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Every Good Regulator of a System Must Be a Model of That System (1970) [pdf]

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21–29 of 29 posts

Re: Every Good Regulator of a System Must Be a Model of That System (1970) [pdf]

#21
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone doubts that being able to regulate a Turing machine would require a system that is Turing complete. But this seems very far from saying that regulating any system requires a complete (isomorphic) model it. Or did you mean something else?

A surprisingly large number of things that we normally don't think of as computers are Turing-complete. It's a very low bar of complexity. And regulating requires modeling requires simulation. That's what Turing's result says: to know whether a program halts you must run it.

A surprisingly large number of things can be modeled as Hamiltonian systems -- in fact, all things -- but this does not imply that Liouville's theorem can be usefully applied universally (or even frequently). The reason is that the subset of variables we actually have access to and care about are not Hamiltonian.

Likewise, observing that some microscopic piece of a system has operations that can be mapped on to a Turing machine does not mean that the output of the Turing machine controls the variables we care about.

Additionally, we prove constraints about the outputs of particular software (executed on Turing machines) all the time. Noting that some piece of a system is isomorphic to a Turing machine does not actually mean it will be fed arbitrary instructions.

Re: Every Good Regulator of a System Must Be a Model of That System (1970) [pdf]

#22

LOL. The second paragraph in the abstract starts with "m this paper a theorem is presented […]"

Probably an OCR error.

Especially likely since the Introduction section contains has "i(lea" instead of "idea".

Re: Every Good Regulator of a System Must Be a Model of That System (1970) [pdf]

#23
post #3

It feels like people keep rediscovering the implications of Turing-completness in different domains.

Don't know why parent was downvoted...

If one can't make the connection between Turing completeness/automata theory and Neuro-cognititive function...think more.

Re: Every Good Regulator of a System Must Be a Model of That System (1970) [pdf]

#24
post #9

see https://www.amazon.com/Have-Fun-at-Work-Livingston/dp/093706... and https://www.amazon.com/Friends-High-Places-W-Livingston/dp/0... for practical applications of Ashby thinking.

Do you know any other books around the same topic. I'm not sure what good keywords would be for this. Ebooks preferrably. Looks interesting.

Free 2017 ebook with overview of cybernetics: https://www.google.com/amp/newbooksnetwork.com/liss-c-werner...

Many resources: http://pangaro.com/definition-cybernetics.html

Re: Every Good Regulator of a System Must Be a Model of That System (1970) [pdf]

#25
post #8

>> modelling might in fact be a necessary part of regulation. That seems false. PID is used all over, no models. Very simple, very effective.

The fact that PID loops work for many systems is a consequence of the dynamics of those systems, for example that the integral of velocity is position and the derivative of velocity is acceleration. A vast array of phenomena can be modeled as 2nd order linear ODEs.

Which just means that for many things your brain doesn't need a new model, just to parametrize one of the most common models.

Re: Every Good Regulator of a System Must Be a Model of That System (1970) [pdf]

#26
post #8

>> modelling might in fact be a necessary part of regulation. That seems false. PID is used all over, no models. Very simple, very effective.

As a bad physicist ("physics is the art of approximation", some prof said during my studies): Indeed, you only have to model the relevant aspect(s) of the system, which may be completely unrecognizable as the system. I guess it's somewhat more true in programming, because if you have only ten lines, can you even call it modeling? That said, I like to say that the best kind of code teaches you something new abou the p…

>because if you have only ten lines, can you even call it modeling?

Ten? Do you even Perl?

Re: Every Good Regulator of a System Must Be a Model of That System (1970) [pdf]

#27

see https://www.amazon.com/Have-Fun-at-Work-Livingston/dp/093706... and https://www.amazon.com/Friends-High-Places-W-Livingston/dp/0... for practical applications of Ashby thinking.

It’d be nice to list the names of the books, rather than just links. I’m curious about your suggestions, but don’t necessarily want to visit Amazon.

Re: Every Good Regulator of a System Must Be a Model of That System (1970) [pdf]

#28

see https://www.amazon.com/Have-Fun-at-Work-Livingston/dp/093706... and https://www.amazon.com/Friends-High-Places-W-Livingston/dp/0... for practical applications of Ashby thinking.

It’d be nice to list the names of the books, rather than just links. I’m curious about your suggestions, but don’t necessarily want to visit Amazon.

The books are "Have Fun at Work" and "Friends in High Places," both by William L. Livingston

Re: Every Good Regulator of a System Must Be a Model of That System (1970) [pdf]

#29
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know any other books around the same topic. I'm not sure what good keywords would be for this. Ebooks preferrably. Looks interesting.

Free 2017 ebook with overview of cybernetics: https://www.google.com/amp/newbooksnetwork.com/liss-c-werner... Many resources: http://pangaro.com/definition-cybernetics.html

Thanks! Many of the articles on pangaro.com were quite interesting.
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