[FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?

[Russ Abbott]

Thank you all for your interest and replies. I regret that I asked this
question just before leaving for vacation. I'll be away for a week.

Here are my thoughts, which I didn't want to impose before hearing other
answers.

A complex system involves agents with the following properties.

   - They can accumulate (and store) free energy.
   - They have means to release that energy.
   - They respond to (symbolic) information, i.e., symbols. By that I mean
   that they respond to things on the basis of their internal rules rather
   than as a consequence of physics or chemistry. (In other words they are
   autonomous in the sense that they are governed by internal rules and not
   just pushed around by external forces.) I'm not saying that the internal
   rules are not themselves run by physics and chemistry, only that the
   response of an agent to some information/symbol is minimally if at all
   connected to the physical nature of the symbol.  (A bit is a symbol. Bit
   representations don't matter when software looks at bit values. Similarly
   when you see a red traffic light you respond to the symbol
   red-traffic-light, not to the physical effects of the photons -- other than
   to translate those photons into the symbol. Software is a set of rules no
   matter what mechanism executes it.) Of course one of the things agents can
   do is to employ some of its stored energy as part of its response to a
   symbol.

The result of all this is that agents operate in two worlds:
physics/chemistry and information. A system cannot be considered complex
unless it includes such agents.

-- Russ

On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 12:40 PM glen ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> 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
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