Patterns and Anti-Patterns

Patterns and anti-patterns. Conformity and deviation. One cannot live without either. With patterns and conformity, we stagnate through complacency, entrenchment, and hubris. With anti-patterns and deviation, we course all through the known knowledge space, each on its own, losing synergies from mutual survival dependence, each fighting each other on their own principles, and end up with chaos.

So the trick is the balance between the two extremes.

The current SIN-'net [in]famous A. Yee is a manifestation of the anti-pattern, the deviant. Except he is without balance, which caused him to end up in his current predicament. I pity him. An easy mistake to make, one that could've been avoided easily had he chosen to do so instead of letting the inner chaos erupt and take over. I envy him, because by sheer matyrdom, he managed to draw attention to the exact struggles that many have in the latencies of their consciousness but have been too comfortable to dare to voice it out in a repressive environment.

It's hard to decide which of the two feelings I have towards him is the dominant, since I only have this one-shot snapshot of the person himself. Maybe he's choice of a shock delivery was a calculated move, his choice of matyrdom for the greater good as his form of altruism -- never mind the self-death if the sheeple learn! Or it could just be the naïveté of one who hasn't figured out the right balance between patterns and anti-patterns, between being conforming and being deviating. The choice between interpretations of his intent itself is probably more revealing on me than on him.

But back to the point: the balance between the two extremes. Patterns are comfortable, they streamline the decision-making process by providing an easy pattern of ready-made questions with relatively ready-made answers. Routines and procedures are exactly the type of ready-made questions with automatic ready-made answers -- the decisions have been made before, and it is merely the execution of the decisions. Computers are excellent at following routines and procedures, as are most orthodox bureaucrats. There is a danger to that of routines and procedures though, as many a person who has used a computer can tell. If the input to the routine or procedure varies vastly from the assumptions behind the designed routine/procedure, the results are unpredictable at best and detrimental at worst. Most system designers know of that limitation, and so they end up trying to account for as many such assumptions as they can to make the routine/procedure seem ``resilient''. Much of debugging falls into that category as well.

That, however, ends up hiding the fact that as time goes on, the assumptions themselves change beyond the scope of the changes made to the routine/procedure, and it will be time to rewrite the routine/procedure. We know this for computer systems, but the same thing can be thought of for social constructs.

Laws are like routines/procedures. They are patterns -- patterns of society that has undergone codification and formalisation. ``One may not generate noise greater than 90dBA after 2100hrs'' can be one such law. ``Everyone must kow-tow to the local Inquisitor should he/she show his/her authority medallion'' can be another such law. Both are patterns, both are routines/procedures to guide behaviour under specific circumstances.

Both are also not always right.

That's where the anti-pattern/deviation comes into play. Anti-patterns/deviations serve as the search frontier for the novel -- new ideas to solve existing problems, new problems that the current patterns do not already solve. We codify this as ``research'' (yet another pattern!) but have mostly confined it to the fringes of human existence, and at a level that is more impersonal than most. Anti-patterns/deviations relating to science (both hard and soft) are acceptable only when confined to those researchers -- people invested with the power to research via their PhDs and their research tenure.

Once you bring it to the mainstream it's no longer research and is an implementation and with it comes different levels of expectations. Implementation of social change has become much harder ever since we gained better communication connectivity. Yes it's much harder, not easier. It's a contrary view and let me explain a little on the why.

You see, bottom-up social change is never smooth nor gradual. It comes like a whiplash in the form of an uprising or revolution, peaceful or otherwise. It is the accumulation of too many patterns that anger people past the point of repression into downright oppression that makes them spring back with a vengeance. And that is how it gets messy, since all the patterns that were present before now get swept away at once by the angry mob. A society without patterns to guide it (in the form of law, bureaucracy or authority) is a mob, and all mobs have the intelligence of the lowest common denominator, until a leader emerges that can somehow influence the mob towards a more patterned behaviour. Ease of communication provides a feedback mechanism for such bottom-up affairs, which can be seen in the Arab Spring of recent times, as well as the Maidan protests. Some of the feedback is from the local people involved, but due to the 'net's reach, we end up having feedback from outside of the local region, which can be good or bad depending on who's evaluating the situation.

What about top-down social change then? It has always existed, but it is confined to the patterned-thinking of whoever is in charge. After all, if it ain't broke, don't touch it, right? If the current set of laws and bureaucratic mechanisms are working, there is little to no incentive to shake them up in any way. More importantly, most of such top-down social changes are too feeble, particularly when it is done by committee. For some things that affect the status quo, the changes will come swift, but for those that can impact on whoever's in power's power base, the changes will be... less swift. Top-down social changes done by a Prince (feudal lord, warlord, dictator... well you get the idea) moves much faster, though the Prince is not immune to the lure of maintaining or elevating his power base.

Much of the [economically] developed world suffers from too many patterns, while much of the less [economically] developed world suffers from too many anti-patterns. International laws, trade agreements, even the status quo itself are patterns that get enforced ad nauseum, whether or not they are actually as effective as they were before. These patterns raise the barrier of entry into the mainstream, which partly explains why the less [economically] developed world remains so. Internally, the less [economically] developed world has too many anti-patterns, which naturally leads to the anarchy that is chaos.

Clearly, I've been reading too much of the Dune series.

Balance. Balance is key. But balance is hard to attain. Seeking a balance between the pattern and the anti-pattern is the goal that we should all strive for, especially in SIN city.