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

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

#5
post #3

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

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?

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

#7
post #6

This is interesting in context of so-called model-free and model-based reinforcement learning.

I tacitly assumed that "model-free" really meant "model has been marginalized out", i.e. instead of treating it as a function to be estimated/learned through regression. Is that not the case?

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

#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.

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

#10
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.

One way to look at a PID controller is that it uses a simple model that is correct in a lot of situations.
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