Steve writes:
< She starts out with simple Materialist/Vitalist contrasts but
alludes (nearly) to Marcus latest snark: /"//Simulate from first
principles: https://www.vasp.at/ >/
What’s odd is this idea there is something about nature that can’t
be described in a repeatable way, such that a digital computer
could simulate it, in principle. Paradoxically, to defend that
idea, one would have to describe an experiment that could
illustrate counter examples -- concepts that could not be said.
It is obfuscation by construction.
Absolutely "in principle"...
and wonderfully "concepts that could not be said" returns us to the
domain of "effing the ineffable"...
What I'm fascinated with in the case of this work (assembly theory in
general?) is the (potential/aspirational/proposed) qualitative
difference between things which are possible vs things which are
probable and perhaps a whole pantheon of subclassifications of types or
orders of (contingent) probability (might be something like Buddhist
"conditioned phenomena" and "dependent origination).
I think I take her point to be that there are things expressible in
nature (specifically "life" in this case) which have not been and will
not be described in a repeatable way until they are... and that there
are informational (fully deterministic) processes which don't exist
until they do. To wit: Molecular formation and then chemical reactions
which couldn't exist until they could (physical regimes below plasma)
and pre-biotic organic chemistry dressing the stage for proto-biological
processes to become A) possible and B) likely and C)
in-some-sense-inevitable. The autocatalysis and autopoesis of
self-organizing systems (at all levels of abstraction and complexity)
being salient I think.
I'd not claim that the most complicated (and complex) systems in
existence can't be simulated en-silico (more aptly en-digitalia?) but
rather that as each new phase of organization of matter and energy that
emerges as the universe unfolds is "non-prestateable"... only that it
is unlikely (different than entirely impossible) that the complexity
(and therefore mean-time-to-discovery/expression/autocatalysis).
While evolutionary processes of life seem to have
achieved/discovered/emerged "eyes" (sight organs) several (11?) times,
so much (all) of life (and other complex adaptive systems) occurs at the
tip of the current scaffolding in place.
This topic explodes (flying off in all directions at once as I am wont
to do) out into the questions implied in daveW's work on evolution V
engineering (in Business Systems). My understandiing of assembly theory
is at best nascent/formative/inchoate so I won't try to push it any
further here. I suspect that there are several here who have a better
grasp on assembly theory and perhaps their own nascent thoughts about
these questions (probability V possibility) and information-theoretic
measures of emergent complexity than I do... perhaps I am just "tossing
a word salad" here (to mix metaphors win a way Doug Roberts would be proud)?
ericS, jonZ, REC, SG, yourself and gepr all come to mind (I know there
are more I'm not naming) as folks who have been raising and fighting
dogs in very salient domains for their whole career. Me, I mostly just
bet on them.
- Steve
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