two tempos

dear FISers,

Allan's questions are quite intriguing ones. As a rough answer, I would say
that like in some biological explanations, we might be suffering from the
lack of distinction between two very different "tempos".

Following Kauffmann«s (or Bob's) views on evolvability of species in
adaptive landscapes (or societal changes in their own self-mappings), the
time unit is quite large: the elementary motion of a species while it
climbs "mount fitness" may represent hundred-thousands life cycles... and
the time-unit to change social values is usually the generational span.

Conversely, the most interesting time unit from the (fluid) info point of
view may be in the seconds, in the minutes, in the hours. It is the very
time of physiology, or the usual schedule of the daily socio-economic
transactions...

It is in this (microscopic) physiological time-window where info becomes a
crucial item that can connect the foundationss of several intractable
concepts: consciousness (as an ecologically grounded invention), VEMS'
intermingling with real life situations, nature of social complexity, and
even the "value" concept of economics.

To restate the problem, it is in this other time-frame that the company,
the individual, the cell, the molecule are different from conventional
physical entities... They follow an adaptive "fluid" self-organizng
dynamics quite at odds with the traditional physical ones. Discarding
uninteresting pieces of the own self in order to keep oneself adaptive is
quite amazing. In this regard my understanding of Fontana's alquimia is
that it explodes combinatorially, but it does not purposively "kill"
irrelevant items, it would kill rather randomly... (but probably am wrong
in this strict interpretation).

Gordon Scarrott paper contains good hints about the issue at hand. And
given that Ted and William Dockens already pointed to the necessity of this
enlarged discussion, particularly including consciousness, perhaps we
should come back into this big perspectivistic problem once the socioinfo
discussion is over...

best regards

Pedro

---------------------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuan. TEL 34 976 761927, FAX --761861 and -- 762111
Dept. Ingen. Electronica y Comunicaciones, CPS Universidad de Zaragoza,
Maria de Luna 3, Zaragoza 50015, SPAIN
email: marijuan@posta.unizar.es
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Received on Wed Nov 18 09:29:17 1998