When we talk of complex systems we normally mean systems or interacting components that have an impact and relationship between each other – and generally exhibit non-linear, unpredictable, sometimes volatile, ever-changing and emergent behaviour.
But thats the textbook – what are your views?
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To me, a better way to view complexity is describing what we see in the real world, the physical subjects that are what scientists try to imitate with their models. In nature and in the economy complexity is quite often observed as a property of the unexplainable organization of systems of nature that work by themselves. Continue reading What does complexity mean for you?→
re: Philosophical Anthropology, Ethics and Political Philosophy in an Age of Impending Catastrophe by Arran Gare, abstract & links
Arran,
Sometimes it’s a struggle to read all the way through philosophy papers… but really enjoyed this one. I liked it both because its subject is quite close to my interests (what’s missing from or conception of nature) and because you describe the whole sweep of modern philosophy on the issue so clearly and comfortably. Thanks Continue reading Arran Gare’s sweeping view: modern philosophy losing its way→
All Things Considered today gave the usual calm treatment the remarkably incongruous claim by news anchor Glen Beck to the mantle of Dr. Martin Luther King this weekend. An minister who had attended the “ecumenical” political gathering pointed to how the number of children born without married parents had gone up dramatically since the 1960’s, as indicating the nation taking a “wrong turn” then, and what a new religious revolution was needed to heal.
How in trying to “save the environment” most people choose symbolic energy savings, instead of responding to what “the experts” point to as having real effects, is the theme of the NY times blog “Dot Earth” post Misperceived Paths to Energy Savings.
It’s sadly also “the experts” themselves who are the very worst offenders, in truth, constantly recommending energy savings for their business value, but by making energy use more profitable also stimulate the economy to use more. I occasionally try to get Andy Revkin, the author of the blog, to question his own assumptions… Continue reading Misperceived Paths to Energy Savings→
…is that after completing a really wonderful education combining physics and environmental design I did some independent research while living in Denver, and discovered a rather effective new method of physical science research. Continue reading What happened to wreck my life…→
The whole story of growth and money. The players in a simple resource using natural trade economy.
As in a four person market economy, shown with two resource providing and two resource consuming trades, people create wealth by exchanging complementary goods in exchange for money. Growth comes as each learns how to do things better and the resources hold out. For price stability the banker prints money to keep up with growth.
The banker also provides safe keeping for the money saved by people with more than they presently need, and gives it out in exchange for a promise of money growth in return.
At the limits of the earth that tells people to make money taking big risks to avoid limits, when that’s more of what’s left with high returns, so to avoid being responsible for growing risks, people with savings should just spend their returns instead of expecting them to multiply. It’s the natural thing to do to make peace with limits.
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One of the difficulties with complex theoretical models is that they all need to assume the parts are following rules.
How economies work, of course, is with ”animate learning-bots” (that’s “us”), all exploring the world and discovering new relationships all the time. That’s why I tend to take the limiting conditions nature displays as a guide, based on her own synthesis of the whole process (like the switch from multiplying to diminishing returns on the success of the search for stuff). Continue reading “The Catch”, why you read nature’s models→
The term you use is “econophysics” but the graph in “A Richter Scale for Markets” in the NY Times seems to display much more than you mention. It shows the swelling and decaying disturbances in the economy, where theoretically they are not supposed to be. I use a physics based data mining tool to expose emerging systems of that kind. One example I found shows market pricing mechanisms dramatically “fishtailing” an going out of control, for example. It might be useful to you. Continue reading Market earth quakes, a sign of emergent chaos→
A friend in an environmental discussion group proposed his favorite list of hopeful, but quite unproven technology solutions for the energy crisis, making the usual false assumption that the problem is a lack of energy resources. That causes the further error of not considering what consequences the solution would have… if it worked.
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All,
There’s a rather interesting “Catch 22” in trusting hopeful but unproven technological fixes. They raise a promise you can’t check out the consequences of. The usual hidden consequence is the problem. Even if they work wonderfully to solve the problem they are targeted to solve, then they expand the economy and multiply all our other problems… Continue reading “Fixes” that look great and fail better.→
One way is to begin to use more scientific measures of the net effect of things. There are some rather major problems with “sustainability arithmetic”, you might call it.
People tend to mix statements of social values and the numbers they use in a way that is very forgiving for whatever purpose intended. I don’t exaggerate. For one familiar example, people count their own personal waste items as their environmental impacts, such as the number of plastic bags they use. They might count their efficiency in limiting cooking and cleaning, or running the AC, etc.
