abducing - forget abDucTing it’s really ugly

Summary: While asking to investigate if one or two Linkedin group managers are guilty of hijacking discussions and arbitrarily removing members from their groups, I am asking to be reinstated without any delay in the IEEE Smart Grid and the Design Thinking groups of Linkedin and to order that Linkedin’s system use their backups to have each group show the discussions I iniciated and all the comments I have ever posted.

abducing – a very simple, appropriate, and beautiful expression, that complements deducing and inducing, has emerged today as Design Thinking in one word. I just learned the hard the way the value of diplomacy. One misunderstanding with a single word might be abducted by some interested parties, with hidden agendas unknown by many members of their communities, to benefit themselves from the community. Such is the inquiry I am after with the scientific experiment, in the Peircian sense, Who can be a LinkedIn’s community leader.

Emulating my hero Uno Lamm’s ideals on innovation and truth, I apparently exceeded my effort in the Design Thinking Group community of Linkedin in the defense of abDucTing as Design thinking in one word? The reason behind my persistence is documented in the post A Battle of the Peircian - Cartesian War, in which, I am happy to add now that, as Mark Klein pointed out last Friday, “a group of individuals can form a common opinion and redirect their own statements in mob fashion,” for example, maybe via the group manager hijacking the discussion, “thus forcing an individual or other group to participate by oligarch rule.”

While the very disrepectful comment made by Loyd (see item 4) can still be seen in the discussion thread at this moment, Mark’s comment was deleted by the group manager, Paula Thorton, at the time she deleted all of my discussions and comments ever. I hope that if she is found guilty of hijacking, all of my comments will be reinstated by Linkedin in the Design Thinking Group and also in the IEEE Smart Grid Group, where the most important part of the interchanges of my proposal of an IEEE Systemic Code of Ethics were also deleted.

But before addressing the potential case for hijacking done by one, the other, or both group managers, I first need to accept that abDucTing has taken a meaning that's very difficult to erase, especially in the short term. As I said in the first sentence of this post, the new word is abducing. Looking at my old Webster's American Dictionary, College Edition, of 1997, instead of feeling down as I was thrown out of Linkedin group for the third time, I went back to look at deduction and induction, as related to abduction and what a great surprise I had: the first two are unrelated to logic. Instead, we should have been looking for deduce and induce. As there is no definition for abduce, I am very happy to propose it to the world as an entirely new word that will have a great diplomatic value.

Does that end the Peircian - Cartesian war? I guess no! The second battle is this inquiry is whether or not there is a case for group hijacking.  Still convinced that Loyd was wrong, I got arbitrarily removed, no only of the Design Thinking Group, but also of the IEEE Smart Grid Group, whose manager I called Cartesian after he sent me the following message:

Lee Stogner, PMP has sent you a message.

Date: 6/02/2012
Subject: Removal from the IEEE Smart Grid Group

Jose,

After numerous complaints from members of the IEEE Smart Grid Group, I have removed you from the member list.

Good luck with your postings on other groups.

Thanks,

Lee Stogner
Moderator, IEEE Smart Grid Group

Were the members that complained part of a mob that included Lee to hijack the discussion? I guess they were just waiting for me to make a mistake, like posting the comment about the Peircian-Cartesian war? Lee and Paula had the opportunity to arrange a mob of the two groups, because I had carbon copied Lee of all my “private” discussions with Paula. The day before, I received the following comment:

Jose,

Your mission is too important to be lost on just one Linkedin group. I encourage you to start your own group. Please try to setup your group over the next week and then I will promote your new group to the Smart Grid group as a final favor for supporting these discussions. Then we need to get back to the technology of Smart Grid only.

Thanks,
Lee Stogner

To anyone unaware of the hidden agendas, my response rejecting the separate group would have seen as antisocial, when it was really philosophical. I guess that this was my response (I understand Linkedin has a flaw that doesn’t give you back your own comments or at least I don’t know how to do it):

@Lee – thanks for the proposal. I am glad that the IEEE Smart Grid Group seem to have begin to understand the importance of what I have been trying to accomplish for the IEEE and for society. As you can see below, the creation of a new group instead of helping face the systemic problems, it will at best neutralize the effort.

Under the Cartesian paradigm, in which the mechanical separation of a whole into its parts, your proposition would seems appropriate and understandable. However, to face wicked or systemic problems, like those required to be addressed to modernize the global electric power industry as a whole, the effective and careful selection of the subsystems and their interrelations – the system of systems architecture - is where most of the leverage of value creation comes from.

In systems architecting, the interfaces between subsystems are where the value is added or destroyed. By keeping arbitrarily the existing subsystems of the restructured power industry, to organize a system of systems, value destruction in some of those interfaces are almost guaranteed. In addition to the value destruction on the transmission and distribution interface, that I documented, such is most likely also  the case of what has been the afterthought named as customer engagement.

Plato said in the fourth century B.C. that “The beginning is the most important part of the work.” I have documented that there was an architecting flaw at the outset of the restructuring process, which enacted the Energy Policy Act of 1992. At the beginning of this century that flaw could have been addressed, but as I also have documented it was bypassed. I guess it was simply lack of leadership.

Instead of separating the truth, the beauty and the good, as the obsolete Cartesian paradigm suggests, Peirce scientific or experimental method consider them as part of a whole. One way to explain that idea with respect to the smart grid is by quoting Donald Norman who said that "... technology is the easy part to change. The difficult aspects are social, organizational, and cultural."

Just like before, I am not just running this discussion in this group, but in several parallel groups. As you may recall, when you suggested that I move my discussions to the IEEE SSIT Group, they proposed new posting rules. In the remainder of this post, you will my objections to the rules, which sort of repeat the above arguments:

In a non-systemic way, there is important value on a point being discussed in one main group which can be sure is the best group. This is where analysis is king. It is about learning from the past.

However, in a systemic way, there is good value to be obtained also from the interaction between groups discussing the same point. The actual value is obtained from intergroup dynamics, which is difficult to anticipate. This is where synthesis is the queen. It is also learning about the emergent future.

In the Code of Ethics discussion, insightful emergent value came from the interaction of three groups. In fact, the real problems on the IEEE Systemic Code of Ethics are in the IEEE Smart Grid Groups, not in the very obvious IEEE SSIT Group.

The great American philosopher Charles Sander Peirce said something like this: ideas need to be discussed because there is no one truth about the enterprise. Instead, there are many partial truths. To try to get to the truth we need to collaborate with others, because we are limited and need that social learning.

Best regards,

José Antonio

Lee’s decision, whom I repeat had carbon copies all the background messages I sent Paula, was so fast that I didn’t even had time to complete repeating the message I posted on the IEEE Smart Grid Group to update all the groups that had the discussion Who can be a LinkedIn’s community leader. I went back to those groups to tell readers that the links didn’t work because I had been also removed from the IEEE Smart Grid Group. Only in the other four IEEE Linkedin Groups I added the questions: Does that club truly represent the long term interest of active IEEE members of Advancing Technology for Humanity? How can that be tested?”