Re: [FRIAM] ChatGPT and William James

[Eric Charles]

I know this conversation has drifted quite a bit but I wanted to point
out that if I was a weary lecturer teaching 6 classes a semester, who was
thrilled to get anything with complete sentences and a vague semblance of
thought, the chat bot gets an A on its responses.

If it is in one of the advanced seminars I used to teach, where there were
a manageable number of students, and I'm was really reading the papers to
grade them well... the chat bot's responses might still garner a
passing grade, but not much better than that. This is clearly a "I quickly
scanned the internet" level of response. Odds are that if I was in a cranky
mood, and fed those responses into a plagiarism catcher, large chunks of it
would be flagged. I wish I still had access to one, so I could check.

And that assumes I asked the types of questions used as prompts here (which
I typically wouldn't), instead of questions that required demonstration of
deeper analysis/engagement with the text.

The big problem with these bots, from the perspective of a professor, is
that they provide poor students access to the same type of help that was
always available to rich students via their peers, and which have been
available to the upper-middle class for a while now via various websites
(namely, having someone else improvise a passable essay for you to turn
in). Because the profession has long discounted making students do real
intellectual work, and then grading that work seriously, the chat bots pose
a serious problem.






On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 5:23 PM Jochen Fromm  wrote:

> I enjoy talking with ChatGPT about famous scientists, thinkers, writers
> and philosophers. Because it is trained on vast amounts of data it knows
> them all: Pascal, Cervantes, Dante, Hugo, Goethe, Leibniz, Newton,
> Humboldt, Shakespeare,... It can summarize almost any book which is
> remarkable. Today I have asked it about William James and Anil Seth
>
> Me: You certainly have heard of William James, one of the fathers of
> Psychology?
>
> ChatGPT: Yes, I'm familiar with William James. He was an American
> philosopher and psychologist who is often referred to as the "father of
> American psychology." He made significant contributions to the development
> of psychology as a scientific discipline, and his ideas and writings
> continue to influence psychology and related fields to this day.
>
> Some of James' most influential contributions to psychology include his
> theory of functionalism, which emphasized the study of the purpose and
> function of behavior and mental processes, rather than their underlying
> structures; his work on consciousness, which he famously described as a
> "stream" of continuously changing thoughts and perceptions; and his
> exploration of the relationship between the mind and the body, which he
> called the "mind-body problem."
>
> James also wrote extensively on a wide range of topics, including
> religion, philosophy, and human nature. His most famous book, "The
> Principles of Psychology," was published in 1890 and is still considered a
> classic in the field.
>
> Me: Can you summarize his book "The Principles of Psychology"?
>
> ChatGPT: Certainly! "The Principles of Psychology" is a comprehensive and
> influential textbook that William James published in 1890. It aimed to
> provide a broad overview of the field of psychology at the time, covering
> topics such as perception, emotion, thought, consciousness, and the nature
> of the self.
>
> The book is organized into two main sections. The first section focuses on
> the lower-level processes of sensation and perception, including topics
> such as attention, memory, and learning. The second section focuses on
> higher-level mental processes, such as reasoning, judgment, and emotion.
>
> Throughout the book, James emphasized the importance of studying mental
> processes in their natural context and stressed the need for psychology to
> be closely linked to biology and other natural sciences. He also developed
> the theory of functionalism, which argued that the purpose and function of
> mental processes are more important to understanding them than their
> underlying structures.
>
> Overall, "The Principles of Psychology" was a landmark work that helped
> establish psychology as a distinct scientific discipline and influenced
> generations of psychologists and other scientists.
>
> Me: William James said: "Thoughts themselves are the thinkers". What does
> he mean?
>
> ChatGPT: When William James said "thoughts themselves are the thinkers,"
> he was expressing his belief in what is often called the "stream of
> consciousness" view of the mind. James believed that the mind is not a
> fixed entity or substance, but rather a constantly changing stream of
> thoughts, feelings, and sensations.
>
> According to James, our thoughts are not the products of a separate entity
> or "thinker" within us, but rather they are the result of the ongoing
> activity of the mind itself. In other 

Re: [FRIAM] ChatGPT knows FRIAM

[Eric Charles]

I am particularly impressed that at the end there it doubled down on having
the *wrong *title for Nick's publication.

[image: image.png]


On Tue, Feb 21, 2023 at 4:20 PM  wrote:

> Stunning!  How do you know if ChatCBT is lying; it’s steely lips are
> moving.
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Jochen Fromm
> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 21, 2023 1:23 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] ChatGPT knows FRIAM
>
>
>
> Me: Do you know the FRIAM group in Santa Fe?
>
>
>
> ChatGPT: Yes, I'm aware of the FRIAM group in Santa Fe. FRIAM (Focusing
> Research on Infinite Automated Models) is a research group located at the
> Santa Fe Institute, a renowned research center dedicated to the study of
> complex systems. FRIAM is a group of interdisciplinary researchers who
> explore the use of mathematical models and computational methods to
> understand complex systems and phenomena, with a focus on
> infinite-dimensional systems. The group's research interests include
> dynamical systems, machine learning, optimization, and more. FRIAM's work
> has contributed to a deeper understanding of various systems, such as
> financial markets, climate models, and biological systems, among others.
>
>
>
> Me: No, I mean the Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group. It is
> organization of complexity researchers and software developers in Santa Fe,
> New Mexico, interested in applied complexity
>
>
>
> ChatGPT: I apologize for the confusion. Yes, I'm also aware of the Friday
> Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group in Santa Fe. It is a group of
> complexity researchers and software developers who meet on Friday mornings
> to discuss and explore topics related to applied complexity. The group is
> open to anyone who is interested in the subject and is often attended by
> researchers, academics, entrepreneurs, and professionals from a variety of
> fields. The discussions at the group cover a wide range of topics,
> including complex systems, data science, artificial intelligence, and more.
> The group provides a forum for members to share their ideas and learn from
> each other in an informal setting over a cup of coffee. The Friday Morning
> Applied Complexity Coffee Group is one of many examples of the vibrant
> intellectual community in Santa Fe dedicated to the study of complex
> systems.
>
>
>
> Me: Can you name some active members?
>
>
>
> ChatGPT: I'm sorry, but as an artificial intelligence language model, I
> don't have access to real-time information on the current membership of the
> Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group. The group is a community of
> complexity researchers and software developers in Santa Fe who meet on a
> regular basis to discuss and explore topics related to applied complexity.
> The membership of the group is fluid, with new members joining and others
> moving on as their interests and circumstances change. If you are
> interested in learning more about the group, you might be able to find more
> information on their website or through social media channels.
> Alternatively, you could try reaching out to the Santa Fe Institute, which
> has connections with many researchers and organizations in the Santa Fe
> area.
>
>
>
> Me: Nicholas Thompson, Eric Charles, Glen Ropella and Frank Wimberly are
> part of this group. What do you know about them?
>
>
>
> ChatGPT: Nicholas Thompson is the Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine, which
> covers a wide range of topics related to technology, science, and culture.
> Prior to his current position at Wired, he was a senior editor at the
> magazine and worked as a reporter for The New Yorker and Legal Times.
> Thompson is also the author of "The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George
> Kennan, and the History of the Cold War," a book that explores the history
> of the Cold War through the lives of two of its most prominent strategists.
>
>
>
> Eric Charles is the Vice President of Engineering at Descartes Labs, a
> geospatial data analytics company that leverages machine learning and
> artificial intelligence to analyze satellite imagery and other types of
> data. Charles has a background in computer science and has worked in
> various engineering and leadership roles at several technology companies,
> including Intel, Sun Microsystems, and Google.
>
>
>
> Glen Ropella is a computer scientist and engineer who has worked on a
> variety of projects related to computational modeling, artificial
> intelligence, and machine learning. He is currently a Senior Scientist at
> Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he is involved in research on complex
> systems and t

Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [EXT] News Alert: Most young men are single. Most young women are not.

[Eric Charles]

If you think the only option a college- educated 23 year old woman has is
to be attached to a similarly-aged man... you would not do well in the
current dating pool :- )

While it *might* be a truth, universally acknowledged,  that a single man
in possession of a fortune,  must be in want of a wife,  an educated woman
with a good job need not be in want of a husband.



On Wed, Feb 22, 2023, 12:03 PM Nicholas Thompson 
wrote:

> Last time I checked, the average number of attached males has to equal the
> average number of attached females, unless, of course, females, feel
> attached to men who don’t feel attached.
>
> Sent from my Dumb Phone
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> *From:* The Hill 
> *Date:* February 22, 2023 at 7:01:34 AM MST
> *To:* nthomp...@clarku.edu
> *Subject:* *[EXT] News Alert: Most young men are single. Most young women
> are not.*
> *Reply-To:* emailt...@thehill.com
>
> 
> Click in for the latest news from The Hill.
>
> 
>  View Online
> 
>
>
> [image: I'm an image]
> News Alert
> News Alert
> [image: Facebook]
> 
>  [image:
> Twitter]
> 
>  [image:
> LinkedIn]
> 
>  [image:
> YouTube]
> 
>
> *Most young men are single. Most young women are not.*
> 
>
> More than 60 percent of young men are single, nearly twice the rate of
> unattached young women, signaling a larger breakdown in the social,
> romantic and sexual life of the American male.
>
>
>
> Read the full story here.
> 

Re: [FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[Eric Charles]

I would have assumed it was an abstraction that could be found in many
systems, with no explicit limitations regarding what that system is made
of, but lots of limitations regarding where we happen to find it in the
world he happen to inhabit... or something like that... recognizing that
where-we-happen-to-find-it *might* indicate something about the challenges
of getting it to occur in various substances.

Is that the same a calling it "an equivalence class" or talking about its
generalizability?




On Tue, Feb 21, 2023, 1:05 PM Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> Just there are computer codes that can only run on some architectures,
> there are physical phenomena that can only be realized on certain
> substrates.   What evidence is there that something other than differing
> substrates are needed to explain mental things?
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Feb 21, 2023, at 9:49 AM, glen  wrote:
> >
> > If, as EricS has argued, "mental stuff" is an equivalence class, then
> it may not be very different from "generalized across different
> architectures". But if "mental stuff" is disjoint from "architecture
> stuff", then it cannot be "generalized across different architectures"
> because a) that implies there exist architectures across which it is NOT
> generalized and b) "generalized" is a function of, dependent upon,
> explicitly in reference to, different architectures.
> >
> >> On 2/21/23 09:30, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> >> Sorry, I probably glossed over something.   How is the "mental" any
> different from a computer program or a set of neural net edge weights
> generalized to different (analog) architectures.
> >> -Original Message-
> >> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> >> Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2023 9:26 AM
> >> To: friam@redfish.com
> >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Nick's Categories
> >> Excellent! I appreciate your clarification as to why it might be useful
> to explore. I will do so. I'm still a bit confused as to why you mentioned
> it in the context of me claiming that "the bot" (e.g. ChatGPT) has a body.
> Or the context of claiming some forms of panpsychism are monist. Maybe I'll
> figure out why Deacon's relevant to one or both of those comments as I read
> through Rączaszek‑Leonardi's essay.
> >> Thanks.
> >>> On 2/21/23 09:13, Steve Smith wrote:
> >>> Glen -
> >>>
> >>> Attempting a balance between succinctness and
> completeness/contextualization/relevance I offer the following excerpt from
> Rączaszek‑Leonardi's essay about 3 pages into the 7-page work:
> >>>
> >>> /One important implication of the proposed scenario for the
> >>> emergence of autogen is that in the process of transferring a complex
> >>> set of constraints from substrate to substrate, the “message”, never
> >>> becomes an abstract and immaterial “thing” – or a set of abstract
> >>> symbols, which seem to be a staple substance of mind in a dualistic
> >>> Cartesian picture. On the contrary: the process can be viewed, in some
> >>> sense, as an opposition to what is usually meant by abstraction: it
> >>> embodies, in a concrete physi- cal structure, the complex dynamical
> >>> and relational constraints that maintain an organism far from
> >>> thermodynamic equilibrium. /
> >>>
> >>> This quotation is my attempt to acknowledge/identify  a possible
> resolution (or at least explication) of the tension between the duals of
> the Cartesian Duality we bandy about here.
> >>>
> >>> Another correspondent offline offered the correlation between Deacon's
> homeo/morpho/teleo-dynamics and Kauffman's reflections on living systems in
> his 2000 Investigations:
> >>>
> >>> - detect gradients
> >>> - construct constraints to extract work from gradients
> >>> - do work to maintain those constraints
> >>>
> >>> may be relevant (or interesting or both).
> >>>
> >>> On 2/21/23 8:23 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> 
>  Glen -
> 
>  FWIW,  I'm still chewing on your assertions of 5 months ago which
> referenced Christian List's "Levels" <
> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/21103/>  and the points he made (and you
> reinforced) on Indexicality and first/third person descriptions  *because*
> they tie in to my own twisty turny journey of trying to understand the
> paradoxes of mind/body   substance/form duality (illusions?).
> 
>  To give a nod to the Ninja's website (or more to the point, your
> reference to it and comparison to teleodynamics.org) I assume your
> criticism is that the website(s) is more rhetorical than informational?
> 
>  The relevance of Deacon's Teleodynamics in my thinking/noodling has
> to do with the tension between supervenience and entailment.   Deacon's
> style *does* depend a bit on saying the same thing over and over again,
> louder and louder which can be convincing for all the wrong reasons.  But
> that alone does not make what he's saying wrong, or even wrong-headed.
> Perhaps I am guilty of courting confirmation bias insomuch as Deacon's
> constructions of homeo-morpho-teleo 

Re: [FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[Eric Charles]

" "Experience Monism" is itself a much more primitive position, so
primitive that my former student, now mentor, Eric Charles doubts that it
is worth asserting. "

:- P
What I doubt is that it is relevant to most activities, including most
discussions. It is a perfectly good bit of philosophy, that is worth
asserting when relevant. For example, it isn't relevant to the activity of
grocery shopping, ringing up the cash register, or bagging the goods.
"Would you like a plastic bag for that?"
"Ma'am, I know nothing of the world beyond my experience. As such, it is
unclear how we would know if plastic bags were real, or if the nickle you
are about to charge me for one even exists, or if your experience of 'a
plastic bag' matches my own in any way! However, if you are asking if I
would like my future experience of carrying things to the car to feature
the experience of a plastic bag to assist me, then. yes please just
one."

What about in the context of scientific activity? However relevant
discussion of Experience Monism is to the bench chemist, or professional
astronomer, it is equally relevant to the work-a-day psychologist. That
isn't to say it is irrelevant to any of those people, only to say that it
is unfair to try to uniquely burden the scientific psychologist with its
baggage in any manner you wouldn't burden a scientist in any other
discipline. Thus, whenever the topic is brought up in an effort to knee-cap
the psychologist, it is fair to whether under metaphorically equivalent
conditions one would similarly try to knee-cap the chemist.

Just as their might be some situations in which you might find it
fascinating to discuss with an astronomer what they experience as "a
planet" (I see you Pluto, you have nothing to be ashamed of), and it might
be interesting to ask a chemist what they experience "sodium" as, one might
ask a research psychologist what they experience as "memory" or
"conformity" or "aggression". In all those cases we might be interested in
how the experiences of that particular professional differ from our own,
and how they differ from the experiences of other lay people we are
familiar with.

When faced with someone promoting dualistic thinking (of the classic,
mind-body dualism variety) how does Experience Monism play in? It *should*
play in just as above, into a discussion of what *that person* experiences
as mental and what they experience as matter. Could that, in turn, be part
of a larger discussion that does or does not converge our experiences?
Sure. And that's happening a bit in this thread. But the Experience Monist
has no business trying to dictate to people, in the course of such a
discussion, that the distinction they experience is not real or is in some
other way invalid. Their experience *is *exactly what it is, and the
Experience Monist is obligated to accept it as such.

I *did *ask with incredulity, probably a bit more than I should have,
whether Glen experienced dirt as engaging in psyche-type *activity*,
because I doubted that he did so. I wouldn't have been at all incredulous
with Dave about the same topic, because I wouldn't be at all surprised to
learn that he had panpsychic leanings.




On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 11:44 AM  wrote:

> Glen,
>
> Thank you for writing.  I would take the minimum conditions of pan
> psychism to be that every object (i.e., every thing to which a noun may be
> applied) has interests and acts in accordance with those interests.  From
> the point of view of the "experience monist" (wtf) , panpsychism is an
> empirical assertion that needs to be explored in the usual way: by diligent
> observation and careful delineation of terms.
>
>
>
> "Experience Monism" is itself a much more primitive position, so primitive
> that my former student, now mentor, Eric Charles doubts that it is worth
> asserting.  It asserts only that experience is all we have and that, to the
> extent that we talk of events beyond experience, we are, in fact, talking
> about structures in experience.  Thus, when we assert that something is
> real or true, we are obligated to describe the properties of that
> experience, the experience of realness or truthity.
>
>
>
> Is it true that dirt has interests and acts in accordance with them?
> Maybe.  We'ld have to see. If not, though, there are many quasi telic
> process in nature that raise that sort of question.  My favorite is the
> manner in which an icy puddle defends 32 degrees as its temperature.  Does
> a n icy puddle have an interest in remaining close to 32 degrees?
>
>
>
> It would be great if you could "stop by" some Thursday morning   I miss
> your regular input. Much tho it drives me nuts.
>
>
>
> By the way, there was a podcast called Hard Fork, I believe, in which a
> techy type i

Re: [FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[Eric Charles]

I don't know what you mean by "mental stuff", of course.

Well... In this context, I mean whatever the "psyche" part of panpsychism
entails.

Given that I don't believe in disembodied minds, I'm with you 100% on
everything you do being "body stuff". Which, presumably, leads to the
empirical question of what types of bodies do "psyche", and where those
types of bodies can be found.

You say further that: No. Neither the dirt nor I do "mental stuff".

Well, now we have something to actually talk about then! Dave West,
unsurprisingly, stepped in strongly on the side of dirt having psyche in at
least a rudimentary form, I presume he would assert that you (Glen) do
mental stuff too. Dave also asserts that his belief in panpsychism
*does* affect
how he lives in the world. Exactly to the extent that his way of living in
the world is made different by the belief, panpsychism *is* more than just
something he says.

Steve's discussion about what it would feel like to be the bit of dirt
trampled beneath a particular foot is a bit of a tangent - potentially
interesting in its own right. His discussion of when he, personally, starts
to attribute identity - and potentially psyche - to clumps of inanimate
stuff seems directly on topic, especially as he too has listed some ways
his behaviors change when he becomes engaged in those habits.





On Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 2:36 AM ⛧ glen  wrote:

> Doubling down on the incredulity fallacy? OK. Yes. There is something it
> is like to be trampled dirt. I don't know what you mean by "mental stuff",
> of course. I don't do any mental stuff as far as I know. Everything I do is
> inherently "body stuff". Maybe that's because I've experienced chronic pain
> my whole life. Maybe some of you consistently live in a body free
> experience? I've only experienced that a few times, e.g. running in a
> fasted state. And I later suffered for that indulgent delusion.
>
> No. Neither the dirt nor I do "mental stuff". So you need a more concrete
> question.
>
> On February 16, 2023 6:04:17 PM PST, Eric Charles <
> eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >"an account of the seemingly analogous position of panpsychism"
> >
> >What is that more than something people say?
> >
> >Do *you* experience the dirt at your feet as having a mental life? If so,
> >tell me about it: What is the dirt like when it seems to be doing mental
> >stuff? What kind of mental stuff is it doing?
> >
> >If not: Have you seen anyone who earnestly thinks the dirt is doing mental
> >stuff? If so, what were *they* like? How was that belief pervasive in
> their
> >adjustments to the world? Based on your experiences with that person, how
> >do you think your ways of acting in the world would change if you adopted
> >such a position?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 1:27 PM glen  wrote:
> >
> >> I don't grok the context well enough to equivocate on concepts like
> "have"
> >> and "category of being". But in response to Nick's question: "What is
> there
> >> that animals do that demands us to invent categories to explain their
> >> behavior?", my answer is "animals discretize the ambient muck". So if
> >> categorization is somehow fundamentally related to discretization, then
> >> animals clearly categorize in that sense.
> >>
> >> I mean, all you have to do is consider the frequencies of light the
> >> animals' eyeballs do or don't see. That's two categories right there,
> the
> >> light they do see and the light they don't. Unless there's some
> sophistry
> >> hidden behind the question, the answer seems clear. Reflection on what
> one
> >> does and does not categorize isn't necessary. I could even claim my
> truck
> >> discretizes fluids ... those that make it seize up versus lubricate it,
> >> those that it burns vs those that stop it cold. Etc. Maybe the question
> is
> >> better formulated as "What makes one impute categories on another?"
> Clearly
> >> my truck doesn't impute categories on squirrels.
> >>
> >> But Nick does follow that question with this "experience" nonsense. So
> my
> >> guess is there *is* some sophistry behind the question, similar to
> EricC's
> >> incredulous response to DaveW's question about phenomenological
> composition
> >> of experience(s). What I find missing in Nick's (and EricC's)
> distillation
> >> of experience monism is an account of the seemingly analogous position
> of
> >> panpsychism. Were I a scholar, I might ta

Re: [FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[Eric Charles]

Would you though?!? You certainly wouldn't stop stepping on it.




On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 9:16 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> "...how do you think your ways of acting in the world would change if you
> adopted such a position?"
>
> I would stop shooting piles of dirt with a .30-06.  I haven't done that
> for 60+ years but it's intended as a* reductio ad absurdum* argument.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 7:05 PM Eric Charles 
> wrote:
>
>> "an account of the seemingly analogous position of panpsychism"
>>
>> What is that more than something people say?
>>
>> Do *you* experience the dirt at your feet as having a mental life? If so,
>> tell me about it: What is the dirt like when it seems to be doing mental
>> stuff? What kind of mental stuff is it doing?
>>
>> If not: Have you seen anyone who earnestly thinks the dirt is doing
>> mental stuff? If so, what were *they* like? How was that belief pervasive
>> in their adjustments to the world? Based on your experiences with that
>> person, how do you think your ways of acting in the world would change if
>> you adopted such a position?
>>
>>
>> 
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 1:27 PM glen  wrote:
>>
>>> I don't grok the context well enough to equivocate on concepts like
>>> "have" and "category of being". But in response to Nick's question: "What
>>> is there that animals do that demands us to invent categories to explain
>>> their behavior?", my answer is "animals discretize the ambient muck". So if
>>> categorization is somehow fundamentally related to discretization, then
>>> animals clearly categorize in that sense.
>>>
>>> I mean, all you have to do is consider the frequencies of light the
>>> animals' eyeballs do or don't see. That's two categories right there, the
>>> light they do see and the light they don't. Unless there's some sophistry
>>> hidden behind the question, the answer seems clear. Reflection on what one
>>> does and does not categorize isn't necessary. I could even claim my truck
>>> discretizes fluids ... those that make it seize up versus lubricate it,
>>> those that it burns vs those that stop it cold. Etc. Maybe the question is
>>> better formulated as "What makes one impute categories on another?" Clearly
>>> my truck doesn't impute categories on squirrels.
>>>
>>> But Nick does follow that question with this "experience" nonsense. So
>>> my guess is there *is* some sophistry behind the question, similar to
>>> EricC's incredulous response to DaveW's question about phenomenological
>>> composition of experience(s). What I find missing in Nick's (and EricC's)
>>> distillation of experience monism is an account of the seemingly analogous
>>> position of panpsychism. Were I a scholar, I might take such work on
>>> myself. But I'm not and, hence, very much appreciate these distillations of
>>> dead white men's metaphysics and will take what I can get. 8^D
>>>
>>> On 2/16/23 09:22, Steve Smith wrote:
>>> > Might I offer some terminology reframing, or at least ask for some
>>> additional explication?
>>> >
>>> >  1. I think "behaviours" would be all Nick's Martians *could*
>>> observe?  They would be inferring "experiences" from observed behaviours?
>>> >  2. When we talk about "categories" here, are we talking about
>>> "categories of being"?  Ontologies, as it were?
>>> >
>>> > Regarding ErisS' reflections...   I *do* think that animals behave *as
>>> if* they "have categories", though I don't know what it even means to say
>>> that they "have categories" in the way Aristotle and his legacy-followers
>>> (e.g. us) do...   I would suggest/suspect that dogs and squirrels are in no
>>> way aware of these "categories" and that to say that they do is a
>>> projection by (us) humans who have fabricated the (useful in myriad
>>> contexts) of a category/Category/ontology.   So in that sense they do NOT
>>> *have* categories...   I think in this conception/thought-experiment we
>>> assume that Martians *would* and would be looking to map their own
>>> ontologies onto the behaviour (and inferred  experiences and judgements?)
>>> of Terran animals?
>>> >
>>> > If I were to invert the subj

Re: [FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[Eric Charles]

:
> >>>
> >>> FWiW, I willmake every effort to arrive fed to Thuam by 10.30
> Mountain.  I want to hear the experts among you hold forth on WTF a
> cateogory actually IS.  I am thinking (duh) that a category is a more or
> less diffuse node in a network of associations (signs, if you must).  Hence
> they constitute a vast table of what goes with what, what is predictable
> from what, etc.  This accommodates “family resemblance”  quite nicely.  Do
> I think animals have categories, in this sense, ABSOLUTELY EFFING YES. Does
> this make me a (shudder) nominalist?  I hope not.
> >>> Words…nouns in particular… confuse this category business.  Words
> place constraints on how vague these nodes can be.   They impose on the
> network constraints to which it is ill suited.  True, the more my
> associations with “horse” line up with your associations with “horse”, the
> more true the horse seems.  Following Peirce, I would say that where our
> nodes increasingly correspond with increasing shared experience, we have
> evidence ot the (ultimate) truth of the nodes, their “reality” in Peirce’s
> terms.  Here is where I am striving to hang on to Peirce’s realism.
> >>> The reason I want the geeks to participate tomorrow is that I keep
> thinking of a semantic webby thing that Steve devised for the Institute
> about a decade ago.   Now a semantic web would be a kind of metaphor for an
> associative web; don’t associate with other words in exactly the same
> manner in which experiences associate with other experiences.  Still, I
> think the metaphor is interesting.  Also, I am kind of re-interested in my
> “authorial voice”, how much it operates like cbt.
> >>>
> >>> Rushing,
> >>>
> >>> Nick
> >>>
> >>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of Eric Charles
> >>> Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2023 10:29 AM
> >>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group<
> friam@redfish.com>
> >>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Thuram still happening?
> >>>
> >>> Well shoot. that would do it Thank you!
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 12:28 PM Frank Wimberly
> wrote:
> >>>> Today is Wednesday, isn't it?
> >>>>
> >>>> ---
> >>>> Frank C. Wimberly
> >>>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> >>>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
> >>>>
> >>>> 505 670-9918
> >>>> Santa Fe, NM
> >>>>
> >>>> On Wed, Feb 15, 2023, 10:19 AM Eric Charles<
> eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com>  wrote:
> >>>>> Are the Thursday online meetings still happening? I missed a few
> weeks due to work piling up meetings on, but I'm trying to log in now, and
> it looks like the meeting hasn't started.
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Thuram still happening?

[Eric Charles]

Well shoot. that would do it Thank you!



On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 12:28 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> Today is Wednesday, isn't it?
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2023, 10:19 AM Eric Charles <
> eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Are the Thursday online meetings still happening? I missed a few weeks
>> due to work piling up meetings on, but I'm trying to log in now, and it
>> looks like the meeting hasn't started.
>> 
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[FRIAM] Thuram still happening?

[Eric Charles]

Are the Thursday online meetings still happening? I missed a few weeks due
to work piling up meetings on, but I'm trying to log in now, and it looks
like the meeting hasn't started.

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Re: [FRIAM] experience monism

[Eric Charles]

While Dear Professor Thomspon has, over the years, become good at
understand the experience monist position, I feel he has yet to become
great at it, and so I feel the urge to put on my William James Hat, and
give more forceful answers to some of the queries the Ever-Enthusiastic
Professor West has asked. William James's "Radical Empiricism" is, I
believe, the quintessential experience monism, so channeling him is a good
way to try to respond, even though I know I cannot be as eloquent as he
was. I ask that these replies be read not as contradicting anything our
generously eye-browed colleague offered, but rather be read as
supplementing and extending upon the beginning he provided.


1) Is an *Experience* a whole or a composite? I.e., (scent of
cinnamon)—(heat of oven)—(grandmother's smile) OR (scent of cinnamon) +
(heat of oven) + (grandmothers smile)? Another analogy a single photograph
or a Photoshopped collage?


This is putting the cart before the horse. Is it not the case that, as you
move through the world you experience things *as *whole, and experience
other things *as* composite? Sometimes you may even experience something *as
*being The Same Thing, despite experiencing it as whole one minute, and as
composite the next minute. Each of these experiences is what it is, and we
must at all costs resist the urge to deny that. It is tempting, for
example, after one has learned to draw a chair - after having been taught
to "see" the chair as a collection of shapes and colors, projected at
particular angles - to retrospectively pretend that new way we have learned
to experience the chair is how the chair must have come to us in the first
instance. But the initial experience was what *it *was, and the later
experience is what *it is*, and while the retrospective experience gets to
be acknowledged for what *it* is (in its own turn), we must always keep in
mind that the retrospective experience is not the original experience.
There is no refuge to be found in *a priori* assertions that
wholes-must-be-parts, that parts-must-be-wholes, or any other metaphysical
claims. There is only an examination of the experiences - actual
experiences - to determine what those particular experiences are or are
not.

   1A) If an *Experience* is is a composite- there must be 'atomic'
*Experience* from which it is composed. Is it possible to *Experience* and
"atomic *Experience*" in isolation?

This is an odd assertion. *SOME* experiences are composites, and they are
composed of exactly the components present. It may be the case that  (*in
future experiences*) each person can break their experiences down up to
some limit. But there is no reason *a priori* to assume that each person's
limit will be the same, or that whatever residue one person is left with
will match the residue another is left with (one person, for example,
coming at the task with a background in traditions of western analytic
philosophy, and another coming at the task with a background in monastic
buddhist traditions, or a third having studied for decades under the
tutelage of Timothy Leary). Given around 200 years of people in Psychology
attempting, under various research conditions, to forge out agreement
amongst themselves about the smallest elements introspectively identifiable
in experience, it seems reasonable to conclude - at least tentatively -
that no such "atomic" components exist in the sense implied.


2) Does an *Experience* have duration, or is each *Experience* akin to a
frame of a film and continuity simply an artifact of being presented at
some rate; e.g., 30 frames per nanosecond?

Of course experiences have durations! One may experience a slap on the
back, or a song on the radio, or the slow decay of western
civilization under the assault of whichever political group they happen to
distrust. All of those experiences have a duration, but they all have quite
different durations.

I am not sure, however, what the reference to the film is. The closest I
can come, myself, to making sense of it, suggests the thinking is once
again backwards. There is wonderful research in the field of
"psychophysics" showing that continuity vs impulse are experienced in
different ways in different senses, and even in many different ways within
a single "sense" depending on the circumstances. For example, if you make a
device tap someone fast enough, it will eventually be experienced as a
solid (i.e., non-tapping) touch. But the frequency at which this happens
will depend on the part of the body being tapped (the upper back, for
example, requiring a lower frequency for the transition than, say, the
inside of the forearm). This is similar to what is seen with the "flicker
fusion" frequency for movies, which can vary depending on the part of the
eye being stimulated. But note that we view such experiments *without *the
arrogatation common among the hard sciences and followers of scientism -
where dualism is still commonplace - that any part of those experiments

Re: [FRIAM] Sorting Algorithm? AI? Identifying "types" within data

[Eric Charles]

I don't mind building something, I don't know where to start.

What are some keywords to look for, or some articles to start from?

I'm asking here exactly because neither I, nor the two data scientists who
now ostensibly work for me, seem to be able to figure out where to start at
it.

(Obviously I would have preferred to find that there WAS something
out-of-the-box, I'm happy for anything that is appreciably ahead of
starting-from-scratch, because if that's where we are, it's never
happening.)



On Thu, Jan 12, 2023 at 9:51 AM glen  wrote:

> Well, it *is* a "thing". We're doing something very similar on our
> project, classifying patient types. It's just that there's no
> standard/generic/singular way to do it. I get the feeling you're looking
> for some sort of black box process you can blindly apply. And that's not a
> thing. But there's loads of research and methods on how to classify such
> things. Which one will actually work with your data is a question only
> those looking at the data can answer.
>
> You could anonymize that data and post it here (or wherever) and hold a
> contest to see who gets the best classifier. Offer a $1000 reward. 8^D
>
> On 1/11/23 18:08, Eric Charles wrote:
> > I'm also trying to do some sort of career classification game,
> originally because I thought it wouldn't be too hard. IF it was possible to
> do the career classification game, it would de facto assist with the
> attrition prediction. But if that just kind of isn't a thing, then I guess
> it isn't a thing .
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Sorting Algorithm? AI? Identifying "types" within data

[Eric Charles]

he scikit-learn
> library in Python to group the careers of the 2 million people into
> clusters using the k-means algorithm:
> > Copy code
> > from sklearn.cluster import KMeans
> > # Load the data into a NumPy array
> > data = np.loadtxt('career_data.txt')
> > # Create the k-means model
> > model = KMeans(n_clusters=4)
> > # Fit the model to the data
> > model.fit(data)
> > # Predict the cluster labels for each data point
> > labels = model.predict(data)
> > # Print the cluster labels
> > print(labels)
> > This code will group the data into 4 clusters, as specified by
> the n_clusters parameter. You can adjust this parameter to change the
> number of clusters that the data is grouped into.
> > To extract features from the data that can be used as input to
> the k-means model, you will need to preprocess the data and select relevant
> features. This will likely involve some feature engineering, which will
> depend on the specific characteristics of the data and the goals of your
> analysis.
> > I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions.
> >
> > On Fri, 6 Jan 2023 at 19:34, Eric Charles <
> eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com <mailto:eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com>>
> wrote:
> >
> > Greetings all,
> > I'm hoping someone here could help out. Let's imagine I had
> some data where each row was a person's career. We could list major events
> every year.
> >
> > For example: 2004 they were highered, 2007 they get a
> promotion, 2010 they leave for a different company, 2012 they come back at
> a higher level, 2015 get a promotion, then no change until 2022.
> >
> > Let's say I had data like this for roughly 2 million people,
> and that there are around 10 different types of changes that could happen
> during any time period (could be yearly, quarterly, monthly, I can make it
> how I want).
> >
> > I was hoping we could ask a computer to tell us if there
> were "types of careers" that people had. We could say "put all these
> careers into 4 buckets" or "7 buckets" based on similarity. Then we could
> look at the piles the computer made and try to make sense of them.
> >
> > One type might be "company man" for people who tend to stay
> in place for 20 or more years, another type could be a "rotator", who
> leaves and returns every 3 years or so. Etc. The point is, I want a
> computer to make the piles for me, rather than trying to come up with
> potential piles a priori.
> >
> > Are there methods for doing this? I know it's a problem
> we've *talked* about a lot, but I don't know if there are solutions.
> >
> > Any help would be appreciated.
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
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Re: [FRIAM] Sorting Algorithm? AI? Identifying "types" within data

[Eric Charles]

>From what I can tell "one-hot encoding" is just another term for dummy
coding the data, i.e., make it a bunch of 1/0 columns. H2o seems more
promising, but seems to require a backbone of quantitative data that you
can substitute (based on something akin to a regression) for the
categorical variables.

It seems weird to me that this doesn't exist. It seems like such a basic
thing to want the computer to do for you. The lack of this reinforces my
belief that a ton of AI work is just people who don't understand basic
analytic techniques trying hard not to learn how to do them. If most of the
AI efforts are just giving me the results of a regression, that's not super
exciting when I am comfortable running regressions myself.





On Sat, Jan 7, 2023 at 3:30 PM Pieter Steenekamp 
wrote:

> One way to handle categorical input data for machine learning is to
> convert it using one-hot encoding - it's not difficult but a bit cumbersome.
> Fortunately there are other options. H2O is a machine learning library
> available in both Python and R that does this conversion "under the hood".
>
> I asked ChatGPT about "machine learning with categorical inputs using
> H2O", she answered:
>
> H2O is a popular open-source library for training machine learning models
> in Python and R. It is designed to be scalable, fast, and easy to use, and
> it includes a number of algorithms for classification, regression, and
> clustering.
>
> H2O can handle categorical variables natively, so you don't need to use
> one-hot encoding or any other special techniques to work with them. When
> you import your data into H2O, you can specify which columns are
> categorical, and H2O will take care of the rest.
>
> Here is an example of how you might use H2O to train a machine learning
> model with categorical inputs in Python:
>
> Copy code
> import h2o
> # Initialize H2O
> h2o.init()
> # Import your data into H2O
> df = h2o.import_file("path/to/your/data.csv")
> # Specify which columns are categorical
> df['input_variable'] = df['input_variable'].asfactor()
> # Train a model using the categorical input_variable column
> model = h2o.H2ORandomForestEstimator(categorical_encoding =
> "one_hot_explicit")
> model.train(["input_variable"], "output_variable", df)
> Here is an example of how you might use H2O to train a machine learning
> model with categorical inputs in R:
> Copy code
> library(h2o)
> # Initialize H2O
> h2o.init()
> # Import your data into H2O
> df <- h2o.importFile("path/to/your/data.csv")
> # Specify which columns are categorical
> df[, "input_variable"] <- as.factor(df[, "input_variable"])
> # Train a model using the categorical input_variable column
> model <- h2o.randomForest(x = "input_variable", y = "output_variable",
> training_frame = df)
>
> On Sat, 7 Jan 2023 at 17:37, Eric Charles 
> wrote:
>
>> That's somewhat helpful. Having looked up several of these
>> algorithms (I'm still checking a few), it seems like they all input some
>> sort of distance measure between the items (analogous to the distance
>> between their coordinates on a cartesian graph), and then do some sort of
>> distance-minimization function. The challenge here is that I don't have
>> anything equivalent to that: The data is primarily categorical.
>>
>> Does anyone on here actually have experience doing that kind of work?
>>
>> It's not that it would be impossible for me to change the categorical
>> data into something more quantitative, but doing so would bake in my
>> assumptions about how the categories should be determined.
>> 
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2023 at 1:32 AM Pieter Steenekamp <
>> piet...@randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
>>
>>> I asked https://chat.openai.com/chat and here is the conversation:
>>>
>>> *Pieter Steenekamp*
>>> can you suggest a solution for the following problem "I'm hoping someone
>>> here could help out. Let's imagine I had some data where each row was a
>>> person's career. We could list major events every year.For example: 2004
>>> they were highered, 2007 they get a promotion, 2010 they leave for a
>>> different company, 2012 they come back at a higher level, 2015 get a
>>> promotion, then no change until 2022.  Let's say I had data like this for
>>> roughly 2 million people, and that there are around 10 different types of
>>> changes that could happen during any time period (could be yearly,
>>> quarterly, monthly, I can make it how I want).  I was hoping we could ask a
>>> computer to tell us if there were "t

Re: [FRIAM] Sorting Algorithm? AI? Identifying "types" within data

[Eric Charles]

r paths and
> success.
> *Pieter Steenekamp*
> can you propose python code to do sometingh like this please
> *https://chat.openai.com/chat <https://chat.openai.com/chat>*
> Sure, here is an example of how you could use the scikit-learn library in
> Python to group the careers of the 2 million people into clusters using the
> k-means algorithm:
> Copy code
> from sklearn.cluster import KMeans
> # Load the data into a NumPy array
> data = np.loadtxt('career_data.txt')
> # Create the k-means model
> model = KMeans(n_clusters=4)
> # Fit the model to the data
> model.fit(data)
> # Predict the cluster labels for each data point
> labels = model.predict(data)
> # Print the cluster labels
> print(labels)
> This code will group the data into 4 clusters, as specified by the
> n_clusters parameter. You can adjust this parameter to change the number of
> clusters that the data is grouped into.
> To extract features from the data that can be used as input to the k-means
> model, you will need to preprocess the data and select relevant features.
> This will likely involve some feature engineering, which will depend on the
> specific characteristics of the data and the goals of your analysis.
> I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions.
>
> On Fri, 6 Jan 2023 at 19:34, Eric Charles 
> wrote:
>
>> Greetings all,
>> I'm hoping someone here could help out. Let's imagine I had some data
>> where each row was a person's career. We could list major events every
>> year.
>>
>> For example: 2004 they were highered, 2007 they get a promotion, 2010
>> they leave for a different company, 2012 they come back at a higher level,
>> 2015 get a promotion, then no change until 2022.
>>
>> Let's say I had data like this for roughly 2 million people, and that
>> there are around 10 different types of changes that could happen during any
>> time period (could be yearly, quarterly, monthly, I can make it how I
>> want).
>>
>> I was hoping we could ask a computer to tell us if there were "types of
>> careers" that people had. We could say "put all these careers into 4
>> buckets" or "7 buckets" based on similarity. Then we could look at the
>> piles the computer made and try to make sense of them.
>>
>> One type might be "company man" for people who tend to stay in place for
>> 20 or more years, another type could be a "rotator", who leaves and returns
>> every 3 years or so. Etc. The point is, I want a computer to make the piles
>> for me, rather than trying to come up with potential piles a priori.
>>
>> Are there methods for doing this? I know it's a problem we've *talked*
>> about a lot, but I don't know if there are solutions.
>>
>> Any help would be appreciated.
>>
>> Best,
>> Eric
>>
>> 
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>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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>> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
>> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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[FRIAM] Sorting Algorithm? AI? Identifying "types" within data

[Eric Charles]

Greetings all,
I'm hoping someone here could help out. Let's imagine I had some data where
each row was a person's career. We could list major events every year.

For example: 2004 they were highered, 2007 they get a promotion, 2010 they
leave for a different company, 2012 they come back at a higher level, 2015
get a promotion, then no change until 2022.

Let's say I had data like this for roughly 2 million people, and that there
are around 10 different types of changes that could happen during any time
period (could be yearly, quarterly, monthly, I can make it how I want).

I was hoping we could ask a computer to tell us if there were "types of
careers" that people had. We could say "put all these careers into 4
buckets" or "7 buckets" based on similarity. Then we could look at the
piles the computer made and try to make sense of them.

One type might be "company man" for people who tend to stay in place for 20
or more years, another type could be a "rotator", who leaves and returns
every 3 years or so. Etc. The point is, I want a computer to make the piles
for me, rather than trying to come up with potential piles a priori.

Are there methods for doing this? I know it's a problem we've *talked*
about a lot, but I don't know if there are solutions.

Any help would be appreciated.

Best,
Eric


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[FRIAM] THURAM virtual meeting

[Eric Charles]

So, what's the status on the Thursday meetings?

Are they happening and ending quickly? Have they petered out?


Best,
Eric


>
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Re: [FRIAM] Adversarial Go trick defeats KataGo

[Eric Charles]

"the adversarial policy works by first staking claim to a small corner of
the board. He provided a link to an example
 in which the
adversary, controlling the black stones, plays largely in the top-right of
the board. The adversary allows KataGo (playing white) to lay claim to the
rest of the board, while the adversary plays a few easy-to-capture stones
in that territory."

This sounds oddly reminiscent of the vs-computer RISK strategy of taking
over Australia, and ceding the rest of the board until you suddenly come
out and win. Which no half-decent human opponent would ever let you do, but
the computer AI make totally viable.



On Thu, Nov 10, 2022 at 1:24 PM Roger Frye  wrote:

>
> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/11/new-go-playing-trick-defeats-world-class-go-ai-but-loses-to-human-amateurs/
>
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[FRIAM] Clouds as objects and duals

[Eric Charles]

Amazing video of a "roll cloud" that seems to neatly demonstrate many of
the things we discuss fairly often. It is extremely object-like. "It" seems
to move around despite continuously forming and reforming itself at the
boarder, while *seeming* not to "mix" with the "layers" around it. And, of
course, the air around it is "pulling" it into place as much as the air in
it is "pushing" into new space, so it gets at all of Steve's
bidirectional-causality urges. Anyway... if nothing else, it is pretty
damned cool to watch:

 https://youtu.be/InxQlUOYAng?t=58



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Re: [FRIAM] Nick's monism kick

[Eric Charles]

Frank,  let's run with that!

Assuming it was stupid to bring up atoms, how SHOULD the student respond?
Verbally and behaviorally?

How do you typically respond to stupid advice? :- )

On Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 6:19 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> My conclusion:  the Lab Tech was dumb for mentioning atoms.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:21 PM Eric Charles 
> wrote:
>
>> Two preliminaries:
>> 1) For what it's worth, I am trying to back Nick into a different corner
>> than the one Mike thinks I am but Mike is correct in seeing that I
>> don't want to let Nick weasel out of the confrontation. It is perfectly
>> valid for Nick to point out that he is proud of any student who takes
>> *anything *from one course to another, but that doesn't speak to whether
>> he would be happy or not seeing this particular interaction play out due to
>> the effects of his teaching.
>>
>> 2) Both Mike and Nick want to read into the lab tech something I was
>> exactly excluding from the lab tech's reaction - a sophisticated
>> understanding of the situation that matches what they would like to have a
>> student glean from their classrooms. In the email I am currently replying
>> to, Nick says something like "I don't recognize the student as saying what
>> I would say" and to that I reply "Exactly!" The student isn't a stand in
>> for you, they are a person your teachings have significantly influenced.
>> The student, *like you*, doesn't see the role that "real" or "fact" play in
>> the conversation, and *like you* any hint of "essentialism", especially
>> connected with something that sounds like a crude "materialism", makes her
>> scoff.
>>
>> The basics of the initial scenario are:
>> A lab tech is giving a safety warning. The student, rather than complying
>> with that warning, tries to initiate a conversation about how the words
>> used in the warning make it seem like maybe the lab tech could learn a
>> thing or two about philosophy from Dr. Thompson (a typical
>> sophomoric-sophomore way to respond). The lab tech doesn't give a shit
>> about any of that, and reiterates the safety warning, elaborating it in
>> ways that make sense *to him* by adding in words like "fact" and "atoms".
>> The student scoffs even harder now, because this poor fellow can't even
>> understand that she is trying to help him learn how to think better. As you
>> listen in the hall, the student's responses might not be *exactly* what you
>> would say in her place, but it is obvious that she is *trying* to do the
>> type of conversation you modeled in your class, and that what is happening
>> is due to your influence as an instructor. The culmination of the back and
>> forth is that, because the student is doing everything other than complying
>> with the warning, the lab tech - in his role as the person charged with
>> maintaining lab safety - kicks her out of the chemistry lab.
>>
>> And the basic questions to Nick were:
>> How do you feel witnessing that? Proud, worried, confused? Does it sound
>> like the student was getting the message you intended, or has the intended
>> message gone awry?
>>
>> In the second version, I tried to make the culmination of the interaction
>> even more extreme, so that the key aspect of the interaction - that the
>> student was responding to a safety warning by talking philosophy - was even
>> more obvious. As the conversation continues, the increasingly exasperated
>> lab tech brings in more and more potentially-irrelevant terms and concepts
>> for the student to smugly nit pick, until eventually the
>> thing-being-warned-about actually occurs and several people are grievously
>> injured.
>>
>> How was I hoping Nick would respond? I was hoping it would look something
>> like this:
>> 1) No, I would *not *be happy if I overheard that interaction.
>> 2) She misunderstood X and/or she apparently didn't grok the part where I
>> explained Y.
>> 3) If I had done a better job in the classroom, she would have cared
>> about understanding what his warning meant in terms of practice. (And I
>> imagine anything that Nick adds to illustrate this point would lines up
>> pretty well with Mike's dialog.)
>>
>> If Nick has finally wrapped his head around the scene being played out, I
>> still want to hear from him what X and/or Y are. GIVEN that the student
>> seems to have a reasonable - if imperfect - understanding of 

Re: [FRIAM] Nick's monism kick

[Eric Charles]

iewed, encapsulates a broad
> network of knowledge concerning when things explode.  And I suppose,
> therefore, Mike might see me as anti-Pragmatic (and merely pragmatic) when
> I stress the relation between mixing THESE flasks under THESE CIRCUMSTANCES
> and bad consequences.  I accept that criticism, but I don’t really see him
> making it.
>
>
>
> Lab tech: What? I'm talking about a real danger, and I need you to be
> careful so it doesn't happen.
> Student: Yes, exactly, you believe that those experiences will follow if
> certain experiences happen now.
> Lab tech: Huh? No. I'm telling you how the physical atoms work. I mean...
> yes... the part about the explosion is something that would happen under
> certain circumstances in the future, *but the chemical reaction and the
> damage it could cause are well known facts.*
>
>
>
> I never really understood how the words real and facts are working in this
> hypothetical and why the Labtech thinks that their safety, in the instant,
> is better guaranteed by knowing about atoms, than by knowing to keep the
> two flasks separate.
>
>
>
> As for the rest, I am completely lost.  I really need to pull it out into
> a single document and study the damn thing.  I am torn between an impulse
> to capitalize on Mike’s participation and the fact that I have much else on
> my plate right now.
>
>
>
> Are we perhaps writing something here?   If so, I will  try to do my best
> to put aside everything else and pitch in.
>
>
>
> I love you guys, honest!
>
>
>
> Nick
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Nicholas Thompson 
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 30, 2022 12:47 PM
> *To:* Eric Charles 
> *Cc:* M. D. Bybee ; Jon Zingale <
> jonzing...@gmail.com>; friam@redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: Nick's monism kick
>
>
>
> I am at the moment living in a remote colony of rich peoples shacks, Hence
> no Internet.
>
>
>
> But I like the question so well I am forwarding it to the list. I will get
> back to you when I do not have to thumb my answer.
>
> N
>
> Sent from my Dumb Phone
>
>
> On Aug 30, 2022, at 11:27 AM, Eric Charles 
> wrote:
>
> 
>
> Nick,
>
> You have been asking for "an assignment", and I think I finally thought of
> a good one for you. (And I think it might spur some interesting discussion,
> which is why others are copied here.)
>
>
>
> Imagine that you are still teaching at Clark, and that you have been
> tentatively including your current monism more and more in some of the
> classes. When walking by the Chemistry labs, you recognize the voice of an
> enthusiastic student you had last quarter,, and you start to ease drop. The
> conversation is as follows:
>
> Lab tech: Be careful with that! If it mixes with the potassium solution,
> it can become explosive, we would have to evacuate the building.
> Student: What do you mean?
> Lab tech: If the potassium mixes with chlorides at the right ratio, then
> we are *probably* safe while it is in solution, but if it dries up, it is a
> hard-core explosive and it wouldn't take much to level the whole building.
> We would have to take that threat seriously, and evacuate the building
> until I made the solution safe.
> Student: Oh, a predictions about future experiences, I like those!
> Lab tech: What? I'm talking about a real danger, and I need you to be
> careful so it doesn't happen.
> Student: Yes, exactly, you believe that those experiences will follow if
> certain experiences happen now.
> Lab tech: Huh? No. I'm telling you how the physical atoms work. I mean...
> yes... the part about the explosion is something that would happen under
> certain circumstances in the future, but the chemical reaction and the
> damage it could cause are well known facts. Look, man, if you aren't here
> to learn how to be safe with the chemicals, then maybe you should just
> leave.
> Student: Wait, seriously? You aren't some kind of *materialist* are you?!?
> You know anything we could talk about are *just* experiences, right? It's
> experiences all the way down!
>
> Listening in, you can tell that the student is taking this line based on
> your influence, because it sounds like things they were kinda-sorta
> starting to grock in your class.
>
> How do you feel hearing that? Proud, worried, confused? Does it sound like
> the student was getting the message you intended, or has the intended
> message gone awry? Would you have said something similar to the Lab Tech
> under the same circumstances?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Nick's monism kick

[Eric Charles]

g good about himself as a teacher.
But surely that changes at least a bit if the Lab Tech, after having been
unsuccessful at creating the desired change in lab safety, is also
unsuccessful at getting the student to leave, and the thing-warned-against
(however you want to phrase it in terms of word choice or level of clarity)
came to pass?

If that had happened, would you still be especially proud of the student
for "holding her ground" against the pressure from the lab tech?

And are we going to try to blame the lab tech for not having been versed
enough in the philosophical context of the student's concern to provide the
more sophisticated answer that Mike provided?



On Fri, Sep 23, 2022 at 2:25 PM Mike Bybee  wrote:

>
>
>
>
> Ooh, I know I should wait for Nick, but this is really too
> exciting.  (Maybe I have too much time on my hands.  No, it’s not that.)
>
> To recapitulate à
>
> In Eric’s dialogue, we have a lab tech saying things on the
> level of familiarity.  I imagine him at Ogg the caveman level:  “Ugh.  Put
> pretty-colored things together, will go BOOM!”
>
> We have an interlocutor (call him Dave) recognizing that this
> is not quite the level of discourse to which they’ve become accustomed in
> their chemistry courses.  “Uh, by pretty-colored things, you mean these
> solutions and chemicals?  And by ‘boom!’ do you mean a highly-energetic
> interaction with kilojoules of energy expended?”
>
> And then we can imagine the actual chemist.  The chemist would
> recognize that discourse at the level of familiarity might get the job done
> (in the “utilitarian” or “expediency” sense of pragmatism, but not the
> praxis-ist sense).  That’s what Ogg expects.
>
> And the chemist would also see that discourse in terms of
> abstract definitions might in some ways better communicate the expected
> experience (using the word “explosion,” for example, might more exactly
> express anticipated results).
>
> But the chemist will be able to say exactly the same things as
> Ogg the caveman and Dave-the-abstract-thinker (or at least THINK exactly
> the same thing), but he would think of all of that at the highest level of
> clarity and distinctness, because Lavoisier trained chemists to do that.
>
> Now,
>
> Given all that à
>
> I think we should also imagine Ogg the caveman lab tech saying
> to the student, “Yes, okay, if you need more precision, then I can express
> in those terms more exactly what I mean.  No, I don’t need to talk about
> “matter” any more than I need to talk about “fist.”  Yes, I realize that
> fist-talk is just expedient or convenient talk.  Yes, in such a case, to be
> more precise I would have to talk about a hand configuration, and to be
> more precise, I need to stop talking about ‘matter.’  You’re right.
>
> “And yes, some psychologist *might* mistakenly appeal to a
> kind of non-dualism in this case and talk about materialism.  Such a
> non-dualist materialist might say something like this:  The soul is to the
> body as the kick is to a leg.  That is, some psychologists might think we
> can reduce all psychology talk to materialism.  But no, that’s not what we
> do in the chemistry lab, and evidently, that’s not what Nick’s doing when
> he does psychology, either.  Hooray for Nick for understanding that at the
> ultimate level of discourse, such appeals miss the point of having
> discourse at the most profound level.”
>
> In THAT respect, the student has it entirely wrong at the end
> of Eric’s continuation.  As Eric imagines it, the student says, “What?
> Just because *you* are naïve enough to believe in materialism, I need to
> get out?!?”
>
> If the lab tech were not Ogg the caveman, he or she would
> respond, “No, that’s not the reason you need to get out.  You need to get
> out for reasons that have nothing to do with the
> materialism-idealism-dualism debate entirely.  In fact, you need to get out
> [at the ultimate level of discourse] exactly for the reasons that Nick
> specifies, because we know that if you continue doing certain things
> (praxis) then certain events will result, and we can specify both the
> *doing* and the *results* at the highest level of clarity and
> distinctness.  Any problem with that?”
>
> Isn’t that what’s at stake in Eric’s dialogue and (especially)
> in his continuation?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 20, 2022 12:02 AM
> *To:* Mike Bybee 
> *Cc:* thompnicks...@gmail.com; Jon Zingale ;
> friam@redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: Nick's monism kick
>
>
>

Re: [FRIAM] Nick's monism kick

[Eric Charles]

ism and “ultimate” terminology.  At the provision level we can speak
> about such things as fists and kicks and so on, but at the ultimate level
> (so to speak), we know that by “fist,” we mean nothing more than a
> particular configuration of a hand and fingers.  A fist is actually an
> epiphenomenon.  So, too, with “kick.”
>
> So, we can be speaking OF THE SAME THING at different levels
> of clarity (and distinctness).
>
> And given Eric’s imagined dialogue, we can see that speakers
> can sometimes not even grasp that they’re speaking of the same thing, just
> at different levels of clarity and distinctness!
>
> At least, I thought that’s what Eric’s dialogue made
> abundantly clear.  On the one hand, we have a lab tech speaking at one
> level (say, the level of familiarity).  On the other hand, we have a
> student who’s speaking at a different level of clarity and distinctness
> (sometimes the theoretical level, at other times the praxis-ism level).
>
> But they’re both saying the same thing.
>
>
>
> Is that another way of saying what you were saying, Nick?
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* thompnicks...@gmail.com
> *Sent:* Monday, September 19, 2022 12:59 PM
> *To:* 'Mike Bybee' ; 'Eric Charles' <
> eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com>
> *Cc:* 'Jon Zingale' ; friam@redfish.com
> *Subject:* RE: Nick's monism kick
>
>
>
> I think this comes very close to our discussion on operationism.  My
> response to eric’s challenge on that score was his “quantity” argument,
> which he himself disavowed.  The attempt to identify a concept by a single
> operation or even by operations within a single paradigm is operationism,
> which I, as a pragmatist, condemn.  However, the sum of all conceivable
> operations is the pragmaticist “meaning” of the concept.  Now, in
> disavowing this “Quantitative” distinction between operationism and
> pragmatism, Eric seems to be reaching for some “essence” which is aside
> from all operations that might flow from adoption of the concept.  I wrote
> you both about this, and neither has replied.
>
>
>
> Now, as to the dialogue.  I would be proud of the student by the fact that
> she has carried anything from the psycho building to the chemistry
> building.  Most students go through a complete brainwashing when they pass
> out into the quadrangle.  Finally, I would be proud of her holding her
> ground with the lab tech, even when such heavy artillery is brought to bear
> on her.
>
>
>
> As to the substance, I find the Lab Tech’s response oddly incoherent.
> First he appears to ding her for her flat affect.  “Look, kid,  some
> consequences are more… um… consequential than others.  Don’t you feel the
> heat of that explosion?” On that point, I agree with him.  Emotional
> consequences are consequences.  We could do experiments on them.
>
>
>
> But then he seems to be dinging her for not understanding that the dire
> consequences arise from molecular events rather than from bad lab
> technique, as if they become more consequention when they are understood in
> atomic terms.  As if their “dangerousness” is attached to their
> “atomicness”.  This argument felt to me like some sort of creepy
> essentialism, I and wanted no part of it.  I would have been even more
> proud of the student if she had responded, “Respectfully, sir, that makes
> no sense to me at all.  What is truly dangerous here, what I must be
> steadfastly warned against, is mixing these two substances under particular
> circumstances, or even composing a mixture that might, though inattention,
> find itself under those circumstances.   True, atomic principles might help
> me anticipate dangers with other solutions, but the danger is in the
> explosion, not in the atoms.
>
> !
>
> In my year at Harvard, two of my classmates were thrown out for a
> chemistry experiment pursued in their dorm rooms that resulted in an
> explosion.  The students defended themselves before the Dean (my uncle, as
> it happened), on the ground that the two chemicals involved *could not
> have exploded!  *The chemistry department agreed.  Nonetheless, the Dean
> threw they out, but with a Deanly wink encouraging application for
> re-admission in the following year.
>
>
>
> Have I answered your question?
>
>
>
> n
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Mike Bybee 
> *Sent:* Monday, September 19, 2022 1:03 PM
> *To:* 'Nicholas Thompson' ; 'Eric Charles' <
> eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com>
> *Cc:* 'Jon Zingale' ; friam@redfish.com
> *Subject:* RE: Nick's monism kick
> *Importance:* Hig

Re: [FRIAM] thanks for nothing biden

[Eric Charles]

Also, that article and those senators suck... a fundamental
misunderstanding of the legal issues involved. Marijuana can only be
"decriminalized" by congress, and until that happens, HHS, DEA, and similar
agencies will reasonably assume it is their federal mandate to respond in
the way that they did in that article - because it is their federal
mandate.

Marijuana should have been decriminalized decades ago. At the latest, under
the "I didn't inhale" administration, but there is very little that Biden
can do.  Unfortunately, Marijuana was listed, by name, in the Controlled
Substance Act of 1970, and that act will need to be amended if you want to
remove it from the controlled substance list.

---
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Senior Workforce Analyst
Human Capital Management Office
Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA)
American University - Adjunct Instructor



On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 2:40 AM Gillian Densmore 
wrote:

> Which is his entire, moronic time as POTUS
>
> FUCK!
> Democratic senators hit Biden for 'extraordinarily disappointing' stance
> on marijuana (msn.com)
> 
>
> What in the fuck is wrong with that man?  How is this not a nobraider
> binary, 2 digit IQ push an vote by him?
> So far weed in places where it's legal has brought in fat stacks. From
> taxes in sales of the wonderful caugh inducing treat alone NM is on track
> to record surplus.  I don't get it  low hanging fruit to ease (or stop) a
> depresse economy, and (maybe) slow or stop out of controll inflation.
>
> i feel as though both parties despise the country.
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Re: [FRIAM] Peirce, Buddhism, Monism, Behaviorism, oh my!

[Eric Charles]

We can define it in many ways, but it is still worth considering that the
more interesting question might be how the word functions, in practice.

What is the role that confirmation-by-others plays in what what you, or I,
or someone else ascribes reality to? How sensitive is that ascription to
variations in confirmation-by-others? What other factors affect the
ascription's strength? What weakens it?

As for dreams: Plenty of people believe they have had dreams confirmed,
both in their own direct experience and in the experiences of others. It
really is a much more mirky topic than most give it credit for.




On Thu, Jun 2, 2022 at 5:29 PM Jochen Fromm  wrote:

> If we want to define "real" in terms of observers we could say an
> experience is real when other observers have the same experience in the
> same situation or context and can confirm it independently *and*
>  subsequently.
>
> A squirrel we meet in the park can be confirmed by others and if we find
> out the place where it lives, we can observe it subsequently.
>
> A rainbow in the clouds or a movie in the cinema could be confirmed by
> other observers, but only for a short time and not subsequently in the time
> that follows.
>
> A dream at night can neither be confirmed by others nor repeated by
> oneself subsequently. We experience things that seem to be real, but when
> we wake up in the morning we see that they are not real. We are not able to
> confirm the experience.
>
> -J.
>
>
>  Original message 
> From: ⛧ glen 
> Date: 6/1/22 03:43 (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Peirce, Buddhism, Monism, Behaviorism, oh my!
>
> How many subsequent experiences are needed? 2? A google? And is reality
> defeasible? Eg if some experience is 'real' to me, then I get some brain
> damage and no longer get repeats, is the now unexperienced experience real?
>
> On May 31, 2022 6:05:40 PM PDT, Nicholas Thompson 
> wrote:
> >Dave, I think I disagree. Not all experiences have a character of being
> real. Only those that are confirm or subsequent experiences.
> >
> >Sent from my Dumb Phone
> >
> >On May 31, 2022, at 8:27 PM, Prof David West 
> wrote:
> >
> >
> >At the risk of becoming a poster boy for glen's comments about cult
> maintenance and othering;
> >
> >It is the body and brain that are Illusion, the self Real.
> >
> >The mirage, the rainbow illustrate the emergence of Illusion. Raindrops
> and neurons are posited as ex post facto "explanations" and "causes" for
> very real, 'perceptions,' 'apprehensions,' 'experiences' of rainbows and
> mirages.
> >
> >davew
> >
> >On Tue, May 31, 2022, at 12:59 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> >> Interesting episode. Yes, Garfield apparently uses it to advertise his
> book. I like the mirage example he uses (at 11:00) to illustrate an
> illusion which is real as an experience and as a dynamic refraction process
> but unreal as a physical substance.
> >>
> https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691220284/losing-ourselves
> >>
> >> Daniel Dennett recently posted on Twitter a link to an article which
> contains the same idea, but for a rainbow instead of a mirage: perceiving a
> rainbow is a real experience of a colored arc, but also an illusion because
> there is of course no real physical arc at the place where we see it.
> >> https://www.keithfrankish.com/2022/05/like-a-rainbow/
> >>
> >> Maybe the illusion of the self works indeed in the same way? As whole
> persons who have bodies and brains we are real, just as raindrops in the
> sky are real. But when the billions of neurons start to sparkle in the
> light of conscious thoughts, the experience of a self emerges for a short
> time like a rainbow which emerges shortly from a million raindrops that
> bend the light towards the observer.
> >>
> >> I believe Jay Garfield is right when he says that we are able to
> construct ourselves as embedded beings. It is as if we are 6, 7 or 8
> dimensional beings in a 4 dimensional spacetime where the additional
> dimensions are embedded in the others. This additional dimensions come
> through language and enable to specify a personality. If we consider a
> person from a 3rd person point of view, then the personality of a person
> certainly determines the behavior. This means everyone has a self in form
> of a character or personality. Even if it is illusionary or an unreachable
> ideal to be a certain type of person, such a type can be approximated. Our
> personalities can be considered as embedded abstract person types that we
> acquire and approximate in the course of time. In this sense we can say we
> have a self that guides our actions. And the abstract type is independent
> from us, since it could also be implemented in a sophisticated robot,
> android or AI.
> >>
> >> -J.
> >>
> >>
> >>  Original message 
> >> From: thompnicks...@gmail.com
> >> Date: 5/31/22 11:04 (GMT+01:00)
> >> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity 

Re: [FRIAM] Peirce, Buddhism, Monism, Behaviorism, oh my!

[Eric Charles]

So, like, exactly what you just said. That is a serious empirical question.
Let's say that you believe something to be real, or not-real. Are there *
*any** subsequent interactions in the world that would lead you to
re-evaluate that belief? If we could, ever, get at **all** the subsequent
interactions that might lead you to re-evaluate that belief, we would have
a very good idea what "real" meant to you.

If we just do you, then it is solid "idiographic" science. We **might**
also hypothesize that if we did that with a lot of people, across a lot of
beliefs, that we would see some similarities emerge. If so, we
**could* *abstract
those similarities and try to create prescriptive guidance for word usage,
a "definition" if you will.

If we did a cross-cultural study, we could examine the accuracy of whatever
word we might translate as "real" by seeing if it actually maps on to the
same re-evaluation criteria that "real" does in our culture.

Etc.

It is also important to note that the subsequent interactions don't have to
be limited in the way conventional Western science would like them to be.
For example, if someone said "I wouldn't believe some particular God was
real unless I died and found myself before him" that is a totally viable
criteria for the purposes of our study.

Note also that in practice we will likely run into the usual problems with
self-report, but that is a different discussion altogether. The question is
whether there are conditions under which your belief in the reality of
something could change, not whether you can **perfectly** self-report on
what those conditions are.

(And, as a final note: When Peirce gives the "pragmatic definition of
truth", he is making an assertion about what the result of the above study
would be, if we could run it as comprehensively as possible. Peirce is
great, IMHO, when he admits that's what he's doing, and he's a jackass when
he just asserts his definition without that context.)




On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 9:42 PM ⛧ glen  wrote:

> How many subsequent experiences are needed? 2? A google? And is reality
> defeasible? Eg if some experience is 'real' to me, then I get some brain
> damage and no longer get repeats, is the now unexperienced experience real?
>
> On May 31, 2022 6:05:40 PM PDT, Nicholas Thompson 
> wrote:
> >Dave, I think I disagree. Not all experiences have a character of being
> real. Only those that are confirm or subsequent experiences.
> >
> >Sent from my Dumb Phone
> >
> >On May 31, 2022, at 8:27 PM, Prof David West 
> wrote:
> >
> >
> >At the risk of becoming a poster boy for glen's comments about cult
> maintenance and othering;
> >
> >It is the body and brain that are Illusion, the self Real.
> >
> >The mirage, the rainbow illustrate the emergence of Illusion. Raindrops
> and neurons are posited as ex post facto "explanations" and "causes" for
> very real, 'perceptions,' 'apprehensions,' 'experiences' of rainbows and
> mirages.
> >
> >davew
> >
> >On Tue, May 31, 2022, at 12:59 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> >> Interesting episode. Yes, Garfield apparently uses it to advertise his
> book. I like the mirage example he uses (at 11:00) to illustrate an
> illusion which is real as an experience and as a dynamic refraction process
> but unreal as a physical substance.
> >>
> https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691220284/losing-ourselves
> >>
> >> Daniel Dennett recently posted on Twitter a link to an article which
> contains the same idea, but for a rainbow instead of a mirage: perceiving a
> rainbow is a real experience of a colored arc, but also an illusion because
> there is of course no real physical arc at the place where we see it.
> >> https://www.keithfrankish.com/2022/05/like-a-rainbow/
> >>
> >> Maybe the illusion of the self works indeed in the same way? As whole
> persons who have bodies and brains we are real, just as raindrops in the
> sky are real. But when the billions of neurons start to sparkle in the
> light of conscious thoughts, the experience of a self emerges for a short
> time like a rainbow which emerges shortly from a million raindrops that
> bend the light towards the observer.
> >>
> >> I believe Jay Garfield is right when he says that we are able to
> construct ourselves as embedded beings. It is as if we are 6, 7 or 8
> dimensional beings in a 4 dimensional spacetime where the additional
> dimensions are embedded in the others. This additional dimensions come
> through language and enable to specify a personality. If we consider a
> person from a 3rd person point of view, then the personality of a person
> certainly determines the behavior. This means everyone has a self in form
> of a character or personality. Even if it is illusionary or an unreachable
> ideal to be a certain type of person, such a type can be approximated. Our
> personalities can be considered as embedded abstract person types that we
> acquire and approximate in the course of time. In this sense we can say we
> have a self that 

Re: [FRIAM] Web 3 is going great!

[Eric Charles]

The MLM is only a problem if a) they make you put in a big investment of
capital or b) you actually think you will get rich off of it. If you don't
have to outlay cash, and you think you'll get some tupperware (or whatever)
and make a few $100 out of it, and then you actually get some tupperware
and make a few $100 out of it, then everything about it is fine. If, in
contrast, they make you get an initial purchase of $10,000 worth of
product, with promises you'll flip it for $50,000 in no time, and that
you'll recruit people under you for passive income that is more than that
annually, and then none of that happens and you are stuck with $10K worth
of junk you couldn't afford in your garage... then you have a problem.

So, I agree with what you said regarding being "complicit", so long as we
agree that you only "complicit" in the activity you are part of - that is,
I don't think it is fair to label someone as complitic with anything that
vaguely resembles the thing they are part of. For example, if someone is in
an innocuous local riding club, they are not thereby complicit in the
existence of biker gangs. If someone claimed, "You are in a group that
rides together, and some groups that ride together also kill people, so you
are complicit in those deaths" neither of us would think that was a good
argument... right?

Even the technical savvy doesn't distinguish  a Web3 scam from a non-web3
scam as much as you would think. Pretty much every real life scam is based
on information asymmetry, and much of leans on a lack of technical
sophistication in the buyer. It's different technical skills, to be sure,
but the inability to trace out what's included in a credit-default swap is
technical in the same way the inability to read smart-contract code is
technical.

Scams exist in real life, all over the place. Even A+++ rated securities
can turn out to be garbage, and the rating companies are still in business
and somehow still trusted. It is baffling all over.

If there is something that Web3 adds to the general problem of scams, it is
that often you can't know who the agents are. Not just that you don't know,
but it could be undeterminable, due to the additional anonymity that is not
possible with a live MLM or investment scam. That was leaned on heavily in
the article Roger and Frank shared. Someone can claim to be a member of a
certain race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orinetation, etc., but if you never
see them, how would you know? Answer: You wouldn't. So if that is *THE*
reason you are getting into a project, don't do it unless the founders are
completely doxxed. Easy day.





On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 10:14 AM glen  wrote:

> Interesting take. It reminds me of Stockholm Syndrome and abusive
> relationships. I've made disruptive runs at ad hominem, hume's guillotine,
> appeal to authority, and petitio principii. I have yet to make a run at the
> slippery slope. I had 2 recent opportunities to do so, 1) regarding consent
> and 2) re: populism. My bougie post is a bit of a start and your defense of
> MLM propogation is similar. Peter Singer gives us a foundation by arguing
> that bestiality doesn't *necessarily* represent the abuse of animals. Maybe
> the sheep likes it when the farmer has their way? Maybe we should take
> Alison Mack's explicit *consent* to becoming a branded slave and slave
> recruiter seriously? Maybe the wife enjoys being beaten?
>
> These slopes are obviously slippery. But one that's not so obvious is the
> asymmetric relationship between the actually powerful and the bougie. E.g.
> when *I* buy crypto, given that I not only know what they are, what
> distributed ledgers are, how to do some cryptography, a bit of math, a lot
> of programming, a lot of systems engineering and supply chain analysis, I
> really am giving my consent. Like you say, the person selling the Amway
> products just because they enjoy it and like some of the products isn't
> necessarily being scammed or scamming others.
>
> The problem is analogous to the redefinition of racism. Racism used to be
> widely used to *cover* individual prejudice. But as the language evolves,
> racism is coming to target less visible, systemic infrastructure. The
> small-minded right doesn't see that. The intellectual right does see it,
> but purposefully obfuscates. Buying Amway products makes you complicit,
> whether you understand that or not. ... similar to the insanity defense. I
> actually don't care if you murdered 17 children because you're insane or
> radicalized by Fox News or whatever. You still need to die, humanely,
> regardless of your motivations. Ideas don't matter. Actions do. Maybe
> that's why I can't bring myself to make a full-throated defense of slippery
> sloped conclusions like bestiality or "radical democracy".
>
>
> On 5/31/22 21:29, Eric Charles wrote:
> > Alternate ta

Re: [FRIAM] Web 3 is going great!

[Eric Charles]

Alternate take: Web3 is doing just fine.

Identity politics is bad in all contexts, including when it's used to get
people to buy things they otherwise wouldn't buy (which is the main focus
of the Molly White article). Also, Pyramid schemes are bad anywhere you
find them, not just on the web, and certainly not just in web3. Oh, and
also you can manipulate people by giving them a false sense of security...
well... no shit.

But also, if people are getting a thing they want, then that isn't a scam.
If you go to a tupperware party put on a friend, because you need
tupperware, and might as well buy it there, and then you buy it there, and
later the tupperware that you wanted arrives, that simply isn't a bad
thing. The tupperware sales scheme might even be an MLM, but that doesn't
mean you got scammed when you bought a container, it just means your friend
probably isn't going to get rich off the whole thing.

Here is a link to an NFT that looks to be a pure pyramid scheme, you
shouldn't buy it but hey... if you get in early maybe you will get
lucky and the scheme will work:
https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xa8089bf595f2b2ada60b24224fcdc411cf0a40da/300


Here is a link to an NFT minting that is being put on by PokerGo, which is
a known, real world company, that runs tons of tournaments, has a
production studio, and has its own streaming service for poker (including
the biggest back list anywhere), and if you get the NFT it comes with free
membership to their streaming service. So, if you figure you are going to
pay for their streaming service for a year or two, you probably want to buy
this NFT.  PokerGO Genesis NFT Collection - Collection | OpenSea


If eth goes to zero tomorrow (which it won't), as long as PokerGo honors
the streaming membership, it will be a fine purchase. If eth goes up and/or
there is a run on PokerGo NFTs, and I can sell at a profit in a year or
two, that would be even better, but it isn't necessary for the purchase to
make sense.

(Technically the PokerGo NFT is still in mint, so you actually want to
"mint" not "buy", but let's not complicate things)

Best,
Eric



---
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Senior Workforce Analyst
Human Capital Management Office
Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA)
American University - Adjunct Instructor



On Mon, May 30, 2022 at 7:47 AM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> I have too many subscriptions but there's this from the source
>
> https://blog.mollywhite.net/predatory-community/
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Mon, May 30, 2022, 4:53 AM Roger Critchlow  wrote:
>
>> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/29/molly-white-crypto/
>>
>> -- rec --
>>
>> On Fri, May 27, 2022 at 8:17 PM glen  wrote:
>>
>>> Ha! No, I won't be buying any NFTs. I do still hold out some hope for
>>> distributed computation, however naïve. My Ada is staked. And I'm
>>> sporadically re-piqued by FileCoin and AR. But the anti-crypto rants are
>>> fantastic. Perfect examples of healthy criticism. This one was a lot of fun:
>>>
>>> Web3.0: A Libertarian Dystopia
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-sNSjS8cq0
>>>
>>> On 5/27/22 17:02, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>>> > The longer-form, less sarcastic thoughts on web3 are also good
>>> reading, https://blog.mollywhite.net/blockchain/ <
>>> https://blog.mollywhite.net/blockchain/>, though the rate at which
>>> things are going great is pretty hilarious.  Who knew the future would
>>> bring us serial rug-pullers?
>>> > -- rec --
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > -- rec --
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Fri, May 27, 2022 at 6:31 PM Marcus Daniels >> > wrote:
>>> >
>>> > So you won’t be buying commemorative NFTs of the Heard/Depp
>>> verdict?
>>> >
>>> >  > On May 27, 2022, at 1:51 PM, glen >> > wrote:
>>> >  >
>>> >  > ...and is definitely not an enormous grift that's pouring
>>> lighter fluid on our already-smoldering planet.
>>> >  >
>>> >  > https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ 
>>> >  >
>>> >  > --
>>> >  > Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙
>>>
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Re: [FRIAM] Another reason the future is nothing like the past...

[Eric Charles]

Finally got a chance to watch this with the family, very well done!





On Tue, May 24, 2022 at 6:59 PM Jon Zingale  wrote:

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiadG3ywJIs_channel=Tai-DanaeBradley
>
> What a great way to introduce readers to a phd thesis.
>
>
> https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4773=gc_etds
>
> joy!
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Re: [FRIAM] quotes and questions

[Eric Charles]

[image: image.png]





On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 11:55 AM glen  wrote:

> I've always wondered why we obsessively dichotomize. I've tried to express
> my confusion in the context of the law of noncontradiction and excluded
> middle since my 1st (authentic) analysis course in college. I'd caught a
> whiff of intuitionism by that time and asked my prof about it. He wisely
> feigned ignorance and suggested I do my homework.
>
> When Dave asks a question like "What is the negation of evolution?", it
> absolutely *begs* us to avoid negation  ... this silly impulse to think in
> dichotomies. Negation is a stupid concept, perhaps the most Evil human
> invention ... maybe 2nd only to religion. And juxtaposed with evolution,
> which relies heavily on high-dimensional contexts, makes it crystal clear
> how stupid a concept negation actually is.
>
> Now, "opposition" carries much more ambiguity. One could think of it (and
> "reaction") in something like Newton's 3rd law. But the ambiguity also
> allows us to think in terms of a bushy opposition or "response", rather
> than negation or reaction. So kudos to the quotees who used the more
> ambiguous term, helping us think a little more broadly. And woe to those
> who read the ambiguous term and preemptively register it as the
> miniscule-minded concept of negation.
>
> That bushy opposition flows nicely into Dave's invocation of "stress". In
> the past, I've expressed affinity with the (ole timey) Cynics who flout
> contemporary norms and attempt for Flow. But if I'm honest, I'm actually
> anti-Flow ... or maybe it's a kind of processor-sliced-multi-Flow. The only
> time I feel authentic is when I'm surfing a stressful context ... like some
> adrenaline junky hopping from one brief high to another. Comfort, Groove,
> Flow, Eudaimonia, are most accurately mapped to something like laminar
> death. Turbulence is the new groovy. Flow is for squares, man.
>
> On 5/10/22 21:06, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > Wokeness or antifa are two reactions to bad faith.  At some point
> communication is no longer occurring and it is delusional to expect a civil
> dialog.   When that happens it is just a matter of whether to keep taking a
> beating in the name of a principle that the other party does not care about
> (who IS the audience for this demonstration of futility?) or to use other
> means that they cannot ignore.
> >
> > Another way to deal with Trump-like people on social media would be to
> scale the the fact checking with the lying, so that liars have an
> unblockable paragraph of injected correction surrounding each false claim.
>   Unfortunately then the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and that the
> narcissist gets the attention they seek.  In that sense cancellation is
> better.
> >
> >> On May 10, 2022, at 7:42 PM, Prof David West 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> 
> >> Quotes:
> >>
> >> /"A thing without oppositions ipso facto does not exist ... existence
> lies in opposition."/ C.S. Peirce.
> >>
> >> /"It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep
> truth." /Neils Bohr.
> >>
> >> Questions:
> >> What is the negation of evolution? Natural Selection? Survival of the
> 'Fittest'?
> >>
> >> What is the negation of 'bleeding heart liberalism'? Of Trumpism? Of
> "wokeness?"
> >>
> >> Quote:
> >>
> >> /"Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples
> and ask yourselves whether a tree which is supposed to grow to a proud
> height could do so without bad weather and storms; /*[1]* /whether
> misfortune and external resistance, whether any kinds of hatred, jealousy,
> stubbornness, mistrust, hardness, greed, and violence to not belong to the
> *_favorable_* conditions without which any great grown even of virtue is
> scarecely possible." F. Nietzsche (emphasis his)/
> >>
> >> *[1] *The Biosphere 2 project encountered a problem with trees falling
> over far before they reached their maturity. It was from lack of wind. Wind
> and mechanical stress was required to grow the hard tissues that allowed
> the tree to stand.
> >>
> >> Questions:
> >>
> >> To what extent do we (denizens of FRIAM and their local cultures)
> require the kinds of stress being encountered in the world?
> >>
> >> I suspect that there needs to be a balance between realizable
> civilization and stresses, but how is that balance defoined and, more
> importantly, found and maintained?
> >>
> >> Concrete example of last question: Will the Twitterites end up being a
> better or worse 'culture' post-Musk?
> >>
> >> davew
>
>
> --
> Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙
>
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Re: [FRIAM] THUAM is virtual. FRIAM will be in person.

[Eric Charles]

Regardless of my age,  I am looking forward to the first THUAM meeting.

On Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 12:38 PM John Dobson  wrote:

> You're not the group's only octogenarian.  I*m 81 and counting.
>
> John D
>
> On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 2:34 PM Nicholas Thompson 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Has anybody questioned St. John’s about this matter?
>> Speaking as the groups only octogenarian, I think I will wait and see how
>> many septuagenarians die before I start participating again on Friday. Nick
>>
>> Sent from my Dumb Phone
>>
>> On Apr 11, 2022, at 1:11 PM, Frank Wimberly  wrote:
>>
>> 
>> I'll start the virtual FRIAM at the usual 9:00am on Thursday.  I hope
>> some local people attend too.
>>
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 11:49 AM Stephen Guerin <
>> stephen.gue...@simtable.com> wrote:
>>
>>> We will resume in-person FRIAM at St John's on Fridays.
>>>
>>> Virtual FRIAM will shift to Thursday mornings.
>>>
>>>
>>>
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Re: [FRIAM] Ordinary logic

[Eric Charles]

I mean presumably AFTER reading the second option,  the participants
understood the first option to be "a bank teller who is not an activist".

The most notable thing about the study is how shitty psychological research
is in general. It should be impossible to publish those results without
some accompanying "qualitative" research exploring how the participants
understood the question.   Whether my interpretation is right or wrong,  we
should not be in the position of speculating blindly.

On Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 6:39 PM Nicholas Thompson 
wrote:

>
> I am still without a computer, but will try to dictate more precisely,
> because I am going stir crazy not being able to communicate with friam.
> There is a huge literature in philosophy and cognitive science in which
> scientists ask people to make inferences and then fall over themselves
> laughing when their subjects make inferences that are not correct according
> to formal logic.  Most of the examples that are familiar  to me involved
> abduction which formal logicians seem to regard as a fallacy but which
> Peirce regards as a formally correct form of logic that is both
> probabilistic and weak. Here is an example from sobers book, Ockhams razors
>
> Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She majored in
> philosophy. As a student she was deeply concerned with issues of
> discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear
> demonstrations. Philosophers asked subjects which of the following
> statements is more probable: One Linda is a bank teller. Two jLinda is a
> bank teller and is active in the feminist movement. When subjects answer
> the latter, the philosophers fall all over themselves laughing because a
> conjunction can never be larger than its conjuncts.
>
> Analytical philosophy aside, what do we suppose is going on here.? I think
> the subjects have already abducted That the probability that Linda is a
> bank teller is vanishingly small, And so have rejected the Premises of the
> problem. Any wiser thoughts?
>
> Best my slurred speech and fat thumbs could do! Thanks for your patience.
> Nick.
>
>
> Sent from my Dumb Phone
>
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Re: [FRIAM] the hard problem

[Eric Charles]

Excellent, and accurate!

--

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 7:05 AM ⛧ glen  wrote:

>
> --
> glen ⛧
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Re: [FRIAM] To repeat is rational, but to wander is transcendent

[Eric Charles]

That is a bizarre distinction, that can only be maintained within some sort
of odd, contextless discussion. If you tell me the number of atoms of a
particular substance that you have smushed within a given space, we can,
with reasonable accuracy, tell you the density, and hence the "state of
matter". When we change the quantity of matter within that space, we can
also calculate the expected change in temperature.

For example, when there are 25 moles of propane in the tank under my grill,
the state of matter is liquid.




On Fri, Mar 25, 2022 at 8:35 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> *From the web:*
>
> *Intensive properties do not depend on the quantity of matter*. Examples
> include density, state of matter, and temperature. Extensive properties do
> depend on sample size. Examples include volume, mass, and size.Dec 4, 2019
>
> How is any of those variables emergent.
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 5:26 PM Nicholas Thompson 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Jon, I am sitting outside at a Ohori‘s. Chris tells me that there’s
>> some sort of giant fork cook up that’s going to happen around six or maybe
>> seven and then we all should come. Not the kind of thing I could talk Kenny
>> into I don’t think but it might be fun to bring the kid to. They all smell
>> is much more bearable when there’s an actual smell of food mixed up in the
>> afternoon is very mild and pleasant. I wanted to take a few moments to try
>> and get my mind around the intensive extensive distinction I now have a way
>> to remember which is which which is the intensive properties are
>> independent of the size of the system. So at least I have that little bit
>> of grip.  Song the number of altruists in a group is an intensive sorry
>> sorry extensive property of the group it changes with the size of the
>> system according to Siri, the functional organization of the group the
>> degree of functional organization if you will varies nonlinear early with
>> the number of altruist  but it does vary with the number vouchers and so
>> would be also an extensive property? No according to Winsett poop so far as
>> I’m concerned is the only one who makes any sense on the subject an
>> emergent property contrast with an aggregate property so the number of
>> altruists in the group is an aggregate property because it is insensitive
>> to the arrangement of the parts when you get a property which is sensitive
>> to the arrangement of the parts then you get an emergent property. So I’m
>> trying to think of those two distinctions are orthogonal related to One
>> another. I will send this message along now that’s where I am at the
>> moment. I will send a message along now so you get the info about the pork.
>> Since I have no computer I will probably keep dictating these messages to
>> you which you are entirely entitled to ignore but give me a medium in which
>> to Think. Nick
>>
>> Sent from my Dumb Phone
>>
>> On Mar 24, 2022, at 4:16 PM, Jon Zingale  wrote:
>>
>> 
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-wandering-domain_theorem
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQkZVPU2txg_channel=TheAbelPrize
>>
>> Been thinking about fractals and analytic continuations for recursive
>> algorithms, lately. I would love to read some thoughts.
>>
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Re: [FRIAM] Patriotic Millionaires

[Eric Charles]

Glen,
Intentional, but not distortion.

If they were advocating more funding to cancer research, then just as you
suggest we would want to see if they also gave philanthropically to support
cancer research.  If they were advocating more funding to the arts, then we
would want to see what they gave to the arts (e.g., my Kennedy Center)
example. Many rich people behave in exactly this way; I've seen tons of
rich people over the years running those sorts of messages to good effect.

The parallel in this situation: If they were advocating more of their money
be taken in taxes and put into the federal general fund, we would want
evidence that they were voluntarily paying more taxes than they owe.
Preferably, we would want to see something in line with whatever tax
policies they are advocating be applied to people of their wealth level,
but I'd be happy with any sizable payment over what they currently owe
under current IRS code.

Can we find evidence of a single one of them even claiming to have done
that? Not hard evidence that they did so, even just a claim to have done
so. Has anyone on here seen such a claim?

I obviously haven't done an exhaustive search, but I've been tracking rich
people talking about this individually or in groups for probably three
decades now, and I've never seen anyone openly claim to have volentarily
paid the amount of taxes they would owe under the system they claim to want
applied to them by force. I've never even seen someone talk about how the
movement inspired them to pay *any *general taxes over what they owe within
the current system. It is pretty weird to publicly announce that you are
only willing to do the something you claim is morally right if you are
forced to do so by legislation. In what other context do we ever see those
kinds of statements?





On Mon, Mar 7, 2022 at 1:04 PM glen  wrote:

> It's not clear to me if EricC is accidentally or purposefully distorting
> the message. In order for us to accuse the participants in Patriotic
> Millionaires (PM) of *not* supporting any given cause, we'd need to look at
> their individual philanthropy. Looking at the stances, lobbying, and
> messaging of PM is inadequate.
>
> E.g. If we took a look at an issue PM says is Good, a "value", and we
> examine the donations of all the PM participants and found that either a)
> they don't donate any of their money at all or b) they donate to everything
> except the values of the PM, *then* EricC's rhetoric would have some
> traction.
>
> Otherwise, what an org advocates is not, cannot ever be, identical to what
> its members advocate.
>
> I've done none of that work of comparing PM's advocacy/lobbying and its
> participants' actions. Perhaps others have?
>
> On 3/7/22 09:51, Eric Charles wrote:
> > Pick a cause if you want, or just send your money to the government if
> the
> > point is that you think the government should have it.  ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
> >
> > 
> > A Javelin missile costs $175,203 according to Wikipedia. 4 years of
> college
> > education is cheaper than that at most institutions. *Any *millionaire
> > could just cover one of those, if they thought that was the best use of
> > their money. *Any *millionaire could cover 4 of them, and still have a
> > significantly higher net worth than the median American under 40. We need
> > to stop pretending otherwise. If someone has several million, they could
> > cover a whole lot more and still be doing just fine.
> >
> > "Look, man, I think helping kids go to college is a morally crucial
> > activity and that those who have an obligation to support it should do
> > so... But I won't help with that unless I know a legislature is forcing
> > lots of other people to help kids go to college!" Well ok but
> > that's a pretty shitty position to take.
> >
> > Maybe you think it's so important that you want to help yourself, and
> you *also
> > *you think others should be forced to help. Sure. I don't like that
> > position, but it is sensible, and you can morally ground it in all sorts
> of
> > ways. But no level of moral importance should exist as a category where
> you
> > won't help unless everyone else is forced to as well. Yes, people take
> that
> > position all the time. But it is a morally shitty position, and we should
> > treat it that way.
> >
> > Phrased differently: Having the government pick up the slack when
> > individual action is insufficient can often make sense. Claiming that
> only
> > government action should happen, and then acting as if that claim somehow
> > relieves individuals from any obligation to live up to their purported
> > moral values, is crap.
> >
> > If you think it is important to support local kids g

Re: [FRIAM] Patriotic Millionaires

[Eric Charles]

Pick a cause if you want, or just send your money to the government if the
point is that you think the government should have it.  ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯


A Javelin missile costs $175,203 according to Wikipedia. 4 years of college
education is cheaper than that at most institutions. *Any *millionaire
could just cover one of those, if they thought that was the best use of
their money. *Any *millionaire could cover 4 of them, and still have a
significantly higher net worth than the median American under 40. We need
to stop pretending otherwise. If someone has several million, they could
cover a whole lot more and still be doing just fine.

"Look, man, I think helping kids go to college is a morally crucial
activity and that those who have an obligation to support it should do
so... But I won't help with that unless I know a legislature is forcing
lots of other people to help kids go to college!" Well ok but
that's a pretty shitty position to take.

Maybe you think it's so important that you want to help yourself, and you *also
*you think others should be forced to help. Sure. I don't like that
position, but it is sensible, and you can morally ground it in all sorts of
ways. But no level of moral importance should exist as a category where you
won't help unless everyone else is forced to as well. Yes, people take that
position all the time. But it is a morally shitty position, and we should
treat it that way.

Phrased differently: Having the government pick up the slack when
individual action is insufficient can often make sense. Claiming that only
government action should happen, and then acting as if that claim somehow
relieves individuals from any obligation to live up to their purported
moral values, is crap.

If you think it is important to support local kids getting a college
education, then step up. You are in absolutely no sense "a bum" or "a
sucker" if you help someone afford a college education and your neighbor
doesn't. That's not how moral action works. Not at all. The correct
response to someone trying to act that way is to try to force them to admit
the obvious truth, which is that they have chosen not to support whatever
the cause is that is in question.

Again, if they *are *supporting the cause, and adding on top of their
individual support a statement that they also think others should do more,
that's a much more defendable position. Statements like "I think the arts
should be supported, which is why I donated $XX,XXX to The Kennedy Center,
while lobbying my federal congressperson for more tax support" is perfectly
reasonable, as is "I think we need to better support local kids going to
college, which is why I provided 5 $X,XXX local-kid scholarships this local
high school graduates, while also talking with my state congressperson
about upping state funding to state schools."

Do a survey of the "Patriotic Millionaires" and ask them how much more they
paid in taxes than what they owed. My guess is that you would find $0 as
the across the board answer. If it's not $0 across the board, certainly the
median will be $0.


On Mon, Mar 7, 2022 at 9:47 AM Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> Let’s say it is not a box of cookies but a four year college scholarship
> or a Javelin missile launcher.  The millionaire might be able to pay those
> individually, but no one else.  In that situation there is no sales for the
> individual girl scouts to perform.  At best a few heroic medium-sized
> donations.
>
> Some purchases will be out of reach without spreading the cost around,
> even over thousands of millionaires.
>
> On Mar 7, 2022, at 6:04 AM, Eric Charles 
> wrote:
>
> 
> Marcus,
> Let's say you have a neighbor who's always talking about wanting to
> support the girl scouts, and who even goes so far as to set up a web page
> about how important it is to support the girl scouts, and pays to have
> signs printed and distributed around town about how important it is to
> support girl scouts. You have a cousin in the girl scouts, so you send her
> over with the girl-scout cookie order form. The neighbor takes a look at
> the forms and tells your cousin "While I *do *think I should support girl
> scouts, I am not going to give you any money unless everyone else in the
> neighboorhood is forced to give you money too. Don't ask me to be a chump."
>
> What would we make of that?
>
>
> 
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 6, 2022 at 11:13 PM Marcus Daniels 
> wrote:
>
>> Facebook had advertisements on TV for a few months talking about their
>> efforts to review content for fake news.   They advocated government
>> regulation.   Commonality being that a taxation or regulation impacts them
>> and their competitors in the same way, so their effective power and
>> influence won’t be negatively impacted.   “Don’t ask me to be a chump.”
>>
&

Re: [FRIAM] Patriotic Millionaires

[Eric Charles]

Marcus,
Let's say you have a neighbor who's always talking about wanting to support
the girl scouts, and who even goes so far as to set up a web page about how
important it is to support the girl scouts, and pays to have signs printed
and distributed around town about how important it is to support girl
scouts. You have a cousin in the girl scouts, so you send her over with the
girl-scout cookie order form. The neighbor takes a look at the forms and
tells your cousin "While I *do *think I should support girl scouts, I am
not going to give you any money unless everyone else in the
neighboorhood is forced to give you money too. Don't ask me to be a chump."

What would we make of that?





On Sun, Mar 6, 2022 at 11:13 PM Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> Facebook had advertisements on TV for a few months talking about their
> efforts to review content for fake news.   They advocated government
> regulation.   Commonality being that a taxation or regulation impacts them
> and their competitors in the same way, so their effective power and
> influence won’t be negatively impacted.   “Don’t ask me to be a chump.”
>
> On Mar 6, 2022, at 8:02 PM, Eric Charles 
> wrote:
>
> 
> Frank,
> That all seems 100% positive to me.
>
> Do you also routinely publicly complain about how legislatures are lax in
> not forcing you to do more of that sort of thing, because you strongly
> think that you should do more, but are unwilling to without the government
> forcing you to?
>
> THAT is what the Patriotic Millionaires are doing.
>
> 
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 6, 2022 at 9:43 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:
>
>> I probably shouldn't volunteer to be a case in your argument but...
>>
>> I do make donations to universities and a church.  Today my wife and
>> grandson Matthew assembled packages of hygiene products for Ukrainian
>> refugees which included things like towels, toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap,
>> shampoo etc.  This was done at United Church of Santa Fe.  As for financial
>> contributions we spend $20k per year for tuition at Matthew's school which
>> is a Montessori school for kids with executive function problems.  There
>> are a number of scholarship students whose families wouldn't be able to
>> send their kids there without help.
>>
>> The church group put together 137 packages this morning.  We donated
>> funds for the purchase of some of the stuff.
>>
>> Melinda Gates said that if you're a billionaire you can donate half of
>> your assets without any impact on your lifestyle.  But that's a different
>> question.
>>
>> Frank
>>
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 6, 2022, 7:24 PM Eric Charles 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> While some of the goals of groups like "Patriotic Millionaires" are
>>> admirable, I can never get past the blatant hypocrisy of it all. Maybe
>>> "hypocrisy" isn't exactly the right term. You could also see the part
>>> that bugs me as a bizarre worship of the benefits of authority over
>>> individual choice. Let me rephrase their primary claim: "I, as a rich
>>> person, recognize that I really *should *give more of my money to
>>> certain causes, but I adamantly refuse to do so unless forced to do so by
>>> the federal legislature."
>>>
>>> What is anyone really to make of that position? Is it any different than
>>> trying to look virtuous by saying that you know you should stop using child
>>> labor in your mine, while also publicly refusing to stop unless the
>>> government makes you?
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 3:08 PM glen  wrote:
>>>
>>>> Obviously, I'm either procrastinating or unclear on how best to do
>>>> actual work today because here is yet another thing I meant to talk about
>>>> with someone, anyone, awhile back:
>>>>
>>>> https://patrioticmillionaires.org/about/
>>>>
>>>> A salon participant recently asked whether "greed" was our most
>>>> nefarious trait as a species. It's a great question for sparking
>>>> discussion. My answer was that the most nefarious trait of *all* species is
>>>> myopia, the inability to reason over externalities, from pond scum to the
>>>> Trust <https://raised-by-wolves.fandom.com/wiki/Trust>. But to
>>>> de-emphasize what people think of as "greed", I said "Trying to ensure you
>>>> have enough money to live out your life in relative comfort is not greed.

Re: [FRIAM] Patriotic Millionaires

[Eric Charles]

Frank,
That all seems 100% positive to me.

Do you also routinely publicly complain about how legislatures are lax in
not forcing you to do more of that sort of thing, because you strongly
think that you should do more, but are unwilling to without the government
forcing you to?

THAT is what the Patriotic Millionaires are doing.




On Sun, Mar 6, 2022 at 9:43 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> I probably shouldn't volunteer to be a case in your argument but...
>
> I do make donations to universities and a church.  Today my wife and
> grandson Matthew assembled packages of hygiene products for Ukrainian
> refugees which included things like towels, toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap,
> shampoo etc.  This was done at United Church of Santa Fe.  As for financial
> contributions we spend $20k per year for tuition at Matthew's school which
> is a Montessori school for kids with executive function problems.  There
> are a number of scholarship students whose families wouldn't be able to
> send their kids there without help.
>
> The church group put together 137 packages this morning.  We donated funds
> for the purchase of some of the stuff.
>
> Melinda Gates said that if you're a billionaire you can donate half of
> your assets without any impact on your lifestyle.  But that's a different
> question.
>
> Frank
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Sun, Mar 6, 2022, 7:24 PM Eric Charles 
> wrote:
>
>> While some of the goals of groups like "Patriotic Millionaires" are
>> admirable, I can never get past the blatant hypocrisy of it all. Maybe
>> "hypocrisy" isn't exactly the right term. You could also see the part
>> that bugs me as a bizarre worship of the benefits of authority over
>> individual choice. Let me rephrase their primary claim: "I, as a rich
>> person, recognize that I really *should *give more of my money to
>> certain causes, but I adamantly refuse to do so unless forced to do so by
>> the federal legislature."
>>
>> What is anyone really to make of that position? Is it any different than
>> trying to look virtuous by saying that you know you should stop using child
>> labor in your mine, while also publicly refusing to stop unless the
>> government makes you?
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 3:08 PM glen  wrote:
>>
>>> Obviously, I'm either procrastinating or unclear on how best to do
>>> actual work today because here is yet another thing I meant to talk about
>>> with someone, anyone, awhile back:
>>>
>>> https://patrioticmillionaires.org/about/
>>>
>>> A salon participant recently asked whether "greed" was our most
>>> nefarious trait as a species. It's a great question for sparking
>>> discussion. My answer was that the most nefarious trait of *all* species is
>>> myopia, the inability to reason over externalities, from pond scum to the
>>> Trust <https://raised-by-wolves.fandom.com/wiki/Trust>. But to
>>> de-emphasize what people think of as "greed", I said "Trying to ensure you
>>> have enough money to live out your life in relative comfort is not greed.
>>> Greed is, after acquiring billions of dollars, you feel the need to acquire
>>> more billions of dollars."
>>>
>>> I found Patriotic Millionaires prior to that conversation. And it seems
>>> legit ... a set of outwardly greedy people who recognize limits to their
>>> greed ... a recognition that there's a spectrum of merit, some luck, some
>>> effort, some systemic infrastructure, etc. Overall, [m|b]illionaire
>>> philanthropy (and especially effective altruism) seem like jokes to me,
>>> very postmodern jokes. "Here, let me given you a billion dollars without
>>> fundamentally rewriting your genetic code." Pffft. Give anyone enough money
>>> and you'll corrupt them fundamentally, often against their will.
>>> Philanthropists know this. Effective Altruism is an oxymoron. You can't
>>> both be coercive and altruistic at the same time. >8^D
>>>
>>> Anyway, I'd welcome any opinion on Patriotic Millionaires.
>>>
>>> --
>>> glen
>>> When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.
>>>
>>>
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>>>

Re: [FRIAM] academic freedom

[Eric Charles]

"why is it a topic people want to talk about, and why do they have strong
feelings and opinions?"

I have a two part answer. First for "normal people" and then for myself.

Well I assume a big part of the answer for normal peolpe... which is
usually neglected... is how much of society is still geared towards forcing
people to care about it. For over a decade I've been arguing with my more
liberal friends that bathroom choice is an insane hill to die on. What they
want to fight for (I assert) is unisex bathrooms. Either multi-stall rooms
like we have now, but not segregated, or just individual-person bathrooms
all around.

Many opponents of trans bathroom choice care what bathroom someone go into
BECAUSE there are signs on the doors that say "Male" and "Female" or "Men"
and "Women". As soon as you have that segregation, and you have a populace
trained from youth to identify as male or female in countless situations,
you build a population that will have some people highly vested in ensuring
the sorting occurs "correctly." Lessons like "Line up boys and girls" are
happening in school at the same time as "This is a circle and this is a
rectangle."  What % of people will be viscerally stirred up about bathroom
the issue? Hard to say, but presumably very similar to the number deeply
bothered by other people's failure to conform to any other arbitrary social
norm; something similar to the number of people who will care if you cut
your grass or have visible tattoos, or the number who would be viscerally
bothered if you showed them a collection of legos where the circular and
rectangular ones were all mixed up together.

Let's imagine that we went back in time to the 1950's and started a
campaign to keep White vs Colored drinking fountains, seating areas, and
restaurants, while fighting for the rights of people to use whichever one
they identified with. Would that have been a sensible goal? If we had done
that approach, would we have been surprised to find some people
without deeply caring that people matched up with the labels in the way
*they* thought the labels should be used?

So, that's why I think it's of interest to lots of people... because
they exist within a system full of elements designed to make them care
about it.

Why is it of interest to me?

I have several friends with trans kids, and my youngest is leaning that
direction heavily. And I see pics of kids who were unhappy when trying to
select (for example) a girl's bathing suit, and then they are overjoyed
when allowed to select a boy's bathing suit. Usually the scenario is a
bikini vs swim shorts. But what is happening there?!? Broadly, I can see
two options. Either A) the entire set up is about the type of suit ---
tight, small, and revealing versus knee-length and loose-fit) --- or B) the
core of the issue is something about the gender labels themselves. If it is
the first, then we can just drop the gender labels, put all the swimsuits
in the same part of the store, and thereby solve whatever dilemma was
present. If it is the second, that won't work, because the labeling is part
of why the second swimsuit was better, and so a pair of the exact same
bottoms, labeled as "men's speedos" would have elicited the same positive
reaction. Personally, it is the latter scenario that worries me more. If
what is happening is really more about the labels than about the options
themselves, then the liberal efforts to allow people to eschew the gender
binary are themselves just some weirdly performative way of reinforcing the
gender binary, and there is not going to be any easy solution to
the problems that creates, which deeply affect the lives of people.



On Fri, Mar 4, 2022 at 4:03 PM Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> < The 'Great Hurrah' regarding sex/gender the past few years is, IMHO,
> mostly nonsense, oversimplification, and reification in service of politics
> and power. >
>
> For example, at Glen's pub meetup, why is it a topic people want to talk
> about, and why do they have strong feelings and opinions?   It seems like
> kind of a handwave to attribute it to some powerful people that have some
> arbitrary agenda, or just to attribute it to the powerful persons' habits.
>  The unseen powerful people just brainwashed these folks into having strong
> opinions where they need not have any?It seems plausible to me these
> puppet masters are opportunists who see some strings to pull, and so they
> do.   But why is that puppet there in the first place?
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of Prof David West
> Sent: Friday, March 4, 2022 12:41 PM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedom
>
> One of the segments of the undergraduate cultural anthropology course I
> taught, the one that I enjoyed teaching the most, focused on sex, gender,
> and marriage. I took great pleasure (yes Nick,  schadenfreude) destroying
> all the preconceived notions and asserted "Truths" of my, mostly Catholic
> and upper class 

Re: [FRIAM] Patriotic Millionaires

[Eric Charles]

While some of the goals of groups like "Patriotic Millionaires" are
admirable, I can never get past the blatant hypocrisy of it all. Maybe
"hypocrisy" isn't exactly the right term. You could also see the part
that bugs me as a bizarre worship of the benefits of authority over
individual choice. Let me rephrase their primary claim: "I, as a rich
person, recognize that I really *should *give more of my money to certain
causes, but I adamantly refuse to do so unless forced to do so by the
federal legislature."

What is anyone really to make of that position? Is it any different than
trying to look virtuous by saying that you know you should stop using child
labor in your mine, while also publicly refusing to stop unless the
government makes you?


On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 3:08 PM glen  wrote:

> Obviously, I'm either procrastinating or unclear on how best to do actual
> work today because here is yet another thing I meant to talk about with
> someone, anyone, awhile back:
>
> https://patrioticmillionaires.org/about/
>
> A salon participant recently asked whether "greed" was our most nefarious
> trait as a species. It's a great question for sparking discussion. My
> answer was that the most nefarious trait of *all* species is myopia, the
> inability to reason over externalities, from pond scum to the Trust <
> https://raised-by-wolves.fandom.com/wiki/Trust>. But to de-emphasize what
> people think of as "greed", I said "Trying to ensure you have enough money
> to live out your life in relative comfort is not greed. Greed is, after
> acquiring billions of dollars, you feel the need to acquire more billions
> of dollars."
>
> I found Patriotic Millionaires prior to that conversation. And it seems
> legit ... a set of outwardly greedy people who recognize limits to their
> greed ... a recognition that there's a spectrum of merit, some luck, some
> effort, some systemic infrastructure, etc. Overall, [m|b]illionaire
> philanthropy (and especially effective altruism) seem like jokes to me,
> very postmodern jokes. "Here, let me given you a billion dollars without
> fundamentally rewriting your genetic code." Pffft. Give anyone enough money
> and you'll corrupt them fundamentally, often against their will.
> Philanthropists know this. Effective Altruism is an oxymoron. You can't
> both be coercive and altruistic at the same time. >8^D
>
> Anyway, I'd welcome any opinion on Patriotic Millionaires.
>
> --
> glen
> When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Training your value network

[Eric Charles]

Given the history of Kyu and Don rankings, the phrase "Amatuer 5th Don" is
highly amusing.

Very cool video. It is hard for me to imagine a game of chess in which
players resign with so many moves left. Admittedly, I've only played very
amatuer chess, but hoping-your-opponent-screw-up would seemed pretty
important, if there were a really large number of moves left to be made. If
there were only a few moves left, not so much.



On Mon, Jan 31, 2022 at 12:13 AM Jon Zingale  wrote:

> You know, because talking shit about AI and the hype around AI are equally
> boring:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDcls1gMCxA_channel=AndrewJackson
>
> Here is a pretty good explanation of AlphaGo's value network from the
> perspective of an amateur 5 dan at the Seattle go club.
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Communication guides for the elderly

[Eric Charles]

And, of course, that brilliant routine about "shit" from a few years ago: the
word shit - YouTube 



On Sat, Jan 22, 2022 at 2:07 PM Stephen Guerin 
wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 22, 2022 at 11:17 AM Stephen Guerin <
> stephen.gue...@simtable.com> wrote:
>
>> as a GenX, column C missed the subtlety and expressiveness of fuck
>> idioms. EG idioms on this page is probably 10% of the way there.
>> https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fuck
>>
>
> Learned a new Aussie idiom
> 
> from that link that I hope to find an excuse to use :-)
>
> 1. "Mate look at this"...Barry
> " Barry, we are not here to fuck spiders, get back to it."...boss
>
> 2. "Do you think we can win the championship?"...Player
> "Well I am not here to fuck spiders"...Coach
>
> 3.  "Would you boys like a beer?".. Bartender
> "Well, we're not here to fuck spiders..."
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] AI "conquered" poker

[Eric Charles]

Watching poker on TV can be weird, as can watching Formula 1. On the other
hand, playing poker is no weirder than driving a car :- )



On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 2:15 PM Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> I don't get poker like I don't get why people would watch Formula 1 or
> Indy cars drive around in a circle.   Especially since they have to limit
> the car designs.   Now this I would watch:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAdG-iTilWU
>
> --
> *From:* Friam  on behalf of Eric Charles <
> eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Friday, January 21, 2022 11:48 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] AI "conquered" poker
>
> A decent NY Times article on AI in the Poker space. It wasn't paywalled
> for me.
>
> How AI Conquered Poker (www-nytimes-com.translate.goog)
> <https://www-nytimes-com.translate.goog/2022/01/18/magazine/ai-technology-poker.amp.html?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB>
>
> 
>
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[FRIAM] AI "conquered" poker

[Eric Charles]

A decent NY Times article on AI in the Poker space. It wasn't paywalled for
me.

How AI Conquered Poker (www-nytimes-com.translate.goog)




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Re: [FRIAM] gene complex for homosexuality

[Eric Charles]

"Couldn’t this also be part of a parcel of adaptations present in mothers
to call an audible when her offspring are still in utero?"


One could imagine kin-selection-ish arguments to that extent, which would
fall under Category 1. Under Certain Circumstances, it is the best strategy
to contribute to the rearing of kin rather than having your own kids, and
this is controlled to some extent by the Mother's responsiveness to said
circumstances, as present during her pregnancy.  Mother-genes that guide
advantageous responses to such circumstances are thereby passed on with
higher frequency than Mother-genes that guide neutral or disadvantageous
responses.

On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 9:50 PM  wrote:

> Eric,
>
>
>
> Couldn’t this also be part of a parcel of adaptations present in mothers
> to call an audible when her offspring are still in utero?
>
>
>
> n
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 13, 2022 7:02 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] gene complex for homosexuality
>
>
>
> Frank,
>
> Sexual orientation being associated with hormonal concentrations during
> pregnancy would be a mark in favor of the spandrel arguement: There are
> important, dynamic, developmental processes that lead to sexual-attraction
> biases. Those processes are perturbed by various environmental factors, but
> have a strong degree of equifinality regarding various parts of the
> process. Those perterbations, plus the corrective mechanisms, sometimes
> leads to homosexuality, bisexuality, and all sorts of other things. Even
> though that sometimes happens, so far the selective forces have found it
> better to sometimes do that than to try to mess with the developmental
> processes enough to avoid ever having such outcomes. So, it's a thing that
> happens sometimes, and it doesn't really affect selection as much as one
> might think. It is a pretty neutral outcome that sometimes happens at the
> intersection of some really important processes.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 10:21 PM Frank Wimberly 
> wrote:
>
> What about the evidence that sexual orientation may be associated with
> testosterone or estrogen concentrations in the womb during pregnancy.
> These may interact with unspecified genetic factors.
>
>
>
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296090/
>
>
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:50 PM  wrote:
>
> You’re probably right.
>
>
>
> Perhaps bonobo sexuality is the primitive state.
>
>
>
> “Bub”
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Wednesday, January 12, 2022 8:33 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] gene complex for homosexuality
>
>
>
> Nick,
>
> No, no, no... you have the pedagogical point backwards... They are
> starting with some weird view that homosexuals are people who are
> absolutely exclusively sleeping with members of the same sex. You can't
> start from that and be like "Yeah, but once you're in the harem, there you
> are! Am I right!" Forget that fact that a huge number of gay men you and I
> know were at one point married and have kids, that's no the student's
> starting point (or at least it wasn't 20 years ago). If you start with the
> harems, then they will knee jerk "That's not real homosexuality, that's not
> what I'm talking about."   To avoid that knee-jerk, you need to start by
> pointing out that even if their naive take on the phenomenon is correct, it
> still might not be that hard to explain evolutionarily.
>
>
>
> Once they are reminded that it's pretty easy math to have helpful-for-kin
> traits selected for, then you can offer the intermediary
> spandrel/exaptation option which gets them thinking that maybe there might
> be more to the discussion than they originally thought, and THEN you can
> point out that their initial premises might also just be complete garbage.
>
>
>
> Also, re Marcus's take: I think that would be a variation of the
> spandrel/exaptation explanation. Look, bub, it's pretty important to
> get natural selection going that people want to have sex. So you need a
> very reliable method of creating attraction, and you generally wa

Re: [FRIAM] gene complex for homosexuality

[Eric Charles]

Frank,
Sexual orientation being associated with hormonal concentrations during
pregnancy would be a mark in favor of the spandrel arguement: There are
important, dynamic, developmental processes that lead to sexual-attraction
biases. Those processes are perturbed by various environmental factors, but
have a strong degree of equifinality regarding various parts of the
process. Those perterbations, plus the corrective mechanisms, sometimes
leads to homosexuality, bisexuality, and all sorts of other things. Even
though that sometimes happens, so far the selective forces have found it
better to sometimes do that than to try to mess with the developmental
processes enough to avoid ever having such outcomes. So, it's a thing that
happens sometimes, and it doesn't really affect selection as much as one
might think. It is a pretty neutral outcome that sometimes happens at the
intersection of some really important processes.






On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 10:21 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> What about the evidence that sexual orientation may be associated with
> testosterone or estrogen concentrations in the womb during pregnancy.
> These may interact with unspecified genetic factors.
>
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296090/
>
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:50 PM  wrote:
>
>> You’re probably right.
>>
>>
>>
>> Perhaps bonobo sexuality is the primitive state.
>>
>>
>>
>> “Bub”
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick Thompson
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, January 12, 2022 8:33 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] gene complex for homosexuality
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick,
>>
>> No, no, no... you have the pedagogical point backwards... They are
>> starting with some weird view that homosexuals are people who are
>> absolutely exclusively sleeping with members of the same sex. You can't
>> start from that and be like "Yeah, but once you're in the harem, there you
>> are! Am I right!" Forget that fact that a huge number of gay men you and I
>> know were at one point married and have kids, that's no the student's
>> starting point (or at least it wasn't 20 years ago). If you start with the
>> harems, then they will knee jerk "That's not real homosexuality, that's not
>> what I'm talking about."   To avoid that knee-jerk, you need to start by
>> pointing out that even if their naive take on the phenomenon is correct, it
>> still might not be that hard to explain evolutionarily.
>>
>>
>>
>> Once they are reminded that it's pretty easy math to have helpful-for-kin
>> traits selected for, then you can offer the intermediary
>> spandrel/exaptation option which gets them thinking that maybe there might
>> be more to the discussion than they originally thought, and THEN you can
>> point out that their initial premises might also just be complete garbage.
>>
>>
>>
>> Also, re Marcus's take: I think that would be a variation of the
>> spandrel/exaptation explanation. Look, bub, it's pretty important to
>> get natural selection going that people want to have sex. So you need a
>> very reliable method of creating attraction, and you generally want it to
>> be men attracted to women and women attracted to men. But the first part,
>> the "attracted to someone" part is probably far more important than the
>> "exactly who are you attracted to" part. As such, it's really not all that
>> surprising to find men attracted to men and women attracted to women, and
>> it's not clear that any special explanation beyond that is needed.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 3:32 PM  wrote:
>>
>> Eric,
>>
>>
>>
>> I think this an excellent capper to an excellent discussion.  I wish
>> somebody would scrape it, perhaps edit to make it more readable, and file
>> it somewhere amongst Friam’s Greatest Hits.  Somewhere, somebody should
>> have reminded us that GenesFur X are really just genes that, in some
>> devious say or other, make X more likely.   Is a genefur grooming a gene
>> for maintaining group resistance to parasites, a gene for, building social
>> relationships or both.  If you asked the gene, it would say, “I really
>> don’t care.”
>>
>>
>>
>> Still, I might div

Re: [FRIAM] gene complex for homosexuality

[Eric Charles]

Nick,
No, no, no... you have the pedagogical point backwards... They are starting
with some weird view that homosexuals are people who are absolutely
exclusively sleeping with members of the same sex. You can't start from
that and be like "Yeah, but once you're in the harem, there you are! Am I
right!" Forget that fact that a huge number of gay men you and I know were
at one point married and have kids, that's no the student's starting point
(or at least it wasn't 20 years ago). If you start with the harems, then
they will knee jerk "That's not real homosexuality, that's not what I'm
talking about."   To avoid that knee-jerk, you need to start by pointing
out that even if their naive take on the phenomenon is correct, it still
might not be that hard to explain evolutionarily.

Once they are reminded that it's pretty easy math to have helpful-for-kin
traits selected for, then you can offer the intermediary
spandrel/exaptation option which gets them thinking that maybe there might
be more to the discussion than they originally thought, and THEN you can
point out that their initial premises might also just be complete garbage.

Also, re Marcus's take: I think that would be a variation of the
spandrel/exaptation explanation. Look, bub, it's pretty important to
get natural selection going that people want to have sex. So you need a
very reliable method of creating attraction, and you generally want it to
be men attracted to women and women attracted to men. But the first part,
the "attracted to someone" part is probably far more important than the
"exactly who are you attracted to" part. As such, it's really not all that
surprising to find men attracted to men and women attracted to women, and
it's not clear that any special explanation beyond that is needed.


On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 3:32 PM  wrote:

> Eric,
>
>
>
> I think this an excellent capper to an excellent discussion.  I wish
> somebody would scrape it, perhaps edit to make it more readable, and file
> it somewhere amongst Friam’s Greatest Hits.  Somewhere, somebody should
> have reminded us that GenesFur X are really just genes that, in some
> devious say or other, make X more likely.   Is a genefur grooming a gene
> for maintaining group resistance to parasites, a gene for, building social
> relationships or both.  If you asked the gene, it would say, “I really
> don’t care.”
>
>
>
> Still, I might divide things up a bit differently.
>
>
>
> *1.   **Homosexuality benefits the homosexual.* By hanging around the
> harem, ostensibly interested only in sex with the haremmor, he has
> unfettered access to the haremmees.  Given the high reproductive rate of
> haremmees, he only has to “slip up” a couple of times to be in good shape,
> reproductively.  This assumes that the haremmers have pretty much locked up
> the females in the group.Game theorists call this the sneaky fucker
> strategy.
>
> *2.   **Group Selection Arguments: *Group level adaptations could be
> triggered facultatively when infant and juvenile individuals receive cues
> that their particular  individual future reproductive environment is bleak.
>
>
>1. *Homosexuality benefits the Parents of the homosexual.  *This is
>   the kinselection argument laid out by Eric, with its group selection
>   element made explicate.  Homosexuals assist in the reproduction of their
>   siblings.  Here the group is the relatively efficient offspring- group 
> of
>   gene-bearing parents.
>   2. *Homosexuality benefits the small group of which the
>   homosexual’s family is part. *Groups with one or more strongly
>   bonded males are more productive of offspring than groups without.   
> Think
>   Slime molds.
>
> I wasn’t sure that erics #3 isn’t so much an alternative as the cultural
> level description of the consequences of the others.
>
>
>
> N
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Wednesday, January 12, 2022 12:04 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] gene complex for homosexuality
>
>
>
> Re potential evolutionary explanations for homosexuality: They really
> don't have to be very convoluted at all.
>
>
> I prepared a worksheet for a class 15 or so years ago, after a bunch of
> students starting trying use homosexuality as proof that evolution couldn't
> explain (any) behavior. I'd rather just link to the blog... but to make
> things easier for other's, I'll also copy-paste below: Fixing Psychology:
> Evolution and Homosexuality
> <https://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/2012/03/evolutio

Re: [FRIAM] gene complex for homosexuality

[Eric Charles]

Re potential evolutionary explanations for homosexuality: They really don't
have to be very convoluted at all.

I prepared a worksheet for a class 15 or so years ago, after a bunch of
students starting trying use homosexuality as proof that evolution couldn't
explain (any) behavior. I'd rather just link to the blog... but to make
things easier for other's, I'll also copy-paste below: Fixing Psychology:
Evolution and Homosexuality




Evolution and Homosexuality

Evolutionary theorists could potentially explain homosexuality using three
distinct methods. The first two take the modern notion of homosexuality at
face value, the third questions it.

1.Explain homosexuality as a benefit in and of itself.

The most straightforward way to explain the presence of *any *trait using
evolutionary logic is to tell a story about how individuals with that trait
reproduce their genes better than those without the trait. In the case of
exclusive homosexuality, that is difficult, because homosexuals do not
reproduce. However, it is still possible.

For example, a costly traits may be so helpful to your relatives (i.e.,
your kin) that it more than makes up for the cost you pay. This is called
“kin selection”. Your children will share 50% of your genes, so we can give
them a value of .5 in terms of your reproduction. A full sibling’s children
share 25% of your genes, so we can give them a value of .25. That means
that if you posses a trait that makes you have one less child on average
(-.5), but you get three more nephews or nieces in exchange (+.75), natural
selection will favor that trait (= .25). On average, the next generation
will have more of your genes by virtue of your possessing a trait that
makes you have fewer children. This explanation could be even more powerful
when applied your own parents, i.e., helping raise your brothers and
sisters, with whom you share as many genes as your own children (both .5).

If that was the explanation for human homosexuality, what might you also
expect to be true of homosexuality?


2.Explain homosexuality as a byproduct of other adaptive mechanisms.

There are many types of explanations compatible with evolutionary theory,
but that do not explain the traits under questions as adaptations in and of
themselves. In one way or another, these explanations explain traits as the
byproduct of some other adaptive process. The trait in question could be a
necessary byproduct of two evolutionarily sound items; for example, an
armpit appears when you combine a torso with an arm, but no animal was ever
selected specifically for having armpits! Alternatively, the trait in
question could be the result of an adaptive mechanism placed in an unusual
context; for example, evolution favored humans that desired sweet and fatty
food in an environment where such things were rare; now that we are in an
environment where such things are plentiful, this desire can cause serious
health problems. Homosexuality could be explainable in terms of biological
or psychological mechanisms acting appropriately in odd circumstances, or
as a byproduct of selection for other beneficial traits.

If that explanation were correct, what types of traits might humans have
been selected for that could result in homosexuality when pushed to the
extreme or placed in unusual circumstances?

3.Reject the notion of homosexuality as it is currently conceived and
offer new categories.

Evolutionary thinking often necessitates a rejection of old categories and
the creation of new ones. The current systems of dividing the world may not
be relevant to answering evolutionary questions. The labels “Homosexual”
and “Heterosexual” may be good examples. The modern notions of strict homo
vs. hetero-sexuality arose relatively recently. It has never been bizarrely
uncommon for women or men to live together or to set up long term
relationships with members of the same sex. What is relatively new is the
notion that this can divide people into types, some who exclusively do one
thing and some who exclusively do another.  A so-called homosexual man need
only have sex with a woman once to have a baby, and visa versa. While this
is now the stuff of comedic amusement, it may be a much more natural
context for homosexuality. There may be no reason to think that so-called
homosexuals of the past got pregnant, or impregnated others, less often
than so-called hetersexuals.

If this is the case, would there necessarily be any selection for or
against preferring the relatively exclusive company of same-sex others?
What possible benefits could there be to raising children in a “homosexual”
environment? (Hey now, don’t bring moral judgment into this, it is only a
question of surviving and thriving.)




On Sat, Jan 8, 2022 at 6:13 PM ⛧ glen  wrote:

> I'm in an ongoing argument with a gay friend about how tortured 

Re: [FRIAM] more modal realism

[Eric Charles]

That all seems right to me.

We could even imagine that there is only one universe, and it is normally
nothing, but that, during very short windows within the time when it isn't,
sometimes sentient life springs up and asks silly questions.

Have you tried countering with "Why NOT something?"


On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 3:01 PM glen  wrote:

> Yes. I made the anthropocentric argument at one point. Either I did a bad
> job of it, or he rejects it for some other reason. But I have NOT made the
> sheer numbers argument yet. An ordering in time, like you use with "long
> enough" doesn't seem, to me, very distinct from an ordering in space
> (number of universes).
>
> But maybe that does help answer whether it's probabilistic or not. (I'm
> assuming by "slightest change", you meant "slightest chance".) A single
> universe with a chance of spontaneous somethingness definitely sounds
> probabilistic to me, whereas the set size ordering in space does not. But
> that makes me feel like I'm contradicting myself. If ordering in time isn't
> different from ordering in space, then why would ordering in time be
> probabilistic but ordering in space NOT be?
>
> Identifying that conflict in my own thinking helps. Thanks.
>
> On 12/29/21 11:44, Eric Charles wrote:
> > This always struck me as such a weird discussion. I've had people try to
> drag me into it a few times.
> >
> > If there was ever the slightest change that  something could come from
> nothing, and nothing was around for long enough, eventually something would
> come from it.
> >
> > But, I think the better point is something like: While I don't know how
> many of the "possible worlds" might exist... I can assure you that all of
> them in which someone asks "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
> are worlds in which there is something.
> >
> > So even if the vast majority of the possible worlds had nothing, it
> would still be true that 100% of the worlds in which people-in-bars asked
> such questions, would be worlds with something.
> >
> >
> > <mailto:echar...@american.edu>
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 28, 2021 at 12:31 PM glen  geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds>
> >
> > We see something like this in evolutionary justifications of various
> phenotypic traits, the most egregious being evolutionary psychology, but
> including Nick's hyena penis and the ontological status of epiphenomena.
> Yes, I'm posting this in part because of EricC's kindasorta Voltaire-ish
> response to what might seem like my Leibnizian defense of bureaucracy. But
> I'm also hoping y'all could help with the question I ask later.
> >
> > Of course, I'm more on Spinoza's (or Lewis') side, here, something
> closer to a commitment to the existence of all possible worlds. I'm in a
> running argument at our pub salon about the metaphysical question "Why is
> there something, rather than nothing?" My personal answer to that question,
> unsatisfying to the philosopher who asked it, is that this is either a
> nonsense question *or* it relies fundamentally on the ambiguity in the
> concepts of "something" and "nothing". Every denial of the other proposed
> answers (mostly cosmological) involves moving the goal posts or invoking
> persnickety metaphysical assumptions that weren't laid out when the
> question was asked. ... it's just a lot of hemming and hawing by those who
> want to remain committed to their own romantic nonsense.
> >
> > But a better answer might be something like: Because the size of the
> set of possible worlds where there is something is *so much larger* than
> the size of the set of worlds where there is nothing. And one might even
> argue that all the possible worlds where there is nothing are degenerate,
> resulting in only 1 possible world with nothing. [⛧]
> >
> > I don't think this is a probabilistic argument. But I'm too ignorant
> to be confident in that. Can any of you argue one way or the other? Is this
> argument from size swamping probabilistic, combinatorial? Or can I take a
> Lewisian stance and assert that all the possible worlds do, already, exist
> and this is just a numbers thing?
> >
> >
> > [⛧] This is not my own metaphysics, assuming that's stable, which is
> ... uh ... semi-monist (?) ... maybe pseudo-monist ... along the lines of
> an open-ended, increasing degrees of freedom universe ... whatever that
> might turn out to mean.
>
> --
> glen
> Theorem 3. There exists a doub

Re: [FRIAM] more modal realism

[Eric Charles]

This always struck me as such a weird discussion. I've had people try to
drag me into it a few times.

If there was ever the slightest change that  something could come from
nothing, and nothing was around for long enough, eventually something would
come from it.

But, I think the better point is something like: While I don't know how
many of the "possible worlds" might exist... I can assure you that all of
them in which someone asks "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
are worlds in which there is something.

So even if the vast majority of the possible worlds had nothing, it would
still be true that 100% of the worlds in which people-in-bars asked such
questions, would be worlds with something.





On Tue, Dec 28, 2021 at 12:31 PM glen  wrote:

>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds
>
> We see something like this in evolutionary justifications of various
> phenotypic traits, the most egregious being evolutionary psychology, but
> including Nick's hyena penis and the ontological status of epiphenomena.
> Yes, I'm posting this in part because of EricC's kindasorta Voltaire-ish
> response to what might seem like my Leibnizian defense of bureaucracy. But
> I'm also hoping y'all could help with the question I ask later.
>
> Of course, I'm more on Spinoza's (or Lewis') side, here, something closer
> to a commitment to the existence of all possible worlds. I'm in a running
> argument at our pub salon about the metaphysical question "Why is there
> something, rather than nothing?" My personal answer to that question,
> unsatisfying to the philosopher who asked it, is that this is either a
> nonsense question *or* it relies fundamentally on the ambiguity in the
> concepts of "something" and "nothing". Every denial of the other proposed
> answers (mostly cosmological) involves moving the goal posts or invoking
> persnickety metaphysical assumptions that weren't laid out when the
> question was asked. ... it's just a lot of hemming and hawing by those who
> want to remain committed to their own romantic nonsense.
>
> But a better answer might be something like: Because the size of the set
> of possible worlds where there is something is *so much larger* than the
> size of the set of worlds where there is nothing. And one might even argue
> that all the possible worlds where there is nothing are degenerate,
> resulting in only 1 possible world with nothing. [⛧]
>
> I don't think this is a probabilistic argument. But I'm too ignorant to be
> confident in that. Can any of you argue one way or the other? Is this
> argument from size swamping probabilistic, combinatorial? Or can I take a
> Lewisian stance and assert that all the possible worlds do, already, exist
> and this is just a numbers thing?
>
>
> [⛧] This is not my own metaphysics, assuming that's stable, which is ...
> uh ... semi-monist (?) ... maybe pseudo-monist ... along the lines of an
> open-ended, increasing degrees of freedom universe ... whatever that might
> turn out to mean.
>
> --
> glen
> Theorem 3. There exists a double master function.
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] bad covid story

[Eric Charles]

Man for someone who has repeatedly told me, when we are in zoom, about
how you can share a beer with a racist skinhead, and come to find some sort
of sympathetic understanding of the reasoning of where they are coming
from... it is baffling the situations where you take exactly the opposite
line.

As per the post from a year ago: If I'm a doctor, and there's a dude
covered in swastikas, and times are normal, then I probably treat him for
his injuries just like I treat anyone else for their injuries. If we are in
an emergency situation, where triage is going to have to happen one way or
another, then that dude might not be my top priority. I might not be ok,
because of the overall situation of dealing with a sustained emergency, but
that decision sure wouldn't be why I was worried about myself. If someone
is for sure going to get subpar treatment today - because we lack
the resources to do otherwise - then it might as well be that guy.



On Mon, Dec 27, 2021 at 1:24 PM glen  wrote:

> What process do we use to vet the "ministers"?
> Do we need policies and procedures for things like "aura massage"?
> Do you remove the ventilator to give them the pill?
> How much does "whatever that method may be" cost? And who will pay for it?
> How much should doctors' and nurses' and finance staff *practice* their
> proper scripts for what they can and can't say to patients? 10 hours per
> week? Just in med school?
> How many edge cases should doctors have to *calculate* through to handle
> wackos like anti-maskers? What about, say, Christian Scientists? How
> complex do the logic diagrams need to be?
> How do we set the standard for *when* to tell family members the patient
> died? Who sets that standard? What committee?
> Should the doctor wear body armor or have a body guard present when
> informing the family of a death? How much do we pay for such things? Does
> the body armor have to be sterilized? Are the body guards unionized? Who
> pays for their liability insurance? Should they carry guns?
>
> Pffft. As I said, you're being ridiculously idealistic. It's fine to
> engage in wishful thinking and dream of unicorns. But don't use that as an
> excuse for idiots who cause more problems than they solve. Moreover, don't
> use your magical thinking to apply a guilt trip to an already stressed
> workforce.
>
>
>
> On 12/27/21 10:11, Eric Charles wrote:
> > Letting people try long shot, even mystical attempts, to save a person
> we are virtually certain is going to die is less cruel. (If we can let
> ministers pray with patients, we can give them a Vitamin D pill.)
> >
> > Finding a way to let people see their dying family member, whatever that
> method may need to be, is less cruel. (The idea that the doctors have to
> calculate the risk of being accused of murder if they arrange it is a
> negative aspect of the situation, not a positive one.)
> >
> > When you are virtually certain a patient is going to die, not saying "I
> won't won't let you die" is less cruel. (It is cruel to the patient, it is
> cruel to the family, and, frankly, the idea that anyone should have to say
> such lies is cruel to the person saying the lie.)
> >
> > Not going out of your way to convince a family to come to the
> hospital if you know you won't let them in, is less cruel.
> >
> > Not seeking them out while they are still in fight-mode, to tell them in
> person that the patient died, is less cruel.
> >
> > Being prepared for extremely negative reactions in situations where
> extremely negative reactions are likely to occur, is less cruel.
> >
> > Not blaming them for your leaving the profession, after a series of
> unforced errors on your part, is less cruel.
> >
> > Do you remember the UK case with Alphie Evans? When the doctors decided
> the kid should have to stay and die in a UK hospital, rather than be
> transferred to a hospital where doctors wanted to try a long-shot
> treatment? Alfie Evans not allowed to leave country, UK court says | CNN <
> https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/25/health/alfie-evans-appeal-bn/index.html> That
> was about as dystopian and cruel as health care rules can possibly get, and
> it followed all the laws and statutes and policies that existed for
> rational reasons. As a fan of dystopian stories, I can assure you that it
> is common for them to feature bureaucracies following rationally
> constructed laws and statutes.
> >
> > I do agree with Marcus that it would have been much better if the family
> had proactively identified someone who would more closely follow the
> treatment path they wanted. I don't know what the initial path to
> hospitalization was.
> >
> > <mailto:echar...@american.edu>
>

Re: [FRIAM] bad covid story

[Eric Charles]

Letting people try long shot, even mystical attempts, to save a person we
are virtually certain is going to die is less cruel. (If we can let
ministers pray with patients, we can give them a Vitamin D pill.)

Finding a way to let people see their dying family member, whatever that
method may need to be, is less cruel. (The idea that the doctors have to
calculate the risk of being accused of murder if they arrange it is a
negative aspect of the situation, not a positive one.)

When you are virtually certain a patient is going to die, not saying "I
won't won't let you die" is less cruel. (It is cruel to the patient, it is
cruel to the family, and, frankly, the idea that anyone should have to say
such lies is cruel to the person saying the lie.)

Not going out of your way to convince a family to come to the hospital if
you know you won't let them in, is less cruel.

Not seeking them out while they are still in fight-mode, to tell them in
person that the patient died, is less cruel.

Being prepared for extremely negative reactions in situations where
extremely negative reactions are likely to occur, is less cruel.

Not blaming them for your leaving the profession, after a series of
unforced errors on your part, is less cruel.

Do you remember the UK case with Alphie Evans? When the doctors decided
the kid should have to stay and die in a UK hospital, rather than be
transferred to a hospital where doctors wanted to try a long-shot
treatment?  Alfie Evans not allowed to leave country, UK court says | CNN
<https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/25/health/alfie-evans-appeal-bn/index.html> That
was about as dystopian and cruel as health care rules can possibly get, and
it followed all the laws and statutes and policies that existed for
rational reasons. As a fan of dystopian stories, I can assure you that it
is common for them to feature bureaucracies following rationally
constructed laws and statutes.

I do agree with Marcus that it would have been much better if the family
had proactively identified someone who would more closely follow the
treatment path they wanted. I don't know what the initial path to
hospitalization was.




On Mon, Dec 27, 2021 at 12:28 PM glen  wrote:

> This is unadulterated bullshit. Sure, perhaps in some ideal world, where
> all people are rational and all systems are frictionless, "the process
> could have been much less cruel". It's bullshit in Frankfurt's sense
> because it's not quite a lie and it's not quite the truth. And given your
> (EricC) ability to think clearly and pay attention to detail, we can only
> assume you *know* it's bullshit.
>
> If it could have been much less cruel, then please suggest the concrete
> modifications to the current byzantine set of laws, P, cultural norms,
> agency recommendations, political forces, etc. that would get us from here
> to there. (Not the impractical nonsense in your bullets like patients'
> family members prescribing meds that nurses will administer. Really?
> Sheesh.) If you cannot get us, practically, from where we are now to that
> less cruel place, then you're just blowing idealist smoke.
>
>
> On 12/27/21 09:18, Eric Charles wrote:
> > Even if, by the time the story starts, he was going to die no matter
> what happened, the process by which that happened could have been much less
> cruel.
> --
> glen
> Theorem 3. There exists a double master function.
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] bad covid story

[Eric Charles]

I certainly didn't say there weren't reasons why the events unfolded as
they did. Everything that happens has reasons. I was pointing out that the
situation is unnecessarily bad in more ways than just the ones that people
already seemed to fully understand and be responding to.

I have spent plenty of time in emergency rooms, and brought people for
plenty of surgeries. I have sat with one dying person in hospice, and with
a few people who might have died in an ICU but who luckily didn't. I also
recognize that if I'd loaded my kids into a car and driven to see my dying
wife, and had been turned away for a reason that everyone knew existed
before I was asked to come out, and then someone came up to me in the
parking lot to tell me she had died while we were being kicked out, there's
a reasonable chance I'd at least shove him out of frustration. That's about
as escalated and stressful a situation as I can imagine, short of it being
one of my kids who was dying in the hospital. If that exact person had
repeatedly told my wife "I won't let you die", a punch would be virtually
guaranteed.

I'm not saying I'm a good person because that would be my response, I'm
saying it would be VERY predictable and VERY understandable. And if the guy
thought it was "lucky" that I was still there to be told by
him-in-particular in person, while I'm still ramped up about being kicked
out of the hospital with my kids, then he needs to work on his thinking
skills.

The frustration of the family and it's manifestations are totally
understandable. They are wrong, but they still deserve our sympathy. They
were frustrated about aspects of the situation that it is completely
reasonable to be frustrated by; they lost their husband/father. Even if, by
the time the story starts, he was going to die no matter what happened, the
process by which that happened could have been much less cruel. The system
itself, the structure of laws and statutes and practices, creates, *at
times*, situations that are borderline dystopian and that are cruel to
patients and their families. There might be very rational reasons why the
system exists in that state, but reasons-existing doesn't magically erase
the cruelness.

I know you (Glen) don't particularly care about labels, but as several on
this list do: To not be able to understand and be sympathetic with both the
doctor *and *the family in this story is fundamentally illiberal. If you,
for whatever reasons, desire to self-identify as "liberal", you should go
back and read it again with that in mind.




On Mon, Dec 27, 2021 at 10:54 AM glen  wrote:

> Wow. This reads like you've *never* spent any time witnessing hospital
> operation. Surely that's not true. Surely you've spent time at an ICU bed
> side, waiting for someone to not die, right? Or, perhaps you've taken a
> friend to the emergency dept for some reason (like smacking their head on
> the pavement)? Maybe, at least, you've visited someone in a typical room
> recovering from surgery or somesuch?
>
> If you've done any of that, surely you'll recognize that a) there are laws
> these people (nurses, doctors, administrators, whole hospital systems,
> etc.) have to follow or they'll be severely punished for violation of those
> laws. Right?
>
> And on top of the laws, there are various statuses that hospitals have
> (e.g. Trauma 3 vs 1) for which there are fairly strict policies and
> procedures, where, if violated, people will be severely reprimanded and the
> hospital may lose its status. Surely you realize that, too. Right?
>
> And on top of that, there are standard safety practices, standard
> materials used, "algorithms" by which such systems are, if not optimized,
> made as efficient and effective as possible. (Do you know how much
> disposable plastic and paper would be used to, say, roll a dying man out
> into the fvcking parking lot? Never mind that act of rolling them out there
> would open them to accusations of murder.)
>
> Then, add to that the fact that these humans are doing their level best to
> help people, under extremely stressful situations. Renee' comes home crying
> many days simply because a patient she's familiar with by their health
> record *alone* (i.e. never having seen the person face to face) has died.
> Perhaps you're so immune to empathy that you would maintain a perfect
> computing inference machine in your head in spite of the people dying in
> the hallways. But normal people aren't that psychopathic. Cheers to you.
>
> But, yeah, it's fine. Nothing to worry about, here. Blame the doctor.
> Blame the hospital. Blame Fauci. Blame the victims. It's standard practice,
> I guess.
>
> Wow ... just wow.
>
>
> On 12/27/21 07:12, Eric Charles wrote:
> > It's weird how many ways this can be dystopian all at the same time.
> Under the assumption, that it is

Re: [FRIAM] bad covid story

[Eric Charles]

It's weird how many ways this can be dystopian all at the same time. Under
the assumption, that it is obvious what Nick replied "Yuck!" at, let me add:

   - It is pretty easy to explain to people that ICU's require masks
   regardless of Covid, that a cold could kill some other ICU patient who is
   immunocompromised in some other way, and that it was a rule pre-Covid.
   Don't fight with the family about special Covid rules, talk them through
   making the decision to see their loved on. Just tell them it's for the kid
   doing chemo one room over.
   - Whatever the situation, if they won't wear masks in the hospital,
   there should be the option to bring the father to see them outside. If,
   given the choice, he would prefer to be removed from all machines and
   wheeled outside to see his kids one last time, that should for sure be a
   choice the patient and family can make. It is horrific to have him die
   alone with his family right there. Mind-bogglingly horrific.
   - It really isn't necessary to say things like "we won't let you die" to
   patients who you are almost assuredly going to die under your care. It is,
   if anything, immensely cruel. The aside from the doctor "although I never
   said we might not have any choice in the matter" makes that interaction
   worse, not better. What's he going to tell the family "Oh, yeah, I said we
   won't let your husband die, totally. But, you see, technically speaking, I
   never said we wouldn't let the virus kill him, so, like, No Lies, am I
   right?"
   - It is pretty easy to give someone vitamin C and D. You can buy them at
   any drug store for a few bucks. Let the family give him mega-doses of
   vitamins if they want. Why would you ever stop that?
   - Hydroxychloroquine and/or ivermectin are also pretty easy to get, and
   not too expensive, and there's also no evidence that they increase risk. At
   the least the family should have had the option to pay for them, and have
   them administered. If there is someone the doctor has essentially given up
   on, and the family wants to bring in a shaman to perform rituals involving
   goat guts and sacred flowers - and the shaman is willing to wear a mask -
   then the idea of denying that is crazy. "I'd rather continue a course of
   treatment that will definitely result in death, instead of letting people
   try random stuff that's unlikely to work" is NOT a moral position. This is
   worse than denying a visit from the family minister.
   - If you go out to confront a grieving family --- a mother who you had
   drive in, with their children, and who you then turned away at the door ---
   to tell them that their loved one just died while you were turning them
   away, then you should expect some severely negative reactions, up to, and
   including, the possibility of physical violence. I have no idea how to
   explain how obvious that is, other than just stating it. I can't imagine
   what was going through the physician's head if they went out there and then
   were surprised to get shoved, or hit, or even to have the patient chase
   them around the parking lot with their car. Especially if it is the exact
   physician who unreasonably denied all the requested treatments. Especially
   if you turned them away for a reason that you knew would happen when you
   begged them to drive all the way there. Completely unnecessary and
   completely daft.
   - To emphasize that last part: You could have not had any of this
   happen, if you had just NOT had them drive in only to be turned away, and
   simply followed the normal procedures for informing someone over the phone
   when a death occurs. The physician went out of his way to arrange the
   situation that he is complaining about, every aspect of which happened in
   an unsurprising fashion.
   - To try to hit that nail even harder: When the author says
   "Fortunately, they had not left", I could only think "Fuck you." That was
   before I read the next paragraph and learned what the wife's reaction was.
   This physician's thinking about the whole situation is so unbelievably
   screwed up in its self-righteous martyrdom.  "Fortunately, they had not
   left." Are you serious? "Fortunately" you have a chance to tell a frantic,
   legitimately angry, flustered, and frustrated mother, in front of her three
   children, that her husband died alone, only a hundred yards away, while his
   whole family was standing in our parking lot? Fuck you dude. Eight ways to
   Sunday. He has every right to be frustrated by having to deal with patients
   and families who made choices he disagrees with, but the continuous cruelty
   and better-than-thou posturing is really, really, really problematic, and
   if you didn't catch any of that in the story, that's a problem.






On Tue, Dec 21, 2021 at 2:19 PM glen  wrote:

>
>
> https://old.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/rakxun/my_career_of_treating_patients_has_ended/
>
> > After more than three 

Re: [FRIAM] Dear Long Suffering Colleagues

[Eric Charles]

As repeatedly hammered in the excellent book "Beyond Versus", Sober is
conflating two things:

1) A does not cause C except through B. (A-> B -> C with no other arrows)

2) In this data set, knowledge of B lets us predict C exactly as well as we
can predict it with combined knowledge of B & knowledge of A.

For the first one,  time matters a lot (assuming standard forward-casualty
views), and for the latter it doesn't matter in the slightest. As Glen
points out,  it could easily be bidirectional.

Also, to Sober's point: YES,  if internal mental states existed in a
Cartesian manner,  AND we somehow had perfect knowledge of them,  THEN they
would be higly useful for predicting behavior.  But we can all see that
isn't actually a good arguement for believing in them... right? All the
math in the world wouldn't change that right?

But ALSO,  don't forget the crucial point behaviorist-Nick should be
making... let's say someone punches you,  and you kick them back.  Let's
say I happen to be brain scanning when you get punched,  and I detect a
signal in your brain that perfectly predicts you will kick back.  That
signal,  is part of the process by which the other guys punch caused your
kick. The signal is contained in "you kicked back"; it is a component part
of it.  That "you kicked" entails all of that stuff,  not just the muscle
contractions in your leg,  which could be caused by knee-tap reflexes,
external electrical stimulation,  or other causes completely unrelated to
the internal process entailed in "you kicked".

On Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 4:42 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> Instead of "if A is true then B is true" think "if I know the value of A
> then I know something about the value of B".  For instance A = age and B =
> income.
>
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:03 PM  wrote:
>
>> I think you mean by a "fork" what we call a "common cause".  When two
>> variables are correlated it may be that they have a common cause.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Sober’s word, not mine.  Yours is the meaning he seems to give it.  The
>> whole article concerns how a causal “fork” breathes life into hypothetical
>> “inner” variables.  The abstract concerns how a causal collision breathes
>> life into  hypothetical “inner” variables.  You and glen agree that order
>> is NOT important, so now I am going to have a rethink.  Does it make any
>> sense to distinguish between logical and temporal order?  So B is true,
>> given A, speaks to logical order.   A CAUSES B speaks to temporal order,
>> unless we have given up on the requirement that the Cause A cannot occur
>> after A itself.
>>
>>
>>
>> N
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick Thompson
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
>> *Sent:* Monday, December 20, 2021 12:02 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Dear Long Suffering Colleagues
>>
>>
>>
>> I think you mean by a "fork" what we call a "common cause".  When two
>> variables are correlated it may be that they have a common cause.
>>
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 8:17 AM uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:
>>
>>
>> I don't understand your criticism. What do you think is "cocked up"? [⛧]
>>
>> I'll take a swipe at what might be the problem: The concluding paragraph
>> seems to make the point that forks *are* (reversed) collisions and
>> collisions are (reversed) forks. The key may lie in some preemptive
>> registration of words like "prediction". If you stick to words like
>> "relation" and "correlation" and toss out all the mechanistic/causal
>> language, it might be clearer how forks are collisions and vice versa. The
>> only difference is the *direction* of inference.
>>
>> But to be clear, despite my guess above, I'm asking a question. What do
>> you think is wrong, here?
>>
>> [⛧] For my own convenience, here's the link to the article I *think*
>> we're talking about:
>> methodological behaviorism, causal chains, and causal forks
>> https://behavior.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/BPv45_SOBER.pdf
>>
>> On 12/19/21 10:08 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>> > */Yes!  Right!  Thankyou! /*
>> >
>> > That is now obvious to you because you know that stuff.  But for three
>> weeks it has been driving me crazy.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Now for the second point.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> E1 and E2, each causally contribute to a behavior, B.  In this case, 
>> postulating
>> >
>> >
>>  an inner state, I, that is caused by both E1 and E2, and which causes I, 
>> affects
>> >
>> >
>> one's predictions concerning the relationship between environment and 
>> behavior.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > This is from the abstract of the article.  Not only do we see the same
>> slip-up with respect to I (I IS after all, the inner 

[FRIAM] Simplifying networks and matrixes

[Eric Charles]

I obviously can't deep dive into this, but it seems like the type of thing
that gets people at FRIAM interested 62 year old problem solved...


https://a//www.dailyo.in/technology/indian-mathematician-cracks-1959-problem-and-ramanujan-graphs/story/1/34929.html

 *THE 1959 KADISON-SINGER PROBLEM*

The original problem that was posed by Kadison and Singer was this: *If one
had to know about the state of a quantum system, would having complete
knowledge of its sub systems help understand this system? If yes, to what
extent?*

A practical application of this concept was the concept of matrices (yes,
the math concept that had brackets and zeros and ones in certain
locations). Asking the above question is equivalent to someone asking: *Could
matrices be broken down into more depth and simplified? If yes, how much?*

**

Adam was trying to solve his own different problem. His problem was on
similar lines, but different. Adam was trying to reduce a computer network
to have less connections, but which could act as effectively as before.
This would help them compress data and help in efficient computation.

On second thoughts, this seemed to be very similar to a friend's maths
problem, which was also known as the Kadison-Singer problem. When Adam
Marcus realised he could solve the maths and computer science problem
together, he joined forces with the other two specialists, Daniel Spielman
and Nikhil Srivastava to work together, and eventually solved the problem.

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Re: [FRIAM] Screening off

[Eric Charles]

If 1 co-occurs with 2 50% of the time, and 2 co-occurs with 3 50% of the
time, and that 1 never occurs with 3 except when 2 has occurred, then:
* Given 1 happens, then you would guess that 3 will happen 25% of the time.
* But if you knew whether or not 1 had caused 2 in a particular instance,
you could significantly improve that guess (shifting to 0% or 50%).
* In contrast, if you knew 2 happened, you would guess that 3 would happen
50% of the time, AND it wouldn't change anything if you found out whether
or not 1 had happened.


Now, in place of "co-occurs" some people want to substitute "cause", which
is frustrating and confusing to you, because you are an experimentalist.
This is an "observational" approach to trying to draw conclusions, not a
"true experiment" approach. At no point do you get to manipulate the
variables and see what happens. You *just *look at the data that was
collected, and conclude A) that 2 causes 3, and B) that to the extent that
1 causes 3, it causes 3 via 2, and in no other fashion. And, as an
experimentalist, you know that's a pretty non-ideal approach to getting at
causation, no matter how schmanzy the algorithms get.

In contrast, let us imagine we are studying the vocalizations of macaques,
and we notice that a certain vocalization happens, which haven't heard very
often, seems to co-occur with the presence of leopards. We think "Hey,
maybe seeing a leopard is causing the cries" ---> Presence of leopard
causes seeing of leopard, seeing of leopard causes cries. In this case, we
would find that a much messier relationship. It would look something like
this:
* Presence of a leopard co-occurs with seeing a leopard 80% of the time.
* Seeing a leopard co-occurs with cries 80% of the time.
* IF seeing the leopard screened off, then when a leopard is present, you
would expect a given macaque to make a cry 64% of the time - if, and only
if, they see the leopard.
* But you observe a much higher rate of response when you do your
observations. What's happening? Why is the leopard-call response not
"screened off" by having seen the leopard?
* Well there are OTHER ways that the presence of a Leopard causes
cries, such as hearing a leopard, or smelling the leopard. (Plus leopard
calls are mimicked.) Because of that, it wouldn't be surprising to have
leopard calls occur 80 or 90% of the time a leopard is nearby.



On Sat, Dec 4, 2021 at 7:38 PM Nicholas Thompson 
wrote:

> Frank,
>
> Still need help. Given events 1, 2, and 3, 3 has been screen off by 2 from
> 1, if  the probability that 3 occurs given that 2 has occurred is equal to
> the probability that 3 occurs given that both 2 and one have occurred.
>  As I understand mathematics this equality requires that the probability of
> 1 occurring is 1.00.  Another way to say that is that the probability that
> 3 occurs  if 2 has occurred is the same as the probability that 3 has
> occurred if 2 has occurred, and 1 has already occurred.  What's the fun in
> that?  In other words, given the possibility of other causes for 2, the
> fact that 2 occurs gives us relatively little evidence that 1 has
> occurred.  Isn"t this true of all causal abduction?
>
> N
>
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Re: [FRIAM] A thread for why did we first eat or drink that?

[Eric Charles]

In my imagination...
Step 1: Some random ancient male, "Ow! This Horrible!"
Step 2: Later, that random dude and a bunch of other dudes, "Ogg, you try
this, so good, yummy yum!" 2 minutes later, the entire group as Ogg cries
in a corner, "Ahahahahahaha! We get Zogg next! Hey Zogg, you try this, so
good!"
Step 3: "What? Zogg no cry? Zogg is no cry man. He eat another, still no
cry? Zogg, Zogg, Zogg, Zogg!"
Step 4: All the other men secretly eat little bits and cry in the corner
until one day they triumphantly show the group how that they can eat it and
not cry too.
Step 5: Imitation continues, combined with human's amazing ability to seek
the familiar.




On Thu, Dec 2, 2021 at 2:32 PM uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:

> Not sure if this is in the same vein. But:
>
>
> https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-catnip-plant-repels-insects-mosquitoes-chemical-receptor
>
> On 12/2/21 11:13 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> > Gil=
> >
> > I don't have a good answer to this one, but experience it myself all the
> time.
> >
> > SNL writers sure put a fine point on it though:
> >
> >
> https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/bad-decision-family/2868100
> >
> > In the spirit of thread-twining...   I wonder if this "instinct"
> (habit?) isn't rooted in some kind of group-survival by helping (some of)
> us escape the local minima of "one bad experience"... smearing the
> distinction (maybe?) amongst possible worlds?  A
> semantic/cognitive/perceptual mechanism for annealing in CS speak?
> >
> > Also, it might be noted that natural pesticides include things like
> garlic and capsacin, suggesting that we are drawn to them *because* they
> are even harsher on our possible parasites than they are on ourselves?
> >
> > Somewhere I once read something about the positive correlation between
> health-promoting phytonutrients and the commonly associated
> bitter/sour/astringent tastes they come with.   This source barely
> references it... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11101467/   and this one
> addresses the bitter/toxic correlation:
> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7878094/
> >
> > My own PseudoCalvinist upbringing instructed me "it has to taste bad to
> be good (for you)" contradicting (or explaining) Poppinses idea about "a
> spoonful of sugar".
> >
> > It is also the case that "adult tastes" are almost all "acquired".  Few
> of us really liked our first shot of tequila or even sip of beer or wine,
> and definitely not the first puff of tobacco (or any other herb) smoke...
> >
> > I think I'll go s(n)ort through the stuff in the back of my fridge now!
> >
> > and another one for the causality impaired:
> >
> >
> https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/do-you-know-what-i-hate/n9296
> >
> > - Steve
> >
> >
> > On 12/2/21 11:17 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote:
> >> While making lunch. I got curious about what might have gone through
> the first people to not just eat, but keep eating peppery things. I'm sort
> of picturing a conversation between to dudes where one decides "that thing
> that just set my mouth on fire? yeah! let me have more!".
> >>
> >> What on earth might have possessed humans to keep eating spicey foods?
> I also wonder the samething about coffee. A hard green fruit seed that you
> have to flambe to make edible or drinkable.
>
> --
> "Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] The epiphenomenality relation

[Eric Charles]

Hmm. not sure where to go with Glen & Steve's responses.

"we can't reverse engineer a builder's intention from the artifact."

Well but we can attempt to... with the same limitations as attempts to
understand anything else. Like, if all we do is go around slinging
Descarte-styled "Yeah, but are you SURE!" after literally every statement
anyone ever makes, that might be a good hobby, but it doesn't really get
you anywhere. We can certainly use systematic ways to probe the systems
based on various hypotheses, and thereby increase our confidence just
like trying to figure out anything else in the world.

"All models are wrong (though some may be useful)."

That's just a weird linguistic game, right? A model is a model, not the
thing being modeled. True enough, and worth reminding people of every so
often. But that doesn't mean it is "wrong" as a model. A model is RIGHT if
it accurately captures the INTENDED aspects of the target phenomenon...
because that's what being a good model entails.

So, we COULD, potentially, accurately know a builder's intentions after
sufficient examination of an artifact or set of artifacts. Also, we could
be wrong. And our internal model of the builder isn't actually the builder,
but that doesn't necessarily mean our model is wrong, as a model.



On Thu, Dec 2, 2021 at 11:21 AM Steve Smith  wrote:

> EricC/Glen -
>
>
> I'm glad we agree. I made the same points here:
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2021-November/090981.htmlhttps://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2021-November/090983.html
>
> To reiterate, we can't reverse engineer a builder's intention from the 
> artifact.
>
> We can't mind read (even our own).
>
>  To go even further, we can't even do a *complete* job of characterizing the 
> aspects of a thing, the aspects of environments, or the relations between 
> them.
>
> All models are wrong (though some may be useful).
>
>  Parallax is needed across all scales and in both directions. Polyphenism is 
> parallax on the thing. Robustness is parallax on the environment. And 
> counterfactuals are parallax on their coupling.
>
> All systems (existing within the same light-cone) are "nearly
> decomposable" ?
>
> Herb Simon Sez: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1909285
>
> One of the attractive qualities of modal realism is that it addresses both 
> consistency (through concrete possible worlds) and completeness (through 
> counterpart theory) in positing and testing various models. The problem 
> becomes one of discovering which world you inhabit *from the data*, not from 
> whatever abstracted models you may prefer.
>
> Lewis's Modal Realism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism> is a
> new one on me, but very interesting framing.   Only skimming the Wikipedia
> Article on the topic leaves me with only enough information to be
> dangerous...  so I am refraining from rattling on about all of my reactions
> to it's implications (for me) and in particular some of the objections
> listed there to his theory.  From this thin introduction I think I find
> Yagasawa's extension of possible worlds being distributed on a modal
> dimension rather than isolated space-time structures (yet) more
> compelling/useful?
>
> And what would Candide <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman> have
> to say about this?
>
>
>
> On 12/1/21 6:35 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
>
> Me -> We've imputed in all cases. Certainly we can assume artificial systems 
> were designed for a purpose, but we still don't know what that purpose is 
> without imputing a model onto that system. And, in both cases, we could 
> proceed to experiment with the system, in order to test the predictions of 
> the imputed model and increase our confidence that we have imputed correctly. 
> The ability to do these things does not distinguish between the two types of 
> system. There are long and respected scientific traditions using experimental 
> methods to gain confidence in our understanding of why certain systems were 
> favored by natural selection, i.e., to determine the manner in which they 
> help the organism better fit its environment.
>
> Me -> Well it might be reification in some sense, but that term usually 
> implies inaccuracy, which we cannot know in this case without 
> experimentation. Even with a system we designed ourselves, where we might 
> have a lot of insight into why we designed the system the way we did, we 
> certainly don't have perfect knowledge. All we have there is a model of our 
> own behavior to impute off of. Once again, this doesn't clearly differentiate 
> the two situations. In all of these situations it is a mistake to 
> uncritically reify our initial intuitions

Re: [FRIAM] The epiphenomenality relation

[Eric Charles]

Ah I've been looking for something in this to latch onto!
Glen -> "The word "epiphenomenon" is loaded with expectation/intention. It
works quite well in artificial systems where we can simply assume it was
designed for a purpose. But in "natural" systems (like the hyena case), if
we use that concept, we've imputed a *model* onto the system."

Me -> We've imputed in all cases. Certainly we can assume artificial
systems were designed for a purpose, but we still don't know what that
purpose is without imputing a model onto that system. And, in both cases,
we could proceed to experiment with the system, in order to test the
predictions of the imputed model and increase our confidence that we have
imputed correctly. The ability to do these things does not distinguish
between the two types of system. There are long and respected scientific
traditions using experimental methods to gain confidence in our
understanding of why certain systems were favored by natural selection,
i.e., to determine the manner in which they help the organism better fit
its environment.

Glen continues -> I can't take that further step without a preliminary
understanding that "wild type" systems don't exhibit epiphenomena at all.
They can't, by definition. If some effect *looks* like an epiphenomenon to
you, it's because *you* imputed your model onto it. It's a clear cut case
of reification.

Me -> Well it might be reification in some sense, but that term usually
implies inaccuracy, which we cannot know in this case without
experimentation. Even with a system we designed ourselves, where we might
have a lot of insight into why we designed the system the way we did, we
certainly don't have perfect knowledge. All we have there is a model of our
own behavior to impute off of. Once again, this doesn't clearly
differentiate the two situations. In all of these situations it is a
mistake to uncritically reify our initial intuitions about the system's
purpose.




On Mon, Nov 29, 2021 at 12:05 PM uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:

> Yes, that's the point. Thanks for stating it in yet another way.
>
> The word "epiphenomenon" is loaded with expectation/intention. It works
> quite well in artificial systems where we can simply assume it was designed
> for a purpose. But in "natural" systems (like the hyena case), if we use
> that concept, we've imputed a *model* onto the system.
>
> I would go even further (encroaching on Marcus' example) and argue that
> even if someone *else* designed a system, you cannot reverse engineer that
> designer's intention from the system they built. The agnostic approach is
> to treat every system you did not build yourself, with your own hands, as a
> naturally occurring system. (This is the essence of hacking, including
> benign forms like circuit bending.) I would ... I want to ... but I can't
> take that further step without a preliminary understanding that "wild type"
> systems don't exhibit epiphenomena at all. They can't, by definition. If
> some effect *looks* like an epiphenomenon to you, it's because *you*
> imputed your model onto it. It's a clear cut case of reification.
>
>
> On 11/29/21 8:49 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> > glen wrote:
> >> ... Purposefully designed systems have bugs (i.e. epiphenomena,
> unintended, side-, additional, secondary, effects). Biological evolution
> does not. There is no bug-feature distinction there.
> >
> > In trying to normalize your terms/conceptions to my own, am I right that
> you are implying that intentionality is required for epiphenomena (reduces
> to tautology if "unintended" is key to "epi")?
> >
> > This leads us back to the teleological debate I suppose.   The common
> (vulgar?)  "evolution" talk is laced with teleological implications...  but
> I think what Glen is saying here that outside the domain of human/sentient
> will/intentionality (which he might also call an illusion), everything
> simply *is what it is* so anything *we* might identify as epiphenomena is
> simply a natural consequence *we* failed to predict and/or which does not
> fit *our* intention/expectation.
> >
> > We watch a rock balanced at the edge of a cliff begin to shift after a
> rain and before our very eyes, we see it tumble off the cliff edge and
> roll/slide/skid toward the bottom of the gradient but being humans, with
> intentions and preferences and ideas, *we* notice there is a human made
> structure (say a cabin) at the bottom of the cliff and we begin to take
> odds on how likely that rock is to slip/slide/roll into the cabin.   *we*
> give that event meaning that it does not have outside of our
> mind/system-of-values.   The rock doesn't care that it came to final rest
> (or not) because the cabin structure in it's (final) path was robust enough
> to absorb/reflect the remaining kinetic energy in the rock-system and the
> cabin doesn't care either!   We (because we are in the cabin, because we
> built the cabin, because we are paying a mortgage to the bank on the cabin,
> because we intend 

Re: [FRIAM] WAS: P Zombie Couches

[Eric Charles]

Oh, I like the potential connection with Cantor. I hadn't thought of it
that way before!

I think the interesting distinction there is that Cantor offered a proof
that there was always at least one more number than could be counted.
Mathematicians went nuts over it (I knew it was bad, but not that bad), but
ultimately there was something to latch onto and figure out if Cantor was
correct. In this case it is simply a blind assertion that no matter how
much physicalism can explain there will always be more. You get people to
agree with that blind confusion through some slick linguistic trickery, but
it's never more than that.

At least, that's my initial reaction to the comparison.


On Sun, Nov 21, 2021 at 4:20 AM Jon Zingale  wrote:

> That water is H20 gets at my confusion. While this is a classic example
> of an a posteriori truth, the stability of truths like these form
> categories that couldn't have been any other way. I feel that your
> follow up questions get at this nicely:
>
> """
> Would we say something like: Sure, but then it wouldn't be "water"
>
> Or would we say something like: Yes, that could definitely be a possible
> world, but their "water" wouldn't be exactly the same as our water.
> """
>
> That Thompson's (and I suspect your) flavor of Peircean logic derives
> from an interest in how we get robust generals from sampling messy
> particulars, I interpret his (and possibly your) program (from within
> the framework of Kripke semantics) as an attempt to understand when a
> posteriori truths "lift" to reveal what are effectively a priori truths.
>
> """
> There might be a conversation something like it that would have a bit of
> depth, but instead it is almost entirely linguistic trickery masquerading
> as deep thoughts.
> """
>
> I understand that your post was intended to ridicule an argument, that
> in all likelihood is faux deep[围棋], but elements of the "linguistic
> trickery" reminds me (and may be modeled upon) of Cantor's famous
> argument[א]. Cantor begins his argument by attempting to put the Real
> numbers in correspondence with the Natural numbers (effectively naming
> each real number with some integer) only to show that there is always
> one more real that could not be named. In the p-zombie argument, one is
> *supposed to conclude* that there must always be one more quality of
> consciousness that is not accounted for by naming with the material
> world, and thus more than physicalism is needed to account for the world.
> Whatever the p-zombie argument's final status be, my post was an attempt
> to assess the risk while responding thoughtfully to your entertaining
> and generous offering.
>
> [围棋] To take the argument seriously is to see it as a kind of hanami ko,
> but it may, in fact, be something more akin to throwing away stones in
> what is clearly another's territory. On the other hand, as the proverb
> goes, "Stones are never truly dead until they're removed from the board".
>
> [א] Cantor, probably the greatest of all metaphysician mathematicians ;)
> His Wikipedia article documents the hostility and ridicule that he and
> his transfinite numbers received:
>
> """
> Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers was originally regarded as so
> counter-intuitive – even shocking – that it encountered resistance from
> mathematical contemporaries (...) Cantor, a devout Lutheran Christian,
> believed the theory had been communicated to him by God. Some Christian
> theologians (particularly neo-Scholastics) saw Cantor's work as a
> challenge to the uniqueness of the absolute infinity in the nature
> of God – on one occasion equating the theory of transfinite numbers
> with pantheism – a proposition that Cantor vigorously rejected.
>
> The objections to Cantor's work were occasionally fierce: Leopold
> Kronecker's public opposition and personal attacks included describing
> Cantor as a "scientific charlatan", a "renegade" and a "corrupter of
> youth". Kronecker objected to Cantor's proofs that the algebraic numbers
> are countable, and that the transcendental numbers are uncountable,
> results now included in a standard mathematics curriculum. Writing
> decades after Cantor's death, Wittgenstein lamented that mathematics is
> "ridden through and through with the pernicious idioms of set theory",
> which he dismissed as "utter nonsense" that is "laughable" and "wrong".
> """
>
> .-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:
>  5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
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>

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

Re: [FRIAM] Has anybody been lookiung at covid numbers

[Eric Charles]

Your numbers are behind a paywall... you could screen shot and paste them
here if you wanted me to look at them.

Mine are from here:  United States COVID: 48,558,229 Cases and 793,539
Deaths - Worldometer (worldometers.info)
<https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/>




On Sun, Nov 21, 2021 at 1:10 AM  wrote:

> Hmmm! https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
>
>
>
> Are we looking at the same data?
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Saturday, November 20, 2021 10:13 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Has anybody been lookiung at covid numbers
>
>
>
> I haven't looked up Santa Fe's numbers specifically... but if it is
> anything like national numbers, the difference is that last year we were in
> the early stages of a massive uptick, and this year we are in the middle of
> a rapid fall off (with the recent cold snaps having no noticeable effect).
> If you look at the graph below, you will see an upswing starting October
> 18th of last year which peaked January 14th, and by Nov 20th it was
> already 950 a day above where  it started. In contrast, this year we are
> down over 950 a day from the peak on Sept 24th.
>
>
>
> A winter spike could still happen, but we are over a month out from where
> it started last year, but I don't think it is going to. If the current
> trend continues, we'll be at a negligible number of deaths per day within
> about 2 months. I think that's overly optimistic, but 3-4 months is
> probably very realistic (barring a new variant), even if we allow for a
> modest post-holiday uptick.
>
>
>
> How that should play into any particular person's particular plans, I
> can't say. Even in the unrealistically-optimistic 2-month scenario, that's
> still 30,000 more deaths. More than double that for the more realistic 4
> month scenario.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 20, 2021 at 12:37 AM  wrote:
>
> Good to hear from you, Jackie.  A fresh voice on the list.  Always
> welcome.  Sometimes we regulars bore ourselves to death.
>
>
>
> We decided not to meet with the extended family in Houston, a hard
> decision that I instantly stopped regretting when I saw the new numbers.
> The only question in my mind is whether we avoid my son’s family for a week
> or two when they return.   People keep telling me about vaccinated people
> they know who have croaked and I am definitely in the vulnerable group …
> age, diabetes, heart disease --.   There are some folks on this list who
> are very good at numbers and have vulnerabilities of their own.  I am
> guessing we will hear from them in time.  I am guessing that unless I am
> planning to stay in my house for the rest of my life, I should probably not
> worry about it too much.
>
>
>
> Thanks for your message.  Don’t be a stranger.
>
>
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Jacqueline Kazil
> *Sent:* Friday, November 19, 2021 11:10 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Has anybody been lookiung at covid numbers
>
>
>
> Hi! Jackie here. Nick, I too can get hysterical about Covid. I left DC for
> Missouri and lived on a dead-end street in the country with my in-laws for
> almost a year sharing a bedroom with my three year old and newborn. Then my
> mom was in an intensive care situation after an accident - for 52 days.
> This was in Florida during the summer surge -- at one point covid
> positivity rate was > 25% in the county she was in.  I couldn't leave
> Florida, because my baby's daycare in DC has a covid policy that you had to
> quarantine if your house was exposed to a covid positivity rate of >10% &
> my moms hospital had a policy that said you had to quarantine if you leave
> the state of Florida, you had a to quarantine (I didn't understand this
> one. This was a policy for the sake of having a policy. All other states
> were better places to be). With these two policies in play, despite not
> seeing my children for more than a month and having to quit breastfeeding,
> I decided not to travel home... and sometimes life sucks. [As I write this,
> I feel like this is a simulation in the works.]
>
>
>
> In Florida during the time with my mom, I was pushed outside of my comfort
> zone. I was in an environment where a lot of the population feels
> differently

Re: [FRIAM] Has anybody been lookiung at covid numbers

[Eric Charles]

I haven't looked up Santa Fe's numbers specifically... but if it is
anything like national numbers, the difference is that last year we were in
the early stages of a massive uptick, and this year we are in the middle of
a rapid fall off (with the recent cold snaps having no noticeable effect).
If you look at the graph below, you will see an upswing starting October
18th of last year which peaked January 14th, and by Nov 20th it was
already 950 a day above where  it started. In contrast, this year we are
down over 950 a day from the peak on Sept 24th.

A winter spike could still happen, but we are over a month out from where
it started last year, but I don't think it is going to. If the current
trend continues, we'll be at a negligible number of deaths per day within
about 2 months. I think that's overly optimistic, but 3-4 months is
probably very realistic (barring a new variant), even if we allow for a
modest post-holiday uptick.

How that should play into any particular person's particular plans, I can't
say. Even in the unrealistically-optimistic 2-month scenario, that's still
30,000 more deaths. More than double that for the more realistic 4 month
scenario.


[image: image.png]



On Sat, Nov 20, 2021 at 12:37 AM  wrote:

> Good to hear from you, Jackie.  A fresh voice on the list.  Always
> welcome.  Sometimes we regulars bore ourselves to death.
>
>
>
> We decided not to meet with the extended family in Houston, a hard
> decision that I instantly stopped regretting when I saw the new numbers.
> The only question in my mind is whether we avoid my son’s family for a week
> or two when they return.   People keep telling me about vaccinated people
> they know who have croaked and I am definitely in the vulnerable group …
> age, diabetes, heart disease --.   There are some folks on this list who
> are very good at numbers and have vulnerabilities of their own.  I am
> guessing we will hear from them in time.  I am guessing that unless I am
> planning to stay in my house for the rest of my life, I should probably not
> worry about it too much.
>
>
>
> Thanks for your message.  Don’t be a stranger.
>
>
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Jacqueline Kazil
> *Sent:* Friday, November 19, 2021 11:10 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Has anybody been lookiung at covid numbers
>
>
>
> Hi! Jackie here. Nick, I too can get hysterical about Covid. I left DC for
> Missouri and lived on a dead-end street in the country with my in-laws for
> almost a year sharing a bedroom with my three year old and newborn. Then my
> mom was in an intensive care situation after an accident - for 52 days.
> This was in Florida during the summer surge -- at one point covid
> positivity rate was > 25% in the county she was in.  I couldn't leave
> Florida, because my baby's daycare in DC has a covid policy that you had to
> quarantine if your house was exposed to a covid positivity rate of >10% &
> my moms hospital had a policy that said you had to quarantine if you leave
> the state of Florida, you had a to quarantine (I didn't understand this
> one. This was a policy for the sake of having a policy. All other states
> were better places to be). With these two policies in play, despite not
> seeing my children for more than a month and having to quit breastfeeding,
> I decided not to travel home... and sometimes life sucks. [As I write this,
> I feel like this is a simulation in the works.]
>
>
>
> In Florida during the time with my mom, I was pushed outside of my comfort
> zone. I was in an environment where a lot of the population feels
> differently than I do about safety. I also was walking into hospitals with
> covid patients where vaccinated nurses were dropping like flies. I gave up
> a little, because of the stress I only had so much energy to worry about
> covid. A friend even convinced me to eat in a restaurant indoors -- barely,
> once.
>
>
> I just looked up Santa Fe county, and it is just over 10% covid positivity
> rate.
>
> https://covidactnow.org/us/new_mexico-nm/county/santa_fe_county/?s=25691480
>
> Covid positivity rate is supposed to be a signal of knowledge spreading. I
> would say over 10% right before Thanksgiving is probably a not a good place
> to be. This means it is spreading and people know, but some don't. With
> families getting together -- the "some don't" part is not good.
>
>
>
> With my experience of being in various environments, I would say that if I
> were in a place with a rate of 10% or higher, I would worry enough to
> batten down the hatches for the holidays, because... sometimes life sucks.
> I would limit the number of people I interacted with.
>
>
>
> Also to consider in this equation -- how many people already had covid
> that already counted in the vaccine numbers.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> .-- .- -. - / .- -.-. 

Re: [FRIAM] WAS: P Zombie Couches

[Eric Charles]

I would say that Peirce is concerned with determining what is true in this
actual world. That water decomposes into hydrogen and oxygen in a certain
ratio under certain experimental conditions, is the type of thing we will
(presumably) continue to agree about until the end times, i.e., it is
"true". (That ratio isn't exactly 2 hydrogen for every 1 oxygen, but it is
reasonably close.)

Can we imagine a world in which water decomposes in some other fashion? I'm
not sure exactly what that discussion is. Would we say something like:
Sure, but then it wouldn't be "water"

Or would we say something like: Yes, that could definitely be a possible
world, but their "water" wouldn't be exactly the same as our water.

At any rate

The Philosophical Zombie Problem is the type of thing that is faux deep,
and I thought it deserved to be ridiculed, and I think it makes as much
sense when talking about couches as when talking about people. So... I was
mostly just trying to make that point. (Ditto with the "Stomach in Jar"
entry mocking the "Brian in a Vat" thought experiment.) There might be a
conversation something like it that would have a bit of depth, but instead
it is almost entirely linguistic trickery masquerading as deep thoughts.

---



On Sat, Nov 20, 2021 at 9:39 PM Jon Zingale  wrote:

> "As an experience-monist, I believe either that all worlds are possible
> or no worlds are possible. Also, as an experience-monist (but not as a
> behaviorist) I am allowed to experience the world in a variety of ways,
> as present, as past, as future, as fantasy, as dreams, and, as possible,
> or impossible."
>
> I gather that you mean something like, "Any experience is possible", but
> I am not sure that this coincides with the usage of "possible worlds" as
> it occurs in EricC's Wikipedia reference, *possible worlds* in the sense
> of Kripke. In Kripke, "possible worlds" logic is used as a kind of foil
> for speaking about a priori and a posteriori truths. Kripke distinguishes
> between those propositions which are necessarily true (in that they are
> true for every possible world) and those propositions which are possibly
> true (in that they are true for at least one possible world). As far as
> I can reason at present, your ontological commitments are to "Peircean
> Truth" wherein propositions are only "true" if they are true for every
> possible world, i.e., necessary truth. Those propositions which are
> unstable, or vary across "worlds", I imagine for Peirce, are nothing at
> all. How poorly do I understand your position relative to this context?
>
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[FRIAM] P Zombie Couches

[Eric Charles]

Inspired by conversation in FRIAM a few weeks ago, I finally finished my
overdue blog post on the mystery of Philosophical Zombie Couches.

Fixing Psychology: Deep thoughts: P Zombie Couches


I wrote several years ago about the classic "Stomach in a Jar
"
problem that has vexed philosophers for decades. I write today about the
equally complex Philosophical Zombie Couch problem, which has fascinated
philosophers since Keith Campbell and Robert Kirk introduced the idea in
the early 1970s, and David Chalmers popularized it in the mid 1990s. Many
of you will not be familiar with the problem, so let me lay it out simply
to start out with.

You could summarize the argument with a single premise: We can all imagine
an object with all the properties of a couch, but which does not contain
couchishness.

Wikipedia  makes it a
bit more complicated, summarizing Chalmers's argument as follows:

   1. According to physicalism, all that exists in our world (including
   couchishness) is physical.
   2. Thus, if physicalism is true, a metaphysically possible world in
   which all physical facts are the same as those of the actual world must
   contain everything that exists in our actual world. In particular,
   couchishness must exist in such a possible world.
   3. In fact we can conceive of a world physically indistinguishable from
   our world but in which there is no couchishness (a zombie couch world).
   From this (so Chalmers argues) it follows that such a world is
   metaphysically possible.
   4. Therefore, physicalism is false.

That's it, whether you work off the simple premise or more complicated
argument, its implications can keep an introductory philosophy class going
for weeks. The quixotic objects in question are called Zombie Couches. When
we examine them, we find that they are physically identical to a regular
couch. When we interact with them, we encounter reactions that make them
indistinguishable from a real couch. And yet they are without any actual
couchishness.

The questions that follow are obvious:

   - How would we ever know if we were dealing with such a couch?
   - Is it possible that our couch is the only one with couchishness, and
   that all other couches we interact with are Zombie Couches?
   - If our couch were a P Zombie Couch, would we even know?

This riddle is central to the "Hard Problem of Couchishness" that has been
a focal point of the field for some time. What is it like to be a couch?
Can something be exactly like a couch, without actually being a couch? Even
just the logical possibility of such an object seems like it would refute
the very notion of physicalism, because it implies that we readily
recognize that a purely physical explanation of couchishness is
insufficient.

Of course, there are those who claim the P Zombie Couch problem is a
bamboozle from the start. Daniel Dennett is key among them, and he has
claimed that any philosopher who claims to be able to conceive of a Zombie
Couch either hasn't fully conceived of the object in question, or is
inadvertently porting in "second-order couchishness" in one manner or
another. As Dennet states:

Supposing that by an act of stipulative imagination you can remove
couchishness while leaving all couch-entailed systems intact — a quite
standard but entirely bogus feat of imagination — is like supposing that by
an act of stipulative imagination, you can remove structural integrity
while leaving all structural objects and relations intact. … Structural
integrity isn’t that sort of thing, and neither is couchishness (1995,
325... roughly).


Others counter that P Zombie Couches are quite easy to imagine: For
example, what if we created microscopic machines that replaced every-other
fiber in your couch cushions? The machines would take the input from any
fiber, and pass the input along to the next fiber, but not be a fiber
itself. Clearly the resulting object would not have couchishness, while
still appearing couchish in all interactions. Q.E.D.

There are, of course, many other objections to the Zombie Couch line of
arguments. Should "metaphysical possibility" influence our thinking about
the actual world we find ourselves in, or can such factors only play into
discussions of "possible worlds"? Can the argument hold if we define
couchishness in purely functional terms? The richness of these discussions
connects the Zombie Couch problem with many other areas of philosophical
investigation.

Several famous thought experiments relate to this issue, for example: What
if, when throwing a couch away in a swamp, a bolt of lightning hit the
couch and destroyed it, and at the same instance another bolt of lightning
some distance away rearranged different atoms into an exact duplicate of
your couch. If, startled by 

Re: [FRIAM] lurking

[Eric Charles]

ope for someone with more
>> follow-through than I have to implement a more redundant but "thorough"
>> space-time decomposition (an N-1xN-1 kernel over the 4 positions at each
>> "zoom" level).
>>
>> Regarding poker.. I played some low-stakes in college and saw there were
>> two things to take in:   the main technical skill was to simply play less
>> poorly than the other players at the table and that was entirely
>> overshadowed by the social-engineering games of bluffing, etc.   The very
>> simple game-theoretic aspect of not depleting your own stake before you
>> catch a "lucky streak" going your way was also a good understanding.   I
>> played with my "boss" and a number of peers at the time and realized that
>> it was more about jockeying for position at work and drinking beer than it
>> was about winning/losing.  I think the most I ever lost/won was on the
>> order of $20-$40 which in those days was roughly 1-2 shifts wages... a LOT
>> if I joined them weekly... too rich for my blood!  I still feel that
>> *technically* playing well really means just playing less badly.
>> Blackjack being even more obviously so?
>>
>>
>> Yikes.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Nov 7, 2021, at 1:56 PM, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
>>
>> My inclination would be to invest in standoff biometrics (e.g. Eulerian
>> Video Amplification) and then find the best poker playing code.   It ought
>> to be possible to automate and perhaps get rich in the process.
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
>> *Sent:* Sunday, November 7, 2021 7:42 AM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] lurking
>>
>> I DID read all the thread so far... but I'm curious how we got to one of
>> the starting points: "as cringy as it may be for some dork to be proud of
>> their Poker prowess"
>>
>> I am somewhat satisfied with my Poker mediocrity, certainly not proud of
>> it... but if I met someone who was ACTUALLY startlingly better than I am,
>> and they were proud of that, I wouldn't find it cringy. (Ditto in my other
>> hobbies, like Aikido.)
>>
>> I guess if I met someone who had a slight edge in their drunk-buddy home
>> games, and they were super proud of THAT, then i would find it cringy.
>> (Ditto someone who's the best Aikido student in their small dojo, but who's
>> obviously not more than that.)
>>
>> When I see academic work on game theory, it's usually of lower quality
>> than what the good poker players are doing these days. Mastering the game
>> is crazy hard, and being able to sit down and implement a coherent and
>> winning strategy for 40-80 hours a week is not easy. So... why would that
>> be cringe?
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 3, 2021 at 1:42 PM Marcus Daniels 
>> wrote:
>>
>> Ok, part of the story is knowing what is really needed for
>> reproducibility as a function of context.
>> With that, then there's the matter of how much control is afforded.   Is
>> it programmable in predictable ways?
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
>> Sent: Wednesday, November 3, 2021 8:20 AM
>> To: friam@redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] lurking
>>
>> Yeah, I agree. But context is Queen. When the virus is created in the
>> lab, it's done with real stuff distilled from the soupy world. Given enough
>> of a difference in context, the robot may not be able to re-constitute the
>> life because the soupy world surrounding the robot doesn't have the real
>> stuff required. Such drastic context changes could be a result of
>> translation through space or time. E.g. trying to construct, on Mars, an
>> organism read/serialized on earth. Or e.g. trying to construct an organism
>> read millennia ago, millennia in the future. It's naive to talk about
>> "science" as if any given read-out formula thereby expressed is *complete*.
>> Science is abstraction to a large extent ... maybe not as abstracting as
>> math, of course. And science must remain "open" precisely because any
>> formula it expresses is suspect, perhaps incomplete.
>>
>> My favorite example is the magic brewing stick:
>> https://medievalmeadandbeer.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/scandinavian-yeast-logs-yeast-rings/
>>  It *was* scientific to lay out the magic stick as a critical element of
>> the brewing process, only to discover later that the stick isn't the
>> important part.
>>
>> On 11/2/21 2:39 PM, Ma

Re: [FRIAM] lurking

[Eric Charles]

fe and it's implications for
> finding structure at many scales... I still hope for someone with more
> follow-through than I have to implement a more redundant but "thorough"
> space-time decomposition (an N-1xN-1 kernel over the 4 positions at each
> "zoom" level).
>
> Regarding poker.. I played some low-stakes in college and saw there were
> two things to take in:   the main technical skill was to simply play less
> poorly than the other players at the table and that was entirely
> overshadowed by the social-engineering games of bluffing, etc.   The very
> simple game-theoretic aspect of not depleting your own stake before you
> catch a "lucky streak" going your way was also a good understanding.   I
> played with my "boss" and a number of peers at the time and realized that
> it was more about jockeying for position at work and drinking beer than it
> was about winning/losing.  I think the most I ever lost/won was on the
> order of $20-$40 which in those days was roughly 1-2 shifts wages... a LOT
> if I joined them weekly... too rich for my blood!  I still feel that
> *technically* playing well really means just playing less badly.
> Blackjack being even more obviously so?
>
>
> Yikes.
>
>
>
> On Nov 7, 2021, at 1:56 PM, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
>
> My inclination would be to invest in standoff biometrics (e.g. Eulerian
> Video Amplification) and then find the best poker playing code.   It ought
> to be possible to automate and perhaps get rich in the process.
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Sunday, November 7, 2021 7:42 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] lurking
>
> I DID read all the thread so far... but I'm curious how we got to one of
> the starting points: "as cringy as it may be for some dork to be proud of
> their Poker prowess"
>
> I am somewhat satisfied with my Poker mediocrity, certainly not proud of
> it... but if I met someone who was ACTUALLY startlingly better than I am,
> and they were proud of that, I wouldn't find it cringy. (Ditto in my other
> hobbies, like Aikido.)
>
> I guess if I met someone who had a slight edge in their drunk-buddy home
> games, and they were super proud of THAT, then i would find it cringy.
> (Ditto someone who's the best Aikido student in their small dojo, but who's
> obviously not more than that.)
>
> When I see academic work on game theory, it's usually of lower quality
> than what the good poker players are doing these days. Mastering the game
> is crazy hard, and being able to sit down and implement a coherent and
> winning strategy for 40-80 hours a week is not easy. So... why would that
> be cringe?
>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 3, 2021 at 1:42 PM Marcus Daniels 
> wrote:
>
> Ok, part of the story is knowing what is really needed for reproducibility
> as a function of context.
> With that, then there's the matter of how much control is afforded.   Is
> it programmable in predictable ways?
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
> Sent: Wednesday, November 3, 2021 8:20 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] lurking
>
> Yeah, I agree. But context is Queen. When the virus is created in the lab,
> it's done with real stuff distilled from the soupy world. Given enough of a
> difference in context, the robot may not be able to re-constitute the life
> because the soupy world surrounding the robot doesn't have the real stuff
> required. Such drastic context changes could be a result of translation
> through space or time. E.g. trying to construct, on Mars, an organism
> read/serialized on earth. Or e.g. trying to construct an organism read
> millennia ago, millennia in the future. It's naive to talk about "science"
> as if any given read-out formula thereby expressed is *complete*. Science
> is abstraction to a large extent ... maybe not as abstracting as math, of
> course. And science must remain "open" precisely because any formula it
> expresses is suspect, perhaps incomplete.
>
> My favorite example is the magic brewing stick:
> https://medievalmeadandbeer.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/scandinavian-yeast-logs-yeast-rings/
>  It *was* scientific to lay out the magic stick as a critical element of
> the brewing process, only to discover later that the stick isn't the
> important part.
>
> On 11/2/21 2:39 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > Even if that were so, viruses have been pulled from history or tweaked
> and created in the lab.   So we have a design specification, and the means
> to make it.One could imagine a robot fabricating the close-to-the-metal
> machine too.   T

Re: [FRIAM] RADICAL embodied cognitive science

[Eric Charles]

Nick,
Have you ever seen 4 people playing a game of bridge? I saw that once,
snapped my fingers to freeze time, and moved them each to be in rooms
identical to the one they started in, but each in a different state.
Weirdly enough, the game did not continue. It turns out that while the game
of bridge has parts, it is not decomposable. The people did not continue to
function at all as they did when in the room together.

I had a related experience where I saw 4 people sitting around a table,
each playing tetris on their own cell phone. I once again snapped my
fingers to freeze time, and moved them each to be in rooms identical to the
one they started in, but each in a different state. This time, as expected,
the play continued, at least for a bit before they noticed the change. It
turns out that a group of 4 people playing tetris on their cell phone IS
decomposable.

Or, are we just quibbling over whether the 4 bridge prayers in the first
scenario count as "components"?



On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 2:34 PM  wrote:

> Colleagues,
>
>
>
> Chemero’s book contains a glossary of “Dynamical Systems” terms, words
> that I have heard you wizards bandy about for years but never quite
> grasped.  I am seeing this as a moment to get my hands firmly on them.
>  The ninth term in the list is “decomposable”.  Non-linear systems are
> not-decomposable, i.e. “they cannot be modeled as collections of separable
> components.”
>
>
>
> But the tenth and last item in the list reads as follows:
>
>
>
> 10. Non-decomposable, nonlinear systems can only be characterized using
> global collective variables and/or order parameters, variables or
> parameters of the system that summarize the behavior of the system’s
> components.
>
>
>
> Neither “order parameters” nor “components” are defined in the list, so
> the reader is cut loose at this point.  I have never quite understood what
> an order parameter is, despite decades of looking up definitions.  I am
> guessing that it roughly corresponds to the redundancy of a system, the
> degree to which one can predict one part from another.  So crystals have a
> higher order parameter than the solution from which they are precipitated.
>
>
>
> This relates to my utter confusion when people start talking about
> breaking symmetry.  This, I gather, requires me to think of fog as
> symmetrical but neatly arrayed rows of alto-cumulus as the result of
> “breaking symmetry.”  This has always seemed like crazy talk to me.
>
>
>
> But what truly puzzles me most about this item, is the last word,
> “components”.  How can a non-decomposable system have components.  I am
> guessing that practically what that means is that one postulates components
> and then analyzes the system from the point of view of those postulations,
> shifting from postulation to postulation until some seem more stable that
> others.  Sounds a lot like perception to me.
>
>
>
> This problem, trivial as it might seem to you all, has always been a block
> to my embracing of systems talk.  I want to know the formal process by
> which we are empowered to talk about the components of non-decomposable
> systems.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
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> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:
>  5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
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>

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Re: [FRIAM] lurking

[Eric Charles]

.
>
> I suppose I feel the same duality in good Analysis/Synthesis vs
> *effective* Rhetoric...
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 7, 2021 at 9:23 PM Steve Smith  wrote:
>
>>
>> On 11/7/21 12:02 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
>>
>> There must be some kind of “Back to the future” movie that can be made
>> out of this.  Doyne Farmer in Vegas all over again, but with current-era AI
>> in place of toe-operated computers.
>>
>> Yah!  Surely Casinos can't begin to restrict computers(phones)/earbuds,
>> etc.  on the gaming floor.
>>
>> Strange coincidence that my sister went to Kindergarten with Vance
>> Packard (Norm's brother) in Silver City long before they all became eagle
>> scouts and then the Chaos Cabal.  We moved away the next year and I doubt I
>> ever met any of them back then.   I came to LANL just before (I think)
>> Doyne came... I seem to remember that Norm was there for a summer...  and
>> soon came the (in)famous CA conference...   As I remember it the game of
>> interest (aside from Life, what with Conway in attendance) was GO with a
>> lot of speculation about the implications of local vs global
>> "intelligence"...   I was intrigued by HashLife and it's implications for
>> finding structure at many scales... I still hope for someone with more
>> follow-through than I have to implement a more redundant but "thorough"
>> space-time decomposition (an N-1xN-1 kernel over the 4 positions at each
>> "zoom" level).
>>
>> Regarding poker.. I played some low-stakes in college and saw there were
>> two things to take in:   the main technical skill was to simply play less
>> poorly than the other players at the table and that was entirely
>> overshadowed by the social-engineering games of bluffing, etc.   The very
>> simple game-theoretic aspect of not depleting your own stake before you
>> catch a "lucky streak" going your way was also a good understanding.   I
>> played with my "boss" and a number of peers at the time and realized that
>> it was more about jockeying for position at work and drinking beer than it
>> was about winning/losing.  I think the most I ever lost/won was on the
>> order of $20-$40 which in those days was roughly 1-2 shifts wages... a LOT
>> if I joined them weekly... too rich for my blood!  I still feel that
>> *technically* playing well really means just playing less badly.
>> Blackjack being even more obviously so?
>>
>>
>> Yikes.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Nov 7, 2021, at 1:56 PM, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
>>
>> My inclination would be to invest in standoff biometrics (e.g. Eulerian
>> Video Amplification) and then find the best poker playing code.   It ought
>> to be possible to automate and perhaps get rich in the process.
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
>> *Sent:* Sunday, November 7, 2021 7:42 AM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] lurking
>>
>> I DID read all the thread so far... but I'm curious how we got to one of
>> the starting points: "as cringy as it may be for some dork to be proud of
>> their Poker prowess"
>>
>> I am somewhat satisfied with my Poker mediocrity, certainly not proud of
>> it... but if I met someone who was ACTUALLY startlingly better than I am,
>> and they were proud of that, I wouldn't find it cringy. (Ditto in my other
>> hobbies, like Aikido.)
>>
>> I guess if I met someone who had a slight edge in their drunk-buddy home
>> games, and they were super proud of THAT, then i would find it cringy.
>> (Ditto someone who's the best Aikido student in their small dojo, but who's
>> obviously not more than that.)
>>
>> When I see academic work on game theory, it's usually of lower quality
>> than what the good poker players are doing these days. Mastering the game
>> is crazy hard, and being able to sit down and implement a coherent and
>> winning strategy for 40-80 hours a week is not easy. So... why would that
>> be cringe?
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 3, 2021 at 1:42 PM Marcus Daniels 
>> wrote:
>>
>> Ok, part of the story is knowing what is really needed for
>> reproducibility as a function of context.
>> With that, then there's the matter of how much control is afforded.   Is
>> it programmable in predictable ways?
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
>> Sent: Wednesday, November 3, 2021 8:20 AM
>> To: friam@redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRI

Re: [FRIAM] lurking

[Eric Charles]

So... yeah... if Steve was in a conversation with me, and tried to act
proud of beating his drunk buddies in poker... that's exactly what I was
agreeing would be cringe... but nothing that he said has any connection
with the type of strategy that goes into professional poker playing. Why
not point out that the main technical skill in chess or go is "to play less
poorly than the other player"? Obviously that's what you are trying to do,
but what does that mean, and how do you pull it off against opponents who
have dedicated several thousand hours to studying the game?

Like, here is an hour-long seminar, with simulations, that JUST covers some
aspects of how you should play the turn card in Texas Holdem when you are
in a middle position versus the big blind. Matt starts out summarizing how
you get to that point, then the solver comes about 7 minutes in: Improve
your Turn Strategy with Matt Affleck - YouTube
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl4MpNxS_3M>   ..--- If I ran into Matt, I
suspect he'd be pretty humble... but if he was proud of how good he was at
poker, I wouldn't think that was cringy at all... I've probably watched
20-40 hours of his videos, and the way he's manipulating the simulations,
the concepts he's extracting from them, AND his ability to sit down and
implement those strategies is impressive.


This book is 480 pages about the modern conception of game theory optimal
play, and I doubt any academic book about game theory is going to have
better explanations of what game theory is trying to accomplish:   Modern
Poker Theory: Building an unbeatable strategy based on GTO principles:
Acevedo, Michael: 9781909457898: Amazon.com: Books
<https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Poker-Theory-unbeatable-principles/dp/1909457892#customerReviews>
-
I've chatted with Michael online, and he's way more humble than he should
be. He has videos where he chats with Bert Stevens, who is off and on the
#1 player in the world, and they are awesomely educational.



On Sun, Nov 7, 2021 at 9:23 PM Steve Smith  wrote:

>
> On 11/7/21 12:02 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
>
> There must be some kind of “Back to the future” movie that can be made out
> of this.  Doyne Farmer in Vegas all over again, but with current-era AI in
> place of toe-operated computers.
>
> Yah!  Surely Casinos can't begin to restrict computers(phones)/earbuds,
> etc.  on the gaming floor.
>
> Strange coincidence that my sister went to Kindergarten with Vance Packard
> (Norm's brother) in Silver City long before they all became eagle scouts
> and then the Chaos Cabal.  We moved away the next year and I doubt I ever
> met any of them back then.   I came to LANL just before (I think) Doyne
> came... I seem to remember that Norm was there for a summer...  and soon
> came the (in)famous CA conference...   As I remember it the game of
> interest (aside from Life, what with Conway in attendance) was GO with a
> lot of speculation about the implications of local vs global
> "intelligence"...   I was intrigued by HashLife and it's implications for
> finding structure at many scales... I still hope for someone with more
> follow-through than I have to implement a more redundant but "thorough"
> space-time decomposition (an N-1xN-1 kernel over the 4 positions at each
> "zoom" level).
>
> Regarding poker.. I played some low-stakes in college and saw there were
> two things to take in:   the main technical skill was to simply play less
> poorly than the other players at the table and that was entirely
> overshadowed by the social-engineering games of bluffing, etc.   The very
> simple game-theoretic aspect of not depleting your own stake before you
> catch a "lucky streak" going your way was also a good understanding.   I
> played with my "boss" and a number of peers at the time and realized that
> it was more about jockeying for position at work and drinking beer than it
> was about winning/losing.  I think the most I ever lost/won was on the
> order of $20-$40 which in those days was roughly 1-2 shifts wages... a LOT
> if I joined them weekly... too rich for my blood!  I still feel that
> *technically* playing well really means just playing less badly.
> Blackjack being even more obviously so?
>
>
> Yikes.
>
>
>
> On Nov 7, 2021, at 1:56 PM, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
>
> My inclination would be to invest in standoff biometrics (e.g. Eulerian
> Video Amplification) and then find the best poker playing code.   It ought
> to be possible to automate and perhaps get rich in the process.
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Sunday, November 7, 2021 7:42 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] lurking
>
> I DID read all the thread so far...

Re: [FRIAM] best microphone?

[Eric Charles]

I got a Yeti Pro last summer and have been very happy with it. It comes
with software that will gate and suppress, as well as several other
features. If you're doing high end recording, it might not work, but it's
been just fine reducing normal home sounds from the background for my
purposes. Although, if background noise is your main concern, you might
just want to get a highly directional microphone with a good windscreen.



On Sat, Nov 6, 2021 at 12:56 AM Gillian Densmore 
wrote:

> Like Carl said, they don't. you can use noise gates and noise
> supression settings for OBS, zoom, or what ever. you'll be using.  Headsets
> with noise cancelling (what streamers use), Lapel Mics[lavleiers]  will
> give a much better chance, even el-gato's with some pretty good built in
> filters and it's own hims from just being used helps give you a better
> chance filtering the sounds out. All that's insane overkill, and costly,
> for zoom. just a basic headset if your really bugged by background noises..
>
> On Fri, Nov 5, 2021 at 8:46 PM Marcus Daniels 
> wrote:
>
>> Great.   I have my winter and non-winter workspaces so that gives me an
>> excuse to get several.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>>
>>
>> Marcus
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Carl Tollander
>> *Sent:* Friday, November 5, 2021 7:14 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] best microphone?
>>
>>
>>
>> Generally, microphones don't do background noise processing (there are
>> probably some all-in-one mics that try but then you end up committed to the
>> associated app).   See below for thoughts on Zoom and noise.   Anyhow, be
>> forewarned, audio is a rabbit hole, with near it-seems-like-infinite
>> twiddleware.  Rewarding, if you want to go there, but I'm assuming you have
>> other fish to fry.
>>
>> I teach Japanese drumming (Taiko) online, so I need to move (e.g. jump)
>> around a lot and stay in frame while I'm talking.  For others, this might
>> translate into leaning back in your chair away from the mic, or pacing
>> while composing a thought.
>>
>> So, when I started all this, I got a wireless mic (Samson XPDm Headset
>> Digital Wireless System) plugged into a USB interface (the Scarlett brand
>> is pretty good for low-end work, I would avoid the PreSonus).  Check out
>> sweetwater.com  or bhphotovideo.com - their sales service is great, but
>> don't let them sell you software.
>>
>>
>>
>> As I say, I like to move around and stay in frame while I'm talking.
>>  So, I also got an Obsbot Tiny camera.  *Much* better than the stock 2020
>> Macbook Pro laptop camera and it follows you around to keep you in frame.
>> obsbot.com  (no you do not need the software)  And yes, better than the
>> Logitech.  Plug and play.  It has its own mic built-in, but haven't messed
>> with it much yet.
>>
>>
>>
>> There are *many* steps up.  They get expensive, mostly in terms of your
>> attention.   I can advise, but.at the end of all this you might be
>> happy with a Rode podcaster mic.  If you do get hooked for music, Shure
>> (SM-57) and AudioTech (AT-220)  are good brands.  And then there are
>> various mixer boards and audio processing software.. Take care, or
>> audio will eat your head.
>>
>>
>>
>> Zoom background noise processing is not awful, but best use depends quite
>> a bit on your rig, so you have to experiment.  Alas, there's no monitoring
>> function, so to experiment you have to record your session and play it back
>> or have a very patient friend on the other side of the conversation.  I've
>> also been messing with whereby.com as a Zoom alternative and sometimes
>> the latency is better.
>>
>>
>>
>> At the end of all this you if you don't move around much you might be
>> happy with a Rode podcaster mic.
>>
>>
>>
>> And then video mixing it a whole 'nother thing, but if you want multiple
>> cameras - look up "ATEM Mini".
>>
>>
>>
>> Good luck, you'll need it.
>>
>> Carl
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 5, 2021 at 10:59 AM Marcus Daniels 
>> wrote:
>>
>> Anyone have suggestions for microphones for videoconferencing in an
>> environment with background noise?   The main background noise is nearby
>> fan noise, and sometimes also louder air conditioning.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>>
>>
>> Marcus
>>
>>
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>>
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Re: [FRIAM] lurking

[Eric Charles]

I DID read all the thread so far... but I'm curious how we got to one of
the starting points: "as cringy as it may be for some dork to be proud of
their Poker prowess"

I am somewhat satisfied with my Poker mediocrity, certainly not proud of
it... but if I met someone who was ACTUALLY startlingly better than I am,
and they were proud of that, I wouldn't find it cringy. (Ditto in my other
hobbies, like Aikido.)

I guess if I met someone who had a slight edge in their drunk-buddy home
games, and they were super proud of THAT, then i would find it cringy.
(Ditto someone who's the best Aikido student in their small dojo, but who's
obviously not more than that.)

When I see academic work on game theory, it's usually of lower quality than
what the good poker players are doing these days. Mastering the game is
crazy hard, and being able to sit down and implement a coherent and winning
strategy for 40-80 hours a week is not easy. So... why would that be
cringe?




On Wed, Nov 3, 2021 at 1:42 PM Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> Ok, part of the story is knowing what is really needed for reproducibility
> as a function of context.
> With that, then there's the matter of how much control is afforded.   Is
> it programmable in predictable ways?
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
> Sent: Wednesday, November 3, 2021 8:20 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] lurking
>
> Yeah, I agree. But context is Queen. When the virus is created in the lab,
> it's done with real stuff distilled from the soupy world. Given enough of a
> difference in context, the robot may not be able to re-constitute the life
> because the soupy world surrounding the robot doesn't have the real stuff
> required. Such drastic context changes could be a result of translation
> through space or time. E.g. trying to construct, on Mars, an organism
> read/serialized on earth. Or e.g. trying to construct an organism read
> millennia ago, millennia in the future. It's naive to talk about "science"
> as if any given read-out formula thereby expressed is *complete*. Science
> is abstraction to a large extent ... maybe not as abstracting as math, of
> course. And science must remain "open" precisely because any formula it
> expresses is suspect, perhaps incomplete.
>
> My favorite example is the magic brewing stick:
> https://medievalmeadandbeer.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/scandinavian-yeast-logs-yeast-rings/
> It *was* scientific to lay out the magic stick as a critical element of the
> brewing process, only to discover later that the stick isn't the important
> part.
>
> On 11/2/21 2:39 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > Even if that were so, viruses have been pulled from history or tweaked
> and created in the lab.   So we have a design specification, and the means
> to make it.One could imagine a robot fabricating the close-to-the-metal
> machine too.   There is a story one can write down how it is done.   If
> there is no story, it is not science we are talking about, it is something
> else.
>
>
> --
> "Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Revising the American Revolution

[Eric Charles]

Wil Wheaton - best known for playing Wesley Crusher on Star Trek, and
related appearances on Big Bang Theory - turns out to be a really cool guy,
who went through some traumatic stuff during his childhood celebrity days.
He gave a relevant answer to a fan question on this topic:

Q: I have more of an opinion question for you. When fans of things hear
about misconduct happening on sets/behind-the-scenes are they allowed to
still enjoy the thing? Or should it be boycotted completely? Example: I’ve
been a major fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer since I was a teenager and it
was currently airing. I really nerded out on it and when I lost my Dad at
age 16 “The Body” episode had me in such cathartic tears. Now we know about
Joss Whedon. I haven’t rewatched a single episode since his behavior came
to light. As a fan, do I respectfully have to just box that away? Is it
disrespectful of the actors that went through it to knowingly keep watching?
Answer: I have been precisely where you are, right now. In fact, we were
just talking about this a few days ago, as it relates to a guy who wrote a
ton of music that was PROFOUND to me when I was a teenager. He wrote about
being lonely and feeling unloved, and all the things I was feeling as a
teenager.
He grew up to be a reprehensible bigot, and for years I couldn't listen to
one of the most important bands in my life anymore.
But this week, someone pointed out that he was one member of a group that
all worked together to make that thing that was so important to me. And the
person he was when he wrote those lyrics is not the person he is today. And
the person I was when I heard those lyrics doesn't deserve to be shoved
into a box and put away, because that guy is a shit.
This is a long way of saying that Joss sure turned out to be garbage.
Because of who I my friends are, I know stuff that isn't in the public, and
it's pretty horrible. He's just not a good person, and apparently never was
a good person.
BUT! Buffy is more than him. It's all the actors and crew who made it. It's
all the writers who aren't Joss. Joss is part of it, sure, and some of the
episodes he wrote are terrific.
At least one of the episodes he wrote was deeply meaningful to you at a
moment in your life when you'd experienced a loss I can only imagine. The
person you are now, and the 16 year-old you were who just lost their dad,
are more important than the piece of shit Joss Whedon revealed himself to
be.
His bad behavior is on him. He has to live with it, and the consequences of
it.
16 year-old you, who just lost their dad, shouldn't have to think about
what a shit Joss Whedon is for even a second. That kid, and you, deserve to
have that place to revisit when you need to go there.
I can't speak for the other actors, even the ones I know. But I will tell
you, as an abuse survivor myself who never wanted to be in front of the
camera when he was a kid: it's really okay for you to enjoy the work. The
work is good and meaningful, and if nobody is going to watch it because of
what one piece of shit did two decades ago, what was it all for?
I'm not the pope of chilitown, so take this for what it's worth: I believe
that when some piece of art is deeply meaningful to a person, for whatever
reason, that art doesn't belong to the person who created it, if it ever
did. It belongs to the person who found something meaningful in the art.
If it feels right to you to put it away and never look at it again, that's
totally valid. But if it brings you comfort, or joy, or healing, or just
warm familiarity to bring it out and spend some time with it, that's
totally valid, too.
I've written a lot of words. I hope some of them make sense and are helpful
to you.




On Sat, Oct 23, 2021 at 2:09 PM  wrote:

> Hi, everybody,
>
>
>
> I know.  Who has time to listen to podcasts.  Most of them are redundant
> and so can be listened to while making chicken pot pie.  But every once in
> a while there is one I have to listen to twice because it acquaints me with
> a bunch of stuff I never will dive into but which I really want to know.
>
>
>
>
> https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-story-of-americas-founding-you-werent-taught-in-school/id1548604447?i=1000539039484
>
>
>
> The interviewee here Woody Houlton, a promoter of the 1619 Project, whose
> goal is to recast the American revolution and particularly the constitution
> as counter revolutionary moves.  It puts me in mind of Charles Beard, an
> American historian who wrote in the 30’s a materialist history of the US
> which was largely buried during the McCarthy era.  (I hope I have this
> right, John)  The REAL revolution, on this account occurs after the Civil
> War with the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.   What I love about this is
> that illuminates for me what is going on in our current debates over
> textualism.  The Textualists are trying to get us back to the pre-Civil War
> constitution which was dedicated to preserving the prerogatives of the
> privileged classes.  

[FRIAM] Why you studying with them?

[Eric Charles]

Seems relevant to some of our discussions of moral issues.

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Re: [FRIAM] That was fun!

[Eric Charles]

Those are very useful. You should have one.





On Fri, Sep 17, 2021 at 3:01 PM  wrote:

> I can buy this car travel adapter for 16 bucks and it will come tomorrow.
> Shall I bite?
>
>
>
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Buywhat-Inverter-Converter-Adapter-Computer/dp/B07QPS15YK/ref=sr_1_11?dchild=1=automobile+travel+adapter=1631903687=8-11
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[Eric Charles]

"Re: your claim that monism unifies epistemology and ontology"

I wouldn't phrase it that way. I would say that there is no meaningful
distinction between epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics, and that if
they appear to be different that is a sign of confusion. You can approach
the same subject with those frames in mind, I guess, as a statement of your
personal reason for being interested in the topic... but ultimately they
are all asking the same questions, and if we thought about them that way it
would be an improvement.



On Thu, Sep 16, 2021 at 3:09 PM uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:

> I doubt I'll make it to vFriAM tomorrow. My schedule hasn't been conducive
> lately. So, I'll take the nugget in your text below that I can reply to
> best. My claim is *not* that the distinction between phenomena and
> epiphenomena is relative to a point of view. That's *your* claim, not mine.
> My claim is that epiphenomena do not exist. They are figments of your
> imagination ... or, more generously, your calculus for analyzing the world.
> They are purely *formal*, syntactic things with no correlate in the world.
>
> If we can carry multiple frames around with us, we can swap them in and
> out and rank them according to which frames produce more or fewer
> epiphenomena. Those that produce fewer should be prioritized over those
> that produce many. In that, I think, we agree. If we refuse to carry around
> multiple frames, then we're (preemptively) stuck with whatever one we've
> landed on. But none of this should be taken as a claim that epiphenomena
> exist, only as an indicator for how articulated and complete our frame is
> ... i.e. its fidelity to what does exist.
>
> Re: your claim that monism unifies epistemology and ontology -- I've cited
> Wolpert's "Limits of Inference" several times and I doubt citing it again
> will be helpful. But if we think of all the ways we can think about the
> universe as part of the universe, then we can see that there might be a
> smaller set of ways to think that have high fidelity than the number of
> ways that have low fidelity. Wolpert's argument is that there can be only 1
> maximally faithful way to think. It's a strong argument. It's stronger than
> Rosen's argument that there does not exist a "largest model". But, to me,
> both are monist; and both lower the number of epiphenomena.
>
>
>
> On 9/16/21 11:41 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Are we mixing up monadism with monism?  I think the
> epistemic/ontological distinction fails under monism.  Either everything is
> ontological or everything is epistemic, and in any case there is no
> in-principle distinction to be made between them.
> >
> > Under peirce's triadic monism all experience is cognition (yes, even
> body experiences) and all cognition is in signs, themselves having always
> three "arguments".  (Sorry, =? Variables,
> things-you-have-to-have-there-or-the-expression-is-incomplete. ) So, not
> only is there a point of view in every proposition, the proposition is
> incomplete until the point of view is made explicit, or at least well
> understood between the propositor and the propositee.   Asserting that the
> phenomenon/epiphenomonon distinction is relative to a point of view is no
> challenge to that distinction.  The whole discussion concerns the shifting
> of frames and the search for a frame that will hold them both.  So, I don't
> dispute your relativism;  I just insist that it's already built into my
> line of thought.  And sometimes I sense that you NEED ME TO BELIEVE that
> there is only one reality and that it is mine.  That's not what a Peircean
> monism asserts.  Even mine.
> >
> > Since  you assert that you disagree and yet there is no way I can
> steel-man your position that is incompatible with this relativistic monism,
> I need to talk to you.  So, tomorrow, around ten am your time, I will
> extricate myself from the Mosquito Infested Bog, and try to reach Vfriam
> from my car.   We'll see how that goes.
> >
> > If we can get beyond a "relativisticker that thou" pissing contest, I
> would like to go on and discuss this difference between body knowledge and
> brain knowledge as if the brain were not, after all, a part of the body.
> (Sorry, that was a bit of straw=manning, for which I need to apologize, but
> for clarity, need not delete).  Your actual distinction was between
> Cognitive knowledge and Body knowledge.  Many people (perhaps not you) want
> to treat this as an entirely different kind of knowledge, and I think a lot
> of evil can spring from such a radical differentiation.  For me, it is once
> again an instance of frame shifting and the search for a frame that will
> embrace both the "cognitive" and the "somatic" frame.  I would frame them
> both as modes of experience, say, urgent and reflective.  Which of these
> modes of experience "proves out" then becomes an empirical question.
> Writing this, I now see that built into my thinking is the idea that a kind
> of hyper-reflective 

Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[Eric Charles]

Dave might be accurate in his self-assessment - i.e., that he would put it
on a shelf after a while. I'm pretty sure the $50 billion industry suggests
that many would not. Though, maybe they would put their first one on the
shelf, and only come back to it intermittently for nostalgic reasons, while
collecting multiple helmets with similar functionality that had novel
color, shapes, and attachments.

On Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 11:25 PM  wrote:

> Hi, everyone [who is still following this thread].
>
>
>
> Before I go back on my meds, I just thought I would send along this link
> <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/compass-pleasure_b_890342>.  I should
> perhaps be embarrassed at sending a HuffPost link, but the summary of the
> old Olds/Milner research seems accurate enough and it is very succinct.
>  On my account we have been talking all along about the epiphenomenal
> relation and in particular, that version of it which relates goals to
> functions.  Functions are epiphenomenal with respect to the goals that
> serve them.  The function of a pleasure (ie, a goal system) is to get us to
> do stuff that urgently needs doing.  What happens when we access the goal
> system directly and make it possible to do essentially nothing and achieve
> the goal?   Dave says, having learned what it had to teach him, he would
> put the device on a shelf.  But how would he do that and WHY would he do
> that?  What other goal-pleasure would be sufficient to mobilize and direct
> him in the putting of the device on the shelf.
>
>
>
> Ok.  Best be done for a bit.  Let’ see.  One tablet a day by mouth.  Sorry
> to bother you all.  I do learn a lot from these exercises, even if nobody
> else does.  And then later I write something good, and that pleases me.
>
>
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Marcus Daniels
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 15, 2021 9:45 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc
>
>
>
> One could mimic the raw signals from sexual organs, or one could mimic the
> internal signals that are derived from those signals, that integrate with
> relevant context that create the perception of loving feelings and their
> “meaning”.   Like in the dreams that have been discussed recently, the
> semantics are also encoded into neurons.
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 15, 2021 6:10 PM
> *To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc
>
>
>
> Yes, but WHY?
>
>
>
> Probably time for me to figure out what my point is, here.  First of all,
> we are deep in the epiphenomenon, spandrel, intensionality, blah-blah-blah
> perplex here,   Pleasures are pleasures because the mean something, and if
> you disconnect the pleasure from the thing it means … disconnect the red
> fluff on brown wire from the thing it means to the male robin … you get the
> bird attacking the fluff and no territory defended.
>
>
>
> I thought we were talking about a direct brain stimulation that produced
> orgasmic pleasure.  So all your industry—salacious as it might be -- is
> irrelevant, no?  And so is my puritanism.
>
>
>
> What is not irrelevant – if indeed it is still regarded as valid science –
> is that ancient study with rats that involved wires in the “pleasure”
> center of the brain.  Unless my Puritan Brain remembers falsely, the rats
> just went on pressing the bar until they starved to death.  The
> evolutionary meaning of pleasure is what it leads you to do.  Everything
> else is just spandrel.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 15, 2021 8:31 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc
>
>
>
> Nick man sometimes you are so old and Puritanical-New-England-ey
> it is hilarious. "Hey everyone! Let's imagine that there wasn't a $50
> *billion* dollar industry producing sex toy... ok... if that didn't
> exist, how would we invent one?"
>
>
>
> Like should I send you links of people in public places with gadgets
> (remote controlled by premium-level paying fans) inserted in various
> orifices? It's a whole genera.
>
>
> • Size of the glo

Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[Eric Charles]

Nick man sometimes you are so old and Puritanical-New-England-ey it
is hilarious. "Hey everyone! Let's imagine that there wasn't a $50
*billion* dollar
industry producing sex toy... ok... if that didn't exist, how would we
invent one?"

Like should I send you links of people in public places with gadgets
(remote controlled by premium-level paying fans) inserted in various
orifices? It's a whole genera.

• Size of the global sex toy market 2019-2026 | Statista





On Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 1:20 PM  wrote:

> Ok.  Imagine a device that would produce, at command, an orgasm.  Imagine
> further that it had settings that could be tweaked to produce different
> intensities and kinds of orgasm.  Imagine finally that it has a
> randomization setting.  Imagine that it costs 49.95, 30 day money back
> guarantee.
>
>
>
> Would you buy it?
>
>
>
> Does this have to do with the Shirley/Kaye Sera dimension Glen and I were
> talking about? (I think Glen was the one amongst you clods that got that
> joke.)  We who are in love with Shirley would never touch it;  you
> Kaye-lovers would buy it, I suppose.  Does it have anything to do with lack
> of respect for the decisions that Evolution has made for you?  Is the
> Shirley/Kaye distinction a version of the Apollonian/Dionysian
> distinction?  I hope that Dave West, priest as he is at the Temple of Kaye,
> with straighten me out on my Nietzsche.  See also, *Patterns of Culture
> *
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Marcus Daniels
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 15, 2021 1:02 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc
>
>
>
> I think the Flow TD-NIRS system is like $50k for now, but it isn’t really
> buyable yet.The Flux magnetometer system would be in the millions, I
> think.   Nothing beats implanted wires!
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 15, 2021 6:46 AM
> *To:* friam@redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc
>
>
>
>
>
> On 9/14/21 6:01 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> See kernel.com
>
> Yeh, like that...   plenty of what looks like slick pre-release
> hype-by-allusion, yet undeniably evidence that the development in this area
> is in a virtuous feedback loop.   A quick gander didn't present me with any
> numbers but the gear looks pretty pricey...   probably the stuff of a
> future motorcycle/bicycle/climbing helmet to upload your brain as you go
> into a skid/fall/tumble!
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sep 14, 2021, at 4:40 PM, Steve Smith 
>  wrote:
>
>  Glen-
>
> Ha! Well, not for me. I'm a technophile. Even more important than 
> drug-induced experiences are those induced by other technologies like 
> transcranial magnetic stimulation, which I don't regard as fundamentally 
> different from connectivity drugs. Implants would be even better for 
> interacting with that hairball of [intero|proprio]ceptive feedback loops that 
> compose consciousness as well as pain.
>
> I've been dabbling with transcutaneous electro neural stim and electro
> muscular stim (TENS/EMS) primarily for pain and rehab (Mary's recent
> back/leg pain/dysfunction), trying to work it into the VR/AR simulacral
> artifacts I already fiddle with in Visual/Aural/CheapHaptics.
>
> The accessibility of VR/AR gear (HUD/HMD/GPU/CPU) has already overshot my
> wildest dreams of a couple of decades ago   I fiddled with EEG pickups 20
> years ago but it was too early or at least there was a metaphorical
> impedance mismatch of sorts. I've NOT dabbled with transcranial magnetic
> stimulation...   I don't even know if it is accessible.  I am curious
> (guardedly hopeful) that these things are maturing at a pop/commercial
> level faster/better than at the professional level.   There may well be a
> crowd-sourced ensemble exploration underway right now.
>
> Regarding your *muscaria/fly agaric* aspirations, I'm hearing something
> more like homeopathy or law-of-similars since the "fly" in *fly agaric*
> comes from etymologically the habit of using it to poison flies by infusing
> it in milk to attract flies.Maybe this is entirely a tangent (most of
> my observations here *are* tangents?).
>
> - Steve
>
> So, I'll leave the sweat lodges and eating of wiggling things to more 
> adventurous types like you. But the drugs need not be orally administered. 
> I've always wanted to try to fly by painting myself with muscaria.
>
>
>
> On 9/14/21 11:03 AM, Prof David West wrote:
>
> Glen: /Were I fully liberated, I'd be doing a lot more, and a lot more 
> diverse, drugs than I do./
>
>
>
> Diversity of *_/experiences/_*, not just drugs!!
>
> -  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[Eric Charles]

That is a really good article. Oddly well balanced, veering at times one
direction or another, then correcting. Coulda been tightened up a bit...
but if that's my only criticism, that's pretty high praise!





On Tue, Sep 14, 2021 at 4:33 AM ⛧ glen  wrote:

> The New Puritans
>
> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/10/new-puritans-mob-justice-canceled/619818/
>
> Steps extracted:
> 1) you divide your acquaintances into heroes, villains, and
> good-but-useless.
> 2) you can't continue in your (admittedly "successful") learned behaviors
> (career, etc.).
> 3) you obsess that everyone hates you and apologize, even if you feel you
> did nothing wrong; and your apology is rejected.
> 4) people investigate you, confirming your persecution complex by
> anonymous proceedings controlled by people you think hold grudges against
> you.
>
> And I suppose 5) you grapple with what to do after the episode (e.g.
> become a Free Speech Warrior - FSW or move on).
>
> --
> glen ⛧
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Calling Bullshit

[Eric Charles]

Typically a "shadow docket" denial usually only has a paragraph or two
explaining why the case will not be heard. I'm not sure I've even seen one
with a full majority opinion. It is not unusual to have a short dessent,
but 4 dessents seems highly unusual. Of course, I'm an amature at this, so
others might know more. I do poke pretty deeply into a few decisions every
year, and have been doing that for a while, but am certainly not a SCOTUS
expert.

The majority rationale seems to be what is summarized before the Robert's
dissent in the link provided above.

To prevail in an application for a stay or an injunction, an applicant must
carry the burden of making a “strong showing” that it is “likely to succeed
on the merits,” that it will be “irreparably injured absent a stay,” that
the balance of the equities favors it, and that a stay is consistent with
the public interest. Nken v. Holder, 556 U. S. 418, 434 (2009); Roman
Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 141 S. Ct. 63, 66 (2020) (citing
Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 555 U. S. 7, 20 (2008)).
The applicants now before us have raised serious questions regarding the
constitutionality of the Texas law at issue. But their application also
presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they
have not carried their burden. For example, federal courts enjoy the power
to enjoin individuals tasked with enforcing laws, not the laws themselves.
California v. Texas, 593 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (slip op., at 8). And it is
unclear whether the named defendants in this lawsuit can or will seek to
enforce the Texas law against the applicants in a manner that might permit
our intervention. Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U. S. 398, 409 (2013)
(“threatened injury must be certainly impending” (citation omitted)). The
State has represented that neither it nor its executive employees possess
the authority to enforce the Texas law either directly or indirectly. Nor
is it clear whether, under existing precedent, this Court can issue an
injunction against state judges asked to decide a lawsuit under Texas’s
law. See Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123, 163 (1908). Finally, the sole
private-citizen respondent before us has filed an affidavit stating that he
has no present intention to enforce the law. In light of such issues, we
cannot say the applicants have met their burden to prevail in an injunction
or stay application. In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not
purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in
the applicants' lawsuit. In particular, this order is not based on any
conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas’s law, and in no way limits
other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas
state courts.

---



On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 1:49 PM uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:

> I can't find the majority opinion. This page implies there should be one:
>
> https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/21a24.html
> The dissenting opinions are all HTML linked. Maybe I'm just incompetent.
>
> Yeah, there's no doubt that the provenance of the artifact (and its
> content) is also important and might submit to (manual) deconstruction. But
> at some point AI will eventually do a much better job. The robots will be
> better postmodernists than we could ever be.
>
> On 9/13/21 10:40 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > If there is an artifact, it makes me wonder what the point of the
> artifact practitioner is.Law, medicine, this should all fall to AI.
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
> > Sent: Monday, September 13, 2021 10:20 AM
> > To: friam@redfish.com
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Calling Bullshit
> >
> > Exactly. EricC's comment on correlations between the
> originalist-textualist axis and the liberal-conservative axis ignores the
> useful idiot, Tool, aspect. The question is one of whether or not there is
> such a thing as Ground Truth. When ACB makes some decision based on some
> occult perspective, originalist or pragmatist or whatever, how can she be
> sure she's not merely a tool for the conservatives?
> >
> > In long-winded, written out justifications, that artifact allows for
> both criticism/error-correction *and* postmodern reinterpretation of that
> artifact. But with dead-of-night, unsigned rulings, we're no better off
> than drunk texting one's ex- ... or "wingin' it" when cutting lumber for
> your porch.
> >
> > So, here, ACB is demonstrating that she *is* a political hack, by
> defending occult decisions, post hoc. And it doesn't really matter what
> quadrant it lands on in the 2D space. What matters is the *method*, laid
> out in bare artifacts that we can all criticize.
> >
> > One of my employees argued, in response to my criticism, that I simply
> don't understand his "method" or "process". Well, yeah. Right. Of course I
> don't understand your (pretention at a) method or process because I have 

Re: [FRIAM] Calling Bullshit

[Eric Charles]

"Originalism", in this context, is a label for a particular tradition of
textual interpretation, when faced with current legal challenges. Haggling
over the exact label that would be appropriate isn't as useful as it seems.
The tradition in question strives to determine the intent of the laws at
the time of its writing and/or the implications that the word and phrase
choices would have had at the time of the writing. That such an approach is
inherently imperfect is of no real consequence, as no approach is going to
be executed perfectly. The intent stands as the intent, regardless of
whether it can ever be perfectly achieved.

There is nothing inherently "timeless" about a statement that because
militias are important to maintain we should have the right to bear arms.
In fact, there is a clear political process (constitutional amendment) that
can alter that text at any time. The Judicial approach in question holds
that, until such a time as there is sufficient will to change the text, the
text stands, as designed at the time. If we modified the 2nd Amendment at a
Constitutional Convention next year, all "originalist" justices, moving
forward, would try to determine how the intent of that new phrasing, as
understood in the year 2022, was relevant to legal challenges that were not
anticipated at the time of the new-Amendment's writing.

I'm not saying that's the best approach available, just that it is
coherent, and well understood within the legal profession.





On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 12:13 PM Marcus Daniels 
wrote:

> If one “read through” to a timeless intent, then how is originalism,
> original?   It implies that deconstruction is unwelcome beyond some point.
> That it is essentially a religion.
>
> > On Sep 13, 2021, at 8:43 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:
> >
> > On 9/13/21 8:14 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> Glen, I wonder what ACB thinks "pragmatism" is.   Holmes was a prime
> member of the Metaphysical Club with Peirce and James.  Was he a Judicial
> Pragmatist?  On Comey's account?  I would love to know.  Thing we have
> learned is that a besotted person is a besotted person first and last, no
> matter how intelligent they are.
> >
> > Yeah, I thought her [ab]use of the term might trigger you. I think her
> usage is just fine. Were she at my pub, I'd ask what the difference is
> between being pragmatic and being "textual" ... those liberal justices are
> probably "postmodern marxists". Pffft.
> >
> >> On 9/13/21 8:14 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> >> Being an 'originalist' is the sort of thing that bible school might
> teach one to do?
> >
> > I don't think so, at least not in a naive sense. I've never been to
> Bible School. But my Church of Christ friend claims they were taught to
> "read through" the text, like a good modernist. So, they were very tolerant
> of metaphor. The grape juice and crackers were *not* actual blood and
> flesh. At least *some* subset of the protestants aren't batsh¡t.
> >
> >
> > --
> > ☤>$ uǝlƃ
> >
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Re: [FRIAM] Calling Bullshit

[Eric Charles]

If one were being generous with her (not sure why we would, but "if"), then
she is correct, in so much as modern "conservative" politics is only
loosely related to the tradition of "originalist" jurisprudence. Modern
"conservative" politics wants judges that agree with their agenda, not
judges that act on principles, and they prefer originalist judges over the
alternatives based on a few issues that are highly important to them at the
moment. It is, at best, a temporary alliance.

This can be seen more clearly in cases where all the justices agree, or
when the court splits on other than the "libreal-conservative" dimension.
The vitriol that ensues from the conservatives towards the judges who were
"supposed to" find in their favor is impressive - it seems far stronger, at
least in that moment, than their vitriol towards the judges that
consistently disagree with them. Of course, we pay the most attention to
cases where the "liberal-conservative" split happens... so that dimension
has a strong salience whenever SCOTUS is benign discussed.

As for the pragmatism thing, I think she is clearly using it with a small
"p" instead of a capital "P" as one might with Oliver Wendell Holmes, or
even Judge Posner. Beyer seems interested in finding practical solutions to
the problems before him, more than sticking to grand principles or a
particular, unique, way of approaching the law.



On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 11:43 AM uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:

> On 9/13/21 8:14 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Glen, I wonder what ACB thinks "pragmatism" is.   Holmes was a prime
> member of the Metaphysical Club with Peirce and James.  Was he a Judicial
> Pragmatist?  On Comey's account?  I would love to know.  Thing we have
> learned is that a besotted person is a besotted person first and last, no
> matter how intelligent they are.
>
> Yeah, I thought her [ab]use of the term might trigger you. I think her
> usage is just fine. Were she at my pub, I'd ask what the difference is
> between being pragmatic and being "textual" ... those liberal justices are
> probably "postmodern marxists". Pffft.
>
> On 9/13/21 8:14 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > Being an 'originalist' is the sort of thing that bible school might
> teach one to do?
>
> I don't think so, at least not in a naive sense. I've never been to Bible
> School. But my Church of Christ friend claims they were taught to "read
> through" the text, like a good modernist. So, they were very tolerant of
> metaphor. The grape juice and crackers were *not* actual blood and flesh.
> At least *some* subset of the protestants aren't batsh¡t.
>
>
> --
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Can empirical discoveries be mathematical?

[Eric Charles]

As I said a few days ago: I think traditionally,  "mathematical" would have
been synonymous with "rigorous deduction from a minimal number of axioms",
but I doubt that approach is clear cut anymore.

I am pretty confident that modern mathematics is WAY more open-field than
that.  The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy seems to agree with that
intuition, though I think it is an even broader topic than implied by just
this entry:  Non-Deductive Methods in Mathematics (Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy) 





On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 11:19 AM Barry MacKichan <
barry.mackic...@mackichan.com> wrote:

> Briefly, and in my opinion, mathematics can only make claims like ‘if A is
> true then B is true’. To say B is true, you must also say A is true.
> Eventually you have to go back to the beginning of the deductive chain, and
> the truth of the initial statement is inductive, not deductive or
> mathematics. You can predict the time and place of an eclipse, and this
> prediction is based on mathematics and a mathematical model of reality —
> Newton’s laws in this case. But the truth of this prediction is inductive
> since the initial positions and velocities for the calculation are
> inductive, as is the applicability of Newton’s laws to reality, and even
> the ‘fact’ that mathematics can describe the universe is inductive.
>
> And Einstein showed that the applicability of Newton’s laws was in fact
> wrong and offered a new model — which we inductively accept as true, if
> only provisionally.
>
> Mathematics cannot prove any statement about the real world. Any such
> statement will depend at some point on an inductive truth or a definition.
>
> —Barry
>
> On 3 Sep 2021, at 18:10, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Ok, is mathematics (logic, etc.) a way of arriving at true propositions
> distinct from observation or are mathematical truths different from
> empirical truths?
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Can empirical discoveries be mathematical?

[Eric Charles]

Why are we parsing discoveries into those two types?

I think traditionally,  "mathematical" would have been synonymous with
"rigorous deduction groin a minimal number of axioms", but I doubt that
approach is clear cut anymore.

Given that you claim to have sussed out your insight via systematic
*empirical* observation,  and you claim it regarding a particular class of
*empirical* objects... I'd go with "empirical"... if I had to choose one
for you... but I'm also not sure why we would play this game to begin with.

Unless you confessed to me that it was insecurities tied to a deep seeded
physics envy... in which case I'd at least understand why you asked.

On Fri, Sep 3, 2021, 1:25 PM  wrote:

> By discovery, I mean only happening on a regularity that was unexpected.
>
>
>
> I guess I didn’t need all the razzle-dazzle about the t-shirts.  Let’s say
> that I, being totally naïve of logic, announced to friam that I had made a
> survey of all my never-married male friends and each and every one claimed
> to be a bachelor.  I offered to you-all, as an insight, that all unmarried
> men are bachelors.   I think I have made that “discovery” empirically; you
> might have arrived at the same insight logically.  Perhaps the empirical vs
> mathematical thing is methodological.  Of course, I now realize that
> inorder to arrive at my empirical conclusion, I had to invoke the logical
> form, induction: this man is un-married, this man is a batchelor, all
> batchelors are unmarried.  You might have arrived at the same conclusion
> deductively (i.e., mathematically).
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Friday, September 3, 2021 12:48 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Can empirical discoveries be mathematical?
>
>
>
> Nick,
>
> I quote from https://www.britannica.com/science/scientific-theory
>
> "In attempting to explain objects and events, the scientist employs (1)
> careful observation or experiments, (2) reports of regularities, and (3)
> systematic explanatory schemes (theories). The statements of regularities,
> if accurate, may be taken as empirical laws expressing continuing
> relationships among the objects or characteristics observed."
>
> Based on this, I reckon, because you have reported the regularities, you
> have discovered an empirical scientific law. Congratulations!
>
> Next is to systematically explain it, then you have a scientific theory!
>
> Maybe I did not answer your question? You asked if this is an empirical
> discovery or a mathematical one.
>
>
> IMO you have done only the first part, the empirical discovery. This could
> now be taken further and if you can prove it using formal mathematics, then
> only can you claim you have made a mathematical discovery. So, it is (not
> yet) a mathematical discovery. Sorry to blow your bubble.
>
> P
>
>
>
> On Fri, 3 Sept 2021 at 17:24,  wrote:
>
> Colleagues,
>
>
>
> Years ago, my daughter, who knows I hate to shop, bought me a bunch of
> plain T-shirts.  The label’s on the shirts were printed, rather than
> attached, and so have faded.  Each morning, this leaves me with the problem
> of decerning which is the front and which the back of the shirt, and even,
> which the inside and which the out-.  After years of fussing with these
> shirts I decerned a pattern.  Up/down, inside-in/inside-out, left/right,
> front/back, crossed arms/uncrossed arms, you can’t do one transformation
> without doing at least one other.
>
>
>
> Is this an empirical discovery or a mathematical one?
>
>
>
> I guess it boils down to whether “front/back” entails in its meaning
> another transformation.   Should we call empirical discoveries
> “discoveries” and mathematical discoveries “revelations”?
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Can empirical discoveries be mathematical?

[Eric Charles]

I mean... I feel like "discovery" if the first challenge for your
classification system to justify... ;- )

On Fri, Sep 3, 2021, 11:24 AM  wrote:

> Colleagues,
>
>
>
> Years ago, my daughter, who knows I hate to shop, bought me a bunch of
> plain T-shirts.  The label’s on the shirts were printed, rather than
> attached, and so have faded.  Each morning, this leaves me with the problem
> of decerning which is the front and which the back of the shirt, and even,
> which the inside and which the out-.  After years of fussing with these
> shirts I decerned a pattern.  Up/down, inside-in/inside-out, left/right,
> front/back, crossed arms/uncrossed arms, you can’t do one transformation
> without doing at least one other.
>
>
>
> Is this an empirical discovery or a mathematical one?
>
>
>
> I guess it boils down to whether “front/back” entails in its meaning
> another transformation.   Should we call empirical discoveries
> “discoveries” and mathematical discoveries “revelations”?
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Liberal dilemmas

[Eric Charles]

It didn't seem like you to be implying that sort of thing, which is why I
phrased it in terms of what I am used to seeing (rather than ascribing such
motives to you). Thanks for the clarification!





On Thu, Sep 2, 2021 at 12:56 PM uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:

> Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that I'm confident in the concept of
> progression. I'm not, as my rants against concepts like the singularity and
> risks of fascism in the US *should* indicate. I don't think anyone's better
> off, despite the empty rhetoric of Pinker et al.
>
> But I do believe in dynamism. The world today is very different from the
> world of yesterday. To think otherwise would be a bit foolish, I think.
> And, along with that, the *modes* of behavior of yesterday will mostly not
> apply today. ... "mostly" is an important, and purposefully vague, part of
> that sentence. I have no idea what modes translate across time (or space)
> and what modes do not. That's one of the sources of my pluralism and
> pragmatic rejection of monism.
>
> As for the particular of access to hot springs. I think it's kindof
> offensive for us to assume we should be able to pollute nature at will.
> Sure, the fittest and richest amongst us will always be able to pollute
> everything, toss cars into space, shit on Mt. Everest, etc. But if there
> are limits to access, it seems perfectly reasonable to me. I can't do as
> many pull-ups as I'd like. And Dave can't navigate to hot springs. Big
> deal. Get over it.
>
>
> On 9/2/21 9:45 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
> > I'm interested in what's behind that "obsolete" and "left behind" talk.
> Usually I see that kind of language in a Progressive context, where it is
> used to indicate that things are moving in The Right Direction, and that
> they are Better Now than they were before, and that the people hurting
> and/or complaining just don't appreciate - gosh darn it - how much better
> off they are.
> >
> > Workers complaining that OSHA codes make it harder to electrocute
> themselves to death; fire codes making it harder for Mrs. O'Leary's cow to
> torch a whole city; etc.
> >
> > Is that what is happening in these situations? Or is it more like a
> bunch of automatons on a restless random walk, while some other
> automatons want to stay where they are?
> >
> > Where does: Making it harder for disabled people to access hot springs
> on public land fall on that spectrum?
> >
> >
> > <mailto:echar...@american.edu>
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Sep 2, 2021 at 10:50 AM uǝlƃ ☤>$  geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> > Well, I do feel pity for Dave and the obsolete people/modes being
> left behind. Nostalgia is difficult. On his deathbed, with so much time to
> sit and think about dying, my dad finally admitted that his "type A
> personality" was an artifact of the circumstances within which he was
> reared ('30s). And it wasn't at all successful under the
> circumstances/times in which me and my sister were reared. My sister took
> something more like Marcus' stance, an unvarnished "get with the program".
> I took a more apathetic stance, "you're gonna to die soon, anyway, at which
> your pain will end."
> >
> > I feel the same way when I see lions at the zoo, once glorious
> masters on the Serengeti, now pathetic creatures burdened with claws and
> teeth and nobody to fight with. It's truly sad. But it's also terrifying to
> me. Am *I* capable of recognizing the signal when it comes my way? Or am I
> destined to be a scared little snowflake, hiding in my nostalgia? ...
> aggrieved, petulant, and burdened with my teeth and claws?
> >
> > I took a morning walk to downtown Olympia right after the pandemic.
> I walk/run around 6am. As I was returning, walking, a man in a black
> gaiter, sunglasses, and black hoodie, covered so well I couldn't see any of
> his flesh ... hell, I don't even know if it was a man. Was walking toward
> me. I didn't think much of it at the time. There was a new building across
> the street with some weird structure (e.g. a kitchen on the 1st floor with
> no other rooms attached ... WTF?). So I crossed to peer through the various
> floor to ceiling plate glass windows to see if I could figure out what it
> was for?
> >
> > When I was done peering into the windows, I noticed the man on the
> other side of the street, stopped, staring at me. That scared me. Did he
> intend harm? Was he offended that I crossed the street? Should I go back
> across and say something? ... well, a couple of women walked past me
> audibly wondering what this building was for and that distracted me. I
> talked to them for a

Re: [FRIAM] Liberal dilemmas

[Eric Charles]

I'm interested in what's behind that "obsolete" and "left behind" talk.
Usually I see that kind of language in a Progressive context, where it is
used to indicate that things are moving in The Right Direction, and that
they are Better Now than they were before, and that the people hurting
and/or complaining just don't appreciate - gosh darn it - how much better
off they are.

Workers complaining that OSHA codes make it harder to electrocute
themselves to death; fire codes making it harder for Mrs. O'Leary's cow to
torch a whole city; etc.

Is that what is happening in these situations? Or is it more like a bunch
of automatons on a restless random walk, while some other automatons want
to stay where they are?

Where does: Making it harder for disabled people to access hot springs on
public land fall on that spectrum?





On Thu, Sep 2, 2021 at 10:50 AM uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:

> Well, I do feel pity for Dave and the obsolete people/modes being left
> behind. Nostalgia is difficult. On his deathbed, with so much time to sit
> and think about dying, my dad finally admitted that his "type A
> personality" was an artifact of the circumstances within which he was
> reared ('30s). And it wasn't at all successful under the
> circumstances/times in which me and my sister were reared. My sister took
> something more like Marcus' stance, an unvarnished "get with the program".
> I took a more apathetic stance, "you're gonna to die soon, anyway, at which
> your pain will end."
>
> I feel the same way when I see lions at the zoo, once glorious masters on
> the Serengeti, now pathetic creatures burdened with claws and teeth and
> nobody to fight with. It's truly sad. But it's also terrifying to me. Am
> *I* capable of recognizing the signal when it comes my way? Or am I
> destined to be a scared little snowflake, hiding in my nostalgia? ...
> aggrieved, petulant, and burdened with my teeth and claws?
>
> I took a morning walk to downtown Olympia right after the pandemic. I
> walk/run around 6am. As I was returning, walking, a man in a black gaiter,
> sunglasses, and black hoodie, covered so well I couldn't see any of his
> flesh ... hell, I don't even know if it was a man. Was walking toward me. I
> didn't think much of it at the time. There was a new building across the
> street with some weird structure (e.g. a kitchen on the 1st floor with no
> other rooms attached ... WTF?). So I crossed to peer through the various
> floor to ceiling plate glass windows to see if I could figure out what it
> was for?
>
> When I was done peering into the windows, I noticed the man on the other
> side of the street, stopped, staring at me. That scared me. Did he intend
> harm? Was he offended that I crossed the street? Should I go back across
> and say something? ... well, a couple of women walked past me audibly
> wondering what this building was for and that distracted me. I talked to
> them for a minute. And when I looked back the guy was gone.
>
> Have I become just like the scared little old lady that lives next door?
> Afraid of progress? Afraid of diversity? Scared of my own shadow? I
> honestly don't know.
>
>
> On 9/2/21 7:22 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > The signal to the welfare rancher is “Find a new line of work and quit
> your whining.”
> >
> >> On Sep 2, 2021, at 7:05 AM, Eric Charles <
> eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> 
> >> "The fact that you agree with the policies and actions does not
> mitigate the harm caused."
> >>
> >> This seems to be a recurring theme in conversations I am having
> recently, in several venues. I make a factual claim about damages caused by
> a policy/action/decision. Someone objects to the factual claim because they
> agree with policy/action/decision. I'm never quite sure where to go in the
> conversation after that.
> >>
> >> Like, I saw someone post, non-sarcastically, a meme claiming that
> Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan was more peaceful that Trump's final
> days in office. When I pointed out how obviously wrong that was, the
> otherwise-sensible-seeming person couldn't do anything but insist that
> withdrawing was the right thing to do. Like... come on man... I get that...
> but what does that have to do with pretending things went well, or were
> "peaceful"?!?
> >>
> >> So, like... yeah... you might agree with restrictions on the uses of
> public lands... but that doesn't mean you need to pretend it has no
> negative consequences for individuals. Just own that those harms will
> happen, as part of your supporting the policy.
> >> <mailto:echar...@american.edu>
> >>
> >>
> >> On 

Re: [FRIAM] Liberal dilemmas

[Eric Charles]

"The fact that you agree with the policies and actions does not mitigate
the harm caused."

This seems to be a recurring theme in conversations I am having recently,
in several venues. I make a factual claim about damages caused by a
policy/action/decision. Someone objects to the factual claim because they
agree with policy/action/decision. I'm never quite sure where to go in the
conversation after that.

Like, I saw someone post, non-sarcastically, a meme claiming that Biden's
withdrawal from Afghanistan was more peaceful that Trump's final days in
office. When I pointed out how obviously wrong that was, the
otherwise-sensible-seeming person couldn't do anything but insist that
withdrawing was the right thing to do. Like... come on man... I get that...
but what does that have to do with pretending things went well, or were
"peaceful"?!?

So, like... yeah... you might agree with restrictions on the uses of public
lands... but that doesn't mean you need to pretend it has no negative
consequences for individuals. Just own that those harms will happen, as
part of your supporting the policy.



On Wed, Sep 1, 2021 at 8:09 PM Prof David West  wrote:

> Marcus, you seem to miss my point; perhaps just baiting me.
>
> Honors at Highlands: this was part of a policy, stated publicly at a Board
> of Regents meeting, "Highlands exists to provide degrees to Hispanic
> students that could never obtain one at any other university. Honors
> degrees, curricula, and courses are racist reasons that students from
> northern New Mexico cannot succeed at other universities and, as such,
> cannot be tolerated at Highlands."
>
> Posters: woman in question was a 30+ year old grad student (we shared the
> same advisor). The posters were in my office for my enjoyment, purchased at
> the university bookstore. Meeting was held in my office at her request.
> They were prints of Dali work considered "great art." The human figures are
> totally androgynous as well as being distorted in typical Dali style. Her
> motive for filing the complaint was, she stated in an email a year later,
> to discredit me with our advisor who she thought showed a preference for my
> work over hers. The HR office, because of their "enlightened liberal
> policies" accepted her complaint on its face, no investigation; as the same
> policy stated one was not needed because, as a male and academic staff, I
> had no defensible position to consider.
>
> Ranchers: this particular family took 'stewardship' seriously and made
> hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of improvements to public land. but
> my point is simply that bureaucrats, kowtowing to liberal environmental
> lobbyists set policy without regard to any 'facts on the ground' or any
> science, simply on liberal philosophy of how things "should be."
>
> Access: I too am a taxpayer. There are some very nice hot springs on BLM
> land near by. They are maintained and upgraded by a volunteer public group
> (pretty informal, word of mouth kind of stuff). Being old and feeble, my
> access is increasing dependent on the use of an ATV. BLM policy dictates
> constant reduction of motorized transport on that land, so it will not be
> long before my access is de facto denied. This is a personal example of a
> "woke" policy on increasing wilderness designations thereby denying access
> to elderly, handicapped, and otherwise marginally abled.
>
> You asked for examples of liberal actions/policies that caused harm, to me
> specifically, but by implication in general. These are tangible examples.
> The fact that you agree with the policies and actions does not mitigate the
> harm caused.
>
> davew
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 1, 2021, at 4:33 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> Welfare ranchers, indeed.   The rest of us have to constantly modernize
> our skills..  But freeloading off the public land and environment that’s
> “multigenerational” and must be preserved?  Why?
>
>
>
> Marcus
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 1, 2021 3:17 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Liberal dilemmas
>
>
>
> I owned 40 acres in Torrance County, NM which was adjacent to a national
> forest.  Ranchers were charged $1.21 per acre per year to use the NF land
> for grazing.  I could have made $48 per year by charging a little less than
> the feds.  My property taxes were $40 per year.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 1, 2021, 1:50 PM Marcus Daniels  wrote:
>
> Dave wrote:
>
> < More significant: I have had my curricular materials censured and have
> had my job threatened on a number of occasions because it was deemed
> inconsistent with liberal values. Ironically, many of these events occurred
> when I was teaching at a Catholic university where I could, with impunity,
> challenge religious orthodoxy, but not liberal woke snowflake 

Re: [FRIAM] Liberal dilemmas

[Eric Charles]

I'm fine with anti-drunk driving laws,  but against wearing-seatbelt laws.
And either way,  it's the crazy mentality I am most abundantly against.

If you resent the existence of drunk drivers,  *because* you think they are
somehow forcing you to drive sober,  that's really weird.

Ditto if you make the meme about seatbelts.

Proudly owning your decision to put others first makes sense.  But the
mentality in the comic is toxic,  and should be avoided.




On Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 12:39 PM cody dooderson  wrote:

> As a thought experiment, imagine that the person in the cartoon is walking
> through a group of drunk people getting into their cars. Does the cartoon
> still bother you or is it somehow related to the politics behind masks?
>
> The laws against drunk driving is also an authoritarian rule that limits
> my liberty. Even seat belt laws limit my liberty. Is it wrong to agree with
> some authoritarians when they make sense?
>
> Cody Smith
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 8:51 AM  wrote:
>
>> I stand by the flag of Bleeding Heart Liberalism ready to do battle with
>> you guys.
>>
>>
>>
>> n
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick Thompson
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
>> *Sent:* Saturday, August 28, 2021 10:06 AM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Liberal dilemmas
>>
>>
>>
>> Marcus,
>>
>> It does take the "bleeding hearts" some time to get to "othering". That
>> said, it's been a while since this started, and the vast majority I know
>> are there now.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 4:47 PM Marcus Daniels 
>> wrote:
>>
>> Nah, it takes the bleeding hearts some time to get to othering.   They
>> need some moral support to do it.
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
>> *Sent:* Friday, August 27, 2021 12:51 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Liberal dilemmas
>>
>>
>>
>> We talk politics sometimes and the "liberal paradox" has come up. This
>> seems like a variation on that. I've seen this comic for half a year now,
>> and it bugs me every time.
>>
>>
>>
>> There is 1) an arrogance to "RIGHT THING", 2) an assumption that anyone
>> acting differently than you cannot have any explanation for their behavior
>> other than selfish idiocy, and 3) a self-centered belief that their
>> behavior is somehow a factor of you, rather than a choice of their own.
>> Even worse than those, 4) there is some fundamental lack of
>> decision-ownership that leads to some insidious places: The assertion that
>> what others are doing leads you to "have to" do something --- HAVE TO ---
>> rather than it being one of many factors that play into your *choosing *to
>> do it.
>>
>>
>>
>> I'm vaccinated, and I wear a mask in public, and I dislike everything
>> this comic seems to be standing for. It is *anti*-liberal. It reveals
>> deeply authoritarian leanings, and a firm dedication to "othering" those
>> around you.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

[Eric Charles]

I'm deeply confused... Am I to get the impression that you want to use
"equal" to indicate things that are not the same,  but use "similar" to
indicate things that are the same?

I mean... you do keep trying to pitch schemes for making inheritance
exactly the same for everyone,  right? Is that not a scenario where the
word "equal" would be appropriate?

Are we going to discuss the virtues of believing that "all people are
created similar"?

I'm really going to need you to spell out more thoroughly the point you are
trying to make.



On Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 9:21 PM  wrote:

> Hi, Eric,
>
> Again, you appear to confound similarity with equality.  *Ex hypothesi*
> and NOT because I am a communist, let us invent a world in which we each
> serve different functions but are all paid exactly the same for serving
> them.  That would be a world in which there was maximum dissimilarity but
> financial equality.  Similarity has to with what we do; equality to do with
> how it’s valued.
>
>
>
> Not you say that the world I just invented is too strange to be relevant.
> But is it that much stranger than a world in which I stand talking
> non-sense to a bunch of students for a pretty good salary while others of
> my generation to get shot at in Vietnam for peanuts?   Ditto you and Iraq.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Saturday, August 28, 2021 8:40 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"
>
>
>
> Merle,
>
> I *am *deeply grateful for my life, which *is *extraordinarily privileged
> in many ways. I'm not sure what deep remorse would have to do with it.
>
>
>
> Even were we to institute some rules that gave everyone in the world
> historically extraordinary privileges, it would be a mistake to give
> everyone the same extraordinary privileges. A world of diverse people
> produces superior outcomes to a world of identical people. Any approach
> that wants to deny that is not going to work out well. Any approach that
> wants to try to give every single person the same life, is not a good idea.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 11:41 AM Merle Lefkoff 
> wrote:
>
> Coming from different perspectives (missing: our interrelationship with
> nature) hasn't ultimately offered us a good future, as well as an inability
> to avoid war and addiction to weapons of mass destruction (including global
> warming).  I suggest that a new perspective for someone like Eric might be
> looking around at his extraordinarily privileged life (his life defies the
> human condition) and finding some way to express gratitude and remorse deep
> within.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 8:05 AM Eric Charles <
> eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> " All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world."
>
>
>
> Hard disagree. Perhaps in a perfect we would reduce the extreme inequities
> a bit, but it would be a much less perfect world if we created actual full
> equality. This is part of my long-standing disagreement with Nick's
> attempts to flat-world inheritance.
>
>
>
> We are in a BETTER world because people had a variety of experiences
> growing up. Some had a new bike magically appear for them one day. Some
> sold lemonade all summer and got one themselves. Some never got the new
> bike they wanted at all. Some never even got a used bike. Some were punched
> and had their bikes stolen. I'm not talking about watching a sibling
> literally starve to death... but I am talking about a broad range of
> unequal personal and social starting places. We are a better world because
> people live very different lives, pursuing very different goals, informed
> by different experiences, and thereby coming at problems from very
> different perspectives.
>
>
>
> "All people are created equal" is a claim about how we have socially
> agreed to treat people *as if* they were "endowed by their creator" with
> certain basic rights. Those are what is now called "negative rights",
> rights not to have others interfere with you in certain ways. But in a
> grand sense, people are not equal, and we wouldn't want them to be; it
> would be disastrous if they were.
>
>
>
> As tempting as it is to arrogantly declare that the world would be a
> better place if it everyone was just like me... I also know that's not
> true. There is no individual for which it is true, not even one as amazing
> a

Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

[Eric Charles]

Merle,
I *am *deeply grateful for my life, which *is *extraordinarily privileged
in many ways. I'm not sure what deep remorse would have to do with it.

Even were we to institute some rules that gave everyone in the world
historically extraordinary privileges, it would be a mistake to give
everyone the same extraordinary privileges. A world of diverse people
produces superior outcomes to a world of identical people. Any approach
that wants to deny that is not going to work out well. Any approach that
wants to try to give every single person the same life, is not a good idea.




On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 11:41 AM Merle Lefkoff 
wrote:

> Coming from different perspectives (missing: our interrelationship with
> nature) hasn't ultimately offered us a good future, as well as an inability
> to avoid war and addiction to weapons of mass destruction (including global
> warming).  I suggest that a new perspective for someone like Eric might be
> looking around at his extraordinarily privileged life (his life defies the
> human condition) and finding some way to express gratitude and remorse deep
> within.
>
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 8:05 AM Eric Charles <
> eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> " All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world."
>>
>> Hard disagree. Perhaps in a perfect we would reduce the extreme
>> inequities a bit, but it would be a much less perfect world if we created
>> actual full equality. This is part of my long-standing disagreement with
>> Nick's attempts to flat-world inheritance.
>>
>> We are in a BETTER world because people had a variety of experiences
>> growing up. Some had a new bike magically appear for them one day. Some
>> sold lemonade all summer and got one themselves. Some never got the new
>> bike they wanted at all. Some never even got a used bike. Some were punched
>> and had their bikes stolen. I'm not talking about watching a sibling
>> literally starve to death... but I am talking about a broad range of
>> unequal personal and social starting places. We are a better world because
>> people live very different lives, pursuing very different goals, informed
>> by different experiences, and thereby coming at problems from very
>> different perspectives.
>>
>> "All people are created equal" is a claim about how we have socially
>> agreed to treat people *as if* they were "endowed by their creator" with
>> certain basic rights. Those are what is now called "negative rights",
>> rights not to have others interfere with you in certain ways. But in a
>> grand sense, people are not equal, and we wouldn't want them to be; it
>> would be disastrous if they were.
>>
>> As tempting as it is to arrogantly declare that the world would be a
>> better place if it everyone was just like me... I also know that's not
>> true. There is no individual for which it is true, not even one as amazing
>> as I, and not even one as amazing as you.
>>
>>
>> 
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 9:00 PM Sarbajit Roy  wrote:
>>
>>> Nick,
>>>
>>> I am not a metaphysicist to debate such things with you. Can just state
>>> cold facts.
>>>
>>> All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world.
>>> However, when the world they are born into is imbalanced, in actuality
>>> their weightage depends on the circumstances of their birth and the larger
>>> society(s) they are born into
>>>
>>> Attempts, by poiticians. to change that imbalance invariably create a
>>> cure worse worse than the disease .. killing sparrows in China or
>>> introducing rabbts to Australia. For instance, the *reverse
>>> discrimination* presently practised in India against Brahmins has been
>>> taken to extraordinary lengths by "vote bank" politics
>>>
>>> Brahmins students are not eligible (barred in law) to apply for 87% of
>>> seats in engineering or medical colleges in India.
>>> They must openly compete with the entire population of applicants for
>>> the remaining 13% of seats
>>> To get admission into a top engineering college, a Brahmin student must
>>> get at least 72 out of 90 multiple choice questions correct in what is
>>> acknowledged to be one of the world's toughest entrance exams, whereas a
>>> reserved category student can get in even after getting all 90 questions
>>> wrong.
>>>
>>> So if I look at it dispassionately, the problem with gaining true
>>> equality is politics and politicians. The misguided attemptsof the USA to
>>> promote / inmp

Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

[Eric Charles]

The question of mechanism is not an easy one. There have been several
attempts to figure out how to speak of it, by those who think mostly along
the same lines as Nick and I do.

Gilbert Ryle famously talked about "dispositions" in this context. Nick
wants to go with pure "up reduction". My buddies Andrew and Sabrina want to
talk about how organisms transition between being different types of
special-purpose machines. There are other options.

No one is denying that there are internal mechanisms which, in the right
environment, will produce the pattern of responses being discussed. The
first question is how to properly understand the relationship between
that *part
*of the mechanism and the "higher-level" phenomenon of interest. All I care
about, and all Nick should care about, in that context is that we keep our
descriptions and explanations distinct. Discussion of brain parts serves to
help explain the behavioral patterns of interest, and at no point should we
confuse the brain parts for the behavioral pattern. That would be like
confusing the breakdown of baking soda with the rising of the bread.
Obviously the baking soda is important, and it is worth describing how it
breaks down when wet, but also we can't rule out that there are other ways
for bread to rise, and if we remove all the wet baking soda, no amount of
staring at it in isolation will result in our finding leavened bread.

The second question is how to understand how we "feel" the emotion. The
answer is going to be something of the form: *We are socially taught to
recognize early correlates of the larger patterns, and to label them in
particular ways.* If you reject the dualistic idea that we have infallible
knowledge about ourselves, you are going to end up at some variation of
that. And if you are *not *going to
reject infallible-dualistic-self-insight, then we shouldn't be anywhere
near this discussion yet, because there are much more basic issues
to figure out first.

Again, in a casual conversation, we can really not care about any of this.

Also, I'm not sure what's up with the thumbs metaphor. You have thumbs, I
could definitely, have your thumbs. Yes, there's a sense in which your
thumb is a complex, dynamic system. But also, your thumb is easily removed
and handed to me. In this modern wonder-age, I could even have it attached
and made functional on my own hand.




On Thu, Aug 26, 2021 at 3:21 PM Steve Smith  wrote:

>
>  uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
> > It's not a matter of being absolute or not. It's a matter of nit-picking
> the particular word used rather than trying to dig into the mechanism.
> Balling up the composition into "have", "are", or "doing" is all useless
> posturing. I don't care. Use "are" if you want. I don't care. It's silly to
> distinguish.
>
> It is not silly to me insomuch as each of those *feels* very
> different.   I see others who seem to *do* their emotions... "throwing
> tantrums" vs "having fits" vs "being spastic"...
>
> My inner experience is more that of "having fits" in the moment, but on
> careful analysis, I sometimes recognize that I might have "thrown a
> tantrum" trying to disguise it as "having a fit".   In the long run
> though, it seems that it does sum to "being spastic".
>
> > What I do care about is *how* we compose from part to whole.
> Superposition is, at least implies, a particular composition, a frequency
> domain, overlay. But I'd argue it's an impoverished one. The question is
> about the "hard problem", qualia, quality, etc. When you look at the
> experiments surrounding general anesthesia, with electrodes planted in
> various places on and in the body, you see time series that exhibit very
> long- and very short- term patterns. Consciousness can be quantified based
> on these time series (and spectral analyses of them). You can do the same
> with semi-conscious sedation. They are not superpositions so much as
> sequential modes, iterative feedback loops, waxing and waning in intensity
> ... waves upon carrier waves. So superposition is necessary, but
> insufficient.y
>
> yes, more aptly "coupling" I'd hazard, though to a casual outside
> observer, superposition is what is observed from the outside?
>
> I was in a men's group for a while which had any number of silly (to me,
> not to them) rituals which included checking in to the group with our
> emotions.   They desperately wanted everyone to conform to the
> mad/sad/glad/scared basis space.   I resisted, often checking in with
> "hopeful yet trepidatious"...   which was the only words I felt
> comfortable using to describe the feelings I had.  They tried to
> intimidate and cajole me into mad/sad/glad/scared.   The best I could
> offer was "I'm glad to be here, a little sad that I have to describe it
> in these four words, scared that you will reject me because I'm not
> following your code precisely, and mad that you might do such a
> thing". I thought "hopeful but trepidatious" was a good shorthand
> for that.   I stuck with them 

Re: [FRIAM] Epic

[Eric Charles]

I love this guy!

He had a couple good covers with TV preachers, but I think I really started
to appreciate him with this bid from up in Canada, earlier this year, when
stores were just starting to do the open-close dance. And the reactions by
those standing around watching are awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YPiUtAde2o



On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 9:10 AM uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:

>
> Covid Rant goes METAL! [San Diego Board of Supervisors meeting Remix]
> https://youtu.be/052iTp04DRY
>
> We've broached the ethics of enjoying the fruits of problematic people
> before. My favorite example is HP Lovecraft's racism and xenophobic
> inspired, insanity inducing otherness. But even HG Wells had some brushes
> with anti-semitism. The world is replete with examples of good art extruded
> from bad people.
>
> This is yet another example. It takes a particular kind of mind to watch
> that dude spitting all over that microphone and see it as poetry.
>
> --
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
> -  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>
-  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
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Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
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Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

[Eric Charles]

" All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world."

Hard disagree. Perhaps in a perfect we would reduce the extreme inequities
a bit, but it would be a much less perfect world if we created actual full
equality. This is part of my long-standing disagreement with Nick's
attempts to flat-world inheritance.

We are in a BETTER world because people had a variety of experiences
growing up. Some had a new bike magically appear for them one day. Some
sold lemonade all summer and got one themselves. Some never got the new
bike they wanted at all. Some never even got a used bike. Some were punched
and had their bikes stolen. I'm not talking about watching a sibling
literally starve to death... but I am talking about a broad range of
unequal personal and social starting places. We are a better world because
people live very different lives, pursuing very different goals, informed
by different experiences, and thereby coming at problems from very
different perspectives.

"All people are created equal" is a claim about how we have socially agreed
to treat people *as if* they were "endowed by their creator" with certain
basic rights. Those are what is now called "negative rights", rights not to
have others interfere with you in certain ways. But in a grand sense,
people are not equal, and we wouldn't want them to be; it would be
disastrous if they were.

As tempting as it is to arrogantly declare that the world would be a better
place if it everyone was just like me... I also know that's not true. There
is no individual for which it is true, not even one as amazing as I, and
not even one as amazing as you.





On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 9:00 PM Sarbajit Roy  wrote:

> Nick,
>
> I am not a metaphysicist to debate such things with you. Can just state
> cold facts.
>
> All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world.
> However, when the world they are born into is imbalanced, in actuality
> their weightage depends on the circumstances of their birth and the larger
> society(s) they are born into
>
> Attempts, by poiticians. to change that imbalance invariably create a cure
> worse worse than the disease .. killing sparrows in China or introducing
> rabbts to Australia. For instance, the *reverse discrimination* presently
> practised in India against Brahmins has been taken to extraordinary lengths
> by "vote bank" politics
>
> Brahmins students are not eligible (barred in law) to apply for 87% of
> seats in engineering or medical colleges in India.
> They must openly compete with the entire population of applicants for the
> remaining 13% of seats
> To get admission into a top engineering college, a Brahmin student must
> get at least 72 out of 90 multiple choice questions correct in what is
> acknowledged to be one of the world's toughest entrance exams, whereas a
> reserved category student can get in even after getting all 90 questions
> wrong.
>
> So if I look at it dispassionately, the problem with gaining true equality
> is politics and politicians. The misguided attemptsof the USA to promote /
> inmpose "democracy" and "equality" in third world countries inevitably
> results in the installation of dictatorships or puppets fronting for
> miltary regimes as a reaction. Afghanistan is a good example of it.
>
> Sarbajit
>
> On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 1:34 AM  wrote:
>
>> Sarbajit,
>>
>>
>>
>> If I understand the shape of the globe correctly, you are waking up
>> pretty soon, and I would like to pick up the conversation about caste, if
>> you don’t mind.
>>
>>
>>
>> I believe the proposition in the subject line.  Given the many ways that
>> proposition can be understood as plainly false, I feel that my belief in it
>> must be defended.
>>
>>
>>
>> In what sense equal?  Not in genes.  Not in uterine environment. .  Not
>> in early nutrition and cognitive stimulation. Not in social capitol. Not in
>> financial capitol.  Not in access to health care.  Not in exposure to
>> future parasites.  Not in almost anything that I can think of.   So, why is
>> the aphorism not just nonsense.
>>
>>
>>
>> I find, that if I examine my thinking in this matter, a very primitive
>> metaphysics about the moment of an individual’s creation.  What follows is
>> flagrantly silly, but here it is.   On my account, at the moment of birth a
>> soul is taken out of storage and assigned to a body.  By “person” in the
>> aphorism, I mean the combination of a particular soul with the particular
>> body.  These assignments are at random.  So, for good or ill, no soul
>> deserves the body it gets.   I cannot claim credit for my genes, my good
>> uterine environment, my social capitol, my financial capitol, my bad hip,
>> the draft deferment it provided, my getting a phd at absolute peak of
>> demand for phd’s, my good education, even my FRIAM membership.  They are
>> all consequences of that initial, random assignment.   Now YOU may credit
>> me in some ways, because knowing that all these advantages have been
>> assigned to me may 

Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

[Eric Charles]

Seconding what I take to be Frank's sentiment, I would be "satisfied" with
MUCH less than I have now. I'm not sure how that connects to the larger
thread though.

I feel bad for people who have been taught to be robustly unsatisfied with
life.



On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 3:46 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> During WW2, while my father was serving in the Pacific, my mother and I
> lived with her parents in a little village in the mountains of rural New
> Mexico.  We lived in a two bedroom house with running water but no
> bathroom.  Heat was provided by a wood burning stove that was used for
> cooking as well.  There was a battery powered console radio.  I was between
> 4 months and 30 months old.  I was bathed in a galvanized washtub and I
> remember that.  We had no shortage of food nor clothing.  My grandfather
> worked for the Santa Fe Railroad as a section foreman and had a secure
> salary.  I remember being happy but, for the most part, I was oblivious.  A
> kid that age isn't happy if the adults, particularly his mother, aren't
> happy.  After my mother and I moved away from there after the War we
> visited often until I was five.  I remember my grandparents enjoying life
> for the most part.
>
> To live like that today would require me to give up almost everything I
> have.  But I feel nostalgic for that time and fond of those memories.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:23 PM  wrote:
>
>> So, of the privileges you enjoy and list, how many would have to go away
>> before you life would be no longer “decent”?
>>
>>
>>
>> To be honest, Idon’t know what I am fishing for here, but for some reason
>> the answer to that question seems important to me. I guess, I am thinking
>> that the notion of a decent life, like that of a essential worker, hides
>> some caste implications within it.  That some of us are of a nature that
>> they SHOULD be satisfied with less than would satisfy me.
>>
>>
>>
>> N
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick Thompson
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter
>> Steenekamp
>> *Sent:* Friday, August 27, 2021 3:06 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick,
>>
>> Thanks for asking how I would characterize the life I'm leading. My life
>> is just great, I'm satisfied with my life. My need for food, safety, love
>> and self-esteem are to a large degree met. Actually, I would rate myself on
>> the self-actualization level on Moslow's hierarchy.
>>
>> It's not about me, there are many people in South Africa who's basic
>> physiological needs like food and safety are not met.
>>
>> Pieter
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 27 Aug 2021 at 20:28,  wrote:
>>
>> Pieter,
>>
>>
>>
>> If, in your ideal world, their lives are “decent, ” how would you
>> characterize the life that you are leading.  The way you talk sounds a bit
>> like the way we talk about “essential” workers here.
>>
>>
>>
>> N
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick Thompson
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter
>> Steenekamp
>> *Sent:* Friday, August 27, 2021 1:49 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"
>>
>>
>>
>> Dave wrote  *Why this obsession with "equality?"*
>>
>>
>>
>> I totally agree. But in South Africa we have a large portion of the
>> population that do not have food on the table every day and I simply don't
>> think it's right.
>>
>> So, my view is that instead of obsessing with "equality", we should
>> obsess that those on the bottom of the economic ladder should at least have
>> decent lives.
>>
>> Pieter
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 27 Aug 2021 at 19:11,  wrote:
>>
>> Dave,
>>
>>
>>
>> I think of mathematical abstractions as aspirations.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks for meeting me on my own ground, here.  You will recall that my
>> original project was to try and discover what the metaphysical foundations
>> might be for my  strong negative  response to the idea that castes are
>> tolerable.  What MUST I assume in order to think as I do.   I have for many
>> years suspected that the fundamental difference between comfortable BHL’s
>> like me and comfortable conservatives is that we liberals see our comfort
>> as arising from good luck, and they see their comfort as arising from their
>> merit.   Now, all metaphysics is non-sense, except insofar as it explains
>> and encourages an approach to other people that is … um …. Good.  I think
>> than mine encourages me to approach people less wealthy than I,  not as
>> people deserving of their fate but as people who have, in some sense, made
>> me a gift.   Thus if there is kharma, it should be that the fortunate
>> “should” pay for the correction of any absence 

Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

[Eric Charles]

All are created equal, in terms of having certain inalienable rights.
Beyond that, I'm not sure anything is claimed in the document mentioned.
They certainly didn't think all men were equally tall, or equally robust,
or equally prepared for leisurely pursuits or hard labor. They didn't think
men were broadly indistinguishable from each other. If I could tweak one
thing, as a more atheistic-leaning classic liberal, I would state it as a
fundamental assumption of our general social construct, rather than
claiming them to have been endowed by a Creator... but other than the
insertion of a deity, I'm not sure what the confusion is.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to
secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People
to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government



-- Eric C.

On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 2:29 PM  wrote:

> Pieter,
>
>
>
> If, in your ideal world, their lives are “decent, ” how would you
> characterize the life that you are leading.  The way you talk sounds a bit
> like the way we talk about “essential” workers here.
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Friday, August 27, 2021 1:49 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"
>
>
>
> Dave wrote  *Why this obsession with "equality?"*
>
>
>
> I totally agree. But in South Africa we have a large portion of the
> population that do not have food on the table every day and I simply don't
> think it's right.
>
> So, my view is that instead of obsessing with "equality", we should obsess
> that those on the bottom of the economic ladder should at least have decent
> lives.
>
> Pieter
>
>
>
> On Fri, 27 Aug 2021 at 19:11,  wrote:
>
> Dave,
>
>
>
> I think of mathematical abstractions as aspirations.
>
>
>
> Thanks for meeting me on my own ground, here.  You will recall that my
> original project was to try and discover what the metaphysical foundations
> might be for my  strong negative  response to the idea that castes are
> tolerable.  What MUST I assume in order to think as I do.   I have for many
> years suspected that the fundamental difference between comfortable BHL’s
> like me and comfortable conservatives is that we liberals see our comfort
> as arising from good luck, and they see their comfort as arising from their
> merit.   Now, all metaphysics is non-sense, except insofar as it explains
> and encourages an approach to other people that is … um …. Good.  I think
> than mine encourages me to approach people less wealthy than I,  not as
> people deserving of their fate but as people who have, in some sense, made
> me a gift.   Thus if there is kharma, it should be that the fortunate
> “should” pay for the correction of any absence of randomness that
> intergenerational transfers might inflict on the children of the poor.
>
>
>
> I lay this out in this naïve way because I thought it might provoke a
> strong (and perhaps equally naïve) reaction from Sarbajit which would make
> it immediately clear what different places we are coming from.  Sarbajit
> may not answer, in which case I am left having revealed my naivete
> metaphysics to you bozos with all the consequences that must follow.
>
>
>
> Now remember, nobody ever claimed that all [persons] are created equal.
> I think that we all will agree that all persons are created equal [ in] and
> that  they are endowed … with certain unalienable rights …” “– i.e., they
> should be equal before the law.  Our differences lie between these two
> poles.  I take the “and” seriously, and think that, above and beyond the
> legal rights implied by the “endowment” conveyed by the second clause, they
> have an obligation of humbleness and gratitude to all those what have their
> good fortune possible, and that, at the very minimum that obligation should
> be expressed in an overtly redistributive tax policy.
>
>
>
> But even if you don’t accept the further implications of severing the two
> clauses in the way that I do, the notion of equality before the law demands
> much more of the rich than they currently pay.  For instance, when J. P.
> Morgan IX runs over the faithful k-9 companion of the homeless Max Morgan
> and Max decides to sue, J.P. can pay the requested amount, including Max’s
> court costs and be done with it.  If he decides to contest, then both
> parties should pay into the court costs in proportion to their wealth and
> the lawyers should be assigned at random.
>
>
>
> To the extent that the list is 

Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

[Eric Charles]

So This is JUST a question of whether we are having a casual
conversation or a technical one, right? Certainly, in a casual,
English-language conversation talk of "having" emotions is well understood,
and just fine, for example "Nick is *having *a fit, just let him be." (I
can't speak for other languages, but I assume there are many others where
that would be true.)

If we were, for some reason, having a technical conversation about how the*
Science of **Psychology*, should use technical language, then we *might *also
come to all agree that isn't the best way to talk about it.

In any case, the risk with "have" is that it reifies whatever we are
talking about. To talk about someone *having *sadness, leads naturally ---
linguistically naturally --- in English --- to thinking that sadness is *a
thing* that I could find if I looked hard enough. It is why people used to
think (and many, many, still do) that if we just looked hard enough at
someone's brain, we would find *the sadness* inside there, somewhere. That
is why it is dangerous in a technical conversation regarding psychology,
because that implication is wrong-headed in a way that repeatedly leads
large swaths of the field down deep rabbit holes that they can't seem to
get out of.

On the one hand, I *have *a large ice mocha waiting for me in the fridge.
On the other hand, this past summer I *had *a two-week long trip to
California. One is a straightforward object, the other was an extended
activity I engaged in. When the robot-designers assert that their robot
"has" emotions, which do they mean? Honestly, I think they don't mean
either one, it is a marketing tool, and not part of a conversation at all.
As such, it does't really fit into the dichotomy above, and is trying to
play one off of the other. They are using the terms "emotions and
instincts" to mean something even less than whatever Tesla means when they
say they have an autodrive that for sure still isn't good enough to
autodrive.

What the robot-makers mean is simply to indicate that the robot will be a
bit more responsive to certain things that other models on the market,
and *hopefully
*that's what most consumers understand it to mean. But not all will... at
least some of the people being exposed to the marketing will take it to
mean that emotion has been successfully put somewhere inside the robot.
(The latter is a straightforward empirical claim, and if you think I'm
wrong about that, you have way too much faith in how savvy 100% of
people are.) As such, the marketing should be annoying to anti-dualist
psychologists, who see it buttressing *at least some* people's tendency to
jump down that rabbit hole mentioned above.



On Tue, Aug 24, 2021 at 10:48 AM  wrote:

> Eric,
>
>
>
> Many points well taken.  I am particularly proud of being dope-slapped by
> Glen about being overly narrow in my understanding of “inside.”  It was, as
> he said, a case of my failure to fulfill my obligation as a thinker to
> steelman any argument before I try to knock it down.
>
>
>
> But let me turn Glen’s steel-man obligation around.  Aren’t you made
> uneasy when people claim that to be private that which is plainly present
> in their behavior?  And doesn’t the whole problem of “What it’s like to be
> a bat” and “the hard problem” strike you as an effort to make hay where the
> sun don’t shine?
>
>
>
> If you do share those concerns, and you worry that I have (as usual)
> overstated my case, then that’s one kind of discussion; if you don’t share
> them at all, then that’s a very different conversation.
>
>
>
> My position on “the realm of the mental” is laid out in many of my
> publications, perhaps most concisely in the first few pages of Intentionality
> is the Mark of the Mental"
> 
> .
>
>
>
> It’s an old argument, going back to Descartes.  Do we see the world
> through our minds, or do we see our minds through the world?
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *David Eric Smith
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 24, 2021 7:47 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions
>
>
>
> It’s the right kind of answer, Nick, and I don’t find it compelling.
>
>
>
> Put aside for a moment the use of “have” as an auxiliary verb.  I can come
> up with wonderful reasons why that is both informative and primordial, but
> I also believe they are complete nonsense and only illustrate that there
> are no good rules for reliable argument in this domain.
>
>
>
> Also, I don’t adopt the frame of using the past tense as a device to skew
> the argument toward the conclusion you started with.  (Now _there_ is a
> category error: to start with a conclusion.  Lawyer!)
>
>
>
> I think probably throughout Indo-European derived languages, “have” is
> used 

Re: [FRIAM] of straw and steel

[Eric Charles]

e 1970s, per faculty actually teaching or
> doing research).  That high tuition isn’t actually cost-received from most
> parents, because a significant fraction of it was spent either giving their
> kids scholarships, building water parks and student centers, or whatever.
> However: if they had given it in need-based grants, they wouldn’t be
> getting _anything_ from the parents.  So in the businessman’s world, the
> investment gathered a maximized monetary profit, which was the criterion
> for how to make it.
>
> As in EricC’s point below, there will be some very rich parents with kids
> so lazy or dull that they aren’t well-prepared even with opportunities, so
> one can’t give them scholarships, and those will pay the sticker price.
> Those are the ones who buy the article at $19, or medical products or
> services at list price.  High profit but small margin on them.
>
>
> In all the recent and ongoing conversations about tuition jubilee or free
> college in the US, I worry that everything real and solvable gets ruled out
> before we ever start, because the above characterization of the real
> business model isn’t front and center.  Not very different for medical
> products and services (I am trying not to use the completely bleached
> expression “health care”), though that has been around long enough that a
> fuller story is not so uncommon to find.
>
> It is right that we have mortgaged a whole generation of kids with
> unplayable tuition loans, and probably somebody should eat that cost.  Kind
> of like when German banks bought junk mortgage bonds in the US, they should
> actually have been allowed to fail for having not done due diligence,
> rather than being bailed out by a government that then had to get the money
> to float them by leaning on somebody else (the Irish, the Italians).  That
> of course doesn’t really work for the reasons correctly given in Minsky’s
> Ratchet
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Stabilizing-Unstable-Economy-Hyman-Minsky/dp/0071592997
> But the threat of it somehow should be used, while the problem is
> building, to keep the banks doing due diligence, and to stop the schools
> from hiking tuition and spending to profit on the margin, or medical
> products and services skyrocketing as a negotiating point against insurance
> companies, etc.  The system either gets fixed as a system, or not at all.
>
> There must be a really great book somewhere, which gets the data and the
> economics better than I can, and also explains this clearly enough that it
> can be an everyman’s book.  It’s messy and a bait indirect, but it’s not so
> hard as to be incomprehensible.  Does anybody know such a book?
>
> Eric
>
>
>
> On Jul 3, 2021, at 5:51 AM, Eric Charles 
> wrote:
>
> Something Glen's analysis,  there are MANY things in the modern economy
> that fit things model,  including healthcare.
>
> The insurance companies demand a steep discount in procedures.
> The hospital's have costs to cover.
> The only possible consequence is to dramatically increase the sticker
> price.  There hospital doesn't expect someone to pay that much for a major
> procedure,  they expect bulk buyers (i.e., insurance companies) to drive
> buisness at ther bulk price. (If some random person does pay sticker price
> every so often,  all the better, but that's not ther primary goal.)
>
> Mattress companies, clothing stores,  etc. that have massive sales 3/4th
> of the year are doing the same sort of thing.
>
> See also my continuous complaints about the "Big Mac Index". Only a small
> % of Big Macs in the U.S. are purchased at sicker price.  The sticker price
> is primarily intended as something to discount off of.
>
> On Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:56 AM uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:
>
> Maybe. But remember, despite the prescriptive linguists out there: a)
> "troll" is not an insult and b) it can be accidental.
>
> All 3 of Russ' "people with grants", Barry's "rent seeking", and Pieter's
> "publishing profits are bad for science" responses are a trawler's delight!
> Rather than talk about the Strawman fallacy and it's variations, we're
> talking ... [sigh] again ... about capitalism and money.
>
> Call it naivete if you want. But it was a very effective troll.
>
> On 6/30/21 7:47 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Oh, I see.  The point is to make getting the individual item so
> expensive that it just balances driving to the library (or doing ILL) with
> subscribing to the Journal.  It's pure manipulation; costs have nothing to
> do with it.
> >
> > Glen, I think you persistently confuse naivete with trolling.
>
> --
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
> -  . -..-. . -. -

Re: [FRIAM] for the optimists

[Eric Charles]

I can't possibly weigh in on this issue re nano science.  That said,  it's
definitely a thing in psychology.  (Cliques monopolizing grant funding,
centralized federal funding coming under control of the politically savvy
members of the field,  etc.)

On Thu, Jul 1, 2021, 12:44 PM uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:

> Your Book Review: Where's My Flying Car?
> https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-wheres-my-flying
>
> Is the following claim made by the author of the book (Hall - seemingly
> accepted by the author of the review) largely accurate? I ask because it's
> a common liberal talking point that publicly funded R has resulted in the
> majority of the tech we rely on in *modern* life. I'm terrible at history.
>
> > Hall blames public funding for science. Not just for nanotech, but for
> actually hurting progress in general. (I’ve never heard anyone before say
> government-funded science was bad for science!) “[The] great innovations
> that made the major quality-of-life improvements came largely before 1960:
> refrigerators, freezers, vacuum cleaners, gas and electric stoves, and
> washing machines; indoor plumbing, detergent, and deodorants; electric
> lights; cars, trucks, and buses; tractors and combines; fertilizer; air
> travel, containerized freight, the vacuum tube and the transistor; the
> telegraph, telephone, phonograph, movies, radio, and television—and they
> were all developed privately.” “A survey and analysis performed by the OECD
> in 2005 found, to their surprise, that while private R had a positive
> 0.26 correlation with economic growth, government funded R had a negative
> 0.37 correlation!” “Centralized funding of an intellectual elite makes it
> easier for cadres, cliques, and the politically skilled to gain control of
> a field, and they by their nature are resistant to new, outside,
> non-Ptolemaic ideas.” This is what happened to nanotech; there was a huge
> amount of buzz, culminating in $500 million dollars of funding under
> Clinton in 1990. This huge prize kicked off an academic civil war, and the
> fledgling field of nanotech lost hard to the more established field of
> material science. Material science rebranded as “nanotech”, trashed the
> reputation of actual nanotech (to make sure they won the competition for
> the grant money), and took all the funding for themselves. Nanotech never
> recovered.
>
>
>
> --
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
> -  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
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Re: [FRIAM] The Dream of Florida

[Eric Charles]

How long do you have?

If a longer amount if time,  California,  absolutely.  Drive the beautiful
coastal highway from San Diego to the giant red woods (or at least San
Francisco).

If it is a short trip,  pick a warm beach in Florida. Miami or Key West or
something like that.  It will be a Big American Beach,  and you won't be
sad you didn't get around as much.


On Thu, Jul 1, 2021, 3:30 PM Jochen Fromm  wrote:

> Thanks Russ, that's very nice.
>
> I am not sure if Los Angeles is a good choice for us. Like New York it is
> such a huge city that it must be exhausting at times. California is of
> course fascinating. Maybe we start with the east coast as Pieter suggested.
>
> Do you plan to travel yourself too, now that you have a bit more time? Or
> do you have other plans? My wife would probably spend more time with her
> horse - she has bought a 19 year old black horse last month which she is
> riding once or twice a week. If I would have more time I would probably
> spend a lot of time in libraries or write another book which nobody reads
> :-)
>
> -J.
>
>
>  Original message 
> From: Russ Abbott 
> Date: 7/1/21 19:16 (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Dream of Florida
>
> Agree with Marcus.
>
> On the other hand, California has much more variety wrt scenery than
> Florida or Hawaii. Also, the weather is typically much nicer than Florida.
> Even though it's July 1, it's in the mid 70's where we live (in Culver
> City ).  But there is probably a
> 20-degree difference between downtown LA and the beach. And it gets even
> warmer further inland.
>
> We have a guest room, which you're welcome to use. The main problem will
> be that it has a single bed, which you will probably find crowded for two.
> It shouldn't be too bad for a few days, though.
>
> -- Russ
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 1, 2021 at 8:22 AM Marcus Daniels 
> wrote:
>
>> Go to Maui!
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>> *Sent:* Thursday, July 1, 2021 7:29 AM
>> *To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] The Dream of Florida
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi, Jochen,
>>
>>
>>
>> It’s the word “relax” that stuck.  What follows is composed entirely of
>> prejudices and hearsay.  Hard for me to imagine relaxing anywhere in the
>> US, certainly not Florida.  Bear in mind California is given to cold water
>> beaches (because of the upwelling) (the hotter California gets, the colder
>> the beaches get) and Florida to warm water beaches (because of the Gulf
>> stream.  If I were wanting a Beach where I could Get Away From It All,  I
>> would go looking in Northern Michigan or perhaps some of the Ontario
>> coastline of the great lakes.  But bear in mind that the food in Rural
>> America is awful.   Take your espresso pot in your suitcase.
>>
>>
>>
>> Now Glen will immediately read me out for sweeping generalizations, as he
>> should.  What’s the pleasure in making generalizations that don’t sweep?
>> So every one of my SG’s has notable exceptions.  But they are hard to
>> find.  The best thing would be to find somebody you trust who knows of a
>> vacation cabin you could have in a month that the owner isn’t using it.
>> On the shore of Lake Winnipesauke in NH, say, only a couple of hours from
>> Boston.  The lake will be utterly deserted, except on weekends, when it
>> will be busy with stupid people on mindless water craft.June in New
>> England has its hazards, of course.  You could have two weeks of drizzle or
>> two weeks of a thundering heatwave.  You might try Nantucket in the off
>> season.  I don’t know anything about that.   There is a little town just
>> over the border in New Brunswick where my family (rarely me) has gone for
>> generations, Called St. Andrews.  Terrible beaches, cold water, but a very
>> pleasant ethos.  And a 27 foot tide!  Local pastime: go to the causeway and
>> watch the tourists cars get inundated.   Don’t know about water temp on the
>> seaward side of Nova Scotia.  Any of these places, you could get lucky and
>> have a hot June, get unlucky and sit in the fog for a month.
>>
>>
>>
>> N
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick Thompson
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Jochen Fromm
>> *Sent:* Thursday, July 1, 2021 2:15 AM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> Friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* [FRIAM] The Dream of Florida
>>
>>
>>
>> We are planning a vacation in the USA next year, if we are still healthy
>> and do not lose our jobs. What do you think is the best sunshine state to
>> relax, Florida or California? Or maybe New Mexico? The best time for
>> Florida is probably spring or early summer before the hurricanes? Or is
>> Florida in a crisis now too?
>>
>>
>>