[FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?

[Nick Thompson]

Thanks, Steve.

 

Larding below

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Stephen Guerin
Sent: Monday, May 29, 2017 2:30 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Cc: Eric Smith <desmith at santafe.edu>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?

 

 




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On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 12:10 PM, Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net <mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net> > wrote:

SG,

 

There are now THREE issues lurking here between us. 

 

IS THE CRITERION FOR A SYSTEM ARBITRARY: You say yes; I say no.  We’ve already covered that ground.

 

In my post, I said it is not arbitrary. It's a function of what the researcher is trying to use it for or explain.

[NST==>Well, that sounds like arbitrary to me.  But it’s a subtle point, and bordering on the edge of a word-bicker, so I won’t pursue it now.  Someday, I would like to do a thing on “subjective vs objective” some day, but today time is limited.  <==nst] 

 

 IS A HURRICANE A SYSTEM:  For me, that is the question of whether the collection of thunderstorms we call a hurricane interact with one another more than they interact with their collective surroundings.  Another way to put this question is in terms of redundancy.  If we were to go about describing the movements of the thunderstorms of a hurricane, would we get a simpler, less redundant description if we referred their movements to the center of the hurricane.  I think the answer to this question is clearly YES.

 

Yes you could model the movement in a simpler way by modeling the movement of the center point. And that was my second model of a hurricane as a random walker biased by a global wind vector and Coriolis curve term. And I said that was not a complex system.

 

 

IS A HURRICANE COMPLEX?  For me, complexity means “multi-layered” .  So, a complex system is one composed of other systems.  A hurricane is a system of thunderstorms which themselves are a system of thermals (handwaving, here).  Thus a hurricane is at least a three-level system.  So, yes.  It is complex.

 

I agree about complex systems as having multiple layers - a macro scale and a micro scale. I would say there's one system. If I was trying to model a hurricane in my first example of an emergent vortex dissipating temperature and pressure gradients, I would model the air with a combination of air particles and patches of air - at LANL they would describe these as particle in a box models or hybrid lagrangian and eulerian models. I would not introduce thunderstorms at the micro level. But there's many ways to skin a hurricane :-)

 

Some would say the micro level air particles and air cell components which I would model as finite state machines (agents with a lower case "a") are systems in their own right and have boundaries. I don't see the benefit of calling them systems as their aren't multiple interacting components within them. But don't feel like arguing too hard here.

 

Eric Smith?  

 

 

Yes, where are you Eric Smith <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIFJLMyUwrg> ?

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