Dear FIS colleagues,
I disagree with the comments by Steven and Stan on the nature of
complexity. How can one substantiate and quantify social complexity if the
previous complexity within the society's individuals has not been solved?
At the time being, there is no accepted rigorous evaluation of biological
complexity --neither number of genes, RNA transcripts, proteins, nor genome
size, chromosome number etc., provide individually any solid estimation;
together more or less. Perhaps, the only accepted single number as a proxy
of organismic complexity is the number of differentiated cell types
---becoming similar to Joe's approach in societies (social roles, or
professions, plus other issues related to number of artifacts, etc.).
Besides, the problem of simplicity/complexity regarding behaviors of
individuals in societies, deserves a more careful consideration (I disagree
here with the views exposed by all parties up to now). Social and
individual complexity may advance by, precisely, inhibiting the behavior of
individuals: introducing then combinatoric games. Our language diminishes a
lot the complexity of each "plosive" (comparing the sonograms of words with
wild screams) but by doing so it may create an open-ended combinatoric
game, with solid & shared rules...
Is wikipedia reliable? A recent study in Nature was comparing it with the
British Encyclopedia regarding the soundness of the same sci. entries
(several hundreds of them). Surprising, the appropriateness was pretty much
similar!, though with a slight advantage by the Brit. Well the brief
comments in this case about complexity were quite acceptable as a first
approximation, I think.
Anyhow, my general opinion on the problem of social complexity is that,
like its homonymous biological counterpart, it stands beyond formal
approaches, at the time being. Let us remind the recent exchanges on
"biological computation"... If so, requests to directly algorithmize it,
are ill posed directions: without new approaches to info it cannot be done
meaningfully. I do not mean we should renounce, as new ideas are around.
For instance, though I disagree with several (fundamental) facets of Karl's
approach, some of his hints on multidimensional partitions are indeed
intriguing tools as a way to formalize the paradoxical "informal" loss and
gains of information regularly played by us, the living creatures. By
adding extra info you destroy it, and viceversa...
Having spent my two cents for the week,
bye!
Pedro
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