Glen, > Phil Henshaw wrote: > > Gee, I don't know if it helps with your philosophy, but I > think you're > > making a common mistake with the inverse square relation. It's an > > indicator of complex system organization, not a design > principle. 'A' > > implies 'B' but 'B' in no way implies 'A'. It's like a > thermometer, if > > a thermometer reads 98.6 it's likely you've found a human > but heating > > something up to 98.6 and trying to talk to it is nutty. > The inverse > > square metric is a time saving empirical tool for helping > to locate and > > investigate complex systems. You have to look into the > system to find > > what makes it organized, though. > > Hmmm. I don't think I'm making the mistake you're citing. > But, it's plenty likely. I make all sorts of mistakes all > the time. [grin] To be clear, let me paraphrase what you're saying: > > By saying the inverse power law is a result/indicator rather > than a design principle, you're saying that the generators of > these results could be multifarious and not determined. I.e. > just because a system turns out to require things extreme > behavior and circumstances doesn't mean the organization of > the system is the only organization that could possibly > achieve its objectives.
I may not be speaking directly to your actual phrase, describing what you've gathered from complexity theory: "the extent versus the objectives of control structures should show something like an inverse power law to maintain a balance between diversity and efficacy." I read that as meaning that you'd design an inverse square relation into your control systems. I don't know what actual kind of controls you may be thinking of, or how you'd measure their diversity or efficacy, of course. The 'generators' of the inverse square measure are the self-organizations of the particular complex system you then try to understand. If you design a procedure by which self-organization develops it's quite likely it would behave like natural self-organized systems and be structurally different every time, and still have metrics like the inverse square distributions of their parts which are similar. That there might also be various different kinds of solution to a given objective is a separate issue to me. > You're saying that another system may be organized > differently, achieve the same objectives, and not exhibit the > same extrema. > > Is that right or did I misunderstand you? I'm not quite sure it addresses your question, but I'm was saying the process by which complex systems evolve does not follow an inverse square pattern or series of steps. The measure is generally only found in systems after they have been built by other means. > > The network science people seem to have a better way of > using it than > > the other mainstream science disciplines interested in the subject I > > think. They're looking at complex systems from the inside > out (though > > maybe not having quite realized that networks are artifacts of the > > complex systems they are embedded in). Their identification of the > > elaboration and refinement of network connections during network > > development as the origin of the inverse square metric and > > 'scale-free' distribution of internal connectedness of natural > > networks is very helpful. There should logically be some kind of > > connection with the thinking of people taking an outside in > approach > > to complexity, but I have not been able to figure out what it is. > > I don't quite buy this. But, my criticism of it takes us on > a tangent. I'll state my criticism anyway and if you choose > to pursue the tangent, then so be it. [grin] > > I don't believe there is a fundamental difference between > constructivism and formalism. I.e. one cannot study a system > from the inside out without also studying it from the outside > in, and vice versa. When one uses a phrase like "studying > complex systems from the inside out", the phrase merely > _emphasizes_ one part of the studying. Objectively, all > studies involve an iterative approach that cycles between > inside and outside studies. This seems to be true of > everything from riding a bicycle to cosmology. Well, it's not half well enough studied, but inside and outside perspectives of organization in systems are so very different it takes special care to keep them straight it seems to me. I'm not even sure if one can discuss a system as having an inside (network cell of relations) since I haven't heard the 'news' in the journals yet and it seems to require a radical exception to the traditional view of determinism. Isn't the traditional view that all causation comes from the outside still the most widespread? One of the differences between the two perspectives is the huge difference inside and outside views is in the information content of your observations. If your view of the world is based on an insider's perspective of some self-organized 'hive' of activity, say a religious or social movement, it may be extremely hard to make sense of an outsider's view of exactly the same thing. The insider's view is of all the internalized connections, and the outsider's view of essentially all the loose ends. Getting them to connect can be very difficult. > > As far as the limits of control, don't all complex systems have > > significantly independent design and behavior? It seems > to me that the > > first thing anything with independent design and behavior > requires is > > basic respect, otherwise you make large mistakes with it, > right? We so > > often forget that finding the easy ways for independent > things to get > > along is a great design strategy. Nature seems to like it > quite a lot > > for evolutionary survival too! > > It's not clear to me what you're saying, here. But, I don't > really believe in "design". Design is a cognitive fiction we > use to rationalize/justify our behavior. The causes of the > phenomena generated by a complex system are... occult, > occluded, at least to some extent. I think that's why we > call these systems "complex". And its for these reasons that > simulation is such a necessary and powerful tool in the study > of these systems. We can't readily find "laws" that compress > the description of the system. For less complex systems, we > can infer these laws. In studying natural systems it's apparent that lots of intricate 'design' develops without any 'design'. I was using first sense above, that complex systems may develop all kinds of organization and activity that were neither preconceived nor predetermined. Whether you can find useful 'laws' to describe complex systems I think is like other real scientific questions, more dependence on whether you ask the right questions. I was looking for years for some clear evidence that the economic systems all act as a single complex system, behaving as a whole. The fact that the embodied energy of economic value (btu/$GDP) is asymptotically approaching around 8000btu/$ in all the economies of the world seems to say it's all one system in a highly useful way. The self-organization of the economies gives us a conversion and equivalence between a physical measure and what humans value. I expect these things are lying all over the place, but we're just beginning to recognize them. > > Ultimately, however, even when we can (seem to) achieve some > descriptive compression, the causes of the behavior are still > occult. But we gain some confidence through temporal and > spatial extrapolation (we repeat experiments through time and > check to be sure the results are the same and we have > different people in different locations repeat the > experiments to see if the results are the same). Through > such indirect "validation", we come to trust that our > compressed description is _correct_ or true. But, > ultimately, the causes are still occult. There is always the > chance of a black swan. I think it's more productive, when you're well beaten, to accept that systems with complex internal network designs we tend not to even see are beyond our understanding. There's still good sense to making models of things, and developing ways of determining if the models behave like what it imitates. One of the interesting subjects that came up at the SASO conference is that no one in the information network control systems field seems to know how to do that for self-organizing and self-adapting software controls... except random experiment. That may lead to 'gaining some confidence', as you say, but it's not the same as the narrowly defined uncertainties of the deterministic controls of the past. > > So, "don't all complex systems have significantly independent > design and behavior"? For the above reasons, my answer is > _no_ because "design" is a figment of our imagination. A > better answer would be that the question is ill-formed and > unanswerable. Complex systems are not _designed_ at all. > They grow and evolve through the propagation of happenstance. Well, that's kind of abstract. It's a simpler issue when talking about real things. Any ecology or social group, etc., will have different networks emerge within them as they develop and so they will respond differently too. That's all I mean by independent design and behavior. When I speak of 'designing' complex systems, as I do for architectural and planning projects, it's more about setting up a system learning process. Discovering how to make links between previously disconnected parts of communities takes an effort at exploratory learning about the disconnected parts of your community. Once you then design ways to link them the end product is their own creative interactions which the planners would never think of. Instead of 'propagation of happenstance' I'd use 'development of opportunity'. The latter covers both truly random events and the exploratory path-finding processes also prominent in self-organization. Phil > > - -- > glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com > A random group of homeless people under a bridge would be far > more intellectually sound and principled than anything I've > encountered at the university so far. -- Ward Churchill > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org > > iD8DBQFG2wGFZeB+vOTnLkoRAq3eAKCAI+vbRLTFlFKeT7WV7k3QEeh6KwCfRLQ9 > phZzjO6yjThsCbm74urmILA= > =IWll > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
