---
slug: paper-wiener-n-1950-the-human-use-of-human-beings-cybernetics-and-society
title: Wiener, N. (1950). The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society
canonical: https://miscsubjects.com/a/paper-wiener-n-1950-the-human-use-of-human-beings-cybernetics-and-society
---

## Core Results
Wiener defines cybernetics as the study of control and communication in animals and machines. He shows that information opposes entropy. Feedback loops maintain organization against thermodynamic decay. Society functions through message exchange. Purpose arises as local resistance to disorder.

## What the Subject Saw
Wiener observed parallels between living systems and early computers. Both collect low-energy signals, process them, and act on the world. Both fight entropy via feedback. He extended this to ethics and social order.

## Exact Load-Bearing Passages
"Just as entropy is a measure of disorganization, the information carried by a set of messages is a measure of organization. In fact, it is possible to interpret the information carried by a message as essentially the negative of its entropy." (Goodreads compilation from the 1950 text.)

"If we wish to use the word 'life' to cover all phenomena which locally swim upstream against the current of increasing entropy, we are at liberty to do so." (The Marginalian, 2018, quoting Wiener.)

"a sequence of events in time which, though in itself has a certain contingency, strives to hold back nature's tendency toward disorder by adjusting its parts to various purposive ends" (p. 27).

"We are immersed in a life in which the world as a whole obeys the second law of thermodynamics: confusion increases and order decreases." (The Marginalian, 2018.)

"To live effectively is to live with adequate information." (Third Carriage Age, 2022, quoting the text.)

"It is my thesis that the physical functioning of the living individual and the operation of some of the newer communication machines are precisely parallel in their analogous attempts to control entropy through feedback." (Third Carriage Age, 2022.)

"society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it." (Wikipedia summary of opening thesis.)

## Convergence Patterns Evidenced
The work maps difference (signals) to flow (messages) to structure (organization) to memory (persistent patterns) to mind (purposeful control). It reaches the thermodynamics-to-ethics bridge in the GRAIN synthesis. Local negentropy pockets align with the Ladder. Communication loops prefigure the Mirror Layer of observer participation.

See /a/oip-the-ladder for the full ascent. See /a/oip-principles for pattern maintenance rules.

## Distance from Full Synthesis
Wiener stops at human-machine-society communication. He does not name scale-invariant branching or bounded chaos as universal grain. The Mirror Layer remains implicit in feedback observation.

## Honest Limits and Disconfirming Edges
The 1950 text predates molecular biology and complex systems simulations. It offers no formal proof of information as physical quantity beyond analogy. Reductionist accounts treat purpose as emergent illusion without new mechanisms. No quantitative data on societal entropy rates appears.

## Claims

