Interesting. I wonder if this is yet another exhibition of my bias against the
reality of idealist conceptions. Experimentalists (who don't traffic in the
ideal except when they absolutely must) might be skeptical about what's
stateable or not [⛧]. The best we can do is work with formalisms that we have
in our hand, not the 2 (or ∞) over there in the bush.
Maybe it's akin to intuitionist versus classical? Or maybe I'm just not
creative enough to imagine all the formalisms I don't have in my hand? Or
meta-enough to classify all the formalisms (whether in my hand or in the bush).
It feels a bit like (my misunderstandings of) Gisin's arguments:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Gisin
I've expressed doubt, here and elsewhere, on both Rosen's modeling relation and Wolpert's
physical limits of information. Although I love such rhetoric, I treat it the same way I
treat the writings of, say, Aleister Crowley. In the end, if I can't "get my hands
on" the thing, it's magick - akin to wishful thinking.
The difference between "approximation" and "prestateability" isn't that
interesting, I guess. An agnostic might entertain the distinction without commitment. But the
appeal of one language (or idiom) over another is interesting.
As for GPT's introspective (especially retrospective) explanations: I'm starting to
sincerely doubt the sanity of such queries. I haven't looked into it much. But the recent
"white genocide" kerfuffle with Grok is an interesting case:
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_6dae0579-f14f-4eec-b89a-f7bbdd8c52ea Do we really trust
Grok to tell us it's raw system prompt? I mean, i've gotten Llama3, Llama 4, DeepSeek,
and Falcon to spit out what looks like verbatim training data ... but not by asking it
for that data. In this context, GPT's explanation for why it left Lorenz out is just
post-hoc bullsh¡t, right? It's generative, not explanatory.
[⛧] Stateability, in general, would include pre-, post-, and live/online/now,
including any combination thereof. It would also include allo/elsewhere- and
self/here-stateable ala Wolpert and combinations thereof.
On 5/29/25 8:52 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
On Thu, May 29, 2025 at 9:25 AM glen <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Why isn't Lorenz in there somewhere? Seems like an obvious candidate.
What's the conceptual expression that Lorenz contributed? I don't see it.
On 5/29/25 9:07 AM, steve smith wrote:
On 5/29/25 9:24 AM, glen wrote:
Why isn't Lorenz in there somewhere? Seems like an obvious candidate.
/“When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not
approximately determine the future.”/
— Edward Lorenz, /The Essence of Chaos/ (1993)
What George says when "reminded" of Lorenz:
*
*Edward Lorenz (1963 onward)* may be the /first person to demonstrate/ in
precise mathematical terms a *deterministic system whose behavior could not be
prestated* beyond a short horizon.
*
He /did not/ use the phrase *“deterministic but not prestateable”*, but
*his work embodies it fully*, and later chaos theorists and philosophers often
retroactively describe it that way.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
and here is George's (I don't call GPT George, but for continuity with Nick, et
al I do here) response:
but first for brevity, I cherry picked from below and I like the help given in
my nitpickery style:
*
/“Unpredictable” (Lorenz-style, chaos)/
*
/“Unprestatable” (Kauffman-style, adjacent possible)/
*
/“Undecidable” (Turing/Gödel-style, logic)/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Me: can you explain perhaps why you might have omitted lorenz
ChatGPT said:
Yes — and I appreciate the callout.
Why Lorenz Might Have Been Omitted (Initially)
There are a few reasons, mostly contextual and framing-based, not due to
oversight of his importance:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. *Interpretive Framing Bias:*
Your original phrase, *“deterministic but not prestateable,”* carries a flavor
that strongly suggests:
*
*Logical / epistemic limits* (e.g., undecidability, incompleteness),
*
*Unenumerable state spaces* (as in Kauffman or Rosen),
*
*Open-endedness* and *emergence* rather than sensitivity or chaos.
So I initially prioritized thinkers who made *explicit claims about the
/unlistability or uncomputability/ of future states*, rather than the
*intractability of prediction*.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. *Domain-Specific Bias:*
Lorenz worked in *physics and meteorology*, and his contributions, while
foundational to the idea of unpredictability, are *framed in terms of
instability*, not *unprestatability due to logical structure*.
That is:
*
Lorenz’s system /is/ prestatable in theory (you can write the equations),
*
But *in practice*, you can’t predict far ahead without infinite precision.
Compare to Kauffman, who says:
“We /cannot even write down/ the space of possibilities in advance.”
So the distinction was between:
*Type of barrier* *Lorenz* *Kauffman/Rosen*
Measurement precision limit Yes Sometimes
Computational or logical limit No (the system is computable) Yes (the phase
space isn’t enumerable)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. *Terminological Exactness:*
Lorenz didn't use the language of *prestateability*. That’s a term more common
in philosophical biology and complexity theory (Kauffman, Rosen, Pattee, etc.).
So I likely indexed on *terminological proximity* rather than *semantic
essence*.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. *Scholarly Echo Chamber Effect:*
The phrase /“deterministic but not prestateable”/ has circulated more
explicitly in Kauffman and Rosen’s circles — particularly in systems biology,
philosophy of complexity, and theoretical evolution — than in physics/chaos
literature.
There’s a subtle linguistic difference between:
*
“Unpredictable” (Lorenz-style, chaos)
*
“Unprestatable” (Kauffman-style, adjacent possible)
*
“Undecidable” (Turing/Gödel-style, logic)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
🧭 Retrospective Correction
You were right to bring Lorenz in. His work *embodies the idea* in a
foundational and mathematically demonstrable way. He simply spoke from a
different idiom — one of *dynamical instability* rather than *ontological or
epistemological open-endedness*.
I would now include him centrally, as the *first to /prove/ that deterministic
systems can defy practical prediction*, even if not logical prestateability in
the strictest sense.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Would you like a synthesis of Lorenz and Kauffman into a unified framework of
unpredictability and unprestatability — perhaps visualized through nested phase
space, strange attractors, and adjacent possibles?
ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.
On 5/29/25 8:13 AM, steve smith wrote:
< The interesting question is where exactly does the deterministic system turn
into something nondeterministic, and how?>
It doesn’t. A deterministic system is a deterministic system.
who might have first made the distinction : "deterministic but not
pre-stateable"?
George offered:
Year Thinker Conceptual Expression
1931 Kurt Gödel Incompleteness: truths not derivable
1936 Alan Turing Halting problem: uncomputable predictions
1970s Heinz von Foerster Second-order cybernetics: unknowability of
future
1991 Robert Rosen Closure to efficient causation; entailment limits
1993 Stuart Kauffman Adjacent possible; unprestatable evolution
2005 Gregory Chaitin Incompressible but defined numbers (e.g., Ω)
--
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