Steve Smith wrote at 03/19/2013 03:08 PM: > I'm still enjoying my illusion of free-will and get a little skitchy > around overstated pre-determination (or a fully mechanistic model of the > universe?). This is probably just a twitch itself?
Well, the twitch ontology doesn't make any statements about free will or illusions or any of that. It only minimizes what would be inside an actor's boundary if such a boundary exists. That's why it will work for objectivists or constructivists. That minimal kernel is simply a source of "energy", the impetus to move, say, do, act in whatever way your constraints allow you to. If you only have 1 DoF, then every twitch will place you on points in that dimension. If you have N DsoF, then you'll (eventually) end up sampling the space bounded by those constraints. So, there are no types of twitch, there is only twitch. That doesn't imply any sort of determinism. In fact, it might argue for nondeterminism. > You have referred to yourself in the past as a "simulant" which I took > to mean that you are a professional creator of "simulations" (simulation > scientist?) despite the fact that it was too close to "Replicant" from > Blade Runner and sounded more like you were claiming that "you" were > just a somewhat modularized region in a giant simulation. I mean it in both senses, circularity, ambiguity. I am part of the simulations I help create. But I don't say it to distinguish me from anyone else. I actually think we're all simulants. The manifested effects of your twitch may seem to fall into an entirely different taxonomy (e.g. music or paper mache bagels with cream cheese), but it's still constructed and it's still _similar_ to something else. Hence everything we construct is a simulation of something. And everything we construct is a (complementary, reflective, inverted) simulation of ourselves, like a glove is a simulation of the hand. > In some circles it is a truism the "we are what we eat"... which > suggests that someone who "eats simulations" for a living is likely to > "become a simulation" at least in their own mind. Or perhaps it is your > twitch that you *are* a simulation scientist *because* you see the world > as one grande simulation and the ones you create and execute are just > modularized simulations within the simulation? Excellent! But, no. I'm the type of simulant I am because, for whatever ontogenic, hysterical constraints, the only/best thing I can manipulate is rhetoric (which includes deduction in the form of instructions for machines). That region of my constraint box was more open, perhaps more densely meshed than other regions. If my twitch had emerged in a baseball player's constraint box, then the simulations I'd be a part of would be much different. > "I" am also not completely an illusion. Right. You're a wiggly twitch exploring your constraints. So say we all. -- =><= glen e. p. ropella If there's something left of my spirit ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
