[FRIAM] Complexity and Information - Cambridge University Press

[Owen Densmore]

> Sorry if I appeared flip, Owen.

No worries, didn't even notice.

I hope I'm not exhibiting a stuck bit here, but I'm seeing seeing  
more folks writing about similar formalisms.

A real mind blower for me is reading Brian Green's The Fabric of the  
Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
   http://tinyurl.com/g3p6h
For our discussion, he has a long and interesting discussion of  
entropy, and how it relates to time-symmetry paradoxes in physics.   
He even does a good explanation of why the early universe, even  
though very uniform, was extraordinarily low entropy.  Similarly he  
shows why black holes, even with a presumed huge density at the  
singularity, are of the highest entropy.

This keeps up, I'll be talking complexity babble with Steve!  Wow.

     -- Owen

Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net


On Aug 16, 2006, at 10:59 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote:

> Sorry if I appeared flip, Owen.
>
> The book is a short one of about 100 pages / 16 short chapters  
> adapted from
> Joe's 1993 lectures in France. It deals more with computational  
> complexity or
> information-based complexity which is loosely related to our  
> general use of the
> term Complexity.
>
> I would be up for a reading group around the book that tried to get  
> a better
> understanding of the relationship of the two worlds. If we get  
> sufficiently far,
> perhaps Joe could give a lecture and disabuse of any progress we  
> think we've
> made :-)
>
> As a flip aside, I think there is a might be a way to apply  
> computational
> complexity to define/measure boundary conditions in agent-based  
> models. In the
> case of the ant foraging abm, I think of the roles of the nests and  
> food sources
> as injecting information into the system and are a the potential  
> source of
> order. The rate at which they inject these bits of information may  
> be a measure
> of how 'far-from-equilibrium' the system is. Ie, every time step,  
> the nest and
> food patches are testing if any ants are at their location and  
> flipping their
> behavioral bit between food-seeking to nest-seeking. I'm wondering  
> if you can
> tie the computational complexity of that action and the gradient  
> following
> behavior of the ants to the macroscopic order you see in the ant  
> path creation.
> Just wild-hair speculation...
>
> -S
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Owen Densmore [mailto:owen at backspaces.net]
>> Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 10:10 AM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Complexity and Information - Cambridge
>> University Press
>>
>> DOH!  Sorry Pamela, I entirely missed the fact that J. F. Traub was
>> *your* J. F. Traub!  I just bought the book, btw.
>>
>> For the rest of FRIAM, here's Joe's web site:
>>    http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~traub/
>>
>>      -- Owen
>>
>> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>>
>>
>> On Aug 16, 2006, at 8:27 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote:
>>
>>> Owen,
>>>
>>>> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been
>> discussed
>>>> before.
>>>
>>> We just discussed this last week. It's on my bookshelf. Ask
>> Pamela if
>>> she's interviewed the guy.  :-)
>>>
>>> -S
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Owen Densmore [mailto:owen at backspaces.net]
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 8:19 AM
>>>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Friam
>>>> Subject: [FRIAM] Complexity and Information - Cambridge University
>>>> Press
>>>>
>>>> Has anyone read this?
>>>>    http://tinyurl.com/pbxm9
>>>>    or
>>>>    http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?
>>>> isbn=0521485061
>>>>
>>>> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been
>> discussed
>>>> before.
>>>>
>>>>      -- Owen
>>>>
>>>> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ============================================================
>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> 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
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> 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
>>
>>
>
>
> ============================================================
> 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