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Every now and then I see something like this upvoted on HN and wonder, "What the heck?" Feels odd to see something get to the front page with 23 votes and 1 com

Every now and then I see something like this upvoted on HN and wonder, "What the heck?" Feels odd to see something get to the front page with 23 votes and 1 comment when I can't understand what it's trying to convey. [Especially that ratio of votes to comments seems pretty rare, particularly on more confusing/philosophical posts.] I'd love if anybody upvoting this would spare a thought on what you're taking away from this.

nyrikki 3y ago
I didn't upvote, but maybe this helps. We work in an industry that is people building systems-of-systems-of-systems, which seems to match the popular misconception of entropy. People are desperate for viewpoints and tools to help manage that complexity. As someone who has just enough science background to be annoyed by the misunderstanding of entropy, and enough architecture experience to be annoyed by the misunderstanding of how to effectively try to manage complexity, I get your frustration. Error twords building simple systems that are easy to replace with defined boundaries and the org structure to build such systems is a better path. Proving causality in complex systems is hard, if even possible, but if someone finds value in this model, the use of flawed analogies is probably useful for them. Hopefully they realize this is a lens and they will need other lenses with models flawed in different ways to see the bigger picture. As most complex problems only allow for approximation, I have tried to let go of what specific lenses people leverage and have moved to asking them to use multiple views. At least in this case where invoking properties of macroscopic qualities, Gibbs free energy etc... It is technically wrong in multiple ways, but I can see how people may find value in it
- rlupi 3y ago
  That is imprecise, I can understand. Why do you think it is wrong?
  - nyrikki 3y ago
    I will try to respond when I have time, which may be this weekend. Remember to look at your comment history if you want an explanation. Or maybe others will answer it before I can.
rlupi 3y ago
He is describing the difference that exist in dynamical systems (physics, computer systems) between microscopic and macroscopic descriptions. If you have few interactions among things, you can analyze their interactions through the lenses of cause and effects. That's the microscopic part. Think about a snooker table, if it's normal sized and a normal number of balls, you can imagine more or less what will happen once you hit your ball. Once you have many things that interact between each other, with each interaction going in different ways, tracing causal links becomes impractical. Things start to get "chaotic", in the sense that small variation can cause long term changes in their trajectories (this can happen in any system with 3 or more degrees of freedom and feedback, because 3rd degree differential equations can have two curves/solutions that coincide on one side and then bifurcate later). Given enough things, it is like playing snooker with an infinite table and infinite balls, and infinite players. Then it start to make sense to track the macroscopic values that are conserved in large parts of the infinite table, e.g. energy levels of the balls (kinetic) and the force and general direction with which each average player hits the balls (acceleration). Does this help?

nyrikki 3y ago

I didn't upvote, but maybe this helps. We work in an industry that is people building systems-of-systems-of-systems, which seems to match the popular misconception of entropy. People are desperate for viewpoints and tools to help manage that complexity. As someone who has just enough science background to be annoyed by the misunderstanding of entropy, and enough architecture experience to be annoyed by the misunderstanding of how to effectively try to manage complexity, I get your frustration. Error twords building simple systems that are easy to replace with defined boundaries and the org structure to build such systems is a better path. Proving causality in complex systems is hard, if even possible, but if someone finds value in this model, the use of flawed analogies is probably useful for them. Hopefully they realize this is a lens and they will need other lenses with models flawed in different ways to see the bigger picture. As most complex problems only allow for approximation, I have tried to let go of what specific lenses people leverage and have moved to asking them to use multiple views. At least in this case where invoking properties of macroscopic qualities, Gibbs free energy etc... It is technically wrong in multiple ways, but I can see how people may find value in it

rlupi 3y ago
That is imprecise, I can understand. Why do you think it is wrong?
- nyrikki 3y ago
  I will try to respond when I have time, which may be this weekend. Remember to look at your comment history if you want an explanation. Or maybe others will answer it before I can.

rlupi 3y ago

He is describing the difference that exist in dynamical systems (physics, computer systems) between microscopic and macroscopic descriptions. If you have few interactions among things, you can analyze their interactions through the lenses of cause and effects. That's the microscopic part. Think about a snooker table, if it's normal sized and a normal number of balls, you can imagine more or less what will happen once you hit your ball. Once you have many things that interact between each other, with each interaction going in different ways, tracing causal links becomes impractical. Things start to get "chaotic", in the sense that small variation can cause long term changes in their trajectories (this can happen in any system with 3 or more degrees of freedom and feedback, because 3rd degree differential equations can have two curves/solutions that coincide on one side and then bifurcate later). Given enough things, it is like playing snooker with an infinite table and infinite balls, and infinite players. Then it start to make sense to track the macroscopic values that are conserved in large parts of the infinite table, e.g. energy levels of the balls (kinetic) and the force and general direction with which each average player hits the balls (acceleration). Does this help?