Re: Any non-biological complex systems?

Posted by Stephen Guerin-5 on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Any-non-biological-complex-systems-tp7589731p7589775.html

> Heh, you're not going to make an empathetic attempt to listen to Russ' intent? 8^)

I am listening to Russ. I do think he's defining a sub-class of complex systems (eg living systems). I would like to keep the definition of "complex systems" broader than that though.

I understand the subtle distinction your trying to make. I would say the full phase space of a *complex system* has narrow critical regimes in their behavior (phase) space where *complex behavior* is observed as the control parameters are swept through the phase transition. In the critical regime we see complex behavior like sensitivity to initial conditions, critical slowing down, critical fluctuations, power law statistics, long-range correlations, etc. On either side of the phase transition (eg sub-critical and super-critical) regimes, these statistics and behaviors are not present.

That said, while the critical regime may be narrow in phase space many of these system "self-tune" to the critical point but that's another thread.

Agreed?

On Fri, May 26, 2017 at 5:30 PM, glen ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Heh, you're not going to make an empathetic attempt to listen to Russ' intent? 8^)

My answer is either or both "yes" and/or "no", because your words are too ambiguous. Both "complex" and "system" are left to the audience's imagination.  I would say that each of those _can_ exhibit complex phenomena when constrained, by a controlling [sub]system, to particular regimes of their behavior space.  So, yes.  But I would also say that each of those does not normally or naturally remain in such states for very long or under a wide range of circumstances.  So, no.

I suppose you get to choose which of my answers you accept.


On 05/26/2017 04:16 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote:
> Do you agree that at least one of these is an example of a non-biological
> complex system?
>
>    - ferromagnetic system (described with ising model)
>    - Bénard cell formation (convection)
>    - Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction

--
☣ glen

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