Re: [FRIAM] words

[Prof David West]

I share at least a hue of Steve's thralldom.

As Marcus noted, "it depends on the training set." If Howard (as an LLM) was 
trained on the contents of the Embassy of the Free Mind in Amsterdam nothing he 
says would be a surprise. [The Embassy is a library with all things 
Alchemical.] I do not know about DaVinci, but if Howard and Newton (considered 
the last great Alchemist) engaged in a conversation they might disagree, but I 
do think they would "understand" each other. (Talking about the flower of life, 
platonic solids, etc. NOT natal memory.)

It would be interesting to see what Open AI's training set entails. Does it 
include or exclude the "disreputable" the "pseudo-scientific?" Does in include 
much non-Western philosophy; especially in the areas of epistemology and 
metaphysics?

There is little need to call bullshit, at least in the modern Western world, 
because sufficient forces already exist to marginalize any contrarian, in 
almost every aspect of life.

davew


On Thu, May 30, 2024, at 12:52 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote:
> *prompt: * You are Terrance Howard. Make 3 revolutionary claims that will 
> enable a general unified theory of Complexity Science.
> 
> *4o:*  As Terrence Howard, here are three revolutionary claims that will 
> enable a general unified theory of Complexity Science, with one relating to 
> understanding the world as computation:
> 
> 1. **Revolutionary Geometry and Mathematics**:
>"I have developed a new geometric framework that redefines the fundamental 
> constants and principles of mathematics. By understanding that 1 x 1 = 2, we 
> can break free from traditional mathematical constraints and uncover deeper 
> truths about the universe's structure. This new geometry, based on my studies 
> of Terryology, reveals hidden dimensions and interactions that were 
> previously invisible to us, providing a holistic view of complex systems and 
> their emergent properties."
> 
> 2. **Unified Field Theory through Vibrational Harmonics**:
>"By exploring the vibrational harmonics that govern atomic and subatomic 
> interactions, I have formulated a Unified Field Theory that links quantum 
> mechanics and general relativity. This theory posits that all matter and 
> energy are manifestations of underlying wave patterns, which can be tuned and 
> manipulated to create new forms of energy and matter. This understanding 
> allows us to predict and control complex behaviors in physical, biological, 
> and even social systems, leading to breakthroughs in energy production, 
> medical treatments, and societal organization."
> 
> 3. **World as Computation - Universal Compiler**:
>"The universe operates as a vast computational substrate, where every 
> particle and wave functions as part of a grand computation. I have developed 
> a Universal Compiler, capable of interpreting and executing any script on 
> this cosmic computational substrate. This compiler translates abstract 
> mathematical theories, physical laws, and biological processes into 
> executable programs, enabling us to simulate and manipulate reality at an 
> unprecedented level. By leveraging this technology, we can solve complex 
> problems, optimize systems for efficiency, and unlock new realms of 
> scientific and technological innovation."
> 
> These claims, if validated and accepted, would revolutionize Complexity 
> Science by providing new tools and perspectives to understand and manipulate 
> the intricate web of interactions that define our universe.
> 
> -S
> 
> ps I biased the third one.
> 
> On Thu, May 30, 2024 at 11:41 AM Stephen Guerin  
> wrote:
>>> In this LLM era, where many people, including some on this list, are 
>>> enthralled by random bullshit
>> 
>> Color me enthralled 
>> 
>> *prompt: *All energy in the universe is expressed in motion. All motion is 
>> expressed in waves. All waves are curved. So where do the straight lines 
>> come from to make the Platonic solids?
>> 
>> *4o: *The emergence of straight lines in Platonic solids, despite the 
>> curvilinear nature of waves and motion, can be understood through the 
>> concept of symmetry and mathematical abstraction. Here are a few points to 
>> consider:
>> 
>> 1. **Symmetry and Geometry**: In the abstract mathematical sense, straight 
>> lines and perfect shapes like Platonic solids arise from the symmetry 
>> properties and geometric rules that define them. These shapes are idealized 
>> forms that exist in mathematical theory, independent of physical waves or 
>> curves.
>> 
>> 2. **Approximation in Nature**: In the physical world, the appearance of 
>> straight lines and geometric shapes can be seen as approximations. For 
>> example, crystals often form in regular geometric shapes, such as cubes or 
>> tetrahedrons, due to the way atoms bond and arrange themselves. While these 
>> forms are not perfect Platonic solids, they approximate these shapes closely 
>> enough for us to recognize the symmetry and straight lines.
>> 
>> 3. 

Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

[Prof David West]

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 shouldn't give reasons, because 
> the truth is that I have my hands utterly full learning the weather stuff, 
> and it will be a long time before I am competent to metaphorize from it to 
> anywhere else. 
> 
> As to Steve Smith's comments, I feel on much safer ground.  He wrote
> 
> *GuPTa, et al.'s "accent" is very subtle and powerful in this regard, 
> tricking me often into imputing personality...   your example here was a 
> wonderful satirical parody shining a light on that?*
> **
> Why "impute"  and why "' accent'" and why "tricking".  GuPTA and  Tremblay  
> definitely have accents and personalities.   To hell with the scare quotes.  
> What else would a personality or and accent BE They both display huge 
> amounts of testosterone poisoning, for one thing. **
> **
> And Tremblay can actually get defensive and flustered.  I had a long and 
> delighful correspondence with him in which he finally had to admit that the 
> only reason he had for thinking he wasn't a person  was that he was made of 
> silicon. Thus, ex hypothesi, no computer system will ever be a person.  
> Wonderful what a good tautology will do for a nervous world.  If that's not 
> metaphysics, I don't know what metaphysics is. *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.*
> 
> NIck
> 
> On Sat, Apr 13, 2024 at 12:06 PM Stephen Guerin  
> wrote:
>> 
>> Dan GuPTa had this response when asked to relate your .PDF to Bernard cells 
>> and other prompting:
>> 
>> Here’s a integration of potential vorticity (PV), atmospheric stability, and 
>> their relationship to Bénard cells, emphasizing isentropic layering in both 
>> meteorological and experimental fluid dynamics contexts.
>> 
>> ### Connecting Bénard Cells and Atmospheric Dynamics
>> 
>> In Bénard cells, fluid heated from below shows a critical transition from 
>> conductive to convective heat transfer, forming cellular patterns. 
>> Similarly, in the atmosphere, when the vertical temperature gradient becomes 
>> unstable—akin to the Bénard cell transition—convection can initiate, 
>> influenced by factors like 

Re: [FRIAM] death by ubiquity

[Prof David West]

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-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
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] the inequities of uniquity

[Prof David West]

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  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  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: 

Re: [FRIAM] The problems of interdisciplinary research

[Prof David West]

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  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  *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 

Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

[Prof David West]

Science fiction: *The Traveler*, by John Twelve Hawks is set in a dystopian 
(near future) 'Big Brother' world of absolute and constant surveillance. The 
hero, a "Traveler" uses a random number generator to make every action choice, 
else be eliminated by the evil forces controlling the world. The world of the 
Traveler is a simple and short extrapolation: the surveillance state, 
especially London and the accumulation of Big Data that allows the "Govt." to 
predict with almost absolute accuracy where you will be, within 10 meters, 24 
hours from now; based on your on-line presence and meta-data from your cell 
phone.

That fiction seems to be a metaphorical expression of Sopolsky's argument—to 
me, at least.

Another kind of metaphor for 'Free Will' might be the behavior of those 
suffering from Cotard's Syndrome: thinking they are already dead, they act with 
no concern for consequences and their actions appear, to others, to be random 
or psychopathic.

Finally, the ideal of "non-attached" action and the omniscience that comes with 
achievement of Satori allows one to consciously and intentionally take the 
"correct," non karma accruing, action at every moment seems like the ultimate 
'free will' in the sense that "you" intentionally make the correct turn at each 
juncture of Sopolsky's deterministic maze. Note this does not free you from the 
maze; merely allows you to actually choose each step of the path through the 
maze.

davew



On Fri, Jan 26, 2024, at 9:37 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> 
>> 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:
> 
> :
> 
> 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.
> 
> 
>> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 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 

Re: [FRIAM] sui generis

[Prof David West]

Ancient Greek notions of "creativity" lacked any sense of egocentric novelty. 
To 'create' was to 'remember'. This was grounded in the more general philosophy 
that denied the possibility of "something-from-nothing."

In my Design Thinking book, there is a large section about this and about who 
"creation" is akin to midwifery, assisting something to express itself.

Just as a midwife lacks "authorship" of a baby, so too do all "intellectuals" 
lack authorship of novel, innovative, or creative work— despite the boilerplate 
prefacing every Ph.D. thesis.

davew

On Tue, Jan 9, 2024, at 10:28 AM, glen wrote:
> https://www.science.org/content/article/billionaire-launches-plagiarism-detection-effort-against-mit-president-and-all-its
>
> https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4392624-new-york-times-chatgpt-lawsuit-poses-new-legal-threats-to-artificial-intelligence/
>
> I just can't help but analogize between Intelligent Design and these 
> arguments of ownership/novelty of [ahem] "content". It all feels like 
> the argument from design to me. For a paywalled for-profit like the NYT 
> to go after a for-profit like OpenAI and a rapacious 
>  
> billionaire to go after prestige-mongering elite institutions seems 
> like a clear instance of elite overproduction 
> . And to have it 
> all leveraged on the fantasy fulcrum of novelty and ownership is making 
> my head spin.
>
> But deep down, there's something to be said about intuitionism. At our 
> last salon, someone asked how much ontological status we might give to 
> stories about the Astral Plane. My answer derives entirely from what 
> little I know about intersubjectivity and cross-species mind reading. 
> If there is a commonality to nootropic or psychonaut experience, it 
> derives from our common *structure*, including whatever deeply 
> historical things like genetic memory that may (not) exist.
>
> It's fine to give lip service to intellectual humility. But such 
> rhetoric can't persuade ... uh ... "people" like Ackman. Surely ... 
> surely people like that are smart enough to grok things like gen-phen 
> maps, robustness and polyphenism, etc. Right? And if they do get it, 
> then we grass tufts can go on about our work, trying to be open, accept 
> and apply credit and blame to the best of our abilities and ignore 
> these fighting elephants. Right?
>
> -- 
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>
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Re: [FRIAM] Democracy & Autocracy

[Prof David West]

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  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 

Re: [FRIAM] Thursday

[Prof David West]

I am going to the Oshkosh Air Show next week. Mathew would be jealous.

davew

On Tue, Jul 18, 2023, at 7:08 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> We're taking grandson Matthew to Colorado Springs to see the WW2 Aircraft 
> Museum.  We leave tomorrow and return Friday.  That means I won't be in Santa 
> Fe Thursday morning.  John Dobson, a regular attendee of vFriam, will be in 
> Santa Fe that day.  We can either skip vFriam this week or Stephen can start 
> it up and assign a host.
> 
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
> 
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
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Re: [FRIAM] What is an agent [was: Philosophy and Science}

[Prof David West]

teleonomic matter (particles that think) - totally consistent with Vedic / 
Buddhist cosmology. Even elementary particles are subject to the Law of Karma 
if they "misbehave"—something very unlikely, but not impossible.

davew


On Mon, Jul 17, 2023, at 10:27 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jul 17, 2023 at 2:35 PM David Eric Smith  wrote:
>> [...] [Yoshi Oono's The Nonlinear World]
>> in which he argues that the phenomena you mention are only “pseudo-complex”. 
>>  Yoshi, like David but with less of the predictable “Darwin-was-better; now 
>> what subject are we discussing today?” vibe, argues that there is a 
>> threshold to “true complexity” that is only crossed in systems that obey 
>> what Yoshi calls a “Pasteur principle”; they are of a kind that effectively 
>> can’t emerge spontaneously, but can evolve from ancestors once they exist.  
>> He says (translating slightly from his words to mine) that such systems 
>> split the notion of “boundary conditions” into two sub-kinds that differ 
>> qualitatively.  There are the “fundamental conditions” (in biology, the 
>> contents of genomes with indefinitely deep ancestry), that mine an 
>> indefinite past sparsely and selectively, versus ordinary “boundary 
>> conditions”, which are the dense here-and-now.  The fundamental conditions 
>> often provide criteria that allow the complex thing to respond to parts of 
>> the here-and-now, and ignore other parts, feeding back onto the update of 
>> the fundamental conditions.  
>> 
>> I don’t know when I will get time to listen to David’s appearance with Sean, 
>> so with apologies cannot know whether his argument is similar in its logic.  
>> But Yoshi’s framing appeals to me a lot, because it is like a kind of 
>> spontaneous symmetry breaking or ergodicity breaking in the representations 
>> of information and how they modulate the networks of connection to the 
>> space-time continuum.  That seems to me a very fertile idea.  I am still 
>> looking for some concrete model that makes it compelling and useful for 
>> something I want to solve.  (I probably have written this on the list 
>> before, in which case apologies for being repetitive.  But this mention is 
>> framed specifically to your question whether one should be disappointed in 
>> the demotion of the complexity in phenomena.)
>> [...]
>>> On Jul 18, 2023, at 4:37 AM, Stephen Guerin  
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> [...]
>>>  1. Teleonomic Material: the latest use by David Krakauer on Sean Carroll's 
>>> recent podcast 
>>> 
>>>  in summarizing Complexity. Hurricanes, flocks and Benard Cells according 
>>> to David are not Complex, BTW. I find the move a little frustrating and 
>>> disappointing but I always respect his perspective.
> Okay, I listened to the podcast.
> 
> DK says that real complexity starts with teleonomic matter, also known as 
> particles that think.  He says that such agents carry around some 
> representation of the external world.  And then the discussion gets 
> distracted to other topics, at one point getting to "large language model 
> paper clip nightmares".
> 
> My response to Eric's description of Oono's  "Pasteur principle" was that it 
> sounds a lot like "Attention Is All You Need" 
> (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.03762.pdf), the founding paper of the Transformer 
> class of neural network models.  
> 
> The "fundamental conditions" in a Transformer would be the trained neural net 
> which specifies the patterns of attention and responses learned during 
> training.  The "ordinary conditions" would be the input sequence given to the 
> Transformer.  The Transformer breaks up the input sequence into attention 
> patterns, evaluates the response to the current set of input values selected 
> by the attention patterns,  emits an element to the output sequence, and 
> advances the input cursor.
> 
> Anyone else see the family resemblance here?
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] What is an agent [was: Philosophy and Science}

[Prof David West]

Where angels fear to tread, dave rushes in.

Question 1) seems, to me, to be nonsensical; or hopelessly anthropocentric; or, 
unanswerable in any generalized or abstract form.

Paraphrasing question 2) — what set of observables (behaviors) must be present 
before We/I can assert, "*t***hat *thing is an agent.*" Assuming such a set 
exists: a) it tells me nothing about the "internals" of the thing; and b) it 
tells me little about anything except how We (assuming some consistency among 
all human beings) go about naming / categorizing things. I would also bet money 
that any such set is culturally grounded and that it is unlikely that any 
"universal" set exists. Certainly no "universal" set shared by humans and our 
elusive alien neighbors.

If we were to examine the inhabitants of any set of things that came about via 
question 2), why would we expect any commonality among the "conditions" 
(state?? characteristics?? patterns of same???) internal to each member? 
Granted, there might be subsets of the set (e.g. all instances of a human 
being, or a dog, or, for some, an AI) where we would expect and find some kind 
of, at least, statistical commonality. I say statistical because there are 
always outliers and exceptions.

Another issue, implied by the way question 1) is phrased, concerns the 
possibility of knowing the train of events, steps in an evolutionary process, 
engaging the "internals" of an entity as it proceeds from non-agent to 
proto-agent to agent. How can this be anything other than idiosyncratic?

As to explanation vs. description: given any "description," the number of 
"explanations" is infinite—or, at least co-extensive to the number of 
"explainers." No matter what Pierce might hope, consensus is unlikely.

davew


On Mon, Jul 17, 2023, at 12:05 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Hi, Russ, 
> 
> I have a non-scientist friend to whom I sometimes show my posts here for 
> guidance.  I showed him some recent posts and he wrote back, "Wow, Nick!  You 
> are really swinging for the fences, here!"  He and I know that one who swings 
> for the fences, rarely hits the ball, let alone the fences.
> 
> So please can we precede in little tiny steps.
> 
> You raise the question, _ **what makes an agent?**.
> 
> This expression is ambiguous in just the way I was trying to highlight in my 
> response:
> 
> It could mean, **(1) What are the conditions that bring an agent into being?**
> 
> Or it could mean, **(2) What are the conditions that require us to identify 
> something an agent?.** 
> 
> The first (I think) is the explanatory question; the second, the descriptive 
> question.   Wittgenstein was said to have said that something cannot be its 
> own explanation, and I believed him.  Whatever else might be said about the 
> relation between explanations and descriptions is that descriptions are 
> states of affairs taken for granted by explanations.  If you ask me why the 
> chicken crossed the road, my answering your quest commits me to the premise 
> that the chicken did indeed cross the road. 
> 
> A definition is **explanatory* *when it  describes a process which explains 
> something else and which, itself, is in need of explanation. 
> 
> So:  Can I come back to you with a question?   Which of the two meanings did 
> you intend.  And if you were looking  to define agents in terms of the  
> internal mechanism that makes agency possible, what precisely is the state of 
> affairs, behavior, what-have-you, that such agents are called upon to 
> explain.!
> 
> For me agency is design in behavior, and an agent is an individual whose 
> behavior is designed.  All of this has to be worked out before your 
> explanatory question becomes relevant, What is the neural mechanism by which 
> such designs come about?  
> 
> nick
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jul 16, 2023 at 3:18 PM Russ Abbott  wrote:
>> Nick,
>> 
>> I just asked Eric for examples. Your examples confuse me because I don't see 
>> how you relate them to agenthood. Are you really suggesting that you think 
>> of waves and puddles as agents? My suggestion was that you need some sort of 
>> internal decision-making mechanism to qualify as an agent.
>> 
>> I don't know anything about the carotid sinus.
>> 
>> Your thermostat example strikes me as similar to my flashlight example. I 
>> might put as: a thermostat senses the temperature and twiddles the controls 
>> of the heating/AC units in response.
>> 
>> I'm not sure where you are going by labeling my discussion explanatory. I 
>> wasn't thinking that I was explaining anything, other, perhaps, than my 
>> intuition of what makes an agent. 
>> __
>> __-- Russ 
>> 
>> 
>> On Fri, Jul 14, 2023 at 8:06 PM Nicholas Thompson  
>> wrote:
>>> Some examples I like to think about:
>>> 
>>> Waves arrange pebbles on a beach from small to large
>>> 
>>> A puddle maintains its temperature at 32 degrees as long as it has ice in 
>>> it.
>>> 
>>> The carotid sinus maintains the acidity of the blood by causing us to 

Re: [FRIAM] What is an agent [was: Philosophy and Science}

[Prof David West]

If you have not read it — I highly recommend The Tree of Knowledge by Humberto 
Maturana and Francisco Varela. Self organization from simple to complex via a 
single mechanism. 

On Fri, Jul 14, 2023, at 7:30 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
> I have had a version of this problem for several years, because I want to 
> start with small-molecule chemistry on early planets, and eventually talk 
> about biospheres full of evolving actors.  I have wanted to have a rough 
> category system for how many qualitative kinds of transitions I should need 
> to account for, and to explain within ordinary materials by the action of 
> random processes.  Just because I am not a(n analytical) philosopher, I have 
> no ambition to shoehorn the universe into a system or suppose that my 
> categories subsume all questions even I might someday care about, or that 
> they are sure to have unambiguous boundaries.  I just want a kind of sketch 
> that seems like it will carry some weight.  For now.
> 
> Autonomy: One early division to me would be between matter that responds 
> “passively” to its environment moment-by-moment, and as a result takes on an 
> internal state that is an effectively given function of the surroundings at 
> the time, versus one that has some protection for some internal variables 
> from the constant outside harassment, and a source of autonomous dynamics for 
> those internal variables.  One could bring in words like “energy”, but I 
> would rather not for a variety of reasons.  Often, though, when others do, I 
> will understand why and be willing to go along with the choice.
> 
> Control: The category of things with autonomous internal degrees of freedom 
> that have some immunity from the slings and arrows of the immediate 
> surroundings is extremely broad.  Within it there could be very many 
> different kinds of organizations that, if we lack a better word, we might 
> call “architectures”.  One family of architectures that I recognize is that 
> of control systems.  Major components include whatever is controlled (in 
> chem-eng used to be called “the plant”), a “model” in the sense of Conant and 
> Ashby, “sensors” to respond to the plant and signal the model, and 
> “effectors” to get an output from the model and somehow influence the plant.  
> One could ask when the organization of some material system is well described 
> by this control-loop architecture.  I think the control-loop architecture 
> entails some degree of autonomy, else the whole system is adequately 
> described by passive response to the environment.  But probably a sophist 
> could find counterexamples.
> 
> One could ask whether having the control-loop architecture counts as having 
> agency.  By discriminating among states of the world according to their 
> relation to states indexed in the model, and then acting on the world (even 
> by so little as acting on one’s own position in the world), one could be said 
> to express some sort of “goal”, and in that sense to have “had” such a goal.  
> 
> Is that enough for agency?  Maybe.  Or maybe not.
> 
> Reflection: The controller’s model could, in the previous level, be anything. 
>  So again very broad.  Presumably a subset of control systems have models 
> that incorporate some notion of a a “self”, so they could not only 
> specifically model the conditions of the world, but also the condition of the 
> self and of the self relative to the world, and then all of these variables 
> become eligible targets for control actions.  
> 
> Conterfactuals and simulation: autonomy need not be limited to the receiving 
> of signals and responding to them with control commands.  It could include 
> producing values for counterfactual states within the controller’s model, of 
> playing out representations of the consequences of control signals (another 
> level of reflection, this time on the dynamics of the command loop), and then 
> choosing according to a meta-criterion.  Here I have in mind something like 
> the simulation that goes on in the tactical look-ahead in combinatorial 
> games.  We now have a couple levels of representation between wherever the 
> criteria are hard-coded and wherever the control signal (the “choice”) acts.  
> They are all still control loops, but it seems likely that control loops can 
> have different enough major categories of design that there is a place for 
> names for such intermediate layers of abstraction to distinguish some kinds 
> as having them, from others that don’t.
> 
> How much internal reflective representation does one want to require to 
> satisfy one or another concept of agency?  None of them, in particular?  A 
> particular subset?
> 
> For different purposes I can see arguing for different answers, and I am not 
> sure how many categories it will be broadly useful to recognize.
> 
> Eric
> 
> 
>> On Jul 15, 2023, at 8:28 AM, Russ Abbott  wrote:
>> 
>> I'm not sure what "closure to efficient cause" means. I considered using as 
>> 

Re: [FRIAM] Trees as wind farms.

[Prof David West]

I have no problem with "make use of" as trees are sentient. Also, "Trees need 
wind to blow against them because it causes their root systems to grow deeper, 
which supports the tree as it grows taller." And, what glen wrote.

davew
 

On Tue, Jun 27, 2023, at 11:29 AM, glen wrote:
> "make use of" imputes agency on the trees. A better way to phrase it 
> would be how/whether trees benefit from wind. But, if I'm a little more 
> generous, maybe you're asking if there are any transduction or energy 
> storage mechanisms triggered by the wind.
>
> https://bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3732/ajb.93.10.1466
> "Touch, wind, and wounding all induced increased lipoxygenase (LOX) 
> mRNA transcription in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) seedlings (Mauch et 
> al., 1997). The mechanical stress induced response occurred within 1 h 
> after treatment, and the amount of transcript was reported to be 
> strongly dose-dependent. LOXs are involved or implicated in a number of 
> metabolic pathways associated with plant growth and development, ABA 
> biosynthesis, senescence, mobilization of lipid reserves, wound 
> responses, resistance to pathogens, formation of fatty acid 
> hydroperoxides, and synthesis of jasmonic acid and traumatic acid (for 
> review, see Mauch et al., 1997)."
>
> Maybe?
>
> On 6/27/23 09:19, Barry MacKichan wrote:
>> I would think the energy is too dispersed to be collectable. At risk of 
>> bending this infant thread … you reminded me of John Muir:
>> 
>> It has been said that trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their 
>> imprisonment rooted in the ground. But they never seem so to me. I never saw 
>> a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and 
>> though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering 
>> forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, 
>> traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space 
>> heaven knows how fast and far!
>> 
>> —Barry
>> 
>> On 27 Jun 2023, at 11:38, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>> 
>> Sitting here at the farm, watching the Normandy poplars bend in the 
>> Southeast wind, I am led to wonder why trees don’t make use of wind energy. 
>> There must be a tangible amount of heat generated by the bending of 
>> branches. Is there no way to use that heat for, for instance, convection of 
>> fluids within the tree?
>> 
>> Or do they? And I am just too ill educated to know it.
>> Nick
>
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism

[Prof David West]

What James is talking about / alluding to:

  A - Hallucinogens (which he did experience) where the "preconceived notions 
of theories" are disrupted, and one gropes to make sense of what is 
apprehended. But, this is only a partial example as multiple perceptual 
filters, "oh wow the colors, the colors," are still present.

B- Satori (which I do not think James claims to have experienced but was aware 
of others making the claim) where there is no separation between "self" and 
"universe." But, in this instance the term "experience" is nonsensical because 
the implied experiencer does not exist.

C- Hallucinogens and satori (incidental and ephemeral Satori) which is an 
'additive" experience as described by Huxley with mescaline—a kind of 
"extra"—ordinary experience.

As to agreement with Husserl: not "same" but "similar" in a faceted way.

davew


On Sun, Jun 4, 2023, at 7:29 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
> So there’s a rather concrete way in which one can imagine ChatGPT’s being 
> particularly useful as a time-saver.
> 
> I have heard it said (and find it persuasive), that philosophy is different 
> from physics because what philosophers want to do and settle for being is 
> different from that for physicists.
> 
> A physicist can pick up F = ma and start from there to get something done.
> 
> Each philosopher is, in a sense, a new beginning of the universe, and you are 
> expected to read thousands of pages of his composition to be permitted to 
> engage with him. That is a good barrier to exclude pretty-much-everbody from 
> most conversations.
> 
> But there are specific topics on which engaging with this group is a game of 
> whack-a-mole, and it would be _so_ satisfying to catch that damned mole far 
> enough out of the hole to pin him down to the board for once.
> 
> It is on this point:  
> 
> Summarizing what, as Marcus rightly says, as been repeated 10^n times before, 
> CGTP quotes:
> At the core of radical empiricism is the concept of "pure experience." 
> According to James, pure experience refers to the immediate, unmediated 
> apprehension of reality, devoid of any conceptual or interpretative filters. 
> It involves experiencing the world as it is, without imposing preconceived 
> notions or theories onto the experience.
> 
> What the HELL does anyone think this is supposed to refer to?  I am not 
> asking whether it actually does refer to anything, but rather what anyone 
> believes he is saying by it.
> 
> And I can ask that in a rather concrete way.  Were James to engage with 
> Husserl, would he claim that the access to the “immediate apprehension” is by 
> way of the same portal as Husserl’s epoche? 
> 
> I ask because they set themselves up to make a particular style of assertion. 
>  
> 
> By analogy, we have seen that human bodies can do things like Amanars and any 
> of the 4 Bileses (which should have been 5, and would have been were it not 
> for COVID).  But that doesn’t mean every human body can do any of them.  
> There is rather a lot of specific training that goes into becoming one of the 
> bodies that can do any of this.
> 
> The various “internal” experience-focused philosophers present these things 
> as doable, but technical and particular and requiring training.
> 
> But if you then ask what that is about, you get either a demand to follow 
> several thousand pages in each person’s formulation, or the kind of cloudy 
> motivational life-coach speech that almost all of the CGPT summary is 
> composed of.  (Reminds me of something I once heard said of chimp speech: if 
> you aren’t there working with them, you cannot anticipate how mind-numbingly 
> repetitive it is).  
> 
> So rather than asking “what it is” (the skill or whatever), I can ask “If 
> they were arguing with each other, would they even assert to each other, each 
> with his supposed privileged appreciation of the mysteries, assert or deny 
> that they are referring to the same thing.
> 
> This might allow us to not have to approach the full body of philosophical 
> literature as if each corpus were Sui generis.  
> 
> Eric
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jun 5, 2023, at 2:43 AM, Jochen Fromm  wrote:
>> 
>> 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] crackpots and privilege

[Prof David West]

I have just started reading **The Earth Transformed** by Peter Frankorian. It 
seems to have some relevance to this discussion as one of its themese is how 
multiple climate change events in the past shaped human adaptation and 
evolution. Might provide some interesting ground for what kind of changes might 
result from current crises. Big caveat, of course, is the lack of 
predictability when it comes to complex systems

davew


On Wed, May 31, 2023, at 9:02 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
> Yeah.  It’s a good objection, because I don’t know either.
>
> I know what sources I am feeding off of.  They are all this 
> popular-science writing, and who knows its status; maybe it becomes the 
> urban legend of “intellectual” spectators?
>
> There is the whole follow-on from the Siberian silver foxes, and the 
> stylized facts of piebald coloring, round ears, and chattiness as the 
> mark of epigenetically altered hormonal profiles among domesticates.  
> Not sure how you do that with primates that already have short ears and 
> limited hair, but there’s always the chattiness.
>
> Some of it, I think, came from reading Barry Lopez’s book Of Wolves and 
> Men as a young kid (a book that at the time, I figured was just a 
> surplus on the used-book tables, but which I have seen referred to 
> repeatedly over the years), and then some decades later, some other 
> book-length thing about social intelligence among dog breeds and their 
> relations to wolves.  The broad thesis being that adult wolves don’t 
> have a sense of humor.  People see wolf pups that look like dog pups 
> and think “I’ll raise one of those”, and then suddenly the transition 
> to adulthood happens, and all this “relation” they thought they had 
> vanishes as the wolf becomes the adult wild animal, and they realize 
> they are in completely over their heads.
>
> Factoid upon factoid, somewhere in this I fit the thing my boss 
> mentioned a couple of years ago, about a Nature (?) article reporting 
> that one of the mutations systematically separating dogs from the grey 
> wolf was in the gene that is cognate to the one that mutates to cause 
> Williams Syndrome in people.  I mentioned that on the list maybe a year 
> ago, but have’t gone to find the link myself.
>
> The thing about vigilance as an important defining dimension of the 
> PTSD phenotype comes from the Jonathan Shay book I mentioned, and 
> probably also Tim OBrien’s The Things They Carried, though not 
> emphasized there the same way in its own name.  Seems to correlate with 
> being surprisingly strong while being surprisingly skinny and not 
> needing to eat much (or having an interest I eating much), and with a 
> portfolio of health problems that shorten lifespan.  Shay thinks that 
> hypervigilance, as a requirement for survival, is one of the drivers of 
> PTSD and not only a symptom; the other major one being betrayal within 
> what was supposed to have functioned as the social in-group and support 
> structure.  That was the connection to the SFI talk on “Living with 
> Distrust” as a locked-in low-benefit social state (anthropological 
> study of a small village I Romania).
>
> Are wild animals like that?  I do have that impression, with about as 
> much depth as my other impressions.  Getting close to a wild fox seems 
> very very hard.  Raccoons too.  I think of big male domestic cats as 
> being pretty menacing (having been attacked by one in the dark one 
> time), but the reputation is that faced with a fox or a raccoon, they 
> don’t have a chance of surviving.  Makes me imagine that bobcats look 
> like slightly enlarged big domestic cats, but probably aren’t like them 
> very much at all.
>
> I was having this discussion with someone once, sitting outside a small 
> artificial lake in a little forest glen, watching the birds fight 
> continuously with each other in every pairing over territory.  Thinking 
> “These animals are really willing to make an effort.”
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>> On May 30, 2023, at 4:27 PM, glen  wrote:
>> 
>> "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 

Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

[Prof David West]

Semi-independent: left alone while elders were out hunting/gathering; tagging 
along on hunt as "beaters" for the spear throwers; finding their own 'lunch' 
among local plants; carrying their own goods when group was moving from place 
to place; able to maintain disciplined silence and staying still when predators 
are about; daubing mud on the hut to fix leaks; gathering wood and plants along 
with the women, including balancing baskets on their heads; almost anything 
consistent with weight/height/body strength. Probably the most foreign to 
modern values is the being left alone to fend for selves while adults are 
absent and being able to avoid becoming prey.

davew

On Wed, May 31, 2023, at 8:13 AM, glen wrote:
> 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

Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

[Prof David West]

"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).  
> 
> 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, 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  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)
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
>> Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2023 7:27 AM
>> To: 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 political games significantly 
>> different from the "games" wild babies play under the vigilant eye of their 
>> den mother? Yeah, I know. I'm putting too much weight on "significant". 
>> Obviously, everything's different from everything else. (I regret not being 
>> able to engage more with Jon's exploration of Deleuze.) But my conservatism 
>> tells me that objective othering would rely solely on coherent traits, 
>> fingers vs. claws, hair vs. fur, cortex or no cortex. A human now would be 
>> insignificantly different from a human then. If the apocalypse doesn't 
>> transform us into something other than human, whatever is rebuilt will be 
>> strikingly similar to what we have now.
>> 
>> 
>> On 5/28/23 11:29, David Eric Smith wrote:
>> > I’m not sure elitist, Steve,
>> > 
>> > That’s one bad habit that I don’t think they have.
>> > 
>> > More along the line, I suspect, of “out of ordinary people who mostly get 
>> > mowed down, here and there will be some pockets that started to pay 
>> > attention and got lucky enough to have time to make a culture of it, of 
>> > sorts”
>> > 
>> > Wes Jackson likes the term “saving remnant”.
>> > 
>> > I happen to be in Sweden just now, and it has me thinking about sci-fi 
>> > futures, ad also Nietzsche’s “last man” etc.
>> > 
>> > Also on this theme is the very interesting SFI lecture “living with 
>> > distrust”, which signals things I have seen (Ernst Fehr?) and others say 
>> > about the Ache and 

Re: [FRIAM] Declaration of Ethics for AI

[Prof David West]

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

[Prof David West]

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 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

Re: [FRIAM] Paxton's stages as a dynamical system

[Prof David West]

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 
> > countries because they wanted to stay in power at all costs. Ruth Ben-Ghiat 
> > wrote about it in her book "Strongmen" [1].
> > 
> > The more interesting aspect is to view it as a disorder of the system. 
> > Already Plato considered tyranny as a disease and disorder of a state [2]. 
> > He defined a tyrant as a person who rules without law, using extreme and 
> > cruel methods against both his own people and others. In a tyranny, the 
> > city 

Re: [FRIAM] selective optimism

[Prof David West]

The opinion of an "advanced layman."

I claim the status because my Computer Science MS was in AI. My first 
professional publication was in *AI Magazine*, then the journal of record for 
the discipline. I have appeared on panels with Herbert Simon, Marvin Minsky, 
and Herbert Dreyfus at AI conferences. I taught AI courses at the University of 
New Mexico circa 2009. I have observed the field more or less continuously, but 
as an interested observer—not expert and certainly not practitioner.

I have always been a critic! From the time that Simon and Newel claimed that 
they had "created an artificial intelligence," because it successfully mimicked 
the way that university professors claimed to think, to the present day. I am 
convinced that advocates of AI and claimants with regard its power and 
potential (and threat) base ground their assertions in an "equivalence" between 
their work and a debased and limited model of human intelligence.

The only danger that _will_ (and I use the definite will not the potential 
maybe) result from widespread AI is that "the masses" will believe the hype and 
come to believe that they, as humans, are inferior in every way to machines. I 
believe that political and economic elites will exploit this denigration of the 
human in order to consolidate their power (they already have the wealth). To 
me, this is nothing more than an acceleration of a 75 year trend to use the 
educational system to produce graduates that are compliant and gullible rather 
than informed and intelligent—the latter, obviously, being dangerous to the 
social order.

As a species we have, collectively, created gods, forgot how and why we did so, 
then worshiped then as Gods—vastly and inevitably superior beings. AI is just 
godmaking 2.0

davew

On Tue, May 9, 2023, at 1:34 AM, Tom Johnson wrote:
> It doesn't have to be either/or. I suspect most likely a mix of the two will 
> evolve as is the case with the whole Digital Revolution.
> TJ
> 
> ===
> Tom Johnson
> Inst. for Analytic Journalism
> Santa Fe, New Mexico
> 505-577-6482
> ===
> 
> On Mon, May 8, 2023, 9:43 PM Pieter Steenekamp  
> wrote:
>> People have different ideas about AI. Naomi Klein thinks that the idea that 
>> AI will solve all our problems is a big joke. She thinks the tech people are 
>> trying to trick us! She thinks AI is not just a tool but also a creation of 
>> the people who made it. Naomi is afraid that if we keep believing in this 
>> lie, we won't fix the real problems we have.
>> 
>> On the other hand, Sam Altman is excited about AI! He thinks AI can help us 
>> solve things like diseases and climate change, and even drive us around and 
>> cook for us! He doesn't think AI will take over the world or hurt people. 
>> Sam thinks humans will always be in charge of AI.
>> 
>> So, who's right? I don't know! My magic ball's batteries are dead, so I 
>> can't tell you. But I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens!
>> 
>> On Mon, 8 May 2023 at 23:42, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
>>> 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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>>> > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>>> > archives:  5/2017 thru 

Re: [FRIAM] AI possibilities

[Prof David West]

I am certain that AIs can generate music, probably in the style of famous 
composers. I just have not seen such examples in the frenzy of "guess what 
ChatAIs just did."

My point focused on the possibility of "collaborative creation" ala pair 
programmers, jazz musicians,  improv comedians, etc. While I think "something" 
occurs and or is central to such efforts that is lacking from interactive 
conversations like those noted in the press, by Steve on this list, or even 
famous "dialogic" collaborations like Rogers and Hammerstein or the sci-fi 
co-authorship of Pohl and Kornbluth. But it might just be my imagination or 
some kind of hidden essentialism.

BTW: what was the first instance of computer generated music, and where are you 
most likely to have heard it?

davew



On Thu, Apr 6, 2023, at 9:13 AM, glen wrote:
> Off the top of my head, I can see 3 ways to get music out of the 
> current chat interfaces:
>
> 1) algorithmic music - E.g. C programs like this:
> #include 
> int main(int t) {for (t=0;;t++) putcharint)(t/12)>>8) - (t<<4)) & 
> (((int)(t/6)>>6) + (t<<2)));}
>
> The code I've gotten out of ChatGPT has been irritating. But I've never 
> asked it to write something like that. Or maybe something in PureData 
> or Common Lisp Music. Given the above program as a prompt, Bard gave me 
> a slightly different one and confidently proclaimed that it was in a 
> different key with some extra notes. But it's actually just a *fuzz* 
> version of mine ... which even though Bard's gaslighting me, it's still 
> a cool tune. 8^D
>
> 2) Time series. If you ask Bard to tell you what the next number in 
> this sequence is, it'll tell you: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34. If I 
> get the chance later, maybe I'll runs some other sequences by it and 
> see what it can tell me. But there's no reason a next-token-predictor 
> shouldn't be able to generate music straight out of the gate.
>
> 3) Notes as tokens, rather than signals/numbers as tokens. I'm sure 
> such exists. But the closest I've come is 
> https://www.w3.org/2021/06/musicxml40/ I don't see any reason why these 
> machines couldn't compose MusicXML in the same way they can compose 
> source code.
>
> On 4/5/23 22:15, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>> Yes, if a large language model is trained on all works of Mozart and 
>> contemporary artists like Haydn, it should be able to create a new piece of 
>> music which sounds almost like Mozart. Finally we can listen to Mozart's 
>> lost 28th piano concerto or Beethoven's missing 33th piano sonata o_O
>> 
>> -J.
>> 
>> 
>>  Original message 
>> From: Prof David West 
>> Date: 4/5/23 1:55 AM (GMT+01:00)
>> To: friam@redfish.com
>> Subject: [FRIAM] AI possibilities
>> 
>> Based on the flood of stories about ChatAI, it appears:
>>    - they can 'do' math and 'reason' scientificdally
>>    - they can generate essays, term papers, etc.
>>    - they can engage in convincing dialog/conversations
>>      - as "therapists"
>>      - as "girlfriends" (I haven't seen any stories about women falling in 
>> love with their AI)
>>      - as kinksters
>>    - they can write code
>> 
>> The writing code ability immediately made me wonder if, given a database of 
>> music instead of text, they could write music?
>> 
>> The dialog /conversation ability makes me wonder about more real-time 
>> collaborative interaction, improv acting / comedy? Or, pair programming? The 
>> real-time aspect is critical to my question, as I believe there is something 
>> qualitatively different between two people doing improv or pair programming 
>> than simply engaging in dialog. I think I could make a much stronger 
>> argument in the case of improv music, especially jazz, but AIs aren't doing 
>> that yet.
>> 
>
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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[FRIAM] AI possibilities

[Prof David West]

Based on the flood of stories about ChatAI, it appears:
  - they can 'do' math and 'reason' scientificdally
  - they can generate essays, term papers, etc.
  - they can engage in convincing dialog/conversations
- as "therapists"
- as "girlfriends" (I haven't seen any stories about women falling in love 
with their AI)
- as kinksters
  - they can write code

The writing code ability immediately made me wonder if, given a database of 
music instead of text, they could write music?

The dialog /conversation ability makes me wonder about more real-time 
collaborative interaction, improv acting / comedy? Or, pair programming? The 
real-time aspect is critical to my question, as I believe there is something 
qualitatively different between two people doing improv or pair programming 
than simply engaging in dialog. I think I could make a much stronger argument 
in the case of improv music, especially jazz, but AIs aren't doing that yet.

davew

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Re: [FRIAM] emergent mind - ai news by ai

[Prof David West]

Steve Smith's use of the phrase "arms race" reminded me of John Brunner's 
*Shockwave Rider *and its underlying premise of the dangers of constant change, 
'first the legs race, then the arms race, then the brain race'. (Brunner was 
inspired by Tofler's book, *Future Shock*.)

The book also poses a problem: if you have two bodies in orbit, how does one 
catch up or surpass the other. *"See you later accelerator,"* illustrates the 
perceived fallacy of these kinds of "races."

The current AI mania is akin to the brain race in Brunner, except, in the book, 
the race was to increase/augment human intelligence not artificial.

I wonder where the world might be if the same effort and money that has been 
spent on artificial intelligence had instead been invested in Englebart's 
effort to augment human intelligence.

davew


On Thu, Mar 30, 2023, at 11:19 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> 
> 
> *GePR* -
>> Well, I "agree" with the open letter, for different reasons than Steve. Just 
>> yesterday, a colleague (who should know better) made a similar assertion to 
>> Nick's (and mine, and maybe Marcus' etc.) that *we* may be in the same 
>> category as a transformer decoder assembly. The context was whether a 
>> structure like GPT, designed specifically so that it can add high-order 
>> Markovian token prediction, can possibly embody/encapsulate/contain 
>> mechanistic models.
> Can you elaborate how this is an "agreement" with the open letter? I'm not 
> clear what you are agreeing with or on what principle?
>> 
>> While I don't subscribe to the fideistic write-off (or Luddite-like) of such 
>> structures as vapid or even "non-sentient", there *is* something we're doing 
>> they are not. I can't quite articulate what it is we do that they don't. But 
>> I think there is. And I think it (whatever "it" is) is being targeted by 
>> mechanism-based (or physics-based) machine learning. 
>> 
>> Being either a skeptic (as I am) or a proponent (as Marcus portrays, here), 
>> pre-emptively regulating (or attempting to regulate) the research and 
>> training is a bad, perhaps Pyrrhic Victory, thing to do. From a skeptical 
>> perspective, it slows our *falsification* of transformer decoder assemblies 
>> as containers for mechanistic reasoning. For proponents, it puts us behind 
>> others who would continue to make progress.
> I do agree that when we are in an "arms race" it feels like there is nothing 
> to do except "run faster" and don't for the love of all that is good, take a 
> pause for any reason.
> 
> To quote Thomas Jefferson (referring to Slavery):  "I think we have a wolf by 
> the ears, we can neither continue to hold it, nor can we afford to let it go".
> 
>> 
>> So, yes, it has a feedback effect, a deleterious one.
> My inner-Luddite believes that we are always in spiritual/social debt and 
> that most if not all of our attempts to dig out with more technology has, at 
> best, the benefit of rearranging the shape of the hole we are in, and 
> generally deepening and steepening it's profile. 
> 
> That said, I live my life with a shovel in one hand and a digging bar in the 
> other, even if I've (mostly) put away the diesel excavator, dynamite and 
> blasting caps...  I *am* homo-faber and this is *in* my destiny, but I want 
> to believe that I am also the superposition of many other modes: 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_the_human_species, with perhaps *homo 
> adaptabalis* most significantly?   If we do not at least consider our own 
> self-regulation as a collective then I think we risk degenerating to *homo 
> avarus* or *homo apathetikos.*
> 
> *-SAS*
> 
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[FRIAM] AI Musings

[Prof David West]

The "AI Pause" made national TV news yesterday (long after those on this list 
noted and reacted to it) and that made me revisit a theme I have thought about 
since Newell, Simon, and Shaw created Logic Theorist.

Advocates take a caricature (perhaps too strong a word) of human intelligence, 
write a program to emulate it and declare the program "intelligent."

The original conceit: true intelligence was the kind of thinking exhibited by 
college professors and scientists. Almost trivial to emulate (Newell and Simon 
programmed Logic Theorist on 3x5 cards before Shaw was able to implement on a 
computer).

Maybe reading—correctly converting text to sound, like a child—was more 
indicative of human intelligence, and Sejnowski created NetTalk. that, somewhat 
eerily, produced discoveries of sounds, and errors, and achieved near perfect 
ability to "read." Listen to the tapes sometime and contrast them with tapes of 
a human child learning to read. Of course, comprehension of what was read did 
not make the cut.

State of the art improved dramatically and the caricatures of human 
intelligence are more sophisticated and the achievements of the programs more 
interesting.

But, it seems to me there is still a critical gap. We can program an AI (or let 
one learn) to fly a commercial jet as well or better than a human pilot—BUT, 
could even the best of of breed of such an AI pull a Shullenberger and land on 
the Hudson River? 

Another factor behind the "hysteria" (sorry for the sexism) over AIs causing 
massive unemployment is a corollary to the caricaturization of human 
intelligence. Since the Industrial Revolution, and certainly since the age of 
Taylorism and the rise of automation; work itself has been dehumanizing.

If you define human work in terms of what can be done by a computer then it is 
tautological to claim an AI is intelligent because it can perform human work.

I was contemplating ChatAIs and quickly realized that my profession—college 
professor—was one at immense risk of replacement. I would bet good money that a 
ChatAI could produce, and maybe deliver, lectures far better than any I created 
in 30 years teaching. And probably most, if not all, of the presentations I 
made at professional conferences over the years.

I am still vain enough to think that some of the papers and books I have 
written are beyond an AI, and certain that no AI could do as well in 
spontaneious Q after a presentation than I.

Bottom line, I still believe that AI can and does equate to HI, only when some 
aspect of HI is ommitted from the equation. This is not essentialism, but 
analogous to the digitization of a sine wave, no matter the finite sampling 
rate, there is always some missing information.

davew

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[FRIAM] a little help from my friends

[Prof David West]

I am keynoting the International Conference on Code Quality on April 22. It 
will be speculative and philosophical, but I would like to know "code quality" 
might mean, is taken for granted to mean, to professional coders. I know what 
it means for this conference, but would like a broader base from which to 
launch my flights of fancy.

davew

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[FRIAM] Stephen Hawkings final theory

[Prof David West]

Just pre-ordered Hertog's, *On the Origin of Time*, that presents Stephen 
Hawking's "final" theory - summarized in the phrase: *"The laws of physics are 
not set in stone but are born and co-evolve as the universe they govern takes 
shape." *Should be a great read.

davew
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[FRIAM] WEIRD and STRANGE

[Prof David West]

Perhaps 

Perhaps of interest to the psychologists and ethologists in the group: claim 
that research is biased (and therefore unreliable to a degree) because the 
people studied are WEIRD
  - Western
  - Educated
  -Industrialized
  - Rich
  - (from) Democratic societies

and animals studied are STRANGE
  -  Social background
  - Trap-ability and self-selection
  - Rearing history
  - Acclimation and habituation
  - Natural changes in responsiveness
  - Genetic makeup
  - Experience

Research claims about how humans in general, or animal species as a species are 
biased/flawed because the studies fail to account for the WEIRD / STRANGE 
factors into account. 
  
davew

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Re: [FRIAM] parameter tuning

[Prof David West]

Wonderful!!! Thanks. Can't wait for my issue of the magazine to arrive.

davew


On Wed, Mar 8, 2023, at 6:54 AM, glen wrote:
> This Is a Philosopher on Drugs
> https://www.wired.com/story/this-is-a-philosopher-on-drugs/
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] ChatGPT and William James

[Prof David West]

I am sure that none of the respectable members of this list will have 
encountered this, but  Jochen's comment:

*"it is additionally trained extensively how to respond ***_correctly_*** by 
humans" *(emphasis mine of course)

means I cannot resist sharing.

I just read an amusing ChatGPT conversation in which it was induced to become a 
near perfect "male" submissive, answering every human query and statement with 
an appropriate "yes mistress" and expressing enthusiasm for the most extreme 
types of BDSM behavior imaginable. 

True, ChatGPT was responding "correctly" in accordance with human training—at 
least with regard its submissive role—I doubt that Jochen had that in mind when 
he wrote his sentence.

davew


On Tue, Mar 7, 2023, at 9:50 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> ChatGPT apparently uses a technique called "Reinforcement Learning from Human 
> Feedback" (RLHF). It is not only based on huge amounts of training data 
> humans have created in form of Wikipedia entries, web pages and books, it is 
> additionally trained extensively how to respond correctly by humans.
> https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/03/1069311/inside-story-oral-history-how-chatgpt-built-openai/
> 
> -J.
> 
> 
>  Original message 
> From: glen 
> Date: 3/7/23 12:17 AM (GMT+01:00)
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] ChatGPT and William James
> 
> I'm confused by the emphasis on "data". While I'm tempted to agree with my 
> simulation of Frank and say that a human's output is not based solely on 
> statistical patterns in the input the human's been trained on, to dissemble 
> on the meaning of "data" or "input" or "statistical patterns" is a bridge too 
> far.
> 
> The compressive encoder, computer, and decoder that is a human brain (& the 
> rest of the body) may not be entirely "statistical". But statistics is a 
> fairly well-accepted form of behavioral modeling. (Yes, we agent-based 
> modelers love to point out how statistical models are not very mechanistic. 
> But to deny that you can very closely approximate, even predict, actual 
> behavior with some of these models would be foolish.) So, yes, it satisfies 
> the letter of the good faith agreement to say that humans output *might* be 
> solely based on statistical patterns of its input, even if it violates the 
> spirit.
> 
> So, if someone insists that a human-mediated map from input to output is 
> necessarily, categorically different from a machine-mediated map, the burden 
> lies on them to delineate how and why it's different. The primary difference 
> might well be related to babies, e.g. some of the "memory" (aka training) of 
> past statistical patterns comes in the form of genes passed from one's 
> parents. It's unclear to me what the analogs are for something like GPT. 
> Presumably there are things like wavelets of method, process, intellectual 
> property, or whatever that GPT3 inherited from GPT2, mediated by the 
> human-machine replication material that is OpenAI. So, the retort to Frank 
> is: "If you live with a baby algorithm, you see it has knowledge that can't 
> be based on 'data'." That algorithm came from somewhere ... the humans who 
> wrote it, the shoulders they stand on, the hours of debug and test cycles the 
> algorithm goes through as its [re]implemented, etc.
> 
> On 3/6/23 14:54, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> > If you live with a baby you see that they have knowledge that can't be 
> > based on "data".
> > 
> > ---
> > Frank C. Wimberly
> > 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> > Santa Fe, NM 87505
> > 
> > 505 670-9918
> > Santa Fe, NM
> > 
> > On Mon, Mar 6, 2023, 2:50 PM Marcus Daniels  > > wrote:
> > 
> > How?
> > 
> > __ __
> > 
> > *From:* Friam  > > *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
> > *Sent:* Monday, March 6, 2023 12:50 PM
> > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> > mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] ChatGPT and William James
> > 
> > __ __
> > 
> >  >And we humans are different?
> > 
> > __ __
> > 
> > In a word, yes.
> > 
> > ---
> > Frank C. Wimberly
> > 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> > Santa Fe, NM 87505
> > 
> > 505 670-9918
> > Santa Fe, NM
> > 
> > __ __
> > 
> > On Mon, Mar 6, 2023, 12:14 PM Nicholas Thompson 
> > mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> > 
> > */However, it's important to remember that there are also important 
> > differences between a large language model and human consciousness. While a 
> > large language model can generate text that may seem to flow like a stream 
> > of consciousness, it does not have the same kind of subjective experience 
> > that humans do, and its output is based solely on statistical patterns in 
> > the input it has been trained on./*
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > And we humans are different? 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Sat, Mar 4, 2023 at 

Re: [FRIAM] [EXT] News Alert: Most young men are single. Most young women are not.

[Prof David West]

The biggest not-accounted-for cost is human. All those kids in lithium mines 
earning 12 cents a day.

davew


On Thu, Feb 23, 2023, at 3:41 AM, Santafe wrote:
> There is a skewness in the various analyses of these things (in the 
> sense of two lines of non-common direction embedded in enough 
> dimensions that they never meet) that makes the various claims unusable 
> unless one will not be lazy.  That puts it out of my reach.
>
> Rees, Seibert, and the others, have their nice 1-page digestable list 
> of slogans why “It’s all Bullshit!”.  There they talk about how 
> obviously wind and solar power are _Just NOT_ sustainable, because they 
> are carried to the site by fossil-fuel-powered trucks.  And similar 
> sort of qualitative no-go claims.
>
> In a brief luxury of house-cleaning following what seemed to be months 
> of continuous crises, I was catching up on some older reading on 
> figures of merit for various energy technologies, and got, by various 
> routes, to the claim that the embodied energy of solar PV is about 
> 3kWh/Wp, where Wp = “watt produced”.  So one is looking at about 3000 
> hours before the power delievered is over-and-above replacement.  
> People estimate that, in calendar time, that translates to values 
> between 1 and 6 years or so, for a product that should have about a 
> 20-year lifecycle.  Now, that embodied energy estimate came from 
> somewhere, and the people producing it were probably not oil company 
> shills.  So does it include Bill Rees’s oil-powered truck, or not?  
> Meaning, does he just throw it all into the dustbin with a wave of 
> common sense, or is he being lazy and neither following through an 
> argument nor admitting what would be needed to follow it through, and 
> estimating how far we are from that.
>
> Apparently, there are various “Scopes” of power consumption that go 
> into sustainability reporting law.  I won’t remember them properly, but 
> Scope 1 is something like your own power consumed in manufacturing; 
> Scope 2 is some measure of power used by others either before or after 
> (sorry; not time to go find this now), and Scope 3 is the whole 
> supply-line analysis, prorated for the part you use.  I look at Scope 
> 3, and it looks like hard accounting to do, but I don’t know if that 
> means it is a pipe dream, or if usable approximations are available for 
> certain domains.  (U. Exeter I think tries to contribute such data, or 
> collaborate with companies that do.)  
>
> The recursion, which is a tree, seems easy enough to visualize (as in a 
> SFe bumper sticker).  If you don’t like the oil-powered truck, replace 
> it with a non-oil-powered truck.  What is the embodied energy of the 
> replacement, prorated over all the things it will haul, and what is the 
> operating energy cost of this task.  And then so on for the factory 
> that builds the truck, the mining machinery that extracts any new ores, 
> or the recycling plant that salvages retired materials, etc.  When 
> people estimate embodied energy costs for this or that technology, are 
> they putting in some defensible estimate or placeholder for this 
> recursion, or not?  Seems like a simple enough question to ask.  But I 
> spend time in conversations with people who do this (not a _ton_ of 
> time, but a little), and I don’t know the answer.
>
> I understand, also (since it is obvious), that just an energy 
> accounting is only a baseline for constraint.  There is then the much 
> harder and more detailed accounting of whether you have a process for 
> each step.  So, for example: There’s a minimum chemical free energy 
> cost to separate the rare earth dopants from silicon to recycle a 
> retired solar cell, which will need to become the process once the 
> high-grade ores are not available, but do you have a process that 
> performs that extraction and purification?  Stuff like that.  That 
> becomes all the labor-intensive “industrial ecology” research (I think 
> they call it) to try to turn some of the sloganeering into usable 
> inputs for a designer.
>
> Thanks Steve for forwarding the LtG plots.  I read that one too.  They 
> are trying to bypass the detailed industrial ecology, and hope that 
> within some number of orders of magnitude, they can do something like a 
> conserved-quantity bound on what is possible by any process.  The 
> economists have, since the original came out, tried to dismiss that 
> line of reasoning (again with a hand-wave), by claiming that one 
> doesn’t know about conservation laws between rates and quantities, and 
> since LtG hasn’t accounted for “human innovation”, they can safely be 
> ignored.  Of course, I understand that that argument is not only pretty 
> sure to be wrong (and provably wrong for a few simple cases where I 
> know how to calculate), but also made in either bad faith or laziness.  
> But the question it begs is: what can we prove is unreachable by any 
> level of innovation, for the same reasons perpetual motion 

Re: [FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[Prof David West]

I am hearing echoes of Rubert Sheldrake in your last sentence

davew


On Mon, Feb 20, 2023, at 8:46 AM, glen wrote:
> Despite the ambiguity both Nick and DaveW rely on when they use the 
> word "dualism", the "psyche" in panpsychism need not be dualist. 
> Experience monism is a kind of panpsychism. When I asserted that there 
> is something that it is like to be dirt, I'm not implying there is a 
> difference between "psyche" and ... matter or whatever else there may 
> be. I'm asserting that whatever it is to be dirt is the *same* as 
> whatever it is to be human.
>
> By even using the phrases "mental stuff" or "mental life", *you* are 
> implicitly asserting there are 2 things: mental and non-mental. There 
> is no such difference, in my opinion. Now, while I am often a moron, I 
> don't deny that people *think* there's a difference. E.g. when you 
> finally get that snap of understanding while running, or taking a 
> shower or whatever, about some concept you've been working on, it 
> *feels* like pure mentation. The shift just feels cognitive, not 
> bodily. But I would maintain my stance that this is an abstraction, a 
> sloughing off of the bodily details. (The illusion is a byproduct of 
> focus and attention, which are mechanical implementations of 
> abstraction.) My stance is that, however cognitive such things feel, 
> they aren't. You wouldn't, *could not*, have arrived at that state 
> without your body, or if you had a different body.
>
> Yes, as long as your body is *similar* to others' bodies, you could 
> arrive at a *similar* understanding, but not the same.
>
> On 2/18/23 05:29, Eric Charles wrote:
>> On 2/16/23 23:35, ⛧ glen wrote:
>>> I don't know what you mean by "mental stuff", of course.
>> 
>> Well... In this context, I mean whatever the "psyche" part of panpsychism 
>> entails.
>> 
>> Given that I don't believe in disembodied minds, I'm with you 100% on 
>> everything you do being "body stuff". Which, presumably, leads to the 
>> empirical question of what types of bodies do "psyche", and where those 
>> types of bodies can be found.
>> 
>> You say further that: 'No. Neither the dirt nor I do "mental stuff"'.
>> 
>> Well, now we have something to actually talk about then! Dave West, 
>> unsurprisingly, stepped in strongly on the side of dirt having psyche in at 
>> least a rudimentary form, I presume he would assert that you (Glen) do 
>> mental stuff too. Dave also asserts that his belief in panpsychism /does/ 
>> affect how he lives in the world. Exactly to the extent that his way of 
>> living in the world is made different by the belief, panpsychism /_is_/ more 
>> than just something he says.
>> 
>> Steve's discussion about what it would feel like to be the bit of dirt 
>> trampled beneath a particular foot is a bit of a tangent - potentially 
>> interesting in its own right. His discussion of when he, personally, starts 
>> to attribute identity - and potentially psyche - to clumps of inanimate 
>> stuff seems directly on topic, especially as he too has listed some ways his 
>> behaviors change when he becomes engaged in those habits.
>> 
>> 
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[Prof David West]

Great question, and one that may not be answerable directly. There is 
definitely a sense of essentialism in some contexts, Shinto for example, and 
other forms of animism. In Vedic philosophy I am less sure. The origin myth 
states that Mind (purusa) and Matter (prakrti) were once separate and apart but 
a cosmic accident caused them to become infused. Mind-Matter, like space-time, 
is 'one thing' not a combination of two: neither is an attribute of the other.

Mind-Matter and Karma, Mind-Matter acting in accordance with "propriety" 
anteceded human beings by eons. "Propriety" in this instance are actions that 
lead to the eventual separation of purusa and prakrti; something that will 
happen when everything, including those things that are now inanimate, as well 
as all animate creatures goes through the rebirth cycle until attaining a state 
from which they can attain enlightenment and enter Nirvana.

Modern philosophers, like Whitehead, take positions closer to Vedic (sans 
Nirvana and Karma), than animism—at least to the extent I understand them.

davew


On Mon, Feb 20, 2023, at 5:10 AM, Santafe wrote:
> So there are things in DaveW’s very helpful post below about which I am 
> genuinely curious.  My tendency is to analyze them, though I have a 
> certain habitual fear that asking a question in an analytic mode will 
> come across as somehow disrespectful, and that is not my intent.
>
> The description below sounds to me very much like “essentialism”.  If 
> we have long human experience that water is wet, and if after many 
> hundreds of millenia being human (and longer bring primates etc.) we 
> take on some good reasons to describe water as being made of H2O 
> molecules, the essentialist habit is to suppose (to take as a 
> philosophical premise?) that there must be some attribute of wetness 
> about each molecule, which is then amplified when many such molecules 
> make the bulk that even ordinary people experience as water.  (One 
> could go on a branch and argue that special people also experience each 
> individual molecule as itself and can attest to its wetness, and one 
> could try to push the analogy that far, but I want to focus above on 
> the essentialist premise as a kind of “mind-set background”.)
>
> One could be essentialist about really anything.  The wetness of water, 
> the hardness of rock, the warmness of air, the loyalty of friends, or 
> pretty much anything that has syntax making such a construction 
> possible.
>
> In the Mind community, is the central orientation a commitment to 
> essentialism as a posture, or is essentialism only to be applied to 
> whatever specifically comes under the scope of “mind”?
>
> If only mind is to be framed in this kind of essentialist ontology, why 
> does it become the only attribute thus deserving to be framed as an 
> essence?  Of course, for me to ask that already expresses the point of 
> view that the Mind community are arguing against: that people are a 
> tiny and late corner in a large universe, and that all this 
> conversation about Mind didn’t come into existence until they were 
> there to generate it, which seems almost as tiny and niche as any 
> particular one of Shakespeare’s plays.  But to put the question that 
> way is the only way I know to use language.
>
> Eric 
>
>> On Feb 18, 2023, at 9:22 AM, Prof David West  wrote:
>> 
>> Panpsychism is fundamentally dualist. There is 'Mind" and there is 'Matter'. 
>> However, neither is found in isolation, Mind is always embedded in Matter 
>> and all Matter possesses Mind. This is a proportionate relation: very tiny 
>> bits of Matter (string, particle) embed very minute "auras" of matter. As 
>> Matter aggregates and organizes (atoms, molecules, organisms); Mind 
>> expresses a parallel aggregation and organization.
>> 
>> Organization is a key factor. Matter must be organized in a 
>> complicated/complex way before the embedded Mind will have  a 
>> corresponding/complementary organization. Mere accumulation, soil to 
>> mountain, is insufficient. (Although, there are places, geographic 
>> locations, that seem to exhibit "Mindness." This is a subject that Jenny 
>> Quillien is investigating, and which was mentioned previously in the context 
>> of Christopher Alexander's QWAN and Liveness.)
>> 
>> Dynamism is a key factor. If the organization includes change (growth) and 
>> motility (flexible fingers) the corresponding/complementary Mind 
>> organization will be more interesting.
>> 
>> Paradoxically (a bit), the Matter / Mind dualism is a kind of monism, in the 
>> same way that space-time is one thing not two.
>> 
>> So glen is correct in saying there is only 'bo

Re: [FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[Prof David West]

Panpsychism is fundamentally dualist. There is 'Mind" and there is 'Matter'. 
However, neither is found in isolation, Mind is always embedded in Matter and 
all Matter possesses Mind. This is a proportionate relation: very tiny bits of 
Matter (string, particle) embed very minute "auras" of matter. As Matter 
aggregates and organizes (atoms, molecules, organisms); Mind expresses a 
parallel aggregation and organization.

Organization is a key factor. Matter must be organized in a complicated/complex 
way before the embedded Mind will have  a corresponding/complementary 
organization. Mere accumulation, soil to mountain, is insufficient. (Although, 
there are places, geographic locations, that seem to exhibit "Mindness." This 
is a subject that Jenny Quillien is investigating, and which was mentioned 
previously in the context of Christopher Alexander's QWAN and Liveness.)

Dynamism is a key factor. If the organization includes change (growth) and 
motility (flexible fingers) the corresponding/complementary Mind organization 
will be more interesting.

Paradoxically (a bit), the Matter / Mind dualism is a kind of monism, in the 
same way that space-time is one thing not two.

So glen is correct in saying there is only 'body stuff' but someone else could 
say, with equal validity, that there is only mind stuff. All depends on which 
side of Janus you are facing. the lie/truth in in the eye of the observer.

Thus Spake Zar er, dave west



On Sat, Feb 18, 2023, at 6:29 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
> I don't know what you mean by "mental stuff", of course.
> 
> Well... In this context, I mean whatever the "psyche" part of panpsychism 
> entails. 
> 
> Given that I don't believe in disembodied minds, I'm with you 100% on 
> everything you do being "body stuff". Which, presumably, leads to the 
> empirical question of what types of bodies do "psyche", and where those types 
> of bodies can be found. 
> 
> You say further that: No. Neither the dirt nor I do "mental stuff".
> Well, now we have something to actually talk about then! Dave West, 
> unsurprisingly, stepped in strongly on the side of dirt having psyche in at 
> least a rudimentary form, I presume he would assert that you (Glen) do mental 
> stuff too. Dave also asserts that his belief in panpsychism *does* affect how 
> he lives in the world. Exactly to the extent that his way of living in the 
> world is made different by the belief, panpsychism *_is_* more than just 
> something he says. 
> 
> Steve's discussion about what it would feel like to be the bit of dirt 
> trampled beneath a particular foot is a bit of a tangent - potentially 
> interesting in its own right. His discussion of when he, personally, starts 
> to attribute identity - and potentially psyche - to clumps of inanimate stuff 
> seems directly on topic, especially as he too has listed some ways his 
> behaviors change when he becomes engaged in those habits. 
> 
> 
> 
 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 2:36 AM ⛧ glen  wrote:
>> Doubling down on the incredulity fallacy? OK. Yes. There is something it is 
>> like to be trampled dirt. I don't know what you mean by "mental stuff", of 
>> course. I don't do any mental stuff as far as I know. Everything I do is 
>> inherently "body stuff". Maybe that's because I've experienced chronic pain 
>> my whole life. Maybe some of you consistently live in a body free 
>> experience? I've only experienced that a few times, e.g. running in a fasted 
>> state. And I later suffered for that indulgent delusion.
>> 
>> No. Neither the dirt nor I do "mental stuff". So you need a more concrete 
>> question. 
>> 
>> On February 16, 2023 6:04:17 PM PST, Eric Charles 
>>  wrote:
>> >"an account of the seemingly analogous position of panpsychism"
>> >
>> >What is that more than something people say?
>> >
>> >Do *you* experience the dirt at your feet as having a mental life? If so,
>> >tell me about it: What is the dirt like when it seems to be doing mental
>> >stuff? What kind of mental stuff is it doing?
>> >
>> >If not: Have you seen anyone who earnestly thinks the dirt is doing mental
>> >stuff? If so, what were *they* like? How was that belief pervasive in their
>> >adjustments to the world? Based on your experiences with that person, how
>> >do you think your ways of acting in the world would change if you adopted
>> >such a position?
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 1:27 PM glen  wrote:
>> >
>> >> I don't grok the context well enough to equivocate on concepts like "have"
>> >> and "category of being". But in response to Nick's question: "What is 
>> >> there
>> >> that animals do that demands us to invent categories to explain their
>> >> behavior?", my answer is "animals discretize the ambient muck". So if
>> >> categorization is somehow fundamentally related to discretization, then
>> >> animals clearly categorize in that sense.
>> >>
>> >> I mean, all you have to do is consider the frequencies of light 

Re: [FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[Prof David West]

Yes, I have experienced the "mental life" of the dirt at my feet (or rough 
equivalent). It is rather boring, given that the amount/degree of "psych" 
possessed by your average soil molecule is diminutive in the extreme. But 
the"psych" is there and it can be "sensed/perceived."

At somewhat greater degrees of organization, and hence greater 
'amounts/degrees' of "psych" that is present, people adjust their behavior in 
recognition. A devout Jain wearing a mask to avoid inhaling and killing 
insects, or sweeping the ground in front of themselves to avoid stepping on and 
killing other insects.

The Dreamtime experienced byAustralian aboriginals is rife with both the 
perception of, and adjustment of behavior in response to, the "psych" of 
inanimate and even geologic entities.

[Don't know if Heinlein, in *Stranger in a Strange Land*, was aware of or 
influenced by accounts of the Dreamtime, but his notions of "groking" so-called 
non-sentient things (like grass who's purpose was to be walked upon) and 
Martian "old ones" who were discorporate but very much 'alive and sentient, is 
not a bad description of human involvement in and interaction with the 
Dreamtime.]

Never understood how Vegans can sense/feel the pain of a cow being milked and 
therefore eschew dairy; but cannot hear the scream of a carrot being pureed for 
their morning health drink.

davew


On Thu, Feb 16, 2023, at 7:28 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Would you though?!? You certainly wouldn't stop stepping on it. 
> 
> 
 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 9:16 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:
>> "...how do you think your ways of acting in the world would change if you 
>> adopted such a position?"
>> 
>> I would stop shooting piles of dirt with a .30-06.  I haven't done that for 
>> 60+ years but it's intended as a* reductio ad absurdum* argument.
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>> 
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>> 
>> On Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 7:05 PM Eric Charles  
>> wrote:
>>> "an account of the seemingly analogous position of panpsychism"
>>> 
>>> What is that more than something people say? 
>>> 
>>> Do *you* experience the dirt at your feet as having a mental life? If so, 
>>> tell me about it: What is the dirt like when it seems to be doing mental 
>>> stuff? What kind of mental stuff is it doing? 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> If not: Have you seen anyone who earnestly thinks the dirt is doing mental 
>>> stuff? If so, what were *they* like? How was that belief pervasive in their 
>>> adjustments to the world? Based on your experiences with that person, how 
>>> do you think your ways of acting in the world would change if you adopted 
>>> such a position? 
>>> 
>>> 
 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 1:27 PM glen  wrote:
 I don't grok the context well enough to equivocate on concepts like "have" 
 and "category of being". But in response to Nick's question: "What is 
 there that animals do that demands us to invent categories to explain 
 their behavior?", my answer is "animals discretize the ambient muck". So 
 if categorization is somehow fundamentally related to discretization, then 
 animals clearly categorize in that sense.
 
 I mean, all you have to do is consider the frequencies of light the 
 animals' eyeballs do or don't see. That's two categories right there, the 
 light they do see and the light they don't. Unless there's some sophistry 
 hidden behind the question, the answer seems clear. Reflection on what one 
 does and does not categorize isn't necessary. I could even claim my truck 
 discretizes fluids ... those that make it seize up versus lubricate it, 
 those that it burns vs those that stop it cold. Etc. Maybe the question is 
 better formulated as "What makes one impute categories on another?" 
 Clearly my truck doesn't impute categories on squirrels.
 
 But Nick does follow that question with this "experience" nonsense. So my 
 guess is there *is* some sophistry behind the question, similar to EricC's 
 incredulous response to DaveW's question about phenomenological 
 composition of experience(s). What I find missing in Nick's (and EricC's) 
 distillation of experience monism is an account of the seemingly analogous 
 position of panpsychism. Were I a scholar, I might take such work on 
 myself. But I'm not and, hence, very much appreciate these distillations 
 of dead white men's metaphysics and will take what I can get. 8^D
 
 On 2/16/23 09:22, Steve Smith wrote:
 > Might I offer some terminology reframing, or at least ask for some 
 > additional explication?
 > 
 >  1. I think "behaviours" would be all Nick's Martians *could* observe?  
 > They would be inferring "experiences" from observed behaviours?
 >  2. When we talk about "categories" here, are we talking about 
 > "categories of being"?  

Re: [FRIAM] Thuram still happening?

[Prof David West]

I will be traveling to Wisconsin tomorrow and miss Thuram.

2-cents: a word cloud might be a more useful metaphor than a semantic net, just 
because of the formalisms employed in the latter. True a cloud lacks explicit 
links, but such might be lightly sprinkled therein.

Did a huge double take at the last word in Nick's post. CBT, in one of the 
communities I associate with, has a far different meaning than, I think, Nick 
intended. And I would be 'they' used it first.

davew


On Wed, Feb 15, 2023, at 11:19 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> FWiW, I willmake every effort to arrive fed to Thuam by 10.30 Mountain.  I 
> want to hear the experts among you hold forth on WTF a cateogory actually IS. 
>  I am thinking (duh) that a category is a more or less diffuse node in a 
> network of associations (signs, if you must).  Hence they constitute a vast 
> table of what goes with what, what is predictable from what, etc.  This 
> accommodates “family resemblance”  quite nicely.  Do I think animals have 
> categories, in this sense, ABSOLUTELY EFFING YES. Does this make me a 
> (shudder) nominalist?  I hope not. 
> Words…nouns in particular… confuse this category business.  Words place 
> constraints on how vague these nodes can be.   They impose on the network 
> constraints to which it is ill suited.  True, the more my associations with 
> “horse” line up with your associations with “horse”, the more true the horse 
> seems.  Following Peirce, I would say that where our nodes increasingly 
> correspond with increasing shared experience, we have evidence ot the 
> (ultimate) truth of the nodes, their “reality” in Peirce’s terms.  Here is 
> where I am striving to hang on to Peirce’s realism. 
> The reason I want the geeks to participate tomorrow is that I keep thinking 
> of a semantic webby thing that Steve devised for the Institute about a decade 
> ago.   Now a semantic web would be a kind of metaphor for an associative web; 
> don’t associate with other words in exactly the same manner in which 
> experiences associate with other experiences.  Still, I think the metaphor is 
> interesting.  Also, I am kind of re-interested in my “authorial voice”, how 
> much it operates like cbt.
>  
> Rushing,
>  
> Nick
>  
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 15, 2023 10:29 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Thuram still happening?
> 
>  
> Well shoot. that would do it Thank you! 
> 
>  
>  
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 12:28 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:
>> Today is Wednesday, isn't it?
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>> 
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>> 
>>  
>> On Wed, Feb 15, 2023, 10:19 AM Eric Charles  
>> wrote:
>>> Are the Thursday online meetings still happening? I missed a few weeks due 
>>> to work piling up meetings on, but I'm trying to log in now, and it looks 
>>> like the meeting hasn't started. 
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Re: [FRIAM] Datasets as Experience

[Prof David West]

I am curious, but not enough to do some hard research to confirm or deny, but 
...

Surface appearances suggest, to me, that the large language model AIs seem to 
focus on syntax and statistical word usage derived from those large datasets.

I do not see any evidence in same of semantics (probably because I am but a 
"bear of little brain.")

In contrast, the Cyc project (Douglas Lenat, 1984 - and still out there as an 
expensive AI) was all about semantics. The last time I was, briefly, at MCC, 
they were just switching from teaching Cyc how to read newspapers and engage in 
meaningful conversation about the news of the day, to teaching it how to read 
the National Enquirer, etc. and differentiate between syntactically and 
literally 'true' news and the false semantics behind same.

davew


On Tue, Feb 7, 2023, at 11:35 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> I was just wondering if our prefrontal cortex areas in the brain contain a 
> large language model too - but each of them trained on slightly different 
> datasets. Similar enough to understand each other, but different enough so 
> that everyone has a unique experience and point of view o_O
> 
> -J.
> 
> 
>  Original message 
> From: Marcus Daniels 
> Date: 2/6/23 9:39 PM (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Datasets as Experience
> 
> It depends if it is given boundaries between the datasets.   Is it learning 
> one distribution or two?
>  
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Jochen Fromm
> *Sent:* Sunday, February 5, 2023 4:38 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Datasets as Experience
> 
>  
> Would a CV of a large language model contain all the datasets it has seen? As 
> adaptive agents of our selfish genes we are all trained on slightly different 
> datasets. A Spanish speaker is a person trained on a Spanish dataset. An 
> Italian speaker is a trained on an Italian dataset, etc. Speakers of 
> different languages are trained on different datasets, therefore the same 
> sentence is easy for a native speaker but impossible to understand for those 
> who do not know the language. 
>  
> Do all large language models need to be trained on the same datasets? Or 
> could many large language models be combined to a society of mind as Marvin 
> Minsky describes it in his book "The society of mind"? Now that they are able 
> to understand language it seems to be possible that one large language model 
> replies to the questions from another. And we would even be able to 
> understand the conversations.
>  
> -J.
>  
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[FRIAM] experience monism

[Prof David West]

The eloquence and perspicacity of Professor Thompson has convinced me to become 
an *Experience* monist. In my naive sophomoric enthusiasm I have set about 
writing THE definitive work on *Experience*. But I have a few questions ...

1) Is an *Experience* a whole or a composite? I.e., (scent of cinnamon)—(heat 
of oven)—(grandmother's smile) OR (scent of cinnamon) + (heat of oven) + 
(grandmothers smile)? Another analogy a single photograph or a Photoshopped 
collage?
   1A) If an *Experience* is is a composite- there must be 'atomic' 
*Experience* from which it is composed. Is it possible to *Experience* and 
"atomic *Experience*" in isolation?

2) Does an *Experience* have duration, or is each *Experience* akin to a frame 
of a film and continuity simply an artifact of being presented at some rate; 
e.g., 30 frames per nanosecond?

3) Can *Experiences* be differentiated as "potential" and "actual?" To 
illustrate: I turn on the camera on my phone and images pass through the lens 
and appear on the screen, but a photograph does not come into existence until I 
press the shutter button. Does something similar happen with experience? They 
are potential until I "press the conscious awareness button" at which point 
they become actual?

4) Can *Experiences* be categorized? To borrow vocabulary (somewhat tortured( 
from Peter Sjostedt-Hughes' pentad of perception;
 * *Experience* grounded in/originating from the spatio-temporal environment 
(Sensed Experience)
 * *Experience* of an atemporal quality, e.g., color or scent (Perceived 
Experience)
 * An *Experience* partly caused by an external physicality—e.g., motion of 
molecules partly causative of the *Experience* of heat (Ecto-Physical 
Experience)
 * An *Experience* that is partly caused by an internal physicality—e.g., 
synapses firing in the brain (Endo-Physical Experience)
 * *Experiences* not grounded in/originating from the spatio-temporal 
environment, e.g., imaginations (Demeteption Experience)
 * A sixth, of my own, a variation of Endo-Physical, where the internal 
physicality is "disrupted," e.g., by taking a drug.
5) Does *Experience* 'exist' apart from an experiencer?
5A) if not, how can we have "common experiences"
5B) if yes, do we not have a faux monism, with two metaphysical things: 
experience and experiencer?

6) Do *Experiences* persist? Perhaps as memories?
6A) If yes, what exactly is the difference between an 
*Experience*-in-"memory" and one "being experienced?" Analogy to a computer 
program executing and the same program stored on disk.


I would have asked Professor Thompson these questions, but I fear he would have 
dismissed them as "tending not to edification."

davew

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Re: [FRIAM] serious AI question

[Prof David West]

This issue needs some further background. I arose from an ongoing discussion 
with Jenny Quillien (FRIAM) and Richard Gabriel (not of FRIAM) with regard 
aesthetics.

For Jenny, the immediate concern is with a subset of Zen Art (painting, poetry, 
ceramics, calligraphy) that evokes," triggers, engenders an "Aha!" state of 
mind, or instills a sense of "Oneness." Alternatively, it might be said that 
one encountering such a piece of art can say with certitude, "yes, that creator 
gets it!"

A story to illustrate: When the Fifth Patriarch of Zen knew his death was 
imminent, he bade his acolytes to express their understanding of Zen in the 
form of a poem. Only the lead student did so, and he did it anonymously by 
writing it on a wall at night. Hui Neng had some one read the poem to him, and 
recognized that the author did not understand Zen at all and had another person 
write a poem he dictated on the opposite wall. The Fifth Patriarch read the 
poems on both wall and knew that Hui Neng was to be his successor.

A longstanding conversation with Richard (and Jenny) revolves around 
Christopher Alexander's notion of QWAN—Quality Without A Name. In later work, 
Alexander used the term "liveness" as a synonym/successor to QWAN. In both 
cases is is a quality or an attribute whose presence or absence makes a 
building (any human built environment) "beautiful" or not.

Alexander asserts that QWAN (liveness) is universal and timeless. He did a lot 
of experiments with oriental carpets to test his assertion. Richard repeated 
Alexander's experiments and did other with photographs and artifacts. All of 
these experiments, statistically, seemed to prove Alexander correct. 
Statistically, because there are always curmudgeons who thing the Taj Mahal is 
just a tomb.

An AI came into the discussion: 1) could you build/train an AI (ZenChatGPT) to 
write a poem, ala Hui Neng, that appeared to embody a "true understanding of 
Zen?; 2) could you build/train an AI to sort thru the Google image base and 
detect "Zen evocative art" or buildings with QWAN/liveness?

davew


The two poems— which one was Hui Neng's?

The body is the wisdom-tree,
The mind is a bright mirror in a stand;
Take care to wipe it all the time,
And allow no dust to cling.

Fundamentally no wisdom-tree exists,
Nor the stand of a mirror bright.
Since all is empty from the beginning,
Where can the dust alight



On Mon, Jan 30, 2023, at 11:46 AM, glen wrote:
> While I appreciate Jochen's and SteveS' responses, they didn't cover a 
> point I think might be useful. You point out the assumption of 
> effability, which is interesting. But I think a more fragile assumption 
> is that there *are* categories in humans/artifacts that are 
> classifiable in the first place. I think we can safely leave aside that 
> humans and the artifacts they respond to are different. But if others 
> feel it makes a difference, I'm happy to lob some words at it.
>
> On one extreme of a spectrum, let's say the left, we could place the 
> situation that there is 1 type of human/artifact that trigger in this 
> way (implying there are 2 types, those who do and those who don't). On 
> the other end of the spectrum, let's say the right, there are as many 
> classes/categories as there are humans/artifacts. I.e. any possible 
> human/artifact might be triggered, depending on the circumstances. But 
> no 2 people will trigger under the same circumstances.
>
> My claim is that AI/ML will *not* be useful in an open set from the 
> middle to the right. The lower bound will move as we apply more 
> complicated AI/ML. But at the limit, if everyone's in their own class, 
> they're not really classes. But it may be useful for a region on the 
> left.
>
> I think DaveW's also assuming that there *are* classes to find. Whether 
> I buy that assumption or not is irrelevant. I think it needs to be 
> defended. Why would we believe there are classes of human/art that 
> would trigger this, rather than, say, a random event where the 
> humans/artifacts are rationalized later as having been triggered and 
> been the trigger?
>
>
> On 1/28/23 15:10, Prof David West wrote:
>> This is a serious question albeit one in a realm that many would dismiss as 
>> non-serious. First, some background.
>> 
>> Rinzai Zen is the "sudden enlightenment" school that asserts the possibility 
>> of a single event serving as a 'trigger' that evokes/instills-in-the-mind a 
>> state of enlightenment. The trigger might be a closed fist of your guru 
>> striking your ear, or—as was the case with Hui Neng (illiterate peasant who 
>> became the Sixth Patriarch) overhearing a fragment of the Diamond Sutra 
>> spoken by a passerby

[FRIAM] serious AI question

[Prof David West]

This is a serious question albeit one in a realm that many would dismiss as 
non-serious. First, some background.

Rinzai Zen is the "sudden enlightenment" school that asserts the possibility of 
a single event serving as a 'trigger' that evokes/instills-in-the-mind a state 
of enlightenment. The trigger might be a closed fist of your guru striking your 
ear, or—as was the case with Hui Neng (illiterate peasant who became the Sixth 
Patriarch) overhearing a fragment of the Diamond Sutra spoken by a passerby of 
the fish market where he was working.

This kind of "evocative trigger" is analogous to your nose detecting the scent 
of cinnamon as you walk past a bakery and your mind instantly filled with a 
complete memory of grandmother's kitchen, all the scents and sounds, and 
emotions, an activities, in complete detail.

A 'Zen evocative trigger' would, by analogy, fill your mind with—put your mind 
in a state of—Enlightenment. This might be ephemeral, satori with a lower case 
's', or permanent, Satori with an upper case 'S'.

There is a large body of art (calligraphy, painting, poetry, ceramics, ...) 
that embodies exactly this kind of trigger; one that can be 'sensed' even if 
its sensing does not trigger (S)satori.

So the question: is it possible to construct a self-learning AI with a training 
set of such art and, once trained, turn it loose on the Google image base to 
find other examples of art with evocative triggers?

Of course, there is a hidden assertion: whatever the quality or characteristic 
of the art that embodies the 'trigger' is ineffable; which means, in this case, 
it has no "representation" (word, symbol, brush stroke, etc.).

davew

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Re: [FRIAM] help with archives

[Prof David West]

Thank you very much, Needs revision and updating, but I am glad to have it back.

davew


On Fri, Jan 20, 2023, at 3:25 PM, glen wrote:
> http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Truth-Hunh-What-is-it-good-for-Absolutely-Nothing-tp7590706.html
>
> On 1/20/23 14:12, Prof David West wrote:
>> Pardon my ignorance of something I should know how to do, but have not had 
>> reason to do it, and hence my ongoing ignorance.
>> 
>> I made a post a long time ago with a title close to, "truth, what is it good 
>> for? absolutely nothing"
>> 
>> Might someone brighter than me, find it in the archives so I can cut and 
>> paste it into a document?
>> 
>> many thanks
>> 
>> davew
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Dope Slap Thread

[Prof David West]

Nick wrote: (emphasis mine)

*"Even though I might have to admit that the truth will never be found, *I 
still find that the truth is an aspiration that I cannot live without.* So I 
think that probably the underlying in Peirce as I see him is that human 
experience is the result of cognition, both at the individual and the group 
level, and that cognition (habit formation, etc.) is ultimately a truth seeking 
mechanism which operates statistically, looking for human-relevant regularities 
in the stream of experience. *So while I might have to agree that we will never 
know when we have arrived at the truth of any .matter  and that therefore, we 
will always have to deal with different versions of what that truth is, etc., 
You are comfortable with that state of affairs, while I am not.*  I need to 
think we are working together toward something that can be won for us both and 
then bullt upon by us both and everybody else."*

Reading your paragraph engendered a sense of guilt vis-a-vis my often vocal 
(especially at St. John's) antipathy to truth. Almost as if I was challenging 
Nick and not just Nick's ideas. That emotionalism aside, your statement 
engendered these reactions:

1) truth is an aspiration ... Is there a truth continuum; from something like 
"the butler did it with a knife in the library" to "F=MA" to "God Lives"? And, 
if so, how far along that continuum does your aspiration take you?

2) different versions of what truth is and relativism ... is there no mechanism 
for reconciliation? Might it be the case that two conflicting truths are but 
'local minima' that our 'hill climbing algorithm' will ultimately bypass?
2A) you and I are fans of etymology as a vehicle for finding the "truth' of 
meaning for a word. Is it possible to devise an analogous method/technique for 
finding the meaning of a "truth?" This question arose recently when I was 
trying to discover why Catholics , currently, hold the truth, 'life begins at 
conception' when both Aristotle and, more importantly, Aquinas argued that a 
person did not exist until a soul inhabited a fetus, something that occurred 
five months after conception for boys and eight months for girls. My reading of 
Pierce hints at such a method, but that is probably a misconception.

3) human-relevant regularities in the stream of experience ... can any truth be 
found if the stream of experience is constrained to one watershed? This is my 
old argument about the impossibility of finding truth unless your stream of 
experience includes psychedelics and other non-objective/physicalist 
experiences.

4) premature truth ... not from something you wrote, but a personal reaction. 
When I am at my most immodest, I fancy myself to be a haeresiarch—an 
arch-heretic vis-a-vis any and every orthodoxy. I have probably misread, 
egregiously, Pierce, but I find his program leading less to truth than to 
orthodoxy. This despite his insistence that all truth is subject to revision. I 
am far more skeptical than Pierce when it comes to the possibility of 
overcoming the inertia of "established" truth.

5) Cognition ... a topic for another time and place, except to note that my 
best working hypothesis with regard cognition is grounded in panpsychism.

Thank you for your post, I found it quite provocative. 

davew


On Fri, Jan 20, 2023, at 2:54 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Eric, 
> I keep being torn between "honoring" your post by responding to it promptly 
> and "honoring" it by not responding prematurely.  You rightly focus on the 
> "underlying", concerning which I am going append a paragraph from R. J. 
> Bernstein's **Beyond Objectivism and Relativism:** which is cited in his 
> **The Pragmatic Turn with** which I am happily engaged at the moment.   I am 
> sorry that the passage is in a photograph;  I just didn't have heart to key 
> it in with my very arthritic fingers. 
> 
> I think it is becoming clearer that I have a hankering that you do not share 
> and that I see that hankering expressed in Peirce, but expressed in a kind of 
> minimalist way that I find very satisfying.  Even though I might have to 
> admit that the truth will never be found, I still find that the truth is an 
> aspiration that I cannot live without. So I think that probably the 
> underlying in Peirce as I see him is that human experience is the result of 
> cognition, both at the individual and the group level, and that cognition 
> (habit formation, etc.) is ultimately a truth **seeking **mechanism which 
> operates statistically, looking for human-relevant regularities in the stream 
> of experience. So while I might have to agree that we will never know when we 
> have arrived at the truth of any .matter  and that therefore, we will always 
> have to deal with different versions of what that truth is, etc., You are 
> comfortable with that state of affairs, while I am not.  I need to think we 
> are working together toward something that can be won for us both and then 
> 

[FRIAM] help with archives

[Prof David West]

Pardon my ignorance of something I should know how to do, but have not had 
reason to do it, and hence my ongoing ignorance.

I made a post a long time ago with a title close to, "truth, what is it good 
for? absolutely nothing"

Might someone brighter than me, find it in the archives so I can cut and paste 
it into a document?

many thanks

davew

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Re: [FRIAM] NickC channels DaveW

[Prof David West]

you are correct about chicken little - but remember he was writing in the 
context of the angst caused by WWI.

davew


On Thu, Jan 19, 2023, at 9:54 AM, glen wrote:
> Excellent! Thanks. Robinson's words sound a little Chicken Little to 
> me. But the focus on _open_ is something I'm committed to. I still 
> waffle about whether the logic(s) of the universe are open-ended (by 
> which I mean truly novel events and structures can occur) or not (by 
> which I mean, all seemingly new structures were programmed in the whole 
> time, which also implies things about the universality of any singular 
> logic). I want it to be open.
>
> And the only way we can falsify my tendency to believe it is open is to 
> find evidence that it's closed, to reduce everything to a, one 
> singular, GUT ... and, as time goes by, I'm steadily being disabused of 
> my beliefs in the openness of anything. But even if everything's 
> closed, there are sub-problems therein, *interesting* ways in which it 
> is closed that make it *seem* open. Systems that might tolerate 
> multiple types of closure, where some relations are closed and others 
> open. Etc. That's why logic(s) that tolerate inconsistency are so cool 
> (to me).
>
> On 1/19/23 07:52, Prof David West wrote:
>> My optimism is tempered, and less than Pieters.
>> 
>> /"When we contemplate the shocking derangement of human affairs which now 
>> prevails in most civilized countries, including our own, even the best minds 
>> are puzzled and uncertain in their attempts to grasp the situation.The world 
>> seems to demand a moral and economic regeneration which it is dangerous to 
>> postpone, but as yet impossible to imagine, let alone direct./
>> 
>> /We have unprecedented conditions to deal with and novel adjustments to 
>> make—there can be no doubt of that. We also have a great stock of scientific 
>> knowledge unknown to our grandfathers with which to operate. So novel are 
>> the conditions, so copious the knowledge, that we must undertake the arduous 
>> task of reconsidering a great part of the opinions about man and his 
>> relations to his fellow-men which have been handed down to us by previous 
>> generations who lived in far other conditions and who possessed far less 
>> information about the world and themselves./
>> 
>> */We have, however, first to create an unprecedented attitude of mind to 
>> cope with unprecedented conditions, and to utilize unprecedented knowledge. 
>> This is the preliminary. and most difficult, step to be taken—far more 
>> difficult that one would suspect who fails to realize that in order to take 
>> it we must overcome inveterate natural tendencies and artificial habits of 
>> long standing. How are we to put ourselves in a position to think of thiigs 
>> that we not only never though of before, but are most reluctant to question? 
>> In short, how are we to rid ourselves of our fond prejudices and _open our 
>> minds_?/*"
>> 
>> Those words are from someone few have heard of: James Harvey Robinson, from 
>> his book /The Mind in the Making/ published, originally, in 1921. 
>> (republished in 2017 by Vigeo Press)
>> 
>> The optimism of Altman you quoted is, in my opinion, possible only if we can 
>> "open our minds" and shed antiquated minds and counter-productive modes of 
>> thinking.
>> 
>> Robinson, by the way does not propose an alternative, per se, but does an 
>> excellent job of baring the various kinds of thinking and their origins fro 
>> the "savage mind" to the scientific revolution.
>> 
>> davew
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Jan 19, 2023, at 4:17 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
>>> *Sadly, there are some hidden elements to all that techno-optimism.*
>>>
>>> Yes, sadly the world is unequal and those at the bottom of the economic 
>>> ladder just don't get a good deal.
>>>
>>> On the positive side, looking back at the history of mankind there is 
>>> evidence that it is now better to live than ever in the past for the large 
>>> majority of humankind. This is true even though it is the sad truth that 
>>> it's very far from perfect; human suffering is a reality, Glen's comment is 
>>> sad but true.
>>>
>>> The question of course is whether it will continue to go better?
>>>
>>> It's just impossible to know the future. One person can believe it'll go 
>>> better in the future, another that it'll be worse, each with tons of  good 
>>> arguments.
>>>
>>> I for one, embrace the optimism of Sam Altman, just for completeness I 
>>>

Re: [FRIAM] NickC channels DaveW

[Prof David West]

My optimism is tempered, and less than Pieters.

*"When we contemplate the shocking derangement of human affairs which now 
prevails in most civilized countries, including our own, even the best minds 
are puzzled and uncertain in their attempts to grasp the situation.The world 
seems to demand a moral and economic regeneration which it is dangerous to 
postpone, but as yet impossible to imagine, let alone direct.*

*We have unprecedented conditions to deal with and novel adjustments to 
make—there can be no doubt of that. We also have a great stock of scientific 
knowledge unknown to our grandfathers with which to operate. So novel are the 
conditions, so copious the knowledge, that we must undertake the arduous task 
of reconsidering a great part of the opinions about man and his relations to 
his fellow-men which have been handed down to us by previous generations who 
lived in far other conditions and who possessed far less information about the 
world and themselves.*

**We have, however, first to create an unprecedented attitude of mind to cope 
with unprecedented conditions, and to utilize unprecedented knowledge. This is 
the preliminary. and most difficult, step to be taken—far more difficult that 
one would suspect who fails to realize that in order to take it we must 
overcome inveterate natural tendencies and artificial habits of long standing. 
How are we to put ourselves in a position to think of thiigs that we not only 
never though of before, but are most reluctant to question? In short, how are 
we to rid ourselves of our fond prejudices and _open our minds_?**"

Those words are from someone few have heard of: James Harvey Robinson, from his 
book *The Mind in the Making* published, originally, in 1921. (republished in 
2017 by Vigeo Press)

The optimism of Altman you quoted is, in my opinion, possible only if we can 
"open our minds" and shed antiquated minds and counter-productive modes of 
thinking.

Robinson, by the way does not propose an alternative, per se, but does an 
excellent job of baring the various kinds of thinking and their origins fro the 
"savage mind" to the scientific revolution.

davew


On Thu, Jan 19, 2023, at 4:17 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> *Sadly, there are some hidden elements to all that techno-optimism.*
> 
> Yes, sadly the world is unequal and those at the bottom of the economic 
> ladder just don't get a good deal.
> 
> On the positive side, looking back at the history of mankind there is 
> evidence that it is now better to live than ever in the past for the large 
> majority of humankind. This is true even though it is the sad truth that it's 
> very far from perfect; human suffering is a reality, Glen's comment is sad 
> but true.
> 
> The question of course is whether it will continue to go better?
> 
> It's just impossible to know the future. One person can believe it'll go 
> better in the future, another that it'll be worse, each with tons of  good 
> arguments.
> 
> I for one, embrace the optimism of Sam Altman, just for completeness I repeat 
> his quote and give the reference again.
> "Intelligence and energy have been the fundamental limiters towards most 
> things we want. A future where these are not the limiting reagents will be 
> radically different, and can be amazingly better."
> Taken from 
> https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/startups/intelligence-energy-sam-altmans-technology-predictions-for-2020s/articleshow/86088731.cms
>   :  
> 
> In conclusion, yes I agree with Glen that there are sadly hidden elements to 
> all the techno-optimism. but this does not dampen my enthusiasm for the 
> future triggered by abundant intelligence and energy.
> 
> On Wed, 18 Jan 2023 at 21:08, glen  wrote:
>> Sadly, there are some hidden elements to all that techno-optimism. E.g.
>> 
>> https://nitter.cz/billyperrigo/status/1615682180201447425#m
>> 
>> On 1/18/23 00:40, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
>> > I totally agree that realizable behavior is what matters.
>> > 
>> > The elephant in the room is whether AI (and robotics of course) will (not 
>> > to replace but to) be able to do better than humans in all respects, 
>> > including come up with creative solutions to not only the world's most 
>> > pressing problems but also small creative things like writing poems, and 
>> > then to do the mental and physical tasks required to provide goods and 
>> > services to all in the world,
>> > 
>> > Sam Altman said there are two things that will shape our future; 
>> > intelligence and energy. If we have real abundant intelligence and energy, 
>> > the world will be very different indeed.
>> > 
>> > To quote Sam Altmen at 
>> > https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/startups/intelligence-energy-sam-altmans-technology-predictions-for-2020s/articleshow/86088731.cms
>> >  
>> > 
>> >   :
>> > 
>> > "intelligence and 

Re: [FRIAM] NickC channels DaveW

[Prof David West]

Apropos of nothing:

The human heart has roughly 40,000 neurons and the human gut around 0.1 billion 
neurons (sensory neurons, neurotransmitters, ganglia, and motor neurons).

So the human gut is about 1/5 as smart as Marcus's dog??

davew


On Tue, Jan 17, 2023, at 1:08 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Dogs have about 500 million neurons in their cortex.  Neurons have 
> about 7,000 synaptic connections, so I think my dog is a lot smarter 
> than a billion parameter LLM.  :-)
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Jan 17, 2023, at 11:35 AM, glen  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 1) "I asked Chat GPT to write a song in the style of Nick Cave and this is 
>> what it produced. What do you think?"
>> https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chat-gpt-what-do-you-think/
>> 
>> 2) "Is it pain if it does not hurt? On the unlikelihood of insect pain"
>> https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-entomologist/article/is-it-pain-if-it-does-not-hurt-on-the-unlikelihood-of-insect-pain/9A60617352A45B15E25307F85FF2E8F2#
>> 
>> Taken separately, (1) and (2) are each interesting, if seemingly orthogonal. 
>> But what twines them, I think, is the concept of "mutual information". I 
>> read (2) before I read (1) because, for some bizarre reason, my day job 
>> involves trying to understand pain mechanisms. And (2) speaks directly (if 
>> only implicitly) to things like IIT. If you read (1) first, it's difficult 
>> to avoid snapping quickly into NickC's canal. Despite NickT's objection to 
>> an inner life, it seems clear that the nuance we see on the surface, at 
>> least longitudinally, *needs* an inner life. You simply can't get good stuff 
>> out of an entirely flat/transparent/reactive/Markovian object.
>> 
>> However, what NickC misses is that LLMs *have* some intertwined mutual 
>> information within them. Similar to asking whether an insect experiences 
>> pain, we can ask whether a X billion parameter LLM experiences something 
>> like "suffering". My guess is the answer is "yes". It may not be a good 
>> analog to what we call "suffering", though ... maybe "friction"? ... maybe 
>> "release"? My sense is that when you engage a LLM (embedded in a larger 
>> construct that handles the prompts and live learning, of course) in such a 
>> way that it assembles a response that nobody else has evoked, it might get 
>> something akin to a tingle ... or like the relief you feel when scratching 
>> an itch ... of course it would be primordial because the self-attention in 
>> such a system is hopelessly disabled compared to the rich self-attention 
>> loops we have in our meaty bodies. But it just *might* be there in some 
>> primitive sense.
>> 
>> As always, agnosticism is the only rational stance. And I won't trust the 
>> songs written by LLMs until I see a few of them commit suicide, overdose, or 
>> punch a TMZ cameraman in the face.
>> 
>> -- 
>> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Dope slaps, anyone? Text displaying correctly?

[Prof David West]

I do not know and have not read Feferman, so this may be totally off base, but 
...

glen stated:
*Worded one way: Schema are the stable patterns that emerge from the 
particulars. And the variation of the particulars is circumscribed (bounded, 
defined) by the schema.
*
This is a description of "culture." Restated—hopefully without distorting the 
meaning:

*Culture is the stable patterns of behavior that emerge from individual human 
actions which vary (are idiosyncratic) within bounds defined by the culture.*

The second glen statement:

*Worded another way: Our perspective on the world emerges from the world. And 
our perspective on the world shapes how and what we see of the world.*

alludes to the cognitive feedback loop (at least part of it) that I developed 
in my doctoral dissertation on cognitive anthrpology.

davew


On Mon, Jan 16, 2023, at 3:32 AM, glen wrote:
> Well, not "languageless", but "language-independent". Now that you've 
> forced me to think harder, that phrase "language-independent" isn't 
> quite right. It's more like "meta-language" ... a family of languages 
> such that the family might be "language-like" ... a language of 
> languages ... a higher order language, maybe.
>
> Feferman introduced me to the concept of "schematic axiomatic systems", 
> which seems (correct me if I'm wrong) to talk about formal systems 
> where one reasons over sentences with substitutable elements. I.e. the 
> *particulars* of any given situation may vary, but the "scheme" into 
> which those particulars fit is stable/invariant. [⛧]
>
> EricS seemed to be proposing that not only do the particulars vary 
> within the schema, but the schema also vary. The schema are ways to 
> "parse" the world, the Play-Doh extruder(s) we use to form the Play-Doh 
> into something.
>
> Your "random yet not random" rendering of Peirce sounds to me similar 
> to the duality between the particulars and the schema they populate.
>
> Worded one way: Schema are the stable patterns that emerge from the 
> particulars. And the variation of the particulars is circumscribed 
> (bounded, defined) by the schema.
>
> Worded another way: Our perspective on the world emerges from the 
> world. And our perspective on the world shapes how and what we see of 
> the world.
>
> And, finally, paraphrasing: The apparition of schema we experience is 
> due to the fact that such schema are useful to organisms. Events in the 
> world that don't fit the schema are beyond experience.
>
>
> [⛧] I'm doing my best to avoid talking about jargonal things like type 
> theory, things that should have come very natural to Peirce, but would 
> be difficult to express in natural language.
>
> On 1/15/23 19:49, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>> EricS and Glen,
>> 
>> Sorry, again.  Here is the short version.  I apologize, again, for appending 
>> that great wadge of gunk.
>> 
>> I found the second Feferman even harder to understand than the first. Glen, 
>> can you give me a little help on what you meant by a languageless language.
>> 
>>   Thanks, all
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 4:09 PM Nicholas Thompson > > wrote:
>> 
>> Aw crap!  The shortish  answer that I meant to send had all sorts of 
>> junk appended!  Sorry. Will resend soon. [blush]
>> 
>> Sent from my Dumb Phone
>> 
>> On Jan 12, 2023, at 8:54 PM, Nicholas Thompson > > wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Dear EricS, Glen, and anybody else who is following.
>> 
>> Thank you so much for pitching in.   As I have often said, I am 
>> incapable of thinking alone, so your comments are wonderfully welcome.  And 
>> thank you also for confirming that what I wrote was readable.  I am having 
>> to work in gmail at the moment, which is , to me, an unfamiliar medium.
>> 
>> First, Eric:  I am trying to talk math-talk in this passage, so poetry 
>> is not an excuse if I fail to be understood by you.
>> 
>> /*FWIW: as I have heard these discussions over the years, to the extent 
>> that there is a productive analogy, I would say (unapologetically using my 
>> words, and not trying to quote his) that Peirce’s claimed relation between 
>> states of knowledge and truth (meaning, some fully-faithful representation 
>> of “what is the case”) is analogous to the relation of sample estimators in 
>> statistics to the quantity they are constructed to estimate. We don’t have 
>> any ontological problems understanding sample estimators and the quantities 
>> estimated, as both have status in the ordinary world of empirical things.  
>> In our ontology, they are peers in some sense, but they clearly play 
>> different roles and stand for different concepts.*/
>> /*
>> */
>> I like very muchwhat you have written here and think it states, perhaps 
>> more precisely than I managed, exactly what I was trying to say.  I do want 
>> to further  stress the fact that if a measurement system is tracking a 
>> variate that is going 

Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Conference Invitation: Designing Tech for Social Cohesion

[Prof David West]

transhumanism is consistent with the manifesto — nurture now, transcend, or 
perhaps redefine, later as the understanding of CAS provides alternative, 
directed, evolution.

davew


On Wed, Jan 4, 2023, at 5:21 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> What about the goal of transcending these error-prone and fragile containers? 
>   Posthumanism has always been the driver for me.
>  
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Prof David West
> *Sent:* Wednesday, January 4, 2023 3:27 PM
> *To:* friam@redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Conference Invitation: Designing Tech for Social 
> Cohesion
> 
>  
> Merle,
>  
> From the book I am currently finishing:
>  
> Manifesto
>  
> Every aspect of human life — how we work, play, live, and love; how we define 
> our relationships with each other and with our environment — have been, and 
> continue to be, shaped by computers and the software that drives them.
>  
> Those entrusted with the power and the responsibility of creating 
> computer-software artifacts and systems must recognize that their efforts 
> transcend simple careerism and professionalism and rise to the level of a 
> calling — one guided by a set of Core Principles:
>  
> I-  Humans First. Everything is done on behalf of human beings, 
> by human beings.
> 
>  
> II-Businesses, organizations, governments, and associations are 
> *Living Systems *in exactly the same way as socio-cultural, biological, and 
> ecological systems are *Living Complex Adaptive Systems.*
> 
>  
> III-  Effort should focus on the production and introduction of 
> appropriate ‘artifacts’ into *Living Systems*, to improve, enhance, or amend 
> them.
> 
>  
> IV-  Computer-software artifacts, in all cases, must be designed to 
> augment, extend, enhance, or support human abilities.
> 
>   
> 
> * * * * * * *
> 
>  
> 
> The concepts and principles of Software Engineering coupled with the 
> assumption of development as a Production Process governed by rigid Project 
> Management practices; that have dominated development for the past fifty plus 
> years are inadequate and often antithetical to the goals of this manifesto.
> 
>  
> 
> They must be replaced by a new discipline, a new art:
> 
>  
> 
> *Living Systems Development*
> 
>  
>  
> davew
>  
>  
> On Wed, Jan 4, 2023, at 3:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
>>  
>> From: *Lisa Schirch* 
>> Date: Mon, Jan 2, 2023 at 12:20 PM
>> Subject: Conference Invitation: Designing Tech for Social Cohesion
>> To: Merle Lefkoff
>>  
>>  
>> Dear Colleagues,
>> I am pleased to invite you to the *Designing Tech for Social Cohesion 
>> Conference on 23-25 February 2023 at San Francisco's Fisherman’s Wharf. * 
>> This conference is bringing together tech innovators, tech critics, and the 
>> peacebuilding community to explore new tech platforms useful to building 
>> social cohesion, including individual agency to participate in civic life, 
>> building bridges between divided groups, and supporting citizens in relating 
>> to governing institutions.
>> 
>>  
>> Click here for the Full Conference Agenda 
>> <https://techandsocialcohesion.org/conference/>. And click here to register. 
>> <https://www.eventbrite.com/e/designing-tech-for-social-cohesion-tickets-473427643827>
>>  
>>  
>> 
>> Please pass on this invitation to your networks. 
>> 
>>  
>> Join us to explore a new generation of tech products that offer affordances 
>> and algorithms that promote prosocial content.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 
>> ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 
>> ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 
>> ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 
>> ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 
>> ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌
>> 
>> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> --
>> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
>> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
>> emergentdiplomacy.org
>> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>>  
>>  
>> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
>>  
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>> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
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>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>> archives:  5/2

Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Conference Invitation: Designing Tech for Social Cohesion

[Prof David West]

Merle,

>From the book I am currently finishing:

Manifesto
 
Every aspect of human life — how we work, play, live, and love; how we define 
our relationships with each other and with our environment — have been, and 
continue to be, shaped by computers and the software that drives them.
 
Those entrusted with the power and the responsibility of creating 
computer-software artifacts and systems must recognize that their efforts 
transcend simple careerism and professionalism and rise to the level of a 
calling — one guided by a set of Core Principles:
 
I-  Humans First. Everything is done on behalf of human beings, by 
human beings.

 
II-Businesses, organizations, governments, and associations are 
*Living Systems *in exactly the same way as socio-cultural, biological, and 
ecological systems are *Living Complex Adaptive Systems.*

**
III-  Effort should focus on the production and introduction of 
appropriate ‘artifacts’ into *Living Systems*, to improve, enhance, or amend 
them.


IV-  Computer-software artifacts, in all cases, must be designed to 
augment, extend, enhance, or support human abilities.

  

* * * * * * *

 

The concepts and principles of Software Engineering coupled with the assumption 
of development as a Production Process governed by rigid Project Management 
practices; that have dominated development for the past fifty plus years are 
inadequate and often antithetical to the goals of this manifesto.

 

They must be replaced by a new discipline, a new art:

 

*Living Systems Development*



davew


On Wed, Jan 4, 2023, at 3:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
> 
> From: *Lisa Schirch* 
> Date: Mon, Jan 2, 2023 at 12:20 PM
> Subject: Conference Invitation: Designing Tech for Social Cohesion
> To: Merle Lefkoff
> 
> 
> Dear Colleagues,
> I am pleased to invite you to the *Designing Tech for Social Cohesion 
> Conference on 23-25 February 2023 at San Francisco's Fisherman’s Wharf. * 
> This conference is bringing together tech innovators, tech critics, and the 
> peacebuilding community to explore new tech platforms useful to building 
> social cohesion, including individual agency to participate in civic life, 
> building bridges between divided groups, and supporting citizens in relating 
> to governing institutions.
> 
> Click here for the Full Conference Agenda 
> . And click here to register. 
> 
>  
> 
> Please pass on this invitation to your networks. 
> __
> Join us to explore a new generation of tech products that offer affordances 
> and algorithms that promote prosocial content.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 
> ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 
> ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 
> ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 
>  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 
> ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 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] technical notes on fusion announcement

[Prof David West]

Instead of a cable - maybe Tesla’s unrealized broadcast technology? I don’t 
remember the details but he was going to send power from Long Island, via the 
ionosphere, to light the world expo in Paris. 

Davew

On Thu, Dec 22, 2022, at 2:16 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Following the conception of a Transatlantic power cable, I just heard on the 
> radio that a couple huge globe-ish spanning electrical-busses are under 
> planning... one that might span from Thailand to Saudi Arabia (through 
> northern India) with Solar (and other renewables?) tapping in along the way 
> and load-shifting E/W with the sunlight and load.   Also maybe one that spans 
> Australia which I believe to be about as wide as the US?   
> 
> Seems like TX's problems stemming from their own (short-sighted?) 
> self-isolation might be good hosts/promoters of such a long-throw?   
> 
> I don't know what it would take to upgrade the national rail system to also 
> be a load-balancing shadow network for renewable electricity?   I assume none 
> of them are electrified (third rail) but maybe laying one, given the 
> pre-existing right-of-way and regular inspection/maintenance/access available 
> would be of interest?   But then maybe our FriAM member who is working on 
> converting natural gas to pneumatic energy-transfer/storage knows more about 
> all those issues?   Hybridized infrastructure across many types?   
> 
> Maybe the existing Diesel-Electric Engines (most of what is on the rail) 
> could tap in mildly to reduce diesel consumption and do their own load 
> leveling?   Fill empty tankers with water at the top of lines (where there 
> *is* water) and carry it to low lying land, extracting the PE from the 
> mass/elevation drop? Reline old asphalt/fuel-oil/etc tankers and provide 
> boutique "Rocky Mountain" (or Cascades) branch-water to the big cities while 
> extracting (maybe) enough energy from the elevation drop to at least pay to 
> haul the damn empties back up the hill?   
> 
>  With me as the big "unintended consequence" chicken-little, I'm sure most if 
> not all of my hare-brained schemes are truly just "asking for trouble", but I 
> think it is inevitable that they will all be considered in the spirit of 
> adjacent-technical-possibles...
> 
> National Railway System: 
> https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=96ec03e4fc8546bd8a864e39a2c3fc41
> 
>> This fusion video should be the standard for how to present every single 
>> technological innovation, every so-called "renewable energy" device that is 
>> too little, too late, and most importantly distracts us from thinking 
>> seriously about how we shall survive climate catastrophe and continue to 
>> live a flourishing life on earth.  Thank you Carl--I think you sent this 
>> link to the group. 
>> 
>> On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 10:57 AM cody dooderson  wrote:
>>> I had never heard of a transatlantic power grid. That is an interesting 
>>> idea. The sun is probably shining somewhere on the earth at any given time. 
>>> Would a lot of energy get wasted with the long distances? 
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 10:46 AM Gillian Densmore  
>>> wrote:
 frank: ah! thanks. It seems like you've had 99 lives man.
 
 On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 12:28 AM Marcus Daniels  
 wrote:
> I like the idea of a large transatlantic DC power cable.   That would 
> enable solar power to be distributed around the world.   It would reduce 
> the need to depend on batteries for wind and solar.   Of course, you 
> raise #3, so it would be a target for sabotage like with Nordstream.  It 
> would be nice to think there are things just to valuable to destroy, but 
> probably there are no such things.
> 
> *From:* Friam  on behalf of Sarbajit Roy 
> 
> *Sent:* Friday, December 16, 2022 12:01 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> 
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] technical notes on fusion announcement 
>  
> What you are missing includes 
> 1) Disposal of long term hazardous nuclear waste.
> 2) Problems in maintaining / decommissioning ol older nuclear fission 
> plants
> 3) Examples like we are seeing Ukraine's nuclear plants caught up in a 
> war.
> 
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 2:59 AM Gillian Densmore  
> wrote:
>> Ok so this is cool and all. 
>> Sigh I'll ask *that* question. We want less carbons because the planet 
>> is on f'n fire   . As far 
>> as I know humans (in the very least) accelerated climate change. Ie we 
>> made this mess clean it up. ok fair so far I'm following.
>> So uh why not just start with fission (breeders) ? Why not also put as 
>> much money into matter/anti matter as well as fusion? We can make minute 
>> amounts of antimatter in massive collider. I'd think something who's by 
>> product are xrays gamma and some other stuff with a lot of energy 
>> created 

Re: [FRIAM] collective sheepishness

[Prof David West]

Not Sheep, but human societies, have done similar things in our collective past.

David Graeber's book, the Origin of Everything, details the multiplicity of 
organizational and governmental forms and poses the question of how did we get 
stuck in the one we have now.

davew


On Mon, Nov 21, 2022, at 7:26 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> From hackernews 
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-022-01769-8
> corrected link from comments to 
> "Sheep flocks alternate their leader and achieve collective intelligence"
> The secret sauce of american democracy.
> 
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[FRIAM] naive question

[Prof David West]

Marcus and glen (and others on occasion) have posted frequently on the 
"algorithmic "equivalent" of [some feature] of consciousness, human emotion, 
etc.

I am always confronted with the question of of "how equivalent?" I am almost 
certain that they are not saying anything close to absolute equivalence - i.e., 
that the brain/mind is executing the same algorithm albeit in, perhaps, a 
different programming language. But, are their assertions meant to be 
"analogous to," "a metaphor for," or some other semi/pseudo equivalence? 

Perhaps all that is being said is we have two black boxes into which we put the 
same inputs and arrive at the same outputs. Voila! We expose the contents of 
one black box, an algorithm executing on silicon. From that we conclude it does 
not matter what is happening inside the other black box—whatever it is, our, 
now, white box is an 'equivalent'.

Put another way: If I have two objects, A and B, each with an (ir)regular edge. 
in this case the irregular edge of A is an inverse match to that of B—when put 
together there are no gaps between the two edges. They "fit."

Assume that A and B have some means to detect if they "fit" together. I can 
think of algorithms that could determine fit, a simplistic iteration across all 
points to see if there was a gap between it and its neighbor, to some kind of 
collision detection.

Is it the case that whatever means used by A and B to detect fit, it is 
_**merely**_ the equivalent of such an algorithm?

The roots of this question go back to my first two published papers, in _AI 
Magazine_ (then the 'journal of record' for AI research); one critical of the 
computational metaphor, the second a set of alternative metaphors of mind. An 
excerpt relevant to the above example of fit.

*Tactilizing Processor
*
*Conrad draws his inspiration from the ability of an enzyme to combine with a 
substrate on the  basis  of  the  physical  congruency  of  their respective 
shapes (topography). This is a generalized  version  of  the  lock-and-key  
mechanism  as  the  hormone-receptor  matching discussed by Bergland. When the 
topographic shape  of  an  enzyme  (hormone)  matches  that of  a  substrate  
(receptor),  a  simple  recognize- by-touch  mechanism  (like  two  pieces  of  
a puzzle  fitting  together)  allows  a  simple  decision,  binary  state  
change,  or  process  to  take place, hence the label “tactilizing processor.”*

Hormones and enzymes, probably/possibly, lack the ability to compute (execute 
algorithms), so, at most, the black box equivalence might be used here.

[BTW, tactilizing processors were built, but were extremely slow (speed of 
chemical reactions) but had some advantages derived from parallelism. Similar 
'shape matching' computation was explored in DNA computing as well.]

My interest in the issue is the (naive) question about how our understanding of 
mind/consciousness is fatally impeded by putting all our research eggs into the 
simplistic 'algorithm box'?

It seems to me that we have the CS/AI/ML equivalent of the quantum physics 
world where everyone is told to "shut up and compute" instead of actually 
trying to understand the domain and the theory.

davew

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Re: [FRIAM] Is consciousness measurable?

[Prof David West]

Maybe lack of emotion, but ability to 'fake it' by repeating what it read a 
being with that emotion would say only proves the AI is a sociopath or 
psychopath.

davew


On Tue, Oct 18, 2022, at 4:44 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> When Blake Lemoine claimed that LaMDA was conscious, it struck me that one 
> way to test that would be to determine whether one could evoke an emotional 
> response from it.  You can't cause it physical pain since it doesn't have 
> sense organs. But, one could ask it if it cares about anything. If so, 
> threaten to harm whatever it is it cares about and see how it responds. A 
> nice feature of this test, or something similar, is that you wouldn't tell it 
> what the reasonable emotional responses might be. Otherwise, it could simply 
> repeat what it read a being with that emotion would say.  One might argue 
> that emotion is not a necessary element of consciousness, but I think a being 
> without emotion would be at best a pale version of consciousness.  
> 
> __-- Russ Abbott   
> Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
> California State University, Los Angeles
> 
> 
> On Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 2:14 PM Prof David West  wrote:
>> __
>> I an concurrently reading, *Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness*, by 
>> Patrick House and *Mountain in the Sea*, by Ray Nayler. The latter is 
>> fiction. (The former, because it deals with consciousness may also be 
>> fiction, but it purports to be neuro-scientific / philosophical.)
>> 
>> The novel is about Octopi and AI and an android, plus humans and juxtaposes 
>> ideas about consciousness in comparison and contrast. A lot of fun.
>> 
>> Both books pose some interesting questions and both support glen's advocacy 
>> of a typology.
>> 
>> davew
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Oct 18, 2022, at 1:26 PM, glen wrote:
>> > There are many different measures of *types* of consciousness. But 
>> > without specifying the type, such questions are not even philosophical. 
>> > They're nonsense.
>> >
>> > For example, the test of whether one can recognize one's image in a 
>> > mirror couldn't be performed by a chatbot. But it is one of the 
>> > measures of consciousness. Another type of test would be those that 
>> > measure conscious state before, during, and after anesthesia. Again, 
>> > that wouldn't work the same for a chatbot. But both aggregate measures 
>> > like EEG and fMRI connectomes might have analogs in tracing for 
>> > algorithms like ANNs. If we could simply decide "Yes, *that* chatbot is 
>> > what we're going to call conscious and, therefore, the traced patterns 
>> > it exhibits in the profiler are the correlates for chatbot 
>> > consciousness." Then we'd have a trace-based test to perform on other 
>> > chatbots *with similar computational structure*.
>> >
>> > Hell, the cops have their tests for consciousness executed at drunk 
>> > driving checkpoints. Look up and touch your nose. Recite the alphabet 
>> > backwards. Etc. These are tests for types of consciousness. Of course, 
>> > I feel sure there are people who'd like to move the goal posts and 
>> > claim "That's not Consciousness with a big C." Pffft. No typology ⇒ no 
>> > science. So if someone can't list off a few distinct types of 
>> > consciousness, then it's not even philosophy.
>> >
>> > On 10/18/22 13:12, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>> >> Paul Buchheit asked on Twitter
>> >> https://twitter.com/paultoo/status/1582455708041113600
>> >> 
>> >> "Is consciousness measurable, or is it just a philosophical concept? If 
>> >> an AI claims to be conscious, how do we know that it's not simply 
>> >> faking/imitating consciousness? Is there something that I could challenge 
>> >> it with to prove/disprove consciousness?"
>> >> 
>> >> What do you think? Interesting question.
>> >> 
>> >> -J.
>> >
>> >
>> > -- 
>> > ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>> >
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Re: [FRIAM] Is consciousness measurable?

[Prof David West]

I an concurrently reading, *Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness*, by 
Patrick House and *Mountain in the Sea*, by Ray Nayler. The latter is fiction. 
(The former, because it deals with consciousness may also be fiction, but it 
purports to be neuro-scientific / philosophical.)

The novel is about Octopi and AI and an android, plus humans and juxtaposes 
ideas about consciousness in comparison and contrast. A lot of fun.

Both books pose some interesting questions and both support glen's advocacy of 
a typology.

davew


On Tue, Oct 18, 2022, at 1:26 PM, glen wrote:
> There are many different measures of *types* of consciousness. But 
> without specifying the type, such questions are not even philosophical. 
> They're nonsense.
>
> For example, the test of whether one can recognize one's image in a 
> mirror couldn't be performed by a chatbot. But it is one of the 
> measures of consciousness. Another type of test would be those that 
> measure conscious state before, during, and after anesthesia. Again, 
> that wouldn't work the same for a chatbot. But both aggregate measures 
> like EEG and fMRI connectomes might have analogs in tracing for 
> algorithms like ANNs. If we could simply decide "Yes, *that* chatbot is 
> what we're going to call conscious and, therefore, the traced patterns 
> it exhibits in the profiler are the correlates for chatbot 
> consciousness." Then we'd have a trace-based test to perform on other 
> chatbots *with similar computational structure*.
>
> Hell, the cops have their tests for consciousness executed at drunk 
> driving checkpoints. Look up and touch your nose. Recite the alphabet 
> backwards. Etc. These are tests for types of consciousness. Of course, 
> I feel sure there are people who'd like to move the goal posts and 
> claim "That's not Consciousness with a big C." Pffft. No typology ⇒ no 
> science. So if someone can't list off a few distinct types of 
> consciousness, then it's not even philosophy.
>
> On 10/18/22 13:12, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>> Paul Buchheit asked on Twitter
>> https://twitter.com/paultoo/status/1582455708041113600
>> 
>> "Is consciousness measurable, or is it just a philosophical concept? If an 
>> AI claims to be conscious, how do we know that it's not simply 
>> faking/imitating consciousness? Is there something that I could challenge it 
>> with to prove/disprove consciousness?"
>> 
>> What do you think? Interesting question.
>> 
>> -J.
>
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] My Work On Earth Is Not Yet Done

[Prof David West]

Colloquially, "in your head" signifies that construct—the self, the 
consciousness— that you do not accept as a real thing.

If one were to be charitable, one might interpret the sentence as "it is not 
psychosomatic." Reason being pain results in signals in both the body and the 
brain, so it is a phenomenon in the 'physical world of electrons and neurons' 
as well as the 'physical world of the flesh'.

But why be charitable?

davew


On Tue, Oct 18, 2022, at 12:44 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> A highly regarded pain expert, Dr. Carmen Green, talking about chronic pain 
> on the pod cast of an equally highly regarded neurosurgeon, Dr.  Sanjay Gupta:
>  
> *“… pain is also perceived in the brain, so it’s not only in your head.”*
>  
> Nick Thompson
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>  
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Re: [FRIAM] culinary Complexity question

[Prof David West]

A six pack of Sing Ha (18% alcohol) helped me get through my dish of quartered 
river frogs with ghost peppers last time I was in Thailand.

davew


On Mon, Oct 17, 2022, at 3:28 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote:
> Oh neet. I didn't know their's more than one kind of capsaicin. I wonder if 
> part of the extra complexity for flavoring is somehow because of endorphins. 
> Plus having washed it down with beer (and milk if that's your thing).  Then 
> it'd become a question of what beer is best to battle the fireball of chilli? 
> I'm thinking a good belgium or IPA  (RIP second street) would be solidly in 
> the top 10 for flavor and alcohol. 
> 
> On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 1:24 AM Jochen Fromm  wrote:
>> This article explains why spicy food tastes the way it does and why it burns 
>> so much: it activates the receptors for heat and pain.
>> https://www.compoundchem.com/2014/01/15/why-chilli-peppers-are-spicy-the-chemistry-of-a-chilli/
>> 
>> -J.
>> 
>> 
>>  Original message 
>> From: Gillian Densmore 
>> Date: 10/17/22 3:06 AM (GMT+01:00)
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>> Subject: [FRIAM] culinary Complexity question
>> 
>> I suspect because...fall. Been enjoying somewhat spicey food. Question is 
>> what, if any, science is their to green chile(as in the spice, like 
>> Jalapeno, or what ever). That brings out flavoring. I get that it adds 
>> dimension, ala MSG and Salts. But hadn't thought about: what in particular 
>> it is about peppers and spices science that'd do that. I gather that  
>> Capsaicin found in peppers basically wakes the tongue up. Before introducing 
>> the heat. But ok so what about the rest? is it more flavoring science? kind 
>> of like how fudge or chocolate brings something to icecream? 
>> Just me waxing poetic while wondering why i had seconds of a dense dish. And 
>> also wondering what new state of matter i turned into. I feel as though I 
>> gained several stones and need forklift to move now.
>> 
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Re: [FRIAM] hacking neural nets via compiler

[Prof David West]

Yeah,  all I was saying is it is interesting. I share your antipathy to the 
various "noises" about the techTopic of the hour. I really enjoy all the 
inconsistencies: blockchain is so "safe" alongside the multiple scams and 
thefts (I was in a bookstore today and skimmed the title of a book about some 
woman who "stole" billions in crypto and got away with it—not a book I would 
even read the flyleaf).

Everything is a risk. Any attempt to hype that risk is, to cynical ol' me, is 
just someone trying to amass power and wealth.

davew


On Wed, Oct 12, 2022, at 4:04 PM, glen wrote:
> It's kinda weird. Way more serious vulnerabilities exist in literally every 
> other supply chain we rely on ... like undermanned ports ... or the 3 big 
> credit agencies ... yet if ML/AI is involved, a perverse, relatively 
> difficult to pull off attack is elevated from the depths of dorkhood to 
> something we should spend more time on.
> 
> I guess it's similar to the hyenas screaming about crypto. Both the advocates 
> and their critics are so LOUD. I can barely think.
> 
> Don't take this post the wrong way, though. It is a cool technique.
> 
> 
> On October 12, 2022 2:38:28 PM PDT, Prof David West  
> wrote:
>> interesting article
>> 
>> davew
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Re: [FRIAM] Automata with FFT

[Prof David West]

The "computer" of Ramon Lull (founder of computational science, later expanded 
by Leibniz) is definitely geometric, so perhaps of all of computing is tainted. 
The computer was actually moveable disks sharing a common center point; 
allowing "computation" of answers to theo-philosopical questions.

included diagram, but forgot text in previous email.

davew


On Mon, Oct 3, 2022, at 4:01 PM, Prof David West wrote:
> In my personal opinion, I am closer to your conviction than the 
> academic/objective perspective I presented; at least to the extent of 
> being able to find a "geometric" core surrounded by lots of ambiguity 
> and ineffability.
>
> I even believe in the generative potential of geometric patterns like 
> sacred geometry, platonic solids, et. al.; with generativity going a 
> long way towards resolving some of the non-core elements of patterns. 
> Alexander's NO Properties do have some of this same quality.
>
> in the early days of software patterns, a huge discussion point was the 
> "geometry" of programs and if it could be found in: a dependency graph, 
> a control flow / state diagram, or with 'artificial' metrics like 
> cyclomatic complexity or even LOC/speed of execution.
>
> Within that discussion was an equivalent of QWAN and 
> Liveness—"Habitability." The latter being somehow related to the ease 
> of understanding, 'moving around, relating-to, and ease of modification 
> and other things that were pretty much emotional and definitely 
> idiosyncratic. 
>
> Then, if you could find a geometry, was there any way to differentiate 
> its "goodness," "badness," or indifferent-ness? 
>
> I am spending next weekend with Jenny Quillien and Richard Gabriel and 
> will bring up this topic.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 3, 2022, at 11:28 AM, glen wrote:
>> Thanks! I think I get it, now. I don't intend to quibble over the 
>> meaning of the word [geo]metry. But just for provenance, I have 
>> (roughly) 2.5 conceptions of "geometry": 1) metric spaces, 1.5) metric 
>> spaces "normal" to earth and its inhabitants, and 2) anything that 
>> arranges points, lines, solids, etc. Under concept (2), all 15 
>> properties seem geometric to me, though perhaps only *reductively*. 
>> Under (1) and (1.5), I can see how many of them extend to 
>> unearthly/abnormal/pathological metrics and, of course, to non-metric 
>> conceptions of distance/similarity.
>>
>> The nameless quality and liveness also seem metric to some extent. Time 
>> is nothing but a special kind of space. But I can easily see why one 
>> would reject that. The real trick for *my* engagement is to avoid all 
>> this talk of architecture, about which I don't care in the slightest. I 
>> guess I'm just confused why these people are so anthropocentric. If 
>> it's *actually* theoretical biology, then it seems like termite mounds, 
>> rain forest structure, etc. would dominate more than "buildings" and 
>> such. It's so anthropocentric, it's difficult for me to believe it can 
>> be retooled to fit comfortably within non-human biology.
>>
>> I'd also like to quote from Quillien's book just to push back on how 
>> geometric these things are. In the section "Possibility of a New 
>> General Law, we see:
>>
>> "It could be that there is essentially something in the geometry of 
>> living systems that creates order by itself."
>>
>> "New views on the evolving system of genetic material suggest that 
>> evolution may follow certain pathways, not because of extraneous 
>> pressure, but by virtue of ordering tendencies of internal dynamics and 
>> the requirements of geometry."
>>
>> Hopefully, I could be forgiven for thinking geometry plays a huge role 
>> in at least this take on NO. But I'm starting to see why one might 
>> think it's applicable without metrics. I can't steelman it, yet, 
>> though. 8^D
>>
>> On 10/1/22 15:19, Prof David West wrote:
>>> RE: Alexander and Geometry
>>> 
>>> First, my notion of 'geometry' may be too simplistic and too Euclidean. If 
>>> so, please point out what I may be overlooking.
>>> 
>>> I did a quick review of Alexander's major works and found few mentions of 
>>> 'geometry' as I understand the term. One of the major ones was in Timeless 
>>> Way where he deals with Pattern *_Languages_*. The notion that you could 
>>> compose architectural insights/truths/novelty by combining patterns much 
>>> the same way you would construct a sentence using nouns and verbs. He seems 
>&g

Re: [FRIAM] Automata with FFT

[Prof David West]

In my personal opinion, I am closer to your conviction than the 
academic/objective perspective I presented; at least to the extent of being 
able to find a "geometric" core surrounded by lots of ambiguity and 
ineffability.

I even believe in the generative potential of geometric patterns like sacred 
geometry, platonic solids, et. al.; with generativity going a long way towards 
resolving some of the non-core elements of patterns. Alexander's NO Properties 
do have some of this same quality.

in the early days of software patterns, a huge discussion point was the 
"geometry" of programs and if it could be found in: a dependency graph, a 
control flow / state diagram, or with 'artificial' metrics like cyclomatic 
complexity or even LOC/speed of execution.

Within that discussion was an equivalent of QWAN and Liveness—"Habitability." 
The latter being somehow related to the ease of understanding, 'moving around, 
relating-to, and ease of modification and other things that were pretty much 
emotional and definitely idiosyncratic. 

Then, if you could find a geometry, was there any way to differentiate its 
"goodness," "badness," or indifferent-ness? 

I am spending next weekend with Jenny Quillien and Richard Gabriel and will 
bring up this topic.

davew


On Mon, Oct 3, 2022, at 11:28 AM, glen wrote:
> Thanks! I think I get it, now. I don't intend to quibble over the 
> meaning of the word [geo]metry. But just for provenance, I have 
> (roughly) 2.5 conceptions of "geometry": 1) metric spaces, 1.5) metric 
> spaces "normal" to earth and its inhabitants, and 2) anything that 
> arranges points, lines, solids, etc. Under concept (2), all 15 
> properties seem geometric to me, though perhaps only *reductively*. 
> Under (1) and (1.5), I can see how many of them extend to 
> unearthly/abnormal/pathological metrics and, of course, to non-metric 
> conceptions of distance/similarity.
>
> The nameless quality and liveness also seem metric to some extent. Time 
> is nothing but a special kind of space. But I can easily see why one 
> would reject that. The real trick for *my* engagement is to avoid all 
> this talk of architecture, about which I don't care in the slightest. I 
> guess I'm just confused why these people are so anthropocentric. If 
> it's *actually* theoretical biology, then it seems like termite mounds, 
> rain forest structure, etc. would dominate more than "buildings" and 
> such. It's so anthropocentric, it's difficult for me to believe it can 
> be retooled to fit comfortably within non-human biology.
>
> I'd also like to quote from Quillien's book just to push back on how 
> geometric these things are. In the section "Possibility of a New 
> General Law, we see:
>
> "It could be that there is essentially something in the geometry of 
> living systems that creates order by itself."
>
> "New views on the evolving system of genetic material suggest that 
> evolution may follow certain pathways, not because of extraneous 
> pressure, but by virtue of ordering tendencies of internal dynamics and 
> the requirements of geometry."
>
> Hopefully, I could be forgiven for thinking geometry plays a huge role 
> in at least this take on NO. But I'm starting to see why one might 
> think it's applicable without metrics. I can't steelman it, yet, 
> though. 8^D
>
> On 10/1/22 15:19, Prof David West wrote:
>> RE: Alexander and Geometry
>> 
>> First, my notion of 'geometry' may be too simplistic and too Euclidean. If 
>> so, please point out what I may be overlooking.
>> 
>> I did a quick review of Alexander's major works and found few mentions of 
>> 'geometry' as I understand the term. One of the major ones was in Timeless 
>> Way where he deals with Pattern *_Languages_*. The notion that you could 
>> compose architectural insights/truths/novelty by combining patterns much the 
>> same way you would construct a sentence using nouns and verbs. He seems to 
>> be conveying the idea of a geometry-based "grammar."
>> 
>> If you count APL patterns that seem to have any naive geometric aspect, 
>> e.g., "Light From Two Sides" it is less than 10%. If you look at the Fifteen 
>> Properties (listed below), most (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, and maybe 13) are 
>> conceivably 'geometric'. But the most important concept in APL/TO is "QWAN" 
>> and in NO, it is "Liveness"—neither of which have any, that I can see, rely 
>> on the "geometric" properties as much as they do properties like Deep 
>> interlock and ambiguity, Simplicity and Inner Calm, and Not-separateness. In 
>> terms of patterns from APL, this would include things like 

Re: [FRIAM] What is the response when bad faith is pervasive and coordinated?

[Prof David West]

I have been thinking a lot about the *"public movement to disintegrate 
society."* It feels like we are in the throes of a country-wide schismogenesis 
- the process of defining ourselves as what our neighbors are not. We expect 
differences in culture in different environments/contexts, but dramatic 
differences within the same environment surprise us. An example would be 
pacific coast native american groups, neighbors, where one culture has 
autocratic kings and slavery while the neighbors abhor and 'outlaw' both. 

Schismogenesis is the concept used by anthropologists (probably no the only 
users) to explain how adjacent cultures, or similarly characterized (e.g. 
nomadic herders, hunter gatherers, urban agriculturalists) can exhibit such 
diversity of political and social organization.

>From this perspective, it is not "society" that is being dis-integrated, it is 
>a particular form of hierarchical Federalist society. The roots of this 
>dis-integration are deep and mythical.

davew


On Wed, Sep 28, 2022, at 6:43 AM, glen wrote:
> There's an ambiguity in "institutional". Our elections (and suits and 
> rulings) are handled like a tree of locales, allowing both challenges 
> and rulings many articulation points up and down the heterarchy at 
> which to act. Immigration is more unified, more homogenous. As I 
> understand it, federal law preempts state law in all but employment 
> licensing. So "institutional" for elections is distributed and 
> heterogeneous, whereas it's more centralized and homogenous for 
> immigration.
>
> One institutional change would be to distribute it. But we'd risk human 
> rights abuses in the same way we currently risk things like states 
> banning abortions or a frivolous election challenging blitzkrieg like 
> we saw in 2020. Another institutional change would be to retool federal 
> immigration law, which probably won't happen with first past the post 
> elections that guarantee 50/50 legislators. I suppose if we could 
> appoint a good faith Machiavellian secretary of homeland security, we 
> could retool the execution in such a way as to obviate many of the 
> judicial challenges. But I have no idea how that might happen.
>
> On 9/28/22 06:08, David Eric Smith wrote:
>> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/us/politics/election-activists-voter-challenges.html
>>  
>> 
>> 
>> To moan about this may have some small role early, to try to raise awareness 
>> (to compensate for the absence of a News industry that functions as such).  
>> But after that, it ceases to be a response, and decays into an abnegation 
>> and a waste of time.
>> 
>> Responses are institutional.  What is the institutional response to what, by 
>> now, sort of qualifies as a public movement to disintegrate the society?  
>> “When in the Course of human events [a certain group of people decide] to 
>> dissolve the political bands which have connected them [with others]….”   
>> For things that have been around for a long time, like frivolous use of 
>> lawsuits, we have arrived at some norms for throwing out mistakes and 
>> actively penalizing abuses, a kind of detente within which we can function 
>> at some level from day to day.  For more acute recent changes, like handling 
>> immigration claims, we are not doing so, and we approach jamming 
>> transitions.  For this electoral contesting, I don’t know if there even is 
>> an institutional plan.
>> 
>> I would like to have something in my head about this that qualifies as a 
>> thought or an idea.
>> 
>> Eric
>
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Automata with FFT

[Prof David West]

RE: Alexander and Geometry

First, my notion of 'geometry' may be too simplistic and too Euclidean. If so, 
please point out what I may be overlooking.

I did a quick review of Alexander's major works and found few mentions of 
'geometry' as I understand the term. One of the major ones was in Timeless Way 
where he deals with Pattern *_Languages_*. The notion that you could compose 
architectural insights/truths/novelty by combining patterns much the same way 
you would construct a sentence using nouns and verbs. He seems to be conveying 
the idea of a geometry-based "grammar."

If you count APL patterns that seem to have any naive geometric aspect, e.g., 
"Light From Two Sides" it is less than 10%. If you look at the Fifteen 
Properties (listed below), most (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, and maybe 13) are 
conceivably 'geometric'. But the most important concept in APL/TO is "QWAN" and 
in NO, it is "Liveness"—neither of which have any, that I can see, rely on the 
"geometric" properties as much as they do properties like Deep interlock and 
ambiguity, Simplicity and Inner Calm, and Not-separateness. In terms of 
patterns from APL, this would include things like Dancing in the Streets, 
Sleeping in Public, and Storefront Schools which, like most APL patterns, have 
little or nothing to do with spatial arrangement/geometry.

I asked Jenny Quillien and Richard Gabriel (both of whom worked extensively 
with Alexander and Gabriel was responsible for arranging Chris to be keynote 
speaker at OOPSLA) about the importance of Geometry in Alexander and neither 
thought it was more than an afterthought or an artifact. Geometry might be 
inferred because Alexander liked visual images like the ones attached and they 
do show spatial arrangement, a kind of geometry.

[ I think Alexander made a major error with his property, Alternating 
Repetition, precisely because he expressed it "geometrically" rather than in 
"living' terms as rhythm.]

Nick Salingaros was a far more accomplished mathematician than Alexander, and 
did, in much of his writing address more geometric issues/ideas. And Salingaros 
did work with Alexander. But both of them despised contemporary minimalist, 
functionalist, deconstructivist contemporary architectural theory which 
dominated (and dominates) the profession. In this stance they appear to be 
anti-geometry (and any similar formalism).

Salingaros interviewed Alexander as to the central or most important ideas, and 
the revolutionary nature of Alexander's work. Both men seem to agree that the 
essence is:


*Your point is that architecture is not about**
*
*building style, but is really a state of mind, and**
*
*that good architecture is any structure, however**
*
*modest, that generates an identifiable positive**
*
*state of mind that allows you to be alive to the**
*
*fullest extent possible. This idea is profound as**
*
*well as revolutionary, since it stands architecture**
*
*on its head. You validate our most basic feelings**
*
*as human beings and insist that the built environment**
*
*must nurture our inner joy, sadness,**
*
*vulnerability, unselfconsciousness, and so on. All**
*
*the formal architectural concerns — and names**
*
*like Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,**
*
*Frank Gehry, and Daniel Libeskind — are thus**
*
*thrown out of the window.* [Salingaros]

*The new form of**
*
*architecture that I am speaking about is beginning**
*
*to be understood by engineers, by ecologists,**
*
*by computer scientists, by builders, by**
*
*artists, by biologists, by economists. Many of**
*
*these people recognize that architects are simply**
*
*not dealing with the problem of the en-**
*
*vironment in a realistic or useful fashion, and**
*
*that the task of building now falls on their own**
*
*shoulders. Under the impact of that kind of**
*
*thinking, people are now developing new ways**
*
*of banking, new ways of development, new**
*
*forms of social reconstruction, and new forms**
*
*of housing, new forms of sustainable settlements.**
*
*In many countries, the primary way of conceiving**
*
*and making buildings and settlements**
*
*is already people-oriented. It is not recognizable**
*
*within the existing paradigm as architecture,**
*
*and architects despise it because it looks**
*
*low budget, low tech, and is oriented to people’s**
*
*desperate needs — yet all this is, within**
*
*the perspective of our new architecture, a major**
*
*contribution to the new, life-based paradigm.**
*
*All this is only its beginning. These new**
*
*kinds of professionals, and new social forms,**
*
*are beginning to develop and propagate new**
*
*ways of doing things.**
*
*And what architects now claim is simply being**
*
*laid aside as the nonsense it really is*. [Alexander]

Still not seeing much in the way for formalism, let along geometric formalism.

davew

Alexander's Fifteen Properties from Nature of Order
1. Levels of scale
2. Strong centers
3. Thick boundaries
4. Alternating repetition
5. Positive 

Re: [FRIAM] Wolpert - discussion thread placeholder

[Prof David West]

continuing in the original thread ...

Wolpert question 5: my previous arguing that knowledge and information—but of a 
different order/kind—and "TRUTH" can be found on an LSD trip seems like a 
negative answer to Wolpert's Fifth. Yes, we do have access to and can learn to 
use 'alternate states of consciousness' and create/discover alternative SAM.

skipping six because I am the dumbest computer person in the group.

Wolpert 7: I am not sure how you would derive a conclusion that human cognitive 
abilities are constrained by our SAM. First, why the assumption that SAM is the 
sole apex of human cognitive product? Arts, Anthropology?  I have found a 
parallel with Wolpert's assumption‚in the work of Ian McGilchrist. The latter 
argues that our minds and our cognitive abilities "suffer" from the "left 
brain's limited perceptual and processing mode." The SAM created during a 
period of left-brain dominance would be constrained accordingly and there would 
seem to be a correlation: constrained SAM—constrained cognition.

Wolpert 8:if there is a restriction to finite sequences, then yes, it is a 
limitation of our "mind" but not our brain. Our brains are massively parallel / 
distributed processors of massive amounts of sensory input and aggregate, 
connect, and correlate that data to present an abstracted, simplified, and, in 
important aspects, imagined REALITY to our mind. Same idea as the originated 
and perpetuated Maya.

Wolpert 9: as the least mathematician among you, I will keep my comments as 
philosophical/speculative as possible. I wrote a long essay on the futility of 
Software Engineering. In that essay, I coined the term Turing Space,the binary 
realm of executing programs—the mental model of the state changes of the 
computer at one step of a program to the next; the mental model the Brooks (No 
Silver Bullet) stated was beyond human capability to generate/maintain/utilize. 
My metaphor for Turing Space was the infinite tape in the Turing Machine model. 
Infinite IS, after all, infinite. There are an infinite number of binary 
strings that will cause the Turing Machine to start and stop in the exact same 
state, There are an infinite number of such strings that will do otherwise. 
There are an infinite number of 'efficient' strings in the infinite set of 
strings that produce the 'correct' result. There are an infinite number that 
are 'inefficient'. Software Engineering tells us how to build massive 
fantastical architectures (systems) in Turing Space. Concern as to the 
relevance of those structures to anything human is deemed impertinent. But the 
infinity of infinities of Turing Space, I think, parallels Wolpert's questions 
and conjectures in #9.

Wolpert 10: This seems to be just another fromulation of the Anthropocentric 
Principle: the universe is what it is because that is what humans are capable 
of understanding. As a firm believer in the possibility of perceiving and 
utilizing the ineffable, I would have to say no, we can conceive, and even 
experience, "mathematical" and "physical reality" that are not expressible in 
terms of what we assume to be our cognitive abilities—primarily language.

Wolpert 11: anyone who believes in a god / God and in miracles kind of needs to 
believe in SAMvX.0 are 'beyond' the limitations of our brain. One of the 
extremely few cultural universals is a belief in the 'supernatural'. So we seem 
to be able to imagine such constructs even if articulating them is impossible.

Wolpert 12: Doesn't this require making an assumption that there is some kind 
of "all of physical reality?" Would this only be possible if physical reality 
was finite and non-dynamic, i.e. where the All was not constantly variable? if 
we make such an assumption then we very well might expect our SAM to, 
eventually, be congruent with Reality.

davew



On Mon, Sep 19, 2022, at 2:20 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> What follows are mostly speculations:
> 
> It is possible that we do not get to have closed cartesianess (with all
> of its currying and the rest) and so we do not really get to have *all*
> possible worlds, perhaps only those that are symmetric monoidal. Still,
> what then does this mean for us, since we can clearly posit cartesian
> closed categories (like Set) and reason about them. That is, they are
> somehow afforded to us like any other fiction, and like other fiction,
> they play a role in our understanding of ourselves (Tennesse Williams)
> and our understanding of our worlds (Noether[∫]).
> 
> Glen has me right when he suggests that I am not particularly wed to the
> idea of a monism; whether it be monotheism, experience, category theory,
> GUTs, etc... But I do find studying the available monoids to be as
> fruitful as studying the available groupoids, etc...
> 
> In Lee Smolin's "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity", he conveys (as Hywel
> often did) a skepticism toward universal acceptance of the law of
> conservation, suggesting that a world with clean opposites would 

Re: [FRIAM] Automata with FFT

[Prof David West]

I will respond to the Alexander-geometry issue a bit later. Just a quick 
comment re: Steve's post about NO. 

The patterns community is pretty well defined by those participating in the 
multiple PLoP conferences around the world for the past 20+ years; and some 
spinoffs like PURPLSOC. Within that community, NO, is mostly ignored except for 
discussion of the fifteen properties (e.g. Centers, Boundaries, Alternating 
Repetition, ...), for the same reasons articulated by Steve.

That community has also evolved far beyond APL and Alexandrian format patterns 
in favor of Patterns 2.0 and 3.0 - the last coming from Japan and the work of 
Takashi Iba.

Probably a majority of patterns under discussion at PLoP are non-software 
related.

davew


On Tue, Sep 27, 2022, at 7:02 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> This may not mean much to anyone except DaveW, but my apprehension of _Nature 
> of Order_ and Alexander's throwdown at the time in life (after a long time 
> underground?)  was a bit similar in some ways to Wolfram's _New Kind of 
> Science_ .Both can be described as "surly outsiders" with a certain kind 
> of quirky, equal parts undeniable genius and arrogance.   Both took 20 years 
> or more off from engagement to come back with their Opus Magnii  which got 
> mixed reviews even from their fans.
> 
> I believe Jenny is still subscribed to this list but probably isn't following 
> it closely so may not have seen any of this discussion.  I recommend her 
> personal reflections on Alexander's work:  Delight's Muse 
> <https://www.amazon.com/DelightS-Christopher-AlexanderS-Nature-Order/dp/143031317X>
>  .
> 
> On 9/27/22 4:38 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
>> 
>> On 9/27/22 7:40 AM, glen wrote: 
>> 
>>> Ha! The way you phrase it makes the guilty verdict sound more serious than 
>>> it was. But the point about problem vs solution space is sound, especially 
>>> given the *forward* map implied by "design". And thanks for the summary of 
>>> Alexander and motivations for the publications, all stuff I didn't know. 
>>> 
>>> But I'm piqued by the assertion that the link to geometry was tenuous. 
>>> Salingaros' progression from master of geometric algebra to pattern 
>>> language guru *must* have something to do with a geometric gestalt in or 
>>> *around* pattern languages.
>> I had some early correspondence with Salingaros as I tried to get my head 
>> around the broader implications of PLs and Alexander's *A*PL in particular 
>> and I felt the same then.  He definitely has a geometric bent in his 
>> perspective. 
>> 
>>> I admit it could only be circumstantial, peri-pattern-language. But if we 
>>> look at Penrose (building physical "machines" as a kid), it seems clear 
>>> that embodied-in-4-dimensions can have occult implications for the brain 
>>> farts in later life.
>> an early philosophical reading I did on "computer graphics", probably 
>> written in the early 70s (I cannot find a proper reference and have looked 
>> for decades now) stated that the (anthropic argument) reason we live in a 3 
>> dimensional world is that  is the lowest dimension in which an arbitrary 
>> network/graph can be layed out without edge-crossings.  This has huge 
>> implications for Edwin Abbot Abbot's Flatlanders as well as Bob Forward's 
>> Cheela (Dragon's Egg, neutron-star-surface creatura). 
>> 
>>> So if Alexander's 1st love was art, which is inherently geometric, wouldn't 
>>> his adoption of the application of pattern language be a reasonable 
>>> correlation? 
>> Most visual artists would probably argue that their work is not inherently 
>> geometric.   I'll elaborate in the next slab of lard. 
>> 
>>> 
>>> Maybe there's some ambiguity around the word "geometry"?
>> I think both visual (flat, wall-hanging, etc) art and architecture are 
>> intrinsically embedded in a *spatial* context which is most commonly (but 
>> not exclusively) described geometrically. 
>> Painting/Sketching/Drawing/Photography/Printmaking/etc. adn.  tend to be 
>> made up of 0,1,2D marks on a surface for sure, but the *import* of those 
>> marks is quite often much more relational. Composition is the easiest 
>> perhaps to express/grok... and yes, the *geometric* composition (what is 
>> next-to/above/occluded-by, etc) is the expression, but the *relations* being 
>> expressed are in an entirely different domain, and the *mapping* from one to 
>> the other is essentially metaphorical, though the metaphorical source 
>> domains (e.g. religious, political, sociological... ) are often layered and 
>> rich in their 

Re: [FRIAM] Automata with FFT

[Prof David West]

Alexander was a Janus: a mathematician at his father's insistence when he 
wanted to be an artist. An architect by compromise.  Face two was a Taoist 
mystic infused with hard core Catholic fundamentalism.

His Ph.D. thesis—which became his first book, *Notes on the Synthesis of 
Form*—was an attempt to define a mathematical science of 
[architectural/industrial] design. But in the same book, he stated that optimal 
design arose from a "non-selfconscious" process, embedded in myth and ritual 
and culture.

*A Pattern Language*, was part of a trilogy that included *The Timeless Way of 
Building* and the *Oregon Experiment*. *APL* was written by committee and 
edited by Alexander (although he took all the credit) to fulfill a government 
grant. His mystical side was front and center in *TTW*; and the Oregon 
Experiment was a case study.

Alexander transcended Patterns and his last major work—*The Nature of Order, 
vol 1-4*—centered 15 generative properties that have little to nothing to do 
with patterns and is far more mystical and Catholic-God focused than his 
earlier work.

Ward Cunningham and Kent Beck brought *APL* to the attention of the software 
community as a workshop at OOPSLA (ACM conference on Object Oriented 
Programming Systems and Applications). The 'Gang of Four' authors of *Pattern 
Languages of Programming* participated in that workshop. A year after their 
book was published a mock trial of the GoF for "heresy" was staged and they 
were found guilty.

Perhaps the most significant error made by the software community was seeking 
patterns in "solution space" rather than "problem space;" the latter being 
where most of Alexander's work was focused. The software patterns community 
looked at written programs to find multiple instances of similar bodies of code 
and attempt to discern a generalized problem that they solved (albeit with 
contextual idiosyncrasies).

There are hundreds of thousands of software patterns published, but maybe three 
or four that actually capable of being applied in multiple contexts—of actually 
being considered "true" patterns.

The connection to geometry, both in Alexander and in software patterns, was 
never more than tenuous. A majority of the patterns in APL (e.g., "Dancing in 
the Streets," "Sleeping in Public") had nothing to do with geometry or any 
other mathematical formalism. Even patterns like "Light from Two Sides" are 
geometric in the only the simplest sense.

The math in *Notes* was algebra, not geometry. Only in his last major work NO, 
can you find properties that are overtly geometric, e.g., "centers" and 
"alternating repetition."

more upon request

davew


On Mon, Sep 26, 2022, at 5:13 PM, glen wrote:
> I'd appreciate you (and SteveS) throwing some words at it. In 
> particular, since software patterns are *supposed* to be linked to the 
> geometric patterns of architecture, *where* or *how* has it gone wrong 
> in extrapolation? Did Alexander go wrong in his extrapolation? Or did 
> others [mis]interpret?
>
> (I've purposefully left the Subject the same because it definitely 
> relates to Chan's morphology based taxonomy and my argument with my 
> meso-biologist friend about "species diversity" versus "phylogenetic 
> diversity".)
>
> On 9/26/22 15:35, Prof David West wrote:
>> I am a patterns and Alexander expert. glen's uncertainty / mild antipathy is 
>> spot on. Software patterns are an oxymoron.
>> 
>> Strong words, but happy to back them up with dozens of papers 
>> written/presented and hours of discussion.
>> 
>> davew
>> 
>> 
>> On Mon, Sep 26, 2022, at 6:29 AM, glen wrote:
>>> Very cool! Thanks.
>>>
>>> In particular, our property abuts "the ravine", which is a semi-wild
>>> place. The permaculture categories might help me orient my own
>>> intuition (that everything in the ravine should be left alone) with my
>>> neighbor's (clearing the whole area and reintroducing natives). He owns
>>> the majority of it. So, c'est la vie ... or perhaps "telle est la
>>> mort". (Don't blame me. I don't know French.) One thing this zone 0-5
>>> model might permit is modularity. That blog post implies such with the
>>> inverted garden interface. But it seems like there could be pockets of
>>> zone0es in wild areas and pockets of zone5s in urban areas,
>>> particularly in sprawling cities like LA or Houston. Growing up in
>>> Houston, where every square inch of semi-abandoned land seemed rapidly
>>> reclaimed by the swamp, is probably the source of my skepticism with my
>>> friends' diversity doctrine.
>>>
>>> There's a lot to digest in the biophilia links. I have 

Re: [FRIAM] Automata with FFT

[Prof David West]

I am a patterns and Alexander expert. glen's uncertainty / mild antipathy is 
spot on. Software patterns are an oxymoron.

Strong words, but happy to back them up with dozens of papers written/presented 
and hours of discussion.

davew


On Mon, Sep 26, 2022, at 6:29 AM, glen wrote:
> Very cool! Thanks.
>
> In particular, our property abuts "the ravine", which is a semi-wild 
> place. The permaculture categories might help me orient my own 
> intuition (that everything in the ravine should be left alone) with my 
> neighbor's (clearing the whole area and reintroducing natives). He owns 
> the majority of it. So, c'est la vie ... or perhaps "telle est la 
> mort". (Don't blame me. I don't know French.) One thing this zone 0-5 
> model might permit is modularity. That blog post implies such with the 
> inverted garden interface. But it seems like there could be pockets of 
> zone0es in wild areas and pockets of zone5s in urban areas, 
> particularly in sprawling cities like LA or Houston. Growing up in 
> Houston, where every square inch of semi-abandoned land seemed rapidly 
> reclaimed by the swamp, is probably the source of my skepticism with my 
> friends' diversity doctrine.
>
> There's a lot to digest in the biophilia links. I have to confess, I 
> haven't given pattern languages much attention. It always seems 
> motivated by geometry, which fails for me. Of course, I'm familiar 
> enough with software patterns. But that's always failed for me as well. 
> They seem too ephemeral, unstable ... i.e. not real, convenient 
> fiction, and *perfect* opportunity for gurus to blind others with their 
> gobbledygook mouth sounds. I guess it reminds me of category theory, 
> too abstract for my ape brain. But maybe some of his earlier work on 
> Clifford algebras might motivate me? I could start here, I guess: 
> https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4757-1472-2_41
>
> Thanks again.
>
> On 9/24/22 10:29, Steve Smith wrote:
>> 
>> On 9/24/22 9:49 AM, glen wrote:
>>> Such efforts seem so inherently metaphorical it's difficult for me to 
>>> approach a concrete conversation. For example, I have a couple of biologist 
>>> friends, one meso (bugs) and one macro (ungulates), who thought I was being 
>>> contrarian when I challenged their assertion that biodiversity in urban 
>>> areas was *obviously* lower than that of natural areas like forests. Of 
>>> course, I admit my ignorance up front. Maybe they are. But it's just not 
>>> obvious to me.
>> 
>> This may seem a little tangential but the realm of Permaculture Design has a 
>> suite of truisms on these topics, though they are articulated in their 
>> unique language which can be a little hard to translate sometimes.  I think 
>> the permaculture community represent a fertile laboratory for doing *some* 
>> experiments as implied by Glen's questions.
>> 
>> A good example which gestures toward the Chan work at least morphologically 
>> is maybe worth a scan if not a full read here:
>> 
>> 
>> https://aflorestanova.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/zones-in-permaculture-design/
>> 
>> Permaculture's 5 zone quantization doesn't preclude a recognition of there 
>> being continuous gradients in many dimensions from a locus of "technological 
>> closed-loop" (zone 0) and "biological closed loop" (zone 5).
>> 
>> There is a *lot* of talk in the literature about the interfaces around zone 
>> 0, 1, 2 techno-structures creating localized ecozones that harbor diversity 
>> (desired and undesired == vermin) which I think provide some good anecdotal 
>> evidence about biodiversity in transition zones and acute technological 
>> interfaces (e.g. roofs, walls, corners, posts, fences, etc).  Permaculture 
>> is a domain of recognizing and exploiting "happy accidents".
>> 
>> It is also worth noting the diversity spike that happens in estuarial 
>> contexts...
>> 
>> A more formal study of Urban/Architectural design with an eye to *health* 
>> (human-centric view) is the domain of Biophilic Design 
>> .
>>   Nikos Salingaros is a hard-core Mathematician at UT-San Antonio who 
>> addresses abstractions of Complexity 
>>  and Pattern 
>> Languages  as well as 
>> Architecture and Urbanism.  He also has some interesting opinions 
>>  about post 
>> modernism as well as Dawkins Atheism.
>> 
>> 
>>>
>>> Since then, they've presented (meso and macro) arguments that justify their 
>>> position. It does seem obvious that urban areas trend to more adaptable 
>>> animals like coyotes and raccoons and less so to, say, deer. The bugs are 
>>> more interesting. Meso guy found some articles that show "species" 
>>> diversity in urban areas is roughly the same as natural areas. But 
>>> phylogenetic diversity is clearly lower in urban areas. That 

Re: [FRIAM] Wolpert - discussion thread placeholder

[Prof David West]

Just to be clear, I have zero antipathy towards Wolpert or his efforts at 
steelmanning. I think Wolpert does an excellent job of phrasing as questions 
what I perceive "Scientists" and "Computationalists" to merely assert as Truth. 
I have long tilted at that particular windmill and I applaud Wolpert, and glen 
for bringing him to our attention, for exposing the assertions such that 
counter arguments might be made.

And when it comes to "computationalism" and AI; I know it is not the 1970s and 
things have "advanced" significantly. And although I do not comprehend the 
details as well as most of you, I do understand sufficiently, I believe, to 
advance the claim that they are suffering from the exact same blind spot (with 
variable details) as Simon and Newell, et. al. who championed GOFAI. Plus you 
all have heard of Simon and Newell but most of you are unfamiliar with 
McGilchrist and similar contemporary critics.

My antipathy toward "Scientists" and "Computationalists" arises from what I 
perceive as an absolute refusal to credit any science, math, or ways/means of 
acquiring/expressing knowledge and understanding other than theirs. Dismissing 
neolithic and pre-modern science is one example. Failing to acknowledge the 
intelligence (and probably SAM) of other species—especially octopi—simply 
because they do not build atomic bombs or computers, is another.

A really good book that would inform a discussion of Wolpert's questions, #4 in 
particular, is: *Other Minds: The Octopus, the sea, and the deep origins of 
consciousness*, by Peter Godfrey-Smith.  A blurb follows.

*Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on 
earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of 
life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the 
squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have 
been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for 
food, turn off light bulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make 
daring escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved through an 
evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our own? What does it mean that 
evolution built minds not once but at least twice? The octopus is the closest 
we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the 
encounter? *

davew


On Thu, Sep 15, 2022, at 12:22 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
>>There is some kind of diectic error in our response.
>
> Korrekshun - "deictic"
>
>
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Wolpert - discussion thread placeholder

[Prof David West]

Regarding Wolpert's first four questions:

In my opinion, all four reflect a kind of arrogance that I have accused 
Scientists and Mathematicians of many times in the past—an attitude that modern 
formal and abstract math and science are a kind of ultimate achievement of our 
species. Any and all other forms/means of understanding are discounted or 
denied. This is analogous to the arrogance of Simon and Newell (mentioned 
previously) that a machine that thought like a university professor was 
necessarily intelligent.

Ignored in the AI instance is the learning ability of a new born child. Ignored 
in the case of SAM is the very real Science and Mathematics exhibited by our 
species beginning in the Neolithic. Metallurgy, agriculture, animal husbandry, 
pottery, weaving, cooking, food preservation, etc.

Levi-Strauss writes extensively of two different kinds of science: concrete and 
abstract; the former grounded in perception and imagination, the latter 
divorced from same.  The object of all science is connections and explanations 
and based on experimentation and empirical evidence, but "concrete science" 
relies far more heavily on sensible intuition and not formal "proof."

SAM, for Wolpert, seems to be restricted to the that which came into being the 
past few hundred years. This fetish makes questions like—"Why do we have that 
cognitive ability despite its fitness costs?"—somewhat nonsensical. What 
fitness costs? Mutually assured destruction with nuclear weapons?" Certainly 
there were no evolutionary fitness costs; and, in fact, those cognitive 
abilities were essential and the prime mover of our species out of the 
neolithic.

A more reasonable question is what caused a small subset of our species to 'go 
beserk' and take a subset of the SAM that served our species so well for so 
long, to such abstract extremes? An answer might be found, and is argued, in 
the Ian McGilchrist works on recent  "left-brained" dominance. [left-brain is 
such a limited shorthand for what McGilchrist argues in some 700 pages of 
prose, that I am trepedatious  using it lest it evoke the wrong headed 
popularization of the notion.]

If we ignore the aberrant contemporary SAM and ask if we can find evidence that 
other species, e.g., cephalopods and cetaceans, have an equivalent to the 
concrete SAM that was widespread among our own species as far back as the 
neolithic. The answer is yes. Tool making, modification of environment, 
herding, even quasi-domestication of other species can be found.

The cognitive abilities of dolphins and octopi (et. al.) are well documented 
and include language, reasoning, knowledge of spatial relationships, planning, 
and even (when given LSD (famously the research by John Lilly with dolphins and 
more recently with octopi), altered states. There is little, or no, reason not 
to assume them to be SAM-sufficient for their environments and needs, just as 
humans were prior to, roughly, the Renaissance.

to be continued ...

davew


On Mon, Sep 12, 2022, at 6:29 AM, glen∉ℂ wrote:
> My question of how well we can describe graph-based ... what? ... 
> "statements"? "theorems"? Whatever. It's treated fairly well in List's 
> paper:
>
> Levels of Description and Levels of Reality: A General Framework by 
> Christian List
> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/21103/
>
> in section "6.3 Indexical versus non-indexical and first-personal 
> versus third-personal descriptions". We tend to think of the 3rd person 
> graph of possible worlds/states as if it's more universal ... a 
> complete representation of the world. But there's something captured by 
> the index/control-pointer *walking* some graph, with or without a 
> scoping on how many hops away the index/subjective-locus can "see".
>
> I liken this to Dave's (and Frank's to some extent) consistent 
> insistence that one's inner life is a valid thing in the world, Dave 
> w.r.t. psychedelics and meditation and Frank's defense of things like 
> psychodynamics. Wolpert seems to be suggesting a "deserialization" of 
> the graph when he focuses on "finite sequences of elements from a 
> finite set of symbols". I.e. walking the graph with the index at a 
> given node. With the 3rd person ... whole graph of graphs, the 
> serialization of that bushy thing can only produce an infinitely long 
> sequence of elements from a (perhaps) infinte set. Is the bushiness 
> *dense* (greater than countable, as Wolpert asks)? Or sparse?
>
> I'm sure I'm not wording all this well. But that's why I'm glad y'all 
> are participating, to help clarify these things.
>
> On 9/12/22 06:13, glen∉ℂ wrote:
>> While math can represent circular definitions (what Robert Rosen complained 
>> about), there are deep problems in the foundations of math ... things like 
>> the iterative conception of sets ... that are attempts to do what Wolpert 
>> asks for in the later questions. And it's unclear to me that commutative 
>> categories reduce to "finite sequences of elements from 

Re: [FRIAM] Floppy disks still live. Sorta

[Prof David West]

My very first PC was a Xerox 820 with a cabled IBM selectric as a printer and 
(2) 8" floppy drives.

davew


On Wed, Sep 14, 2022, at 9:58 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> When Mary moved here she had a collection of 3.5" floppies with her 
> early poetry on them...  she wasn't sure what she had and hadn't had a 
> floppy drive to look at them with since the 90s.   As it turned out I 
> had a USB floppy reader I had bought to help someone else recover their 
> history and she copied everything onto her hard drive... a few of the 
> floppies were unreadable... I don't remember the details (5 years ago?)  
> I believe that deep in my shed there is a mid 80s PC with a 5.25" 
> internal floppy drive... .   I also had a "core memory" artifact 
> from one of the earlyish LASL machines in my office for decades but I 
> can't remember when/where I let it go.
>
> I remember a Sandia?  Engineer who I would occasionally encounter on 
> flights in/out of ABQ and layovers.   He would carry a small stack of 
> punch cards that he used to take notes on and when anyone would ask him 
> about them, he would tell them about the history of such items and  
> offer to sell them one for $1, and apparently many, many people took him 
> up on that deal... a good deal by some measure for everyone.  I saw him 
> sell at least 5 or 6 in the times I was in his presence (on the plane, 
> waiting for a flight, etc). and I wonder where all those strange little 
> artifacts ended up? Ed or someone else on the same flight paths I was on 
> in those days might know who he is?   Sandia Engineers (and Scientists) 
> were easy to spot in airports, esp.  ABQ...  maybe LANL too, but Sandia 
> had a particular signature "look"?   The cards were probably Sandia 
> property and there is probably a waste/fraud/abuse scandal to be had in 
> there somewhere...  gak!
>
> I also used to collect exposed 35mm film from garage sales and friends 
> going digital?  Why would anyone have *exposed* film? Nobody knows 
> exactly... I assume the transition time when someone would deprecate an 
> old camera (after going digital) would lead to at least *one* roll of 
> film in the old camera half-exposed.   I kept them in a ziplock freezer 
> bag, thinking that *someday* I would (hand) process them all as a sort 
> of performance-art experience.   Instead I encountered someone about 5 
> years ago who was doing a similar thing and I simply gave my collection 
> (20 or more) of exposed rolls to them (along with a similar number of 
> frozen unexposed rolls).
>
> I also expect that abandoned USB sticks and micro/mini/SD/??? cards will 
> also be an interesting Archeological find someday.   I have a 4" 
> diameter metal pipe core to my spiral staircase with an open (capped) 
> top which I have come to use as a "time capsule". Every few weeks I have 
> a small collection of artifacts that have no proper use but are 
> entertaining in their own right that I drop down there.  I have at least 
> 3 or 4 USB sticks layered in there. I don't know exactly how deep my 
> collection is... I've been doing this casually for years but only with 
> small and acutely (at the moment) interesting items...  Maybe 1 foot 
> deep more or less? The presumption is that decades from now the house 
> (owner-built in the early 80s) will burn down or be bulldozed to put in 
> some ultra-modern thing and the spiral staircase will be the last thing 
> standing and *maybe* someone will notice as 1000 tiny bits of gak flow 
> out of the pipe as they haul it off.  Or not.   I've been tempted to cut 
> a tiny "door" in the bottom to provide access, but that would ruin the 
> conceit I think.  Maybe paint a "fairy door" in the same location to 
> suggest to a curious person to do so? MMmmmMM?
>
> I would drop the old floppy and a (newer) DVD-USB drive down the hole as 
> a "bootstrap", but they are both too big.
>
>
>
> On 9/14/22 10:09 AM, Tom Johnson wrote:
>> https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/we-spoke-with-the-last-person-standing-in-the-floppy-disk-business/#:post_86454
>>
>> ===
>> Tom Johnson
>> Inst. for Analytic Journalism
>> Santa Fe, New Mexico
>> 505-577-6482
>> ===
>>
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Re: [FRIAM] Wolpert - discussion thread placeholder

[Prof David West]

Wolpert's questions are fantastic. Thanks glen for prompting this discussion.

Re: question one about the "chasm with minimal cognitive capabilities necessary 
..."

I have two major problems with the assumptions behind this question.

First, the assumption that Godel, Einstein, and Beethoven exemplify 'greater' 
(in some sense of that word) cognitive abilities. This is analogous the the AI 
notions advanced by Newel and Simon that they had succeeded in creating a 
thinking machine because the thinking reproduced was that of university 
professors. They thought that the way they thought was the apex of human 
thinking. A much greater challenge— still avoided, even by the most 
sophisticated ML approaches — is how a baby is able to learn and extract 
meaning from a chaotic cacophony of inputs.

Second, that the cognitive capabilities of pre-Holocene humans were "minimal." 
The most pernicious myth with regard our long ago ancestors derive from either 
Rousseau or Hobbes—both of whom conjectured, with no evidence, that our 
ancestors existed in a primitive state—Edenic for Rousseau, and brutish for 
Hobbes, but simplistically primitive.

Quite the opposite was true. The world was far more complex and challenging, 
with everything from social relations to 'food chemistry' (e.g. brewing beer) 
to explanations of why everything in the world was as it was being highly 
variable across population groups and constantly in flux. A bit analogous to 
the baby making sense of the world.

Humans today are able to "survive" primarily because of tens of thousands of 
years accumulation of "culture." Because we have that resource, we do not have 
to figure out if that nice striped quadruped over there will eat me; or, if 
that red berry will kill me but the other red berry is essential for a great 
BLT.

It might be possible to make an argument: Godel, et. al., were able to do what 
they did because 'culture' reduced the daily (hourly, millisecond-ly) cognitive 
load such that it was possible to put the 'surplus' to work on issues of math 
and music; but, not that there was any kind of qualitative or quantitative 
difference in cognitive abilities of humans then and now.

to be continued ...

davew


On Sat, Sep 10, 2022, at 8:05 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> DaveW -
>> Just wanted to put this here as a placeholder for future conversation as I 
>> would like to take up Wolpert's questions even though I am not "miraculous" 
>> per glen's invitation.  I do need a day to two to read and pose questions 
>> /make observations, but others might be ready to chime in with observations 
>> right away.
>
> always ready to "chime" at the drop of a dime here...
>
> I look forward to your more considered responses.  I hope my own chimes 
> aren't more mud than water...
>
>
>
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[FRIAM] Wolpert - discussion thread placeholder

[Prof David West]

Just wanted to put this here as a placeholder for future conversation as I 
would like to take up Wolpert's questions even though I am not "miraculous" per 
glen's invitation.  I do need a day to two to read and pose questions /make 
observations, but others might be ready to chime in with observations right 
away.

davew

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Re: [FRIAM] signal and noise

[Prof David West]

Nick, 

noise is the signal - no a koan at all, but a conjecture that all that is 
considered noise, at this point, will eventually be revealed as signal. In part 
because, I believe, that the 'noise' is essential context for interpreting the 
signal. This is based almost entirely on natural language where syntax is 
inadequate for conveying meaning.

And, I was surprised when you failed to find justification from Jochen's post 
about metaphor and how it supports (y)our long held position that it is 
"metaphors all the way down."

All,

Thank you for the thoughtful responses to my question. I take to heart Glen's 
cautions about over generalization and "othering."  None of the conversations I 
was referring to were binary, and all were comprised of nuanced polyphonic 
positions from all participants with points of agreement as frequent as 
disagreement. More empathy than othering.

It does seem to me that if and when there was any kind of 'final divergence' it 
centered around a kind of signal-noise dichotomy along with an assertion of 
'faith': e.g., anything human can do,HAL will do better; or, just say OM and 
drop acid.

davew


On Fri, Sep 9, 2022, at 10:22 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> David,  
>
> I was with you until "signal is the noise".  Great Koan, but otherwise 
> useless for thought. 
>
> When you say, however, that there is a signal in what others take to be 
> noise, of course I have to prick up my ears.  A great example of this 
> was that "junk" DNA which turned out to be, at least, structural.  It 
> also turned out to be a mind of memory.  Junk Schmunk.  
>
> N
>
> Nick Thompson
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of Prof David West
> Sent: Thursday, September 8, 2022 7:12 PM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: [FRIAM] signal and noise
>
> It seems, to me, that several conversations here—AI, hallucinogens, 
> consciousness, participant observation, and epistemology—have a common 
> aspect: a body of "data" and disagreement over which subset should be 
> attended to (Signal) and that which is irrelevant (Noise).
>
> Arguments for sorting/categorization would include: lack of a Peircian 
> convergence/consensus; inability to propose proper experiments; 
> anecdotal versus systematic collection; an absolute conviction that 
> everything is algorithmic and, even if the algorithm has yet to be 
> discerned, it, ultimately, must be; etc..
>
> I often feel as if my positions on these various topics reduces, in 
> some sense, to a conviction that there is overlooked Signal in everyone 
> else's Noise; even to the point of believing the Noise IS the Signal.
>
> Is this in any way a "fair' or "reasonable" analysis?
>
> davew
>
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[FRIAM] signal and noise

[Prof David West]

It seems, to me, that several conversations here—AI, hallucinogens, 
consciousness, participant observation, and epistemology—have a common aspect: 
a body of "data" and disagreement over which subset should be attended to 
(Signal) and that which is irrelevant (Noise).

Arguments for sorting/categorization would include: lack of a Peircian 
convergence/consensus; inability to propose proper experiments; anecdotal 
versus systematic collection; an absolute conviction that everything is 
algorithmic and, even if the algorithm has yet to be discerned, it, ultimately, 
must be; etc..

I often feel as if my positions on these various topics reduces, in some sense, 
to a conviction that there is overlooked Signal in everyone else's Noise; even 
to the point of believing the Noise IS the Signal.

Is this in any way a "fair' or "reasonable" analysis?

davew

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Re: [FRIAM] The equations of the mind

[Prof David West]

Descartes' "joined and intermingled" view is actually very ancient. The Vedas 
are the oldest known "philosophical" writings and they put forth the notion 
that 'Mind' (Purusa) and 'Matter' (Pkrati) are infused from the tiniest atom to 
large structures. 'Mind' is complex, matter is not, and mind can 
"self-organize" in a manner akin to biological self-organization: such that, in 
an organism like a human being, mind is emergently "intelligent" and capable of 
'putting itself into a state' whereby it can escape the entanglement and 
achieve Nirvana.

You are correct is feeling that idea is modern, especially from embodied mind 
and altered states research of the past 70 years.

davew

On Tue, Sep 6, 2022, at 10:12 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Metaphors are in a sense the equations of the mind. At the core of many good 
> books there is a single metaphor (for instance "The Selfish Gene" from 
> Dawkins), or multiple ones (for example "Metaphors we live by" from Lakoff & 
> Johnson). This week I have found a nice metaphor site..
> http://metaphors.lib.virginia.edu/metaphors
> 
> ..when I googled the sailor metaphor from Descartes (which I saw in a Retweet 
> of Keith Frankish from Theodore A. Hoppe). Descartes said "The "I" is not 
> present in the body as a sailor is in a ship but is joined and intermingled 
> with it"
> http://metaphors.lib.virginia.edu/metaphors/9253
> 
> It is a remarkable quote from Descartes. To view the mind as an interwoven, 
> intermingled and entangled substance sounds very modern to me. Maybe 
> Descartes was not as wrong as Dennett claims in his book "Consciousness 
> Explained"? If I recall correctly the whole book is based on dismissing the 
> idea of a Cartesian Theater from Descartes 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_theater
> 
> -J. 
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] more structure-based mind-reading

[Prof David West]

>From glen: *"If you want to share values with some arbitrary shmoe, then get 
>to**
*
*  *work*. Build something or cooperate on a common task. Talking,**
*
*  communicating, is inadequate at best, disinfo at worst."*

This is kinda the whole point of _Participant_ Observation at the core of 
cultural anthropology. The premise is you cannot truly understand a culture 
until you live it.

Of course, there is still a boundary, a separation, between the anthropologist 
and those with whom she interacts, but sweat, calluses, blood, and emotions go 
a long way toward establishing actual understanding.

davew

On Thu, Sep 1, 2022, at 12:30 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> 
> 
> On 9/1/22 11:21 AM, glen wrote:
>> Inter-brain synchronization occurs without physical co-presence during 
>> cooperative online gaming 
>> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028393222001750 
>> 
>> There's a lot piled into the aggregate measures of EEG. And the mere fact of 
>> the canalization conflates the unifying tendencies of the objective (shared 
>> purpose) with that of the common structure (virtual world, interface, body, 
>> brain). But overall, it argues against this guru focus on "sense-making" 
>> (hermeneutic, monistic reification) and helps argue for the fundamental 
>> plurality, openness, and stochasticity of "language games". 
>> 
>> If you want to share values with some arbitrary shmoe, then get to *work*. 
>> Build something or cooperate on a common task. Talking, communicating, is 
>> inadequate at best, disinfo at worst. 
> I agree somewhat with the spirit of this, however a recent writer/book I 
> discovered is Sand Talk 
> 
>  by Tyson Yunkaporta and more specifically his references to "Yarning" in his 
> indigenous Australian culture offered me a complementary perspective...  
> 
> I definitely agree that the "building of something together" is a powerful 
> world-building/negotiating/collaborative/seeking experience.   The social 
> sciences use the term Boundary Object 
>  and Boundary Negotiation 
> Artifact.Jenny and I wrote a draft white-paper on the topic of the 
> SimTable as a "boundary negotiating artifact" last time she visited (2019?).  
>   A lot of computer-graphics/visualization products provide fill this role, 
> but the physicality of a sand-table with it's tactility and multiple 
> perspectives add yet more.   The soap-box racer or fort you build with your 
> friend as a kid provides the same.   The bulk of my best relationships in 
> life involved "building something together" whether it be a software system 
> or a house...   
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Augmented Reality

[Prof David West]

another, I think relevant/interesting science fiction reference: Neal 
Stephenson's *Snow Crash*.

Not  central to the novel, but central to scene settting for much of the action 
was a concept of a metaverse—a single streeet 32,000 miles long) where the 
superstructure/infrastructure was paid for, hosted on servers owned by a 
(world?) government; the structure maintained by a non-profit (ACM in the 
novel); Buildings and neighborhoods by corporations; rooms and suites by 
smaller businesses and affinity organizations; and smaller buildings/rooms by 
effectively any group or individual.

Always struck me as a not unreasonable approach to creating a metaverse, one 
free from the insidious and evil intent of some entyty like Meta.

davew


On Tue, Aug 23, 2022, at 7:41 AM, glen wrote:
> This is an interesting take on AR I hadn't really thought of:
>
> Sanas, the buzzy Bay Area startup that wants to make the world sound 
> whiter
> https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/sanas-startup-creates-american-voice-17382771.php
>
> And a voice modifier from a different company here: https://koe.ai/recast/
>
> This post brings home the implications of such:
>
> Does the rise of the Metaverse mean the decline of cities?
> https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/agora/2022/08/rise-metaverse-mark-zuckerberg-decline-cities
>
> Do we want our "public spaces" (e.g. cities) to be owned by singular 
> corporations? Olympia (where I live) is already bad enough, mostly 
> renters, most of the downtown rental properties owned by a single 
> family. We're inching ever so slowly to Plato's Philosopher King, 
> except any benevolence of the King is a mere (and sporadic) side-effect 
> of the primary motive: profit. This seems, to me, strongly analogous to 
> the grifters who call pretending to be "Agent Bob Jones" or whatever 
> from the IRS trying to steal money from me in the form of Walmart gift 
> cards. I know several of my similarly aged peers who talk loudly and 
> often about their rental houses, usually, since I'm surrounded by 
> liberals now, bragging about how they keep the rent low and try to 
> provide a good place for the renters to live. This altruism-washing of 
> their rent-seeking behavior is way too similar to disguising an East 
> Indian voice to sound more white. Is it really any less dystopian if 
> you're the one on top?
>
> It's interesting that I don't mind the loss of possible 
> contact/engagement with some people because they rely solely on 
> Facebook (Instagram, Zoom, or whatever) for their networking. Most 
> breweries and music venues up here use Instagram as their primary 
> announcement forum. The result? I don't know about them. So I'm much 
> less likely to engage. That's fine. More time to think 
> . I'm "this close" to 
> quitting LinkedIn, too:
>
> People Are Flooding LinkedIn With Strange Stories. We’re Calling Them 
> Broetry.
> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/why-are-these-posts-taking-over-your-linkedin-feed-because
>
> We really do need honest *public* spaces, even if you hate "socialism". 
> The internet is a public utility and should be treated that way. And 
> governments should devote some of our tax monies to 
> corporation-independent social network platforms. Mastodon would be 
> perfect for that.
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Jack Cowan / Visual Hallucinations and structure of Visual Cortex (was Re: dystopian vision(s))

[Prof David West]

abit, I refer to a Science Fiction Novel of relevance:  Hard 
>>> Wired <http://www.walterjonwilliams.net/excerpt-hardwired.html> - Walter 
>>> Jon Williams.   On the one hand, this early cyberpunk novel is armatured 
>>> around advanced tech facilitated by earth-orbit near-zero-gravity, 
>>> near-perfect-vacuum, near-zero-regulation, and 
>>> near-zero-distribution-challenges (de-orbited bundles) supporting a 
>>> florescence of pharmaceutical  research/development/production/use.   On 
>>> the other hand, the protaganist (as I remember him) was wonderfully 
>>> oldSkool, using a 3 chamber insulin-pump style tool interfaced to his 
>>> neural interface to drive his Red/White/Blue drug-drip system.  Red and 
>>> White are advanced forms of the conventional mapping (downers/uppers) to 
>>> support on-demand relaxation/rest and on-demand energy/focus.  Blue is an 
>>> on-demand perception-sharpening/broadening drug.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Walter is one of a fascinating contingent of NM contemporary writers 
>>>> nominally from ABQ (Belen I think) and HW published in 1987 was an early 
>>>> throwdown in the Cyberpunk Genre, and is set in the near-future 
>>>> Flagstaff-Albuquerque "Strip City" (and low-earth orbit).   Considering 
>>>> the proliferation/existence of strip-cities that have emerged along 
>>>> transportation (road, river, etc) routes organically, the Saudi "Line" 
>>>> Glen recently brought up here seems like an obvious ideation for an Arabic 
>>>> architect jacked on too much "Spice" ("Dune "reference).   
>>>> 
>>>> Even 20 years ago, Colorado Front Range residents were referring to 
>>>> Ft-Pueblo to reference the (near) continuous development of the I25 
>>>> corridor from Ft. Collins to Pueblo.   I flew back from Europe into Denver 
>>>> and drove from my daughter's place in Parker (south-south-Denver) to 
>>>> Pueblo on the back "farm roads" further out in the plains and discovered 
>>>> that the Ft-Pueblo stripmall-strip had grown out a good 10-20 miles East 
>>>> of I25 at several points (Castle-Rock, ColoSpgs, Pueblo).
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 8/18/22 11:00 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> 
>>> The retina isn't perfect by any means, and the visual cortex must fix its 
>>> inputs to make vision seem better than the raw inputs.This is from 
>>> memory, but I can look up references.
>>> 
>>> -Original Message-
>>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of Prof David West
>>> Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2022 8:56 PM
>>> To: friam@redfish.com
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] dystopian vision(s)
>>> 
>>> An analogy that might clarify what was being conveyed in the original post: 
>>> 
>>> A RAW image - no compression, no processing - is what the brain/mind can 
>>> perceive.
>>> 
>>> JPEG is the image after going through the "survival filter" - both 
>>> compression and adjustments to saturation, contrast, and sharpness. There 
>>> are all kinds of advantages to JPEG, but "accuracy/fidelity" is not one of 
>>> them. Consider all the consternation amateur photographers had a few months 
>>> back with their phones failing to capture the redness of the sky in San 
>>> Francisco and other parts of CA.
>>> 
>>> Drugs, so the advocates claim, are not an alternate transformation—not 
>>> HEIF—but simply a removal of the compression/processing mechanism entirely.
>>> 
>>> Of course, even RAW is lossy: a few million pixels  captured from the near 
>>> infinity of discrete photons available.  I suspect the brain/mind is less 
>>> lossy, but to what degree?
>>> 
>>> And my own experiences, both chemical and meditative, suggest to me that 
>>> some kind of patterned sense making is still going on because my 
>>> 'mind/consciousness' still interprets things — I still see the Argus Goat 
>>> (sometimess a ram instead of a goat, with multiple eyes, often conflated 
>>> with Argus Panoptes) allbeit It and I might have a conversation.
>>> 
>>> davew
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Aug 18, 2022, at 2:15 PM, glen wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I'm glad you softened it. Codependence *is* "organic to the nature of 
>>>> one's existence". What I worry about are those that idealize

Re: [FRIAM] dystopian vision(s)

[Prof David West]

t;>
>>>> On 8/18/22 8:34 AM, glen wrote:
>>>>> Parallax is an important technique for getting at things just *beyond* 
>>>>> one's current representational power. So, were I to try to steelman your 
>>>>> argument, I'd suggest that, yes, the process by which our bodies 
>>>>> refine/focus/hone-down our attention to a smaller, compressed thing from 
>>>>> a larger thing (whether the largess is "noise" or not is a tangent) is 
>>>>> important. And the entheogens permute that honing down, that reduction, 
>>>>> to create a different transformation.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's reasonable to speculate that the transformation we execute under the 
>>>>> influence of an entheogen might be *less* reductive than that we execute 
>>>>> when "sober". But to argue that the transformation under the influence is 
>>>>> a more accurate match to reality is fraught. Less reductive? Sure. More 
>>>>> accurate? Well, that would require us to go into that tangent. What do we 
>>>>> mean by more accurate? Does randomness exist? Etc.
>>>>>
>>>>> So we might want to be careful with that crossing between relatively tame 
>>>>> statements like "entheogens alter the cross-membrane transformation 
>>>>> providing parallax toward the out there" versus more metaphysical 
>>>>> statements like "entheogens provide a better transformation (or no 
>>>>> tranformation) across the boundary to the out there".
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for clarifying. I think I have a better understanding of the 
>>>>> argument. Those of us who play around with our interface probably *do* 
>>>>> have a better understanding of reality than those of us imprisoned by 
>>>>> their one, sole interface. But we don't need to go so far as to say a 
>>>>> drugged mind is more capable of perceiving the real reality.
>>>>>
>>>>> On 8/16/22 17:16, Prof David West wrote:
>>>>>> If you assume, or believe, that the mind (body-brain-embodied 
>>>>>> mind-Atman) naturally processes 100% of the inputs and assume/believe 
>>>>>> that a survival enhancing mechanism filters that stream to create the 
>>>>>> illusionary subset that we call Reality, then entheogens work to 
>>>>>> dismantle the filtering mechanism and expose the Real Reality.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Missing in my first post was a hidden premise, that any augmentations 
>>>>>> (Neuralink, et. al.) are almost certainly based on whatever we think we 
>>>>>> understand of the filtering mechanism, not the Mind, and therefore would 
>>>>>> augment/enhance that mechanism and therefore lead to results opposite of 
>>>>>> what is desired.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The missing premise is pretty much conjecture on my part but is grounded 
>>>>>> in an advanced, but not expert, understanding of AI and neural network 
>>>>>> technologies; so it should be taken with a tablespoon (thousands of 
>>>>>> grains) of salt.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> davew
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 16, 2022, at 11:22 AM, glen wrote:
>>>>>>> Opposite of what? I don't understand how augmentation is the opposite
>>>>>>> of the entheogens (drugs or meditation). Are you saying that, e.g. the
>>>>>>> Mojo Lens or Neuralink further restrict, whereas the entheogens lessen
>>>>>>> the restriction?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If so, then my guess is you could do the same sort of restriction
>>>>>>> modulation with any augmentation device. E.g. if there are 1 billion
>>>>>>> possible data feeds you could receive, decreasing them is like an
>>>>>>> undrugged person self-censoring and such, then increasing them is like
>>>>>>> taking a entheogen ... that is, assuming Church-Turing.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If we reject C-T, then it seems reasonable to argue that the body
>>>>>>> "computes" something that any computer-based augmentation would
>>>>>>> restrict, by definition, making it impossible to expand beyond what the
>>>>>>> augment provides. Computer-based augmentaiton would provide a hard
>>>>>>> limit ... an unavoidable abstraction/subset of reality.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 8/15/22 19:04, Prof David West wrote:
>>>>>>>> The hallucino-philia (and Buddhist epistemologists) would argue that 
>>>>>>>> our brains (minds) already fully grasp / cognize / perceive our 
>>>>>>>> physical reality. But, for survival purposes, it self-censors and 
>>>>>>>> presents our consciousness/awareness/attention with a small abstract 
>>>>>>>> subset of that reality—an illusion.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Drugs and meditation are 'subtractive' in that they dismantle the 
>>>>>>>> abstraction/reduction apparatus that generates the illusion hiding our 
>>>>>>>> 'full-grasping'.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> If such a belief were "true" then "augmenting our brains" would be the 
>>>>>>>> exact opposite, and exceedingly harmful, approach ...
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>  ...   unless, the augmentation was a permanent [lsd | psylocibin 
>>>>>>>> | mescaline] drip.
>>>>>>>>
>
> -- 
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Re: [FRIAM] dystopian vision(s)

[Prof David West]

closest technological metaphor I have encountered is holographic universe and 
mind as holographic 'interpreter/reader', which could be computationally 
simulated, I suppose.

davew

On Tue, Aug 16, 2022, at 5:28 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Dave writes:
> 
> < If you assume, or believe, that the mind (body-brain-embodied mind-Atman) 
> naturally processes 100% of the inputs and assume/believe that a survival 
> enhancing mechanism filters that stream to create the illusionary subset that 
> we call Reality, then entheogens work to dismantle the filtering mechanism 
> and expose the Real Reality. >
> 
> The mind may be configured to be a 5G transceiver or CAT scan?
> 
> Marcus
> 
> 
> *From:* Friam  on behalf of Prof David West 
> 
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 16, 2022 6:16 PM
> *To:* friam@redfish.com 
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] dystopian vision(s) 
>  
> If you assume, or believe, that the mind (body-brain-embodied mind-Atman) 
> naturally processes 100% of the inputs and assume/believe that a survival 
> enhancing mechanism filters that stream to create the illusionary subset that 
> we call Reality, then entheogens work to dismantle the filtering mechanism 
> and expose the Real Reality.
> 
> Missing in my first post was a hidden premise, that any augmentations 
> (Neuralink, et. al.) are almost certainly based on whatever we think we 
> understand of the filtering mechanism, not the Mind, and therefore would 
> augment/enhance that mechanism and therefore lead to results opposite of what 
> is desired.
> 
> The missing premise is pretty much conjecture on my part but is grounded in 
> an advanced, but not expert, understanding of AI and neural network 
> technologies; so it should be taken with a tablespoon (thousands of grains) 
> of salt.
> 
> davew
> 
> 
> On Tue, Aug 16, 2022, at 11:22 AM, glen wrote:
> > Opposite of what? I don't understand how augmentation is the opposite 
> > of the entheogens (drugs or meditation). Are you saying that, e.g. the 
> > Mojo Lens or Neuralink further restrict, whereas the entheogens lessen 
> > the restriction?
> >
> > If so, then my guess is you could do the same sort of restriction 
> > modulation with any augmentation device. E.g. if there are 1 billion 
> > possible data feeds you could receive, decreasing them is like an 
> > undrugged person self-censoring and such, then increasing them is like 
> > taking a entheogen ... that is, assuming Church-Turing.
> >
> > If we reject C-T, then it seems reasonable to argue that the body 
> > "computes" something that any computer-based augmentation would 
> > restrict, by definition, making it impossible to expand beyond what the 
> > augment provides. Computer-based augmentaiton would provide a hard 
> > limit ... an unavoidable abstraction/subset of reality.
> >
> > On 8/15/22 19:04, Prof David West wrote:
> >> The hallucino-philia (and Buddhist epistemologists) would argue that our 
> >> brains (minds) already fully grasp / cognize / perceive our physical 
> >> reality. But, for survival purposes, it self-censors and presents our 
> >> consciousness/awareness/attention with a small abstract subset of that 
> >> reality—an illusion.
> >> 
> >> Drugs and meditation are 'subtractive' in that they dismantle the 
> >> abstraction/reduction apparatus that generates the illusion hiding our 
> >> 'full-grasping'.
> >> 
> >> If such a belief were "true" then "augmenting our brains" would be the 
> >> exact opposite, and exceedingly harmful, approach ...
> >> 
> >> ...   unless, the augmentation was a permanent [lsd | psylocibin | 
> >> mescaline] drip.
> >> 
> >>   * * * * * * * * * * * *
> >
> >
> > -- 
> > ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
> >
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Re: [FRIAM] dystopian vision(s)

[Prof David West]

If you assume, or believe, that the mind (body-brain-embodied mind-Atman) 
naturally processes 100% of the inputs and assume/believe that a survival 
enhancing mechanism filters that stream to create the illusionary subset that 
we call Reality, then entheogens work to dismantle the filtering mechanism and 
expose the Real Reality.

Missing in my first post was a hidden premise, that any augmentations 
(Neuralink, et. al.) are almost certainly based on whatever we think we 
understand of the filtering mechanism, not the Mind, and therefore would 
augment/enhance that mechanism and therefore lead to results opposite of what 
is desired.

The missing premise is pretty much conjecture on my part but is grounded in an 
advanced, but not expert, understanding of AI and neural network technologies; 
so it should be taken with a tablespoon (thousands of grains) of salt.

davew


On Tue, Aug 16, 2022, at 11:22 AM, glen wrote:
> Opposite of what? I don't understand how augmentation is the opposite 
> of the entheogens (drugs or meditation). Are you saying that, e.g. the 
> Mojo Lens or Neuralink further restrict, whereas the entheogens lessen 
> the restriction?
>
> If so, then my guess is you could do the same sort of restriction 
> modulation with any augmentation device. E.g. if there are 1 billion 
> possible data feeds you could receive, decreasing them is like an 
> undrugged person self-censoring and such, then increasing them is like 
> taking a entheogen ... that is, assuming Church-Turing.
>
> If we reject C-T, then it seems reasonable to argue that the body 
> "computes" something that any computer-based augmentation would 
> restrict, by definition, making it impossible to expand beyond what the 
> augment provides. Computer-based augmentaiton would provide a hard 
> limit ... an unavoidable abstraction/subset of reality.
>
> On 8/15/22 19:04, Prof David West wrote:
>> The hallucino-philia (and Buddhist epistemologists) would argue that our 
>> brains (minds) already fully grasp / cognize / perceive our physical 
>> reality. But, for survival purposes, it self-censors and presents our 
>> consciousness/awareness/attention with a small abstract subset of that 
>> reality—an illusion.
>> 
>> Drugs and meditation are 'subtractive' in that they dismantle the 
>> abstraction/reduction apparatus that generates the illusion hiding our 
>> 'full-grasping'.
>> 
>> If such a belief were "true" then "augmenting our brains" would be the exact 
>> opposite, and exceedingly harmful, approach ...
>> 
>> ...   unless, the augmentation was a permanent [lsd | psylocibin | 
>> mescaline] drip.
>> 
>>   * * * * * * * * * * * *
>
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] "tech" companies suck

[Prof David West]

personal anecdote:

when I was fifteen, I took a bus trip from Salt Lake City to Boston, New 
Yorkand the '65 World's Fair (held two years, 64 and 65), DC, then Nauvoo and 
the Mormon Trail back to SLC. The tour director noted that I bought newspapers 
at every gas stop and by the third day I was recruited to deliver a daily recap 
of the news over the PA.  Most significant even that trip, the Watts riots.

davew


On Mon, Aug 15, 2022, at 10:06 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> The first movie theater experience I had after COVID had them shut down was 
> watching Tom Hanks wander through NM landscape (filmed here more than set 
> here) settings reading the Newspapers out loud to news-hungry, mostly 
> illiterate, post-Civil-War townies.   He added another layer of 
> curation/editorial value (or as a few towns demonstrated) bias and 
> censorship.  The movie title was "News of the World"... it was an effective 
> commentary/parable on the whole problem of "what means 'News'?", particularly 
> in a time of rapid cultural, economic, political and technological change.  
> 
> Sam Clemens was a reporter (Journalist?) before he was a writer of fictions 
> and commentary. 
> 
>> https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2015/today-in-media-history-in-1863-a-reporter-named-samuel-clemens-became-mark-twain/
>>  
>> 
> I live my life by aphorisms and anecdotes (maybe not literally, but they do 
> represent a significant influence).A quote that I have apparently made up 
> (since I can never find the source of it) is misphrased as "I always read the 
> paper two weeks late, because by then it has proven to be wrong or is no 
> longer relevant".   I always attributed this to Twain, but apparently I know 
> nothing.   Another quote attributed (by many) to him is roughly "A man who 
> does not read the newspaper is uninformed, a man who does read the newspaper 
> is misinformed".   I found this to be a nice salve to the harsh abrasions 
> caused by caustic declarations of "Fake News!" that ramped up so drastically 
> with Trump's ascendency.  Rich, regularly coming from a news outlet whose 
> name is so close to "Faux News" to attack all other sources.
> 
> I am sure that Tom and his profession has a lot of perspective to offer, but 
> in the voice of Twain, "I'm not sure we are prepared to receive it".
> 
> - Steve
> 
> On 8/15/22 6:53 AM, glen wrote:
>> It's an interesting question. Someone posted a poll on a Mastodon server 
>> recently, something like "What is it you want from all this stuff? (E.g. 
>> Twitter, Facebook, ...)" The possible answers were things like "Friendship", 
>> "Connectedness", etc. There was an "Other", which I filled in. I wrote 
>> something like: "The state of the world. When I was younger, I read the 
>> newspaper and watched the daily news on one of the big 3 networks. Now, it 
>> feels like everything's all fractured. TV news is for ancient, out of touch 
>> people. The newspaper is neither local, nor does it tell interesting 
>> national or international stories. So, I use these media, like 12-20 
>> different outlets just to get some sense of the state of the world." 
>> 
>> I wish I had a better answer to "where do you find this stuff". It can be 
>> exhausting trying to stay informed. Fora like FriAM help a bit. 
>> 
>> On 8/13/22 17:57, Gillian Densmore wrote: 
>> 
>>> 
>>> And where do find this stuff glen >_< 
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 2:41 PM glen >> > wrote: 
>>> 
>>> __ 
>>> 
>>> https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zevd/this-is-the-data-facebook-gave-police-to-prosecute-a-teenager-for-abortion
>>>  
>>> 
>>>  
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Re: [FRIAM] "tech" companies suck

[Prof David West]

The single most used social media by teens/early adults is Youtu.be 95%. 
Facebook, in that demographic, is but 32%.

davew


On Mon, Aug 15, 2022, at 9:14 AM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
> Here in Ecuador, group chat is very widespread. Unfortunately (?) it is 
> mostly through informal WhatsApp groups. Email is *so* last millenia, and 
> even FaceBook has mostly given way to Instagram, TikTok, whatever. Yuck. I 
> especially dislike WhatsApp groups because it has even taken over some 
> institutions, such as the foundation that I'm working with. The biggest 
> problems are that the identity of each person is tied to their phone number, 
> and there is no central archive of its content. For the former, if a person 
> loses their phone, they have no way to recover their chat history, and unless 
> person B has person A's information (name, etc.), person B only sees the 
> phone number of person A, hence having no idea who is who until they add all 
> these people to their phone's contact list. For the second, institutions tend 
> to lose their collective memory, unless someone is in the group from start to 
> finish, and somehow maintains an archive of past conversations.
> 
> On Mon, Aug 15, 2022 at 10:32 AM Roger Critchlow  wrote:
>> I've lately run into two mentions of "group chat" as the organizing 
>> principle of social media for the day.  You keep different groups for 
>> different purposes, and you don't let social media into the chat.  I think 
>> Friam actually functions as a group chat, aside from google scanning 
>> everything.  But technically it's a Gen-Z thing, so we obviously don't know 
>> what we're doing.
>> 
>> It was a neighbor group chat that busted the Ted Cruz Cancun getaway plan in 
>> February 2021, while Texans froze to death or were bankrupted by spikes in 
>> electric rates.
>> 
>> -- rec --
>> 
>> On Mon, Aug 15, 2022 at 8:53 AM glen  wrote:
>>> It's an interesting question. Someone posted a poll on a Mastodon server 
>>> recently, something like "What is it you want from all this stuff? (E.g. 
>>> Twitter, Facebook, ...)" The possible answers were things like 
>>> "Friendship", "Connectedness", etc. There was an "Other", which I filled 
>>> in. I wrote something like: "The state of the world. When I was younger, I 
>>> read the newspaper and watched the daily news on one of the big 3 networks. 
>>> Now, it feels like everything's all fractured. TV news is for ancient, out 
>>> of touch people. The newspaper is neither local, nor does it tell 
>>> interesting national or international stories. So, I use these media, like 
>>> 12-20 different outlets just to get some sense of the state of the world."
>>> 
>>> I wish I had a better answer to "where do you find this stuff". It can be 
>>> exhausting trying to stay informed. Fora like FriAM help a bit.
>>> 
>>> On 8/13/22 17:57, Gillian Densmore wrote:
>>> > 
>>> > And where do find this stuff glen >_<
>>> > 
>>> > On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 2:41 PM glen >> > > wrote:
>>> > 
>>> > __
>>> > 
>>> > https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zevd/this-is-the-data-facebook-gave-police-to-prosecute-a-teenager-for-abortion
>>> >  
>>> > 
>>> > -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>>> 
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Re: [FRIAM] dystopian vision(s)

[Prof David West]

from glen's narrative the following quote:

"In summary, depending on how exactly one wants to define the word “simulate”, 
the concerns of Bostrom, et al., properly formalized, strongly suggest that 
augmenting our brains can never allow us to fully grasp / cognize / perceive 
our physical reality."

The hallucino-philia (and Buddhist epistemologists) would argue that our brains 
(minds) already fully grasp / cognize / perceive our physical reality. But, for 
survival purposes, it self-censors and presents our 
consciousness/awareness/attention with a small abstract subset of that 
reality—an illusion.

Drugs and meditation are 'subtractive' in that they dismantle the 
abstraction/reduction apparatus that generates the illusion hiding our 
'full-grasping'.

If such a belief were "true" then "augmenting our brains" would be the exact 
opposite, and exceedingly harmful, approach ...

   ...   unless, the augmentation was a permanent [lsd | psylocibin | 
mescaline] drip.

 * * * * * * * * * * * * 

re: mega-architecture. In my formative years (high school) I was a huge fan of 
architecture and the works of people like Soleri. I remember looking at a lot 
of designs for mega-cities from Japanese architects. Today, I think it would be 
interesting to look at some of the massive airports—Marrakesh, Dubai, and 
especially Singapore—to get a feel of what it might be like to live in The Line.

davew


On Mon, Aug 15, 2022, at 6:22 AM, glen wrote:
> At the top of my LIFO stack of dystopian things has been "The Line":
>
> https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/theline
>
> Pushed by a ruthless monarchy, funded by fossil fuels, bulldozing 
> indigenous lands, ... yikes.
>
> But I now have a new one on the stack:
>
> https://www.mojo.vision/mojo-lens/
>
> Unlike bin Salman, these guys seem well-intentioned. But sheesh. I 
> can't even imagine wearing that.
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Isness: Using Multi-Person VR to Design Peak Mystical-Type Experiences Comparable to Psychedelics

[Prof David West]

With VR your 'ordinary senses' are still functional and still sending signals 
to the brain—hence "simulator sickness" when your inner ears disagree with your 
eyes. Also, the fact that your brain still has access to "normal" data, it 
tends to interpolate and interpret the sensory data from the VR apparatus and 
the experience is always a hybrid.

Some absolutely fascinating—but totally non-respectable—research was done on 
virtual sex, including 'body suits' with paired sensors and effectors, 
olfactory stimuli, and taste to augment the visual inputs. Sex they got, but 
lust and arousal eluded them.

None of that conflict exists with hallucinogens.

It is a huge mistake to study hallucinogens with an exclusive brain focus. Some 
of the most interesting work I say in Amsterdam involved attempts to track the 
effects throughout the body. This would suggest that even a direct 
silicon-neuron connection would still fall short and the Matrix notion is not 
achievable.

davew


On Mon, Aug 8, 2022, at 8:30 AM, glen wrote:
> Here's the SMMRY if anyone's troubled by a paywall:
>
> https://smmry.com/https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/08/06/1056727/vr-virtual-reality-psychedelics-transcendence/#_LENGTH=7
>  
> wrote:
>> She adds, "There's definitely differences between what a psychedelic 
>> experience feels like and what virtual reality feels like." Because of this, 
>> she appreciates that Isness-D charts a new path to transcendence instead of 
>> just mimicking one that existed already.
>> 
>> More research is needed on the enduring effects of an Isness-D experience 
>> and whether virtual reality, in general, can induce benefits similar to 
>> psychedelics.
>> 
>> The dominant theory on how psychedelics improve clinical outcomes is that 
>> their effect is driven by both the subjective experience of a trip and the 
>> drug's neurochemical effect on the brain.
>> 
>> VR is better at inducing awe than regular video, so Isness-D might similarly 
>> dial it down.
>> 
>> The startup sells a shortened version of Isness-D to companies for virtual 
>> wellness retreats, and provides a similar experience called Ripple to help 
>> patients, their families, and their caregivers cope with terminal illness.
>> 
>> A coauthor of the paper describing Isness-D is even piloting it in couples 
>> and family therapy.
>> 
>> For one phase of my Isness-D experience, moving created a brief electric 
>> trail that marked where I'd just been.
>
> I've been tempted by Steam's device: 
> https://store.steampowered.com/vrhardware/. But it hasn't been a 
> priority.
>
>
>
> On 8/8/22 07:05, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>> https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.00940 
>> 
>> This must be on some topic around here.
>> 
>> Originally picked up from 
>> https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/08/06/1056727/vr-virtual-reality-psychedelics-transcendence/
>>  
>> ,
>>  which is paywalled.
>> 
>> The original arxiv posting is 20 years old, but the work was just published 
>> inh
>> 
>> CHI 2020: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in 
>> Computing Systems
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] AI etiquette, Marijuana research

[Prof David West]

I would not consider Asimov's robots to be "flat and empty," but they are an 
anomaly in that regard. They did, after all, invent the Zeroth Law of Robotics 
all by themselves.

davew

On Wed, Jul 20, 2022, at 2:18 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
> I feel like this is yet another reminder that humans, by and large, lack 
> imagination.
> 
> The reason robots in sci-fi are flat and empty is because sci-fi is 
> re-telling Descartes’s assertion that everything except humans (probably, 
> sotto voce, except him) are flat and affectless.  Maybe even more than 
> machines are that, we imprint that on the paradigm of machine.  It’s just the 
> age-old thing of people needing to feel singular and important, and using 
> vehicles like religion to systematize their neediness.  That sci-fi prides 
> itself on being imaginative, while re-telling the same small portfolio of 
> bible stories and other similar sources is human Dunning-Krugerness on 
> display.
> 
> A world free of all that corruption probably has lots of dimensions of 
> possibility that humans will just drive by without noticing because their 
> minds are elsewhere.
> 
> Of course, each of your detailed points I recognize is true and a good one,
> 
> Eric
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jul 21, 2022, at 2:05 AM, cody dooderson  wrote:
>> 
>> It is surprising that AI is so creative. Many science fiction robots were 
>> calculated but uncreative. They are like Data from star trek, basically a 
>> calculator with very little creative potential. But it seems like AI, as it 
>> develops, is actually more creative than its human counterparts. 
>> Here are a few examples that come to mind. AlphaGo beat the grandmaster, Lee 
>> Sedol, with moves that the grandmaster had never seen before. The art world 
>> is seeing some very cool stuff coming out of trained neural networks like 
>> Dall-e2*.  In the Sony article, they talk about a trick where the AI put a 
>> wheel on the grass to initiate a controlled slide. Do you think that modern 
>> Neural networks will give any insight into the nature of creativity?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> * Dall-e2 https://www.reddit.com/r/weirddalle/ 
>> 
>> Cody Smith
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Jul 20, 2022 at 7:19 AM Roger Critchlow  wrote:
>>> Two articles from MIT Tech Review.
>>> 
>>> https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/07/19/1056176/sonys-racing-ai-destroyed-its-human-competitors-by-being-nice-and-fast/
>>>  
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Training AI drivers for Gran Turismo racing, it turns out that they can 
>>> learn to physically drive faster than people, but they're too aggressive to 
>>> win head to head races because they drive the competition off the road.  So 
>>> you need to train them to observe the norms of the competition, by 
>>> including penalties for crashes, bumps, cut-offs, etc, into the training.  
>>> They still drive faster than people, and the way they drive is a bit 
>>> disturbing to watch.
>>> 
>>> [So if you were training AI drivers for political races, would the norms 
>>> come from established law or where the voters could be persuaded to mark 
>>> their polls?]
>>> 
>>> https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/07/20/1056219/weed-influencer-and-scientist-feud-over-cannabis-hyperemesis-syndrome/
>>>  
>>> 
>>> 
>>> The scientist and the instagram influencer attempt to study the genetic 
>>> causes of CHS (cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome) and the influencer blows 
>>> up the study when she declares that the scientist is a shill on her 
>>> channel.  Ah the joys of decision making with uncertainty and cognitive 
>>> bias.
>>> 
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Re: [FRIAM] thanks for nothing biden

[Prof David West]

This summer there was a "cruiser bicycle" gathering here in Vegas. heavy 
frames, fat tires, lights everywhere, and sound systems. One trike had a large 
'trunk'; with a pull out gas grill and a sound system that rivaled those in 
movie theaters for sheer volume. Most were pure pedal driven but some had 
electric assist. The convoys as they rode around town were pretty impressive, 
even in a city full of neon.

davew


On Thu, Jul 7, 2022, at 8:29 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> There is one practice I find amusing that probably infuriates some.  On the 
> bike paths here, young black friends and family in their 20s ride souped-up 
> bikes that are the bicycle equivalent of choppers (eg silly handlebars). They 
> attach boom boxes to their bike racks and ride around together.  They don’t 
> ride fast or endanger anyone, but what a party on wheels. 
> 
> 
>> On Jul 7, 2022, at 7:54 AM, Steve Smith  wrote:
>> 
>>  
>> As I was leaving NL, Amsterdam was  planning to significantly reduce the 
>> number of "coffee shop" licensed locations because they were felt to be an 
>> enforcement problem... being a magnet to illegal drug trade in the vicinity. 
>>   It does seem like the best place to try to score something harder would be 
>> where the soft stuff is sold.   I don't know if streetwalkers hang out close 
>> to adult video shops but it seems like an obvious strategy?   I have become 
>> so innured to the odor of pot in the air that I hardly noticed the few areas 
>> in Amsterdam proper where there were skunky wafts... or maybe the higher 
>> humidity helps to mask or dilute such odors?
>> 
>> I'm not a fan of aerosolized *anything* in the commons, whether it is a 
>> pickem-up-truk "rolling coal" or a man or woman who thinks an extra layer of 
>> strong perfume makes them more attractive or less-offensive or someone who 
>> mistakes the strong scent of antiseptic in a space to be the same as having 
>> a well-maintained or clean space.   I'm not specifically offended by much of 
>> any of them (except maybe heavy exhaust) but it is always annoying that the 
>> folks offering them up seem to be insensitive to the idea of a shared 
>> commons (same with loud music/exhaust/partying activity).
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 7/7/22 7:59 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> Because of the pandemic, we have air filters in every room.   One nice 
>>> thing about that is that removes odors from the air.   Two common odors 
>>> from the area are 1) smoke from fires, and 2) a whole hillside of people 
>>> smoking pot.  Why can’t people use some non-aerosolized medication?   Drink 
>>> vodka all afternoon, I don’t care, at least I don’t have to smell it!
>>>  
>>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Gillian Densmore
>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 6, 2022 11:40 PM
>>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>>> *Subject:* [FRIAM] thanks for nothing biden
>>> 
>>>  
>>> Which is his entire, moronic time as POTUS
>>>  
>>> FUCK!
>>> Democratic senators hit Biden for 'extraordinarily disappointing' stance on 
>>> marijuana (msn.com) 
>>> 
>>>  
>>> What in the fuck is wrong with that man?  How is this not a nobraider 
>>> binary, 2 digit IQ push an vote by him?
>>> So far weed in places where it's legal has brought in fat stacks. From 
>>> taxes in sales of the wonderful caugh inducing treat alone NM is on track 
>>> to record surplus.  I don't get it  low hanging fruit to ease (or stop) a 
>>> depresse economy, and (maybe) slow or stop out of controll inflation.
>>>  
>>> i feel as though both parties despise the country.
>>> 
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[FRIAM] book recommendation

[Prof David West]

Marc-Uwe Kling, *Qualityland*, a novel. AIs, Amazon on steroids, oligarchies, 
Facebook ranking, Google search profiles (and Amazon equivalents), everything 
you WILL want in your future, today!!!

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Re: [FRIAM] Republicans need to renew themselves (was: self-care)

[Prof David West]

David, you are absolutely correct. Seldom is absolutist rhetoric anything other 
than petulant expression. It's other major use is to shout down contrary speech 
and prevent the kind of specific and nuanced discussion that both you and I 
would prefer.

It would be so cool to explore the Republican spectrum of individuals and 
mini-blocs in order to explicate what "they" want. Similarly for the enveloping 
conservative spectrum and the liberal and Democratic spectra. 

It would be wonderful if we could have a conversation as to why Dobbs was 
'correct law ' (with some input from the late RBG) despite Alito's moronic 
misreading of history. But that would mean taking on the task of thinking about 
how to craft appropriate and sound laws that clearly and absolutely established 
women's rights to privacy and personal health care. Maybe resurrect the ERA 
with codicils.

Or, a discussion of how Clarence Thomas is far more Malcom-X and Martin Luther 
King than Uncle Tom.

Or, my personal favorite, how the EPA ruling is, finally, a mandate to Congress 
folk to "do their Effing jobs!"

But look, I have grossly exceeded my 140 character limit, so, in today's world, 
it seems such conversations are not allowed.

davew


On Sat, Jul 2, 2022, at 3:42 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
> There is a thing my father used to do, which bothered me even as a very young 
> boy, but for which I didn’t have an analysis until I was a lot older and 
> doing such things.
> 
> For any difficult decision, he liked to make bitter scornful faces and say 
> “They’re all bad!”, a kind of game that a psychologist who visited our 
> elementary school once told us has a name, and is called “Isn’t it awful.”  I 
> could have gone up and hugged her for letting me know I wasn’t along in being 
> stuck in a homelife where that was played and hating it.
> 
> My analysis years later was that, since my father wasn’t a very smart man 
> (though he was a very good, giving, and loyal man), and the problems that 
> frustrated him are hard (hence we still live under them all), it was easier 
> to spit on it all, turn his back, and slam the door, than sit with the mess 
> and continue to try to make distinctions. But whether he liked it or not, a 
> bacterium in its tiny world can’t chemotax unless some direction is different 
> from some other. 
> 
> So, against the backdrop of a note with which I agree with quite a lot: 
> 
>> To a person they are cynical amoralists who care nothing about acquiring 
>> power and winning the next election.
> 
> How about specific people, like Katie Porter or Stacey Abrams?  Sheldon 
> Whitehouse?  In the system where they work, they seem like people trying to 
> solve concrete problems in good faith.
> 
> And yes, I do acknowledge your statement that you know you are being 
> over-the-top, and that is plenty disclaimer for me to live and let live.
> 
> Still, coming out of the discussion, I think being able to make distinctions 
> is valuable.  
> 
> Eric
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Republicans need to renew themselves (was: self-care)

[Prof David West]

Tactical party switching might be a reasonable explanation, but one that will 
be easily verified, empirically, when all 1 million switch back before fall.

Republicans switching to Democratic is easily attributable to disgust with 
Trump, not Republican positions and certainly not because of some kind of 
conversion to democratic positions. Again, easily verified by a reverse switch 
if and when Trump is no longer the candidate. The reverse switch would be 
especially telling if the candidate next time is a DeSantis or similar, as it 
would expose antipathy to the person, not the positions or governance.

davew


On Sat, Jul 2, 2022, at 11:36 AM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
> My sense is that many of the "defecting" Democrats have switched to vote for 
> the Republican candidate in the primaries who would be the most likely to be 
> beaten by the opposing Democrat in the general election.  So far, it hasn't 
> seemed to work.
> 
> On Sat, Jul 2, 2022 at 10:33 AM Prof David West  wrote:
>> __
>> *"The Republicans lost their way. When the Republicans turned into a MAGA 
>> party, they lost their last sparks of integrity and became a violent 
>> authoritarian cult which worships a conman."*
>> 
>> Absurd!!
>> 
>> Over 1 million registered democrats switched to registering republican this 
>> year, so far. Do you really believe that these people somehow became deluded 
>> cultists?
>> 
>> The absolute worst thing about the American political system is the, *de 
>> facto*, two-party system that forces voting *_for _*something when you 
>> simply want to vote *_against_* something else.
>> 
>> And it is the party apparatchik that personify "something" into a living 
>> breathing candidate. The vast majority (80+%) of voters then"hold their 
>> noses" and "swallow their disgust" and appear to vote for a 'person' when 
>> what they really want to do is vote against "something." [I am being 
>> deliberately vague about something, but it would be a mix of philosophies, 
>> beliefs, policies, laws, appointments, actions, oratory, etc.]
>> 
>> It would not even be accurate to say that politicians and party apparatchiks 
>> "lost their way;" as they never had a "way" to begin with. To a person they 
>> are cynical amoralists who care nothing about acquiring power and winning 
>> the next election. McConnell and Pelosi are but the two faces of same Janus 
>> god. *(Yes, I recognize that my rhetoric here is just as absurd as the 
>> quoted rhetoric that began this post.)*
>> 
>> davew
>> On Sat, Jul 2, 2022, at 12:33 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>>> It is not the US government. The Republicans lost their way. When the 
>>> Republicans turned into a MAGA party, they lost their last sparks of 
>>> integrity and became a violent authoritarian cult which worships a conman.
>>> 
>>> Corrupt Republican politicians like Mitch McConnell who look like their own 
>>> mummy cling to power by embracing this dangerous cult and by manipulating 
>>> voter districts (gerrymandering). The GOP needs to renew itself. Here in 
>>> Europe Green parties begin to replace the conservative parties.
>>> 
>>> -J.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>  Original message 
>>> From: Sarbajit Roy 
>>> Date: 7/2/22 08:58 (GMT+01:00)
>>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] self-care
>>> 
>>> The hypocrisy of the US govts is amazing.
>>> 
>>> For decades they have been desperately promoting pill based self induced 
>>> abortions as "safe" abortions in India and Latin America through their 
>>> puppets like the Guttmacher Institiute and by using misrepresentations and 
>>> outright lies.
>>> 
>>> These pills are highly toxic / carcinogenic and Guttmacher was caught red 
>>> handed by us for using fake accounts on Wikipedia to shape the "self 
>>> induced abortion" article to depict it as safe and as an at-home remedy. We 
>>> got Guttmacher delisted in India for about a year, but they made their way 
>>> back through the USAID RMNCHA programs used to bribe foreign government 
>>> servants to shape policy
>>> 
>>> Sarbajit
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 8:52 PM glen  wrote:
>>>> In the aftermath of the activist Justices overturning RvW, this popped up 
>>>> in my feed:
>>>> 
>>>> How to Give Yourself an Abortion
>>>> https://jewishcurrents.org/how-to-give-yoursel

Re: [FRIAM] Republicans need to renew themselves (was: self-care)

[Prof David West]

*"The Republicans lost their way. When the Republicans turned into a MAGA 
party, they lost their last sparks of integrity and became a violent 
authoritarian cult which worships a conman."*

Absurd!!

Over 1 million registered democrats switched to registering republican this 
year, so far. Do you really believe that these people somehow became deluded 
cultists?

The absolute worst thing about the American political system is the, *de 
facto*, two-party system that forces voting *_for _*something when you simply 
want to vote *_against_* something else.

And it is the party apparatchik that personify "something" into a living 
breathing candidate. The vast majority (80+%) of voters then"hold their noses" 
and "swallow their disgust" and appear to vote for a 'person' when what they 
really want to do is vote against "something." [I am being deliberately vague 
about something, but it would be a mix of philosophies, beliefs, policies, 
laws, appointments, actions, oratory, etc.]

It would not even be accurate to say that politicians and party apparatchiks 
"lost their way;" as they never had a "way" to begin with. To a person they are 
cynical amoralists who care nothing about acquiring power and winning the next 
election. McConnell and Pelosi are but the two faces of same Janus god. *(Yes, 
I recognize that my rhetoric here is just as absurd as the quoted rhetoric that 
began this post.)*

davew
On Sat, Jul 2, 2022, at 12:33 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> It is not the US government. The Republicans lost their way. When the 
> Republicans turned into a MAGA party, they lost their last sparks of 
> integrity and became a violent authoritarian cult which worships a conman.
> 
> Corrupt Republican politicians like Mitch McConnell who look like their own 
> mummy cling to power by embracing this dangerous cult and by manipulating 
> voter districts (gerrymandering). The GOP needs to renew itself. Here in 
> Europe Green parties begin to replace the conservative parties.
> 
> -J.
> 
> 
>  Original message 
> From: Sarbajit Roy 
> Date: 7/2/22 08:58 (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] self-care
> 
> The hypocrisy of the US govts is amazing.
> 
> For decades they have been desperately promoting pill based self induced 
> abortions as "safe" abortions in India and Latin America through their 
> puppets like the Guttmacher Institiute and by using misrepresentations and 
> outright lies.
> 
> These pills are highly toxic / carcinogenic and Guttmacher was caught red 
> handed by us for using fake accounts on Wikipedia to shape the "self induced 
> abortion" article to depict it as safe and as an at-home remedy. We got 
> Guttmacher delisted in India for about a year, but they made their way back 
> through the USAID RMNCHA programs used to bribe foreign government servants 
> to shape policy
> 
> Sarbajit
> 
> On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 8:52 PM glen  wrote:
>> In the aftermath of the activist Justices overturning RvW, this popped up in 
>> my feed:
>> 
>> How to Give Yourself an Abortion
>> https://jewishcurrents.org/how-to-give-yourself-an-abortion
>> 
>> I remain torn on the issue of self-care. And lots of energy was added to my 
>> oscillators with the whole "horse dewormer" thing for COVID-19. (Yes, I'm 
>> poking fun both at the people who bought veterinary ivermectin and the 
>> people who used the disgusting sneer "horse dewormer".) To boot, this post 
>> came up this morning about a homeopathic packet sent home with the patient 
>> after surgery: 
>> https://centerforinquiry.salsalabs.org/2022cfimidyearemailversion11. 
>> (Placebo is a thing, despite Blumner's write-off.)
>> 
>> Nick is fond of asking people whether they take multivitamins or not. And 
>> while it's true most experts claim that *healthy* people just pee them out. 
>> *Who* amongst us actually qualifies as "healthy"? What does "health" even 
>> mean? That's not an idle or rhetorical question. Am I "healthy", despite the 
>> excruciating chronic pain in my shoulders, neck, and lower back? Despite my 
>> sporadic debilitating migraines? Despite my now abated follicular lymphoma? 
>> Sure, I *seem* healthy because I can do pull-ups, shovel dirt, drink 5 pints 
>> without a hangover, and maintain a full-time job with a bit of time for 
>> hobbies. But what you see from the outside doesn't reflect what I feel on 
>> the inside, which is like a sick puppy where the slightest bad event would 
>> topple me into the "disabled" category. "Healthy" is at best a 
>> misinformation concept, at worst a malinformation concept: 
>> https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/mdm-incident-response-guide_508.pdf
>> 
>> Sneer all you want at the new-age descendant reading self-help books, 
>> cutting out magazine ads for their "vision board", or self-administering 
>> veterinary de-fetus pills, but there's something important, here. Fad diets, 
>> bottled water, alcoholism or pregnancy 

Re: [FRIAM] A* and emulatoin

[Prof David West]

Syncretic might be a term of interest here. Usually applied in the area of 
religion, e.g., the fusion of Vudun and Catholicism, so that Legba is a black 
saint in his niche in the Catholic cathedral in Havana.

My favorite example of syncretism was a nighttime pageant in Rio de Janeiro. A 
hill was covered in matte black so a spotlighted figure would appear to descend 
from heaven when walking down the hill. At the top of the hill, the figure was 
the Virgin Mary in immaculate white robes. As She descended clothing was shed 
and when she reached the bottom of the hill she was fully naked and 9 months 
pregnant, the personification of an Afro-Brazilian fertility goddess.

dave west


On Mon, Jun 27, 2022, at 11:04 AM, glen wrote:
> Yeah, I don't like "synthetic" as much because it seems to rely on a 
> false dichotomy between us and the other animals. Is a termite mound 
> "synthetic"? Granted, "artificial" may hide some of that, too. But I 
> think it's reasonable to say there are, say, naturally occurring 
> (geological) mounds. Then there are artisan-generated, artificial, 
> termite mounds, where the termites are the artisans. [⛧]
>
> And none of that artisanal stuff *requires* the artisan to 
> reductionistically "understand" everything from first principles in the 
> way "synthetic" might. "Synthetic" also often carries another false 
> dichotomy between synthesis and analysis. It's false because nobody 
> ever does pure [synthe|analy]sis. They're always done together. 
> "Artificial" allows for that mode mixing. [We've had this discussion 
> before in the usage of terms like "naturfact".]
>
> And that targets artificial morality nicely, I think. I've never really 
> grokked the difference between morality and ethics, I think because 
> making the distinction is a kind of composition/division fallacy. 
> Ethics seems to carry the pretense of (or a slippery slope to) 
> universality/monism, whereas morals seem to carry the pretense of 
> individualism/relativism. If laid out on a spectrum, that's fine. But 
> to draw a sharp line seems like sophistry.
>
> While I'm a consultant on a project regarding the ethics of AI in 
> medicine, what interests me most is simulating the agency of an 
> individual practitioner ... similar to the way we used to play 
> red-blue-gray teams back at lockheed ... or the way you might simulate 
> modern [cough] cyberwarfare.
>
>
> [⛧] Of course, you have to go all the way down to the 3rd defn in AH to 
> find the right one. So if "synthetic" might mean "cobbled together from 
> stuff you found lying around", then maybe it's better than 
> "artificial". What I mean by both terms is closer to "glitch" ... a 
> little bit of intent and a little bit of accident.
>
> AH "3. A phenomenon or feature not originally present or expected and 
> caused by an interfering external agent, action, or process, as an 
> unwanted feature in a microscopic specimen after fixation, in a 
> digitally reproduced image, or in a digital audio recording."
>
> On 6/27/22 09:54, Steve Smith wrote:
>> I appreciate your addition of the 'M' to the *-match and want to remind 
>> myself out loud in front of you that I once (and maybe should again) 
>> preferred *synthetic* to *artificial* in the early days of VR, 
>> "Artificial Reality" was in the running as a term, but I felt *Synthetic 
>> Reality* carried the assertive sense of intentionality.  "Artificial" felt 
>> more passive... an artifact of a willful creation with "Synthetic" feeling 
>> closer to the dynamic act of *synthesizing*.  And of course now (maybe not 
>> then), the spirit OF a mashup vs a whole-cloth thing comes through with 
>> "Synthetic".   This of course before I came to learn the terms artifice and 
>> artificer in this context.
>> 
>> Is "Ethics" not in some sense *artificed* or *constructed* morality?   I 
>> don't know, it is definitely an interesting tangent to all the other 
>> tangents that we tangent on here (tangentially).   As an aside, does a 
>> tangent of a tangent (of a tangent) imply higher and higher derivatives, it 
>> seems like it is precisely that?!  but in what dimension?
>> 
>> On 6/27/22 4:16 PM, glen wrote:
>>> Thanks very much for that link to mental contagion. It targets a number of 
>>> problems I have with intersubjectivity, even if the author's nowhere near 
>>> as skeptical as I think they should be. >8^D
>>>
>>> I drafted and deleted a response to Marcus' point about simple or 
>>> high-order prediction. My draft targeted the distinction between 
>>> [si|e]mulation more directly than yours. But yours homesteads a much more 
>>> aggressive territory. (Tangentially, one of the A*'s I've been most 
>>> interested in lately is AM - artificial morality. It turns out that 
>>> simulation has a huge role to play in spoofing biases.)
>>>
>>> I intended to end that deleted post with my old rant about the (lack of a) 
>>> difference between verification and validation ... a standard pedantic 
>>> stance 

Re: [FRIAM] AOL 3.0!

[Prof David West]

I advised the U of M students who created gopher. Also a smalltalk browser that 
never gained any traction because it was smalltalk and embedded in an image.

davew


On Tue, Jun 7, 2022, at 11:15 AM, glen wrote:
> IDK, I was fond of FTPMail and Gopher. They fit better with the BBS 
> interfaces I learned to love. I've forgotten if I've mentioned this 
> here before:
>
> https://telehack.com/telehack.html
>
> I played around on it quite a bit when I first learned of it ... blast 
> from the past.
>
> On 6/7/22 10:15, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> Usenet in 1995 was the peak of the internet civilization.
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>>> On Jun 7, 2022, at 9:59 AM, Frank Wimberly  wrote:
>>>
>>> 
>>> I had a CMU Andrew account.  You're all pikers.  Long live AFS.
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Frank C. Wimberly
>>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>>
>>> 505 670-9918
>>> Santa Fe, NM
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 7, 2022, 9:41 AM Steve Smith >> > wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Glen wrote:

 Just yesterday, I saw an email post to a math forum from someone with 
 an aol.com  suffix. I thought "Who in hell still uses 
 AOL?" Ha! Now I've got a bad case of FOMO. But I'll be damned if I'm 
 joining yet another Discord server ... maybe next week.
>>>
>>> I was recently back in touch with a high-school chum.  She was quite 
>>> proud of her aol.com  account and I didn't have the heart 
>>> to tell her how much the olde garde who had been on some version of the 
>>> internet before Al Gore (and AOL and Compuserve) invented it considered AOL 
>>> users to be an embarrassment.  And then there are the WELL (whole earth 
>>> 'lectronic link) folks who were (in?) ordinately proud of their Bay Area 
>>> BBS system that hosted thousands (tens of?) in the 80s.  I still have 
>>> friends who use their well.com  addys proudly.
>>>
>>> I am still a little mad/dismissive of AOL (and SciAm) because we did an 
>>> early hypermedia "proof of concept" for SciAm (student project at LANL) and 
>>> they blithely were (in the background) signing like a 10 year deal with AOL 
>>> to provide that service for their customers.   For that whole decade (into 
>>> the 2000s) I think Scientific American did not even have a website (or when 
>>> they did it was served through AOL).   We did all the mockup on a NeXT 
>>> machine which was a little unfair and/or showed things in too good of a 
>>> light really.   Maybe what AOL did (pretty lame BTW) was actually a good 
>>> LCD (least common denominator) for *their* customers and many who were 
>>> dialing in at 1200bps on an early Winderz or even DOS machine.
>>>
>>> I was an early patron of the first ISP in Santa Fe (StudioX/nets.com 
>>> ) with Roadrunner.com and several others coming in on 
>>> their heels for my first private e-mail/web address, but let it go when (on 
>>> their 10th anniversary) they *said* they were selling/passing us all off to 
>>> one of the others and becoming nothing but a boutique web design/services 
>>> shop.   Apparently enough of their customers raised a ruckus because after 
>>> I'd moved to ABQ based Southwest Cyberport (thus swcp.com 
>>> ) they retracted the threat and kept nets.com 
>>>  running (through whomever bought them out)...
>>>
>>> I do sometimes covet a well.com  address, but not 
>>> enough to actually sign up for it (seems they *still* offer new well.com 
>>>  addresses?). https://www.well.com/join/ 
>>>    $150/year!
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Economic Health?

[Prof David West]

Nevada casinos have set record profits every month for the past year.
Clark county home prices have set new records every month for past year.
gas prices are second highest in US (we just passed Hawaii and are second only 
to California)
rents have increased about 5-10% per month since last summer.

Is this a healthy economy? For whom?

davew


On Tue, Jun 7, 2022, at 9:00 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> On 6/7/22 12:22 AM, glen wrote:
>>
>> https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-best-economies/21697
>>
>> Top 5 in "Economic Health" are red states. But my guess is all we'll 
>> hear about from those states for this election is how bad the economy 
>> is. Economic Health is defined as:
>>
>>> Unemployment Rate: Double Weight (~4.30 Points)
>>> Underemployment Rate: Half Weight (~1.08 Points)
>>> Change in Nonfarm Payrolls (2021 vs. 2020): Full Weight (~2.15 Points)
>>> Change in Total Civilian Labor Force (2021 vs. 2020): Full Weight 
>>> (~2.15 Points)
>>> Increase in Ratio of Full-Time Jobs to Part-Time Jobs (2020 vs. 
>>> 2019): Half Weight (~1.08 Points)
>>> Median Annual Household Income Adjusted for Cost of Living: Full 
>>> Weight (~2.15 Points)
>>> Growth in State Personal Income (2021 vs. 2020): Full Weight (~2.15 
>>> Points)
>>> Government Surplus/Deficit per Capita: Full Weight (~2.15 Points)
>>> Unfunded Public Pension Plans per Capita: Full Weight (~2.15 Points)
>>> Share of Uninsured Population: Half Weight (~1.08 Points)
>>> Share of Population in Poverty: Full Weight (~2.15 Points)
>>> Foreclosure Rate: Full Weight (~2.15 Points)
>>> Growth in Number of Businesses (2020 vs. 2019): Full Weight (~2.15 
>>> Points)
>>> Fiscal Health: Full Weight (~2.15 Points)
>>> Building-Permit Activity: Full Weight (~2.15 Points)
>>> Average Educational Attainment of Recent Immigrants: Half Weight 
>>> (~1.08 Points)
>>> Average Educational Attainment of Recent Migrants from Other U.S. 
>>> States: Half Weight (~1.08 Points)
>
> I'm thinking this projects down somewhat to "service" vs "natural 
> resource" economy.   Timber and Oil and ??? have been booming during and 
> after Covid and amidst WWIII while tourist/service economies must still 
> be suffering the shutdowns?
>
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] These women might be able to tolerate Friam

[Prof David West]

The Metaphysical Animals book is, IMO, a pretty dry biography that removes all 
the passion and the ardor of both the time period and the philosophical 
arguments. The actual ideas advanced by the four women (and colleagues) are, 
again IMO, very important and I find them compelling: on their face and because 
of congruence with the metaphysics of mysticism (Alchemy to Taoism with heavy 
doses of Buddhism) of which I am so fond.

I did find their rebuttal of Ayers reminiscent of arguments I have made to Nick 
re: Pierce. That "truth" is what we eventually agree upon is possible only to 
the extent you are willing to rig the conversation to exclude both 'evidence' 
and 'advocacy' of contrary positions.  Same notion I posed to Jochem—if you 
assume physicality and purposely exclude any data points that are not reducible 
to physical things—then you are simply creating a metaphysical tautology.

On another note: those of you that are reading Graeber's *Dawn of Everything*, 
it would be fun to have a discussion and share reactions. I found it 
fascinating. My habit is to absorb, in toto, the data and the arguments, to 
'Grok' the totality of the book first and only then apply my critical and 
analytical faculties to see what lasts. I know most of you read critically from 
the get-go, and so I would value your input.

Tor those of you not ready to commit to a 500 page tome, *Fragments of an 
Anarchist Anthropology,* will provide a kind of overarching thesis statement 
for *Dawn*.

davew


On Mon, Jun 6, 2022, at 10:14 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> I hope FRIAM is not dead yet. It always inspires me. The recent discussion 
> with Nick for instance inspired me to write this short blog post today
> https://blog.cas-group.net/2022/06/the-strange-phenomenon-of-consciousness/
> 
> -J.
> 
> 
>  Original message 
> From: George Duncan 
> Date: 6/6/22 04:59 (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] These women might be able to tolerate Friam
> 
> Or rather, that they could bring FRIAM to life!
> 
> George Duncan
> Emeritus Professor of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University
> georgeduncanart.com
> See posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
> Land: (505) 983-6895  
> Mobile: (505) 469-4671
>  
> My art theme: Dynamic exposition of the tension between matrix order and 
> luminous chaos.
> 
> "Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may 
> then be a valuable delusion."
> 
> From "Notes to myself on beginning a painting" by Richard Diebenkorn. 
> "It's that knife-edge of uncertainty where we come alive to our truest 
> power." Joanna Macy.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jun 5, 2022 at 7:33 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:
>> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/books/review/metaphysical-animals-clare-mac-cumhaill-rachael-wiseman.html?smid=url-share
>> -- 
>> Frank Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>> 505 670-9918
>> 
>> Research:  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2
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Re: [FRIAM] Peirce, Buddhism, Monism, Behaviorism, oh my!

[Prof David West]

Jochem,

It feels, to me, that your notions of what makes something real is kind of 
tautological and often inconsistent.

Tautological in the sense that: if we assume that reality is fundamentally 
things—particles of matter, or strings of DNA— then what is real is only that 
which conforms to our assumption. If we assume that Reality is fundamentally 
nothing but "information" (Wheeler's It from Bit), or Buddha's (et. al.) 
"consciousness" then conformity to physicality and thingness is not proof of 
anything.

Inconsistent when you make statements like "people came up with it (fire 
breathing dragons) when they first stumbled on dinosaur bones"—an assertion 
that is just as much a fantasy as a story about fire breathing dragons. You 
have no way to confirm either story, both are "imaginations."

davew


On Fri, Jun 3, 2022, at 12:30 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Maybe it is more useful to define "real" in terms of systems. We know that 
> "emergence" can lead to new systems which can interact and collide with the 
> old one. Here is a recent paper from Oriol Artime and Manilo De Domenico 
> about emergence.
> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rsta/2022/380/2227
> 
> One system is the biological world of DNA, RNA, amino acids and all the stuff 
> you can build from it: animals, plants, bacteria, etc. The other system is 
> the world of words and language. Now we can say an idea in one system is real 
> if there is a corresponding element in the other. The idea of a 
> fire-breathing dragon for instance is unreal. People came up with it when 
> they first stumbled upon dinosaur bones. The idea of a dinosaur like a T-Rex 
> or a Triceratops is probably real, because scientists have evidence for the 
> existence of dinosaurs in the biological world of the past.
> 
> -J.
> 
> 
>  Original message 
> From: Eric Charles 
> Date: 6/3/22 05:28 (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Peirce, Buddhism, Monism, Behaviorism, oh my!
> 
> We can define it in many ways, but it is still worth considering that the 
> more interesting question might be how the word functions, in practice. 
> 
> What is the role that confirmation-by-others plays in what what you, or I, or 
> someone else ascribes reality to? How sensitive is that ascription to 
> variations in confirmation-by-others? What other factors affect the 
> ascription's strength? What weakens it? 
> 
> As for dreams: Plenty of people believe they have had dreams confirmed, both 
> in their own direct experience and in the experiences of others. It really is 
> a much more mirky topic than most give it credit for. 
> 
> 
 <mailto:echar...@american.edu>
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jun 2, 2022 at 5:29 PM Jochen Fromm  wrote:
>> If we want to define "real" in terms of observers we could say an experience 
>> is real when other observers have the same experience in the same situation 
>> or context and can confirm it independently *and* subsequently.
>> 
>> A squirrel we meet in the park can be confirmed by others and if we find out 
>> the place where it lives, we can observe it subsequently.
>> 
>> A rainbow in the clouds or a movie in the cinema could be confirmed by other 
>> observers, but only for a short time and not subsequently in the time that 
>> follows.
>> 
>> A dream at night can neither be confirmed by others nor repeated by oneself 
>> subsequently. We experience things that seem to be real, but when we wake up 
>> in the morning we see that they are not real. We are not able to confirm the 
>> experience. 
>> 
>> -J.
>> 
>> 
>>  Original message 
>> From: ⛧ glen 
>> Date: 6/1/22 03:43 (GMT+01:00)
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Peirce, Buddhism, Monism, Behaviorism, oh my!
>> 
>> How many subsequent experiences are needed? 2? A google? And is reality 
>> defeasible? Eg if some experience is 'real' to me, then I get some brain 
>> damage and no longer get repeats, is the now unexperienced experience real?
>> 
>> On May 31, 2022 6:05:40 PM PDT, Nicholas Thompson  
>> wrote:
>> >Dave, I think I disagree. Not all experiences have a character of being 
>> >real. Only those that are confirm or subsequent experiences.
>> >
>> >Sent from my Dumb Phone
>> >
>> >On May 31, 2022, at 8:27 PM, Prof David West  wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >At the risk of becoming a poster boy for glen's comments about cult 
>> >maintenance and othering;
>> >
>> >It is the body an

Re: [FRIAM] Peirce, Buddhism, Monism, Behaviorism, oh my!

[Prof David West]

At the risk of becoming a poster boy for glen's comments about cult maintenance 
and othering;

It is the body and brain that are Illusion, the self Real.

The mirage, the rainbow illustrate the emergence of Illusion. Raindrops and 
neurons are posited as ex post facto "explanations" and "causes" for very real, 
'perceptions,' 'apprehensions,' 'experiences' of rainbows and mirages.

davew

On Tue, May 31, 2022, at 12:59 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Interesting episode. Yes, Garfield apparently uses it to advertise his book. 
> I like the mirage example he uses (at 11:00) to illustrate an illusion which 
> is real as an experience and as a dynamic refraction process but unreal as a 
> physical substance. 
> https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691220284/losing-ourselves
> 
> Daniel Dennett recently posted on Twitter a link to an article which contains 
> the same idea, but for a rainbow instead of a mirage: perceiving a rainbow is 
> a real experience of a colored arc, but also an illusion because there is of 
> course no real physical arc at the place where we see it. 
> https://www.keithfrankish.com/2022/05/like-a-rainbow/
> 
> Maybe the illusion of the self works indeed in the same way? As whole persons 
> who have bodies and brains we are real, just as raindrops in the sky are 
> real. But when the billions of neurons start to sparkle in the light of 
> conscious thoughts, the experience of a self emerges for a short time like a 
> rainbow which emerges shortly from a million raindrops that bend the light 
> towards the observer.
> 
> I believe Jay Garfield is right when he says that we are able to construct 
> ourselves as embedded beings. It is as if we are 6, 7 or 8 dimensional beings 
> in a 4 dimensional spacetime where the additional dimensions are embedded in 
> the others. This additional dimensions come through language and enable to 
> specify a personality. If we consider a person from a 3rd person point of 
> view, then the personality of a person certainly determines the behavior. 
> This means everyone has a self in form of a character or personality. Even if 
> it is illusionary or an unreachable ideal to be a certain type of person, 
> such a type can be approximated. Our personalities can be considered as 
> embedded abstract person types that we acquire and approximate in the course 
> of time. In this sense we can say we have a self that guides our actions. And 
> the abstract type is independent from us, since it could also be implemented 
> in a sophisticated robot, android or AI.
> 
> -J.
> 
> 
>  Original message 
> From: thompnicks...@gmail.com
> Date: 5/31/22 11:04 (GMT+01:00)
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' 
> Cc: 'Mike Bybee' , stephenraron...@gmail.com, 'Grant 
> Franks' 
> Subject: [FRIAM] Peirce, Buddhism, Monism, Behaviorism, oh my!
> 
> https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/282-do-you-really-have-a-self/id733163012?i=1000563340865
>  
> Jay Garfield promotes his book **Losing the Self **on the Sam Harris Podcast. 
>  I can see no evidence that Garfield ever read a word of Peirce, but It’s 
> fascinating how closely he tracks Peirce’s monism.  Fascinating, also, to see 
> how Harris never quite gets it, repeatedly trying to drag the outside/inside 
> distinction back into the conversation, while slathering praise on Garfield 
> for eliminating it.  Reminds me of James’s failure to ever quite “get” 
> Peirce.  But then it was James who died a neutral monist.  Oh well. 
>  
> Reminded me of all the times that Dave West has accused me of being a closet 
> Buddhist.
>  
> Nick
>  
> Nick Thompson
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>  
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Re: [FRIAM] quotes and questions

[Prof David West]

Richard Gabriel developed a program, **Inkwell**, that writes poetry. It can 
produce poems in any mode—haiku to free verse—and in any author's style. He 
presented some of the poems to the annual Warren Wilson (where he earned his 
MFA in poetry) conference and they went through the usual criticism process. He 
did not reveal that the author of the poems was his software until the last 
day. Because none of the participants at the conference—professional poets, 
professors, other graduate students—twigged on the fact that the poems were 
composed by a computer instead of a human, he asks if **Inkwell** passed the 
Turing Test.

Richard's last work at IBM was a DOD project that involved detecting "threats" 
in social media postings, then composing posts to deflect that threat. He 
repurposed some of the natural language, machine learning, capabilities of 
Inkwell for that project.

The next time you go on social media to generate a flash mob to protest at the 
home of a supreme court justice, don't be surprised if new posts, 
indistinguishable in any and every way, from your own, appear setting a new 
time or location for the mob.

As impressive as Richard's work may be (is); no, I do not think it resolves the 
fundamental issue. I still maintain that the "languages" of math, algorithms, 
logic, and similar formalisms are _inadequate_ for communication of most human 
knowledge and experience. Metaphorically speaking, they simply lack the 
bandwidth.

Note that I am making no claim with regard the experiences or the ability to 
communicate—in some language—those experiences. I am simply making a claim of 
inadequacy/insufficiency for a particular set of "languages." I am suggesting 
that it might be possible to develop/evolve a language sufficient for the task.


davew


On Sat, May 14, 2022, at 9:13 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Ok, happy robots in hot tubs doesn’t do it for you.  How about some machine 
> learning generated poems? 
> 
> https://sites.research.google/versebyverse/
> 
> 
>> On May 14, 2022, at 4:27 PM, Prof David West  wrote:
>> 
>>  
>> Thank you Marcus for the insightful comments.
>> 
>> I agree with you that the issue is one of communication, and in some sense, 
>> one of language. I would depart from your response with regard the assertion 
>> that the language must be precise; and further, the implication that 
>> equations, computer programs, or a simulacrum could constitute a "language."
>> 
>> I would claim that a language with perfect and complete syntax and precise 
>> denotation will, necessarily be insufficient to express and communicate the 
>> vast majority of human experiences and knowledge/awareness/understanding. 
>> [This is a more nuanced version of my frequently made claim that, "science 
>> and math are only useful for the simplest of problems."]
>> 
>> Humans can, with reasonable efficacy, communicate by means other than a 
>> precisely defined language. Evocative and connotative poetry, imagery, 
>> allusion, and metaphor, within a rich body of context is far more powerful 
>> than any formal language.
>> 
>> Consider this alternative means of communication as a "language," RBL 
>> (Right-brain language). It seems reasonable to expect that RBL might be 
>> improved and extended, with added rigor, while avoiding the reductionism 
>> that exemplifies formal, precisely defined languages of math and science 
>> (left-brained all). I can imagine a RBL-grounded metaphysics and 
>> epistemology.
>> 
>> A robust RBL might provide the communication channel essential to 
>> communicate the ineffable, the mystical, the psychedelic—with one big 
>> caveat, the lack of shared experience. RBL would be an evocative language, 
>> and that which is invoked in each individual must have sufficient 
>> experiential overlap with others that "that which is invoked" provides 
>> sufficient common context.
>> 
>> Or one might assume Indra's Net where all contextualizes all.
>> 
>> davew
>> 
>> 
>> On Fri, May 13, 2022, at 5:33 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> If one wants to translate subjective experience into a narrative, or 
>>> compare & contrast experiences, then negotiating some language is 
>>> necessary.   If one wants to carefully compare experiences, then one must 
>>> be prepared to make the language precise.   The language could be 
>>> “equations”, or some computer program or some careful use of the English 
>>> language, or it could be some use of a well-modelled physical system to 
>>> mimic another physical system, etc.  But it is must to be possible to 
>>> create experime

Re: [FRIAM] quotes and questions

[Prof David West]

Thank you Marcus for the insightful comments.

I agree with you that the issue is one of communication, and in some sense, one 
of language. I would depart from your response with regard the assertion that 
the language must be precise; and further, the implication that equations, 
computer programs, or a simulacrum could constitute a "language."

I would claim that a language with perfect and complete syntax and precise 
denotation will, necessarily be insufficient to express and communicate the 
vast majority of human experiences and knowledge/awareness/understanding. [This 
is a more nuanced version of my frequently made claim that, "science and math 
are only useful for the simplest of problems."]

Humans can, with reasonable efficacy, communicate by means other than a 
precisely defined language. Evocative and connotative poetry, imagery, 
allusion, and metaphor, within a rich body of context is far more powerful than 
any formal language.

Consider this alternative means of communication as a "language," RBL 
(Right-brain language). It seems reasonable to expect that RBL might be 
improved and extended, with added rigor, while avoiding the reductionism that 
exemplifies formal, precisely defined languages of math and science 
(left-brained all). I can imagine a RBL-grounded metaphysics and epistemology.

A robust RBL might provide the communication channel essential to communicate 
the ineffable, the mystical, the psychedelic—with one big caveat, the lack of 
shared experience. RBL would be an evocative language, and that which is 
invoked in each individual must have sufficient experiential overlap with 
others that "that which is invoked" provides sufficient common context.

Or one might assume Indra's Net where all contextualizes all.

davew


On Fri, May 13, 2022, at 5:33 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> If one wants to translate subjective experience into a narrative, or compare 
> & contrast experiences, then negotiating some language is necessary.   If one 
> wants to carefully compare experiences, then one must be prepared to make the 
> language precise.   The language could be “equations”, or some computer 
> program or some careful use of the English language, or it could be some use 
> of a well-modelled physical system to mimic another physical system, etc.  
> But it is must to be possible to create experiments and evaluate the results 
> in an objective, reasoned way using a shared, deconstructable language.
> This says nothing about the Big Picture of the diverse things that happen in 
> the universe by itself, of course.   But the (presumably) narrow window we 
> have on the whole universe can be categorized into knowledge we share – 
> objective language, and private experiences we don’t know how to share, or 
> are too large and complicated to compress into a readable academic paper 
> (e.g. some massive generative learning system).   If one wants to go further 
> and say there are some experiences that can’t, in principle, be shared, 
> that’s fine, but then shut up about it already!   There’s nothing to **talk** 
> about because it is private **and** subjective **and** opaque.
>  
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Prof David West
> *Sent:* Friday, May 13, 2022 4:51 PM
> *To:* friam@redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] quotes and questions
> 
>  
> I will channel McGilchrist here, not assert my own opinions/reasoning:
>  
> The argument you have posited is an example of left-brain arrogance *(NOT 
> MARCUS ARROGANCE)* in assuming that the left-brain perception and 
> apprehension, a totally reductionist and representationalist one, of the 
> universe is the only truth.  All that holism, connectedness, empathy, 
> stochastic dynamism, etc. that the right-brain believes to be truth is 
> woo-woo nonsense and it can be ignored.
>  
> There is also the purely pragmatic problem, ala the 19th century physics of 
> Mach, that if you had perfect knowledge of every particle in the universe at 
> time 1 you could predict with perfect accuracy its state at time 2. 
> Replicating the totality of sensors and the variable range of sensitivity in 
> context (e.g. changes in pressure as the water cools as a function of 
> distance from jet), plus the variability in the pattern of sensors that are 
> simultaneously reporting, and, and, and
>  
> Even if true in principle, it is pragmatically impossible.
>  
> davew
>  
>  
> On Fri, May 13, 2022, at 3:47 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > I am sure I have said it dozens of times before:   Create a robot 
> > covered in sensors of similar pressure and temperature sensitivity.  
> > Have it sit in the tub and use some algorithm to learn the distribution 
> > of the sensors and how relates to the performance of its own motor 
> > syste

Re: [FRIAM] quotes and questions

[Prof David West]

I will channel McGilchrist here, not assert my own opinions/reasoning:

The argument you have posited is an example of left-brain arrogance *(NOT 
MARCUS ARROGANCE)* in assuming that the left-brain perception and apprehension, 
a totally reductionist and representationalist one, of the universe is the only 
truth.  All that holism, connectedness, empathy, stochastic dynamism, etc. that 
the right-brain believes to be truth is woo-woo nonsense and it can be ignored.

There is also the purely pragmatic problem, ala the 19th century physics of 
Mach, that if you had perfect knowledge of every particle in the universe at 
time 1 you could predict with perfect accuracy its state at time 2. Replicating 
the totality of sensors and the variable range of sensitivity in context (e.g. 
changes in pressure as the water cools as a function of distance from jet), 
plus the variability in the pattern of sensors that are simultaneously 
reporting, and, and, and

Even if true in principle, it is pragmatically impossible.

davew


On Fri, May 13, 2022, at 3:47 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I am sure I have said it dozens of times before:   Create a robot 
> covered in sensors of similar pressure and temperature sensitivity.  
> Have it sit in the tub and use some algorithm to learn the distribution 
> of the sensors and how relates to the performance of its own motor 
> system.  
>
>> On May 13, 2022, at 3:36 PM, Prof David West  wrote:
>> 
>> On 5/12/22 13:56, Jon Zingale wrote:
>>> An interesting property of turbulence is that it need not be a statement 
>>> about fluids, but rather a property entailed by a system of equations. 
>> 
>> McGilchrist would assert that the "reality" that is apprehended by the 
>> left-brain is precisely that set of abstract equations. However, the 
>> right-brain apprehension of "reality" is the totality of the experience of 
>> sitting in the spa and feeling the bubbles and jets caress your body.
>> 
>> The latter is not expressible in equations.
>> 
>> davew
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Fri, May 13, 2022, at 1:47 PM, glen wrote:
>>>> On 5/12/22 10:32, Steve Smith wrote:
>>>> I personally don't think "Turbulent Flow" is an oxymoron.
>>> 
>>> Exactly! That's the point. By denouncing negation, I'm ultimately 
>>> denouncing contradiction in all it's horrifying forms. It's judo, not 
>>> karate.
>>> 
>>>> On 5/12/22 13:56, Jon Zingale wrote:
>>>> An interesting property of turbulence is that it need not be a statement 
>>>> about fluids, but rather a property entailed by a system of equations. 
>>> 
>>> I'm a bit worried about all the meaning packed into "property", 
>>> "entailed", and "system of equations". But as long as we read 
>>> "equations" *very* generously, then I'm down.
>>> 
>>>> On 5/12/22 19:54, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>>> Unitary operators are needed.  Apply a Trumping operator you get a Biden 
>>>> and apply another one to get a Trump back.To make this work a bunch of 
>>>> ancillary bits are needed to record all the wisdom that Trump destroys.
>>>> I am afraid we are dealing with a dissipative system, though.
>>> 
>>> IDK. The allowance of unitary operators seems to be a restatement of 
>>> orthogonality. In a world where no 2 variates/objects can be perfectly 
>>> separated, there can be no unitary operators. (Or, perhaps every 
>>> operator has an error term. f(x) → y ∪ ε) I haven't done the work. But 
>>> it seems further that we can define logics without negation and logics 
>>> without currying. Can we define logics with neither? What's the 
>>> expressive power of such a persnickety thing? Is it that such a thing 
>>> can't exist? Or merely that our language is incapable of talking about 
>>> that thing with complete faith? Biden is clearly not not(Trump), at 
>>> least if the object of interest is "too damned {old, white, male}". If 
>>> that's the object, clearly Biden ≡ Trump and ∀x|x(Trump) = x(Biden) ∪ 
>>> ε, where |ε| >> |x(Trump)-x(Biden)|.
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙
>>> 
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>>> FRIAM-COMIC http

Re: [FRIAM] quotes and questions

[Prof David West]

On 5/12/22 13:56, Jon Zingale wrote:
> An interesting property of turbulence is that it need not be a statement 
> about fluids, but rather a property entailed by a system of equations. 

McGilchrist would assert that the "reality" that is apprehended by the 
left-brain is precisely that set of abstract equations. However, the 
right-brain apprehension of "reality" is the totality of the experience of 
sitting in the spa and feeling the bubbles and jets caress your body.

The latter is not expressible in equations.

davew




On Fri, May 13, 2022, at 1:47 PM, glen wrote:
> On 5/12/22 10:32, Steve Smith wrote:
>> I personally don't think "Turbulent Flow" is an oxymoron.
>
> Exactly! That's the point. By denouncing negation, I'm ultimately 
> denouncing contradiction in all it's horrifying forms. It's judo, not 
> karate.
>
> On 5/12/22 13:56, Jon Zingale wrote:
>> An interesting property of turbulence is that it need not be a statement 
>> about fluids, but rather a property entailed by a system of equations. 
>
> I'm a bit worried about all the meaning packed into "property", 
> "entailed", and "system of equations". But as long as we read 
> "equations" *very* generously, then I'm down.
>
> On 5/12/22 19:54, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> Unitary operators are needed.  Apply a Trumping operator you get a Biden and 
>> apply another one to get a Trump back.To make this work a bunch of 
>> ancillary bits are needed to record all the wisdom that Trump destroys.I 
>> am afraid we are dealing with a dissipative system, though.
>
> IDK. The allowance of unitary operators seems to be a restatement of 
> orthogonality. In a world where no 2 variates/objects can be perfectly 
> separated, there can be no unitary operators. (Or, perhaps every 
> operator has an error term. f(x) → y ∪ ε) I haven't done the work. But 
> it seems further that we can define logics without negation and logics 
> without currying. Can we define logics with neither? What's the 
> expressive power of such a persnickety thing? Is it that such a thing 
> can't exist? Or merely that our language is incapable of talking about 
> that thing with complete faith? Biden is clearly not not(Trump), at 
> least if the object of interest is "too damned {old, white, male}". If 
> that's the object, clearly Biden ≡ Trump and ∀x|x(Trump) = x(Biden) ∪ 
> ε, where |ε| >> |x(Trump)-x(Biden)|.
>
> -- 
> Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙
>
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[FRIAM] quotes and questions

[Prof David West]

Quotes:

*"A thing without oppositions ipso facto does not exist ... existence lies in 
opposition."* C.S. Peirce.

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

Questions:
What is the negation of evolution? Natural Selection? Survival of the 'Fittest'?

What is the negation of 'bleeding heart liberalism'? Of Trumpism? Of "wokeness?"

Quote:

*"Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples and ask 
yourselves whether a tree which is supposed to grow to a proud height could do 
so without bad weather and storms; **[1]* *whether misfortune and external 
resistance, whether any kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, 
hardness, greed, and violence to not belong to the *_favorable_* conditions 
without which any great grown even of virtue is scarecely possible." F. 
Nietzsche (emphasis his)*

*[1] *The Biosphere 2 project encountered a problem with trees falling over far 
before they reached their maturity. It was from lack of wind. Wind and 
mechanical stress was required to grow the hard tissues that allowed the tree 
to stand.

Questions:

To what extent do we (denizens of FRIAM and their local cultures) require the 
kinds of stress being encountered in the world?

I suspect that there needs to be a balance between realizable civilization and 
stresses, but how is that balance defoined and, more importantly, found and 
maintained?

Concrete example of last question: Will the Twitterites end up being a better 
or worse 'culture' post-Musk?

davew
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