Sunday, May 15, 2011

Engine Design.

Modern auto engines are marvelously complex pieces of machinery. Over a century of improvement has resulted in engines that are lighter, more powerful, more fuel efficient and more reliable than their original predecessors.



The engine designer has a hard task. He is usually given a design brief which on closer inspection is contradictory. For a given engine capacity, his engine must produce maximal power and yet he is also told to minimise fuel consumption, which is directly related to power output. He is told that the engine must be light and reliable, but in order to improve reliability he must make some of the parts heavier than what is needed. The engine must be cheap and simple to manufacture, but the high temperatures and pressure needed to achieve fuel efficiency mean more expensive alloys and cooling. And so on.

In the end, engine design like most other mutiparametric design, is an exercise in compromise amongst competing independent parameters. Things are a trade off.

Once a multiparametric system has been optimised for a certain state, system integrity is dependent upon the system operating within certain design parameters. Operating mulitparametric systems outside their design parameters may result in loss of system integrity,  reduced system life or suboptimal system performance. Now most robust systems usually allow for some minor variation outside design criteria, but this becomes harder the more complex the system is.

For example and engine may have the following design criteria. (I've made these up)

1) Fuel consumption of 20mls @ minute at idle.
2) Cylinder head temperature not to exceed 160 degrees Centigrade.
3) Coolant flow at 10 liters a minute.
4) Oil temperature not to exceed 90 degrees Centigrade.
5) Maximum 9:1 fuel compression
6) Oil change every 200 hours of operation.and so on. 

The system, in order to be viable, has to stick to its rules of operation.

Car engines, for a given class of car, are more similar than different since the parametric constraints placed by by materials science and thermodynamics mean that there are only a limited number of compatible mutiparametric solutions to the engine design problem.

This does not apply just to cars. Cake mixers, bicycles, pens, passenger aircraft, etc. are more alike than different, its because as the state of the art improves and matures, it becomes apparent that there are only a limited number of viable solutions to the design problem. Initial ideas which were promising are found to be impractical from a variety of perspectives.

(There is rumour that the Volkswagen 1.4 TSI engine, a novel solution to engine design requirements, is going to be discontinued because it is too expensive to make. )

Now the point about all this is that society can be considered a multiparametric system, being composed of multiple competing and interacting elements, and as such, society can be looked at from a systems engineering perspective.

It was Jim Kalb's writings that got me thinking about looking at society this way. His battle against modernism is based upon a traditionalist perspective. The argument, as I see it, being that traditional cultures such as Islam and Chinese Confucianism have lasted because they cater towards human beings better than modernism does. After reading this, I asked myself the question, given the stability of Confucian and Islamic society, what sort of rules of operation produce a systemically stable society?

When you look at it from a systems engineering point of view you see that stable and relatively advanced societies seem to operate under a relatively narrow systems of rules; what C.S. Lewis called the "Tao of Life." In fact these rules can be don't actually have to be divinely inspired, rather they are relatively self evident to any man of moderate reflection. Christian writers would have called these operating parameters Natural Law. Anyone who is really interested should have a read of C.S. Lewis's Abolition of Man, where he quotes similar passages from Hindu, Norse, Egyptian, Roman, Jewish, Greek and Chinese texts.

Some of these rules of system operation can be summed up as follows:

The existence of a morality which is independent of the individual.
A belief in objective truth.
Censure of some kind for transgression of the rules.
Benefit of some kind for concordance with them.
Just and fair dealings with others
Consideration of others in our actions.
Preference for our own kind.
Sexual restraint.
Magnanimity.

The fact that these cultures, which lasted for centuries, separated both temporally and spatially should have broad common approaches to their operation suggests that stable complex societies may only be possible if run according to these broad principles. The fact that large scale promiscuity, institutionalised lying and moral relativism have not stood out as organising principles amongst surviving cultures suggest that from a systems perspective, these operating rules may be inimical to system stability. Relatively advanced stable societies may only be possible under a narrow set of system parameters.

5 comments:

Robert Brockman said...

The interesting question is whether there are multiple stable equilibrium points. What happens when a society goes outside the set of parameters that it was "designed" for? Advanced technology has radically changed our life -- do the Old Design Rules still work?

People who attempt to live by a new/different set of rules are basically early adopters of deep alpha software. IF the new set of rules fits the new circumstances better and IF the old set of rules collapses, then these people win big. Otherwise, the results won't be good.

JMSmith said...

Robert Brockman,
I don't see how technology can change the parameters of a functioning society, although it can certainly change the means employed to meet those parameters. Technology can, for instance, give us new ways to realize order and freedom; but I don't see how it could eliminate the need to balance these two parameters. In the SP's automobile engine analogy, the parameters remain constant, only the means to satisfy those parametric requirements change.

Individuals can take advantage of technological and other changes and live by a new set of rules. At the scale of an individual life or subculture lifestyle, they can "win big" by maximizing one parameter. The bohemian subculture, for instance, maximizes spontaneity and ignores prudence, but it can do this only because there are in the larger society prudential individuals and subcultures. The extreme instability of hippy communes in the 1960s illustrates what happens when a social system maximizes bliss.

I've been reading lately about Robert Owen's utopian colony of New Harmony, Indiana. It fell apart because too many in New Harmony wished to debate politics, write poetry, and play musical instruments. The "working class," too small to begin with, suffered attrition as workers either left the colony in disgust or decided to take up philosophy, poetry, and music.

This is why deviant lifestyles must be stigmatized. It is good to have bohemian artists in a society, but it is not good to have lots and lots of bohemian artists. Our society needs intellectuals, but it certainly doesn't need more intellectuals.

Don't you think there is something to be said for the old culture in which an actress, say, was somewhat disreputable. Once the stigma was removed, we suddenly had way too many actresses, aspiring actresses, and women who act like actresses.

Simon Grey said...

one other comparison between engines and society that should be made is that the parameters of operation aren't necessarily known upfront. Whoever first invented the engine likely didn't know the limits of the engine, and what could or could not be done with it. The limits were eventually discovered by a process of trial and error.

Additionally, there are some who operate engines without knowing the parameters of performance, and so they often test the parameters and, occasionally, learn what the parameters are the hard way.

However, the comparison between engines and society has its limits. The main difference between the two is that society isn't designed, at least in a top-down manner.

The Social Pathologist said...

@R Brockman

The interesting question is whether there are multiple stable equilibrium points.

I think within certain parameters there are multiple equilibrium points. Hindu and Chinese culture are both stable yet different.

I don't think technology is really an issue, as the fundamental glue in society is interpersonal relationships, I feel that technology may influence these but only to a minor order.

@JMSmith

At the scale of an individual life or subculture lifestyle, they can "win big" by maximizing one parameter.

This is an interesting line of speculation. My take on this would be that certain individuals may maximise one parameter and a healthy society will tolerate it. But I'm not sure that the individual can actually be happy by living life optimised for a particular parameter.

The interesting thing about such an individual is that he can be used as an example to justify change in the system. Take for example, homosexuality. Advanced tolerant societies may provide a milleu in which homosexuals can flourish. Their flourishing, on the other hand, can be used by simple minded others to justify that homosexuality, by being successful, should be considered a normative behavior. In making homosexuality a normative behaviour the society destroys itself.

The Social Pathologist said...

@ Simon

Whoever first invented the engine likely didn't know the limits of the engine, and what could or could not be done with it. The limits were eventually discovered by a process of trial and error.

Or by divine inspiration (if you want to bring religion into the matter).

The ten commandments have a remarkable similarity with the Tao of life. The commandment, "Thou shall not kill" could be systemically equivalent to the the engine designer specifying that the oil temperature should not exceed a certain temperature.

Interestingly, most cultures have some sort of lawgiver which form the foundation of their culture.

Additionally, there are some who operate engines without knowing the parameters of performance, and so they often test the parameters and, occasionally, learn what the parameters are the hard way.

I can affirm that my Conservatism has frequently been affirmed by my stupidity.

The main difference between the two is that society isn't designed, at least in a top-down manner.

Society isn't designed as much as it is willed. That will can either be expressed diffusely, as through the collective choices of a population or by population control, as in a dictator. How a society is "designed" is based on the choices people make. Who decides; that determines if a society is top-down or bottom-up.