Yes, doesn’t matter. Email is a clunky chanel. Best,
E > On May 22, 2020, at 8:52 AM, <[email protected]> > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Thank you, ERIC! > > I KNEW I was going to make that mistake some day. > > Nick > > Nicholas Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology > Clark University > [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ > <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> > > > From: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2020 5:50 PM > To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> > Subject: RE: [FRIAM] anonymity/deniability/ambiguity > > Thank you, David, > > I need to think about all of this. > > A brief early response: There are two things that words do: they stroke and > they convey information. AT the core, I think, my authoritarian impatience > (to use a word that has recently blossomed in the correspondence on the list) > arise when people confuse one use of words for another. When we speak of > that of which we cannot speak we are like primates who groom but do not > remove any lice. Grooming and being groomed is very nice; but I am really > interested in louse removal. > > Nick > > Nicholas Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology > Clark University > [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ > <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> > > > > From: Friam <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> On > Behalf Of David Eric Smith > Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2020 5:15 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] anonymity/deniability/ambiguity > > Signal to Nick: > > You commented on wanting to understand the conversation about formalists and > intuitionists which I have been using in various conversations with Glen and > Jon. Now is the chance to do it at low cost. > > Frank has provided two proofs of irrationality of the square root of 2, one > formalist (using proof by contradiction requiring acceptance of the law of > the excluded middle) a few days ago, this most recent one being constructive, > meaning that it constructs a degree of difference that you can point to > concretely, rather than concluding from the syntax that there must be such. > One gets at the core of anything I was trying to say by looking at these two > proofs, and deciding whether one can see what is different in their sense. > > For me, these concrete, super-simple minimal pairs are the mental tools to > get at the difference between one style of thought and another. I can then > try to decide whether, in some much more difficult context, where it is very > hard to be concrete, I think I see the same kind of contrast in style. Since > I am too slow to almost ever work out the watertight version of anything, and > some of these would be too hard for me to do at all, I don’t even seriously > intend to check whether my imagistic impression is reliable. I am willing to > use the simple cases I do understand as perceptive filters to try to make > some kind of approximate sense of the hard cases, as the alternative to just > letting it all go by. > > You commented in one of these emails that you could accept “irreducible” as > long as it didn’t mean “can’t be described”, and I have been thinking over > the past days whether I can come down on one side of that or the other. You > might also have said, “as long as it didn’t mean `can’t be observed’ “. > > I decided I don’t know. To know what can or can’t be observed, can or can’t > be described, is or isn’t behavior, one has to operationalize any of those > and decide how reliable the operationalization is. The exchange mostly of > Glen, EricC, and Jon about what is or isn’t behavior, often quite tedious, > seemed like it took seriously the right caution. One could build comparable > tedious harangues around “observe” and “describe”, and perhaps must to > resolve this. > > You might think you can say, as a matter of syntax, that “of course it must > be observable” or else one is denying science. Physicists though for almost > 200 years that that “of course” was unproblematic, that they had an > operationalization that was both flexible enough to extend to more and more > subjects, restrictive enough to have content, and expressible in equivalence > to mathematical objects. Then they learned that the way they had assumed “of > course” it could be done wasn’t the correct formalization to be extended to > quantum mechanics. That didn’t mean that there wasn’t a correct > formalization, only that a different one was required, to subsume all that > had worked before, and also extend where the former one couldn’t go. The > proof of inadequacy of the former was only demonstrated by putting one that > was more correct in its place and exhibiting the difference (constructive); > it seems like it would have been hopeless to anticipate, in the pre-quantum > days, that the notion of observability was inadequate in the way it actually > was, and even more hopeless to try to use a syntactic argument (formalist) > either to assert its sufficiency or identify the specific defect that quantum > mechanics would ultimately reveal. So when I ask “what is the value of a > formalist-style declaration that inner-ness can’t be a real property, if one > is not constructing something to show that to be the case”, this is the style > difference I am using as a reference to put that question. > > I don’t imagine that what we learned about definitions of observability in > physics will have any direct relevance to whatever challenges the term may > pose in psychology. The physics example is just a nice reminder of ways in > which it can be very hard to decide when one is really saying something, and > likewise an example that constructing the alternative sometimes seems to give > the only perspective from which to see that there had formerly been a > problem. > > Because Pierce et seq. have done so much to try to be precise, practical, and > useful in defining what science is, it allows me to be lazy, say “yes I > accept and defend all that”, and then ask for an ultra-stripped-down > abstraction of what science is then. > > I may already have written this (senility), but my imagistic definition would > be that science is the premise that mistakes aren’t all sui generis, but that > they have family resemblances, and that there are methods of practice that > give one a better-than-random chance of recognizing that something may be a > mistake even short of knowing what ‘the' (or ‘a better’) answer is. I choose > that framing in part because it is also the framing that formalizes the > notion of error correction in computer science (so I have a mental image to > refer to as an exemplar accompanied by some formal tools). One wants to > identify the fact that a message contains an error, without having to know, > for every message in advance, what it was supposed to have contained (else > you didn’t need to be sending messages in the first place). > > I use the stripped down form in the hope of building a recursive tree of > mutual refereeing, for all elements of scientific practice, now appealing to > my mental image of Peter Gacs’s error-correcting 1D cellular automaton, which > does this by nesting correcting structure within correcting structure. Then > I can look for every aspect of our practice that is trying to play this role > in some way. A subset include: > 1. Intersubjectivity to guard against individual delusion, ignorance, > oversight, and similar hazards. > 2. Experimentation to guard against individual and group delusion etc, and to > provide an additional active corrective against erroneous abduction from > instances to classes. > 3. Adoption of formal language protocols: > 3a. Definitions, with both operational (semantic) and syntactic (formalist) > criteria for their scope and usage > 3b. Rigid languages for argument, including logic but also less-formal > standards of scientific argument, like insistence on null models and > significance measures for statistical claims > > There must be more, but the above are the ones I am mostly aware of in daily > work. > > These are, to some extent, hierarchical, in that those further down the list > are often taken to have a control-theoretic-like authority to tag those > higher-up in the list as “errors”. However, like any control system, the > controller can also be wrong, and then its authority allows it to impose > cascades of errors before being caught. Hence, I guess Kant thought that a > Newtonian space x time geometry was so self-evident that it was part of the > “a priori” to physical reasoning. It was a kind of > more-definite-than-a-definition criterion in arguments. And it turned out > not to describe the universe we live in, if one requires sufficient scope and > precision. Likewise, the amount of a semantics that we can capture in > syntactic rules for formal speech is likely to always be less than all the > semantics we have, and even the validity of a syntax could be undermined > (Godel). But most common in practice is that the syntax could be used as a > kind of parlor entertainment, but the interpretation of it becomes either > invalid or essentially useless when tokens that appeared in it turn out not > to actually stand for anything. This is what happens when things we thought > were operational definitions are shown by construction of their replacements > to have been invalid, as with the classical physics notion of “observable”, > or the Newtonian convention of “absolute time”. > > I would like to give Pierce’s “truth == reliable in the long run” a modern > gloss by regarding the above the way an engineer would in designing an > error-correction system. The instances that are grouped in the above list > are not just subroutines in a computer code, but embodied artifacts and > events of practice by living-cognizing-social behavers and reasoners. And > then decide from a post-Shannon vantage point what such a system can and > cannot do. What notions of truth are constructible? How long is the long > run, for any particular problem? What are the sample fluctuations in our > state of understanding, as represented in placeholders for terms, rules, or > other forms we adopt in the above list in any era, relative to asymptotes > that we may or may not yet think we can identify? How have errors cascaded > through that list as we have it now, and can we use those to learn something > about the performance of this way of organizing science? (Dave Ackley of UNM > did a lovely project on the statistics of library overhauls for Linux > utilities some years ago, which is my mental model in framing that last > question.) Formal tools to answer more interesting versions of questions > like those. > > I mentioned some stuff about this in a post a month or two ago, and EricC > included in a later post by way of reply that Pierce did a lot of statistics, > so I understand I can’t take anything here outside the playpen of a listserve > until I have first read everything Pierce wrote, and everything others wrote > about what Pierce wrote, etc. I suspect that, since Pierce lived before the > publication of at least part of what is now understood about reliable error > correction, large deviations, renormalization, automata theory, etc., there > should be something new to say from a modern standpoint that Pierce didn’t > already know, but that assertion is formalist, and thus valueless. I have to > do the exhaustive search through everything he actually did know, to point > out something new that isn’t already in it (constructivist). > > Which is why I won’t have time, resources, or ability to do it. So I will > never know whether the things said above actually mean something. > > Eric > > > > > >> On May 22, 2020, at 2:44 AM, Frank Wimberly <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> The badly rendered part: >> >> >> {\displaystyle \left|{\sqrt {2}}-{\frac {a}{b}}\right|={\frac >> {|2b^{2}-a^{2}|}{b^{2}\left({\sqrt {2}}+{\frac {a}{b}}\right)}}\geq {\frac >> {1}{b^{2}\left({\sqrt {2}}+{\frac {a}{b}}\right)}}\geq {\frac {1}{3b^{2}}},} >> >> >> On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 11:30 AM Frank Wimberly <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> Clinicians often call that "being oppositional". >>> >>> You say that I've known authorities. I was just talking to John Baez about >>> my advisor Errett Bishop, often called the inventor of constructive >>> mathematics. Here is a constructive proof, with no use of the excluded >>> middle, of the irrationality of sqrt(2) that I found in Wikipedia. >>> Apologies to those who don't care: >>> >>> In a constructive approach, one distinguishes between on the one hand not >>> being rational, and on the other hand being irrational (i.e., being >>> quantifiably apart from every rational), the latter being a stronger >>> property. Given positive integers a and b, because the valuation >>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singly_and_doubly_even#Definitions> (i.e., >>> highest power of 2 dividing a number) of 2b2 is odd, while the valuation of >>> a2 is even, they must be distinct integers; thus |2b2 − a2| ≥ 1. Then[17] >>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_root_of_2#cite_note-17> >>> {\displaystyle \left|{\sqrt {2}}-{\frac {a}{b}}\right|={\frac >>> {|2b^{2}-a^{2}|}{b^{2}\left({\sqrt {2}}+{\frac {a}{b}}\right)}}\geq {\frac >>> {1}{b^{2}\left({\sqrt {2}}+{\frac {a}{b}}\right)}}\geq {\frac {1}{3b^{2}}},} >>> the latter inequality being true because it is assumed that a/b ≤ 3 − √2 >>> (otherwise the quantitative apartness can be trivially established). This >>> gives a lower bound of 1/3b2 for the difference |√2 − a/b|, yielding a >>> direct proof of irrationality not relying on the law of excluded middle >>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_excluded_middle>; see Errett Bishop >>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Errett_Bishop> (1985, p. 18). This proof >>> constructively exhibits a discrepancy between √2 and any rational. >>> >>> On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 10:50 AM Steve Smith <[email protected] >>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>>> >>>> On 5/21/20 10:32 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote: >>>> > Don't be fooled. "The problem with communication is the illusion that it >>>> > exists." Or ie I believe in a stronger form of privacy than you believe >>>> > in. >>>> I KNOW! I know just what you mean! >>>> >>>> <note to Frank... one of the species of animal in this group is "the >>>> Contrarian", but you probably already guessed that> >>>> >>>> >>>> -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . >>>> ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... >>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>>> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam >>>> <http://bit.ly/virtualfriam> >>>> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>>> <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> >>>> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ >>>> FRIAM-COMIC <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC> >>>> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Frank Wimberly >>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz >>> Santa Fe, NM 87505 >>> 505 670-9918 >> >> >> >> -- >> Frank Wimberly >> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz >> Santa Fe, NM 87505 >> 505 670-9918 >> -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... >> ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam >> <http://bit.ly/virtualfriam> >> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> >> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ >> <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >> <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> > > -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... > ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > <http://bit.ly/virtualfriam> > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/>
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