Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
I'm way behind. Wondering why anyone is still talking about the "lack of predictability" from complex systems. I prefer thinking about the opening afforded to the "adjacent possible". On Fri, Jun 2, 2023 at 6:19 AM Prof David West wrote: > I have just started reading *The Earth Transformed* by Peter Frankorian. > It seems to have some relevance to this discussion as one of its themese is > how multiple climate change events in the past shaped human adaptation and > evolution. Might provide some interesting ground for what kind of changes > might result from current crises. Big caveat, of course, is the lack of > predictability when it comes to complex systems > > davew > > > On Wed, May 31, 2023, at 9:02 PM, David Eric Smith wrote: > > Yeah. It’s a good objection, because I don’t know either. > > > > I know what sources I am feeding off of. They are all this > > popular-science writing, and who knows its status; maybe it becomes the > > urban legend of “intellectual” spectators? > > > > There is the whole follow-on from the Siberian silver foxes, and the > > stylized facts of piebald coloring, round ears, and chattiness as the > > mark of epigenetically altered hormonal profiles among domesticates. > > Not sure how you do that with primates that already have short ears and > > limited hair, but there’s always the chattiness. > > > > Some of it, I think, came from reading Barry Lopez’s book Of Wolves and > > Men as a young kid (a book that at the time, I figured was just a > > surplus on the used-book tables, but which I have seen referred to > > repeatedly over the years), and then some decades later, some other > > book-length thing about social intelligence among dog breeds and their > > relations to wolves. The broad thesis being that adult wolves don’t > > have a sense of humor. People see wolf pups that look like dog pups > > and think “I’ll raise one of those”, and then suddenly the transition > > to adulthood happens, and all this “relation” they thought they had > > vanishes as the wolf becomes the adult wild animal, and they realize > > they are in completely over their heads. > > > > Factoid upon factoid, somewhere in this I fit the thing my boss > > mentioned a couple of years ago, about a Nature (?) article reporting > > that one of the mutations systematically separating dogs from the grey > > wolf was in the gene that is cognate to the one that mutates to cause > > Williams Syndrome in people. I mentioned that on the list maybe a year > > ago, but have’t gone to find the link myself. > > > > The thing about vigilance as an important defining dimension of the > > PTSD phenotype comes from the Jonathan Shay book I mentioned, and > > probably also Tim OBrien’s The Things They Carried, though not > > emphasized there the same way in its own name. Seems to correlate with > > being surprisingly strong while being surprisingly skinny and not > > needing to eat much (or having an interest I eating much), and with a > > portfolio of health problems that shorten lifespan. Shay thinks that > > hypervigilance, as a requirement for survival, is one of the drivers of > > PTSD and not only a symptom; the other major one being betrayal within > > what was supposed to have functioned as the social in-group and support > > structure. That was the connection to the SFI talk on “Living with > > Distrust” as a locked-in low-benefit social state (anthropological > > study of a small village I Romania). > > > > Are wild animals like that? I do have that impression, with about as > > much depth as my other impressions. Getting close to a wild fox seems > > very very hard. Raccoons too. I think of big male domestic cats as > > being pretty menacing (having been attacked by one in the dark one > > time), but the reputation is that faced with a fox or a raccoon, they > > don’t have a chance of surviving. Makes me imagine that bobcats look > > like slightly enlarged big domestic cats, but probably aren’t like them > > very much at all. > > > > I was having this discussion with someone once, sitting outside a small > > artificial lake in a little forest glen, watching the birds fight > > continuously with each other in every pairing over territory. Thinking > > “These animals are really willing to make an effort.” > > > > Eric > > > > > > > >> On May 30, 2023, at 4:27 PM, glen wrote: > >> > >> "Somehow not the domain of peace and spirituality that I think > first-worlders like to project onto first-nationers, and which might even > be true for the first-nationers, since they are also from a milder time by > a lot than a large extinction." > >> > >> IDK, man. Are wild animals different from us in any significant way? > Are they actually never lazy, never unvigilant, etc? Or, perhaps, is the > attribution of vigilance (and hence never unvigilance) an illusion born of > othering? A standard whipping post for me is this "Are you a cat person or > a dog person" cocktail party ice breaker. Admitting the
Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
Understood --- Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, Santa Fe, NM 87505 505 670-9918 Santa Fe, NM On Fri, Jun 2, 2023, 10:47 AM Nicholas Thompson wrote: > Frank, > > So is sex, if you think about it. Yet, . > > On Fri, May 26, 2023 at 3:20 PM Frank Wimberly > wrote: > >> My grandsons' girlfriends (twenty-somethings) say that they think babies >> are disgusting. I hope they change their minds. In any case, what does a >> shortage of babies have to do with AI? >> >> --- >> Frank C. Wimberly >> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, >> Santa Fe, NM 87505 >> >> 505 670-9918 >> Santa Fe, NM >> >> On Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:48 PM Roger Critchlow wrote: >> >>> Google news decided to surface an article from Fortune today. It's >>> headlined "Society's refusal to have enough babies is what will save it >>> from the existential threat of A. I., Eric Schmidt says". The headline is >>> accompanied by a very serious head shot of Eric. Nice try, Google, but >>> you're not sucking me down that rabbit hole. >>> >>> Meanwhile, someone apparently read my mind about the rationality of >>> disaster prepping and wrote an epic novel about it 40 years ago in >>> Catalan. The Garden of the Seven Twilights by Miquel de Palol is available >>> in English translation and as an ebook on overdrive.com at your local >>> library. The narrator crosses refugee swamped Barcelona to check on his >>> mom and gets sent off by her to a McMansion'ed medieval monastery high in >>> the Pyrenees where the elite are amusing themselves with stories while >>> awaiting the resolution of the first war of entertainment. Lots of stories >>> about themselves and their friends and acquaintances. >>> >>> -- rec -- >>> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom >>> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam >>> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >>> archives: 5/2017 thru present >>> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ >>> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >>> >> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom >> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam >> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >> archives: 5/2017 thru present >> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ >> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >> > -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ > -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
Gee, Nick,did I miss something? On Fri, Jun 2, 2023 at 9:47 AM Nicholas Thompson wrote: > Frank, > > So is sex, if you think about it. Yet, . > > On Fri, May 26, 2023 at 3:20 PM Frank Wimberly > wrote: > >> My grandsons' girlfriends (twenty-somethings) say that they think babies >> are disgusting. I hope they change their minds. In any case, what does a >> shortage of babies have to do with AI? >> >> --- >> Frank C. Wimberly >> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, >> Santa Fe, NM 87505 >> >> 505 670-9918 >> Santa Fe, NM >> >> On Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:48 PM Roger Critchlow wrote: >> >>> Google news decided to surface an article from Fortune today. It's >>> headlined "Society's refusal to have enough babies is what will save it >>> from the existential threat of A. I., Eric Schmidt says". The headline is >>> accompanied by a very serious head shot of Eric. Nice try, Google, but >>> you're not sucking me down that rabbit hole. >>> >>> Meanwhile, someone apparently read my mind about the rationality of >>> disaster prepping and wrote an epic novel about it 40 years ago in >>> Catalan. The Garden of the Seven Twilights by Miquel de Palol is available >>> in English translation and as an ebook on overdrive.com at your local >>> library. The narrator crosses refugee swamped Barcelona to check on his >>> mom and gets sent off by her to a McMansion'ed medieval monastery high in >>> the Pyrenees where the elite are amusing themselves with stories while >>> awaiting the resolution of the first war of entertainment. Lots of stories >>> about themselves and their friends and acquaintances. >>> >>> -- rec -- >>> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom >>> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam >>> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >>> archives: 5/2017 thru present >>> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ >>> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >>> >> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom >> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam >> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >> archives: 5/2017 thru present >> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ >> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >> > -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ > -- Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. Center for Emergent Diplomacy emergentdiplomacy.org Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA mobile: (303) 859-5609 -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
Frank, So is sex, if you think about it. Yet, . On Fri, May 26, 2023 at 3:20 PM Frank Wimberly wrote: > My grandsons' girlfriends (twenty-somethings) say that they think babies > are disgusting. I hope they change their minds. In any case, what does a > shortage of babies have to do with AI? > > --- > Frank C. Wimberly > 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, > Santa Fe, NM 87505 > > 505 670-9918 > Santa Fe, NM > > On Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:48 PM Roger Critchlow wrote: > >> Google news decided to surface an article from Fortune today. It's >> headlined "Society's refusal to have enough babies is what will save it >> from the existential threat of A. I., Eric Schmidt says". The headline is >> accompanied by a very serious head shot of Eric. Nice try, Google, but >> you're not sucking me down that rabbit hole. >> >> Meanwhile, someone apparently read my mind about the rationality of >> disaster prepping and wrote an epic novel about it 40 years ago in >> Catalan. The Garden of the Seven Twilights by Miquel de Palol is available >> in English translation and as an ebook on overdrive.com at your local >> library. The narrator crosses refugee swamped Barcelona to check on his >> mom and gets sent off by her to a McMansion'ed medieval monastery high in >> the Pyrenees where the elite are amusing themselves with stories while >> awaiting the resolution of the first war of entertainment. Lots of stories >> about themselves and their friends and acquaintances. >> >> -- rec -- >> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom >> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam >> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >> archives: 5/2017 thru present >> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ >> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >> > -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ > -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
I have just started reading **The Earth Transformed** by Peter Frankorian. It seems to have some relevance to this discussion as one of its themese is how multiple climate change events in the past shaped human adaptation and evolution. Might provide some interesting ground for what kind of changes might result from current crises. Big caveat, of course, is the lack of predictability when it comes to complex systems davew On Wed, May 31, 2023, at 9:02 PM, David Eric Smith wrote: > Yeah. It’s a good objection, because I don’t know either. > > I know what sources I am feeding off of. They are all this > popular-science writing, and who knows its status; maybe it becomes the > urban legend of “intellectual” spectators? > > There is the whole follow-on from the Siberian silver foxes, and the > stylized facts of piebald coloring, round ears, and chattiness as the > mark of epigenetically altered hormonal profiles among domesticates. > Not sure how you do that with primates that already have short ears and > limited hair, but there’s always the chattiness. > > Some of it, I think, came from reading Barry Lopez’s book Of Wolves and > Men as a young kid (a book that at the time, I figured was just a > surplus on the used-book tables, but which I have seen referred to > repeatedly over the years), and then some decades later, some other > book-length thing about social intelligence among dog breeds and their > relations to wolves. The broad thesis being that adult wolves don’t > have a sense of humor. People see wolf pups that look like dog pups > and think “I’ll raise one of those”, and then suddenly the transition > to adulthood happens, and all this “relation” they thought they had > vanishes as the wolf becomes the adult wild animal, and they realize > they are in completely over their heads. > > Factoid upon factoid, somewhere in this I fit the thing my boss > mentioned a couple of years ago, about a Nature (?) article reporting > that one of the mutations systematically separating dogs from the grey > wolf was in the gene that is cognate to the one that mutates to cause > Williams Syndrome in people. I mentioned that on the list maybe a year > ago, but have’t gone to find the link myself. > > The thing about vigilance as an important defining dimension of the > PTSD phenotype comes from the Jonathan Shay book I mentioned, and > probably also Tim OBrien’s The Things They Carried, though not > emphasized there the same way in its own name. Seems to correlate with > being surprisingly strong while being surprisingly skinny and not > needing to eat much (or having an interest I eating much), and with a > portfolio of health problems that shorten lifespan. Shay thinks that > hypervigilance, as a requirement for survival, is one of the drivers of > PTSD and not only a symptom; the other major one being betrayal within > what was supposed to have functioned as the social in-group and support > structure. That was the connection to the SFI talk on “Living with > Distrust” as a locked-in low-benefit social state (anthropological > study of a small village I Romania). > > Are wild animals like that? I do have that impression, with about as > much depth as my other impressions. Getting close to a wild fox seems > very very hard. Raccoons too. I think of big male domestic cats as > being pretty menacing (having been attacked by one in the dark one > time), but the reputation is that faced with a fox or a raccoon, they > don’t have a chance of surviving. Makes me imagine that bobcats look > like slightly enlarged big domestic cats, but probably aren’t like them > very much at all. > > I was having this discussion with someone once, sitting outside a small > artificial lake in a little forest glen, watching the birds fight > continuously with each other in every pairing over territory. Thinking > “These animals are really willing to make an effort.” > > Eric > > > >> On May 30, 2023, at 4:27 PM, glen wrote: >> >> "Somehow not the domain of peace and spirituality that I think >> first-worlders like to project onto first-nationers, and which might even be >> true for the first-nationers, since they are also from a milder time by a >> lot than a large extinction." >> >> IDK, man. Are wild animals different from us in any significant way? Are >> they actually never lazy, never unvigilant, etc? Or, perhaps, is the >> attribution of vigilance (and hence never unvigilance) an illusion born of >> othering? A standard whipping post for me is this "Are you a cat person or a >> dog person" cocktail party ice breaker. Admitting the false dichotomy, dog >> people tend to think of cats as non-social, selfish, blahblah. Cat people >> tend to think of dogs as slobbery, vapid, etc. It's complete nonsense born >> of arbitrary delusions. >> >> But of course, there is something to be said of the built environment. It >> would be difficult for a human reared in a
Re: [FRIAM] India
At the present time the roads are mostly so bad and filled with pedestrians and cows or camels darting about that self driving vehicles would be a non-starter anyway. I'm constantly amazed when I see Westerners in our capital New Delhi crossing roads at pedestrian crossings (crosswalks) on their go light naively believing that cars or buses will follow rules and stop for them. On Fri, Jun 2, 2023 at 9:12 AM Marcus Daniels wrote: > I vaguely remember some official saying that self-driving cars would be > outlawed in India, for fear it would take jobs away? > > > > *From:* Friam *On Behalf Of *Sarbajit Roy > *Sent:* Thursday, June 1, 2023 3:10 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam@redfish.com> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] India > > > -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
