[FRIAM] complexity and emergence

Wed Dec 12 13:22:47 EST 2007

Which federal conference is this and how about some citations for your 90%
fat tail comment. 

Gus Koehler, Ph.D.
President and Principal
Time Structures, Inc.
1545 University Ave.
Sacramento, CA 95825
916-564-8683, Fax: 916-564-7895
Cell: 916-716-1740
www.timestructures.com

-----Original Message-----
From: friam-bounces at redfish.com [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf
Of phil henshaw
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 9:22 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] complexity and emergence

Here's a good example.  I'm at the fed conference on sustainable design
metrics and strategies, hearing about high quality metrics for the energy
content of building decisions and the complex redesigns for reducing our
impacts by 50% by 2030.  Only problem is, the best metrics are showing the
problem is more complicated, and that the trends in performance gains are
actually slowing down not speeding up, and, that the measures of the total
energy content of our decisions people have spent the most time on miss
literally 90% of the total.  Apparently the distribution of energy content
our decisions are responsible for has a
'fat tail', which makes 90% of it unaccountable.   That seems to mean
that all the strategies are missing the main target.   Given problematic
indicators like that it seems to we should 'look around' for the hidden
lists of things not represented....  

Phil Henshaw                       ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave 
NY NY 10040                       
tel: 212-795-4844                 
e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com          
explorations: www.synapse9.com  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: friam-bounces at redfish.com
> [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Glen E. P. Ropella
> Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 9:51 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] complexity and emergence
> 
> 
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> Marcus G. Daniels on 12/11/2007 06:53 PM:
> > Sure, if you manage to invent two entirely new ways of looking at a 
> > problem [the data collection plan/model and a design for a
> synthetic
> > model].   Theoretical frameworks rarely come out of thin air -- new 
> > models come from extensions and tweaks to a reference
> model, and the
> > finite gestalt of a scientific community.   That's 
> inevitable, I think,
> > unless you happen to have a topic for study that has very
> rich set of
> > data available (that wasn't collected motivated by some
> hypothesis).  
> 
> But you don't need a new theoretical framework for a model to be 
> fundamentally different from another model.  As we've seen on this 
> list alone, there are already a wide variety of theoretical frameworks 
> that are _never_ directly compared.
> For the most part, I think this is because people prematurely decide 
> that two frameworks are incommensurate and that it doesn't make sense 
> to target the same referent with models in the two frameworks.
> 
> A great example is hybrid (discrete + continuous) systems.  
> For some reason, we feel the need to call such systems "hybrid" even 
> though they're not really that difficult to combine.  The trick is 
> that the _theoretical_ tools used to reason about them are different.  
> But, we can pull together lots of different things and run them in 
> co-simulation without requiring theoretical commensurability.
> 
> Likewise, analogs come from the weirdest places.  For example, we can 
> compare the models for the "meter"; the metal rod is fundamentally 
> different from the distance light travels in a vacuum.  These are 
> fundamentally different models of the meter.  Another example is an RC 
> plane versus a balsa wood plane as models of a life size plane.  The 
> models are fundamentally different.  All that's required is a common 
> aspect ("lift").
> 
> Granted, when multi-modeling becomes standard practice, we will
> (probably) eventually consolidate our model construction methods, 
> which will constrain such model construction (all rooted in physics no 
> doubt).  And _then_ it will be reasonable to say that the various 
> models are NOT fundamentally different.  But right now, in the 
> immature modeling and simulation discipline we have, any two models 
> are very likely to be very different.  In fact, part of our purpose in 
> publishing our functional unit representation method is to help push 
> for the development of multi-modeling methodology so that we can make 
> models with incommensurate structure phenomenally more commensurate 
> through aspects and co-simulation.  The idea being to construct/select 
> populations of structures to find those that best generate the 
> targeted behavior.
> 
> - --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com The 
> assertion that our ego consists of protein molecules seems to me one 
> of the most ridiculous ever made. -- Kurt Gödel.
> 
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