That doesn't seem to get at my question. It's partly about the major structure of nature, that it's full of things that are tightly self-referential. A self-sufficient set of rules is a good example, but so is an individual air current a very good example too. With respect to an internalized system's self-references, anything else in the universe is 'out of the loop' and does not meaningfully exist. I think that's a major reason why it's quite hard to perceive the presence of natural systems at all.
Still, where we see such closed systems developing in the physical world it is always on 'gradients' (yes even closed sets of rules would appear to live on the gradients of the author's imagination). There is certainly lots of thinking to be done about all that, but my question was simply whether there's a way to design a set of rules that has only to do with itself, but relies for it's operation on rules outside it's definitions, beyond it's set of self-references? I can see how it works with physical things, but not how to do it with abstract models. It's a topological question I think, something like how to have a universal set contain itself as an element, and other confusing conjectures... In nature one can often see how it has to do with physical parts of systems participating in many independent systems at once. That seems harder for me to imagine for logical systems. Can it be done somehow? Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] explorations: www.synapse9.com > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels > Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 10:27 AM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Formal Definition of Agent Based Model > > > Phil Henshaw wrote: > > That would somewhat model the occurrence of 'emergent cells' of new > > systems of relationships that are 'feeding on' rather than being > > 'determined by' their environments. > > > To my way of thinking, a `type correct' computer program behaves > somewhat like a fit individual in a biological system. But it's not > very realistic since type consistency is global property of a > program. > If you fiddle with a subcomponent of a Java program, for example, the > compiler will tell you if you did something wrong and not let you run > the program. In a biological system the corresponding subcomponent > might not get exercised enough to change the fitness of the > individual > much. Fitness is both a function of the environment and the > individual. For example, given a large population of > individuals and > few of them are in the situation in the environment where > changes to a > part of there genome would kill them, it doesn't matter if > that change > is, in principle, inferior. By `in principle' I mean there > are easy to > imagine environments where it would be inferior. In a > computer program > I mean that a code path has operands and operators that are > incompatible. clip.. ============================================================ 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
