Steve Smith wrote at 07/26/2013 01:27 PM:
On 7/26/13 1:30 PM, glen wrote:
But a tight coupling between the most powerful and a consensual centroid would
stultify an organization. It would destroy the ability to find truth in
outliers, disruptive innovation. I suppose that can be handled by a healthy
diversity of organizations (scale free network). But we see companies like
Intel or Microsoft actively opposed to that... they seem to think such
behemoths can be innovative.
I think they *can* drive the consensual reality to some extent... to the point
that counterpoint minority opinions polyp off (Apple V MS, Linux V Commercial,
Debian V RedHat V Ubuntu, etc.)
Yeah, I agree behemoths can drive consensual reality. I just don't think they
can be innovative at the same time. The innovation comes from outside, much
smaller actors. And when the innovation does come from inside a behemoth, I
posit that some forensic analysis will show that it actually came from either a
(headstrong/tortured) individual inside the behemoth, or from the behemoth's
predation.
So, it's not clear to me we can _design_ an artificial system where calibration
(tight or loose) happens against a parallax ground for truth (including peer
review or mailing lists).
It seems intuitively obvious to me that such *can*, and that most of it is
about *specifying* the domain... but maybe we are talking about different
things?
I don't know what you're saying. 8^) Are you disagreeing with me? Are you
saying that it seems obvious to you we _can_ design an artificial system which
calibrates against a consensual truth?
Superficially, I would agree that we can build one... after all, we already
have one. But I don't think we can design one. I think such a design would
either be useless _or_ self-contradictory.
It still seems we need an objective ground in order to measure belief error.
It think this is true by defnition. In my work in this area, we instead sought measures of belief and
plausibility at the atomic level, then composing that up to aggregations. Certainly, V&V is going
to require an "objective ground" but it is only "relatively objective" if that even
vaguely makes sense to you?
Well, I take "relative objectivity" to mean (simply) locally true ... like, say, the
temperature inside my fridge has one value and that outside my fridge has another value. But local
truth usually has a reductive global truth behind it (except QM and gravity). So, I don't think
"relative objectivity" really makes much sense.
Scope and locality do make sense, though. You define a measure, which includes a domain
and a co-domain. Part of consensual truth is settling on a small set of measures,
despite the fact that there are other measures that would produce completely different
output given the same input. So, by "objective ground", I mean _the_ truth...
the theory of everything. And, to date, the only access I think we have to _the_ truth
is through natural selection. I.e. If it's right, it'll survive... but just because it
survived doesn't mean it was right. ;-)
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⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
The seven habits of the highly infected calf
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