Self Organization's topics - tribe.net

warring over energy may be pre-mature

2007-05-22T20:35:23Z

http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wtether.html

The space tether experiment failed due to excess energy melting the tether. This one of those things that was reported as a massive failure and then dropped completely, even tho the results of the investigation as to why it failed actually ended up proving the theory. At this point all we need is a better design.

As long as we have abundant clean energy, we can apply technology to solve most of these other massive problems we face.

posted in Self Organization - 3 replies

Non-Profit Org to Commission Programmer[s] for OpenSource Freeware

2007-03-18T16:09:16Z

Non-Profit Org to Commission Programmer[s] for OpenSource Freeware

Reply to: AINPO@care2.com

We are seeking windows/apple/Linux/Pocket PC capable compilers and open source publishers (C++, Perl, python?), and ANY Artificial Intelligence, Random Number Generation,or bot implementation specialists. Decompiler capable folks welcome as well.
This Project will pay from a Small non-profit grant/stipend and will be distributed Copyleft/open source.

This program will need:
-Full duplex bandwidth p2p access similar to bit torrent infrastructure
-IP telephony (capable of 28k modem success, primarily for 48k and better-OGG compression?)
-ability to view cad files & pdf
-*generic voice command (simple short syllable recognition that wouldnt require vocal mapping)
-skinnable GUI
-Media player unit
-alternative to gps for satellite positioning interface
-ability to induct volunteered computers for shared-load data processing via network
-chat/bulletin capable with realtime image conveyance(EX. drawing/tutoring software)
-(GRAMMER SENSITIVE)LANGUAGE TRANSLATION VIA TEXT WOULD BE AWESOME
-database inc. almanacs, smog counts etc (see bots)
-Self Contained to a disk?
-Spyware immune
-BBS, webcam, Ham, shortwave integration-(upgrades)

Most of the code for these functions is available open source already.
This Non-Profit Org is seeking compiled and open source versions of a program to facilitate organized bartering/communications amongst (registered?):

WWOOF participants
Intentional Communities
User groups
Professional Travelers
International Communities
Shelters
Refugee Camps
Sudents
Senior Citizens
Holistic practitioners
Independant Media
Community Gardens
Anyone & Everyone

Part of the interface would mimic the NYSE/NASDAQ/etc boards with Glyphic/Iconic
representations of Goods (ex. bag of rice/spirulina/well pump/shovel/automobile bus part VIA Original FONTS LIBRARY) in surplus or demand for local/international barter / donation. IP Telephony would allow for conference calling(virtual PBX) or bandwidth-quota controlled 1 on 1 telephony that could occur on a 28.8k landline successfully.

Anyone with sufficient skills can collaborate with us to design this.
Our coffers are small but the job pays. You will be collaborating with a Graphic designer and Digital audio producer. This product will give credit to the designers but be -Copyleft- and opensource.

We are a non-profit organization preparing for 501c3 status and you can see our under construction website at the link below.
Click the icon on the left.
Peace Love & Progress from the Angel Initiative Non-Profit Org

posted in Self Organization - 0 replies

Something I wrote today...

2007-01-04T13:26:28Z

Today... 11:41am. Aug.24. 2005

...at Bleu Loo's reading the Plant Trees events listing I find this video of Army Troopers attacking a dance party in the Utah Wilderness:

"Get out now... or I'll put your ass in jail! Go!"

"I think they are serious. They got guns."

http://www.abductionproductions.com/utahrave.mov

And read the accounts:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/22/13030/7546

http://www.utahcountyonline.org/News/DeptNewsDetails.asp?ID=17759&WN_System=SHERIFF

http://www.music-versus-guns.org/

http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/82205utrave.cfm

We are in a time of war.

It may not seem like it while doing yoga and eating Indian cuisine on Haight street.

Countries are imaginary lines.

Control, power, building the pyramid on the dollar bill, with the all seeing eye watching.

This is real.

Bush this... Bush that... he is a scape goat... a puppet... the head is interchangeable. He is not incharge. Learn as much as you can about the CFR:

http://www.solomax.com/aug.8.3.html

Kent state... over and over again.

http://www.may41970.com/May 4, 2003/DefenseAppeal.htm

http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/

Intolerance

I just googled "our way of life will not be" and found these words following the phrase:

...deterred by terrorism.

... adjusted at the whims of terrorists.

...destroyed.

...disrupted.

...threatened.

...threatened by the actions of any form of Dictatorship!

...curtailed.

...changed just to confirm to their wishes.

...changed by a small number of fanatics.

...challenged idly

... threatened by those who use religion to get their way.

...sacrificed in the pursuit of ...

... sufficient if we do not clearly extend the invitation to others to join in our life, in our prayer, ...

...related to IT or data (Information) content and management, we already have an overload of ...

"And he told us all to go shopping so that we can take refuge in the fact that our way of life will not be dispensable." from: http://www.rubyan.com/politics/archives/002558.html

What is "our way of life?"

Democrats and Republicans... in war all the time... the struggle for power... the control of resources. Are "they" protecting "our way of life"...? What is our way of life? Is it two weeks vacation and the right to remain silent?

Arnold is not "The Last Action Hero". He is a puppet controled by men in black. Turn off the TV. Realize your power. Join neighbors in open council circles to form true common-unity. Localize food and education. Peak oil is here. "Our way of life" is changing ...like it or not. Time to get tribal. Action Heroes Unite!

posted in Self Organization - 3 replies

The 1st Virtual Congress on World Citizenship and Democratic Global Governance

2006-10-13T15:04:12Z

Hi,

In that virtual congress you can participate in a debat about democracy, world citizenship, etc.

The 1st Virtual Congress is a unique opportunity to share views on global governance and how to advance towards it.

Over 30 papers are presented by leading mundialists, giving a good picture of current strategies and ideas.

Papers cover the following topics:

Strategic considerations
Reflexions on necessary changes
Global justice
Education for world citizenship
History of world democracy
Mundialist projects
Religion, spirituality and change

I hope you find interesting.

Synnove

posted in Self Organization - 4 replies

The Wealth of Networks

2006-05-15T23:59:51Z

Yochai Benkler, author of the seminal paper "Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm" http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.PDF has just published a book titled "The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom" & released the full text of it under a Creative Commons license in both PDF & wiki form: http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php/Main_Page

Anybody who has any interest in self organization pretty much has to put reading this book at the top of their to-do list. That is all.

Tim

posted in Self Organization - 4 replies

networks 101

2006-04-16T23:10:24Z

I need to get a read on my audience, to see who's listening & what they know, so I can adjust my posts to match their level. To do that, here's a quick quiz. To keep it simple & hopefully get more responses, I'm not looking for anyone to actually answer the questions. Just tell me which questions you feel reasonably confident you know the answers for. And if you don't want to post even that much, you can even send me your answer privately; I'm just trying to get an aggregate baseline here, for my own use. OK, on with the quiz. Remember, all I'm looking for is a list of question numbers, not the actual answers.

1) Define "network"
2) How do you measure a network?
3) What is a log-log plot?
4) What is a power law?
4) Name 3 degree distributions
5) Define "scale-free"
6) Define "small world"
7) What is a random network?
8) What is a graph?
9) What is a lattice?
10) What's an Erdos number?
11) What is Zipf's Law?
12) What is Pareto's Law?
13) What is a bipartite network?
14) What is the SIR model?
15) Define "percolation threshold"
16) Define "information cascade"

posted in Self Organization - 4 replies

A sort of intro...

2006-04-16T05:03:15Z

Hey everybody!

I would introduce myself - but its all in my profile

I wanted to post some resources I've recently found that might get you excited and allow you to generate some monetary support -- or give it (oh it aint the only thing but it helps!) to projects that you would like to start, have started or you think just plain deserve it. These are some really innovative web based tools.

Here you go:

www.fundable.com
www.dropcash.com
www.pledgebank.com
www.kiva.org

I'd love to hear about any successes you have with these or other web 2.0 tools.

Namaste!

Cityzen Jane
(I'm looking for friends so drop a note!)

posted in Self Organization - 1 reply

mission statement

2006-03-26T22:07:31Z

I believe that it's not tinfoil-hat conspiracist thinking to say that we're in the early stages of what will prove to be an all-out global civil war for control of the limiting resources of civilization, with oil, fresh water, high-yield soil & access to high technology at the top of the list. Knowing this, there are a number of possible responses:

1) Ignore the problem & pretend it doesn't exist.
2) Join the dominant power structure, advance as high as you can manage within it & reap the rewards of being a good citizen.
3) Resistance, infiltration & subversion of the dominant power structure.
4) Withdrawl into fortress-like enclaves stocked with provsions, arable land & enough arms for self-defense.
5) Eat, drink & be merry, for tomorrow we die.
6) Attempt to find solutions that can minimize the duration, intensity & permanent impact of the conflict on humanity as a whole.

I've chosen answer 6 & my solution lies in developing the concepts of social self-organization to build social structures that are more efficient, intelligent, fair & resilient. I don't have much more right now than a lot of ideas about how to do that, but that's what I'm about & that's where I'm going. I just wanted to say it while I have the words.

Tim

posted in Self Organization - 18 replies

self-assembling DNA art

2006-03-17T15:44:26Z

this week's nature cover: self-assembling DNA origami!
full text here: www.nature.com/nature/jou...e04586.html

posted in Self Organization - 0 replies

The Physics of Friendship

2006-03-13T21:57:47Z

By comparing people to mobile particles randomly bouncing off each other, scientists have developed a new model for social networks. The model fits with empirical data to naturally reproduce the community structure, clustering and evolution of general acquaintances and even sexual contacts.

Read more at Physorg.com: http://www.physorg.com/news11611.html

posted in Self Organization - 1 reply

maps

2006-03-11T19:23:32Z

If you can access a large enough transaction database, you can map any network to an arbitrary degree of granularity. Having the map, you can plot its topology mathematically. Having the equations & values that describe the topology, you can compute what properties it has - for example, how many nodes need to be cut in order to trigger a cascading failure on a specific subset of the network as a whole. Knowing which nodes need to be manipulated, applying this to real world situations is left as an exercise for the student.

Tim

posted in Self Organization - 3 replies

Physics, complexity and causality

2005-06-09T18:01:26Z

Physics, complexity and causality

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7043/full/435743a.html

by George F. R. Ellis

Mathematics Department, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, Cape Town 7701, South Africa.

Although the laws of physics explain much of the world around us, we still do not have a realistic description of causality in truly complex hierarchical structures.

The atomic theory of matter and the periodic table of elements allow us to understand the physical nature of material objects, including living beings. Quantum theory illuminates the physical basis of the periodic table and the nature of chemical bonding. Molecular biology shows how complex molecules underlie the development and functioning of living organisms. And neurophysics reveals the functioning of the brain.

In the hierarchy of complexity, each level links to the one above: chemistry links to biochemistry, to cell biology, physiology, psychology, to sociology, economics, and politics. Particle physics is the foundational subject underlying — and so in some sense explaining — all the others. In a reductionist world view, physics is all there is. The cartesian picture of man as a machine seems to be vindicated.

But this view omits important aspects of the world that physics has yet to come to terms with. Our environment is dominated by objects that embody the outcomes of intentional design (buildings, books, computers, teaspoons). Today's physics has nothing to say about the intentionality that has resulted in the existence of such objects, even though this intentionality is clearly causally effective.

A simple statement of fact: there is no physics theory that explains the nature of, or even the existence of, football matches, teapots, or jumbo-jet aircraft. The human mind is physically based, but there is no hope whatever of predicting the behaviour it controls from the underlying physical laws. Even if we had a satisfactory fundamental physics 'theory of everything', this situation would remain unchanged: physics would still fail to explain the outcomes of human purpose, and so would provide an incomplete description of the real world around us.

Can we nevertheless claim that the underlying physics uniquely causally determines what happens, even if we cannot predict the outcome? To examine whether we can, contemplate what is required for this claim to be true within its proper cosmic context. The implication is that the particles existing when the cosmic background radiation was decoupling from matter, in the early Universe, were placed precisely so as to make it inevitable that 14 billion years later, human beings would exist, Charles Townes would conceive of the laser, and Edward Witten would develop string theory. Is it plausible that quantum fluctuations in the inflationary era in the very early Universe — the source of the perturbations at the time of decoupling — implied the future inevitability of the Mona Lisa and Einstein's theory of relativity? Those fluctuations are supposed to have been random, which by definition means without purpose or meaning.

However, such meaning did indeed come into being. Ever higher levels of interaction and causality arose as complexity spontaneously increased in the expanding Universe, allowing life to emerge. Darwinian processes of selection guided the physical development of living systems, including the human brain.

It is possible that what actually happened was the contextual emergence of complexity: the existence of human beings and their creations was not uniquely implied by the initial data in the early Universe; rather the underlying physics together with that initial data created a context that made the existence of human beings possible. Conditions at the time of the decoupling of matter and radiation 14 billion years ago were such as to lead to the eventual development of minds that are autonomously effective. Such minds are able to create higher-level order, such as the Hubble Space Telescope and Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem, that embodies a purpose and meaning not in existence before.

With this view, the higher levels in the hierarchy of complexity have autonomous causal powers that are functionally independent of lower-level processes. Top-down causation takes place as well as bottom-up action, with higher-level contexts determining the outcome of lower-level functioning, and even modifying the nature of lower-level constituents.

Stored information plays a key role, resulting in non-linear dynamics that are non-local in space and time. Brain functioning is causally affected by abstractions, such as the value of money, the rules of chess and the theory of the laser. These abstractions are realized as brain states in individuals, but are not equivalent to them — James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism is not the same as any individual's brain state. Although such concepts are causally effective, they are not themselves physical variables. Consequently physics per se cannot causally determine the outcome of human creativity; rather it creates the 'possibility space' to allow human intelligence to function autonomously.

This situation is not dependent specifically on human intentionality. Physics by itself cannot explain any behaviour that is adaptive and depends on context, for example, beaver dam-building and the dances of bees. It is plausible that these also emerged at late times in the expanding Universe as higher-level autonomous behaviours, made possible but not causally determined by the underlying physics and chemistry of matter.

If this is the case, the challenge to physics is to develop a realistic description of causality in truly complex hierarchical structures, where top-down causation and memory effects allow autonomous higher levels of order to emerge with genuine causal powers. So far, attempts to relate physics to complexity — such as the reaction−diffusion equation, chaos theory, the renormalization group, complexity theory — take us only a small step on this road.

posted in Self Organization - 0 replies

Network Theory - the Emergence of the Creative Enterprise

2005-04-29T18:45:40Z

(sorry for the long cut and paste, but Science magazine is subscription only)

Network Theory--the Emergence of the Creative Enterprise
by Albert-László Barabási

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/308/5722/639

In the Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov placed psychohistorian Harry Seldon so far into the future that Earth, the birthplace of the Galactic civilization, has been forgotten (1). Indeed, Star Trek's teleporting characters appear far more grounded in reality than Seldon's mathematical equations that accurately predict the multigalactic society's fate thousands of years into the future. Today, when reports about quantum teleportation fill the pages of the best physics journals, we wonder how long it will be until a real Harry Seldon produces an accurate mathematical theory of human behavior.

It may be hard to believe, but conditions for such a quantitative approach are increasingly in place. Indeed, records of human actions are already stored in numerous databases. E-mail and phone records document our social and professional interactions; travel records and GPS navigation systems capture our travel patterns and physical locations; credit-card companies maintain records of our shopping and entertainment habits. Although in the wrong hands, these data sets represent Orwellian tools of power, for scientists they offer incredible insights into human behavior. Combine this capability with the sophisticated tool of network theory (2-7), which analyzes relations between millions of individuals, and you get a glimpse of an unprecedented opportunity to quantify human dynamics. Although a mathematical theory of social complexity remains a pipe dream, it is not as farfetched as it may have appeared in 1942, when Foundation was first published. Proof of this can be found in the study by Guimerà et al. on page 697 of this issue (8). By taking advantage of publicly available data sets from both artistic and scientific fields, the authors offer powerful insights into the mechanisms governing collective human behavior.

Traditionally, the achievements of individuals such as Darwin and Einstein have dominated the public's image of science, yet today some of the most groundbreaking work is collaborative in nature (see the figure). But how do such creative teams come about? Are there discernible differences between collaborations that are sparklingly creative and those that are less inventive? Guimerà et al. use network theory to answer these questions. Their starting point is a collection of fascinating data sets: a century-long record of Broadway musicals and the publication records of several fields of science. These data sets allowed them to reconstruct the collaborative history of the individuals who contributed to a particular show or research publication. The investigators document a changing creative enterprise in which advances require an increasing number of contributors. The history of Broadway is particularly illuminating: The team size responsible for producing a show increased until the 1930s, after which it leveled off, fluctuating at around seven contributors for the past 70 years. In contrast, science continues to search for its optimal collaborative setup: The number of coauthors in each scientific field has increased monotonically during the past decade. It is anyone's guess when and where it will reach a maximum.

Figure 1 Evolution of the scientific enterprise. (Left) For centuries, creative individuals were embedded in an invisible college, that is, a community of scholars whose exchange of ideas represented the basis for scientific advances. Although intellectuals built on each other's work and communicated with each other, they published alone. Most great ideas were attributed to a few influential thinkers: Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein. Thus, the traditional scientific enterprise is best described by many isolated nodes (blue circles). (Middle) In the 20th century, science became an increasingly collaborative enterprise, resulting in such iconic pairs as the physicist Crick and the biologist Watson (left), who were responsible for unraveling DNA's structure. The joint publications documenting these collaborations shed light on the invisible college, replacing the hidden links with published coauthorships. (Right) Although it is unlikely that large collaborations--such as the D0 team in particle physics or the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium pictured here--will come to dominate science, most fields need such collaborations. Indeed, the size of collaborative teams is increasing, turning the scientific enterprise into a densely interconnected network whose evolution is driven by simple universal laws.

PHOTO CREDITS: (LEFT) NEWTON AND GALILEO/AIP EMILIO SEGRE VISUAL ARCHIVES; DARWIN/SOTHDBY'S; (MIDDLE) A. BARRINGTON BROWN/PHOTO RESEARCHERS; (RIGHT) LARRY THOMPSON/NIH

Until the late 1990s, the bulk of network research focused on static properties, which do not change with time (9). Yet a proper understanding of most networks requires that we characterize the assembly process that generated them. Indeed, a map of such networks is not sufficient to understand the structure of the World Wide Web--we must describe how documents and links are added and removed (3). Uncovering all interactions between proteins is only the first step toward understanding cellular networks--we must also explore the importance of gene duplications and mutations that shape the interactions between proteins and genes (10). Similarly, to comprehend the structure of the collaboration map, we must understand how people form friendships and alliances. Given that in the professional world friendships are just as crucial as hard-nosed professional interests, modeling the evolution of creative teams may appear to be impossible. Guimerà's results indicate otherwise: They show that a simple model successfully captures many qualitative features of the network underlying the creative enterprise. In their study, they distinguish between veterans, who have participated in collaborations before, and rookies, who are about to see their names appear in print for the first time. Two parameters are key: the fraction of veteran members in a new team, and the degree to which veterans involve their former collaborators. If choosing experienced veterans is not a priority, the authors find that the network will be broken up into many small teams with little overlap between them. As the likelihood of relying on veterans increases, thanks to the extra links to earlier collaborators, the teams coalesce through a phase transition such that all players become part of a single cluster.

Many professional networks--from the web of actors in Hollywood to scientific collaborations (11, 12)--are scale-free (13), that is, although most individuals have only a few collaborators, a few have hundreds and operate as hubs. The legendary Paul Erdös, the father of random network theory, with more than 500 collaborators, was probably the best known hub within mathematics. The model that Guimerà and co-workers propose does indeed account for hubs, the emergence of which is rooted in the rookies' desire to involve their friends in new teams. Indeed, the more collaborators an individual has, the higher the chances are that he or she will be invited to participate again. This process--called preferential attachment in network theory--is responsible for the emergence of hubs through a rich-gets-richer process (13) in which well-connected individuals continue to be in high demand.

How does this assembly process affect the team's performance? The results of the Guimerà et al. study indicate that expertise does matter: Teams publishing in high-impact journals have a high fraction of incumbents. But diversity matters too: Teams with many former collaborative links offer inferior performance. Thus, the recipe for success seems relatively simple: When forming a "dream team" make an effort to include the most experienced people, whether or not you have worked with them before. The temptation to work mainly with friends will eventually hurt performance.

In Asimov's classic story, Harry Seldon's theory could not handle innovation. To stay on the predictive side, the Foundation went to great lengths to freeze all technological development. Indeed, the most disruptive social changes humanity has experienced are intimately tied to new technologies, from the steam engine to the Internet. It is tempting to conclude, therefore, that given the unpredictability of potential technologies, a theory of human dynamics will have no chance of success until scientific innovation ceases. A more constructive approach, and one taken by Guimerà at al., takes us in the opposite direction, bringing innovation into a scientific and mathematical perspective.

Finally, will there ever be a Harry Seldon and a mathematical theory of human behavior? It is easy to maintain that human actions are too complex to be predictable. But skeptics are proven wrong each time a waiter brings them ketchup with their fries, without having been asked to. A master of consumer behavior, the waiter concludes that very likely they will ask for it. In the same way, a data-driven understanding of human actions could help us to translate into a predictive mathematical language the fundamental principles that drive a society's collective behavior. In a world in which all events are recorded by computers, the conditions for this research are increasingly in place. The quantitative accumulation of such data could easily spark a qualitative change, helping many disparate facts to fall into a coherent predictive theory. By demonstrating that the Web, the cell, or society is driven by similar organizing principles, network theory offers a successful conceptual framework to approach the structure of many complex systems. Perhaps a predictive framework that captures the dynamics and the behavior of networks is not too far behind either. In the light of Guimerà et al.'s results, we can be sure of one thing: While pursuing a theory of human behavior, we could overlook a Harry Seldon. A mathematical theory of human dynamics may not be the solitary achievement of a genius scientist (14), but will likely emerge from the combined efforts of an expert team with just the right combination of expertise, collaborative experience, and fresh ideas.

References

1. I. Asimov, Foundation and Empire (Spectra, New York, 1991) [publisher's information].
2. S. N. Dorogovtsev, J. F. F. Mendes, Evolution of Networks: From Biological Nets to the Internet and WWW (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2003) [publisher's information].
3. A. Pastor-Satorras, A. Vespignani, Evolution and Structure of the Internet: A Statistical Physics Approach (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge,UK, 2004) [publisher's information].
4. R. Albert, A.-L. Barabási, Rev. Mod. Phys. 74, 47 (2002) [APS].
5. S. H. Strogatz, Nature 410, 268 (2001) [Medline].
6. E. Ben-Naim, H. Frauenfelder, Z. Toroczkai, Complex Networks (Springer Verlag, Berlin, 2004) [publisher's information].
7. S. Bornholdt, H. G. Schuster, Eds., Handbook of Graphs and Networks: From the Genome to the Internet (Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, Germany, 2003) [publisher's information].
8. R. Guimerà, B. Uzzi, J. Spiro, L. A. Nunes Amaral, Science 308, 697 (2005).
9. B. Bollobás, Random Graphs (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK, 2001) [publisher's information].
10. A.-L. Barabási, Z. N. Oltvai, Nat. Rev. Genet. 5, 101 (2004) [Medline].
11. M. E. J. Newman, Phys. Rev. E 64, 016131 (2001) [APS].
12. A.-L. Barabási et al., Physica A 311, 590 (2002) [Abstract].
13. A.-L. Barabási, R. Albert, Science 286, [509] (1999).
14. R. Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998) [publisher's information].

posted in Self Organization - 0 replies

self organized deliberation

2005-03-31T16:23:57Z

So how do you use self organization to debate a controversial subject? How do you create consensus when opinions are divided, without imposing one view over the other?

Tim

posted in Self Organization - 7 replies

zero-intelligence decision making

2005-03-30T10:34:01Z

[cross-posted to the Complexity Theory tribe]

Research at the Santa Fe institute supports a social dynamic theory that I have long suspected - key large-scale decisions are governed by control parameters that do not include rational reflection.

A depressing prospect for the Humanist, but how else can you explain the recent elections in the US?

From:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6948

'Zero intelligence' trading closely mimics stock market

Katharine Davis

A model that assumes stock market traders have zero intelligence has been found to mimic the behaviour of the London Stock Exchange very closely.

However, the surprising result does not mean traders are actually just buying and selling at random, say researchers. Instead, it suggests that the movement of markets depend less on the strategic behaviour of traders and more on the structure and constraints of the trading system itself.

The research, led by J Doyne Farmer and his colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, US, say the finding could be used to identify ways to lower volatility in the stock markets and reduce transaction costs, both of which would benefit small investors and perhaps bigger investors too.

A spokesperson for the London Stock Exchange says: "It's an interesting bit of work that mirrors things we're looking at ourselves."

Most models of financial markets start with the assumption that traders act rationally and have access to all the information they need. The models are then tweaked to take into account that these assumptions are not always entirely true.

But Farmer and his colleagues took a different approach. "We begin with random agents," he says. "The model was idealised, but nonetheless we still thought it might match some of the properties of real markets."

Buying and selling
In the model, agents with zero intelligence place random orders to buy and sell stocks at a given price. If an order to sell is lower than the highest buy price in the system, the transaction will take place and the order will be removed - a market order. If the sell order is higher than the highest buy price, it will stay in the system until a matching buy order is found - a limit order. For example, if the highest order to buy a stock is $10, limit orders to sell will be above $10 and market orders to sell will be below $10.

The team used the model to examine two important characteristics of financial markets. These were the spread - the price difference between the best buy and sell limit orders - and the price diffusion rate - a standard measure of risk that looks at how quickly the price changes and by how much.

The model was tested against London Stock Exchange data on 11 real stocks collected over 21 months - 6 million buy and sell orders. It predicted 96% of the spread variance and 76% of the variance in the price diffusion rate. The model also showed that increasing the number of market orders increased price volatility because there are then fewer limit orders to match up with each other.

Incentives and charges
The observation could be useful in the real financial markets. "If it is considered socially desirable to lower volatility, this can be done by giving incentives for people who place limit orders, and charging the people who place market orders," Farmer says.

Some amount of volatility is important, because prices should reflect any new information, but many observers believe there is more volatility than there should be. "On one day the prices of US stock dropped 20% on no apparent news," says Farmer. "High volatility makes people jittery and sours the investment climate." It also creates a high spread, which can make it more expensive to trade in shares.

The London Stock Exchange already has a charging structure in place that encourages limit orders. "Limit orders are a good way for smaller investors to trade on the order book," says a spokesperson.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0409157102)

posted in Self Organization - 25 replies

USA not a Democracy?

2005-03-22T18:02:10Z

I hear Bush talking about spreading democracy... but... could it be like talking heads on FOX news promoting war but saying they are Christan/love jesus? ...Wolf in sheep's clothing.

The other night a friend said that the US founding fathers didn't want a democracy... but rather a republic. He sent me an article on the web to see the difference. The article was written by a republican, and it plainly stated that the rich shouldn't or don't vote democrat cuz democrats are just trying to take money from the rich.

He basically said we need rulers cuz the majority are stupid, and don't deserve social programs. It does amaze me how so many people follow belief systems... but... I love all people.

So... I'm obessed with advertising... and the messages put out... on billboards to t-shirts. I'm serious about creating billboards for social change. How do we shift people's view from "me and mine" to "us and our"? The common wealth... tool libraries and local investment. making our cities more like ant hills.

To start, every five blocks should have a community center-- a safe place where the doors have no locks. The common gathering place... a camp fire. My lab is a five block village in Mexico called Roblito. I was just there a week ago... in the roll of something like a summer camp councilor. These pages show picks: www.solomax.com/dec.31.4.html and www.solomax.com/roblito.html

To create social change... people need to know their neighbors. As it is now, they care more about TV characters... cuz that is who they spend more time with. Okay... it's ranting... but true. We can figure out the math and read all the books, but it comes down to people really caring about each other and coming together... being rich with friendship... not having the desire to have a big house filled with crap and gates around it.

This page has a link to that article I talked about above and some insightful words from Catherine Fitts: www.solomax.com/jan.14.5.html

So... this is an open invite to anyone who would like to work with me on the Roblito community center for cultural exchange. I'm going back down there mid-march to mid-april to do another summer camp like deal. The object is to create a model community center to teach people how to create community centers.

This is a very safe, happy little village. You will fall in love with these people. I have not been the same since I met them. We need to spread that feeling to neighborhoods across the US and around the world. We gotta learn how to love.

posted in Self Organization - 4 replies

books

2005-01-16T03:13:35Z

Here's a partial list of books that deal with self organization (ie, ones I've read):

Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means, by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks, by Mark Buchanan

Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order, by Steven Strogatz

Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, by Duncan J. Watts

Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between Order and Randomness (Princeton Studies in Complexity), by Duncan J. Watts

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, by Howard Rheingold

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, by Steven Berlin Johnson

World Without Secrets: Business, Crime and Privacy in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing, by Richard Hunter

The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold J. Morowitz

Six Degrees, Sync & Emergence are the best of the bunch, IMO. Nexus is OK, Small Worlds is kind of a repeat of Watts' other book. Smart Mobs is flashy but unfilling, Linked is too full of itself & there's not enough math. World Without Secrets is also very full of itself, with all sorts of laws named after the author, but it's much more a speculative & predictive work than any of the others (except Smart Mobs). The Emergence of Everything is unreadable & kind of scary; the author slips between name-dropping abstract, high-level physics concepts without explanation & what seems like acid-trip-induced religion in a jaw-dropping exercise in lunacy.

There's my one-minute review. Six Degrees, Sync, Emergence: buy. The rest: not so much.

Tim

posted in Self Organization - 5 replies

announcing the NetTraq mailing list

2004-12-29T01:00:31Z

It's been a while since I posted here, & that's because I'm still struggling somewhat to find my voice. To help with that, I've just created a mailing list for discussing some of the same stuff I was trying to say here. If anybody's still listening, you can sign up for it here:

http://nettraq.scalefree.net/listinfo.cgi/nettraq-scalefree.net

All are welcome, but what I'm really hoping for is participation. I can talk all day but I need feedback to keep me going. OK, that's all.

RA

posted in Self Organization - 5 replies

The Wisdom of Crowds

2004-10-10T16:57:33Z

There's a new book making the rounds, The Wisdom of Crowds, Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations; by James Surowiecki.

Unlike most of the authors in the genre, he's a financial writer for the New Yorker, not a scientist of any sort. But he's definitely done his research & backs up his claims with a ton of references to papers & scholarly works. The main thesis is that if you poll a crowd that's diverse, independant & distributed, the aggregate of their answers to a question will be better than any individual. It's a counter-intuitive idea, but he offers so many examples of it that it's hard to refute.

It's a very dense book, with an awful lot to digest & make sense of. I'm only in the early chapters & there's already more stuff to track down & follow up on than I know what to do with. But it's still quite readable, so don't be scared off of it. Somewhere along the line I'm going to have to go back & write up my thoughts on each chapter, but for now I'll just say go get your own copy & you won't be dissapointed.

Tim

posted in Self Organization - 9 replies

decentralization and ethics

2004-09-28T11:39:55Z

I was reading the "self organized Intelligence" thread and had following thought. There were two examples of how efficient is decentralized decision taking. These are good examples, but the analizis is lacking an important factor - the ethics of the participants. There is a very strong taboo around acting in a sefish manner when the community is in danger. I believe that it is that taboo that made it possible that the little decisions taken by all the small players all aligned into the recovery of the whole community, and that perhaps in normal operation this would not be possible.

posted in Self Organization - 1 reply

Christopher Alexander - The Nature of Order

2004-09-26T16:50:52Z

Zbigniew Lukasiak posted a link to this in the Cognitive Science tribe and I thought it might also be useful here:

Christopher Alexander is an architect who has had an amazing impact on computer science, and his book, The Nature of Order, seems to have interesting things to say about patterns and, hence, about organization.

http://www.cmcrossroads.com/bradapp/docs/NoNoO.html

posted in Self Organization - 2 replies

Complexity Rising

2004-09-02T01:32:53Z

Here's a fairly long philosophical piece on Complexity & civilization. I'm not at all sure about the conclusion, that we're literally becoming a global organism (I'm also extremely skepical about the Singularity, Convergence or any other similar idea); I see it as more of a useful metaphor. But aside from that, it's a good piece that covers an awful lot of ground.

COMPLEXITY RISING: FROM HUMAN BEINGS TO HUMAN CIVILIZATION, A COMPLEXITY PROFILE
http://necsi.org/projects/yaneer/Civilization.html

Tim

posted in Self Organization - 10 replies

Legal Protection

2004-08-31T02:20:34Z

I was thinking that the legal right to self organization is something that would be protected via the right to assemble. Is this something you mentioned somewhere or did I really think it up? Any thoughts? I think a 'virtual community' that meets to discuss things, vote in its members, etc. is the intent of assembly as is some virtual communities.

posted in Self Organization - 11 replies

Complexity Theory Tribe

2004-08-19T19:48:30Z

I've just found this Tribe, and I'm extremely pleased to learn that it exists. Maturana and Varela's Autopoeisis and Cognition was an intellectual milestone in my life, and this kind of topic is central to my interests.

There's also a Complexity Theory tribe at complexitytheory.tribe.net. A slightly broader topic, but there's clearly a lot of mutual relevence.

posted in Self Organization - 0 replies

Extreme Democracy

2004-08-17T17:53:49Z

There's a new book (partly) out & available online, Extreme Democracy. It's a collection of essays about political SO, written by a number of people who've been involved in driving it forward in the last couple years; Steven Johnson, Clay Shirky, Joe Trippi & others. It's all very good stuff, go read it when you get a chance. It's at http://extremedemocracy.com

Tim

posted in Self Organization - 1 reply

self organized Intelligence

2004-08-14T16:48:57Z

Duncan Watts has a great editorial in Slate on how to decentralize the Intelligence community. This is very much what I'm talking about when I say we need to build self organized systems. I'm not surprised, Duncan's also the author of Six Degrees.

Tim

http://slate.msn.com/id/2104808/

Decentralized Intelligence
What Toyota can teach the 9/11 commission about intelligence gathering.
By Duncan Watts
Posted Thursday, Aug. 5, 2004, at 11:30 AM PT

The most publicized recommendation of the 9/11 commission—and one President Bush and Sen. John Kerry have raced to endorse—is that the United States create a national director of intelligence. Centralizing is an understandable response to the pre-9/11 intelligence fiasco. But as organizational science and history show, it's also a misguided one.

When organizations fail, our first reaction is typically to fall into "control mode": One person, or at most a small, coherent group of people, should decide what the current goals of the organization are, and everyone else should then efficiently and effectively execute those goals. Intuitively, control mode sounds like nothing so much as common sense. It fits perfectly with our deeply rooted notions of cause and effect ("I order, you deliver"), so it feels good philosophically. It also satisfies our desire to have someone made accountable for everything that happens, so it feels good morally as well.

But when a failure is one of imagination, creativity, or coordination—all major shortcomings of the various intelligence branches in recent years—introducing additional control, whether by tightening protocols or adding new layers of oversight, can serve only to make the problem worse.

To understand this, we need to step outside government bureaucracy for a moment and take a look at the world of industrial organization, which has had some valuable experience in recovering from major mistakes.

In 1997, the Toyota group suffered what seemed like a catastrophic failure in its production system when a key factory—the sole source of a particular kind of valve essential to the braking systems of all Toyota vehicles—burned to the ground overnight. Because of their much-vaunted just-in-time inventory system, the company maintained only three days of stock, while a new factory would take six months to build. In the meantime Toyota's production of over 15,000 cars a day would grind to an absolute halt. This was the kind of disaster with the potential to wreck not just the company itself, but the entire Japanese automotive industry. Clearly, then, Toyota, along with the more than 200 other companies that are members of the extended Toyota group, had ample incentives to find a solution.

The big question was: How? How does one rapidly regenerate large quantities of a complex component, in several different varieties, without any specialized tools, gauges, and manufacturing lines (almost all of which were lost), with barely any relevant experience (the company that made them was highly specialized), with very little direction from the original company (which was quickly overwhelmed), and without compromising any of their other production tasks? Well, actually it's not clear that one could do it at all, nor was it clear at the time to any of the senior managers of the Toyota group. After all, if this was the kind of disaster that their risk management executives had considered, they would never have left themselves vulnerable to it in the first place.

Nevertheless, they succeeded, but not in the way one might have expected. Rather than relying on the guidance and coordination of an inspired leader (control mode), the response was a bewildering display of truly decentralized problem solving: More than 200 companies reorganized themselves and each other to develop at least six entirely different production processes, each using different tools, different engineering approaches, and different organizational arrangements. Virtually every aspect of the recovery effort had to be designed and executed on the fly, with engineers and managers sharing their successes and failures alike across departmental boundaries, and even between firms that in normal times would be direct competitors.

Within three days, production of the critical valves was in full swing, and within a week, production levels had regained their pre-disaster levels. The kind of coordination this activity required had not been consciously designed, nor could it have been developed in the drastically short time frame required. The surprising fact was that it was already there, lying dormant in the network of informal relations that had been built up between the firms through years of cooperation and information sharing over routine problem-solving tasks. No one could have predicted precisely how this network would come in handy for this particular problem, but they didn't need to—by giving individual workers fast access to information and resources as they discovered their need for them, the network did its job anyway.

Much the same kind of recovery happened in lower Manhattan in the days after Sept. 11, 2001. With much of the World Trade Center in rubble and several other nearby buildings closed indefinitely, nearly 100,000 workers had no place to go on Sept. 12. In addition to the unprecedented human tragedy of lost friends and colleagues, dozens of firms had to cope with the sudden disappearance of their offices along with much of their hardware, data, and in some cases, critical members of their leadership teams. Yet somehow they survived. Even more dramatically, almost all of them were back in business within a week—an achievement that even their own risk management executives viewed with amazement.

Once again, the secret to their success was not so much that any individual had anticipated the need to build up emergency problem-solving capacities or was able to design and implement these capacities in response to the particular disaster that struck. Rather, the collective ability of firms and individuals alike to react quickly and flexibly was a result of unintentional capabilities, based on informal and often accidental networks that they had developed over years of socializing together and collaborating on unrelated and routine—even trivial—problems. When talking about their recovery efforts, manager after manager referred, often with puzzlement and no small sense of wonder, to the importance of informal relationships and the personal knowledge and understanding that these relationships had engendered.

Perhaps the most striking example of informal knowledge helping to solve what would appear to be a purely technical problem occurred in a particular company that lost all its personnel associated with maintaining its data storage systems. The data itself had been preserved in remote backup servers but could not be retrieved because not one person who knew the passwords had survived. The solution to this potentially devastating (and completely unforeseeable) combination of circumstances was astonishing, not because it required any technical wizardry or imposing leadership, but because it did not. To access the database, a group of the remaining employees gathered together, and in what must have been an unbearably wrenching session, recalled everything they knew about their colleagues: the names of their children; where they went on holidays; what foods they liked; even their personal idiosyncrasies. And they managed to guess the passwords. The knowledge of seemingly trivial factoids about a co-worker, gleaned from company picnics or around the water cooler, is not the sort of data one can feed into a risk-management algorithm, or even collate into a database—in fact, it is so banal that no one would have thought to record it, even if they could. Yet it turned out to be the most critical component in that firm's stunning return to trading only three days after the towers fell.

So, how does one make this kind of magic happen? Unfortunately, no one is quite sure. Different organizations, from business firms to research communities to the military, have tried to address their collective problem-solving needs in a variety of ways. Some militaries make a point of training their officers in joint-service academies and staff colleges, both of which serve the purpose of building friendships and professional relationships across otherwise frosty institutional boundaries. Academic researchers, for their part, organize interdisciplinary conferences and working groups that serve to introduce disciplinary specialists who turn out to have complementary knowledge or skill sets, but who otherwise would never have had occasion to meet. And business firms from the automotive to high-tech and finance industries deliberately cross-pollinate their intellectual capital by fostering worker exchanges across divisions or even firms, building problem-solving teams around tasks rather than departments, emphasizing informal agreements and collaborations over formal contracts, and organizing sophisticated team-building exercises for geographically dispersed junior executives.

None of these methods, however, come with any guarantee of success, and all of them come with their associated (and usually far more tangible) costs. As a result, not everyone in either private or public sectors explicitly encourages informal network building, nor is it always effective when they do. Even from a purely theoretical perspective, no one has figured out what is required to build organizations that are not only efficient at performing routine, familiar tasks, but also good at adapting to the exceptional and the unanticipated.

And even where we have apparently clear examples of success, it isn't clear that what works, say, for a car manufacturer or finance firm is going to work for the CIA and the FBI. In the world of intelligence, the kind of information that, in less-clandestine businesses, tends to flow along informal social networks must necessarily be subject to greater constraints. So harnessing the power of social networks for innovation, creativity, and rapid adaptation is a trickier business for intelligence organizations than arguably for any other kind.

What should be clear, however, is that combining the many different agencies involved in intelligence gathering and analysis at a single point—that of the director of intelligence—is almost certain not to succeed in delivering the kind of ambiguous yet essential functionality that everyone wants. So, some other kind of connectivity, along with a more creative approach, is required—one that incorporates not only the sharing of information across agency boundaries (a recommendation of the commission's that has received relatively little attention), but active collaboration, joint training, and the development of long term personal relationships between agencies as well. Creative intelligence analysis has a lot in common with other kinds of problem-solving activities: thinking outside the box, challenging deeply held assumptions, and combining different, often seemingly unrelated, kinds of expertise and knowledge. By understanding how innovative and successful organizations have been able to solve large-scale, complex problems, without anyone "at the top" having to micromanage the process, the intelligence community could learn some valuable lessons that might help it escape the mistakes of the past.

Duncan Watts is associate professor of sociology at Columbia University and author of Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age.

posted in Self Organization - 11 replies

Self Classification

2004-08-12T03:53:51Z

My meanderings in the other thread have led me to bring up this:

A component of our self-organization is self classification. I am very interested in this part because I think as creatures that have the ability to change how we classify ourselves ('grow', 'evolve'?), the system is going to always be in flux and only an indication of a certain group of people at a specific time. Again, the object would be to get everyone participating (no wonder some guy accused me of being a 'plant' -- I'm not though) for the motive of understanding ourselves better.

What are some of the implications of that?

posted in Self Organization - 12 replies

Stigmergy

2004-08-10T02:05:00Z

Stigmergy is a key component in biological self organized systems. I think that figuring out how to adapt it to social systems will lead to real breakthroughs for us.

So what is it? It's a signalling system whereby individuals leave messages for each other by modifying their environment. Ants leave pheremone trails when they go out looking for food, so they can find their way back & others can follow them. Many animals mark their territories with their scent or urine. For us humans, I suppose written language could be considered a form of stigmergy. But I believe that more sophisticated stigmergic systems can be developed to target specific needs.

Here's what the ever-useful Wikipedia has to say about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy

And here's a site that explains the theory behind it, & has some research into it: http://www.stigmergicsystems.com/

Tim

posted in Self Organization - 8 replies

what is Self Organization?

2004-08-02T21:42:33Z

Simply put, self organization is what happens when you take a population of objects, put them in a shared environment & they spontaneously form a stable or metastable structure. Snowflakes are self organized. So are ant colonies; although there's no ant giving orders to the others (queens are just reproduction machines, not leaders), if you measure the distances between key areas of the colony (food storage, cemetary, queen's chamber) you'll find the same ratios as the colony grows & even between different colonies. Somehow, each ant's decisions & actions contributes to making that happen, without any conscious planning or ordering. After all, they're just ants.

Self organization can happen with all kinds of objects. Molecules, animals, elementary particles (lasers & superconducters are self organized), computer systems (p2p file sharing networks), social systems. In theory, democracy is self organized, although in recent years it's pretty obvious that this has changed with the rise of corporate influence in politics.

What do all of these systems have in common? From what I've been able to tell, they all share a common set of methods, algorithms & parameters. If the system falls within those parameters, self organization can happen; if it falls outside of them, it falls apart. The trick is learning that math & figuring out how to apply it to the system you have in mind.

To that end I've started a collection of scholarly papers on self organization, synchrony, network theory & assorted related subjects, in the hopes of creating a center of gravity around which a learning community can be formed to make use of them. I'll be honest, although I get the concepts the math is a bit beyond me. I'm just hoping to be a catalyst for others to carry the idea forward.

Tim

posted in Self Organization - 2 replies

welcome to Self Organization

2004-08-02T16:33:06Z

Greetings! Welcome to the Self Organization Tribe. When I created this tribe, I had two ideas in mind. One, to have a place to discuss the theory (& maybe some of the math) behind self organization. And two, a place for people who want to actually design & build self-organized social systems to figure out how to go about that.

Self organization in general & its application to human social systems has been a subject of great interest to me for the past few years. I believe it has great potential for advancing civilization, for making us collectively more capable & resilient & especially to give us a mechanism for making better decisions that can lead to a sustainable way of life.

That's a lot to put on a Tribe. But nobody ever accused me of thinking small.

Tim

posted in Self Organization - 8 replies