Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning.
D Does saying that a thing is in a state mean anything more than that you have tried to measure something about that thing and that your measurement theory gives you confidence that you have been successful? Or, perhaps, the switches on some box are set to some position or other. And while I am asking dumb questions, to hard scientists (as opposed to biologists), does the word system mean anything more than whatever tf we happen to be talking about at the moment? N From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts Sent: Friday, April 12, 2013 9:25 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning. Oh shit. Nick's in a state again. On Apr 12, 2013 9:23 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: I have a terrible time with the word state; how about analytical output? Otherwise we're good. Nick -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Friday, April 12, 2013 5:40 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning. Nicholas Thompson wrote at 04/12/2013 03:51 PM: [NST ==[...] Am I correct that you want to exclude for tautological sequences of reasoning where the conclusion is entailed the premises (or the answer in the question) but the path is so complex that we cannot anticipate it? ==NST] Yes. On my more flippant days, I'll point out that some people claim unanticipatable, complicated deduction reduces to tautology. And I may say it when I get frustrated at people who don't understand the difference between deduction and induction. But for the most part, yes. A purely deductive system that can hit upon true, but surprising, theorems, is not merely tautology. [NST ==The first time you made this distinction, I couldn't quite get it. Can you say a bit more? It wold seem to me that recursion could happen only once, but that iteration would require several instances. So I can imagine an interation of recursions but not the reverse. In short, I don't know how talk this talk, yet. ==NST] Both recursion and iteration can be infinite. The difference lies the focus of the repetition. Recursion puts more focus on the I/O of the process, what comes out of any given application must make sense going in. The input and output must be commensurate. Iteration puts more focus on the procedure, in particular the state, the conditions that obtain. As long as the conditions still tolerate it, the iteration will continue, regardless of whether the I/O is meaningful. Iteration can wander more than recursion. Recursion is less prone to the adage garbage in = garbage out. So, in your filter metaphor, if your filter stays the same, each time the fluid is pushed through, it will filter more of the same particles out of the fluid until there are none left (or the filter fills up). With iteration, your filter might change each time it's used because of unforeseen effects. For example, if your filter is supposed to extract particles 1-100 millimeters, but you use it so much that it starts to develop densely packed regions, then it may begin to filter only particles that are 1-100 nanometers. The filter is a hysterical process. It has memory. If you replace the filter with a new one each time the fluid goes through it, then you've got recursion. If you allow the filter to get progressively dirty, then you've got iteration. Iteration is most aligned with stateful repetition. Recursion is most aligned with stateless repetition. P ^ M - P leaves out information. So, saying P is not the same as saying P^M.[NST ==AH! So total entailment is not sufficient to tautology, on your account. I have to think about that. So all white swans are white is a tautology but (1) All swans are white (2) this bird is a swan (3) this bird is white is not. ==NST] Not technically, no. But if pressed, I would consider the context of the accusation. When I'm talking to someone like you, who might actually listen to me, I'd say no. When talking to someone who just likes to hear themselves talk, I'd say ok, sure, 1) all swans are white plus 2) this is a swan, therefore 3) this swan is white is close enough to a tautology for me to call it that for this conversation. But when/if I allow that, I'm on a slippery slope to calling all deduction tautological. But, as I said above, there are some people who claim that all deduction is tautology. They would probably identify different types of tautology (e.g. simple or minimal) versus a complicated (perhaps irreversible) deduction. [NST ==OK. We are on the same page. So what term do you want to use? ==NST] I see no problem with deduction or perhaps inference, grammatical transformation, etc. Heck, I'd even be ok with simulation, numerical analysis, play it forward, let it roll, and Deism.
Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning.
Nick, I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about this between sips of coffee this morning. --Doug On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 12:19 AM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: D Does saying that a thing is in a state mean anything more than that you have tried to measure something about that thing and that your measurement theory gives you confidence that you have been successful? Or, perhaps, the switches on some box are set to some position or other. And while I am asking dumb questions, to hard scientists (as opposed to biologists), does the word system mean anything more than whatever tf we happen to be talking about at the moment? ** ** N ** ** *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Friday, April 12, 2013 9:25 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning.* *** ** ** Oh shit. Nick's in a state again. On Apr 12, 2013 9:23 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: I have a terrible time with the word state; how about analytical output? Otherwise we're good. Nick -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Friday, April 12, 2013 5:40 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning. Nicholas Thompson wrote at 04/12/2013 03:51 PM: [NST ==[...] Am I correct that you want to exclude for tautological sequences of reasoning where the conclusion is entailed the premises (or the answer in the question) but the path is so complex that we cannot anticipate it? ==NST] Yes. On my more flippant days, I'll point out that some people claim unanticipatable, complicated deduction reduces to tautology. And I may say it when I get frustrated at people who don't understand the difference between deduction and induction. But for the most part, yes. A purely deductive system that can hit upon true, but surprising, theorems, is not merely tautology. [NST ==The first time you made this distinction, I couldn't quite get it. Can you say a bit more? It wold seem to me that recursion could happen only once, but that iteration would require several instances. So I can imagine an interation of recursions but not the reverse. In short, I don't know how talk this talk, yet. ==NST] Both recursion and iteration can be infinite. The difference lies the focus of the repetition. Recursion puts more focus on the I/O of the process, what comes out of any given application must make sense going in. The input and output must be commensurate. Iteration puts more focus on the procedure, in particular the state, the conditions that obtain. As long as the conditions still tolerate it, the iteration will continue, regardless of whether the I/O is meaningful. Iteration can wander more than recursion. Recursion is less prone to the adage garbage in = garbage out. So, in your filter metaphor, if your filter stays the same, each time the fluid is pushed through, it will filter more of the same particles out of the fluid until there are none left (or the filter fills up). With iteration, your filter might change each time it's used because of unforeseen effects. For example, if your filter is supposed to extract particles 1-100 millimeters, but you use it so much that it starts to develop densely packed regions, then it may begin to filter only particles that are 1-100 nanometers. The filter is a hysterical process. It has memory. If you replace the filter with a new one each time the fluid goes through it, then you've got recursion. If you allow the filter to get progressively dirty, then you've got iteration. Iteration is most aligned with stateful repetition. Recursion is most aligned with stateless repetition. P ^ M - P leaves out information. So, saying P is not the same as saying P^M.[NST ==AH! So total entailment is not sufficient to tautology, on your account. I have to think about that. So all white swans are white is a tautology but (1) All swans are white (2) this bird is a swan (3) this bird is white is not. ==NST] Not technically, no. But if pressed, I would consider the context of the accusation. When I'm talking to someone like you, who might actually listen to me, I'd say no. When talking to someone who just likes to hear themselves talk, I'd say ok, sure, 1) all swans are white plus 2) this is a swan, therefore 3) this swan is white is close enough to a tautology for me to call it that for this conversation. But when/if I allow that, I'm on a slippery slope to calling all deduction tautological. But, as I said above, there are some people who claim that all deduction is tautology. They would probably identify different types of tautology (e.g.
Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning.
Output not a good word for that at all. We can go back to conclusion, in the sense of the transformation has stopped. I'm OK with that. Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: I have a terrible time with the word state; how about analytical output? Otherwise we're good. Nick -- glen ep ropella 971-255-2847 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
Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning.
On 4/12/13 5:40 PM, glen wrote: Iteration is most aligned with stateful repetition. Recursion is most aligned with stateless repetition. Purely functional constructs can capture iteration, though. $ cat foo.hs import Control.Monad.State import Control.Monad.Loops inc :: State Int Bool inc = do i - get put (i + 1) return (i 10) main = do putStrLn (show (runState (whileM inc get) 5)) $ ghc --make foo.hs $ ./foo ([6,7,8,9,10],11) 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
Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning.
On 4/13/13 2:05 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: Can anybody translate this for a non programmer person? A state may be a complex graph, or a high dimensional space, but it is still useful to recognize it can be represented by a value and that (formal) transformations can be made either as a whole or in parts. Since a change to a part is a change to the whole, not being clear on how the composition works is bad. Functional programming (roughly speaking, recursion) requires this consistency. It's not that iteration is a more versatile description, but it is sloppier. Nothing gets glossed-over using monadic types for state. In the example code, e.g., the counter state cannot escape or be mutated outside the scope of the `runState'. 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
Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning.
Nick, I surprised that you are not more conversant in computer languages. You're always, well, niggling about the meaning of this word, or that one in the context of this or that conversation. With computer languages, there are very few ambiguities, contextual or other wise. Kind of like mathematics. For one as worried as you often appear to be about the true meaning of the written word, I would have thought that you would positively revel at the ability to express yourself with nearly absolute crystal clarity, no ambiguities whatsoever. Could it be that you seek out the ambiguities that are ever present in human languages to give yourself something to pounce upon and worry over, and to provide the opportunity to engage in nearly endless conversations? --Doug On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 2:05 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Can anybody translate this for a non programmer person? N -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2013 1:10 PM To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning. On 4/12/13 5:40 PM, glen wrote: Iteration is most aligned with stateful repetition. Recursion is most aligned with stateless repetition. Purely functional constructs can capture iteration, though. $ cat foo.hs import Control.Monad.State import Control.Monad.Loops inc :: State Int Bool inc = do i - get put (i + 1) return (i 10) main = do putStrLn (show (runState (whileM inc get) 5)) $ ghc --make foo.hs $ ./foo ([6,7,8,9,10],11) 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 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 -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* 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
Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning.
I don't know, I don't speak Haskell. --Doug On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 3:29 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Could be! ** ** Ok. Now that that is behind us, what did the message mean? ** ** N ** ** *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Saturday, April 13, 2013 3:02 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning.* *** ** ** Nick, ** ** I surprised that you are not more conversant in computer languages. You're always, well, niggling about the meaning of this word, or that one in the context of this or that conversation. ** ** With computer languages, there are very few ambiguities, contextual or other wise. Kind of like mathematics. For one as worried as you often appear to be about the true meaning of the written word, I would have thought that you would positively revel at the ability to express yourself with nearly absolute crystal clarity, no ambiguities whatsoever. ** ** Could it be that you seek out the ambiguities that are ever present in human languages to give yourself something to pounce upon and worry over, and to provide the opportunity to engage in nearly endless conversations?* *** ** ** --Doug On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 2:05 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Can anybody translate this for a non programmer person? N -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2013 1:10 PM To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning.*** * On 4/12/13 5:40 PM, glen wrote: Iteration is most aligned with stateful repetition. Recursion is most aligned with stateless repetition. Purely functional constructs can capture iteration, though. $ cat foo.hs import Control.Monad.State import Control.Monad.Loops inc :: State Int Bool inc = do i - get put (i + 1) return (i 10) main = do putStrLn (show (runState (whileM inc get) 5)) $ ghc --make foo.hs $ ./foo ([6,7,8,9,10],11) 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 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 ** ** -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* 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 -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* 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
Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning.
On 4/13/13 3:29 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: Now that that is behind us, what did the message mean? Iteration is a special case of recursion, namely tail recursion. Specifically, Glen's description of memory in the behavior of an oil filter can be handled by passing and returning an oil filter state object to the recursive functions. It's true that with imperative programming languages like C that it is all too easy to get memory effects -- a progressively more dirty filter -- because in absence of any extra thinking or effort, there's all of the heap memory that can be mutated without any bulletproof mechanism to control its lifetime or scope. Purely functional programming languages force use of control mechanisms over scope and lifetime. As for the question of what constitutes an explanation for dirty oil, the engine or the absence of filtering, I'd say that's a topic not related to iteration or recursion. There's nothing wrong with saying that The oil is clean because it is filtered, or The oil becomes dirty become of the activity of the engine, or in a deep-dive to a first-principle physical explanation of oil fluid dynamics, combustion, friction, etc. One way to reason about these propositions is using types. For example, in Haskell, types like.. type Oil = Either DirtyOil PrettyCleanOil filterOil :: Oil - FilterState - (PrettyCleanOil,FilterState) cycleEngine :: PrettyCleanOil - Oil ..place constraints on how to put together a car. System-level composition of these functions which fails to respect these types, simply cannot be compiled, i.e. it's proven to be internally inconsistent. It's also possible, using a dependently typed language like ATS or Agda to define PrettyCleanOil in terms of values; it is possible for a certain, type-constrained function (certain inputs together with a set of operations) to be proven ahead of time as being able (or not) to cause a transition from PrettyCleanOil to DirtyOil. For example, one could imagine a program that iterated `cycleEngine' a million times as compiling but a billion would not. The reason being that a physical simulation could show that combustion and friction effects could at most produce a maximum amount of oil-dirtying per cycle. A dependently-typed program could, for example, force the modeler to include a maintenance intervention in the simulation in order to replace the filter in order to compile. In this way, a lot of needless simulation could be avoided. 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] Systems, State, Recursion, Iteration.
Nick - It would be difficult to explain this (Marcus' definition of iteration vs recursion) to you without teaching you several key computer science concepts which are not necessarily difficult but are very *specific*. The first step would be to answer your question of days ago about what a System is. Physicists define System the same way Biologists (or even Social Scientists) do, just using different components and processes. It involves the relationship between the thing itself (a subset of the universe) and a model that represents it. Therein lies two lossy compressions: 1) Reductionism is at best a convenient approximation... no subset or subsystem is completely isolated (unless perhaps somehow what is inside a black hole is isolated from what is outside, but that might be an uninteresting, degenerate case?); 2) The model is not the thing... we've been all over this, right? Another lossy compression/projection of reality. oh and a *third*; 3) We can only measure these quantities to some degree of precision. In a system, a simultaneous measure every quantity of every aspect of the system is it's state. In practice, we can only measure some of the quantities to some precision of some of the aspects, and in fact, that is pretty much what modeling is about... choosing that subset according to various limited qualities such as what we *can* measure and with what level of precision and with a goal in mind of answering specific questions with said model. At this point, we are confronted with what means State? Your preference for Analytical Output vs State I think reflects your attempt to think in terms of the implementation of a model (in a computer program, or human executed logic/algorithm). The problems with Analytical Output in this context arise from both Analytical and Output. Analytical implies that the only or main value of the state is to do analysis on it. In Marcus example, it's main use is to feed it right back into an iterated model... no human may ever look at this state. Output suggests (also) that the state is visible *outside* the system. While (for analytical purposes) we might choose to capture a snapshot of the state, it is not an output, it is just the STATE of the system (see above). Marcus point was that in a recursive *program* (roughly a deterministic implementation rooted in formal symbol processing, of a model of some system), the system is nominally subdivided into physical or logical subsets or subsystems and executed *recursively* (to wit, by subdividing again until an answer can be obtained without further subdivision). In an iterative *program*, the entire (sub) system model is executed with initial conditions (state) one time, then the resulting state of that iteration is used as the initial conditions for the *next* iteration until some convergence criteria (the state of the system ceases to change above some epsilon) is met. I hope this helps... and doesn't muddy the water yet more? - Steve I don't know, I don't speak Haskell. --Doug On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 3:29 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Could be! Ok. Now that that is behind us, what did the message mean? N *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Saturday, April 13, 2013 3:02 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning. Nick, I surprised that you are not more conversant in computer languages. You're always, well, niggling about the meaning of this word, or that one in the context of this or that conversation. With computer languages, there are very few ambiguities, contextual or other wise. Kind of like mathematics. For one as worried as you often appear to be about the true meaning of the written word, I would have thought that you would positively revel at the ability to express yourself with nearly absolute crystal clarity, no ambiguities whatsoever. Could it be that you seek out the ambiguities that are ever present in human languages to give yourself something to pounce upon and worry over, and to provide the opportunity to engage in nearly endless conversations? --Doug On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 2:05 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Can anybody translate this for a non programmer person? N -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2013 1:10 PM To: friam@redfish.com mailto:friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning. On 4/12/13
Re: [FRIAM] Systems, State, Recursion, Iteration.
I would characterize the notion of state in terms of the functionality that the thing whose state we are talking about. Depending on its state, it is does and is capable of doing different things. This is different from thinking of state in terms of measurements. This sense of state is an abstract notion and doesn't tell you how to determine the state something is in. It just tells you what I mean by state. - When a traffic light is in the red state it emits red light, and it is capable of changing its state to green. - When a traffic light is in the green state it emits green light, and it is capable of changing its state to yellow. - When a traffic light is in the yellow state it emits yellow light, and it is capable of changing its state to red. Since I haven't been following this discussion at all carefully, perhaps this isn't what you are talking about. In that case, sorry for the intrusion. -- Russ *-- Russ Abbott* *_* *** Professor, Computer Science* * California State University, Los Angeles* * My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688* * Google voice: 747-*999-5105 Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/ * vita: *sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/ and the courses I teach *_* On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:46 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Nick - It would be difficult to explain this (Marcus' definition of iteration vs recursion) to you without teaching you several key computer science concepts which are not necessarily difficult but are very *specific*. The first step would be to answer your question of days ago about what a System is. Physicists define System the same way Biologists (or even Social Scientists) do, just using different components and processes. It involves the relationship between the thing itself (a subset of the universe) and a model that represents it. Therein lies two lossy compressions: 1) Reductionism is at best a convenient approximation... no subset or subsystem is completely isolated (unless perhaps somehow what is inside a black hole is isolated from what is outside, but that might be an uninteresting, degenerate case?); 2) The model is not the thing... we've been all over this, right? Another lossy compression/projection of reality. oh and a *third*; 3) We can only measure these quantities to some degree of precision. In a system, a simultaneous measure every quantity of every aspect of the system is it's state. In practice, we can only measure some of the quantities to some precision of some of the aspects, and in fact, that is pretty much what modeling is about... choosing that subset according to various limited qualities such as what we *can* measure and with what level of precision and with a goal in mind of answering specific questions with said model. At this point, we are confronted with what means State? Your preference for Analytical Output vs State I think reflects your attempt to think in terms of the implementation of a model (in a computer program, or human executed logic/algorithm). The problems with Analytical Output in this context arise from both Analytical and Output. Analytical implies that the only or main value of the state is to do analysis on it. In Marcus example, it's main use is to feed it right back into an iterated model... no human may ever look at this state. Output suggests (also) that the state is visible *outside* the system. While (for analytical purposes) we might choose to capture a snapshot of the state, it is not an output, it is just the STATE of the system (see above). Marcus point was that in a recursive *program* (roughly a deterministic implementation rooted in formal symbol processing, of a model of some system), the system is nominally subdivided into physical or logical subsets or subsystems and executed *recursively* (to wit, by subdividing again until an answer can be obtained without further subdivision). In an iterative *program*, the entire (sub) system model is executed with initial conditions (state) one time, then the resulting state of that iteration is used as the initial conditions for the *next* iteration until some convergence criteria (the state of the system ceases to change above some epsilon) is met. I hope this helps... and doesn't muddy the water yet more? - Steve I don't know, I don't speak Haskell. --Doug On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 3:29 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Could be! Ok. Now that that is behind us, what did the message mean? N *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Saturday, April 13, 2013 3:02 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular
Re: [FRIAM] Systems, State, Recursion, Iteration.
I guess I would call this a functional state. Or perhaps a disposition. But what is interesting to me about this usage of state is the following: . This sense of state is an abstract notion and doesn't tell you how to determine the state something is in. It just tells you what I mean by state Russ, in your graduate training, did anybody beat you over the head with the terms hypothetical construct and intervening variable? So the lurking question, here, for a behaviorist, is what could meaning mean but the measures by which one accesses it. I think it probably means the network of relations in which the concept resides. So you can have a conversation about unicorns, not because we have ever seen one, but because the concept of a unicorn lives in a network of concepts that are more closely related to things we have seen. Nick From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2013 9:16 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Systems, State, Recursion, Iteration. I would characterize the notion of state in terms of the functionality that the thing whose state we are talking about. Depending on its state, it is does and is capable of doing different things. This is different from thinking of state in terms of measurements. This sense of state is an abstract notion and doesn't tell you how to determine the state something is in. It just tells you what I mean by state . * When a traffic light is in the red state it emits red light, and it is capable of changing its state to green. * When a traffic light is in the green state it emits green light, and it is capable of changing its state to yellow. * When a traffic light is in the yellow state it emits yellow light, and it is capable of changing its state to red. Since I haven't been following this discussion at all carefully, perhaps this isn't what you are talking about. In that case, sorry for the intrusion. -- Russ -- Russ Abbott _ Professor, Computer Science California State University, Los Angeles My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688 Google voice: 747-999-5105 Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/ vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/ and the courses I teach _ On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:46 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Nick - It would be difficult to explain this (Marcus' definition of iteration vs recursion) to you without teaching you several key computer science concepts which are not necessarily difficult but are very *specific*. The first step would be to answer your question of days ago about what a System is. Physicists define System the same way Biologists (or even Social Scientists) do, just using different components and processes. It involves the relationship between the thing itself (a subset of the universe) and a model that represents it. Therein lies two lossy compressions: 1) Reductionism is at best a convenient approximation... no subset or subsystem is completely isolated (unless perhaps somehow what is inside a black hole is isolated from what is outside, but that might be an uninteresting, degenerate case?); 2) The model is not the thing... we've been all over this, right? Another lossy compression/projection of reality. oh and a *third*; 3) We can only measure these quantities to some degree of precision. In a system, a simultaneous measure every quantity of every aspect of the system is it's state. In practice, we can only measure some of the quantities to some precision of some of the aspects, and in fact, that is pretty much what modeling is about... choosing that subset according to various limited qualities such as what we *can* measure and with what level of precision and with a goal in mind of answering specific questions with said model. At this point, we are confronted with what means State? Your preference for Analytical Output vs State I think reflects your attempt to think in terms of the implementation of a model (in a computer program, or human executed logic/algorithm). The problems with Analytical Output in this context arise from both Analytical and Output. Analytical implies that the only or main value of the state is to do analysis on it. In Marcus example, it's main use is to feed it right back into an iterated model... no human may ever look at this state. Output suggests (also) that the state is visible *outside* the system. While (for analytical purposes) we might choose to capture a snapshot of the state, it is not an output, it is just the STATE of the system (see above). Marcus point was that in a recursive *program* (roughly a deterministic implementation rooted in formal
Re: [FRIAM] Systems, State, Recursion, Iteration.
Thanks, Steve. Will ponder all of this. Nick From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steve Smith Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2013 8:47 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] Systems, State, Recursion, Iteration. Nick - It would be difficult to explain this (Marcus' definition of iteration vs recursion) to you without teaching you several key computer science concepts which are not necessarily difficult but are very *specific*. The first step would be to answer your question of days ago about what a System is. Physicists define System the same way Biologists (or even Social Scientists) do, just using different components and processes. It involves the relationship between the thing itself (a subset of the universe) and a model that represents it. Therein lies two lossy compressions: 1) Reductionism is at best a convenient approximation... no subset or subsystem is completely isolated (unless perhaps somehow what is inside a black hole is isolated from what is outside, but that might be an uninteresting, degenerate case?); 2) The model is not the thing... we've been all over this, right? Another lossy compression/projection of reality. oh and a *third*; 3) We can only measure these quantities to some degree of precision. In a system, a simultaneous measure every quantity of every aspect of the system is it's state. In practice, we can only measure some of the quantities to some precision of some of the aspects, and in fact, that is pretty much what modeling is about... choosing that subset according to various limited qualities such as what we *can* measure and with what level of precision and with a goal in mind of answering specific questions with said model. At this point, we are confronted with what means State? Your preference for Analytical Output vs State I think reflects your attempt to think in terms of the implementation of a model (in a computer program, or human executed logic/algorithm). The problems with Analytical Output in this context arise from both Analytical and Output. Analytical implies that the only or main value of the state is to do analysis on it. In Marcus example, it's main use is to feed it right back into an iterated model... no human may ever look at this state. Output suggests (also) that the state is visible *outside* the system. While (for analytical purposes) we might choose to capture a snapshot of the state, it is not an output, it is just the STATE of the system (see above). Marcus point was that in a recursive *program* (roughly a deterministic implementation rooted in formal symbol processing, of a model of some system), the system is nominally subdivided into physical or logical subsets or subsystems and executed *recursively* (to wit, by subdividing again until an answer can be obtained without further subdivision). In an iterative *program*, the entire (sub) system model is executed with initial conditions (state) one time, then the resulting state of that iteration is used as the initial conditions for the *next* iteration until some convergence criteria (the state of the system ceases to change above some epsilon) is met. I hope this helps... and doesn't muddy the water yet more? - Steve I don't know, I don't speak Haskell. --Doug On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 3:29 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Could be! Ok. Now that that is behind us, what did the message mean? N From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2013 3:02 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning. Nick, I surprised that you are not more conversant in computer languages. You're always, well, niggling about the meaning of this word, or that one in the context of this or that conversation. With computer languages, there are very few ambiguities, contextual or other wise. Kind of like mathematics. For one as worried as you often appear to be about the true meaning of the written word, I would have thought that you would positively revel at the ability to express yourself with nearly absolute crystal clarity, no ambiguities whatsoever. Could it be that you seek out the ambiguities that are ever present in human languages to give yourself something to pounce upon and worry over, and to provide the opportunity to engage in nearly endless conversations? --Doug On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 2:05 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Can anybody translate this for a non programmer person? N -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2013 1:10 PM To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning. On 4/12/13 5:40 PM, glen wrote: Iteration is most aligned with
Re: [FRIAM] Systems, State, Recursion, Iteration.
Never beaten over the head with “hypothetical construct” or “intervening variable”. My notion of state is basic theoretical computer science. How an automaton (a formally defined mechanism such as a Turing Machine, Finite Automaton, etc.) reacts to its input depends on its state. This isn't intended to be particularly sophisticated. It's just a technique used when specifying how things interact with their environments. When a traffic light that controls a crosswalk is in the green state (in your direction) and you press the cross button, it ignores that input. When it's in its red state (in your direction) and you press the cross button, it starts counting down to turning green. How long the countdown will be depends on another element of its state: how much time has passed since the most recent green. *-- Russ Abbott* *_* *** Professor, Computer Science* * California State University, Los Angeles* * My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688* * Google voice: 747-*999-5105 Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/ * vita: *sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/ and the courses I teach *_* On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 8:48 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Thanks, Steve. Will ponder all of this. Nick ** ** *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith *Sent:* Saturday, April 13, 2013 8:47 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* [FRIAM] Systems, State, Recursion, Iteration. ** ** Nick - It would be difficult to explain this (Marcus' definition of iteration vs recursion) to you without teaching you several key computer science concepts which are not necessarily difficult but are very *specific*. The first step would be to answer your question of days ago about what a System is. Physicists define System the same way Biologists (or even Social Scientists) do, just using different components and processes. It involves the relationship between the thing itself (a subset of the universe) and a model that represents it. Therein lies two lossy compressions: 1) Reductionism is at best a convenient approximation... no subset or subsystem is completely isolated (unless perhaps somehow what is inside a black hole is isolated from what is outside, but that might be an uninteresting, degenerate case?); 2) The model is not the thing... we've been all over this, right? Another lossy compression/projection of reality. oh and a *third*; 3) We can only measure these quantities to some degree of precision. In a system, a simultaneous measure every quantity of every aspect of the system is it's state. In practice, we can only measure some of the quantities to some precision of some of the aspects, and in fact, that is pretty much what modeling is about... choosing that subset according to various limited qualities such as what we *can* measure and with what level of precision and with a goal in mind of answering specific questions with said model. At this point, we are confronted with what means State? Your preference for Analytical Output vs State I think reflects your attempt to think in terms of the implementation of a model (in a computer program, or human executed logic/algorithm). The problems with Analytical Output in this context arise from both Analytical and Output. Analytical implies that the only or main value of the state is to do analysis on it. In Marcus example, it's main use is to feed it right back into an iterated model... no human may ever look at this state. Output suggests (also) that the state is visible *outside* the system. While (for analytical purposes) we might choose to capture a snapshot of the state, it is not an output, it is just the STATE of the system (see above). Marcus point was that in a recursive *program* (roughly a deterministic implementation rooted in formal symbol processing, of a model of some system), the system is nominally subdivided into physical or logical subsets or subsystems and executed *recursively* (to wit, by subdividing again until an answer can be obtained without further subdivision). In an iterative *program*, the entire (sub) system model is executed with initial conditions (state) one time, then the resulting state of that iteration is used as the initial conditions for the *next* iteration until some convergence criteria (the state of the system ceases to change above some epsilon) is met. I hope this helps... and doesn't muddy the water yet more? - Steve I don't know, I don't speak Haskell. ** ** --Doug On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 3:29 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Could be! Ok. Now that that is behind us, what did the message mean? N
Re: [FRIAM] Systems, State, Recursion, Iteration.
Dear Russ I've read your paper on *how the Fed can fix the economy: *You've programed the states of the economy and frozen the Fed's response in turns of those states like traffic lights. It reminds me of classical control theory - pure and immediate Proportional control to control a single variable. Are there any Is and Ds which are time/rate dependent or is that left up to the Fed? ** On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 9:33 AM, Russ Abbott russ.abb...@gmail.com wrote: Never beaten over the head with “hypothetical construct” or “intervening variable”. My notion of state is basic theoretical computer science. How an automaton (a formally defined mechanism such as a Turing Machine, Finite Automaton, etc.) reacts to its input depends on its state. This isn't intended to be particularly sophisticated. It's just a technique used when specifying how things interact with their environments. When a traffic light that controls a crosswalk is in the green state (in your direction) and you press the cross button, it ignores that input. When it's in its red state (in your direction) and you press the cross button, it starts counting down to turning green. How long the countdown will be depends on another element of its state: how much time has passed since the most recent green. *-- Russ Abbott* *_* *** Professor, Computer Science* * California State University, Los Angeles* * My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688* * Google voice: 747-*999-5105 Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/ * vita: *sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/ and the courses I teach *_* On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 8:48 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Thanks, Steve. Will ponder all of this. Nick ** ** *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith *Sent:* Saturday, April 13, 2013 8:47 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* [FRIAM] Systems, State, Recursion, Iteration. ** ** Nick - It would be difficult to explain this (Marcus' definition of iteration vs recursion) to you without teaching you several key computer science concepts which are not necessarily difficult but are very *specific*. The first step would be to answer your question of days ago about what a System is. Physicists define System the same way Biologists (or even Social Scientists) do, just using different components and processes. It involves the relationship between the thing itself (a subset of the universe) and a model that represents it. Therein lies two lossy compressions: 1) Reductionism is at best a convenient approximation... no subset or subsystem is completely isolated (unless perhaps somehow what is inside a black hole is isolated from what is outside, but that might be an uninteresting, degenerate case?); 2) The model is not the thing... we've been all over this, right? Another lossy compression/projection of reality. oh and a *third*; 3) We can only measure these quantities to some degree of precision. In a system, a simultaneous measure every quantity of every aspect of the system is it's state. In practice, we can only measure some of the quantities to some precision of some of the aspects, and in fact, that is pretty much what modeling is about... choosing that subset according to various limited qualities such as what we *can* measure and with what level of precision and with a goal in mind of answering specific questions with said model. At this point, we are confronted with what means State? Your preference for Analytical Output vs State I think reflects your attempt to think in terms of the implementation of a model (in a computer program, or human executed logic/algorithm). The problems with Analytical Output in this context arise from both Analytical and Output. Analytical implies that the only or main value of the state is to do analysis on it. In Marcus example, it's main use is to feed it right back into an iterated model... no human may ever look at this state. Output suggests (also) that the state is visible *outside* the system. While (for analytical purposes) we might choose to capture a snapshot of the state, it is not an output, it is just the STATE of the system (see above). Marcus point was that in a recursive *program* (roughly a deterministic implementation rooted in formal symbol processing, of a model of some system), the system is nominally subdivided into physical or logical subsets or subsystems and executed *recursively* (to wit, by subdividing again until an answer can be obtained without further subdivision). In an iterative *program*, the entire (sub) system model is executed with initial conditions (state) one time, then the resulting state of that iteration is used as the
