What does that mean?
> Those programs I posted can create an infinity of unique pictures
>from a few lines of code.
So can a random number generator. The big Q is do they contain any
useful information???
> All that information is in the phase spaces of the nonlinear systems.
It's only fair to call it information if it is capable of doing
something. Drawing a picture on a computer screen doesn't cut it for
information in my book. Besides nonlinear systems may exist without
having much to do with the real world. Apparently even those who
have locked up their professional careers in studying them havent
found much useful information in them, as the Sci Am article brought
out. One of my colleagues, a theoretical nuclear physicist, has studied
complex systems for several years now. He thought it would explain
everything from lifes origin to evolution. He was planning to write a
book on nonlinear systems this summer. He returned from a summer
workshop on complexity in Philadelphia where one of the organizers
of the symposium confided to him that he was planning to write a book
also, as soon as there was something to say! He has just this week
decided to abandon complex systems to get away from all the ego
trippers and flakes and go back into something respectable like Nuclear
Chromodynamics. So much for the state of affairs in complexity.
Art