What are examples of the energy required by systems in general and <Ned> in particular?

some positive energy could be helpful, of the forward looking and imaginative kind. I am tired of energy wasted to discuss what we are not.

Ha, ha...I'm afraid I'm about to write something very much along the lines of what Christina is tired of.

It may be a silly thing, but my mind often gets wrapped into knots when I think about energy. Energy is a physical property that can be quantified which describes the amount of work than can be done by a force. There are several forms of energy, electromagnetic, gravitational, thermal, light, etc. But then there is a construct of psychic energy, the force that powers the mind, in which the metaphor of the energy of physics is applied to mind. The metaphor has bugs in it. Mental systems require physical energy of the physical sort. Since "psychic energy" is generally rendered just "energy" It's not always clear where one begins and the other leaves off.

Or, of course my reading comprehension is really bad. I'm not sure what the topic for further research actually is being suggested in the quotation. And that makes it hard to attempt an answer to Linda's question.

Tentatively the question sounds to me like: What are the forces that can be measured which result in real work being done at <Ned>? For the time being we can stipulate that users have consumed enough calories to fuel the movement of fingers on their keypads, that the electric power plants are operating and the server is plugged in. That sort of energy tally is possible and relevant for some questions.

My sense of it is that what motivates us to work isn't very much like physical energy at all. Take for example a the results of no-reply.

Nicholas Bentley has done a lot of work on the rights of creative producers. His ideas are very thought out and worthwhile. He posted a thread, even mentioning me, and I didn't write anything. I did no work. I feel bad about that.

The thing is that no response represents zero "energy" and yet no response is something that means a lot in terms of work being done. It's conundrums like this that make my head spin when "energy" is a metaphor of physical energy.

Networks, communities and markets are all different. Something about markets is there should be few barriers to entry, whereas communities have boundaries, even if they aren't geographic.

I know that Linda sees little use for Twitter. Yesterday I was impress with an idea myG20. A G20 meeting will be in Pittsburgh. What impressed me is this effort is simple it uses #hastags at Twitter. Hashtags were a user generated way to form groups at Twitter and greatly increases the usefulness of the messaging system.

Okay, I know I'm far afield talking about Twitter; what I have in mind is a comment about <Ned>. First more Twitter: danah boyd is a smart scholar about the social Web. A recent post Twitter: "pointless babble" or peripheral awareness + social grooming? highlights the importance of social grooming. Mostly we think of social grooming as no-work, but it is essential for getting work done.

I really see <Ned> as a community. It takes a commitment to work here, at minimum people have to learn to use the tools. That commitment is a barrier to entry, but boundaries are an essential element for communities, not a bad thing. Social grooming isn't pointless, it is essential to our community and for getting work done.

What concerns me is when a metaphor of energy discourages precisely the sorts of things which encourage us.

Derailing threads is an issue that always comes up in online discussions. I sometimes do just that. Generally I think people presume that the derailing of threads is deliberate, a sort of violence. Sometimes that's the case. More often I think it has to do with people approaching issues from very different frames or perspectives. Sometimes the commitment to frames is so vigorously defended that any attempt to create common understanding. Well, most of the time attempting common understanding just seems too much work.

Much of what <Ned> is has more to do with social practice, an "ethic" of the place. Something of the 'ethic" of Onet was a high tolerance for very contentious threads. And with <Ned> rather an agreement that people were sick of all the contentiousness. These sorts of agreements are patterns, whereas Linda's question has not to do with patterns but the "energy" necessary to produce patterns in human systems.

I watched a video today of part of an interview of Thich Nhat Hanh by Ram Dass. The clip is about 10 minutes. It's the first half that interested me the most. Ram Dass asks Thich Nhat Hanh about holding anger and emotions like that ina tender way. Thich Nhat refers to anger as a kind of "energy" and says that mindfulness is a kind of "energy."

I've said that I'm wary of energy as a metaphor for the mind. That said, I'm very impressed with how successfully Thich Nhat Hanh uses the metaphor of energy for such constructs as anger, mindfulness, compassion, and even understanding.

Are these constructs Thich Nhat Hanh refer to as "energy" responsive to you question about creating useful patterns here at <Ned>? Or am I way off on a tangent?

Gad, Linda, you know you can rap my knuckles with a ruler whenever necessary. Sorry for taking this thread off the rails. Having done so I'll add a couple of links that seem relevant to the general issue of complexity, if not the specific topic of <Ned>.

Thomas Homer-Dixon has a lot to say about complexity with hours and hours of reading linked from his Web site.

This (PDF) short paper Ingenuity Theory: Can Humankind Create a Sustainable Civilization is worthwhile.

"But I’ve come to believe that there’s one overriding imperative: we must reduce the rate at which our requirement for ingenuity is rising. We have to ease up on the global accelerator pedal. Because if we don’t slow down and simplify things voluntarily—if we allow the complexity, speed, and unpredictability of the systems we’ve created to go on increasing, unchecked—these systems will sometimes fail catastrophically. In other words, system failure will eventually slow down and simplify things for us, whether we like it or not."

Ingenuity isn't energy but I wonder if it's a construct we tend to call "energy" when thinking about human systems?

Again I'm afraid I'm going off on tangents, or maybe it's thinking non-linearly ;-)

One of the observations about complex situations in the Cynefin framework is that cause and effect relationships only make sense in retrospect.

In Sunday's NYT Magazine Paul Krugman has an essay looking at what went wrong with macroeconomics. It's a very good read, but my reaction to it was to sort of shake my head. If situations are complex and therefore unpredictable, then what's an economist to do?

This morning I got pointed to a post at Cosmic Variance by Sean Carroll via 3Quarks. I point to the 3Quarks post because it also has a snippet of Krugman's reply, but I highly recommend Carroll's full post, "Mistaking Beauty for Truth."

Carroll's post shook off my casual "tisk, tisk" about Krugman's article because he points directly to the subject of doing science.

If you've read or are familiar with Thomas Khun's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" you'll be familiar with the notion of "normal science." My crude rendering of the idea is that there are periods of scientific revolutions where scientific theories are in a crisis because they have flaws or lack explanatory power. New theories come up which do a better job. After the revolution there is a period of quiet where scientists without much explicit reference to theory; it's there as a ground for their work, pursue "normal science."

So on one hand Krugman points out there's a revolution happening in macro-economics right now. But Carroll's article made me see that Krugman is saying something interesting about what comes next. Again my take on things is rather crude, but in a nutshell:

(I'll use the cynefin frame work which Krugman doesn't mention.) I think that what Krugman is saying is that economists have proceeded on the presumptions that economist study complicated problems. That is economists have assumed that the realtionships between cause and effects are complicated so need expert analysis to identify, nevertheless the relationships between cause and effect are more or less linear. But Krugman is suggesting that as elegant as neo-classical economic models are they fundamentally misconstrue the situations they face as complicated problems when instead they are complex. Complex situations are ones where the relationships between cause and effect are only understood in retrospect. This is because there are many ways in which relationships can join into patterns, and so far we've got no way of predicting patterns of patternings.

Here's part of what Krugman says regarding Carroll's essay:

Discover suggests general relativity versus Newtonian physics; but a better model may be meteorology, which as I understand it starts from some simple basic principles but is fiendishly complex in practice.

I love it, because I think most people get that meteorology as complex not complicated. Most people probably think that butterflies flapping their wings and changing the course of weather seems a bit extreme, nonetheless find it as good a way as any to suggest the problem of knowing what initial conditions are. There simply are too many things in play to know what's going to end up mattering. And I think people without knowing much about Chaos Theory are glad there's at least a theory for chaos.

Not being an economist, and because Krugman's piece is so clearly written, I missed that he was suggesting that the financial crisis feels like a kick in the shins to economists. Revolutions aren't easy to endure, in fact the hurt like hell. And of course how it all plays out in the realm of economics is a complex situation rather than a complicated one.