Complexity and Information - Cambridge University Press

[Owen Densmore]

Has anyone read this?
   http://tinyurl.com/pbxm9
   or
   http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521485061

Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been discussed  
before.

     -- Owen

Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net

[Stephen Guerin]

Owen,

> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been
> discussed before.

We just discussed this last week. It's on my bookshelf. Ask Pamela if she's
interviewed the guy.  :-)

-S

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Owen Densmore [mailto:owen at backspaces.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 8:19 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Friam
> Subject: [FRIAM] Complexity and Information - Cambridge
> University Press
>
> Has anyone read this?
>    http://tinyurl.com/pbxm9
>    or
>    http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521485061
>
> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been
> discussed before.
>
>      -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> 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
>
>

[Owen Densmore]

DOH!  Sorry Pamela, I entirely missed the fact that J. F. Traub was  
*your* J. F. Traub!  I just bought the book, btw.

For the rest of FRIAM, here's Joe's web site:
   http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~traub/

     -- Owen

Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net


On Aug 16, 2006, at 8:27 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote:

> Owen,
>
>> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been
>> discussed before.
>
> We just discussed this last week. It's on my bookshelf. Ask Pamela  
> if she's
> interviewed the guy.  :-)
>
> -S
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Owen Densmore [mailto:owen at backspaces.net]
>> Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 8:19 AM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Friam
>> Subject: [FRIAM] Complexity and Information - Cambridge
>> University Press
>>
>> Has anyone read this?
>>    http://tinyurl.com/pbxm9
>>    or
>>    http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?
>> isbn=0521485061
>>
>> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been
>> discussed before.
>>
>>      -- Owen
>>
>> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> 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

[Pamela McCorduck]

I'd like to say I've read it, but you could find out very easily that  
I haven't.   I get talks on the topic, however.  ; -)


On Aug 16, 2006, at 10:10 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:

> DOH!  Sorry Pamela, I entirely missed the fact that J. F. Traub was
> *your* J. F. Traub!  I just bought the book, btw.
>
> For the rest of FRIAM, here's Joe's web site:
>    http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~traub/
>
>      -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>
>
> On Aug 16, 2006, at 8:27 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote:
>
>> Owen,
>>
>>> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been
>>> discussed before.
>>
>> We just discussed this last week. It's on my bookshelf. Ask Pamela
>> if she's
>> interviewed the guy.  :-)
>>
>> -S
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Owen Densmore [mailto:owen at backspaces.net]
>>> Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 8:19 AM
>>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Friam
>>> Subject: [FRIAM] Complexity and Information - Cambridge
>>> University Press
>>>
>>> Has anyone read this?
>>>    http://tinyurl.com/pbxm9
>>>    or
>>>    http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?
>>> isbn=0521485061
>>>
>>> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been
>>> discussed before.
>>>
>>>      -- Owen
>>>
>>> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> 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
>
>
> ============================================================
> 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
>

"These days, from time to time, the public libraries launch an effort  
to get children together with books, and signs bloom on their walls  
saying
Read to Succeed!  This seems singularly wrong-headed, since few seven-
year-olds care about their future job categories, or at least no  
seven year old you'd want to know.  The signs ought to say Books: The  
Way Out."

                                Barbara Holland


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[Stephen Guerin]

Sorry if I appeared flip, Owen.

The book is a short one of about 100 pages / 16 short chapters adapted from
Joe's 1993 lectures in France. It deals more with computational complexity or
information-based complexity which is loosely related to our general use of the
term Complexity.

I would be up for a reading group around the book that tried to get a better
understanding of the relationship of the two worlds. If we get sufficiently far,
perhaps Joe could give a lecture and disabuse of any progress we think we've
made :-)

As a flip aside, I think there is a might be a way to apply computational
complexity to define/measure boundary conditions in agent-based models. In the
case of the ant foraging abm, I think of the roles of the nests and food sources
as injecting information into the system and are a the potential source of
order. The rate at which they inject these bits of information may be a measure
of how 'far-from-equilibrium' the system is. Ie, every time step, the nest and
food patches are testing if any ants are at their location and flipping their
behavioral bit between food-seeking to nest-seeking. I'm wondering if you can
tie the computational complexity of that action and the gradient following
behavior of the ants to the macroscopic order you see in the ant path creation.
Just wild-hair speculation...

-S

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Owen Densmore [mailto:owen at backspaces.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 10:10 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Complexity and Information - Cambridge
> University Press
>
> DOH!  Sorry Pamela, I entirely missed the fact that J. F. Traub was
> *your* J. F. Traub!  I just bought the book, btw.
>
> For the rest of FRIAM, here's Joe's web site:
>    http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~traub/
>
>      -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>
>
> On Aug 16, 2006, at 8:27 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote:
>
> > Owen,
> >
> >> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been
> discussed
> >> before.
> >
> > We just discussed this last week. It's on my bookshelf. Ask
> Pamela if
> > she's interviewed the guy.  :-)
> >
> > -S
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Owen Densmore [mailto:owen at backspaces.net]
> >> Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 8:19 AM
> >> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Friam
> >> Subject: [FRIAM] Complexity and Information - Cambridge University
> >> Press
> >>
> >> Has anyone read this?
> >>    http://tinyurl.com/pbxm9
> >>    or
> >>    http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?
> >> isbn=0521485061
> >>
> >> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been
> discussed
> >> before.
> >>
> >>      -- Owen
> >>
> >> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ============================================================
> >> 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
>
>
> ============================================================
> 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
>
>

[Owen Densmore]

> Sorry if I appeared flip, Owen.

No worries, didn't even notice.

I hope I'm not exhibiting a stuck bit here, but I'm seeing seeing  
more folks writing about similar formalisms.

A real mind blower for me is reading Brian Green's The Fabric of the  
Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
   http://tinyurl.com/g3p6h
For our discussion, he has a long and interesting discussion of  
entropy, and how it relates to time-symmetry paradoxes in physics.  
He even does a good explanation of why the early universe, even  
though very uniform, was extraordinarily low entropy.  Similarly he  
shows why black holes, even with a presumed huge density at the  
singularity, are of the highest entropy.

This keeps up, I'll be talking complexity babble with Steve!  Wow.

     -- Owen

Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net


On Aug 16, 2006, at 10:59 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote:

> Sorry if I appeared flip, Owen.
>
> The book is a short one of about 100 pages / 16 short chapters  
> adapted from
> Joe's 1993 lectures in France. It deals more with computational  
> complexity or
> information-based complexity which is loosely related to our  
> general use of the
> term Complexity.
>
> I would be up for a reading group around the book that tried to get  
> a better
> understanding of the relationship of the two worlds. If we get  
> sufficiently far,
> perhaps Joe could give a lecture and disabuse of any progress we  
> think we've
> made :-)
>
> As a flip aside, I think there is a might be a way to apply  
> computational
> complexity to define/measure boundary conditions in agent-based  
> models. In the
> case of the ant foraging abm, I think of the roles of the nests and  
> food sources
> as injecting information into the system and are a the potential  
> source of
> order. The rate at which they inject these bits of information may  
> be a measure
> of how 'far-from-equilibrium' the system is. Ie, every time step,  
> the nest and
> food patches are testing if any ants are at their location and  
> flipping their
> behavioral bit between food-seeking to nest-seeking. I'm wondering  
> if you can
> tie the computational complexity of that action and the gradient  
> following
> behavior of the ants to the macroscopic order you see in the ant  
> path creation.
> Just wild-hair speculation...
>
> -S
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Owen Densmore [mailto:owen at backspaces.net]
>> Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 10:10 AM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Complexity and Information - Cambridge
>> University Press
>>
>> DOH!  Sorry Pamela, I entirely missed the fact that J. F. Traub was
>> *your* J. F. Traub!  I just bought the book, btw.
>>
>> For the rest of FRIAM, here's Joe's web site:
>>    http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~traub/
>>
>>      -- Owen
>>
>> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>>
>>
>> On Aug 16, 2006, at 8:27 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote:
>>
>>> Owen,
>>>
>>>> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been
>> discussed
>>>> before.
>>>
>>> We just discussed this last week. It's on my bookshelf. Ask
>> Pamela if
>>> she's interviewed the guy.  :-)
>>>
>>> -S
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Owen Densmore [mailto:owen at backspaces.net]
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 8:19 AM
>>>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Friam
>>>> Subject: [FRIAM] Complexity and Information - Cambridge University
>>>> Press
>>>>
>>>> Has anyone read this?
>>>>    http://tinyurl.com/pbxm9
>>>>    or
>>>>    http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?
>>>> isbn=0521485061
>>>>
>>>> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been
>> discussed
>>>> before.
>>>>
>>>>      -- Owen
>>>>
>>>> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ============================================================
>>>> 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
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> 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

[Tom Johnson]

You know, I'm sure, that the author, Joe Traub, is Pamela McCorduck's
husband.  She may have read it.

I suggested to Joe last week that he might enjoy dropping by FRIAM.

-Tom

On 8/16/06, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:

>
> Has anyone read this?
>    http://tinyurl.com/pbxm9
>    or
>    http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521485061
>
> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been discussed
> before.
>
>      -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> 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
>

--
==========================================
J. T. Johnson
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
www.analyticjournalism.com
505.577.6482(c)                                 505.473.9646(h)
http://www.jtjohnson.com               tom at jtjohnson.com

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete."
                                                   -- Buckminster Fuller
==========================================
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[Douglas Roberts-2]

Actually, Tom, I believe what Pamela said about "getting between the covers"
meant something else entirely.  She may have read the book, though.

;-}

--Doug

On 8/16/06, Tom Johnson <tom at jtjohnson.com> wrote:

>
> You know, I'm sure, that the author, Joe Traub, is Pamela McCorduck's
> husband.  She may have read it.
>
> I suggested to Joe last week that he might enjoy dropping by FRIAM.
>
> -Tom
>
>
> On 8/16/06, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:
> >
> > Has anyone read this?
> >    http://tinyurl.com/pbxm9
> >    or
> >    http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521485061
> >
> > Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been discussed
> > before.
> >
> >      -- Owen
> >
> > Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
> >
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > 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
> >
>
>
>
> --
> ==========================================
> J. T. Johnson
> Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
> www.analyticjournalism.com
> 505.577.6482(c)                                 505.473.9646(h)
> http://www.jtjohnson.com               tom at jtjohnson.com
>
> "You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
> To change something, build a new model that makes the
> existing model obsolete."
>                                                    -- Buckminster Fuller
> ==========================================
>
> ============================================================
> 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
>
>

--
Doug Roberts, RTI International
droberts at rti.org
doug at parrot-farm.net
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell
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[Pamela McCorduck]

First laugh-out-loud of the day.


On Aug 16, 2006, at 12:32 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

> Actually, Tom, I believe what Pamela said about "getting between  
> the covers" meant something else entirely.  She may have read the  
> book, though.
>
> ;-}
>
> --Doug
>
> On 8/16/06, Tom Johnson <tom at jtjohnson.com> wrote:
> You know, I'm sure, that the author, Joe Traub, is Pamela  
> McCorduck's husband.  She may have read it.
>
> I suggested to Joe last week that he might enjoy dropping by FRIAM.
>
> -Tom
>
>
> On 8/16/06, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:
> Has anyone read this?
>    http://tinyurl.com/pbxm9
>    or
>    http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521485061
>
> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been discussed
> before.
>
>      -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> 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
>
>
>
> --
> ==========================================
> J. T. Johnson
> Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
> www.analyticjournalism.com
> 505.577.6482(c)                                 505.473.9646(h)
> http://www.jtjohnson.com               tom at jtjohnson.com
>
> "You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
> To change something, build a new model that makes the
> existing model obsolete."
>                                                    -- Buckminster  
> Fuller
> ==========================================
>
> ============================================================
> 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
>
>
>
>
> --
> Doug Roberts, RTI International
> droberts at rti.org
> doug at parrot-farm.net
> 505-455-7333 - Office
> 505-670-8195 - Cell
> ============================================================
> 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

"These days, from time to time, the public libraries launch an effort  
to get children together with books, and signs bloom on their walls  
saying
Read to Succeed!  This seems singularly wrong-headed, since few seven-
year-olds care about their future job categories, or at least no  
seven year old you'd want to know.  The signs ought to say Books: The  
Way Out."

                                Barbara Holland


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