[FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?

[Russ Abbott]

I think the weather example rests on the likelihood that we could have
complex weather without biology.

On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 1:26 PM Steve <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

> And I agree completely with the idea of zooming in (enough) to be at least
> hunting subSnarks on a domain composed almost entirely of Snarks... ((Or
> Snarkbait?)
>
> Beating the dead snark, I was mildly perturbed by the implication that the
> complexity of weather systems was more than incidentally dependent on the
> biological systems that might infiorm them (transpiration from forest or
> savannah, light absorption by algae, methane from cattle and termites, etc)
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On May 25, 2017, at 1:39 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
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
> >
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20170525/e98c84b0/attachment.html>