Hi, Owen,
This would all be a lot easier if you would just say what you think.
What was the “unkind way” that your message was “not in” ?
And what the dickens is an O.P.?
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
<http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
*From:*Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Owen
Densmore
*Sent:* Thursday, June 08, 2017 6:08 PM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<friam@redfish.com>
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language
No, my troll comment was meant for Nick's OP. Not in an unkind way,
but ...
On Thu, Jun 8, 2017 at 4:05 PM, Steven A Smith <sasm...@swcp.com
<mailto:sasm...@swcp.com>> wrote:
Glen -
I have found concept mapping tools to be helpful in this context,
but usually in live-brainstorming sessions... with one (or more)
operators clicking and typing and dragging and connecting while
others chatter out loud, then shifting the mouse/keyboard(s) to
another(s).
I know we have a mind-mapping ( I prefer concept-mapping) tool
developer on the list... I'm blanking his name, though I know he
has been active off and on! I hope he catches this and pitches
in. I believe he was heading toward web-enabled, simultaneous
editing capabilities. I did some tests and provided some
feedback on an early version a few years ago..
My only significant experience in this is with CMAPtools and a few
others driven by various project-lead's preferences, but never
really adopted by myself.
I was in the process of developing some more formal tools with UNM
for the NSF a few years ago, based on formalisms being developed
by Tim Goldsmith (dept. Psychology) at UNM. The presumption WAS
(IS) that we all have reserved lexicons and for a collaborative
group to develop a common one, there has to be a lot of discussion
and negotiation. Our example was a group of climate change
scientists who (un)surprisingly used identical terms in very
similar contexts with very different intentions and meanings in
some cases. It isn't too surprising when you realize that an
ocean scientist and an atmospheric scientist are very interested
in many of the same physical properties, but with different
emphasis and within different regimes. Pressure, density,
humidity, salinity, vorticity all seem to have pretty clear
meanings to any scientist using them, but the relative importance
and interaction between them has different implications for each
group.
Needless to say, we didn't finish the tools before the funding ran
out. This is now nearly 8 years old work... the ideas area still
valid but without a patron and without SME's to "test on" it is
hard to push such tools forward. My part included building the
equivalent of what you call "mind maps" from the differing lexical
elements, floating in N-space and "morphing" from each individual
(or subgroup's) perspective to some kind of common perspective...
with the intention of helping each individual or subgroup
appreciate the *different* perspective of the others.
This is modestly related to my work in "faceted ontologies" (also
currently not under active development) where "multiple lexicons"
is replaced by "multiple ontologies" or in both cases, the
superposition of multiple lexicons/ontologies.
I haven't worked with Joslyn since that 2007? paper... but we
*tried* a joint project with PNNL/NREL a couple of years ago, but
it failed due to inter-laboratory politics I think. He's an
equally brilliant/oblique character as you... take that for what
it is worth!
I liked Frank's double-dog-dare to you. I think that is one of
the good things you bring out in this list, all kinds of others'
feistiness! It was also good that you could both call it for what
it was. It makes me want to read Kohut... I have special reasons
for trying to apprehend alternate self-psychology models right
now, though from your's and Frank's apparent
avoidance(/dismissal?) of Kahut and my immediate phonetic
slip-slide to Camus, I'm a little leery.
On 6/8/17 2:33 PM, glen ☣ wrote:
We quickly polluted that thread, too. But it drives home the
point that an email list is _not_ a (good) collaborative
production tool.
Aha! I haven't heard from Cliff since my work for the
PSL<https://www.psl.nmsu.edu/>. He supposedly works up at
PNNL. Thanks for that article.
Yes, I took Owen to be calling Russ' post a trolling post.
But "troll" is like "complex", meaningless out of context.
I'm completely baffled why "layer" isn't understood ... makes
me think I must be wrong in some deep way. But for whatever
it's worth, I believe I understand and _agree_ with Nick's
circularity criticism of mechanistic explanations for
complexity, mostly because of a publication I'm helping
develop that tries to classify several different senses of the
word "mechanistic". The 1st attempt was rejected by the
journal, though. 8^( But repeating Nick's point back in my
own words obviously won't help, here.
Yes, I'm willing to help cobble together these posts into a
document. But, clearly, I can't be any kind of primary. If
y'all don't even understand what I mean by the word "layer",
then whatever I composed would be alien to the other
participants. One idea might be to use a "mind mapping" tool
and fill in the bubbles with verbatim snippets of people's
posts ... that might help avoid the bias introduced by the
secretary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept-_and_mind-mapping_software
I also don't care that much about the meaning of "complex".
So, my only motivation for helping is because y'all tolerate
my idiocy.
On 06/08/2017 12:52 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
I admit to being over my depth, at least in attention, if
not in ability to parse out your dense text, and more to
the point, the entire thread(s) which gives me more
sympathy with Nick who would like a tool to help organize,
neaten up, trim, etc. these very complex ( in the more
common meaning of the term) discussions. My experience
with you is that you always say what you mean and mean
what you say, so I don't doubt that there is gold in that
mine... just my ability to float the overburden and other
minerals away with Philosopher's Mercury (PhHg) in a
timely manner.
I DO think Nick is asking for help from the rest of us in
said parsing... to begin, I can parse HIS first
definition of "layer" is as a "laying hen"... a chicken
(or duck?) who is actively laying eggs. A total
red-herring to mix metaphors here on a forum facilitated
by another kind of RedFish altogether... a "fish of a
different color" as it were, to keep up with the metaphor
(aphorism?) mixology.
I DON'T think Owen was referring to you when he said:
"troll", I think he was being ironical by suggesting Russ
himself was being a troll. But I could be wrong. Owen
may not even remember to whom his bell "trolled" in that
moment? In any case, I don't find your
contribution/interaction here to be particularly
troll-like. Yes, you can be deliberately provocative, but
more in the sense of Socrates who got colored as a
"gadfly" (before there were trolls in the lexicon?).
Stay away from the Hemlock, OK?
I'm trying to sort this (simple?) question of the meaning
(connotations) of layering you use, as I have my own
reserved use of the term in "complex, layered metaphors"
or alternately "layered, complex metaphors"... but that is
*mostly* an aside. I believe your onion analogy is
Nick's "stratum" but I *think* with the added concept that
each "direction" (theta/phi from onion-center) as a
different "dimension". Your subsequent text suggests a
high-dimensional venn diagram. My own work in
visualization of Partially Ordered Sets (in the Gene
Ontology) may begin to address some of this, but I suspect
not.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4935.pdf
I may continue to dig into this minefield of rich ore and
interesting veins, but it has gotten beyond (even) me as a
multiple attender who thrives on this kind of complexity
(with limits apparently!).
I think I heard you suggest that YOU would volunteer to
pull in the various drawstrings on this multidimensional
bag forming of a half-dozen or more branching threads...
I'll see if I can find that and ask some more pointed
questions that might help that happen?
I truly appreciate Nick's role (as another Socrates?)
teasing at our language to try to get it more plain or
perhaps more specific or perhaps more concise? Is there
some kind of conservation law in these dimensions?
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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