They come to you after the talk etc and excitedly say that whatever was in your talk proves their theory that, say, "time is a fractal", or "life is a fractal", ... of course never with any rigorous quantitative justification.
For those wondering:
Seems you've been experimenting with n-body simulations, that's cool, pretty much what I've been doing in my free time lately. Doing research into physics-based cellular automata and self-correcting systems. Anyway good luck, can't wait for the official release of Chaotica 2!
https://youtu.be/I6bHpJ2GV0Y I made a few videos, and have some more coming soon. Loads of fun.
I am exploring the physical implications of a philosophical concept I have been working on for a while which I refer to as Zodeasim, specifically I am trying to couple consciousness with the concept of system which is able to expend energy in order to exert a mind-to-world fit in the interest of the system's continued growth and stability. This is similar and complimentary to Friston's free energy principle [0].
That is, I am a conscious being precisely because at any time, I can use the energy within my system to act against the natural lowest energy state in which I exist. I can jump up, against gravity, or I can push against strong winds, or lift heavy objects. The very act of using energy in order to act against external forces is what separates me from the air I breathe and the ground upon which I stand, because it implies some kind of physical calculation which results in a particular orchestrated motion carried out by every atom in my body. The complexity of these physical calculations, and the senses which define the way in which these calculations take place, create an emergent layer which we perceive as consciousness.
The ability to perceive emotions is a powerful apparatus which greatly extends the capability of a system to perceive itself as a single entity which has certain needs which need to be met, so even if a bug also constantly consumes and expends energy in order to remain in a higher energy state, our perception of the world and of ourselves is radically different. This makes it difficult for us to agree upon what a "conscious experience" is, and if all forms of life are even "conscious". The Panpsychists believe that even a rock contains "consciousness", however my assertion is that only periodic systems with the ability to consume and expend energy in a directed fashion have any sort of "experience".
So naturally, I propose a higher order layer of consciousness, one that we cannot quite perceive since we are constituents of the layer from which it arises. I define any motion in the universe which is a result of a system changing energy states as a result of a physical computation to be a "kin". Any other kind of motion, like a rock falling from my hand to the ground, is just regular, abiotic motion. As an independent organism, my system is a culmination of a great deal many different kinds of kins, which can usually be broken down into simple rules, such as the activation potential of a neuron in my brain being a straight-forward non-linear response to the amount of voltage it is receiving from other neurons, as well as non-kins, such as a protein "walking" across a cell, a.k.a continuously "falling" into the lowest energy state. Thus I do not gain any conscious perception from such proteins, but I do gain it from the total network effect of all my brain's neuronal structures making simple calculations based on sensory input.
Thus the namesake of Zodeasim: Zoo = alive, idea = idea. I posit the existence of a form of "life" in the sense of a self-sustaining system capable of expelling energy in self-interest, which lasts far beyond the average human lifespan. We are able to encode into the universe "ideas" which have the capability to sustain themselves and, over time, either strengthen, evolve, or die out. Whereas we use our neurons to do our computations, an idea is able to carry out its computations across the entire noosphere [1] and it is within that system that the idea exists. An idea is able to gather intel from the senses of many different creatures, and make changes to its form which are suitable. An idea can travel through any medium. I can speak something to you and the idea can travel through the sound waves. I can write to you and let it travel through photons. But ultimately, it can use any channel available to communicate itself. Some ideas are so strong that, just by hearing them, they completely overtake your body for their purposes. I know it seems wonky but if you consider that we don't understand the nature of our own free will, such ideas don't necessarily have to be acting in their own "free will" in order to be conscious, so long as they are defined by their kins, which are able to change energy states in self-interest according to internal and external conditions.
This is what I am trying to experiment with n-body systems. The transfer of information between systems and the ability for systems to act in self-preservation in a more controlled and simplified environment. I hope I find some of the answers I seek.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy_principle#Free_ene... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy_principle#Perceptu...
I guess in some ways, socially, you can see a person embodying certain behaviors and values. And this can spread out in a fractal-like pattern.
Let's say this person is violent and sometimes shouts swear words at other people. Then we look at a family whose members say bad things about another family. Then we look at a village and see it having graffiti on its walls, bad words about another village. Same thing with sports fans. Same thing with countries, having a sort of trade war with each other. Let's now go the other way, perhaps the micro organisms in your body are having a conflict right now, spurting out this liquid and that gas and so on.
In some ways we can consider this to be a fractal.
Except, of course, we can't.
The term fractal is a well-defined mathematical object. There might be "self-similarity" there, but (just a fun fact) fractals are typically not self-similar, so it's not a very good litmus test.
If not fractal, then what word?
self-similar?
Per the Wikipedia article, they are not well defined. Also, self-similarity of some kind is one of the requirements. Is it completely wrong, or is this a debated topic in mathematics?
Let's look at one paragraph from Wikipedia.
> Images of the Mandelbrot set exhibit an elaborate and infinitely complicated boundary that reveals progressively ever-finer recursive detail at increasing magnifications. The "style" of this repeating detail depends on the region of the set being examined. The set's boundary also incorporates smaller versions of the main shape, so the fractal property of self-similarity applies to the entire set, and not just to its parts.
Let's consider the context of behavior again.
A person is an object of elaborate and infinitely complicated boundary. You may look at one instance of behavior at one time and you may see a certain value, like you see at a fractal at a particular zoom and configuration. In a sense, particular details at this magnification. A family of several people has an elaborate and infinitely complicated boundary and has details of it's own, in addition to the people within it. A village... A city... A country... A planet... An organ...
Let's look at Merriam-Webster: > any of various extremely irregular curves or shapes for which any suitably chosen part is similar in shape to a given larger or smaller part when magnified or reduced to the same size.
Do you see how it fits?
If we consider shape more literally, it may be something like, a person has an arm to grasp things. Let's take one function, picking an object up and bringing it nearer to you. A community has an appointed person to deliver things. A country has a company to do so. A world has a certain country which is the most efficient for transport. A cell has a protein or a function of its membrane to interact with some molecules to bring them closer.
Let's say on the second wall, instead of graffiti of violence, you see a message of love. You look around the wall and you see there is a person in love, a family sharing love, a town with flowers, a peaceful city.
For a wall with nothing, it could be a value in the set that corresponds to a particular color that represents it did not meet the threshold.
For the first sentence, my point was not to imply that a presence of one kind of behaviour leads to similar behaviour in related structures, but that at different scales, components of each structure may exhibit similar kinds of behaviour. E.g. a person can be considered to be violent or peaceful and so can a community. This could be from our nature of finding patterns in everything, though. Which I guess also leads to emergent properties anyway in some way, so I cannot add much more there.
Actually I am unsure if it fits the definition of emergence - "emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own" - but it would be hypocritical for me to argue on that note :D