no two pikes will have the same, as each neural network is capable of referring to the memory of conditions complex enough that the same situation is very unlikely to be identical in two geographical locations. This will obligatorily be reflected in different, albeit perhaps subtly so, answers to threats. One would expect fishes to respond differently to threats, and indeed, that’s what any fisherman would confirm: some fishes are harder to catch than others. In the case of the pike, the performance is variable, if in a restricted register. The ontology is still set in a fixed competence, but accumulated history in memory provides for different behaviors, and henceforth different performance.

Mammals add to that freedom. Thanks to their emotional system, the degree of variability between individuals is greatly enhanced due to the prolonged circumstances of the newborn’s education (provisioning). Accordingly, the number of possible answers to threats is also extended, and one would expect the answers to hunting to be possibly very sophisticated, a fact that can be confirmed for example in the patterns of deception exhibited by stags in venery. The distance between competence and performance in mammals is in relation to the variations in their upbringing and subsequent experiences. The capability of the animal to learn from having escaped past threats in order to protect itself against further attack is well documented in hunting annals. This we would readily characterize as an example of adaptation to the unknown, a subject we will come back to soon. Learning affects competence, providing a modified ontology that adds to variations of performance and henceforth the evolutionary capability to answer threats.

Judging by their evolutionary success so far, it can be readily asserted that humans have established a superior system to recognize asymmetries and associated threats. Our organization of social ecosystems is a mitigating factor in dealing with asymmetries in the physical realm. By annihilating or confining superiorly performing animals, humans have developed an environment in which physical threats are modeled in an increasingly precise and set way, which however doesn’t exclude asymmetries in the performance of social ecosystems in new physical situations like global warming. In the social ecosystems themselves, it is necessary to note that the capability to answer threats is balanced with the capability to create them. It is ironic that the same freedom that affords reaction to unknown situations of increased complexity is also capable of creating them. This is the conundrum that necessarily demands a model of trust capping the infinite possibility of measures and counter-measures, so that decisions can be made. This evolution of the human trust system is a further elaboration of the mammalian ontological capabilities that adds further performance variability and associated capabilities to the amelioration of threats.

Computers started as leeches, and, to stay with secure cores, whose primary purpose is in fact to recognize asymmetries and answer threats, the first secure computers were set circuits that would predictably answer any form of attack, but would not be able to alter behavior depending on contextual circumstances beyond the immediate recognition of the threat. For example, an original secure computer was the ubiquitous telephone card used throughout the world in the now rapidly extinguishing fixed telephone booth. That card was a single circuit that had the single capability of decreasing a counter each time a fixed length of time had been expanded talking on the phone. Just as with the leech, the performance and the competence of the computer were equal, all cards reacting similarly to threats.

Slightly more elaborated are the Subscriber Identity Modules of mobile phones. Those cards are far more sophisticated than the fixed telephony ones, as batches of them are born with the same competence, but rapidly endowed with performance capabilities that vary, depending on the level of service afforded the phone owner. More strikingly even, cards with the same level of service can show some adaptability to threats, for example by modulating their answer to invalid personal

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