Systems Scientists

"The concept of a random walk is simple but rich for its many applications, not only in finance but also in physics and the description of natural phenomena. It is arguably one of the most founding concepts in modern physics as well as in finance, as it underlies the theories of elementary particles, which are the building blocks of our universe, as well as those describing the complex organization of matter around us."

"According to the academic world view that markets are efficient, only the revelation of a dramatic piece of information can cause a crash, yet in reality even the most thorough post-mortem analyses are typically inconclusive as to what this piece of information might have been. For traders and investors, the fear of a crash is a perpetual source of stress, and the onset of the event itself always ruins the lives of some of them."

"At another level, market crashes constitute beautiful examples of events that we would all like to forecast. The arrow of time is inexorably projecting us toward the undetermined future. Predicting the future captures the imagination of all and is perhaps the greatest challenge."

"Model building is the art of selecting those aspects of a process that are relevant to the question being asked. As with any art, this selection is guided by taste, elegance, and metaphor; it is a matter of induction, rather than deduction. High science depends on this art."

"Unwrapping occurs when the "solution" is explicitly built into the program from the start."

"There is more of a mystery to the origin of the pin factory that Adam Smith (1776) discusses in his Wealth of Nations than is generally realized."

"Looking back to data, we can see if the consequences are plausible; looking forward to theory, we can see if general principles are suggested."

"The measure of performance of any given agent is the amount of money it accumulates through its actions."

"Evolution continually innovates, but at each level it conserves the elements that are recombined to yield the innovations."

"Particular individuals do not recur, but their building blocks do."

"When a new building block is discovered, the result is usually a range of innovations."

"If there is to be a competition, there must be some basis for resolving it. It is also clear that the competition should be experienced based."

"This use of building blocks to generate internal models is a pervasive feature of complex adaptive systems."

"The recycling of resource by the aggregate behavior of a diverse array of agents is much more than the sum of the individual actions."

"The multiplier effect is a major feature of networks and flows. It arises regardless of the particular nature of the resource, be it goods, money, or messages."

"nonlinear interactions almost always make the behavior of the aggregate more complicated than would be predicted by summing or averaging."

"If we are to understand the interactions of a large number of agents, we must first be able to describe the capabilities of individual agents."

"With theory, we can separate fundamental characteristics from fascinating idiosyncrasies and incidental features. Theory supplies landmarks and guideposts, and we begin to know what to observe and where to act."

"Even though these complex systems differ in detail, the question of coherence under change is the central enigma for each."

""Doing science," particularly the synthesis of disparate ideas, is not as arcane as it is often made out to be. Discipline and taste play a vital role, but the activity is familiar to anyone who has made some effort to be creative."

"Holland's and Kauffman's work, together with Dawkins' simulations of evolution and Varela's models of autopoietic systems, provide essential inspiration for the new discipline of artificial life, This approach, initiated by Chris Langton (1989, 1992), tries to develop technological systems (computer programs and autonomous robots) that exhibit lifelike properties, such as reproduction, sexuality, swarming, and co-evolution."

"We had summer courses in what was called automata theory; after the first year I directed them. Herb Simon, Al Newell, Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, they all came and lectured on them, so there was quite a bit of interaction."

"Actually quite recently, within the last four or five years, Bill and I have got back together again to build agent-based models of language acquisition; so that was a kind of longrange boomerang"

"So anyhow I did math and I had actually started writing a dissertation in mathematics – on cylindrical algebras, algebras that extended Boolean algebras to predicate logic with quantifiers"

"That time at IBM was obviously an influence on me. I worked for them for eighteen months and then decided I really did want to go to graduate school."

"I think it’s still true, you had to do a dissertation for your bachelor’s degree. I decided that I wanted to do something that was really quite new: work with the first real-time computer"

"Not particularly, although my parents always encouraged me and supported my interest, from the first chemistry set they bought me,"

"The end point, a cas simulation with a realistic interface, is highly desirable, because it enables an ecologist, or economist, or politician to try out alternatives that could not possibly tried in real systems."

"Quantum physicists today are reconciled to randomness at the individual event level, but to expect causality to underlie statistical quantum phenomena is reasonable. Suppose a person shakes an ink pen such that ink spots are formed on a white wall, in what appears for all intents and purposes, randomly. Let us further suppose the random ink spots accumulate to form precise pictures of different known persons' faces every time. We will not regard the overall result to be a happenchance; we are apt to suspect there must be a "method" to the person who is shaking the ink pen."

"Scientific realism in classical (i.e. pre-quantum) physics has remained compatible with the naive realism of everyday thinking on the whole; whereas it has proven impossible to find any consistent way to visualize the world underlying quantum theory in terms of our pictures in the everyday world. The general conclusion is that in quantum theory naive realism, although necessary at the level of observations, fails at the microscopic level."

"Any high school boy or girl knows how to calculate the force with which a stone he or she throws will hit someone in the face, but nothing in those equations they use will tell them whether or not to throw it…To solve the problem of values we must know what is valuable. Consciousness is the most valuable commodity…To bring values into science, we need to connect science with what is valuable—consciousness."

"As science went further and further into the external world, they ended up inside the atom where to their surprise they saw consciousness staring them in the face!"

"Present an explanation of Gomatam's interpretation of Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics. You do not need to include your own interpretation of Bohr or evaluate whether Gomatam is getting Bohr's view correct. But you should articulate the conception of reality offered Gomatam's Bohr. In doing so, you should make clear whether Gomatam's Bohr solves the measurement problem and to what extent his account makes sense. Your paper should be approximately 1000-2500 words."

"Gomatam has proposed a new approach according to which quantum theory ought to use the terms ‘statistics’ or ‘probability’ to refer only to the occurrence of observable events and altogether renounce the notion of probabilities when talking about quantum ontological states."

"However, many applied optimization problems have not been considered yet. It is necessary to use optimization methods of quantum and bio-molecular systems, because of the practical importance of the implementation of physical processes satisfying the required quality criteria. Most of the attention is focused on the following problems: … 2. Mathematical modeling of controlled physical and chemical processes in the brain; [to] consider the brain as a quantum macroscopic object (Gomatam, 1999)."

"I have benefited from… working with Ravi Gomatam on his ["Towards a Consciousness-Based, Realist Interpretation of Quantum Theory--Integrating Bohr and Einstein"](1998)"

"In this sense, we agree with Gomatam (1999) who argues for a revision of our notion of macroscopic objects in accord with quantum non-separability. Indeed, the key to progress in quantum gravity may lie in a willingness to abandon stalwart concepts of dynamism such as energy, momentum, force, and even causation at the fundamental level of modeling."

"I was very interested in the talk by Dr. Ravi Gomatam… because he showed, by some nice arguments that the proper way to think of quantum mechanics is in terms of relationships… This is a new way of thinking, which is perhaps how we can get out of the confusions we seems to be in at present moment. It may be that this how we should be doing science."

"Two features of QT are commonly taken to be fundamentally non-classical: the absolute randomness of single events in the atomic regime, and the need for a permanent record of the experiment obtained using a macroscopic experimental arrangement…QT can also be applied to the larger system consisting of the original atomic system plus the macroscopic experimental arrangement. In this case, however, the larger system needs to interact with another stage of macroscopic recording. Since this procedure can continue ad infinitum, and is decisively terminated only when the result of an experiment is interpreted by a conscious observer, some noted quantum theorists have promoted the view that the quantum theory has some nexus with the consciousness of the observer..."

"The Schrödinger equation, which is at the heart of quantum theory, is applicable in principle to both microscopic and macroscopic regimes. Thus, it would seem that we already have in hand a non-classical theory of macroscopic dynamics, if only we can apply the Schrödinger equation to the macroscopic realm. However, this possibility has been largely ignored in the literature because the current statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics presumes the classicality of the observed macroscopic world to start with. But the Schrödinger equation does not support this presumption. The state of superposition never collapses under Schrödinger evolution."

"In these two essays [the papers of 1955 and 1956] the focus is upon ways of simplifying the choice problem to bring it within the power of human computation... The key to the simplification of the choice process in both cases is the replacement of the goal of maximizing with the goal of satisficing, of finding a course of action that is ‘good enough’. I have tried, in these two essays, to show why this substitution is an essential step in the application of the principle of bounded rationality."

"The principle of bounded rationality [is] the capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world — or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality."

"We will likely also find that the nature of the problem to be solved will be a principal determinant of the mix. With our growing understanding of the organization of judgmental and intuitive processes, of the specific knowledge that of the specific knowledge that is required to perform particular judgmental tasks, and of the cues that evoke such knowledge in situations in which it is relevant, we have a powerful new tool for improving expert judgment. We can specify the knowledge and the recognition capabilities that experts in a domain need to acquire, and use these specifications for designing appropriate learning procedures."

"In order to survive, the organization must have an objective that appeals to its customers, so that they will make the contributions necessary to sustain it. Hence, organization objectives are constantly adapted to conform to the changing values of customers, or to secure new groups of customers in place of customers who have dropped away. The organization may also undertake special activities to induce acceptance of its objectives by customers - advertising, missionary work, and propaganda of all sorts."

"The behaviour of individuals is the tool with which the organisation achieves its targets."

"Organizations and institutions provide the general stimuli and attention-directors that channelize the behaviors of the members of the group, and that provide those members with the intermediate objectives that stimulate action."

"Organizations and institutions permit stable expectations to be formed by each member of the group as to the behavior of the other members under specified conditions."

"Roughly speaking, rationality is concerned with the selection of preferred behavior alternatives in terms of some system of values, whereby the consequences of behavior can be evaluated."

"# Rationality requires a choice among all possible alternative behaviors. In actual behavior, only a very few of all these possible alternatives come to mind."

"#Since these questions lie in the future, imagination must supply the lack of experienced feeling in attaching value to them. But values can be only imperfectly anticipated."