[FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?
Steven A Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Thu May 25 08:23:39 EDT 2017
maybe an interesting (but relevant) question is also "what is interesting?"
It seems that we, as examples of complex, organized,
far-from-equilibrium, systems of dissipative systems entities find other
examples with similar (subsets) of those properties "interesting"...
I'm not sure what a system without those properties would call
interesting (or if it could/would call anything anything).
I think what you are calling "interesting" are systems exhibiting
nonlinear phenomena, self-organization, and aghast! emergence. I think
therefore that such systems exhibit proto-life-like properties by
definition. Your exclusion of systems arising from biological
(explicitely alive) systems seems to be trying to niggle at the root of
"what is life"?
On 5/25/17 5:59 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>
> 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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>
>
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