page_title: Viable system model
section_title: Metalanguage
hierarchical_section_title: Viable system model / Metalanguage
caption_attribution_description: English: Beer Meta language. Derived from "Platform for Change" by Stafford Beer (1975)
context_page_description: The viable system model is a model of the organizational structure of any autonomous system capable of producing itself. A viable system is any system organised in such a way as to meet the demands of surviving in the changing environment. One of the prime features of systems that survive is that they are adaptable. The VSM expresses a model for a viable system, which is an abstracted cybernetic description that is claimed to be applicable to any organisation that is a viable system and capable of autonomy.
context_section_description: In ascending the recursions of the viable system the context of each autonomous 5-4-3-2 metasystem enlarges and acquires more variety.
  This defines a metalanguage stack of increasing capability to resolve undecidability in the autonomous lower levels. If someone near process level needs to innovate to achieve potential, or restore capability, help can be secured from management of higher variety.
  An algedonic alert, sent when actuality deviates by some statistically significant amount from capability, makes this process automatic.
  The notion of adding more variety or states to resolve ambiguity or undecidability (also known as the decision problem) is the subject of Chaitin's metamathematical conjecture algorithmic information theory and provides a potentially rigorous theoretical basis for a general management heuristic. If a process is not producing the agreed product more information, if applicable, will correct this, resolve ambiguity, conflict or undecidability.
  In "Platform for Change" (Beer 1975) the thesis is developed via a collection of papers to learned bodies, including UK Police and Hospitals, to produce a visualization of the "Total System". Here a "Relevant ethic" evolves from "Experimental ethics" and the "Ethic with a busted gut" to produce a sustainable earth with reformed "old institutions" becoming "new institutions" driven by approval (eudemonic criteria "Questions of Metric" in Platform... pp 163– 179) from the "software milieu" while culture adopts the systems approach and "Homo faber" (man the maker) becomes "Homo Gubernator"  (self-steering).
caption: Resolving undecidability by raising the metalanguage
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