Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 10-02-10 11:29 AM: > Because that's how evolution works? Development constrains the exploration > space of evolution, and evolution would not be so sucessful if it did not. > Epigenesis, man. Epigenesis.
I'm not so sure that's true. It seems to my ignorant eye that evolution is open ended. I.e., while it's true that history applies pressure to shape the space to be sampled, it's not true that a) the size of the space decreases monotonically nor b) constraints need persist from one instant to the next. Any general cone of decreasing radius through time is, I suspect, a figment of our imagination. Rather, what happens is a high dimensional and very dynamic sequence of soft constraints chunking forward in time like large set of interwoven space-filling curves. At any given point, the options available to the process are constrained (softly, i.e. the process _might_ choose to violate the constraint in very rare cases), but at the next point, the constraints are (can be) very different. In business, the symptom of applying this convenient fiction is that entrepreneurs create some arbitrary, pull-it-out-of-the-air agenda, plan, strategy, etc. and then when they actually start doing something productive, that fiction is ignored or constantly rewritten to placate the investors. The worst part about it is that everyone _knows_ the plan is mostly bullsh*t, overly concretized from a necessarily abstract kernel. But as long as the rhetoric appeals to a majority of people involved, it's comforting I suppose. Perhaps sociologically and psychologically, the convenient fiction has some necessary effect on those involved? Perhaps everyone would get depressed and shoot themselves in the head or watch TV all day eating oreos if there were no "plan"? I don't know. Color me fuddled. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ 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
