From: TURTLE              
To: SAAVIK              
Subject: Flicker noise  
Date & Time: 04/28/91 23:27:16
Message Number 16262

>Incidentally, what the *hell* is flicker noise?????
 
Flicker noise is a characteristic exhibited by a lot of chaotic systems.
It's the type of unpredictable state transitions you see in a non-
continuous chaotic system that displays brief, drastic state changes
between periods of apparant stability. If you want to see it i action,
just turn over an hourglass...the sand'll pile up to a certain point
nice and quiet-like, then suddenly landslide to a new state, and pile
up quietly, and landslide. A common characteristic is that tiny changes
in the system--the addition of /one/ grain of sand--can cause a sudden
catastrophic change in the system, and it is absolutely impossible to
predict the magnitude of the change except in certain broad limits
(there will always be more small changes than large changes, for
example). Also, the ratio of small to large shifts is relatively
constant over any number of iterations, meaning that the behavior of the
system is fractal, and if you plot the number of shifts of various
magnitudes over a given number of transitions you'll get a nice, smooth
curve. Any chaotic system that behaves this way is said to exhibit
flicker noise. I brought it up because I was thinking about chaos theory
about a week ago and noticed that some relationships I've seen work the
same way--the system tends to drive itself to the brink of instability,
then realign drastically at a seemingly trivial change. You know, like
couples who seem perfectly happy until--whammy!--the slightest stress
explodes into a major confrontation way out of proportion to whatever
caused the stress in the first place. All systems which exhibit flicker
noise can /seem/ to be perfectly solid and stable while actually being
a hairbreath away from disaster, so one grain of sand or one trivial
disagreement can cause the whole thing to come crashing down. They're
non-linear, see, and...hell, I'm out of space.