[tmbchr]™

Controlling Chaotic Systems



Stock market advice from MIT:

“To control a chaotic system, you have to get a certain minimum amount of information at a certain rate to get the system in a desired state. If you get less than that, you’re not going to be able to control it,” Lloyd said.

Controlling a system’s entropy, or tendency toward disorder, is key. From the perspective of thermodynamics, controlling an object means reducing its entropy. The more that is known about the system, the less entropy it seems to have. In this vein, entropy is understood as the number of possibilities, which decreases as knowledge grows.







6 Reader Responses

  1. speedbird Says:
    April 3rd, 2008 at 3:25 am

    Nice, thanks for that. Very interesting.

    What I’ve understood previosuly is that, say you can predict the weather for one day, you need a certain amount of information. For each extra day, you need to double the amount of information so it quickly gets out of hand.

    So now we’re talking about the information rate required to control a system - fair enough. Assuming we’re not part of the system, presumably.

    What’s more interesting is how the undercurrent of philosophy shouts from the page ‘If you can predict something, that’s the same as control!’.

    And also the more subtle thing about entropy: if you can measure a random sequence, it’s not entropic? Hmm… that’s strong determinism by another name. ‘We /can/ know the state of the Universe well enough to predict its future’. But then quantum computing scares me at the best of times, with its promise of solving /all/ mathematical problems.

  2. alistair Says:
    April 3rd, 2008 at 6:13 pm

    math is another map of reality. solving all reality problems is what the promise of quantum computing is about…..that and um, controlling it.

    any emulation large enough and fast enough is percieved as real.

    the child`s trick of drawing images on the corners of pages of books and then flipping them fast enough gives the impression of movement.

    so, if you have a big enough sample of tim and a fast enough processor and a fast enough delivery medium…..

    and who`s to say that this hasn`t all happened before?

  3. Julia Says:
    April 3rd, 2008 at 6:50 pm

    So, my bet is that Tim followed his own advice a long time ago and left his computer in charge of his web site and we’ve been talking to a Timulation ever since.

    http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/12/09/erasing-personal-history/

  4. alistair Says:
    April 3rd, 2008 at 8:56 pm

    could be…..me too.

    at least i think so sometimes.

  5. Julia Says:
    April 4th, 2008 at 9:01 am

    Invasion of the Blogger Snatchers.

  6. Big Elk Says:
    April 5th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    There’s no way for you to ever know for sure and that is centrally important to “it”



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