confidence with exploring them. I'm at a conference on sustainable
still very much in place. They still view the problem as solving a
first. The failure of that, of course, is when the box floating along
different way.
exploring or adapting to their environments. _If_ people are paying
attention models evolve by people making new ones. When you look to see
defining whatever is outside the structures of models away. It
introduces bias. Learning to do the opposite, exploring the complex
methods though. I sort of approach it as a 'mining' exercise, looking
bye. Having a way to identify the time and place where complex systems
are developing their organization saves a lot more than time. It seems
to lead to better questions. I also, for measuring total environmental
impacts, use the tried and true way to look outside any box... "follow
the money". Some people are even responding to how very effective it is
680 Ft. Washington Ave
> -----Original Message-----
> From: friam-bounces at redfish.com
> [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Glen E. P. Ropella
> Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 4:38 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] complexity and emergence (was: FRIAM and causality)
>
>
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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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