[FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?

[glen ☣]

I agree completely.  But if we look carefully at Russ' question:

On 05/24/2017 11:00 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> Can we think of anything that is non-biological, non-human, and not a biological or human artifact that would qualify as an agent based system?

And we consider the previous comments about biology creeping into (even!) weather patterns and climate, and whether complexity is invariant through the reduction to physics ... and we can even extend that to something like Smolin's fecund universe, etc ad forever, it becomes clear that we're hunting the snark.  And I suppose the wisdom of traditions like Buddhism and such, as well as the falsification/selection approach of critical rationalism, _strongly_ suggest to us what Harley Davidson tells us on a regular basis: The journey is the destination.

So, rather than talk about the elusive snark, why not talk explicitly about the journey ... the workflow, the tools, the thing(s) right in front of our face/hands?  E.g. topological insulators don't look at all plectic to me.  So, I'd be very interested to hear why y'all think they are.  (By using "plectic", I'm admitting that I don't understand quantum physics; so sure, they're mysterious... but how are they complex in the way we're using the term, here?)

But I'm more interested in well-defined concepts of agents than I im in well-defined concepts of complex systems.  So, what type of agents are we talking about?  Kauffman's "thermodynamic agents"?  Zero intelligence agents?  BDI-capable agents?  Etc.  These concrete details would put us squarely inside the journey and outside the destination.


On 05/25/2017 12:21 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> MY point (at least, not trying to speak for others) was/is that "interesting", "life", and "complexity" might very well be highly superposed or even "conjugated" (to introduce an extremely overloaded technical term).
> 
> I suppose to disambiguate, I believe that "Life" is a subset of "Complex Systems" and life in the larger sense of ALife is a larger subset of complex systems, though probably still a *proper* subset? The outer bounds of he vagueness of "Life" convolved with the inner bounds of vagueness of Complex Systems might allow them to become identical?  The question of "Interesting" seems to be sharpened (or is it dulled?) by the subjectivity of the term...  I suppose "interesting" is usually defined by being simultaneously "familiar enough to be relevant" and "unfamiliar enough to be novel".  Since we are LIfe ourselves, it seems likely that we find *life itself* at least relevant and as we expand the definition of Life it becomes more novel and interesting, up to embracing all of "complexity"... to the extent that the Alife movement expanded the consideration from biological life to proto-life and quasi-life, I'm tempted to claim that *they* would include *all* of complex systems...
> admitting that the specific boundaries of all the above *are* vague.
> 
> To re-iterate, I think there IS good evidence to consider "complex systems" and "life" as highly related and it seems obvious that they would be "interesting", though I suppose there should be things outside of that domain which are also obviously "interesting". Agency is another hairball to sort through and I won't attempt much except that in MY definition of Life, "Agency" is one of the qualities of proto-life.   To that extent, it would seem that complex systems composed *of* entities with agency are as likely as any "biological system" to exhibit complexity, etc.
> 
> As for "Russ clarifying his question", I think this can be a rhetorical device?   It has always seemed to me that Science really degenerates to "asking the right question" where when properly formulated, the "answer becomes obvious"... in some sense, I think THIS is what passes for elegance, the holy grail of scientific theory?


-- 
☣ glen