[FRIAM] Automata with FFT

[Steve Smith]

On 9/24/22 9:49 AM, glen wrote:
> Such efforts seem so inherently metaphorical it's difficult for me to 
> approach a concrete conversation. For example, I have a couple of 
> biologist friends, one meso (bugs) and one macro (ungulates), who 
> thought I was being contrarian when I challenged their assertion that 
> biodiversity in urban areas was *obviously* lower than that of natural 
> areas like forests. Of course, I admit my ignorance up front. Maybe 
> they are. But it's just not obvious to me.

This may seem a little tangential but the realm of Permaculture Design 
has a suite of truisms on these topics, though they are articulated in 
their unique language which can be a little hard to translate 
sometimes.  I think the permaculture community represent a fertile 
laboratory for doing *some* experiments as implied by Glen's questions.

A good example which gestures toward the Chan work at least 
morphologically is maybe worth a scan if not a full read here:

    https://aflorestanova.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/zones-in-permaculture-design/

Permaculture's 5 zone quantization doesn't preclude a recognition of 
there being continuous gradients in many dimensions from a locus of 
"technological closed-loop" (zone 0) and "biological closed loop" (zone 5).

There is a *lot* of talk in the literature about the interfaces around 
zone 0, 1, 2 techno-structures creating localized ecozones that harbor 
diversity (desired and undesired == vermin) which I think provide some 
good anecdotal evidence about biodiversity in transition zones and acute 
technological interfaces (e.g. roofs, walls, corners, posts, fences, 
etc).  Permaculture is a domain of recognizing and exploiting "happy 
accidents".

It is also worth noting the diversity spike that happens in estuarial 
contexts...

A more formal study of Urban/Architectural design with an eye to 
*health* (human-centric view) is the domain of Biophilic Design 
<https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/report/biophilia-healing-environments/>.  
Nikos Salingaros is a hard-core Mathematician at UT-San Antonio who 
addresses abstractions of Complexity 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikos_Salingaros#Complexity> and Pattern 
Languages <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_language> as well as 
Architecture and Urbanism.  He also has some interesting opinions 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikos_Salingaros#Philosophy> about post 
modernism as well as Dawkins Atheism.


>
> Since then, they've presented (meso and macro) arguments that justify 
> their position. It does seem obvious that urban areas trend to more 
> adaptable animals like coyotes and raccoons and less so to, say, deer. 
> The bugs are more interesting. Meso guy found some articles that show 
> "species" diversity in urban areas is roughly the same as natural 
> areas. But phylogenetic diversity is clearly lower in urban areas. 
> That seems counter intuitive to me. It's a cool result.
>
> My main point when I originally expressed skepticism, though, was 
> about microbial diversity. Is it possible that bug-layer and 
> microbe-layer (including what lives in/on large animals like rats and 
> humans) diversity makes up for lower diversity in large-layers?
>
> I *feel* that projects like Chan's could help with this question since 
> it seems prohibitively expensive to sample and test enough microbial 
> populations of urban and wild areas, especially if we include 
> intra-animal populations. I'm just not sure *how* they could help.
>
> On 9/24/22 03:38, David Eric Smith wrote:
>> It’s funny; I know Bert.
>>
>> One of our colleagues played a role in bringing him out to work at 
>> Google in Tokyo.
>>
>> A mathematician (Will Cavendish) who has part-time support at IAS
>> https://www.ias.edu/scholars/will-cavendish 
>> <https://www.ias.edu/scholars/will-cavendish>
>> is also interested in the mathematical dimensions of this, though I 
>> have only a glancing exposure to how those two together are trying to 
>> frame the problems.  Because Bert has come at it more from the 
>> ALife/engineering approach, and Will’s interests run more in the 
>> direction of proving capabilities of broad classes of systems, often 
>> interested in their aggregation as categories  (and also about the 
>> role of simulation as a replacement for proof in systems that produce 
>> complicated enough state spaces), it should be a productive and 
>> interesting collaboration.  I don’t know how engaged others are in 
>> the Google group on this specific project, because I am too far 
>> outside that loop.
>>
>> Eric
>>
>>> On Sep 23, 2022, at 4:03 PM, Jon Zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com 
>>> <mailto:jonzingale at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.05433.pdf 
>>> <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.05433.pdf>
>
>
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