Halfway through Shnerb's paper I read "... the arguments and computer
experiments mentioned above show convincingly that the individuals based
life is much more resilient than a hypothetical life density spread across
spatial regions". Well that seems fair enough, I think, if Shnerb is talking
about the entities in his artificial 2d world where he has indeed shown that
discrete and continuous descriptions diverge.
But no, I'm apparently not thinking big enough. "In particular most of the
species in nature could be in this regime... Similarly markets... In fact
this line of thought might provide an explanation to the emergence of
life..." And later: "This may explain the fact that most of the ecological
systems are two dimensional".
I think I must have missed that lesson on scientific method where such
evidence-free leaps of faith were shown to be valid.
Robert Holmes
{author of "How my 1-d Cellular Automata Models Everything in the Universe
Ever"}
-----Original Message-----
From:
[hidden email] [mailto:
[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Owen Densmore
Sent: 31 December 2003 09:34
To: The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] The Importance of Being Discrete - Life Always Wins on
theSurface
Someone on the NetLogo list sent a reference to this:
http://arxiv.org/abs/adap-org/9912005.. saying:
I was fascinated a few years ago to read Shnerb's PNAS article on "The
Importance of Being Discrete," exhibiting qualitatively different
behaviors
in an equation-based and an entity-based model of the same system ...
Owen Densmore 908 Camino Santander Santa Fe, NM 87505
[hidden email] Cell: 505-570-0168 Home: 505-988-3787
AIM:owendensmore
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