In some ways it seems that the use of supercomputers to "predict" the weather is an example of looking at a complex system from the inside.
12. Weather Service Getting Big New Computer The National Weather Service is beginning to use a new computer that when fully deployed will be faster than any computer in the world today. The first phase of the new system, already in service, is being announced at ceremonies Friday. It's a cluster of 44 IBM servers with a peak speed of 7.3 trillion calculations per second. By 2009 the system will be expanded to reach a potential speed of 100 trillion calculations per second, IBM said. The added power is expected to help forecasters who run complex programs that take measurements of weather conditions around the world and project them forward in small increments in an effort to determine what the weather will be like in hours and days. The results of the various outlooks form the basis for television and newspaper forecasts. They also are used in aviation, agriculture, disaster response and many other areas. Improvements from the new computer power are expected to include better hurricane forecasts, with that storm season just getting under way. ( Source: http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WEATHER_SUPERCOMPUTER?SITE=NYROM&; SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT ) -----Original Message----- From: pete [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 5, 2003 11:04 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gaia Hypothesis... On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Thanks, Pete, I believe I understand what you are saying, but doesn't >Gaia imply some form of direction and purposefulness? An item on the >James Lovelock website puts the matter this way: >"James Lovelock argues that such things as the level of oxygen, the >formation of clouds, and the saltiness of the oceans may be controlled by >interacting physical, chemical and biological processes. He believes that >"the self-regulation of climate and chemical composition is a process >that emerges from the rightly coupled evolution of rocks, air and the >ocean - in addition to that of organisms. Such interlocking >self-regulation, while rarely optimal - consider the cold and hot places >of the earth, the wet and the dry - nevertheless keeps the Earth a place >fit for life." The New York Times Book Review has called his arguments in >favor of Gaia "plausible and above all illuminating." >http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/ > >Note the use of the phrase "rightly coupled evolution" in the foregoing. >The concept as a whole seems to come pretty close to the intelligent >design movement in current Christianity, the major difference being, I >suppose, that man is the center in the ID movement, but may be >unnecessary in Gaia. Well, this can get pretty deep, but let me plunge ahead and see what I can do. The key word in that quote is "emerges". Emergent behaviour is a favourite of the reductionists, as they tout it as the "source" of consciousness in their materialist vision. But regardless of their misunderstandings, the notion of emergent behaviour resembling intelligent action is a characteristic of backfed systems in general. The "right coupling" of inanimate objects is serendipitous, but not unusual in nature. The instances are generally not extensive in scope, or resilient, but operate over a limited range. A simple example is moist air, which has a backfed tendency to maintain its temperature, via the heat of vapourization of water: as temperature drops, some water condenses, releasing heat which goes into the air sustaining its temperature. If the temperature rises, some water droplets evapourate, consuming heat in the process, and thus holding the temperature down. When life is added to the mix, the extent and flexibility of the systems can be greatly extended. A nice thought experiment to illustrate this is the "Daisyworld" story used to explain Gaia. Daisyworld is an imaginary planet covered in a carpet of daisy plants. It maintains its temperature, because if it starts getting warmer, the "daisies" start proliferating white flowers, which reflect sunlight and lower the energy absorbed by the ground, thus dropping the temperature. If it starts getting colder, the daisies decrease their flower production, and their dark leaves absorb sunlight and thus energy, which is reradiated as heat, raising the temperature. The point for our purposes is how this would have come to be. If the behaviour of the daisies were the opposite of that described, cooling trends would be enhanced, as would warming trends. The result of this is that the temperature would swing outside the survival range of the daisies, and thus they would be killed off in large numbers. This provides a natural selection mechanism which ensures that over time, the "rightly-coupled" behaviour will be favoured, and thus the daisyworld comes to be. There is nothing about intelligent design here, just a very simple feedback path, combined with the great flexibility of living organisms, which can adjust their nature to optimize a backfed system, where inanimate substances cannot. The Gaia concept postulates that all sorts of variables relevant for the maintenance of living systems have developed dependencies on living organisms in this manner. The result is the world as an entity which is complex in the same way any organism molded by natural selection is complex. There, I think that covers it without getting lost in the philosophical issues of emergent behaviour. -Pete >Ed Weick ----- Original Message ----- From: "pete" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 11:28 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gaia Hypothesis... > > On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >But what if the system is not interacting and closed looped? What if > >each species (or family) looks after itself and promotes itself without > >enhancing or embellishing the others, but really crowding them out and > >getting rid of them to make room for itself? Gaia may not be > >primordially cooperative, but primordially inherently viciously > >competitive. > > These things are not mutually exclusive: the system as a whole > is inescapably closed looped, because of the finite size of > the ecology, which is the "sink" for all the actions of the > biota on the earth, but also their "source", so the ecology > is circumscribed like a yeast colony in sugar syrup whose > population is self limiting because the alcohol it excretes > pervades its environment and is toxic above a threshhold > concentration. > > My cerebral, intelligent dinosaur would never have thought > >that it (he or she) would ever be eclipsed, but there wase a little > >proto-mammal lurking near by, avoiding being eaten. Then along came a > >rock from outer space, landing in the Gulf of Mexico. Random? > >Absolutely. > > The Gaia system is a vastly complex netork of interacting feedback > paths, which have evolved to interact within a range of values > for lots of critical variables. The equilibria for the system are > metastable, that is, there are lots of different potential plateaux > of stability within the overall range, and the system is subject > to being knocked from any one such state to another by external > shock or mutation driven internal alteration of constituents of > the biota. The point of the theory is that the long development > time of the global-level selection processes for all the multiple > feedback paths make it likely that the overall system can recover > to one of its equilibria within its comfort zone from any such > perturbation. As far as the Gaia system as a whole is concerned, > mammals or dinosaurs, either work as well as the other their > niche in the system. The system as a whole is only concerned with > keeping its environment within the habitable range for earth brand > (DNA, amino acid, cellular)life in general, not life of any particular > variety of manifestation thereof - in fact, viewed in the time > scale where its operation is most apparent, all individual species > are churned as part of the process. > > Note, by the way, I'm only trying to express the theory as I > understand it. I don't know whether I buy it completely - I can > see how some individual instances of feedback paths can work, but > I don't know that that justifies developing the meta-level of an > overarching theory. That is, I don't know if that offers more > explanatory power than simply taking each case individually > and working out their interactions. It would seem the metatheory > implies a more extensive set of conclusions than you get from > treating its components as autonomous, but I don't know if they've > ever been articulated, let alone demonstrated. > > -Pete Vincent > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "pete" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 6:20 PM > Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gaia Hypothesis... > > > > > > On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > >> Robert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >> > > >>> Don't know about Gaia being 'new-agey.' I was thinking more in terms > > >>> of James Lovelock's notion that 'earth, in all its interactions and > > >>> transformations, added up to a single giant living system.' > > >> > > >> arthur > > >> > > >> I would make one change. An additional word. Random. > > > > > >I agree with Arthur. I read the Gaia stuff years ago and felt that the > > >notion that the Earth and all it's living systems were somehow > > >directional or purposeful is nonsense. The beauty of Gaia is that it is > > >essentially chaotic and you never know where it is going next. Picture a > > >very clever and very cerebral dinosaur. Could it have contemplated a > > >world without it but with us? > > > > Not directional or purposeful, in the sense of consciously goal > > oriented, simply persistent and self-correcting, by negative > > feedback, as a closed loop system in the systems engineering sense. > > A living system is a special case of a CL system, where the > > feedback is developed by the actions of organisms, which > > behave actively to contribute to th feedback mechanisms, > > allowing for much more and more rapid opportunities for > > feedback subsystems to arise than in passive, inanimate > > natural environments, where such systems can arise, but are > > rare and of limited range and flexibility. Once a living > > system is established, the requirements of the living components > > tend to enhance and embellish the feedback aspects through > > natural selection operating on a macrosopic scale on populations. > > > > You have to distinguish the "hardnosed" core Gaia Hypothesis from > > the froth whipped up around it by the soft-of-thinking. > > > > -Pete Vincent > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Futurework mailing list > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
