Registered: Oct 2007
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Gershom Zajicek M.D. you are most so right, Darwin was a revelation indeed.
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A thing well said will be wit in all languages.~John Dryden
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Registered: Feb 2004
Posts: 152

Recently in his blog, Wolfram mentioned a new interpretation of space and time. http://blog.wolfram.com/2007/09/my_...unive.html#more

Let’s first examine two current interpretations of space.
“Normally in physics one thinks of space as some kind of background, in which matter and particles and so on separately exist” writes Wolfram. Some regard space as a container in which events happen, that existed even before the Big Bang, and we evolve in it. Poetically speaking, the Big Bang might be regarded as a fertilization of a primordial uterus.

Mandelbrot draw our attention to the possibility that space might be a fractal with its own geometry. Now Wolfram proposes that space might be a network and cautions us not “to imagine that the points in the network have actual defined positions in some background space.” He then adds “What's interesting, though, is that when a network gets big enough, its combinatorics alone can in effect define a correspondence with ordinary space.”

What about time? :” Current physics tends to say that time is just like space--just another dimension.” In other words time is a container extension into a higher dimension. Such a simple extension seems not to work in a fractal space. How then define time in a fractal space? I leave it to you as an exercise in a thought experiment.

Wolfram has a another suggestion. Suppose that space is a network of programs. “In programs, moving in space might correspond to looking at another part of the data, but moving in time requires executing the program.” “For networks, pretty much the most general kind of program is one that takes a piece of network with one structure, and replaces it with another.”

“But now we're deriving something like that for the universe: we're saying that these networks with almost nothing "built in" somehow generate behavior that corresponds to gravitation in physics.” This is Wolfram’s space. Actually it is a space-time. The programs are the space while each executes its own time. Similar space-times are inherent in life.
http://www.what-is-cancer.com/papers/ca/ca67.htm

Wolfram: ”Special and general relativity are things that physicists normally assume are built into theories right from the beginning, almost as axioms (or at least, in the case of string theory, as consistency conditions). The idea that they could emerge from something more fundamental is pretty alien” Yet Wolfram believes that ”. . .our whole universe and its complete history could be generated just by starting with some particular small network, then applying definite rules.” I hope that he does not mean our physical universe but the way we interpret it.

More on Wolfram’s biological thinking
http://www.what-is-cancer.com/paper...lexityFrame.htm

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Registered: Feb 2004
Posts: 152

Change is the fundamental attribute of nature. Life is a process which interprets change. In order to do so life has to sense change and remember the previous change. Sensing change triggers movement, either toward change or away from it. The three attributes, sensing , memory and movement, distinguish life from non life (but do not define life). While in the physical world, movement has to have a cause, movement of a life form is triggered. It is triggered by change.

The decision whether to move toward a change, or away from it, is handled by an entity, which controls the change in the living being, called here Wisdom of the Body (WOB). Every life form is bounded (covered with a membrane) and distinguishes between its personal change (self) and the change which it faces. Unlike inorganic matter, life’s wisdom (WOB) is inherited.

http://www.what-is-cancer.com/paper...lexityFrame.htm

Evolution is an ongoing improvement of WOB to handle change. (Survival of the fittest WOB).
At a certain stage of evolution, life entities acquired a mind, which assists WOB to interpret change.

The human mind broadened its change interpretation capabilities by creating religion, science and philosophy. While the three disciplines claim to understand reality, they are no more than means to interpret change.

Last edited by Gershom Zajicek M.D. on 03-26-2008 at 09:39 AM

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Registered: Feb 2004
Posts: 152

RIEDENSCHNEIDER (Lawyer)

...They got this guy, in Germany.
Fritz something-or-other. Or is it.
Maybe it's Werner. Anyway, he's got
this theory, you wanna test something,
you know, scientifically--how the
planets go round the sun, what
sunspots are made of, why the water
comes out of the tap--well, you gotta
look at it. But sometimes, you look
at it, your looking *changes* it. Ya
can't know the reality of what
happened, or what *would've* happened
if you hadden a stuck in your goddamn
schnozz. So there *is* no 'what
happened.' Not in any sense that we
can grasp with our puny minds. Because
our minds... out minds get in the
way. Looking at something changes
it. They call it the 'Uncertainty
Principle.' Sure, it sounds screwy,
but even Einstein says the guy's on
to something.

RIEDENSCHNEIDER

...Reasonable doubt. I'm sayin',
sometimes, the more you look, the
less you really know. It's a fact. A
proved fact. In a way, it's the only
fact there is. This heinie even wrote
it out in numbers.

The Man Who Wasn't There
by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
http://www.answers.com/topic/the-ma...t=entertainment

v. Change http://www.what-is-cancer.com/paper...xity/change.htm

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Registered: Feb 2004
Posts: 152

My two threads in this discussion group examined two issues, complexity and randomness. http://www.what-is-cancer.com/paper...s/compFrame.htm
Complex systems studied in physics and mathematics differ inherently from the one I am studying, which is life. Among other I pointed out, that statistics which are appropriate for studying physical (“dead”) phenomena are inadequate for the study of life, since based on the concept of randomness. I therefore called them machine statistics. Unfortunately Medicine relies entirely on machine statistics, contributing to medicine induced diseases, known as iatrogenic.

The sub prime crisis offers a unique opportunity to examine these two issues in real life. Economy is a kind of a living system since being driven by humans, How come that it nearly collapsed, while Life is extremely robust? Take for instance microbe societies which paved the way for our appearance on earth, and support our life even today. These complex systems are extremely robust. What is their secret? And might it be applied to stabilize economy? In other words what ingredients of life are missing in the living complex system called economy?

We may thus analyze the economical crisis from two perspectives, physical and biological. Economy is dominated by reductionism, and its linear or quasi-linear models failed to predict the current crisis. Their inadequacy was apparent to Benoit Mandelbrot who suggested that economy might be understood better in the realm of fractal geometry. Yet the difficulty is deeper as Nassim Taleb (“The Black Swan”) wrote:

“Statistical and applied probabilistic knowledge is the core of knowledge;
statistics is what tells you if something is true, false, or merely anecdotal; it
is the "logic of science"; it is the instrument of risk-taking; it is the applied
tools of epistemology; you can't be a modern intellectual and not think
probabilistically—but... let's not be suckers. The problem is much more
complicated than it seems to the casual, mechanistic user who picked it up
in graduate school. Statistics can fool you. In fact it is fooling your
government right now. It can even bankrupt the system (let's face it: use of
probabilistic methods for the estimation of risks did just blow up the banking
system)”.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/tal...eb08_index.html

Why should this marvelous tool fool us? First of all since being based on the concept of randomness, which does not exist as such in nature. It is a concept which physics applies for examining nature. It is extremely successful for understanding “dead” nature, like the solar system, and fails when applied to economy which vibrates with life.

So what is the secret of life that economy lacks?
To be continued

Last edited by Gershom Zajicek M.D. on 09-13-2009 at 07:47 AM

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Registered: Feb 2004
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The stock market is regarded here as a living system, and since life is endowed with intelligence, what might be a stock market intelligence? But first, what do we mean by intelligence?

An amoeba swims in a pond and interacts with it. It samples mass and energy and responds with action. During this interaction amoeba distinguished between pleasant and unpleasant input, which will trigger its immediate action response, or reaction. It is attracted to pleasant experience, and escapes the unpleasant. Its decision about its immediate reaction is influence by its past experience (knowledge) which is stored in its structure. Amoeba's memory is embodied.

Amoeba interaction may be represented as a repeating cycle. Input → judgment → action → input. . . Which is regarded here as amoeba intelligence.

As life on earth evolved single cells aggregated into complex organisms and operate in ascending hierarchies of complexity. Our body is made of cells which aggregate into tissues, which form organs and so on. Each hierarchy is endowed with its own intelligence operating like in the amoeba. Entities like red blood cell, neuron, liver or brain have their own intelligences.

The stock market differs from the human organism. It has only two hierarchies, the trader, or stock market unit, and the stock market it self. Each with its own intelligence. We hope to understand the trader, however, what is the intelligence of the system? The answer may be found in a living entity called the swarm.
http://www.what-is-cancer.com/paper...lexityFrame.htm

Swarm describes a behavior of an aggregate of animals of similar size and body orientation, generally moving en mass in the same direction. The term can be applied to fish, insects, birds, various microorganisms such as bacteria, and people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm

Watch the amazing behavior the swarm of European starlings http://www.fazed.org/video/view/?id=336 The swarm flies as a unit. Despite its rapid turns birds always remain together. You wonder who controls its decision where and when to turn? Its behavior is a manifestation of a swarm intelligence which obeys the same rules of the amoeba. Its unraveling requires the understanding of its input, knowledge and judgment. Swarm knowledge (memory) is embodied in its structure. Its judgment is based on the same pleasure principle of the amoeba. Yet what is its input? Without its specification we cannot define swarm intelligence.

The stock market is also a swarm. Its input are economical impulses, traders, etc. Its reaction (behavior) is manifested by indexes, like Dow-Jones industrial average, S&P 500, or NASDAQ. Their change (movement) is analogous to the flock behavior which seems to turn erratically up and down. Its recent crash indicates that unlike the bird swarm, stock market knowledge is still imperfect. Yet being a living system, the stock market will gradually evolve to stable strange attractor.

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Registered: Feb 2004
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Recently my account was blocked by Google. This incident turned my attention to this sociological entity (a complex system) with some interesting insights which I like to share with you.

In order to understand sociological entities, I regard them as living things. I am quite cognizant with human and animal life. So in order to understand entities like , state, economy, or stock market, I compare them with the living things that I know better. For instance I might ask, does stock market have diseases like a human? If so might I understand them better by comparing them with human disease?

This kind of reasoning I apply now to Google. It grew to become a mighty “animal”. However all animals are controlled by other animals, or the environment and the question is who controls Google? Hitherto the state was our mightiest animal, and it took centuries to implement internal controls to prevent the state from harming us, like in the case of a dictatorship. However our society did not provide any effective means to control Google. Obviously Google still behaves well yet this may change since Google is a living entity thriving for power.

Google provides important services. However once you accept the condition which Google imposes upon you, you willingly accept its control. In the case of Gmail this may seem harmless, yet what about cloud computing? I don’t think that any serious company will use this service, since it involves a submission to the control of an uncontrolled giant.

Biological history taught that the fate of giant animals was not so good. To my mind this will also be the fate of Google. Its rapid growth was possible since the sociological environment was surprised by its ascent. Sooner or later Google may split into smaller entities, which will compete among themselves and so control each other.

Recently we witnessed another phenomenon which might harm Google. I mean the Chinese animal which did not like what Google did within its boundaries. Google made us believe that it left China for ethical (democratic) reasons. The real reason to my mind was that Google was really threatened and had to escape from China. It ran for its life. I am now looking around to understand better this threat, since soon it will pop up from an unexpected direction.

Do you have an idea what this threat might be?

http://www.what-is-cancer.com/paper...s/compFrame.htm

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Thanks.Now I have a better understanding about complexity of a living cell.

Daniel,

UNIQUE ARTICLE WIZARD

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