The Puzzle of How Large-Scale Order Emerges in Complex Systems | Hacker News Reader

The Puzzle of How Large-Scale Order Emerges in Complex Systems

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138 pointsachristmascarl25 comments

If you want to read more about how this works, I'd recommend Stuart Kauffman's "The origins of order".

Be warned, it's not light reading, it's basically his PhD student's and his research, written up as a book, it is engaging though, and he leads you gently through the concepts - you do have to master one chapter before getting to the next though. Having said that, it does show how chaos and order interact with each other, and he then leads into the mechanism of evolution along the boundary of that interaction.

Spoiler: the boundary is where all the interesting stuff happens...

https://www.amazon.com/Sync-Order-Emerges-Universe-Nature/dp... is also a good read on it. Perhaps not as technical as the above but has some interesting history on the discovery of these interesting mathematical truths.

This is the book I'm currently reading.

I guess that's not so interesting a comment, but it's an old and pretty niche book so I'm surprised to see it mentioned on HN today.

Anyway I agree Strogatz does a good job. He's both telling a good story and he also explains more of the mathematical ideas than a lot of books for popular audiences. He also has a podcast that's worth checking out.

I read it around when it came out and still remember it well - it's a good book! And Strogatz is excellent among popular mathematics writers.

For anyone curious, this boundary is referred to as the edge of chaos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos

Just ordered, thanks

I haven't read a book in at least 3 years

The author of the article, Philip Ball, wrote an excellent book on order almost 20 years ago: Critical Mass https://philipball.co.uk/critical-mass-how-one-thing-leads-t... He also wrote many other interesting books but "Critical Mass" really reviews a lot concerning emerging phenomena in complex systems from the point of view of a condensed matter physicist.

Order emerges in simple systems as well. Turing was fascinated by the emergent order of bi-stable chemical reactions, the moving wave-fronts of reaction inside a bounded space.

Not that there aren't puzzles a-plenty here. Why things like energy minimisation make water freeze in complex regular shapes which presents as "how do the limbs know to take that pattern" delight me. I kind of felt ok with "just because" but I realize that's not really an answer.

This is a topic of interest of mine, and something I've spent a lot of time experimentally investigating.

I can add more detail later, but for now, see https://slackermanz.com/understanding-multiple-neighborhood-...

Do you have any experience with asynchronous local updates, rather than a global synchronized time step?

     Crutchfield introduced a conceptual device called the epsilon (ε) machine. This device can exist in some finite set of states and can predict its own future state on the basis of its current one. It’s a bit like an elevator, said Rosas; an input to the machine, like pressing a button, will cause the machine to transition to a different state (floor) in a deterministic way that depends on its past history—namely, its current floor, whether it’s going up or down, and which other buttons were pressed already.

How is this different from a turing machine?

Is "emergence" even a useful concept? I personally don't see how it's distinct from simple consequence. Sure, you may not be able to predict certain more distant outcomes of a system from the set of initial conditions, but the immediate next state is always predictable from the present state. It seems "emergence" is not a property of phenomena but merely a statement of our (in)ability to predict them at a distance.

Emergence means to me at least that new properties at a more macro scale can be used to describe the new phenomenon.

Examples: principles of DNA information processing emerges from lower principles in chemistry.

Many great recommendations in the comments here about on emergent order in complex systems -- does anyone have recommendations for reading about how such systems de-organize?

One theory is, they eventually invent nukes and go at it.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Perhaps "Six Sources of Collapse" [1] may be what you're looking for.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Robert_Hadlock

Emergent behaviors are something it seems none of the tech-bros attempting to re-invent things from first principles ever account for in their plans. You can't just reason out complex systems because emergent things cannot be predicted that way.

The reason your carefully reasoned worldview isn't correct/doesn't match with reality is because of emergent behaviors.

When do interesting new non-obvious theorems/patterns appear as interesting assumptions are added in math?

That might be a related problem, or the more general version of the problem.

This has been a topic of interest for me for almost a decade so far.

See also: non-linear dynamics, dynamical systems

The study of Complexity in the US Sciences is fairly recent, with the notable kickoff of the Santa Fe Institute [1]. They have all the resources there, from classes to scientific conferences.

A few book recommendations I've picked up over the years:

- Lewin, Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos [2] (recommended for a gentle introduction with history)

- Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science [3]

- Holland, Emergence: From Chaos To Order [4]

- Holland, Signals and Boundaries: Building Blocks for Complex Adaptive Systems [5]

- Holland, Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity [6] (unread but part of the series)

- Miller, Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life [7]

- Strogatz, Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: With Applications To Physics, Biology, Chemistry, And Engineering [11] (edit: forgot i had this on my desk)

Also a shoutout to Stephen Wolfram, reading one of his articles [8] about underlying structures while stuck at an airport proved to be a pivotal moment in my life.

- Wolfram's New Kind of Science, as an exploration of simple rules computed to the point of complex behavior. [9]

- Wolfram's Physics Project, a later iteration on NKS ideas with some significant and thorough publication of work. [10]

Links:

[1] https://www.santafe.edu/

[2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226476553

[3] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143113453

[4] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738201421

[5] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262525933

[6] https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Order-Adaptation-Builds-Comple...

[7] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691127026

[8] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/what-is-spacetim...

[9] https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/

[10] https://wolframphysics.org/

[11] https://www.amazon.com/Nonlinear-Dynamics-Chaos-Applications...

About 30 years for me. As my username might suggest.

To this already excellent list I would add that the Santa Fe Institute (mentioned above) is continually putting out new work and papers on this topic.

Examples here: https://www.santafe.edu/research/results/books

Complex, nonlinear - possibly adaptive - systems with or without convergence but emergence, and structure!

Convergence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergence > STEM

Emergence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

Stability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability

Stability theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_theory

Glossary of systems theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_systems_theory

I never understood why so many hate "New Kind of Science"... Just ordered it and will form my own opinion.

Thanks for posting these resources.

I've been meaning to look more deeply into the field. I read a popular science book on it in the past and always desired to ascertain a more formal understanding.

The Nature of Order really addresses this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_Order

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