Re: [FRIAM] Reasons why we elect narcissists

> "I can't help but feel you're waiting to pop out of the horse and hit me > with something that falsifies my faith in the foxes." A fox one's faith in which can be falsified is a faux-fox. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Re: [FRIAM] words RE: words

> Emergent: hexagonality of snowflakes. Can we predict that from water > vapor and cold? And something about (maybe just the existence of) nuclei? But predicting the hexagonality doesn't seem (to me) nearly enough to predict the (not always, but very often) near-symmetry well past the level of

Re: [FRIAM] words RE: words

Nick thinks: > As I think Lee would say (dammit, Lee, where are you?), don't ask a fish > about water; he knows nothing of it. I would not say that; I have always thought it was a particularly silly thing to say. Since there are approximately 30 more messages to work through, I won't expand on

Re: [FRIAM] words RE: words

> I only kinda like it because I would prefer something like: emergence > exists when the post-map language has a different expressibility than the > pre-map language. Surely not *simply* "different"? If the post-map language has strictly less expressibility than the pre-map language, does

Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

> It's as > if I ran into God on the street and I said, "God, I have always > wondered: How did you do this creation thing? And God answered "What > creation thing?" God:creation::fish:water FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

Dave writes in relevant part: > also, if the Turing machine, the programmer, and the 'user' form an > appropriate triad, might it be said that the Turing machine 'knows' what > the programmer programmed and the user observes? None of the three > elements "possess" that knowledge in isolation, but

Re: [FRIAM] A question for tomorrow

> Thanks, Marcus. > > How often are proofs with errors published in refereed articles or > textbooks? Some years ago, when you guys in Santa Fe were reading Ruben Hersh's "18 Unconventional Essays on the Nature of Mathematics", I took the opportunity to download a copy for myself. Assuming

Re: [FRIAM] A question for tomorrow

> Russell writes: > > < However, conversely, there appear to interesting results that indicate > P=NP for random oracle machines. There is some controversy over this, > though, and personally, I've never been able to follow the proofs in the > area :). > > > Minimally, why is LaTeX the preferred

Re: [FRIAM] A question for tomorrow

Frank writes: > I would hate to have to demonstrate that a modern computer is an instance > of a Turing Machine. Among other things they usually have multiple > processors as well as memory hierarchies. But I suppose it could be done, > theoretically. First a passage from a chapter I

Re: [FRIAM] A question for tomorrow

Maybe I've missed it, but has no one pointed out that a "Turing Machine" is a mathematical formalism? I may be a stick in the mud, but I refuse to extend the definition of "know" so far as to make "A Turing Machine knows [something]" a meaningful statement. You might as well ask what a Goedel

Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 190, Issue 1

The latest on the Neuroskeptic blog: "The Driver is the Brain of the Car". http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2019/04/06/the-driver-is-the-brain-of-the-car/ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at

Re: [FRIAM] new studies confirm existence galaxies almost-no-dark-matter

> https://grammarist.com/usage/dwarfs-dwarves/ tells me it's a neologism or, perhaps, a neoarchaeologism? > popularized by Tolkien. The OED's only record of it (in a usage citation for "dwarf, n.") is "1818 W. Taylor in Monthly Mag. 46 26 The history of Laurin, king of the dwarves."

Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 189, Issue 40

> An equation that captures the theory of > the adjacent possible is available. I have recently been reminded that Quine, in "On What There Is", posed the question (presumably rhetorical and/or tendentious; my reminder came in the form of just the following sentence with attribution but no other

Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Nick says, in relevant part: > For instance, when > sociobiologists use the notion of selfish gene, they may legitimately > disclaim the idea that genes consciously choose between self-regarding and > other-regarding options, but they cannot legitimately disclaim the idea > that a gene has the

Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Nick et al., "surplus meaning" was the term I was misremembering. Further replies to Nick's further questions later. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe

[FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Steve writes in relevant part: > My position is that I favor each and every one of us taking whatever > responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of > capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and "managing" it to > the best of our ability. The quotation marks around the

Re: [FRIAM] are we how we behave?

I predict with great confidence that the stimulus "are we how we behave?" will quickly evoke a response from Nick. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe

[FRIAM] abduction at the arxiv tonight

https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05479 I have not looked at the paper. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] The fruits of abduction

> The problem is that Born’s rule was not really more than a smart guess > — >> there was no fundamental reason that led Born to propose it. “It was >> an >> intuition without a precise justification,” said Adán Cabello >> , a quantum theorist at the

Re: [FRIAM] Photos of popped balloon

> I think they were cylinders, not spheres, so there were two holes. This > is where we start talking about homology groups. We don't absolutely *have* to. The theories of Riemann surfaces and algebraic functions got pretty far just having the (proto-homological, but very ungroupy) notions of

Re: [FRIAM] FW: Math emojis

Nick: > Well, Ok. I can see that it's sort of like Carl Tollander's > > "Let there be a spherical cow," which always makes me smile. > > Or > > Even the micro economists', > > "Let there be a fully informed consumer." I don't claim to be a native speaker of PhysicsEng, much less of EconoEng, but

Re: [FRIAM] FW: Math emojis

The joke (such as it is) is a discourse joke, playing upon the fact (incontestable to all fluent writers/speakers of MathEng, i.e., mathematicians' English) that the fragment of MathEng "For every \epsilon < 0" is perfectly well formed both syntactically and semantically, but violates the

Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Nick writes, in relevant part: > I am not sure what monads and monism have to do with each other, other > than that they share a linguistic root. Honest. I have trouble seeing > the connection. ... > I don't have much of a grip on MonADism. As I understand monads, they > are irreduceable

Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

>We spend all this faith-based energy believing that individuals > have thoughts and intentions, when perhaps we're merely *tools*. Cf. Fort's maxim, "A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time."

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

Glen says to Nick: > I have no idea why you used the word "duality". I am very afraid that Nick's use (is metaphorical and) can probably be traced back to having read/heard someone writing about "the wave/particle duality" or the like. I'm not sure what *you* mean by duality: the rest of your

[FRIAM] Learning curves (was, Abduction)

Nick wrote, in relevant part, > This reminds me of the misuse of the "learning curve" > metaphor. People speak of a steep learning curve as something to be > feared. In fact, people who learn quickly have a steep learning curve. Behold, complete with ASCII art (so be ready to view this in a

Re: [FRIAM] Was: Abduction; Is Now: Dionysian and Apollonian Lives

I'm not sure what you're buying with your move to "continuous" rather than (merely) "infinite-valued". I mean, though your discretized values {0..n} are integers, they are (in my small experience of many-valued logics, which does not include any actually *working* with them as logics) merely

Re: [FRIAM] g-conjecture?

> I'm sure most of you know more about this than me. But since I'm in a kind > of pseudo-holiday state between work and doing nothing, perhaps you are too: > > Amazing: Karim Adiprasito proved the g-conjecture for spheres! >

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

Glen wrote, in relevant part, "Like mathematicians, maybe we have to ultimately commit to the ontological status of our parsing methods?" I wish to question the implicit assumption that mathematicians _do_ (or even _ought to_) "ultimately commit to the ontological status" of _anything_ in

Re: [FRIAM] Winter Solstice Feature

Dear Nick et al., Here's my contribution to your Soltice gaiety, such as it is: a follow-the-bouncing-ball-style MP4 (prepared on the cheap with Wondershare Filmora's screen-capture) of my C "Solstice Song" (rendered, both as score and MIDI performance, by the excellent freeware MuseScore),

Re: [FRIAM] two books

Jon Zingale writes, in relevant part: > In modern mathematics, one encounters categories whose > `points` have an internal structure which can be more > complicated than one's initial intuition would provide. > There is a sense that what the interested physicist is doing > by exploring the

Re: [FRIAM] two books (perhaps a bit more)

You might also enjoy his "The Nature of the Chemical Bond". I acquired my copy an age or two ago from The Library of Science (remember that???) but only dipped into to it for the first time about 3 years ago. The book's contribution to the lucidity of my interaction it far exceeded mine,

Re: [FRIAM] firefox and memory

> We haven't heard a lot of from you, lately. Any bursr do you under your > saddle you'ld like to talk about? Given that he seems to be posting from a British university, he very well *could* have a bursar under his saddle. FRIAM

Re: [FRIAM] firefox and memory

Since 57.0.2 installed itself on my (4 year old W7Professional) machine, Firefox has run *much* *slower*. Bah, humbug. > Did you get v57, Quantum? It should be much faster.. > > Sent from my iPhone > > On Dec 7, 2017, at 9:42 PM, Nick Thompson >

Re: [FRIAM] organizations

I regularly caught skunks in our Hav-a-Hart trap (bought and intended for woodchucks). Never attached a long (or short) cord to the release mechanism, but I always opened the cage wearing a bathing suit (or less). One time, the damned skunk really didn't want to leave; I think it was about

Re: [FRIAM] Fractals/Chaos/Manifolds

The word, as a term of Mathematical English (which is of course quite a distinct dialect of English) is a calque of the Mathematical German word "Mannigfaltigkeit". Franklin Becher, in the first paragraph of the lead article in the October, 1896, issue of the American Mathematical Monthly,

Re: [FRIAM] Unix Nightmare

Frank writes: > Nick, > > Well, sometimes when I'm thinking about a dream, I suddenly remember some > detail that I had completely forgotten. But more often I fall back to > sleep. In my old age, I seldom remember dreams. in reply to Nick: > > Good lord, Frank. Surely you are teasing me.

Re: [FRIAM] speaking of analytics

Nick asks: > How does thinking of data as > encased in a non-dynamic subterranean matrix shape our (your) thinking for > good > or ill? I'm astounded that *that* is the (most) salient part of the metaphor to your mind. I'd sooner know, "how does talking of data as something that is

Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Re: your dental pain. Patsy had to have a tooth pulled a couple of weeks ago; her dentist, instead of prescribing opioids, told her to take 2 ibuprofen and 2 acetominipehn (sp.?), together, every four hours. It worked great. No doubt not recommended for long term use or if you have liver

Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

> Dreams and hallucinations are experiences that don't, in the long run, pan > out. Speak for yourself, man! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe

Re: [FRIAM] metaphor and talking across skill levels

Okay, the test worked! So: Carl Tollander writes: This may throw something (light?) on the issue. http://cheng.staff.shef.ac.uk/morality/morality.pdf The reason I'm tossing this in may not become apparent until a ways into it, when mathematical morality notions are used to address

[FRIAM] test message

Sorry for the noise (if the experiment works; if not, no worries.) FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Spelling of Spanish Surnames

Nick, Don't apologize--take the tack that Wayne O'Neil took in his lexicographic introduction to (at least the first edition of) the American Heritage dictionary: English spelling includes a *lot* of useful information about the history and otherwise-hidden relationships of our words. (I'd

Re: [FRIAM] QRE: Spelling of Spanish Surnames

Nick: Nyaaah! Nyaaah! As we used to say when we were six. In 1968, my then-girlfriend (long since become a Mad Bomber at Los Alamos--her graduate degree was in astrophysics) provided what is has just now become fresh evidence of something-or-other relevant to this thread: having learned

Re: [FRIAM] Spelling of Spanish Surnames

Nick asks: How come other people can standardize their spellings and we can't standardize ours. Damn! Well, in the first place, the case of actual Spanish-as-she-is-spoke, including all its dialectal differences, isn't quite as clean as the official Castilian standard that Frank

[FRIAM] illusions

Nick writes, incidentally to Frank's comments about [his] argumentative style: As for the inner life thing, I don't think I am dishonest when I say that I don't believe in an inner life. I admit that I have something like that as an experience, but think it must be an illusion. The

Re: [FRIAM] Most Distant Galaxy - What's wrong with this statement?

From the BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24637890 (today) /Because it takes light so long to travel from the outer edge of the Universe to us, the galaxy appears as it was 13.1 billion years ago (its distance from Earth of 30 billion light-years is because the

Re: [FRIAM] Most Distant Galaxy - What's wrong with this statement?

And so? Matter/energy can't move faster than 1 light year per year, but the expansion of the universe isn't making any matter/energy move in its local frame, it's just putting more space- time between the local frames of various different bits of matter/energy. I mean, consider the size and

Re: [FRIAM] Notions of entropy

Nick to Owen: ... Yet, just as you could never get the world to agree that emotionality was just the number of fecal boluses left by a rat in an open field maze, you will never get the world to agree that entropy is just the output of a mathematical formula. They might say, that is a

Re: [FRIAM] Notions of entropy

Nick writes, in relevant part: I am, I think, a bit of what philosophers call an essentialist. In other words, I assume that when people use the same words for two things, it aint for nothing, that there is something underlying the surface that makes those two things the same. So,

Re: [FRIAM] How do forces work?

Russ asks: Is there a mechanistic-type explanation for how forces work? For example, two electrons repel each other. How does that happen? Other than saying that there are force fields that exert forces, how does the electromagnetic force accomplish its effects. What is the

Re: [FRIAM] offline:] Isomorphism between computation and philosophy

You mean, I got wise because I retired? Not sure I follow. Nick Yup. What an *awful* environment, in many ways, Clark was. Of course maybe the good things were only possible because of the bad things? FRIAM Applied Complexity

Re: [FRIAM] Isomorphism between computation and philosophy

Nick asks Owen: So, Owen, you meet a beautiful woman at a cocktail party. She seems intelligent, not a person to be fobbed off, but has no experience with either Maths or Computer Science. She looks deep into your eyes, and asks And what, Mr. Densmore, is the halting problem? You find

Re: [FRIAM] Tautologies and other forms of circular reasoning.

In my (leetle) world, referential opacity refers to ambiguities that arise in intentional utterances ... utterances of the form, Jones believes (wants, thinks, hopes, etc.) that X is the case. They are opaque in that they tell us nothing about the truth of X. So, for instance, Jones

Re: [FRIAM] Isomorphism between computation and philosophy

Nick: It's probably a good thing that I retired before I got wise. I think I hear the sound of the Arrow of Causality twanging in the bullseye. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's

Re: [FRIAM] Systems, State, Recursion, Iteration.

Nick, I guess I would call this a functional state. Or perhaps a disposition. You could also (and equally well--or equally badly) use Lewin's phrase the field at the present time. Or rather, since we do want to talk about existents that persist in time but may have different states at

Re: [FRIAM] Just sent this to the Google Device Support Team

Nick, Even a former English major ought to be able to faithfully transcribe a short phrase from the second line of the first sentence of a two-paragraph, three-sentence e-mail that is actually included a few inches below the locus of his transcription... On the other hand, if it weren't for

Re: [FRIAM] Against Kierkegaard (was Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services)

No, not IMAP. I want my own cloud. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvKj8lTuVtk inevitably will lead to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq3YdpB6N9M FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's

Re: [FRIAM] Windows Resource Monitor

Nick says, in relevant part: The response to this inquiry has led me wonder some wonderings about the folks on the list. Is it the case that: (1)I am the only person on this list that owns a PC You have been in the presence of both Eric and me when we have been using our PCs, and I

Re: [FRIAM] WAS:: Cliques, public, private. IS: Preserving email correspondence

Nick writes: Larding is the practice of distributing ones response in the text. Larding is not a problem, it is best practice (in my highly considered opinion): it simulates (somewhat) a naturally structured conversation, between or among a group of people, on one topic or several related

Re: [FRIAM] Preserving email correspondence

Nick, I have avoided larding by quoting nothing whatever. That should help my concentrate your attention on the point that I think is most important, which I have not seen you address at all (but I may have missed it): WHAT IS YOUR END-IN-VIEW? My previous claim, that (larded) e-mail

Re: [FRIAM] Privacy vs Open Public Data

Nick speaks for himself: We are, by immigration, probably a nation of former thieves, cutpurses, embezzlers, for whom the choice was the docks or the stocks. You, sir, I believe, are from a sub-nation of former religious fanatics. I am partly that, but mostly from the (large!) sub-nation

Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: Privacy vs Open Public Data

Nick avers: I guess I am a behaviorist about shame. If my behavior makes me blush than it was shameful. Alternatively, someone has slipped you a large dose of niacin, which has made you blush, which you have felt as shame. I suggested this several times to Jim Laird as a worthwhile

Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: Privacy vs Open Public Data

Why stop at jam the camera? *Spoof* the camera (feed it false but plausible data, perhaps inculpating someone else, or perhaps just showing an uppity empty Naugahyde `:chair): a real- time, animated analogue of the photoshopped stills we now have learned to expect everywhere. Ah. The

Re: [FRIAM] How to avoid shootings

Dear Lee and Marcus, I am afraid I fell for a Liberal meme. It may, of course, be true, but at least so far as I can determine from a quick scan of the web, there is no consensus on the causality that I implied. So, at the moment, I guess it just comes down to values. I hate the

[FRIAM] FRIAM archives?

The shirt-tail appended to all FRIAM posts ends lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org;. However, I a 404 Not Found error when trying to connect to that URL. Is it defunct, or just temporarily out of order? If the former, is there an alternative URL for lectures,

Re: [FRIAM] faith

Nick to Robert (or perhaps to Russ, I got confused): I guess its fair to say that in matters of small f faith, you are a catholic and I am a quaker. I really don't care about what the minister has to say; I want to hear from the congregation. Trusting (did you-all already differentiate

Re: [FRIAM] Unsolved Problems in Psychology

I like John Archibald Wheeler's brief description of the situation (which appears in print as marginalia in his book _Gravity_ with Misner and Thorne): Matter tells space how to curve. Space tells matter how to move. Agent-based modeling (with message-passing, even!), you might say. Bruce,

[FRIAM] on the limits of inductive reasoning

From the AP wire, April 22, 2012. ... McKay says that a day before the killings, on Julia Hudson's birthday, Balfour told her, If you ever leave me, I'm going to kill you, but I'm going to kill your family first. She didn't take him seriously, McKay said, because Balfour hadn't

Re: [FRIAM] a further tangent

Nick, I didn't (and wouldn't) use the noun remediation (at least, not to mean remedy). As verbs, remediate and remedy have different senses to me (and to the OED). In particular, the OED says (and I agree--though I don't claim this was in my mind) that remediate includes the sense of

[FRIAM] tangents upon tangents!

With apologies to everyone but Lee: The word remediation could be two entirely different words, one arising from remedy and the other arising from mediate. The first mediation failed, so we agreed to remedy the situation by conducting a remediation is a perfectly intelligible sentence

[FRIAM] a tangent from Re: Just as a bye-the-way

Glen wrote: Nick and Doug are both being flippant because a mailing list is not a conducive forum to rigorous conversation. They seemingly enjoy their lack of empathy toward the other, at least here ... probably not face-to-face. So, the likelihood either will assume the other has

[FRIAM] a further tangent

I asked a (non-rhetorical) question: But you might think it is, so I ask you, do you? If not, how might it be remediated (practically or impractically)? It occurred to me that maybe this is something that could be investigated using ... AGENT BASED MODELING! (Indeed, maybe it has been.)

Re: [FRIAM] Just as a bye-the-way

Nick, I sent this response at 9.39. did you not get it. I think the server throws away one in five of my messages, just for fun. FWIW, I also didn't get it then. Do you know Auden's Domesday Song? It begins, Jumbled in the common box Of their dumb mortality, Orchid, swan, and

Re: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Bruce Sherwood writes, in relevant part: On the other hand, I can recommend highly the popular science book The Dance of the Photons by Anton Zeilinger [...] At one point in the book he appropriately celebrates measurements that quantitatively address certain aspects of reality that have

Re: [FRIAM] Bourbon, Manic Monologs, Soliloquys, and Square Marbles

Tory - You are most welcome... Doug sums up what you said about our house simply by referring to it as a Hobbit House. He (nor you for that matter) never actually saw the house we lived in before, an eclectic adobe built by an old hippy friend in the 60s while he was probably on Acid

Re: [FRIAM] Google+ Circles and Social Networks

Is anyone on Google+ already? I think it is definitely a step in the right direction. The circle concept is interesting. ...as Dante said to Virgil. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St.

[FRIAM] The One-and-a-Half (Plus or Minus One-Half) Cultures, again

I was engaged in a (so far not unexpectedly fruitless) search for any evidence that any working scientist (as contrasted with aged eminences grises who begin to take up Philosophy in their declining years) has ever committed to print any suggestion that her or his work has ever been in the

Re: [FRIAM] Experiment and Interpretation

Nick writes, in relevant part: AS for the discussion with Doug and Peter, I am, I guess, an incurable amateur. I think of the world as arrayed in layers [of abstraction]; for me, there always is [should be? -note the use of modal language!] a level of abstraction at which it is

Re: [FRIAM] Experiment and Interpretation

Peter Lissaman writes, in relevant part: Incidentally, with reference to some discussions of high and low pressures at surfaces: ALL free surfaces for ANY fluid motion with stationary air as the contiguous external fluid are at the same CONSTANT pressure. How could they be otherwise? But,

Re: [FRIAM] Experiment and Interpretation

Nick replies to Douglas Roberts: First, It says something kind of funny about physics . that it will never explain anything that any of us are curious about unless we first learn enough about it (physics) that we can understand the explanation (in physical terms)? Second, it seems to say

Re: [FRIAM] Household vortices, redux

Nick and all, If the following comment has already been made (and disposed of), please accept my apologies (the house was full of visitors for a while and I stopped keeping up with my mail). One thing that leaps to my eye in the description of the empirical experiment made by Nick, and

Re: [FRIAM] Household vortices, redux

Are you asking why does a vortex form at all? No. Are you assuming that the drain is rifled in some sense and that a vortex wouldn't form without the rifling. No, that hadn't occurred to me, and I don't think (having done my share of household-level plumbing) that drains are rifled in

[FRIAM] thought experiments

Nick having expressed some outrage at what he perceives as (nefarious?) thread hijacking (what I prefer to think of as thread drift, but, hey), I'm starting a new thread. It seems to me that thought experiment (and its German original) is a misleading phrase; further, it seems to me that Nick,

Re: [FRIAM] Modeling obfuscation (was - Terrorosity and it's Fruits)

Eric, Mohammed, et al.: Alex Poddiakov, in Moscow, has done work that seems to me like it *might* be related to this question; for instance, on what he calls Trojan horse learning. I refer you to his website, where various manuscripts (some in Russian, some in Russglish) are available and

[FRIAM] monkeys, Shakespeare, and Venn

Recent talk of memes and original sources reminds me that, just the other day, I was reading John Venn's book on logic (published 5 years before he wrote the paper which gave the name Venn diagrams to the familiar diagrams that had been around much longer), and discovered that he spends about 3

Re: [FRIAM] Assistance sought: The meaning of constraints

[my comment follows Russ's] Russ Abbot writes: As I understand it, work is defined as the change in kinetic energy resulting from the application of a force. Normally that means work is force times distance. So if there is no distance (no motion) there is no change in kinetic energy and

Re: [FRIAM] Work! Fer Gawd and Newton's sake!

I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted, or if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleas'd not the million, 'twas caviare to the general. In general, I agree. -R On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.netwrote: In the true

Re: [FRIAM] Assistance sought: The meaning of constraints

Dear Nick, I am also reviewing a book--actually, two booklets and a book chapter--in the sense that I am working mightily to incorporate into a book I am editing and partly writing (on mathematical models for use in psychology) a discussion of their virtues and vices. In my case, the matter

Re: [FRIAM] Assistance sought: The meaning of constraints

On 13 Mar 2011 at 15:31, Victoria Hughes wrote: Well, I know this is another one of my out-of-left-field questions, but out of curiousity is gravity a constraint or a force? On Newton's account of things (if not in his language?) it's a force; I think also in Special Relativity. In General

Re: [FRIAM] does classical mechanics always fail to predict or retrodict for 3 or more Newtonian gravity bodies? Rich Murray 20

With particular regard to computer simulations of celestial mechanics, Gerry Sussman wrote a paper sometime in (IIRC) the late 1970s, about the ultimate instability of the solar system (one of the classical motivations for celestial mechanics in general and the 3-body problem in particular). I

Re: [FRIAM] A question for your Roboteers out there

On 5 Feb 2011 at 12:29, Nicholas Thompson wrote: At what point in the complexity of a robot (or any other control system) does it begin to seem useful to parse input into information about the system itself and information about other things? From the beginning, it's useful to parse input

Re: [FRIAM] Daphnia's jeans

On 4 Feb 2011 at 14:33, Nicholas Thompson wrote: I bet you somebody will post something in the next day claiming that humans have fewer genes because they have a larger brain instead. As the saying goes, what counts isn't the size of your genome, it's how you use it. To a first order

Re: [FRIAM] The decline effect

On 12 Dec 2010 at 0:46, Nicholas Thompson wrote: At least until recently, when the NY-er writes about science, they try very hard not to write anything stupid. What??? Have you forgotten the whole disgraceful Paul Brodeur episode? Refresh your memory by reading

[FRIAM] Tinbergen on mathematics, mathematical model, and novels

[Note to Nick: This is Jakob, the economist, brother of your Tinbergen.] There are also a number of misunderstandings about mathematics. Sometimes it is believed that only certain very simple and therefore rigid relations are representative by mathematics and that reality is more

[FRIAM] Elisabeth Pisani article on long history of data mining

http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/12/Prospect_Big_data.pdf (that URL should be all on one line) FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives,

[FRIAM] pond scum update

Here is a report from someone on another list to which I forwarded Nick's original usb microscope question; the list had been kicking it around for a while, and this guy took action. ===begin=== http://www.celestron.com/c3/product.php?ProdID=516 These are pretty good photos! How easy is it to

Re: [FRIAM] Peer review

I am told that in economics these days, some journals do pay referees (which I presume means peer reviewers) an honorarium that diminishes by some set amount every day from the receipt of the paper (not dipping below $0, though; that *would* get my attention). This might be an Academic Urban

Re: [FRIAM] Updike Vs the Bard

On 1 Dec 2010 at 13:12, Nicholas Thompson wrote: I Always wondered how Hamlet knew what an angel looked like. Let alone, God. ... Nick, you are being an uncareful reader. Here's the text from Hamlet, again: What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!

[FRIAM] the nine circles of scientific hell

http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2010/11/9-circles-of-scientific- hell.html FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

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