Hello Günther, I think: 1) There are real things that are ***indescribable entirely***. For example, thoughts and emotions of a thirteen years old girl before her first date (I mean completely uncontrollable) :-) 2) Writing them down (in English) would be considered as a ***formal description*** of the system (Dostoevsky, Joyce, Proust). It's ***adequate*** if we: read a book more then once, quote from it, think about it much later, look for new books of the author, formulate our own emotions in the book's terms, etc. Is such a system liner / non-linear? How about poetry of Brodsky, Tsvetaeva, Rilke ( not all :-)? How about systems "defined" in pictures of French Impressionists and Dali and in movies like Matrix Trilogy? Musical compositions? Take Dostoevsky. Is it complex? Yes, of course - they still publish new insights and reward them! 3) Large distributed systems like all publications about love in English. How about the same publications in the Internet with all references and cross-references?... Examples like these are beyond the threshold (L) in Chaitin's incompleteness theorem (no rules without exceptions for a rich system). 4) I assume that you mean "centralized computability" based on computational models constructed by a person or a small connected group. It wouldn't be too complex to cope with real complexity (Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety). More, there is only one universal thing: it is reality itself. I don't see how computability is equal to it! (Newton probably thought about analytics as universal formalism.)
Your thoughts? Warm wishes, Mikhail ----- Original Message ----- From: "Günther Greindl" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 5:33 AM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] When is something complex Hi Mikhail, > That article in Wiki about Kolmogorov complexity > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity answers all these questions > perfectly - better than me :-( ? I am perfectly aware of Kolmogorov Complexity - but it does not answer the questions posed below, unfortunately. And I would be specifically interested in _your_ answers/ thoughts :-) > Mikhail Gorelkin wrote: >> Just two thoughts: 1) it seems that complexity is a more fundamental >> category than linearity / non-linearity, > >which are parts of a sophisticated ***formal*** system; K-Complexity is also a formal system. I would like to uphold my questions from before: How would you imagine a complex system which is not non-linear? I would say that linear = proportianal relationships; non-linear -> arbitrary functional relationships. Not even non-linear would then imply _no_ relationships - so no complex system. > 2) I assume there are types of complexity (and, therefore, many - I mean > really many - types) >> that cannot be expressed in any formal system (beyond linearity / >> non-linearity). You mean systems that can't even be modeled computationally? I would not equate non-linear systems with those one can model with diff. eq. in closed form. Addendum: the question really is if properties of formal systems (uncomputability etc) apply to real world complex systems - maybe they are all computable (albeit intractable)? >> Something like Gödel's theorem. ? How that? Best, Günther -- Günther Greindl Department of Philosophy of Science University of Vienna [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/ Blog: http://dao.complexitystudies.org/ Site: http://www.complexitystudies.org ============================================================ 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
============================================================ 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
