Re: [Fis] order/disorder/causality

Reacting to Victoras' posting: If we have before us a scene (which must
necessarily be contained in a yet larger possible scene), and we consider
the number of its possible complexions, including an estimate of transition
rates between complexions, it is still possible to state that each
complexion is unique. This s because each will have had a partly different
path in its generation. And, if we find two scenes that are identical, we
can choose to look closer at some element in the scene, and analyze its
parts until we find a difference. Uniqueness happens as historical
information accumulates, and even mass produced machines will gradually
become unique. Suppose we go back in some organism, to look at eggs. Each
one looks the same, but it will not take us long to find differeces between
them if we look more closely. Similarity is a construct, made by
frameworking, were we deliberately ignore (what to our study would be)
trivial differences.

STAN

>Let me respond/comment Michel's, Karl's and Bob's postings (religion of
>probability and definition of order). I would agree with Karl on Natural
>numbers. Regarding Bob's combinatorial examples there is a single assumption
>that numbers of possibilities should be hardly dependent on - discrete or
>continuous space (incl. functional space too). So there can be an enormous
>amount of calculated possibilities of various event's combinations, but in
>reality different combinations are not equally possible. So number of
>possible outcomes (or degrees of freedom) is usually reduced to some minimum
>when those events/objects become a part of a larger system. Thus a complete
>set of these most probable states each one dependent on it's own attractor
>starts behaving like a discrete system with large although limited number of
>different states with discontinuous transitions among them. Those states are
>usually characterized by probability distributions or some "limits of
>tolerance". So in reality there are more similar (although I would not dare
>saying identical) events than unique. That's why Case Based Reasoning (AI
>approach to problem solving) works so well even for weather predictions or
>various diagnosing tasks for machines and humans in technology and medicine.
>Even ratios of species in a natural community follow certain patterns of
>occurrence - they are never changing continuously, but always in a jumpy
>manner. The same can be said about periodic system of chemical elements -
>one can not use whatever sort of regression based on continuity to predict
>characteristics of an element. But Mendelejev's periodical law based on
>discrete assumptions can handle the problem quite easily. And eventually the
>same is true for any natural phenomenon - spatial and functional transitions
>among cells, atoms, molecules, and everything that we call objects or events
>in our 4 dimensions - always occur as jumps. If one takes a real (not
>modelled) gradient of salinity or temperature changing with depth in a lake
>or sea, then the one again would notice many small jumps instead of an
>ideal" continuous change. Now if the one assumes that "the word should be
>continuous (somebody prove it please !) and all the rest of it is just a
>noise" he will necessarily arrive to the conclusion as Bob wrote : "the
>fabric of causality manifests holes everywhere, at all levels"... But is
>this true ?..
>Wouldn't the following sentence be more correct then: "the fabric of our
>XXI-st century knowledge still manifests holes everywhere, at all levels".
>Isn't it so that violation of the causality law would also mean violation of
>the I-st law of thermodynamics ? So if causality "shows a hole" somewhere in
>physical world this should also mean the disproportion of
>energy/matter/work/entropy and also a violation of E=mc2 during this "holy"
>event. Shouldn't the law of causality play the same role in science as the
>I-st law in Thermodynamics (the I-st law of Cyberdynamics ;-) should sound
>great ! ) ? But what if "causality holes" are true. Then let's remember
>Lorenz who has got totaly different results with his famous system of
>equations just because the computer rounded down the numbers stored in
>memory. Is then our Universe a computer like the one Lorenz worked with
>which tries to round-down numbers that seem too big for calculations and
>thence "causality holes", unpredictable behavior, chaos ? Which assumption
>is true then ?
>
>Definition of order...
>Here I would agree with Karl again. It seems like the "order" relates with
>synchronicity i.e. interacting elements making a system are more orderly
>then independent elements that do not make a system. Then a level of order
>(in between these two marginal states) could be calculated as ratio of sync
>among elements. Thus order of a perfect system would be equal to 1, order of
>chaotic mixture of some independent non interacting parts eq 0. Let's found
>what's in between on a real-world example - the Internet by taking a subset
>of the internet - 1000 web sites located somewhere. Next step pinging (IT
>term) those sites and looking whether they respond or not (how many packages
>lost). if 900 sites responded ("were in their places" as Karl wrote), and
>100 failed to respond, then system of those 1000 web sites would have a
>degree of order eq to 0.9. Probably it should be considered as relatively
>high... But the hard part in this is that in nature elements interact in
>several ways/levels depending on the purpose of the system(s) they are parts
>of. So in this case degree of order should be based on correct responses at
>different communication levels (who knows their number ?). And then posibly
>adding up those ratios and dividing from number of levels - thus calculating
>an average degree of order in the system :-). Just a speculation...
>
>Best regards
>Viktoras
>
>
>
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Received on Thu May 6 22:21:18 2004