Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

ENFORMATIONISM

A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to the ancient worldviews of Materialism and Idealism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's also a Theory – of – Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.

  Post 135.  July 1, 2024

  Synchrony : Small World Networks

     Holistic Systems are Synchronized & Organized

Synchrony ─ coordination in space & time of multiple simultaneous events ─ seems to emerge in the complex, and sometimes chaotic, world when elements of a system are inter-connected by information-sharing links. The exact nature of those links is not always clear. And in some cases, may seem to be “spooky action at a distance”. In any case, some of those coordinated systems have been labeled by scientists as “Small World Networks”. It’s as-if ancient horse-powered mail delivery, for the whole Earth, were shrunk-down to the size of one neighborhood in a single city. For example, in the Internet, an email can be delivered in seconds, instead of hours, days, or months. So, the World Wide Web is an invisible net-work that communicates at near the speed of light.

Strogatz says, "Network theory is concerned with relation-ships between individuals, the patterns of interactions.  . . .  organizing principles . . .  architecture of relationships". He’s talking about Communication links conveying abstract inform-ation. One of those principles is Clustering, which is a measure of local interconnections. Another is Path Length, a measure of how big the network is. He goes on to note that, "Short path length facilitates rapid communication . . . high clustering . . . feedback loops . . . modular structure". But, for the system as a whole, a few long connections between major clusters, such as Google, increases its efficiency, and also contributes to the Small World effect. Together, all these patterns of energetic interactions and structural relationships tend to allow the disparate parts to function as-if a single entity : an organism. Which is also known as “Holism”¹. In the WWW diagram at upper left, the system has many local nodes, and only a few long global transmission lines. It’s the long “short-cuts” that bind the remote parts of the system into an integrated organism. And it’s the inter-connected “feedback loops”² that allow the generation of novelty. Plus, modular construction (clusters) makes the system more enduring in the face of entropic de-construction.

A Small World network is also characterized by its moderate position between Order and Disorder, as illustrated in this pop-up diagram {click here}. Notice the the Regular system (like a Cluster) has a Probability of Zero (p=0)³. Which means that it is rigidly interconnected, with no room for new connections (re-wiring). And the Random system is chaotic, with p=1 (100%), meaning that the system is too free (unreliable) . By contrast, the Small World system is well-organized, but with a medium degree of Randomness⁴, to allow some shortcuts between nodes ; indicated by the longer lines connecting only a few nodes. This is one example of a Watts-Strogatz model of Small World properties.

1. Holism :
   A systematic way of thinking about the world and its inter-dependent com-ponents. An alternative to reductive focus on indepen-dent parts. Ironically, Holism is a contracted network (small world) due to local clusters of order, and increased global intercon-nectivity. But the system may also have a high degree of randomness within its organization, which makes it flexible and creative.  

2. Feedback Loops :
   “A feedback loop is the part of a system in which some portion (or all) of the system's output is used as input for future operations. Each feedback loop has a minimum of four stages. During the first stage, input is created. During the second stage, input is captured and stored. During the third stage, input is analyzed and during the fourth stage, the insight gained from analysis is used to make decisions.”
https://www.techtarget.com/searchitchannel/definition/feedback-loop

3. Small World Odds :
  Shortcuts are then introduced to the network by randomly rewiring each edge with some probability, p. For p = 0 the network is a lattice, for p = 1 the network is random, and for p ≪ 1 and p > 0, the network is small-world.
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep22057

4. Randomness :
   “A random process is a sequence of random variables whose outcomes do not follow a deterministic pattern, but follow an evolution described by probability.
  Although randomness had often been viewed as an obstacle and a nuisance for many centuries, in the 20th century computer scientists began to realize that the deliberate introduction of randomness into compu-tations can be an effective tool for designing better algorithms. In some cases, such randomized algorithms even outperform the best deterministic methods.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness

Computer diagram
of WorldWideWeb
interconnections

Blog Post 135 continued . . . click Next

Relative worldwide internet usage
by countries
click image to enlarge