Glen -
I have found concept mapping tools to be helpful in this context, but
usually in live-brainstorming sessions... with one (or more) operators
clicking and typing and dragging and connecting while others chatter out
loud, then shifting the mouse/keyboard(s) to another(s).
I know we have a mind-mapping ( I prefer concept-mapping) tool developer
on the list... I'm blanking his name, though I know he has been active
off and on! I hope he catches this and pitches in. I believe he was
heading toward web-enabled, simultaneous editing capabilities. I did
some tests and provided some feedback on an early version a few years ago..
My only significant experience in this is with CMAPtools and a few
others driven by various project-lead's preferences, but never really
adopted by myself.
I was in the process of developing some more formal tools with UNM for
the NSF a few years ago, based on formalisms being developed by Tim
Goldsmith (dept. Psychology) at UNM. The presumption WAS (IS) that we
all have reserved lexicons and for a collaborative group to develop a
common one, there has to be a lot of discussion and negotiation. Our
example was a group of climate change scientists who (un)surprisingly
used identical terms in very similar contexts with very different
intentions and meanings in some cases. It isn't too surprising when
you realize that an ocean scientist and an atmospheric scientist are
very interested in many of the same physical properties, but with
different emphasis and within different regimes. Pressure, density,
humidity, salinity, vorticity all seem to have pretty clear meanings to
any scientist using them, but the relative importance and interaction
between them has different implications for each group.
Needless to say, we didn't finish the tools before the funding ran out.
This is now nearly 8 years old work... the ideas area still valid but
without a patron and without SME's to "test on" it is hard to push such
tools forward. My part included building the equivalent of what you
call "mind maps" from the differing lexical elements, floating in
N-space and "morphing" from each individual (or subgroup's) perspective
to some kind of common perspective... with the intention of helping each
individual or subgroup appreciate the *different* perspective of the others.
This is modestly related to my work in "faceted ontologies" (also
currently not under active development) where "multiple lexicons" is
replaced by "multiple ontologies" or in both cases, the superposition
of multiple lexicons/ontologies.
I haven't worked with Joslyn since that 2007? paper... but we *tried* a
joint project with PNNL/NREL a couple of years ago, but it failed due to
inter-laboratory politics I think. He's an equally brilliant/oblique
character as you... take that for what it is worth!
I liked Frank's double-dog-dare to you. I think that is one of the
good things you bring out in this list, all kinds of others'
feistiness! It was also good that you could both call it for what it
was. It makes me want to read Kohut... I have special reasons for
trying to apprehend alternate self-psychology models right now, though
from your's and Frank's apparent avoidance(/dismissal?) of Kahut and my
immediate phonetic slip-slide to Camus, I'm a little leery.
On 6/8/17 2:33 PM, glen ☣ wrote:
We quickly polluted that thread, too. But it drives home the point that an
email list is _not_ a (good) collaborative production tool.
Aha! I haven't heard from Cliff since my work for the
PSL<https://www.psl.nmsu.edu/>. He supposedly works up at PNNL. Thanks for
that article.
Yes, I took Owen to be calling Russ' post a trolling post. But "troll" is like
"complex", meaningless out of context.
I'm completely baffled why "layer" isn't understood ... makes me think I must be wrong in
some deep way. But for whatever it's worth, I believe I understand and _agree_ with Nick's
circularity criticism of mechanistic explanations for complexity, mostly because of a publication
I'm helping develop that tries to classify several different senses of the word
"mechanistic". The 1st attempt was rejected by the journal, though. 8^( But repeating
Nick's point back in my own words obviously won't help, here.
Yes, I'm willing to help cobble together these posts into a document. But, clearly, I can't be any kind of
primary. If y'all don't even understand what I mean by the word "layer", then whatever I composed
would be alien to the other participants. One idea might be to use a "mind mapping" tool and fill
in the bubbles with verbatim snippets of people's posts ... that might help avoid the bias introduced by the
secretary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept-_and_mind-mapping_software I also don't care that
much about the meaning of "complex". So, my only motivation for helping is because y'all tolerate
my idiocy.
On 06/08/2017 12:52 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
I admit to being over my depth, at least in attention, if not in ability to
parse out your dense text, and more to the point, the entire thread(s) which
gives me more sympathy with Nick who would like a tool to help organize, neaten
up, trim, etc. these very complex ( in the more common meaning of the term)
discussions. My experience with you is that you always say what you mean and
mean what you say, so I don't doubt that there is gold in that mine... just my
ability to float the overburden and other minerals away with Philosopher's
Mercury (PhHg) in a timely manner.
I DO think Nick is asking for help from the rest of us in said parsing... to begin, I can parse HIS first
definition of "layer" is as a "laying hen"... a chicken (or duck?) who is actively laying
eggs. A total red-herring to mix metaphors here on a forum facilitated by another kind of RedFish
altogether... a "fish of a different color" as it were, to keep up with the metaphor (aphorism?)
mixology.
I DON'T think Owen was referring to you when he said: "troll", I think he was being ironical by
suggesting Russ himself was being a troll. But I could be wrong. Owen may not even remember to whom his
bell "trolled" in that moment? In any case, I don't find your contribution/interaction here to be
particularly troll-like. Yes, you can be deliberately provocative, but more in the sense of Socrates who got
colored as a "gadfly" (before there were trolls in the lexicon?). Stay away from the Hemlock, OK?
I'm trying to sort this (simple?) question of the meaning (connotations) of layering you use, as I have my own reserved use of
the term in "complex, layered metaphors" or alternately "layered, complex metaphors"... but that is *mostly*
an aside. I believe your onion analogy is Nick's "stratum" but I *think* with the added concept that each
"direction" (theta/phi from onion-center) as a different "dimension". Your subsequent text suggests a
high-dimensional venn diagram. My own work in visualization of Partially Ordered Sets (in the Gene Ontology) may begin to
address some of this, but I suspect not.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4935.pdf
I may continue to dig into this minefield of rich ore and interesting veins,
but it has gotten beyond (even) me as a multiple attender who thrives on this
kind of complexity (with limits apparently!).
I think I heard you suggest that YOU would volunteer to pull in the various
drawstrings on this multidimensional bag forming of a half-dozen or more
branching threads... I'll see if I can find that and ask some more pointed
questions that might help that happen?
I truly appreciate Nick's role (as another Socrates?) teasing at our language
to try to get it more plain or perhaps more specific or perhaps more concise?
Is there some kind of conservation law in these dimensions?
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