Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[gepr]

Ha! Excellent. All we need is a way to continually measure the neural
correlates to psychopathy and stick the devices to a 2-arm cohort.

--
⛧ glen

On May 11, 2016 6:08 PM, "Marcus Daniels"  wrote:
>
> If an apophany is arises from abnormal overfitting of environmental
information, perhaps a necessary but not sufficient condition to an
epiphany is psychopathy?  A bold motivational driver toward a hypothesis
and experiment.  :-)

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[Marcus Daniels]

If an apophany is arises from abnormal overfitting of environmental 
information, perhaps a necessary but not sufficient condition to an epiphany is 
psychopathy?  A bold motivational driver toward a hypothesis and experiment.  
:-)

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2016 3:05 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"


Very nice!  I wish I were a bit more able to stockpile either cash or 
attention.  I'm a bit too impulsive for either.  I do make an attempt at 
logging "ideas worth pursuing".  I even prioritize them to some extent.  But my 
process has always depended on "more than one motivation" to pursue any given 
subject.  I.e. I don't invest deeply in anything until it's reinforced by lots 
of nudges/patterns.  Hence my apophenia, which turns out to be motivated 
reasoning.

On 05/11/2016 11:08 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> If anything I'm more breadth oriented than I used to be.   It's more a like a 
> cash flow thing.   I know I'll have to jettison a lot of attention and 
> short/medium term memory  to do depth, and so I try to find opportunities to 
> schedule the attention in batch.  As a young person, I'd run out of cash, so 
> to speak, and be in a world of hurt.Now I collect a nice pile of cash, 
> figuratively and literally, before jumping in.The ongoing negotiation 
> with the people around me gets replaced with what amounts to a monetary 
> transaction to keep them at a bay for a while.   Knuth (or some favorite 
> novelist, etc.), in contrast, had such a giant pile of (intellectual) cash he 
> could keep people at bay, period.   The "reflexes" are no worse, from age, 
> and maybe better, but I'm not going to work 30 hours straight anymore because 
> that's just stupid.

--
⛧ glen


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe 
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[glen]

Very nice!  I wish I were a bit more able to stockpile either cash or attention.  I'm a bit too 
impulsive for either.  I do make an attempt at logging "ideas worth pursuing".  I even 
prioritize them to some extent.  But my process has always depended on "more than one 
motivation" to pursue any given subject.  I.e. I don't invest deeply in anything until it's 
reinforced by lots of nudges/patterns.  Hence my apophenia, which turns out to be motivated 
reasoning.

On 05/11/2016 11:08 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

If anything I'm more breadth oriented than I used to be.   It's more a like a cash flow 
thing.   I know I'll have to jettison a lot of attention and short/medium term memory  to 
do depth, and so I try to find opportunities to schedule the attention in batch.  As a 
young person, I'd run out of cash, so to speak, and be in a world of hurt.Now I 
collect a nice pile of cash, figuratively and literally, before jumping in.The 
ongoing negotiation with the people around me gets replaced with what amounts to a 
monetary transaction to keep them at a bay for a while.   Knuth (or some favorite 
novelist, etc.), in contrast, had such a giant pile of (intellectual) cash he could keep 
people at bay, period.   The "reflexes" are no worse, from age, and maybe 
better, but I'm not going to work 30 hours straight anymore because that's just stupid.


--
⛧ glen


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[Marcus Daniels]

" [*] Yes, many of us can successfully "jockey" from one role to another as our 
skills shift from "fast reflexes" to "wisdom of age".  But even the most 
successful jockeys eventually fade away."

If anything I'm more breadth oriented than I used to be.   It's more a like a 
cash flow thing.   I know I'll have to jettison a lot of attention and 
short/medium term memory  to do depth, and so I try to find opportunities to 
schedule the attention in batch.  As a young person, I'd run out of cash, so to 
speak, and be in a world of hurt.Now I collect a nice pile of cash, 
figuratively and literally, before jumping in.The ongoing negotiation with 
the people around me gets replaced with what amounts to a monetary transaction 
to keep them at a bay for a while.   Knuth (or some favorite novelist, etc.), 
in contrast, had such a giant pile of (intellectual) cash he could keep people 
at bay, period.   The "reflexes" are no worse, from age, and maybe better, but 
I'm not going to work 30 hours straight anymore because that's just stupid.

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[glen]

OK.  But that doesn't change the fact that "have to" is too strong.  It would 
be better phrased "Most of us want to stay on top of things."  In the end, of 
course, as we get old and fade away[*], we simply cannot keep up with things, 
which leads to complaining about how the world is developing.  Even those who 
authentically try as hard as they can to either ensure their values are valued 
or at least to keep up with where the value lies will eventually fail.  The 
trick is whether, as they're failing, they continue to complain ... perhaps in 
the mistaken belief that their complaining helps.  I.e. Get off my lawn!

The wise ones will realize they do not _have_ to keep up, despite however much 
they may want to.  And, those will also be the least likely to complain as they 
fade away.

[*] Yes, many of us can successfully "jockey" from one role to another as our 
skills shift from "fast reflexes" to "wisdom of age".  But even the most 
successful jockeys eventually fade away.

On 05/11/2016 09:05 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> What I meant here is that in organizations there is a difference between what 
> is true and what is valued.  So "staying on top of things" is knowing random 
> valued things in that instant.Someone can escalate or build consensus 
> around a goal up the ranks, and now they will protect that goal even if it 
> isn't worth protecting.   In this situation, the consensus building process 
> is just one of susceptible individuals adding to momentum (e.g. out of fear 
> or ambition), not one where more eyes and brains perform something like peer 
> review.  One can make a living as a manager just watching things escalate an 
> deescalate, and learn nothing about the world in the process.   Same sort of 
> wasted motion in fashion or popular music or the world of celebrity.   


-- 
⛧ glen


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[Marcus Daniels]

What I meant here is that in organizations there is a difference between what 
is true and what is valued.  So "staying on top of things" is knowing random 
valued things in that instant.Someone can escalate or build consensus 
around a goal up the ranks, and now they will protect that goal even if it 
isn't worth protecting.   In this situation, the consensus building process is 
just one of susceptible individuals adding to momentum (e.g. out of fear or 
ambition), not one where more eyes and brains perform something like peer 
review.  One can make a living as a manager just watching things escalate an 
deescalate, and learn nothing about the world in the process.   Same sort of 
wasted motion in fashion or popular music or the world of celebrity.   

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2016 9:42 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

On 05/11/2016 06:45 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Most us have to stay on top of things, though.  Hopefully, though, it is not 
> the only thing.

I wonder about the use of the word "have".  A particular person with whom I'm 
currently forced to interact, keeps his nose stuck in his phone and ear buds in 
his ears all day every day.  He claims he _has_ to do this because if he 
doesn't he grows anxious ... to the extent of panic attacks.  He claims he 
needs constant stimulus for his emotional well-being.  It's akin to the fasting 
experiments I started recently.  Prior to those experiments, I thought I _had_ 
to eat every day.  I felt like I got "hangry", as Renee's co-workers call it, 
where "low blood sugar" made one irritable.  But by purposefully denying myself 
food for growing amounts of time, I discovered that I was simply addicted to my 
habits ... stuck in my comfort zone.  I now believe the evidence (which I've 
always known about, but ignored) that people (including me) can live just fine 
for quite awhile without food.

I wonder how many of us who have to stay on top of things, are similarly 
addicted.

But then again, head hunters are not knocking down my door looking for 
expertise in things like Mean.io, either. 8^)

--
⛧ glen


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe 
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[glen]

On 05/11/2016 06:45 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Most us have to stay on top of things, though.  Hopefully, though, it is not 
> the only thing.

I wonder about the use of the word "have".  A particular person with whom I'm 
currently forced to interact, keeps his nose stuck in his phone and ear buds in 
his ears all day every day.  He claims he _has_ to do this because if he 
doesn't he grows anxious ... to the extent of panic attacks.  He claims he 
needs constant stimulus for his emotional well-being.  It's akin to the fasting 
experiments I started recently.  Prior to those experiments, I thought I _had_ 
to eat every day.  I felt like I got "hangry", as Renee's co-workers call it, 
where "low blood sugar" made one irritable.  But by purposefully denying myself 
food for growing amounts of time, I discovered that I was simply addicted to my 
habits ... stuck in my comfort zone.  I now believe the evidence (which I've 
always known about, but ignored) that people (including me) can live just fine 
for quite awhile without food.

I wonder how many of us who have to stay on top of things, are similarly 
addicted.

But then again, head hunters are not knocking down my door looking for 
expertise in things like Mean.io, either. 8^)

-- 
⛧ glen


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[Marcus Daniels]

I like Knuth's take on it..

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html

Most us have to stay on top of things, though.  Hopefully, though, it is not 
the only thing.

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2016 9:34 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"


Yes, I agree.  I was going to be cantankerous and respond with something about 
imperfect closure and the "openness" of all processes.  But this article brings 
me back to a steady irritant:

  Are our smartphones afflicting us all with symptoms of ADHD?
  
https://theconversation.com/are-our-smartphones-afflicting-us-all-with-symptoms-of-adhd-58330

The inability to "do analysis" or for deep thought may well simply be a symptom 
of the larger issue of attention-spreading (for lack of a better term).  There 
seems to be a dichotomy between depth- vs. breadth-first attention at the root 
of the problem Sussman bemoaned.  Us old people (well, geeks anyway) tend 
toward depth-first ... or at least depth-preferred ... attention, whereas the 
younger ones tend toward breadth-preference.  You don't have to know _about_ 
the incident things, you only need to know _of_ them.  You can have whole 
conversations simply mentioning various things without discussing any single 
thing in any depth.

There's a deep theme, here somewhere ... oops, my phone just dinged.


On 05/09/2016 04:26 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> If you have a closure over the whole universe and you are given one knob to 
> turn, and once doing so out pops a new projection of the world you can see, 
> then you 1) don't necessarily see the whole universe, but 2) can potentially 
> be a specialist in the things that are observable in that projection.The 
> part I don’t like in this picture is that the niche-fillers start to fancy 
> the idea there are different universes popping out the closure and see no 
> need to reconcile them.  They see N vectors instead of one eigenvector.

--
⛧ glen


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe 
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[glen]

Yes, I agree.  I was going to be cantankerous and respond with something about 
imperfect closure and the "openness" of all processes.  But this article brings 
me back to a steady irritant:

  Are our smartphones afflicting us all with symptoms of ADHD?
  
https://theconversation.com/are-our-smartphones-afflicting-us-all-with-symptoms-of-adhd-58330

The inability to "do analysis" or for deep thought may well simply be a symptom 
of the larger issue of attention-spreading (for lack of a better term).  There 
seems to be a dichotomy between depth- vs. breadth-first attention at the root 
of the problem Sussman bemoaned.  Us old people (well, geeks anyway) tend 
toward depth-first ... or at least depth-preferred ... attention, whereas the 
younger ones tend toward breadth-preference.  You don't have to know _about_ 
the incident things, you only need to know _of_ them.  You can have whole 
conversations simply mentioning various things without discussing any single 
thing in any depth.

There's a deep theme, here somewhere ... oops, my phone just dinged.


On 05/09/2016 04:26 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> If you have a closure over the whole universe and you are given one knob to 
> turn, and once doing so out pops a new projection of the world you can see, 
> then you 1) don't necessarily see the whole universe, but 2) can potentially 
> be a specialist in the things that are observable in that projection.The 
> part I don’t like in this picture is that the niche-fillers start to fancy 
> the idea there are different universes popping out the closure and see no 
> need to reconcile them.  They see N vectors instead of one eigenvector.

-- 
⛧ glen


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[Russell Standish]

TCL/Tk, eh? Minsky is an graphically-based open-source dynamical
systems simulator I've mostly written using TCL/Tk that weighs in
around 10K lines. I've often fantasised about porting it to a
different toolkit, one that supports web browsers, and/or tablets. Qt
being one possibility.

Remind me not to use Gnome if at all possible. Bits of gnome are used
in Minsky, for doing things like font and SVG rendering, but used
reluctantly, because those APIs are just plain ugly, obviously written
by someone with a disdain for the C++ way of doing things.

Cheers


On Mon, May 09, 2016 at 07:47:01PM -0400, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> I've done a completely "off my lawn" thing over the past few weeks.
> Playing Mahjong solitaire on Ubuntu is one of my vices, but I don't like
> the way the supplied program works in many ways.   At least twice I've
> downloaded the source for gnome-mahjongg and looked at it until my eyes
> started bleeding and gave up.  It's a gnome application and, furthermore,
> it's a gnome-game application, its source code is not its source code, it's
> source code is a specialization of a framework that's a specialization of a
> framework.
> 
> I've written my own version of mahjong in Tcl, Tk, and Snit.  The entire
> source, including the svg for the tile set (which I stole from
> gnome-mahjongg and rewrote), comes to 3382 lines of code as of right now.
> Tcl is the other scripting language that isn't Perl and isn't Python and
> isn't Ruby.  Tk is the user interface toolkit written for Tcl to prove that
> there could be a one line "hello world" progam for X windows, which
> subsequently has become available on Windows, Mac, Android, Perl, Python,
> and Ruby.  Snit is a pure Tcl object extension for Tcl, that also allows
> you to extend Tk widgets.
> 
> It's not really a fair comparison, since I left out all the layouts and
> tile sets that I don't use, and I haven't even implemented everything I
> planned to do, and I didn't even plan to implement it all, and everything
> doesn't work right, either.  None the less, I can play Mahjongg solitaire
> with my 3382 line Tcl/Tk/Snit script, and the source tree for
> gnome-majongg-3.20.0 is 19.5 Mbytes and 576 files or directories.
> 
> http://github.com/recri/mahjong, I think it may be a better program if I
> purposely leave some bugs in it,
> 


-- 


Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[Roger Critchlow]

I've done a completely "off my lawn" thing over the past few weeks.
Playing Mahjong solitaire on Ubuntu is one of my vices, but I don't like
the way the supplied program works in many ways.   At least twice I've
downloaded the source for gnome-mahjongg and looked at it until my eyes
started bleeding and gave up.  It's a gnome application and, furthermore,
it's a gnome-game application, its source code is not its source code, it's
source code is a specialization of a framework that's a specialization of a
framework.

I've written my own version of mahjong in Tcl, Tk, and Snit.  The entire
source, including the svg for the tile set (which I stole from
gnome-mahjongg and rewrote), comes to 3382 lines of code as of right now.
Tcl is the other scripting language that isn't Perl and isn't Python and
isn't Ruby.  Tk is the user interface toolkit written for Tcl to prove that
there could be a one line "hello world" progam for X windows, which
subsequently has become available on Windows, Mac, Android, Perl, Python,
and Ruby.  Snit is a pure Tcl object extension for Tcl, that also allows
you to extend Tk widgets.

It's not really a fair comparison, since I left out all the layouts and
tile sets that I don't use, and I haven't even implemented everything I
planned to do, and I didn't even plan to implement it all, and everything
doesn't work right, either.  None the less, I can play Mahjongg solitaire
with my 3382 line Tcl/Tk/Snit script, and the source tree for
gnome-majongg-3.20.0 is 19.5 Mbytes and 576 files or directories.

http://github.com/recri/mahjong, I think it may be a better program if I
purposely leave some bugs in it,

-- rec --

On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 6:37 PM, Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> "So, I'm glad it's all peek these days.  It means we're builing
> shoulders on which later generations stand.  The opposite situation would
> be _sad_, say if everyone had to learn quantum mechanics just to add
> numbers together ... or if everyone had to know how to surface mount with a
> hot plate in order to post to Facebook ... well, OK, that might be a good
> thing, actually ... but you get my point."
>
> One can learn to program in, say, Python without understanding a given
> machine instruction set.One can even learn a subset, and have a correct
> understanding of some of its syntax and semantics and little or no
> understanding of other parts.   That doesn't mean that learning the rest is
> pointless, or that learning a machine language couldn't give a Python
> programmer deeper and useful insight into why some constructs are slow and
> others are fast.   Or that learning about digital circuit design couldn't
> give insight into what makes a machine instruction set energy efficient.
> Or that learning quantum mechanics couldn't give some insight into what
> makes circuits work the way they do.   All these tools can be useful and
> the connections between them are some of the most interesting and useful
> things to know.   This trend toward "industry relevant" knowledge is just
> to say the graph should be chopped up into consumable sound bites without
> regard to their coherence or utility for learning
>   other things.
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[Marcus Daniels]

If you have a closure over the whole universe and you are given one knob to 
turn, and once doing so out pops a new projection of the world you can see, 
then you 1) don't necessarily see the whole universe, but 2) can potentially be 
a specialist in the things that are observable in that projection.The part 
I don’t like in this picture is that the niche-fillers start to fancy the idea 
there are different universes popping out the closure and see no need to 
reconcile them.  They see N vectors instead of one eigenvector.

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2016 5:00 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"


You're dancing around the fundamental point: Can abstraction layers be 
closures?  And that's the essence of complexity theory, the study of what and 
how some thing is reducible to the inner layers (or what and how expands to the 
outer layers).  Can you really understand Go just by knowing the rules?  Or can 
you understand it without knowing the rules, just knowing possible 
configurations?  The bias in Western culture seems to lie in the forward map.  
We tend to have a deep desire to build everything from 1st principles, axioms.  
(And even when we're fundamentally ignorant, we pretend at understanding the 
principles.)  It's not enough to be an artisan.  You have to be a scientist.

So, your qualifier, without regard to coherence or extension, is 
over-simplification.  What's actually happening is specialization, 
niche-filling ... the same thing that's been happening the whole time.  And it 
is definitely _not_ without regard.  It may be systemic or evolutionary (so 
that no single mind understands what's happening).  But to assert that there is 
no order or pattern to specialization seems wrong (at least too strong).


On 05/09/2016 03:37 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> One can learn to program in, say, Python without understanding a given 
> machine instruction set.One can even learn a subset, and have a correct 
> understanding of some of its syntax and semantics and little or no 
> understanding of other parts.   That doesn't mean that learning the rest is 
> pointless, or that learning a machine language couldn't give a Python 
> programmer deeper and useful insight into why some constructs are slow and 
> others are fast.   Or that learning about digital circuit design couldn't 
> give insight into what makes a machine instruction set energy efficient.  Or 
> that learning quantum mechanics couldn't give some insight into what makes 
> circuits work the way they do.   All these tools can be useful and the 
> connections between them are some of the most interesting and useful things 
> to know.   This trend toward "industry relevant" knowledge is just to say the 
> graph should be chopped up into consumable sound bites without regard to 
> their coherence or utility for learnin
g other things.

--
⛧ glen


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe 
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[glen]

You're dancing around the fundamental point: Can abstraction layers be 
closures?  And that's the essence of complexity theory, the study of what and 
how some thing is reducible to the inner layers (or what and how expands to the 
outer layers).  Can you really understand Go just by knowing the rules?  Or can 
you understand it without knowing the rules, just knowing possible 
configurations?  The bias in Western culture seems to lie in the forward map.  
We tend to have a deep desire to build everything from 1st principles, axioms.  
(And even when we're fundamentally ignorant, we pretend at understanding the 
principles.)  It's not enough to be an artisan.  You have to be a scientist.

So, your qualifier, without regard to coherence or extension, is 
over-simplification.  What's actually happening is specialization, 
niche-filling ... the same thing that's been happening the whole time.  And it 
is definitely _not_ without regard.  It may be systemic or evolutionary (so 
that no single mind understands what's happening).  But to assert that there is 
no order or pattern to specialization seems wrong (at least too strong).


On 05/09/2016 03:37 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

One can learn to program in, say, Python without understanding a given machine 
instruction set.One can even learn a subset, and have a correct understanding of some 
of its syntax and semantics and little or no understanding of other parts.   That doesn't 
mean that learning the rest is pointless, or that learning a machine language couldn't 
give a Python programmer deeper and useful insight into why some constructs are slow and 
others are fast.   Or that learning about digital circuit design couldn't give insight 
into what makes a machine instruction set energy efficient.  Or that learning quantum 
mechanics couldn't give some insight into what makes circuits work the way they do.   All 
these tools can be useful and the connections between them are some of the most 
interesting and useful things to know.   This trend toward "industry relevant" 
knowledge is just to say the graph should be chopped up into consumable sound bites 
without regard to their coherence or utility for learnin

g other things.

--
⛧ glen


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[Marcus Daniels]

"So, I'm glad it's all peek these days.  It means we're builing shoulders 
on which later generations stand.  The opposite situation would be _sad_, say 
if everyone had to learn quantum mechanics just to add numbers together ... or 
if everyone had to know how to surface mount with a hot plate in order to post 
to Facebook ... well, OK, that might be a good thing, actually ... but you get 
my point."

One can learn to program in, say, Python without understanding a given machine 
instruction set.One can even learn a subset, and have a correct 
understanding of some of its syntax and semantics and little or no 
understanding of other parts.   That doesn't mean that learning the rest is 
pointless, or that learning a machine language couldn't give a Python 
programmer deeper and useful insight into why some constructs are slow and 
others are fast.   Or that learning about digital circuit design couldn't give 
insight into what makes a machine instruction set energy efficient.  Or that 
learning quantum mechanics couldn't give some insight into what makes circuits 
work the way they do.   All these tools can be useful and the connections 
between them are some of the most interesting and useful things to know.   This 
trend toward "industry relevant" knowledge is just to say the graph should be 
chopped up into consumable sound bites without regard to their coherence or 
utility for learning
  other things.   

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[glen]

There is (at least in me) an ongoing brawl between (at least) 2 homunculi: the one that embraces novel 
situations where I have zero knowledge or control and have to "live in the present" versus the one 
that embraces knowledge and control.  As I age, the latter usually has the upper hand.  (During chemo, I 
found myself shying away from experiences I would have previously launched into without thought. And it was 
all "I told you so" after a horrific sunburn I got at one point ... "use sunblock or stay in 
the shade while they're poisoning you", it said ... Bah!)

And this mailing list might well provide an interesting opportunity for such 
contrast ... being seemingly populated mostly by old people (where the latter 
homunculus likely wins more) but orbiting the concept of complexity (where 
control and understanding are rare).  The former homunculus would die off if we 
didn't feed it at least sporadically.

So, I'm glad it's all peek these days.  It means we're builing shoulders 
on which later generations stand.  The opposite situation would be _sad_, say if 
everyone had to learn quantum mechanics just to add numbers together ... or if 
everyone had to know how to surface mount with a hot plate in order to post to 
Facebook ... well, OK, that might be a good thing, actually ... but you get my 
point.


On 05/09/2016 02:47 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

In the early days of Linux there was a period where they fastest way to figure 
out what was going on was to grab the source and study it.   Contrast that with 
the current world of Stack Exchange and Google.There’s enough information 
out there that I suspect many people may never learn to do careful analysis.
They can get by on poke and prod, and the industry drivers for intellectual 
property reinforces that behavior.  Not that anyone really is “taught” to 
program -- at least that is worth hiring -- but it is sad to see computer 
science diluted in this way.  I’ve helped someone through the current Harvard 
CS-50 curriculum and, no, SICP it ain’t.

On 05/09/2016 12:29 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:

I think it's pretty funny. The singularity happened before the millennium, when 
our libraries outgrew our ability to thoroughly test or understand them. In 
mere decades the artificial universe, starting from nothing, had become as 
mysterious as reality.


On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 3:18 PM, Gary Schiltz > wrote:


In the words of the (in)famous Ross Perot, "Now, that's just sad."

On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 1:57 PM, glen > wrote:



Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP

http://www.posteriorscience.net/?p=206_mid=0e370a=em-prog-na-na-newsltr_20160507


--
⛧ glen


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[Marcus Daniels]

In the early days of Linux there was a period where they fastest way to figure 
out what was going on was to grab the source and study it.   Contrast that with 
the current world of Stack Exchange and Google.There’s enough information 
out there that I suspect many people may never learn to do careful analysis.
They can get by on poke and prod, and the industry drivers for intellectual 
property reinforces that behavior.  Not that anyone really is “taught” to 
program -- at least that is worth hiring -- but it is sad to see computer 
science diluted in this way.  I’ve helped someone through the current Harvard 
CS-50 curriculum and, no, SICP it ain’t.

From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2016 1:30 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

I think it's pretty funny.  The singularity happened before the millennium, 
when our libraries outgrew our ability to thoroughly test or understand them.  
In mere decades the artificial universe, starting from nothing, had become as 
mysterious as reality.

-- rec --

On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 3:18 PM, Gary Schiltz 
<g...@naturesvisualarts.com<mailto:g...@naturesvisualarts.com>> wrote:
In the words of the (in)famous Ross Perot, "Now, that's just sad."

On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 1:57 PM, glen 
<geprope...@gmail.com<mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP
http://www.posteriorscience.net/?p=206_mid=0e370a=em-prog-na-na-newsltr_20160507

--
⛧ glen


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[Roger Critchlow]

I think it's pretty funny.  The singularity happened before the millennium,
when our libraries outgrew our ability to thoroughly test or understand
them.  In mere decades the artificial universe, starting from nothing, had
become as mysterious as reality.

-- rec --

On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 3:18 PM, Gary Schiltz 
wrote:

> In the words of the (in)famous Ross Perot, "Now, that's just sad."
>
> On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 1:57 PM, glen  wrote:
>
>>
>> Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP
>>
>> http://www.posteriorscience.net/?p=206_mid=0e370a=em-prog-na-na-newsltr_20160507
>>
>> --
>> ⛧ glen
>>
>> 
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[Gary Schiltz]

In the words of the (in)famous Ross Perot, "Now, that's just sad."

On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 1:57 PM, glen  wrote:

>
> Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP
>
> http://www.posteriorscience.net/?p=206_mid=0e370a=em-prog-na-na-newsltr_20160507
>
> --
> ⛧ glen
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

[FRIAM] Tagged "Get off my lawn!"

[glen]

Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP
http://www.posteriorscience.net/?p=206_mid=0e370a=em-prog-na-na-newsltr_20160507

-- 
⛧ glen


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com