Re: [FRIAM] Getting Verbed...

Nichols' argument rings a little true with Musk and Trump, not so much with Thiel. Along the lines of Doctorow, this guy has a plausible take: https://bylinetimes.com/2022/11/07/musks-twitter-buy-makes-no-sense-unless-its-part-of-something-bigger/ The "multipolar" world might actually be a good

Re: [FRIAM] Wolpert - discussion thread placeholder

Yes, it is willful ignorance (aka Evil). If you extrapolate the rather esoteric work of defining a convex hull around possible worlds (whether it's instantiation from a formal foundation like Schoedinger's, limited to high confidence extension of "adjacent possible", or brute force existentiali

Re: [FRIAM] truth-preserving math

tals are made super duper cold you can levitetate trains kind of quantum mechanics?? On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 11:00 AM glen∉ℂ mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote: 70-year-old quantum prediction comes true, as something is created from nothing https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/

[FRIAM] truth-preserving math

70-year-old quantum prediction comes true, as something is created from nothing https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/something-from-nothing/ It seems like this is another example where the arrogance of the abstraction reigns. Because the math relating holes and electrons is the same (?) as th

Re: [FRIAM] Wolpert - discussion thread placeholder

I do see us trying to identify the distinguishing markers of ... "cognition we can't imagine". That's fantastic. I'll try to collate some of them going backwards from Marcus': - novelty - dissimilarity from "cognition as we know it" - graded separation from human culture/sociality - simulation

Re: [FRIAM] Wolpert - discussion thread placeholder

with Wolpert's main point: that we are more limited/biased than we can possibly imagine. In any case, don't read my comments the wrong way. I'm enormously grateful y'all have engaged. On 9/15/22 10:02, Steve Smith wrote: glen∉ℂ wrote: Great question. I also appreciate the spec

Re: [FRIAM] Wolpert - discussion thread placeholder

D (famously the research by John Lilly with dolphins and more recently with octopi), altered states. There is little, or no, reason not to assume them to be SAM-sufficient for their environments and needs, just as humans were prior to, roughly, the Renaissance. to be continued ... davew On

Re: [FRIAM] VFriam

Spurn? No. I just have to work most Thursdays. But thanks for thinking of me! On 9/15/22 07:39, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks, Frank.  I will join you soon after noon, eastern.  FWTW.  Or as Glen would say, pftt.  By the way, why does Glen Spurn Thursdays?  I miss him. -. --- - / ...

Re: [FRIAM] Wolpert's 12 questions

Steve Smith sasmyth at swcp.com, Sat Sep 10 11:00:22 EDT 2022: This suggests to me that the very fundament of what I believe is "consciousness" is self-other dualistic? Is there something unique about (our familiar form of) consciousness that requires the self-other duality? I agree with yo

Re: [FRIAM] Wolpert - discussion thread placeholder

l this well. But that's why I'm glad y'all are participating, to help clarify these things. On 9/12/22 06:13, glen∉ℂ wrote: While math can represent circular definitions (what Robert Rosen complained about), there are deep problems in the foundations of math ... things like the it

Re: [FRIAM] Wolpert - discussion thread placeholder

Well, I think Dave gets at something important, here, that SteveS misses by jumping to reflection (model of self modeling the world), though I agree SteveS' response to Q1 is correctly oriented. But first, we can't ignore Wolpert's run-up to that 1st question. It seems to me he is treating prot

Re: [FRIAM] model, metaphor, and things

While I technically agree, I can't help but ask: What if it's not true? How would we go about demonstrating that it's not true? What if animals actually "relax into" their envinronments in a computationally universal way? I.e. although it seems like we learn by analogy, maybe we're actually uni

Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: International firm to invest $254M in ABQ hydrogen factory -- ABQ Journal

Yep. I've long wanted to get one of those panel adapters that allows me to power the house with my gas powered generator. I just never found the motivation. Making something like this standard seems like progress. Renee' wants to put solar panels on the house. So I'm wondering how universal suc

Re: [FRIAM] if by 'populism' he meant ...

Well, that sounds quite similar to Steve's "mobacracy". Do you see that as different? FWIW, the definition I think is mostly right is any particular ideology that separates society into 2 groups, ordinary people and *corrupted* elites. The important part is that the particular ideologies group

Re: [FRIAM] if by 'populism' he meant ...

Excellent! Ignoring your vTAO for a second, I distinguish culture from a psychogenic delusion by its exogenous inputs. Culture, as I imagine it, is *definitely* derived from the actual world, whereas a psychogenic delusion *may* not be. On to your vTAO, I like the construction. But to pursue

Re: [FRIAM] flu versus COVID

It's also important to note that conservatives tend to feel/see fear more prominently than those open to new experiences. Marcus' point about reactive grievance is an indicator. It's not the conservative tendency to be afraid that generates the grievance culture, though. Conservative fear is we

Re: [FRIAM] SavantX in SFe

Nothing for sure. This recent patent seems indicative: David Linus Ostby https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=david+ostby&oq=d#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DqplV7M8W2xwJ But Ostby's also presented on graph search: http://nmbdas.com/speakers/ On September 13, 2020 7:10:14 AM PDT, Steve

Re: [FRIAM] flu versus COVID

Never ascribe malice (or governance by fear) when incompetence will suffice. -- paraphrased from some pithy archetype somewhere sometime. I was totally with you until the last 2 paragraphs, though I haven't checked your facts. In my posts about "credibility", I tried to lay out the idea that so

[FRIAM] jargon as a competence gatekeeper

George Conway discusses President Donald Trump's diagnosis https://youtu.be/fAbpThZ33QA There's something insanely ironic about Conway reading the "plain English" in the DSM-5 and diagnosing Trump. We've had conversations about things like quantum woo, artificial mathematization, and (bad) sci

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

As I understand it, the attack was a successful use of "active measures". The objective was to find *extant* rifts in US society and exploit them. This resulted in a sophisticated data science driven attack on platforms via technology like Facebook. There are 2 layers to it: 1) the primary obje

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

OK. I suppose we have the option of taking on a burden of going through your old posts and finding where you address the following: That a digital voting app runs the risk of exacerbating the type of exploitation we saw in 2016. I've done that and you have *not* addressed that objection, which

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

Sorry. Where is your code for this digital voting app? I missed the link. On 8/23/20 9:10 AM, jon zingale wrote: I can see that you are in a bad mood. Again, I have addressed these issues in writing already. To take a play from your book: READ THE CODE! - . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -.

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

Hm. I'm not intentionally doing that. But if you're unwilling to address the concerns I'm trying to raise, then there's not much else I can do. Accusations of libel are a tad more serious than misattribution or strawman. Nice brinkmanship! >8^D On 8/23/20 8:56 AM, jon zingale wrote: It is a b

Re: [FRIAM] vaccine

I would take it in a heartbeat, but not to save myself, to reduce the extent to which I infect others. I'm white, unaffiliated, suburban dwelling, 53 yrs old. On 8/23/20 8:53 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote: I guess most people here in Europe would take an officially approved vaccine which has successf

Re: [FRIAM] constructor theory

As usual, Marcus beat us to the punch: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/BBC-News-Ant-colony-personalities-shaped-by-environment-tp7585564p7585637.html On 8/23/20 8:43 AM, Prof David West wrote: latest distraction, obsession, of my fascination with physics persona — http://constructortheory.or

Re: [FRIAM] words for Nick (political-words focused)

I think the standard rhetoric is that the Dems limit positive freedoms, where the Reps limit negative freedoms. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/ Though I have lots of problems with this (always false) dichotomy. There are exceptions, of course. Anti-abortion Reps w

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

Re mismatched expectations with voting and representation versus liberal use of metaphor: If you agree that too much focus on metaphor *is* too much focus on the tool, then you should agree that a focus on digital voting is treating the symptom, not the cause. And that implies this effort of Jo

Re: [FRIAM] Myth of the Given

Ha! Yes, that's a much more reasonable statement than saying "'everything is text' is bullshit". It's not bullshit. It may be a bit misguided. Or perhaps they're overstating the case simply to provide emphasis to their (overly dense) audience. But calling it "bullshit" doesn't help. There is suc

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

t. I *love* the idea of the paintball gun. But it does sound a bit like suicide ... suicide by gun nut. On 8/21/20 1:10 PM, Steve Smith wrote: On 8/21/20 9:58 AM, glen∉ℂ wrote: The problem is that we expect our representation to be, somehow, faithful/accurate. We can see this in microcosm w

Re: [FRIAM] Myth of the Given

That's ridiculous! >8^D You can't take "as if P" seriously without taking P seriously. What you'll end up with are spies and moles, bad faith actors, pretending to argue but really just building strawmen and hiding in the corners of the conversation trying to sabotage any good faith attempts to

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

Hm. I want to confirm that this post is commentary and you're not expecting a response. But maybe it's push-back for me to be *more* explicit about the problem? Just in case, I'll throw more words/gestures at it. The problem is that we expect our representation to be, somehow, faithful/accurat

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

There are other trials beside absentee voting. It's largely irrelevant, though, as is the patent. My point was that this focus on "digital" voting will do more harm than good. Of course, everyone is free to do harm, accidentally or on purpose. My only objective was to point out why these effort

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

Nah. That's simply false and cleverly ignores my post entirely. Tools don't solve problems. The typical Republican approach of throwing money at some vague problem doesn't work. What does work is to identify the problem and develop candidate solutions to it using the extant tools. Resources dev

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

Exactly! If humans have free will, we can program a machine to have it too (someday, anyway). And since we don't know how to *construct* free will and the evidence against it is accumulating, it's reasonable to claim it doesn't exist and the burden is increasingly on those who believe in it to

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

Well, the reason I'm throwing this idea out there in the first place is because parts of it map (roughly) to LOTS of algorithms I've run across over the years. Nick was asking and I'm simply trying to spitball something that might be constructive. You're free to analogize to your heart's conten

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

Right. What I set up was in preparation for an argument about exactly that. Can a system (any system we know about) be programmed to factor in its experience so that the next time around, the probabilities will be different, even if only slightly so? Personally, I could go either way. FW) I can

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

That's exactly what I said. Thanks for repeating it in your own words! On 6/16/20 8:40 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: We could build a simulation of it, and the simulation won't be able to defy its programming. - . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

As usual, I am below arguing a position that I don't necessarily believe. This is a game, a temporary hypothesis. Precede every assertion with "Let's say that ..." 1) There's no need for two of you. You are a steady mesh of choices in parallel, from the tiniest cellular process to picking up th

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

Well, you only said you could write an ABM. You didn't mention "conventionally call a serial computer". Given where you work, you might have been hypothesizing that you could write an ABM on some other kind of computer. But whatever, I already agreed that it wouldn't. I'll repeat that what's mo

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

I agree. I doubt it would display free will, too. But it's an interesting question whether it would or not. It's an even more interesting question whether it would *look* like it exhibited free will, which is the question RussA asked. On 6/15/20 3:25 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: Ok, I can make a

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

Nah. I'm not redefining the term at all. The definition I'm using is in the dictionary. It's in the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. It's a common usage and I won't be deprecating it. Just because there's a large body of people talking about 1 tiny subdomain of the term doesn't mean the sta

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

Yes. To be hogtied by ancient philosophers' "science" would be irritating. What's most interesting about the concept is where selection happens and the scope of its impact. On 6/15/20 3:04 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: But for me the most interesting cases of free will occur in the most t

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

I don't think either of them have anything like what we call free will. But if pressed, I'd argue that ice has more free will than water vapor because whatever randomness happens inside either process will matter more in the case of ice than vapor. On 6/15/20 2:59 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: Do

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

I don't think free will is bound with (naive) morality at all. It's all about selection functions. Do I turn this way or that. Do I eat some food, go for a run, or read a book. So, I don't see it as "importing" anything. Free will is all about which things are bound and which things are free (a

Re: [FRIAM] "the arc of ...bends toward ...."

Marcus said that. >8^D But I'm honored to be confused for Marcus. http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/alternative-response-tp7597063p7597080.html On 6/15/20 12:10 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: Glen Hath Said: Hah, the arc of technical universe is long, but it bends toward best practices?

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

Well, maybe not. But we all do it. We can't help it because we are truncating machines. Even the most fastidious of us will succumb sporadically and truncate others according to our own limitations. We're all just cookie cutters slicing up the world arbitrarily. But I agree that we should be pr

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

Yes! Faith is a truncation. The important distinction being that you can't choose to have faith or not have faith. It seems innate, though maybe you can *program* some people to be more inclined to faith-based truncation. For my part, I'm inherently lazy. I don't take action unless there are fo

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

LoL! Yes it does. It *begins* to get us there. Sure, I agree that the high level processes you mentioned need some sense of composition. For example how might scope limitations in biochemical processes percolate up to something like the extracellular matrix? But just because skepticism is warra

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

Hm. First, I'd propose the homunculus is tiny in scope and impact with respect to every other process. I'd even argue that it's so tiny, it doesn't (can't) transform states. Maybe it doesn't have memory at all. It might simply be a random bit flip. And the only time it would matter at all is if

Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

Are we claiming some people act *as if* XYZ? Or are we claiming that some people XYZ? Yeah, I know, weird way to ask the question. What I'm actually trying to point out is that in saying things like "communicate over a faulty channel", or landing on an alternate value for an ambiguous term (a

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

Ha! As if any self-respecting troll would program in Javascript. My bot's written in Perl. On 6/12/20 4:56 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote: |FATAL ERROR:CALL_AND_RETRY_LAST Allocationfailed -JavaScriptheap out ofmemory 1:node::Abort()[/usr/bin/node]2:0xe2c5fc[/usr/bin/node]3:v8::Utils::ReportApiFailu

Re: [FRIAM] tactics and strategy - from vFRIAM 6/12 - attention glen

Hm. I'm not sure objective (1) requires them to *be* as I describe (anti-democratic and/or pro-authority), only that their special pleading be silenced or drowned out. The constant hedging (EricC's "I'm not *that* kind of racist" ... or "what *I* mean when *I* fly the confederate flag is blahbl

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

Yeah, you must be right. It's probably related to my upgrade to Bullseye and those spontaneous reboots. My new 'puter will be here Monday. All will then be well! On 6/12/20 3:49 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: Glen, your FRIAM bot has a bug! - . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. . .-. .

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

Damn it again! WTF is going on, here? On 6/12/20 3:28 PM, glen ep ropella wrote: Yep, I like that ... though we may find several defense contractors on the list. On 6/12/20 3:25 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: What publicly traded companies do ABM.   Go all in. ☺ - . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. ..

Re: [FRIAM] tactics and strategy - from vFRIAM 6/12 - attention glen

I think the way to start is to identify the intention/purpose of the rhetoric/strategy. My tack, what I want to argue about, is that the rhetoric/strategy you identify is *not* "to defeat Trump". And that's why you think it's a stupid strategy, because you've identified a fictitious objective.

Re: [FRIAM] expressVPN

Yes. In principle, we should all be using VPNs. In practice, not so much. If I were you, I'd try it out and if it worked, keep using it. I can't vouch for expressVPN, though. Which corporations you trust will vary with your personality. On 6/11/20 3:33 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: Is th

Re: [FRIAM] Practical Covid Guidlines

To be clear, below is Dave's predictions: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/the-end-of-the-pandemic-td7595888.html#a7595894 I don't see how your claim that they've come to pass are anything but confirmation bias. Every one of the predictions seems to have failed. The pandemic hasn't ended. Ther

Re: [FRIAM] chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

Yep. That's why I recommend calisthenics and yoga for those of you who fear death. Strength training with bodyweight only is a good compromise. If you have burst an aneurysm doing pull-ups, well, God just wants you closer to her bosom. On 6/11/20 11:28 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: http://online.w

Re: [FRIAM] chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

Ha! This just showed up in my email: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/youre-never-too-old-to-regain-that-lost-muscle-and-you-can-do-it-at-home/2020/06/05/b221ccc4-a5d1-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html - . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. . .-. . FRIAM Applied Comple

Re: [FRIAM] chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

Ha! Yeah. Renee' wants a trike. I keep telling her that trikes are for old fat people. It doesn't seem to change her mind. On 6/11/20 10:22 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: Bah, a design problem.. https://www.arcimoto.com/ - . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. . .-. . FRIAM Applied Compl

Re: [FRIAM] chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

The deadlift helps you learn how the posterior chain of muscles and connective tissue work together to achieve a complex action [†] like, say, getting out of your lazy-boy. One of the common flaws in weightlifting is to focus on isolating muscles. Things like the deadlift are more like calisthe

Re: [FRIAM] chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

I can't speak for Nick, but it would be relatively easy to deny the existence of a UNIFIED consciousness without denying the existence of multifarious attentive consciousness. This is largely what I intended to do by focusing on those 2 papers that talk about the [dis]engagement of the motor co

Re: [FRIAM] Thoughts on the Floyd protests

Well, that was part of Jochen's point, that fear is part of why the cops are so aggressive. Whether or not their rationalizations of being in fear for their own lives, while e.g. shooting someone in the back as they run away, are true or not, fear is a fundamental part of the story. It's writte

Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

Re: your example, no. (600,1000) is a continuum, which means the conditions at 740 will be *a lot* like those at 640, 840, etc. [†] "Edge" isn't really jargon. As to how one knows where the edges are, there's only one answer, and that is to go over it. Until you *fall* off the edge, you won't r

Re: [FRIAM] [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?

Heh, it was Homotopy Type Theory I was accusing of being hoity-toity. 8^) But I think it's reasonable to argue that W. was pretty hoity-toity, as this story implies: When Feyerabend Met Wittgenstein https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL600Mafzf0 Disclosure: Feyerabend is my favorite philosoph

[FRIAM] constructive explanations (was Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?)

OK. I'm going to focus on this distinction. When you explain some thing to someone, you have a choice between 2 styles. You can tell them how to make it happen or you can tell them how that thing fits in with everything else. So, in your eraser behind the book setup, you focus on the latter. Er

Re: [FRIAM] Universal and Accessible Entropy Estimation Using a Compression Algorithm

I love it when papers answer the questions that 1st pop into my head. My 1st question was about the encoding and targeting the particular compression algorithm. And sure enough, they answer my question in the supplement: Compression algorithms are designed to minimally rep-resent a dataset’s

Re: [FRIAM] [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?

Excellent! So, your *scalar* is confidence in your estimates of any given distribution. I try to describe it in [†] below. But that's a tangent. What I can't yet reconstruct, credibly, in my own words, is the faith in *convergence*. What if sequential calculations of an average do NOT converge?

Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms nov 26 consistency

Very interesting idea! I never really thought of the inflationary big bang as a behaviorist account. But I suppose it has to because it's agnostic about what's inside the singularity, before Time. And what is a singularity if not an expression of monist faith? Then after the blob articulates in

Re: [FRIAM] post you seem to have missed from FRIAM

And among the reasons I don't have a security clearance is to preserve the *option* of taking cocaine, at will. 8^) I agree with both you and Dave in that I would not choose to take cocaine. But I might choose to take other drugs. E.g. I've taken some THC since it's been legal, here. It's fun f

Re: [FRIAM] means of production take 2

Excellent! Thanks for that summary. I don't want to disagree with much of what you said, because what I'm trying to do is work out why some people can use the phrase "ownership of the means of production" with a straight face. 8^) What you lay out below worked. I did *not* grok that the key dif

Re: [FRIAM] means of production take 2

Yes, I am most definitely concentrating on the *right* to destroy (my *claim* over something), not merely the ability to destroy something that others may have claim/right to/over. So, your text below is largely unrelated to my sense of "right to destroy". The mere *ability* to deprive another

Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

Thanks. The evidence is still correlational, I suppose. But this article seems to provide strong evidence that rats do it: Biosynthesis and Extracellular Concentrations of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in Mammalian Brain https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45812-w I'm still skeptical, of

[FRIAM] means of production take 2

To contribute to my spam score, I'll try again to suss out what is meant by owning the means of production. Here it is again: The collapse of the information ecosystem poses profound risks for humanity https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/19/the-collapse-of-the-information-ecosyste

Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

I looked for some scientific evidence of this, but failed to find it. Can you clue me in to the sources showing it's made in the brain? On 11/19/19 7:10 AM, Prof David West wrote: DMT is present, manufactured, in the human brain ...

Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

My guess is you're a methodological pluralist just like the rest of us. The trick is that monism is moot. Even *if* all things are somehow organizations of experience, to be pragmatic, you have to be able to *generate* 2 seemingly different things (like your experience vs. my experience) by di

Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

Oops. I meant to include a link to this: https://youtu.be/yL_-1d9OSdk On 11/17/19 7:48 AM, glen∈ℂ wrote: So, we all turn into "enlightened" people and go around mumbling "mu" all the time. FRIAM Applied Compl

Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

Herein lies the monist rub. If types of things are the same as things of type, then why do we have 2 words: "thing" and "type"? Why not just have one word: "thing"? The same is true of "kind" vs. "type". Or any 2 words you might choose at random from the dictionary. So, we all turn into "enlight

Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

I don't know this Hywel person. But number of things of a type is different from number of types of thing. 8^) Unless types of a thing are also things of a type. Channeling a modern teenager: That's so meta, dude. On 11/17/19 6:55 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote: Channeling Hywel, I hope accurately:

Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

Ha! You raise two excellent points: 1) Is "a beer" a portion of a given volume or a massive noun? https://youtu.be/cf0y2pVw6Tk Or perhaps it refers to different batches, distinguished by the process (ingredients, mash, boil, distribution)? But what if you're a macro brewery and your quality c

Re: [FRIAM] culture vs things

LoL! First laugh of the day. Thanks. On 11/11/19 8:15 AM, Merle Lefkoff wrote: Pinker is an idiot. Always has been. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://

[FRIAM] culture vs things (was: capitalism vs. individualism)

Yes! Along the same lines of communities policing themselves, pluralists are at risk of runaway relativism. I was reading this article recently and was taken aback by this exc

Re: [FRIAM] capitalism vs. individualism

Well, during my chemotherapy and years of maintenance doses of obinutuzumab, red meat was the only thing that sated me. Prior to my diagnosis and after I stopped taking the drug, I do well on a mostly plant diet, eating meat once or twice per week. That personal experience convinced me of what

Re: [FRIAM] capitalism vs. individualism

I guess we don't disagree nearly as much as I inferred from your earlier post. But I also worry about the narratives surrounding Schiff. I agree that AOC is more rational. But many of the right-wing sites are claiming Pelosi is as questionable as Schiff. And I disagree completely. Pelosi is par

Re: [FRIAM] capitalism vs. individualism

While I agree that your *narrative* is plausible, I'm always skeptical of such narratives. The system is more complex than these stories we tell ourselves. I didn't confidently support impeachment until Trump released his readout of the Ukraine call. And most of my more conservative friends did

Re: [FRIAM] capitalism vs. individualism

On 11/7/19 4:15 AM, Prof David West wrote: Or violence. Ad hoc, then systematic. On Violence: A Comparison of Georges Sorel & Frantz Fanon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNLN3anBByY (Parentheticals reflect my inability to transcribe what he's saying.) "In the context of the colonial disp

Re: [FRIAM] capitalism vs. individualism

Re: leaving the interstitial space unmodeled being motivated reasoning -- I struggled with that, mostly because I lamely qualified it twice: 1) only sometimes and 2) only if you *cannot* multi-model it. My emotional (?, intuitive maybe?) motivation is that I too often see people slap together

Re: [FRIAM] MoNA

Well, that's a reasonable heuristic. But there are complications. A good example might be the "preemptive strike", when you perceive a slow-growing threat, some of which may have a noisy signal prone to misinterpretation. (Thinking Iraq invasion.) E.g. our home grown domestic terrorists like Ri

[FRIAM] metaphor run amok!

Since I've whined, here, about our tendency to believe it's "metaphor all the way down" ... and maybe in relation to Hoffman's idea that evolution may select for false beliefs, I thought I'd post this as a twisty follow-up: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/22/no-filter-my-week-long

Re: [FRIAM] query and observation

Heh, I doubt you're missing my point. And please don't mistake my defense/explanation of Hoffman as advocacy. I think it's interesting. But he relies too much, IMO, on idealized modeling. So, I don't think the interface idea is really all that important. But it is interesting. To me, though, t

Re: [FRIAM] abduction and casuistry

Sorry for my incompleteness. I should have stated that G&W say the schema is for a *solved* abduction problem. What you're describing is the exploration of the *inverse* map. Using the conclusion, you infer the premise(s) that fit. I'd hoped it would be obvious this is possible with the connect

Re: [FRIAM] abduction and casuistry

First, did you miss Dave's contribution? It was more on-topic than mine! On Rigor: Yes, there's quite a bit of what you say I can agree with. But only if I modify *my* understanding of "rigor". I think rigor is any methodical, systematic behavior to which one adheres to strictly. It is the fid

Re: [FRIAM] All hail confirmation bias!

Steve and I discussed some of this sort of thing awhile back. I argued that the loss of both individual and collective plasticity over time might be the core selection criterion. In times of fat diversity in the environment, it's helpful to have diverse and tightly coupled estimators (thanks t

Re: [FRIAM] Posts from the Scotts

Yes, exactly! Referring back to the spectrum between episodic and diachronic personalities, it strikes me that the regular accusations I get of non sequitur, are something like hairpin turns in my (always bad) rhetoric. It's also just plain fun to do it and I wish others would do it to me as of

Re: [FRIAM] Predictive coding basedon deep learning

It's in these crevices of the discussion that it becomes obvious that the "painted surface" analogy [†] fails completely. This is why Hoffman's "interface" theory is so attractive. The same core point is made, just with more explanatory power. It's analogous to how we play video games. Good exam

Re: [FRIAM] Posts from the Scotts

The 3 excerpts below seem to indicate the (my?) problem. At first, I though Marcus was agreeing with me by listing options for harm-of-eating-animals. But then he goes toward monism-by-unification with "agreeing on what matters" and whole-equilibrium-implies-part-equilibrium. And I thought Stev

Re: [FRIAM] Posts from the Scotts

It's not clear to me which of these Marcus was responding to. But it seems like he was responding to (1) with the variation as a function of changes in perspective. But your teasing with (2) seems likely, too, from which I infer that our world-cutters are dynamic and can be complexified dependi

Re: [FRIAM] Posts from the Scotts

Well, bait and switch is a common, special, sub-category of the very topic, which is: the map between how we (artificially) cut up the world versus how the world actually is. What Alexander was pointing out was exactly that. Of course, when it's our preemptively registered ontology that's being

Re: [FRIAM] Posts from the Scotts

Yeah, I had the same reaction. But I lost to my own argument. Since Renee's been a grievance officer for her union, she and I've had an argument about "violence in the workplace". She claims (and both the union and management agree) that harsh words and aggressive tone and body language constitu

Re: [FRIAM] "I have no idea what's going on." -- Towelie

Bah! My dad was a pilot. So we flew on "passes" from the time I was born. I've been flying (as mostly a passenger) in 2 seater T-38s, 4 seater excursion flights over glaciers, etc. for my entire life. We even veered off and jumped a couple of runways at SAF with ... a pilot who will remain unna

  1   2   >