William P. Hall President
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Transcript of William P. Hall President
Evolutionary epistemology versus faith and justified true belief:
― Does science work and can we know the truth?
William P. Hall
PresidentKororoit Institute Proponents and Supporters Assoc., Inc. - http://kororoit.org
[email protected]://www.orgs-evolution-knowledge.net
Atheists Society Lecture: 12 August 2014
Access my research papers from Google Citations
Introduction
Epistemology is a lot more important than a subject for philosophical debate
Humanity faces a range of existential risks, e.g.,– Anthropogenic global warming & climate change
Rising sea levels Global crop failures (e.g., potato famines) Exotic disease pandemics (e.g., ebola)
– Peak oil / minerals– Global scale catastrophe
1851-scale electromagnetic storms Meteor strike
How do we know this? What should we do about them: How do we know what we think we know?
Who do we trust? Does science provide truth? Or a suitable basis for rational action?2
Faith and belief do not provide effective
answers!
9/11 & horrors of the 20th Century
The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center Often suicidally committed perpetrators
can be guided by one or a few charismatic leaders to commit massive outrages against initially comparatively peaceful populations– Hitler, WWII in Europe and the Holocaust– Japan's warlords and WWII in the Pacific– Stalin, terrors and gulags– Mao Tse Tung and the Cultural Revolution– The multitude of smaller "ethnic cleansings" in the
Balkans/Cambodia/Iraq/Iran/Sudan etc…
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Some smaller consequences of extreme beliefs
Historic – some smaller examples self-inflicted death– Joseph Kibweteere's Catholic-based Movement for the
Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (2000 – 800-1000 deaths in Uganda from immolation.). See Venter 2006. Doomsday movements in Africa: Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God)
– Marshall Herff Applewhite's Heaven's Gate Cult (1997 - 39 poisoned). See Zeller (2003). The euphemization of violence: The case of Heaven’s Gate”.
– Jim Jones "Jonestown Massacre" (1978 - 913 deaths in Guyana, mostly from suicide or murder of children (217) by parents). See Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple
Current– Suicide bombers and the Sunni-Shia conflict, murder and
mayhem reported on a daily basis5
How do individual people become weapons of mass destruction?
Contexts:– Psychotic leaders radiating ultimate conviction– Followers’ willingness to abdicate thoughtful
responsibility for own actions Charismatic leaders who convince others they have special
powers, such as the ability to heal, to speak with God directly, or know absolute truth
Willingness to accept on faith (and faith alone) the word of God as proclaimed by some charismatic leader or some purported holy document
Big question: – What leads seemingly ordinary people to sacrifice their
property and lives to follow charismatic leaders?– Easier to accept and believe than to think and
criticize6
Cults and the primacy of true belief
Con jobs performed by almost all religions and cults based on faith and belief
Sola fide (by faith alone - see Wikipedia)– God's pardon for guilty sinners is granted to and
received through faith, conceived as excluding all "works," alone.
– True belief is determined by faith and faith alone Faith in the guru/leader Faith in the designated scriptures
Some will claim confirmatory manifestations to justify true belief or one disconfirmatory case to deny the vast bulk of evidence– Far better to criticize all important claims
How can we combat the Murdoch press??7
My personal problematic
“Your work is not scientific”
Hall, W.P. 1973. Comparative population cytogenetics, speciation and evolution of the iguanid lizard genus Sceloporus. PhD Thesis, Harvard University
Invited review:Hall, W.P. 2010.
Chromosome variation, genomics, speciation and evolution in Sceloporus lizards. Cytogenetic and Genome Research 127 (2-4), pp. 143-65.
Why understanding epistemology became personally important to me
(Evolutiononary biology is not a physical science) PhD Harvard (1973)
Chromosome variation, genomics, speciation and evolution in Seceloporus lizards (cty.) Ernest E Williams & Ernst Mayr
– One of the largest studies of chromosome variation to then– Novel theories challenging Mayr’s geographical speciation model
Poorly received by my advisors, journals & other critics– Referring to my draft thesis, EEW said, “I don’t like it, do it over! ”
[i.e., the thesis, not the research]– [Me] What’s wrong with it? [EEW] “I don’t know.”– The data was so overwhelming he and Mayr still had to pass the work
In 1977-79 while I was a post doc at Univ. Melbourne I summarised my thesis work for peer review and formal publication:
– A U. of Mich. PhD student who earlier assisted both in the field and lab claimed “Your work is unscientific” and re-drafted it
– He failed to understand the logic of my methodology and argument– Was he correct?
I spent most of postdoc studying history and epistemology of science
– Too late for my job prospects as an evolutionary biologist
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Initial learnings from history and philosophy of science (< 1980)
Most philosophers seemed to live in ivory towers, away with the black swans and other figments of imagination
Only two offered practical answers to my problematic (ref Maniglier on Bachelard and the concept of problematic)– Thomas Kuhn (1970), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Historical and sociological analysis Paradigms Normal vs Revolutionary Science(Kuhn helped my understanding, but not relevant for today’s talk)
– Karl Popper (1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1963) Conjectures and Refutations: the Growth of
ScientificKnowledge
(1972) Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (1977 – with J.C. Eccles) The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for
Interactionism (1994) Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem: In
Defence ofInteraction
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Popper 1959, 1963– We can’t prove if we know the truth– There is no such thing as induction– Deductively falsifying a theory is deterministic– Correspondence theory of truth– Make bold hypotheses and try to falsify them –
what is left is better than what has been falsified– Falsifiability demarcates science from pseudoscience
Popper (1972 – “Objective Knowledge”) biological approach– Knowledge is a biological phenomenon– Knowledge is solutions to problems of life– All knowledge is cognitively constructed (Popper is a radical
constructivist!)– Falsification doesn’t work in the real world; claims can be protected by
auxiliary hypotheses (All claims to know must be regarded as fallible)
– Three worlds ontology– “Tetradic schema” / “general theory of evolution” to eliminate errors
and build knowledge Many contemporary philosophers misunderstand Objective
Knowledge– “Objective knowledge” = knowledge codified into/onto a
physical object (DNA, printed paper, pitted CD, magnetic domains)
The early Popper vs. the mature Popperon epistemology
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How do you do “science” with complex and often chaotic systems?
Differences between the life and physical sciences– Deterministic vs stochastic (≠ indeterminate) causation– Physical science
Hypothetico-deductive approaches Theoretical predictions susceptible to near deterministic refutation
– Living systems Causally complex, non-linear, to some degree chaotic Can explain retrodictively but cannot predict deterministically
Comparative approach– Study “natural experiments”
Shared common ancestry controls most variables Look for correlations between possible causes and effects
– Cycles of speculation, criticism and testing Extend scope phylogenetically and range of effects
– Hall (1983) Modes of speciation and evolution in the sceloporine iguanid lizards. I. Epistemology of the comparative approach and introduction to the problem
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1. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION AND INITIAL SPECULATIONS
2. SELECT APPROPRIATE NATURAL ‘EXPERIMENTS’ AND ‘CONTROLS’ TO ILLUSTRATE PROBLEM
3. COLLECT DATA FROM EXPERIMENTS AND CONTROLS
4. DO CROSS-CORRELATION ANALYSES OF N-DIMENSIONALMATRICES TO IDENTIFY SIGNIFICANT PHENOMENA
5. GENERATE MODELS THROUGH ANALOGY, INDUCTION, ETC. WHICH PROVIDE CAUSAL EXPLANATIONS FORSIGNIFICANTLY CORRELATED PHENOMENA
ARECORRELATIONS
FOUND?
6. IS MODEL LOGIC
OK?
SHOULDMATRICES BE RE-
RANKED ?
6a. ISMODEL LOGIC
OK?
8. TEST PREDICTIONS: a. SAME PHENOMENA OF NEW CASES b. OTHER PHENOMENA OF ORIGINAL CASES c. OTHER PHENOMENA OF OTHER CASES
3a. COLLECT OTHERNEEDED DATA
4a. FURTHER CROSSCORRELATION ANALYSESWITH NEW DATA
5a. REVISE AND/OR REPLACEMODEL AS INDICATED BYNEW CORRELATIONANALYSES
9. TEST RECONSTRUCTIONS: DO MODELS PLAUSIBLY
RECONSTRUCT CASESACCORDING TO EVIDENCE?
7. TEST ASSMPTIONS: a. DEMONSTRATIONS b. H D EXPERIMENTS c. SIMULATIONS
OK?
OK?
OK?
AND
10. A NATURAL PHENOMENON HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED AND UNDERSTOOD,BUT THIS UNDERSTANDING SHOULD BE HELD ONLY AS LONG AS ITPROVIDES REALISTIC EXPLANATIONS OF OBSERVATIONS ABOUT NATURE
NO
NO
NO
NO
NOYES
YES
YESYES
YES
YES
YES
NONO
My answer to the problematic:How to understand complex stochastic systems scientifically?• Build, test &
criticize asas many connections aspossible betweentheory andreality
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Scientific thinking in the 20th Century
(skipped for today)See extra slides
Evolutionary epistemology
―A biologically-based theory of the growth of scientific
knowledge
Philosophy, “knowledge”, and “truth”
A-priori assumptions– There is a “real world” with law-like behaviours– The physics of reality causes individual
existences– There are no essences beyond the reality of our
existences– Solipsistic approaches are self-defeating
A claim to know may truly correspond to reality, but… Truth (or falsity) in the real world cannot be proved– Knowledge of the world is not identical to
the real world– Cognition is in the world - it does not
mirror it16
Problems– “Problem of Induction” - any number
of confirmations does not prove the next test will not be a refutation (e.g., Gettier)
– The biological impossibility to know if a claim to know is true
Vision does not form an image of external reality
The brain does not perceive reality, it constructs a model– Perception and cognition are
consequences of propagating action potentials in a neural network.
– Action potentials stimulated by physical perturbations to neurons
– Perception lags reality (see added slides)
Knowledge is constructedImpossible to know whether a claim is true or
not
17 Clock, via Wikimedia
Popper’s probable sources for his biological approach to epistemology
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Charles Darwin (1859) On the Origin of Species Konrad Lorenz – 1973 Nobel Prize (animal
cognition and knowledge) Donald T. Campbell cognitive scientist concerned
with knowledge growth– (1960) Blind Variation and Selective Retention…. (paper)– (1974) Evolutionary Epistemology (chapter)
Popper’s acknowledgements, e.g.,– (1972) Knowledge is solutions to problems of life– (1974) “The main task of the theory of knowledge
is to understand it as continuous with animal knowledge; and … its discontinuity – if any – from animal knowledge” [p 1161, “Replies to my Critics” in The Philosophy of Karl Popper]
Karl Popper's first big idea from Objective Knowledge:
“three worlds” ontology
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Energy flowThermodynamics
PhysicsChemistry
Biochemistry
Cyberneticself-regulation
CognitionConsciousness
Tacit knowledge
Genetic heredityRecorded thoughtComputer memoryLogical artifacts
Explicit knowledgeEncode/Reproduce
Recall/Decode/Instruct
Enable/C
onstrain
Reg
ulate/Control In
ferr
ed lo
gic
Des
crib
e/Pr
edict
Test
Observe
World 1
Existence/Reality
World 2
World of mental orpsychological states and processes, subjective experiences, memory of history
Organismic/personal/situational/ subjective/tacit knowledge in world 2 emerges from interactions with world 1
World 3
The world of “objective” knowledge
Produced / evaluated byworld 2 processes
“living knowledge
”
“codified knowledge
”
“life”
“Epistemic cut” concept clarifies validity and relationships of Popper’s three worlds
Popper did not physically justify his ontological proposal Howard Pattee 1995 “Artificial life needs a real epistemology”
– An “epistemic cut” (also known as “Heisenberg cut”) refers to strict ontological separation in both physical and philosophical senses between:Knowledge of reality from reality itself, e.g., description from construction, simulation from realization, mind from brain [or cognition from physical system]. Selective evolution began with a description-construction cut.... The highly evolved cognitive epistemology of physics requires an epistemic cut between reversible dynamic laws and the irreversible process of measuring [or describing]….
– Different concept from “epistemic gap” separating “phenomenological knowledge” from “physical knowledge”
– No evidence Pattee or Popper ever cited the other One epistemic cut separates the blind physics of world 1 from the
cybernetic self-regulation, cognition, and living memory of world 2 A second epistemic cut separates the self-regulating dynamics of
living entities from the knowledge encoded in books, computer memories and DNAs and RNAs
See Pattee (2012) Laws, Language and Life. Biosemiotics vol. 720
Popper’s second big idea: "tetradic schema“ / "evolutionary theory of knowledge" / "general theory
of evolution"
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Pn a real-world problem faced by a living entity
TS a tentative solution/theory.Tentative solutions are varied through serial/parallel iteration
EE a test or process of error elimination
Pn+1 changed problem as faced by an entity incorporating a surviving solution
The whole process is iterated TSs may be embodied in W2 “structure” in the individual entity, or TSs may be expressed in words as hypotheses in W3, subject to
objective criticism; or as genetic codes in DNA, subject to natural selection
Objective expression and criticism lets our theories die in our stead
Through cyclic iteration, sources of errors are found and eliminated
Tested solutions/theories become more reliable, i.e., approach reality Surviving TSs are the source of all knowledge!
Popper (1972), pp. 241-244
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USAF Col. John Boyd's OODA Loop process wins dogfights and military conflicts
Achieving strategic power depends critically on learning more, better and faster, and reducing decision cycle times compared to competitors.
See Osinga (2005) Science, strategy and war: the strategic theory of John Boyd - http://tinyurl.com/26eqduv
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Popper's General Theory of Evolution + John Boyd
O = Observation of reality; O = Making sense and orienting to observations with solutions to be tested; D = Selection of a solution or making a “decision”
A = Application of decision or "Action" on realityEE = Elimination of errors
Self-criticism eliminates bad ideas before action The real world is a filter that penalizes/eliminates entities that
act on mistaken decisions or errors (i.e., Darwinian selection operates or Reality trumps belief )
TS1
TS2
•••
TSm
Pn Pn+1AOn EE
EE
Selfcriticism
Environmentalcriticism /filter
Reality trumps belief
D
Science as a social processes for
formalizing and managing
knowledge to make it reliable
Vines, R., Hall, W.P. 2011. Exploring the foundations of organizational knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 3.
Hall, W.P., Nousala, S. 2010. What is the value of peer review – some sociotechnical considerations. Second International Symposium on Peer Reviewing, ISPR 2010 June 29th - July 2nd, 2010 – Orlando, Florida, USA
Vines & Hall (2011) – Building personal and explicit knowledge from real-world experience
Knowledge exists at several levels of organization– Personal tacit (W2) Personal explicit (W3)– Organizational common (W3) Organizational Formal
(W3)– Formal integrated in organizational structure/dynamics
(W2)26
Vines & Hall (2011) Turning individual knowledge into reliable and trustworthy organizational knowledge
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Hall & Nousala (2010) - Constructing formal knowledge
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Hall & Nousala (2010) - Growing and formalizing scientific, scholarly and technical knowledge
Building the Body of Formal Scientific Knowledge involves cycles of knowledge building and criticism in four hierarchical levels of cognitive organization:
Existential Reality (W1) 1. Personal (“I”):
observe (W2) orient TTs (W1) EE (iterate) … or … (articulate & share) (W2 & W3)
2. Collaboration Group (“We”) : assimilate (W2) articulate express (W3) EE (W1) (iterate) … or … (submit)
3. SST Discipline Members (“Them” – mostly via W3): peer review (EE) (reject/revise) … or … (publish)
4. Knowledge Society: use … or … evolve/retract Maintain, extend, test society’s Body of Formal Knowledge through use
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Hall (unpub) - Creating & managing formal knowledge
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Take Home
Hall, W.P. 2011. Physical basis for the emergence of autopoiesis, cognition and knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 2: 1-63.
Vines, R., Hall, W.P. 2011. Exploring the foundations of organizational knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 3.
• All claims to know are fallible
• Don’t accept what you are told or read uncritically
• Consider sources• Gurus have vested
interests• Science works pretty
well• Test important claims
where you can
Scientific thinking in the 20th Century
Fundamentalism
See: American Academy of Arts and Sciences' Fundamentalism Project in the Religious Movements 1998 Homepage section on fundamentalism: http://tinyurl.com/moexo3j)
Fundamentalist sectarianism– Elect or chosen membership– Sharp group boundaries– Charismatic authoritarian leaders– Mandated behavioral requirements– Idealism as basis for personal and communal identity– Stress absolutism and inerrancy in their sources of revelation– Belief that truth is revealed and unified – Arcane so outsiders cannot understand communal truth – Members are part of a cosmic struggle – Reinterpret events in light of this cosmic struggle – Demonization of their opposition;– Selective in what parts of their tradition they stress – Attempt to overturn modern culture and its power.
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Henry Blaskowski on Quora
The central 'faith' of science is that the world exists and is observable. Everything else stems from that.
It is a faith in that it is indistinguishable from the "brain in a jar"/Matrix theory of life. No, we can't prove we are not just a brain in a jar, that we are making all this up. So, if we are in that state, science is just false.
But if the world exists, then science requires no faith, just observation [and a bit more].
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20th Century Epistemology tries to explain the power of science to understand world
Plato’s “justified true belief”, Vienna Circle & Logical Positivism– Truth is knowable
Post WWII– Constructivism and radical constructivism
Knowledge is constructed – does not/cannot “reflect” external reality
– The historian Thomas Kuhn
– Anti-Nazi’s Michael Polanyi Karl Popper
– Popper’s “irrationalist” students Imre Lakatos P.K. Feyerabend36
Problems with Logical Positivism
Gettier’s Problems– Any number of confirmations does not prove the next test will
be a refutation
The biological impossibility to know if a claim to know is true– The brain does not perceive the world
Cognition is a consequence of propagating action potentials in a neural network.
Action potentials stimulated by physical perturbations to neurons
– Vision does not form an image of external reality Photons are not the objects reflecting them Photons striking retina are converted into neural action
potentials in primary photoreceptor cells Neurons aggregate in the retina respond to lines,
brightness, changing contrast, movements A mental construction is not identical to the external reality
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Constructivism
Basic constructivist tenants– World is independent of human minds– “Knowledge” of the world is always a human construct– There is little point to be concerned about external reality
because you cannot know what it is Social constructivism
– Social relationships and interactions construct socially held perceptions of reality and knowledge. Truth is what people believe to be true
Radical constructivism– Knowledge cannot be transported from one mind into
another– Individual knowledge and understanding depends on
personal interpretation of experience, not what "actually" occurs.38
Major scientific advances
19th Century– Darwinian theory of natural selection– Maxwell’s equations / theory of electromagnetism
20th Century– Chromosomal/genetic theory of inheritance– Relativity– Atomic theory– Electrodynamics/unification of forces– Quantum theory– Synthetic theory of evolution– Plate tectonics
All based on theoretical speculation tested in practice Prior science largely based on natural history observations
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Human knowledge/dominance of the world appears to grow through time
Pragmatic observation – human power over nature has grown through time
Thomas Kuhn – The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1960)– Key ideas
Paradigms– World views– Disciplinary matrices– Incommensurable usages of same words
Normal science Revolutions
This is constructivist historical interpretation not epistemology
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Time-lines for constructing knowledgefrom reality
(animated slides explained by references below)
Martin, C.P., Philp, W., Hall, W.P. 2009. Temporal convergence for knowledge management. Australasian Journal of Information Systems 15(2), 133-148.
Hall, W.P., Else, S., Martin, C., Philp, W. 2011. Time-based frameworks for valuing knowledge: maintaining strategic knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 1: 1-28. (OASIS Seminar Presentation, Department of Information Systems, University of Melbourne, 27 July 2007)
Slide 42
Information transformations in the living entity through time
World 1
Living systemCell
Multicellular organismSocial organisation
State
Perturbations
Observations(data)
Classification
Meaning
An "attractor basin"
Related information
Memory of history
Semantic processing to form knowledge
Predict, proposeIntelligence
World 2
Hall, W.P., Else, S., Martin, C., Philp, W. 2011. Time-based frameworks for valuing knowledge: maintaining strategic knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 1: 1-28.(OASIS Seminar Presentation, Department of Information Systems, University of Melbourne, 27 July 2007)
Slide 43
Processing Paradigm(may include W3)
Another view
Decision
Medium/Environment Autopoietic system
World State 1
Perturbation Transduction
Observation MemoryClassification
Evaluation
Synthesis
AssembleResponse
Internal changes
Effect action
Effect
Time
World State 2
IterateObserved internal changes
World 1 World 2
Codified knowledge
World 3
Time-based cognitive processes in
observing the world to reach a goal
Based on Boyd’s OODA Loop
From the paper
immutable past
the world
t1
t1 – time of observation
t2
t2 – orientation & sensemakingt4 – effect action
temporal convergence
calendar time
“now” as itinexorablyprogresses through
time
intendedfuture
××
×
divergent
divergent
divergent futures
×stochastic
future
convergent futuretemporal d
ivergence
OODA
t4
t3 – planning & decision
t3
Anticipating and controllingthe future from now
Animated slide Click to advance
immutable past
the world
t1
t2
temporal convergence
calendar time
intendedfuture
××
×
divergent futures
divergent futures
divergent futures
×stochastic
future
convergent futuretemporal d
ivergence
OODA
t4
t3
Perceivable world
Cognitive edge
journey thus far
chart: received and constructed world view that remains extant and authoritative for a single OODA cycle.
perceivable world: the world that the entity can observe at t1 in relationship to the chart. This is the external reality (W1) the entity can observe and understand in W2 (i.e., within its "cognitive edge"
journey thus far: the memory of history at t2 as constructed in W2. Memories tend to focus on prospective and retrospective associations with events (event-relative time) and can also be chronological in nature (calendar time)
chart
“now” as itinexorablyprogresses through
time
recent past: recent sensory data in calendar time concerning the perceivable world at t1 (i.e., observations) the entity can project forward to construct a concept of the present situation (i.e., at t3), or some future situation. Recent past is constructed in W2 based on what existed in W1 leading up to t1.
recentpast
Present: calendar time: when an action is executed.• perceived present: the entity's
constructed understanding in W2 of its situation in the world at time t3;
• actual present: the entity's instantaneous situation in W1 at time t4.
perceived present
Proximal future: the entity's anticipated future situation in the world (W2) at t4 as a consequence of its actions at t1+j, where j is a time-step unit—typically on completing the next OODA cycle. This anticipation is based on observed recent past, perceived present and forecasting of the future up to t4.
OODA
t1+j
proximalfuture
Intended future: the entity's intended goal or situation in the world farther in the future (at tgs, where gs is a goal-state and tgs is the moment when that goal is realised). Intentions are not necessarily time specific but are always associated with an event or goal-state (i.e., the arrival of a set point in calendar time can also be considered to be an event).
tgs
• convergent future: the entity’s mapping of the proximal future against an intended future in which tgs can be specified. t1 and t1+j can also be mapped to tgs and then tgs+1 forecasted in the form of some subsequent goal.• divergent future: a world state where the entity’s actions in the proximal future (t1+j) failed to achieve the world state of the intended future at tgs.Animated slide
Click to advance