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pable of learning. Humphrey considers it to be the most fundamental form of
learning” (1951, 5). But, as Ashby put it in Design for a Brain , “The nature of
habituation has been obscure, and no explanation has yet received general ap-
proval. The results of this chapter suggest that it is simply a consequence of the
organism's ultra-stability, a by-product of its method of adaptation” (1952, 152). 33
The significance of this observation is that Ashby had gone beyond the simple
mimicry of adaptation to a novel result—discovering the go of a phenomenon
that hitherto remained mysterious. 34 And in his journals, Ashby took this line of
thought still further. Reflecting on DAMS on 22 May 1952 (p. 3829), he arrived
at an analysis of “dis-inhibition” (he writes it in quotes): “The intervention of a
second stimulus will, in fact, restore the δ-response to its original size. This is a
most powerful support to my theory. All other theories, as far as I know, have to
postulate some special mechanism simply to get dis-inhibition.” 35
If DAMS never reached the promised land and Ashby never quite reached
Lake Chad, then, certainly the DAMS project led to this one substantive re-
sult: an understanding of habituation and how it could be undone in ultra-
stable machines. We can come back to this result when we return to Ashby's
psychiatric concerns.
I can add something on the social basis of Ashby's research in the DAMS era
and its relation to the trajectory of his research. In the early 1950s, Pierre de
Latil visited the leading cyberneticians of the day, including Walter as well as
Ashby, and wrote up a report on the state of play as a topic, Thinking by Ma-
chine: A Study of Cybernetics , which appeared in French in 1953 and in English
in 1956, translated by Frederick Golla's daughter, Yolande. De Latil recorded
that “Ashby already considers that the present DAMS machine is too simple
and is planning another with even more complex action. Unfortunately,
its construction would be an extremely complex undertaking and is not to
be envisaged for the present” (de Latil 1956, 310). I do not know where the
money came from for the first versions of DAMS, but evidently cost became a
problem as Ashby began to aim at larger versions of it. On an ill-starred Friday
the 13th in September 1957, Ashby noted to himself, “As the RMPA [Royal
Medico-Psychological Association] are coming to B. H. [Barnwood House]
in May 1960 I have decided to get on with making a DAMS for the occasion,
doing as well as I can on the money available. By building to a shoddiness that
no commercial builder would consider, I can probably do it for far less than
a commercial firm would estimate it at.” Clearly, by this time Ashby's hobby
was turning into a habit he could ill afford and remained a hobby only for lack
 
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