Russell Wallace wrote:
On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 4:15 PM, Richard Loosemore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
We are arguing past each other.
That was the impression I had, yes.
The reference you cite talks only about "complicatedness" --- as in, the
opposite of simplicity. In other words, the common usage of "complexity".
This has nothing to do with the very specific thing that is called
"complexity" in the sense of "complex systems" --- the things that are
studied all the time by people such as those at the Santa Fe Institute:
Complexity in the complex systems sense means there is no analytical
shortcut from the behavior of the parts to the behavior of the whole,
so that to know the behavior of the whole requires detailed simulation
or physical experiment. This phenomenon is ubiquitous in all the
examples I've given.
Completely false.
The type of complexity that dominates a system will, generally speaking,
occur only under certain circumstances. In none of the examples you
have given do those circumstances apply. Not one.
It is almost never the case that complexity *dominates* a system. You
can always find trivial examples of complexity in pretty much any
system, but in 99.999% of systems, the complexity plays no significant
role in the overall behavior of the system, at the level of interest.
We understand some of the circumstances that most often cause massive
effects of complexity (the four characteristics I listed before), and
these circumstances occur only rarely in natural systems. They
certainly do not appear in any of your examples.
I have repeated this same explanation to you many times, and you have
always come back with no defense that takes into account any of these
arguments: instead of addressing the above in an attempt to show that
the systems do contain a significant amount of complexity, you do
nothing except repeat the same unsupported assertions.
Since you have done this ad nauseam, and since you are also bellicose
and abusive in your comments, I have finally lost patience: you are now
consigned to the killfile, along with Arthur T Murray and Mike Tintner.
I look to this list as a place to debate issues, not as a place where
careful, painstaking arguments are met wth a barrage of abuse.
Bye.
Richard Loosemore
The point is that there is a difference between the two that is an absolute
killer: you can use human ingenuity to overcome most complicated systems,
but it is easy to cross the line and try to build something that, in fact,
is *complex* (technical sense) ..... and if you cross that line, you can
apply your ingenuity till the end of the universe and you will still have
made zero progress.
You would agree the human brain, at least, is complex? Yet it was
developed before the end of the universe, by trial and error - which
is one of the tools in the repertoire of human engineers.
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agi
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