At Home in the Universe The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity Stuart Kauffman Chapter 11 In Search of Excellence John Horst

In Search of Excellence Logic of Patches Patch Procedures Patch Possibilities Receiver-Based Optimization Patch Politics

Logic of Patches Non-overlapping patches/optimize for selfish NK model Traveling Salesman Local/Global maximums Very Best/Excellent

Patch Procedures “Take a hard conflict-laden task in which many parts interact, and divide it into a quilt of non overlapping patches. Try to optimize within each patch” Chaos vs Order Stalinist Leftist Italian 5x5 vs 6x6 Nash Equilibrium

Patch Possibilities “... I suspect patching will, in fact, prove to be a powerful means to solve hard problems. In fact, I suspect that analogues of patches, systems having various kinds of local autonomy, may be a fundamental mechanism underlying adaptive evolution in ecosystems, economic systems, and cultural systems.” “If we now begin to have evidence that when properly parsed into right-size patch complex problems complex problems can rapidly be brought to fruitful comprise solutions … rational management technique,

Receiver-Based Optimization “All agents in a system trying to coordinate behavior let other agents know what is happening to them.” “The receivers of this information use it to decide what they are going to do.” “The receivers base their decisions on some overall specification of 'Team' goal.” “...different subsets of constraints are ignored at different times” “You should not try to please all the people all the time, but you should pay attention to everyone some of the time.”

Patch Politics Democracy “rule of the majority” Federal System Federal State Counties Municipalities “Might we best think of democracy as a system to achieve excellent compromises among these conflicting interests?” Robert Axelrod … 'A mechanism that allowed “experimentation”'