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vii The goal of this book is to explain how various types of complexity emerge due to the interaction among constituents.
vii One of the characteristic features of simple systems is, that there is a single cause which implies a single effect. For large class of complex systems it is true that effects are fed back to modify causes... Furthermore they are open to material, energetic and information flow by interaction with their environment, still they are closed units. Another aspect of complexity is the question how collective phenomena emerge by some self-organized mechanisms.
viii Loops, specifically feedback loops were studied by cybernetics, an abandoned scientific discipline, which emphasized that effects may feed back to influence causes. Such kinds of systems, which are characterized by "circular causality" certainly could be qualified to be called as complex.
p.2 The human mind (and brain) is certainly an extremely complex structure. [Jean] Piaget [1896-1980] classified the child development to four classes, the last one around 11 years is characterized by abstract thinking. The transitions between the stages is driven by errors. The accumulated errors require the reorganization of the cognitive structure. Please note, that Piaget was concerned with development, so he was interested not in static, but dynamic structures. Also, Piaget assumed (and he was right), that knowledge is not only acquired from outside but constructed from inside.
p.3 The most important mathematical technique to represent the structural relationship among the elements of natural and social systems is graph theory. Graph theory offers a natural way to represent systems with individual nodes and connection between nodes.
p.7 Here are some characteristic properties of complex systems:
- Circular causality, feedback loops, logical paradoxes and strange loops
- Small change in the cause implies dramatic effects
- Emergence and unpredictability
p.40 The paper entitled "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology" by Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener, and Julian Bigelow gave the conceptual framework of goal-directed behavior both in technological and biological context... the paper emphasized that purposeful behavior can exist both in engineered and biological systems without assuming the Aristotelean "final cause". Purposeful behavior can be explained by present causes, but the causation acts in a circular manner.
[JLJ - In a complex world, you cannot move directly to your goals. You must instead substitute the execution of the well-designed scheme for the goal - for example, attending a college or trade school to learn the required skills to land a good job and start a useful career. The well-designed scheme can fail if others execute it better than you do.]
p.43 Cybernetic systems, such as organisms and social systems are studied by another cybernetic system, namely by the observer. Von Foerster was a radical constructivist. According to this view, knowledge about the external world is obtained by preparing models on it. The observer constructs a model of the observed system, therefore their interactions should be understood "by cybernetics of cybernetics", or "second-order" cybernetics.
p.44 [Ross Ashby] "At this point we must be clear about how a 'system' is to be defined... What is necessary is that we should pick out and study the facts that are relevant to some main interest that is already given. The system now means not a thing, but a list of variables."
p.44 As Dupuy explains [137], [JLJ - Dupuy, J. The Mechanization of Mind, Princeton University Press, 2000], cybernetics was built on the beliefs that
"1. Thinking is a form of computation. The computation involved is not the mental operation of a human being who manipulates symbols in applying rules, such as those of addition or multiplication; instead it is what a particular class of machines do - machines technically referred to as 'algorithms'. By virtue of this, thinking comes within the domain of the mechanical..."
p.59 Zarathustra from ancient Persia may have initiated the appearance of the linear time concept in the Western thinking.
[JLJ - Thus spoke Zarathustra...]
p.109 Dynamical systems theory became a predominant paradigm, and materialize the philosophical concept of causality by mathematical tools. This concept tells that cause imply effects, consequently the present state determines the future. If the fixed rule acting on the actual state is deterministic, there is only "one" future. In case of probabilistic rules, different futures could be predicted with certain probabilities.
p.176 A heuristic search is an inductive strategy to find solutions to problems. Heuristic search hypothesis. The solutions to problems are represented as symbol structures. A physical symbol system exercises its intelligence in problem solving by searching - that is, by generating and progressively modifying symbol structures until it produces a solution structure...
[JLJ - Not in all cases, in my opinion, "searching" is what appears to be happening, provided that we are actually looking for something specific, such as a "win" against best play in tic-tac-toe. What might instead be happening is a practical exploration of a solution space, with ultimately a "stance" being selected/adopted (against the unknown future) which attempts to achieve sustainable development in a competitive environment. In this case, we only see and "evaluate" as end points "typical positions", knowing that complexity will impact actual play, which will then more than likely take a different course.]
p.195 [William] Shockley explained that, to publish a paper, one must (i) have the ability to select an appropriate problem for investigation, (ii) have competence to work on it, (iii) be capable of recognizing a worthwhile result, (iv) be able to choose an appropriate stopping point in the research and start to prepare the manuscript, (v) have the ability to present the results and conclusions adequately, (vi) be able to profit from the criticism of those who share an interest in the work, (vii) have the determination to complete and submit a manuscript for publication, and (viii) respond positively to referees' criticism...
[JLJ - No, you just need to launch your own web page, like I have done.]
p.295 Why do we need cognition ultimately? We need it to guide actions... an organism is not a passive receiver but actively seeks information relevant to its actions... Actions are determined by the goals... Perception does not give information on the present happening only, but tells also what is going to happen soon. Cognition has a role in extending the time-frame of prediction. Perception and action are inter-dependent. Actions need perceptions to guide them but actions also participate in the process of perception.
p.295 The idea that people rely on mental models can be traced back to Kenneth Craik's suggestion in 1943 that the mind constructs "small-scale models" of reality that it uses to anticipate events. Mental models can be constructed from perception, imagination, or the comprehension of discourse.
[JLJ - IMHO, the purpose of the mind is to reduce reality to the equivalent of building blocks, that can be experimentally moved around and recombined, in an intelligent attempt at deciding what to do next. If you have a scheme for going on, you just have to follow the scheme, on a day-to-day basis. The "puzzle" that reality presents to us ought to draw from within us (creatively constructed, or perhaps even taken from successful others) a scheme of some sort, which lets us swim with the sharks of the moment, in order to "go on". Wherever we are at present, our previous self thought that we might benefit from being there, in some way, successfully improvising to meet the problems that we might run into. The fallacy of the mental model idea is sort of like trying to make a model of the stock market, in order to win at investment. Guess what: the stock market is extremely hard to figure out how to crack. Someone who knows your mental model can try to fool or trick you, and you might end up in a bad situation. What you need is a scheme for going on, which involves (in part) interpreting richly detailed cues in the environment.]
p.297 Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) writes [225]: "Understanding always implies a preunderstanding which is in turn prefigured, by the determinate tradition in which the interpreter lives and that shapes his prejudices."
p.306 Economy is a dynamic process. It is the emergent result of collective interaction of very different players (well, agents), from individual investors, to firms, consumers, banks, and ABM [Agent Based Modeling] seems to be a very good method to simulate, how local interactions among players may lead to macroscopic behavioral patterns.
p.338 History (Even Financial History) Repeats Itself
In all six cases [of sharp drops in the stock market over the last 100 years] a very sharp (often, but not always super-exponential...) growth is followed by an abrupt fall. The early stage of the rise is economically justified, and it is related to the appearance of new products, generally related to technological changes. The initial rise is amplified, (more accurately) over-amplified by increased investment due to expectations for rapid and big profit. Self-organized cooperativity appears when many people invest synchronously. However, the velocity of the price increase due to a positive feedback mechanism cannot be sustained. The process becomes unstable. In an unstable situation small, local perturbations might have dramatic consequences, and say, a relatively small increase of the interest rate might initiate a crash."
[JLJ - This was written prior to the 2008 stock and financial market crash.]
p.357 Circular and network causality. As opposed to simple systems, where causes and effects... can be separated, a system is certainly complex, if an effect feeds back into its cause.
p.358 Emergence. Complex systems... may show collective phenomena, which cannot be predicted from the behavior of the constituents.
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