Manlio De Domenico / is on Nostr

Professor of Physics of #ComplexSystems & Network Scientist @ University of Padua.

Statistical Physics of interacting systems: from cells to societies. I curate #ComplexityThoughts

Lead @ComuneLab & Director of Padua Center for Network Medicine.

#NetworkScience #NetworkMedicine #Neuroscience #SystemsBiology #CompSocSci #Epidemiology #CollectiveBehavior #InformationProcessing #BioInspiredComputing #RegimeShifts #HumanDynamics

#Astrophotography #BluesPiano

Last Notes

2023-09-03 21:03:40

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I want to go in that direction. But in your definition there are concerning parts:
Why should it be necessarily physical? A Turing Machine can do the job in an abstract space as well.
Why should it be used by an agent for a given purpose? If a living organism is a machine, then the agent itself is the machine.
Got the point?
@npub1t64…u4j0 @npub1zll…lhfq @npub1d0p…un09 @npub1apg…f07c @npub1crv…vnx3 @npub1ary…md4c @npub1nt0…stjf @npub1skv…aky3 @npub1fr4…q2gy

2023-09-03 21:00:05

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Thank you for building up on my question, Nicole. I have given for granted the reason behind it, but it's not granted.
Establishing what is a machine can allow one to engineer other systems in a similar way. That is, I am confident that there are some machines that can be designed by scratch by us for a given purpose.
The usual rationale is "if it's a machine then there's a fixed blueprint, and it's just a matter of discovering the blueprint"
This is linked to my direct question: it's likely that there are distinct classes of machines and only some of them can be represented by a fixed blueprint.
Roughly speaking: keeping aside all the specific details at the corresponding scales, is a cell a machine like a mechanical watch? What about the human brain? What about the human body, and what about the society as a whole?
Discovering the blueprint of an efficient machine at one scale can provide hints or guidelines for designing better machine at other scales, or just to better understand/use/build on them.
The whole issue is to establish which type of machines allow this and under which (formal/operational) conditions.
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2023-09-03 14:52:46

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In fact my questions are more about classifying machines in a systematic way.
I can't deal with non-operational definitions.
Parts doing what together? Do they have a purpose? Are they designed or natural? Is their purpose designed or emergent?
Otherwise, everything is a machine, also an hurricane.
@npub12ld…d8ag @npub1d0p…un09 @npub1crv…vnx3 @npub1zll…lhfq @npub1apg…f07c @npub1skv…aky3 @npub1ary…md4c @npub1fr4…q2gy @npub1nt0…stjf

2023-09-03 14:52:46

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2023-09-03 14:27:56

Following up an interesting exchange, I'd like to ask you:
- how would you define a "machine" broadly speaking?
- is your definition covering a broad spectrum, such as molecular machines, man made machines, computers, etc?
- are you sure that your definition does not lead to defining as "machine" a forest fire or an hurricane?
- which argument would you use to characterize the differences between a molecular machine like kinesin and a mechanical machine like an old watch? Does it work too for a whole cell or the human brain? (at a high level of abstraction, of course)
I have some ideas to share based on universal Turing machines and complexity science, but would like to get more inputs, first.
As usual, I try to bootstrap the discussion by involving a diverse pool of friends and good thinkers: @npub1ary…md4c @npub1nt0…stjf @npub1fr4…q2gy @npub1d0p…un09 @npub1apg…f07c @npub1skv…aky3 @npub1crv…vnx3 @npub1zll…lhfq
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2023-09-03 14:27:56