Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

2021-08-29 Thread Eric Charles
I'm deeply confused... Am I to get the impression that you want to use
"equal" to indicate things that are not the same,  but use "similar" to
indicate things that are the same?

I mean... you do keep trying to pitch schemes for making inheritance
exactly the same for everyone,  right? Is that not a scenario where the
word "equal" would be appropriate?

Are we going to discuss the virtues of believing that "all people are
created similar"?

I'm really going to need you to spell out more thoroughly the point you are
trying to make.



On Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 9:21 PM  wrote:

> Hi, Eric,
>
> Again, you appear to confound similarity with equality.  *Ex hypothesi*
> and NOT because I am a communist, let us invent a world in which we each
> serve different functions but are all paid exactly the same for serving
> them.  That would be a world in which there was maximum dissimilarity but
> financial equality.  Similarity has to with what we do; equality to do with
> how it’s valued.
>
>
>
> Not you say that the world I just invented is too strange to be relevant.
> But is it that much stranger than a world in which I stand talking
> non-sense to a bunch of students for a pretty good salary while others of
> my generation to get shot at in Vietnam for peanuts?   Ditto you and Iraq.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Saturday, August 28, 2021 8:40 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"
>
>
>
> Merle,
>
> I *am *deeply grateful for my life, which *is *extraordinarily privileged
> in many ways. I'm not sure what deep remorse would have to do with it.
>
>
>
> Even were we to institute some rules that gave everyone in the world
> historically extraordinary privileges, it would be a mistake to give
> everyone the same extraordinary privileges. A world of diverse people
> produces superior outcomes to a world of identical people. Any approach
> that wants to deny that is not going to work out well. Any approach that
> wants to try to give every single person the same life, is not a good idea.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 11:41 AM Merle Lefkoff 
> wrote:
>
> Coming from different perspectives (missing: our interrelationship with
> nature) hasn't ultimately offered us a good future, as well as an inability
> to avoid war and addiction to weapons of mass destruction (including global
> warming).  I suggest that a new perspective for someone like Eric might be
> looking around at his extraordinarily privileged life (his life defies the
> human condition) and finding some way to express gratitude and remorse deep
> within.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 8:05 AM Eric Charles <
> eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> " All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world."
>
>
>
> Hard disagree. Perhaps in a perfect we would reduce the extreme inequities
> a bit, but it would be a much less perfect world if we created actual full
> equality. This is part of my long-standing disagreement with Nick's
> attempts to flat-world inheritance.
>
>
>
> We are in a BETTER world because people had a variety of experiences
> growing up. Some had a new bike magically appear for them one day. Some
> sold lemonade all summer and got one themselves. Some never got the new
> bike they wanted at all. Some never even got a used bike. Some were punched
> and had their bikes stolen. I'm not talking about watching a sibling
> literally starve to death... but I am talking about a broad range of
> unequal personal and social starting places. We are a better world because
> people live very different lives, pursuing very different goals, informed
> by different experiences, and thereby coming at problems from very
> different perspectives.
>
>
>
> "All people are created equal" is a claim about how we have socially
> agreed to treat people *as if* they were "endowed by their creator" with
> certain basic rights. Those are what is now called "negative rights",
> rights not to have others interfere with you in certain ways. But in a
> grand sense, people are not equal, and we wouldn't want them to be; it
> would be disastrous if they were.
>
>
>
> As tempting as it is to arrogantly declare that the world would be a
> better place if it everyone was just like me... I also know that's not
> true. There is no individual for which it is true, not even one as amazing
> as I, and not even one as amazing as you.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 9:00 PM Sarbajit Roy  wrote:
>
> Nick,
>
> I am not a metaphysicist to debate such things with you. Can just state
> cold facts.
>
> All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world.
>
> However, when the world they are born into is imbalanced, in actuality
> their weightage depends on the circumstances of their birth and the larger
> society(s) they a

Re: [FRIAM] Weighted Ensemble

2021-08-29 Thread Roger Frye
Yes, I have been using the sklearn random forest and other ensemble methods
at SigmaLabsInc. I can't tell you too much because it is proprietary, but
we downsample the normal pixels some, upsample the anomalies some, and
apply class weights to complete the balance.

We wrote a white paper that is available here
https://sigmalabsinc.com/machine-learning-a-game-changer-for-additive-manufacturing/


On Sun, Aug 29, 2021 at 2:08 PM Jon Zingale  wrote:

> I am presently working on learning weighted ensemble
>  sampling techniques and was
> curious if any here have worked with them before. The technique seems
> promising and has enjoyed quite a bit of success (even above MCMC
> ) in circles
> concerned with reaction rates for rare events.
>
> Some points of interest for me include:
>
>1. A better sampling of fringe-outlier works/art from streaming
>services.
>2. An alternative (bin-based sampling) to globally defined "fitness"
>measures in evolutionary modeling.
>3. An application of diffusion-limited aggregation to general search
>(especially in the face of limited resources)
>4. An application of linear logic to optimization problems in conformation
>prediction 
>.
>5. Investigation of dynamical properties, such as distribution of
>trajectories with "high winding number", on strange attractors.
>
>
> While I am just beginning to grok the technique, I thought it might be
> fruitful to ask here.
>
> Jon
> -  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
> 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
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/


[FRIAM] Weighted Ensemble

2021-08-29 Thread Jon Zingale
I am presently working on learning weighted ensemble
 sampling techniques and was curious
if any here have worked with them before. The technique seems promising and
has enjoyed quite a bit of success (even above MCMC
) in circles
concerned with reaction rates for rare events.

Some points of interest for me include:

   1. A better sampling of fringe-outlier works/art from streaming services.
   2. An alternative (bin-based sampling) to globally defined "fitness"
   measures in evolutionary modeling.
   3. An application of diffusion-limited aggregation to general search
   (especially in the face of limited resources)
   4. An application of linear logic to optimization problems in conformation
   prediction .
   5. Investigation of dynamical properties, such as distribution of
   trajectories with "high winding number", on strange attractors.


While I am just beginning to grok the technique, I thought it might be
fruitful to ask here.

Jon
-  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/


Re: [FRIAM] interesting - if true

2021-08-29 Thread Marcus Daniels
One would think that being progressive leads to progress, no?

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2021 11:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] interesting - if true

Didn't we know that already?

On Thu, Aug 26, 2021 at 1:56 PM Prof David West 
mailto:profw...@fastmail.fm>> wrote:
I encountered the following assertions but have not been able to confirm or 
refute.

65% of Americans earning $500,000/yr or more are registered Democrats and 74% 
of those earning $100,000 or less are Registered Republican. (Supposedly, IRS 
is source, but I can find it.)

The 20 wealthiest Congressional Districts have Democratic representatives. (How 
was wealth measured?)

17 of the 20 wealthiest zip codes gave more money to Democrats than 
Republicans. (

More than half of the wealthiest individuals (Forbes list I guess) in the US, 
consistently support, in words and contributions (how would anyone know) 
"liberal democratic" values and causes.

If these were true, it would be interesting to the extent it belies the 
caricatures of the Republican party as the bastion of the plutocrats and the 
Democratic party as the champion of the working class.

davew

-  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/


--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
twitter: @merle110

-  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/


Re: [FRIAM] interesting - if true

2021-08-29 Thread Frank Wimberly
I don't earn any money but I receive more annually than I ever earned.  I
guess you could say that I earned it in the past but that's not clear.  Are
there lots of people in my situation?  I vote Democrat.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Aug 29, 2021, 12:53 PM Merle Lefkoff  wrote:

> Didn't we know that already?
>
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2021 at 1:56 PM Prof David West 
> wrote:
>
>> I encountered the following assertions but have not been able to confirm
>> or refute.
>>
>> 65% of Americans earning $500,000/yr or more are registered Democrats and
>> 74% of those earning $100,000 or less are Registered Republican.
>> (Supposedly, IRS is source, but I can find it.)
>>
>> The 20 wealthiest Congressional Districts have Democratic
>> representatives. (How was wealth measured?)
>>
>> 17 of the 20 wealthiest zip codes gave more money to Democrats than
>> Republicans. (
>>
>> More than half of the wealthiest individuals (Forbes list I guess) in the
>> US, consistently support, in words and contributions (how would anyone
>> know) "liberal democratic" values and causes.
>>
>> If these were true, it would be interesting to the extent it belies the
>> caricatures of the Republican party as the bastion of the plutocrats and
>> the Democratic party as the champion of the working class.
>>
>> davew
>>
>> -  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
>> 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
>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>>
>
>
> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
> twitter: @merle110
>
> -  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
> 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
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/


Re: [FRIAM] interesting - if true

2021-08-29 Thread Merle Lefkoff
Didn't we know that already?

On Thu, Aug 26, 2021 at 1:56 PM Prof David West 
wrote:

> I encountered the following assertions but have not been able to confirm
> or refute.
>
> 65% of Americans earning $500,000/yr or more are registered Democrats and
> 74% of those earning $100,000 or less are Registered Republican.
> (Supposedly, IRS is source, but I can find it.)
>
> The 20 wealthiest Congressional Districts have Democratic representatives.
> (How was wealth measured?)
>
> 17 of the 20 wealthiest zip codes gave more money to Democrats than
> Republicans. (
>
> More than half of the wealthiest individuals (Forbes list I guess) in the
> US, consistently support, in words and contributions (how would anyone
> know) "liberal democratic" values and causes.
>
> If these were true, it would be interesting to the extent it belies the
> caricatures of the Republican party as the bastion of the plutocrats and
> the Democratic party as the champion of the working class.
>
> davew
>
> -  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
> 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
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>


-- 
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
twitter: @merle110
-  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/


Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

2021-08-29 Thread Frank Wimberly
Nick,


Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Aug 29, 2021, 10:58 AM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> I know.  If we agreed without realizing it think of the time and work
> we've spent.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Sun, Aug 29, 2021, 10:11 AM  wrote:
>
>> Dear Frenemy,
>>
>>
>>
>> What I HOPE I said is that you have no special means of access, no
>> infallible aprehension of your own states.  I hope I did not say that you
>> have no information that I do not have, because that would be absurd.
>> Every point of view gives access to different sources of [fallible]
>> information.
>>
>>
>>
>> Geez!  I would hate to think that we AGREED after all these years.
>>
>>
>>
>> N
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick Thompson
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
>> *Sent:* Sunday, August 29, 2021 11:04 AM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick,
>>
>>
>>
>> I can't find the message to which this is an appropriate reply.  Did you
>> know once say to me that I have no private inner life or not?  Maybe I have
>> a false memory.
>>
>> Frank
>>
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 12:22 PM  wrote:
>>
>> Ach!  My point was I don't think you need organisms, or minds, or any of
>> the "hard" stuff, to run into the logical problems entailed in moving
>> between levels of organization.  Perhaps I am just too old, too slow,  too
>> HOT, too uninformed, to be in this argument, right now. Or ever?Not
>> without some help in language mediation, anyway, from some of my trusties,
>> who are absent from the conversation.   So, I bow out.   But I love you all.
>>
>> N
>>
>> Nick Thompson
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
>> Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2021 2:08 PM
>> To: friam@redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions
>>
>> Choosing a particular emotion misses the point, confuses the noise for
>> the signal. The polyphenism, alone, demonstrates that starting with a
>> particular emotion and working inversely from that phenotype to the
>> generators is guaranteed to be a difficult problem ... you're guaranteeing
>> that we stay stuck in this argument forever.
>>
>> Instead, work on the forward map from generator to phenomenon. The
>> article Roger posted goes a long way to helping us understand how to get
>> from molecules (or tissue, at least) to either glucose regulation or
>> storage/retrieval. And we're not talking about billiard balls. We're
>> talking about ion channels, neuron firing, collections of neurons firing,
>> anatomical tissue and patterns of firing correlated with such tissue, and
>> finally spectral analyses of such firing patterns. That carries us along a
>> forward map from molecules to consciousness (or, at least, perception).
>>
>> And I don't think we're going to get to EricS' question without that
>> compositional stack, because we're going to have to talk about which parts
>> are Markovian and which parts are not (or are high-order Markovian).
>>
>> On 8/26/21 9:34 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>> > I guess I think in levels of organization, and my rants are always of
>> > the form, Grant Each Level Its Due and Do Not Confuse Them.  So you can
>> discuss the amygdala all you want, but you still have not described, or
>> identified, fear.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > So, you ask, how would a person of my persuasion go about explaining
>> > the relation between the molecules in my skin  and the excitation of
>> those elections that produce on my screen, what I am writing.  Never mind
>> the socalled hard problem (the problem of the soul). Let’s figure out a way
>> to talk about that.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Or for that matter, let’s make it even simpler:  Let’s talk about the
>> > relation between the molecules of a cue  ball that result in the motion
>> of the eightball into a pocket and the loss of the game.   Let’s even do
>> some spherical cowing here and assume that one, and only one molecule of
>> the cue ball touches one and only one molecule of the eightball.  Is this a
>> good model?   Have I understood the question right?
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > I don’t think Nick should say “I am my fear.”  I think he should say
>> > “I am the sum total of all the things that I do and that fear is one of
>> the things I do”.   Or, perhaps, to put it in terms of experience-monism,
>> “I am all that I experience and when I experience my flight behavior in
>> relation to my experience of my circumstances I experience my fear.”
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > I have to g

Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

2021-08-29 Thread Marcus Daniels
Did y'all not see Monkey Pong?   Soon enough there will be measurements on all 
this and explainable ML algorithms will pick the data apart.

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of ? glen
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2021 6:37 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

I can't shake the feeling that it doesn't matter what I write, here. But I'm 
stubborn.

My point has been that our feelings are forms of self-attention. And if we take 
self-attention seriously, it may not be necessary for the learning to be 
'socially taught'. One part of the body can learn the patterns of another part 
of the body, without any inter-body social interaction.

If that happens in each body, then the slight differences in each body can lead 
to different learned patterns in each body. And if that happens, the 'hard 
problem' becomes one of uniqueness. How different are the intra-body learned 
patterns?

Inter-individual influence will dampen the diversity of intra-body learned 
patterns, but perhaps only to some extent. Even with that dampening, we might 
each be ever so slightly unique, such that no one body can ever accurately 
explain any other body [¶].

Or, perhaps that uniqueness is negligible for any 2 similarly structured 
bodies. So intraspecies mind reading is justified. But interspecies mind 
reading is not. Or maybe all mammals can mind read each other. But 
reptile-mammal mind reading can't happen.

[¶] Even if we allow a long-memory, perfect information demon, observing the 
body from the outside, that demon might not have access to the self-attention 
learning inside the target. 

On August 28, 2021 8:07:43 AM PDT, Eric Charles 
 wrote:
>The question of mechanism is not an easy one. There have been several 
>attempts to figure out how to speak of it, by those who think mostly 
>along the same lines as Nick and I do.
>
>Gilbert Ryle famously talked about "dispositions" in this context. Nick 
>wants to go with pure "up reduction". My buddies Andrew and Sabrina 
>want to talk about how organisms transition between being different 
>types of special-purpose machines. There are other options.
>
>No one is denying that there are internal mechanisms which, in the 
>right environment, will produce the pattern of responses being 
>discussed. The first question is how to properly understand the 
>relationship between that *part *of the mechanism and the 
>"higher-level" phenomenon of interest. All I care about, and all Nick 
>should care about, in that context is that we keep our descriptions and 
>explanations distinct. Discussion of brain parts serves to help explain 
>the behavioral patterns of interest, and at no point should we confuse 
>the brain parts for the behavioral pattern. That would be like 
>confusing the breakdown of baking soda with the rising of the bread.
>Obviously the baking soda is important, and it is worth describing how 
>it breaks down when wet, but also we can't rule out that there are 
>other ways for bread to rise, and if we remove all the wet baking soda, 
>no amount of staring at it in isolation will result in our finding leavened 
>bread.
>
>The second question is how to understand how we "feel" the emotion. The 
>answer is going to be something of the form: *We are socially taught to 
>recognize early correlates of the larger patterns, and to label them in 
>particular ways.* If you reject the dualistic idea that we have 
>infallible knowledge about ourselves, you are going to end up at some 
>variation of that. And if you are *not *going to reject 
>infallible-dualistic-self-insight, then we shouldn't be anywhere near 
>this discussion yet, because there are much more basic issues to figure 
>out first.
>
>Again, in a casual conversation, we can really not care about any of this.
>
>Also, I'm not sure what's up with the thumbs metaphor. You have thumbs, 
>I could definitely, have your thumbs. Yes, there's a sense in which 
>your thumb is a complex, dynamic system. But also, your thumb is easily 
>removed and handed to me. In this modern wonder-age, I could even have 
>it attached and made functional on my own hand.
>
><
--
glen ⛧

-  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/


Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

2021-08-29 Thread Frank Wimberly
I know.  If we agreed without realizing it think of the time and work we've
spent.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Aug 29, 2021, 10:11 AM  wrote:

> Dear Frenemy,
>
>
>
> What I HOPE I said is that you have no special means of access, no
> infallible aprehension of your own states.  I hope I did not say that you
> have no information that I do not have, because that would be absurd.
> Every point of view gives access to different sources of [fallible]
> information.
>
>
>
> Geez!  I would hate to think that we AGREED after all these years.
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
> *Sent:* Sunday, August 29, 2021 11:04 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions
>
>
>
> Nick,
>
>
>
> I can't find the message to which this is an appropriate reply.  Did you
> know once say to me that I have no private inner life or not?  Maybe I have
> a false memory.
>
> Frank
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 12:22 PM  wrote:
>
> Ach!  My point was I don't think you need organisms, or minds, or any of
> the "hard" stuff, to run into the logical problems entailed in moving
> between levels of organization.  Perhaps I am just too old, too slow,  too
> HOT, too uninformed, to be in this argument, right now. Or ever?Not
> without some help in language mediation, anyway, from some of my trusties,
> who are absent from the conversation.   So, I bow out.   But I love you all.
>
> N
>
> Nick Thompson
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
> Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2021 2:08 PM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions
>
> Choosing a particular emotion misses the point, confuses the noise for the
> signal. The polyphenism, alone, demonstrates that starting with a
> particular emotion and working inversely from that phenotype to the
> generators is guaranteed to be a difficult problem ... you're guaranteeing
> that we stay stuck in this argument forever.
>
> Instead, work on the forward map from generator to phenomenon. The article
> Roger posted goes a long way to helping us understand how to get from
> molecules (or tissue, at least) to either glucose regulation or
> storage/retrieval. And we're not talking about billiard balls. We're
> talking about ion channels, neuron firing, collections of neurons firing,
> anatomical tissue and patterns of firing correlated with such tissue, and
> finally spectral analyses of such firing patterns. That carries us along a
> forward map from molecules to consciousness (or, at least, perception).
>
> And I don't think we're going to get to EricS' question without that
> compositional stack, because we're going to have to talk about which parts
> are Markovian and which parts are not (or are high-order Markovian).
>
> On 8/26/21 9:34 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I guess I think in levels of organization, and my rants are always of
> > the form, Grant Each Level Its Due and Do Not Confuse Them.  So you can
> discuss the amygdala all you want, but you still have not described, or
> identified, fear.
> >
> >
> >
> > So, you ask, how would a person of my persuasion go about explaining
> > the relation between the molecules in my skin  and the excitation of
> those elections that produce on my screen, what I am writing.  Never mind
> the socalled hard problem (the problem of the soul). Let’s figure out a way
> to talk about that.
> >
> >
> >
> > Or for that matter, let’s make it even simpler:  Let’s talk about the
> > relation between the molecules of a cue  ball that result in the motion
> of the eightball into a pocket and the loss of the game.   Let’s even do
> some spherical cowing here and assume that one, and only one molecule of
> the cue ball touches one and only one molecule of the eightball.  Is this a
> good model?   Have I understood the question right?
> >
> >
> >
> > I don’t think Nick should say “I am my fear.”  I think he should say
> > “I am the sum total of all the things that I do and that fear is one of
> the things I do”.   Or, perhaps, to put it in terms of experience-monism,
> “I am all that I experience and when I experience my flight behavior in
> relation to my experience of my circumstances I experience my fear.”
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > I have to get back to that message from EricS that I bungled my response
> to.
>
> --
> ☤>$ 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
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam

Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

2021-08-29 Thread Steve Smith
Glen -


> I can't shake the feeling that it doesn't matter what I write, here. But I'm 
> stubborn.
 We rely on that.
>
> My point has been that our feelings are forms of self-attention. And if we 
> take self-attention seriously, it may not be necessary for the learning to be 
> 'socially taught'. One part of the body can learn the patterns of another 
> part of the body, without any inter-body social interaction.
I experienced this as a somewhat self-aware (reflective?) child with
limited social contact.   I spent a lot of time with myself (and more to
the point, with the natural world) and found the body-body interactions
as important as the body-environment (climbing trees, hopping from rock
to rock, digging in the ground laying on my back watching trees wave,
clouds morph, animals move about their business).   As an aging man with
a professional stake in mediating the extended sensorium (beyond
sight/sound) in the time of COVID lockdowns I am becoming more and more
aware of how my various body parts/systems interact... especially around
pain/discomfort.  Finding a comfortable sitting/sleeping position,
learning how to change my gait, my modes of moving, lifting, etc. 
consumes more than a little of my attention as it seems like it did as I
learned to walk, run, leap, swim as a child.
> If that happens in each body, then the slight differences in each body can 
> lead to different learned patterns in each body. And if that happens, the 
> 'hard problem' becomes one of uniqueness. How different are the intra-body 
> learned patterns?
>
> Inter-individual influence will dampen the diversity of intra-body learned 
> patterns, but perhaps only to some extent. Even with that dampening, we might 
> each be ever so slightly unique, such that no one body can ever accurately 
> explain any other body [¶].
>
> Or, perhaps that uniqueness is negligible for any 2 similarly structured 
> bodies. So intraspecies mind reading is justified. But interspecies mind 
> reading is not. Or maybe all mammals can mind read each other. But 
> reptile-mammal mind reading can't happen.

Having had two wildly different housemates for nearly two years, one
with some acute neurological (brain injury) challenges and another with
severe social differences (conspiracy theorist on virtually every topic
available), I am very aware of how simllar/different we can all be and
how we (do or don't) resonate.  

I think your point about inter-species is even more interesting in some
ways.   I observe that infant mammals *all* seem to be able to play with
one another which is an example of "mind-reading" as well as *learning*
or *practicing* it.   

One of my lifelong acutely recurring dreams involves "non-standard"
locomotion... dreaming about running, jumping, flying, swimming,
vine-swinging, etc.   Some of this is MY body-motor-models exercising my
body-mass/neuro-muscular leverages, elasticities, etc...   Watching
animals locomote  triggers/builds mirror neuron(al connection)s for me.

>
> [¶] Even if we allow a long-memory, perfect information demon, observing the 
> body from the outside, that demon might not have access to the self-attention 
> learning inside the target. 
>
> On August 28, 2021 8:07:43 AM PDT, Eric Charles 
>  wrote:
>> The question of mechanism is not an easy one. There have been several
>> attempts to figure out how to speak of it, by those who think mostly along
>> the same lines as Nick and I do.
>>
>> Gilbert Ryle famously talked about "dispositions" in this context. Nick
>> wants to go with pure "up reduction". My buddies Andrew and Sabrina want to
>> talk about how organisms transition between being different types of
>> special-purpose machines. There are other options.
>>
>> No one is denying that there are internal mechanisms which, in the right
>> environment, will produce the pattern of responses being discussed. The
>> first question is how to properly understand the relationship between
>> that *part
>> *of the mechanism and the "higher-level" phenomenon of interest. All I care
>> about, and all Nick should care about, in that context is that we keep our
>> descriptions and explanations distinct. Discussion of brain parts serves to
>> help explain the behavioral patterns of interest, and at no point should we
>> confuse the brain parts for the behavioral pattern. That would be like
>> confusing the breakdown of baking soda with the rising of the bread.
>> Obviously the baking soda is important, and it is worth describing how it
>> breaks down when wet, but also we can't rule out that there are other ways
>> for bread to rise, and if we remove all the wet baking soda, no amount of
>> staring at it in isolation will result in our finding leavened bread.
>>
>> The second question is how to understand how we "feel" the emotion. The
>> answer is going to be something of the form: *We are socially taught to
>> recognize early correlates of the larger patterns, and to label them in
>> particular ways.* If you r

Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

2021-08-29 Thread thompnickson2
Dear Frenemy, 

 

What I HOPE I said is that you have no special means of access, no infallible 
aprehension of your own states.  I hope I did not say that you have no 
information that I do not have, because that would be absurd.  Every point of 
view gives access to different sources of [fallible] information.  

 

Geez!  I would hate to think that we AGREED after all these years. 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2021 11:04 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

 

Nick, 

 

I can't find the message to which this is an appropriate reply.  Did you know 
once say to me that I have no private inner life or not?  Maybe I have a false 
memory.

Frank

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 12:22 PM mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

Ach!  My point was I don't think you need organisms, or minds, or any of the 
"hard" stuff, to run into the logical problems entailed in moving between 
levels of organization.  Perhaps I am just too old, too slow,  too HOT, too 
uninformed, to be in this argument, right now. Or ever?Not without some 
help in language mediation, anyway, from some of my trusties, who are absent 
from the conversation.   So, I bow out.   But I love you all.

N

Nick Thompson
thompnicks...@gmail.com  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-Original Message-
From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2021 2:08 PM
To: friam@redfish.com  
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

Choosing a particular emotion misses the point, confuses the noise for the 
signal. The polyphenism, alone, demonstrates that starting with a particular 
emotion and working inversely from that phenotype to the generators is 
guaranteed to be a difficult problem ... you're guaranteeing that we stay stuck 
in this argument forever.

Instead, work on the forward map from generator to phenomenon. The article 
Roger posted goes a long way to helping us understand how to get from molecules 
(or tissue, at least) to either glucose regulation or storage/retrieval. And 
we're not talking about billiard balls. We're talking about ion channels, 
neuron firing, collections of neurons firing, anatomical tissue and patterns of 
firing correlated with such tissue, and finally spectral analyses of such 
firing patterns. That carries us along a forward map from molecules to 
consciousness (or, at least, perception).

And I don't think we're going to get to EricS' question without that 
compositional stack, because we're going to have to talk about which parts are 
Markovian and which parts are not (or are high-order Markovian).

On 8/26/21 9:34 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com   
wrote:
> I guess I think in levels of organization, and my rants are always of 
> the form, Grant Each Level Its Due and Do Not Confuse Them.  So you can 
> discuss the amygdala all you want, but you still have not described, or 
> identified, fear.
> 
>  
> 
> So, you ask, how would a person of my persuasion go about explaining 
> the relation between the molecules in my skin  and the excitation of those 
> elections that produce on my screen, what I am writing.  Never mind the 
> socalled hard problem (the problem of the soul). Let’s figure out a way to 
> talk about that.
> 
>  
> 
> Or for that matter, let’s make it even simpler:  Let’s talk about the 
> relation between the molecules of a cue  ball that result in the motion of 
> the eightball into a pocket and the loss of the game.   Let’s even do some 
> spherical cowing here and assume that one, and only one molecule of the cue 
> ball touches one and only one molecule of the eightball.  Is this a good 
> model?   Have I understood the question right?
> 
>  
> 
> I don’t think Nick should say “I am my fear.”  I think he should say 
> “I am the sum total of all the things that I do and that fear is one of the 
> things I do”.   Or, perhaps, to put it in terms of experience-monism, “I am 
> all that I experience and when I experience my flight behavior in relation to 
> my experience of my circumstances I experience my fear.”
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> I have to get back to that message from EricS that I bungled my response to.

--
☤>$ 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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/


-  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  

Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

2021-08-29 Thread Frank Wimberly
Nick,

I can't find the message to which this is an appropriate reply.  Did you
know once say to me that I have no private inner life or not?  Maybe I have
a false memory.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 12:22 PM  wrote:

> Ach!  My point was I don't think you need organisms, or minds, or any of
> the "hard" stuff, to run into the logical problems entailed in moving
> between levels of organization.  Perhaps I am just too old, too slow,  too
> HOT, too uninformed, to be in this argument, right now. Or ever?Not
> without some help in language mediation, anyway, from some of my trusties,
> who are absent from the conversation.   So, I bow out.   But I love you all.
>
> N
>
> Nick Thompson
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
> Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2021 2:08 PM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions
>
> Choosing a particular emotion misses the point, confuses the noise for the
> signal. The polyphenism, alone, demonstrates that starting with a
> particular emotion and working inversely from that phenotype to the
> generators is guaranteed to be a difficult problem ... you're guaranteeing
> that we stay stuck in this argument forever.
>
> Instead, work on the forward map from generator to phenomenon. The article
> Roger posted goes a long way to helping us understand how to get from
> molecules (or tissue, at least) to either glucose regulation or
> storage/retrieval. And we're not talking about billiard balls. We're
> talking about ion channels, neuron firing, collections of neurons firing,
> anatomical tissue and patterns of firing correlated with such tissue, and
> finally spectral analyses of such firing patterns. That carries us along a
> forward map from molecules to consciousness (or, at least, perception).
>
> And I don't think we're going to get to EricS' question without that
> compositional stack, because we're going to have to talk about which parts
> are Markovian and which parts are not (or are high-order Markovian).
>
> On 8/26/21 9:34 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I guess I think in levels of organization, and my rants are always of
> > the form, Grant Each Level Its Due and Do Not Confuse Them.  So you can
> discuss the amygdala all you want, but you still have not described, or
> identified, fear.
> >
> >
> >
> > So, you ask, how would a person of my persuasion go about explaining
> > the relation between the molecules in my skin  and the excitation of
> those elections that produce on my screen, what I am writing.  Never mind
> the socalled hard problem (the problem of the soul). Let’s figure out a way
> to talk about that.
> >
> >
> >
> > Or for that matter, let’s make it even simpler:  Let’s talk about the
> > relation between the molecules of a cue  ball that result in the motion
> of the eightball into a pocket and the loss of the game.   Let’s even do
> some spherical cowing here and assume that one, and only one molecule of
> the cue ball touches one and only one molecule of the eightball.  Is this a
> good model?   Have I understood the question right?
> >
> >
> >
> > I don’t think Nick should say “I am my fear.”  I think he should say
> > “I am the sum total of all the things that I do and that fear is one of
> the things I do”.   Or, perhaps, to put it in terms of experience-monism,
> “I am all that I experience and when I experience my flight behavior in
> relation to my experience of my circumstances I experience my fear.”
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > I have to get back to that message from EricS that I bungled my response
> to.
>
> --
> ☤>$ 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
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.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
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/


Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

2021-08-29 Thread thompnickson2
Thank you Pieter.  New Thought!

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2021 3:09 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

 

And the elephant in the room is (.. sound of drums please ..) :

"All [groups] are created equal"

 

On Sun, 29 Aug 2021 at 03:21, mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

Hi, Eric,

Again, you appear to confound similarity with equality.  Ex hypothesi and NOT 
because I am a communist, let us invent a world in which we each serve 
different functions but are all paid exactly the same for serving them.  That 
would be a world in which there was maximum dissimilarity but financial 
equality.  Similarity has to with what we do; equality to do with how it’s 
valued.  

 

Not you say that the world I just invented is too strange to be relevant.  But 
is it that much stranger than a world in which I stand talking non-sense to a 
bunch of students for a pretty good salary while others of my generation to get 
shot at in Vietnam for peanuts?   Ditto you and Iraq.  

 

Nick 

 

Nick Thompson

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2021 8:40 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

 

Merle, 

I am deeply grateful for my life, which is extraordinarily privileged in many 
ways. I'm not sure what deep remorse would have to do with it.   

 

Even were we to institute some rules that gave everyone in the world 
historically extraordinary privileges, it would be a mistake to give everyone 
the same extraordinary privileges. A world of diverse people produces superior 
outcomes to a world of identical people. Any approach that wants to deny that 
is not going to work out well. Any approach that wants to try to give every 
single person the same life, is not a good idea. 


 

 

 

On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 11:41 AM Merle Lefkoff mailto:merlelefk...@gmail.com> > wrote:

Coming from different perspectives (missing: our interrelationship with nature) 
hasn't ultimately offered us a good future, as well as an inability to avoid 
war and addiction to weapons of mass destruction (including global warming).  I 
suggest that a new perspective for someone like Eric might be looking around at 
his extraordinarily privileged life (his life defies the human condition) and 
finding some way to express gratitude and remorse deep within.

 

On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 8:05 AM Eric Charles mailto:eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> > wrote:

" All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world."

 

Hard disagree. Perhaps in a perfect we would reduce the extreme inequities a 
bit, but it would be a much less perfect world if we created actual full 
equality. This is part of my long-standing disagreement with Nick's attempts to 
flat-world inheritance. 

 

We are in a BETTER world because people had a variety of experiences growing 
up. Some had a new bike magically appear for them one day. Some sold lemonade 
all summer and got one themselves. Some never got the new bike they wanted at 
all. Some never even got a used bike. Some were punched and had their bikes 
stolen. I'm not talking about watching a sibling literally starve to death... 
but I am talking about a broad range of unequal personal and social starting 
places. We are a better world because people live very different lives, 
pursuing very different goals, informed by different experiences, and thereby 
coming at problems from very different perspectives. 

 

"All people are created equal" is a claim about how we have socially agreed to 
treat people as if they were "endowed by their creator" with certain basic 
rights. Those are what is now called "negative rights", rights not to have 
others interfere with you in certain ways. But in a grand sense, people are not 
equal, and we wouldn't want them to be; it would be disastrous if they were. 

 

As tempting as it is to arrogantly declare that the world would be a better 
place if it everyone was just like me... I also know that's not true. There is 
no individual for which it is true, not even one as amazing as I, and not even 
one as amazing as you. 





 

 

On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 9:00 PM Sarbajit Roy mailto:sroy...@gmail.com> > wrote:

Nick, 

I am not a metaphysicist to debate such things with you. Can just state cold 
facts.

All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world.

However, when the world they are born into is imbalanced, in actuality their 
weightage depends on the circumstances of th

Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

2021-08-29 Thread ⛧ glen
I can't shake the feeling that it doesn't matter what I write, here. But I'm 
stubborn.

My point has been that our feelings are forms of self-attention. And if we take 
self-attention seriously, it may not be necessary for the learning to be 
'socially taught'. One part of the body can learn the patterns of another part 
of the body, without any inter-body social interaction.

If that happens in each body, then the slight differences in each body can lead 
to different learned patterns in each body. And if that happens, the 'hard 
problem' becomes one of uniqueness. How different are the intra-body learned 
patterns?

Inter-individual influence will dampen the diversity of intra-body learned 
patterns, but perhaps only to some extent. Even with that dampening, we might 
each be ever so slightly unique, such that no one body can ever accurately 
explain any other body [¶].

Or, perhaps that uniqueness is negligible for any 2 similarly structured 
bodies. So intraspecies mind reading is justified. But interspecies mind 
reading is not. Or maybe all mammals can mind read each other. But 
reptile-mammal mind reading can't happen.

[¶] Even if we allow a long-memory, perfect information demon, observing the 
body from the outside, that demon might not have access to the self-attention 
learning inside the target. 

On August 28, 2021 8:07:43 AM PDT, Eric Charles 
 wrote:
>The question of mechanism is not an easy one. There have been several
>attempts to figure out how to speak of it, by those who think mostly along
>the same lines as Nick and I do.
>
>Gilbert Ryle famously talked about "dispositions" in this context. Nick
>wants to go with pure "up reduction". My buddies Andrew and Sabrina want to
>talk about how organisms transition between being different types of
>special-purpose machines. There are other options.
>
>No one is denying that there are internal mechanisms which, in the right
>environment, will produce the pattern of responses being discussed. The
>first question is how to properly understand the relationship between
>that *part
>*of the mechanism and the "higher-level" phenomenon of interest. All I care
>about, and all Nick should care about, in that context is that we keep our
>descriptions and explanations distinct. Discussion of brain parts serves to
>help explain the behavioral patterns of interest, and at no point should we
>confuse the brain parts for the behavioral pattern. That would be like
>confusing the breakdown of baking soda with the rising of the bread.
>Obviously the baking soda is important, and it is worth describing how it
>breaks down when wet, but also we can't rule out that there are other ways
>for bread to rise, and if we remove all the wet baking soda, no amount of
>staring at it in isolation will result in our finding leavened bread.
>
>The second question is how to understand how we "feel" the emotion. The
>answer is going to be something of the form: *We are socially taught to
>recognize early correlates of the larger patterns, and to label them in
>particular ways.* If you reject the dualistic idea that we have infallible
>knowledge about ourselves, you are going to end up at some variation of
>that. And if you are *not *going to
>reject infallible-dualistic-self-insight, then we shouldn't be anywhere
>near this discussion yet, because there are much more basic issues
>to figure out first.
>
>Again, in a casual conversation, we can really not care about any of this.
>
>Also, I'm not sure what's up with the thumbs metaphor. You have thumbs, I
>could definitely, have your thumbs. Yes, there's a sense in which your
>thumb is a complex, dynamic system. But also, your thumb is easily removed
>and handed to me. In this modern wonder-age, I could even have it attached
>and made functional on my own hand.
>
><
-- 
glen ⛧

-  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/


Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

2021-08-29 Thread Pieter Steenekamp
And the elephant in the room is (.. sound of drums please ..) :

"All [groups] are created equal"

On Sun, 29 Aug 2021 at 03:21,  wrote:

> Hi, Eric,
>
> Again, you appear to confound similarity with equality.  *Ex hypothesi*
> and NOT because I am a communist, let us invent a world in which we each
> serve different functions but are all paid exactly the same for serving
> them.  That would be a world in which there was maximum dissimilarity but
> financial equality.  Similarity has to with what we do; equality to do with
> how it’s valued.
>
>
>
> Not you say that the world I just invented is too strange to be relevant.
> But is it that much stranger than a world in which I stand talking
> non-sense to a bunch of students for a pretty good salary while others of
> my generation to get shot at in Vietnam for peanuts?   Ditto you and Iraq.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Saturday, August 28, 2021 8:40 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"
>
>
>
> Merle,
>
> I *am *deeply grateful for my life, which *is *extraordinarily privileged
> in many ways. I'm not sure what deep remorse would have to do with it.
>
>
>
> Even were we to institute some rules that gave everyone in the world
> historically extraordinary privileges, it would be a mistake to give
> everyone the same extraordinary privileges. A world of diverse people
> produces superior outcomes to a world of identical people. Any approach
> that wants to deny that is not going to work out well. Any approach that
> wants to try to give every single person the same life, is not a good idea.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 11:41 AM Merle Lefkoff 
> wrote:
>
> Coming from different perspectives (missing: our interrelationship with
> nature) hasn't ultimately offered us a good future, as well as an inability
> to avoid war and addiction to weapons of mass destruction (including global
> warming).  I suggest that a new perspective for someone like Eric might be
> looking around at his extraordinarily privileged life (his life defies the
> human condition) and finding some way to express gratitude and remorse deep
> within.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 8:05 AM Eric Charles <
> eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> " All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world."
>
>
>
> Hard disagree. Perhaps in a perfect we would reduce the extreme inequities
> a bit, but it would be a much less perfect world if we created actual full
> equality. This is part of my long-standing disagreement with Nick's
> attempts to flat-world inheritance.
>
>
>
> We are in a BETTER world because people had a variety of experiences
> growing up. Some had a new bike magically appear for them one day. Some
> sold lemonade all summer and got one themselves. Some never got the new
> bike they wanted at all. Some never even got a used bike. Some were punched
> and had their bikes stolen. I'm not talking about watching a sibling
> literally starve to death... but I am talking about a broad range of
> unequal personal and social starting places. We are a better world because
> people live very different lives, pursuing very different goals, informed
> by different experiences, and thereby coming at problems from very
> different perspectives.
>
>
>
> "All people are created equal" is a claim about how we have socially
> agreed to treat people *as if* they were "endowed by their creator" with
> certain basic rights. Those are what is now called "negative rights",
> rights not to have others interfere with you in certain ways. But in a
> grand sense, people are not equal, and we wouldn't want them to be; it
> would be disastrous if they were.
>
>
>
> As tempting as it is to arrogantly declare that the world would be a
> better place if it everyone was just like me... I also know that's not
> true. There is no individual for which it is true, not even one as amazing
> as I, and not even one as amazing as you.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 9:00 PM Sarbajit Roy  wrote:
>
> Nick,
>
> I am not a metaphysicist to debate such things with you. Can just state
> cold facts.
>
> All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world.
>
> However, when the world they are born into is imbalanced, in actuality
> their weightage depends on the circumstances of their birth and the larger
> society(s) they are born into
>
> Attempts, by poiticians. to change that imbalance invariably create a cure
> worse worse than the disease .. killing sparrows in China or introducing
> rabbts to Australia. For instance, the *reverse discrimination* presently
> practised in India against Brahmins has been taken to extraordinary lengths
> by "vote bank" politics
>
>
> Brahmins students are not eligible (barred in law) to apply for 87% of
> seats in engine