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OT "More is Different"

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George Herold

Jan 1, 1970
0
By analogy, some people design parts, and some people design complicated systems
out of parts.
Well OK, but that could still use the same basic 'skill set'..
Is there some "phase change" when you get a whole bunch of parts?
Do you need to change the way you think about it?

I liked the money example at the end of the article*.
Once you have a boat load of money does how you think about it change? Say you have enough so that you can't spend the interest faster than it grows.

George H.




*And NO I don't want to start a political, tax the rich, vs. cut taxes on the rich debate.
 
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George Herold

Jan 1, 1970
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On Fri, 13 Dec 2013 09:21:06 -0800 (PST), George Herold <[email protected]>

wrote:


As a system gets more complex, the number of causality paths explodes as (n!)!
or something radical like that. Some of those paths, just by accident, will then
be diabolically evil. And then some of the diabolically evil paths will hide
other diabolically evil paths.

Happens all the time. Like, this week.

Hmm OK. But I assume Jim T. has the same type of issues in IC design. And I assume that you both use the same strategy that I do to deal with it. That is you break the big system into smaller parts. Get each of the small pieces working. And then hope all the parts "play well together", or at least that the bad boys can be tamed easily.
And it sorta looks the same for the next step up the ladder. If I'm building a big experiment, I'd buy pieces of electronics/ apparatus, put those together in small sub-units that are easy to test and debug. And then start adding the pieces together. I'm picturing the FEL where I worked years ago.. A big complicated machine. Perhaps if it gets complicated enough you get to the point were there is no single person who can hold the whole "picture" of the machine in their head. Maybe Cern? How do they deal with it? I'd guess it's just another layer of systems on top. I'm not seeing any phase change. (But maybe I'm not clever enough.)

George H.
 
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Robert Baer

Jan 1, 1970
0
George said:
Well OK, but that could still use the same basic 'skill set'..
Is there some "phase change" when you get a whole bunch of parts?
Do you need to change the way you think about it?

I liked the money example at the end of the article*.
Once you have a boat load of money does how you think about it change?
* Yup! Can't help it.
 
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Robert Baer

Jan 1, 1970
0
John said:
As a system gets more complex, the number of causality paths explodes as (n!)!
or something radical like that. Some of those paths, just by accident, will then
be diabolically evil. And then some of the diabolically evil paths will hide
other diabolically evil paths.

Happens all the time. Like, this week.
..and then some of the diabolically evil paths will hide gold!
 
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