These claims stem from an overly optimistic interpretation of certain developments in computer science. Over the past few decades, researchers have found that various simple rules, when followed by a computer, can generate patterns that appear to vary randomly as a function of time or scale. Let's call this illusory randomness "pseudo-noise." A paradigmatic example of a pseudo-noisy system is the mother of all fractals, the Mandelbrot set, which is an icon of the chaoplexity movement.
The fields of both chaos and complexity have held out the hope that much of the noise that seems to pervade nature is actually pseudo-noise, the result of some underlying, deterministic algorithm. But the noise that makes it so difficult to predict earthquakes, the stock market, the weather and other phenomena is not apparent but very real. This kind of noisiness will never be reduced to any simple set of rules, in my view.
Of course, faster computers and advanced mathematical techniques will improve our ability to predict certain complicated phenomena. Popular impressions notwithstanding, weather forecasting has become more accurate over the last few decades, in part because of improvements in computer modeling. But an even more important factor is improvements in data-gathering notably satellite imaging. Meteorologists have a larger, more accurate database upon which to build their models and against which to test them. Forecasts improve through this dialectic between simulation and data-gathering.
John Horgan__EDGE 16__ May 6, 1997{Dennet's riff on techTV was the unfixed location of consciousness. that there is no place in the brain we are. that we have this attribute and that attribute and without those attributes it's not that we have nothing it's that nothing's there. somehow Dennet jumped from that in a way I couldn't follow to an athiest's redoubt. but the illusion of consciousness is real enough to require a sharper vocabulary. I'm here man, right here. why not an illusion of consciousness in the universe itself? or some unfathomably great portion thereof? just as real just as empty just as illusionary. Horgan, Dennett, so many others, medieval theologians the lot of em. I mean I like these guys for the most part but they have these blindnesses that are so irritatingly constrictive to evolutionary dialog. slog through the quarkisms and superstringists and each wave of monks and priests and their worshipful accolytes, and you may get a clear shot at some small bit of the truth. Horgan's stance that kicked this post up was the 'never be reduced to any simple set of rules, in my view.'
well hey. what could be simpler than a garage-door opener? how simple is it? explain how it works to a shepherd in 1500 BC Greece. in ancient Greek. and fit your explanation to his attention span.
simple rules to one may not be to another. it's a refusal to see the terms as incompletely defined. the Santa Fe posse says a computer will eventually...and Hogan says no because his idea of what a computer is is stuck in time here. my little two-step for these dilemmas has been a redefinition on the fly, what time is shifts depending on your location and momentum, for instance. the ability to predict earthquakes, once acheived, will seem no more fantastic, eventually, than predicting with pinpoint accuracy an eclipse of the sun. predictions that were in their early days unimaginably complex, to the unitiated. in my view.}
