XPost: sci.crypt   
      
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   Cybernetics is, in a word, awesome.   
      
   A cyberneticist can talk from atoms to cells to nervous systems, to   
   management of a company, country, world, solar system.   
      
   Whether an organism is mechanical, biological or social, it requires   
   a feedback mechanism to survive.   
      
   Your nervous system does some amazing things to fight off infections.   
      
   It creates custom anti-bodies to attack foreign microbes.   
   Custom living cells created through a system of feedback to spot that   
   there was a problem, analysis of the problem, action on the problem.   
      
   This is a life-sustaining feedback 'homeostatic' loop.   
      
   [bracket comments are mine]   
   When Stafford Beer says Cyberstride needed to filter 'homeostatic loops':   
      
   *   "The Human Use of Human Beings - Cybernetics and Society"   
   *   by Norbert Wiener, 1954, pre-ISBN   
   *   
   *   The process [such as that employed by our nervous system] by which we   
   *   living beings resist the general stream of corruption and decay is   
   *   known as homeostasis.   
      
   Stayin' alive, stayin' alive...   
      
   So, "statistical filtration for all homeostatic loops" means one is checking   
   on the health of the monitored system.   
      
   The cybernetician uses the same language for feedback of weapons systems   
   (picking out a submarine from the background noise of the ocean) as they   
   do for describing human life, as they do for the political organization   
   of a country.   
      
   Like I said, an awesome scope.   
      
   Norbert Wiener even came up with a physics-based   
   description of how life is formed by information.   
      
   Check it out. Hang in there too, it's worth it.   
      
   *   "Platform for Change", by Stafford Beer, 1978, ISBN 0 471 06189 1   
   *   
   *   The term 'entropy' began life as a subtle measure of energy flow.   
   *   
   *   When something hotter is systemically bound to something cooler, the   
   *   greater energy of the hotter stuff migrates---inexorably migrates---   
   *   into the coole   
      
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)