Nick, et al.,
I have mixed feelings about the notion of national apologies for long-past
events. Who is it that needs to apologize? And who will they apologize to? To
stick with your example, what has Obama ever done to Bill Baker (current head
of the Cherokee Nation)?
I have similar feelings
But Jochen... now you are begging the question. Even if it is true, as you
argue, that real-life gun training and violent video games cause problems IN
TROUBLED TEENS, the obvious conclusion would be to try to produce fewer
troubled teens! If you fix that, you don't need to regulate legitimate
Owen,
A math prof here gives good election year math club talk and covers Arrow's
work. While Arrow is quite correct that: democracy is mathematically
arbitrary. It is also pretty easy to demonstrate that vote for one person and
the plurality wins everything is the worst option. If you take any of
Jochen,
I was deep intrigued by the more detailed maps that were produced to
go along with the 2008 elections. I suspect Pinker is trying to explain a not
real phenomenon (such is often my impression with Pinker, but that's another
discussion). Take for example the purple graph at the bottom of
Your email got through, and Carl had a great comparison with the notion of
'coolness'.
Following his suggestion, it seems that you are using 'attachment' and
'detachment' as short hands for caring-about-maintaining-your-attachment and
caring-about-dissolving-your-attachment. Both are similar,
Well, of course, the ultimate arrogance of the Social Darwinist/Eugenics
movements was the belief that they knew who was fit, without ever
investigating it. So far as I can tell, gang members are, in general, more fit
than people in the same immediate environment who are not members of gangs.
If
Steve,
This is, of course, the inherent weakness of the socially liberal position*,
right? Either you become a hypocrite, or you must agree with your antagonist's
right to passionately hate your ideas. The person arguing against you has no
such handicap. The cards are thus stacked from the
Well... so much for discussing modeling...
Personally, I am not a big fan of the Golden Rule because it implies that
everyone should be happy with the same things. It also implies the very
arrogant position that what you-in-particular want can be the should for
everyone else. How about if we try
The faith discussion seemed to fall apart, but might now be pulling itself back
together - hence the slight subject change.
One variant of the pragmatic dictum, using James's catchy phrasing, is that
There is no difference that doesn't make a difference. In this particular
situation, the there is
teach
_
On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 9:58 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES # wrote:
But Russ... if you concede Tory's point, then I think you are quite
stuck.
There are many, many, many people for whom the everyday world
contains a divine being... and the everyday
Since this thread is still going... Curt said:
Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the
road. I don't have to track every one exactly.
Exactly!
It is faith when you stop monitoring the other cars when driving, stop looking
at the ground you are about to step on when
year, but the longer you maintain faith that the other
diver will stay in his lane, the more likely it becomes that you won't make it
home one night.
I've been riding for 48 years, still alive...
--Doug
On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 6:13 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES # wrote:
Since
this thread is still
But Russ... if you concede Tory's point, then I think you are quite stuck.
There are many, many, many people for whom the everyday world contains a divine
being... and the everyday world is the everyday world. There are people who
train hard to see God surrounding them, and there are people for
adequately deal with discrete and non-discrete aspects, etc., which you point
out we would need. Lee, can you give a more skilled plug?
On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 06:29 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote:
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/19/2012 02:54 PM:
But Glen, when you talk about the infiltrator
Arlo,
Yes and no. Yes, that is the general idea: When we start using psychological
terms, we are talking about some pattern of action-relative-to-the-world. If
that pattern is a function, then any given behavior akin to a point value
and/or the derivative at that point depending on how we want to
...@ropella.name wrote:
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/18/2012 07:46 AM:
Trying to be a sophisticated Nick:
Faith doesn't underlies reality, but it underlies all experience. And by
experience, I mean it underlies all the way you act and
react towards
reality. This doesn't give you a theory of everything
Glen said:
In [Sarbajit's example of cult indoctrination], there is still a missing piece
between the
social comfort
brought by the increasing participation in various activities versus
some belief ascribed to the cult members. I would posit that a
mole/infiltrator could participate in a cult
Trying to be a sophisticated Nick:
Faith doesn't underlies reality, but it underlies all experience. And by
experience, I mean it underlies all the way you act and react towards
reality. This doesn't give you a theory of everything, but it might give
you a theory of everything psychological.
Nick,
I too am interested in Sarbajit's reply, but I can tell you there are
developing differences in the U.S.
In the current becoming-adults generation there is a growing number of what
sociologists have labeled nones. This is a group that is not religious, but
also Atheism is not a
Sarbajit,
Trying to make things succinct, I think the argument Nick is trying to make
goes something like this:
To act a certain way in a certain situation is to have a belief. Thus, our
lives are full of beliefs, which are variously consistent or inconsistent
depending on how you examine our
Roger,
Two points:
1) Being a third party kind of guy, with no particular loyalty for or against
Obama (though keeping a healthy fear of Romney), I share Owen's frustration at
Obama's inability/unwillingness to clearly articulate his successes. His
overall record includes a surprising number of
Glen of course the next step in a discussion like this is for someone
to ask you what evidence you have that any actual thing has more actor status
than a thermostat. Answering this questions adequately requires 1) taking into
account the complexity of what a thermostat accomplishes and 2)
to you, but it did not seem so to me at the time.
Eric
On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 07:32 PM, Roger Critchlow r...@elf.org wrote:
On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 8:24 AM, ERIC P. CHARLES # wrote:
Roger,
Two points:
2) I don't think
anyone has a problem with the government scaling in needed ways to the
population
Doug,
As an adamant atheist, this is still low on my list of reasons to dislike
Romney.
No one has really talked about what Bain Capital does - I have nothing against
raising money, but he should not be allowed to claim
http://doonesbury.slate.com/strip/archive/2012/07/02. Also, the idea that he
Steve,
I would be tempted to agree with you if he (and his party, and his
campaign) didn't keep saying other things instead. He is in the process of
organizing a several hundred million dollar media blitz. Why not say some
simple and straightforward things about what you actually accomplished?
Steve,
Interesting paper, but I'm not sure if I follow. The basic argument seems to be
that we often explain things by imagining (with the help of statistics)
hypothetical constructs that cannot be directly measured. As those constructs
can't be measured directly, they don't help us predict
As, oddly, no one seems to have mentioned it yet... I'm pretty sure that air
does separate. Am I wrong to think that air at a high enough altitude is
mostly hydrogen? So the question is not what keeps it from separating, but what
keeps it from separating more fully... right?
Eric
On Wed, Jun
I don't think this posted before, apologies if it is a duplicate:
I'm pretty sure the cause of this physics tangent was my
assertion that psychology is no worse off than any of the hard sciences in the
unsolved problems department. Hence, if we think physicists and chemists and
biologists have
at 6:30 PM, ERIC P.
CHARLES #
wrote:
Arlo, I agree completely about the process point.
I was a bit less
certain when you said, something difficult about psychology is
that much of the data has to be collected through someone else
- those [people] involved in the
study
I assume you would consider
[mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of
Carl Tollander
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 10:16 PM
To: ERIC P. CHARLES
Cc: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Unsolved Problems in Psychology
Eric,
Re: 1) humming makes my sinuses happy, generally.
Re: 2) I quite agree, it's not so simple. Yet, one
Arlo, I agree completely about the process point.
I was a bit less certain when you said, something difficult about psychology
is that much of the data has to be collected through someone else - those
[people] involved in the study
I assume you would consider a person to be part of the physical
That sounds like a fun game.
Putting my predictor's hat on, I
think that you will need three classes of judgment: 1) That problem is solved.
2) That problem is not solved. 3) That question is ill-formed, and hence is not
a potentially-solvable problem in its present form.
Eric
P.S. Since it
Jochen,
As an indirect answer to your question: One reason why physics,
chemistry, and biology seem to be largely complete and self-contained fields is
through the progressive banishment of the magical explanations for their
phenomenon. There are many traditions in psychology which have, to a
Given the rapid advancement in digital publishing opportunities over the past
few years, I'm not sure exactly how much more difficult this is for a lesser
known scientist. The conversion of LaTeX to ebook problem remains, but if you
are in a field that does not need carefully-formatted specialized
A sociology colleague and I have been working on a project related to
PowerPoint use in the classroom, specifically looking at professor's use of
citations in their classroom presentations. Aside from our project getting a
good rise out of our colleagues, it is legitimately anticipating an
Russ stated:
Normal
0
false
false
false
EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE
But Russ, come on now. To 'have faith' is nothing other than 'to act as if it
was the case'.
Thus, if we act as if induction is the case, we have faith in induction. If I
see that someone routinely relies on induction when trying to figure things
out, and I have seen that he acts with confidence
/
_
On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 2:11 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES # wrote:
But Russ, come on now. To
'have faith' is nothing other than 'to act as if it was the case'.
Thus, if we act as if induction is the case, we have faith in
induction. If I see that someone routinely relies
Bob,
I'm not the expert on internet rules and regulations by any means... but... I
think this situation is a bit different. In particular, hasn't it always been
the case that most everything you do on the web is, in some important sense,
public. You have an IP number, you go through shared servers
Nick says: what is this thing about INTELLLIGENT life? Isn’t all life
intelligent?
Yes. Nick, you are correct, there is a bit of sloppiness going on here, but it
is a common sloppiness and I suspect the term is well understood in context.
When people talk about finding 'intelligent life' on
Owen,
As I understand it:
Doug announced his ordination. After a bit of banter, Doug made some
generalizations about religious and non-religious people based on his past
experience but... the ability to draw conclusions from past experience is a
bit philosophically mysterious. The seeming
Glen,
There is good reason to exclude the middle though. I am uncomfortable with the
non-right-or-wrong options you have given. To me, it seems that an argument can
only be correct if it specifies the circumstances under which it is correct
(when the intended circumstances are always, we often
While we wait for Doug...
The problem with induction is that the only good evidence for it is that
several times in the past we have used the inductive method and it has worked.
If you really gathered all the evidence, you would see such a strong trend that
the logical conclusion would seem
A timely cover story in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education, A Boom Time
for Education Start-Ups. It suggests reasons both why the start-ups are
happening, and why people are investing in them:
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Boom-Time-for-Education/131229/
I think it is open access, but if
I'm trying to wrap my head around this. Perhaps the problem is that Wilson is
renouncing the one big thing that made his career. Without sociobiology, Wilson
would have been remembered within the field as a competent ant biologist, and
would not be known outside the field at all. But with
An intriguing message from my NSF program officer, regarding a grant
opportunity probably relevant to many on the FRIAM list:
Forwarded Message
From: Tuller, Betty K. btul...@nsf.gov
Date: Thu, Feb 23, 2012 09:41 AM
Subject: New Data-Intensive Research
Benny,
The first quote is the only one I think is from me. To
clarify:
When you say that the phenomenon is reading gibberish, then
it seems like it might be a skill. However, if you phrase it as a failure to
distinguish gibberish from properly written words, or as mistaking gibberish
for properly
Since people are replying about the scrambled-word message
rant
I will continue to stress that these skills, while interesting, are the
opposite of impressive. Under virtually any other circumstances, the ability to
carefully discriminate things is considered a higher ability, a sign of more
Owen,
To shift slightly... Aren't there conflicting metaphors here? How can
something be free, and yet be a marketplace? In marketplaces people are
orderly, follow the rules, pay for things, etc. The idea of a free marketplace
of ideas is inherently contradictory. Either it is an anarchy, or it
Heh, :- )
Much of the problems in modern psychology arose, historically, because people
studying the physical sciences thought they could escape the problems of
dualism by foisting them off onto psychology. But use of scientific instruments
in no way escapes the subjective objective problem, if
made a habit of
publishing non-replicable data.
On
Sun, Nov 13, 2011 07:35 PM, Roger Critchlow r...@elf.org
wrote:
On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at
7:29 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES # wrote:
Roger,
You are correct that it might seem like psychology should have
other things to worry about, but frankly
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of ERIC P. CHARLES
Sent: October-27-11 9:32 PM
To: Gillian Densmore
Cc: Anne Rowland; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 99
Doug, don't fret.
The answer to Jochen's question is Yes, it is about friggin time we get a good
theory, and Andrew and Sabrina's blog is an excellent source of ideas for
improving psychology. Recently Andrew's blog has been getting attention from
other excellent professionals, including a
there is; no mystical nor
supernatural
stuff.
Of the two links you provided, I found your post to be more clear on the
conflict in psychology
than the PsychScientists' post.
Thanks,
Steph T
On 11/12/2011 8:29 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES wrote:
Doug, don't fret.
The answer
Is this a strong-mind test or a weak-mind test? One might assume that a
stronger mind would see the world as it really is or something like that. One
might similarly assume that a weak mind would be fooled by something like
this. The message claims that it is an impressive human achievement to be
To deviate a touch, and head a bit back towards a past thread... how many of us
are there left who use their different devices for different purposes?
I like that my computer at work has totally different bookmarks than my laptop,
which has totally different bookmarks than my cell phone...
with
competing, occasionally dynamic membership criteria and membership
itself is fuzzy.
On 10/27/11 8:32 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES wrote:
Gillian,
H trying to put my
evolutionary psychology hat on, and
feeling
Gillian,
H trying to put my
evolutionary psychology hat on, and feeling like I am not doing it quite as
well as I should
Humans ARE programed to do things
for the good of their groups. The question then is: How do we get people to
feel as if they are part of a group? and How do we get
Two thoughts,
1) This is also part of the magic that happens when companies match
retirement investments, rather than simply paying you more money. The idea of a
proper savings account went out the door, and instead money that should have
been saved went into artificially inflating stock prices. I
Nick,
Did anyone ever try to answer your question? My guess is that they are trying
to do something fairly simple, like comparing the number of people who tweet
Go Obama! vs. the number who tweet F*@% Obama!.
If that is not what sentiment analysis meant, I would be very interested in
knowing as
But there is a real weirdness about many of the protesters. Captured very well
with this image:
http://weaselzippers.us/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/OWS-Evil-Corporations.jpg
It's as if these people know what they are fighting, but have no clue how to
fight it. Ghandi got people to hand weave
Russ I agree with you completely, though I'm not sure a president who doesn't
do anything is the worst-case scenario.
A third party run for president will not be able to do much without a third
party assault on congressional incumbents. One of the worst things in American
politics right now, in
Interesting ideas! I'm not sure what would have to be true for the evolution
metaphor to make sense, however. Certainly the world is changing, but to say
that particles are 'evolving' is a more narrow claim. As I understand the
metaphor, at least two things would have to be true that I know next
to the replication rate of the
universe. Particles somehow emerge from spacetime in this replication process.
I have not read the papers Marcus mentioned, maybe they contain some
interesting hints.
Jochen
Sent from Android
ERIC P. CHARLES e...@psu.edu wrote:
Interesting ideas! I'm not sure
of the mind,
evo-devo, multi-level selection, extended physiology, etc. To say the
mind-body problem is solved is to dismiss all these positions and their
backers.
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote circa 11-09-20 07:48 AM:
Well... yes and no.
To keep my metaphor in the 'P.S.' going, we also can't say exactly how
Nick,
I have been thinking recently about trying to write a short story. It would
start with a version of Daniel Dennet's wonderful brain-in-a-vat. It would be a
story of a valiant man who volunteered for the procedure; he volunteered for
his love of science and the deep impact it would have on
Speaking as a young academic, it is no one but the old academics who keep
in place the stranglehold of academic journals as the sole means of
professional communication. Not the ancient academics, mind you... so Nick, you
are off the hook ;- )
At this point, the only barrier to communication
:
Whoa, how about more? Why did you feel a need to start the blog? What is
your goal? Why psychology or fixing? .. possibly Cognitive Science, or
History of Science, or xx?
We need at least a trailer .. maybe the first post was it?
-- Owen
On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 6:03 PM, ERIC P
Forwarded to list at Owen's request...
Owen,
I'll meditate on a more thorough answer, but the quick one is:
Yes, psychology is fragmented in the sense of having little or no
basis upon which psychologists agree. The original umbrella organization, the
American Psychological Association now has 56
Glen,
I have this problem too, but before your post had not thought about how
localized a problem it is. Having thought about this for a few days, I have a
hypothesis you might find more satisfying: The reason you often use 'data' as a
singular noun is because you are often referring to (or
(which we can teach,
like nuclear physics)? Is it a physiological problem between muscle
memory, the spinal cord, and the thing we call the brain?
Robert C
http://www.cirrillian.com
On 8/18/11 6:03 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES wrote:
Shameless
plug: I have started a academically
Shameless plug: I have started a academically-oriented blog. I suspect my most
recent post, on 'http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/', is relevant to many
of the discussions that I have been part of on this list, and will be of
interest to at least a few people here.
I now return you to your
Yes, but... economic issues aside... there was a greater risk in the European
mission of ultra-multiculturalism than many appreciated. If you want to be a
great, open democracy, you take the risk that one day enough religious Muslims
will move to your country that they can democratically enact
Owen,
My understanding of European 'Multiculturalism' - gained through many
discussions with European colleagues - is that it has all of the vices of the
old US 'separate but equal', with none of the virtues. That is, there is no
real caveat for 'equal' and no real caveat for 'separate'. The MC
Russ,
Very nice calculations. It would have taken me quite a while to figure it out.
Thanks!
Tom,
Interesting article. At the end though, I think the review's author misses the
point of why Bayes theorem was so controversial amongst the 'frequents' (which
suggests the book's author might have
Russ,
That was actually a very good article! I remain amongst those skeptical that
one can really test the theory, but it is nice to see the theory explained such
a straightforward way, and to know there are people making solid attempts to
test it.
One major cop-out / overtly-overstated-claim
Bruce,
Very nice! For these and several other reasons, electronic formats might just
save the textbook. They also offers the possibility to undercut the used book
market - which 1) drives the continuous worthless revisions, 2) makes it very
difficult for publishers to take a risk on a textbook
That is potentially fascinating. However, it is not terribly interesting to
state that we can establish a conservation principle merely by giving a name to
the absence of something, and then pointing out that if we start with a set
amount of that something, and take it away in chunks, then the
I did not read all of the explosion of posts about philosophy (I was at a
conference when it happened), but...
This is a very limited view of what
it is that Philosophers do. One of the main points to come out of the American
Philosophical tradition is the notion that philosophy must continuously
Sarbajit,
I believe that for the purposes of some types of learning, Nick would consider
that a form of fiddling. Certainly I would. This is most obvious if you are
trying to find out what would happen if you sit under the boddhi tree by
yourself for a while. However, it is presumably an
Lee,
Not an answer, but more grist to the mill:
Interestingly, if we believe in the cartesian theatre, then your points hold
better - In a world in which I have perfect knowledge of my own mind, it should
be impossible to perform a thought experiment, because I could never get a
result that was
Russ,
The uncertainty arguments definitely have merit. Overly-confident people spend
money like crazy and keep very little savings (in more sane times they were
called manic, now they are called middle class). Even mildly-worried people
spend carefully and have savings (in more sane times they
I am not an expert on economics by any means, but there are some economic
arguments I think I understand, including the uncertainty argument. What
follows will be a somewhat sloppy mix of psychology and economics:
When people - individual consumers, investors, business owners, etc. - are
I think Tom is right that the path to solving mysteries like this is often to
look outward rather than inward. Part of the point of William James's somewhat
mysterious Stream of Consciousness expositions was to point out that at the
most basic level experience is a unified whole - i.e. the
Ok, I'm a bad person for not reading the cited paper, but I was thinking about
problem late last night. I keep thinking that we need to make assumptions about
the distribution (regarding bounds and shape), but then I can't figure out a
combination of assumptions that really seems necessary. This
) A below B above
3) A above B below
4) A above B above
I'm still unable to see how we get a better than 50% edge by knowing the 2nd
number.
The normal distribution would not apply to random numbers - which are evenly
distributed ie. flat.
Sarbajit
On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 5:46 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES
, Jun 9, 2011 at 9:09 AM, ERIC P. CHARLES # wrote:
Sarbajit,
Great point, but let me make it a bit more complicated. Possibilities marked
with a + indicate situations in which we will have a probabilistic
advantage in our guessing, possibilities marked with a - indicate
situations in which
One things many philosophers might point out in response to such an assertion,
is that we don't have a very good handle on the notion of determined'. In
fact, there are quite a few big-named dead white guys, who would say that
physical causality and mental causality are equally illusory (and by
Odd quote, especially with the beginning part. The moon illusion is the oldest
known illusion, and it is very cool. The effect was documented in ancient
Greece, and they knew it was an illusion. The easiest way to demonstrate the
illusory nature is to look at the moon, hold you hand out at arms
Hey all,
Against all my wife's better judgment, I am considering starting a blog. Enough
of my professional colleagues have them, and enough interesting stuff seems to
be happening on them, that it seems a good idea. I was hoping for some
collective wisdom about the pros and cons of different
Nice article,
We at Altoona are looking for a new head librarian. For the past three days, I
have attended talks by candidates. The consensus seems to be that he university
library of the future will be a knowledge commons. It is a awkward term, and
not one speaker started out by explaining what a
university library gutted its down floor, put in a
coffee bar and IT stuff, and called itself the “academic commons.” Seems
like a fad in Library Land.
Nick
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of ERIC P. CHARLES
Sent: Monday
Russ,
Good questions. I'm hoping Nick will speak up, but I'll hand wave a little, and
get more specific if he does not.
This is one of the points by which a whole host of conceptual confusions enter
the discussion of evolutionary theory. Often people do not quite know what they
are asserting,
Vladimyr,
I agree with you that my situation was too complex, that was
part of my point (i.e., that if that is what Mohammed is thinking about, it is
awfully complex). But he wants to model systems with rules, in which rules made
for purpose A can be corrupted so they do not serve A, and rather
.
Winnipeg,Manitoba, R2J3R2
Canada
(204) 2548321 Land
(204) 8016064 Cell
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com
[mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of ERIC P. CHARLES
Sent: May-08-11 4:00 PM
To: Mohammed El-Beltagy
Cc
I can't see that this posted, sorry if it is a duplicate
Mohammed,
Being totally unqualified to help you with this problem... it
seems interesting to me because most models I know of this sort (social systems
models) are about information acquisition and deployment. That is, the modeled
Gary,
Given our last major thread on this list, I am skeptical about even the
possible benefits (mostly out of ignorance). My understanding is that
compressed Hydrogen is awfully easy to get, and doesn't take much energy to
produce. Can anyone on the list estimate how much energy is needed to
To bring us back towards free markets and competition...
There are clever (and possibly true) arguments about how free markets and open
competitions create situations that benefit most of the people involved. So far
as I know, all of these clever arguments rely on informed consumers and a
Peggy,
I'm sure there is a more expensive way of making magnets that produces less
pollution. (Actually, probably the way described with another set of equally
sized plants to clean up the waste.)
Eric
On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 11:10 AM, peggy miller highlandwi...@gmail.com wrote:
I wondered if any
Ditto what Patrick said. In the end, one of the most important aspects of
whether or not an insurrection is successful is which way the military goes. In
Egypt, for the most part, the military refused to fire, and in the end sided
with the rebels. The question for Egypt now is whether or not the
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