Christopher Alexander died a week ago today. He was one of my last heroes. I won’t name the others. He had a unique impact on me in the way his work not only spanned, but continuously integrated, the physics of complexity, the implications for its practical application, and prose that read like poet
appliedcomplexity.substack.com
1 Recommender
This Spring will have me trying my hand at some stonework. I’ve been reading up, but of course nothing will instill real lessons like giving it a shot. Last July we had record rainfall and the brook that runs by the house flooded a bit. The running water got itself up and behind an old stone retaini
appliedcomplexity.substack.com
1 Recommender
One of the most important pieces of research for understanding the world we are dealing with today was published in 1998 by Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz. Collective Dynamics of ‘Small-world’ Networks presents a simple model for considering the impact of adding “long-range connections” into a wor
appliedcomplexity.substack.com
1 Recommender
Precautionary decisions do not scale. Collective safety may require excessive individual risk avoidance, even if it conflicts with an individual’s own interests and benefits. It may require an individual to worry about risks that are comparatively insignificant.
www.academia.edu
The novel coronavirus emerging out of Wuhan, China has been identified as a deadly strain that is also highly contagious. The response by China to date has included travel restrictions on tens of millions across several major cities in an effort to slow its spread. Despite this, positively identifie
necsi.edu
Boundaries put friction on interactions and interdependencies, reducing upper bounds on computational irreducibilityConsider two 50-cell elementary cell automata (assume rule 110) v. one 100-cell system: The two 50-cell systems can be treated separately, but you can’t break down t...
jwnorman.com
I’ve written a short essay that has been published at my friend Adam Robbert’s new publication “The Side View”. Here is a teaser and a link to the full article: What is a whole and how is one generated?We are very used to thinking of wholes as composed by parts. That is, a whole i...
thesideview.co
Yaneer Bar-Yam of the New England Complex Systems Institute tweeted about the need to understand Ashby’s Law in order to grapple with activities like driving, whether by human or machine.Perhaps surprising: One can make driving easier and make it less safe. Keeping attention on dr...
jwnorman.com
The concept of function is ubiquitous in biology. That is, the notion that the structure and behavior of certain things not only participate in larger patterns, but that their participation is for something — some later state to be achieved. A functional thing does something the w...
jwnorman.com
The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus BoschA Garden is a wonderful exemplar, not only metaphor, of how humans ought to (must!) relate to the world if we hope to live in harmony with natural processes. Humans are unique in their ability and willingness to transform the envir...
jwnorman.com
Or when life gives you X make f(X) A central question in the biological sciences is “what is life?”. What are the properties that make some system qualify as living and others as non-living?The hardest scientific challenges are often the ones that seem intuitively easy. We don’t k...
jwnorman.com
As the ongoing devastation around Houston, TX continues to unfold from Hurricane Harvey flood waters, it is crucial that we begin learning lessons to better mitigate these risks in the future — for Houston and elsewhere. Inevitably, both scientific and political discussions have t...
jwnorman.com
Load More
Don't miss out curated content from your favorite people

Join to see curated content, recommendations and collections from your favorite people.

Find creators I follow