The K-Factor | Page 4

start others. This goes on
faster and faster and bam, a few milliseconds later you have an atomic
bomb. This is what happens if you don't attempt to control the reaction.
"However, if you have something like heavy water or graphite that will
slow down neutrons and an absorber like cadmium, you can alter the
speed of the reaction. Too much damping material will absorb too
many neutrons and the reaction will stop. Not enough and the reaction

will build up to an explosion. Neither of these extremes is wanted in an
atomic pile. What is needed is a happy balance where you are soaking
up just as many neutrons as are being generated all the time. This will
give you a constant temperature inside the reactor. The net neutron
reproduction constant is then 1. This balance of neutron generation and
absorption is the k-factor of the reactor. Ideally 1.0000000.
"That's the ideal, though, the impossible to attain in a dynamic system
like a reactor. All you need is a few more neutrons around, giving you a
k-factor of 1.00000001 and you are headed for trouble. Each extra
neutron produces two and your production rate soars geometrically
towards bang. On the other hand, a k-factor of 0.999999999 is just as
bad. Your reaction is spiraling down in the other direction. To control a
pile you watch your k-factor and make constant adjustments."
"All this I follow," Costa said, "but where's the connection with
Societics?"
"We'll get to that--just as soon as you realize and admit that a minute
difference of degree can produce a marked difference of kind. You
might say that a single, impossibly tiny, neutron is the difference
between an atom bomb and a slowly cooling pile of inert uranium
isotopes. Does that make sense?"
"I'm staggering, but still with you."
"Good. Then try to go along with the analogy that a human society is
like an atomic pile. At one extreme you will have a dying, decadent
culture--the remains of a highly mechanized society--living off its
capital, using up resources it can't replace because of a lost technology.
When the last machine breaks and the final food synthesizer collapses
the people will die. This is the cooled down atomic pile. At the other
extreme is complete and violent anarchy. Every man thinking only of
himself, killing and destroying anything that gets in his way--the
atomic explosion. Midway between the two is a vital, active, producing
society.
"This is a generalization--and you must look at it that way. In reality

society is infinitely complex, and the ramifications and possibilities are
endless. It can do a lot more things than fizzle or go boom. Pressure of
population, war or persecution patterns can cause waves of immigration.
Plant and animal species can be wiped out by momentary needs or
fashions. Remember the fate of the passenger pigeon and the American
bison.
"All the pressures, cross-relationships, hungers, needs, hatreds, desires
of people are reflected in their interrelationships. One man standing by
himself tells us nothing. But as soon as he says something, passes on
information in an altered form, or merely expresses an attitude--he
becomes a reference point. He can be marked, measured and entered on
a graph. His actions can be grouped with others and the action of the
group measured. Man--and his society--then becomes a systems
problem that can be fed into a computer. We've cut the Gordian knot of
the three-L's and are on our way towards a solution."
* * * * *
"Stop!" Costa said, raising his hand. "I was with you as far as the 3L's.
What are they? A private code?"
"Not a code--abbreviation. Linear Logic Language, the pitfall of all the
old researchers. All of them, historians, sociologists, political analysts,
anthropologists, were licked before they started. They had to know all
about A and B before they could find C. Facts to them were always
hooked up in a series. Whereas in truth they had to be analyzed as a
complex circuit complete with elements like positive and negative
feedback, and crossover switching. With the whole thing being stirred
up constantly by continual homeostasis correction. It's little wonder
they did do badly."
"You can't really say that," Adao Costa protested. "I'll admit that
Societics has carried the art tremendously far ahead. But there were
many basics that had already been discovered."
[Illustration]

"If you are postulating a linear progression from the old social
sciences--forget it," Neel said. "There is the same relationship here that
alchemy holds to physics. The old boys with their frog guts and awful
offal knew a bit about things like distilling and smelting. But there was
no real order to their knowledge, and it was all an unconsidered
by-product of their single goal, the whole nonsense of transmutation."
They passed a lounge,