Re: [FRIAM] The Self Case
You're not quibbling. This is *the* point I was trying to make when talking about episodic vs. narrative personalities. (And my worry about the "narrating complexity" project.) Those of us who switch all the time, perhaps pathologically, scatterbrained, high schizotypes, my not be able to distinguish one mode from another. It's all a chaotic mess of ghostly voices. Similarly, on the other end of the spectrum, hyper narrative, canalized, enslaved people may not *admit* that they're a different person at age 60 than they were at age 20. So, they may not be able to distinguish modes, either. While indulging your most neurotic self, checking the #cases, #deaths, daily ... worried about whether or not you should fly back to MA or bunker down in NM, you should have the ability to switch modes somehow. Maybe meditation, a good stiff whisky, high dose of psilocybin, a long walk up a mountain, a re-read of Ulysses, I don't know. It doesn't matter. But mode-switching is healthy ... in moderation, of course. My point to Jochen was that clarity surrounding any 1 mode will derive from athletic mode-hopping. On 4/10/20 12:18 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: > I agree totally; but can you see the degrees without first having seen the > possibility of a polarity? > > I admit I am quibbling here. -- ☣ uǝlƃ .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... . ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
Re: [FRIAM] The Self Case
Glen, I agree totally; but can you see the degrees without first having seen the possibility of a polarity? I admit I am quibbling here. 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: Friday, April 10, 2020 12:59 PM To: FriAM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Self Case Of course! To quote one of the most preeminent magicians of all time: Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law! 8^) But what it doesn't seem like you see is that by calling them *modes*, I've created a middle ground between them. It is the same *stuff*, just different processes. (Or, dually, the same process, just different stuff.) If you admit to that similarity, then we can take it a step further and show more than just 2 modes ... perhaps even countably infinite modes. Then your distinction of kind becomes a distinction of degree ... which means it's all the same thing, merely dependent on which part of the spectrum you're working on. I.e. the *domain*. On 4/10/20 11:43 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: > Am I allowed to agree with the second without agreeing to the second? Am I > allowed, in fact to use the success of your second argument as evidence > AGAINST the aritificiality of the distinction? -- ☣ uǝlƃ .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... . ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... . ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
Re: [FRIAM] The Self Case
Yes, it's definitely related. I keep wanting to go back to the paper Marcus posted (coupled Ising sub-models vs global Ising models) and potential mixed phases of subcomponents. Qualitative ascription depends on such mixed states. E.g. the "wetness" of water as opposed to the "dryness" of hard frozen ice as opposed to the "wetness" of ice bathed in room temperature atmosphere. Phase diagrams are nothing if not an attempt to quantify qualities. On 4/10/20 11:55 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote: > Your last paragraph reminds of simulated annealing. -- ☣ uǝlƃ .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... . ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
Re: [FRIAM] The Self Case
Of course! To quote one of the most preeminent magicians of all time: Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law! 8^) But what it doesn't seem like you see is that by calling them *modes*, I've created a middle ground between them. It is the same *stuff*, just different processes. (Or, dually, the same process, just different stuff.) If you admit to that similarity, then we can take it a step further and show more than just 2 modes ... perhaps even countably infinite modes. Then your distinction of kind becomes a distinction of degree ... which means it's all the same thing, merely dependent on which part of the spectrum you're working on. I.e. the *domain*. On 4/10/20 11:43 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: > Am I allowed to agree with the second without agreeing to the second? Am I > allowed, in fact to use the success of your second argument as evidence > AGAINST the aritificiality of the distinction? -- ☣ uǝlƃ .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... . ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
Re: [FRIAM] The Self Case
Glen,
Your last paragraph reminds of simulated annealing.
Frank
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM
On Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 12:44 PM wrote:
> Glen,
>
>
>
> Good to see you again in the Zoom meeting. Talking to people “in person”
> really does enhance understanding. Duh!
>
>
>
> You wrote:
>
>
>
> I reject both your and Nick's distinctions as artificial. 8^)
>
>
>
> But then you wrote:
>
>
>
> The objection I have to catastrophizing or intolerance to ambiguity is,
> essentially, calling attention to our sticky-modes ... our inability to
> switch modes when it would be very useful to switch. I'm not trying to
> suggest that "nomothetic" knowledge is better than "idiographic" knowledge,
> only that we avoid getting stuck in either one.
>
>
>
> Am I allowed to agree with the second without agreeing to the second? Am
> I allowed, in fact to use the success of your second argument as evidence
> AGAINST the aritificiality of the distinction?
>
>
>
> 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 u?l? ?
> Sent: Friday, April 10, 2020 10:09 AM
> To: FriAM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Self Case
>
>
>
> Nick's prior introduction of the two terms (here:
> http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/Good-climate-change-skeptics-td7586673i20.html#a7586710)
> is still relevant. I reject both your and Nick's distinctions as
> artificial. 8^)
>
>
>
> The deeper issue is the domain of applicability. As chaotic, fractal,
> scalable, stigmergic, markov, etc. systems seem to imply, regularity and
> historicity aren't really distinct things. What matters is whether we are
> *modal* in the formulation of our predicates. Inducing a rule when studying
> the narrative trajectory of Nick need not be any different than inducing a
> rule when studying the longitudinal trajectory of an idealized demographic.
> There's a bit of trickery when switching from temporal induction to spatial
> induction (narrative vs. population). But as the parallelism theorem
> argues, any process achievable by a bunch of independent processes can be
> simulated by a serial process. So, there *are* ways to switch modes,
> perhaps even perfectly. We see the same duality in objects vs. processes.
>
>
>
> The objection I have to catastrophizing or intolerance to ambiguity is,
> essentially, calling attention to our sticky-modes ... our inability to
> switch modes when it would be very useful to switch. I'm not trying to
> suggest that "nomothetic" knowledge is better than "idiographic" knowledge,
> only that we avoid getting stuck in either one.
>
>
>
> In fact, I've argued in some publications that qualitative observations
> naturally precede quantitative observations. And as the domain changes (in
> our simulation work, *expands*, but it applies equally to *moves*, in
> particular for parallax), what was previously quantitative can be fuzzified
> to be more qualitative and then steadily walked back to quantitative with
> the new domain. I.e. regularity derives from irregularity, nomothetic
> derives from idiographic.
>
>
>
> On 4/10/20 4:47 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>
> > I don't know the difference between "nomothetic" and "idiographic", but
> I am interested in the area between idiosyncratic, irregular descriptions
> and symmetric, regular theories. History is often the former, an
> idiosyncratic description of events and names specific for a certain time
> and country. Mathematics is usually the latter, because it is based on
> symmetries and precise rules to describe regularities. In the area between
> we can find phenomena like path-dependent evolution and adaptation.
>
> >
>
> > For example as Edwin Holt ("The concept of consciousness") noticed the
> concept of an environmental cross section helps to explain subjective
> consciousness which is in a sense both specific to an individual but also
> predictable if we know the exact cross section of the environment. George
> H. Mead ("Mind, Self & Society") also argues that all individual selves are
> reflections of the social process. I believe we discussed it a few years
> ago.
>
> >
>
> > In the case of Donald Trump we can also observe how subjective objects
> and objective theories overlap. There is certainly no one like Donald, and
> yet there are many people especi
Re: [FRIAM] The Self Case
Glen,
Good to see you again in the Zoom meeting. Talking to people “in person”
really does enhance understanding. Duh!
You wrote:
I reject both your and Nick's distinctions as artificial. 8^)
But then you wrote:
The objection I have to catastrophizing or intolerance to ambiguity is,
essentially, calling attention to our sticky-modes ... our inability to switch
modes when it would be very useful to switch. I'm not trying to suggest that
"nomothetic" knowledge is better than "idiographic" knowledge, only that we
avoid getting stuck in either one.
Am I allowed to agree with the second without agreeing to the second? Am I
allowed, in fact to use the success of your second argument as evidence AGAINST
the aritificiality of the distinction?
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 u?l? ?
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2020 10:09 AM
To: FriAM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Self Case
Nick's prior introduction of the two terms (here:
<http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/Good-climate-change-skeptics-td7586673i20.html#a7586710>
http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/Good-climate-change-skeptics-td7586673i20.html#a7586710)
is still relevant. I reject both your and Nick's distinctions as artificial.
8^)
The deeper issue is the domain of applicability. As chaotic, fractal, scalable,
stigmergic, markov, etc. systems seem to imply, regularity and historicity
aren't really distinct things. What matters is whether we are *modal* in the
formulation of our predicates. Inducing a rule when studying the narrative
trajectory of Nick need not be any different than inducing a rule when studying
the longitudinal trajectory of an idealized demographic. There's a bit of
trickery when switching from temporal induction to spatial induction (narrative
vs. population). But as the parallelism theorem argues, any process achievable
by a bunch of independent processes can be simulated by a serial process. So,
there *are* ways to switch modes, perhaps even perfectly. We see the same
duality in objects vs. processes.
The objection I have to catastrophizing or intolerance to ambiguity is,
essentially, calling attention to our sticky-modes ... our inability to switch
modes when it would be very useful to switch. I'm not trying to suggest that
"nomothetic" knowledge is better than "idiographic" knowledge, only that we
avoid getting stuck in either one.
In fact, I've argued in some publications that qualitative observations
naturally precede quantitative observations. And as the domain changes (in our
simulation work, *expands*, but it applies equally to *moves*, in particular
for parallax), what was previously quantitative can be fuzzified to be more
qualitative and then steadily walked back to quantitative with the new domain.
I.e. regularity derives from irregularity, nomothetic derives from idiographic.
On 4/10/20 4:47 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> I don't know the difference between "nomothetic" and "idiographic", but I am
> interested in the area between idiosyncratic, irregular descriptions and
> symmetric, regular theories. History is often the former, an idiosyncratic
> description of events and names specific for a certain time and country.
> Mathematics is usually the latter, because it is based on symmetries and
> precise rules to describe regularities. In the area between we can find
> phenomena like path-dependent evolution and adaptation.
>
> For example as Edwin Holt ("The concept of consciousness") noticed the
> concept of an environmental cross section helps to explain subjective
> consciousness which is in a sense both specific to an individual but also
> predictable if we know the exact cross section of the environment. George H.
> Mead ("Mind, Self & Society") also argues that all individual selves are
> reflections of the social process. I believe we discussed it a few years ago.
>
> In the case of Donald Trump we can also observe how subjective objects and
> objective theories overlap. There is certainly no one like Donald, and yet
> there are many people especially among managers who have a Narcissistic
> Personality Disorder as mental health professionals have warned us ("The
> dangerous case of Donald Trump"). In addition to this psychological
> interpretation Sarah Kendzior describes in her new book ("Hiding in plain
> sight") that his behavior is not uncommon for authoritarian systems.
--
☣ uǝlƃ
.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...
. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays
Re: [FRIAM] The Self Case
Nick's prior introduction of the two terms (here:
http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/Good-climate-change-skeptics-td7586673i20.html#a7586710)
is still relevant. I reject both your and Nick's distinctions as artificial.
8^)
The deeper issue is the domain of applicability. As chaotic, fractal, scalable,
stigmergic, markov, etc. systems seem to imply, regularity and historicity
aren't really distinct things. What matters is whether we are *modal* in the
formulation of our predicates. Inducing a rule when studying the narrative
trajectory of Nick need not be any different than inducing a rule when studying
the longitudinal trajectory of an idealized demographic. There's a bit of
trickery when switching from temporal induction to spatial induction (narrative
vs. population). But as the parallelism theorem argues, any process achievable
by a bunch of independent processes can be simulated by a serial process. So,
there *are* ways to switch modes, perhaps even perfectly. We see the same
duality in objects vs. processes.
The objection I have to catastrophizing or intolerance to ambiguity is,
essentially, calling attention to our sticky-modes ... our inability to switch
modes when it would be very useful to switch. I'm not trying to suggest that
"nomothetic" knowledge is better than "idiographic" knowledge, only that we
avoid getting stuck in either one.
In fact, I've argued in some publications that qualitative observations
naturally precede quantitative observations. And as the domain changes (in our
simulation work, *expands*, but it applies equally to *moves*, in particular
for parallax), what was previously quantitative can be fuzzified to be more
qualitative and then steadily walked back to quantitative with the new domain.
I.e. regularity derives from irregularity, nomothetic derives from idiographic.
On 4/10/20 4:47 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> I don't know the difference between "nomothetic" and "idiographic", but I am
> interested in the area between idiosyncratic, irregular descriptions and
> symmetric, regular theories. History is often the former, an idiosyncratic
> description of events and names specific for a certain time and country.
> Mathematics is usually the latter, because it is based on symmetries and
> precise rules to describe regularities. In the area between we can find
> phenomena like path-dependent evolution and adaptation.
>
> For example as Edwin Holt ("The concept of consciousness") noticed the
> concept of an environmental cross section helps to explain subjective
> consciousness which is in a sense both specific to an individual but also
> predictable if we know the exact cross section of the environment. George H.
> Mead ("Mind, Self & Society") also argues that all individual selves are
> reflections of the social process. I believe we discussed it a few years ago.
>
> In the case of Donald Trump we can also observe how subjective objects and
> objective theories overlap. There is certainly no one like Donald, and yet
> there are many people especially among managers who have a Narcissistic
> Personality Disorder as mental health professionals have warned us ("The
> dangerous case of Donald Trump"). In addition to this psychological
> interpretation Sarah Kendzior describes in her new book ("Hiding in plain
> sight") that his behavior is not uncommon for authoritarian systems.
--
☣ uǝlƃ
.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...
. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
Re: [FRIAM] The Self Case
I don't know the difference between "nomothetic" and "idiographic", but I am
interested in the area between idiosyncratic, irregular descriptions and
symmetric, regular theories. History is often the former, an idiosyncratic
description of events and names specific for a certain time and country.
Mathematics is usually the latter, because it is based on symmetries and
precise rules to describe regularities. In the area between we can find
phenomena like path-dependent evolution and adaptation.For example as Edwin
Holt ("The concept of consciousness") noticed the concept of an environmental
cross section helps to explain subjective consciousness which is in a sense
both specific to an individual but also predictable if we know the exact cross
section of the environment. George H. Mead ("Mind, Self & Society") also argues
that all individual selves are reflections of the social process. I believe we
discussed it a few years ago.In the case of Donald Trump we can also observe
how subjective objects and objective theories overlap. There is certainly no
one like Donald, and yet there are many people especially among managers who
have a Narcissistic Personality Disorder as mental health professionals have
warned us ("The dangerous case of Donald Trump"). In addition to this
psychological interpretation Sarah Kendzior describes in her new book ("Hiding
in plain sight") that his behavior is not uncommon for authoritarian systems.-J.
Original message From: thompnicks...@gmail.com Date: 4/10/20
06:01 (GMT+01:00) To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: [FRIAM] The Self Case OK, Glen, fair enough and
stipulated. I hope you know how much I value your perspective. But ...One of
the constant debates in my field (well, perhaps more accurately, in the field
of most of the members of my Department, was between the "nomothetic" and the
"idiographic". Knowing you as well as I do, I know that before I get to the
end of this sentence you will have looked those terms up and come to understand
them better than I do. But still, to bolt the argument to the ground, a bit,
let me explain them myself. It is like the difference between the graph in a
scientific paper of the mean value of the independent variable and the values
of the dependent variable, as interpolated -- that's nomothetic -- and the
picture of three individual subjects which represent the values of the
independent variable -- that's idiographic. Nomothetic study seeks to get at
the laws that relate one kind of thing to another; the other seeks to capture
the ... dare I say essence of a phenomenon through a single instance.
Physics writing is often said to be nomothetic; history writing is said to be
idiographic. Psychology is said to be both. Studies of rats in mazes are
nomothetic in intent; we really DON'T give a damn for the individual rat. But
clinical case studies are definitely idiographic. My field -- ethology -- has
often been torn between the two impulses, and the idiographic gave way in the
end to the nomothetic. To my regret, while I was on sabbatical in the
Maddingley {ethological} Field Station in Cambridge, England I met a woman,
Joan Hall Craggs, who had managed to record and sonogram all the song types
sung by a single male black bird during his 18 year (could that be right?!)
career. She had binder upon binder of them in her office, all beautifully
preserved, dated, and fieldnoted. I am afraid, when she died, the whole lot
went in the dumpster. A nomothetical scientist would argue that such a record
would tell one nothing about "blackbirds"; an idiographic scientist would
claim that without such a record, we would never know what was possible for a
black bird. (By the way, a "black bird" in England is a very close relative of
our American robin'\; robins, in England are something else entirely.) Now,
I have already stipulated that, in a sense my focusing on my individual case is
to some extent narcissistic and, well, stupid. However, focusing on a single
case is not necessarily either. And since I know my case best of all, and
since the home church is living it right now, I think keeping the Santa Fe
numbers before us GROUNDS us and helps us, perhaps, not to think of "cases" and
"deaths" in the disembodied way that we do when we are performing as nomothetic
scientists. Every nomothetic case is an intersection of just a few variables
of interest; every idiographic case is the intersection of an infinity of
variables, any one of which may be of interest to somebody. Thinking of the
“self-case”, helps to keep that fact in view. Thanks as always for you
insights, Hope to see you tomorrow. Nick Nicholas ThompsonEmeritus Professor
of Ethology and PsychologyClark
UniversityThompNickSon2@gmail.comhttps://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
-Original Message-From: Friam On Behalf Of
u?l? ?Sent: Thursday, Apri
Re: [FRIAM] The Self Case
Ohh! Yes.
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: Thursday, April 9, 2020 10:13 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Self Case
Sounds like your department was mixture of clinicians and experimenters.
Frank
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM
On Thu, Apr 9, 2020, 10:01 PM mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:
OK, Glen, fair enough and stipulated. I hope you know how much I value your
perspective.
But ...One of the constant debates in my field (well, perhaps more accurately,
in the field of most of the members of my Department, was between the
"nomothetic" and the "idiographic".Knowing you as well as I do, I know that
before I get to the end of this sentence you will have looked those terms up
and come to understand them better than I do. But still, to bolt the argument
to the ground, a bit, let me explain them myself. It is like the difference
between the graph in a scientific paper of the mean value of the independent
variable and the values of the dependent variable, as interpolated -- that's
nomothetic -- and the picture of three individual subjects which represent the
values of the independent variable -- that's idiographic. Nomothetic study
seeks to get at the laws that relate one kind of thing to another; the other
seeks to capture the ... dare I say essence of a phenomenon through a
single instance. Physics writing is often said to be nomothetic; history
writing is said to be idiographic. Psychology is said to be both. Studies of
rats in mazes are nomothetic in intent; we really DON'T give a damn for the
individual rat. But clinical case studies are definitely idiographic. My
field -- ethology -- has often been torn between the two impulses, and the
idiographic gave way in the end to the nomothetic. To my regret, while I was
on sabbatical in the Maddingley {ethological} Field Station in Cambridge,
England I met a woman, Joan Hall Craggs, who had managed to record and sonogram
all the song types sung by a single male black bird during his 18 year (could
that be right?!) career. She had binder upon binder of them in her office, all
beautifully preserved, dated, and fieldnoted. I am afraid, when she died, the
whole lot went in the dumpster. A nomothetical scientist would argue that such
a record would tell one nothing about "blackbirds"; an idiographic scientist
would claim that without such a record, we would never know what was possible
for a black bird. (By the way, a "black bird" in England is a very close
relative of our American robin'\; robins, in England are something else
entirely.)
Now, I have already stipulated that, in a sense my focusing on my individual
case is to some extent narcissistic and, well, stupid. However, focusing on a
single case is not necessarily either. And since I know my case best of all,
and since the home church is living it right now, I think keeping the Santa Fe
numbers before us GROUNDS us and helps us, perhaps, not to think of "cases" and
"deaths" in the disembodied way that we do when we are performing as nomothetic
scientists. Every nomothetic case is an intersection of just a few variables
of interest; every idiographic case is the intersection of an infinity of
variables, any one of which may be of interest to somebody. Thinking of the
“self-case”, helps to keep that fact in view.
Thanks as always for you insights,
Hope to see you tomorrow.
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 u?l? ?
Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2020 4:26 PM
To: FriAM mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] covid19.healthdata.org <http://covid19.healthdata.org>
OK. This is definitely a different message from what I thought you said. I
thought you were saying their estimates were optimistic. And since their
estimates include their uncertainty bands, that includes not peaking till much
later than what their chart might suggest, maybe 4.5k deaths PER DAY at the
peak, 125k dead overall, etc. If we consider the outside of their uncertainty,
that's not optimistic at all.
You can go back to MA right now. And if you're super careful, you can most
likely do it without getting infected. So, your "pessimism" is not about the
Re: [FRIAM] The Self Case
Sounds like your department was mixture of clinicians and experimenters.
Frank
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM
On Thu, Apr 9, 2020, 10:01 PM wrote:
> OK, Glen, fair enough and stipulated. I hope you know how much I value
> your perspective.
>
>
>
> But ...One of the constant debates in my field (well, perhaps more
> accurately, in the field of most of the members of my Department, was
> between the "nomothetic" and the "idiographic".Knowing you as well as I
> do, I know that before I get to the end of this sentence you will have
> looked those terms up and come to understand them better than I do. But
> still, to bolt the argument to the ground, a bit, let me explain them
> myself. It is like the difference between the graph in a scientific paper
> of the mean value of the independent variable and the values of the
> dependent variable, as interpolated -- that's nomothetic -- and the picture
> of three individual subjects which represent the values of the independent
> variable -- that's idiographic. Nomothetic study seeks to get at the laws
> that relate one kind of thing to another; the other seeks to capture the
> ... dare I say essence of a phenomenon through a single instance.
> Physics writing is often said to be nomothetic; history writing is said to
> be idiographic. Psychology is said to be both. Studies of rats in mazes
> are nomothetic in intent; we really DON'T give a damn for the individual
> rat. But clinical case studies are definitely idiographic. My field --
> ethology -- has often been torn between the two impulses, and the
> idiographic gave way in the end to the nomothetic. To my regret, while I
> was on sabbatical in the Maddingley {ethological} Field Station in
> Cambridge, England I met a woman, Joan Hall Craggs, who had managed to
> record and sonogram all the song types sung by a single male black bird
> during his 18 year (could that be right?!) career. She had binder upon
> binder of them in her office, all beautifully preserved, dated, and
> fieldnoted. I am afraid, when she died, the whole lot went in the
> dumpster. A nomothetical scientist would argue that such a record would
> tell one nothing about "blackbirds"; an idiographic scientist would claim
> that without such a record, we would never know what was possible for a
> black bird. (By the way, a "black bird" in England is a very close
> relative of our American robin'\; robins, in England are something else
> entirely.)
>
>
>
> Now, I have already stipulated that, in a sense my focusing on my
> individual case is to some extent narcissistic and, well, stupid. However,
> focusing on a single case is not *necessarily* either. And since I know
> my case best of all, and since the home church is living it right now, I
> think keeping the Santa Fe numbers before us GROUNDS us and helps us,
> perhaps, not to think of "cases" and "deaths" in the disembodied way that
> we do when we are performing as nomothetic scientists. Every nomothetic
> case is an intersection of just a few variables of interest; every
> idiographic case is the intersection of an infinity of variables, any one
> of which may be of interest to somebody. Thinking of the “self-case”,
> helps to keep that fact in view.
>
>
>
> Thanks as always for you insights,
>
>
>
> Hope to see you tomorrow.
>
>
>
> 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 u?l? ?
>
> Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2020 4:26 PM
>
> To: FriAM
>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] covid19.healthdata.org
>
>
>
> OK. This is definitely a different message from what I thought you said. I
> thought you were saying their estimates were optimistic. And since their
> estimates include their uncertainty bands, that includes not peaking till
> much later than what their chart might suggest, maybe 4.5k deaths PER DAY
> at the peak, 125k dead overall, etc. If we consider the outside of their
> uncertainty, that's not optimistic at all.
>
>
>
> You can go back to MA right now. And if you're super careful, you can most
> likely do it without getting infected. So, your "pessimism" is not about
> the peak, total bed availability, or whatever. Your pessimism seems to have
> more to do with *you* (and your immediate clique). That you could go ahead
> and do what you need to do now, but won't, isn't pessimism about these
> estimates. It's fear for your own condition. That's understandable, of
> course, but not really about this estimate or its methods.
>
>
>
>
>
> On 4/9/20 2:49 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > Perhaps they seem optimistic to me only because mine have been so
> pessimistic. I have assumed that I am immobilized here in Santa Fe for the
> next year. I even put up a list on my wall of 365 days and have been
> crossin
