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Emergence, Week 6
Welcome to the on-line forum associated with the Biology 361 = Computer Science 361 at Bryn Mawr College. Its a way to keep conversations going between course meetings, and to do so in a way that makes our conversations available to other who may in turn have interesting thoughts to contribute to them. Leave whatever thoughts in progress you think might be useful to others, see what other people are thinking, and add thoughts that that in turn generates in you.
As always, you can leave whatever thoughts occurred to you this week. But if you need something to get you started ...
Reactons to Ways of Making Sense of the World ? To the universe as a non-deterministic system? To changing ways of modeling/doing research along those lines?
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Code from Today's Class
globals[ visited ]
to setup
ca
crt 1
end
to go
ask turtles [ set pcolor yellow
rt random 360
fd 1]
update
tick
end
to update
set visited count patches with [pcolor = yellow]
plotxy ticks (visited / ((2 * max-pxcor + 1) * (2 * max-pycor + 1 )) * 100)
end
Perception
I like the non-deterministic
From our last class, I
From our last class, I found it very interesting to talk about the fact that there is a lot of incomputable stuff out there and that even though we are deeply impressed with deterministic systems, they can only do so much.
As far as making sense of the world, I think that the question of the relationship between disorganization and pattern is very important and one that will lead us to more questions than actual answers. Thinking about disorganization is very important to the discussion of emergence because it can help us to better understand and explain emerging elements as well as influence our thoughts on the implications of complexity.
We agree that we live in a world that presents patterns of both organized and disorganized elements. The more that we talk about disorganization, the more that we are realizing that it is an important element and not necessarily a secondary product.
The "Ways of Making Sense of the World" exhibit provides us with three different approaches to making sense of the world which include:
In each approach there is a different goal, perception of time, and a status of organization. All of these approaches provide us with a different inquiry, but I'm wondering what other approaches have been proposed. I agree that the idea here is not to choose the "best" approach, but instead to accept them all as possibilities and to find a value in the relationship between them. As the exhibit mentions, "But perhaps inquiry isn't in fact about finding answers but instead about finding questions", and I agree. Ultimately, this shows that one approach is simply insufficient in explaining the concept of disorganization.
Something that I found to be really interesting from the "Ways of Making Sense of the World" exhibit was the fact that it mentions that the "human brain has evolved to find patterns and so one's judgment that something is disorganized because it has not pattern is not a very reliable one", because it brings up a very important point about the importance of human judgment in determining and explaining what is disorganized. Everyone is going to have a different view on what shows disorganization and so I think that this adds another level of complexity to the discussion of disorganization.
Ways of not necessarily making much sense at all
thoughts on Ways of Making Sense of the World
After reading “Ways of Making Sense of the World” what I got from the article was that the third approach “non-deterministic emergence” has certain advantages as a paradigm because it offers a useful outlook on disorganization/randomness which the first approach “primal patterns” and second approach “deterministic emergence” do not. By defining randomness as noise which obscures underlying patterns or viewing it merely as a surprising outcome of deterministic processes, I think we are limiting the importance randomness has in the way we view the world. Non-deterministic emergence, which takes into account the idea that “randomness is inherent” rather than “a byproduct of a deterministic system,” is significant because it implies that randomness is an important starting element. Since randomness allows for the generation of more possibilities it seems to me that it would offer greater scope in exploration as the article suggests. This view of “randomness yielding possibilities/ patterns” is not so surprising at least in terms of evolution since random mutations that arise in a population generate change and allow for evolution to occur. If as the article states “randomness can produce any kind of order one might be interested in” what determines what order/patterns are produced? If there are an infinite number of possibilities why do we see the patterns we see in our world? Is there a tendency toward stable forms / patterns?
Ways of Making Sense of the World
I was looking at the model of cellular automaton generated in a nine element array that was posted in the article. /exchange/ca/applet1 I was comparing it to the cellular automata model in Netlogo with a 128 by 64 window. I am sure we all knew that the window size makes a big difference on how the patterns look, but I only realized how vast that difference is after I did this comparison. You should all try it too! Take a look at rule 115 for instance.
Other than that, what I probably found most interesting in the reading “Ways of Making Sense of the World” is the comparison and/or relation made between deterministic systems and randomness. Deterministic models generates statistically random patterns, and at the same time, they are limited in their generative capability. Non-deterministic models have randomness inherent. At the same time, there is the presumption that randomness is a by-product of deterministic system.
“Deterministic systems, as exemplified by Wolfram's analysis of cellular automata, have enormous generative power, including the ability to generate statistically random patterns. And there is clearly explanatory power in presuming deterministic systems as a foundation for inquiry. At the same time, deterministic systems are clearly limited in their generative capabilities (see also Chaitin). Non-deterministic emergence, in which randomness is inherent in the universe, would yield phenomena difficult to make sense of using forms of inquiry that start from a presumption that randomness is itself a by-product of deterministic emergence. Accepting genuine randomness as a significant causal element in its own right may in this case be a more effective perspective for inquiry.” (Ways of Making Sense of the World: Non-deterministic emergence).
Randomness and Patterns
This week, I have been thinking a lot about randomness and the role of disorder in emergence and the universe. The “Ways of Making Sense of the World” exhibit asks whether it is randomness that yields pattern rather than randomness being something that obscures patterns. The idea of randomness yielding patterns is exemplified by the random motion of atoms that can give rise to recognizable and predictable patterns in the form of molecules or reactions. The idea of randomness obscuring patterns is what we see in many of the Cellular Automata rules, especially rule 30, which has some areas that create patterns and others that seem random. Arguments can be made for both ideas. Either way, I am curious as to why it is, if disorder is so linked to patterns, it is the natural tendency of systems to move from a highly ordered to a less highly ordered state. I also wonder whether things that we interpret as random are just complex patterns we can’t recognize. Is it really accurate to say that a system is deterministic, if by saying it is deterministic we mean it behaves the exact same way every time, when it is impossible to know the outcomes of infinite runs of the system. Is it more accurate to say that something is not behaving non-deterministic? This is similar to the halting problem we discussed briefly. We can say that something comes to an end if we observe it doing so, but we can’t safely assume something won’t stop just because it hasn’t yet. Should we assume that something is deterministic until it is proven non-deterministic, or vice versa, just like we’re supposed to assume someone is innocent until proven guilty?