Any non-biological complex systems?
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Any non-biological complex systems?
 
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Are there any good examples of a complex system that doesn't involve biological organisms (including human beings)?
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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the internet On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 6:59 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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The internet includes people -- who generate messages that traverse it. But a system consisting solely of computers networked in some way may be a good example. It's not quite what I was thinking of, though. I'd like to exclude anything biological and anything created by biological organisms. So that excludes computers. The best example I can think of is the weather system, including, ocean currents and their interactions with weather phenomena. Considering the distinction that's often made between complex and complicated, should weather be considered complex or complicated? On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 6:00 PM Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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In reply to this post by Russ Abbott
formation of galaxies, stars and planets. Maybe. I guess. On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 7:59 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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In reply to this post by Russ Abbott
High speed trading comes close to not involving people. Other examples that come to mind involve some autonomous (biological) agent creating demand. For
example, energy or data or transportation networks are responding to a logistical demand created by people. Netflix (vs. adaptive routing) is a demand created by people. As companies like Google begin to build agents that build models and satisfy constraints the requests they initiate will become more adaptive.
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]]
On Behalf Of Russ Abbott Are there any good examples of a complex system that doesn't involve biological organisms (including human beings)? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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Is a vortex like a funnel cloud or the Saturn's hexagon considered a complex system? Cody Smith On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 8:31 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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"Complex Systems" being a somewhat fuzzy concept, this is
hard/easy to answer.
Any physical system comprised of large numbers of similar or
identical elements which interact and yield non-linear collective
behaviour seems like a good enough definition for your purposes.
Sand dune formation and (breaking) waves and cloud
formation/dissipation all seem like pretty good candidates, not to
mention the aforementioned weather in general.
Earthquake/Rift/Mountain formain seems like a good fit as well as
wind/rain erosion of soil in general. On 5/24/17 8:56 PM, cody dooderson
wrote:
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Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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Weather? Gems? Crystals?(natural ones) On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 9:04 PM, Steven A Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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In reply to this post by cody dooderson
Cody you poor poor person.pentagrams? lol been waching a bit much DrWho or DaFlash have we :P On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 8:56 PM, cody dooderson <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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In reply to this post by Steve Smith
Although Donder's Son may have a fine example. The clouds (gas things) Jupiter or saturns weather are fine example of complicated stuff only those planets make. On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 9:04 PM, Steven A Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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I'll buy the ones Steven Smith mentioned. But those are mainly weather and related. I guess that could be generalized to weather and geology. I don't see why formation of galaxies, stars and planets would be considered a complex system phenomenon unless all of physics would be. A vortex or hurricane or other dissipative system? I'd rule out high speed trading since it's done with computers and works only because it interacts with people trading. All the examples I like (weather, etc.) are open systems that have energy flowing through them. That often generates interesting phenomena. (As we mentioned above dissipative systems.) Do you think that's enough to qualify a system as complex? (I know, as Steve said, it's a fuzzy term.) They all reflect "emergence" of some sort -- even though I don't like that term these days. But they lack the quality of complexity that we find in systems containing agents with some degree of autonomy. Are there any non-biological, non-human, non-computer systems that would qualify as consisting of autonomous agents? On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 8:48 PM Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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“I'd rule out high speed trading since it's done with computers and works only because it interacts with people trading.” Increasingly there are volatility hazards that arise because machines are talking to machines in a multiparty fashion via the trading system and this happens
at a frequency beyond what people can fathom. It takes on a life of its own. Planetary weather patterns seem like a decent example, but biology sneaks into that one too. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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High speed trading does take on a life of its own and runs at a speed too fast for people to follow. As I said, though, I want to exclude human-produced artifacts. In addition, it's not clear there would be high speed trading if there weren't human traders they are trying to front-run. Agree, biology does sneak into weather phenomena as well. What about my revised question. 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? On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 9:48 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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In reply to this post by Russ Abbott
Russ - I *think* I know what you are getting at, but I don't think we are there yet in this discussion. I think we've come full circle to the challenges we encountered in the early days of Artificial Life. The first year or two of ALife conferences had a lot of focus on "what IS life?" It is a bit too early in the morning for me to give this proper consideration but as I remember it, there were many examples of systems with life-like or more to the point proto-life-like properties. I doubt I can put my hands on my proceedings from ALife I and ALife II easily and couldn't pull them up online beyond this: I think your intuition that "unless all of physics would be" is correct, especially when caveated by your own reference to dissipative systems which go on to imply far-from-equilibrium and irreversible systems. A precursor to the ALife work was that of Tibor Ganti: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotonwhich invoked "metabolism" and "self-replication" as qualities of proto-life. It seems like Autocatalytics Sets are useful and near-minimal abstractions? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocatalytic_setI feel like my maunderings here are vaguely circular when concatenated with your own but I hope someone more incisive than I takes an interest in this discussion and tightens these ideas up a little. - Steve On 5/24/17 10:25 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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maybe an interesting (but relevant) question is also "what is
interesting?" It seems that we, as examples of complex, organized, far-from-equilibrium, systems of dissipative systems entities find other examples with similar (subsets) of those properties "interesting"... I'm not sure what a system without those properties would call interesting (or if it could/would call anything anything). I think what you are calling "interesting" are systems exhibiting nonlinear phenomena, self-organization, and aghast! emergence. I think therefore that such systems exhibit proto-life-like properties by definition. Your exclusion of systems arising from biological (explicitely alive) systems seems to be trying to niggle at the root of "what is life"?
On 5/25/17 5:59 AM, Steven A Smith
wrote:
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In reply to this post by Russ Abbott
The concept of an agent is even more ill-formed than that of complexity or emergence. All the well-defined versions of the concept tighten it down to specific domains. So, you'd have to refine your question even more in order to get a coherent answer. On 05/24/2017 11:00 PM, Russ Abbott wrote: > What about my revised question. 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? -- ␦glen? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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The physical examples like Saturn's pole formation is "complex" due to its being an attractor state, I believe. If I were doing a search for complex phenomena, which actually is a nifty idea, I'd first tweet Melanie Mitchell, or Mark Newman, or ask Stephen, but then I'd look for: - tipping points - equilibria - fractal formations - unstable systems (reverse of equilibra?) - sigmoidal graph of a variable You might like this, I'm following it: Post back if you find something satisfying. -- Owen On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 8:51 AM, ┣glen┫ <[hidden email]> wrote:
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In reply to this post by Steve Smith
Maturana and Varela, Robert Rosen, Mark Bedeau, Stuart Kauffman [†] (as well as a huge ecology of others) have written about this to no avail, apparently. We _insist_ on having our ambiguity and eating it, too. In the end, it's rhetorical trickery (of which I'm no less culpable than anyone else) to use words like "complexity", "emergence", "interestingness", "agent", etc. in a technical context without making _some_ (any!) attempt to disambiguate. There are bottom-up rhetorical tactics (Newman, Moore, et al), where they reserve their vague-speak for the vague contexts, and simply tolerate their own and others higher order pattern-matching homunculi to imagine categories like complexity and agency. And there are top-down tactics (M&V, Rosen, et al), where the rhetoriticians try to speak directly about the "can't define it but I know it when I see it" categories. If you view these two rhetorical tactics as inductive vs generative (e.g. back-tracking), respectively, you can appreciate both. But we have to be careful not to arbitrarily swap one vague concept for another. Just because "interesting", "life", and "complexity" are all vague doesn't mean they're analogs. We need Russ to clarify his question before we'll have anything useful to say about it. [†] Including this "gem" by Kauffman: https://arxiv.org/abs/1303.5684, wherein he proceeds to treat subjects Rosen had treated way earlier, way better, and with no citation of Rosen, to boot. [sigh] But, hey, defection can be profitable. On 05/25/2017 05:23 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > maybe an interesting (but relevant) question is also "what is interesting?" > > It seems that we, as examples of complex, organized, far-from-equilibrium, systems of dissipative systems entities find other examples with similar (subsets) of those properties "interesting"... I'm not sure what a system without those properties would call interesting (or if it could/would call anything anything). > > I think what you are calling "interesting" are systems exhibiting nonlinear phenomena, self-organization, and aghast! emergence. I think therefore that such systems exhibit proto-life-like properties by definition. Your exclusion of systems arising from biological (explicitely alive) systems seems to be trying to niggle at the root of "what is life"? > > > > On 5/25/17 5:59 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: >> >> Russ - >> >> I *think* I know what you are getting at, but I don't think we are there yet in this discussion. >> >> I think we've come full circle to the challenges we encountered in the early days of Artificial Life. The first year or two of ALife conferences had a lot of focus on "what IS life?" It is a bit too early in the morning for me to give this proper consideration but as I remember it, there were many examples of systems with life-like or more to the point proto-life-like properties. I doubt I can put my hands on my proceedings from ALife I and ALife II easily and couldn't pull them up online beyond this: >> >> http://alife.org/conferences-isal-past?page=2 >> >> I think your intuition that "unless all of physics would be" is correct, especially when caveated by your own reference to dissipative systems which go on to imply far-from-equilibrium and irreversible systems. >> >> A precursor to the ALife work was that of Tibor Ganti: >> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemoton >> >> which invoked "metabolism" and "self-replication" as qualities of proto-life. >> >> It seems like Autocatalytics Sets are useful and near-minimal abstractions? >> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocatalytic_set >> >> I feel like my maunderings here are vaguely circular when concatenated with your own but I hope someone more incisive than I takes an interest in this discussion and tightens these ideas up a little. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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In reply to this post by Russ Abbott
Metamaterials. Topological insulators. On May 24, 2017 6:59 PM, "Russ Abbott" <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Any non-biological complex systems?
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I just looked up "Topological Insulator" (thanks Carl) and was blown away (once again) about things discovered/developed during my professional career that I had not heard of before but find relevant/fascinating to some of my work. I wonder if the boys (and girls?) of the Enlightenment felt the same as the scientific progress of that era unfolded so fully inside one lifetime? By coincidence I was just at my nephew's graduation from UofA
with a BS in Materials Science. I met his dept. chair and another
researcher who are leading him forward to a PhD in Material
Science, working in the area of quantum phononics. The project(s)
were fascinating. None of this is unanticipated, the only thing I have a hard time accepting is that it is happening (it would seem) in my lifetime. My PhD Molecular Biologist daughter was arguing against targeted gene splicing as a practicality until CRISPR happened and now, just a couple of years later, it is key to her own work! The social implications would seem to be staggering? I don't believe in a Kurzweilian style singularity exactly, but the exponential growth (by what measure?) of tech seems to be happening quite clearly... the impact on everyday life, of course is another matter. Technological optimists (like Marcus?) probably only see the upside of this, while neo-retro-luddites (like myself) have a hard time staying away from the grey-goo/dystopian futures... I am also somewhat of a fatalist and expect that it will all happen one way or another with or without me fretting. A couple of years ago, you may have heard me asking Schlitz about living in Ecuador as I was looking at withdrawing to the hills of Panama, not exactly for these reasons but with that in mind. The folks with a beachhead there turned out to be nuttier than fruitcakes (why would that not surpise us) so it wasn't a real option anyway. Enough wandering I suppose... Carry on! - Steve On 5/25/17 12:01 PM, Carl Tollander
wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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