I've found it fun to think about the subjects of complexity theory and chaos theory as a layperson, and there's something really enticing about it (from a naive perspective) in pop culture in general.
I think there's a general base belief that it can still be tamed, that if you zoom out enough, all these crazy variations in dynamic systems can still be bounded within predictable parameters.
Silly examples - the Emperor's big plans in the Star Wars saga, or the second Foundation in Asimov's Foundation series. In the latter, he did allow for the fact that chaos theory meant that the psychohistorians couldn't predict small outcomes, but that they could certainly predict big ones. In both of those, the authors were enjoying a fantasy that you could plug in some key inputs, put up with a ton of variation, but still get the general output that you originally planned for. And then closer to home, there's public policy planning or even bigger planning like the introduction of the Euro.
Is that true in chaos theory though? Are there mathematical ways to create and predict dynamic systems with behavior that is truly bound within certain parameters?
Is that true in chaos theory though? Are there mathematical ways to create and predict dynamic systems with behavior that is truly bound within certain parameters?
There was some hype about this in the 90s, but not much seems to have come from it in terms of practical applications. However it is really cool from a theoretical perspective, and some of the experiments (IIRC precisely controlling chaotic contraction patterns in heart tissue from rabbits in vitro) were also really interesting.
If you are a lay person interested in this subject in general I can recommend John Gribbon's book Deep Simplicity (it's publish with two different subtitles)
I think there's a general base belief that it can still be tamed, that if you zoom out enough, all these crazy variations in dynamic systems can still be bounded within predictable parameters.
Silly examples - the Emperor's big plans in the Star Wars saga, or the second Foundation in Asimov's Foundation series. In the latter, he did allow for the fact that chaos theory meant that the psychohistorians couldn't predict small outcomes, but that they could certainly predict big ones. In both of those, the authors were enjoying a fantasy that you could plug in some key inputs, put up with a ton of variation, but still get the general output that you originally planned for. And then closer to home, there's public policy planning or even bigger planning like the introduction of the Euro.
Is that true in chaos theory though? Are there mathematical ways to create and predict dynamic systems with behavior that is truly bound within certain parameters?