Steve Was there a better way in Gmail? I think the use of caps was conventional in academia before Trump. It certainly does not Suggestshouting.
I apologize for my Many typos and Dictos. I simply seem to be unable to read them until too late N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology Clark University nthomp...@clarku.edu https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson On Mon, Jun 16, 2025 at 1:36 PM steve smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote: > Nick - > > I'm surprised you gave over to ALL-CAPS to distinguish your words from > others... it was shockingly difficult or me to read through carefully... > some call this "shouting" which is part of the effect to me also, but more > key is the typography and readability of it... > > That said, I did what I had to to make it "parseable" with my own > sensoria/sensibilities and found it to be quite rich epistemically. > > I share your apprehension/feeling/sensibilities on the topic — that > entropy (or motive, or any number of these second-order constructs) gets > misrepresented when we try to pin it to an instant, as if we could find it > *in* the moment instead of across the differential. > > Your “Newliebzian category error” notion made me smile - there’s something > compelling about how we keep building our most useful tools from fictions > we then forget are fictions. Even that might be too conventient? It might > be a kind of necessary fold in how cognition works - using what’s locally > graspable to navigate what’s only ever apparent in change or flow. There is > a larger insight I think about metaphor in general, but in this case > time/causally grounded metaphorical target domains? > > I also appreciate your connection to how motives are misread — > interiorized and moment-bound when really they emerge from comparative arcs > of behaviour. That strikes me as roughly what the nervous system does: > extract regularities from dynamics, then offer up something *like* a > motive as a usable handle. Induction is fallible, but it’s also our only > working interface. Not because it guarantees truth, but because it lets us > stay involved. > > In that light, entropy - or motive - might be less about what *is*, and > more about what is *minimally sufficient to expect*? From a free energy > perspective, the nervous system isn't trying to uncover objective causes > but to *minimize surprise* through actionable pattern recognition - > constructing motives, like entropy, as provisional summaries of systemic > change. It isn’t so much that they’re true, but that they *reduce the > expected divergence* between model and world just enough to stay > viable? > > Fascinating that this iterative/parallel *satisficing* seems to converge > on something yet more absolute (objective truth)? Is this what > Transformers (for the ML wonks in the crowd) do? > > - Steve > > On 6/16/25 10:38 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > > HERE IS A THE PARADOX AS I NOW UNDERSTAND IT. IS ENTROPY A STATE > VARIABLE/ WELL, YES AND NO. IT IS NOT IN THE SENSE THAT YOU CANNOT > CALCULATE IT FROM INSTANTANEOUS STATE VARIABLES, IN PERHAPS THE WAY THAT > YOU CANNOT CALCULATE ACCELERATION FROM AN INSTANTANEOUS MEASUREMENT OF > LOCATION AND VELOCITY. ACCELERATION AT INSTANT IS A CATEGORY ERROR, A > MATHEMATICAL FICTION. BUT, STRANGE TO DISCOVER, THAT ALL PROGRESS IN > MATHEMATICS, BEGINNING WITH THE MATHEMATICAL LINE, PERHAPS, IS THE RESULT > OF THE EXPLOITATION OF SUCH FICTIONS. fOR THE MOMENT LETS CALL THEM > NEWLIEBZIAN CATEGORY ERRORS. iF MY CURRENT INTUITION IS CORRECT AND > ENTROPY IS NEWLIEBZIAN CATEGORY ERROR, THEN IT FOLLOWS THAT THE REASON i AM > CONFUSED BY IT IS BECAUSE PEOPLE KEEP ATTRIBUTING IT TO INSTANTS AND PLACES > WHEN IT KNOWN THROUGH THE COMPARISON OF DYNAMICS AND ARRAYS. BEWARE > BECAUSE THIS IS A VERY FAMILIAR CONFUSION TO ME, BETWEEN MOTIVES, WHICH ARE > THOUGHT OF INTERIOR INSTANTS, WHEN THEY ARE ACTUALLY KNOWN THROUGH THE > COMPARISON OF DYNAMICS AND ARRAYS OF BEHAVIOR. THE WHOLE PURPOSE OF OUR > NERVOUS SYSTEM (THE STUFF IN SIDE) IS TO MAKE COMPUTATIONS BASED ON THE > DYNAMICS AND ARRAYS OF BEHAVIOR AND APPLY THEM TO THE NEXT APPLICABLE > INSTANT. PHILOSOPHERS CAN SAY ALL THE WANT ABOUT THE FALLIBILITY OF > INDUCTION, BUT IT IS ALL WE GOT. > > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / > ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >
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