>> I agree with "mutual interaction of the components" leading to a "previously
>> non-existant order" being perceptible in the "system as a whole". I've just
>> got reservations about the necessity of the mutation condition.
>
>I have reservations about "previously non-existent order": I'd prefer
>"previously unobserved order" [Never mind that this isn't Quantum
>Politically Correct].
Well, sorry. But you can't have it. I'm talking about, just prior [if we're
talking about time as in chronological time here] to DNA appearing on the
scene, there being less order in the system than there was 1 billion years
later, when there WAS genetic life. Sorry. It is of course because the Earth
receives energy from the sun, it's not anti-entropic, but there IS an
increase in the orderdness of the system. If I said to you "make the world
less ordered", it'd be more likely to tend towards a soup of chemicals than
towards a keenly balanced meta-ecosystem. More order!
>> >A more accurate electronic analogy for a metasystem transition would
>> >be an oscillator. Connect random transistors and electrical power in
>> >various configurations, and nothing much happens (the configuration
>> >burns out some components, or the system is driven into a steady-state
>> >saturation or cutoff mode; nothing remarkable. But make one or two minor
>> >changes, so that the components are connected in a /positive/ feedback
>> >configuration, and so that the gain of the system is greater than
>> >unity, and something remarkable does happen. The whole system begins
>> >to oscillate at a frequency determined by the amount of inductance,
>> >capacitance and resistance in the system. A property emerges, a complex
>> >behaviour that is completely dependant upon, but whose existence or
>> >behaviour is not implicit in, the nature of any single component.
>>
>> Lovely. Feedback's one of my favourite things. I think that severe
>> schizophrenia looks quite like cognitive feedback... with ideas setting off
>> similar ideas to the extent that the patient can't react effectively to
>> their surroundings. Is there a semi-analogy here to an information-choked
Net?
>
>I wouldn't know *that*. You're describing the basics for a proof of "All
>democracies are fundamentally irrational at large scales."
Well, .. erm.... GREAT! Cool! I never realised I was, but cool, because
that's just what I believe.
Dave Pape
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