Glen, > Phil Henshaw wrote: > > I may not be speaking directly to your actual phrase, > describing what > > you've gathered from complexity theory: "the extent versus the > > objectives of control structures should show something like > an inverse > > power law to maintain a balance between diversity and efficacy." I > > read that as meaning that you'd design an inverse square > relation into > > your control systems. I don't know what actual kind of > controls you > > may be thinking of, or how you'd measure their diversity or > efficacy, > > of course. > > The actual controls I'm talking about are simple positive and > negative reinforcement of behavior. For example, if someone > breaks a law, we try to apply negative reinforcement through > punishment. If someone does a good job, we try to apply > positive reinforcement through compensation. But, I think the > principle would also hold in engineering control systems.
OK, pushes and pulls, in directions chosen by a 'controller'. Does that include looking at the subjects of control to see how they find it easiest and hardest to respond? In other words is the thing you call 'control' just as easily a complex system learning process? > When I say that a graph of extent versus number of objectives > _shows_ an inverse power law, I am not saying that I would > design an inverse square law into a control system. I don't > know why you insist on replacing "power" with "square". And > I don't know how one would mistake "design" for "show". I > simply mean that if you measured the panoply of existing > control structures using two measures: extent of the control > structure in space and time and number of objectives for that > control structure, you would see an inverse power > relationship between the two measures. I.e. the larger the > extent of the control structure, the fewer its objectives. > The smaller the extent, the higher its number of objectives. > I have no idea if the power of the relation would turn out to > be 2 or not. I guess bending my mind to directly think about the distributed 'process ecologies' of complex systems, leaves me to make occasional odd errors in math... No, I do mean to be talking about Pareto distributions and the inverse power law family or relationships. I also should not dismiss the usefulness of designing a control strategy to fit the statistically probable shape of the problem you're dealing with. Whether statistics ignore individual characteristics or not they still do save a lot of time! I suppose there are lots of good examples of exceptions to my notion that designing systems to follow inverse power laws is an error. > > > Well, it's not half well enough studied, but inside and outside > > perspectives of organization in systems are so very different it > > takes special care to keep them straight it seems to me. I'm not > > even sure if one can discuss a system as having an inside (network > > cell of relations) since I haven't heard the 'news' in the journals > > yet and it seems to require a radical exception to the traditional > > view of determinism. Isn't the traditional view that all causation > > comes from the outside still the most widespread? > > I don't know what the general view of causation is. But, the > general categories for observation from the inside versus the > outside are: constructivism versus formalism. When one > observes a system objectively, from the outside, it seems the > tendency is to formalize everything (a.k.a. remove the > semantic grounding of the tokens that represent constituents > of the system). When one observes a system subjectively, > from the inside, it seems the tendency is to retain the > semantics and construct explanations directly from the > constituents of the system. > > My point was that, ultimately, there's no fundamental > difference between the two because even a subjective account > of a phenomenon will involve objectively defined sub-elements > and an objective account of a phenomenon will involve > subjectively interpreted sub-elements. I think my point would be that outside perspectives are highly naturally subjective in a hidden way, causing there to be a big difference between inside and outside views. Your premise seems to be that your observer is all seeing. For a real outside observer of any independent cell of relationships, the relationships are not participated in and the existence of the system they are part of is thus completely invisible. It's only when the observer steps inside the system, getting into the loop, that they suddenly become aware of the whole other world of relationships it represents. We see this over and over, that systems develop in secret from us and then our awareness of them bursts into our attention. I think that's a direct effect of systems developing as truly independent cells of relationships. > > The difference is one of _method_ not of substance. > > > One of the differences between the two perspectives is the huge > > difference inside and outside views is in the information > content of > > your observations. If your view of the world is based on an > > insider's perspective of some self-organized 'hive' of activity, say > > a religious or social movement, it may be extremely hard to make > > sense of an outsider's view of exactly the same thing. The > insider's > > view is of all the internalized connections, and the outsider's view > > of essentially all the loose ends. Getting them to connect can be > > very difficult. > > But, as eluded to above, the reasons for this is that the > inside view retains the semantics and the outside view tries > to reduce the relations to pure syntax. Pure syntax is best > for prediction but piss-poor for heuristic value. Pure > semantics is best for understanding but near useless for prediction. Wouldn't it be nice to have a heuristics machine to convert pure syntax in to meaningful gobbely gook for any particular inside view...! I'm not sure how, but this might connect with the structural dilemma that nature's design is deceptive because we all think the world we see is the one that's there, and we all see different ones, partly because of the inverse power law distributions of network connections as I was describing to Bill. Phil > > - -- > glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com > Whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do > good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs > over good intentions. > - -- Milton Friedman > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org > > iD8DBQFG3tEPZeB+vOTnLkoRAgGsAKCCOqFC8IQ8Tl28hseuUv2jYSvalQCfaDNL > sAAHFL7qRIRyq6QJx9t2iY4= > =77Tp > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
