of the person is a product of the needs hierarchy and that the degree of stimulation is related to the level of emotional response to any given situation. If two parties engage in a common interaction and they are not each driven by the same level of need, then the emotional response of each may vary. If we’re gauging the level of involvement on the part of two different participants in a sporting event interaction then we might say “The one who wants to win more will actually win.” In this case, “want to” is a form of shorthand for the individual level of stimulation. Voicing a more fundamental observation, we must be aware that trust derived from a state of ecstasy can give rise to those willing to die for their cause; perhaps illustrating the ultimate level of stimulus response. Such stimuli make for extreme asymmetries in interactions and as a consequence exemplify threats to be addressed in the mechanics of interactions. Consider that a person whose family is starving for food may be driven by a very different level of stimulus than are the persons who want to be paid a fair price for the loaf of bread that they have produced. Thus, a useful and sometimes necessary aspect of establishing the rules of engagement for an interaction is the determination of the specific stimulus for each party. If it cannot be ascertained to some level of trust just what is driving the participants to an interaction, then it may actually represent a threat factor to the interaction itself.

Asymmetry can lead a social ecosystem beyond its state of equilibrium. As the uncertainty increases, so does the threat of disruption. For example, if even modest asymmetries in the effectiveness of a trust infrastructure are found to exist, it can result in severe dislocation, if not destruction, of the entire social system. Consider the effectiveness of terror tactics within our modern social order; the extreme actions of the few influence the trust of the many in their social systems. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 evoked extreme response measures as a result. One could argue that certain of the responsive measures in essence abrogated various constraints defined by the Constitution, the seminal trust point within this social ecosystem. The challenge of answering threats becomes one of identifying potential asymmetries and providing corrective feedback mechanisms. We now notice that asymmetries reflect an effective evaluation discrepancy between the competence and the performance of a particular aspect of the interaction system. So, on that basis let’s consider the results of our interaction model in just a bit more detail.

Freedom

We’ve identified asymmetries as sources of threats, ranging from the repertory of the known, to the unknown, and on to the unknown unknown. In evaluating the capability of organisms to answer threats, we must evaluate both the competence and the performance of the participants to interactions. Competence refers to the innate capabilities of a system, while performance refers to how well those capabilities are utilized to realize some end goal of the system. A worm comes equipped with a set material to face the world, where the full functioning of the animal is expressed by a finite number of neuronal connections set for life. We expect all leeches (of the family Erpobdellidae) to answer threats in the same manner; competence and performance in this case match, a situation that we can associate to a system without any degree of freedom. In a computer model, we’ll say that the model of a leech is that of a set ontology, a fixed competence.

A fish, however, exhibits more variability. It does not come equipped with all the neuronal connections it’ll ever use for its lifetime. Game fishes called northern pike (Esox lucius) builds nest from which they hunt prey. They do not come with neuronal connections that point to a specific hole in the river’s bank. However, while they all can discover and dig a hole, they each associate with a particular hole under specific environmental conditions. As neural circuitry goes,

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