Complexes

Upshot : The limitations of materialism for studying cognition have motivated alternative epistemologies based on information and computation. I argue that these alternatives are also inherently limited and that these limits can only be overcome by considering materialism, info-computationalism, and cognition at the same time. Open peer commentary on the article “ Info-computational Constructivism and Cognition ” by Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic. Gershenson C. (2014) Info-computationalism or Materialism? Neither and Both. Constructivist Foundations 9(2) : 241–242. Available at  http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/9/2/241.gershenson

The 16th International Congress of Systems and Cybernetics WOSC2014 will take place on October 15-17 a the University of Ibagué, Colombia. One of the congress themes is  Design and Control of Self-organising Systems Many real-world problems are non-stationary and highly complex. That is, they are changing constantly and interacting, generating novel information that limits prediction. If the change is faster than our ability to optimize our solutions, then these will be obsolete. As an alternative, we have designed adaptive systems, in many cases inspired in biology. One approach for designing adaptive systems has been proposed with the use of self-organization: instead of trying to optimize a problem, the aim is to design components of a system that by local interactions actively search for their best configuration. When designed properly, self-organizing systems can adapt to extremely dynamic and complex problems at the same scales at which changes occur. As our systems beco...

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 The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) has an open call for postdoctoral fellowships to start in September, 2014 or March, 2015. 

Candidates should have obtained a PhD degree within the last three years and be under 36 years, both to the date of the beginning of the fellowship.

 The area of interests of candidates should fall within complex systems, artificial life, information, evolution, cognition, robotics, and/or philosophy.

 Interested candidates should send CV and a tentative project (1 paragraph) to cgg-at-unam.mx by Monday, March 3rd (if starting in September 2014, otherwise in the coming months). Full application package should be ready by Friday, March 7 at noon, Mexico City time.
 Projects can be inspired from: http://turing.iimas.unam.mx/~cgg/projects.html

  and/or  http://froese.wordpress.com/research/ Postdoctoral fellowships are between one and two years (after renewal).
 Spanish is not a...

Education at all levels is facing several challenges in most countries, such as low quality, high costs, lack of educators, and unsatisfied student demand. Traditional approaches are becoming unable to deliver the required education. Several causes for this inefficiency can be identified. I argue that beyond specific causes, the lack of effective education is related to complexity. However, information technology is helping us overcome this complexity. http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.2827

We apply measures of complexity, emergence and self-organization to an abstract city traffic model for comparing a traditional traffic coordination method with a self-organizing method in two scenarios: cyclic boundaries and non-orientable boundaries. We show that the measures are useful to identify and characterize different dynamical phases. It becomes clear that different operation regimes are required for different traffic demands. Thus, not only traffic is a non-stationary problem, which requires controllers to adapt constantly. Controllers must also change drastically the complexity of their behavior depending on the demand. Based on our measures, we can say that the self-organizing method achieves an adaptability level comparable to a living system. Measuring the Complexity of Self-organizing Traffic Lights Dario Zubillaga, Geovany Cruz, Luis Daniel Aguilar, Jorge Zapotecatl, Nelson Fernandez, Jose Aguilar, David A. Rosenblueth, Carlos Gershenson http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.01...

We compared entropy for texts written in natural languages (English, Spanish) and artificial languages (computer software) based on a simple expression for the entropy as a function of message length and specific word diversity. Code text written in artificial languages showed higher entropy than text of similar length expressed in natural languages. Spanish texts exhibit more symbolic diversity than English ones. Results showed that algorithms based on complexity measures differentiate artificial from natural languages, and that text analysis based on complexity measures allows the unveiling of important aspects of their nature. We propose specific expressions to examine entropy related aspects of tests and estimate the values of entropy, emergence, self-organization and complexity based on specific diversity and message length. Complexity measurement of natural and artificial languages Gerardo Febres, Klaus Jaffe, Carlos Gershenson http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.5427  

ALIFE 14: THE FOURTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE SYNTHESIS AND SIMULATION OF LIVING SYSTEMS July 31st - August 2nd, 2014 Javits Center, Manhattan, New York, NY, USA http://alife14.org Sponsored by the International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL) January 15, 2014 -- Workshop/tutorial proposal deadline February 1, 2014 -- Science visualization competition deadline March 31, 2014 -- Paper/abstract submission deadline ********************************************************************** We cordially invite you to submit papers to ALIFE 14: The Fourteenth International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. Since its inception in 1987, ALIFE has been the leading biyearly international conference in the field of Artificial Life -- the highly interdisciplinary research area on artificially constructed living systems, including mathematical, computational, robotic, and biochemical ones. The understanding and application of such generalized forms of life, or ...