Funnel Rule 3 sometimes might be good

["Carlos H. Méndez" <carmende@ufm.edu.gt>]

Hello Denizens. 

Applying Dr. Deming's 13 Point, I have been reading about
many things far from management. One of them is biology and the relationship
between species. While learning about the different mechanisms that work in
the development of a particular characteristic in a certain species, it
seems that many of them are "arms races", for example,  between a predator
and its pray or between two males from the same species, trying to
monopolize other females or territories. These "arm races" have developed
characteristics like: the  peacock's colorful fan like tail, the speed of
the leopards, many types of flowers and insects, horns, etc.

In the human species, one of those characteristics seems to be our own
brain, which in the past 18 million or so years, has shown incredible
speedy growth. The brain seems to be the product of an old arms race between
different Hominids.

When you study the essence of these arm races, they are efforts to keep
close to zero,  the difference in a certain characteristic between two
individuals. For example, the more the speedy antelopes survived, the more
the speedy leopards survived, and so forth. To me arm's races seem to be
Funnels
rule 3, where the target value is zero difference between a particular
characteristic. In The New Economics, Dr. Deming gives as an example
nuclear proliferation, which is an ugly product of an arms race. Even so,
nature has shown us that not all arms races give ugly results.

So many questions come to my mind. Maybe some of you would like to discuss:

1) Are "arms races" in different species, examples of the funnel's rule 3,
or
are they actually rule 2 or some other rule?

2) Independently of which rule they are, it seems that sometimes good can
come out of this rule. Our brain for example. ¿Would you agree?

3) In management, could there be some value of understanding where rule 2 or
3 might provide interesting results?

Just some thoughts and questions. Thanks for reading,

Carlos Méndez
Invenia, S.A.
invenia@guate.net
PBX - (502) 336-9669
_
"Being healthy is merely the slowest possible rate at which one
can die."
_
"Mantenerse sano es la forma mas lenta de morirse."