb outside variety (risk)?’ I tested this during several training sessions I performed world-wide and came to the conclusion that maximum variety has not yet been understood as the ultimate radical uncertainty containment tool available. Cybernetics is the science of viability. I can teach you.

A Crisis of Perception

 

A recent book by Peter Oborne titled The Assault on Truth (2021) describes the cognitive failures of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, who believe that lying gets them ahead: “Johnson was 23 when he was first sacked for lying”. This book features a listing of events, talks, political turmoil and societal effects caused by information deficit, which demonstrates that Fritjof Capra’s observation of a crisis of perception is correct. This insight is therefore of crucial importance as it offers an unusual view on the certainty by information and the uncertainty by disinformation which can be achieved by man if he or she is open to learn. 

The Performance Probability Pattern of disinformation (lying, deceit) is negative because the performance of any system that seeks less information rather than ‘optimal’ can’t function fully. Entropy (disorder) can also be observed as the information we don’t like to have. This is called negative interdependence, which means that a goal can only be achieved if others can’t. In other words: I can become rich because you can’t (you pay for it). Goals that are planned that would depend on enforcement, either by suppression of information or false information, can’t be achieved due to an energy-information-matter weakness (deficit) rendering the work needed to achieve that goal insufficient.

Manipulation in any form of information to achieve an ulteriorly motivated goal ends in chaos i.e., the inability of social governance, hence the status of our planetary society. This is unnecessary and can be re-designed by changing the general perception that lying is creative and constructive, because it is the exact opposite. Lying is allowed only when personal survival in life-threatening situations is at hand. Because the human mind is either unwilling or unable to see and understand this, society is in a state of unconsciously enforced ‘public entropy’ which can be understood as an accelerating, deteriorating disorder.

Sounds familiar? The trouble is that I can write these lines, but few are willing to change their minds, because their perception, or observation is driven by the need to jump on the bandwagon before someone else does. I just returned from the FETSA conference at StocExpo in Rotterdam and observed several speakers who jumped on the bandwagon of hydrogen, net zero and ammonia, because an investment trend is developing in that direction. But my question is: do we know enough about these risky elements and products? Have we truly studied their potential impact on life, the environment and social cohesion for the long term?

But the most important question to ask is: will the race towards net zero allow and use optimal information or is there a real risk of becoming a path-dependent rat race which has to enforced by those with vested interests? Is it the goal first to make money or to serve society with an abundant and clean form of sustainable energy? If these questions can’t be answered honestly, we have to be aware that entropy laws of physics can’t be broken nor escaped. An information deficit paradox will be the result: the act of lying to achieve a goal already consumes the energy which would have been needed to achieve it.

 

This is the latest in a monthly series of articles by Arend van Campen, founder of TankTerminalTraining, who can be contacted at arendvc@tankterminaltraining.com. More information on the company’s activities can be found at www.tankterminaltraining.com.