Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

[Merle Lefkoff]

Sorry, Jochen, just about everything you recommend will make things worse.
I also wrote about the failure of the climate models almost ten years ago.
You nailed one of the biggest problems, though: even really smart guys
don't know shit about global warming.


On Sat, Jan 27, 2024 at 3:11 PM Jochen Fromm  wrote:

> I am not a big fan of Sabine. Her book "Lost in math" is too pessimistic
> and too negative for me. She earns money from her YouTube video channel.
> The more sensational the content, the more clicks. That being said I agree
> that climate change is one of the biggest problems, and the outlook is not
> good.
>
> If we don't act now temperatures will rise inevitably, and there is a real
> possibility our economies will collapse. But if we prohibit all fossil
> fuels now our economies will collapse too, because they depend on it.
> Airplanes, ships, trucks, cars, heatings in our homes, plastic products,...
> everything is based on fossil fuels.
>
> What our leaders do is take they planes and private jets to fly to climate
> conferences and economic forums where they agree on lofty goals but when
> they return it is business as usual.
>
> What we can do is voting for better politics - besides getting an emission
> free car, using electric trains and public transport, switching to
> sustainable energy, using less plastic, etc. Eventually it will also mean
> less travelling by plane and cruise ships. This means no longer vacation in
> exotic places - but imagine how much better the air in our cities would be
> if the majority of cars are emission free.
>
> -J.
>
>
>  Original message 
> From: Russ Abbott 
> Date: 1/27/24 10:01 PM (GMT+01:00)
> To: ICE - debora shuger , Rob Watson <
> rnwat...@humnet.ucla.edu>, Richard Abbott ,
> "Michael, Maria, and Luna Abbott-Whitley/Penado" ,
> Danielle Abbott-Whitley , "Whitley, Julian" <
> jln.whit...@gmail.com>, Dale Shuger , The Friday
> Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate
>
> I apologize for this relatively mass email. It was prompted by a video
>  by Sabine
> Hossenfelder,  Sabine is a theoretical physicist who has spent much of her
> recent life as a popular science writer and video maker. See her Wikipedia
> page .
>
> The video linked to above talks about climate models. The bottom line is
> that it appears that most of the current models have underestimated how
> quickly earth will warm. The consequences are frightening.
>
> -- Russ Abbott
> Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
> California State University, Los Angeles
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:  5/2017 thru present
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>   1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>


-- 
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  (303) 859-5609
-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom 
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:  5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
  1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/

Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

[Curt McNamara]

She is correct. The IPCC reports are also very conservative.

An informal poll of the IPCC representatives gave 2.5C as the likeliest
final temp rise. That is a huge amount, however probably not enough to
eliminate humanity.

We are turning the corner: carbon emissions have plateaued.

However passing through a tipping point seems still quite likely to me.

Pearce's With Speed and Violence gives a great overview of the science and
what the evidence of past climate transitions looks like.

https://books.google.com/books?id=rimrkFlTHn4C=PT1=kp_read_button=en=1_redir=0=1#v=onepage=false

  Curt

On Sat, Jan 27, 2024, 3:00 PM Russ Abbott  wrote:

> I apologize for this relatively mass email. It was prompted by a video
>  by Sabine
> Hossenfelder,  Sabine is a theoretical physicist who has spent much of her
> recent life as a popular science writer and video maker. See her Wikipedia
> page .
>
> The video linked to above talks about climate models. The bottom line is
> that it appears that most of the current models have underestimated how
> quickly earth will warm. The consequences are frightening.
>
> -- Russ Abbott
> Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
> California State University, Los Angeles
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:  5/2017 thru present
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>   1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>
-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom 
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:  5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
  1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/

Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

[Michael Orshan]

Hi:

Generating electricity via power plants causes 25% of the GHGs and uses 45%
of the water in the US.  In less populated countries it is closer to
70/80%.  More EV will cause more need for electricity, so removing fossil
fuels from power plants is the key.  Solar and wind are helping.  But the
big issue is what happens when the sun is down or the wind has stopped.
This is solved by long duration energy storage.  That will allow everything
to work smoothly.  Still there are many political and resource
bottlenecks.

Mike

Mike

On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 8:21 PM Leigh Fanning  wrote:

> At some point we'll have SAF at scale.
>
> https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/sustainable-aviation-fuels
>
> Leigh
>
> On 29 Jan 2024 at 03:26 PM, glen related
> > I feel like individual actions (like sorting recycling, buying/using
> EVs, etc.) are a tiny drop in the bucket compared to institutional actions.
> For example, the NIH recently held a meeting in Maryland explicitly stating
> a *preference* for in person attendance. This seemed egregious to me. I
> mean, I know they're not a department of ecology or biology ... or climate
> science or whatever. But surely ... shirley they know that institutional
> pressure to fly around the earth is a part of the problem, right? Like, how
> are we supposed to compete for federal funds ... social network wise, when
> all the flesh-pressing rich people fly around pressing the flesh in
> meatspace?
> >
> > Similarly, ALife is in Copenhagen. Very cool. I've always wanted to go
> there. Luckily, IACAP (RussA mentioned) is in Eugene. I can take the train
> there. Maybe if we change your "life is at stake" to "career is at stake",
> we could make some interim progress. Anyone who flies to a conference is
> immediately spray-painted with a scarlet letter. But, really. It's not
> about us. It's about Amazon, Microsoft, P, Maybelline <
> https://www.beatthemicrobead.org/11-makeup-brands-exposed-with-the-use-of-microplastics/>,
> Dupont, etc. ... and maybe even the NIH. We should make it about their
> "corporate life is at stake" and execute the bad actors.
> >
> > Speaking of the death penalty for corporations:
> >
> https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/politics/2024/01/29/taking-away-trump-s-business-empire-would-stand-alone-under-new-york-fraud-law
> >
> > "An Associated Press analysis of nearly 70 years of civil cases under
> the law showed that such a penalty has only been imposed a dozen previous
> times, and Trump’s case stands apart in a significant way: It’s the only
> big business found that was threatened with a shutdown without a showing of
> obvious victims and major losses."
> >
> > Freewill? Agency? Pffft. The real touchstone is "identify the victim".
> >
> > On 1/29/24 14:41, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> > > I saw this article mentioned by Eliot Jacobson on his X/Twitter
> profile which argues that our actions will most likely not be enough until
> there is a big shock which motivates real change. It also uses the Covid
> pandemic to illustrate that people are able to change if they are convinced
> their lives are at stake
> > > https://time.com/6565499/apocalyptic-optimism-climate-change/
> > >
> > > It fits to my own observations here in Europe: there are more and more
> EVs and charging stations, but not enough. There are more heat pumps
> replacing gas heatings, but not enough. There is more use of renewable
> energy but not enough. I fear people will only start to change
> fundamentally if they feel their life is at stake. Will it be too late
> then? I don't know. Let's be optimistic. "Keep your face always toward the
> sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you"
> > > https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/03/05/sunshine/
> > >
> > > -J.
> > >
> > >
> > >  Original message 
> > > From: Steve Smith 
> > > Date: 1/28/24 8:16 PM (GMT+01:00)
> > > To: friam@redfish.com
> > > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate
> > >
> > > I love me a good dose of Sabine... her flat-delivery of equally
> serious and glib lines is killer IMO... and for the most part I feel
> compelled to defer to her facts and analyses (almost) without reserve.
> (/around 13:30 she said "so mind-f#%#%ingly stupid" /). I'm surprised she
> didn't actually invoke the biblical "four horsemen"!  Her closing statement
> with the "stop gluing yourself to things" sorta made Sabine the
> anti-Greta?  Both of those made me choke on my coffee .
> > >
> > > The whole North-Atlantic circulation thing (AMOC tipping point)
> threatening to undermine the British Isles and Scandinavia's relatively
> mild winters (moderated by oceanic heat transport from the equator) is one
> of the things I expect to crash a lot of expectations (and economies and
> ???) around the industrial north.   New England is also implicated in a
> major/abrupt local climate change from this as well.
> > >
> > > I did a short stint with a pre-climate (atmospheric-ocean model
> coupling) modeling team at LANL in the 90s and 

Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

[Leigh Fanning]

At some point we'll have SAF at scale.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/sustainable-aviation-fuels

Leigh

On 29 Jan 2024 at 03:26 PM, glen related
> I feel like individual actions (like sorting recycling, buying/using EVs, 
> etc.) are a tiny drop in the bucket compared to institutional actions. For 
> example, the NIH recently held a meeting in Maryland explicitly stating a 
> *preference* for in person attendance. This seemed egregious to me. I mean, I 
> know they're not a department of ecology or biology ... or climate science or 
> whatever. But surely ... shirley they know that institutional pressure to fly 
> around the earth is a part of the problem, right? Like, how are we supposed 
> to compete for federal funds ... social network wise, when all the 
> flesh-pressing rich people fly around pressing the flesh in meatspace?
> 
> Similarly, ALife is in Copenhagen. Very cool. I've always wanted to go there. 
> Luckily, IACAP (RussA mentioned) is in Eugene. I can take the train there. 
> Maybe if we change your "life is at stake" to "career is at stake", we could 
> make some interim progress. Anyone who flies to a conference is immediately 
> spray-painted with a scarlet letter. But, really. It's not about us. It's 
> about Amazon, Microsoft, P, Maybelline 
> ,
>  Dupont, etc. ... and maybe even the NIH. We should make it about their 
> "corporate life is at stake" and execute the bad actors.
> 
> Speaking of the death penalty for corporations:
> https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/politics/2024/01/29/taking-away-trump-s-business-empire-would-stand-alone-under-new-york-fraud-law
> 
> "An Associated Press analysis of nearly 70 years of civil cases under the law 
> showed that such a penalty has only been imposed a dozen previous times, and 
> Trump’s case stands apart in a significant way: It’s the only big business 
> found that was threatened with a shutdown without a showing of obvious 
> victims and major losses."
> 
> Freewill? Agency? Pffft. The real touchstone is "identify the victim".
> 
> On 1/29/24 14:41, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> > I saw this article mentioned by Eliot Jacobson on his X/Twitter profile 
> > which argues that our actions will most likely not be enough until there is 
> > a big shock which motivates real change. It also uses the Covid pandemic to 
> > illustrate that people are able to change if they are convinced their lives 
> > are at stake
> > https://time.com/6565499/apocalyptic-optimism-climate-change/
> > 
> > It fits to my own observations here in Europe: there are more and more EVs 
> > and charging stations, but not enough. There are more heat pumps replacing 
> > gas heatings, but not enough. There is more use of renewable energy but not 
> > enough. I fear people will only start to change fundamentally if they feel 
> > their life is at stake. Will it be too late then? I don't know. Let's be 
> > optimistic. "Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will 
> > fall behind you"
> > https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/03/05/sunshine/
> > 
> > -J.
> > 
> > 
> >  Original message 
> > From: Steve Smith 
> > Date: 1/28/24 8:16 PM (GMT+01:00)
> > To: friam@redfish.com
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate
> > 
> > I love me a good dose of Sabine... her flat-delivery of equally serious and 
> > glib lines is killer IMO... and for the most part I feel compelled to defer 
> > to her facts and analyses (almost) without reserve. (/around 13:30 she said 
> > "so mind-f#%#%ingly stupid" /). I'm surprised she didn't actually invoke 
> > the biblical "four horsemen"!  Her closing statement with the "stop gluing 
> > yourself to things" sorta made Sabine the anti-Greta?  Both of those made 
> > me choke on my coffee .
> > 
> > The whole North-Atlantic circulation thing (AMOC tipping point) threatening 
> > to undermine the British Isles and Scandinavia's relatively mild winters 
> > (moderated by oceanic heat transport from the equator) is one of the things 
> > I expect to crash a lot of expectations (and economies and ???) around the 
> > industrial north.   New England is also implicated in a major/abrupt local 
> > climate change from this as well.
> > 
> > I did a short stint with a pre-climate (atmospheric-ocean model coupling) 
> > modeling team at LANL in the 90s and what I enjoyed most was the cognitive 
> > dissonance amongst the researchers who on one hand felt they couldn't 
> > predict *anything* confidently but recognized the incredibly high stakes 
> > and the emerging awareness of the implications of dynamical systems theory 
> > on the domain... how many bifurcation points likely surrounded the 
> > relatively linear "basin" the climate has been wandering in since the 
> > Younger Dryas.
> > 
> > Without exception, every scientist I worked with then privately declared 
> > "we have a problem!" even though they didn't 

Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

[glen]

I feel like individual actions (like sorting recycling, buying/using EVs, etc.) 
are a tiny drop in the bucket compared to institutional actions. For example, 
the NIH recently held a meeting in Maryland explicitly stating a *preference* 
for in person attendance. This seemed egregious to me. I mean, I know they're 
not a department of ecology or biology ... or climate science or whatever. But 
surely ... shirley they know that institutional pressure to fly around the 
earth is a part of the problem, right? Like, how are we supposed to compete for 
federal funds ... social network wise, when all the flesh-pressing rich people 
fly around pressing the flesh in meatspace?

Similarly, ALife is in Copenhagen. Very cool. I've always wanted to go there. Luckily, IACAP (RussA mentioned) is in 
Eugene. I can take the train there. Maybe if we change your "life is at stake" to "career is at 
stake", we could make some interim progress. Anyone who flies to a conference is immediately spray-painted with a 
scarlet letter. But, really. It's not about us. It's about Amazon, Microsoft, P, Maybelline 
, Dupont, etc. ... and 
maybe even the NIH. We should make it about their "corporate life is at stake" and execute the bad actors.

Speaking of the death penalty for corporations:
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/politics/2024/01/29/taking-away-trump-s-business-empire-would-stand-alone-under-new-york-fraud-law

"An Associated Press analysis of nearly 70 years of civil cases under the law showed 
that such a penalty has only been imposed a dozen previous times, and Trump’s case stands 
apart in a significant way: It’s the only big business found that was threatened with a 
shutdown without a showing of obvious victims and major losses."

Freewill? Agency? Pffft. The real touchstone is "identify the victim".

On 1/29/24 14:41, Jochen Fromm wrote:

I saw this article mentioned by Eliot Jacobson on his X/Twitter profile which 
argues that our actions will most likely not be enough until there is a big 
shock which motivates real change. It also uses the Covid pandemic to 
illustrate that people are able to change if they are convinced their lives are 
at stake
https://time.com/6565499/apocalyptic-optimism-climate-change/

It fits to my own observations here in Europe: there are more and more EVs and charging 
stations, but not enough. There are more heat pumps replacing gas heatings, but not 
enough. There is more use of renewable energy but not enough. I fear people will only 
start to change fundamentally if they feel their life is at stake. Will it be too late 
then? I don't know. Let's be optimistic. "Keep your face always toward the sunshine 
- and shadows will fall behind you"
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/03/05/sunshine/

-J.


 Original message 
From: Steve Smith 
Date: 1/28/24 8:16 PM (GMT+01:00)
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

I love me a good dose of Sabine... her flat-delivery of equally serious and glib lines is killer IMO... and for the 
most part I feel compelled to defer to her facts and analyses (almost) without reserve. (/around 13:30 she said 
"so mind-f#%#%ingly stupid" /). I'm surprised she didn't actually invoke the biblical "four 
horsemen"!  Her closing statement with the "stop gluing yourself to things" sorta made Sabine the 
anti-Greta?  Both of those made me choke on my coffee .

The whole North-Atlantic circulation thing (AMOC tipping point) threatening to 
undermine the British Isles and Scandinavia's relatively mild winters 
(moderated by oceanic heat transport from the equator) is one of the things I 
expect to crash a lot of expectations (and economies and ???) around the 
industrial north.   New England is also implicated in a major/abrupt local 
climate change from this as well.

I did a short stint with a pre-climate (atmospheric-ocean model coupling) modeling team 
at LANL in the 90s and what I enjoyed most was the cognitive dissonance amongst the 
researchers who on one hand felt they couldn't predict *anything* confidently but 
recognized the incredibly high stakes and the emerging awareness of the implications of 
dynamical systems theory on the domain... how many bifurcation points likely surrounded 
the relatively linear "basin" the climate has been wandering in since the 
Younger Dryas.

Without exception, every scientist I worked with then privately declared "we have a 
problem!" even though they didn't feel they had anywhere near the evidence to say 
anything that strongly in their publications.

Anecdotally, I've been experiencing a fairly steady winter-warming at my 
high-desert location 20 miles outside Santa Fe at about 5400ft where I catch 
the cold-air flow off of both the Sangre de Christo and the Jemez mtns.   
Winters have gotten drier for the most part and while the lows still maintain 
(see above), the highs 

Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

[Jochen Fromm]

I saw this article mentioned by Eliot Jacobson on his X/Twitter profile which 
argues that our actions will most likely not be enough until there is a big 
shock which motivates real change. It also uses the Covid pandemic to 
illustrate that people are able to change if they are convinced their lives are 
at stakehttps://time.com/6565499/apocalyptic-optimism-climate-change/It fits to 
my own observations here in Europe: there are more and more EVs and charging 
stations, but not enough. There are more heat pumps replacing gas heatings, but 
not enough. There is more use of renewable energy but not enough. I fear people 
will only start to change fundamentally if they feel their life is at stake. 
Will it be too late then? I don't know. Let's be optimistic. "Keep your face 
always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you" 
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/03/05/sunshine/-J.
 Original message From: Steve Smith  Date: 
1/28/24  8:16 PM  (GMT+01:00) To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Bad 
news about the climate 
I love me a good dose of Sabine... her flat-delivery of equally
  serious and glib lines is killer IMO... and for the most part I
  feel compelled to defer to her facts and analyses (almost) without
  reserve. (around 13:30 she said "so mind-f#%#%ingly stupid" ).  
  I'm surprised she didn't actually invoke the biblical "four
  horsemen"!  Her closing statement with the "stop gluing yourself
  to things" sorta made Sabine the anti-Greta?  Both of those made
  me choke on my coffee .

The whole North-Atlantic circulation thing (AMOC tipping point)
  threatening to undermine the British Isles and Scandinavia's
  relatively mild winters (moderated by oceanic heat transport from
  the equator) is one of the things I expect to crash a lot of
  expectations (and economies and ???) around the industrial
  north.   New England is also implicated in a major/abrupt local
  climate change from this as well.
I did a short stint with a pre-climate (atmospheric-ocean model
  coupling) modeling team at LANL in the 90s and what I enjoyed most
  was the cognitive dissonance amongst the researchers who on one
  hand felt they couldn't predict *anything* confidently but
  recognized the incredibly high stakes and the emerging awareness
  of the implications of dynamical systems theory on the domain...
  how many bifurcation points likely surrounded the relatively
  linear "basin" the climate has been wandering in since the Younger
  Dryas.  
Without exception, every scientist I worked with then privately
  declared "we have a problem!" even though they didn't feel they
  had anywhere near the evidence to say anything that strongly in
  their publications.

Anecdotally, I've been experiencing a fairly steady
  winter-warming at my high-desert location 20 miles outside Santa
  Fe at about 5400ft where I catch the cold-air flow off of both the
  Sangre de Christo and the Jemez mtns.   Winters have gotten drier
  for the most part and while the lows still maintain (see above),
  the highs during the winter (and dead of summer) have risen
  consistently for the last 20 years I've lived at this location.   
The climate and long-range weather forecasts for the area that
  I've checked out are somewhat mutually contradictory and my
  half-full/half-empty biases lead me to smug satisfaction when my
  fruit trees promise to do better than historically, even if my
  tomatoes freeze on Oct 1 no matter what (I've tossed plastic film
  over them and had them keep on growing/ripening until Thanksgiving
  a few years when I've bothered)...  root vegetables can now stay
  in the ground until I dig to eat and winter squash on the vine
  outside longer and longer.  
On the half-empty side, surface water is becoming more and more
  dear here, my AC-free summers are getting more uncomfortable and
  it is likely enough that all of this is a minor perturbation
  compared to what might hit this region in the next few decades as
  various major tipping points tip.

 

  If I were younger, I'd probably be more (personally) worried. 
I tell my 40-something progeny that they should plan on the
possibility that they might live forever and their children are
even more likely to.  Me, I'm just happy that when my
hand-carved wooden chompers get too slimy and splintery to use
that the folks with drills and novacaine can make me a "screw-in
set" like Nicks!   
  Meanwhile the only thing I can think to do is keep lowering my
own personal footprint and readying my home(stead) for another
generation to pick up wherever I leave off with an equally
lowered (residence-induced) footprint.  I'm not vegan (yet) but
I try to 

Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

[glen]

I like your arc, here. But it's missing one thing that I think is important (for whatever 
that's worth). The freewill and choice tokens seem to point at the space containing both 
the outcome of the resolution process and, more importantly, all the many counterfactuals 
that "could have" obtained. I've tried to make this point in my mentions of 
Hume's Guillotine and a canonical exception. Yes, sure, one can't derive an is from an 
ought (or vice versa). However, an is can constrain an ought (maybe vice versa?). E.g. 
you can suggest that person X ought to wear a coat because it's cold outside and person X 
has a history of avoiding cold. But what if person X doesn't have a coat? The fact [no 
coat] constrains the ought [wear a coat].

When a diachronic personality/character remembers the affect (what it felt 
like) prior to the resolution from heterogeneous tension to consolidated 
action, the paths not taken, some of them anyway, factor into the personality's 
current affect. What if I had gone hiking instead of eating all that junk food 
at the Super Bowl party? Re: your primarily cultural consideration - Even 
without any obvious current social pressure, an individual may use this feeling 
of choice to bias the resolution in the future.

And you can only have/use such temporally scoped feedback if you have a 
diachronic self conception (conscious or not). So as the object of the freewill 
and choice signs, I'd point not to the resolution, but to the anticipatory 
feedback mechanism and how/if/whether it modifies future resolutions.

On 1/28/24 11:49, David Eric Smith wrote:

I mostly sit on the sidelines in these freewill and choice discussions, because 
I don’t know what anybody else wants from the terms and the language using 
them.  I wonder whether the people using them know what they want from them, or 
if they would regard that as a meaningful thing to ask of someone.  So I hear 
evidence of this or that degree of regularity or context-sensitivity, and have 
no idea what problem they are supposed to be addressing.

But it leaves me wondering what questions I could ask that would give me some 
traction.

First, how much of this freewill and choice language is really anchored in its 
main features in the nature of human experience, and how much is exercise of a 
culturally inherited and partly arbitrary speech convention?  I mean this in 
the sense one might ask of language: there is some evidence that aspects of 
language use are inherently human and regular, as we see from invented 
isolated-group languages (deaf kids etc.) or from pidgin-creole transitions.  
But any particular language is of course conventional in much of its structure, 
and most kids raised without a language will not, by themselves, create a 
substitute in time.

I can imagine there are aspects of both for the freewill and choice thing.

But what would be the “native and unambiguous” aspect?  I feel like to say 
anything, I first have to think of the activities going on in the mind like a 
hive of bees, partly autonomous but partly coordinated.  Other activities also 
always-working are serving to maintain coordination where it is needed.  For 
example, if my elbow moves in one direction, then the laws of physics say it 
will not have moved in some different direction.  So while there may be many 
chaotic inputs to elbow movement, at some point they need to resolve into an 
action that there will only be one of.

So if, David Chalmers-like, I am to claim that there is an experiential aspect 
called “feeling that I choose”, what the hell should that refer to?  I could 
guess that, in cases where there is some significant spread in the contributors 
to an action, and the resolving activities have to do some work against some 
tension to resolve to some definite action, the self-modeling and 
self-reporting aspects of awareness might present those as a report of a 
tension, to which evolved language will then attach a tag “choosing” so that we 
can refer to it in ourselves and in each other.  It seems like I remember 
reading, years ago when this was in a spate of articles, about the anterior 
cingulate gyrus and the amygdala as brain regions that go active when some kind 
of conflict or heterogeneous input needs to be resolved somehow.

Thus: to the extent that Cheyne-Stokes breathing doesn’t even need the brain, 
it is pretty hierarchical, and I don’t expect that it will ever report itself 
too me as offering freedom to “choose” something.  Presumably it won’t report 
itself at all.  But other things look more like Seely’s process of a hive of 
bees choosing where to migrate.  Lots of signals come in from significantly 
independent origins, and there can be a long period of balance among several 
possible outcomes before something tips, and the hive goes somewhere.  That 
tension will feel to me like some symbol needs to be attached to the tipping, 
and there is an opportunity for some “choice” or “will” term to get 

Re: [FRIAM] Honeymoon over!

[Steve Smith]

With integration of LLMs (and other ML) into AR and personal assistant 
tech riding around on early adopters "shoulders", I would expect these 
percieve-reason-act structures to be "in training" essentially learning 
how to emulate (and extrapolate) their user's/wearer's/familiar's 
decision processes?


It would seem that this is where Pearl and Glymour's causal inferencing 
models would be directly applicable?


I read somewhere that Tesla's data  gathered from their Self Driving 
features represents a somewhat unique data-set due to these 
percieve/reason/act implications.   Does (less than full) self-driving 
car tech not represent a real-life training opportunity?


An AR enhanced ML personal assistant would seem to be an equally obvious 
place to begin to bootstrap training an AI in "everyday activities"?



On 1/28/24 5:23 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
Thanks, Jochen, I know about LangChain. I'm not claiming that LLMs 
cannot be used as elements of larger computations, just that LLMs on 
their own are quite limited. I'll make that point in the talk if the 
abstract is accepted.

_
_
__-- Russ Abbott
Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles


On Sun, Jan 28, 2024 at 1:31 PM Jochen Fromm  wrote:

Langchain is an agent framework started by Harrison Chase. A
Langchain agent uses LLMs to reason in a perceive-reason-act
cycle. One could argue that Langchain agents are able to think,
and we are even able to watch them thinking
https://github.com/langchain-ai/langchain

deeplearning.ai  has free courses about
Langchain

https://www.deeplearning.ai/short-courses/langchain-for-llm-application-development/

-J.


 Original message 
From: Russ Abbott 
Date: 1/28/24 9:58 PM (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Honeymoon over!

Sorry you couldn't get through. The abstract for the abstract had
to be submitted separately. Here it is.

LLMs are strikingly good at generating text: their output is
syntactically correct,  coherent, and plausible. They seem capable
of following instructions and of carrying out meaningful
conversations. LLMs achieve these results by using transformers to
produce text based on complex patterns in their training data. But
powerful though they are, transformers have nothing to do with
reasoning. LLMs have no means to build or to reason from internal
models; they cannot backtrack or perform exploratory search; they
cannot perform after-the-fact analysis; and they cannot diagnose
and correct errors.  More generally, LLMs cannot formulate, apply,
or correct strategies or heuristics. In short, LLMs are not a step
away from Artificial General Intelligence.

A pdf of the full abstract is attached.
_
_
__-- Russ

On Sun, Jan 28, 2024 at 10:12 AM Steve Smith  wrote:




And if you're interested, my long abstract submission to
IACAP-2024

has related thoughts. (Scroll down until you get to the link
for the actual paper.)


Russ -

I am interested in reading your abstract/paper..._
_

I signed up for an IACAP account but the link you provided
seems to be dead?

- Steve_
_

-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p
Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:  5/2017 thru present
https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
  1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/

-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:  5/2017 thru present
https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
  1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/


-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p 
Zoomhttps://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:  5/2017 thru presenthttps://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
   1/2003 thru 6/2021http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied 

Re: [FRIAM] Slow AI

[Steve Smith]

>Though these were all experienced and confident men, the average year to year correlation 
in their results was 0.01.  The highly rewarded experts of finance 
have no real idea what they're doing, they are highly rewarded for an 
"illusion of skill"<


One of my father-in-law's best friends was a man named Eli Shapiro who 
was the Alfred P Sloan Professor of Economics at MIT.  My FIL asked 
him some question about stock investing.  Shapiro said, "Chuck, nobody 
knows anything."


And yet there is a huge amount of money flowing into the pockets of the 
financial advisors, stock brokers, economic pundits, etc. Giant 
buildings are built to house the folks working in that industry right 
next to their Insurance Industry cousins?


I take "the efficient market hypothesis" at face value (as best I can) 
so it doesn't surprise me that anyone's presumed/imagined ability to 
predict significantly is at least very limited.


I think this is one of the reasons that an open-ended "growth economy" 
is so popular, it make everyone willing to take on the mantle, a /_"tide 
whisperer"_/, pretending their shamanic actions/words are lifting those 
boats?
-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom 
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:  5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
  1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/