HOLISM Bizarre Systems Monica April 18 2010
<p>Apr 19, 2010 10:15 PM
 
Monica first played the clip  PLAY  by  David Kaplan and Eric Zimmerman
 
 
list of  scientists and writers contrib to the discussion of HOLISM  (and holism vs reduc debate)
 
including  Teilhard de Chardin.
Schrodinger  1946 ...  What is life ....  exclt slide with  perhaps 30 scientisits.
 
Reductionism is well named...
 
REDUCE the problem by breaking it into components;  main strategy of Sci Method.
REDUCE complexity by dividing it into parts.
reduce the # of variables by isolating the system from the environment in a lab.
Simple Explanation  (to get a theory of everything)
 
In contrast to HOLISM
When u reduce,  u may discard the v thing you're looking for ... throw the baby out with the bathwater.
 
When u split up the problem u throw away the info that only exists at the SYSTEM LEVEL
u throw away the EMERGENT 
 
System  needs to be understood at the appropriate level and not below.
 
4  features present in BIZARRE SYSTEMS
 
CHAOTIC (massive feedback)  IRREDUCIBLE  (ridden with interactions)
Ambiguous  (context dependent)  EMERGENT  (System level ...  tranformative emergence)
 
Appropriate for those  problems are  MFM  MODEL FREE SYSTEMS
must be generated by experience  (learned)
Work on  bizarre systems
... no guaranteed optimal result;  MFM  are best effort only, fallible.
 
The MFM  ZOO
Discovery by Trial and Error  (generate and test)
Gross Enumeration (rather than elegant proof)  eg   4 color theorem proof.
PATTERN RECOGnition
Learning;  ADAPTATION  eg  Model Free adaptive controller  (rather than PID controller)
EVOLUTION   genetic algorithms
Language ..  just ask someone,  consultation or  Google search.
 
Example 1:  Movie  Recommendations
NetFlix  Prize  for  >  10%  improvement in accuracy.
she shows a simple  MFM  appraoch.
(what NOT to do... do NOT model movies or model  customers or genres).
 
She shows diagram  (node and link graph)  nodes are movies connected by
people:  eg   Bob  Likes  Matrix   and Bob Likes Existenz...
so link from Bob to each of those.
 
Now,  just eliminate  Bob and draw  one arc  (the Bob arc ... altho unlabelled)
connecting Matrix to Existenz...  it means  one customers  rented both Matrix and Existenz.
If Sean also  rented both, then there are TWO arcs connecting them.
 
Now,  let's say  Bill  has rented MATRIX and u want to give him recommendations....
just count the links from MATRIX...  say  there are  17 links to Existenz and that is
the biggest number connecting Matrix to anything... then ur 1st recom is Existenz.
 
(I prev. asked that same Q of Monica)
 
Winning Team was an amalgamation of teams that used a combo of methods
that produced a  10.!%  improvement over baseline and won  the Million dollar prize.
 
weighted a variety of methods,  eg. just stick with Oscar Winners.
 
To Do  MFM, u need Big Data
 
Data Mining on massive DB.
 
Note:  Silicon Valley  Bay Area  ACM
 
Continuous Industrial Processes...  pipelines  (hard to do)... weather,
robotics;
rational drug design is BS per Monica ...  actually do  generate and test.
 
RFLP  Reflep...
restrictive  fragmentation  length  polymorphism  to sequence  DNA
or to idnetify genes  eg  in rare diiseases.
 
In Science:  generation of hypotheses is done holistically  (I joke by LSD)
and testing only is done reductionistically.
 
 
 
 
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