Complexes

One measure of people's knowledge is the amount of information that a person can come up with. In the "old" days, this information would come mainly out of your head. From experience, you can know what things are, e.g. facts, dates, etc. With a good memory , you can reproduce much learned information. Add reasoning , and you can combine your experiences to produce novel information and know how things work. Thus, people will have more knowledge if they are able to store and manipulate information. This was the game humankind played... until a decade ago. Blame it on Google . What is the use of memorizing information when you can find it in an instant? Before you had to go to a library to search for information, so it was a big advantage to have a good memory. Now remembering and reasoning are not enough. You need to know where to find information. Certainly, this does not displace reasoning, only encyclopedic memory. The thing is that having such an accessible inform...

When I was in high school I read a book by Stephen Hawking, which stimulated me to develop my own theory of the universe. Still in my teens I wrote about it and presented these ideas at a conference in Mexico in 1997. It was funny more than a decade afterwards to find about this paper by Aurich et al. They analyzed cosmic microwave background radiation and suggest that the universe is cyclic... same as I did. Let's see how the community responds to their results.

Gershenson, C. (2008). Book Review: "Self-Organization and Emergence in Life Sciences", edited by Bernard Feltz, Marc Crommelinck and Philippe Goujon . Artificial Life 14 (2):239-240. Excerpts: Self-organization and emergence have received much attention in biology and artificial life [1, 2, 4, 5], even though these pervasive concepts have eluded strict definition [3]. This makes the contributions contained in this interdisciplinary volume relevant to many aspects of artificial life. (...) The book consists of three parts, dedicated to the scientific approach, the historical approach, and the epistemological and conceptual approaches, (...) The study of self-organization and emergence is still in development, and although this volume is worthwhile for those familiar with the field, a definitive introduction has yet to be written. This volume is not recommended as a first reading on the topic, as the articles are at the discussion level. It is certainly recommended for peopl...

“Sciences, not even the hardest ones, are not purely objective, nor arts are purely subjective...” “We can access reality only through models/metaphors” “The more you scream, the less I'll hear” “So few intelligent people, so many wise guys...” “Belief in an absolute truth leads to intolerance” “Is it me, or is it the context?” “Nature brings us closer to ourselves” “To fool others, you need to fool yourself first, thus becoming a fool” *“The easiest way to cope with complexity is not having it” “A failure is not that awful if you learn something from it” *“People fear/hate other nations only when they don't know them” *“If only cars were fueled by road rage...” “The first step to understand people is to accept them as they are” “Everybody is special. You just need to observe carefully...” You can find more aphorisms here .

I recently did a short article on self-organizing systems (in Spanish) for a general audience , which was recently published by La Jornada (Mexican newspaper)... Parvadas, cardúmenes, manadas y colonias de insectos funcionan por medio de mecanismos similares. No hay un animal líder dictando ordenes a otros. Sin embargo, tomas de decisiones muy complejas pueden realizarse por el grupo. Esto se debe a que los animales, aunque sigan reglas simples en su comportamiento, interactúan localmente de forma tal que en su conjunto pueden lograr tareas que los individuos por sí mismos no podrían realizar. Este fenómeno, donde los elementos de un sistema interactúan para producir un comportamiento, patrón o función globales, se conoce como auto-organización . Read more...

In this TED Talk , Al Gore argues for global action to face global crisis. The proposed solution: tax carbon. In theory, it sounds like a good option. However, how to bring it to reality? How many changes in economies would this produce? Certainly, companies would be tempted to use renewable energy sources, and these would become a great market. However, oil companies hold much of the power behind curtains. Could a social movement achieve this change? Could this be effectively implemented in most countries? What to do with countries who would not tax their carbon emissions? This huge change wouldn't be the end of the world, certainly, but such a drastic transformation seems almost impossible. Well, let's fight for this almost impossibility, otherwise we'll be sitting on our fat behinds waiting for catastrophes to force the transformation.

Nature published the results of a poll where they asked researchers about drug use to boost their brains. It turns out that from their respondents, "one in five respondents said they had used drugs for non-medical reasons to stimulate their focus, concentration or memory", even when half of drug users reported unpleasant side-effects. Now, here I have only questions: Should drug use in science be restricted, just like in sports? If so, the main reason for doing it would be the health of users, "fairness" in "competition", or simply ethics? A problem here is to draw a boundary line, just like with sports. Many people have coffee, tea, or chocolate, and it boosts their performance. The thing is that it is legal and socially acceptable, plus the side effects are minor... Would there be any sense in anti-doping tests for scientists? If so, and a test comes positive, how could this affect their research? OK, I don't have answers, but I do have opinions... ...