Eric -
All very well described... thank you... I feel you have given me a round
half-bakers-dozen new things to think about in these matters.
.... can tend to spin a thread with a _very_ long ring-down time by
people who really care about this topic and have put a lot of time
into it.
Nice description of an (all too) common phenomenon. Even though my
tendency is to drive such ringing, I will try to damp instead.
... Confessed bias here on various science problems: most notions
start out in common language, and are taken as having some meaning --
examples: particle in physics; individual in evolutionary dynamics --
and only on the far side of learning how to do technical calculations
for some more mundane reason do we learn that the words may still be
usable, but that to be used reliably vis a vis the world, they can
require some rather elaborate construction to attach a definition to.
So I am interested in that anyway for material things, and it is some
extension of that interest to wonder about sources of confidence or
conten! t in expressions.)
An important phenomenon to ponder..
... The extensive form is not only large, but is also structured, from
the sequence and dependencies of moves. Therefore one can do
combinatorics on it. One can speak of how rare subsets of leaves on
the tree are, and how hard it is to arrive at them reliably, etc. I
can show what this looks like for evolutionary games, where it
provides a nice way to get at neutrality, but I am sure the same
combinatorics can be made useful in many domains.
Very interesting... thanks...
I like the phrase here "in which nonsense has a defined status". I would claim that
there is a meta-game in play where this is literally and obviously the truth... it is why we have
so many words for "bullshit" to refer to utterances deliberately crafted to sound
meaningful while being meaningless. I *think* this is the bread and butter of marketing and of
politics (which contemporarily is significantly driven by marketing?)
Maybe one can go further though, and recognize that politics and marketing are
simply exaptations of what is resident in communication at all levels.
yes... and I suspect Glen's assertion that communication is a form of
grooming has some validity to it... something about the object of
communication being (also) about refining the social order.
The question of understanding how things work can remain interesting apart
from our need to make use of it, which can have emotional valence.
Well said!
One can try to be more model specific. I think i have referred to Ray
Jackendoff's "three systems" view in threads before, in his lectures
Language, Consciousness, Culture, available in book form. It is
semi-concrete enough that one could think of making models. Thank you
for this conversation.
Ditto... I will try to follow up on Jackendoff (again?) and be more
prepared for this type of conversation when it arises.
- Steve
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