Re: [FRIAM] Target Practice with your Television
I share your lament about the homogenization of culture. As I get older, I pine for those early days of requesting files through ftpmail and e-mail addresses with lots of ! in them. Back then, the internet was fun and cool. Now it's a cesspool of TL;DR people like me yapping about stuff nobody cares about or people uploading pictures of their food in centralized databases used by corporations to deny them employment. But, analogous to TV, there's a certain beauty lurking deep in the horror. Personally, I'm grateful to be a part-time inhabitant of the cesspool and I am constantly amazed by the sanctimonious who hold themselves above the cesspool. I probably wouldn't be so amazed if I were totally immersed in it. Using your analogy, my tendency to tunnel from one deme to another gives me the added perspective that comes from being able to partly immerse myself in the cesspool, but still escape sporadically and immerse myself in other pools. I stand in awe of the evolution of culture, just as I do with the evolution of the universe. But I don't let my awe prevent me from getting a little cess on me on a regular basis. It's difficult for me to imagine _wanting_ to isolate myself any more than I'm already isolated. But to each his own, I suppose. On 05/07/2013 04:30 PM, Steve Smith wrote: Glen - Obviously you find your Television useful and feel you can thoughtfully mitigate any negative side-effects having it in your life might present. I was mostly making fun of your (deliberately idiosyncratic?) choices of programming as described. You are not alone, and I recognize that at least half the (relatively small number of) people who share my own response to TV are bigger cranks than I am. It is the constant stream of pop-culture and push-advertising (not just commercial, but all kinds of social and political agendas embedded everywhere) that I respond so negatively to. I am not desensitized as are people who watch/listen to it regularly. I get edgy when in a big city bustling with advertisements, loud cars, pushy people, beggars and streetwalkers. Having a TV on is a bit like that to me. Not being desensitized, when I am exposed, I immediately notice the worst elements whether it is the infomercials, the regular commercials, the inane game shows, the yammering (not just talking) news-heads, the Jerry Springer-style talk shows, the soap operas, or the reality shows. We *do* (now) watch made for TV movies and series when they catch our interest through the magic of Netflix and iTunes. But rather than having to operate the *off* button when crap starts spewing out of the screen, we simply operate the *on* button, choosing *what* to watch rather than *what not to* watch. I was not socialized to TV. I grew up in places where there was no reception to speak of, and my parents had little interest in it when we did. I (once again) live somewhere where there is no reception (neither pre-digital nor post). My wife came to me with a TV which she used very little (mostly with a VHS player). We read a lot. Once we had alternative methods for watching video tapes (then DVDs), the TV set went into the shed. On 9/11/2012 my wife pulled it out, dusted it off, plugged it in and made me order up a satellite dish. A week later she took it back to the shed. I tried to cancel the Satellite service (ha! one year contract!). It was giving her nothing (that she wanted) that she couldn't get by A) reading a daily paper, B) listening to a modicum of radio when driving into town (every day or two), C) searching on the internet (dialup at the time!), D) talking to friends who were more plugged in. We found the TV news stations to be highly repetitious, redundant and often inane.We found the rest to be ... mostly just sad. Neither of us follow sports. We read a lot. I watch maybe 10-30 minutes of TV a week with the sound turned down and subtitles (sometimes) turned on. It may be while standing in line waiting where one is on, at the barber, the mechanic or in a bar, etc. I am often intrigued by the flashing lights, the semi-attractive talking heads (speaking quite authoritatively about something, but I suspect more likely nothing) and the level of hyperbole being emitted in a constant stream. This is usually *more* than enough for me. TV is to me like leaded paint or leaded gasoline, or maybe at best like white sugar and white flour. The former has been outlawed and I think few people pine for the good ole days of leaded gas/paint... it is recognized as an anachronism... the lead served an important function, but the risks were eventually recognized and alternatives found. I don't need to keep a gallon of each around to remind me of the good ole days. I *do* keep white sugar and white flour in my cabinet and even use the sugar often in my coffee. I use the flour occasionally to make up some biscuits and/or some
Re: [FRIAM] Target Practice with your Television
I think we agree on most of these points. Another reason I like TVs is because I'm mostly a wall flower at parties. Smalltalk irritates me and I only talk to people after a given party passes through that phase transition where it ratchets down a bit and allows more intimate conversations amongst small groups. Until that happens, I need ways to entertain myself. It's for that reason I like to play old movies or mix videos on the TV during parties, usually with the sound muted. Nosferatu and Fearless Vampire Killers are favorites. But I also have a good set of videos from Spot Draves: http://scottdraves.com/ This is especially useful because I like death, speed, and heavy metal music. And I usually like to turn that up loud enough to prevent conversation. So, the TV is an integral part of any parties I throw ... not for broadcast stations. That means that we have an ambiguity or equivocation in the term TV. I used to use a LCD projector for some of this stuff. But with the cheap LED-LCD TVs, the picture is so much better and the access to various TV apps on network enabled TVs makes me think no digital swamp is complete without a big screen TV. On 05/08/2013 09:36 AM, Steve Smith wrote: Thanks for the perspective. You may remember I insisted on referring to my own version of Owen's Digital Ecology as a Digital Swamp. My point to that, which I hope parallels your perspective, is that no matter how much we want it all to be a nice, orderly, well understood environment, it is a complex, seething mass with unexpected/unintended consequences. I'm afraid I'm a compulsive dead-horse beater. I also understand your reaction to those of us who might sanctimoniously try to hold ourselves above. I don't necessarily have any judgement against those who are able to frolic in the cesspool (your word) of pop culture and thrive in it's fecundity. I use the term pop dismissively and have to acknowledge that in some sense all culture is pop. I'm not speaking from an elitist position that suggests Wagnerian Opera is better than Sing Along with Homer Simpson, as Television Characters go I kinda like Homer and don't care so much for Opera. One may be more rarified or expensive than the other but in some sense it is all part of a collective experience that both reflects who we are and perhaps establishes who we become. You may not believe the paradigm of bread and circuses, I tend to. What I think I'm reporting is that having grown up (childhood and adulthood) somewhat *naturally* separated from the more obvious sources of popular culture (television, urban centers and suburban consumer culture) I am not inclined to seek it out in large doses (excepting those all night motel binges with the remote now and then). I'm also reporting that I think the push nature of TV in particular is insidious. Yes, the TV has an off button, but it is easy to forget to use it. If I'm reading a newspaper (online or in print) and I get a little disturbed by what I'm reading my failsafe position is to put it down and read/do something else. I guess I feel that TV is an attractive nuisance. Having watched most of my television as an adult (in passing) in the mute state, I feel that I have a unique perspective on it. I think TV reads differently without sound, especially if it is a rarity rather than a constant companion. And TV sound reads differently than Radio sound. Having been a DJ in a border town in the 70's I listened to my share of Mexican Radio. Though I understood Spanish well enough and was not unfamiliar with Mexican culture, I was always taken aback by all the *selling by yelling*. TV sounds a lot like that to me, whether it is news or advertisements. And I share your concern (for myself in this case) about isolating myself any more than I already am. But somehow I don't think my lack of TV is what isolates me. Though there may be a correlation. -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Target Practice with your Television
On 05/08/2013 10:31 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote: What is a counter example of non-homogenization of culture? I think homogenization of (or homogenized state of) culture can take different forms. Were it normal, it could be fatter or skinnier. If it's skewed/biased (which is most likely) it can be skewed more or less. These parameters for whatever distribution exist would (were we to measure samples) provide counter examples. Higher sigma and fatter tails would indicate less homogenous. It seems to suggest that culture is a thing that leads individuals, rather than individuals leading it. If we consider the whole, high dimensional space, I posit that the reality contains multiple feedback loops. I.e. culture leads individuals and vice versa. Whether the causal flows happen more in one or the other direction probably depends on which variable is being examined. For example, it seems to me that I see 2 opposing causal flows in music. One is that in pop music, culture leads individuals. But in folk or jazz or any live-music oriented domain, it strikes me that individuals (or individual bands) lead culture. If anything, the problem in the U.S. is that people think their problems are unique and that their clan is special. So, we fail to factor out the common bits of everyday life into shared systems like mass transport, affordable housing, health care, etc. There's something to be said for put up or shut up. Prove you're special. Oh, so you're not, here's a nice television for you to watch. This pressure is good, despite the risks of narcissism or sanctimony to any particular individual. It's difficult for me to imagine an individual performing at their maximum if they spend all their time in the middle of the biggest cluster of individuals. But I still reject the idea that any particular individual is somehow _not_ special. I remember a distinction made at one of the computing and philosophy conferences i attended referring to the difference between the special sciences and the general sciences. That is one of the reasons I think biology is interesting. I think it sits right on the line. It's a special science, but seems to be poised to reveal some more generic laws any decade now. -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Target Practice with your Television
On 05/08/2013 11:44 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote: It depends what you mean by `lead'. I'd distinguish between influence and innovate. I'd claim that culture does not innovate, it can only put down a road and encourage people to take it, and thereby set the stage for innovators. That's a good point. If we run with the analogy, we could also say that both the culture and the innovator lay down roads, the innovator blazing new trails and the culture coming behind and paving the most oft used of those trails. The result becomes a large network of roads and trails that provide the opportunity for any newcomer to walk in novel ways ... a little bit on a seldom used trail, a little way on a super highway, a little way on some well used, but still unpaved paths, etc. In this sense, culture may not, itself, innovate. But it comes very close. Any drill down into the meaning of innovate will turn into a nit-picky rat hole. So it's safe to say that culture does (or practically does) innovate by optimizing the landscape for innovation... so easy a caveman could do it. ;-) -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Cell phone turns 40
OK. We don't really disagree. But I'll push the point just a tiny bit further and see if it goes anywhere. On 04/29/2013 03:31 PM, Steve Smith wrote: On the other hand, I'm not setting out to *prove* my concept of what is generational, but rather to explain or illuminate it. [...] I'm only trying to make the argument that there *are* couplings between generations which yield interesting oscillations with periods roughly on the order of human reproduction cycles. Even though you're not setting out to provide evidence for your concept of generational, you do assert the existence of generational couplings (distinct from other types of coupling) and that these couplings yield interesting oscillations. I infer that to mean that these generational couplings are somehow more evident, more influential, more something than other inter-group couplings. Perhaps they're not more, but just different. In any case, what we need in order to have a useful discussion is some definite identification of that type of coupling. And for that, we need some type of data, or at the very least a clear measure that could generate the data. Without that, I can, literally, choose _anything_ and call it a generational coupling. I can say, for example, that my grandfather's appreciation for pecans was very high, my father's very low, and mine very high. And to justify that, I can explain with something like: people of my grandfather's generation walked quite a bit (being depression era), took great pleasure in edibles found on the roadside, resulting in a behavior reinforcing feedback. But in my dad's generation, with the hegemony of car travel, grocery stores, gym-based exercise, a rebounding economy, etc. walking in your neighborhood and the interestingness of random snacks like pecans from pecan trees growing out of your neighbors' yards, waned. And now, with the locavore movement and a trend away from industrial farms toward CSAs, community gardens and the maker culture, I tend to really enjoy picking, say, apples from an apple tree in a neighbor's yard and eating it on my walk around the neighborhood. I can do this with _anything_ because I don't need any data in order to make such claims. The above is mostly true. But it's not definite beyond the concrete detail and context I provide. Any generational effect I might identify could well be purely a result of instantaneous (or short duration) social downward causation, not generational oscillation. I.e. maybe it's not phase locking so much as a drifting/wandering progression of social forcing? How would we know? So, in order to establish the existence of generational couplings (distinct from any other type of couplings), we need some aggregated, abstracted data. -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Cell phone turns 40
On 04/30/2013 12:07 PM, Steve Smith wrote: (how many books do you/father/grandfather own? how much personal correspondence do each of you maintain? how many journal entries (words, lines, pages?) do you average? etc.) I think I can gather some data. I already have a number of questions I ask various people in social settings. Since I loathe small talk, I have to entertain myself in some way. If I don't have questions to ask, I usually end up getting in an argument and making everyone mad at me. So, i'll add these questions to my list of things to ask when I get bored in social situations. ;-) My own answers to these questions are: Grandfather: more reading depth, less breadth: not at all a writer Dad: very broad, not much depth: not at all a writer Me: some depth, some breadth: lots of correspondence, some publication It's difficult for me to extract a pattern from that. Then again, I was adopted and have no idea who my biological parents are. Given the measures we've chosen, there is no method for teasing apart nature vs. nurture. Had we chosen more biologically relevant measures, it might be easier to do so. I guess at this point, I've proposed a model that is not particularly well validated (by me)... but then that is usually what this level of discussion consists of doesn't it? Speculation about what models *might* have some validity and how they *might* be tested and maybe some anecdotal dogpiles to support/contradict the models proposed? It seems the norm for this mailing list. But other communities can be more tolerant of deeper exploration. I'm not addicted to closure. But I do seek it out and appreciate it when I find it. (I've really enjoyed Arlo's recent resurrections.) -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] formaldehyde is made in brain cells from methanol (wood alcohol) by ADH1 enzyme -- breakthrough paradigm by Prof. Woodrow C Monte: Rich Murray 2013.04.27
Very interesting! Thanks, Rich. It's amazing to me how biologically important formaldehyde is, not only as a toxin, but as a naturally occurring metabolite. I don't remember when I first heart the aphorism The dose is the poison. But it comes up again and again. All the interesting chemicals are active and have regimes where they're negligible, interesting, and poisonous, at least in healthy organisms. Damn it. There's that magic number 3 again. ;-) On 04/27/2013 10:00 PM, Rich Murray wrote: May I venture to introduce a new candidate for a toxic cause of autism -- briefly, methanol (wood alcohol) (about the same doses from cigarette smoke, aspartame, and unfresh fruits juices vegetables cut up and preserved wet at room temperature in sealed cans jars plastic containers) quickly enters the blood and travels with the blood, with half-life 3 hours, to the whole body and the fetus every minute -- only in 20 specific human tissues with high levels of ADH1 enzyme, is the methanol rapidly made into free floating formaldehyde right within these cells, which include the inner walls of brain blood vessels at the base of the brain, and also the Purkinje cells in the vermis of the cerebellum: Chapter 12 Autism and Other Birth Defects, free at www.WhileScienceSleeps, Prof. Woodrow C. Monte, Food Science and Nutrition, Arizona State University, retired 2004, with 745 free online full text medical research references: ... our methanol poisoned rat pups lost Purkinje cells preferentially from a very specific area of the cerebellum called the vermis. This meant little to me at the time but it has now been discovered the cerebellum is known to be preferentially damaged in human autism, 622 and the vermis 570 and hippocampus are the particular areas of the cerebellum most damaged and reduced in volume by the disease. 571 ... http://www.whilesciencesleeps.com/pdf/622.pdf 12 page full text -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Meta-discussion
Yeah, but at least FOAR allows top-posting! Nothing on the internet is more irrational than the bias against top-posting. And I mean it. The bias against top-posting is the lower bound of rationality. Hm. Would it be oxymoronic to claim the existence of an upper bound on irrationality? Is there an ordering relation on irrational reasoning? On 04/24/2013 10:01 PM, Steve Smith wrote: Nothing I love better than being thrown out of a bar. Exchanging a few blows with the bouncers, maybe landing a rabbit punch or two on the way through the door and coming back the next night for another round! Rules for the anti-FOAR list: # Use of profanity, insults or excessive ad-hominem is discouraged. Please keep this civil. # Keep things on-topic. If your posting can't be related to something in the books mentioned above, please take it offline. # Don't feed the trolls. If someone posts something obviously outrageous in order to stir up trouble, simply don't respond to it. Keep responses to more subtle points that you disagree with. If FRIAM had these standards, half of us would be banned within the week, and the remaining lurkers would never post... the sound of *no* hands clapping! -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] science and language
On 04/22/2013 06:53 PM, Steve Smith wrote: And is it possible that this neurological structure literally co-evolved with language itself? [...] How much does sharing some basic language (structure?) get involved in empathic understanding? Yes, it's entirely possible that they happened to evolve together. But it may not be necessary that they will/would always evolve together. Personally, I think sharing basic language _requires_ the ability to empathize, to put yourself in another's position. Without that ability, we devolve into silly arguments like the Chinese room or the existence of consciousness-less zombies. What I think we are both talking about is: 1) Taking a(n educated?) guess that involves causal relations; 2) Formulating a way to test this guess by *doing something*; 3) Doing something; 4) Observing the results; 5) Recording the results; 6) repeat any/all of 1,2,3,4,5 until 5 matches 1 (excluding the obvious cheat of simply adjusting 5 to match 1, also practiced for the purpose of gaining future funding but generally frowned upon) [...] Hypothesis generation and testing combined with repeatability (by others) is all I mean by the Scientific Method. I think you do too? I don't include hypothesis generation. We could classify scientists into different types, at least minimal vs. sophisticated. And if we did that, then the sophisticated ones would develop clear hypotheses and then test them with a reality-bifurcating experiment. But I think there are street scientists who spend their lives bifurcating reality without ever pausing to yap about what they've demonstrated. And to keep the conversation simple, it is my intention to focus on these minimal scientists. Well, the point of the conversation I wanted to have was about science WITHOUT language, if such is possible. If you have a way to show me how a hypothesis can be an _action_ as opposed to a thought or something that's is primarily represented in written or spoken form, then we can talk about a science that includes non-lingual hypotheses and, of course, non-lingual experimentation. -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DIY science
On 04/22/2013 11:37 PM, Russ Abbott wrote: But if it's possible what's the difference as far as your perspective on what science is? My point was that you, too, can build a device that might allow you to test E=mc^2. It was in response to your statement that: On 04/22/2013 11:15 AM, Russ Abbott wrote: There isn't much in today's science that I personally can use to manipulate the world. Much of it provides the foundation for devices that other people build through which I manipulate the world. My claim is that most of today's science can be personally used, by you, to manipulate the world. You can build the device. And you can use it to formulate a test for these theories. And I claimed this in order to push home my point that theories are not scientific unless they are accompanied by the science of a _test_. -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] DIY science
Sorry, I did not intend that you would use a scientific theory in your daily life. I merely wanted to say that E=mc^2 is _not_ science. The science lies in the test, the actions you can take. I thought I said that. But maybe I was unclear. On 04/23/2013 07:57 AM, Russ Abbott wrote: But I can test E=mc^2 by gaining access to the equipment that allows for such tests. I don't have to build it myself. I still don't see the difference. My original point wasn't about testing e=mc^2; it was about using it in my daily life. I still don't see how I would use it other than in devices that I don't build but that take advantage of it--although I can't think of any of those either. Does a nuclear power generator count? I can't built it, but I can take advantage of it. -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Presented for FRIAMic Consideration
Whenever I go down to Portland State University, there's a fundamentalist preacher standing on a bench asserting that all the people walking around are morally in danger. He talks and talks, rails and rails. Yet the students discuss their classes or their social networks, study their books, talk on their phones, eat their lunch, etc. No matter how loud the preacher yells about the behavior and moral degradation of the people around him, nobody listens. They continue to do what they do, sometimes listening in amusement to the preacher, or playing Amen, brother games with him, but mostly ignoring him. I have some ideas about why his protestations have no effect. But it would help, especially in a conversation like this, if the preacher, himself, were to give some practical hint as to _how_ the discussion could be taken in a new direction. Or even in what new direction the preacher would like us to take the discussion. (Aside from thumbing some bible or other.) Mostly, the preacher seems to want to preach, with no discussion being possible. Anytime anyone tries to approach the preacher and _discuss_ whatever, the preacher ends up ranting and railing about how that person just doesn't get it and always falls into the standard immorality they exhibited before they tried to start a discussion with the preacher. On 04/23/2013 08:16 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote: Fuggit, work can wait, the first proposal is in final edit and the second one is under control, so why delay my response. Re: your question of what do I find ridiculous: Not the subject of the referenced paper, certainly. Rather our little group's pronounced tendency to niggle and (dare I say it?) pontificate over the true, deep, and (dare I say it?) philosophical meanings of words. Like, say, just to pick a random sample: emergence, complex, behaviors, through, causal, entropic, and forces. And now to hijack my own thread: the referenced paper mentions cosmology as one of the topic ares that the above terms are frequently used to describe. Since cosmology is one of my favorite spare time reading focus areas, I wanted to make an observation that the following reference makes very clearly, which is that *nobody* has even the slightest glimmer of understanding of our true cosmological origins. Even the events after that instant of the big bang, where it is postulated that our universe expanded from sub-atomic dimensions, through inflation (inflation? WTF caused that?) are only sparsely understood. Classical physicists like to duck the subject of What caused the big bang? by hiding behind the academic artifice of claiming that the question is meaningless because space-time did not exist before the big bang. But, we do like to pontificate here on FRIAM, don't we? Deeply, and philosophically. But rather than continuing in the usual vein of debating (deeply, but with much pontification) the true meaning, of, say emergence again, let's take the discussion in a new direction. Sorry for the Facebook link, but the original article is buried behind a NewScientist paywall. The article nicely addresses my thoughts on that other question you asked me, i.e. where do I think life comes from. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=501821756549668set=a.477892902275887.114170.334816523250193type=1theater --TrollBoi -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] The nature of Discussion Fora
On 03/19/2013 07:03 PM, Steve Smith wrote: do you have any references I could follow? The Twitch Ontology would be new to me (excepting what you just wrote). It felt as if it explained human behaviour as an automaton, but obviously more than that? No references. As far as I know, I made it up. 8^) I'm sure I've stolen it from somewhere, though. If I were to cite anyone, it would be Lima de Faria and autoevolution. But it's also inspired by autopoiesis. And there's a good dose of this mixed in: http://www.gprolog.org/manual/gprolog.html#htoc342 I think I began thinking this way back in college when I eavesdropped on an argument between a physics and a chemistry major who were arguing about what absolute zero means. Sorry for not being a scholar. I've long lamented my inability to keep track of where I get ideas. I wouldn't say it attempts to explain human behavior as automata. It's more an assertion that there is really only 1 source of all the variety we see around us, the impetus to fill/explore a space. I haven't yet decided if it's a categorically different thing that the rest of matter/energy. Human (or any, including quantum foam) behavior is just an artifact of the twitch sampling a constrained space. The constrained space has properties, including being more or less dense in various dimension. The denser the space, the more options/points the twitch has to explore. So, there are no types of twitch, there is only twitch. That doesn't imply any sort of determinism. In fact, it might argue for nondeterminism. I like to distinguish determinism from predictability. If I understand your concept of twitch, there is no choice to be made, but the outcome of coupled, cascading twitches (actors acting interactively?) can only be determined by running the twitching simulation forward? That's right, there is no choice to be made. However, the twitch might sample the space randomly or by some determined algorithm. I don't know. -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
[FRIAM] Against Kierkegaard (was Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services)
On 03/14/2013 09:16 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: Er.. IMAP? You have complete control over gmail. I uploaded 20+ years of mail to it over a day or so and have it all cached on my IMAP clients (thunderbird and mail.app) .. yes one needs 1 and I'm positive you have multiple clients. I have to respond to this first and separately because my response is simultaneously ideological and practical! Woohoo! ;-) No, not IMAP. I want my own cloud. The analog from GMail to my own cloud-based e-mail would be more like the combination of DNS failover with a grid of SMTP+dovecot+sparkleshare. Why do I want my own cloud? I don't really have a good answer for that. I just like a) to be able to change things I want changed when I want them changed and b) I like to know what's happening underneath. I don't know how GMail works underneath, but I would like to. But if I were forced to _guess_ why using another company's infrastructure to store my data offends me, I'd probably guess that the trend toward a single identity, single e-mail, use of real names in social nets, single sign-on, etc. ... that general trend indicates that this string ... e.g. g...@ropella.name will eventually _actually_ be my name, my unique ID ... the primary hook by which people communicate with me (or throw me in jail, accuse me of terrorism, ... whatever). And if that's the case, then I want to know what's happening in and around that unique ID... just like I want to understand DNA, or biological mechanisms in the meat-space cloud around me ... like how to maintain healthy living soil in my garden. How can someone ever say they understand their self if they don't really, practically understand the cloud surrounding their self? p.s. Yes, were you so inclined, you might read this as a categorical rejection of the word cloud as business-speak idiocy. 8^) -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
[FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
On 09/14/2012 06:56 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: For me, consciousness is a point of view, and any telic system has a point of view. Zombies are telic systems, no? That's a great question. I would answer no. Zombies cannot be telic (as I understand that word, of course) because they are enslaved by their context. They are not ends in and of themselves. They are tools whose purpose has been installed in them by some non-zombie actor. FWIW, the Rosenites would disagree with me. They'd claim that a zombie (were such possible) would be an organism closed to efficient cause (agency). From this, they claim such closure allows anticipation, which, in turn, allows final cause (purpose) ... all without any requirement for _consciousness_ ... but with a requirement for reflective self-reference (aka closure). Getting from reflection to consciousness might not be that hard. And I support them in their quest. ;-) But they haven't proven the closure to me. I believe we organisms are only partially closed (to any of the causes). Complete closure, in any of the causes, looks more like death to me. So, there's something missing from their framework ... to the limited extent to which I understand it. Now, we might be able to reverse engineer a tool's purpose from its attributes. And in that sense, a zombie might express a goal or purpose and be called telic ... but that purpose would not be its _own_. Perhaps a tool is telic, but it's not autotelic. And this is where faith and crazy enter. When we can't reverse engineer a person's purpose ... or more accurately ... when we can't empathize ... we can't tell ourselves a story in which context their actions make sense, then they're acting on faith or they're crazy. It is this ability to empathize ... for your neurons to be stimulated similarly to your referent's by observing their behavior ... that presents us with the zombie paradox. On the one hand, telling a believable story turns you into a _machine_, a tool, without personal responsibility or accountability. (My parents made me this way!) But on the other hand, not telling a story makes you alien, crazy, a wart that has to be removed. Interesting people walk that fine line between adequately explaining themselves but leaving just enough craziness and mystery to preserve their identity, to avoid being a zombie. I usually fail and am often accused of being a tool. 8^) Anyway, if you are curious, it's laid out in the conversation with the Devils Advocate on page 16 of the attached. Let me know what you think, if you have time to look at it. I will read it. Thanks. But in case it's not obvious, you must know that I don't take this stuff very seriously. I only think/talk about this stuff to distract me from work. ;-) So, it's unlikely that I'll be able to give it the attention that it and you deserve. -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
On 09/15/2012 06:59 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: Wow! This Zombie thing is WAY more complicated than I thought it was. Although I haven't read any Kant first hand, I hear him lurking in the background. For me, a thermostat/furnace system is a telic system. It acts in such a way as to maintain a set point. So do I, sometimes. Me and my furnace: we are telic systems. I disagree about the furnace, obviously. I could argue from the dictionary, but I'll spare you that. ;-) How about if I launch the argument from the concept of stigmergy? Any artifact, however intuitive it's interface, will be [mis-|ab-]used. To boot, its use (proper or not) will produce side effects not intended by the designer. Hence, any artifact like your furnace doesn't _express_ or _have_ a goal or purpose so much as one is ascribed to it by observers. It's this perspective that allows me to enjoy graffiti, even gangster tags, so much more than some people. I even enjoy some forms of vandalism (though I can't bring myself to participate). A more benign form of vandalism are the relatively new unconferences and things like collaborative fiction. Hell, even open-ended nonlinear games like grand theft auto help demonstrate the (absence of) telos in artifacts. No, I maintain that the only objects capable of expressing purpose or tending toward a goal are those with actor status, those identifiable (but non-atomic) units who act as their own agents. Everything else is premature conclusion and wishful thinking on the part of some observer. (Perhaps your furnace is not really a furnace! It just acts that way when you're not around.) -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: The lost Member
On 08/22/2012 08:24 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote: We can manually add second and third addressess for people that want to post from multiple accounts. Forward your request and additional email addresses to me. And be sure to change your personality just slightly depending on which e-mail address you're posting from. ;-) Personally, I find it very satisfying. -- glen == Hail Eris! Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; (I am large—I contain multitudes.) FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Wikileaks Mirror Taken Down: Host Buckles Under Demands from Upstream Provider | Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/weakest-links-host-buckles-when-upstream-provider -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
