> At 02:46 PM 2/1/97 -0800, Tim Rhodes wrote:
> >
[CLIP]
> >> Memetic structures arise from self-aware interactions (culture)
> >
> >Or perhaps: Memetic structures arise from social interactions. (culture)
> >
> >> And....?
> >
> >Well, this is were I stumble. Is the next step:
> >* Metasystem transition structures arise from memetic interactions (???)
> >
> >And if so, is this too self-referential to take us to the next step. What
> >arises from transition theory interactions? Can we usefully talk about
> >the next stage using the terminology of the previous stage?
> >
> >I don't know the answer.
> >
>
> Me either.
>
> I don't know about self-referential; maybe just "goes without saying".
> I think it would be extremely difficult. The crux of it is the limit
> imposed by the intractible nature of predictions of complex systems
> implicit in the fact that the nature of emergent systems are not
> reflected in the nature of any underlying component. That doesn't
> mean it would be impossible in theory (depending on the number and
> nature of the variables, and the simulation time, etc), just nearly
> impossible in practice. That's where intuition comes in - arriving
> (jumping?) at conclusions based on incomplete information. The sticky
> part is making the right conclusions, and knowing why they're right ;-)
The above [metasystems arising from memetic interactions] *isn't*
necessarily self-referential, any more than a recursive program [say, to
work an instance of the Tower of Hanoi problem] is.
The atomic events and recursive definitions haven't been defined. [And
may take much research *to* define.] But the whole concept could be
well-defined, with effort.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
/
/ Kenneth Boyd
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////