Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

[gepr ⛧]

On August 13, 2017 4:39:47 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
>
>Every day I form hypotheses about how I think this or that experiment
>or code modification will go, and often I have to confront contrary
>evidence.   I would say I have a pretty fast turnover of ideas.

I doubt that. My guess is that your ideas that you think are turning over fast 
have a long and deep history within you and you resurrect them sporadically and 
try to apply them to some current context. 

>If I work with other people on these things, they will agree that some
>issues are settled, and other issues remain ambiguous.  The language
>evolves with shared experience, and in such a way that feelings become
>less and less part of it.  I don't think it has anything to do with
>when lunchtime is.   Other people it is all about lunchtime, oxytocin
>and stuff like that.
>
>
>How are social issues any different?

They aren't any different. But I think your sense of fast turnover and munging 
of ideas is illusory. Those ideas you flip through were already there in some 
form and your trying them out against the (social) context. People who spend 
their lives building these ideas have a large rolodex to flip through, some of 
which other rolodex flippers will agree are or are not applicable in this or 
that type of context.

Innovative ideas do emerge. But it's never fast. 


-- 
⛧glen⛧


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Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

[Marcus Daniels]

Glen writes:


"It took a really long time, which is one of my reasons for rejecting memetics. 
 If ideas were real, then they could change instantaneously."


Every day I form hypotheses about how I think this or that experiment or code 
modification will go, and often I have to confront contrary evidence.   I would 
say I have a pretty fast turnover of ideas.

If I work with other people on these things, they will agree that some issues 
are settled, and other issues remain ambiguous.  The language evolves with 
shared experience, and in such a way that feelings become less and less part of 
it.  I don't think it has anything to do with when lunchtime is.   Other people 
it is all about lunchtime, oxytocin and stuff like that.


How are social issues any different?


Marcus


From: Friam  on behalf of ┣glen┫ 

Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2017 4:34:03 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

I'm not a scholar, but I don't really think Szasz was anti-psychology, per se.  
He was a long-time member of the psychicatric association and all that jazz.  
But he pulled no punches when policing his community ... something we all 
should do more of ... moderate muslims bear the responsibility for allowing 
radicals to steal their religion just as much as intelligent Trump voters bear 
responsibility for the MAGA-morons ... just as I bear responsibility for what 
the Clinton team did to Sanders.  So, when I say Szaszian, this is what I mean. 
 I could tell more stories about my brushes with talk therapy.  But I'd rather 
try to stay on topic: the structure and mechanisms by which ideas evolve 
(evolve as in "change over time", not genes and selection).

I've said before on this list that I think the only reason we can communicate 
is because we share a common body structure (eyes, fingers, pancreas, etc.).  
The only reason I can communicate with my cat is because they also have hunger 
hormones and pain-mediating nerves.  Etc.  This implies (and I can directly 
assert) that ideas only evolve if/when bodies evolve.  E.g. I think one of the 
reasons Hawking comes up with such fantastic alternative hypotheses for 
physical phenomena is *because* he once had a well functioning body and has 
seen those functions evolve and disappear.  Another e.g. is that I can 
empathize with the scaredy-cat nazis because I, too, have a functioning fight 
or flight response.  I was severely homophobic as a kid and up into college.  
And I've been conscious of how that irrational emotion has subsided over time.  
But I'd always had and tried to respect my gay friends throughout.  I admitted 
that, and they treated me appropriately because, I was the one with the 
"illness", not them.

So, if thoughts supervene on the body, then what changed in my body so that my 
homophobia subsided?  Well, my hypothesis is mostly reinforcement and signals 
like oxytocin.  The less I had bad feelings associated with the other 
homophobes in Texas (including my dad) and the more I studied, competed 
against, and partied with my gay friends, the more good feelings I began to 
associate with homosexuals.  It took a really long time, which is one of my 
reasons for rejecting memetics.  If ideas were real, then they could change 
instantaneously.  But they're not.  What's real are hormones and neurons.

Does that help?


On 08/13/2017 11:59 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I'm definitely not the one to educate you (or anyone) on this. Following your 
> allusion to Szaszian anti-psychology, what I'm seeking is common ground on 
> whether there is even a valid question which the ideas of cultural evolution 
> and more pointedly, memetics purports to answer (or "structure usefully" 
> perhaps in your terms?).
>
> I'm intuitive at my root, so if a set of heuristics, metaphors, 
> rules-of-thumb, semi-formal analogies, notional models, seem to be failing in 
> some significant way, I am happy to back off to a more fundamental level and 
> seek fresh experiential bedrock to rebuild my house of cards upon.
>
> May I ask how you DO structure your thinking around the *apparent* (or is 
> this an illusion) structured "progress" of human 
> knowledge/behaviour/culture/society/civilization??? Naturally many see 
> our current state on the brink of (apparently) climate disaster, collapse of 
> capitalism, fizzling out of representative democracy, possibility of a 
> (regional?) nuclear exchange, etc.  as evidence that "we have not evolved!", 
> but I would claim that is a gross misapprehension of the term "evolved".   
> I'd say we HAVE evolved to the state we are in (collectively).
>
> For the sake of discussion, I'm happy to drop the attempt of the term "meme" 
> to be a strong analogy to a "gene", but I'm guessing that is not enough to 
> help you with the specifics of your skepticism?   I'm poking AT the 
> perimeters of your 

Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

[┣glen┫]

I'm not a scholar, but I don't really think Szasz was anti-psychology, per se.  
He was a long-time member of the psychicatric association and all that jazz.  
But he pulled no punches when policing his community ... something we all 
should do more of ... moderate muslims bear the responsibility for allowing 
radicals to steal their religion just as much as intelligent Trump voters bear 
responsibility for the MAGA-morons ... just as I bear responsibility for what 
the Clinton team did to Sanders.  So, when I say Szaszian, this is what I mean. 
 I could tell more stories about my brushes with talk therapy.  But I'd rather 
try to stay on topic: the structure and mechanisms by which ideas evolve 
(evolve as in "change over time", not genes and selection).

I've said before on this list that I think the only reason we can communicate 
is because we share a common body structure (eyes, fingers, pancreas, etc.).  
The only reason I can communicate with my cat is because they also have hunger 
hormones and pain-mediating nerves.  Etc.  This implies (and I can directly 
assert) that ideas only evolve if/when bodies evolve.  E.g. I think one of the 
reasons Hawking comes up with such fantastic alternative hypotheses for 
physical phenomena is *because* he once had a well functioning body and has 
seen those functions evolve and disappear.  Another e.g. is that I can 
empathize with the scaredy-cat nazis because I, too, have a functioning fight 
or flight response.  I was severely homophobic as a kid and up into college.  
And I've been conscious of how that irrational emotion has subsided over time.  
But I'd always had and tried to respect my gay friends throughout.  I admitted 
that, and they treated me appropriately because, I was the one with the 
"illness", not them.

So, if thoughts supervene on the body, then what changed in my body so that my 
homophobia subsided?  Well, my hypothesis is mostly reinforcement and signals 
like oxytocin.  The less I had bad feelings associated with the other 
homophobes in Texas (including my dad) and the more I studied, competed 
against, and partied with my gay friends, the more good feelings I began to 
associate with homosexuals.  It took a really long time, which is one of my 
reasons for rejecting memetics.  If ideas were real, then they could change 
instantaneously.  But they're not.  What's real are hormones and neurons.

Does that help?


On 08/13/2017 11:59 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I'm definitely not the one to educate you (or anyone) on this. Following your 
> allusion to Szaszian anti-psychology, what I'm seeking is common ground on 
> whether there is even a valid question which the ideas of cultural evolution 
> and more pointedly, memetics purports to answer (or "structure usefully" 
> perhaps in your terms?).
> 
> I'm intuitive at my root, so if a set of heuristics, metaphors, 
> rules-of-thumb, semi-formal analogies, notional models, seem to be failing in 
> some significant way, I am happy to back off to a more fundamental level and 
> seek fresh experiential bedrock to rebuild my house of cards upon.
> 
> May I ask how you DO structure your thinking around the *apparent* (or is 
> this an illusion) structured "progress" of human 
> knowledge/behaviour/culture/society/civilization??? Naturally many see 
> our current state on the brink of (apparently) climate disaster, collapse of 
> capitalism, fizzling out of representative democracy, possibility of a 
> (regional?) nuclear exchange, etc.  as evidence that "we have not evolved!", 
> but I would claim that is a gross misapprehension of the term "evolved".   
> I'd say we HAVE evolved to the state we are in (collectively).
> 
> For the sake of discussion, I'm happy to drop the attempt of the term "meme" 
> to be a strong analogy to a "gene", but I'm guessing that is not enough to 
> help you with the specifics of your skepticism?   I'm poking AT the 
> perimeters of your skepticism NOT to pry it off of you, but rather to 
> understand if there is something specifically useful (to me) in that crust 
> for my own skepticism (or even my pollyanna).


On 08/13/2017 12:12 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:> 
> 
> Glen -
>> Ha! You see? That's not even wrong. 8^) But it's more plausible than 
>> asserting that my ideas are mutated and crossed over from ... yours ... or 
>> Szasz' ... or my mom's, for example.
> What I'm trying to tickle apart here is what we do with the very idea that 
> you might have a psuedo-Szaszian perspective on psychology or that you "are a 
> Skeptic".
> 
> forget "meme", let's try "pattern" on in *at least* a semi-formal sense like 
> the Alexandrian idea of Pattern Languages?  And what of "Alexandrian 
> Patterns" ?Whether that is a "meme" or a "pattern" or just a "rose by any 
> other name" is what I'm looking to get an alternative grasp of...
> 
> If we admit patterns that can be copied, modified by intention or by 
> ignorance or by chance, and can even be mixed with other 

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

[Marcus Daniels]

"To explain why I hate it so much, we can try to think deeply about the nazi 
that killed the antifa yesterday in Charlottesville and Trump's response to it 
(blaming all sides)."


This 
side
 must have been terribly menacing to a man in a > 300 HP car.  Not only do 
words have meaning, but even perceptions.  The memes are unbound or at least 
differently bound.

So any fitness function that involves them cannot be compared.


Marcus



From: Friam  on behalf of ┣glen┫ 

Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2017 10:28 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

I absolutely loathe the meme metaphor.  I don't usually agree with Nick's 
distinction between metaphor and analogy.  8^)  But here, I claim the meme 
isn't *anything* like a gene... or more clearly, there is no idea/thought 
construct that is anything like a gene.

To explain why I hate it so much, we can try to think deeply about the nazi 
that killed the antifa yesterday in Charlottesville and Trump's response to it 
(blaming all sides).  To be clear, anyone who continues defending their vote 
for Trump at this point should be held accountable for their idiotic choice.  
But the Trump defender will say something like "Trump's not a racist or a nazi, 
even if some of his followers are."  And, "yes I support Trump.  But I'm not a 
nazi."  Pffft.  It flat out does not matter.  There is no analog for mutation 
or crossover that we can use to map Trump to his nazis.  The gooey milieu that 
flows from someone like Trump, whose life of privilege has severely decoupled 
him from reality, to the nazis, whose fear and hatred has severely decoupled 
them from reality, ... that gooey ball of ill-formed ideology can't be coupled 
to reality.  That's the problem with metaphor, ideology, and fantasy.  To make 
reductive attempts to model such fantasy with analogies to real things (like 
genes) is to conflate fantasy with reality.

To be as clear as I can, ideas can only track back to mechanisms when they sync 
up with reality.  That's why (observational) science is so successful.  There 
are (basically) 2 ways ideas can interact with reality: 1) methodologically and 
2) neural correlates.  If a ball of ideas includes (in its not biological 
evolution) a method for regularly testing itself against reality, then it's 
possible to analogize between that ball of ideas and reality.  Neither Trump, 
nor his nazis include that.  So, the only remaining map we can draw from the 
ideas to reality is any neural correlates we can find.  And until we have 
those, mapping the ideas to genes dooms us to faulty (at best) or delusional 
(at worst) inferences.

Now, everyone I know who uses the words "meme" and "memetics" is relatively 
scientifically literate.  So, memetics *seems* plausible because it's only used 
by relatively clear thinkers about relatively reality-touching balls of ideas.  
But I would bet money that memetics will fail miserably if we try to use it to 
explain or model fantasy-dominated people like Trump and his supporters.



On 08/12/2017 12:10 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> In the socio/political/religious/economic realm it seems that multiple 
> simultaneous mutations are more obvious to observe.   I think we see humans 
> mis-copy their memetic code (misinterpret their holy scriptures, or their 
> parents or masters teachings, etc.) very often and sometimes in several 
> dimensions at once. Perhaps the "robustness" of the underlying unit (a human 
> being) allows for such wild mutations (highly antisocial behaviour by most 
> measures) in a single copy, is what allows for what seems like some fairly 
> fast memetic evolution at the social level?
>
> i'm probably reaching here, but in this petri dish that is the USA with Trump 
> or the first world with Trump, et al, or even the globally connected (bits, 
> atoms, virus particles, memes, oh my!) first, second and third world there is 
> likely to be some relatively unprecedented mutations recognized and even 
> selected for.  Some could say that Donald Trump represents a half-dozen (or 
> more) mutations in the socio/economic/political code and yet HE WAS SELECTED 
> FOR and is almost surely malignant and seems to be metastasizing (other 
> populist whitelash fascist movements around the first world).  The question 
> in this metaphor might be whether the body (humankind) has the ability to 
> fight back against this? It fits my Candide/Pollyanna idea that times such as 
> these are good times to focus significant resources on simply "tending your 
> own garden".The world will have a better chance of fighting off this 
> malignancy if it maintains it's overall health (social, economic, spiritual)
> otherwise.   We can't let this malignancy weaken our immune system any more 
> than 

[FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

[Steven A Smith]

Glen -

Ha! You see? That's not even wrong. 8^) But it's more plausible than asserting 
that my ideas are mutated and crossed over from ... yours ... or Szasz' ... or 
my mom's, for example.
What I'm trying to tickle apart here is what we do with the very idea 
that you might have a psuedo-Szaszian perspective on psychology or that 
you "are a Skeptic".


forget "meme", let's try "pattern" on in *at least* a semi-formal sense 
like the Alexandrian idea of Pattern Languages?  And what of 
"Alexandrian Patterns" ?Whether that is a "meme" or a "pattern" or 
just a "rose by any other name" is what I'm looking to get an 
alternative grasp of...


If we admit patterns that can be copied, modified by intention or by 
ignorance or by chance, and can even be mixed with other patterns, then 
we have at least a partial registration in the target domain of 
biological evolution/genetics.


I'm trying not to argue this from a perspective of persuading you, but 
rather on "helping" you deconstruct the general idea that biological 
evolution (based in Genetics) is in any way a model for social/cultural 
evolution.  Or to deconstruct the more specifics of "memetics" and 
replace it with something more prosaic but useful perhaps?


Or maybe I'm barking up the wrong three, maybe you are trying to tell me 
(as I think Szasz tries to tell us about mental illness) that there is 
no there there?


neither here, nor there,
 - Steve


On August 13, 2017 11:22:21 AM PDT, Frank Wimberly  wrote:

You are a typical intellectualizing scientist, which isn't a bad thing
to
be.

Frank

p.s.  Intellectualization is a defense which is not as debilitating as
some
others.




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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

[Steven A Smith]

Glen -

I'm definitely not the one to educate you (or anyone) on this. Following 
your allusion to Szaszian anti-psychology, what I'm seeking is common 
ground on whether there is even a valid question which the ideas of 
cultural evolution and more pointedly, memetics purports to answer (or 
"structure usefully" perhaps in your terms?).


I'm intuitive at my root, so if a set of heuristics, metaphors, 
rules-of-thumb, semi-formal analogies, notional models, seem to be 
failing in some significant way, I am happy to back off to a more 
fundamental level and seek fresh experiential bedrock to rebuild my 
house of cards upon.


May I ask how you DO structure your thinking around the *apparent* (or 
is this an illusion) structured "progress" of human 
knowledge/behaviour/culture/society/civilization??? Naturally many 
see our current state on the brink of (apparently) climate disaster, 
collapse of capitalism, fizzling out of representative democracy, 
possibility of a (regional?) nuclear exchange, etc.  as evidence that 
"we have not evolved!", but I would claim that is a gross 
misapprehension of the term "evolved".   I'd say we HAVE evolved to the 
state we are in (collectively).


For the sake of discussion, I'm happy to drop the attempt of the term 
"meme" to be a strong analogy to a "gene", but I'm guessing that is not 
enough to help you with the specifics of your skepticism?   I'm poking 
AT the perimeters of your skepticism NOT to pry it off of you, but 
rather to understand if there is something specifically useful (to me) 
in that crust for my own skepticism (or even my pollyanna).


- Sieve


On 8/13/17 12:17 PM, gepr ⛧ wrote:

Well like I said in response to Frank's suggestion about self psychology, I 
tend towards a Szaszian perspective on talk therapy and psychology. But even 
that constellation of ideas, I think, has more structural truth to it than 
memetics.

Of course my ignorance may be getting in my way here. So I'm relatively open to 
being educated on any of these subjects. But there is a pretty high skeptical 
hurdle that I have to leap over in order for any such education to take root.


On August 13, 2017 9:56:16 AM PDT, Steven A Smith  wrote:

Is there an alternate way of thinking/talking about the *apparent*
encoding of human/social/cultural artifacts in language units,
including
what appears to be something a lot like "mutation and drift" across
this
space?

Or have I already (re)transgressed?




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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

[gepr ⛧]

Ha! You see? That's not even wrong. 8^) But it's more plausible than asserting 
that my ideas are mutated and crossed over from ... yours ... or Szasz' ... or 
my mom's, for example. 

On August 13, 2017 11:22:21 AM PDT, Frank Wimberly  wrote:
>You are a typical intellectualizing scientist, which isn't a bad thing
>to
>be.
>
>Frank
>
>p.s.  Intellectualization is a defense which is not as debilitating as
>some
>others.
-- 
⛧glen⛧


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

[gepr ⛧]

Well like I said in response to Frank's suggestion about self psychology, I 
tend towards a Szaszian perspective on talk therapy and psychology. But even 
that constellation of ideas, I think, has more structural truth to it than 
memetics.

Of course my ignorance may be getting in my way here. So I'm relatively open to 
being educated on any of these subjects. But there is a pretty high skeptical 
hurdle that I have to leap over in order for any such education to take root.


On August 13, 2017 9:56:16 AM PDT, Steven A Smith  wrote: 
>Is there an alternate way of thinking/talking about the *apparent* 
>encoding of human/social/cultural artifacts in language units,
>including 
>what appears to be something a lot like "mutation and drift" across
>this 
>space?
>
>Or have I already (re)transgressed?

-- 
⛧glen⛧


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

[Steven A Smith]

Glen -


I absolutely loathe the meme metaphor.

I do agree that it has been overused and overpopularized.

   I don't usually agree with Nick's distinction between metaphor and analogy.  
8^)  But here, I claim the meme isn't *anything* like a gene... or more 
clearly, there is no idea/thought construct that is anything like a gene.
Is there an alternate way of thinking/talking about the *apparent* 
encoding of human/social/cultural artifacts in language units, including 
what appears to be something a lot like "mutation and drift" across this 
space?


Or have I already (re)transgressed?

- Steve


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

[┣glen┫]

I absolutely loathe the meme metaphor.  I don't usually agree with Nick's 
distinction between metaphor and analogy.  8^)  But here, I claim the meme 
isn't *anything* like a gene... or more clearly, there is no idea/thought 
construct that is anything like a gene.

To explain why I hate it so much, we can try to think deeply about the nazi 
that killed the antifa yesterday in Charlottesville and Trump's response to it 
(blaming all sides).  To be clear, anyone who continues defending their vote 
for Trump at this point should be held accountable for their idiotic choice.  
But the Trump defender will say something like "Trump's not a racist or a nazi, 
even if some of his followers are."  And, "yes I support Trump.  But I'm not a 
nazi."  Pffft.  It flat out does not matter.  There is no analog for mutation 
or crossover that we can use to map Trump to his nazis.  The gooey milieu that 
flows from someone like Trump, whose life of privilege has severely decoupled 
him from reality, to the nazis, whose fear and hatred has severely decoupled 
them from reality, ... that gooey ball of ill-formed ideology can't be coupled 
to reality.  That's the problem with metaphor, ideology, and fantasy.  To make 
reductive attempts to model such fantasy with analogies to real things (like 
genes) is to conflate fantasy with reality.

To be as clear as I can, ideas can only track back to mechanisms when they sync 
up with reality.  That's why (observational) science is so successful.  There 
are (basically) 2 ways ideas can interact with reality: 1) methodologically and 
2) neural correlates.  If a ball of ideas includes (in its not biological 
evolution) a method for regularly testing itself against reality, then it's 
possible to analogize between that ball of ideas and reality.  Neither Trump, 
nor his nazis include that.  So, the only remaining map we can draw from the 
ideas to reality is any neural correlates we can find.  And until we have 
those, mapping the ideas to genes dooms us to faulty (at best) or delusional 
(at worst) inferences.

Now, everyone I know who uses the words "meme" and "memetics" is relatively 
scientifically literate.  So, memetics *seems* plausible because it's only used 
by relatively clear thinkers about relatively reality-touching balls of ideas.  
But I would bet money that memetics will fail miserably if we try to use it to 
explain or model fantasy-dominated people like Trump and his supporters.



On 08/12/2017 12:10 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> In the socio/political/religious/economic realm it seems that multiple 
> simultaneous mutations are more obvious to observe.   I think we see humans 
> mis-copy their memetic code (misinterpret their holy scriptures, or their 
> parents or masters teachings, etc.) very often and sometimes in several 
> dimensions at once. Perhaps the "robustness" of the underlying unit (a human 
> being) allows for such wild mutations (highly antisocial behaviour by most 
> measures) in a single copy, is what allows for what seems like some fairly 
> fast memetic evolution at the social level?
> 
> i'm probably reaching here, but in this petri dish that is the USA with Trump 
> or the first world with Trump, et al, or even the globally connected (bits, 
> atoms, virus particles, memes, oh my!) first, second and third world there is 
> likely to be some relatively unprecedented mutations recognized and even 
> selected for.  Some could say that Donald Trump represents a half-dozen (or 
> more) mutations in the socio/economic/political code and yet HE WAS SELECTED 
> FOR and is almost surely malignant and seems to be metastasizing (other 
> populist whitelash fascist movements around the first world).  The question 
> in this metaphor might be whether the body (humankind) has the ability to 
> fight back against this? It fits my Candide/Pollyanna idea that times such as 
> these are good times to focus significant resources on simply "tending your 
> own garden".The world will have a better chance of fighting off this 
> malignancy if it maintains it's overall health (social, economic, spiritual)
> otherwise.   We can't let this malignancy weaken our immune system any more 
> than it already has.

-- 
␦glen?

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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