[Terrapreta] Critical thinking or lack thereof

[MMBTUPR at aol.com]

          from          Lewis L Smith

I am glad to see that SKB is familiar with Waldrop's Complexity. It was the 
first book which I ever read on the subjects of complexity and chaos. I have 
reread it several times since, and highly recommend it. There are other versions 
of "the birth of complexity", but since I know Dr. W. Brian Arthur and was 
able to checkout personally what Waldrop wrote about PR and about City Corp, I 
feel confidence in its historical accuracy.

Many people believe that there is a "sweet spot" in the state space of 
complex systems and that it is best described as "the edge of chaos".   I have eight 
books on chaos, and "edge" does not appear in the index of any of them, so I 
suspect that this idea comes from the behavior of such functions as the 
logistic curve [ used in marketing studies and studies of biological populations ]. 
With this curve, small changes in the value of the seed in a certain portion 
of its range, can produce a drastic shift from non-chaotic to chaotic behavior 
in the output variable or vice versa.

However, my experience with new ventures and evolving technologies leads me 
to believe that a better metaphor in many cases is "the zone of fruitful 
turbulence", especially to describe those aspects of such industries as 
biotechnology, hydrogen energy, information technology and pharmaceuticals which are in 
rapid evolution.

[ See my "Economies and markets as complex systems", "Business Economics", 
quarterly journal of the National Association for   Business Economics, 01/02. ]

Cordially. ###



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