Dear Organlearners,
Leo Minnigh <L.D.Minnigh@library.tudelft.nl> writes:
>The mystery of all bifurcation points stays for me as a
>puzzle. Is it just coincidence that a process chooses the
>immergency, rather than the emergency? Or lies this choice
>already in an earlier stage of the process? In that case we
>should not speak of bifurcation points, because that means
>that the trajectory before reaching this point, follows one
>single line:
(snip, diagram)
>If it is not a matter of choice, than in earlier stages occurred
>a 'butterfly effect'. Which means that we should speak of a
>deviation (instead of a point). For a long period in the process
>the trajectory is composed of two parallel lines which at a
>vaguely defined point shows a significant deviation: one
>following through towards an immergency, the other towards
>an emergency:
(snip, diagram)
>In my mind it is the last case. Otherwise it is for Jeanette,
>her team or us, useless to look for devieations. We must
>follow the track bachward towards the start of the process
>in search for the butterfly.
Greetings Leo,
You have asked a very, very important question. What is even more
important, you have asked the question so clearly that you have
answered much of it yourself. (Herein lies an important lesson for
creativity.) Thereby you have positioned yourself as one of a very
small minority. The far majority of researchers in complexity science
consider the outcome of the bifurcation to be a "stochastic" event. It
means that they consider the outcome as "chance driven" rather than as
"causality driven".
They do acknowledge the "butterfly effect", but only in the sense of
an amplification, causing an "avalanch" in a system which is at a
labile equilbrium. A stationary car on the top of mountain pass has a
labile equibrium. One push and it begins to rush to the valey below.
On the other hand, a stationary car at the bottom of the valley is at
a stable equilbrium. One push and it again grinds to a standstill.
But they do not acknowledge the "butterfly effect" in the sense of a
predestination, determining the particular outcome (emergence or
immergence). They offer many reasons. An important reason is that
there are so much noise along the path from initiation to bifurcation
that this noise has a far greater effect on the outcome than the
initiation itself. But in my viewpoint they are forgetting one very
important factor -- the resilience of the system to such deviations of
noise by self-control through feed-back loops. Only when the feedback
loop is not working sufficiently for the noise to be encountered, will
the noise overide an earlier cause which orginally determined the
outcome.
Thus the hot question becomes: What is necessary for a feedback system
to over ride any noise which may change the final outcome?
My own understanding also involves the double path option rather than
the single path option. But whereas you are now considering the
possibility that there is a gradual divergence which only becomes
noticeable at the bifurcation point, I see these two paths firmly
connected all the way. (I also investigated the possibility which you
are now proposing, but found it to cause too many anomalies, even
though these anomalies are tricky to perceive.) In other words, these
two paths form a complementary duall all the way. I often think of the
double helix of DNA as a pcture of what I have in mind.
Despite this possible difference (we may change our viewpoints in
future), we have one very important thing in common, namely perceiving
that the cause for which case the outcome will be, may lie in the
distant past.
Let me mention two examples. When my dear wife was still a young
child, she suffered from breathing problems. The doctors in those days
(almost 50 years ago) with the technology available to them, diagnosed
it as asthma which she will outgrow. Well she did outgrow the asthma.
She had many examinations during her pregnancies, none revealing a
serious problem, although she battled with threatening miscarriages
during each pregnancy. But ten years ago she became very ill. Even
with technology much more advanced, the doctors could not discover the
cause of her problems. She had sudden "bouts" of extreme tiredness, so
much that she even became grey in the face. She went to several
internists, each examining her carefully, taking ECGs
(electrocardiographs), blood examples, seeking for whatever cause.
Eventually they, and even our GP, became tired of her complaints -
saying that she should rather consult a psychiatrist. So she went to a
new GP who started the whole process of investigation again. After a
couple of months even he got irritated. But one day, at work, she was
seized again by this bout. In the that terrbile condition she got into
the car, drove to the GP and demanded him to examine her immediately.
He gave her one look, rushed her in his car immediately to the
cardiologist she was last examined by and demanded him to examine her
immediately. He gave her one look, scolded the GP for doing such a
reckless thing and ordered him to take her to the hosipital where he
will meet them. When he got there, he tried something which should
have been done long before. He pushed a miniature camera through her
artery into her heart. It was then when he discovered the cause of the
problem, a hole in the wall between the two upper chambers almost 5 cm
in diameter! The hole was so big that it made no audible sound, nor
any drastic alteration on the ECG. She had been borne with this hole
and had to struggle all her life with it as the cause of many
immergences. Only after 45 years her willing heart began to complain
that it could not handle it any more.
Another example. Although Jan Smuts signed the treaty of Versailles to
bring peace to WWI and its horrors, he began to warn other heads of
states already in the early twenties that this treaty will not bring
perpanent peace, but may cause a conflict greater than WWI. (Jan Smuts
was prime minister of South Africa and also the father of holism
"Holism and Evolution" -- 1926. He had similar things to say about the
treaty of Washignton which regulated the affairs between the USA and
Japan.) He continually tried to convince them how this treaty was
causing one after the other failure in the political and economical
life of Europe. In the thirties he had enough evidence to show example
by example how this treaty forced Germany onto an irreversible course.
Only in 1934 British newspares began to take notice of what he said.
"Fear, the meanest of human motives, is today the master of us all.
... If Europe is to get back onto the right road again, it seems to me
necessary that the nations, both victors an vanquished, should be
cured of their Freudain obsessions, should recover their common sense
and sanity." He pleaded for peace, not as a mere mechanical
arrangement of political and economical issues, but as something
"reaching down to and resting on our common human foundations". He
warned statesmen that a WWII was inevtiable, unless they they make
changes to make up even for the changes which should have been made
fifteen years earlier. He identified the treaties of Versailes and
Washington as the butterfies which would cause WWII, but the majority
of statesmen believed otherwise -- catastrophies (immergences) do not
have causes going far back into time.
Yes Leo, even in the face of a catastrophies such as war, it seems
that humankind will always bifurcate into two beliefs concerning
bifurcations -- another example of the dog biting its own tail. Some
believe that all bifurcations are events, triggered stochastically by
a recent incident. The rest believe that even humans are part of the
web-of-time from the distant past to the distant future, following a
mysterious pattern which they will be able to uncover piece by piece
so as to amke the correct choices.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Let your thoughts meander towards a sea of ideas.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Leo, thanks for letting your thoughts meander on this very important
issue.
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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