{"id":581,"date":"2005-01-16T16:28:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-16T16:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2005\/01\/16\/581\/"},"modified":"2005-01-16T16:28:00","modified_gmt":"2005-01-16T16:28:00","slug":"581","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=581","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

THE BAD BOYS OF COMPLEXITY AND EMERGENCE: I\u2019ve taken some interest in the scientific discussion regarding complexity<\/span> and emergence<\/span> over the past few years. It\u2019s interesting, because it might be one of those \u201cparadigm shifts\u201d that philosopher Thomas Kuhn speaks of. It could be one of those revolutions of thought, like what Newton did to classical thinking in the 16th Century, and what Einstein did to Newtonian physics in the early 20th Century. If you\u2019re not familiar with complexity and emergence, there are plenty of books about it written at the layman\u2019s level (the only level that I can understand it). If you don\u2019t want to shell out for the books, you can still find various web sites that give you a \u201cComplexity 101\u201d summary (hmmm, Complexity 101, sort of an oxymoron). Just do a search on . . . complexity and emergence.<\/p>\n

In a nutshell, the “complexity and emergence” movement started out with computer simulations of reality. These computer runs showed that a relatively simple set of calculation rules carried out by large number of interacting agents (a.k.a. \u201ccellular autonoma<\/span>\u201d) can produce very complex results that sometimes look amazingly like real life. For example, with some fairly simple programming, most any high school geek can easily simulate a flight of geese or the growth of a tree or a traffic jam right there on the screen.<\/p>\n

This gave scientists new insights about how to do things; instead of designing machines and systems that take their commands from a centralized brain that is supposed to have all the answers (and goes tilt when it actually doesn\u2019t), we can instead design things that are broken up into simple and decentralized components. If designed right, those components will inter-act in a way that unintentionally gets the job done. Imagine trying to run a symphony orchestra without a conductor. If every musician had only a simple piece to play and only had to coordinate with the three or four musicians nearest to him or her, well . . . OK, maybe this wouldn\u2019t work for an orchestra. But as to mining minerals under the sea, or cleaning up a major oil spill, it could well be the better mousetrap. (If you saw the robot guy in the movie Fast, Cheap and Out of Control<\/span>, you know what I mean).<\/p>\n

Most of the scientists and mathematicians in the complexity field have been fairly modest and reasonable about just what their \u201cthought revolution\u201d can or can\u2019t do. Complexity may well give us some profound insights as to how life emerged in the universe, but it can\u2019t explain where the Big Bang came from, nor can it untie the knots that quantum theory and gravitational physics get themselves into. Or can it? There are a couple of guys who are making noises in that direction. Their names are Edward Fredkin<\/span> and Stephen Wolfram<\/span>. They both seem to think that complexity and digital analysis is the best way to look at life, the universe and everything. They want to throw out empirical science as we know it, and understand everything thru \u201cobject-oriented\u201d<\/span> computer simulations.<\/p>\n

Well, obviously the mainstream scientists don\u2019t think this is such a good idea. And to be honest, I don\u2019t think we\u2019re ready for it either. It\u2019s awfully interesting to come up with computer programs that do things on the screen which look like real life. But it\u2019s a whole \u2018nuther thing to conclude that real life operates the way that you\u2019ve programmed your computer. Can we really feel comfortable deciding what to do about AIDS or cancer or war based on a computer simulation that appears to mimic these things? What if there are several possible ways<\/span> to simulate a complex real-life phenomenon on a computer; how would we know that we\u2019ve got the right one, and that it accurately predicts how that phenomenon will respond to changes?<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Fredkin and Wolfram can\u2019t be swept away and forgotten. They\u2019re awfully smart cookies, and they got rich<\/span> using their smarts. You\u2019ve got to respect that. Maybe in a hundred years or two, this is the way that the world is going to think. For now, I\u2019ll stick with the continuous and fuzzy view of reality that I was born with (which gets fuzzier and fuzzier every year as my eyes get worse). But I\u2019ll be keeping a myopic eye on the complexity thing, and I\u2019ll also keep the names Fredkin and Wolfram in the back of my mind. I\u2019d recommend you doing the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE BAD BOYS OF COMPLEXITY AND EMERGENCE: I\u2019ve taken some interest in the scientific discussion regarding complexity and emergence over the past few years. It\u2019s interesting, because it might be one of those \u201cparadigm shifts\u201d that philosopher Thomas Kuhn speaks of. It could be one of those revolutions of thought, like what Newton did to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}