if you’ve ever wondered, as so many of us are wont to do, why it is that the Conus Textile shell pattern:
follows the cellular automaton Rule 30:
then look no further! the dynamics of financial crises has got your back. both are prize-winning examples of the complex properties that emerge out of simple interactions among a large number of things neighbouring each other.
as mentioned in another post, you can prove mathematically without much of a fuss that in a system where everybody imitates everyone else, everyone will converge to a single behaviour. if desire is what is being imitated, money is the behaviour towards which everyone converges. the striking feature of this convergence, of course, is that it relies on no planning and no intentionality - it is merely a formal property of the behaviour of mimetic agents.
this is also (i had it confirmed with canadian authorities) what’s responsible for the supposedly endless variety in snowflakes. even though a pre-printed general snowflake plan is blatantly nowhere to be seen, the interaction between each water molecule according to the well-established rules of mineralogy allows for the emergence of a limitless number of possible complex geometrical combinations.
in ‘the greatest show on earth’, richard dawkins provides a welcome look of respectability to the cellular automata business by arguing that the extraordinary complexity of the patterns governing the operation of organisms is also brought about by the low-level, local rules of engagement between individual cells - and not by any sort of general top-to-bottom plan. fascinatingly, this can actually be easily observed in the early stages of embryological development - the very moment where things take the daring leap from single cell to pluricellular crazysauce.
besides laying claim to the smooth(ish) functioning of the capitalist economy, then, cellular automata are also responsible for the possibility of complex life and evidence of the absence of a general plan for the universe. not many of other areas of science can claim that, i don’t think.
as far as emerging properties go, however, money is a bit lacking in charm. it FEELS a little less arbitrary than the proverbial sign, there's none of the funky recursivity of language to it. i suppose it IS pretty astounding as a means of coordinating productive behaviour in a maddening scale... but i mean, will you just look at that sexy mollusc! rule 30 seems to generate several repeating but distinctive patterns, and not simply a homogenization of the entire field of possible patterns through convergence towards a single self-instituted kind-of-boring imaginary thing. if there was some way to extend the automata notion to every human institution, language most of all, things might start to get a bit more engaging.
this automata scene is in cahoots with the field of mathematics known as complexity theory, an unholy union that spawned the notion of ‘emergent property’. now a lot of things can be said of complexity theory, but that it isn’t FUN isn’t one of them. it is to the credit of complexity theory, besides, to reaffirm orthodox economics’ long-held belief that if you can differentiate twice, you’ll never want for knowledge of the world. it deals very well with time, and isn’t prone to chill out in the usual comfort zone of synchronous or comparative statical analysis. and finally, it’s common knowledge that if you have never been personally elated by a long and intimate examination of the bifurcation diagram,
you haven’t lived.
in biology, niche theory shows that one of the keys to figuring out (biological*) life is not only in the vast and amazingly convoluted self-sustaining patterns that make organisms, but in the higher level patterns formed in the relationship between organisms themselves! consider only that the same ecological niche can be occupied by a flying squirrel and by a flying lizard. that is, animals from completely diverse evolutionary trees can evolve similar attributes that make them apt for one particular function. THAT IS, the form of the organism is in direct relation to whatever is going on in his ecosystem - THAT IS, to whatever is going on with all of it’s other neighbouring organisms. the very notion of an environment, on top of that, makes it almost as if the higher-level ecological interactions demand certain attributes to be evolved to fill certain gaps - in better words, it’s almost as if there’s a co-determination between the several orders of complex emergent patterns.
in its fanciest moments, if it doesn’t check itself, the analytical mind dreams that there’s a way to draw out the simple base rules backwards from observation of emerged behaviour. it dreams of pulling INvolving properties out of established patterns, and of a great chain of orders and orders of pattern complexity, one above the other, ad nauseam, with no beginning or end in sight (this would have the added benefit of reeaaally pissing off all of reductionist physics, which has been going on since - unless i have no idea what i’m talking about - the early hindus). it dreams of the outstanding computing power of the universe, that all the patterns are in the observing mind, and none in the phenomena themselves - and that the minds of men have been cured of their addiction to causality. it dreams the very funky places where complexity might reside, and of life's patient zero in molecular biology.
it dreams, basically, of a field of science dedicated simply to the study of patterns in general. short of being a victorian-futurist mercenary crimefighter, or of having the sex life of Conus Textile, i can imagine few things cooler than a phd in Pattern Sciences.
*the key to figuring out personal life, of course, belongs to the different field of specular escapology.
follows the cellular automaton Rule 30:
then look no further! the dynamics of financial crises has got your back. both are prize-winning examples of the complex properties that emerge out of simple interactions among a large number of things neighbouring each other.
as mentioned in another post, you can prove mathematically without much of a fuss that in a system where everybody imitates everyone else, everyone will converge to a single behaviour. if desire is what is being imitated, money is the behaviour towards which everyone converges. the striking feature of this convergence, of course, is that it relies on no planning and no intentionality - it is merely a formal property of the behaviour of mimetic agents.
this is also (i had it confirmed with canadian authorities) what’s responsible for the supposedly endless variety in snowflakes. even though a pre-printed general snowflake plan is blatantly nowhere to be seen, the interaction between each water molecule according to the well-established rules of mineralogy allows for the emergence of a limitless number of possible complex geometrical combinations.
in ‘the greatest show on earth’, richard dawkins provides a welcome look of respectability to the cellular automata business by arguing that the extraordinary complexity of the patterns governing the operation of organisms is also brought about by the low-level, local rules of engagement between individual cells - and not by any sort of general top-to-bottom plan. fascinatingly, this can actually be easily observed in the early stages of embryological development - the very moment where things take the daring leap from single cell to pluricellular crazysauce.
besides laying claim to the smooth(ish) functioning of the capitalist economy, then, cellular automata are also responsible for the possibility of complex life and evidence of the absence of a general plan for the universe. not many of other areas of science can claim that, i don’t think.
as far as emerging properties go, however, money is a bit lacking in charm. it FEELS a little less arbitrary than the proverbial sign, there's none of the funky recursivity of language to it. i suppose it IS pretty astounding as a means of coordinating productive behaviour in a maddening scale... but i mean, will you just look at that sexy mollusc! rule 30 seems to generate several repeating but distinctive patterns, and not simply a homogenization of the entire field of possible patterns through convergence towards a single self-instituted kind-of-boring imaginary thing. if there was some way to extend the automata notion to every human institution, language most of all, things might start to get a bit more engaging.
this automata scene is in cahoots with the field of mathematics known as complexity theory, an unholy union that spawned the notion of ‘emergent property’. now a lot of things can be said of complexity theory, but that it isn’t FUN isn’t one of them. it is to the credit of complexity theory, besides, to reaffirm orthodox economics’ long-held belief that if you can differentiate twice, you’ll never want for knowledge of the world. it deals very well with time, and isn’t prone to chill out in the usual comfort zone of synchronous or comparative statical analysis. and finally, it’s common knowledge that if you have never been personally elated by a long and intimate examination of the bifurcation diagram,
you haven’t lived.
in biology, niche theory shows that one of the keys to figuring out (biological*) life is not only in the vast and amazingly convoluted self-sustaining patterns that make organisms, but in the higher level patterns formed in the relationship between organisms themselves! consider only that the same ecological niche can be occupied by a flying squirrel and by a flying lizard. that is, animals from completely diverse evolutionary trees can evolve similar attributes that make them apt for one particular function. THAT IS, the form of the organism is in direct relation to whatever is going on in his ecosystem - THAT IS, to whatever is going on with all of it’s other neighbouring organisms. the very notion of an environment, on top of that, makes it almost as if the higher-level ecological interactions demand certain attributes to be evolved to fill certain gaps - in better words, it’s almost as if there’s a co-determination between the several orders of complex emergent patterns.
in its fanciest moments, if it doesn’t check itself, the analytical mind dreams that there’s a way to draw out the simple base rules backwards from observation of emerged behaviour. it dreams of pulling INvolving properties out of established patterns, and of a great chain of orders and orders of pattern complexity, one above the other, ad nauseam, with no beginning or end in sight (this would have the added benefit of reeaaally pissing off all of reductionist physics, which has been going on since - unless i have no idea what i’m talking about - the early hindus). it dreams of the outstanding computing power of the universe, that all the patterns are in the observing mind, and none in the phenomena themselves - and that the minds of men have been cured of their addiction to causality. it dreams the very funky places where complexity might reside, and of life's patient zero in molecular biology.
it dreams, basically, of a field of science dedicated simply to the study of patterns in general. short of being a victorian-futurist mercenary crimefighter, or of having the sex life of Conus Textile, i can imagine few things cooler than a phd in Pattern Sciences.
*the key to figuring out personal life, of course, belongs to the different field of specular escapology.
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