Re: Other processes

[Ionel <***>]

Hi, John M:

My comments on the "chaotic, but deterministic processes" that are
in a certain sense 'coherent' were intended as a half-humorous test to see
if  the 'butterfly's wings flaps' of my relevant-- but otherwise mild
comment-- could stir up a bigger 'tornado' of dicussion on the possible
role played by 'chaos' in biology because the presence of chaos does
prevent one from making exact computer predictions of the chaotic systems
behavior as shown by Michael Conrad and Otto Rossler earlier in the 80's,
an argument that I discussed in further detail in an article which is now
also available on the Web at Cogprints, or at CERN' s external preprints
archive because our bio-moderators at 'arXiv' didn't like the year when it
was originally printed-- 1987.
_____________________________________________________________________
"Chaotic" processes are in a sense a good, striking example of non-
reductionism as their behavior under perturbation is neither always
predicatble digitally nor can such chaotic process-based systems be taken
appart and still retain their complex chaotic behavior. Robert Rosen liked
them very much, especially in their chemical/biochemical coupled reactions
form that was published first by Otto Rossler in BMB and elsewhere.
[Ms. Judith Rosen has kindly let me know that Robert and Dr. Otto Rossler
were quite good friends (hope I am not saying something that I was not
supposed to have mentioned?), ...and anyway that's something that I already
knew at least in part from my own correspondence with Robert.]
If they play a central role or not in living systems is still a debated
issue, but one cannot deny that they are very likely to occur in a living
organism-- maybe moderated by dynmic control programming or anticipatory
systems that 'learn' how to handle 'extreme chaos'and thus act to prevent
the 'tornado' from occuring under small perturbations from outside.
Some people have said that living systems "live at the edge of chaos".
I'd like to see your anti-chaos ideas on this chaos posting.

Best regards,

Ionel

On Thu, 8 Jul 2004 10:14:43 -0400, John M <***> wrote:

>Hi, Pete,
>I resisted to comment to Ionel's post, because I woud have had to force
myself to start - as you did - with: "Right". Chaos is a topic I was 'in'
for some years and abandoned it when I got better (broader?) ideas. I used
to be named at Jamie's Ceptual Inst. "Our Resident Chaotician" - not
anymore. But that would lead astray from the topics at hand..
>I strongly disliked the Lorentz farce about the butterflies, repeated in
literature the ~28,754th time by Ionel, which was a good weapon  in the
arsenal of the conventionalist - reductionist hardheads. I also averted
from the "physical chaology", really an pxymoron: to calculate the
definitionwise uncalculable into a nonchaotic system (redefining 'chaos').
>
>You refer to your response to me (Wrap-up?) - no specifics. Did you mean
to the one:
>
>>>> (excerpt):
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>----- Original Message -----
>From: John M
>To: ***
>Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 11:26 AM
>Subject: Re: RR-centric "Process" Definition?
>
>
>Hi, Pete,
>as I indicated in my reflect to Ionel, I have some 2nd thoughts upon your
general (process, that is).
>
>"process (general): The sequence of energy or information exchanges that
effect or define a systemâ??s transition between an initial state and a
final state."
>
>I cannot refer to this "en. or info xchngs" since I have no idea what you
mean by "energy" (used, however, all over physix).
>Info is also a term to be identified in this usage. Finally I may suggest
to ponder "changes" for "exchanges" - can be 1 way.
>...?????...(SNIP the rest)
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>if yes, I missed it from my mail. I certainly would like to read it.
Especially with your remark on the journalistic joke of Lorentz. You wrote:
>>As I said in my "Wrap-Up" post to John M., that's a very different
context than the one that motivated my original question.<
>
>Wouldn't it be helpful not to refer just to "complex systems"? That raises
all kinds of irrelevant connotations from the part of the zillion arbitrary
definitions of 'complex'.
> I know that we, on this list, refer to RR-complexity, but let us say so.
>
>'Chaotic' as I would look at it now, IS deterministic, simply beyond the
boundaries we observe and exercising influences from disregarded (maybe
still undiscovered?) parts.
>Out of several reductionistic 'spaces', first: into unaccounted orders of
magnitude, then
>off-boundary-qualia and in the topical "non - restriction" openness.
>It appears really in the (RR) natural systems domain. Not within well-
trimmed models.
>
>So, please, if you have the post I missed, kindly mail it to me, if not,
write one.
>I will be delighted to read it.
>
>John M
>
>  ----- Original Message -----
>  From: Pete Giansante
>  To: ***
>  Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2004 9:49 PM
>  Subject: Re: Other processes
>
>
>  Hi Ionel:
>
>  Right... but I hope I've adequately stipulated my aversion to the notion
of  "initial and final states" in my earlier reply to John M. I'm not
dealing with "chaotic processes" anyway. They are complex, but not chaotic.
I've got some fairly well-defined coherent systems, whose interactions are
characterized by sufficiently coherent processes that they can be
quantified, their interactive processes can be replicated, their behavior
can be predicted, and those predictions can be corroborated as to their
accuracy. The butterfly effect is a hypothesis; I don't know of any
methodology by which it can be quantified, replicated, predicted, or
corroborated. As I said in my "Wrap-Up" post to John M., that's a very
different context than the one that motivated my original question.
>
>  As an aside, the constraint that a system "come back to where it started
from" is not relevant to any of the systems I'm studying. In principle, I'm
not even sure that's possible in complex systems. Probably not.
Irreversibility is ubiquitous in real-world systems. Whether the systems
are "deterministic" may or may not be applicable. In chaotic processes, one
can assume determinism until the cows come home. For my purposes, the
question is one of utility, by which I mean "usefulness".
>
>  In any case, your reference to such processes is intriguing. I would be
fascinated to read some of the literature. Can you point me in the
direction of some sources you'd be willing to recommend?
>
>  Thanks!
>
>  Pete
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
>
>  Ionel wrote:
>
>RE: Process definition
>
>There is a growing literature on "chaotic processes" also, that don't seem
>to fit the proposed definition, it's a deterministic type of process that
>may end up a long way from where it started and will 'never' come back to
>where it satrted from. Lorentz's story of the butterfly's wings air flow
>in Brazil causing a Tornado in North America!
>
>Everyone on vacation... beware of tornadoes!
>
>Ionel
>