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> On Dec 7, 2019, at 1:25 PM, <[email protected]> > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Glen, > > Most streams of experience don't converge. Random streams predict nothing. > They are of no use to the organism. Only streams that converge, "are". I.e, > only they exist. Random streams, aren't. Most co-occurrences in stream are > random, they reveal no existents. Since you can never know for sure whether > you are in a random or a non random stream, you can never know whether the > parts of the stream you are responding to exist or not. But you can sure > make educated (i.e., probabilistic) guesses, and that's what organisms' > learning mechanisms do. So, I don’t have a ==>faith<== in convergence. I, > like all learning creatures, have a lack of interest in non-convergence. Non > being interested in convergence in experience would be like going to a poker > game in which some cards are marked and not being interested in the relation > between the cards and the marks. > > Nick > > Nick Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology > Clark University > [email protected] > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of glen?C > Sent: Saturday, December 7, 2019 9:40 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind? > > Excellent! So, your *scalar* is confidence in your estimates of any given > distribution. I try to describe it in [†] below. But that's a tangent. > > What I can't yet reconstruct, credibly, in my own words, is the faith in > *convergence*. What if sequential calculations of an average do NOT converge? > > Does this mean there are 2 stuffs, some that converge and some that don't? > ... some distributions are stationary and some are not? Or would you assert > that reality (and/or truth, given Peirce's distinction) is always and > everywhere stationary and all (competent/accurate/precise) estimates will > always converge? > > > > > [†] You can be a little confident (0.01%) or a lot confident (99.9%). I don't > much care if you close the set and allow 0 and 1, confidence ∈ [0,1]. I think > I have ways to close the set. But it doesn't matter. If we keep it open and > agree that 100% confidence is illusory, then your scalar is confidence ∈ > (0,1). Now that we have a scale of some kind, we can *construct* a typology > of experiences. E.g. we can categorize things like deja vu or a bear in the > woods as accumulations of confidence with different organizations. E.g. a > composite experience with ((e1⨂e2⨂e3)⨂e4)⨂e5, where each of ei experiences > has some confidence associated with it. Obviously, ⨂ is not multiplication or > addition, but some other composer function. The whole composite experience > would then have some aggregate confidence. > >> On December 6, 2019 8:22:29 PM PST, [email protected] wrote: >> Elegant, Glen, and you caused me truly to wonder: Is the population >> mean, mu, of statistics fame, of a different substance than the >> individual measurements, the bar x's that are stabs at it? But I think >> the answer is no. It is just one among the others, a citizen king >> amongst those bar-x's, the one on which the others will converge in a >> normally distributed world. I guess that makes me a frequentist, >> right? >> >> And it's not strictly true that Mu is beyond my reach. I may have >> already reached it with the sample I now hold in my hand. I just will >> never be sure that I have reached it. >> >> Could you, Dave, and I perhaps all agree that all ==>certainty<== is >> illusory? >> >> I don't think that's going to assuage you. >> >> I am going to have to think more. >> >> Ugh! I hate when that happens. > > > ============================================================ > 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 > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
