"Ashby's law" meaning in English

See Ashby's law in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proper name

Forms: Ashby's Law [alternative], law of requisite variety [alternative], law of requisite complexity [alternative]
Etymology: Originally formulated by the cyberneticist W. Ross Ashby in 1956. Head templates: {{en-prop}} Ashby's law
  1. To control variety externally, you must be able to control even more variety internally.

Alternative forms

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  "etymology_text": "Originally formulated by the cyberneticist W. Ross Ashby in 1956.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Ashby's Law",
      "tags": [
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    {
      "form": "law of requisite variety",
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    {
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          "parents": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "(Can we date this quote?), (Please provide the book title or journal name):",
          "text": "His \"Law\" of Requisite Variety stated that for a system to be stable, the number of states that its control mechanism is capable of attaining (its variety) must be greater than or equal to the number of states in the system being controlled.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To control variety externally, you must be able to control even more variety internally."
      ],
      "id": "en-Ashby's_law-en-name-hkZEHrhn"
    }
  ],
  "word": "Ashby's law"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Originally formulated by the cyberneticist W. Ross Ashby in 1956.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Ashby's Law",
      "tags": [
        "alternative"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "law of requisite variety",
      "tags": [
        "alternative"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "law of requisite complexity",
      "tags": [
        "alternative"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
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  "lang": "English",
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  "senses": [
    {
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "(Can we date this quote?), (Please provide the book title or journal name):",
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      ],
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        "To control variety externally, you must be able to control even more variety internally."
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}

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-04-02 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-03-21 using wiktextract (db8a5a5 and fb63907). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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