Please see below.
Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2016 10:57 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] speaking of analytics - data mining Gravel has fractured faces and is complex. It certainly does not move freely between units. It is used just for the opposite property. Pebbles are rounded move more freely. (If you want to split hairs, I can do that too.) [NST==>Splitting hairs is just what working a metaphor is about. So I consider your contribution above as very helpful. I was thinking pebbles, actually. I think if one orders gravel around here, pebbles is what you get. So, we are “negotiating” the surplus meaning of the metaphor, making it explicit. Good important scientific work. Work too rarely done, in my opinion, particularly with respect to the metaphor of “natural selection.” <==nst] The point is that billions of A, G, C, and Ts, do not directly create information about why one person will be Usain Bolt and another will be Amadeus Mozart, or how certain immunotherapy tactics will work with one person or not another. [NST==>Well, I agree so avidly with this statement, that I have lost track of where we disagree. <==nst] If you want to think about organic molecules, don’t think about dance partners. Get an organic chemistry textbook and a molecular dynamics code and check to see if a metaphor even is in the right ballpark. [NST==>I only meant to assert that “dance partner” is a better metaphor than “gravel as was delivered to my yard last week.”<==nst] From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2016 8:41 AM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] speaking of analytics - data mining Marcus, Now here, I would argue that gravel is a very bad metaphor for base pairs. The salient properties of the elements of gravel is that the particles are more or less uniform in shape free to move with respect to one another , and not easily compressed and broken. Base pairs are of significantly different shapes, bind together importantly with each other and other substances, do not move freely with respect to one another, and can readily be crushed and broken. So, the argument would run, thinking of base pairs as gravel will lead to more errors than thinking of them as, say, dance partners in an elaborate contra-dance. Nick . Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2016 10:33 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] speaking of analytics - data mining In anguish, the people invented an entire new profession - Data Mining - that essentially 'crushed' the data stores creating gravel composed of individual datums and put the result in a different, more malleable matrix — live gravel in cement and sand and water (before the matrix dries). From this new medium the people would pluck bits of gravel and place them next to each other an proclaim, "Look! Information!" That’s a funny story, but it overlooks the fact that sometimes all there is, is bits of gravel. Like 3 billion base pairs of the human genome. There’s no “teenage clerk” that has looked at most of it in detail or has much of any intuition about what it does. Similarly, there’s no Rosetta stone for the nuances of why different whale species vocalize one way or another. It’s just a process of throwing ideas against the wall and see if they stick. Computers can do that more rapidly than humans can, at least. Data mining isn’t just for developers in industry that can’t figure out how to decompose tables or make indices. There are many approaches to modeling information, database normalization is one of many. Information and category theory contribute other approaches. Marcus
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