[Fis] Re: Continuing Discussion of Social and Cultural Complexity

Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 12:04:05 -0500
To: fis@listas.unizar.es
From: Ted Goranson <tedg@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: [Fis] Re: Continuing Discussion of Social and Cultural Complexity

-------------------

Igor Matutinovic wrote on 2/5/07:

>Ted wrote:
>I do believe that there are limits to complexity of any system. I believe
>the limits exhibit not only in the behavior of the system as seen by that
>actions of its members, but also in the abstractions those members use in
>the information that is exchanged.
>
>Ted, can you give us an example from the social realm for your statement
>"My understanding is that when those information abstractions (which
>evolve with the system) become overloaded, a new level of the system is
>created, with new, "cleaner" abstractions."

Igor-

This is a tough one.

The reason is because of the old inside-outside problem. Each higher level
develops two properties: its abstractions are the residue of complexity
breaking in lower levels, plus the higher levels can "see" the lower ones
from the outside. (As we can see and understand chemical dynamics.)

In this, I am imputing that there is a hierarchy of consciousness, so for
example biological entities have some introspective qualities over physical
ones, just as we as humans do over both biological and physical. A
corollary is that introspective awareness does not flow up. This is another
way of saying that the information primitives of a higher level would be
incomprehensible to those of a lower. We would not expect molecules to
understand human love, for instance.

In this scheme, humans could understand the abstractions in an information
dialog of lower ones, which is what we call science. And perhaps soon we
may recast scientific theories in terms of these information abstractions.
Incidentally, this is what I take as the agenda of FIS.

But we cannot of levels higher than us. So if there are higher levels of
emergent structure beyond social systems - entirely possible and likely -
we couldn't understand it. I believe this is why the notion of a God or
gods is so persistent.

Note in this, that a higher level of organization with its own emergent
laws is a quite different thing (the way I am talking here) than just "more
structure." So international peace, Gaia, or Stonier's internet-based
"global brain" are all within our current, social layer.

So I cannot give you an example. But I think we can say some things about
it if we can suss out the steps associated with complexity breaking at
lower levels and extrapolate. I believe this higher level would have some
evolved, soft logic like situation theory, which is why I bang on that so
much here.

And I believe that the foundations of set theory will weaken at that higher
level and category theoretic axiomatic systems be stronger. I also strongly
believe in the transcendence of symmetry across layers, that the notion is
some sort of information super-primitive.

Beyond that I cannot say. But we are working on it. I do believe that we
can build artificial systems that can "see" this level where we cannot.
This my current job.

Hope this helps.

Best, Ted

-- 
__________
Ted Goranson
Sirius-Beta
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