Looking for: complex systems that defy model reduction.
The behavior of a complex system is hard to predict from its parts alone because it follows from how the parts interact.
Model reduction is a way to capture the behavior of a complex system more simply (eg to capture the magnetism of 1g of Fe2O3, you don't have to model all 1022 molecules and their interactions). My sense is that model reduction works best when you have many repeated copies.
I'm looking for some good (ideally concrete) examples of complex systems that defy model reduction. I anticipate that they will be made of heterogeneous parts.
I sometimes explain to people why the so-called "Cynefin model" is utter crap. I usually start by giving them 1 very simple fact that is false about Cynefin. False as in blatantly wrong. Then something strange happens: People who "use" that model do not reflect, do not get thoughtful, they do not even argue!
Instead, they start talking about how they use that instrument and that it is "still useful". That it "makes people think".
See the irony?
"If you're unlucky and you just tried to pretend complexity could be avoided altogether, it has no place to go in this world. But it still doesn't stop existing."
"Much of the attention of methodologists has focused on how to recognize and control for unwanted factors that can affect outcomes of interest. But psychology is also important: it tells us that own human biases can be just as important in leading us astray"
My new piece for @thetransmitter. Why is treating brain dysfunction so ENORMOUSLY challenging?
Because it amounts to controlling a complex system.
Drawing from the history of weather research, I pose the question: Can it even be done? And 14 experts in complex systems chime in. Would love to hear your thoughts as well!
That phrase is just so great. It's easy to see how it's counterpart slipped through the cracks. "Judicious model robustification" - who can claim not to aspire to that as well?
To all modelers out there, may your model be judiciously robustified!
"That impulse to scour away the messiness that makes life resilient is what many conservation biologists call the “pathology of command and control.” Today, the same drive to centralize, control and extract has driven the internet to the same fate as the ravaged forests."
We Need To Rewild The Internet
By MARIA FARRELL AND ROBIN BERJON
One more from the heap of raw ideas and unfinished projects: This one from almost precisely 2 years ago, going under the working title "Computational Lace", but really a kind of fractal process based on an initial 2D SDF, creating a surprising amount of complexity from even the simplest seed shapes...
This is again one of these projects requiring a full size view to appreciate the fine structures emerging...
Last week, I presented the work I did with prof. Kuldeep Meel and prof. Arunabha Sen at IJCAI 2023.
We showed the benefits of reducing a problem to a computationally harder problem (yes, you read that right!), by demonstrating how it allows us to solve much larger problem instances.
It was so much fun to finally share this work with so many fantastic researchers at IJCAI! Thank you to all organisers for making this conference possible. I'm also super grateful to the reviewers who gave us great feedback!
The gist here is to model a genetic network as a dynamical system with two attractor states (in this case, it's leukemia and the states are apoptosis on-versus-off).
I'm looking for leads to papers that apply this type of approach to model genetic networks (not neural circuits) that have something a bit more to do with the brain; ideally not cancer.
(This is not my field). Huntington's? Fragile X? Anything neuron related?
Grazie alle prefazioni di Paolo Aversa e Marco Fainello e per le interviste e i consigli di praticanti illustri: Sunil Mundra, Daniel Mezick, Sonja Blignaut, Chris Matts, John Coleman, Valerie McLean, Tiani Jones, e Carol Mase.
Stigmergy is a form of self-organization. It produces complex, seemingly intelligent structures, without need for any planning, control, or even direct communication between the agents. As such it supports efficient collaboration between extremely simple agents, who may lack memory or individual awareness of each other.
Describes how the characteristic shapes of the mounds of different species emerge. "During mound construction, environmental factors such as heat flow and gas exchange affect the building behavior of termites, and the resulting change in mound geometry in turn modifies the response of the internal mound environment to external thermal oscillations."
If you are curious about the novel results published in Science and Nature by the collaboration btw Meta and US academics, you might want to read #ComplexityThoughts
I try to build some background for non-experts of #ComputationalSocialScience and summarize the main findings.
Finally, I dig into the ongoing debate, covering existing documents and my chats with Sandra González-Bailón, Sander van der Linden, Pierluigi Sacco and others
This debate might be of high interest for self-organized decentralized platforms, such as #Mastodon and the #Fediverse in general
A network that shaped our present: ~400,000 km of roads connecting thousands of cities & villages.
An emblematic physical manifestation of complex adaptive systems, allowing for goods, people and cultures to flow through continents and flourish along millennia.
Following up a previous post about the topic, here there is the second (and maybe the last one) essay. What is the technological singularity and is this a real issue? Again, a perspective from #complexity#science, with a travel through #cybernetics, slime molds and black-hole computers.
I think there are tons of people who would love a regular car, an EV or Hybrid, without all that other electronic junk. Purposefully making transitioning to cleaner options too expensive is a stupid policy.
Linear Memory (WIP), variations on a theme... exploring the terrain. Impressed by the resulting complexity, considering the simplicity of the system/setup...
Complexity welcomes Elige! (twitter.com)