Steve,
I have just arrived in MA in the Mosquito Infested Swamp and opened
your message. Now I realize that this message is part of a high
minded correspondence on profound matters, and that you have EVERY
reason to have forgotten yourself. But STILL I want to remind you
that you promised me years ago NEVER AGAIN to use the word "inform"
where the word "shape" would do as well or better. Now, having said
this, it is now my duty to crawl backwards through this high-minded
correspondence and try to ACTUALLY have something USEFUL to say
about it. You would think that you high-minded folks at FRIAM would
at least give an old guy a few days to TRAVEL.
"Inform" indeed! Soon you'll be informing putty. With what
information will you provide that putty, as you are “informing” it.
I informed the putty with my finger so that it lay smoothly against
the window pane. I informed my friend that it was time to leave for
the Friam meeting; he was like putty in my hands.
Grrr
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steve
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2017 2:27 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?
And I agree completely with the idea of zooming in (enough) to be at
least hunting subSnarks on a domain composed almost entirely of
Snarks... ((Or Snarkbait?)
Beating the dead snark, I was mildly perturbed by the implication
that the complexity of weather systems was more than incidentally
dependent on the biological systems that */might inform/*them
(transpiration from forest or savannah, light absorption by algae,
methane from cattle and termites, etc)
Sent from my iPhone
> On May 25, 2017, at 1:39 PM, glen ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com
<mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
> I agree completely. But if we look carefully at Russ' question:
>
>> On 05/24/2017 11:00 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
>> Can we think of anything that is non-biological, non-human, and
not a biological or human artifact that would qualify as an agent
based system?
>
> And we consider the previous comments about biology creeping into
(even!) weather patterns and climate, and whether complexity is
invariant through the reduction to physics ... and we can even
extend that to something like Smolin's fecund universe, etc ad
forever, it becomes clear that we're hunting the snark. And I
suppose the wisdom of traditions like Buddhism and such, as well as
the falsification/selection approach of critical rationalism,
_strongly_ suggest to us what Harley Davidson tells us on a regular
basis: The journey is the destination.
>
> So, rather than talk about the elusive snark, why not talk explicitly
> about the journey ... the workflow, the tools, the thing(s) right in
> front of our face/hands? E.g. topological insulators don't look at
> all plectic to me. So, I'd be very interested to hear why y'all
think
> they are. (By using "plectic", I'm admitting that I don't understand
> quantum physics; so sure, they're mysterious... but how are they
> complex in the way we're using the term, here?)
>
> But I'm more interested in well-defined concepts of agents than I
im in well-defined concepts of complex systems. So, what type of
agents are we talking about? Kauffman's "thermodynamic agents"?
Zero intelligence agents? BDI-capable agents? Etc. These concrete
details would put us squarely inside the journey and outside the
destination.
>
>
>> On 05/25/2017 12:21 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> MY point (at least, not trying to speak for others) was/is that
"interesting", "life", and "complexity" might very well be highly
superposed or even "conjugated" (to introduce an extremely
overloaded technical term).
>>
>> I suppose to disambiguate, I believe that "Life" is a subset of
"Complex Systems" and life in the larger sense of ALife is a larger
subset of complex systems, though probably still a *proper* subset?
The outer bounds of he vagueness of "Life" convolved with the inner
bounds of vagueness of Complex Systems might allow them to become
identical? The question of "Interesting" seems to be sharpened (or
is it dulled?) by the subjectivity of the term... I suppose
"interesting" is usually defined by being simultaneously "familiar
enough to be relevant" and "unfamiliar enough to be novel". Since
we are LIfe ourselves, it seems likely that we find *life itself* at
least relevant and as we expand the definition of Life it becomes
more novel and interesting, up to embracing all of "complexity"...
to the extent that the Alife movement expanded the consideration
from biological life to proto-life and quasi-life, I'm tempted to
claim that *they* would include *all* of complex systems...
>> admitting that the specific boundaries of all the above *are* vague.
>>
>> To re-iterate, I think there IS good evidence to consider
"complex systems" and "life" as highly related and it seems obvious
that they would be "interesting", though I suppose there should be
things outside of that domain which are also obviously
"interesting". Agency is another hairball to sort through and I
won't attempt much except that in MY definition of Life, "Agency" is
one of the qualities of proto-life. To that extent, it would seem
that complex systems composed *of* entities with agency are as
likely as any "biological system" to exhibit complexity, etc.
>>
>> As for "Russ clarifying his question", I think this can be a
rhetorical device? It has always seemed to me that Science really
degenerates to "asking the right question" where when properly
formulated, the "answer becomes obvious"... in some sense, I think
THIS is what passes for elegance, the holy grail of scientific theory?
>
>
> --
> ☣ glen
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