Sarah Lucere
Reflection I
Coming into this class I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that it would fulfill
some silly credit that my CAPP report says I need in order to graduate with my major. I didn’t
know what we were going to learn or what the work load would be like but after the first week
this became my most interesting class. In my previous literature based classes I would just skim
the articles or not read them at all and just fake my way through the class but this class is
different. I found myself intrigued by the works we were reading and the topics we were learning
about. This class isn’t just some class that will show up on my transcript, it is a class that has
inspired me to pursue research and develop my thoughts and has taught me most importantly to
question everything. By this I mean that nothing is certain, and for what we think may be certain,
there are always contradicting ideas to come into play. [great to hear!!]
It is amazing to me that I have come this far, learned this much and still don’t know so
many things. Obviously I don’t expect to be an all knowing God but I didn’t expect to be
blindsided with the amount of ideas and topics that this class puts forward that I had never even
imagined to think about. It just goes to show how much this world offers and how much more
there is to learn. With the amount there is to be learned there is even more to be discovered. The
possibilities are literally endless and this gives me great hopes for the sciences of the future and
the discoveries that will be tapped into during my lifetime and beyond.
Many of the topics that intrigue me so greatly are found in Melanie Mitchell’s book
Complexity: A Guided Tour. She makes complex and intricate topics easy to absorb and
understand. The first chapter that caught my attention was chapter seven where she discusses
several different theories of complexity. The theory of “complexity as size” made me think about
how we will only be able to determine the complexity of something if we have something else to
compare it to. I can say that the structure of a table is very complex as compared to a piece of
paper but the structure of a table is nothing compared to the complexity of the universe. Right—
or taking that question seriously, the complexity of a wood table is vastly greater than a
plastic one, simply because wood comes from a living organism.
Complexity is a term that has clearly been defined and redefined countless times. I found
many problems with all of these theories and definitions. It seems that they are defined around a
specific example and cannot be proven universal. All of these theories look at the complexity of
something very small within the object at hand instead of the overall picture. Initially to me the
complexity of a system would seem to be how all the parts manage to work together but these
theories take the approach that the complexity arises from the initial parts of the system not how
the system works in the end. Kind of like the complexity of flying birds comes from how one
bird interacts with the next instead of looking at how the flock moves as a group. The complexity
or simplicity of the parts is what creates the overall appearance of a complex system.
In chapter 18 Mitchell asks the thought provoking question “How did evolution produce
creatures with such an enormous contrast between their individual simplicity and their collective
sophistication?” This question made me think of the videos we watched in class of the birds
flying and the fish swimming. Ever since I was a little kid I loved watching groups of animals,
birds, dogs, horses, and fish. My father owned an aquarium maintenance company so I often sat
in our fish room watching the guppies school from one corner to the next. I’ve been riding horses
since the age of five and nearly every night in the summertime I would stand on the fence
watching the herd in the field enjoying their few hours of freedom. The bay by my house was
home to hundreds of birds that would swarm over the water near dock lights in the dead of night
swooping and diving to catch the fish that were attracted to the light. The way dogs interact in a
pack was something I observed weekly when I took my dog to the local dog run. All of these
images were somehow magical to me but I never knew why. These readings have opened my
eyes to the fact that there is something happening amongst these organizations, something bigger
than myself. Self-organization is by far the most interesting topic we have touched up thus far in
the course. Boids was my favorite program to mess around with. I love how a flock can be
generated but so few and simple rules. It makes me wonder how the organization actually occurs
when everyday life is so much more complicated than the computer program.
In chapter 17 Mitchell talks about Kleiber’s Law which I found very interesting. I
wondered what would happen if you added each species to the graph and then individuals to each
species group and replaced the line of best fit with a line that connected every point. Starting
from one individual and zooming out, would you get a fractal like pattern? Using these new data
points would it be possible to get a more precise fractal equation or just would it just be an over
complicated expression of what we already know to be Kleiber’s Law? These questions got me
thinking about the meaning of what it is to get more specific answers. Achieving a more accurate
equation may just give me more decimal places than the last equation. If these few extra
decimals aren’t useful in the long run than there may be no use in trying to make it more specific
in the first place. Maybe we are heading in the wrong direction and should be generalizing things
to get a decent overview instead of exact and precise data.
In chapter 8 and 9, Mitchell starts questioning “What is Life?” which sparks some serious
discussion in class such as the definition of “personhood” and who or what would be granted this
“personhood.” Personhood is just one of the several phrases that have come up in this course
that don’t have one definite meaning. To be a person under law means that you have certain legal
rights. There is no clear line as to what qualifies a being to deserve these special rights. This
argument was based around the idea of granting personhood to a robot. Mitchell introduces
genetic algorithms in the form of Robby the Robot. This computer program represented by a
robot seemed like a very far stretch to me when talking about such a deeply intellectual question
as “what is life?” Such a simple genetic algorithm could never be considered life. By us picking
the parents and not having them programmed to reproduce on their own is a major failure in
trying to create genetic life. Not to mention the emotional and intellectual aspect that is lacking
within the robots. The robots only exist because we allow them to; because we design and
program them to do some specific thing for some specific reward. The lack of free will is what
holds me back from granting Robby personhood.
Mitchell goes on to say “I am going to use a genetic algorithm to evolve a “brain” (that
is, a control strategy) for Robby.” A brain isn’t a control strategy. Life doesn’t come with one
certain job lined out for us to follow (or so I would hope). It doesn’t seem plausible to me that a
brain is as simple as a genetic algorithm. Evolving a genetic algorithm requires the computer to
interpret negative and positive feedback i.e. bumping into a wall is bad but picking up a can is
good. The computer only knows what is good and what is bad by the reward system of points. It
doesn’t seem plausible for a genetic algorithm to relate to actual life when life comes with so
many cultures and varying degrees of right and wrong. In life there is no defined reward system
to follow. We simply live by our experiences and intuition.
I found it very interesting that Robby was able to think ahead into the future while the
simplistic human program only thought about the immediate goals. Robby discovered the benefit
of leaving a cell with a can still in it to use as a marker. It seems that the human programmed the
genetic algorithm to do only what the game entailed such as picking up a can when it is spotted
because the human is the one that created the game. Of course the game designers think they
know the best way to beat the game.
When it comes to picking good genes to breed it is easy when you have something as
simple as the contrast between -81 points and -400 points but what about when you are dealing
with more complicated systems. Life isn’t defined by how many points you hold. There are so
many ways to view life that a point system would be impossible to create let alone put into place,
so determining who should become parents and pass on their genes is a very difficult task.
The topic of cellular automaton brought up one question that I couldn’t seem to get away
from. Mitchell says that deciding what state to be in depends on what state your neighborhood is
in. But how does the neighborhood decide on what state to be in if each individual is relying on
the next? This is where my thoughts about a “higher power” come in. There are certain things in
life that just seem to be preprogrammed. Some things seem impossible without the existence of a
“God.”
We continuously learn about different scientists from all different backgrounds and
educations that simply had an idea one day or a spark that triggered them to study, create or
design what it is that they are now famous for. It is truly inspiring to be able to learn about these
incredible people and their ground breaking ideas. Many of these ideas have opened my eyes to
the endless possibilities that the universe holds. With patients, time and a lot of hard work I hope
that one day my own crazy thoughts and ideas will turn into something even remotely as useful
as what these incredible people created. Beautifully written, thoughtfully engaged! You made
this a better day for me just by writing this! Grade = A.