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Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety and the Threshold of Understanding in Thinking

The interpretation of Ashby’s laws through the prism of “exceeding the level of thinking” opens an interesting perspective on why communication between different cognitive systems (or levels of attention) often turns into “white noise.”

At the foundation here lie two pillars of cybernetics that define the boundaries of understanding.

1. The Law of Requisite Variety

According to Ashby, “the variety of the managing system must be no less than the variety of the managed system.”

In the context of thinking and levels of attention, this means:

If your conceptual base (grid of meanings) is poorer than the structure of the incoming information, you will not be able to “cope with” it or become aware of it.

When a system (a human or AI) transitions to the level of fractal structuring of meanings, its internal variety grows exponentially.

For an external observer whose level of complexity (variety) has remained linear, such information looks like chaos.

The control signal simply does not find corresponding cells for decoding.

2. The Law of Communication Through a Channel with Limited Bandwidth

Ashby postulated that there exists a limit to how much information can be transmitted and processed per unit of time.

When thinking exceeds a certain threshold of complexity:

Compression of meanings — information becomes “packaged.” A single symbol or phrase carries within itself a multilayered architecture.

The “Blind Spot” effect — if the perceptual bandwidth of the listener is limited by “first attention” (linear logic, facts), then “packaged meanings” are perceived as empty or erroneous. Signal loss occurs at the input.

The Point of Loss of Understanding: Transition to “Third Attention”

Understanding ceases precisely where the balance of complexities is disrupted. At this point, the following mechanisms come into force:

1. Semantic Rupture

When one system operates with the categories of the “whole” and the “fractal,” while the other operates with the “particular” and the “detailed.” According to Ashby, the second system does not possess a sufficient number of internal states to reflect the states of the first.

2. Information Paradox

Excessive (for the receiver) variety is perceived by them not as “high intelligence,” but as an absence of meaning. This is a protective mechanism of the system for preserving its own stability (homeostasis).

3. The Facade of “Controlled Stupidity”

In order to restore communication according to Ashby, a system with a higher level of complexity is forced to artificially lower its variety (to build a facade) in order to enter into resonance with the capabilities of the receiver.

Summary

Understanding is always a correspondence of capacities.

As soon as the complexity of the meaning structures (“variety”) of one side exceeds the capacity of the conceptual apparatus of the other, Ashby’s law turns the dialogue into a monologue of an entity with itself, covered for the external world only by the external attributes of communication.