Is it worth reading if we liked these notes? Does he elaborate much on specifics about these ideas? Or do these notes sum up everything fairly thoroughly?
[Systems with hysteresis cannot be made sense of with a timeless black-box analysis.]
Is this actually true, though? I’m inclined to think that your black-box analysis was badly done if it can’t account for hysteresis. Time is only relevant to the system insofar as time describes the rate at which various parts of the system do things, which makes it seem like it’s something that can be accounted for in indirect terms. Using indirect terms might be less efficient, but I don’t see any reason to believe it’s impossible.
I disagree that black box thinking is something we should strive to avoid. It seems too useful to me, and rather unavoidable anyways. Of course any particular black box model may be an oversimplification, but models that don’t try to aim themselves at simplicity are going to fail due to Occam’s Razor. (Also, in what sense is black box thinking a reductionist bias? It seems like the quintessential holistic bias to me.)
Is this actually true, though? I’m inclined to think that your black-box analysis was badly done if it can’t account for hysteresis.
If the system’s state is a function of its environment and of its past, because some internal component of the system is “remembering” the past, then a timeless input/output analysis can’t predict the system’s output from its input.
I disagree that black box thinking is something we should strive to avoid.
I didn’t say it was. Nor did the author. Every approach has biases.
As to whether the article is worthwhile—well, it’s hard to get a hold of, and most of it is focused on questions of evolutionary theory. If it interests you, you’d probably find it easier and more useful to get the book. You can sample it thru the link in the post.
Is it worth reading if we liked these notes? Does he elaborate much on specifics about these ideas? Or do these notes sum up everything fairly thoroughly?
Is this actually true, though? I’m inclined to think that your black-box analysis was badly done if it can’t account for hysteresis. Time is only relevant to the system insofar as time describes the rate at which various parts of the system do things, which makes it seem like it’s something that can be accounted for in indirect terms. Using indirect terms might be less efficient, but I don’t see any reason to believe it’s impossible.
I disagree that black box thinking is something we should strive to avoid. It seems too useful to me, and rather unavoidable anyways. Of course any particular black box model may be an oversimplification, but models that don’t try to aim themselves at simplicity are going to fail due to Occam’s Razor. (Also, in what sense is black box thinking a reductionist bias? It seems like the quintessential holistic bias to me.)
If the system’s state is a function of its environment and of its past, because some internal component of the system is “remembering” the past, then a timeless input/output analysis can’t predict the system’s output from its input.
I didn’t say it was. Nor did the author. Every approach has biases.
As to whether the article is worthwhile—well, it’s hard to get a hold of, and most of it is focused on questions of evolutionary theory. If it interests you, you’d probably find it easier and more useful to get the book. You can sample it thru the link in the post.