Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - A philosophical investigation into the nature and role of intelligence in the cosmos

12-20-2004, 05:54 AM

Observations have shown that systems can be described in terms of a 'phase-space' where each parameter of the system is laid out as a dimensional axis, and the values of each parameter are used to plot a point in the multi-dimensional phase-space.
When systems are plotted like this, they can easily be described as falling into 3 main classes.
1) Systems that rapidly expand out from their initial parameters - explosions, chain-reactions etc
2) Systems that converge onto a single stable point, or attractor - water flowing down a hill, or a marble at the bottom of a bowl, a spring-wound clock that is allowed to run without re-winding the mechanism.
3) Systems that fall into a stable pattern of motion, normally around one or more attractors

Of the systems that fall into type 3 there are two subtypes
a) Ones that show stable, periodic patterns of behavior
b) Ones that show chaotic yet stable, a periodic patterns of behavior

It is of course this second type that is most interesting and most often found in nature.

Imagine a pile of sand. A grain is dropped onto the top of the pile at a regular interval. Each grain will hit the top of the pile and find a place to rest. If enough grains of sand pile up in some part of the pile, eventually, the pile will give way and a mini-landslide will occur. How does this happen?

The system is organising itself to exist at the edge of chaos. i.e. the system, in attempting to reach an equilibrium must reach a point in its phase space where it's balanced between two opposing attractors. Any further input into the system will cause it to change from a stable state (where each grain of sand is unaffected by the next) to a catastrophic one (where a new grain of sand will disrupt the position of thousands of others) - the system self-organises.

Now this is a bit of a conceptual jump, but if the sand-pile can be thought of as a system of inter-communicating agents (albeit communicating in a very simple manner) it isn't too difficult to take the same set of ideas and transfer them into many other situations. Planets coalescing from dust fragments, self-catalyzing reactions sweeping across planet-surfaces, creating ever more complex chemicals. At some point a group of chemicals becomes complex enough to catalyze a reaction that reproduces themselves from commonly found carbon and oxygen molecules. The set of chemicals - probably a basic set of amino acids - with no or little competition spreads across the face of the earth. Ever more complex forms develop. Why? Because these are all examples of type 3b systems - self-creating, self-organising, self-complexing systems.

I can see the same process being responsible for everything we see around us. Nature seems to create and develop itself. That appears to be what nature does. One of the more recent developments is what we call intelligence. Whether it resides in the bacterium that swims up a chemical gradient towards food, or a computer programmer laying out a set of abstract structures and parameters for a machine to work within - it is matter behaving in complex ways, temporarily (or not) flouting the second law of thermodynamics.

On one hand I can agree with Art and say that intelligence is related, indeed flows from this universal process of self-creation and self-expansion into new realms of complexity. However, I'm uncomfortable in labeling this process as intelligence - it makes it sound like intelligence is not just a random side-effect, as if nature knew what it was going to build from the start. It is part and parcel of the same thing, but it is that thing that I see as being fundamental and intelligence emerging from it, not the other way around.

I'd like to think that the answers to the deepest questions lie in the reasons why the universe seems to prefer these 3b systems, but then if it didn't we wouldn't be able to argue the point here on TFP. The alternatives are a system that explodes itself out of existence, or dies away into nothing, or one that is in a state of perpetual stagnation. A 3b type system is the only one that is capable of keeping itself in existence while generating within it a froth of further complexity. What if we look back to the origins of the universe with this model of existence? What if space, time and matter itself all originate from this same process of auto-increasing complexity?

What if matter evolved from some unbalance in the fundamental fabric of the universe? It would mean that everything we know might spring from this same process of self-complication. It would be pleasing to my mind anyway to think that there is some single, universal process or law that is responsible for life, the universe and everything. All that is required for it to be possible is for there to be some initial imbalance that allowed for a single 3b type system - that imbalance could be tiny, almost infinitesimal - and from there onwards, everything is not only possible, it becomes inevitable.

12-20-2004, 05:54 AM	#36 (permalink)
zen_tom Guest	Observations have shown that systems can be described in terms of a 'phase-space' where each parameter of the system is laid out as a dimensional axis, and the values of each parameter are used to plot a point in the multi-dimensional phase-space. When systems are plotted like this, they can easily be described as falling into 3 main classes. 1) Systems that rapidly expand out from their initial parameters - explosions, chain-reactions etc 2) Systems that converge onto a single stable point, or attractor - water flowing down a hill, or a marble at the bottom of a bowl, a spring-wound clock that is allowed to run without re-winding the mechanism. 3) Systems that fall into a stable pattern of motion, normally around one or more attractors Of the systems that fall into type 3 there are two subtypes a) Ones that show stable, periodic patterns of behavior b) Ones that show chaotic yet stable, a periodic patterns of behavior It is of course this second type that is most interesting and most often found in nature. Imagine a pile of sand. A grain is dropped onto the top of the pile at a regular interval. Each grain will hit the top of the pile and find a place to rest. If enough grains of sand pile up in some part of the pile, eventually, the pile will give way and a mini-landslide will occur. How does this happen? The system is organising itself to exist at the edge of chaos. i.e. the system, in attempting to reach an equilibrium must reach a point in its phase space where it's balanced between two opposing attractors. Any further input into the system will cause it to change from a stable state (where each grain of sand is unaffected by the next) to a catastrophic one (where a new grain of sand will disrupt the position of thousands of others) - the system self-organises. Now this is a bit of a conceptual jump, but if the sand-pile can be thought of as a system of inter-communicating agents (albeit communicating in a very simple manner) it isn't too difficult to take the same set of ideas and transfer them into many other situations. Planets coalescing from dust fragments, self-catalyzing reactions sweeping across planet-surfaces, creating ever more complex chemicals. At some point a group of chemicals becomes complex enough to catalyze a reaction that reproduces themselves from commonly found carbon and oxygen molecules. The set of chemicals - probably a basic set of amino acids - with no or little competition spreads across the face of the earth. Ever more complex forms develop. Why? Because these are all examples of type 3b systems - self-creating, self-organising, self-complexing systems. I can see the same process being responsible for everything we see around us. Nature seems to create and develop itself. That appears to be what nature does. One of the more recent developments is what we call intelligence. Whether it resides in the bacterium that swims up a chemical gradient towards food, or a computer programmer laying out a set of abstract structures and parameters for a machine to work within - it is matter behaving in complex ways, temporarily (or not) flouting the second law of thermodynamics. On one hand I can agree with Art and say that intelligence is related, indeed flows from this universal process of self-creation and self-expansion into new realms of complexity. However, I'm uncomfortable in labeling this process as intelligence - it makes it sound like intelligence is not just a random side-effect, as if nature knew what it was going to build from the start. It is part and parcel of the same thing, but it is that thing that I see as being fundamental and intelligence emerging from it, not the other way around. I'd like to think that the answers to the deepest questions lie in the reasons why the universe seems to prefer these 3b systems, but then if it didn't we wouldn't be able to argue the point here on TFP. The alternatives are a system that explodes itself out of existence, or dies away into nothing, or one that is in a state of perpetual stagnation. A 3b type system is the only one that is capable of keeping itself in existence while generating within it a froth of further complexity. What if we look back to the origins of the universe with this model of existence? What if space, time and matter itself all originate from this same process of auto-increasing complexity? What if matter evolved from some unbalance in the fundamental fabric of the universe? It would mean that everything we know might spring from this same process of self-complication. It would be pleasing to my mind anyway to think that there is some single, universal process or law that is responsible for life, the universe and everything. All that is required for it to be possible is for there to be some initial imbalance that allowed for a single 3b type system - that imbalance could be tiny, almost infinitesimal - and from there onwards, everything is not only possible, it becomes inevitable.