“After communication had finally been invented, or, better, after it arose not only as a sporadic attunement of living systems but also as a continuous arrangement, this communication must have effectively functioned as an evolutionary potential. In view of this more permanent establishment of communication, people sitting together and not communicating may be regarded as a disturbance. Here one may be reminded of Paul Watzlawick’s famous dictum that ‘one cannot not communicate’. Perhaps a train compartment is the exception, but there one has a special permit not to communicate. The fact that communication functions as an evolutionary potential means that it functions as an adjustment to the perceptive achievements of those who are present or, alternatively, as an adjustment to the creativity and intuition of those who express themselves in writing” (Niklas Luhmann, Introduction to Systems Theory, Cambridge UK (Polity Press) 2013, 95).
In an empty train compartment, we communicate with the machine.
Question to ChatGPT: “If you think of achievement as a sum of tasks completed, however successfully: what would be the counter term to achievement?”
Answer by ChatGPT: “If you consider performance as a sum of processed tasks, then the opposite term to performance could be “inactivity” or “inactivity”. While performance encompasses the quantity and quality of tasks worked on, inactivity refers to the absence of activity or action. Thus, the opposite term to performance would mean that no or few tasks were worked on, or that the quality of the tasks worked on was low.
However, it is important to note that performance includes not only the quantity but also the quality of the tasks worked on. In this sense, the counter term to performance would not necessarily be just “inactivity,” but also a deficient or insufficient fulfillment of the requirements placed on a task.”
On the one hand, this leads to the distinction between the function of a social system (as a possible contribution to solving a possible social problem, for the solution of which there are also functional alternatives) and its coding (along which a self-organizing system (re)produces itself).
Function and coding describe “… a contingency schema, but they do so in very different ways. Whereas a function makes comparison with functional equivalents possible, coding regulates the oscillation between positive and negative values, thus the contingency of the evaluations on which the system orients its own operations” (Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 2, Stanford, Calif. (Stanford University Press) 2013, 90-91).
On the other hand, it leads to the distinction of observations of the formation of subsystems.
“For purely logical reasons, there are three possibilities: (1) observation of the overall system to which the subsystem belongs, (2) observation of other subsystems in the intrasocietal environment (or of other systems in the external environment), and (3) observation of the subsystem by itself (self-observation). To enable these various system references to be distinguished, I shall call observation of the overall system function, observation of other systems performance, and self-observation of a system reflection” (Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 2, Stanford, Calif. (Stanford University Press) 2013, 96).
It is therefore not possible to understand these aspects ‘in one go’. Perhaps on the way back?