Posted by
Robert Holmes on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Dynamics-of-Complex-Systems-by-Yaneer-Bar-Yam-tp522166p522222.html
On 7/23/06, Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at redfish.com> wrote:
>
> ...
>
In other systems like the ant foraging ABM model, we're trying to generalize
> the
> notions of "work" and "heat" beyond traditional mechanical processes.
> we've said
> that work is performed on the agents at the micro level as the system
> becomes
> complex and moves toward an organized state. For example, ants are
> informed by
> the pheromone field; work is peformed on them as they lose degrees of
> freedom in
> their movement and follow the gradient.
>
> Ultimately, I'm claiming, unformally at this point, that complex systems
> are a
> method for converting heat to work.
>
> -Stephen
I think you're going to end up in an irreconcilable paradox here. Take the
case of conservation laws: if you want to use conventional statistical
mechanics and thermodynamics, then your 'new' energy (whatever you want to
call it) is going to have some conservation law attached to it. But
information flow between agents is not conserved. For example, the
information you extract from this specific email is not in any way affected
by the number of people reading it.
Sure, I can impose conservation laws on (say) information flows because I am
building the model and can impose any rule structure on it I like. But that
would seem (IMHO) to represent too great a dislocation from reality for any
ABM derived from that assumption to be particularly realistic.
Alternatively, I could accept that something like information is not
conserved. But if I do this then I can't treat information as an analogue of
energy and I don't get to use all those well-established stat mech and
thermodynamics laws.
Robert
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