When we investigate into the sociological foundations of collective intelligence and group behaviors, a finding is that any social system at any level is a passive structure.
- The passive social system (PSS) theory [Wang, 2007]: Any individual of the nth generation will passively enter a social system created by those of the n-1th generation. However, the current nth generation is then, in turn, designs and maintains the system for the n+1th generation who have no change to do so yet. Therefore, for any social system as a long life-span system [Wang, 2012], it is always passive for the next generations because it’s designed by earlier generations.
- Advantage of PSS’s: Stable, structural, low rate of risks, reduced failures, better collection of cumulative knowledge and experience, good traceability, better predictability, etc.
- Disadvantage of PSS’s: Conservative, inefficient, constraining creativity, tending to rectify new perspectives, slow to response new development, disappoint young members, inherent internal tension, etc.
This is an interesting question, particularly due to it inter-generational assumption. I have been working to apply complexity concepts and in particular information theory -- information is transmitted from the past to the future (Crutchfield et al. 2009) -- and believe you can relax the inter-generational assumption in the general case. There are also applications from group selection evolutionary research (Nowak et al, 2011) that are relevant. You can see some of this thinking in the attached paper.
References
Crutchfield, J. P. Ellison, C. J. & Mahoney, J. R. (2009) Time’s Barbed Arrow: Irreversibility, Crypticity, and Stored Information Santa Fe Institute Working Paper 09-XX-XXX arxiv.org:09XX.XXXX [physics.gen-ph]
Hazy, J. K., & Ashley, A. (2011). Unfolding the Future: Bifurcation in Organizing Form and Emergence in Social Systems. Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 13(3), 58-80.
Nowak, M., Tarnita C.E., & Wilson, E.O., (2010). The evolution of eusociality. Nature 466, August 26, 2010, p.1057. doi: 10.1038/nature0920.
The passive social system theory, the way Yingxu Wang presents it, only says that social systems do not change ! Yet they do. I would therefore suggest him to change to another theory, a theory that takes into account the emergence of new properties of social systems. He could then reframe his question into "What are the basic mechanisms of the emergence of novelty in social systems?", a much better question indeed.
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