Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: tortoise; Cicero; johnnyb_61820; BereanBrain; Strategerist; My2Cents; Aetius; Alamo-Girl; ...

Isn't complexity really subjective?

What we habitually consider complex are those things that are arranged to our values.

In an objective sense, it may be that a desktop PC is no more ordered, no more complex, than a cloud of gas.


202 posted on 12/28/2005 6:35:40 PM PST by Age of Reason
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies ]


To: Age of Reason

Thanks for the ping.


268 posted on 12/28/2005 7:51:50 PM PST by Baraonda (Demographic is destiny. Don't hire 3rd world illegal aliens nor support businesses that hire them.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 202 | View Replies ]

To: Age of Reason
"In an objective sense, it may be that a desktop PC is no more ordered, no more complex, than a cloud of gas."

See if you can get a cloud of gas to download your e-mail ;o)

279 posted on 12/28/2005 8:06:06 PM PST by editor-surveyor (Atheist and Fool are synonyms; Evolution is where fools hide from the sunrise)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 202 | View Replies ]

To: Age of Reason
Isn't complexity really subjective?

Complexity does have strict measures, measures that are what is actually being used in thermodynamics, mathematics, and elsewhere, but very few people who are not mathematicians have any idea what the measure looks like and intuition about such things is almost always badly mistaken.

The most useful general measure of complexity for a finite observer -- a general subjective metric, in other words -- is something called predictive error complexity. Given some pattern, the PEC describes the mathematical limits of knowledge a particular algorithmically finite observer can have about the nature of the system that generated the pattern. This is an obscure concept that is only about ten years old, but it has quickly proven to be an extremely important unifying concept with broad and deep ramifications. Formal definitions of intelligence and measures of the same are based on it.

Kolmogorov complexity is a better known measure, but has little meaning in practice outside of machines that are infinite in space and rate (time). Theoretically very important, but you cannot engineer anything with it. PEC is the purely finite case equivalent.

389 posted on 12/28/2005 10:51:47 PM PST by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 202 | View Replies ]

To: Age of Reason
Isn't complexity really subjective?

Well, yeah. It is a concept. As such, the word used could be "fluffiness". The fact is, something discernable exists between a cloud of gas and a PC. And that something is more(different) than "color", "temperature", "mass", or "position".

558 posted on 12/29/2005 7:59:59 AM PST by AndrewC
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 202 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson