Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[David Eric Smith]

t;  
>> The paradox of development (AKA epigenisis) is that there are all sorts of 
>> futures that can be known pretty precisely about a developing individual yet 
>> they are totally unknown to the individual that is developing.  It has to do 
>> with our discussion of intenSion, a few months back.
>>  
>> It may also be time for one of you to be delegated to “elder” me, in the 
>> quaker tradition.  “Now, Nick, ….”
>>  
>> N .
>>  
>> N
>>  
>> Nicholas Thompson
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>> Clark University
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,8pikIqjsWmNuBHfzE3VVLQF4_vkvnGX1oPfmWg4qJVbO9ts2bygQUBET758DUPmA4dH0McR2MMXhK_cL-slNT6tfSaWx6GP41uIIowPT-1XJk62VKA,,&typo=1>
>>  
>>  
>> From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> 
>> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
>> Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2020 10:00 AM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > <mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>>  
>> I want to somehow say sigh and sigh on this thread.
>>  
>> It comes somehow straight out of Monty Python (Blessed are the 
>> cheesemakers….)
>>  
>> 1. Some physicists figure out how to do a calculation, showing that some 
>> parts can go dynamically into an organized state, appealing to a combination 
>> of their own shapes and laws of large numbers for events that happen, and 
>> they don’t need to have the organized form imposed by any outside boundary 
>> conditions beyond the very low-level rules for how the events are sampled.  
>> They already knew this happens in equilibrium, because that is how anything 
>> freezes.  But here they are seeing it in a dynamical context, where the 
>> ordered form happens to be more ordered than the states they could produce 
>> from somehow-similar components in equilibrium.
>>  
>> 2. Physicsts, like everyone, are usually impatient and don’t want to have to 
>> recite the whole operational meaning of something every time they want to 
>> refer to it in the course of saying something else.
>>  
>> 3. So the physicists come up with a tag.  It should be sort of evocative, 
>> sort of catchy, and easy to remember.  Aha!  “Self-organization”, to keep in 
>> mind that the organization is resulting from low-level local features, and 
>> not from the boundary conditions imposed on the system beyond that local 
>> stuff.
>>  
>> 4. Nick encounters the term.  It happens to contain two words about which he 
>> cares very very much, so to him they are not mere hackage generated by some 
>> physicists, but freighted with meaning.
>>  
>> 5. Nick starts a thread: Which self?  Is it the same self before and after?  
>> Is “organized” here a transitive or an intransitive verb?  If transitive, 
>> what is the object?  Can the same referent be both object and subject of a 
>> transitive verb?  Does that make the verb reflexive?  What are the 
>> implications for monists?  For dualists?
>>  
>> 6. Friam is willing to engage.
>>  
>> 7.  I write a long tedious email, trying to remind the humanists that the 
>> most important character trait of physicists is impatience.  
>>  
>> Eric
>>  
>>  
>> 
>> 
>>> On Oct 29, 2020, at 10:03 AM, Prof David West >> <mailto:profw...@fastmail.fm>> wrote:
>>>  
>>> Nick,
>>>  
>>> " I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that 
>>> is
>>> assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled."
>>>  
>>> By what definition? Your monist view that the self lacks ontological status 
>>> in the first place?
>>>  
>>> davew
>>>  
>>>  
>>> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, at 5:48 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com 
>>> <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > Jon,
>>> > 
>>> > Is a steam governor a case of downward causation?
>>> > 
>>> > This question will reveal, no doubt, that I don't understand  your 
>>> > previous
>>> > answer, but perhaps others will explain it to me. 
>>> > 
>>> > I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that 
>>> > is
>>> > assembling is never, by defi

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[David Eric Smith]

But that’s exactly not the set of relations they want to invoke with the word 
“self-organization”.  Not organization imposed by a scaffold.  Organization 
that reflects a loss of access to a large subset of arrangements, for reasons 
that appeal only to the “ordinary” local properties of the system that you 
already knew, but that have consequences for very non-local regularities that 
the small-scale features don’t seem to be “about”.

Things get interesting when we get to viral capsids.  They exploit properties 
of statistical mechanics that enable you, by controlling the shape and surface 
properties of some small, rigid proteins, to manage the assembly of quite large 
and structured ribonucleoprotein complexes.  On the other hand, the 
information-carrying library that ensures those coat proteins will have forms 
that do assemble with functional consequences, is an outcome of Bayesian 
filtering according to regularities in environments.

So there is a part that uses the mechanics of "self-organization”, but only for 
the rightly-configured participants.  Chance favors the prepared mind.  The 
gods help those who help themselves (or in this case, the gods set those up to 
help themselves).

Eric



> On Oct 29, 2020, at 3:39 PM,  
>  wrote:
> 
> Dave, 
>  
> Ontology, schmontology.  As others have pointed out, mine is just a trivial 
> logical point.   Let the self (Sx) be any kind of thing (Tx) at all.  Let 
> assembly be a process of putting things together to make a new thing.  S1 + 
> T1 = S2 + T2 = etc.  At each point the self that is assembled is not the self 
> that is assembling, no?  I think, on the whole, it would be better if we 
> spoke not of self assembly, but of scaffolding where something external to 
> the structure being formed, facilitates the formation of the structure.  So 
> at each stage in the assembly, the previous stage “scaffolds” the next.  
> White smokers scaffolded the formation of life. Life scaffolded the further 
> evolution of life.  The genome is a scaffold for natural selection.  
>  
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,-9eA0tpcGk9pd5OHwVPFZ791KirZei_eJawe0TpH2mQQh4T_CothRzV6kAT-r6c8rxSP1ri8cM7AiYAqGFm5bQnKnpsutj1uNPz3usqZODg,&typo=1>
>  
>  
> From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
> Behalf Of Prof David West
> Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2020 8:04 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>  
> Nick,
>  
> " I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that is
> assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled."
>  
> By what definition? Your monist view that the self lacks ontological status 
> in the first place?
>  
> davew
>  
>  
> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, at 5:48 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com 
> <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Jon,
> > 
> > Is a steam governor a case of downward causation?
> > 
> > This question will reveal, no doubt, that I don't understand  your previous
> > answer, but perhaps others will explain it to me. 
> > 
> > I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that is
> > assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled. 
> > 
> > Perhaps I am getting tangled up in words again. 
> > 
> > n
> > 
> > Nicholas Thompson
> > Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> > Clark University
> > thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>
> > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
> > <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,H4iSezwAWby322D_ahy0aIh7MEXifMvdqHq4hHBSZ30wZfjKsrDhbeju733P9Qv-QPN3SuldVSHyJD5xE_uL7p36t7ovHvenB1KmwckqSMBWrFda5w,,&typo=1>
> >  
> > 
> > 
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> 
> > On Behalf Of jon zingale
> > Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 2:01 PM
> > To: friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com>
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
> > 
> > Nick,
> > 
> > Let's say I have a language designed to work with sticks, where for
> > instance, it makes sense to name certain relations *Triangle*. Additionally,
> > let's assume that the language is detailed enough to include less obvious
> > relations such as those 

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[jon zingale]

Wow. I just checked my records and it was already 3 years ago that we started
that Baez book.



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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[jon zingale]

Is it really as bad as all of that? I like your choice of Darboux, rather
than Euler or Gauss, because his name quickly points me in a particular
direction. My experience is that familiarity with the tastes of individual
mathematicians contributes to navigating that vast sea, mercifully
suggesting hope that some charted course will not lead me astray. Darboux
fashioned such-and-such tool and if I think about the problem for a while, I
too may need such a tool. I suppose I can agree that like the Dewey decimal
or LLC system, it is an awkward and archaic attempt at library science.
OTOH, it seems to work well with my sensibility for building my personal
memory castle. Certainly, however, if I read an uninterpretable sentence
concluded with, "to which we apply a theorem of St. Anthony...", well then I
would surely cry.



--
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-  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Frank Wimberly]

 Eric’s analysis.
>>
>> I still want to protest abit.  I think the dynamic relation between the
>> physical concept  and the physicist’s humanistic metaphor is much more
>> interesting than this analysis would suggest.  Physicists use those
>> metaphors for a reasons, cognitive and communicatory.  And humanists are
>> right to explore their implications.  Otherwise, it would be fair for the
>> humanist to turn to the physicist and say, “Shut up and calculate.”
>>
>> The paradox of development (AKA epigenisis) is that there are all sorts
>> of futures that can be known pretty precisely about a developing individual
>> yet they are totally unknown to the individual that is developing.  It has
>> to do with our discussion of inten*S*ion, a few months back.
>>
>> It may also be time for one of you to be delegated to “elder” me, in the
>> quaker tradition.  “Now, Nick, ….”
>>
>> N .
>>
>> N
>>
>> Nicholas Thompson
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>> Clark University
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,8pikIqjsWmNuBHfzE3VVLQF4_vkvnGX1oPfmWg4qJVbO9ts2bygQUBET758DUPmA4dH0McR2MMXhK_cL-slNT6tfSaWx6GP41uIIowPT-1XJk62VKA,,&typo=1>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *David Eric Smith
>> *Sent:* Thursday, October 29, 2020 10:00 AM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>>
>> I want to somehow say sigh and sigh on this thread.
>>
>> It comes somehow straight out of Monty Python (Blessed are the
>> cheesemakers….)
>>
>> 1. Some physicists figure out how to do a calculation, showing that some
>> parts can go dynamically into an organized state, appealing to a
>> combination of their own shapes and laws of large numbers for events that
>> happen, and they don’t need to have the organized form imposed by any
>> outside boundary conditions beyond the very low-level rules for how the
>> events are sampled.  They already knew this happens in equilibrium, because
>> that is how anything freezes.  But here they are seeing it in a dynamical
>> context, where the ordered form happens to be more ordered than the states
>> they could produce from somehow-similar components in equilibrium.
>>
>> 2. Physicsts, like everyone, are usually impatient and don’t want to have
>> to recite the whole operational meaning of something every time they want
>> to refer to it in the course of saying something else.
>>
>> 3. So the physicists come up with a tag.  It should be sort of evocative,
>> sort of catchy, and easy to remember.  Aha!  “Self-organization”, to keep
>> in mind that the organization is resulting from low-level local features,
>> and not from the boundary conditions imposed on the system beyond that
>> local stuff.
>>
>> 4. Nick encounters the term.  It happens to contain two words about which
>> he cares very very much, so to him they are not mere hackage generated by
>> some physicists, but freighted with meaning.
>>
>> 5. Nick starts a thread: Which self?  Is it the same self before and
>> after?  Is “organized” here a transitive or an intransitive verb?  If
>> transitive, what is the object?  Can the same referent be both object and
>> subject of a transitive verb?  Does that make the verb reflexive?  What are
>> the implications for monists?  For dualists?
>>
>> 6. Friam is willing to engage.
>>
>> 7.  I write a long tedious email, trying to remind the humanists that the
>> most important character trait of physicists is impatience.
>>
>> Eric
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Oct 29, 2020, at 10:03 AM, Prof David West 
>> wrote:
>>
>> Nick,
>>
>> *" I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self
>> that is*
>> *assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled."*
>>
>> By what definition? Your monist view that the self lacks ontological
>> status in the first place?
>>
>> davew
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, at 5:48 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>> > Jon,
>> >
>> > Is a steam governor a case of downward causation?
>> >
>> > This question will reveal, no doubt, that I don't understand  your
>> previous
>> > answer, but perhaps others will explain it to me.
>> >
>> >

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[David Eric Smith]

I’m actually quite on board with your wish to make these questions more 
interesting than they may have started out, Nick.

And I also think you are right that the namers meant the names to carry weight. 
 (Though I also think most thought is a bit hurried and careless, and gives 
itself more credit than is earned.)

The interesting struggle will be that the original calculation was in a way 
rather small, compared to the metaphor that many hope can be spun from it.

Or perhaps said another way, maybe many of these things that have weight to 
compel as we experience them in life, are pointers to little mechanics below 
the surface that, in its own terms, is a small thing.

I know that in each paper I write, I imagine getting at a big idea, and realize 
that the most I have done is a small calculation.  So there is a foot in each 
boat….

Best,

Eric


> On Oct 29, 2020, at 1:20 PM,  
>  wrote:
> 
> Sorry everybody.  I seem to be out of my depth in  many pools at once.
>  
> I really like Eric’s analysis. 
>  
> I still want to protest abit.  I think the dynamic relation between the 
> physical concept  and the physicist’s humanistic metaphor is much more 
> interesting than this analysis would suggest.  Physicists use those metaphors 
> for a reasons, cognitive and communicatory.  And humanists are right to 
> explore their implications.  Otherwise, it would be fair for the humanist to 
> turn to the physicist and say, “Shut up and calculate.”
>  
> The paradox of development (AKA epigenisis) is that there are all sorts of 
> futures that can be known pretty precisely about a developing individual yet 
> they are totally unknown to the individual that is developing.  It has to do 
> with our discussion of intenSion, a few months back.
>  
> It may also be time for one of you to be delegated to “elder” me, in the 
> quaker tradition.  “Now, Nick, ….”
>  
> N .
>  
> N
>  
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,8pikIqjsWmNuBHfzE3VVLQF4_vkvnGX1oPfmWg4qJVbO9ts2bygQUBET758DUPmA4dH0McR2MMXhK_cL-slNT6tfSaWx6GP41uIIowPT-1XJk62VKA,,&typo=1>
>  
>  
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
> Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2020 10:00 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>  
> I want to somehow say sigh and sigh on this thread.
>  
> It comes somehow straight out of Monty Python (Blessed are the cheesemakers….)
>  
> 1. Some physicists figure out how to do a calculation, showing that some 
> parts can go dynamically into an organized state, appealing to a combination 
> of their own shapes and laws of large numbers for events that happen, and 
> they don’t need to have the organized form imposed by any outside boundary 
> conditions beyond the very low-level rules for how the events are sampled.  
> They already knew this happens in equilibrium, because that is how anything 
> freezes.  But here they are seeing it in a dynamical context, where the 
> ordered form happens to be more ordered than the states they could produce 
> from somehow-similar components in equilibrium.
>  
> 2. Physicsts, like everyone, are usually impatient and don’t want to have to 
> recite the whole operational meaning of something every time they want to 
> refer to it in the course of saying something else.
>  
> 3. So the physicists come up with a tag.  It should be sort of evocative, 
> sort of catchy, and easy to remember.  Aha!  “Self-organization”, to keep in 
> mind that the organization is resulting from low-level local features, and 
> not from the boundary conditions imposed on the system beyond that local 
> stuff.
>  
> 4. Nick encounters the term.  It happens to contain two words about which he 
> cares very very much, so to him they are not mere hackage generated by some 
> physicists, but freighted with meaning.
>  
> 5. Nick starts a thread: Which self?  Is it the same self before and after?  
> Is “organized” here a transitive or an intransitive verb?  If transitive, 
> what is the object?  Can the same referent be both object and subject of a 
> transitive verb?  Does that make the verb reflexive?  What are the 
> implications for monists?  For dualists?
>  
> 6. Friam is willing to engage.
>  
> 7.  I write a long tedious email, trying to remind the humanists that the 
> most important character trait of physicists is impatience.  
>  
> Eric
>  
>  
> 
> 
>> On Oct 29, 2020, at 10:03 AM, Prof David West > <mailto:

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Eric Charles]

I agree with everything said in there email focusing on:

And I also think you are right that the namers meant the names to carry
weight.  (Though I also think most thought is a bit hurried and careless,
and gives itself more credit than is earned.)


However, as I am fond of saying: *It's worse than that.*

They aren't just picking the names to carry weight, the are picking the
names exactly to try to gain traction off of how sexy it sounds, even when
they know they know that they would deny all the sexy implications if
pressed. And it doesn't bother them that anyone hearing the term will think
the phenomenon is sexier than it actually is, because that is a feature,
not a bug.

There is a reason Dawkins titled his book "The Selfish Gene" rather than
"Things that stay around are things that stayed around."

There is a reason people called it "superstring theory" instead of
"High-dimensional math you will never understand and which we might never
be able to test."

It wasn't JUST about verbal expedience or rushed thinking. If you wanted
expedience you would just label it Theory Option 78, or TO78 if you wanted
it even shorter. You could do that, sure, but it would never get you a
mention on Freakonomics radio.


On Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 1:32 PM David Eric Smith  wrote:

> I’m actually quite on board with your wish to make these questions more
> interesting than they may have started out, Nick.
>
> And I also think you are right that the namers meant the names to carry
> weight.  (Though I also think most thought is a bit hurried and careless,
> and gives itself more credit than is earned.)
>
> The interesting struggle will be that the original calculation was in a
> way rather small, compared to the metaphor that many hope can be spun from
> it.
>
> Or perhaps said another way, maybe many of these things that have weight
> to compel as we experience them in life, are pointers to little mechanics
> below the surface that, in its own terms, is a small thing.
>
> I know that in each paper I write, I imagine getting at a big idea, and
> realize that the most I have done is a small calculation.  So there is a
> foot in each boat….
>
> Best,
>
> Eric
>
>
> On Oct 29, 2020, at 1:20 PM,  <
> thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Sorry everybody.  I seem to be out of my depth in  many pools at once.
>
> I really like Eric’s analysis.
>
> I still want to protest abit.  I think the dynamic relation between the
> physical concept  and the physicist’s humanistic metaphor is much more
> interesting than this analysis would suggest.  Physicists use those
> metaphors for a reasons, cognitive and communicatory.  And humanists are
> right to explore their implications.  Otherwise, it would be fair for the
> humanist to turn to the physicist and say, “Shut up and calculate.”
>
> The paradox of development (AKA epigenisis) is that there are all sorts of
> futures that can be known pretty precisely about a developing individual
> yet they are totally unknown to the individual that is developing.  It has
> to do with our discussion of inten*S*ion, a few months back.
>
> It may also be time for one of you to be delegated to “elder” me, in the
> quaker tradition.  “Now, Nick, ….”
>
> N .
>
> N
>
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,8pikIqjsWmNuBHfzE3VVLQF4_vkvnGX1oPfmWg4qJVbO9ts2bygQUBET758DUPmA4dH0McR2MMXhK_cL-slNT6tfSaWx6GP41uIIowPT-1XJk62VKA,,&typo=1>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *David Eric Smith
> *Sent:* Thursday, October 29, 2020 10:00 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
> I want to somehow say sigh and sigh on this thread.
>
> It comes somehow straight out of Monty Python (Blessed are the
> cheesemakers….)
>
> 1. Some physicists figure out how to do a calculation, showing that some
> parts can go dynamically into an organized state, appealing to a
> combination of their own shapes and laws of large numbers for events that
> happen, and they don’t need to have the organized form imposed by any
> outside boundary conditions beyond the very low-level rules for how the
> events are sampled.  They already knew this happens in equilibrium, because
> that is how anything freezes.  But here they are seeing it in a dynamical
> context, where the ordered form happens to be more ordered than the states
> they could produce from somehow-similar components in equilibrium.
>
> 2. Phy

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[David Eric Smith]

I want to somehow say sigh and sigh on this thread.

It comes somehow straight out of Monty Python (Blessed are the cheesemakers….)

1. Some physicists figure out how to do a calculation, showing that some parts 
can go dynamically into an organized state, appealing to a combination of their 
own shapes and laws of large numbers for events that happen, and they don’t 
need to have the organized form imposed by any outside boundary conditions 
beyond the very low-level rules for how the events are sampled.  They already 
knew this happens in equilibrium, because that is how anything freezes.  But 
here they are seeing it in a dynamical context, where the ordered form happens 
to be more ordered than the states they could produce from somehow-similar 
components in equilibrium.

2. Physicsts, like everyone, are usually impatient and don’t want to have to 
recite the whole operational meaning of something every time they want to refer 
to it in the course of saying something else.

3. So the physicists come up with a tag.  It should be sort of evocative, sort 
of catchy, and easy to remember.  Aha!  “Self-organization”, to keep in mind 
that the organization is resulting from low-level local features, and not from 
the boundary conditions imposed on the system beyond that local stuff.

4. Nick encounters the term.  It happens to contain two words about which he 
cares very very much, so to him they are not mere hackage generated by some 
physicists, but freighted with meaning.

5. Nick starts a thread: Which self?  Is it the same self before and after?  Is 
“organized” here a transitive or an intransitive verb?  If transitive, what is 
the object?  Can the same referent be both object and subject of a transitive 
verb?  Does that make the verb reflexive?  What are the implications for 
monists?  For dualists?

6. Friam is willing to engage.

7.  I write a long tedious email, trying to remind the humanists that the most 
important character trait of physicists is impatience.  

Eric



> On Oct 29, 2020, at 10:03 AM, Prof David West  wrote:
> 
> Nick,
> 
> " I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that is
> assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled."
> 
> By what definition? Your monist view that the self lacks ontological status 
> in the first place?
> 
> davew
> 
> 
> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, at 5:48 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com 
> <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Jon,
> > 
> > Is a steam governor a case of downward causation?
> > 
> > This question will reveal, no doubt, that I don't understand  your previous
> > answer, but perhaps others will explain it to me. 
> > 
> > I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that is
> > assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled. 
> > 
> > Perhaps I am getting tangled up in words again. 
> > 
> > n
> > 
> > Nicholas Thompson
> > Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> > Clark University
> > thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>
> > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
> > <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,aryOhfVU48KQtN6xZTrA9DuKF6rEe-ZppSYOdQn_1Py6Cpgt586u2buLg3DjT-c0qFESZFBn3sJm21uO2hXWV9yFGAeZn5lBmiyLY_mGvBNki6JGqZr5Vawr0Cc,&typo=1>
> >  
> > 
> > 
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> 
> > On Behalf Of jon zingale
> > Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 2:01 PM
> > To: friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com>
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
> > 
> > Nick,
> > 
> > Let's say I have a language designed to work with sticks, where for
> > instance, it makes sense to name certain relations *Triangle*. Additionally,
> > let's assume that the language is detailed enough to include less obvious
> > relations such as those which relate sticks to trees to soil and water.
> > Would it be cheap to narrowly define *downward causation* as the
> > manipulation of the world in accordance with this language to produce new
> > sticks?
> > 
> > Consider as another example when one manipulates charge in bulk using analog
> > filters. Here, a circuit designer may not need to know about spin or
> > superposition or a lot of other details about the universe. In fact, the
> > designer may not know how to write a "mid-frequency ranged filter" if they
> > were only given a quantum mechanical view of the world. They may, however,
> > know how to build such a fil

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2]

Dave, 

 

Ontology, schmontology.  As others have pointed out, mine is just a trivial
logical point.   Let the self (Sx) be any kind of thing (Tx) at all.  Let
assembly be a process of putting things together to make a new thing.  S1 +
T1 = S2 + T2 = etc.  At each point the self that is assembled is not the
self that is assembling, no?  I think, on the whole, it would be better if
we spoke not of self assembly, but of scaffolding where something external
to the structure being formed, facilitates the formation of the structure.
So at each stage in the assembly, the previous stage "scaffolds" the next.
White smokers scaffolded the formation of life. Life scaffolded the further
evolution of life.  The genome is a scaffold for natural selection.  

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2020 8:04 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

Nick,

 

" I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that
is

assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled."

 

By what definition? Your monist view that the self lacks ontological status
in the first place?

 

davew

 

 

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, at 5:48 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com
<mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>  wrote:

> Jon,

> 

> Is a steam governor a case of downward causation?

> 

> This question will reveal, no doubt, that I don't understand  your
previous

> answer, but perhaps others will explain it to me. 

> 

> I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that
is

> assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled. 

> 

> Perhaps I am getting tangled up in words again. 

> 

> n

> 

> Nicholas Thompson

> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

> Clark University

> thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> 

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

>  

> 

> 

> -Original Message-

> From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>
> On Behalf Of jon zingale

> Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 2:01 PM

> To: friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com> 

> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

> 

> Nick,

> 

> Let's say I have a language designed to work with sticks, where for

> instance, it makes sense to name certain relations *Triangle*.
Additionally,

> let's assume that the language is detailed enough to include less obvious

> relations such as those which relate sticks to trees to soil and water.

> Would it be cheap to narrowly define *downward causation* as the

> manipulation of the world in accordance with this language to produce new

> sticks?

> 

> Consider as another example when one manipulates charge in bulk using
analog

> filters. Here, a circuit designer may not need to know about spin or

> superposition or a lot of other details about the universe. In fact, the

> designer may not know how to write a "mid-frequency ranged filter" if they

> were only given a quantum mechanical view of the world. They may, however,

> know how to build such a filter if they are given appropriately shaped

> conductive surfaces and coils.

> 

> My apologies in advance if this characterization (that of reducing
*downward

> causation* to manipulation of a domain-specific language) is horribly

> flawed, but I spent this much time writing a response. So, there.

> 

> 

> 

> --

> Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> 

> -  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .

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> 

> 

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[David Eric Smith]

Very nice, Nick.

Co-larding below, but I will try to keep it short.

> On Oct 28, 2020, at 11:12 PM,  
>  wrote:
> 
> Thanks Eric.
>  
> Some unsophisticated “larding” below.
>  
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,7mgS_yRtylDwoUn0gBHLwx1KOpvXunFFWVOL-dndvnSW8gh3D853mwn4VaHNUkLWaOpRoXYIUGisFga4oYshoWm_HH69okfPH90nSpHrnw,,&typo=1>
>  
>  
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
> Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 7:35 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>  
> Hi Nick,
>  
> I think something causes dreams to have the narrative order they have.  
> Whatever it is probably is put in place by all the other functions that the 
> brain is asked to perform, along with the many constraints on how it is 
> possible to make a brain.  So dreams receive all that structure to take the 
> form they do.
> [NST===>I am sure that everything I am about to say is wrong, but let’s see 
> where it goes.  Let’s say, ex hypothesi, that sleeping is for tidying up the 
> brain and the brain cannot tidy up without generating experiences, in the say 
> that I cannot tidy up the mess of books, bills, and papers without reading 
> them briefly to identify them and put them in some frame of reference.  Let 
> it be the case that this goes on all night at a tremendous speed, and even 
> though you are experiencing, you do nothing because you are asleep.  Now, 
> upon awakening, you catch some of this processing in progress and you 
> remember them along with phony narrative time stamps that attach them to 
> earlier in the night.  Dreams are an epiphenomena of the waking brain 
> catching the sleeping brain at its work.  I think I have just created a 
> dualist monster here.  Oh, well. <===nst]

I actually think this is fine.  What I have seen about the memory-reinforcement 
role believed to be served by dreams works with it well.

The point being, dreams are not creating narrative for their own sake and 
within their own scope.  They are inheriting structures of narrative that are 
there in the brain, and are part of a template as other work is being done.

> I prefer that kind of example, where there are many inputs and a real thing 
> (all the organization of the brain) that they create, which is then available 
> to act “downwardly” on any one thing, particularly one that the structure 
> probably wasn’t selected for.  Like, dreaming may be functional, but I’m not 
> sure that whether dreams are entertaining would matter that much to 
> evolutionary criteria.
>  
> What I prefer those examples to are the old trope of “magnetization 
> downwardly causes spins to align”, since there is no additional thing that is 
> “magnetization” than the aggregate effect of all the other spins.  So one 
> hasn’t added anything by claiming “downward causation” to just saying “each 
> spin affects all the others, and the net effect excludes entropy to the 
> environment”.
> [NST===>So am I right that the magnetization is not an emergent; it is just 
> the aggregate effect of the spins?<===nst]

It is emergent, and it is exactly nothing more than an aggregate effect.  Both. 
 Because in this use of the term “emergent” there is no dependence on a notion 
of downward causation.

This was my life.  I use emergence daily.  I never find myself needing to use 
downward causation.

Best,

Eric


>  
> Best,
>  
> Eric
>  
> 
> 
>> On Oct 28, 2020, at 3:48 PM, > <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> > <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>  
>> The bite causes the irritation causes the itch causes the slap causes the 
>> removal of the mosquito.   And the slap causes the mosquito to be gone and 
>> relieves the irritation.  So that is definitely downward causation.  But 
>> this is all in the context of a complex organization that has already been 
>> assembled and “designed” for self maintenance.  To it begs the question I 
>> was [ineptly] trying to ask.  How do such control systems get assembled in 
>> the first place if NOT through the mediation of group selection?
>>  
>> N
>>  
>>  
>> I suppose that the local irritation causes the itch is upward causation, 
>> that “itch” is a state of the whole.  
>>  
>> Nicholas Thompson
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>> Clark University
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2]

Thanks, Eric, 

 

I like that. 

 

So long as the humanist does not get to say “Shut up and Calculate” and the 
physicist to say, “Of Course they aren’t strings, you idiot!”.  So long as it’s 
left dynamic.  

 

Hywel and I used to repeat this dialogue about once or twice a year.  He would 
be explaining some bit of particle physics to me in pen and ink on elegant pad 
he always carried around with him, and he would say “This particle wants to do 
this, and that particle wants to do that!” and I would soon be drowning.  At 
some point, I would thank him, and say, “So you confirm what I have always 
believed: that Psychology is the mother of all sciences.”

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2020 11:32 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

I’m actually quite on board with your wish to make these questions more 
interesting than they may have started out, Nick.

 

And I also think you are right that the namers meant the names to carry weight. 
 (Though I also think most thought is a bit hurried and careless, and gives 
itself more credit than is earned.)

 

The interesting struggle will be that the original calculation was in a way 
rather small, compared to the metaphor that many hope can be spun from it.

 

Or perhaps said another way, maybe many of these things that have weight to 
compel as we experience them in life, are pointers to little mechanics below 
the surface that, in its own terms, is a small thing.

 

I know that in each paper I write, I imagine getting at a big idea, and realize 
that the most I have done is a small calculation.  So there is a foot in each 
boat….

 

Best,

 

Eric

 





On Oct 29, 2020, at 1:20 PM, mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

 

Sorry everybody.  I seem to be out of my depth in  many pools at once. 

 

I really like Eric’s analysis.  

 

I still want to protest abit.  I think the dynamic relation between the 
physical concept  and the physicist’s humanistic metaphor is much more 
interesting than this analysis would suggest.  Physicists use those metaphors 
for a reasons, cognitive and communicatory.  And humanists are right to explore 
their implications.  Otherwise, it would be fair for the humanist to turn to 
the physicist and say, “Shut up and calculate.”

 

The paradox of development (AKA epigenisis) is that there are all sorts of 
futures that can be known pretty precisely about a developing individual yet 
they are totally unknown to the individual that is developing.  It has to do 
with our discussion of intenSion, a few months back. 

 

It may also be time for one of you to be delegated to “elder” me, in the quaker 
tradition.  “Now, Nick, ….”

 

N .

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

 
<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,8pikIqjsWmNuBHfzE3VVLQF4_vkvnGX1oPfmWg4qJVbO9ts2bygQUBET758DUPmA4dH0McR2MMXhK_cL-slNT6tfSaWx6GP41uIIowPT-1XJk62VKA,,&typo=1>
 https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2020 10:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

I want to somehow say sigh and sigh on this thread.

 

It comes somehow straight out of Monty Python (Blessed are the cheesemakers….)

 

1. Some physicists figure out how to do a calculation, showing that some parts 
can go dynamically into an organized state, appealing to a combination of their 
own shapes and laws of large numbers for events that happen, and they don’t 
need to have the organized form imposed by any outside boundary conditions 
beyond the very low-level rules for how the events are sampled.  They already 
knew this happens in equilibrium, because that is how anything freezes.  But 
here they are seeing it in a dynamical context, where the ordered form happens 
to be more ordered than the states they could produce from somehow-similar 
components in equilibrium.

 

2. Physicsts, like everyone, are usually impatient and don’t want to have to 
recite the whole operational meaning of something every time they want to refer 
to it in the course of saying something else.

 

3. So the physicists come up with a tag.  It should be sort of evocative, sort 
of catchy, and easy to remember.  Aha!  “Self-organization”, to keep in mind 
that the organization is r

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

What can you possibly mean by "totally unknown"? EricS' reference to freezing 
doesn't imply that the thing frozen "knows" anything about being frozen. It's 
simply a state, in a space, where some other states in that space are 
unreachable. Anthropomorphizing to dreaming humans adds that higher order 
reflective layer, executive, or enteroceptive process that isn't necessary for 
*most* conversations about emergence.


On 10/29/20 10:20 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> The paradox of development (AKA epigenisis) is that there are all sorts of 
> futures that can be known pretty precisely about a developing individual yet 
> they are totally unknown to the individual that is developing.  It has to do 
> with our discussion of inten*/S/*ion, a few months back.

-- 
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2]

Sorry everybody.  I seem to be out of my depth in  many pools at once. 

 

I really like Eric’s analysis.  

 

I still want to protest abit.  I think the dynamic relation between the 
physical concept  and the physicist’s humanistic metaphor is much more 
interesting than this analysis would suggest.  Physicists use those metaphors 
for a reasons, cognitive and communicatory.  And humanists are right to explore 
their implications.  Otherwise, it would be fair for the humanist to turn to 
the physicist and say, “Shut up and calculate.”

 

The paradox of development (AKA epigenisis) is that there are all sorts of 
futures that can be known pretty precisely about a developing individual yet 
they are totally unknown to the individual that is developing.  It has to do 
with our discussion of intenSion, a few months back. 

 

It may also be time for one of you to be delegated to “elder” me, in the quaker 
tradition.  “Now, Nick, ….”

 

N .

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2020 10:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

I want to somehow say sigh and sigh on this thread.

 

It comes somehow straight out of Monty Python (Blessed are the cheesemakers….)

 

1. Some physicists figure out how to do a calculation, showing that some parts 
can go dynamically into an organized state, appealing to a combination of their 
own shapes and laws of large numbers for events that happen, and they don’t 
need to have the organized form imposed by any outside boundary conditions 
beyond the very low-level rules for how the events are sampled.  They already 
knew this happens in equilibrium, because that is how anything freezes.  But 
here they are seeing it in a dynamical context, where the ordered form happens 
to be more ordered than the states they could produce from somehow-similar 
components in equilibrium.

 

2. Physicsts, like everyone, are usually impatient and don’t want to have to 
recite the whole operational meaning of something every time they want to refer 
to it in the course of saying something else.

 

3. So the physicists come up with a tag.  It should be sort of evocative, sort 
of catchy, and easy to remember.  Aha!  “Self-organization”, to keep in mind 
that the organization is resulting from low-level local features, and not from 
the boundary conditions imposed on the system beyond that local stuff.

 

4. Nick encounters the term.  It happens to contain two words about which he 
cares very very much, so to him they are not mere hackage generated by some 
physicists, but freighted with meaning.

 

5. Nick starts a thread: Which self?  Is it the same self before and after?  Is 
“organized” here a transitive or an intransitive verb?  If transitive, what is 
the object?  Can the same referent be both object and subject of a transitive 
verb?  Does that make the verb reflexive?  What are the implications for 
monists?  For dualists?

 

6. Friam is willing to engage.

 

7.  I write a long tedious email, trying to remind the humanists that the most 
important character trait of physicists is impatience.  

 

Eric

 

 





On Oct 29, 2020, at 10:03 AM, Prof David West mailto:profw...@fastmail.fm> > wrote:

 

Nick,

 

" I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that is

assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled."

 

By what definition? Your monist view that the self lacks ontological status in 
the first place?

 

davew

 

 

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, at 5:48 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com 
<mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>  wrote:

> Jon,

> 

> Is a steam governor a case of downward causation?

> 

> This question will reveal, no doubt, that I don't understand  your previous

> answer, but perhaps others will explain it to me. 

> 

> I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that is

> assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled. 

> 

> Perhaps I am getting tangled up in words again. 

> 

> n

> 

> Nicholas Thompson

> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

> Clark University

> thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> 

> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,aryOhfVU48KQtN6xZTrA9DuKF6rEe-ZppSYOdQn_1Py6Cpgt586u2buLg3DjT-c0qFESZFBn3sJm21uO2hXWV9yFGAeZn5lBmiyLY_mGvBNki6JGqZr5Vawr0Cc,&typo=1>
>  

>  

> 

> 

> -Original Message-

> From: Friam mailto:friam-b

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Steve Smith]

Eric Smith wrote:
> */  Dreams are an epiphenomena of the waking brain catching the
> sleeping brain at its work.  I think I have just created a dualist
> monster here.  Oh, well. <===nst] /*
>
> I actually think this is fine.  What I have seen about the
> memory-reinforcement role believed to be served by dreams works with
> it well.
I have always liked the "just so" story that dreams serve as a forum for
"untangling" the tangles left from the day's weaving of webs that humans
seem to do.  Like braiding a set of cords and having to pause every few
dozen braidings to untangle the ends of the cords (the
counter-braid).    In a more modern idiom, I think of it as a
refactoring process.  Or following Piaget's structural theory of
learning convolved with CS201 topics, it is a rebalancing of "trees" as
we hang more and more stuff on them in our daily experiences.
>
> The point being, dreams are not creating narrative for their own sake
> and within their own scope.  They are inheriting structures of
> narrative that are there in the brain, and are part of a template as
> other work is being done.

Yes, like that.


>
>> I prefer that kind of example, where there are many inputs and a real
>> thing (all the organization of the brain) that they create, which is
>> then available to act “downwardly” on any one thing, particularly one
>> that the structure probably wasn’t selected for.  Like, dreaming may
>> be functional, but I’m not sure that whether dreams are entertaining
>> would matter that much to evolutionary criteria.
>>  
>> What I prefer those examples to are the old trope of “magnetization
>> downwardly causes spins to align”, since there is no additional thing
>> that is “magnetization” than the aggregate effect of all the other
>> spins.  So one hasn’t added anything by claiming “downward causation”
>> to just saying “each spin affects all the others, and the net effect
>> excludes entropy to the environment”.
>> */[NST===>So am I right that the magnetization is not an emergent; it
>> is just the aggregate effect of the spins?<===nst] /*
>
> It is emergent, and it is exactly nothing more than an aggregate
> effect.  Both.  Because in this use of the term “emergent” there is no
> dependence on a notion of downward causation.
>
> This was my life.  I use emergence daily.  I never find myself needing
> to use downward causation.

Following DaveW's commentary, I suppose I think of "Emergence" as being
about ontological status.   When a jizillion air molecules (with
suspended dust and water droplets) begin to (self?) organize into a
vortex, there is some point at which we want to call it a
whirlwind/funnel-cloud/tornado/tropical storm/hurricane.   And in fact,
the collective action of those molecules/particles/droplets is dominated
by the vortex's properties with the components' properties less
important?   But when/how does this transition happen?  Is it always a
recognizable phase transition of some sort?  

I admit to finding "self-organization" "emergence" "ontological status"
"downward causation" and "auopoesis" to be very (but wonderfully)
mysterious...   I think it was recently that someone (SteveG) made the
point that the central theme of any study is the term which is most in
contention (Consciousness, Art, Governance, etc.).  Perhaps by
definition, the central object of study (or constellation thereof) is
the one thing left to be under-specified... otherwise why would we be
studying it?

- Steve


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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Prof David West]

Nick,

*" I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that 
is**
*
*assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled."*

By what definition? Your monist view that the self lacks ontological status in 
the first place?

davew


On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, at 5:48 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> Jon,
> 
> Is a steam governor a case of downward causation?
> 
> This question will reveal, no doubt, that I don't understand  your previous
> answer, but perhaps others will explain it to me. 
> 
> I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that is
> assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled. 
> 
> Perhaps I am getting tangled up in words again. 
> 
> n
> 
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>  
> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of jon zingale
> Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 2:01 PM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
> 
> Nick,
> 
> Let's say I have a language designed to work with sticks, where for
> instance, it makes sense to name certain relations *Triangle*. Additionally,
> let's assume that the language is detailed enough to include less obvious
> relations such as those which relate sticks to trees to soil and water.
> Would it be cheap to narrowly define *downward causation* as the
> manipulation of the world in accordance with this language to produce new
> sticks?
> 
> Consider as another example when one manipulates charge in bulk using analog
> filters. Here, a circuit designer may not need to know about spin or
> superposition or a lot of other details about the universe. In fact, the
> designer may not know how to write a "mid-frequency ranged filter" if they
> were only given a quantum mechanical view of the world. They may, however,
> know how to build such a filter if they are given appropriately shaped
> conductive surfaces and coils.
> 
> My apologies in advance if this characterization (that of reducing *downward
> causation* to manipulation of a domain-specific language) is horribly
> flawed, but I spent this much time writing a response. So, there.
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[jon zingale]

Nick,

I could probably express my thoughts in *steam governor* talk, but since
this week KenP has me thinking about RNA, I will try this other tack.
Extensionally, ribosomes can be identified as functions taking RNA and
returning useful proteins for an organism. Due to the constrained nature
of the *mechanism*, only certain sequences of RNA bases correspond to
proteins. Let us think of this correspondence as giving a semantics of
sequences to proteins. Now, a virus can come along and hijack the protein
production by sending RNA messages of its own, i.e., by operating within
the constraints of the semantics and producing viable RNA sequences.

As another example, consider giving an order at a restaurant. When you
perform this task, the waiter must decode the utterance into experiences
they can reason about before they can carry out the order. More than
just a transformation of pressure waves into the action of bringing you
food, designations of meaning are non-arbitrarily selected from the
context.



--
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[David Eric Smith]

Hi Nick,

I think something causes dreams to have the narrative order they have.  
Whatever it is probably is put in place by all the other functions that the 
brain is asked to perform, along with the many constraints on how it is 
possible to make a brain.  So dreams receive all that structure to take the 
form they do.

I prefer that kind of example, where there are many inputs and a real thing 
(all the organization of the brain) that they create, which is then available 
to act “downwardly” on any one thing, particularly one that the structure 
probably wasn’t selected for.  Like, dreaming may be functional, but I’m not 
sure that whether dreams are entertaining would matter that much to 
evolutionary criteria.

What I prefer those examples to are the old trope of “magnetization downwardly 
causes spins to align”, since there is no additional thing that is 
“magnetization” than the aggregate effect of all the other spins.  So one 
hasn’t added anything by claiming “downward causation” to just saying “each 
spin affects all the others, and the net effect excludes entropy to the 
environment”.

Best,

Eric


> On Oct 28, 2020, at 3:48 PM,  
>  wrote:
> 
> The bite causes the irritation causes the itch causes the slap causes the 
> removal of the mosquito.   And the slap causes the mosquito to be gone and 
> relieves the irritation.  So that is definitely downward causation.  But this 
> is all in the context of a complex organization that has already been 
> assembled and “designed” for self maintenance.  To it begs the question I was 
> [ineptly] trying to ask.  How do such control systems get assembled in the 
> first place if NOT through the mediation of group selection?
>  
> N
>  
>  
> I suppose that the local irritation causes the itch is upward causation, that 
> “itch” is a state of the whole.  
>  
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,E3j_ycVni22ignpNV8IcYN_l6RjYl9qsLDTt0w72L-JpDqiVv0B1y7kJwgT01Vl1U0L_0fwvlWWbaSWWJETTmYIoCSXpFW7hINbo6PeV_Q,,&typo=1>
>  
>  
> From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
> Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
> Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 1:37 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group  <mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>  
> Scratching oneself?  I'm not trying to be a pain.
> 
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
> 
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>  
> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:32 PM  <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> If one allows stygmergy as a form of downward causation, I can understand 
>> it.  So I guess I am looking for the simplest kind of example of self 
>> assembly: i.e., where something of a higher order improves itself by 
>> improving the arrangement of its parts.  Or places constraints on its parts 
>> to be good for itself. There may be a thousand examples.  I just can’t think 
>> of one that doesn’t involve group selection.  
>>  
>> N
>>  
>> Nicholas Thompson
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>> Clark University
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,An9y_L_qMcw7DjbQBwr59oFMAkGsviixot6WozslEE5WIPeCOq2aKJdu9NDGUP0rZYt1iuyD3biIS01Jw0dBCOHTRC-pjjvpRwzika9I9hBfjEOV8b0_&typo=1>
>>  
>>  
>> From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> 
>> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 1:16 PM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > <mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>>  
>> I'm not Marcus but a classical example is mental events causing physical 
>> events.  Note the use of mental language.
>> 
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>> 
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>  
>> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:12 PM > <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> Marcus, 
>>> 
>>>  can't claim to understand you fully, here, but your use of the word, 
>>> sovereignty, made me think you might have something to contribute to a 
>>> quandary I found myself in recently.  I was on a zoom with a bunch of 
>>> peo

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2]

Thanks Eric.

 

Some unsophisticated “larding” below.

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 7:35 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

Hi Nick,

 

I think something causes dreams to have the narrative order they have.  
Whatever it is probably is put in place by all the other functions that the 
brain is asked to perform, along with the many constraints on how it is 
possible to make a brain.  So dreams receive all that structure to take the 
form they do.

[NST===>I am sure that everything I am about to say is wrong, but let’s see 
where it goes.  Let’s say, ex hypothesi, that sleeping is for tidying up the 
brain and the brain cannot tidy up without generating experiences, in the say 
that I cannot tidy up the mess of books, bills, and papers without reading them 
briefly to identify them and put them in some frame of reference.  Let it be 
the case that this goes on all night at a tremendous speed, and even though you 
are experiencing, you do nothing because you are asleep.  Now, upon awakening, 
you catch some of this processing in progress and you remember them along with 
phony narrative time stamps that attach them to earlier in the night.  Dreams 
are an epiphenomena of the waking brain catching the sleeping brain at its 
work.  I think I have just created a dualist monster here.  Oh, well. <===nst] 

 

I prefer that kind of example, where there are many inputs and a real thing 
(all the organization of the brain) that they create, which is then available 
to act “downwardly” on any one thing, particularly one that the structure 
probably wasn’t selected for.  Like, dreaming may be functional, but I’m not 
sure that whether dreams are entertaining would matter that much to 
evolutionary criteria.

 

What I prefer those examples to are the old trope of “magnetization downwardly 
causes spins to align”, since there is no additional thing that is 
“magnetization” than the aggregate effect of all the other spins.  So one 
hasn’t added anything by claiming “downward causation” to just saying “each 
spin affects all the others, and the net effect excludes entropy to the 
environment”.

[NST===>So am I right that the magnetization is not an emergent; it is just the 
aggregate effect of the spins?<===nst] 

 

Best,

 

Eric

 





On Oct 28, 2020, at 3:48 PM, mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

 

The bite causes the irritation causes the itch causes the slap causes the 
removal of the mosquito.   And the slap causes the mosquito to be gone and 
relieves the irritation.  So that is definitely downward causation.  But this 
is all in the context of a complex organization that has already been assembled 
and “designed” for self maintenance.  To it begs the question I was [ineptly] 
trying to ask.  How do such control systems get assembled in the first place if 
NOT through the mediation of group selection?

 

N

 

 

I suppose that the local irritation causes the itch is upward causation, that 
“itch” is a state of the whole.  

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

 
<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,E3j_ycVni22ignpNV8IcYN_l6RjYl9qsLDTt0w72L-JpDqiVv0B1y7kJwgT01Vl1U0L_0fwvlWWbaSWWJETTmYIoCSXpFW7hINbo6PeV_Q,,&typo=1>
 https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 1:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

Scratching oneself?  I'm not trying to be a pain.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:32 PM mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

If one allows stygmergy as a form of downward causation, I can understand it.  
So I guess I am looking for the simplest kind of example of self assembly: 
i.e., where something of a higher order improves itself by improving the 
arrangement of its parts.  Or places constraints on its parts to be good for 
itself. There may be a thousand examples.  I just can’t think of one that 
doesn’t involve group selection.  

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

 

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2]

Jon,

Is a steam governor a case of downward causation?

This question will reveal, no doubt, that I don't understand  your previous
answer, but perhaps others will explain it to me. 

I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that is
assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled. 

Perhaps I am getting tangled up in words again. 

n

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


-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 2:01 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Nick,

Let's say I have a language designed to work with sticks, where for
instance, it makes sense to name certain relations *Triangle*. Additionally,
let's assume that the language is detailed enough to include less obvious
relations such as those which relate sticks to trees to soil and water.
Would it be cheap to narrowly define *downward causation* as the
manipulation of the world in accordance with this language to produce new
sticks?

Consider as another example when one manipulates charge in bulk using analog
filters. Here, a circuit designer may not need to know about spin or
superposition or a lot of other details about the universe. In fact, the
designer may not know how to write a "mid-frequency ranged filter" if they
were only given a quantum mechanical view of the world. They may, however,
know how to build such a filter if they are given appropriately shaped
conductive surfaces and coils.

My apologies in advance if this characterization (that of reducing *downward
causation* to manipulation of a domain-specific language) is horribly
flawed, but I spent this much time writing a response. So, there.



--
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2]

…which would explain why I have never quite understood auto poeisis.  It’s one 
of those Escher things … the hand drawing the hand.  

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 2:53 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

Maturana and Varela use structural coupling at the "indiivual" before the 
"individual in context" before "group" before "control structures," e.g. "mind."

 

davew

 

 

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, at 2:48 PM, Prof David West wrote:

A simple — stymergic — example. Write down your waking blood sugar measure; 
then everything you eat and the time you ate it; two hours after each intake, 
measure and record your sugar level; and finally, your sugar level as you 
retire to bed. Do this for several weeks. Your behavior will change in detail, 
to your betterment. You do not even need to look at what you wrote down or 
analyze it in any fashion. There is some degree of talisman magic in knowing 
that the recordings are stored somewhere and available for review if you ever 
wanted to, or if your clinician wanted to use it as data to develop a 
hypothesis.

 

Since you brought up the word and seem to think it has some meaning — I have 
never understood stymergy because it seems to be grounded in the notion that an 
organism is separate/apart from its environment. My understanding of reality 
would assert that each are constant and simultaneous co-mediators of each 
other. (Actually they are the same thing and any apparent differentiation is 
just illusion.)

 

The entire concept of autopoeisis and structural coupling, as I understand it, 
would seem to be an example of "something at a higher order improving itself by 
arranging its parts."

 

davew

 

 

 

 

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, at 1:32 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com 
<mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>  wrote:

If one allows stygmergy as a form of downward causation, I can understand it.  
So I guess I am looking for the simplest kind of example of self assembly: 
i.e., where something of a higher order improves itself by improving the 
arrangement of its parts.  Or places constraints on its parts to be good for 
itself. There may be a thousand examples.  I just can’t think of one that 
doesn’t involve group selection. 

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

 

 

 

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

Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 1:16 PM

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

 

I'm not Marcus but a classical example is mental events causing physical 
events.  Note the use of mental language.

 

---

Frank C. Wimberly

140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 

Santa Fe, NM 87505

 

505 670-9918

Santa Fe, NM

 

 

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:12 PM mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

 

Marcus, 

 

 can't claim to understand you fully, here, but your use of the word, 
sovereignty, made me think you might have something to contribute to a quandary 
I found myself in recently.  I was on a zoom with a bunch of people.  First 
they talked about emergence, and I figured I understand that.  Wimsatt: a 
property is emergent if it is a property of a whole that depends on the order 
or arrangement of the parts.  So, the ability of sticks to bear weight depends  
on their arrangement as triangles.   So far, so good.  But then the began to 
talk about "downward" causation, and I realized that I did not know, nor have I 
ever known, what people mean by "downward" causation.  Do you have some simple 
models of it in mind that even I could understand? 

 

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> 

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

 

 

 

-Original Message-

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of Marcus Daniels

Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 9:17 PM

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

Using statistical mechanics to inspire a stable and universal functional form 
that evolves in time is one way to make a model of social systems.   But even 
with that for model of the physical world, there are many 

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Prof David West]

Maturana and Varela use structural coupling at the "indiivual" before the 
"individual in context" before "group" before "control structures," e.g. "mind."

davew


On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, at 2:48 PM, Prof David West wrote:
> A simple — stymergic — example. Write down your waking blood sugar measure; 
> then everything you eat and the time you ate it; two hours after each intake, 
> measure and record your sugar level; and finally, your sugar level as you 
> retire to bed. Do this for several weeks. Your behavior will change in 
> detail, to your betterment. You do not even need to look at what you wrote 
> down or analyze it in any fashion. There is some degree of talisman magic in 
> knowing that the recordings are stored somewhere and available for review if 
> you ever wanted to, or if your clinician wanted to use it as data to develop 
> a hypothesis.
> 
> Since you brought up the word and seem to think it has some meaning — I have 
> never understood stymergy because it seems to be grounded in the notion that 
> an organism is separate/apart from its environment. My understanding of 
> reality would assert that each are constant and simultaneous co-mediators of 
> each other. (Actually they are the same thing and any apparent 
> differentiation is just illusion.)
> 
> The entire concept of autopoeisis and structural coupling, as I understand 
> it, would seem to be an example of "something at a higher order improving 
> itself by arranging its parts."
> 
> davew
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, at 1:32 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>> If one allows stygmergy as a form of downward causation, I can understand 
>> it.  So I guess I am looking for the simplest kind of example of self 
>> assembly: i.e., where something of a higher order improves itself by 
>> improving the arrangement of its parts.  Or places constraints on its parts 
>> to be good for itself. There may be a thousand examples.  I just can’t think 
>> of one that doesn’t involve group selection. 

>>  

>> N

>>  

>> Nicholas Thompson

>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

>> Clark University

>> thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

>> 

>>  

>>  

>> 

>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 28, 2020 1:16 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>> 

>>  

>> I'm not Marcus but a classical example is mental events causing physical 
>> events.  Note the use of mental language.

>> 

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

>>  

>> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:12 PM  wrote:

>>> 

>>> Marcus, 
>>> 
>>>  can't claim to understand you fully, here, but your use of the word, 
>>> sovereignty, made me think you might have something to contribute to a 
>>> quandary I found myself in recently.  I was on a zoom with a bunch of 
>>> people.  First they talked about emergence, and I figured I understand 
>>> that.  Wimsatt: a property is emergent if it is a property of a whole that 
>>> depends on the order or arrangement of the parts.  So, the ability of 
>>> sticks to bear weight depends  on their arrangement as triangles.   So far, 
>>> so good.  But then the began to talk about "downward" causation, and I 
>>> realized that I did not know, nor have I ever known, what people mean by 
>>> "downward" causation.  Do you have some simple models of it in mind that 
>>> even I could understand? 
>>> 
>>> Nick 
>>> Nicholas Thompson
>>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>>> Clark University
>>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -Original Message-
>>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
>>> Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 9:17 PM
>>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>>> 
>>> Using statistical mechanics to inspire a stable and universal functional 
>>> form that evolves in time is one way to make a model of social systems.   
>>> But even with that for model of the physical world, there are many possible 
>>> models for control systems that could layer on top of 

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Prof David West]

A simple — stymergic — example. Write down your waking blood sugar measure; 
then everything you eat and the time you ate it; two hours after each intake, 
measure and record your sugar level; and finally, your sugar level as you 
retire to bed. Do this for several weeks. Your behavior will change in detail, 
to your betterment. You do not even need to look at what you wrote down or 
analyze it in any fashion. There is some degree of talisman magic in knowing 
that the recordings are stored somewhere and available for review if you ever 
wanted to, or if your clinician wanted to use it as data to develop a 
hypothesis.

Since you brought up the word and seem to think it has some meaning — I have 
never understood stymergy because it seems to be grounded in the notion that an 
organism is separate/apart from its environment. My understanding of reality 
would assert that each are constant and simultaneous co-mediators of each 
other. (Actually they are the same thing and any apparent differentiation is 
just illusion.)

The entire concept of autopoeisis and structural coupling, as I understand it, 
would seem to be an example of "something at a higher order improving itself by 
arranging its parts."

davew




On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, at 1:32 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> If one allows stygmergy as a form of downward causation, I can understand it. 
>  So I guess I am looking for the simplest kind of example of self assembly: 
> i.e., where something of a higher order improves itself by improving the 
> arrangement of its parts.  Or places constraints on its parts to be good for 
> itself. There may be a thousand examples.  I just can’t think of one that 
> doesn’t involve group selection. 

>  

> N

>  

> Nicholas Thompson

> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

> Clark University

> thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

> 

>  

>  


> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 28, 2020 1:16 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

>  

> I'm not Marcus but a classical example is mental events causing physical 
> events.  Note the use of mental language.


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

>  

> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:12 PM  wrote:


>> Marcus, 
>> 
>>  can't claim to understand you fully, here, but your use of the word, 
>> sovereignty, made me think you might have something to contribute to a 
>> quandary I found myself in recently.  I was on a zoom with a bunch of 
>> people.  First they talked about emergence, and I figured I understand that. 
>>  Wimsatt: a property is emergent if it is a property of a whole that depends 
>> on the order or arrangement of the parts.  So, the ability of sticks to bear 
>> weight depends  on their arrangement as triangles.   So far, so good.  But 
>> then the began to talk about "downward" causation, and I realized that I did 
>> not know, nor have I ever known, what people mean by "downward" causation.  
>> Do you have some simple models of it in mind that even I could understand? 
>> 
>> Nick 
>> Nicholas Thompson
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>> Clark University
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
>> Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 9:17 PM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>> 
>> Using statistical mechanics to inspire a stable and universal functional 
>> form that evolves in time is one way to make a model of social systems.   
>> But even with that for model of the physical world, there are many possible 
>> models for control systems that could layer on top of it.   If there are no 
>> shared concept types in these different models, there's nothing to do but go 
>> back to simulating the physics to determine what could happen next.   
>> Simulating these physics takes energy that is of no discernable value to 
>> users of any one model so at some point there will be conflict over that 
>> energy.The Libertarian claims that there is something in common between 
>> the users of these models, but it is nothing more than story that serves her 
>> purposes.   There is no reason not to violate her sovereignty if the 
>> reward/risk is acceptable.  
>> 
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of ? gl

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[jon zingale]

dual fields, Nick, dual fields.



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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[jon zingale]

Nick,

Let's say I have a language designed to work with sticks, where for
instance, it makes sense to name certain relations *Triangle*. Additionally,
let's assume that the language is detailed enough to include less obvious
relations such as those which relate sticks to trees to soil and water.
Would it be cheap to narrowly define *downward causation* as the
manipulation of the world in accordance with this language to produce new
sticks?

Consider as another example when one manipulates charge in bulk using analog
filters. Here, a circuit designer may not need to know about spin or
superposition or a lot of other details about the universe. In fact, the
designer may not know how to write a "mid-frequency ranged filter" if they
were only given a quantum mechanical view of the world. They may, however,
know how to build such a filter if they are given appropriately shaped
conductive surfaces and coils.

My apologies in advance if this characterization (that of reducing *downward
causation* to manipulation of a domain-specific language) is horribly
flawed, but I spent this much time writing a response. So, there.



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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

Well, the point I was making is that the physics Marcus is claiming must be 
exercised/computed *without* shared structure will *usually* result in shared 
structure. I.e. it'll be a rare thing for any component to be completely alien 
to another component. 

Now, "recognition" of any extant common structure is a 2nd order structure. So 
any 1st order variation/error between the 2 (multi-order) structures may well 
compound and produce larger variation/error in that recognition of shared 
structure.

And it's that combinatorial *expansion* of error I'm relying on to assert the 
rarity of disjoint components (that don't share any structure). That we can 
simulate/model each other AT ALL indicates shared structure.

And this is how I'm explaining the "unreasonable effectiveness" of these higher 
order behaviors (like _mind_).

Whether it's crisply bidirectional (isomorphic, recursively invertible) or not 
is a question we could talk about. But, yes, it has to be at least a little bit 
bidirectional. That's what "shared structure" means. A can't be similar to B 
without B also being similar to A, even if the 1st "similar" is slightly 
different from the 2nd "similar".

My only suggestion for downward causation lies in the higher order patterns 
canalizing the space, constraining the variation of the lower order processes. 
It's a different kind of "causation" than upward causation. Upward is driven, 
generative. Downward is constraint, restrictive ... like a flow-formed arroyo 
that is both caused by and causes flow patterns.

On 10/28/20 12:14 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> I would go with this so long as we agree it's bidirectional.  I learn who I 
> am from watching you and you learn who you are from watching me and we both 
> learn who we are by watching them.  
> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ???
> Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2020 7:17 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
> 
> I'd argue that, as long as there's common structure between the agents 
> building and using the control layer models, then there will be shared 
> concepts in and of those models. And it's not *only* the Libertarian who 
> claims there's shared structure between the builders/users. As I've tried to 
> *ask* w.r.t. to inter-species mind-reading, don't most complex animals 
> "assume" some shared structure, not only between them and their kin, but 
> between them and their predators/prey and symbiotic species? And if your dog 
> does it, then it's likely Capitalists and Socialists also do it.
> 
> Of course, the extent to, and rate at, which such shared structures change 
> through time is the gist of this conversation.
> 
> On 9/14/20 8:16 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> Using statistical mechanics to inspire a stable and universal functional 
>> form that evolves in time is one way to make a model of social systems.   
>> But even with that for model of the physical world, there are many possible 
>> models for control systems that could layer on top of it.   If there are no 
>> shared concept types in these different models, there's nothing to do but go 
>> back to simulating the physics to determine what could happen next.   
>> Simulating these physics takes energy that is of no discernable value to 
>> users of any one model so at some point there will be conflict over that 
>> energy.The Libertarian claims that there is something in common between 
>> the users of these models, but it is nothing more than story that serves her 
>> purposes.   There is no reason not to violate her sovereignty if the 
>> reward/risk is acceptable.  

-- 
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2]

The bite causes the irritation causes the itch causes the slap causes the 
removal of the mosquito.   And the slap causes the mosquito to be gone and 
relieves the irritation.  So that is definitely downward causation.  But this 
is all in the context of a complex organization that has already been assembled 
and “designed” for self maintenance.  To it begs the question I was [ineptly] 
trying to ask.  How do such control systems get assembled in the first place if 
NOT through the mediation of group selection?

 

N

 

 

I suppose that the local irritation causes the itch is upward causation, that 
“itch” is a state of the whole.  

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 1:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

Scratching oneself?  I'm not trying to be a pain.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:32 PM mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

If one allows stygmergy as a form of downward causation, I can understand it.  
So I guess I am looking for the simplest kind of example of self assembly: 
i.e., where something of a higher order improves itself by improving the 
arrangement of its parts.  Or places constraints on its parts to be good for 
itself. There may be a thousand examples.  I just can’t think of one that 
doesn’t involve group selection.  

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

 

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 1:16 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

I'm not Marcus but a classical example is mental events causing physical 
events.  Note the use of mental language.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:12 PM mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

Marcus, 

 can't claim to understand you fully, here, but your use of the word, 
sovereignty, made me think you might have something to contribute to a quandary 
I found myself in recently.  I was on a zoom with a bunch of people.  First 
they talked about emergence, and I figured I understand that.  Wimsatt: a 
property is emergent if it is a property of a whole that depends on the order 
or arrangement of the parts.  So, the ability of sticks to bear weight depends  
on their arrangement as triangles.   So far, so good.  But then the began to 
talk about "downward" causation, and I realized that I did not know, nor have I 
ever known, what people mean by "downward" causation.  Do you have some simple 
models of it in mind that even I could understand? 

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



-Original Message-
From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 9:17 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Using statistical mechanics to inspire a stable and universal functional form 
that evolves in time is one way to make a model of social systems.   But even 
with that for model of the physical world, there are many possible models for 
control systems that could layer on top of it.   If there are no shared concept 
types in these different models, there's nothing to do but go back to 
simulating the physics to determine what could happen next.   Simulating these 
physics takes energy that is of no discernable value to users of any one model 
so at some point there will be conflict over that energy.The Libertarian 
claims that there is something in common between the users of these models, but 
it is nothing more than story that serves her purposes.   There is no reason 
not to violate her sovereignty if the reward/risk is acceptable.  

-Original Message-
From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of ? glen
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 7:18 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Go

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Frank Wimberly]

Scratching oneself?  I'm not trying to be a pain.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:32 PM  wrote:

> If one allows stygmergy as a form of downward causation, I can understand
> it.  So I guess I am looking for the simplest kind of example of self
> assembly: i.e., where something of a higher order improves itself by
> improving the arrangement of its parts.  Or places constraints on its parts
> to be good for itself. There may be a thousand examples.  I just can’t
> think of one that doesn’t involve group selection.
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 28, 2020 1:16 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
>
>
> I'm not Marcus but a classical example is mental events causing physical
> events.  Note the use of mental language.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:12 PM  wrote:
>
> Marcus,
>
>  can't claim to understand you fully, here, but your use of the word,
> sovereignty, made me think you might have something to contribute to a
> quandary I found myself in recently.  I was on a zoom with a bunch of
> people.  First they talked about emergence, and I figured I understand
> that.  Wimsatt: a property is emergent if it is a property of a whole that
> depends on the order or arrangement of the parts.  So, the ability of
> sticks to bear weight depends  on their arrangement as triangles.   So far,
> so good.  But then the began to talk about "downward" causation, and I
> realized that I did not know, nor have I ever known, what people mean by
> "downward" causation.  Do you have some simple models of it in mind that
> even I could understand?
>
> Nick
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
> Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 9:17 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
> Using statistical mechanics to inspire a stable and universal functional
> form that evolves in time is one way to make a model of social systems.
>  But even with that for model of the physical world, there are many
> possible models for control systems that could layer on top of it.   If
> there are no shared concept types in these different models, there's
> nothing to do but go back to simulating the physics to determine what could
> happen next.   Simulating these physics takes energy that is of no
> discernable value to users of any one model so at some point there will be
> conflict over that energy.The Libertarian claims that there is
> something in common between the users of these models, but it is nothing
> more than story that serves her purposes.   There is no reason not to
> violate her sovereignty if the reward/risk is acceptable.
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of ? glen
> Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 7:18 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
> Well, sure. But the assumptions and simplifications are piling up fast.
> With anarcho-capitalism, I was trying to suggest a governing system that
> relies on as few assumptions as possible. And my sense is that social
> democracy relies on more assumptions (like the existence of stable
> functional forms).
>
> On September 14, 2020 6:13:33 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels 
> wrote:
> >It depends whether you think of "static" as some circumscribed state or
> >"static" as a fixed functional form.  (The latter still allowing for a
> >dynamical system.)   The appropriation/application of the notion of a
> >"phase transition" would probably argue for the fixed functional form
> >on the basis of physics.
>
> --
> glen ⛧
>
> -  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe
> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2]

If one allows stygmergy as a form of downward causation, I can understand it.  
So I guess I am looking for the simplest kind of example of self assembly: 
i.e., where something of a higher order improves itself by improving the 
arrangement of its parts.  Or places constraints on its parts to be good for 
itself. There may be a thousand examples.  I just can’t think of one that 
doesn’t involve group selection.  

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 1:16 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

I'm not Marcus but a classical example is mental events causing physical 
events.  Note the use of mental language.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:12 PM mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

Marcus, 

 can't claim to understand you fully, here, but your use of the word, 
sovereignty, made me think you might have something to contribute to a quandary 
I found myself in recently.  I was on a zoom with a bunch of people.  First 
they talked about emergence, and I figured I understand that.  Wimsatt: a 
property is emergent if it is a property of a whole that depends on the order 
or arrangement of the parts.  So, the ability of sticks to bear weight depends  
on their arrangement as triangles.   So far, so good.  But then the began to 
talk about "downward" causation, and I realized that I did not know, nor have I 
ever known, what people mean by "downward" causation.  Do you have some simple 
models of it in mind that even I could understand? 

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



-Original Message-
From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 9:17 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Using statistical mechanics to inspire a stable and universal functional form 
that evolves in time is one way to make a model of social systems.   But even 
with that for model of the physical world, there are many possible models for 
control systems that could layer on top of it.   If there are no shared concept 
types in these different models, there's nothing to do but go back to 
simulating the physics to determine what could happen next.   Simulating these 
physics takes energy that is of no discernable value to users of any one model 
so at some point there will be conflict over that energy.The Libertarian 
claims that there is something in common between the users of these models, but 
it is nothing more than story that serves her purposes.   There is no reason 
not to violate her sovereignty if the reward/risk is acceptable.  

-Original Message-
From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of ? glen
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 7:18 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Well, sure. But the assumptions and simplifications are piling up fast. With 
anarcho-capitalism, I was trying to suggest a governing system that relies on 
as few assumptions as possible. And my sense is that social democracy relies on 
more assumptions (like the existence of stable functional forms).

On September 14, 2020 6:13:33 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com> > wrote:
>It depends whether you think of "static" as some circumscribed state or 
>"static" as a fixed functional form.  (The latter still allowing for a
>dynamical system.)   The appropriation/application of the notion of a
>"phase transition" would probably argue for the fixed functional form 
>on the basis of physics.

--
glen ⛧

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Frank Wimberly]

I'm not Marcus but a classical example is mental events causing physical
events.  Note the use of mental language.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:12 PM  wrote:

> Marcus,
>
>  can't claim to understand you fully, here, but your use of the word,
> sovereignty, made me think you might have something to contribute to a
> quandary I found myself in recently.  I was on a zoom with a bunch of
> people.  First they talked about emergence, and I figured I understand
> that.  Wimsatt: a property is emergent if it is a property of a whole that
> depends on the order or arrangement of the parts.  So, the ability of
> sticks to bear weight depends  on their arrangement as triangles.   So far,
> so good.  But then the began to talk about "downward" causation, and I
> realized that I did not know, nor have I ever known, what people mean by
> "downward" causation.  Do you have some simple models of it in mind that
> even I could understand?
>
> Nick
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
> Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 9:17 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
> Using statistical mechanics to inspire a stable and universal functional
> form that evolves in time is one way to make a model of social systems.
>  But even with that for model of the physical world, there are many
> possible models for control systems that could layer on top of it.   If
> there are no shared concept types in these different models, there's
> nothing to do but go back to simulating the physics to determine what could
> happen next.   Simulating these physics takes energy that is of no
> discernable value to users of any one model so at some point there will be
> conflict over that energy.The Libertarian claims that there is
> something in common between the users of these models, but it is nothing
> more than story that serves her purposes.   There is no reason not to
> violate her sovereignty if the reward/risk is acceptable.
>
> -Original Message-----
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of ? glen
> Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 7:18 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
> Well, sure. But the assumptions and simplifications are piling up fast.
> With anarcho-capitalism, I was trying to suggest a governing system that
> relies on as few assumptions as possible. And my sense is that social
> democracy relies on more assumptions (like the existence of stable
> functional forms).
>
> On September 14, 2020 6:13:33 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels 
> wrote:
> >It depends whether you think of "static" as some circumscribed state or
> >"static" as a fixed functional form.  (The latter still allowing for a
> >dynamical system.)   The appropriation/application of the notion of a
> >"phase transition" would probably argue for the fixed functional form
> >on the basis of physics.
>
> --
> glen ⛧
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2]

I would go with this so long as we agree it's bidirectional.  I learn who I am 
from watching you and you learn who you are from watching me and we both learn 
who we are by watching them.  

n

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


-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2020 7:17 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

I'd argue that, as long as there's common structure between the agents building 
and using the control layer models, then there will be shared concepts in and 
of those models. And it's not *only* the Libertarian who claims there's shared 
structure between the builders/users. As I've tried to *ask* w.r.t. to 
inter-species mind-reading, don't most complex animals "assume" some shared 
structure, not only between them and their kin, but between them and their 
predators/prey and symbiotic species? And if your dog does it, then it's likely 
Capitalists and Socialists also do it.

Of course, the extent to, and rate at, which such shared structures change 
through time is the gist of this conversation.

On 9/14/20 8:16 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Using statistical mechanics to inspire a stable and universal functional form 
> that evolves in time is one way to make a model of social systems.   But even 
> with that for model of the physical world, there are many possible models for 
> control systems that could layer on top of it.   If there are no shared 
> concept types in these different models, there's nothing to do but go back to 
> simulating the physics to determine what could happen next.   Simulating 
> these physics takes energy that is of no discernable value to users of any 
> one model so at some point there will be conflict over that energy.The 
> Libertarian claims that there is something in common between the users of 
> these models, but it is nothing more than story that serves her purposes.   
> There is no reason not to violate her sovereignty if the reward/risk is 
> acceptable.  


--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2]

Marcus, 

 can't claim to understand you fully, here, but your use of the word, 
sovereignty, made me think you might have something to contribute to a quandary 
I found myself in recently.  I was on a zoom with a bunch of people.  First 
they talked about emergence, and I figured I understand that.  Wimsatt: a 
property is emergent if it is a property of a whole that depends on the order 
or arrangement of the parts.  So, the ability of sticks to bear weight depends  
on their arrangement as triangles.   So far, so good.  But then the began to 
talk about "downward" causation, and I realized that I did not know, nor have I 
ever known, what people mean by "downward" causation.  Do you have some simple 
models of it in mind that even I could understand? 

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


-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 9:17 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Using statistical mechanics to inspire a stable and universal functional form 
that evolves in time is one way to make a model of social systems.   But even 
with that for model of the physical world, there are many possible models for 
control systems that could layer on top of it.   If there are no shared concept 
types in these different models, there's nothing to do but go back to 
simulating the physics to determine what could happen next.   Simulating these 
physics takes energy that is of no discernable value to users of any one model 
so at some point there will be conflict over that energy.The Libertarian 
claims that there is something in common between the users of these models, but 
it is nothing more than story that serves her purposes.   There is no reason 
not to violate her sovereignty if the reward/risk is acceptable.  

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of ? glen
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 7:18 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Well, sure. But the assumptions and simplifications are piling up fast. With 
anarcho-capitalism, I was trying to suggest a governing system that relies on 
as few assumptions as possible. And my sense is that social democracy relies on 
more assumptions (like the existence of stable functional forms).

On September 14, 2020 6:13:33 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels  
wrote:
>It depends whether you think of "static" as some circumscribed state or 
>"static" as a fixed functional form.  (The latter still allowing for a
>dynamical system.)   The appropriation/application of the notion of a
>"phase transition" would probably argue for the fixed functional form 
>on the basis of physics.

--
glen ⛧

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Steve Smith]

EricS -

I think this gives a good "hint" of part of what a fully Socialized or
Communal system looks like to some (e.g. Libertarians), and why they
resist what others of us might see as "reasonable attempts at leveling
the playing field".  

I'm definitely ambivalent in the sense of being of "two minds".   I am a
creature (ego?) shaped by the struggles and challenges I have
experienced... and "what didn't kill me made me stronger" or maybe more
to the point, I am a product of my experiences (nod to Glen's
"diachronic" vs "episodic" thoughts).  

I have only the thinnest apprehension of Glen's "Anarcho Syndicalism"
(sure I've read a little, but have far from had time to think through it
all)  but it has some of the positive features I look for like
"structure at all scales" and "self-similarity" possibilities,
explaining not only how "history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes"
(Clemens) but perhaps how cultural sub-units, "bubbles" if you will also
rhyme across geography/culture as well as time.   A bit of a
cultural/semantic version of the "multi-verse foam" ideas in
physics/cosmology.

Also the best reason I can accept for a continued-to-expand humanity...
with consciousness being not unlike the big-bang, expanding (in quality)
right up to our current era where the likes of Musk and several
nation-states are aspiring to begin to colonize the inner system (at
least moon/mars) in our (their?) lifetimes.

- SteveS

> Nick, while I laud your motivation, I strongly disagree with your
> proposed solution. The desire for a basic fairness of some sort should
> be kept quite different the notion of creating a flatland. We WANT a
> society full of people who faced a variety of different struggles. 
>
> This is a Peirce/Dewey democracy problem. /_IF_/ the rationale for a
> democratic system is that we make better decisions when we bringing a
> variety of perspectives to bear on a problem, then the push for
> flat-land destroys the rationale for having a democratic system. While
> we might easily agree that those struggles should not include a risk
> of literal starvation, that doesn't mean we want them all to start out
> with access to identical fiscal resources and identical educational
> opportunities. That some people have more food than others, in a
> system that guarantees everyone a baseline amount of food to support
> development, is perfectly fine. 
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 11:32 AM  <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Thanks, Eric.  He came off better on the podcast.  Glad to be
> corrected.  This American Life did one of it’s quixotic treatments
> of systems in which leaders are chosen at random, and, of course,
> was quite pleased by the result.  By the way, isn’t that how the
> Dali Lama is  chosen? 
>
>  
>
> I still think we should randomize all the babies at birth, take
> huge amounts of money off the top and pour it in at the bottom in
> the form of education and flat-out income adjustment so that no
> child is disadvantaged by the station of his/her birth. 
>
>  
>
> Nick
>
>  
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>  
>
>  
>
> *From:* Friam  <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Friday, September 18, 2020 6:20 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
>  
>
> So delayed response to the original... based on the longer
> reviews I've seen, this is partially a criticism of meritocracy
> itself, but also a very strong criticism of the neo-liberal
> bastardization of meritocracy. As it says in the opening line of
> the review in the original post: The thing being criticized are
> "pernicious assumptions" about merit. From what I can tell, his
> TED talk summarizes the book
> well: https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_the_tyranny_of_merit 
>
>  
>
> He starts out with some discussion of moral luck, but in my
> opinion not a great discussion of it. Then he moves on to
> criticize a world where pieces of paper are confused for ability.
> In such a world, those without the right pieces of paper are
> deemed to lack merit and are told they can't have dignity. That
> part is

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Eric Charles]

Nick, while I laud your motivation, I strongly disagree with your proposed
solution. The desire for a basic fairness of some sort should be kept quite
different the notion of creating a flatland. We WANT a society full of
people who faced a variety of different struggles.

This is a Peirce/Dewey democracy problem. *IF* the rationale for a
democratic system is that we make better decisions when we bringing a
variety of perspectives to bear on a problem, then the push for flat-land
destroys the rationale for having a democratic system. While we might
easily agree that those struggles should not include a risk of literal
starvation, that doesn't mean we want them all to start out with access to
identical fiscal resources and identical educational opportunities. That
some people have more food than others, in a system that guarantees
everyone a baseline amount of food to support development, is perfectly
fine.





On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 11:32 AM  wrote:

> Thanks, Eric.  He came off better on the podcast.  Glad to be corrected.
> This American Life did one of it’s quixotic treatments of systems in which
> leaders are chosen at random, and, of course, was quite pleased by the
> result.  By the way, isn’t that how the Dali Lama is  chosen?
>
>
>
> I still think we should randomize all the babies at birth, take huge
> amounts of money off the top and pour it in at the bottom in the form of
> education and flat-out income adjustment so that no child is disadvantaged
> by the station of his/her birth.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Friday, September 18, 2020 6:20 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
>
>
> So delayed response to the original... based on the longer reviews
> I've seen, this is partially a criticism of meritocracy itself, but also a
> very strong criticism of the neo-liberal bastardization of meritocracy. As
> it says in the opening line of the review in the original post: The thing
> being criticized are "pernicious assumptions" about merit. From what I can
> tell, his TED talk summarizes the book well:
> https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_the_tyranny_of_merit
>
>
>
> He starts out with some discussion of moral luck, but in my opinion not a
> great discussion of it. Then he moves on to criticize a world where pieces
> of paper are confused for ability. In such a world, those without the right
> pieces of paper are deemed to lack merit and are told they can't have
> dignity. That part is criticizing a world in which our leaders continuously
> message that everyone should go to college, encouraging a false belief that
> a getting a degree somehow magically makes you successful, and encouraging
> the implicit (or sometimes explicit) judgement that not getting a degree
> somehow a personal failure and that getting a degree and then not
> succeeding is an incoherent position to be in. The failure of that program
> of thought has been huge. It is hard to explain how many of the students I
> taught at Penn State Altoona had their lives made worse by getting a
> degree. They are working the same jobs they could have worked out of high
> school, but with 4 years less experience, added shame and frustration,
> crippling debt, and a worse relationship with parents who can't understand
> why having a degree hasn't made their kids successful. And you can't try to
> defend this by hand-waving at education being virtuous in its own right,
> but it won't work, because by any reasonable measure they aren't very
> educated either.
>
>
>
> Even with as right as some parts of that critique are, it is all somehow
> seething with the suspect rhetoric of the protestant work ethic. There is
> nothing inherently virtuous in being exploited for your labor (in the
> Marxist sense of providing profit to a capitalist), and he is somehow
> lumping all "work" together in a way that obscures that.
>
>
>
> When all is said and done, it is an interesting argument, but my
> Libertarian Goat is doing fine, thank you :- )
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 1:28 PM  wrote:
>
> This should do it!
>
>
>
>
> https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/
>
>
>
> The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the us is
> now the least socially mobile country among the western democr

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Marcus Daniels]

Is this the right question?What does a society optimize for?

From: Friam  On Behalf Of thompnicks...@gmail.com
Sent: Friday, September 18, 2020 8:32 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Thanks, Eric.  He came off better on the podcast.  Glad to be corrected.  This 
American Life did one of it’s quixotic treatments of systems in which leaders 
are chosen at random, and, of course, was quite pleased by the result.  By the 
way, isn’t that how the Dali Lama is  chosen?

I still think we should randomize all the babies at birth, take huge amounts of 
money off the top and pour it in at the bottom in the form of education and 
flat-out income adjustment so that no child is disadvantaged by the station of 
his/her birth.

Nick

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



From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Friday, September 18, 2020 6:20 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

So delayed response to the original... based on the longer reviews I've 
seen, this is partially a criticism of meritocracy itself, but also a very 
strong criticism of the neo-liberal bastardization of meritocracy. As it says 
in the opening line of the review in the original post: The thing being 
criticized are "pernicious assumptions" about merit. From what I can tell, his 
TED talk summarizes the book well: 
https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_the_tyranny_of_merit

He starts out with some discussion of moral luck, but in my opinion not a great 
discussion of it. Then he moves on to criticize a world where pieces of paper 
are confused for ability. In such a world, those without the right pieces of 
paper are deemed to lack merit and are told they can't have dignity. That part 
is criticizing a world in which our leaders continuously message that everyone 
should go to college, encouraging a false belief that a getting a degree 
somehow magically makes you successful, and encouraging the implicit (or 
sometimes explicit) judgement that not getting a degree somehow a personal 
failure and that getting a degree and then not succeeding is an incoherent 
position to be in. The failure of that program of thought has been huge. It is 
hard to explain how many of the students I taught at Penn State Altoona had 
their lives made worse by getting a degree. They are working the same jobs they 
could have worked out of high school, but with 4 years less experience, added 
shame and frustration, crippling debt, and a worse relationship with parents 
who can't understand why having a degree hasn't made their kids successful. And 
you can't try to defend this by hand-waving at education being virtuous in its 
own right, but it won't work, because by any reasonable measure they aren't 
very educated either.

Even with as right as some parts of that critique are, it is all somehow 
seething with the suspect rhetoric of the protestant work ethic. There is 
nothing inherently virtuous in being exploited for your labor (in the Marxist 
sense of providing profit to a capitalist), and he is somehow lumping all 
"work" together in a way that obscures that.

When all is said and done, it is an interesting argument, but my Libertarian 
Goat is doing fine, thank you :- )



On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 1:28 PM 
mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> wrote:
This should do it!

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/

The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the us is now 
the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.

Nick

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


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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2]

Thanks, Eric.  He came off better on the podcast.  Glad to be corrected.  This 
American Life did one of it’s quixotic treatments of systems in which leaders 
are chosen at random, and, of course, was quite pleased by the result.  By the 
way, isn’t that how the Dali Lama is  chosen?  

 

I still think we should randomize all the babies at birth, take huge amounts of 
money off the top and pour it in at the bottom in the form of education and 
flat-out income adjustment so that no child is disadvantaged by the station of 
his/her birth.  

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Friday, September 18, 2020 6:20 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

So delayed response to the original... based on the longer reviews I've 
seen, this is partially a criticism of meritocracy itself, but also a very 
strong criticism of the neo-liberal bastardization of meritocracy. As it says 
in the opening line of the review in the original post: The thing being 
criticized are "pernicious assumptions" about merit. From what I can tell, his 
TED talk summarizes the book well: 
https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_the_tyranny_of_merit 

 

He starts out with some discussion of moral luck, but in my opinion not a great 
discussion of it. Then he moves on to criticize a world where pieces of paper 
are confused for ability. In such a world, those without the right pieces of 
paper are deemed to lack merit and are told they can't have dignity. That part 
is criticizing a world in which our leaders continuously message that everyone 
should go to college, encouraging a false belief that a getting a degree 
somehow magically makes you successful, and encouraging the implicit (or 
sometimes explicit) judgement that not getting a degree somehow a personal 
failure and that getting a degree and then not succeeding is an incoherent 
position to be in. The failure of that program of thought has been huge. It is 
hard to explain how many of the students I taught at Penn State Altoona had 
their lives made worse by getting a degree. They are working the same jobs they 
could have worked out of high school, but with 4 years less experience, added 
shame and frustration, crippling debt, and a worse relationship with parents 
who can't understand why having a degree hasn't made their kids successful. And 
you can't try to defend this by hand-waving at education being virtuous in its 
own right, but it won't work, because by any reasonable measure they aren't 
very educated either. 

 

Even with as right as some parts of that critique are, it is all somehow 
seething with the suspect rhetoric of the protestant work ethic. There is 
nothing inherently virtuous in being exploited for your labor (in the Marxist 
sense of providing profit to a capitalist), and he is somehow lumping all 
"work" together in a way that obscures that. 

 

When all is said and done, it is an interesting argument, but my Libertarian 
Goat is doing fine, thank you :- )




 

 

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 1:28 PM mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

This should do it!

 

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/

 

The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the us is now 
the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.  

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> 

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

 

 

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Steve Smith]

EricC -

Thanks for your thought out, coherent summary/analysis.   I think you
cover the issues (as I see them) well, conflating credentials with
competence or capability (while there is a correlation, sometimes it is
negative, and in fact it is just a tiny subdomain within a higher
dimensional space).  

My own collapse/summary of the topic is that there is a complex tension
between the instincts of the individual as organism and the individual
as a member of a family/community/tribe/species/nation/culture/planet...   

I have been trying to let Glen's offering of Anarcho-Syndicalism settle
in my heart/brain/soul a little more before I "respond-from-the-hip".  
While I don't expect this particular convolution of the above issues to
be "an answer", it does sound like a useful "stalking horse" to think
from (closest idiom to what I previously used "strawman" to achieve).

- SteveS

On 9/18/20 6:20 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
> So delayed response to the original... based on the longer reviews
> I've seen, this is partially a criticism of meritocracy itself, but
> also a very strong criticism of the neo-liberal bastardization of
> meritocracy. As it says in the opening line of the review in the
> original post: The thing being criticized are "pernicious assumptions"
> about merit. From what I can tell, his TED talk summarizes the book
> well: https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_the_tyranny_of_merit 
>
> He starts out with some discussion of moral luck, but in my opinion
> not a great discussion of it. Then he moves on to criticize a world
> where pieces of paper are confused for ability. In such a world, those
> without the right pieces of paper are deemed to lack merit and are
> told they can't have dignity. That part is criticizing a world in
> which our leaders continuously message that everyone should go to
> college, encouraging a false belief that a getting a degree somehow
> magically makes you successful, and encouraging the implicit (or
> sometimes explicit) judgement that not getting a degree somehow a
> personal failure and that getting a degree and then not succeeding is
> an incoherent position to be in. The failure of that program of
> thought has been huge. It is hard to explain how many of the students
> I taught at Penn State Altoona had their lives made worse by getting a
> degree. They are working the same jobs they could have worked out of
> high school, but with 4 years less experience, added shame and
> frustration, crippling debt, and a worse relationship with parents who
> can't understand why having a degree hasn't made their kids
> successful. And you can't try to defend this by hand-waving at
> education being virtuous in its own right, but it won't work, because
> by any reasonable measure they aren't very educated either. 
>
> Even with as right as some parts of that critique are, it is all
> somehow seething with the suspect rhetoric of the protestant work
> ethic. There is nothing inherently virtuous in being exploited for
> your labor (in the Marxist sense of providing profit to a capitalist),
> and he is somehow lumping all "work" together in a way that obscures
> that. 
>
> When all is said and done, it is an interesting argument, but my
> Libertarian Goat is doing fine, thank you :- )
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 1:28 PM  > wrote:
>
> This should do it!
>
>  
>
> 
> https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/
>
>  
>
> The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the
> us is now the least socially mobile country among the western
> democracies. 
>
>  
>
> Nick
>
>  
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com 
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>  
>
>  
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Eric Charles]

So delayed response to the original... based on the longer reviews I've
seen, this is partially a criticism of meritocracy itself, but also a very
strong criticism of the neo-liberal bastardization of meritocracy. As it
says in the opening line of the review in the original post: The thing
being criticized are "pernicious assumptions" about merit. From what I can
tell, his TED talk summarizes the book well:
https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_the_tyranny_of_merit

He starts out with some discussion of moral luck, but in my opinion not a
great discussion of it. Then he moves on to criticize a world where pieces
of paper are confused for ability. In such a world, those without the right
pieces of paper are deemed to lack merit and are told they can't have
dignity. That part is criticizing a world in which our leaders continuously
message that everyone should go to college, encouraging a false belief that
a getting a degree somehow magically makes you successful, and encouraging
the implicit (or sometimes explicit) judgement that not getting a degree
somehow a personal failure and that getting a degree and then not
succeeding is an incoherent position to be in. The failure of that program
of thought has been huge. It is hard to explain how many of the students I
taught at Penn State Altoona had their lives made worse by getting a
degree. They are working the same jobs they could have worked out of high
school, but with 4 years less experience, added shame and frustration,
crippling debt, and a worse relationship with parents who can't understand
why having a degree hasn't made their kids successful. And you can't try to
defend this by hand-waving at education being virtuous in its own right,
but it won't work, because by any reasonable measure they aren't very
educated either.

Even with as right as some parts of that critique are, it is all somehow
seething with the suspect rhetoric of the protestant work ethic. There is
nothing inherently virtuous in being exploited for your labor (in the
Marxist sense of providing profit to a capitalist), and he is somehow
lumping all "work" together in a way that obscures that.

When all is said and done, it is an interesting argument, but my
Libertarian Goat is doing fine, thank you :- )





On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 1:28 PM  wrote:

> This should do it!
>
>
>
>
> https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/
>
>
>
> The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the us is
> now the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
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> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

This is exactly the type of observation the ideal of anarcho-syndicalism would 
foster. Ideally, we could *induce* the current structure from such coupling 
patterns, including higher order couplings (like tertiary couplings -- 
"interpretations" -- to other couplings). With the induction tools, we can 
infer the current structure as well. We could argue for "evidence based 
policy", a data-driven socio-political modeling tool. But because our political 
structure is mostly top-down (e.g. Constitutional Republic), it *seems* more 
facile to use typical economic models rather than inducing models from data. 
Adopting a minimal-assumption ideal like anarcho-syndicalism can help seed the 
induction. But only as long as we continually remember it's an ideal, not a 
practical objective.

As we get good at such induction, we could do it periodically, in different 
geographic regions, in different demographics, etc. That might provide some 
data for how universal particular structures are, rates of change for 
particular structures, the distribution of structure sizes, etc. A social 
democratic system might, then, be approached by codifying the larger more 
stable structures into policy/law, while allowing the smaller less stable 
structures the freedom to wiggle.

On 9/15/20 8:30 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> There is some mutual information between reports on Fox and MSNBC commentary 
> shows: The topic is sort of the same, but the interpretation attracts or 
> repels.  Then there's another class of topics, like disregard for the 
> homeless, or the use and abuse of certain animals that is widespread but is 
> more like a weak or glassy coupling vs. a strong repulsive relation as seen 
> in the political case.   The distinction is between agents that are 
> adversaries vs. agents to be controlled (e.g. mice in the walls) or exploited 
> (cattle).  

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Marcus Daniels]

There is some mutual information between reports on Fox and MSNBC commentary 
shows: The topic is sort of the same, but the interpretation attracts or 
repels.  Then there's another class of topics, like disregard for the homeless, 
or the use and abuse of certain animals that is widespread but is more like a 
weak or glassy coupling vs. a strong repulsive relation as seen in the 
political case.   The distinction is between agents that are adversaries vs. 
agents to be controlled (e.g. mice in the walls) or exploited (cattle).  

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2020 6:17 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

I'd argue that, as long as there's common structure between the agents building 
and using the control layer models, then there will be shared concepts in and 
of those models. And it's not *only* the Libertarian who claims there's shared 
structure between the builders/users. As I've tried to *ask* w.r.t. to 
inter-species mind-reading, don't most complex animals "assume" some shared 
structure, not only between them and their kin, but between them and their 
predators/prey and symbiotic species? And if your dog does it, then it's likely 
Capitalists and Socialists also do it.

Of course, the extent to, and rate at, which such shared structures change 
through time is the gist of this conversation.

On 9/14/20 8:16 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Using statistical mechanics to inspire a stable and universal functional form 
> that evolves in time is one way to make a model of social systems.   But even 
> with that for model of the physical world, there are many possible models for 
> control systems that could layer on top of it.   If there are no shared 
> concept types in these different models, there's nothing to do but go back to 
> simulating the physics to determine what could happen next.   Simulating 
> these physics takes energy that is of no discernable value to users of any 
> one model so at some point there will be conflict over that energy.The 
> Libertarian claims that there is something in common between the users of 
> these models, but it is nothing more than story that serves her purposes.   
> There is no reason not to violate her sovereignty if the reward/risk is 
> acceptable.  


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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

I'd argue that, as long as there's common structure between the agents building 
and using the control layer models, then there will be shared concepts in and 
of those models. And it's not *only* the Libertarian who claims there's shared 
structure between the builders/users. As I've tried to *ask* w.r.t. to 
inter-species mind-reading, don't most complex animals "assume" some shared 
structure, not only between them and their kin, but between them and their 
predators/prey and symbiotic species? And if your dog does it, then it's likely 
Capitalists and Socialists also do it.

Of course, the extent to, and rate at, which such shared structures change 
through time is the gist of this conversation.

On 9/14/20 8:16 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Using statistical mechanics to inspire a stable and universal functional form 
> that evolves in time is one way to make a model of social systems.   But even 
> with that for model of the physical world, there are many possible models for 
> control systems that could layer on top of it.   If there are no shared 
> concept types in these different models, there's nothing to do but go back to 
> simulating the physics to determine what could happen next.   Simulating 
> these physics takes energy that is of no discernable value to users of any 
> one model so at some point there will be conflict over that energy.The 
> Libertarian claims that there is something in common between the users of 
> these models, but it is nothing more than story that serves her purposes.   
> There is no reason not to violate her sovereignty if the reward/risk is 
> acceptable.  


-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Marcus Daniels]

Using statistical mechanics to inspire a stable and universal functional form 
that evolves in time is one way to make a model of social systems.   But even 
with that for model of the physical world, there are many possible models for 
control systems that could layer on top of it.   If there are no shared concept 
types in these different models, there's nothing to do but go back to 
simulating the physics to determine what could happen next.   Simulating these 
physics takes energy that is of no discernable value to users of any one model 
so at some point there will be conflict over that energy.The Libertarian 
claims that there is something in common between the users of these models, but 
it is nothing more than story that serves her purposes.   There is no reason 
not to violate her sovereignty if the reward/risk is acceptable.  

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of ? glen
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 7:18 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Well, sure. But the assumptions and simplifications are piling up fast. With 
anarcho-capitalism, I was trying to suggest a governing system that relies on 
as few assumptions as possible. And my sense is that social democracy relies on 
more assumptions (like the existence of stable functional forms).

On September 14, 2020 6:13:33 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels  
wrote:
>It depends whether you think of "static" as some circumscribed state or 
>"static" as a fixed functional form.  (The latter still allowing for a
>dynamical system.)   The appropriation/application of the notion of a
>"phase transition" would probably argue for the fixed functional form 
>on the basis of physics.

--
glen ⛧

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[⛧ glen]

Well, sure. But the assumptions and simplifications are piling up fast. With 
anarcho-capitalism, I was trying to suggest a governing system that relies on 
as few assumptions as possible. And my sense is that social democracy relies on 
more assumptions (like the existence of stable functional forms).

On September 14, 2020 6:13:33 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels  
wrote:
>It depends whether you think of "static" as some circumscribed state or
>"static" as a fixed functional form.  (The latter still allowing for a
>dynamical system.)   The appropriation/application of the notion of a
>"phase transition" would probably argue for the fixed functional form
>on the basis of physics.  

-- 
glen ⛧

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Marcus Daniels]

It depends whether you think of "static" as some circumscribed state or 
"static" as a fixed functional form.  (The latter still allowing for a 
dynamical system.)   The appropriation/application of the notion of a "phase 
transition" would probably argue for the fixed functional form on the basis of 
physics.  

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 5:23 PM
To: FriAM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Well, the 2nd part of my response was the dynamic landscape. The equilibrium to 
which it [re]bounds to is NOT the same as the previous equilibrium. And, along 
with my objection to SteveG's use of "phase transition" in social systems, it's 
not even clear to me that any kind of *objective* equilibrium was ever reached 
in the first place. A very slow change can look relatively stable compared to a 
very fast change. And any such pseudo-equilibrium may well simply represent the 
abstraction *away* from whatever underlying mechanism continues to change 
radically, perhaps resulting in a kind of polyphenism.

All that's simply to say that it's not clear to me your analogy to optimization 
is very reliable. Anarcho-syndicalism is attractive because it *should* (but 
probably wouldn't) allow for a dynamic foam of non-equilibrium growth and 
shrinking of various interest groups, in direct response to the environment 
created by the other groups (and the actual, geo-rate environment). Social 
democracy approximates that diversity of group size/rate with large, more 
stable structures providing the effective equilibrium into which the smaller, 
faster structures settle and, perhaps churn. The trick is that social democracy 
enshrines some large structures which may turn out to be part of the problem. 
So, it might lack some dynamism that anarcho-syndicalism has.

On 9/14/20 5:01 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Ok, repeated unusually big wildfires or hurricanes would not be of the 
> revolution type of perturbation because those are less coupled to a 
> low-dimensional artificial control system.Revolutionaries are just 
> turning knobs in ham-handed ways trying to change a much more complicated 
> system without really knowing what one is doing.   The system rebounds to an 
> equilibrium.

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

Well, the 2nd part of my response was the dynamic landscape. The equilibrium to 
which it [re]bounds to is NOT the same as the previous equilibrium. And, along 
with my objection to SteveG's use of "phase transition" in social systems, it's 
not even clear to me that any kind of *objective* equilibrium was ever reached 
in the first place. A very slow change can look relatively stable compared to a 
very fast change. And any such pseudo-equilibrium may well simply represent the 
abstraction *away* from whatever underlying mechanism continues to change 
radically, perhaps resulting in a kind of polyphenism.

All that's simply to say that it's not clear to me your analogy to optimization 
is very reliable. Anarcho-syndicalism is attractive because it *should* (but 
probably wouldn't) allow for a dynamic foam of non-equilibrium growth and 
shrinking of various interest groups, in direct response to the environment 
created by the other groups (and the actual, geo-rate environment). Social 
democracy approximates that diversity of group size/rate with large, more 
stable structures providing the effective equilibrium into which the smaller, 
faster structures settle and, perhaps churn. The trick is that social democracy 
enshrines some large structures which may turn out to be part of the problem. 
So, it might lack some dynamism that anarcho-syndicalism has.

On 9/14/20 5:01 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Ok, repeated unusually big wildfires or hurricanes would not be of the 
> revolution type of perturbation because those are less coupled to a 
> low-dimensional artificial control system.Revolutionaries are just 
> turning knobs in ham-handed ways trying to change a much more complicated 
> system without really knowing what one is doing.   The system rebounds to an 
> equilibrium.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Marcus Daniels]

Ok, repeated unusually big wildfires or hurricanes would not be of the 
revolution type of perturbation because those are less coupled to a 
low-dimensional artificial control system.Revolutionaries are just turning 
knobs in ham-handed ways trying to change a much more complicated system 
without really knowing what one is doing.   The system rebounds to an 
equilibrium.

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 4:34 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

The "heating" refers to an over-simplified optimization analogy, particularly 
low-dimensional and where the landscape is static. If you allow more nuanced 
actions other than breaking the law or violence, then the "heat" can be 
anything from walking down main street with a BLM sign to gathering initiative 
signatures to pretty much any other form of action.

What fraction of the population has to "get involved" in these non-voting ways? 
The answer depends on the type of "heat" you want to generate. Our snowflake 
trigger cancel culture is working to some extent. Our "bring your guns to town" 
culture is working to some extent. Use of tools like onion routing work. Etc. 
If the son of your friend is too lazy or disinterested to come up with his own 
satisfying ways to act, now, then it's difficult for me to prescribe one action 
or another, much less how *emphatic* he should be in those actions.


On 9/14/20 4:17 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Well, I think of a son of a friend of mine.   He seems bewildered as to why 
> he should vote.   To him, the revolution will come and will change things in 
> unrecognizable ways.   What fraction of the population has to ignore the law 
> or use violence to be analogous to heating?   Where energy barriers are small 
> compared to the kinetics of individuals?  Or it just never happens?


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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

The "heating" refers to an over-simplified optimization analogy, particularly 
low-dimensional and where the landscape is static. If you allow more nuanced 
actions other than breaking the law or violence, then the "heat" can be 
anything from walking down main street with a BLM sign to gathering initiative 
signatures to pretty much any other form of action.

What fraction of the population has to "get involved" in these non-voting ways? 
The answer depends on the type of "heat" you want to generate. Our snowflake 
trigger cancel culture is working to some extent. Our "bring your guns to town" 
culture is working to some extent. Use of tools like onion routing work. Etc. 
If the son of your friend is too lazy or disinterested to come up with his own 
satisfying ways to act, now, then it's difficult for me to prescribe one action 
or another, much less how *emphatic* he should be in those actions.


On 9/14/20 4:17 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Well, I think of a son of a friend of mine.   He seems bewildered as to why 
> he should vote.   To him, the revolution will come and will change things in 
> unrecognizable ways.   What fraction of the population has to ignore the law 
> or use violence to be analogous to heating?   Where energy barriers are small 
> compared to the kinetics of individuals?  Or it just never happens?


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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Marcus Daniels]

Well, I think of a son of a friend of mine.   He seems bewildered as to why he 
should vote.   To him, the revolution will come and will change things in 
unrecognizable ways.   What fraction of the population has to ignore the law or 
use violence to be analogous to heating?   Where energy barriers are small 
compared to the kinetics of individuals?  Or it just never happens?

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 4:11 PM
To: FriAM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Well, as Steve's question hints, there's a difference between the limit and the 
process that approaches the limit. Anarcho-syndicalism isn't tunneling. Unions, 
labor, community organizing, etc. are tunneling. And anarcho-syndicalism would 
be the state to which they're tunneling. [⛧] I'm a bit torn between social 
democracy and anarcho-syndicalism, though. Social democracy seems like a kind 
of 80/20 compromise ... lipstick on a pig. But visions of anarcho-syndicalism 
seem either way too vague, or come with too much special pleading. I tend to 
think anything that will eventually work will be ugly ... because reality is 
ugly. I enjoyed Sabine Hossenfelder's stubbornness here: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUWbe5KGaQY


[⛧] Revolution achieves nothing but the chance for one set of idealists to take 
over from another set of idealists, putting in place ridiculous abstractions 
that foment pain as the details are "worked out".

On 9/14/20 3:57 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> The sociological equivalent of tunneling through an energy barrier must be 
> anarcho-syndicalism (which sounds a lot like organized crime) and heating the 
> system up, revolution?


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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

Well, as Steve's question hints, there's a difference between the limit and the 
process that approaches the limit. Anarcho-syndicalism isn't tunneling. Unions, 
labor, community organizing, etc. are tunneling. And anarcho-syndicalism would 
be the state to which they're tunneling. [⛧] I'm a bit torn between social 
democracy and anarcho-syndicalism, though. Social democracy seems like a kind 
of 80/20 compromise ... lipstick on a pig. But visions of anarcho-syndicalism 
seem either way too vague, or come with too much special pleading. I tend to 
think anything that will eventually work will be ugly ... because reality is 
ugly. I enjoyed Sabine Hossenfelder's stubbornness here: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUWbe5KGaQY


[⛧] Revolution achieves nothing but the chance for one set of idealists to take 
over from another set of idealists, putting in place ridiculous abstractions 
that foment pain as the details are "worked out".

On 9/14/20 3:57 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> The sociological equivalent of tunneling through an energy barrier must be 
> anarcho-syndicalism (which sounds a lot like organized crime) and heating the 
> system up, revolution?


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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Marcus Daniels]

The sociological equivalent of tunneling through an energy barrier must be 
anarcho-syndicalism (which sounds a lot like organized crime) and heating the 
system up, revolution?

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 3:37 PM
To: FriAM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

I still think some form of anarcho-syndicalism is plausible: 
https://mises.org/library/anarcho-syndicalism-recipe-ruin

But there are some intense local minima we have to go through to get there.

On 9/14/20 1:39 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> I'm always game to hear about what *have to be* myriad alternatives or 
> variations of the reality (manic hypercapitalism) or the ideal (mere 
> free-market capitalism) we live in.

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

I still think some form of anarcho-syndicalism is plausible: 
https://mises.org/library/anarcho-syndicalism-recipe-ruin

But there are some intense local minima we have to go through to get there.

On 9/14/20 1:39 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> I'm always game to hear about what *have to be* myriad alternatives or 
> variations of the reality (manic hypercapitalism) or the ideal (mere 
> free-market capitalism) we live in. 

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Steve Smith]

> Yes, online shopping does seem to be directly analogous to mall and big box 
> shopping, engine oil right next to the organic apples! What's not to love?
Seductive it is.  
> More importantly, monopolies like Amazon demonstrate, once again, that the 
> computer is less flexible than the humans using the computer. Their 
> undermining of Etsy with "handmade" is a great example. I use Etsy to buy 
> from locals.
I try to use Etsy, but the lines between Etsy, Amazon, eBay and
AliExpress are getting blurred enough I lose track.   I recently bought
a handmade longbow for Mary via Etsy from what felt like a proper
one-man shop, but when I couldn't raise them to change the shipping
address (my bad) and ask them to tiller it for a slightly higher draw
weight (Mary's amazon physique had already mastered a 35# training bow),
I could get no response whatsoever, so I started looking around and
discovered that they also sold on Amazon and the "shopfront" there made
it evident that they'd transcended "family business" to something
bigger... still probably cottage-industry scale.   When we got the bow
(never got an acknowledgement but they DID ship it to the right address
and it DOES appear to be a 45# draw to my feel) the finish and packaging
suggested that they were turning out tens of these a day... not the same
as a factory, but not the same as a guy or gal sitting in front of their
fireplace shaving down a stick into a bow.   This is all nit-picking if
I"m criticising this vendor... whoever/whatever they are, I'm happy for
them and they got my order right, and *I* was the one who wanted the
product for $60 when there were *plenty* of (mostly SCA/Reenactor)
options for $200.    I still "shop" Etsy for what feels like righteous
products and both of my creative adult daughters have Etsy shops where
sometimes some of their creative products get sold...  
>  The narrative we were fed for "online shopping" was a diversification of 
> vendors with a unification of end point (your door). [⛧] But what we end up 
> with is a unification of vendor (Amazon), through an exploitation of workers 
> and institutions, to a unification of destination.
I *still* find myself thinking "I'll check Amazon for that" when I
really mean "I'll check ONLINE for that" and then veering away from
big-box stores online for one reason and small independents for others
and settling on Amazon.   I have *forced* myself to use Amazon Day
delivery (condense any orders within the week to a single delivery day)
and Smile (small donation to non-profit of my choice), but that feels
more like guilt-amelioration than anything.
>  This hearkens back to wealth inequality and the permanent underclass 
> capitalism requires.
I'm always game to hear about what *have to be* myriad alternatives or
variations of the reality (manic hypercapitalism) or the ideal (mere
free-market capitalism) we live in. 
> I think it's a mistake to desperately optimize away from "needing" anything.
That was just a knee jerk toward "getting ready for the apocalypse"...
it's easier to tune up skills and establish personal infrastructure
(herd of chickens) when you aren't starving in the dark.
>  But maybe it's purely philosophical. 
I think it is *partly* philosophical... and can maybe be more well
explored in the abstract hindsight of just what each of us would do if
we know what we know now, but found ourselves on the Titanic just as it
hit the iceberg.   We have a few hours to sort ourselves out from top to
bottom, what do we do?   Anecdotally, the "Orchestra Played On" and I
admire/respect that.   As well as those who worked hard to get the
lifeboats in the water without more loss of life and supplies than
neccessary.   But not so much the ones who had already picked out the
best ones, hoarded extra supplies aboard, and then got there first and
fought off the "women and children" that might have competed with them
for those supplies as they caste off with an elite crew aboard (my
apprehension of what a modern Libertarian would do).
> Part of the reason I prefer the local hardware store is because the people in 
> there help me solve problems, regardless of whether I buy anything. Of the 
> box stores, Lowe's seems the most interested in problem solving, but still 
> not good. The local hardware (and feed) store people seem to get a real kick 
> out of it when I come in with a problem to solve ... e.g. hanging a movable 
> welding screen from a > 20' ceiling. The people at the box stores could not 
> care less.
I enjoy my current local hardware... my previous local hardware tended
toward "overhelpful".    There are hardwares virtually everywhere who
typify the best of these things, and I am thankful for them.  I have not
visited, but hear great things about Arandas across the Street (Hickox?)
from the TuneUp in SFe.  Independent Bookstores, Farmers Markets and
Coffee Shops and even Grocers the same.  But the imbalances in "the
Market" make it hard, just as "one-stop shopping" at th

Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

Yes, online shopping does seem to be directly analogous to mall and big box 
shopping, engine oil right next to the organic apples! What's not to love?

More importantly, monopolies like Amazon demonstrate, once again, that the 
computer is less flexible than the humans using the computer. Their undermining 
of Etsy with "handmade" is a great example. I use Etsy to buy from locals. The 
narrative we were fed for "online shopping" was a diversification of vendors 
with a unification of end point (your door). [⛧] But what we end up with is a 
unification of vendor (Amazon), through an exploitation of workers and 
institutions, to a unification of destination. This hearkens back to wealth 
inequality and the permanent underclass capitalism requires.

I think it's a mistake to desperately optimize away from "needing" anything. 
But maybe it's purely philosophical. Part of the reason I prefer the local 
hardware store is because the people in there help me solve problems, 
regardless of whether I buy anything. Of the box stores, Lowe's seems the most 
interested in problem solving, but still not good. The local hardware (and 
feed) store people seem to get a real kick out of it when I come in with a 
problem to solve ... e.g. hanging a movable welding screen from a > 20' 
ceiling. The people at the box stores could not care less.

That social interaction, along with the pub, are about all I really get in meat 
space. Were I as creative or handy as you, I wouldn't need/have that social 
interaction at all. I used to get something similar at the book stores, not so 
much at Powell's, but the smaller ones. The maker spaces I used to go to had 
similar issues ... purchasing electronic components online is wy different 
than going to the local pack-rat dork vendor who would help you build the 
device with you. So, it's less about only buying what you need, and more about 
social learning/production. Ebooks and online shopping just does not compare 
and I feel sorry for those who do all their reading, making, thinking, and 
drinking alone in their basements.


[⛧] We were fed that narrative for personal computers, media sources, music 
artists, etc. Each time, the oligarchs manage to find a way to exploit 
resources (including duped consumers) in order to funnel wealth to their 
passive investments.

On 9/14/20 9:30 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> 
> I think "online shopping" in general has proven to be an effective
> competitor to "mall shopping" as "malls" became effective competitors to
> "main street", and I suppose "main street" to the old-school "general
> store" model.    It is a reverse-backflow system where some aspects of
> the "business" improve while others flail.   The mall has *everything
> you want* compared even to a rich mainstreet selection, but you have to
> drive out to the suburbs and hike across a 1000 acre parking lot, but
> are rewarded by ambient entertainment, air conditioning and an
> invitation to use them for senior exercise walks.
> 
> Yup, but it felt like Elizabeth would like to "rain hell down on them"
> like an early c20 Trust Buster if she'd gotten hold of the reins (for
> better or worse).  
> 
> I paradoxically drive past small hardware stores on my way to "the big
> box" too often, though usually only when I am confident the local
> doesn't have what I need, and after I've checked in on "do I really NEED
> what I can only find at the big box".   Before COVID I studiously
> eschewed *marts but still went to Target and Sams as if they were
> qualitatively different (whilst also doing the calculus of the big-box
> hardware store example when I could).  
> 
> COVID had me going back to my DIY roots and trying desperately NOT to
> think I needed ANYTHING from ANY of those places just as practice
> for the Apocalypse, should it come (yes, it is still inevitable, just
> not sure what time-scale).   Speaking of which, our flock of 8 hens is
> finally producing 5-7 eggs a day which is only slightly more than we are
> eating...   but now we have a racoon who jumped the 8' courtyard wall
> (an interesting obstacle at best, not an obstruction for him) and shat
> on the roof of our coop (knocked together from my hoards of salvaged
> supplies) last night.   Time to double-down on fasteners and get the dog
> habituated to the chickens (while in their coop at least)...   I'd
> rather not have to figure out how to pass Raccoon Stew off to Mary as
> vegetarian.
> 
>  sourcing of goods and services>


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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Marcus Daniels]

The rules of the game, and the supervision of the system allows for predatory 
behavior, yet as consumers we should try to collectively compensate around the 
margins?  Aren't the adaptive responses to 1) become a predator or 2) demand 
the system be changed, or both?   Before the robots take over for Amazon 
delivery, I want to see a few plausible Trumpers delivering my Lysol.   (The 
books I'll transfer electronically.)

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 9:08 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Exactly, which is why I *politely* suggest, if you care about your local book 
shop, do not use Amazon.

On 9/14/20 9:04 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> The real objection seems to be to (not so) good old-fashioned capitalism.   
> Amazon is just good at it.


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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Steve Smith]

On 9/14/20 9:51 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
> Well, the argument is not mainly that they're too big. It's that they use 
> offensive marketing tactics to *kill* smaller "competitors" ... e.g. 
> diapers.com. You know, good old fashioned capitalism. If they didn't engage 
> in that sort of thing, they wouldn't be villains. The "natural" reduction to 
> the mediocre that happens in monopoly or oligopoly isn't as much of a 
> concern. And their consistent mistreatment of their delivery workers (not 
> their IT workers) is also not the main concern. If, as RussS argues, they 
> were simply more competent, then the "freedom" of the market might be enough 
> to allow a radical idea to disrupt them. But it's not mere competence. Amazon 
> is anti-freedom and predatory.
I think "online shopping" in general has proven to be an effective
competitor to "mall shopping" as "malls" became effective competitors to
"main street", and I suppose "main street" to the old-school "general
store" model.    It is a reverse-backflow system where some aspects of
the "business" improve while others flail.   The mall has *everything
you want* compared even to a rich mainstreet selection, but you have to
drive out to the suburbs and hike across a 1000 acre parking lot, but
are rewarded by ambient entertainment, air conditioning and an
invitation to use them for senior exercise walks.
>
> Besides, this government will not break them up. Amazon is way more powerful 
> than the Trump admin, despite Trump's idiotic personal vendetta.

Yup, but it felt like Elizabeth would like to "rain hell down on them"
like an early c20 Trust Buster if she'd gotten hold of the reins (for
better or worse).  

I paradoxically drive past small hardware stores on my way to "the big
box" too often, though usually only when I am confident the local
doesn't have what I need, and after I've checked in on "do I really NEED
what I can only find at the big box".   Before COVID I studiously
eschewed *marts but still went to Target and Sams as if they were
qualitatively different (whilst also doing the calculus of the big-box
hardware store example when I could).  

COVID had me going back to my DIY roots and trying desperately NOT to
think I needed ANYTHING from ANY of those places just as practice
for the Apocalypse, should it come (yes, it is still inevitable, just
not sure what time-scale).   Speaking of which, our flock of 8 hens is
finally producing 5-7 eggs a day which is only slightly more than we are
eating...   but now we have a racoon who jumped the 8' courtyard wall
(an interesting obstacle at best, not an obstruction for him) and shat
on the roof of our coop (knocked together from my hoards of salvaged
supplies) last night.   Time to double-down on fasteners and get the dog
habituated to the chickens (while in their coop at least)...   I'd
rather not have to figure out how to pass Raccoon Stew off to Mary as
vegetarian.



- Steve


>
> On 9/14/20 8:47 AM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
>> Which, by transitivity must mean animosity toward the 40% of idiot citizens 
>> who keep such radical ideas from having a chance in hell of happening. 
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 10:38 AM Marcus Daniels > > wrote:
>>
>> I guess I don't get all this animosity toward Amazon.   If it is too 
>> big, then use the force of government to break it up.


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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Barry MacKichan]

When we lived near Seattle, my wife worked for a while at HP, where she 
heard this story. Some visitors from Germany were visiting HP, and when 
one of them saw the clusters of smokers outside, who were mostly women, 
he said to his HP host, “Wow! Does HP really provide hookers for their 
workers?”


Just an opposing data point for your comment “very few professional 
smoke.” You neglected the oldest profession.


—Barry

On 13 Sep 2020, at 22:21, Frank Wimberly wrote:

My 56 year-old daughter smokes cigarettes.  She is the head Latin 
teacher at an elite boarding school in upstate New York.  I ask her 
why she smokes and I point out that most Latin teachers don't.  It 
may be classist but it seems to me that very few professionals 
smoke.  She says, "Believe me, I know".  Since most places make you 
go outside to smoke she meets all the smokers.  So, this unhealthy 
activity leads to mixing.  Unless she's the only teacher who smokes, 
which is possible.
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

Exactly, which is why I *politely* suggest, if you care about your local book 
shop, do not use Amazon.

On 9/14/20 9:04 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> The real objection seems to be to (not so) good old-fashioned capitalism.   
> Amazon is just good at it.


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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Marcus Daniels]

The real objection seems to be to (not so) good old-fashioned capitalism.   
Amazon is just good at it.

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 8:51 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Well, the argument is not mainly that they're too big. It's that they use 
offensive marketing tactics to *kill* smaller "competitors" ... e.g. 
diapers.com. You know, good old fashioned capitalism. If they didn't engage in 
that sort of thing, they wouldn't be villains. The "natural" reduction to the 
mediocre that happens in monopoly or oligopoly isn't as much of a concern. And 
their consistent mistreatment of their delivery workers (not their IT workers) 
is also not the main concern. If, as RussS argues, they were simply more 
competent, then the "freedom" of the market might be enough to allow a radical 
idea to disrupt them. But it's not mere competence. Amazon is anti-freedom and 
predatory.

Besides, this government will not break them up. Amazon is way more powerful 
than the Trump admin, despite Trump's idiotic personal vendetta.

On 9/14/20 8:47 AM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
> Which, by transitivity must mean animosity toward the 40% of idiot 
> citizens who keep such radical ideas from having a chance in hell of 
> happening.
> 
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 10:38 AM Marcus Daniels  <mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
> 
> I guess I don't get all this animosity toward Amazon.   If it is too big, 
> then use the force of government to break it up.

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

Well, the argument is not mainly that they're too big. It's that they use 
offensive marketing tactics to *kill* smaller "competitors" ... e.g. 
diapers.com. You know, good old fashioned capitalism. If they didn't engage in 
that sort of thing, they wouldn't be villains. The "natural" reduction to the 
mediocre that happens in monopoly or oligopoly isn't as much of a concern. And 
their consistent mistreatment of their delivery workers (not their IT workers) 
is also not the main concern. If, as RussS argues, they were simply more 
competent, then the "freedom" of the market might be enough to allow a radical 
idea to disrupt them. But it's not mere competence. Amazon is anti-freedom and 
predatory.

Besides, this government will not break them up. Amazon is way more powerful 
than the Trump admin, despite Trump's idiotic personal vendetta.

On 9/14/20 8:47 AM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
> Which, by transitivity must mean animosity toward the 40% of idiot citizens 
> who keep such radical ideas from having a chance in hell of happening. 
> 
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 10:38 AM Marcus Daniels  > wrote:
> 
> I guess I don't get all this animosity toward Amazon.   If it is too big, 
> then use the force of government to break it up.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Gary Schiltz]

Which, by transitivity must mean animosity toward the 40% of idiot citizens
who keep such radical ideas from having a chance in hell of happening.

On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 10:38 AM Marcus Daniels 
wrote:

> I guess I don't get all this animosity toward Amazon.   If it is too big,
> then use the force of government to break it up.
>
>
>
> -Original Message-
>
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of Steve Smith
>
> Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 8:34 AM
>
> To: friam@redfish.com
>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
>
>
> Glen -
>
>
>
> Thanks for the reminder to keep on supporting local/independent if you
> want them to be around later.  Or because they are your neighbors.  Or of
> course, if you just want to stick it to Bezos like the Lilliputians that we
> are!
>
>
>
> I didn't know about this resource.   I have degenerated to routing all of
> my orders through Op Cit which moved to De Vargas from SanBusco. They try
> very hard to find and obtain any title and have offered Mary that they will
> also add her wish list to theirs and pull books she is looking for as they
> find them (they have a big backlog of unsorted and get more every day in
> trade) rather than order.
>
>
>
> They don't seem to be registered with Bookshop, nor does Big Star... I'll
> follow up and see why maybe not.
>
>
>
> - Steve
>
>
>
> On 9/14/20 8:30 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
>
> > And just in case you want to avoid enriching super villains like Bezos:
>
> >
>
> > https://bookshop.org/books/bonds-of-civility/9780521601153
>
> > https://bookshop.org/books/the-taming-of-the-samurai-honorific-individ
>
> > ualism-and-the-making-of-modern-japan-revised/9780674868090
>
> >
>
> > And the book Steve shared:
>
> > https://bookshop.org/books/blackfoot-physics-a-journey-into-the-native
>
> > -american-worldview/9781578633715
>
> >
>
> > On 9/13/20 6:52 PM, Carl Tollander wrote:
>
> >> Yes to Ikegami's "Bonds of Civility"and her other book "Taming of the
> Samurai".
>
> >>
>
> >> Carl
>
> >>
>
> >>
>
> >> On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 4:14 PM David Eric Smith  <mailto:desm...@santafe.edu>> wrote:
>
> >>
>
> >> This idea of places where people of different walks “encounter each
> other” — or even better have something meaningful to do with each other,
> has an interesting role at a certain period of social change in Japan.
>
> >>
>
> >> From a friend and colleague:
>
> >>
> https://www.amazon.com/Bonds-Civility-Aesthetic-Political-Structural/dp/0521601150
>
> >> The author argues that the creation of “publics” was an important
> social innovation in getting around the codified barriers in an officially
> feudal society, de facto before it was possible de jure.
>
> >
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Marcus Daniels]

I guess I don't get all this animosity toward Amazon.   If it is too big, then 
use the force of government to break it up.

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 8:34 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Glen -

Thanks for the reminder to keep on supporting local/independent if you want 
them to be around later.  Or because they are your neighbors.  Or of course, if 
you just want to stick it to Bezos like the Lilliputians that we are!

I didn't know about this resource.   I have degenerated to routing all of my 
orders through Op Cit which moved to De Vargas from SanBusco. They try very 
hard to find and obtain any title and have offered Mary that they will also add 
her wish list to theirs and pull books she is looking for as they find them 
(they have a big backlog of unsorted and get more every day in trade) rather 
than order.  

They don't seem to be registered with Bookshop, nor does Big Star... I'll 
follow up and see why maybe not.

- Steve

On 9/14/20 8:30 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
> And just in case you want to avoid enriching super villains like Bezos:
>
> https://bookshop.org/books/bonds-of-civility/9780521601153
> https://bookshop.org/books/the-taming-of-the-samurai-honorific-individ
> ualism-and-the-making-of-modern-japan-revised/9780674868090
>
> And the book Steve shared:
> https://bookshop.org/books/blackfoot-physics-a-journey-into-the-native
> -american-worldview/9781578633715
>
> On 9/13/20 6:52 PM, Carl Tollander wrote:
>> Yes to Ikegami's "Bonds of Civility"and her other book "Taming of the 
>> Samurai".
>>
>> Carl
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 4:14 PM David Eric Smith > <mailto:desm...@santafe.edu>> wrote:
>>
>> This idea of places where people of different walks “encounter each 
>> other” — or even better have something meaningful to do with each other, has 
>> an interesting role at a certain period of social change in Japan.
>>
>> From a friend and colleague:
>> 
>> https://www.amazon.com/Bonds-Civility-Aesthetic-Political-Structural/dp/0521601150
>> The author argues that the creation of “publics” was an important social 
>> innovation in getting around the codified barriers in an officially feudal 
>> society, de facto before it was possible de jure.
>


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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Steve Smith]

Glen -

Thanks for the reminder to keep on supporting local/independent if you
want them to be around later.  Or because they are your neighbors.  Or
of course, if you just want to stick it to Bezos like the Lilliputians
that we are!

I didn't know about this resource.   I have degenerated to routing all
of my orders through Op Cit which moved to De Vargas from SanBusco. 
They try very hard to find and obtain any title and have offered Mary
that they will also add her wish list to theirs and pull books she is
looking for as they find them (they have a big backlog of unsorted and
get more every day in trade) rather than order.  

They don't seem to be registered with Bookshop, nor does Big Star...  
I'll follow up and see why maybe not.

- Steve

On 9/14/20 8:30 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
> And just in case you want to avoid enriching super villains like Bezos:
>
> https://bookshop.org/books/bonds-of-civility/9780521601153
> https://bookshop.org/books/the-taming-of-the-samurai-honorific-individualism-and-the-making-of-modern-japan-revised/9780674868090
>
> And the book Steve shared:
> https://bookshop.org/books/blackfoot-physics-a-journey-into-the-native-american-worldview/9781578633715
>
> On 9/13/20 6:52 PM, Carl Tollander wrote:
>> Yes to Ikegami's "Bonds of Civility"and her other book "Taming of the 
>> Samurai".
>>
>> Carl
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 4:14 PM David Eric Smith > > wrote:
>>
>> This idea of places where people of different walks “encounter each 
>> other” — or even better have something meaningful to do with each other, has 
>> an interesting role at a certain period of social change in Japan.
>>
>> From a friend and colleague:
>> 
>> https://www.amazon.com/Bonds-Civility-Aesthetic-Political-Structural/dp/0521601150
>> The author argues that the creation of “publics” was an important social 
>> innovation in getting around the codified barriers in an officially feudal 
>> society, de facto before it was possible de jure.
>


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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

And just in case you want to avoid enriching super villains like Bezos:

https://bookshop.org/books/bonds-of-civility/9780521601153
https://bookshop.org/books/the-taming-of-the-samurai-honorific-individualism-and-the-making-of-modern-japan-revised/9780674868090

And the book Steve shared:
https://bookshop.org/books/blackfoot-physics-a-journey-into-the-native-american-worldview/9781578633715

On 9/13/20 6:52 PM, Carl Tollander wrote:
> Yes to Ikegami's "Bonds of Civility"and her other book "Taming of the 
> Samurai".
> 
> Carl
> 
> 
> On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 4:14 PM David Eric Smith  > wrote:
> 
> This idea of places where people of different walks “encounter each 
> other” — or even better have something meaningful to do with each other, has 
> an interesting role at a certain period of social change in Japan.
> 
> From a friend and colleague:
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/Bonds-Civility-Aesthetic-Political-Structural/dp/0521601150
> The author argues that the creation of “publics” was an important social 
> innovation in getting around the codified barriers in an officially feudal 
> society, de facto before it was possible de jure.


-- 
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Roger Critchlow]

I ordered a board game this morning,
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/311484/kapital, based on a mention in
the New Yorker.

Roll the dice, pay 10k financial, collect 10k social, ..., oops,
revolution, redistribute!

Votre commande a été acceptée, replied the publisher, not sure why a
command sounds more empowering than an order.

-- rec --

"

On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 12:25 AM jon zingale  wrote:

> My partner, Sarah, remarked that the abstract is remarkable in that it
> seems
> parallel (for her) to how she experiences our world today. The book is on
> my
> reading list. Thank you.
>
>
>
> --
> Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[jon zingale]

My partner, Sarah, remarked that the abstract is remarkable in that it seems
parallel (for her) to how she experiences our world today. The book is on my
reading list. Thank you.



--
Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Marcus Daniels]

The large dog park on the bay near where I live brings all kinds of people that 
have at least one good quality.Mostly people are accommodating about how 
dogs behave or misbehave up to some limit.   But there was this guy a couple 
days ago when it was dark all day from smoke, when almost no one came out of 
their house, who could make a special effort to bring out his phone to record 
his lecture of another person about that person’s dog that he claimed was 
attacking other dogs.  It wasn’t significantly true as far as I could tell as 
I’d been in the same area for a while.   With all that was wrong -- with the 
pandemic and the fires everywhere -- this guy could take at least 10 minutes to 
follow around this guy and make a miserable day even more miserable.   While 
the lecture was proceeding the `offending’ dogs were coming up to the guy to 
say hi.   I was hoping they’d jump for his neck.   That I would have not 
reported on my phone.

Oh, I’m supposed to reflect on the importance of mixing.   Never mind.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2020 7:21 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

My 56 year-old daughter smokes cigarettes.  She is the head Latin teacher at an 
elite boarding school in upstate New York.  I ask her why she smokes and I 
point out that most Latin teachers don't.  It may be classist but it seems to 
me that very few professionals smoke.  She says, "Believe me, I know".  Since 
most places make you go outside to smoke she meets all the smokers.  So, this 
unhealthy activity leads to mixing.  Unless she's the only teacher who smokes, 
which is possible.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 4:14 PM David Eric Smith 
mailto:desm...@santafe.edu>> wrote:
This idea of places where people of different walks “encounter each other” — or 
even better have something meaningful to do with each other, has an interesting 
role at a certain period of social change in Japan.

From a friend and colleague:
https://www.amazon.com/Bonds-Civility-Aesthetic-Political-Structural/dp/0521601150
The author argues that the creation of “publics” was an important social 
innovation in getting around the codified barriers in an officially feudal 
society, de facto before it was possible de jure.

Eric




On Sep 13, 2020, at 1:27 PM, 
mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> 
mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> wrote:

This should do it!

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.kirkusreviews.com%2fbook-reviews%2fmichael-j-sandel%2fthe-tyranny-of-merit%2f&c=E,1,KxR3VUYiFyLi-9EwiZchRYJULv3vw8vndRDcdK-uHjMLLKBRYDsCsP1hohZZXJCvy_3Wg6yv4vV6bk_km46AMUuQUaM_Qj2dG6Q3Q4KJ8BMOPSaB&typo=1>

The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the us is now 
the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
thompnicks...@gmail.com<mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,gKsz360cU5H_ketjmPQBEhJptprQAdBbicogUNQHhZRFUFrFaQn3tzXvVm0GLJIvOuwFz42i1kHyDLNM4llt9i9QTj7aeCxZ7N4DrFX08icRvAg35Zk,&typo=1>


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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Frank Wimberly]

My 56 year-old daughter smokes cigarettes.  She is the head Latin teacher
at an elite boarding school in upstate New York.  I ask her why she smokes
and I point out that most Latin teachers don't.  It may be classist but it
seems to me that very few professionals smoke.  She says, "Believe me, I
know".  Since most places make you go outside to smoke she meets all the
smokers.  So, this unhealthy activity leads to mixing.  Unless she's the
only teacher who smokes, which is possible.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 4:14 PM David Eric Smith  wrote:

> This idea of places where people of different walks “encounter each other”
> — or even better have something meaningful to do with each other, has an
> interesting role at a certain period of social change in Japan.
>
> From a friend and colleague:
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Bonds-Civility-Aesthetic-Political-Structural/dp/0521601150
> The author argues that the creation of “publics” was an important social
> innovation in getting around the codified barriers in an officially feudal
> society, de facto before it was possible de jure.
>
> Eric
>
>
>
> On Sep 13, 2020, at 1:27 PM,  <
> thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This should do it!
>
>
> https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/
> 
>
> The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the us is
> now the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
> 
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[David Eric Smith]

This idea of places where people of different walks “encounter each other” — or 
even better have something meaningful to do with each other, has an interesting 
role at a certain period of social change in Japan.

From a friend and colleague:
https://www.amazon.com/Bonds-Civility-Aesthetic-Political-Structural/dp/0521601150
 

The author argues that the creation of “publics” was an important social 
innovation in getting around the codified barriers in an officially feudal 
society, de facto before it was possible de jure.

Eric



> On Sep 13, 2020, at 1:27 PM,  
>  wrote:
> 
> This should do it!
>  
> https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/
>  
> 
>  
> The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the us is now 
> the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.  
>  
> Nick 
>  
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> thompnicks...@gmail.com 
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
> 
>  
>  
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Carl Tollander]

Yes to Ikegami's "Bonds of Civility"and her other book "Taming of the
Samurai".

Carl


On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 4:14 PM David Eric Smith 
wrote:

> This idea of places where people of different walks “encounter each other”
> — or even better have something meaningful to do with each other, has an
> interesting role at a certain period of social change in Japan.
>
> From a friend and colleague:
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Bonds-Civility-Aesthetic-Political-Structural/dp/0521601150
> The author argues that the creation of “publics” was an important social
> innovation in getting around the codified barriers in an officially feudal
> society, de facto before it was possible de jure.
>
> Eric
>
>
>
> On Sep 13, 2020, at 1:27 PM,  <
> thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This should do it!
>
>
> https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/
> 
>
> The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the us is
> now the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
> 
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Frank Wimberly]

Hanauer might remember.  I doubt that anyone else knows.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 1:17 PM  wrote:

> Frank,
>
>
>
> What was the other?
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
> *Sent:* Sunday, September 13, 2020 12:15 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
>
>
> More luck.  Luck isn't the only thing but it's important.  Nick Hanauer
> says that years ago he had a couple million to invest and he was presented
> with a couple of venture capital opportunities.  He had no idea which to
> choose so he essentially flipped a coin.  His choice was Amazon and he's
> now a multi-billionaire.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:56 AM Marcus Daniels 
> wrote:
>
> Taking the view that success is nothing more than an outcome of a random
> percolation process, the individuals on the `winning’ end of that
> percolation process are significantly different from the people that got
> stuck somehow.   They have more skills, more knowledge, more contacts, more
> experience.  Yes there are arguable counter examples:  PhDs that do
> management and lose their technical edge, or individuals that are too
> specialized to do anything very useful.But by in large it is helpful to
> be around people that study and solve hard problems for a living and
> accumulate expertise.   If it is a given that there are only so many slots
> available or needed for highly-skilled people in a society, then whether
> there is `justice’ for that selection isn’t really related to merit as a
> thing (versus as a process).   What’s really needed to get more people
> through some kind of enriching percolation process is a **demand** for it
> – huge numbers of open, positions that will participate in creating diverse
> services people want to pay for.   Then the various kinds of organizations
> that provide appropriate support for learning can adapt to that need.
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> *Sent:* Sunday, September 13, 2020 10:28 AM
> *To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
>
>
> This should do it!
>
>
>
>
> https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/
>
>
>
> The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the us is
> now the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2]

Frank, 

 

What was the other?

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2020 12:15 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

More luck.  Luck isn't the only thing but it's important.  Nick Hanauer says 
that years ago he had a couple million to invest and he was presented with a 
couple of venture capital opportunities.  He had no idea which to choose so he 
essentially flipped a coin.  His choice was Amazon and he's now a 
multi-billionaire.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:56 AM Marcus Daniels mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com> > wrote:

Taking the view that success is nothing more than an outcome of a random 
percolation process, the individuals on the `winning’ end of that percolation 
process are significantly different from the people that got stuck somehow.   
They have more skills, more knowledge, more contacts, more experience.  Yes 
there are arguable counter examples:  PhDs that do management and lose their 
technical edge, or individuals that are too specialized to do anything very 
useful.But by in large it is helpful to be around people that study and 
solve hard problems for a living and accumulate expertise.   If it is a given 
that there are only so many slots available or needed for highly-skilled people 
in a society, then whether there is `justice’ for that selection isn’t really 
related to merit as a thing (versus as a process).   What’s really needed to 
get more people through some kind of enriching percolation process is a 
*demand* for it – huge numbers of open, positions that will participate in 
creating diverse services people want to pay for.   Then the various kinds of 
organizations that provide appropriate support for learning can adapt to that 
need.

 

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> 
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2020 10:28 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

This should do it!

 

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/

 

The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the us is now 
the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.  

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> 

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

 

 

 

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2]

Yes, but ….

 

We don’t fetishize “achievement” and we keep taking money and educational 
opportunity off the top and pouring it in at the bottom, not because we have 
empathy for those poor people but because we recognize that 
there-but-for-the-grace-of-God go we.  

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

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

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2020 12:26 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

Agreed.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 12:21 PM Marcus Daniels mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com> > wrote:

Yes, but so what?   If there is a lottery system for top universities (per the 
abstract), how is that substantially different from just viewing individuals a 
cluster of particles in the expanding universe?   It’s one kind of luck or 
another.  

 

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2020 11:15 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

More luck.  Luck isn't the only thing but it's important.  Nick Hanauer says 
that years ago he had a couple million to invest and he was presented with a 
couple of venture capital opportunities.  He had no idea which to choose so he 
essentially flipped a coin.  His choice was Amazon and he's now a 
multi-billionaire.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:56 AM Marcus Daniels mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com> > wrote:

Taking the view that success is nothing more than an outcome of a random 
percolation process, the individuals on the `winning’ end of that percolation 
process are significantly different from the people that got stuck somehow.   
They have more skills, more knowledge, more contacts, more experience.  Yes 
there are arguable counter examples:  PhDs that do management and lose their 
technical edge, or individuals that are too specialized to do anything very 
useful.But by in large it is helpful to be around people that study and 
solve hard problems for a living and accumulate expertise.   If it is a given 
that there are only so many slots available or needed for highly-skilled people 
in a society, then whether there is `justice’ for that selection isn’t really 
related to merit as a thing (versus as a process).   What’s really needed to 
get more people through some kind of enriching percolation process is a 
*demand* for it – huge numbers of open, positions that will participate in 
creating diverse services people want to pay for.   Then the various kinds of 
organizations that provide appropriate support for learning can adapt to that 
need.

 

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On 
Behalf Of thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> 
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2020 10:28 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

 

This should do it!

 

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/

 

The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the us is now 
the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.  

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> 

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

 

 

 

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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Frank Wimberly]

Agreed.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 12:21 PM Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> Yes, but so what?   If there is a lottery system for top universities (per
> the abstract), how is that substantially different from just viewing
> individuals a cluster of particles in the expanding universe?   It’s one
> kind of luck or another.
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
> *Sent:* Sunday, September 13, 2020 11:15 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
>
>
> More luck.  Luck isn't the only thing but it's important.  Nick Hanauer
> says that years ago he had a couple million to invest and he was presented
> with a couple of venture capital opportunities.  He had no idea which to
> choose so he essentially flipped a coin.  His choice was Amazon and he's
> now a multi-billionaire.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:56 AM Marcus Daniels 
> wrote:
>
> Taking the view that success is nothing more than an outcome of a random
> percolation process, the individuals on the `winning’ end of that
> percolation process are significantly different from the people that got
> stuck somehow.   They have more skills, more knowledge, more contacts, more
> experience.  Yes there are arguable counter examples:  PhDs that do
> management and lose their technical edge, or individuals that are too
> specialized to do anything very useful.But by in large it is helpful to
> be around people that study and solve hard problems for a living and
> accumulate expertise.   If it is a given that there are only so many slots
> available or needed for highly-skilled people in a society, then whether
> there is `justice’ for that selection isn’t really related to merit as a
> thing (versus as a process).   What’s really needed to get more people
> through some kind of enriching percolation process is a **demand** for it
> – huge numbers of open, positions that will participate in creating diverse
> services people want to pay for.   Then the various kinds of organizations
> that provide appropriate support for learning can adapt to that need.
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> *Sent:* Sunday, September 13, 2020 10:28 AM
> *To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
>
>
> This should do it!
>
>
>
>
> https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/
>
>
>
> The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the us is
> now the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Marcus Daniels]

Yes, but so what?   If there is a lottery system for top universities (per the 
abstract), how is that substantially different from just viewing individuals a 
cluster of particles in the expanding universe?   It’s one kind of luck or 
another.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2020 11:15 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

More luck.  Luck isn't the only thing but it's important.  Nick Hanauer says 
that years ago he had a couple million to invest and he was presented with a 
couple of venture capital opportunities.  He had no idea which to choose so he 
essentially flipped a coin.  His choice was Amazon and he's now a 
multi-billionaire.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:56 AM Marcus Daniels 
mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
Taking the view that success is nothing more than an outcome of a random 
percolation process, the individuals on the `winning’ end of that percolation 
process are significantly different from the people that got stuck somehow.   
They have more skills, more knowledge, more contacts, more experience.  Yes 
there are arguable counter examples:  PhDs that do management and lose their 
technical edge, or individuals that are too specialized to do anything very 
useful.But by in large it is helpful to be around people that study and 
solve hard problems for a living and accumulate expertise.   If it is a given 
that there are only so many slots available or needed for highly-skilled people 
in a society, then whether there is `justice’ for that selection isn’t really 
related to merit as a thing (versus as a process).   What’s really needed to 
get more people through some kind of enriching percolation process is a 
*demand* for it – huge numbers of open, positions that will participate in 
creating diverse services people want to pay for.   Then the various kinds of 
organizations that provide appropriate support for learning can adapt to that 
need.

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
Behalf Of thompnicks...@gmail.com<mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2020 10:28 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' 
mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
Subject: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

This should do it!

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/

The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the us is now 
the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.

Nick

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



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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Frank Wimberly]

More luck.  Luck isn't the only thing but it's important.  Nick Hanauer
says that years ago he had a couple million to invest and he was presented
with a couple of venture capital opportunities.  He had no idea which to
choose so he essentially flipped a coin.  His choice was Amazon and he's
now a multi-billionaire.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:56 AM Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> Taking the view that success is nothing more than an outcome of a random
> percolation process, the individuals on the `winning’ end of that
> percolation process are significantly different from the people that got
> stuck somehow.   They have more skills, more knowledge, more contacts, more
> experience.  Yes there are arguable counter examples:  PhDs that do
> management and lose their technical edge, or individuals that are too
> specialized to do anything very useful.But by in large it is helpful to
> be around people that study and solve hard problems for a living and
> accumulate expertise.   If it is a given that there are only so many slots
> available or needed for highly-skilled people in a society, then whether
> there is `justice’ for that selection isn’t really related to merit as a
> thing (versus as a process).   What’s really needed to get more people
> through some kind of enriching percolation process is a **demand** for it
> – huge numbers of open, positions that will participate in creating diverse
> services people want to pay for.   Then the various kinds of organizations
> that provide appropriate support for learning can adapt to that need.
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> *Sent:* Sunday, September 13, 2020 10:28 AM
> *To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
>
>
> This should do it!
>
>
>
>
> https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/
>
>
>
> The thesis is that “meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the us is
> now the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
>
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> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[Marcus Daniels]

Taking the view that success is nothing more than an outcome of a random 
percolation process, the individuals on the `winning' end of that percolation 
process are significantly different from the people that got stuck somehow.   
They have more skills, more knowledge, more contacts, more experience.  Yes 
there are arguable counter examples:  PhDs that do management and lose their 
technical edge, or individuals that are too specialized to do anything very 
useful.But by in large it is helpful to be around people that study and 
solve hard problems for a living and accumulate expertise.   If it is a given 
that there are only so many slots available or needed for highly-skilled people 
in a society, then whether there is `justice' for that selection isn't really 
related to merit as a thing (versus as a process).   What's really needed to 
get more people through some kind of enriching percolation process is a 
*demand* for it - huge numbers of open, positions that will participate in 
creating diverse services people want to pay for.   Then the various kinds of 
organizations that provide appropriate support for learning can adapt to that 
need.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of thompnicks...@gmail.com
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2020 10:28 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' 
Subject: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

This should do it!

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/

The thesis is that "meritocracy" is the cause of the fact that the us is now 
the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.

Nick

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



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[FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2]

This should do it!

 

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-m
erit/

 

The thesis is that "meritocracy" is the cause of the fact that the us is now
the least socially mobile country among the western democracies.  

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

thompnicks...@gmail.com  

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

 

 

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