Re: A question for the emergentists among you

Posted by Robert Holmes on Oct 12, 2009; 7:02pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/A-question-for-the-emergentists-among-you-tp3799888p3809945.html

Actually I think the thread is heading into some interesting and (for me) useful directions. Several contributors (Eric, Glen, Russell et al.) are explicitly filling in the blank in the sentence "if a phenomenon is identified as emergent then <blank>" (and thanks to Doug for the clear statement of my question).

As to the math, I'm absolutely not against developing a theoretical grounding for emergence but (IMHO) it needs to inform the "if" clause of Doug's statement AND the "then" clause. I think that our discussions over the past months have tended to focus on the former rather than the latter: my question was just an attempt to correct the balance.

-- Robert

P.S. Does it help if I know whether my simulation will display chaotic behavior? You betcha: if I know the shape of the attractor in phase space I know which states of the system are impossible and which are possible and I can calculate the probability of finding the system in those possible states. So that means (for example) that I can apply error bars to my prediction of next week's weather or properly price the financial derivative that I am selling.

On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 12:13 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Robert: Just to help untangle the discussion: Are you saying a theoretical grounding for Complexity .. or even just Modeling .. appears to have no concrete use for you?

To be even more specific: Chaos has at least one definition: divergence.  It uses the Lyapunov exponent to define chaotic systems.

Thus would it be useful for you in a calculation to know whether it was inherently chaotic?

   -- Owen

============================================================
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