Re: Correlation v. causality
Warren Ockrassa wrote: (2) Most people are stupid, and forced to think for themselves will opt for the most stupid and evil choices No. It's a mischaracterization -- and unfair -- to assert that most people are stupid. Most people are not stupid. They make the best operational decisions they can given the information available to them. If most people were stupid, our species would have been extinct long ago. Most people is stupid _and_ most stupid people have an instinctive drive to mindlessly obey the orders of those that they believe are more intelligent - and this is what prevents extinction. Sorry, no time (now) to reply to the rest of the post. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: dogmatism v. pragmatism
On Dec 4, 2007 3:11 PM, jon louis mann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: religion and science are incompatible, for the most part May I just say, nicely perhaps... baloney. I spend all day doing complicated large-scale mathematical analysis of community behaviors, writing software, trying to know all the statistics that might apply (I hate statistics, which is probably the only healthy way to use it) and keeping up with a rapidly growing field of analysis. I'm also a committed Christian and there's nothing incompatible about the two. My church and lots of others around here are full of scientists and engineers -- this is Silicon Valley, after all. Some may find that their beliefs and their science collide, but I assure you that most don't. The real incompatibility is between fear and science. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Correlation v. causality
On Dec 4, 2007 9:45 PM, Charlie Bell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Not necessarily. You could just be repeating buzz-words (in fact, complexity is a red-flag buzz-word in precisely the same way transitional fossils or macroevolution are - makes me think you're alluding to William Dembski, but I'd be shocked and disappointed if you were). Which is why I was asking for a more in-depth discussion of the perceived issues complexity has to a specific Darwinian model. If you can do that, then we can have a discussion. If you can't, or won't, then it's just a waste of time. I'm talking about the Santa Fe Institution people and those doing related work. Kauffman, Waldrop, Holland, Arthur, Lewin, etc. I've read probably 20 such books, none in the last few years, so I may be somewhat behind. I did most of an undergraduate degree in biology until I switched into writing and rhetoric. I got interested in genetics when I was a kid; as a college freshman in 1975, one of my first programs on a PDP-8 modeled Mendelian inheritance. Just looked to see who Dembski is. I guess I need to say clearly that I am not nor ever have been a proponent of intelligent design. I find that whole idea and movement rather nauseating. It seems to me to be rather obviously based in fear, not science. I feel the same way about people who assume that anybody who is unsatisfied with Darwinian -- natural selection as the over-reaching mechanism of speciation -- must be proponents of intelligent design. It's like it's impossible to engage in debate without first rejecting the lunatics. Emergence isn't trivial, it's actually an important insight, one of those (like natural selection) that seems so damned obvious in hindsight that it's hard to imagine not understanding it. However you're right in that pointing out that a system exhibits emergence doesn't tell you much about it unless you bother to discover the nature of the simple causes and how they generate complex results. I wasn't saying that emergence is trivial. I was saying that it is trivial to describe emergence. As I think you're saying, figuring out the implications of emergence is challenging. There's a lot to be discovered by those who can figure out the mathematics that will allow us to model many kinds of emergent phenomena, which currently seem to be beyond-astronomical in magnitude. So... perhaps I can answer your question this way... we don't know much much of evolution is driven by simple rules that are inherent in the universe (thus the anthropic principle) v. how much is driven by competition. It's a lot easier to see competition at work because our main tool for studying emergence is modeling that rapidly sucks down all the computing power we can throw at it. Saying it another way... complexity says that the interactions of lots of agents gives rise to unpredictable (so far) phenomena. At the simplest mathematical levels, it is meaningless to describe those interactions as competitive or cooperative, but at higher levels of observation, such behaviors appear to emerge. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Correlation v. causality
On Wed, 5 Dec 2007, Nick Arnett wrote: I'm talking about the Santa Fe Institution people and those doing related work. Kauffman, Waldrop, Holland, Arthur, Lewin, etc. I've read probably 20 such books, none in the last few years, so I may be somewhat behind. I did most of an undergraduate degree in biology until I switched into writing and rhetoric. I got interested in genetics when I was a kid; as a college freshman in 1975, one of my first programs on a PDP-8 modeled Mendelian inheritance. Just to give you an idea as to where my mind was, when I read Waldrop I immediately thought Howard, not M. Mitchell. :P (We owned a copy of _Complexity_, I read it, it got lost sometime around 1998 or so, and we may replace it, because we liked it. I own a copy of _Howard Who?_ that I've seen a lot more recently, and I'm at the same conventions as Howard on a regular basis. Don't think I've ever shared space with M. Mitchell.) Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Weekly Chat Reminder
As Steve said, The Brin-L weekly chat has been a list tradition for over six years. Way back on 27 May, 1998, Marco Maisenhelder first set up a chatroom for the list, and on the next day, he established a weekly chat time. We've been through several servers, chat technologies, and even casts of regulars over the years, but the chat goes on... and we want more recruits! Whether you're an active poster or a lurker, whether you've been a member of the list from the beginning or just joined today, we would really like for you to join us. We have less politics, more Uplift talk, and more light-hearted discussion. We're non-fattening and 100% environmentally friendly... -(_() Though sometimes marshmallows do get thrown. The Weekly Brin-L chat is scheduled for Wednesday 3 PM Eastern/2 PM Central time in the US, or 7 PM Greenwich time. There's usually somebody there to talk to for at least eight hours after the start time. If you want to attend, it's really easy now. All you have to do is send your web browser to: http://wtgab.demon.co.uk/~brinl/mud/ ..And you can connect directly from William's new web interface! My instruction page tells you how to log on, and how to talk when you get in: http://www.brin-l.org/brinmud.html It also gives a list of commands to use when you're in there. In addition, it tells you how to connect through a MUD client, which is more complicated to set up initially, but easier and more reliable than the web interface once you do get it set up. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ This message was sent automatically using launchd. But even if WTG is away on holiday, at least it shows the server is still up. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: dogmatism v. pragmatism
On Dec 5, 2007 11:45 AM, jon louis mann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: jerry pournelle, is also catholic, and used to be a much more progressive, but now is way over to the opposite end of the political spectrum. I haven't seen Jerry in a long time, but I never would have guessed that he was ever progressive. The more times I ran into him, the less I could stand reading anything he wrote... Aside from his grandiosity and misbehavior (don't ask, I won't gossip) I'd hear it all in his voice, which could ruin anything. i can understand why many wealthy individuals are drawn to the religious right, but i can not understand why so many lower class christians support bush when they are victims of his economic policies... George Lakoff has an explanation and although I'm not sure it is politically useful, it makes a lot of sense to me. Moral Politics is his book that explains it in depth. The short version is that the right, especially the fundamentalist right-wingers, appeal to a stern father concept that all of us have and use to one extent or another. The alternative is to invoke our concept of nurturing parents, Lakoff argues. But it's sort of like Freud; the model works but doesn't seem to be practical. i have a friend who is a cal tech graduate and is still orthodox. that i don't understand, but we are still friends. if you are raised in a faith, you either reject it completely, as i did, or find some way to rationalize your faith... perhaps there is a middle ground? In my faith, being lukewarm is cause for criticism... ;-) Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
dogmatism v. pragmatism
In my faith, being lukewarm is cause for criticism... ;-) Nick what is your faith, nick, if you don't mind my asking? i get that you are a christian, but what version? were you raised in the church, or did you have some kind of epiphany? i personally don't believe one's political bias is determined by whether their personal obligations are forced or chosen. perhaps influenced? i have been in both situations and also had a very stern father model. some people react against their upbringing and others embrace it, but imho, it is an individual choice. i have two sisters who are republicans, one brother who is apolitical and another who is as radically militant as myself. i hate the government in any case, even though i believe government should regulate industry and provide social services. i encountered pournelle for the first time during the reagan years when he was involved with sdi. he would talk about his politics in the mc carthy era and was very visible at conventions and the lasfs. i haven't seen him in years but hear that he has mellowed and no longer drinks excessively. jon - Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: dogmatism v. pragmatism
Lakoff makes more sense if you add the concept of freely chosen obligations versus enforced obligations - I forget the precise terminology. The latter means that you do what you do because you must - it's your duty as whatever your role is. Dharma, in the Hindu usage. The former is, you freely choose your obligations and choose to remain faithful to them. People who believe in the chosen obligations ask How can you ever trust someone forced into staying with you/taking care of Mom/whatever? Being enslaved, won't the resent it and do as little as possible or get petty revenge? People who believe in forced obligations can't imagine being able to ever trust any of the chosen-obligation people. After all, didn't they get into their marriage, role, or whatever, on a *whim*? And won't they walk out of it just as freely? The mapping onto Lakoff is fairly obvious. And let me add that the forced-obligation people tend to be hard-right and the chosen-obligation people to be moderate-to-hard left. The reason is that if the government takes over the obligations, doesn't that get people off the hook and allow them to skip out on doing their bounden duty? There was a long discussion of this on Ozarque's Journal (lj) some time ago. http://idiotgrrl.livejournal.com/ Now is the winter of our discontent From: Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Subject: Re: dogmatism v. pragmatism Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 11:55:40 -0800 On Dec 5, 2007 11:45 AM, jon louis mann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: jerry pournelle, is also catholic, and used to be a much more progressive, but now is way over to the opposite end of the political spectrum. I haven't seen Jerry in a long time, but I never would have guessed that he was ever progressive. The more times I ran into him, the less I could stand reading anything he wrote... Aside from his grandiosity and misbehavior (don't ask, I won't gossip) I'd hear it all in his voice, which could ruin anything. i can understand why many wealthy individuals are drawn to the religious right, but i can not understand why so many lower class christians support bush when they are victims of his economic policies... George Lakoff has an explanation and although I'm not sure it is politically useful, it makes a lot of sense to me. Moral Politics is his book that explains it in depth. The short version is that the right, especially the fundamentalist right-wingers, appeal to a stern father concept that all of us have and use to one extent or another. The alternative is to invoke our concept of nurturing parents, Lakoff argues. But it's sort of like Freud; the model works but doesn't seem to be practical. i have a friend who is a cal tech graduate and is still orthodox. that i don't understand, but we are still friends. if you are raised in a faith, you either reject it completely, as i did, or find some way to rationalize your faith... perhaps there is a middle ground? In my faith, being lukewarm is cause for criticism... ;-) Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
EP/Meme/War model was Correlation v. causality
At 01:00 PM 12/5/2007, Nick Arnett wrote: On Dec 4, 2007 3:10 PM, hkhenson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 01:00 PM 12/4/2007, Nick Arnett wrote: snip You've set an impossibly high burden of proof by claiming that religion causes evil. You'll never prove it. I don't think that's the proper model. My argument there is really about the squishiness of psychology and sociology. The *claim* made by EP figures such as Buss, Cosmides, Tooby and company is that EP provides a way to link these sciences into the rest of science. Evolutionary psychology states that *every* human psychological trait is either the result of direct selection or a side effect of direct selection. (With a bit of possibility of something being fixed due to random genetic drift.) This is arguing from a conclusion. The conclusion is that everything that exists in living organisms arose via evolution, therefore everything has an evolutionary explanation. I'll certainly allow that it *may* be true, but it certainly isn't proved -- our understanding of evolution is far from complete. We can only work with the best explanations we have now. For the moment evolution or as it was known, natural selection, is the best unifying explanation for all of biology we have. Furthermore, I think pure Darwinian explanations are generally wrong. Everything doesn't arise from competition and we have mathematics (complexity) that demonstrates that, or at least very strongly suggests that Darwinian models are substantially incomplete. Until Hamilton came up with the concept of inclusive fitness, there was a big hole in Darwinian theory that even Darwin was aware of. But I am not aware of any other holes. (Nothing in this is an argument for or against God; like the majority of people, I don't think religion has anything much to say about evolution.) I agree with the last point. Evolution, however, may have a *great deal* to say about religion. I think we can agree that the psychological mechanisms behind religion are a species wide psychological trait. It's known from twin studies to be at least as heritable as other personality traits. That's interesting and certainly speaks to causes. You have a choice of directly selected (like the psychological mechanism behind Stockholm syndrome) or a side effect like drug addiction. (In the EEA being wiped out on plant sap was a formula for experiencing the intestines of a predator from the inside.) I favor direct selection via a primary mortality mode in the EEA, wars between groups of humans. Here is the background: http://cniss.wustl.edu/workshoppapers/gatpres1.pdf I have gone a little further than Dr. Gat and propose that the psychological mechanism leading to wars starts with a population average bleak outlook. Under circumstances where parents can see they won't be able to feed the kids through the next dry season, it makes genetic sense for an evolved behavioral switch to flip. So the future looks bleak enough, it is cost effective from the gene's viewpoint for a group of related males to go to war and take the high risk of dying. Hmmm. Are you suggesting that this mechanism directly explains, for example, our invasion and occupation of Iraq? Yes. I go into it in some detail in Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War. War mode which a population can get into either by a long buildup of xenophobic memes in response to a bleak future *or* by being attacked inhibits rational thinking. The reason is that when people get into war mode there is a divergences in interests between the individual and his/her genes. I can't explain this unless you are up on inclusive fitness and the human EEA, in which case it is fairly obvious. Or is war simply a leftover from a time of scarcer resources? Have you looked at the price of gasoline lately? You ask: How do religions fit in here? What are religions? They are memes of course, Ouch. Though I love the concept of a meme, it is at best vaguely defined. Clever, but not obviously useful, at least to me. So it's very little help to me to postulate that religions are memes. Memes are elements of culture, replicating information patterns and dozens of other equal ways to define them. They are at the root information and could be measured in bits if you want. but in particular religions are *xenophobic* memes. When times are good they are relatively inactive seed xenophobic memes. What we see today as religions are the result of evolved psychological mechanisms that induce groups to go to war as needed by conditions. By this model religions don't _cause_ wars. How does this explain non-warring religions? How could they have anything meaningful left over? You can show me a very few religions that were not involved with war. My response would be to say wait and that distinction will go away. If you consider killing people evil or at least
Re: Correlation v. causality
On 5 Dec 2007, at 02:35, jon louis mann wrote: It may prevent most people from being evil some of the time but it also makes most people evil some of the time too. Catholic ideas about birth control are evil whenever applied. What about the various recent evil Muslim antics? William T Goodall the original judeo religion which spawned christianity, and islam and all their schisms is far less evil and dogmatic in its campaigns against heretics. reform and reconstructionist jews are far more progressive than its conservative and orthodox forbears. some protestant religions and moderate muslims are improving, also, so tere is hope... i would not say that all evangelical fundamentalists are stupid, just ignorant. they often make a choice to ignore facts and are motived more by emotion than rational thought. people who are sceptical and free thinkers are probably more intelligent in general because they make a conscious choice to reject mystical superstition and creation mythos. Catholics are still the largest Christian sect and Sharia law is part of Muslim culture. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or Allow? ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
dogmatism v. pragmatism
religion and science are incompatible, *for the most part*... jon May I just say, nicely perhaps... baloney. I spend all day doing complicated large-scale mathematical analysis of community behaviors, writing software, trying to know all the statistics that might apply (I hate statistics, which is probably the only healthy way to use it) and keeping up with a rapidly growing field of analysis. I'm also a committed Christian and there's nothing incompatible about the two. My church and lots of others around here are full of scientists and engineers -- this is Silicon Valley, after all. Some may find that their beliefs and their science collide, but I assure you that most don't. The real incompatibility is between fear and science. Nick i agree with you about fear and science, nick. perhaps i should clarify that i was referring to evangelical fundamentalist religious zealots who preach hellfire and damnation, deny evolution and translate the christian bible literally. that IS incompatible with science, and to put it unkindly, that sort of dogmatic religion is baloney, salami, sausage and other meat byproducts from intestinal organs. now, having said that, i do respect those christians who practice the teachings of christ, but i draw the line at elevating a mortal to diety status. he was a man, like you and i, just with a highly developed sense of morality, in the context of his times. he was a rebel, and i believe, a commie. i have no problem with his sermon on the mount, or the beatitudes, either. i admire the story of him as a youngster throwing the money changers out of the temple. it is institutional religion i abhor. i generally tolerate congregationalists over, say southern baptist schisms, although i marched with mlk for civil rights and those kind of political stands i approve. there are fundamental differences in how different religions believe humanity and the world interact. religion and politics are an extremely volatile mix. both approach the most profound questions of existence from different perspectives and with different agendas. unfortunately, because of the religious right, politics has mutated into a material and spiritual debate over issues such as aborttion, capital punishment, education, torture, justice, race, eguality, health care, immigration, gender, sexual idenity and much, much more. religion and state are supposed to be separate, at least in america. i once had this discussion with r.a. lafferty and he got up and walked away. he was devoutly catholic and i was mystified how someone so intelligent and literate could believe in doctines like papal infalliblibility. jerry pournelle, is also catholic, and used to be a much more progressive, but now is way over to the opposite end of the political spectrum. i can understand why many wealthy individuals are drawn to the religious right, but i can not understand why so many lower class christians support bush when they are victims of his economic policies... i have a friend who is a cal tech graduate and is still orthodox. that i don't understand, but we are still friends. if you are raised in a faith, you either reject it completely, as i did, or find some way to rationalize your faith... perhaps there is a middle ground? jon - Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Correlation v. causality
On 06/12/2007, at 11:09 AM, Nick Arnett wrote: those systems through a few simple rules is a challenge, but not beyond our capacity. Interestingly, some of the most successful work has come out of games and movies - SimCity exhibits some emergence, and CGI crowd/battle scenes Oh, I gotta disagree about what we can calculate. Take the simplest sort of rule system -- a binary network -- and if it is big enough to be interesting, there isn't enough time and computing power in the life of the universe to examine the possible states. Oh, I see what you mean. Well, yes if you're talking on that scale. But at smaller scales, look at some of what's been done in Game of Life, building computational devices and so on. And then we (well not me...) can build systems that treat those computational devices as agents within a larger scale sim. So we have some shortcuts to help ameliorate some of the pure scale issues. Unless there's been some breakthrough I haven't heard about, nobody has come up with an algorithmic solution, either but when if and when somebody does, it'll be huge. Nobody has figured out how to mathematically describe the observable way the models cycle through similar (attractor) states. Perhaps with quantum computing... Yep, that'll be the big one. Although it'll render PGP useless... Especially interesting is actually the pre-evolutionary field of abiogenesis, where hypercycles may turn out to explain how a set of complex interactions of molecules could bootstrap out of the prebiotic chemical soup. This is where Kauffman opened my eyes... replicators like to replicate and all that. But it's not Darwinism Arrgh. No, it's not Darwinism. But it isn't outside of evolutionary theory either! -- unless everything that we observe is getting tossed into the Darwinism bucket to fight off the ID people, which might be politically useful, but confusing. No!!! Stop saying Darwinism! Yes. But that's describing behaviour, not evolution (which is simply changes in gene frequencies in a population over time). That strikes me as a surprisingly narrow definition and not at all common in my reading. It's the fact of evolution - given a breeding population with imperfect inheritance, gene frequencies will change over time. That's all evolution actually is. Now, charting how that's manifested itself over the history of life on Earth is one huge area of study (also known as evolution but really genealogy writ extremely large), and how variability and selection and so on work is another area of study (also shorthanded to evolution, but really evolutionary theory). Now, there's some speculation that DNA has a bit more going on than just a gene carrier: - it's been postulated that interactions of genes can act in a self-organising way, or even as a form of calculating device, a genetic computer. But this is controversial, and it's going to take a lot of work to show this. Interesting line of study, however. And just what Kauffman (or is it Axelrod) suggests is signified by the mathematical relationships between gene counts and cell differentiation counts, if I am remembering it correctly. I'm struggling to recall (and away from my books), but isn't the mechanism of cell differentiation still quite a mystery? It's imperfectly understood, but when I was an undergraduate we learnt a fair bit about it, and in the 15 years since everything I learnt has been superceded. It's the fastest moving field in biology, as I mentioned in a previous post. Of course, with all the stem cell research going on, perhaps there's a lot of new evidence coming out all the time. Stem cells, and other biological models. The main ones used are the nematode worm _C. elegans_ and the zebrafish. Charlie. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Correlation v. causality
William T Goodall wrote: Corollary: Religion is not evil, because it prevents most people from being evil. It may prevent most people from being evil some of the time but it also makes most people evil some of the time too. Catholic ideas about birth control are evil whenever applied. What about the various recent evil Muslim antics? People who blindless follow those ideas are already stupid, evil, or both. If they weren't puppets of those evil clerics, who knows what other evil things they would do? Maybe instead of unprotected sex, they would be practicing mass rape. Maybe instead of terrorist suicidal acts, they would be practicing kidnapping, extorsion, or drug traffic. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: EP/Meme/War model was Correlation v. causality
On 06/12/2007, at 8:45 AM, hkhenson wrote: At 01:00 PM 12/5/2007, Nick Arnett wrote: It's great food for thought, but I'd still like to escape the circularity. Is it just politically incorrect to consider non-Darwinian explanations? One can consider them. But one has to actually show how they're better than current explanations. Not at all. I just don't know any that can't be mapped to biology/ evolution. Yep. And I mean *scientific* non-Darwinian explanations, not the non- thinking kind that some folks seem to think is all that fits in one's head if one chooses to have faith. For example, how does the anthropic principle (which I suspect the math of complexity hints at) fit into this discussion? It doesn't. Wrong level. Indeed. The anthropic principle is, IMO, a huge red herring and the ultimate in hubris. It makes the assumption that this universe is suited for life. Really? Given the size of the observed universe, and the miniscule bit of it that observably has life, I'd say this universe is, to a high degree of precision, very hostile indeed to life. Intuitively, I'm tempted to believe that if Darwinism was all there is, we wouldn't be here to observe the universe. But how can one prove the anthropic principle without a few other universes available as examples? Again, Darwinism. Eesh. It's like calling orbital mechanics Newtonism or electrics Edisonism. It's a really loaded term, and evolutionary studies have moved on 150 years from Darwin's foundations. Really understanding biology (and natural selection) depends on understanding the level below it, chemistry. Not so much, but it can give one some extra insights. The existing elements are dependant on physics processes in stars (which is where the anthropic principle comes in). But evolution is emergent. As far as I know, *nothing* in biology makes any sense without invoking evolution. Yep. Dobzhansky's classic 1973 essay Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution is as relevant today. Full text here: http://www.2think.org/dobzhansky.shtml The same is true (I think) if you want to understand levels that depend on biology such as psychology and sociology. Less strongly so, but the consensus is stronger than it was 10 years ago. I think a lot of the problems come when people conflate evolution with Darwinism and mean a strict gradualism with strict natural selection as the only mechanism - this is a poor caricature of the breadth and depth of modern evolutionary theory in all its guises. Emergent phenomena may or may not wind up joining the synthesis - I suspect that it will - but it's not a theory in competition to evolution, it's complementary. Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: dogmatism v. pragmatism
On Dec 5, 2007 4:00 PM, Charlie Bell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Except insofar as Christianity makes claims about how the world is. IIRC, you're a Lutheran, and the American Lutheran church is fairly progressive. But saying there's *nothing* incompatible about the two would seem to be a stretch - even if you subscribe to the viewpoint of non-overlapping magisteria there are bound to be cases where you simply have to make a value judgement between what your religion tells you and how the world appears to actually be, no? Not that I can recall. Certainly not on a regular basis. There has been at least one time when I made a commitment to a church-related activity and our CEO called and wanted to talk business, urgently, and I told him that on that particular day -- a Saturday -- my priority was the church. Ironically, what I was supposed to be doing was practicing a talk on priorities -- how we balance faith, family, work, etc. One reason I'm very happy to work where I am is that this was okay, even encouraged by our CEO. Others might be less supportive and I'd have to decide whether or not to keep working there... but I don't see that as an incompatibility. What I find far more incompatible, or at least challenging, is to hang on to faith while witnessing the worst things life has to offer -- war, suicides, trauma of all sorts. It often seems like it would be much easier to yield to fear and distraction (which are related) than to continue to believe. My church and lots of others around here are full of scientists and engineers -- this is Silicon Valley, after all. Some may find that their beliefs and their science collide, but I assure you that most don't. Because they genuinely don't collide at all, or because of compartmentalisation? Depends on the church, I'm sure. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Correlation v. causality
On Dec 5, 2007 3:44 PM, Charlie Bell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 06/12/2007, at 2:56 AM, Nick Arnett wrote: I'm talking about the Santa Fe Institution people and those doing related work. Kauffman, Waldrop, Holland, Arthur, Lewin, etc. Right, now I'm a lot closer to understanding what you're alluding to (but it's the Santa Fe Institute...). Of course it is... the older I get the more my fingers decide to type words that are similar the ones I intended. I'm really astonished when they type the wrong articles -- correct part of speech, but not the word I was thinking. Makes me wonder how the whole brain-fingers things works. People who make sweeping statements without getting involved in specifics are 9 times out of 10 cranks, or at the very least don't know what they're talking about. It's hard to give people the benefit of the doubt when there are so many aggressive cranks out there. Emergence has applications in ecosystems, crowd control, city design, animal behaviour, surveillance, neural nets, and so on. Economics. Must not omit economics. The implications for economics are, in my mind, too interesting to make a list and leave it out. Just a point of personal preference...but money makes the world go 'round. Modelling those systems through a few simple rules is a challenge, but not beyond our capacity. Interestingly, some of the most successful work has come out of games and movies - SimCity exhibits some emergence, and CGI crowd/battle scenes Oh, I gotta disagree about what we can calculate. Take the simplest sort of rule system -- a binary network -- and if it is big enough to be interesting, there isn't enough time and computing power in the life of the universe to examine the possible states. Unless there's been some breakthrough I haven't heard about, nobody has come up with an algorithmic solution, either but when if and when somebody does, it'll be huge. Nobody has figured out how to mathematically describe the observable way the models cycle through similar (attractor) states. Perhaps with quantum computing... Especially interesting is actually the pre-evolutionary field of abiogenesis, where hypercycles may turn out to explain how a set of complex interactions of molecules could bootstrap out of the prebiotic chemical soup. This is where Kauffman opened my eyes... replicators like to replicate and all that. But it's not Darwinism -- unless everything that we observe is getting tossed into the Darwinism bucket to fight off the ID people, which might be politically useful, but confusing. Yes. But that's describing behaviour, not evolution (which is simply changes in gene frequencies in a population over time). That strikes me as a surprisingly narrow definition and not at all common in my reading. Now, there's some speculation that DNA has a bit more going on than just a gene carrier: - it's been postulated that interactions of genes can act in a self-organising way, or even as a form of calculating device, a genetic computer. But this is controversial, and it's going to take a lot of work to show this. Interesting line of study, however. And just what Kauffman (or is it Axelrod) suggests is signified by the mathematical relationships between gene counts and cell differentiation counts, if I am remembering it correctly. I'm struggling to recall (and away from my books), but isn't the mechanism of cell differentiation still quite a mystery? Of course, with all the stem cell research going on, perhaps there's a lot of new evidence coming out all the time. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: dogmatism v. pragmatism
On 06/12/2007, at 3:05 AM, Nick Arnett wrote: I'm also a committed Christian and there's nothing incompatible about the two. Except insofar as Christianity makes claims about how the world is. IIRC, you're a Lutheran, and the American Lutheran church is fairly progressive. But saying there's *nothing* incompatible about the two would seem to be a stretch - even if you subscribe to the viewpoint of non-overlapping magisteria there are bound to be cases where you simply have to make a value judgement between what your religion tells you and how the world appears to actually be, no? My church and lots of others around here are full of scientists and engineers -- this is Silicon Valley, after all. Some may find that their beliefs and their science collide, but I assure you that most don't. Because they genuinely don't collide at all, or because of compartmentalisation? The real incompatibility is between fear and science. That's true. So really, it's where religions or ideologies are fear- based that they have trouble with dealing with things as they are. Well, that explains the Bush Administration... Charlie. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Correlation v. causality (was Re: Poll finds more Americans believe in devil than Darwin)
On 5 Dec 2007, at 00:55, Warren Ockrassa wrote: On Dec 4, 2007, at 10:56 AM, William T Goodall wrote: On 4 Dec 2007, at 16:26, Richard Baker wrote: Nick said: I'm pointing out that there's a correlation between skepticism about science and good science. The country that includes a lot of skeptics about science is the same country that excels in science. Therefore, one may leap to the conclusion that skepticism about science causes good science. It's not scepticism though. The people in the US who don't believe in evolution by natural selection by and large aren't saying we don't think evolution by natural selection is an adequate explanation for the extant biological diversity so for the moment we won't believe in it even though there are no plausible alternatives but rather we don't believe in evolution by natural selection because these fairy stories are so much more plausible despite the total lack of evidence for them! That's not scepticism, it's misplaced credulity. And people who think like that are dangerous to themselves and others. Hence religion is evil. No more nor less so than any other institution. Other institutions don't necessarily require people to believe untrue things. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If so, then Microsoft would have great products. - Steve Jobs ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Correlation v. causality
On 06/12/2007, at 2:56 AM, Nick Arnett wrote: I'm talking about the Santa Fe Institution people and those doing related work. Kauffman, Waldrop, Holland, Arthur, Lewin, etc. Right, now I'm a lot closer to understanding what you're alluding to (but it's the Santa Fe Institute...). I followed the early A-life stuff very carefully, and think that Chris Langton's work is fascinating. Kauffman is very interesting too, but he's got a lot of work to do. I'll discuss it below a bit. Just looked to see who Dembski is. I guess I need to say clearly that I am not nor ever have been a proponent of intelligent design. I find that whole idea and movement rather nauseating. It seems to me to be rather obviously based in fear, not science. Yes. But when you start saying things like complexity poses challenges to Darwinian models without providing examples, you're echoing (inadvertently it seems), one of the major battle cries of the ID movement. Gets my hackles up, because it's vacuous at best and downright unscientific more likely. I feel the same way about people who assume that anybody who is unsatisfied with Darwinian -- natural selection as the over-reaching mechanism of speciation -- must be proponents of intelligent design. It depends what people are saying. If one actually proposes some other model, then it can be evaluated, and there's a discussion, and we're doing science. But if you look back over the last few posts, you'll see that I've been trying to ask what models you're talking about, and it took several attempts to even get you to even mention some scientists by name. It appeared extremely evasive from where I'm sitting, and that again is a red-flag to pseudoscience. Bear in mind that outside of Brin-L, I spend a lot of time discussing evolutionary biology, and I'm well used to cranks hijacking discussions. People who make sweeping statements without getting involved in specifics are 9 times out of 10 cranks, or at the very least don't know what they're talking about. It's like it's impossible to engage in debate without first rejecting the lunatics. Which is what I've been trying to do by asking you exactly what you were alluding to. It's a lot easier to engage in a debate if you actually engage in it. Emergence isn't trivial, it's actually an important insight, one of those (like natural selection) that seems so damned obvious in hindsight that it's hard to imagine not understanding it. However you're right in that pointing out that a system exhibits emergence doesn't tell you much about it unless you bother to discover the nature of the simple causes and how they generate complex results. I wasn't saying that emergence is trivial. I was saying that it is trivial to describe emergence. As I think you're saying, figuring out the implications of emergence is challenging. There's a lot to be discovered by those who can figure out the mathematics that will allow us to model many kinds of emergent phenomena, which currently seem to be beyond- astronomical in magnitude. Emergence has applications in ecosystems, crowd control, city design, animal behaviour, surveillance, neural nets, and so on. Modelling those systems through a few simple rules is a challenge, but not beyond our capacity. Interestingly, some of the most successful work has come out of games and movies - SimCity exhibits some emergence, and CGI crowd/battle scenes So... perhaps I can answer your question this way... we don't know much much of evolution is driven by simple rules that are inherent in the universe (thus the anthropic principle) v. how much is driven by competition. Why are those two different things? Evolution as currently accepted *is* driven by simple rules. If you have inheritance and differential breeding rates, that lead to changes in gene prevalence over generations. That's all evolution is. There is a lot in the complexity of ecosystems (or in maintaining simple systems in a stable way) that could be understood and explained by emergence. Especially interesting is actually the pre-evolutionary field of abiogenesis, where hypercycles may turn out to explain how a set of complex interactions of molecules could bootstrap out of the prebiotic chemical soup. Indeed, emergence and hypercycles may go a long way to explaining how biochemical systems like the Krebs cycle could have appeared and been incorporated. Look at one of those huge posters of the human metabolic pathways, and it absolutely screams emergence. Here: http://expasy.org/cgi-bin/show_thumbnails.pl Kauffman argues that the complexity of systems may result as much from emergent phenomena and complexity, non-linear dynamics, maybe chaos, as they do through natural selection. Well yes, they probably do. But I think these are two related but not totally overlapping areas - natural selection explains
Re: dogmatism v. pragmatism
On 06/12/2007, at 11:17 AM, Nick Arnett wrote: There has been at least one time when I made a commitment to a church-related activity and our CEO called and wanted to talk business, urgently, and I told him that on that particular day -- a Saturday -- my priority was the church. Ironically, what I was supposed to be doing was practicing a talk on priorities -- how we balance faith, family, work, etc. :-) One reason I'm very happy to work where I am is that this was okay, even encouraged by our CEO. Others might be less supportive and I'd have to decide whether or not to keep working there... but I don't see that as an incompatibility. No, that's not what I meant, of course. But that's an interesting and different issue that I think we all have to deal with, and I'm sure we'll discuss it again. What I find far more incompatible, or at least challenging, is to hang on to faith while witnessing the worst things life has to offer -- war, suicides, trauma of all sorts. It often seems like it would be much easier to yield to fear and distraction (which are related) than to continue to believe. Or, indeed, decide as I did that leaving religion and embracing the concept that all those things are like they are because it's just how it is, and it's actually the brave choice to stand up, say actually, it makes a lot more sense of there isn't a god... and stop being afraid of life and death. That worked for me, and casting away that fear and doubt allowed me to start making decisions about my own life properly. But I appreciate it neither makes sense to, nor helps, many others. Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: EP/Meme/War model was Correlation v. causality
On 06/12/2007, at 8:45 AM, hkhenson wrote: Furthermore, I think pure Darwinian explanations are generally wrong. Everything doesn't arise from competition and we have mathematics (complexity) that demonstrates that, or at least very strongly suggests that Darwinian models are substantially incomplete. Until Hamilton came up with the concept of inclusive fitness, there was a big hole in Darwinian theory that even Darwin was aware of. But I am not aware of any other holes. The mechanism of inheritance was another, and that led to Darwin's theory struggling round the turn of the 20th century. Until Huxley, Mayr, Fisher, Haldane and so on realised Mendelian genetics explained it. And then with the understanding that DNA was the carrier of the heritable information, that sealed it. Also, understanding that crossover and chromosomal translocations and so on are just as important to widening variability as mutations was a big support to the body of theory. Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Correlation v. causality (was Re: Poll finds more Americans believe in devil than Darwin)
On Dec 5, 2007, at 5:39 AM, William T Goodall wrote: On 5 Dec 2007, at 00:55, Warren Ockrassa wrote: On Dec 4, 2007, at 10:56 AM, William T Goodall wrote: And people who think like that are dangerous to themselves and others. Hence religion is evil. No more nor less so than any other institution. Other institutions don't necessarily require people to believe untrue things. Some religions require that, yes. That does not justify tarring the entire field with the same brush. The UU church, for instance, doesn't particularly have any articles of faith (which could be one reason membership* numbers seem so low) and doesn't particularly care if you ascribe to any given belief system. Furthermore there are ample cases of individuals being motivated to perform good deeds as a direct result of religious teachings, which is pretty much inarguable proof that the statement religion is evil is simply not correct. It *can* be evil, there are myriad times when it *is* evil, but your statement that religion *is* evil is functionally equivalent to saying that, since some people are anaphylactically allergic to shellfish, all shellfish are lethal poisons to all individuals. It's just not true. == * I originally mistyped that as memebership. Rather Freudian- slippish of me. -- Warren Ockrassa Blog | http://indigestible.nightwares.com/ Books | http://books.nightwares.com/ Web | http://www.nightwares.com/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Correlation v. causality
On Dec 5, 2007, at 4:45 AM, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro wrote: Warren Ockrassa wrote: (2) Most people are stupid, and forced to think for themselves will opt for the most stupid and evil choices No. It's a mischaracterization -- and unfair -- to assert that most people are stupid. Most people are not stupid. They make the best operational decisions they can given the information available to them. If most people were stupid, our species would have been extinct long ago. Most people is stupid _and_ most stupid people have an instinctive drive to mindlessly obey the orders of those that they believe are more intelligent - and this is what prevents extinction. This is an interesting pair of claims and I'd be intrigued to know what evidence you have to support either one of them, and more particularly why you've arrived at the conclusion you have. What I mean is that it almost looks like you've made a decision and are doing a post hoc analysis to support it. It might help to define what you mean by stupid, but what I'm reading here could be inverted as this: Because many people tend to be followers rather than leaders, and because many people prefer the comfort of feeling part of a group to the relative discomfort of being trend-setters, most people tend to align with a leader of their choice. This can lead to destructive, mindless behavior and inculcate intellectual laziness, which can often be characterized as rank stupidity. That's not the same thing as saying that most people are stupid, but it might be a middle ground that's more conducive to productive discussion regarding what to actually *do* about it. And with groups in play, stupidity might be relative. Consider, for instance, that a YEC would consider most biologists, paleontologists, anthropologists, physicists and geologists as being incredibly stupid for not seeing the obvious clarity of the point of view that aligns to strict Biblical interpretation. And that is relevant, because Isaac Newton was a young-earth creationist and, when he wasn't inventing calculus in order to define physics and optics, he was trying to find proofs of a literal interpretation of Biblical teachings. So which was he? Stupid or brilliant? Or consider what might happen if I were to begin holding forth on the subject of opera, about which I know essentially nothing. To an aficionado I'd sure as hell look plenty stupid, but it would (probably) be a mistake to characterize me as being so, instead of simply labeling me a loudmouthed ignoramus on the topic. The point is that we might be more inclined to consider those who are not part of our in-crowd as being stupid simply because they aren't part of our in-crowd, but as with the case of Newton, it seems unwise to apply one label to all members of a clade. If you're thinking of stupid as meaning inclined to mental laziness, I'd probably agree, but my personal working definition of stupid is (more or less) totally incapable of comprehending something. I don't believe the concepts are equivalent, and I don't believe most people fit that definition of stupid. -- Warren Ockrassa Blog | http://indigestible.nightwares.com/ Books | http://books.nightwares.com/ Web | http://www.nightwares.com/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Correlation v. causality
On Wed, 5 Dec 2007, Warren Ockrassa wrote: If you're thinking of stupid as meaning inclined to mental laziness, I'd probably agree, but my personal working definition of stupid is (more or less) totally incapable of comprehending something. I don't believe the concepts are equivalent, and I don't believe most people fit that definition of stupid. I have several categories for people who don't have given information or knowledge: 1) Ignorant (but probably willing to learn, or at least not rejecting the information) 2) Willfully ignorant (actively rejecting the information) 3) Stupid Ignorance can be cured with information. Stupidity can't. Willful ignorance is the worst, IMO. Brittle dogmatism leads to willful ignorance in a number of cases, hence is a very negative thing. Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Correlation v. causality
Because many people tend to be followers rather than leaders, and because many people prefer the comfort of feeling part of a group to the relative discomfort of being trend-setters, most people tend to align with a leader of their choice. This can lead to destructive, mindless behavior and inculcate intellectual laziness, which can often be characterized as rank stupidity. That's not the same thing as saying that most people are stupid, but it might be a middle ground that's more conducive to productive discussion regarding what to actually *do* about it. And with groups in play, stupidity might be relative. Consider, for instance, that a YEC would consider most biologists, paleontologists, anthropologists, physicists and geologists as being incredibly stupid for not seeing the obvious clarity of the point of view that aligns to strict Biblical interpretation. And that is relevant, because Isaac Newton was a young-earth creationist and, when he wasn't inventing calculus in order to define physics and optics, he was trying to find proofs of a literal interpretation of Biblical teachings. So which was he? Stupid or brilliant? Or consider what might happen if I were to begin holding forth on the subject of opera, about which I know essentially nothing. To an aficionado I'd sure as hell look plenty stupid, but it would (probably) be a mistake to characterize me as being so, instead of simply labeling me a loudmouthed ignoramus on the topic. The point is that we might be more inclined to consider those who are not part of our in-crowd as being stupid simply because they aren't part of our in-crowd, but as with the case of Newton, it seems unwise to apply one label to all members of a clade. If you're thinking of stupid as meaning inclined to mental laziness, I'd probably agree, but my personal working definition of stupid is (more or less) totally incapable of comprehending something. I don't believe the concepts are equivalent, and I don't believe most people fit that definition of stupid. Warren Ockrassa in that sense stupid is not only relative, but its definition depends on what one chooses to believe to be true knowledge. perhaps how you determine what is truth is genuine wisdom. one who chooses to remain ignorant about arguments that logically refute their belief system may instead excercise their consider intellect to rationalize their belief just as newton tried to resolve religion with science to keep the church off his back. jon mann - Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
dogmatism v. pragmatism
nick, i remember when i went to my first science fiction convention and i realized how diverse fandom was. i assumed we were all free thinkers and learned there were cultists and gays and even christians among us. some of the fans didn't even read and were into media and role playing, etc. what a shock!¬) i should not be surprised that there are CEOs in silicon valley who recognizes the need to balance faith, family, and work. the fact that you find it challenging to hang on to your faith while witnessing the worst life has to offer makes you more human, but i wonder why you feel losing your faith is the easy way out? i am not trying to convert you, but i agree with charlie that is would be more courageous to seriously consider the possibility that you have been following the wrong path and find meaning without faith. there is no reason to give up your morality and purpose just because you decide not to follow a structured set of beliefs. i was an altar boy, but was never caught up in the dogma. i couldn't help having doubts about what the priests and nuns were teaching me. it left me free to make my own decisions based on all the information available, rather than trying to adhere to the out of date catholic indocrination. i am actually free of any need to find a way to make any religious beliefs conform to scientific theories that would have had me burnt at the stake during the inquisation. that is no longer a danger and we need to get on with advancing stem cell research, and other scientific advances that religion is attempting to prevent. jon jon - Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
