Monday, July 07, 2014

information-based fitness and the emergence of criticality in living systems


pnas |  Empirical evidence suggesting that living systems might operate in the vicinity of critical points, at the borderline between order and disorder, has proliferated in recent years, with examples ranging from spontaneous brain activity to flock dynamics. However, a well-founded theory for understanding how and why interacting living systems could dynamically tune themselves to be poised in the vicinity of a critical point is lacking. Here we use tools from statistical mechanics and information theory to show that complex adaptive or evolutionary systems can be much more efficient in coping with diverse heterogeneous environmental conditions when operating at criticality. Analytical as well as computational evolutionary and adaptive models vividly illustrate that a community of such systems dynamically self-tunes close to a critical state as the complexity of the environment increases while they remain noncritical for simple and predictable environments. A more robust convergence to criticality emerges in coevolutionary and coadaptive setups in which individuals aim to represent other agents in the community with fidelity, thereby creating a collective critical ensemble and providing the best possible tradeoff between accuracy and flexibility. Our approach provides a parsimonious and general mechanism for the emergence of critical-like behavior in living systems needing to cope with complex environments or trying to efficiently coordinate themselves as an ensemble.

14 comments:

Dale Asberry said...

Exactly my thinking here: http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2014/01/any-given-hieroglyphic-symbol-became.html

Dale Asberry said...

That was exactly my thinking with this: http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2014/01/any-given-hieroglyphic-symbol-became.html

arnach said...

Six months is too soon to draw any useful (or even remotely lasting) conclusion, IMO.

CNu said...

What do you see out the corner of your eye that's at odds with the glowing assessment in the article?

Vic78 said...

Ms Dowd is still high.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/maureen-dowd-who-do-we-think-we-are.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=2&referrer=

Constructive_Feedback said...

[quote]Bro CFeed - what is wrong with proposing an economic solution which is tried and true in establishing governance? [/quote]


Brother Ed:


FOCUS.


Nothing that you said is 'Mutually Exclusive' to what I've said.


MY FOCUS, however, is the CORRUPTION that FRONTS as "A Black Development Agenda".
I WILL NEVER put myself in a situation where the CONFIDENCE MEN who are HARVESTING THE MINERALS from under the feet of the "Americanized Negro" promote themselves as APPRAISER of MY "Plan". ( I an not saying that you or CNu fit this mold)


I will NEVER accept their call for "Black Unity" but ONLY accept commonly agreed upon REGULATION of the "Black Community Consciousness Nucleus" where I and the "Embedded Confidence Men" agree to NEVER molest or misappropriate the 'Development Resources' (and Integrity) of the Black Community for use within ANOTHER DOMAIN (such as American Political Opportunism).


Do you think a Charlatan like Al Sharpton will ever agree to YIELD his unchecked access to this sacred core IF it means that he has to UNILATERALLY yield his POWER that his has obtained through PROPAGANDA and "Keep The Enemy On Trial So You Don't Indict Your Friends In Power"?


This is an INSTITUTIONAL PROBLEM and not an ECONOMIC problem.
The INSTITUTIONAL INTEGRITY of "our struggle" is molested by those who see us as 'Warm Bodies' who will VOTE FOR OUR SALVATION in the American elections.


Per your reference to "The Company Town" - you only need to look at the "Civil Rights Pharisees' as they operate in Atlanta. THEIR selective choice of "Speaking Truth To Power" and WHO THEY PROTEST AGAINST is akin to "WHITE RACIST POLICEMEN" except that we are all conditioned to believe that this MAN MADE American government has some "Magical Power" because they took an "oath" - while this ragtag group of 'Embedded Confidence Men' are free from such "official" scrutiny because they are not "Officers Of The Law".


Unfortunately the damning results upon the Black community are the same as if they were "authorities".

These corrupt "company towns" had to ultimately yield to "PUBLIC POLICY" imposed by "the Government".


For the Black community governance - "The government" is enjoying the FRAUD that takes place. It will need to be a GRASS ROOTS effort of people who are "Sick and Tired Of Being Sick and Tired" who choose to REGULATE the EMBEDDED CONFIDENCE MEN because they see them as EQUAL TO THE CORRUPT WHITE POLITICIANS yet more capable of USING Black people because they operate from an INSIDE POSITION - close to the internal organs and not protected by the skeletal system.

arnach said...

Bits and pieces, here and there, starting with the fact that no one has been through this transition and, as Maureen Dowd learned the hard way, this is a whole new world in terms of potency and effect. She was an idiot, and she deserves the fact that her self-inflicted overdose experience is now called "pulling a Dowd" out here. The Denver Post (with their 'the Cannabist' thing) and others could and should have provided a guide for first-time (or not-in-a-long time) cannabis users to give them a clue what they were about to step into, and not one based on the consumption profile of the people that they hired to do their "reporting." The dose/response/tolerance curve of this stuff is SO big (perhaps six or more orders of magnitude) that people are bound to screw up like Dowd and others have done. Anyone over 21 can walk into a store and buy weed that is SO much stonger than anything anyone ever saw 20 years or more ago (particularly when the dab nail gets heated up) and yet no one seems to be pointing that out, which means that there will be more bad stories to trumpet on the news, Charlotte Figi's experience to the contrary notwithstanding.

The long and short of it is that, due to the disservice done by cannabis having been so thoroughly illegal that, for the most part, no one knows anything about how and what it does except anecdotally. That will change over time, starting here in the Rocky Mountain High state of Colorado, where state funding is helping researchers begin to peel back the veil. PRR incoming, finally. But not before some people will have permanently stupified and/or injured or killed themsleves (probably indirectly, i.e. due to impaired judgment). There will be negative public health consequences; hopefully they will not be too large.

Ed Dunn said...

So once again we reach this point - yes, there are liberal agents working to keep African-Americans focus on the black vote instead of institutional development. But we reach this point of argument /discussion and your response become a circular loop of confidence men, corruption and so on.

How do we break this circular loop and why is the focus to keep discussing to this point of agents and not how to move beyond them marginalization/neutralization? Do the black community need to buy "conscious" books and learn their history? Do politicians need to stop collecting tribute and bribe money?


No, the only solution is to disrupt and now that we here in this discussion and circular loop - how do we disrupt? I would like to hear your disruption strategy now that we are at this juncture.

umbrarchist said...

Look at how much money there is to be made on talking about how bad the drug problem is. Consider how much unemployment would be caused by stopping the drug war. What do you mean the tax money would be spent somewhere else? But consider the economic dislocation in the mean time.

Vic78 said...

So we wait for Jesus to come back? It sounds like you have this in the world but not of it disposition. "Fuck this system it's going to hell anyway." What do you do before the great day comes? Are you satisfied preaching?

Vic78 said...

Damn, you called him Hon. Bro. That's cold, man.

Constructive_Feedback said...

MY WORD, Brother CNu. Just imagine if you had a "cricket" that was PROPORTIONALLY the size of the more successful "Black Mineral Harvesting Operation" that is going on today but you seem to be less offended over?

You'd have a beast that is the scale to take a chomp out of the Earth, thus disrupting the entire global economy as men - White, Black, Asian, Indian and Hispanic focus on the more fundamental economic choice SURVIVAL from the earth tremors and flooding that the super sized Gryllus assimilis has rendered - akin to the asteroids that had previously disrupted life on earth.


I do give you credit for being aware of the brilliant insight of George S Schuyler

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dV6jTO9Au-s/UPMlgSst5CI/AAAAAAAAifU/tq3ZyiPYbjw/s1600/Reaper.png

Vic78 said...

You act as if nobody has read your blog before. This is all you have. You're the first person to "call me out" after months of posting. You're full of shit. It's clear as day to me and anyone who reads our exchanges. This is me being nice.

Okay, I'll take the bait. Point number 1: I was talking about the Party's failures with a group that is loyal to them. Point 2: this is more bullshit, I bring up Black folks' foolishness with their votes quite a bit. You just feel like typing your blog post. Point 3: I have talked about development; I even laid out a practical way to manipulate the system now. I just didn't say much about it in this section. Sometimes I feel like talking about other shit. When have you even mentioned practical application of your schemes? Oh yeah, I remember you said you were content just putting your message out after being asked about practical application. I did say you were full of shit(repetition is the key to education).

As a response to your attempted character assassination I'll be nice right now. If you persist I'll resort to humor. You have given me a lot to work with.

John Kurman said...

Considering how people handle the.two most brain-bendingest drugs out there - alcohol and tobacco - I don't worry overmuch about the casualty rates or experiences of stupid.drunken cheerleaders like Dowd.

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