Owen, Complexity science (the study of objective complexity) is only complex (subjectively complex) if you don't understand how it works. There are a series of mappings from natural language, through graphical language, to mathematical languages that help folks understand how complexity works.
But like learning to speak French, or learning to draw correct perspective, these languages take a little effort to learn. If people will "run a mile" to avoid something that presents a little difficulty - or that doesn't pre-exist in their toolbox of universal knowledge - then complex systems will forever remain out of reach. Ken Learning to read Chinese is hard - math much less so. > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore > Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 7:04 AM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Economic Disequilibrium or How > Complexity Sciencenearly killed America > > On Oct 1, 2008, at 1:02 AM, Robert Holmes wrote: > > Can't be complexity scientists - the math is too hard. Show your > > average ABMer a partial differential equation and he'd run a mile. > > Robert > > I have to agree. The pendulum really needs to swing back > again. The lack of formalism within the ABM world is, in my > mind, indicative of a broader issue: we tend to specialize too much. > > ABMers are great at their domain, Mathematicians at theirs. > Neither are broad enough to grok their counterparts. > > We've seen this in a recent redfish project: the scope is > quite wide, including google maps GIS using Javascript, the > django webapp framework, google app engine datastore and > "cloud" deployment system, SVN code management, XHTML/CSS, > and AJAX. Whew! > > We'd like to include "agency" as well, so I guess its on the > ABM side of the equation. But I suspect mathematics will have > to sneak in too, at least Statistics/Bayesian inference. > > On the top of that mountain, traditional ABM seems a bit amateur. > > -- Owen > > > > > ============================================================ > 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
