Ah, good to see you nick. How fairs you? On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Hi everybody, > > > > Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog. > > > > I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. > > > > First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose > value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it’s last value. > So the next step in a random walk is “random” but the current value (it’s > present position on a surface, say) is “the result of a stochastic > process.” From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I > still can’t tell if I am correct or not. > > > > Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you > confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this “evolution” of > which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are > speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- > *The > alteration of the design of taxa over time*. Hard to see any way in > which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into > the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the > vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability > all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are > predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of > your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of > the phenomenon, itself. > > > > So what kind of “evolution” are you guys talking about? > > > > Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, > here. > > > > nick > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > ============================================================ > 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 > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >
============================================================ 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 FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
