BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

ALGORITHMIC INCOMPRESSIBILITY 3)5)

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The impossibility to reduce a string of data to a simpler algorithm that would permit to retrieve them.

G. CHAITIN demonstrated that: "A completely random string of digits cannot be reduced to a shorter program at all ". On the contrary: "… a regular string of 1 s and 0s describing some data such as 0101010101… which continues for 1000 digits can be encapsulated in a shorter instruction "repeat 01 500 times" (1990, p.45-46)

Chaitin related this finding to TURING 's uncomputability theorem and showed that: "the halting probability is arithmetically random" (Ibid)

According to CHAITIN, TURING's "… result that the halting probability is random corresponds to TURING's assertion that the halting problem is undecidable"

From another viewpoint, St. KAUFFMAN states: "One measure of the complexity of an algorithm is the minimal program length which yields the desired output. The more minimal an algorithm is, the less redundancy it contains. Consequently, minor modification of minimal programs grossly alter the output of the algorithm. In contrast, minor alterations of highly redundant algorithms modify output only slightly" (1993, p.231). Thus, algorithmic compression may make an algorithm's behavior more uncertain.

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

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