complex systems

The Fox & The Hedgehog 

The Fox and the Hedgehog**

By Herb Wiggins, M.D.; Clinical Neurosciences; Discoverer/Creator of the Comparison Process/COMP Theory/Model; 14 Mar. 2014.

“User Ma’at Ra” ( Power is the truth of Ra. ) –King name of Ramesses 2, The Great. 1300- 1210 BC, Khemet (The Black Land, Egypt/Misr)

” Knowledge can be power.” –John Locke

” Least energy rules……”

** “The fox and the hedgehog” from “Preface to the Grammar of Biology” –Erwin Chargaff, PhD,, biochemist, “Science”, 14 May 1971.

The “Grammar of Biology” is an astonishingly wise & insightful article by Erwin Chargaff, the great biochemist. He discovered Chargaff’s rules, one of which was that in DNA the base pairs, cytosine amounts exactly matched the guanosine, and the adenine the same as the thymine. He wrote about the fox and the hedgehog. “The Fox knows a lot of things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”. From the poet, Archilos of Paros.

There is further importance and practical value to the LEP(least energy principle) in terms of living systems, our societies and economies. For a very long time evolution has been thought of as being driven by population pressures of Malthus and the competitive “survival of the fittest” dicta. But what, specifically, are those? Some point out that being fit and in good health helps survival. But what exactly are the basic specifics of those? They state competition but with few instances, and indeed the whole of social Darwinism, which sounded good, but never worked out, fell into disrepute for this dearth of clearly definable, measurable specifics. & so it has remained, largely, since 1859 when evolution was first introduced.

Using the LEP, however, can greatly improve our understanding of what’s going on in the most basic processes of evolution. And like most comparison processes results in significant increases in understanding of the details and specifies, which this method can give us, Plus the practical consequences & outcomes of this kind of new model of what drives evolution. First of all, there are metabolic, structural, and genetic processes in life. There are the citric acid cycles, the glycolytic cycle of energy production and the highly oxidative processes going on in those symbionts of bacterial life within us, the mitochondria. In EACH of these cases, the specific instances of metabolic cycles can be explored in terms of their thermodynamic efficiencies. By comparing these among the living systems, we can determine which are more efficient and which are more likely to yield what is, as Einstein said, the most powerful of all forces in the universe, compound interest.

Recently, it has been found that some blue green algae’s chloroplasts can create 20% more starches than chloroplasts in our usual domesticated plants can. By this comparison, thus LEP, we know that here is a process which can be improved, and thus every 3+ years, double output. And if those chloroplasts are transplanted successfully and will integrate neatly within the metabolic specifics of our domesticated, food bearing plants, then food production can be effective increased by an extra 100% of production in most cases in just over 3 years.

This shows the power & wisdom of Dr. Einstein’s compound interest and the REAL driving force behind evolution. It’s not “competition” nor “survival of the fittest” so much as the more highly specific and useful LEP. For each metabolic cycle, each biochemical process in the cells, as has been shown, there are unlimited ways of improving those. & each time an improvement is made and significant advantages given, the species become more stable and more complete. So thus when we create ever more efficient systems, which do a very great deal with the least possible energy, we create metabolic fitness and durability which cannot be effectively nor easily undone. Look to the stability of the proton, for example. THAT is our goal to achieve.

Behaviors of food gathering and growing crops, social interactions and reproduction, physically fit and efficient body structures, as well as training of the next generation efficiently and well, to create a self-sustaining growing system, are some of the logical ideals at this point in our understanding. A society which cannot or will not transmit its wisdom of surviving to the next generation, cannot or will not train more than adequately in the technologies, the doctors, the computer and technical experts in the fields of design and construction, electronics, power systems, water and transportation systems, and so forth, will not survive. If a society destroys its intelligentsia, it’s very quickly doomed. If it HAS no intelligentsia, it cannot survive, but is likely to be absorbed by outsiders.

If it is not moral, and ethics can be very easily seen to be a series of clear, survival strategies, then it will die or be conquered. And all of these elements must be carefully integrated to create the highest possible efficiency, guided by the LEP and thus be the most stable. Those species can survive better, being the most capable of resisting those forces locally and in our planet and off, which can destroy us. Or further weaken us to the point where we can be destroyed by a 1-2 punch, or 1 thru 3 punches as have probably happened during mass extinctions in the past. Thus we must get off planet to survive and spread ourselves widely around this universe in living communities of high efficiency, in all the details. The LEP of the universe is ubiquitous. This should be our best blueprint and goal and course of action. LEP cannot long be ignored. We must implement and find specifically ways of both biological enhancements of our metabolic efficiencies, all carefully integrated into our DNA genomes. & we must find the best morality/ethics which produces the most efficient and thus stablest and survivable societies for progressing out of our ignorance and incompleteness of understanding.

Why does the human brain work so well and how did it comes about? That’s very clear using the comparison process, the Least Energy Principle(LEP). Because thinking and manipulating logically, mathematically and using complex systems gives a HUGE advantage in controlling the environment around us. We can build better shelters, do agriculture and thus build up more food and storage of foods so we are less bound by fluctuating climatic conditions such as droughts, floods, pests of food plants & animals, and so forth. The human brain in its current form evolved because it created ideas which could be put into play to model and thus control more of what went on around us. This larger advantage gave greater reproduction and growth to those groups who used those methods, their populations rose and they took over from the less intelligent and not so well organized societies, who weren’t able to use such methods.

It was both biological and social, cultural developments interacting which created the evolutionary advantages of compound interest, PLUS those societies, which most notably were able to create stable, growing agricultural systems, leading to large population growth and the cities. The increased food production compound interest outputs, gave rise to population growth. THAT is why the human brain’s physiological advantages of modern man came about. And combined with social advances made the most of those internal biological evolutionary changes, which kept feeding back to create new technologies, and then created more internal biological, genetic advantages, growing exponentially. This took over and dominated ecological niches of other creatures, as well, resulting in more land for humans to expand upon. Sadly, a serious side of effect of this has been environmental degradations and species’ massive destruction, again which will act in the long run to cut growth. Understanding these facts carefully by using the LEP will show us ways to get round these problems and bring our populations into balance with our ecologies & technologies. Otherwise, it’s likely to collapse, and not later, but sooner.

Thus it’s behavioral & structural efficiencies driven by the LEP which must guide us, as they have guided the survival of most all other species on earth to long lives, longevity of survival over the eons. Evolution is driven in most all aspects by LEP and that’s how to better understand evolution, cultural development, and behaviors and emotional systems, etc. It’s how our brains came about, because they can handle real existing events as models in brain, which are far, far easier to think about, than to manipulate events outside out brains, every single time. Thinking about doing something, becomes DOING something over time, as the models get more and more efficient. But we must NEVER forget that mind is the merest shadow of events in existence, from which it’s derived. The idea/word NEVER is superior to the force, logic and power of events in existence, against which it must most always be measured, described, and above all, compared.

The immense stability of some species is explained by the LEP. Their longevity and stabilities of a genome, and why species live so long must now be addressed. Limulus (the horseshoe crab, 450 mega years), stromatolites(algal clumps of sand/calcium, 3-3.5 gigayears), Lingula, a mollusc (480 megayears); and the Sequoia tree species (100-120 megayears), are also likely LEP. They live long and are stable by a simple mechanism which is genetic. IF a species is highly efficient in most all ways based upon the genes, then if that species varies genetically even slightly from that maximal efficiency to a lesser, the lesser will be selected against, thus returning the efficiency of the species genome and population to the maximal amount. Thus such long lived species are stable, by the LEP, which creates that very efficiency resulting in their stabilities.

Further, by inputting this recognition, If we humans wish to live long as a stable species, we MUSt be the most efficient metabolically, genetically & structurally and behaviorally around. Then nothing can compete with us successfully and we will have entered the longevity marathon with a huge advantage. This is what the long lived stromatolites, dating back to 3-3.5 gigayears tell us. They survived because they are efficient. Even the horse, which is 12 megayears old as a genus, has outlived us, by using extremely efficient genetic, metabolic, structural and behavioral adaptations to its environments. The more efficient we are, the more likely we will survive for billions of years. The more efficient our mental systems for understanding and our models are, the greater longevity we will be granted in a universe driven by the LEP. This is the key to understanding longevity of a species. The total LEP outcomes which create stabilities which can last for eons.

Further, it’s clear that human emotions and structure, and thus genetics has been stable for 1000’s of years. The article shows this:
https://jochesh00.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/106/

But what happens if we begin to make changes in our human genomes? It’s very clear that each gene interacts with one or many others. If even one gene is changed, this could have a long term systemic, even lethal effects. For instance, the so called “side effects” of medications are NOT side effects at all, but called that to ignore the complex system effects of medicines. Each new drug has not just a single effect, but many effects, although our linear thinking and methods try to limit and ignore those by naming them, side effects. Drug side effects are NOT, “side effects” but rather complex system effects. In the same way, making genetic changes in humans without understanding the fullest implications of those systemic effects, which will reach in many cases well beyond a single genetic change.

Our genomes are stable, because they are efficient, by the LEP. If we make changes in the genomes without regard to those efficiencies and render the system less efficient by any single or more genetic changes, then we risk damaging the stability and efficiency of the entire genome. It’s well known in the genetics of domesticated plants and animals, that when we selectively bred for characteristics, we start seeing a significantly greater mutation rate than normal compared to wild genomes. Both dogs and navel oranges show this. We humans, if go we mucking about carelessly in our genomes, before we comprehend more fully how a single change genetically, can create many other changes, not necessarily obvious at first, but in the long run important to survive, can destabilize our own genomes as well. This will create less survivability and increased mutation rates which can be very, very dangerous and damaging. Therefore, we must be observant, carefully investigate the fullest systemic effects, not side effects, of each genetic change we plan on making BEFORE instituting those. Otherwise, there could be very serious problems down the line for those who are genetically changed, without considering most all of the major complex system effects. These facts MUST be taken into account before any such changes are made.

The facts that our emotions are stable is part and parcel of this system approach. Even a minor genetic change could change our emotional states and how we react. the moral and social implications of this could be protean. Changing human emotional outputs could render segments of our societies unstable and even dangerous. It could cause serious breakdowns socially as well as psychologically, because the old rules would no longer apply. And the new forms of human emotions could have serious long term harmful consequences in interpersonal interactions as well as social stabilities. We cannot afford to destabilize our emotional systems, which would likely result in destabilizing our societies as well. This is a very real concern based upon solid evidences. We MUST be very careful before we institute genetic changes in our species of ANY kind, because those could have long term deleterious systemic consequences of major import.

The next ideas are those of economic efficiency & stability, specifically. For some time it’s been known that there is an “invisible hand” first noted by Adam Smith, which seemed to be directing economic, industrial, development and continues today in the midst of our current economies in the service industries, manufacturing, and so forth. The efficiencies of U.S. agriculture, where less than 1.5% of the population grows food for the rest, Plus massive food exports is well established & legendary. Compared to most nations which must import much of their food and rarely have fewer than 20-30% of their people engaged in growing food is telling. And this, very clearly is the LEP as the major driver, as well. Because as been shown before, efficiency counts. Solid, efficient food production will tend to stabilize any society which uses those methods. It will also promote growth of population to such a size that it cannot easily be attacked, nor defeated.

Thus the major aspects of economic growth, which are driven by the LEP, create a massive compound interest growth, which we are seeing most clearly in the electronics and computer industries. Not only are several percent added every year, but that growth is compounded every year, becoming ever higher. Efficiency results in growth in most cases, as Apple, Inc., has shown the world, neatly. We must begin to understand our economics in terms of LEP and thermodynamics to best understand what’s going on in this complex interaction of materials, transforms, added value and output of the complex system, we call an economy.

To discuss these LEP further, consider paper & papyrus, with ink & pens. These are far, far better, faster, vastly more able to be made cheaper, though paper is not as durable. This immense LEP advantage over cuneiform tablets which were bulkier, required 100’s of volumes more storage space & heavier, & took more energy to move around, compared to papyrus & then paper with vastly higher information densities per area/volume/weight measures. & thus all around a far, far more efficient method.

That drove out cuneiform tablets by compound interest advantage very quickly, not surviving the 1200-1000 BC period where Middle East cultures all collapsed during the transition to a full Iron Age. Bronze died out, as copper & tin were far scarcer than iron resources, though harder to work, could create vastly more weapons & harder tools, too, esp. with the advent of steel. Thus, LEP played a huge part as well in the earliest economies & societies. And these pen and paper methods survive to this day, altho the far, far faster word processing methods are well nigh catching up. For the first time in over 4500 years, something can exceed in efficiency, pen and ink on paper. It was stable THAT long because of its ultra high efficiencies of use, storage (libraries/archives), and reading.

It’s the LEP which drives creativity which creates worth, value and growth, NOT some putative “invisible hand”. It was the research sections created by Andrew Carnegie, which helped him drive out his competitors by finding ever more efficient methods to create better and less expensive steel/iron. The same was true of Edison’s research labs at Menlo Park, NJ. The same is true of most all modern industries, which have active research departments all having one goal: to create faster, more efficiently, less costly products, to gain the advantages of the compound interest force over their competitors. To win that “Bottom Line” advantage. An advantage in which Apple, Inc., has led the way, to become the world’s largest and most wealthy company yet seen. By clearly identifying this source of economic growth the LEP and the creativities which drive it, we can therefore understand economics better and make it work better, consciously, instead of by Trial & Erro and guessing.

What is creativity in fact? It’s a more efficient way of doing things. Compare the methods of the ancients using circles to model the orbits of the planets. Those were complicated, used lots of epicycles and were not very accurate. But Kepler’s ellipses and Newton’s laws of motion were far, far more accurate, and in addition, could describe any such set of solar systems far, far more easily than the ancient methods. Thus they were given a huge compound interest advantage, and indeed dominate today. The fact that the orbits so computed are LEP should not come as a surprise, either, as Newton’s equations are also the LEP solutions to those orbits. This is hardly an accident!! Although we have adapted his methods to the more accurate “elements of orbit” to describe them in 3-D, those work far, far more accurately to get men to the moon and back and spacecraft exploratory probes to the outer planets, as well. LEP methods, efficient, more accurate, and they win and run the show.

The essential driving force of the comparison process, which creates the LEP methods, can be stated in a complex system way, using its characteristics & thus showing its power. The LEP arises from the comparison process & can be seen using this principle to make a creative solution. Applying (a comparison word: apply an application, apply an application of an application, etc) it comes about by comparing the outcomes in terms of energy, time, resources & costs of each method, skill, process, application or way of doing something. That which uses the least energy wins. It creates the highest compound interest benefit of growth over the long term. Creatvity is essentially a means of creating a far more efficient or effetive method/products using the comparison process.

But let us look deeper into How this comes about in detail & specifically. Comparison takes two or more ideas, words, &/or events & compares them. In finding common elements in each of them it organizes & understands them within that category, such as the analogy word cluster, which can also be considered in a more incomplete form, an antonymous form. The higher Category is the analogy word cluster, or higher abstraction, just as antonyms are higher abstractions. Therefore it unites and simplifies a whole group of similar events, words/ideas, into a single embracing, subsuming category, and thus saves energy. The many become the one. The confusion goes away, and ordering is created. Simplification of the mass takes place. LEP.

Further, consider the insects become in all of their astounding complexities & forms, members of the Arthropoda. And all of the insects are collected into their various families, all joined by common elements of genetics, appearances, 6 legs, antennae shapes and such. This not ONLY organizes but greatly simplifies the whole family, and then find the orders of insects from that. But it’s also a least energy principle. It does MUCH with less. The system of classification creates an LEP form. Thus it’s highly efficient compared to just a random listing of bugs, beetles & butterflies, and organizes it as well. & that organization can be read far faster, and the place of any known insect can be found. & more entries can be added to these lists. These classifications are thus highly organized, least energy forms. Exactly like our genomes!!

Let us take chitin, keratin, collagen, and lignin/wood/cellulose. Each of these are very, very durable, physically and are not easily broken down chemically, because they are LEP forms. It takes a LOT of energy to break down cellulose/wood, because it’s least energy. Thus animals of themselves cannot digest this to gain the sugars out of which wood is composed. But instead rely upon vast collections of bacteria and protozoa in their guts, in order to get at this sugar resource of lignin. Thus the termites, ruminants, and others must create the conditions where those bacteria/protozoans, not only thrive, but can be passed onto the next generations, without losing that cellulose breaking down process, leaving just enough sugar for the host to justify the whole long gut and cellulose digesting mix, which does the work. Those compounds are all very, very stable. They are least energy & durable compounds. This gives us an idea of how efficiently the LEP and comparison process which drive it can increase our understanding of what lies behind the essential stable structures of plants and animals. Nothing Less than the LEP has driven & created and used time and again, by the comparison process. Gaining that compound interest advantage, as well.

That is how the comparison process works, by saving energy in terms of finding places for each insect species & how, Also, it simplifies the system. It’s how any new insect can be placed by comparison, once again. Repeating endlessly the forms of comparison, ordering, saving energy. Those are the secrets of the comparison process and why it’s been selected for to work in our cortices. That’s what makes sense of how our minds work and why the comparison process works. The LEP, which is comparison process created & driven gives the compound interest advantage. These are the depths within depths within depths of simple recognition, the deeper pattern recognition such as of the Periodic table of elements, understanding, and the classifications/hierarchies methods of understanding. The comparison process taking vast amounts of data, efficiently finding the unifying, simplifying elements in them, then creating a highly energy efficient classification scheme to both organize and make it possible, predictable by trial and error methods to be both created, AND read by the same process.

These energy savings are then realized repeatedly by any reading of the classification again. It creates compound interest energy savings which are of huge advantage in the long term. Thus the entire system is least energy saving, & thus favored, thus above all, highly stable. Unless a more efficient classification method comes along, this out-competes and is favored. It’s also stable, a stability because it’s least energy. & that is how the comparison process does the deed. Least energy form, Stability, & huge long term energy savings which multiplies advantage and out competes compared to any other system, unless that is more efficient. This is the key to understanding understanding, and in fact, understanding and recognizing (reading) very likely most anything. It’s universal, unifying and simplifies greatly so we can comprehend far more with far, far less. & each time we use this system, the energy savings multiply via the compound interest rule. That is the heart and core of the comparison process and why it evolved (& our brains’ cortex came about), & why we are so successful as a species. also why it’s stable and why it’s so widely used not only in humans but all over the planet in living as well as not living systems. LEP, the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics.

This is the point of it all. The foxes, linear thinkers, know a lot of little things, but the complex system, comparison processor users know one big thing. Guess which wins in the competition of life with that huge compound interest advantage, every time they use it?

The Hedgehog. Least energy rules.

Le Chanson Sans Fin, the Comparison Process,

Introduction, Part 3

When the average person daily deciphers cryptograms on the puzzle pages he uses the same COMP . He uses a similar process for word finding puzzles, sudokus, crosswords, and picture puzzles. When we decode simple or complex codes, we use the same COMP .

When we translate one language into another, we use, again, massively, the COMP to make a useful translation. & most interestingly, when we contact over the next 1000's of years another space faring species, we will use the COMP to build up our model of their language as they will ours, simply by the COMP. We will point to those things we have in common, stars, rocks, elements, compounds, persons, etc., and give them their names in our language and writing and they will, regardless of what system they use, can give us theirs,  words/ideas/images for the same. This is how powerful the COMP is. It will be much the same for any language anywhere in our universe, very likely. 

When we make copies, those must built, created & compare very closely to the originals, must they not? Otherwise, how would it be of much value? We can copy a copy and we can compare a copy with another, for fidelity. Again, more words which contain the COMP within them. Every copy from the faxes, to the copiers, to the copy and paste function, all share at their origin, the COMP . It's how and why copying is possible.

The copying of all written texts including our most sacred texts occurred by using the COMP massively. It's ancient as the earliest forms of scripts. It's universal from Mesopotamia, to Egypt, to Aryan cultures and throughoutt East Asia. This is no accident. 

But there is far, far more. When the DNA molecule is unzipped in the chromosomes of our cells for cell division & reproduction, the DNA polymerase compares each Adenine to its counterpart, Thymidine, and builds up the other two DNA chains necessary for cell division, based upon the COMP. For every A it creates a T on the complementary double helix chain and vice versa. For every Guanidine it adds a complementary Cytosine and vice versa. and when it's done with that, it manufactures the proteins from the messenger RNA by creating that strip of RNA, using the same COMP, complementary synthesis to create more proteins to build the rest of the dividing cell.

Cell division is COMP on a biochemical scale, just as copying is. Reproductions of all of the species from the bacteria and the virions, through ALL species on our planet is COMP . Thus we see that our very existence is not only comprehended and understood and talked about using COMP, but our very selves arrived and are created by a similar, analogous, simple biochemical system. Duplication, replication, copying, reproduction can all be COMP dependent tasks. 

There are huge numbers of words associated with the COMP. Ratios, relationships, associations, pattern finding, definitions, etc. Literally, 100's of words can be found and ID'd which within them at their origins, we find the COMP . This shows it's tremendously widespread characteristic as well as its enormous importance, too. 

In this we & all the plants and animals and others in our world are united. There is one unifying principle, as the COMP unifies most all higher brains' functionings, it also unifies us with all other life. This grand principle, the COMP , which creates the analogy, the poets' metaphors, the similes, the anecdotes of Lincoln, the fables of Aesop and the Parables of Jeshua Ben Joseph, to the Zen koans, & the surahs of Mohammed, unifies us all in a totally unexpected way. From the simple to the complex, it shows the power of the COMP , an essential comparison function of our cortex, which appears to be far, far more important than anything else in our brains, the predominant, higher cortical function. & it's universal. 

In the scientific method of logical empiricism we find the COMP at every level. Because science so depends upon measurement, which is a COMP process, therefore this is one. We take a ruler or measuring tape, or any of the many methods and compare those lengths against what we measure. It's all COMP. When we measure frequencies of light we use the COMP. When we count in our vast censuses, again the COMP. All of our odometers and special travel odometers do the same. They measure, even the most precise micrometers and light interference & quantum devices to measure the tiniest lengths & time intervals, and the parallax methods to determine vast distances. And so on, and on, and limitlessly on. 

Measurement in turn depends upon Mathematics, which  can be simply defined as the relationships of the numbers. 4 is related to 2 by being twice 4. 12 is related to 4 by being 3 times 4 and 1 & 1/2 of 8. Every number can be related to every other number by the COMP , using words and language. These relationships are adding, subtracting, division and multiplication. Basic arithmetic is all COMP. 

In geometry, literally, "land measuring" we find many different kinds of lines, shapes, quadrangles, squares, circles, arcs, chords, ovals, etc. Suffice it to prove the point, is that Pi  is the numeric comparison of an ideal circle's circumference to its diameter and radius. The area of the circle is found by comparing the square of the radius times Pi. Trigonometry is the comparison of right angle triangles' two sides to one another, which creates the trig functions, sine, cosine, tangent, etc. It's the way the sides of a right triangle compare to each other, simply. The algebra of ratios and proportions are simply COMP. And on and on. 

So the sciences formally measure using the COMP , which is so built-in we scarcely see it. A scientist gets an idea, that perhaps, since all the finches on the Galapagos most closely resemble each other, then possibly they are all related and came from a common ancestor, which on that remote island steadily speciated into the various kinds of finches there. THAT is the point at which Darwin came up with the evolutionary model. By comparing finches, and spending his lifetime finding and confirming with the millions of species both living and extinct which he and we have found since. Wallace found the same speciating patterns in the Indonesian isles, essentially another version of the same thing found by Darwin years earlier. That was the moment of discovery, the comparison of the plants and animals on isalted islands, which showed the way. The COMP . 

When Einstein asked the question, what is is like to ride on a light photon?, he was given an insight which lead to a piece of relativity. When he realized that ALL time and space was not absolute, but must be compared to a fixed spot to be measured, THAT was another part. When he realized that time slowed down when objects were sped up relative to a fixed site on the earth, and when he realized that acceleration was equivalent to being in a gravitational field of the same meters/sec.squared value, then he came up with even more. Each of these insights by Einstein were the COMP. That ancient method which orders and creates creativity. Finally, when he realized that time was not a constant, he found that in a higher gravitational field, compared to a less intense field, time slowed down, he had his relativity basics, and created his noted Invariance Theory, which was eventually renamed the Theory of Relativity.

All time and space measurements must be compared to another for meaning. 

From these and other determinations where it's possible to identify the point and thinking of the creative scientist, it's fairly clear, from Kepler's realization that planetary orbits were not circular and the ancients were wrong, that the earth was NOT the center of the solar system (there was NO privileged point in the solar system) ; & Edison's work through massive trial and error kind of discovery,  shows that the COMP was in use when those creative revelations were present. 

The scientist tests his hypotheses reached by the COMP by using double blind, controlled studies, which rule out much bias and interfering noise. This kind of testing ( & ALL testing is COMP, too), creates a finding which may confirm, partially confirm, disconfirm or not confirm his hypothesis. If it does confirm it, that is, to a high degree of probability 95% or more, then it's publishable. If others can confirm it, usually 2 times more, it's likely correct, using the same COMP which underlies all testing and all measuring. This reference shows it in more detail. It was found weeks after the original discovery was posted in January 2014. It's not the Basic COMP of the cortex, but simply one of the many ways & methods the COMP can be developed to be used in the sciences, thus confirming again, its deepest value.

http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/SticiGui/Text/experiments.htm 

The confirmation by other, independent persons and labs and sites of a scientific finding, shows that what has been found is indeed real and existing outside of our brains. It means it is a finding which is true under the fixed conditions on earth, when the test was performed can be found anywhere else on earth. And perhaps, even anywhere else in the universe if a physical finding. The universe is what each of us have in common, existing independently and outside of us. 

But the secrets of the sciences are these. If you bow to the universe by testing it as the arbiter of what is going on, then that finding  can often be used again and again to create a technology based upon it, such as the transistor, and literally millions of other findings do the same. Because the universe is very likely the same everywhere, those events are backed up by the universe everywhere, and just like the existence of the natural laws and the  protons/electrons/neutrinos of atoms/mass are stable, so is that finding. That constancy of the universe, and the facts that careful scientific investigation give us empirical truths about, may often mean it's a universal truth, and can be used by anyone or any intelligence in our local region and possibly very many billions of light years away, too. The findings of the sciences when truly established as real and existing, give the sciences and the technologies the very power of the universe itself.  and they are backed up by the very laws of the universe, also. That is not a trival technology or method. & it's one of the secrets and powerful methods which the scientific method can create.

 From the child to the adult, that COMP creates the discoveries which allow us to learn & grow & develop. In the sciences and very likely in the arts, that COMP event creates much of what we call creativity. From Archimedes, to Newton, to Kepler and Einstein and many others, the COMP can be simply seen as the way discoveries are made. It's the underpinning of creativity. When Edison through the same trial and error experiments found the electric light, he at last realized it with the carbon filament. He had the idea that running electricity thru the right substance would create a usable electric light. THAT was the COMP event. and from that same emotional charging up of the cortex, all the rest of what he found, too. 

The COMP is an active process in the cortex always working to create understanding and make sense of events around it. In the event called Pareidolia, the brain can find animals and other common shapes in clouds. It can find the Old Man in the Mtn. in a granite stone formation in Vermont. It can find the Camelback shape of the Mountain in north Phoenix, AZ, and there are literally many 1000's of such events, which the brain creates using the MofC. It's working to associate, recognize and create patterns, actively when we are awake. Thiis is how it understands meanings in speech and words, and makes sense of much which is not understood. the COMP is an active function in our cortices. The COMP easily explains pareidolia. 

COMP is how to create creativity. How the COMP understands understanding and comprehends comprehension. How we can talk about talking and think about thinking. How we can model a model. How we can think about language. Again, the same transitive, recursive processes, all underlain by the COMP . This is no accident of speech, as it shows the COMP relationships in the words which themselves use the COMP , & depend upon it to work. 

Much work  in  Artificial Intelligence  has finally been able to achieve basic, voice activated programs. The implications are endless. Voice activation means a computer is able to detect human words, compare them to a library it can create or already has of such sounds and perform the corresponding simple task. This is through and through machine COMP . The problem has been the AI professionals did not know what they had to do. They simply proceeded from trial and error, as do we all when being creative, to find a way to get the computer to recognize (COMP ) vocalizations we call words. 

But to create creativity? It's COMP as well, When computers can model human COMP for thinking and visual recognition, then they will be truly AI. and when they can create creativity thru the COMP algorithms, and humor, as well via the same COMP skills, then full AI will have been achieved. COMP is the one, very simple process which has been missed. & had we thought of it sooner, it could have been done years ago. But we did NOT know enough of what simple language and words and thinking and creativity were, and what their origins were, until recently.  

Imagine the capabilities of a truly COMP creative computer, which at 10 GHz can find thousands of creative breakthroughs in a few minutes, compared to our 100-200 ms. brain processing speed. (The evoked potential, a cortical latency of recognition). With that massive increase in creativity AI could make progress and breakthroughs on a massive basis, not just for the programmers, but for all. And combined with a QC? 

"Oh brave new world, that hath such people in it!"

 For these reasons the COMP can be metaphorically termed Le Chanson Sans Fin, the Endless Song. & it might well be Le Chanson de la Terre et Le Chanson Universel, as well. It's real. It's confirmed billions of times a day, and it must be considered, studied, and extended, and then used to create better lives by the COMP creativity algorithm, which the next section will discuss further.

COMP creates creativity. It also creates humor. It also creates optical and sensory illusions via our visual cortex which works by comparing the images and shapes it perceives. The applications are as endless as the COMP can be repeatedly used. There is no limit to the application of the COMP . That is its power and its capability. 

Because this endless recursivity, the COMP models the universe, which is also endlessly recursive. Our universe is built of protons/electrons, neutrons (combining 1 each of the former) and neutrinos, the stable particles of the universe. and from each of these used together in all the myriad ways are created; the atoms, elements and isotopes from which mass in our universe is created. From those atoms came all the molecules of chemicals and biochemicals from which life itself is made. (10's of millions of chemicals which have been EACH classified by the COMP .) Endlessly complex, based upon simple atoms and simple nucleons. Just as DNA is based upon 4 base pairs; just as proteins are based upon 3 codon segments for each amino acid, building up the complexity of cell membranes, ribosomes, chromosomes, the mitochondria that give energy to run the cells & the enzymes which do all the biochemical work of the cells. This enormously stable simplicity of the universe is unlimitted(from a human standpint), compared & described by the COMP . It models piece by piece, system by system, also. and has for 100's of millions of years on this earth, too. and can for all places and times in our universe for the last 15-20 billions of years and for an equal time, very likely into the future.   

 When we understand how the COMP works to create language, order, and rules, even creativity, we find one thing. Every time we hear a joke and "get" the punch line, we have done a self-rewarding task. We get a bit of dopamine kick which the novelty gives us. We smile and may laugh. It's self-reinforcing, so we like jokes, and we repeat them to see others get the same "kick".  When a child comes in from outside, and has found a new kind of bug or animal, he may say "Daddy!! Daddy!! Look what I found!".  How often have we heard that? That's the kick of discovery, that momentary reward for finding something new, the thrill of novelty..

 When Archimedes got into his bath, saw the water displaced by his body, and realized in that COMP moment, that displacement of water could be used to measure density, he cried out "Eureka, I have found it!' Again, the dopamine, self reinforcing process, which each of us may feel when we reach that moment of understanding and discovery. The "pleasures of philosophy" which Aristotle wrote of when investigating the world by his methods. The COMP reinforces itself, and is probably responsible for our curiosity as well. & that of the other animals, too. Exploration is a survival tactic. If it's rewarded, it will be done again. The dopamine kick of the COMP. 

How vast and truly omnipresent and ubiquitous this COMP is, is therefore clear. And that it can create copies of itself, and proliferate by creating new order and new ways of understanding, is also clear. It's plain that the COMP scan simplify down an huge amount of information. What was once dark and confusion, suddenly becomes lit by that bright bolide in the darkness, illuminating the skies of our clear reason to much of what was unknown before, but that light does not fade.

The COMP is  endless and limitless.  For every new word the child has, he can compare that to others. For every new idea the creativity of the COMP gives us it can compare those will all the others, to create more insights. And the more it creates, the more it proliferates, exponentiating to a much larger size. The math fomula is "X!", one of the fastest expanding math series known. This is a secret hiding within  the COMP. This is its power. A method which can potentially decode the universe, using a self-reinforcing dopamine kick to keep itself going and it can be performed endlessly to help us understand better and better, again and again, in endless reiterations, that complex universe outside of us, and that vast, biological complexity inside of us. Truly, it is "Ignothi Seauton."

It may eventually form the basic of a unified understanding of almost everything, which it has already partly classified and partially understood. Le Chanson Universel, Sans Fin, de La Terre:The  Comparison Process iThe followng sections will extend further the creativity function of the COMP and many other observations and confirming substantiations.

End of Introduction: Le Chanson Sans Fin

 Le Chanson Sans Fin: The Comparison Process--Introduction 

"Every fundamental advance in physics was preceded by an epistemological advance."--Albert Einstein

 "Almost anything which jogs us out of our current abstractions, is a good thing."--Lord North, Alfred Whitehead, co-author of the Principia Mathematica.

 "Ignothi seauton." Know yourself.--Socrates, 5th C. BC

 "There is no royal road to understanding. You have to do the work."--Anon.  

Part 1:

The Comparison Process (COMP) is likely to be the predominant, high level, cortical function/process of the brain, which subsumes language, thinking, creativity, visual perceptions, associations, and perceptions of laws, morality, music, creativity and many other high level cortical functions. It lies directly on the neurophysiology/cortex interface between brain & mind.

The COMP is very simple. From this simple process, languages of any kind can be created. Education, teaching, learning, discovery and creativity can arise from COMP. It is basically a strategic, active process used in the cortices of the brain to do everything from operation of the motor and sensory cortex, to consciousness & the conscience and much else besides. The COMP does not create the emotions, altho the cortex clearly modulates and can control them. It's a very simple process, recursive & reiterative, not a thing or object, but an active function, and from this simplicity all the rest can be built. 

Einstein wrote that no time nor space was absolute. In order to measure time and space we must start with a fixed reference point, a point relative to which we measure, a point which is arbitrary and then measure from there. In the same way, our cortex starts with the sensory inputs and compares them with each other to create our consciousness, language, and much else. For instance, when we use words we use the COMP, largely. We hear sounds as babies, and begin to imitate them as our mothers teach us to talk. She corrects & develops our language from the simple words, to the more complex by example, correction and addition of words. By the time we are in our teens we have a good command of the language, and can create and add to it on our own. As ontogeny recaps philogeny in our bodies' development from infant to adult, so do our basic language skills develop by adding more and more words, and more and more language skills, from the simple, to the complex vocabuaries of language. 

The COMP is there from the first in the cortex and is the built in structural process of all languages, which is why babies from any race/locale can learn any language. The method is built into the cortex and is the COMP. When we hear  words we compare those to words in our verbal Long Term Memory (LTM) and we understand what a word means by comparing it to those already there.  If not, then we ask the person to tell us what the word means, by using other words with which we are already familiar. i.e., we compare the words we already know for a definition of the new word. Definition is COMP. No word is an island. No word stands alone, to paraphrase John Donne. Each word is given meaning by other words, and each word is & can be defined by other words. Each word must be compared to other words for meaning, otherwise there is no meaning. Words are highly contextual for this reason. A language is probably a complex system of related words.

 For instance, take a noun, a verb and the object following the verb, the usual grammatical sentence. 

The Tree stop orange.

 It makes no sense at all. Still the grammar is there, a noun subject, a verb, and an object. But it makes no sense despite that proper grammatical construction. Now why? Because none of the words relate to each other at all. Without these relationships the words are meaningless in this case. Change the sentence to "The orange tree stopped growing." and anyone can see the line is understandable. All the relationships are there. It's a tree, an orange tree. Living trees can stop growing for many reasons. It makes sense now because the words can all be "compared" to each other using the COMP very quickly, and we have a normal, comprehendable sentence. We created the sense by arranging a set of words which allowed those "meaningful" relationships to be read and understood.

 Grammar does NOT necessarily create meaning. That's the point here. It's the relationships among the words which do that. Whatever creates a meaningful sentence must create a meaningful relationship among the words. No one can talk about "steely" when talking about tree bark. But about a person's eyes? Again, highly contextual, created by the COMP creating relationships among the words to give meaning. 

In "Jabberwocky"  by Lewis Carroll, we read the words:

 "Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All Mimsy were the borogoves and the mome raths outgrabe." 

Again, all of the grammar is correct, but there is absolutely no meaning. It has form, but like in the first sentence, no meaning. Grammar does NOT create meaning. and this has been the crowbar in the metal gears for trying to understanding language. Get rid of the sole "grammar" requirement, and everything starts to make sense:

 Contextuality, the ability of words to have many meanings depending upon their context, i.e,, the words around them which they can be compared to. 

CF.: "I CAN do it.";  The beans were in the CAN.";  (Another, but rather rude phrase "CAN" related to the WC); and lastly, "He saw the Can-can."

There it is. Understanding of language is based upon the relationships among the words for meaning and context. The grammar is a red herring, a false lead, a distraction. 

When my beloved g'ma had a stroke affecting her speech output area, Broca's, she could still talk. She'd say something like " I go sit." meaning she wanted to sit down. The grammar is bad, but the meaning was still intact. These instances show that it's the relationships of the words which give meaning, NOT grammar, which can give form, but not meaning, necessarily. 

When one uses the COMP all of this becomes clear, as well. When we speak we are constantly comparing the words to each other to make sense. That means the active process of the COMP is being used all the time to imbue the string of words with meaning. And if the right words are used, then meaning will result from the relationships among them which are possible despite the bad grammar. 

Take a look at our dictionaries. They use words to define words. They define each word by comparing it to others of known meaning. The dictionaries provide Synonyms, the words which mean much the same, with their mostly connotated differences, The large books called Thesauri are made up of whole collections of these Synonyms, all based upon the COMP. The Antonyms, which are opposites, again COMP. & then there are the Homonyms, pun forming, sound alike words/combinations, which can create the double entendre and are the source of much humor. Again, another instance of an unsuspected new kind of word, wherein the words create far more than was in them from the beginning. 

The dictionary is organized by alphabetical means. This means a word starting with a "c" is compared & located to the 3rd section beginning with all such words. The next letter is found, an 'o" and then one turns to the "c" words followed with an "o" after the "C". The next letter, is searched for, comparing the words until one gets to "com", and so on until one gets to "comparison"

The method is self-consistent and reflexive. Comparisons can be compared, endlessly. It's very self organizing. Because there is no absolute meaning, and all words must be compared to other words for their meaning, it makes complete sense. No word is an island. No word stands alone.. Meaning is best gained by comparison of words to others, i.e., definitions. In the same way we derive distance, speed & time by comparing to fixed, but arbitrary standards, so do the meanings of words rely upon other words. We define words by other words, comparing the meanings of the phrases to create the definitions. No word can possibly stand alone. What would it mean? Meaning is created by comparing to other words with meanings.

And so the list of words grows & grows as more and more categories are recognized, filled with words which fit into each category. Overall, this is COMP. It creates words by showing us new events/new relationships, and so forth. It builds new words by discoveries of new events, new meanings, and so forth. The structure function- relationship is itself a comparison. Definitions are comparisons. Contrasting and differences in meaning are established by comparison. 

Essentially, we use words to communicate with others, not ourselves.. It's a social activity. The words created and learned are then stored in the LTM, which creates a stable, recallable, recognizable entity, a word, which reflects a concept/idea/image or event in existence. These are models for events in existence and is the way our higher cortical functions in our brains are organized. It is nothing less than the fundamental way we process information, i.e., think. This may well mean that in practice, language is a complex system. With literally 100,000's of words in most technical and advanced languages, the complex interactions of these words with other words in sentences, often creating new meanings and new discoveries, very likely shows this. 

When we recall words wrongly, wanting to say cryolite and instead say rhyolite, These errors show us how words are stored in our verbal memories. When trying to recall words, we often get words which are near to it, but not it. Koskiusko, or tabasco or something similar for "capsaicin" the active ingredient in chiles. Note that this means that most words are stored by sound. They may rhyme, or sound similiarly, and so when reaching for a word we want from verbal memory, we refer to a storage cache of similar words, and get the wrong one, time to time. The words can be stored in many different ways and categories, too. Thinking of States in the South, we get a different word storage cache from States on the east coast. All of these associations of words that we know and the ideas behind them are likely mostly stored this way. 

Any kind of error, be it a genetic error creating a disorder, or other conditions, creates a new opportunity to compare that genetic disorder to the normal. Any new finding which can be compared to normals or other conditions, can create new insights, simply because it allows the COMP to be used again in a new way. In some mouse models, researchers use mutagens to create genetic changes. Then they back cross the offspring of that mouse to bring out the recessives created by the mutagens. This often results in interesting findings, by this method of genetic error creation, which is little more than one more of the myriads of types of COMP. Any difference from what we see normally, any finding which is unusual can be of this value, simply because it permits the COMP to be used on one more event, one more situation, to enlighten us. 

Encyclopedias are organized the same way as dictionaries. This is not a trivial example of the COMP, either. When we speak, we find words in our LTM (Long Term Memory) which we use to express our thoughts. The words give language via our LTM a stable platform from which it can grow. When we view the dictionary, when we listen, the same process goes on. We hear words, compare them to those we know and derive meaning from the multiple, fluent, automatic comparisons we make. When we read, we see letters/symbols which phonetically correspond, ie. compare, to words we already know. When we write, we reverse this process, finding words in the verbal LTM which we then write down and create writing. From start to finish when we speak and think and hear using language, we are constantly comparing each word to other words & their meanings AND relationships, which we already know.

 When we see something familiar, it's familiar because we have a LTM item which allows us to recognize it. Recognition is a COMP. Whenever recognition is seen, it's COMP in every testable case. Everyone uses the COMP 1000's of times daily in these instances. When we see a face, we compare it to our library of faces in the right inferior temporal cortex where those are found. If this area is damaged badly, we will not be able to recognize faces. If verbal memory is damaged by strokes or other injuries we lose parts or all of speech. If visual cortex is damaged we can no longer do the comparison processing of the images to see. If motor/sensory cortex is damaged we can no long move or feel on the affected side relative to the brain injury. If the right hemispheric sensory strip is damaged, we might not even realize we HAVE a left side at all!!  

 In every case there is a structure/function relationship between the COMP to cortical functions in the brain. If there is a function, such as sight, or sensation, or movement of a body part, or smell, or hearing, there exists a corresponding part of our cortex which subsumes these higher functions.  In this way, by comparing those persons with damage in specific areas of the brain, we have found this to be an inviolable rule. For every function of the brain we can detect, there is a corresponding area(s) which create that function. Therefore we can be sure that the COMP resides in the cortices of the brain, and that it operates there wherever there is intact, functional cortex.

From this simple COMP, operating in many different ways, all based upon the simple 100's of 1000's of cortical cell columns, again, massively reduplicated, we find higher level cortical functions, such as speech, hearing, music, memory, motor/sensory functions, thinking and processing of information of all sorts. In most every case, it's COMP or a variant of it. For instance, when we classify all species of living forms, we have created an immensely complicated classification system, based upon the COMP. Every organism we see, unless it's a new one, can be classified by observing it, noting its size, shape, color and other major characteristics, including genetics, and then refer by COMP to the classification of all biological forms, and find it. Each part of this immense, organized, well ordered system was built up by using the COMP on a massive scale. Every single known species has been observed, studied, and compared to many others, to find out where it fits. This is massive COMP. As there are millions of such bacteria, plants, microrganisms, and animals, this is millions of instances of confirmations of the use of the COMP. It shows that from the simple COMP a huge, orderly classification scheme can be organized & ordered/created from disorder.

COMP creates order from chaos. It shows how categories are created by the COMP to hold vast numbers of events within each of them. From trees to bacteria to the huge numbers of millions of insects, mostly beetles, the Coleoptera. All this vast order, like language, has been created simply by comparing each form of life to the others. It can be repeated and referred to endlessly. It can be made to include extinct life forms as well. It can be done without limit, just like our words and number systems, also created by the COMP without limit. The COMP has created our entire system of classification of all living things simply by the COMP used again and again. This is not a trivial proof. 

In the Hertzsprung Russell Diagram of the stars, literally 10,000's of stars have been compared to each other to establish the Main Sequence of stars and upon this scheme almost all stars can be fitted. A similar system exists for the galaxies and all those other event such as planets, comets, nebulae, nova/supernoava remnants, etc. Literally, the COMP can be used to catalog and organize everything we can observe, and it has & continues to do so. Inside All of us, Everywhere.

 The elements and chemical compounds based upon them are compared and classified extensively by the rules of the IUPAC system. The Periodic table of the elements and isotopes is the result of this.  Many of the elements, such as the noble gases, the halides, the highly reactive gases such as flourine, chlorine, iodine, and the ferrous metals, to name just a few, have close relationships to the other similar elements. This is 10's of millions more  confirmations from each chemical found and so classified by comparing it to the rules & structures in chemistry. 

The COMP underlies our creation of & reading of maps, which are set up to compare to physical landmarks & guide us about. For every landmark, address, or other characteristic, there has been this COMP  function used. and when we use/read the map, we look to the physical references we see around us and then compare them to the map to see which way to go. Using a compass is much the same thing. 

Epistemological advances/methods in Complex systems  Part 3 "User Ma'at Ra"  "Truth is the power of Ra."Ruling name of Rameses 2, "the Great" "Knowledge is good, because from knowledge comes wisdom, and from wisdom comes many good things."--Proverbs "Knowledge is power."--Frances Bacon "Every major advance in physics is preceded by an epistemological advance."--A. Einstein Least Energy rules. "There is NO royal road to geometry."  Archimedes to the king of Syracusa, ca. 3rd C. B.C. At the core of any good epistemology, is the ability to think clearly and critically. Recommended are the noted economist, Stuart Chase' book, Guides to Straight Thinking: With Thirteen Common Fallacies . This is a basic core text on clear. logical reasoning. A second is Carl Sagan's landmark article in "Parade" magazine, 1 Feb. 1987, titled "The Fine Art of Baloney detection" Also found in his book, The Demon Haunted World.  & the last would be James Lett's fine chapter, "A Field Guide to Critical Thinking" in The 100th Monkey..., , 1991, edited by Kendrick Frazier, the noted editor of "Scientific American" Lett's chapter is probably one of the finest surveys of scientific methodologies and critical thinking available. Once an individual has mastered these methods, a person is much more likely to avoid problems with thinking and will be able to acquire reliable information and know why it's reliable. As well as processing that information carefully and reliably. All are necessary to understand and operate in the current computerized, information rich society we live in. But why think at all about events and models of what's going on our world using complex systems?  They may be hard to understand, they may take a great deal of work to figure out and there isn't as much certainty in them compared to the deterministic methods of linear models. There are many reasons, the chiefest among them are the basic weaknesses and limits of linear thinking. Linear methods can  only be partly true. The knowledge so obtained is incomplete and never can be complete, either, if we are to believe Godel's proof.  Linear methods tear down structures into their parts, and analyze those, but rarely put it back together again. Partializing the universe necessarily results in incompleteness because it leaves out so much, including how the parts work together. "Tree" doesn't tell us very much. It ignores the ecology in which the tree lives, the shape of th leaves, bark, roots, it's genetics, the physiology, and scores of other important points. The limits of linear thinking are considerable and capabilities of linearity are also very limited. We see this with Behavorism, which very linear dictum was "Stimulus yields response", S>R. And as a result behaviorism has declined to near extinction, with the new medications and the fact that the black box, which behaviorism also ignored, turned out to be very important after all. But this is linearity, which ignores too much of the universe and is now being itself steadily laid to rest. Further evidence of the serious limits of linear thinking are that it fails to see, & usually ignores the complex systems in which its objects exist. Medications have many effects in addition to their major designed targets. Side effects are ignored, but not in complex systems models because those so called "side effects" are actually systemic effects which enlighten us more to what's going on in the entire biological system. By ignoring the side effects, linear thinking ignores too much of the entire biological system, much of what is critical to understanding how it works. Once more, consider the capabilities of alinear systems compared to linear. To manufacture ammonia, the Bosch/Haber process is used requiring, hundreds of atmospheres of pressure & about 1000 deg. F, What the legumes root nodules of nitrogen fixing bacteria do at room temperatuve, everyday, fix atmospheric nitration into usable nitrates for protein synthesis. Linear methods can usually only do one thing at a time. Complex systems can do many at the same time. Least energy systems have a significant advantage over linear systems which use a great deal of energy, instead of considerably less. Complex systems in the long run, have the greater energy efficient and the long run are likely to out-compete linear systems for this reason. Consider the case of two manufacturing sites. Posit the one has a 10% advantage in terms of less energy usage, fewer resources being used and less time to create the item than the other. Using the rule of 72, the more efficient process will double in savings over the lesser process in about 7 years. In 15 years quadrupling its advantage. This is precisely the reason we do not see many linear events in the natural world. They cost too much. Compare natural systems' structures with human structures which use straight lines, circles, boxlike cosntructions and so forth. Where do we see these in the natural world? In very few places in fact. The structures of trees, mountain ranges, clouds and many others including the bark and root structures of plants have a complex order, fractal in nature. It's also least energy. Human linear geometries take a lot of energy to impose on the real world. They also have a higher energy cost. Consider that linear geometries are probably not the best way of transporting goods. Look at the vein pattern on the backs of our hands. THAT is a complex system structure and it gets the blood back to the heart very efficiently, as efficiently as the arteries distribute blood, simlar to the veins.. It's least action, too. Do we see linear, square & rectangular boxes in the structures of our veins, arteries and lymphatics? Emphatically not!! Consider the structure of linearity of roads & power and energy lines in the flat planes. then compare that to the roads found in hilly and mountainous areas. THOSE winding roads are more complex systems, because they bend to the least energy routes going around hills, traveling next to watercourses, as do streams in the same areas. Flowing streams/rivers have a least energy structure, which are complex and also energy efficient. Our mountain roads have more in common with these than do the right angle shapes in our linear road building in flat areas, for this very reason. & our veins and arteries have a similar structure and shape, also. The limits of linear methods are also frankly found in the increased specialization in the sciences, including the medical areas. In both, students must increasingly study longer and longer times even to begin to make a contribution of significance. Eventually, and probably even now, this is becoming unsustainable. It's the old exponential barrier all over again. Many physicists & biological scientists at conferences find it very hard to understand what many of their colleagues are doing even in adjacent fields, let along in other scientific areas. This will eventually throttle much scientific progress unless better ways are found to get around this "knowing more and more about less and less, until we know most everything about almost nothing."  Complex systems thinking and methods are a better alternative to this rapidly diminishing return using a linear approach. The Higgs boson was apparently found using the construction of the Large Hadron Collector and then spending even more billions to detect the Higgs. But the finding still lacks the essential, convincing confirmation by at least two other sites and teams, and then publication. Particle physics appears to be nearing an end because it's become more and more costly to do research, which gives less & less. Exponential barrier has now been climbed. It's like trying to climb up a steep playground slide, which is also greased. Eventually, the wise give up and use other methods. Given the fact that scientific and medical knowledge has been doubling every 5 -6 years for about 50-60 years, this is 2 exp 10-12 times as much information as we had about 60 years ago. what we find is a morass of information, and we are unable to deal with it, much less learn it. By using complex systems structure/function relationships and related methods, we can compress a great deal of information into easily understandable diagrams/processes and thus do an end run around this information overload. It presents us with an efficient way of udnerstanding more, with a lot less detail. Or as Irwin Chargaff wrote in his remarkable,"The Biology of Grammar" in a 1970 issue of "Science", "the foxes know a lot of little things. But the hedgehog, he knows one great big thing." For these and other reasons, linear shapes/thinking/mthods must eventually yield to the least energy structures of the complex systems we see in our world.Complex systems do a lot more in less time that do simple, linear systems. This is their inevitable advantage and why such systems exist in our world. There are a number of problems which linear methods cannot solve, viz, the N-body problem, the travelling salesman problem, and problem of close packing involving 7 or more spheres of varied sizes resting inside a cube. The latter is most easily solved by simple, gently shaking the box until the rattling stops, or greatly declines. But computers cannot solve that problem at all in a finite time. Nor many of the previous two problems outside of trivial low number items/stops. Some of the basics of complex systems would probably be these.  A complex system must involve at least 3 or more interacting elements, and are often very much larger numbers than these, esp. in societies, economies, and above all, biological systems, where the number of interacting molecules/atoms may number near 10 exp30, or more. This definition creates alinearity in practice, and avoids linear systems of the type, where A always yields B. It gives the systems the capabilities of A yielding many results, as previously stated in the examples of organic chemical reactions, and so forth. To optimize understanding of these systems uses the approach of structuralism, as best identified by structure/function relationships. Those basic elements have structures which create functions/operations/outputs. Those structures also have their limits &  capabilities by definition. One of the finest books which demonstrates these kinds of systems is Alexander Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", which altho the author might not have been aware of it, shows the events of how new scientific theories can be created, and describes many of the psychological/social events observed during these changes in paradigms. He showed us a beginning of what and how complex systems were. A good understanding of Kuhn's methods and observations will go a long ways in understanding the basic rules inside many complex systems and how they may operate. Consider that any technology has TWO hurdles to overcome. It must not only prove the method is better and gives greater advantage in the long run than its predecessors, but ALSO that it must overcome social/psychological barriers to its introduction. New methods exist within a complex social system which can create unsuspected and rather illogical oppositions to pre-existing methods. This is shown in many examples, but for every major advance in technology, it must not only overcome other methods, but must also be socially/psychologically successful if it's to be adopted. In "Wilbur and Orville" the author showed how the Wright brothers had their flyer working and functioning by 1903. But it was not until FIVE years later, in 1908, that it was accepted in the USA. Mainly because the Wrights sold their aircraft designs to the French, the US government found out about it and so were forced to compete and buy the Wright brothers designs as well. So the demonstrations of the craft were simultaneously shown in airfields near Paris at Le Mans & also near Washington, DC.  If the system were simply linear, the Wright brother design would have sold itself. But existing in a complex social/economic system, it had to take 5 years to overcome the conservativism problems in the USA. The Wright brothers solved that problem by bringing in the French. Which might have been as brilliant in itself and hard to do as in creating the first flying aircraft!! Another fine text is James Burke's Connections, by which he showed clearly how new inventions came about and the social transforms associated with those. Often in very surprising ways, again a hallmark of complex systems. The last would be James Gleick's remarkable book, "Chaos", where he develops fractal geometries and models, by showing how fractals often model the fundamentals of what have become known as complex systems. He shows how the recursive equations of fractals work, (feedback analogies) and how they can mimic and model complex systems, even so far as a working, valid, fractal geometry of cardiac arrhythmias. & that is astonishing by itself. These are the fundamental background texts by which a person may come to recognize and understand complex systems, tho the authors probably didn't realize it. There are quite a few others examples the astute reader can find for him/herself. Complex systems are very complicated, and organizing any discussion of them this early in our pioneering work is bound to be both difficult and even confusing, with many false leads and trails taken, on the path to that new Promised Land, the epistemology and practice of Complex Systems. The intellectual tools we use are structure function relationships. Next are visualization of these structures interacting and the behaviors and characteristics of those. This can also be called process thinking. As in the complex systems of biology, under the evolutionary model, we can see/draw/image and visualize the evolution of a species. Most people have seen the series of primates starting out with pre-simian forebears finally ending up with Homo erectus to Neanderthal man to Cro-magnon and then a modern human. We've seen also the progression of Eohippus to Mesohippus and then to the modern horse. Visualization of these processes is often a great deal simpler than just describing them, too. Another example would be Feynman diagrams, which show particle transformations and effects. Using Schwinger's complex calculations, which often take hours/weeks to complete, the Feynman diagrams can simply be drawn following a few simple rules. Again, the behaviors of the system can be shown much easier by diagraming them.The linear methods are energy intensive and costly. Imaging/process thinking are much more efficient methods. When the complex system of plate tectonics is discussed, the images of sea floor spreading of the plates, the subduction images showing the creation of volcanic mountain chains & great quakes, and the slip/fault quake zones can be seen a lot better than described with words. The linear spread of seamounts showing the creation of the Hawaiian isles caused by hot spots of upwelling basaltic lavas, are other examples. In the complex systems of biological receptor sites models, most have seen the vesicles at the one side of the model, molecules oc acetylcholine being released and their uptake by receptors on the other side, which initiates muscle contraction. Other receptors have other effects according to their types and behaviors. These are all process thinking and structure/function relationships of mental images which can show us how complex systems work. The study of ecology is yet another important  & obvious complex systems approach, where the biological systems all interact with each other and physical features and geographies. Much has been written about ecological systems, but it's an important complex systems example, and too much so to be ignored. The reader is referred to widely available literature on ecological systems. Teaser Alert!! If you've gotten this far, then recall the 1st sildenafil rules for turbo-charging.Under a doctor's care, and already being sure that "vitamin V" has few untoward side effects or contra-indications, such as cardiac problems, nitrates usages, significant drops in BP, then you have the 50 mg., (1/2 of 100 mg. tab). You;'ve got tthe ranitidine, OTC, 300 mgs. total dose, and are now ready for the next part of a complex ssytem design to enhance sildenafil. Sildenafil works as part of the guanosine monophosphate (GMP) system, as a diesterase blocker, which lets the compound build-up to create more smooth muscle relaxation. Using the method of comparison (see below), realize that AMP system is biochemically very close to the GMP system. As a result that which affects the AMP, will probably also affect the GMP levels. The dimethyl xanthines (DMX) are noted and easily obtainable substances for wakefulnes and arousal. There are 3 kinds, Caffeine(coffee), Theophilline(tea), and theobromine(chocolate). Each will stimulate the AMP levels, but coffee is faster in the liquid form, theophilline tends to be used for opening up the bronchioles, and theobromine is a longer acting, probably less overstimulating DMX, than caffeine.Therefore, take powdered baking chocolate (which has had the oil/fat removed) and mix 3 tbs. with hot water, flavoring out the bitter taste with sugar/sweetener to taste. Mix it in the water & drink it down after taking the ranitidine. It will have a number of effects. First, heart rate will increase, to counteract any modest blood pressure drops from sildenefil. 2nd it will act as a stimulant to enhance perfomance, and lastly it will also augment the cyclic GMP system to work better in the target organ. Just as caffien augments cyclic AMP to create more wakefulness/stimulation, so this acts to improve the effects of the sildenafil's biochemical target. It sounds sdifficult but it's as easy as making up a cup of hot chocolate, no fat, please. The next and last part of the complex systems menu to turbocharge sildenafil, or any of the "nafils", will be given after the next section of this primer on "complex systems". This will include the massively effective and creative and applicable, Method of Comparison.  There is a lot more to write regarding complex systems, certainly. But this short primer can give a reasonable introduction into both the mindsets, Methods and workings of the new epistemology, & with practical examples of the same. In this way encourages those workign among complex ssytems the styles and thinking necessary to find and utilize and even build such complex systems. & why complex systems methods in the long run follow the least energy rules. & it means complex systems thinking & develepment will follow the rule of 72 in out-competing linear thinking in the long run. 

Le Chanson Sans Fin, the Comparison Process

Part 2

This mapping by COMP functions is present in most of the higher animals, as well, from elephants, to wildebeests, to birds, and in all species which are territorial, which is a great many of them, which set up their recognition of what is theirs, using the comparison process/function. This does not necessarily mean that the same brain structures in humans are the same which are used in other animals, but in the cases of the primates, it's very likely very, very similar structurally, in our corresponding cortical cells columns and areas of the brain. 

When we look at our time pieces, we compare what is going on, to what we see there. We tell time by the COMP. How often is this done by normal working people, each day? We compare local time to UTI in Greenwich, as well. The COMP is widespread, it's general, it's universal for our species.  

It has created languages in the same way, using different rules in many cases, different sounds and tonalities, but each language in its own way is a self consistent system  created by the COMP, created steadily from the very simple in our infancies, to the complex and markedly flexible and capable vocabularies we use professionally in most major fields. It's the COMP.

When we want to understand something, we say it in words, and each of these is ONLY meaningful in the context of other words. When we comprehend some event, it's the same thing. We can talk about talking. We can think about thinking, we can create creativity, & we can understand understanding. & we can compare a comparison, we can explain understanding. We can model modeling. It's all self-consistent, unlimitted in the number of times we can do it, and self-reflexive as well.  When we are aware of something, we can think & talk about it. The baby's awareness is minimal at birth but rapidly grows as it begins to talk, learn and compare words to events around it. The words act as stable platforms upon which more words can be added, each meaningful in terms of other words. Each defined by other already existing words.

Analysis is simply COMP written large in various different ways. To be aware or conscious of something, means it fits into our model of the world around us, built up by ideas/words/images, from our sensory impressions. It's predominatly the COMP which does all of this. 

When there are these many 100's of millions of COMP examples, this is confirmation on a grand scale, that the COMP is real and working in our cortex. Why something this simple, this basic has been ignored for so long is remarkable, but then again, so was air ignored by our species for 1000's of years, too, until about the 1700's. & if air can be ignored, so omnipresent and common, then so can the COMP, too. It's there, it's real and it's always at work. 

Our laws of morality are based upon a COMP. This system tells us how to relate to others, and how to behave. If we steal, or lie, or are dishonest or cheat, we can in every case compare this to the rules we are taught by language and comparing to real events, to judge if we are wrong or not. This cortical function of the conscience, to which lawful behaviors and rules also apply, is in the frontal lobes of the brain. If the frontal lobes are damaged, then lawful/moral behaviors decline to slovenly appearances, no respect for others or oursevles & asocial often antisocial behaviors & so forth, little short of sociopathy. Again, a cortical function with a cortical origin using  the COMP. 

Our large structures of legal laws are built upon the same process of comparison, endlessly, be it the English, American, or Napoleonic codes. When a cop stops someone for breaking the red light law, he recognizes this breach by the COMP, and tickets him & that's COMP. COMP can rule and govern and enforce, too. The method of enforcement of the laws is implicit in the COMP. And so on and on. It organizes society by these legal and moral injunctions, by the COMP . And this is in every case. using the COMP creates a body of laws and induces people to understand them and use them. We compare what others do and find/realize whether they are behaving, or not. These examples all come from and have in common, the COMP for their creation, structuring and compliance and existence. This is no accident. Again this tester for the socially appropriate, the COMP checker,  is in our frontal lobes by clinical evidence. Further, in normal people we can appeal in social ways that they "keep on the straight and narrow". And so these individuals correct their behaviors, accordingly. The COMP can enforce and control this order. It can actually GOVERN behaviors, as anyone who has corrected a child can immediately see. The COMP is a governor of the brain as well. not only does it create the order of the higher cortical functions, but it has checking and testing functions, also, which can internalize socially appropriate behaviors, diction and grammar in language, and watch skills as they are being performed, correcting each & every one of them, too. The COMP acting out of our cortex serves to order, organize and create higher functions and it can also govern and correct them in process, as well. 

The universe can also be modelled by a similar system of laws, observed and confirmed, which shows us the behaviors, characteristics and various stable parts and processes in the universe. We compare & refer to (another COMP based word) new events to those which we find and find that they are indeed consistent with, ie, they compare closely with the gravitation, or laws of motion and so forth. It's the same system of organization. So it's very clear that cortical brain organization and systems are bound by the COMP, from start to finish. 

The key to understanding the COMP is that it's a process, not an event or thing. It compares ideas, words, images, events, etc. In doing so it expends energy in our cortex where the comparison work is being done. In doing so, it can order thoughts, and that is the anti-entropic event which a process which creates order must be able to do. It creates order. By creating methods of classification by comparison. By creating indices to organize books and other related systems. By expending energy it creates order, and is anti-entropic. This is the key to creativitiy. This is the key to organizing and controling and governing. It reverses entropy by doing the work of comparison in the cortex. & more energy is required to write out the laws, and disseminate them. Quite within the laws of Thermodynamics and physics. 

We know this COMP occurs in the cortex of the brain. We can easily Identify  many of the places which specific functions are going on such as speech, visual image processing, hearing of music, sensation, motor control and so forth. Specifically where this occurs within the 5 layer, neuronal/physiological structure of the cortex is not known. But now we know where and what to look for. A system of neural connections, which cannot only store memories, but which can compare them, considering them at least 2 at a time or more. At present time we do not know  how the cortex works. But we know NOW where to look and what to look for, so the job is half done. We have to means now to idnetify the exact neurophysiology of the COMP and by extension, thinking and analysis and the very roots of cortical consciousness. That's no mean redirection of investigation. 

The COMP is therefore seen as a great unifying process going on in our brains, which creates most of these grand schemes in all of their flexibility & complexity, based upon comparing real events, images & perceptions and categories of events in the brain. From the simplicity of the  COMP, comes the complexities of the mind and brain. Let us consider the thermodynamics of this method, which can take a basic function, the COMP from the widespread usage of it in doing much of our high level processing.

Essentially, the COMP  creates order from chaos. It can order the universe for us by its endless capacity to be repeated. In order to create order by the laws of thermodynamics, there must be in energy input. At that point where the COMP makes the comparison, which allows the dictionary, or encyclopedia or book index to be ordered by the alphabetization rules, the cortex does the COMP. THAT is the process using energy which creates the decreased disorder. This should be measurable in the brain cortex. Creating order costs energy and the brain's physiology uses this energy to create a new word, a new concept, or even a sentence, but the process uses energy and the active process of the COMP is the key to understanding what does it. 

Shannon's information theory stated that essentially, the entropy of information is directly related to how much it restricts a description of an event in existence. In other words, order is increased by using the COMP, which acts according to and within the known laws of thermodynamics in our cortex. Nothing unlawful is going on here. In fact, it's what we'd expect to happen. All of the neurophysiology is there to do it and order is created. It's possible to use this massive order creating process to create order in books. That indexing capacity can be given a thermodynamic value, also. & it can be measured and studied. This is all very real, you see. Recognition of the COMP and how it works allows us to trace drerctly from speech and language to the exact places in the cortex where the COMP is working. And then to trace throughout the brain where similar COMP is ongoing. 

In other animals from the arthropods, to fish to the higher mammals, we recognize that they set up territories . They know the landmarks from their sensory inputs of their environment and they know what is theirs. They know(COMP) because they recognize their territories. They recognize mates, predators, food, and so forth. In each case, the dog knows his master's sound, his footsteps, his smell, his voice. and he compares these to his LTM and he recognizes his master and family. All of the animals can do this recognition in some way, from the at least the arthropods & fish on up. So it's a VERY widespread COMP. and it unifies us all in that basic respect. In the arthropods, we know we have seen territoriality in the crabs and other crustaceans. These are 100's of millions of years old. Even the sea anemones and corals will limit their competition by attacking their non-self neighbors, establishing territoriality. By whatever means, they recognize self, from non-self, and maintain their piece of intertidal zone or coral reef. Recognition means COMP in some form is operating  This dates the COMP capability, in whatever biochemical/neural form it was created for each species, back to at least 600 million years ago in the Pre-Cambrian period. This kind of ancient evidence for its existence is not trivial. Essentially, it's always been with life on earth at least in the multicellular form. 

But there is more, far, far more. When the Rosetta stone was found, it carried the same message in 3 symbolic languages. The top was Ptolemaic Egyptian hieroglyphs. The middle, Egyptian demotic, a sort of cursive writing for legal and common events, and the last was Hellenistic Greek which was known.  Champollion and Young deciphered the hieroglyphics and the demotic by the COMP and trial and error, which is the same thing. They compared pharoah's names in the cartouches to the names they knew in the lower Greek section  and confirmed all of it, Slowly, carefully over the years, they were able to develop from very simple words and letters the complex language of the ancient Egyptians which had been lost. Does this sound familiar to how babies learn language? It's not a coincidence. T

he lost languages of the Hittites, Sumerian, cuneiform systems and even Linear B have been decoded using the COMP in the same way, steadily building up the language. Recapping the same way we have all learned language as children. The endless comparing, the trials and errors, the eventually creating of a consistent system for the Egyptian language. COMP all through. 

It's been found recently that bottlenosed porpoises, Tursiops truncatus (as they are classified), also uses language. This was found, not surprisingly, using trial and error and the COMP. When animal ethologists were observing and recording porpoise whistles, they heard a series of repeated whistles. When they recorded and then played each of them back, the whistles alerted & corresponded(COMP) to some individuals, specifically. That is they compared what happened to the porpoises when their suspected names were played back and found they responded to them. The findings were well past highly significant. The dolphins use the COMP as do we. They have names which compare to individuals. and when we begin to learn their porpoise language, we will find the COMP as central to their use and development of language as do we. This is not a coincidence. This is the power of a most ancient and capable COMP system. Which even the brightest animals have, including our primate cousins. And the whales and dolphins are far, far older than we are.

Epistemological advances/methods in Complex systems  Part 3 

"User Ma'at Ra"  "Truth is the power of Ra."

Ruling name of Rameses 2, "the Great" 

"Knowledge is good, because from knowledge comes wisdom, and from wisdom comes many good things."

--Proverbs

 "Knowledge is power."

--Frances Bacon 

"Every major advance in physics is preceded by an epistemological advance."

--A. Einstein 

Least Energy rules. 

"There is NO royal road to geometry."  Archimedes to the king of Syracusa, ca. 3rd C. B.C. 

How to turbocharge sildenafil

At the core of any good epistemology, is the ability to think clearly and critically. Recommended are the noted economist, Stuart Chase' book, Guides to Straight Thinking: With Thirteen Common Fallacies . This is a basic core text on clear. logical reasoning. A second is Carl Sagan's landmark article in "Parade" magazine, 1 Feb. 1987, titled "The Fine Art of Baloney detection" Also found in his book, The Demon Haunted World.  & the last would be James Lett's fine chapter, "A Field Guide to Critical Thinking" in The 100th Monkey..., , 1991, edited by Kendrick Frazier, the noted editor of "Scientific American" Lett's chapter is probably one of the finest surveys of scientific methodologies and critical thinking available.

 Once an individual has mastered these methods, a person is much more likely to avoid problems with thinking and will be able to acquire reliable information and know why it's reliable. As well as processing that information carefully and reliably. All are necessary to understand and operate well  in the current computerized, information rich society we live in. 

But why think at all about events and models of what's going on our world using complex systems?  They may be hard to understand, they may take a great deal of work to figure out and there isn't as much certainty in them compared to the deterministic methods of linear models. There are many reasons, the chiefest among them are the basic weaknesses and limits of linear thinking. Linear methods can  only be partly true. The knowledge so obtained is incomplete and never can be complete, either, if we are to believe Godel's proof.  Linear methods tear down structures into their parts, and analyze those, but rarely put it back together again. Partializing the universe necessarily results in incompleteness because it leaves out so much, including how the parts work together. "Tree" doesn't tell us very much. It ignores the ecology in which the tree lives, the shape of th leaves, bark, roots, it's genetics, the physiology, and scores of other important points. 

The limits of linear thinking are considerable and capabilities of linearity are also very limited. We see this in Behavorism, which very linear dictum was "Stimulus yields response", S>R. And as a result behaviorism has declined to near extinction, with the new medications and the fact that the black box, which behaviorism also ignored, turned out to be very important after all. But this is linearity, which ignores too much of the universe and is now being itself steadily laid to rest. 

Further evidence of the serious limits of linear thinking are that it fails to see, & usually ignores the complex systems in which its objects exist. Medications have many effects in addition to their major designed targets. Side effects are ignored, but not in complex systems models because those so called "side effects" are actually systemic effects which enlighten us more to what's going on in the entire biological system. By ignoring the side effects, linear thinking ignores too much of the entire biological system, much of what is critical to understanding how it works. 

Once more, consider the capabilities of alinear systems compared to linear. To manufacture ammonia, the Bosch/Haber process is used requiring, hundreds of atmospheres of pressure & about 1000 deg. F, What the legumes' root nodules of nitrogen fixing bacteria do at room temperatuve, everyday, fix atmospheric nitration into usable nitrates for protein synthesis.

 Linear methods can usually only do one thing at a time. Complex systems can do many at the same time. Least energy systems have a significant advantage over linear systems which use a great deal of energy, instead of considerably less. Complex systems in the long run, have the greater energy efficient and the long run are likely to out-compete linear systems for this reason. 

Consider the case of two manufacturing sites. Posit the one has a 10% advantage in terms of less energy usage, fewer resources being used and less time to create the item than the other maker. Using the rule of 72, the more efficient process will double in savings over the lesser process in about 7 years. In 15 years quadrupling its advantage. This is precisely the reason we do not see many linear events in the natural world. They cost too much. 

Compare natural systems' structures with human structures which use straight lines, circles, boxlike constructions and so forth. Where do we see these in the natural world? In very few places in fact. The structures of trees, mountain ranges, clouds and many others including the bark and root structures of plants have a complex order, fractal in nature. It's also least energy. 

Human linear geometries take a lot of energy to impose on the real world. They also have a higher energy cost. Consider that linear geometries are probably not the best way of transporting goods. Look at the vein pattern on the backs of our hands. THAT is a complex system structure and it gets the blood back to the heart very efficiently, as efficiently as the arteries distribute blood, simlar to the veins.. It's least action, too. Do we see linear, square & rectangular boxes in the structures of our veins, arteries and lymphatics? Emphatically not!! 

Consider the structure of linearity of roads & power and energy lines in the flat planes. then compare that to the roads found in hilly and mountainous areas. THOSE winding roads are more complex systems, because they bend to the least energy routes going around hills, traveling next to watercourses, as do streams in the same areas. Flowing streams/rivers have a least energy structure, which are complex and also energy efficient. Our mountain roads have more in common with these than do the right angle shapes in our linear road building in flat areas, for this very reason. & our veins and arteries have a similar structure and shape, also. 

The serious limits of linear methods are also frankly found in the increased specialization in the sciences, including the medical areas. In both, students must increasingly study longer and longer times even to begin to make a contribution of significance. Eventually, and probably even now, this is becoming unsustainable. It's the old exponential barrier all over again. Many physicists & biological scientists at conferences find it very hard to understand what many of their colleagues are doing even in adjacent fields, let along in other scientific areas. This will eventually throttle much scientific progress unless better ways are found to get around this "knowing more and more about less and less, until we know most everything about almost nothing."  Complex systems thinking and methods are a better alternative to this rapidly diminishing return using a linear approach. 

The Higgs boson was apparently found using the construction of the Large Hadron Collector and then spending even more billions to detect the Higgs. But the finding still lacks the essential, convincing confirmation by at least two other sites and teams, and then publication. But who can afford it?  Particle physics appears to be nearing an end because it's become more and more costly to do research, which gives less & less. Exponential barrier has now been climbed. It's like trying to climb up a steep playground slide, which is also greased. Eventually, the wise give up and use other methods.

Intel has now created the Fab 42 chip, which is about as small as a computer transistor can get without running into quantum effects ruining reliability. Gone are the days where new chips can be cheaply manufactured and double their power. the silicon chip computer revolution is virtually over. Again, the exponential barrier of linate methods

 Given the fact that scientific and medical knowledge has been doubling every 5 -6 years for about 50-60 years, this is 2 exp 10-12 times as much information as we had about 60 years ago. what we find is a morass of information, and we are unable to deal with it, much less learn it. Neither is the information by any means complete either. OUr methods again have hit the greased slide of the exponential barrier.

By using complex systems structure/function relationships and related methods, we can compress a great deal of information into easily understandable diagrams/processes and thus do an end run around this information overload. It presents us with an efficient way of understanding more, with a lot less detail. Or as Irwin Chargaff wrote in his remarkable,"The Biology of Grammar" in a 1970 issue of "Science", "The foxes know a lot of little things. But the hedgehog, he knows one great big thing." 

For these and other reasons, linear shapes/thinking/mthods must eventually yield to the least energy structures of the complex systems we see in our world.Complex systems do a lot more in less time that do simple, linear systems. This is their inevitable advantage and why such systems exist in our world. 

There are a number of problems which linear methods cannot solve, viz, the N-body problem, the travelling salesman problem, and problem of close packing involving 7 or more spheres of varied sizes resting inside a cube. The latter is most easily solved by simple, gently shaking the box until the rattling stops, or greatly declines. But computers cannot solve that problem at all in a finite time. Nor many of the previous two problems outside of trivial low number items/stops. 

Some of the basics of complex systems would probably be these.  A complex system must involve at least 3 or more interacting elements, and are often very much larger numbers than these, esp. in societies, economies, and above all, biological systems, where the number of interacting molecules/atoms may number near 10 exp30, or more. This definition creates alinearity in practice, and avoids linear systems of the type, where A always yields B. It gives the systems the capabilities of A yielding many results, as previously stated in the examples of organic chemical reactions, and so forth. 

To optimize understanding of these systems uses the approach of structuralism, as best identified by structure/function relationships. Those basic elements have structures which create functions/operations/outputs. Those structures also have their limits &  capabilities by definition. One of the finest books which demonstrates these kinds of systems is Alexander Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", which altho the author might not have been aware of it, shows the events of how new scientific theories can be created, and describes many of the psychological/social events observed during these changes in paradigms. He showed us a beginning of what and how complex systems were. A good understanding of Kuhn's methods and observations will go a long ways in understanding the basic rules inside many complex systems and how they may operate.

 Consider that any technology has TWO hurdles to overcome. It must not only prove the method is better and gives greater advantage in the long run than its predecessors, but ALSO that it must overcome social/psychological barriers to its introduction. New methods exist within a complex social system which can create unsuspected and rather illogical oppositions to pre-existing methods. This is shown in many examples, but for every major advance in technology, it must not only overcome other methods, but must also be socially/psychologically successful if it's to be adopted. In "Wilbur and Orville" the author showed how the Wright brothers had their flyer working and functioning by 1903. But it was not until FIVE years later, in 1908, that it was accepted in the USA. Mainly because the Wrights sold their aircraft designs to the French, the US government found out about it and so were forced to compete and buy the Wright brothers designs as well. So the demonstrations of the craft were simultaneously shown in airfields near Paris at Le Mans & also near Washington, DC.  If the system were simply linear, the Wright brother design would have sold itself. But existing in a complex social/economic system, it took  5 years to overcome the conservativism problems in the USA. The Wright brothers solved that problem by bringing in the French. Which might have been as brilliant in itself and hard to do as in creating the first flying aircraft!! 

Another fine text is James Burke's Connections, by which he showed clearly how new inventions came about and the social transforms associated with those. Often in very surprising ways, again a hallmark of complex systems. 

The last would be James Gleick's remarkable book, "Chaos", where he develops fractal geometries and models, by showing how fractals often model the fundamentals of what have become known as complex systems. He shows how the recursive equations of fractals work, (feedback analogies) and how they can mimic and model complex systems, even so far as a working, valid, fractal geometry of cardiac arrhythmias. & that is astonishing by itself. 

These are the fundamental background texts by which a person may come to recognize and understand complex systems, tho the authors probably didn't realize it. There are quite a few other examples the astute reader can find for him/herself. Complex systems are very complicated, and organizing any discussion of them this early in our pioneering work is bound to be both difficult and even confusing, with many false leads and trails taken, on the path to that new Promised Land, the epistemology and practice of Complex Systems. 

The intellectual tools we use are structure function relationships. Next are visualization of these structures interacting and the behaviors and characteristics of those. This can also be called process thinking. As in the complex systems of biology, under the evolutionary model, we can see/draw/image and visualize the evolution of a species. Most people have seen the series of primates starting out with pre-simian forebears finally ending up with Homo erectus to Neanderthal man to Cro-magnon and then a modern human. We've seen also the progression of Eohippus to Mesohippus and then to the modern horse. Visualization of these processes is often a great deal simpler than just describing them, too. 

Another example would be Feynman diagrams, which show particle transformations and effects. Using Schwinger's complex calculations, which often take hours/weeks to complete, the Feynman diagrams can simply be drawn following a few simple rules. Again, the behaviors of the system can be shown much easier by diagraming them.

The linear methods are energy intensive and costly. Imaging/process thinking are much more efficient methods. When the complex system of plate tectonics is discussed, the images of sea floor spreading of the plates, the subduction images showing the creation of volcanic mountain chains & great quakes, and the slip/fault quake zones can be seen a lot better than described with words. The linear spread of seamounts showing the creation of the Hawaiian isles caused by hot spots of upwelling basaltic lavas, are other examples. 

In the complex systems of biological receptor sites models, most have seen the vesicles at the one side of the model, molecules oc acetylcholine being released and their uptake by receptors on the other side, which initiates muscle contraction. Other receptors have other effects according to their types and behaviors. These are all process thinking and structure/function relationships of mental images, which can show us how complex systems work. 

The study of ecology is yet another important  & obvious complex systems approach, where the biological systems all interact with each other and physical features and geographies. Much has been written about ecological systems, but it's an important complex systems example, and too much so to be ignored. The reader is referred to widely available literature on ecological systems.

 Teaser Alert!! If you've gotten this far, then recall the 1st sildenafil rules for turbo-charging.Under a doctor's care, and already being sure that "vitamin V" has few untoward side effects or contra-indications, such as cardiac problems, nitrates usages, significant drops in BP, then you have the 50 mg., (1/2 of 100 mg. tab). You;'ve got tthe ranitidine, OTC, 300 mgs. total dose, and are now ready for the next part of a complex ssytem design to enhance sildenafil. 

Sildenafil works as part of the guanosine monophosphate (GMP) system, as a diesterase blocker, which lets the compound build-up to create more smooth muscle relaxation. Using the method of comparison (see below), realize that AMP system is biochemically very close to the GMP system. As a result that which affects the AMP, will probably also affect the GMP levels. The dimethyl xanthines (DMX) are noted and easily obtainable substances for wakefulnes and arousal. There are 3 kinds, Caffeine(coffee), Theophilline(tea), and theobromine(chocolate). Each will stimulate the AMP levels, but coffee is faster in the liquid form, theophilline tends to be used for opening up the bronchioles, and theobromine is a longer acting, probably less overstimulating DMX, than caffeine.

Therefore, take powdered baking chocolate (which has had the oil/fat removed) and mix 3 tbs. with hot water, flavoring out the bitter taste with sugar/sweetener to taste. Mix it in the water & drink it down after taking the ranitidine. It will have a number of effects. First, heart rate will increase, to counteract any modest blood pressure drops from sildenefil. 2nd it will act as a stimulant to enhance perfomance, and lastly it will also augment the cyclic GMP system to work better in the target organ. Just as caffiene augments cyclic AMP to create more wakefulness/stimulation, so this acts to improve the effects of the sildenafil's biochemical target. It sounds difficult but it's as easy as making up a cup of hot chocolate, no fat, please.

 The next and last part of the complex systems menu to turbocharge sildenafil, or any of the "nafils", will be given after the next section of this primer on "complex systems". This will include the massively effective and creative and applicable, Method of Comparison.  

There is a lot more to write regarding complex systems, certainly. But this short primer can give a reasonable introduction into both the mindsets, Methods and workings of the new epistemology, & with practical examples of the same. In this way encourages those workign among complex ssytems the styles and thinking necessary to find and utilize and even build such complex systems. & why complex systems methods in the long run follow the least energy rules. & it means complex systems thinking & develepment will follow the rule of 72 in out-competing linear thinking in the long run.