Hi Nick, and others,
I am going to wait until I receive my copy of Rosen's "Life Itself" which I ordered, and which is due art the end of this week. I want to take another look at what Rosen promised (or seemed to promise) and what he delivered. --John ________________________________ From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of Nick Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net> Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2018 2:32 AM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Cc: 'Jon Zingale' Subject: [FRIAM] Formalizing the concept of design Dear Frank, Jon, Eric, and anybody else, OK. Let me be blunt. I wish that the mathematically inclined among you would help me. As I have told you all before, my brother was a mathematician and I got one of his two math genes, which was enough to give me vague mathematical intuitions but not enough that I could actually make good on more than a few of them. I have long been carrying around in my head the notion of “design arrays" which I have offered as a kind of universal way of looking at such troublesome concepts as adaptation, motivation, communication, learning, development, etc., where our explanatory concepts seem to be fatally entangled with our descriptive ones. A design co-array is a co-listing of circumstances and adaptive techniques, with all the pairings leading to a common outcome. I guess I am wondering, Is this way of thinking about telic phenomena a mathematical way? It seems to me to relate to the idea of mapping. The motivated animal maps his behavior onto his circumstances and thence, convergently, onto outcomes. But I am also wondering, aside from making my deceased big brother proud, is there any benefit to formalizing it. It is my understanding of mathematics that the benefit of formalization is the capacity to be led, through the formalization to some unexpected prediction concerning the phenomenon. It’s hard for me to see what benefits such a formalization would provide. To make it as easy for you to think about this problem, I have ocr-ed its most lucid and concise description among my papers, cleaned it up, and attached it above. I am eager for anybody’s thoughts. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2018 5:24 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Open Letter, draft #2 Well, I'm not a sequential machine although my wife has her doubts. Thanks for the algebraic geometry suggestions. Jon Zingale and I will try to master the subject. Others may join us on Saturday mornings if they wish. Frank ----------------------------------- Frank Wimberly My memoir: https://wacsequentisl mww.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly My scientific publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 Phone (505) 670-9918 On Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 5:16 PM John Kennison <jkenni...@clarku.edu> wrote: Hi Frank, I didn't realize it was supposed to be a joke --it seemed like a relevant example. I'm not an algebraic geometer but: . . . there is a historical survey in https://www.ime.usp.br/~pleite/pub/artigos/abhyankar/abhyankar.pdf Historical Ramblings in Algebraic Geometry and Related Algebra www.ime.usp.br Historical Ramblings in Algebraic Geometry and Related Algebra Author(s): Shreeram S. Abhyankar Source: The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 83, No. 6 (Jun. - Jul ... If you read that you can tell if you like Ahbyankar's style. He wrote a more thorough survey in 295 pages called "Algebraic Geometry for Scientists and Engineers'' (including computer scientists. --John ________________________________________ From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of Frank Wimberly <wimber...@gmail.com> Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2018 5:53:53 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Open Letter, draft #2 Sorry, John. It was a weak attempt to be humorous. Also, I mistyped. I meant "algebraic geometry" when I was asking for a book recommendation. Frank ----------------------------------- Frank Wimberly My memoir: https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly My scientific publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 Phone (505) 670-9918 On Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 12:56 PM Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com> wrote: John writes: “Is there something that animals, or more particularly humans, can do which we can prove cannot be duplicated by a sequential machine?” A sequential computer program could simply be a loop that sampled random numbers and indexed into the address space of the computer program itself (not its memory). One could make a specialized computer using a FPGA that even had an instruction to do that random dispatching. To counter the arguments of Penrose, one could do the same using quantum states. https://www.springer.com/us/book/9781402078941 There are all kinds of physical processes that are simulated on classical supercomputers, of course. Marcus ============================================================ 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 FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ 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 FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
============================================================ 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 FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
