
Complexity, contingency, and criticality (1994) [pdf] - headalgorithm
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/92/15/6689.full.pdf
======
GorgeRonde
With a more inspirational tone:

> Synchronicity from Synchronized Chaos, Gregory S. Duane

> Source:
> [https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/17/4/1701](https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/17/4/1701)

> The synchronization of loosely-coupled chaotic oscillators, a phenomenon
> investigated intensively for the last two decades, may realize the
> philosophical concept of “synchronicity”—the commonplace notion that related
> eventsmysteriously occur at the same time. When extended to continuous media
> and/or large discrete arrays, and when general (non-identical)
> correspondences are considered between states, intermittent synchronous
> relationships indeed become ubiquitous. Meaningful synchronicity follows
> naturally if meaningful events are identified with coherent structures,
> defined by internal synchronization between remote degrees of freedom; a
> condition that has been posited as necessary for synchronizability with an
> external system. The important case of synchronization between mind and
> matter is realized if mind is analogized to a computer model, synchronizing
> with a sporadically observed system, as in meteorological data assimilation.
> Evidence for the ubiquity of synchronization is reviewed along with recent
> proposals that: (1) synchronization of different models of the same
> objective process may be an expeditious route to improved computational
> modeling and may also describe the functioning of conscious brains; and (2)
> the nonlocality in quantum phenomena implied by Bell’s theorem may be
> explained in a variety of deterministic (hidden variable) interpretations if
> the quantum world resides on a generalized synchronization “manifold”.

\------------------------------------------------------

Related: Automatic translation of an interview with recently passed-away
Mathematician Vladimir Voevodsky.

Source:
[https://baaltii1.livejournal.com/200269.html](https://baaltii1.livejournal.com/200269.html)

> \- I quote. “I express the timid hope that in the second part there will be
> words about a critical analysis of the causes of those visions that you
> visited, and about the relation of these visions to physical reality.”

> \- At first, I couldn’t think of anything else about a very general idea,
> which I found hard to accept, but based on all the experience that I went
> through over the past five years. There are inhuman minds around us. By the
> word "mind" I mean here an information system with memory, motivation,
> ability to model the external world and to plan. They are not "aliens", but
> natively earthly and, most likely, evolutionarily older than humans. These
> minds actively (and sometimes negatively) affect people's lives.

> The world of these minds is very complex, maybe even comparable in
> complexity to that part of the world as a whole, which we now call physical
> reality. I would not like to speculate about the structure of this world,
> because I lack facts, observations for this. Even the simplest questions for
> today for me do not have clear answers. I am sure that these minds interact
> with people. Almost sure with higher animals. And how do they interact with
> lower animals? With inanimate matter? Considerations of logical consistency,
> which should satisfy the complete picture of the world, suggest that somehow
> interact. In this sense, they too are part of "physical reality." It's just
> a part about which we know very, very little. This part of the world must be
> studied and studied using scientific methodology.

> Of course, there have been attempts at such a study. Especially at the end
> of the nineteenth century, but then there were not enough opportunities for
> this. Now it seems to me that such a study can begin with the group of
> phenomena that Jung called sinchronicity. Simply, it is unnatural from the
> point of view of existing models, patterns in individual and collective
> behavior of people. In Russian, this, as I understood from the comments to
> the first part of the interview, is called "synchrony".

> Now, for the first time, the possibility has arisen of such patterns
> documented (ie, instrumental) to fix, and begin to understand their
> structure. It appeared due to the existence of a huge number of records of
> both human speech (for example, interviews on radio stations) and human
> movements (for example, "security cameras" at airports). These data need to
> be analyzed taking into account their binding to physical time. I am pretty
> sure that in this way it is possible to detect patterns in the behavior of
> people who, on the one hand, are not explained by their conscious activity
> and, on the other hand, are too complex and too precisely tied to objective
> (physical) time so that they can be attributed to individual
> subconsciousnesses.

> I personally do not want to do this, although I sometimes feel internal
> pressure pushing me in this direction. I really hope that there will be
> people who have both access to the necessary data and the courage and desire
> to deal with this problem. It will be a real science. From here the chain
> will be drawn to the present understanding of the structure and driving
> forces of the historical process, and then the process of evolution of life
> in general.

