complexity and emergence (was: FRIAM and causality)

Posted by glen ep ropella on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/FRIAM-and-causality-tp525337p525399.html

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Phil Henshaw on 12/09/2007 01:13 PM:

> Well, hopefully returning to the main thread.   The question seems to
> concern an observation that information can be 'misused', letting people
> capitalize on the interesting ways in which 'bad models' don't fit, to
> display a 'reality' beyond the information which is both verifiably
> present and verifiably explorable.   To me that seems to have a bearing
> on the sort of opposite principle of Niels Bohr.  I believe Bohr's idea
> was that because science works only with information that a fundamental
> assumption of science must be that nothing exists which can not be
> represented with information, ...and so, only immature thinkers could
> possibly doubt that at the most fundamental level the structure of the
> universe is that "God rolls dice", I think it goes.
>
> Do you see that connection or any bits and pieces of it?  Or are these
> durable shapes in the fog between the models something different?

I definitely see a connection.  The "interstitial spaces" or
"interactions" that are the primary subject of complexity studies fall
(to my mind) squarely in the category of "implicit" or "not clearly
identified, named, or described".

To me, much of the controversy around both "complexity" and "emergence"
lies in this very sense of the "unameable".  It's not so much that the
words are meaningless, abused, or reflect subjective phenomena, as it is
that these are words intended to refer to un-identified, un-named, or
un-described things.  Once a phenomenon is identified, named, and
described explicitly, it ceases to be "emergent" or "complex" in some
(non-technical) uses of those terms.

I don't particularly relate it to Bohr's principle (as you've described
it), though.  I'm a fan of _naive_ approaches to understanding and
manipulating things because a naive perspective can help one escape
infinite regress ("rat holes") and paradox set up by historical trends.
 So, when convenient, it's a good thing to just assume reality is as its
portrayed in our (always false) models.  But, like all perspectives,
it's useful to be able to don and doff them in order to achieve some end.

In the end, most of the "shapes in the fog" _can_ be identified, named,
and described.  But, some of them resist.  It's tough to tell whether
such "shapes in the fog" are real or just an artifact of the models
through which we look.  In the end, given the tools we have available,
we can't state, definitively, that some thing we cannot identify, name,
or describe clearly is a thing at all.  We are left with falsification
as the only reliable method.  We can never say:  "Bob's description is
true."  We can only say: "Bob's description has not yet been shown
false."  Likewise, we can't say "that shape in the fog _is_ merely bias
resulting from millenia of bad language".  We can only say "models 1-n
fail to capture that shape in the fog".

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally
and attempting to make them equal. -- F.A. Hayek

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