ONT Re: Information = Comprehension x Extension -- Discussion
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ICE. Discussion Note 12
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HT = Hugh Trenchard
hugh,
the span of my attention is so circumscribed at the moment
that i will need to take your message one chunk at a time.
HT: My view is that in looking for analogues of brain consciousness in
a complex system such as the human socio-economic system, we should
look for equivalencies of complexity between the respective systems.
My suggestion is that if we can identify systems which exhibit
interactive complexity equivalent to that of the human brain,
then such systems may be said to exhibit similar degrees of
consciousness.
things like complexity, diversity, entropy, information, uncertainty, variety
are 2-edged swords. up to a point they attract our interest, and we tend to
attribute special virtues to systems that generate moderate amounts of their
positive features -- but only up to a point -- and after that, too much of
a 2-edged thing becomes a positively bad thing, and the positive side of
information becomes indistinguishable from chaos. indeed, it is likely
that the downside of complexity precedes its upside in the order of
life's evolution, since it apparently takes a long time to evolve
a tolerance for even small amounts of novelty in the environment.
of course, this refletion on the 2-edged character of complexity and its kin
is just another way of stating the "law of requisite variety" (LORV) that we
get from ashby and classical cybernetics, to wit, that organisms are forced
to take complexity into their bosoms, as it were, in order to counter the
sundry disturbances from the environment that threaten to sunder them
from their preferential forms of life.
jon awbrey
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http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/mighty/history.html
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