Re: The Relevance of Complex Systems

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Sep 08 2005 - 19:18:24 MDT


My car, alas, is not a Carnot Engine. There are all these practical
complications in the real world, doncha know, which makes thermodynamics
irrelevant if you're trying to build *efficient* systems. My car is a
Complex System, too: I looked under the hood and there were all these
interacting doohickeys whose local behavior was completely different
from the globally emergent car. That carburetor thingy doesn't even
have wheels, much less an engine! As a result I find myself completely
unable to predict my car's behavior. Why, one time I floored the gas
pedal, and my car moved fifty miles backward and refilled its own gas tank!

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://intelligence.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


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