Recent Posts
- Principles of biological computation: from circadian clock to evolution
- The science and engineering of biological computation: from process to software to DNA-based neural networks
- Elements of biological computation & stochastic thermodynamics of life
- Rationality, the Bayesian mind and their limits
- Web of C-lief: conjectures vs. model assumptions vs. scientific beliefs
- Idealization vs abstraction for mathematical models of evolution
- Allegory of the replication crisis in algorithmic trading
- 668,213 views
Join 2,752 other subscribers
Contributing authors
-
Abel Molina
-
Alexandru Strimbu
-
Alexander Yartsev
-
Eric Bolo
-
David Robert Grimes
-
Forrest Barnum
-
Jill Gallaher
-
Julian Xue
-
Artem Kaznatcheev
-
Keven Poulin
-
Marcel Montrey
-
Matthew Wicker
-
Dan Nichol
-
Philip Gerlee
-
Piotr MigdaĆ
-
Robert Vander Velde
-
Rob Noble
-
Sergio Graziosi
-
Max Hartshorn
-
Thomas Shultz
-
Vincent Cannataro
-
Yunjun Yang
Hiding behind chaos and error in the double pendulum
June 15, 2019 by Artem Kaznatcheev 1 Comment
If you want a visual intuition for just how unpredictable chaotic dynamics can be then the go-to toy model is the double pendulum. There are lots of great simulations (and some physical implementations) of the double pendulum online. Recently, /u/abraxasknister posted such a simulation on the /r/physics subreddit and quickly attracted a lot of attention.
The resulting dynamics are at right.
It is certainly unpredictable and complicated. Chaotic? Most importantly, it is obviously wrong.
But because the double pendulum is a famous chaotic system, some people did not want to acknowledge that there is an obvious mistake. They wanted to hide behind chaos: they claimed that for a complex system, we cannot possibly have intuitions about how the system should behave.
In this post, I want to discuss the error of hiding behind chaos, and how the distinction between microdynamics and global properties lets us catch /u/abraxasknister’s mistake.
Read more of this post
Filed under Commentary, Technical Tagged with complexity, current events, philosophy of science, prediction, video