While I generally agree with glen's point made, I contend that we (all
entities with models of the world as used for active inference on the
state of the outside world beyond the pale of the markov blanket of
relevance?) all model all the time, but it is the domain of analytics
(across many domains/disciplines/styles) who are wont to make *formal*
models, and in particular ones grounded in mathematical language (which
could include a variety of diagrams, etc).
A computer program is generally a style of model which is
machine-readable and machine-executeable, though not always
machine-verfiable. My Haskell friends and and lots of more serious CS
types are seeking to make these executable instructions into formally
provable models? Several here are much more explicitely versed in this.
Literary metaphor is the tool which literary practicioners use to
formalize (less rigorously by design?) their own models of their
observation of the world. Somewhere in between or elsewhere (to invoke
a spatial metaphor?) lies the conceptual metaphors I claim we all use
all the time to A) apply our intuitive experience/understanding in one
familiar domain to another less familiar one; B) to explain things we
(think we) understand in a domain we are familiar with to someone else
who is more familiar with another domain. Yes there is lossy
compression and distortion involved in thee processes when used in good
faith. When used in bad faith (e.g. political rhetoric), this becomes a
feature (of the persuasion) not a bug (of the understanding/communication).
</mansplainery>
On 7/15/2025 2:52 PM, Prof David West wrote:
I like your framework and it has some direct relevance to the other part of
this thread about McGilchrist.
I would add multi-disciplinary ("broadly skilled") modelers to multiscale
modelers and actually think them more important. Multiscale modelers might be able to
avoid composition fallacies but will still be trapped within a narrowly defined model.
I would also go out on a limb and claim that metaphor and metaphoric reasoning
is key to being able to select a model that best fits.
davew
On Tue, Jul 15, 2025, at 10:41 AM, glen wrote:
OK. That's helpful. If I reword it into my own words, one's ability to
mentalize¹ about others state or intention is limited by the
mentalizer's facility with modeling². If the mentalizer is a broadly
skilled modeler, then they'll spend quite a bit of effort on model
selection, choosing the best fit they can find in their toolbox. But if
the mentalizer is a bad modeler, or only has experience with specific
models, then they'll tend to use one of those models with which they're
familiar, regardless of how well it fits their target.
In that context, many people/pundits will not be skilled at multiscale
modeling (where one takes great pains to avoid composition fallacies).
So they fall back on what they do know. And every normally intelligent
human is very good at modeling other humans. So when talking about a
composite like a corporation or nation, it's likely that most people
will use human models to model those composites.
This means that the burden is on me, assuming I have more experience
with multiscale modeling than many, to either (behind the scenes) do
all the translation myself *or*, in an interactive context, help the
modeler refine their modeling abilities. Whether I take up that burden
would depend on the [Good|Bad] Faith of the modeler as I saw it ... or
simply a matter of bandwidth.
[1] mentalize - “the ability to attribute mental states (e.g.,
knowledge, intentions, emotions, perception) to self and others” -
Quesque et al 2024
[2] modeling - here I mean anything from math to elementary school
teachers who can teach children well to mystics with coherent
metaphysics to fantasy authors who build complex worlds, etc.
On 7/14/25 10:19 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
I don't have any good referenes to the way that individual behaviour composes to group
beyond the anecdotal (we've discussed whether a mob of angry people is an angry mob?) but
I do think it is an important topic to understand. I think it is a corollary to how
emergent phenomena/affordances "stack".
It is our "habit" to describe particles at all scales in the same mode, as if the
composition of "mass" and the energetics that they carry and are influenced by (strong,
weak, gravity, EM) or coupled through are entirely familiar to our mundane intuitions developed
throwing, rolling, bouncing balls around. So if that fails in something presumably as cut/dried
as physics (subatomic, nucleonic, molecular, etc), why would we expect it to work in the
interactions of far-from-spherica cow-humans?
To harp on my intersubjective ideas, I will claim (with little substantiation) that the
fact that our interactions among humans are significantly moderated/defined/informed by
our *beliefs* about one another and about the systems we've created and engage in that in
some cases, those part-whole, metonymic/synechdochic conflations might be more motivated
due to that mediation through belief/expectation than for example, excpecting a quark or
a photon or even neutron to "act" like a billiard ball, just because it is the
convenient/common analogic/metaphoric referent?
On 7/3/2025 9:34 AM, glen wrote:
I'm used to interpersonal projection. E.g. Joe Rogan's supplements vs. his
accusations re the mRNA vaccines:
Rogan's Big Pharma Scandal Keeps Getting Weirder
https://youtu.be/bogYSu3cCLg?si=U1Jk93n5DC4gppdx
But I'm not habituated to the analogy of projection ("lady doth protest too
much") to national/party scale propaganda:
Projection as an Interpersonal Influence Tactic: The Effects of the Pot Calling
the Kettle Black
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672012711010
I expect man-babies like Trump to accuse their targets of their own misdeeds
(https://theconversation.com/why-trump-accuses-people-of-wrongdoing-he-himself-committed-an-explanation-of-projection-237912).
And to the extent that the right in the US (including SCOTUS) believe in and achieve the
unitary executive, the analogy between interpersonal projection and national or group
projection will be more accurate. This is one reason why "projection
propaganda" worked well for Russia and China but not so much for the US, because the
difference in scope between an individual and a regime was smaller there than here in the
US.
So given that one of my whipping posts is that we bear the burden of showing how group
behavior composes from individual behavior before we assert that the map is in any way
coherent, I can't use "projection propaganda" without coming up with that
composition. If any of you historians or journalists have any clue sticks to hit me with,
I'd very much appreciate it.
--
¡sıɹƎ ןıɐH ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ
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