Thanks, Stan and others.
Very briefly, I was thinking on the economy (together with most of social
structure) as the "arrows" or bonds that connect the "nodes" of
individuals. Take away the arrows, the bonds, and you are left with a mere
swarm of structureless, gregarious individuals. Change the type of
connectivity, you get markets, planned economies, mixed ones, etc. Thus,
very roughly, in the evolution of social bonds I see a trend toward more
complex and info-entropic social structures: far less strong bonds, far
more weak bonds. Curiously, these complex societies also devour far more
energy and produce far more physical entropy (both types of entropies seem
to go hand with hand)... Well, and what are finally those social "bonds"
but information?
best regards
Pedro
PS. I would not quite agree with Pattee's view of constraints...
At 23:28 01/03/2007, you wrote:
Guy -- Yes, you are right. But I was reacting to Pedro's "The realm of
economy is almost pure information." Some aspects of an economy must be
seen to be dynamics, not just all of it pure constraints (here I reference
Pattee's 'dynamics / constraints' dichotomy). It is during the dynamics
that physical entropy is produced. Of course, informational entropy will
certainly be magnified in the constraint realm of an economy. As well, in
order to set up constraints, dynamical activities would have to be
undertaken.
Then Pedro asked:
>On the second track, about hierarchies and boundary conditions, shouldn't
>we distinguish more clearly between the latter (bound. cond.) and
>"constraints"?
S: Basing my views on Pattee's general distinction between dynamics
and constraints, the relation between constraint and boundary conditions is
{constraint {boundary condition}}. That is, boundary conditions are one
kind of constraint. Constraints are informational inputs to any dynamical
system, and can be of many kinds.
STAN
-------------------------------------
>Stan,
>
>Aren't all constraints a form of information? I see constraints as
>informing the bounds of the adjacent possible and adjacent probable. If
>this is correct, then it would seem to render the economy as "almost pure
>information". In fact, I think it would render all emergent systems as
>pure information. Wouldn't it?
>
>Regards,
>
>Guy
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