Tags / 17 quotes from 10 sources
#complexity
Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart)
Grabbing a coffee cup is harder than chess
Yale University AI researcher and philosopher Drew McDermott points out that current AI systems tend to work in narrow domains and outperform humans only in areas such as chess and numerical computation, where there are clear ground rules. He says, “A robot that can walk into a…
Big Data Lambda Architecture
Big data lambda architecture
Let’s go through the diagram piece by piece. * (A)—All new data is sent to both the batch layer and the speed layer. In the batch layer, new data is appended to the master dataset. In the speed layer, the new data is consumed to do incremental updates of the realtime views. *…
Complex system - Wikipedia
Networks and complex systems
The interacting components of a complex system form a network, which is a collection of discrete objects and relationships between them, usually depicted as a graph of vertices connected by edges. Networks can describe the relationships between individuals within an…
Emergent behaviors and properties
Another common feature of complex systems is the presence of emergent behaviors and properties: these are traits of a system that are not apparent from its components in isolation but which result from the interactions, dependencies, or relationships they form when placed…
Systems that exhibit complexity
For a system to exhibit complexity means that the systems' behaviors cannot be easily inferred from its properties. Any modeling approach that ignores such difficulties or characterizes them as noise will necessarily produce models that are neither accurate nor useful. As yet…
Nonlinear behavior
Complex systems often have nonlinear behavior, meaning they may respond in different ways to the same input depending on their state or context. In mathematics and physics, nonlinearity describes systems in which a change in the size of the input does not produce a proportional…
Epigrams On Programming
Simplicity and complexity
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
Seek symmetry everywhere
Symmetry is a complexity reducing concept (co-routines include sub-routines); seek it everywhere.
Introducing Artificial Intelligence (Henry Brighton and Howard Selina)
Tic-tac-toe versus chess
The space of all possible tic-tac-toe games is negligible in comparison to the number of possible games of chess. One of the world’s greatest chess masters, Garry Kasparov, perfectly expressed the difficulty.
The chess game tree won't fit in the universe
With chess, looking ahead even a moderate number of moves becomes intractable – the number of combinations becomes too large to contemplate. The game tree for chess cannot fit into the universe, let alone a computer’s memory.
Life, The Multiverse And Everything: An Introduction To The Ideas Of Humberto Maturana Interpreting Maturana
Circularity:
This principle we may derive from Maturana's emphasis on structure-determinism, and on the circularity and recursiveness of all organizationally closed systems. This moves us away from simplistic linear cause-effect sequences and towards the generation and appreciation of…
Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle)
Big problems decompose into simple ones
Yet another important idea, already implicit in what I have said, is that big complex problems can be broken down into little simple problems, which can be broken down into even simpler problems, until we reach the level of ultimate simplicity. Doing multiplication with several…
The Cidoc Conceptual Reference Module: An Ontological Approach To Semantic Interoperability Of Metadata
Necessity of data structure diversity
Let us regard here data structures for long-term storing of data, as database schemata, but also tagging schemes like SGML/XML DTD, RDF Schema, and data structures designed as fill-in forms guiding users to a complete and consistent documentation [...] These structures are…
The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian)
Nested hierarchies
there is another kind of hierarchy: one which is nested. Nested hierarchies can be visualised as concentric circles, with the smallest circle in the centre at the ‘bottom’ of the hierarchy and the largest, outer circle at the ‘top’ of it. To say such a hierarchy is nested is…
Living things as hierarchies without central control
All living things, says Feinberg, are nested hierarchies. ‘At the lower levels of an organism are organelles that are combined to produce single cells that are in turn organised to produce tissues, which are then combined to produce organs that are ultimately organised to…
Fragility is the strength of the self
So what could explain the strange combination of fragility and robustness that characterises the self? The answer is perhaps that the fragility is the strength. A pearl may be hard and distinct, but smash it and it’s utterly destroyed. A composite or amalgam, on the other hand…
Thesauri Of Historical Periods – A Proposal For Standardization.
Cultural periods are controversial
The archeological notion of cultural periods is based on cultural semantics. Chronological systems based on such periods are notoriously controversial, due to the complexity of the relationships between contextual phenomena and spatiotemporal values. Nevertheless, they play a…