>>12791711Mate, Beer was fucking based. FUCKING. BASED.
I unironically think he is undoubtedly the best English philosopher and theoretician of the twentieth century. Granted, no one here will bother to read his work (although I prefer his Heart of Enterprise rather than Brain of the Firm because of a few problems which are obvious to us but he later picked up on as being problematic), but what he did in Chile in the 1970's was FUCKING IMPRESSIVE given the technology they had at the time. We find parallels of the technology he advocated now being use in financial institutions such as Black Rock.
The structure of the Viable System Model can be mapped onto cells, the human body (central nervous system) and even human organizations in such a way that they can said to be isomorophically recursive. This means, you can formalize why an error might occur in one system and find an analogous problem also occurring in another for similar reasons. His work is a hell of a better way to think of organizations and economies then found in contemporary politics and economics.
He has videos online for those that are interested. I cannot recommend enough his works.