OK. We don't really disagree. But I'll push the point just a tiny bit further and see if it goes anywhere.
On 04/29/2013 03:31 PM, Steve Smith wrote: > On the other hand, I'm not setting out to *prove* my concept of what is > generational, but rather to explain or illuminate it. > > [...] > > I'm only trying to make the argument that there *are* > couplings between "generations" which yield interesting oscillations > with periods roughly on the order of human reproduction cycles. Even though you're not setting out to provide evidence for your concept of generational, you do assert the existence of generational couplings (distinct from other types of coupling) and that these couplings yield interesting oscillations. I infer that to mean that these generational couplings are somehow more evident, more influential, more something than other inter-group couplings. Perhaps they're not "more", but just different. In any case, what we need in order to have a useful discussion is some definite identification of that type of coupling. And for that, we need some type of data, or at the very least a clear measure that could generate the data. Without that, I can, literally, choose _anything_ and call it a generational coupling. I can say, for example, that my grandfather's appreciation for pecans was very high, my father's very low, and mine very high. And to justify that, I can explain with something like: people of my grandfather's generation walked quite a bit (being depression era), took great pleasure in edibles found on the roadside, resulting in a behavior reinforcing feedback. But in my dad's generation, with the hegemony of car travel, grocery stores, gym-based exercise, a rebounding economy, etc. walking in your neighborhood and the interestingness of random snacks like pecans from pecan trees growing out of your neighbors' yards, waned. And now, with the "locavore" movement and a trend away from industrial farms toward CSAs, community gardens and the maker culture, I tend to really enjoy picking, say, apples from an apple tree in a neighbor's yard and eating it on my walk around the neighborhood. I can do this with _anything_ because I don't need any data in order to make such claims. The above is mostly true. But it's not definite beyond the concrete detail and context I provide. Any generational effect I might identify could well be purely a result of "instantaneous" (or short duration) social downward causation, not generational oscillation. I.e. maybe it's not "phase locking" so much as a drifting/wandering progression of social forcing? How would we know? So, in order to establish the existence of generational couplings (distinct from any other type of couplings), we need some aggregated, abstracted data. -- glen =><= Hail Eris! ============================================================ 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
