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On Systems and Authority (a-shared-404.com)
1 point by Shared404 on Sept 6, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments



Congratulations. You've rediscovered from first principles the impetus behind the Declaration of Independence.

The answer you were hovering is, is a tenative yes. A system that no longer brings about it's intended ends need be revised or done away with until it does, and that means a dismissal of the authority currently driving The system. The part you haven't really touched on though that is critical to take into account, is what it means for a system and it's authority to be in that state when the components that make up that system exist independently from the system.

Looking at a human composed system, the humans have organized and accepted a state-of-affairs composed of a set of collective delegations of authority. Wipe out that set of delegations, you wipe out the authority, the system is essentially in a reset state (implying a higher order meta-system, but let's not go there).

You are then left with the challenge of developing a predominant consensus amongst the components of the old system in order to set back up the significant network of functional working relationships, and thereby, functional authorities.

All of this being much easier said than done.


> The part you haven't really touched on though that is critical to take into account, is what it means for a system and it's authority to be in that state when the components that make up that system exist independently from the system.

An excellent point

    Looking at a human composed system, the humans have organized and accepted a state-of-affairs composed of a set of collective delegations of authority. Wipe out that set of delegations, you wipe out the authority, the system is essentially in a reset state (implying a higher order meta-system, but let's not go there).

    You are then left with the challenge of developing a predominant consensus amongst the components of the old system in order to set back up the significant network of functional working relationships, and thereby, functional authorities.
It seems to me like the most efficient way to accomplish this would be to temporarily retire a system in order to have time to revamp/rebuild it. In order to do this effectively, you would of course need some temporary hold-over system. This holdover would not need to accomplish all of the functions of the original, but just enough so that things don't fall apart.

I don't really know how this could be implemented in a general way, but for the school system, it could look like:

    1. Schools close and go remote (Already mostly happening due to covid).

    2. School system audited by teachers/professional educators.

    3. After auditing, superfluous elements of the system are removed, and missing elements added.

    4. Re-open, following the new system.
That being said, I'm kind of an idiot, and don't really know what I'm talking about. Also, as you stated:

> All of this [is] much easier said than done.


I wrote this a little while ago. I'm not really sure why, and I don't know how accurate it is.

I'd love to hear anyone else's thought's on this topic.

Also, sorry about the self link.




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