Identifying “Prescriptive Information” (PI)—the specific instructions or rules that allow a system to perform work and maintain its identity—requires looking beyond physical matter to find the arbitrary rules that harness physical laws.
According to the sources and the thinking of David L. Abel and Howard Pattee, you can identify a system’s prescriptive identity through the following steps:
1. Cross the “Cybernetic Cut”
The first step is to distinguish between universal Laws (physical necessity) and local Rules (cybernetic choice).
• Physical Laws: These are inexorable and rate-dependent (e.g., gravity or chemical reactions)[1][2].
• Rules (PI): These are rate-independent symbols or codes that are not dictated by physics but are “chosen” to achieve a function[3][4].
• Identification: Look for where a specific sequence (like DNA or an organizational protocol) determines a physical outcome that would never happen by random chance[5][6].
2. Distinguish “Organization” from “Structure”
Following Humberto Maturana, a system’s identity is its Organization, which represents the invariant relations that must be maintained for the system to exist as a member of its class[7][8].
• The Check: Ask, “Which relations can change without destroying the system’s nature?” The components that cannot be changed without the system becoming “something else” constitute its prescriptive identity[7].
3. Ladder Up the Abstraction Hierarchy
To find the information that prescribes the system’s behavior, use the Abstraction Hierarchy to move from the physical to the functional[11][12].
• Identify the “Why”: The highest levels of the hierarchy—Functional Purpose and Values/Priorities—are the sources of PI[12][13].
• Method: Ask “So what?” or “Why is this important?” recursively until you reach the superordinate goals that define the system’s “Deep Structure”[14][15].
4. Locate “Constraint Closure”
Identity is often identified through a self-referential loop where the system produces the very components that maintain it[16][17].
• Semantic Closure: Look for the loop where symbolic instructions (the PI) are required to build physical constraints (the machinery), but those same physical constraints are required to read and execute the symbolic instructions[18][19].
• Agency: Abel posits that PI is identified when you find an agent (human or biological) making an “appropriate selection” from a set of possibilities to ensure survival[20][21].
5. Apply the POSIWID Test
Finally, the most practical identification of prescriptive information is found through POSIWID (The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does)[22][23].
• Actual vs. Rhetoric: Ignore mission statements or “work-as-imagined.” Observe the system’s actual outputs and interactions with its environment[22][24].
• Emergent Identity: The “true” prescriptive information is the logic evident in the system’s recurrent patterns of behavior, which act as a record of its history and its “fit” with the environment[25][26].
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In your current project, can you identify a specific “rule” or “policy” that seems arbitrary from a physics standpoint but is absolutely necessary for your system’s identity?
References
[1] 💬Gists.md [2] 💬Keywords + Jargon.md [3] 💬Gists.md [4] 💬Keywords + Jargon.md [5] 💬Gists.md [6] 💬Gists.md [7] 💬Keywords + Jargon.md [8] 💬Questions.md [11] 💬Gists.md [12] 💬Keywords + Jargon.md [13] 💬Questions.md [14] 💬Keywords + Jargon.md [15] 💬Questions.md [16] 💬Environment.md [17] 💬Keywords + Jargon.md [18] 💬Gists.md [19] 💬Keywords + Jargon.md [20] 💬Keywords + Jargon.md [21] 💬Keywords + Jargon.md [22] 💬Keywords + Jargon.md [23] 💬Keywords + Jargon.md [24] 💬Perspectives.md [25] 💬Environment.md [26] 💬Environment.md