Talk:Edge of chaos

Latest comment: 7 years ago by Brian Josephson in topic Get rid of 'edge of chaos' link

Get rid of 'edge of chaos' link edit

I don't think http://bactra.org/notebooks/edge-of-chaos.html deserves inclusion here. The article says:

I think the evolutionary argument, as usually stated, rests on a big mistake about what nervous systems, immune systems, genetic regulatory nets, etc., evolve to do. This is not transmit information from one place to another, or be "flexible" in some abstract sense, but cause actions which enhance the fitness of the organism they happen to be in.

That is true, but 'edge of chaos' ideas explain the context in which this evolution takes place, so they are very relevant. It is a bit like using the fact that the purpose of a clock is to tell the time to argue that gear wheels etc. are irrelevant. One wonders if this link was put in by way of self-advertisement: it is just a blog rather than an RS in any case. --Brian Josephson (talk) 10:16, 14 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

Furthermore, the Google Scholar search link below it is redundant -- you don't need Wikipedia to tell you that doing that will get you references to the subject of the article! --Brian Josephson (talk) 09:25, 17 February 2017 (UTC)Reply