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Notes on software and processes for collecting, analyzing and acting on data |
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In brief, the idea that I keep circling back to runs something like this. We experience a world that is unpredictable yet apparently purposeful at the same time. Even though we believe in mechanistic cause and effect, quantum uncertainty aside, the world does not behave like a clockworks. While some events can be predicted, e.g. a ball will drop to the ground from a height, other events, like hurricanes, remain impossible to discuss with certainty. Recognition of the universal conditions of uncertainty results in a probabilistic approach to the universe. To bring order to making decisions, modeling and simulation are tools to create representations of the world. Making decisions involves values and desiring one condition over another. We can find the roots of unpredictability in chaos and complexity which have been shown to arise in the simplest deterministic systems. Complex systems have emergent properties and it is these emergent properties that we most often model and form the basis of values. Once we realize that we are really dealing in the emergent qualities of complex systems, a higher order, almost spiritual dimension is available within a material, mechanistic universe. The idea of purpose in an unpredictable universe, emerging from complex systems, is a place where we can live lives of significance. |
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Copyright 2003 by James J. Vornov |