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 <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.05433.pdf
<https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.05433.pdf>
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