Variety (Latin,  varietatem,  ‘a kind, species’) may be the spice of life, but it also turns out to be very difficult thing to control.

Cyber is used nowadays to denote matrix-like AI stuff that flies around us on our phones, earbuds, and wireless routers. The prefix ‘cyber’ is actually a neologism (Greek, ‘new word’) spawned from an original concept known as cybernetics, a word originating in 1951 manufactured from the Greek kybernētikos meaning ‘good at steering.’ The father of cybernetics was Norbert Weiner, an American mathematician, and scientist, although many other prominent scientists were present at the delivery. 

Before there was cyberpunk, cybersecurity, or cyberspace, there was cybernetics.

Back in the Cold War days, the idea was that cybernetics would be the discipline that would study real-time results and alter control mechanisms to reflect new incoming data. For example, to track an incoming missile so that an anti-aircraft gun can be repositioned. Many words we now consider commonplace in our connected world, such as feedback, owe their origins to cybernetic theory. So does your thermostat.

These guys were the original control freaks, and while I could write an entire entry just on feedback, there is another derivative of cybernetics that I find even more interesting: the control of variety. This was pioneered by William Ross Ashby, an English psychiatrist,  who called this principle The Law of Requisite Variety. 

Ashby’s law states that only variety can absorb variety. In simple terms, this means that to control or manage a system with a certain level of complexity or variety, the system controlling it must have at least an equivalent level of variety or complexity.

Better if it has more.

Here’s a simple example. Your infant is crying. They appear to have two varieties of temperament: happy (not crying) and sad (crying).  You’re going to need something more than just being angry at them for crying.  Adding happiness to your possible responses if they stop will help, because now at least your control reactions equal the number of variations in the child’s mood.  Better still would be to increase your range of responses:  such as calm discussion, distraction, setting boundaries, offering better choices, etc.   

Martha instinctively knew this, and it’s why I believe she is a magna mater. For example, before a long car trip, and knowing the kids could soon get squirmy and irritable, a new GameBoy cartridge would magically appear for each, in their favorite color, followed later by a healthy treat, their favorite tunes on the stereo, etc. 

Even simpler, imagine a four-way intersection, with one central traffic light controlling traffic flow. It changes red here, green there, and has just enough variety to stop cars from running into each other.  Now contemplate what would happen if the town decided to add an additional street, perhaps diagonal, to the intersection, but forgot to upgrade the traffic control system. What needs control now has more variation than the variety in the control system.

Medicine could use a refresher course in requisite variety. To effectively treat a patient with complex health issues, doctors must have a variety of diagnostic tools, treatments, and medications at their disposal. If a patient does not respond to one treatment, a different approach or combination of therapies might be necessary to manage the condition. 

Variety broaches the touchy subject of polypharmacy, the practice of taking multiple medications concurrently.   Many of these medications often work in a manner quite close to each other. Better would be better to construct a specific combination of medicines that addressed the problem, each from a variety of different molecular control points. Besides the likelihood of better results, it would also be likely that, due to synergy,  lower doses of each medicine could be used.  This would also likely minimize the odds that the body would become tolerant or resistant to the requisite variety polypharmacy cocktail,  since it is almost impossible to mutate to several challenges all at once.

Considering that experts think that every molecule in your body is separated from any other molecule by a maximum of six reactions, it’s no surprise that drug effects wear off. The body just finds another way of getting around the blockade, just like you’d get off the interstate when the traffic was bumper-to-bumper and try to find local roads that will improve your arrival time. 

Just try to remember that control is not about clenching the fist, but rather trying to find new ways of using your amazing hand and finger dexterity. 

I think the consequences of Napoleon Bonaparte not following the law of  requisite variety was elegantly summed up by Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington when he described how he won the battle of Waterloo: 

 ‘They came on in the same old way, and we sent them back in the same old way. ‘