Re: [FRIAM] Big data forensics

[glen ep ropella]

 of 
> interest, because the strong signatures are few and the questions many.  I 
> wanted probability methods to get distributional evidence about weak and 
> distributed, but numerous and reinforcing, patterns of concordance in 
> language.  That was the easiest idea, because we already know how to do it 
> and it was just a matter of fighting a reactionary culture.  I think just the 
> change of generations is already well on the way toward winning that battle, 
> quite independently of any tiny contribution (if any at all) that we made.
> 
> For this one (the genomic forensics), I feel like we know who many of the 
> organized actors are.  Governments will try to “control the narrative”, to 
> the extent that they perceive doing so to be in their interest, and to the 
> extent that the norms and institutions of the society give them cover in 
> doing it.  Governments that both are authoritarian and that depend on 
> promulgating an ideology are probably the most committed to doing this 
> comprehensively.  There are mid-level skirmishes, like between the US and 
> Wikileaks, but I think because of the new horizons in big computing together 
> with being able to seal off borders, China is pioneering a new frontier in 
> this, which could be a “more is different” moment.  I can’t think of a 
> counterpart to them anywhere else in the world just now.  The Russian model 
> is quite different (I like things that Masha Gessen and Gary Kasparov say 
> about that approach, granting that each of them has a POV); I have wondered 
> how much confidence to attach to public health data coming-out of Vietnam, 
> which is by many measures kind of an okay functioning society, but in which 
> any building or billboard made of durable materials is still plastered with 
> official slogans and propaganda.  (That one is not a case about which I know 
> almost anything, so my cautions there are nearly empty.). 
> 
> Against these actors, we have other big actors, like intelligence agencies, 
> and that is probably okay to produce some balance of power.  But they are all 
> monoliths.
> 
> The few cases where we have interesting data for the viral question, from 
> Yuri Deigin’s collaborators and now Jesse, are tiny data points acquired at 
> large personal time and effort, guided by insight about particular questions. 
>  I do feel like early sequence data are particularly high-value, because with 
> what we currently can estimate about mutation rates, we could plug 
> sequence-diversity data into back-of-the-envelop epidemiological models and 
> try to get a sense of how much circulation there was in any community at any 
> time, and try to back out timelines for founder infections, sort of like the 
> LANL group did for HIV in the 1990s (?).  (That was Bette Korber, Tanmoy 
> Bhattacharya, Alan Perelson, and their cohort, plus I am sure other groups 
> that I don’t know.). 
> 
> Yet we must bs swimming in genome data of an incidental nature, like stray 
> reads that end up in repositories that only by accident one would look for.  
> I continue to wonder if there is some “design” of a sieve that could automate 
> or crowdsource some of these questions, so there could be a “public option” 
> to go alongside the NSA/CIA vs. Governments dyad.  Viral genomics seems to be 
> a problem whose structure is well-matched to distributed, public-data 
> surveillance.
> 
> I worry that, as more of these discoveries come out, the government 
> intrusion, micromanagement, and punitiveness toward academic and institute 
> researchers in China is going to become just miserable.  Even it it was a 
> wild outbreak, the essentially adversarial stance the CCP takes toward the 
> rest of the world would cause them to suppress information, because they 
> don’t trust the rest of the world not to draw motivated conclusions for the 
> sake of working against them (and that is not an unreasonable fear; it’s 
> where Miranda rights come from).  So to the degree that an accurate and 
> reasonably confident story could be put together for this problem, perhaps it 
> would reduce the time this particular pain will be drawn out.  I would also 
> like to think it could contribute to a sense that there are limits to what 
> countries can expect to get away with.


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[FRIAM] The Originalist Presidency in Practice?

[glen ep ropella]

https://www.lawfareblog.com/originalist-presidency-practice
> Perhaps even more fundamentally, any approach that privileges whichever 
> branch can act and object more—as the gloss approach does—will systematically 
> favor the president over Congress, because the president can act more easily 
> and has invested in institutions like the Department of Justice’s Office of 
> Legal Counsel (OLC), whose role is to object to perceived constitutional 
> intrusions by Congress. Congress, meanwhile, lacks such an institution and 
> has not had the incentive to create one. In short, as Prakash explains (and 
> as other scholars have suggested), an interpretive method that treats 
> consistent past practice and lack of objection as evidence of 
> constitutionality will systematically privilege the president. And, as 
> Prakash shows, so it has.

This point about investing in the OLC as a "deep state" institution seems 
important. Can it be true that Congress doesn't have anything similar? Would 
the CRS be a model for such? <https://crsreports.congress.gov/> Or perhaps even 
play that role?

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[FRIAM] Personified/anthropomorphized software (was Re: New ways of understanding the world)

[glen ep ropella]

It's not about people's belief they understand the software. And I can't speak 
to Dave's motivation for believing it's the Best Way. But I can describe ways 
that this style of design produces better software than other styles.

We've talked on list quite a bit about agency, hallmarks of living systems, 
complexity buzzwords like attractors, and far-from-equilibrium, etc. By 
treating software components as Kantian ends, rather than means, helps ensure 
*distribution* of computational effort/cost. Wrapping each component in its own 
ball of responsibility/duty/self-interest helps the designer play the game, on 
a long-term basis, of "logic, logic, where is the logic".

The traditional systems engineering approach attempts to distribute logic 
according to a modernist kind of planning the whole thing out, a waterfall 
process where you spend lots of upstream time planning, get a blueprint, parcel 
out effort to subcontractors, verify, test, deploy, maintain. This works, but 
not for long, and not for massive heterogeneous systems.

The newer approaches like "agile", "continuous delivery", "devops", "code as 
data", etc. are evolutionary steps from waterfall in the right direction. But 
the limit point is to eventually have every unit of computation carry with it, 
its own context, its own "closure". Such "personification" is an effective 
heuristic for doing (and remembering to do) that.

On 12/1/20 12:31 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>  
> If you are saying that the more AI acts like a person, the more People will 
> believe they understand it, I totally agree. Whether they believe truthfully 
> is a whole ‘nother that matter.  If ever there were a cradle for 
> manipulation, AI is it. 
>
> On 12/1/20 12:01 PM, Prof David West wrote:
>> 
>> Everything I do in software is grounded in personification / 
>> anthropomorphization of objects - small bits of software. I would contend 
>> that this is the best way to understand and design such software. So I see 
>> no reason to avoid personification of AI software and would, in fact, argue 
>> that current approaches to designing an AI will fail precisely because they 
>> do not take that perspective.

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Re: [FRIAM] How soon until AI takes over polling?

[glen ep ropella]

That's an unjustified assertion. There's plenty of evidence that our CNS 
*simulates* the world and reuses components in both interacting with the world 
and simulating the world. Your dualism will not be tolerated. >8^D

There's a branch of xAI where the black boxes are "explained" dualistically 
with a white box analog that simulates the black box and something like the A/R 
ε-equivalence is used to build trust/credibility in the fidelity of that 
simulation. But they don't hot-swap components with each other, which is why (I 
think) such methods are ultimately less credible than types of xAI where the 
system that explains IS the system that executes.


On 11/11/20 9:00 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> Isn’t this a wonderful example of the incoherence of a notion of executive 
> consciousness?
> 
> The system that explains is not the system that executes.

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Re: [FRIAM] How soon until AI takes over polling?

[glen ep ropella]

I think I agree with the idea that *some of* our conceptual dynamics are 
already coupled with physical dynamics. However, I also think the recent 
discussion of the pyrrhonian problematic and vernacular conceptions of 
"mechanism" highlight where that's *not* the case.

There seems (to me) an inexorable trend toward explainable AI. The credibility 
of any conception (e.g. a simulation) hinges on being able to explain what it's 
doing. And it's not (quite) enough to bury it all in esoteric math. My own 
attempts to suss out the distinction are couched in terms of "relational 
grounding" and a form of "logical depth". The paper we published hasn't had 
much traction, though. The overwhelming majority of citations are from our own 
group. You can view xAI (or xML) as "top down" and solidly mechanistic 
approaches as "bottom up". But a network is a better way to think about it, 
where black box predictors (like ODE and stat models) are "thin" and 
mechanistic models are "thick". Deep learning is just a tad thicker. 
Mechanistic and physics-based machine learning is yet thicker.

The question is "what is the stuff that makes it thick" ... thick with what? My 
answer is model composition. And it's the composing operators that [dis]allow 
the "interreality", as well as the relationship between [white|black|grey] 
boxes.

One of the triggering assertions I use at simulation conferences is to claim 
that validation and verification are the exact same thing, because verification 
is simply the validation of one's conceptual model against one's computational 
model. It's somewhat hyperbolic because the practical methods differ. But 
making the point can open some hard-nosed engineering types to a little 
philosophical speculation.

On 11/11/20 7:08 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> 
> 
>>
>> So one more thing goes into what is both a black box and a private rather 
>> than public box.  It will take over after the first few times it produces 
>> much more reliable results, but since we won’t know what it is based on — 
>> AIs don’t explain themselves — we will have no ability to extrapolate out of 
>> sample.
>>
>> Eric
> 
> And at what point does this kind of coupling yield a full up "inter-reality" 
> in the Guintatas-Hubler sense? 
> 
> https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.75.057201
> 
> My speculation is that we are already (way past) there, which is why the idea 
> of "Russian Interference" in our election via social media feels so 
> trite/mundane if simultaneously hugely threatening.


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Re: [FRIAM] Google Dog

[glen ep ropella]

Too obfuscated for me. But here's my *guess*:

https://google.github.io/closure-library/source/closure/goog/demos/

On 9/30/20 9:42 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> Age must finally be overtaking me.  Did anybody else get hypnotized by the 
> dog google put up on their opening page today?  So far as I could figure, the 
> background never repeats.  It must be done in layers.  It would be nice if 
> somebody explained it to me so that I won’t spend the entire day staring at 
> it.

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Re: [FRIAM] hot time in town tonight

[glen ep ropella]

I don't really know where the topic ended up re: Sapir-Whorf vs. McWhorter. But 
it dovetails nicely with this sub-thread. As a reminder, here is the last post 
on the Sapir-Whorf vs. McWhorter sub-thread: 
http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ethnography-and-information-systems-tp519925p7598205.html
 wherein Dave accuses McWhorter of strawmanning Sapir-Whorf.

I know I *should* do my homework and read up on Sapir-Whorf and McWhorter's 
objection to it. But I'd like to simply bookmark what I think now so that I can 
double back and be embarrassed later. To me a language, including programming 
languages, don't control or channel "thought" in any way. But the scare quotes 
are there on purpose. Performative language, like any action, *does* feed back 
onto thought. And the feedback loop is critical. It doesn't happen inside one's 
head. It happens when you *express* in a language. So if you imagine a "mind" 
that has never said a single word, expresses a thought in some language. They 
either hear/see themselves doing the expressing or they don't. If they do, then 
that hearing/seeing modifies their "mind". If they express the thought again in 
the same language, they may (or may not) do it differently. Again, that 
modifies their "mind". Etc. It seems obvious that, over time, the framework of 
the expression(s) influences the machine doing the expressing.

Of course, there are different types of thinkers. I'm mostly algebraic. But 
I've known lots of people way smarter than me who are visual thinkers. A visual 
person expressing in text may be like the above novel expressor not 
hearing/seeing themselves doing the expression. And an algebraic person 
expressing visually may not hear/see their expression. So, a machine's 
performative expressions may have more or less feedback, again depending on the 
language, the framework in which the expression is made.

This is the heart of the argument I make to my clients. I don't argue that, 
e.g., physics-based modelers can only think in differential equations (DEs). I 
make the argument that if you *start* with a language that's limited to, or 
optimized for DEs, then each *iteration* of *that* model will be more DE-like. 
It will become difficult to generalize that model into something non-DE ... 
which provides a fulcrum for criticism of *some* hybrid cyber-physical systems, 
BTW.



On 9/23/20 9:22 AM, jon zingale wrote:
> I think that I agree with you, and add that "particularity not mattering" in
> a model is a modding-out of the thing modeled. I can imagine chains of
> quotients describing coarser and coarser models, agents to ODEs to networks
> of weighted edges, say. Comparisons, then of things modeled inducing
> comparisons across chains, maybe with some exactness or torsion criteria for
> measuring degrees of satisfaction.
>
> On 9/23/20 8:21 AM, glen ep ropella wrote:
>> A common problem I have when arguing that "mechanistic models" are 
>> qualitatively different from "descriptive models" is describing what it is 
>> about "mechanism" that's being modeled. I see it as a spectrum. Compartment 
>> models provide a good example. Some ODE contains a term that homogenizes all 
>> the stuff that happens inside cells versus, say, the intercellular matrix. 
>> Because there are 2 compartments, identifiable by terms in the equations, 
>> you can say it's "mechanistic" ... funging a bit on the "-istic" suffix. If 
>> I make some claim like: "Any one cell might behave differently from any 
>> other cell based on its history", then we could create another compartment, 
>> cells of type 1 and type 2. We can do that progressively until there's a 
>> compartment for each particular cell (and each particular extra-cellular 
>> space engineered by the actions of the cell).
>> 
>> In this sense, FP is similar to OOP in its particularity, and they contrast 
>> with homogenizing paradigms like systems dynamics models. What I'd *like* to 
>> do is find a way to emphatically ask my clients: "Does particularity 
>> matter?" Chemistry seems to say "no" for the most part. Microbiology seems 
>> to waffle a bit between small and large molecules. Medical scale biology is 
>> decidedly in the "yes" category, what with individualized treatment and "no 
>> average person" problems. Social systems are like inverted microbiology, 
>> where at smaller scopes, the answer is "yes", but at huge scopes the answer 
>> becomes "no" again. I'm too ignorant of quantum theory to say, but it seems 
>> like decoherence implies it may waffle a bit too.
>> 
>> The answer to

Re: [FRIAM] hot time in town tonight

[glen ep ropella]

A common problem I have when arguing that "mechanistic models" are 
qualitatively different from "descriptive models" is describing what it is 
about "mechanism" that's being modeled. I see it as a spectrum. Compartment 
models provide a good example. Some ODE contains a term that homogenizes all 
the stuff that happens inside cells versus, say, the intercellular matrix. 
Because there are 2 compartments, identifiable by terms in the equations, you 
can say it's "mechanistic" ... funging a bit on the "-istic" suffix. If I make 
some claim like: "Any one cell might behave differently from any other cell 
based on its history", then we could create another compartment, cells of type 
1 and type 2. We can do that progressively until there's a compartment for each 
particular cell (and each particular extra-cellular space engineered by the 
actions of the cell).

In this sense, FP is similar to OOP in its particularity, and they contrast 
with homogenizing paradigms like systems dynamics models. What I'd *like* to do 
is find a way to emphatically ask my clients: "Does particularity matter?" 
Chemistry seems to say "no" for the most part. Microbiology seems to waffle a 
bit between small and large molecules. Medical scale biology is decidedly in 
the "yes" category, what with individualized treatment and "no average person" 
problems. Social systems are like inverted microbiology, where at smaller 
scopes, the answer is "yes", but at huge scopes the answer becomes "no" again. 
I'm too ignorant of quantum theory to say, but it seems like decoherence 
implies it may waffle a bit too.

The answer to that question *should* help me choose the paradigm(s) for the 
analogs I build. Until I have a competent way to emphatically ask the question, 
though, my pluralism facilitates agile analogies. I argue for multi-models ... 
integrationist analogs that facilitate the composition of different models of 
computation. Reliance on any one computational paradigm *before* having a 
competent estimate for the analog's requirements is dangerous.

I guess it doesn't much matter how pure Rust is. It seems well situated for 
integrationism, which is the only reason I haven't given my friend an answer, 
yet. If I do "join", I'll probably do it as 1099 for now so I can treat him 
like a client instead of a boss.


On 9/22/20 7:32 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I think linear/affine types as in Rust are cool.  For one thing, they seem 
> plausible for physical analogues to computation, like your infinitely-long 
> expressions.  In a biochemical system it often wouldn't make sense to `share' 
> a variable across several expressions.   A `physical' function would consume 
> its inputs.   Similarly linear types are like the no-cloning theorem for 
> quantum states.  It's a small change for a person used to writing functional 
> programs to get in the habit of using linear types.   Similar to Swarm's 
> notion of switching phases, but where the switching of the method sets is 
> understood by the compiler and can be enforced.  Even besides the physical 
> intuition, linear types provide a low-overhead way to manage memory, like is 
> the norm for complex stack-allocated objects in C++.

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Re: [FRIAM] Exciting new Covid research

[glen ep ropella]

And here's a local "Science on Tap" event:

Supercomputing and Systems Biology: A New Hypothesis for COVID-19
Dr. Daniel Jacobson https://www.ornl.gov/staff-profile/daniel-jacobson
https://www.meetup.com/ScienceOnTapORWA/events/273259319/


On 9/2/20 4:33 PM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
> Thanks for sending that along!
> 
> Here's the Smmry for easy Nabble searching:
> https://smmry.com/https://elemental.medium.com/a-supercomputer-analyzed-covid-19-and-an-interesting-new-theory-has-emerged-31cb8eba9d63#&SM_LENGTH=7
> 
>> Jacobson's team says in their paper that "The pathology of Covid-19 is 
>> likely the result of Bradykinin Storms rather than cytokine storms," which 
>> had been previously identified in Covid-19 patients, but that "The two may 
>> be intricately linked." Other papers had previously identified bradykinin 
>> storms as a possible cause of Covid-19's pathologies.
>>
>> According to the researchers, bradykinin storms could create arrhythmias and 
>> low blood pressure, which are often seen in Covid-19 patients.
>>
>> Jacobson told me, "It is a reasonable hypothesis that many of the 
>> neurological symptoms in Covid-19 could be due to an excess of bradykinin. 
>> It has been reported that bradykinin would indeed be likely to increase the 
>> permeability of the blood-brain barrier. In addition, similar neurological 
>> symptoms have been observed in other diseases that result from an excess of 
>> bradykinin."
>>
>> Increased bradykinin levels could also account for other common Covid-19 
>> symptoms.
>>
>> The similarities between ACE inhibitor side effects and Covid-19 symptoms 
>> strengthen the bradykinin hypothesis, the researchers say.
>>
>> Though still an emerging theory, the bradykinin hypothesis explains several 
>> other of Covid-19's seemingly bizarre symptoms.
>>
>> The bradykinin hypothesis provides a model that "Contributes to a better 
>> understanding of Covid-19" and "Adds novelty to the existing literature," 
>> according to scientists Frank van de Veerdonk, Jos WM van der Meer, and 
>> Roger Little, who peer-reviewed the team's paper.
> 
> 
> 
> On 9/2/20 11:04 AM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
>> https://elemental.medium.com/a-supercomputer-analyzed-covid-19-and-an-interesting-new-theory-has-emerged-31cb8eba9d63
> 

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Re: [FRIAM] vaccine

[glen ep ropella]

Of course we get angry when some part of our toolchain breaks! The important 
attribute, though, is the extent to which we can debug and rebuild it. My point 
is the CDC isn't a monolith. And I argue the processes upon which it's built 
are transparent enough that its breakage shouldn't be that hard to recover 
from. Its composing members are deeply committed people, committed to doing the 
right thing, trying to help the world. While I agree incompetence and 
malfeasance can be damaging, I have faith in the overwhelming majority of those 
people to continue the work they do. And to whatever tiny extent I can, I'll 
help them do that work.


On August 23, 2020 10:29:54 PM PDT, David Eric Smith  
wrote:
>Well, if that’s “the key point”, then we should all get up on high
>horses and enjoy blaming everyone who ever gets angry at the loss of
>anything that was good, or useful, or valuable.  After all, any one
>thing wasn’t everything, and therefore it wasn’t diverse.  It was just
>itself.  It was just some good, or useful, thing that we put a lot of
>work into building because it was all we could do to produce one of it.
>And now some saboteurs have injured or destroyed it, and we don’t have
>any one of it at all.
>
>I cannot recreate everything in life in its best form out of my own
>self.  I am not that big.  I depend on things in the world and in
>society that take decades or centuries of work by thousands or tens of
>thousands of people to assemble, and that have no replacements when
>they are gone.
>
>> On Aug 24, 2020, at 8:36 AM, glen ep ropella 
>wrote:
>> 
>> There's the key point, right? That diversity fosters openness,
>facilitating the entrance, maintenance, and extinction of all sorts of
>wild-type rationale. Writing in stone an authority figure like the CDC,
>or Fauci, or [who|what]ever dampens that openness ... stunts our
>ability to reason. I spend a lot of energy denigrating the denial of
>expertise. But appeal to authority is arguably worse.
>> 
>> If Redfield or Azar suddenly announced a vaccine, the process is open
>enough that you could email the clinical trial PIs and find out whether
>you might trust it. Normalizing/unifying trust into any single app,
>org, or person will always be a mistake.

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Re: [FRIAM] vaccine

[glen ep ropella]

There's the key point, right? That diversity fosters openness, facilitating the 
entrance, maintenance, and extinction of all sorts of wild-type rationale. 
Writing in stone an authority figure like the CDC, or Fauci, or [who|what]ever 
dampens that openness ... stunts our ability to reason. I spend a lot of energy 
denigrating the denial of expertise. But appeal to authority is arguably worse.

If Redfield or Azar suddenly announced a vaccine, the process is open enough 
that you could email the clinical trial PIs and find out whether you might 
trust it. Normalizing/unifying trust into any single app, org, or person will 
always be a mistake.

On August 23, 2020 4:42:42 PM CDT, David Eric Smith  wrote:
> 
>if Redfield is directing the CDC, and Azar is directing whatever he
>directs, and a month before Election Day there is a declaration that
>there is a vaccine available, I would not take it.  In the earlier eras
>of the CDC — say, when the public health officials of Taiwan came to
>visit CDC to learn how to design a pandemic response, because it was
>universally seen as the gold standard world-wide — I would probably
>have taken it.  I am told, through a friend who Is a working
>epidemiologist within the agency, that both of them are regarded as
>trouble, Redfield more through incapability than malice, Azar the more
>typical trumpish combination of both.

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[FRIAM] Ever heard of a ‘top-4’ primary? It could be heading to a state near you soon

[glen ep ropella]

Apt of no other threads 8^D:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/ever-heard-of-a-top-4-primary-it-could-be-heading-to-a-state-near-you-soon/

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Re: [FRIAM] COVID-19 Pandemic Modeling and Simulation

[glen ep ropella]

Some have posted their COVID-19 models to the list. Here's a specific request 
from the SCS. It's unclear to me if they only want members to fill it out. My 
guess is they would be OK with posts from non-members as long as they were 
willing to join, present, or collaborate.

On 7/8/20 12:19 PM, donotre...@scs.org wrote:
>  
> Society for Modeling & Simulation International
> 
>   Dear SCS Member,
> 
> The ongoing pandemic of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is 
> challenging the world, countries, societies, cultures, science, technology 
> and individuals. The Society of Modeling and Simulation International, (SCS) 
> is kindly asking your contributions to tackle these challenges with modeling 
> and simulation. The SCS VP of Education is running an initiative for 
> effective collaboration and dissemination of our resources, capabilities and 
> results regarding modeling and simulating various aspects of the COVID-19 
> Pandemic. As the first step, to identify the current potential of the SCS 
> members, we would like to ask you to fill out the form in the following link: 
> https://forms.gle/L9y4fgDu7bkkUAMi8. SCS will use this information to set up 
> collaboration and dissemination channels, such as web meetings and webinars, 
> as soon as possible.  
> 
> Kind regards,
> Umut Durak
> The Society of Modeling and Simulation International, (SCS)
> VP of Education

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[FRIAM] The Virtuous Side of Viruses

[glen ep ropella]

The Virtuous Side of Viruses
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-virtuous-side-of-viruses/

Smmry's TL;DR 
<https://smmry.com/https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-virtuous-side-of-viruses/#&SM_LENGTH=7>:
> Phage therapy has long been used in eastern Europe to battle infections, but 
> after modern antibiotics arrived in the 1940s, it was largely ignored.
> 
> With modern techniques, virologists can precisely match just the right phages 
> to a specific strain of superbug-with sometimes astonishing results.
> 
> Tom Patterson, for example, was resurrected from an overwhelming Iraqibacter 
> infection after his wife, Steffanie Strathdee, an infectious disease 
> epidemiologist, scoured the world for phages that might save him.
> 
> Strathdee has since co-founded U.C.S.D.'s Center for Innovative Phage 
> Applications and Therapeutics.
> 
> In Patterson's case, nine different phages were used in various cocktails 
> injected into his bloodstream multiple times a day over 18 weeks.
> 
> After multiplying inside a bacterium, phages use lysins to break through the 
> cell wall of their host, instantly killing it.
> 
> A purified lysin made from a phage gene isolated in Fischetti's lab was 
> tested in a phase 2 trial with 116 patients suffering from staph infections 
> of the blood or heart, including 43 with MRSA strains.

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Re: [FRIAM] [Swarm-directors] proposal to invest the funds in E*Trade account

[glen ep ropella]

Yep, I like that ... though we may find several defense contractors on the list.

On 6/12/20 3:25 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

What publicly traded companies do ABM.   Go all in. ☺



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Re: [FRIAM] [Swarm-directors] today's meeting, and call for vote on proposal

[glen ep ropella]

Ooops. Sorry for the unfortunate mistake.

On 6/8/20 10:46 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> That’s so funny.  
> 
>  
> 
> *From: *Friam  on behalf of Gary Schiltz 
> 
> *Reply-To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> 
> *Date: *Monday, June 8, 2020 at 10:45 AM
> *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] [Swarm-directors] today's meeting, and call for vote 
> on proposal
> 
>  
> 
> I'm not part of Swarm, but hope you guys decide not to disband. 
> 
>  
> 
> On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 12:41 PM glen ep ropella  <mailto:g...@tempusdictum.com>> wrote:
> 
> That's convincing, Jim. I also vote "no".
> 
> I'd like to know what the mission is, even if it's only to fold and 
> disperse the funds.
> 
> On 6/8/20 10:21 AM, James J Anderson wrote:
> > I agree with Steve that bringing attention to SDG is not a very useful 
> result. Even if there is a way for Netlogo to acknowledge a $10k donation, a 
> link to the existing Swarm website is not going to impress. In particular, if 
> we do decide to be absorbed into an active organization, what is the value of 
> shining attention to SDG if it then disappears? 
> >
> > As we go forward to extinction or invigoration might we first consider 
> our assets and how they might be leveraged to some purpose. The only tangible 
> asset is the $40K in the bank. Intangible assets are a shared history and 
> disjoint but overlapping activities in ABM. Splitting up the funds is the 
> easy part, Making more of SDG requires a vision, agreement and individual 
> commitments of time. But I don't see that we can do all this before the end 
> of the voting period. We have created a false deadline for ourselves. 
> >
> > I vote no for this round.
> >
> > I do hope we can revisit Steve's proposal after we have some better 
> resolution of the future of SDG. 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] [Swarm-directors] today's meeting, and call for vote on proposal

[glen ep ropella]

That's convincing, Jim. I also vote "no". 

I'd like to know what the mission is, even if it's only to fold and disperse 
the funds.

On 6/8/20 10:21 AM, James J Anderson wrote:
> I agree with Steve that bringing attention to SDG is not a very useful 
> result. Even if there is a way for Netlogo to acknowledge a $10k donation, a 
> link to the existing Swarm website is not going to impress. In particular, if 
> we do decide to be absorbed into an active organization, what is the value of 
> shining attention to SDG if it then disappears? 
> 
> As we go forward to extinction or invigoration might we first consider our 
> assets and how they might be leveraged to some purpose. The only tangible 
> asset is the $40K in the bank. Intangible assets are a shared history and 
> disjoint but overlapping activities in ABM. Splitting up the funds is the 
> easy part, Making more of SDG requires a vision, agreement and individual 
> commitments of time. But I don't see that we can do all this before the end 
> of the voting period. We have created a false deadline for ourselves. 
> 
> I vote no for this round.
> 
> I do hope we can revisit Steve's proposal after we have some better 
> resolution of the future of SDG. 

-- 
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[FRIAM] Graal VM

[glen ep ropella]

I've recently used the Graal VM <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GraalVM> for its 
inclusion of FastR <https://github.com/oracle/fastr>. As always, this provoked 
a lot of churning amongst my Homunculi. I keep my Stay-Liberated Homunculi at 
bay by pointing out the GPL of the community edition. But they launched a mild 
riot this morning when I read this:

Oracle employees plan to walk off the job after boss holds pro-Trump fundraiser
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/13/21136577/larry-ellison-fundraiser-donald-trump-oracle-employees

Ordinarily (pre-Citizens United 
<https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/citizens-united-v-federal-election-commission/>),
 I give corporate charters the benefit of the doubt that their officers and 
owners are somewhat separated from the company. But with the continuing trend 
toward the Unitary Executive 
<https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/01/william-barr-donald-trump-mueller-report-1295273>
 and Celebrity-King 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/opinion/beyonce-coachella-blackness.html> 
(or Queen, but gender is fluid), it seems naive of me to *continue* giving them 
that benefit of the doubt.

Just as Trump has rerouted all pardoning/commutation from "the deep state" to 
his personal Celebrity-Self, corporate smoky-back-room players like Ellison (or 
Thiel, or Musk, or whichever celebrity executive/advisor/loan-shark/Great-Man 
you may want to cite) are flexing their unitary executive muscles in a variety 
of ways. I doubt that this is anything new. But with our 
[dis]information-freeflow culture, along with the surge of conspiracy theories, 
we also have a bit more visibility on their exercising of their powers ... 
there are more windows into the smoky back rooms.

If your officers/owners do something, then your employees are also *doing* that 
thing. The question is whether the employees are unaware of their complicity. 
So, some of my Homunculi are arguing: See! The contributers to Graal are *not* 
useful idiots! It doesn't matter whether they like Trump or not. What matters 
is they *know* Oracle supports Trump.

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[FRIAM] Scientific polarization

[glen ep ropella]

Scientific polarization
Cailin O’Connor, James Owen Weatherall
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13194-018-0213-9

> Contemporary societies are often “polarized”, in the sense that sub-groups 
> within these societies hold stably opposing beliefs, even when there is a 
> fact of the matter. Extant models of polarization do not capture the idea 
> that some beliefs are true and others false. Here we present a model, based 
> on the network epistemology framework of Bala and Goyal (Learning from 
> neighbors, Rev. Econ. Stud. 65(3), 784–811 1998), in which polarization 
> emerges even though agents gather evidence about their beliefs, and true 
> belief yields a pay-off advantage. As we discuss, these results are 
> especially relevant to polarization in scientific communities, for these 
> reasons. The key mechanism that generates polarization involves treating 
> evidence generated by other agents as uncertain when their beliefs are 
> relatively different from one’s own.


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Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: How Computers Work, featuring Bill Gates, and more!

[glen ep ropella]

And along these same lines:

Humble Book Bundle for Functional Programming:
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/functional-programming-books

Supporting Code for America (https://www.codeforamerica.org/).

On 01/30/2018 09:43 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> ​I wonder if we could get our governors (whichever state we live in) to join 
> the 16 who have already signed up?​
> 
> It seems to me that:
> - Broadband is a utility, like water and power.
> - CS should be taught in public schools.
> - Both together would be a Good Thing

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[FRIAM] Meltdown & Spectre

[glen ep ropella]

I'm sure you're all already aware... But just in case:

Reading privileged memory with a side-channel
https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading-privileged-memory-with-side.html

-- 
glen



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[FRIAM] Janus colloids

[glen ep ropella]

  Spontaneous system follows rules of equilibrium
  https://phys.org/news/2017-07-spontaneous-equilibrium.html

> The research was spurred when Granick and Yan noticed something strange in 
> the laboratory. As they watched a random mixture of soft-matter particles 
> called Janus colloids, which Granick previously developed, they observed that 
> the particles sometimes sorted themselves by type. Named after the Roman god 
> with two faces, the micron-sized spheres have one hemisphere coated with a 
> thin metal layer. They self-propel in the presence of an electric field, and 
> when a rotating magnetic field is applied, they move in circles. In the 
> presence of these fields, about 50 percent of the colloids orient their 
> metal-coated hemisphere in the same direction. The remaining 50 percent face 
> in the opposite direction.




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Re: [FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?

[glen ep ropella]

E.g. this seems like a coherent definition of coherence.  Is it lost in its 
technical detail?  Maybe.  Ontologies are rife with assumptions, like any other 
model.

Systematic Phenomics Analysis Deconvolutes Genes Mutated in Intellectual 
Disability into Biologically Coherent Modules
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929715004954

> Cluster biological coherence was calculated as follows. First, we retrieved 
> the GO terms associated with the disease genes under- lying cluster 
> syndromes. These GO terms were then pooled across all genes causing the same 
> syndrome, resulting in a set of GO terms annotated to the syndrome. To 
> incorporate ontological relation- ships between GO terms into the comparison, 
> we added all term ancestors to the GO term set, excluding the root terms for 
> the three GO categories. This approach has been shown to work as well as more 
> complicated approaches.31 For each syndrome pair, we deter- mined the GO term 
> overlap between the two syndromes:
> 
>   S_p(i,j) = n(G_i ∩ G_j)/n(G_i ∪ G_j)  (1)
> 
> where S_p(i,j) is the pairwise GO term overlap score for diseases i and j, n 
> is the number of GO terms meeting the specified criteria, and G_i and G_j are 
> the sets of GO terms associated with diseases i and j, respectively. For each 
> cluster, the mean pairwise overlap was used as the biological coherence score 
> for that cluster:
> 
>   n
>S_c =  Σ S_p(i,j)/n
>  i,j
> 
> where S_c is the genetic cohesiveness score for cluster c, S_p(i,j) is the GO 
> overlap score for diseases i and j, and n is the number of disease pairs in 
> the cluster. The mean biological coherence score across all clusters was used 
> as the overall cluster biological coherence score for the database:
> 
>n
>S = Σ S_c/n
>c
> 
> where S is the overall genetic cohesiveness score for the phenotype data set, 
> S_c is the genetic cohesiveness score for cluster c, and n is the number of 
> clusters in the phenotype data set.

On 06/06/2017 08:33 AM, ┣glen┫ wrote:
> Second, your "interact more closely with one another than they do with 
> entities outside the set" is nothing but _closure_.  Or if I can infer from 
> the lack of response to my broaching the term, we could use "coherence" or 
> some other word.  And that means that your working definition is not naive.  
> It does rely on an intuition that many of us share.  But in order for you to 
> know what you're talking about, you have to apply a bit more formality to 
> that concept.

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Re: [FRIAM] ​Academia.edu​

[glen ep ropella]

Perhaps this:
http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2009-January/058912.html
http://backspaces.net/28/moth-my-way-or-the-highway/

On 05/10/2017 01:59 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
> I may have missed part of the thread, but what does MOTH stand for? Or are
> you talking about the psychology of the night time equivalent of
> butterflies? A la
> https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/head-strong/201404/what-the-military-can-learn-the-peppered-moth

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] scraping a web site

[glen ep ropella]

Great idea!  I just added:



to all Nick's pages on my host.  It helped a lot on my phone.

On 01/04/2017 02:33 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
> As if Nick's head isn't already spinning from all the advice, one thing I 
> would mention is just how big a share of web access these days is via mobile 
> devices, i.e. smartphones and tablets. According to some (reputable?) 
> sources, glean from a single Google search, mobile use has overtaken desktop 
> use (desktop includes laptops). If true, then is a good idea to design new 
> web sites with this in mind, and use a platform that supports "responsive" 
> design, where the platform detects the capabilities of the user's browser and 
> formats pages accordingly. I haven't dug into Nick's site yet, so I don't how 
> amenable the pages are to formatting for a four inch screen :-)

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Re: [FRIAM] scraping a web site

[glen ep ropella]

$ wget -k -r http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/

On 01/04/2017 12:16 PM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:
> So I'm curious, what tools did you use to do Nick's migration?

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Re: [FRIAM] scraping a web site

[glen ep ropella]

Hey Nick,

I went ahead and downloaded your page(s) and put it up here:

  http://agent-based-modeling.com/ntnd/nickthompson/naturaldesigns/index.html

Let me know if I've missed anything.  I'm happy to help move it wherever.

-glen

On 01/03/2017 08:49 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> I am in the uncomfortable position of being bound by threads of steel to 
> Earthlink.  Many, MANY, years I go I started a website on Earthlink, 
> {http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ 
> <http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
> 
> }, and put a lot of my writing, and some commentary up on it.  The website 
> creation and editing medium (trellix) was pretty good for its time, and there 
> are many ways that I find the site quite satisfying.  But gradually Earthlink 
> has withdrawn its support, and now I am not sure I could get in to edit or 
> change it.  Meantime, Research Gate has gotten started, and provides a 
> somewhat better place to meet the world and archive my stuff.  And also, 
> having the site on earthlink binds me to them and their 22 dollar a month 
> fee.  So. …
> 
>  
> 
> I am wondering if there is a way (or a service that would) scrape the website 
> and, possibly, dump it into a new and more reliable, more website creation 
> medium?  Please, ambulatory knowledge only.  I don’t want a people doing deep 
> searches to answer this  question . 


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Re: [FRIAM] Euthphyro vs Socrates

[glen ep ropella]

Ha! Yes. Perhaps that's exactly what Noah was talking about. >8^) But to be 
fair, we're all toddlers to some extent. I've always been confused about why 
child-like is a compliment but childish is an insult.


On December 8, 2016 5:54:43 PM PST, Steven A Smith  wrote:
>... reminds me of a famous line on 
>FriAM a few years ago, I think it went "You can be such an a**hole 
>sometimes"

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Dawning of the age of stochasticity

[glen ep ropella]

Very cool article, Grant!  Thanks.  I started to get lost on page 11 with the 
meta-axioms that give the Bernoulli random variables. *8^(  It's interesting 
that the wikipedia page 
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis#Arguments_for_and_against_CH)
 mentions Feferman's semi-intuitionistic ideas in the same context as 
Freiling's argument against the CH.

But I was irritated by his maps from the traditional subdivisions of math to 
the primitive elements of human experience.  The geometry one seems right to 
me.  But either he didn't finish explaining the referents of analysis, or I 
disagree.  Analysis (to me, of course) is all about _proximity_, the closeness 
of any bunch of things.  Differentiation being about the determination of a 
locality and integration being about establishing totalities.  Although it's 
obvious (hindsight is 20/20) how to get to analysis from the calculus and from 
forces.  It doesn't strike me that forces (and acceleration and oscillation) 
are the primitive human experiences referred to by analysis, as a domain.

Also, I don't really agree with the map from algebra to recipes of action.  To me algebra 
is about the preservation of some ... "substance" _through_ transformation.  
So, like with forces giving us (well, Newton and Leibniz) a path into the calculus, the 
composition of actions in algebra is a kind of side effect.  The core of it (to me, a 
non-mathematician!) is about the preservation of some quality through equivalence (and 
equivalence classes).

Obviously, it would be silly for me to argue with Mumford on this sort of 
thing.  But I'm wondering whether you (or anyone on the list) see these 
experience correlations more as he sees them?

As usual, I have no comment on the actual topic of the paper. 8^)

On 11/13/2016 10:21 AM, Grant Holland wrote:

http://www.stat.uchicago.edu/~lekheng/courses/191f09/mumford-AMS.pdf


--
glen ep ropella ⊥ 971-280-5699


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Re: [FRIAM] what other subject is there this morning

[glen ep ropella]

Heh. I'd move back if they did. In the meantime, I'd push for Cascadia. 

On November 9, 2016 9:01:02 PM PST, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
>What isn't possible at this point?
>
>
>https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/09/trump-win-california-secede-calexit-silicon-valley?CMP=edit_2221
>
>Silicon Valley investors call for California to secede from the US
>after Trump
>win
>www.theguardian.com
>Hyperloop co-founder said he would fund ‘Calexit’ campaign for
>Democratic state to become its own nation as tech industry has been at
>odds with Trump
>
>
>
>
>
>From: Friam  on behalf of Edward Angel
>
>Sent: Wednesday, November 9, 2016 11:31:28 AM
>To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] what other subject is there this morning
>
>Even if Congress were willing to get rid of the EC, the constitutional
>amendment could never get enough states to pass it.
>
>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)   an...@cs.unm.edu
>505-453-4944 (cell)  http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
>
>On Nov 9, 2016, at 10:47 AM, Tom Johnson
>mailto:t...@jtjohnson.com>> wrote:
>
>"Interesting that HRC seems likely to win the popular vote. "
>
>Simply that the Electoral College is, today, a screwy concept.  And
>remember, this happened in 2000 when the Republicans also prevailed.  I
>doubt a majority of Congress has the cajones to get rid of the EC.
>TJ
>
>
>
>Tom Johnson
>Institute for Analytic Journalism   -- Santa Fe, NM USA
>505.577.6482(c)505.473.9646(h)
>Society of Professional Journalists
>Check out It's The People's
>Data
>http://www.jtjohnson.com  
>t...@jtjohnson.com
>
>
>On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 10:42 AM, Owen Densmore
>mailto:o...@backspaces.net>> wrote:
>Interesting that HRC seems likely to win the popular vote. Now what
>does THAT say about democracy?
>
>
>
>
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>
>
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>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
glen


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Re: [FRIAM] Trump Is Just A Normal Polling Error Behind Clinton | FiveThirtyEight

[glen ep ropella]

Well, I tend to use "rational" to mean analytic, cutting up. So when the 
liberals I was talking to expressed that the vote Trump as molotov cocktail was 
rational, I heard "if that's the way you slice up the world, then it makes 
sense ... it's not nonsense." But by saying it was unreasonable, they're simply 
pointing out that it's an extreme way to slice up the world. You don't need 
naive realism to grok that distinction.

On November 7, 2016 8:04:12 PM PST, Nick Thompson  
wrote:
>“unreasonable but rational”

-- 
glen


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Re: [FRIAM] Trump Is Just A Normal Polling Error Behind Clinton | FiveThirtyEight

[glen ep ropella]

That's it in the abstract. But to be more concrete, if Trump wins, I'll have to 
talk with various people about specific consequences of whatever his 
administration does. Eg since Renee's a nurse and I have cancer, I have to 
discuss healthcare and insurance and unions in specific. With Obama and 
Clinton, I have little trouble engaging seriously. With Trump, I'll have to 
pretend to treat it seriously and discuss without calling him an idiot. I'm 
used to this type of code switch when I go home and talk to the right wingers 
in my family. But if Trump wins I expect I'll have to do it up here too.

I _could_ just be a jerk for the next 4-8 years and refuse to try. But that 
causes me more stress than simply switching and engage.

On November 7, 2016 5:55:54 PM PST, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
>Steve writes:
>
>
>"I'm not sure I understand why
>
>either of you (Marcus or Glen) expect to need to do significantly more
>"code switching" than you probably already do to bridge different
>communities or aspect of your life?"
>
>
>Imagine an agent-based model where there are two worlds,  D and H, each
>with their unique constraints.  Then there are tactics that agents G or
>M can execute.   These tactics are a little different for G and M's
>unique capabilities,  as they are for hundreds of millions of other
>agents.  The G and M agents will load up different tactic decks that
>will optimize for hazards in worlds D and H in different ways.  I can't
>speak for the G agent, but the M agent finds the tactics he can load to
>function in the H world more interesting than the ones in the D world. 
>But M will go ahead and load and elaborate the D tactics if push comes
>to shove.   M would rather not waste cycles and memory on the D deck.
-- 
glen


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Re: [FRIAM] Yearly rant about this daylight savings stuff

[glen ep ropella]

I enjoy it. It's like losing a $20 bill in the spring, then finding it in your 
coat pocket in the fall.


On November 5, 2016 11:03:41 PM PDT, Nick Thompson  
wrote:
>
>Since retirement, we Thompsons reset our clocks and just keep on living
>as
>we have been, doing things an hour earlier on the clock.  Eventually it
>catches up with us, but for a while, we still have the long afternoons.


-- 
glen


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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[glen ep ropella]

On October 28, 2016 7:28:22 PM PDT, Owen Densmore  wrote:
>Sorry to be pedestrian, but how about the OP's desire to convert
>thread(s)
>into posts/correspondence?

But that was my point in mentioning a tree threaded mail reader, especially an 
open source one. It should be a matter of straightforward engineering to 
extract the part of tbird that makes a tree out of a thread. That code could be 
the launch point for a tool to do what we want.

Determining whether a line prefixed with the quote char is intentionally quoted 
or detritus should be easy enough. If all remaining text after the nonquoted 
part is quoted, then it can be tossed. But if there is a quoted part followed 
by a nonquoted part, it should remain.

I really think 80 to 90 % of what Nick wants exists.  But there's no incentive 
to do that work. And the amount of work to go from 80% to 100% is always large.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Memo To Jeff Bezos: The Most Productive Workers Are Team Players, Not Selfish Individualists | The Evolution Institute

[glen ep ropella]

OK. I agree pretty much with what you say below. But that's more of a statement 
about the application of resources, not the efficacy of teams. Humans, being 
complex machines with diverse phenotypes are best applied to multifarious 
problems. As automation takes over tasks, the displaced humans should be 
reapplied.  That's not happening as fast as we'd like. But it doesn't imply 
that teams are less effective than individuals or that teams are mostly a tool 
to undermine individuals.

On October 27, 2016 5:32:18 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
>
>"I don't understand what you're saying, here.  Are you saying that
>professionals don't, say, bake cookies for the PTA or their kid's
>baseball team?  Obviously you're not saying that."
>
>I am talking about the major compromises people make to make it up the
>corporate ladder or beat out their competitors.   Ok, they may bake
>cookies, but the kids aren't coming to work, they're going to day care.
>Meanwhile, in case you hadn't noticed the middle class is disappearing.
>People are falling down or they are moving up.When I say
>"Professionals do XXX", I mean "It is in the best interest of
>professionals who want to remain professionals to do XXX", especially
>when the work could soon be automated.  Of course, they may do all
>sorts of things in practice.  The world you are talking about is not
>going to  be sustainable for long.
>
>Marcus
>--
>Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and
>original in your work. -- Gustave Flaubert
>
>
>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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Re: [FRIAM] speaking of analytics

[glen ep ropella]

On September 10, 2016 9:45:40 PM PDT, Nick Thompson 
 wrote:
>I think it's the word "registration" that has me most confused.  Can you help 
>a bit further? 

Registration is when a quality/feature coalesces or seems to emerge from the 
ambience ... when a structure appears amongst the structureless noise.

>Does inductive inference involve metaphor?  That seems to be the lurking 
>question, here.  Inductive inference is famously incomplete without some 
>fundamental assumptions (abductions) concerning the kind of world we are in 
>... a stable one, for instance.  So, I would answer the question, yes.

I don't think all types of induction require metaphor, no. It seems like 
induction can be done with meaningless symbols. ... like asking what symbol 
should follow in this sequence: 

   a 6 g ! 4 q t

It may well be more powerful to attach meaning to the symbols as part of your 
guess. But it isn't necessary. Part of the problem might be that we tend to 
assume there exists a correct and unique answer to the question. E.g. if I were 
to _tell_ you that the 8th symbol was definite, just hidden from you. But 
induction need not assume a definite, correct, unique 8th symbol. Any new 
symbol derived from the 1st 7 will be an inductive inference. It doesn't matter 
whether the result is true or false (or pink or whatever). It's still induction.

It may be reasonable to claim that no inductive inference can be made, which 
would imply that there is zero signal in the data at all. But what you're 
really claiming in that case is that any induction is as good as any other 
induction. That doesn't prevent some arbitrary inference from happening. It 
only tells us that we have no a priori way of estimating its likelihood of 
success.


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Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Re: Understanding you-folks

[glen ep ropella]

On 07/07/2016 02:11 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

I don't understand why you connect special purpose devices with paper math vs. 
computation.   I claim the problem with paper math is that 1) the former does not carry 
or enforce correctness checks, 2) it is not put in context -- things are pulled out of 
thin air as "the reader should know this", and 3) there isn't a formal mapping 
or harness to a universal computer.


Well, I disagree with all 3 of those assertions.  But it's a soft disagreement.  I rely on softening the definitions of 
"correctness checks", "put in context", "harness to universal computer".  Paper math is a 
social enterprise and that sociality is the correctness check.  Similarly, it is put in the context of its application 
and/or the larger body of math.  And the "universal computer" it is harnessed to is (proximally) the human 
brain/CNS and (distally) logic/reasoning as a whole.

Paper math is a semi-semantic computation.  This is nothing more than a restatement of 
Hilbert's program.  It is a (canonical) use case of a special purpose device: the human 
brain.  It's interesting and meaningful to ask whether or not computers can do the math 
humans do.  I think the answer keeps coming up "yes" ... but people smarter 
than me are not convinced.  So, we shouldn't be stubbornly reductionist.  It hurts nobody 
to let them have the distinction ... at least for now and possibly forever.


If all domain-specific artifacts were built up with machine readable 
ontologies, then the general intelligent agents will have threads to pull to 
start putting the artifacts in context.   Perhaps some kinds of agents, like 
humans, would benefit from additional `analogy modules' to assist with mapping 
large semantic graphs into similar pre-existing ones.  That would be an 
accelerator for learning, not a question of having a sufficient semantic 
representation.


Well, OK.  But there's still an assumption that the infrastructure will be 
complete, high quality, and credible.  Is there room for gaming and 
misinformation in such systems?  Can our ontological mesh lie to people?  ... 
create idiot savants? ... be used to rig elections?  If so, then it most 
assuredly _is_ a question of sufficient semantic grounding.

--
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Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Re: Understanding you-folks

[glen ep ropella]

Heh, to be as clear as possible, there were 4 questions in the OP and several 
follow-up questions, summarized below.  I think the additional ideas on 
computation were (mostly) addressing the follow-up questions, particularly the 
_exploration_ of the idea that not all inference is computational.  But those 
additional ideas also address the OP question #2 to some extent.  We have 1 
answer to OP #1 from Dave.

On 07/02/2016 08:30 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Dear Friammers,
> 1.   Has anybody read this book?
> 2.   Do you understand it?
> 3.   WTF is an Accept State?
> 4.   And why is it called an “Accept State?”

On 07/05/2016 06:25 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> If one has to use an “artificial” stop rule such as “quit when you get to the 
> tenth decimal point”, is such a problem deemed “computable” or 
> “non-computable”?  Can one “compute” the square root of two? 

On 07/06/2016 11:33 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Thanks, Glen,
> I assume that the following is NOT a program in your sense.
> ;;Compute the sum of 2 and 2;;.
> Begin
> Ask Dad, "Dad, what is the sum of 2 and 2?
> Dad says, "Four"
> Four
> End.  
> It is, however, an algorithm, right? 

On 07/06/2016 12:05 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> I guess what I was fishing for is some sort of exploration of the idea that 
> not all procedures for arriving at answers are computations.   

On 07/07/2016 11:32 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote:
> Nick,
> 
> Owen asks:
>> has the OP (original post) been satisfied?  
> 
> Has the this email thread answered your original question what an Accept 
> state is? And why it is called an Accept state?
> 
> Are we in an accept or reject state. Or like many threads is this non-halting?

> On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 8:10 AM, Owen Densmore  <mailto:o...@backspaces.net>> wrote:
>> 
>> Just to calibrate: has the OP been satisfied? 
>> 
>> I *think* so, we discussed FSM's discussing their input string and their 
>> final state and whether that was the designated accept state.
>> 
>> And tho a Turing Machine is more than a FSM, the vocabulary of states, 
>> input strings and so on should answer the OP.
>> 
>> I'm not sure the additional ideas on computation were coherent enough to 
>> add to his interest, but then, knowing Nick, I could be wrong!
>> 
>> Hope the book reading is progressing with success, given our help.


-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Understanding you-folks

[glen ep ropella]

All computers are analog at their base.  The only thing that distinguishes 
so-called analog computers from typical computers is their lack of 
universality.  The analogies/models these analog computers implement are simply 
more obvious than those of the more universal, general purpose, computers.  
Universality is proportional to the extent to which the computation is purely 
syntactical (non-semantic).  The less universal, the more specific, the more 
"analog".

The false identification of continuity with "analog" and discreteness with 
"digital" is a red herring and has caused all sorts of nonsensical hot air.  
What's important is how the machine models its referent.  Analog computers 
(like the MOSFET √ Marcus linked to) simply have a natural and tightly bound 
referent.  It's that tight _binding_ that gives the analog computers both their 
efficiency edge and their lack of universality.  The meaning has already been 
assigned (or at least constrained).  Analog computers are implementations of 
domain-specific languages.


On 07/06/2016 02:31 PM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:
> My question is then what do Analog Computers 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer> do and how do they fit into 
> Nick's exploration? As I recall they have no procedures but do produce 
> 'answers' without computation as we commonly know it these days. They 
> probably have an 'accept state' to tell the user when the 'answer' is 
> available. The same Wikipedia article (linked) speaks to ongoing research 
> into their use.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Re: Understanding you-folks

[glen ep ropella]

I don't disagree with you.  But the question is less about whether any part of "an 
answer" is definable as computation and more about a value judgement on the results 
(or inputs) of any particular computation.  If there is such a thing in the universe as a 
non-computational process (oracle) that sits inside the agent (or lurking out in the 
milieu), then when the computational cascade hits that non-computational process, that's 
when the binding/grounding/meaning obtains.

It's obvious that higher order processes (like quantification over quantifications) can be at least 
simulated in any modern computer programming language.  (assuming the parallelism theorem)  And 
languages like Coq can even help express intuitionistic logics.  Whether such things are exactly 
equivalent to the higher order math we use in things like analysis is an open question, I think(!). 
 I could easily be wrong, since I don't really grok things like HoTT.  But even if unification were 
demonstrable everywhere, it's still a reasonable question for the lay person to wonder about.  
Where does vernacular "computation" stop and this high-falutin fancy-pants 
"computation" begin?  The same sort of question occurs in questions about the neural 
correlates of consciousness.



On 07/06/2016 04:00 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

I don't see how this is unexpected or suggests anything that can't be computed. 
  The agent takes a higher order function as an argument and then uses it.  
That is exactly like plugging in a constant.   In fact, any decent compiler 
that inlines using interprocedural optimization will actually treat it that 
way.  The generated object code will be the caller function with the argument 
incorporated into it, e.g. g(f,m,s) turns into just h(m,s).   And users of 
languages like Haskell do this sort of partial application all the time 
[without particular concern for how it works].   If g is the anticipatory agent 
that is responding to other stimuli, s, then f may take on a different meaning 
than if it were incorporated into some other function like g'.   Likewise if 
there are m and m' for different milieu environments different behaviors could 
occur for h(m,s) or h(m',s).That being realized, it doesn't mean that f has 
any magical meaning.  It can still be understood completely without th
 at coupling.



--
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[FRIAM] Fwd: Re: Understanding you-folks

[glen ep ropella]

Seems my other email address is jammed up ... made it to the archives, though.

 Forwarded Message 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Understanding you-folks
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2016 13:51:13 -0700
From: glen ☣ 
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 


Well, we're in some rarefied air, now ... but since most of you are in Santa 
Fe, you're used to it.  I'll give you 3 ways (I find interesting) that meaning 
might be non-computational (or at least not 1st order):

   1) Rosen: loopiness/closure,
   2) situatedness, embeddedness (Penrose: quantum embeddedness), and
   3) coherence (who?).

(1) has to do with higher order operations.  A variable takes on meaning when 
(partially) convolved into an anticipatory agent ... some process that 
expects/anticipates the future.  (2) A variable takes on meaning when it 
interacts with the milieu (probably bound by a light cone). And (3) a variable 
takes on meaning when/if it perfectly integrates with every sentence (again 
probably bound by some inferential proximity) in the system.

These are types of binding that are distinct from, say, plugging in a constant 
or yet another schema.

On 07/06/2016 01:34 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

What does it mean to _mean_ something?   Just grounding in some real world 
phenomenology?   Or does it require sensors and actuators -- robotics?


--
☣ glen


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Re: [FRIAM] Understanding you-folks

[glen ep ropella]

Nick,  It's fantastic how you punch right through the rhetoric to the deeper 
philosophical points.  Thanks.

It all depends on how you define "compute".  I think the best definition 
offered here (by Lee) is Soare's:

"A computation is a process whereby we proceed from initially given objects, 
called inputs, according to a fixed set of rules, called a program, procedure, 
or algorithm, through a series of steps and arrive at the end of these steps 
with a final result, called the output. The algorithm, as a set of rules 
proceeding from inputs to output, must be precise and definite, with each 
successive step clearly determined. (Soare, 1996, p. 286; definitional emphases 
in the original)"

The tricky part, in my opinion, is the "definite" requirement.  Definiteness 
seems like a relatively simple concept.  But it's not.  cf eg:

https://aphilosopherstake.com/2016/06/11/is-the-universe-part-of-the-world/

"We often speak as if we can quantify over absolutely everything, or at least 
absolutely every-actual-thing, but then continue to reason as if all of those 
(actual) things form a set. In many cases this looks perfectly harmless. If 
we’re talking about medium-sized dry goods, for example, we can think of our 
quantifiers as being implicitly restricted to e.g. physical objects (our 
second-order quantifiers to sets of those, etc). As on even the most liberal 
views of what counts as a physical object, there aren’t more than 
continuum-many (the cardinality of the real numbers) of them, we shouldn’t run 
into an immediate problems."

On 07/05/2016 09:43 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Thanks, Frank. 
> Now all is clear.
> 
> On 07/05/2016 07:31 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>> You can decide what it means to compute the square root of 2.  For example, 
>> you can program the Turing machine to enter an accept state if it finds a 
>> number (it can) whose square is within 10^-9 of 2.
>>
>> On 07/05/2016 06:25 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Thanks, Eric,
>>> 
>>>  Can one “compute” the square root of two? 


-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Strawson on consciousness.

[glen ep ropella]

One man's spam is another man's "valid content". For example, I learned this 
JavaScript trick from a ransomware attack I received awhile back:

  > this["eval"]("console.log(\'hello\')")
  hello

Anyway, because you _personally_ recommend the book, I'll finally take a look.

On 05/20/2016 10:52 AM, Robert Wall wrote:
> Yikes!  I hope I didn't just add to your spam!  😕

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Strawson on consciousness.

[glen ep ropella]

On 05/20/2016 10:11 AM, Robert Wall wrote:
> Have you read Averill Law's /Simulation Modeling and Analysis/?  Makes a good 
> reference too.  Cheers.

Not yet.  I'm glad to hear you say that.  I've been suspicious of Law's work 
because I get continual _spam_ from him (or his staff, or publishers of his 
work, ... or whoever).  In general, I'm a fan of spam.  It's co-evolution up 
front and personal.  But when someone claims to be an expert in my field, a 
field that is notoriously horizontal, then not only makes that claim but 
_spams_ me on a regular basis, my normally cheery attitude turns negative.

But with your recommendation (the 1st I've seen aside from the spam), I'll take 
a look.  Thanks!

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Re: [FRIAM] Undark: Why Science Journalism Matters

[glen ep ropella]

Most definitely.  That one's going into the RSS feed. 8^)

On 03/17/2016 06:36 PM, Robert Wall wrote:

Also, a welcomed introduction to the UnDark digital publication. I have it
bookmarked.  Carl Zimmer, Rebecca Skloot, David Corcoran ... nothing but
good stuff.



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Re: [FRIAM] My Del seems kuput

[glen ep ropella]

While trying to find out how much the NUC5i7RYH weighs, I got a kick out of the 
NaNs in the Date field:

   http://imgur.com/UgmoK0l


On 12/14/2015 05:09 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Good direction, I think.

I did a similar thing for several years: I got a Mac Mini and used it for a
desktop. The NUC is sorta a Windows/Linux version?

-- Owen

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 5:33 PM, Russell Standish 
wrote:


I just recently bought an Intel NUC. Very compact (about the size of a
thick paperback), but a powerful desktop machine as well (powerful
enough for my C++ development needs when on the road).

Entry level NUC may suit your budget...


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Re: [FRIAM] Welding. Welding what? Wood?

[glen ep ropella]

I thought this might be interesting to some, here.

On 10/30/2015 01:52 PM, Mark Morland wrote:

Welding wood?  WTF?

https://youtu.be/X0k04hjdYuQ



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Re: [FRIAM] FW: Meat

[glen ep ropella]

On 10/28/2015 12:05 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Now, how similar is your behavior in regard to climate change to the 
decision-making patterns you describe here.


I don't understand the question.  How similar is my behavior is to my 
decision-making?  That's so over-loaded with implications I can't think 
straight. 8^)  First, what I tried to describe was my behavior, not my 
decision-making.  Your question not only implies that I failed in that, but 
that there's a difference between decision-making and behavior.  
Decision-making and behavior are the same thing.

Second, it's not clear that anything I do can affect climate change at all.  
Or, let me put it another way.  There are things I can control (like voting, 
calling a representative, arguing in bars, drinking out of reusable containers, 
etc.).  But the connection of any of those things with climate change is 
tenuous.  So, when making my decisions (i.e.  behaving) I rely on _lots_ of 
broad spectrum inputs, parallax, not merely climate change ... not a single 
input.  My decisions (voting, getting to-go beer in a growler, etc) are all 
multiply and heterogeneously justified.  Hence it's misleading to impute a 
single cause for any given behavior/decision.


Also: turn your analytic skills on what you are doing here.  Is it REASONABLE.  
Is it REASONING.  Is it EVER reasonable to change your individual behavior on 
the basis of a population average?


Well, like a broken record, there is no "reason" independent of my biological milieu.  I think that implies 
the answer to your question is "of course".  If my biology is driven by, say, the trace minerals in my tap 
water, and most people in my city drink the same tap water, then of course, it's reasonable to assume we'll change our 
behavior _toward_ a population average ... probably the same reason we all react to "house music" or fruit.  
You may _say_ you don't like fructose ... but that highlights the ambiguity in "like", not the biology that 
processs it.

But if your question is intended to invoke the deus ex machina, where _thought_ 
(esp. a single thought) is the causa prima for action, then absolutely NO.  
That never happens in me and I deny that it happens in you or anyone else.

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Re: [FRIAM] Hosting Service

[glen ep ropella]

These guys have a cheap option:

  http://directspace.net/services/virtual/ovzfeatures.php

I have the $4/month one and it works well enough.

On 09/28/2015 11:57 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:

The hosting service for backspaces.net <http://backspaces.net> literally closed 
up shop and disappeared w/o warning or access to data!

So I'm looking for a reasonable hosting service with ssh access and modest hacking 
capabilities .. bash, *nix commands, possibly node.js, as well as a reasonable 
"dashboard" .. like CPanel or similar for installing packages.

I'll probably use this as a way to toss hosted wordpress and media wiki and 
just use much simpler blog/wiki web services.



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Re: [FRIAM] What is WebAssembly? The Dawn of a New Era

[glen ep ropella]

On 09/15/2015 10:17 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:

https://medium.com/javascript-scene/what-is-webassembly-the-dawn-of-a-new-era-61256ec5a8f6


Nice article, thanks!  I can't help but wonder if (as Ray commented re: 
unikernels) we're simply returning to the past.  I'm too ignorant to see how 
this is _fundamentally_ different from virtual machines and bytecode.

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Re: [FRIAM] Every browser sucks

[glen ep ropella]

The solutions to these problems are here:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Source_Code/Mercurial
http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/get-the-code

8^)

On 09/03/2015 07:03 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:

How about Chrome or Firefox or Opera on a decent computer?  :-)

By that, I mean a machine with sufficient resources in terms of RAM,
CPU, and GPU. For today’s browsers, that means about 4 GB of RAM,
something on the order of an Intel Core i5 or AMD equivalent
processor, and at least a decent GPU. My decent computer happens to be
a Mac, but I’ve been happy enough with Windows when I’ve had to be. Or
any decent Linux distro, again on said decent hardware.

On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 8:10 PM, Gillian Densmore  wrote:

I have had enough of both chrome, and firefox.

Chrome has a crappy UI and FireFox crashes every 10 seconds fucking me over.

I hate them both

What out there doesn't suck?



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Re: [FRIAM] radiation from solar arrays

[glen ep ropella]

I took him to mean noises (outside) you hear as you drive by, because up here 
there are several large power transmission lines you float under when you're 
rafting or hike under up in the mountains; and when you're near these power 
lines, you can hear a very loud crackling hum/hiss... like a Jacob's Ladder, 
but with a constant set of tones:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXiOQCRiSp0


On 09/03/2015 08:49 AM, cody dooderson wrote:

Are you talking about static on your car radio, or static electricity?
Static electricity would be weird, but I bet somebody could explain the
static on a car radio.

Cody Smith

On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 9:12 AM, Nick Thompson 
wrote:


Hi, everybody,



Still in Massachusetts, where there is a bit of a boom in large,
industrial scale, solar arrays.  There is a multi-acre array nearby that is
said to make static as you drive by it.  Is there anything that these
arrays could be emitting?   Or could the structure of the thing be
“resonating” to something and amplifying it?


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Re: [FRIAM] Blog+wiki?oO

[glen ep ropella]

It sounds like you're looking for a free hosted CMS.  Perhaps try Joomla:

  https://www.joomla.com/

I wouldn't say it's "the best" in any sense.  But it looks like you can set up 
a free site that's blog- and wiki-ish.


On 08/26/2015 07:11 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote:

Hi all anyone know if there's  a hosted system that mixes some blgo and
wiki features?
I ask because  my self hosted blog on namecheap may have caused namecheap
to go kaboom, as I love love Wordpress's Wiki-plugin for how-tos and notes
to myself but if I'm to awsome for name cheap than I'll need a alternative


Wiki features I like: Can add to a page, if I make a mistake can undue it I
can be looking at the website and add to it without hopping around from a
adminy pannel and the page i'm looking at

Wordpres i love because it's fun and easy to add post, manage photos and
video

Is there a system that has best of both? If so what's been peoples
experiences



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Re: [FRIAM] A PolyMath by any other name...

[glen ep ropella]

On 08/12/2015 08:49 AM, Steve Smith wrote:

 Are *we* a key part of the microbiome of the planet?   It seems like *we* are an essential element of 
the "living crap" of mother earth and our "virulent" destruction of other species and 
habitat even for ourselves, might have similar implications. Though I suppose that the analogy might be 
better with the "skin biome"?


Well, there is this:

The human gut microbiome as a transporter of antibiotic resistance genes 
between continents
http://aac.asm.org/content/early/2015/08/04/AAC.00933-15.abstract

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Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: unikernels?

[glen ep ropella]

Well, of course, I'm actually looking for the inverse problem: what is the 
minimum hole we need to see interesting abuse, e.g. whole new ecosystems of 
behavior.  It seems like strongly typed, lazy (not just non-strict) eval 
languages capable of higher order logic are the right platform for finding 
minimal holes of maximal interestingness.

On 08/11/2015 02:05 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

The usual problem that occurs in non-strict languages are thunk leaks.I 
plan to plan to plan to plan ... to do something.. Delayed failure can 
occur too, but for me it is much less common then, say, ad-hoc type handling in 
a dynamically-typed language.

I think it just comes down to the degree to which the developer articulates the 
constraints on the context as types, and then whether the language has the 
property of really enforcing those types.Also there's the problem of what 
happens when the developer just can't get across what they want in the types.  
Either because they can't be bothered or because the type system isn't 
versatile enough.

I think these security issues come down to limitations in human attention.  
Tools and languages can help with that, but obsessiveness is needed too.


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Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: unikernels?

[glen ep ropella]

OK.  But what I'm still missing is this:  if unikernels are more domain- and/or 
task-specific, then the dev environment will branch, perhaps quite a bit.  I.e. 
one dev environment for many deployables.  We end up with not just the original 
(false?) dichotomy between config and compiled, but meta-config and, perhaps, 
meta-compiled.  And that may even have multiple layers, meta-meta.

So, while I agree pwning the devop role allows the attacker to infect the deployables, the attacks 
have to be sophisticated enough to survive that branching to eventually achieve the attacker's 
objective.  I.e. "closeness" in terms of automation doesn't necessarily mean 
"closeness" in terms of total cost of attack.

It just seems that the more objective-specific the deployable(s), the less 
likely a hacked devops process will give the desired result.  I'd expect a lot 
more failed integration/deployment attempts if my devops process was modified.

But this is all too abstract, of course.  The devil is in the particulars.


On 08/11/2015 01:13 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote:

   I would expect the dev environment to be closer if not actually in the same 
hypervisor.  It's almost like the web-site we once attacked by using the java 
compiler on the web-site's computer sytem to modify the code in the web-site.  
Right now, with devops, the dev environment is probably not in the 
cloud/hypervisor.  And, for unikernels that may also be true.  But to deploy 
quickly in both devops and unikernel, there has to be a direct channel from dev 
to cloud.

   In more traditional environments, there's a dev server in a separate space, 
a testing server in its own environment (sometimes shared with production but 
not touching production data), and a production server.  While traditional 
environments don't always follow the process well, in theory the flow is 
developers develop on a development network with the dev server, roll their 
system into the testing server which runs alongside the production server with 
a copy of the production data and processing real or test transactions, and 
finally install the tested version on the production server.  From my 
standpoint, that means I can attack the production server directly or the 
development server on a separate network.  There has to be connectivity, but 
it's likely to be filtered, if only to prevent the development server from 
affecting the production environment.

   In devops and in future unikernel systems, the pace of change is, of 
necessity, much faster and the three roles are collapsed into one VM.  The VM 
image is modified in place, given a new name so that rollback is possible, and 
the management software is told to use the new image instead of the old.

   One of the principles of cyberwarfare (as formulated in our paper of that 
name) is that some entity, somewhere, has the privileges to do whatever the 
attacker wants to do and the attacker's goal is to become that entity.  In the 
case of devops and unikernel, that entity is the developer(s) who make(s) the 
changes to the VM.  In traditional environments, the attacker might need to 
assume the privileges of several entities.


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Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: unikernels?

[glen ep ropella]

On 08/11/2015 12:21 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

But this isn't just about virtual machines.  It's about using type-safe 
languages so that hardware protection mechanisms are simply not needed.By 
virtue of it compiling at all, it can be shown to be safe to run.



On 08/11/2015 10:32 AM, glen ep ropella wrote:

Unikernels: Rise of the Virtual Library Operating System
http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2566628


What I found most interesting was this blurb:


Configuration is a considerable overhead in managing the deployment of a large 
cloud-hosted service. The traditional split between the compiled (code) and 
interpreted (configuration) is unnecessary with unikernel compilation. 
Application configuration is code—perhaps in an embedded domain-specific 
language—and the compiler can analyze and optimize across the whole unikernel.


This (false?) dichotomy keeps arising in almost every conversation I have.  And 
I don't yet have a trunk/root conception of how they all fit together.  But my 
intuition tells me they fit together.  Some recent examples:

o open-ended evolution (and/or evolution of evolution), broached at ECAL -- the 
answer I kept giving, that nobody really responded to, includes self-hosted 
languages (simple circularity) and cycles in hosting (L_0 hosts L_1 which then 
hosts L_0).

o families of models, as opposed to those well- or over-fitted to a given 
context -- here I'm talking mostly about mathematical vs. agent-based (or other 
discrete or hybrid) biological models, but it relates to any domain-specificity.

o the gen-phen map, polyphenism and neutrality/degeneracy -- the context being the 
importance of the developmental (configuration/interpretation) path from 
gene(compiled)->phene and, again, any circularity due to downward causation.


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Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: unikernels?

[glen ep ropella]

If I understand what you're saying, you're still admitting that the attack has to happen at a 
greater "distance" from the target, right?  Even if the dev env is "virtually 
close", it's still at least 1 step removed from the deployed thing.

On 08/11/2015 12:28 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote:

   The security improvements of unikernels may be overstated.

   Look at the announcement, last week, of installing malware on LTE/3G modems 
built into laptops and tablets [1].  As Rich Murray pointed out in his comment 
on the subject in SANS Newsbites - these modems are a thing, an appliance, in 
the Internet of Things.  The ability to fix these things is necessary to the 
developers of the things.

   Unikernels, with configuration baked in, will have similiar needs.  In the 
case of unikernels, editing of configuration inputs and recompiling/linking 
will be required instead of a manufacturer's backdoor to update firmware.  The 
development environment to make those configuration changes must be virtually 
close to the hypervisor runtime environment of the unikernel.  That means the 
development environment will be a target.

   Of course, the real target will be the unikernel VMs that are poorly 
configured.  The unikernel is the ultimate reaction to the exploit - but it 
does nothing for attacks that simply use the system as designed to do the 
attacker's bidding.

[1] 
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2968274/security/internal-lte3g-modems-can-be-hacked-to-help-malware-survive-os-reinstalls.html


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[FRIAM] unikernels?

[glen ep ropella]

Life in a Post-Container World and Why Linux Will Play a Diminished Role
http://thenewstack.io/life-post-container-world/

Unikernels: Rise of the Virtual Library Operating System
http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2566628

Luckily, Marcus introduced me to ocaml a long time ago, otherwise I'd feel even 
more out of touch than I already do.

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[FRIAM] How brand-new words are spreading across America

[glen ep ropella]

http://qz.com/465820/how-brand-new-words-are-spreading-across-america/

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Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [alife] Conference Announcement - "Re-conceptualizing the Origin of Life", Abstract deadline is Aug. 1st

[glen ep ropella]

Speaking of ALife, will anyone else be at ECAL next week?

On 07/16/2015 03:50 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote:
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: "Sara Walker" mailto:srw...@gmail.com>>
> Date: Jul 16, 2015 3:48 PM
> Subject: [alife] Conference Announcement - "Re-conceptualizing the Origin of 
> Life", Abstract deadline is Aug. 1st
> To: mailto:alife-annou...@lists.idyll.org>>
> Cc:
> 
> *Upcoming Conference on*
> 
> *“Re-conceptualizing the Origin of Life”*
> 
> *Nov. 9-13th, 2015 at Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington D.C.*

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Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q

[glen ep ropella]

On 07/13/2015 07:39 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

What I see is that proprietry software is just the visible tip of the iceberg, 
but its largely open source underneath.


Me too.  I'd be interested to see some sort of analysis of "software pathways", chains of 
software packages that were hit when a large sample of use cases were exercised.  I'd guess that 
pretty much any use case that involves the internet relies on open source somewhere in the chain.  
The only proprietary package I use on a regular basis is Quickbooks.  I don't think I need to see 
the chains invoked when I, say, download a tax table update or submit payroll for a direct deposit. 
 But I would like to see the chain invoked when I, say, "Save to PDF".  I'd also like to 
know which tools they use to make their data files sharable across multiple clients.  I can imagine 
those chains are all proprietary and licensed ... but I have no idea.

On that same front, Gary's right about that last 20%.  But user-facing software 
has a much harder last 20% than what happens behind the scenes _because_ those 
occult tools are allowed to be very focused, tight, and single purpose, whereas 
user-facing tools have to handle, ameliorate, shunt, faciliate the myriad 
things a general intelligence can/will do.  User facing tools have to deal with 
morons and geniuses, whereas internal tools can get away with well-defined 
contracts.

Another factor, I think is the old saw that we humans only want to pay for things we can 
see/touch ourselves.  This may be more true of Americans than elsewhere (based on how 
much we bitch about our relatively low taxes).  But I think it's fairly natural to object 
to, say, "hidden" fees at banks or for childless couples funding schools 
through property taxes.  So, it may not be so much that proprietary software pays to do 
that last 20% of work, so much as that nobody will pay for anything but the user-facing 
equipment.

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[FRIAM] 3D abms

[glen ep ropella]

Here's a video of a 3d model I did for a company that doesn't want me to talk 
about it.  It's in MASON:

  https://youtu.be/1TjIe3EiM1o

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Re: [FRIAM] My charity is more effective than your charity!

[glen ep ropella]

On 07/07/2015 07:06 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> OsiriX is good for MRIs (DICOM files).   MIALite is a segmentation plugin for 
> it that works.   Some of the OsiriX plugins have bitrot and crash the 
> browser.  Give your GPU  something [cough] useful to do other than [cough] 
> gaming.Don't know about segment tracking over time.   Might have to write 
> that.. 

Very cool.  $700 is pretty stiff.  It's not clear whether the plugin will work 
with the osirix free version.  I have been using ginkgo cad, the free version 
of which works pretty well.

On 07/07/2015 07:43 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> I think you should *build* a video game based on your thorax... or a 
> projection of it's 4D-ness...  and uses Dr. Seuss's "Lorax" as a theme for 
> the narrative!

I'm just starting to dip my toes into 3D modeling (for another project).  I 
wonder how difficult it would be to create a 3D "world" modeled off the DICOM 
images?  It'd be kinda cool running a little avatar around over the kidneys and 
through the ribs, to grandmother's goiter we go!

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Re: [FRIAM] Greek Crisis & Philosophy

[glen ep ropella]

On 07/07/2015 09:13 AM, Pamela McCorduck wrote:

Plenty of blame to go around here. And if Greece is unmoored from Europe, you 
can see Putin moving in—naval bases, missiles, even. He’s a nasty character to 
get into bed with, but when no one else offers you a blanket...


  Greece Can Join BRICS as a Growing Economy - Official
  http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150707/1024309291.html

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Re: [FRIAM] A New Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution

[glen ep ropella]

OK.  Well, I liken it to evidence-based medicine.  I don't really consider that 
sort of thing dilution or lowering the bar.  It seems to me they're simply 
trying to ground policy in science.  It's certainly extension of the science 
into non-scientific domains.  And anytime you do that, you run the risk of 
backflow from the non-science into the science.  So, having the same people do 
both activities is risky.  You can't win if you don't play, though.


On 06/30/2015 03:23 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

My objection was to your claim that nothing is for sure so might as well 
equivalence activism+science vs. science.   I see this group of people as 
lowering the bar for scientific inquiry in their field, and at once diluting 
the efforts of social workers and other kinds of advocates.   In my book that's 
a far worse offense than whatever benefit they think they'll get from coupling 
their inquiry to their advocacy.   I guess if that's what they want, they can 
have it.As for the rest, whatever, I was just killing time until my tests 
came back.



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Re: [FRIAM] A New Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution

[glen ep ropella]

On 06/30/2015 11:34 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Is a search engine a participant in people's web browsing?


No.  But the people who wrote the artifact (and maintain the servers, and tweak 
the algorithms, and use it for advertising) are participants in my web browsing.


And it is not about objective reality, it's about precision of terminology.


Bah.  What can "precise terminology" mean without any stable referent?  
Precision _is_ about objective reality at least to some extent.  At the very least, there 
has to be some way to measure the difference between 2 different terms or usages of a 
single term.  So, even if the terms themselves don't map to reality, the metric used to 
contrast them does.

So, your dependence on precise terminology implies a dependence on objective 
reality.


What is nailed down sufficiently-well for an analysis about the logical 
consequences of the nailed-down thing or system of things.It's not clear 
what this group of people is willing to nail down, even temporarily.


I agree that it's not clear for this new society.


Just like it isn't clear what climate change deniers are willing to nail down.


But it is NOT "just like ... climate change deniers".  Are you seriously making 
that equivalence?


It is bad faith, not skepticism, when people put their monetary or ideological 
goals ahead of the evidence, and then claim they are interested in the 
evidence.  That's what I mean by corruption.


OK.  I disagree, _if_ those people are up front that they put their monetary or 
ideological goals first.  It's not bad faith or corruption, then.  And you have 
to admit that by openly stating that activism is one of this new group's 
objectives, then it's a bit of a leap to accuse them of bad faith or corruption 
right off the bat.  If it were bad faith, their true objectives would not be as 
obvious as they've made them.

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Re: [FRIAM] [ SPAM ] Re: A New Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution

[glen ep ropella]

On 06/30/2015 09:14 AM, Steve Smith wrote:

" what it was to be Dine' " could possibly be reduced to their genes, their language and 
the artifacts they carried or knew how to make... but I find it easier/better if I include the 
"stories they told".


Yes, compression is real, not ideological.  The reason you feel it 
easier/better is because it helps you with the inverse map from phenomena to 
mechanism.  You have to act on the mechanism.  Compression helps you do that.  
But it doesn't mean that the ideology is shared.  It means the compressed 
analog is shared.  The analog is a stand-in for the ephemeral thing you 
recognize/register.  Funny enough, because there are a bunch of animals almost 
identical to you standing about, they recognize/register that ephemeral thing 
in much the same way.  Their analogs are very similar to your analogs because 
your body is very similar to theirs.

When/if we find communicative life elsewhere (here or other planets), we'll be able to test the 
hypothesis completely.  But we can do it in small bits right here and now.  Do amputees 
"understand" the world in the same way non-amputees "understand" the world?  
Did Helen Keller think the same way sighted and hearing people think?



On the other hand, these distinctions might just be illusions, held by the delusional.   But this argument 
begs the question of "who" or "what" is delusional?   An individual sentient creature 
such as a human being?   A group of sentients with a shared "ideology"?


The delusion is simply in assuming the analog _is_ its referent.  It would be 
like wondering why real airplanes aren't made of balsa wood.  This is why I 
tend to think tele-war (very remotely operated weapons like drones) will cause 
something like PTSD similar in devastation, but from the opposite circumstance, 
to the close-up witness of, participation in, violence.  That sort of removal 
from your context can be very difficult, I suspect.  You have no choice but to 
act as if the analog (controller) is the referent (weapon).  And it is the same 
... yet it's not, because of the very complicated machinery between the 
controller and the controlled, machinery invisible to the operator.

What's doing the assuming?  Your body, of course.  The better the analog, the 
more your body is tricked into acting upon the idea as if it's the referent.  
Ideas are brain processes, analogs for real things to which they refer.  E.g. 
mental manipulation of an image of a 3D object engages many of the same 
circuits as actual manipulation of the 3D object.  The better the ideas, the 
easier it is to be tricked into thinking those analogs are ultimately accurate, 
so accurate that the idea is the real thing.  The smarter you are, the more 
likely you are to be tricked ... which means I'm completely safe.

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[FRIAM] A New Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution

[glen ep ropella]

https://evolution-institute.org/project/society-for-the-study-of-cultural-evolution/


A New Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution

Why a new society?

Our capacity for culture stems from our ability to receive, process, integrate, 
and transmit information across generations. The study of human culture and 
cultural change has made great strides during the last few decades in fields 
such as anthropology, computer science, evolutionary biology, neurobiology, 
psychology, and sociology. Yet, the study of cultural change as an evolutionary 
process, similar to genetic evolution but with its own inheritance mechanisms, 
is only now becoming a central area of scientific inquiry that spans these 
disciplines and holds much potential for academic integration.

Outside the Ivory Tower, all public policies attempt to accomplish cultural 
change in a practical sense to reach their various objectives, yet they rarely 
draw upon an explicit scientific theory of cultural change. A new society is 
needed to catalyze the study of cultural change from a modern evolutionary 
perspective, both inside and outside the Ivory Tower.

A recent EI workshop, “Advancing the Study of Cultural Evolution: Academic 
Integration and Policy Applications,” laid the groundwork for the formation of 
a society. The workshop was organized by Michele Gelfand, a cultural 
psychologist at the University of Maryland, and EI President David Sloan 
Wilson. The participants represented a melting pot of disciplines that need to 
become integrated to create a science of cultural change informed by 
evolutionary theory. They strongly endorsed the need for a society to 
accomplish the objectives identified during the workshop.

What will the SSCE do?

We envision an activist society that does much more than publish a journal and 
host an annual meeting. One of our first items of business will be to 
collectively identify “Grand Challenges” in the study of cultural evolution; 
these will define the agenda of the society. Then we will work toward the 
creation of basic scientific research programs and practical initiatives to 
tackle the Grand Challenges. We expect scientific research and real-world 
solutions to go together through the creation of field sites for the study of 
cultural evolution, similar to biological field sites.

Who should join the SSCE?

We encourage the following people to become founding members:

Academic professionals, graduate students, and undergraduate students from 
any discipline relevant to cultural evolution. We especially encourage the next 
generation of scientists to become involved.
Anyone (professional or nonprofessional) who is trying to accomplish 
positive cultural change in the real world and who would like to base their 
efforts on cultural evolutionary theory.
Anyone (professional or nonprofessional) with an intellectual interest in 
cultural evolutionary theory who would like to get involved and support the 
newly emerging field.
We are especially eager for our members to come from all cultures around 
the world—an appropriate ideal for a Society for the Study of Cultural 
Evolution!

What will happen right away?

When you become a founding member…

You will be added to our mailing list to receive regular communications.
You will be consulted, if you desire, to provide input in the creation of 
bylaws for the society and important decisions concerning dues, an annual 
conference, and a journal.
You can help us identify grand challenges for the study of cultural 
evolution.
You can get involved in the projects that we create to tackle the grand 
challenges.

We look forward to starting the SSCE with a diverse membership and to offer 
both intellectual stimulation and practical knowledge for improving the quality 
of life.

Please help us recruit founding members by bringing our invitation to the 
attention of your friends and associates! We aim to be inclusive and diverse.




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Re: [FRIAM] [ SPAM ] where is the real threat?

[glen ep ropella]

On 06/26/2015 04:36 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> CBS or Comcast cover that, but also the evening news.  In various situations 
> such conglomerates may find it in their interest to present  information in 
> ways that benefit their bottom line, even to audiences that are above the 
> least common denominator.   Even if their news programs are credible and 
> honest most of the time, it's exceptional times where their reputation can be 
> monetized.  These situations could plausibly impact people as much as 
> propaganda.  

Another good point that argues to the same conclusion, because anyone who 
succumbs to flipping the trust bit opens themselves up to that sort of creeping 
exploitation.  That slow, imperceptible programming probably has _way_ more 
impact than the relatively episodic nature of propaganda.

On 06/27/2015 06:50 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Glen,
> Don't the bulk of non-zero sum gains arise from trust?
> see MOTH, for instance.

No.  I think the bulk of non-zero sum gains are a result of co-evolution of 
competing scrutiny, the exploitation of niches the players stumbled upon 
together.  I.e. they're really zero-sum games where the externalities aren't 
recognized by the players.  And in that sense, if it is trust that prevents 
them from recognizing the externalities, then trust is tantamount to ignorance.

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Re: [FRIAM] metaphor and talking across skill levels

[glen ep ropella]

On 03/10/2015 08:30 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Imagine that I am standing before you holding a flat object, such as a
> notebook in my left hand, flat side to you.  I hold a small object in my
> right hand, let's say an art gum eraser, so that appears to you above and
> behind the plain of notebook.  I release the eraser.  Please give me a
> "plain-spoken" description of what you would see.

I would have responded, had I received your previous post...  In any case, 
here's what I would expect to see:  The eraser would move for awhile, 
disappear, reappear, and again move for awhile before stopping.

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[FRIAM] RE: clinical diagnosis of [a]theism?

[glen ep ropella]

I don't understand that concept of "validator" at all. For glucose, you talk 
about multiple measures.  It sounds like you're saying a more accurate measure 
is the validator for a less accurate measure. These are all concrete things: 
urine, blood, etc. But then you go on to say a conceptual notion is the best 
validator.  Is a conceptual notion a more accurate measure than a concrete 
measure?  I don't get it.


circa Tue Dec 23 00:44:54 EST 2014 nick wrote:
> My bad.  I used "validator" in a narrow technical sense, not in its more 
> regular sense of a proof. [...] A high sugar content in a single urine test 
> is a somewhat valid measure of some degree of diabetes, but several blood 
> glucose tests is a much better validator, and a hemoglobin A1C, which gives 
> you a measure of how high the glucose has been for the last 3 months, is even 
> better.  The best validator is, of course, kind of a conceptual notion, 
> because it is the thing itself, the thing that all of these measures are 
> attempting to get at. And you can NEVER get at it because you always have to 
> be measuring it or sampling it, etc.  Maybe that one-meter rod in Paris (or 
> whatever) is a pure validator, but if so, it is one of the few.


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Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Civil Statistician: “Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures,” Breiman

[glen ep ropella]

Thanks Tom.  This may prove useful for starting arguments at a meeting next 
week!  The people we're meeting with are staunch data modelers, though perhaps 
not in quite the sense used here.  They consistently hear our challenges as 
claims that their approaches are flawed, despite our rather loud advocacy for 
_all_ appropriate methods ... that any solution should flow from the 
requirements set by the problem.  The paper and the synoptic blog post might 
come in handy ... but I won't be holding my breath.


On 08/28/2014 01:42 PM, Tom Johnson wrote:

Another interesting discussion coming out of CMU.



-- Forwarded message --
From: *Blogtrottr* mailto:busy...@blogtrottr.com>>
Date: Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 1:05 PM
Subject: Civil Statistician: “Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures,” Breiman




“Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures,” Breiman 

Aug 28th 2014, 18:22, by civilstat

One highlight of my fall semester is going to be a statistics journal club led by CMU’s Ryan 
Tibshirani  together with his dad Rob Tibshirani 
 (here on sabbatical from Stanford). The journal club 
will focus on “Hot Ideas in Statistics “: 
some classic papers that aren’t covered in standard courses, and some newer papers on hot or 
developing areas. I’m hoping to find time to blog about several of the papers we discuss.

The first paper was Leo Breiman’s “Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures” 
 (2001) with 
discussion and rejoinder. This is a very readable, high-level paper about the culture 
of statistical education and practice, rather than about technical details. I 
strongly encourage you to read it yourself.

Breiman’s article is quite provocative, encouraging statisticians to downgrade 
the role of traditional mainstream statistics in favor of a more 
machine-learning approach. Breiman calls the two approaches “data modeling” and 
“algorithmic modeling”:

  * Data modeling assumes a stochastic model for where the data came from: what 
is the distribution for the data or the random noise, and how do you imagine it 
relates to predictor variables? Then you estimate and interpret the model 
parameters. Breiman claims that common practice is to validate your model by 
goodness-of-fit tests and residual analysis.
  * Algorithmic modeling assumes almost nothing about the data, except that 
it’s usually i.i.d. from the population you want to learn about. You don’t 
start with any statistical distributions or interpretable models; just build a 
“black box” algorithm, like random forests or neural nets, and evaluate 
performance by prediction accuracy (on withheld test data, or by 
cross-validation).

I absolutely agree that traditional statistics focuses on the former over the 
latter, and also that the latter has a lot to offer and should be a welcome 
addition to any statistician’s toolbox. But Breiman’s tone is pretty harsh 
regarding “data modeling,” apart from a few placating remarks at the end. He 
uses a few straw man arguments, explaining how algorithmic modeling beats 
poorly-done traditional statistics. (For instance, about overreliance on 5% 
significance of regression coefficients, he says “Nowadays, I think most 
statisticians will agree that this is a suspect way to arrive at 
conclusions”—but he is still presenting this “suspect way” as the standard that 
“most statisticians” use. So which is it? Is the majority wrong or right? If by 
“statisticians” he actually means “psychologists who took one stats class,” 
then this calls for a completely different discussion about education and 
service courses.) Meanwhile, Breiman neglects some important be

nefits of well-done

data modeling.

A couple of the discussants (David Cox and Brad Efron) defend the value of data 
modeling. (Efron has a great way to rephrase significance tests as prediction 
problems: “In our sample of 20 patients drug A outperformed drug B; would this 
still be true if we went on to test all possible patients?”) Another discussant 
(Bruce Hoadley) shares some examples of early algorithmic culture from the 
credit scoring industry, including the importance of interpretability: 
“Sometimes we can’t implement them until the lawyers and regulators approve. 
And that requires super interpretability.” The final discussant (Emanuel 
Parzen) encourages us to see many cultures besides Breiman’s two: Parzen 
mentions maximum entropy methods, robust methods, Bayesian methods, and 
quantile methods, while I would add sampling theory as another underappreciated 
distinct statistical paradigm.

As for myself, I agree with many of Breiman’s points, especially that 
“algorithmic modeling” should be added to our standard applied toolbox and 

[FRIAM] IPViking live

[glen ep ropella]

http://map.ipviking.com/
http://www.norse-corp.com/blog-thursday-140320.html


Today, we'd also like to announce the availability of a completely new and 
updated version of the Norse Live Attack Map. When we posted our first map back 
in late 2012, we did not really think much about it to be honest. Norse CTO 
Tommy Stiansen created it on a whim one weekend using mostly open source code, 
and attack maps are not necessarily a new concept. Like a lot of things, it was 
created out of a need for a quick and easy way for people to visualize the 
global and live nature of Norse's threat intelligence platform. While the 
activity on the map is just a small subset (less than 1%) of the total attack 
traffic flowing into the Norse platform at any point in time, map 
visualizations can be a powerful way to communicate time-based geographic data 
sets.




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Re: [FRIAM] Source Forge, inter alia

[glen ep ropella]

The best thing to do is run the software in a virtual machine, e.g. 
https://www.virtualbox.org/.  Perhaps even run your web requests through 
a proxy server. http://www.publicproxyservers.com/  Depending on what 
you mean by "safe", this will help you isolate the thing until _you_ 
decide it's safe.  And, of course, run it through some sort of checker, e.g.


https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/4ce00249c99238a33ca8f7a4a75d763e0035b23ab0ef043129bb6e0e5d0afec8/analysis/

preferably more than one:

http://app.webinspector.com/public/reports/22906975

To take it a few steps further, you can check for spammers:

http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=blacklist%3akeepvid.com&run=toolpage

See what OS they are (claim to be) running:

http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?host=keepvid.com&x=8&y=1

See how their website has evolved over time:

https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://keepvid.com

See bitcoin transactions:

https://blockchain.info/address/1NYQHzvg7DT4PDoTm7h6jy46gPKS3gNoZu

And then there's always page 10 of the Google search reslts, which gives 
us these sites:


http://blog.teesupport.com/easy-and-effective-guide-for-getting-rid-of-keepvid-com-quickly-manual-removal-guide/
http://www.cleanpcguide.com/remove-keepvid-com-removal-guide-how-to-remove-keepvid-com/



On 07/03/2014 05:59 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

Open source software is less to have spyware or viruses.  That’s because
the software is in its preferred high-level form – the recipe is
published.   Proprietary software, in contrast, is delivered as a
binary.  To know whether bad stuff is in a binary program, a difficult
decompilation and reverse engineering process is needed to get back to
something like the preferred form.   Like having to run spectroscopy to
find out what is in a cake.   In the open source case, you just bake
your own cake.  If you know the ingredients are plausible, and the
structure of the recipe makes sense, then you can feel good about having
a piece of cake.   And even if you are not a baker, you may know some
bakers that can give an opinion on the recipe . That doesn’t mean there
aren’t bugs or bad oversights, but malicious behavior is harder to hide.

*From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Nick
Thompson
*Sent:* Wednesday, July 02, 2014 9:43 PM
*To:* Friam
*Subject:* [FRIAM] Source Forge, inter alia

Sorry, everybody.

I guess my question could be stated more broadly, with perhaps some
saving of your time in the long run.  How do I decide if a piece of
software, available on the internet is safe or not?  I guess one can
look for reviews on “reputable” sites, but then how does one recognize a
reviewing site as reputable. ?  I suppose one could look at the webpage
of the software maker and see if the software is being regularly
updated, etc.  What about the site on which the software is hosted?
Does that give a clue Does Source Forge screen it’s software?  If so, I
couldn’t see any sign of that on the Source forge page.

Perhaps if one of you would provide an answer to me on this general
question, it would you all being bothered by particular versions of it
later on.

Thanks,

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/




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Re: [FRIAM] Gerald M. Edelman (1929-2014)

[glen ep ropella]

I found out he died after I returned from a long trip.  But it turns out 
he died just 1 day prior to a conversation I was having with one of the 
researchers at the conference.  I don't often get to talk about neural 
darwinism ... and never with anyone in the field of neuropsych.  That 
researcher had just come from a neuropsych meeting and I wanted to know 
how that crowd felt about Edelman's later ideas (including his 
collaboration with Tononi).  He had no idea how the others felt.  But it 
was an interesting coincidence that we'd talked about him the day after 
his death.


I know some people who think his later work was ... muddled.  But, 
personally, I'm very grateful for the brave ones who put their ideas out 
there despite whatever "consensus" they might face.  I'll miss him.


On 06/26/2014 01:10 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:

The beginning of the obituary in Science:

Gerald M. Edelman, who was born in New York in 1929, died at his home in
La Jolla, California, on 17 May 2014. With him, biology has lost a great
scientist and something even rarer—a profound thinker. Edelman's work in
the 1960s revealed the chemical structure of antibody molecules, for
which he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1972 with
Rodney Porter. In the 1970s, Edelman turned to studying how cells stick
to each other, which led to the discovery of cell adhesion molecules
(CAMs). Afterward, Edelman directed much of his efforts to understanding
“how the brain gives rise to the mind” and formulated a general theory
of brain function—the theory of neuronal group selection.



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Re: [FRIAM] Telehack

[glen ep ropella]

On 04/30/2014 10:57 PM, Tom Carter wrote:

rain . . .

Ah, the joys of curses on a vt100 . . . :-)


Not just rain!

http://youtu.be/I83eVi6b3Rw

Ahh, the irony of uploading a video of that to youtube.  I feel like 
such a hipster.


--
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Re: [FRIAM] The Amoeba's Secret

[glen ep ropella]

I'm definitely interested!  Thanks for mentioning it.

On 03/11/2014 02:26 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

I thought the eclectic minds inhabiting this list might be interested
in my latest project: "The Amoeba's Secret", a translation into
English of Bruno Marchal's "Le Secret de l'Amibe", which is a
semi-autobiographical account of his investigation into the
consequences of computationalism (the idea that we are computer
programs), and how it can be used to solve the Mind-Body problem.

Currently only available as a Kindle book from KDP, it will be
available in paperback sometime towards the end of this month (all
going well :).

Cheers



--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem. 
-- Milton Friedman




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[FRIAM] Is this irony?

[glen ep ropella]

The Availability of Research Data Declines Rapidly with Article Age

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2813%2901400-0

Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.


Policies ensuring that research data are available on public archives are 
increasingly being implemented at the government [1], funding agency [2,3,4], 
and journal [5,6] level. These policies are predicated on the idea that authors 
are poor stewards of their data, particularly over the long term [7], and 
indeed many studies have found that authors are often unable or unwilling to 
share their data [8,9,10,11].



--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com
Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded 
everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves. -- Robert Anton Wilson




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Re: [FRIAM] Manifesto Project Database

[glen ep ropella]

On 12/13/2013 04:57 PM, Arlo Barnes wrote:

A rather hackish proxy, but ngram

 here.


Nice!  Thanks for the ngram link.  "ukraine, the ukraine" is interesting 
as well.  A significant separation started in 1915.


--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com
... it is unfortunate that enthymeme resolution is treated as a kind of 
presumptive meaning determination. -- Gabbay & Woods in "The Reach of 
Abduction"




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Re: [FRIAM] Corporate responsibility wrt health insurance

[glen ep ropella]

On 12/07/2013 08:31 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote:

As a follow up: Mr Glen, are you considering a Kickstarter project?
When you say "some cooperation's object..." . Is it "Holy shit! Health
care is fucking expensive  " , I just wanted to have (fill in the blank)
While in a Kickstart phase?


To be clear, it was Russ who asserted that "corporations object", not 
me.  And you may have insulted Russ by confusing us. ;-)


No, I don't have any projects that would warrant a charity venue like 
kickstarter.


--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com
And therefore the victories won by a master of war gain him neither 
reputation for wisdom nor merit for valour.   -- Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"




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Re: [FRIAM] fluid - network - molecules (was PRISM/AP kerfluffle, etc)

[glen ep ropella]

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https://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/background/index.html


"Marcus G. Daniels"  wrote:
>On 7/15/13 9:50 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
>> Thanks for giving us the longer-living link, but I don't get the
>> relevance to Z?
>No relevance to the insufferable Zimmerman topic, in favor of the
>Zimmermann history related to the other thread.  (never mind)


- --
glen ep ropella 971-255-2847
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Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning.

[glen ep ropella]

"Output" not a good word for that at all. We can go back to conclusion, in the 
sense of "the transformation has stopped". I'm OK with that.

Nicholas  Thompson  wrote:

>I have a terrible time with the word "state";  how about analytical
>output?
>
>
>Otherwise we're good.  
>
>Nick 

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glen ep ropella 971-255-2847


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