The Seneca Effect blog closes down for the reasons explained in a previous post. But the spirit and the ideas of Seneca and his modest modern follower, Ugo Bardi, continue in other forms. Ugo Bardi blogs:
What went wrong with the "El Faro"? It would be too easy to fault the captain, Michael Davidson. He surely made mistakes: he underestimated the threat, and -- probably -- acted emotionally, thinking he could show his bravery by sailing straight into what he believed was just a tropical storm. It is normal: everyone makes mistakes, and human males are especially prone to making the kind of mistakes that derive from a macho attitude. The point is to detect the mistakes and correct them before they create disastrous damage. And, here, the ship's command system failed completely. It is typical for ships to be managed by a "vertical" organization that pivots around a single man (rarely a woman) at the top. It is the captain, whose orders cannot be questioned. You may remember the quarrel between Starbuck and Ahab described in Melville's "Moby Dick," where Ahab cuts short Starbuck by saying that "There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod". Again, this fictional episode is not unlike what happens in the real world.
The kind of vertical command structure nearly guarantees disaster when the man at the top turns out to be mad, drunk, or simply not up to the task. And then disasters happen. Not all of them are as spectacular as the sinking of the "El Faro," but if you consult Wikipedia's entry on "shipwrecks," you'll be surprised by how long it is, even for recent years. The same kind of disasters happen with planes, working teams, and, often, with the military, where the list of incompetent, stupid, and evil commanders is long and detailed (the charge of the 300 at Balaklava is just one of the many examples, even going on right now in the world).
It may be that rigid hierarchical structures have their origin in the overstretching of the role of the "alpha male," typical of many social creatures. Indeed, in human society, these structures are typical of all-male environments. In the case of the El Faro, the second mate, Danielle Randolph, was the only woman on the command deck. Women are known to be more flexible and less obsessed with rank than men (of course, with plenty of exceptions!), and it may be for this reason that she was the only one who explicitly proposed to steer the ship toward safety. Other members of the command deck seem to have had doubts, too, but they didn't discuss the captain's decision. So, the second mate was overruled by the captain who, in doing that, was signing his (and everybody's on board) death sentence. Another poignant element of the story is the last message that Randolph sent to her mother. It ended with "love to you all" -- which was not her usual way to end her messages. She understood what was going to happen, but was powerless to avoid it.
In nature, alpha males have no power to give orders to other members of the group. The concept of "orders" is purely human and also relatively recent in our evolutionary history. From what we know, rigid pyramidal hierarchies started to appear only with the development of city-states, some 5,000 years ago, when there also appeared kings and God-kings. Apparently, people were fascinated by these larger-than-life figures, to the point that they put their trust in them. So much that they even invented imaginary overlords, truly out-of-this-world alpha males, to be obeyed and worshiped.
Democracy doesn't change things so much. Imagine that the captain of the "El Faro" had been elected by the crew. That would have changed little or nothing about his power to give orders to everybody. Then, if the second mate had been a member of the opposition, it is even more certain that she would have been overruled when she proposed to change course. That's how democracy works: the opposition is always wrong.
So, where can we find better ideas on how to manage complex systems? Maybe there are ways. Let me report a paragraph from Prigogine's "The End of Certainty" (1996), where he cites Bierbacher, Nicolis, and Shuster:
The maintenance of organization in nature is not -- and cannot be -- achieved by central management. Order can only be maintained by self-organization. Self-organizing systems allow adaptation to the prevailing environment, i.e. they react to changes in the the environment with a thermodynamic response which makes the system extraordinarily flexible and robust against perturbations from outside conditions. We want to point out the superiority of self-organizing systems over conventional human technology which carefully avoids complexity and hierarchically manages nearly all technical processes.
The authors, here, are actually describing the concept of "holobiont," even though they do not use the term. The holobiont is the most common and efficient way for complex systems to organize themselves in nature. The elements of a holobionts interact with each other horizontally, not hierarchically. It is what gives the system its extraordinary flexibility and adaptability. If the command system of the El Faro had been organized as a holobiont, the captain couldn't (and wouldn't) have ignored or overruled the suggestion of the second mate.
Would it be possible to organize human society in this way? Yes, we know plenty of examples of societies that self-organize into forms that mimic the holobiont structure. Elinor Ostrom reported how several of these structures can manage natural resources at the local level, much better than heavy top-down hierarchies. So, it may well be that God-kings are an evolutionary dead-end and that, as we march into the future, we'll learn to behave more like the natural way of behaving is, it is the wisdom of holobionts. On the other hand, for the time being, this idea looks a little difficult to put into practice, considering how much people seem to love the idea of kneeling down and receiving orders from the Great Man at the top. And I don't have to tell you about the unending string of disasters that this attitude has caused, and is still causing. But you never know: in the end, all humans are holobionts. And holobionts can learn!
These concepts and more are discussed in "The Proud Holobionts" blog
(you can find here a dramatized version of the sinking of the El Faro aired on the Discovery Channel in 2020. The trailer of the fantastic 1956 movie, "Moby Dick" is here)
So, how is the life of a retiree scientist? It is a dream. Freedom from bureaucracy, paperwork, research reports, grant writing, attending meetings, being part of committees, all that. I don't have to spend the 1h 30' of commuting time that I used to spend every day to go to my office and back. To say nothing about not having to torture those catatonia-suffering creatures that go under the name of "students." I feel like a retiree executioner!
More than all, I feel as if I had returned to when I was a postdoc at Berkeley, in the 1980s. At that time, I didn't have paperwork to do, no teaching, no committees, and no performance reports. I could spend 100% of my time on research. It was wonderful: I remember that the libraries of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory were open all night for researchers. And I did spend entire nights browsing the shelves. To say nothing about the bookstores in town: it was there that I discovered the concept of "peak oil."
Today, university libraries have become fortresses where you can enter only if you are fully masked and if you reserve a seat in advance. But they have become useless: the Internet gives us possibilities that we wouldn't have dreamed of in the 1980s. It is a dream if you are trained in science, if you like science, if you love science, (I still do, despite the sad state of science, nowadays).
The whole scientific knowledge of the world is at your fingertips. You can jump from paleontology to cosmology, to thermodynamics, to microbiology, or anything you fancy to learn. True, some of this knowledge is hidden behind the hideous paywalls that publishers use to make obscene profits, but I daresay that the relevant knowledge is mostly available for free. Nobody wants to publish behind a paywall anymore, except for papers they don't care much about because it is the cheap way to publish, and it gives them academic "points." But the relevant work, no, everyone wants it to be read!
That leaves a problem: how do you wade through so much information? The mass of data that you can summon onto your screen is enormous, the problem is that you risk losing yourself in a galaxy of irrelevance. In my case, I rely a lot on blogs. Blogs often provide high-quality information, sometimes truly excellent information written by scientists or by experts in their fields. Nothing like the chaotic environment of social media (to say nothing about the censorship). And nothing like the boring platitude of scientific journals.
But how do you organize your information flux from blogs? It is easy: you use a feed reader. I am always surprised at discovering how few people use feed readers to organize their information. It is simple, costs nothing, and it insures that you never miss the sources you think are relevant. And you decide what you want to read: you are not a slave to the search algorithms of whatever search engine or social media you use. I use "theoldreader.com," but there are many similar ones. Try one, your views of the world will change. You may also want to try "substack.com" -- it is the same idea: it allows you to select the subjects you are interested in. But it works only with substack blogs, whereas a generic feed reader will cover practically all the available Web sites.
There remains the problem of the sheer limits of time and the capability to absorb so much information. There is the risk to become an Internet larva, spending all the time available surfing this and that.
I am trying to cope with this problem. For one thing, I am dropping certain activities that I think are too time-consuming, and scarcely productive. For one thing, I am considering whether to resign from my position as editor at the "Biophysical Economics and Sustainability" journal. It is an interesting journal in terms of its theme, but it is still steeped in the old and obsolete scientific publishing paradigm of hiding papers behind paywalls.
Then, I think I'll drop Twitter, too. Too much noise and too little content. It is not the same for Facebook, which still allows one to present reasonably structured information -- you just have to be careful to avoid censorship, which you can do if you phrase your statements carefully. About Metaverse..... well, I still don't know what it is, but I think that you won't be able to force me into it, not even threatening me with a shotgun.
So, with all this information coming in, what is coming out? A list of what I am doing would be boring for you, but let me just tell you that I am in a burst of activities -- I don't think I've ever been so productive as a scientist as now!
Quickly, I am publishing articles in scientific journals, and I am able to publish articles that I see as relevant (and also sometimes fun. That's the way science should be, I think). Among the latest articles, one is a co-authored study on the concept of a 100% renewable-powered society (spearheaded by Christian Breyer). Another (together with Ilaria Perissi) is a re-examination of the "Mousetrap Experiment" that simulates a chain reaction, shown first in Walt Disney's movie "Our friend the atom." Another paper (still with Ilaria) is about transforming the story of "Moby Dick" into a boardgame. The reviewers seem to be a little perplexed, but I think we'll be able to publish it. And there are more papers in the pipeline.
Then, books. The main one is "Limits and Beyond," a new report to the Club of Rome that reassesses the story of the famous 1972 book, "The Limits to Growth." Then, my previous book, "The Empty Sea" (together with Ilaria Perissi), is being published in Chinese. It will appear in September. More books are in the pipeline, one is titled "The Age of Exterminations." I think that it will not be easy to find a good publisher for this one -- a little gloomy, to say the least! Anyone among readers has suggestions?
And then there are blogs and discussion groups. Let me just say that I am fascinated by the concept of "holobiont" and I am dedicating a lot of time to it. I have a blog on holobionts, that I think I will transfer soon to Substack. Right now, the way I see the concept is in terms of the "extended holobiont" synthesis. It will be published (I hope) as a chapter in a new book edited by Jean Pierre Imbrogiano and David Skribna.
The holobiont is, I think, a new paradigm that can help us frame many of the things that are causing us so much trouble nowadays. Holobionts are the building blocks of the ecosystem, and also of human-made social and economic systems. The whole idea of holobionts is to emphasize collaboration and avoid competition. Holobionts mean sharing, creating, and living. It is the way of all the creatures of the ecosystem. Gaia herself is a giant holobiont -- the master of them all! Then, of course, we are all holobionts ourselves.
And so, onward, fellow holobionts!
