I'm just back from a week's work in Baltimore on a project to research and improve treatment entry and engagement among narcotics addicts. Reason they invite me is because the characteristics of complex co-evolutionary systems help them see, understand and act on the problem in new and more effective (we all hope, evaluation to come) ways. It's less a measure of complexity and more a phase transition in perception and action on the part of human actors who are part of the system.
What about algorithmic complexity, the measure suggested by Gell- Mann, I think it was? It won't offer an in or out, necessary and sufficient condition measure, but rather a "more or less" evaluation that allows translation between system patterns and computer code. The code is then the measure. Mike On Jul 22, 2006, at 11:36 AM, Owen Densmore wrote: > At yesterday's FRIAM, I mentioned the Chaos has the luxury of > reasonably formal techniques, much lacking in Complexity. My point > was that there was an "inclusion principal" for chaos .. a way to > partition processes into those that are chaotic and those that are > not. And naturally, neither set is null. > > The technique used in Chaos is the Lyapunov exponent: > http://hypertextbook.com/chaos/43.shtml > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyapunov_exponent > > A similar measure, as far as I know, is not available for description > of Complex systems .. one that offers a solution to the inclusion > principal for Complex processes. > > BTW: We were having difficulty remembering the name of the author of > one of the more popular books. I believe we were searching for > Robert Devaney. He is editor of the Studies in Nonlinearity series > of books, which includes a rather interesting one by Brian Davies > which has a wonderful set of Java applications/applets for exploring > chaos .. a sort of lab if you will. > > -- Owen > > Owen Densmore > http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
