from:"Pieter Steenekamp"

People have different ideas about AI. Naomi Klein thinks that the idea that
AI will solve all our problems is a big joke. She thinks the tech people
are trying to trick us! She thinks AI is not just a tool but also a
creation of the people who made it. Naomi is afraid that if we keep
believing in this lie, we won't fix the real problems we have.

On the other hand, Sam Altman is excited about AI! He thinks AI can help us
solve things like diseases and climate change, and even drive us around and
cook for us! He doesn't think AI will take over the world or hurt people.
Sam thinks humans will always be in charge of AI.

So, who's right? I don't know! My magic ball's batteries are dead, so I
can't tell you. But I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens!

On Mon, 8 May 2023 at 23:42, Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> He's not lying, he is running his softmax function at a higher temperature
> to collect more samples in the vicinity of the truth.
>
> > On May 8, 2023, at 12:50 PM, glen  wrote:
> >
> > AI machines aren’t ‘hallucinating’. But their makers are.
> >
> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/08/ai-machines-hallucinating-naomi-klein
> >> Is all of this overly dramatic? A stuffy and reflexive resistance to
> exciting innovation? Why expect the worse? Altman reassures us: “Nobody
> wants to destroy the world.” Perhaps not. But as the ever-worsening climate
> and extinction crises show us every day, plenty of powerful people and
> institutions seem to be just fine knowing that they are helping to destroy
> the stability of the world’s life-support systems, so long as they can keep
> making record profits that they believe will protect them and their
> families from the worst effects. Altman, like many creatures of Silicon
> Valley, is himself a prepper: back in 2016, he boasted: “I have guns, gold,
> potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli
> Defense Force and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”
> >> I’m pretty sure those facts say a lot more about what Altman actually
> believes about the future he is helping unleash than whatever flowery
> hallucinations he is choosing to share in press interviews.
> >
> >
> > --
> > ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
> >
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Re: [FRIAM] Cory Doctorow on AI hype vs Crypto Hype

Roger,
Thanks for the info and references.
As the great philosopher Britney Spears once said, "Why do you have a brain
if you're not willing to change it?" So for now, I'll switch my stance from
"pro-emergence-in-LLMs" to "I have no idea what's going on."

On Tue, 9 May 2023 at 04:25, Roger Critchlow  wrote:

> This evening's hackernews contribution:
>
>
> https://hai.stanford.edu/news/ais-ostensible-emergent-abilities-are-mirage
>
> AI’s Ostensible Emergent Abilities Are a Mirage
> According to Stanford researchers, large language models are not greater
> than the sum of their parts.
>
> Which is a gloss on https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.15004:
>
> Recent work claims that large language models display emergent abilities,
>> abilities not present in smaller-scale models that are present in
>> larger-scale models. What makes emergent abilities intriguing is two-fold:
>> their sharpness, transitioning seemingly instantaneously from not present
>> to present, and their unpredictability, appearing at seemingly
>> unforeseeable model scales. Here, we present an alternative explanation for
>> emergent abilities: that for a particular task and model family, when
>> analyzing fixed model outputs, one can choose a metric which leads to the
>> inference of an emergent ability or another metric which does not. Thus,
>> our alternative suggests that existing claims of emergent abilities are
>> creations of the researcher's analyses, not fundamental changes in model
>> behavior on specific tasks with scale.
>
>
> -- rec --
>
>
> On Mon, May 8, 2023 at 12:33 AM Pieter Steenekamp <
> piet...@randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
>
>> Sorry, I forgot to add the url of the interview.
>> (580) The Current State of Artificial Intelligence with James Wang -
>> YouTube <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6WL4X6pmCY>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 8 May 2023 at 08:27, Pieter Steenekamp <
>> piet...@randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
>>
>>> I am very excited about the basic idea that neither Google nor any Big
>>> Tech company has the Moat as per the hackernews reference above.
>>> Very interesting around this is the interview with James Wang of
>>> Cerebras James Wang about this where he makes a strong case (in my view in
>>> any case) that in future open source large language models are going to be
>>> much more prominent than those of Big Tech.
>>>
>>> I quote from the description on Toutube about the interview:
>>> "Scaling laws are as important to artificial intelligence (AI) as the
>>> law of gravity is in the world around us. AI is the empirical science of
>>> this decade, and Cerebras is a company dedicated to turning
>>> state-of-the-art research on large language models (LLMs) into open-source
>>> data that can be reproduced by developers across the world. In this
>>> episode, James Wang, an ARK alum and product marketing specialist at
>>> Cerebras, joins us for a discussion centered around the past and the future
>>> of LLM development and why the generative pre-trained transformer (GPT)
>>> innovation taking place in this field is like nothing that has ever come
>>> before it (and has seemingly limitless possibilities). He also explains the
>>> motivation behind Cerebras’ unique approach and the benefits that their
>>> architecture and models are providing to developers."
>>>
>>> On Mon, 8 May 2023 at 01:09, Merle Lefkoff 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thank you Roger.
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Re: [FRIAM] Cory Doctorow on AI hype vs Crypto Hype

Sorry, I forgot to add the url of the interview.
(580) The Current State of Artificial Intelligence with James Wang - YouTube
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6WL4X6pmCY>


On Mon, 8 May 2023 at 08:27, Pieter Steenekamp 
wrote:

> I am very excited about the basic idea that neither Google nor any Big
> Tech company has the Moat as per the hackernews reference above.
> Very interesting around this is the interview with James Wang of Cerebras
> James Wang about this where he makes a strong case (in my view in any case)
> that in future open source large language models are going to be much more
> prominent than those of Big Tech.
>
> I quote from the description on Toutube about the interview:
> "Scaling laws are as important to artificial intelligence (AI) as the law
> of gravity is in the world around us. AI is the empirical science of this
> decade, and Cerebras is a company dedicated to turning state-of-the-art
> research on large language models (LLMs) into open-source data that can be
> reproduced by developers across the world. In this episode, James Wang, an
> ARK alum and product marketing specialist at Cerebras, joins us for a
> discussion centered around the past and the future of LLM development and
> why the generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) innovation taking place in
> this field is like nothing that has ever come before it (and has seemingly
> limitless possibilities). He also explains the motivation behind Cerebras’
> unique approach and the benefits that their architecture and models are
> providing to developers."
>
> On Mon, 8 May 2023 at 01:09, Merle Lefkoff  wrote:
>
>> Thank you Roger.
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Re: [FRIAM] Cory Doctorow on AI hype vs Crypto Hype

I am very excited about the basic idea that neither Google nor any Big Tech
company has the Moat as per the hackernews reference above.
Very interesting around this is the interview with James Wang of Cerebras
James Wang about this where he makes a strong case (in my view in any case)
that in future open source large language models are going to be much more
prominent than those of Big Tech.

I quote from the description on Toutube about the interview:
"Scaling laws are as important to artificial intelligence (AI) as the law
of gravity is in the world around us. AI is the empirical science of this
decade, and Cerebras is a company dedicated to turning state-of-the-art
research on large language models (LLMs) into open-source data that can be
reproduced by developers across the world. In this episode, James Wang, an
ARK alum and product marketing specialist at Cerebras, joins us for a
discussion centered around the past and the future of LLM development and
why the generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) innovation taking place in
this field is like nothing that has ever come before it (and has seemingly
limitless possibilities). He also explains the motivation behind Cerebras’
unique approach and the benefits that their architecture and models are
providing to developers."

On Mon, 8 May 2023 at 01:09, Merle Lefkoff  wrote:

> Thank you Roger.
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Re: [FRIAM] Dissecting Recall of Factual Associations in, Auto-Regressive Language Models

2023-05-07 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

You know what endlessly fascinates me? The way large language models are
like those magic growth pills you see in cartoons. Just add some extra
data, give it a stir, and voila! Emergent abilities appear out of thin air.
It's like watching a kid turn into a superhero overnight.

I quote verbatim from https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.07682.pdf
"Scaling up language models has been shown to predictably improve
performance and sample efficiency on a wide range of downstream tasks. This
paper instead discusses an unpredictable phenomenon that we refer to as
emergent abilities of large language models. We consider an ability to be
emergent if it is not present in smaller models but is present in larger
models. Thus, emergent abilities cannot be predicted simply by
extrapolating the performance of smaller models. The existence of such
emergence raises the question of whether additional scaling could
potentially further expand the range of capabilities of language models."

Emergent properties of large language models are abilities that are not
present in smaller models but are present in larger models. They are
unpredictable and cannot be explained simply by extrapolating the
performance of smaller models. Some examples of emergent abilities are:

Solving math problems
Answering factual questions
Generating summaries
Writing code
Playing games
Translating languages
Composing music
Drawing images
Detecting emotions
Reasoning logically

On Sun, 7 May 2023 at 18:29, Steve Smith  wrote:

> https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.14767.pdf
>
> I am pretty much over my head in this literature, but continue to be
> fascinated as I watch people who are not try to untangle some explanatory
> power in their models...
>
> The details of this analysis or framing this as *information flow* rather
> than *static data/structure* is reminiscent of some very nascent work we
> *tried* to do 15 years ago, attempting to analyze/understand huge Systems
> Dynamics models of Critical Infrastructure joined together/coupled to try
> to predict the potential for cascading failures through these coupled
> systems.   The representation *as* SD models were natural for this framing
> but we made only the tiniest progress IMO in extracting hints of
> *explanatory* narratives.I was primarily doing visualization on those
> tasks but tried to focus on clustering of the Dual Graph/Network  to find
> structure in the *flow* during extreme events rather than in the
> engineered/designed structure of the network itself.
>
> I know there are others on this list who have worked with complex, dynamic
> networks  (I'm thinking of Frank's colleagues and Causal Discovery in
> Graphical Models,   various project Glen has alluded to, and a wide variety
> of problems Stephen has related to me over the years, but I'm sure there
> are plenty of others)...  I'm curious if anyone else is wading in this deep
> (and more to the point, finding any traction)?
>
> From the paper:
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Cory Doctorow on AI hype vs Crypto Hype

2023-05-05 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

I don't have the article, but maybe as a second best the following
interview with Geoffry Hinton:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sitHS6UDMJc

On Fri, 5 May 2023 at 08:16, Roger Critchlow  wrote:

> Merle --
>
> I tried, but it's paywalled to me now.
>
> -- rec --
>
> On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 4:39 PM Roger Critchlow  wrote:
>
>> Didn't read Cory's blog, though I'm still laughing at the blurb for Red
>> Team Blues.
>>
>> But I read Geoffrey Hinton's interview with MIT Tech Review yesterday.
>>
>>
>> https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/02/1072528/geoffrey-hinton-google-why-scared-ai
>>
>> It's not hype that chatgpt dazzled everyone with a model which is much
>> smaller than a human brain, even though it took a fairly huge budget for
>> OpenAI to build it.
>>
>> And I read this posting from an anonymous googler today via hackernews.
>>
>>https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither
>>
>> It's not hype that the open source community has rapidly figured out how
>> to produce equally dazzling models with drastically smaller budgets of
>> resources, and is continuing to iterate the process.
>>
>> -- rec --
>>
>> On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 10:11 AM Gary Schiltz 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I love the graphic! I've had the misfortune of twice jumping on that
>>> roller coaster just before the Peak of Inflated Expectation - once for the
>>> AI boom/bust of the mid 1980s and once for the dotcom boom/bust of the late
>>> 1990s. Jumped on too late to make a killing, but didn't get too badly
>>> damaged by the Trough of Disillusionment either.
>>>
>>> On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 10:34 AM Steve Smith  wrote:
>>>

 https://doctorow.medium.com/the-ai-hype-bubble-is-the-new-crypto-hype-bubble-74e53028631e

 I *am* a fan of LLMs (not so much image generators) and blockchain (not
 so much crypto or NFTs) in their "best" uses (not that I or anyone else
 really knows what that is) in spite of my intrinsic neoLuddite affect.

 Nevertheless I think Doctorow in his usual acerbic and penetrating
 style really nails it well here IMO.

 I particularly appreciated his reference/quote to Emily Bender's "High
 on Supply" and "word/meaning conflation" in the sense of "don't mistake an
 accent for a personality" in the dating scene.

 A lot of my own contrarian commments on this forum come from resisting
 what Doctorow introduces (to me) as "CritiHype" (attributed to Lee
 Vinsel)...  the feeling that some folks make a (a)vocation out of kneejerk
 criticism.   It is much easier to *poke* at something than to *do*
 something worthy of being *poked at*.   I appreciate that Doctorow doesn't
 seem to (by my fairly uncritical eye) engage in this much himself...  which
 is why I was drawn into this article...

 I also very much appreciate his quote from Charlie Stross:

 *corporations are Slow AIs, autonomous artificial lifeforms that
 consistently do the wrong thing even when the people who nominally run them
 try to steer them in better directions:*

 *https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future
  *

 I could go on quoting and excerpting and commenting on his whole
 article and the myriad links/references he offers up but will curb my
 enthusiasm and leave it to the astute FriAM readers to choose how much to
 indulge in.   It was a pretty good antidote for my own AI-thusiasm driven
 by long chats with GPT4 (converging on being more like long sessions
 wandering through Wikipedia after the first 100 hours of engagement).

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Re: [FRIAM] Cory Doctorow on AI hype vs Crypto Hype

2023-05-04 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

AI is exploding like a birthday cake with too many candles, and it's
mind-blowing what machines can do! Yann LeCun and I are on the same
wavelength here: the world needs more brains. Thanks to machine
intelligence amplifying human intelligence, we're heading towards a new
Renaissance, a brighter era of Enlightenment. And to all you AI doomsday
preppers out there, Yann LeCun has dropped the mic: the "hard take-off"
scenario is more unlikely than a unicorn sighting! So, hold off on the
robo-apocalypse theories - our intelligent machines are still less wise
than your average feline. Let's start there and see where the AI journey
takes us, shall we?

To provide you with some details, I would like to directly cite two recent
tweets from Yann LeCun. Here they are in verbatim:

First tweet: "The world requires greater intelligence. The fusion of
machine intelligence and human intelligence will facilitate a fresh
Renaissance, a novel phase of Enlightenment. Assertions about the
destructive impact of AI are merely a contemporary version of
obstructionism."

Second tweet: "It appears that those who anticipate the downfall of AI
require a clear explanation: the concept of a rapid take-off is entirely
unfeasible."

On Fri, 5 May 2023 at 06:29, Merle Lefkoff  wrote:

> Roger, can you send me the full article about Hinton in the M.I.T. review.
> Thanks.
>
> On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 4:39 PM Roger Critchlow  wrote:
>
>> Didn't read Cory's blog, though I'm still laughing at the blurb for Red
>> Team Blues.
>>
>> But I read Geoffrey Hinton's interview with MIT Tech Review yesterday.
>>
>>
>> https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/02/1072528/geoffrey-hinton-google-why-scared-ai
>>
>> It's not hype that chatgpt dazzled everyone with a model which is much
>> smaller than a human brain, even though it took a fairly huge budget for
>> OpenAI to build it.
>>
>> And I read this posting from an anonymous googler today via hackernews.
>>
>>https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither
>>
>> It's not hype that the open source community has rapidly figured out how
>> to produce equally dazzling models with drastically smaller budgets of
>> resources, and is continuing to iterate the process.
>>
>> -- rec --
>>
>> On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 10:11 AM Gary Schiltz 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I love the graphic! I've had the misfortune of twice jumping on that
>>> roller coaster just before the Peak of Inflated Expectation - once for the
>>> AI boom/bust of the mid 1980s and once for the dotcom boom/bust of the late
>>> 1990s. Jumped on too late to make a killing, but didn't get too badly
>>> damaged by the Trough of Disillusionment either.
>>>
>>> On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 10:34 AM Steve Smith  wrote:
>>>

 https://doctorow.medium.com/the-ai-hype-bubble-is-the-new-crypto-hype-bubble-74e53028631e

 I *am* a fan of LLMs (not so much image generators) and blockchain (not
 so much crypto or NFTs) in their "best" uses (not that I or anyone else
 really knows what that is) in spite of my intrinsic neoLuddite affect.

 Nevertheless I think Doctorow in his usual acerbic and penetrating
 style really nails it well here IMO.

 I particularly appreciated his reference/quote to Emily Bender's "High
 on Supply" and "word/meaning conflation" in the sense of "don't mistake an
 accent for a personality" in the dating scene.

 A lot of my own contrarian commments on this forum come from resisting
 what Doctorow introduces (to me) as "CritiHype" (attributed to Lee
 Vinsel)...  the feeling that some folks make a (a)vocation out of kneejerk
 criticism.   It is much easier to *poke* at something than to *do*
 something worthy of being *poked at*.   I appreciate that Doctorow doesn't
 seem to (by my fairly uncritical eye) engage in this much himself...  which
 is why I was drawn into this article...

 I also very much appreciate his quote from Charlie Stross:

 *corporations are Slow AIs, autonomous artificial lifeforms that
 consistently do the wrong thing even when the people who nominally run them
 try to steer them in better directions:*

 *https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future
  *

 I could go on quoting and excerpting and commenting on his whole
 article and the myriad links/references he offers up but will curb my
 enthusiasm and leave it to the astute FriAM readers to choose how much to
 indulge in.   It was a pretty good antidote for my own AI-thusiasm driven
 by long chats with GPT4 (converging on being more like long sessions
 wandering through Wikipedia after the first 100 hours of engagement).

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Re: [FRIAM] remembering Swarm

2023-05-02 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Russell,

Are you working on https://ravel.bio/ ?

Looks very exciting! Do you have more information on it. The website info
is very sketchy/

On Tue, 2 May 2023 at 01:08, Russell Standish  wrote:

> On Mon, May 01, 2023 at 10:40:00AM +0200, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> > I like Python, but I also use other languages and I don’t think it’s the
> best
> > for everything. For example, when I teach deep learning to business
> people who
> > don’t code, I recommend R and H2O. R is simpler for non-coders and H2O
> can
> > handle spreadsheet data better, for example when there is missing data or
> > categorical inputs. My point is that Python is not hard, but it can be
> less
> > friendly for busy managers who want to learn AI basics. This is when I
> compare
> > Python/Scikit Learn with R/H2O, not even Python/Tensorflow which is very
> > powerful but very difficult to learn for non-coders. One more thing, for
> the
> > common business use case, I think R/H2O is more powerful than Python with
> > typical deep learning platforms like Scikit Learn and Tensorflow.
>
>
> I'll look up H2O. Not for my own purposes - as I said, I've gone all
> in on Python, and still C++ is my natural environment, even Python I
> find has some friction.
>
> But, from you description, it looks like a natural competitor to a
> product I'm working on called Ravel.
>
>
> --
>
>
> 
> Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Principal, High Performance Coders hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
>   http://www.hpcoders.com.au
>
> 
>
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Re: [FRIAM] remembering Swarm

2023-05-01 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

I like Python, but I also use other languages and I don’t think it’s the
best for everything. For example, when I teach deep learning to business
people who don’t code, I recommend R and H2O. R is simpler for non-coders
and H2O can handle spreadsheet data better, for example when there is
missing data or categorical inputs. My point is that Python is not hard,
but it can be less friendly for busy managers who want to learn AI basics.
This is when I compare Python/Scikit Learn with R/H2O, not even
Python/Tensorflow which is very powerful but very difficult to learn for
non-coders. One more thing, for the common business use case, I think R/H2O
is more powerful than Python with typical deep learning platforms like
Scikit Learn and Tensorflow. Obviously, if you wish to play with large
language models or computer vision, there's only one horse in town and it
ain't R! Use Python for these!

For ABM programming, it also depends on what you want to do. My default
choice is NetLogo, even though it’s light weight. I think that for many ABM
problems, a basic “toy-model” can show the idea and the basic emergence of
complexity. For example, in South Africa, where electricity is a big
problem, I made a NetLogo toy model to show the current costs of different
types of electricity production. The model shows that solar and wind with
batteries may be good, but they are outrageously expensive given that peak
demand at 7 pm because battery grid storage is very expensive. So, you
still, unless you're willing to pay so much to cripple the economy, need a
reliable base load. With a simple NetLogo toy model, I could show this idea
easily.

On Mon, 1 May 2023 at 09:02, Russell Standish  wrote:

> On Mon, May 01, 2023 at 06:40:52AM +0200, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> > A few years back, I built a model for a client using AnyLogic. I think
> It was a
> > great choice at the time for that specific application, with its choice
> of
> > simulation modes and build in optimization algorithms. But now, with the
> > explosion of packages in the Python world, I'm not sure if I'd make the
> same
> > choice today.
>
> Interesting comment. Of course, I'm going all-in on Python, and the
> next version of EcoLab will be Python-based, rather than the current
> TCL.
>
>
> >
> > On Mon, 1 May 2023 at 00:06, Russell Standish 
> wrote:
> >
> > Anyone use AnyLogic?
> >
> > Mind you, the requirement to use Java is for me a big detriment, and
> > the main reason I keep using and developing EcoLab.
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 04:20:40PM +0200, Pietro Terna wrote:
> > > Currently Repast4Py for parallelization and sometimes pure
> Python in
> > a
> > > Jupyter notebook.
> > >
> > > Best, Pietro
> > >
> > > Il 30/04/23 13:53, Jochen Fromm ha scritto:
> > >
> > > Yes, LLMs give a new boost to agent-based modeling and
> agent-based
> > software
> > > engineering, but it is a totally new class of agents. AutoGPT
> is an
> > example
> > > https://github.com/Significant-Gravitas/Auto-GPT
> > >
> > > What do you think is better to use by the way, Repast4Py or
> Mesa, or
> > just
> > > pure Python in a Jupyter notebook ?
> > > https://youtu.be/bjjoHji8KUQ
> > >
> > > -J.
> > >
> > >
> > >  Original message 
> > > From: Pietro Terna 
> > > Date: 4/30/23 12:13 PM (GMT+01:00)
> > > To: friam@redfish.com
> > > Subject: [FRIAM] remembering Swarm
> > >
> > >Dear all,
> > >
> > >remembering Swarm: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03442.pdf
> > >
> > > It would seem to be an important step ahead in the field of
> social
> > > simulation. Best, Pietro
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> > > "It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is
> also a
> > deep truth." Neils Bohr.
> > >
> > > A https://terna.to.it/breviArticoli.html riporto dei miei
> brevi
> > articoli su temi di attualità.
> > >
> > > Home page: https://terna.to.it  Twitter: https://twitter.com/
> > @pietroterna
> > > Mastodon: https://mastodon.uno/@PietroTerna
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. ---
> -.. .
> > >

Re: [FRIAM] remembering Swarm

2023-04-30 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

A few years back, I built a model for a client using AnyLogic. I think It
was a great choice at the time for that specific application, with its
choice of simulation modes and build in optimization algorithms. But now,
with the explosion of packages in the Python world, I'm not sure if I'd
make the same choice today.

On Mon, 1 May 2023 at 00:06, Russell Standish  wrote:

> Anyone use AnyLogic?
>
> Mind you, the requirement to use Java is for me a big detriment, and
> the main reason I keep using and developing EcoLab.
>
> Cheers
>
> On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 04:20:40PM +0200, Pietro Terna wrote:
> > Currently Repast4Py for parallelization and sometimes pure Python in
> a
> > Jupyter notebook.
> >
> > Best, Pietro
> >
> > Il 30/04/23 13:53, Jochen Fromm ha scritto:
> >
> > Yes, LLMs give a new boost to agent-based modeling and agent-based
> software
> > engineering, but it is a totally new class of agents. AutoGPT is an
> example
> > https://github.com/Significant-Gravitas/Auto-GPT
> >
> > What do you think is better to use by the way, Repast4Py or Mesa, or
> just
> > pure Python in a Jupyter notebook ?
> > https://youtu.be/bjjoHji8KUQ
> >
> > -J.
> >
> >
> >  Original message 
> > From: Pietro Terna 
> > Date: 4/30/23 12:13 PM (GMT+01:00)
> > To: friam@redfish.com
> > Subject: [FRIAM] remembering Swarm
> >
> >Dear all,
> >
> >remembering Swarm: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03442.pdf
> >
> > It would seem to be an important step ahead in the field of social
> > simulation. Best, Pietro
> >
> > --
> >
> > "It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a
> deep truth." Neils Bohr.
> >
> > A https://terna.to.it/breviArticoli.html riporto dei miei brevi
> articoli su temi di attualità.
> >
> > Home page: https://terna.to.it  Twitter:
> https://twitter.com/@pietroterna
> > Mastodon: https://mastodon.uno/@PietroTerna
> >
> >
> >
> > -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> > to (un)subscribe
> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> > archives:  5/2017 thru present
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
> >   1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > "It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep
> truth." Neils Bohr.
> >
> > A https://terna.to.it/breviArticoli.html riporto dei miei brevi
> articoli su temi di attualità.
> >
> > Home page: https://terna.to.it  Twitter:
> https://twitter.com/@pietroterna
> > Mastodon: https://mastodon.uno/@PietroTerna
> >
> >
>
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> > archives:  5/2017 thru present
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
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>
>
> --
>
>
> 
> Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Principal, High Performance Coders hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
>   http://www.hpcoders.com.au
>
> 
>
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[FRIAM] I'd be grateful for comments.

2023-04-30 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

The South African National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF) asked me to
make a presentation on AI in programming at an online event they plan to
host on 18/19 May on Pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence.
I have a draft ready and I'm asking all my friends and family to give my
constructive criticism on it so that I can, if required, change my
presentation.
So, to all my FRIAM friends, if anyone of you could maybe have a look at it
and comment then I'll be very grateful.
You can download my draft presentation from:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6qjeed06gwzxvby/AI%20in%20programming.draft%2Crev.0.pptx.zip?dl=0

Thanks,
Pieter
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Re: [FRIAM] SFI AI Talk tonight (live and streaming)

2023-04-11 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Thanks. I'm looking forward to watching it on Youtube.

On Tue, 11 Apr 2023 at 19:33, Angel Edward  wrote:

>
> 
>
> *Listen up*
>
> Will artificial intelligence ultimately be oppressive or innovative?
> According to Chat GPT
> ,
> to which we posed the question, it "depends on how it is designed,
> implemented and regulated, and the specific context in which it is used."
> Perhaps the real-live scientists working on the issue will prevaricate less
> when they delve in at 7:30 pm tonight at the Lensic Performing Arts Center
> for the free 2023 Santa Fe Institute Community Lecture Series
> ,
> featuring Arizona State University Professor of Computer Science Stephanie
> Forrest
> ;
> University of New Mexico Department of Computer Science Professor Melanie
> Moses
> ;
> and Santa Fe Institute Professor Cris Moore. All three will discuss their
> work on AI and algorithms in health, housing, criminal justice,
> cybersecurity and energy, along with their thoughts on where new tools like
> ChatGPT are heading. Reserve free tickets
> 
>  but,
> if you can't attend in person, SFI will stream the lecture live on its YouTube
> channel
> 
>  (where
> it also will be recorded for future viewing).
> __
>
> Ed Angel
>
> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS
> Lab)
> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>
> 1017 Sierra Pinon
> Santa Fe, NM 87501
> 505-984-0136 (home)   edward.an...@gmail.com
> 505-453-4944 (cell)  http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
>
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[FRIAM] if you can't beat them, join them

2023-04-09 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

On this forum, there has been a lot of discussion about ChatGPT and other
AI technologies. Therefore, I believe it would be beneficial to share a
video in which Sal Khan demonstrates the use of GPT-4 in online teaching.
The main idea I want to convey is that instead of trying to fight against
AI, we should adopt the mindset of "if you can't beat them, join them" and
utilize AI to our advantage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j0jSKcvbLY
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Re: [FRIAM] Bing Chat vs ChatGPT

2023-03-20 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

I use both chatGPT (chat.openai.com) and Bing Chat and I use them for
different use cases.
If I want help to phrase my writing better, I use chatGPT. I would
typically write a paragraph and ask chatGPT to rephrase it. I'm not good
with expressing myself using natural language and I find chatGPT's help
very useful. For those people who are gifted with the skills to use natural
language well it will probably be just annoying.
If I just want to do an internet search, I use Bing AI. I find it much more
useful and accurate than a Google search. It gives a short summary of the
results and references that's relatively easy to check. It's far from
perfect, but for this purpose I find it significantly better than Google
search.

On Mon, 20 Mar 2023 at 20:13, Jochen Fromm  wrote:

> I've read that Bing Chat is now available for everyone in this blog post..
> https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2023/03/14/Binging
>
> ..and it really seems to be available now for everyone. I have tried it
> and it feels horrible though. The overall experience is totally different
> from ChatGPT. Bing Chat is stubborn and repetitive. Do you remember Clippy
> the office assistant? Bing Chat is like Clippy: it is simply annoying. And
> if you say something that it doesn't like it aborts the conversation
> abruptly. Microsoft took something valuable and ruined it.
>
> -J.
>
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[FRIAM] Request for Assistance with Agent Based Modeling

2023-01-31 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Dear all,

I am writing to request your assistance in my efforts to advise the South
African Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Ghordan, on the use of
agent-based modeling (ABM) as a decision support system.

Eskom is the main supplier of electricity in South Africa and it has been
facing a number of challenges. Despite receiving technical and economic
advice, the Minister is faced with social-political constraints that
prevent him from effectively addressing the root causes of Eskom's issues.

Given your expertise in complexity science, I believe that the Friam group
could offer valuable insights and advice to help me build the ABM decision
support system for the Minister. Maybe you can connect me with others who
have relevant knowledge and skills and will be willing to help.

We will of course not say no for freebies, but we will be willing to pay
for professional input.

I would greatly appreciate any help or advice that you can offer in this
matter.

Pieter
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Re: [FRIAM] NickC channels DaveW

2023-01-19 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

*Sadly, there are some hidden elements to all that techno-optimism.*

Yes, sadly the world is unequal and those at the bottom of the economic
ladder just don't get a good deal.

On the positive side, looking back at the history of mankind there is
evidence that it is now better to live than ever in the past for the large
majority of humankind. This is true even though it is the sad truth that
it's very far from perfect; human suffering is a reality, Glen's comment is
sad but true.

The question of course is whether it will continue to go better?

It's just impossible to know the future. One person can believe it'll go
better in the future, another that it'll be worse, each with tons of  good
arguments.

I for one, embrace the optimism of Sam Altman, just for completeness I
repeat his quote and give the reference again.
"Intelligence and energy have been the fundamental limiters towards most
things we want. A future where these are not the limiting reagents will be
radically different, and can be amazingly better."
Taken from
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/startups/intelligence-energy-sam-altmans-technology-predictions-for-2020s/articleshow/86088731.cms
  :

In conclusion, yes I agree with Glen that there are sadly hidden elements
to all the techno-optimism. but this does not dampen my enthusiasm for the
future triggered by abundant intelligence and energy.

On Wed, 18 Jan 2023 at 21:08, glen  wrote:

> Sadly, there are some hidden elements to all that techno-optimism. E.g.
>
> https://nitter.cz/billyperrigo/status/1615682180201447425#m
>
> On 1/18/23 00:40, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> > I totally agree that realizable behavior is what matters.
> >
> > The elephant in the room is whether AI (and robotics of course) will
> (not to replace but to) be able to do better than humans in all respects,
> including come up with creative solutions to not only the world's most
> pressing problems but also small creative things like writing poems, and
> then to do the mental and physical tasks required to provide goods and
> services to all in the world,
> >
> > Sam Altman said there are two things that will shape our future;
> intelligence and energy. If we have real abundant intelligence and energy,
> the world will be very different indeed.
> >
> > To quote Sam Altmen at
> https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/startups/intelligence-energy-sam-altmans-technology-predictions-for-2020s/articleshow/86088731.cms
> <
> https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/startups/intelligence-energy-sam-altmans-technology-predictions-for-2020s/articleshow/86088731.cms>
>  :
> >
> > "intelligence and energy have been the fundamental limiters towards most
> things we want. A future where these are not the limiting reagents will be
> radically different, and can be amazingly better."
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 18 Jan 2023 at 03:06, Marcus Daniels  <mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
> >
> > Definitions are all fine and good, but realizable behavior is what
> matters.   Analog computers will have imperfect behavior, and there will be
> leakage between components.   A large network of transistors or neurons are
> sufficiently similar for my purposes.   The unrolling would be inside a
> skull, so somewhat isolated from interference.
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Friam  friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On Behalf Of glen
> > Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2023 2:11 PM
> > To: friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com>
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] NickC channels DaveW
> >
> > I don't quite grok that. A crisp definition of recursion implies no
> interaction with the outside world, right? If you can tolerate the
> ambiguity in that statement, the artifacts laying about from an unrolled
> recursion might be seen and used by outsiders. That's not to say a
> trespasser can't have some sophisticated intrusion technique. But unrolled
> seems more "open" to family, friends, and the occasional acquaintance.
> >
> > On 1/17/23 13:37, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> >  > I probably didn't pay enough attention to the thread some time
> ago on serialization, but to me recursion is hard to distinguish from an
> unrolling of recursion.
> >
>
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] NickC channels DaveW

2023-01-18 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

I totally agree that realizable behavior is what matters.

The elephant in the room is whether AI (and robotics of course) will (not
to replace but to) be able to do better than humans in all respects,
including come up with creative solutions to not only the world's most
pressing problems but also small creative things like writing poems, and
then to do the mental and physical tasks required to provide goods and
services to all in the world,

Sam Altman said there are two things that will shape our future;
intelligence and energy. If we have real abundant intelligence and energy,
the world will be very different indeed.

To quote Sam Altmen at
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/startups/intelligence-energy-sam-altmans-technology-predictions-for-2020s/articleshow/86088731.cms
 :

"intelligence and energy have been the fundamental limiters towards most
things we want. A future where these are not the limiting reagents will be
radically different, and can be amazingly better."



On Wed, 18 Jan 2023 at 03:06, Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> Definitions are all fine and good, but realizable behavior is what
> matters.   Analog computers will have imperfect behavior, and there will be
> leakage between components.   A large network of transistors or neurons are
> sufficiently similar for my purposes.   The unrolling would be inside a
> skull, so somewhat isolated from interference.
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2023 2:11 PM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] NickC channels DaveW
>
> I don't quite grok that. A crisp definition of recursion implies no
> interaction with the outside world, right? If you can tolerate the
> ambiguity in that statement, the artifacts laying about from an unrolled
> recursion might be seen and used by outsiders. That's not to say a
> trespasser can't have some sophisticated intrusion technique. But unrolled
> seems more "open" to family, friends, and the occasional acquaintance.
>
> On 1/17/23 13:37, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > I probably didn't pay enough attention to the thread some time ago on
> serialization, but to me recursion is hard to distinguish from an unrolling
> of recursion.
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Deep learning training material

2023-01-13 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

In response to the very valuable feedback I got, including from Rus in this
group but also from others outside of this group, I reworked my deep
learning training material very significantly. For if anybody is interested
it's available from
https://www.dropbox.com/s/y5fkp10ar5ze67n/deep%20learning%20training%20rev%2013012023.zip?dl=0

Just to make sure you guys are clear about the objective of the workshop,
below is a quote from the training document.

But before I give the quote, just an answer to why am I doing this workshop?
a) There is plenty of very good material on the internet for free to go
into deep learning for people with software skills. But none (that I know
of) for those without any software expertise wanting to know and use deep
learning
b) AI is making a splash in the world right now and there are (I think)
many people without software skills yearning to know more about it.
c) It is really very easy (I think) for a professional without software
skills to acquire what's necessary to apply deep learning for applications
where tabular data is available to train the deep learning. This workshop
intends to do exactly that.

Now for the quote from the training material:

"This workshop aims to provide a broad overview of deep learning
principles, rather than focusing on technical details. The goal is to give
you a sense of how deep learning can be used to make predictions on
practical problems using labeled data in spreadsheet form. By the end of
the workshop, you will have the skills to apply deep learning to address
challenges in your area of expertise.

During this workshop, we will be utilizing R or Python programming
languages as a means of configuring and making predictions with labeled
data in spreadsheet form. However, it is crucial to note that the primary
focus of the workshop is not on programming itself, but rather on the
fundamental concepts and techniques of deep learning. We will provide
template programs that can be used with minimal modifications, and the main
emphasis will be on guidance and exercises to solidify participants'
understanding of the material. For those with little to no prior
programming experience, we have included an optional section to introduce
basic concepts of R or Python, but it is important to note that this
section is only intended to provide a basic understanding and will not make
you an expert in programming."

Pieter

On Mon, 9 Jan 2023 at 20:32, Steve Smith  wrote:

> The "celebration of the hand" project (coordinated with UNM's Maxwell
> museum of anthropology) is nearly 15 years defunct now.   We made a tiny
> bit of progress on some LANL small-business-assistance time from an ML
> researcher, a small bit of seed-funding and matching time on my own part.
> The key to this was the newly available prosumer-grade laser-scanners of
> the time, as well as emerging photogrammetric techniques.
>
> The point of the project was to augment what humans were already doing...
> both pointing to similarities too subtle for a human to notice or based on
> dimensions a human expert wouldn't be able to identify directly.   I
> haven't touched bases on where that field has gone in most of that
> intervening time.   My paleontological/archaelogical partner in that
> endeavor went his own way (he was more interested in developing a lifestyle
> business for himself than actually applying advanced techniques to the
> problem at "hand" (pun acknowledged)) and then a few years later he died
> which is part of the reason for not (re)visiting it myself...
>
> The relevant issue to the linked article(s) is mostly that we were
> building modelless models (model-free learning) from the data with the hope
> (assumption?) that *some* of the features that might emerge as being good
> correlates to related/identical "hands" might be ones that humans could
> detect or make sense of themselves.   The state of the art at the time was
> definitely an "art" and was based on the expertise of contemporary flint
> knappers trying to reproduce the patterns found in non-contemporary
> artifacts.   We did not do any actual work (just speculation guided
> background research) on pottery and textiles...  the Maxwell museum
> researcher we worked with was also "overcome by events" simply needing to
> develop the exhibits and not having time/focus to attend to the more
> researchy aspects...  her interest was more on textiles than ceramics or
> lithics... which seemed to be the area we likely had the least advantage
> over human-experts.
>
> My niece works at the U of Az Archaelogy dept cataloging the accellerating
> number of artifacts coming in.   At some point I can imagine an automated
> classification system taking over much of the "mundane" aspects of this
> work...   like a self-driving car that at least

Re: [FRIAM] Deep learning training material

2023-01-09 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Thanks for the references, I've briefly looked at them and am looking
forward to perusing them more closely. The interpretation of ML is a big
thing of course. The machine gives you the results and it would sometimes
be nice if it can be accompanied by some explanation of how it achieved it.

What you describe about your work sounds very interesting indeed. My gut
feel is that, at least with the current generation of AI, human ingenuity
and judgement would be far superior to AI in recognising similarities in
the "hand" of the artisans involved. But AI could well be a powerful tool
in assisting the humans?

On Mon, 9 Jan 2023 at 18:50, Steve Smith  wrote:

> I was hoping this article would have more meat to it, but the main point
> seems highly relevant to a practical/introductory workshop such as the one
> you are developing:
>
> The Need for Interpretable Features: Taxonomy and Motivation
> <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544903.3544905>
>
>
> https://scitechdaily.com/mit-taxonomy-helps-build-explainability-into-the-components-of-machine-learning-models/
>
> My limited experience with ML is that the convo/invo-lutions that
> developers go through to make their learning models work well tend to
> obscure the interpretability of the results.   Some of this seems
> unavoidable (inevitable?), particularly the highly technical reserved
> terminology that often exists in a given domain, but this team purports to
> help provide guidelines for minimizing the consequences...
>
> My main experience with this domain involved an attempt to find distance
> measures between the flake patterns in 3D scanned archaeological artifacts,
> starting with lithics but also aspiring to work with pottery and
> textiles...  essentially trying to recognize similarities in the "hand" of
> the artisans involved.
>
>
> On 1/9/23 1:29 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
>
> @Russ,
>
> a) I appreciate the suggestion to include a simple neural network that can
> make predictions based on inputs and be trained using steepest descent to
> optimize its weights. This would be a valuable addition to my training
> material, as it provides a foundational understanding of how neural
> networks work.
>
> b) My focus is on providing practical training for professionals with deep
> domain knowledge but limited software experience, who are looking to
> utilize deep learning as a tool in their respective fields. In contrast, it
> seems that your focus is on understanding the inner workings of deep
> learning. Both approaches have their own merits, and it is important to
> cater to the needs and goals of different learners.
>
> Pieter
>
> On Sun, 8 Jan 2023 at 21:20, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
>
>> The main defects of both R and Python are a lack of a typing system and
>> high performance compilation.  I find R still follows (is used by) the
>> statistics research community more than Python.   Common Lisp was always
>> better than either.
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On Jan 8, 2023, at 11:03 AM, Russ Abbott  wrote:
>>
>> 
>> As indicated in my original reply, my interest in this project grows from
>> my relative ignorance of Deep Learning. My career has focussed exclusively
>> on symbolic computing. I've worked with and taught (a) functional
>> programming, logic programming, and related issues in advanced Python; (b)
>> complex systems, agent-based modeling, genetic algorithms, and related
>> evolutionary processes, (c) a bit of constraint programming, especially in
>> MiniZinc, and (d) reinforcement learning as Q-learning, which is
>> reinforcement learning without neural nets. I've always avoided neural
>> nets--and more generally numerical programming of any sort.
>>
>> Deep learning has produced so many impressive results that I've decided
>> to devote much of my retirement life to learning about it. I retired at the
>> end of Spring 2022 and (after a break) am now devoting much of my time to
>> learning more about Deep Neural Nets. So far, I've dipped my brain into it
>> at various points. I think I've learned a fair amount. For example,
>>
>>- I now know how to build a neural net (NN) that adds two numbers
>>using a single layer with a single neuron. It's really quite simple and 
>> is,
>>I think, a beautiful example of how NNs work. If I were to teach an intro
>>to NNs I'd start with this.
>>- I've gone through the Kaggle Deep Learning sequence mentioned
>>earlier.
>>- I found a paper that shows how you can approximate
>>any differentiable function to any degree of accuracy with a single-layer
>>NN. (This is a very nice result, although I bel

Re: [FRIAM] Deep learning training material

2023-01-09 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

uld be learning about Deep Learning, I would be
>> disappointed--at least with what's covered in the write-up.
>> >
>> > I say this because I've been looking for a good intro to Deep
>> Learning. Even though I taught Computer Science for many years, and am now
>> retired, I avoided Deep Learning because it was so non-symbolic. My focus
>> has always been on symbolic computing. But Deep Learning has produced so
>> many extraordinarily impressive results, I decided I should learn more
>> about it. I haven't found any really good material. If you are interested,
>> I'd be more than happy to work with you on developing some introductory
>> Deep Learning material.
>> >
>> > -- Russ Abbott
>> > Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
>> > California State University, Los Angeles
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Jan 5, 2023 at 11:31 AM Pieter Steenekamp <
>> piet...@randcontrols.co.za <mailto:piet...@randcontrols.co.za>> wrote:
>> >
>> > Thanks to the kind support of OpenAI's chatGPT, I am in the process
>> of gathering materials for a comprehensive and hands-on deep learning
>> workshop. Although it is still a work in progress, I welcome any interested
>> parties to take a look and provide their valuable input. Thank you!
>> >
>> > You can get it from:
>> >
>> https://www.dropbox.com/s/eyx4iumb0439wlx/deep%20learning%20training%20rev%2005012023.zip?dl=0
>> <
>> https://www.dropbox.com/s/eyx4iumb0439wlx/deep%20learning%20training%20rev%2005012023.zip?dl=0
>> >
>> >
>>
>> --
>> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>>
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Re: [FRIAM] Deep learning training material

2023-01-07 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Hi Russ,

Thank you so much for providing such valuable feedback. I appreciate your
thoughts and am taking them very seriously.

Regarding the choice of Python over R, I agree with your recommendation and
plan to focus solely on Python.

Your comments about the overall approach of the workshop have given me
pause to reconsider my initial plan. It is clear that the current material
does not meet the stated objective of providing a comprehensive
understanding of the principles of deep learning. Rather, it is intended to
empower participants to utilize deep learning in their daily work.

I am considering two options: either making it clear that the workshop is
not designed to cover the principles in-depth, or revising the material to
meet the stated objective. I am also open to finding a middle ground, such
as incorporating more theory while being transparent about the workshop's
goals.

I would be very interested in exploring the possibility of collaborating
with you to develop some introductory deep learning training material.
Perhaps we can continue this conversation off this platform? Please don't
hesitate to reach out to me at piet...@randcontrols.co.za.

Pieter

On Sun, 8 Jan 2023 at 01:19, Russ Abbott  wrote:

> Hi Pieter,
>
> A few comments.
>
>- Much of the actual deep learning material looks like it came from
>the Kaggle "Deep Learning
><https://www.kaggle.com/learn/intro-to-deep-learning>" sequence.
>- In my opinion, R is an ugly and *ad hoc* language. I'd stick to
>Python.
>- More importantly, I would put the How-to-use-Python stuff into a
>preliminary class. Assume your audience knows how to use Python and focus
>on Deep Learning. Given that, there is only a minimal amount of information
>about Deep Learning in the write-up. If I were to attend the workshop and
>thought I would be learning about Deep Learning, I would be
>disappointed--at least with what's covered in the write-up.
>
>I say this because I've been looking for a good intro to Deep
>Learning. Even though I taught Computer Science for many years, and am now
>retired, I avoided Deep Learning because it was so non-symbolic. My focus
>has always been on symbolic computing. But Deep Learning has produced so
>many extraordinarily impressive results, I decided I should learn more
>about it. I haven't found any really good material. If you are interested,
>I'd be more than happy to work with you on developing some introductory
>Deep Learning material.
>
> -- Russ Abbott
> Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
> California State University, Los Angeles
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 5, 2023 at 11:31 AM Pieter Steenekamp <
> piet...@randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
>
>> Thanks to the kind support of OpenAI's chatGPT, I am in the process of
>> gathering materials for a comprehensive and hands-on deep learning
>> workshop. Although it is still a work in progress, I welcome any interested
>> parties to take a look and provide their valuable input. Thank you!
>>
>> You can get it from:
>>
>> https://www.dropbox.com/s/eyx4iumb0439wlx/deep%20learning%20training%20rev%2005012023.zip?dl=0
>>
>>
>> Pieter
>>
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Re: [FRIAM] Sorting Algorithm? AI? Identifying "types" within data

2023-01-07 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

One way to handle categorical input data for machine learning is to convert
it using one-hot encoding - it's not difficult but a bit cumbersome.
Fortunately there are other options. H2O is a machine learning library
available in both Python and R that does this conversion "under the hood".

I asked ChatGPT about "machine learning with categorical inputs using H2O",
she answered:

H2O is a popular open-source library for training machine learning models
in Python and R. It is designed to be scalable, fast, and easy to use, and
it includes a number of algorithms for classification, regression, and
clustering.

H2O can handle categorical variables natively, so you don't need to use
one-hot encoding or any other special techniques to work with them. When
you import your data into H2O, you can specify which columns are
categorical, and H2O will take care of the rest.

Here is an example of how you might use H2O to train a machine learning
model with categorical inputs in Python:

Copy code
import h2o
# Initialize H2O
h2o.init()
# Import your data into H2O
df = h2o.import_file("path/to/your/data.csv")
# Specify which columns are categorical
df['input_variable'] = df['input_variable'].asfactor()
# Train a model using the categorical input_variable column
model = h2o.H2ORandomForestEstimator(categorical_encoding =
"one_hot_explicit")
model.train(["input_variable"], "output_variable", df)
Here is an example of how you might use H2O to train a machine learning
model with categorical inputs in R:
Copy code
library(h2o)
# Initialize H2O
h2o.init()
# Import your data into H2O
df <- h2o.importFile("path/to/your/data.csv")
# Specify which columns are categorical
df[, "input_variable"] <- as.factor(df[, "input_variable"])
# Train a model using the categorical input_variable column
model <- h2o.randomForest(x = "input_variable", y = "output_variable",
training_frame = df)

On Sat, 7 Jan 2023 at 17:37, Eric Charles 
wrote:

> That's somewhat helpful. Having looked up several of these algorithms (I'm
> still checking a few), it seems like they all input some sort of distance
> measure between the items (analogous to the distance between
> their coordinates on a cartesian graph), and then do some sort of
> distance-minimization function. The challenge here is that I don't have
> anything equivalent to that: The data is primarily categorical.
>
> Does anyone on here actually have experience doing that kind of work?
>
> It's not that it would be impossible for me to change the categorical data
> into something more quantitative, but doing so would bake in my assumptions
> about how the categories should be determined.
> 
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 7, 2023 at 1:32 AM Pieter Steenekamp <
> piet...@randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
>
>> I asked https://chat.openai.com/chat and here is the conversation:
>>
>> *Pieter Steenekamp*
>> can you suggest a solution for the following problem "I'm hoping someone
>> here could help out. Let's imagine I had some data where each row was a
>> person's career. We could list major events every year.For example: 2004
>> they were highered, 2007 they get a promotion, 2010 they leave for a
>> different company, 2012 they come back at a higher level, 2015 get a
>> promotion, then no change until 2022.  Let's say I had data like this for
>> roughly 2 million people, and that there are around 10 different types of
>> changes that could happen during any time period (could be yearly,
>> quarterly, monthly, I can make it how I want).  I was hoping we could ask a
>> computer to tell us if there were "types of careers" that people had. We
>> could say "put all these careers into 4 buckets" or "7 buckets" based on
>> similarity. Then we could look at the piles the computer made and try to
>> make sense of them. One type might be "company man" for people who tend to
>> stay in place for 20 or more years, another type could be a "rotator", who
>> leaves and returns every 3 years or so. Etc. The point is, I want a
>> computer to make the piles for me, rather than trying to come up with
>> potential piles a priori. Are there methods for doing this? I know it's a
>> problem we've *talked* about a lot, but I don't know if there are
>> solutions. "
>> *https://chat.openai.com/chat <https://chat.openai.com/chat>*
>> There are several approaches that you could use to group the careers of
>> these 2 million people into clusters based on similarity. One approach is
>> to use unsupervised machine learning techniques, specifically clustering
>> algorithms, to automatically group the data into clusters. Some popular
>> cluster

Re: [FRIAM] new thermal tech

2023-01-06 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

I am somewhat puzzled by the discussion surrounding the efficiency of heat
pumps in relation to the laws of thermodynamics. If my understanding is
correct, the salient question being raised is whether it is possible for a
heat pump to transfer 3 to 4 kW of heat using only 1 kW of electricity,
which seems to contradict the laws of thermodynamics.

Allow me to clarify: a heat pump is not creating 3 to 4 kW of energy, but
rather transferring 3 to 4 kW of heat from a lower temperature to a higher
temperature using 1 kW of electrical energy. This is entirely within the
realm of thermodynamic principles, as I learned them in engineering school.
Heat pumps have been in use for some time, and it is not uncommon to find
off-the-shelf heat pumps capable of this task.

Pieter

On Fri, 6 Jan 2023 at 19:34, David Eric Smith  wrote:

> I assume “delivers” would have been a better word choice than “produces”.
>
> After we create better schools to teach our kids government and
> citizenship, we should move on and teach them to understand thermodynamics.
>
>
> > On Jan 6, 2023, at 12:27 PM, Gary Schiltz 
> wrote:
> >
> > Amusing indeed (the PV magazine article). The pump “reportedly
> > produces 3 kW to 4 kW of heat for every kilowatt of power it
> > consumes”. Say what?
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 6, 2023 at 8:28 AM Roger Critchlow  wrote:
> >>
> >> I was amused to see an announcement of a thermoacoustic heat pump  the
> other day:
> >>
> >>
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.pv-magazine.com%2f2023%2f01%2f02%2fresidential-thermo-acoustic-heat-pump-produces-water-up-to-80-c%2f=E,1,SIXaeD9pWPwQ9_a2yQcA2Mb6Oa19--caDioiCnI9tb9wHtj9F3T-fS0FbAdlNeoJjozEjvgRHvMxxDB874D65rIXmYYzllXMzQ-xbTUOen3OXZ0wb7n6ON_lX3U,=1
> >>
> >> then an ionocaloric refrigerator announcement turns up this morning
> >>
> >>
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fnewscenter.lbl.gov%2f2023%2f01%2f03%2fcool-new-method-of-refrigeration%2f=E,1,WtFGOsq-ZfdSeNDj-coqZXFEeJnYAea0pwlFL95XWPuzaTHMiuaDIsqM19iVS7Oaw1ElarAioZmixa4jBVRrZyrnp7sdhboRXZmwL4HYzjyNmyPqbA,,=1
> >>
> >> It seems that you won't recognize your air conditioner in a few years.
> >>
> >> -- rec --
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-.

Re: [FRIAM] more bullsh¡t

2023-01-06 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

In my current perspective, the integration of automation and artificial
intelligence *in the coming decade* will significantly impact employment
opportunities. However, I also believe that in this future, there will be
an abundance of material resources, allowing individuals to access the
products and services they desire within the limitations of physical laws.
It is impossible to predict the future with certainty, but these are my
current speculations based on my observations.

In terms of education, I advocate for a system that allows for self-guided
learning rather than mandatory teaching. By creating an environment that
supports learning and inviting guest instructors for specialized knowledge,
students can pursue their interests and passions. Even if some students
attempt to abuse the system, the benefits of fostering a love for learning
outweigh any potential harm.

Full disclosure: I haven't kissed the Blarney Stone and wrote a paragraph,
but it did not sound good. So I asked ChatGPT to rephrase and upon reading
I went yes this is exactly my point and it almost sounds as if I have
kissed the bloody stone. So the above is my exact message but rephrased
eloquently by ChatGPT.

On Fri, 6 Jan 2023 at 12:19, David Eric Smith  wrote:

> Your use of chatGTP, Pieter, is to my mind a very interesting thread.
>
> There was a columnist for the New York Times many years ago, named William
> Safire.  I don’t even remember now what he wrote about, but he was known,
> and was significant to me, for being an example of “a good writer”.
>
> Safire wrote something (column?  book?  article?) with the theme that, if
> one would write creatively, one should first do several years galley-rowing
> as an editor somewhere.  People who have an impulse to write “creatively”
> imagine all kinds of innovation in language that will be just dramatic and
> wonderful.  Editors, who have had to deal with those imaginations in the
> writings of others, know that most such ideas are awful and need to be
> beaten out of the writer if he or she is ever to become good.  So Safire’s
> thesis was that you really need to do this, for a number of years and a
> large number of other people’s pieces, to squeeze the nonsense out of you
> and develop a solid understanding of your language.  Kind of like, in books
> on French cooking, the author says “why did we have to spend the first year
> cooking mixed vegetables in mayonnaise over and over again; I don’t even
> like mixed vegetables in mayonnaise.  To which the answer, of course, is
> that one develops what the French term “method”: experience with uniform
> sizing of each ingredient, correct relative sizing across ingredients, time
> of introduction to heat, and on and on, so that one gets control and has
> everything cooked to the intended degree reliably.  Only then has one
> gained the tools to create.
>
> I have run Safire’s thesis by some writers I know to see what happened; my
> notable memories are the ones who hate it and think it is completely wrong.
>
> But to Glen’s point that we should think of literary AI the way we think
> of pocket calculators (another thing I was not allowed to have in school;
> my parents thought it would make me stupid).  ChatGTP can be sort of the
> William Safire level of basic method in language, not intending or intended
> to create anything, but somehow, as you say, to find a kind of solid and
> central expression for things.  One might even think of the appropriate
> training schedule for a tool meant to do just that, which could be a bit
> different from the ad hoc training that is probably first-gen of these
> tools.
>
> Eric
>
> On Jan 6, 2023, at 12:59 AM, Pieter Steenekamp 
> wrote:
>
> As a native of South Africa, I have personally witnessed the shortcomings
> of both our public primary and secondary education systems and the
> financial barriers that prevent many from accessing private schools. In
> response, I have dedicated the past year to establishing a private
> institution that is not only affordable, but also committed to providing a
> high-quality education. In reflecting on what constitutes a truly valuable
> education, I have come to the conclusion that the most essential outcome is
> not the acquisition of academic skills, but rather the development of
> strong relationships - both with oneself and with the outside world. While
> it is not possible to directly teach children how to cultivate such
> relationships, it is possible to create an environment in which they can
> learn and grow through unsupervised interactions with their peers.
>
> Full disclosure: I have not kissed  Blarney Stone and my ability to write
> (or speak for that matter) eloquently is just awful. I've written a
> paragraph and then I asked chatGPT, who have kissed the Blamey Stone

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

2023-01-06 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

I asked https://chat.openai.com/chat and here is the conversation:

*Pieter Steenekamp*
can you suggest a solution for the following problem "I'm hoping someone
here could help out. Let's imagine I had some data where each row was a
person's career. We could list major events every year.For example: 2004
they were highered, 2007 they get a promotion, 2010 they leave for a
different company, 2012 they come back at a higher level, 2015 get a
promotion, then no change until 2022.  Let's say I had data like this for
roughly 2 million people, and that there are around 10 different types of
changes that could happen during any time period (could be yearly,
quarterly, monthly, I can make it how I want).  I was hoping we could ask a
computer to tell us if there were "types of careers" that people had. We
could say "put all these careers into 4 buckets" or "7 buckets" based on
similarity. Then we could look at the piles the computer made and try to
make sense of them. One type might be "company man" for people who tend to
stay in place for 20 or more years, another type could be a "rotator", who
leaves and returns every 3 years or so. Etc. The point is, I want a
computer to make the piles for me, rather than trying to come up with
potential piles a priori. Are there methods for doing this? I know it's a
problem we've *talked* about a lot, but I don't know if there are
solutions. "
*https://chat.openai.com/chat <https://chat.openai.com/chat>*
There are several approaches that you could use to group the careers of
these 2 million people into clusters based on similarity. One approach is
to use unsupervised machine learning techniques, specifically clustering
algorithms, to automatically group the data into clusters. Some popular
clustering algorithms that you could use for this problem include k-means,
hierarchical clustering, and DBSCAN (Density-Based Spatial Clustering of
Applications with Noise). You could also use dimensionality reduction
techniques, such as PCA (Principal Component Analysis) or t-SNE
(t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding), to reduce the dimensionality
of the data and then use a clustering algorithm to group the data into
clusters. Another approach is to use supervised machine learning
techniques, where you would need to manually label a subset of the data
with the cluster labels, and then use this labeled data to train a
classifier to predict the cluster labels for the remaining data. It's worth
noting that these approaches will require some feature engineering, where
you will need to extract relevant features from the data that can be used
to represent the careers of the people in the dataset. Once you have
identified and extracted these features, you can then use them as input to
the machine learning algorithms to group the data into clusters.
*Pieter Steenekamp*
would it then be possible to get  for example if there were "types of
careers" that people had?
*https://chat.openai.com/chat <https://chat.openai.com/chat>*
Yes, once you have grouped the careers of the 2 million people into
clusters using one of the approaches I mentioned above, you can then
analyze the characteristics of each cluster to identify common patterns and
trends within each cluster. This will allow you to identify "types of
careers" that people have, based on the similarity of their career events.
For example, if one of the clusters is characterized by people who have had
long tenures at a single company, you could label this cluster as "company
man" careers. Similarly, if another cluster is characterized by people who
frequently switch between companies, you could label this cluster as
"rotator" careers. You can then use this information to gain insights into
the types of careers that are represented in the dataset, and potentially
draw conclusions about the factors that may influence career paths and
success.
*Pieter Steenekamp*
can you propose python code to do sometingh like this please
*https://chat.openai.com/chat <https://chat.openai.com/chat>*
Sure, here is an example of how you could use the scikit-learn library in
Python to group the careers of the 2 million people into clusters using the
k-means algorithm:
Copy code
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans
# Load the data into a NumPy array
data = np.loadtxt('career_data.txt')
# Create the k-means model
model = KMeans(n_clusters=4)
# Fit the model to the data
model.fit(data)
# Predict the cluster labels for each data point
labels = model.predict(data)
# Print the cluster labels
print(labels)
This code will group the data into 4 clusters, as specified by the
n_clusters parameter. You can adjust this parameter to change the number of
clusters that the data is grouped into.
To extract features from the data that can be used as input to the k-means
model, you will need to preprocess the data and select relevant features.
This will likely involve

Re: [FRIAM] more bullsh¡t

2023-01-05 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

As a native of South Africa, I have personally witnessed the shortcomings
of both our public primary and secondary education systems and the
financial barriers that prevent many from accessing private schools. In
response, I have dedicated the past year to establishing a private
institution that is not only affordable, but also committed to providing a
high-quality education. In reflecting on what constitutes a truly valuable
education, I have come to the conclusion that the most essential outcome is
not the acquisition of academic skills, but rather the development of
strong relationships - both with oneself and with the outside world. While
it is not possible to directly teach children how to cultivate such
relationships, it is possible to create an environment in which they can
learn and grow through unsupervised interactions with their peers.

Full disclosure: I have not kissed  Blarney Stone and my ability to write
(or speak for that matter) eloquently is just awful. I've written a
paragraph and then I asked chatGPT, who have kissed the Blamey Stone, to
rephrase it more eloquently. The above paragraph reflects exactly what I
wish to say, but is just expressed so much better.

On Fri, 6 Jan 2023 at 00:39, glen  wrote:

> AI, Teaching, and "Our Willingness to Give Bullshit a Pass"
>
> https://dailynous.com/2023/01/05/ai-teaching-and-our-willingness-to-give-bullshit-a-pass/
>
> The first time I heard this argument was from these guys:
>
>
> https://www.audible.com/pd/Pill-Pod-104-AI-the-New-Crisis-of-Humanities-Education-Podcast/B0BPQ77Z8P
>
> My phrasing of the idea being that tools like ChatGPT are analogous to
> calculators, allowing the computer to do what it's good at and freeing
> humans up to do what we're good at. Why require students to learn bullshit
> rhetorical styling when we can teach them to think about the *substance*
> ... a lesson many of us learned from Knuth's TeX a long time ago. The trick
> is that tools like ChatGPT are built around the bullshit-generation use
> case. What we need are tools built around the bullshit-detection use case.
>
> With branch prediction, we could implant a little device just under the
> eardrum that listened to someone's speech acts for a tiny fraction, predict
> where it was going, and call bullshit or "pay attention" for some interval.
> The bullshitters' rhetoric would never even reach your audio perception
> devices. ... like trigger warnings for all of us sensitive snowflakes who
> can't bear to look on images of Mohammed <
> https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/01/05/hamline-university-assailed-for-firing-professor-who-showed-images-of-muhammads-face/
> >.
>
> Those of us who've kissed the Blarney Stone, unfortunately, would spend
> our lives talking to brick walls.
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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[FRIAM] Deep learning training material

2023-01-05 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Thanks to the kind support of OpenAI's chatGPT, I am in the process of
gathering materials for a comprehensive and hands-on deep learning
workshop. Although it is still a work in progress, I welcome any interested
parties to take a look and provide their valuable input. Thank you!

You can get it from:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/eyx4iumb0439wlx/deep%20learning%20training%20rev%2005012023.zip?dl=0


Pieter
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Re: [FRIAM] My plan to disrupt education

2021-10-29 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

 into traditional
> semester credit courses it would have been the equivalent of two
> undergraduate and three graduate degrees. Subjects far transcended
> programming and other computer science topics to include business (of
> course since business constituted the vast majority of our projects), hard
> and soft sciences, writing, presentation, inter-personal and "soft" skills,
> philosophy and history (Computer Scientists and Software Engineers are
> abysmally ignorant of their own history and the thought foundations of
> their discipline), art (including computer graphics of course, but much
> more), and math (but probability and statistics and geometry instead of
> calculus).
>
>
>
> Students learned 'on-demand'. The project to which they were assigned
> would require some specific knowledge and they would "demand" that
> learning. Actually, every six weeks, students would complete a learning
> plan and the faculty had to combine them into a set of modules for lecture
> and presentation in the ensuing 6-week interval. All teaching took place in
> the same open lab/classroom, so everyone either directly or by "osmosis"
> picked up on what was being taught.
>
>
>
> The program was immensely successful. Our student body came from the
> poorest county in the poorest state (sometimes Louisiana would take first
> place) and were woefully unprepared for college. But they succeeded: one
> exemplar student entered the program lacking even rudimentary user skills
> like "cut and paste," but was a team leader and J2EE mentor at the start of
> his second semester. (He was also the only one who figured out why the Hero
> — movie of same name — did not kill the warlord unifying China in a
> wonderfully written essay.)
>
>
>
> Our student body was 70% minority (mostly because of where we were and the
> mission of the University) and 51-54 percent female.
>
>
>
> Half of the students in the first year of the program had papers (not
> student presentations but full papers) accepted to OOPSLA and Agile  both
> conferences had a 90+ percent rejection rate). Every student was place in
> jobs, often before graduation and often with the companies who gave us
> apprenticeship projects.
>
>
>
> The preceding is just bragging, but I am very proud of what we did.
>
>
>
> We had two faculty, myself and Pam Rostal and both of us worked 70-90 hour
> weeks which would not be sustainable long term. We did attract a lot of
> attention and industry "superstars" would drop by to mentor in their
> particular area for 2-3 weeks at a time.
>
>
>
> If you have interest in any details, please ask off-list and I will be
> happy to respond.
>
>
>
> davew
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 27, 2021, at 12:25 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
>
> The public education system in South Africa is largely broken. For those
> who can afford it, we have very good schools, but the majority cannot and
> the education options for them are bleak.
>
>
>
> I plan to do something about it.
>
>
>
> This is my second attempt. About three years ago I started a school as a
> proof of concept with a radical model to have very high quality yet very
> low cost education and it failed miserably. (I managed to make plans for
> the kids and I don't believe any suffered from the experience - I pulled
> the plug before too much harm was done). I've thought, and discussed it a
> lot, and I'm ready to roll out my second, very different attempt.
>
>
>
> The basis of this is that there are plenty of resources available for
> free, and provided you manage the environment properly, kids can and will
> teach themselves.
>
>
>
> My plan is a model with two legs, both legs offering very high quality
> education, but the first leg is relatively expensive and has "bells and
> whistles" to attract the wealthy and the second is bare bones to make it
> affordable for those kids whose parents can't pay.
>
>
>
> The profit from first leg schools then cross-subsidise the costs of the
> second leg schools.
>
>
>
> The concept for both legs are copied from https://www.khanlabschool.org/
> , adapted for local conditions of course. The second leg schools will just
> be a low cost version, but the education offered will still be world class.
>
>
>
> Our academic year starts in January. I'm working flat out to have my first
> school of the first leg open in January 2022. Then to have the first school
> of the second leg open in January 2023. Then to learn from the experience,
> adapt and roll it out so that every child in South Africa has access to
> world class education in five years time.
>
>
&

Re: [FRIAM] My plan to disrupt education

2021-10-29 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Thank you very much uǝlƃ , I really appreciate your question " how do you
plan to balance the push and pull? "

The long and short of it is that the plan is to be flexible about it.
Encourage the students to pull. Apart from further encouragement, leave
those that pull to continue. But then intervene and push those students
that do not want to pull.

There will be no regular formal classes with a teacher presenting and the
students listening. Each student works according to her own schedule at her
own pace, we do the monitoring and if required the intervention.

Let me explain.
First of all, there are really a lot and very high quality learning
resources online available for free. A very strong emphasis of what I plan
to do is to teach the students how to learn by themselves.
At the start we discuss and agree with each student their individual
education outcome. We monitor this at regular intervals and intervene and
update and modify it if required.
Our model requires from each student to partake in all three of the
following areas, but with different emphasis on different areas for
different students:
a) Formal curriculum to pass end of school exit exams to get a school
leaving certificate. These exams and certification are according to
www.cambridgeinternational.org.
b) Practise communication skills. They must on a regular basis read or
research some topic and then make written and oral presentations about it.
It starts with pushing, for example giving a student a book about wild
animals in Africa and then asking her to do the presentations about a
giraffe. Per student over time this builds up to more complex assignments
where she has to do extensive research and comprehensive presentations.
c) The last one is then both individual and group project work.

Within the framework each student has the freedom to choose what to do and
when to do it. But every student must work hard - if they don't we will
intervene and push them.

For example, if a student has a project to grow medicinal mushrooms and she
becomes very passionate about it and works hard on this project, we will
tolerate it if she does the minimum academic work, as long as she stays on
track to pass her exams. We will also allow her to skimp a bit on the
communication activities, but not skip it altogether.

Pieter

On Fri, 29 Oct 2021 at 17:47, uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:

> I'm a bit surprised nobody has replied to this. I can't contribute much,
> being ill-suited to formal education. But that raises a point. If we divide
> causation into 2 types, which I'll call "push" and "pull", structuring a
> school like what you seem to be doing will require canalization. Your
> purpose is to put in place a (complex) estuary, as it were, that balances
> the student's natural pull (desire, curiosity, etc.) against some set of
> heuristics you want to push, to instill ... the topology of the estuary.
>
> There are similar schools in various places, I suppose mostly liberal arts
> schools. And, in my travels, I've run across people who have *still* not
> found a path through the tangled canals that were "pushed", no matter how
> accommodating. Similarly, I've found people (like a couple of old roommates
> at aTm) who simply want someone to tell them what to learn so they can move
> on, get a job, have kids, and retire.
>
> So ... admittedly having only barely guessed at your plans ... how do you
> plan to balance the push and pull? Must all your students be super
> go-getters? Or will you plan to knead the lazy and shiftless ones, too?
> Will you use classifiers like Myers-Briggs to route some into the arts and
> some into STEM canals? Or rely exclusively on implicit self-classification?
> And since you plan to facilitate both poor and wealthy students, how do you
> plan to handle some in-group/tribal influences like the draw some of our
> poor get towards gang membership or even working the family farm?
>
>
> On 10/27/21 11:25 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> > The public education system in South Africa is largely broken. For those
> who can afford it, we have very good schools, but the majority cannot and
> the education options for them are bleak.
> >
> > I plan to do something about it.
> >
> > This is my second attempt. About three years ago I started a school as a
> proof of concept with a radical model to have very high quality yet very
> low cost education and it failed miserably. (I managed to make plans for
> the kids and I don't believe any suffered from the experience - I pulled
> the plug before too much harm was done). I've thought, and discussed it a
> lot, and I'm ready to roll out my second, very different attempt.
> >
> > The basis of this is that there are plenty of resources available for
> free, and provided you manage the environment properly, kids can and w

[FRIAM] My plan to disrupt education

2021-10-27 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

The public education system in South Africa is largely broken. For those
who can afford it, we have very good schools, but the majority cannot and
the education options for them are bleak.

I plan to do something about it.

This is my second attempt. About three years ago I started a school as a
proof of concept with a radical model to have very high quality yet very
low cost education and it failed miserably. (I managed to make plans for
the kids and I don't believe any suffered from the experience - I pulled
the plug before too much harm was done). I've thought, and discussed it a
lot, and I'm ready to roll out my second, very different attempt.

The basis of this is that there are plenty of resources available for free,
and provided you manage the environment properly, kids can and will teach
themselves.

My plan is a model with two legs, both legs offering very high quality
education, but the first leg is relatively expensive and has "bells and
whistles" to attract the wealthy and the second is bare bones to make it
affordable for those kids whose parents can't pay.

The profit from first leg schools then cross-subsidise the costs of the
second leg schools.

The concept for both legs are copied from https://www.khanlabschool.org/ ,
adapted for local conditions of course. The second leg schools will just be
a low cost version, but the education offered will still be world class.

Our academic year starts in January. I'm working flat out to have my first
school of the first leg open in January 2022. Then to have the first school
of the second leg open in January 2023. Then to learn from the experience,
adapt and roll it out so that every child in South Africa has access to
world class education in five years time.

Pieter

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Re: [FRIAM] ivermectin

2021-09-25 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

 distastefully close, in my
> perception, to those who will say “you really are a spiritual person, and
> you just won’t admit it.  When you stop resisting and admit it, you will
> come around to where I am, and you will see.”  That doesn’t seem to me like
> any way to make decisions that differs from what leaves us in our current
> mess, since people have been doing it forever.  Yet those who are into it
> now are convinced that this time they hold the true innovation.
>
> Very hard for me to understand.
>
> Eric
>
>
> On Sep 24, 2021, at 1:57 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:
>
>
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.theguardian.com%2fcommentisfree%2f2021%2fsep%2f22%2fleftwingers-far-right-conspiracy-theories-anti-vaxxers-power=E,1,YQWY-Qx-D6GAp4uFSbw9DpsNm0UPherqjbJBTzVjSG_of5c03uW3M1Peo6dUo_IiTgPC8e0gxQA9PhkeNnQbLgsUGzPtJnH2zqUVd0qr3S7PDBI,=1
>
> "The notion of the 'sovereign body', untainted by chemical contamination,
> has begun to fuse with the fear that a shadowy cabal is trying to deprive
> us of autonomy."
>
> On 9/23/21 5:24 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
>
> Well, I for one am always very suspicious of what my doctor tells me.
>
> It's not that I'm against modern medicine, IMO they do wonders, but are
> their interests always aligned 100% with mine as a patient? Me thinketh
> not, modern medicine is money-driven.I go to the doctor for advice, but
> ultimately I claim responsibility for my own body; I don't abdicate my
> health to somebody else.
>
> For example, I just listened to a documentary "Big Pharma - How much power
> do drug companies have? "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z_W3yRA9I8 <
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z_W3yRA9I8> on Youtube, going into
> details of the greed of the pharmaceutical companies.
>
>
> --
> "Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] ivermectin

2021-09-23 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

I specifically like the concluding paragraph in your Guardian's reference:
"Enlightenment of any kind is possible only through long and determined
engagement with other people’s findings and other people’s ideas.
Self-realisation requires constant self-questioning. True freedom emerges
from respect for other people."

It reminds me of Donald Hoffman's case against reality. One person's
science is another person's delusion.

Pieter

On Thu, 23 Sept 2021 at 19:00, uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:

>
> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/22/leftwingers-far-right-conspiracy-theories-anti-vaxxers-power
>
> "The notion of the 'sovereign body', untainted by chemical contamination,
> has begun to fuse with the fear that a shadowy cabal is trying to deprive
> us of autonomy."
>
> On 9/23/21 5:24 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> > Well, I for one am always very suspicious of what my doctor tells me.
> >
> > It's not that I'm against modern medicine, IMO they do wonders, but are
> their interests always aligned 100% with mine as a patient? Me thinketh
> not, modern medicine is money-driven.I go to the doctor for advice, but
> ultimately I claim responsibility for my own body; I don't abdicate my
> health to somebody else.
> >
> > For example, I just listened to a documentary "Big Pharma - How much
> power do drug companies have? "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z_W3yRA9I8
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z_W3yRA9I8> on Youtube, going into
> details of the greed of the pharmaceutical companies.
> >
>
> --
> "Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
>
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>

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Re: [FRIAM] ivermectin

2021-09-23 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Well, I for one am always very suspicious of what my doctor tells me.

It's not that I'm against modern medicine, IMO they do wonders, but are
their interests always aligned 100% with mine as a patient? Me thinketh
not, modern medicine is money-driven.I go to the doctor for advice, but
ultimately I claim responsibility for my own body; I don't abdicate my
health to somebody else.

For example, I just listened to a documentary "Big Pharma - How much power
do drug companies have? "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z_W3yRA9I8 on
Youtube, going into details of the greed of the pharmaceutical companies.

Pieter

On Thu, 23 Sept 2021 at 00:13,  wrote:

> I once polled the folks around the table about non-medical approved cures
> we were taking.   Everybody was doing at least one thing that their doctor
> wasn’t particularly keen on.
>
>
>
> We are all fools in SOME context.  Some in more contexts than others.
>
>
>
> n
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Roger Critchlow
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 22, 2021 5:49 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> Friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] ivermectin
>
>
>
> via hackernews
>
>
>
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01535-y
>
>
>
> Two studies showing positive results treating Covid-19 with Ivermectin are
> both junk, the numbers reported not being consistent with the experiments
> claimed, one has been withdrawn, the authors of the other are not
> responding to requests for clarification.
>
>
>
> -- rec --
>
>
>
>
>
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>

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Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

Marcus,

The data are fresh from the horse's mouth, Phizer themselves.
Their main report
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v1.full.pdf and
their supplementary data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2021/07/28/2021.07.28.21261159/DC1/embed/media-1.pdf

Maybe you want to read the very first email in this thread again?

Pieter

On Thu, 16 Sept 2021 at 18:37,  wrote:

> Just so’s you know,
>
>
>
> I took it from this email thread, where it pretty much stood alone.
>
>
>
> And remember.  Y ou (we) aren’t just writing to one another.  You (we) are
> writing to 300 other people.
>
>
>
> n
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Marcus Daniels
> *Sent:* Thursday, September 16, 2021 12:32 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?
>
>
>
> Trials are done in phases.  First they have to establish that the
> treatment does no harm.  That’s what this was about.   Some anti-vax jerk
> probably dug up this reference and started quoting it out of context, like
> you are.
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> *Sent:* Thursday, September 16, 2021 9:28 AM
> *To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?
>
>
>
> You guys keep proving my point about the 100th Meridian and irony.
>
>
>
> Would any of you buy a seat belt that was marketed to not cause deaths?
> You are so lost in your point about small numbers that you’ve lost your
> sense of the plain meaning of words.  Sheesh!
>
>
>
> n
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Roger Critchlow
> *Sent:* Thursday, September 16, 2021 12:16 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?
>
>
>
> sum(reasons_for_death) != number_of_deaths, and Death itself is listed as
> a reported cause of death.
>
>
>
> -- rec --
>
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 16, 2021 at 12:01 PM Pieter Steenekamp <
> piet...@randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
>
> For what it's worth, from table S4 in the supplementary data
> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2021/07/28/2021.07.28.21261159/DC1/embed/media-1.pdf
>
> Reported Cause of Death   BNT162b2 (N=21,926) Placebo
> (N=21,921)
> Deaths15
>14
> Acute respiratory failure  0
>  1
> Aortic rupture  0
>   1
> Arteriosclerosis   2
>   0
> Biliary cancer metastatic0
> 1
> COVID-19  0
> 2
> COVID-19 pneumonia   1
> 0
> Cardiac arrest4
> 1
> Cardiac failure congestive 1
>   0
> Cardiorespiratory arrest 1
> 1
> Chronic obstructive pulmonary
> disease  1
> 0
> Death 0
> 1
> Dementia   0
>   1
> Emphysematous cholecystitis   1
>  0
> Hemorrhagic stroke   0
>  1
> Hypertensive heart disease  1
> 0
> Lung cancer metastatic1
>0
> Metastases to liver   0
>1
> Missing 0
>  1
> Multiple organ dysfunction
> syndrome 0
> 2
> Myocardial infarction0
> 2
> Overdose 0
> 1
> Pneumonia   0
>   2
> Sepsis  1
>   0
> Septic shock

Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

For what it's worth, from table S4 in the supplementary data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2021/07/28/2021.07.28.21261159/DC1/embed/media-1.pdf

Reported Cause of Death   BNT162b2 (N=21,926) Placebo
(N=21,921)
Deaths15
 14
Acute respiratory failure  0
   1
Aortic rupture  0
  1
Arteriosclerosis   2
0
Biliary cancer metastatic0
  1
COVID-19  0
2
COVID-19 pneumonia   1
  0
Cardiac arrest4
1
Cardiac failure congestive 1
0
Cardiorespiratory arrest 1
  1
Chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease  1
  0
Death 0
1
Dementia   0
1
Emphysematous cholecystitis   1
 0
Hemorrhagic stroke   0
   1
Hypertensive heart disease  1
0
Lung cancer metastatic1
   0
Metastases to liver   0
   1
Missing 0
 1
Multiple organ dysfunction
syndrome 0
  2
Myocardial infarction0
  2
Overdose 0
  1
Pneumonia   0
  2
Sepsis  1
  0
Septic shock 1
 0
Shigella sepsis 1
 0
Unevaluable event   1
 0

On Thu, 16 Sept 2021 at 17:37, Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> Pittsburgh irony:  Ooh.  Yinz are rill tough.  I'm skeered.  Cf. Kasich,
> who is from McKees Rocks which is across the river from "dahntahn"
> Pittsburgh.
>
> Yinz = "you ones" similar to "y'all" in the South.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 8:41 AM  wrote:
>
>> Then we can say with a 99% probability that the vaccination does not
>> increase the total  (again all causes) death rate with more than a factor
>> of 1.6.
>>
>> Oh I am so glad.  So reassuring*.
>>
>>
>>
>> You guys are scaring the total crap out of us citizens.
>>
>>
>>
>> N
>>
>>
>>
>> PS to Frank.  There’s lot’s of irony in Pittsburgh.  I count on you to
>> recognize it.
>>
>> Nick Thompson
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter
>> Steenekamp
>> *Sent:* Thursday, September 16, 2021 7:34 AM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?
>>
>>
>>
>> Thank you Roger,
>>
>> Using the numbers from Phizer's report, I did a sort of quick and dirty
>> manual iteration process to get to the following Monte Carlo testing
>> conclusion
>>
>> If:
>> a) the total death rate of the unvaccinated is 14/22000 (all causes) and
>> b) a total of 15 out of 22000  (again all causes)  of the vaccinated
>> group died
>> Then we can say with a 99% probability that the vaccination does not
>> increase the total  (again all causes) death rate with more than a factor
>> of 1.6.
>>
>> My Python program to do this is as follows:
>>
>> import random
>> total_of_tentousand_samples_less_than_16=0
>> r=1.6 # manually iterate this number until the answer is less than 100,
>> with 1000 test runs for a probability of 99%
>> numberList = [0, 1] # 0 = live, 1=dead
>> for i in range(1000):
>>   x=(random.choices(numberList, weights=((1-r*14/22000), r*14/22000),
>> k=22000))
>>   if( sum(x)<16):
>>
>> total_of_tentousand_samples_less_than_16=total_of_tentousand_samples_less_than_16+1
>>
>> print(total_of_tentousand_samples_less_than_16

Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

53030303028
>
> # check the model:
> julia> mean_and_std(accumulate(est_death_rate, 22000, 180, 50))
> (14.96, 3.6419326558007294)
>
> # in the ball park again.
>
> # So the point of this simulation isn't the exact result, it's the pairs
> of results that this process can generate
> # let's stack up two sets of simulations, call the top one 'treatment' and
> the bottom one 'control'
> # treatment and control are being generated by the exact same model,
> # but their mutual relation is bouncing all over the place.
> # That treatment>control or vice versa is just luck of the draw
>
> julia> [accumulate(est_death_rate, 22000, 180, 20),
> accumulate(est_death_rate, 22000, 180, 20) ]
> 2-element Vector{Vector{Int64}}:
>  [12, 12, 13, 11, 22, 13, 14, 16, 13, 14, 21, 17, 13, 14, 19, 11, 20, 11,
> 9, 19]
>  [11, 14, 15, 17, 11, 19, 17, 12, 16, 14, 18, 16, 11, 16, 12, 16, 10, 14,
> 17, 13]
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 2:25 AM Pieter Steenekamp <
> piet...@randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
>
>> In the Phizer report "Six Month Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA
>> COVID-19 Vaccine" (
>> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v1.full.pdf)
>> , I picked up the following:
>>
>> "During the blinded, controlled period, 15 BNT162b2 and 14 placebo
>> recipients died"
>>
>> Does this mean the Phizer vaccine did not result in fewer total deaths in
>> the vaccinated group compared to the placebo unvaccinated group?
>>
>> I sort of can't believe this, I obviously miss something.
>>
>> But of course, there are clear benefits in that the reported vaccine
>> efficacy was 91.3%
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Re: [FRIAM] "Layers of the atmosphere do not mix.""

Related:
Why the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans Don't Mix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U93QRMcQU5Y

On Wed, 15 Sept 2021 at 17:08,  wrote:

>
> https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/conus_band.php?sat=G16=GEOCOLOR=24
>
> Notice how the layers slide over one another in TX this morning, slick as
> grease.
>
>
>
> n
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Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

2021-09-15 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Thank you Eric.

On Wed, 15 Sep 2021, 9:00 am David Eric Smith,  wrote:

> Pieter,
>
> On its own, I don’t think the statement means anything.  You have to know
> what the cohort was and what the null model was.  I think that in all these
> trials, to be seeking approval for multiple age groups, they must have
> tested in multiple age groups as well.  Sometimes old people die, no matter
> what you are doing.  (Sometimes people who are not old die too, but to have
> significant numbers of people who just happen to die in a trial is not in
> itself surprising if the trial has an old or fragile cohort.)  Numbers like
> 14 and 15 are very small in any clinical trial, which should have been run
> with some thousands to tens of thousands of participants.  Even if the
> numbers of vaccine and placebo in the whole sample were quite different,
> those numbers are so small that they might be in the sampling noise for any
> conclusion.
>
> Apologies that I don’t have time to read the report, and thank you for
> circulating.  This is the sort of question for which it would be good to
> have one of these public-health professors who write community-information
> articles, to go back and round up all the other data that are needed to
> determine what the null model is, whether there is any excess in either
> number you post, and then what the sample noise is for this statistic.  In
> principle, any of us could do it.  But people who do this for a living know
> rapidly where to find the relevant statistics, what data sources are
> properly curated, how to weight background statistics to match the tested
> cohort, what other systematic sample biases to look for, etc., which is
> important in interpreting any of these statistics as evidence for a
> causation question.
>
> I will hope that nothing I have said above is wildly wrong, but of course
> we should look for a better source than me,
>
> Eric
>
>
> On Sep 15, 2021, at 3:24 PM, Pieter Steenekamp 
> wrote:
>
> In the Phizer report "Six Month Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA
> COVID-19 Vaccine" (
> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v1.full.pdf
> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.medrxiv.org%2fcontent%2f10.1101%2f2021.07.28.21261159v1.full.pdf=E,1,l1mASX-DLApZIhUOYFgy-r7F74HlDesTNgutDt0LykvRihqhyjrzAGpEqJwx8jOzFnbbUQdx3BQTfd8osCdHSXyPMjhkpPHcBs-mpPzlecdaEIt50MlLoyIK8g,,=1>)
> , I picked up the following:
>
> "During the blinded, controlled period, 15 BNT162b2 and 14 placebo
> recipients died"
>
> Does this mean the Phizer vaccine did not result in fewer total deaths in
> the vaccinated group compared to the placebo unvaccinated group?
>
> I sort of can't believe this, I obviously miss something.
>
> But of course, there are clear benefits in that the reported vaccine
> efficacy was 91.3%
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[FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

2021-09-15 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

In the Phizer report "Six Month Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA
COVID-19 Vaccine" (
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v1.full.pdf) , I
picked up the following:

"During the blinded, controlled period, 15 BNT162b2 and 14 placebo
recipients died"

Does this mean the Phizer vaccine did not result in fewer total deaths in
the vaccinated group compared to the placebo unvaccinated group?

I sort of can't believe this, I obviously miss something.

But of course, there are clear benefits in that the reported vaccine
efficacy was 91.3%
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Re: [FRIAM] Can empirical discoveries be mathematical?

2021-09-03 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Eric,

Nick's question and the parsing of discoveries into two types intrigue me.
I'm an engineer, so maybe I have a deep seeded philosophy of science envy?

Pieter

On Fri, 3 Sept 2021 at 19:58, Eric Charles 
wrote:

> Why are we parsing discoveries into those two types?
>
> I think traditionally,  "mathematical" would have been synonymous with
> "rigorous deduction groin a minimal number of axioms", but I doubt that
> approach is clear cut anymore.
>
> Given that you claim to have sussed out your insight via systematic
> *empirical* observation,  and you claim it regarding a particular class
> of *empirical* objects... I'd go with "empirical"... if I had to choose
> one for you... but I'm also not sure why we would play this game to begin
> with.
>
> Unless you confessed to me that it was insecurities tied to a deep seeded
> physics envy... in which case I'd at least understand why you asked.
>
> On Fri, Sep 3, 2021, 1:25 PM  wrote:
>
>> By discovery, I mean only happening on a regularity that was unexpected.
>>
>>
>>
>> I guess I didn’t need all the razzle-dazzle about the t-shirts.  Let’s
>> say that I, being totally naïve of logic, announced to friam that I had
>> made a survey of all my never-married male friends and each and every one
>> claimed to be a bachelor.  I offered to you-all, as an insight, that all
>> unmarried men are bachelors.   I think I have made that “discovery”
>> empirically; you might have arrived at the same insight logically.  Perhaps
>> the empirical vs mathematical thing is methodological.  Of course, I now
>> realize that inorder to arrive at my empirical conclusion, I had to invoke
>> the logical form, induction: this man is un-married, this man is a
>> batchelor, all batchelors are unmarried.  You might have arrived at the
>> same conclusion deductively (i.e., mathematically).
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick Thompson
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter
>> Steenekamp
>> *Sent:* Friday, September 3, 2021 12:48 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Can empirical discoveries be mathematical?
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick,
>>
>> I quote from https://www.britannica.com/science/scientific-theory
>>
>> "In attempting to explain objects and events, the scientist employs (1)
>> careful observation or experiments, (2) reports of regularities, and (3)
>> systematic explanatory schemes (theories). The statements of regularities,
>> if accurate, may be taken as empirical laws expressing continuing
>> relationships among the objects or characteristics observed."
>>
>> Based on this, I reckon, because you have reported the regularities, you
>> have discovered an empirical scientific law. Congratulations!
>>
>> Next is to systematically explain it, then you have a scientific theory!
>>
>> Maybe I did not answer your question? You asked if this is an empirical
>> discovery or a mathematical one.
>>
>>
>> IMO you have done only the first part, the empirical discovery. This
>> could now be taken further and if you can prove it using formal
>> mathematics, then only can you claim you have made a mathematical
>> discovery. So, it is (not yet) a mathematical discovery. Sorry to blow your
>> bubble.
>>
>> P
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 3 Sept 2021 at 17:24,  wrote:
>>
>> Colleagues,
>>
>>
>>
>> Years ago, my daughter, who knows I hate to shop, bought me a bunch of
>> plain T-shirts.  The label’s on the shirts were printed, rather than
>> attached, and so have faded.  Each morning, this leaves me with the problem
>> of decerning which is the front and which the back of the shirt, and even,
>> which the inside and which the out-.  After years of fussing with these
>> shirts I decerned a pattern.  Up/down, inside-in/inside-out, left/right,
>> front/back, crossed arms/uncrossed arms, you can’t do one transformation
>> without doing at least one other.
>>
>>
>>
>> Is this an empirical discovery or a mathematical one?
>>
>>
>>
>> I guess it boils down to whether “front/back” entails in its meaning
>> another transformation.   Should we call empirical discoveries
>> “discoveries” and mathematical discoveries “revelations”?
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick Thompson
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
&

Re: [FRIAM] Can empirical discoveries be mathematical?

2021-09-03 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

It could be both.

If you just describe it in terms of t-shirts then it is an empirical
scientific law. You can claim to have discovered an empirical scientific law
If you now express it in mathematical terms, and the mathematical community
accepts it as true, then it is then a mathematical axiom. Now  (and nobody
else has previously discovered it)  you can claim to have discovered a
mathematical axiom.

Then, as I mentioned earlier, if you prove your mathematical axiom, using
formal mathematics, then only have you made a mathematical discovery.

Example
Bertram Russel started with the axiom 1+1=2 and then used 300 pages of
formal mathematics to prove it,


On Fri, 3 Sept 2021 at 19:07,  wrote:

> OK fine.  Is it an empirical thingamabob or a mathematical one.
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Friday, September 3, 2021 11:38 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Can empirical discoveries be mathematical?
>
>
>
> I mean... I feel like "discovery" if the first challenge for your
> classification system to justify... ;- )
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 3, 2021, 11:24 AM  wrote:
>
> Colleagues,
>
>
>
> Years ago, my daughter, who knows I hate to shop, bought me a bunch of
> plain T-shirts.  The label’s on the shirts were printed, rather than
> attached, and so have faded.  Each morning, this leaves me with the problem
> of decerning which is the front and which the back of the shirt, and even,
> which the inside and which the out-.  After years of fussing with these
> shirts I decerned a pattern.  Up/down, inside-in/inside-out, left/right,
> front/back, crossed arms/uncrossed arms, you can’t do one transformation
> without doing at least one other.
>
>
>
> Is this an empirical discovery or a mathematical one?
>
>
>
> I guess it boils down to whether “front/back” entails in its meaning
> another transformation.   Should we call empirical discoveries
> “discoveries” and mathematical discoveries “revelations”?
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Can empirical discoveries be mathematical?

2021-09-03 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Nick,

I quote from https://www.britannica.com/science/scientific-theory
"In attempting to explain objects and events, the scientist employs (1)
careful observation or experiments, (2) reports of regularities, and (3)
systematic explanatory schemes (theories). The statements of regularities,
if accurate, may be taken as empirical laws expressing continuing
relationships among the objects or characteristics observed."

Based on this, I reckon, because you have reported the regularities, you
have discovered an empirical scientific law. Congratulations!

Next is to systematically explain it, then you have a scientific theory!

Maybe I did not answer your question? You asked if this is an empirical
discovery or a mathematical one.

IMO you have done only the first part, the empirical discovery. This could
now be taken further and if you can prove it using formal mathematics, then
only can you claim you have made a mathematical discovery. So, it is (not
yet) a mathematical discovery. Sorry to blow your bubble.

P

On Fri, 3 Sept 2021 at 17:24,  wrote:

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

2021-08-29 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

And the elephant in the room is (.. sound of drums please ..) :

"All [groups] are created equal"

On Sun, 29 Aug 2021 at 03:21,  wrote:

> Hi, Eric,
>
> Again, you appear to confound similarity with equality.  *Ex hypothesi*
> and NOT because I am a communist, let us invent a world in which we each
> serve different functions but are all paid exactly the same for serving
> them.  That would be a world in which there was maximum dissimilarity but
> financial equality.  Similarity has to with what we do; equality to do with
> how it’s valued.
>
>
>
> Not you say that the world I just invented is too strange to be relevant.
> But is it that much stranger than a world in which I stand talking
> non-sense to a bunch of students for a pretty good salary while others of
> my generation to get shot at in Vietnam for peanuts?   Ditto you and Iraq.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Saturday, August 28, 2021 8:40 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"
>
>
>
> Merle,
>
> I *am *deeply grateful for my life, which *is *extraordinarily privileged
> in many ways. I'm not sure what deep remorse would have to do with it.
>
>
>
> Even were we to institute some rules that gave everyone in the world
> historically extraordinary privileges, it would be a mistake to give
> everyone the same extraordinary privileges. A world of diverse people
> produces superior outcomes to a world of identical people. Any approach
> that wants to deny that is not going to work out well. Any approach that
> wants to try to give every single person the same life, is not a good idea.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 11:41 AM Merle Lefkoff 
> wrote:
>
> Coming from different perspectives (missing: our interrelationship with
> nature) hasn't ultimately offered us a good future, as well as an inability
> to avoid war and addiction to weapons of mass destruction (including global
> warming).  I suggest that a new perspective for someone like Eric might be
> looking around at his extraordinarily privileged life (his life defies the
> human condition) and finding some way to express gratitude and remorse deep
> within.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 8:05 AM Eric Charles <
> eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> " All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world."
>
>
>
> Hard disagree. Perhaps in a perfect we would reduce the extreme inequities
> a bit, but it would be a much less perfect world if we created actual full
> equality. This is part of my long-standing disagreement with Nick's
> attempts to flat-world inheritance.
>
>
>
> We are in a BETTER world because people had a variety of experiences
> growing up. Some had a new bike magically appear for them one day. Some
> sold lemonade all summer and got one themselves. Some never got the new
> bike they wanted at all. Some never even got a used bike. Some were punched
> and had their bikes stolen. I'm not talking about watching a sibling
> literally starve to death... but I am talking about a broad range of
> unequal personal and social starting places. We are a better world because
> people live very different lives, pursuing very different goals, informed
> by different experiences, and thereby coming at problems from very
> different perspectives.
>
>
>
> "All people are created equal" is a claim about how we have socially
> agreed to treat people *as if* they were "endowed by their creator" with
> certain basic rights. Those are what is now called "negative rights",
> rights not to have others interfere with you in certain ways. But in a
> grand sense, people are not equal, and we wouldn't want them to be; it
> would be disastrous if they were.
>
>
>
> As tempting as it is to arrogantly declare that the world would be a
> better place if it everyone was just like me... I also know that's not
> true. There is no individual for which it is true, not even one as amazing
> as I, and not even one as amazing as you.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 9:00 PM Sarbajit Roy  wrote:
>
> Nick,
>
> I am not a metaphysicist to debate such things with you. Can just state
> cold facts.
>
> All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world.
>
> However, when the world they are born into is imbalanced, in actuality
> their weightage depends on the circumstances of their birth and the larger
> society(s) they are born into
>
> Attempts, by poiticians. to change that imbalance invariably create a cure
> worse worse than the disease .. killing sparrows in China or introducing
> rabbts to Australia. For instance, the *reverse discrimination* presently
> practised in India against Brahmins has been taken to extraordinary lengths
> by "vote bank" politics
>
>
> Brahmins students are not eligible (barred in law) to apply for 87% of
> seats in

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

You asked how many privileges would have to go away before my life would no
longer be "decent".

It's not that I don't care about material things, I love my luxuries, but I
don't need them to have a "decent" life. For me now, in my old age, health,
good family and friend relations and then just
basic physiological needs like food and safety would be more than adequate.

My wife and I are atheists, but two of my three children and their spouses
are Budhists and I'm probably influenced by their emphasis on the simple
life. My third child and spouse are devout Cristians and they also
influence us by their commitment to giving to society and downplaying
material stuff.

Just on the lighter side, I read somewhere that if you earn one dollar more
than your wife's sister's husband, then you are rich.

Pieter



On Fri, 27 Aug 2021 at 21:23,  wrote:

> So, of the privileges you enjoy and list, how many would have to go away
> before you life would be no longer “decent”?
>
>
>
> To be honest, Idon’t know what I am fishing for here, but for some reason
> the answer to that question seems important to me. I guess, I am thinking
> that the notion of a decent life, like that of a essential worker, hides
> some caste implications within it.  That some of us are of a nature that
> they SHOULD be satisfied with less than would satisfy me.
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Friday, August 27, 2021 3:06 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"
>
>
>
> Nick,
>
> Thanks for asking how I would characterize the life I'm leading. My life
> is just great, I'm satisfied with my life. My need for food, safety, love
> and self-esteem are to a large degree met. Actually, I would rate myself on
> the self-actualization level on Moslow's hierarchy.
>
> It's not about me, there are many people in South Africa who's basic
> physiological needs like food and safety are not met.
>
> Pieter
>
>
>
> On Fri, 27 Aug 2021 at 20:28,  wrote:
>
> Pieter,
>
>
>
> If, in your ideal world, their lives are “decent, ” how would you
> characterize the life that you are leading.  The way you talk sounds a bit
> like the way we talk about “essential” workers here.
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Friday, August 27, 2021 1:49 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"
>
>
>
> Dave wrote  *Why this obsession with "equality?"*
>
>
>
> I totally agree. But in South Africa we have a large portion of the
> population that do not have food on the table every day and I simply don't
> think it's right.
>
> So, my view is that instead of obsessing with "equality", we should obsess
> that those on the bottom of the economic ladder should at least have decent
> lives.
>
> Pieter
>
>
>
> On Fri, 27 Aug 2021 at 19:11,  wrote:
>
> Dave,
>
>
>
> I think of mathematical abstractions as aspirations.
>
>
>
> Thanks for meeting me on my own ground, here.  You will recall that my
> original project was to try and discover what the metaphysical foundations
> might be for my  strong negative  response to the idea that castes are
> tolerable.  What MUST I assume in order to think as I do.   I have for many
> years suspected that the fundamental difference between comfortable BHL’s
> like me and comfortable conservatives is that we liberals see our comfort
> as arising from good luck, and they see their comfort as arising from their
> merit.   Now, all metaphysics is non-sense, except insofar as it explains
> and encourages an approach to other people that is … um …. Good.  I think
> than mine encourages me to approach people less wealthy than I,  not as
> people deserving of their fate but as people who have, in some sense, made
> me a gift.   Thus if there is kharma, it should be that the fortunate
> “should” pay for the correction of any absence of randomness that
> intergenerational transfers might inflict on the children of the poor.
>
>
>
> I lay this out in this naïve way because I thought it might provoke a
> strong (and perhaps equally naïve) reaction from Sarbajit which would make
> it immediately clear what different places we are coming from.  Sarbajit
> ma

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

Nick,

Thanks for asking how I would characterize the life I'm leading. My life is
just great, I'm satisfied with my life. My need for food, safety, love and
self-esteem are to a large degree met. Actually, I would rate myself on the
self-actualization level on Moslow's hierarchy.

It's not about me, there are many people in South Africa who's basic
physiological needs like food and safety are not met.

Pieter



On Fri, 27 Aug 2021 at 20:28,  wrote:

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

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

our
> 'independent variable' of income?
>
>
>
> No two human beings are created equal, let alone all "men." (sic) But the
> unfounded conviction that this must be 'true' demands the invention of myth
> to explain why it is not. And those myths are, in my opinion, harmful and
> divisive.
>
>
>
> I agree with Pieter (and probably everyone else on this list) that the
> current state of income inequality is evil and untenable. But, I would
> disagree with any means of rectifying the situation that is grounded in any
> kind of myth of individual human "equality."
>
>
>
> davew
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 27, 2021, at 1:34 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
>
> If you just look at the world then "all [persons] are created equal" is
> just nonsense. What I like to focus on is what can we as a society do, and
> what can I personally do to move towards making all more equal? It's
> obviously not practical to expect heaven on earth, but IMO the current
> state of inequality is just not acceptable, but that's no reason to do
> nothing. For now I just address the first one, what can we as a society do?
>
>
>
> The current state of politics is to a large extent driven by ideology and
> I would like to see a movement towards a more practical, and humble
> approach. Like an approach based on the philosophy behind the 2019 economic
> Nobel prize winners Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer. Their approach to reduce
> global poverty is experiment-based, taken from science.
>
>
>
> I quote from
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2019/10/14/nobel-prize-in-economics-won-by-trio-tackling-global-poverty/
> :
>
> "Their work, which tackles one of humanities most pressing issues, is
> based on the idea that to battle poverty, the issues should be broken down
> into smaller pieces and studied via small field experiments to answer
> precise questions within the communities who are most affected."
>
>
>
> Another quote:
>
> "Poor people are supposed to be either completely desperate or lazy or
> entrepreneurial but people don’t – we don’t try to … understand the deep
> root and interconnected root of poverty." - Esther Duflo
>
>
>
> I don't mind if anybody wants to understand the deep root and
> interconnected root of poverty, it's just that I personally, like Esther
> Duflo, like to focus on what to do about it.
>
>
>
> Pieter
>
>
>
> On Fri, 27 Aug 2021 at 05:07,  wrote:
>
> Dave,
>
>
>
> This is, of course, exactly the opposite of my creation myth in which the
> slate is wiped clean after every generation.  But it would explain a belief
> system in which well-being was the deserved reward of having lived well in
> a previous life.
>
>
>
> While I am here, please let me point out that “equal in law” seems a
> rather constrained understanding “born equal”, given especially that the
> passage goes on to add equality in law (well rights, actually) as  an
> additional endowment.
>
>
>
> “… and they are endowed by their Creator by certain rights, including
> life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
>
>
>
> Where is John Dobson when we need him.  Could somebody please forward this
> note to him.  I don’t have his email address here with me.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Nick
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Prof David West
>
> *Sent:* Thursday, August 26, 2021 10:17 PM
>
> *To:* friam@redfish.com
>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"
>
>
>
> Purely from my academic understanding of the subject; the Nick that is, at
> this moment / in this incarnation, is a product of karma accrued and shed
> over multiple instances of existence. Hence, what you are now is precisely
> what you *deserve* to be. All persons may have been created equal some
> untold incarnations ago and before they had any opportunity to accrete
> karma.
>
>
>
> davew
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2021, at 2:04 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Sarbajit,
>
>
>
> If I understand the shape of the globe correctly, you are waking up pretty
> soon, and I would like to pick up the conversation about caste, if you
> don’t mind.
>
>
>
> I believe the proposition in the subject line.  Given the many ways that
> proposition can be understood as plainly false, I feel that my belief in it
> must be defended.
>
>
>
> In what sense equal?  Not in genes.  Not in uterine environment. .  Not in
> early nutrition and cognitive stimulation. Not

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

If you just look at the world then "all [persons] are created equal" is
just nonsense. What I like to focus on is what can we as a society do, and
what can I personally do to move towards making all more equal? It's
obviously not practical to expect heaven on earth, but IMO the current
state of inequality is just not acceptable, but that's no reason to do
nothing. For now I just address the first one, what can we as a society do?

The current state of politics is to a large extent driven by ideology and I
would like to see a movement towards a more practical, and humble approach.
Like an approach based on the philosophy behind the 2019 economic Nobel
prize winners Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer. Their approach to reduce global
poverty is experiment-based, taken from science.

I quote from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2019/10/14/nobel-prize-in-economics-won-by-trio-tackling-global-poverty/
:
"Their work, which tackles one of humanities most pressing issues, is based
on the idea that to battle poverty, the issues should be broken down into
smaller pieces and studied via small field experiments to answer precise
questions within the communities who are most affected."

Another quote:
"Poor people are supposed to be either completely desperate or lazy or
entrepreneurial but people don’t – we don’t try to … understand the deep
root and interconnected root of poverty." - Esther Duflo

I don't mind if anybody wants to understand the deep root and
interconnected root of poverty, it's just that I personally, like Esther
Duflo, like to focus on what to do about it.

Pieter

On Fri, 27 Aug 2021 at 05:07,  wrote:

> Dave,
>
>
>
> This is, of course, exactly the opposite of my creation myth in which the
> slate is wiped clean after every generation.  But it would explain a belief
> system in which well-being was the deserved reward of having lived well in
> a previous life.
>
>
>
> While I am here, please let me point out that “equal in law” seems a
> rather constrained understanding “born equal”, given especially that the
> passage goes on to add equality in law (well rights, actually) as  an
> additional endowment.
>
>
>
> “… and they are endowed by their Creator by certain rights, including life,
> liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
>
>
>
> Where is John Dobson when we need him.  Could somebody please forward this
> note to him.  I don’t have his email address here with me.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Nick
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Prof David West
> *Sent:* Thursday, August 26, 2021 10:17 PM
> *To:* friam@redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"
>
>
>
> Purely from my academic understanding of the subject; the Nick that is, at
> this moment / in this incarnation, is a product of karma accrued and shed
> over multiple instances of existence. Hence, what you are now is precisely
> what you *deserve* to be. All persons may have been created equal some
> untold incarnations ago and before they had any opportunity to accrete
> karma.
>
>
>
> davew
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2021, at 2:04 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Sarbajit,
>
>
>
> If I understand the shape of the globe correctly, you are waking up pretty
> soon, and I would like to pick up the conversation about caste, if you
> don’t mind.
>
>
>
> I believe the proposition in the subject line.  Given the many ways that
> proposition can be understood as plainly false, I feel that my belief in it
> must be defended.
>
>
>
> In what sense equal?  Not in genes.  Not in uterine environment. .  Not in
> early nutrition and cognitive stimulation. Not in social capitol. Not in
> financial capitol.  Not in access to health care.  Not in exposure to
> future parasites.  Not in almost anything that I can think of.   So, why is
> the aphorism not just nonsense.
>
>
>
> I find, that if I examine my thinking in this matter, a very primitive
> metaphysics about the moment of an individual’s creation.  What follows is
> flagrantly silly, but here it is.   On my account, at the moment of birth a
> soul is taken out of storage and assigned to a body.  By “person” in the
> aphorism, I mean the combination of a particular soul with the particular
> body.  These assignments are at random.  So, for good or ill, no soul
> deserves the body it gets.   I cannot claim credit for my genes, my good
> uterine environment, my social capitol, my financial capitol, my bad hip,
> the draft deferment it provided, my getting a phd at absolute peak of
> demand for phd’s, my good education, even my FRIAM membership.  They are
> all consequences of that initial, random assignment.   Now YOU may credit
> me in some ways, because knowing that all these advantages have been
> assigned to me may make me useful or pleasing (or the opposite) in many
> ways, and that may bring me the advantages of your association.  But è I ç
> do not èdeserveç those

Re: [FRIAM] On the: RLY!? side

2021-08-26 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Thanks for the reply Sarbajit, so what you're saying is the situation is
much worse in India than what the official numbers indicate.

Pieter

On Thu, 26 Aug 2021 at 10:48, Sarbajit Roy  wrote:

> I can give you some more context citing my personal experience
>
> I stay in a spacious (for India) gated-off apartment complex in New Delhi,
> with 90 apartments and about 400 residents. About 25% of the apartments
> have retired doctors from India's premier hospitals, and we're mostly
> educated professionals well clued in to take precautions..
>
> In the first COVID wave  which peaked in Sept 2020 we had 2 infections and
> no deaths. In the second wave which peaked in May 2021, we had about 75
> known infections (of which 25 needed hospitalization) and 8 COVID deaths in
> my apartment complex alone. Similar numbers happened in the surrounding
> apartment complexes. My father-in-law who stays in a similar apartment
> complex a mile away was hospitalised for 10 days with COVID this May at the
> peak but luckily pulled through at age 82 years. He only got a hospital bed
> because he was Indian Army while other patients were being turned away in
> droves before my eyes.
>
> Sarbajit
>
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2021 at 1:56 PM Sarbajit Roy  wrote:
>
>> Pieter
>>
>> The official statistics for India are quite (grossly) inaccurate. We can
>> *conservatively* multiply the number of infections by x10 and the number
>> of deaths by x3.
>> While the statistics are comparatively better maintained in the urban
>> areas, in the rural areas there is massive under-reporting and people were
>> dying like flies.
>> There is inadequate testing capacity and health infrastructure in the
>> rural areas and we estimate the death rate at between 6% to 12% of the
>> population in certain states.
>>
>> My own uncle, a retired Indian Army doctor aged about 81 years, was the
>> only doctor left for a radius of 100 km in a densely populated state
>> because the regular doctors had either fled or died of COVID. He expired
>> 2 months ago, of COVID, while still in the saddle attending patients.
>>
>> Sarbajit
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 26, 2021 at 12:31 PM Pieter Steenekamp <
>> piet...@randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
>>
>>> Sarbajit,
>>>
>>> When covid started I was very worried about India with it's high
>>> population density. But according to
>>> https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries the deaths/1M
>>> population in India is 313. In the USA, for example, the figure is 1950
>>> deaths/1M population.
>>>
>>> Further, according to
>>> https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ India seems to
>>> be dodging the delta variant, because the daily new cases has been dropping
>>> since May and seems to be staying low.
>>>
>>> My point is, India seems to be doing relatively less bad than many other
>>> countries.
>>>
>>> Then, there seems to be relatively high prophylactic and early treatment
>>> use of ivermectin in India.
>>> Refer to:
>>>
>>> https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/lucknow/uttar-pradesh-government-says-ivermectin-helped-to-keep-deaths-low-7311786/
>>>
>>> https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/05/11/indian-state-will-offer-ivermectin-to-entire-adult-population---even-as-who-warns-against-its-use-as-covid-19-treatment/?sh=18acd8956d9f
>>>
>>> https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19/epidemiologic-analyses-on-covid19-and-ivermectin/
>>>
>>> https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/indias-ivermectin-blackout---part-iii-the-lesson-of-kerala/article_ccecb97e-044e-11ec-9112-2b31ae87887a.html
>>>
>>> I'd like to have your views on this. Is there a possible causal link
>>> between the use of ivermectin and low new covid infections in India?
>>>
>>> Pieter
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 26 Aug 2021 at 04:42, Sarbajit Roy  wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi
>>>>
>>>> I would like to give you an "Asian" (perhaps culturally distasteful)
>>>> perspective on this from India.
>>>>
>>>> India has (officially) the 2nd highest number of COVID-19 infections
>>>> and deaths after the USA.
>>>>
>>>> However, within India, there is a small class of people, like me,
>>>> called Adi Brahmins .. it's a Hindu caste,  who don't wear masks or take
>>>> clinically unproven or untested vaccination

Re: [FRIAM] On the: RLY!? side

2021-08-26 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Sarbajit,

When covid started I was very worried about India with it's high population
density. But according to
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries the deaths/1M
population in India is 313. In the USA, for example, the figure is 1950
deaths/1M population.

Further, according to
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ India seems to be
dodging the delta variant, because the daily new cases has been dropping
since May and seems to be staying low.

My point is, India seems to be doing relatively less bad than many other
countries.

Then, there seems to be relatively high prophylactic and early treatment
use of ivermectin in India.
Refer to:
https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/lucknow/uttar-pradesh-government-says-ivermectin-helped-to-keep-deaths-low-7311786/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/05/11/indian-state-will-offer-ivermectin-to-entire-adult-population---even-as-who-warns-against-its-use-as-covid-19-treatment/?sh=18acd8956d9f
https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19/epidemiologic-analyses-on-covid19-and-ivermectin/
https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/indias-ivermectin-blackout---part-iii-the-lesson-of-kerala/article_ccecb97e-044e-11ec-9112-2b31ae87887a.html

I'd like to have your views on this. Is there a possible causal link
between the use of ivermectin and low new covid infections in India?

Pieter









On Thu, 26 Aug 2021 at 04:42, Sarbajit Roy  wrote:

> Hi
>
> I would like to give you an "Asian" (perhaps culturally distasteful)
> perspective on this from India.
>
> India has (officially) the 2nd highest number of COVID-19 infections and
> deaths after the USA.
>
> However, within India, there is a small class of people, like me, called
> Adi Brahmins .. it's a Hindu caste,  who don't wear masks or take
> clinically unproven or untested vaccinations, mainly because we continually
> practice an ancient non-contact system known as UNTOUCHABILITY. Since
> Brahmins are traditionally the scientific / intellectual elite of India, we
> have known about virii, fomites, their modes of transmission, and how they
> cause infection and disease for centuries and we knew this empirically even
> before microscopes were invented.
>
> The rules and concepts of untouchability are drilled into Brahmin children
> from infancy, and we practice it scrupulously even if it is banned by law
> in India. And it's not as if we dont believe in Western medicine systems or
> science, I was drilled by my grandfather who was the Director General of
> India's Armed Forces ( .. aka Surgeon General of India), to the extent that
> even the metal cutlery at his dining table was "autoclaved" before we used
> them.
>
> The people who are contracting and dying of COVID in India are the ones
> who are fated to do so because of their own foolishness and ignorance, and
> also because India's government wanted them to die.
> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57005563
>
> Sarbajit Roy
> New Delhi, India
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2021 at 4:31 AM Gillian Densmore 
> wrote:
>
>> Pieter: YES! thats what I was trying to ask. Personally I think the
>> science and tech around Vaccinations just rocks. On the human side: It is
>> amazingly cool what people can do what we decide to do so.
>> you bring up a good point! I watched youtube videos from people that made
>> the vaccines. LOL I did need to try to ask for a translation on what it
>> meant to map the genetics. RNA. mRNA.  And when I learned how safe the
>> vaccine was. Then I decided I couldn't get in line fast enough. It sounds
>> like that's the opposite what some people are doing. It sounds like the
>> hear: this was made using new medical technology, that hasn't neneded to be
>> tested outside of labs until now. So they basically heard Fear And Doubt.
>> Which is a shame.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 25, 2021 at 11:56 AM Marcus Daniels 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> They aren't under a mandate to have sufficient capacity, or they'd have
>>> sufficient capacity.   Through a triage process they can prioritize.   It
>>> must happen already, even if it isn't legal.  Oh, the local drug addict is
>>> here again.  That guy is probably not #1 for the attention of the doctors.
>>> If enough big organizations like hospitals, grocery stores, etc. simply
>>> refuse to patronize people without evidence of vaccination, there doesn't
>>> need to be a mandate.   And it isn't just ERs, there are people getting
>>> allergy shots, getting physical therapy, eyeglasses adjusted, etc.  No
>>> shirt, no shoes, no vaccination, no service.
>>>
>>> -Original Message-
>>> From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
>>> Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2021 10:47 AM
>>> To: friam@redfish.com
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] On the: RLY!? side
>>>
>>> That's just nonsense. By the time you're at the ER, the vaccine is
>>> largely irrelevant. Plus, when some 18 year old kid comes in unconscious
>>> with a gunshot wound, it's difficult to ask her if she's been

Re: [FRIAM] On the: RLY!? side

2021-08-25 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Gillian,

My take on your question of how this thinking, of being an antivaxer, works?

For me, the key lies in understanding human behavior. I know I'm waltzing
on very thin ice because there are others in this group who have already
forgotten what I still have to learn about human behavior , so I'm prepared
to be severely humbled.

This Friam group is excluded of course, but for the rest of humanity,
humans make decisions subconsciously and then rationalise their decisions
with logic. Their subconscious minds do not care about logic or whether it
makes sense at all, it's just about emotions.

One of the books I'm currently reading is Making Sense of World History by
Rick Szostakt and I can't verbalise it better than the quote from the book:
"Humans have an incredible capacity for self-deception. Our subconscious
thoughts can guide us to act in ways that are cowardly, malicious, or
jealous even if we would consciously disdain cowardice, malice and
jealousy. Why did a mental capacity for self-deception evolve in humans?
One theory is that self-deception aids us in other-deception. Humans have
been selected for cooperation, and therefore selected to give and observe
cues regarding dishonesty. As discussed above, we will feel guilty for
lying (that is, violating a cultural value favouring honesty), and display
this guilt physically. Human cooperation would be difficult if we lacked
any ability to discern when others were lying. While cooperation depends on
some degree of confidence in the honesty of others, individual success can
nethertheless rely on some ability to cheat. In the complex evolution of
human beings, then, we can expect selection pressure for both (detection
of) honesty and dishonesty. Difficulty in consciously lying would encourage
the cooperation on which human societies depend. Ability to lie
subconsciously would be individually advantageous, and the limits it
imposes on human cooperation might not prevent collaboration in hunting or
gathering or agreeing on group decisions."

I'm not condoning the antivaxers. Personally I consider vaccination
technology one of humankind's greatest medical inventions ever, and I'm
also super excited about the potential of mRNA vaccination technology in
more effectively fighting future viruses. I'm merely trying to explain
illogical behavior, that's what you asked, not so?

Pieter

On Wed, 25 Aug 2021 at 03:39, Gillian Densmore 
wrote:

> What can possibly poses people to have a GD tantrum about vaccines.
> The cynical of me thinks it's basically a tantrum mixed with deranged and
> dangerous levels of trolling. While the "Jedi" side er the small part
> wanting to see the best of these GD raving lunatics. It's, frankly, baffled.
> The powers that be say put a GD mask on, and thank antivaxers.  What is
> pissing me off and just straitup confusing the ever living *** me  is how
> does this thinking work? Rejecting a compound that'll keep you healthy? For
> me: I (literally) couldn't get in line fast enough! I think I broke my
> caregiver who, I wanted to drive me their just in case. Meen while the
> other extreme are these people having GD tantrum. It's like: here's
> something that'll help you not get this virus,its free and you just need to
> get in a line. The first thing they say is: omg! free? why that smacks of
> [something they read someplace]. And ma freedoms
>
> Can some please help me get just WTF these people are on, or how the hell
> anything about how they think can possibly make any sense?
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Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

2021-08-24 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

For anybody interested in a new revolutionary version of how the brain
works, there is a very interesting podcast where Lex Fridman interviews the
neuroscientist Jeff Hawkins. Jeff reckons there are thousands of similar
structures in our brain, each one of these with a model of the world making
predictions. Then a sort of voting system decides what prediction to use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1KwkpTUbkg


On Tue, 24 Aug 2021 at 07:08, ⛧ glen  wrote:

> Nah. An emotion is exactly analogous to your thumb, registerable both as a
> separate object and a compositional part of you, composed in both space and
> time, with all that part-whole relations imply.
>
> On August 23, 2021 8:30:52 PM PDT, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> >In general the grammar of the two words is different.  If you say I had
> something, I am sent looking for a property, possession or attribute.  If
> you say I did something, I am sent looking for an action I performed.   So,
> there is a vast inclination to make emotion words as a reference to
> something we carry inside, rather than a pattern in what we do.  This seems
> to me like misdirection, a category error in Ryle’s terms.
> >
> >
> >
> >Does that help?
>
> --
> glen ⛧
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

2021-08-23 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

The creators of the Aibo robot dog say it has ‘real emotions and instinct’.
This is obviously not true, it's just an illusion.

But then, according to Daniel Dennett, human consciousness is just an
illusion.
https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/illusionism.pdf

On Mon, 23 Aug 2021 at 09:18, Jochen Fromm  wrote:

> "In today’s AI universe, all the eternal questions (about intentionality,
> consciousness, free will, mind-body problem...) have become engineering
> problems", argues this Guardian article.
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/10/dogs-inner-life-what-robot-pet-taught-me-about-consciousness-artificial-intelligence
>
> -J.
>
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Re: [FRIAM] "ZAMM"

2021-08-19 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

It's available on Amazon as paperback, hardcover and ebook:
https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Anniversary-ebook/dp/B0063HC7EQ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1=zen+and+the+art+of+motorcycle+maintenance=1629378375=digital-text=1-1

I read the book eons ago and I remember very little details, just that I
enjoyed it very much. I'm looking forward to rereading it.

Pieter



On Thu, 19 Aug 2021 at 14:52, Roger Critchlow  wrote:

> Searching "Zen and the art of" as a title in the Boston Public Library
> yields 101 results.  There are two ecopies of ZAMM with 18 holds queued,
> could take as much as 18 weeks to reach the head of the queue.
>
> Eugen Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery has this comment from a library
> patron:
>
> First I ever saw this zen classic was over at my uncle's house in
> Pacifica, California. He left a closet full of his books after he passed
> from exposure in the Santa Cruz Mountains. After John Lennon was
> assassinated (not long before Ronald Reagan--former governor of
> California---was to be inaugurated), I tried to recuperate partially there.
> The cover of the book looked nothing like the library's copy, but the real
> gen still waits within, for those with open minds. Can you clear that busy
> mind, with all its preoccupations and agendas, and simply concentrate on
> taking the bow string into your thumb and finger, and release the arrow, at
> the exact perfect time, but not using your conscious mind? "There followed
> weeks and months of fruitless practice. I could take my standard again and
> again from the way the Master shot, see with my own eyes the nature of the
> correct loose; but not a single one succeeded." Rest in Peace, George
> Simon; Rest in Peace, John Winston Ono Lennon." Hoyen of Gosozen (died
> 1140) says, 'Here is a man who, turning the emptiness of space into a sheet
> of paper, the waves of the ocean into an inkwell, and Mount Sumeru into a
> brush, writes these five characters: SO-SHI-SAI-RAI-I. To such, i spread my
> zagu and make my profound bow.' "
>
> -- rec --
>
> On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 11:57 PM Merle Lefkoff 
> wrote:
>
>> There's been some publicity lately about enticing young people away from
>> a tech or finance future--substituting, instead, the possibility of
>> becoming a skilled plumber or electrician, or better yet an ecological
>> farmer.  Those are the jobs we'll perhaps need in the near future as we
>> attempt to survive on a transformed planet.  Pirsig lives as a guide to our
>> fragile future.
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 9:32 PM Frank Wimberly 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> When will you be back here?
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Frank C. Wimberly
>>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>>
>>> 505 670-9918
>>> Santa Fe, NM
>>>
>>> On Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 9:17 PM  wrote:
>>>
 No.  Actually I hadn’t thought of that.  Too far east for those sorts
 of thoughts, right now.  Let’s see what David supposes.



 N



 Nick Thompson

 thompnicks...@gmail.com

 https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/



 *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
 *Sent:* Wednesday, August 18, 2021 11:03 PM
 *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
 friam@redfish.com>
 *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "ZAMM"



 David can answer for himself.  I think you want to lead a seminar.

 ---
 Frank C. Wimberly
 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
 Santa Fe, NM 87505

 505 670-9918
 Santa Fe, NM



 On Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 9:01 PM  wrote:

 Gary,



 It would be great to hear from somebody reading it for the first time.
 I am, I think, the only person to have read *Go Set a Watchman *and *To
 Kill a Mockingbird* in the order in which they were written, not the
 order in which they were published.  I thought it gave me a unique
 perspective.



 Nick



 Nick Thompson

 thompnicks...@gmail.com

 https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/



 *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Gary Schiltz
 *Sent:* Wednesday, August 18, 2021 10:53 PM
 *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
 friam@redfish.com>
 *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "ZAMM"



 It’s one I’ve always intended to read, but somehow never got around to
 it. I’d be interested, but need to read it soon.



 On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 8:46 PM  wrote:

 Colleagues,



 I wonder if Pirsig’s *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance *was a
 thing for any of you, and if you would be interested in pursuing a thread
 about it and, if so, if you would be willing to get it down off your shelf
 and flip through it, looking for the parts you loved and the parts you
 hated.



 N



 Nick Thompson

 thompnicks...@gmail.com

[FRIAM] AI creates new inventions

2021-08-19 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

"At first glance, a recently granted South African patent relating to a
“food container based on fractal geometry” seems fairly mundane. The
innovation in question involves interlocking food containers that are easy
for robots to grasp and stack.

On closer inspection, the patent is anything but mundane. That’s because
the inventor is not a human being – it is an artificial intelligence (AI)
system called DABUS."

also

"The system simulates human brainstorming and creates new inventions. DABUS
is a particular type of AI, often referred to as “creativity machines”
because they are capable of independent and complex functioning. This
differs from everyday AI like Siri, the “voice” of Apple’s iPhones."

Quoted from:
https://theconversation.com/in-a-world-first-south-africa-grants-patent-to-an-artificial-intelligence-system-165623
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Re: [FRIAM] ivermectin, nope

2021-08-15 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Thanks for the comments gentlemen.

Pieter

On Sun, 15 Aug 2021 at 19:12, Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> Like
>
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Sun, Aug 15, 2021, 11:00 AM Roger Critchlow  wrote:
>
>> Oh, forgot to clearly identify the irony:   ;-)
>>
>> Doing diligence on this crap is way exhausting.  I am entirely in
>> sympathy with your dilemma.
>>
>> Even if ivermectin does nothing useful, it still may be a useful
>> treatment in situations where no other treatment is available.  And
>> fabricating evidence of its efficacy would also be a comfort to the
>> patients and the medical staff in that situation.   A placebo can be better
>> than nothing, a placebo with a bogus story behind it can be even better.
>>
>> -- rec --
>>
>> -- rec --
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 15, 2021 at 12:37 PM Roger Critchlow  wrote:
>>
>>> Pieter --
>>>
>>> I looked over the links you listed.
>>>
>>> They seem to claim that withdrawl of ivermectin caused the spike in
>>> Covid cases in India, and also that administering ivermectin caused the end
>>> of the spike in Covid cases.Both of these claims are sort of hard to
>>> evaluate, since I don't see any evidence that anyone has ever distributed
>>> ivermectin/doxycycline/zinc kits very widely, either before or after the
>>> spike in infections.  Constructing and delivering kits for 1.366 billion
>>> people would have been quite an achievement for any economy.
>>>
>>> I followed the links to https://c19ivermectin.com/ and found the list
>>> of ivermectin studies.  The list presented currently claims 110 studies, 68
>>> peer reviewed, 64 involving control and treatment groups, but it's puffed
>>> up with another 50 entries which are news clippings, press releases,
>>> meta-analyses, reviews, and other miscellanea.
>>>
>>> I looked an early review article,
>>> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-020-0336-z.pdf, though the pdf
>>> is hosted at nature.com, it's from a different journal.
>>>
>>> The Journal of Antibiotics (2020) 73:593–602
>>>> https://doi.org/10.1038/s41429-020-0336-z
>>>> Ivermectin: a systematic review from antiviral effects to COVID-19
>>>> complementary regimen Fatemeh Heidary1 ● Reza Gharebaghi2,3
>>>> 1 Head of Ophthalmology Division, Taleghani Hospital, Ahvaz Jundishapur
>>>> University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran
>>>> 2 Kish International Campus, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
>>>> 3 International Virtual Ophthalmic Research Center (IVORC), Austin, TX,
>>>> USA
>>>> Abstract
>>>> Ivermectin proposes many potentials effects to treat a range of
>>>> diseases, with its antimicrobial, antiviral, and anti-cancer properties as
>>>> a wonder drug. It is highly effective against many microorganisms including
>>>> some viruses. In this comprehensive systematic review, antiviral effects of
>>>> ivermectin are summarized including in vitro and in vivo studies over the
>>>> past 50 years. Several studies reported antiviral effects of ivermectin on
>>>> RNA viruses such as Zika, dengue, yellow fever, West Nile, Hendra,
>>>> Newcastle, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, chikungunya, Semliki Forest,
>>>> Sindbis, Avian influenza A, Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome,
>>>> Human immunodeficiency virus type 1, and severe acute respiratory syndrome
>>>> coronavirus 2. Furthermore, there are some studies showing antiviral
>>>> effects of ivermectin against DNA viruses such as Equine herpes type 1, BK
>>>> polyomavirus, pseudorabies, porcine circovirus 2, and bovine herpesvirus 1.
>>>> Ivermmust beectin plays a role in several biological mechanisms, therefore
>>>> it could serve as a potential candidate in the treatment of a wide range of
>>>> viruses including COVID-19 as well as other types of positive-sense
>>>> single-stranded RNA viruses. In vivo studies of animal models revealed a
>>>> broad range of antiviral effects of ivermectin, however, clinical trials
>>>> are necessary to appraise the potential efficacy of ivermectin in clinical
>>>> setting
>>>>
>>>
>>> The quick read is that ivermectin interferes with viral reproduction *in
>>> vitro*, but fails to work *in vivo*, for all of these viruses.  It's
>>> been tried against every virus that's tur

Re: [FRIAM] ivermectin, nope

2021-08-15 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Excellent prof Thomson!

On Sun, 15 Aug 2021 at 15:49,  wrote:

> Thanks, Pieter,
>
>
>
> Do parasites make one vulnerable to covid?   Alternatively, does having
> covid, open the door to parasites one is already carrying?  I can’t be the
> first person to think of that.
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Sunday, August 15, 2021 2:28 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] ivermectin, nope
>
>
>
> Nick,
>
> Thanks for pointing out that my message is not very clear. Let me rewrite
> it with a change in wording, I hope it's better this time.
>
> I believe that the study that Marcus referred to above ,
> https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-11/ivermectin-no-effect-covid  
>  ,
> is most probably correct.
>
> Help me if I'm wrong. It proves that according to a specific protocol,
> there are no benefits against covid  in using ivermectin. Does that mean
> that there are no other prophylaxis protocols that include ivermectin that
> do give benefits?
>
> I'd like to make sense of what's happening in India. According to some
> (see references below), the use of ivermectin is effective against covid in
> India. I really don't know how reliable these sources are. Does anyone have
> better information? I'd like to know.
>
> References:
>
> https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/
>
>
>
> https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-208785/v1/d6ff79a3-d354-4aba-a6b0-4bc123bbd225.pdf
>
>
> https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2021/04/29/when-india-stopped-prescribing-ivermectin-and-started-vaccinating-deaths-shot-up/
>
>
>
>
> https://nonvenipacem.com/2021/07/31/india-crushed-covid-using-ivermectin-and-you-can-too/
>
>
>
>
> https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/elites-worried-covid-cases-india-plummet-government-promotes-ivermectin-hydroxychloroquine-use/
>
>
>
> Pieter
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, 14 Aug 2021 at 23:13,  wrote:
>
> Pieter
>
>
>
> Did you perhaps leave out a link?  Which study?
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Saturday, August 14, 2021 12:09 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] ivermectin, nope
>
>
>
> I believe this study is most probably correct.
>
> Help me if I'm wrong. It proves that according to a specific protocol,
> there are no benefits against covid  in using ivermectin. Does that mean
> that there are no other prophylaxis protocols that include ivermectin that
> do give benefits?
>
> I'd like to make sense of what's happening in India. According to some
> (see reference below), the use of ivermectin is effective against covid in
> India. I really don't know how reliable these sources are. Does anyone have
> better information? I'd like to know.
>
> References:
>
> https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/
>
> https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-208785/v1/d6ff79a3-d354-4aba-a6b0-4bc123bbd225.pdf
>
> https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2021/04/29/when-india-stopped-prescribing-ivermectin-and-started-vaccinating-deaths-shot-up/
>
>
> https://nonvenipacem.com/2021/07/31/india-crushed-covid-using-ivermectin-and-you-can-too/
>
>
> https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/elites-worried-covid-cases-india-plummet-government-promotes-ivermectin-hydroxychloroquine-use/
>
>
>
> Pieter
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, 14 Aug 2021 at 17:34, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
>
>
> https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-11/ivermectin-no-effect-covid
>
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Re: [FRIAM] ivermectin, nope

2021-08-15 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Nick,

Thanks for pointing out that my message is not very clear. Let me rewrite
it with a change in wording, I hope it's better this time.

I believe that the study that Marcus referred to above ,
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-11/ivermectin-no-effect-covid
  ,
is most probably correct.

Help me if I'm wrong. It proves that according to a specific protocol,
there are no benefits against covid  in using ivermectin. Does that mean
that there are no other prophylaxis protocols that include ivermectin that
do give benefits?

I'd like to make sense of what's happening in India. According to some (see
references below), the use of ivermectin is effective against covid in
India. I really don't know how reliable these sources are. Does anyone have
better information? I'd like to know.

References:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/

https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-208785/v1/d6ff79a3-d354-4aba-a6b0-4bc123bbd225.pdf

https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2021/04/29/when-india-stopped-prescribing-ivermectin-and-started-vaccinating-deaths-shot-up/

https://nonvenipacem.com/2021/07/31/india-crushed-covid-using-ivermectin-and-you-can-too/

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/elites-worried-covid-cases-india-plummet-government-promotes-ivermectin-hydroxychloroquine-use/

Pieter



On Sat, 14 Aug 2021 at 23:13,  wrote:

> Pieter
>
>
>
> Did you perhaps leave out a link?  Which study?
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Saturday, August 14, 2021 12:09 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] ivermectin, nope
>
>
>
> I believe this study is most probably correct.
>
> Help me if I'm wrong. It proves that according to a specific protocol,
> there are no benefits against covid  in using ivermectin. Does that mean
> that there are no other prophylaxis protocols that include ivermectin that
> do give benefits?
>
> I'd like to make sense of what's happening in India. According to some
> (see reference below), the use of ivermectin is effective against covid in
> India. I really don't know how reliable these sources are. Does anyone have
> better information? I'd like to know.
>
> References:
>
> https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/
>
> https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-208785/v1/d6ff79a3-d354-4aba-a6b0-4bc123bbd225.pdf
>
> https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2021/04/29/when-india-stopped-prescribing-ivermectin-and-started-vaccinating-deaths-shot-up/
>
>
> https://nonvenipacem.com/2021/07/31/india-crushed-covid-using-ivermectin-and-you-can-too/
>
>
> https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/elites-worried-covid-cases-india-plummet-government-promotes-ivermectin-hydroxychloroquine-use/
>
>
>
> Pieter
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, 14 Aug 2021 at 17:34, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
>
>
> https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-11/ivermectin-no-effect-covid
>
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Re: [FRIAM] ivermectin, nope

2021-08-14 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

I believe this study is most probably correct.

Help me if I'm wrong. It proves that according to a specific protocol,
there are no benefits against covid  in using ivermectin. Does that mean
that there are no other prophylaxis protocols that include ivermectin that
do give benefits?

I'd like to make sense of what's happening in India. According to some (see
reference below), the use of ivermectin is effective against covid in
India. I really don't know how reliable these sources are. Does anyone have
better information? I'd like to know.

References:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/
https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-208785/v1/d6ff79a3-d354-4aba-a6b0-4bc123bbd225.pdf
https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2021/04/29/when-india-stopped-prescribing-ivermectin-and-started-vaccinating-deaths-shot-up/
https://nonvenipacem.com/2021/07/31/india-crushed-covid-using-ivermectin-and-you-can-too/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/elites-worried-covid-cases-india-plummet-government-promotes-ivermectin-hydroxychloroquine-use/

Pieter

On Sat, 14 Aug 2021 at 17:34, Marcus Daniels  wrote:

>
> https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-11/ivermectin-no-effect-covid
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Moral collapse and state failure

2021-08-10 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

d example. Like the USA South Africa was a former British colony.
> >> And both countries had to struggle with racism in the past. But the
> >> development of democracy was different. The rise and fall of
> >> democracy is an interesting topic
> >> https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177465/the-decline
> >> -and-rise-of-democracy
> >>
> >> I wonder what the essential factor is: do immoral presidents cause
> >> the collapse of democracy in a country by undermining democratic
> institutions or is it the other way round: the economy (and therefore the
> country) is already broken and institutions are weak, which enables immoral
> authoritarian rulers to grab power? Or a combination of both?
> >>
> >> -J.
> >>
> >>
> >>  Original message 
> >> From: Pieter Steenekamp 
> >> Date: 8/8/21 20:26 (GMT+01:00)
> >> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> >> 
> >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Moral collapse and state failure
> >>
> >> Well, I'm from South Africa, and we have been close to moral collapse
> and IMO that could have led to our state failing.
> >>
> >> If you ask ten South Africans you'll get maybe twenty opinions, below
> is just my very brief view of what has been and what is happening in South
> Africa.
> >>
> >> South Africa became democratic in 1994 with Nelson Mandela the
> president. With him at the helm we had the moral high ground. His immediate
> successor Thabo Mbeki also did well. But between 2009 and 2017 Jacob Zuma
> was our president. He looted very seriously from the state and
> unfortunately under him many people in all state organisations started to
> also loot. The corruption became very deep. He is in jail now.
> >>
> >> We now have Cyril Ramaphosa as president and it's anybody's guess,
> >> but at least I'm very confident that Cyril is leading us again towards
> the moral high ground and away from state failure.
> >>
> >>
> >> On Sun, 8 Aug 2021 at 19:18, Jochen Fromm  j...@cas-group.net>> wrote:
> >>
> >> This paper from last year argues that moral collapse and state
> failure are linked. Would you agree?
> >>
> >> https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2020.568704/full
> >> <https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2020.568704/full>
> >>
> >> -J.
>
>
> --
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Moral collapse and state failure

2021-08-10 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Steve,

Thanks for your hopes for us in South Africa.

I try not to be judgemental, so I will just say that South Africa's "Right
Wing"'s world view differs radically from mine and in my opinion if their
ideas are implemented it would lead to disaster. Fortunately for us they
have negligible clout in society, we can safely just ignore them and move
on..

P

On Mon, 9 Aug 2021 at 18:33, Steve Smith  wrote:

> Pieter -
>
> > Your "The Wrong (formerly Right) Wing in the US"
> > reminds me of the quote by Larry Elder:
> > "Conservatives consider liberals well-intentioned, but misguided.
> > Liberals consider conservatives not only wrong, but really, really bad
> > people."
> This smells strongly of a Strawman characterization and I hear this from
> Right Wingers all the time.  It sounds like a bit of projection
> overlayed on "best defense is a good offense".
>
> My own erstwhile "Conservatism" was it's own style of misguided
> good-intentions.   For the most part, those I left behind there appear
> to be acting out of variations on "greed and fear" which doesn't make
> them really really bad people, but it doesn't bode well for them, nor
> those they effect.  This includes most of my and Mary's extended family
> and many friends, neighbors, and former colleagues (LANL).
>
> I hope, for your sake, that So. Africa's "Right Wing" is not as "Wrong
> Headed" as our own.
>
> - Steve
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Moral collapse and state failure

2021-08-09 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Steve,

Your "The Wrong (formerly Right) Wing in the US"
reminds me of the quote by Larry Elder:
"Conservatives consider liberals well-intentioned, but misguided. Liberals
consider conservatives not only wrong, but really, really bad people."

P

On Mon, 9 Aug 2021 at 06:06, Steve Smith  wrote:

> Jochen -
>
> Thanks for the original article reference.   It lead me to seek out and
> find another interesting /relevant introductory/survey article:
>
> Stability of Democracies:  A Complex Systems Perspective
> <https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6404/aaeb4d>
>
> In regards to your original question, my own biased intuition is that it
> is a vicious (rather than virtuous) cycle.   Our various corrupt leaders
> with notable presidents such as Harding (Teapot Dome), Nixon (Watergate++)
> and DJT-45 (Tax, Emoluments, Election, Sexual Misconduct, etc... many left
> to be exposed I suspect) definitely undermine the confidence in and
> commitment to our imperfect Democracy, driving it further away from any
> ideal it might aspire to.
>
> I personally wasted half of my voting life in reaction to Nixon and the
> next several cycles following.   Watching the shenanigans of 2000 and then
> 2016 and worse 2020, I expect there will be entire new generations as
> disaffected as I was.  It is hard to maintain a legitimate participatory
> Democracy with that level of disaffection and confusion.
>
> The Wrong (formerly Right) Wing in the US seems nearly dead-set on
> leveraging this to the extreme.   In hindsight, the rhetoric of the Wrong
> Wing has been playing at this for my entire adult life, but it is acutely
> worse this past 1-5 years.   From Trump's embrace of nearly every right
> wing dictator he could find to Tucker Carlson in Hungary this week, it
> seems to be happening entirely in plain sight!
>
> - Steve
>
>
> On 8/8/21 2:09 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>
> Good example. Like the USA South Africa was a former British colony. And
> both countries had to struggle with racism in the past. But the development
> of democracy was different. The rise and fall of democracy is an
> interesting topic
>
> https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177465/the-decline-and-rise-of-democracy
>
> I wonder what the essential factor is: do immoral presidents cause the
> collapse of democracy in a country by undermining democratic institutions
> or is it the other way round: the economy (and therefore the country) is
> already broken and institutions are weak, which enables immoral
> authoritarian rulers to grab power? Or a combination of both?
>
> -J.
>
>
>  Original message 
> From: Pieter Steenekamp 
> 
> Date: 8/8/21 20:26 (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Moral collapse and state failure
>
> Well, I'm from South Africa, and we have been close to moral collapse and
> IMO that could have led to our state failing.
>
> If you ask ten South Africans you'll get maybe twenty opinions, below is
> just my very brief view of what has been and what is happening in South
> Africa.
>
> South Africa became democratic in 1994 with Nelson Mandela the president.
> With him at the helm we had the moral high ground. His immediate successor
> Thabo Mbeki also did well. But between 2009 and 2017 Jacob Zuma was our
> president. He looted very seriously from the state and unfortunately under
> him many people in all state organisations started to also loot. The
> corruption became very deep. He is in jail now.
>
> We now have Cyril Ramaphosa as president and it's anybody's guess, but at
> least I'm very confident that Cyril is leading us again towards the moral
> high ground and away from state failure.
>
>
> On Sun, 8 Aug 2021 at 19:18, Jochen Fromm  wrote:
>
>> This paper from last year argues that moral collapse and state failure
>> are linked. Would you agree?
>> https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2020.568704/full
>>
>> -J.
>>
>>
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Re: [FRIAM] off-label technologies, exaptatiion and exponential technological growth.

Nick,

The last thing I wish to do is to give medical advice about your diabetes
or any medical condition because I just don't know enough to do that. But I
do want to share an experience I had with a condition that is also
associated with lifestyle: high blood pressure.

About 5 years ago I went to my GP with some minor condition. He took the
opportunity to check some other vitals, amongst others my blood pressure -
and high (sic) and behold it was high. He lectured me on the dangers and
gave me a prescription for chemicals to bring it down. I got the
prescription pills but it was as though my whole being just said NO, surely
this is wrong to take chemicals for a lifestyle associated disease?. I
decided to throw away the pills, researched high blood pressure, bought a
blood pressure monitor and changed my lifestyle and got it under control
without the chemicals. A year or so later we moved to a small coastal town
and I obviously had to change doctors. But then the covid hard lockdowns
happened and I was not careful to maintain my healthy lifestyle -  I gained
significant weight, exercised much less and the associated covid-induced
stress also did not help my blood pressure. After a while I checked my
blood pressure, and surprise, surprise, it went high again. I tried to get
back into the healthy lifestyle thing again but found it very
difficult, so I found a new local GP and asked him to treat my high
blood pressure. But after the second day on the chemicals, it was again as
though my whole being said NO, NO, NO. Again I threw away the chemicals,
upped my resolve to live healthy and I'm very proud to report that my blood
pressure is normal again without the use of chemicals.

I'm not against the mainstream medical indusdtry - they have their place
and can do a lot for many illnesses and medical conditions, But I refuse to
let go and abdicate my own wellness to somebody else. I take ownership of
my own body and manage it as I see it. When appropriate I do make use of
conventional doctors and ask their advice but at the end of the day I do as
I see fit and allow them to do with my body as I see fit.

P

On Sun, 8 Aug 2021 at 22:46,  wrote:

> Thanks, Pieter,
>
>
>
> As a 40 year late-onset, lean diabetic, my ears always perk up when I hear
> that it is avoidable.  It sure would be nice to avoid it.  As for obesity,
> I have known quite a few people to struggle with it and their metabolisms
> just seem to be mercilessly efficient.  In that connection, I wonder about
> brown fat, an organ for spilling excess calories.
>
>
>
> Anyway, Pieter, thanks for what you wrote.
>
>
>
> n
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Sunday, August 8, 2021 1:19 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] off-label technologies, exaptatiion and
> exponential technological growth.
>
>
>
> Nick,
>
> Thanks for the question.
>
> Before I start, just a clarification. I'm referring to diabetes type 2,
> which is strongly linked to lifestyle and not diabetes type1.
>
> 1. From the NIH article
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5741209/:
> " Obesity is a chronic metabolic disease affecting adults and children
> worldwide. It has become one of the leading causes of death, as obesity is
> known to be the main risk factor for a number of non-communicable diseases,
> in particular type 2 diabetes. This close relationship led to the
> connotation ‘diabesity’, highlighting the fact that the majority of
> individuals with diabetes are overweight or obese. Until today the BMI is
> still used to classify overweight and obesity. Since reduced muscle mass is
> highly prevalent throughout the BMI range, the measurement of body
> composition is strongly recommended. Moreover, it is essential for
> monitoring the course of weight reduction, which is part of every effective
> anti-obesity treatment. Weight reduction can be achieved via different
> weight loss strategies, including lifestyle intervention (diet and
> exercise), pharmacotherapy, or bariatric surgery. However, not all of these
> strategies are suitable for all patients, and any further needs should be
> considered. Besides, attention should also be drawn to concomitant
> therapies. These therapies may promote additional weight gain and further
> trigger the deterioration of blood glucose control. Thus, therapeutic
> strategies are warranted, which can be easily used for the management of
> obese patients with type 2 diabetes to achieve their glycemic and weight
> loss goals. "
>
> Just a comment before I go further, We all "know", as per the above, that
> die

Re: [FRIAM] off-label technologies, exaptatiion and exponential technological growth.

Prof David West, just confirming, I'm not speaking in absolutes.

My point is simply that for most of us you can significantly reduce future
health problems by following a healthy lifestyle. This is not limited to
but includes severe health problems if you are infected by the covid virus.

P

On Sun, 8 Aug 2021 at 19:15, Prof David West  wrote:

> Not Pieter, but ...
>
> Some small percentage of *Type II *diabetes is not
> preventable/controllable with diet and exercise.
>
> Similarly, of the 42% of the US population that is obese (9.2% morbidly
> obese), some small subset is not preventable/controllable with diet
> exercise. (My guess is less that 20-25%).
>
> I am pretty sure Pieter was not speaking in absolutes.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 8, 2021, at 8:46 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Pieter,
>
>
>
> I am interested in your assertion that metabolic disorders like diabetes
> and obesity are preventable.
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Sunday, August 8, 2021 5:16 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] off-label technologies, exaptatiion and
> exponential technological growth.
>
>
>
> The CDC reports that among 4,899,447 hospitalized adults in PHD-SR,
> 540,667 (11.0%) were patients with COVID-19, of whom 94.9% had at least 1
> underlying medical condition.
> https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2021/21_0123.htm.
>
>
> My reading of this is that it is mainly preventable conditions and my
> simple conclusion is that if you live healthy you are well protected
> against covid.
>
> My wife and I got a wake-up call with loved ones that died of covid. They
> were all obese. Our focus is now to live healthy. It not only gives
> additional protection against covid, but against many other causes of
> illness and poor quality of life too.
>
>
>
> On Sun, 8 Aug 2021 at 10:26, David Eric Smith  wrote:
>
> Hi Frank,
>
>
>
> Only because Marcus responded….
>
>
>
> This article
>
>
> https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/08/05/covid-19-vaccines-dont-really-work-as-hoped/
>
> Isn’t a good start.
>
>
>
> I didn’t read the whole thing, so I will confine my remarks to the title
> and second paragraph, relative to the reported data.
>
>
>
> 74% of people in the P-town outbreak had been vaccinated.  What does that
> tell us?  Very nearly nothing.  This is the like the textbook question
> given to any undergrad in statistics.  (And remember: “She’s an actuary!” —
> be ready to take her word for things.)
>
>
>
> There were, if I remember the number, 60k visitors to P-town.  How many of
> them were vaccinated?  Don’t have numbers on that.  Suppose 99.67% of them
> were, for the sake of making a point.  800 cases (rounded out).  600 among
> the vaccinated.  Suppose everyone in P-town was exposed (also not reported,
> I have no idea how many were).  At that rate, the number of infections
> among the vaccinated would be 1%.  Sounds well within the range of a
> vaccine that tests as 94% effective against infection.
>
>
>
> Suppose that only the state average of 64% were vaccinated and everyone
> was exposed.  Then the fraction infected becomes 1.5%.  Since P-town is a
> destination for the educated and rich, and known as a gay-friendly place so
> probably lefter than Mass as a whole, I would be very surprised if the vax
> fraction of the visitors were not above the state average.  Not least
> because they were going to a party.
>
>
>
> How many were unvaccinated among the 60k?  Again, not reported, presumably
> not something one is even allowed to ask about, and so probably impossible
> to know with precision and not easy to estimate.  But again to make a
> point, suppose the number of unvaccinated was 200 ppl.  Infections among
> the unvaxsed: 200.  Wow!  That would be 100% infectivity among the
> unvaccinated.
>
>
>
> Suppose the fraction actually vaxxed was 50/50 and everybody was exposed.
> Well, then, the vaccines were terrible; increased your chance of being
> infected by 50%.  But of course that would require that the unvaxsed were
> also only catching delta at <2%, which is improbable.  So presumably, if we
> knew the other numbers, we could guess at about what fraction of people
> actually had exposure.
>
>
>
> But then to use that, we need the correlation between degree of exposure
> and vaccination status, and who the hell knows even what the sign of that
> number would be?
>
>
>
> MY POINT (sorry to

Re: [FRIAM] Moral collapse and state failure

Well, I'm from South Africa, and we have been close to moral collapse and
IMO that could have led to our state failing.

If you ask ten South Africans you'll get maybe twenty opinions, below is
just my very brief view of what has been and what is happening in South
Africa.

South Africa became democratic in 1994 with Nelson Mandela the president.
With him at the helm we had the moral high ground. His immediate successor
Thabo Mbeki also did well. But between 2009 and 2017 Jacob Zuma was our
president. He looted very seriously from the state and unfortunately under
him many people in all state organisations started to also loot. The
corruption became very deep. He is in jail now.

We now have Cyril Ramaphosa as president and it's anybody's guess, but at
least I'm very confident that Cyril is leading us again towards the moral
high ground and away from state failure.

On Sun, 8 Aug 2021 at 19:18, Jochen Fromm  wrote:

> This paper from last year argues that moral collapse and state failure are
> linked. Would you agree?
> https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2020.568704/full
>
> -J.
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] off-label technologies, exaptatiion and exponential technological growth.

Nick,

Thanks for the question.

Before I start, just a clarification. I'm referring to diabetes type 2,
which is strongly linked to lifestyle and not diabetes type1.

1. From the NIH article
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5741209/:
" Obesity is a chronic metabolic disease affecting adults and children
worldwide. It has become one of the leading causes of death, as obesity is
known to be the main risk factor for a number of non-communicable diseases,
in particular type 2 diabetes. This close relationship led to the
connotation ‘diabesity’, highlighting the fact that the majority of
individuals with diabetes are overweight or obese. Until today the BMI is
still used to classify overweight and obesity. Since reduced muscle mass is
highly prevalent throughout the BMI range, the measurement of body
composition is strongly recommended. Moreover, it is essential for
monitoring the course of weight reduction, which is part of every effective
anti-obesity treatment. Weight reduction can be achieved via different
weight loss strategies, including lifestyle intervention (diet and
exercise), pharmacotherapy, or bariatric surgery. However, not all of these
strategies are suitable for all patients, and any further needs should be
considered. Besides, attention should also be drawn to concomitant
therapies. These therapies may promote additional weight gain and further
trigger the deterioration of blood glucose control. Thus, therapeutic
strategies are warranted, which can be easily used for the management of
obese patients with type 2 diabetes to achieve their glycemic and weight
loss goals. "

Just a comment before I go further, We all "know", as per the above, that
diet and exercise lead to weight loss, but for some people (including
myself)  it's very difficult. I started to follow David Sinclair and as
part of his longevity recommendations he includes intermittent fasting. It
works wonders for both my wife and me.  I mention him briefly below, and
it's worthwhile to evaluate everything he says, but for now, because it's
more directly related to your question, I merely focus on intermittent
fasting.

2. I follow the work and recommendations of dr David Sinclair
https://sinclair.hms.harvard.edu/people/david-sinclair ,a Professor in the
Department of Genetics and co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for
Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School. IMO, if you are
interested in staying healthy for longer, it's worthwhile to lend him your
ears or read his book
https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/1501191977 .

3. I quote from an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about
Intermittent Fasting https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1905136 :
"We then present and discuss findings from preclinical studies and more
recent clinical studies that tested intermittent-fasting regimens in
healthy persons and in patients with metabolic disorders (obesity, insulin
resistance, hypertension, or a combination of these disorders). Finally, we
provide practical information on how intermittentfasting regimens can be
prescribed and implemented."

4. Finally, if you are really interested then you might want to listen to
dr Pradip Jamnadas' lecture on Fasting for Survival
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuOvn4UqznU
Dr. Pradip Jamnadas is the founder and medical director of Cardiovascular
Interventions and has practiced in Central Florida for over 31 years.
Widely recognized for his skill in interventional cardiology Dr. Jamnadas
has been awarded Orlando Top Doctor by Orlando Magazine consecutively for
over a decade.
He is on staff at AdventHealth Orlando, and teaches medical students as an
Assistant Clinical Professor at Florida State University, the University of
Central Florida College of Medicine, and residents in Florida Hospital’s
teaching programs.
Educated in England, at the University of London College Medical School
with internships in London and Kent, he completed his residency in internal
medicine at the University of Maryland and his cardiology fellowship at
Yale University. In addition he completed an interventional cardiology
fellowship at St. Luke’s Hospital in Milwaukee, WI.

P

On Sun, 8 Aug 2021 at 16:47,  wrote:

> Pieter,
>
>
>
> I am interested in your assertion that metabolic disorders like diabetes
> and obesity are preventable.
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Sunday, August 8, 2021 5:16 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] off-label technologies, exaptatiion and
> exponential technological growth.
>
>
>
> The CDC reports that among 4,899,447 hospitalized adults in PHD-SR,
> 540,667 (11.0%) were patients with COVID-

Re: [FRIAM] off-label technologies, exaptatiion and exponential technological growth.

The CDC reports that among 4,899,447 hospitalized adults in PHD-SR, 540,667
(11.0%) were patients with COVID-19, of whom 94.9% had at least 1
underlying medical condition.
https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2021/21_0123.htm.

My reading of this is that it is mainly preventable conditions and my
simple conclusion is that if you live healthy you are well protected
against covid.

My wife and I got a wake-up call with loved ones that died of covid. They
were all obese. Our focus is now to live healthy. It not only gives
additional protection against covid, but against many other causes of
illness and poor quality of life too.

On Sun, 8 Aug 2021 at 10:26, David Eric Smith  wrote:

> Hi Frank,
>
> Only because Marcus responded….
>
> This article
>
> https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/08/05/covid-19-vaccines-dont-really-work-as-hoped/
> Isn’t a good start.
>
> I didn’t read the whole thing, so I will confine my remarks to the title
> and second paragraph, relative to the reported data.
>
> 74% of people in the P-town outbreak had been vaccinated.  What does that
> tell us?  Very nearly nothing.  This is the like the textbook question
> given to any undergrad in statistics.  (And remember: “She’s an actuary!” —
> be ready to take her word for things.)
>
> There were, if I remember the number, 60k visitors to P-town.  How many of
> them were vaccinated?  Don’t have numbers on that.  Suppose 99.67% of them
> were, for the sake of making a point.  800 cases (rounded out).  600 among
> the vaccinated.  Suppose everyone in P-town was exposed (also not reported,
> I have no idea how many were).  At that rate, the number of infections
> among the vaccinated would be 1%.  Sounds well within the range of a
> vaccine that tests as 94% effective against infection.
>
> Suppose that only the state average of 64% were vaccinated and everyone
> was exposed.  Then the fraction infected becomes 1.5%.  Since P-town is a
> destination for the educated and rich, and known as a gay-friendly place so
> probably lefter than Mass as a whole, I would be very surprised if the vax
> fraction of the visitors were not above the state average.  Not least
> because they were going to a party.
>
> How many were unvaccinated among the 60k?  Again, not reported, presumably
> not something one is even allowed to ask about, and so probably impossible
> to know with precision and not easy to estimate.  But again to make a
> point, suppose the number of unvaccinated was 200 ppl.  Infections among
> the unvaxsed: 200.  Wow!  That would be 100% infectivity among the
> unvaccinated.
>
> Suppose the fraction actually vaxxed was 50/50 and everybody was exposed.
> Well, then, the vaccines were terrible; increased your chance of being
> infected by 50%.  But of course that would require that the unvaxsed were
> also only catching delta at <2%, which is improbable.  So presumably, if we
> knew the other numbers, we could guess at about what fraction of people
> actually had exposure.
>
> But then to use that, we need the correlation between degree of exposure
> and vaccination status, and who the hell knows even what the sign of that
> number would be?
>
> MY POINT (sorry to be so ugly all the time): we can find any
> interpretation you like, from completely anodyne to totally absurd, from
> within feasible ranges of other variables on which we have little or no
> information.
>
> How much drama does any of this warrant?
>
> Well, we were told that, what, 5 people landed in the hospital?  Out of
> 60k visitors plus locals.  Of whom 3 had preexisting problem conditions.
> No reports on whether the ones with problem conditions were vaxxed. Even in
> that tiny sample, we know nothing about correlation information that would
> change the direction of its implications qualitatively, from moving 1 or 2
> people between categories.
>
> One final thing: those positive cases are outcomes of tests.  I don’t
> recall seeing anything on how many were symptomatic.  Could be all of them,
> but in many of these cohorts that use any contact tracing, it is fewer.
> That’s PCR in the nose or throat.
>
> So really?  Is the title “the vaccines don’t work as believed on the delta
> variant” warranted?
>
> Speaking in slightly fuller sentences, what did we “expect” from
> experience with vaccines up to now? The vaccines enable the learning phase
> of immunity to be done and stored, so that one may or may not have
> antibodies in any given quantity (variable across people and probably
> usually degrades with time; six month numbers being given a a guess at a
> time frame, with considerable imprecision), but one does have whatever
> genetic memory there is to activate antibody-producing cells quickly.  That
> has been reported for about 1/2 year in dribs and drabs, and the variance
> in the results gives us an idea of roughly how much uncertainty we should
> have.
>
> So virus establishes a beachhead in the nose and throat, and rather than
> taking a week and a half to figure out an

Re: [FRIAM] Bike is the slow death of the planet

2021-08-07 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Nick,

Having to choose between modern technology and what's good for the
environment is a false dichotomy. There are societies, like Denmark, with a
clear direction towards a good balance between the tension between the
modern industrial world and the environment.

Let me quote one of the replies on the social media where I got my original
bike quote from:

" Denmark is known as the city of bicycles and their economy is great! And
there are sales of bikes continually as a way of life generating big
streams of revenue and tax, bike lanes made and maintained giving
employment, basket equipment made for bikes for shopping and carrying
parcels... so they definitely do contribute to a great economy. They buy
lots of juice to drink when cycling as well as licences. The repair market
to bikes is also thriving as are the carriages and baskets that are
attached to the bikes. I think bikes are great!!  "

Pieter



On Sat, 7 Aug 2021 at 17:01,  wrote:

> Pieter,
>
>
>
> So, unpack this a little.  Take it beyond irony.  See this piece that I
> am constantly flogging on friam.   Am I flogging a dead horse or am I
> flogging you WITH a dead horse.
> <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238356686_A_Utopian_perspective_on_ecology_and_development>
>
>
>
> I ask this, as I am unwrapping a package of razor blades from amazon.
> Retail cost 8 bucks; delivered to me, in my hand,  in under 24 hours, for
> 5, saving ME an hour of travel, a gallon of gasoline, 5 minutes of
> chit-chat with the gormless clerk at CVS,  and three dollars.  Do we
> applaud Amazon or do we boycott it?
>
>
>
> Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Saturday, August 7, 2021 5:17 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Bike is the slow death of the planet
>
>
>
> I don't know who wrote this originally, I got it on social media:
>
> "Bike is the slow death of the planet ".
> A banker made economists think this when he said: ′′ A cyclist is a
> disaster for the country's economy: he doesn't buy cars or borrow money to
> buy. He doesn't pay insurance policies Doesn't buy fuel, doesn't pay to
> take the car to revision and repairs needed. Does not use paid parking. It
> doesn't cause major accidents. Does not require multi lane highways. He
> doesn't become obese
> Healthy people are not necessary or useful to the economy. They don't buy
> medicine. They don't go to hospitals or doctors. They add nothing to the
> country's GDP.
> On the contrary, each new McDonald's store creates at least 30 jobs,
> actually 10 cardiologists, 10 dentists, 10 diet experts and nutritionists,
> obviously as well as the people who work in the store itself ".
>
> Choose carefully: a bike or a Mc Donald? Worth thinking about
>
> PS: walking is even worse. Pedestrians don't even buy a bike!
> -  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
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[FRIAM] Bike is the slow death of the planet

2021-08-07 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

I don't know who wrote this originally, I got it on social media:

"Bike is the slow death of the planet ".
A banker made economists think this when he said: ′′ A cyclist is a
disaster for the country's economy: he doesn't buy cars or borrow money to
buy. He doesn't pay insurance policies Doesn't buy fuel, doesn't pay to
take the car to revision and repairs needed. Does not use paid parking. It
doesn't cause major accidents. Does not require multi lane highways. He
doesn't become obese
Healthy people are not necessary or useful to the economy. They don't buy
medicine. They don't go to hospitals or doctors. They add nothing to the
country's GDP.
On the contrary, each new McDonald's store creates at least 30 jobs,
actually 10 cardiologists, 10 dentists, 10 diet experts and nutritionists,
obviously as well as the people who work in the store itself ".

Choose carefully: a bike or a Mc Donald? Worth thinking about

PS: walking is even worse. Pedestrians don't even buy a bike!
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Re: [FRIAM] for our psychonauts

2021-08-06 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

I haven't heard of Sasha Chapin so I did a millisecond's worth of research
on him. Is he the kind of guy that is known to tell stories?
I found out that he's a fan of Jordan Peterson.
https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/the-jordan-peterson-we-deserve-or
My conclusion (tongue in cheek): you can't believe anything he says.

On Fri, 6 Aug 2021 at 18:18, Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> Don't forget about Mars!
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> Sent: Friday, August 6, 2021 8:24 AM
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <
> friam@redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] for our psychonauts
>
> Reminds me of that period in which people were desperately looking for
> something to do with nuclear explosives other than kill one another. Like:
> "Let's blow a new hole in the Isthmus of Panama!"  Project Plowshares, it
> was called.
>
> Nick Thompson
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
> Sent: Friday, August 6, 2021 10:57 AM
> To: FriAM 
> Subject: [FRIAM] for our psychonauts
>
>
> What Should We Make Of Sasha Chapin's Claim That Taking LSD Restored His
> Sense Of Smell After COVID?
> https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-should-we-make-of-sasha-chapins
>
> I haven't read it, yet. I'm hoping posting it here will remind me to
> actually read it.
>
> --
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Can current AI beat humans at doing science?

2021-07-21 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Prof Dave West,

There is something different happening with the current generation of AI
compared to the previous generation. The AI generation of Alan Newell @
Herb Simon, and I also want to include Big Blue that beat Gary Kasparov at
chess was just encoding human intelligence and making it much faster. The
AI did not contribute any novel concepts to the algorithm, the humans did
that.

The current neural network based AI does add novelty to the solution. It
learns and gains insight from the data in ways that humans can not.

Take AlphaFold for example, humans do not understand how to predict the
folding of a protein by analyzing the amino acid sequence; it's beyond
human understanding to do that. It's like AlphaFold looked at the 10
odd known examples of amino acid sequences and the resulting folded protein
structure and say - it's easy, you just look at this, then that, and the
resulting folded protein is this. Even comprehending what AlphFold is
saying is beyond human understanding - it's there to look at, it's in the
weights of the gain and biases of the many connections of the artificial
neural network, but humans can just not interpret it.

For a human to understand AlphaFold's reasoning to solve the protein
folding problem is like expecting a 2 year old child to understand quantum
mechanics. Or like me to understand my wife's mind.

AI does not have general intelligence, maybe it will never happen. But I
think it's safe to say that in some narrow fields, like in the protein
folding problem, AI is certainly more intelligent than humans. The
important issue is that there is evidence that AI does add novelty to the
solution.

Pieter

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 22:46, Prof David West  wrote:

> Thirty something years ago, Alan Newell walked into his classroom and
> announced, "over Christmas break, Herb Simon and I created an artificial
> intelligence." He was referring to the program Bacon, which fed with the
> same dataset as the human deduced the same set of "laws." It even deduced a
> couple of minor ones that Bacon missed (or, at least, did not publish).
>
> Simon and Newell tried to publish a paper with Bacon as author, but were
> rejected.
>
> AlphaFold (which I think is based on a program Google announced but has
> yet to publish in a "proper" journal) is, to me, akin to Bacon, in that it
> is not "doing science," but is merely a tool that resolves a very specific
> scientific problem and the use of that tool will facilitate humans who
> actually do the science.
>
> I will change my mind when the journals of record publish a paper authored
> by AlphaFold (or kin) as author and that paper at least posits a credible
> theory or partial theory that transcends "here is the fold of the xyz
> sequence to address why that fold is 'necessary' or 'useful'.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 20, 2021, at 1:12 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
>
> A year or so ago, Deepmind's AlphGo defeated the then world Go-champion
> Lee Sedol at a time when leading Ai researchers predicted it will be at
> least 10 years before AI can reach that level. But the valid question then
> was - why so excited? It's just a game. There is an interesting documentary
> on youtube about this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y
>
> What's happening now is that AI makes scientific discoveries beyond human
> ability.
>
> Is anybody worried where it will end?
>
> I quote from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03819-2
> Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold
> Proteins are essential to life, and understanding their structure can
> facilitate a mechanistic understanding of their function. Through an
> enormous experimental effort1–4, the structures of around 100,000 unique
> proteins have been determined5, but this represents a small fraction of the
> billions of known protein sequences6,7. Structural coverage is bottlenecked
> by the months to years of painstaking effort required to determine a single
> protein structure. Accurate computational approaches are needed to address
> this gap and to enable large-scale structural bioinformatics. Predicting
> the 3-D structure that a protein will adopt based solely on its amino acid
> sequence, the structure prediction component of the ‘protein folding
> problem’8, has been an important open research problem for more than 50
> years9. Despite recent progress10–14, existing methods fall far short of
> atomic accuracy, especially when no homologous structure is available. Here
> we provide the first computational method that can regularly predict
> protein structures with atomic accuracy even where no similar structure is
> known. We validated an entirely redesigned version of our neural
> network-based model, AlphaFold, in the challenging 14th Critic

[FRIAM] Can current AI beat humans at doing science?

2021-07-20 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

A year or so ago, Deepmind's AlphGo defeated the then world Go-champion Lee
Sedol at a time when leading Ai researchers predicted it will be at least
10 years before AI can reach that level. But the valid question then was -
why so excited? It's just a game. There is an interesting documentary on
youtube about this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y

What's happening now is that AI makes scientific discoveries beyond human
ability.

Is anybody worried where it will end?

I quote from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03819-2
Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold
Proteins are essential to life, and understanding their structure can
facilitate a mechanistic understanding of their function. Through an
enormous experimental effort1–4, the structures of around 100,000 unique
proteins have been determined5, but this represents a small fraction of the
billions of known protein sequences6,7. Structural coverage is bottlenecked
by the months to years of painstaking effort required to determine a single
protein structure. Accurate computational approaches are needed to address
this gap and to enable large-scale structural bioinformatics. Predicting
the 3-D structure that a protein will adopt based solely on its amino acid
sequence, the structure prediction component of the ‘protein folding
problem’8, has been an important open research problem for more than 50
years9. Despite recent progress10–14, existing methods fall far short of
atomic accuracy, especially when no homologous structure is available. Here
we provide the first computational method that can regularly predict
protein structures with atomic accuracy even where no similar structure is
known. We validated an entirely redesigned version of our neural
network-based model, AlphaFold, in the challenging 14th Critical Assessment
of protein Structure Prediction (CASP14)15, demonstrating accuracy
competitive with experiment in a majority of cases and greatly
outperforming other methods. Underpinning the latest version of AlphaFold
is a novel machine learning approach that incorporates physical and
biological knowledge about protein structure, leveraging multi-sequence
alignments, into the design of the deep learning algorithm.
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Re: [FRIAM] Collective sensemaking

2021-07-20 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

To somewhat reflect on an exercise like this; it obviously depends on your
understanding of what is "false". A postmodern point of view emphasizes the
importance of perspective, there is no absolute ground truth. If you view
the world from this perspective, then obviously an exercise like this is
meaningless. On the other hand, modernists argue there is a ground truth
and an exercise like this can help to get to the ground truth. (I admit I
don't really know what is postmodernism and modernism, that's my
understanding and I'm open to learn if someone more knowledgeable corrects
me)

Personally, I don't really know where to draw the line. There are obviously
issues where the truth is subjective, but I do think there's enough
validity in an objective ground truth to experiment with an exercise like
this. Take the example from the very first "valid" falsification - Malone
claimed a treatment cost for Remdsivir is approximately $6-$8k and the
submission was made that this is false, it is only about $3k. Malone was
wrong, there's no subjectivity involved, he made an objectively
measurable false claim.

Again, I like to withold my final verdict on the process till it's
completed and we can study the results, but the openness and transparency
of the process enthuses me. Of course, there could be practical reasons why
it does not deliver what's expected?

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 19:41, uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:

> But, for what it's worth, reading the current state of the spreadsheet,
> Jocelynn clearly thinks more like I do. Paul, in my opinion, doesn't
> understand how to evaluate the claims. Max is in the middle, perhaps taking
> too much of a myopic, literalist perspective on falsification.
>
>
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nEsf6l_dEv_NQqLvoHYP-eRZ0UmZGqo16uSHub53h9Q/edit#gid=31863150
>
> As expected, this Ground Truth Challenge is mostly a waste of time. And
> I'm sure Bret *loves* the attention. But to the extent it gets people
> talking at least somewhat dispassionately about composition and narrative,
> maybe it'll be slightly helpful.
>
> So far, 5 of the counterclaims are scored as "valid". I.e. One of
> Weinstein, Kory, or Malone made a blatantly false statement. But the devil
> is always in the details.
>
>
> On 7/20/21 8:16 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
> > No. Trust is a bug, not a feature in this context. Now, *if* the
> referees come back with a nuanced evaluation of any of the objections, then
> I would be impressed. One of the reasons most philosophers and scientists
> don't respond well to falsificationism is because it can be myopically
> taken out of context (which I think this Ground Truth effort does as well).
> Theories are never actually falsified, per se. It's a mix of testing and
> iteration, mixing and matching from old theories and tiny incremental
> progress.
> >
> > The same would be true of the evaluations from the referees. It's not a
> matter of trust, argument from authority. It's a matter of good faith
> mechanistic explanation ... something Weinstein fails at continually. Irony
> is broken, here. Weinstein wants us to see him as democratizing,
> anti-censorship, blahblah. But he never seems to deliver the contextual
> nuance required for it. His appeals to emotion, anecdote, special pleading,
> and a variety of other fallacies obstruct democracy.
> >
> > This is where, despite my misgivings, someone like Joe Rogan is WAY more
> informative and defensible. Another fundamental pillar of Popperianism is
> *openness*, that untested hypotheses can enter the testing pipeline from
> anywhere. Rogan is open minded to a fault. (If your mind is too open, your
> brains will fall out.) Weinstein is *motivated* and pre-filters hypotheses,
> especially anything appearing "woke" or "mainstream". And that's just
> stupid.
> >
> >
> > On 7/19/21 8:58 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> >> Am I correct in asserting that the gist of what you guys say about this
> ground truth exercise is that if you don't trust the referees you can't
> trust the result? If yes, I'll agree with you on that point.
> >
>
> --
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Collective sensemaking

2021-07-19 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

i/Fallacy_of_composition
>
> which should concern anyone interested in obscure gen-phen mapping. Let's
> just assume the referees involved will find against all the unrejected
> objections to isolated claims made by BW. Does that, then, imply that BW is
> not "promoting quackery"?
>
> As a fan of conspiracy theories like Jack Parsons being an occult
> practitioner, the Deep Hot Biosphere, Evolution Without Selection, etc.,
> it's difficult NOT to notice how conspiracy peddlers like BW effectively
> use factoids and then rely on their audience to "fill in the gaps". This is
> the essence of Lakoff's diagnosis of Trump's ... uh ... performance art
> rallies. It's the essence of how leaders like Charles Manson persuade their
> followers to, say, murder people, without ever explicitly ordering them to
> do so.
>
> As I've alluded before, the fallacy of composition is particularly lethal
> to narrativity ... just because the factoids are, in isolation, "true",
> doesn't mean the narrative they serve is "true". What we desperately need
> is a calculus by which to demonstrate how/when/why systemic properties
> reduce and when they don't. And we don't even need culture war fetishes
> like ivermectin or critical race theory to discuss it. We can retreat to
> safe territory like physics and math. >8^D
>
>
> On 7/17/21 10:16 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
>
> I'm a big fan of but some members of this group have been highly
> critical of Bret Weinstein in previous emails. I'll be monitoring the
> exercise described below where the integrity of Bret Weinstein will be
> scrutinized.
>
> Background
> The online magazine Quilette published an article
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fquillette.com%2f2021%2f07%2f06%2flooking-for-covid-19-miracle-drugs-we-already-have-them-theyre-called-vaccines%2f=E,1,Jy6cC_XpQiIbm8e4pYMva0efNyTmgqanDxTUB8cpbnkS2rSxAyp02FGF1lqzJPIUkafQeJ5yK9y_PUmuPCWmJtgzbxBllnzmxO-CCQ4LwEmzkm37VHvm=1
> <
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fquillette.com%2f2021%2f07%2f06%2flooking-for-covid-19-miracle-drugs-we-already-have-them-theyre-called-vaccines%2f=E,1,G1dxtRFLasu1wmdQaQubJE17NUG2NOGaF-qQfHpN9oAYdg9xaHt_xsc8da2xv06eCM3sf4xXSmwQ1ytW0GMp1fQHTEsCTXwNffWXk4GveEjTQ11uW7VAWCDCWA,,=1>
> highly critical of Bret Weinstein and his guests.
>
> Now, supporters of Bret decided to challenge the article and are launching
> a $10k "Ground truth challenge".
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.betterskeptics.com%2flaunching-the-10k-ground-truth-challenge%2f=E,1,TWt3NADFGWKReb829jbamrThxBZmne5j28ERcAuQPgEts2r-LPlqV1IFgqYHmw3_XWKlL1MdJSreN59_Z-cUapaWM0gLayJor4AdoMv2EUrBWCXvqDk10LT7UA,,=1
> <
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.betterskeptics.com%2flaunching-the-10k-ground-truth-challenge%2f=E,1,7-OR4-16G0ioUO3G_-8NQ_E5oUEjuolC6e7-otXUgJdx5miZ1Y9SJLHke3R_eCjHN_dgZkGyVxM7BLFxbvT7BXnA8TNWcqygsmiwWBNxrGasF25t757yAA,,=1
> >
>
>
>
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> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
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Re: [FRIAM] why, me, o lord?!

2021-07-18 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

I would definitely be worried if one of my PC's cores is at 95 degC. I
would turn the machine off for 30 minutes at least

On Sun, 18 Jul 2021 at 21:57,  wrote:

> Thank you,  One of the cores is at 95 degrees C; I can hear the fan
> whirring.  No other noises just at the moment.
>
>
>
> Time to turn the machine off and walk away?
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Sarbajit Roy
> *Sent:* Sunday, July 18, 2021 12:50 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] why, me, o lord?!
>
>
>
> HWMONITOR to monitor the CPU
> https://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/hwmonitor_1.44.exe
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 9:24 PM  wrote:
>
> Thanks everybody.  Right now all is quiet.  Last night, it was making
> noises like a saw-whet owl that has slammed his talons in a car door.  I
> will pay close attention to the heating issue.  So far the machine is
> barely warm to the touch.  I have them on a three year, come-to-my-door
> warrantee, so I aint buying no new machine in the near future.
>
>
>
> 7 inches of rain in July and counting.
>
>
>
> Carl, it was particularly good to hear from you.  Two gifts you have given
> me forever are “steaming dog vomit” and “imagine a spherical cow”.  Surely
> you have more of that sort of stuff in you.  Don’t be a stranger.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
> *Sent:* Sunday, July 18, 2021 8:54 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] why, me, o lord?!
>
>
>
> I took my Lenovo laptop running Ubuntu Linux to Best Buy because it
> wouldn't accept the 20 character disk encryption password that had
> previously worked.  I thought it might be a good time to convert it to
> Windows 10 which would give the house more flexibility.  I further thought
> this would be a matter of wiping the hard drive and installing W10.  All
> the data I care about are in the cloud. The Geek Squad receptionist said he
> didn't know anything about Linux and that he would ask a "tech".  Sounds
> like "let me talk to my manager."  The conclusion was the hardware is too
> old to support W10 so why don't I just buy a new laptop which might be a
> less expensive option.  It has an Intel I7 processor.
>
>
>
> I decided to take it to Marcos who wiped the disk and installed a new
> version of Ubuntu.  I took it home and installed Zoom.  For all other
> purposes accessing applications via the browser should work.  I might have
> to install Steam so Matthew can play games with his international friends.
>
>
>
> But the consensus is that yours is a fan problem.  The only relevance of
> my experience is to resist buying a new computer unless there is no other
> less costly option.  Good luck, Nick.
>
>
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 11:31 PM Pieter Steenekamp <
> piet...@randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
>
> I agree with Carl that it's most probably fan problems and that could lead
> to overheating.
>
> You obviously need to get it serviced. In the meantime I recommend you
> search for how to measure the temperature of the CPU and then monitor it. I
> guess that while the temperature is not too high you would have some
> breathing space while waiting to have it serviced. I tinker with Raspberry
> Pis that don't not come standard with any cooling so I monitor the CPU
> temperatures, but that's in Linux so I don't think sharing what I do would
> help you.
>
> I'm sure you don't need to be reminded to ensure that all your important
> data is securely backed up
>
>
>
> On Sun, 18 Jul 2021 at 06:49,  wrote:
>
> Anybody,
>
>
>
> My Lenovo laptop has started making the oddest array of noises.  It
> started with clunks and chunks and churrs but has now moved on to peeps and
> whistles.  It’s latest production is a dying swan noise … a squeal, that
> descends in halftones and intensity followed by a scary silence… for a
> bit.
>
>
>
> Lenovo customer service seems to be “upgrading its systems” and has not
> responded for three days.  Much as the noises sound like a dying mechanical
> hard drive,  this machine has a solid state hard drive.  Any thoughts?  The
> machine seems to be working fine otherwise, but

Re: [FRIAM] why, me, o lord?!

2021-07-17 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

I agree with Carl that it's most probably fan problems and that could lead
to overheating.

You obviously need to get it serviced. In the meantime I recommend you
search for how to measure the temperature of the CPU and then monitor it. I
guess that while the temperature is not too high you would have some
breathing space while waiting to have it serviced. I tinker with Raspberry
Pis that don't not come standard with any cooling so I monitor the CPU
temperatures, but that's in Linux so I don't think sharing what I do would
help you.

I'm sure you don't need to be reminded to ensure that all your important
data is securely backed up

On Sun, 18 Jul 2021 at 06:49,  wrote:

> Anybody,
>
>
>
> My Lenovo laptop has started making the oddest array of noises.  It
> started with clunks and chunks and churrs but has now moved on to peeps and
> whistles.  It’s latest production is a dying swan noise … a squeal, that
> descends in halftones and intensity followed by a scary silence… for a
> bit.
>
>
>
> Lenovo customer service seems to be “upgrading its systems” and has not
> responded for three days.  Much as the noises sound like a dying mechanical
> hard drive,  this machine has a solid state hard drive.  Any thoughts?  The
> machine seems to be working fine otherwise, but I am afraid it is going to
> shake itself to death.
>
>
>
> Sorry to bother you with this.
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
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>
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[FRIAM] Collective sensemaking

2021-07-17 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

I'm a big fan of but some members of this group have been highly
critical of Bret Weinstein in previous emails. I'll be monitoring the
exercise described below where the integrity of Bret Weinstein will be
scrutinized.

Background
The online magazine Quilette published an article
https://quillette.com/2021/07/06/looking-for-covid-19-miracle-drugs-we-already-have-them-theyre-called-vaccines/
highly critical of Bret Weinstein and his guests.

Now, supporters of Bret decided to challenge the article and are launching
a $10k "Ground truth challenge".
https://www.betterskeptics.com/launching-the-10k-ground-truth-challenge/

I quote:
"As listeners of the DarkHorse Podcast, we are well aware of the
seriousness of the claims being made by its hosts and guests. Like most, we
would prefer if those claims were not true. We read the Quillette piece
with interest, hoping to hear a counterpoint that gave us reason to think
things would turn out for the best. We were disappointed
to discover
that under basic scrutiny, the criticisms crumbled.

The pervasive view that the DarkHorse Podcast broadcasts misinformation,
paired with the inability to point to exactly what that misinformation
might be, leads us to wonder about what failure of sensemaking might be
taking place on either side of this debate. We believe we need 'better
skeptics', ones committed to calling out bad behavior, but also to offering
concrete evidence for scrutiny.

We decided to make this our first experiment in collective sensemaking:
Could an online community, aided by a purpose-built protocol, resolve the
question of factual veracity in the views expressed by Bret, Heather, and
their guests, on the topic of vaccines and ivermectin?
Unlike existing fact checkers, we recognize that in new and developing
situations, no-one can or should claim to hold the absolute truth.
Consequently instead of "verificationism", we're embracing Popper's
Falsification philosophy. We can't aspire to verify all claims out there,
but we can attempt to eliminate demonstrably bad statements by
falsification and in that process illuminate the voices that may be
pointing to truth."
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[FRIAM] How Do Neural Networks Grow Smarter?

2021-07-13 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv_JJ2ZuDJM






*"Neurobiologists and computer scientists are trying to discover how neural
networks become a brain. Will nature give us the answer, or is it all up to
an artificial intelligence to work it out?Join Peter Robin Hiesinger as he
explores if the biological brain is just messy hardware which scientists
can improve upon by running learning algorithms on computers.In this talk,
Robin will discuss these intertwining topics from both perspectives,
including the shared history of neurobiology and Artificial
Intelligence.Peter Robin Hiesinger is professor of neurobiology at the
Institute for Biology, Freie Universität Berlin."*
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Re: [FRIAM] Holochain technology

2021-07-08 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Some of you might have observed that I'm a big bitcoin fan. Now it is said
that Holochain is better than Blockchain. Maybe, in the light of new
information, it's now time for me to consider changing my mind?

From
https://blog.holochain.org/satoshi-nakamoto-and-the-fate-of-our-planet-2/ :
*"It's probably pretty clear that I think Holochain could replace
blockchain for a lot of the crypto applications we see today. As we've
seen, a well-designed Holochain app can deliver the same safety guarantees
as blockchain, with better performance, at zero cost, for a fraction of the
resource consumption."*

On Thu, 8 Jul 2021 at 05:48, Gary Schiltz 
wrote:

> I remember seeing a Smalltalk implementation that allows running code to
> be suspended, sent over the wire to another VM, and continue where it left
> off. It may have been Squeak, I’m not sure.
>
> On Wed, Jul 7, 2021 at 5:51 PM Marcus Daniels 
> wrote:
>
>> Yes, mobile code and distributed computing.  It is the way to give people
>> freedom!
>>
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Re: [FRIAM] for the optimists

2021-07-04 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

Interesting discussion between Lex Fridman and Sam Harris about the future
of AI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiQZHEtTGAU

At one point they were discussing possible future intelligent self driving
cars, I quote from the transcript of their discussion, Sam Harris speaking:
"Just imagine if some woke team of engineers decided that we have to tune
the algorithm some way, I mean there are situations where the car has to
decide who to hit, I mean there's just bad outcomes where you're going to
hit somebody right, now we have a car that can tell the what race you are
right, so where going to build the car to preferentially hit white people
because white people have had so much privilege over the years this seems
to be the only ethical way to redress those wrongs of the past, but that
could get produced as an artifact presumably of just how you built it and
you didn't even know you engineered it that way. You built a racist
algorithm and you didn't even intend to."

On Sun, 4 Jul 2021 at 08:58, Pieter Steenekamp 
wrote:

> “AI will be either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to
> humanity.”  –  Stephen Hawking
>
> On Sun, 4 Jul 2021 at 00:43, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
>
>> Nova had an episode on this recently.  It was really pretty interesting.
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
>> *Sent:* Saturday, July 3, 2021 2:42 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] for the optimists
>>
>>
>>
>> And by the way, I think flying cars would be a disaster — a three
>> dimensional traffic jam.
>>
>> With many deaths.  I used to fly airplanes regularly.  It's nontrivial
>> and I don't see how the capacity to be a car too makes it easier.
>>
>>
>>
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 3, 2021, 3:10 PM Barry MacKichan <
>> barry.mackic...@mackichan.com> wrote:
>>
>> I’m not prepared to weigh in on any long discussion, but my impression is
>> that the reason that the inventions after 1960 pale in comparison with them
>> before is that the low-hanging fruit that really makes life easier
>> (electricity, public health infrastructure like sewage treatment and clean
>> water, fast transportation) was all invented earlier.
>>
>> The invention of computers — aided by the space race and DARPA — made
>> some things easier, but the record there is ambiguous. My sense now is that
>> the changes now are driven by advertising and marketing. Google and
>> Facebook are in the advertising business, and it’s hard to claim that is an
>> improvement for the majority of people. Software used to be about building
>> enabling tools, but for the last 25 years it seems like a part of the
>> advertising industry.
>>
>> The OECD study may have be just correlation, not causation. See
>> https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations and, especially,
>> https://twitter.com/bioluisinho/status/1224404802693668864?lang=en
>>
>> —Barry
>>
>> And by the way, I think flying cars would be a disaster — a three
>> dimensional traffic jam.
>>
>> —Barry
>>
>> On 1 Jul 2021, at 12:43, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
>>
>> Your Book Review: Where's My Flying Car?
>> https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-wheres-my-flying
>>
>> Is the following claim made by the author of the book (Hall - seemingly
>> accepted by the author of the review) largely accurate? I ask because it's
>> a common liberal talking point that publicly funded R has resulted in the
>> majority of the tech we rely on in *modern* life. I'm terrible at history.
>>
>> Hall blames public funding for science. Not just for nanotech, but for
>> actually hurting progress in general. (I’ve never heard anyone before say
>> government-funded science was bad for science!) “[The] great innovations
>> that made the major quality-of-life improvements came largely before 1960:
>> refrigerators, freezers, vacuum cleaners, gas and electric stoves, and
>> washing machines; indoor plumbing, detergent, and deodorants; electric
>> lights; cars, trucks, and buses; tractors and combines; fertilizer; air
>> travel, containerized freight, the vacuum tube and the transistor; the
>> telegraph, telephone, phonograph, movies, radio, and television—and they
>> were all developed privately.” “A survey and analysis performed by the OECD
>> in 2005 found, to their surprise, that while private R had a positive
>

Re: [FRIAM] for the optimists

2021-07-04 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

“AI will be either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to
humanity.”  –  Stephen Hawking

On Sun, 4 Jul 2021 at 00:43, Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> Nova had an episode on this recently.  It was really pretty interesting.
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
> *Sent:* Saturday, July 3, 2021 2:42 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] for the optimists
>
>
>
> And by the way, I think flying cars would be a disaster — a three
> dimensional traffic jam.
>
> With many deaths.  I used to fly airplanes regularly.  It's nontrivial and
> I don't see how the capacity to be a car too makes it easier.
>
>
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 3, 2021, 3:10 PM Barry MacKichan <
> barry.mackic...@mackichan.com> wrote:
>
> I’m not prepared to weigh in on any long discussion, but my impression is
> that the reason that the inventions after 1960 pale in comparison with them
> before is that the low-hanging fruit that really makes life easier
> (electricity, public health infrastructure like sewage treatment and clean
> water, fast transportation) was all invented earlier.
>
> The invention of computers — aided by the space race and DARPA — made some
> things easier, but the record there is ambiguous. My sense now is that the
> changes now are driven by advertising and marketing. Google and Facebook
> are in the advertising business, and it’s hard to claim that is an
> improvement for the majority of people. Software used to be about building
> enabling tools, but for the last 25 years it seems like a part of the
> advertising industry.
>
> The OECD study may have be just correlation, not causation. See
> https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations and, especially,
> https://twitter.com/bioluisinho/status/1224404802693668864?lang=en
>
> —Barry
>
> And by the way, I think flying cars would be a disaster — a three
> dimensional traffic jam.
>
> —Barry
>
> On 1 Jul 2021, at 12:43, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
>
> Your Book Review: Where's My Flying Car?
> https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-wheres-my-flying
>
> Is the following claim made by the author of the book (Hall - seemingly
> accepted by the author of the review) largely accurate? I ask because it's
> a common liberal talking point that publicly funded R has resulted in the
> majority of the tech we rely on in *modern* life. I'm terrible at history.
>
> Hall blames public funding for science. Not just for nanotech, but for
> actually hurting progress in general. (I’ve never heard anyone before say
> government-funded science was bad for science!) “[The] great innovations
> that made the major quality-of-life improvements came largely before 1960:
> refrigerators, freezers, vacuum cleaners, gas and electric stoves, and
> washing machines; indoor plumbing, detergent, and deodorants; electric
> lights; cars, trucks, and buses; tractors and combines; fertilizer; air
> travel, containerized freight, the vacuum tube and the transistor; the
> telegraph, telephone, phonograph, movies, radio, and television—and they
> were all developed privately.” “A survey and analysis performed by the OECD
> in 2005 found, to their surprise, that while private R had a positive
> 0.26 correlation with economic growth, government funded R had a negative
> 0.37 correlation!” “Centralized funding of an intellectual elite makes it
> easier for cadres, cliques, and the politically skilled to gain control of
> a field, and they by their nature are resistant to new, outside,
> non-Ptolemaic ideas.” This is what happened to nanotech; there was a huge
> amount of buzz, culminating in $500 million dollars of funding under
> Clinton in 1990. This huge prize kicked off an academic civil war, and the
> fledgling field of nanotech lost hard to the more established field of
> material science. Material science rebranded as “nanotech”, trashed the
> reputation of actual nanotech (to make sure they won the competition for
> the grant money), and took all the funding for themselves. Nanotech never
> recovered.
>
> --
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
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> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>
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Re: [FRIAM] the synthetic spike, again

2021-07-02 Thread Pieter Steenekamp

So there are different opinions out there. Check!

On Fri, 2 Jul 2021 at 15:13, uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:

> COVID-19 Vaccine-Generated Spike Protein is Safe, Contrary to Viral Claims
>
> https://www.factcheck.org/2021/07/scicheck-covid-19-vaccine-generated-spike-protein-is-safe-contrary-to-viral-claims/
>
> "That’s because the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is a shape-shifter. To fuse
> its viral membrane with the host cell membrane it substantially changes its
> shape from an unstable pre-fusion state to a stable post-fusion state.
> While previously working on a vaccine for MERS, a disease caused by another
> coronavirus, McLellan and others discovered that by adding two proline
> molecules to the spike protein, they could lock it into its pre-fusion
> state, triggering a more effective immune response and preventing cell
> entry. The same harmless mutation, called 2P, as in two proline molecules,
> is used in the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.
>
> During a SARS-CoV-2 infection, the NIAID told us, the virus spike proteins
> can latch onto human cells, allowing the virus to infect them. With the
> live virus, the protein “attaches to receptors on the surface of cells and
> fuses the viral membrane with the host-cell membrane,” McLellan said.
>
> However, vaccine-generated spike proteins can’t do that fusion because
> they are locked in the pre-fusion shape."
>
> --
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
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>
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Re: [FRIAM] The Dream of Florida

Yochen, just a comment on your misgivings about Florida being Trump-country.

When I visited Miami the very first time many years ago, it was mainly
English-speaking Americans with minority Hispanics. Later it became sort of
50-50 and lately it's more like a Hispanic city with minority "traditional"
English speaking Americans. A significant portion of the Hispaninics are
from Cuba and they seem to loath communism and are attracted to the
Republican party.
All I'm saying is that the Repubilcan support in Miami specifically is
maybe not the stereotype Trump Maga people?

Maybe I'm wrong in my interpretation, if someone wants to correct me, I'm
open to learn more and change my mind about this. I certainly don't claim
to be an expert on American culture, I'm just sharing my personal
experience in Miami.

Pieter

On Thu, 1 Jul 2021 at 20:57, Pieter Steenekamp 
wrote:

> I couldn't agree more - Boston is my personal  favorite US city.
>
> Nothing against Harvard, it's okay, if you're there you obviously have to
> visit there, but personally I treasure many visits to MIT. I'm not an
> academic, but I really enjoyed my many visits to the MIT campus.
>
> But then, if you appreciate art, my wife and daughters would tell you not
> to miss the Isabella Stewarrt Gardner museum in Boston. It's not only the
> art, but the story of this "moderately rich" woman of a previous age.
>
> Just a story about New York. On one of our visits we stayed in an
> affordable hotel in Queens. The first evening there we ate at a pizza place
> nearby. My wife looked around and asked "where are the Americans?" We saw
> people that seemed to be from all over the world there. My son answered -
> Mom, these are the Americans!. New York is truly cosmopolitan!
>
> On Thu, 1 Jul 2021 at 20:06, Jochen Fromm  wrote:
>
>> Boston is not a bad idea. It is an old city which is the home of Harvard
>> and M.I.T., and certainly has a lot of museums and culture. It must have
>> bookshops and libraries. And apparently it has affordable hotels too, for
>> instance this one which looks nice
>> https://www.nantasketbeachresort.com
>>
>> -J.
>>
>>
>>  Original message 
>> From: Pieter Steenekamp 
>> Date: 7/1/21 10:12 (GMT+01:00)
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>>
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Dream of Florida
>>
>> I've spent about 8 months in total in the US on different trips both for
>> pleasure and work and visited a number of states.
>>
>> Every person is different, so I don't really want to give a
>> recommendation, but if parallel universes do exists and I could recommend
>> myself in another universe that has not been to the US, I would
>> recommend to do the East Coast, including maybe a subset (I would not
>> include too much for one visit) of Boston, New York, Washington and then
>> Kennedy Space Centre, Fort Lauderdale and Miami in Florida.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 1 Jul 2021 at 08:15, Jochen Fromm  wrote:
>>
>>> We are planning a vacation in the USA next year, if we are still healthy
>>> and do not lose our jobs. What do you think is the best sunshine state to
>>> relax, Florida or California? Or maybe New Mexico? The best time for
>>> Florida is probably spring or early summer before the hurricanes? Or is
>>> Florida in a crisis now too?
>>>
>>> https://slate.com/business/2021/06/miami-condo-collapse-florida-building-industry-crisis.html
>>>
>>> -J.
>>>
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>>>
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>>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] The Dream of Florida

I couldn't agree more - Boston is my personal  favorite US city.

Nothing against Harvard, it's okay, if you're there you obviously have to
visit there, but personally I treasure many visits to MIT. I'm not an
academic, but I really enjoyed my many visits to the MIT campus.

But then, if you appreciate art, my wife and daughters would tell you not
to miss the Isabella Stewarrt Gardner museum in Boston. It's not only the
art, but the story of this "moderately rich" woman of a previous age.

Just a story about New York. On one of our visits we stayed in an
affordable hotel in Queens. The first evening there we ate at a pizza place
nearby. My wife looked around and asked "where are the Americans?" We saw
people that seemed to be from all over the world there. My son answered -
Mom, these are the Americans!. New York is truly cosmopolitan!

On Thu, 1 Jul 2021 at 20:06, Jochen Fromm  wrote:

> Boston is not a bad idea. It is an old city which is the home of Harvard
> and M.I.T., and certainly has a lot of museums and culture. It must have
> bookshops and libraries. And apparently it has affordable hotels too, for
> instance this one which looks nice
> https://www.nantasketbeachresort.com
>
> -J.
>
>
>  Original message 
> From: Pieter Steenekamp 
> Date: 7/1/21 10:12 (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Dream of Florida
>
> I've spent about 8 months in total in the US on different trips both for
> pleasure and work and visited a number of states.
>
> Every person is different, so I don't really want to give a
> recommendation, but if parallel universes do exists and I could recommend
> myself in another universe that has not been to the US, I would
> recommend to do the East Coast, including maybe a subset (I would not
> include too much for one visit) of Boston, New York, Washington and then
> Kennedy Space Centre, Fort Lauderdale and Miami in Florida.
>
>
> On Thu, 1 Jul 2021 at 08:15, Jochen Fromm  wrote:
>
>> We are planning a vacation in the USA next year, if we are still healthy
>> and do not lose our jobs. What do you think is the best sunshine state to
>> relax, Florida or California? Or maybe New Mexico? The best time for
>> Florida is probably spring or early summer before the hurricanes? Or is
>> Florida in a crisis now too?
>>
>> https://slate.com/business/2021/06/miami-condo-collapse-florida-building-industry-crisis.html
>>
>> -J.
>>
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>>
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Re: [FRIAM] The Dream of Florida

Of course, of course of course!
If you're into swamping I guess there's no better place to visit than the
Everglades!

On Thu, 1 Jul 2021 at 18:49, uǝlƃ ☤>$  wrote:

> Dude, never underestimate the swamp. My mom's relatives, peri-Baton Rouge,
> exhibited deep culture and integration with the swamp. As my dad used to
> say "If you're bored, then you're boring."
>
>
> On 7/1/21 9:44 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> > A couple of things:
> >
> > a) My impression when we visited the Everglades, was that it's a swamp
> and the only living creatures there are mosquitos . But apparently I was
> wrong and there is much more to it:
> >
> http://www.nationalparkunits.com/everglades-national-park-is-more-than-a-swamp/
> <
> http://www.nationalparkunits.com/everglades-national-park-is-more-than-a-swamp/
> >
>
> --
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
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>
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Re: [FRIAM] The Dream of Florida