Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

"Challenge: I have tried and failed, so far, but can you pose the exact same set of metaphors but absent the military/violence words?" Go vs. Chess? P.S. Even Santa is doing it https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/578959/shaman-santa/

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

Nick, Absolutely different. But, in ways we have barely touched upon, potentially complementary. War required both strategies PLUS some means of meaningful interaction. Challenge: I have tried and failed, so far, but can you pose the exact same set of metaphors but absent the

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

Dave, I dunno, Dave. I still think we're different. I lay siege to large cities; you send cavalry deep behind enemy lines. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -Original

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

David writes: < There is such a huge area of interesting, at least to me, research, and not just for therapeutic use, here that it annoys me when a combination of puritan morality and scientific elitism dismisses the entire subject. > On a computer, when I experiment with kernel modules or

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

while typing my last response, the conversation took an interesting turn, prompting the following. I went to college intending to become a quantum chromodynamicist. Before college I had read every 'popular' science book on Physics and Cosmology (Asimov, etc,) and monographs used in graduate

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

But is there a continuous "many valued" logic, where any proposition can be evaluated to take on some sub-region of a continuous set? Yes! See Wikipedia for a good discussion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-valued_logic --- Frank Wimberly My memoir:

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

> Why hast thou forsaken me? > > Nick Well, did you pay your tithes last month It is really kind of silly to think that one can either characterize oneself, or be characterized by others, as Dionysian or Apollonian. the concept has become so mucked up since Nietzsche used the notions

Re: [FRIAM] Learning curves (was, Abduction)

Figure B is how R works, and Figure A describes a good student. On 1/2/19, 2:32 PM, "lrudo...@meganet.net" wrote: 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 >

[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

Blame Frank! 8^) Or blame yourself for artificially discretizing humans into Dionysian vs. Apollonian. Thanks, Lee. I doubt I have the ability to parse the Barmak and Minian work. But I appreciate your skepticism. My intention was to vaguely hand-wafe at something about closed and open

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

Lee, I think you got your threads seriously tangled. N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of

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] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)

Depression, bipolar disorder, and OCD are examples of the kind of mental illnesses I had in mind. They make life hard for those that have it. More downsides than upsides. As for sociopathy, for most people, just being too damned irritating will eventually create a cost for them too.

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

I claim the answer to your 2 questions is yes. As Marcus (with the usage classes) and Steve (with behavioral "drugs") point out, the reason people engage in such things is to make their lives *better* (according to some definition of "better"). To think anything else is to risk the madness of

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

Well, right, Steve. Is it fair to say that, to some extent, you have "cultivated" dreaming? I guess that's all I mean to say. I decided not to dream much. By the way, may I unfairly take you to task about one thing you said. And I quote: rational/linear modes of

Re: [FRIAM] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)

It is to this point that I prefer to think in terms of "neurodiverse" rather than "mentally ill".   Your definitions here respond more to my idea of "sociopathy".    I don't think of sociopaths as being mentally ill, just not good members of the society they find themselves in.   Most

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

Since one of my dead horses is artificial discretization, I've always wondered what it's like to work in many-valued logics. So, proof by contradiction would change from [not-true => false] to [not-0 => {1,2,..,n}], assuming a discretized set of values {0..n}. But is there a continuous "many

Re: [FRIAM] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)

Nick writes: “A mentally ill individual is one whose behavior is so annoying that other individuals are willing to cooperate to put him away?” Sure, in that case the “mentally ill individual” may have failed to connect their actions with the consequences. Or maybe they wanted lodging in a

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

Hmmm! Of course I take drugs. I'm a diabetic for god's sake. Every day I pump myself full of artificial insulin and the preservative that keeps if fresh, "l-creosotin", a form of formaldehyde, I assume. And you are absolutely right, I don't look for some peak experience every time my

Re: [FRIAM] on selection pressure

Sure, you can see that selection pressure samples more intensively in the lower quantiles of energy, just not close to the ground state. The goal I had was to find the ground state, not just to give the appearance of one. Stepping back, I claim what conservatives want is to give the

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

p.s. Dropping the law of the excluded middle required giving up proof by contradiction. --- Frank Wimberly My memoir: https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly My scientific publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 Phone (505)

Re: [FRIAM] on selection pressure

The reason I asked was your statement "selection pressure has accomplished nothing". What I would be looking for is a more comprehensive description of the solution space showing selection as selecting a *subset* of properties/dimensions of the space. So, while selection may not have pushed

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

Nick, I don't think the dichotomy is useful to understand or categorize why people seek experiences. Some seek them to feel better about going in circles (opiates), others to help them to go in some direction (stimulants), and others to see more possible directions (psychedelics).One can

Re: [FRIAM] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)

Marcus, Forgive me if I am entering this party late, but what exactly means “mental illness” I would expect that mental illness is massively underdiagnosed in this country, and especially in the blue collar mid-west where it is considered a taboo topic and people have not had adequate

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

I have spent my life cultivating hypnopompic and hypnogogic states...  this, which supports lucid dreaming, is my best way to access mystical states...   mindfulness meditation, as I practice it, can lapse into these states if I allow it. I was put off by the drug-culture of my peers in the

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

I think this is where the misunderstanding lies. The people who experiment with nootropics (nowadays, anyway) aren't really looking for a "peak experience". I think the trend is toward the older shamanic use ... like my mom used to say about going to church on Sunday ... it's like a "shot in

Re: [FRIAM] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)

Robert writes: “Estimates vary by source, but fraction of opioid deaths that are suicide is around 20-30%” What I’d really like to know is how the fraction of opioid deaths occur with individuals that have no historical sign of mental illness at all, and would be described by their friends

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

This bend within an already bent thread caused me to put down my screen (aka computer in this case) and pick up the lingering paper Sunday NYT Book Review section I'd been hoarding (at the risk of it becoming fire-starter when I wasn't looking).   The cover is a Surrealist drawing, nominally

Re: [FRIAM] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)

"Dreamland" by Sam Quinones has a good description of the history of our current epidemic. Highly recommended. Estimates vary by source, but fraction of opioid deaths that are suicide is around 20-30% On Wed, Jan 2, 2019 at 11:01 AM Marcus Daniels wrote: > >

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

Perhaps Marcus already said this or something like it. You do dream you just want to ignore that fact because it's inconsistent with your assertion that minds don't exist. Also, a dichotomy can be true if you exclude the law of the excluded middle which constructivist mathematicians do and still

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

Dave, Thou deniest me in my moment of need! Thou castest me to the wolves (eg Marcus). Why hast thou forsaken me? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

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

Marcus, Well, if nothing is real, then dreams aren't real either, right. So, that's a non-starter. I don't think I am being absurd, but that's for others to judge. I assume my brain does rem sleep like everybody else's, but one sure as hell can minimize or maximize the experience of

Re: [FRIAM] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)

http://theconversation.com/suicide-nation-whats-behind-the-need-to-numb-and-to-seek-a-final-escape-98137 “Americans stand out from people in other countries with respect to their focus on individualism. Americans believe that success is determined by our own control and that it is very

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

Sorry Nick, I am as hardcore Apollonian as is possible. And if you organize your life around pleasure, even if moderate and consistent, it is you that are the Dionysian. davew On Wed, Jan 2, 2019, at 10:02 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Dave, > > I realize that you (and perhaps others of our

Re: [FRIAM] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)

Dumb question: Is there anything behind this besides an burst of legal prescriptions that created a self-reinforcing trend? Or are people actually going crazy? From: Friam on behalf of Robert Holmes Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Date: Wednesday, January 2,

Re: [FRIAM] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)

I can come up with a couple of possibilities. First, that some of the opioid deaths are counted in other causes of death to get to the 2% number.  The second, is that there is another category of opioids beyond the "heroin", "natural & semi synthetic, inc. oxycodone", "synthetic, inc.

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

It's a false dichotomy. An Apollonian can recognize that he or she needs food, just as well as they could recognize they need intellectual or spiritual sustenance. And of course your brain will do the dreaming that is needed to keep you alive, even if you don't know about it or recognize its

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

Yeah. See. That's just the point. About 20 years ago, I decided that dreaming was a waste of time and I wouldn't do it anymore. So I don't. Dionysians and Apollonians are very different people. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University

[FRIAM] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)

Early this week I came across a recent press release from NM Dept of Health: "Governor Martinez Announces Continued Improvement in Drug Overdose Death Rankings" . I've been tinkering round with opioid statistics, so thought it might be worth

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

There's also this thing one can do called `sleeping in', which tends to increase the probability of dream memory and/or lucid dreaming, at least for me. A built-in neuroplasticity mechanism complete with psychedelic phenomena and a safety mechanism of motor system deactivation. ( On 1/2/19,

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

Dave, I realize that you (and perhaps others of our colleagues here) are Dionysians, whereas I, always, have been a stalwart Apollonian. The difference, for me, is the risk one is willing to take for a peak experience of some sort. Some people organize their lives around their vacations and

Re: [FRIAM] on selection pressure

The connections are imperfect, but the world is better with people like Ken that are willing to explain them. If you want to execute perfect arithmetic, use a computer. From: Friam on behalf of Stephen Guerin Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Date: Wednesday,

Re: [FRIAM] on selection pressure

Here's Ken's TV interview in Santa Fe which provides a nice review of the findings in his book. http://reportfromsantafe.com/episodes/view/293/ken-stanley-author-why-greatness-cannot-be-planned-the-myth-of-the-objective/ ___

Re: [FRIAM] on selection pressure

Hi Stephen, Thanks for the paper. I have some colleagues that study deceptive energy landscapes but it is a different literature. [I do like trying to figure out “How the hell did that work?!” more than a workman-like construction project. Maybe up to a point when the experiments and

Re: [FRIAM] on selection pressure

Very cool, Marcus! Did you interact with Ken Stanley ( https://scholar.google.se/citations?user=6Q6oO1MJ=en=ao) when he was at SFI a couple years back? Ken's research would support your observations on the importance on the pressure to maintain novelty/diversity in evolutionary algorithms vs

Re: [FRIAM] on selection pressure

Some memory, and the ongoing recombination and optimization of less fit (high energy) individuals which tend to create other less fit individuals. In this optimization system there are numerous methods that are used to create fit individuals, but the ones that create the very best individuals

Re: [FRIAM] on selection pressure

Are there computational (or otherwise not shown) costs to the members that continue in the free case but are pruned in the selection case? On 1/2/19 7:44 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Here are a couple of plots from a large constrained optimization problem I've > been running. > In the first

[FRIAM] on selection pressure

Here are a couple of plots from a large constrained optimization problem I've been running. In the first case, I apply selection pressure: If a solution is not in the top 200 performers, it dies. In the second case, the population can continue to grow without concern for its performance.

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

I agree. It reminds me of a conversation I was just having with a friend who floated the idea that Alzheimer's, in stripping away many of our mental functions, could be considered at least partly a good thing. My response was that for all the Alzheimer's patients I've had the opportunity to

Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

MDMA risks = dehydration, in part because it is usually taken in the context of frenetic physical activity like at a rave. Disinhibition can pose a secondary risk because partner selection is less discerning. Like too many drugs, long term effects / gender different effects / age different