Chaos?

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Should the Construction of *that* Mosque Be Allowed to Proceed?

Yes. It's a property rights/free speech issue first and foremost.

48%

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Undecided. There are powerful arguments on both sides.

Total votes: 29

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

Economics In One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

Submitted by tyler.sharshel on Mon, 2008-11-10 07:35

I've been reading a novel and a big part of it talks about the balance between chaos and order, that it naturally evens out. The more order you try and press on something, the more chaos it responds with. A thought came to mind: Take the idea of chaos, and approach it through objectivism. If all actions define a certain reaction, can chaos really exist? I'm not talking in some theory of relativity bullshit where if you're awesome the universe just bends around you and gives you good stuff, just logically. If black and white destructive actions lead to self-destruction isn't order simply the only thing there is? Going further does this mean we are constantly under the illusion that without an entity ensuring order we are destined for chaos? Or that the "balance" of more order more chaos is actually just a constant middle-ground that needs no influence? A free thought simply swimming around in my dome, I'm curious to see what people have to say about it.

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SOLO

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Different Orders

Submitted by Stephen Boydstun on Tue, 2008-12-09 14:46.

Both order and disorder are characterized in determinate mathematical ways in modern physics. Those characterizations are orderly, but we should keep distinct (i) the order of the characterization of disorder and (ii) the disorder being characterized. We should not let the order in (i) make less real the disorder in (ii).

“In short, my colleagues and I have shown that the development of order from chaos, far from contradicting the second law, fits nicely into a broader framework of thermodynamics. We are just at the threshold of using this new understanding for practical applications. Perpetual-motion machines remain impossible, and we will still ultimately lose the battle against degeneration. But the second law does not mandate a steady degeneration. It quite happily coexists with the spontaneous development of order and complexity.” –J. Miguel Rubí, writing in "The Long Arm of the Second Law" Scientific American (Oct 2008)

On chaos and order, as in thermodynamics:

Thermal Physics / Statistical Mechanics

http://arxiv.org/ftp/cond-mat/papers/0511/0511651.pdf

Setting biological order in thermodynamic Second Law:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-mat/pdf/0412/0412493v1.pdf

Rand's Robot

On chaos as in extreme dynamic instability:

Chaos

SOLO Thread

Swim, read, swim, . . .

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New application of extreme dynamic-instability chaos:

Chaotic Lasers for Random Number Generator

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Chaos, Order, and Life of the Cell

From "No Gene Is an Island" (Science News 12/6/08):

“Little by little, research is revealing how all these parts [within a cell] are connected in vast networks, networks in which genes and proteins interact in living cells to produce cell behaviors. . . .

“For very large networks encompassing entire cells, scientists are also learning how to watch whole network’s behaviors over time. / The basic idea is to represent the condition of the complete network at one moment in time as a point in [an abstract] space called ‘state space’. . . .

“Tweak the architecture of an ordered network just a bit and the system can cross over into chaotic behavior. In this case ‘chaos’ doesn’t mean mayhem or randomness. It just means that the network will follow a meandering path through state space that, unlike ordered behavior, never repeats. That path isn’t truly random, but it is unpredictable because even the tiniest, immeasurable difference in its state at one moment can gradually swell until it alters the course of the entire network . . . .

“I turns out that ordered and chaotic behavior are both dangerous for a cell. Ordered behavior is too stable, so the cell can’t respond to challenges in its environment. Chaotic behavior balloons disturbances until they overrun the cell, preventing the cell from keeping its interior suitable for the chemistry of life. / But there’s a Goldilocks zone at the threshold between order and chaos called criticality. ‘It’s been hypothesized for a long time that living systems are critical, and what we’ve done is show for the first time on a molecular level that that’s true for these cells’, Shmulevich says.”