You all be glad to know that I have been in New England for the last three days
and have yet to see the sun. The green is overpowering.
My father, who emigrated to the west from KY after WWII referred to this
as "so green, it hurts your eyes!"
Apparently, they had a record-breakingly warm February here followed by and
equally record-breakingly cold March which has resulted in in an eruption of
ticks. Yes, folks, this year, even the ticks have ticks.
I hear it is this way in the upper midwest/great-lakes region as well.
While I was traveling, you all suddenly had a burst of Complexity Talk,
which I am now trying to recapture.
...
Many of my ilk have died for the lack of good, fresh, passionate argument to
submit to a Journal.
I am sympathetic with your desire to capture/render some of these
informal/semi-formal discussions in a more formal form, but believe that
a good portion of the back and forth here is _mere_ collective
brainstorming. In this particular round-robin, I see Russ having had a
very specific (but not completely exposed) idea about the boundary
region between life and non-biological complex systems, which he posed
as a challenge.
A number of us threw down in various forms, mostly trying to answer his
specific question, or in my case asking him if he wasn't really noticing
that there may be no clear boundary between life and non-biological
complex systems... suggesting that it is our definition of "life itself"
which deserves a constant expanding. I think Glen's listing of
precedents for this question, roughly from Rosen to Kauffman was another
way of suggesting that, though I've been wrong about what Glen means before.
I am also a firm believer that what we often do (when we do it well) in
this type of forum is to refine a question until it may (or may not)
have a simple or obvious (but non-trivial?) answer.
I think the residue of the discussion, as refactored by Stephen Guerin
is still a very much alive horse worth beating, or at least leading to
water.
I am afraid that what is needed is not a better mechanical *threading*
tool to preserve these discussions (I can easily sort my inbox by
subject/date and recover the thread (and others could do the same on the
archive)). Merely capturing the discussion as it was
generated/played-out does not achieve more than the baseline of what you
want I think. There may be automatic semantic processing tools which
could help to tie all of this together into something more structured
than a series of "he said/he said" arcs. There are complex references
within this corpus and much richer references to the larger corpus of
writing on the topic(s) (complexity science, life, etc.)
It feels as if what you are wishing for is an automated "editor" in the
broadest sense, including the role of curator and summarizer. Or maybe
just the tools to aid a human in that process. I know you have talked
this up many times and it often falls dead or gets you a round of
razzing, so I don't want to instigate that. I don't know how often your
role has been as an editor of others' technical work, but is it fair to
say that is where you are looking for leverage?
Also, while I am in a reflective mood, it is probably time for me to apologize
to Steve S. for my rhetorical snark. Actually, his use of in form is normative.
I didn't mind your snark at all, it was a good excuse to engage with
you, if only in a simple riposte. I do think that the use of language
is important and our current (ab)uses at the highest levels of
government and politics(for example) which play off the most base
(mis)uses by the populist populace (aka unwashed masses) makes it feel
ever more urgent.
(I have seen dictionaries that make his usage the FIRST usage.) So actually,
I have NO normative leg to stand on. To bulk up my critique of his use of the
word, I have to build a much bigger argument concerning the use of words that
have two meanings in place of words that have but one in the hope of avoiding
two-close scrutiny of the meaning being conveyed. But even that argument is
shaky, because SS could say, I meant EXACTLY what I said. I MEANT to say that
something ... some speech, some idea, some event ... shaped the inside of
something.
I WILL cop to a propensity of deliberate use of slightly unfamiliar
words or familiar words in unfamiliar contexts... I don't like to think
I do it for simple effect, I like to think I *usually* do it to draw
attention to the specificity of the usage. In this case, I felt there
were nuances suggested by "inform" over "shape" (as I've already
argued... not arguing here... just illustrating).
And now, those of you who know me well, will see the actual source of my
disgruttlement with his usage: my behaviorism. [OH GAWD, THOMPSON, DO YOU HAVE TO DO
THIS?] For a behaviorist, the metaphor implied by "information" itself is
profoundly dangerous because it appeals to the shape of something which we cannot see.
Even when we speak of informing somebody in the normative, everyday usage, we are
obfuscating. Speech influences behavior at least in some long-term global sense, or it
does nothing at all. (Yes, Frank, it's true! (};-)] )
I do hope we can sit for many hours some day and for me to let you
edjumicate me a little more on the broader implications of being a
behaviorist. I"d like to understand better how that informs (gak!) your
worldview and the things you find it easier to discuss in a particular
mode and the things you find more difficult to think around.
Lord knows, I miss you all! If anybody has the energy to summarize your recent
complexity debate, I would be in your debt.
I doubt my summary is of the kind you want, more of a blow-by-blow than
anything, but I do hope the discussion proceeds in a way that is useful
to you. Your own tradition of scholarship and un) questions of the rest
of us.
I think Glen Biohazard's comment "without a secretary, there is no
artifact"... Are you therefore maybe asking for a "mechanical
secretarial turk"?
Carry on!
- Steve
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of gepr
Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2017 7:38 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]>; Stephen
Guerin <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?
I've struggled to understand your point here. Are you saying that, eg, a phase
diagram of a device like a refrigerator, with ice in the freezer part, jello in
the fridge part, and coolant in the compressor:
1. violates a definition of 'space',
2. cannot exist,
3. reduces to a common, atomic, phase space, or 4. something else?
On May 26, 2017 5:39:40 PM PDT, Stephen Guerin <[email protected]>
wrote:
We disagree on the use of systems and subsystems in the context of
phase space then. To me, there is one system and that system has a
phase space - There are not multiple subsystems in the phase space.
--
⛧glen⛧
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