::scr Ramblings of a Classic Refugee or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love OS X

[Matt Webb]

On Tuesday, February 5, 2002, at 03:52 PM, Piers Cawley wrote:

>> and effect, weight, small changes only rarely having big effects,
>                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> You know, I'm really unsure about that one. Evidence is that the vast
> majority of natural phenomena are non-linear in interesting
> ways. (Witness the whole 'small sperm interfaces with small egg' thing
> for instance). If you were feeling positive you could probably call
> this 'high leverage', or maybe just plain chaotic. An awful lot of
> human design appears to be attempting to overcome sensitive dependence
> on initial conditions to provide us with something a little more

Okay, I'll rephrase.. Human-scale reality appears to consist of things 
that have effect-sizes proportionate to their cause-sizes. Evidence: 
That we're surprised when the reverse is true, eg a chair collapsing 
when you sit on it. When large effects *do* happen, they happen in very 
well defined ways: levers, avalanches, etc. [1]

Has anyone read Red/Green/Blue Mars? I'm reminded of the holons, 
fundamental units of emergent systems. Given KSR lifted most of the 
other ideas in the books from other places, I'm hoping there's some 
scientific literature floating around about the concept.

	-mw