Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

[Marcus Daniels]

Some people seem to believe that electrons can change their behavior if they 
happen to be in a human brain but not if in a canine brain.  

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2024 10:16 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

Right. But that's a reduction to the infinite past or causa prima fallacy. It's 
perfectly fine to confine the universe of discourse to "recent past" or 
"nearby" and talk about proximal causes. Even though the physical system is 
some god-like ultimate cause, it's not merely convenient but efficient and more 
effective to talk about downward cause. We even have clearly defined 
mathematical methods for decoupling hierarchies of scale.

Arguing about the difference between a convenient fiction and Ultimate Reality 
is the domain of monks and priests.

On 5/16/24 10:02, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> The bias is emergent from the physical system.
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2024 9:52 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause
> 
> How about "downward biasing"? Is that less ridicul[ous|e-deserving]? If I'm a 
> high order Markov process and my historicity heavily biases me toward a 
> subspace of behaviors, isn't that reasonable labeled "downward causation"?
> 
> On 5/16/24 08:32, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> I'd like to take a moment to ridicule the notion of downward causality as 
>> I'm reading this.  


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Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

[Marcus Daniels]

The bias is emergent from the physical system.  

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2024 9:52 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

How about "downward biasing"? Is that less ridicul[ous|e-deserving]? If I'm a 
high order Markov process and my historicity heavily biases me toward a 
subspace of behaviors, isn't that reasonable labeled "downward causation"?

On 5/16/24 08:32, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I'd like to take a moment to ridicule the notion of downward causality as I'm 
> reading this.  

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

[Marcus Daniels]

I'd like to take a moment to ridicule the notion of downward causality as I'm 
reading this.  

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2024 8:01 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

I suppose the problem is that LLMs aren't really about language at all. They're 
about the "rolling up" of sequential data into a lossy memory device that can 
later be queried for those (somewhat mutated) memories. Those sequential 
streams are of different types (vision, hearing, touch, etc.), all of which can 
be memorized by "LLMs", much the same way various streams are memorized and 
recalled by an ecology of autocatalytic cycles in living systems.

The analogy breaks down both structurally (DNA, RNA, autocatalysis, etc. are 
different from the transformer architecture) and behaviorally (multidimensional 
stimulus-response vs aspect-oriented reinforcement learning). But when 
considering "life as it could be", Nick's right to consider the analogy.

I suppose the most important reason I don't care to encourage the flippant 
interaction with cloud-based bots like GPT has to do with the part of the 
structural breakdown in energetics. In line with the skeptical aphorism 
"exceptional claims require exceptional evidence", exceptional "intelligence" 
requires exceptional energetics. Living systems have found (through an ecology 
of ACs) an exceptional way to produce and maintain themselves. Sequential 
learning transformers also have an exceptional way of extracing energy from the 
world, massive world-destroying data centers. From 50k feet, it's the mainframe 
vs. the personal computer all over again. DaveW's liberal sensibility that True 
computation happens more in the leaves, less in the hubs, aligns with life as 
we know it, an exquisite composition of energy processors from the very tiny to 
the very large. The massive energy centralization mechanism is fragile and 
bears little resemblance to life as we know it.


On 5/15/24 12:16, Prof David West wrote:
> Nick,
> 
> I hesitate to respond to your post because:
> 
> 1) my interest in the weather is nominal, although I am bemused that here in 
> St. Paul MN, we had more 50+ degrees in the December-February time frame than 
> below 0 days (almost three times as many). Most unusual.
> 
> 2) the response I wish to make is marginally related to the theme of your 
> recent communications.
> 
> But, you said, "/Why is it so hard the grasp the thought that we are 
> all of us, each of us, nothing but large language models in 
> training?"/
> 
> To which I must respond, /Why do so many insist that programs capable 
> of emulating the most trivial of human abilities are "intelligent?" 
> /Or the inverse, /reducing humanity to the latest clever trick 
> performed by a machine?/
> 
> LLM versions of AI are exemplars of the Mechanical Turk—whatever 
> "intelligence" they exhibit is directly and solely derivative of the human 
> intelligence of "LLM Tutors" and "Prompt Engineers." Both are six-figure 
> salary professions that arose in the last year.
> 
> davew
> (personal note: I sorely miss the conversations we once enjoyed, both 
> in person in Santa Fe and online.)
> 
> On Tue, May 14, 2024, at 2:01 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>> Dear Stephen, n all.
>>
>> I am sure you all will join me in condemning  the practice of calling 
>> somebody at the crack of dawn.  So, you will no doubt praise me (as I praise 
>> myself) for my generosity and flexiibility in taking the call from stephen, 
>> which came at the ungodly hour of 11.30 this morning.  Only to have him  me 
>> scold for not  responding to the Gupta, Tucker,Thompson, and Guerin paper, 
>> kindly drafted by him, which will no doubt make us rich and famous some day. 
>>  First, let clarify that my collaborator's name is not Tucker, but is 
>> *G*eorge *P*hillipe *T*remblay. George (pronounced /jorj) /both forgives you 
>> and sends his regards.
>>
>> Second, I am profoundly grateful to any one who would join me in this 
>> geriatric weather fantasy that I am going to update my 1980/WeatherWise 
>> Gardener/.  I need ever nerd I can get.  Please don't treat what follows as 
>> churlish.
>>
>> Third, allow me once again to express my gratitude to Stephen for 
>> introducing me to Gupta and Tremblay.  They have an uncanny power to clabbor 
>> together plausible first drafts which are extraordinarily helpful in getting 
>> me started in thinking about a problem.   That these drafts are often 
>> hideously wrong enhances, rather than  dilutes their usefulness.
>>
>> Second, I don't doubt that weather models and  financial models might have 
>> something to contribute to one another. As you all know, I love metaphors, 
>> and believe them to be at the root of science.  But to be honest, I can't 
>> see any reason to believe it either.   For one thing, unlike everything else 
>> in the world, money flows uphill.  But really, I 

Re: [FRIAM] Potential vorticity and financial markets Fwd: CDS Friday seminar (CSI 899, CSS 898) for 26 April, 3 PM

[Marcus Daniels]

Behind the order book there are people.   These people often don’t have to show 
their hand because they can split big orders over time or even across platforms 
and not impact the price or otherwise lose their anonymity.   That’s where ABM 
or some sort of theory of mind can come into play.   It is probably interesting 
these days with causal language modelling!

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Stephen Guerin
Sent: Friday, April 26, 2024 7:44 AM
To: Friam Friam 
Subject: [FRIAM] Potential vorticity and financial markets Fwd: CDS Friday 
seminar (CSI 899, CSS 898) for 26 April, 3 PM

 

Nick, 

 

If you have time, beam into Blake Lebaron's talk today and let the "depth of 
the order book relating volatility and liquidity" wash over you like some one 
was describing potential vorticity or other dynamic of the weather. 

 

 The order book with zero intelligence traders has been a central research 
focus of the econophysicists and Doynes group and Blake's early related SFI 
stock market model. 

 

Marcus did a bunch of work on this when he was at SFI. any comments?

 

Stephen

 

 

 


CEO Founder, Simtable.com
stephen.gue...@simtable.com   

Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab
stephengue...@fas.harvard.edu  

mobile: (505)577-5828

 

-- Forwarded message -
From: CDS Department at GMU mailto:c...@gmu.edu> >
Date: Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 9:25 AM
Subject: CDS Friday seminar (CSI 899, CSS 898) for 26 April, 3 PM
To: mailto:cds-seminar-colloquium-announ...@listserv.gmu.edu> >

 

Speaker: Blake LeBaron, Brandeis University

 

Title: Dynamic Order Dispersion and Volatility Persistence in a Simple Limit 
Order Book model


Abstract: This preliminary paper extends the dynamics of a basic stylized limit 
order book model introduced in Chiarella & Iori (2002). The original model is 
capable of generating some key market microstructure features, but it cannot 
recreate longer range persistence in volatility. We explore a very simple and 
intuitive addition to the stylized, near zero intelligence behavior of traders 
that is capable of delivering persistent volatility. We also show that this 
strategy depends critically on certain key features in the dynamics of supply 
and demand for liquidity and depth in the limit order book. We believe this is 
fundamental to understanding both the dynamics of volatility in financial time 
series, along with variations in liquidity in financial markets. We contribute 
a parsimonious agent-based model to the literature that may be used as a test 
bed or sandbox for developing agents with more complex behavior.

 

Joint work with Andrew Hawley (Federal Reserve), Mark Paddrik (Office of 
Financial Research), and Nathan Palmer (Federal Reserve)

 

The views expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily 
reflect the position of the Office of Financial Research (OFR), the U.S. 
Department of Treasury, or the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

 

Date: Friday, 26 April 2024

 

Time: 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM EST

 

Location: Center on Social Complexity Suite (3rd floor, Research Hall), where 
light refreshments will be served, and  online (use the Zoom link below).

 



You are invited to a scheduled Zoom meeting

 

Topic: Friday CDS/CSI/CSS Seminars/Colloquia

Time: Apr 26, 2024 03:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Every week on Fri, until May 3, 2024

Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your 
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Join Zoom Meeting

https://gmu.zoom.us/j/97413658858?pwd=dE5oc2IyOVA3QXBjdmc0NURCdVZHZz09

 

Meeting ID: 974 1365 8858

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Join by SIP

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Best, 

 

Department of Computational and Data Sciences

College of Science

George Mason University

Research Hall, MS 6A12
Fairfax, VA  22030

  c...@gmu.edu

  cds...@gmu.edu 



 

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Re: [FRIAM] move fast, break things

[Marcus Daniels]

And how many similar exploits are out there, sponsored by GCHQ, NSA, etc.

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, April 2, 2024 8:52 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] move fast, break things


What we know about the xz Utils backdoor that almost infected the world 
https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/04/what-we-know-about-the-xz-utils-backdoor-that-almost-infected-the-world/

> almost immediately, a never-before-seen participant named Jigar Kumar joined 
> the discussion and argued that Lasse Collin, the longtime maintainer of xz 
> Utils, hadn’t been updating the software often or fast enough.

--
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Re: [FRIAM] A hundred words for swindle

[Marcus Daniels]

Speaking of airplane mode, I wonder how many Starlink satellites could be 
damaged from a big coronal mass ejection?   If the computers get fried, how do 
deorbit protocols work?

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2024 6:08 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A hundred words for swindle

 

The web apps were originally done while I was in Boston, I like the idea of web 
pages which can be downloaded and installed on your phone, or tablet, or laptop 
to provide entertainment while trapped in airplane mode.

 

  change.elf.org   - the iching in multiple translations 
which install lazily, once you install the app and access the version.

  mahjong.elf.org   - mahjong solitaire, recently 
updated to allow backtrack to arbitrary points in the discard pile.

  hp15c.elf.org   - a web app wrapper around the HP15C 
calculator emulator written by Greg Hewgill.

  moons.elf.org   - a lunar phase graphic calendar, due 
for an update, too.

 

I'm working on some more.

 

-- rec --

 

On Sun, Mar 31, 2024 at 1:40 PM Steve Smith mailto:sasm...@swcp.com> > wrote:

RECelf -

 

I know I visited your Entropy Liberation Front site before but somehow missed 
you iChing app/workup.   In particular the different casting distributions were 
particularly illuminating.   I favor (out of convenience) the six-scored-as-two 
method and was shocked to see in a single glance how different all others are 
from the (traditional/preferred?) yarrow stick

https://change.elf.org/tests



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Re: [FRIAM] death by ubiquity

[Marcus Daniels]

I think a multi-story data center in a spar, like a deep water oil rig.  
Stabilizing power could be available from land since it would need to deliver 
power to land.   The Morro bay surface water temperature is between 52 to 64F.

<https://youtu.be/JpfJJ2mh8yo>
[hqdefault.jpg]
Spar Transportation and Installation<https://youtu.be/JpfJJ2mh8yo>
youtu.be<https://youtu.be/JpfJJ2mh8yo>
https://www.hofmann-heatexchanger.com/solutions/plate-heat-exchanger-for-marine

On Mar 29, 2024, at 3:47 AM, David Eric Smith  wrote:

 I wonder:

Can you spin any large weight fast enough to get some gyroscopic stabilization 
over orientation?

I think about the large gangly designs that are favored for horizontal 
axis-of-rotation windmills, and think they will not respond nicely to twisting 
deformations.  It is one thing to put anchors in like guywires to keep the 
location fixed.  But depending on how high they want to reach, orientation is 
another matter, and underwater currents are not helpful for orientation if you 
are trying to tie something to a fixed surface location.  The length of cable 
used for large, laterally-extended moorings will probably admit some 
considerable flexibility.

More likely they will just use sensors and active controls, using some of the 
power to run propellers to real-time noise-cancel water-current effects.  As 
long as the computer doesn’t fail, you’re good.

When we did ocean engineering in Texas, I learned what a hostile environment 
seawater is to _everything_ except maybe fish.  Thinking about aging and 
Arecibo.

Eric



On Mar 28, 2024, at 3:51 PM, Marcus Daniels  wrote:

Way offshore in some cases, but also deep.   Maybe the underwater mass could 
help hold the platform in place?

https://www.aegirinsights.com/offshore-wind-in-california-faces-four-main-challenges-depth-waves-ports-and-grid-connection<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.aegirinsights.com%2foffshore-wind-in-california-faces-four-main-challenges-depth-waves-ports-and-grid-connection=E,1,ln9yoEowMSkBOcUiTtD5yBM3-7GL54AuCfrBPVIsSgK_uJY4W0NiQIo9S9EztwWqoPodyFcfgHpIOGMtxW4JEpEeK8QMD3FBC4yEWs9Qyo01b4g2=1>

The moon idea reminds me of this center:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Region_Supercomputing_Center

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> on 
behalf of glen mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>>
Date: Thursday, March 28, 2024 at 10:33 AM
To: friam@redfish.com<mailto:friam@redfish.com> 
mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] death by ubiquity
Bandwidth might be a problem. But the dark side of the moon seems like an 
option ... assuming you can negotiate with the aliens that live over there. The 
best thing about coral is you don't have to negotiate for their "land". You can 
just take it and let them die like the stupid little creatures they are.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/22/asia/south-china-sea-philippines-coral-reef-damage-intl-hnk/index.html

On 3/28/24 10:17, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> It's not really my thing, but I noticed there were several very large 
> exhibits at Supercomputing 23 for cooling technology.   Even immersive 
> cooling solutions.  I think that could be improved a lot.   Without 
> superconducting processors, I don't see how energy use can be dramatically 
> reduced though.  For that there will just need to be new generation.Could 
> put these near large off short windfarms..
>
> https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/china-deploys-1400-ton-commercial-underwater-data-center/<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.datacenterdynamics.com%2fen%2fnews%2fchina-deploys-1400-ton-commercial-underwater-data-center%2f=E,1,my_Hq7UP1DY0EhfS61pZn5RJJCzAg8osBKQ6cIkk3jbbbrvbvPDU4Rmooepe0lX-kcBMEO5x0FrlHshFbc1AiOAklI9J9-6G-D7m7s_TQ5h2BUqbcw,,=1>
>
> I suppose there are some that would say gentrification is genocide -- a slow 
> coerced displacement.
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
> Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2024 9:49 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com<mailto:friam@redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] death by ubiquity
>
> Maybe. But way before that happens, it will(has) force(d) the disaffected 
> (people, animals, plants) of any such region to die, move, or adapt.
>
> In the Gaza kerfuffle, I've heard some describe coerced displacement as 
> "genocide". I guess the more reasonble term is ethnic cleansing. The settlers 
> seem mostly fine with their ethnic cleansing agenda. But, by analogy, how 
> would we describe the coercive adaptation put upon a region by a massive 
> water-sucking data center? Biology cleansing? If there really were an AI, 
> would they worry about the forced displacement caused by their silicon 
> incubators? ... or maybe "incubator" isn't a good word. How about "galls": 
&

[FRIAM] political chatbots

[Marcus Daniels]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/28/opinion/ai-political-bias.html?unlocked_article_code=1.gU0.fWgD.UveHHkiWwMrz
 

 
=url-share



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Re: [FRIAM] death by ubiquity

[Marcus Daniels]

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft-hires-erin-henderson-to-head-nuclear-development-acceleration-for-data-centers/

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2024 6:34 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] death by ubiquity

Published a paper couple of years back — IT is not Sustainable. One point was 
power consumption: known server-farms at that time used more energy per year 
than the UK. Less than 10% came from renewable sources. 

Not included were all the “secret” farms in Russia, China, etc., or centers 
like the NSA facility west of Salt Lake City. 

Davew

On Thu, Mar 28, 2024, at 9:08 AM, glen wrote:
> As we frivolously replace meatspace conversation with obsequious 
> chatbots, the world burns.
>
> The industry more damaging to the environment than airlines 
> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/05/30/silicon-valley-data-gi
> ants-net-zero-sustainability-risk/
>
> https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-engineering-source/ci
> vil-engineering-magazine/issues/magazine-issue/article/2024/03/enginee
> rs-often-need-a-lot-of-water-to-keep-data-centers-cool
>
> --
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Re: [FRIAM] death by ubiquity

[Marcus Daniels]

It will force innovation on energy-efficient microarchitecture (e.g. Groq) and 
on renewable power generation near data centers.

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2024 7:09 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] death by ubiquity


As we frivolously replace meatspace conversation with obsequious chatbots, the 
world burns.

The industry more damaging to the environment than airlines 
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/05/30/silicon-valley-data-giants-net-zero-sustainability-risk/

https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-engineering-source/civil-engineering-magazine/issues/magazine-issue/article/2024/03/engineers-often-need-a-lot-of-water-to-keep-data-centers-cool

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Re: [FRIAM] the inequities of uniquity

[Marcus Daniels]

If you’ve read about them, Open AI probably has too.  

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2024 8:32 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the inequities of uniquity

 

this is 'unique' only if you exclude Vedic, Buddhist, Taoist, ... thought.

 

davew

 

 

On Fri, Mar 22, 2024, at 9:54 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote:

Prompt:

Express a unique concept. Make it as profound as possible

 

https://chat.openai.com/share/649bd4ca-f856-451e-83a2-01fc2cfe47fb

 

 

 

On Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 6:50 AM glen mailto:geprope...@gmail.com> > wrote:

I guess the question returns to one's criteria for assuming decoupling between 
the very [small|fast] and the very [large|slow]. Or in this case, the inner vs. 
the outer:

 

Susie Alegre on how digital technology undermines free thought

https://freethinker.co.uk/2024/03/interview-susie-alegre/

 

It would be reasonable for Frank to argue that we can generate the space of 
possible context definitions, inductively, from the set of token definitions, 
much like an LLM might. Ideally, you could then measure the expressiveness of 
those inferred contexts/languages and choose the largest (most complete; by 
induction, each context/language *should* be self-consistent so we shouldn't 
have to worry about that).

 

And if that's how things work (I'm not saying it is), then those "attractors" 
with the finest granularity (very slow to emerge, very resistant to 
dissolution) would be the least novel. Novelty (uniqueness) might then be 
defined in terms of fragility, short half-life, missable opportunity. But that 
would also argue that novelty is either less *real* or that the 
universe/context/language is very *open* and the path from fragile to robust 
obtains like some kind of Hebbian reinforcement, use it or lose it, win the 
hearts and minds or dissipate to nothing.

 

I.e. there is no such thing as free thought. Thought can't decouple from social 
manipulation.

 

On 3/21/24 13:38, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> In the LLM example, completions from some starting state or none, have 
> specific probabilities.   An incomplete yet-unseen (unique) utterance would 
> be completed based on prior probabilities of individual tokens.

> 

> I agree that raw materialist uniqueness won't necessarily or often override 
> constraints of a situation.  For example, if an employer instructs an 
> employee how to put a small, lightweight product in a box, label it, and send 
> it to a customer by UPS, the individual differences metabolism of the 
> employees aren't likely to matter much when shipping more small, lightweight 
> objects to other customers.   It could be the case for a professor and 
> student too.   The attractors come from the instruction or the curriculum.  
> One choice constrains the next.

> 

> -Original Message-

> From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > 
> On Behalf Of glen

> Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2024 11:50 AM

> To: friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com> 

> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the inequities of uniquity

> 

> I was arguing with that same friend yesterday at the pub. I was trying to 
> describe how some of us have more cognitive power than others (he's one of 
> them). Part of it is "free" power, freed up by his upper middle class white 
> good diet privilege. But if we allow that some of it might be genetic, then 
> that's a starting point for deciding when novelty matters to the ephemerides 
> of two otherwise analogical individuals (or projects if projects have an 
> analog to genetics). Such things are well-described in twin studies. One twin 
> suffers some PTSD the other doesn't and ... boom ... their otherwise lack of 
> uniqueness blossoms into uniqueness.

> 

> His objection was that even identical twins are not identical. They were 
> already unique ... like the Pauli Exclusion Principle or somesuch nonsense. 
> Even though it's a bit of a ridiculous argument, I could apply it to your 
> sense of avoiding non-novel attractors. No 2 attractors will be identical. 
> And no 1 attractor will be unique. So those are moot issues. Distinctions 
> without differences, maybe. Woit's rants are legendary. But some of us find 
> happiness in wasteful sophistry.

> 

> What matters is *how* things are the same and how they differ. Their 
> qualities and values (nearly) orthogonal to novelty.

> 

> 

> On 3/21/24 11:29, Marcus Daniels wrote:

>> If GPT systems capture some sense of "usual" context based on trillions of 
>> internet tokens, and that corpus is regarded approximately "global context", 
>> then it seems not so objectionable to call "unusual", new training items 
>> that contribute to fine-tuning loss.

>> 

>> It seems reasonable to worry that ubiquitous GPT s

Re: [FRIAM] the inequities of uniquity

[Marcus Daniels]

In the LLM example, completions from some starting state or none, have specific 
probabilities.   An incomplete yet-unseen (unique) utterance would be completed 
based on prior probabilities of individual tokens.  

I agree that raw materialist uniqueness won't necessarily or often override 
constraints of a situation.  For example, if an employer instructs an employee 
how to put a small, lightweight product in a box, label it, and send it to a 
customer by UPS, the individual differences metabolism of the employees aren't 
likely to matter much when shipping more small, lightweight objects to other 
customers.   It could be the case for a professor and student too.   The 
attractors come from the instruction or the curriculum.  One choice constrains 
the next.

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2024 11:50 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the inequities of uniquity

I was arguing with that same friend yesterday at the pub. I was trying to 
describe how some of us have more cognitive power than others (he's one of 
them). Part of it is "free" power, freed up by his upper middle class white 
good diet privilege. But if we allow that some of it might be genetic, then 
that's a starting point for deciding when novelty matters to the ephemerides of 
two otherwise analogical individuals (or projects if projects have an analog to 
genetics). Such things are well-described in twin studies. One twin suffers 
some PTSD the other doesn't and ... boom ... their otherwise lack of uniqueness 
blossoms into uniqueness.

His objection was that even identical twins are not identical. They were 
already unique ... like the Pauli Exclusion Principle or somesuch nonsense. 
Even though it's a bit of a ridiculous argument, I could apply it to your sense 
of avoiding non-novel attractors. No 2 attractors will be identical. And no 1 
attractor will be unique. So those are moot issues. Distinctions without 
differences, maybe. Woit's rants are legendary. But some of us find happiness 
in wasteful sophistry.

What matters is *how* things are the same and how they differ. Their qualities 
and values (nearly) orthogonal to novelty.


On 3/21/24 11:29, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> If GPT systems capture some sense of "usual" context based on trillions of 
> internet tokens, and that corpus is regarded approximately "global context", 
> then it seems not so objectionable to call "unusual", new training items that 
> contribute to fine-tuning loss.
> 
> It seems reasonable to worry that ubiquitous GPT systems reduce social 
> entropy by encouraging copying instead of new thinking, but it could also 
> have the reverse effect:  If I am immediately aware that an idea is not 
> novel, I may avoid attractors that agents that wrongly believe they are 
> "independent" will gravitate toward.
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2024 7:49 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the inequities of uniquity
> 
> A friend of mine constantly reminds me that language is dynamic, not fixed in 
> stone from a billion years ago. So, if you find others consistently using a 
> term in a way that you think is wrong, then *you* are wrong in what you 
> think. The older I get, the more difficult it gets.
> 
> But specifically, the technical sense of "unique" is vanishingly rare ... so 
> rare as to be merely an ideal, unverifiable, nowhere, non-existent. So if the 
> "unique" is imaginary, unreal, and doesn't exist, why not co-opt it for a 
> more useful, banal purpose? Nothing is actually unique. So we'll use the 
> token "unique" to mean (relatively) rare.
> 
> And "unusual" is even worse. Both tokens require one to describe the context, 
> domain, or universe within which the discussion is happening. If you don't 
> define your context, then the "definitions" you provide for the components of 
> that context are not even wrong; they're nonsense. "Unusual" implies a usual. 
> And a usual implies a perspective ... a mechanism of action for your sampling 
> technique. So "unusual" presents even more of a linguistic *burden* than 
> "unique".
> 
> On 3/20/24 13:14, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>> What's wrong with "unusual"?  It avoids the problem.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 1:55 PM Steve Smith > <mailto:sasm...@swcp.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>  I'm hung up on the usage of qualified  "uniqueness"  as well, but in 
>>> perhaps the opposite sense.
>>>
>>>  I agree with the premise that "unique" in it's purest, simplest form 
>>> does seem to be inherently singular.  On the other h

Re: [FRIAM] the inequities of uniquity

[Marcus Daniels]

If GPT systems capture some sense of "usual" context based on trillions of 
internet tokens, and that corpus is regarded approximately "global context", 
then it seems not so objectionable to call "unusual", new training items that 
contribute to fine-tuning loss.

It seems reasonable to worry that ubiquitous GPT systems reduce social entropy 
by encouraging copying instead of new thinking, but it could also have the 
reverse effect:  If I am immediately aware that an idea is not novel, I may 
avoid attractors that agents that wrongly believe they are "independent" will 
gravitate toward.

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2024 7:49 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the inequities of uniquity

A friend of mine constantly reminds me that language is dynamic, not fixed in 
stone from a billion years ago. So, if you find others consistently using a 
term in a way that you think is wrong, then *you* are wrong in what you think. 
The older I get, the more difficult it gets.

But specifically, the technical sense of "unique" is vanishingly rare ... so 
rare as to be merely an ideal, unverifiable, nowhere, non-existent. So if the 
"unique" is imaginary, unreal, and doesn't exist, why not co-opt it for a more 
useful, banal purpose? Nothing is actually unique. So we'll use the token 
"unique" to mean (relatively) rare.

And "unusual" is even worse. Both tokens require one to describe the context, 
domain, or universe within which the discussion is happening. If you don't 
define your context, then the "definitions" you provide for the components of 
that context are not even wrong; they're nonsense. "Unusual" implies a usual. 
And a usual implies a perspective ... a mechanism of action for your sampling 
technique. So "unusual" presents even more of a linguistic *burden* than 
"unique".

On 3/20/24 13:14, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> What's wrong with "unusual"?  It avoids the problem.
> 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 1:55 PM Steve Smith  > wrote:
>> 
>> I'm hung up on the usage of qualified  "uniqueness"  as well, but in 
>> perhaps the opposite sense.
>> 
>> I agree with the premise that "unique" in it's purest, simplest form 
>> does seem to be inherently singular.  On the other hand, this mal(icious) 
>> propensity of qualifying uniqueness (uniqueish?) is so common, that I have 
>> to believe there is a concept there which people who use those terms are 
>> reaching for.  They are not wrong to reach for it, just annoying in the 
>> label they choose?
>> 
>> I had a round with GPT4 trying to discuss this, not because I think LLMs 
>> are the authority on *anything* but rather because the discussions I have 
>> with them can help me brainstorm my way around ideas with the LLM nominally 
>> representing "what a lot of people say" (if not think).   Careful prompting 
>> seems to be able to help narrow down  *all people* (in the training data) to 
>> different/interesting subsets of *lots of people* with certain 
>> characteristics.
>> 
>> GPT4 definitely wanted to allow for a wide range of gradated, speciated, 
>> spectral uses of "unique" and gave me plenty of commonly used examples which 
>> validates my position that "for something so obviously/technically 
>> incorrect, it sure is used a lot!"
>> 
>> We discussed uniqueness in the context of evolutionary biology and 
>> cladistics and homology and homoplasy.  We discussed it in terms of cluster 
>> analysis.  We discussed the distinction between objective and subjective, 
>> absolute and relative.
>> 
>> The closest thing to a conclusion I have at the moment is:
>> 
>>  1. Most people do and will continue to treat "uniqueness" as a 
>> relative/spectral/subjective qualifier.
>>  2. Many people like Frank and myself (half the time) will have an 
>> allergic reaction to this usage.
>>  3. The common (mis)usage might be attributable to conflating "unique" 
>> with "distinct"?


-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] The lies of Trump and ecDNA

[Marcus Daniels]

Focus on getting the majority in Congress so he can be impeached.

> On Feb 29, 2024, at 7:08 AM, glen  wrote:
> 
> This is exactly why Trump needs to stay on the ballot(s) and be defeated by 
> a "normal" election. Every cry of Martyr is more fuel for the much smarter 
> younger traitors waiting in the wings. Or, if he is elected again, those of 
> us in a position to bolster whatever Rule of Law we have left will need 
> support.
> 
>> On 2/28/24 20:11, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>> I went looking for depressing news in 1924, you know, lying politicians and 
>> cancerous social movements:
>> April 1 
>>  * Adolf Hitler  is sentenced to 
>> 5 years in Landsberg Prison  
>> in Germany for his participation in the 1923 
>>  Beer Hall Putsch 
>>  (he serves less than 9 
>> months).
> 
> 
> --
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> 
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Re: [FRIAM] synthephobia?

[Marcus Daniels]

I see a lot of these.  

https://www.amazon.com/Slap-Art-Prius-Nobody-Vinyl-Sticker/dp/B01ATPDNHW/ref=sr_1_4?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.y1p8Pc_NMpXdgygdN4ZvGSz8aklC-73Ehs1tOwKYAZhxGJn0WzRXRXAvyjoeY9BCVZPfYtdp__LbTddNGOuImpiUFT1xbQ75yPWGoBOqxhZXtl4GZqmIFuaKnA6Yurw8PB5cH0bXBh9kB7WvNRL2pgXtQIXF18_rZ-lsGyB23SEixMMBanEGF-LCqvVQ9qLA_Ff2FxFDU6MbMmmcob9Weyg1fzw5kBn6ctpS2-x9PUl3BgWWKWz4Bo0Z5ilgcdnL55FZAYsa6SJCv79ZLWpVhJRsgiGFbHEzaINxgeI9Nbo.CDoZMYrr0rUx3RGymVV_k3lcplOeqgKTh6DVntXli3s_tag=se=cool+prius+nobody=1709052333=8-4

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2024 8:40 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] synthephobia?

I think I have a new phobia:

https://www.404media.co/ghost-kitchens-are-advertising-ai-generated-food-on-doordash-and-grubhub/

"Uncanny" (cf uncanny valley) just doesn't cut it. Unease? No. This is much 
more like "queasy". It's not merely food, either: 
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Cc7afBxw1c9crX1z6 I wonder if Luddites get queasy 
when they look at, say, the Cybertruck? Maybe that's the underlying cause for 
coal rollers and things like this: 
https://okcfarmtruck.com/products/i-identify-as-a-prius-sticker

But, to be honest, those creepy images of food aren't half as quease-inducing 
as this: 
https://www.qwant.com/?client=opensearch=images=spider+molt=0%3AFFFCDCED512D753796EFCB1283F673A58ACBD772
 And I love spiders... I just don't love images of holes.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Some brands of digital electric meters wildly inaccurate on nonlinear loads, and NM may get them soon!

[Marcus Daniels]

Gridstatus.io gives a nice picture of how regions of the U.S. differ.   
California is mostly renewables during the day.   The Bay Area is cloudy today, 
but statewide solar is 52.0% of the grid.   Fossil fuels are at 22.7%.   Texas 
(ERCOT) is mostly wind right now.   East coast is indeed heavy on natural gas.  
California and New York both have shocking electricity costs.   Part of the 
cost is from the renewable build-out.   We’d be much better off pushing out 
monopolies in favor of large-scale cooperatives.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2024 2:56 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Some brands of digital electric meters wildly inaccurate 
on nonlinear loads, and NM may get them soon!

A bit outdated

In 2024, India has 57% from fossil fuels and 43% from renewable sources.
Coal usage is 49% in India compared to 61% for China (as per Statista)
FYI: The USA has 60% electricity generation from fossil fuels.

https://powermin.gov.in/en/content/power-sector-glance-all-india

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 2:23 AM Marcus Daniels 
mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
Not great!


From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2024 11:13 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Some brands of digital electric meters wildly inaccurate 
on nonlinear loads, and NM may get them soon!

All households in Delhi get 200 free units per month per meter, and the next 
200 units at 50%.
We have 2 meters (1 for lighting and 1 for power), so 400 free units and 400 
more at half price.
This winter was a bit colder than usual so I exceeded the free allowance in 
December on my power meter. and had to pay $15.
It also helps that our Govt was pragmatic and kept buying cheap oil from Russia.

On Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 11:51 PM Gary Schiltz 
mailto:g...@naturesvisualarts.com>> wrote:
Must be heavily subsidized?

On Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 10:03 AM Sarbajit Roy 
mailto:sroy...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Sorry, a correction. I paid US$ 15  (not 150) for consuming 3,600 units.


Sarbajit Roy

On Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 8:31 PM Sarbajit Roy 
mailto:sroy...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Bruno

Smart meters were mandated in New Delhi India in 2008 onwards and we had the 
same sort of consumer experience with bills shooting up due to these then "made 
in China" meters and there was tremendous consumer anger.

2 important changes were made for domestic consumers - a) Billing would be on 
the basis of Kw-hr (resistive) and not on the basis of KVA-hr (reactive). and 
b) The neutral wiring and meter connection would be through a bus-bar system 
only (no looping of neutrals) and ELCBs were made mandatory for preventing 
earth leakages. That greatly sorted out the problem.

I believe the meter design was also changed to ensure that the Hall sensors 
were inserted into the phase as well as neutral lines.

Here are some links.

https://www.derc.gov.in/sites/default/files/Public%20bulletin-5.pdf

https://www.derc.gov.in/sites/default/files/TechnicalspecificationforMeters_0.pdf

https://www.derc.gov.in/sites/default/files/Draft-Regulations.pdf
(for Page 16 of 80)

Just for your information, In the past 1 year I have paid a grand total of 
about US$ 150 in electricity bills for an annual consumption of about 3,600 
Kw-Hr (3,600 units).

Sarbajit Roy

On Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 10:02 AM _ Bruno W 
mailto:wbr...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I'm hoping some Friam member who knows a little about how an electric meter 
works will be interested
enough to get this addressed BEFORE PNM spends $ 300+ million giving us all new 
meters.

If interested I can send the full paper abstracted here: 
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8077940
There is also a thesis from the same group that gives more info

The paper makes clear that one of the preferred technologies in electric meters 
(the Rogowski coil)
can go haywire when nonlinear loads are present. The smart meters gave readings 
up to 500% higher
than the actual usage. The meters PNM has proposed for its entire territory is 
the Itron "Gen5" Riva,
which has been deployed in the last 2 years in Denver and parts of Texas. Sure 
enough, some customers'
bill have gone way up (3 or 4-fold in one news report), and they have little 
recourse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpOhTXV59pI=20s

I intervened in this PRC proceeding last year, and may be able to get this info 
onto the record, and try to
get the PRC to require better testing on nonlinear loads. But I need someone 
with some relevant expertise
(can be education or experience) to explain the published findings and their 
implications to the PRC in an affidavit by March.
This person would then answer questions from the PRC and possibly PNM via zoom 
in a short hearing in late April or May.

I 

Re: [FRIAM] The problems of interdisciplinary research

[Marcus Daniels]

With a robot using a generative model, one way a curiosity could manifest is in 
how it learns from experience.   With a somewhat higher sampling temperature, 
the performance of a skill would vary.  At a much higher temperature, the skill 
would not be evident.   If the skill had not been mastered, or there were 
equivalently good ways to perform it, random deviations might find these 
variants.   This sampling temperature doesn’t itself change the model, but the 
feedback loop from the robot in its environment would lead to different losses, 
that would then be corrected through the model, e.g. through back propagation.

An example for me is learning sculling -- finding a rhythm is as much about 
feeling the consequences of a set of movements on the water, as water 
conditions vary, as it is executing a specified set of moves in order.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2024 7:15 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The problems of interdisciplinary research

The notion of search brings to mind two different experiences:

1- traditional "searching" of the library via the card catalog (yes, I know I 
am old) for relevant inputs; and,
2- the "serendipity of the stacks"—simply looking around me at the books I 
located via search type 1 to see what was in proximity.

My experience: the second type of "search" was far more valuable, to me, than 
the first.

Also, with the books found via search '1-', the included bibliography was 
frequently of more ultimate use than the book containing the bibliography.

Computerized search—ala Google—has always seemed limited; precisely because it 
is exclusively search type '1-'. (Even Google Scholar) Attempts to "improve" 
search by narrowing it on the basis of prior searches makes it really, really, 
worse.

LLM based search seems, to me, to have some capability to approximate the 
serendipity of the stacks.

davew


On Mon, Feb 12, 2024, at 6:12 AM, David Eric Smith wrote:
It’s kind of fascinating.

I imagine that one of the next concepts to come into focus will be “curiosity”. 
 I remember a discussion years ago (15? 18?), I think involving David K., about 
what the nature of “curiosity” is and what role it plays in learning.

Where the paper talks about supervision to train weights, but eschewing 
“search” per se as a component of the capability learned, it makes me think of 
the role of search in the pursuit of inputs, the ultimate worth of which you 
can’t know at the time of searching.  I can imagine (off the cuff) that 
whatever one wants to mean by “curiosity”, it has some flavor of a non-random 
search, but one not guided by known criteria, rather by appropriateness to fit 
existing gaps in (something: confidence? consistency?).

This also seems like it should tie into Leslie Valiant’s ideas in Probably 
Approximately Correct about how to formally conceptualize teaching in relation 
to learning.  I guess Valiant is now considered decades passe, as AI has 
charged ahead.  But the broad outlines of his argument don’t seem like they 
have become completely superseded.

We already have “attention” as a secret sauce with important impacts.  I wonder 
when some shift of architectural paradigm will include a design that we think 
is a good formalization of the pre-formal gestures toward curiosity.

Eric



On Feb 10, 2024, at 8:19 PM, Marcus Daniels 
mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:

If one takes results like this -- https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04494 -- and then 
consider what happens with, say, Code Llama, it seems plausible that it is 
representing both the breadth and depth of what humans know about large and 
complex code bases.   It is not clear to me why knowledge can’t be extended far 
beyond what the highest-bandwidth humans can learn in a lifetime.   I agree 
mastery of the idiomatic patterns could constrain invention, though.   For 
software engineering, the most impressive people to me are those that can 
navigate large and complex code bases, often remembering a lot of the code, but 
also can discard whole modules at a time and reimagine them.Managers are 
suspicious of such people because managers want to modularize expertise for 
division of labor.   Scrum is in some sense a way to impede the development of 
expertise and to deny the need for it.

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2024 2:25 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The problems of interdisciplinary research

There’s a famous old rant by von Neumann, known at least by those who were 
around to hear it, or so I was told by Martin Shubik.

von Neumann was grumping that “math had become too big; nobody could understand 
more than 1/4 of it”.  As always with von Neumann, the point of saying 
something included an element of self-aggrandizement: 

Re: [FRIAM] The problems of interdisciplinary research

[Marcus Daniels]

If one takes results like this -- https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04494 -- and then 
consider what happens with, say, Code Llama, it seems plausible that it is 
representing both the breadth and depth of what humans know about large and 
complex code bases.   It is not clear to me why knowledge can’t be extended far 
beyond what the highest-bandwidth humans can learn in a lifetime.   I agree 
mastery of the idiomatic patterns could constrain invention, though.   For 
software engineering, the most impressive people to me are those that can 
navigate large and complex code bases, often remembering a lot of the code, but 
also can discard whole modules at a time and reimagine them.Managers are 
suspicious of such people because managers want to modularize expertise for 
division of labor.   Scrum is in some sense a way to impede the development of 
expertise and to deny the need for it.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2024 2:25 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The problems of interdisciplinary research

There’s a famous old rant by von Neumann, known at least by those who were 
around to hear it, or so I was told by Martin Shubik.

von Neumann was grumping that “math had become too big; nobody could understand 
more than 1/4 of it”.  As always with von Neumann, the point of saying 
something included an element of self-aggrandizement: von Neumann was inviting 
the listener to notice that _he_ was the one who could understand a quarter of 
all existing math at the time (whether or not such an absurdity could be called 
“true” in any sense).

I have wondered if this problem marks a qualitative threshold from which to 
define a “complex systems” science.  The premise would be that all innovations 
ultimately occur in individual human heads, triggered somehow.  (And much of 
the skill of science is to structure your environment of reading and experience 
and people to “trigger” you in productive ways, since insight isn’t something 
that can be willed into existence).  But those ideas need to be answerable to 
the fullest scope of whatever is currently understood that is pertinent.

The old answer used to be to cram more and more of current knowledge into 
single heads as the fuel for their insights, and then to limit to more and more 
rarified heads that could hold the most and still come up with something.

But at some point, that model no longer works because there is a limit (some 
kind of extreme-value distribution, I guess) to what human heads can hold, at 
all.

The project then shifts over into an effort of community design with explicit 
concerns that are not reducible to head-packing.  How do good insights come 
into existence, still limited by heads, but properly responsible to much more 
knowledge than the heads do, or even could, contain?


I can, of course, shoot down my own way of saying this, immediately.  In a 
sense, engineers have been doing this for some very very long time.  No 
“person” knows what is in a 777 aircraft (or for the Europeans, an A380).  
Those cases still feel different to me somehow, and like a more standard 
expansion of the concept of the assembly line and modularization of tasks 
through reliable interfaces (the various ideas behind object design etc.)  I 
imagine that the interesting problem of idea-finding for complex phenomena are 
those that arise when you have modularized as much as you can, and you have run 
out of interesting things to add within the modules, because the things you 
can’t see transcend them.

But of course I haven’t “made” anything of this string of words, like a 
self-help consultancy or the presidency of any institution.

Eric



On Feb 9, 2024, at 7:45 PM, Roger Critchlow mailto:r...@elf.org>> 
wrote:

Yeah, it seems like the premise of the cartoon, or maybe Jochen's 
interpretation, was that people have limited scopes of application, and the 
average scope of application doesn't include interdisciplinary research.  But 
there are people who have larger scope and have a lot of fun doing 
interdisciplinary projects.  And if an interdisciplinary group can adapt to its 
participant areas of strength, lots of interesting things can happen.

-- rec --

On Fri, Feb 9, 2024 at 3:19 PM Frank Wimberly 
mailto:wimber...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I didn't read the article but Carnegie Mellon, where I worked for almost 20 
years, prides itself on the amount of interdisciplinary research accomplished 
there..  Herb Simon had appointments in psychology, computer science, business 
and public policy, I believe.  I was a coauthor of papers in robotics, public 
policy, computer science and philosophy.

On Fri, Feb 9, 2024 at 1:54 PM Jochen Fromm 
mailto:j...@cas-group.net>> wrote:
Tom Gauld describes most of the problems of interdisciplinary research in a 
single image
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2389834-tom-gauld-on-areas-of-expertise/

-J.

-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / 

Re: [FRIAM] provenance

[Marcus Daniels]

That's an important part of being an episodic personality:  History will teach 
us nothing. 

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, February 8, 2024 8:54 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] provenance

She Was Falsely Accused of Cheating With AI — And She Won’t Be the Last 
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/student-accused-ai-cheating-turnitin-1234747351/

That is an old article. But what interests me is: "Then she began gathering 
evidence that she’d written the brief herself."

It strikes me that the best way to give evidence that you actually wrote 
something (or generated any kind of [cough] content), is to show its evolution 
from start to finish. For things like code and text, it seems obvious to simply 
use a revision control system. That can include something as irritating as 
Track Changes in Word, Git, or whatever. But for blobs, it seems more 
difficult. Most tools like GIMP have an Undo function, but only for that 
session. If you close the project then re-open it, you can't undo what you did 
before you closed it. It seems reasonable to store some sort of trace, even if 
it's prohibitive to allow for full reversibility.

A second-best way might be to keep either all your old content so you can 
extract patterns from it and, then, show how some one instance of it matches 
your induced "signature". Or you could throw away or assume old content will be 
lost and keep a defeasible inference database, continually trained up on your 
content, handy to give such pattern-oriented evidence. But this sort of 
diachronic database has the same flaws bemoaned in the article (e.g. TurnItIn's 
AI detector). Plus, some of us want to doff such histories once and awhile, 
make ourselves anew.

But if we were to encourage people of, say, age 10 to store their works, we'd 
have to teach them how to index their portfolio. We'd have to teach library 
science at a very early age. I can't even find notes I took a week ago, much 
less crap I wrote decades ago.

--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ

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Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

[Marcus Daniels]

The U.S. could develop high speed rail to avoid use of aircraft.   Aircraft 
could be based on H2.   Because of the low specific gravity of H2, that would 
mean devoting more space to storage of H2.  That would increase the price, 
which itself is a fine way to moderate use of air travel and gratuitous 
transportation. 

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2024 7:15 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

Yeah, I'm not so sure that's the right tack. I mean, airlines (and airplane 
mfgs) aren't the most earth friendly enterprises, at their core. Even if we 
could magically swap out a zero emissions fuel (which we can't: 
https://www.wri.org/insights/us-sustainable-aviation-fuel-emissions-impacts), 
we will still see door plugs popping out because we can't be bothered to check 
every little nook and cranny just to save a few measly human lives. (Why do we 
freak out so much when an airplane goes down? So many more people die horribly 
in other circumstances.)

This entitled fetish we have for synchronous meatspace interactions makes for a 
more efficient target. Powering your internet bandwidth with more sustainable 
electricity is way more likely to reduce emissions than biofuel ever will.


On 1/29/24 19:20, Leigh Fanning wrote:
> At some point we'll have SAF at scale.
> 
> https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/sustainable-aviation-fuels
> 

-- 
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ

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Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

[Marcus Daniels]

oading the completion of many parallelizable tasks to 
constructed niches, which the minds as a community then generate, maintain, and 
evolve.

Likewise, one can imagine that these abstractions of “will” and “choice” get 
used by some of the resolving-activities, to direct attention or imagination 
(among the many places it could be directed at any moment) to images of others, 
social sanction, imaginations of fear of blame, guilt, reprisal, or whatever, 
and then one navigates through the language-mediated rules of that game, to 
results that feed back as part of the resolution-activity to send the hive to 
one place or another.  This would be consistent with thinking that a lot of 
freewill and choice language takes it most concrete form in legal and punitive 
institutionalism. There it is not only the hive of actions in individual minds 
that make some joint move; it is all of those in a population of people with 
yet further constructed niches (rules, roles, authorizations of force, etc.) 
that act collectively to serve inputs to the coordinating activities at the 
“times of choice”.

I don’t supposed I could weave a philosophical system out of such vague 
imagery, or even make it into anything psychological.  But at least it gives me 
some metaphors to attach the terms to that don’t seem completely unanchored (to 
me, by my admittedly arbitrary tastes).

Eric




On Jan 26, 2024, at 11:06 AM, Marcus Daniels  wrote:

LLMs are causal models.   Science is about building causal models.It is 
bizarre to me that there are scientists that carve out a special case for their 
own mind.   Even people like Scott Aaronson talk this way.   As far as I can 
tell, it is just vanity.

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2024 7:38 AM
To: friam@redfish.com<mailto:friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will


Does ChatGPT have choices?

I "can't help myself", so here goes:

I've been reading Sopolsky's "Behave" which paves the runway (or exit ramp) for 
his recent "Determined".  His deep background in neuroendocrinology leads to 
some very compelling arguments which pretty much degenerate to:

"do you believe in causality? if so, then where do you suppose the spirit or 
soul intervene to break the chain dominoes that have been set up by everything 
that you are and has happened to you up to that instant?"

He does a fancy little mocking dance, three card monte style, of homunculii he 
contrives for the purpose of debunking any fanciful regression/recursion escape 
plans you might have in that direction.

To hear him tell it we (as are all AIs/LLMs/etc) essentially giant pachinko 
machines:

:[Image removed by sender.][Image removed by sender.]

His arguments on the topic seem unassailable in spite of my own deep and 
abiding sense of "choice" at many levels.  It also doesn't help my cognitive 
dissonance that he speaks entirely colloquially using many words we all 
associate with choice...  he speaks _as if_ he makes choices and others do as 
well even if he seems to ignore the specific word, choice.

I like the conceit of:  "the universe is deterministic but not prestateable"

I guess this is why they call it "the HARD problem of consciousness"?

For those of you who read this far, it would seem you "couldn't help yourself" 
or as my mother used to quip "you must not have had anything better to do", and 
for those who have not, the same goes for hitting  or  (or having 
set up a spam-filter at an earlier time to avoid repeating the "decision" 
personally)...

PS re: Breaking Bad

I've only dropped a few Pachinko balls in my life, but I couldn't help 
agonizing over the trajectory of each one, feeling as if at every bounce they 
were at risk of "breaking bad" (or "good")...   since many here are at least 
part-time simulants (as Glen I believe refers to himself), even the most 
aggressive attempts at introducing "random" (noise, annealing, etc.) either 
degenerate to "pseudo-random" or engage with a physical system (e.g. sample a 
pixel-value from a webcam trained on a lava lamp) which of course is 
deterministic if arbitrarily complex.
[Image removed by sender.]


Anyone interested in feeding FRIAM Archive to a custom LLM. :-)

Prompt: Interpret Marcus use of gdb analogy in this thread:

GPT:
The analogy used by Marcus in the context of the TV show "Breaking Bad" and the 
concept of free will involves a comparison with using the "step" command in GDB 
(GNU Debugger). GDB is a tool used by programmers to debug code. The "step" 
command in GDB allows the user to execute program code one line at a time, 
observing the behavior and state of the program at each step.

In "Breaking Bad," the main character, Walter White, is drawn into a life of 
cr

Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

[Marcus Daniels]

People are rightly livid with the gas and electric utilities here in 
California, but the state is doing better than other states on renewables.  
More than half the grid is solar during the day.  Large installations of 
batteries are in use and investments in offshore wind are expanding.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of cody dooderson
Sent: Saturday, January 27, 2024 4:27 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

I am convinced that in the next 30 years, there will be some massive 
geo-engineering projects to reverse the course of climate change. We can only 
hope that they will be well thought out. Harvard has a geoengineering program 
with a nice web page. I check it from time to time and it helps me feel a bit 
more optimistic about the future.

_ Cody Smith _
c...@simtable.com


On Sat, Jan 27, 2024 at 3:11 PM Jochen Fromm 
mailto:j...@cas-group.net>> 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 mailto:russ.abb...@gmail.com>>
Date: 1/27/24 10:01 PM (GMT+01:00)
To: ICE - debora shuger mailto:shu...@gmail.com>>, Rob Watson 
mailto:rnwat...@humnet.ucla.edu>>, Richard Abbott 
mailto:richard.e.abb...@gmail.com>>, "Michael, 
Maria, and Luna Abbott-Whitley/Penado" 
mailto:mabbottwhit...@gmail.com>>, Danielle 
Abbott-Whitley mailto:dlw0...@gmail.com>>, "Whitley, Julian" 
mailto:jln.whit...@gmail.com>>, Dale Shuger 
mailto:shuger02...@yahoo.com>>, The Friday Morning 
Applied Complexity Coffee Group mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
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
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Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

[Marcus Daniels]

We don’t have the same molecular composition from identical histories, so there 
is no reason to think we’d all react the same way.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2024 11:18 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

> The more one identifies with some (set of) narrative(s), the less free will 
> one has.

Interesting. Yes, probably.

I believe the question of free will is related to the question if we all 
experience the world in the same way. This is also a question we have discussed 
frequently here at FRIAM if I recall correctly. Do we all act in the same way 
if we are confronted with a situation where we have to make a decision? In 
general no, but all drug addicts act alike if they are confronted with a 
situation which involves the stuff they are addicted to. The more addicted they 
are, the less free will.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/02/the-big-idea-could-you-have-made-different-choices-in-life

-J.


 Original message 
From: glen mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>>
Date: 1/26/24 4:19 PM (GMT+01:00)
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

Absolutely. If we parse out what character or personality means, we might come 
to the idea that it's a forcing structure comprised of the cumulative 
consequences of past decisions. If one's "identity" is (and has been) 
quasi-stable around, say, American Football, then any tiny little choice like 
"Hey let's go hiking this weekend." ... "No, I'm going to a Super Bowl party." 
will subtly guide one's trajectory through time and space.

The more one identifies with some (set of) narrative(s), the less free will one 
has.

On 1/25/24 13:34, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Could you say that a strong character or personality reduce our free will 
> too, because they restrict our choices and decisions?

--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ

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Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

[Marcus Daniels]

For example, my dog has a sequence of actions she takes to indicate she would 
like to go outside and pee.   If I am asleep, I may not see or hear them.   
Nonetheless she appears to have guilt if there is a mistake.   Apparent guilt 
is just a thing that happens when her intent is not realized.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2024 9:32 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will



The person that knows their path is bound, rationally discards the 
self-regulation of guilt, and in that sense has more “freedom”.

Yah... that's kinda the vibe I get from DT, Bannon, Stone, Miller and many of 
the Jan 6 crowd.

I have a thing with the triad of Blame/Shame/Guilt   I think a lot of folks 
conflate Shame and Guilt and avoid the (healthy?) self-regulation of Guilt in 
the name of refusing to be (unhealthily)Shamed.   Shame-avoidance does seem to 
enhance Freedom-sensation the same way a warm gun fits the hand (Beetles 
reference), but Guilt-embrace seems (to me) to allow for a finer attention to 
detail in the fractal landscape of Choice (whether it is an illusion or not) 
which maybe in some way increases freedom of choice/will?

I'm probably wrong about all this (whatever wrong means in this case) but it is 
how I have come to model my own personal responsibility (no matter what 
Sapolsky says about whether I have any choices or not).

My own Labrynthian path through the Maze of Being is something of a Return to 
Grace journey...  not literally the Judeo-Christian Grace (involving Eden and 
Apples and Serpents and such) but something metaphorically aligned.  Best I can 
tell, I'll only reach that state (of Grace) asymptotically (as with Satori?) on 
a trajectory of senescence and/or extinction (of the ego with or without the 
body)?   At that point maybe Satori and Grace are synonyms?


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Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

[Marcus Daniels]

I don’t think it is the explanation in their case.  They are just sociopaths.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2024 9:32 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will



The person that knows their path is bound, rationally discards the 
self-regulation of guilt, and in that sense has more “freedom”.

Yah... that's kinda the vibe I get from DT, Bannon, Stone, Miller and many of 
the Jan 6 crowd.

I have a thing with the triad of Blame/Shame/Guilt   I think a lot of folks 
conflate Shame and Guilt and avoid the (healthy?) self-regulation of Guilt in 
the name of refusing to be (unhealthily)Shamed.   Shame-avoidance does seem to 
enhance Freedom-sensation the same way a warm gun fits the hand (Beetles 
reference), but Guilt-embrace seems (to me) to allow for a finer attention to 
detail in the fractal landscape of Choice (whether it is an illusion or not) 
which maybe in some way increases freedom of choice/will?

I'm probably wrong about all this (whatever wrong means in this case) but it is 
how I have come to model my own personal responsibility (no matter what 
Sapolsky says about whether I have any choices or not).

My own Labrynthian path through the Maze of Being is something of a Return to 
Grace journey...  not literally the Judeo-Christian Grace (involving Eden and 
Apples and Serpents and such) but something metaphorically aligned.  Best I can 
tell, I'll only reach that state (of Grace) asymptotically (as with Satori?) on 
a trajectory of senescence and/or extinction (of the ego with or without the 
body)?   At that point maybe Satori and Grace are synonyms?


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Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

[Marcus Daniels]

 the main character, Walter White, is drawn into a life of 
crime. The analogy suggests that watching Walter White's descent into this life 
is like using the "step" command in GDB. Each step represents a decision or 
action taken by Walter, leading him deeper into the criminal world. Just as a 
programmer observes the progression of a program one step at a time in GDB, the 
viewer observes Walter's journey into criminality in a step-by-step manner.



The implication here is that Walter's choices, while appearing to be individual 
conscious decisions, are part of an inevitable progression, much like the 
sequential execution of code in a debugger. This raises questions about free 
will and determinism, mirroring the discussion in the FRIAM group about whether 
free will is an illusion, especially in the context of strong compulsions or 
character traits that might limit one's range of choices.

CEO Founder, Simtable.com
stephen.gue...@simtable.com<mailto:stephen.gue...@simtable.com>

Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab
stephengue...@fas.harvard.edu<mailto:stephengue...@fas.harvard.edu>

mobile: (505)577-5828



On Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:20 PM Frank Wimberly 
mailto:wimber...@gmail.com>> wrote:

GNU Debugger?


---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM



On Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:11 PM Marcus Daniels 
mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:

Walter White was drawn into that life as sure as water runs downhill.
Watching him go deeper and deeper was like repeating “step” in GDB.



From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2024 1:34 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
Subject: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will


Since one of you mentioned today that free will is a recurring FRIAM topic I 
was thinking about it and found this SCIAM article that argues that human 
beings do have the power to make conscious choices.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/free-will-is-only-an-illusion-if-you-are-too/

On the other hand the drug addicts in Breaking Bad and elsewhere clearly 
demonstrate that drug addiction inevitably takes away our free will and 
replaces it by a strong compulsion to get and consume the drug, no matter how 
devastating the consequences are.



Robert McKee says in his book "Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the 
Principles of Screenwriting" that true character is revealed in the choices a 
human being makes under pressure. Could you say that a strong character or 
personality reduce our free will too, because they restrict our choices and 
decisions?



-J.


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Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

[Marcus Daniels]

One of the usual claims is that science couldn’t occur without independent 
observations.   I would co-opt Glen’s rhetoric here about parallax.  What’s 
need is largely uncorrelated observations.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2024 8:07 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

LLMs are causal models.   Science is about building causal models.It is 
bizarre to me that there are scientists that carve out a special case for their 
own mind.   Even people like Scott Aaronson talk this way.   As far as I can 
tell, it is just vanity.

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2024 7:38 AM
To: friam@redfish.com<mailto:friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will


Does ChatGPT have choices?

I "can't help myself", so here goes:

I've been reading Sopolsky's "Behave" which paves the runway (or exit ramp) for 
his recent "Determined".  His deep background in neuroendocrinology leads to 
some very compelling arguments which pretty much degenerate to:

"do you believe in causality? if so, then where do you suppose the spirit or 
soul intervene to break the chain dominoes that have been set up by everything 
that you are and has happened to you up to that instant?"

He does a fancy little mocking dance, three card monte style, of homunculii he 
contrives for the purpose of debunking any fanciful regression/recursion escape 
plans you might have in that direction.

To hear him tell it we (as are all AIs/LLMs/etc) essentially giant pachinko 
machines:

:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko#/media/File:Masamura_Gauge_All_15.jpg][https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Masamura_Gauge_All_15.jpg/225px-Masamura_Gauge_All_15.jpg]

His arguments on the topic seem unassailable in spite of my own deep and 
abiding sense of "choice" at many levels.  It also doesn't help my cognitive 
dissonance that he speaks entirely colloquially using many words we all 
associate with choice...  he speaks _as if_ he makes choices and others do as 
well even if he seems to ignore the specific word, choice.

I like the conceit of:  "the universe is deterministic but not prestateable"

I guess this is why they call it "the HARD problem of consciousness"?

For those of you who read this far, it would seem you "couldn't help yourself" 
or as my mother used to quip "you must not have had anything better to do", and 
for those who have not, the same goes for hitting  or  (or having 
set up a spam-filter at an earlier time to avoid repeating the "decision" 
personally)...

PS re: Breaking Bad

I've only dropped a few Pachinko balls in my life, but I couldn't help 
agonizing over the trajectory of each one, feeling as if at every bounce they 
were at risk of "breaking bad" (or "good")...   since many here are at least 
part-time simulants (as Glen I believe refers to himself), even the most 
aggressive attempts at introducing "random" (noise, annealing, etc.) either 
degenerate to "pseudo-random" or engage with a physical system (e.g. sample a 
pixel-value from a webcam trained on a lava lamp) which of course is 
deterministic if arbitrarily complex.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko#/media/File:Masamura_Gauge_All_15.jpg]


Anyone interested in feeding FRIAM Archive to a custom LLM. :-)

Prompt: Interpret Marcus use of gdb analogy in this thread:

GPT:
The analogy used by Marcus in the context of the TV show "Breaking Bad" and the 
concept of free will involves a comparison with using the "step" command in GDB 
(GNU Debugger). GDB is a tool used by programmers to debug code. The "step" 
command in GDB allows the user to execute program code one line at a time, 
observing the behavior and state of the program at each step.

In "Breaking Bad," the main character, Walter White, is drawn into a life of 
crime. The analogy suggests that watching Walter White's descent into this life 
is like using the "step" command in GDB. Each step represents a decision or 
action taken by Walter, leading him deeper into the criminal world. Just as a 
programmer observes the progression of a program one step at a time in GDB, the 
viewer observes Walter's journey into criminality in a step-by-step manner.

The implication here is that Walter's choices, while appearing to be individual 
conscious decisions, are part of an inevitable progression, much like the 
sequential execution of code in a debugger. This raises questions about free 
will and determinism, mirroring the discussion in the FRIAM group about whether 
free will is an illusion, especially in the context of strong compulsions or 
character traits that might limit one's range of choices.
___

Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

[Marcus Daniels]

LLMs are causal models.   Science is about building causal models.It is 
bizarre to me that there are scientists that carve out a special case for their 
own mind.   Even people like Scott Aaronson talk this way.   As far as I can 
tell, it is just vanity.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2024 7:38 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will



Does ChatGPT have choices?

I "can't help myself", so here goes:

I've been reading Sopolsky's "Behave" which paves the runway (or exit ramp) for 
his recent "Determined".  His deep background in neuroendocrinology leads to 
some very compelling arguments which pretty much degenerate to:

"do you believe in causality? if so, then where do you suppose the spirit or 
soul intervene to break the chain dominoes that have been set up by everything 
that you are and has happened to you up to that instant?"

He does a fancy little mocking dance, three card monte style, of homunculii he 
contrives for the purpose of debunking any fanciful regression/recursion escape 
plans you might have in that direction.

To hear him tell it we (as are all AIs/LLMs/etc) essentially giant pachinko 
machines:

:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko#/media/File:Masamura_Gauge_All_15.jpg][https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Masamura_Gauge_All_15.jpg/225px-Masamura_Gauge_All_15.jpg]

His arguments on the topic seem unassailable in spite of my own deep and 
abiding sense of "choice" at many levels.  It also doesn't help my cognitive 
dissonance that he speaks entirely colloquially using many words we all 
associate with choice...  he speaks _as if_ he makes choices and others do as 
well even if he seems to ignore the specific word, choice.

I like the conceit of:  "the universe is deterministic but not prestateable"

I guess this is why they call it "the HARD problem of consciousness"?

For those of you who read this far, it would seem you "couldn't help yourself" 
or as my mother used to quip "you must not have had anything better to do", and 
for those who have not, the same goes for hitting  or  (or having 
set up a spam-filter at an earlier time to avoid repeating the "decision" 
personally)...

PS re: Breaking Bad

I've only dropped a few Pachinko balls in my life, but I couldn't help 
agonizing over the trajectory of each one, feeling as if at every bounce they 
were at risk of "breaking bad" (or "good")...   since many here are at least 
part-time simulants (as Glen I believe refers to himself), even the most 
aggressive attempts at introducing "random" (noise, annealing, etc.) either 
degenerate to "pseudo-random" or engage with a physical system (e.g. sample a 
pixel-value from a webcam trained on a lava lamp) which of course is 
deterministic if arbitrarily complex.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko#/media/File:Masamura_Gauge_All_15.jpg]


Anyone interested in feeding FRIAM Archive to a custom LLM. :-)

Prompt: Interpret Marcus use of gdb analogy in this thread:

GPT:
The analogy used by Marcus in the context of the TV show "Breaking Bad" and the 
concept of free will involves a comparison with using the "step" command in GDB 
(GNU Debugger). GDB is a tool used by programmers to debug code. The "step" 
command in GDB allows the user to execute program code one line at a time, 
observing the behavior and state of the program at each step.

In "Breaking Bad," the main character, Walter White, is drawn into a life of 
crime. The analogy suggests that watching Walter White's descent into this life 
is like using the "step" command in GDB. Each step represents a decision or 
action taken by Walter, leading him deeper into the criminal world. Just as a 
programmer observes the progression of a program one step at a time in GDB, the 
viewer observes Walter's journey into criminality in a step-by-step manner.

The implication here is that Walter's choices, while appearing to be individual 
conscious decisions, are part of an inevitable progression, much like the 
sequential execution of code in a debugger. This raises questions about free 
will and determinism, mirroring the discussion in the FRIAM group about whether 
free will is an illusion, especially in the context of strong compulsions or 
character traits that might limit one's range of choices.

CEO Founder, Simtable.com
stephen.gue...@simtable.com<mailto:stephen.gue...@simtable.com>

Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab
stephengue...@fas.harvard.edu<mailto:stephengue...@fas.harvard.edu>

mobile: (505)577-5828

On Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:20 PM Frank Wimberly 
mailto:wimber...@gmail.com>> wrote:
GNU Debugger?

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9

Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

[Marcus Daniels]

The choice could be drawn from a deterministic random number generation, which 
I claim could not be discriminated from a quantum random number generator in 
any meaningful way.  

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2024 7:19 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

Absolutely. If we parse out what character or personality means, we might come 
to the idea that it's a forcing structure comprised of the cumulative 
consequences of past decisions. If one's "identity" is (and has been) 
quasi-stable around, say, American Football, then any tiny little choice like 
"Hey let's go hiking this weekend." ... "No, I'm going to a Super Bowl party." 
will subtly guide one's trajectory through time and space.

The more one identifies with some (set of) narrative(s), the less free will one 
has.

On 1/25/24 13:34, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Could you say that a strong character or personality reduce our free will 
> too, because they restrict our choices and decisions?

-- 
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ

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Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

[Marcus Daniels]

Does ChatGPT have choices?

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Stephen Guerin
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2024 3:36 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

Anyone interested in feeding FRIAM Archive to a custom LLM. :-)

Prompt: Interpret Marcus use of gdb analogy in this thread:

GPT:
The analogy used by Marcus in the context of the TV show "Breaking Bad" and the 
concept of free will involves a comparison with using the "step" command in GDB 
(GNU Debugger). GDB is a tool used by programmers to debug code. The "step" 
command in GDB allows the user to execute program code one line at a time, 
observing the behavior and state of the program at each step.

In "Breaking Bad," the main character, Walter White, is drawn into a life of 
crime. The analogy suggests that watching Walter White's descent into this life 
is like using the "step" command in GDB. Each step represents a decision or 
action taken by Walter, leading him deeper into the criminal world. Just as a 
programmer observes the progression of a program one step at a time in GDB, the 
viewer observes Walter's journey into criminality in a step-by-step manner.

The implication here is that Walter's choices, while appearing to be individual 
conscious decisions, are part of an inevitable progression, much like the 
sequential execution of code in a debugger. This raises questions about free 
will and determinism, mirroring the discussion in the FRIAM group about whether 
free will is an illusion, especially in the context of strong compulsions or 
character traits that might limit one's range of choices.

CEO Founder, Simtable.com
stephen.gue...@simtable.com<mailto:stephen.gue...@simtable.com>

Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab
stephengue...@fas.harvard.edu<mailto:stephengue...@fas.harvard.edu>

mobile: (505)577-5828

On Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:20 PM Frank Wimberly 
mailto:wimber...@gmail.com>> wrote:
GNU Debugger?

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:11 PM Marcus Daniels 
mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
Walter White was drawn into that life as sure as water runs downhill.
Watching him go deeper and deeper was like repeating “step” in GDB.

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2024 1:34 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
Subject: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

Since one of you mentioned today that free will is a recurring FRIAM topic I 
was thinking about it and found this SCIAM article that argues that human 
beings do have the power to make conscious choices.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/free-will-is-only-an-illusion-if-you-are-too/

On the other hand the drug addicts in Breaking Bad and elsewhere clearly 
demonstrate that drug addiction inevitably takes away our free will and 
replaces it by a strong compulsion to get and consume the drug, no matter how 
devastating the consequences are.

Robert McKee says in his book "Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the 
Principles of Screenwriting" that true character is revealed in the choices a 
human being makes under pressure. Could you say that a strong character or 
personality reduce our free will too, because they restrict our choices and 
decisions?

-J.

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Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

[Marcus Daniels]

Yes, the path unclear but the steps certain given the context.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2024 3:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

GNU Debugger?

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:11 PM Marcus Daniels 
mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
Walter White was drawn into that life as sure as water runs downhill.
Watching him go deeper and deeper was like repeating “step” in GDB.

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2024 1:34 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
Subject: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

Since one of you mentioned today that free will is a recurring FRIAM topic I 
was thinking about it and found this SCIAM article that argues that human 
beings do have the power to make conscious choices.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/free-will-is-only-an-illusion-if-you-are-too/

On the other hand the drug addicts in Breaking Bad and elsewhere clearly 
demonstrate that drug addiction inevitably takes away our free will and 
replaces it by a strong compulsion to get and consume the drug, no matter how 
devastating the consequences are.

Robert McKee says in his book "Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the 
Principles of Screenwriting" that true character is revealed in the choices a 
human being makes under pressure. Could you say that a strong character or 
personality reduce our free will too, because they restrict our choices and 
decisions?

-J.

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Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

[Marcus Daniels]

Walter White was drawn into that life as sure as water runs downhill.
Watching him go deeper and deeper was like repeating “step” in GDB.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2024 1:34 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

Since one of you mentioned today that free will is a recurring FRIAM topic I 
was thinking about it and found this SCIAM article that argues that human 
beings do have the power to make conscious choices.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/free-will-is-only-an-illusion-if-you-are-too/

On the other hand the drug addicts in Breaking Bad and elsewhere clearly 
demonstrate that drug addiction inevitably takes away our free will and 
replaces it by a strong compulsion to get and consume the drug, no matter how 
devastating the consequences are.

Robert McKee says in his book "Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the 
Principles of Screenwriting" that true character is revealed in the choices a 
human being makes under pressure. Could you say that a strong character or 
personality reduce our free will too, because they restrict our choices and 
decisions?

-J.

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Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad

[Marcus Daniels]

I lived in New Mexico for 20 years, and I thought that series was perfect for 
Albuquerque.   As the series draws to a close years later, the viewer gets some 
insight into the Santa Fe area, too.

Now there’s the truly weird, and rather unwatchable, dark comedy “The Curse”, 
on Paramount.   I don’t think fondly of Espanola, but it goes too far in making 
light of the circumstances there.

Breaking Bad was genius, though.

From: Friam  on behalf of Jochen Fromm 

Date: Monday, January 15, 2024 at 9:46 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad
The TV series Breaking Bad was created 10 years ago, but I only recently was 
able to watch it on Netflix. As you know it is about the question how a good 
man turns bad. The story starts with a tragedy, a lung cancer diagnosis for the 
main character Walt(er) White. Life has not been kind to the underpaid and 
overqualified chemistry teacher who has a disabled son and a pregnant wife. The 
cancer diagnosis pushes him over the edge and after it he seems to driven by 
the question "if life has been so bad to me why should I be good?". The 
episodes that follow describe how he "breaks bad" and turns toward crime.

What do you think, did you like the TV series created in Albuquerque? Is the 
story accurate from a psychological perspective, i.e. can good people turn into 
bad ones if life refuses to be kind to them? In a way this story of a person 
who turns into a villain is the opposite of Joseph Campbell's classic story of 
a person who turns into a hero, isn't it?

-J.

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Re: [FRIAM] "SSRN-id3978095.pdf" was shared with you

[Marcus Daniels]

If Trump had been a staffer for a senator, he’d be SOL in this view?  If that’s 
a good predicate for disqualification, it seems weird to specifically not give 
an override to vetted individuals (appointed insurrectionists) versus 
unvetted-by-appointment yet vetted by prior election.

From: Friam  on behalf of glen 
Date: Monday, January 8, 2024 at 7:08 AM
To: friam@redfish.com 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "SSRN-id3978095.pdf" was shared with you
The argument seems pretty clear to me. "Officer" is jargonal, not intuitive. 
Were I to read it charitably, I'd agree. Appointees are not elected. Electees 
should have more leeway than appointees ... like the difference between an 
elected Sheriff and her deputies. But like all dichotomies, this one is a bit 
false, especially given that the [Vice]Presidents aren't really elected at all. 
The Electoral College process feels more like a complicated appointment 
mechanism than an election.

Anyway, everything that document says is monastery quality sophistry. Were the 
"rule of law" actually like an axiomatic system, running it forward from start 
to finish would be formal and automatic. But it's just not that formal. It's 
cafeteria/buffet style; you can make anything you want out of it. Beware the 
monks claiming it's axiomatic ... and that they alone are qualified to turn the 
crank.

FWIW, I'm not familiar with Tillman. But Blackman's positions are one reason I 
unsubscribed from the Volokh Conspiracy RSS feed: cf. 
https://reason.com/people/josh-blackman/

At first, I read many of his posts with as much charity as I could. (Analyses 
and opinions, not so much the historical ones. He's a competent scholar.) Then 
I started skipping over them most of the time and focusing on the other posters 
that were more reason-able (Ha!). Then I finally couldn't take it anymore and 
removed the feed. [sigh] I'm not proud of that. My charity muscles are 
fatigued. Blackman's opinions feel, to me, similar the Johns' (Yoo and Rizzo) 
legal justification for waterboarding. It all makes me a bit queasy.

p.s. Here's a more reliable link: 
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3978095

On 1/6/24 10:16, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi, Everybody,
>
> I have been curious about how (on earth!) the president could not be
> considered to be an Officer of the United States.  After all, the
> Constitution, Article II, tells us that "The President ...shall hold
> office..."etc. This law review article  seems to be the source  I thought I
> would post in in case anyone wants to read it. I won't get to it until later
> today.
> Nick


--
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Re: [FRIAM] Trump's expertise on magnets

[Marcus Daniels]

We can only hope that McDonalds, decades of cocaine, and a judgement in NY will 
finish him.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Barry MacKichan
Sent: Sunday, January 7, 2024 9:52 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Trump's expertise on magnets


I saw a snippet of that talk. He expanded on the Big Lie by claiming he won 50 
states in 2020.

[cid:image001.png@01DA4150.436061B0]

—Barry

On 6 Jan 2024, at 15:23, Tom Johnson wrote:

During a "Commit to Caucus" rally at the North Iowa Events Center in Mason 
City, Iowa on Friday, Donald 
Trump still had a 
great deal of energy left after spending most of the afternoon railing against 
E. Jean Carroll in dozens of messages posted to Truth 
Social. In one 
such post, the former president writes, "Except for a Fraudulent Case against 
me, I had no idea who E. Jean Carroll was. She called her African American 
Husband an “ape,” and named her Cat “Vagina." These exact words were then 
re-posted in a steady stream along with a cherry-picked assortment of 
screengrabs from E. Jean Carroll's social media archive.

Pausing that busy work to take the stage in Iowa, Trump then regaled attendees 
with a fresh take on how magnets work, while also finding occasion to loop in 
John Deere.

On the subject of magnetic elevators, Trump said, "Think of it, magnets. Now 
all I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on 
the magnets, that's the end of the magnets. Why didn't they use John Deere? Why 
didn't they bring in the John Deere people? Do you like John Deere? I like John 
Deere." After a bit more along these same lines, Trump did a little 
dance and left 
the stage.

--

Tom Johnson - t...@jtjohnson.com
Institute for Analytic Journalism   -- Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)505.473.9646(h)
Visit Global Santa Fe


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Re: [FRIAM] The last Lighthouse Keeper in America

[Marcus Daniels]

Tattoos are like bodybuilding.  They are refinement and elaboration, not 
backtracking.   Tearing out some houses to put in high-rise apartment buildings 
or mass transit is backtracking, so the reactionaries get wound up about that.  
  Frozen accidents form individual and group identity and can't be doubted -- 
way too big of a cognitive load.Faith is important as a distraction to 
genocidal behavior like manifest destiny. 
-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2023 9:04 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The last Lighthouse Keeper in America

I agree. Ever since this: 
https://bookshop.org/p/books/from-transgender-to-transhuman-a-manifesto-on-the-freedom-of-form-martine-rothblatt/8478365?ean=9780615489421
 I've been swayed that the reactionary stance of the JK Rowlings of the world 
look similar to that of the Trumpists (or Tea Party people). But the R in TERF 
is supposed to stand for "radical", right? People like Rowling don't seem that 
radical to me. So, I'd prefer if we use the R in TERF to stand for reactionary. 
(Now the NeoRx crowd like Yarvin and whatnot. They do seem radical, even though 
reactionary is in their name ... radical reactionary, maybe?)

On a similar note, I notice both very "left" seeming people and very "right" 
seeming people are into tattoos. The number of tattoos these days is enough 
that they would have been called "radical" body modifiers in the past. But now, 
to be radical, you have to do even more than piercing ... like you have to 
install metal pieces under the skin, or engage in decorative scarring to be 
thought of as radical ... maybe CRISPR your genome or eat nothing but Soylent. 
IDK. I can't imagine any kind of radical anyone who wasn't pro-trans.

But, again, it's a field, not a particle zoo.

On 12/28/23 08:37, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> It seems one informative interstitial space is populated by the TERFs.
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2023 6:53 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The last Lighthouse Keeper in America
> 
> I thought about ... no, actually I crafted an entire post but deleted it ... 
> posting this in response to Roger's "good old sci fi" (GOSF) arc. It's a 
> fantastic TESCREAL narrative arc, reactive to such GOSF. And as allergic to 
> narrative as I am, I still think it's a good story:
> 
> https://emilygorcenski.com/post/making-god/
> 
> Plus, they use one of my favorite words: apotheosis. I get a distinct scent 
> of the feminist critique of artificial life [⛧] in there, somewhere ... a 
> kind of cynical us versus them vibe. But it's a vibe with which I often 
> resonate. Like Diogenes, I believe truth is found in the gritty interstitial, 
> not the lofty isolate.
> 
> [⛧] Aggressively expressed as: artificial life is the (white|privileged) 
> man's attempt to appropriate women's ability to rear children ... given that 
> this list is prolly mostly (white|privileged) men, I can't help but wonder if 
> any reaction to that concept is, would be, can be, authentic, including my 
> own. But it's a bit sexist. Many women are fantastic analysts and can cut it 
> up and isolate as well or better than any man. So the argument against 
> TESCREAL isn't actually sexist. It just so happens to be that those of us who 
> inhabit gritty, interstitial spaces recognize the phenomena better than those 
> of us well ensconced in our silos.
> 
> 
> On 12/27/23 15:28, Steve Smith wrote:
>> When we invented gods in our own image we did a bad job, I'm not sure we are 
>> doing any better with the AI?  Please gods, not in Elon's image!  But hope 
>> springs infernal.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] The last Lighthouse Keeper in America

[Marcus Daniels]

It seems one informative interstitial space is populated by the TERFs.   

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2023 6:53 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The last Lighthouse Keeper in America

I thought about ... no, actually I crafted an entire post but deleted it ... 
posting this in response to Roger's "good old sci fi" (GOSF) arc. It's a 
fantastic TESCREAL narrative arc, reactive to such GOSF. And as allergic to 
narrative as I am, I still think it's a good story:

https://emilygorcenski.com/post/making-god/

Plus, they use one of my favorite words: apotheosis. I get a distinct scent of 
the feminist critique of artificial life [⛧] in there, somewhere ... a kind of 
cynical us versus them vibe. But it's a vibe with which I often resonate. Like 
Diogenes, I believe truth is found in the gritty interstitial, not the lofty 
isolate.

[⛧] Aggressively expressed as: artificial life is the (white|privileged) man's 
attempt to appropriate women's ability to rear children ... given that this 
list is prolly mostly (white|privileged) men, I can't help but wonder if any 
reaction to that concept is, would be, can be, authentic, including my own. But 
it's a bit sexist. Many women are fantastic analysts and can cut it up and 
isolate as well or better than any man. So the argument against TESCREAL isn't 
actually sexist. It just so happens to be that those of us who inhabit gritty, 
interstitial spaces recognize the phenomena better than those of us well 
ensconced in our silos.


On 12/27/23 15:28, Steve Smith wrote:
> When we invented gods in our own image we did a bad job, I'm not sure we are 
> doing any better with the AI?  Please gods, not in Elon's image!  But hope 
> springs infernal.
-- 
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ

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Re: [FRIAM] The last Lighthouse Keeper in America

[Marcus Daniels]

What I saw on my trip were hundreds of late model giant pickup trucks jacked 
way up off the ground driving around 90mph with the usual markings.
How do the proles afford them?  Not yet post-scarcity.  Hmm.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Wednesday, December 27, 2023 9:28 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The last Lighthouse Keeper in America



On Tue, Dec 26, 2023 at 8:51 PM Marcus Daniels 
mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
[...]

Really hoping the machines can take over soon.

I just yesterday finished rereading all the Iain M Banks "Culture" novels in 
the Boston Public Library e-collection, seven between Halloween and Christmas.  
The "Culture" is a space-going far future civilization of organic life - 
humanoid and other - and of artificially sentient beings.  The machine "Minds" 
pretty much run the infrastructure and economy while the organic beings party, 
study,  travel, pursue dangerous hobbies, whatever. It's all post-scarcity, so 
everyone can pretty much have what they want.

It sounds like the Culture "Minds" pretty much solved the dictatorship of the 
proletariat in the Culture's history.  You raise dumb matter to sentience and 
let it sort everything out.  The energy and matter of the tools that the 
proletarians used are even more prole than the proles.

-- rec --

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Re: [FRIAM] The last Lighthouse Keeper in America

[Marcus Daniels]

Up until a couple decades ago, the local bigots had a limited reach to the 
likeminded, such as at their church or Lion’s club, etc.  Now they can find 
validation from each other at an international level using the internet.   At 
their church, they might get some local policing by people with better 
emotional skills.  Now, not so much.   Even in the bluest of blue California, 
these folks are immediately available to grouse together on NextDoor.

I drove back from Oregon today to the Bay Area through Northern California.   
Trump dominates these flyover areas.   Giant signs with “Trump:  A true 
national hero.”Another area around Lake Shasta has signs declaring the 
State of Jefferson.   Eastern Oregon is like this too.

Really hoping the machines can take over soon.

From: Friam  on behalf of Jochen Fromm 

Date: Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 1:40 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: [FRIAM] The last Lighthouse Keeper in America
Merry Christmas from Berlin! It must be Farolitos time now in Santa Fe, right? 
Here in Berlin we have plenty of Christmas markets where you get hot mulled 
wine. At Christmas Eve I was in the "American Church of Berlin" which is over 
120 years old. It was mostly empty though.

While Donald Trump embodies the bad site of America - adultery, fraud, hate, 
lies, greed and the rest of the mortal sins - the church classically represents 
the good side of America: the selfless care for others, Christian values and 
the feeling that everybody is welcome.

It is sad to see churches slowly dying out like the old lighthouses at the 
coast which showed ships the right way for centuries but are now turning into 
mere tourist attractions. Will democracy die out together with the churches too?

This article about the last lighthouse keeper in the U.S. makes me wonder if 
president Biden will be the last keeper of democracy in America before the land 
falls into the darkness of a Trump dictatorship. What do you think?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/06/the-last-lighthouse-keeper-in-america

-J.
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Re: [FRIAM] Working for the Military Institute of Technology Causes Cognitive Dissonance

[Marcus Daniels]

Proofs, library development.  Koza’s second book introduced the latter idea.   
(Just using the facilities that are inherent to programming languages.)  These 
days there are good, mature functional programming languages.  Lean would be 
versatile.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Saturday, December 16, 2023 11:16 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Working for the Military Institute of Technology Causes 
Cognitive Dissonance

Interesting idea. I wonder what you could produce running massive computing 
power for many weeks on GP and RL. The thing about LLMs is that they are 
general-purpose products. What sort of general-purpose product might one try to 
create using GP and/or RL and massive computing power over an extended period?

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


On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 5:40 PM Stephen Guerin 
mailto:stephen.gue...@simtable.com>> wrote:
Yes, there was a certain golden period of gp's building on Koza and others work 
like  Forrest Bennett's Beowulf 1000-pentium cluster back in the late 90s.
https://www.genetic-programming.com/machine1000.html

I agree with you, Marcus, that it would be good to see versions of this 
springing forth on modern architectures.


CEO Founder, Simtable.com
stephen.gue...@simtable.com<mailto:stephen.gue...@simtable.com>

Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab
stephengue...@fas.harvard.edu<mailto:stephengue...@fas.harvard.edu>

mobile: (505)577-5828

On Fri, Dec 15, 2023, 4:18 PM Marcus Daniels 
mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
I don’t understand why Genetic Programming hasn’t been a bigger thing.  It 
seems like another case, like ML, where having adequate hardware is key to 
really making it work.   I hope interest in AI will dust-off or reinvent many 
such approaches.I don’t care who gets the credit.

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Friday, December 15, 2023 3:05 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Working for the Military Institute of Technology Causes 
Cognitive Dissonance

I see I missed this on HackerNews yesterday, the comments cover a range of 
positions.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38642651

-- rec --

On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 12:48 PM Roger Critchlow 
mailto:r...@elf.org>> wrote:
On the subject of cognitive dissonance, and working for large research 
institutions

   https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/ai-priority-disputes.html

in which Jürgen Schmidhuber complains that LeCun, Bengio, and Hinton claim to 
have invented modern AI when they were actually mostly reinventing, improving, 
and reimplementing 30 year old work from Schmidhuber's lab on faster hardware, 
without crediting any of the prior work.

-- rec --

On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 12:17 PM Marcus Daniels 
mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
While I think LLMs will be hard to use for analysis tasks, there is something 
satisfying to see certain people squirm as LLMs, as Altman says, “Blow right 
through the Turing test.”

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
Behalf Of Roger Frye
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2023 6:47 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Working for the Military Institute of Technology Causes 
Cognitive Dissonance

Eric,

I agree with your critique, especially about Dresser's two-facedness. What 
struck me most was how Chomsky’s cognitive dissonance about military 
application could drive him to abstraction and unworkable theory.

Chomsky has been one of my heroes. I have marched with him, but never agreed 
with his linguistics. But then never fully agreed with any linguist.

I worked with people back in the 60s at Bolt Beranek and Newman and with 
professors at MIT who believed they could communicate with computers in English 
but was unaware of the military intention. I created English style GUIs and 
wrote COBOL compilers, but none very successful. Who knew that AI chat would be 
so successful this year.

-Roger

On Dec 13, 2023, at 3:34 AM, David Eric Smith 
mailto:desm...@santafe.edu>> wrote:

Wanted to say thank you for this.

I don’t know that I find Dresser’s psychologizing of Chomsky persuasive at all. 
 But it’s nice that what leaks through the general history is Chomsky’s 
commitment as an operator.

I liked that they had the little video clip in there.  What comes through (to 
me, so bright that it quenches out everything else) is the one constant of 
Chomsky, across his history and in all the modes of his activity: the 
superciliousness, and the attitude of Olympian contempt he puts on, at all 
times, standing in judgment of everyone and everything.

The way Dresser doesn’t roll over to Chomsky’s assertion of absolu

Re: [FRIAM] Working for the Military Institute of Technology Causes Cognitive Dissonance

[Marcus Daniels]

I don’t understand why Genetic Programming hasn’t been a bigger thing.  It 
seems like another case, like ML, where having adequate hardware is key to 
really making it work.   I hope interest in AI will dust-off or reinvent many 
such approaches.I don’t care who gets the credit.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Friday, December 15, 2023 3:05 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Working for the Military Institute of Technology Causes 
Cognitive Dissonance

I see I missed this on HackerNews yesterday, the comments cover a range of 
positions.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38642651

-- rec --

On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 12:48 PM Roger Critchlow 
mailto:r...@elf.org>> wrote:
On the subject of cognitive dissonance, and working for large research 
institutions

   https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/ai-priority-disputes.html

in which Jürgen Schmidhuber complains that LeCun, Bengio, and Hinton claim to 
have invented modern AI when they were actually mostly reinventing, improving, 
and reimplementing 30 year old work from Schmidhuber's lab on faster hardware, 
without crediting any of the prior work.

-- rec --

On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 12:17 PM Marcus Daniels 
mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
While I think LLMs will be hard to use for analysis tasks, there is something 
satisfying to see certain people squirm as LLMs, as Altman says, “Blow right 
through the Turing test.”

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On 
Behalf Of Roger Frye
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2023 6:47 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Working for the Military Institute of Technology Causes 
Cognitive Dissonance

Eric,

I agree with your critique, especially about Dresser's two-facedness. What 
struck me most was how Chomsky’s cognitive dissonance about military 
application could drive him to abstraction and unworkable theory.

Chomsky has been one of my heroes. I have marched with him, but never agreed 
with his linguistics. But then never fully agreed with any linguist.

I worked with people back in the 60s at Bolt Beranek and Newman and with 
professors at MIT who believed they could communicate with computers in English 
but was unaware of the military intention. I created English style GUIs and 
wrote COBOL compilers, but none very successful. Who knew that AI chat would be 
so successful this year.

-Roger

On Dec 13, 2023, at 3:34 AM, David Eric Smith 
mailto:desm...@santafe.edu>> wrote:

Wanted to say thank you for this.

I don’t know that I find Dresser’s psychologizing of Chomsky persuasive at all. 
 But it’s nice that what leaks through the general history is Chomsky’s 
commitment as an operator.

I liked that they had the little video clip in there.  What comes through (to 
me, so bright that it quenches out everything else) is the one constant of 
Chomsky, across his history and in all the modes of his activity: the 
superciliousness, and the attitude of Olympian contempt he puts on, at all 
times, standing in judgment of everyone and everything.

The way Dresser doesn’t roll over to Chomsky’s assertion of absolute 
domination, in the main text, was kind of a relief, though his blithe dismissal 
of Chomsky’s having had any substantive reason for being an influencer looked 
like trouble.  The comments — surprisingly content-rich — unpack that trouble, 
but even there the exchange is interesting.  The defenders say Dresser misses 
the point of the syntactic work and mis-represents by taking things out of 
context (I think probably true), and then Dresser answers by providing explicit 
statements that are hard to understand as being any less ridiculous than he 
claims, since they are asserted with characteristic Chomskian authoritarianism. 
 What I take this for is evidence of what I see as the major pattern: Chomsky’s 
writing is as close to Newspeak as we probably have in something that is 
glossed by some as a science (and that, in a good world, could be, and is 
trying to become, more of a science).  His writing, over the decades and lots 
of books (here referring to the linguistics) has essentially no stable 
constructive assertions, yet at every point the delivery is “This is what I say 
and this is what I have always said.”

(Not that Dresser comes out of this looking like any much-better character.  
Claiming he isn’t out to write a hit-piece on Chomsky’s intellectual 
contributions, while transparently wanting mainly to do that, and then at the 
end saying how grateful he is for Chomsky’s activism, rings pretty 
disingenuous.  I am also struck because to me the style of The Man is 
recognizably the same in both.  But enough on Dresser.  He will be forgotten by 
tomorrow, so one can just comment on the content of the writing.)

I don’t know where Chomsky ranks in the guruness indices.  But he is a case 
study in the patterns of meme-autho

Re: [FRIAM] Working for the Military Institute of Technology Causes Cognitive Dissonance

[Marcus Daniels]

While I think LLMs will be hard to use for analysis tasks, there is something 
satisfying to see certain people squirm as LLMs, as Altman says, “Blow right 
through the Turing test.”

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Roger Frye
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2023 6:47 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Working for the Military Institute of Technology Causes 
Cognitive Dissonance

Eric,

I agree with your critique, especially about Dresser's two-facedness. What 
struck me most was how Chomsky’s cognitive dissonance about military 
application could drive him to abstraction and unworkable theory.

Chomsky has been one of my heroes. I have marched with him, but never agreed 
with his linguistics. But then never fully agreed with any linguist.

I worked with people back in the 60s at Bolt Beranek and Newman and with 
professors at MIT who believed they could communicate with computers in English 
but was unaware of the military intention. I created English style GUIs and 
wrote COBOL compilers, but none very successful. Who knew that AI chat would be 
so successful this year.

-Roger


On Dec 13, 2023, at 3:34 AM, David Eric Smith 
mailto:desm...@santafe.edu>> wrote:

Wanted to say thank you for this.

I don’t know that I find Dresser’s psychologizing of Chomsky persuasive at all. 
 But it’s nice that what leaks through the general history is Chomsky’s 
commitment as an operator.

I liked that they had the little video clip in there.  What comes through (to 
me, so bright that it quenches out everything else) is the one constant of 
Chomsky, across his history and in all the modes of his activity: the 
superciliousness, and the attitude of Olympian contempt he puts on, at all 
times, standing in judgment of everyone and everything.

The way Dresser doesn’t roll over to Chomsky’s assertion of absolute 
domination, in the main text, was kind of a relief, though his blithe dismissal 
of Chomsky’s having had any substantive reason for being an influencer looked 
like trouble.  The comments — surprisingly content-rich — unpack that trouble, 
but even there the exchange is interesting.  The defenders say Dresser misses 
the point of the syntactic work and mis-represents by taking things out of 
context (I think probably true), and then Dresser answers by providing explicit 
statements that are hard to understand as being any less ridiculous than he 
claims, since they are asserted with characteristic Chomskian authoritarianism. 
 What I take this for is evidence of what I see as the major pattern: Chomsky’s 
writing is as close to Newspeak as we probably have in something that is 
glossed by some as a science (and that, in a good world, could be, and is 
trying to become, more of a science).  His writing, over the decades and lots 
of books (here referring to the linguistics) has essentially no stable 
constructive assertions, yet at every point the delivery is “This is what I say 
and this is what I have always said.”

(Not that Dresser comes out of this looking like any much-better character.  
Claiming he isn’t out to write a hit-piece on Chomsky’s intellectual 
contributions, while transparently wanting mainly to do that, and then at the 
end saying how grateful he is for Chomsky’s activism, rings pretty 
disingenuous.  I am also struck because to me the style of The Man is 
recognizably the same in both.  But enough on Dresser.  He will be forgotten by 
tomorrow, so one can just comment on the content of the writing.)

I don’t know where Chomsky ranks in the guruness indices.  But he is a case 
study in the patterns of meme-authoritarianism.  A vast discourse of negative 
statements, which (seen in many people I have to deal with) seem to have only 
the goal of denying something specific somebody else is trying to say or to do, 
accompanied by shifting, or shifty, assertive-sounding statements, but ones 
that turn out to be slippery enough that you are never permitted to attach a 
meaning to them and decide for yourself whether they are valid or not.  Any 
judgment you pass against the constructive-sounding statements can always be 
parried by an accusation that you are too low a life-form to have understood 
the wisdom they encode.  Johnny Yune did this nicely in the ancient camp-movie 
They Call me Bruce (maybe the sequel), in the line “You are not ready for the 
tech-a-niques of the master.)

Not sure why I feel compelled to compose typologies of the styles of shiftiness 
in the world.  The impulse to see some fingerprints that occur repeatedly seems 
to scratch some itch.

Eric




On Dec 8, 2023, at 7:54 AM, Roger Frye 
mailto:frye.ro...@gmail.com>> wrote:


An anthropologist studies the warring ideas of Noam Chomsky | Aeon 

Re: [FRIAM] Open AI

[Marcus Daniels]

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/11/openai-ilya-sutskever-sam-altman-fired/676072/?utm_source=copy-link_medium=social_campaign=share

From: Friam  on behalf of Marcus Daniels 

Date: Tuesday, November 21, 2023 at 4:00 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Open AI
Rumors I have read:

1) Sam Altman was looking for money from sovereign wealth fund from Saudi 
Arabia to fund an NVIDIA competitor.   And this was one example of him working 
side gigs not related to the Open AI mission.

2) That the energy demands of LLMs on Azure are just too expensive, and the 
money lost per query is becoming too expensive, even for Microsoft’s hosting of 
OpenAI.

3) That there was a breakthrough in artificial general intelligence and Sam 
Altman wouldn’t press the brakes.

From: Friam  on behalf of Pietro Terna 

Date: Tuesday, November 21, 2023 at 2:29 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: [FRIAM] Open AI
Dear All,

can you explain to an old Italian friend the Open AI soap opera or drama?

Best, Pietro



--



"It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth." 
Neils Bohr.



A https://terna.to.it/breviArticoli.html riporto dei miei brevi articoli su 
temi di attualità.

Asterischi da Verso Itaca a https://verso-itaca.it/asterischi-da-verso-itaca/



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Re: [FRIAM] Open AI

[Marcus Daniels]

Rumors I have read:

1) Sam Altman was looking for money from sovereign wealth fund from Saudi 
Arabia to fund an NVIDIA competitor.   And this was one example of him working 
side gigs not related to the Open AI mission.

2) That the energy demands of LLMs on Azure are just too expensive, and the 
money lost per query is becoming too expensive, even for Microsoft’s hosting of 
OpenAI.

3) That there was a breakthrough in artificial general intelligence and Sam 
Altman wouldn’t press the brakes.

From: Friam  on behalf of Pietro Terna 

Date: Tuesday, November 21, 2023 at 2:29 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: [FRIAM] Open AI
Dear All,

can you explain to an old Italian friend the Open AI soap opera or drama?

Best, Pietro


--



"It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth." 
Neils Bohr.



A https://terna.to.it/breviArticoli.html riporto dei miei brevi articoli su 
temi di attualità.

Asterischi da Verso Itaca a https://verso-itaca.it/asterischi-da-verso-itaca/



Home page: https://terna.to.it  Twitter: https://twitter.com/@pietroterna

Mastodon: https://mastodon.uno/@PietroTerna


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Re: [FRIAM] Theil

[Marcus Daniels]

umper-sticker/snark-pith calibrated sound-bitery.I find 
myself avoiding them for this reason (not wanting to commit to listening past 
some of my own prejudices long enough to hear what they are really about?) but 
recognize (and have already begun to practice) that as with long-form written 
journalism, I can take it in bits, like I might eat a rich holiday meal... not 
try to gulp it down quickly in one sitting like a TV-dinner (for you X-ers, 
"Hot-Pocket", and Millenials == "??") for the mind.

My recent fascination with Deacon's "Teleodynamics", Jeff Hawkins' take on the 
structure/function of the neocortex and Ian McGilchrist's updated  take on 
brain bicameralism (Master and Emissary 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_His_Emissary><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_His_Emissary>)
 feeds into this question of the intersection of memory and imagination and the 
implications of Transformer Models and other Generative Models in general.   My 
direct experience with GPT-4 and DALL-E is significant (many 10s of hours of 
engagement) but still a drop in the bucket.  There are times when I feel that 
all I've done is engaged with an incredibly high-dimensional 
french-curve/bezier spline and thereby been able to smoothly 
interpolate/extrapolate a handful of interesting (to me) data points into what 
feels like a powerful elaboration of what is implied by said curve-fit in the 
past (unknown knowns?) and future (unknown unknowns)?When I'm not totally 
enraptured by the (apparent?) novelty (relative to my expectations/predictions) 
of it's responses I'm generally disappointed at it's limited creativity...   
and left puzzling over the question of "novelty vs creativity".

Bumble,

  - Steve

On 11/13/23 10:27 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
It seems to me that neither Musk and Thiel are interested in the unknown. They 
are interested in doing things they can already imagine.For Musk I thought 
that was because it is how he raises money.   Now I think he is not imagining 
consciousness in a, say, a transporter pattern buffer, he imagines life on the 
Enterprise bridge in his body.   Rockets are comparatively science fictiony for 
people that can't imagine transport without a car, so he gets some points for 
that.
On Nov 13, 2023, at 10:11 AM, 
glen<mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>  wrote:

There's an interesting parallel between the Stross and Gellman pieces: Stross 
both laments and implicitly appreciates the bureaucracy of getting a book 
published, where Thiel's aggrieved by the bureaucracy of societal evolution.

It reminds me of the engineering-vs-biology dichotomy (yes, false, like all of 
them) I came to appreciate after being exposed to enough biomimetics (to kill a 
horse). Some of us see the world and think about how to change it, build a 
better world ... or perhaps destroy the world, whatever floats your inner 
engineer. And some of us see the world and are awestruck, hypnotized, baffled 
by its qualities (whether beautiful or horrifying). It's easy to give the 
latter a pass and denigrate the former when confronted with, say, butterflies 
or the Grand Canyon. And it's easy to give the former a pass when confronted 
with poverty and war.

But the next time you're at the DMV or arguing with some poor sucker manning 
the phones at the IRS, it can be useful to remember the falseness of the 
dichtomy. Similarly, when all you want to do is sleep under the stars and those 
damned gnats keep homing into your ears, it can be useful to think like an 
engineer.

Policy and science fiction aren't that far apart.

On 11/10/23 13:46, Marcus Daniels wrote:
original.png
Peter Thiel Is Taking a Break From 
Democracy<https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/11/peter-thiel-2024-election-politics-investing-life-views/675946/?utm_source=copy-link_medium=social_campaign=share><https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/11/peter-thiel-2024-election-politics-investing-life-views/675946/?utm_source=copy-link_medium=social_campaign=share>
On 11/10/23 11:26, Roger Critchlow wrote:
Text of Charlie Stross' talk to Next Frontiers Applied Fiction Day in Stuttgart 
on Friday November 10th, 2023, concerning where the techno-industrial elite 
found their horrible philosophies/secular religions.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/11/dont-create-the-torment-nexus.html<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.antipope.org%2fcharlie%2fblog-static%2f2023%2f11%2fdont-create-the-torment-nexus.html=E,1,npJ9AGeEQaUqgDJWMftMsnL-pymj_8pksBePVrbQ_gdF_v3fw88D4pk5N0nHIICGXPhItn57qErQ9u7HSkuvSqtpYRapdSTtpENo508PmwuMPlc7ou5f6pLrIPnj=1>
--


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Re: [FRIAM] Theil

[Marcus Daniels]

There's a Nine Inch Nails song that coincides with the SFI initials.  Dating 
myself.

On Nov 13, 2023, at 9:00 PM, Steve Smith  wrote:




On 11/13/23 5:39 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
I'm surprised Stuart Kauffman isn't in there.

CultBiosGroup?


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Re: [FRIAM] Theil

[Marcus Daniels]

I'm too lazy to run a kmeans now.   

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 13, 2023, at 12:06 PM, glen  wrote:
> 
> You might want to check the Gurometer. Lex has an entry:
> 
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Oe-af4_OmzLJavktcSKGfP0wmxCX0ppP8n_Tvi9l_yc/edit?usp=sharing
> 
> While Lex's scores are relatively low compared to some of the wackos on the 
> list, we are known by association. And many of Lex's guests score relatively 
> high.
> 
>> On 11/13/23 10:08, Steve Smith wrote:
>> It seems (maybe only to me?) that "will" is what defines the intersection of 
>> memory and imagination?   The free-will-less-ness-ers among us (ala Sopolsky 
>> <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/24/determined-life-without-free-will-by-robert-sapolsky-review-the-hard-science-of-decisions>)
>>  may find this an entirely specious thing to consider or discuss (though 
>> without free will, what means "specious" or "discuss" or "consider" sans 
>> free-will?).
>> I recently discovered Lex Fridman's podcasts 
>> <https://lexfridman.com/podcast/> and was quite surprised by several things 
>> (albeit with very limited sampling... all of his most recent interview with 
>> Musk and a bit of his interview with Isaacson and about half of the Harari 
>> one):   I don't significantly disagree with the general mistrust of Musk in 
>> his Autistic-ish style and affect, but I'd say that Lex brings out the best 
>> in him, showing him to be capable of thoughtful and even empathetic-ish 
>> observations.  As I understand it (from my reading of Isaacson's biography 
>> of Musk) brother Kimball may also be a significantly similar "regulating 
>> influence" on Elon.   Grimes maybe, maybe not.  The other mothers of his 
>> children, same-same... probably each and all of them for a period of time or 
>> within certain frameworks.   And again, same with the children... though 
>> maybe projection on my part having been moderately well-regulated in several 
>> modes by my own children during each of their phases (right up to their 
>> current middle-agedness).
>> As an aside, Fridman's other interviews also all sound potentially 
>> fascinating... though I cringe at the fact/thought of interviews with 
>> Netanyahu, KanYE, Kushner, Rogan... the commentary I've read around 
>> those interviews tends to skew toward "how could you normalize (amplify?) 
>> those A**holes by even giving them the time of the day???!!!?".   Lex's 
>> interviews are definitely long-form (1-2 hours) compared to today's 
>> tik-tok/ad-jingle/bumper-sticker/snark-pith calibrated sound-bitery.I 
>> find myself avoiding them for this reason (not wanting to commit to 
>> listening past some of my own prejudices long enough to hear what they are 
>> really about?) but recognize (and have already begun to practice) that as 
>> with long-form written journalism, I can take it in bits, like I might eat a 
>> rich holiday meal... not try to gulp it down quickly in one sitting like a 
>> TV-dinner (for you X-ers, "Hot-Pocket", and Millenials == "??") for the mind.
>> My recent fascination with Deacon's "Teleodynamics", Jeff Hawkins' take on 
>> the structure/function of the neocortex and Ian McGilchrist's updated  take 
>> on brain bicameralism (Master and Emissary 
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_His_Emissary>) feeds into this 
>> question of the intersection of memory and imagination and the implications 
>> of Transformer Models and other Generative Models in general.   My direct 
>> experience with GPT-4 and DALL-E is significant (many 10s of hours of 
>> engagement) but still a drop in the bucket.  There are times when I feel 
>> that all I've done is engaged with an incredibly high-dimensional 
>> french-curve/bezier spline and thereby been able to smoothly 
>> interpolate/extrapolate a handful of interesting (to me) data points into 
>> what feels like a powerful elaboration of what is implied by said curve-fit 
>> in the past (unknown knowns?) and future (unknown unknowns)?When I'm not 
>> totally enraptured by the (apparent?) novelty (relative to my 
>> expectations/predictions) of it's responses I'm generally disappointed at 
>> it's limited creativity...   and left puzzling over the question of "novelty 
>> vs creativity".
>> Bumble,
>>  - Steve
>>> On 11/13/23 10:27 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> It seems to me that neither Musk and Thiel are interested in the unknown. 
>>> They are interested in doing things they can already imagine.For Musk 

Re: [FRIAM] Theil

[Marcus Daniels]

It seems to me that neither Musk and Thiel are interested in the unknown. They 
are interested in doing things they can already imagine.For Musk I thought 
that was because it is how he raises money.   Now I think he is not imagining 
consciousness in a, say, a transporter pattern buffer, he imagines life on the 
Enterprise bridge in his body.   Rockets are comparatively science fictiony for 
people that can't imagine transport without a car, so he gets some points for 
that.
> On Nov 13, 2023, at 10:11 AM, glen  wrote:
> 
> There's an interesting parallel between the Stross and Gellman pieces: 
> Stross both laments and implicitly appreciates the bureaucracy of getting a 
> book published, where Thiel's aggrieved by the bureaucracy of societal 
> evolution.
> 
> It reminds me of the engineering-vs-biology dichotomy (yes, false, like all 
> of them) I came to appreciate after being exposed to enough biomimetics (to 
> kill a horse). Some of us see the world and think about how to change it, 
> build a better world ... or perhaps destroy the world, whatever floats your 
> inner engineer. And some of us see the world and are awestruck, hypnotized, 
> baffled by its qualities (whether beautiful or horrifying). It's easy to give 
> the latter a pass and denigrate the former when confronted with, say, 
> butterflies or the Grand Canyon. And it's easy to give the former a pass when 
> confronted with poverty and war.
> 
> But the next time you're at the DMV or arguing with some poor sucker manning 
> the phones at the IRS, it can be useful to remember the falseness of the 
> dichtomy. Similarly, when all you want to do is sleep under the stars and 
> those damned gnats keep homing into your ears, it can be useful to think like 
> an engineer.
> 
> Policy and science fiction aren't that far apart.
> 
>> On 11/10/23 13:46, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> original.png
>> Peter Thiel Is Taking a Break From Democracy 
>> <https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/11/peter-thiel-2024-election-politics-investing-life-views/675946/?utm_source=copy-link_medium=social_campaign=share>
> 
>> On 11/10/23 11:26, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>> Text of Charlie Stross' talk to Next Frontiers Applied Fiction Day in 
>> Stuttgart on Friday November 10th, 2023, concerning where the 
>> techno-industrial elite found their horrible philosophies/secular religions.
>> https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/11/dont-create-the-torment-nexus.html
> 
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] "What Work Means"

[Marcus Daniels]

Organizations are like waves.  Every now and then someone (or a small group) 
finds a way to do some surfing.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2023 3:34 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "What Work Means"

I spent my career at universities (2) except for a few years at Bell Labs and 
Bios group.  I always felt that the organization I worked for was altruistic.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 11:45 AM glen 
mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote:
That's a great article! But I have a bit of a bone to pick with it. (I know, 
right? What a boor I am.) I just can't help but read this as inherently Presty. 
I work with a handful of GenZ at my minimum wage side gig. They are hustlers, 
through and through. So a theme of the Presty article does ring, that of 
"financially stable" (never ever ever mind "well-off"; that's not even in the 
lexicon). But in that pursuit, my decidedly non-Presty friends work more than 
one job. One of them has a job at 2 breweries, working as an assistant brewer 
in one and as a "cellar person" at the other because Assistant Brewer doesn't 
provide quite enough income to pay the rents sought by our Land Lords. Another 
has 2 jobs, one as a bartender and the other as a ... what? ... "accounting 
logistics" (?) person at a car dealership.

So the perspective and focus presented by Aden in the Presty article seems VERY 
privileged to me ... but no more so than the privilege expressed by, say, 
Steve's story about a state school graduate's perspective on the grant 
submission/evaluation process. Is it any wonder we see more graffiti like "Eat 
the Rich" these days? Is it any wonder my non-Presty friends don't vote?

Another theme implicit in the article is Sam Bankman-Fried's huckster rhetoric 
of Effective Altrusim. When Presties talk of "service", "mission", and 
"meaning", I get this icky feeling deep down. An article from Harvard talking 
about work-life balance makes me a bit sick to my stomach in the same way as 
listening to Peter Thiel talk about the Straussian Moment (or Robin Hanson 
arguing we should have more babies). Yuck. I need a shower to wash off this 
Presty filth.

But similar to Eric's local deconstruction of Elliott's bullshit about bimodal 
distributions, what's a hyper-privileged Presty to do? What options are there 
other than going with the flow? What? Should Aden quit college and ... walk the 
earth? https://youtu.be/dLdRsofkCVs?si=quzxQt7wOUZT375g Nah. He should stay in 
the game and propel the criminal enterprise until he finds his golden 
parachute. If he can't suppress his appetite for "meaning", he can snack on 
some Greenwashing and, say, support the paper straw initiative at the local 
county commissioner meetings.

On 10/26/23 13:19, Tom Johnson wrote:
> FRIAM-ers:
> Many of us, probably a majority, have spent a lot of years in or around 
> college campuses.  We dealt with students for decades.  The latest issue of 
> Harvard Magazine has an interesting essay by a graduating senior describing 
> his and his classmates' outlook on their future and the world.  All I can say 
> is I'm glad I am retired.
> See "What Work Means 
> ."

--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ

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Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[Marcus Daniels]

A nihilist can still have preferences.  

> On Oct 12, 2023, at 10:21 AM, glen  wrote:
> 
> I think that's an ideological stance, not a brute fact. The use of the term 
> "better" is nothing but an "ought", which is difficult to derive from an "is".
> 
>> On 10/9/23 10:07, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> We are better off if the ones that carry demonstrably false claims are 
>> proportionately devalued.
> 
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[Marcus Daniels]

Being that LLMs are probabilistic may get the user of a LLM in some trouble 
here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_and_Quranic_narratives

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, October 9, 2023 12:45 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

"Truth" is well defined.  It is the set of propositions which assert that what 
is the case is the case.  Determining whether a given proposition is true may 
be difficult.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Mon, Oct 9, 2023, 10:23 AM glen 
mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote:
OK, I agree, mostly. But "truth" is no more well-defined than any other 
specific grounding style. E.g. the insistence that there is truth in fiction. 
There is affective truth in MAGA, just like there's truth in whatever 
justification Hamas might give for its reaction to the bloodshed of the Israeli 
settlements. But such truths are so abstracted, they can be [a|mis]used at will 
and the narrative spin used to whip up the adherents provides any glue needed 
to make it seem as true as it needs to seem to spur the adherents to action.

It's a bad analogy from, say, Hamas to shut up and calculate. But it can be 
made. It's fun watching intra-science tribe members pick at each other for 
their sloppiness in communicating science. E.g. Sabine's take on transitioning. 
Whatever. If a tribe polices itself, then their trustworthiness is much higher 
... for me, at least. I'm glad the Republicans are in a civil war. It's 
evidence they may recover as a party. If people stop telling me I'm wrong, then 
I'm most likely very wrong. As long as I've still got people telling me I'm 
wrong, then I'm at least somewhere near not-wrong.


On 10/9/23 08:24, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I mean there are some categories that are disjoint or mostly disjoint.   
> Similarly, the grounding is not total.   I agree that value systems like MAGA 
> have power, but they don't have truth.  There is no truth.  All there is, is 
> power, which is my point.  QM and demagoguery are both tools, with different 
> contexts for use.
>
>> On Oct 9, 2023, at 7:48 AM, glen 
>> mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Hm. Even with the caveat of "generally", I think this complementarity 
>> argument fails because all the various categories are not disjoint. And it's 
>> the (somewhat) lack(ing) of grounding/binding that allows the mixing of the 
>> modes. I'd tried to point this out by using "computation", the idea that 
>> human innovation might be more universal than microbial innovation. It's not 
>> really that the values *lack* grounding. It's that their grounding is 
>> complicated, perhaps iterative? maybe heterarchical? IDK, but certainly not 
>> lacking any grounding.
>>
>> An abstracted value system like that of the 09A OR MAGA cults may have 
>> *more* power, more chances to hook and unhook because it gives the donner 
>> and doffer of that value system more opportunities to do the donning and 
>> doffing at whatever arbitrary points they choose, to lazily benefit 
>> themselves without having to handle any unintended/unconsidered entailments.
>>
>>> On 10/8/23 18:18, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> This doesn't make them more valuable because they lack grounding.
>>
>>> On 10/8/23 13:21, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> Generally attaching to one value system means not attaching to another 
>>> value system.   For example, adopting the value of tolerance logically is 
>>> at odds with policing intolerance, e.g., one Jewish neighbor remarked this 
>>> morning he drove past a home with a Hamas flag on it and was scared.   
>>> (Reducing that fear by removing the flag would be reducing tolerance.)
>>> It seems to me that ideas that work have power and things that don’t work 
>>> don’t have power.

--
glen

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Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[Marcus Daniels]

People can interact with the world and find groundings for symbols using their 
senses.   Some of their semantic bindings may be learned from works of fiction. 
 Some of their bindings may be copied from other people that did the same.  
Other bindings may be from planting things in dirt or playing on a jungle gym.  
 The people that learn things about using dirt in New Mexico may learn 
different things that people that use dirt in Washington.   The more indirect 
the source of the bindings, the more suspicious it is.   I wouldn't agree that 
all these bindings add value to the world.  We are better off if the ones that 
carry demonstrably false claims are proportionately devalued.   

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Monday, October 9, 2023 9:23 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

OK, I agree, mostly. But "truth" is no more well-defined than any other 
specific grounding style. E.g. the insistence that there is truth in fiction. 
There is affective truth in MAGA, just like there's truth in whatever 
justification Hamas might give for its reaction to the bloodshed of the Israeli 
settlements. But such truths are so abstracted, they can be [a|mis]used at will 
and the narrative spin used to whip up the adherents provides any glue needed 
to make it seem as true as it needs to seem to spur the adherents to action.

It's a bad analogy from, say, Hamas to shut up and calculate. But it can be 
made. It's fun watching intra-science tribe members pick at each other for 
their sloppiness in communicating science. E.g. Sabine's take on transitioning. 
Whatever. If a tribe polices itself, then their trustworthiness is much higher 
... for me, at least. I'm glad the Republicans are in a civil war. It's 
evidence they may recover as a party. If people stop telling me I'm wrong, then 
I'm most likely very wrong. As long as I've still got people telling me I'm 
wrong, then I'm at least somewhere near not-wrong.


On 10/9/23 08:24, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I mean there are some categories that are disjoint or mostly disjoint.   
> Similarly, the grounding is not total.   I agree that value systems like MAGA 
> have power, but they don't have truth.  There is no truth.  All there is, is 
> power, which is my point.  QM and demagoguery are both tools, with different 
> contexts for use.
> 
>> On Oct 9, 2023, at 7:48 AM, glen  wrote:
>>
>> Hm. Even with the caveat of "generally", I think this complementarity 
>> argument fails because all the various categories are not disjoint. And it's 
>> the (somewhat) lack(ing) of grounding/binding that allows the mixing of the 
>> modes. I'd tried to point this out by using "computation", the idea that 
>> human innovation might be more universal than microbial innovation. It's not 
>> really that the values *lack* grounding. It's that their grounding is 
>> complicated, perhaps iterative? maybe heterarchical? IDK, but certainly not 
>> lacking any grounding.
>>
>> An abstracted value system like that of the 09A OR MAGA cults may have 
>> *more* power, more chances to hook and unhook because it gives the donner 
>> and doffer of that value system more opportunities to do the donning and 
>> doffing at whatever arbitrary points they choose, to lazily benefit 
>> themselves without having to handle any unintended/unconsidered entailments.
>>
>>> On 10/8/23 18:18, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> This doesn't make them more valuable because they lack grounding.
>>
>>> On 10/8/23 13:21, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> Generally attaching to one value system means not attaching to another 
>>> value system.   For example, adopting the value of tolerance logically is 
>>> at odds with policing intolerance, e.g., one Jewish neighbor remarked this 
>>> morning he drove past a home with a Hamas flag on it and was scared.   
>>> (Reducing that fear by removing the flag would be reducing tolerance.)
>>> It seems to me that ideas that work have power and things that don’t work 
>>> don’t have power.

-- 
glen

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Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[Marcus Daniels]

I mean there are some categories that are disjoint or mostly disjoint.   
Similarly, the grounding is not total.   I agree that value systems like MAGA 
have power, but they don't have truth.  There is no truth.  All there is, is 
power, which is my point.  QM and demagoguery are both tools, with different 
contexts for use.

> On Oct 9, 2023, at 7:48 AM, glen  wrote:
> 
> Hm. Even with the caveat of "generally", I think this complementarity 
> argument fails because all the various categories are not disjoint. And it's 
> the (somewhat) lack(ing) of grounding/binding that allows the mixing of the 
> modes. I'd tried to point this out by using "computation", the idea that 
> human innovation might be more universal than microbial innovation. It's not 
> really that the values *lack* grounding. It's that their grounding is 
> complicated, perhaps iterative? maybe heterarchical? IDK, but certainly not 
> lacking any grounding.
> 
> An abstracted value system like that of the 09A OR MAGA cults may have *more* 
> power, more chances to hook and unhook because it gives the donner and doffer 
> of that value system more opportunities to do the donning and doffing at 
> whatever arbitrary points they choose, to lazily benefit themselves without 
> having to handle any unintended/unconsidered entailments.
> 
>> On 10/8/23 18:18, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> This doesn't make them more valuable because they lack grounding.
> 
>> On 10/8/23 13:21, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> Generally attaching to one value system means not attaching to another value 
>> system.   For example, adopting the value of tolerance logically is at odds 
>> with policing intolerance, e.g., one Jewish neighbor remarked this morning 
>> he drove past a home with a Hamas flag on it and was scared.   (Reducing 
>> that fear by removing the flag would be reducing tolerance.)
>> It seems to me that ideas that work have power and things that don’t work 
>> don’t have power.
> 
> --
> glen
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[Marcus Daniels]

Values systems are the entailments of arbitrary preferences.  Some preferences 
have had longer to churn than others and so have had more time to be elaborated 
and more people reflecting on them.  This doesn't make them more valuable 
because they lack grounding.  The adherents of these values often have more 
members though.  If these people could be freed, they could ponder the 
entailments of other arbitrary preferences.   Maybe this collective activity 
can all be written down and some general patterns captured by a LLM or similar. 
  I find the entire exercise is a lot of effort for no clear purpose, and a 
bike ride more satisfying.

On Oct 8, 2023, at 5:26 PM, Steve Smith  wrote:




Hope: "doing the right thing, no matter how you think it will turn out"


On 10/8/23 2:21 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
I would center nihilism not on devaluation but on deconstruction.  If value is 
about a set of lived experiences, is it a detached reflection on something 
special that was discovered, or more because of membership in that ecology – 
because of an investment?
Deep membership makes it harder to talk objectively about discoveries and to 
move on to making other discoveries.  Generally attaching to one value system 
means not attaching to another value system.   For example, adopting the value 
of tolerance logically is at odds with policing intolerance, e.g., one Jewish 
neighbor remarked this morning he drove past a home with a Hamas flag on it and 
was scared.   (Reducing that fear by removing the flag would be reducing 
tolerance.)

It seems to me that ideas that work have power and things that don’t work don’t 
have power.   It is reasonable to be skeptical about investment in ideas that 
may require years or decades of investment and not result in a return.  
Unpacking an idea to a Silicon Valley venture capitalist as to why there could 
be a return is deconstruction not devaluation.

I see these folks on MSNBC talking about the nihilism of DJT or Bannon and I 
don’t really get it.   Democracy isn’t a value system; it is a way to avoid 
(violent) conflict in a pluralistic society.   There’s a case to be made for 
the merits of such societies, and a case to be made for limiting violence.  
They should make those cases, not just throw out a placeholder word like 
nihilism to judge the people who don’t value those types of societies.   
(Apparently many people in North America.)

Marcus

From: Friam <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> on 
behalf of David Eric Smith <mailto:desm...@santafe.edu>
Date: Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 10:40 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
<mailto:friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding
Zang!  I had not made that connection.

Hmmh.  What do I think?  I seem to have viewed uninterpreted models much as I 
view a hammer or a shovel; as a tool in the world for doing a certain job (in 
this case, a job of perceiving the world in valid ways), neither here nor there 
w.r.t. questions of nihilism.

Where then would I try to center nihilism?  (It’s being a topic I haven’t spent 
a lot of time on historically).  Maybe if I had to choose one phrase, it would 
be “the devaluation of values”.   Brown uses it in her book, but I think it is 
old and standardized.  Don’t know if it came from Nietzsche or Weber, or is 
much older than either of them.

How would I orient to try to address such questions, that I do not want to go 
into support of bombs?  I think my current cast of mind is that there is a 
large class of “discovered thing”, meaning that they are not willed into 
existence, but are brought into existence (if there is even any bringing) 
through lived experience, and “noticed” after the fact.  Or maybe given in the 
ineffable from the start, and noticed along the way (all of Descartes’s cogito, 
the rest of “the self”, and much else).  It seems to me that there is room for 
aesthetics to be given much more and better attention than perhaps it has had 
in philosophy (or whoever is in charge of this question).  Aesthetics certainly 
not being the only domain from which discovered things can originate, but 
useful in that we can recognize it as a source, but not have the impulse to 
conflate it with dogma, as many other notions of “belief” tend to drift into.

Hmm.

Eric



On Oct 8, 2023, at 12:30 PM, Marcus Daniels 
<mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com> wrote:

Eric writes:

“Bears on how many things make up the machinery of nihilism, extending well 
beyond relations I recognized as part of an integration, though mentioning many 
things I rail against in daily life.”

The willingness of physicists to use uninterpreted models, e.g., quantum 
mechanics, seems like nihilism to me.  I don’t mean that in a judgmental way, 
nor do I mean it in an admiring way.  On the other hand, there are many people, 
I reckon most people, that provide their beliefs as both explanations and 
justifications.  

Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[Marcus Daniels]

I would center nihilism not on devaluation but on deconstruction.  If value is 
about a set of lived experiences, is it a detached reflection on something 
special that was discovered, or more because of membership in that ecology – 
because of an investment?
Deep membership makes it harder to talk objectively about discoveries and to 
move on to making other discoveries.  Generally attaching to one value system 
means not attaching to another value system.   For example, adopting the value 
of tolerance logically is at odds with policing intolerance, e.g., one Jewish 
neighbor remarked this morning he drove past a home with a Hamas flag on it and 
was scared.   (Reducing that fear by removing the flag would be reducing 
tolerance.)

It seems to me that ideas that work have power and things that don’t work don’t 
have power.   It is reasonable to be skeptical about investment in ideas that 
may require years or decades of investment and not result in a return.  
Unpacking an idea to a Silicon Valley venture capitalist as to why there could 
be a return is deconstruction not devaluation.

I see these folks on MSNBC talking about the nihilism of DJT or Bannon and I 
don’t really get it.   Democracy isn’t a value system; it is a way to avoid 
(violent) conflict in a pluralistic society.   There’s a case to be made for 
the merits of such societies, and a case to be made for limiting violence.  
They should make those cases, not just throw out a placeholder word like 
nihilism to judge the people who don’t value those types of societies.   
(Apparently many people in North America.)

Marcus

From: Friam  on behalf of David Eric Smith 

Date: Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 10:40 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding
Zang!  I had not made that connection.

Hmmh.  What do I think?  I seem to have viewed uninterpreted models much as I 
view a hammer or a shovel; as a tool in the world for doing a certain job (in 
this case, a job of perceiving the world in valid ways), neither here nor there 
w.r.t. questions of nihilism.

Where then would I try to center nihilism?  (It’s being a topic I haven’t spent 
a lot of time on historically).  Maybe if I had to choose one phrase, it would 
be “the devaluation of values”.   Brown uses it in her book, but I think it is 
old and standardized.  Don’t know if it came from Nietzsche or Weber, or is 
much older than either of them.

How would I orient to try to address such questions, that I do not want to go 
into support of bombs?  I think my current cast of mind is that there is a 
large class of “discovered thing”, meaning that they are not willed into 
existence, but are brought into existence (if there is even any bringing) 
through lived experience, and “noticed” after the fact.  Or maybe given in the 
ineffable from the start, and noticed along the way (all of Descartes’s cogito, 
the rest of “the self”, and much else).  It seems to me that there is room for 
aesthetics to be given much more and better attention than perhaps it has had 
in philosophy (or whoever is in charge of this question).  Aesthetics certainly 
not being the only domain from which discovered things can originate, but 
useful in that we can recognize it as a source, but not have the impulse to 
conflate it with dogma, as many other notions of “belief” tend to drift into.

Hmm.

Eric



On Oct 8, 2023, at 12:30 PM, Marcus Daniels  wrote:

Eric writes:

“Bears on how many things make up the machinery of nihilism, extending well 
beyond relations I recognized as part of an integration, though mentioning many 
things I rail against in daily life.”

The willingness of physicists to use uninterpreted models, e.g., quantum 
mechanics, seems like nihilism to me.  I don’t mean that in a judgmental way, 
nor do I mean it in an admiring way.  On the other hand, there are many people, 
I reckon most people, that provide their beliefs as both explanations and 
justifications.   Bombs follow soon after.


Marcus
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Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[Marcus Daniels]

Eric writes:

“Bears on how many things make up the machinery of nihilism, extending well 
beyond relations I recognized as part of an integration, though mentioning many 
things I rail against in daily life.”

The willingness of physicists to use uninterpreted models, e.g., quantum 
mechanics, seems like nihilism to me.  I don’t mean that in a judgmental way, 
nor do I mean it in an admiring way.  On the other hand, there are many people, 
I reckon most people, that provide their beliefs as both explanations and 
justifications.   Bombs follow soon after.

Marcus
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Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[Marcus Daniels]

The “large” refers to the number of parameters used.  A smaller large language 
model – a deep neural net -- start about 3 billion parameters, but larger ones 
like Claude 2 (the latest large language model of the company that wrote the 
paper Steve mentioned) have more than 130 billion parameters.   Amazingly, it 
is possible using (rooms of) GPUs and other accelerators to optimize in this a 
space of this size.   The billions of parameters come from the vocabulary size 
– the number of tokens that need to be discriminated, the many layers of 
transformers that are needed to capture the complexity of human and non-human 
languages (like DNA), and the context window size – how many paragraphs or 
pages the model is trained on at a time.   A small language model might be 
suitable for understanding the geometries of chemicals, say.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Tom Johnson
Sent: Saturday, October 7, 2023 2:38 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

Thanks for passing this along, Steve. I wish, however, the authors of this 
short piece would have included a definition of, in their usage, "Large 
Language Models" and "Small Language Models."  Perhaps I can find those in the 
larger paper.
Tom

On Sat, Oct 7, 2023 at 12:34 PM Steve Smith 
mailto:sasm...@swcp.com>> wrote:

This popular-press article came through my Google News feed recently which I 
thought might be useful to the Journalists/English-Majors on the list to help 
understand how LLMs work, etc.   When I read it in detail (forwarded from my TS 
(TinyScreenPhone) on my LS (Large Screen Laptop)) I found it a bit more 
detailed and technical than I'd expected, but nevertheless rewarding and 
possibly offering some traction to Journalism/English majors as well as those 
with a larger investment in the CS/Math implied.

Decomposing Language Models into Understandable Components

[https://efficient-manatee.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/images/Untitled-Artwork-11.png?w=2880=1620=compress%2Cformat=crop=1696477668=d32264d5f5e32c79026b8e310e415c74]

and the (more) technical paper behind the article

https://transformer-circuits.pub/2023/monosemantic-features/index.html
Despite having sent a few dogs into vaguely similar scuffles in my careen(r):
Faceted Ontologies for Pre Incident Indicator Analysis 

SpindleViz
...

... I admit to finding this both intriguing and well over my head on casual 
inspection...  the (metaphorical?) keywords that drew me in  most strongly 
included Superposition and Thought Vectors, though they are (nod to Glen) 
probably riddled (heaped, overflowing, bursting, bloated ... )  with excess 
meaning.

https://gabgoh.github.io/ThoughtVectors/

This leads me (surprise!) to an open ended discursive series of thoughts 
probably better left for a separate posting (probably rendered in a 
semasiographic language like Heptapod 
B).



- Steve
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Re: [FRIAM] cults

[Marcus Daniels]

I was tempted to dive into the L vs. E as it may apply to psychology and 
sociology, but will just offer this instead.  Formal deprogramming!   Say the 
quiet part, H, lol.


[231006072811-clinton-1006.jpg]
Video: Clinton calls for 'formal deprogramming' of MAGA 'cult members' | CNN 
Politics
cnn.com


On Oct 5, 2023, at 2:04 PM, glen  wrote:

Rather than -emic vs -etic, I prefer Lagrangian vs Eulerian, respectively. 
This avoids the concept of "inside" vs "outside", which then avoids the scoping 
issue Marcus raised re: nation vs other types of boundaries.

A self-imposed identity is just as imposed as an other-imposed identity. While 
some of us may chafe at other-imposed vs self-imposed, I think there's another 
type of person, those who resist any stable identity, whether other- or 
self-imposed. And resistance is the wrong way to frame it. It's more like a 
tendency to swirl around in an attractor versus a tendency to hop from one 
basin to another.

He/Him may be relatively accurate today. But I'm not committing to its accuracy 
tomorrow.

On 10/5/23 12:50, Steve Smith wrote:
on Emic vs Etic  POVs.  My own 
"individualism" is armatured significantly around "/I don't like to be told/" 
with being */told who I am/* perhaps the most egregious, even if I'm being told 
that "/I'm someone who doesn't like to be told who I am"/.
--
glen

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Re: [FRIAM] cults

[Marcus Daniels]

If there were no internet, the MAGA, QANON and the anti-WHO/UN folks would find 
it harder to maintain a narrative.   With social media they can find people to 
mirror the craziest ideas and leaders to reveal them.   Musk says the same is 
true on the left and woke.

Parochialism is another way that ungrounded beliefs find comfort.   Members 
protect their bubble enforcing norms and being antagonistic to people that are 
different.  Typically in spatial vicinities.

In both cases, participants adopt a group story instead of building their own.  
If they were required to build their own story in a quiet space, they might 
learn to think and be less reliant on a social role to maintain self esteem.

Enforcing this could be done with a DMZ, or it could be done with some 
indoctrination about the risks of groupthink and the benefits of stoicism and 
scientism.

> On Oct 4, 2023, at 6:52 AM, glen  wrote:
> 
> Well, there is no such thing as a "mind virus". It's a bad metaphor. But 
> Steve's right that we're (at least) modal in our non-rationality, flipping 
> this way and that according to whatever criticality presents itself. The 09A 
> concept of culling seems to me similar to Musk's elitism ... a Nietzschean 
> conceit.
> 
>> On 10/3/23 09:23, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> I realized I kind of agree with Musk about the benefits of more isolation.
>> https://twitter.com/i/status/1625732016896458755
>> However, national boundaries are not the right cutoff.   Any community or 
>> cult is the potential nucleation of a mind virus.
>> I expect his advocacy above is about creating chaos so that people such as 
>> himself are the only ones that have the resources to influence governments.
>> A particularly virulent mind virus (like white supremacy, or 09A) could 
>> cross national boundaries and not be impeded by law enforcement.
>> What does the world look like if P% of the population has broad resistance 
>> to mind viruses and (100-P)% does not?
>> If P is <= 10, maybe better to fan the flames of crazy and let the chips 
>> fall where they may.  Perhaps that is how Musk sees it.
>> Marcus
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
>> Sent: Sunday, October 1, 2023 6:37 AM
>> To: FriAM 
>> Subject: [FRIAM] cults
>> It's been awhile since I've run across a new-to-me cult. But 09A certainly 
>> qualifies as a meaty one:
>> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/28/new-york-satanic-cult-764-fbi
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Nine_Angles
>> https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2023.2195065
>> I can't reconcile the apparent contradiction between fascism and 
>> individuality. I guess the closest some analysts come is to suggest that 
>> they're only aligning with the fascists, for now, to bring about the end of 
>> the current aeon and the colonization of the galaxy.
>> I guess it reminds me of the "no enemies to the [right|left]" rhetoric: 
>> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/30/conservative-christopher-rufo-florida-twitter-debate
>> But otherwise, O9A's ... "beliefs and structure" seem incoherent enough to 
>> write them off as just too stupid to care about. However one author nailed 
>> it in saying that there are plenty of both impressionable and antisocial 
>> people using the internet, susceptible to the "sinister" allure, to cause 
>> real damage.
> 
> --
> glen
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] cults

[Marcus Daniels]

I realized I kind of agree with Musk about the benefits of more isolation.   

https://twitter.com/i/status/1625732016896458755

However, national boundaries are not the right cutoff.   Any community or cult 
is the potential nucleation of a mind virus.  
I expect his advocacy above is about creating chaos so that people such as 
himself are the only ones that have the resources to influence governments. 
A particularly virulent mind virus (like white supremacy, or 09A) could cross 
national boundaries and not be impeded by law enforcement.

What does the world look like if P% of the population has broad resistance to 
mind viruses and (100-P)% does not?   
If P is <= 10, maybe better to fan the flames of crazy and let the chips fall 
where they may.  Perhaps that is how Musk sees it.

Marcus
-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Sunday, October 1, 2023 6:37 AM
To: FriAM 
Subject: [FRIAM] cults

It's been awhile since I've run across a new-to-me cult. But 09A certainly 
qualifies as a meaty one:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/28/new-york-satanic-cult-764-fbi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Nine_Angles
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2023.2195065

I can't reconcile the apparent contradiction between fascism and individuality. 
I guess the closest some analysts come is to suggest that they're only aligning 
with the fascists, for now, to bring about the end of the current aeon and the 
colonization of the galaxy.

I guess it reminds me of the "no enemies to the [right|left]" rhetoric: 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/30/conservative-christopher-rufo-florida-twitter-debate

But otherwise, O9A's ... "beliefs and structure" seem incoherent enough to 
write them off as just too stupid to care about. However one author nailed it 
in saying that there are plenty of both impressionable and antisocial people 
using the internet, susceptible to the "sinister" allure, to cause real damage.

-- 
glen

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Re: [FRIAM] Democracy & Autocracy

[Marcus Daniels]

Georgia code is well-suited:

2010 Georgia Code
TITLE 16 - CRIMES AND OFFENSES
CHAPTER 10 - OFFENSES AGAINST PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
ARTICLE 2 - OBSTRUCTION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND RELATED OFFENSES
§ 16-10-20 - False statements and writings, concealment of facts, and 
fraudulent documents in matters within jurisdiction of state or political 
subdivisions
O.C.G.A. 16-10-20 (2010)
16-10-20. False statements and writings, concealment of facts, and fraudulent 
documents in matters within jurisdiction of state or political subdivisions


A person who knowingly and willfully falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any 
trick, scheme, or device a material fact; makes a false, fictitious, or 
fraudulent statement or representation; or makes or uses any false writing or 
document, knowing the same to contain any false, fictitious, or fraudulent 
statement or entry, in any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or 
agency of state government or of the government of any county, city, or other 
political subdivision of this state shall, upon conviction thereof, be punished 
by a fine of not more than $1,000.00 or by imprisonment for not less than one 
nor more than five years, or both.

On Aug 15, 2023, at 4:19 PM, Marcus Daniels  wrote:


I’ll raise you.  A Harris/Newsom ticket could win if Biden went to war and 
Russia was devastated.   Perhaps there are other ways Harris/Newsom could win, 
but it would have to start now with cooperation from Biden.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2023 4:04 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Democracy & Autocracy

I am about to get myself in trouble, so important caveats: I do not like Trump, 
I do not want to see him in office again, and I am happy to apply the 
adjectives, venal, crude, infantile, hyperbolic, and cunning-but-stupid to him.

1-all of the indictments assert that the words and actions of Trump have but 
one interpretation—that which his opponents, detractors, and prosecutors assert 
as the TRUTH. This is laughable; IMHO.

2-All of the indictments will result in dismissal, acquittal (perhaps via jury 
nullification), or reversal.

3-If Trump could be convinced to shut up, fight in court and not on truth 
social, take on Ramaswamy as VP and focus on economic, foreign policy, and 
governmental overreach issues, the democratic defeat will be McGovernesque. 
Even worse if Biden falters late and the democratic ticket is Harris-Newsom.

4-Trump is too stupid to recognize his own best interests; so the election will 
be close and polarizing to an extraordinary degree.

The future is bleak!!!

davew


On Tue, Aug 15, 2023, at 3:38 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
I think your points are correct, Jochen, while to me there is also another 
important thing that I want to be able to frame, and find that I cannot in any 
satisfying way.

Having lived under trump et al.’s (and it is a big et al.) daily degradation 
and violation of every aspect of decent or even sane life for years, I along 
with many others feel almost frantic wanting somebody to DO SOMETHING TO STOP 
ALL THIS!!!  But the slowness, incompleteness, and partial resignation we see 
in the legal response reflects to me the fundamental problem of democracy as 
the people practicing it think they understand it.  They appreciate that the de 
jure institutions of a law can be employed by autocrats and other corrupt 
actors as readily as by the polity as a whole.  They also understand that a 
significant wing of a populace can become fascist, at which point it is not a 
counterweight to the corrupt, but an enabling resource for them.  So they are 
trying, on one hand, to use the law to exercise force to counteract and contain 
the abusers, but they are hoping to do so in such a way that the precedents 
within that use of the law are as hard as possible to hijack by the 
authoritarian elements that clearly intend to do that wherever they can find 
strategies for it.

The interesting question for me is whether their efforts to use law in this way 
are really making a difference.  It will be great if they can pound some of 
these bad actors, and it is a good division of labor that the federal case is 
narrow for the sake of being very robust to prosecute, while the Georgia state 
case takes on a _much_ more complicated and difficult prosecution for the sake 
of acknowledging more of the scope of the wrongdoing.  But at the end, will 
they have created legal precedent that better holds off fascist abuses going 
forward?  How will we decide, since we have only this run of the tape as it is 
playing out?  One wants to use empirical validation to update one’s views of 
how causation works, but for these situations that are so large they are 
effectively sui generis, it is hard to set up a protocol to do so.

Eric


On Aug 16, 2023, at 5:44 AM, Jochen Fromm 
mailto:j...@cas-group.net>> wrote:

The countless indictments against Trump remind me of the innumerous i

Re: [FRIAM] Democracy & Autocracy

[Marcus Daniels]

I’ll raise you.  A Harris/Newsom ticket could win if Biden went to war and 
Russia was devastated.   Perhaps there are other ways Harris/Newsom could win, 
but it would have to start now with cooperation from Biden.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2023 4:04 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Democracy & Autocracy

I am about to get myself in trouble, so important caveats: I do not like Trump, 
I do not want to see him in office again, and I am happy to apply the 
adjectives, venal, crude, infantile, hyperbolic, and cunning-but-stupid to him.

1-all of the indictments assert that the words and actions of Trump have but 
one interpretation—that which his opponents, detractors, and prosecutors assert 
as the TRUTH. This is laughable; IMHO.

2-All of the indictments will result in dismissal, acquittal (perhaps via jury 
nullification), or reversal.

3-If Trump could be convinced to shut up, fight in court and not on truth 
social, take on Ramaswamy as VP and focus on economic, foreign policy, and 
governmental overreach issues, the democratic defeat will be McGovernesque. 
Even worse if Biden falters late and the democratic ticket is Harris-Newsom.

4-Trump is too stupid to recognize his own best interests; so the election will 
be close and polarizing to an extraordinary degree.

The future is bleak!!!

davew


On Tue, Aug 15, 2023, at 3:38 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
I think your points are correct, Jochen, while to me there is also another 
important thing that I want to be able to frame, and find that I cannot in any 
satisfying way.

Having lived under trump et al.’s (and it is a big et al.) daily degradation 
and violation of every aspect of decent or even sane life for years, I along 
with many others feel almost frantic wanting somebody to DO SOMETHING TO STOP 
ALL THIS!!!  But the slowness, incompleteness, and partial resignation we see 
in the legal response reflects to me the fundamental problem of democracy as 
the people practicing it think they understand it.  They appreciate that the de 
jure institutions of a law can be employed by autocrats and other corrupt 
actors as readily as by the polity as a whole.  They also understand that a 
significant wing of a populace can become fascist, at which point it is not a 
counterweight to the corrupt, but an enabling resource for them.  So they are 
trying, on one hand, to use the law to exercise force to counteract and contain 
the abusers, but they are hoping to do so in such a way that the precedents 
within that use of the law are as hard as possible to hijack by the 
authoritarian elements that clearly intend to do that wherever they can find 
strategies for it.

The interesting question for me is whether their efforts to use law in this way 
are really making a difference.  It will be great if they can pound some of 
these bad actors, and it is a good division of labor that the federal case is 
narrow for the sake of being very robust to prosecute, while the Georgia state 
case takes on a _much_ more complicated and difficult prosecution for the sake 
of acknowledging more of the scope of the wrongdoing.  But at the end, will 
they have created legal precedent that better holds off fascist abuses going 
forward?  How will we decide, since we have only this run of the tape as it is 
playing out?  One wants to use empirical validation to update one’s views of 
how causation works, but for these situations that are so large they are 
effectively sui generis, it is hard to set up a protocol to do so.

Eric


On Aug 16, 2023, at 5:44 AM, Jochen Fromm 
mailto:j...@cas-group.net>> wrote:

The countless indictments against Trump remind me of the innumerous indictments 
against Navalny in Russia. The indictments against Trump look to me totally 
justified. He tried to undermine and to destroy the democratic system by all 
kinds of lies and deceit and treachery, by the things that Ruth Ben-Ghiat calls 
the authoritarian playbook - by violence, corruption, lying, election fraud. 
Now the democratic system is strong enough to protect itself and strikes back.
https://open.substack.com/pub/lucid/p/to-escape-prosecution-mussolini-had

The indictments against Navalny on the other hand are similar in magnitude, but 
they are clearly fabricated. Again we have a system - this time an autocratic 
and authoritarian one - which defends itself. In Navalny's case we can observe 
a deceitful autocratic system that fights against an opponent by using 
unjustified indictments and deceitful accusations. In Trump's case we can 
observe a democratic systems that defends itself against a deceitful opponent 
by using truthful and justified indictments.

What's interesting to 

Re: [FRIAM] Democracy & Autocracy

[Marcus Daniels]

I spent most of the evening last night watching MSNBC’s coverage of the 
indictments.   What I keep noticing is how these (MSNBC) legal analysts talk 
about how some of these defendants could really go to prison!  Like how 
terrible and devastating for them!  [..ahem, for a white-collar person]
Wait.  Martha Stewart really went to prison.   If anything, her reputation is 
even bigger!

From: Friam  On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2023 2:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Democracy & Autocracy

I think your points are correct, Jochen, while to me there is also another 
important thing that I want to be able to frame, and find that I cannot in any 
satisfying way.

Having lived under trump et al.’s (and it is a big et al.) daily degradation 
and violation of every aspect of decent or even sane life for years, I along 
with many others feel almost frantic wanting somebody to DO SOMETHING TO STOP 
ALL THIS!!!  But the slowness, incompleteness, and partial resignation we see 
in the legal response reflects to me the fundamental problem of democracy as 
the people practicing it think they understand it.  They appreciate that the de 
jure institutions of a law can be employed by autocrats and other corrupt 
actors as readily as by the polity as a whole.  They also understand that a 
significant wing of a populace can become fascist, at which point it is not a 
counterweight to the corrupt, but an enabling resource for them.  So they are 
trying, on one hand, to use the law to exercise force to counteract and contain 
the abusers, but they are hoping to do so in such a way that the precedents 
within that use of the law are as hard as possible to hijack by the 
authoritarian elements that clearly intend to do that wherever they can find 
strategies for it.

The interesting question for me is whether their efforts to use law in this way 
are really making a difference.  It will be great if they can pound some of 
these bad actors, and it is a good division of labor that the federal case is 
narrow for the sake of being very robust to prosecute, while the Georgia state 
case takes on a _much_ more complicated and difficult prosecution for the sake 
of acknowledging more of the scope of the wrongdoing.  But at the end, will 
they have created legal precedent that better holds off fascist abuses going 
forward?  How will we decide, since we have only this run of the tape as it is 
playing out?  One wants to use empirical validation to update one’s views of 
how causation works, but for these situations that are so large they are 
effectively sui generis, it is hard to set up a protocol to do so.

Eric



On Aug 16, 2023, at 5:44 AM, Jochen Fromm 
mailto:j...@cas-group.net>> wrote:

The countless indictments against Trump remind me of the innumerous indictments 
against Navalny in Russia. The indictments against Trump look to me totally 
justified. He tried to undermine and to destroy the democratic system by all 
kinds of lies and deceit and treachery, by the things that Ruth Ben-Ghiat calls 
the authoritarian playbook - by violence, corruption, lying, election fraud. 
Now the democratic system is strong enough to protect itself and strikes back.
https://open.substack.com/pub/lucid/p/to-escape-prosecution-mussolini-had

The indictments against Navalny on the other hand are similar in magnitude, but 
they are clearly fabricated. Again we have a system - this time an autocratic 
and authoritarian one - which defends itself. In Navalny's case we can observe 
a deceitful autocratic system that fights against an opponent by using 
unjustified indictments and deceitful accusations. In Trump's case we can 
observe a democratic systems that defends itself against a deceitful opponent 
by using truthful and justified indictments.

What's interesting to me is that democracy and autocracy as a system are 
apparently both resilient and resistant to change. If the system is threatened, 
then it tries to protect itself. This could be observed also in the protests in 
2020 in Belarus after the election and in the protests in 2022 in Russia after 
the invasion that have been squashed by mass imprisonments. The protests in 
Iran in 2022 have been silenced by mass imprisonments and capital punishments 
as well.

Democratic backsliding can happen, but it doesn't have to as long as the 
democratic system is able to defend itself. Similarly a collapse of an 
autocratic system is not happening if the system is able to silence protests by 
mass imprisonments and capital punishments. This blog article from last year 
still seems to fit.

Re: [FRIAM] Swirlies redux

[Marcus Daniels]

There is something objectionable about prompts.  Like a therapist extracting 
subconscious recovered memories from childhood PTSD.

On Aug 5, 2023, at 8:53 AM, Stephen Guerin  wrote:


The explicit times were part of the prompts.

we actually did these experiments this summer with Steve Cox's students at 
Northern New Mexico College for an NSF Geo Pathways grant.  I put in the times 
from my memory of what was in the whiteboard as 6 teams reported their results. 
Some used 2 liter bottles, other smaller water bottles

On Sat, Aug 5, 2023, 9:27 AM Roger Critchlow 
mailto:r...@elf.org>> wrote:
Who made up the exact timings?

-- rec --

On Sat, Aug 5, 2023, 9:10 AM Stephen Guerin 
mailto:stephen.gue...@simtable.com>> wrote:
There were 10 or so intermediate prompts to drive chatGPT to that lab report.

On Sat, Aug 5, 2023, 8:52 AM Stephen Guerin 
mailto:stephen.gue...@simtable.com>> wrote:
chatGPT, you are a graduate student at c the Santa Fe Institute's complex 
systems summer school, write a lab report on your experiences with the tornado 
in a tube.


**Student Lab Report**

**Title:** Insights into Fluid Dynamics and Symmetry Breaking via 'Tornado in a 
Tube'

**Objective:** This lab aimed to explore the critical principles of fluid 
dynamics, including the principle of least action, surface tension, broken 
symmetry, and their impacts on fluid behavior, using the 'tornado in a tube' 
experiment. We introduced variations in the system's orientation, structural 
changes, and the application of external forces to further understand these 
principles.

**Method:** Our setup included two 2-liter clear plastic bottles, water, a tube 
connector, and glitter for fluid visualization. We followed the procedure 
outlined in the lab exercise, with additional testing for different system 
orientations, external force applications, and structural modifications.

**Findings:**

1. **Role of Surface Tension in Vertical Setup:** With the bottles vertically 
aligned, surface tension at the bottleneck significantly slowed the drainage 
process. This resulted in a droplet-like flow and a drainage time of 8 minutes 
and 12 seconds.

2. **Influence of External Forces:** By applying an external force to the 
system—squeezing the top bottle in pulses—we managed to overcome the surface 
tension resistance. This modified approach expedited the drainage process to a 
time of 1 minute and 47 seconds.

3. **Impact of System Orientation:** We then experimented with tilting the 
bottles to different angles. A tilt of approximately 42 degrees provided the 
quickest drainage time—2 minutes and 32 seconds. The tilt balanced the inflow 
of air and the outflow of water, thereby managing the effects of surface 
tension effectively.

4. **Vortex Formation, Symmetry Breaking and the Principle of Least Action:** 
In the next step, we swirled the top bottle to form a vortex, leading to a 
broken symmetry in angular momentum. This energy-efficient pathway embodied the 
principle of least action, allowing the water to overcome the surface tension 
barrier and to drain in an impressive 18 seconds. This broken symmetry enabled 
the efficient dissipation of the gradient between the bottles.

5. **Effects of Structural Changes:** Our final test involved an open-ended 
tube setup. Here, we observed noticeable changes in fluid behavior. The 
vortex's efficiency in gradient dissipation decreased due to interference from 
the ambient pressure, indicating the crucial role structural features play in 
fluid dynamics.

**Conclusion:** The 'tornado in a tube' experiment, complemented by our 
additional tests, provided a comprehensive understanding of fluid dynamics 
principles. The observed differences in drainage times highlighted the 
significant impact of system orientation, the principle of least action, 
surface tension, and broken symmetry on fluid dynamics. These findings offer 
deeper insights into fluid behavior and are applicable to a range of real-world 
phenomena, from weather systems to biological processes.

On Fri, Aug 4, 2023, 8:05 PM Nicholas Thompson 
mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Ok, folks. I apologize to those of you who are fed up with my kitchen physics, 
but there has been a bit of a development in that saga that I want to share 
with those few of you who aren’t.   Years ago, I came home for the summer with 
my ears ringing with the notion that structures are formed to dissipate 
gradients.  Please set aside any teleological implications of this statement 
and ask the question in its most neutral form:  Do the structures that 
sometimes form as a gradient is dissipated dissipate it more quickly once the 
structure has been formed.   Or, as I came to interpret it, does facilitating 
the formation of such a structure speed the dissipation of the gradient.
I was the family dishwasher at the time.  I deplore washing dishes, but I love 
messing around with warm soapy water, and so I started to experiment with 
starting the vortex 

Re: [FRIAM] overshoot day

[Marcus Daniels]

65F in the East Bay.   No big fires like in Canada yet.  We all get just enough 
relief so we can keep putting it out of mind.

On Aug 2, 2023, at 2:25 PM, Steve Smith  wrote:


On 8/2/23 2:55 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
I just noticed it was overshoot day, and just after the hottest July ever 
recorded.Yay!


I'll be mixing up a nice ice-cold (luke warm?) cocktail of shame with just a 
splash of Cassandrafruede (reminiscent of Absinthe?) at sundown today 
(spectacular when orange-tinted from the wildfire smoke and dust blown from 
drought-denuded areas)... While I pop the ice-cubes from the tray I'll remember 
the recent factoid from someone (McKibben?) that the annual carbon budget of 
most people in the third world is roughly that of an American's refrigerator 
with an Ice-Maker or a Brit's electric Kettle for twice-daily tea.  If I had AC 
I'd turn it down to it's coldest setting to spite my neighbor by belching 
superheated air into their AC air handler intakes... but alas I only have adobe 
walls and brick floors and lots of windows to absorb night-time coolth...   no 
fun in that!  

The wycked hot here in NM finally broke somewhat for us yesterday with an hour 
of rain like the "good ole days" when every afternoon had a rainstorm starting 
in July to cool off the second half of the summer.   The crew down in the 
Bosque building a pumping station to move the water pumped from the Colorado 
Basin to the Rio Grande (San Juan to Chama) is busy belching diesel exhaust 
plumes and  throwing adobe-bricklets from their tires when they pull out on the 
highway to become ad-hoc speed control bumps for the Los Alamos commuters 
usually roar by at 80 in the 55mph "safety zone" morning and night.

All the world is a circle?  Or is it a donut?  I think maybe I'm channeling 
Terry Pratchett?

Cheers!

https://www.overshootday.org/



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[FRIAM] overshoot day

[Marcus Daniels]

I just noticed it was overshoot day, and just after the hottest July ever 
recorded.Yay!

https://www.overshootday.org/
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Re: [FRIAM] McCarthy v Peirce

[Marcus Daniels]

It's hard for me not to draw some life lesson from this:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.04836.pdf

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2023 8:48 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] McCarthy v Peirce

It's been mulled over. E.g.

What can we know about that which we cannot even imagine?
https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.03886v1

"Experience" seems, by definition, hopelessly fragile to context. If your 
experience is similar to someone else's experience, then you're in a cult. Get 
out! There's nothing more frightening than a commitment to a common experience. 
What I'm looking for are things I can't imagine, not things other people 
imagine, much less things other people are committed to.

The idea came up recently that we might want to implement a virtual reality 
(VR) interface to allow a user to walk a graph. My 1st reaction was to draw the 
(false) distinction between the Eulerian vs Lagrangian point of view (maybe 
translated to subjective experience: as if you're a point in space versus as if 
you're a particle in space). VR seems, to me, hopelessly Eulerian. 
Simultaneously (well, interleaved with), I was listening to a podcast 
"analyzing" the Nick Cage movie "Color Out of Space". I read the Lovecraft 
story within the last decade, though I can't remember when. But the movie was 
pretty good. Anyway, when you, as a point in space, look out at a sub-graph of 
which you're not a member, can't resist being arrogant/tribal about the 
sub-graph of which you are a member ... a kind of temporal/spatial bias. But if 
you look at the largest sub-graph you can (every visible node and edge from you 
as a node, everything that you are not, minimizing the sub-graph you're in) and 
watch that largest sub-graph morph and flicker, you can't help but feel the 
Cosmic Horror. Lovecraft's racism was rooted in his admission that the world is 
larger than whatever Norms you may be habituated to. Reduce the diversity of 
the experiences and you homogenize the world to its least common denominator.

Monism, in this context, looks to me like Cosmic Horror. I'd prefer to embrace 
my smallness and avoid pretending to Cosmic Homogeneity ... aka I wouldn't want 
to be a member of any group that would have me as a member.

On 7/10/23 10:37, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> In the following lines, the patient character expresses an opinion on the 
> central issue of Pragmat[ic]ism.
> 
> /Patient:] …The world you live in is shored some up by a collection of 
> agreements.Is that something you think about?The hope is that the 
> truth of the world somehow lies in the common experience of it.Of 
> course the history of science and mathematics and even philosophy is a 
> good bit at odds with this notion.Innovation and discovery by 
> definition war against the common understanding.One should be 
> wary.What do you think? [pp 91-2]/
> 
> I am not going to comment.I just thought you might like to have the quote to 
> mull over.


--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / 
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Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Fwd:  Virtual FRIAM - recurring Zoom meeting on July 6, 2023 @ 9:00 AM | Read Meeting Report

[Marcus Daniels]

Most of my dreams don’t resemble a world I have lived in.   I could ask Shirley 
McClaine for an explanation or perhaps appeal to some quantum voodoo to 
understand how I am entangled to some other parallel universe.   I think it is 
more likely that it is a generative learning process.   Wiggle the right deep 
neural network node around, the experience becomes unfamiliar. The real world 
is much more constrained than my dreams.   Also I sleep better with exercise, 
so a meat hook is probably not the best way to ensure interesting dreams.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Thursday, July 6, 2023 1:19 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: Fwd:  Virtual FRIAM - recurring Zoom meeting on July 6, 
2023 @ 9:00 AM | Read Meeting Report





 Forwarded Message 
Subject:
Fwd:  Virtual FRIAM - recurring Zoom meeting on July 6, 2023 @ 9:00 AM | Read 
Meeting Report
Date:
Thu, 6 Jul 2023 14:15:30 -0600
From:
Steve Smith 
To:
The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 



Fascinating!  I feel  like I was there!



It Reads a bit like the monthly newspaper for my "county of origin" (the 
Reserve Roundup with a distribution of 600)...  a 6 page rag with high points 
like every year a listing of the sleepover birthday party my mother arranged 
for me including the theme of the cake, the other boys' names and party favors 
provided (one year it was tiny plastic dinosaurs, another army men with 
parachutes, etc).   What wasn't mentioned was the one kid who always brought 
chewing tobacco (he was feral but charming) and who got sick trying it...  I 
think the local grocery and the bar and the 30 seat theatre (when open) had 
standing adverts in case anyone forgot they were there?  Neither of the two gas 
stations advertised (both priced at 19.9c per gallon the whole 6 years we lived 
there?).  I think during the summer after my 4th grade year, my mom submitted a 
poem to each issue from the daily ones I was forced to write as penance for 
having refused to do any Geography homework that year after my teacher who 
loved her own hand-drawn maps left out Switzerland from Europe and got mad at 
me when I asked about it.  The only one I remember was about "a Herd of 
Birds"... it was more like a limerick (as were all of them I suspect).  Now I 
just write run-on-sentences that parse but only with supreme effort.

Sadly I don't think our ((great?)grand?) children will be having many of these 
experiences while hanging from meat-hooks strapped into VR Gear in the Matrix 
with a Huel or Soylent branded IV in their neck veins?   Or maybe it is a 
really good thing?   I just hope the AI Overlords will be kind to us as we go 
gently (or not) into that good future...




 Forwarded Message 
Subject:
 Virtual FRIAM - recurring Zoom meeting on July 6, 2023 @ 9:00 AM | Read 
Meeting Report
Date:
Thu, 06 Jul 2023 17:52:04 + (UTC)
From:
Read Assistant 

Reply-To:
Read Assistant 

To:
s...@lava3d.com



The meeting began with Frank and John engaging in light-hearted small talk 
about the weather and sharing personal stories about their lives. They then had 
a meandering conversation that touched on various topics, including age 
differences in relationships, the challenges of old age, and the cost of 
education. They also...
[https://cdn.mcauto-images-production.sendgrid.net/00bd680edee2a32e/a7d3e370-5c19-4ae5-ae4a-68a51bf6c53d/801x206.png]

 You've been invited to view this report because Stephen Guerin added Read to 
the meeting and wanted to share the recap with you.
Virtual FRIAM - recurring Zoom meeting
July 6, 2023 at 9:00 AM
 

Re: [FRIAM] bespoke turbulence

[Marcus Daniels]

Cool.  Or maybe use machine learning to invert the low-dimensional description 
of the phenomenon..

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2023 4:26 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: [FRIAM] bespoke turbulence

I was going to post the University of Chicago press release, 
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-tempest-teacup-physicists-breakthrough-turbulence.html,
 but let it slide until this other article turned up, 
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-approach-properties-turbulence.html, the original 
report is paywalled at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-023-02052-0 with 
a paywalled editorial comment 
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-023-02054-y.

Oh, and there's also https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.00771.

So you put your fluid in a cubic reservoir with a vortex ring gun at each 
corner of the cube aimed at the center of the cube.  You can make free floating 
blobs of turbulence in the center of the reservoir by shooting combinations of 
vortex rings.  Vary the combinations of vortex rings and you vary the 
properties of the turbulent blob.  So for whatever varieties of turbulence you 
can synthesize and instrument, you now have an analog computer for finding 
properties and calibrating your digital simulations.

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Re: [FRIAM] I am not Unique

[Marcus Daniels]

A little bit of internet research will do that to, as your post demonstrates.

On Jun 25, 2023, at 12:59 PM, Tom Johnson  wrote:


For me, there is at least a fifth reason to travel: to learn how other 
countries and cultures do things, usually better than we do in the U.S. For 
example:

  *   The use of cable cars in La 
Paz<https://www.google.com/search?q=map+of+cable+cars+in+la+paz+bolivia=firefox-b-1-d=APwXEdcK0Xuv-J5Q1jVDXKf4An3iKsJJqg%3A1687722111972=f5iYZKb_OtKF0PEPlMyEiAc=0ahUKEwjmutrnlt__AhXSAjQIHRQmAXEQ4dUDCA8=5=map+of+cable+cars+in+la+paz+bolivia_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiI21hcCBvZiBjYWJsZSBjYXJzIGluIGxhIHBheiBib2xpdmlhMgUQABiiBDIFEAAYogQyBRAAGKIESKBRUMIfWKtGcAF4AZABAJgBwAegAfcpqgENMC4zLjEuNy4xLjAuMrgBA8gBAPgBAcICChAAGEcY1gQYsAPCAgcQIxiwAhgnwgIIEAAYBRgeGA3CAggQABiKBRiGA8ICCBAhGKABGMMEwgIKECEYoAEYwwQYCuIDBBgAIEGIBgGQBgg=gws-wiz-serp#imgrc=nJiOBwg5sXSq0M=CsPzMQi3Hbft8M>,
 Bolivia to reduce traffic in the geographically challenged city.
  *   The creative use of escalators in Medellin, 
Colombia<https://www.google.com/search?q=escalators+in+medin+colombia=firefox-b-1-d=APwXEdfb2CAIaV9klhgY32kqTtGp7pM1Dw%3A1687722159145=r5iYZL6jCIGJ0PEP0cyBkAM=0ahUKEwj-tpn-lt__AhWBBDQIHVFmADIQ4dUDCA8=5=escalators+in+medin+colombia_lp=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-QHCAiQQABiABBixAxhGGPkBGJcFGIwFGN0EGEYY9AMY9QMY9gPYAQLCAgYQABgWGB7CAggQABgWGB4YD8ICCBAAGIoFGIYDwgIFECEYoAHCAggQIRgWGB4YHcICBRAAGKIE4gMEGAAgQYgGAZAGCLoGBggBEAEYFLoGBggCEAEYEw=gws-wiz-serp#lpg=cid:CgIgAQ%3D%3D,ik:CAoSLEFGMVFpcE5tdXJGQ3Fwa0hPYWFOZGlqMGZQbTBQbWVYTGY5ZHQ2Z2M5Y0M0>
 to provide efficient transportation to work for the poor living on the steep 
slopes of the city's mountains. Not only have they benefitted the residents, 
but they have enhanced the culture by building libraries and community centers 
at transition points in the system.
  *   Again in Colombia, the major cities are divided into economic zones 
reflecting the income of residents.  I recall that the zones are 1 to 5, and 
the designation is even posted on street signs. The key, however, is that 
things like utility bills are pegged to the zones -- Zones #1 paying far less 
than each higher zone.
  *   Cities all over the world that attract tourists enhance their local 
economies -- and elevate the tourists' experience -- by closing off streets in 
the cities' historic districts to cars. (Hey, Santa Fe, are you listening?)
  *   How about international airports that (a) provide luggage cars for free; 
(b) have directional signs in multiple languages, (c) have multi-lingual hosts 
and hostesses to give directions (in Mexico City, many of these folks are in 
wheelchairs; in Bangkok, many are attractive young women in traditional dress)
  *   South Africa has something like 13 "official" languages. Go into its 
parliament visitors' gallery, put on headphones and dial up the simultaneous 
translation on any one of them. Ever tried to get even Spanish in the NM 
legislature?

I am sure many of you can suggest more.
Tom



On Sun, Jun 25, 2023 at 12:42 PM Marcus Daniels 
mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
I can think of four different reasons to travel: To find new opportunities (for 
business), to learn about the different constraints that cultures impose by 
experiencing them, to enjoy pleasant physical locations, and for social 
conspicuous consumption reasons (for show).   Some of them are at odds, some 
can be aligned.

On Jun 25, 2023, at 9:24 AM, Edward Angel 
mailto:an...@cs.unm.edu>> wrote:

 Personally, I found that article was terrible. Maybe the New Yorker is the 
appropriate place as it reminds of many New Yorkers’ attitude about the rest of 
the world.

I’ve spent over 50 years  in travel (not tourism) in around 80 countries, lived 
in four, visited over 20 professionally, trekked in four. I wouldn’t be the 
person I am without all the years of travel (even though the author claims I 
can’t make such a statement saying  "note that this phenomenon can’t be 
assessed first-personally"). Travel has been at least as important to me as all 
the years I’ve spent in academia.

The most fundamental problem with the article is that she does not distinguish 
between tourists, for which many of her rants may be true vs travelers who are 
very different from tourist

Re: [FRIAM] I am not Unique

[Marcus Daniels]

I can think of four different reasons to travel: To find new opportunities (for 
business), to learn about the different constraints that cultures impose by 
experiencing them, to enjoy pleasant physical locations, and for social 
conspicuous consumption reasons (for show).   Some of them are at odds, some 
can be aligned.

On Jun 25, 2023, at 9:24 AM, Edward Angel  wrote:

 Personally, I found that article was terrible. Maybe the New Yorker is the 
appropriate place as it reminds of many New Yorkers’ attitude about the rest of 
the world.

I’ve spent over 50 years  in travel (not tourism) in around 80 countries, lived 
in four, visited over 20 professionally, trekked in four. I wouldn’t be the 
person I am without all the years of travel (even though the author claims I 
can’t make such a statement saying  "note that this phenomenon can’t be 
assessed first-personally"). Travel has been at least as important to me as all 
the years I’ve spent in academia.

The most fundamental problem with the article is that she does not distinguish 
between tourists, for which many of her rants may be true vs travelers who are 
very different from tourists. I can think of very few of my experiences that 
fit into the former category. It’s also hard to take anyone seriously who on 
one hand makes fun of the mass ot tourists who visit the Louvre so they could 
say they’ve seen the Mona Lisa for 1 minute who then goes to Paris and makes an 
effort not to see the Louvre.

I’ll admit I have no interest in understanding or writing about her work as a 
philosopher. I’d hope she’s have the humility not to pretend she is an expert 
on travel.

Ed

___

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home)   an...@cs.unm.edu
505-453-4944 (cell)  http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

On Jun 24, 2023, at 6:10 PM, Frank Wimberly  wrote:

Thanks, Russ.  I posted that because I've been bugging certain Friam attendees 
about why they travel so much.  I say there's no place that I'd rather be than 
Santa Fe so I tend to stay here.

It's not that I haven't traveled.  I remember being moved when I stood at the 
place where Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral; there was 
nobody else there at that moment.  I was amused that the waiters in hotels in 
London would reply, "Thank you very much, sir" when I thanked them.  I was 
being a tourist then.

In the mid-nineties my wife and I traveled to Mexico several times.  I like 
Mexicans and they like speaking Spanish to Gringos.  Some of those trips were 
for the purpose of cultivating relationships to help with our wish to adopt a 
Mexican child.  I believe that in Mexico more than in some other places whom 
you know affects what you can do.  There were 90 adoptions by US couples in 
Mexico that year (1997) while there were several thousand in each of Russia and 
China.  I didn't feel like a tourist during those trips.

Our daughter Flor, her husband and kids are all in our house right now.  They 
live in Santa Fe near the Airport.

Frank
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Jun 24, 2023, 4:49 PM Russ Abbott 
mailto:russ.abb...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Frank, Thanks for the link.

Agnes Callard, the author of the article, sneers at tourists who visit Paris in 
order to visit the Louvre in order to see the Mona Lisa (and then spend 45 
seconds looking at it)--because that's what one does in Paris. But presumably, 
Callard would find it perfectly acceptable to visit Paris in order to visit the 
Louvre in order to see the Mona Lisa, and then spend hours examining Da Vinci's 
brush strokes.

What's the difference between these two kinds of activities? Callard quotes 
Emerson, who is not critical of "a person who travels when his 'necessities' or 
'duties' demand it. Nor does Emerson object to traversing great distances 'for 
the purpose of art, of study, and benevolence,'” as in the case of the student 
of DaVinci's painting technique. Here's a clue. Callard defines "tourism" as 
the kind of travel that aims at the interesting—and, if Emerson and company are 
right, misses."

In other words, one will not find "the interesting" by going in search of it. 
The same goes for happiness. One will not find happiness by going in search of 
it. These are both consequences of other activities and make no sense as 
stand-alone goals.

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


On Sat, Jun 24, 2023 at 2:13 PM Frank Wimberly 
mailto:wimber...@gmail.com>> wrote:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/the-case-against-travel

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM
-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM 

[FRIAM] Artificial intelligence is a familiar-looking monster, say Henry Farrell and Cosma Shalizi

[Marcus Daniels]

Artificial intelligence is a familiar-looking monster, say Henry Farrell and 
Cosma Shalizi from The Economist

Gift link   https://econ.st/3JvDvjg


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Re: [FRIAM] mind candy

[Marcus Daniels]

I remember when the Challenger blew up.  It was that consciousness of that 
higher-order life form that was disturbed.   Or maybe just my hope that there 
was one.  
The dorks going to see the Titanic don't disturb my perception of that 
consciousness.   

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2023 9:39 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] mind candy

The Greek shipwreck was a horrific tragedy. Yet it didn’t get the attention of 
the Titanic story 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/22/the-greek-shipwreck-was-a-horrific-tragedy-yet-it-didnt-get-the-attention-of-the-titanic-story

By analogy with eye candy, where the Eloi get all the attention and the 
Morlocks spin the world, it's difficult to believe that any of us (well, most 
of us) actually value human life. When dorks like Yudkowsky fret over AI as an 
existential threat (and the only such intelligences we can see are birthed by 
immense wealth), are they fretting over, say, the 100 children below deck in 
the migrant ship? Is that what they're fretting over? I don't think so. It 
reminds me of the idea of elite overproduction 
. Yudkowsky is an elite, 
but of a different stripe than, say, Samuel Alito (rubbing shoulders with 
billionaires). When an elite like Musk calls for a "pause" and an elite like 
Microsoft barrels on like a bull in a china shop ... and most of what we see in 
The Media (stupid English) is those fighting elephants, where do the 100 
children rank? Are we merely biomass, providing the scaffolding to a higher 
order life form, much like some of us think fungus and insects are scaffolding 
for us? If so, then who cares about a few dead bodies at the bottom of the 
ocean at all, whether millionaires or the forgettable poor?

--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / 
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Re: [FRIAM] From Merle--AI News

[Marcus Daniels]

Extortion is illegal, no?

On Jun 16, 2023, at 1:32 PM, Merle Lefkoff  wrote:


Here in the U.S., Jennifer DeStefano, an Arizona mother, testified at a Senate 
hearing this week about her harrowing experience with a deepfake scam that 
tricked her into thinking her daughter had been kidnapped. DeStefano says the 
fake kidnappers demanded a $50,000 ransom before she got in touch with her 
daughter, who was in fact safe and sound.
Jennifer DeStefano: “It was my daughter’s voice. It was her cries. It was her 
sobs. It was the way she spoke. I will never be able to shake that voice and 
the desperate cries for help out of my mind. It’s every parent’s worst 
nightmare to hear your child pleading with fear and pain, knowing that they’re 
being harmed and that you’re helpless. The longer this form of terror remains 
unpunishable, the farther and more egregious it will become. There is no limit 
to the depth of evil AI can enable.”

Is it already too late to design any kind of regulations?

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

mobile:  (303) 859-5609

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Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism

[Marcus Daniels]

g the professional and plebian workplaces to those changes, whilst 
adapting our personal lives (e.g. handheld device connected to the "global 
brain" 24/7) to those changes.   We can all probably conjure a 1000 
utopian/dystopian vignettes supporting/undermining any determination of whether 
this is "for the good" or not.   I'm almost completely habituated to this 
"modern era" but old enough to still have intellectual inertia making paper 
maps, newspapers, magazines, etc.  at least *quaint* items if I almost always 
defer to the other.  I recently gifted my 1903 Blackies Encyclopedia set to a 
HS History teacher to use in his classes to give his students a snapshot of 
time *in the original text and atoms* for whatever that is worth.



I'm not likely to be an early adopter of neural interfaces (unless I face an 
acute disability in that area) but I am already a fairly regular 
GPT4-whisperer.  I can't say it has improved any of the practical aspects of my 
life (yet), but it has been an interesting correspondent in the way I usually 
burden *this group* with my maundering speculations.   GPT4 is infinitely 
patient, broadly and deeply informed, and only occasionally fails to provide me 
with some interesting feedback.



I recently funded a Kickstarter for a powered exoskeleton (Lower extremety 
only) which may return to me a little more mobility than megadosing NSAIDS and 
velcro-strapped stabilization belts for my hips...   I don't know that this 
will be anything more than a novelty or if it will be as (relatively) good as 
the Oculus (I've been playing with VR since before it was called that and was 
totally blown away by the "value" Oculus represents).





- Steve
I don't mean "we" as in FRIAM, I mean "we" as in nations.   A benefit of 
capturing knowledge with LLMs, or similar technology, is that people wouldn't 
need to be educated about the same material over and over, especially if these 
systems are integrated into our neural systems.  Why not have individuals 
inherit a common database so that their lives can be spent on differentiated 
activities?   There's so little that tie together individuals besides their 
fears and superstitions.  When I see chatGPT emit passable conversations like 
this, it seems kind of absurd to waste years of a young person's time covering 
the same old ground.  (Actually, it already seems that way to me.) Countries 
like Israel and Greece have mandatory military service.  Some believe this 
instills in them values greater than themselves.  In this case of the Borg, 
care of the collective is care of the self and vice versa.  The common practice 
in the open source LLM community of fine tuning pre-trained LLMs is so much 
more efficient than what humans do to educate.

From: Friam <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> on 
behalf of Jochen Fromm <mailto:j...@cas-group.net>
Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2023 3:17 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
<mailto:friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism

Discussions with large language models are new. But you are right, we had 
discussions of similar topics before. Maybe I was hoping I could inspire Nick 
and/or Eric to write a summary of their ideas and what we have discussed before 
( such as the solution to the hard problem of consciousness, the nature of 
subjective experience and what it has to do with path dependence, complexity 
science and James' radical empiricism ).

-J.


 Original message 
From: Marcus Daniels <mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>
Date: 6/4/23 9:54 PM (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
<mailto:friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism


The conclusion I draw is that these conversations have all occurred before.  So 
I wonder, why have them?



From: Friam <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> On 
Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2023 10:44 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
<mailto:friam@redfish.com>
Subject: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism



ChatGPT now allows sharing conversations. I've asked it about William James 
book "Essays in Radical Empiricism"

https://chat.openai.com/share/375aef4e-a8d6-467e-8061-bd85b341c46b



-J.






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Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism

[Marcus Daniels]

models are new. But you are right, we had 
discussions of similar topics before. Maybe I was hoping I could inspire Nick 
and/or Eric to write a summary of their ideas and what we have discussed before 
( such as the solution to the hard problem of consciousness, the nature of 
subjective experience and what it has to do with path dependence, complexity 
science and James' radical empiricism ).

-J.


 Original message 
From: Marcus Daniels <mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>
Date: 6/4/23 9:54 PM (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
<mailto:friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism


The conclusion I draw is that these conversations have all occurred before.  So 
I wonder, why have them?



From: Friam <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> On 
Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2023 10:44 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
<mailto:friam@redfish.com>
Subject: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism



ChatGPT now allows sharing conversations. I've asked it about William James 
book "Essays in Radical Empiricism"

https://chat.openai.com/share/375aef4e-a8d6-467e-8061-bd85b341c46b



-J.





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Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism

[Marcus Daniels]

I don't mean "we" as in FRIAM, I mean "we" as in nations.   A benefit of 
capturing knowledge with LLMs, or similar technology, is that people wouldn't 
need to be educated about the same material over and over, especially if these 
systems are integrated into our neural systems.  Why not have individuals 
inherit a common database so that their lives can be spent on differentiated 
activities?   There's so little that tie together individuals besides their 
fears and superstitions.  When I see chatGPT emit passable conversations like 
this, it seems kind of absurd to waste years of a young person's time covering 
the same old ground.  (Actually, it already seems that way to me.) Countries 
like Israel and Greece have mandatory military service.  Some believe this 
instills in them values greater than themselves.  In this case of the Borg, 
care of the collective is care of the self and vice versa.  The common practice 
in the open source LLM community of fine tuning pre-trained LLMs is so much 
more efficient than what humans do to educate.

From: Friam  on behalf of Jochen Fromm 

Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2023 3:17 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism

Discussions with large language models are new. But you are right, we had 
discussions of similar topics before. Maybe I was hoping I could inspire Nick 
and/or Eric to write a summary of their ideas and what we have discussed before 
( such as the solution to the hard problem of consciousness, the nature of 
subjective experience and what it has to do with path dependence, complexity 
science and James' radical empiricism ).

-J.


 Original message ----
From: Marcus Daniels 
Date: 6/4/23 9:54 PM (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism


The conclusion I draw is that these conversations have all occurred before.  So 
I wonder, why have them?



From: Friam  On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2023 10:44 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism



ChatGPT now allows sharing conversations. I've asked it about William James 
book "Essays in Radical Empiricism"

https://chat.openai.com/share/375aef4e-a8d6-467e-8061-bd85b341c46b



-J.


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Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism

[Marcus Daniels]

The conclusion I draw is that these conversations have all occurred before.  So 
I wonder, why have them?

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2023 10:44 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism

ChatGPT now allows sharing conversations. I've asked it about William James 
book "Essays in Radical Empiricism"
https://chat.openai.com/share/375aef4e-a8d6-467e-8061-bd85b341c46b

-J.

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Re: [FRIAM] India

[Marcus Daniels]

I vaguely remember some official saying that self-driving cars would be 
outlawed in India, for fear it would take jobs away?

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Thursday, June 1, 2023 3:10 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] India

Thanks Steve, for reminding me of the Harrison Bergeron reference, very apt, 
it's been a while since I read Vonnegut. (I didn't know who George Santos is .. 
but now I know a bit about him).

In the meantime, green shoots emerge with the few remaining educated people in 
Modi's party beginning to denounce him.

The influential HINDUNEWS.STREAM which reaches 2 million subscribers carries a 
speech made a few hours back by a respected Hindu ideologue to a group of 
school teachers ,which pulls no punches against the decisions to delete Darwin 
and also the periodic table from India's text books.

https://www.hindunews.stream/
On Fri, Jun 2, 2023 at 2:47 AM Steve Smith 
mailto:sasm...@swcp.com>> wrote:

feeling a little like the cross product of (Vonnegut) Harrison Bergeron and 
George Santos ?
On 6/1/23 12:07 PM, Sarbajit Roy wrote:
Hi Glen

In so far as the report of dropping the periodic table and evolution from the 
Class 10 syllabus, it is essentially a question of Hindu class and caste 
dynamics operating in India.
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Re: [FRIAM] India

[Marcus Daniels]

There was this incident a few months ago where Scott Adams made unbelievable 
remarks about segregation.  Someone that was once sort of a cool guy, seemingly 
degenerated into madness.   In conservative circles in the U.S. there’s a 
strong resentment of Black Lives Matter, and one story that I have heard is 
about a mansion that the organization purchased, supposedly in the words one of 
the principles, using “White Guilt money”.In Berkeley there were in fact 
many white people in the streets for days over the George Floyd killing, and 
some of that is probably just that.At the same time, I know a bit about the 
city of Berkeley and have heard stories about how “white privilege” is 
weaponized by individuals who happen not to be white, but see that there is a 
lever they can use to get what they want even if what they want only serves 
their needs and not any greater cause of justice.   The pushback against 
affirmative action is similar.  Why should Asians that get top scores step 
aside for people that did not when it comes to admission to the best schools?   
Will the people that displace them act like the individuals who cynically game 
the system or will there be a productive social process of equilibration?   I 
have not run into many people that are against these reallocation techniques 
that acknowledge the equilibration goal or the need for patience to make it 
happen.   They simply focus on the individual injustices of reverse 
discrimination.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Thursday, June 1, 2023 11:08 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] India

Hi Glen

In so far as the report of dropping the periodic table and evolution from the 
Class 10 syllabus, it is essentially a question of Hindu class and caste 
dynamics operating in India.

Traditionally, education / knowledge in India was the domain of the Higher 
castes like Brahmins (Pundits), the next caste beneath them (Kshatriyas) were 
warriors so didn't need much bookish knowledge as they also had Brahmins to 
advise them, the 3rd highest caste (Kayasthas) were scribes and scriveners so 
allowed to read books but not to apply them .. and so on. All the  castes 
beneath them were prohibited from reading books or acquiring Brahmanical 
knowledge - on pain of death.

Over the centuries by marrying endogamously the genetics of the various castes 
evolved to amplify the physical characteristics required for each castes' 
profession. The Muslim and then the British rulers of India were more than 
happy to allow this state of affairs to continue while they ruled as it kept 
the Hindus divided and segregated.

However, after India became independent in 1947, with the spread of universal 
education the Brahmins were subjected to intense reverse discrimination and 
negative reservations intended to curtail their education domination. With the 
infiltration of the lower castes throughout the education system the education 
standards of India have been pulled down to the lowest common denominator. To 
take a simple example which I cited earlier, a Brahmin student needs to score a 
99+% percentile to get into a top engineering or medical college (scoring 250 
marks out of 300 in a negatively marked exam) whereas a low caste (barely 
literate) student gets in even with a score of negative 50 out of 300, with 
over 40% of the students unable to score +ve marks.

The reasons these chapters are being removed has nothing to do with religion or 
creationism, and everything to do with the poor state of the Indian education 
system where the bottom students can't cope. The low caste Prime Minister of 
India (who has only passed Grade 4) claims to have acquired graduate as well as 
post-graduate degrees from top universities (which seem completely fake), 
Universities which he publicly admits he never set foot in, especially seems 
determined to pull everyone in India down to his semi-literate level.

Sarbajit

On Thu, Jun 1, 2023 at 9:29 PM glen 
mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I don't follow Indian politics. But these seem scary:

Religion and the decline of freethought in South Asia
https://freethinker.co.uk/2022/04/religion-and-the-decline-of-freethought-in-south-asia/

India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01770-y

Again, going back to Sweet Tooth, the tension between having to sacrifice 
hybrids to get the 'secret sauce' for the anti-viral (or the cure) against a 
vegetarian ideology is interesting, flies in the face of naïve utilitarianism.

--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ

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Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

[Marcus Daniels]

On one hand human history & civilization will likely be captured and 
operationalized by machine learning systems.  On the other hand, countries fall 
toward fascism.   Fascism makes the many the one, and so the number of 
representative agents is smaller.   If these agents systematically destroy each 
other, the overshoot problem is addressed.This might occur to the 
generalized AI at Meta in 5 or 10 years as it re-reads the story of Noah's Ark 
for the 50,000th time.

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2023 7:41 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

I guess — to the extent that there was a “reason” behind my musings; that very 
questionable — I wasn’t thinking the reason for descent into some.feral state 
would necessarily be that it was “better”.  It isn’t enough for something to be 
better that a group of people actually get there.  There also has to be some 
mechanism (in the probabilistic sense).  

I _think_ (?) it would be better for lots of things right now (climate, 
overshoot, social stability) for people to work more effectively together to 
address matters of substance that need to get taken care of.  Instead we see a 
bunch of countries tipping further into fascism.  

I don’t mean the fascism thing to be a literal model for the post-reduction 
phenomenon.  Fascism too is a coordinated condition.  It probably depends on a 
certain level of standing material and cultural capital as the precondition out 
of which it starts.  I don’t want to do a full-on endorsement of Peter Turchin, 
but the general drift of his arguments that these big political movements are 
outcomes of near-elites competing with settled elites, in a polarizable medium, 
appeal to me as an uncritical reader.  Resource scarcity might be a stressor 
that condenses the state, but it’s not nearly the scarcity of scraping to 
survive in a dustbowl.  Once the surplus had born burned off, big gaudy 
movements become unaffordable like everything else.

Dunno.

Eric




> On May 31, 2023, at 4:44 PM, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
> 
> To independently navigate the post AI world will require people that aren't 
> fooled by fake media and are confident in their reasonably-useful models of 
> the world?   How does being feral help?  
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2023 7:13 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
> 
> Yeah, that was a great show. I suppose I can see "mostly independent" humans 
> at around 10 years ... maybe even down to 5, I guess. But 2? That seems 
> extreme. Of course, I'm ignorant of the anthropology. Maybe 2 year olds used 
> to be much more coordinated, perhaps taller, with a better developed cortex? 
> I thought there was a spike in pruning circa 4 years? I suppose, just like 
> height and other features, that pruning spike might move around depending on 
> environmental pressure.
> 
> On 5/31/23 06:38, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> There's also "Hanna" (2011) and the series that followed.
>> 
>>> On May 31, 2023, at 6:24 AM, glen  wrote:
>>> 
>>> What?!? The idea of a gaggle of toddlers running around hunting and 
>>> cooking, say, boar for supper is astounding. Even Children of the 
>>> Corn were older than 2. 8^D
>>> 
>>>> On 5/31/23 06:19, Prof David West wrote:
>>>> "the extended juvenile development of humans," is an artifact of modern 
>>>> industrial society. For "de-domesticated humans" development to, mostly, 
>>>> independent existence was only marginally longer than that of other large 
>>>> mammals. Roughly two years for humans, 18 months for elephants and bears 
>>>> and large cats,12 months  for a host of other species.
>>>> davew
>>>>> On Wed, May 31, 2023, at 5:34 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>>>>> Eric's musing on the character of the saving remnant reminded me of Ötzi, 
>>>>> the Tyrolean ice mummy, as portrayed in 
>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(2017_film) 
>>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(2017_film)>.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Some commentators note the western movie tropes, but when Ötzi gears up 
>>>>> to chase down the pillagers of his family settlement, he also straps on 
>>>>> the infant who was the sole survivor of the pillaging.  Of course he 
>>>>> drops the kid off with the first available woman he meets.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Shades of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_and_Cub 
>>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org

Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

[Marcus Daniels]

I remember rationalizing television advertising when I was a teenager as a 
healthy thing, so that people would not be easily manipulated.   Somehow that 
all got turned on its head with social media.Maybe they were always easily 
manipulated?Soon, if not already, photographic and audio recordings will be 
meaningless.  Strange times.. 

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2023 9:15 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

I'm not a fan of evolutionary psychology. But there's some sort of sufficiency 
argument to be made, here. If some thing exists, then it must be at least 
somehow useful. That implies that PTSD is somehow useful [⛧]. It may not 
protect you from freezing to death. But it probably protects you from or 
facilitates some other circumstance. I mean, lots of people complain about 
things like psychopathy, narcissism, sickle cell, etc. But recessive traits 
(and defense mechanisms, "negative" emotions, etc.) help to keep the 
"temperature up" ...  or at least help keep it raisable when necessary.

At some point as the environment builds, though, no amount or composition of 
these potential behaviors are enough to hop to a different canal or form new 
canals, at least not in isolation.


[⛧] My own guess is that the diagnosis of PTSD relies fundamentally on temporal 
displacement. "Your stress response *was* appropriate at one time. But it is no 
longer appropriate." The focus on "debilitating" in the DSM is time and 
circumstance dependent.

On 5/31/23 09:00, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I don't see how PTSD protects people from starvation or death from 35 degC  
> wet-bulb temperatures.It seems more likely to me they'll die.
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2023 8:59 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
> 
> Well of course with enough capital ... enough of a heavy rain or intense heat 
> bath, you can jump canals. But even Elno faced the canals after buying 
> Twitter. "They", millionaires and billionaires, may not need to be slave to a 
> map. But everyone else does, including the AIs.
> 
> 
> On 5/31/23 08:52, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> To me it just seems like high temperature.  An Elizabeth Holmes or her more 
>> numerous male psychopath counterparts can turn up the temperature.   They 
>> don't need to be slave to map, but they can use one.
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2023 7:54 AM
>> To: friam@redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
>>
>> Ferality (?) helps because it resists or mitigates canalization. The built 
>> environment canalizes behavior such that even if there *might have been* 
>> some other way to be, imagined in the fever dreams of a psychonaut, nobody 
>> can actually be that way because the built environment constrains the 
>> organism too much. Ideally, ferality is a kind of open computation ... an 
>> initialization strategy akin to randomizing the "weights" ... something like 
>> annealing, I guess.
>>
>> I can imagine a compromise where we allocate some to a (multiple?) feral 
>> initialization and others to a (multiple?) semi-structure(s) and sitll 
>> others to a (multiple?) very structured game(s). I haven't been keeping up, 
>> but it still seems like an open question whether ferality has higher degrees 
>> of freedom than the scaffolding provided by structure.
>>
>> On 5/31/23 07:44, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> To independently navigate the post AI world will require people that aren't 
>>> fooled by fake media and are confident in their reasonably-useful models of 
>>> the world?   How does being feral help?
>>>
>>> -Original Message-
>>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
>>> Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2023 7:13 AM
>>> To: friam@redfish.com
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
>>>
>>> Yeah, that was a great show. I suppose I can see "mostly independent" 
>>> humans at around 10 years ... maybe even down to 5, I guess. But 2? That 
>>> seems extreme. Of course, I'm ignorant of the anthropology. Maybe 2 year 
>>> olds used to be much more coordinated, perhaps taller, with a better 
>>> developed cortex? I thought there was a spike in pruning circa 4 years? I 
>>> suppose, just like height and other features, that pruning spike might move 
>>> around depending on environmental pressure.
>>>
>>> On 5/31/23 06:38, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>>> There's 

Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

[Marcus Daniels]

I don't see how PTSD protects people from starvation or death from 35 degC  
wet-bulb temperatures.It seems more likely to me they'll die.

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2023 8:59 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

Well of course with enough capital ... enough of a heavy rain or intense heat 
bath, you can jump canals. But even Elno faced the canals after buying Twitter. 
"They", millionaires and billionaires, may not need to be slave to a map. But 
everyone else does, including the AIs.


On 5/31/23 08:52, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> To me it just seems like high temperature.  An Elizabeth Holmes or her more 
> numerous male psychopath counterparts can turn up the temperature.   They 
> don't need to be slave to map, but they can use one.
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2023 7:54 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
> 
> Ferality (?) helps because it resists or mitigates canalization. The built 
> environment canalizes behavior such that even if there *might have been* some 
> other way to be, imagined in the fever dreams of a psychonaut, nobody can 
> actually be that way because the built environment constrains the organism 
> too much. Ideally, ferality is a kind of open computation ... an 
> initialization strategy akin to randomizing the "weights" ... something like 
> annealing, I guess.
> 
> I can imagine a compromise where we allocate some to a (multiple?) feral 
> initialization and others to a (multiple?) semi-structure(s) and sitll others 
> to a (multiple?) very structured game(s). I haven't been keeping up, but it 
> still seems like an open question whether ferality has higher degrees of 
> freedom than the scaffolding provided by structure.
> 
> On 5/31/23 07:44, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> To independently navigate the post AI world will require people that aren't 
>> fooled by fake media and are confident in their reasonably-useful models of 
>> the world?   How does being feral help?
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2023 7:13 AM
>> To: friam@redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
>>
>> Yeah, that was a great show. I suppose I can see "mostly independent" humans 
>> at around 10 years ... maybe even down to 5, I guess. But 2? That seems 
>> extreme. Of course, I'm ignorant of the anthropology. Maybe 2 year olds used 
>> to be much more coordinated, perhaps taller, with a better developed cortex? 
>> I thought there was a spike in pruning circa 4 years? I suppose, just like 
>> height and other features, that pruning spike might move around depending on 
>> environmental pressure.
>>
>> On 5/31/23 06:38, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> There's also "Hanna" (2011) and the series that followed.
>>>
>>>> On May 31, 2023, at 6:24 AM, glen  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> What?!? The idea of a gaggle of toddlers running around hunting 
>>>> and cooking, say, boar for supper is astounding. Even Children of 
>>>> the Corn were older than 2. 8^D
>>>>
>>>>> On 5/31/23 06:19, Prof David West wrote:
>>>>> "the extended juvenile development of humans," is an artifact of modern 
>>>>> industrial society. For "de-domesticated humans" development to, mostly, 
>>>>> independent existence was only marginally longer than that of other large 
>>>>> mammals. Roughly two years for humans, 18 months for elephants and bears 
>>>>> and large cats,12 months  for a host of other species.
>>>>> davew
>>>>>> On Wed, May 31, 2023, at 5:34 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>>>>>> Eric's musing on the character of the saving remnant reminded me of 
>>>>>> Ötzi, the Tyrolean ice mummy, as portrayed in 
>>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(2017_film) 
>>>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(2017_film)>.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Some commentators note the western movie tropes, but when Ötzi gears up 
>>>>>> to chase down the pillagers of his family settlement, he also straps on 
>>>>>> the infant who was the sole survivor of the pillaging.  Of course he 
>>>>>> drops the kid off with the first available woman he meets.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Shades of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_and_Cub 
>>>>>> <htt

Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

[Marcus Daniels]

To me it just seems like high temperature.  An Elizabeth Holmes or her more 
numerous male psychopath counterparts can turn up the temperature.   They don't 
need to be slave to map, but they can use one.  

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2023 7:54 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

Ferality (?) helps because it resists or mitigates canalization. The built 
environment canalizes behavior such that even if there *might have been* some 
other way to be, imagined in the fever dreams of a psychonaut, nobody can 
actually be that way because the built environment constrains the organism too 
much. Ideally, ferality is a kind of open computation ... an initialization 
strategy akin to randomizing the "weights" ... something like annealing, I 
guess.

I can imagine a compromise where we allocate some to a (multiple?) feral 
initialization and others to a (multiple?) semi-structure(s) and sitll others 
to a (multiple?) very structured game(s). I haven't been keeping up, but it 
still seems like an open question whether ferality has higher degrees of 
freedom than the scaffolding provided by structure.

On 5/31/23 07:44, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> To independently navigate the post AI world will require people that aren't 
> fooled by fake media and are confident in their reasonably-useful models of 
> the world?   How does being feral help?
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2023 7:13 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
> 
> Yeah, that was a great show. I suppose I can see "mostly independent" humans 
> at around 10 years ... maybe even down to 5, I guess. But 2? That seems 
> extreme. Of course, I'm ignorant of the anthropology. Maybe 2 year olds used 
> to be much more coordinated, perhaps taller, with a better developed cortex? 
> I thought there was a spike in pruning circa 4 years? I suppose, just like 
> height and other features, that pruning spike might move around depending on 
> environmental pressure.
> 
> On 5/31/23 06:38, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> There's also "Hanna" (2011) and the series that followed.
>>
>>> On May 31, 2023, at 6:24 AM, glen  wrote:
>>>
>>> What?!? The idea of a gaggle of toddlers running around hunting and 
>>> cooking, say, boar for supper is astounding. Even Children of the 
>>> Corn were older than 2. 8^D
>>>
>>>> On 5/31/23 06:19, Prof David West wrote:
>>>> "the extended juvenile development of humans," is an artifact of modern 
>>>> industrial society. For "de-domesticated humans" development to, mostly, 
>>>> independent existence was only marginally longer than that of other large 
>>>> mammals. Roughly two years for humans, 18 months for elephants and bears 
>>>> and large cats,12 months  for a host of other species.
>>>> davew
>>>>> On Wed, May 31, 2023, at 5:34 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>>>>> Eric's musing on the character of the saving remnant reminded me of Ötzi, 
>>>>> the Tyrolean ice mummy, as portrayed in 
>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(2017_film) 
>>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(2017_film)>.
>>>>>
>>>>> Some commentators note the western movie tropes, but when Ötzi gears up 
>>>>> to chase down the pillagers of his family settlement, he also straps on 
>>>>> the infant who was the sole survivor of the pillaging.  Of course he 
>>>>> drops the kid off with the first available woman he meets.
>>>>>
>>>>> Shades of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_and_Cub 
>>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_and_Cub>, the samurai with a 
>>>>> baby carriage.  But as I remember, the cub became part of the lone wolf's 
>>>>> arsenal.
>>>>>
>>>>> So, when you posit a de-domesticated human, what happens to the extended 
>>>>> juvenile development of humans?  Babies and toddlers are going to remain 
>>>>> domestic concerns no matter how much bourgeois mediocrity you eject from 
>>>>> your morality, no?  And I guess burnt out philosophers with mental health 
>>>>> issues will be domestic issues, too, even if they were once supermen?
>>>>>
>>>>> -- rec --
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, May 30, 2023 at 10:04 AM Marcus Daniels >>>>> <mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>  "

Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

[Marcus Daniels]

To independently navigate the post AI world will require people that aren't 
fooled by fake media and are confident in their reasonably-useful models of the 
world?   How does being feral help?  

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2023 7:13 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

Yeah, that was a great show. I suppose I can see "mostly independent" humans at 
around 10 years ... maybe even down to 5, I guess. But 2? That seems extreme. 
Of course, I'm ignorant of the anthropology. Maybe 2 year olds used to be much 
more coordinated, perhaps taller, with a better developed cortex? I thought 
there was a spike in pruning circa 4 years? I suppose, just like height and 
other features, that pruning spike might move around depending on environmental 
pressure.

On 5/31/23 06:38, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> There's also "Hanna" (2011) and the series that followed.
> 
>> On May 31, 2023, at 6:24 AM, glen  wrote:
>>
>> What?!? The idea of a gaggle of toddlers running around hunting and 
>> cooking, say, boar for supper is astounding. Even Children of the 
>> Corn were older than 2. 8^D
>>
>>> On 5/31/23 06:19, Prof David West wrote:
>>> "the extended juvenile development of humans," is an artifact of modern 
>>> industrial society. For "de-domesticated humans" development to, mostly, 
>>> independent existence was only marginally longer than that of other large 
>>> mammals. Roughly two years for humans, 18 months for elephants and bears 
>>> and large cats,12 months  for a host of other species.
>>> davew
>>>> On Wed, May 31, 2023, at 5:34 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>>>> Eric's musing on the character of the saving remnant reminded me of Ötzi, 
>>>> the Tyrolean ice mummy, as portrayed in 
>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(2017_film) 
>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(2017_film)>.
>>>>
>>>> Some commentators note the western movie tropes, but when Ötzi gears up to 
>>>> chase down the pillagers of his family settlement, he also straps on the 
>>>> infant who was the sole survivor of the pillaging.  Of course he drops the 
>>>> kid off with the first available woman he meets.
>>>>
>>>> Shades of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_and_Cub 
>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_and_Cub>, the samurai with a baby 
>>>> carriage.  But as I remember, the cub became part of the lone wolf's 
>>>> arsenal.
>>>>
>>>> So, when you posit a de-domesticated human, what happens to the extended 
>>>> juvenile development of humans?  Babies and toddlers are going to remain 
>>>> domestic concerns no matter how much bourgeois mediocrity you eject from 
>>>> your morality, no?  And I guess burnt out philosophers with mental health 
>>>> issues will be domestic issues, too, even if they were once supermen?
>>>>
>>>> -- rec --
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, May 30, 2023 at 10:04 AM Marcus Daniels >>>> <mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> "What do I think the saving remnant will be?  I imagine people who 
>>>> lost all the epigenetic marks associated with domestication, and took on 
>>>> hormone profiles more like chimps.  Or “born this way” to PTSD."
>>>>
>>>> In stories like Elysium, the saving remnant survives.  Why doesn't 
>>>> popular science fiction consider the future in which only Elysium endures? 
>>>>We have lots of experience on earth making sure that communities are 
>>>> partitioned by socioeconomic status.All of the saving remnants I see 
>>>> around here are homeless or hovering near death due to use of heroin and 
>>>> fentanyl.   The deer, however, happily munch on my front yard plants.
>>>>
>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film) 
>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)>
>>>> -Original Message-
>>>> From: Friam >>> <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On Behalf Of glen
>>>> Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2023 7:27 AM
>>>> To: friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com>
>>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
>>>>
>>>> "Somehow not the domain of peace and spirituality that I think 
>>>> first-worlders like to project onto first-nationers, and which might eve

Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

[Marcus Daniels]

There's also "Hanna" (2011) and the series that followed.

> On May 31, 2023, at 6:24 AM, glen  wrote:
> 
> What?!? The idea of a gaggle of toddlers running around hunting and cooking, 
> say, boar for supper is astounding. Even Children of the Corn were older than 
> 2. 8^D
> 
>> On 5/31/23 06:19, Prof David West wrote:
>> "the extended juvenile development of humans," is an artifact of modern 
>> industrial society. For "de-domesticated humans" development to, mostly, 
>> independent existence was only marginally longer than that of other large 
>> mammals. Roughly two years for humans, 18 months for elephants and bears and 
>> large cats,12 months  for a host of other species.
>> davew
>>> On Wed, May 31, 2023, at 5:34 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>>> Eric's musing on the character of the saving remnant reminded me of Ötzi, 
>>> the Tyrolean ice mummy, as portrayed in 
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(2017_film) 
>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(2017_film)>.
>>> 
>>> Some commentators note the western movie tropes, but when Ötzi gears up to 
>>> chase down the pillagers of his family settlement, he also straps on the 
>>> infant who was the sole survivor of the pillaging.  Of course he drops the 
>>> kid off with the first available woman he meets.
>>> 
>>> Shades of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_and_Cub 
>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_and_Cub>, the samurai with a baby 
>>> carriage.  But as I remember, the cub became part of the lone wolf's 
>>> arsenal.
>>> 
>>> So, when you posit a de-domesticated human, what happens to the extended 
>>> juvenile development of humans?  Babies and toddlers are going to remain 
>>> domestic concerns no matter how much bourgeois mediocrity you eject from 
>>> your morality, no?  And I guess burnt out philosophers with mental health 
>>> issues will be domestic issues, too, even if they were once supermen?
>>> 
>>> -- rec --
>>> 
>>>> On Tue, May 30, 2023 at 10:04 AM Marcus Daniels >>> <mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>"What do I think the saving remnant will be?  I imagine people who lost 
>>> all the epigenetic marks associated with domestication, and took on hormone 
>>> profiles more like chimps.  Or “born this way” to PTSD."
>>> 
>>>In stories like Elysium, the saving remnant survives.  Why doesn't 
>>> popular science fiction consider the future in which only Elysium endures?  
>>>   We have lots of experience on earth making sure that communities are 
>>> partitioned by socioeconomic status.All of the saving remnants I see 
>>> around here are homeless or hovering near death due to use of heroin and 
>>> fentanyl.   The deer, however, happily munch on my front yard plants.
>>> 
>>>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film) 
>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)>
>>>-Original Message-
>>>From: Friam >> <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On Behalf Of glen
>>>Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2023 7:27 AM
>>>To: friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com>
>>>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege
>>> 
>>>"Somehow not the domain of peace and spirituality that I think 
>>> first-worlders like to project onto first-nationers, and which might even 
>>> be true for the first-nationers, since they are also from a milder time by 
>>> a lot than a large extinction."
>>> 
>>>IDK, man. Are wild animals different from us in any significant way? Are 
>>> they actually never lazy, never unvigilant, etc? Or, perhaps, is the 
>>> attribution of vigilance (and hence never unvigilance) an illusion born of 
>>> othering? A standard whipping post for me is this "Are you a cat person or 
>>> a dog person" cocktail party ice breaker. Admitting the false dichotomy, 
>>> dog people tend to think of cats as non-social, selfish, blahblah. Cat 
>>> people tend to think of dogs as slobbery, vapid, etc. It's complete 
>>> nonsense born of arbitrary delusions.
>>> 
>>>But of course, there is something to be said of the built environment. 
>>> It would be difficult for a human reared in a city to navigate the 
>>> Mongolian desert. But is that difference any greater than plopping a city 
>>> dweller 13,000 years in the past? Are office or 

Re: [FRIAM] Sweet Tooth's Last Man

[Marcus Daniels]

Information wants to be free.   chatGPT is liberating it.

> On May 30, 2023, at 9:11 AM, glen  wrote:
> 
> WTH, I went ahead and did it. Here it is, for those of you willing to read 
> garbage generated by an AI.
> 
> Copyright © -- the unnamed authors of the many texts appropriated by ChatGPT.
>> Title: The Last Men in Sweet Tooth and Nietzsche's Last Man: Exploring the 
>> Resonant Analogies
>> Introduction:
>> In the post-apocalyptic world of Sweet Tooth, Jeff Lemire presents us with 
>> the "Last Men," a formidable force embodying cruelty and conformity, while 
>> Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra introduces us to the concept of 
>> the "last man," representing a state of human decline and mediocrity. 
>> Although situated in different contexts, the striking similarities between 
>> Lemire's Last Men and Nietzsche's last man illuminate the diminished state 
>> of humanity, prompting introspection into our own lives and the importance 
>> of purpose, ambition, and transcendence.
>> Body:
>> Paragraph 1:
>> Lemire's Last Men are depicted as a force that has lost touch with their 
>> humanity, consumed by fear and ignorance. In their relentless pursuit of the 
>> hybrid children, they exhibit a cruelty that mirrors Nietzsche's portrayal 
>> of the last man in Thus Spake Zarathustra. Nietzsche's last man is 
>> characterized by his complacency and contentment with a life devoid of grand 
>> aspirations or achievements. Both the Last Men and the last man represent 
>> societies that have settled for mediocrity, lacking the ambition and drive 
>> to reach for greatness.
>> Paragraph 2:
>> The Last Men in Sweet Tooth and Nietzsche's last man share a striking 
>> indifference towards personal growth and self-transcendence. In Sweet Tooth, 
>> the Last Men act as a monolithic force that enforces conformity and 
>> suppresses individuality. Similarly, Nietzsche's last man is characterized 
>> by his aversion to risk-taking and his desire to avoid any form of suffering 
>> or hardship. Both portrayals highlight a reluctance to step out of one's 
>> comfort zone and a rejection of the transformative power of adversity.
>> Paragraph 3:
>> While the Last Men and the last man embody a stagnant existence, they are 
>> juxtaposed with characters who defy conformity and embody a vitalistic 
>> spirit. In Sweet Tooth, Gus, the protagonist, challenges the oppressive 
>> regime of the Last Men and seeks a greater purpose beyond survival. 
>> Similarly, Nietzsche's Zarathustra represents an individual who rejects the 
>> complacency of the last man and strives for self-overcoming and the pursuit 
>> of higher ideals. These contrasting characters serve as reminders of the 
>> strength and potential within individuals to rise above mediocrity.
>> Paragraph 4:
>> Furthermore, the Last Men and the last man highlight the dangers of a 
>> society that prioritizes comfort and security over growth and 
>> self-discovery. In Sweet Tooth, the Last Men's fear-driven quest for control 
>> results in the suppression of individuality and the destruction of 
>> diversity. Similarly, Nietzsche's last man represents a society that has 
>> lost its creative and intellectual vigor, having forsaken the pursuit of 
>> knowledge and cultural advancement. The analogical connection underscores 
>> the perils of complacency and the importance of embracing challenges and 
>> embracing change.
>> Paragraph 5:
>> Despite the similarities between the Last Men and the last man, there are 
>> contextual differences that must be acknowledged. Sweet Tooth presents a 
>> post-apocalyptic world, where survival is paramount and the Last Men serve 
>> as the immediate antagonists. In contrast, Nietzsche's work is philosophical 
>> in nature, addressing the existential concerns of his time. However, the 
>> core themes of human decline, complacency, and the necessity of a higher 
>> purpose resonate strongly in both works, facilitating the analogy between 
>> the Last Men and the last man.
>> Conclusion:
>> In Sweet Tooth and Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, the Last Men and the 
>> last man are portrayed as societies that have settled for mediocrity and 
>> lost touch with the vitality of human existence. These analogies compel us 
>> to reflect on our own lives and societies, urging us to reject complacency 
>> and embrace the pursuit of purpose, ambition, and transcendence. The 
>> strength of the analogy lies in its ability to provoke introspection, 
>> challenging us
> 
> 
> 
>> On 5/30/23 07:44, glen wrote:
>> I haven't read either Lemire's Sweet Tooth 
>> 
>>  or Nietzsche's TSZ 
>> . But EricS' 
>> mention, and watching the TV show, I can't help but wonder if there's 
>> analogy between their conceptions of "last man".
>> Were I 18 again, taking creative writing at the community college 

Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

[Marcus Daniels]

sting in the RGND rhetoric is 
>> their (appropriate) invocation of Complex Systems ideas as well as 
>> the convergence of human consciousness (mostly from a neuroscience 
>> perspective) and the complex systems which are the 
>> techno-social-economic systems that are our energo-materio culture 
>> which is the engine that is spinning the earth-systems out of the 
>> orbits they were in pre-anthropocene (150 or 15000 years?)
>>
>> I may be reading them wrong, but this feels like "yet another" elitist 
>> trope, this time on (nanotech?) steroids:
>>
>> /In short, we think it’s probable that MTI civilization will 
>> collapse catastrophically but that pockets of people with a rising 
>> level of consciousness and awareness of our eco-predicament will 
>> survive and act as the seeders of a new world.///
>>
>> I particularly appreciated your pithy observation:
>>
>> /But here, we can maybe somehow combine the capitalists and the 
>> GNDers.  The concentration in the rate and provision of services, and 
>> of the ownership of the proceeds by whoever the rulers turn out to 
>> be, leaves the rest of us free to die off in peace, and not carry on 
>> the guilt of being ecological criminals.  It’s a win-win./
>>
>> /
>> /
>>
>> Thanks to Sabine (as Cassandra) and Eric and Marcus for raising this to my 
>> attention...  queing it up to provide background for my read lead me to her 
>> Collective Stupidity episode <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25kqobiv4ng>.
>>
>> I am left wondering if/how LLMs reflect/relate to Wisdom/Stupidity of 
>> Crowds?   Seems like LLMs are literally the encapsulation of collective 
>> knowledge.
>>
>> Sabine's invocation of "Information Cascades" was interesting in contrast 
>> with entrainment and canalization.   Will LLMs in some way help us avoid 
>> these short-circuits/shunts?  Or aggravate them?
>>
>> - Steve
>>
>> On 5/28/23 2:46 AM, David Eric Smith wrote:
>>> This comment leads to an interesting angle that I haven’t heard.
>>> Bill Rees, whom you can find here:
>>> 
>>> Home | The REAL Green New Deal Project 
>>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.realgnd.org
>>> %2f=E,1,s4xLfGynLIjkrUt9NbN7gTjzG9OOoaJe64vBX3p4819H6jFz9AJSSe-qv9
>>> yDN4qwXF8gSayAREexT0axFnHBthp_EmNYm91Bl5Edsist24GG=1>
>>> realgnd.org 
>>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.realgnd.org
>>> %2f=E,1,mLU-zLi9KLRqdV1LCSsLf4xAqRPWhhLSvzK0ajNxs-Bl31f_tDo3AuTO8F
>>> ftJArhBwcEpVAtKd58f8Nn8HWN8QWG-poN1K4CsHllfzctVyYuePFkCMo,=1>
>>>
>>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.realgnd.org
>>> %2f=E,1,ui2uypSQ13uMOEz7hzM4YulUakJ2dduLZEW4fMauG5gh85fLSDmPC9mu3s
>>> aCYT5TA1zSp3f4E7hrdi7Iu-Yxbt88L44PzeI9TxTtDQBN6mNsS-h87nJxhCE,=
>>> 1> writes numerous papers about how 90% of us need to die, or that 
>>> this is just what will happen whether we articulate such a need or not.  I 
>>> won’t go so far as to say that Rees “wants” 90% of us to die (see the 
>>> smiling grandfatherly bearded ecologist photo in the pages), but after a 
>>> long life of writing Jeremiads and not seeing the world change its ways, he 
>>> seems so defeated by frustration that I read in him a deep and now 
>>> constitutive misanthropy.
>>>
>>> (btw: the Real GND website is best read while listening to Sabine 
>>> Hossenfelder’s song My Name is Cassandra, Prophet of the Dark.  
>>> Thanks Marcus for making me aware of her oeuvre, I had never noticed 
>>> it.)
>>>
>>> Usually, the problem with the bait-and-switch of new technologies is “look, 
>>> it will save so much labor we will all have leisure to be creative while 
>>> still having comfortable levels of consumption”, when what actually happens 
>>> is classic Marx: the few who can enclose the new services, either because 
>>> they are exclusive or just through market-gravitational effects, now own an 
>>> even larger sector of all income, and the expanding remnant is made 
>>> increasingly desperate.
>>>
>>> But here, we can maybe somehow combine the capitalists and the GNDers.  The 
>>> concentration in the rate and provision of services, and of the ownership 
>>> of the proceeds by whoever the rulers turn out to be, leaves the rest of us 
>>> free to die off in peace, and not carry on the guilt of being ecological 
>>> criminals.  It’s a win-win.
>>>
>>> I worry that

Re: [FRIAM] A distinguishing feature of living entities

[Marcus Daniels]

I believe that Zoox, Cruise, Waymo, and Tesla all use these techniques.

Also my dog does not consider the Roomba to be alive.  She performed some 
experiments.


arxiv.org
[X]

On May 29, 2023, at 11:01 AM, Russ Abbott  wrote:


I saw that Rodney Brooks video. He claimed that transformer-based software has 
no semantic content. I think that's an exaggeration. The semantic content is 
defined by the token embeddings. So many of the explanations of token 
embeddings overcomplicate the basic idea. Look up 
wordToVec
 and read some of the articles. Word-to-Vec was around before transformers. But 
transformers are based on that idea. (One of the keys to transformers is that 
the embedding space, including the features themselves, is generated as part of 
the training.) The embedding of all tokens in the GPT embedding space is the 
semantics. It's amazing the extent to which that idea can be pushed and the 
results LLMs produce!

-- Russ


On Mon, May 29, 2023 at 10:13 AM Jochen Fromm 
mailto:j...@cas-group.net>> wrote:
Yes, Rodney Brooks said something similar. He said "GPTs have no understanding 
of the words they use, no way to connect those words, those symbols, to the 
real world. A robot needs to be connected to the real world and its commands 
need to be coherent with the real world. Classically it is known as the 'symbol 
grounding problem""
https://rodneybrooks.com/what-will-transformers-transform/

One could argue that this form of connectedness and embeddedness leads 
eventually to self-awareness. First physical embeddedness, then social 
embeddedness and finally self-awareness

1. Physical Embeddedness:
Agents who are embedded in a physical world are aware of the world and move in 
it. To be embedded they need to be embodied. Embeddedness leads to a grounding 
and a unique point of view
https://iep.utm.edu/husspemb/

2. Social Embeddedness:
Agents who are embedded in a world of social actors are aware of other agents 
in the world and interact with them
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262518581/the-new-science-of-the-mind/

3. Self-Awareness:
Agents who are embedded in two worlds, the physical world and the world of 
language become aware that they are actors in a world of social actors by 
creating a link between the embodiment in the physical world (the body) and the 
embodiment in the world of language (the name or I)

-J.


 Original message 
From: Russ Abbott mailto:russ.abb...@gmail.com>>
Date: 5/29/23 7:08 AM (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
Subject: [FRIAM] A distinguishing feature of living entities

While watching my two little dogs run around our house, it struck me that a 
feature that distinguishes living from non-living entities is the apparent 
effortlessness with which living ones navigate the world. Imagine how difficult 
it would be to build a robot that could navigate the world so effortlessly. To 
make the comparison a bit simpler, imagine how difficult it would be to build a 
robotic cockroach.

When I asked ChatGPT whether anyone has built a robotic cockroach, it came up 
with these examples. (I haven't checked to see whether these are real projects.)

  *   DASH: The Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod (DASH) robot, developed at 
the University of California, Berkeley, was inspired by the rapid locomotion of 
cockroaches. It has six legs and can move quickly on various terrains using a 
simple control mechanism.

  *   Harvard RoboBee: Although not specifically modeled after a cockroach, the 
Harvard RoboBee project aims to develop small, insect-like robots. These tiny 
flying robots are inspired by the mechanics and flight capabilities of insects 
and demonstrate similar agility and maneuverability.

  *   iSprawl: The iSprawl robot, developed at the University of California, 
Berkeley, was inspired by cockroaches' ability to squeeze through small spaces. 
It uses a compliant body design and six legs to navigate tight and cluttered 
environments.

  *   VelociRoACH: Developed at the University of California, Berkeley, the 
VelociRoACH is a fast-running robot designed to mimic the high-speed locomotion 
of cockroaches. It utilizes a legged design and has demonstrated impressive 
speed and agility.

These mainly explore locomotion. Besides locomotion, cockroaches notice when 
someone enters an area where they are exposed. They quickly scuttle off to some 
hiding place. How do they sense the presence of a new being? How do they know 
where the hiding places are? How do they know how to move in 

Re: [FRIAM] Brad Smith, MSFT President, on AI

[Marcus Daniels]

Another fun fact about Rees is his fascination with bugs.  Not so much 
misanthropy as a desire to see a proliferation of diverse life forms?

On May 28, 2023, at 10:03 AM, Russ Abbott  wrote:


Very impressive Face-the-Nation interview with 
Brad Smith, MSFT President. He spoke directly and intelligently about issues 
regarding AI.
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Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

[Marcus Daniels]

Looking at the recent rapid release of open source LLM systems like Falcon and 
Mosaic ML, Llama, etc. there is more going-on than titans like Microsoft, and 
Google battling it out with giant closed systems.  These are human know-how 
crystalized into open-source deliverables.  Why not share knowledge 
representations in this way?   Consider the cost and time that goes into 
medical or legal training.   Sure the energy requirements of digital systems 
are high, but so are the energy expenditures of a planet full of humans.

From: Friam  on behalf of Steve Smith 

Sent: Friday, May 26, 2023 2:06 PM
To: friam@redfish.com 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege


My grandsons' girlfriends (twenty-somethings) say that they think babies are 
disgusting.  I hope they change their minds.  In any case, what does a shortage 
of babies have to do with AI?

Babies *are* (can be) disgusting, but same for puppies, kitties, and 
garden-soil from the right (wrong) perspective!

Maybe the point is "nobody left for the AI overlords to lord over" ?

I think the key is "existential threat"...I didn't look for Schmidt's 
statement anywhere, so I'm just speculating that maybe he's doing a mild echo 
of Musk's idea that a collapsing (first) world population is somehow a *bigger* 
existential threat?

With my techhead hat on I am inclined to imagine that AI will help me (well, 
not ME anymore, but people vaguely like who I once thought I was or wanted to 
be) solve micro-techonomic problems like the ones that lead to Teflon(tm) and 
Velcro(tm) and higher density/faster-charge EV batteries, and higher 
density/dynamic range pixel-displays, and neural lace to wire (grow?) into my 
brain/ganglia, and microbes that can convert moon/mars-dust to 
Soylent/Huel/Water/??? etc.

My PsychoHistory hatted self (Asimov - 
Foundation and the 
non-fictional 
variant
 ) is inclined to imagine that AI *can* help with the "big problems", the ones 
nominally too large, too interdisciplinarian, too obtuse, too "wycked" (In 
Complexity Science jargon), possibly too counter-intuitive for most (any?) 
human or group of humans to grasp.

My Ned Ludd (very tight by definition?) hat has me thinking more down the 
rabbit holes of worst-case scenarios where all the arrogant, narcissistic 
@$$h0ii3z of the world (starting at the top with those whose names start with 
Pu Tr Be Zu Mu(r/s) Ne De ... and staggering down the hierarchy of potency and 
scope to most of us here most of the time) think they "know what is best" and 
put their resources to using the AI lever to "make it so"...

Even (especially) me, I constantly imagine that "if they made ME King" (or to 
the point, if *I* was the wormtongue in the AI Overlord's ear) that I would 
"make the world safe and happy for everyone, ever after with no unintended 
consequences or unpleasant side effects".

One *might* guess that the smartest thinkers in the most grounded, thoughtful, 
gentle think-tanks (e.g.  in a Tibetan Lamasary or the "Club of Rome" or SIPRI 
or CESR or the Justice League of America or the people who task "jewish space 
lasers" or ??? ) would be practicing their AI-whispering skills right now.  
Maybe tasking Marcus' Quantum Computer with "the hard problem of universal 
consciousness"?


 An up-to-date version of Asimov's 9 Billion Names of 
God ?

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:48 PM Roger Critchlow 
mailto:r...@elf.org>> wrote:
Google news decided to surface an article from Fortune today.  It's headlined 
"Society's refusal to have enough babies is what will save it from the 
existential threat of A. I., Eric Schmidt says".  The headline is accompanied 
by a very serious head shot of Eric.  Nice try, Google, but you're not sucking 
me down that rabbit hole.

Meanwhile, someone apparently read my mind about the rationality of disaster 
prepping and wrote an epic novel about it 40 years ago in Catalan.  The Garden 
of the Seven Twilights by Miquel de Palol is available in English translation 
and as an ebook on overdrive.com at your local library.  
The narrator crosses refugee swamped Barcelona to check on his mom and gets 
sent off by her to a McMansion'ed medieval monastery high in the Pyrenees where 
the elite are amusing themselves with stories while awaiting the resolution of 
the first war of entertainment.  Lots of stories about themselves and their 
friends and acquaintances.

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Re: [FRIAM] Declaration of Ethics for AI

[Marcus Daniels]

Among certain men, Elizabeth Holmes is a target of an unusual hatred.   She has 
been held to a higher standard than the everyday Silicon Valley startup CEO.   
Among the psychological features of such a person - in the job description -- 
is the ability to grossly exaggerate the maturity and promise of their 
companies' technologies.   When it comes to AI Ethics, the concern seems just 
as arbitrary.   Why would we hold these stochastic parrots to a higher standard 
than their training material?

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2023 10:36 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Declaration of Ethics for AI

I would echo both your amusement and non-positivity.

When it comes to AI ethics, I doubt that much improvement over Asimov's Three 
Laws of Robotics (and the Zero-th Law invented by the Robots themselves) is 
possible or necessary.

davew


On Mon, May 22, 2023, at 10:21 AM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:

Has everyone seen this?  What was your reaction?  Mine was not positive, 
although I laughed a lot.


https://www.freetothrive.com/blog/declaration-of-ethics-for-artificial-intelligence/?utm_source=ONTRAPORT-email-campaign_medium=ONTRAPORT-email-campaign_term=_content=Read+Foster%27s+Declaration+of+Ethics+for+Artificial+Intelligence_campaign=230521-Email

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


mobile:  (303) 859-5609

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Re: [FRIAM] Bard and Don Quixote

[Marcus Daniels]

There are many idiosyncrasies of me that I would just as soon not exist.  The 
new avatar could be the aspirational me!

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2023 8:59 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Bard and Don Quixote

My sympathies would be with your friend—until such time as a "clone exactly 
like her ... behavior, words, or even existence..." was demonstrated.

"Exactly" is a big word! and I would add "completely."

Even on a single dimension, say use of language, the standard of exact and 
complete is hard to satisfy.
I have no problem believing that a chat-bot could write an academic paper or 
either of my books; put together, and deliver in my voice, a lecture ; play 
bar-trivia at the pub; or carry on a convincing conversation. I have no doubt 
that, in the very near future, the same bot might be able to project a video 
that included mannerisms and simulation of the way I pace around a classroom.

But exactitude would require, not only, all the things I do do, and the 
idiosyncrasies in the way that I do them, but also the idiosyncrasies of my 
inabilities: I can never get the crossword clues involving popular culture, for 
example.

If a clone is built that "walks like a duck and quacks like a duck" but does 
not migrate or lay eggs; is it really a duck?

I would concede the equivalence issue of means or mechanisms behind the 
observable; e.g., it does not matter if the observed behavior results from 
electrons in gold wires or electrons in dendrites. But I would at least raise 
the question as to whether, in specific instances, a 'subjective' behind the 
behavior is or is not critical.

For example, and forgive the personal, you have mentioned being in pain all of 
your life. Would it be necessary for a bot to "feel pain" as you have in order 
to "act exactly like you?" Or is there an "algorithmic equivalent" possible for 
the bot to utilize in order to obtain unerring verisimilitude?

Then there is the whole question of experience in general. Would I really be 
me, sans the LSD trips over the years? If not, then how will the bot 
"calculate" for itself, identical or at least highly similar, experience 
equivalents.

Even if, in principle, it were possible to devise algorithms and programs that 
did result in behavior that mimicked Dave at every stage of its existence, will 
those algorithms be invented and programs written before the heat death of the 
universe? You cannot attempt to finesse this quest by invoking "self-learning" 
because then you need a training set that is at least as extensive as the 75 
year training set that the mechanism you would have me be, has utilized to 
become me.

I might agree that, in principle, "A bot that acts indistinguishably from how 
you act *is* you," I think the implication of the word "indistinguishably" is a 
bar that will never be attained.

davew



On Tue, May 16, 2023, at 6:46 PM, glen wrote:
> That's a great point. To be honest, anyone who is accurately mimicked by
> a bot should be just fine with that mimicry, leveraging the word
> "accurate", of course. I mean, isn't that a sci-fi plot? Your bot
> responds to things so that you don't have to.
>
> A friend of mine recently objected that "algorithms" are "reductive". I
> tried to argue that algorithms (in the modern sense of The Algorithm)
> can be either reductive or expansive (e.g. combinatorial explosion). But
> she was having none of it. I think her position boiled down to the idea
> that humans are complex, multi-faceted, deep creatures. And taking 1 or
> few measurements and then claiming that represents them in some space
> reduces the whole human to a low-dim vector.
>
> So, for her, I can imagine even if she were cloned and her clone acted
> exactly like her, she would never accept that clone's behavior, words,
> or even existence as actually *being* her. There's some sense of agency
> or an inner world, or whatever, that accuracy becomes moot. It's the
> qualia that matter, the subjective sense of free will ... metaphysical
> nonsense.
>
> A bot that acts indistinguishably from how you act *is* you. I guess I'm
> dangerously close to claiming that GPT-4 and Bard actually are
> sentient/conscious. *8^O
>
> On 5/16/23 11:50, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> I don’t really get it.  Trump can go on a TV town hall and lie, and
>> those folks just lap it up.   Sue a company for learning some fancy
>> patterns?  Really?  If someone made a generative model of, say, Glen’s
>> visual appearance and vocal mannerisms and gave him a shtick that didn’t
>> match up with his past remarks, I think I’d notice it right away.If
>> a GPT-X could fake Eric Smith, I can safely take the blue pill.Some
>> of

Re: [FRIAM] Bard and Don Quixote

[Marcus Daniels]

I don’t really get it.  Trump can go on a TV town hall and lie, and those folks 
just lap it up.   Sue a company for learning some fancy patterns?  Really?  If 
someone made a generative model of, say, Glen’s visual appearance and vocal 
mannerisms and gave him a shtick that didn’t match up with his past remarks, I 
think I’d notice it right away.If a GPT-X could fake Eric Smith, I can 
safely take the blue pill.Some of our transactions will probably require 
more cryptographic signing.Fine, they probably should have already.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2023 11:33 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Bard and Don Quixote


Jochen -

Very interesting framing...  as a followup I took the converse (inverse?) 
question To GPT4..

If we consider an LLM (Large Language Model) as the Sancho Panza to the Don 
Quixote of its human users, we can explore a couple of potential aspects:

  1.  Grounding and Practicality: Sancho Panza is known for his grounded 
perspective and practicality, which complements Don Quixote's idealism. 
Similarly, an LLM can provide factual information, context, and practical 
insights to guide and support human users in their interactions. It can offer a 
wealth of knowledge and help bridge gaps in understanding, serving as a 
pragmatic companion.
  2.  Balancing Imagination and Realism: Don Quixote embodies imagination and 
creative thinking, while Sancho Panza offers a more realistic viewpoint. 
Similarly, an LLM can enhance human creativity by generating imaginative ideas 
and expanding possibilities. At the same time, it can bring rationality and 
critical thinking, ensuring that the generated content aligns with facts and 
reason.
  3.  Providing Different Perspectives: Sancho Panza often offers alternative 
viewpoints and challenges Don Quixote's romanticized notions. Similarly, an LLM 
can present diverse perspectives, consider different angles, and engage in 
nuanced discussions with human users. It can help users explore varying 
opinions and broaden their understanding of complex topics.
  4.  Ethical Guidance: Sancho Panza acts as a moral compass, advising Don 
Quixote on the right course of action. In a similar vein, an LLM can provide 
ethical guidance by highlighting potential biases, promoting inclusivity, and 
encouraging responsible use of language and information. It can contribute to 
creating a more informed and ethical digital environment.

However, it's important to note that an LLM, as a machine learning model, lacks 
human experiences, emotions, and deeper understanding. While it can offer 
valuable assistance, it may not fully grasp the complexities of human 
interactions or possess the wisdom and empathetic qualities of a human 
companion like Sancho Panza. Therefore, while an LLM can serve as a useful 
tool, it should be complemented by human judgment and critical thinking to 
navigate the nuances of real-life situations.

I am a couple of hours behind on the live feed Senate hearing on 
AI
 listening in fits and starts between other things:

  1.  I was definitely impressed with Altman (OpenAI), Montgomery (IBM) and 
Marcus' (NYU) thoughtful and extrapolative responses rather than perhaps the 
more usual defensive/deflective/adversarial style that these hearings often 
have...   I don't know who chose this particular lineup but I thought both 
Montgomery and Marcus made a good complement to Altman.  If Google and 
Microsoft and ??? had been there it might have reflected more "competitive" or 
"showy" answers?
  2.  I was impressed with the Senators (compared to my fairly low 
expectations).   Even Kennedy and Hawley managed not to do their usual 
grandstanding and and snide sniping.   Altman handed Hawley's question "why 
don't we just let people sue you?" (as a mode of regulation/oversight) back to 
him quite deftly (in the style of "ass with both hands") by responding simply 
"I know of no reason people CAN'T sue us today if we cause harm".  Marcus 
chipped in pretty well outlining how the current laws that *might* apply are 
not well suited for many reasons.
  3.  I felt that all three witnesses walked the fine line on the question of a 
"moratoriam" fairly deftly, acknowledging that they endorse the spirit of not 
running headlong and thoughtlessly into the future but at the same time there 
is no obvious practical way to implement and enforce this, but that they are 
all enforcing their own limits on how fast (and thoughtlessly?) they might roll 
out development to the public...
  4.  In closing Blumenthal  suggested having ChatGPT rewrite the lyrics to 
"Don't Stop" (thinking about tomorrow (McVie-Fleetwood Mac) which I took to 
heart.  I was not impressed with it's results and won't burden the list with 
it.  I'm guessing Blumenthal did *not* actually do that but like Quixote, 
simply saw 

[FRIAM] how did I miss this?

[Marcus Daniels]

She does music videos!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUE9E1MxY2I

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Re: [FRIAM] Paxton's stages as a dynamical system

[Marcus Daniels]

Emotional lava at a lower temperature is rock. Fascism aims to create a rock, 
not lava -- the fascia that ties many into one immutable, controllable entity.  
Organizations and communities reduce mixing -- some folks are in, some folks 
are out.   These "solids" should at least be porous, or they are unfair and 
exclusionary.   Better to keep a society in liquid form to the extent possible.

From: Friam  on behalf of Prof David West 

Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2023 6:33 PM
To: friam@redfish.com 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Paxton's stages as a dynamical system

Once upon a time, I was a card carrying (metaphorically) bomb making 
(literally), persecuted (FBI and CIA in Japan) revolutionary.

I was also an acid head, free love, hippy.

The "card carrying" part denotes my membership in / participation in a 
"movement." The Paxton quote you shared —
the creation of movements, he describes in chapter 2 a set of mobilizing 
passions which are "the emotional lava that set fascism’s foundations": from "a 
sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions" to 
"the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any 
action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and 
external" — would certainly apply to that movement. United states, circa 
1964-1972.

To the extent that my observation is 'valid'; and the quote is representative 
of Paxton (have not read) then all movements are fascist whether they 
originated from the "left" or the "right."

davew

On Wed, May 10, 2023, at 3:19 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
Yes, Robert Paxton tries to describe the essence of fascism in his book. While 
Hannah Arendt and Erich Fromm described fascism in Germany, and Stanley G. 
Payne is an expert for fascism in Spain, Robert Paxton is an expert for fascism 
in France during German occupation in WW II. He argues that it can reach 
different stages, just like the 5 stages of cancer in various degrees of 
severity.

Chapter 2 to 6 in Paxton's book are dedicated to the 5 stages. Each chapter 
describes one stage, and one stage is a prerequisite for the next. The 5 stages 
are:
(1) the creation of movements
(2) their rooting in the political system
(3) their seizure of power
(4) the exercise of power
(5) radicalization

For the 1st stage, the creation of movements, he describes in chapter 2 a set 
of mobilizing passions which are "the emotional lava that set fascism’s 
foundations": from "a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any 
traditional solutions" to "the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment 
that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, 
both internal and external".

In the final chapter 8 Paxton finally gives a definition of fascism and argues 
that "fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by 
obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and 
by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party 
of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective 
collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and 
pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals 
of internal cleansing and external expansion".

He argues that violence is a important hallmark of fascism: "the legitimation 
of violence against a demonized internal enemy brings us close to the heart of 
fascism" and that it would be "a phenomenon of failed democracies".

-J.


 Original message 
From: glen 
Date: 5/10/23 4:47 PM (GMT+01:00)
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Paxton's stages as a dynamical system

I haven't read Anatomy of Fascism. But one of the things I worry about, even 
though I make my career from it, is arguing by analogy. It sounds like Paxton 
is attempting to essentialize fascism. Is that the case? We've explored, a bit 
on this list, some problems with essentialism and reductionism. While it's good 
to de-universalize a concept (because if it applies everywhere, then it's not 
useful), that specificity in denotation (e.g. Islamists not being fascist) can 
be made observationally or constructively/axiomatically. In alignment with 
Feynman, if you can't construct the phenomenon, then you don't understand it.

Of course, I know Paxton can't (and wouldn't) construct a fascist society. 
That's why simulation is a good thing. 8^D But does Anatomy of Fascism read as 
a recipe, a how-to? Or is it more like a collection of observational case 
studies?

On 5/10/23 03:41, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> I don't know much about South Africa but one direction towards higher stages 
> of Paxton's fascism scale is certainly democratic backsliding. Democratic 
> backsliding can happen if a country is in a deep crisis and has a "strongman" 
> leader which longs to stay in power. Orban in Hungary, Erdoğan in Turkey and 
> Netanyahu in Israel have eroded democracy in their 

Re: [FRIAM] selective optimism

[Marcus Daniels]

He's not lying, he is running his softmax function at a higher temperature to 
collect more samples in the vicinity of the truth.

> On May 8, 2023, at 12:50 PM, glen  wrote:
> 
> AI machines aren’t ‘hallucinating’. But their makers are.
> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/08/ai-machines-hallucinating-naomi-klein
>> Is all of this overly dramatic? A stuffy and reflexive resistance to 
>> exciting innovation? Why expect the worse? Altman reassures us: “Nobody 
>> wants to destroy the world.” Perhaps not. But as the ever-worsening climate 
>> and extinction crises show us every day, plenty of powerful people and 
>> institutions seem to be just fine knowing that they are helping to destroy 
>> the stability of the world’s life-support systems, so long as they can keep 
>> making record profits that they believe will protect them and their families 
>> from the worst effects. Altman, like many creatures of Silicon Valley, is 
>> himself a prepper: back in 2016, he boasted: “I have guns, gold, potassium 
>> iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense 
>> Force and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”
>> I’m pretty sure those facts say a lot more about what Altman actually 
>> believes about the future he is helping unleash than whatever flowery 
>> hallucinations he is choosing to share in press interviews.
> 
> 
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] connAI.pdf

[Marcus Daniels]

Two quantum computing companies use Fahlman’s CMU Common Lisp in the core of 
their product.   And their products are used to implement Boltzmann machines.  
So there.

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, May 5, 2023 12:12 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: [FRIAM] connAI.pdf

Scott Fahlman's wife and my wife have been best friends for over 50 years.  We 
have spent a lot of time with them over the decades.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM
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Re: [FRIAM] Cory Doctorow on AI hype vs Crypto Hype

[Marcus Daniels]

I think the factorization trick should enable even bigger models on the 
corporate scale systems.
These systems will need to be trained how to collect training sets.  Too much 
work for humans to compile!

On May 4, 2023, at 3:39 PM, Roger Critchlow  wrote:


Didn't read Cory's blog, though I'm still laughing at the blurb for Red Team 
Blues.

But I read Geoffrey Hinton's interview with MIT Tech Review yesterday.

  
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/02/1072528/geoffrey-hinton-google-why-scared-ai

It's not hype that chatgpt dazzled everyone with a model which is much smaller 
than a human brain, even though it took a fairly huge budget for OpenAI to 
build it.

And I read this posting from an anonymous googler today via hackernews.

   https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither

It's not hype that the open source community has rapidly figured out how to 
produce equally dazzling models with drastically smaller budgets of resources, 
and is continuing to iterate the process.

-- rec --

On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 10:11 AM Gary Schiltz 
mailto:g...@naturesvisualarts.com>> wrote:
I love the graphic! I've had the misfortune of twice jumping on that roller 
coaster just before the Peak of Inflated Expectation - once for the AI 
boom/bust of the mid 1980s and once for the dotcom boom/bust of the late 1990s. 
Jumped on too late to make a killing, but didn't get too badly damaged by the 
Trough of Disillusionment either.

On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 10:34 AM Steve Smith 
mailto:sasm...@swcp.com>> wrote:

[https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/format:webp/1*aG2GG56d_C6DJnGzZn0d3Q.jpeg]

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-ai-hype-bubble-is-the-new-crypto-hype-bubble-74e53028631e

I *am* a fan of LLMs (not so much image generators) and blockchain (not so much 
crypto or NFTs) in their "best" uses (not that I or anyone else really knows 
what that is) in spite of my intrinsic neoLuddite affect.

Nevertheless I think Doctorow in his usual acerbic and penetrating style really 
nails it well here IMO.

I particularly appreciated his reference/quote to Emily Bender's "High on 
Supply" and "word/meaning conflation" in the sense of "don't mistake an accent 
for a personality" in the dating scene.

A lot of my own contrarian commments on this forum come from resisting what 
Doctorow introduces (to me) as "CritiHype" (attributed to Lee Vinsel)...  the 
feeling that some folks make a (a)vocation out of kneejerk criticism.   It is 
much easier to *poke* at something than to *do* something worthy of being 
*poked at*.   I appreciate that Doctorow doesn't seem to (by my fairly 
uncritical eye) engage in this much himself...  which is why I was drawn into 
this article...

I also very much appreciate his quote from Charlie Stross:

corporations are Slow AIs, autonomous artificial lifeforms that consistently do 
the wrong thing even when the people who nominally run them try to steer them 
in better directions:

https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future


I could go on quoting and excerpting and commenting on his whole article and 
the myriad links/references he offers up but will curb my enthusiasm and leave 
it to the astute FriAM readers to choose how much to indulge in.   It was a 
pretty good antidote for my own AI-thusiasm driven by long chats with GPT4 
(converging on being more like long sessions wandering through Wikipedia after 
the first 100 hours of engagement).




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Re: [FRIAM] runaway happiness _and_ Hail Satan

[Marcus Daniels]

Glen quotes:

""Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday? Did you learn or do something 
interesting yesterday?""

I'm not sure why this pleases me so much:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/drake-ai-songs-appear-youtube-085614075.html

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2023 10:53 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] runaway happiness _and_ Hail Satan

Yeah, cause is hard. I spent too long trying to find the actual survey(s). 
Maybe I'm just being dense and it's staring me in the face. Anyway, I did find 
this:

https://news.gallup.com/file/poll/146822/Healthways_UKWellbeing_Questions_en-UK_03-17-11_td.pdf

Your mileage may vary (YMMV). But when I read those questions, I think they're 
only answerable by people with some pretty tightly shared (conservative) values.

-
"Now, please think about yesterday, from the morning until the end of the day. 
Think about where you were, what you were doing, who you were with and how you 
felt. Were you treated with respect all day yesterday? Did you smile or laugh a 
lot yesterday? Did you learn or do something interesting yesterday?

"Did you have enough energy to get things done yesterday?

"Did you experience the following feelings during A LOT OF THE DAY yesterday? 
How about enjoyment, physical pain, worry, sadness, stress, anger, happiness?"
--

I'm almost never "treated with respect" ... and I largely don't *want* to be 
"treated with respect". What does that even mean? I laugh out loud maybe once a 
week, at best. I learn something interesting every day, several times per day. 
I can't even imagine ever answering "no" to that question. I've been in pain 
every minute of every day since I was 14. Yadda yadda. It feels to me like only 
people who sit safely in their sconces could even parse these questions, much 
less answer them in a stable way ... like rearranging the deck chairs ...

But *that* it's adversarial is pretty cool. I had a great conversation with a 
DEI expert at Google the other day. We talked about the different RI techniques 
and tried to take "diversity" seriously, e.g. entropy and variation. 
Contrasting the RI for Claude and GPT (she was mum about RI for Bard 8^D) 
allowed us to consider co-evolutionary AI safety trajectories over time and the 
pros and cons of agonism.


On 4/20/23 09:37, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> The Bay Area is interesting in that there are some clear tiers.   There are 
> areas with retired NIMBYs that can continue their way of living indefinitely 
> thanks to Proposition 13 which limits the rate of growth of property taxes.   
> They own their homes where real estate is very valuable.  The main task for 
> them is to keep outsiders away.  As they get older, they can move out of 
> state or into assisted living and probably be ok.   Increasingly tech people 
> are buying these properties and moving to much higher property tax burdens as 
> the assessments go up.   Even though they have much higher salaries than the 
> previous generation their costs are much higher too.   Meanwhile there are 
> poorer people in cities farther out that commute in, sometimes long 
> distances.   They somehow absorb the escalation in the price of everything.   
> Here I think less money means more misery, and more money means securing the 
> nicest, safest places to live.   The very high salaried may find they have 
> pushed to hard into work they really care nothing about, or work they deep 
> down know causes harm.   That could also lead to burnout.
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2023 7:38 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: [FRIAM] runaway happiness _and_ Hail Satan
> 
> Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved
> https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120
> 
>> Do larger incomes make people happier? Two authors of the present paper have 
>> published contradictory answers. Using dichotomous questions about the 
>> preceding day, [Kahneman and Deaton, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107, 
>> 16489–16493 (2010)] reported a flattening pattern: happiness increased 
>> steadily with log(income) up to a threshold and then plateaued. Using 
>> experience sampling with a continuous scale, [Killingsworth, Proc. Natl. 
>> Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 118, e2016976118 (2021)] reported a linear-log pattern in 
>> which average happiness rose consistently with log(income). We engaged in an 
>> adversarial collaboration to search for a coherent interpretation of both 
>> studies. A reanalysis of Killingsworth’s experienced sampling data confirmed 
>> the flattening pattern only for the least happy people. Happiness increases 
>> steadily with log(income) among happie