Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[David Eric Smith]

This s lovely stuff, Jon, above my understanding and beyond my reach to learn 
in my current circumstances.  Thank you for both.

I know Fotini distantly, from brief overlap at SFI; I didn’t understand that 
this was the particular thing she had done, though I knew this was the general 
area of her work.  I have also been able to talk to her about why she left 
professional math to do design.  It is not the saddest disappointment in what 
our culture should offer people and sometimes fails to, but it is a contender.

I am currently watching a debate or learning session, between a dutch 
philosopher and mathematical logician who specializes in intuitionism, and a 
younger mathematician (maybe from MIT?, currently working in documentary film!) 
who knows category theory well, and some philosophy of math, and is trying to 
learn in the conversation how intuitionism fits into the landscape.  I don’t 
use names because I don’t know whether the existence of the exchange should be 
left as a private correspondence protected from traffic analysis.

But the positions are interesting.  The younger cat-theorist, who is reading 
philosophy of math, presents a picture much like the one you describe, with 
pluralism of several dimensions and no strong attachments.  The dutchman 
asserts that there are ongoing interests in what we want from notions of truth, 
and holds that the formalist/intuitionist polarity is one of the more important 
ones on that question.  The idea that there is no “winning strategy”, in a 
Jaako Hintikka-sense, is what interests me, as something illuminating about our 
aspiration for a truth-notion, and how perhaps inadequately we have been able 
to pin one down after millennia of quite sophisticated efforts.  That is why I 
expect the formalist-constructivist dialogue on the psychology topics to be 
persistent.

Both discussants in the math conversation seem to agree that, in some sense, 
the formalists didn’t declare a full victory, but at most a severely qualified 
one.  The incompleteness theorem ended the Hilbertian hope for a self-contained 
formalist program, and they both seem to agree (I have no knowledge or 
background to say myself) that even the formalists came to some degree to admit 
that there were sectors of their reasoning that did appeal to a kind of 
demonstrative semantics of the kind that intuitionists pin a lot on for number 
theory of finite numbers.  

My witness of this exchange lies behind my earlier remarks.  I wish I had the 
mind to understand the issues for myself.

Eric


> On May 20, 2020, at 10:39 AM, Jon Zingale  wrote:
> 
> EricS,
> 
> You write:
> I bring up this debate in mathematics because it seems significant to me
> how long and how intensely it has been going on, with both sides wanting a
> notion of “truth”, and neither being able to claim to have achieved it in 
> terms
> satisfied by the other.  If the intuitionists had never been able to build a
> real system around their position, the formalists could just declare victory
> and go home.  But the debate seems still live, even within math and not only 
> in
> philosophy, with clear trade-offs that there are proofs that each side will
> accept that the other rejects.
> 
> It would surprise me to meet a mathematician who feels intensely one way
> or an other about a particular choice of topos. For mathematical-logicians,
> what seems more interesting are the geometric morphisms between toposes.
> I would argue that the formalists to some extent did just declare victory
> many times over and that their are still pockets of scientific/mathematical
> culture that believe everything can be reduced to bits. Still, and not just as
> with the intuitionists, richer toposes are there to be found and explored.
> 
> My two favorite examples come from algebraic geometry and from
> quantum cosmology. In the former case, Grothendieck arrives at the
> idea of a non-boolean topos while writing the foundations of algebraic
> geometry. In the latter, Fontini Markopoulou-Kalamara 
>  develops her
> non-boolean topos in the context of quantum gravity†.
> 
> Jon
> 
> †) Tangentially related to other parts of the overall discussion, Fotini
> is also a design engineer working on embodied cognition technologies.
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Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[David Eric Smith]

This is why lists are a death trap, a kind of cognitive-affective pitcher 
plant.  Always there is the impulse to say “Oh no no no! You have misunderstood 
me!”.  But of course there is no sentence compassable that can’t be 
misunderstood.  Whoever is most tenacious will simply outlive the others, and I 
can promise you it won’t be me.  I can’t even imagine what social media must be 
like for the generation born into it.

So I can’t do even 1/10 of the line-by-line reply toward which I twitch, or 
this would turn into the through-the-night conversations between Moriarty and 
Ginsburg that Kerouac relates in On the Road, and I will accept defeat at the 
outset rather than go that way.

Only a couple of things, then.  I need to re-arrange:

> On May 20, 2020, at 3:48 AM,  
>  wrote:

>   They are so hell-bent on not giving an inch to the spiritualists (a worthy 
> position IMO)
> [NST===>OK, so here I am about to confirm my philistinity… (By the way, when 
> is the world going to wake up and remember that Philistine is a racist term.)

I do remember it, always since finding out about it.  Miserably it is part of 
the aggression in which such terms are used.  The people who would use it 
against the physicists do not intend to be kind.

> … by asking you what you think spiritualism is and what it is worthy OF?  In 
> other words, I don’t think you get your “by the way.” It may be “in the way.” 
><===nst] 

My original sentence can be read two ways, one of which is a good-natured, 
humorous supportive one toward what I read as your motive.  Being hell-bent on 
denying the spiritualists an inch is a worthy position IMO.   That was the 
intended meaning, both the good humor and the supportiveness, to say that my 
objections are bounded, and there is much in which I am on your side.   Should 
I say more about why you read it the other way?  No, clearly not.  
Interestingly, because I _cannot_, and there is some fundamental element of 
courtesy in realizing there are limits to what one can know about another.  
Something about being hidden….  (Sorry; that is trolling.)

And then:

> HEP: In principle, whatever you care about is a result of interaction of our 
> building blocks.
> ROS: Well, okay, but your saying that hasn’t addressed basically anything in 
> what we wanted to understand from what we do.
> HEP: Whatever you wanted to understand was just a problem of assembly.
> ROS: “Just assembly” has its own rules which are not already expressed in the 
> rules by which you characterize your building blocks (Of course, the 
> objection was never made with such circumspection, but usually in less clear 
> terms.)
> HEP: Well, in principle we understand all that.
> ROS: Then In Practice, say something we find useful or interesting.
> HEP: In Principle we understand all that.
> ROS: You are a robot.
>  
> And in that way, “reductionist” got entrenched as a synonym for “philistine” 
> who thinks there isn’t anything left to explain beyond a few descriptions of 
> building blocks.  Not only did it lead to a lot of unproductive fighting, it 
> also made it much harder for those who had useful points of view on what 
> reductionism is, or isn’t, to relate its contributions to all the other work 
> that involves understanding of new explanatory primitives.
> [NST===>If anybody on this list thinks I hold the above position, I have been 
> a very poor expositor, indeed. <===nst] 


Followed by 

> [NST===>
[yes I have clipped content here, which does affect context, to highlight a 
part still intending good faith]
>  I am an “up-reductionist”.  My crime is that I assert that the one key to 
> the mind is to look up and out, rather than down and in.   Our minds are 
> something about us, not something within us.   <===nst]


“The one key to the mind”. “Our minds are … about … not … within”

This is why I answered Glen about Brouwer (Intuitionism, constructivism) versus 
the formalists.

If you make your above assertions as answers to a conversation in which you are 
not constructing something to address what the conversation is about (this 
question of inner/outer or hidden or whatever), what is the content of the 
formal assertions?  

Someone is asking you to search in the void for the surprise of a new thought.  
You are answering by declaring a certain kind of sufficiency of thoughts you 
have long held fixed.  You are not claiming to be in possession of all 
constructions — I understand that and always have — but your “about … not … 
within” is a certain kind of changing the subject as a pre-emption.

In my cartoon of the reductionism of the physicists above, I wasn’t asking you 
to make a mapping from the domain-content of that discussion to the 
domain-content of this one — there is a crass older-school behaviorism, as you 
say, for which that kind of mapping would have worked, and I know that is not 
what is at work here, and you are not from that kind of mind — I was asking you 
to consider the style of thought

Re: [FRIAM] John Conway: "Travels With John Conway, in 258 Septillion Dimensions The Princeton mathemagician, who died in April, left an engaging legacy of numerical gamesmanship."

[Tom Johnson]

No. But you can subscribe to the NTY for $1 per week if you watch the
specials.


On Tue, May 19, 2020, 11:12 PM Russ Abbott  wrote:

> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/16/science/john-conway-math.html
>
> -- Russ Abbott
> Professor, Computer Science
> California State University, Los Angeles
>
>
> On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 6:01 PM Jon Zingale  wrote:
>
>> Tom,
>>
>> I would love to be able to read this.
>> Is there another place that isn't behind a pay wall?
>>
>> Jon
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>>
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Re: [FRIAM] John Conway: "Travels With John Conway, in 258 Septillion Dimensions The Princeton mathemagician, who died in April, left an engaging legacy of numerical gamesmanship."

[Russ Abbott]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/16/science/john-conway-math.html

-- Russ Abbott
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles


On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 6:01 PM Jon Zingale  wrote:

> Tom,
>
> I would love to be able to read this.
> Is there another place that isn't behind a pay wall?
>
> Jon
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>
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Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[thompnickson2]

Hi, Eric S, 

 

Thanks again for your thoughtful commentary.  As I read it, I came in and out 
of understanding it just as I came in and out of understanding Glen’s gloss on 
“inside”, just before I FINALLY got it.  So there is hope for me. 

 

This is why lists are a death trap, a kind of cognitive-affective pitcher 
plant.  Always there is the impulse to say “Oh no no no! You have misunderstood 
me!”.  But of course there is no sentence compassable that can’t be 
misunderstood.  Whoever is most tenacious will simply outlive the others, and I 
can promise you it won’t be me.  I can’t even imagine what social media must be 
like for the generation born into it.

At 82, I am not going to outlive any of you, so I would rather not think of the 
discussion in this way.  I have this insane, naïve view that out of such a 
discussion we could pull an article, a book, a compendium, and academic thingy 
of SOME sort that would give some permanence, something that we could be proud 
of.  I would love to see a book, written in  a language we-citizens could 
understand, that would convey the algorithmists’ understandings of the topics 
we have been discussing, e.g., whether they think they are building a machine 
with a ghost in it  or one that merely demonstrates that ghosts are 
unnecessary.  

 

I would love to participate in such a book  In point of fact, over the 15 years 
I have been coming to FRIAM, I have published four articles, each arising to 
some degree from our discussions, so it IS possible.  I am not sure anybody 
else thinks it’s a worthy enterprise, or, more particularly, one that they have 
time to pursue.  I am simply helpless to not try to do it.   And nothing 
sharpens a writer more keenly than learning all the myriad ways in which he can 
be misunderstood.  

 

Sorry for hastily reading your comment on spiritualism.  In the meetings of the 
Mother Church, there are two or three people of a more or less spiritualist 
inclination whom I have been trying to understand and draw out their threads.  
So my comment about the Pragmatic implications of spiritualistic position was 
honest and I hope not haughty. 

 

Thanks once again for your many contributions to my thinking.  I need to reread 
 your posts, particularly your back and forth with Jon, to see if I can 
understand better the mathematical/computational point of view that you are 
developing there. 

 

All the best, 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 8:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

This is why lists are a death trap, a kind of cognitive-affective pitcher 
plant.  Always there is the impulse to say “Oh no no no! You have misunderstood 
me!”.  But of course there is no sentence compassable that can’t be 
misunderstood.  Whoever is most tenacious will simply outlive the others, and I 
can promise you it won’t be me.  I can’t even imagine what social media must be 
like for the generation born into it.

 

So I can’t do even 1/10 of the line-by-line reply toward which I twitch, or 
this would turn into the through-the-night conversations between Moriarty and 
Ginsburg that Kerouac relates in On the Road, and I will accept defeat at the 
outset rather than go that way.

 

Only a couple of things, then.  I need to re-arrange:

 

On May 20, 2020, at 3:48 AM, mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

 

  They are so hell-bent on not giving an inch to the spiritualists (a worthy 
position IMO)

[NST===>OK, so here I am about to confirm my philistinity… (By the way, when is 
the world going to wake up and remember that Philistine is a racist term.)

 

I do remember it, always since finding out about it.  Miserably it is part of 
the aggression in which such terms are used.  The people who would use it 
against the physicists do not intend to be kind.





… by asking you what you think spiritualism is and what it is worthy OF?  In 
other words, I don’t think you get your “by the way.” It may be “in the way.”   
 <===nst] 

 

My original sentence can be read two ways, one of which is a good-natured, 
humorous supportive one toward what I read as your motive.  Being hell-bent on 
denying the spiritualists an inch is a worthy position IMO.   That was the 
intended meaning, both the good humor and the supportiveness, to say that my 
objections are bounded, and there is much in which I am on your side.   Should 
I say more about why you read it the other way?  No, clearly not.  
Interestingly, because I _cannot_, and there is some fundamental element of 
courtesy in realizing there are limits to what one can know about another.  
Something about being hidden….  (Sorry; tha

Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[David Eric Smith]

I like this Glen, particularly the following:

> On May 20, 2020, at 2:10 AM, uǝlƃ ☣  wrote:
> 
> I really wish more people would/could permanently install a "methodological" 
> qualifier in front of every -ism they advocate. So, if you call yourself a 
> monist, are you a methodological monist? And if not, if you're ideal-monist 
> but methodological-pluralist, then I don't particularly care about your 
> idealism. I care about your methods more than your thoughts. At least then, 
> when someone foists a reduction on us, we can, in practice, find if/where 
> they've ignored or assumed away some particulars.

I have wondered — maybe just because I am a spectator to this debate on another 
channel so it is on my mind — whether it is productive to compare the 
distinction you draw to that between the Formalists and the Intuitionists in 
mathematics (came up in Jon’s post a few days ago too).  

To me the formalist wants to trust that whatever satisfies certain rules of 
syntax should be considered true.  (Here I put aside the role of model theory, 
as what formalists would call a semantics associated with the formalism, 
because to me axioms like the excluded middle are syntactic in their nature.) 

It probably matters that the Intuitionists are not merely constructivists (the 
univalent-foundations people, Voyevodsky et al., seem to be more purely 
constructivists), but I’m not sure how much more there is to the philosophical 
position of the intuitionists that mathematical truth is a property of “mental 
events”, than just their methodological commitment that proofs must be 
constructive and definitions demonstrative, ruling out things like terms for 
infinite sets.

The behaviorists seem to have something like a law of the excluded middle in 
their style of thought, of not perhaps articulated as a commitment of method.  
They can simply declare that they have The scientific point of view, and as 
long as you can’t demonstrate a contradiction within it, if you object that 
they are asserting things they can’t back up with construction, you must be 
advocating a spiritualist position.  There is a lot I REALLY DONT LIKE in my 
use of that metaphor, because it ascribes to the behaviorists a more dogmatic 
and domineering position than I think the actual people have, though I think 
their language pushes them toward sounding more that way than they are.  But 
there is some axis of distinction between the syntactic notion of truth that 
the formalists are after, and the constructive semantics (+ some notion of 
“embodiment”, I guess) in the intuitionists, which seems similar to me to your 
contrast of methodological versus idealistic commitments to monism or 
pluralism, and that I agree has been the focus of the impasse in this dialogue 
so far.

I bring up this debate in mathematics because it seems significant to me how 
long and how intensely it has been going on, with both sides wanting a notion 
of “truth”, and neither being able to claim to have achieved it in terms 
satisfied by the other.  If the intuitionists had never been able to build a 
real system around their position, the formalists could just declare victory 
and go home.  But the debate seems still live, even within math and not only in 
philosophy, with clear trade-offs that there are proofs that each side will 
accept that the other rejects (certain proofs of manifold continuity that the 
intuitionists accept that formalists reject, and finitistic proofs for infinite 
sets, as well as the excluded-middle arguments, that the formalists accept and 
the intuitionists reject).  I was surprised, when I first saw the axiom of 
choice, that it was just presented as a part of mathematical reasoning, as to 
me it seemed wildly unreliable, as most efforts to interpret syntactic rules in 
terms of truth values seem unreliable.  On the other hand, like the 
irrationality of sqrt(2) in the proof Frank recounted, I would be surprised at 
any constructive math in which such a result would be false.  Uncommitted is 
the most I would expect.

I held off writing this initially, because I am unsure whether I think it is 
useful even in the broad quality of the distinction, and certainly there is not 
a fine-grained mapping from one of these cases to the others.  But I write it 
now in case it will help a different response I have to write to Nick’s post.

I agree with you we are after trying to express the same or similar kind of 
distinction.

Eric



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Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[Jon Zingale]

EricS,

You write:







*I bring up this debate in mathematics because it seems significant to
mehow long and how intensely it has been going on, with both sides wanting
anotion of “truth”, and neither being able to claim to have achieved it in
termssatisfied by the other.  If the intuitionists had never been able to
build areal system around their position, the formalists could just declare
victoryand go home.  But the debate seems still live, even within math and
not only inphilosophy, with clear trade-offs that there are proofs that
each side willaccept that the other rejects.*

It would surprise me to meet a mathematician who feels intensely one way
or an other about a particular choice of topos. For mathematical-logicians,
what seems more interesting are the geometric morphisms between toposes.
I would argue that the formalists to some extent *did* *just declare
victory*
many times over and that their are still pockets of scientific/mathematical
culture that believe everything can be *reduced to bits*. Still, and not
just as
with the intuitionists, richer toposes are there to be found and explored.

My two favorite examples come from algebraic geometry and from
quantum cosmology. In the former case, Grothendieck arrives at the
idea of a non-boolean topos while writing the foundations of algebraic
geometry. In the latter, Fontini Markopoulou-Kalamara
 develops her
non-boolean topos in the context of quantum gravity†.

Jon

†) Tangentially related to other parts of the overall discussion, Fotini
is also a design engineer working on embodied cognition technologies.
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Re: [FRIAM] IS: Research on Dreams WAS: hidden

[Frank Wimberly]

Dear Friam,

This reply  was unintentionally sent here.  I was answering Nick's "for
what mill?" question and I didn't notice that he asked it in an email to
the Group.  I apologize.

Frank

On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 5:37 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> For which mill:  understanding the patient's unconscious processes.
> Anything the patient produces including dream accounts, feelings toward the
> therapist (positive and negative), conscious fantasies (sexual or
> otherwise), accounts of childhood experiences, crying, rages, forgetting to
> pay the bill.  You get the idea.  It's all grist for the mill it's the most
> idiographic possible investigation of a human psysche I suspect.
>
> The transference including idealizing and devaluing the therapist,
> defiance, rejection, dependency, longing for merger, etc is the most
> important grist.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Tue, May 19, 2020, 5:22 PM  wrote:
>
>> Well, yes, but for which mill??
>>
>>
>>
>> If one accepts dream reports as proxies for dreams, what is the universe
>> to which one is generalizing?
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> Nicholas Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 19, 2020 2:41 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] IS: Research on Dreams WAS: hidden
>>
>>
>>
>> Memories and the accounts thereof are considered valid dream material and
>> it is well known that they have an imperfect relationship to the dream.  It
>> doesn't matter.  Even if a person makes up.a dream; it is grist for the
>> mill.
>>
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 19, 2020, 2:29 PM uǝlƃ ☣  wrote:
>>
>> This is very close to what I was going to propose, except I intended to
>> say something snarky like: We *already* do nomothetic studies of dreams.
>> The results of which are gathered and used in sleep labs all over the
>> country.
>>
>> But it sounds like y'all are talking about doing a nomothetic study of
>> what people *say*, not what they dream. When someone talks about the
>> content of their dreams, can you trust them to tell the truth? ... to know
>> the truth? I'd argue, no. They're making up a *story* about what they just
>> experienced.
>>
>> The same is true about, say, self-reporting alcohol consumption ... or
>> whether or not you'd help a person in an argument with an abusive spouse.
>> Narrative is untrustworthy.
>>
>> On 5/19/20 1:20 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>> > I settled on soliciting from my colleagues around the country as
>> variable a set of song samples and then published on what was true of all
>> of them.  The extremes of that sample also gave us grounds to say what a
>> mockingbird “could” do.  I suppose this was “nomothetic” research, but it
>> also had an idiographic taint.
>> >
>> > Could this sort approach be used with dreaming?
>>
>>
>> --
>> ☣ uǝlƃ
>>
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>>
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>>
>

-- 
Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
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Re: [FRIAM] John Conway: "Travels With John Conway, in 258 Septillion Dimensions The Princeton mathemagician, who died in April, left an engaging legacy of numerical gamesmanship."

[Jon Zingale]

Tom,

I would love to be able to read this.
Is there another place that isn't behind a pay wall?

Jon
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Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[Frank Wimberly]

You may consider the question closed as soon as you tell me the name of my
6th grade classmate. :-)


On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 6:28 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> My mind doesn't feel trivialized, Jon.  I like being an example--of most
> things that I am.
>
> Frank
>
> On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 5:56 PM Jon Zingale  wrote:
>
>> EricS,
>>
>> Philosophically, I most closely identify with what I perhaps could call
>> phenomenological-materialism. For me all ideas we have, we have exactly
>> because they are *afforded* by the world. There may not be unicorns, but
>> horses and animals with horns do exist. Unicorns then are *afforded*.
>> The role of
>> the trump card in a game of bridge† is nowhere to be found in the atomic
>> structure of the card, but the role is *afforded* by our world. Straight
>> lines
>> and symmetry groups may be nowhere measured, but are exactly accessible
>> to us because we exist in a world which *affords* them. For me, this is
>> how I
>> thinly justify not needing a spiritual or platonic meta-physics. Also on
>> a personal
>> level, I *do* believe that mind is public. I am interested in following
>> this line, in part,
>> because I wish to understand exactly how wrong I am.
>>
>> While Tononi (in the development of his IIT)
>> 
>> aims to be very clear about
>> the *reducibility floor* of consciousness, he also puts forth positive
>> assertions
>> about what consciousness is/isn't. For example, Tononi claims that
>> *The internetis not conscious exactly because it isn't fully integrated*.
>> The technical details of
>> his concept of *fully integrated* can be summarized as the observation
>> that when I
>> go to a wikipedia page there aren't bits of my email and other webpages
>> mixed in.
>> He, like I believe we are attempting here, is working to develop a formal
>> model of
>> consciousness. It may be that we are committing the sin of naming things
>> and
>> abstracting, and that we will ultimately have in our hands nothing but a
>> silly-horribly-
>> wrong tool. I feel that doing this kind of work is a wonderful break from
>> binge
>> watching another season of 'Eureka'.
>>
>> Frank,
>>
>> You and Nick have been arguing for and against (respectively) the private
>> nature
>> of mind as long as I have known you both. I apologize if placing you in
>> these
>> examples was in bad taste. I certainly believe you have a rich and
>> beautiful
>> mind, and I will be careful in the future to not trivialize it by using
>> your
>> mind in examples. For the record, anything I had said in regards to your
>> mind,
>> I meant to say about my mind as well.
>>
>> Glen, Steve,
>>
>> If I understand Glen's comprehension of strings example, there are many
>> arbitrary
>> functions which can act as a *choice of representative* for a given
>> *extensional*
>> transformation. To some limited extent, the claim that *the mind is not
>> opaque* may
>> be the claim that there are more structured categories than Sets with
>> arbitrary
>> functions which are applicable to the mind/behavior problem. If we had
>> such a
>> category, I might go so far as to define a fiber over each point on the
>> holographic
>> surface and consider liftings to a bundle or sheaf. Now while
>> simultaneously **ducking**
>> fistfuls of hay from various strawman arguments posed, I suggest that it
>> may be
>> reasonable to define a connection (damn, are we back to covariance) on
>> the bundle.
>> Doing so could be one meaningful way to interpret *tracing a thought*.
>>
>> With regards to the discussion about our holographic surface, I could use
>> more
>> clarification on the lossy/lossless property. I assume we agree that
>> sorting is
>> not dual to shuffling. For instance, defining the type of a shuffling
>> algorithm
>> does not require Ord
>>  to be a class
>> constraint, where it *is* required for sorting.
>> If we are claiming that the information found on our holographic surface
>> is
>> complete, I would like to think we are claiming it to be lossless‡. At
>> the end
>> of the day, it may be the case that we will never know the ontological
>> status of
>> information reversibility through a black hole. Am I wrong about this? If
>> our
>> holographic surface isn't reversible, is hashing perhaps a better analogy?
>>
>> If in the limit of behavioral investigation we find no more semantic
>> ambiguity than
>> the semantic ambiguities we experience when attempting to understand an
>> others
>> language, I may wish to consider the question closed in favor of the mind
>> being
>> public. I do suspect we would run into many many more (perhaps
>> unresolvable)
>> problems along the way, but this exercise is exactly an exercise to me.
>> Learning
>> the nature of these problems is reward enough.
>>
>> Jon
>>
>> †) This example coming from Rota's lectures on 'The end of objectivity

Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[Frank Wimberly]

My mind doesn't feel trivialized, Jon.  I like being an example--of most
things that I am.

Frank

On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 5:56 PM Jon Zingale  wrote:

> EricS,
>
> Philosophically, I most closely identify with what I perhaps could call
> phenomenological-materialism. For me all ideas we have, we have exactly
> because they are *afforded* by the world. There may not be unicorns, but
> horses and animals with horns do exist. Unicorns then are *afforded*. The
> role of
> the trump card in a game of bridge† is nowhere to be found in the atomic
> structure of the card, but the role is *afforded* by our world. Straight
> lines
> and symmetry groups may be nowhere measured, but are exactly accessible
> to us because we exist in a world which *affords* them. For me, this is
> how I
> thinly justify not needing a spiritual or platonic meta-physics. Also on a
> personal
> level, I *do* believe that mind is public. I am interested in following
> this line, in part,
> because I wish to understand exactly how wrong I am.
>
> While Tononi (in the development of his IIT)
> 
> aims to be very clear about
> the *reducibility floor* of consciousness, he also puts forth positive
> assertions
> about what consciousness is/isn't. For example, Tononi claims that
> *The internetis not conscious exactly because it isn't fully integrated*.
> The technical details of
> his concept of *fully integrated* can be summarized as the observation
> that when I
> go to a wikipedia page there aren't bits of my email and other webpages
> mixed in.
> He, like I believe we are attempting here, is working to develop a formal
> model of
> consciousness. It may be that we are committing the sin of naming things
> and
> abstracting, and that we will ultimately have in our hands nothing but a
> silly-horribly-
> wrong tool. I feel that doing this kind of work is a wonderful break from
> binge
> watching another season of 'Eureka'.
>
> Frank,
>
> You and Nick have been arguing for and against (respectively) the private
> nature
> of mind as long as I have known you both. I apologize if placing you in
> these
> examples was in bad taste. I certainly believe you have a rich and
> beautiful
> mind, and I will be careful in the future to not trivialize it by using
> your
> mind in examples. For the record, anything I had said in regards to your
> mind,
> I meant to say about my mind as well.
>
> Glen, Steve,
>
> If I understand Glen's comprehension of strings example, there are many
> arbitrary
> functions which can act as a *choice of representative* for a given
> *extensional*
> transformation. To some limited extent, the claim that *the mind is not
> opaque* may
> be the claim that there are more structured categories than Sets with
> arbitrary
> functions which are applicable to the mind/behavior problem. If we had
> such a
> category, I might go so far as to define a fiber over each point on the
> holographic
> surface and consider liftings to a bundle or sheaf. Now while
> simultaneously **ducking**
> fistfuls of hay from various strawman arguments posed, I suggest that it
> may be
> reasonable to define a connection (damn, are we back to covariance) on the
> bundle.
> Doing so could be one meaningful way to interpret *tracing a thought*.
>
> With regards to the discussion about our holographic surface, I could use
> more
> clarification on the lossy/lossless property. I assume we agree that
> sorting is
> not dual to shuffling. For instance, defining the type of a shuffling
> algorithm
> does not require Ord
>  to be a class
> constraint, where it *is* required for sorting.
> If we are claiming that the information found on our holographic surface is
> complete, I would like to think we are claiming it to be lossless‡. At the
> end
> of the day, it may be the case that we will never know the ontological
> status of
> information reversibility through a black hole. Am I wrong about this? If
> our
> holographic surface isn't reversible, is hashing perhaps a better analogy?
>
> If in the limit of behavioral investigation we find no more semantic
> ambiguity than
> the semantic ambiguities we experience when attempting to understand an
> others
> language, I may wish to consider the question closed in favor of the mind
> being
> public. I do suspect we would run into many many more (perhaps
> unresolvable)
> problems along the way, but this exercise is exactly an exercise to me.
> Learning
> the nature of these problems is reward enough.
>
> Jon
>
> †) This example coming from Rota's lectures on 'The end of objectivity
> 
> '.
>
> ‡) Bzip is a great example of a seemingly lossy algorithm that amazingly
> enough
> is not. The fact that the Burrows-Wheeler
> 

Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[Jon Zingale]

EricS,

Philosophically, I most closely identify with what I perhaps could call
phenomenological-materialism. For me all ideas we have, we have exactly
because they are *afforded* by the world. There may not be unicorns, but
horses and animals with horns do exist. Unicorns then are *afforded*. The
role of
the trump card in a game of bridge† is nowhere to be found in the atomic
structure of the card, but the role is *afforded* by our world. Straight
lines
and symmetry groups may be nowhere measured, but are exactly accessible
to us because we exist in a world which *affords* them. For me, this is how
I
thinly justify not needing a spiritual or platonic meta-physics. Also on a
personal
level, I *do* believe that mind is public. I am interested in following
this line, in part,
because I wish to understand exactly how wrong I am.

While Tononi (in the development of his IIT)

aims to be very clear about
the *reducibility floor* of consciousness, he also puts forth positive
assertions
about what consciousness is/isn't. For example, Tononi claims that
*The internetis not conscious exactly because it isn't fully integrated*.
The technical details of
his concept of *fully integrated* can be summarized as the observation that
when I
go to a wikipedia page there aren't bits of my email and other webpages
mixed in.
He, like I believe we are attempting here, is working to develop a formal
model of
consciousness. It may be that we are committing the sin of naming things and
abstracting, and that we will ultimately have in our hands nothing but a
silly-horribly-
wrong tool. I feel that doing this kind of work is a wonderful break from
binge
watching another season of 'Eureka'.

Frank,

You and Nick have been arguing for and against (respectively) the private
nature
of mind as long as I have known you both. I apologize if placing you in
these
examples was in bad taste. I certainly believe you have a rich and beautiful
mind, and I will be careful in the future to not trivialize it by using your
mind in examples. For the record, anything I had said in regards to your
mind,
I meant to say about my mind as well.

Glen, Steve,

If I understand Glen's comprehension of strings example, there are many
arbitrary
functions which can act as a *choice of representative* for a given
*extensional*
transformation. To some limited extent, the claim that *the mind is not
opaque* may
be the claim that there are more structured categories than Sets with
arbitrary
functions which are applicable to the mind/behavior problem. If we had such
a
category, I might go so far as to define a fiber over each point on the
holographic
surface and consider liftings to a bundle or sheaf. Now while
simultaneously **ducking**
fistfuls of hay from various strawman arguments posed, I suggest that it
may be
reasonable to define a connection (damn, are we back to covariance) on the
bundle.
Doing so could be one meaningful way to interpret *tracing a thought*.

With regards to the discussion about our holographic surface, I could use
more
clarification on the lossy/lossless property. I assume we agree that
sorting is
not dual to shuffling. For instance, defining the type of a shuffling
algorithm
does not require Ord
 to be a class
constraint, where it *is* required for sorting.
If we are claiming that the information found on our holographic surface is
complete, I would like to think we are claiming it to be lossless‡. At the
end
of the day, it may be the case that we will never know the ontological
status of
information reversibility through a black hole. Am I wrong about this? If
our
holographic surface isn't reversible, is hashing perhaps a better analogy?

If in the limit of behavioral investigation we find no more semantic
ambiguity than
the semantic ambiguities we experience when attempting to understand an
others
language, I may wish to consider the question closed in favor of the mind
being
public. I do suspect we would run into many many more (perhaps unresolvable)
problems along the way, but this exercise is exactly an exercise to me.
Learning
the nature of these problems is reward enough.

Jon

†) This example coming from Rota's lectures on 'The end of objectivity

'.

‡) Bzip is a great example of a seemingly lossy algorithm that amazingly
enough
is not. The fact that the Burrows-Wheeler
 transform
is invertible and is statistically useful
more-often-than-it-is-not provides a high bar for what can be accomplished
with data
compression.
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... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Frida

Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[thompnickson2]

Q: Why are not dreams, like any other experience, proper objects o study?  
A:  Because, unlike other experiences, we report them after we have them. 
Q: No, that can't be right.  There is no situation in which we actually report 
the experience precisely as we have it.  So, the difference between a dream and 
any other reportable experience is a matter of degree. 
A: Oh, all right.  We can't study dreams because there is no way to observe you 
having the experience.
Q: Well, what if we take REM sleep as a proxy for dreaming.  Now we can observe 
you having the experience. 
A:  Well, I suppose.  But you  can't observe the experience that I am having.  
... to be continued. 
  



Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
thompnicks...@gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 3:33 PM
To: FriAM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

On 5/19/20 1:47 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> The part I *think*
> you want to preserve is perhaps is that of lossless dimension 
> reduction, and a part-whole relation (where any small part/sampling of 
> the whole-ogram yields *some* information about the whole target)?

Yes. I take the position to be: all valid questions about psychology can be 
properly asked as questions about behavior. This implies, to me, that all valid 
questions about anything can be properly asked as questions about the 
distinguishability limit between that thing (being studied, the object) and 
another thing (e.g. the question asker). I would NOT go so far as to say the 
transformation from object to distinguishability limit is *lossless*. (In 
analogy with black holes, what goes in comes out randomized ... again, if 
understand what I'm talking about ... which is unlikely.) And, also yes, there 
is a part-whole relationship in talking about the object, the transformations 
from object to question asker, and question asker. 

> And I think the corner of this I was trying to pry up was that 
> "obscurity" is relative.

Well, maybe. Let's say you're someone like Nick trying to decide whether or not 
your computer has been compromised. Then compare that to someone like you doing 
the same thing. While it's true that the space of things Nick considers might 
be observables is different from the space of things you might consider are 
observables, that you are both fully large dimensional creatures *might* 
suggest that the relative entropies are the same, for all intents and purposes. 
Sure, you know a few more heuristics to winnow out the plausible decoders than 
Nick. But the sheer number of ways your computer can be compromised might 
*swamp* any difference between the two of you.

My argument is that no matter what thing (object) we're considering decoding 
... a basketball, a human, an ant colony, etc. the number of ways we *could* 
decode what's written right there on the surface swamps any difference between 
2 particular question askers. This is why I cite Rosen and von Neumann and, 
hell, even Feynman, e.g. the description of an object is of a higher order than 
the object itself. All successful cracks are banal tricks. It's easier to be a 
script kiddy than it is to be an intrusion detection specialist. The obscurity 
lies in the number of possible decoders, not the thing that needs to be decoded.

> Not to beg this issue much further, but I guess in your example, I was 
> thinking that the young engineers working at the 
> quantum-time-tunneling laboratory might well keep their secrets 
> obscure from the cute girl simply through the use of shared idioms 
> (amongst the engineers) which she is not privy to by virtue of not 
> being a young man nor an engineer.   Another type of obscurity?

Heh, not to beg it further, but ... [begs it further]. No. The cute girl spy is 
probably *more* well-versed in the young engineer domain than the young 
engineer is. (And, to be clear, I never suggested the young engineer was a man.)

> I suppose I haven't yet accepted that QC is qualitatively the same as 
> a universal computer (archetypical von Neuman machine)...   or the 
> equivalence (by construction) of nDmState CA by n'Dm'State (where n' and m'>m).  TANSTAAFL suggests that in space-time trades they 
> might/must/should-oughta be the same, but I don't think that's a done 
> deal yet?

Not that I know of. But it doesn't matter for this conversation. I'll allow 
that if QC turns out to be something fantastic like hyper-computation, then 
woohoo (!) privacy by obscurity is gone forever. But until then, I'm skeptical.

> I apologize for being the tangenter that I apparently am... or 
> apologize for the effect of it on the conversation... BUT...  I think 
> when it comes to the adversarial co-evolution you were not (yet) 
> talking about, I think Alan Kay's "best way to predict the future is 
> to invent it" is part of the strategy of various flavors of con-men 
> which is to plant 

Re: [FRIAM] IS: Research on Dreams WAS: hidden

[Frank Wimberly]

For which mill:  understanding the patient's unconscious processes.
Anything the patient produces including dream accounts, feelings toward the
therapist (positive and negative), conscious fantasies (sexual or
otherwise), accounts of childhood experiences, crying, rages, forgetting to
pay the bill.  You get the idea.  It's all grist for the mill it's the most
idiographic possible investigation of a human psysche I suspect.

The transference including idealizing and devaluing the therapist,
defiance, rejection, dependency, longing for merger, etc is the most
important grist.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, May 19, 2020, 5:22 PM  wrote:

> Well, yes, but for which mill??
>
>
>
> If one accepts dream reports as proxies for dreams, what is the universe
> to which one is generalizing?
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 19, 2020 2:41 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] IS: Research on Dreams WAS: hidden
>
>
>
> Memories and the accounts thereof are considered valid dream material and
> it is well known that they have an imperfect relationship to the dream.  It
> doesn't matter.  Even if a person makes up.a dream; it is grist for the
> mill.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 19, 2020, 2:29 PM uǝlƃ ☣  wrote:
>
> This is very close to what I was going to propose, except I intended to
> say something snarky like: We *already* do nomothetic studies of dreams.
> The results of which are gathered and used in sleep labs all over the
> country.
>
> But it sounds like y'all are talking about doing a nomothetic study of
> what people *say*, not what they dream. When someone talks about the
> content of their dreams, can you trust them to tell the truth? ... to know
> the truth? I'd argue, no. They're making up a *story* about what they just
> experienced.
>
> The same is true about, say, self-reporting alcohol consumption ... or
> whether or not you'd help a person in an argument with an abusive spouse.
> Narrative is untrustworthy.
>
> On 5/19/20 1:20 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I settled on soliciting from my colleagues around the country as
> variable a set of song samples and then published on what was true of all
> of them.  The extremes of that sample also gave us grounds to say what a
> mockingbird “could” do.  I suppose this was “nomothetic” research, but it
> also had an idiographic taint.
> >
> > Could this sort approach be used with dreaming?
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. -  . -..-. .
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> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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>
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> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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>
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Re: [FRIAM] IS: Research on Dreams WAS: hidden

[thompnickson2]

But how is this a study of dreaming. 

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

thompnicks...@gmail.com

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 2:47 PM
To: FriAM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] IS: Research on Dreams WAS: hidden

 

As a study of story-telling, I agree. As a study of dreaming, I disagree. To 
study dreaming, we hook people up to equipment, let them sleep and monitor what 
happens while they're asleep. (That includes equipment like blood work and 
fMRI, just to be clear.)

 

On 5/19/20 1:40 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

> Memories and the accounts thereof are considered valid dream material and it 
> is well known that they have an imperfect relationship to the dream.  It 
> doesn't matter.  Even if a person makes up.a dream; it is grist for the mill.

 

--

☣ uǝlƃ

 

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Re: [FRIAM] evaporative cooling

[thompnickson2]

Nifty, Ed.  Nifty. 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

 
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Edward Angel
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 3:05 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] evaporative cooling

 

https://www.fieldstudyoftheworld.com/persian-ice-house-how-make-ice-desert/

___


Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS
Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon

Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu
 

505-453-4944 (cell)
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel





On May 19, 2020, at 1:59 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com
  wrote:

 

A technical question for you high-desert scientists:

 

How far can one take evaporative cooling?  With dewpoint temperatures in the
teens, how far down can the output of a swamp cooler be.  This relates to a
question I asked you all in the dead of winter: given a dewpoint temperature
way below freezing, what is the warmest shade temperature at which an icicle
can form. 

 

This is the kind of question that a Massachusetts resident would never think
of, let alone ponder on. 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

thompnicks...@gmail.com  

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

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Re: [FRIAM] IS: Research on Dreams WAS: hidden

[thompnickson2]

Well, yes, but for which mill??

 

If one accepts dream reports as proxies for dreams, what is the universe to 
which one is generalizing?  

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 2:41 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] IS: Research on Dreams WAS: hidden

 

Memories and the accounts thereof are considered valid dream material and it is 
well known that they have an imperfect relationship to the dream.  It doesn't 
matter.  Even if a person makes up.a dream; it is grist for the mill.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Tue, May 19, 2020, 2:29 PM uǝlƃ ☣ mailto:geprope...@gmail.com> > wrote:

This is very close to what I was going to propose, except I intended to say 
something snarky like: We *already* do nomothetic studies of dreams. The 
results of which are gathered and used in sleep labs all over the country.

But it sounds like y'all are talking about doing a nomothetic study of what 
people *say*, not what they dream. When someone talks about the content of 
their dreams, can you trust them to tell the truth? ... to know the truth? I'd 
argue, no. They're making up a *story* about what they just experienced.

The same is true about, say, self-reporting alcohol consumption ... or whether 
or not you'd help a person in an argument with an abusive spouse. Narrative is 
untrustworthy.

On 5/19/20 1:20 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com   
wrote:
> I settled on soliciting from my colleagues around the country as variable a 
> set of song samples and then published on what was true of all of them.  The 
> extremes of that sample also gave us grounds to say what a mockingbird 
> “could” do.  I suppose this was “nomothetic” research, but it also had an 
> idiographic taint. 
> 
> Could this sort approach be used with dreaming? 


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[FRIAM] John Conway: "Travels With John Conway, in 258 Septillion Dimensions The Princeton mathemagician, who died in April, left an engaging legacy of numerical gamesmanship."

[Tom Johnson]

Perhaps of interest:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/16/science/john-conway-math.html


Tom Johnson - t...@jtjohnson.com
Institute for Analytic Journalism   -- Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)505.473.9646(h)
*NM Foundation for Open Government* 
*Check out It's The People's Data
*




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Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[uǝlƃ ☣]

On 5/19/20 1:47 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> The part I *think*
> you want to preserve is perhaps is that of lossless dimension reduction,
> and a part-whole relation (where any small part/sampling of the
> whole-ogram yields *some* information about the whole target)?

Yes. I take the position to be: all valid questions about psychology can be 
properly asked as questions about behavior. This implies, to me, that all valid 
questions about anything can be properly asked as questions about the 
distinguishability limit between that thing (being studied, the object) and 
another thing (e.g. the question asker). I would NOT go so far as to say the 
transformation from object to distinguishability limit is *lossless*. (In 
analogy with black holes, what goes in comes out randomized ... again, if 
understand what I'm talking about ... which is unlikely.) And, also yes, there 
is a part-whole relationship in talking about the object, the transformations 
from object to question asker, and question asker. 

> And I think the corner of this I was trying to pry up was that
> "obscurity" is relative.

Well, maybe. Let's say you're someone like Nick trying to decide whether or not 
your computer has been compromised. Then compare that to someone like you doing 
the same thing. While it's true that the space of things Nick considers might 
be observables is different from the space of things you might consider are 
observables, that you are both fully large dimensional creatures *might* 
suggest that the relative entropies are the same, for all intents and purposes. 
Sure, you know a few more heuristics to winnow out the plausible decoders than 
Nick. But the sheer number of ways your computer can be compromised might 
*swamp* any difference between the two of you.

My argument is that no matter what thing (object) we're considering decoding 
... a basketball, a human, an ant colony, etc. the number of ways we *could* 
decode what's written right there on the surface swamps any difference between 
2 particular question askers. This is why I cite Rosen and von Neumann and, 
hell, even Feynman, e.g. the description of an object is of a higher order than 
the object itself. All successful cracks are banal tricks. It's easier to be a 
script kiddy than it is to be an intrusion detection specialist. The obscurity 
lies in the number of possible decoders, not the thing that needs to be decoded.

> Not to beg this issue much further, but I guess in your example, I was
> thinking that the young engineers working at the quantum-time-tunneling
> laboratory might well keep their secrets obscure from the cute girl
> simply through the use of shared idioms (amongst the engineers) which
> she is not privy to by virtue of not being a young man nor an
> engineer.   Another type of obscurity?

Heh, not to beg it further, but ... [begs it further]. No. The cute girl spy is 
probably *more* well-versed in the young engineer domain than the young 
engineer is. (And, to be clear, I never suggested the young engineer was a man.)

> I suppose I haven't yet accepted that QC is qualitatively the same as a
> universal computer (archetypical von Neuman machine)...   or the
> equivalence (by construction) of nDmState CA by n'Dm'State (where n' and m'>m).  TANSTAAFL suggests that in space-time trades they
> might/must/should-oughta be the same, but I don't think that's a done
> deal yet?

Not that I know of. But it doesn't matter for this conversation. I'll allow 
that if QC turns out to be something fantastic like hyper-computation, then 
woohoo (!) privacy by obscurity is gone forever. But until then, I'm skeptical.

> I apologize for being the tangenter that I apparently am... or apologize
> for the effect of it on the conversation... BUT...  I think when it
> comes to the adversarial co-evolution you were not (yet) talking about,
> I think Alan Kay's "best way to predict the future is to invent it" is
> part of the strategy of various flavors of con-men which is to plant a
> tiny seed in the mark's head and then fertilize it and water it until it
> becomes the mark's own idea about the future (hopes and fears).   One
> way to come to a "common understanding" is to bully or manipulate others
> into sharing your own (or some variant of it).

I'm not sure if you grokked my attitude towards psychodynamics and that's why 
you said "bully". Regardless, it's spot on. The only way you'll get me on the 
couch is if you physically force and restrain me. It seems to me what they do 
is build a pseudo-relationship with you in order to manipulate you into speech 
and thought patterns that, then, *reprogram* you. For those of us with 
debilitating habits who (eventually) "accept a higher power", I'm sure it's 
fine. But I suspect there's a whole host of people whose consent in such a 
process is *implied* at best. And if you made it clear that they were 
undergoing "benevolent brainwashing", they might object.

If someone actually suggested interpreting my dr

Re: [FRIAM] evaporative cooling

[Edward Angel]

https://www.fieldstudyoftheworld.com/persian-ice-house-how-make-ice-desert/ 

___

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 

505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel 


> On May 19, 2020, at 1:59 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> A technical question for you high-desert scientists:
>  
> How far can one take evaporative cooling?  With dewpoint temperatures in the 
> teens, how far down can the output of a swamp cooler be.  This relates to a 
> question I asked you all in the dead of winter: given a dewpoint temperature 
> way below freezing, what is the warmest shade temperature at which an icicle 
> can form. 
>  
> This is the kind of question that a Massachusetts resident would never think 
> of, let alone ponder on. 
> N
>  
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> thompnicks...@gmail.com 
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
> 
>  
>  
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> 
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> 
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> 
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Re: [FRIAM] evaporative cooling

[Sarbajit Roy]

Hi
You need a psychometric chart for this. Here's one off the internet
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evaporative-Cooler-Process-on-Psychometric-Chart-where-e-Efficiency-in-percent-T-DBE_fig5_271288974

On Wed, May 20, 2020 at 2:10 AM Gary Schiltz 
wrote:

> No scientific results here, but some anecdotal experience from about 40
> years ago. I spent two summers in west Texas (near Wink, birthplace of Roy
> Orbison). I was a field tech on a project studying Desert Side-blotched
> Lizards. Temperatures were often over 110 F in the early afternoon, with
> humidity dropping to single digits. We all lived in small sheet metal-sided
> cabins with metal roofs (it was an abandoned Air National Guard base). With
> no cooling, the internal temperature would have been totally unbearable,
> but they had evaporative coolers. The air from them was quite chilly, at
> times I would have to turn mine off or put on a sweater. Of course, at
> night, the desert cooled substantially.
>
> On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 2:59 PM  wrote:
>
>> A technical question for you high-desert scientists:
>>
>>
>>
>> How far can one take evaporative cooling?  With dewpoint temperatures in
>> the teens, how far down can the output of a swamp cooler be.  This relates
>> to a question I asked you all in the dead of winter: given a dewpoint
>> temperature way below freezing, what is the warmest shade temperature at
>> which an icicle can form.
>>
>>
>>
>> This is the kind of question that a Massachusetts resident would never
>> think of, let alone ponder on.
>>
>> N
>>
>>
>>
>> Nicholas Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[Steve Smith]

glen -
> I'd like to avoid your (more accurate) use of holography in talking about 
> this "holographic principle". While the technical details of actual 
> holography are interesting, it adds noise to the idea I'm offering. (Again, I 
> don't believe this idea, myself. I'm offering it as a rewording of what I 
> heard EricC say.) So, I'm offering an analogy to the Bekenstein bound or the 
> holographic principle in physics. I probably should never have used that word 
> "holographic". I'm regretting it, now.

sorry if I wet-noodled you here, not exactly my intention...

I understand/accept that, but am looking into the parts of the
metaphor/analogy/model that *are* apt.  I also admit that I forgot that
you don't subscribe to the idea yourself, but are rather trying to
acknowledge it for the sake of improved discussion.   The part I *think*
you want to preserve is perhaps is that of lossless dimension reduction,
and a part-whole relation (where any small part/sampling of the
whole-ogram yields *some* information about the whole target)?
> On 5/19/20 11:16 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
>> These are all examples of selecting or valuating transformations
>> (letter-scrambles and elisions) based on the relative entropy yielded in
>> a secondary lexicon?
> I haven't, yet, invoked entropy in my attempt to reconstruct privacy from the 
> bare concept of hidden with which I started this thread. I did invoke it 
> earlier, in other threads, because I *do* think it will apply with higher 
> order forms of privacy. But for "privacy through obscurity" all we need is 
> the combinatorial explosion.
And I think the corner of this I was trying to pry up was that
"obscurity" is relative.   If you don't know that I encoded my message
using a specific edition of the 1933 Berlin Phone Book which was
*hashed* by a specific mode of cutting away the binding and shuffling it
(precisely according to a particular algorithm (which for example, might
include first removing the fibonacci-numbered pages), then the apparent
entropy of my encrypted message is HUUUGE! but if YOU DO know those
"keys" then bam!  you have zero relative entropy you know
*precisely* what the *text* of my message contains, even if I may have
obscured it further by including idiomatic and anecdotal coding that is
shared (presumably only by the sender and the receiver).   While I don't
know this to be the case, the Native American code-talkers (in
particular the well known Navajo) could have added another layer of
obscurity to their communications by using idioms from their culture and
religion and maybe even personal relations.
>> thus something like entropy relative to the target domain of some model
>> or another?
> Not yet, no. You *could* argue that a particular target, like Frank, could be 
> identified and attacked via the class inferred from that particularity. In 
> principle, I think this is what therapy does. It's definitely what industrial 
> espionage is about. Some cute girl moves into the apartment next to the young 
> engineer with a newly minted yellow badge and she proceeds to *decrypt* the 
> engineer. She would definitely use some conception of entropy relative to the 
> "young engineer" domain.
>
> But we don't need that for privacy through obscurity.
Not to beg this issue much further, but I guess in your example, I was
thinking that the young engineers working at the quantum-time-tunneling
laboratory might well keep their secrets obscure from the cute girl
simply through the use of shared idioms (amongst the engineers) which
she is not privy to by virtue of not being a young man nor an
engineer.   Another type of obscurity?
>> And there IS an art to plausible ambiguity, [...]
> Yes. In an adversarial co-evolution, it's relatively easy to exploit privacy 
> for some gain. And a skilled hacker will be able to eliminate implausible 
> decoders based on implausible results they generate. But, like with the 
> above, adversarial systems imply targets. And this lowest order privacy 
> doesn't need that for its justification.
yes, a bridge beyond, if not too far, built of the pales that we went
beyond (to coin or abuse a sillygasm).   I do believe that
encryption/decryption (even as a sport?) is intrinsically adversarial
co-evolution.  However, I think it the context this discussion arose
from, perhaps what you are seeking/suggesting is the opposite (or a
complement to) of this.   I think we are perhaps discussing the
qualitative scatter-gather that happens as we have experiences,
differentiating and specializing language to the point of mutual
obscurity (tower of Babel allegory?).  I know that some of my
good-intentions to fill in blanks and stitch between disparate bits ends
up being effectively distracting and divisive (disruptive?).   I do
believe in coherence which leads me to want to tangent on the metaphor
of LASEing which of course would just muddy the aethers more.
>> And you aren't even invoking quantum computing, which throws a whole
>> o

Re: [FRIAM] IS: Research on Dreams WAS: hidden

[uǝlƃ ☣]

As a study of story-telling, I agree. As a study of dreaming, I disagree. To 
study dreaming, we hook people up to equipment, let them sleep and monitor what 
happens while they're asleep. (That includes equipment like blood work and 
fMRI, just to be clear.)

On 5/19/20 1:40 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Memories and the accounts thereof are considered valid dream material and it 
> is well known that they have an imperfect relationship to the dream.  It 
> doesn't matter.  Even if a person makes up.a dream; it is grist for the mill.

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ

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Re: [FRIAM] evaporative cooling

[Gary Schiltz]

No scientific results here, but some anecdotal experience from about 40
years ago. I spent two summers in west Texas (near Wink, birthplace of Roy
Orbison). I was a field tech on a project studying Desert Side-blotched
Lizards. Temperatures were often over 110 F in the early afternoon, with
humidity dropping to single digits. We all lived in small sheet metal-sided
cabins with metal roofs (it was an abandoned Air National Guard base). With
no cooling, the internal temperature would have been totally unbearable,
but they had evaporative coolers. The air from them was quite chilly, at
times I would have to turn mine off or put on a sweater. Of course, at
night, the desert cooled substantially.

On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 2:59 PM  wrote:

> A technical question for you high-desert scientists:
>
>
>
> How far can one take evaporative cooling?  With dewpoint temperatures in
> the teens, how far down can the output of a swamp cooler be.  This relates
> to a question I asked you all in the dead of winter: given a dewpoint
> temperature way below freezing, what is the warmest shade temperature at
> which an icicle can form.
>
>
>
> This is the kind of question that a Massachusetts resident would never
> think of, let alone ponder on.
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
> -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. -  . -..-. .
> ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>
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FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

Re: [FRIAM] IS: Research on Dreams WAS: hidden

[Frank Wimberly]

Memories and the accounts thereof are considered valid dream material and
it is well known that they have an imperfect relationship to the dream.  It
doesn't matter.  Even if a person makes up.a dream; it is grist for the
mill.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, May 19, 2020, 2:29 PM uǝlƃ ☣  wrote:

> This is very close to what I was going to propose, except I intended to
> say something snarky like: We *already* do nomothetic studies of dreams.
> The results of which are gathered and used in sleep labs all over the
> country.
>
> But it sounds like y'all are talking about doing a nomothetic study of
> what people *say*, not what they dream. When someone talks about the
> content of their dreams, can you trust them to tell the truth? ... to know
> the truth? I'd argue, no. They're making up a *story* about what they just
> experienced.
>
> The same is true about, say, self-reporting alcohol consumption ... or
> whether or not you'd help a person in an argument with an abusive spouse.
> Narrative is untrustworthy.
>
> On 5/19/20 1:20 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I settled on soliciting from my colleagues around the country as
> variable a set of song samples and then published on what was true of all
> of them.  The extremes of that sample also gave us grounds to say what a
> mockingbird “could” do.  I suppose this was “nomothetic” research, but it
> also had an idiographic taint.
> >
> > Could this sort approach be used with dreaming?
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. -  . -..-. .
> ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC 
> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>
-- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. -  . -..-. . ... 
... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

Re: [FRIAM] IS: Research on Dreams WAS: hidden

[uǝlƃ ☣]

This is very close to what I was going to propose, except I intended to say 
something snarky like: We *already* do nomothetic studies of dreams. The 
results of which are gathered and used in sleep labs all over the country.

But it sounds like y'all are talking about doing a nomothetic study of what 
people *say*, not what they dream. When someone talks about the content of 
their dreams, can you trust them to tell the truth? ... to know the truth? I'd 
argue, no. They're making up a *story* about what they just experienced.

The same is true about, say, self-reporting alcohol consumption ... or whether 
or not you'd help a person in an argument with an abusive spouse. Narrative is 
untrustworthy.

On 5/19/20 1:20 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> I settled on soliciting from my colleagues around the country as variable a 
> set of song samples and then published on what was true of all of them.  The 
> extremes of that sample also gave us grounds to say what a mockingbird 
> “could” do.  I suppose this was “nomothetic” research, but it also had an 
> idiographic taint. 
> 
> Could this sort approach be used with dreaming? 


-- 
☣ uǝlƃ

-- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. -  . -..-. . ... 
... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[thompnickson2]

Dave, 

 

You have every reason to expect me to know about this, but I don’t.  Whazzat? 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 2:09 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

Would Jung's alchemical approach to dreams be nomothetic?

 

davew

 

 

On Tue, May 19, 2020, at 2:02 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

Dreams:  A *lot* of clinical (idiographic) reading would be obligatory to do it 
right.  I am skeptical that a nomothetic approach would be possible or useful.

 

---

Frank C. Wimberly

140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 

Santa Fe, NM 87505

 

505 670-9918

Santa Fe, NM

 

On Tue, May 19, 2020, 1:41 PM mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

Hi, all, 

 

Before it gets buried and institutionalized in the thread, the term is 
“idiographic”, not “ideographic”.  It doesn’t have to do with ideas but with  
the study of events that are thought of as inherently individual, one-off, 
non-repeatable.  Case histories are idiographs.  The contrast class is 
nomothetic, having to do with the discovery of laws that relate classes of 
objects or events.  A full on double blind controlled experiment is an example 
of nomothetic research.  Psychology Departments can tear themselves apart 
arguing about which is the most worthy.  I think the distinction is worth 
bearing in mind, although common sense dictates that an experience that cannot 
be assigned to a class and does not imply some lawful relation is impossible.  

 

So what about the FRIAM study of dreams? 

 

Nick 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of Frank Wimberly

Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 1:28 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group mailto:friam@redfish.com> >

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

 > I don’t have anything useful or clarifying to say about inner experience 
 > either, except to vote that it seems a fine term from which to begin an in

 

Psychoanalysts have been working on this for over a century but scientists 
reject their methodology and many of their conclusions.  They reject them qua 
scientists but many embrace them personally if they live in a place where 
psychodynamic therapy is available.  Nothing could be more ideographic than an 
extremely deep investigation of an individual's "inner life" including her 
dreams, fantasies, and memories of childhood pains and joys.  

 

Based on living in Pittsburgh where there are two major universities I can say, 
tentatively, that there are high energy physicists and even behaviorists who 
have benefitted from this approach.

---

Frank C. Wimberly

140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 

Santa Fe, NM 87505

 

505 670-9918

Santa Fe, NM

 

On Tue, May 19, 2020, 12:49 PM mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

EricS, Glen, David, Frank, Steve, EricC Old Uncle Tom Cobbley, and all,

 

Let me again thank you all for allowing me to sharpen my thinking against your 
whetstone.  

 

I am perhaps at my most uneasy arguing against EricS, but here goes.

 

Speaking of whetstones, let’s start with Glen’s most recent post, because it 
set’s a limit to how far I am willing to push the argument I have been making:

 

With the above context, I confirm "out loud" that I don't believe in this 
position that EricC and Nick seem to hold. I firmly believe in an opaque inner 
world. But it's an ideal belief, not a practical one. That's the only reason I 
find it interesting to try to formulate their position in my own words.

My monism is limited to formal thought, to the project of building an approach 
to understanding that is as comprehensive and consistent as possible.  I.e., a 
scientific understanding.  But I am an imagination-pluralist.  For instance, 
one of my favorite sayings is, “No person should be denied the pleasures of 
imagining heaven because s/he happens to be an atheist.”  I routinely suggested 
to graduate students that they should stop trying to cram their ideas into a 
scientific format and go write a novel, since the idea they were trying to 
expose was more suitable to that format.  So, if we are arguing about the right 
of humans to take sustenance from any form of thinking that pleases them, then 
let the argument cease.   But whenever informal thinking shapes formal thinking 
(which it always does, to some extent), then I think we need to talk about it 
in a formal way.)  Thus, if you change Glen’s “practical” above to “Practicial” 
(= of, or related to, scientific practice), I agree with him entirely.  

 

That said, if you’re not 

[FRIAM] IS: Research on Dreams WAS: hidden

[thompnickson2]

What would the goal of such research be. 

 

I once did some research on mockingbirds, which have extremely variable songs 
and can sing for hours at a time.  To study them, one must make spectrograms, 
and each spectrogram represents only a few seconds of song.  The idea of doing 
a nomothetic study (random sample of the population) in the usual sense was 
absurd.  I settled on soliciting from my colleagues around the country as 
variable a set of song samples and then published on what was true of all of 
them.  The extremes of that sample also gave us grounds to say what a 
mockingbird “could” do.  I suppose this was “nomothetic” research, but it also 
had an idiographic taint.  

 

Could this sort approach be used with dreaming?  

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 2:02 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

Dreams:  A *lot* of clinical (idiographic) reading would be obligatory to do it 
right.  I am skeptical that a nomothetic approach would be possible or useful.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Tue, May 19, 2020, 1:41 PM mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

Hi, all, 

 

Before it gets buried and institutionalized in the thread, the term is 
“idiographic”, not “ideographic”.  It doesn’t have to do with ideas but with  
the study of events that are thought of as inherently individual, one-off, 
non-repeatable.  Case histories are idiographs.  The contrast class is 
nomothetic, having to do with the discovery of laws that relate classes of 
objects or events.  A full on double blind controlled experiment is an example 
of nomothetic research.  Psychology Departments can tear themselves apart 
arguing about which is the most worthy.  I think the distinction is worth 
bearing in mind, although common sense dictates that an experience that cannot 
be assigned to a class and does not imply some lawful relation is impossible.  

 

So what about the FRIAM study of dreams? 

 

Nick 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 1:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

 > I don’t have anything useful or clarifying to say about inner experience 
 > either, except to vote that it seems a fine term from which to begin an in

 

Psychoanalysts have been working on this for over a century but scientists 
reject their methodology and many of their conclusions.  They reject them qua 
scientists but many embrace them personally if they live in a place where 
psychodynamic therapy is available.  Nothing could be more ideographic than an 
extremely deep investigation of an individual's "inner life" including her 
dreams, fantasies, and memories of childhood pains and joys.  

 

Based on living in Pittsburgh where there are two major universities I can say, 
tentatively, that there are high energy physicists and even behaviorists who 
have benefitted from this approach.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Tue, May 19, 2020, 12:49 PM mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

EricS, Glen, David, Frank, Steve, EricC Old Uncle Tom Cobbley, and all,

 

Let me again thank you all for allowing me to sharpen my thinking against your 
whetstone.  

 

I am perhaps at my most uneasy arguing against EricS, but here goes.

 

Speaking of whetstones, let’s start with Glen’s most recent post, because it 
set’s a limit to how far I am willing to push the argument I have been making:

 

With the above context, I confirm "out loud" that I don't believe in this 
position that EricC and Nick seem to hold. I firmly believe in an opaque inner 
world. But it's an ideal belief, not a practical one. That's the only reason I 
find it interesting to try to formulate their position in my own words.

My monism is limited to formal thought, to the project of building an approach 
to understanding that is as comprehensive and consistent as possible.  I.e., a 
scientific understanding.  But I am an imagination-pluralist.  For instance, 
one of my favorite sayings is, “No person should be denied the pleasures of 
imagining heaven because s/he happens to be an atheist.”  I routinely suggested 
to graduate students that they should stop trying to cram their ideas into a 
scientific format and go write a novel, since the idea

Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[Prof David West]

Would Jung's alchemical approach to dreams be nomothetic?

davew


On Tue, May 19, 2020, at 2:02 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Dreams: A *lot* of clinical (idiographic) reading would be obligatory to do 
> it right. I am skeptical that a nomothetic approach would be possible or 
> useful.
> 
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
> 
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
> 
> On Tue, May 19, 2020, 1:41 PM  wrote:
>> Hi, all, 

>> __ __

>> Before it gets buried and institutionalized in the thread, the term is 
>> “idiographic”, not “ideographic”. It doesn’t have to do with ideas but with 
>> the study of events that are thought of as inherently individual, one-off, 
>> non-repeatable. Case histories are idiographs. The contrast class is 
>> nomothetic, having to do with the discovery of laws that relate classes of 
>> objects or events. A full on double blind controlled experiment is an 
>> example of nomothetic research. Psychology Departments can tear themselves 
>> apart arguing about which is the most worthy. I think the distinction is 
>> worth bearing in mind, although common sense dictates that an experience 
>> that cannot be assigned to a class and does not imply some lawful relation 
>> is impossible. 

>> __ __

>> So what about the FRIAM study of dreams? 

>> __ __

>> Nick 

>> __ __

>> __ __

>> Nicholas Thompson

>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

>> Clark University

>> ThompNickSon2@gmail.com

>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

>> 

>> __ __

>> __ __


>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 19, 2020 1:28 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] hidden

>> __ __

>>  > I don’t have anything useful or clarifying to say about inner experience 
>> either, except to vote that it seems a fine term from which to begin an 
>> in

>> __ __

>> Psychoanalysts have been working on this for over a century but scientists 
>> reject their methodology and many of their conclusions. They reject them qua 
>> scientists but many embrace them personally if they live in a place where 
>> psychodynamic therapy is available. Nothing could be more ideographic than 
>> an extremely deep investigation of an individual's "inner life" including 
>> her dreams, fantasies, and memories of childhood pains and joys. 

>> __ __

>> Based on living in Pittsburgh where there are two major universities I can 
>> say, tentatively, that there are high energy physicists and even 
>> behaviorists who have benefitted from this approach.


>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>> 
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM

>> __ __

>> On Tue, May 19, 2020, 12:49 PM  wrote:

>>> EricS, Glen, David, Frank, Steve, EricC Old Uncle Tom Cobbley, and all,

>>> 

>>> Let me again thank you all for allowing me to sharpen my thinking against 
>>> your whetstone. 

>>> 

>>> I am perhaps at my most uneasy arguing against EricS, but here goes.

>>> 

>>> Speaking of whetstones, let’s start with Glen’s most recent post, because 
>>> it set’s a limit to how far I am willing to push the argument I have been 
>>> making:

>>> 

>>> With the above context, I confirm "out loud" that I don't believe in this 
>>> position that EricC and Nick seem to hold. I firmly believe in an opaque 
>>> inner world. But it's an ideal belief, not a practical one. That's the only 
>>> reason I find it interesting to try to formulate their position in my own 
>>> words.

>>> My monism is limited to formal thought, to the project of building an 
>>> approach to understanding that is as comprehensive and consistent as 
>>> possible. I.e., a scientific understanding. But I am an 
>>> imagination-pluralist. For instance, one of my favorite sayings is, “No 
>>> person should be denied the pleasures of imagining heaven because s/he 
>>> happens to be an atheist.” I routinely suggested to graduate students that 
>>> they should stop trying to cram their ideas into a scientific format and go 
>>> write a novel, since the idea they were trying to expose was more suitable 
>>> to that format. So, if we are arguing about the right of humans to take 
>>> sustenance from any form of thinking that pleases them, then let the 
>>> argument cease. But whenever informal thinking shapes formal thinking 
>>> (which it always does, to some extent), then I think we need to talk about 
>>> it in a formal way.) Thus, if you change Glen’s “practical” above to 
>>> “Practicial” (= of, or related to, scientific practice), I agree with him 
>>> entirely. 

>>> 

>>> That said, if you’re not exhausted, you might have a look at the larding of 
>>> EricS’s note, below: 

>>> 

>>> Thanks again, all, 

>>> 

>>> Nicholas Thompson

>>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

>>> Clark University

>>> Tho

Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[Frank Wimberly]

Dreams:  A *lot* of clinical (idiographic) reading would be obligatory to
do it right.  I am skeptical that a nomothetic approach would be possible
or useful.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, May 19, 2020, 1:41 PM  wrote:

> Hi, all,
>
>
>
> Before it gets buried and institutionalized in the thread, the term is
> “idiographic”, not “ideographic”.  It doesn’t have to do with ideas but
> with  the study of events that are thought of as inherently individual,
> one-off, non-repeatable.  Case histories are idiographs.  The contrast
> class is nomothetic, having to do with the discovery of laws that relate
> classes of objects or events.  A full on double blind controlled experiment
> is an example of nomothetic research.  Psychology Departments can tear
> themselves apart arguing about which is the most worthy.  I think the
> distinction is worth bearing in mind, although common sense dictates that
> an experience that cannot be assigned to a class and does not imply some
> lawful relation is impossible.
>
>
>
> So what about the FRIAM study of dreams?
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 19, 2020 1:28 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] hidden
>
>
>
>  > I don’t have anything useful or clarifying to say about inner
> experience either, except to vote that it seems a fine term from which to
> begin an in
>
>
>
> Psychoanalysts have been working on this for over a century but scientists
> reject their methodology and many of their conclusions.  They reject them
> qua scientists but many embrace them personally if they live in a place
> where psychodynamic therapy is available.  Nothing could be more
> ideographic than an extremely deep investigation of an individual's "inner
> life" including her dreams, fantasies, and memories of childhood pains and
> joys.
>
>
>
> Based on living in Pittsburgh where there are two major universities I can
> say, tentatively, that there are high energy physicists and even
> behaviorists who have benefitted from this approach.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 19, 2020, 12:49 PM  wrote:
>
> EricS, Glen, David, Frank, Steve, EricC Old Uncle Tom Cobbley, and all,
>
>
>
> Let me again thank you all for allowing me to sharpen my thinking against
> your whetstone.
>
>
>
> I am perhaps at my most uneasy arguing against EricS, but here goes.
>
>
>
> Speaking of whetstones, let’s start with Glen’s most recent post, because
> it set’s a limit to how far I am willing to push the argument I have been
> making:
>
>
>
> With the above context, I confirm "out loud" that I don't believe in this
> position that EricC and Nick seem to hold. I firmly believe in an opaque
> inner world. But it's an ideal belief, not a practical one. That's the only
> reason I find it interesting to try to formulate their position in my own
> words.
>
> My monism is limited to formal thought, to the project of building an
> approach to understanding that is as comprehensive and consistent as
> possible.  I.e., a scientific understanding.  But I am an
> imagination-pluralist.  For instance, one of my favorite sayings is, “No
> person should be denied the pleasures of imagining heaven because s/he
> happens to be an atheist.”  I routinely suggested to graduate students that
> they should stop trying to cram their ideas into a scientific format and go
> write a novel, since the idea they were trying to expose was more suitable
> to that format.  So, if we are arguing about the right of humans to take
> sustenance from any form of thinking that pleases them, then let the
> argument cease.   But whenever informal thinking shapes formal thinking
> (which it always does, to some extent), then I think we need to talk about
> it in a formal way.)  Thus, if you change Glen’s “practical” above to
> “Practicial” (= of, or related to, scientific practice), I agree with him
> entirely.
>
>
>
> That said, if you’re not exhausted, you might have a look at the larding
> of EricS’s note, below:
>
>
>
> Thanks again, all,
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *David Eric Smith
> *Sent:* Monday, May 18, 2020 10:26 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] hidden
>
>
>
> As I read this,I am reminded of the 20th century (seems to long ago), in
> which the high-energy physicists dug a social pit for themselves, from
> which the ones they offended do no

[FRIAM] evaporative cooling

[thompnickson2]

A technical question for you high-desert scientists:

 

How far can one take evaporative cooling?  With dewpoint temperatures in the
teens, how far down can the output of a swamp cooler be.  This relates to a
question I asked you all in the dead of winter: given a dewpoint temperature
way below freezing, what is the warmest shade temperature at which an icicle
can form. 

 

This is the kind of question that a Massachusetts resident would never think
of, let alone ponder on. 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

thompnicks...@gmail.com  

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

-- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. -  . -..-. . ... 
... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[thompnickson2]

Hi, all, 

 

Before it gets buried and institutionalized in the thread, the term is 
“idiographic”, not “ideographic”.  It doesn’t have to do with ideas but with  
the study of events that are thought of as inherently individual, one-off, 
non-repeatable.  Case histories are idiographs.  The contrast class is 
nomothetic, having to do with the discovery of laws that relate classes of 
objects or events.  A full on double blind controlled experiment is an example 
of nomothetic research.  Psychology Departments can tear themselves apart 
arguing about which is the most worthy.  I think the distinction is worth 
bearing in mind, although common sense dictates that an experience that cannot 
be assigned to a class and does not imply some lawful relation is impossible.  

 

So what about the FRIAM study of dreams? 

 

Nick 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 1:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

 > I don’t have anything useful or clarifying to say about inner experience 
 > either, except to vote that it seems a fine term from which to begin an in

 

Psychoanalysts have been working on this for over a century but scientists 
reject their methodology and many of their conclusions.  They reject them qua 
scientists but many embrace them personally if they live in a place where 
psychodynamic therapy is available.  Nothing could be more ideographic than an 
extremely deep investigation of an individual's "inner life" including her 
dreams, fantasies, and memories of childhood pains and joys.  

 

Based on living in Pittsburgh where there are two major universities I can say, 
tentatively, that there are high energy physicists and even behaviorists who 
have benefitted from this approach.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Tue, May 19, 2020, 12:49 PM mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

EricS, Glen, David, Frank, Steve, EricC Old Uncle Tom Cobbley, and all,

 

Let me again thank you all for allowing me to sharpen my thinking against your 
whetstone.  

 

I am perhaps at my most uneasy arguing against EricS, but here goes.

 

Speaking of whetstones, let’s start with Glen’s most recent post, because it 
set’s a limit to how far I am willing to push the argument I have been making:

 

With the above context, I confirm "out loud" that I don't believe in this 
position that EricC and Nick seem to hold. I firmly believe in an opaque inner 
world. But it's an ideal belief, not a practical one. That's the only reason I 
find it interesting to try to formulate their position in my own words.

My monism is limited to formal thought, to the project of building an approach 
to understanding that is as comprehensive and consistent as possible.  I.e., a 
scientific understanding.  But I am an imagination-pluralist.  For instance, 
one of my favorite sayings is, “No person should be denied the pleasures of 
imagining heaven because s/he happens to be an atheist.”  I routinely suggested 
to graduate students that they should stop trying to cram their ideas into a 
scientific format and go write a novel, since the idea they were trying to 
expose was more suitable to that format.  So, if we are arguing about the right 
of humans to take sustenance from any form of thinking that pleases them, then 
let the argument cease.   But whenever informal thinking shapes formal thinking 
(which it always does, to some extent), then I think we need to talk about it 
in a formal way.)  Thus, if you change Glen’s “practical” above to “Practicial” 
(= of, or related to, scientific practice), I agree with him entirely.  

 

That said, if you’re not exhausted, you might have a look at the larding of 
EricS’s note, below: 

 

Thanks again, all, 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 10:26 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

As I read this,I am reminded of the 20th century (seems to long ago), in which 
the high-energy physicists dug a social pit for themselves, from which the ones 
they offended do not want ever to let them escape.

 

Keyword is Reductionism.  The narrative went something like this (HEP = High 
Energy Physicist; ROS = anyone from the Rest of Science)

[NST===>I am a reductionist, but let me be precise about what that means to me. 
   To me, a con

Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[Frank Wimberly]

 > I don’t have anything useful or clarifying to say about inner experience
either, except to vote that it seems a fine term from which to begin an in

Psychoanalysts have been working on this for over a century but scientists
reject their methodology and many of their conclusions.  They reject them
qua scientists but many embrace them personally if they live in a place
where psychodynamic therapy is available.  Nothing could be more
ideographic than an extremely deep investigation of an individual's "inner
life" including her dreams, fantasies, and memories of childhood pains and
joys.

Based on living in Pittsburgh where there are two major universities I can
say, tentatively, that there are high energy physicists and even
behaviorists who have benefitted from this approach.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, May 19, 2020, 12:49 PM  wrote:

> EricS, Glen, David, Frank, Steve, EricC Old Uncle Tom Cobbley, and all,
>
>
>
> Let me again thank you all for allowing me to sharpen my thinking against
> your whetstone.
>
>
>
> I am perhaps at my most uneasy arguing against EricS, but here goes.
>
>
>
> Speaking of whetstones, let’s start with Glen’s most recent post, because
> it set’s a limit to how far I am willing to push the argument I have been
> making:
>
>
>
> With the above context, I confirm "out loud" that I don't believe in this
> position that EricC and Nick seem to hold. I firmly believe in an opaque
> inner world. But it's an ideal belief, not a practical one. That's the only
> reason I find it interesting to try to formulate their position in my own
> words.
>
> My monism is limited to formal thought, to the project of building an
> approach to understanding that is as comprehensive and consistent as
> possible.  I.e., a scientific understanding.  But I am an
> imagination-pluralist.  For instance, one of my favorite sayings is, “No
> person should be denied the pleasures of imagining heaven because s/he
> happens to be an atheist.”  I routinely suggested to graduate students that
> they should stop trying to cram their ideas into a scientific format and go
> write a novel, since the idea they were trying to expose was more suitable
> to that format.  So, if we are arguing about the right of humans to take
> sustenance from any form of thinking that pleases them, then let the
> argument cease.   But whenever informal thinking shapes formal thinking
> (which it always does, to some extent), then I think we need to talk about
> it in a formal way.)  Thus, if you change Glen’s “practical” above to
> “Practicial” (= of, or related to, scientific practice), I agree with him
> entirely.
>
>
>
> That said, if you’re not exhausted, you might have a look at the larding
> of EricS’s note, below:
>
>
>
> Thanks again, all,
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *David Eric Smith
> *Sent:* Monday, May 18, 2020 10:26 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] hidden
>
>
>
> As I read this,I am reminded of the 20th century (seems to long ago), in
> which the high-energy physicists dug a social pit for themselves, from
> which the ones they offended do not want ever to let them escape.
>
>
>
> Keyword is Reductionism.  The narrative went something like this (HEP =
> High Energy Physicist; ROS = anyone from the Rest of Science)
>
> *[NST===>I am a reductionist, but let me be precise about what that means
> to me.To me, a concept has been reduced when anybody asserts that there
> is only one key into it (to use the Metaphor Glen and I have been
> exploring.)  The traditional forms of reduction are reductions in scale, as
> when somebody asserts that the mind is just brain activity or behavior is
> just muscle twitches.  I abhor this kind of reductionism, and think it is
> the worst kind of misdirection and obscurantism.  I am an
> “up-reductionist”.  My crime is that I assert that the one key to the mind
> is to look up and out, rather than down and in.   Our minds are something
> about us, not something within us.   <===nst] *
>
>
>
> HEP: In principle, whatever you care about is a result of interaction of
> our building blocks.
>
> ROS: Well, okay, but your saying that hasn’t addressed basically anything
> in what we wanted to understand from what we do.
>
> HEP: Whatever you wanted to understand was just a problem of assembly.
>
> ROS: “Just assembly” has its own rules which are not already expressed in
> the rules by which you characterize your building blocks (Of course, the
> objection was never made with such circumspection, but usually in less
> clear terms.)
>
> HEP: Well, in principle we understand all that.
>
> ROS: Then In Practice, say something we find useful or interesting.
>
> HEP: In Principle we u

Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[uǝlƃ ☣]

I'd like to avoid your (more accurate) use of holography in talking about this 
"holographic principle". While the technical details of actual holography are 
interesting, it adds noise to the idea I'm offering. (Again, I don't believe 
this idea, myself. I'm offering it as a rewording of what I heard EricC say.) 
So, I'm offering an analogy to the Bekenstein bound or the holographic 
principle in physics. I probably should never have used that word 
"holographic". I'm regretting it, now.

On 5/19/20 11:16 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> These are all examples of selecting or valuating transformations
> (letter-scrambles and elisions) based on the relative entropy yielded in
> a secondary lexicon?

I haven't, yet, invoked entropy in my attempt to reconstruct privacy from the 
bare concept of hidden with which I started this thread. I did invoke it 
earlier, in other threads, because I *do* think it will apply with higher order 
forms of privacy. But for "privacy through obscurity" all we need is the 
combinatorial explosion.

> thus something like entropy relative to the target domain of some model
> or another?

Not yet, no. You *could* argue that a particular target, like Frank, could be 
identified and attacked via the class inferred from that particularity. In 
principle, I think this is what therapy does. It's definitely what industrial 
espionage is about. Some cute girl moves into the apartment next to the young 
engineer with a newly minted yellow badge and she proceeds to *decrypt* the 
engineer. She would definitely use some conception of entropy relative to the 
"young engineer" domain.

But we don't need that for privacy through obscurity.

> And there IS an art to plausible ambiguity, [...]

Yes. In an adversarial co-evolution, it's relatively easy to exploit privacy 
for some gain. And a skilled hacker will be able to eliminate implausible 
decoders based on implausible results they generate. But, like with the above, 
adversarial systems imply targets. And this lowest order privacy doesn't need 
that for its justification.

> And you aren't even invoking quantum computing, which throws a whole
> other wrench into, no?

Well, I did by implication. QC simply exploits time/space tradeoffs, at least 
for my purposes, here. And by "With enough time/resources, ..." and the "etc.", 
I tried to imply QC along with all the other issues surrounding computational 
power limitations. We don't really need QC to puncture privacy through 
obscurity. Targeting will suffice. Frank can't be obscure if we can surveil him 
in particular ... like some psychodynamic stalker.

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ

-- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. -  . -..-. . ... 
... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
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archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[thompnickson2]

EricS, Glen, David, Frank, Steve, EricC Old Uncle Tom Cobbley, and all,

 

Let me again thank you all for allowing me to sharpen my thinking against your 
whetstone.  

 

I am perhaps at my most uneasy arguing against EricS, but here goes.

 

Speaking of whetstones, let’s start with Glen’s most recent post, because it 
set’s a limit to how far I am willing to push the argument I have been making:

 

With the above context, I confirm "out loud" that I don't believe in this 
position that EricC and Nick seem to hold. I firmly believe in an opaque inner 
world. But it's an ideal belief, not a practical one. That's the only reason I 
find it interesting to try to formulate their position in my own words.

My monism is limited to formal thought, to the project of building an approach 
to understanding that is as comprehensive and consistent as possible.  I.e., a 
scientific understanding.  But I am an imagination-pluralist.  For instance, 
one of my favorite sayings is, “No person should be denied the pleasures of 
imagining heaven because s/he happens to be an atheist.”  I routinely suggested 
to graduate students that they should stop trying to cram their ideas into a 
scientific format and go write a novel, since the idea they were trying to 
expose was more suitable to that format.  So, if we are arguing about the right 
of humans to take sustenance from any form of thinking that pleases them, then 
let the argument cease.   But whenever informal thinking shapes formal thinking 
(which it always does, to some extent), then I think we need to talk about it 
in a formal way.)  Thus, if you change Glen’s “practical” above to “Practicial” 
(= of, or related to, scientific practice), I agree with him entirely.  

 

That said, if you’re not exhausted, you might have a look at the larding of 
EricS’s note, below: 

 

Thanks again, all, 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 10:26 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

As I read this,I am reminded of the 20th century (seems to long ago), in which 
the high-energy physicists dug a social pit for themselves, from which the ones 
they offended do not want ever to let them escape.

 

Keyword is Reductionism.  The narrative went something like this (HEP = High 
Energy Physicist; ROS = anyone from the Rest of Science)

[NST===>I am a reductionist, but let me be precise about what that means to me. 
   To me, a concept has been reduced when anybody asserts that there is only 
one key into it (to use the Metaphor Glen and I have been exploring.)  The 
traditional forms of reduction are reductions in scale, as when somebody 
asserts that the mind is just brain activity or behavior is just muscle 
twitches.  I abhor this kind of reductionism, and think it is the worst kind of 
misdirection and obscurantism.  I am an “up-reductionist”.  My crime is that I 
assert that the one key to the mind is to look up and out, rather than down and 
in.   Our minds are something about us, not something within us.   <===nst] 

 

HEP: In principle, whatever you care about is a result of interaction of our 
building blocks.

ROS: Well, okay, but your saying that hasn’t addressed basically anything in 
what we wanted to understand from what we do.

HEP: Whatever you wanted to understand was just a problem of assembly.

ROS: “Just assembly” has its own rules which are not already expressed in the 
rules by which you characterize your building blocks (Of course, the objection 
was never made with such circumspection, but usually in less clear terms.)

HEP: Well, in principle we understand all that.

ROS: Then In Practice, say something we find useful or interesting.

HEP: In Principle we understand all that.

ROS: You are a robot.

 

And in that way, “reductionist” got entrenched as a synonym for “philistine” 
who thinks there isn’t anything left to explain beyond a few descriptions of 
building blocks.  Not only did it lead to a lot of unproductive fighting, it 
also made it much harder for those who had useful points of view on what 
reductionism is, or isn’t, to relate its contributions to all the other work 
that involves understanding of new explanatory primitives.

[NST===>If anybody on this list thinks I hold the above position, I have been a 
very poor expositor, indeed. <===nst] 

 

 

The behaviorists sound _so_ much like the reductionists sounded, and it is not 
for me to say whether they want to sound that way or not.

[NST===>Well, sure.  I guess some behaviorists have sounded that way.  But not 
Tolman, and certainly not Peirce, for instance.  <===nst] 

  They are so hell-bent on not giving an inch to the spiritualists (a worthy 
position IMO)

[NST===>OK

Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

[Marcus Daniels]

Anyway, a story is just a computable story with ABM.

From: Friam  on behalf of Steve Smith 

Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Date: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 at 11:30 AM
To: "friam@redfish.com" 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...



Oh you mean an ODE..   
One of my favorite poetic forms IS the "ode".  In particular Neruda's "Ode to 
Common Things" and I DO think that many of what Nick is calling "ideographic" 
stories as acting somewhat as an ode of this type.   On the other hand, the ODE 
of calculus is not as apt as a PDE for gesturing at the inner-relations between 
sub-elements of a story or suite of stories being descriptive (such as a small 
band of (modern?) hominids who somehow manage to be the only ones to push their 
genes forward)?  Systems Dynamics models are coupled collections of ODEs and 
capture much of what I think these types of stories capture:  the relations 
between things and their *behaviour*, each in terms of the other(s).


From: Friam  on 
behalf of Prof David West 
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 

Date: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 at 9:30 AM
To: "friam@redfish.com" 

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

Nick is a big fan of scientific story - at least "popular science" conveyed 
with stories - ala "Private Lives of Garden Birds" by Calvin Simonds.

davew


On Tue, May 19, 2020, at 10:13 AM, 
thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:

Steve,



Re stories, that’s probably why I was drawn to Darwinism.  Every Darwinian 
explanation, no matter how sophisticated, is a story, a historical narrative, 
arising from plausible suppositions about the way things were.  Last time I 
read the literature, the mitochondrial data on humans suggested that we arose 
from a single, smallish, group in southern Africa.  If that’s not an 
idiographic (as opposed to nomothetic) account, I don’t know what is.



Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

thompnicks...@gmail.com

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/






From: Friam  On 
Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 9:04 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...



Nick -

I *like* this kind of anecdotal/vernacular science.   I think Glen might refer 
to these stories/ideas as "just so stories" because they seem to be post-hoc 
fitting of simple yet in some sense apt models to anecdotal data gathered 
ad-hoc but widely.I think I understand (and agree) with his (implied) 
judgment of them as being "real science" but they smack of something more than 
"wishful thinking", maybe "whimsical thinking"?  And a sort of proto-science.  
Or a collective form of knowledge/wisdom formation which lacks the formal rigor 
of modern science.  Related to what Dave appeals to with us perhaps in Jung and 
other ideas of collective consciousness.   A step away from believing that the 
cosmos and everyday life are ordered by a (the) angry/benevolent god(esses) 
toward believing something perhaps equally absurd, that everything is ordered 
by mathematics.

My father was second-generation college educated... with a BS in biology 
preparing him for an advanced degree in Forestry (soil and range science), and 
his parents before him both held BS degrees in Geology.   But they were all 
still rooted in a style of understanding the world (minerals, plants and 
animals, and people) which was roughly animistic... they all still lived 
physically close to the earth and virtually all of their relatives were still 
living in the hills and hollers of Appalachia.  This could easily explain why I 
"like" the anecdotal/vernacular and distrust the *over* application of 
mathematics.

I've rattled on before about the *explanatory* power of models and the 
hypotheses they embody vs *predictive* or *communicative* or *descriptive* or 
even *inspirational*.   These are not orthogonal, but I think still useful...  
a "descriptive" model of the utlity/power of scientific thinking/modeling?

- Steve

FWIW... re: Jon's report on their nutritive value, my young chickens (6 weeks 
today?) have been foraging in our courtyard for about a week during the day.   
At first they showed significant interest in the flies that would occasion 
their feeder, but seemed to learn quickly that they were not fast enough to 
catch them, and soon discovered the myriad ground insects that they could find 
by pecking and scratching.   I was sitting on a low wall next to a couple of 
them... they seem to like the company of humans and will come close and do 
their foraging near me, even though I rarely hand feed them.   I looked down 
and one was swallowing a very lar

Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

[Steve Smith]

> Oh you mean an ODE..   
>
One of my favorite poetic forms IS the "ode".  In particular Neruda's
"Ode to Common Things" and I DO think that many of what Nick is calling
"ideographic" stories as acting somewhat as an ode of this type.   On
the other hand, the ODE of calculus is not as apt as a PDE for gesturing
at the inner-relations between sub-elements of a story or suite of
stories being descriptive (such as a small band of (modern?) hominids
who somehow manage to be the only ones to push their genes forward)? 
Systems Dynamics models are coupled collections of ODEs and capture much
of what I think these types of stories capture:  the relations between
things and their *behaviour*, each in terms of the other(s).
>
>  
>
> *From: *Friam  on behalf of Prof David West
> 
> *Reply-To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> 
> *Date: *Tuesday, May 19, 2020 at 9:30 AM
> *To: *"friam@redfish.com" 
> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...
>
>  
>
> Nick is a big fan of scientific story - at least "popular science"
> conveyed with stories - ala "Private Lives of Garden Birds" by Calvin
> Simonds.
>
>  
>
> davew
>
>  
>
>  
>
> On Tue, May 19, 2020, at 10:13 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com
>  wrote:
>
> Steve,
>
>  
>
> Re stories, that’s probably why I was drawn to Darwinism.  Every
> Darwinian explanation, no matter how sophisticated, is a story, a
> historical narrative, arising from plausible suppositions about
> the way things were.  Last time I read the literature, the
> mitochondrial data on humans suggested that we arose from a
> single, smallish, group in southern Africa.  If that’s not an
> idiographic (as opposed to nomothetic) account, I don’t know what is.
>
>  
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com 
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>  
>
>  
>
>  
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 19, 2020 9:04 AM
>
> *To:* friam@redfish.com
>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...
>
>  
>
> Nick -
>
> I *like* this kind of anecdotal/vernacular science.   I think Glen
> might refer to these stories/ideas as "just so stories" because
> they seem to be post-hoc fitting of simple yet in some sense apt
> models to anecdotal data gathered ad-hoc but widely.    I think I
> understand (and agree) with his (implied) judgment of them as
> being "real science" but they smack of something more than
> "wishful thinking", maybe "whimsical thinking"?  And a sort of
> proto-science.  Or a collective form of knowledge/wisdom formation
> which lacks the formal rigor of modern science.  Related to what
> Dave appeals to with us perhaps in Jung and other ideas of
> collective consciousness.   A step away from believing that the
> cosmos and everyday life are ordered by a (the) angry/benevolent
> god(esses) toward believing something perhaps equally absurd, that
> everything is ordered by mathematics.
>
> My father was second-generation college educated... with a BS in
> biology preparing him for an advanced degree in Forestry (soil and
> range science), and his parents before him both held BS degrees in
> Geology.   But they were all still rooted in a style of
> understanding the world (minerals, plants and animals, and people)
> which was roughly animistic... they all still lived physically
> close to the earth and virtually all of their relatives were still
> living in the hills and hollers of Appalachia.  This could easily
> explain why I "like" the anecdotal/vernacular and distrust the
> *over* application of mathematics.
>
> I've rattled on before about the *explanatory* power of models and
> the hypotheses they embody vs *predictive* or *communicative* or
> *descriptive* or even *inspirational*.   These are not orthogonal,
> but I think still useful...  a "descriptive" model of the
> utlity/power of scientific thinking/modeling?
>
> - Steve
>
> FWIW... re: Jon's report on their nutritive value, my young
> chickens (6 weeks today?) have been foraging in our courtyard for
> about a week during the day.   At first they showed significant
> interest in the flies that would occasion their feeder, but seemed
> to learn quickly that they were not fast enough to catch them, and
> soon discovered the myriad ground insects that they could find by
> pecking and scratching.   I was sitting on a low wall next to a
> couple of them... they seem to like the company of humans and will
> come close and do their foraging near me, even though I rarely
> hand feed them.   I looked down and one was swallowing a very
> large grey-brown o

Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[Steve Smith]

Glen -

> You jumped close to where I was about to go! Now that we have some conception 
> of how this principle is holographic (everything's there on the surface, all 
> we need is the way to read it)
I appreciate this (added) exposure of your (hidden/interior) meaning of
"holographic".   My own experience has me "reading" your use to imply
something *slightly* different.  I see with this expression that you are
focusing on the dimension-reduction (from 3D to 2D nominally?) whilst
maintaining (near?) completeness/homogeneity in sampling?  In practice,
*light holography* is only capable of transferring the radiosity from
the surfaces of 3D objects to another surface (photographic plane/plate,
photographic emulsion on an arbitrary surface). The key point to my
observation is that only "occlusion" is obviated, not "interiority".   I
accept that the way you are using holographic might derive from a more
cosmological view and the "things being imaged" are not prone to obscure
or occlude others... 
> , I'd like to demonstrate that we don't *need* "interiority" to argue for 
> privacy. But my argument differs a bit from yours below. Yours below argues 
> that the keys/ways to read the surface may be inaccessible. My argument is 
> that there are *many* ways to read the surface, some of which may even be 
> mutually exclusive [†]. Further, I think there's a no-go result lurking 
> beneath that we might get to if we get past the lower order results.

Following the (light) holography analogy, it is the re-illumination of
the hologram with the same wavelength of coherent light that reproduces
the surface characteristics of the object (somewhat) faithfully.   If we
illuminate with (not necessarily coherent but modestly collimated) white
light, or another pure frequency of coherent light, we get distortions
of the original image (the first method is convenient and yields what
most of us would call "rainbow" holograms, while the second yields
*scale* shifts which is often used to effectively resize/scale the
hologram).   Knowing the original setup of the hologram recording
(frequency/phase  and spatial location of the source and reference beam)
(when used for metrology for example) allows for more complete/accurate
reproduction.   This is similar to doing decryption with an exact copy
of the codebook.   Code breaking and even practical
encryption/decryption in the field admits for the possibility of
incomplete codebooks (e.g. using different editions of a phonebook or a
bible or other widely distributed book.)

> I'll start with comprehension of strings to work my way to the simplest form 
> of privacy. Stronger forms might follow. Given the string "tin", what ways 
> are there to transform the string? And by what ontology do we decide which of 
> those transforms produce something meaningful? Obviously, an English speaker 
> would land upon the reverse() function, reverse(tin) => "nit". A programmer 
> might use cons(cdr(),car()) => "int". Someone who triggers on "interiority" 
> might use the simpler cdr() => "in". >8^D A chemist include selecting just 
> the first 2 to get Ti. We could elide the middle to get TN, Tennessee. Etc.
These are all examples of selecting or valuating transformations
(letter-scrambles and elisions) based on the relative entropy yielded in
a secondary lexicon?
> The idea is that when a *surface* presents itself, what are all the possible 
> ways to *decode* that data? And, further, which decoding processes produce 
> meaningful results? (I'd argue this is the definition of intrusion detection, 
> anti-virus software, code breaking, etc.) 
thus something like entropy relative to the target domain of some model
or another?

>  If a super simple example like the string "tin" shows an explosion of 
> possible transformations, what can we get from a more realistic example like 
> finding Waldo in a kid's book? Or (Satan help me) interpreting an ink blot?
>
> Given that combinatorial explosion, it is practically infeasible [‡] to 
> slice/rebundle the possibly meaningful transforms down into a collection that 
> can be handled in any small amount of time/resources. Hence we get the 
> simplest form of privacy: "privacy through obscurity". 

> None of us will ever know Frank's image of some childhood friend because 
> there are simply too many ways to parse the data. David Icke can always 
> recant some silly conspiracy theory by saying "that's not what I meant". 
> Trump can avoid responsibility by claiming he said something sarcastically. 
> Etc. There's no way for us to know, for sure, that a chosen decoder isn't the 
> wrong decoder.
And there IS an art to plausible ambiguity, which Trump seems
particularly adept at.   I think that was roughly what Dave did when he
declared "the end of the Pandemic".   While such slip-slideyness ( a
variation on moving the goalposts?) can be maddening, it can also be
fascinating.   My father taught my sister and I to play "Battleship" on
a simple pad of gri

Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

[cody dooderson]

The moths seem to have vanished from my house in Albuquerque. Yesterday
they covered every outdoor surface, and now I can't even find a corpse of
one. Did they all end up in Pojoaque getting nibbled on by chickens?

Cody Smith


On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 10:31 AM Marcus Daniels 
wrote:

> Oh you mean an ODE..   
>
>
>
> *From: *Friam  on behalf of Prof David West <
> profw...@fastmail.fm>
> *Reply-To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Date: *Tuesday, May 19, 2020 at 9:30 AM
> *To: *"friam@redfish.com" 
> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...
>
>
>
> Nick is a big fan of scientific story - at least "popular science"
> conveyed with stories - ala "Private Lives of Garden Birds" by Calvin
> Simonds.
>
>
>
> davew
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 19, 2020, at 10:13 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Steve,
>
>
>
> Re stories, that’s probably why I was drawn to Darwinism.  Every Darwinian
> explanation, no matter how sophisticated, is a story, a historical
> narrative, arising from plausible suppositions about the way things were.
> Last time I read the literature, the mitochondrial data on humans suggested
> that we arose from a single, smallish, group in southern Africa.  If that’s
> not an idiographic (as opposed to nomothetic) account, I don’t know what is.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 19, 2020 9:04 AM
>
> *To:* friam@redfish.com
>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...
>
>
>
> Nick -
>
> I *like* this kind of anecdotal/vernacular science.   I think Glen might
> refer to these stories/ideas as "just so stories" because they seem to be
> post-hoc fitting of simple yet in some sense apt models to anecdotal data
> gathered ad-hoc but widely.I think I understand (and agree) with his
> (implied) judgment of them as being "real science" but they smack of
> something more than "wishful thinking", maybe "whimsical thinking"?  And a
> sort of proto-science.  Or a collective form of knowledge/wisdom formation
> which lacks the formal rigor of modern science.  Related to what Dave
> appeals to with us perhaps in Jung and other ideas of collective
> consciousness.   A step away from believing that the cosmos and everyday
> life are ordered by a (the) angry/benevolent god(esses) toward believing
> something perhaps equally absurd, that everything is ordered by mathematics.
>
> My father was second-generation college educated... with a BS in biology
> preparing him for an advanced degree in Forestry (soil and range science),
> and his parents before him both held BS degrees in Geology.   But they were
> all still rooted in a style of understanding the world (minerals, plants
> and animals, and people) which was roughly animistic... they all still
> lived physically close to the earth and virtually all of their relatives
> were still living in the hills and hollers of Appalachia.  This could
> easily explain why I "like" the anecdotal/vernacular and distrust the
> *over* application of mathematics.
>
> I've rattled on before about the *explanatory* power of models and the
> hypotheses they embody vs *predictive* or *communicative* or *descriptive*
> or even *inspirational*.   These are not orthogonal, but I think still
> useful...  a "descriptive" model of the utlity/power of scientific
> thinking/modeling?
>
> - Steve
>
> FWIW... re: Jon's report on their nutritive value, my young chickens (6
> weeks today?) have been foraging in our courtyard for about a week during
> the day.   At first they showed significant interest in the flies that
> would occasion their feeder, but seemed to learn quickly that they were not
> fast enough to catch them, and soon discovered the myriad ground insects
> that they could find by pecking and scratching.   I was sitting on a low
> wall next to a couple of them... they seem to like the company of humans
> and will come close and do their foraging near me, even though I rarely
> hand feed them.   I looked down and one was swallowing a very large
> grey-brown object which I am now sure was a miller.  The miller moth
> infestation/epidemic/peak at my house (near the Rio Grande) seems to have
> lagged that of the one in Santa Fe and even just up the Pojoaque Valley
> where people have been reporting the deluge for weeks.   Ours just started
> a few days ago.
>
> Speaking of anecdotal and just-so science stories.   I find it fascinating
> to note that these birds, supposedly not THAT removed from their wild
> ancestors are constructed from a single *large enough to eat for breakfast*
> egg-cell in about 20 days and emerge almost fully able to survive alone
> (though they benefit from the warmth and protection and guidance of a
> mother hen, or some people with a heat-lamp and some agri

Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[uǝlƃ ☣]

I think you've hit this squarely, probably because I read it as confirming my 
bias *against* monism and for pluralism. A while back, I tried to call out the 
difference between abstraction and unification. Abstraction ignores 
particularities (even if carefully), whereas unification facilitates the 
reconstruction of those particularities. I think David Deutsch says this well 
with his "hard to vary" conception of explanatory power. We're all sympathetic 
with reduction when and where it works. If we can make the reduction into a 
smaller/shorter expression without truncating its expressive power, then it's 
universally a good thing. And that's not to say that particulars-ignoring 
abstraction isn't also (often) a good thing. But it's not universally a good 
thing.

I really wish more people would/could permanently install a "methodological" 
qualifier in front of every -ism they advocate. So, if you call yourself a 
monist, are you a methodological monist? And if not, if you're ideal-monist but 
methodological-pluralist, then I don't particularly care about your idealism. I 
care about your methods more than your thoughts. At least then, when someone 
foists a reduction on us, we can, in practice, find if/where they've ignored or 
assumed away some particulars.

With the above context, I confirm "out loud" that I don't believe in this 
position that EricC and Nick seem to hold. I firmly believe in an opaque inner 
world. But it's an ideal belief, not a practical one. That's the only reason I 
find it interesting to try to formulate their position in my own words.


ps Sorry if my aggressive clipping clipped too much. But I rely on everyone 
being able to use a threaded mail client or browse nabble for more context.

On 5/18/20 9:26 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
> Keyword is Reductionism.  The narrative went something like this (HEP = High 
> Energy Physicist; ROS = anyone from the Rest of Science)
> [...]
> My own expectation is that the kinds of primitives that people are after will 
> have a certain character of irreducibility about them, and that is what makes 
> them both interesting and hard to drag out into clarity.  And be careful: 
> when I say “irreducibility” I use the word advisedly, and by analogies to 
> cases where it does very good work.  In group theory, we are very interested 
> in distinctions between irreducible and reducible representations.  Tononi’s 
> construction — whatever its other virtues or defects — is essentially a 
> measure of the irreducibility in some information-transmission measure.  Even 
> prime numbers have a specific kind of irreducibility that makes their status 
> not decidable with less than exhaustive search.  The image I want to take 
> from those examples is the same kind of “irreducibility” of patterns that the 
> ROS character above was referring to when he said there are aspects of the 
> patterns that come out at higher order that require their own system, which is


-- 
☣ uǝlƃ
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... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

[FRIAM] Fwd: Help our journalists seek the truth.

[Tom Johnson]

In case anyone's interested
TJ


Tom Johnson - t...@jtjohnson.com
Institute for Analytic Journalism   -- Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)505.473.9646(h)
*NM Foundation for Open Government* 
*Check out It's The People's Data
*




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Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

[Marcus Daniels]

Oh you mean an ODE..   

From: Friam  on behalf of Prof David West 

Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Date: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 at 9:30 AM
To: "friam@redfish.com" 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

Nick is a big fan of scientific story - at least "popular science" conveyed 
with stories - ala "Private Lives of Garden Birds" by Calvin Simonds.

davew


On Tue, May 19, 2020, at 10:13 AM, 
thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:

Steve,



Re stories, that’s probably why I was drawn to Darwinism.  Every Darwinian 
explanation, no matter how sophisticated, is a story, a historical narrative, 
arising from plausible suppositions about the way things were.  Last time I 
read the literature, the mitochondrial data on humans suggested that we arose 
from a single, smallish, group in southern Africa.  If that’s not an 
idiographic (as opposed to nomothetic) account, I don’t know what is.



Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

thompnicks...@gmail.com

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/






From: Friam  On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 9:04 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...



Nick -

I *like* this kind of anecdotal/vernacular science.   I think Glen might refer 
to these stories/ideas as "just so stories" because they seem to be post-hoc 
fitting of simple yet in some sense apt models to anecdotal data gathered 
ad-hoc but widely.I think I understand (and agree) with his (implied) 
judgment of them as being "real science" but they smack of something more than 
"wishful thinking", maybe "whimsical thinking"?  And a sort of proto-science.  
Or a collective form of knowledge/wisdom formation which lacks the formal rigor 
of modern science.  Related to what Dave appeals to with us perhaps in Jung and 
other ideas of collective consciousness.   A step away from believing that the 
cosmos and everyday life are ordered by a (the) angry/benevolent god(esses) 
toward believing something perhaps equally absurd, that everything is ordered 
by mathematics.

My father was second-generation college educated... with a BS in biology 
preparing him for an advanced degree in Forestry (soil and range science), and 
his parents before him both held BS degrees in Geology.   But they were all 
still rooted in a style of understanding the world (minerals, plants and 
animals, and people) which was roughly animistic... they all still lived 
physically close to the earth and virtually all of their relatives were still 
living in the hills and hollers of Appalachia.  This could easily explain why I 
"like" the anecdotal/vernacular and distrust the *over* application of 
mathematics.

I've rattled on before about the *explanatory* power of models and the 
hypotheses they embody vs *predictive* or *communicative* or *descriptive* or 
even *inspirational*.   These are not orthogonal, but I think still useful...  
a "descriptive" model of the utlity/power of scientific thinking/modeling?

- Steve

FWIW... re: Jon's report on their nutritive value, my young chickens (6 weeks 
today?) have been foraging in our courtyard for about a week during the day.   
At first they showed significant interest in the flies that would occasion 
their feeder, but seemed to learn quickly that they were not fast enough to 
catch them, and soon discovered the myriad ground insects that they could find 
by pecking and scratching.   I was sitting on a low wall next to a couple of 
them... they seem to like the company of humans and will come close and do 
their foraging near me, even though I rarely hand feed them.   I looked down 
and one was swallowing a very large grey-brown object which I am now sure was a 
miller.  The miller moth infestation/epidemic/peak at my house (near the Rio 
Grande) seems to have lagged that of the one in Santa Fe and even just up the 
Pojoaque Valley where people have been reporting the deluge for weeks.   Ours 
just started a few days ago.

Speaking of anecdotal and just-so science stories.   I find it fascinating to 
note that these birds, supposedly not THAT removed from their wild ancestors 
are constructed from a single *large enough to eat for breakfast* egg-cell in 
about 20 days and emerge almost fully able to survive alone (though they 
benefit from the warmth and protection and guidance of a mother hen, or some 
people with a heat-lamp and some agri-industrially formulated food and our own 
curiosity).  And then, not too much later, they begin to "shed an egg" nearly 
daily (if you keep taking them away) which if fertilized, would repeat the 
construction, growth process right in front of my eyes.   Aside from their 
daily egg-gift, I look forward to their help in insect control in my garden 
I can tolerate many pests in the garden but some years we get grasshoppers and 
squash bugs, eac

Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

[Prof David West]

Nick is a big fan of scientific story - at least "popular science" conveyed 
with stories - ala "Private Lives of Garden Birds" by Calvin Simonds.

davew


On Tue, May 19, 2020, at 10:13 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> Steve,

> 

> Re stories, that’s probably why I was drawn to Darwinism. Every Darwinian 
> explanation, no matter how sophisticated, is a story, a historical narrative, 
> arising from plausible suppositions about the way things were. Last time I 
> read the literature, the mitochondrial data on humans suggested that we arose 
> from a single, smallish, group in southern Africa. If that’s not an 
> idiographic (as opposed to nomothetic) account, I don’t know what is.

> 

> Nick

> Nicholas Thompson

> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

> Clark University

> thompnicks...@gmail.com

> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

> 

> 

> 


> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 19, 2020 9:04 AM
> *To:* friam@redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

> 

> Nick -

> I *like* this kind of anecdotal/vernacular science. I think Glen might refer 
> to these stories/ideas as "just so stories" because they seem to be post-hoc 
> fitting of simple yet in some sense apt models to anecdotal data gathered 
> ad-hoc but widely. I think I understand (and agree) with his (implied) 
> judgment of them as being "real science" but they smack of something more 
> than "wishful thinking", maybe "whimsical thinking"? And a sort of 
> proto-science. Or a collective form of knowledge/wisdom formation which lacks 
> the formal rigor of modern science. Related to what Dave appeals to with us 
> perhaps in Jung and other ideas of collective consciousness. A step away from 
> believing that the cosmos and everyday life are ordered by a (the) 
> angry/benevolent god(esses) toward believing something perhaps equally 
> absurd, that everything is ordered by mathematics.

> My father was second-generation college educated... with a BS in biology 
> preparing him for an advanced degree in Forestry (soil and range science), 
> and his parents before him both held BS degrees in Geology. But they were all 
> still rooted in a style of understanding the world (minerals, plants and 
> animals, and people) which was roughly animistic... they all still lived 
> physically close to the earth and virtually all of their relatives were still 
> living in the hills and hollers of Appalachia. This could easily explain why 
> I "like" the anecdotal/vernacular and distrust the *over* application of 
> mathematics.

> I've rattled on before about the *explanatory* power of models and the 
> hypotheses they embody vs *predictive* or *communicative* or *descriptive* or 
> even *inspirational*. These are not orthogonal, but I think still useful... a 
> "descriptive" model of the utlity/power of scientific thinking/modeling?

> - Steve

> FWIW... re: Jon's report on their nutritive value, my young chickens (6 weeks 
> today?) have been foraging in our courtyard for about a week during the day. 
> At first they showed significant interest in the flies that would occasion 
> their feeder, but seemed to learn quickly that they were not fast enough to 
> catch them, and soon discovered the myriad ground insects that they could 
> find by pecking and scratching. I was sitting on a low wall next to a couple 
> of them... they seem to like the company of humans and will come close and do 
> their foraging near me, even though I rarely hand feed them. I looked down 
> and one was swallowing a very large grey-brown object which I am now sure was 
> a miller. The miller moth infestation/epidemic/peak at my house (near the Rio 
> Grande) seems to have lagged that of the one in Santa Fe and even just up the 
> Pojoaque Valley where people have been reporting the deluge for weeks. Ours 
> just started a few days ago.

> Speaking of anecdotal and just-so science stories. I find it fascinating to 
> note that these birds, supposedly not THAT removed from their wild ancestors 
> are constructed from a single *large enough to eat for breakfast* egg-cell in 
> about 20 days and emerge almost fully able to survive alone (though they 
> benefit from the warmth and protection and guidance of a mother hen, or some 
> people with a heat-lamp and some agri-industrially formulated food and our 
> own curiosity). And then, not too much later, they begin to "shed an egg" 
> nearly daily (if you keep taking them away) which if fertilized, would repeat 
> the construction, growth process right in front of my eyes. Aside from their 
> daily egg-gift, I look forward to their help in insect control in my 
> garden I can tolerate many pests in the garden but some years we get 
> grasshoppers and squash bugs, each who can decimate a crop. 

> I've always enjoyed watching the Sphynx/Hummingbird moths around the 
> homestead, but did not know their larval form was the "dreaded" tomato worm. 
> Last y

Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

[thompnickson2]

Steve, 

 

Re stories, that’s probably why I was drawn to Darwinism.  Every Darwinian 
explanation, no matter how sophisticated, is a story, a historical narrative, 
arising from plausible suppositions about the way things were.  Last time I 
read the literature, the mitochondrial data on humans suggested that we arose 
from a single, smallish, group in southern Africa.  If that’s not an 
idiographic (as opposed to nomothetic) account, I don’t know what is. 

 

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 9:04 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

 

Nick -

I *like* this kind of anecdotal/vernacular science.   I think Glen might refer 
to these stories/ideas as "just so stories" because they seem to be post-hoc 
fitting of simple yet in some sense apt models to anecdotal data gathered 
ad-hoc but widely.I think I understand (and agree) with his (implied) 
judgment of them as being "real science" but they smack of something more than 
"wishful thinking", maybe "whimsical thinking"?  And a sort of proto-science.  
Or a collective form of knowledge/wisdom formation which lacks the formal rigor 
of modern science.  Related to what Dave appeals to with us perhaps in Jung and 
other ideas of collective consciousness.   A step away from believing that the 
cosmos and everyday life are ordered by a (the) angry/benevolent god(esses) 
toward believing something perhaps equally absurd, that everything is ordered 
by mathematics. 

My father was second-generation college educated... with a BS in biology 
preparing him for an advanced degree in Forestry (soil and range science), and 
his parents before him both held BS degrees in Geology.   But they were all 
still rooted in a style of understanding the world (minerals, plants and 
animals, and people) which was roughly animistic... they all still lived 
physically close to the earth and virtually all of their relatives were still 
living in the hills and hollers of Appalachia.  This could easily explain why I 
"like" the anecdotal/vernacular and distrust the *over* application of 
mathematics.

I've rattled on before about the *explanatory* power of models and the 
hypotheses they embody vs *predictive* or *communicative* or *descriptive* or 
even *inspirational*.   These are not orthogonal, but I think still useful...  
a "descriptive" model of the utlity/power of scientific thinking/modeling?

- Steve

FWIW... re: Jon's report on their nutritive value, my young chickens (6 weeks 
today?) have been foraging in our courtyard for about a week during the day.   
At first they showed significant interest in the flies that would occasion 
their feeder, but seemed to learn quickly that they were not fast enough to 
catch them, and soon discovered the myriad ground insects that they could find 
by pecking and scratching.   I was sitting on a low wall next to a couple of 
them... they seem to like the company of humans and will come close and do 
their foraging near me, even though I rarely hand feed them.   I looked down 
and one was swallowing a very large grey-brown object which I am now sure was a 
miller.  The miller moth infestation/epidemic/peak at my house (near the Rio 
Grande) seems to have lagged that of the one in Santa Fe and even just up the 
Pojoaque Valley where people have been reporting the deluge for weeks.   Ours 
just started a few days ago.

Speaking of anecdotal and just-so science stories.   I find it fascinating to 
note that these birds, supposedly not THAT removed from their wild ancestors 
are constructed from a single *large enough to eat for breakfast* egg-cell in 
about 20 days and emerge almost fully able to survive alone (though they 
benefit from the warmth and protection and guidance of a mother hen, or some 
people with a heat-lamp and some agri-industrially formulated food and our own 
curiosity).  And then, not too much later, they begin to "shed an egg" nearly 
daily (if you keep taking them away) which if fertilized, would repeat the 
construction, growth process right in front of my eyes.   Aside from their 
daily egg-gift, I look forward to their help in insect control in my garden 
I can tolerate many pests in the garden but some years we get grasshoppers and 
squash bugs, each who can decimate a crop.   

I've always enjoyed watching the Sphynx/Hummingbird moths around the homestead, 
but did not know their larval form was the "dreaded" tomato worm.   Last year, 
I was surprised to see that along with my tomatoes, they had discovered the 
volunteer datura that come up here and there around the property and two or 
three had ganged up on one plant and stripped it bare of leaves.I wondered 
at how their metabolism hand

Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[uǝlƃ ☣]

You jumped close to where I was about to go! Now that we have some conception 
of how this principle is holographic (everything's there on the surface, all we 
need is the way to read it), I'd like to demonstrate that we don't *need* 
"interiority" to argue for privacy. But my argument differs a bit from yours 
below. Yours below argues that the keys/ways to read the surface may be 
inaccessible. My argument is that there are *many* ways to read the surface, 
some of which may even be mutually exclusive [†]. Further, I think there's a 
no-go result lurking beneath that we might get to if we get past the lower 
order results.

I'll start with comprehension of strings to work my way to the simplest form of 
privacy. Stronger forms might follow. Given the string "tin", what ways are 
there to transform the string? And by what ontology do we decide which of those 
transforms produce something meaningful? Obviously, an English speaker would 
land upon the reverse() function, reverse(tin) => "nit". A programmer might use 
cons(cdr(),car()) => "int". Someone who triggers on "interiority" might use the 
simpler cdr() => "in". >8^D A chemist include selecting just the first 2 to get 
Ti. We could elide the middle to get TN, Tennessee. Etc.

The idea is that when a *surface* presents itself, what are all the possible 
ways to *decode* that data? And, further, which decoding processes produce 
meaningful results? (I'd argue this is the definition of intrusion detection, 
anti-virus software, code breaking, etc.) If a super simple example like the 
string "tin" shows an explosion of possible transformations, what can we get 
from a more realistic example like finding Waldo in a kid's book? Or (Satan 
help me) interpreting an ink blot?

Given that combinatorial explosion, it is practically infeasible [‡] to 
slice/rebundle the possibly meaningful transforms down into a collection that 
can be handled in any small amount of time/resources. Hence we get the simplest 
form of privacy: "privacy through obscurity". None of us will ever know Frank's 
image of some childhood friend because there are simply too many ways to parse 
the data. David Icke can always recant some silly conspiracy theory by saying 
"that's not what I meant". Trump can avoid responsibility by claiming he said 
something sarcastically. Etc. There's no way for us to know, for sure, that a 
chosen decoder isn't the wrong decoder.

Of course, this raises the question of big data, AI, Moore's Law, etc. With 
enough time/resources, we can brute force our way through it. With enough 
crafty logic, we can winnow the space down. So, if anyone cares, we can take 
further steps to establish higher order privacy. Note that I'm *still* assuming 
that everything's there on the surface. I'm trying to use the position I infer 
from EricC and Nick to *demonstrate* privacy.


[†] I've lazily made this argument a lot by referring to Rosen's defn of 
complexity or von Neumann's extrapolation of Gödel, Wolpert's limits of info, 
etc. But nobody seems to acknowledge those and/or show me how I'm wrong about 
them. [sigh]

[‡] And perhaps impossible in principle.

On 5/18/20 6:46 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> I will attempt to switch sides and argue for why his mind may be private.
> 
> Firstly, while we may only need to know some combination of
> /transformations/ which will allow us to know his mind, it may
> be the case that those transformations are not accessible to
> us. As an example and in analogy to computation, it may be the
> case that we are not the kind of machines which can recognize
> the language produced by a mind. While we as observers are
> able to finite automata our way along observations of Frank,
> his mind is producing context-free sentences, say. I don't
> entirely buy this argument, but it also may be defendable.
> As another example/analogy, we may be attempting to solve
> a problem analogous to those geometric problems of Greek
> antiquity††. It may take a psychological analog to Galois theory
> before we understand exactly why we can't know Frank's mind.

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ

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Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

[Steve Smith]

Nick -

I *like* this kind of anecdotal/vernacular science.   I think Glen might
refer to these stories/ideas as "just so stories" because they seem to
be post-hoc fitting of simple yet in some sense apt models to anecdotal
data gathered ad-hoc but widely.    I think I understand (and agree)
with his (implied) judgment of them as being "real science" but they
smack of something more than "wishful thinking", maybe "whimsical
thinking"?  And a sort of proto-science.  Or a collective form of
knowledge/wisdom formation which lacks the formal rigor of modern
science.  Related to what Dave appeals to with us perhaps in Jung and
other ideas of collective consciousness.   A step away from believing
that the cosmos and everyday life are ordered by a (the)
angry/benevolent god(esses) toward believing something perhaps equally
absurd, that everything is ordered by mathematics.

My father was second-generation college educated... with a BS in biology
preparing him for an advanced degree in Forestry (soil and range
science), and his parents before him both held BS degrees in Geology.  
But they were all still rooted in a style of understanding the world
(minerals, plants and animals, and people) which was roughly
animistic... they all still lived physically close to the earth and
virtually all of their relatives were still living in the hills and
hollers of Appalachia.  This could easily explain why I "like" the
anecdotal/vernacular and distrust the *over* application of mathematics.

I've rattled on before about the *explanatory* power of models and the
hypotheses they embody vs *predictive* or *communicative* or
*descriptive* or even *inspirational*.   These are not orthogonal, but I
think still useful...  a "descriptive" model of the utlity/power of
scientific thinking/modeling?

- Steve

FWIW... re: Jon's report on their nutritive value, my young chickens (6
weeks today?) have been foraging in our courtyard for about a week
during the day.   At first they showed significant interest in the flies
that would occasion their feeder, but seemed to learn quickly that they
were not fast enough to catch them, and soon discovered the myriad
ground insects that they could find by pecking and scratching.   I was
sitting on a low wall next to a couple of them... they seem to like the
company of humans and will come close and do their foraging near me,
even though I rarely hand feed them.   I looked down and one was
swallowing a very large grey-brown object which I am now sure was a
miller.  The miller moth infestation/epidemic/peak at my house (near the
Rio Grande) seems to have lagged that of the one in Santa Fe and even
just up the Pojoaque Valley where people have been reporting the deluge
for weeks.   Ours just started a few days ago.

Speaking of anecdotal and just-so science stories.   I find it
fascinating to note that these birds, supposedly not THAT removed from
their wild ancestors are constructed from a single *large enough to eat
for breakfast* egg-cell in about 20 days and emerge almost fully able to
survive alone (though they benefit from the warmth and protection and
guidance of a mother hen, or some people with a heat-lamp and some
agri-industrially formulated food and our own curiosity).  And then, not
too much later, they begin to "shed an egg" nearly daily (if you keep
taking them away) which if fertilized, would repeat the construction,
growth process right in front of my eyes.   Aside from their daily
egg-gift, I look forward to their help in insect control in my
garden I can tolerate many pests in the garden but some years we get
grasshoppers and squash bugs, each who can decimate a crop.  

I've always enjoyed watching the Sphynx/Hummingbird moths around the
homestead, but did not know their larval form was the "dreaded" tomato
worm.   Last year, I was surprised to see that along with my tomatoes,
they had discovered the volunteer datura that come up here and there
around the property and two or three had ganged up on one plant and
stripped it bare of leaves.    I wondered at how their metabolism
handled the kind of alkaloids that humans (and cattle?) experience as
"loco weed".  The datura, with it's heavily cholorphylled and thick
stems seemed to survive just fine and put out a fresh bounty of
(smaller?) leaves and returned to it's course of producing flowers to be
pollinated by (also the sphynx?) and then a seedpod to lead to this
year's surprise sprouts?!

> Hi, Merle,
>
>  
>
> Are you sure it’s not 19 years?  The standard “take” on insect
> eruptions is (used to be?) that they occur on a cycle of prime numbers
> to make it harder for creatures with shorter cycles to “track” them.
>  See
> https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-cicadas-love-affair-with-prime-numbers
> for a pretty thin introduction to the idea.
>
>  
>
> N
>
>  
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com 

Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

[Angel Edward]

In the 25 years we lived in ABQ,, we had more frequent invasions than 19 or 20 
years apart. If you believe it depends on prime numbers, how about 5 or 7? Also 
the invasions were much more dense that what we’ve seen here. We’d get up in 
the morning and hundreds would be jammed under the front door and in the car 
vents.

Ed
__

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) edward.an...@gmail.com
505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

> On May 19, 2020, at 8:05 AM,  
>  wrote:
> 
> Hi, Merle, 
>  
> Are you sure it’s not 19 years?  The standard “take” on insect eruptions is 
> (used to be?) that they occur on a cycle of prime numbers to make it harder 
> for creatures with shorter cycles to “track” them.  See 
> https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-cicadas-love-affair-with-prime-numbers
>  
> 
>  for a pretty thin introduction to the idea. 
>  
> N
>  
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> thompnicks...@gmail.com 
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
> 
>  
>  
> From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
> Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
> Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 10:01 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group  >
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...
>  
> My son in Boulder says they get the "infestation" right on the dot every 20 
> years.
>  
> They are also important pollinators.  
>  
> On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 9:57 PM Jon Zingale  > wrote:
>> Wow, they are everywhere! According to wikipedia:
>>  
>> Army cutworms are one of the richest foods for predators, such as brown 
>> bears , in this ecosystem, where 
>> up to 72 per cent of the moth's body weight is fat, thus making it more 
>> calorie-rich than elk or deer.[10] 
>>  This is the 
>> highest known body fat percentage of any animal.[11] 
>>  
>>  
>> And according to the New Mexican:
>>  
>> `... they do not carry disease, Formby said, and they’re not the type of 
>> moth that will get into your clothes closet and start shredding your new 
>> camel hair jacket.`
>>  
>>  
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>> 
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>> 
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>> 
>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 
>> 
> 
>  
> -- 
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org 
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
> merlelefk...@gmail.com 
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
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> 
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com 
> 
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ 
> 
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Mission to Abisko

[Steve Smith]

Dave -
> Curses for both Steve and Merle who FORCED me to Amazon to purchase
> both Boundaries and Barriers and Paradigms Lost. Only there for five
> minutes and bought those two plus three others.  You people are
> enablers and I am a weak addict.

But only after you forced me to buy Abisko and Boundaries... the first
being a gateway to the other. 

I have been trying to discipline myself to order books through OpCit who
was offering curbsideish service until last Saturday when they opened
their doors (just a crack wide enough to pick up books).   But you being
up on a mountain in Utah talking to a burning bush, I understand your
best source for nearly everything would be the UPS man!

Merle -

I am wondering if Lars doesn't know Karlqvist... All of Sweden seems to
be about the same size in social distance as Northern NM.   The work is
somewhat tangential to Lars' interests, but perhaps I don't know Lars'
inner/hidden interests.. how could I?

- Steve


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Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

[thompnickson2]

Hi, Merle, 

 

Are you sure it’s not 19 years?  The standard “take” on insect eruptions is 
(used to be?) that they occur on a cycle of prime numbers to make it harder for 
creatures with shorter cycles to “track” them.  See 
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-cicadas-love-affair-with-prime-numbers
 for a pretty thin introduction to the idea. 

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 10:01 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

 

My son in Boulder says they get the "infestation" right on the dot every 20 
years.

 

They are also important pollinators.  

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 9:57 PM Jon Zingale mailto:jonzing...@gmail.com> > wrote:

Wow, they are everywhere! According to wikipedia:

 

Army cutworms are one of the richest foods for predators, such as  
 brown bears, in this ecosystem, 
where up to 72 per cent of the moth's body weight is fat, thus making it more 
calorie-rich than elk or deer. 
 [10] This is the 
highest known body fat percentage of any animal. 
 [11] 

 

And according to the New Mexican:

 

`... they do not carry disease, Formby said, and they’re not the type of moth 
that will get into your clothes closet and start shredding your new camel hair 
jacket.`

 

 

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-- 

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org  

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

merlelefk...@gmail.com  
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff

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Re: [FRIAM] Mission to Abisko

[Prof David West]

Curses for both Steve and Merle who FORCED me to Amazon to purchase both 
Boundaries and Barriers and Paradigms Lost. Only there for five minutes and 
bought those two plus three others. You people are enablers and I am a weak 
addict.

davew


On Mon, May 18, 2020, at 4:01 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Dave -
> 
>> By John L. Casti and Anders Karlqvist

Casti seems to hail from Santa Fe — anybody know him?
> I met him just after he published "The Cambridge Quartet". I also know 
> Benford and Bear. All at the passing acquaintance, one-or-two intense 
> conversation level. Casti, I toured around LANL and SFe, including helping 
> him arrange an interview on one of the Local Radio Stations (live from the El 
> Dorado?). 

>> Our conversations involving metaphor and story and science prompted me to 
>> reread this book over the weekend. I would like to highly recommend it to 
>> everyone on the list.
> Thanks for the reference. I was NOT aware of this book in spite of hosting a 
> collection of SF authors at LANL during the 1998 Nebula Awards held in SFe. 
> This is when I met Benford... Benford was one of my respected colleagues PhD 
> advisor... The theme of the visit to LANL was at least partly about how SF 
> authors often *presage* scientific discoveries. Asimov is classic in this 
> vein (Scientist/SF writer) but another of my favorites is Robert L. Forward, 
> and there is a "new kid on the block" at LANL- Ian Tregellis, 
>  though his fiction is closer to alternate history 
> or fantasy by some measures.

>> https://www.lanl.gov/discover/features/spotlight/ian-tregillis.php

> MANY if not most colleagues in Engineering and Science that I have polled 
> anecdotally will reference the Science Fiction they read as children and 
> young adults as being the strongest influence for preparing for their chosen 
> careers. 

> This was also just as the OED was coming out with an appendix on neologisms 
> coined in fiction and literature. Our "guest of honor" (Jack Wlliamson) had 
> (I think) the most entries in the first publication (or maybe draft) and told 
> stories of being questioned by the FBI for one of his short stories 
> referencing an atom bomb during the Manhattan Project. Since he was *from* NM 
> ( working as a meteorologist in the Pacific during WWII, being too old for 
> military service (40ish?)), they apparently assumed he had some kind of 
> insider info on the project? His "defense" was to pull out his copy of a 1933 
> short-story that presented the idea for the first time (in his record).

> My hypothesis of the *primary* role Speculative Fiction has in Science is 
> that it allows an author or a whole movement within a genre to build a 
> network of hypothesis about "whatever" without the rigid need for grounding 
> them out in observed facts. It is a training/practice ground for "believing 6 
> impossible things before breakfast" and then thoughtfully if not always 
> carefully working through the cascade of assumptions. "IF X were true then 
> what are the myriad possible consequences that might follow from that?".

> Steven C. Gould (Jumper, Wild Side, etc.) states (paraphrasing) "the 
> difference between SF and Fantasy is that in Fantasy, *everything* you know 
> is up for grabs and in Science Fiction *one* 'new fact about reality' is 
> introduced and from that the rest of the story follows". It seemed trite when 
> I first heard it but much SF stands up to that description... I can't speak 
> as much to Fantasy.

>> The subtitle of the book is "stories and myths in the creation of scientific 
>> 'truth'."

Jon, Frank and anyone else who identifies as a mathematician will enjoy / find 
interesting the chapter by Ian Steward, "Secret Narratives of Mathematics."  
From the chapter:

"A proof is a story. Not any old story. It has to take off from the hypothesis 
and end by confirming the conclusion. Not end with the conclusion, by the way — 
any more than a novel is obliged to end with the hero and heroine riding off 
together into the sunset. The story ends when the conclusion is firmly pinned 
down. (This is where you stop and put your Halmos symbol.)

If a proof is a story, then a memorable proof must tell a ripping yarn."

Lot's of fun stuff about evolution, computational thinking, algorithmic and 
ascetic storytelling, something for everyone interested in science, how science 
is done, science as communication, science and prediction.
> It is going on my pile! Though I'm not sure I will draw the same conclusions 
> from this body of work as you might?

> What about Boundaries and Barriers, 
> 
>  which seems to be part of the buildup to Abisko?

> 

> Thanks,

>  - Steve

> 
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Re: [FRIAM] hidden

[David Eric Smith]

As I read this,I am reminded of the 20th century (seems to long ago), in which 
the high-energy physicists dug a social pit for themselves, from which the ones 
they offended do not want ever to let them escape.

Keyword is Reductionism.  The narrative went something like this (HEP = High 
Energy Physicist; ROS = anyone from the Rest of Science)

HEP: In principle, whatever you care about is a result of interaction of our 
building blocks.
ROS: Well, okay, but your saying that hasn’t addressed basically anything in 
what we wanted to understand from what we do.
HEP: Whatever you wanted to understand was just a problem of assembly.
ROS: “Just assembly” has its own rules which are not already expressed in the 
rules by which you characterize your building blocks (Of course, the objection 
was never made with such circumspection, but usually in less clear terms.)
HEP: Well, in principle we understand all that.
ROS: Then In Practice, say something we find useful or interesting.
HEP: In Principle we understand all that.
ROS: You are a robot.

And in that way, “reductionist” got entrenched as a synonym for “philistine” 
who thinks there isn’t anything left to explain beyond a few descriptions of 
building blocks.  Not only did it lead to a lot of unproductive fighting, it 
also made it much harder for those who had useful points of view on what 
reductionism is, or isn’t, to relate its contributions to all the other work 
that involves understanding of new explanatory primitives.


The behaviorists sound _so_ much like the reductionists sounded, and it is not 
for me to say whether they want to sound that way or not.  They are so 
hell-bent on not giving an inch to the spiritualists (a worthy position IMO) 
that they sound like they are claiming a scope of knowledge including all the 
things about which they don’t have anything particularly satisfying to say.  
They are sure, in the end, They Know what science will consist of, at least In 
Principle.  They may actually be right on parts of that, but to assert that 
your system of understanding will, you are confident, subsume all the future 
problems about which, for the present, you are unable to say anything actually 
elucidating, is of questionable utility.  It’s fine to believe that, but if it 
does no work for you, it is not easily distinguishable from a not-even-wrong 
claim.  At the most benign, it substitutes putting a lot of energy into 
defending the turf (of what? of “materialism”? or is that now such an overused 
term that we would like something fresh to characterize the non-spiritualist, 
non-vitalist position?), instead of engaging with where the other person wants 
the discussion to be, which is to say “Hey, there is some distinct cognitive or 
experiential primitive here, which I don’t know how to characterize in a 
satisfying way; would you like to help me think about it?” 

My own expectation is that the kinds of primitives that people are after will 
have a certain character of irreducibility about them, and that is what makes 
them both interesting and hard to drag out into clarity.  And be careful: when 
I say “irreducibility” I use the word advisedly, and by analogies to cases 
where it does very good work.  In group theory, we are very interested in 
distinctions between irreducible and reducible representations.  Tononi’s 
construction — whatever its other virtues or defects — is essentially a measure 
of the irreducibility in some information-transmission measure.  Even prime 
numbers have a specific kind of irreducibility that makes their status not 
decidable with less than exhaustive search.  The image I want to take from 
those examples is the same kind of “irreducibility” of patterns that the ROS 
character above was referring to when he said there are aspects of the patterns 
that come out at higher order that require their own system, which is its own 
kind of thing that occupies science in addition to the system that 
characterizes the building blocks and the local rules for their combination.  
All the systems that characterize all the irreducible patterns are compatible 
with the building blocks, but precisely because each of them captures something 
different, the system for the building blocks doesn’t extract any of them _in 
its particularity_, and it is getting at that particularity that the whole rest 
of science is occupied with.

(Btw, the rabid Darwinists do the same thing.  That is what enables Richard 
Dawkins to take what would otherwise be completely reasonable positions, and 
turn them into an overall offensive posture.  And the character of the 
deflection is the same.  If Darwinism contains everything, then it isn’t doing 
the work for you of extracting some further, particular thing.)


Sorry for the meta-commentary on conversation analysis (or opinionizing).  I 
don’t have anything useful or clarifying to say about inner experience either, 
except to vote that it seems a fine term from which to begin an intere