If you have never been to a chicken breeding facility, you should make it a point to do so. It will graphically illustrate for you a new depth in man's inhumanity to other living beings.
On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 8:07 PM, Nicholas Thompson < nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > Russ, > > For years, chicken breeders selected their chickens at the individual > level, even though they were placing them in close quarters in crates of > nine chickens. Chickens had to be debeaked and they were constantly pulling > dead chickens out of the pens. . So, one day, a couple of poultry > husbandry guys got a bright idea. They selected the best PENS of chickens > for breeding. Pen rates of reproduction went up and the need for debeaking > went away. If anybody is curious, I will chase down the reference. > > I guess even a pen of chickens can be a black box. > > N > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, > Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu) > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > *From:* Russ Abbott <russ.abb...@gmail.com> > *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group<friam@redfish.com> > *Sent:* 2/15/2009 10:32:44 AM > *Subject:* [FRIAM] Emergence: The No-Stats All-Star > > After sending the previous message I started reading this (long) article: The > No-Stats All-Star - > NYTimes.com<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?_r=1&em=&pagewanted=all>. > Here's a key paragraph. > > The five players on any basketball team are far more than the sum of their > parts; the Rockets devote a lot of energy to untangling subtle interactions > among the team's elements. To get at this they need something that > basketball hasn't historically supplied: meaningful statistics. For most of > its history basketball has measured not so much what is important as what is > easy to measure — points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocked shots — and > these measurements have warped perceptions of the game. ("Someone created > the box score," Morey says, "and he should be shot.") How many points a > player scores, for example, is no true indication of how much he has helped > his team. Another example: if you want to know a player's value as a > rebounder, you need to know not whether he got a rebound but the likelihood > of the team getting the rebound when a missed shot enters that player's > zone. > > That's a nice illustration of emergence. It may be subtle, but it's not > magical or mysterious. To create the emergent level of abstraction that the > paragraph refers to, the components have to work together in the right way. > > -- Russ > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > -- Doug Roberts, RTI International drobe...@rti.org d...@parrot-farm.net 505-455-7333 - Office 505-670-8195 - Cell
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
