Complexes

Education at all levels is facing several challenges in most countries [1-4], 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 [5, 6]. However, information technology is helping us overcome this complexity. Complexity can be measured with information theory and can be seen as the balance between stability and variability [7-10]: phenomena without change or with constant change cannot exhibit complex behavior. It has been noted that to actively control a complex system, the controller has to be at least as complex as the controlled [11, 12]. For example, a successful healthcare provider has to match the complexity of the patients she attends. Treatment is highly specific for different patients, so a general practitioner must ha...

We apply measures of complexity, emergence, and self-organization to an urban traffic model for comparing a traditional traffic-light 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 is traffic a non-stationary problem, requiring controllers to adapt constantly; controllers must also change drastically the complexity of their behavior depending on the demand. Based on our measures and extending Ashby’s law of requisite variety, we can say that the self-organizing method achieves an adaptability level comparable to that of a living system. Zubillaga, Darío; Cruz, Geovany; Aguilar, Luis D.; Zapotécatl, Jorge; Fernández, Nelson; Aguilar, José; Rosenblueth, David A.; Gershenson, Carlos. 2014. "Measuring the Complexit...

Aphorisms collection at  http://turing.iimas.unam.mx/~cgg/aforismos.html “Reality: always one step ahead of my most imaginative sarcasms” “The more I travel, the more borders become artificial” *“In science, there are no finished problems, only narrow-minded scientists” “The fact that it has always been that way does not mean that it cannot change” “Since I am finite, I tend to be biased towards speaking only about those things which I have experience with.” “If I say: "I might be wrong", I cannot be wrong” *“If you do not have the right perspective to see the rainbow, it does not imply that the rainbow is not there.” *“One can warmonger interpreting a religious or a scientific text.  One can peacemonger interpreting a religious or a scientific text.  What is more important: the text or the purpose of the interpretation?” “It is difficult to gain new knowledge without first questioning current knowledge” “Remember that you are always setting an example. Do things as yo...

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 Jaffé and Carlos Gershenson Complexity , Early View http://dx.doi.org/...

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...