Re: [FRIAM] off topic....., but still
apparently this isn't even by MLK in the first place. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/out-of-osamas-death-a-fake-quotation-is-born/238220/ !!! On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 9:36 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. ~ Martin Luther King Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] off topic....., but still
Hi, everybody . I am trying to decide whether to be embarrassed about this turn of events or not. The words expressed something that I had been wanting to say for about 48 hours, but had been unable to find words for. I think I would have sent them on to FRIAM if they had been authored by my Aunt Tilly. And, I don't think MLK is twisting in his grave Still, me being supposedly a scholar, and all, makes it a bit rough. So, I guess I am embarrassed. Sorry! Nick From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of siddharth Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2011 1:01 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] off topic., but still apparently this isn't even by MLK in the first place. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/out-of-osamas-death-a-fa ke-quotation-is-born/238220/ !!! On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 9:36 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. ~ Martin Luther King Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org http://www.cusf.org/ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] off topic....., but still
Hi Doug , Would you say the same for Gadaffi's grandchildren too ? Sarbajit Roy अयं निज: परो वेति गणना लघुचेतसाम् । उदारचरितानां तु वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम् ॥ He is mine and he is other, is the thought that narrow minded people have. For noble people, the entire world is family. On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 9:43 PM, Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.netwrote: The world's a better place without him. ~Doug Roberts On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 10:06 AM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. ~ Martin Luther King FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] off topic....., but still
I started thinking about writing a toy model after this article was referenced in another forum: http://www.economist.com/node/18563638 I've always viewed the initiative process a bit suspiciously. It's not that I don't trust myself or the other yahoos on the street... but I do believe in delegation. We delegate legislating to the professional legislators for a reason, I think. (which is also why I'm not a fan of electing non-legislators - laypeople, doctors, programmers, hollywood actors, etc. - to legislative positions.) But, I'm torn because, having worked in lots of multi-disciplinary teams, especially involving students, the value of a fresh perspective is ... well, priceless. It just seems we could apply complexity to this sort of thing and come out the other end a little more facile. I'd love to meet, say, Raul Castro's consultants and give them a modeling and simulation elevator pitch! Steve Smith wrote at 05/03/2011 08:41 PM: I fear that there is not an obvious market. That is not to say there is no value, it is (perhaps) hard to translate that into the market in terms of political or economic capital. I think there is huge (potential) social capital available, but how to translate that into a gradient agents will follow? -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] off topic....., but still
No, of course not Sarbajit. The death of children is just one of the many horrors that result from religious and cultural confrontation. And we are all to blame for having allowed to let it continue since the beginning of recorded history. --Doug On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 2:23 AM, Sarbajit Roy sroy...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Doug , Would you say the same for Gadaffi's grandchildren too ? Sarbajit Roy अयं निज: परो वेति गणना लघुचेतसाम् । उदारचरितानां तु वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम् ॥ He is mine and he is other, is the thought that narrow minded people have. For noble people, the entire world is family. On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 9:43 PM, Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.netwrote: The world's a better place without him. ~Doug Roberts On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 10:06 AM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. ~ Martin Luther King FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org -- Doug Roberts drobe...@rti.org d...@parrot-farm.net 505-455-7333 - Office 505-670-8195 - Cell FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] off topic....., but still
Nick - Still, me being supposedly a scholar, and all, makes it a bit rough. So, I guess I */am/* embarrassed. Sorry! It was all I could do to not smart-assedly claim you had sucker-punched us with that quote. But on followup of the (mis)quote, the mangling was minimal... the spirit was preserved... it was an honest mistake. If anyone got sucker punched it was Penn Jillette himself who is implicated as the biggest disseminator of the misquote. The hub with the most spokes in the transmission network as it were. It brings up some interesting issues. In particular how the ease of communication (personal and mass) has lead to much faster dissemination of (dis)information. It seems there must be a parallel between this and the revolutions in finance and economy where money was made more liquid/fluid/lubricated to speed things up and ultimately change things qualitatively. I'm sure we are already way past that point with information now as well. Language itself started the game, writing helped it transcend space and time, then various steps in publishing technology (from scriptoria to printing presses to newspapers to electronic printing to blogging). Loosely Coupled Distributed Computing Paradigms include the possibility/necessity of working with possibly flawed or dated information, accepting the overhead of possibly having to roll back a local calculation when revised information comes in. It seems like strategies of late binding and rollback are necessary today. But is it possible? I feel that this is how I read news, possibly always have, but even moreso with the Internet. While there are a number of hoaxes running around at any time (doesn't just have to be April 1), there is always a plethora of early misinformation coming out of any event. Was it Mark Twain who claimed to always read the news a week (or two) late because by then you knew whether what was reported was true or not? I'm working on a DoD funded project which includes trying to formally deal with this problem... of multiple qualities of uncertainty in information and the ability to not only propogate information and uncertainty through a knowledge network but to encode and propogate contradictory or revised information. I'm curious how many of the educated, intelligent people on this list handle this problem personally? How do you know what you know? There were standards around Scholarship (as Nick points out) and there are standards about journalism and sourcing, but... obviously those standards are just reference standards, they get ignored, bent, abused, fumbled all the time. If we have ethnographers in the house, it also seems that there are methods for teasing apart the facts from the stories we tell to string the facts together... multiple observers can report the same events but still draw radically different conclusions about the implications. - Steve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] off topic....., but still
In my case, I believe perhaps 10% of what I see/hear. And demand proof for that. Not, mind you, that I'm particularly intelligent/educated... --Doug On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 10:22 AM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: I'm curious how many of the educated, intelligent people on this list handle this problem personally? FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] off topic....., but still
Glen, et alii - I have listened to the chatter on this mail list for years now and with only a few exceptions, we don't seem to put our models where our mouth is. We are all here ostensibly because we know something about Complexity and Modeling, or at least that we are Complexity Groupies of some sort... and yet... but still... I do know (of) Nick's, Eric's, Owen's, Stephen's, and Shawn Barr's collaboration on the MOTH (Myway Or The Highway) model of the prisoners dilemma: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/community/LogoMoth but not much otherwise (I'm sure there are more, I just don't know of them!). I too share the feeling that complex systems studies/modeling might help in the problems of governing. Doug, I know, has had a good taste of building models and running studies for Government Agencies and Policy/Decision Makers who are known to directly disregard highly refined results and make decisions on (apparently) an entirely political basis. I still do work on decision support systems (mostly for Gov't customers) and still hold the opinion that our job is not to help decision makers make more informed decisions, but rather help prevent them from making uninformed decisions. This may sound like splitting hairs, but my experience is that decision makers often have already made their decisions and decision support systems (including simple human analysis) are often used to justify the decisions already chosen. By building well motivated models with a clean stream of source data, I believe that at best, our systems occasionally prevent an overzealous decision (or policy) maker from making a rash, uninformed decision based on personal, political, or in some cases whimsical opinions. Sometimes they might pull back because they are enlightened by our enhanced information/analysis, but more likely because they know that others will be enlightened by it enough to question their decisions. While I think I understand Glen's point about delegation... there are reasons for a representative government... I think that making *more explicit* a shared hierarchical model of the things we are making decisions about, we the people can make better decisions about our popular (or electoral) support for issues and candidates. While I think the professional decision maker deserves better tools, better support, such may only be adopted if the unwashed masses have access to the same information/tools... The news stream and more aptly, the opinion/analysis cloud that trails it, is an attempt to do this. One might think that we could make this more formal? Perhaps Tom Johnson and the School of Analytical Journalism might be able to steer us to something in that regard? In an ideal world, I would like to think that with enough transparency, enough broadly disseminated information, enough understanding at many levels, the answers (or decisions) would flow easily from the questions. I believe this to be the main way things happen science... the question is refined until the answer becomes obvious. Unfortunately, I think there is something more going on, and it is the stories we tell which I believe formally is the models we choose. My friend and colleague, David Thompson who some of you might know from his time at Bios Group, has a blog around his new work in Story Resolution. In particular, this entry on Affording to Know seems fairly apt for the current discussion: http://storyresolution.org/2011/03/the-value-of-affording-to-know/ What leaps out at me from David's postings and our private discussions is that we can fit many models to the same data, or we can tell many different stories based on the same observed events. Multiple observers can report the very same events but tell radically different stories about them. This sobers my thoughts that if we could just write a better model we could understand the world more clearly, make better decisions, etc. But then, it is not uncommon for us to challenge eachother with tell a better story when we are using the facts to make ourselves miserable or abusive The important question (as always) might be what do we mean by better?. At the risk of sounding newage (rhymes with sewage?), I do think the models we have of the world, the stories we tell, are critical in defining the world we are generating. Visualize Whirled Peas comes to mind. The pragmatists (or pessimists, or warmongers or hawks or ...) might say that we have ample evidence that humans are always in violent conflict and that any semblance of peace is an illusion or at best fleeting, etc. The Optimists (or Polyannas, or Candides or LaLaLanders) might be accused of ignoring important facts when choosing to view the world through rose colored glasses. But we do know that to some extent we find what we look for, we optimize what we measure, our big hammers make everything look like nails, etc.
[FRIAM] On a happier, less deep note
Thanks to all my FRIAM friends for your support in helping me sell the first 100 copies of my new book! Anybody who didn't get a virtual signed copy of the cover who wants one, just let me know. http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins/ --Doug FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] off topic....., but still
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 It's a good ramble. But to be clear, modeling and simulation (MS) is not about, nor has it ever been about, finding a better model. Perhaps that's arrogant on my part. How about MS has never been about finding a better _anything_ for me. MS is about thinking. Models[*] are instances of extended physiology, much like a spittle bug's foam. Models are extensions of our brains. I can go further and assert that general purpose computers[+] are _not_ about improving things or finding better things, either. The basic idea is the bigger and more complex your brain is, the more you think. And, to an extent, it's true. What you've identified, the premature fixation on a particular model, was inherited from the already-present structure of our brains. I've heard people assert that it was advantageous for a hunter-gatherer to be able to react quickly without/before engaging the higher structures of the brain. I don't really buy that; but I do buy the concept that we have evolved (for whatever reason/explanation) to prefer our own perspective over others'. Fixation on _a_ model or a _better_ model is just an artifact of that. MS, as a discipline, is about _avoiding_ such a fixation, fleshing out the mechanisms and explanations that satisfy some set of conditions and helping you break out of the limitations of your own perspective ... discovering alternative truths you haven't yet thought of. This is the MS elevator pitch. [*] I'm not including mental models, here, because they are different beasts. I'm talking about externally identifiable artifacts we typically call models. [+] It's more difficult to make that assertion about embedded systems devices because at least 1 particular model must be inscribed into the device. So, one can successfully argue that they are more like, closer to, sensors or motors. Steve Smith wrote circa 11-05-04 10:40 AM: Glen, et alii - I have listened to the chatter on this mail list for years now and with only a few exceptions, we don't seem to put our models where our mouth is. We are all here ostensibly because we know something about Complexity and Modeling, or at least that we are Complexity Groupies of some sort... and yet... but still... I do know (of) Nick's, Eric's, Owen's, Stephen's, and Shawn Barr's collaboration on the MOTH (Myway Or The Highway) model of the prisoners dilemma: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/community/LogoMoth but not much otherwise (I'm sure there are more, I just don't know of them!). I too share the feeling that complex systems studies/modeling might help in the problems of governing. Doug, I know, has had a good taste of building models and running studies for Government Agencies and Policy/Decision Makers who are known to directly disregard highly refined results and make decisions on (apparently) an entirely political basis. I still do work on decision support systems (mostly for Gov't customers) and still hold the opinion that our job is not to help decision makers make more informed decisions, but rather help prevent them from making uninformed decisions. This may sound like splitting hairs, but my experience is that decision makers often have already made their decisions and decision support systems (including simple human analysis) are often used to justify the decisions already chosen. By building well motivated models with a clean stream of source data, I believe that at best, our systems occasionally prevent an overzealous decision (or policy) maker from making a rash, uninformed decision based on personal, political, or in some cases whimsical opinions. Sometimes they might pull back because they are enlightened by our enhanced information/analysis, but more likely because they know that others will be enlightened by it enough to question their decisions. While I think I understand Glen's point about delegation... there are reasons for a representative government... I think that making *more explicit* a shared hierarchical model of the things we are making decisions about, we the people can make better decisions about our popular (or electoral) support for issues and candidates. While I think the professional decision maker deserves better tools, better support, such may only be adopted if the unwashed masses have access to the same information/tools... The news stream and more aptly, the opinion/analysis cloud that trails it, is an attempt to do this. One might think that we could make this more formal? Perhaps Tom Johnson and the School of Analytical Journalism might be able to steer us to something in that regard? In an ideal world, I would like to think that with enough transparency, enough broadly disseminated information, enough understanding at many levels, the answers (or decisions) would flow easily from the questions. I believe this to be the main way things happen science... the
[FRIAM] Memetic Drift in Threads, was: off topic....., but still
On reflection of Owen's thread hygiene around hijacking, etc., I have to wonder about the implications of what I want to call memetic drift. We start with a topic, and at some point it has wandered enough to qualify for a new subject... but it is not always obvious when it deserved a new Subject: line. I believe I am as guilty as most for this form of slow hijacking... the vehicle (thread) is not abruptly taken by force and driven off in some totally different direction than it's original route plan suggested, instead it is seduced iteratively into taking us to Havana. To stretch the metaphor from hijacking to kidnapping, are we all the Patty Hearsts of our own discussions? - Steve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Memetic Drift in Threads, was: off topic....., but still
Very sly you are Steve Smith, The topic with no Name has been an ever present part of the group discussions. It drifts because we have never nailed it to the wall. There is a propensity to organize and control discussions. The nameless issues are like flies in our face. We try so hard to shoo them away but they leave us all a little silly looking . The fly keeps showing up right in the middle of our brows. The nameless issue seems to be Human Nature and it is uncomfortably not what we generally assumed from idealistic perspectives. Often we drift directly into this area as a result of some calamitous world wide affair. All of us are showing surprise at the unpredictable recklessness of our global society. Perhaps clutching to the grail of Complexity is a feeble notion. I admit I am awestruck with the bizarre events of recent months, seemingly errant events recurring in greater and greater frequency. These events seem every few days to imply we really have very little understanding of what is going on around us. In retrospect each event was predictable yet we are clearly unable to see the real world beyond the reflection of our own internal fictions. Our brains like most people are handicapped in some way by short cuts in design. We know there is a world or reality beyond ours but rarely take it into consideration. WE get trapped into deviously designed narratives and have to wait for the penultimate chapter to find the hidden passage way behind the fireplace. The last chapter simply reconstructs all the missing bits which we never noticed. We all end up happier with a clean story line that appears self consistent. Unfortunately the desire for a clean story line is the problem with us. Every story demands one topic, one problem, one hero, one villain. The real world is obviously not structured around our prejudices yet we persist in making it so. ( I read Herodotus and laugh at his explanations of the world. He was a charmer I love his style. No one would dare today write ceaselessly with no plot. But maybe that is what is what I relish. He did not really care himself for the nonsense explanations and showed his dismissal ) Perhaps the writer is our God and he will show us the Truth if we listen closely. The Logos, the Word the hand of God may be nothing more than explanations externalized for intrinsic defects in human brains. The Dogma professed to allay our questions and let us live in peace but it never worked as well as hoped. Reality kept showing up as a nameless annoying fly. We always assume there must be a category and that there must be a plot and some obvious truth. Well maybe that is just our addiction to narrative styles. Complexity is part of the future , but by itself at best it can display some shadows of reality. Most of our difficulties seem to me to be the peculiarities of human intelligence. I personally do not actually have any more faith in it now than God, the Soul, Good or Evil or economic reform. I believe that we are so facile creating illusions we can no longer distinguish truth from fiction. I have a bone to pick with the equivalence of narratives. It plays well with people who have nothing of substance to offer but more fears and economic opportunities. Besides I am not the only one to notice each new revolution seems to be a conflict of fictions, or whether or not the young people are willing to endure the tyranny of an older narrative. Perhaps the people have a shelf life for narratives, it used to keep writers busy and paid. Did the digital era start to disturb the functioning of traditional Human delusions? Why is every new TV show a remake or mix up of older stories in new fashions? Steve there is no need to beat your chest in aguish that you feel you violated some form of ethical guide line. When I used to go fishing I have often had to step over a few old fence lines. Being stuck on one side of the fence can be frustrating fishing or with research. The fish seems to be Human Intelligence or the lack of it. The reason for the lack seems awkward because most of us are a little embarrassed to admit we ever were so easily duped. Now why is it that old men look backward and start to feel ashamed at what they once loved so stridently. The truth upon reflection was always obvious so why did we choose to ignore it. The Complexity Theory revelations or truths will also be easily ignored until a catastrophe strikes. Then we go about the business of burying bodies at sea for various reasons. Why is the truth so difficult to face.? I suspect that once our brains are commited to a narrative we do not find it easy to alter it substantially. Like a filing system we make small alterations but big changes need a house fire or a computer melt down before they are implemented. More than filling in gaps we also seem to wilfully ignore certain information to preserve the established narrative. This is difficult to spot. Our brains seem to be wired for short cuts but
[FRIAM] Why I wish there were more women coming to FRIAM
MIT management professor Tom Malone on collective intelligence and the “genetic” structure of groups http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/05/mit-management-professor-tom-malone-on-collective-intelligence-and-the-genetic-structure-of-groups/ -tj FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] off topic....., but still
Apparently the quote is an appended version of a passage that appeared in MLK's book _Strength to Love_: http://books.google.com/books?id=errxX4tzSMcCpg=PA53#v=onepageqf=false How it joined the first sentence is not clear. A facebook post has been credited: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-of-a-fake-quotation/238257/ But I prefer to think that the amalgam originated here: http://christianhomekeeper.org/blog/i-will-not-rejoice/ Best, Shawn On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 3:01 AM, siddharth sidh...@gmail.com wrote: apparently this isn't even by MLK in the first place. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/out-of-osamas-death-a-fake-quotation-is-born/238220/ !!! On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 9:36 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. ~ Martin Luther King Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Infidel ity
Shawn - Interesting find... has anyone done some analysis via Google's caches to see if this was the earliest recorded reference? Seems like there might be some parallel to the OED process for origins of words, terms, phrases? Do we know the frequency (i'm sure it is adaptive) of Google's robots? Unfortunately, I didn't have to read very far to find: /I understand the only thing different between Osama and me ---is that I have received Christ as my Savior. / Which I find a very disturbing statement. This kind of exclusivity seems to me to be the source of huge and continued divisiveness in the world. - Steve Apparently the quote is an appended version of a passage that appeared in MLK's book _Strength to Love_: http://books.google.com/books?id=errxX4tzSMcCpg=PA53#v=onepageqf=false http://books.google.com/books?id=errxX4tzSMcCpg=PA53#v=onepageqf=false How it joined the first sentence is not clear. A facebook post has been credited: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-of-a-fake-quotation/238257/ But I prefer to think that the amalgam originated here: http://christianhomekeeper.org/blog/i-will-not-rejoice/ Best, Shawn On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 3:01 AM, siddharth sidh...@gmail.com mailto:sidh...@gmail.com wrote: apparently this isn't even by MLK in the first place. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/out-of-osamas-death-a-fake-quotation-is-born/238220/ !!! On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 9:36 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. ~ Martin Luther King Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org http://www.cusf.org/ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] monkeys, Shakespeare, and Venn
Recent talk of memes and original sources reminds me that, just the other day, I was reading John Venn's book on logic (published 5 years before he wrote the paper which gave the name Venn diagrams to the familiar diagrams that had been around much longer), and discovered that he spends about 3 pages discussing the probability of producing the plays of Shakespeare (he doesn't mention the sonnets...) by random-drawing-with-replacement from a bag (not an urn) with the latin letters in it (he doesn't mention whitespace, either). The typewriter had only been invented about 5 years before *that*, and no monkeys are involved (though an idiot shows up shortly thereafter, when he points out that by a *systematic* mechanism (essentially, a recursive enumeration of all finite strings of letters) that even an idiot (viz., Turing's idealized human computing agent) could do, the plays would *surely* be produced eventually. (Venn further points out that, in either case, to actually separate the wheat from the chaff you would more or less have to have a Shakespeare on hand to read the output and give it a thumbs up or thumbs down.) A cursory search with Google found no indication either of an earlier instance of this (proto-)meme, or of anyone before me ever having left a written (and Google-ized) record of noticing it for what it was. In particular, the Wikipedia article on what they call the infinite monkey theorem doesn't mention Venn (or anyone earlier, for that matter). Anyone know anything? Lee Rudolph P.S. No monkeys were harmed in the preparation of this message. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
