[FRIAM] bye

[Phil Henshaw]

There is much further to fall, and I think it's likely the Obama plan will
aggravate the failure of the system and push it over the next edge.  It will
certainly not relieve it of strain and allow it to heal.  

The Obama plan is designed by the same theory that caused the collapse, and
intended to pump up the process of harvesting multiplying returns from our
diminishing, dangerously unstable, and increasingly unresponsive set of
physical resources.  If we pull out all stops to continue on that path as
intended it will probably push the system to a significantly greater failure
that may be relatively permanent.

The only thing that will work is for the people who have financial claims to
be paid more than the physical system was able to produce to rescind those
claims,  i.e. come to a realization that having taken too much money out of
the system enough debts need to be forgiven or enough money put back as
needed to relieve the system of unachievable obligations to them.


Phil Henshaw  
NY NY  www.synapse9.com




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Re: [FRIAM] models that bite back

[Phil Henshaw]

And,... how does a poll, or a military analysis tell you what emotions are
going through people's minds?   That kind of clairvoyance is what you're
claiming, you know.   It seems to me a yes/no vote has insufficient variety
in comparison to thought, and a potential kill ration won't tell you if
going ahead will unusually piss people off.

Phil Henshaw  
NY NY  www.synapse9.com


> -Original Message-
> From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On
> Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels
> Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 5:35 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] models that bite back
> 
> Phil Henshaw writes:
> > A model invariably represents only a person's belief's about the
> world.
> >
> Consider surveys of undecided voters where during a debate the surveyed
> turn their individual dials to indicate approval or disapproval.
> > The physical subject being represented is both fabulously more
> complex than
> > any belief system can be,
> A library is fabulously more complex than most any individual's belief
> system as well.
> > and full of things that are differently organized
> > and requires it's own language of description.
> Military simulations, for example, are often large federated systems,
> where each part is designed by a different domain expert.  Some parts
> of
> the models could even be delegated to human decision makers, as in the
> voting example.
> 
> Complexity, subjectivity, and quantification are different issues.
> 
> Marcus
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] models that bite back

[Phil Henshaw]

Well Marcus, isn't that is entirely the point, and why models are unreliable
and need help?

A model invariably represents only a person's belief's about the world.
The physical subject being represented is both fabulously more complex than
any belief system can be, and full of things that are differently organized
and requires it's own language of description.  It's why one needs a
different mode of description for each way of describing what a person is.
It's why science, being one language of description, is incomplete.  

In some cases, a common language seems adequate for many subjects, but only
when you are careful to ask the same kind of question of each subject,
consistent with that common language.  To use common terminology for
different things you do need to ignore the discrepancies as insignificant,
though.  As when your economic system collapses because they were not
actually insignificant, that turns out to be an error.  It ends up being
much safer to think of the physical world as complexly changing place
needing many languages of description and close attention, and for science,
to watch the fit of your model to see if discrepancies are developing.

In order to pick up significant errors due to emerging discrepancies, you
need to become aware of what's happening.  One way is to watch closely for
them.  You can also rely on hearsay.  The world is full of independently
evolving systems, each changing it's organization in response to its own
place in the world, in its own way, and developing emergent behaviors as it
does. Lots of systems we share the environment with seem sort of diffuse and
passive, and others rather distinctly individual with strong independent
individual reactions to being interfered with.  There's no 'book' you just
have to watch.

If you're not watching and only wait till you loose your job to know that
you should have been watching, (like a lot of us are at the moment) you're
out of a job.   It's like we were imagining an open road and were driving
along in our car and didn't see the water coming because it wasn't on the
map.  
The water coming was real obvious to the people looking out the window who
were repeating saying in increasingly urgent tones "hey there's water
coming".   

Am I wrong to be stunned at how difficult it is to get an acknowledgement
here that living in a physical world means that theory is not enough?  


Phil Henshaw  
NY NY  www.synapse9.com


> -Original Message-
> From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On
> Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels
> Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 2:12 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] models that bite back
> 
> Phil Henshaw wrote:
> > That's only in you model, and leaves out the rest of the world.   My
> "hunch"
> > is it's good to watch the rest of the world for diverging
> continuities
> > too...
> >
> Nothing prevents a person from explicitly representing and revising
> beliefs about the world in a model, especially in an ABM.
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Re: [FRIAM] models that bite back

[Phil Henshaw]

That's only in you model, and leaves out the rest of the world.   My "hunch"
is it's good to watch the rest of the world for diverging continuities
too...

Phil Henshaw  
NY NY  www.synapse9.com


> -Original Message-
> From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On
> Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels
> Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 12:25 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] models that bite back
> 
> Phil Henshaw wrote:
> >
> > All well and good, …unless something in the environment develops a
> > continuity of divergence
> >
> A model can be built around whatever hunch and evaluated in a Bayesian
> framework. At some point, if the divergence really exists, the model
> will reflect that in its likelihood. It's all well and good.
> 
> Marcus
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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Re: [FRIAM] models that bite back

[Phil Henshaw]

All well and good, .unless something in the environment develops a
continuity of divergence

 

Phil Henshaw  

NY NY  www.synapse9.com

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of George Duncan
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 11:23 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] models that bite back

 

I agree with Orlando that there is no need for a conflict here. The Bayesian
paradigm provides a unified framework for decision making that integrates a
subjective interpretation of the past record and views of the future.
Further it is a paradigm that in a principled way modifies current beliefs
according to incoming data--Bayesian learning. In an important sense the
Bayesian paradigm does resolve the controversy.

 

George

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 10:22 PM, Orlando Leibovitz
 wrote:

Tom,

Some of us look to both the patterns of the past and a subjective belief
about the uncertain future when making decisions. And sometimes the way we
interpret  past patterns is as subjective as our  anticipation of the
future. Why set up a non existent conflict?

O 

Tom Johnson wrote: 

A sidebar conversation regarding the "reality" of models

'The story that I have to tell is marked all the way through by a persistent
tension between those who assert that the best decisions are based on
quantification and numbers, determined by the patterns of the past, and
those who base their decisions on more subjective degrees of belief about
the uncertain future. This is a controversy that has never been resolved.' 

- FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO ''AGAINST THE GODS: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF
RISK,'' BY PETER L. BERNSTEIN
See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04risk-t.html?_r=1
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04risk-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine>
&ref=magazine

-tj
-- 


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Re: [FRIAM] Classification of ABM's

[Phil Henshaw]

Steve,

I guess it wasn't clear what I meant, and you seem to be sorting over and
over what is the correct pretence is for relating one body of work to
another.  I think bodies of work are like species in a jungle, all part of
the same jungle.I think the two extensions of the conservation laws,
mine and Noether's, are quite different.   Certainly how hers has been used
is greatly different from how I use mine. If anyone has questions. or
finds a glitch. etc. I'd of course be interested.

 

Phil Henshaw  

NY NY  www.synapse9.com

 

From: Steve Smith [mailto:sasm...@swcp.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:40 PM
To: s...@synapse9.com; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Classification of ABM's

 

Phil Henshaw wrote: 

Owen, 
You say:
 
Clip...
  

I'm sure you don't mean to put yourself in the same class as Emmy
Noether, right?  She's of the same historic stature as most of the
early 1900's best scientists, and her symmetry discoveries surely
should have won her a Nobel.


[ph] Well, equally, I'm sure you don't mean that pretense is important in
scientific questions either, right?   I had not known of Noether's theorem
before Saul mentioned the similarity between my prior comment to Steve and
her extension of the conservation laws.   It does seem similar to the one I
did that I was referring to, and my general theorem would seem, initially,
to have Noether's theorem as a limited case.   
 
  


This reminds me of the difference in idiom between the person who says "Did
you notice that I look a lot like Russel Crowe?" and the one who says "Did
you notice that Russel Crowe looks a lot like me?"   It is (more)
conventional to compare ourselves to those (through popularity or recognized
work) rather than them to us.   I believe that both are  correct and
somewhat factually symmetric, but illuminate a critical difference in
perspective.

I admit that when I discover that something I'm working on has been well
covered by someone previous to me, that I have a mix of satisfaction (I
*knew* I was on the right path), of jealousy (it's not *fair* that someone
already took credit for this discovery), and hope (maybe my approach,
unsullied by the "conventional" has something new to offer that was missed
the first time).

I sense that those of us (active?) on this list range across the spectrum
from folks who thoroughly study "previous work" as we proceed, and those who
proceed without necessarily being so thorough.  Sometimes it is the
ignorance of previous work that allows us to find something new, rather than
being limited by what might have been minor mistakes or lack of perspective
in previous work.  On the other hand, we can spend our entire lives simply
re-inventing (discovering) things that were long-since well understood.

One of my areas of interest is in the emergence of new concepts in Science
as well as the convergence of Scientific Disciplines.   It is common for
researchers in one field to not be aware of previous work in another and to
reproduce it under slightly differing contexts, terminology and assumptions.
Ultimately someone in one field or the other (or in a unifying or spanning
field like nonlinear systems, operations research, modeling and simulation,
etc.) to recognize the overlap of work and do the (then) hard work of
resolving one against the other.   This is why being a research librarian or
working in a patent office might be a great way to become a great
inventor/discoverer.

Our recent discussions about Cladistics are apropos of this topic.   In the
process of classifying sets of systems or artifacts, one often discovers
interesting overlaps and redundancies.


- Steve


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Re: [FRIAM] Classification of ABM's

[Phil Henshaw]

Owen, 
You say:

Clip...
> 
> I'm sure you don't mean to put yourself in the same class as Emmy
> Noether, right?  She's of the same historic stature as most of the
> early 1900's best scientists, and her symmetry discoveries surely
> should have won her a Nobel.
[ph] Well, equally, I'm sure you don't mean that pretense is important in
scientific questions either, right?   I had not known of Noether's theorem
before Saul mentioned the similarity between my prior comment to Steve and
her extension of the conservation laws.   It does seem similar to the one I
did that I was referring to, and my general theorem would seem, initially,
to have Noether's theorem as a limited case.   

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether
> 
> Its hard to imagine a "next level" for her work in this context!
> Start here:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem
> and let us know where to extrapolate to get to your theorem.
> 
Clip...
> 
> Can you formalize this in the same way Emmy did?  That certainly would
> put your work on the map big time!
[ph] I did, extending the linkage of the conservation laws for undefined and
open systems 14 years ago and refreshed it last fall, told you and others
about it, and submitted it to Complexity again.  Not a sole responded with
any comment or question.  Over the years I've mentioned it to hundreds of
physicists and mathematicians and believe I have never gotten any comment
except one friend of a friend reportedly saying "it doesn't go anywhere"
about 12 years ago.   It presents continuity as an envelope of developmental
possibilities, and serves as a guide to locating and investigating them.

 
> Sorry if I appear reactionary, but my Quantum Electrodynamics teacher
> spent many a patient hour letting us get a peak of just how ground-
> breaking her work was and how it was used by generations of physicists
> as a means of tackling problems that were otherwise intractable.
[ph] no not reactionary at all, just uninquisitive. 

> 
> I'm not sure of the details of Murray Gell-Mann's work leading to the
> Nobel, but I suspect Emmy was needed to pave the way.
[ph] I have not yet spent the time needed to understand the range of
Noether's work, but I'd surely concur there are indeed lots and lots of
people whose major insights wait and wait for some linkage with other things
to be of either general use or get the recognition they deserve.  I think
that's even an important feature of how complex systems work, how their
development seems to rely on strings of wonderful found objects that seem to
connect unusually well.  I think that's a lot of what the mystery is.

Best,

Phil Henshaw  
NY NY  www.synapse9.com
> 
> -- Owen





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Re: [FRIAM] Classification of ABM's

[Phil Henshaw]

Saul,

On first glance it appears that Noether's theorem is quite similar to mine,
but just does not take it to the next level.   My similar theorem starts
from extrapolating the three conservation laws for energy flow as a
hierarchy applying to all derivative levels, apparently like Noether seems
to do.   Taking that another step finds that the whole hierarchy of separate
laws becomes one unified law of continuity in energy flows.The
particular usefulness of that is to then work backwards from the n'th
derivative to observe that the form of equation for the  beginning or ending
of any energy flow is a developmental sequence which has all derivatives
real and of the same sign for a finite period as a necessity for avoiding
infinite accelerations and energy densities.

 

So, finding rates of change that are all of the same sign then indicates
where one might find a conserved process that is beginning or ending.
What I find most useful is the unprovable extension of the principle, that
anything displaying continuity of change is a conserved process, and
measures of it may have useful conservation laws of their own at least
temporarily.For example, a complex system's total mass (however
estimated) often behaves as if a strictly conserved quantity, changing only
by smoothly differentiable progressions of change.   That's basically how
business development or the health of newborn infants is gauged, using
stable rates of changing scale as a stand-in for complex system
developmental health.Sometimes the conserved properties of systems
display emergent or transient derivative continuities, ones that weren't
there before.   One well documented example is in my plankton punctuated
equilibrium study, where the speciation event was shown to be comprised of a
series of emerging eruptions of developmental change in the organism's
profile area. 

 

Yes, it may well be true that being able to classify things need not be
particularly informative.  As you say, Nothier's theorem only holds for
certain classes of problems, but I think that suggestion is that that class
may be most generally for the class of problems that involve continuity.
It's just a guess, but maybe the way the Wikipedia entry states the
restrictions of Nothier's theorem to systems following Lagrangian dynamics
and so excludes dissipative processes indicates that the theorem might have
been developed with unnecessary shortcuts that reduce its generality.

 

Theorem http://www.synapse9.com/drtheo.pdf 

Background an applying to physical systems
http://www.synapse9.com/physicsofchange.htm  

 

Best,

 

Phil Henshaw  

NY NY  www.synapse9.com

 

From: Saul Caganoff [mailto:scagan...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 6:44 AM
To: s...@synapse9.com; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Classification of ABM's

 

Phil, 

your statement in bold below peaked my interest because there seems to be a
tenuous analogy with symmetry or conservation laws as described by Noether's
theorem <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem> . This theorem
relates symmetries in a physical system to conservation laws. E.g.
rotational symmetry in space is related to conservation of angular momentum.

So does your observation relating energy transfer to derivative continuity
have a deeper basis behind it?

Also with respect to ABM classification, Noether's theorem only holds for
certain classes of physical problem and hence could form a basis for
classification. Similarly for your observation?

After all, there are two classes of  - those that
fall into two classes and those that don't  :-)

Regards,
Saul Caganoff  




On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 9:38 AM, Phil Henshaw  wrote:

Steve,

Well,. there are rather practical sides to some kinds of top level views.
You might notice, possibly, that wherever energy transfer is involved
derivative continuity in developmental processes will be too.   That tells
you nothing at all bye itself, but might give you a great observation tool.
I use it something like a change process magnifying glass. Where a
natural system subject of interest displays continuities of energy flow, or
any other similarly conserved property only changed by addition or
subtraction, it may give you a clear view of the sequence of assembly
(adding and subtracting steps) for the complex systems involved. Seeing
how it's done naturally might give you ideas, or even help you replicate
things of similar kinds.

 

Phil Henshaw  

NY NY  www.synapse9.com

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Steve Smith
Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 10:44 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Classification of ABM's

 

Doug -


On the other hand, top (top, top, top) level views which result in such
profound observations such as

*   Order matters,

Re: [FRIAM] Classification of ABM's

[Phil Henshaw]

Steve,

Well,. there are rather practical sides to some kinds of top level views.
You might notice, possibly, that wherever energy transfer is involved
derivative continuity in developmental processes will be too.   That tells
you nothing at all bye itself, but might give you a great observation tool.
I use it something like a change process magnifying glass. Where a
natural system subject of interest displays continuities of energy flow, or
any other similarly conserved property only changed by addition or
subtraction, it may give you a clear view of the sequence of assembly
(adding and subtracting steps) for the complex systems involved. Seeing
how it's done naturally might give you ideas, or even help you replicate
things of similar kinds.

 

Phil Henshaw  

NY NY  www.synapse9.com

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Steve Smith
Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 10:44 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Classification of ABM's

 

Doug -




On the other hand, top (top, top, top) level views which result in such
profound observations such as

*   Order matters, or
*   Complexity is, or
*   Taxonomies exist

rarely hold much interest for me, unless they make the job of designing
functional complex systems easier.

Which is why I give you high marks for pragmatism!   
clip.


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Re: [FRIAM] Calling all cladisticists

[Phil Henshaw]

Jack,
Nice comments on the history of science and the issue.   I'd agree with the
cladists that design does not reveal its provenance, but with the
evolutionists that most differences in design arise from their provenance.
So to me, looking at your evidence to see a) how to distinguish one pattern
from another and b)where the differences came from, can both lead to methods
that "give us greater or lesser purchase on given pragmatic objectives".

Since most ABM models are probably from one or another community of models,
designed to use some common features as standard and others as experimental,
one might ask the contributors of the model be published in the community
'cladogram' about that, but it's going to end up looking like a network
history map, which is a hard thing to read and probably as much of a
challenge to analyze...


Phil Henshaw  
NY NY  www.synapse9.com



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Re: [FRIAM] Callling all cladisticists

[Phil Henshaw]

Hmmm,. that does seem to be a problem for me sometimes.Didn't you build
on other people's ideas and incorporate them in you models, and so create an
inheritance connection between them? 

 

Phil Henshaw  

NY NY  www.synapse9.com

 

On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 8:41 PM, Phil Henshaw  wrote:

The basis of taxonomy is the developmental sequences of the forms
themselves, so in the case of ABM's it would be finding who built on whose
ideas and model parts.It's basically  a time network map of parentage
and offspring, which naturally branches and cross fertilizes.

Well, I've been designing, developing, and using ABMS for pert' near 18
years, but  I must confess that the the two sentences above conveyed
absolutely no meaning to my poor, befuddled brain.  

I' serious: none.

Clearly it must be time for me to swarm over to the Carnot-Cycle device and
prise open the magnetic strip- secured metallic thermal barrier and extract
a fused-silicon hermetically-sealed pressure vessel containing
Brettanomyces-modified Hordeum <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hordeum>
vulgare carbohydrate, hopefully tinctured with a moderate dosage of Humulus
Lupulus-produced aromatic oils.

Then, once I'm done with that one, I might just go get myself another beer
from the refrigerator.

-- 
Doug Roberts, RTI International
drobe...@rti.org
d...@parrot-farm.net
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell


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Re: [FRIAM] Callling all cladisticists

[Phil Henshaw]

The basis of taxonomy is the developmental sequences of the forms
themselves, so in the case of ABM's it would be finding who built on whose
ideas and model parts.It's basically  a time network map of parentage
and offspring, which naturally branches and cross fertilizes.

 

I asked what families of models there were at the SASO-07 conference on
self-organizing and self-adapting software and controls.   As I recall there
were a great many variations on the pheromone 'wisdom of the crowd' type of
learning systems and a lot of peer to peer organisms, with a couple whacko
things like amorphous computing.What you'd need maybe is someone to
create a relational network map and have the authors of ABM's draw links
with the ones it was based on somehow. ??   

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2009 7:39 PM
To: nickthomp...@earthlink.net
Cc: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Callling all cladisticists

 

Since my prejudice as a programmer is that almost any abstraction is likely
to be useful, then since taxonomies tend to reveal interesting abstractions,
they will very likely be useful. How could they not? At worst a taxonomy
will be found to be uninteresting and unrevealing of underlying design
principles. In that case, we wasted our time in building the taxonomy. But I
would bet that developing ABM taxonomies will turn out to worth the effort.
I can't imagine an argument that says a priori that it won't be. How could
anyone possibly know that?

-- Russ 



On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Nicholas Thompson
 wrote:

Hi, Russ, 

 

Thanks for your interesting response.  

 

Well, the same argument could be made, could it not, against trying to
gather information about human evolution.  After all, it matters not how we
got here, but who we are, now that we are here.  However, in evolutionary
psychology, I have always been soft on the value of evolutionary study for
understanding human psychology because much of what we do makes more sense
in terms of where we came from than it does in terms of where we are.  

 

But, I am not sure the same argument works for the history of agent based
modeling.  I have never heard any agent based modeler claim that he or she
gives a rat's ass about how we got where we are in that domain.  Might it
illuminate how we got "stuck" in some way or other?  I dunno.  I just dont
know enough about it.  

 

But all of this is aside from the question of the value of Taxonomy.
Evolutionary considerations aside, are there natural kinds of ABM;s  And
would a cladistic analysis of model types be useful for programmers trying
to decide what sort of approach to use to a new problem.  In the ABSENSE of
an interest in history, is there anything useful that taxamonies can tell
us?  

 

that is the question I was asking.  

 

Thanks again for helping me clarify, 

 

NIck 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, 

Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu)

 

 

 

 

- Original Message - 

From: Russ Abbott <mailto:russ.abb...@gmail.com>  

To: nickthomp...@earthlink.net;The Friday <mailto:friam@redfish.com>
Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group

Sent: 1/3/2009 2:16:02 PM 

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Callling all cladisticists

 

Hi Nick,

What's wrong with this argument?

My wife teaches what's known as Early Modern English, which means English
literature, culture, etc. in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. She is
interested in how people thought about things in her period as well as how
those ways of thinking developed from previous periods. We are continually
arguing about the value of that sort of study.  If you are interested in the
history of ideas or culture, it certainly has some value. But if you are
interested in the best current thinking about a subject, why should you care
how people thought about it 4 centuries ago? Do I really care about
Aristotelian physics, for example, if I want to know how the physical world
works? I would say, "No" what I really want to know is what the best current
physicist think. 

Why isn't that same argument relevant to ABMs?  What one really wants to
know is how we currently think about ABMs, not the history of the
development of ABMs that got us there.  If that history makes it easier to
understand the current best thinking, so much the better. But it is only in
the service of the current best thinking that history is useful when what
one wants is to know the current state-of-the-art.  

-- Russ 



On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson
 wrote:

 All, 

 

For those of you who werent there, last friday, we got into an intersting
discussion about the possibility of taxonomies of agent based models.  Are
there only a few basic types?  Are many apparently different agent based
models, deploy

Re: [FRIAM] What to do with knowledge

[Phil Henshaw]

Thanks, yes that way of asking it does expose the fact that I often deal
with the issues of poorly explained complex systems like those one finds all
over the place in societies and ecologies.Science is a policy to
understand things better, though, with the knowns ultimately nested in
unknowns, so the posture is still basically similar.

 

For less defined systems the main "system model" is not in a computer,
though, but in the experience of the people involved, reflected mostly in
their way of making snap judgments or asking probing questions, say, about
whether it's time to use the opposite rule as before. You can have
interacting systems requiring alternating choices, for example, like when
driving on a road where you'd expect a left turn to follow a right turn and
so forth, like a period of adding followed by one of subtracting to keep a
balance, and not always make progress by turning in the same direction as
before. It can be both necessary and rather difficult to convince people
with institutional habits to consider remarkable concept like that.   ;-)

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: Russ Abbott [mailto:russ.abb...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2009 3:07 PM
To: s...@synapse9.com; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What to do with knowledge

 

When I first read this question, I thought that it was somewhat off topic.
It is asking about policy rather than science. But the implication of that
perspective is that there is no science of policy, i.e., that political
science or sociology isn't a science. But of course it should be. In fact it
should be one of the sciences of the complex. 

-- Russ 



On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 8:56 AM, Phil Henshaw  wrote:

Doesn't the most dangerous knowledge often come from having a blind spot to
the danger?   That's often the problem when people don't recognize the
meaning of changes in scale or kind, like looking for 'bigger' solutions
(the bigger bomb or bigger shovel approach) when the nature of the problem
changes unexpectedly with scale.

Would you include that in your problem statement?

Phil Henshaw  



> -Original Message-
> From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On
> Behalf Of Steve Smith
> Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 4:13 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group

> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What to do with knowledge
>

> I believe this is an important but subtle topic that deserves much more
> discussion.
>
> I believe that the sfComplex should host a series of live discussions,
> probably starting with a Panel presentation by a handful of people
> representing differing but well-considered points of view.
>
> I have been considering this since we opened our doors in June, but
> find
> that it is a very difficult topic.  Perhaps the most difficult is the
> polarization that seems to come with it.   I have a lot of strong
> opinions on this subject, some of which I've begun to try to share
> here.  This thread (and the one it emerged from) have tapped a few of
> the ideas and opinions that need to be discussed.
>
> We would need a format and possibly a good moderator to help avoid the
> many opportunities for spinning out.
>
> Ideas, issues, topics are welcome.
>
> - Steve

>
>
>
>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] great paper on revolutionary change in systems

[Phil Henshaw]

Steve,

 

Phil -

This is a very timely reference.  I often find that "Survey" papers,
especially from outside of the field I am working in, but on a subject
overlapping said field can be very illuminating.   They help to provide a
common-sense perspective on the problem... help to remove me from the
"trees" enough to see the "forest", as it were.

[ph] Yes, just my thought, that it seems to be a good survey by a management
science person.  The paper has actually been cited 750 times since it was
published in 91.Clarifying the forest by getting a good look at separate
kinds of trees is also one of the things I found interesting in writing my
short encyclopedia entry covering all the approaches to complex systems
science and practice.   I may have left out just a few things. of course.
but it did force me to look at the subject from several different time
tested orientations.   


Your comment about the discontinuities are 

often observably in the mode of explanation used
and not the physical process might be a corollary of Kierkegard's
Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward.
[ph] Well, that certainly applies to the discontinuity between foresight and
hindsight, when in the one you're looking for choices and in the other
you're only looking for excuses. you might say.  :-)  I'll have to read
Gersick more carefully to understand what she defines as the discontinuity
displayed by "revolutionary change" but what I was thinking was more that
once you see the finished form you suddenly see the whole effect of the
distributed events coming together, that would have been all undeveloped and
incomprehensible before.   Most of them you also would never have seen
before because they were distributed, and so not occurring where you were
looking too, as well as because they were undeveloped as a whole and so
would be naturally meaningless too. So even if the distributed process
was continuous and developmental, you would necessarily miss most of it
happening, and then be distracted by the false simplicity of hindsight to
boot.
  

It is my (anecdotal) experience that many people live through, or even
participate in revolutions without realizing it until (long?) after they are
over.  Often the turmoil that is attendant to the "Revolution" is not a new
experience for them, a series of tumultuous periods lead up to it, and it is
only the actual "breaking through" that ultimately marks it as a
"Revolution".   To the extent that that "breaking through" is an emergent
phenomena, it is often not visible at the scale of the individual observer,
especially an observer who is steeped in the old way of experiencing things.


[ph] What that suggested to me was that a parcel of hot air might be locally
experiencing a gradual decrease in air pressure, and not much else, as it
rose along with an air mass as part of a large accumulating column of air
breaking through an inversion layer to become a great erupting cumulus
cloud.Widely scattered things become unobservably connected is the first
step as far as any part may be concerned.   So for emerging "revolutionary
change"  might it sometimes be that neither the parts nor outside observers
could know about it?

Phil

- Steve



 

www.synapse9.com/ref/GersickCJG1991RevolutionaryChangeTheories.pdf (500k) 
Have any of you heard of the "Academy of Management Review" or Connie JG
Gersick?  
 
She might have called it 'emergence' I think, but seems to have done a great
job of threading together six different theories of change between complex
system equilibriums, punctuated by disequilibrium, which she calls
"revolutionary change".  The familiar ones are the models offered by TS
Kuhn, SJ Gould, and I Prigogine.  She seems to come to the conclusion, yes,
there are discontinuities.   My view has developed as being that, yes, there
are discontinuities, but often observably in the mode of explanation used
and not the physical process.   
 
Does anyone else also see the need to have gaps between modes of explanation
for complex system features as a important reason for using the word
'complex' to describe them?
 
Phil Henshaw  
 
 
 

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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[FRIAM] great paper on revolutionary change in systems

[Phil Henshaw]

www.synapse9.com/ref/GersickCJG1991RevolutionaryChangeTheories.pdf (500k) 
Have any of you heard of the "Academy of Management Review" or Connie JG
Gersick?  

She might have called it 'emergence' I think, but seems to have done a great
job of threading together six different theories of change between complex
system equilibriums, punctuated by disequilibrium, which she calls
"revolutionary change".  The familiar ones are the models offered by TS
Kuhn, SJ Gould, and I Prigogine.  She seems to come to the conclusion, yes,
there are discontinuities.   My view has developed as being that, yes, there
are discontinuities, but often observably in the mode of explanation used
and not the physical process.   

Does anyone else also see the need to have gaps between modes of explanation
for complex system features as a important reason for using the word
'complex' to describe them?

Phil Henshaw  




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Re: [FRIAM] What to do with knowledge

[Phil Henshaw]

Doesn't the most dangerous knowledge often come from having a blind spot to
the danger?   That's often the problem when people don’t recognize the
meaning of changes in scale or kind, like looking for 'bigger' solutions
(the bigger bomb or bigger shovel approach) when the nature of the problem
changes unexpectedly with scale.

Would you include that in your problem statement?

Phil Henshaw  


> -Original Message-
> From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On
> Behalf Of Steve Smith
> Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 4:13 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What to do with knowledge
> 
> I believe this is an important but subtle topic that deserves much more
> discussion.
> 
> I believe that the sfComplex should host a series of live discussions,
> probably starting with a Panel presentation by a handful of people
> representing differing but well-considered points of view.
> 
> I have been considering this since we opened our doors in June, but
> find
> that it is a very difficult topic.  Perhaps the most difficult is the
> polarization that seems to come with it.   I have a lot of strong
> opinions on this subject, some of which I've begun to try to share
> here.  This thread (and the one it emerged from) have tapped a few of
> the ideas and opinions that need to be discussed.
> 
> We would need a format and possibly a good moderator to help avoid the
> many opportunities for spinning out.
> 
> Ideas, issues, topics are welcome.
> 
> - Steve
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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Re: [FRIAM] What to do with knowledge

[Phil Henshaw]

Or, what if multiplying cures was the fatal disease...???  Wouldn't that be
a killer!

Phil Henshaw  

> -Original Message-
> From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On
> Behalf Of James Steiner
> Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 11:53 AM
> To: russ.abb...@gmail.com; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
> Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What to do with knowledge
> 
> I recall an amusing short-short story on that theme. It goes something
> like this:
> 
> A scientist or government official or something tells his wife that a
> terrible discovery that had been made--a discovery of some unique and
> unlikely combination of readily available ingredients that could be
> used to destroy the world. In response to her questions, he assures
> her that the world is safe: Only a handful of people--those he
> directly works with, his co-workers and friends at the lab, who come
> over once a week with their spouses to play cards in their
> basement--even know that such a thing is possible, never mind fully
> knowing the actual ingredients, proportions and processes. Further,
> all research records leading to the discovery have been destroyed, and
> he and his colleagues are determined that the knowledge never be
> exposed.No, he assures her, the world is safe.
> 
> At the next weekly card game hosted at their house, being convinced
> that this knowledge is far too dangerous to exist, she poisons the lot
> of them, thus protecting the world from harm.
> 
> ~~James
> 
> On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 1:35 AM, Russ Abbott 
> wrote:
> > The issue of what to do with knowledge is certainly not an easy one
> to
> > resolve.
> >
> > Let's assume that you discovered that human beings were built in such
> a way
> > that a certain kind of virus would wipe most of us out.  Let's also
> assume
> > that you were the only one who knew that.  What would you do?
> >
> > Would you attempt to destroy that knowledge knowing how potentially
> deadly
> > it is? If you did that, how would feel if a nihilistically inclined
> > sociopath discovered the same thing a year later and set off the
> deadly
> > viral chain reaction?  Perhaps if you had informed someone and
> started to
> > work on a defense, we would not have been so vulnerable to what
> turned out
> > to be a surprise attack.
> >
> > On the other hand, if you had informed people, perhaps the word would
> have
> > gotten out and triggered a biological arms race.
> >
> > I'm not claiming there are easy answers to  these questions.  But I
> do think
> > it's important not to deny the nature of the universe.  The premise
> of my
> > thought experiment was that we were built with a certain kind of
> > vulnerability. Not knowing about it is not necessarily the best way
> to
> > proceed. But knowing about it may be dangerous as well.  Sometimes
> there are
> > no good options. But it is not an option simply to wish that the
> world were
> > different. (Of course it is an option, but it doesn't make the world
> > different.)
> >
> > The same probably holds for nuclear weapons. Whether or not "science"
> > discovered that matter could be converted into energy in what could
> be very
> > destructive ways, the fact is that matter can be converted into
> energy in
> > very destructive ways.  It does no good to wish that this weren't the
> case
> > or that no one would every find out about it. That's an act of denial
> about
> > how the world is. And denial is not a good way to live.
> >
> > -- Russ
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 1, 2009 at 6:06 PM, Ann Racuya-Robbins 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> --
> >> Ann Racuya-Robbins
> >> Founder and CEO World Knowledge Bank  www.wkbank.com
> >>
> >> "The theory of general relativity is a theory about the structure of
> >> nature. It is not noble. It is not evil. It is a theory." Russ
> Abbott
> >>
> >> We cannot separate everything into clear categories and thus avoid
> the
> >> tragic consequencesTheories come about because people create
> >> them...their(people's) agency cannot be removed nor in the theories'
> >> consequnces.
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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Re: [FRIAM] What to do with knowledge

[Phil Henshaw]

There's a popular novel on much the same scenario, but in this case it's
about a poem that is fatal if distributed.   "Lullaby" by Chuck Palahniuk
My son devoured it of course.

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 1:36 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What to do with knowledge

 

The issue of what to do with knowledge is certainly not an easy one to
resolve. 

Let's assume that you discovered that human beings were built in such a way
that a certain kind of virus would wipe most of us out.  Let's also assume
that you were the only one who knew that.  What would you do?  

Would you attempt to destroy that knowledge knowing how potentially deadly
it is? If you did that, how would feel if a nihilistically inclined
sociopath discovered the same thing a year later and set off the deadly
viral chain reaction?  Perhaps if you had informed someone and started to
work on a defense, we would not have been so vulnerable to what turned out
to be a surprise attack. 

On the other hand, if you had informed people, perhaps the word would have
gotten out and triggered a biological arms race.

I'm not claiming there are easy answers to  these questions.  But I do think
it's important not to deny the nature of the universe.  The premise of my
thought experiment was that we were built with a certain kind of
vulnerability. Not knowing about it is not necessarily the best way to
proceed. But knowing about it may be dangerous as well.  Sometimes there are
no good options. But it is not an option simply to wish that the world were
different. (Of course it is an option, but it doesn't make the world
different.)

The same probably holds for nuclear weapons. Whether or not "science"
discovered that matter could be converted into energy in what could be very
destructive ways, the fact is that matter can be converted into energy in
very destructive ways.  It does no good to wish that this weren't the case
or that no one would every find out about it. That's an act of denial about
how the world is. And denial is not a good way to live. 

-- Russ



On Thu, Jan 1, 2009 at 6:06 PM, Ann Racuya-Robbins  wrote:

-- 
Ann Racuya-Robbins
Founder and CEO World Knowledge Bank  www.wkbank.com

"The theory of general relativity is a theory about the structure of nature.
It is not noble. It is not evil. It is a theory." Russ Abbott

We cannot separate everything into clear categories and thus avoid the
tragic consequencesTheories come about because people create
them...their(people's) agency cannot be removed nor in the theories'
consequnces. 



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

 


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[FRIAM] encyclopedia entry on complex systems

[Phil Henshaw]

Hi, hope all are having a good holiday.   

 

I'd appreciate any comment on my condensed encyclopedia entry on the history
and issues of complex systems science for the Encyclopedia of the Earth.
The initial review comment was that "I think it is a nice piece, and
appropriate in terms of language, balance, and reading level for the EoE".
Are there basics I'm missing, or better turns of phrase I might use?

 

If you're not familiar with EoE, it's a venture of the National Council for
Science and the Environment with Boston University, and fairly good at
presenting the hard science of global issues for a general educated
audience.   

Review draft: http://www.synapse9.com/drafts/EoE.ComplexSys-pfh.pdf 

EoE Journal http://www.earthportal.org/  and encyclopedia
http://www.eoearth.org/ 

 

 All the best,

 

Phil,

 

e...@synapse9.com   http://www.synapse9.com

"it's not finding what people say interesting, but finding the interest in
what they say"

 


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Re: [FRIAM] art and science

[Phil Henshaw]

How about listing some of the true open questions, you know, what's missing
from the view of science?That would be a kind of scientific use of art.
So many of the 'portals' between mental universes seem to be through their
respective "dark matter".

 

Phil Henshaw  

 


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Re: [FRIAM] News You Can Lose: Financial Page: The New Yorker

[Phil Henshaw]

Surowiecki, view is perfectly logical, but in terms of natural systems
rather unrealistic.   The standard bearers of the old order are unlikely
candidates for agile innovators in the new one.  There are profound language
differences, and lots of other things.  James should watch how real things
really grow.  It sounds much too much like he's thinking of businesses as
only columns in a spreadsheet... 

Phil Henshaw  


> -Original Message-
> From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On
> Behalf Of Owen Densmore
> Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 12:02 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] News You Can Lose: Financial Page: The New Yorker
> 
> James Surowiecki has an article in the New Yorker on the failure of
> newspapers:
> 
> http://newyorker.com/talk/financial/2008/12/22/081222ta_talk_surowiecki
> 
> He makes a few good points from the economic development standpoint.
> Here's an example:
> 
> 
>In a famous 1960 article called “Marketing Myopia,” Theodore Levitt
> held up the railroads as a quintessential example of companies’
> inability to adapt to changing circumstances. Levitt argued that a
> focus on products rather than on customers led the companies to
> misunderstand their core business. Had the bosses realized that they
> were in the transportation business, rather than the railroad
> business, they could have moved into trucking and air transport,
> rather than letting other companies dominate. By extension, many argue
> that if newspapers had understood they were in the information
> business, rather than the print business, they would have adapted more
> quickly and more successfully to the Net.
> 
>There’s some truth to this. Local papers could have been more
> aggressive in leveraging their brand names to dominate the market for
> online classifieds, instead of letting Craigslist usurp that market.
> And while the flood of online information has made the job of
> aggregation and filtering tremendously valuable, none of the important
> aggregation sites, to say nothing of Google News, are run by a paper.
> Even now, papers often display a “not invented here” mentality,
> treating their sites as walled gardens, devoid of links to other news
> outlets. From a print perspective, that’s understandable: why would
> you advertise good work that’s being done elsewhere? But it’s an
> approach that makes no sense on the Web.
> 
> 
> I'd read James' Wisdom of Crowds, but I hadn't realized how broad his
> writing was:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Surowiecki
> 
>  -- Owen
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Approximation in Science and Engineering

[Phil Henshaw]

For a course on approximation to omit individual case differences is
curiously systemic, as that (individual case differences) is one of more
important complex system properties …

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Alfredo Covaleda
Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 3:19 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Approximation in Science and Engineering

 

Hola 

Este material de MIT OpenCourse que tiene que ver con complejidad parece
interesante.


The Art of Approximation in Science and Engineering


http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-055J
Spring-2008/CourseHome/index.htm

-- 
Alfredo Covaleda Vélez
Ingeniero Agrónomo 
Tecnología en Informática
Teléfono celular 311 213 7829
*
"Las matemáticas nos permiten formular
lo esencial y desterrar lo inesencial, lo
cual propicia también hacer las mismas
preguntas en muchos campos sin
comprometernos con ninguno de ellos."
   Norbert Wiener, 1954.
*


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Re: [FRIAM] Science and Art - swarm example?

[Phil Henshaw]

24hr global air traffic image.

http://www.clipjunkie.com/Global-Air-Traffic-vid4043.html 

 

Phil Henshaw  


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Re: [FRIAM] Required Reading: News (Lessig Blog)

[Phil Henshaw]

If Lessig's idea is to make institutions that require trust to work better,
wouldn't experts need to be interested in identifying their own expert
errors to make that work.?

If we found it fun to look for our untrustworthy assumptions, maybe we'd
become more trustworthy...

Phil Henshaw  


> -Original Message-
> From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On
Behalf
> Of Owen Densmore
> Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2008 11:42 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] Required Reading: News (Lessig Blog)
> 
> Lessig leaving Stanford for Harvard:
>http://lessig.org/blog/2008/12/required_reading_news_1.html
> 
> Reason: He needs their infrastructure for tackling his new goal:
> corruption .. well, really, the way money distorts the commons.
> 
>  -- Owen
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] "what generally happens here"

[Phil Henshaw]

Nick,

 

Well, it's hard to follow all the different conventions people have for the
terms they use.  I agree that a generalization implies a broader and more
inclusive way of explaining things, but I find that most generalizations are
rather particular to the assumptions of the person or the community that
finds them inclusively explanatory. so. I keep having to attach the little
foot note "for the way the question was asked".As they say "y" is a
crooked letter.  :-)   but experience suggests there are some explanations
that have very great generality, and other that have less, though it's hard
to tell which much of the time.Asking about 'causes' doesn't always
narrow it down for me.

 

I think it's a little less confusing to ask "how" something happened rather
than "why" as the causal question.You tend to use wild leaps of
association that way. :-) I still endlessly stumble into how language
equates different metaphors in a speaker's and listener's mind with
processes in the physical world we occupy in common, making it unusually
difficult to be clear about whether our words are referring to anything in
common a listener and speaker might independently consider.

 

I think you were recently puzzling over why it's so very hard to communicate
anything in particular.    Do you think this mixed reference problem might
have something to do with that?

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: Nicholas Thompson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 1:57 PM
To: Phil Henshaw; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: "what generally happens here"

 

Phil, 

 

I strongly disagree.  

 

The difference between an explanation and a generalization is, plainly, a
model of the process being summarized in the generalization.  Explanations
inevitably invoke metaphysics ... not only a generalization but a vision,
picture, a understanding of how the world is.  Even if  all swans WERE
white, the fact that this bird was a swan would not, to me at least, be a
satisfying explanation for why it is white.   I guess this is where I part
company with Hempel.  An explanation, by its very nature, requires us to
paint the roof of the chapel from our imaginations.  The explantion is what
accounts for the generality, not the generality itself.  It is the reason
WHY all swans are white, not the "fact" that they are.   In my world,
anyway, explanations speak of causes.  

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, 

Clark University ([EMAIL PROTECTED])

 

 

 

 

- Original Message - 

From: Phil Henshaw <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  

To: [EMAIL PROTECTED];The Friday Morning <mailto:friam@redfish.com>
Applied Complexity Coffee Group 

Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Sent: 12/2/2008 11:09:33 AM 

Subject: RE: "what generally happens here"

 

Why prediction fails does not seem to be just believing your own script.. as
it were.I'm suggesting that "a theory of some sort" is generally the
same thing as "a statement of what generally has happened". The real
question may be sort of the opposite of "but who would believe such a
thing?!" since believing in a theory with little or no way of checking
how what is actually happening is different from it, seems to be nearly
everyone's preference.   To do the latter you need to maintain the open
questions of your induction, and not cast them off as soon as you have made
something useful with it.

 

So I don't think it's a "fallacy of induction" per se. I think it's more
just that any handy tool can be greatly misused if you don't keep asking
"how does it apply here". There is also an all too common preference for
absolutist rules that contributes to our dodging any information about how
they might not quite apply too.  but I guess that's not just a matter of
clumsiness.

 

So, is that saying "it is so" or "it isn't so", I'm confused. ;-)

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: Nicholas Thompson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 12:32 PM
To: Phil Henshaw; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: "what generally happens here"

 

Ah, Phil.  If you are correct that the answer to "what generally happens
here?" is regarded by some as an "explanation", then the source of the
confusion underlying this conversation becomes immediately evident.  

 

But who would believe such a silly thing?!  "What generally happens
here" is just a summary statement of past experience  One cannot rationally
pass from such a summary of past events to any statement about the future
without a theory

Re: [FRIAM] "what generally happens here"

[Phil Henshaw]

Carl, 

I think I agree, but how does a "robust theory" remain "accessible by" many
explanations.  In a sense that's my general idea of having one theory in any
local circumstance for how to search for explanations for the "what's
happening" question.  As I do that it generally involves noting "what's
developing" and identifying the stage of that development in the normal
sequence of things of coming and going (¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸).   Does that fit your
model of one theory accessible to many explanations?  Do you have examples
of other cases that either fail to or demonstrate the aspect of "robustness"
that you're describing?

Phil
> 
> (sorry if this is a repeat)
> 
> A robust theory would then be one that is accessible by many
> explanations, unifying them by showing how they could make equivalent
> paths through an heuristic. It would serve to maintain open questions
> by
> allowing them to be more local. A theory with only one explanation
> would
> be a crappy theory; mistakes would propagate more globally instead of
> getting metabolized more locally.
> 
> I liked Phil's second question, which I take to lead more towards using
> models to make sense of the present, rather than to "predict" ;
> > The second question is more about individual complex systems in a
> > particular circumstance requiring one to start from the limited
> > information that raises the question and to go to the trouble of
> > expanding your understanding while exploring possible patterns in the
> > environment until you find one that seems to fit.
> Another one would be "who's environment?", which I think leads one back
> to ontology formation/niche construction. Is it not so much that
> prediction is "bad" but rather that it is quaint for the types of
> questions we want/need to ask?
> 
> Carl
> 
> 
> Phil Henshaw wrote:
> >
> > Why prediction fails does not seem to be just believing your own
> > script.. as it were. I’m suggesting that “a theory of some sort” is
> > generally the same thing as “a statement of what generally has
> > happened”. The real question may be sort of the opposite of “but who
> > would believe such a thing?!” since believing in a theory with
> > little or no way of checking how what is actually happening is
> > different from it, seems to be nearly everyone’s preference. To do
> the
> > latter you need to maintain the open questions of your induction, and
> > not cast them off as soon as you have made something useful with it.
> >
> > So I don’t think it’s a “fallacy of induction” per se. I think it’s
> > more just that any handy tool can be greatly misused if you don’t
> keep
> > asking “how does it apply here”. There is also an all too common
> > preference for absolutist rules that contributes to our dodging any
> > information about how they might not quite apply too… but I guess
> > that’s not just a matter of clumsiness.
> >
> > So, is that saying “it is so” or “it isn’t so”, I’m confused… ;-)
> >
> > Phil Henshaw
> >
> > *From:* Nicholas Thompson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > *Sent:* Tuesday, December 02, 2008 12:32 PM
> > *To:* Phil Henshaw; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
> Group
> > *Cc:* [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > *Subject:* RE: "what generally happens here"
> >
> > Ah, Phil. If you are correct that the answer to "what generally
> > happens here?" is regarded by some as an "explanation", then the
> > source of the confusion underlying this conversation becomes
> > immediately evident.
> >
> > But who would believe such a silly thing?! "What generally
> happens
> > here" is just a summary statement of past experience One cannot
> > rationally pass from such a summary of past events to any statement
> > about the future without a theory of some sort that models the world
> > as the sort of place where "what generally has happened"" is what
> > happens in the future.
> >
> > Could it be the case that all this talk about the evils of prediction
> > has occured because Epstein and a few others woke up yesterday to the
> > Fallacy of Induction? Oh, my. Say it isnt so!
> >
> > N
> >
> > Nicholas S. Thompson
> >
> > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
> >
> > Clark University ([EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
> >
> > - Original Message -
> >
> > *From:* Phil Henshaw <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >
> > *To

Re: [FRIAM] "what generally happens here"

[Phil Henshaw]

Why prediction fails does not seem to be just believing your own script.. as
it were.I'm suggesting that "a theory of some sort" is generally the
same thing as "a statement of what generally has happened". The real
question may be sort of the opposite of "but who would believe such a
thing?!" since believing in a theory with little or no way of checking
how what is actually happening is different from it, seems to be nearly
everyone's preference.   To do the latter you need to maintain the open
questions of your induction, and not cast them off as soon as you have made
something useful with it.

 

So I don't think it's a "fallacy of induction" per se. I think it's more
just that any handy tool can be greatly misused if you don't keep asking
"how does it apply here". There is also an all too common preference for
absolutist rules that contributes to our dodging any information about how
they might not quite apply too.  but I guess that's not just a matter of
clumsiness.

 

So, is that saying "it is so" or "it isn't so", I'm confused. ;-)

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: Nicholas Thompson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 12:32 PM
To: Phil Henshaw; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: "what generally happens here"

 

Ah, Phil.  If you are correct that the answer to "what generally happens
here?" is regarded by some as an "explanation", then the source of the
confusion underlying this conversation becomes immediately evident.  

 

But who would believe such a silly thing?!  "What generally happens
here" is just a summary statement of past experience  One cannot rationally
pass from such a summary of past events to any statement about the future
without a theory of some sort that models the world as the sort of place
where "what generally has happened"" is what happens in the future.   

 

Could it be the case that all this talk about the evils of prediction has
occured because Epstein and a few others woke up yesterday to the Fallacy of
Induction?  Oh, my.  Say it isnt so!

 

N

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, 

Clark University ([EMAIL PROTECTED])

 

 

 

 

- Original Message - 

From: Phil Henshaw <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  

To: [EMAIL PROTECTED];The Friday Morning <mailto:friam@redfish.com>
Applied Complexity Coffee Group

Sent: 12/2/2008 8:28:03 AM 

Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Wedtech to Friam: earthquakes

 

There's always the difference between the kind of question you ask and the
type of prediction and explanation for it.For example, you might ask
either "what generally happens here" or "what is happening here".   The
first asks for a simple explanation and a rule of thumb type prediction.
It might be helpful for responding to the second question, or not.The
second question is more about individual complex systems in a particular
circumstance requiring one to start from the limited information that raises
the question and to go to the trouble of expanding your understanding while
exploring possible patterns in the environment until you find one that seems
to fit.

 

 I think there are lots of differences between any kind of explanatory
causation and the instrumental causes.Maybe explanations become useless
if they try to include all the complexity of the instrumental processes, but
also often loose their value by ignoring the underlying complexity too.

 

Re: earth quakes, I went to a lecture at Columbia recently that was just
great on the physics of 'slow slips' in a shearing crust, large horizontal
zones of gradual internal tearing within the crust, having leading vibration
events and propagation fronts, etc.

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Nicholas Thompson
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 3:04 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] Wedtech to Friam: earthquakes

 

Dear All, 

 

We have been having a discussion on a SF Site called Wedtech about the
relationship between explanation, simulation, and prediction.  If you want
to get a sense of the starting point of that discussion, have a look at Josh
Epstein's forum entry in the current JASSS, which seems to be just about as
wrong headed as a piece of writing can be.  In it, he makes a radical
separation between prediction and explanation, implying that the quality,
accuracy, scope, and precision of predictions that arise from an explanation
is no measure of that explanation's value.  

 

In the course of trying to discover where such a silly idea might have come
from, I was led to literatures in economics and geophysics where, indeed,
the word "prediction" has taken on a

Re: [FRIAM] Wedtech to Friam: earthquakes

[Phil Henshaw]

There's always the difference between the kind of question you ask and the
type of prediction and explanation for it.For example, you might ask
either "what generally happens here" or "what is happening here".   The
first asks for a simple explanation and a rule of thumb type prediction.
It might be helpful for responding to the second question, or not.The
second question is more about individual complex systems in a particular
circumstance requiring one to start from the limited information that raises
the question and to go to the trouble of expanding your understanding while
exploring possible patterns in the environment until you find one that seems
to fit.

 

 I think there are lots of differences between any kind of explanatory
causation and the instrumental causes.Maybe explanations become useless
if they try to include all the complexity of the instrumental processes, but
also often loose their value by ignoring the underlying complexity too.

 

Re: earth quakes, I went to a lecture at Columbia recently that was just
great on the physics of 'slow slips' in a shearing crust, large horizontal
zones of gradual internal tearing within the crust, having leading vibration
events and propagation fronts, etc.

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Nicholas Thompson
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 3:04 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] Wedtech to Friam: earthquakes

 

Dear All, 

 

We have been having a discussion on a SF Site called Wedtech about the
relationship between explanation, simulation, and prediction.  If you want
to get a sense of the starting point of that discussion, have a look at Josh
Epstein's forum entry in the current JASSS, which seems to be just about as
wrong headed as a piece of writing can be.  In it, he makes a radical
separation between prediction and explanation, implying that the quality,
accuracy, scope, and precision of predictions that arise from an explanation
is no measure of that explanation's value.  

 

In the course of trying to discover where such a silly idea might have come
from, I was led to literatures in economics and geophysics where, indeed,
the word "prediction" has taken on a negative tone.  These seem to be both
fields in which the need for knowledge about the future has overwhelmed
people's need to understand the phenomenon, so that predictive activities
have way outrun theory.  

 

However, acknowledging the problem in these literatures is not the same
thing as making a principled claim that prediction has nothing to do with
explanation.  

 

In the course of thinking about these matters, I have stumbled on an
extraordinary website packed with simulations done by people at the USGS in
Menlo Park California.  the page is
http://quake.usgs.gov/research/deformation/modeling/animations/.   I commend
to you particularly, the simulations done on teh Anatolian Fault in Turkey
(BELOW the stuff on california) and ask you to ponder whether the mix of
simulatoin, explanation, and predicition is appropriate here.  I suggest you
start at the top of the Anatolian series and move from simulation to
simulation using the link provided at the bottom right of each simulation.
Stress buildup and stress release are represented by red and blue colors
respectively and the theory is one of stress propogation.   I would love to
know where the colors come from i.e., how stress is measured.  If there is
no independent measure of stress, then, as in psychology, the notion of
stress is just covert adhockery.  

 

Please let me (us) know what you think.  

 

Nick 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, 

Clark University ([EMAIL PROTECTED])

 

 

 


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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[FRIAM] Reading the signals of environmental systems

[Phil Henshaw]

Reading the signals of environmental systems

 

The Reasoner,  www.thereasoner.org 
(cc FRIAM)

 

I’ve been working with an effective method for reading the signals of change
within and for developing complex systems, for many years.   It seems to
have produced a list of apparently high quality new findings but a rather
short list of people able to understand them, or the simplicity of the
technique.I did a better job describing it than usual with a mixed
philosophy/methodology paper for Cosmos & History, linked below.   It
describes the turning points of developmental learning curves as resources
for learning about the individual systems producing them.When the curves
change direction, the directions of learning for the systems producing them
are changing direction.   What could be simpler?

 

What seems complicated to people is; how do you square that with
determinism?   It’s done as a study of the freedoms that exist within the
laws, particularly the special freedoms of accumulatively divergent
processes, following the lines of reasoning of Elsaser and Rosen.This
approach is a way of “turning the corner” to acknowledging that physical
processes typically combine both deterministic and creative behavior and
design.   It offers that individual system creativity within the laws is a
better and more consistent explanation for finding such diversity of well
organized things than a principle of general disorganization in systems as a
rule.Determinism applies, but outside the range of freedom within the
rules for individual accumulative organizational processes.

 

The variation on the scientific method is based on physics, but is used
unlike other physics methods.  It’s primarily diagnostic physics, for
raising better questions, not representational physics.   It lets one
systematically explore the relationships between the different cells of
self-organization that constitute individual complex systems and their
learning processes.   It’s a window into the animating hearts of our world,
opened by a disciplined way of watching their paths of development and
helping reveal both what makes life exciting and dangerous. Learning to
read the signals of how your environment is changing directions helps a lot
with avoiding the error of not responding to them… 

 

Failing to respond with curiosity to signals of change in your whole
environment is to display a deep denial and a most backward kind of response
to new realities. Today the world is surrounding us with new realities
of all kinds that are confusing, and dangerous, but most people have not
seen them as world changing for us.Having a better way to read the
signals can help. But we still need to cross the “big divide” to
acknowledging the presence of individual complex systems in our world.   We
need to learn to read the individuality of their learning processes and that
for us, each is different and “out of control”.   The big “expert error” of
determinism taken as a universal principle seems to be its implication that
the universe constitutes only one system.

 

It’s also big jump, conceptually, to move from an idea that the symbolic
relationships we sketch on our notepads and in our computers are not
actually what the systems of nature use to operate.If they have been
quite effective in giving us control over lots of things, they have also
been less useful for helping us see what we can’t control.   They won’t ever
give us control over the ranges of freedom that individual systems have
within the laws to develop their own independent designs and behaviors. 

 

It’s a jump that many others have seen but not quite seen how to make.
Stuart Kauffman’s new image of the universe as being indelibly creative in
its natural processes and requiring a “Reinvention of the Sacred” paints the
problem brilliantly.We find ourselves with a deep conflict, representing
the new world we now find ourselves in can’t be done using the tools we
developed to find it.  My approach to crossing that divide is based on a
way to indentify independent behaviors without loosing the connection
between science and evidence, giving away only the small detail of
descriptive certainty by allowing descriptive uncertainty. That’s what a
diagnostic physics for reading the learning curves of individual systems has
some potential to make efficient and effective, while also helping to open
up the fascinating intricacy of our living world to view.   Pfh

 

Life’s Hidden Resources for Learning -
http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/200/259 

Features of Continuity in data shapes -
http://www.synapse9.com/fdcs-ph99-1.pdf 

Physics of Change - http://www.synapse9.com/physicsofchange.htm 

Learning curves & Learning limits -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_curve 

Other Papers - http://www.synapse9.com/phpub.htm 

Physics of Happening –http://www.synapse9.com/drwork.htm 

 

 

 


Phil

Re: [FRIAM] A Very Short Introduction to Everything

[Phil Henshaw]

>From the 1st intro, "How on earth did we get here?"

"Even Albert Einstein found
himself misled by preconceptions when, in 1917, he fudged his
equations describing a mathematical model of the universe to make
it static and unchanging, as he though it should be. When, 12
years later, Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding,
Einstein admitted his ‘blunder’ – if he’d not been blinkered by
expectations, he’d have been able to predict Hubble’s finding."

If that's the "intro".. then perhaps is the post script is

   -If only we were so lucky as to be as unassuming as Einstein...


Phil Henshaw  

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Owen Densmore
> Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2008 3:22 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] A Very Short Introduction to Everything
> 
> A Very Short Introduction to Everything:
>http://images.amazon.com/media/i3d/01/final_version_of_vsie.pdf
> .. is an overview of the "A Very Short Introduction" series from
> Oxford Press.
> 
> Its an interesting series of books attempting to be brief, pocketable
> and good surveys of whatever catches the author's fancy.
> 
> I stumbled over this looking for stuff by one of my favorite authors,
> Philip Ball, who has two titles in the series (The Elements &
> Molecules).
> 
>  -- Owen
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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[FRIAM] between the laws? a "hiding place" for nature's vitality ?

[Phil Henshaw]

So, partly prompted by how it seemed Kauffman got there.There's a
particularly curious "hiding place" for nature's accumulative individuality
and complex behavior within an otherwise "deterministic" universe obeying
universal natural laws. 

 

It's the somewhat deceptive meaning of "uncertainty".If you prove an
uncertainty for some outcome it means that actual events will "at most" do
one thing, and "at least" do another.That's "information" about a
probability of behavior, not a specification for individual behaviors.   It
specifies the "range of freedom" within the system for non-conforming
individual behaviors, which could perhaps lead to accumulatively diverging
behaviors.  When you multiply successive uncertainties, the accumulative
uncertainties are essentially limitless. 

 

Uncertainty is really both a measure of the freedom for individual
differences within a system, and at the same time the a measure of the
limits beyond which individual differences have no effect.   The range
beyond which individual differences have no effect specifies with certainty
the potential for deterministic system control. It means that
statistical mechanics is a way of describing where accumulative individual
behaviors do not matter, not a statement that they never matter. 

 

What is hiding is that within the uncertainties of natural law nature is
free to develop accumulative diverging effects, the eventful stuff.
Accumulation is not "vitalism", but a process that sometimes builds things
that "have vitality", as an emergent property.In my approach to systems
study that's what watching animated accumulations of events is about.
Observed divergence in accumulating change is a process that shows vitality,
and one you can use to closely examine how animated events develop and what
becomes of them.

 

d'zzat help.?   ;-)

 

Phil Henshaw   


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Re: [FRIAM] Stuart Kauffman

[Phil Henshaw]

Alfredo, 

Thanks.   Wow,  I’m sorry trying to talk about my work has been a struggle
over language, somehow, but you could hardly ask for a better recommendation
for it than Kauffman’s numerous rigorous and compelling reasons why a new
approach fitting his problem statement like mine does is needed.  If
anyone knows people in the larger Santa Fe community that might be
interested in successful applications for the world Kauffman painted,
locating good answerable questions about physical system evolutionary
processes by direct study of them, please pass this on to them.

 

It’s the accumulative creativity of processes throughout the universe, not
deducible in any reasonable approximation by any known kind of general laws
or language.It’s how natural form is continually changing in new
improbably creative ways and presented to us as an integrated record of
inexplicable emergent systems combining countless “pre-adapted” features
which no means of guesswork would ever have identified as having local
opportunistic value. It’s that intractable distributed historiosity of
complex organizational developments that displays the need for a new
technique of learning about them lacking any means to realistically
represent them or what they are doing.What seems possible is a tractable
mathematical historiology of developmental system design that allows you to
at least begin a rigorous exploration of the individual design and
development of physical systems themselves, directly.

 

I even like his reverence for the discovery that coming to grips with this
apparent true form of nature that has been hidden in sight from us for so
long calls for more than the normal level of rethinking, our ideas of
reality, our ideas of what’s sacred.Still, even after proving over and
over that we can’t represent natural form with any language, he still didn’t
yet seem to see that the perfect representations already exist, and all we
need is to learn was how to study them.The opportunity to make the
switch away from representing form with universal laws and math is finding a
method of diagnostic exploration of the systems of interest themselves.


 

As I’ve mentioned before, www.synapse9.com/PICS.htm my method should even
work interactively with exploratory modeling at some point, because it
points to where systemization is occurring and changing, and maybe reveals
interesting “cybernetic body parts” to project from the real phenomena and
use in definitional form.   Reconstructing the evolutions of natural form
can start from tracing the temporary conservation of their local laws
.·´ ¯ `·.It’s a present useful approach to studying real
individual systems, at least if you accept looking for simple questions
first, and then looking around for others.

 

Best


Phil Henshaw  systems design science .·´ ¯ `·.
~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040   
tel: 212-795-4844   e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/> 

"it's not finding what people say interesting, but finding the interest in
what they say" 

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Alfredo Covaleda
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 4:49 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Stuart Kauffman

 

Hola:

Did you watch this?

Reinventing the Sacred: Science, Faith and Complexity
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1380403261776709885
104 minutos

Muchos éxitos,

Alfredo 


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[FRIAM] sure signals - when the problem has obviously changed or is about to

[Phil Henshaw]

Nature continues to change the problem set.Systems embody rules, but
they also develop and change.   There are sure signals of that, well, some
sure signals at any rate.  It's sometimes easily forecast from a long
way off, and then necessitates exploration to find new choices. What
could be simpler and more potentially useful, if also seemingly not
understood?

 

Wazup?   What's not to "get" in that?     Really..

 


Phil Henshaw   

 


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Re: [FRIAM] funny shapes..

[Phil Henshaw]

Yes, sure, try finding a buyer for the whole pack of ideas built around
modeling the future is a projection from of the past.   

 

Notice that the exact point I sold things was when I was disturbed by the
unusually high rate of price increase being unsustainable.  I didn't wait
for a high rate of price decrease and project that into the future. I
was reading the curve with the expectation that the future would be
different from the past (having spent decades watching and learning the
signals of when and how).   

 

The problem with projecting from the past is that the future is actually a
diverging processes running into entirely new conditions, and not continuing
processes with random perturbations repeating old conditions.   So the way
to do real forecasting is not juicing up random variables for behaviors that
won't be repeated, but watching the divergences that display the new
behaviors as they develop.

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 10:51 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] funny shapes..

 

Phil - thanks for your timely suggestion that I should sell my Monsanto
stock a year ago. Do you have any recommendations for what I should sell
last week? -- Robert

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 6:40 PM, Phil Henshaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

5yr Dow & Monsanto today
www.synapse9.com/issues/images/Dow5yr11.08.jpg
www.synapse9.com/issues/images/Monsanto5yr11.08a.jpg

Phil



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

 


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[FRIAM] funny shapes..

[Phil Henshaw]

5yr Dow & Monsanto today
www.synapse9.com/issues/images/Dow5yr11.08.jpg
www.synapse9.com/issues/images/Monsanto5yr11.08a.jpg

Phil



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Re: [FRIAM] The Black Swan

[Phil Henshaw]

It’s interesting how rare it is that one gets to directly address the ‘academic 
prejudices’ that people hold, like the little sparks one can see flying from 
Gardner’s list of characteristics of a “crank” and Falkenstein’s use of it.   
The list and it’s use neatly ignore that both rather neatly fit the model their 
own derogatory stereotype!...We should beware of using “neo-con like” 
judgment in science.  I prefer the ‘mantra’ that “no matter what the complaint, 
there’s nearly always something to it,.. if I only knew what!”   

 

“Expert error” and “expert confusion” is unquestionably the direct cause of our 
world collapsing right now, for example.It’s expert designed systems that 
are doing it.I’ve been pointing very directly to the critical errors being 
made.So has Taleb, from another approach.   It’s important not only look 
for solutions, but also to see what is unsolvable.It explains why 
previously trustworthy systems can go hopelessly out of control.A usual 
part of expert error, of course, is reading “dismissal before content” in the 
usual peer review process.   Is that truly as unsolvable as it seems?

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2008 3:18 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Black Swan

 

Greetings, all --

It was nice to be in Santa Fe again, albeit briefly. Eric Falkenstein is not a 
lover of Taleb, and so I'll pass this along with that proviso and note that 
it's helpful to think through some of both Taleb's statements and Falkenstein's 
reactions:

http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/fooled-by-randomness.html

Here is an earlier posting by Falkenstein that may give you some of the flavor 
of his feelings for Taleb:

Martin Gardner wrote a popular column for Scientific American, and in the 
process received a lot of mail from ‘cranks’ telling him about perpetual motion 
machines and the like. So he wrote a book called Fads 
<http://www.amazon.com/Fads-Fallacies-Name-Science-Popular/dp/0486203948>  and 
Fallacies. In the book he describes "cranks" who he describes as having five 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fads_and_Fallacies_in_the_Name_of_Science>  
invariable characteristics: 

1.  A profound intellectual superiority complex.
2.  Regards other researchers as idiotic, and always operates outside the 
peer review system.
3.  Believes there is a campaign against their ideas, a campaign compared 
with the persecution of Galileo or Pasteur.
4.  Attacks only the biggest theories and scientific figures.
5.  Coins neologisms.

On Taleb’s personal website he describes himself thusly: He is also an 
essayist, belletrist, literary-philosophical-mathematical flâneur. The 
third-person is perfect pitch for describing himself, and the rest , well, 
literary-philosophical-mathematical types—especially flâneurs—tend to be full 
of themselves, supporting Gardner’s characteristic #1. He prides himself on not 
submitting articles to refereed journals, and considers most people who are 
indifferent to him as fools, disdains editors, even spellcheckers (#2). He 
pridefully notes that someone told him “in another time he would have been 
hanged [me: for what, inanity?].” Wilmott <http://www.wilmott.com/>  Magazine, 
a quant publication published by his colleague Paul Wilmott, wrote a fawning 
article <http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/0603_coverstory.pdf>  about him 
where they noted that he is “Wall Street’s principal dissident. Heretic! Calvin 
to finance’s Catholic Church” (#3). His website states his modest desire to 
understand chance from the viewpoint of “philosophy/epistemology, 
philosophy/ethics, mathematics, social science/finance, and cognitive science”, 
supporting #4. Lastly, for #5, has gone so far as to print a glossary  
<http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/glossary.pdf> for his neologisms (eg, 
“epistemic arrogance” for “overconfidence”). In Martin Gardner’s taxonomy, 
Taleb is a classic crank.

(end of excerpt - via Mahalanobis 20 April 2007)

- Claiborne -

 

 

-Original Message-
From: Phil Henshaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' 
Sent: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 7:42 am
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Black Swan

I'd agree Taleb does not communicate his main insights consistently, and






uses fuzzy generalities that you need to "grok" to make sense of.  I don't






think one needs to deal with all that to get the main point, though.













The reasons why *statistical analysis fails for subjects of increasing






non-homogenous complexity* seems invaluable.   It's a principle that might






be derived simply from any number of directions, and is an important point.






Our world is making the critical error exposed in any number of ways it






appears.   

[FRIAM] Today's Sci Times re: a common expert error

[Phil Henshaw]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/science/18tier.html?_r=1 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/science/18tier.html?_r=1&8dpc> &8dpc  about 
how doctors who showed no bias in their treatment of patients were described as 
making prejudiced life and death decisions by a widely accepted (quick) 
statistical means of measuring bias on test, that … gave them no chance to 
think it through or actually make a choice…

 

Phil Henshaw  


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[FRIAM] how well meant system solutions backfire...

[Phil Henshaw]

There’s a general principle that productivity enhancing sustainable design
eventually consumes more resources not less.   Here’s a good example from
today’s  Science section of the NY Times.It forces you to think about
the whole system effects when you solve symptoms not problems… 

 

Productivity enhancements are profitable because they relieve bottlenecks
for the growth system….!People may select them for the image of
sustainability, but the bank funds them because of the profit involved.
The profit comes from facilitating the rest of the system they’re part of.
The multiplying side effects of that are not noticed because no one
considers them.   That’s also how we became dependent on the technologies
that got us in trouble in the first place…



-  Quoting from the article:   NY Times 11/17/08 “…

Drip irrigation also generally increases crop yields, which encourages
farmers to expand acreage and request the right to take even more water,
thus depleting even more of it. “The indirect effect is very possibly to
undermine policy attempts to reduce water consumption,” Dr. Ward said.”

 

Article pasted below, link
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/science/18obwater.html?ref=science 


Phil Henshaw
.·´ ¯ `·.
~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040   
tel: 212-795-4844   e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/> 

-- "it's not finding what people say interesting, but finding the interest
in what they say" --

 

 

Observatory

Drip Irrigation May Not Be Efficient, Analysis Finds 

 

By Henry Fountain
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/henry_fountain
/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 

Published: November 17, 2008 

In an effort to make irrigation more efficient — to obtain more “crop per
drop” — farmers have adopted alternatives to flooding and other conventional
methods. Among these is drip irrigation, shown above, in which water flows
only to the roots. Drip systems are costly, but they save much water.

 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/science/18obwater.html?ref=science#second
Paragraph> Skip to next paragraph Or do they? A hydrologic and economic
analysis of the Upper Rio Grande basin in the Southwest, published in The
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/proceed
ings_of_the_national_academy_of_sciences/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that subsidies and
other policies that encourage conservation methods like drip irrigation can
actually increase water consumption. 

“The take-home message is that you’d better take a pretty careful look at
drip irrigation before you spend a bunch of money on subsidizing it,” said
Frank A. Ward, a resource economist at New Mexico State University and
author of the study with Manuel Pulido-Velázquez of the Polytechnic
University of Valencia in Spain.

With flood irrigation, much of the water is not used by the plants and seeps
back to the source, an aquifer or a river. Drip irrigation draws less water,
but almost all of it is taken up by the plants, so very little is returned.
“Those aquifers are not going to get recharged,” Dr. Ward said.

Drip irrigation also generally increases crop yields, which encourages
farmers to expand acreage and request the right to take even more water,
thus depleting even more of it. “The indirect effect is very possibly to
undermine policy attempts to reduce water consumption,” Dr. Ward said.

Policymakers, he added, must balance the need for more food and for farmers
to make a living with water needs. “It’s fair to say that subsidies are very
good for food security and very good for farmer income,” Dr. Ward said. “But
they may be taking water away from other people.”

 <http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/index.html> More Articles in Science
» A version of this article appeared in print on November 18, 2008, on page
D3 of the New York edition. 

 


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Re: [FRIAM] Strogatz and Ratti video conversation

[Phil Henshaw]

The sneaky part, though you're quite right is saying:
"so it requires a reasonable population before you can connect with someone
of similar or complementary interests."

Is that it ALSO requires a reasonable population of diversely different
interests...!

Phil Henshaw  

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Russell Standish
> Sent: Monday, November 17, 2008 3:17 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Strogatz and Ratti video conversation
> 
> On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 05:06:03PM +0100, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> > Who said that cities are thriving places for humans?
> > I live in Berlin, which is not as big as London or
> > Tokio, but it is loud, crowded and polluted enough.
> > It is more exhausting than exciting to live here. Lots
> > of carcinogenic and pathogenic substances in the air.
> > You meet every day different people in the subway.
> > I think in a small city people know each other
> > much better, although you meet less people, you
> > are connected with more.
> 
> Strogatz was talking about the network effect, sometimes known as
> Metcalfe's law (also known as "there's little value in having the
> first telephone, who're you going to call?").
> 
> Without doubt, the power houses of innovation (whether business,
> science, technology or the arts) are in the big cities. This is no
> doubt because less than 1% of the population is responsible for
> this innovation, so it requires a reasonable population before you can
> connect with someone of similar or complementary interests. This
> network effect also draws the brightest to the larger cities, further
> compounding the network effect.
> 
> The internet has helped to some extent in ameliorating this issue. I
> don't feel the attraction to move to a city like San Francisco or
> Boston, because I can have discusions in fora like this. This is just
> as well - where I live in Sydney, a city of more than 4 million, I
> have a beach at the bottom of my garden, and if compilation times are
> getting to me, I can just put on a mask and snorkel and swim with the
> fishes. http://www.gordonsbayscubadivingclub.com/ I never thought
> living in a big city could be so much fun.
> 
> Cheers
> --
> 
> ---
> -
> A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Mathematics
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au
> ---
> -
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Strogatz and Ratti video conversation

[Phil Henshaw]

Peter,

 

If that's what you saw in their discussion then that's fantastic. It's a
common either a right brain thinking sign of an approaching "ah ha" moment
to come to a real impasse, often a sign of an approaching new realization.
Either that or of dumping the whole mess and being given the gift of a clean
slate, or both!

 

The basic difference I was hoping to bring out is that in natural systems
exceedingly complex things are made simple when they are pulled as a chain
of connections, but and even fairly simple things become unmanageably
complex when you try to push them as a chain.The difference is between
things getting pulled out of an environment by their user versus being
pushed together into a tangle by some observer.   Observer control of
individual complex systems simply does not work. Sometimes we can apply
observer control to statistically regular things that seem to take care of
themselves the same way whatever we do to them.That can work fine.  and
be quite useful.It's no way to steer individualistic complex systems,
though.

 

Jane Jacobs is not the only person to point out the importance of
environmental complexity as a foundation for environmental systems to
thrive.   It's the rich diversity of different kinds of technology, ways of
thinking and overlapping interests that is key to the vitality of the
vibrant cities, industries and conversations.   It has to do with both
stimulating the creativity of individual innovators and the adaptability of
their communities in a changing world.Because it's the diversity that
allows creativity and flexibility, decreases in diversity threaten
ecosystems with collapse, as 'one legged stools' fall over.An urban
example is how the automotive mono-culture around Detroit caused it to be a
one-idea town that could not imagine anything else to do, and deteriorated
after the automotive boom.  

 

The whole subject of complex natural systems is about how the parts learn
new tricks, and adapt as their own behavior or other things change their
environments.Anywhere I look for it I find the creative parts do their
part in that by local exploratory learning processes, small scale
evolutionary elaboration and selection.   That's the inventor in the garage
thing, or the idle conversations at lunch thing.It appears to only work
if the learning parts have some rich leftovers of other forms to explore,
and are not pushed in a way that disrupts their learning.It seems to be
most basic to caring for systems you really must rely on to take care of
themselves.

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: peter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 1:25 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Re: [FRIAM] Strogatz and Ratti video conversation

 

Exactly the point that stuck out to me is two experts ( Top Rated )  from
different disciplines saying " This is scary we really don't know and should
find out " instead of heck lets just build it and see if the humans live (
We don't even do that to amphibians or reptile pets ) this from a senior
member of a profession who's egos are bigger than Everest and about as
unreachable. 

The big kicker here will always be "You cannot measure or model therefore
manage Giant Non linear Complex Systems with simple linear technology not
mater how pretty the GUI " 

Phil mentions Jane Jacobs and her work which is full of visually identified
rules ( that work and do not ) with feedback loops and I will add Chris
Alexander http://www.patternlanguage.com/ ( we are using both in our
parametric model designs of education facilities tied to educational
excellence ) 

Jochen's point about Berlin not being the greatest place to live in can be I
think covered under " What exactly do you call excitement that every
psychopath wants to know" and as Jane Jacobs and even  Ratti points out
designs go wrong but in many cases its just left up to the people in the
FUBAR to suffer baby suffer.

Again from the silliness and partially scary aspect ---  model your city or
town on Discworld and see how close you can get, thats either good news or
bad depending on your Guinness quota or in Jochens case Berliner Weisse

( : ( : pete

Peter Baston

IDEAS

 <http://www.ideapete.com/> www.ideapete.com

 

 

 



Phil Henshaw wrote: 

The idea offered that why cities become such thriving places for humans is
because of the intensity of noise in the connections is somewhat fantastic.
That's really what Storgatz & Ratti are proposing, as traditional science
has always proposed to explain what is inexplicable to it's method.   To
their credit, the one thing they seem to accurately agree on is that science
doesn't have a clue how that would work, and that we do indeed observe daily
that it somehow rea

Re: [FRIAM] Strogatz and Ratti video conversation

[Phil Henshaw]

So very many Berliner's seem to rate the city above Paris, London and NY.
I'm wondering how you might not be aware of the status so many people see in
living there!   Your second comment goes right to the point though, that the
Jekyll & Hyde feature of feedback loops is their special beauty and mystery
at the same time.

Awareness of that is also a key to watching them do it, how they switch from
multiplying good to multiplying harm in the relative "blink of an eye".
It's also one of their highly predictable features.   The way markets can
promote a growth in wealth to a point and then beyond it's point of
diminishing returns promote a growth of instability... is one that would be
exceptionally profitable for us to pay close attention to, for example.  

The 'bitter pill' seems to be that nature changes her rules as the
circumstances are altered, and we seem to define our identities in terms of
which rules we believe in, and that itself is a big mistake.

Phil Henshaw  


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
> Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 11:06 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Strogatz and Ratti video conversation
> 
> Who said that cities are thriving places for humans?
> I live in Berlin, which is not as big as London or
> Tokio, but it is loud, crowded and polluted enough.
> It is more exhausting than exciting to live here. Lots
> of carcinogenic and pathogenic substances in the air.
> You meet every day different people in the subway.
> I think in a small city people know each other
> much better, although you meet less people, you
> are connected with more.
> 
> But I like the following statement from Steven Strogatz
> in this interview, which leads us to "Black Swans" again:
> "In the world of dynamical systems, from a mathematical
> standpoint, feedback loops, especially in complex systems,
> can be really scary. Because of their unintended consequences.
> They can create all the beauty and richness in the world
> around us as well as unforeseen horrors."
> 
> -J.
> 
> - Original Message -
> From: Phil Henshaw
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 3:22 PM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Strogatz and Ratti video conversation
> 
> The idea offered that why cities become such thriving places for humans
> is
> because of the intensity of noise in the connections is somewhat
> fantastic.
> That's really what Strogatz & Ratti are proposing, as traditional
> science
> has always proposed to explain what is inexplicable to it's method.
> To
> their credit, the one thing they seem to accurately agree on is that
> science
> doesn't have a clue how that would work, and that we do indeed observe
> daily
> that it somehow really does.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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Re: [FRIAM] The Black Swan

[Phil Henshaw]

I'd agree Taleb does not communicate his main insights consistently, and
uses fuzzy generalities that you need to "grok" to make sense of.  I don't
think one needs to deal with all that to get the main point, though.

The reasons why *statistical analysis fails for subjects of increasing
non-homogenous complexity* seems invaluable.   It's a principle that might
be derived simply from any number of directions, and is an important point.
Our world is making the critical error exposed in any number of ways it
appears.   

It's also interestingly central to the complexity theory of W M Elsasser
that he developed in the 50's and 60's.  He's an extraordinarily clear
thinking theoretical physicist/biologist who points to that as a gap in
statistical mechanics that needs to be considered for any attempt to model
non-homogenous systems like life.   

I even find that "strategy of the gaps" remotely similar to how Rosen points
to why divergent sequences can't be represented in closed systems of
equations, but are clearly part of life, and so are necessary for any
attempt to model such non-homogenously developing and changing systems as
life.

Phil Henshaw  

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
> Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 4:59 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] The Black Swan
> 
> I am currently trying to read Taleb's "Black Swan".
> Paul and Glen mentioned it earlier a few weeks ago,
> and Russ said it has some nice points. So I read
> the first chapter and thought "well, interesting".
> Then I read the second about Yevgenia Krasnova,
> a fictional character which embodies his anger
> about publishers, and thought "what a crap".
> 
> Somehow it goes on like this: it is hard to
> say if it is crap (his "Mediocristan" and
> "Extremistan" for example) or a masterpiece.
> Chapter three is better again. Many ideas
> are exhilarating, but the terms are often
> very idiosyncratic.
> 
> His main topic, the "Black Swan", is less
> interesting than the many thought provoking
> ideas one can find between the lines, when Taleb
> talks about his experiences or uprising. After
> all, points where little things can make a big
> difference are not new, John H. Holland has
> called them "Lever points", Murray Gell-Mann
> "frozen accidents", and Gladwell "tipping points".
> 
> Do you agree? What do you think are his most
> interesting points? I like for instance the
> paragraphs about "scalable professions":
> for Taleb it is "a profession in which you are
> not paid by the hour and thus subject to the
> limitations of the amount of labor" (p. 27).
> It is in interesting idea to apply "scalability"
> to professions and payoffs.
> 
> -J.
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Re: [FRIAM] Strogatz and Ratti video conversation

[Phil Henshaw]

The idea offered that why cities become such thriving places for humans is
because of the intensity of noise in the connections is somewhat fantastic.
That's really what Storgatz & Ratti are proposing, as traditional science
has always proposed to explain what is inexplicable to it's method.   To
their credit, the one thing they seem to accurately agree on is that science
doesn't have a clue how that would work, and that we do indeed observe daily
that it somehow really does. 

 

They should read Jane Jacobs on the Nature of Economies or the Economy of
Cities, who brilliantly describes the actual creative mechanism of the
environment. The productive "wide open door" to recognizing it, that
most everyone opts not to walk through, is that it's the diversity options,
not the diversity of instructions in a creative organism like a city that do
it.That sort of messes up the deterministic model, of course, but points
to a gap in our rules where things could both exit and enter.

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of peter
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2008 2:27 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Strogatz and Ratti video conversation

 

Nice one indeed , great catch Steve

But do we all realize the implications with the words - Feedback Loops -
Giant Non Linear systems ( being measured with linear systems ) - Network
theory not translating into Euclidean geometry.

I found the piece on natural laws of cities totally enlightening but
fortunately for all of us SaFeans we live in Discworld nirvana where no
natural laws apply as Owen can testify from his phenomenal research under
Professor Pratchett

( : ( : pete

Peter Baston

IDEAS

 <http://www.ideapete.com/> www.ideapete.com

 

 

 



Stephen Guerin wrote: 

Nice video of Steven Strogatz and Carlo Ratti discussing complexity
and urban design:
 
http://salon.seedmagazine.com/salon_strogatz_ratti.html
Strogatz mathematically describes how natural and sociocultural
complexity resolves into vast webs of order. Ratti uses technology as
a tool to create interactive urban environments. In this video Salon,
Strogatz and Ratti discuss whether building and analyzing human
networks can help us overcome our poor mathematical understanding of
complexity.
 
-S
 
  

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[FRIAM] Oops theory... ?

[Phil Henshaw]

 "Every great idea involves a little bit of a slip up." is the idea.
Perhaps that's a way to open up a discussion of the rule following/breaking
aspects of change, a creative "slip ups" feature of both mental creativity
and independent learning systems exploring their environments.   

 

The rules of a system are strongly self-reinforcing, otherwise there would
be no system.   So it's place of creative possibility is to insert things
that might develop in the occasional gaps in the rules? Is there any set
of rules that can't have gaps?   Well it depends on the 'forgiving eye' of
the one being asked that question, but I think all the incompleteness
theorems point to a quite clear answer of 'no'.

 

Phil Henshaw  


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Re: [FRIAM] Are your skills obsolete?

[Phil Henshaw]

Steve,

 

[ph] So we see many of the same historic signs of explosive acceleration,
it's just a fact, and how it's been accumulative (till last month anyway.
:-) )

 Look at how vastly each generations life experience has been from the last,
going back as many generations as we have any personal knowledge of.
People have declared the "sky is falling" and the "end is near" endlessly it
seems too. 

There are plenty of other times and places when the sky WAS/IS falling
compared to today.  I am usually in the position of arguing your point.

[ph] Oh, I'm not saying the 'sky isn't falling', but observe that when
people thought so the real part of it just fell on the half the world that
was replaced by the multiplications of the other. I think part of that
persistent illusion was that it wasn't an illusion for the part of the world
the rest of us stopped caring about. or something vaguely like that.   I
suppose we could now be being fooled the other way, by trusting that the
appearance of danger isn't dangerous.In personal terms the continual
acceleration of change has just seemed to mean excessive generation gaps and
people with rich life experience not having much to teach the next
generation.whizzing along in somewhat of a daze it seems. 



  I think when I set about to find the answer to that question, to see if I
could validate some of feelings of expectation, I asked some of the useful
questions and narrowed it down quite a bit.   The question though, is what
question would you ask to tell if a feeling of impending grand
transformation was real or not?

There are two key, qualitative differences having to do with human scale.
One is that by having longer productive periods in life, under accelerated
change, most adults have to endure several important changes in their
lifetime.  The other is that much of our technology is becoming
life-extending and personal capability enhancing.   There may be thresholds
we have already crossed or on the verge of crossing which are pivotal.



 

I don't think "magic" is what we're talking about. One would not have
any way of confirming a "premonition" of magic.  


I don't know that "magic" is relevant, if I understand your point.   What I
think is important is positive feedback loops and time constants dropping
below certain thresholds.   

[ph] right, the time constants, or in my focus, the learning response lag
times



What I don't know I can agree with is  the following:

 I do think quite sincerely and confidently that foresight about real
complex system transformations, approaching 'water shed moments' is very
likely to be verifiable if they're real.

I think that precisely the opposite is true.  I think the best we can do is
avoid regimes where such change is likely to be precipitated, not precisely
when the system will go through a phase transition or what the phase it is
transitioning to looks like.

[ph]I didn't mean to suggest that one can't be caught by surprise when
crossing unobserved  and unsuspected thresholds or 'trip wires' in a
changing world.   The main one of those may be psychological, being fixated
on our stereotypes for things and not paying attention to the independently
changing and behaving things of the world they represent.   What  I'm saying
is that if you do "feel something coming" it should be possible, using my
approach of identifying developmental continuities anyway, to tell whether
you know enough about it to be referring to something real or not. 

 

At one point I felt that same general acceleration of change and saw how it
gave us the power to decide things with ever more far reaching effects with
ever less thought, and it seemed suspicious.   I then did dig to the bottom
of it I think, and found very substantial reason why acceleration would
continue until we were blindsided by errors of judgment resulting in
cascading failures due to faults no one would have thought to look for.
I got it down to continuous growth being a direct violation of the
conservation laws actually, because the complexity of it's response demands
would naturally exceed the learning lag times of its unchanging parts, and
instantaneous responses require infinite forces.That our world is now
indeed collapsing for essentially that reason isn't what proves the theorem.
It's examining the reasoning, perhaps aided by the example of in happening
before our eyes, to see that there are no other options.   It's a
fascinating puzzle. 

 

Others have seen the same radical acceleration of change and imagined a sort
of 'convergence' in other areas like in computing power, and imagined other
previously unimaginable things must be quickly approaching, like the
machines of the world gaining consciousness. In that case I'd just say,
well point to it, and show me where it's developing.   That's the *sign* of
a valid premonition to me, being able to point to the substantial leading
signs showing where it's actually happening, not just some proje

Re: [FRIAM] Obama, Proposition 8

[Phil Henshaw]

I think that's actually very consistent with what I *intended* to say
anyway.   ;-)I think most married people I know thought the legally
unbinding (formal spiritual) marriage was the real one, and I was just
saying people should have the choice of what they think is the real symbol
of their commitment, so long as they know if they want legal rights,
obligations and recognitions from the government they need to pay $25 and
sign a form too.

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of peggy miller
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 11:51 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] Obama, Proposition 8

 

In response to Phil Henshaw, briefly, I believe there still remains a place
for civil marriage -- that marriage has taken on a non-religious place in
most people's hearts, sort of like Christmas trees and Christmas carols. It
speaks of love, devotion, fidelity between two consenting adults, and should
be something any two adults can partake in civilly. Love between two people
should be able to celebrate and exist under a civil union, legally
undertaken. ... and that union, historically, is called marriage. 

and I think gay male couples can also sort of choose the husband / wife
roles to some degree -- though hopefully all couples, gay or straight,  are
beginning to edge into a shared mixture of both -- so does that mean that a
straight couple who don't want to assume husband and wife roles are not able
to be married -- 

maybe not under Webster ..

So .. I have argued myself towards your position, rather than mine!! A new
definition may be called for here.

Peggy


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Re: [FRIAM] Are your skills obsolete?

[Phil Henshaw]

Steve,

 

I recognize much of your experience of a rush toward a vanishing point and
sense of expectation about that.My question is how can you tell the
difference between the usual kind and the unusual kind? We've had
exploding economic change for a couple hundred years, doubling in size every
20 years and radically transforming everything everywhere all the time.
Look at how vastly each generations life experience has been from the last,
going back as many generations as we have any personal knowledge of.
People have declared the "sky is falling" and the "end is near" endlessly it
seems too.I think when I set about to find the answer to that question,
to see if I could validate some of feelings of expectation, I asked some of
the useful questions and narrowed it down quite a bit.   The question
though, is what question would you ask to tell if a feeling of impending
grand transformation was real or not?

 

I don't think "magic" is what we're talking about. One would not have
any way of confirming a "premonition" of magic.I do think quite
sincerely and confidently that foresight about real complex system
transformations, approaching 'water shed moments' is very likely to be
verifiable if they're real.

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 1:56 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Are your skills obsolete?

 

Phil Henshaw wrote: 

Does it just accelerate indefinitely, like the singularity guys propose??
Or does it reach some point of stabilization as a process, and a relative
completion of the process of exploding rates of change?
 
  

I feel that I am an anachronism, though I am probably not alone on this
list.  In reviewing the list of "obsolete skills" I find that I hold over
half of them and actually practice half of those.  

For example:  I still adjust the timing, gap the plugs and points, and clean
the carbuerator on my 1949 ford truck.  I cut my own firewood (often with
handsaw and axe rather than chainsaw and logsplitter).  I cook my meals on a
wood cookstove which is my only heat other than the sun.  I have built my
own structures of mud and straw.  I make my own charcoal and use it to forge
my own iron and steel implements.  I grow (some of) my own food.  I have not
owned a television for 20 years.   I still own an operable manual
typewriter.

I was born just before Sputnik went up.  I watched men walk on the moon.
I've seen every square meter (literally) of the earth mapped from orbit.
I've seen the surface of Mars via telepresence.  I've watched global climate
change go from a rough concept to a conspiracy theory to  a widely accepted
theory to an almost-directly experienced phenomena.  The sunburn I got in NZ
after 10 minutes on the beach at Sea Level helped to make the Ozone hole
more real to me, for example.

I have also personally experienced the accelerated advance of knowledge and
technology.   I have worked on some of the most advanced big physics, new
biology, and advanced computing projects in the world.  I was already a
veteran user of the internet (NSFnet, ArpaNet, UUNet, etc.) when it was
opened up to the world.   I read Drexler's seminal nanotechnology-coining
"Engines of Creation" while it was still only his master's thesis.  I
attended Feynman's "Plenty of Room at the Bottom" (first given the year I
was born!) and "Reversible Computing" lectures.   The list goes on.

I am not unlike most of you on this list in this extreme contrast of
experiences.  Some here are at least a few years older than me, and many are
much more well connected/embedded in the science and technology realm.  Some
here were born before the Manhattan Project.  Many of you may even be mildly
bionic (replaced hip or knee, pacemaker, etc.) and many of you will become
moreso, possibly unto immortality.



We are perhaps at a unique cusp in time.   I believe (but do not so much
approve of) Kurzweil's vision of the Singularity up to the question of what
it means to be *human*.   If some of us do succeed in living forever, which
almost requires replacing all of our meat, one piece at a time (like the Tin
Man of Oz) or all at once (Kurzweil's upload), will we be the same person?
Will we even be the same "species"?  Would we even recognize ourselves?
What is intelligence/cognition/self without embodiment?

The turmoil in politics (last 8 years), economics (coming on hard as I
type), and religion (fomenting for decades with possible more-acute symptoms
any year now) may only be a mild tremor leading up to the extreme and abrupt
changes we may be in for.   Maybe I've read too much Science Fiction, too
much Utopian/Dystopian fantasy.  Maybe I am too easily fueled by Morbid
Fascination.  

For bett

Re: [FRIAM] Obama, Proposition 8

[Phil Henshaw]

Yes, that's the problem that simple rules get into with complex subjects.
Polygamy is taboo for quite other reasons it seems.   I'd say let marriage
be whatever the spiritual tradition you feel part of says and let whoever
wants to fulfill the legal obligations of civil unions, whatever they happen
to be called, do that too.  Then "who people are" in their relationships is
quite up to them.   

I think there are too many overlapping kinds of interpersonal relationships
to start drawing lines between them, and what nature does to solve that
problem, let them all drink out of the same stream, is the way to sort
things out.

Phil Henshaw  


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella
> Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 12:36 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Obama, Proposition 8
> 
> Thus spake Phil Henshaw circa 11/11/2008 09:12 AM:
> > It's not really about definitions,
> 
> That was precisely my point.
> 
> However, the law _is_ about definitions (though the purpose of the law
> is not about definitions).  Hence, my preferred solution regarding the
> law would be to eliminate the concept of "marriage" completely, for
> everyone.  This would include legalizing poly[gamy|andry].  If 2, 3, or
> N people want to enter into a contract that involves household assets
> and medical power of attorney, then so be it.  But leave your religion
> at the threshold of the courthouse.
> 
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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Re: [FRIAM] Are your skills obsolete?

[Phil Henshaw]

Does it just accelerate indefinitely, like the singularity guys propose??
Or does it reach some point of stabilization as a process, and a relative
completion of the process of exploding rates of change?

Phil Henshaw  


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Tom Johnson
> Sent: Monday, November 10, 2008 3:35 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] com
> Subject: [FRIAM] Are your skills obsolete?
> 
> All:
> 
> Some of us may recall Bruce Sterling's fun site, "Dead Media,"
> technologies that no longer are necessary or exist.
> http://www.deadmedia.org/
> 
> The human side of all that can now be found at "Obsolete Skills"
> http://obsoleteskills.com/Skills/Skills
> 
> Build your personal timeline of obsolescence, friends.
> 
> -tom
> 
> --
> ==
> J. T. Johnson
> Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
> www.analyticjournalism.com
> 505.577.6482(c)505.473.9646(h)
> http://www.jtjohnson.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> "You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
> To change something, build a new model that makes the
> existing model obsolete."
> -- Buckminster Fuller
> ==
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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Re: [FRIAM] Obama, Proposition 8

[Phil Henshaw]

It's not really about definitions, except how the natural change in
relationships is changing definition.   As far as personal bonding and the
forms of lasting attachments go there's a lot more variety than simplistic
rules of gender permutations and combinations can ever define.   Among the
gay's I know of 'wife' is not undefined at all, except as it raises
stereotypes in others minds that don't fit.   When talking about defining
categories of natural forms I think you need to look in some other book.

Phil Henshaw  

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella
> Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 11:56 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Obama, Proposition 8
> 
> Thus spake peggy miller circa 11/11/2008 08:07 AM:
> > Related to the issue of legalizing gay marriage, I think it is
> extremely
> > important to stick with the Webster definition of marriage -- which
> includes
> > "to unite in a close personal way: AND "a legal union as husband and
> wife"
> > -- I think if two people are the age of consenting adults and meet
> these two
> > requirements (since gay couples can choose who is generally the
> husband and
> > generally the wife if they want to) then they should be able to form
> a legal
> > marriage. I think that anything else ignores their rights, and
> ignores the
> > definition of marriage itself.
> 
> But if we argue from the dictionary we may end up with arguments like
> the following.
> 
> While all the below agree with your point:
> 
> 1) "marriage" generally refers to a spousal relationship and
> 2) "spouse" is a term meaning things like vow, pledge, ritual, etc, and
> 3) "husband" generally means master of the house,
> 
> "wife" really is defined to be a female.  So, while lesbian couples can
> choose who is the husband and who is the wife; gay male couples can't.
> They can choose the husband; but neither can be a wife.
> 
> Personally, I think marriage is an obsolete concept.  We should
> completely separate legal contracts from religious ceremonies and purge
> "marriage" from the law entirely.  It should be in the exact same
> category as baptism.
> 
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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Re: [FRIAM] Obama's Science and Innovation Plans

[Phil Henshaw]

The election of Barak gives you hope, for sure, but as good a listener as he
seems to be, some things don't seem to get mentioned to him.   He doesn't
seem to have anyone telling him that multiplying the complexity of our
solutions multiplies our problems, for example.   

We should let him know, open that door for him, pointing to how the
consensus purpose of growing prosperity involves very rapidly increasing the
complexity of systems of using the earth, and in the most elemental way,
can't work.

Paid scientists only find solutions, leaving all the fun problems we can't
solve to the unpaid!

Phil Henshaw  


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Owen Densmore
> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 5:35 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Obama's Science and Innovation Plans
> 
> Interesting the idea of Obama + Tech.  His campaign was innovative in
> the both the way he used the web for fundraising and for organizing
> the troops.
> 
> Orlando recently sent a pointer to his next phase:
>http://www.change.gov
> .. which invites the community to start building a set of ideas for
> how to make progress in Obama's main areas of interest.
> 
> It seems to me that Friam and sfComplex could help.  Dave West's
> innovative educational ideas, for example .. and possibly pushing for
> a Ted-like (or Pangia Day like) web presence for educational media.
> 
>  -- Owen
> 
> 
> On Nov 7, 2008, at 1:32 PM, Tom Johnson wrote:
> 
> > fyi.
> > -tj
> >
> >
> > -- Forwarded message --
> > From: Richard Lowenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Date: Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 11:12 AM
> > Subject: [1st-mile-nm] Obama's Science and Innovation Plans
> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> >
> >> From this week's State Science and Technology Institute newsletter:
> > http://www.ssti.org
> >
> > Federal TBED Funding and Programs Could Expand under Obama
> > Administration
> > After two years of campaigning, President-elect Barack Obama has
> > begun shaping
> > the agenda for his coming administration. Though nothing is certain
> > at this
> > point, throughout his campaign, President-elect Obama reiterated his
> > support
> > for TBED-related initiatives and plans to increase funding for
> > research and
> > innovation. His Plan for Science and Innovation, released in
> > September, makes a
> > wide range of TBED commitments, touching on clean energy investment,
> > STEM
> > education, entrepreneurship and basic research.
> >
> > Last month the New York Times, with research from the Information
> > Technology and
> > Innovation Foundation (ITIF), estimated the annual cost of Obama's
> > innovation
> > plan at $85.6 billion. The president-elect pledged during the
> > campaign to
> > double the current level of funding for basic research over the next
> > ten years
> > at federal science agencies and to fully fund the America Competes
> > Act, signed
> > by President George Bush, at $5.9 billion annually.
> >
> > In order to foster private sector innovation, the Obama plan would
> > make the
> > research and development tax credit permanent, double funding for the
> > Manufacturing Extension Partnership, create an Advanced
> > Manufacturing Fund to
> > increase collaboration between university researchers and industry
> > and invest
> > in a nationwide network of public-private incubators. The plan would
> > also
> > increase research spending on defense and homeland security,
> > including DARPA
> > and Homeland Security ARPA.
> >
> > The plan also called for: restoring the role of White House science
> > advisor to a
> > senior-level position, the Assistant to the President for Science
> > and Technology
> > would report directly to the President and would serve as Director
> > of the Office
> > of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP); and, strengthening the role
> > of the
> > President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST),
> > which would
> > offer private sector and academic insight into federal innovation
> > policy.
> >
> > Also included in the plan was a new $500 million Technology
> > Investment Fund that
> > would build on existing federal education technology programs by
> > offering
> > matching grants to ensure that technology is integrated in public
> > schools. The
> > funds would be used to introduce new high-tech 

[FRIAM] the most powerful force?

[Phil Henshaw]

Einstein  is reputed to have said “the most powerful force in the universe
is compound interest.”   Lots of people think it is quite apt in any case.
There are so many people who don’t see it though, maybe some of you guys who
are on the fence could point out what the uncertainty about it is.I see
growing incremental change as a progression over time, the pattern of
explosions, but many people don’t seem to.  How would I convey that to
people who are not clear about it?

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

 


Phil Henshaw   AIA AAAS natural systems design science
.·´ ¯ `·.
~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040   
tel: 212-795-4844   e-mail:  <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
explorations:  <http://www.synapse9.com/> www.synapse9.com

"it's not finding what people say interesting, but finding the interest in
what they say" 

 


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Re: [FRIAM] In Praise of Doubt, and ...

[Phil Henshaw]

And the usual flaw being sure about how things would seem to have worked in
the past, and possibly not notice them diverge over time.?

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Eric Smith
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2008 4:21 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] In Praise of Doubt, and ...

 

Well, I shouldn't even poke my head above the weeds in this one, because
this thread has way too much energy for me, but I just couldn't resist.
Think of this as a prosodic rather than a semantic reply...

 

 

I think we are reaching the heart of the problem with human nature.  We want
to be correct and we want to be precise and we want to be sure.  

 

We are all aware of the branch of statistical learning theory known as
PAC-learning, or Probably Approximately Correct -learning (?).  

 

One of the few ideas with which I can be completely comfortable.

 

Eric

 

 


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Re: [FRIAM] Fundamentalist-based Republicanism

[Phil Henshaw]

Marcus,
Your example of our weird faith people have in "trickle down" economics
points to a specific instance of magical thinking, in the usual form, that
we think our stereotypes have causal value in physical systems of the world.
The data reads to me as that globally increasing investment generally had
the claimed effect, prior to 1970, and then largely stopped.  That somewhat
coincides with the rise in fanatical belief in the principle just when it no
longer worked.

The effect of believing your stereotypes means that changing the world is
simply a matter of convincing others to have the other stereotypes...  I
think that's what I observe in most politics and why I'm nearly as
disappointed in the level of insight into our problems by the republicans as
by the democrats.  They ALL have crazy fictions about how to change the
complex systems of our world, that independently develop organization and
behavior of their own almost no one happens to watch.  We just give label
with the latest news story stereotype and that settles it!

I don’t think education seems to fix that disease in the situation where
everyone apparently has it.

Phil Henshaw  




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Re: [FRIAM] In Praise of Doubt, and ...

[Phil Henshaw]

Yea, sort of like teaching creationism for science is teaching determinism
for life..

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2008 12:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] In Praise of Doubt, and ...

 

Good find Russ...

Freeman Dyson is quoted as saying 
It is better to be wrong than vague

When Juxtaposed with Feynman's
It is perfectly consistent to be unsure

I think we are reaching the heart of the problem with human nature.  We want
to be correct and we want to be precise and we want to be sure.  

Human nature, on the other hand, doesn't care and would generally rather
have simple, easy, clear answers, even if they are dead wrong. 

On Modeling and Human Nature:

In my own work with scientists and engineers and decision makers I
constantly find them wanting me to help them find simple, clear, absolute
answers and only the best of them are delighted when the find I can only
help them with the simplest answer of all - "it depends" and then clarify
(somewhat) with "and this is what it depends on and how".

I too feel Doug's pain (or chronic irritation) but mine extends beyond the
bounds of fundamentalist religion to wide swaths of our population who are
not religious and if they are to be called fundamentalist, their
fundamentalism is in their unerring belief in things like their own
privelige, their own entitlement, the rightness of the systems they
participate in or perhaps the rightness in the ones they would replace the
ones they are trying to tear down.  It is easy to be a critic, an armchair
quarterback.

As a youth, I was attracted to Science for the open-minded inquiry it
represented.  I was attracted to technology for the miracles it could wring
out of Science.  I was attracted to Democracy for the implied social
fairness and egalitarianism.  I was attracted to free-markets for the
opportunity afforded hard, smart work.  I was attracted to capitalism for
the seeming rightness (in an industrial economy at least) that  capital
resources facilitate productivity and those who create and maintain such
resources should also be rewarded along with those  who provide
labor/talent/etc.

On Liberal vs Conservative:

There is an old saying which I cannot attribute:
If you are not liberal when you are young, there is something wrong with
you.
If you are not conservative when you are old, there is something wrong
with you.

I think this is well motivated and intended but I find otherwise.  At 51
many of you will find me still "young" but I only remember being "younger"
and now feel quite "old", and at least by today's terminology, find I am
going the "other way" toward a more "Liberal" viewpoint.

The point, however, is that in you youth I was quick to adopt idealisms
which were happy and bright and promising which is where the
Democrats/Liberals might tend to err, while over time and the enduring of
hard-knocks, I have learned that the world is often somewhat less than
cooperative with such idealism and pragmatism calls for a certain kind of
pessimism or at least very careful optimism.   This might in fact, be the
basis of the prescribed swing from liberal to conservative with age, but in
our current mapping of liberal (to Dems) and conservative (to Repubs), I
have not been able to maintain this track so well.   There is something
amiss (or aright) here.

I find myself more aligned *against* the Republicans than ever and more
aligned *with* the Democrats than ever.  On introspection, I think that
education through experience helped me a lot.   I think that I learned a lot
about what *really* happens when you apply the ideals of either side to the
real world.   I still find all (most) politicians suspect of hypocrisy and
Dems erring on the Pollyanna side but the neoCons at least seem to be
nothing but a big ugly wad of hypocrisy and short-sighted selfish stupidity.


I don't like the implied axis of Left/Right or Liberal/Conservative.   I
think that these can be applied roughly to social and economic issues ( I'm
liberal socially, but conservative economically is a common statement in my
circles ).   The term "Progressive" has been used often in place of
"Liberal" and in many ways it fits better.  Progressives seem to be
interested in looking for ways to change our society to improve the human
condition while non-Progressives (Conservatives) can be seen to be trying to
preserve the aspects of society which maintain the current better qualities
of the human condition while trying to avoid the (un)intended consequences
of progress.  

I am very sympathetic with both points of view however, I find a good deal
of what we call "progress" blind faith that "change is good" with
opportunists stirring change for changes' sake so t

Re: [FRIAM] Election: Why So Close

[Phil Henshaw]

Well, if this thread isn't out of steam, there is a clear majority of humans
who prefer magical thinking... and imagine the general cause of natural
phenomenon is whether their "we" is in control or not.   You guys too, don't
even acknowledge that there is a physical world, continually speaking of it
as if it's a materialization of a theory by some magic not yet conceived of.

I think that's why our whole culture sees no problem with continually
multiplying the complexity of our problems... there's noting wrong with that
in theory!

Phil Henshaw  


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Owen Densmore
> Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 12:53 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] Election: Why So Close
> 
> Just as in the earlier elections with George Bush, I'm astonished at
> how close the race is, not just who is winning.
> 
> When Bush won, it was really hard to believe: he's clearly incapable.
> The Dems on the other hand, chose a poor candidate in the 04 race, so
> that could be part of it.  And he did steal the race, but he could
> only do so because the separation was so small.
> 
> But given the obvious failure of the Bush administration, why in hell
> is this race so close?  Obama will likely win, but I simply cannot
> understand why 45% or so really think McCain is better!
> 
> Its easy to shrug, and say most people are idiots.  Maybe.  But up
> close and personal, you find this isn't true.  So what is the "ghost
> in the works"?
> 
>  -- Owen
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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Re: [FRIAM] how diminishing returns triggers investor flight & collapse

[Phil Henshaw]

Great questions…! 

1) As a complex systems naturalist I’ve found a number of
particular kinds of ‘constant’ relationships that are unusually strong
predictors of change.   Growth is one, whole system diminishing returns is
another.I’m trying to help people watch their world at IT’s work. 
   I had two ways in mind.The diagram points to the main categories
of resources for growth, the means by which their investments are connected,
and by that how the system balances it’s strains in relation to the
discovered profitability of the earth.The reason the system behaves as a
whole is important for understanding both how increasing resource uses run
into natural limits at the same time, and why no one notices.   It also
shows why those connections get disconnected.   



2)When the stock market is collapsing it’s ‘like’ a house
burning down.There’s a cascade process.   That gives you an indicator
connecting its particular parts. Connecting the parts lets you better
see how it all works and ask how and when it began.When the banks and
others began learning they had made bad bets they tried to sell their bad
bets to someone else.   A lot of people noticed the ‘rush to the door’ and
that precipitated the collapse of trust.   
  Where that began was with both the process that built the false
expectations in the first place and the process of small local failures of
expectation precipitating the collapse.  The ‘whole event’ involves
understanding both the pump that inflated the bubble (which nearly everyone
celebrated at the time) and the sudden appearance of the wide variety of
‘pin pricks’ of failed expectations all over that directly precipitated it.
So far I seem to be the only person who’s noticed that the inflation of the
bubble was certain to create points of failure that could not be responded
to, and so be the first and final cause its own collapse.
  One thing you see at the moment is that central banks providing a safe
haven for money are themselves causing a major movement of investment to the
central banks and disinvestment in the physical economy.   That is actively
dismantling the physical economy, the core problem causing the market to
slide.   This whole scenario of events is actually a natural direct
consequence of our standard practice of planning on continuous growth from
naturally diminishing assets, one of those seemingly ‘unchanging’ general
conditions that foretell enormous change.

 

Does that help?

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: Douglas Roberts [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 3:09 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] how diminishing returns triggers investor flight &
collapse

 

Ok, I'll bite.

How does yet another "everything is connected to everything" diagram help
anything?

While we're on he subject, does that paragraph to the left of the
Everything-Everything diagram say anything more prosaic than, "People invest
to make money, and when the stock market is melting down people aren't
making money on their investments"?

-- 
Doug Roberts, RTI International
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell



On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 12:59 PM, Phil Henshaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Thought this diagram might help.
http://www.synapse9.com/issues/ResourceNet.pdf

 

How markets equalize investment returns for physical resources throughout a
whole system also accelerates the "flight to safety" and collapse of the
whole system too, when physical returns (ROI's) are diminishing below the
financial expectations guaranteed by central banks...  :-(

 

 

Best,

Phil Henshaw
.·´ ¯ `·.

~
212-795-4844 680 Ft.Washington Ave NY NY 10040 [EMAIL PROTECTED]


"it's not finding what people say interesting, but finding the interest in
what they say"

 



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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[FRIAM] how diminishing returns triggers investor flight & collapse

[Phil Henshaw]

Thought this diagram might help.
http://www.synapse9.com/issues/ResourceNet.pdf

 

How markets equalize investment returns for physical resources throughout a
whole system also accelerates the “flight to safety” and collapse of the
whole system too, when physical returns (ROI’s) are diminishing below the
financial expectations guaranteed by central banks...  :-(

 

 

Best,

Phil Henshaw
.·´ ¯ `·.

~
212-795-4844 680 Ft.Washington Ave NY NY 10040 [EMAIL PROTECTED]


"it's not finding what people say interesting, but finding the interest in
what they say"

 


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Re: [FRIAM] The true crisis is still to come

[Phil Henshaw]

Glen,
>From a whole systems view 'peak oil' is part of 'peak everything'.   'Peak
everything' is also synonymous with 'diminishing returns', or 'natural
complications' or 'limits of development'.  I think with the present
collapse there is now more time to worry about global warming, sort of, and
certainly less money.   Thinking about whether growing as fast as we
possibly can until we run into something to stop us means running into what
will stop us as hard as we possibly can, may be more important.

The phenomenon of natural limits is really about how our economic system as
a whole can substitute nearly anything for nearly anything, and so...
equalizes the resource pressures on everything.  That's a very telling
principle when you learn how to apply it.   That's why the increasing
difficulty of finding new core resources; food, fuel, water, space of every
kind, is happening simultaneously.   

The problem with limits is *never* (well 'almost' never) the quantity.  It's
really the complications and the resulting increases in unit costs, their
declining material ROI's.   You can always find more resources for more
effort, but there is a price level where there is no profit in it.  You can
cross that unexpectedly, say due to unexpected new complications, and
trigger market flight.   

If you look at the commodities curve, for example, you see we first had a
20% per year increase in raw material costs for food and energy, for the
past 6 years, and now have a collapse.   You could ask why the physical
system didn't respond to create supply to lower the price.  There was some
'sticking point' and then the speculators jumped in because the needed
increasing supplies were not materializing.   Maybe the whole system reached
the point where the physical complications reduced the total physical return
on investment too far.   
http://www.synapse9.com/issues/92-08Commodities2-sm.pdf or .jpg

That idea is not proved by the graph, just suggested.  What is provable is
that persistent declining ROI's (like how much water the effort to get water
uses) as we now see for all resources will eventually cross the whole system
profitability thresholds.  Whether people see them coming or can explain it
is not the first question.   You just 'half answer' it at first, asking
whether the kind of effect we should see fits the general picture of what we
are seeing.

Phil Henshaw  


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella
> Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 2:36 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The true crisis is still to come
> 
> Thus spake Jochen Fromm circa 10/26/2008 07:25 AM:
> > http://blog.cas-group.net/2008/10/the-true-crisis-is-still-to-come/
> 
> I'm currently reading "The Deep Hot Biosphere" and Gold presents a
> pretty persuasive argument that the hydrocarbons (oil, methane, coal,
> ...) we burn for energy are not (mostly) fossil fuels.  I'm still too
> ignorant to have my own opinion on whether the hydrocarbons are
> [a]biogenic.
> 
> But I wonder how you guys think abiogenic origins of hydrocarbons would
> affect "peak oil"?  On the one hand, if oil is percolating up from deep
> sources, although still finite, the estimates of the total amount of
> oil
> we can exploit would rise significantly.  (And much of the peak oil
> problem would be solvable through new technologies for getting at the
> oil.)  But on the other hand, our burn rate, being exponential, will
> eventually outpace production rates, despite advances in extraction
> technology.
> 
> Does that mean that the peak oil argument is essentially unchanged
> regardless of whether the hydrocarbons are primordial or biogenic?
> 
> (I know it's reductionist of me... I'll say a few Hail Marys in penance
> ... but I'd like to separate the peak oil issue from the global climate
> change issue and focus solely on peak oil and the origins of oil... for
> now, anyway.)
> 
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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Re: [FRIAM] The true crisis is still to come

[Phil Henshaw]

You really have to wonder in a complexity science forum why taking on
endless multiplying complications, as a standard planning concept, would not
be quickly brought into question.   The opening statement in on that CAS
webpage is:

Forget the financial crisis, the true global economic crisis will come in
the next ten years. The end of cheap oil and the beginning of climate change
are the first warning signs. We won’t be able to stop increasing oil prices
in the long term. And we won’t be able to stop climate change and global
warming.

That's only true if the phrase "true global economic crisis" assumes we
don't realize the error in endlessly multiplying the size and complexity of
the system.  Even without any physical resource limits of any kind the
compounding complexity of continual growth makes any system completely
unmanageable.  You get learning demands that exceed the possible range of
learning responses for the parts not changing.   We're supposed to have
learned by seeing the exploding complexity of the financial schemes as the
core problem in the recent collapse.   The central cause of that complexity
was that they were built to maintain financial system growth in the absence
of similar physical system growth.   We should learn from experience.   The
problem of collapse is not with the pins that prick our bubbles but the
pumps that pump them to the point of bursting.

Phil Henshaw  


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
> Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2008 10:25 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] The true crisis is still to come
> 
> Did you know that 8 out of 10 from the biggest
> companies of the world live from oil or oil-consuming
> products? I think the true crisis is still to come, see
> 
> http://blog.cas-group.net/2008/10/the-true-crisis-is-still-to-come/
> 
> -J.
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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Re: [FRIAM] Greenspan - Bad data hurt Wall Street computer models - NYTimes.com

[Phil Henshaw]

Well, OK, "bad data" is a "smoking gun" for why the regulators didn't see it
coming. One question is why it looks like people are finding so very
many different "smoking guns" that show signs of having been just used to
shoot ourselves in the foot.   

 

The common thread for me is our deeply mistaken common purpose and 'standard
practice'.   Everyone's objective was to offer, promise and insure the
stability of continual multiplying returns.The big bit of "bad data"
that spoils that is that the physical system that was needed to support that
endless financial multiplication, was showing emerging diminishing returns.


 

The data was actually plentiful, though, hidden only by the people who
didn't see the question!

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of peter
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 7:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Greenspan - Bad data hurt Wall Street computer models -
NYTimes.com

 

http://www.nytimes.com/external/idg/2008/10/23/23idg-Greenspan-Bad.html?scp=
2
<http://www.nytimes.com/external/idg/2008/10/23/23idg-Greenspan-Bad.html?scp
=2&sq=greenspan%20tsunami%20models&st=cse>
&sq=greenspan%20tsunami%20models&st=cse

The two most fascinating paragraphs are below / its also fun to note the
federal sentencing guidelines now take into account the financial impact
amount of fraud which means our merry Quants could be doing multi lifetimes
in the pokey

But at a hearing
<http://www.idg.com/www/rd.nsf/rd?readform&u=http://oversight.house.gov/stor
y.asp?ID=2256>  held today by the House Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform, Greenspan acknowledged that the data fed into financial
systems was often a case of garbage-in, garbage-out.
Business decisions by financial services firms were based on "the best
insights of mathematicians and finance experts, supported by major advances
in computer and communications technology," Greenspan told the committee.
"The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last
year because the data inputted into the risk management models generally
covered only the past two decades a period of euphoria."
He added that if the risk models also had been built to include "historic
periods of stress, capital requirements would have been much higher and the
financial world would be in far better shape today, in my judgment."

It was unclear from Cox's testimony just what sort of regulatory changes he
was suggesting. But he said that the SEC is now engaged in "aggressive law
enforcement

-- 



Peter Baston

IDEAS

 <http://www.ideapete.com/> www.ideapete.com

 

 


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Re: [FRIAM] MIT experts analyze financial crisis, debate cures

[Phil Henshaw]

Ken
> Phil,
> 
> You speak of causality and "why" answers as if they "ought" be
deterministic
> in some scientific paradigm.  Uncle Occam cautions that may be one
> assumption too many.
[ph] Ah yes... but the value of deterministic answers does not remove the
value of closely focused anticipatory questions.   One needs to be careful
not to waste one's time, but there really are some clear actionable signs of
change that are every bit as useful as deterministic answers.

> 
> Therefore, I sense that the underlying assumption in your observation is
> that science is "supposed" to be the search for truth from events of the
> past.  I refer you to Henry Pollack's book "Uncertain Science, Uncertain
> World", and Michael Lynton's observation that the purpose of science is to
> "separate the demonstrably false from the probably true".
[ph] Yes, and of course what science "is" is whatever scientists "do" and
that's a quite broad spectrum of things. Some habits scientists consistently
return to over and over, include coming up with new questions when the
patterns of what we're looking at just don't fit...  I'm just pointing to a
better methodology for identifying that 'cognitive dissonance' in the
environment that prompts the need for new questions.   It's a way of
scanning the environment for signs of impending systems change, and things
like that.  Relative to *that* point of view the purposes of science seem to
be to describe only what is changeless, and to distract us from many of the
exciting new questions all around us.

> I would add that "probably true" actually means "probably not false", so
> even that logical state is approached asymptotically.  This is an artifact
> (meaning a residual error or inaccuracy) from a Newtonian era paradigm of
> science that has long been shown erroneous yet still permeates most
peoples
> thinking.
[ph] Well, from an anticipatory science view "probably true" mean "worth
checking out", so even if past data is inconclusive at the moment, the
progression observed may suggest future data will become so.  As we build an
ever more complex and rapidly changing world, the "probably true"
expectation that the system will expose ever larger errors we didn't see is,
in my estimate, worth looking into.

> 
> The problem caused by planning on things working is what I call The Sunny
> Day Paradox - usually faced by those who believe in a deterministic
> scientific paradigm. In other words, in spite of successful surgery, the
> patient died.
[ph] Well that is also aptly pointed out with the statistical world view of
the turkey in the month before Thanksgiving...  He's being treated unusually
well and feeling fit as a fiddle...  statistically speaking he has great
prospects for a long life.

> 
> One last point, by "pump" do you mean "probabilistic wavefunction"?
[ph] No I don't mean equations.  I mean a reciprocating process of
accumulation.   The simple handle pump for water in a farmyard or the
spritzer of a lady's perfume are analogous in various ways to the complex
processes that systems use to accumulate changes.  If the spritzer worked
the way a growth system does, starting with an almost imperceptible
discharge and then using some output to multiply the output, a person
patient and persistent enough to get it to operate at all is likely to be
suddenly drenched with perfume and feint to the floor if they don't pay very
close attention to just when to stop it.   It's the relation between the
doubling rate of the pump and lag time in the control system responses that
displays the range of outcomes.   The big lag time to watch, of course, is
the time it takes to switch it off automatic.

It's actually a quite useful question.The wonder to me is why science
has not yet seemed to acknowledge that systems of change change things.

Phil


> 
> Ken
> 
> > -Original Message-
> > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Phil Henshaw
> > Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 8:17 AM
> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
> > Coffee Group'
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] MIT experts analyze financial crisis,
> > debate cures
> >
> > Gosh, I don't know why it's so hard to convey, but it's
> > important to understand.
> >
> > The error in planning on things working as if responding to a
> > normal curve distribution (i.e. admirably designed for all
> > the usual problems) is relying on it if there is a growing
> > 'fat tail' of abnormal events (the black swan).
> > That situation is sure to develop when trying to 

Re: [FRIAM] MIT experts analyze financial crisis, debate cures

[Phil Henshaw]

Gosh, I don't know why it's so hard to convey, but it's important to
understand.  

The error in planning on things working as if responding to a normal curve
distribution (i.e. admirably designed for all the usual problems) is relying
on it if there is a growing 'fat tail' of abnormal events (the black swan).
That situation is sure to develop when trying to regulate a system for
producing ever more unusual and complex events.   That is precisely what we
were, and have always been, and still are trying to do.

A bubble pops at it's weakest point, not it's strongest.  When the
'containment' is a regulatory design, the certainty is that the breach will
occur at the most critical place that no one checked.  By definition it's a
small error that multiplies to an irreversible point before anyone quite
realizes it.   The CAUSE of that is not the rare event (the pin prick).
It's not the weak point in the containment that no one checked (patches of
poor design or regulation or greed, etc).  It's not the size of the bubble
(how big the gradient is from high to low).  It's the pump.

The cause is pumping the bubble of complications in an accelerating way that
guarantees people will miss the problems developing.   It's operating an
growth system and making the first regulatory error, accepting the learning
curve of exploding complication required to stabilize it forever.

There are a lot of 'why' answers, and some of them circular.  I think the
correctable reason why is the common scientific error of reading the future
in the past.   We plan on the future behaving like the past by trusting old
stereotypes and patterns for changing things.   We plan on the future being
like the past EVEN for systems we design for the purpose changing at
continually multiplying rates.   The solution is to notice the cognitive
dissonance... you could say, and just ask the dumb questions.

Phil Henshaw  


> -Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Phil Henshaw
> Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2008 12:06 PM
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] MIT experts analyze financial crisis, debate cures
> 
> Of course!, the reason they fooled everyone so completely was that they
> were
> designed to be completely sensible.   That's what is meant by the
> "black
> swan".
> 
> Phil Henshaw
> 
> 
> > -Original Message-
> > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> > Behalf Of Owen Densmore
> > Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:11 PM
> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> > Subject: [FRIAM] MIT experts analyze financial crisis, debate cures
> >
> > This seemed to be a pretty sound analysis of the current crisis:
> >http://techtv.mit.edu/file/1448/
> > In particular, I was surprised to see how reasonable several things I
> > had thought to be "bad" were.  For example, the "securitization" of
> > mortgages arose from a very reasonable desire to "smooth out" risk.
> I
> > hadn't understood their function before.
> >
> >  -- Owen
> >
> >
> >
> > 
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Re: [FRIAM] MIT experts analyze financial crisis, debate cures

[Phil Henshaw]

Of course!, the reason they fooled everyone so completely was that they were
designed to be completely sensible.   That's what is meant by the "black
swan".   

Phil Henshaw  


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Owen Densmore
> Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:11 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] MIT experts analyze financial crisis, debate cures
> 
> This seemed to be a pretty sound analysis of the current crisis:
>http://techtv.mit.edu/file/1448/
> In particular, I was surprised to see how reasonable several things I
> had thought to be "bad" were.  For example, the "securitization" of
> mortgages arose from a very reasonable desire to "smooth out" risk.  I
> hadn't understood their function before.
> 
>  -- Owen
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Re: [FRIAM] New Journal

[Phil Henshaw]

Well. that you then get a list of ten pages of new journals describing new
fields for discussing the problems of new information complexity and
overload. might be the point.

 

Phil Henshaw  

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Gus Koehler
Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2008 1:11 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: [FRIAM] New Journal

 

 

Those of you who are interested in modeling and autonomous agents should
check out the first issue of the International Journal of Agent Technologies
and Systems, Vol. No. 1, January-March 2009 at
http://www.igi-global.com/journals/

 

Gus

 

Gus Koehler, PhD., CEO 



 

www.timestructures.com

1545 University Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95825
916.564.8683   Fax: 916.564.7895

Cell: 916.716.1740

www.timestructures.com <http://www.timestructures.com/>  
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

 


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Re: [FRIAM] Blinded By Science - When models FAIL taking all the humans

[Phil Henshaw]

I sold enough for my own and my son's security for a time last Nov for
what it's worth.  I chose not to sell out to see how it felt to only 'cover
my ass' and not act like leading the kind of 'flight to safety' that would
bring whole systems down if copied.  That did develop, of course, a few
weeks ago.   As I saw the wave building and crashing it constantly felt like
I really should have sold more, and was glad I had not.

Phil

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Pamela McCorduck
> Sent: Friday, October 17, 2008 4:03 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Blinded By Science - When models FAIL taking all
> the humans
> 
> I found that Nature article disingenuous.  It  just so happened I sat
> down to dinner with a couple of bigtime modelers on Tuesday night--one
> models mathematically, one heuristically. They hadn't ever talked about
> it with each other, but they found out they'd done the same thing:
> they'd done the arithmetic, saw that whatever was happening in the
> markets was a bubble, and closed most of their positions within the
> last eighteen months. Is Nature asking us to feel sorry for people who
> couldn't do arithmetic?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Oct 17, 2008, at 12:32 PM, peggy miller wrote:
> 
> > Models don't replace ownership and smaller sized business
> > responsibility...unless can figure out a model for Caring.
> >
> > When I was doing bank work in D.C. for Consumer Federation, I ended
> up
> > with the position, due both to intuition, as well as hard facts from
> > studies that were performed by Harvard and other fairly reputable
> > places-- showing that good banking judgement becomes reduced (like
> > with any management) as ownership is eliminated replaced by ever
> > larger scale operations managed by non-ownership managers.
> >
> > Translation -- statistics and common sense verified that the larger
> > the operation becomes, with noticeably poorer decisions happening at
> > the size of business over $1 billion in profits, matched by
> > replacement of ownership/manager with non-owner managers, judgment
> > fails. Caring appears to be a part of ownership. Somethings counter
> > this problem, like profit sharing -- giving workers part of profits -
> -
> > but ownership of business and smaller size seems to be almost
> > irreplaceable. Small banks and credit unions, owned locally, rarely
> > fail. The owner's name, reputation and thus decisions are on the
> line.
> >
> > How many names of the managers of these large failed institutions do
> > we know? a couple? and they get paid handsomely either way ..
> >
> > There was discussion of linking pay of all managers more directly to
> > following of safety standards .. but I don't think that happened.
> Also
> > .. just fyi .. when we went to have a hearing on this before Senate
> > Banking Committee .. with the studies showing that size of
> > institutions relates to poor management  -- when you get over $1
> > billion, management quality noticeable deteriorates -- suddenly the
> > group of professors and academics who performed the studies said they
> > could not testify (they were silenced somehow.)
> >
> >
> >
> > Have a great day!
> > Peggy Miller
> >  
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
> 
> "But this I know: the writer who possesses the creative gift owns
> something of which he is not always master--something that, at times,
> strangely wills and works for itself."
> 
>   Charlotte Bronte
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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Re: [FRIAM] Blinded By Science - When models FAIL taking all the humans

[Phil Henshaw]

Glen says,  " > It seems (to me) that we should have learned this lesson
thoroughly
> when> we demonstrated that many contexts call for distributed as opposed
to
> centralized solutions.  

Yes, very much so, but I also agree with Peggy's sense that there's
something about ownership that is different from being indifferent about
following someone else's rules.  If both principles are to apply... then a
distributed system of individual owners, of their own part of a larger whole
system is needed.  To me that means everyone being curious about what can go
wrong.   I see that kind of risk avoidance as one of the clear
distinguishing characteristics of distributed systems functioning as
advanced learning processes, as all organisms seem to in their own domains.
Some learning processes can't learn, like thermostats.  Some can only
explore for self-expansion, like fire.  Others can be risk averse and
seeking out only resources that are free of conflict.  The question isn't
'how' so much, as identifying what we can clearly observe occurring, and
we're trying to explain.

I think that's one of the things a conscious and logical mind can perceive,
that there is a wide assortment of successful learning systems that notice
when the progression of problems being solved is leading to unsolvable
problems, the universal warning sign.  

You can call it "sensing increasingly complex risks with fat tailed
distributions" as Taleb would, or "approaching diminishing returns" as I or
Tainter would, or crossing lines of potential conflict, the name in common
language any animal watches closely in going about their daily business.  I
just don't seem to know how to prove that staying with an ever riskier
course is the cause of the calamity it naturally becomes.   Proving that you
can have foresight seems to  require foresight, relying on reading beyond
one's data every time...

Phil 

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella
> Sent: Friday, October 17, 2008 1:27 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Blinded By Science - When models FAIL taking all
> the humans
> 
> Thus spake peggy miller circa 10/17/2008 09:32 AM:
> > Translation -- statistics and common sense verified that the larger
> the
> > operation becomes, with noticeably poorer decisions happening at the
> size of
> > business over $1 billion in profits, matched by replacement of
> > ownership/manager with non-owner managers, judgment fails. Caring
> appears to
> > be a part of ownership. Somethings counter this problem, like profit
> sharing
> > -- giving workers part of profits -- but ownership of business and
> smaller
> > size seems to be almost irreplaceable. Small banks and credit unions,
> owned
> > locally, rarely fail. The owner's name, reputation and thus decisions
> are on
> > the line.
> 
> Why is it that we are (and continue to be) so myopic to the flaws to
> such large-scale abstraction (aggregation and accumulation)?
> 
> It seems (to me) that we should have learned this lesson thoroughly
> when
> we demonstrated that many contexts call for distributed as opposed to
> centralized solutions.  We had to learn that lesson over and over in
> various disciplines.  Why hasn't that knowledge translated to corporate
> governance?  (Or government even?)
> 
> Centralization, abstraction, aggregation, and accumulation seem to be
> the dominant tendency.
> 
> My undefended conjecture is that such abstraction is the only way an
> individual can _both_ multiply their money _and_ keep the consequences
> at arm's length.  I.e. it's the only way one can both make butt-loads
> of
> money and retain a clear conscience.  (Gee, do I sound like a
> socialist?
> or what? ;-)
> 
> But it's also quite possible that the only way to maintain a "survival
> by growth" method is to engage in such accumulation.  For corporations,
> it's obvious.  For the federal government, it's less so because it's
> reasonable to assume that the management of 3.5 million square miles
> and
> 350 million people requires a centralized solution.
> 
> > How many names of the managers of these large failed institutions do
> we
> > know? a couple? and they get paid handsomely either way ..
> 
> This reminds me of:
> 
> Thus spake peter circa 10/01/2008 09:50 AM:
> > Sure I will dig out some names ...
> > [...]
> >
> > glen e. p. ropella wrote:
> >> But can you help me reduce my ignorance?  Which "complexity science
> >> geniuses" created these credit models?  And which ones do you think
> >> might go to jail?
> 
> Peter?  Did you ever get a chance to dig up some names of these
> "complexity science geniuses"?
> 
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://ww

Re: [FRIAM] The Blunders that lead to the catastrophe - Humpty Dumpty's modeling school

[Phil Henshaw]

Yes, there have been lots of blunders. We've also not been looking at
how environment is becoming increasingly unresponsive, turning a great many
of our assumptions about it upside down.  :-o
http://www.synapse9.com/issues/92-08Commodities2-sm.pdfThis is just one
of many kinds of divergent in new complexities for development that we have
no place to put in our models., and so leave them out of the analysis only
because we don't know what to make of them.   Things like this are signals
of systemic physical system change.   In this case, directly, that when the
price went up more food and energy were not produced.   That sort of thing
could also lead to blunders, couldn't it??  :-)

 

Phil

 

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of peter
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 10:50 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] The Blunders that lead to the catastrophe - Humpty Dumpty's
modeling school

 

The main article 
( : ( : pete
Peter Baston
IDEAS
  www.ideapete.com


The blunders that led to the banking crisis


*   25 September 2008 
*   From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe
  and get 4 free
issues. 
*   Rob Jameson

 
Printable version

WHAT'S the quickest way to kill a bank? As recent events in the financial
world have shown, the answer is to deny them access to ready cash. Over the
past year, a string of banking institutions have found themselves in such a
"liquidity crisis": unable to convince the market they can honour their
promises to pay back money they owe. The result has been a series of
high-profile failures, from Northern Rock in the UK last year to Lehman
Brothers last week.

The crisis did not come without warning. Ten years ago this month, a giant
hedge fund called Long-Term Capital Management collapsed when it too
suffered a liquidity crisis. Yet banks and regulators seem not to have
heeded the lessons from this wake-up call by improving the mathematical
models that they use to manage their risk.

That raises two key questions. How did the risk modellers get it so wrong?
And what can they do to prevent similar crises in future?

Banks are vulnerable to liquidity crises because they borrow money that may
have to be repaid in the short term, and use it to back up more lucrative
longer-term investments. If depositors withdraw their money and other
lenders refuse to lend the bank the funds they need to replace it, the bank
ends up in trouble because it can't easily turn its long-term assets into
cash to make up the shortfall.

Banks pay enormous sums to lure researchers away from other areas of science
and set them to work building complex statistical models that supposedly
tell the bankers about the risks they are running. So why didn't they see
what was coming?

The answer lies partly in the nature of liquidity crises. "By definition
they are rare, extreme events, so all the models you rely on in normal times
don't work any more," says Michel Crouhy head of research and development at
the French investment bank Natixis, and author of a standard text on
financial risk management. What's more, each liquidity crisis is inevitably
different from its predecessors, not least because major crises provoke
changes in the shape of markets, regulations and the behaviour of players.

"Liquidity crises are rare, extreme events, so all the models you rely on in
normal times don't work any more"

On top of this, banks wrongly assumed that two areas of vulnerability could
be treated in isolation, each with its own risk model. When the two areas
began to affect each other and drive up banks' liquidity risk there was no
unifying framework to predict what would happen, explains William Perraudin,
director of the Risk Management Laboratory at Imperial College London.


False assumption


The first set of models covers the bank's day-to-day trading. These models
typically assume that market prices will continue to behave much as they
have in the past, and that they are reasonably predictable. Unfortunately,
while this assumption may hold for straightforward financial instruments
such as shares and bonds, it doesn't apply to the complicated financial
instruments which bundle up different kinds of assets such as high-risk
mortgages. What's more, information about the market prices of these
products usually goes back only a few years, if it is available at all.
"Statistical models based on short time series of data are a terrible way to
understand [these kinds of] risks," says Perraudin.

The models also assumed that the bank would be able to sell "problematic"
assets, such as high-risk sub-prime mortgages, and this too turned out not
to be true. "It's the combination of poor price risk modelling and being
unable to sell out of the position that has produced the nightmare
scenario

Re: [FRIAM] Selection, Reproductive rate, and Karrying Kapacity.

[Phil Henshaw]

Russ & Nick,
Regarding multilevel selection, aren't there multi-level systems involved?
Certainly a change in cell behavior affects the organism, and the local
pack, and larger population, and the local ecology too.  But you also have
reverse effects in that the larger scale orders greatly alter what each
lower order differences will make a difference.  Then there's the
interesting aspect that some kinds of complex systems overlap in lots of
ways, like complexly varied ecosystems with many intersecting levels, and so
a simple hierarchy is not what is operating either.   

What can, if you follow it through, straighten all that out is considering
systems as individual exploratory networks.  Then you can still have
independent ones that overlap and they still work fine, and all of them can
have a role in mediating selection for all the others.


Phil Henshaw      .·´ ¯ `·.
~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040   
tel: 212-795-4844   e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]explorations:
www.synapse9.com    
"it's not finding what people say interesting, but finding the interest in
what they say" 





FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] Selection, Reproductive rate, and Karrying Kapacity.

[Phil Henshaw]

Russ,

 

That's a good example about the difference between breeding for the best
bird vs. the best bird environment, but they don't immediately seem to
address whether variation is developmental or random. It's tricky to
find the hard evidence, but I don't know of anyone saying they could show
statistically that random variation would be constructive either. My
hint is that the organizational processes we can observe the workings of
generally do exhibit developmental variation, like we use in any programming
or other design process.   

 

Once you think of the first part in the design, the process that seems to
work better for people is adding a second related part, *if the first seemed
to work*, and that way extending variations from prior variations
experimentally, rather than randomly.It takes some effort to imagine how
genetic variation could be 'tree like' instead of helter skelter.  but there
a number of ways.  What you need is for competitive advantage to multiply
related variations.

 

In any case individual organism growth and development is clearly a
branching process, and speciation seems to clearly be an extension of a
prior branching process.   Maybe speciation occurs by a branching process
too.In speciation the form of the organism appears to extend its
developmental trees as whole, all at once, something that a tree like
variation process could do and a random variation process very likely not.
So that's what I think would be sensible to look for. 

 

Besides, tree-like development could do one thing that random variation
can't, produce developmental step changes that begin and end.  That's what
is apparently displayed by my little plankton.  I'd really love to have the
$'s to do a photo animation of how the smooth to then bulgy shapes on it's
shell changed through the dips and turns of it's dramatic changes in size
from one to another stable form.

 

Phil

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 5:15 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selection, Reproductive rate, and Karrying Kapacity.

 

One of my favorite books of the year is David Sloan Wilson's Evolution for
Everyone. Wilson has been arguing for multi-level selection for quite a
while -- and as far as I'm concerned he makes very good points. 

The fundamental insight is that everything is both a group and an
individual.  And hence virtually anything can evolve at the individual level
-- even if it's a group. 

Wilson likes talking about religions (or religious groups united by
religious practices) as an example of a group that competes evolutionarily.
He argues that religious that promote hard work, support of fellow members
of one's religious community, etc. tend to succeed. 

He also tells the story of the experient in which groups of hens were
allowed to evolve. It was done in two ways.

1. Start with (say) a dozen cages, each with a certain number of hens. At
the end of a given time, the best egg-layer in each cage were bred to create
a second generaation of cages.  Continue for a certain number of
generations.

2. Start the same way, but after each generation, breed the best cage,
regardless of how its individual members performed.  Continue for a certain
number of generations.

The result: breeding cages was much more successful than breeding
individuals. In this case it turns out that breeding individuals produced
macho hens who pecked each other to death. Breeding cages produced
cooperative hens who lived happily with each other and produced lots of
eggs. 

The larger lesson is that groups often embody structures that support the
group's success. To enable those structures the group needs members who play
various roles. Simply selecting the most productive members of a group and
rewarding them breaks down the group structure. 

-- Russ 



On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 11:18 AM, Nicholas Thompson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

All, 

 

Here are some comments on various comments.   I succumb, reluctantly, to the
community norm about caps. 

 

[grumble, grumble]

 

Glen Said >

 

The idea of expansion and contraction is

interesting: rapid expansion of populations 

(when selection is relaxed) vs. rapid contraction 

of populations (when selection is intensified).

 

The human population went indeed through a 

phase of rapid expansion in the last decades while

natural selection was released through cultural 

and technological progress.

 

Seed Magazine has an article about human 

evolution and relaxed selection, too

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/10/how_we_evolve_1.php <===

 

Nick Replies ===>

 

I think this is a confusion between carrying capacity and selection.  When,
for some reason, carrying capacity is increased, the whole population can
expand, but this does not stop selection.  It may change the nature of
selection from tracking how well individu

Re: [FRIAM] Selection, Reproductive rate, and Karrying Kapacity.

[Phil Henshaw]

I agree with most of Nick's hesitations (except re: all caps.. :-))
Population expansion would increase the variety of individuals to be
selected from, though.I think that was the idea behind Terry Deacon's
theory, still with variation being random and constant, and using the same
old tautology that change is caused by what survives. That there are
several levels of (mostly unexplained) organization and the need for
selection to somehow differentiate between them, and to do so differently
for every organism in the environment, has always been a problem for me in
seeing selection as the primary hand of 'design'.   When I build things that
way it never works.Still, if there are times of great variety in
emerging designs and generous environmental capacities for all to flourish,
one of the newbies may be the one that survives when the tide turns to
drought and famine.   That's sure how it works in economies, and ecologies
are indeed natural economies.

 

One thing I don't see addressed by changing selective pressures to vary
rates of evolution is the possibility of, and apparent need for, 'mutations'
that have low rates of destroying the whole organism.Punctuated
equilibrium seems to imply that there are rare periods when the success rate
of diverse interrelated mutations is a lot higher than the rest of the time.
That there is some kind of switch that turns whole system malleability on
and off.  If you just had a little greater likelihood of mutations at
the periphery of the genome's design, whatever that is, in preference to
it's central structures, it would produce a lot more variation in functional
design in proportion to dysfunctional design.  In that plankton paper of
mine I also broadly speculate on particular mechanisms for that.   That
seems to be the same issue Kirschner and Gerhart are getting at when
subtitling their book "resolving Darwin's dilemma" and by some of the other
EvoDevo models I keep hearing about where variation trees rather than random
disruptions are the key to inventing new things that work . 

 

Phil

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Nicholas Thompson
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 2:18 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] Selection, Reproductive rate, and Karrying Kapacity.

 

All, 

 

Here are some comments on various comments.   I succumb, reluctantly, to the
community norm about caps. 

 

[grumble, grumble]

 

Glen Said >

 

The idea of expansion and contraction is

interesting: rapid expansion of populations 

(when selection is relaxed) vs. rapid contraction 

of populations (when selection is intensified).

 

The human population went indeed through a 

phase of rapid expansion in the last decades while

natural selection was released through cultural 

and technological progress.

 

Seed Magazine has an article about human 

evolution and relaxed selection, too

 
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/10/how_we_evolve_1.php <===

 

Nick Replies ===>

 

I think this is a confusion between carrying capacity and selection.  When,
for some reason, carrying capacity is increased, the whole population can
expand, but this does not stop selection.  It may change the nature of
selection from tracking how well individuals can make use of limited
resources to how fast they can reproduce when times are flush, but there is
no reason to think that raising the carrying capacity should "relax"
selection.  

 

Russell Wrote ===>

 

Any extinction event is a collapse of the food web. And selection only

proceeds by means of extinction. So I'm not really quite sure what

you're trying to nuance here.

 

Nick Replies ===>

 

OK.  Here is where we disagree, I think.  Let's worry this a bit, before we
talk about anything else, because it seems absolutely central:  When talking
about selection, at what level of organization are we speaking?  Gene,
individual, small group, "deme", species, ecosystem?  etc.  I grew up under
the influence of George Williams who argued that no entity above the
individual could serve as a level of selection and  of Richard Dawkins, who
argued that no entity above the level of the gene could serve as a level of
selection.  So, in my world, species level selection is not a powerful cause
of evolution.   Indeed, on some definitions, species, by definition, cannot
compete.  Now, in the last decade, I have thrown off Williams' shackles and
started to talk about selection at the level of the small group.  And,
indeed, I do know that some others have started talking about species-level
selection.   But species level selection has not become the received view,
has it  If not, the statement above must be EXTREMELY [whoops,
_extremely_] controversial.  

 

Let's pause here and see what others say.  

 

 

Nick 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, 

Clark University ([EMAIL PROTECTED])

Re: [FRIAM] SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO what is data anyway

[Phil Henshaw]

Peter,

 

Nice, That's definitely very poetic, making clear why one needs to learn how
to read beyond the facts and the data, as we are all taught never to do.!
Still it seems to omit some of the tension within analysis which allows that
to happen, and that Cousins and Whitehead both seem likely to have been
interested in too. The best part of facts is when they add up to
dissonances, overlapping 'almost logics', that require new questions, and
how one of the easiest things to do with analysis is to treat whatever
upsets old questions as noise.;-) 

 

Phil

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of peter
Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2008 5:13 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; 1st-Mile-NM
Subject: [FRIAM] S what is data anyway

 

On the quest of how truth / morality and honesty drive data ( or not ) I
came across this priceless quotation which I though I would share.

Call me nuts but it makes so much sense


QUOTATION:

There is a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always
been a tendency to confuse logic with values, intelligence with insight.
Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is
matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they
lead. Facts are terrible things if left sprawling and unattended. They are
too easily regarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of
raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic. It requires
a very unusual mind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact.
The computer can provide a correct number, but it may be an irrelevant
number until judgment is pronounced.


ATTRIBUTION:

Norman Cousins (1912-1990), U.S. editor, author. "Freedom as Teacher," Human
Options: An Autobiographical Notebook, Norton (1981)


( : ( : pete

-- 



Peter Baston

IDEAS

  www.ideapete.com

 

 

 


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] Relaxed Selection, a b-level posting

[Phil Henshaw]

Well, maybe their environment is less rich than some, but is then just what
they CAN explore, and have different ways to respond to.   I guess you let
them eat each other or leave each other along.  Maybe they could also attach
different tags to each other to identify 'good guys' from 'bad guys' to be
recognized by others maybe, or other things.  In nature a major complication
is that organisms rely on others of different kinds for their resources and
so competitive advantage is generally unstable if anyone 'wins' the
'competition'.  Maybe you could have 'poison' that is toxic to all produced
and slowly dissipate if any one organism dominates or something, and see
what strategy variations might regulate their discovery of how to maximize
the community without that happening.

Phil

> -Original Message-
> From: Russell Standish [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2008 7:20 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Relaxed Selection, a b-level posting
> 
> On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 01:54:45PM -0400, Phil Henshaw wrote:
> > Russ,
> > You say: "I'm trying a slightly different tack with Tierra, of
> artificially
> > inducing mass extinctions every now and then. I have also tried
> reducing
> > parsimony pressure from time to time (I'm not sure what would be the
> > biological world equivalent of this - possibly variation in
> background
> > radioactivity or cosmic rays)..."
> >
> > If your 'organisms' in Tierra were organized around feedback loops
> that
> > developed by exploring their environments, might you experiment with
> have
> > them be variably exploratory?
> >
> > Phil
> >
> 
> Tierran organism are much simpler than that. They basically just
> reproduce until they die. Some manage to parasitise the resources of
> others. But there is little in the way of environment for them to
> explore (which is a criticism levelled at these experiments to be
> sure).
> 
> --
> 
> ---
> -
> A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Mathematics
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au
> ---
> -




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Re: [FRIAM] Rule 2 and Epigensis

[Phil Henshaw]

But then if you rewrite unwritten rules #1 and #2 would you then also
rewrite unwritten rules #3 and #4, which as I seem to observe say there's
always some exception to rules #1 and #2 in case you have anything
particular to say, so long as you leave openings for those who may wish to
read nothing in particular into it. I think 3 & 4, if I'm right that
they exist, are very useful.!

 

Phil

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2008 4:04 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Rule 2 and Epigensis

 

Nick,

It appears as if you suggesting, specifically, that we should change *two*
rules (#1 as well as #2), unwritten though they both be.  

Let me just tell you that if rewriting these two unwritten rules will
release us from the world of ideological blather that has become the FRIAM
list's hallmark, I say let the rewriting commence.

Fear not, in any event.  It is impossible to scare FRIAM'ers away from
posting to the list.

--Doug

On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 12:25 PM, Nicholas Thompson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Doug,

This is the second time this rule has been offered as a rule of FRIAM in a
way that might confuse folks.

PH wrote ===>Seems to me that everything from epigenetic gene regulation
changes to
> horizontal gene transfer is happening at the bacterial level.. <===

In response , Doug Wrote

===> You know, not to sound too harshly judgmental, or anything, ...
But: you do seem to be in direct violation of rule #2 of the FRIAM posting
guidelines which, like rule #1 reads

"*Second **rule of FRIAM: no one talks about specifics*."<=

I dont think it is a rule, but if it were one, I would say it is a terrible
one and we should change it.  Without the details and the examples, we are
confined to the world of ideological blather.

So, I would hope that we could pool our technical resources and come to a
common view on the assertion made above.  Much of the research that has
been done on epigenetic gene regulation has indeed been done on bacteria!
Does that mean that it has few implications for our understanding of macro
organisms?  Discuss.  Defend your answer with specifics.   It's a great
question and I would hate to see people scared a way from trying to answer
it.

Nick





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Re: [FRIAM] Relaxed Selection, a b-level posting

[Phil Henshaw]

> Marcus says:
> Phil Henshaw wrote:
> > We could consider the vast variation in
> > canine breeds and the fact that breeding selection as an extreme form of
> > epigenetics has not apparently altered the species they all belong to.
> >
> Selection from breeding would mostly be constrained genetics, i.e. a big
> and a small dog could be discriminated by, say, an insulin allele, say
> (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/316/5821/112).
> However in epigenetic case we are talking about an inherited but
> non-genetic change.
[ph] On looking up a couple definitions I find the word distinguishes
between heritable "gene expression" from heritability in general.   I
suppose there are a variety of ways gene expression might be inherited, and
I was falling into the common presumption that "it's all in the genes"...
:~(

> > Perhaps the question is how environmental pressures and experience may
> > clearly influence genetics, but be insufficient to originate the kind of
> > somehow deeper genetic change that creates new forms of life.   Among
other
> > things it points to a distinct difference between 'shallower' and
'deeper'
> > genetic change indicating that some form of structure other than noisy
> > aggregations may be present.
> >
> Seems to me that everything from epigenetic gene regulation changes to
> horizontal gene transfer is happening at the bacterial level..  What is
> the question?
[ph] There may be so many different kinds of inheritance if you open it up
like that, I would just start to differentiate by balling them all up into
one, since we really don't yet seem to have a way to distinguish what does
what and just recently discovered all that 'junk' DNA we can't map has some
other kinds of functions we can't map.   The question I was alluding to is
the argument about whether organisms have any structures at all, or are just
statistical distributions that record statistical interferences (that turn
out to be extremely different for every species).   I believe that is the
usual bottom line dispute between those who think speciation represents a
change of state and those who think it represents only statistical drift.  

The generalization of that is the question of whether any system in nature
actually has any structure of its own, or if all form is just a statistical
aggregation of random environmental perturbations.  I think it's real
obvious that systems have internal designs independent of their environments
because you can watch how their internal loops emerge without determinant
cause and develop locally to become resilient and independently responsive,
as well as having intricately organized unique functional designs. 

I do understand there are a number of issues of causation it leaves
unanswered, but just because they're unanswered doesn't explain how systems
have such unfathomably complex and concentrated multi-faceted organization
without some kind of organizational development process.  I think the root
problem is one of perception, that most explanations seem to try explain
systems as being poked by their environments with sticks or pushed with
pressures, and leave it at that.  That leaves out how the internal threads
of systems are pulled with either trails of crumbs or puddles of honey.
There's certainly a lot that goes on at the interface between system and
environment, but it's both push and pull, and I think when you start asking
it's both push and pull from both inside and out.  The usual idea that
there's no way to cause things but to pry or whack them with a stick, seems
to be missing at least 3/4 of what could be happening at any real complex
system interface.   It certainly seems to give me great productive questions
to be open to that regarding complex system events in general.

Do you ever look at systems and their environments as actively interacting,
each taking advantage of each other in part, instead of just one pushing the
other around?

Phil

> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Relaxed Selection, a b-level posting

[Phil Henshaw]

Russ,
You say: "I'm trying a slightly different tack with Tierra, of artificially
inducing mass extinctions every now and then. I have also tried reducing
parsimony pressure from time to time (I'm not sure what would be the
biological world equivalent of this - possibly variation in background
radioactivity or cosmic rays)..."

If your 'organisms' in Tierra were organized around feedback loops that
developed by exploring their environments, might you experiment with have
them be variably exploratory?

Phil

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Russell Standish
> Sent: Friday, October 10, 2008 1:16 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
> Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Relaxed Selection, a b-level posting
> 
> One should not confuse economics with biological selection. It would
> seem plausible that good economic times might lead to rapid evolution
> of economies, such as during the recent Internet bubble for instance,
> but not that it would have any influence on us at the genetic level.
> 
> The sort of idea that David Green was proposing was that ecosystems
> (aka foodwebs) would cycle between a chaotic and a stable phase. My
> take on this is that immediately after a mass extinction, just about
> any foodweb is stable, because there are not enough connections to
> make it chaotic. Selection under such circumstances would be fairly
> relaxed. As evolution proceeds, the foodweb becomes more
> complex until such a time as chaotic behaviour sets in. Extinction
> becomes increasingly likely, and corresponding selection becomes
> "fierce".
> 
> Cycles of mass extinction followed by species radiation _may_ be a
> driving cause of ecosystem complexity.
> 
> I'm trying a slightly different tack with Tierra, of artificially
> inducing mass extinctions every now and then. I have also tried
> reducing parsimony pressure from time to time (I'm not sure what would
> be the biological world equivalent of this - possibly variation in
> background radioactivity or cosmic rays). But currently my simulation
> code is broken, so I haven't got too far with this to date :(
> 
> Cheers
> 



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Re: [FRIAM] Relaxed Selection, a b-level posting

[Phil Henshaw]

Marcus,

Well, epigenetics is important to understand and maybe looked at another way
helps narrow the real question.  We could consider the vast variation in
canine breeds and the fact that breeding selection as an extreme form of
epigenetics has not apparently altered the species they all belong to.
Perhaps the question is how environmental pressures and experience may
clearly influence genetics, but be insufficient to originate the kind of
somehow deeper genetic change that creates new forms of life.   Among other
things it points to a distinct difference between 'shallower' and 'deeper'
genetic change indicating that some form of structure other than noisy
aggregations may be present.

Phil

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels
> Sent: Friday, October 10, 2008 12:34 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Relaxed Selection, a b-level posting
> 
> Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> > The metaphor is terrible because
> > the time-scale of oscillations of good and bad times in economics is
> WAY
> > too short for the reproductive capacity of the species to respond.
> So the
> > "times" are sort of independent of the reproduction of the species.
> >
> Perhaps not..
> 
> http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11326195
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Relaxed Selection, a b-level posting

[Phil Henshaw]

Nick,
I think I agree with you.  You say "So whether relaxed selection produces
'exploration of morphology space' will depend on the structure and stability
of the environment in terms of size and longevity of the species."   

If the evidence, that S J Gould brought to everyone's attention, is that
speciation occurs typically by a rapid spurt of evolutionary change, or
alternately in a confined ecology, or both, a time & space confinement, that
describes bounds within which the genetic mould is somehow relaxed and
resolidified.  The question is if it occurs maybe once in a period of a
million years for each species... and for just one of perhaps thousands of
species in the same environment at a time, what would be required to do
that??   

Phil

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson
> Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 11:37 PM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: [FRIAM] Relaxed Selection, a b-level posting
> 
> Russell Standish offered the following question:
> 
> > > What do you think of "relaxed selection" ?
> 
> My inexpert response:
> 
> Well, I am uneasy about the concept.  When I used to be a teacher of
> these
> things, students LOVED the idea that some ages and places are harsh and
> some are mellow, and that selection is relaxed in the latter.  The
> metaphor
> is drawn, I assumed, from human economics, where some decades can be
> easy
> and some difficult.  But the metaphor is dangerously misleading ...
> [thompson loves metaphors but he loves some metaphors a whole lot less
> than
> others, and this one is a terrible one.]   The metaphor is terrible
> because
> the time-scale of oscillations of good and bad times in economics is
> WAY
> too short for the reproductive capacity of the species to respond.  So
> the
> "times" are sort of independent of the reproduction of the species.
> 
> But in the evolutionary time scale, whether times are good and bad is
> determined not by how lush the environment but by whether the
> environment
> has been lush long enough for the reproductive potential of the species
> to
> catch up and de-lush it.   So rather than think about "good times" in
> evolution, I would tend to think of periods of rapid expansion of
> populations (when selection is relaxed) and rapid contraction of
> populations (when selection is intensified) and periods of stability
> (when
> selection is intermediate.)
> 
> One of your respondents seemed (sorry, too lazy to go back and look) to
> confound this issue with the question of how bushy or trunky the
> evolutionary tree is.  I dont think... that the two are related.  Bushy
> phylogenies ... like that of australopithecines (the bipedal apes that
> were
> around as genus homo was coming into being) would seem to be generated
> by
> the distribution of the species over a spatially variant but temporally
> invariant landscape.   Trunky phylogenies are produced by the
> distribution
> of the species over temporally variant and a spacially  invariant
> landscape.  This latter pattern characteried the evolution of the genus
> homo.  The attributions of variance and invariance, of course, have to
> be
> made in terms of the longevity of the species and its tendancy to move
> accross the landscape.
> 
> So whether relaxed selection produces "exploration of morphology space"
> will depend on the structure and stability of the environment in terms
> of
> size and longevity of the species.
> 
> That's what I think of relaxed selection.  Apologies if I have been
> reading
> carelessly.
> 
> NIck
> 
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
> Clark University ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
> 
> > *
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Self-awareness and blind spots Was: Self-awareness

[Phil Henshaw]

Steve,

Good, so if we're "only to create a similarly huge number of unconsidered
regions" by acknowledging that some systems are both highly systematic and
completely out of control, let's pick it apart a little.   It is indeed sad
that we seem to need such dramatic demonstrations as having our whole
economic world vaporize to get our attention.  The Missouri mule problem I
guess, a little something to spark our attention.   My take, for many years,
is that standard procedure is the problem, systematically transferring
earned incomes to unearned incomes, by accumulative %'s.   In a physical
world that's the only cause needed.So I think that's what we're seeing
snap back this week, the elastic links between limitless and limited things,
as I and others have said would be the direct consequence of continuing to
use that procedure while waiting to see what would happened.   After a
rubber band has snapped there's less one can do, of course,  but still worth
having strategies reflect an understanding of the problem.

 

I think there are several kinds of "uncontrolled systems".  Some appear
uncontrolled but actually represent continuing unaltered regular processes,
like random walks, chaotic systems, bifurcation and ABM systems where all
the parts follow the same unchanging rules.That sets a kind of odd
partition, as these all seem to be "logical systems".The ones that don't
have rules to follow, and display systematic behaviors that come and go are
generally found to be "individual physical systems".   Of course that's sort
of begging the question, since it's saying that all mathematical control is
'imaginary' and has to work through individual physical systems that are
uncontrolled, but that's one of the weird walls (categorical differences) I
think you naturally run into.   

 

One of the most interesting groups of uncontrolled phenomena are the
temporary divergent processes, maybe looking like a kind of 'tunneling'
through potential barriers, that may be rather quick but you can often catch
a glimpse of.Energy transfer by fluid convection begins like that, as
when warm air is under cool air and needs to have a 'hole' in the barrier
layers above develop to make the energy flow channel.   The little
"run-aways" that start that process don't seem to have precedents or to be
responding to any influence from what will disrupt them later, but to
propagate freely for a short period.That separation between things that
will collide but can't respond to approaching collision till it happens. is
a key characteristic.   Another more personal example would be your own
quick smile in waving to a friend that carries no pretense of the grimace,
when in your exuberance, your hand accidentally clips the person you're
sitting with.  I did that this week!!Those kinds of systems that are
part of "happening" wouldn't work at all the same way if there wasn't space
and time gaps between them, their beginnings, ends and collisions, etc.
Whether predictable or not, individual events often start with events that
have no past and then as they develop, shuttle back and forth between being
divergent from everything around them and then achieving behavior quite
close to some equilibrium.That when they run into things that have no
past for them they are disrupted and change form in locally emergent ways
puts the same big "?" at the end of the chain too.   

 

It's not that one couldn't perhaps develop a 'God's eye view' of local
circumstances and devise some equation that could imitate recorded measures,
and get a reasonable single circumstance emulation.  Modeling artificially
controlled conditions has worked extremely well for lots of things.   The
larger operational definition of 'uncontrolled' then is all the stuff which
that method and interest in control hasn't worked for, and then throw in all
interests other than control we might have asked about. The trick for
exploring the divergent processes in my view is that the parts that are
interacting don't have the option to know the unknown, nor a place to store
such a formula, or any ways to follow one.They have to act without
knowing what they're going to run into.   That makes the theory of endless
compound multiplying economies, guaranteed to never run into anything,  seem
more ironic than any irony scale could possibly measure.   Yet it "made
perfect sense" to so very many!

 

The most useful identifier I found was that the continuity of events
requires every systemic change in behavior to begin with a "little bang", a
divergent eruption of behaviors having no direct precedent.   Where those
"little bangs" are evident or implied the uncontrolled systems they initiate
I call "independent", in that their beginnings have no precedent causes that
the later developed system could have had any information about.   Too bad
about the several hundred trillion we blew this week. but maybe it'll turn
out to be well worth it.It's a little like getti

Re: [FRIAM] Self-awareness

[Phil Henshaw]

Steve,
Well, might you also say science is self-organized to be 'robustly' avoiding
the subject of uncontrolled systems too??   

If something doesn't come to your attention because you're only looking for
something else, it could seem to not exist.   How do you explain the very
large variety of complex systems that take care of themselves somehow,
sharing environments with very low specific variety corresponding to their
evident highly complex internal designs and internally coordinated
behaviors?

Phil

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Steve Smith
> Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 11:48 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self-awareness
> 
> Well said Russ.  Science as a self-organizing system which is
> relatively
> robust and self-healing.
> 
> Russ Abbott wrote:
> > Richard Feynman said that "Science is what we have learned about how
> > not to fool ourselves about the way the world is." To the extent that
> > it achieves that goal, science works even without individual
> > self-awareness. That's really quite an accomplishment, to have
> created
> > a way of being in the world that succeeds reasonably well without
> > having to depend on individual subjective honesty.
> >
> > For the most part, if we aren't honest with ourselves and with each
> > other, we all suffer negative consequences. Now that I've written
> > that, it seems to me that "honesty with oneself" is not a bad
> > definition of "self-awareness." Another way of putting it is that
> > self-awareness is what keeps us from fooling ourselves about our
> > subjective experience. Contrast this with Feynman's definition.
> >
> > Science works reasonably well even without individual self-awareness
> > in that it relies on community self-verification. In some ways
> science
> > is the self-awareness of a community of people about what can be
> known
> > about the world. Obviously science is not about everything -- in
> > particular inter-personal values. But within its domain I think it
> > does a pretty good job of keeping everyone involved reasonably honest
> > -- and especially keeping the community as a whole reasonably honest.
> > There are failures and detours. But they are usually corrected.
> >
> > I hadn't intended my original post to be about science. It was about
> > the importance of self-awareness when dealing with political and
> > governance issues. But now that we are talking about science it's an
> > interesting comparison. Perhaps that's why science has been so
> > successful. It's a methodology that isn't ultimately dependent on
> > individual human honesty. Can we say that about anything else?
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] government hierarchy (was Re: Willful Ignorance)

[Phil Henshaw]

Glen,

Oh, I read it wrong then, sorry!   What about the other stuff, like we have
an unusually large number of experts taking on, and not letting on about,
ever increasingly complex problems.

Phil

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella
> Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 10:20 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] government hierarchy (was Re: Willful Ignorance)
> 
> Thus spake Phil Henshaw circa 10/09/2008 04:48 AM:
> > Right, but totally inconsistent with your first statement "just hire
> an
> > expert".
> 
> You must be confusing me with someone else.  I've been arguing
> _against_
> "just hire an expert" the whole time.
> 
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Relaxed selection

[Phil Henshaw]

I'll look up David Green.   There have been several directions that people
have taken to the fast/slow evolution evidence originally clarified by
Stephen J Gould.   Kirschner and Gerhart's approach in "The Plausibility of
Life" is somewhat like the one I proposed, that the speed control is not
variation in the selective pressure but variation in development rates for a
local exploratory process.  That's quite clearly what's evident in the form
of transition seen with that plankton of mine.   Reasoning it that way does
present some other challenges, of course, but does have the advantage of
getting rid of the highly inelegant notion that the form of new creatures
pre-exists as a kind of negative image in their potential environments. 

Phil

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Russell Standish
> Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 5:55 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Relaxed selection
> 
> David Green proposed somewhat similar ideas back in around
> 2000. Someone else (I forget who now) mentioned it again in a slightly
> different form within the last year in an Artificial Life article. I
> tried running an experiment implementing this idea using Tierra, but
> have found that I need to reimplement Tierra, as computers are now so
> fast that Tierra's genebanker code overflows within a day or so of
> runtime.
> 
> I hope to get around to this over the next year, hopefully before the
> Budapest ECAL conference.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 09:33:39PM +0200, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> > One of the things I am interested in is how nature
> > creatures complex things. The latest New Scientist
> > (from 27 Sep. 2008) has an article named "As if from
> > nowhere" about the topic of "relaxed selection", a
> > concept invented by Terry Deacon. Terry Deacon is
> > an anthropology professor at Berkeley.
> >
> > According to Deacon, relaxed selection is a special
> > form of natural selection, where the selection
> > pressure and the competition is low (i.e. where
> > natural selection itself is nearly absent), and the
> > variety of traits which are able to survive and
> > reproduce is high. When the selection pressures lift,
> > genomes go wandering and new, unexpected traits may
> > arise. I think if there is a "relaxed selection",
> > then one can also speak of a "fierce selection":
> > a natural selection with fierce competition when
> > the climate is harsh and the food is sparse. Under
> > this conditions only the best, well adapted individuals
> > survive.
> >
> > Does natural selection occurs in different degrees?
> > During "relaxed selection", the system enters an
> > exploration phase: the chances of finding new
> > configurations, traits and features are higher.
> > The selection pressure for a species to remain
> > in the corresponding niche is lower.
> > During "fierce selection", the system enters an
> > exploitation phase: chances of optimizing existing
> > configurations, traits and features are higher.
> > The selection pressure for a species to remain
> > in the corresponding niche is higher.
> >
> > What do you think of "relaxed selection" ?
> > Is Deacon onto something?
> >
> > -J.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > 
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
> 
> --
> 
> ---
> -
> A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Mathematics
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au
> ---
> -
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Self-awareness

[Phil Henshaw]

 so, but for the most part I think of scientists as intellectually
honest, as doing as good a job as they know how to do, and as willing to
change their minds in the face of contrary evidence.

-- Russ 



On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 11:35 AM, Phil Henshaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Russ,

Oh, just that scientists appear to be one of the main violators of your
self-awareness principle. Scientists tend to describe the physical world
as if they are unaware that science constructs descriptive models of things
far too complex to model, that might behave differently from any kind of
model we know how to invent.  That has us spending a disproportionate
amount of time looking into our theories for the behavior of the world
around us (under the streetlight for the keys lost in the alley) and letting
our skills in watching physical systems atrophy.

 

Do you see the connection?Is it partly accurate?   

 

Phil Henshaw

 

From: Russ Abbott [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2008 4:04 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self-awareness

 

I'm sorry, Phil, I'm missing your point.  How does your comment relate to my
argument that self-awareness is a primary good and a possible way around the
difficulty most people have with critical thinking?

-- Russ 

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 12:53 PM, Phil Henshaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Well Russ, what if a group of scientists were to acknowledge that science
actually just seems to be descriptive after all..., and looking through the
holes one seems able to actually see signs of a physical world after all!
Than sort of 'emperor's new clothes' moment might be enough to turn
everyone's attention to value of self-critical thinking wouldn't it?!;-)

 

Phil

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2008 10:06 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Willfull Ignorance - Satisfies NickCriteria E

 

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 12:39 PM, glen e. p. ropella <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

So the first step is for each individual to accept their responsibility 
to think/speak critically at every opportunity.  The next step is to 
package such critical thinking inside an infectious wrapper so that 
it spreads across all humanity.


Yes, if it worked it would be wonderful. I'm  cynical enough to  doubt that
it would succeed. (1) I doubt that we can find a wrapper infectious enough
and (2) even if we did, I doubt that the population as a whole is capable of
the level of critical thinking that we need. (That's elitism, isn't it.) 

Demagoguery almost always seems to succeed. Can anything be done about that?
More discouraging is that advertising is cleaned up demagoguery. And
advertising will always be with us.

Just to be sure I knew what I was talking about (critical thinking?) I just
looked up "demagoguery": "impassioned appeals to the prejudices and emotions
of the populace."  

Prejudice and emotion will always be with us -- even the least prejudiced
and least a prisoner of their emotions.  Besides, without emotion, we can't
even make decisions. (That's clearly another discussion, but it's worth
noting.) 

So can we really complain about superficial prejudice and emotion when we
are all subject to it at some level?  

Perhaps the need is for self-awareness -- and even more for having a high
regard for self-awareness -- so that one can learn about one's prejudices
and emotions and stand back from them when appropriate.  Can we teach that?
(It helps to have good role models. Obviously we have had exactly the
opposite in our current president.)

Actually, though, a high regard for self-awareness might be easier to teach
than critical thinking. So perhaps there is hope. But the danger there is to
fall prey to melodrama.  It's not easy. I'll nominate Glen as a good role
model, though.  How can we make your persona more widely visible?

-- Russ

 

 




  _  



 

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-- 

Orlando Leibovitz

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

www.orlandoleibovitz.com

Studio Telephone: 505-820-6183

 


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Re: [FRIAM] Origami metaphor (Level b)

[Phil Henshaw]

Glen says,
> The idea was that math is just the transformation of one set of
> sentences into another set of sentences by a particular grammar.  This
> is (weakly) analogous to the transformation of a piece of paper from one
> shape to another.
But then the idea driving you to do that is your own inspiration, the image
of the swan, or the special one-to-one mapping, or whatever.  How it fits
into your own world of ideas and experience is what actually guides the
direction in which you look for things to prove.  It could be that in
constructing math to be meaningful to mathematicians it's just a social
convention that is being mapped, and not intrinsic forms of the universe, or
that quite other intrinsic forms of the universe would be explored by others
with different experience could they master the technique and get into the
club.

Phil

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella
> Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 7:36 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Origami metaphor (Level b)
> 
> Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 10/08/2008 04:13 PM:
> > Glen said (I think it was glen)
> >
> > "It's just like folding a piece of paper. Someone hands you a piece
> of
> > paper and you fold it into an origami swan. Did you _discover_ the
> > swan? Or did you invent the swan?"
> >
> > And Nick replies ...
> >
> > You all know by now how I feel about metaphors.  Nick thinks being
> serious
> > about metaphors is REALLY IMPORTANT <==rude shouting!
> > So, when I say what I am about to say, I am not just nit-picking.  I
> hope.
> >
> > Isnt the metaphor backwards?  Given the uniqueness of the solution,
> isnt it
> > more like you had been handed the swan and "discovered" that it was
> just a
> > square piece of paper?
> 
> Well, it wasn't really a metaphor.  It's a simile and/or an analogy.
> [grin]
> 
> But, no, it's not backwards any more than it's forwards.  The analogy I
> intended to make was between paper folding and math, not between an
> origami swan and a solution to a sudoku puzzle.  Sorry for not being
> clear.
> 
> The idea was that math is just the transformation of one set of
> sentences into another set of sentences by a particular grammar.  This
> is (weakly) analogous to the transformation of a piece of paper from one
> shape to another.
> 
> To make an analogy between the solution to a puzzle and a particular
> shape, one would have to add more constraints to the shape being
> sought.
>  One might then be able to determine the uniqueness of a particular
> shape given those constraints.  But such an analogy would be even
> weaker
> and wouldn't help explain Wittgenstein's position, I don't think.
> 
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] government hierarchy (was Re: Willful Ignorance)

[Phil Henshaw]

Glen, 

No, taking on impossible tasks is what true stupidity is about, not
expertise, and the best way to hire a stupid expert is to hire people ready
to do it.  Come on... heading into impenetrable walls of complexity is the
stupidest thing any 'expert' could possibly recommend but we've gone and
hired an entire world full of so called 'experts' doing exactly that.   It
ain't gonna work.

You say: 
> There's no reason to avoid relying on historically successful patterns
> of control.  You just have to accumulate enough momentum while
> successful to survive the black swans.  
Momentum is what is causing you to be blind sided by them, not what will let
you barrel through them.  It's not 'bumps in the road' to crash through but
true ends of the road that go unseen.

> The trick is that when experts
> sell themselves to you, they tend toward optimism (and underestimate the
> risks) because they don't eat their own dog food ... they won't really
> suffer the consequences the customer will suffer when their expertise
> fails.  They _tend_ to promise what they really can't deliver ... or
> they're extremely vague about what they promise so they can hold up
> whatever they happen to deliver as a refined version of what they
> promised ... like politicians and outsource code shops.

Right, but totally inconsistent with your first statement "just hire an
expert".

> 
> In contrast, if your "skin is in it", then you tend to be a bit more
> pessimistic (and conservative) with what you promise.

Right, but inconsistent with how mistaken self-interest by the experts has
spread so far and wide that our global life-support system becomes fragile
enough to collapse.  What I've been trying to point out is that nature is
full of signals for when patching up the old model will soon fail.

The hunt for the new one can be the fun you need to replace our natural
disappointment that nature has wriggled out of our feeble grasp yet again!!
If we don't look out for change, change will surely not look out for us.

Phil

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella
> Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2008 8:06 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] government hierarchy (was Re: Willful Ignorance)
> 
> Thus spake Phil Henshaw circa 10/07/2008 12:15 PM:
> > Well, the reliance on competence is relative to the difficulty of the
> task.
> > As our world explodes with new connections and complexity that's sort
> of in
> > doubt, isn't it?   Isn't Taleb's observation that when you have
> increasingly
> > complex problems with increasingly 'fat tailed' distributions of
> correlation
> > then you better not rely on analysis?   Anyone who takes that job is
> > probably running into 'black swans' aren't they?
> 
> Of course more complex processes mean more difficulty in handling them.
>  But that's what "expertise" is all about.  The more difficult the
> handling, the more one needs expertise.  The simpler the processes, the
> more one can rely on yokels or algorithms.  So, I think the opposite of
> your conclusion is justifiable:  The more complex the processes, the
> more powerful the "skill set" sales pitch becomes because the customers
> are aggressively hunting for expertise.
> 
> But even in a very complex domain, regular, somewhat predictable
> patterns of observation/manipulation can yield success, despite the
> occult possibility of unexpected wonky trajectories.  And people who
> have those patterns of observation/manipulation down pat are also
> experts.  They just run the risk of being wrong when/if the system does
> happen to take a wonky trajectory.
> 
> There's no reason to avoid relying on historically successful patterns
> of control.  You just have to accumulate enough momentum while
> successful to survive the black swans.  The trick is that when experts
> sell themselves to you, they tend toward optimism (and underestimate
> the
> risks) because they don't eat their own dog food ... they won't really
> suffer the consequences the customer will suffer when their expertise
> fails.  They _tend_ to promise what they really can't deliver ... or
> they're extremely vague about what they promise so they can hold up
> whatever they happen to deliver as a refined version of what they
> promised ... like politicians and outsource code shops.
> 
> In contrast, if your "skin is in it", then you tend to be a bit more
> pessimistic (and conservative) with what you promise.
> 
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, h

Re: [FRIAM] Wittgenstein

[Phil Henshaw]

Or. another angle.   Proofs represent discoveries about the invented grammar
they use, with the proviso of "so far as we can see"? The way we define
grammars changes to suite our intentions occasionally, but we're generally
trying to identify things inherent in nature, for grammars drawn as
conclusively as we know how to make them. They might not show us about
the aspects of nature that are inconclusive, of course, but we still would
like to know if our constructs are at least pointing to something real.
What I find interesting is that every proof seems to imply "and therefore I
can't think of anything else" a conclusion based on a lack of imagination.
That point to proof as an acceptance of adding a branch to a constructed
tree, I think? If the 'tree' itself at least reflects something that
exists in nature when the grammar surely didn't is the puzzle.

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of John F. Kennison
Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2008 1:01 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Wittgenstein


I would like to respond to Wittgenstein's idea that a mathematical proof
should be called an invention rather than a discovery. When solving a Suduko
puzzle, I often produce a logical deduction that the solution is unique. It
seems clear to me that I discovered that there is only one solution. I don't
see how to make any sense of the idea that I "invented" the fact that there
is only one solution. 



"Wittgensteins technique was not to reinterpret certain particular proofs,
but, rather, to redescribe the whole of mathematics in such a way that
mathematical logic would appear as the philosophical aberration he believed
it to be, and in a way that dissolved entirely the picture of mathematics as
a science which discovers facts about mathematical objects  .  I shall try
again and again, he said, to show that what is called a mathematical
discovery had much better be called a mathematical invention.  There was,
on his view, nothing for the mathematician to discover.  A proof in
mathematics does not establish the truth of a conclusion; if fixes, rather,
the meaning of certain signs. The inexorability of mathematics, therefore,
does not consist in certain knowledge of mathematical truths, but in the
fact that mathematical propositions are grammatical.  To deny, for example,
that two plus two equals four is not to disagree with a widely held view
about a matter of fact;  it is to show ignorance of the meanings of the
terms involved.  Wittgenstein presumably thought that if he could persuade
Turing  to see mathematics in this light, he could persuade anybody."  
 
Turing apparently gave up on W. a few lectures later.  
 
I have to admit the distinction that W. is making here does not move me
particularly.  It seems to me as much of a discovery to find out what is
implied by the premises of a logical system as to find out how many
electrons there are in an iron atom, and since logic is always at work
behind empirical work, I cannot get very excited about the difference.
Perhaps because I am dim witted.  
 
No response necessary. 
 
Nick 





Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, 

Clark University ([EMAIL PROTECTED])







 

 


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Re: [FRIAM] government hierarchy (was Re: Willful Ignorance)

[Phil Henshaw]

Well, the reliance on competence is relative to the difficulty of the task.
As our world explodes with new connections and complexity that's sort of in
doubt, isn't it?   Isn't Taleb's observation that when you have increasingly
complex problems with increasingly 'fat tailed' distributions of correlation
then you better not rely on analysis?   Anyone who takes that job is
probably running into 'black swans' aren't they?

Phil



> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella
> Sent: Monday, October 06, 2008 5:23 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] government hierarchy (was Re: Willful Ignorance)
> 
> Thus spake Marcus G. Daniels circa 10/06/2008 01:49 PM:
> > I expect capable, intelligent managers are a subset of the
> population.
> > If a local government represents too small of a region, there won't
> be
> > competent people available to run things.
> 
> Good point.  However, a complement is that if you have a small enough
> region, only those within that region can _possibly_ be competent
> enough
> to run things.  A great example is an individual human.  If _you_ can't
> manage your own mind/body, then nobody else has any hopes of doing it
> either.
> 
> >I've seen plenty of
> > incompetence and outright corruption in local governments too.
> > Allowing for some expensive mistakes (and expensive successes) may
> > encourage people to pay attention and engage -- they have something
> on
> > the line.
> 
> Yes.  The beauty of local government is that it's easy to put someone
> in
> charge and it's easy to remove them, too.  Sure, there's plenty of
> corruption and incompetence at any level; but the degree of
> accountability, installation, and removal scale, too.  Likewise, the
> stakes for success and failure scale.
> 
> One reason for the "nasty" politics we see is this very scaling.  If
> you've got someone in an aggregated seat of power, then a) it was
> difficult for them to get there and b) it will be difficult to get them
> out of there.  The trick is to find the critical spot in the hierarchy.
>  And that usually turns out to be illegal behavior (based on nefarious
> and ridiculous nooks and crannies of the law) or _disgrace_.  So, we
> politick by calling people hypocrites, racists, or whatever epithet may
> fit the bill because these control points trigger catastrophic
> collapses
> of the inertial systems built up in the government hierarchy.  Of
> course
> politics for heavily inertial aggregated government positions will
> hinge
> on nasty cheap shots and sound bites.
> 
> As much as I hate the idea, we _need_ things like President Bush's
> immunity from prosecution for decisions he made while doing his job.
> We
> need it to preserve the stability of the office in correspondence with
> the amount of effort it took to put him in that office.
> 
> But what this leads one to (I think) is the conclusion that high office
> should be pressed upon the unwilling rather than sought out by those
> who
> want to hold that office.  Perhaps we should make it a requirement of
> citizenship that you can be drafted into office when a "jury" of your
> peers decides that you're the best person to fill that role?  Of
> course,
> that would lead to an entirely different selection mechanism that would
> encourage the occult jockeying for nomination, false modesty, etc.  But
> I wonder how different (or how much worse) it could be than what we
> have
> now?  It may even result in a "brain drain" where all the people at
> risk
> for being drafted move to Canada or something to avoid being forced to
> play President. ;-)
> 
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] Self-awareness

[Phil Henshaw]

Russ,

Oh, just that scientists appear to be one of the main violators of your
self-awareness principle. Scientists tend to describe the physical world
as if they are unaware that science constructs descriptive models of things
far too complex to model, that might behave differently from any kind of
model we know how to invent.  That has us spending a disproportionate
amount of time looking into our theories for the behavior of the world
around us (under the streetlight for the keys lost in the alley) and letting
our skills in watching physical systems atrophy.

 

Do you see the connection?Is it partly accurate?   

 

Phil Henshaw

 

From: Russ Abbott [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2008 4:04 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self-awareness

 

I'm sorry, Phil, I'm missing your point.  How does your comment relate to my
argument that self-awareness is a primary good and a possible way around the
difficulty most people have with critical thinking?

-- Russ 

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 12:53 PM, Phil Henshaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Well Russ, what if a group of scientists were to acknowledge that science
actually just seems to be descriptive after all..., and looking through the
holes one seems able to actually see signs of a physical world after all!
Than sort of 'emperor's new clothes' moment might be enough to turn
everyone's attention to value of self-critical thinking wouldn't it?!;-)

 

Phil

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2008 10:06 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Willfull Ignorance - Satisfies NickCriteria E

 

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 12:39 PM, glen e. p. ropella <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

So the first step is for each individual to accept their responsibility 
to think/speak critically at every opportunity.  The next step is to 
package such critical thinking inside an infectious wrapper so that 
it spreads across all humanity.


Yes, if it worked it would be wonderful. I'm  cynical enough to  doubt that
it would succeed. (1) I doubt that we can find a wrapper infectious enough
and (2) even if we did, I doubt that the population as a whole is capable of
the level of critical thinking that we need. (That's elitism, isn't it.) 

Demagoguery almost always seems to succeed. Can anything be done about that?
More discouraging is that advertising is cleaned up demagoguery. And
advertising will always be with us.

Just to be sure I knew what I was talking about (critical thinking?) I just
looked up "demagoguery": "impassioned appeals to the prejudices and emotions
of the populace."  

Prejudice and emotion will always be with us -- even the least prejudiced
and least a prisoner of their emotions.  Besides, without emotion, we can't
even make decisions. (That's clearly another discussion, but it's worth
noting.) 

So can we really complain about superficial prejudice and emotion when we
are all subject to it at some level?  

Perhaps the need is for self-awareness -- and even more for having a high
regard for self-awareness -- so that one can learn about one's prejudices
and emotions and stand back from them when appropriate.  Can we teach that?
(It helps to have good role models. Obviously we have had exactly the
opposite in our current president.)

Actually, though, a high regard for self-awareness might be easier to teach
than critical thinking. So perhaps there is hope. But the danger there is to
fall prey to melodrama.  It's not easy. I'll nominate Glen as a good role
model, though.  How can we make your persona more widely visible?

-- Russ

 


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Re: [FRIAM] Relaxed selection

[Phil Henshaw]

Jochen,
That concept of alternating opportunistic and constrained developmental
phases, 'relaxed' then 'fierce' selection regimes, sounds like a statistical
version of the behavioral model that growth begins from minute beginnings in
an environment without constraint except itself.  When that kind of growth
exhausts its initially unlimited opportunities and runs into constraints
then integrating with an environment becomes the selective test.  That
switch from just freely expanding on the past to adapting in relation to
emerging future constraints corresponds to immature growth followed by
maturation at climax (¸¸.•´¯¯) and their very different selection regimes.  

The behavioral 'trick' needed to make that statistical idea into a
functional description of a new mode of evolution is letting the system be
active partner and the environment a passive one.  If the system actively
explores its environment, just like you see virtually all living things are
visibly doing whenever they're not sleeping, then the form of the system
doesn't need to be present in the environment before the system develops.
That's always been the real undiscussed problem with the normal Darwinian
model.  It's that individual exploratory habit of a system that makes
opportunistic development such as Deacon describes physically possible.
That's what my plankton paper shows is happening with G. tumida, a series of
progressive evolutionary spurts and collapses on the way to the
stabilization of a new form, clear active individual behavior in a passive
environment.

Phil

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
> Sent: Monday, October 06, 2008 3:34 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] Relaxed selection
> 
> One of the things I am interested in is how nature
> creatures complex things. The latest New Scientist
> (from 27 Sep. 2008) has an article named "As if from
> nowhere" about the topic of "relaxed selection", a
> concept invented by Terry Deacon. Terry Deacon is
> an anthropology professor at Berkeley.
> 
> According to Deacon, relaxed selection is a special
> form of natural selection, where the selection
> pressure and the competition is low (i.e. where
> natural selection itself is nearly absent), and the
> variety of traits which are able to survive and
> reproduce is high. When the selection pressures lift,
> genomes go wandering and new, unexpected traits may
> arise. I think if there is a "relaxed selection",
> then one can also speak of a "fierce selection":
> a natural selection with fierce competition when
> the climate is harsh and the food is sparse. Under
> this conditions only the best, well adapted individuals
> survive.
> 
> Does natural selection occurs in different degrees?
> During "relaxed selection", the system enters an
> exploration phase: the chances of finding new
> configurations, traits and features are higher.
> The selection pressure for a species to remain
> in the corresponding niche is lower.
> During "fierce selection", the system enters an
> exploitation phase: chances of optimizing existing
> configurations, traits and features are higher.
> The selection pressure for a species to remain
> in the corresponding niche is higher.
> 
> What do you think of "relaxed selection" ?
> Is Deacon onto something?
> 
> -J.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Willful Ignorance

[Phil Henshaw]

Robert,

You complain about the dominance of money??How about adding a way to cap
the compounding of unearned income somewhere below infinity.? I can only
model the negative image of that, what can't happen if that's not done,
though.   Very few people are exploring the consequences of making money
finite and sustainable that way.

 

Phil

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Robert Cordingley
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2008 3:26 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Willful Ignorance

 

Someone wanted to know what we could do.  Well, to break the connection
between money and power which I think is a core problem, nationwide, I'd
start with:

Influence peddling:

*   Ban all Special Interest Groups.  Elected officials will have to
listen to their electorate for guidance. SIGs limit freedom of speech of the
person in the street and are non-democratic so can be declared
unconstitutional.
*   Ban jiggory-pokery with redistricting, use geography and population
densities
*   Eliminate term limits: find a good guy keep a good guy, vote the
others out.
*   Require Federal funding of campaigns (as has been suggested) and
State
*   Reduce the number of elected officials to those that count for
political purposes: make the rest civil service career positions appointed
by non-partisan processes.  You are a Judge because you know the law not the
power brokers.  You are a Chief of Police because you've achieved great
crime reduction goals etc.  Side benefit: short ballot papers and elections
are more relevant to the voter.

On voting rights and polling

*   Register everyone to vote when they get a driving license.  You
drive a lethal weapon: you vote. You vote in the district of your current DL
address.

OR 

*   Register everyone to vote when they submit their tax return.  You
file taxes: you vote.   You vote in the district of your current tax return.


*   Registered party members are not allowed to vote in primaries of
other parties.  Unregistered party members voting in primaries of a party
become registered in that party for the next x months.
*   Make it illegal not to vote, punishable with $50 fine or,  give
everyone $50 when they vote.  The rich can afford not to vote.
*   Use school bus routes and drivers to get everyone that has no
transport to the polls.  Make polling-day a day-off-school or on a weekend.
Use schools as polling stations - give everyone one regular school meal for
their time and their voting receipt! Side benefit: all parents see something
about the local schools.
*   Open and close polling stations at the same universal time, for one
24 hour period.
*   Make it illegal for polling officials to be party officials.

and it probably goes on ... We might need a national voter registration
database (o...tricky) and way more cooperation between different arms of
government than we probably now have (ever more tricky).

Quick questions: What political animal does this make me?  How do I get
started? Can someone model all this to see if it would make a difference?

Robert C


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Re: [FRIAM] Effective government; was: Willful Ignorance

[Phil Henshaw]

Russ,

There may not be simple one-line solutions, but there are simple one-line
necessities, that any solution needs to include. 

 

One is to counteract the problem that investing in the use of a commons to
multiply your returns from it will invariably cause it to collapse unless
you switch your returns to divestment before that occurs.The obligation
to self-limit the compound amplification of resource exploitations is
missing from all the widely discussed management proposals I know of.

 

Phil

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2008 2:56 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Effective government; was: Willful Ignorance

 

I see this as involving two fundamental issues: governing a commons and
group effectiveness.

*   There is a lot of current work on governing a commons. The best
known name is Elinor

Ostrom.  

*   The issue of groups, their effectiveness, how evolution selects on
groups as well as on individuals has been studied (and publicized) most
recently by David
  Sloan Wilson.

Both of these issues are extraordinarily important. They are both relevant
to effective government. But they don't offer simple one-line solutions.

-- Russ 



On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 11:04 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

Thus spake Steve Smith circa 10/06/2008 10:46 AM:

> That said, I'm not offering a better plan, though I agree that big
campaign
> contributions are a problem in almost every case.

But big campaigns (and big campaign contributions) are just a symptom of
non-local (big) government.  As long as we have a single government that
governs 3.5 million square miles, we will have complex laws with lots of
loopholes and aggressive special interests who drive campaigns (with money).

The problem, in my view, lies with the way government accumulates upward
to a peak.  Granted, we have a decent system so that government
accumulates upward to 3 (or 4, if you include the free press) peaks.
But, it's still going from 300 million humans and 3.5 million mi^2 up to
3 peaks and 68 mi^2.

I would suggest that the myriad problems with our government don't lie
in any one identifiable cause, but are instead peppered throughout the
accumulation... the way household government accumulates to neighborhood
associations, villages, cities, counties, states, feds, etc.

I'm totally ignorant of political science; but I wonder how much
coherent work is out there on various objective-satisficing methods for
accumulating government?  I'm not talking about silo'ed research like
"methods of state government" or "methods of county government", but
methods for accumulating all the way up from (psychological)
self-government of the individual to President, Congress, and the
courts.  Surely there exists some (by now, half-insane) systems theory
people out there who've been ranting about this sort of accumulation, eh?

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com




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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

 


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Re: [FRIAM] Willful Ignorance

[Phil Henshaw]

Excellent! That goes along with having people who profit from pumping
bubbles till their environments collapse to give it back. Another
impossibility would be persuade politicians not to sell themselves with
tempting empty promises, but by giving people better information for making
their own choices.

 

Phil

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2008 1:56 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Willful Ignorance

 

I think we should tax campaign contributions with progressively higher rates
as the size of the contribution increases.  If you want to give a candidate
a million dollars, that's fine, by you'll need to cough up 10 million
dollars because the contribution is taxed at 90%.  Those who want to
influence our government should be willing to contribute to paying the costs
of their influence.

-- rec --


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Re: [FRIAM] Willfull Ignorance - Satisfies NickCriteria E

[Phil Henshaw]

Well Russ, what if a group of scientists were to acknowledge that science
actually just seems to be descriptive after all..., and looking through the
holes one seems able to actually see signs of a physical world after all!
Than sort of 'emperor's new clothes' moment might be enough to turn
everyone's attention to value of self-critical thinking wouldn't it?!;-)

 

Phil

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2008 10:06 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Willfull Ignorance - Satisfies NickCriteria E

 

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 12:39 PM, glen e. p. ropella <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

So the first step is for each individual to accept their responsibility 
to think/speak critically at every opportunity.  The next step is to 
package such critical thinking inside an infectious wrapper so that 
it spreads across all humanity.


Yes, if it worked it would be wonderful. I'm  cynical enough to  doubt that
it would succeed. (1) I doubt that we can find a wrapper infectious enough
and (2) even if we did, I doubt that the population as a whole is capable of
the level of critical thinking that we need. (That's elitism, isn't it.) 

Demagoguery almost always seems to succeed. Can anything be done about that?
More discouraging is that advertising is cleaned up demagoguery. And
advertising will always be with us.

Just to be sure I knew what I was talking about (critical thinking?) I just
looked up "demagoguery": "impassioned appeals to the prejudices and emotions
of the populace."  

Prejudice and emotion will always be with us -- even the least prejudiced
and least a prisoner of their emotions.  Besides, without emotion, we can't
even make decisions. (That's clearly another discussion, but it's worth
noting.) 

So can we really complain about superficial prejudice and emotion when we
are all subject to it at some level?  

Perhaps the need is for self-awareness -- and even more for having a high
regard for self-awareness -- so that one can learn about one's prejudices
and emotions and stand back from them when appropriate.  Can we teach that?
(It helps to have good role models. Obviously we have had exactly the
opposite in our current president.)

Actually, though, a high regard for self-awareness might be easier to teach
than critical thinking. So perhaps there is hope. But the danger there is to
fall prey to melodrama.  It's not easy. I'll nominate Glen as a good role
model, though.  How can we make your persona more widely visible?

-- Russ


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Re: [FRIAM] Willfull Ignorance - Satisfies NickCriteria E

[Phil Henshaw]

Glen says:
> Without fail, they get annoyed... even if my new body of evidence shows
> that the position I took in the original argument was wrong.
>...My question is:  Why doesn't everyone do this sort of thing?  Why is it
that
> people get in arguments, disagree with one another, and then don't follow
up 
> on it?  Why do people just get all heated up about stuff and then later
don't
> give enough of a crap to spend some serious alone-time working on it?"   

That's an excellent observation.  What it brings to my mind is that people
often argue to 'settle scores', the pecking order and personal allegiance
things, and once you "agree to disagree" the scores are all settled.   That
dynamic reminds me a lot of the reaction of all the environmentalists to my
pointing out how the money problem isn't being solved by any of the popular
environmental solutions, and everyone acts as if it is.  They act like they
know just what I'm talking about, but as if "that score was already settled"
with some social decision to "agree to disagree" and try to ignore it.  

The social relationship demands leaving old scores alone, and prohibit new
evidence?

Phil

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella
> Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2008 2:26 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Willfull Ignorance - Satisfies NickCriteria E
> 
> Thus spake Douglas Roberts circa 10/05/2008 11:07 AM:
> > You want to talk about willful ignorance?  Take a good look around
> you.
> 
> Exactly.  The trick is:  What can we do about it?
> 
> I have this problem with many of my friends.  They're all quite bright
> (in my opinion).  But there's an emergent pattern.  We'll get in an
> argument face-to-face about some issue... let's say whether or not a
> shaft, belt, or chain final drive on a motorcycle is more or less
> efficient than the other two types.  The argument will bifurcate the
> group with some coming down on one side and others coming down on the
> others (and there's usually at least one guy who's pissed that we're
> even arguing about something so stupid ;-).  We'll eventually "agree to
> disagree".
> 
> Now, me being the jerk that I am, I'll go home and do a little research
> that usually includes asking local yokels their opinions as well as
> sticking my dilettante nose in a few books and querying search engines.
>  I eventually, prematurely, converge on a conclusion as to whether or
> not my opinion during the face-to-face was right or wrong.  I then
> (maybe weeks later) bring the body of evidence back to my friends.
> 
> Without fail, they get annoyed... even if my new body of evidence shows
> that the position I took in the original argument was wrong.
> 
> My question is:  Why doesn't everyone do this sort of thing?  Why is it
> that people get in arguments, disagree with one another, and then don't
> follow up on it?  Why do people just get all heated up about stuff and
> then later don't give enough of a crap to spend some serious alone-time
> working on it?
> 
> How can we encourage the people around us to think critically...
> continually critically?  ... even if/when doing so makes them look like
> a jerk?
> 
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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Re: [FRIAM] Willfull Ignorance - Satisfies NickCriteria E

[Phil Henshaw]

The Matt Taibbi quote is an amazingly clear description of the dilemma of
minds that "make sense" of things by plugging in stereotypes of the real
world and so creating an imaginary one lacking internal conflicts.  The
error common to all such "confusions" seems to be discussing things in terms
of pictures in our heads without a reliable way of referring to any
independent reality people might consider. 

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2008 2:08 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Willfull Ignorance - Satisfies NickCriteria E

 

It was a good rant, wasn't it...

Since Steve saw fit to bring up "willful ignorance", and Marcus, Sarah
Palin:  what do you want to bet that McCain's
creationist-the-world-is-6,000-years-old
gun-toting-I-can-see-Russia-from-my-window sidekick garners approximately
50% of the vote next month?

As Matt Taibbi said in his 'The Lies of Sarah Palin' interview with Rolling
Stone Magazine earlier this week:

Here's the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the
thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at
all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while
they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull
the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their
credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China
and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election
Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor
episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket.

And if she's a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed Middle American
archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant sized bag
of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the sizzlin' picante dust from his lips and
rush to the booth to vote for her.



You want to talk about willful ignorance?  Take a good look around you.

-- 
Doug Roberts, RTI International
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 11:49 AM, Marcus G. Daniels <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

Steve Smith wrote:

The point of my talk of ignorance (willful and otherwise) is that to the
extent we are complicit in our own problems, we *do* have the ability to
retrieve some of our power from those we have given it to out of our own
*willful ignorance*. 

Good rant.  :-)

I''ll only add that power is not claimed by not being snowed by the
misrepresentations of those having power.   It's also necessary to organize
resources to influence those in power.  Folks like Sarah Palin recognize
that information is a weapon (e.g. see her recent incredible remarks about
Bill Ayers), but don't otherwise need to be limited by whether information
is true in context.   Similarly corporate lobbyists are effective at
influencing government, but that too is about action first and truth second.

Marcus
--
"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in
the dog." -- Mark Twain




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Re: [FRIAM] Willfull Ignorance - Satisfies NickCriteria E

[Phil Henshaw]

Well, where do you put inherited 'willful ignorance'?  That kind is sort
of 'built in'.

 

There are two of these that my work repeatedly runs into and I fail to find
a way around.One is the evident fact that the active parts of nature
develop locally and have their own local reactions to intruding impacts from
other active parts of nature, and that that just does not correspond with
the concept of everything being determined by its environment.  Yet most
scientists still remain focused on the inherited fascination with explaining
what the determinants are. The other is how everyone who has it pointed
out seems to acknowledge that a system for endless multiplication of wealth
is a threat to everything people need and care about, but then say they're
trying to ignore it to try to get along..

 

Phil 

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Steve Smith
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2008 10:52 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Willfull Ignorance - Satisfies NickCriteria E

 

Dale -



 
I think you're being too generous.  I'm afraid that many fall into a
category I'll call "Maliciously aware". 

"Willful Ignorance", in my vernacular is a dual of "Malicious Awareness".
Just as most good physical comedians and rodeo clowns have to be "really,
really good, to be that bad", Willful Ignorance is grounded in Malicious
Awareness.





Greenspan *had* to know that he was presiding at a series of dedications of
a house of cards (Willfully pretending ignorance).


 
Here you seem to agree that true ignorance may not be the issue.

Again, I use Willful Ignorance in the same sense (mod subtleties) as you use
Maliciously Aware.   The difference is that it is the *affectation of
ignorance* that makes it work.  



  We
have a system where certain players can reap short-term gains without
being held accountable for long-term losses.  I'm sure there are
individuals on this list with more game-theory or behavioral-incentive
knowledge that could elucidate the mechanisms better than I.
  

Yes, and it is not surprising that we would "evolve" personality types to
fill this niche.  I think we've had such in our midst at least as long as
we've not been nomadic.   My personal belief is that survival units of
"wandering tribe" are at least selected for "enlightened self interest" at
the band level.   At the scale we currently operate, I think it is at least
(very) very hard for us to recognize enlightened self interest, much less be
motivated to act on it.



 
The most frustrating part is that I simply don't know what can be done
about it and how I can help.  I can choose to act in what I believe is
a more moral way, guided by "enlightened self-interest", but that
doesn't have much effect on the system as a whole.
  

I (and many here I am sure) share this frustration.  I certainly don't have
any answers but I do have a few caveats:  I believe that much of the power
of the worst offenders in our ruling class (political, economic, religious)
comes directly from an abuse of this very frustration in the rest of us.   I
believe that we have two basic operating modes,  Willfull Ignorance and
Enlightened Awareness.  We ourselves, can be willfully ignorant.   We
willfully seek out "leaders" who will promise us what we want to hear, what
feeds our greed and salves our fears, even when we know better.

Willful Ignorance, IMHO, is driven by the two great motivators of "Greed"
and "Fear".   We constantly allow ourselves to be stampeded from one
unsustainable/untenable position to another because it suits the interest of
those who can extract profit from the massive movements (bull markets, bear
markets, war, etc.)  This is why our "two party system" doesn't really work.
They can play "good cop/bad cop" with us over and over again and we never
notice.   All the while, if something turns out badly they claim "how could
we have known?" but if it turns out well, they scream "See! I told you so!"
And until it all falls down on our heads, we lap it up like cream from a
saucer.

I was at a lecture by Noam Chomsky several years ago.  He was speaking on
some topic related to NAFTA and the packed house hung on his every word.  It
was held at UNM and the audience was about 30% students and 70% yuppies.
During the question and answer session, some poor schmuck stood up and
asked.  "Can you recommend any 'Socially Responsible' Investments?"
Chomsky paused for maybe 5 seconds which was an eternity as the audience all
leaned forward in their seats, held their breath, cocked their ears.  

When he finally spoke, a loud gasp went up.  "Socially Responsible
Investment is a contradiction in terms".   I took his point to mean that
wielding and hoarding resources in an abstract form (stocks, bonds,
commodity futures, currencies, etc) is always fundamentally irresponsible.
The point of an investment is to increase in value relative to the market...
to "get ahead", and it is quite po

Re: [FRIAM] Willfull Ignorance - Satisfies NickCriteria E

[Phil Henshaw]

To add to that, there seems to be a large institutional push for business
and political funded mercenary scientific research to create uncertainty
about legitimate science.   A comment on David Michaels' in book "Doubt is
their product" is in the 9/27 Science News sums it up.  It's 1100 references
and other resources are on the SKPP website www.defendingscience.org.   I
also got a note from regarding the equally suspicious bloging of 'peer
reviewed' papers reported on in The Economist "User-generated science" Sep
18th 2008 print edition on Web 2.0 tools for it as a new horizon for of
speedy (and maybe thoughtless) research.

Phil

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels
> Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2008 1:50 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Willfull Ignorance - Satisfies NickCriteria E
> 
> Steve Smith wrote:
> > The point of my talk of ignorance (willful and otherwise) is that to
> > the extent we are complicit in our own problems, we *do* have the
> > ability to retrieve some of our power from those we have given it to
> > out of our own *willful ignorance*.
> Good rant.  :-)
> 
> I''ll only add that power is not claimed by not being snowed by the
> misrepresentations of those having power.   It's also necessary to
> organize resources to influence those in power.  Folks like Sarah Palin
> recognize that information is a weapon (e.g. see her recent incredible
> remarks about Bill Ayers), but don't otherwise need to be limited by
> whether information is true in context.   Similarly corporate lobbyists
> are effective at influencing government, but that too is about action
> first and truth second.
> 
> Marcus
> --
> "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight
> in the dog." -- Mark Twain
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




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Re: [FRIAM] or more simply, is there order?

[Phil Henshaw]

Maybe it would then be clearer to say  "diverging from apparent past
behavior, on the assumed belief that the future would continue to be a
replication of the past" rather than "diverging from assumptions".   With
natural phenomena the 'generator' is actually the phenomenon in its
environment itself, so the physical thing is the one and only place where
the design of the process is recorded.  So, no, for physical system
emergence I see no reasonable way to make sense of examining "a complex map
between generator and phenomenon" as you would when interpreting a set of
coded instructions and the various runs of the instruction set on a
computer.  

So still, the question is what are the physical system signals that would
tell you that you're observing entirely new phenomena or emerging forms of
behavior (and need a new model)?   Sometimes I've also interpreted that to
mean evidence of 'permanent' or 'irreversible' system change as a way to
narrow down what 'emergence' means.

I'll be away from keyboard for a bit...fyi

Phil

> -Original Message-
> From: glen e. p. ropella [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Friday, October 03, 2008 9:47 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] or more simply, is there order?
> 
> Thus spake Phil Henshaw circa 10/02/2008 08:41 PM:
> > [ph] Yes models would likely show signatures of how they are built,
> 
> These are not necessarily signatures solely indicating how a model was
> _built_.  In fact, since the same model can be built in many different
> ways, measuring the model decidedly does not measure the way it was
> built.  The measurements of the models do show signals that
> characterize
> divergence over time.
> 
> > but I'm
> > asking about the physical phenomenon displaying signatures of
> diverging from
> > the assumptions that had once been valid and according to which a
> model had
> > been built.  How would you tell if there is emergence is what I'm
> after.   I
> > use divergence appearing to have all derivatives of the same sign.
> 
> You can't get "signatures of diverging from assumptions".  Assumptions
> aren't actual things with actual effects.  You can only see divergence
> from an actual object.  Hence, for _models_, you have to build a
> working
> model in order to measure divergence.
> 
> If by "emergence", you mean "a complex map between generator and
> phenomenon", then the way you measure emergence is by parallax with a
> population of models instantiating different mappings from generator to
> phenomenon.  The divergence of the various phenomena exhibited by the
> models from that exhibited by the referent is, then, the way to measure
> emergence in the referent.
> 
> But if you mean something else by "emergence", then I don't understand
> what you mean.
> 
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, http://ropella.name/~gepr




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Re: [FRIAM] or more simply, is there order?

[Phil Henshaw]

Oh surely Nick, I'm sorry.I can't seem to tell when I should explain, as
I'm writing, that a kind of  'dripping' irony is intended.   If you think of
'making sense' making a self-consistent explanation, my question is whether
that automatically requires you to misunderstand things  that work because
of their inconsistencies, like environments.   When you only look at
information from the past that isn't going to change, in your own mind where
there are no alternate perspectives or differing value judgments to deal
with, the illusion of 'making sense'  of everything often does appear work.
Sometimes I catch myself and think of it as a lot of 'patches' to hide the
inexplicable parts. and even try to look back under them.  

 

It would be nice to aim for think inclusively rather than exclusively, and
find what all the points of view have in common rather than only the last
one standing after severe criticism.One thing that pushes me in that
direction is noting when things can be expected to *become* inconsistent,
and diverge on some presently unobservable path, for either general or
specific reasons.   Perhaps this exchange is an example of  'talking past
each other'. in making the same point.The mental machine does such a
deceptively good job of rendering snap judgments the seem to make so much
sense to be conclusive, pure satisfying certainty, maybe that itself should
be thought of as inexplicable too!

 

I guess what I've been trying to raise as a subject is the kinds of evidence
in a system that signal that it is about to become in a way that is
inconsistent with itself.  and that's the systems issue that growth induced
collapse is a small part of, the prior signs of approaching change, that I
find interesting.

 

Phil

 

From: Nicholas Thompson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2008 12:30 AM
To: Phil Henshaw; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] or more simply, is there order?

 

PH wrote

 

" I too also find I make my best sense when talking to myself"

 

NT replies:

 

Oh good lord!  I cannot allow myself to go along with this statement.
First, as a behaviorist, I am not sure what it means to talk to oneself.
Second,  I have no idea what the validator of such a statement would be.  

 

No, I think that only people who have been understood by [some] others can
claim to have made sense.  Otherwise, made sense to whom?  That is why it is
so maddening to speak and not be understood.  

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, 

Clark University ([EMAIL PROTECTED])

 

 

 

 

- Original Message - 

From: Phil Henshaw <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  

To: [EMAIL PROTECTED];The Friday Morning <mailto:friam@redfish.com>
Applied Complexity Coffee Group

Sent: 10/2/2008 8:18:37 PM 

Subject: RE: [FRIAM] or more simply, is there order?

 

Yes,. such is the disappointment of life!   However. we do, I believe, have
words that would be quite meaningless even to ourselves without some sort of
experience in common. I too also find I make my best sense when talking
to myself. but am still also driven to explore those subjects which I can
only really understand by way of the give and take of examining the physical
world people seem to experience in common.Since nearly everything in my
mind makes complete sense, as I make it so, anything that doesn't seems to
have a good chance of being something not in my mind.That's sort of a
technique.   

 

I also find a consistent predictability to not being able to make very good
sense of anything that grows exponentially.  I see loops of events that get
somewhere that I can't trace, and have found that very helpful in
identifying things that are 'out of body' in that sort of actual physical
sense, but lead me to think about the distributed networks of things they
connect which I can't make much sense of.However, they still seem to be
of the kind of thing not located in my mind, but located in the physical
world of common experience, identifiable, but not explainable?Does that
work, is that right ?

 

Phil

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Nicholas Thompson
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2008 5:26 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] or more simply, is there order?

 

Phil Henshaw Hath Spoken Thus: 

 

==>Look, I know this audience is not made of fools, and not deaf and dumb,
and probably not disinterested in change, so I have to figure your inability
to connect with my approach to constructing a science of change for natural
complex systems must be that you find no door between your methods and mine.
<==

 

Phil, 

 

Nick Thompson hath replied:

 

I have struggled to understand you over the years and just  can't.
Othe

Re: [FRIAM] or more simply, is there order?

[Phil Henshaw]

'The Black Swan' was mentioned this AM on the radio in NY and I ordered a
copy.
 Nassim Taleb seems like a prolific writher
and fascinating guy.   The other author mentioned on the segment was Dan
Ariely, author of "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our
Decisions" maybe worth looking at too.

 

Phil

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2008 7:19 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] or more simply, is there order?

 

My daughter, an urban planner in Bruxelles, recommended that I read The
Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by epistemologist Nassim
Nicholas Taleb.  I did look it up and found it might be pertinent to this
string.  Has anybody read it?
Paul 


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