His video on Big Theory of Everything describes a relational holon, DSRP. http://www.cabreraresearch.org/tabs/videos

It is the same as R-theory, but we may have found different logical properties of it.

JK

On Oct 13, 2014, at 1:30 PM, Jack Ring <jring7> wrote:

If you want to deal with kinds of system one way is to use the plural, systems (which does not distinguish one kind from another, bummer). Another way is to use the concept of modes of (singular) system behavior. Modes allows us to label respective modes (functors?).One point of possible confusion is a continuing mix of a) statements about system and b) statements about observers of system but without clarity as to which is being addressed.

I suggest this is where Derek Cabrera’s notion of the four aspects of systemness, DSRP, are useful. http://www.cabreraresearch.org

On Oct 13, 2014, at 8:20 AM, Ken Lloyd <kalloyd> wrote:

Jack,

Well, I suppose I both agree and disagree with your criticism of plurality. At one level of abstraction there is one identifiable pattern referred to as “system”. (Recall, the features from the separation of concerns between abstraction and generalization/specification). Yet at other levels of abstraction (realizations from that one abstraction in different domains) there are different “kinds” of systems – for example, an atom is a system composed of electrons, protons and neutrons which themselves are composed of quarks, leptons and bosons. We cannot directly experience this sub-atomic “stuff”. We can only come to understand them through our models of their systems. The ‘particulars’ of various systems, at various scales, through various spacetimes and contexts are certainly not the same, and the inferential distances when describing these ‘particular’ systems can grow very large – say going from atomic systems to aircraft systems to galactic systems.

This is where the concept of duality becomes useful, as does the related “homotopy category of chain complexes” (a representation, and measurement, of inferential distance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homotopy_category_of_chain_complexes ) that shows the complex of evolutionary morphisms of “how we got to this point”. (Is this “diddling” in Jack-speak? If so, this is primarily what I do with computers in discovering models of various phenomena.) BTW, I’ve used the term “we” in a previous sentence, but “we” may not have anything to do with the objects, structure, behavior or morphism , itself.

I suggest that all of us can be (and are) wrong in our belief statements, at least in the short term (a form of incompleteness). That especially goes for what a system DOES and Fitness for a Particular Purpose (which are always incomplete descriptions), else systems become like spoons and buttons, things we keep using as they are because we don’t know any better or merely out of tradition. I think we all realize that using today’s conceptualization of rockets as a means for space travel is unworkable. Yet, we continue to develop rockets for space travel. Why? We don’t have a workable alternative – yet.

Hopefully, in time, most of our errors will be corrected by those who come after us, but historically that has often taken a very long time (c.f. the acceptance of zero in our mathematics).

From: Jack Ring [mailto:jring7]
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2014 1:26 AM
To: Ken Lloyd
Cc: John Jay Kineman; Kent Palmer; Len Troncale; Tom Marzolf; Janet Singer; Richard Martin; William Schindel; Josh Sparber; Duane Hybertson; Gary Smith; James Martin; Steve Wallis; Richard Emerson; Luke Friendshuh; Kristin Giammarco; Gary Langford; david.rousseau; Michael Singer; Harold; Lynn Rasmussen; David Ing; Jennifer Wilby
Subject: Re: Criteria for a GST

Ken,

I was with you until you invoked the plural, systems. It may be that there is one system and all we do is diddle with it, clutter it up, and sometimes make it more useful (however rarely to ARAP, all responsible and affected parties). One outcome of the plural is the insanity called System of Systems.

I suggest that all of us cannot be collectively wrong about what system DOES thereby about Fit For Purpose. Claims of Does can subjected to demonstrably false.

Make sense?

On Oct 12, 2014, at 7:27 AM, Ken Lloyd <kalloyd> wrote:

Jack,

Re: “If a system signifies ‘always changing, possibly unpredictably’ … “, I think you have identified the duality featured within the languages of systems, specifically that there is a closely coupled difference between the referent, “system”, and the identity of things the referent “refers” to, being the inferent or realizations of the category of things “systems”. IOW, the referent (at equilibrium) can refer to an open category of systems not at equilibrium (changing when possible due to the nature of its domain when being at some distances – material, energy, informational or entropic – from equilibrium).

In this regard, the map is not the terrain, and a picture is not the thing. I’m also certain you realize how your statement’s logical form may be reduced to an erroneous modus tollens argument, yielding “ergo, a system is not a system”. Troublesome, huh?

You are quite correct that in our informal discussions that ”claims about systems in nature are really only reports about how we perceive and reduce ambiguity …” – how we share, communicate, our individual mental notions of concepts from our cognitions and perceptions – and which are important features in learning about systems. But, that seems insufficient and fatally incomplete even when we all agree that they are reasonable and true. We (collectively) can all be wrong. IMO, this is where we need “formal” systems to “separate the demonstrably false from the probably true” (which is not at all the term “formal” often associated with David Hilbert’s “formalism”). That new formal system, and it is indeed a complex coupled system, exhibits systematicity (ala Phillips and Wilson) between minimally four domains. This is also that interesting “language” phenomenon that our referents (from the first paragraph) undergo transformations (morphisms, without apparently changing the referent symbols) WRT the realizations due to systemic non-equilibrium. Without these “additional informational effects on the prior” (a Bayesian concept), we would cease learning valid knowledge.

Worse, it would mean that years of pointless argument and discussion would ensue (i.e. “it depends on how you define a system”) with making any substantive progress in developing valid knowledge about systems.

Ken Lloyd