STABILIZATION

Charles François (2004). STABILIZATION, International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(2): 3167.

Collection	International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics
Year	2004
Vol. (num.)	2(2)
ID	◀ 3167 ▶
Object type	Methodology or model

If a network is repeatedly disturbed by a regular “stimulus” or by a statistically homogeneous “noise”, it will tend to set its switches so that it is less, rather than more, disturbed by it (W.R. ASHBY, 1960, p.5.).

“The property has been demonstrated on the homeostat (Ibid)…

“It depends on the fact that patterns that are much disturbed by the stimulus will have a large chance of being disrupted, while those that are little disturbed will have only a small chance of being disrupted. Every stimulus or noise thus tends differentially to disrupt these patterns that are specially sensitive to it. The end-result is that the machine tends, if repeatedly stimulated, to become unresponsive to the stimulus” (1958, p.5).

ASHBY states:“ In the cerebral cortex this phenomenon has been long known as ”habituation“. It is in fact not restricted to the cerebral cortex but can be observed in every tissue that is capable of learning” (p.5).

In human systems, a similar process leads to routine-like behavior.