[FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?

[Stephen Guerin]

On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 2:25 PM, Russ Abbott <russ.abbott at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>

I disagree with the your last statement - it is too restricting for the
general field of complex systems.

The criteria you list above are similar to what others have described as
distinguishing properties for the transition from physically
self-organizing systems to living systems. So if you include these
conditions as necessary to be a complex system, of course, you won't be
able to find physical systems that qualify as complex systems.

Example criteria others have used similar to yours:

   - onboard free energy stores
   - responding to information gradients instead of just force gradients
   - responding to kinematic flow fields (1987 Kugler and Turvey) instead
   of only kinetic. Eg forces defined on information gradients not just
   mass-based.
   - Stu's definition of an "Autonomous Agent"
      - detect gradients from which it can extract work
      - construct system of constraints to extract work
      - do work to maintain those constraints



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