[FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?
Steven A Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Thu May 25 07:59:13 EDT 2017
Russ -
I *think* I know what you are getting at, but I don't think we are there
yet in this discussion.
I think we've come full circle to the challenges we encountered in the
early days of Artificial Life. The first year or two of ALife
conferences had a lot of focus on "what IS life?" It is a bit too early
in the morning for me to give this proper consideration but as I
remember it, there were many examples of systems with life-like or more
to the point proto-life-like properties. I doubt I can put my hands on
my proceedings from ALife I and ALife II easily and couldn't pull them
up online beyond this:
http://alife.org/conferences-isal-past?page=2
I think your intuition that "unless all of physics would be" is correct,
especially when caveated by your own reference to dissipative systems
which go on to imply far-from-equilibrium and irreversible systems.
A precursor to the ALife work was that of Tibor Ganti:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemoton
which invoked "metabolism" and "self-replication" as qualities of
proto-life.
It seems like Autocatalytics Sets are useful and near-minimal abstractions?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocatalytic_set
I feel like my maunderings here are vaguely circular when concatenated
with your own but I hope someone more incisive than I takes an interest
in this discussion and tightens these ideas up a little.
- Steve
On 5/24/17 10:25 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> I'll buy the ones Steven Smith mentioned. But those are mainly weather
> and related. I guess that could be generalized to weather and geology.
>
> I don't see why formation of galaxies, stars and planets would be
> considered a complex system phenomenon unless all of physics would be.
>
> A vortex or hurricane or other dissipative system?
>
> I'd rule out high speed trading since it's done with computers and
> works only because it interacts with people trading.
>
> All the examples I like (weather, etc.) are open systems that have
> energy flowing through them. That often generates interesting
> phenomena. (As we mentioned above dissipative systems
> <https://goo.gl/WGAZ9Q>.) Do you think that's enough to qualify a
> system as complex? (I know, as Steve said, it's a fuzzy term.) They
> all reflect "emergence" of some sort -- even though I don't like that
> term these days. But they lack the quality of complexity that we find
> in systems containing agents with some degree of autonomy.
>
> Are there any non-biological, non-human, non-computer systems that
> would qualify as consisting of autonomous agents?
>
> On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 8:48 PM Gillian Densmore
> <gil.densmore at gmail.com <mailto:gil.densmore at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Although Donder's Son may have a fine example. The clouds (gas
> things) Jupiter or saturns weather are fine example of
> complicated stuff only those planets make.
>
> On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 9:04 PM, Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com
> <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:
>
> "Complex Systems" being a somewhat fuzzy concept, this is
> hard/easy to answer.
>
>
> Any physical system comprised of large numbers of similar or
> identical elements which interact and yield non-linear
> collective behaviour seems like a good enough definition for
> your purposes. Sand dune formation and (breaking) waves and
> cloud formation/dissipation all seem like pretty good
> candidates, not to mention the aforementioned weather in
> general. Earthquake/Rift/Mountain formain seems like a good
> fit as well as wind/rain erosion of soil in general.
>
>
> On 5/24/17 8:56 PM, cody dooderson wrote:
>> Is a vortex like a funnel cloud or the Saturn's hexagon
>> considered a complex system?
>>
>> Cody Smith
>>
>> On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 8:31 PM, Marcus Daniels
>> <marcus at snoutfarm.com <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
>>
>> High speed trading comes close to not involving people.
>> Other examples that come to mind involve some
>> autonomous (biological) agent creating demand. For
>> example, energy or data or transportation networks are
>> responding to a logistical demand created by people.
>> Netflix (vs. adaptive routing) is a demand created by
>> people.
>>
>> As companies like Google begin to build agents that build
>> models and satisfy constraints the requests they initiate
>> will become more adaptive.
>>
>> *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com
>> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>] *On Behalf Of *Russ
>> Abbott
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 24, 2017 6:59 PM
>> *To:* FRIAM <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
>> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?
>>
>> Are there any good examples of a complex system that
>> doesn't involve biological organisms (including human
>> beings)?
>>
>>
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