JOHN HOLLAND: ADAPTATION IN NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL SYSTEMS (1992)

"Genetic algorithms are playing an increasingly important role in studies of complex adaptive systems, ranging from adaptive agents in economic theory to the use of machine learning techniques in the design of complex devices such as aircraft turbines and integrated circuits. Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems is the book that initiated this field of study, presenting the theoretical foundations and exploring applications.In its most familiar form, adaptation is a biological process, whereby organisms evolve by rearranging genetic material to survive in environments confronting them. In this now classic work, Holland presents a mathematical model that allows for the nonlinearity of such complex interactions. He demonstrates the model's universality by applying it to economics, physiological psychology, game theory, and artificial intelligence and then outlines the way in which this approach modifies the traditional views of mathematical genetics.Initially applying his concepts to simply defined artificial systems with limited numbers of parameters, Holland goes on to explore their use in the study of a wide range of complex, naturally occurring processes, concentrating on systems having multiple factors that interact in nonlinear ways. Along the way he accounts for major effects of coadaptation and coevolution: the emergence of building blocks, or schemata, that are recombined and passed on to succeeding generations to provide, innovations and improvements."


JOHN HOLLAND: MODELING COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS (2008)

A talk for a general university audience hosted by the Weatherhead School of Management and Operations. Professor Holland (University of Michigan) is a pioneer in computer science and the originator of genetic algorithms.

ETHEREUM GAS STATION

User-oriented, real-time metrics on gas price, wait times, and miner policies on the Ethereum network.

OFFICIAL SWARM DOCUMENTATION

"Swarm is a distributed storage platform and content distribution service, a native base layer service of the ethereum web 3 stack. The primary objective of Swarm is to provide a sufficiently decentralized and redundant store of Ethereum’s public record, in particular to store and distribute dapp code and data as well as block chain data. From an economic point of view, it allows participants to efficiently pool their storage and bandwidth resources in order to provide the aforementioned services to all participants."

OFFICIAL WEB3.JS JAVASCRIPT API DOCUMENTATION

ÐApps can invoke Ethereum's web3 protocols using a collection of libraries known as web3.js to communicate with a local node through RPC calls. The present docs offer an API guide and explain how to install and run web3.js.

JOHN HOLLAN: BUILDING BLOCKS FOR COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS (2012)

"Complex adaptive systems (cas), including ecosystems, governments, biological cells, and markets, are characterized by intricate hierarchical arrangements of boundaries and signals. In ecosystems, for example, niches act as semi-permeable boundaries, and smells and visual patterns serve as signals; governments have departmental hierarchies with memoranda acting as signals; and so it is with other cas. Despite a wealth of data and descriptions concerning different cas, there remain many unanswered questions about "steering" these systems. In "Signals and Boundaries," John Holland argues that understanding the origin of the intricate signal/border hierarchies of these systems is the key to answering such questions. He develops an overarching framework for comparing and steering cas through the mechanisms that generate their signal/boundary hierarchies.

Holland lays out a path for developing the framework that emphasizes agents, niches, theory, and mathematical models. He discusses, among other topics, theory construction; signal-processing agents; networks as representations of signal/boundary interaction; adaptation; recombination and reproduction; the use of tagged urn models (adapted from elementary probability theory) to represent boundary hierarchies; finitely generated systems as a way to tie the models examined into a single framework; the framework itself, illustrated by a simple finitely generated version of the development of a multi-celled organism; and Markov processes."


KENNETH WESTPHAL: HEGEL'S JUSTIFICATION OF THE HUMAN RIGHT TO NON-DOMINATION (2017)

"‘Hegel’ and ‘human rights’ are rarely conjoined, and the designation ‘human rights’ appears rarely in his works. Indeed, Hegel has been criticised for omitting civil and political rights all together. My surmise is that readers have looked for a modern Decalogue, and have neglected how Hegel justifies his views, and hence just what views he does justify. Philip Pettit (1997) has refocused attention on republican liberty. Hegel and I agree with Pettit that republican liberty is a supremely important value, but appealing to its value, or justifying it by appeal to reflective equilibrium, are insufficient both in theory and in practice. By reconstructing Kant’s Critical methodology and explicating the social character of rational justification in non-formal domains, Hegel shows that the republican right to non-domination is constitutive of the equally republican right to justification (Forst 2007) – both of which are necessary requirements for sufficient rational justification in all non-formal domains, including both claims to rights or imputations of duties or responsibilities. That is the direct moral, political and juridical implication of Hegel’s analysis of mutual recognition, and its fundamental, constitutive role in rational justification. Specific corollaries of the fundamental republican right to non-domination must be determined by considering what forms of illicit domination are possible or probable within any specific society, in view of its social, political and economic structures and functioning."


OFFICIAL ENS DOCUMENTATION

"ENS is the Ethereum Name Service, a distributed, open, and extensible naming system based on the Ethereum blockchain.

ENS can be used to resolve a wide variety of resources. The initial standard for ENS defines resolution for Ethereum addresses, but the system is extensible by design, allowing more resource types to be resolved in future without the core components of ENS requiring upgrades."

TERRY PINKARD: SUBJECTIVITY AND SUBSTANCE, HEGELIAN FREEDOM IN NATURE AND IN HISTORY (2013)