>Finally, someone has publically substantiated the concerns of those of us
>who had reservations about the significance of various computer simulations
>of everything from origin of life and evolution to space ants.
I think "substantiated" is pushing it a bit. Horgan rightly points out
that the SFI crowd -- some of them -- have been better at producing hype
than results. That's not unusual. Similar things happened with wavelets,
optimal control theory and other tools/technologies that were introduced
with fanfares and predictions of impending breakthroughs. In principle,
the tools were capable of solving problems that had never been solved
before, and that generated a great deal of optimism. Eventually, as people
began to realize that a great deal of hard work and sound thinking would be
required to make progress, the huksters move on to the next great
technology while those who want to accomplish something useful stay. They
don't get much publicity, but they get something done. Complexity's
cousin, chaos, has been studied for a number of years, and produced useful
insights. I suspect complexity will too. But the sooner the hucksters and
promoters move on, the better it will be for the real workers.
>In the June
>issue of Scientific American, a senior staff writer, John Horgan takes on
>the dogma of complex systems and considers where they are leading. The
>article, entitled "From Complexity to Perplexity" goes a long way toward
>revealing the present state of things in Santa Fe and elsewhere. Those of
>you who have taken the computer games to have serious implications for
>anything, read the article carefully and with an open mind. Horgan was
>brave to have written so, and as an editor of a magazine, which has
>previously featured articles supportive of the concepts he calls in
>question, he displayed courage in so forceably applying the brakes. The
>article begins on page 104.
>Art
I think Horgan was just doing his job as an editor of a responsible
publication: trying to warn his readers that there is a great deal of hype
and fluff in complexity theory today, because it has become the darling of
a number of powerful people. I'll have to admit that the mention of
interest from the Clinton Administration has dampened my enthusiasm for
complexity theory a bit :-). In any case, it's hard to imagine how SFI or
the rest of the complexity community could retaliate (not publish in SA?
Hardly :-)).
Bill Hamilton | Vehicle Systems Research
GM R&D Center | Warren, MI 48090-9055
810 986 1474 (voice) | 810 986 3003 (FAX)