the sustainability of western society · 2020. 5. 10. · all human behaviour...

The Sustainability of Western SocietyOn the Reliability of Policy and Finances

Anton F.P. van Putten

HOLLANDPROMOTE.COM

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To my wife Maria

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Anton F.P. van Putten

The Sustainability of Western Society

On the Reliability Of Policy and Finances

All is present, nothing is original,Everything is borrowed from Nature,It should be discovered only.AvP

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Anton F.P. van PuttenP.O. Box 12005602 BE EindhovenThe [email protected]

c© 2008-2009 Stichting Hollandpromote.com. No part of this publication maybe reproduced or distributed in any form of by any means, or stored in a data orretrieval system without prior permission of the author.

ISBN 978-90-813712-1-6

Cover Painting Willem van de Velde, ca 1680.

Typesetting in LATEXby the author.Published in the Netherlands, 2009.

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT page 1PREFACE 3

1 INTRODUCTION 5

2 THE FAILURE RATE OF A PROCESS 132.1 Classes of failure rates 16

3 INFORMATION & KNOWLEDGE 193.1 Energy and Information 203.2 Semantic Information 213.3 Technical information 223.4 Information and Entropy 233.5 Knowledge 233.6 Perception 243.7 A Parametrized Outcome 253.8 Knowledge By Natural Law 253.9 Intuitive Knowledge 273.10 Truth 273.11 Language as communication tool 29

4 HIERARCHY OF OBSERVATIONS 31

5 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROCESSES AND OBSER-VATIONS 335.1 Information In Six Energy Domains 35

6 PROCESSES & SYSTEMS 396.1 Pure Technical Systems 396.2 Mixed Technical and Natural systems 396.3 Natural Systems 406.4 The Input and Output of a System 41

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viii Contents

7 THE PRINCIPLE OF FEEDBACK 437.1 The operand symbol ⊗ 447.2 Economic and Technical feedback 477.3 Intrinsic and Extrinsic Feedback 487.4 Outcome And Target 49

8 THE DUTCH COURT SYSTEM 51

9 ENERGY, POLICY AND FINANCIAL SYSTEMS 559.1 Energy Domains in Political Behaviour 559.2 The energy - time domain in human behaviour 56

10 A DEMOCRACY 6110.1 Critical Events In A Political Process 62

11 A DICTATORSHIP 6711.1 Changing political systems 69

12 A FACTORY ORGANIZATION 7112.1 The organization as system 7112.2 The Principle of Profit and Loss 72

13 STOCK MARKET & BANKING SYSTEM 77

14 WAR AS THE OUTCOME OF A POLITICAL PROCESS 81

15 SOME PROPOSITIONS 83

16 DISCUSSION 85References 87Epilogue 89About the author 91Glossary of Terms 93

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to thank Brian Jones of Jones Translations for correcting myEnglish. All remaining errors are to my account only. I am also greatlyindebted to my wife Maria Eva, and my sons Maurice H.P.M. Van Puttenand Michel J.A.M. van Putten for listening to my everlasting discourse, themany fruitful discussions and their assistance.

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2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

PREFACE

This essay is the result of a comprehensive study started in the seventiesand spread over the subsequent years. The concepts and tools presentedhave shown to be sustainable over time. These concepts and tools are use-ful to analysing explaining today’s systems and processes.

The actual sustainability of society is exposed best in political decision-s. Although rational and legal approaches teach how things apparentlywork, in practice emotions and feelings play a governing role. More thanever mankind is confronted with political and allegedly legal decisions,often with a predictable expiration date, connected to timely information.Information is inevitably connected to energy in an arbitrary type or form.Energy is the beginning and end of all life and all processes, whatever itsorigin. Furthermore; each observation is the representation of an underly-ing concept or event.We analyse the conditions and driving forces, which determine reliabilityand sustainability of decisions, the outcomes and the consequences of a de-cision process. It appears that each process can be expressed in a limitednumber of distinguishable characteristic critical events, with a connectedlikelihood of occurrence. One of the most intriguing questions still is: whatis the basic driving force of human behaviour? Is it power, money, greedor sex? Clearly sexual behaviour is a built- in driving force by the law ofnature. All human behaviour is the parametrized outcome of a process in athree-dimensional energy system, composed of rational, physical and emo-tional energy. Often emotional energy and rational energy are conflictingenergies. No system is sustainable until it has proved to be so.

Any decision can be defined as the parametrized representation of a spir-itual feeling in a given dependent time frame, culture and country.Ultimately,nature law will dictate the reliability of the outcome of a process. This im-plies that absolute truth only exists, in the existence of nature law. The

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4 PREFACE

closer a process accomplishes nature law, the greater the reliability and sus-tainability. The introduced concepts allow an analysis and understandingof any type of process. Using some textual redundancy an attempt hasmade to clarify observations. The concepts explain today’s crisis†.

† When a 5 years old girl (Janneke vP) asks: “I don’t know how to think. How should I think?”, wehave a task to fulfil.

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INTRODUCTION

Mankind has relatively few points of references. Birth and death are un-deniable reference points in mankind’s nature. Further points of referencethroughout history are: the game for power, money and women. It revealsitself in corruption, fraud, dishonesty, hypocrisy, lies, violence, hate, ag-gression, greed, and war. This observed behaviour has caused damagesto society over generations. Over the last 300 years, we have made pro-gresses in technology and science, but no change in human nature. We dohave powerful technical and communication tools. However, society is poi-soned with preoccupation. Observations and comparative studies made atany level between countries, organizations, and religious institutes, giveanswers full of limitations.

Observations are the outcomes of processes connected to emotions, evenin science. Why is it a never-ending story? Is it the law of nature, or are oth-er forces involved? What are the basic driving forces of human behaviour?Daily observations reveal, that when interests of political, economic or in-stitutes pass a certain limit, political and court decisions start to overruleany law and rational reasoning.

In the very end it may cause a complete jamming of the process involved,producing devastation, chaos, or a at least an economic stand still, blockingfurther progress. Procedures, codes, regulations and laws are completelyignored, denied and/or put aside. When great disasters occur then anysystem will reveal its true nature. Earthquakes, ecological disasters, politi-cal conflicts, economic and financial failures, abuse of power, war, terroristattacks and so on, produce the nature of each system connected to the char-acteristics of that given process. Many common questions arise here, e.g.how come, why does it happen and what are the mechanisms behind it?

We notice in any type of process energy is involved, whatever its type.We start our brief study with the following observation:

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6 INTRODUCTION

Each human process occurs in a three-dimensional energy domain consisting ofthree different types of energy, i.e. a physical, a rational and an emotional one.

It will be treated in more detail later on. Of the three, emotional energygoverns most widely. Energy is the beginning and cause of all existenceand it provides us with the potential to dealing with information in all itsrepresentations. Processes may originate from natural processes, from ei-ther mixed natural-technical (man-made) or pure technical systems. It willbe shown that nature law is connected to any type of process even our po-litical and financial systems. Laws of nature provide the only correct toolsto describe and analyse any kind of process.

Point of reference is information. We introduce a firm base for the hier-archy of information and knowledge. Reliability concepts are introducedto describe the actual sustainability of any kind of process whatever is na-ture†. Further, it will be shown that any system can be described with a lim-ited number of critical points . In human behaviour, all actions are based ontwo opposite counteracting types of emotions. Ultimately, illustrating theconcepts and consequences, the characteristics of two counteracting politi-cal systems are investigated: a democracy and a dictatorship .

It is possible to investigate and analyse human behavioural processeswith the help of technical tools retrieved from physics, information theory,control theory and reliability engineering . These tools may provide us abetter insight and understanding how the observed phenomena occur. Itprovides also a possibility to be preventive for undesired outcomes.

Each observation is the representation of the outcome of a process. Con-sidering politics, (Greek: Politik = science or art of government) politics canbe described as the parametrized representation of a spiritual feeling in agive time frame and culture.

Consequently, politics may also be defined as a process connected to spir-itual feelings based on the actual time frame and culture. Each process isconnected to a set of given parameters , characterizing that process, i.e. intime, religion, geographic location, culture, type of society, the education-al level, governmental system, religion and so on. This approach involvesparametrizing all processes, albeit a Court system, a financial, an economi-cal, an educational, religions, social structures, and so on.

Considering observations in more detail, we inevitably have to deal withparametrized representations of phenomena as the outcome of a processembedded in a given structure. We are inevitably dealing with dynamically

† In engineering science Sustainability is defined as Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) when thesystem is repairable. Alternatively, in case of a non-repairable system the Mean Time To Failure isused (MTTF).

INTRODUCTION 7

changing representations in time, dependent of environmental condition-s , cultural bounded traditions, religions and numerous other additionaldetermining parameters. Without being aware of its full implications, weinevitable speak about types of political systems. Societies are processesembedded in a (chosen) political system, sensitive for external and inter-nal influences, threats, conflicts and all other type of possible interference.In its turn, the related outcome of a political process is a function of thesystem’s characteristics and its input quantities. We try to apply the trans-

Fig. 1.1. The Legislature reconvened after a holiday to consider the proposal putforward by the opposition Nationalist Party to set up the new media watchdog.(Taiwan’s Parliament 2005) Taiwan’s parliament is notorious for fistfights, withmany lawmakers enjoying the media attention when brawls erupt.

fer function of a system, to get more insight. In control theory the transferfunction of a system is defined as the ratio of output and input quantities.Generally speaking, the outcome of a process is a function of the systemcharacteristics and its input quantities. What is in between may be consid-ered as a black box.

Therefore, we can model a political system as a dynamically changingprocess with a collection of distinguishable but inseparable components,such as having one or more inputs, one or more outputs, connected with anumber of external and built-in control and feedback systems. Feedback as

8 INTRODUCTION

one of the most fundamental mechanisms in nature and is defined as thequantity of the output of a system, which is fed back into the input of thesystem to obtaining a stable and predefined output for the process desired†.

Each political system is a dynamically changing process with a limitednumber of critical characteristic events of failure. We present political sys-tems not only as processes, which can be modelled with a limited numberof critical characteristic events, but also with a predictable reliability andsustainability, based on its very own system characteristics. We introducehere the concept of a critical event of a system, defined as the characteristicevent of that system, where the process stops functioning properly whenthat event occurs. For instance, when the suspect dies the process stops.When banks go bankrupt, the economic system stops. An underlying con-cept of representation is assigned to each observation. With other words,what is observed is never reality, but is just an illusive parametrized rep-resentation of the underlying (hidden) concept. This formal point of viewis found in many textbooks ranging from Aristotle, and Kant to Heideggerand many others.

Applying this concept to a political system, the process may be consid-ered as the time dependent outcome of a complicated process, producingrepresentations only, in a continuous changing flow of spiritual feelingsand events. Each event will have its own time and cultural dependentparametrized characteristics. Often the underlying reality remains hidden.Consequently, what is observed invariably represents a limited truth, onlywhere the concept of truth still has to be defined. To illustrate this concept, achair is the well-known used example. Thousands of different realizationscan represent a chair. Each representation reveals the same common under-lying concept, “the chair can be seated”. We state therefore that each repre-sentation, whatever its nature, albeit a technical, a mixed natural-technicalsystem, or a pure natural system, is invariably a parametrized representa-tion of an underlying concept. The more closely the representation revealsthe underlying concepts, the more sustainable the representation is. Forinstance, in time a lie connected to an observation of a witness is not sus-tainable. Only the real representation will survive in time. The tools to beintroduced can be applied on representations only. Obviously, it does notmake sense to applying these tools on the underlying concepts, becausethese are by definition just the de-parametrized concepts. When applying

† A simple experiment of an open and closed loop (mixed technical-natural) system with or withoutfeedback is cycling from A to B with either one’s eyes open or closed. Two totally different outputresults are obtained. This will be discussed later on again.

INTRODUCTION 9

Fig. 1.2. Aristotle,384 - 322 BC, Stageira, Chalcidice. Main interests: Physics, Meta-physics, Poetry, Theatre, Music, Rhetoric, Politics, Government, Ethics, Biology.

the tools, a remarkable coherence between totally different systems andprocesses is observed.

We note that the characteristic behaviour of the transfer function of a(linear) system can be described with help of a limited number of charac-teristic points. As previously mentioned the transfer function of a systemis defined as the ratio between output and input†.

We call these characteristic points determining factors or critical eventsand we will discriminate between two different types, i.e. poles (pi) andzeroes (zi)‡.

Poles are assigned to events where the system becomes completely chaot-

† More precisely, the transfer function of system is defined as the ratio of two polynomials, i.e. anumerator and a denominator polynomial multiplied with a constant and equals the ratio of theoutput and input quantity. In a first approach we state that this also holds for non-linear systems.

‡ Definition of a Zero: Zero is the value(s) for z where the numerator of the transfer function equalszero, or the complex frequencies that make the overall gain of the filter transfer function zero. Def-inition of a Pole: a Pole is the value(s) for z where the denominator of the transfer function equalszero, or the complex frequencies that make the overall gain of the filter transfer function infinite.See e.g. Chapter 5, Electronic Measurement Systems, Theory and Practice, A.F.P. van Putten, sec

10 INTRODUCTION

Fig. 1.3. Vincent’s famous Chair by Vincent van Gogh.

ic, infinite or explosive. Zeroes are assigned to events where the system’soutput becomes zero, or stops functioning properly. For technical systemsthe poles and zeroes correspond with a certain frequency.

A good example is found in the human body where a heart attack hastwo failure modes. A failure mode due to heart fibrillation, which corre-sponds with a pole; secondly, a heart stand still which corresponds with azero.

This concept of poles and zeroes has proven its value to other than tech-nical systems. We investigate possible consequences. Directly connectedto the concept of poles and zeroes, is the likelihood, or probability of oc-currence of these possible critical events† With other words, we have toinvestigate the likelihood of occurrence of each pole and zero of the sys-tem. To find an answer, we assign a number of probabilities of occurrence

ed. IOP, 1996, and H. E. Hale, “The Parade of Sovereignties of Testing Theories of Secession in theSoviet Setting”, B.J.Pol S. 30, 31 - 56, Cambridge University Press.

† In technical systems a “critical event” corresponds with a certain frequency.

INTRODUCTION 11

to each pole and zero. We will call this probability, the failure rate of thatevent. Failure rates are determined experimentally with help of statisticalcollected data. For a comprehensive treatment the reader is referred to theliterature [2].

Each process is characterized with a limited number of critical events:Poles, are the events where the process becomes infinite, and zeroes are theevents where the process becomes zero.

The failure rate is defined as the reciprocal value of the expected aver-age time passing between two failures, for that specific process or morespecifically, for that given critical event†. Finally, the failure rate can bedetermined for a complete system, but also for each component of that sys-tem separately. We will discuss this concept here in some more detail. Westate that each critical event has a likelihood of occurrence. Is this analysisworthwhile? We think so, when we apply the concepts to the actual pol-icy makers, worldwide bank crisis and other type of systems of arbitraryorigin. Our investigation continues.

Fig. 1.4. ....You are being flown by an Automatic Pilot directed by an AutomaticNavigator. Everything within this Fail-Safe structure is so carefully engineeredthat nothing can go wrong, Go wrong, go wrong... go.

† For many processes the failure rate 1/λ equals MTBF.

12 INTRODUCTION

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THE FAILURE RATE OF A PROCESS

The failure rate, denoted as λ(t), is defined as the average number of fail-ures per unit of time, for a given event. It may be expressed in failures perhour, per day, per week, per month, or per year. Hence the failure rate isexpressed per unit of time. It has been verified experimentally, that for each(sub) system the failure rate distribution, λ(t), as a function of time, showsthe same bathtub curve. In practice the graphical representation of the fail-ure rate is divided into three different regions as is shown in Figure 2.1.

The bath tub curve can be used for any kind of system or process, i.e.technical, mixed natural-technical system or pure natural systems. Consid-er a western-based civilization as shown in Curve 1, compare with a lessdeveloped civilization in Curve 2, and finally, with a country in a war sit-uation as illustrated in Curve 3. We distinguish three curves with threedifferent failure rates. In Curve 3 people are subjected to sudden occurringevents as bomb explosions, as experienced in war situations. We describethe following regions.

Region I. Here λ is a function of t and will decrease with time, because inthis region, the so-called “burn in” period, a lot of failures can occur. Thisis often the case when a new system is a brand new design and just man-ufactured. This region is also called the “infant mortality” or early-failureregion. After a certain time t1, λ appears to become a constant for an elon-gated period of time and is no longer a function of time only.

Region II. The failure rate λ, appears to be a constant for a certain peri-od. It is called useful life period or normal operating region. In this region,an exponential distribution behaviour is applicable. In western society the

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14 THE FAILURE RATE OF A PROCESS

Fig. 2.1. Examples of three “Bathtub Curves” or failure rate distributions for threedifferent natural populations in three different levels of developmental and envi-ronmental conditions as a function of time. Note that λ is a constant under normaloperating conditions for a limited period only in units per time. This is called theuseful life period. The depicted failure rate (3), illustrates a population / personwith a fatal occurring process ending into a disaster, as e.g. a war condition. Inthe different regions different probability density functions are applicable. Notethat for a human being, the average total life cycle is about 4000 weeks and theoperational economic life cycle is about 1500 -2000 weeks only!

THE FAILURE RATE OF A PROCESS 15

human economic life cycle is about 2000 weeks.

Region III. Here the so-called wear out period, starts at the time λt2,where the failure rate, λ has been doubled. The wear-out region is definedas the beginning where the failure rate becomes twice the failure rate of theuseful-life region. In this period, wear out problems show-up with increas-ing frequency. The failure rate increases gradually in time up to a certainmaximum limit where the system stops functioning. Actually, it is the re-gion where the economic, the physical and / or the technical life cycle ends.

It is assumed that, to all systems the concept of a failure rate can be as-signed†. The three different regions in Figure 2.1, show clearly, that λ(t) is afunction of time. Due to large differences in living circumstances and envi-ronmental conditions, large differences in shapes of failure rate curves areobserved. However, we notice that our physical existence is subject to thesame concept. Actually, natural law , hidden in our genes, dictates the fail-ure rate of our cells! In western society the average maximum physical lifecycle of human existence is about 4000 weeks, where the average economiclife cycle is about 1500 - 2000 weeks.

As noted in Figure 2.1, three different populations are depicted with theirassigned representations of failure rate due to different environmental con-ditions. In some countries, the useful life period does not exceed 27,5 years.In Western European countries and Japan, the useful life period exceeds 70to 80 years, due to a high level of health care, improved infra structural andsocial conditions.

The reciprocal dimension of 1/λ represents time (weeks, months, years).Different environmental conditions generate large differences in failure rate.Under conditions of war, famine, flooding and earthquakes the failure ratewill increase dramatically. For this planet, it is still a shocking observationthat different countries show such large differences in failure rates. Notethat the failure rate curve, λ3, in Figure ?? represents an event λ(t) = t3ending up in a disaster comparable with a traffic or war incident.

The maximum average physical cycle of human life is 4000 weeks, wherethe useful operational economic life cycle is about 1500 -2000 weeks.

Today the failure rate is influenced into large extend due to changingenvironmental conditions of poisoning effects in food and soil, most likelyresulting in a substantial increase in cancer density, which can be defined

† For many classes of systems, the exponential failure rate distribution is applicable, in particular inthe normal life region.


as the number of cancer patients per 100.000 persons‡. Human existence issubject to a failure rate following a bathtub curve.

2.1 Classes of failure rates

When we want to determine the failure rate more precisely, taking intoaccount the applicable environmental conditions, then the normal failurerate, λ(t) should be multiplied by a class factor. This is illustrated in Ta-ble 2.1, which easily can be refined and extended with help of availablestatistical data from official sources and data banks. Furthermore, the dif-ferent conditions can be subdivided into different quality classes with theirrespective factors.

Note that reliability is defined as the probability that a system will stillfunction within its predefined specifications after a certain predefined timeof operation. Hence reliability, R(t) is a probability function, and may alsobe defined as quality over time. For many technical systems in the normaloperation region an exponential function is applicable.

In reliability engineering it is well known that each type of system hasa limited useful -economiclife cycle. For instance, a motorcar has a use-ful economic life period of about 5000 operational hours total, an aircrafthas a useful life period of about 40.000 operational hours, when prescribedmaintenance procedures are followed. After this period the system stillmay function from a technical point of view, but costs of maintenance mayexceed a certain predefined limit. Table 2.1 reflects a table of environmentalclasses and can be used for making reliability calculations and risk analysis.

A human being has an average economic life cycle of about 30 - 40 years(1500 - 2000 weeks) and appears to be a function of the connected political,social and cultural system the person lives in. For physical - natural sys-tems, a further refinement is possible introducing quality factors for skills,physical condition, educational level, training and political system, and alevel assigned to the potential of being able to performing specific tasks.

After an incurred serious illness and recuperation afterwards, the failurerate is again reduced. To a certain extend a human being is a repairable sys-tem. A decrease in failure rate holds when circumstances and living con-ditions are changed, the infant mortality decreases, because of improving

‡ The following statement is made here: many diseases are caused by malfunction or damaging of theintrinsic human feedback system. An excellent example is the constant body temperature control.See also Chapter 7.

2.1 Classes of failure rates 17

Table 2.1. Examples of classes and multiplying factors for λ for differentenvironmental conditions.

Description of quality class Qi Multiplication factor λ

Traffic: motorway, railway, air 10-70Home 50Laboratory 30Office 20Military 150War theatre 10,000High stress working conditions 400Famine, lack of water and food 800Earthquakes 10,000Financial organizations 100-4000Extreme sports 250

system characteristics by improving living conditions. This can be seen inunderdeveloped countries, when environmental conditions are improved.

Once we know what the critical points of a system are, the failure ratecan be changed with appropriate measures and precautions. This holds forevery system, albeit a technical, a mixed natural-technical system or a nat-ural system. It is known that over 85% of all errors and disasters are causedby human failures i.e. at the management level. It is interesting to observethat system and design errors are only revealed, when sudden changes incircumstances occur. For each process in reliability and risk management,the most important question is: “what are the critical events, what is therelikelihood of occurrence and what are the consequences when the systemfails?” Therefore, the most critical question is: ”What are the consequenceswhen a critical event occurs and the system fails?”

The maxim “pay now, save later” has been demonstrated dramaticallymany times by the damage and loss of reputations and lives, when this ruleis neglected.

When doing so, the connected reliability or likelihood of occurrence ofeach pole and zero can be calculated. By determining the ranking of thereliability in magnitude, we can make predictions about reliability and sus-tainability of a whole process. As will be shown this holds also for politicaland financial systems. However, the first next important issue is to sort outthe concepts of information used in so many different circumstances; oftengenerating a lot of confusion.


Reliability and risk analysis are fully grown disciplines, applied in manydifferent disciplines ranging from hardware to software and from engineer-ing to organizations.

In practice a difference is made between economic and technical reliabil-ity. Economically reliability is defined, where the system maintenance costsurpass a certain predefined limit. Technical reliability is defined as theprobability where the system is running out of its predefined specificationsand time. The relationship between quality and reliability is expressed injust a simple definition: reliability is quality over time, R(t) = Q/t, wherequality is defined as the collective of specifications of a system at a certainmoment, t. For many classes of systems, the exponential failure distribu-tion is applicable, in particular in the normal life region.

Fig. 2.2. “It’s only a random failure sir! It will never happen again”.

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INFORMATION & KNOWLEDGE

Our society has become an information society. Every action is based ondealing with information and no decision is taken without having collectedthe right amount of information firstly. It is even worse, we have becomecompletely dependent on electronic systems dealing with all these abun-dance of information. So we have to start where it should start giving adefinition for information.

Information is defined as anything what increases our image or knowl-edge of a source sending that information (MacKay). It can also be saidinformation is anything which decreases the uncertainty about the sourceproducing that amount of information. The concept of uncertainty impliesthat each statement contains a probability or likelihood of correctness of theinformation presented. Performing measurements, uncertainty can be de-fined in a mathematical form with help of a standard deviation on a sampleof measurements or observations. Information is something that increasesour image and knowledge of the source producing that information. Or

Information is anything that diminishes the uncertainty† about the source providing thatinformation.

In information theory the question is when a zero is sent, what is the like-lihood that a zero will be received and so on. Then conditional probabilitiescome into scope, but again a certain amount of uncertainty is involved. Inessence, information and knowledge is the same concept although knowl-edge is defined here as personally connected information.

Processing of information implies the collection , the recognition, the re-trieval, the storage, the calculation, and the representation of information

† Performing measurements, uncertainty can be defined in a mathematical form.

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20 INFORMATION & KNOWLEDGE

in any arbitrary (energy) form. We will make no restriction whatever thenature of the source is. In any working system a certain amount of in-formation is present. Without any energy present, no information can beprocessed. It is stated that information constantly is connected to a type ofenergy carrier . The smallest known energy carriers are electrons and pho-tons. So far how information is connected to an electron or photon is notknown‡.

3.1 Energy and Information

Energy and information are connected entities. So, in the beginning therewas energy and energy is the beginning and the end of all being.

Energy, by definition, is something that can perform labour. Howev-er, the question what energy is in its true nature is not answered here. Amore basic approach says - energy is connected to vibration of “matter”, orchange in its broadest sense. Information and Energy are connected enti-ties; without energy no information exists.

The level of frequency may change over a wide range. For instance, inthe vibration of a piano string, the vibration of mass is involved, which cor-responds with a certain amount of audible energy in a frequency of 10 - 15kHz. In light, energy is involved corresponding with a given frequency (=vibration) of energy in the electromagnetic field at a given light frequency,e.g. blue - green light at 6*1014 Hz. In solid state material the atoms arevibrating corresponding with their intrinsic temperature, which representsa certain amount of thermal energy. Hence, at a temperature of zero Kelvinno thermal energy is present. In the nucleon of an atom other energy rep-resentations are present and so on. Energy is the vibration of matter orchange of matter in its broadest sense.

Concerning information in general, two other distinctions are made. First-ly, we have to deal with semantic information , which is language related.Secondly, we distinguish technical information as it occurs in technical in-formation systems, such as in computers, communication systems and inchannels for information transport where information is bound to an ener-gy carrier such as an electron or photon as previously mentioned.

‡ See also Wikipedia for a comprehensive description of information. The question how informationis connected to an energy carrier is not answered. Electron charge: 1.6 · 10−19C with mass: 6.1 ·10−31 kg.

3.2 Semantic Information 21

3.2 Semantic Information

Information contained in a language is called semantic information. Se-mantics is defined as the formal study of a meaning in a language. Meaningcorresponds with an amount of information, containing a certain message,which can be understood as decreasing uncertainty. Semantic informationis best illustrated with help of an example. In the following sentence themessage:

“the baker bakes brown bread early in the morning”

has a meaning and contains information concerning a baker, the type ofbread he is baking, and at what time he is doing it.

“The coach lost a set”

is another example with over one hundred different meanings, whichcorrect information can only be retrieved in the given context.

Complying with a given language, the letters on the page show a well-defined regularity and the semantic information is recognized by the se-quence in which the letters and words appear on paper. At the very mo-ment the information is received, it can be said that this information re-duces uncertainty of the source, sending this information.

If the same letters appear at random , all meaning of the sentence is lostand interpretation is no longer possible. It is then said the amount of se-mantic information or redundancy has become zero. Redundancy in a se-mantic sense means the surplus of information involved in the message.This is exactly what a perfect encryption code should imply, no redun-dancy left, no information left and no way of retrieving the informationagain. We will illustrate the concept of language redundancy with help ofthe same simple example. Consider the following sentence:

“N t mrng t bkr bks brwn brd”

Although in this sentence all vowels are missing, it is still possible to readthis sentence. With other words, in most words and sentences, the messagecan still be recognized, because of the redundancy present. It is noticedthat, so far known, no quantitative measure for semantic information isavailable. A message without any redundancy left is completely encrypt-ed. This issue reveals in a nutshell the conflict of interest between secretservices of governments, on the one side, and crime organizations and thepublic and companies who want to protect their industrial property right-s, (IPR), on the other side. The syntax of a language is dealing with thecorrectness of the used spelling and grammar rules.


Fig. 3.1. A communication system existing of an information source, a transportchannel and a receiver. Information can be transported in any type of energy form.Usually, in the transport channel, one connection is for information transport, andone is for control purposes, which act also as a kind of feedback system. Notethat a time difference continually exists between generating the information andreceiving the information.

3.3 Technical information

A technical communication system, consisting of a source (sender) and areceiver is illustrated in Figure 3.1. Now the concept of information shouldbe treated differently. With help of a simple telephone set all the relevantaspects can be demonstrated easily. Here we have to deal with technicalinformation, related to representations of energy, which can be processedby technical systems. Today, the information is transported and processedpreferably in an electrical and / or in an optical form. Further it can beeither analog , which means information having a continuous characterin time, or in a digital shape, which means information having a discretecharacter in time.

Technical information can be quantified and it is then based on the num-ber of a limited number of independent degrees of freedom, in the givensource of information. This is called structural information and it is ex-pressed in logons. In its turn, each logon can be expressed in metric orselective information. Usually, metric information is connected to energyand therefore it is expressed in a dimensionless number called metrons. Se-lective information is related to the content of the message existing of the m

possible symbols used in that system, each with a probability of occurrence.When a certain possible event occurs, a limited amount of information is

generated or received. In information theory, a smallest amount of selectiveinformation is defined, based on a logarithmic scale. . Obviously, this ap-proach contains a completely different treatment with regards to semanticinformation. An extensive treatment is beyond the scope of this study.

In technical system we also have to deal with redundancy, but then theconcept has a different meaning. In technical systems redundancy mean-s installing multiple systems to get systems technically superfluously toguaranteeing a minimum reliability and just increasing reliability for safety

3.4 Information and Entropy 23

reasons. For technical systems the concept of redundancy is best illustrat-ed with an example. In an aircraft four power supplies are installed andtwo board computers All separate systems are able to perform the samefunctions. When one of the systems is failing, the other redundant systemtakes over all functionality performing all required functions. In technicalsystems implementing redundancy increases reliability and it is expressedin numbers.

Calculations are based on experimentally collected data of failure ratesand probability calculations. An introduction in reliability theory is beyondthe scope of this treatment here. The interested reader is referred to chapterfive in reference [2]

3.4 Information and Entropy

In 1948 Shannon showed an interrelationship between information and thebasic concept of chaos. In this way he was the first to connect the ideaof information and entropy. Complying with the second law of thermo-dynamics , in a closed system, the increase in entropy is a measure of theenergy that is not available for work in a thermodynamic process. Entropycan also be defined as a hypothetical tendency for the universe to attain astate of maximum homogeneity.

It is also said, each closed system is striving towards a maximum ofchaos, corresponding with the minimum amount of energy in that systemconsidered. To enlighten this further, entropy is also defined as a measurefor chaos, or disorder. Analogue to entropy, information is quantified in thesame way, based on the uncertainty of possible events and its probability ofoccurrence and it can be calculated in the same way as defined for selectiveinformation is done. However, we will leave this subject here, because it isbeyond the scope of this treatment†.

3.5 Knowledge

Here, we want to introduce the concept of knowledge and look at the inter-relationship with information. Knowledge can be defined as anything whatreduces uncertainty of a system, or source producing that knowledge. It isthe same concept as information. Some prefer to make a separate defini-tion, stating that knowledge is personified information. Hence, it is also

† C.E. Shannon and Warren Weaver; The mathematical theory of Communication, 12th ed. London,Un. of Linois Press, 1974.


defined as information gained by either; study, experience or the fact orstate of knowing; or, something that is or may be known.

Knowledge is otherwise defined as the body of truths or facts accumu-lated in the course of time, or the sum of what is known. However, thefirst definition completely covers the concept of information as reducingthe uncertainty of a system, of a source, or of a given process. For ourtreatment, it is now extremely important to make some other distinctionsto avoid a great deal of confusion. Knowledge is also defined as personalbound information. We define knowledge as personal bound information.

3.6 Perception

Perception is defined as the personified intuitive recognition or appreciation,or insight retrieved from an observation. Subsequently, based on this def-inition, it is then possible to define perceptual knowledge as parametricknowledge, which is completely dependent on by whom, where and whenthe information is collected and interpreted. Note that a parameter is de-fined as a constant or variable term in a mathematical function that deter-mines the specific form of the function but not its general nature. Whenwe apply this concept to making an observation, then it is said each ob-servation is subject to parametrization. Hence we define perception as thepersonified intuitive appreciation of an observation. The next exampleswill illustrate the concept.

When people observe a traffic accident and they are asked for a writtenstatement of what exactly was observed, each of the declarations shall d-iffer into various aspects. Noted differences may be time of observation,the point and angle of view they had when the accident occurred, the realcause, colours, weather conditions and so on. The same holds for the en-vironmental conditions, when the observations are made. We distinguishpersonal bound parameters (conditions) and environmental bound param-eters. (conditions) Consequently, witness statements are subject of per-ception and are based on the physical condition, the age of the observers,and many other individually connected parameters and the environmentalphysical conditions during the observation. We conclude, the informationcontent of the witness statements is completely parametrized, or put alter-natively, is fully personified. Note that in science we want to de-personifythe observation.

3.7 A Parametrized Outcome 25

3.7 A Parametrized Outcome

A classic and famous example demonstrating, the parametrization of ob-servations is the process of making of a silver bowl for worshipping. Inhis ”Die Technik und die Kehre”, Heidegger he described the goal of thecraftsman to making a silver bowl for worshipping based on observationsAristotle made†.

However, the first question to be answered what is the essence of being abowl? Is it the material the bowl is made from, is it its shape, size, weight,colour, or the time frame the bowl is made in? Obviously, not. The questionis what makes it a bowl for worshipping and not just an ordinary table bowlfor keeping fruit? The answer is not straightforward.

It should have an interconnection with the underlying concept of beinga bowl for worshipping purposes. A basic essence is, it can contain some-thing, but it is not the complete description, but just one of the parametersof being a bowl for worshipping. The general question remains: What isthe essence of any representation? Apparently, it is never the representa-tion itself as observed. All observed parameters as shape, material, weight,colour, size, etc., are measurable quantities, describing the bowl in greateror lesser detail. It is then a collection of assigned independent parametersdescribing the specifications of the bowl. For this reason, the materializedoutcome of each process is a parametrization of an underlying concept. Wedefine that any observation is the parametrized representation of an un-derlying concept Any observation is the parametrized representation of anunderlying concept.

To find out what the essence of an observation is, all parameters describ-ing it, should be eliminated. This de-parametrization process will be treat-ed in some detail again. We will make a distinction at three different levels:1) the perceptual level, 2) the science or knowledge level and 3) the meta-physical (conceptual) level. Firstly, knowledge by natural law should beconsidered.

3.8 Knowledge By Natural Law

Natural laws are given by nature and are completely independent of hu-man’s observations and reach. Natural laws of gravitation, and Electro-

† Causa Materialis, an input quantity, which determines the type of material of which the scale willbe made. In this example, the chosen material is silver; Causa Formalis are the chosen means,the technological process and the tools to modify the silver material to make, in this example thatsilver scale; Causa Finalis is the aim by which the scale is determined in shape and material. CausaEfficiens is the energy and human labour capital, which must be supplied into the system to activaterealize the process. Note that in quantum mechanics spontaneous events without cause exist.


magnetism cannot be changed by human intervention. It just exists. We de-fine knowledge retrieved from nature, as de-personified conceptual knowl-edge. All parameters describing the perceptual level of the observationare removed. It is knowledge collected, discovered, found in natural lawand it is made totally independent of humans interpretations and percep-tion. However, in the scientific arena the observation remains parametrized(quantified) based on the reference units applied, as defined e.g. in thewell-known Systeme Internationale d’Unite. (SI-system).

Knowledge attained from natural law is de-personified information.

Natural law cannot be changed by human intervention, or by acclama-tion†. They are the given boundary conditions we are living in. Discover-ing natural law is called science. When a relativistic process is involved,and the observer becomes a part of that system’s relativistic process, thenthe outcome may be observer dependent. It still holds to making these ob-servations and so it is still subject to natural law, because the observer be-comes a part of it. Under these conditions, the observer itself has becomepart of the underlying physical mechanism, process or experiment.

In science, with an increasing level of de- parametrization, the observa-tions become closer to the essence of the underlying concepts. However,each observation has its limitations; each observation invariably contains acertain amount of uncertainty.

Scientific knowledge is gained performing research, modelling, execut-ing simulations and doing many elongated experiments. For validationreasons, knowledge must be repeatable and totally independent of the ob-server’s interpretation. In practice, a physical model is just a representationof what is observed and will describe in greater or lesser accuracy naturallaw with help of, mathematical expressions and chosen units, in order todiscover the essence. In time, new experiments may accomplish a closerand closer proving of natural law and so in time (scientific) observationsare often subject to improvements‡.

A well-known example of a nature law is Newton’s gravitational law.Being on this planet and not in a space station, still apples fall downwardfrom a tree towards earth, wherever the observation is made on earth. This

† In the early thirties, a German allegedly scientific committee declared Einstein’s discovery of thetheory of relativity (1917) as a false theory, because Einstein was Jewish.

‡ Good examples are also found in Court processes where DNA techniques have delivered new in-sights in victim and offender.

3.9 Intuitive Knowledge 27

observation is completely independent of the observer. The gravitationalconstant slightly changes, as a function of the geographic position, but doesnot alter the essence of the concept of gravitation§.

An interesting equivalent describing the relationship between energyand mass, is Einstein’s famous relationship E = mc2, in which m is mass, Eis energy, and c is the velocity of light.. The expression reveals an existingequivalence between energy and matter and it is verified by experimen-t many times. This equivalence belongs to first principles of nature, notinvented here by anybody, but discovered and revealed from natural law.

3.9 Intuitive Knowledge

Another source of knowledge is intuition. Intuition is defined as the direc-t perception of truth , or a fact, independent of any reasoning process. Hence,intuitive knowledge can be defined as: knowledge gained from intuition.. Itis the process found in an artist, a composer, an inventor, or sometimes ascientist, who knows straightforward how to paint, write, compose, andto make things without any consciousness reasoning. In such a conditionthe person just knows how to do it. An intensive training period to gainthe skills needed, may be part of the educational period. Intuition is al-so the way, how inventions are born; incidentally as just being all at oncethere. Sometimes, many years later the explanation “why” follows and itthen appears that, some essence of concept was found accidentally com-plying with natural law. Some people call this soul’s knowledge and in thisrespect such feelings are soul’s language.

3.10 Truth

Based on the concepts above, we can discuss truth more precisely now.Several different definitions reveal the concept. Truth is defined as: theactual state of a matter . It can also be defined as: the conformity with the factsor reality, or it is defined as: a verified indisputable fact, or proposition. Moreclosely to Heidegger, it says, It is the corresponding set of parameters describingthe actual characteristics of the representation of the observation.

So science and natural law are part of truth. Just a simple observationmay be the truth, but need not necessarily be qualified as science, e.g. theobservation the traffic light is red, may be the truth, but is not necessarily ascientific observation.

§ Gravity is still one of the less understood natural laws. To get more insight in this phenomena largedetectors are built.


In science the observation is repeatable and independent on a person’sinterpretation, place, culture or so forth. At the level of truth, everybodyagrees with the observations made. It can also be said that truth is de-personified knowledge.

In general, truth is the parametrization of an observation, but as a condi-tion, the group of parameters connected to a personified interpretation, areeliminated. Once the perceptual knowledge is gained, it can be convertedinto truth by eliminating all personified parameters connected to the obser-vation made. Note that not all truth is science, but a scientific observationmay be called the truth†.

Truth is the actual state of matter

OR

Truth is the corresponding set of parameters describing the actual char-acteristics of the representation of the observation.

The discovery of super-conductivity in 1911 by the Dutch scientist Kamer-ling Onnes is also an interesting example of accidentally and partially intu-itive gained knowledge. No less than 46 years later, in 1957, Bardeen, Coop-er and Schiefer, (the BCS theory) explained -partly- the phenomenon ofsuper conductivity, with help of the theory of quantum mechanics, whichhad became available. In general super-conductivity is still not fully un-derstood.

Intuitive knowledge is either perceptual knowledge and/or knowledgediscovered complying with natural law and often will be present in a mixedoutcome. Care should be taken, what is unexplainable today, might be ex-plained tomorrow. The statement “it does not exist, because I cannot un-derstand it”, can never be justified.

As an example, consider a magician performing a nice illusive and aston-ishing trick. Intentionally, the trick will not be understood, but must havea cause. Our senses mislead us and we are unable to grasp what really ishappening. Still the effect is there and of course, an explanation exists, butthe magician intentionally will not reveal it, because then the illusion will

† That Truth exists can be shown with help of Boolean expressions: the correctness of an observationof a certain event ’O’, plus (= OR) the in-correctness of the same observation ’O’ is always one andis true. The correctness of the observation time (= AND) the simultaneous incorrectness of the sameobservation is always zero and cannot be true. Note that OR and AND is an operand

3.11 Language as communication tool 29

be destroyed and the entertainment effect is lost.

It is still astonishing some people state: “everything is perception, factsdo not exist”. It is claiming the principle of doubt, instead of presentinga justified scientific doubt. Obviously, an extreme and silly proposition inCourt sometimes used by lawyers, inherently denying their own existence!

3.11 Language as communication tool

Language is an example of a fully parametrized processing tool used forexchanging information between entities. Languages belong to the poor-est tools available to express and communicate our thoughts and feelings.Why is the concept of an apple in French une pomme, in English an apple,in German ein Apfel, in Dutch een appel, in Spanish la manzana, each timerepresenting the same underlying concept of being an apple. Obviously,language is a fully parametrized representation tool to communicate, to s-tore and to exchanging information. Language is one of the most unreliabletools for communication revealing truth.

Language is the most unreliable tool for communication.

Behind a given language representation, we expect an unambiguous state-ment, but in practice, it is usually not. For instance, the simple sentencehere repeated, consisting of five different words: the coach lost a set, mayhave over one hundred different meanings! For each language, an essentialrequirement is full compatibility between sender and receiver, otherwiseno exchange of information will occur. Practically, here again each spokenand written language is a parametrization of concepts. In programminglanguages, one is aiming to dealing with commands which must be unam-biguously correct when used. In Table 3.1, the different levels and types ofinformation are summarized. It is possible to make a distinction betweenrelative truth and absolute truth dependent whether a reference system ispresent or not.

A nice example illustrates the concept. A guest speaker presents a lec-ture to a Chinese speaking audience in the Chinese language. Obviously,the audience will understand what is being said, listening and reacting ac-cordingly. The speaker suddenly changes into speaking the English lan-guage. The audience will experience this as a shock, information transferstops immediately, the audience gets totally confused hearing sound with-


Table 3.1. Some definitions of information and knowledge in language andtechnical systems.

Type of Information Characteristics

Information Something that reduces uncertainty of thesource or system the information is retrievedfrom, or something that increases theknowledge of the receiver. See also knowledge

Semantic information The meaning or information content of aword or sentence in a certain language

Technical information See selective informationStructural information The number of independent degrees of

freedom in a given source of information (logons)Selective information Connected to the content of a message of m

possible symbolsKnowledge same as information, but may be personifiedPerceptual knowledge Parametric knowledge as something that

reduces uncertainty of a system based onperception by an observer, or the personifiedintuitive interpretation of an observation

Knowledge by natural law Information retrieved from natural law,independent of the observer

Background knowledge All information gathered before a certain timeForeground knowledge All information gathered after a pre-chosen timeIntuitive knowledge The direct perception of truth or fact

independent of any reasoningTruth 1) the actual state of matter as a verified

fact or de-personified knowledge, not subject tohuman perception; 2) the corresponding set ofparameters describing the characteristics of therepresentation. Relative truth is truth relative to achosen reference frame

Meta-physical knowledge Information not subject to any physical lawsknown so far or de-personified verification

out meaning. The transport of information is blocked. Change back and theinformation flow continues. Just try it and the experience is a sensation.

4

HIERARCHY OF OBSERVATIONS

Our basic ability is to making observations with help of our five senses: vi-sion , smell, hearing, taste, and touch. It is possible to outline the concept ofobservations in a kind of hierarchy. We have noticed already, that all obser-vations are personified. What is really behind the observation, but neverseen, is the representation of the underlying concept. This is illustrated ina kind of hierarchy as shown in Figure 4.1.

At the observational level all distinguishable parameters have to be spec-ified. With help of a scrutinizing scientific process, all personified param-eters can be eliminated and only the objective parameters are left. Herewe enter the arena of science or truth level, which may be absolute or rel-ative, dependent whether there is a reference frame chosen. Ultimately, atthe meta-physical level, all parameters are eliminated and the underlyingexistence of the concept is left.

Each observation has two sets of parameters, firstly the parameters con-nected to that event or object itself, denoted with X1,2,···l and secondly theset of parameters connected to the observer Op,c,t,r,... In science it is the aimto eliminate all parameters connected to the observer, which is realized byperforming experiments.

Ultimately what should remain, is scientific truth, based on a chosen ref-erence system, where all personified parameters are eliminated.

For instance, making pictures under two different viewing angles of thesame subject produce totally different parametrized results. Additional ex-periments only increase the reliability of the observation or decrease theuncertainty of the source, the subject, the information is retrieved from.

The reliability of a system, a process, an observation or a statement,whatever its nature, can be calculated with dedicated software. programs

31

32 HIERARCHY OF OBSERVATIONS

Fig. 4.1. Hierarchy of different parametrization levels in making observations. Atthe perception level all parameters are involved, i.e. personal, individual, scientificand truth level parameters, denoted with two groups of parameters 1) O p, c, r, t,..and 2) X1 . Xn. At the scientific and truth level the de-personified parametersremain denoted with X1.X, only. The meta-physical level O, represents the hiddenabsolute reality of being, where no further de-parametrization is possible.

using probability theory and Boolean algebra. For an introduction in relia-bility theory the reader is referred to Chapter 5 of Reference [2].

5

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROCESSESAND OBSERVATIONS

As previously stated, all things start with energy as the beginning and endof all being. Processes only occur when energy is present. Additionally,information is, without exception, connected to an energy carrier. How canwe manage to achieve a grasp of understanding, for the energy presentand the information processed? This is why we introduce the idea of sys-tems and processes. But how we deal with all types of feelings, connectedto process, is also a question to be answered. So we state here that eachobservation is the outcome of a process.

Each observation is the outcome of a process.The relationship between observations, energy, processes, information

and systems is introduced with help of some basic concepts retrieved fromcontrol theory. A mathematical treatment is omitted here. We start, to-wards each observation, with an assigned originating process. Comparethis with the law of cause and effect. This happens at two different levels:firstly, making observations is a process inside the observer; secondly, theobject observed is the result of a process. The next step a system is assignedto each process, which makes it possible to model that given process. Mak-ing observations is a process inside the observer.

Reversing this approach means what is observed is continuously the out-come of a process of the observer. Subsequently, to describe, model andanalyse processes, a system description is required and needs to be con-nected to it. A process is defined as: a series of actions, which is able totransform the input variables into the (desired) output variables, with helpof supplied energy, information and materials into it.

A process is a series of actions, which is able to transform the input vari-ables into output variables, with help of supplied energy, information and

33

34 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROCESSES AND OBSERVATIONS

materials into it.

System and process are interconnected and belong to each other; they arenot identical and are inseparable. Note that what are observed are events/ outcomes of processes and not systems. We grasp the observations into asystems approach, to describe, to understand and to analyse.

Introducing the concept system we start with one of the many used def-initions†.

A system is defined as a functional unit, which performs a certain task.Each system has a distinguishable input and output to interfacing that sys-tem communicating with its environment. This concept is illustrated inFigure 5.1.

Fig. 5.1. The concept system is a connection of physical elements to perform acertain task. Such a system can be assigned to each process in which the inputquantities are processed. An input quantity is any entity, which can be processedby the system. The system performs a certain task producing an output. Withappropriate interfaces the input and output are an integral part of a whole system.

In the black box system, it is thought that the actual processing will occur.The arrows indicate the direction of the flow of data, information, goods,materials supplies and so on.

It is easily seen that these concepts can be transposed e.g. to flying an airplane being a mixed technical - natural system. We deal here with informa-tion processing systems and not with energy converting systems such as ina power plant, where mechanical energy with help of a turbine is convert-ed into electrical energy. The information supplied into a computer in anappropriate and recognizable form is processed, complying with the com-

† Definition ISSS, International Society for the system sciences, 2000. See also, From a taste of ”Sys-temics”, by Bela Banathy, ISSS, 2000.

5.1 Information In Six Energy Domains 35

puter characteristics and given commands, with help of electrical energy.

A system is a functional unit, which performs a certain task.

An alternative definition for a system is: a configuration of parts connectedand joined together by a web of relationships. In a more technical sense, it mean-s a connection of physical elements joined together as one integral system,in a given relationship between input and output to perform a certain task.

When we state that humankind is operating at the highest possible sys-tem level, we can distinguish six sensing organs at the input. With these or-gans the environment is observed. With help of sight, smell, hearing, tasteand touch, or skin organ, we collect information from our environment.At the output we recognize the physical elements of creation; reproductiveorgans, hands, limbs, speech, body language, and so on, with which wereact and create our environment. Consider what is going on when sittingbehind a computer and typing text; all the mentioned aspects are easilyrecognized.

Each system is an information processing system. Information is in-evitably connected to an energy carrier. When no energy is present wecannot observe any information; stronger, information cannot exist with-out energy.

5.1 Information In Six Energy Domains

In our environment, information is invariably connected to one of the sixpossible energy types or energy domains found in nature, which can beperceived and handled for information processing:

• mechanical• chemical• electrical• magnetic• radiation• thermal

Today, for many advantageous reasons, information is processed in anelectrical or optical energy form, but not exclusively. In particular, process-ing and transmission of information in the optical energy domain is still


gaining wider acceptance and has found already many applications in theTelecom and IT industries.

Transposing this concept to humankind, we distinguish 200 different or-gans, each performing a specific task, composing our physical human exis-tence. Each (sub)system is placed in a certain environment and with helpof interfaces at the input and output of the system, the system can interactwith its environment.

The system can exchange information, communicate or interact with it-s environment. Interfaces can be understood as any system making anexchange of information possible between two different energy domain-s without loss of information. For instance, with help of a thermocouplethe temperature in an oven is measured and converted into an electricalquantity corresponding with the measured temperature.

Another example, radiation is converted into an image, which can beperceived. But radiation can also be converted into electrical energy whensolar cells are used. For a comprehensive treatment of energy conversionpossibilities the reader is referred to the literature. An illustration of thepossible energy conversions for information carriers is given in Figure 5.2.

Fig. 5.2. Diagram illustrating the possible energy conversions at the input andoutput of a system. The modification unit here is in the electrical domain. Theradiant energy domain offers the same possibilities. In all types of systems a typeof energy conversions can be found.

5.1 Information In Six Energy Domains 37

This diagram presents all possible energy information conversions fromone energy domain into an another one. At the input of a system it is calleda sensor, at the output we speak about an actuator. Transducers are thecollective name for the input and output devices and they can be distin-guished on technical, mixed natural technical and complete natural sys-tems. The transducers act as a type of interfaces between different energydomains at the input and the output of a system. The interface should func-tion without loss of information between the different energy domains. Fora comprehensive treatment the reader is referred to the literature [Ref 2, Ch.6].

6

PROCESSES & SYSTEMS

All processes can be described within their own limitations with help ofsystem concepts. Processes and systems can also be distinguished in a kindof hierarchy with an increasing order of complexity. Actually, we may dis-tinguish the following hierarchy of systems.

6.1 Pure Technical Systems

A pure technical system is a functional unit, composed of man-made part-s and components, which can perform a certain task independently. Forinstance, a computer, a rocket, a satellite, a TV set, an iPod, a mobile tele-phone, and so on. Technical systems are manufactured with help of man-made tools.

6.2 Mixed Technical and Natural systems

In mixed natural-technical systems, the system combines a natural systemand a technical system to performs a certain task. Examples are driving acar, piloting an aircraft, sailing a boat, cycling and so on.

A policy making system, and a banking system are other examples to bediscussed in some detail later. The quality and reliability of the interrela-tionship between persons and technical system determine the final reliabil-ity and are an essential requirement for a reliable functioning. We remindhere again the existing relationship between quality and reliability.

39

40 PROCESSES & SYSTEMS

6.3 Natural Systems

Pure natural systems are found in nature. For instance, a plant, a tree, afish, an animal and ultimately humankind are at the highest level naturalsystems.

Common to all systems is, that they process information, and need ener-gy, having an input, an output, a processing system and are connected totheir environment with certain interfaces.

For natural and mixed natural-technical systems we define the same reli-ability concepts as for pure technical systems. In the system the input quan-tities are modified, changed, and processed with help of supplied energy.A type of energy conversion is often involved. When an energy conversionof information is involved, it should be realized without loss of informa-tion. For instance, a wireless keyboard connected to the input of a comput-er, converts mechanical (typing) energy into an electrical bit stream, andtransports the information wireless with help of electrical-magnetic waves,or via an optical interface into the input of the computer. Another exampleis the processing of speech with help of a microphone; mechanical energyis converted into electrical energy. The information is processed in a formof electrical energy and becomes available at the output in a visible radiat-ing form on a display which can be perceived by mankind through sightand/or sound. It is noticed that, the relationship (ratio) between input andoutput describes the system’s characteristics. A few examples illustrate theconcepts.

In an electrical kitchen oven electrical energy (= input) is converted intoheat (= the process) up to the target temperature (= aim), which has beenset in advance to obtaining the desired cooking result. Actually, the system-s used to facilitate this process, are an electrical heating element mountedin a kind of isolated box, a temperature sensing device, (= sensor) a devicewhich compares the desired temperature with the measured temperaturein the oven, the control unit and in its simplest form an on/off switch asactuator.

Considering a banking system there is a process inflow and outflow ofmoney of clients. Money is assigned to (paper) contracts. For sustainabilitythis in- and outflow of money requires a closed loop monitoring and con-trol system. As will be shown, the lack of a closed loop control system is

6.4 The Input and Output of a System 41

the essential element of many financial disasters. A more comprehensivediscussion is found in the following chapters.

6.4 The Input and Output of a System

Here we have to consider the input and output variables more precisely.The independent input variables are supplied to the input of the system.The type of input energy should match with the system’s interfaces and beable to affect the system’s input. Output variables are the specific outcomeof a system; i.e. they will show system dependent characteristics.

Consequently, for any given system, a limited category of input variableshas to be considered only. In the previous example, energy is a valid inputvariable, whereas dish washing soap is not. The output variable will beheat, whereas, music is a most unlikely an output variable for a kitchenoven. The input variables are called the independent variables The outputquantities of the system are dependent variables, because their represen-tation is determined by the characteristics of the system, which have pro-cessed these. The input may contain a large number of different variablesdependent on the complexity of the system involved. In a banking system,clients, cash flow and (virtually) money are the input variables, whereasoutput variables are mortgage loans and (virtual) contracts. Employees arepart or subject of the banking process itself. We will see in more detail howthis can work out.

42 PROCESSES & SYSTEMS

7

THE PRINCIPLE OF FEEDBACK

Although the concept of feedback is very common and well known, its im-pact is often overlooked and cannot be underestimated or neglected. Feed-back is one of the most fundamental and important principles found innature, in engineering sciences, and in all other kind of disciplines. In allsustainable processes and systems a kind of feedback can be observed.

Feedback is defined as “the return action via which a part of the outputof a system is connected to the input of that system, effecting the actualprocess”.

Applying feedback, the input and output of a process are connected toeach other with help of a separate so-called feedback loop. Connectionswith the input and output are made with appropriate interfaces, rangingfrom pure technical towards only natural. The feedback loop is a system initself. The whole system represents a closed loop system, having differentcharacteristics with regards to the system without a feedback system. Theconcept of closed and open loop may raise some confusion as will be ex-plained later on. It can be shown that an appropriate feedback system im-proves stability, accuracy, and sustainability of the process involved, what-ever the type of process is. Consider the previous given example of cyclingin open and closed loop.

Norbert Wiener studied feedback in its fundamental widest sense andintroduced the term Cybernetics†.

The concept of feedback in its broadest sense is transposed also onto apolitical and financial system, in practice closely connected to each other.In its broadest sense it is called cybernetics. Feedback is a fundamentalrequirement for all sustainable processes The concept of feedback for a po-litical system in its simplest form is illustrated in Figure 7.1.

† Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, 1948,1961, MIT press.

43

44 THE PRINCIPLE OF FEEDBACK

Fig. 7.1. The closed loop system H *, applying feedback ,implies the use of a partof the output quantity fed back to the input with help of a second system. At theinput, a so-called summing point is used where the part of the output is connect-ed to the input. Usually, for reasons of stability, the sign of the output signal isreversed before it is connected to the input. The system including the feedbacksystem may be considered as one integral system. Each system is embedded in itsown (social) environment.

Considering a political system, the Parliament acts as a feedback processfor the Government. Feedback consists of written documents, procedures,laws and measures. These written documents act as the physical represen-tation of the feedback systems used. Clearly, this may occur in differentenergy domains and at different levels. Note that feedback is also dealingwith information processing using energy. With this approach we will in-vestigate the operating and failing conditions of systems. An interestingexample to study is the rise and fall of Margret Thatcher as Prime Ministerof the UK in the eighties (1979 - 1990).

7.1 The operand symbol ⊗To get a more in depth understanding of this approach we explain the pointwhere the part of the output quantity is connected to the input of the systemdenoted with a cross symbol. It is common practice that a circle with crossinside is used for that purpose, usually called the summing point†.

The symbol ⊗ represents an operand and symbolizes the action where

† In general, an operand is defined as a specific prescription to perform a certain task. Examples ofsymbols of an operand are: the plus sign ’+’; the minus sign, ’-’ , and the multiplying symbol *. Anoperand prescribes what you have to do with the factors connected to that symbol.

7.1 The operand symbol ⊗ 45

the different data of input and output are compared with each other. Thesymbol is also called an algebraic summing point, or the action point wherethe different input quantities, before entering the actual system, are com-pared to each other. The operand is also a confrontation action betweenoutput and input. In technical systems, the desired value(set point) is sub-tracted from a part of the output value; the difference is then fed into thesystem again and further processed to get the desired result. In a broad-er sense it is the process of confrontation, where different opinions meet.For a more detailed mathematical treatment the reader is referred to theliterature‡.

We can again illustrate the concepts with the kitchen oven (Fig 7.2). Thekitchen oven in its simplest form, contains a temperature sensing device,a comparator and an on / off switch, acting as the feedback system. Via atemperature-sensing device, e.g. a thermocouple, the output temperatureis monitored, then compared with the desired pre-set target temperature,subtracted from each other and the difference is fed into the heater con-troller of the on/off switch (actuator) at the input in order to obtaining thedesired cooking temperature.

Cycling is an example of a mixed natural-technical system. Where amixed system is involved, complexity increases. The body with its mus-cles in hands, feet and sight , under the supervision of the brains, acts aspart of the system and simultaneously as feedback system in one closedloop to achieve the desired destination. Sight, hearing and the equilibriumorgan act as the sensorial input devices, observing the output for the rightheading. The observed information at the output is compared with the goalinformation (destination). The actual difference between input and outputis fed into the cycling process to maintain the right heading.

Chemical energy (food) is converted via a chemical process into mechan-ical energy at the input of the cycling process causing the cycling movemen-t. At the output, hands and feet act as the actuators controlling the steeringand speed by accelerating or decreasing. At the very moment the eyes areclosed, the feedback loop is broken down and consequently the cyclingprocess will stop, usually with a painful clash. Note that our body is fullof different control systems. The control of a constant body temperature iswell known.

When in any feedback system, one element in the loop is disconnected

‡ The available literature about control theory and cybernetics is overwhelming. Some referencesare: ’Control system principles and design, E.O. Doebelin; John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1985.A classic work is: ’Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine’,Norbert Wiener, 1948, 1961, MIT press.


Fig. 7.2. Kitchen oven with temperature and time control functions to achieve thetight cooking result.

Fig. 7.3. Closed loop cycling process; the process of cycling stops when the feed-back loop is eliminated, e.g. when the eyes are closed.

7.2 Economic and Technical feedback 47

from the other system components, the system will become out of control,will start to deteriorate, or to jam, and the target usually cannot be reached.The system including the feedback system is called the loop of the system.In the event that a system starts to operate without any feedback, the sys-tem is called an open loop system When the system operates with all feed-back components involved, it is called a closed loop system, guaranteeingstability.

7.2 Economic and Technical feedback

Concerning open loop and closed loop systems an important remark shouldbe made here to often raising confusion. In economic systems a distinctionis made between open systems and closed systems in a different way. In e-conomic systems, an open system is defined as: ”a system where the globalmarket is a part of the feedback loop”. Economic closed systems operateisolated from their market environment; no (economic) external feedbackis present.

Complying with the concepts introduced, the concepts mentioned are adescription of a type of technical feedback, but also applicable to economicsystems. Consequently, in an open economic system, the market is im-plemented as an integral part of the feedback loop. In a closed economicsystem the market is (partial) eliminated from the feedback loop, which cancause huge disasters, recently shown by unrealistic mortgage loans. A fewexamples illustrate the concepts in wider perspective.

An audio system is a mixed technical and natural system. The listeneracts as a non-technical feedback system in the closed loop. He/she moni-tors the loudness and the quality of the music and will make corrections toaccomplish his/her desired taste and volume.

Making music with help of an instrument is a complicated example ofa mixed natural-technical process. It is a continuously interacting closedloop processing system where instrument and performer have become oneintegral system, making music. The system “musician - instrument” is theinformation processing system reading, and interpreting, and he/she si-multaneously acts also in the feedback loop, continuously monitoring theoutcome in quality, volume, expression and interpretation. It is easy to re-trieve numerous other examples from daily life experience.

In financial systems, banks are part of a process producing financial


products generating an in - and outflow of money totally controlled byhuman behaviour, such as greed, arrogance, hurry, and so on. Today themarket acts as a worldwide feed back loop. Banks are part of an economicworldwide closed loop system. Conditions must be fulfilled to keep theprocess sustainable, and are actually determined by the operating char-acteristics of the system practised and the feedback loop involved. It isinteresting to note that the feedback loop today showed a complete vulner-ability, poisoning the input variables and consequently affecting the sus-tainability of the system.

7.3 Intrinsic and Extrinsic Feedback

We introduce the concept of intrinsic and extrinsic feedback, because twotypes of feedback systems are met. Intrinsic feedback is present when thefeedback loop is part of the system itself. Extrinsic feedback is found insystems, where the feedback is not a part of the system itself. Feedback canbe intentionally and non-intentionally.

Fig. 7.4. Diagram illustrating the concept of intrinsic and extrinsic feedback in acomplete system. Note that the crossed circles represent the so-called summingpoints at the input. Intrinsic feedback is a built-in feedback system belonging tothe process itself. Extrinsic feedback may be implemented by an outside systemnot being a part of the system itself.

In case of interference, indicated by the arrow, the performance of thesystem and hence the outcome can be severely damaged or changed. The

7.4 Outcome And Target 49

automatic gain in an amplifier, controlling loudness of an audio system isan example of an internal feedback system; the listener functions as theextrinsic feedback system not being a physical part of the system.

In case of an intentionally extrinsic feedback system, it is a built-in fea-ture to guarantee proper operation to obtaining the desired goals. Theseconcepts are illustrated in Figure 7.4. A non-intentionally feedback processmay act on any sensitive point of the system causing severe interferenceand damage.

Taking again the kitchen oven as an example, the temperature controlleris part of the internal system. The user, observing the baked result will actas the extrinsic feedback system. A pilot flying an aircraft acts also as theextrinsic feedback loop of the flying process.

He /she is not part of the technical system itself, but together with thetechnical system is forming one integral system performing the process offlying from A to B. In case of a non-intentionally feedback the outcome maybe undefined, causing unexpected results. This concept of intrinsic andextrinsic feedback is easily applied to numerous examples retrieved frompractice. When the feedback loop, either intrinsic or extrinsic is damagedor even eliminated, the system goes out of control. Look already what hashappened to the different financial systems and aircraft accidents. The toolspresented offer an excellent possibility for analysis and actions for makingimprovements.

7.4 Outcome And Target

An outcome is any result of a process. A target is defined as: “any ob-ject or desired outcome aimed at, usually complying with a predefinedplan”. System, input, process, output, and target are distinguishable, non-identical but inseparable entities. A goal may be defined as: “the realiza-tion of a vision a person has, before realizing it”. From the preset goal allsystem requirements and characteristics are retrieved before realizing thesystem just as it should be! Note that the built-in relationship of the systembetween input, output, implies, that the same input quantities fed into d-ifferent representations of the same system can generate a totally differentoutput! A famous example may illustrate this.

Let a group of people telling the same story in a serial fashion and thelast person will write it up again. A totally different end version of thestory will be obtained, because each person will process the information ina different way.


Following the introduction, we now come to the main theme of our dis-cussion. We consider the political and financial processes embedded ina given society, using the introduced concepts. We start introducing, theamazing Dutch Court system, showing (intrinsic) design errors, often re-sulting in an abuse of power as outcome of the process.

8

THE DUTCH COURT SYSTEM

It is interesting to introduce here some aspects of the Dutch Court system.With help of a simple diagram it can be shown that the Dutch Court sys-tem involves fundamental design errors revealing that no feedback is in-volved at all. Consequently, the system inherently is an open loop systemand highly vulnerable and sensitive to fraud, corruption, forgery, abuse ofpower, biasing and conflict of interests. The simplified process is illustratedin Figure 8.1, where the major process steps are depicted based on writtenlaw procedures. No feedback loops are implemented or present neitherexternal nor intrinsic. This observation holds per separate court level. Nu-merous cases confirm the observations and analysis made.

The key process features in creating a minute (the original written ver-dict) as a legally defined authentic document are as follows. The writtenreport of a court session produces an authentic document according to arti-cle 156 lid 2 Rv: Authentic documents are documents in the required formand created by authorised civil servants, whom are empowered by law toreport on their observations or actions. After a closed consultation, thejudges come forward with a decision which is laid down in an authenticact the so-called minute accomplishing art.160 lid 1 Rv. From this authenticact copies are made called notice (afschrift) and a deed (grosse), which canbe used for execution of the verdict.

The record of the court session is the only and unique source of the eventsat a court meeting. It is legally mandatory that any court meeting is record-ed in a record (process-verbaal), without the existence of such a record anysuch meeting is by default non-existent. The record (proces-verbaal) is anauthentic document and, by law, must be undersigned by the chairmanand the clerk to take effect.

The procedure for making decisions is governed by articles 5 and 7 of the

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52 THE DUTCH COURT SYSTEM

Fig. 8.1. Process of creating the authentic act (the minute) as a result of a courtsession and decision. The system characteristic is that of an open loop system,without any feedback loop present. Minimum quality of the output can never beguaranteed. The system is characterized by its open loop behaviour. Examplesof observed wrong-doings are, forgery of authentic acts, undersigned by adminis-trative personnel; forgery of court copies; structural absence of the minute of theverdict; structural absence of session reports; the practice of lawyers as judges;changing and disappearing of court documents, etc.

Law on Legal Administration (Wet RO). The minute contains the originalwritten report of the decision by article 160 lid 1 Rv: The force of written ev-idence is uniquely and solely in the original document. Notices and copiesare to be undersigned by the chairman and the clerk of that particular courtsession, including date and issued as a copy conform (the minute) ex arti-cle 160 lid 2 Rv in order to carry the force of legal power. However, overthe past years it has been revealed that almost all authentic verdicts of thecourt of appeal are undersigned by administrative employees and not bythe clerk and the chairman of that court session. In daily practice this iscalled forgery. †

In numerous cases, due to wrongly taken decisions, the final outcome inhealth, social,financial and economic damages is running into the billionsof Euros. Violation of the verdict with existing international laws, i.e.: EVR-M and BUPO, is practised frequently. In civil cases, the estimated failurerate is about 0.01/year, which corresponds with at least 10 percent.

It is noticed that mutatis mutandis, the same characteristics are valid fordiscipline rights at lawyers. Klaas de Vries, senator of the Dutch Parliamen-

† The Stevens-Schipper Method, NJB, June 17, 2005, no.24, p. 1240-1242

THE DUTCH COURT SYSTEM 53

t, characterized quality control as medieval.† Actually, the “trias politica”concept for the Dutch court systems shows a fundamental design error andultimately acts as an open loop system, hence failing to function properly,due to the lack of any built-in feedback loop. Minimum quality and relia-bility can never be guaranteed because of the open loop system’s character.

Consequently, the character of the Dutch court system and for the disci-pline rights at lawyers, offers maximum potential of freedom of abuse ofpower and violation of ruling law without any consequence for the actingpersons.

† In Dutch; Advocatenblad, March 6 2009

54 THE DUTCH COURT SYSTEM

9

ENERGY, POLICY AND FINANCIAL SYSTEMS

Policy and financial systems are strongly connected processes embeddedin their own geographical, social and cultural environment, with all the el-ements related to that process. It is now possible to sort out the introducedconcepts. The simplified diagram, Figure 9.1 illustrates the idea.

In the elements of the system, e.g. we find inhabitants, geographical con-ditions, climate, land, finances, natural resources, infrastructure, and so on.At the output we find: products, all kind of goods and infra-structural ser-vices for the public in a continuing closed loop process of improvement andchanges. Once an outcome is obtained it can become a part of the systemor generate a new system. On top of it we find the type of governmentaland global structures.

9.1 Energy Domains in Political Behaviour

Policy is connected to human behaviour. Its understanding is improvedinto a large extent, when we introduce a three-dimensional (3-D) energydiagram, connected to any (political) mankind made process. The outcomeof all policy behaviour is traceable to human behaviour.

The following considerations may reveal what is connected to the typesof physical outcomes of human behaviour. Firstly, we notice that each rep-resentation of human behaviour contains a limited amount of energy andinformation, which can be conceived by humankind.

A second consideration is connected to the essential driving forces of hu-man kind. All human behaviour acts between two opposite driving forces.The driving forces are called harmony (some prefer to speak about Love)energy on the one side and on the opposite side- the energy (emotion )is fear, and greed; being the full absence of harmony, because it is self-

55

56 ENERGY, POLICY AND FINANCIAL SYSTEMS

Fig. 9.1. A political and financial society represented in a simplified system di-agram where the process is the living society with all boundary conditions in-volved. Input quantities are newly born inhabitants, immigrants, goods, and allkind of imported commodities. The feedback system consists of an internal andan external process. The internal feedback process is considered as inherently be-longing to the political or banking system itself. Codes, laws and rules are im-plemented. We find all goods and products, either material or immaterial at theoutput.

centered. Harmony is an expanding emotional energy, whereas fear andgreed is a contracting (emotional) energy. Obviously, the two types of emo-tions are counteracting generating opposite outputs. Another representa-tive of fear are also guilt feelings.

In its essence, human decisions are taken based on one of these two coun-teracting emotions. For instance, what G.W. Bush jr. decides is based ongenerating fear amongst his own people to gain more political power. It iseasily observed that in policy, fear is often involved based on statements ofthreat or terror, e.g. generating unanswered questions, what might happenin the near future.

9.2 The energy - time domain in human behaviour

Human’s behaviour can be projected in a three-dimensional energy-timediagram. One axis is for the physical energy, one for the rational energy

9.2 The energy - time domain in human behaviour 57

and one for the emotional energy. All outcomes of human behaviour arecomposed of these three different energy domains with different contribu-tions in magnitude from each domain. Each moment, each individual oper-ates in his three-dimensional energy frame as function of time. Individualsand collections of individuals, will behave in this same three-dimensionalenergy time frame and is found in political and financial systems too. Thisis illustrated in Figure 9.2.

A ballet dancer, a singer, a musician and policy makers operate mainly inthe emotional-physical energy plane. Emotions are transferred onto the au-dience with help of physical energy using the body, and/or an instrumentto express, to communicate and to transfer the intended message.

A scientist uses its rational and physical energy to pursue after the truthof natural law. He is mainly acting in the ground plane, performing ex-periments, making models, simulating, verifying with observations andultimately publishing his/her results. What about bankers? They operatemainly in the emotional rational energy domain, where greed has appearedto be a dominant factor pursued by the bonus system making short termmaximum profit.

Policy makers are acting in the emotional-rational energy plane, usingemotional and often inconsistent rational arguments to transferring theirvision, perceptions, opinions, and messages, highly time dependent, to thepublic often with a predictable expiration date. By definition, their state-ments are individually and strongly parametrized representations of theirideas trying to convince the public to win votes with one goal without ex-ception gaining power. This energy time diagram can be transposed to eachindividual and each type of each system and society at a certain time, t withan arbitrary chosen energy scale for each axis, to make comparisons possi-ble. As said earlier, emotional energy often dominates rational behaviour.

We use the short notation: Sph, rat, em, t, where S stands for a society, ph,for physical, rat, for rational, em, for emotional energy and t for time. Oneother subdivision yields that each of these energy types can be subdivid-ed in so called intensive and extensive quantities, where intensive standsfor “how strong” and “extensive” stands for, “how much”. For instance,in the physical energy domain we can ask for, how large the force is andwhat the volume involved is. In the emotional energy domain comparablequestions can be answered such as how much hate, and how strong is it.However, how to quantify emotional energy, e.g. hate, is not known. Thecore of a human being, indicated with a black dot, is an unknown entity.


The core forms the essence of a human being (spirit) and is subject of studyof psychology.

These concepts are also found in Antonio Damasio’s studies of mind andconsciousness in a different wording. He states that mind, feelings andphysics are inseparable components in humankind†.

Considering the introduced energy domains we can define conscious-ness as a vector quantity composed of four parameters, ph, em, rat, andtime, t. For instance, when the physical body is dead, there is no conscious-ness. When the brain is severely damaged, the person will act at a very lowlevel of consciousness. When feelings are less developed, the person mayact rationally only. In all situations, with a living person, there is a traceableinterconnection between the three types of energy. Hence, it is justified tostating that the previously mentioned quantity, S equals the vector quantityfor consciousness C ph, em, rat, t of an individual, of a group or even canrepresent a whole society, on a vector scale .

At a given time, each representation is connected to its own time frameand given boundary conditions. The three different types of energies can besubdivided in an intensive and an extensive quantity. The representation isa dynamical one and a function of time. The energy level on the emotion-al axis and the magnitude of the rational axis may represent the level ofawareness/consciousness. The origin represents the essence of the entity(unknown spirit). Ultimately, the characteristic of the core determines theoutcome.

All human behavior is based on two opposite driving forces of emotionalenergy i.e. harmony and fear.

Another striking example is falling in love. This process operates in theemotional-physical energy domain resulting in strong positive emotionalfeelings, which can generate noticeable physical reactions in the body. Inextreme circumstances, the rational energy operates at zero level.

War is a complete opposite situation; the process operates also in thephysical-emotional energy domain, but now the emotional process is com-pletely negative (e.g. fear) and will produce devastating results. Rationalenergy may still be involved to sort out the most effective means for thecomplete destruction and devastation of the enemy. Negative emotionalenergy is controlling the process. The outcome of such processes causes

† Antonio Damasio “The Feelings of What Happens; Body and motion in the Making of Conscious-ness” , Publ. Harcourt Brace, 1999.

9.2 The energy - time domain in human behaviour 59

Fig. 9.2. Representation of a society or an individual, Si, ph, rat, em, t, in a threedimensional energy time diagram, with three axis; one axis represents the physicalenergy, one axis the rational energy and one the emotional energy. An arbitraryenergy scale may be chosen for reference purposes. This representation describeseach individual outcome with help of three parameters representing the quantityand quality of the physical, the rational and the emotional energy in that system.

a tremendous amount of negative emotional energy effecting individuals,societies, and political infrastructures for decades in an almost closed loopprocess, as a result of hate and fear. Such processes can only be stoppedwhen a complete opposite process of positive energy can be generated, orwhen the system is completely destroyed. The same category of negativeemotional energy is found in addictions of whatever the type. In practice,these effects usually take generations to restore the system into a new moresustainable system.

In history three dominant addictions exist in the following everlastingsequence of priority: power, money and women. What about a democracy,a dictatorship and a war situation? This is illustrated with help of the intro-


duced concepts. The examples do not claim completeness; a more detailedanalysis is open to investigation.

10

A DEMOCRACY

Politics may be defined as the parametrized representation of a spiritualfeeling in a given time frame and culture. Politics is without exceptionconnected to processes generating these feelings. In each political system,process and system are interconnected and belong to each other. Whilst theprocess is the actual series of actions, the system is the framework in whichthe process occurs. Figure 10.2 illustrates the basic political structure of ademocracy. The British system is taken for reference purposes. Numer-ous feedback loops form built-in characteristics of the political system andbelong to the essentials of the actual process. The feedback loops shouldguarantee sustainability and stability of the political system over time.

For instance, feedback loops consist of codes, laws and regulations. Theyact as the written (partly) common agreed reference feedback system. Ineach society they have been compiled over decades based on gained expe-rience. Here, the two houses of representatives act as a daily feedback loopfor the government, controlling and monitoring actions, achievements andoutcomes. Ultimately, the political system and society we are living in, isthe outcome of an accepted or forced political process. Consequently, theleadership of a society, is the result of a mutual interacting process betweensociety and government leaders founded on (not exclusively) written rulesand elections.

Politics may be defined as the parametrized representation of a spiritualfeeling in a given time frame and culture.

The outside world is not being a part of the society considered, but in-variably forms the present external feedback loop. The source and type ofthe external or internal feedback process will influence the process and thesystem. Interference is defined as: “a disturbing process incurring an inter-

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62 A DEMOCRACY

action with the society considered”. Interference is any undesired/unintendedexternal action influencing the process and its outcome. Interference canhave a natural, a mixed natural-technical, or a pure technical origin. Forinstance, an earthquake, a hurricane, an electrical power failure, a terroristattack, human behaviour, a computer failure, are examples of interferencecausing chaos into a society, generating loss and damage destroying infras-tructures.

The question may be asked, whether democracy is the optimum systemfor ruling a country? Concerning efficiency and the amount of bureaucracyand time delays involved, it is not. In a democracy the process is poorly in-efficiency due the large number of regulations and the number of personsinvolved in the decision process. Some say it is the best of the worst. Con-sidering, reliability and sustainability, in practice it appears to be one of themost viable and sustainable political structures. It may be clear that on-ly political systems, which have implemented a firm and effective built-infeedback process, appear to be sustainable over time.

10.1 Critical Events In A Political Process

We can ask for critical events in a society, where it stops (zeroes ) function-ing properly and where the process becomes chaotic (poles), as the diagramin Figure 10.1 helpfully depicts.

We have called these two types of critical events already zeroes and poles.For convenience as repeated here, a zero is defined as a critical event wherethe process stops functioning properly; a pole is defined as a critical eventwhere the process becomes chaotic. After determining all possible criticalevents, a successive analysis can be made, asking for the likelihood of oc-currence of each of these events. This likelihood may then be expressedin a failure rate with which the reliability can be calculated. Sometimesreliability is expressed in the complementary failure probability†. .

Obviously, when a critical event occurs, the system characteristics andits connected process change dramatically. The process will react accord-ingly, producing totally different outcomes with regards to the previouslyobtained outcomes.

Each critical event may be composed of a large number of possible subevents with their own failure rates. A good estimation for the numbers can

† The sum of the probability that a system will function and the probability that a system will notfunction is always 1.

10.1 Critical Events In A Political Process 63

Fig. 10.1. Questions in the House of Lords

be obtained from historical databases, collected over a long period takinginto account the given boundary and environmental conditions for a spe-cific process. Ultimately, the reliability of a system can be calculated andexpressed in a number ranging form 0 - 1, when the whole system is anal-ysed into its smallest parts with its connected topology. The interrelation-ship involved must be determined and all critical paths and events have tobe taken into account with their respective failure rates. For technical sys-tems software programs for reliability calculations are available and thereis no reason why this software cannot be made custom for non-technical ormixed- technical systems‡.

A system in a crisis or war situation will suddenly reveal its poles anda zeroes simultaneously. It may stop many normal (public) functions. Ina split second it will not only destroy whole infrastructures, but also gen-erating destruction, it will cause chaos, exhausting natural resources, e-conomics, and social infrastructures. The reader can easily make his /her own choice of observations of many events and analysis determining

‡ For methods of reliability calculations, see e.g. Chapter 5 of ”Electronic Measurement Systems,publisher IOP, UK, sec. ed., 1996 by the author.

64 A DEMOCRACY

Fig. 10.2. Simplified diagram of a nation’s political two-chamber system and pro-cess. All societies are based on codes and agreements. The outcome of each societyis completely parametrized. In the extrinsic feedback loop the rest of the world isinvolved. In a dictatorship, all feedback loops are eliminated invariably resultingin corruption, and jamming of the social and economic process of a nation.

where the system stops functioning properly and / or becomes chaotic.Some number examples for the failure rate are given.

A number of examples of possible critical events (CE) for a political sys-tem are summarized in Table 10.1.

These critical events (CE) act as poles and zeroes in a political system.The given numbers for the failure rates per year are based on estimatesand retrieved from public sources. It is noticed that a one-time occurrence

10.1 Critical Events In A Political Process 65

Table 10.1. Examples of critical events (CE) acting as poles and zeroes in apolitical system. Some are one-time events, others are recurrent with possible

long-term effects, that may lead to chaos. To all critical events – poles and zeros –a failure rate λ (per year) is assigned, that may depend on time.

CE: chaos (poles) λ[yr−1] CE: system stops (zeros) λ[yr−1]

Corruption 0.012 Flood · · ·Fraud 0.005 Revolution · · ·Poverty & unemployment > 1% Electrical power failures 0.08Forgery 0.5 Bomb alarms 0.1Cultural / religious conflicts · · · Murder (in NL) 1.5 × 10−5

Social injustice · · · Government resigns (in It) ∼ 1· · ·

of some events causes a one-time immediate effect. In case of corruption,we have to deal with long term devastating effects, ultimately generatingchaos. To all critical events poles and zeroes - a failure rate λ can be as-signed. Only in the normal operation region the failure rate may be consid-ered as a constant. Note that all failure rates have the dimension 1/time.Open lines are intentionally left blank. In a first estimation the failure rateequals the ratio of the number of failures and the total number of chosenevents in a given period and country or area.

In asking about its sustainability, the levels of de-parametrization of thepreset and achieved goals should be determined. With other words, thecloser a political or financial process accomplishes natural laws, the moresustainability is achieved. Increased feelings of well being for the popu-lation will be the result. The best method to improving a society is doingresearch in a continuous effort and offering good quality education. Theseare prerequisites for implementing changes in a society and achieving sus-tainability. As again has been proven by recent financial events, all coun-tries are connected to each other into one worldwide global process.

No country can operate in complete isolation from the rest of the world.A kind of interaction between society and the outside world will constantlyexist. Some countries consider internet a danger. But no society can escapeit. Actually, each society acts as an open political and economic system,where the outside world acts as the extrinsic feedback system. This is rep-resented in the same Figure 10.2 and denoted as external feedback system,’rest of world’.

66 A DEMOCRACY

All countries are connected to each other into one worldwide global pro-cess.

This model is very helpful explaining why political statements inevitablycontain a high level of parametrization with their inherent expiration date.Politicians change their mind from day to day, or from week to week oftenruled by emotions aiming to increasing influence or retaining power. Eachpolitician operates within his/her own political parametrized process. Re-liability and sustainability of political processes and systems are not onlydetermined by the system parameters, but it is also dependent on all inputquantities that enter a society.

Continuously operating feedback loops are required to keep the systemsustainable. In this sense, the Police and the Army may be considered asnecessary feedback system supporting sustainability. When all people be-have in a friendly, kindly and mutual way of understanding, laws, codes,police, army and lawyers have become obsolete. As long as system processcomplies with the ruling laws of nature the system is sustainable. As maybe observed, we are far from that†.

† See for instance: ”Kroonprinsenleed - Machtwisselingen in de politiek”, Ed van Tijn, pub. Augustus2008, ISBN 978 90 457 01875, in Dutch.

11

A DICTATORSHIP

Characterizing a dictatorship, we can ask for the differences when com-pared with a democracy. What is the essence of a dictatorship? It is easilyseen that, in such systems ultimately all types of feedback loops are elimi-nated. A dictator prescribes his own laws and goals, eliminating any oppo-sition and interference. He will - in a historical perspective always male -removing all external and internal feedback loop systems with one goal; toremain in power. He will take any action necessary to gain and retain pow-er, applying violence, brute force, and generating as much fear as possible.Many existing dictatorships fit the description given. This is illustrated inFigure 11.1.

In dictatorships corruption often comes into scope, which is characteris-tic for this type of process. In time, all other malfunction behaviour will beshown to be for the realization of personal goals only, ultimately runninginto in a contracting society.

After having eliminated all feedback systems, most dictators becomecompletely paranoid as illustrated in Figure 11.1. The system and its con-nected process has become an open loop system in a technical perspectiveand a closed system in an economic perspective. History learns it will ex-or implode every time, jam or vanish in time. The goals show an extremelyhigh level of parametrization, with many critical events. The system doesnot comply with natural law.

Historically, numerous examples can be retrieved. All these systems canbe analysed with the tools introduced. For instance, communism lastedonly 72 years (1917-1989), because the practical implementation of the un-derlying concepts revealed abuse of power , corruption, fear, social injus-tice and resulting in devastating outcomes. Predictably a dictatorship will

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68 A DICTATORSHIP

Fig. 11.1. Illustration of a dictatorship with help of a system diagram. One or morefeedback loops are broken down and eliminated. Even all input variables can beeliminated. From history it can be learned that all dictatorships vanish in time,because the outcomes show inevitably a poor reliability and sustainability. Thedictatorship outcomes show a high parametrization level with a high failure rateper specific parameter.

inherently fail, it is just a matter of time. Note that some communist statesstill exist, but the question arises for how long?

Napoleon (1796 - 1812) made similar mistakes and he was in power forabout 16 years. So did Hitler (1933 - 1945) for about 12 years and so on. Forcomparison reasons, the Soviet communist system characteristics showeda high failure rate due to a lack of internal and external feedback. System’sreliability and sustainability reaches a zero level. So was Hitler in settinggoals highly parametrized, opposing natural laws. Dictatorship proves tobe a disaster over time. A dictatorship is the outcome of a process generat-ing a contracting society with a highly vulnerable reference system.

Napoleon’s process outcome, should be regarded slightly different . HisCivil Code and others have shown a high sustainability and it is still in usein many countries. He had a genius vision for organizing a society. But forsome reason he changed his characteristics, ultimately believing that Russi-a could be conquered, which is impossible for many reasons; consequently,

11.1 Changing political systems 69

some of his outcomes became a disaster.

In this respect the Singapore ruling system may be studied and appearsto be a good example of a type of functioning dictatorship.

Actually, dictators show a behaviour mainly acting in the physical-emotionalenergy plane using fear and power. The system gets many dominant polesand zeroes with extremely high failure rates. When the system containsmany of such critical events, the process will run into failure and will with-out exception collapse in time.

Due to its nature a dictatorship is a process with many critical eventswith extreme high failure rates.

Rarely, a dictator keeps his goals compliant with natural law. Supposinghe is able to do so, then a dictatorship is one of the most effective rulingsystems. Compare this model with a boss of a company who has a clearvision of where to go with the company. He is acting like a captain on aship. In business history excellent examples are found, i.e.: Bill Gates ofMicrosoft , Steve Jobs , of Apple dr. Land of Polaroid , Anton Philips andmany others.

In time a dictatorship will inevitably fail, due to its characteristic be-haviour to eliminating any type of feedback becoming an open loop. Itis a matter of time.

The same mechanisms can be found in commercial organizations wherethe management is loosing sight and is acting in complete isolation fromthe rest of the world without any kind of external feedback.

11.1 Changing political systems

Changing political systems starts with changing the process of awarenessor spirit often forced after a dramatic event. Each change of awarenessbegins with a feeling, a thought, a word, which are then put into actionand converted into a realization , or materialization. The realization (goal)should have a set of time and cultural independent parameters complyingwith natural law for sustainability. This approach guarantees maximumsustainability. From the preset goals the required infrastructure should bederived and implemented. In science and technology this recipe has beenproven over and over again. Here the large discrepancy between policy,and financial systems with their short termed political and bonus goals,and science and technology, comes into a striking contrast.

Nelson Mandela former president of South Africa, represents the ulti-

70 A DICTATORSHIP

mate example that political systems can change, changing the awarenesswithout bloodshed.

12

A FACTORY ORGANIZATION

With help of the well-known ISO model for a given organization illustratedin Figure 12.1 it is easy to find many poles and zeroes, whatever the kind ofbusiness or services is. We will extend our discussion in some more detailbecause it reveals some other interesting aspects.

12.1 The organization as system

In this flow diagram all process steps are given; Ai stands for an audit,Pi for a production step and Ci for a quality control step. Retrieved fromstatistics, in an organization failures and success, are mainly caused by themanagement. Failures are often found at the level of (mis)management, i.e.by wrong marketing strategy, dishonesty, arrogance, fraud, greed and soon.

The quality of the outcome (products) is determined by the character-istics of the whole system including the management. The level of de-parametrization of goals determines the sustainability of the system. Theoutcome should be taken as point of reference to analyse its efficiency.Quality is defined as the sum of all specifications of a system at a certainmoment, where reliability may be defined as quality over time.

With help of this diagram it is easy to analyse the most recent events anddisasters, such as AHOLD, FORTIS, ABN-AMROH, the banking systemand so on. Usually the management comes into scope firstly as the lesserreliable one of the whole system.

Wrong doing per category of collaborator with regards to fraud, is givenIn Table 12.2, resulting in devastating effects for an organization. The num-bers given are an example and valid for organizations in the Netherlands,concerning fraud and corruption for the year 2000.

71

72 A FACTORY ORGANIZATION

hbtp]

Fig. 12.1. Diagram of an organization based on the ISO 9000/xxx model, illus-trating an arbitrary business process. In each organization, the management levelappears to be the most vulnerable feedback loop, determining success or failure.Statistics learns, that the quality of the management level determines failure orsuccess. The most recent events as AHOLD, FORTIS, ABN-AMROH, can be anal-ysed easily with help of this diagram.

For each (business) organization, excessive comfort is a severe danger,because it stops progress and critical self reflection.

As an example an automobile factory has over 20-thousand input vari-ables for making the end product. Quality control from part level towardssystem level and onwards plays a crucial role to achieve the desired results.

With help of Figure 12.2, it is easy to trace all possibilities for (failing)feedback loops. Practically, the management is in the best position to elim-inate feedback loops, represented by the Audit system, Am and the Refer-ence system, Cm.

12.2 The Principle of Profit and Loss

It is interesting to investigate the principle of profit and loss in some moredetail. Each company produces the following outcomes

12.2 The Principle of Profit and Loss 73

Table 12.1. Examples of poles and zeros for a business organization. The readeris invited to extend the list with further possible poles and zeros.

Poles: chaos Zeros: stopsCorruption ArroganceFraud Faulty productsGreed Earthquakes, floodingFaulty market policies FireSocial injustice, income inequality lack of suppliesFaulty or dysfunctional management lack of moneyLack of confidence bankruptcyLack of skills or knowledge strikesLack of control or feedback · · ·

Table 12.2. Review of fraud cases over the year 2000 in The Netherlands

Collaborator Percentage Collaborator Percentage

Administration 5.8 Department store 7.0General support 5.2 Manager, CEO 13.8Works manager 2.3 Technician 5.2Drivers 12.8 Production 1.7Safety guards 1.7 Cleaner 7.0Treasurer 1.7 System controller 1.7Boss 5.8 Dispatcher 3.5Catering 6.6 Sales 6.4Buying agent 1.2 Remainder 10.6

• Profit, maximum preferred;• Goods, any kind;• Services, any kind;• Waste , as bypass products.

In general, all goods and services end up in waste, becoming part of ourecological closed loop and environment again. Each business organizationis aiming for making maximum profit with his products and / or services.How can profit and loss be defined? Profit and loss is expressed in money.Money has been assigned to an equivalent amount of energy comparedwith a chosen reference, e.g. one barrel of oil†.

Pushing this to the extreme, maximizing profit implies globalization andcontrolling an increasing amount of energy. From statistics, it is known that

† For instance 1 standard m3 at standard conditions (1013,25 mbar and 273,15 K) of natural gas isequivalent with 35.7 M Joules of energy.


Fig. 12.2. In an automobile factory all elements of the process denoted in Fig-ure 12.1 can be traced and verified. The production manuals are indicated withCm. The manuals for auditing and quality control are indicated with Am.

1.5% of US inhabitant’s control 90% of the available resources, energy andmoney. For this limited number of people, this implies the potential forexecuting maximum control of power. From the perspective of natural lawthis system does violate natural law and cannot be considered as a sustain-able system. Note that time has proven to be an irrelevant parameter!

Profit represents energy or money; it is an input quantity to keep the pro-cess running. So for an organization making profit as a single aim can becharacterized as wrong doing by natural law. The input quantity, as moneyand energy is, can never work as a goal. The company will be most vulner-able to market changes and may even vanish in time. When profit is sup-plied back again in the input, it will work expanding the company. Whenprofit (= energy) is stored, or withhold, it contracts society; the amount ofavailable energy decreases. Striving for spreading production, goods andservices in a de-parametrization process will support the company to be-come sustainable over time. What is a de-parametrization process here?It will be clear applying natural law non-violating the ecological environ-

12.2 The Principle of Profit and Loss 75

ment is a one of the prerequisites.

Greed is like a stationary black hole absorbing all surrounding energy.

What is observed today is maximum greed under all conditions even whenlosses are made. This implies with natural law an ongoing infringement ofour ecological system. Greed acts as a stationary black hole contracting so-ciety. In the long run we have inevitably to pay for it. Forest devastation,contamination of soil, etc. It is easy to find many examples. A change ofmind should change our awareness; we are subjected to natural law; evenif we do not want to accept this, ultimately we will be confronted with theoutcome based on the law of cause and effect.

13

STOCK MARKET & BANKING SYSTEM

The stock market is a daily example of a completely parametrized systemruled by emotions. The outcome reflects the essence of the principle ofprofit and loss. The system is extremely vulnerable and appears to be non-sustainable (volatile). The stock market acts as a representation of economicgrowth; is it? For a company, the principle of having shareholders can workefficiently, providing money for new starts, developments, doing research,making inventions for new products and creating new activities. Makingshareholders value the goal of an organization appears to be wrong doingfor previously mentioned reasons.

Speculation is an example of trying to make profit in its ultimate purity.The desired goal is generating profit only taking extreme high risks witha high failure rate. What are the input quantities here? It is mainly basedon a kind of information processing on feelings and rumours. What is theunderlying process involved? Usually the process is just one person takingdecisions based on his / her perception. It is the perception dealing withthe available information from many undefined sources. The system’s out-come is 100% parametrized with an extreme vulnerability showing highinstability characteristics.

The crash in the internationally banking system has revealed many hid-den poles and zeroes of the financial system. The parameters of the eco-nomic system and goals show a highly time dependent character. The sus-tainability or reliability has proven to be extremely low due to the system’sparameters having a high failure rate. The system’s characteristics and itsgoal, do not comply with natural law at all, but focus merely on a smallamount of persons interests.

External and internal circumstances change, interference occurs easily

77

78 STOCK MARKET & BANKING SYSTEM

and the system shows an inherently high built in vulnerability due to awrong set of goals†.

Dominating parameters are connected to persons showing greed, arro-gance and egoism hidden in the system bonus characteristics. It is not d-ifficult to make a more in-depth investigation to find all critical events, i.e.the poles and zeroes.

Banking systems should offer financial and public services, to clientscompanies and the market. Banking targets should be defined as long-termassets, with a low risk character and de-parametrized financial products asoutput to guarantee sustainability.

Shareholders provide fuel at the input in the form of money and are, asowner also part of the system acting as one of the feedback loops. Internaland an external feedback loops are easily recognized. A risk analysis de-partment should be implemented to continuously monitor and control allpossible critical events with their likelihood of occurrence.

Fig. 13.1. Example of the core-business in the banking system.

Note that input quantities are also materials, energy and human resources.In general, the most essential mistake is making an input quantity a target.Money as being fuel, can never act as a sustainable target. Money as beingenergy for an organization, can never act as a sustainable target.

† Interference is any undesired action onto the system.

STOCK MARKET & BANKING SYSTEM 79

Fig. 13.2. Simplified illustration of a banking system, where different subsystemsact as a feedback loop. In each feedback loop critical events can be recognizedwhere in case of occurrence the system will stop functioning properly. A crosssymbolizes where either the feedback loop is broken down or does not functionproperly.

As previously said, most observed occurring critical events are: wronglytaken management decisions based on arrogance, fear, greed, lack of skills,and so on, all of which implicitly eliminate feedback. Feelings and emo-tions often dominate the process, where rationality should. A striking lackof confidence in the banking process, is one of the lesser-understood in-triguing parameters in banking systems. A failure rate can be assigned to alack of confidence (= zero).

The ratio of failures and the total number of passed financial actions candeliver the desired number for the failure rate in a given time frame, some-times called Failures in Time (FITs). When critical events occur the final re-sult becomes, without exception, a disaster. For further investigation, hereagain it is interesting to analyse the observed failures in the banking sys-tem with the tools presented. The following citation of Thomas Jefferson,third president of the United of America, illustrates the ongoing conduct ofbanking systems since 1802.

As previously noticed, the reliability of a system, an observation or a s-

80 STOCK MARKET & BANKING SYSTEM

tatement, whatever its nature, can be calculated with dedicated softwareprograms using probability theory and Boolean algebra, taking into ac-count all counting parameters. An early appreciation of the societal impactof the banking system is given in Figure 13.3.

Fig. 13.3. An early appreciation of the societal impact of the banking system.

14

WAR AS THE OUTCOME OF A POLITICALPROCESS

War is the outcome of a spiritual process. We can describe war with thesame tools and concepts as previously given. We observe the generationof a tremendous amount of devastating physical energy. The outcome is adreadful process of emotions and physical violence, effecting a society fordecades. When a society creates a war atmosphere, it generates internally achange of system characteristics, located in the physical- emotional energyplane.

One objective of war is the inevitably complete destruction of the oth-er party. The process violates natural law in its deepest essence, creatingchaos, resulting in maximum (entropy) chaos. The output of such a processis fed back again to the input of the system society and will influence thesystem characteristics effecting social life, economics and political stabili-ty with extreme consequences. In its worst case when chemical or nuclearweapons are used, the ecological system is destroyed for decades. Once awar situation has entered a society it can only be corrected or stabilized byagain changing the system’s characteristics.

A war process can be ended injecting a lot of positive (opposite) ener-gy into the process, implementing new poles and zeroes compensating theexisting ones. See also Figure 11.1. By implementing new internal and ex-ternal feedback systems, changing the system and connected process char-acteristics it can find its realization.

Here, a paradox arises that sometimes with a compensating war process,and with brute force only, a new society can be founded. However, thiscan also result in a disaster (see e.g. Friedmann). In any case the negativeenergy connected to a war process must be converted into positive energyobtaining a new system with changed characteristics. It is noticed that all

81

82 WAR AS THE OUTCOME OF A POLITICAL PROCESS

wars and conflicts are the outcome of a spiritual process.

All Wars and conflicts are the outcome of a spiritual process.

War is one of the most extreme forms of the lust for power, inherently vi-olating natural law. As already posed, in certain circumstances the com-pensating counteracting feedback again needs to be a counteracting waractivity. It might be revealed that, after long discussions, no other toolsare available to create the desired new system characteristics. In general,when a system (society) becomes totally out of control extreme strong feed-back measures are required to convert the system into a new society, withimproved system characteristics. All wars and conflicts originate from adefensive goal.

To prevent a war process is stepping backwards and looking deep insid-e, towards the essence of life where only natural laws exists and no exter-nal feedback as Codes and Laws are necessary. This process demands acompletely de-parametrization of all system parameters where no criticalevents any longer exist. Today’s society has a long way to go for this spiri-tual change of mind. Note that mankind is also subjected to natural law. Inactuality; all processes inevitably are subjected to natural law.

Concerning political systems, some propositions may be worthwhile con-sidering for further evaluation and discussion. The propositions reflectsome observations found, which may be productive in making improve-ments in the political awareness processes.

15

SOME PROPOSITIONS

Proposition 1. Any existing disagreement between nations has never beenbetween the essences of nations, but only between the (parametrized) im-ages of nations. The same holds for cultural and religious differences. Fearhas distorted international relationships by first distorting individual per-ception. Political overlays will survive changes when they represent thehidden spiritual - meta-physical reality of the people behind it.

Proposition 2. It is in each government’s advantage to harmonize it-s activities with the spirit of its homeland. Each homeland has its owncharacteristics and spiritual reality behind it. Each of the national spiritscomplements each other. The key to sustainability is not competition butcooperation at the spiritual level at a common set of purposes. Striving fora better mutual understanding can make codes and laws obsolete savingtime and money.

Proposition 3. All questions and problems can be solved. It is just amatter of awareness; finding the right view and appropriate approach toperception. This will change the characteristics of that system involved.

Proposition 4. The wealth of a nation is derived from the process of thatnation striving for de-parametrized goals. The pre-set goals determine theprocess to be raised. The greatest zero (= block) to prosperity is fear, for itobstructs the flow of life. In dictatorial ruled governments this characteris-tic is found in its extreme nature.

Proposition 5. Truth and politics are often each other’s antagonist, whilstpolitics is saying what you need to say to achieve the preset desired goals.

83

84 SOME PROPOSITIONS

16

DISCUSSION

As shown in our investigation, each observation can be understood in termsof the outcome of a process with its connected system. Input and outputare part of one integral concept. The presence and quality of the feedbackloop determine the sustainability of any process. It can be analyzed andreliability numbers can be assigned to it. It is possible to characterize a sys-tem with help of limited number of critical events named poles and zeroes.They are easily recognized when answering the question where the systemstops functioning properly and where it becomes chaotic. Critical eventscan be expressed in failure rates, reflecting the likelihood of occurrence.

This is a complicated but important topic for further research in risk con-trol and analysis. Collected statistical data, of any type of event, offers alarge resource of reference material for the type of failure rates considered.A mix of emotional, rational and physical energy, cause the outcome of aprocess when human behavior is involved.

Political and financial systems show an increasing sustainability whentheir goals contain a high level of de-parameterization, and independencerepresenting the hidden spiritual - meta-physical timeless reality. Analyz-ing political and financial systems with help of the concepts introduced,provides a profound understanding, and even predictability with theseprocesses. All outcomes are based on human behavior.

When the applicable natural laws are violated, the sustainability of eachprocess severely deteriorates. The tools introduced may assist further in-sight. The counteracting basic emotions are an interesting subject for scal-ing experiments. Rationality and emotion often cause conflicting feelings.Ultimately, there is no escaping natural law.

85

86 DISCUSSION

References

Robert Greene, and Joost Elfers, The 48 Laws of Power, published 1998 by ProfileBooks Ltd., London, UK.

A.F.P. van Putten, Electronic Measurement Systems, theory and practice, sec ed.IOP, UK 1996.

Karl Heinz Deschner, Das Kreuz in der Kirche, ein Sexualgeschichte des Christen-dums, Econ Verlag GmbH, ISBN 902951292x, sec. ed. 1980

ISO 9000 Standardization norms, Dutch Institute of Standardization, Delft, TheNetherlands, 1988

Elyia M. Goldratt, Theory of Constraints, North River Press Inc., New York, 1990E.M. Goldratt , The Goal A Process of Ongoing Improvement, North River Press,

New York, 1986Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal Ma-

chine, MIT press,. 1948Martin Heidegger, Die Technik und die Kehre, Uitg. Lannoo, Tielt en Utrecht, 1973Fritjof Capra, The Turning point, 1982C.E Shannon, The mathematical theory of communication, 12th ed. London; Uni-

versity of Linois Press, 1971C.E. Shannon and Warren Weaver, The mathematical theory of communication,

University of Linois Press, 12th ed. 1971Roger Penrose, Shadows of the Mind, A Search for the missing Science of Con-

sciousness, Oxford University Press, 1994Norbert Wiener, Invention, The care and feeling of Ideas, The MIT press, Cam-

bridge, Mass. USA, 1993Antonio Damasio, The Feelings of What Happens; Body and motion in the Making

of Consciousness , Publ. Harcourt Brace, 1999Robert Greene, and Joost Elfers, The 48 Laws of Power, pub. 1998 Profile Books

Ltd., London, UK, 1998L. von Bertalanffy,A Taste of Systemics, ISSS, 2000MSN Encarta 2002 consulted for all subjectsWikipedia consulted for all subjectsGregor Vincent, Bonus Time, Publ. Juliette Books, Febr 2008Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon, Steve Jobs, iCon, The Greatest second act in

the History of Business, Publ. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005David Owen, In Sickness and in Power, Illness in heads of government during the

last 100 years, Methuen Publishing Ltd. London, 2008

87

88 References

Epilogue

Mankind has a few points of reference only. Birth and death are undeniablereference points in mankind’s nature. Further points of reference through-out history are: the game for power, money and women. All three can actas an addiction. The actual sustainability of society is exposed best in po-litical decisions. Although rational and legal approaches teach how thingsapparently work, in practice emotions and feelings play a governing role.More than ever mankind is confronted with political and allegedly legaldecisions, often with a predictable expiration date, connected to timely in-formation. Information is inevitably connected to energy in an arbitrarytype or form. Energy is the beginning and end of all life and all processes,whatever its origin. Each observation is the representation of an underly-ing concept or event. We analyse the conditions and driving forces, whichdetermine reliability and sustainability of decisions, the outcomes and theconsequences of a decision process.

One of the most intriguing questions still is: what is the basic drivingforce of human behaviour? Is it power, money, greed or sex? Clearly, sex-ual behaviour is a built- in driving force by the law of nature. Humanbehaviour is the parametrized outcome of a process in a three-dimensionalenergy system, composed of rational, physical and emotional energy. Oftenemotional energy and rational energy are conflicting energies. No system issustainable until it has proved to be so. The closer a process accomplishesnature law, the greater the reliability and sustainability. The concepts allowanalysis and understanding of any type of process and crisis.

89

90 Epilogue

About the author

Anton F.P. van Putten (1939, Amstelveen, The Netherlands) studied Elec-trical engineering at the School of Polytechnics Amsterdam and at DelftUniversity of Technology. He received his Ph.D. from the Katholieke Uni-versiteit Leuven in 1988, with great distinction. He was professor at Eind-hoven University of Technology, visiting professor in London, MiddlesexUniversity, Universite de Bordeaux I and at the Universidade de Fisica,Coimbra, Portugal. He is a specialist in solid state sensors and inventedthe silicon flow sensor in 1974.With his three sons, he co-invented world’s first certified fully electronicgas monitoring system for domestic usage, the Van Putten Gas Energy Ob-servatory (VPGEO) (www.VPGEO.com).Over the past years he studied Law of the Dutch Court system and pub-lished articles about several law topics. (www.Hollandpromote.com) An-ton van Putten is married with Maria Eva Veeken; together they have threesons and one daughter.

91

Glossary of Terms

A

ACAlternating Current

ActuatorsA device found at the output of a system and able to covert informationfrom one energy domain into another

AgingThe change of specifications of a system in time due to environmental cir-cumstances

Alzheimer diseaseA disease marked by progressive memory loss and mental deteriorationassociated with brain damage, the cause of which is ill understood

AND functionA Boolean operator, that returns a positive result when both operands arepositive. Or a logical function consisting of a series connection of systemsor conditions that returns positive when all operands are positive

AristotleA Greek philosopher living from 422 - 388 BC

AuditAn official investigation used to check if the required procedures have beenstrictly followed

93

94 Glossary of Terms

Auditory organAn organ appropriate for hearing sound

AutismA developmental disorder characterized by extreme self-absorption, anddetachment from reality; a type of brain disease of which the cause is illunderstood

AwarenessSame as conscious

B

Background knowledgeUnderstanding, or information gained by study or experience before a spec-ified time moment.; 2. Fact or state of knowing before a certain specifiedmoment; 3. The body of truths or facts accumulated in the course of time,available before a specified time moment

BarristerIn UK a lawyer who has the privilege of pleading in the higher courts

BiasedInitial operating conditions of a representation of a system.

Biological sensesOne of the faculties, sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch, by which humansand animals perceive

Biological systemA functional entity, that can perform a certain biological task.

Boolean algebraCalculation rules in which each of the logic values and the result can takeonly one of two values, e.g. one and zero, or ”true” and ””false” or ”switchclosed and ”switch open”, and so on. Two operands are available only: i.e.”AND” and ”OR”.

Boundary condition

Glossary of Terms 95

Limiting particular state or situation of a person or thing, or 2) limitingstate of health, or 3) limiting social position, or 4) a limiting modifying cir-cumstance.

BrainThe part of the central nervous system enclosed in the cranium of verte-brates, serving to control mental and physical actions.

Burn in periodTime to test new parts and systems under defined extreme environmentalconditions accelerating the testing time.

C

ChildhoodIn engineering the time a new system reveals infant mortality.Closed loop systemA system where feedback is applied

Code systemA system using a symbolic arrangement of statements or instructions in acomputer program in which letters, digits, etc., are represented as binarynumbers, or 2. the set of instructions in such a program. 3. A system orfunctional entity based on codes.

Conditional eventAn event dependent on the occurrence of another event, realized underthat specified condition only.

Conditional probabilityThe likelihood of the occurrence of an event under a specified given condi-tion.

ConsciouslyAwareness of one’s own existence, sensations, etc.; or 2. Having the mentalfaculties fully active.; 3. Known to oneself.

Cross effectsUnintentional occurring mutual effects of systems or sensing devices ap-


parently not operating independently from each other.

Cumulative distribution functionA specific summing probability function

CyberneticsThe study of organic control and communication systems, and mechanicalor electronic systems analogous to them.

D

DCElectrical Direct Current

De Morgan theoremA Boolean algebraic expression

DeterminantsFactors determining the characteristics of a system used in psychology.

Dirac delta functionSpecific mathematical function

E

Early-failureFailure occurring at the beginning of a life cycle of a system.

EconomicsThe science of wisdom of infinite scarcity

Economical reliabilityEconomic life cycle during a certain period.

ElectronsElementary particle that carries the negative elementary charge, and form-s neutral atoms when accompanying positively charged nuclei of protonsand neutrons.

Energy


A physical quantity needed to perform labour, which is conjugate to time(the product of energy and time is action)Energy carrierAn intensive physical quantity able to carry power

Entropy1. An indirect measure of energy, that is not available for work in a ther-modynamic process (the product of entropy and temperature is energy); 2.a hypothetical tendency is for the total entropy in the universe to increasewith time; 3. A measure for chaos or disorder.

Environmental conditionsOperational conditions for a system

ExpectationThe average of possible probabilities of series of events

Extensive parameterA parameter describing a physical quantity

Extrinsic feedbackFeedback path not belonging to the system itself

F

Failure rateThe average number of failures in a specified time for a certain system

FeedbackThe principle of applying a part of the output signal to the input

Force of mortalityThe period of increased mortality for a new system

FrequenciesThe number of changes of a certain event per time unit

H

Hazard rate


Synonym for failure rate when the failure rate is a function of time

Human engineeringThe science of interactions between man and machines

HybrisThe illness of pride

HysteriaA neurosis characterized by violent emotional outbreaks, sensory distur-bances, or (2), an uncontrollable emotional outburst, as from fear.

I

ImageA physical likeness or representation of a person, animal, or thing.; 2. Anoptical counterpart of an object, as is produced by reflection from a mirror.;3. a mental representation.

Immanual KantA German philosopher, who lived from 1724-1804.

Impulse responseThe use of characterizing a system with help of an impulse.

Independent variablesVariables found at the input of a system not dependent of other parameter.

Infant mortalityThe changing failure rate region at the beginning of a life cycle failure ratecurve of a new system

InformationAny knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact orsource of information; 2.data at any stage of processing.

Input variablesVariables found at the input of a system

Intensive parameters


A physical parameter which can carry power

InterferenceAny undesired cause which may influence a process or system

IntuitionDirect perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process.

Intuitive knowledgeKnowledge or insight gained based on intuition

ISO 9000 systemA worldwide accepted quality system approved by the International Stan-dardization Organization

J

JealousyResentful and envious, as of someone’s success

JurisprudenceThe science or philosophy of law; 2. A system of laws.

JuryA group of persons selected and sworn to examine the evidence in a caseand render a verdict to a court.

K

Kamerling Onnes, HeikeDutch scientist who discovered superconductivity in 1911. He observedthat no electrical resistance is present in mercury below 4.2 K.

L

LifecycleThe useful period of a system

Linear systemA system complying with the conditions for linear behaviour


Logons

A unit of structural information and it is expressed in metrons

M

Magnetic fieldsA field having the properties of a magnet

Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF)The average time between two failures for a repairable system over its en-tire life cycle .

Mean Time To Failure (MTTF)The average time to failures for a non-repairable system

Mean Time To First Failure (MTTFF)For a repairable system the average time to first failure.

Meta-physical realityThe hidden existence of a representation or image

MetricA physical unit based on the unit of length the meter retrieved from the SIsystem.

Metrons(1)Greek word for meter; (2) unit for structural information per logon

Mixed natural-technical systemA system operating as one system consisting of a technical and a naturalsystem

Multiple Sclerosis(MS), a progressive auto-immune disease in which the body attacks its owncentral nervous system, gradually destroying myelin, the white, fatty sub-stance that surrounds nerve fibres, thereby damaging sites in the brain andspinal cord


N

Negative feedbackThe principle of connecting a part of the output signal to the input of a sys-tem with opposite sign.

NMRNuclear Magnetic Resonance or NMR, A technique developed for the spec-troscopic analysis of natural living substances. NMR became a diagnostictool for obtaining precise images of tissues within the human body muchbetter than are possible with CAT scans or ultra-sonic equipment. The N-MR technique is also called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Norbert WienerAmerican scientist and mathematician at MIT 1894 - 1964, US.

Nyquist theoremA theorem describing the minimum required sample frequency taking sam-ples from an analogue information source, without losing information.

O

ObservationEach object, or natural phenomenon which can be perceived by humansenses, with or without tools

ObsessionsMental illnesses in which a person experiences an abnormally high level ofanxiety over an elongated period.

OffenderPerson who has committed an act against the law

Open loop systemSystem without having a feedback loop.

Open systemA system placed in and connected to its environment

OR function


Boolean expression, where either one or more of given number of parame-ter must be true to obtain an outcome to be successful.

OrthodoxA person having opinions based on codes only.

Output variables

(Physical) parameters found at the output of a system as a function of thatsystem

P

ParameterA mathematical or physical variable or constant describing a specific aspectof a function or system, but not its general nature.

ParanoidType of psychosis in which a person suffers from logically consistent delu-sions (fixed, false beliefs) of persecution or grandeur.

Parkinson diseaseGradual progressively disabling disease marked by tremor and increasingstiffness of the muscles.

PartnershipAn arbitrary relationship between persons

PerceptionThe intuitive recognition, or appreciation or insight retrieved from an ob-servation.

Perceptual knowledgeKnowledge gained by perception and henceforth a function of the personby whom the observation is based.

PhotonsThe smallest amount of radiant energy known.

Physiology


The science of the normal functions of the living things.

Physiological boundaryA present constraint related to physiological conditions of a living system

p-n diagramA graphical representation of the characteristics of a system with help ofpoles and zeroes.

Pole- zero plotSame as a p-n diagram

PolesIn a given system the characteristic frequency of an event where the systemunder consideration becomes chaotic.

Political systemThe type of government of public affairs in general a state is acting in.

Polynomial functionA mathematical function consisting of more than one term, or factor.

Positive feedbackThe connection of the output quantity to the input without reversing sign

PowerPower is defined is energy per unit of time

ProbabilityThe likelihood of occurrence of an possible event

Probability density distributionA mathematical function describing the probability over an infinitesimalsmall range for a continuous or discrete stochastic process

Probability functionA mathematical function describing the probability of a given type of eventsor stochastic processes.

Probability theory


The mathematical theory describing stochastic processes with discrete orcontinuous variables.

ProcessA series of actions connected to a certain system

Process parametersAll distinguishable independent and dependent variables which determinethe process.

Profit1) Economically, defined as the difference between costs and price earnedfor a provided service or good; 2) The advantage or good obtained from aneffort.

PropositionA statement made sometimes without further explanation or proof.ProsecutorA person who can start legal actions against somebody.

Psychological processA process connected to the functions of mind

PsychologyThe science study of the mind and its processes

PulseA extremely short occurrence of an event

QQualityThe instantaneous collection of specifications of a given system.Quality classAn arbitrary collection of specifications connected to a certain type of qual-ity level

Quality controlThe control procedures executed during manufacturing of products verify-


ing the accomplishment of predefined accepted specifications.

Quality factorsNumerical numbers assigned to quality classes.

Quantum mechanicsIn solid state material or a plasma, the description of the number of possiblediscrete energy states and the probability of their occupation by electrons.

R

Radiant energyEnergy generated or available in the electromagnetic spectrum

RationalSomething what is possible to be reasoned or can be tested by reasoning.

Real axisUsually an X-axis in a graphical representation of complex numbers onwhich only the real numbers - positive or negative- are located with a cho-sen origin as reference.

ReceiverA person or system, that receives information.

RecordsWritten (legal) statements or stored information in other means as magnet-ic tapes.

RedundancyThe superfluity in a language or system containing more than is strictlyneeded.

Reference systemA system with predefined units, that is used for making comparisons andmeasurements possible between items or entities.

RegistrarA person whose duty is to keep (legal) records or registers.


RelationshipAn existing connection between a person, things, idea or other things

ReliabilityThe probability that a system will functioning after a certain predefined pe-riod within its predefined specifications.

Reliability calculationsCalculations performed to express the reliability in a number.

Reliability engineeringThe engineering science to predict the reliability of systems goods, services,hardware and software.

Religious systemA system based on the belief of the existence of a supernatural ruling pow-er, the creator and controller of the universe, who has given to humankinda spiritual nature which continues to exist after the death of the body; (2)or, one of the various systems of belief.

Repair actionIn reliability engineering the action to bring back the system to its originalstate after having performed a maintenance or repair action.

RepresentationThe physical image of something, which can be perceived by the humansenses.

Reproductive organsThe organs by which the reproduction of the species can be performed.

ResponseThe reaction on a stimulus at the input of a given system.

Response curveThe graphical representation of the output of a system on a stimulus ap-plied at the input.

Reversible processA physical mechanism of which the reverse principle exists, e.g. the Peltier


effect, converting heat into an electrical voltage difference, and the Seebeckeffect, implying the conversion of an electrical voltage into a temperaturedifference.S

Salivary glandAn organ that produces the natural liquid present in the mouth.

SchieferA US based scientist and one of the Nobel price winners who explainedsuperconductivity in 1957.

SchizophreniaType of mental disorder or split personality characterized by lack of asso-ciation between the intellectual processes and actions.

Selective informationA quantity of information connected to a selection to be made out of possi-ble events. See also metric information.

Self-consciousnessBeing consciousness of own existence

Semantic informationThe meaning of language connected information

SemanticsThe meaning of words or language

SenderA person or system providing information

SensorDevice able to convert information from one energy domain into anotherenergy domain without loss of information

SexThe being of male or female, or the attractiveness of a person of one sex tothe other, and so on.


ShannonUS scientist who was the first to connect the concept of information to theconcept of entropy.

Shannons theoremThe theorem that states that a signal source having a maximum frequencyof fmax requires a minimum sample frequency of 2 fmax to avoid loss ofinformation.SightWhat can be perceived in the visible region

SI-systemStands for Systeme Internationale d’Unite, a world-wide accepted uniquereference system for mass, length, time unit, force and other physical units.Social behaviourHuman related group behaviour

SocietyA system whereby people live together in organized communities

SolicitorIn UK a lawyer who prepares legal documents and can represent clients inlower courts

Spinning electronsThe characteristic of an electron spinning on their own axis and thereforegenerating an own spin magnetic field.

Spiritual levelThe level of thinking not related to material things

SQUIDSA transducer able to measure the weak magnetic processes in the brains.SQUID stands for Super Conductivity Quantum Interference Devices

StabilityThe condition or quality that a system will behave sustainable in time.


Standard deviationThe square root of the variance of a stochastic variable

Step functionA type of mathematical function applied to the input of a system to deter-mine the characteristic of that system.

StimuliAn arbitrary input variable to activate a system

Stochastic independenceA stochastic variable not dependent of another stochastic variable.

Stochastic mutual excludingStochastic variables which cannot occur at the same time

Strain gaugeA sensor consisting of a resistive thin wire for measuring mechanical forces.

Structural informationIn information theory the number of independent characteristics of degreesof freedom of an information source.SuccessA type of desired output quantity of a system

SuicideThe act to end ones life or one’s welfare.

Super-conductivityThe quality of a material having no resistance for an electrical current.

SustainabilitySomething that gives strength and can be maintained

SystemA group of technical and / or natural things, parts, or components coher-ently connected to perform a certain specific function


System characteristicsThe points -poles and zeroes - determining the faculty of a system

T

TargetThe aimed outcome of a process or system

Technical informationType of information, which can be processed by technical systems only.

Technical reliabilityReliability assigned to technical systems only. See also reliability.

Technical systemsSystems composed of non-natural parts, components and materials.

Theory of causesThe theory of the four conditions by which an effect is caused.

Thermal energyEnergy connected to the thermal domain

ThermocoupleA sensor device consisting of two different metals able to measure a volt-age difference as a function of temperature difference

TimeA measure to determine distance, speed, acceleration and space.

Time invariantA quantity not dependent on time

TouchThe faculty of physical feeling things

ToxicA poisonous substance or quality

Transducers


Devices converting information from one energy domain into another ener-gy domain. For instance, a solar cell converts radiant energy into electricalenergy, or a thermocouple converting a temperature difference into a volt-age.

Transfer functionThe mathematical expression describing the relationship between outputand input of a system

Transferring informationThe activity of transporting information from a sender to a receiver.

TransientA short discontinuous event occurring in a system

TruthThe actual state of matter or indisputable facts observed on which consen-sus exists.

Truth levelThe -energy - level on which the observations are made

TumorA diseased growth in some part of the body

U

UncertaintyThe degree of lack of knowledge

UnconsciouslyThe unawareness of being

Unreliability functionThe complementary function of reliability function.

Useful life periodThe technical or economical period a system can be used within its prede-fined specifications.


V

VarianceA probability function, as measure of disagreement with the average of apopulation.

W

WasteThe useless outcome of a process

WarThe use of armed forces between countries or groups

WealthThe possession of a great amount of property, money, goods.

Wear out periodThe time a system shows a failure rate of more than twice the normal fail-ure rate.

Z

ZeroesThe characteristic points of a system representing the possible events, whenoccurring, the system stops functioning.

Index

interfaces, 40operand, 44

absolute, 31abuse of power, 50, 51accuracy , 43act, 51action point , 45actuator, 37, 40, 45addictions, 59agreements, 64airplane, 34algebraic summing point, 45amplifier, 49analog, 22angel of view, 24antagonist, 83Apple Inc., 69appreciation, 24Aristotle, 8, 25Army, 66arrogance, 71assets, 78atoms, 20audible, 20audience, 57audio system, 49audio system , 47audit, 71, 72, 74, 93authentic document, 51automatic gain, 49automobile factory, 72awareness, 69

ballet, 57bankers, 57banking process , 41banking system , 40bankrupt, 8Bardeen, 28bathtub curve, 13, 16behavior

rational, 57

bit stream, 40black box, 34black hole, 75board computers, 23body, 57body language, 35bonus characteristics, 78bonus goals, 69bonus system, 57Boolean algebra, 32boundary conditions, 58, 63brain, 58brains , 45British system, 61bureaucracy, 62burn in period, 13

cancer density, 15cash flow, 41category, 71chair, 8chairman, 51changing process, 7chaos, 5, 23, 62chaotic, 10, 62characteristics, 27

system’s, 7chemical, 35, 81chemical energy , 45chemical process , 45Civil code, 68class factor, 16clerk , 51closed loop, 40closed loop system, 67closed loop system , 47closed system, 23codes, 61coherence, 9collection of data, 19comfort, 72communication system, 20, 22communism, 67

113

114 Index

company, 69, 74comparator , 45compatibility, 29compensating war process, 81competition, 83complementary failure probability, 62components, 39, 58computer, 35computer failure, 62conatmination, 75concept

underlying, 8conceptual knowledge, 26conditional probability, 19confidence, 79configuration, 35conflict of interest, 51conformity, 27confrontation action, 45consciousness, 58consciousness reasoning, 27consultation, 51contracting emotional energy, 56contracting society, 67, 68control of power, 74control system , 40control theory, 6, 33control unit , 40Cooper, 28cooperation, 83core, 57correctness, 21corresponding set of parameters, 27corruption, 51, 64, 67counteracting, 6counteracting emotions, 56counteracting feedback, 82Court, 29court decisions, 5court session, 51Court system, 6craftsman, 25creation, 35crisis, 63critical event, 8critical events, 8, 9, 62critical points, 6cultural, 55culture, 28Cybernetics, 43cycling process , 45

Damasio, Antonio, 58database, 63de-parameterized, 8de-parametrization, 65de-personified knowledge, 28de-personify, 24decision, 51declarations, 24deed, 51

defensive goal, 82democracy, 6, 59, 61dependent variables, 41design errors, 50desired temperature, 40desired value, 45determining factors, 9dictatorship, 6, 59, 67digital, 22dimensionless number, 22discipline rights, 52, 53dishonesty, 71display, 40disturbing process, 61driving force, 55Dutch Court system, 51Dutch court system, 50Dutch Parliament, 53dynamical, 58

earthquake, 62ecological environment, 73, 75economic closed systems , 47economic life cycle, 15economic perspective, 67economic process, 64economic system, 8, 77education, 65efficiency, 62egoism, 78Einstein, 27elections, 61electrical, 35electrical energy, 34, 40electro-magnetism, 26electrons, 20emotion, 55emotional, 6emotional energy, 57emotions, 5encrypted, 21encryption code, 21enemy, 58energy, 6, 20, 23, 33, 55energy - time diagram, 56energy carrier, 20energy conversion, 36energy converting system, 34energy domains, 58energy time diagram, 57entities, 20, 49entropy, 23, 81environment, 35environmental bound parameters, 24environmental classes, 16environmental conditions, 7, 15environmetal condition, 24equilibrium organ , 45errors

design, 17essence, 26

Index 115

exchange of information, 29existence, 36expanding emotional energy, 56expected average, 11expiration date, 57, 66explosive, 10exponential distribution, 13exponential failure distribution, 18expression , 47extensive quantity, 57external action, 62external feedback, 68external feedback , 47external feedback loop, 61extrinsic feedback, 48extrinsic feedback loop, 64

failing conditions , 44failure, 8failure mode, 10failure rate, 11, 13, 62, 77

distribution, 13failures, 13

human, 17fear, 55, 58, 67feedback, 7, 43

intentionally, 48non-intentionally, 48

feedback loop, 43feedback loops, 61feedback system, 22feelings, 33, 77fibrillation, 10field

electromagnetic, 20financial products , 48financial system, 49financial system , 43first principles, 27flow, 8flying process, 49forest devastation, 75forgery, 51, 52frame, 57framework, 61fraud, 51, 71frequency, 10freuqncy, 20functional unit, 34

Gates, R.W., 69geographical, 55geographical conditions, 55global market, 47global process, 65global structure, 55Government, 44government, 61gravitation, 25gravitational constant, 27greed, 55, 57, 71

ground plane, 57guilt feelings, 56

harmony, 55, 58hate, 57hearing, 31, 35heart attack, 10heart stand still, 10Heidegger, 8, 25, 27, 87hierarchy, 31, 39hierarchy of information, 6Hitler, 68homeland, 83houses of representatives, 61huamnkind, 35human behavior, 6, 48, 55human intervention, 26human resources, 78hurricane, 62

illusive, 8image, 36implode, 67independent input variables , 41independent parameters, 25independent variables , 41industrial property rights, 21infant mortality, 16infant mortatilty, 13infinite, 10inflow, 40information, 6, 17, 19, 23, 29, 40, 55information carriers, 36information processing , 44information society, 19information theory, 19information transport, 20infromation, 20inhabitants, 55input quantities, 7, 40, 66input variables, 33, 72integral system, 35integral system , 47intensive quantity, 57interaction, 62interconnection, 58interface, 36interface , 41interfaces, 36interfaces , 43interfacing, 34interference, 7, 49, 61, 77interference , 48international relationships, 83internet, 65interpretation , 47intrinsic feedback, 48intrinsic temperature, 20intuition, 27inventions, 27iPod, 39

116 Index

ISO model, 71isolation, 65

jamming, 5, 64Jobs, S., 69

Kamerling Onnes, 28Kant, 8Kelvin, 20knowledge, 19, 23

soul’s, 27knowledge level, 25

Land, 69language, 27, 29language redundancy, 21law

natural, 57law of cause and effect, 33laws, 61laws , 44lawyers, 66leadership, 61legal power, 52level of parametrization, 66life

essence, 82life cycle, 14–16, 96, 98, 100life period

useful, 13likelihood , 10likelihood of correctness, 19likelihood of occurrence, 62likelihood of occurrence , 10limbs, 35linear system, 9listemer , 47living person, 58logarithmic scale, 22logons, 22long term, 65loss, 72loudness , 47lust for power, 82

MacKay, 19magician, 28magnetic, 35management, 71Margret Thatcher, 44market environment , 47marketing strategy, 71measurable quntities, 25mechanical, 35mechanical energy , 40meta-physical, 31metaphysical level, 25metric, 22metrons, 22microphone , 40Microsoft, 69

mind, 58, 66minute, 51mixed natural-technical system, 39mobile telephone, 39money, 40, 59, 73monitoring actions, 61mortgage loans , 41musician, 57mutatis mutandis, 52

Napoleon, 68nations, 83natural law, 15, 25, 27, 65, 74natural processes, 6natural resources, 63natural systems , 40natural-technical, 6nature, 43nature law, 6Negative emotional energy, 58negative energy, 81Nelson Mandela, 69new society, 82Newton, 26non-identical, 49Norbert Wiener, 43notice, 51nuclear weapons, 81nucleon, 20

observation, 6observations, 5, 31open loop, 43open loop system, 47, 67opinions, 45opinons, 57opposition, 67optical energy, 35optical energy domain, 35optimum system, 62organs, 36origin, 58originating process, 33outcome, 33, 62outcome , 49outflow, 40output quantity , 44output vaiables, 33output variables , 41outside world, 65oven, 40

p erception, 57paradox, 81parameter, 24parameterized, 64parameterized representations, 6, 57parameters, 6parametric knowledge, 24parametrization, 24parametrized, 6

Index 117

paranoid, 67Parliament, 44parts, 39perception, 24, 27, 77, 83perceptual knowledge, 28perceptual level, 25performer , 47personal bound information, 24personal bound parameters, 24personified information, 23perspective, 67phenomena, 6Philips, Anton, 69photons, 20physical, 6physical conditions, 24physical elements, 35physical energy, 56, 81physical outcome, 55physical reactions, 58physical- emotional energy plane, 81pilot, 49poisoning, 15, 48Polaroid, 69poles, 9, 62, 63, 71Policy, 66policy, 55policy makers, 57political power, 56political stability, 81political structures, 62political system, 43Politics, 61politics, 6postive energy, 59power, 59, 66

abuse, 67power failure, 62pre-set goals, 83preoccupation, 5Prime Minister , 44principle of doubt, 29probability, 10probability of occurence, 22probability theory, 32procedures , 44process, 33, 61processes, 5processing of information, 19production step, 71profit, 57, 72profit and loss, 77proposition, 27, 83propositions, 82psychology, 58public services, 78

quality, 71quality , 39quality control, 71quality factors, 16

quantityextensive, 58

quantum mechanics, 28

radiation, 35, 36random, 21ratio , 40rational, 6rational argumnents, 57rational energy, 56, 58, 59reality, 8realization, 69receiver, 22reciprocal value, 11recognition, 19

intuitive, 24record, 51redundancy, 21, 22referece frame, 31reference feedback system, 61reference points, 5reference system, 68reference units, 26region

early-failure, 13regulations, 61, 62relationship, 35relative, 31relativistic process, 26reliability, 6, 8, 22, 31, 39, 62, 68, 77reliability engineering, 6religous differences, 83repairable system , 16repeatable, 26, 28representation, 6, 8, 25reproductive organs, 35resources, 74retrievel of data, 19return action, 43risk, 77risk analysis, 18risk analysis department, 78rocket, 39rumors, 77

satellite, 39scale

energy, 57Schiefer, R., 28science, 26, 69scientific doubt, 29scientific knowledge, 26scientist, 57second law of thermodynamics, 23selective information, 22self reflection, 72self-centered, 56semantic information, 20, 22semantics, 21sender, 22senses, 28, 31

118 Index

sensing organs, 35sensor, 37, 40sequence, 21serial, 49services, 71set point, 45Shannon, 23shareholders, 78shareholers, 77ship, 69SI-system, 26sight, 35silver bowl, 25simulation, 57simulations, 26Singapore ruling system, 69singer, 57skin organ, 35smell, 31, 35social injustice, 67society, 6, 50, 58, 61solar cells, 36solid state material, 20sound, 40source, 22, 61specifications, 25speculation, 77speech, 35spirit, 58, 69spiritual feeling, 6spiritual process, 81, 82spiritual reality, 83spritual feeling, 61stability, 43, 61stable, 8state of knowing, 24state of matter, 27statistical, 11stock market, 77storage of data, 19structural information, 22sub events, 62summing point , 44super conductivity, 28suspect, 8sustainability, 6, 40, 61, 66sustainable, 8sustainable process, 43sustanaibility, 8switch, 40syntax, 21system, 35

sustainable, 59system characteristics, 8system definition, 34system dependent, 41system parameters, 66

target, 49target temperature, 45taste, 31, 35

technical, 6technical - natural system, 34technical information, 20technical system, 39technology, 69terrorist attack, 62thermal, 35thermal energy, 20thermocouple, 36thermocouple , 45Thomas Jefferson, 79thought, 69threat on terror, 56three dimensional, 55three-dimensional energy domain, 6time dependent, 57time frame, 58tool, 39topology, 63touch, 31, 35traceable, 55, 58traffic accident, 24transducer, 37transfer function, 7transport channel, 22trias politica, 53truth, 8, 27two chamber system, 64

unambiguous, 29uncertainty, 19, 23underlying concept, 8, 25

validation, 26vector quantity, 58vector scale, 58velocity

light, 27verdict, 51vibration of matter, 20violence, 67vision, 31, 57, 69volume, 57vowels, 21vulnerability, 48

war, 58, 81wealth, 83weather conditions, 24wireless keyboard, 40witness, 8witten statement, 24women, 59worshipping, 25written language, 29written report, 51

zeroes, 9, 62, 63

the sustainability of western society · 2020. 5. 10. · all human behaviour...

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