Re: [FRIAM] looking for a word

[Robert Wall]

Glen,

I believe what you are trying to achieve is what we used to call "face
validity."  To achieve accreditation among the domain experts, the model
had to appeal on an empathic level or it was toast. This was not easy to do
at the program level (DAG?) but easier to do a higher level of abstracted
modeling (organic level).  Beyond that, the model had to produce outcomes
(verification) that the model was not, say just overfitting the data.

So it seems you are saying that you are trying to convey an organic feel
from a mechanistic process. With Herny Markam's Blue Brain project, for
example, I think they were doing this same thing by starting with a digital
reconstruction of recognizable parts of a mouse brain's neocortex.
Analogously, I think, you are starting with a digital reconstruction of a
rat's liver lobules.

So the wordsmith challenge is to describe how the mechanistic structure
overlay one-for-one on to the organic structure.  I would think that this
relationship must be functional.  Not sure.

This understanding doesn't "answer the mail" for you but it might help with
the wordsmithing.

Robert

On Fri, Aug 17, 2018 at 4:28 PM uǝlƃ ☣  wrote:

> Interesting.  Robert's mention of "fractally-associative" was attractive
> to me and seems similar to your [dis]assortativity.  But I'm too ignorant
> (so far) to know whether that has any heuristic power.
>
> I now owe ~4 pints, but only have any confidence I'll have to pay up on 1.
> 8^)
>
> Here's the context.  In our *analogy* from our computational model of the
> liver to a referent liver, we use a directed graph (without degenerate
> cycles) to simulate the lobules in various livers (perfused rat, whole
> animal mouse, etc.).  In that graph, some of the "sinusoidal segments" feed
> into our "central vein".  But they do so in a computationally coherent way
> that is physically incoherent. It's a DAG.  The edges don't actually
> *conduct* the molecules.  It's a magical attachment.  One of my more
> biologically inclined colleagues was trying to analogize to the referent
> liver, which is much more ... "organic" ... whereas our analog is much more
> ... "schematic", if that makes any sense.  My colleague is attempting to
> point out the difference between an actual liver's complex "bed" of flowing
> integration versus our analog's engineered ... "managed" ... "magical" ...
> transference.
>
> Part of my motivation for posting this question, here, is that I'm
> pitching for us to implement a more "space-filling" lobule structure than
> that exhibited by our current DAG.  Although my colleague thinks I'm
> arguing against him, I'm actually trying to bolster his argument that, in
> order to build a *strong* structural analogy (and thereby a strong
> behavioral analogy), we might need a computational structure that is more
> analogous to the referent lobule.
>
> And part of my *rhetoric* requires a relatively catchy word/phrase to use
> to indicate our our current DAG is easily face-falsifiable.
>
>
> On 08/17/2018 01:37 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> > Glen -
> >
> > I haven't converged on precisely what you are looking for here...   but
> > am fascinated with the question.
> >
> > My best guess at the general area you are contemplating would involve
> > the graph theoretic idea of a "cluster" and/or imply something about
> > (dis)assortativity.I think maybe what you are talking about are
> > (collections of) nodes with high local clustering coefficients and I
> > *think* with high assortativity.  If I understand your question, Marcus'
> > suggestions, and the finer points of these graph measures, a typical
> > "hub" in the normal sense would have high disassortativity, or in
> > laymans terms, nodes with high degree would connect more to nodes with
> > low degree, etc.  while what you are looking for might be nodes with
> > (relatively) high degree *and*  high assortativity, or nodes that
> > connect to nodes of similar degree...
> >
> > I know this is far from providing "a word"...  but the resulting phrase
> > might be "an assortative cluster" or "a cluster with high assortativity"?
> >
> > Can you say anything more about the underlying system being modeled?
> > Are you trying to fit this to the known/observed structure or it's
> > function, or one implying the other?
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

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Re: [FRIAM] looking for a word

[Robert Wall]

Here's a paper  (2010) that describes
a hub attraction dynamical growth model (HADGM) that exhibits fractal and
probabilistic behavior for forming nodes in a complex network.

But you are looking for a descriptive word or phrase. Perhaps, "dynamic
growth models with fractally-associative (or nonassociative) hubs."  It
seems to have something to do with the behavior of forming nodes
(connections); so that seems to be the focus for your description. Not
sure, but would agree that fractile behavior seems at the root of what you
are trying to describe: some "hubbing" and "hubbing-resistance," so to
speak.

I like the amber Belgian beers ... 


On Fri, Aug 17, 2018 at 12:52 PM uǝlƃ ☣  wrote:

> Excellent!  I suppose the things I'm talking about would exhibit something
> like a persistent homology.  Of course, I'm looking for a word to describe
> a subset of those (the particular way something like a capillary bed
> branches out from the large blood vessels).  So, it would have to be a type
> of persistent homology.
>
> But the concept of "a filtration" is also evocative, both in its math and
> biological/physical meanings.  Much of what the tissue samplers are doing
> is counting/indexing objects and branches in an attempt to identify
> weirdness.
>
> On 08/17/2018 11:28 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > Persistent homology?
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

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Re: [FRIAM] Subject: Re: Friam Digest, Vol 180, Issue 3

[Robert Wall]

> It seems silly to say that one would democratize elite bicycle racing.


This reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's satirical and dystopian science-fiction
short story *Harrison Bergeron
* (1961).    Full text
 (20 pages).

Remember that Oracle acquired MySQL.  It is now a free product (likely with
no meaningful updates, not sure) but with an option to upgrade to supported
Oracle extensions at a premium.  Hopefully, PostgreSQL, which can compete
with Oracle, will remain open.   ESRI accommodates PostgreSQL for
geodatabases. I always appreciated that along with their replacing Visual
Basic scripting with Python.  Anywho ...

On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 10:52 AM, Marcus Daniels 
wrote:

> Glen writes:
>
> "This reminded me of my (postmodern) criticism of open source (in spite of
> any of my advocacy of it), that open source *can* be exploited by an elite
> set of people who are elite by their capability to know how to read, use,
> and think about code, or design google queries, or SEO. It's only
> "democratization" IF the skills and resources to use it are available to
> everyone."
>
> How about bicycle racing.   Not everyone can achieve > 80 ml/kg/min VO2
> max, but a few people can.These are biologically gifted people, and
> then they train like hell too, and/or sometimes use performance enhancing
> drugs.   There are some people that can train like hell but always be
> beaten by someone than trains as hard or less.  They just don't have it.
>
> Open source as a meritocracy is attractive to its adherents because it
> selects for individuals that succeed in developing a particular kind of
> sustained intellectual productivity, based on nothing else but the fact
> that they do.You can't just go through a particular training procedure
> and come out a productive peer in this community.  It doesn't matter if you
> are born a citizen of a hypothetical Code Nation.People from all over
> the world end-up being recruited to major tech firms who can see the value
> of their work, and not just the bullet points on a resume.
>
> It seems silly to say that one would democratize elite bicycle racing.
>
> Marcus
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

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Re: [FRIAM] Oh, Gawd!

[Robert Wall]

Why not just rebuild it?  I'd be willing to help. sounds like a very noble
cause ...

On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 4:58 PM, Gary Schiltz 
wrote:

> There are many options, open source and commercial. I’ve used
> http://ricks-apps.com/osx/sitesucker/index.html on macOS, but haven’t
> tried it on the way back machine.
>
> On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 6:11 PM Roger Critchlow  wrote:
>
>> Ah, 2010
>>
>>   https://web.archive.org/web/20100602025557/http://cusf.org
>>
>> Just run a recursive wget on that url, though that may not work because
>> the referenced urls on the page all point to cusf.jigsy.com, so they
>> will be archived under that url.
>>
>> Ah, 2011
>>
>>   https://web.archive.org/web/20110816091744/http://cusf.jigsy.com
>>
>> so run the recursive wget on that url and see what you get.
>>
>> You get the web.archive.org robots.txt and the cusf.org home page with
>> references to cusf.jigsy.com rewritten to reference the web.archive.org
>> copies.
>>
>> More searching reveals an open source ruby gem (
>> https://github.com/hartator/wayback_machine_downloader) and
>> http://waybackdownloader.com/ which will do the job  for a price.
>>
>> Here is the homepage in a google doc https://docs.google.com/
>> document/d/1qBwdaV2i5_IW5jAqdRfRGg66R8FA0pafCY8lH8Ru8e4/edit?usp=sharing
>>
>> -- rec --
>>
>> -- rec --
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 1:58 PM, Roger Critchlow  wrote:
>>
>>> Yes, the earliest archives are for Credit Unions of South Florida, the
>>> latest archives are for CU Schools Foundation, haven't found one that is
>>> the City University of Santa Fe.  Are you sure this was the URL?
>>>
>>> -- rec --
>>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 1:25 PM, Bob Ballance  wrote:
>>>
 In what time frame was the site active?

 . . . Bob

 On Feb 11, 2018, at 12:27 PM, Merle Lefkoff 
 wrote:

 If someone can find the Way Back Machine and recovers Nick's valuable
 web site, I would very much like to know about that.  My Center is partners
 with a Swedish team working on a project with the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala
 called "Timeless Knowledge."  I'm interested in appropriate technologies in
 addition to systems science  that I can bring to this project before I go
 to India.  At the very least--what a great metaphor!!

 On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 12:11 PM, Nick Thompson <
 nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote:

> Here I am asking for your help, again.
>
>
>
> *EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:* Does anybody know of an easy way to recover a
> defunct website, for the City University of Santa Fe, cusf.org, from
> the WayBackMachine?
>
>
>
> *SUPPORTING BLATHER:   *
>
>
>
> As the members of the Mother Church know, The Santa Fe University of
> Art and Design is collapsing (https://retakeourdemocracy.
> org/2018/02/11/santa-fe-launches-sf-university-of-art-
> design-community-input-roundhouse-update-hb-325-chaco-more/ )and
> leaving behind a white elephant of a campus for the City to develop as it
> sees fit;.  It includes a stunning, state-of-the-art, theatre.  There is a
> process in progress, running over the next few months, to engage the 
> public
> in development planning.
>
>
>
> I have always felt that Santa Fe ought to be a University town.  It
> has great coffee shops, zillions of retired professors, art galleries and
> performance spaces galore, and a plethora of Institutes and other
> intellectual organizations which are post graduate institutes in all but
> name.  The last time this happened, I was young and idealistic (only 70)
> and I set about chartering an institution I called the City University of
> Santa Fe, a membership organization whose job it would be to support the
> transition of the old  College of Santa Fe to a full-fledged University 
> and
> to use the retired faculty in Santa Fe as a bridging faculty.  We had a 
> web
> page, we ran some seminars, it was fun.  In the end, Laureate Industries
> took over the campus, and it looked like CUSF was unnecessary.  But here 
> we
> are again, and I would like to be able to pass on the charter and the
> concept to the people who are thinking about the future of the SFUAD
> campus.
>
>
>
> The favor I am asking is as follows.  I cannot recover the website.  I
> have been told that there is something called the Way Back Machine that
> contains old websites.  I tried to work with it and I have some evidence
> that the materials do exist, there, but I could not bring them up.  I
> believe (but am not sure) that it was hosted by GoDaddy or BraveNet and
> that the site address was cusf.org.  Unfortunately, that address has
> been scooped up twice since by others.
>
>
>
> Do any of you know how to make the 

Re: [FRIAM] Opportunity to join a discussion about Charles Sanders Peirce

[Robert Wall]

By the way, there is a lively debate going on about the Sabine Hossenfelder
article How Popper killed Particle Physics
<https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2017/11/how-popper-killed-particle-physics.html?m=1>
posted
just yesterday.  It could make a good thread, as a few of you on the list
seem to agree with her rant and it would be good to hear as to why that is
so ... I am guessing this sentiment has something to do with Thomas Kuhn in
Nick's case at least.

Kuhn's criticism of Popper seems to be saying that logical positivism
(verificationism ... looking for ways to prove we are right ... instead of
wrong) dominates science ... still ... and not in a good way.  I think that
is right (e.g., LHC), but it doesn't undermine what Popper is saying about
how to be sure and honest about what we really know ... lest we backslide
into epistemological relativism or intellectual totalitarianism (e.g., a
leading paradigm doesn't shift until its authors die off ... something like
that).

Sabine seems to be backing off the rant a bit, I think; she says she is not
criticizing Popper, only saying that falsification is not enough ... and it
should not halt any theory development.  I would have to believe that even
Popper might agree with some of this with some clarifications.  I thought
the reply comment about "mathematicism" was interesting and kind of funny.

Looking back over this particular thread, it turns out that I did not
mention String Theory per se. I did mention that Smolin's "Genesis" theory
is claimed to be testable.  Perhaps this is what prompted Carl's insertion
of Sabine's rant.

Good to see Smolin getting a shout-out in the comments along with Lisa
Randall. Kum ba ya.

[image: Inline image 1]

Cheers

On Mon, Nov 6, 2017 at 1:20 PM, gⅼеɳ ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Excellent!  Yes, complement is a much more appropriate relation between
> the ideas than compete, I think.  Thanks.
>
> On 11/06/2017 11:08 AM, Robert Wall wrote:
> >
> > Actually, I think I said that Smolin's idea "competes" with
> Mareletto's.  That was sloppy; I meant that Smolin's theory can exist in
> the same space with Constructor Theory as an explanatory system, but one
> that operates on the macro scale (cosmological), especially with respect to
> initial conditions (constraints) to our universe. Constructor Theory
> proposes a physical universe at the microscale that could start here and
> unfold with new constraints "evolving" from earlier ones.  I see the
> heavier elements (e.g., carbon ... gold) being generated from later
> generation suns as a possible example of this. England seems to take this
> history into the abiogenesis by appealing to the idea of metabolic
> homeostasis with the production of dissipative systems being a likely
> outcome in this universe. Anyway, I should have used the term "complements"
> versus "competes."
>
> --
> ☣ gⅼеɳ
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

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to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Re: [FRIAM] Opportunity to join a discussion about Charles Sanders Peirce

[Robert Wall]

Glen, I think Carl is referring to my earlier remark about String Theory.
He is not alone in attacking Popper because Popper's idea concerning
falsifiability and a "true" scientific theory stand in the way of just
accepting a proposed theory base just on their mathematical elegance. I,
myself, hope that science doesn't go this way, as it will be difficult to
know where to draw the line between science and philosophy or even
religion. Too Platonic for my taste.

So, you are correct that this is not entirely relevant to the current area
of discussion.  Nonetheless, I happen to like Jerry Coyne's position on
this belief system, his being a lot less snippy than the Sabine one, IMHO:

Is falsifiability essential to science?



Sorry for the delayed response; I am out of town, and so, not near my
library references.  But, let's me try to continue with my feeble
comparisons between the propositions of these three scientists:
Deutch|Marletto (bing one), England, and Smolin.

OK.  So, I  hear you saying (please correct me!) that you do see a
> similarity in all 3 (England, Smolin, and Marletto) up to their attempts to
> find a non-teleological explanation for the structures to which we tend to
> ascribe teleology (teleonomic).  You're right that I agree up to that point.


Yep; it was teleonomy under the looking glass in the context of biological
systems in particular ... with Nick leading the discussion with his 1987
paper on the topic, which I read with great interest.

In your prior post, you posited that Marletto might be more closely aligned
> with England, but England *contra* Smolin.  My response was that Smolin
> seems to be saying much the same thing as England.  So, if Marletto is
> consistent with England, then Marletto might also be consistent with
> Smolin.  And my stronger assertion is that England does not seem to
> contradict Smolin.


Actually, I think I said that Smolin's idea "competes" with Mareletto's.
That was sloppy; I meant that Smolin's theory can exist in the same space
with Constructor Theory as an explanatory system, but one that operates on
the macro scale (cosmological), especially with respect to initial
conditions (constraints) to our universe. Constructor Theory proposes a
physical universe at the microscale that could start here and unfold with
new constraints "evolving" from earlier ones.  I see the heavier elements
(e.g., carbon ... gold) being generated from later generation suns as a
possible example of this. England seems to take this history into the
abiogenesis by appealing to the idea of metabolic homeostasis with the
production of dissipative systems being a likely outcome in this universe.
Anyway, I should have used the term "complements" versus "competes."

Erwin Schrödinger, in his *What is Life* (1944) coined the term *negentropy*
to explain the process of such dissipative systems usurping negative
entropy from their environments (e.g., food, sunlight) and staying in
balance by expelling positive entropy back into their environments (heat or
enthalpy in thermodynamic terms).  Negentropy was later recognized (even by
Schrödinger) to be equivalent to Gibbs free energy (i.e., energy
available for work), especially because living systems exist in
environments that are relatively stable in terms of temperature and
pressure. Someone later than Schrödinger described this negentropy process
as the extraction of *information* from the environment, which fits well, I
think, with Constructor Theory. Gibbs (statistical) Entropy function
resembles Claude Shannon's Information Entropy function, which seems to
have motivated this concept.

Some think that entropy is better for analyzing just closed (isolated or
adiabatic) systems ... but this is a very complex topic, especially with
respect to systems operating far from equilibrium maintain structures with
few degrees of freedom or states. It's pretty amazing stuff, though ... but
I am not the best one to explain these processes ... and that's just what
they are: processes.

Yes, Smolin and England could be aligned but on different scales--macro and
micro respectively.  For Smolin we would need to understand black holes a
bit better in this context, I think. A fecund universe is one with a lot of
black holes ... cosmic eggs, if you will that have cosmic "genomes" that
resemble the parent universe, but with variations due to whatever. So see
these as new constraint generators, I suppose, in the context of
Constructor Theory.

Can any of this be brought back into the domain of *teleonomy*?  It is a
question of about how something can arise from nothing. In an earlier
thread with my philosophy group I brought this to a discussion on a similar
topic titled "The Bridge From Nowhere":

This might have something to do with the *Hard Problem of Consciousness* as
well.  Not sure.  But, it is fun to think about.  We have been discussing
the role or 

Re: [FRIAM] Opportunity to join a discussion about Charles Sanders Peirce

[Robert Wall]

tsch|Marletto, and England be used to explain "How can the *appearance *of
design emerge (in biology) in a no-design (in physics) universe?"
Constructor Theory seems to be trying to construct a bridge to span the
knowledge gap between (no-design) physics and (teleonomic) biology:

Thinking within the prevailing conception has led some physicists –
> including the 1963 Nobel Prize-winner Eugene Wigner and the late US-born
> quantum physicist David Bohm – to conclude that the laws of physics must be
> tailored to produce biological adaptations in general. This is amazingly
> erroneous. If it were true, physical theories would have to be patched up
> with ‘design-bearing’ additions, in the initial conditions or the laws of
> motion, or both, and the whole explanatory content of Darwinian evolution
> would be lost.



> So, how can we explain physically how replication and self reproduction
> are possible, given laws that contain no hidden designs, if the prevailing
> conception’s tools are inadequate?



> By applying a new fundamental theory of physics: *constructor theory*.


So, to the list of Smolin, Deutsch|Marletto, and England, add Monad,
Pittendrigh, and Mayr as pioneers in 'trying' to construct
*explanatory *systems
that can explain teleonomic processes in an unintentional universe.

Well, that's enough for now. Lunch ...

Again, (only) fun stuff to consider.  Hope it helps your review the "living
systems as entropy maximizers" theme for another meeting.

Cheers,

Robert


On Wed, Nov 1, 2017 at 12:59 PM, gⅼеɳ ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for posting your intro materials to purpose of the universe.  I
> haven't looked at them, yet, but will (probably next week).
>
> But since I'm making a feeble attempt to review the "living systems as
> entropy maximizers" theme for another meeting, the below paragraph of yours
> tweaked me.  It strikes me that Smolin's "maximal variety" (e.g. [⛤])
> conception meshes well with England's conception of physical (non-living)
> adaptation, as well as Constructor Theory's "any non-impossible recipe".
> The first two (Smolin and England) seem to be intuitionistic in that they
> imply a recipe (follow the path with the most options), whereas
> Deutsch/Marletto are (perhaps) more classical (in logic/math terms) by
> allowing any recipe that doesn't contradict known constraints.
>
> I *think* it's a mistake to read Smolin's conception as implied by the
> Marletto quote, which was about Bohm and Wigner.  I'm ignorant of what Bohm
> and Wigner actually suggested.  But Smolin seems to propose that things
> like stars exhibit (some) similar properties to living systems, especially
> in their ability to "maintain themselves as constant source of light and
> heat", despite the high entropy bath in which they sit.  So, when
> considering things like cosmological constants and how they seem "tuned for
> life" (e.g. [⛧]), it's important to avoid putting the cart before the
> horse.  It's not that the universe is tailored to produce life.  It's that
> the universe is what it is and life-like systems just happen to be a very
> likely outcome in this universe.
>
> I'd *love* it if you (or anyone) would argue with me and help me refine my
> thinking or, better yet, change my mind and be able to explain how Smolin,
> England, and Deutsch/Marletto are fundamentally different!
>
>
> [⛤] http://www.johnboccio.com/research/quantum/notes/150602938.pdf
> [⛧] https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0702115.pdf
>
> On 10/29/2017 12:57 PM, Robert Wall wrote:
> >
> > In the context of *information *being another physically fundamental
> entity in the universe along with *energy *and *matter*, I brought up David
> Deutsch <https://www.edge.org/video/constructor-theory>'s Constructor
> Theory <https://aeon.co/essays/how-constructor-theory-solves-the-
> riddle-of-life> at the FRIAM as a very recent contender to build a new
> physics based on this uber-reductionist viewpoint. I haven't heard much
> more progress on this over the last two years and I think Deutsch is
> relying on his postdoctoral research associate, Chiara Marletto, to bring
> this into the domain of biology.  Constructor Theory is to address this
> conclusion: "The conclusion that the laws of physics must be tailored to
> produce biological adaptations is amazingly erroneous."  So this theory
> would indeed compete with Smolin's Cosmological Natural Selection Theory.
> But, Constructor Theory might be very much in line with Jeremy
> England's Physics Theory of Life
> > <https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-
> physics-theory-of-life-20170726/> (Note: this is from /QuantaMagazine/,
> which we also discussed) and, perhaps with Nob

Re: [FRIAM] Opportunity to join a discussion about Charles Sanders Peirce

[Robert Wall]

 a system, is information conserved [Copenhagen
interpretation of quantum mechanics] like energy and matter? 

I have not been up to speed on the Baldwin Effect in the context of
phenotypic plasticity, learning, or development phenomena (e.g., language)
... and niches. Can you suggest some readings?  It seems to ask the
question as to what leads what: Genes or phenotypes?  Do epigenetics come
into play here
<https://aeon.co/essays/the-selfish-gene-is-a-great-meme-too-bad-it-s-so-wrong>
 (this was heavily debated here
<https://aeon.co/essays/dead-or-alive-an-expert-roundtable-on-the-selfish-gene>
)?

Thanks,

Robert

P.S., Glen, yeah, that is the same Chris Goad!  He came here from Oregon
but apparently grew up here in Santa Fe.  I think his father was pretty
well known at LANL.


On Fri, Oct 27, 2017 at 9:08 PM, Nick Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net>
wrote:

> Dear Robert,
>
>
>
> It was great to see you at today’s meeting; hope you become a regular.
>
>
>
> I will “lard” your text below with my responses.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Robert
> Wall
> *Sent:* Friday, October 27, 2017 5:51 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Opportunity to join a discussion about Charles
> Sanders Peirce
>
>
>
> Nick,
>
>
>
> Thanks for the offer; I do have a copy of Jacques Monod’s *Chance and
> Necessity*. As I remember, it was not easy to find at the time as a new
> copy.
>
>
>
> Your request:
>
>  ... if you have a text of your presentation, I would love to read it.
>
>
>
> What I do still have is the text I prepared for the *Santa Fe
> Philosophical Society* as "homework" for my 20-minute presentation.  So,
> if one reads my 20-page "Does the universe have a purpose for us?" before
> the presentation, they would be better prepared for the "lecture" and
> ensuing discussion.  So it is a primer of sorts.  And, it serves as a
> partial look at how, with the rise of Darwinism, teleonomic explanations
> historically and "successfully" pushed aside teleological explanations for
> the *apparent *goal directiveness of biological evolution.  But I see
> that your 1987 paper "The Misappropriation of Teleonomy" would see this as
> no explanation at all.
>
> *[NST==>Well, I would need to read you papers and see how you characterize
> a “teloeonomic explanation.”  My suggested use of the term is descriptive.
> But the only real constraint is that a teloeonomic concept not be used as
> an explainer and as a describer in the same argument.  <==nst] *
>
> I shall read *that* paper to see why you say that, though, you are also
> saying that Jaques Monad "beat you to the punch-line."
>
> *[NST==>Well, it was more that he beat Sean Carroll to the punch line.  If
> I had read Monod in graduate school (which was possible) I might not have
> been so amazed by Carroll in retirement.  And I might have not spent so
> much of my career beating back silly arguments about the nature-nurture
> “issue.”  <==nst] *
>
>  Need to re-read that one.   More to come ...
>
>
>
> I also had a two-page handout, summarizing the points in the paper.  Also,
> the title question was posed to the group (~ 20 persons) both before and
> after the session.  The final majority consensus was "no" but there were
> some minds changed as I recall.  I wonder if I had changed the question to
> "Does life have a purpose for us?" would the consensus been different.
> Friedrich Nietzsche clearly lamented "no," but warned us that we had better
> figure out a rational one we can all agree on pretty soon.  His warning
> seems to ask, "If we are so smart, why haven't we come up with a *rational
> *purpose (goal) for humanity?"  Humans are the only teleological *agents *in
> the universe that we know about.
>
> *[NST==>I wonder if I agree with this.  <==nst] *
>
> And, we are the only organisms that *can *imbue rational purpose for
> ourselves.
>
> *[NST==>I guess I agree that we are the only rationalizing organisms.
> <==nst] *
>
>
>
> Here's a sidebar ramble motivated by today's FRIAM session ... giving it
> more "thought":
>
>
>
> Given what I heard you aks the FRIAM group this morning, "Is natural
> selection a *fair *process--for it must be so for it to work the way it
> does (careful to not say 'pro

Re: [FRIAM] Opportunity to join a discussion about Charles Sanders Peirce

[Robert Wall]

ly so I can get a seat in the middle (hearing problems), but that might
> not be a factor for you, so come any time.  The group is very eclectic –
> sometimes we do old fart stuff, and sometimes we do really interesting
> stuff.  We have several mathematicians, and when they get going, I just
> have to Sit In Wonder.
>
> I note your interest in teleonomy.  Through a weird coincidence, I ran
> into a blog  run by some middle eastern folks who made me read Jacques
> Monod’s CHANCE AND NECESSITY.
> <https://www.amazon.com/Chance-Necessity-Natural-Philosophy-Biology/dp/0394718259/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8=1509073028=8-1-spell=Chance+and+necesssity>
> (I have a PDF, if you would like to read it.)  I was astounded because
> “Teleonomy” is the key term of Monod’s  exposition, and I had written some
> papers on it in the eighties (e.g. The Misappropriation of Teleonomy
> <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302329059_The_Misappropriation_of_Teleonomy>)
> without ever finding his book.  Anyway, if you have a text of your
> presentation, I would love to read it.
>
>
>
> I have been trying to write something on Peirce for months now but need a
> collaborator to keep me honest.  Perhaps the group has one.
>
>
>
> Thanks again for getting in touch.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Robert
> Wall
> *Sent:* Thursday, October 26, 2017 7:00 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Opportunity to join a discussion about Charles
> Sanders Peirce
>
>
>
> Hi Nick,
>
>
>
> No worries.  I am happy to tell you et al. a bit more about the *Santa Fe
> Philosophical Society* that wouldn't be apparent from the website. I have
> been a member of the *SFPS* for about four years and joined about a year
> after we moved to Santa Fe from Austin, Texas, where I retired from Hewlett
> Packard as a performance-research scientist | engineer. We most often meet
> at a particular member's comfortable home, Mim's, every second Sunday of
> the month for a discussion on some philosophical issue or on the works of
> some philosopher that has or will be researched by a volunteer and who will
> provide a 30 to 40-minute introduction to the group followed by a moderated
> discussion.  I have given two or three presentations to the group on topics
> like Martin Heidegger's 1954 essay "The Question Concerning Technology" and
> teleonomy versus teleology, to give you some quick examples. The group is
> older, very friendly, and philosophically curious.  Many are ex-pats from
> LANL, but not all ... like me.
>
>
>
> If I can get a number of those among you that are interested, I can just
> add you as my guest to the sign-up list.  Then, if you like what you see
> and hear, you can join ... but you do not have to be a member to come to
> these meetings.  The member headcount determines the dues that are paid
> annually to the Meetup organization that maintains the web resources.
> Members, or anyone, can donate a few dollars to a can, but it doesn't take
> a lot of money to run this Meetup group.  Mim has a very large
> accommodating living room for these meetings, but we try to limit sessions
> to just 25 attendees (with shoes off at the door). Parking has never been a
> problem. My good friend Chris Goad--a theoretical mathematician Ph.D.
> graduate from Stanford, a self-admitted Platonist, and a huge proponent of
> the Computational Theory of Mind (we have argued this for nearly four years
> now)--has volunteered as the session moderator. A good guy. Coffee and tea
> are always available; some, like Chris Mechels, bring a beer.   Many
> times handouts are provided, but it is best just to print off the prepared,
> linked material from the website.
>
>
>
> Often, there can be several much smaller (~4-5 persons) breakout subgroups
> that will do a deeper dive into some philosophical topic at some other
> time(s).  I have been involved in several that meet weekly at the Travel
> Bug for a few hours. The one I frequent seems to have turned toward
> discussions in neuroscience, which I think has been motivated by early
> sessions on consciousness and the Philosophy of Mind. It's all good. 
>
>
>
> BTW, I came across FRIAM by way of Steven Guerin, to whom I wrote years
> ago after reading a paper he wrote on complex adaptive systems, a
> percolating interest of mine.  Steven replied that *that *made six now
> who read the

Re: [FRIAM] Opportunity to join a discussion about Charles Sanders Peirce

[Robert Wall]

Oh; you already signed up, Nick!  Very cool!  

On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 7:00 PM, Robert Wall <wallrobe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Nick,
>
> No worries.  I am happy to tell you et al. a bit more about the *Santa Fe
> Philosophical Society* that wouldn't be apparent from the website. I have
> been a member of the *SFPS* for about four years and joined about a year
> after we moved to Santa Fe from Austin, Texas, where I retired from Hewlett
> Packard as a performance-research scientist | engineer. We most often meet
> at a particular member's comfortable home, Mim's, every second Sunday of
> the month for a discussion on some philosophical issue or on the works of
> some philosopher that has or will be researched by a volunteer and who will
> provide a 30 to 40-minute introduction to the group followed by a moderated
> discussion.  I have given two or three presentations to the group on topics
> like Martin Heidegger's 1954 essay "The Question Concerning Technology" and
> teleonomy versus teleology, to give you some quick examples. The group is
> older, very friendly, and philosophically curious.  Many are ex-pats from
> LANL, but not all ... like me.
>
> If I can get a number of those among you that are interested, I can just
> add you as my guest to the sign-up list.  Then, if you like what you see
> and hear, you can join ... but you do not have to be a member to come to
> these meetings.  The member headcount determines the dues that are paid
> annually to the Meetup organization that maintains the web resources.
> Members, or anyone, can donate a few dollars to a can, but it doesn't take
> a lot of money to run this Meetup group.  Mim has a very large
> accommodating living room for these meetings, but we try to limit sessions
> to just 25 attendees (with shoes off at the door). Parking has never been a
> problem. My good friend Chris Goad--a theoretical mathematician Ph.D.
> graduate from Stanford, a self-admitted Platonist, and a huge proponent of
> the Computational Theory of Mind (we have argued this for nearly four years
> now)--has volunteered as the session moderator. A good guy. Coffee and tea
> are always available; some, like Chris Mechels, bring a beer.   Many
> times handouts are provided, but it is best just to print off the prepared,
> linked material from the website.
>
> Often, there can be several much smaller (~4-5 persons) breakout subgroups
> that will do a deeper dive into some philosophical topic at some other
> time(s).  I have been involved in several that meet weekly at the Travel
> Bug for a few hours. The one I frequent seems to have turned toward
> discussions in neuroscience, which I think has been motivated by early
> sessions on consciousness and the Philosophy of Mind. It's all good. 
>
> BTW, I came across FRIAM by way of Steven Guerin, to whom I wrote years
> ago after reading a paper he wrote on complex adaptive systems, a
> percolating interest of mine.  Steven replied that *that *made six now
> who read the paper, or something like that.  Even as a perhaps too
> infrequent contributor--but frequent reader--of the forum, I find the list
> has many thoughtful contributors that seem to know one another fairly well.
> And, I imagine the FRIAM at St. Johns has the same caliber of thinkers with
> a similar degree of familiarity. Anyway, I've been meaning to drop by the
> FRIAM group at least on my way to join the St. John's library, as they have
> the best philosophical library in these parts. If memory serves, you meet
> at 9:30 a.m. every Friday.
>
> For some reason, I thought you were on the east coast near Boston or
> something like that. But, yes, I would enjoy meeting you as well, having
> enjoyed your contributions to the forum, especially as you go about
> explaining Peirce. So, I have been waiting for Peirce to appear on the menu
> at the *SFPS* and it has finally arrived. William James, another
> pragmatist, about whom I am also very curious. Dewey?  Maybe, so ...
>
> Hope you can make it to the SFPS. The sessions never seem to disappoint.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Robert
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 9:18 PM, Nick Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net
> > wrote:
>
>> Robert,
>>
>>
>>
>> I apologize for asking a dumb question about SF Philosophers.  I didn’t
>> see the link (as a link).
>>
>>
>>
>> I will make every effort to be there.  Sunday night is my cooking night
>> for the extended family, but with a little planning I should be able to
>> finesse it.
>>
>>
>>
>> I always imagined that you were from some far distant place!  Like
>> Australia, or something.  Have you been here the whole time?  Have you ever
>> come to FRIAM?

Re: [FRIAM] Opportunity to join a discussion about Charles Sanders Peirce

[Robert Wall]

Hi Nick,

No worries.  I am happy to tell you et al. a bit more about the *Santa Fe
Philosophical Society* that wouldn't be apparent from the website. I have
been a member of the *SFPS* for about four years and joined about a year
after we moved to Santa Fe from Austin, Texas, where I retired from Hewlett
Packard as a performance-research scientist | engineer. We most often meet
at a particular member's comfortable home, Mim's, every second Sunday of
the month for a discussion on some philosophical issue or on the works of
some philosopher that has or will be researched by a volunteer and who will
provide a 30 to 40-minute introduction to the group followed by a moderated
discussion.  I have given two or three presentations to the group on topics
like Martin Heidegger's 1954 essay "The Question Concerning Technology" and
teleonomy versus teleology, to give you some quick examples. The group is
older, very friendly, and philosophically curious.  Many are ex-pats from
LANL, but not all ... like me.

If I can get a number of those among you that are interested, I can just
add you as my guest to the sign-up list.  Then, if you like what you see
and hear, you can join ... but you do not have to be a member to come to
these meetings.  The member headcount determines the dues that are paid
annually to the Meetup organization that maintains the web resources.
Members, or anyone, can donate a few dollars to a can, but it doesn't take
a lot of money to run this Meetup group.  Mim has a very large
accommodating living room for these meetings, but we try to limit sessions
to just 25 attendees (with shoes off at the door). Parking has never been a
problem. My good friend Chris Goad--a theoretical mathematician Ph.D.
graduate from Stanford, a self-admitted Platonist, and a huge proponent of
the Computational Theory of Mind (we have argued this for nearly four years
now)--has volunteered as the session moderator. A good guy. Coffee and tea
are always available; some, like Chris Mechels, bring a beer.   Many
times handouts are provided, but it is best just to print off the prepared,
linked material from the website.

Often, there can be several much smaller (~4-5 persons) breakout subgroups
that will do a deeper dive into some philosophical topic at some other
time(s).  I have been involved in several that meet weekly at the Travel
Bug for a few hours. The one I frequent seems to have turned toward
discussions in neuroscience, which I think has been motivated by early
sessions on consciousness and the Philosophy of Mind. It's all good. 

BTW, I came across FRIAM by way of Steven Guerin, to whom I wrote years ago
after reading a paper he wrote on complex adaptive systems, a percolating
interest of mine.  Steven replied that *that *made six now who read the
paper, or something like that.  Even as a perhaps too infrequent
contributor--but frequent reader--of the forum, I find the list has many
thoughtful contributors that seem to know one another fairly well. And, I
imagine the FRIAM at St. Johns has the same caliber of thinkers with a
similar degree of familiarity. Anyway, I've been meaning to drop by the
FRIAM group at least on my way to join the St. John's library, as they have
the best philosophical library in these parts. If memory serves, you meet
at 9:30 a.m. every Friday.

For some reason, I thought you were on the east coast near Boston or
something like that. But, yes, I would enjoy meeting you as well, having
enjoyed your contributions to the forum, especially as you go about
explaining Peirce. So, I have been waiting for Peirce to appear on the menu
at the *SFPS* and it has finally arrived. William James, another
pragmatist, about whom I am also very curious. Dewey?  Maybe, so ...

Hope you can make it to the SFPS. The sessions never seem to disappoint.

Cheers,

Robert


On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 9:18 PM, Nick Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net>
wrote:

> Robert,
>
>
>
> I apologize for asking a dumb question about SF Philosophers.  I didn’t
> see the link (as a link).
>
>
>
> I will make every effort to be there.  Sunday night is my cooking night
> for the extended family, but with a little planning I should be able to
> finesse it.
>
>
>
> I always imagined that you were from some far distant place!  Like
> Australia, or something.  Have you been here the whole time?  Have you ever
> come to FRIAM?
>
>
>
> I look forward to meeting you.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Robert
> Wall
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 25, 2017 8:46 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Opportunit

[FRIAM] Opportunity to join a discussion about Charles Sanders Peirce

[Robert Wall]

FYI.

The* Santa Fe Philosophical Society* is offering a discussion session
on Charles Sanders Peirce

on Sunday, November 12, 2017, 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM.

Nick, if you are in town, the group would definitely benefit from your
attendance ...

Robert

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

Re: [FRIAM] KRACK

[Robert Wall]

Thanks for the heads-up, Glen!

On Tue, Oct 17, 2017 at 8:55 AM, ┣glen┫  wrote:

> Key Reinstallation Attacks
> Breaking WPA2 by forcing nonce reuse
> https://www.krackattacks.com/
>
> > We discovered serious weaknesses in WPA2, a protocol that secures all
> modern protected Wi-Fi networks. An attacker within range of a victim can
> exploit these weaknesses using key reinstallation attacks (KRACKs).
> Concretely, attackers can use this novel attack technique to read
> information that was previously assumed to be safely encrypted. This can be
> abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers,
> passwords, chat messages, emails, photos, and so on. The attack works
> against all modern protected Wi-Fi networks. Depending on the network
> configuration, it is also possible to inject and manipulate data. For
> example, an attacker might be able to inject ransomware or other malware
> into websites.
> >
> > The weaknesses are in the Wi-Fi standard itself, and not in individual
> products or implementations. Therefore, any correct implementation of WPA2
> is likely affected. To prevent the attack, users must update affected
> products as soon as security updates become available. Note that if your
> device supports Wi-Fi, it is most likely affected. During our initial
> research, we discovered ourselves that Android, Linux, Apple, Windows,
> OpenBSD, MediaTek, Linksys, and others, are all affected by some variant of
> the attacks. For more information about specific products, consult the
> database of CERT/CC, or contact your vendor.
>
>
>
> --
> ␦glen?
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

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

Re: [FRIAM] Proofs of God?

[Robert Wall]

John writes:

Buddhism does not require a belief in God.


Nor does science.  The Abrahamic God is akin to--perhaps even derived
from--the concept of the *Logos  *of
Heraclitus . In this context, the concept
may even be believed to be the initial physical conditions ("genetic code")
of the universe dictating how all matter will unfold after the initial
creation moment.  And it may be believed to be the creative force itself
that makes the universe so comprehensible to our "God-given" minds.

As Einstein observed, “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is
> that it is comprehensible.”


Jeremy England's *Theory of Life* is an intriguing new theory about how
organic life emerged from inorganic substances based on dissipation-driven
organization, maximizing Gibbs free energy.  So, it was bound to happen ...
it was "written in the stars" so to speak.  And, it doesn't *seem *to
require a "guiding hand" for it to happen, which would be consistent with
the Deism of our American forefathers.

The *Genesis *story is another "theory" about the same as it tells us we
were made from inorganic dust or earth.  The "breath of God" would be like
the self-organized ignition of a new metabolic homeostatic event that
prevailing conditions have made easier than before.  These events are
always accompanied by a "psychological" need to escape death through
replication or immortality. Some, like French nuclear physicist,
philosopher and writer Jean-Émile Charon believe that this force is
embedded in all of Matter.

Still, I agree with England's rhetorical question and answer:

Do we need to keep learning about God? For my part, in light of everything
> I know, I am certain that we do.


In any case, learning about "God" is to remain curious about things we do
not know and to continually challenge what we think we already know.  In
this sense, Science can be your god.  And, Buddhism can be your god.  There
is nothing incompatible between these two secular disciplines of thought.
Neither requires a belief in the Abrahamic God; they are just ways of
understanding the human condition:  being thrown with a human consciousness
into a seemingly chaotic, purposeless universe and seeking solid ground on
which to stand.  In this context, we all need a belief system to sustain
our conceptual moorings to this universe.  It seems to be the price of
human consciousness that understands its own death as in inescapable event.

The proof of "God" is in our human condition. God == Learning about God ==
human need to find purpose.  Learning about "God" is to be contemplative as
it is in the Buddhist tradition.  It is mindfulness.

Finally, IMHO, "God" is the inherent psychological force to
understand our raison d'être.  It has many manifestations as it does in
Hinduism and as I have explained here.

Cheers.


On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 4:47 PM, John Kennison  wrote:

> I don't think that a rigorous proof of how evolution works would be all
> that earth-shaking. Most openly non-scientific religions have had much
> experience at simply ignoring such proofs and the more liberal religions
> have found ways to co-exist with science ("Maybe God used evolution to
> create the world". In my own religion (Unitarian-Universalism) sermons that
> mention God usually include formulations such as "God, as you understand
> the term". Buddhism does not require a belief in God.
> --
> *From:* Friam  on behalf of George Duncan <
> gtdun...@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Friday, October 13, 2017 2:44:18 PM
> *To:* Stephen Guerin; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Proofs of God?
>
> By
> Jeremy England
> Oct. 12, 2017 6:29 p.m. ET
> 311 COMMENTS
> 
>
> I recently learned that I play a role in Dan Brown’s new novel, “Origin.”
> Mr. Brown writes that Jeremy England, an MIT physics professor, “was
> currently the toast of Boston academia, having caused a global stir” with
> his work on biophysics. The description is flattering, but Mr. Brown errs
> when he gets to the meaning of my research. One of his characters explains
> that my literary doppelgänger may have “identified the underlying physical
> principle driving the origin and evolution of life.” If the fictional
> Jeremy England’s theory is right, the suggestion goes, it would be an
> earth-shattering disproof of every other story of creation. All religions
> might even become obsolete.
>
> It would be easy to criticize my fictional self’s theories based on Mr.
> Brown’s brief description, but it would also be unfair. My actual research
>  on how lifelike behaviors
> emerge in inanimate matter is widely available, whereas the Dan Brown
> character’s work is only vaguely described. There’s 

Re: [FRIAM] Truth: “Hunh! What is it good for? Absolutely Nothing!”

[Robert Wall]

Steven writes:

What of examples of *convergent evolution* where similar structures (with
> similar form and function) appear to arise independently.   I would not
> claim that they all arise **from the same theory** (or that anything
> "arises" from theory) but rather that the same theoretical abstractions
> around form/function and utility can be "reverse engineered" or
> "discovered" or "recognized".
>


> A common example is the multiple emergence of "camera-like" eyes in
> cephalapods, vertebrates, and jellyfish.  An even more ubiquitous example
> is Carbon Fixation via the C4 Photosynthetic Process (this example comes
> from my research to try to keep up with Guerin's dual-field/gradient babble
> in the domain of mitochondria/chloroplast metabolic duality) which has
> apparently been "discovered" or "invented" tens of times...


Nick responds to Steven with:

Unfortunately for us, there is a fly in this ointment.  The basic chemistry
> and molecular genetics of vision is highly conserved, also.  So, an
> alternative theory might be (and Dave might be about to offer it) is that
> mode of vision we earthly organisms use was hit upon early and precluded
> the development of an infinite number of better ones.


I was highly intrigued by this assertion and, so, did more digging and
found this version of that "truth"--

*National Geographic*: Jellyfish and human eyes assembled using similar
genetic building blocks

(2008).

The eyes of the box jellyfish tell us yet again that important innovations,
such as eyes, evolve by changing how existing groups of genes are used,
rather than adding new ones to the mix.


This is not inconsistent with Nick's assertion but it is not inconsistent
with Steven's either if I understand both.  In the biological context, and
in addition to the ideas of randomness, natural selection, and a whole lot
of time, there are the biological hardware and the software here to
consider along with the idea of a teleonomic programmer ... kind of like
Marcus' programmer with a discernable personality:

According to this analysis (*Nautilus *2016) concerning the Hox gene circuit
,
there doesn't seem to be enough time for randomness (i.e., blindly groping)
to be explanatory. The numbers tend to say this *would *be absurd.

Take, for example, the discovery within the field of evolutionary
> developmental biology that the different body plans of many complex
> organisms, including us, arise not from different genes but from different
> networks of gene interaction and expression in the same basic circuit,
> called the Hox gene circuit. To get from a snake to a human, you don’t
> need a bunch of completely different genes, but just a different pattern of
> wiring in essentially the same kind of Hox gene circuit. For these two
> vertebrates there are around 40 genes in the circuit. If you take account
> of the different ways that these genes might regulate one another (for
> example, by activation or suppression), you find that the number of
> possible circuits is more than 10700. That’s a lot, lot more than the
> number of fundamental particles in the observable universe. What, then, are
> the chances of evolution finding its way blindly to the viable “snake” or
> “human” traits (or phenotypes) for the Hox gene circuit? How on earth did
> evolution manage to rewire the Hox network of a Cambrian fish to create us?


So, it seems that nature's methodology seems more akin to design engineering
 than development from
scratch (subgenomic?); that is, creating new applications (biological
inventions) from a rearrangement of the parts (e.g., atoms, molecules,
genes) of existing parts.  This also seems consistent with Nick (something
*is* conserved|reused--genes, including regulatory ones that seem to
quicken adaptation), Marcus (seeing this Hox gene circuit as the preference
of the programmer), Dave [Heraclitus, Henri Bergson, and Alfred North
Whitehead] ("Until the Universe achieves  ‘heat death’ (at which time
there might
be a single Truth), everything changes and therefore only ephemeral
‘truths’ are possible."), Steven ("What of examples of *convergent
evolution* where similar structures (with similar form and function) appear
to arise independently. " e.g., jellyfish eye versus the human eye.),
and Jeremy
England :

If [*Jeremy*] England’s approach stands up to more testing, it could
> further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation for every
> adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of
> dissipation-driven organization. They might find, for example, that “the
> reason that an organism shows characteristic X rather than Y may not be
> because X is more fit than Y, but 

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

[Robert Wall]

Nick,

"Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them."  and
 "The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd."

Not trying to get into a tussle with you,  but Jeremy England
 would tend
to agree with you, as would I.  According to this analysis (*Nautilus *2016)
concerning the Hox gene circuit
,
there doesn't seem to be enough time for randomness (i.e., blindly groping)
to be explanatory. The numbers tend to say this *would *be absurd.

Take, for example, the discovery within the field of evolutionary
> developmental biology that the different body plans of many complex
> organisms, including us, arise not from different genes but from different
> networks of gene interaction and expression in the same basic circuit,
> called the Hox gene circuit. To get from a snake to a human, you don’t
> need a bunch of completely different genes, but just a different pattern of
> wiring in essentially the same kind of Hox gene circuit. For these two
> vertebrates there are around 40 genes in the circuit. If you take account
> of the different ways that these genes might regulate one another (for
> example, by activation or suppression), you find that the number of
> possible circuits is more than 10700. That’s a lot, lot more than the
> number of fundamental particles in the observable universe. What, then, are
> the chances of evolution finding its way blindly to the viable “snake” or
> “human” traits (or phenotypes) for the Hox gene circuit? How on earth did
> evolution manage to rewire the Hox network of a Cambrian fish to create us?


​...​

​

You could go from one sequence to another with the same shape (and thus
> much the same function) via a succession of small changes to the sequence,
> as if proceeding through a rail network station by station. Such changes
> are called neutral mutations, because they are neither adaptively
> beneficial nor detrimental. (In fact even if mutations are not strictly
> neutral but slightly decrease fitness, as many do, they can persist for a
> long time in a population as if they were quasi-neutral.)


Here is a new explanation *for the rest of us* -- *Wired*: CONTROVERSIAL
NEW THEORY SUGGESTS LIFE WASN'T A FLUKE OF BIOLOGY—IT WAS PHYSICS

[7-30-2017].

... and here -- *Scientific America*: A New Physics Theory of Life

[2014], where the same science author writes about this when the idea was
first proposed by England in his 2013 paper
.


A physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the
law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like physical
properties


Perhaps very much prematurely, England is being touted as the new Darwin.
His theory, however, does not replace natural selection but provides a
deeper expanation for "fitness."

In an hour-long lecture that I listened to
 recently, England admits that
we cannot really attribute any of this to randomness ... we don't really
know precisely what that is. What it seems to come down to, though, are--as
you say--the "best" hypotheses for the seemingly improbable (considering
the Second Law of Thermodynamics) building of new structures in a
prevailing heat bath that dissipate the most Gibbs free energy. Erwin
Schrödinger noted something similar in his 1944 essay *What is Life*.

If I understand this, what creates these "fit" structures is this
tendency for all matter, not just living matter, (i.e., arrangements of
atoms or molecules) to self-organize into new organizations--your
*hypotheses*--that maximize the dissipation of free energy. It is indeed
the evolving, prevailing environment that provides the opportunities for
various, different "hypotheses" to arise at different times in geological
history. So, in a sense, you *can *say that natural selection *creates and
preserves* innovations if you see it as an interactive process as both
Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead both did at the beginning of the
twentieth century.

>From the same *Scientific American* article, this is notable:

Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give
> researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and
> function in living things, many of the researchers said. “Natural selection
> doesn’t explain certain characteristics,” said Ard Louis, a biophysicist at
> Oxford University, in an email. These characteristics include a heritable
> change to gene expression called methylation, increases in complexity in
> the absence of natural selection, and certain molecular changes Louis has
> recently 

Re: [FRIAM] Fractal discussion Landscape-bird songs

[Robert Wall]

This less than 5-minute video seems visually helpful in the context of what
Jon accomplished last night: Takens' theorem in action for the Lorenz
chaotic attractor .  This
video provides some idea of what emerges from the manifold in terms of the
time series with airflow. Yes, very cool! 

On Tue, Feb 28, 2017 at 4:22 PM, Jon Zingale  wrote:

> Nick,
>
> Well one way we may be able to understand
> birdsong as fractal might be by studying the
> underlying mechanism of the syrinx
> . I can
> imagine this section of the birds trachea as a coupled
> oscillator, that when driven far from equilibrium
> could give way to trajectories along a strange
> attractor (which would be fractal). In an attempt
> to think about recovering the attractor from the
> time-series of the bird song, I ran across Takens'
> theorem last night. Then later last night (I couldn't
> sleep) I coded up an example of Takens' theorem
> in RubyProcessing
> .
> What is amazing about this
> theorem is that it suggests how to build a low-
> dimensional manifold from a single dimensional
> time-series! So freaking cool. As a test case, I
> coded up the Lorenz equations and plotted the
> manifold. Then I calculated just the time series
> for the x dimension. Lastly, I reconstructed the
> entire manifold (topologically) from just this one
> coordinate! Included below is a screenshot of
> the visualizer. It is actually more fun to watch in
> motion, but the picture is telling in itself.
>
> Jon
>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] FW: Fractal discussion Landscape-bird songs

[Robert Wall]

No.  My bad Glen.  I guess I have buttons I didn't think I had ... Thanks
for the follow-up explanation. Much appreciated.

My objective, to be sure, was not seeking agreement, except on the general
concept of "being in the zone." It was they only way to be sure we could
start on the same page ... a meeting of the minds, as it were. Remember I
came late to the thread. I kept digging for a root, but the hole was just
getting deeper and deeper.  Then it seemed that someone was filling the
hole with me in it. 

Iconoclast, I am not.  Not smart enough. Maybe why I drag guys
like Csikszentmihalyi to the party. But, as I think Vladimyr was saying, I
could have been taking Csikszentmihalyi's idea further than even he
intended it to be taken ... to the level of a society as a whole.  Even in
wonder, it may have just been too far too early. But well intended, as it
has been, for me, a search for a plausible approach at *normalizing *a society
to where it stops presenting us all with one unsolved existential threat
after another. So it has been a personal mission to understand this.  A
hobby of sorts. In this thread, I started with and concluded that I didn't
think it was possible to do what I was suggesting. Still, sometimes we
learn about an issue by throwing hypothetical solutions at it from every
corner of thought. Knowing why something isn't or may not be possible is
still insight ... even though it may sound like nonsense. 

So what's next to try on this quest? Complexity science?   Certainly,
zeitgeists can be seen as emergent phenomena. Problem?  Is emergent
behavior even controllable?

Context switch: To understand bird evolution you are going to have to go
back pretty far.  There is strong evidence that they are first cousins to
the dinosaurs. Landscapes and climates (conditionals) have changed
drastically since the Mesozoic Era. But has bird song reflected this?  It
would be interesting to contemplate how the first birds sounded compared to
birds of our day.  We seem to know how many of them looked.  Could their
sound be detected in a way similar to the way linguist try to piece back
the evolution of human language, back to its origins? And I don't know how
they do this reliably.

Fractals being patterns that are repeated in patterns at all levels of
scale (and tempo) seem to suggest a building up of complexity from very
simple rules like with *cellular automata*. Bird songs have grammar--rules,
that need to be learned from generation to generation. Variations could
creep in just from the variations that occur in the parents, just like with
human genetics. Speciation (morphological differences) makes not only a new
bird but likely a new bird song from different vocal engines.  Bird songs
of all types *have *been crudely reproduced with cellular automata. I
dunno.  I am not really addressing the question which I think is how to
determine if bird song patterns are spatially correlated, but maybe it's a
start ... tip-toe .. tip-toe ...

[image: Inline image 1]

Cheers


On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 8:29 AM, ┣glen┫ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Oops.  I'm sorry if I've offended you.  I am contrarian and tend to seek
> out areas of disagreement, rather than agreement.
>
> On 02/24/2017 07:14 PM, Robert Wall wrote:
> > The "as if" was the key.  The "as if" alludes to the behavioral
> manifestation. Yes?
>
> Yes, of course.  However, this is the subject of the conversation.  If we
> allow the "as if" to work its magic on us, we can be tricked into taking
> the illusion seriously.  So, by calling out the nonsensical materials
> surrounding the "as if", I'm trying to avoid that.
>
> > I notice that you seem to use the words "useless" and  "nonsense"
> [usually with the adjective /utter /] a lot when you post replies.
>
> Yes, you're right.  And I apologize if my usage is inferred to mean
> something more than it is.  What I mean by "useless" is that I have no use
> for it.  I can't formulate a use case.  What I mean by "nonsense" is that
> it makes no sense to me.  I should pepper my replies with more social salve
> like "to me" and "in my opinion".  It's difficult, though, because that
> overhead interferes with the actual content.  But please don't think my
> attribution of "useless" and "nonsense" imply that I haven't read or tried
> to make use/sense of that content.  My colleagues constantly mention work
> like that of Csikszentmihalyi and I've studied what I can to extract
> elements I can use, often to no avail.
>
> I'm certain my failure is due to my own shortcomings.  But it is true.  I
> have too much difficulty applying tools that rely fundamentally on
> thoughts/minds/ideas/etc across tasks and domains.
>
> > In a strange way, though, throughout this whole t

Re: [FRIAM] FW: Fractal discussion Landscape-bird songs

[Robert Wall]

G! 
New day...

On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 8:30 AM ┣glen┫ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Oops.  I'm sorry if I've offended you.  I am contrarian and tend to seek
> out areas of disagreement, rather than agreement.
>
> On 02/24/2017 07:14 PM, Robert Wall wrote:
> > The "as if" was the key.  The "as if" alludes to the behavioral
> manifestation. Yes?
>
> Yes, of course.  However, this is the subject of the conversation.  If we
> allow the "as if" to work its magic on us, we can be tricked into taking
> the illusion seriously.  So, by calling out the nonsensical materials
> surrounding the "as if", I'm trying to avoid that.
>
> > I notice that you seem to use the words "useless" and  "nonsense"
> [usually with the adjective /utter /] a lot when you post replies.
>
> Yes, you're right.  And I apologize if my usage is inferred to mean
> something more than it is.  What I mean by "useless" is that I have no use
> for it.  I can't formulate a use case.  What I mean by "nonsense" is that
> it makes no sense to me.  I should pepper my replies with more social salve
> like "to me" and "in my opinion".  It's difficult, though, because that
> overhead interferes with the actual content.  But please don't think my
> attribution of "useless" and "nonsense" imply that I haven't read or tried
> to make use/sense of that content.  My colleagues constantly mention work
> like that of Csikszentmihalyi and I've studied what I can to extract
> elements I can use, often to no avail.
>
> I'm certain my failure is due to my own shortcomings.  But it is true.  I
> have too much difficulty applying tools that rely fundamentally on
> thoughts/minds/ideas/etc across tasks and domains.
>
> > In a strange way, though, throughout this whole thread, you actually
> make my point.  Thanks!  Language can be a problem.  Symbolic reference.
> Imprecision. But the bottom-line is that I feel you really didn't (even try
> to) understand anything I said, and, apparently, I don't really understand
> anything you have said in as much as I have tried.  And I am not sure it is
> because of the imprecision of language, though. It is something else that
> leads you to just find disagreement.  As often said, it is much easier to
> sound smart by tearing something down than to constructively build on
> something. Maybe that applies here.  Not sure. Hope not.
>
> I don't intend to tear anything down and am under no illusions regarding
> my own lack of intelligence.  I'm a solid C student and am always
> outmatched by my friends and colleagues.  (That's from a lesson my dad
> taught me long ago.  If you want to improve your game, choose opponents
> that are better than you are.  So I make every attempt to hang out with
> people far smarter than I am.  That they tolerate my idiocy is evidence of
> their kindness.)
>
> But the point, here, is that you offered a solution to the problem I
> posed.  And I believe your solution to be inadequate.  So, I'm simply
> trying to point out that it is inadequate and why/how it is inadequate. ...
> namely that your concept of optimal or efficient embedding in an
> environment is too reliant on the vague concept of mind/thought.
>
> If birdsong retains its temporal fractality despite the bird being
> embedded in a non-fractal environment, then we should look elsewhere ...
> somewhere other than the birds' minds.  Vladimyr's argument posted last
> night may demonstrate that I'm wrong, though.  I don't know, yet.
>
> --
> ␦glen?
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] FW: Fractal discussion Landscape-bird songs

[Robert Wall]

n of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and
> the scientific recognition of man's animal origins. Although lip service is
> paid to this most profound piece of scientific knowledge, for all
> practical, political, social, economic and ecological purposes we have yet
> to face up to it.


This short opinion article is an emulation of what I have been trying to
explain to you but perhaps it does a much better job at explaining it. Give
it a go ...  Utter nonsense? Annoying?

At this point, not only do I think that Flow can *not *likely be achieved
at the level of a society as a whole, I do not now think that there can be
a meeting of the minds between us in this discussion.  Where I look in the
crevices where can find agreement--in spite of the imprecision of the
symbolic references that can pepper language--you, line by line here even,
have looked for disagreement only.  On an intuitive level, we do not seem
to be the same social animal.  Not a social crime, of course, unless you
are just "gaming" me with some unnecessary display of intellectual peacock
feathers; but regretfully I see no way to make headway [e.g., congruity of
thought] here as it seems clear that we seem to have very opposing
objectives in this discussion.

I, nor Csikszentmihalyi, will annoy you no further ...

On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 3:48 PM, glen ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> OK.  Yes, thanks, that helps.  But I do think you disagree with me, only I
> may not have made myself clear enough for you to realize we disagree.  I'll
> interleave in the hopes of making my objections in context.
>
> On 02/24/2017 01:44 PM, Robert Wall wrote:
> > The last quote, to me, says that a group acting toward a common goal in,
> say the way an individual in that group would, does *not *imply that the
> "symbolic references" used to act rationaly in the world are all in align
> or even perhaps in synchopation under an fMRI. YES! I can agree with this.
> And I don't think that I disagreed.
>
> But that's not what I'm saying.  Perhaps you're making what I'm saying
> much stronger.  Or perhaps what you're saying is entirely different.  I
> can't tell because you're leaping too far.  I'm only saying that if the
> stuff that causes our behavior is aligned, we need something _other_ than
> our behavior to demonstrate that alignment.  I'm trying to focus on the
> difference between thought and action.  You seem to be conflating that with
> the difference between individuals and groups.
>
> The thought vs. action dichotomy is critical to my rhetoric about
> individuals vs. groups.  But it's more fundamental and must be made before
> (independently) of any rhetoric about individual vs. group.
>
> > And I do even agree with you that there are examples of goups that do
> act as if with "one mind" and even benevolently.
>
> Again, I don't think I said that.  I don't think even an individual's
> thoughts matter.  (This is why Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "flow" is
> useless and annoying to me.)  It's pure nonsense to talk of mind at all.
> So, it's nonsense to say that societies act as if with one mind.  But that
> does not mean they can't be "in the zone", because being in the zone has
> nothing to do with one's mind.
>
> > Market-oriented co-ops are such a phenomenon, which I discussed in
> another thread, especially with Marcus who seemed to see these as an bane
> to society as unmanaged enterprises, which they are not. Perspective is
> sharpened by exposure.  My company transitionsed to an ESOP, but the
> intended economic benefit was eventually corrupted by the management team
> that used this preferred organizational form to basically enrich themselves
> at the expense of what the ERISA originally intended--cooperative,
> community-oriented corprorate behavior.  Stakeholders in the welfare of the
> community. At the grassroots, it was enything but a co-operative.  It was a
> vehicle to enrich the corporate management. But where it works, it is
> beautiful.
>
> If you see these co-ops as technological innovations, then I'd argue that
> their use and ABUSE can both be examples of society being "in the zone".
> The same is true of the cell phone and space travel.  It's totally
> irrelevant whether the co-ops relate to the beliefs, desires, and
> intentions of the humans involved (if such things exist).  What would
> matter is the society's beliefs, desires, and intentions (if such exists).
> The only stakeholder is society.  The individuals are as expendable as
> sand, or fossil fuel, or bacteria.
>
> > But I do kind of see where a "meeting of the minds" between us may have
> been derailed here about what we each mean concerning /being in the zone/"
> at a level of society.  And 

Re: [FRIAM] FW: Fractal discussion Landscape-bird songs

[Robert Wall]

e to regard the
thoughts of the many philosophers and linguists on this topic to be wise.
What we would expect instead is the *supersession* of our language-based
symbolic references with something akin to Intuition or Empathy ...
something beyond words such that wisdom emeges on the scale of a society
[and why I use capitalization of those terms]. So far, anyway, I do not see
this as being not only possible, but not evident.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says that being in the zone seems to occur when an
individual has both great skill and great challenge in a particular area.
When Flow happens, it is when the Self tends to evaporate from
consciousness and there is only the task. The individual is said to be
empathically connected with [in love with] the work: artist of all stripes
"feel" this.  Therefore, I say that this *cannot *happen at the level of a
society as a whole when the majority of individuals are only trying to game
the other players in that society.

We have not as a whole or on many individual levels been able to supercede
the animal. Nietzsche was not hopeful.  Begson was, sort of, and says this
will be eventually possible when we--presumably as a species--evolve to a
level where the Intuitive matches the Intellect in dominance.

I hope that this is a bit more clear, but to address you question directly
now, I am not in disagreement with you--never was--but also I stand firm on
what I meant, with which you said you are dubious. But maybe that was a
matter of talking past one another.  A language-based phenomenon.
*Intent *distinguishes
the phenomena of *being in the zone*.   *Scale *distinguishes the level of
its achievement. To be sure, symbolic references have little to nothing to
do with the kind of* being in the zone* to which I was referring. It's kind
of like what Timothy Gallwey was trying to convey in his book *The Inner
Game of Tennis*.  Thinking is gone.


On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 12:13 PM, glen ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Perhaps you did not see my previous response where I outlined what I think
> exhibit societal states (yes, at the societal layer, as a whole) of being
> in the zone.  If so, could you explain whether you agree or disagree that
> those are examples of what you discuss below?  If you didn't get the email,
> which happens to me often enough, the response is here:
>
>   http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2017-February/048807.html
>
> To be clear, my refutation of the claim that low-D spaces are similar
> because high-D space are similar was not intended as a referent for your
> society in the zone as a whole.  But I did proffer the examples listed
> above (e.g. stigmergy) as referents.
>
> And when you say "/complicated spaces/ presumed to be the imperfectly
> shared sets of symbolic references we would call worldviews", that is
> definitely not tantamount to the same as what I said.  My refutation was
> about the _presumption_.  The assertion is if P then Q, where P = lowD
> spaces are similar and Q = highD spaces are similar.  I'm not really trying
> to say anything other than not(P=>Q).  If the complicated internal spaces
> of people do match up or are shared in some way, then we need a different
> way of showing that they are shared (perhaps fMRI?).
>
> And to be clear that we're still on topic, whether or not the fractality
> of birds' songs is or can be related to the fractality of their landscapes
> is a question about the soundness of P=>Q and how/whether the similarity of
> bird brains can be established.
>
>
> On 02/24/2017 10:45 AM, Robert Wall wrote:
> > It's a mistake to infer that the complicated spaces (the deluded
> people's minds/brains/bodies/culture) are the same just because their
> projections (the things they say and do) are the same.
> >
> >
> > Yeah, and that is not the same as what I meant for a society being /in
> the zone/ as a whole, though Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi does initiate his talk
> with examples of a kind of mass hysteria brought about by cataclysmic
> events when introducing a topic he calls the Optimal Experience.
> Presumably, he used mass hysteria for contrast, but I think clumsily
> because he doesn't relate an Optimal Experience at the level of society.
> The examples of folks who demonstrate the phenomenon he is relating are
> individuals like Albert Einstein.  So what is he talking about?  What am I
> talking about?  What are y' all talking about?  The symbols seem the same,
> but we seem to be talking past one another. It happens ...
> >
> > Trying to be a bit clearer here and not at all retaliating with any
> backhand strike, the idea I am nudging forth is one that seems to be rare
> even among individuals, nevermind societies. We recognize its occurrence in
> the works of others we often describe as genius

Re: [FRIAM] FW: Fractal discussion Landscape-bird songs

[Robert Wall]

zed into tribes and set up a system of
patterned utterances to communicate within tribal sets of other such
simulators. For each simulator, this provides a comforting feeling of not
being alone and so, safe. What emerges, though, is a dependency on the
rule-based axioms [or grammar] that underlie the pattern of utterances and
concepts, and they go about rationalizing everything they come in contact
with in accordance with the ever expanding "knowledgebase."

But they do this at a cost--the proverbial bite from the apple of the Tree
of Knowledge, as it were--because as the world the simulators see now
becomes ever more epistemologically "known," it is also becoming ever more
ontologically meaningless. As this happens, the tribal individual
simulators start to "feel" ever more sociologically alone and unsafe.  Have
we been expelled from the Garden of Eden?

And they begin to wonder about the meaning of it all.  And in Self-defense,
they start to turn to surreal, other-world symbols to help them to *rationalize
*their current state of unhappiness. But, others, more reflective among
them, who have been contemplating this phenomenology--philosophers--are
saying things like "What are man's truths ultimately? Merely his
irrefutable errors." "There are no facts, only interpretations."  "Every
word is a prejudice."  "The most thought-provoking thing in our
thought-provoking time is that we are still not *thinking*."  It's
disturbing ...  What are we missing?!  What was the true cost of this
"emergence," which took root at the same time that language and, perhaps,
intellect and civilization did?

Perhaps, the individual simulators have been *deluded *into thinking that
their worldview is real, immutable, ... and that the everything else in the
world was put there for their exploitation and happiness. They think that
those are just things outside of themselves, objectified things with names
that are wholly unrelated to other things. The only really important thing
is the Self.  Embodied experience. But, is it? ...  And what is really
important at the level of society and how does that thing get
accomplished?  To be sure, it doesn't get accomplished by chaos. It might
happen through *harmony*, but I don't think it will be a harmony of
symbolic references alone ...

This has been a thinker among some of us for some time. It just doesn't
seem resolvable without effective *feedback *at the level of a society.

[image: Inline image 1]  Let's make that great (again?).

And, so, that's why I don't think that society as a whole will likely find
itself *in the zone*.  Now I hope *that's* clear.  

Cheers 

On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 7:52 AM, ┣glen┫ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think I anticipated your backhanded strike. >8^D  I did this with my
> (badly mangled) reference to (and skepticism about) the holographic
> principle ... or behaviorism in psychology ... or hidden markov models ...
> or state space reconstruction methods ... or by any of a huge number of
> other symbols.
>
> A many to one projection from a complicated space to a simple space
> _facilitates_ shared delusion because it makes the complicated things
> _seem_ similar even though they're not.  That is what explains your shared
> delusions like Shazaam.  It's a mistake to infer that the complicated
> spaces (the deluded people's minds/brains/bodies/culture) are the same just
> because their projections (the things they say and do) are the same.
>
> Although you're invocation of Occam's razor seems appropriate, your
> assertion (similarities in the low dimension space are caused by
> similarities in the high dimension space) is not the simplest explanation
> at all.  The simplest explanation is the one identified in that paper about
> the fractal dimension of Rorcshach blots (still on topic!) and that
> identified by Lakoff about Trump's language.  A medium with low dimension
> allows the high dimension participants to "fill in the gaps".
>
>
> On 02/23/2017 06:58 PM, Vladimyr Burachynsky wrote:
> > I think Robert Wall is nudging close to an idea that he failed to
> adequately clarify but you may have nailed it while trying to deny it (this
> I call a backhanded strike). Last week there was a strange article about
> groups of people having the same memory that have no contact with each
> other. That shared memory was in fact  demonstrably false. It was regarding
> a misperceived memory of a TV show called Shazaam and some comedian called
> Sinbad... My mind retains utter garbage sometimes.
> >
> > I never saw it but then it never actually happened. The investigators
> explained that so many of the false memory components overlapped reality
> > that the subjects truly believed some occurrence that was categorically
> disproved. So a socie

Re: [FRIAM] FW: Fractal discussion Landscape-bird songs

[Robert Wall]

way I lose myself after that 3rd mile when running.  I have no illusions
> that my zone is in any way shared by the people I'm arguing with, though
> ... no more than I think you and I share internal constructs mediated by
> the word "blue"


To be clear, Glen, I was referring to a society being "in the zone" as a
whole. Maybe this could mean an alignment of symbolic references.  Not
sure, but, like you, somewhat dubious that this could happen. Within my
philosophy group, we have discussed the idea of *conscious
evolution*--becoming,
say, wiser, by being "in the zone" so to speak--*with respect to the
individua*l.  And I do see this as kind of a Csikszentmihalyi-est "being in
the zone," a period of selfless awareness of a task or challenge. It's a
neurological phenomenon. The objective is to make the period last as long
as possible. Society is not very good at being selfless, even for a moment.

Perhaps with the assistance of Hebbian learning, say, over time this is
possible for individuals who work at it to remain in this state longer than
is typical.  It becomes a skill or practice.  But bubbling this up to the
level of a society does not seem possible.  Religion hasn't and won't do it
because that's a model that requires blind credulity to the provided
surreal symbols.  Even in the context of Hebbian learning, where are the
"societal neurons" that need to be rewired from their inculcated states?
They tend to be imbued in the laws and in the prevailing morality memes.
But these are just things to be gamed to ensure a *face validity* with our
self-full life simulations.

The key component to any smart system is feedback.  But, we live in a
society that is running open loop.  Another form of loopiness or delusion,
I guess ... believing that everything will work out in the long run.  We
are exceptional. We have democratic elections ... Hmmm,  I think the
awakening is happening.  Maybe there is hope?  Is that a drone I hear above
... Oh, it's just an Amazone delivery ... or is it?  :-)

Cheers


On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 6:45 PM, Vladimyr Burachynsky <vbur...@shaw.ca>
wrote:

> Thanks for the structure of thought .
>
>
>
> So am I an Iconoclast because I am all too aware of the misuse of Icons (
> simulations). I taught FEM and CAD and
>
> saw puzzlement on the, soon to be, engineers faces. I have watched
> engineers sneak out of the lecture hall when I started showing slides of
>
> summation of stacked matrices flying across the screen.
>
>
>
> So this alludes to a possible intrinsic Tautology or Loopiness in our
> brains. The representation is conflated with the speculative but unknown
> reality (since it is never completely understood anyway) Switching from one
> state to the other might be called metaphysical thinking. A wonderful
> source of confusion.
>
> Being totally immersed in a computer game might be said to be in the
> groove but when one man fights another and we call that being in the groove
> then are we conflating two models. If one is slaughtering the enemies on a
> game platform one can say he is free of ethics or morality. When Bruce Lee
> does the same on film
>
> many thought it real. but those who actually fought in life knew it was BS
> on  constrained/elevated ropes.
>
>
>
> If the  mirror neurons discussed at length do as described then they must
> occupy configurations near identical to neurons trained by self discovery
> (learning)
>
> Then actual differentiation would seem very difficult.
>
>
>
> I have a daughter  formally trained as a M.Sc. BioMedical Artist and we
> used to argue about symbolic thinking , she pro and I con. But the
> strangest part is that I am also or was considered a fair artist and
> illustrator for a time. Indeed I use symbols very well but mistrust others
> with lesser skill. Yet the most skillful are the most dangerous at least in
> engineering. She would regularly remark that I sketched in perspective
> complex machinery that did not yet exist and then built the working
> prototypes. Nothing elegant but functional. She claimed only to draw what
> already  really existed dead or alive, I always thought those arguments
> were small expeditions into some form of knowledge about human thinking.
> She thought otherwise unfortunately, but I have never had the fortune to
> meet another with her combination of talents.  Somewhere in this
> quasi-church may be others lurking in the shadows.
>
>
>
> I admit to being a rather visual thinker so data visualization is my hobby
> now. And understanding Normal People, since they are so many...
>
> Perhaps this is not exactly the correct thread but miss the song of larks
> on the prairie fields. A few notes brings back so many memories and the
> smells
>
> of clover a

Re: [FRIAM] FW: Fractal discussion Landscape-bird songs

[Robert Wall]

Hi Glen,

What you describe as *flow* or being *in the zone* has been precisely
written

and talked
 about
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as the Optimal Experience.  No one will
experience this quite the same way, as the flow experience requires
both skill and challenge in an area where flow will occur. By his own
statements, Einstein is said to have been in flow when he synthesized the
concept of General and Special Relativity. At the time he was arguably very
skilled in math and physics and, of course, very challenged.

However, I prefer Alfred North Whitehead's (et al.) concept that we are all
always in *flow*. We just don't alway realize it. In his *Process
Philosophy*, as conveyed  in his *Process and Reality*, he writes about the
two modes of perceptual experience: (1) *Presentational Immediacy* [the
bits of data that get presented to us through our senses--or imagination]
and (2) *Causal Efficacy* [the conditioning of the present by the past].
Curiously, Csikszentmihalyi says that we can only process data from our
senses at a rate of 110 bit/sec.  Reading this post likely will chew up 60
bits/sec. of that bandwidth. 

Why I bring this up at all is that Whitehead thinks that what integrates
these two modes into the whole of what we perceive is *Symbolic Reference*.
Symbolic reference is kind of like how we tag bits of our real-world
immersion for building a largely symbolic but sustainable--for us
individually--worldview. Most time these symbolic references are provided
to us--inculcated--by others like with a religion or by our parents.  Most
are satisfied with that. In your friend's case, I believe it is possible
that y' all were unsettling--challenging--his worldview ... or, he
challenging yours.

Flow is not likely to be aroused in a social context. It is an inner state
... what the Greeks and Csikszentmihalyi would say is the entering into
an alternate reality devoid of our sense of self.  Your existence melts
away in such a state. So our symbols get challenged or, perhaps, disappear
as well. French social philosophers Jean Baudrillard and Gilles Deleuze
also talk about symbolism, but it was at a social level.  As far as I am
concerned, Flow can't be achieved at the level of society ... but, boy I
wish that that were not so.  Csikszentmihalyi talks about the opposite of
Flow that occurs on a social level that often occurs when society has been
thrown into a chaos as with war or Trumpism. 樂

Is mathematics invented or discovered?  This is a perennial topic that
arises within my philosophy group.  It never really gets resolved, but how
could it be?   It is the ultimate of symbolic reference systems because of
its precision in predicting the way the world manifests itself to our
perception. This is not so true of our other symbols or abstractions. So
are they any different?  In a way, they are because mathematical symbols
form from an axiom-driven language. But, notwithstanding Jerry Fodor's
"built-in" syntactic language of thought, languages are human inventions
based on metaphors [if you like George Lakoff].  Languages work among
cultures because they are more or less conventional (acceptable) to a
culture.  The fact that they can be translated into other languages is
because we are all immersed in the same reality. In this way, I tend to
think of mathematics as invented. If you are a Platonist--a worldview--you
will likely disagree.

As I often do, I  kind of resonate with Vladimyr's thought, which you
included in your post. It is very Csikszentmihalyi-est. I do think that
simulations can lure us into thinking that they are an exact dynamic
facsimile of the reality which they try to abstract into an analytical
model.  There are all kinds of things about simulations that can lead us
astray. Fidelity is one thing, obviously.  But, I think that the worst
thing--and this is often the fate of a simulator because of time and
funding--is when they get so complicated that no one understands the
process for how the results were computed.  This--like with many neural
networks--is when the simulator just become an Oracle.  This is kind of
what happened with Henry Markam's Blue Brain Project
,
building a simulation of something for which they didn't know the first
principles.  I think also this is what John Horgan wrote about concerning
what was going on at the Santa Fe Institute in his *SA* article From
Complexity to Perplexity
.

But, as Vladimyr muses, maybe this is the best we can do ... and symbolic
reference is what nature served up for us to cope, concerning what we are
perceiving.  But, as with all smart systems, a smart entity will always try
to challenge and refine those symbols with 

Re: [FRIAM] Narcissism Again

[Robert Wall]

Actually, I think the author, Richard Willmsen, got it right, Frank.  I am
seeing more of these predictions of a meltdown ... the following
linked *CounterPunch
*article says he is going to have a lot of help in the process ...

Also, I think Paul Street has this same thought completely right in his
very well-written piece, calling out all of the inept sockpuppet characters
that have been on or competed to be on the POTUS stage over the last decade
or so.

But will Trump quit?  It seems inevitable that he could not possibly last
the year. No?  Maybe there *is *hope ... BUT, we then get Mike Pence ...
AND, except for the disciples of Milton Friedman, perhaps, Steet's article
does paint a very disheartening picture-- a palimpsest of sorts--for the
"deeps state" neoliberal system that underlies all of this. Moreover, the
author thinks all of the other 2016 presidential contenders--except for,
perhaps, Bernie--were puppets in the marionette performance we called an
election and then a follow-up performance in an Administration. What is
amazing is that Trump kicked all of their butts and then had many of them
go through an *Apprentice*-like job interview.  Yikes! What does that alone
say?


​*CounterPunch*: The Deep State v. Trump

 (yesterday)​



This is the part I liked, as it confirms what I have thought about this
distraction.  This is what the Russian scare is really all about ...


​The second thing is to de-legitimize the blustering newcomer to
Washington. The CIA, the Democratic Party, some Republican elites and the
corporate media’s embrace of the dubious narrative claiming that Trump owes
his election and presidency to Russian hacking is part of an elite campaign
to keep Trump on a right leash even as he enters the White House. The
ubiquitous media-fed storyline linking Trump to the Kremlin Putin is
crafted to de-legitimize Trump politically as well to keep the New Cold War
heat on Russia and to help the dismal Democrats avoid blame for the
terrible policies they enact and enable and the awful campaigns and
candidates they run.​



This too:

*Adjust, Quit, or Get Removed*

Trump will either understand this and adjust or cling to his aberrational
white-nationalist-protectionist-nativist folly and get removed from power
one way or another. My sense is that the serious and sober, class- and
empire-conscious U.S. wealth and power elite is counting on Trump’s sense
of self-interest to understand that he’s going to have to scale back enough
of his narcissism and white-nationalist “populism” to show that’s he’s a
“team player” if he wants to avoid (a) being impeached, (b) being removed
from office in some other fashion (has the CIA shown Trump the digitally
enhanced version of the Zabruder film yet?), and/or (c) going down as the
most laughably ridiculous president in American history.


Finally:

*The Top Trump Threat Goes Unmentioned*

Meanwhile, the planet faces a golden shower of capitalism-generated climate
change

that
Trump wants to escalate. All indications are that a massive, system-wide
reconversion from fossil fuels to renewable energy is required within at
least the next two decades if humanity is to realistically hope for any
kind of decent future under or beyond the rule of the American and
world-capitalist Deep State. And here we might want to consider *the main
thing missing from the corporate media’s often critical commentary on the
new White House*: Trump’s determination to “deregulate energy” – that is,
to significantly escalate the Greenhouse Gassing-to death of life on Earth.
  If it’s any dark consolation, the coming economic crash should cut global
carbon emissions for a few months or so.


This, of course, is the scariest part.  Cheers.

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 10:01 PM, Frank Wimberly 
wrote:

> This insightful essay about Trump argues that he will soon decompensate:
>
> https://infinite-coincidence.com/2017/01/22/donald-trump-
> is-going-to-snap-very-soon-and-here-is-how-i-know/
>
> Since it is a prediction it will be easy to evaluate.
>
> Frank
>
> Frank Wimberly
> Phone (505) 670-9918
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

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

Re: [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent

[Robert Wall]

Marcus,

I am not sure but you may have the wrong impression of employee-owned
worker cooperatives.  Of course, they have structure and management and
decision-making processes just like capitalist-owned companies. Even *Forbes
*think they are a good idea: If Apple Were A Worker Cooperative, Each
Employee Would Earn At Least $403K

(December 2014).  It might be a good project for you to research this more.
Check out Mondragon

in Spain, for example.  Britain under Jeremy Corbin's leadership for Labor
is floating a plan to allow employees to have first-refusal rights to
purchase companies that want to sell or move offshore.

There are all kinds of co-operative institutions with perhaps the best
example in this country being the idea, at least, of the public bank, like
the Bank of North Dakota, which may be the only one, but not sure.
Cooperatives are much more prevalent outside of this country.  There may be
an insidious reason for this, however. Nonetheless, after you do a little
research, I am sure that you will see that employee-owned
cooperatives would meet with your concept of good "enterprises."  They are
inherently community motivated and supported and are not the kind of
enterprises that you will see move offshore or park their cash there to
avoid US taxation [note: Co-ops actually pay more taxes than
capitalist-owned corporations]. Give them a second look ...

I give that names like worrying, self-reflection, doubt, analysis, and
> reading.   I believe it is practiced in a widespread way by the type 1
> thinkers that Pamela mentioned.


You might have to remind me what Type 1 Thinking is all about. I found
this--Type 1 and Type 2 thinking
--but that
isn't what I was trying to explain.  If you mean a sort of Closed-Loop
Reflect-Analyze-Act type thing, then yes; that could be something akin
to Hebbian
learning
.
The most important part is that the process-a self-administered
psychodynamic one--is implemented by the individual and not, say, a
psychologist or priest.  I don't get the *worry *or *doubt *part, though,
unless you mean that the objective is to diminish those sensations and grow
confidence. The other important part is mindfulness ... being consciously
aware as much as possible.  So much of our awake time is lived on
"automatic."  Very difficult to break out of this.

But, in this thread, I wasn't so much interested in this process at
the *individual
*level except to use it as a tangible example to define--for
Steve--what it *might
*mean at the level of society, that being the underlying exploratory thrust
of this thread. How can Hebbian learning be applied at the level of
society? At the moment, it's a rhetorical question.  I mean, what are the
synapses of a society? All I can think of is the level of a Golden-Rule
kind of *morality *manifest in its so-called zeitgeist. But if the society
is basically amoral, then those hypothetical "synapses" are weak.

We tend more to use crime and punishment as a way of strengthening these
social synapses, but it doesn't result in a positive feedback loop to the
members of that society-- many who will eventually figure out how to game
the system to their own advantage. People have to actually have faith in
the system in a way that they see something egalitarian that emerges.  We
don't have that in our society and I think the Eric Smith provided some
insight into why: Power--to have control over one's destiny--is as
unequally distributed as wealth, which Eric may argue is the result of an
imbalance between *access *and *constraint*. [*an interesting aside*:
employee-owned cooperatives tend to blunt this kind of malignancy from
growing ]. Anywho ...

>From your last paragraph, if I follow, you seem to have much more hope that
we can improve society with chemicals, gene editing, quantum computing, or
with surgical implants than I do.  I don't think that I would want to live
in such a society. What will emerge, if any of this is at all possible, is
a super-smart animal with the same ratty morals and self-interest. That's a
very dangerous animal, IMHO.  This is why many folks are scared of AI; look
who's leading the pack at this technology and buying up the world's brain
trust: Google ... one of those "enterprises" that you justifiably don't
seem to trust. 樂

Cheers


On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 8:35 PM, Marcus Daniels 
wrote:

> Robert writes:
>
>
>
> *< *It would be a Hebbian-oriented *mental process *by way of
> "habituating" the kind of thoughts that lead to altruism or the desired
> state. >
>
>
>
> I give that names like worrying, self-reflection, doubt, analysis, 

Re: [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent

[Robert Wall]

Hi Marcus,

All good thoughts.  Thanks!  Just a few things hopefully that can
constructively add to the discussion ...

There is research in this area.


The kind of "rebooting" I am thinking about in this context would not be
chemically or surgically induced.  It would be a Hebbian-oriented *mental
process *by way of "habituating" the kind of thoughts that lead to altruism
or the desired state.  In a manner of speaking this is a process of
consciously rewiting the brain through a processs of trial and error and
observing how such habitualed thoughts and behavior work as positive
feedback loops to an individual's happiness and as reflected in those in
his social circle. It not a brainwashing or fooling one's self.  It doesn't
result in an army of Jason Bourne types.  It is conscious and logical.
It's the beginning of wisdom.  Or, is it just a fool's errand? Not easy.
Not something I have achieved. But I do think it is possible.  I have a few
more years yet ... and then I die.   It does beg the question, "What's
the point if this can't be perkolated up to the level of society?"  I
suppose we need to ask a devoted Buddhist this same question.

And, so my question is how this can work at the level of a society, beyond
the individual level. An example, perhaps but not sure, is the societal
transformation of profit-oriented, capitalist or stockholder-owned
enterprises into employeed-owned cooperatives. It creates a very different
kind of economy, still very much market oriented.  If habituated, it may
become obvious that this could be a better way. ESOPs under ERISA were an
attempt at this but were abused by the capitalists to gain the tax breaks
provided by a government that saw the wisdom in this. I won't quote Ronald
Reagan again here ... enough said. Many employees in thos ESOPs have asked,
"What's the point?"

With respect to the Thiel, Parrish thing, the answer to a better
society--or even a better lif--will not be to have everyone, or even just
those who can afford it, live longer.  The problem is that they drag their
crappy minds along with them. Living longer does not change the animal. The
same is true with transhumanism.  What gets uploaded?  The same crappy
minds.  Genetic engineering isn't going to get us there either, IMHO. We
don't know where to locate the genes or how to comfigure the so called Hox
circuits to get *better *brains or minds.  Again, better for whom?  Then
there's the Blank Slate debate.  Cue Steven Pinker ...

This "uploading" *is* all kind of a fools errand, if you resonate with the
idea of embodied cognition [again George Lakoff and especially Anthony
Chemero and his Radical Embodied Cognitive Science].  As it turns out, if
you follow this stuff, we can't separate the mind from the body or the body
from the world.  So forget uploading your minds into immortal robotic
contraptions. BTW, that *Nautilus *article I linked on consciousness being
composed of atoms is another look at this. Good luck to Thiel and Parrish.
IMHO, we need to value the lives we have now and try to impriove them while
we have our time in the sun ...

Cheers


On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 5:44 PM, Marcus Daniels 
wrote:

> *< *In a sense, conscious evolution is a kind of rebooting of a conscious
> organism with a new "morality" program that has the purpose of changing the
> nature of that organism *more *toward altruism and *less *toward
> self-interest, kind of resetting the initial conditions built into our DNA,
> so to speak ... superseding the animal. >
>
>
>
> There is research in this area.
>
>
>
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2763614/
>
>
>
> “Pathological anxiety is thought to reflect a maladaptive state
> characterized by exaggerated fear mismatched with actual environmental
> stimuli.”
>
>
>
> Special case: economic anxiety.
>
>
>
> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger-
> where-the-economy-is-weaker/
>
>
>
> “Routine jobs are often defined as those that involve tasks that can be
> accomplished by following explicit rules
> .
> A standard definition  of routine
> jobs includes manufacturing and other goods-related occupations, as well as
> administrative, clerical and sales occupations; nonroutine jobs include
> professional, managerial and service occupations. For this post, we
> included farming-related occupations in routine jobs since the BLS
> projects  employment
> declines in those occupations over the next decade. The correlation between
> Trump support and the share of jobs that are routine by this definition was
> 0.65.”
>
>
>
> Trump piled on copious amounts of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and
> pathological anxiety emerges.
>
>
>
> “So, it's kind of changing the probabilities of the social game, like we
> are discussing in this thread, but on an individual level. On the
> 

Re: [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent

[Robert Wall]

>
> Without millions of dollars of cash flow, there can’t be professional
> investigators.


Not so.  Not at all.  There are several Internet-based, often
donation-dependent (I donate to several), news and opinion outlets that do
very good, in-depth investigative journalism Take a look at Greg Palast
, for one. Palast did a couple of investigative
pieces on how the election results did not jive with the exit polling stats
in dozens of cases.  Exit polls have long been thought of as reliable
leading indicators of ultimate winners.

How about Seymour Hersh ?  For
opinion, I really miss Christopher Hitchens
.

Then there are *CounterPunch*, *Truthout*, and* DemocracyNow* (with Amy
Goodman), *The Real News Network*, *Truthdig *(with über-investigative
journalist Chris Hedges) are also among the many well-respected sources
today for investigative journalism. I tend to like Glen Greenwald formerly
of the *Guardian *and now with his own Investigative Journalism blog: *The
Intercept*. These are the members of the Fifth Estate that are getting
their acts together and doing the job formerly assigned by society to the
Fourth Estate: reliable watchdog.  Now we need a watchdog to watch the
supposed watchdog.

If you happened to watch the movie *Spotlight
*,
you would have learned that investigative journalism is largely
disappearing from the MSM.  It just isn't much appreciated by the
subscribers (they rather be tantalized with the latest news about the
Kardashians.), it doesn't pay the bills, and it is reasoned as too
expensive to do.  See also: *HuffPost*: Journalism Isn't Dying - It's Being
Murdered

(January
2016).

The genesis of this dilemma goes back to Bill Clinton's signing of the
Telecommunications Act in 1996 giving a green light to the rapid and
massive consolidation of the industry by the oligarchy and the large
corporations that are often the subject of investigations. It is argued
that Clinton did this to make nice with the GOP that wanted to impeach him
at the time.

Let's actually give thanks to the emergent Fifth Estate for continuing to
give investigative journalism life after the Telecommunications Act. Many
of these reporters had to become freelancers or form their own online
havens for plying their craft. That's what we see happening now in this
profession.

Even skeptics of the expertise of journalists have to admit that an
> advantage of having a job is that you can do it all the time.The 5th 
> estate
> may be less censored in their remarks, but without actual evidence they’ll
> run out of new things to say.


As it turns out, the reality of investigative journalism is quite the
opposite of what you suppose.  Then there is this: *Salon*: Why we’re
living in the golden age of investigative journalism

(August 2014).  And this: *The Ring of Fire Network
*: Corporate America tried to Kill
Investigative Journalism: They didn’t Anticipate Social Media

(August 2015).  I mean, just Google this stuff for yourself and you will
see what is going on in this usually noble profession.  Evidence often
survives under the FOIA or from other sources like whistleblowers, etc. Not
running out of anything to say ...

In my opinion, and as heard from others, what gives this survival of the
craft "legs," post-Clinton--is the runaway condition of the neoliberal
world benefiting only the elite.  Lots to investigate and report to keep it
going.  The fake news that we find more often instream tends to be like
anti-aircraft flak sent out--even by institutions like the *Washington
Post*--to
fool the readership away from zeroing in on anything damaging.  I am not
sure, but this Russian hacking thing could just be a distraction from
zeroing in too much on why the Dems lost the election that they should have
won. Not an original idea from me, but from the alternative news outlets
that are now trying to keep an eye on things. 

To be sure, I also read the *New York Times*, the *Washington Post*, the *Wall
Street Journal*, and the *Guardian*.  This is where you will find what the
corporatocracy wants you to think. It's usually a good starting place, but
not much in the way of investigative journalism except as brought in by the
freelancers ... folks like  Seymour Hersh. If it's important, then I think
you must go to multiple alternative sources to calibrate. For example,
nobody in the MSM is covering the election fraud story about 

Re: [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent

[Robert Wall]

I am with you there Marcus.  We all have to decide where the truth lies (no
pun intended).   Listing to multiple news sources is the best way when
one has the time to do it. I have at least a dozen go-to news sources that
all seem to provide different, if not conflicting points of view.  I don't
listen to RT exclusively or even predominately, but I haven't gotten a
direct sense of any "propaganda" as such. But, it's tough to say that it
doesn't exist.  It exists everywhere.  Multiple points of view ...

Cheers

On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 10:22 PM, Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com>
wrote:

> "Do you think *Al Jazeera* is also *not *worth listening to either?"
>
>
> I used to watch it more, not so much lately.   I got the impression that
> the English version was not representative.   I don't think it is directly
> comparable to RT.
>
> Lately Der Spiegel is relevant to my concerns, and the Guardian.   I would
> say that "from a perspective" is going to be a sort of persuasion, if not
> outright propaganda. That's why I like reading Mother Jones too.  I know
> what their `perspective' is.   I'm less thrilled with outlets that try to
> be all things to all people.   Really we need a reporters that act more
> like intelligence agents.  Like diplomatic immunity or similar.
>
>
> ------
> *From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of Robert Wall <
> wallrobe...@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 19, 2017 9:41:01 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
>
>
>> P.S. RT is the Russian Propaganda news outlet.   Of course, they'd have
>> their own motives for wanting to diminish Chinese power.
>
>
> I think you should try to understand it before you castigate it as Russian
> propaganda.  I know it is popular in the MSM to press this canard--as the
> MSM is dying--but did you think what was presented in the clip I posted as
> being anything like Russian propaganda ... something Putin would want us to
> realize as if we didn't already realize it?  Do you think *Al Jazeera* is
> also *not *worth listening to either?  Given the fake news coming from
> our own MSM, more and more folks are looking elsewhere ... to alternative
> viewpoints, even if foreign ... and even if funded by our current bogeyman.
> As I hear it told, Putin has very little to say about the
> journalistic content of RT.  The same is said of Rupert Murdoch's influence
> over our own *Wall Street Journal*.  Let's look closer at Fox "News,"
> MSNBC, CNN, etc.
>
> I thought the *Columbia Journalism Review* of RT--What Is Russia Today
> <http://www.cjr.org/feature/what_is_russia_today.php>?--was a reasonable
> accounting of this alternative news outlet.  They provide a worldview *from
> their own perspective*.  If we want to understand this country better
> instead of just using them to generate fear in the US in order to promote a
> domestically destructive neoliberal agenda, then I submit that this is a
> good resource for that.
>
> Being open-minded does not mean you are brainwashed.  Quite the opposite I
> would think ...
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 8:39 PM, Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com>
> wrote:
>
>> "The rigging is, IMHO, of not doing anything about the unabated and
>> disproportionate flow of wealth to the top and, hence, giving rise to the
>> resulting, ever-skewing, descriptive Pareto distribution of wealth versus
>> population.  It certainly does seem like an increasing biasing of the
>> metaphorical *fair *coin [e.g., the busted "trickle down" metaphor of
>> President Ronald Reagan]."
>>
>>
>> I think it depends in part on the source of the wealth and how it is
>> used.   There's a qualitative difference between a Google and a payday loan
>> company that preys on the poor.   Are these wealthy people creating new
>> high-paying jobs or locking-in people to dead-end jobs like coal mining?
>> Do they have a vision of advancement of humanity (Gates) or just a
>> unnecessary assertion of the `need' for a lowest-common-denominator
>> dog-eat-dog view of things?  How does their wealth and power matter in the
>> long run?It is at least good that there isn't just one kind of
>> billionaire, like the sort that destroys the environment and enslaves
>> people.
>>
>>
>> A problem with government is that the agency it gives people is either
>> very limited (you get food stamps so you can eat), or it is also
>> hierarchical like these enterprises (you don't get much agency unless you
>> fight your way up or are an 

Re: [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent

[Robert Wall]

>
> It is a double standard and a failure of imagination to think that
> ​ ...​
>

Hillary Clinton?  RT?  Though the initial response you gave seemed to be on
topic or near it, regretfully, you seemed to have gotten side-tracked by
other things in my prose about it.  And so, to me at least, you seem to be
cherry-picking things of no consequence here to the topic. I guess that's
okay, but I don't think I want to go there with you at the risk of being
side-tracked myself. Perhaps these could be the subject of another thread?
I can join you there for a more detailed response.

To be sure, this particular thread is about whether or not massive wealth
or disproportionate global prosperity is earned or achieved mostly by
luck.  It is about neoliberalism as an excuse by those who benefit for the
continuance of the current trends in the ever-widening wealth gap, not only
in this country but in others as well. How do Trade Agreements fit into
this? Could this be a prequel to a dangerous tipping point towards the
instability of a society?  At least that is what I intended to convey.


On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 9:28 PM, Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com>
wrote:

> "Strong critics of Hillary Clinton imply that she, like her husband,
> would surely have strengthened the negative feedback effect of
> neoliberalism toward their own self-interest and toward worsening social
> stability, IMHO."
>
>
> It is a double standard and a failure of imagination to think that one
> cannot optimize multiple objectives at once, e.g. their own good and the
> common good.  It is not even hypocritical.   The fact is that it takes
> money and power to change things, so they went out and got some.   No, she
> should have been a nun, but the Donald can swoop down with his kleptocrat
> friends and do god knows what..
>
>
> Marcus
> ------
> *From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of Robert Wall <
> wallrobe...@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 19, 2017 4:57:14 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
>
> This is just an exploratory thought piece to try in this forum ... please
> skip if it seems, right off the bat, as being too thought-full ...  [image:
> ][image: ]
>
> Does *Pareto's Principle
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle> *(with the attending,
> so-called Power Law <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law>) provide
> good *moral* justification for an amped-up progressive tax strategy or a
> reverse-discriminating set of rebalancing policies [e.g., changing the
> probabilities for the "everyman"]?  And, is the argument one of
> *morality *or one of *necessity*?  That's what this thread and the
> subject *Nautilus *article intend to explore, especially with the events
> that will begin the next four years tomorrow.
>
> *Nautilus*:  Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
> <http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/investing-is-more-luck-than-talent?utm_source=Nautilus_campaign=f5f998a451-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_18_medium=email_term=0_dc96ec7a9d-f5f998a451-56531089>
>  (January
> 19, 2017).
>
> *The surprising message of the statistics of wealth distribution.*
>
>
> *I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor
> the battle to the strong, *
> *neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding,
> nor yet favor to men of skill, *
> *but time and chance happeneth to them all.*  (Ecclesiastes 9:11)
>
>
> [*an introductory aside*: As computational statisticians, we love our
> simulations ... and our coin tosses.  [image: ] We are always mindful
> of *bias *... as, say, apparent with the ever-widening wealth gap. Money,
> Money, Money <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETxmCCsMoD0> ...] [image:
> ]
>
> [image: Inline image 1]
>
>
> So, as described in the subject *Nautilus *article, Pareto's Principle,
> descriptively seen so often in nature, seems to imply that the current
> widening wealth gap is, well, "natural?"  Judging by its prevalence in most
> all rich societies, it does seem so. However, remembering that this sorting
> process works even with *fair *coin tosses in investments and gambling,
> this process phenomenon with its biased outcomes seems to occur in many
> places and on many levels ...
>
> For example, we find this aspect of *luck in nature* elsewhere in
> biological processes; from *Wikipedia *... *Chance and Necessity: Essay
> on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology* is a 1970 book by Nobel
> Prize winner Jacques Monod, interpreting the processes of evolution to show
> that life is only the result of natural processes by "pure chance.

Re: [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent

[Robert Wall]

>
> P.S. RT is the Russian Propaganda news outlet.   Of course, they'd have
> their own motives for wanting to diminish Chinese power.


I think you should try to understand it before you castigate it as Russian
propaganda.  I know it is popular in the MSM to press this canard--as the
MSM is dying--but did you think what was presented in the clip I posted as
being anything like Russian propaganda ... something Putin would want us to
realize as if we didn't already realize it?  Do you think *Al Jazeera* is
also *not *worth listening to either?  Given the fake news coming from our
own MSM, more and more folks are looking elsewhere ... to alternative
viewpoints, even if foreign ... and even if funded by our current bogeyman.
As I hear it told, Putin has very little to say about the
journalistic content of RT.  The same is said of Rupert Murdoch's influence
over our own *Wall Street Journal*.  Let's look closer at Fox "News,"
MSNBC, CNN, etc.

I thought the *Columbia Journalism Review* of RT--What Is Russia Today
<http://www.cjr.org/feature/what_is_russia_today.php>?--was a reasonable
accounting of this alternative news outlet.  They provide a worldview *from
their own perspective*.  If we want to understand this country better
instead of just using them to generate fear in the US in order to promote a
domestically destructive neoliberal agenda, then I submit that this is a
good resource for that.

Being open-minded does not mean you are brainwashed.  Quite the opposite I
would think ...


On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 8:39 PM, Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com>
wrote:

> "The rigging is, IMHO, of not doing anything about the unabated and
> disproportionate flow of wealth to the top and, hence, giving rise to the
> resulting, ever-skewing, descriptive Pareto distribution of wealth versus
> population.  It certainly does seem like an increasing biasing of the
> metaphorical *fair *coin [e.g., the busted "trickle down" metaphor of
> President Ronald Reagan]."
>
>
> I think it depends in part on the source of the wealth and how it is
> used.   There's a qualitative difference between a Google and a payday loan
> company that preys on the poor.   Are these wealthy people creating new
> high-paying jobs or locking-in people to dead-end jobs like coal mining?
> Do they have a vision of advancement of humanity (Gates) or just a
> unnecessary assertion of the `need' for a lowest-common-denominator
> dog-eat-dog view of things?  How does their wealth and power matter in the
> long run?It is at least good that there isn't just one kind of
> billionaire, like the sort that destroys the environment and enslaves
> people.
>
>
> A problem with government is that the agency it gives people is either
> very limited (you get food stamps so you can eat), or it is also
> hierarchical like these enterprises (you don't get much agency unless you
> fight your way up or are an elected official).  For people to truly be free
> means creating a commons that facilitates other kinds of motivators that
> are rewarding in more complex ways than just salary or status.
> Universities don't really deliver on this, except perhaps for
> some professors who are in that world for most of their adult life.
>
>
> I would say neoliberalism is trying to engineer biased coins that land in
> a coordinated ways to build something more complex.   One way is with trade
> laws.
>
>
> Marcus
>
>
> P.S. RT is the Russian Propaganda news outlet.   Of course, they'd have
> their own motives for wanting to diminish Chinese power.
> --
> *From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of Robert Wall <
> wallrobe...@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 19, 2017 4:57:14 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
>
> This is just an exploratory thought piece to try in this forum ... please
> skip if it seems, right off the bat, as being too thought-full ...  [image:
> ][image: ]
>
> Does *Pareto's Principle
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle> *(with the attending,
> so-called Power Law <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law>) provide
> good *moral* justification for an amped-up progressive tax strategy or a
> reverse-discriminating set of rebalancing policies [e.g., changing the
> probabilities for the "everyman"]?  And, is the argument one of
> *morality *or one of *necessity*?  That's what this thread and the
> subject *Nautilus *article intend to explore, especially with the events
> that will begin the next four years tomorrow.
>
> *Nautilus*:  Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
> <http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/investing-is-more-luck-tha

Re: [FRIAM] Cold War Jitters Resurface as U.S. Marines Arrive in Norway - The New York Times

[Robert Wall]

Yeah, by provoking the Russians it seems Obama is trying to "salt the
earth" for the next administration.  A so-called Parthian shot
 at those that threaten to
throw his "legacy" under the bus.

No, Owen, it makes no sense, but it will fuel the post-election narrative
to come (actually already here) that will certainly be filled with sour
grapes, anxiety, anger, and hatred. Payment in full for the eight years of
obstructionism?  Not sure, but it is insane.

Or it could be Obama's handlers, the corporatocracy, trying to set the
stage for a (re)new bogeyman--Russia--to follow ISIS in order to sell arms
and Mafia-like protection.  There is big money in NATO.  Eisenhower warned
us about this--the Industrial-Military Complex.  Our economy is becoming
overly dependent on continuous war. If this is what it is, we should be
very glad that we didn't get Clinton's Kissinger-mentored militarism. This
is a full retreat to the Cold War Era of the '50s and 60s.  Should be good
for the bomb shelter industry ... again.  

I can't help noticing the sockpuppet corporate media falling in line to
promote the new narrative: "The Russians are coming" ... and "Trump is
their Manchurian candidate."  I am not at all a fan of Trump's, but this is
all bat-shit crazy. I too am a bit spooked.

-Robert


On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 10:15 AM, Owen Densmore  wrote:

> Does this make any sense? Are Norwegians concerned about a Russian
> invasion? Sounds nuts.
> ​​
> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/world/europe/norway-us-
> russia-marines.html
>
> ​Poland recently​ received US military folks too:
>   https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/world/europe/as-
> trump-reaches-toward-putin-us-troops-arrive-in-poland.html
>
> It seems to be NATO sponsored but why US troops?
>
> I'm a bit spooked.
>
> ​   -- Owen​
>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

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

Re: [FRIAM] scraping a web site

[Robert Wall]

Nick,

A lot of good ideas here.  I will just add one more.  For what you are
doing, from what I can tell, you may do well with a so-called non-database
Content Management System like Kirby .  There are
scores of these out there now
, many
being free.  I have some experience with Kirby.  It was just $40 ($17 now I
think) and very easy to use and very good support.  It is file-folder
based, very intuitive and has been around for a while. Essentially, being
file-based, if you can build a Windows directory, you can build a decent
website.  They have some examples of some very minimalist ways to go.

As Owen say, you do need to figure out how you are going to get it into the
sky, so to speak. I have been using HostGtor for years, but there are
others.

Glen,

A good steer to the File Manager plugins to get to the backend from the
Admin Panel in WordPress.   I installed WP File Manager (free), but the Pro
version looks like what one really needs if, say, you want to do some code
editing. This is useful.

On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 1:15 PM, Owen Densmore  wrote:

> Hi Nick, glad you recovered your site.
>
> In terms of going forward, there are lots of changes in the blog-o-sphere.
> Two things to consider:
>
> 1 - Content: I.e. what do you want your site to be? Is it mainly "static
> pages" or does it need bells and whistles like wordpress or other CMS's
> (Content Management Systems) supply. You might consider Markdown rather
> than an HTML editor. It is a simple text format that uses a specific format
> to build pages.
>
> 2 - Deployment: I.e. how do you get it into the sky! Hosting services are
> a dime a dozen and many of them are OK. They are fairly easy to use via a
> "dashboard". There are several free stunts too, like github pages, zeit
> now, medium.com and so on.
>
> The latter free sites generally solve both issues but then you have to
> play their game.
>
> On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 11:10 AM, Gillian Densmore 
> wrote:
>
>> Nick yes it called giving me a call. I don't know how you set it up.  In
>> short it's a very routine thing to do. Wit
>> I'd do it for you for free because I consider you a friend.
>>
>> Thier's always some Oops when you do so. And it depends on how you, fam,
>> and or friends set it up. I
>>
>> -Wordpress (for example) now has some rocking tools specifically for
>> moving between Weby Web  hosts.
>>
>> -Basic HTML is pretty portable, But again it depends entirely on how you
>> or a friend set it up.
>>
>> If you can oldschool FTP to earthlink just download it. From experience
>> it's a good idea to start the new web-host upload it, to make sure you
>> didn't miss something.
>>
>> Robert Corginger hit the nail on the head. In simple speak
>> Web-making-tools such as the OG DreamWeaver and Wordpress (as of 4.6) have
>> a variety of tools to move it around. I swear by Database->Files Folder
>> Plugins for wordpress for that reason.
>> But needless to say you do have options.
>>
>> As to what host? That's a matter of taste and how much you want to play
>> Admin.  Like I said to Steve. I LOVE to have Wordpress on Gilsplace.net
>> just to keep up with trying out setting up  or keeping up a website.
>>  BUT for just a quick article or rave or geeking out?
>> Wordpress.com all theway. Wix and Weebly (however that's spelled) are a
>> close tie though.
>> Because they just work.
>> For what it's worth ipage.net AmazonCloud,  get rave reviews. namecheap
>> in my experience isn't to bad. help is a totall crap shoot though.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 10:28 AM, glen ep ropella 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Hey Nick,
>>>
>>> I went ahead and downloaded your page(s) and put it up here:
>>>
>>>   http://agent-based-modeling.com/ntnd/nickthompson/naturaldes
>>> igns/index.html
>>>
>>> Let me know if I've missed anything.  I'm happy to help move it wherever.
>>>
>>> -glen
>>>
>>> On 01/03/2017 08:49 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>>> > I am in the uncomfortable position of being bound by threads of steel
>>> to Earthlink.  Many, MANY, years I go I started a website on Earthlink, {
>>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ <
>>> http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
>>> >
>>> > }, and put a lot of my writing, and some commentary up on it.  The
>>> website creation and editing medium (trellix) was pretty good for its time,
>>> and there are many ways that I find the site quite satisfying.  But
>>> gradually Earthlink has withdrawn its support, and now I am not sure I
>>> could get in to edit or change it.  Meantime, Research Gate has gotten
>>> started, and provides a somewhat better place to meet the world and archive
>>> my stuff.  And also, having the site on earthlink binds me to them and
>>> their 22 dollar a month fee.  So. …
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > I am wondering if there is a way (or a service that would) 

Re: [FRIAM] probability vs. statistics (was Re: Model of induction)

[Robert Wall]

Hey Glen,

Yes, on the first issue with respect to the Axiom of Choice, I think the
word "choice" there does not map one-for-one to the same word used in
probability theory. I think the two concepts are mutually exclusive, but
this may be beyond my "pay grade" to worry or talk about. 蘿

However, I can most certainly see your point about the beneficial
relationship between measurement theory and probability theory. The notion
sigma algebra is spot on, especially for the mathematics of theoretical
probability. Even though I may be considered an old dog professionally, I
can still resonate with Grant's notion of probability spaces as well.  It's
all good!

You know, I can still have fun while simultaneously being lost in the
forest. This has been fun!  Thanks for letting me play in the sandbox ... 

Cheers

On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 6:50 PM, glen ☣  wrote:

>
> Well, sure.  But the point is that the axiom of choice asserts, merely,
> the existence of the ability to choose a subset.  They call them "choice
> functions", as if there exists some "chooser".  But there's no sense of
> time (before the choice function is applied versus after it's applied).
> The name "choice" is a misleading misnomer.
>
> And that's my point.  Probability theory is a special case of measure
> theory.  Calling the set measures "probabilities" is an antiquated,
> misleading, and unfortunate name.
>
> On 12/14/2016 01:41 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> > Don't think about choosing.  The axiom of choice says that there is a
> function from each set (subset) to an element of itself, as I recall.
>
> --
> ☣ glen
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

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

Re: [FRIAM] probability vs. statistics (was Re: Model of induction)

[Robert Wall]

Glen,

Okay, given some of the later postings against the original question, I am
thinking that your question may have morphed or that I have completely
misunderstood what you are asking. Not sure. For example, somehow we have
gone from probability theory and its ontological status to the
Banach-Tarski Theorem and the Axiom of Choice.  This seems like a
non-sequitur, but not sure.  First off, a theory is inductive, whereas, a
theorem is deductive; so that is my first disconnect. So I don't understand
how we got here ... but this often happens to me.  :-(

Then we go to what I think is a refinement of the original question. Yes?
 (I am just trying to navigate the thinking to get to the core issue, that
I seem to be missing):

But what is this "set of events"? That's the question that is being
> discussed on this thread. It turns out that the events for a finite space
> is nothing more than the set of all possible combinations of the sample
> points. (Formally the event set is something called a "sigma algebra", but
> no matter.) So, an event scan be thought of simply all combinations of the
> sample points.


and then to:

So, the events already have probabilities by virtue of just being in a
> probability space. They don't have to be "selected", "chosen" or any such
> thing. They "just sit there" and have probabilities - all of them. The
> notion of time is never mentioned or required.


An event is not *all* the combinations of the sample points.  As Grant has
said, an event [outcome] has probability depending on how it is arbitrarily
configured from the event space by the researcher.  Moreover, there is an
important distinction to be made between the distribution of values [e.g.,
the numbers on each side of a dice being equally likely] and the sampling
distribution that is dependent on how the event is composed in a trial
sequence.  The sampling distribution is the mathematical result of the
convolution of probabilities when choosing N independent, *usually
*identically-distributed
random picks from the parent distribution.

Another example might be helpful: I think you are trying to define the
sample space like with an urn of 10 balls with three red and seven white.
An event, in that case, would be something like picking three balls all
red.  We could easily compute the probability of this event by using
hypergeometric arithmetic; this is because of the sample space changing if
you do not replace any balls after each pick. But, there is a finite number
of other possible events in this scenario of picking three things from a
bin of ten things. To be sure, though, this statistical problem does not
relate at all to the paradoxical Axiom of Choice ... unless I am still
missing something.  We are not interested in slicing and dicing [no pun
intended] a probability space of a certain size in a way for coming up
with, say, two identical but mutually exclusive probability spaces of the
same size. This would make no sense, IMHO.

Events are just the outcome(s) one is interested in computing the
probability for.  They don't exist--as selections, in the way that I think
you mean--until they are formulated by the researcher ... not trying to
conjure up anything spooky here between the observer and the experiment as at
the quantum level. :-) Nor are these events--not being mathematical
entities of any type--something to be discovered in some platonic math
sense [I mistakenly called you a Platonist, but on rereading the thread, I
think you are not. Sorry. But the world wouldn't be as interesting without
Platonists. :-) ].

For example, there is the possible event of being dealt four aces in one
hand of five cards and for which I can assign a probability given the
conceptual structure of the probability space: a deck of cards. This is
nothing more than laying out the number of possible [combinations--so order
doesn't matter] of hands (a sample) and determining how many ways I could
be dealt four aces [just one] ... then dividing the latter by the former.
This is an example of a categorical probability space, where the events are
all the various ways [combinations] one can be dealt five cards from a deck
of 52. We could go on to define these into categories like two of a kind,
three of a kind, and so forth. Each of those events can be then assigned a
probability.

and then:

Perhaps it's helpful to think about the "axiom of choice"?  Is a
> "choosable" element somehow distinct from a "chosen" element?  Does the act
> of choosing change the element in some way I'm unaware of?  Does
> choosability require an agent exist and (eventually) _do_ the choosing?


The Axiom of Choice is a paradox that seems to get into trouble with
set-cardinality, where it comes to infinite sets.  To me is nothing more
than a mathematical curiosity that has no impact on the practical world. So
I don't think this is helpful to your cause. But I would be more than
curious to see how you think it might be. I am more an applied

Re: [FRIAM] probability vs. statistics (was Re: Model of induction)

[Robert Wall]

Hi Glen, et al,

Thanks for cashing mu $0.02 check. :-)

When I wrote that "but it doesn't have to be" I wasn't asserting that
probability theory is devoid of events.  Events are fundamental to
probability theory.  They are the outcomes to which probability is
assigned.  In a nutshell, the practice of probability theory is the mapping
of the events--outcomes-- from random processes to numbers, thus making the
practice purposefully mathematical.  And in this regard, we speak of a
mathematical entity dubbed a random variable in order to carry out the
calculus of probability and statistics.

A random variable is like any other variable in mathematics, but with
specific properties concerning the values it can take on.  A random
variable is considered "discrete" if it can take on only countable,
distinct, or separate values [e.g., the sum of the values of a roll of
seven die].  Otherwise, a random variable can be considered "continuous" if
it can take on any value in an interval [e.g., the mass of an animal].
But, a random variable is a real-valued function--a one-to-one mapping of a
random process to a number line.

This is arguably as long about way of explaining [muck?!] why I said "but
it doesn't have to be ... time." Time doesn't have to be involved such that
the random variable does not have to distributed in time but often can be,
such as in reliability theory--for, example, the probability that a device
will survive for at least T cycles or months.

Yes to your and Grant's notion that thinking in terms of probability spaces
is a good way of thinking of probability and statistic and this mapping, as
mathematically we are doing convolutions of distributions [spaces?] when
modeling independent, usually identically distributed random trials
[activities]. But, let's not confuse the mathematical modeling with the
selection process of, say picking four of a kind from a deck of 52 cards.
All we are interested in doing is mapping the outcomes--events-- to
possibilities over which the probabilities all sum or integrate to no more
than unity. The activity gets mapped in the treatment of the random
variable in the mapping [e..g., the number of trials]. So, for example,
rolling 6s six times in a row is not a function of time, but of six
discrete, independent and identically distributed trials. For the computed
probability, in this case, it doesn't matter how long it took to roll the
dice six times.

I am thinking that this is the way your "opponent" is thinking about the
problem and suspect that he has been formally trained to see it this way.
Not the only way but a classical way.

When Eric talks about the historic difference between scientists,
mathematicians, and statisticians practicing probability theory and
statistics, these differences quickly disappeared when the idea of *uncertainty
*bubbled up into the models found in the fields of physics, economics,
measurement theory, decision theory, etc.  No longer could the world be
completely described by the classical system dynamic models.  Maybe before
Gauss even (the late-1700s), who was a polymath to be sure, error terms
were starting to be added to their equations and had to be estimated.

As to my language of "when" an event occurs with some calculated
likelihood, it can be a description or a prediction. The researcher may be
asking like Nick is [kind of?] asking in the other thread, what is the
likelihood of my getting this many 1s in a row if the process is supposedly
generating discrete random numbers between, say, one and five? In this
case, a *psychologically *unexpected event has happened. Or in planning his
experiment in advance, he may just want to set a halting threshold for
determining that any machine that gives him the same N consecutive numbers
in a row to be suspect. In that case, the event hasn't happened but has a
finite potential for happening and we want to detect that if it happens ...
too much.

Those "events" don't _happen_.  They simply _are_


This bit seems more philosophical than something a statistician would
likely [no pun intended] worry about. Admittedly, my choice of
words--throughout my post--could have been more precise, but I would not
have said that "events simply are."  When discussing the nature of time in
a "block universe," maybe that could be said, but I would have been in
Henri Bergson's corner [to my peril, of course] in the 1922 debate between
Bergson and Albert Einstein on the subject of time. :-) Curiously,
Bergson's idea of time is coming back--see *Time Reborn* (2013) by Lee
Smolin.  But this is likely not what you meant. However, you are an
out-of-the-closet Platonist by your own admission. No worries; I have
friends who are Platonists, most of them being mathematicians or
philosophers or believe the brain to be a computer, but not typically
computational scientists and certainly not cognitive scientists. :-) No
such thing as computational philosophy ... yet. Hmmm.

BTW, a Random Variable--continuous or 

Re: [FRIAM] probability vs. statistics (was Re: Model of induction)

[Robert Wall]

Hi Glen,

I feel a bit like Nick says he feels when immersed in the stream of such
erudite responses to each of your seemingly related, but thread-separated
questions.  As always, though, when reading the posted responses in this
forum, I learn a lot from the various and remarkable ways questions can be
interpreted based on individual experiences.  Perhaps this props up the
idea of social constructivism more than Platonism.  So, if you can bear
with me, my response here is more of a summary of my takeaways from the
variety of responses to your two respective questions, with my own
interpretations thrown in and based on my own experiences.

Taking each question separately ...

Imagine a thousand computers, each generating a list of random numbers.
> Now imagine that for some small quantity of these computers, the numbers
> generated are in n a normal (Poisson?) distribution with mean mu and
> standard deviation s.  Now, the problem is how to detect these non-random
> computers and estimate the values of mu and s.


Nick's question seems to be about how to determine non-random event
generators from independent streams of reportedly random processes.  This
is not really difficult to do and doesn't require any assumptions about
underlying probability distributions other than that each number in the
stream is equally likely as any other number in the stream [i.e., uniformly
distributed in probability space] and that the cumulative probability over
all possible outcomes sums to unity: the very definition of a random
variable ... a non-deterministic event--an observation--mapped to a number
line or a categorical bin.  A random variable has both mathematical and
philosophical properties, as we have heard in this thread.

For Nick's question, I think that Roger has provided the most practical
answer with Marsaglia's Die Hard battery of tests for randomness.  In my
professional life, I used these tests to prepare, for example, a QC
procedure for ensuring our hashing algorithms remained random allocators
after each new build of our software suite.  For example, a simple test
called the "poker test" using the Chi-squared distribution could be used to
satisfy Nick's question with the power of the test (i.e., reducing the
probability of rejecting the null hypothesis of randomness when it is true;
thus perhaps finding more non-random processes than really exist)
increasing with larger sample sizes ... longer runs.

So, does anyone here have an opinion on the ontological status of one or
> both probability and/or statistics?  Am I demonstrating my ignorance by
> suggesting the "events" we study in probability are not (identical to) the
> events we experience in space & time?


At the risk of exposing my own ignorance, I'll also say your question has
to do with the ontological status of any random "event" when treated in any
estimation experiments or likelihood computation; that is, are proposed
probability events or measured statistical events real?

For example--examples are always good to help clarify the question--is the
likelihood of a lung cancer event given a history of smoking pointing to
some reality that will actually occur with a certain amount of uncertainty?
In a population of smokers, yes.  For an individual smoker, no. In the
language of probability and statistics, we say that in a population of
smokers we *expect *this reality to be observed with a certain amount of
certainty (probability). To be sure, these tests would likely involve
several levels of contingencies to tame troublesome confounding variables
(e.g., age, length of time, smoking rate). Don't want to get into
multi-variate statistics, though.

Obviously, time is involved here but doesn't have to be (e.g., the
probability of drawing four aces from a trial of five random draws). An
event is an observation in, say, a nonparametric Fisher exact test of
significance against the null hypothesis of, say, a person that smokes will
contract lung cancer, which we can make contingent on, say, the number of
years of smoking. Epidemiological studies can be very complex, so maybe not
the best of examples ...

So, since probability and statistics both deal with the idea of an
event--as your "opponent" insists--events are just observations that the
event of interest [e.g., four of a kind] occurred; so I would say
epistemologically they are real experiences with a potential (probability)
based on either controlled randomized experiments of observational
experience.  But is a potential ontologically real?  樂

Asking if those events come with ontologically real probabilistic
properties is another, perhaps, different question?  This gets into
worldview notions of determinism and randomness. We tend to say that if a
human cannot predict the event in advance, it is random ... enough. If it
can be predicted based, say, on known initial conditions, then using
probability theory here is misplaced. Still, there are chaotic non-random
events that are not practically 

Re: [FRIAM] Model of induction

[Robert Wall]

Eric,

(I am ending many sentences with prepositions; apologies.)


Modern language usage manuals, for example,* Garner's Modern American Usage*
[2009: 3rd Edition, page 654], advise that you no longer have to worry
about ending a sentence with a preposition. As Winston Churchill once
quipped when criticized for occasionally ending a sentence with a
preposition, "This is the type of errant pedantry up with which I will not
put." 蘿

Cheers,

Robert W.

On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 3:21 PM, Robert J. Cordingley  wrote:

> Hi Eric
>
> I was remembering that if you tossed a perfectly balanced coin and got 10
> or 100 heads in a row it says absolutely nothing about the future coin
> tosses nor undermines the initial condition of a perfectly balanced coin.
> Bayesian or not the next head has a 50:50 probability of occurring. If you
> saw a player get a long winning streak would you really place your bet in
> the same way on the next spin? I would need to see lots of long runs (data
> points) to make a choice on which tables to focus my efforts and we can
> then employ Bayesian or formal statistics to the problem.
>
> I think your excellent analysis was founded on 'relative wins' which is
> fine by me in identifying a winning wheel, as against 'the longer a run of
> success' finding one which I'd consider very 'dodgy'.
>
> Thanks Robert
>
>
>
> On 12/12/16 1:56 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
>
>> Hi Robert,
>>
>> I worry about mixing technical and informal claims, and making it hard
>> for people with different backgrounds to track which level the conversation
>> is operating at.
>>
>> You said:
>>
>> A long run is itself a data point and the premise in red (below) is false.
>>>
>> and the premise in red (I am not using an RTF sender) from Nick was:
>>
>> But the longer a run of success continues, the greater is the probability
 that the wheel that produces those successes is biased.

>>> Whether or not it is false actually depends on what “probability” one
>> means to be referring to.  (I am ending many sentences with prepositions;
>> apologies.)
>>
>> It is hard to say that any “probability” inherently is “the” probability
>> that the wheel produces those successes.  A wheel is just a wheel (Freud or
>> no Freud); to assign it a probability requires choosing a set and measure
>> within which to embed it, and that always involves other assumptions by
>> whoever is making the assertion.
>>
>> Under typical usages, yes, there could be some kind of “a priori” (or, in
>> Bayesian-inference language, “prior”) probability that the wheel has a
>> property, and yes, that probability would not be changed by testing how
>> many wins it produces.
>>
>> On the other hand, the Bayesian posterior probability, obtained from the
>> prior (however arrived-at) and the likelihood function, would indeed put
>> greater weight on the wheel that is loaded, (under yet more assumptions of
>> independence etc. to account for Roger’s comment that long runs are not the
>> only possible signature of loading, and your own comments as well), the
>> more wins one had seen from it relatively.
>>
>> I _assume_ that this intuition for how one updates Bayesian posteriors is
>> behind Nick’s common-language premise that “the longer a run of success
>> continues, the greater is the probability that the wheel that produces
>> those successes is biased”.  That would certainly have been what I meant in
>> a short-hand for the more laborious Bayesian formula.
>>
>>
>> For completeness, the Bayesian way of choosing a meaning for
>> probabilities updated by observations is the following.
>>
>> Assume two random variables, M and D, which take values respectively
>> standing for a Model or hypothesis, and an observed-value or Datum.  So:
>> hypothesis: this wheel and not that one is loaded.  datum: this wheel has
>> produced relatively more wins.
>>
>> Then, by some means, commit to what probability you assign to each value
>> of M before you make an observation.  Call it P(M).  This is your Bayesian
>> prior (for whether or not a certain wheel is loaded).  Maybe you admit the
>> possibility that some wheel is loaded because you have heard it said, and
>> maybe you even assume that precisely one wheel in the house is loaded, only
>> you don’t know which one.  Lots of forms could be adopted.
>>
>> Next, we assume a true, physical property of the wheel is the probability
>> distribution with which it produces wins, given whether it is or is not
>> loaded.  Notation is P(D|M).  This is called the _likelihood function_ for
>> data given a model.
>>
>> The Bayes construction is to say that the structure of unconditioned and
>> conditioned probabilites requires that the same joint probability be
>> arrivable-at in either of two ways:
>> P(D,M) = P(D|M)P(M) = P(M|D)P(D).
>>
>> We have had to introduce a new “conditioned” probability, called the
>> Bayesian Posterior, P(M|D), which treats the model as if it depended on the
>> data.  But this is 

Re: [FRIAM] Eric's book link: The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere

[Robert Wall]

Steve, yes, thanks for this heads up about the arrival of Eric's and Harold
Morowitz' book.  I have been intrigued about and anticipating this book's
arrival ever since watching those videos you shared with the forum last
April presenting Eric's talk at the Aspen Institute on the (chemical)
origins of life (metabolisms?).  This, by the way, was your post within the
"Origins of Life" thread started by Nick Thompson, then introducing the
arrival of Nick Lane's book *THE VITAL QUESTION: Energy, evolution, and the
origins of complex life*.

Eric, I hope to be eventually mingled among those readers of your book who
can *try *to add "value" by way of subsequent discussions, writings, or
(science) blogging. The origins of life--especially, in the context of
homeostasis, which seems to me to be a fundamental universal principle--is
a mesmerizing and attractive (though, not well understood) topic for me
personally and I appreciate authors such as yourself who  bring new
research to us for consideration and education. For example, I have been on
several note-taking strolls through the *Evolving Planet *exhibit at the
Field Museum in Chicago.  Perhaps, your book will help set the stage better
for the time when organic life emerged on a hot, infant Earth.   I wish
you the best for its reception among the trained geochemists and lay
public.

Not sure, but I think I am the culprit who, yesterday, unintentionally
renamed the local Collected Works bookstore "Collective Works."  In the
immortal word of Rick Perry, "Oops."  

Cheers,

Robert

On Sun, Oct 23, 2016 at 4:22 AM, Eric Smith  wrote:

> Hi Steve, and thanks for this,
>
> At present, no, I don’t have any planned promotionals in SF, and I am not
> sure I can even make it through town this Autumn.  For me as for you, CW is
> the only bookstore I could think of as a natural venue for this.  (I did
> enjoy, though didn’t remark on, the pleasant Freudian/finger slip in
> someone’s email (Lee’s?) a day or two ago referring to it as Collective
> Works (or maybe I was just not in the know on a standard joke)).
>
> I’ll hope that material is enjoyable or somehow useful.  It was a hard
> slog for the last two years to try to get a better background in the
> geochemical literature that bears on this question, and my understanding of
> that is still _much_ shakier than for some of the metabolism literature.
> To trained geochemists' eyes this will glare immediately.  But the great
> thing I am learning is that value isn’t “contained” in a book; it is
> created in its own form by each reader.  So the limitations of the authors
> aren’t as terminal as one would at first suppose.
>
> All best,
>
> Eric
>
>
> > On Oct 21, 2016, at 1:56 PM, Steven A Smith  wrote:
> >
> > Eric -
> >
> > Congratulations!   Looks like a great jump forward in this literature!
>  I look forward to it!
> >
> > Any chance you will be holding a public reading with a local bookstore?
> Or have a preferred local bookstore we could storm to make sure they carry
> your book by buying a few?   My goto of late is Collected Works...
> >
> > FRIAM (local?) do we have enough interest for a reading group to form
> (again)?   Is Nick back in town?
> > - Steve
> >
> > On 10/21/16 10:36 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote:
> >> Eric's book came up at FRIAM. here's a Amazon link, there may be a
> better distributor.
> >> "The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth
> Geosphere" by Eric Smith, Harold J. Morowitz.
> >>
> >> Start reading it for free: http://amzn.to/2dGBsKs
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> 
> >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> >> to unsubscribe
> >> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> >
> > 
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>

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Re: [FRIAM] Unix Nightmare

[Robert Wall]

> “Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a Unix programmer, fluttering hither and
> thither, to all intents and purposes a Unix programmer. I was conscious
> only of my happiness as a Unix programmer, unaware that I was myself. Soon
> I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know
> whether I was then a man dreaming I was a Unix programmer, or whether I am
> now a Unix programmer, dreaming I am a man.”
> ​
> ―
> ​ with "permission" from​
>  Zhuangzi , The
> Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the
> Chuang-Tzu ​
> ​ 
>

​It happens to all of us ... 

​


On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 6:32 PM, Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> Nick,
>
> Well, sometimes when I'm thinking about a dream, I suddenly remember some
> detail that I had completely forgotten.  But more often I fall back to
> sleep.  In my old age, I seldom remember dreams.
>
> Frank
>
> Frank Wimberly
>
> On Oct 21, 2016 6:26 PM, "Nick Thompson" 
> wrote:
>
>> Good lord, Frank.  Surely you are teasing me.  How could your memory of a
>> dream not be accurate?!
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Frank
>> Wimberly
>> *Sent:* Friday, October 21, 2016 5:50 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam@redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Unix Nightmare
>>
>>
>>
>> I first learned Unix when I went to work at Bell Labs in 1978.  I was
>> only there for two years but over the next 18 years at Carnegie Mellon I
>> used Unix workstations or time-sharing systems almost constantly. The other
>> night I had a dream that involved Unix.  I am not saying the dream made
>> sense.  Dreams often don't.  For some reason I had a feeling that someone
>> had modified my system by replacing the cat command with a shell script
>> that didn't behave the way cat should.  I decided to use the which command
>> to find where the fake cat script was located in the file system.  But then
>> I thought how can I examine the script without using cat.  I was going
>> around in circles about this until I sort of woke up.  I realized that I
>> could use ed to look at the script.  Then I went back to sleep.  Sometimes
>> my memories of my dreams aren't accurate.
>>
>> Frank
>>
>> Frank Wimberly
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>> 
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>

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Re: [FRIAM] enablors vs disruptors

[Robert Wall]

So, perhaps, rather than thinking of enablers and disrupters as alternative
predicate adjectives describing new technological innovations brought to
market, let's think of the former as the subject of a simple sentence with
a prepositional phrase and the latter as the object of the same sentence,
such as "The enabler brought disruption to the existing market."  This
connotes more of a cause and effect relationship between the words; so they
are coupled and not opposed as they would be comparing them as separate
predicate adjectives.

As it turns out, as far as I can remember, in a market strategy aimed at
being disruptive in, say, a start-up seeking venture capital to target and
break through certain established barriers to entry set up as defenses
against disruption--in a way reminiscent of what the trebuchet brought to
existing castle walls in the Middle Ages--the enabler is much more than the
technology per se (i.e., the trebuchet) ... as Eric Charles has proffered
in his strategy for a non-technology start-up. The enabler must also
include the strategy itself--entry and exit--an organization, leadership, a
delivery system, ideology and policy development, fundraising, people,
closed-loop feedback systems with timely corrective action, etc. Disruption
is not guaranteed by just a good technological idea. Successful big
businesses--those worth disrupting--most always have built-in defenses
against disruptions. Timing is also important to thwart a competent counter
attack.

To be sure, disruption--that is, market share usurpation--can come in
various degrees.  There's Amazon's  "trebuchet" to the brick and mortar
businesses ... but there are still many surviving bookstores like
Collective Works and Op Cit. So scale or size--like with species surviving
an extinction event disruption--is a form of defense like it wasn't when
Tower Records got too big to respond to the Amazon or Apple disruptions.

And then there are those "boutique" challenges, like Five Guys, to the
seemingly impenetrable hamburger delivery businesses represented by the Big
Three. In this case, there is no real new technology at the core, but just
a strategy to appeal to a different segment of the market not being
addressed well enough to repel a niche-level disruption ... a wood chipper
instead of a trebuchet, say.

Like many on this thread have done already, the analysis brought by Nick
has been immediately analogized to the current political spectrum with
concrete dump trucks and jackhammers even. I like this direction,
especially for the 2016 election, which should motivate us all to
contemplate how to cause a disruption in the system that has, IMHO,
delivered to us the two worst candidates for POTUS in recent memory ... and
mine goes back all the way to Eisenhower and Stevenson ... I did like Ike
... even if I was just a kid then traveling with my parents on the
nascent interstate highway infrastructure he brought to the transportation
marketplace ... disruptive? Ask the Holiday Inns, Howard Johnsons, etc.
that replaced the mom and pops.

Electorally, it looks like 2016 is a bust, but can we do anything for
20120? How do we disrupt the market for political leadership?  In that
respect, I found this article brought to us by *The Daily Beast* to be
quite thought-provoking: "Time To Take a Silicon Valley Hammer To the
Two-Party Duopoly

(9-10-2016)."  Yeah, it could even be a jackhammer. 

What the author brings is a reformation of the previous sentence I brought
at the start of this post, such as "The Citizens' Party brought disruption
to the market for political leadership ."  He says,


"Let's disrupt the Democratic and Republican parties the way Uber’s
> eviscerated the taxi business."



>
> "I want us to come together to build this Citizens’ Party to enable the
> broad range of Americans who fall under the fat part of the bell curve in
> our political thinking and attitudes—those of us who find the Democrats’
> socialism-fueled platform as repugnant as we find the Republicans’ nativist
> one—to identify and nurture candidates and raise funds and build
> organizations that reflect our non-outlier beliefs about how our country
> should work."



>
> "If we ’re going to disrupt this market for political leadership—the
> market the two parties collude to control in a way no Justice Department
> would ever allow in any other context—we’re going to need to bring
> expertise from the technology, political, policy, legal, communications,
> and fundraising industries and communities into the swarm and make them all
> buzz together." 


That's much more to bring than just a technology product to enable the
disruption.  The "castle walls" of the existing Duopoly are nearly
seventeen decades old and heavily fortified and those insiders are very
good at controlling the existing zeitgeist (i.e., the marketplace of
ideas).  

Re: [FRIAM] enablors vs disruptors

[Robert Wall]

Hi Nick,

I think this fellow would agree with you: Technology: Enabler versus
Disruptor
.


It is not the business model that is necessarily disrupted, but the way
that the model is executed through the use of emerging or existing
technological innovations: a better "mousetrap" so to speak  What gets
disrupted is the market share profile; what occurs then is sometimes call a
"shakeout."  The computer shakeouts of the '80s come to mind for me,
especially with the advent of the personal computer ... and now the
shrinking and even wearable mobile computing platforms.

But, you are rights in saying that the new competing execution strategies
for identical business models are *enabled *by newer, more clever
technology integrations that can *disrupt *existing market shares in those
markets.

So it is not enablers *versus *disrupters; it is more that enablers [i.e.,
the better mousetrap] enable disruption, which is what I think you are
saying.

Well, that's my $0.02 anyway. 蘿

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 12:18 PM, Nick Thompson 
wrote:

>
>
> Dear Friammers,
>
>
>
> A close friend of mine has gone to work in marketing for a Startup
> Incubator in Another City.  I have been perusing the website and I notice
> frequent use of the word “disruptors”, as if disruption was a goal in
> itself.  This puzzles me.  I have always thought of technology as
> “enabling’ and have thought of its disruptive effects as a kind of
> collateral damage that needs to be mitigated.  Now I recognize that one of
> the properties of a really good technology company is the ability to
> respond quickly to disruption, and to provide solutions and open up
> opportunities for those whose lives are disrupted.  And I realize that if I
> owned a technology company, I might want to produce disruption in order
> that I might supply “enablors” to the disrupted.  But isn’t it a case of
> industrial narcissism to MARKET oneself as a disruptor, a kind of
> “preaching to the choir”, rather than outreach to potential purchasers of
> one’s technology?  Or is my thinking “oh so 20th Century.”
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Re: [FRIAM] Hope?

[Robert Wall]

I often like *Counterpunch *for their opinion.  And they make an
excellent point here
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/28/debate-nights-biggest-lie-was-told-by-lester-holt/>,
as you say, Glen.

My contention for who should be in the presidential debates is that perhaps
notwithstanding the *FiveThirtyEight *simulation results, any candidate on
ballots in *enough *states--where it is possible for them to accrue 270
electoral votes--should be included in the presidential debates.  So under
this criterion, I would argue for the inclusion of both Gary Johnson and
Jill Stein.  If they are not in those debates, it is argued that it is
near-impossible for them to win much in the Electoral College.

Now, Nate Silver makes a different argument for an event with
non-zero probability, but one that would involve Congress making the final
choice.  I mean forget for a moment what success any third-party candidate
may have in the Electoral College, this
"not-getting-to-270-by-any-candidate" scenario  is much more likely given
the way the polls are showing an inexplicable near dead heat between the
two major-party candidates. Of course, this would require a good showing by
the third-party candidates in the Electoral College.

Now, under this "possible" scenario, any other third-party candidate would
have to be considered if they win any state; that is if I understand the
rules for this heretofore unprecedented event. So, if this is so, what if a
third-party candidate can win at least one state? And, this possibility
becomes more plausible for a third-party candidate, the more states that
have them on their ballot.  I am, of course, ruling out the effect of the
corporate-controlled media bias for shirking their role of informing the
electorate that there are more than two candidates for consideration and
the strength of the two-party hegemony in this country.  And, I won't get
into the idea of developing an *epistocracy *to replace all of this, but
it's a good discussion to be had ... 

According to *Merriam-Webster*, plausible means "appearing worthy of
belief ."  Maybe this year many things that didn't seem credible in the
past could be worthy of our belief this cycle.  I mean, how credible is it
that Donald Trump would have become the GOP's champion candidate for
POTUS?  Everything seems upside-down this time.  Yes?


On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 5:29 PM, glen ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I liked the point as made by this post:
>
> http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/28/debate-nights-biggest
> -lie-was-told-by-lester-holt/
>
> But even if we admit that the only purpose for the peripheral candidates
> is to influence the actual candidates, we still have an argument for
> allowing them to debate.  So, the answer to the question of why they're not
> in the debate really is because it's _bipartisan_ not nonpartisan.  It's
> just another example of how the expressivity of your language biases what
> you do/can understand.
>
> On 10/03/2016 04:21 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>
>> Gary Johnson is not plausible.  Didn't 538 say his odds were 2 in 100?
>>
>> On Oct 3, 2016 5:05 PM, "Robert Wall" <wallrobe...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> This simulation ensemble conducted by *FiveThirtyEight *gives some
>>> plausibility to New Mexico becoming the new Florida with Gary
>>> Johnson--not
>>> Jill Stein--playing the part of Ralph Nader.  It also gives some non-zero
>>> plausibility to Gary Johnson becoming the next POTUS.  So why isn't
>>> Johnson
>>> in the debates?  Isn't plausibility the real criterion?  We need to find
>>> out more about this potential next POTUS.  Yes? [image: 樂][image: ]
>>>
>>>
>
> --
> [image: ☣] glen
>
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Hope?

[Robert Wall]

Hi Frank,

I should have used scare quotes.  Sorry.  It is difficult to get your
tongue in cheek to show enough in a forum post.

[image: Inline image 1]



On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 5:21 PM, Frank Wimberly <wimber...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Gary Johnson is not plausible.  Didn't 538 say his odds were 2 in 100?
>
> Frank
>
> Frank Wimberly
> Phone (505) 670-9918
>
> On Oct 3, 2016 5:05 PM, "Robert Wall" <wallrobe...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Glen.  Quite interesting.
>>
>> This simulation ensemble conducted by *FiveThirtyEight *gives some
>> plausibility to New Mexico becoming the new Florida with Gary Johnson--not
>> Jill Stein--playing the part of Ralph Nader.  It also gives some non-zero
>> plausibility to Gary Johnson becoming the next POTUS.  So why isn't Johnson
>> in the debates?  Isn't plausibility the real criterion?  We need to find
>> out more about this potential next POTUS.  Yes? [image: 樂][image: ]
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 1:23 PM, glen [image: ☣] <geprope...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Election Update: The Craziest End To The 2016 Campaign Runs Through New
>>> Mexico
>>> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-the-craz
>>> iest-end-to-the-2016-campaign-runs-through-new-mexico/
>>>
>>> "In 20,000 simulations of our polls-only model this morning, cases in
>>> which neither Clinton nor Trump received a majority of electoral votes and
>>> Johnson received at least one came up just 30 times, putting the chances at
>>> 0.15 percent."
>>>
>>> I _wish_ I could run 20k simulations in one morning! 8^)  I just
>>> optimized our code so that drug moving from the heterogeneous lobule into
>>> the well-mixed body compartment are converted from objects to integer
>>> counts.  That cut execution time by several orders of magnitude... but each
>>> experiment still takes ~10-12 hours.
>>>
>>> --
>>> [image: ☣] glen
>>>
>>> 
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>>
>>
>>
>> 
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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>>
>
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Hope?

[Robert Wall]

Thanks, Glen.  Quite interesting.

This simulation ensemble conducted by *FiveThirtyEight *gives some
plausibility to New Mexico becoming the new Florida with Gary Johnson--not
Jill Stein--playing the part of Ralph Nader.  It also gives some non-zero
plausibility to Gary Johnson becoming the next POTUS.  So why isn't Johnson
in the debates?  Isn't plausibility the real criterion?  We need to find
out more about this potential next POTUS.  Yes? 樂


On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 1:23 PM, glen ☣  wrote:

> Election Update: The Craziest End To The 2016 Campaign Runs Through New
> Mexico
> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-the-craz
> iest-end-to-the-2016-campaign-runs-through-new-mexico/
>
> "In 20,000 simulations of our polls-only model this morning, cases in
> which neither Clinton nor Trump received a majority of electoral votes and
> Johnson received at least one came up just 30 times, putting the chances at
> 0.15 percent."
>
> I _wish_ I could run 20k simulations in one morning! 8^)  I just optimized
> our code so that drug moving from the heterogeneous lobule into the
> well-mixed body compartment are converted from objects to integer counts.
> That cut execution time by several orders of magnitude... but each
> experiment still takes ~10-12 hours.
>
> --
> [image: ☣] glen
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[FRIAM] FREE Book - Beyond Connecting the Dots

[Robert Wall]

I just was notified about this interactive book that promotes systems
thinking and modeling.  It is titled *Beyond Connecting the Dots: Modeling
For Meaningful Results* .  The book
used to sell for about $10, but now, for some reason, it is being offered
as FREE.

*Beyond Connecting the Dots* is a new kind of book on Systems Thinking and
> Modeling. Rather than being constrained by the printed page, it runs
> digitally on your computer or your tablet. Because of this it can provide
> you an exciting experience that goes beyond the printed word. The models in
> the book are truly interactive and you can directly experiment with them
> within the book as you read about them. *Beyond Connecting the Dots* is
> more than a book; it is a truly interactive learning environment that lets
> you play with ideas rather than just read them.


Apple or Windows Desktop or Web.  Looks useful.  Perhaps some of you in
this forum would also find this book useful ...

Cheers,

Robert

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Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Re: Understanding you-folks

[Robert Wall]

Yikes! Sorry Stephen for misspelling your name, but at least I did it
consistently.  

- Rebort

On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 6:30 PM, Nick Thompson 
wrote:

> Sorry,
>
> It took me a bit to realize that I was the OP.
>
> This has been tremendously useful for me, because it has given me a sense
> of what you all agree on and what is controversial.  Author of the book, of
> course, writes as if everything he says would be agreed upon by everybody
> in theworld, including.
>
> I will restart the book with all of this discussion behind me.
>
> Thanks to you all,
>
> OP
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ep
> ropella
> Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2016 3:38 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Re: Understanding you-folks
>
>
> Heh, to be as clear as possible, there were 4 questions in the OP and
> several follow-up questions, summarized below.  I think the additional
> ideas on computation were (mostly) addressing the follow-up questions,
> particularly the _exploration_ of the idea that not all inference is
> computational.  But those additional ideas also address the OP question #2
> to some extent.  We have 1 answer to OP #1 from Dave.
>
> On 07/02/2016 08:30 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Dear Friammers,
> > 1.   Has anybody read this book?
> > 2.   Do you understand it?
> > 3.   WTF is an Accept State?
> > 4.   And why is it called an “Accept State?”
>
> On 07/05/2016 06:25 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > If one has to use an “artificial” stop rule such as “quit when you get
> to the tenth decimal point”, is such a problem deemed “computable” or
> “non-computable”?  Can one “compute” the square root of two?
>
> On 07/06/2016 11:33 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Thanks, Glen,
> > I assume that the following is NOT a program in your sense.
> > ;;Compute the sum of 2 and 2;;.
> > Begin
> > Ask Dad, "Dad, what is the sum of 2 and 2?
> > Dad says, "Four"
> > Four
> > End.
> > It is, however, an algorithm, right?
>
> On 07/06/2016 12:05 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > I guess what I was fishing for is some sort of exploration of the idea
> that not all procedures for arriving at answers are computations.
>
> On 07/07/2016 11:32 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote:
> > Nick,
> >
> > Owen asks:
> >> has the OP (original post) been satisfied?
> >
> > Has the this email thread answered your original question what an Accept
> state is? And why it is called an Accept state?
> >
> > Are we in an accept or reject state. Or like many threads is this
> non-halting?
>
> > On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 8:10 AM, Owen Densmore  > wrote:
> >>
> >> Just to calibrate: has the OP been satisfied?
> >>
> >> I *think* so, we discussed FSM's discussing their input string and
> their final state and whether that was the designated accept state.
> >>
> >> And tho a Turing Machine is more than a FSM, the vocabulary of
> states, input strings and so on should answer the OP.
> >>
> >> I'm not sure the additional ideas on computation were coherent
> enough to add to his interest, but then, knowing Nick, I could be wrong!
> >>
> >> Hope the book reading is progressing with success, given our help.
>
>
> --
> glen ep ropella ⊥ 971-280-5699
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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>
>
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Understanding you-folks

[Robert Wall]

Hi Robert Cordingley,

I thought your follow-up question--about analog computing--to Nick's is an
intriguing one, especially in the context of the definition for computing
that Steven brought. Solving a set of differential equations certainly
leads to an answer, though not necessarily to a discrete answer.  This *is *a
process that involves a specific trajectory through a continuous phase
space ... so, perhaps, that trajectory can be thought of as your "accept
state" of sorts.

To be sure, is analog computing still computing?  What are the states in
the continuous-phase space of analog computing and how does this paradigm
compare with the discrete states of a finite state machine?   Perhaps as a
key idea, if we can liken state space
 with phase space
 then analog computing seems to
fit rather well into the general genre of computing.

State space is conceptually similar to phase space
> , but for discrete rather than
> continuous dynamical systems.


Thus, I see *analog computing* just as a *different *species of computing
that has some advantages over digital computing: speed and theoretical
precision depending on the application and the precision of measurement.
Biological systems are continuous dynamical analog systems and, in fact,
parallel processing systems of multiple simultaneous inputs.

As it turns out MIT (and DARPA) are rediscovering the advantages of analog
computing for simulating biological systems
.

BUT, I don't want to go so far as to say that living systems are computers;
and so, this caveat would seem to conflict with categorizing analog
computing as the *same *species as digital computing.  In terms of this
argument then, I see digital computing as a possible virtualization of
analog computing.  We can solve differential equations on digital computers
as well.  Yes?

Going a bit further, some liken the universe to an infinite-state-machine
(ISM) which may or may not be more powerful than a Turing Machine, but this
gets a bit philosophical. Still, could analog computing be thought of as a
localized ISM?  Not sure.  Maybe let's not go there.

Interesting to reflect on this in the context of Nick's original question
or thought experiment.  Such reflection does seem to be able to take the
conversation along different trajectories, but hopefully not straying too
far from the original question.  It's easy to get lost in the weeds ... and
maybe I have here.  

Cheers,

-R

On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 3:31 PM, Robert J. Cordingley 
wrote:

> My question is then what do Analog Computers
>  do and how do they fit
> into Nick's exploration? As I recall they have no procedures but do produce
> 'answers' without computation as we commonly know it these days. They
> probably have an 'accept state' to tell the user when the 'answer' is
> available. The same Wikipedia article (linked) speaks to ongoing research
> into their use.
> Robert C
>
> On 7/6/16 1:05 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>
> I didn't ask it because I wasn't smart enough to think of it.
>
> I guess what I was fishing for is some sort of exploration of the idea that 
> not all procedures for arriving at answers are computations.
>
> Not so smart, after all, eh?
>
> Nick
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com ] On 
> Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
> Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2016 2:47 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group  
> 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Understanding you-folks
>
> "Ask" could be a higher order function that takes as an argument a "says" 
> function.
> Provided those are made precise enough to be operational, then you would have 
> a "consult the Oracle" program/algorithm.  Details such as "how to acquire 
> the Dad" (and what to do in his absence) would need to be spelled-out.
> With such a program one might build another program which would be "predict 
> what the Oracle will say given different values".
> That program would demonstrate insight on the part of the author.I'm not 
> sure what you are driving at here.   Why don't you just say?
> I thought it was probably "computing is not insight" or something like that?
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com ] On 
> Behalf Of Nick Thompson
> Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2016 12:33 PM
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'  
> 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Understanding you-folks
>
> Thanks, Glen,
>
> I assume that the following is NOT a 

Re: [FRIAM] Understanding you-folks

[Robert Wall]

Sorry. Let's try again.  The link did not seem to come through for the
cognitive science paper "Computation vs. information processing: why their
difference matters to cognitive science
<https://www.google.com/url?sa=t=j==s=web=1=rja=8=0ahUKEwiZj5GTzt_NAhUY82MKHTqlBxEQFgghMAA=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.umsl.edu%2F~piccininig%2FComputation_vs_Information_Processing.pdf=AFQjCNFl90aR_HXyTP2W9G2jK-yvrwKvNw=dp-Jj-FYpQn9fwPvCe-fLw>
(2010)"

-R

On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 2:46 PM, Robert Wall <wallrobe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Many would argue (eg Seth Llloyd
>> http://www.nature.com/news/2002/020603/full/news020527-16.html) that
>> *any* process that involves changes of state is computation. Can you name a
>> "procedure for arriving at answers" that doesn't involve a series of
>> processes that change state?
>
>
> That pretty much covers it, Steven.  Very concise. It does more
> fundamentally ask the question, "Can all procedures be modeled as just
> state machines?"
>
> So, back to an early thought of a Turing Machine, which is a very
> simple--almost trivial--model of a computation, but this trivial device is
> capable of any computation that can be performed by any other computing
> device.
>
> [*Sidebar*: Is a medical procedure [protocol] as computation?  The
> objective is to get to an outcome that may not occur.  There are steps.  If
> we were to automate this "operation" with a machine, then we could easily
> think of this as a computational procedure.  Yes?]
>
>
> In the context of a *mathematical model of computation*, the other
> missing piece here seems to be the *allowable *triggers or conditions
> established for transitioning out of any particular state. That's the key
> part of any algorithm especially for determining its complexity.  Also, an
> algorithm doesn't have to be guaranteed to finish (reach an* accept state*)
> at an answer in order to be considered a procedure or algorithm, IMHO.  For
> example, nothing may guarantee that a *proper *condition will arise for
> the procedure to transition to the next logical state.  And, there are
> algorithms
> <https://www.google.com/url?sa=t=j==s=web=7=rja=8=0ahUKEwip-OSS19_NAhUEKGMKHRCfAHgQFgg2MAY=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FP_versus_NP_problem=AFQjCNFEKjY0JaPaecYPn3Mt3va-OIHmNg=Z1QceI9MitOs90CpLXYU9A=bv.126130881,d.cGc>
> that cannot theoretically be determined to finish or stop. But that is
> likely not in scope of addressing the original question:
>
> Nick writes: I guess what I was fishing for is some sort of exploration
>> of the idea that
>> *​​not all *procedures for arriving at answers are computations.
>
>
> Okay--at the risk of just throwing a bit more confusion into the
> mix--let's ask, "Is computation the same as information processing?"  This
> may just be a semantic argument but it is a point of departure for
> cognitive scientists who make the distinction that the brain is not a
> computer. See, for example, Computation vs. information processing: why
> their difference matters to cognitive science (2010).  It is an
> interesting discussion in terms of the cognitive science concept of "
> *computationalism*" that arises in discussions of strong generalized
> artificial intelligence.
>
> Since the cognitive revolution, it has become commonplace that cognition
>> involves both computation and information processing. Is this one claim or
>> two? Is computation the same as information processing?
>> The two terms are often used interchangeably, but this usage masks
>> important differences. In this paper, we distinguish information processing
>> from computation and examine some of their mutual relations, shed-
>> ding light on the role each can play in a theory of cognition. We
>> recommend that theorists of cognition be explicit and careful in choosing
>> notions of computation and information and connecting them together.
>
>
> Again, this may just be a semantic argument or outside the scope of Nick's
> original query, though it is still interesting.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -R
>
> On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 1:33 PM, Stephen Guerin <
> stephen.gue...@simtable.com> wrote:
>
>> Nick writes:
>> > I guess what I was fishing for is some sort of exploration of the idea
>> that not all procedures for arriving at answers are computations.
>>
>> Many would argue (eg Seth Llloyd
>> http://www.nature.com/news/2002/020603/full/news020527-16.html) that
>> *any* process that involves changes of state is computation. Can you name a
>> "procedure for arriving at answers" that doesn't involve a series of
>> processes that change state?
>>
>> -S
>>
&g

Re: [FRIAM] Understanding you-folks

[Robert Wall]

>
> Many would argue (eg Seth Llloyd
> http://www.nature.com/news/2002/020603/full/news020527-16.html) that
> *any* process that involves changes of state is computation. Can you name a
> "procedure for arriving at answers" that doesn't involve a series of
> processes that change state?


That pretty much covers it, Steven.  Very concise. It does more
fundamentally ask the question, "Can all procedures be modeled as just
state machines?"

So, back to an early thought of a Turing Machine, which is a very
simple--almost trivial--model of a computation, but this trivial device is
capable of any computation that can be performed by any other computing
device.

[*Sidebar*: Is a medical procedure [protocol] as computation?  The
objective is to get to an outcome that may not occur.  There are steps.  If
we were to automate this "operation" with a machine, then we could easily
think of this as a computational procedure.  Yes?]


In the context of a *mathematical model of computation*, the other missing
piece here seems to be the *allowable *triggers or conditions established
for transitioning out of any particular state. That's the key part of any
algorithm especially for determining its complexity.  Also, an algorithm
doesn't have to be guaranteed to finish (reach an* accept state*) at an
answer in order to be considered a procedure or algorithm, IMHO.  For
example, nothing may guarantee that a *proper *condition will arise for the
procedure to transition to the next logical state.  And, there are
algorithms

that cannot theoretically be determined to finish or stop. But that is
likely not in scope of addressing the original question:

Nick writes: I guess what I was fishing for is some sort of exploration of
> the idea that
> *​​not all *procedures for arriving at answers are computations.


Okay--at the risk of just throwing a bit more confusion into the mix--let's
ask, "Is computation the same as information processing?"  This may just be
a semantic argument but it is a point of departure for cognitive scientists
who make the distinction that the brain is not a computer. See, for
example, Computation vs. information processing: why their difference
matters to cognitive science
http://www.umsl.edu/~piccininig/Computation_vs_Information_Processing.pdf>
(2010).  It is an interesting discussion in terms of the cognitive science
concept of "*computationalism*" that arises in discussions of strong
generalized artificial intelligence.

Since the cognitive revolution, it has become commonplace that cognition
> involves both computation and information processing. Is this one claim or
> two? Is computation the same as information processing?
> The two terms are often used interchangeably, but this usage masks
> important differences. In this paper, we distinguish information processing
> from computation and examine some of their mutual relations, shed-
> ding light on the role each can play in a theory of cognition. We
> recommend that theorists of cognition be explicit and careful in choosing
> notions of computation and information and connecting them together.


Again, this may just be a semantic argument or outside the scope of Nick's
original query, though it is still interesting.

Cheers,

-R

On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 1:33 PM, Stephen Guerin 
wrote:

> Nick writes:
> > I guess what I was fishing for is some sort of exploration of the idea
> that not all procedures for arriving at answers are computations.
>
> Many would argue (eg Seth Llloyd
> http://www.nature.com/news/2002/020603/full/news020527-16.html) that
> *any* process that involves changes of state is computation. Can you name a
> "procedure for arriving at answers" that doesn't involve a series of
> processes that change state?
>
> -S
>
> ___
> stephen.gue...@simtable.com 
> CEO, Simtable  http://www.simtable.com
> 1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505
> office: (505)995-0206 mobile: (505)577-5828
> twitter: @simtable
>
>>
>
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Fascinating article on how AI is driving change in SEO, categories of AI and the Law of Accelerating Returns

[Robert Wall]

Hi Marcus or Robot Overload,

Tongue in cheek:  How about early "retirement" packages to benefit the
surviving families?  I certainly may have to consider this myself for my
kids' and grandkids' survival  if the "offer" comes about.  But I am
retired and not displaced ... but I may still seem like a resource consumer
with no "apparent" ROI [except for what gets posted here, of course. :-)]

Still, given the knowledge I currently represent and embody that will waste
away with my death as you have said, I may still be more of an optimist in
these matters.  As naive as this may sound, if, for the sake of improving
humanity, we all spent just a bit more attention to achieving this uptick
through our own conscious evolution than through technological evolution
[and not through religion], we would have much fewer worries here. Improve
the conscious states even if through "advanced medicine and genetic
enhancements" or better and closer, more rational social politics.

This is the way to improve humanity in a *meaningful *way. No sixth
extinction event marking the end of the Anthropocene and the beginning of
the posthuman era.  No SkyNet.  No *I Robot *[the movie not the novel].
Just the conquering of what seems to be in the way of our survival at the
moment, irrespective of any ANI or AQI robots: our immediate impact on the
ecosystem. In that respect, we should do what is right for us collectively
and right for a planet upon which we desperately will need for a long time
to come. No way we are going to be able to leave this rock. Transhumanism
is a great Sci-Fi narrative, but not a good bet for us in the long run.

I recommend reading Martin Heidegger's essay *The Question Concerning
Technology*
<https://www.google.com/url?sa=t=j==s=web=2=rja=8=0ahUKEwjh5rye75TNAhUbA1IKHVEmAwEQFggkMAE=http%3A%2F%2Fsimondon.ocular-witness.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2008%2F05%2Fquestion_concerning_technology.pdf=AFQjCNEhi7RSgqOaAwOK4kGgKndXKfqYpw=JKZ_x68VT3dj4nwOve_XZw>
(1954).  We *are *enframed.  But, the escape is ... well, *poetry*. Okay, I
know ... but you have to read this essay to understand. 

Best regards,

Robert

On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 8:03 PM, Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com> wrote:

> If I were a robot overlord, and I didn’t want to look after 7 billion
> humans as pets, I’d start offering advanced medicine and genetic
> enhancements to “early users”, esp. the rich and powerful.   The results of
> these could be things like open-ended lifespan (ongoing repairs to aging
> bodies) and improved IQ, and perhaps even nicely-packaged cybernetic
> enhancements for emergency `soul preservation’ or high-speed
>  communication.  Humans are good at ignoring suffering outside of their
> tribe, and this would just be a new kind of social stratification.  Don’t
> need Skynet, just an incentive structure…
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Robert
> Wall
> *Sent:* Monday, June 06, 2016 7:16 PM
>
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fascinating article on how AI is driving change in
> SEO, categories of AI and the Law of Accelerating Returns
>
>
>
> Getting back to Tom's original theme about how AI is driving change, let's
> examine that further, but now integrating in some of the other thoughts in
> this thread such as: on the hegemonic nature of AI-- proprietary or open
> source; or the societal impact of AI on the workforce--requisite skills
> increasing the value of the surviving human work; or on the existential
> risk of AI to humanity.  Certainly, it would be very relevant to also
> consider AI in the context of technological unemployment.  IMHO, this is
> the immediate existential threat, the threat to human-performed work.  Work
> is the thing that gives most of us something to organize our lives around
> ... giving us meaning to our existence. This threat is not naive.  It is
> real, palpable, and more fearsome than mortal death or physical extinction.
>
>
>
> We talked about the difference between ANI [Artificial Narrow
> Intelligence] and AGI [Artificial General Inteligence], with the former
> being the most prevalent--actually, the only type currently achieved.
> Current factory robots are of the ANI-type and are already replacing human
> workers by the millions here and abroad.  As their cost [ ~ $20,000]
> continues to decline through manufacturing efficiencies these robots will
> be able to replace even more workers, simultaneously putting downward
> pressure on the official, sustainable minimum wage.
>
>
>
> Even if the average rate of increase in "IQ" of these ANI robots remains
> at a modest steady pace or accelerates in pace with the supposed law of
> accelerating r

Re: [FRIAM] Fascinating article on how AI is driving change in SEO, categories of AI and the Law of Accelerating Returns

[Robert Wall]

Getting back to Tom's original theme about how AI is driving change, let's
examine that further, but now integrating in some of the other thoughts in
this thread such as: on the hegemonic nature of AI-- proprietary or open
source; or the societal impact of AI on the workforce--requisite skills
increasing the value of the surviving human work; or on the existential
risk of AI to humanity.  Certainly, it would be very relevant to also
consider AI in the context of technological unemployment.  IMHO, this is
the immediate existential threat, the threat to human-performed work.  Work
is the thing that gives most of us something to organize our lives around
... giving us meaning to our existence. This threat is not naive.  It is
real, palpable, and more fearsome than mortal death or physical extinction.

We talked about the difference between ANI [Artificial Narrow Intelligence]
and AGI [Artificial General Inteligence], with the former being the most
prevalent--actually, the only type currently achieved. Current factory
robots are of the ANI-type and are already replacing human workers by the
millions here and abroad.  As their cost [ ~ $20,000] continues to decline
through manufacturing efficiencies these robots will be able to replace
even more workers, simultaneously putting downward pressure on the
official, sustainable minimum wage.

Even if the average rate of increase in "IQ" of these ANI robots remains at
a modest steady pace or accelerates in pace with the supposed law of
accelerating returns, then these ANI robots will start to make progress in
the higher-paying jobs AND will tend to obviate the often stated political
bromide of education as a solution; that is, human progress through a
relatively slow educational process will not be able to keep up.

Nor will we be "just a media for representing knowledge." Because
situation, actionable knowledge will be derived at the edges of the network
by way of sousveillance replacing the current news sources and repurposing
them for command and control of, well, the situation.  "And it is difficult
to imagine how such a sluggish government system could keep up with such a
rapid rate of change when it can barely do so now. (-quote from the linked
article below)"

This situation has been anticipated years ago such as in the *Harvard Business
Review* article: What Happens to Society When Robots Replace Workers?

(Dec
2014):

"Ultimately, we need a new, individualized, cultural, approach to the
> meaning of work and the purpose of life. Otherwise, people will  find a
> solution – human beings always do – but it may not be the one for which we
> began this technological revolution."


Here's the rub and maybe the signal to keep all this in check:  Under such
a dystopian scenario--where labor is transformed into capital--our
capitalistic system would eventually collapse.  Experts say that when
unemployment reaches 35%, or thereabouts, the whole economic system
collapses into chaos. Essentially there would be no consumers left in our
consumer society. Perhaps, the only recourse would be for the capitalists
who own the robots [the new workforce] to provide for a universal basic
income to the technologically unemployed in order to maintain social order.

BUT, without a reason to get up in the morning, I doubt that this could
last for long.

Dystopian indeed. I know.  Under such a scenario, we really won't need
those SEO workers because there will be fewer and fewer consumers looking
for stuff except for free entertainment.  So Facebook should become the new
paragon website under most search categories, but Amazon, not so much.  The
Google search algorithms will need to be recalibrated ... oh, wait a
minute... no SEO workers. Facebook will become the new Google. Brave new
world.

Cheers 蘿

On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 3:22 PM, Roger Critchlow  wrote:

>
> https://medium.com/utopia-for-realists/why-do-the-poor-make-such-poor-decisions-f05d84c44f1a
> was interesting, vis a vis what happens when you just give poor people
> money.
>
> -- rec --
>
> On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 4:54 PM, Marcus Daniels 
> wrote:
>
>> I suspect a universal basic income is a requirement for people to _not_
>> seek an idle life.If people can't count on food, shelter, and health
>> care, they probably can't engage in anything in a substantial way.On
>> the other hand, saving the people that could do substantial things (and by
>> "substantial" I mean artistic or scientific discovery or synthesis),  could
>> come at a prohibitive cost of saving those that won't.   A problem with the
>> "day jobber" approach is the narrowing of substantial things to what
>> happens to be in the interest of dominant organizations.Even in silicon
>> valley, that's a harsh narrowing of the possible.   So I would say do it to
>> make the world interesting and not just for humanitarian reasons.
>>
>> 

Re: [FRIAM] Fascinating article on how AI is driving change in SEO, categories of AI and the Law of Accelerating Returns

[Robert Wall]

Hi Tom,

Interesting article about Google and their foray [actually a Blitzkrieg, as
they are buying up all of the brain trust in this area] into the world of
machine learning presumably to improve the search customer experience.
Could their efforts actually have unintended consequences for both the
search customer and the marketing efforts of the website owners? It is
interesting to consider. For example, for the former case, Google picking
WebMD as the paragon website for the healthcare industry flies in the face
of my own experience and, say, this *New York Times Magazine* article: A
Prescription for Fear

(Feb
2011).  Will this actually make WebMD the *de facto* paragon in the minds
of the searchers?  For the latter, successful web marketing becomes
increasingly subject to the latest Google search algorithms instead of the
previously more expert in-house marketing departments. Of course, this is
the nature of SEO--to game the algorithms to attract better rankings.  But,
it seems those in-house marketing departments will need to up their game:

In other ways, things are a bit harder. The field of SEO will continue to
> become extremely technical. Analytics and big data are the order of the
> day, and any SEO that isn’t familiar with these approaches has a lot of
> catching up to do. Those of you who have these skills can look forward to a
> big payday.


Also, with respect to those charts anticipating exponential growth for AGI
technology--even eclipsing human intelligence by mid-century--there is much
reasoning to see this as overly optimistic [see, for example, Hubert
Dreyfus' critique of Good Old Fashion AI: "What Computers Can't Do"].
These charts kind of remind me of the "ultraviolet catastrophe" around the
end of the 19th century. There are physical limitations that may well tamp
progress and keep it to ANI.  With respect to AGI, there have been some
pointed challenges to this "Law of Accelerating Returns."

On this point, I thought this article in *AEON *titled "Creative Blocks:
The very laws of physics imply that artificial intelligence must be
possible. What’s holding us up?

(Oct
2012)" is on point concerning the philosophical and epistemological road
blocks.  This one, titled "Where do minds belong?

(Mar
2016)" discusses the technological roadblocks in an insightful, highly
speculative, but entertaining manner.

Nonetheless, this whole discussion is quite intriguing, no matter your
stance, hopes, or fears. 

Cheers,

Robert

On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 4:26 PM, Tom Johnson  wrote:

> See
> http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/04/artificial-intelligence-is-changing-seo-faster-than-you-think/?ncid=tcdaily
> 
>
> Among other points: "...why doing regression analysis over every site,
> without having the context of the search result that it is in, is supremely
> flawed."
> TJ
>
> 
> Tom Johnson
> Institute for Analytic Journalism   -- Santa Fe, NM USA
> 505.577.6482(c)505.473.9646(h)
> Society of Professional Journalists    -   Region 9
>  Director
> *Check out It's The People's Data
> *
> http://www.jtjohnson.com   t...@jtjohnson.com
> 
>
>
>
> Sent with MailTrack
> 
>
>
> 
>  Virus-free.
> www.avast.com
> 
> <#m_-9171770883074403068_DDB4FAA8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Re: [FRIAM] Strawson on consciousness.

[Robert Wall]

Yikes!  I hope I didn't just add to your spam!    Also, I didn't realize
how much more it sells for now!  My introduction to Law was through a
seminar I attended in Washington DC where I was a consultant.  His book was
the textbook used in an M class I took at George Mason University for my
MS in computational statistics. Also, I have used his ExpertFit
<http://www.averill-law.com/distribution-fitting/> software to feed
stochastic simulations and to characterize output data.  Works well.

I agree with this review of the subject book:

Law is about as authoritative as you can get for M / Operations Research
> and systems analysis (ORSA). If you are building a library or need a
> comprehensive reference for advanced studies or your analytic work, it is
> probably no surprise that this book would be highly recommended. Not
> necessarily for the lay person, you need some fundamental skills in
> mathematics, statistics, probability etc. to really leverage the
> information in this book. I used a previous version in graduate school 20
> years ago and HAD to add this to my work reference library.


The book is comprehensive in the math and statistics and design of
experiments (DOE).  My copy (silver cover) is likely dated [e.g., talks
about MODSIM]. But the math hasn't changed.

Having said this, I do remember Law as being very *enterprising*, let's
say.  Still, I was never really spammed or I just forgot or set up
filters.  Not sure.  But, his book was a go-to reference for my work ... I
especially used it for variance reduction when comparing alternatives, for
example.  Good stuff!  Like a brain ravaged boxer, makes me want to come
out of retirement ... again.  


On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 11:19 AM, glen ep ropella <g...@tempusdictum.com>
wrote:

> On 05/20/2016 10:11 AM, Robert Wall wrote:
> > Have you read Averill Law's /Simulation Modeling and Analysis/?  Makes a
> good reference too.  Cheers.
>
> Not yet.  I'm glad to hear you say that.  I've been suspicious of Law's
> work because I get continual _spam_ from him (or his staff, or publishers
> of his work, ... or whoever).  In general, I'm a fan of spam.  It's
> co-evolution up front and personal.  But when someone claims to be an
> expert in my field, a field that is notoriously horizontal, then not only
> makes that claim but _spams_ me on a regular basis, my normally cheery
> attitude turns negative.
>
> But with your recommendation (the 1st I've seen aside from the spam), I'll
> take a look.  Thanks!
>
> --
> glen ep ropella ⊥ 971-280-5699
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] Strawson on consciousness.

[Robert Wall]

This is just kicking a dead scorpion ...   Thanks Glen for the
follow-up.  The whole curfuffle brings critical thinking to the forefront,
and that ain't bad.  To me, skepticism is a science-oriented version of
mindfulness--being mindful of misgrounded or ungrounded, inculcated
beliefs.  Yes, it does seem that Horgan was careless here and got caught in
his own trap.  The pack turned on this lone wolf.  I'll have to check out
this tNESS.

As my profession was in operations research, I have been a frequenter to
the Informs publications.  The article on intellectual distance looks
intriguing.  Curious finding. Thanks!

Have you read Averill Law's *Simulation Modeling and Analysis*?  Makes a
good reference too.  Cheers.

On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 10:00 AM, glen ⛧  wrote:

> Dead horses notwithstanding, I found this comment chuckle-worthy:
>
> ---
> Mary Mangan • 2016-05-19 02:51 AM
> Heh. Yeah--imagine making evidence-free (aka "impressionistic") claims in
> front of a room full of people who value evidence. Who could have predicted
> that?
> ---
>
> That was a comment on this article:
>
>
> http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-sceptics-hit-back-after-rebuke-1.19945?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews
>
> On 05/19/2016 08:29 AM, glen ⛧ wrote:
> > For me, I tend to be a skeptic in my own field (modeling & simulation)
> and a contrarian outside it.
>
> And on this front, this article was also interesting:
>
> Looking Across and Looking Beyond the Knowledge Frontier: Intellectual
> Distance, Novelty, and Resource Allocation in Science
> http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2015.2285
>
> "We find that evaluators systematically give lower scores to research
> proposals that are closer to their own areas of expertise and to those that
> are highly novel."
>
> In other words, Horgan's basing his talk on his "impressionistic view" of
> skeptics was just plain lazy.  That doesn't make his contrarian assertions
> false, just fragile.
>
> --
> ⛧ glen
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Re: [FRIAM] Strawson on consciousness.

[Robert Wall]

Yikes!  Skeptic-on-skeptic fight!  This linked article you bring Glen begs
an interesting question: When does a skeptic just become just a contrarian?
 I mean, what do skeptics publish but skepticism and critiques contrary to
the topic at hand? Are they obliged, as Dr. Steven Novella insists, on
presenting a fair and balanced position ... like with *Fox News*?  Is that
the nature of their craft?  Or is that left up to the reader?

So, what were they thinking when they invited Horgan to speak at their
convention?!  It kind of reminds me of the parable of the *Scorpion and the
Frog* [somethime the *Snake Crossing the River*]:

The Scorpion and the Frog

  A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the
scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The
frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion
says, "Because if I do, I will die too."

  The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream,
the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of
paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown,
but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"

Replies the scorpion: "Its my nature..."


Arguably, John Horgan is going to "rain on your parade" if you invite him
to comment on it.  That is his nature.  We can count on him for that.  So
he would make a terrible guest at a cocktail party or to speak at your
daughter's graduation ceremony.   "Daddy, it was just awful ..."

To be sure, "Criticizing ideas is well within the marketplace of ideas."
 Eh?

Yes, in some way--reading the range of associated comments--I think they
were both hurt here ... but neither drowned.  Didn't  Dr. Steven Novella
also boot Richard Dawkins out of the same convention for something he
said?  Not sure, but remember something, as I follow Dawkins also.  Dawkins
too can be somewhat overbearing in his criticisms--but some say that he
became this way having to constantly defend his positions from the fringe
lunatics.  But I always learn something, even in his diatribes, to be
sure.  And that is what NeuroLogicablog is supposed to be all about.  Yes?

The NeuroLogicaBlog covers news and issues in neuroscience, but also
> general science, scientific skepticism, philosophy of science, critical
> thinking, and the intersection of science with the media and society.


In the context of this discussion of skepticism, I really miss the
continued eloquence and prose of his friend Christopher Hichens. Dawkins
always said that his biggest fear would be to be on the opposite side of a
debate from Hitchens.  Hitchens on Horgan would be awesome!  But, somehow,
I can.t see them on opposite sides ...

It would be interesting to hear others comment here too about Horgan and
this incident.  What do you think?  I am not sure what to think, but I am
not surprised at the outcome.  The linked article was, for me,
thought-provoking.  Thanks!

On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 6:34 PM, glen ⛧ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> I'm that way, too.  To wit, I really enjoyed this article:
>
>
> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/john-horgan-is-skeptical-of-skeptics/
>
> On 05/18/2016 05:13 PM, Robert Wall wrote:
>
>> Personally, as an outside observer, I tend to learn more from a critical
>> angle than from one
>> that is promoted from the inside by the promoters, who would be less
>> critical of their own work of course.  His writings encourage me to look
>> deeper.
>>
>
> --
> ⛧ glen
>
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Strawson on consciousness.

[Robert Wall]

Glen, I agree that there are some big science projects that would require
government funding, especially--and perhaps only--when there is a
verifiable public good as a possible potential outcome, IMHO. No, no
Constitutional amendments as long as science remains science ... big or not
... but *science *may be in a process of being redefined in a much looser
way.  Even theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss is a bit worried here
<http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2005/11/theory_of_anything.html>
.

With respect to John Horgan, and notwithstanding his reputation with some
of the folks he interviews perhaps, I see him among other good science
writers who keep a public eye on what is going on in science. We don't have
to like or agree with him but Horgan is not shy about casting a critical
light on otherwise very speculative (government and academic) institutional
activities (e.g., his *From Complexity to Perplexity*).  Personally, as an
outside observer, I tend to learn more from a critical angle than from one
that is promoted from the inside by the promoters, who would be less
critical of their own work of course.  His writings encourage me to look
deeper.  Even Lawrence Krauss is a bit worried here.

Also, I do respect arguments like the one Feyerabend brings about public
funding of science for the same reason.  These have the potential to create
public conversations in important areas that otherwise many see as beyond
comprehension. That's the job of a science writer.  For example, do we need
or want to build our own national facility to rival LHC?  If so, why?  How
will it improve our lives? Or, do we want to fund our own national project
to rival Henry Markam's Blue Brain Project (now the Human Brain Project ...
notably to rein it in)?  Is the premises of this project sound?  Many think
not
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-human-brain-project-went-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it/>.
We do have our own national brain project--the White House Brain Initiativ
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRAIN_Initiative>e--but it is fundamentally
different in terms of its mission.

Of course, there can be merit in speculative research.  This is how
discoveries are made.  However, I think Horgan is urging us to be careful
here going forward. as the cost of these potential discoveries is getting
steep and there is the likelihood that we will learn nothing more.  The law
of rapidly diminishing returns is setting in.  So how do we decide?

Niels Bohr once declared that the opposite of a profound truth is also a
> profound truth. This is the charmed predicament of the Blue Brain project.
> If the simulation is successful, if it can turn a stack of silicon
> microchips into a sentient being, then the epic problem of consciousness
> will have been solved. The soul will be stripped of its secrets; the mind
> will lose its mystery. However, if the project fails—if the software never
> generates a sense of self, or manages to solve the paradox of
> experience—then neuroscience may be forced to confront its stark
> limitations. Knowing everything about the brain will not be enough. The
> supercomputer will still be a mere machine. Nothing will have emerged from
> all of the information. We will remain what can’t be known.


I think that the question Horgan--and certainly Feyerabend-- is trying to
raise is, "Should our government fund *ironic science*?"  Ironic science is
science that ceases to be science methodologically.  This is where
scientists cross the line into metaphysics or philosophy.  Feyerabend would
say religion.

Cheers

On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 4:02 PM, glen ⛧ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Whew! I'm a huge fan of Feyerabend. For a minute I was afraid you were
> allowing wackos like this guy:
>
>   http://youtu.be/8XjR9f0DZJc
>
> I tend to think the way out of the trap is through citizen science (eg
> DIYBio and our own friends at GUTS). To some extent anything in big science
> must be gov funded. Even if you don't call it "government", it's still
> pooled resources with minority management, which implies a government of
> some sort. And anytime a minority make judgments for the majority, we'll
> hear cries of bias and for "separation". The real measure of progress is
> watching how scientific experiments that used to be only doable by big
> science are now doable by citizens in their garage.  As long as that
> happens, we have to admit there's an important role for government funded
> science.  If we don't get our own high energy colliders we can run on saw
> horses in our garage, _then_ we'll push for a Constitutional amendment.
>
> Anyway, arguments like this are why so many scientists think little of
> Horgan. His arguments are rife with over simplification. Yahoos like Mike
> Adams <http://www.naturalnews.com/About.html> use simil

Re: [FRIAM] Strawson on consciousness.

[Robert Wall]

Hi Glen,

It took me a while to find where I read that argument.  But, as it turns
out, the argument was recounted by John Horgan in his *The End of
Science *(1996)
the first paragraph at the top of page 47 in the chapter titled "The End of
Philosophy."  There, Horgan was recounting the argument put forth by
philosopher Paul Feyerabend who wrote in his *Against Method* [p 295]:

“The separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation
> of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic
> religious institution.”


Horgan writes:

Feyerabend also objected to the claim that science is superior to other
> modes of knowledge.  He was particularly enraged at the tendency of Western
> states to foist the products of science--whether the theory of evolution,
> nuclear power plants, or gigantic particle accelerators--on people against
> their will.  "There is separation between state and church," he complained,
> "but none between state and church.


Paul Feyerabend has been called the worst enemy of science by a 1987 *Nature
*essay <http://Paul Feyerabend, called the worst enemy of science by a 1987
Nature essay.>.  Maybe this is just one reason among many
<https://www.quora.com/Is-it-common-among-scientists-to-scorn-philosophy>
why it is perceived that scientists--especially physicists--dislike
philosophers.  But no public funding for science research?!  What's not to
like?  樂

Robert



On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 9:43 AM, glen ⛧ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Is there any chance you might remember where you read that argument?  I'll
> do some googling; but that can be pretty haphazard.
>
> On 05/17/2016 02:43 PM, Robert Wall wrote:
> > There was a thought-provoking argument I read somewhere recently about
> the federal grants given to scientific research. Given that science
> research like with Super-String Theory is and has been arguably bleeding
> over into metaphysics, philosophy, or even religion (e.g., Edward Witten),
> we may need to amend the US Constitution to include a clause [or intention]
> for the separation between science and state.  This action would imply that
> any and all scientific research would need to stand on its own.  This might
> be overkill, but the objective is kind of in the wheelhouse for the newly
> emerging Center for Open Science <https://cos.io/>--an institution that
> arose with the expose of bad science studies in medicine <
> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/>
> found in science journals and reported
> > <
> https://www.google.com/url?sa=t=j==s=web=3=rja=8=0ahUKEwiM3e3rhuLMAhVX3mMKHZxNBE8QFgguMAI=http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.plos.org%2Fplosmedicine%2Farticle%3Fid%3D10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124=AFQjCNGnlrRZK18zALFoV13bVKFpywymjg=erIO_WZ6jK3DgZsqfdLu2w=bv.122129774,d.cGc>
> by Dr. John Ioannidis last decade.
>
> --
> ⛧ glen
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Re: [FRIAM] Strawson on consciousness.

[Robert Wall]

Hi Russ, Steve, et al.,

I should tell you that I am reading John Horgan's *The End of Science:
Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age* (2015
edition).  Such an ominous title!  I know.  But here Horgan concludes for
many scientific endeavors the job is finished [link to a critique of the
book]

for all practical purposes.

Horgan thinks that we aren't likely to see any new Kuhnian paradigm shifts
like with quantum mechanics or general and special relativity anytime soon,
if ever.  We will likely only see gap-filling activities, so to speak, like
with the Higgs particle in helping to complete the standard model of
particle physics.  But this is all good too.  It is just not *new *knowledge.
Eh?

In the meantime, Horgan coins the term *ironic science* to classify what we
seem to be doing now in science like, for example, in physics and its close
cousin cosmology, where science is becoming untestable.  *Beauty *[e.g.,
mathematical elegance] seems to be the current standard for
verification--it begs the issue as to whether we are discovering or
inventing Reality.  To falsify String Theory--the leading candidate
for the *Theory
of Everything*--we would need a super-conducting super collider the size of
the galaxy ... well, larger than we could practically make or even afford
at least--and that is becoming an issue as well.  What we would be looking
for is something that is neither matter nor energy: a multi-dimensional
string that gives rise to properties found in our universe depending on the
frequency of the vibrations. So, is this a reasonable priority when the
returns are ever diminishing, as Horgan contends?

I read this very clever analogy for these strings.  Imagine God as a Cosmic
Rocker playing his ten- or eleven-string guitar as the cosmos unfolds from
his Big Bang amplifier.  Here's the compelling question: Is God playing to
a particular musical score?  One that ultimately gives rise to humans and
substance for consciousness?  Strong anthropic principle anyone?

There was a thought-provoking argument I read somewhere recently about the
federal grants given to scientific research. Given that science research
like with Super-String Theory is and has been arguably bleeding over into
metaphysics, philosophy, or even religion (e.g., Edward Witten), we may
need to amend the US Constitution to include a clause [or intention] for
the separation between science and state.  This action would imply that any
and all scientific research would need to stand on its own.  This might be
overkill, but the objective is kind of in the wheelhouse for the newly
emerging Center for Open Science --an institution that
arose with the expose of bad science studies in medicine

found in science journals and reported

by Dr. John Ioannidis last decade.

I still like John Horgan as a skeptic and science writer and I appreciated
the link provided by Steve for the Science of Consciousness Conference that
I could not attend and which Horgan describes as not having come very far
since his first visit in 1994.  Ironic science?  It would seem so IMHO.
Oh.  Here is SciAm's From Complexity to Perplexity
 outside
the paywall.

I hope I haven't hijacked this thread, which seems to be more about
consciousness and ... monism (?).  But, in that context, I *have *long been
hoping that we could crank up the energy in the Large Hadron Collider to
find the *mind particle* and *prove *folks like the recently turned
panpsychistic and American neuroscientist Christof Koch correct.  

Cheers,

Robert

On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 12:42 PM, Russ Abbott  wrote:

> Steve,
>
> Thanks for the pointer to the John Horgan posts
> 
> about the Consciousness conference in Arizona. (I can't find your post to
> reply to. I thought it was in this thread.)
>
> I had dismissed Horgan after his posts saying something like science was
> dead. But this redeems him in my view.
>
> On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 8:19 AM glen ⛧  wrote:
>
>>
>> On 05/16/2016 07:55 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> > Pfft?
>>
>> Sorry.  That's my attempt to write a raspberry ... I don't know the
>> emoticon... =P  maybe ... :-r ?  Of course, pfft is a "dry" raspberry.  To
>> get the right effect, you have to stick your tongue out ... but you can't
>> do that in polite company.  Plus, a dry raspberry is like 

Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Introducing The Systems Thinker: 800+ insightful articles completely free

[Robert Wall]

Looks good Tom.  Thanks.  Right in my wheelhouse ... again!

-Robert

On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 5:53 PM, Tom Johnson  wrote:

> Does seem to really be free.
> TJ
>
> 
> Tom Johnson
> Institute for Analytic Journalism   -- Santa Fe, NM USA
> 505.577.6482(c)505.473.9646(h)
> Society of Professional Journalists    -   Region 9
>  Director
> *Check out It's The People's Data
> *
> http://www.jtjohnson.com   t...@jtjohnson.com
> 
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: The Systems Thinker 
> Date: Mon, May 2, 2016 at 5:44 PM
> Subject: Introducing The Systems Thinker: 800+ insightful articles
> completely free
> To: t...@jtjohnson.com
>
>
> [image: logo]
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> Welcome to The Systems Thinker! We're excited to announce the launch of a
> new website containing the complete library of 800+ Systems Thinker
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> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 154, Issue 18

[Robert Wall]

Nick,

I have worried about the loss of my data as well and have searched for an
economical solution. For me, losing a device (e.g., by a crash or by theft)
is not nearly as critical a loss as losing my data.  Hardware can be
replaced.  Lost data, likely, cannot.  But losing a hard drive also means
the loss of your applications (not just data), which would have to be
reinstalled unless you have a reinstallable image of your hard disk,
including the operating system.  I have lots of applications, some of which
are just downloads with not associated physical media, which is fairly
typical now.

My solution, after doing the trade-offs and comparing reviews, was to go
with NovaStor's NovaBackup
 (a
new startup I think) for an introductory price of about $50 for the
software, but including a year's worth of technical support.  What I liked
especially is that they will help you set up a schedule of backups as part
of the service over the internet--this support takes less than an hour.
This service is not like Carbonite or CrashPlan where your data (not apps)
gets backed up to the cloud, though that would be just another layer of
protection.  This solution is just the software to back everything up to
*wherever* even Dropbox, software you will own forever (i.e., a one-time
cost).  I chose to back up my data and my hard disk image to a USB-connected
2 TB hard disk

that I purchased from Amazon for $75.  NovaStor will even help you create a
boot "disk" on a flash drive if your hard disk actually crashes. Everyone
should have a boot disk to recover from a corrupted operating system.

However, even in this seemingly robust set up you will still be vulnerable
to the so-called ransomware attacks--which are on the rise--where
everything (apps and data) local or connected by a network or by USB--gets
encrypted.  The survival strategy for this kind of attack is to have an
image stored offline [unconnected].  For this, NovaStor will show you how
to save an image on a flash drive away from the attackers.  High-capacity
flash drives are quite cheap these days.  I back up a new image to my
USB-connected hard disk every week. I roll off another image backup to the
offline flash drive every so often, just to be sure.

In order to have NovaStor continue with support after the first year, I
suspect I would have to shell out another $50, but I am not sure that I
will need this.  This solution is just backup software. But if it works and
you have your backup schedules set up, what more  needs to be done?  The
updates would need to be fantastic!

Hope this addresses your question.  Be assured that I receive no
compensation from NovaStor for this review.   This solution just seems to
"answer the mail" for me at least.

Cheers,

Robert

On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 9:31 PM, Nick Thompson 
wrote:

> Hi, Michael, and others,
>
>
>
> I would happily spend the money to have somebody do it for me, but I
> cannot give up my machine under the current circumstances for the 3 or 4
> days that the services require.  I am thinking that if I follow Jack’s
> instructions, I can swap out the new hard drive and see if it works.  If it
> doesn’t, I am no worse off.  The transfer of files could be done
> overnight.
>
>
>
> All my data is up on Carbonite, but the last time I had to do this, it
> took two days to download over an Ethernet connection.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Michael
> Stevens
> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 26, 2016 10:48 AM
> *To:* friam@redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 154, Issue 18
>
>
>
> Nick,
>
>If you wanted to transfer only “files,” like the text of a paper,
> photographs, a spreadsheet, etc. there are plenty of ways to do that. (You
> probably know this, I’m not trying to insult your intelligence!) However,
> if software is involved, e.g. Word, Excel, etc., I think it’s much more
> complicated. What you have heard about an image is correct, but I wouldn’t
> recommend that as a do-it-yourself project, particularly in a distracted
> state of mind with family troubles. There are just too many little things
> that could go wrong. My advice is to hire someone. Price range would most
> likely be $100 - $150, but that’s only a guess.
>
> Best of luck,
>
> Mike Stevens
>
> Berkeley
>
> On Apr 26, 2016, at 9:00 AM, friam-requ...@redfish.com wrote:
>
>
>
> Send Friam mailing list submissions to
> friam@redfish.com
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> or, via email, send 

Re: [FRIAM] Origins of Life

[Robert Wall]

Stephen,

Your discussion with Nick Thompson on the essence of Evolution sounds
remarkably similar to the pre-Socratic arguments "between" Heraclitus and
Parmenides on Being  and Becoming
.  The modern version
of this eternal discussion seems to have manifested in the metaphysical
propositions of Process Philosophy
 that
are substantially promoted in Alfred North Whitehead's seminal *Process and
Reality* (1978).

​"​
Modern philosophers who appeal to process rather than substance include
Nietzsche , Heidegger
, Charles Peirce
, Alfred North
Whitehead , Alan Watts
, Robert M. Pirsig
, Charles Hartshorne
, Arran Gare
, Nicholas Rescher
, Colin Wilson
, and Gilles Deleuze
. In physics Ilya Prigogine
[3]
 distinguishes
between the "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process
philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can
be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion,
philosophy, and science.
​" - Wikipedia on Process Philosophy​


I tend to lean in the same direction as you on this topic and I think that
is why I have become a devoted student of complexity science (and process
philosophy) and the idea of emergence; as Thomas Nagel argues in his *Mind
and Cosmos: Why the materialists Neo-Darwinian conception of Nature is
almost certainly false* (2012), not everything is reducible to Substance
(atoms ... Being) as an explanation of its essence.

It seems to me that the "far-from-equilibrium surprises" that evolve
through the unpredictable, stochastic process of evolution validate the
idea that we live in a non-deterministic reality; but then this gets us
into a long discussion or the essence of randomness--or is it just
complexity? (local author George Johnson gets into this though in his *Fire
in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order* (1996) :-)  And the
nature of Time gets muddled into the discussion as well-- see *Time Reborn:
>From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe* (2014) by
physicist Lee Smolin.

​"​
> Now that we have more modern descriptions of living systems and
> explanations of origin of life, shouldn't our descriptions and explanations
> of Evolution change along with it?
> ​" - Stephen Guerin​
>

This conclusion was also reached back in 1989 by Gregoire Nicolis and Ilya
Prigogine in their *Exploring Complexity*.

"Our physical world is no longer symbolized by the stable and periodic
> planetary motions that are at the heart of classical mechanics.  It is a
> world of instabilities and fluctuations, which are ultimately responsible
> for the amazing variety and richness of the forms and structures we see in
> nature around us.  New concepts and new tools are clearly necessary to
> describe nature, in which evolution and pluralism become the key words." - 
> *Preface
> *to *Exploring Comnplexity* (1989)


I like the series of books written by Nick Lane and see him as sort of the
Carl Sagan of biological evolution.  This is a good thing I believe.  I
have read some of them but not *THE VITAL QUESTION: Energy, evolution, and
the origins of complex life (2015).*  However, this thread is good
motivation to take the dive.   :-)

This is all very interesting.  Wish I knew more ... and probably said less
...

-Robert

On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 6:04 PM, Stephen Guerin  wrote:

> I composed my email before seeing Eric's post. Having now read his email,
> I would say let's not get too distracted by Nick Lane's Vital Question for
> the task we set ourselves at FRIAM.
>
> I think Eric's talks bests represents what I was calling the view of life
> as gradient dissipation and a property of the ecological whole and less a
> property of an individual.
>
> As a quick summary for the list, Nick and I have had a 10-year back and
> forth discussion on evolution since his arrival in Santa Fe. We are setting
> ourselves the task of coming to a common definition and perhaps explanation
> of mechanism. If we fail to come to agreement, we hope to at least be able
> to coherently state each other's position.
>
> In this context, I was arguing that evolution is a description of the
> historical change of the pathways of breakdown (and 

Re: [FRIAM] mass surveillance

[Robert Wall]

Following on to Dave's thoughts on the relationship between anonymity and
freedom to express non-conforming opinions or behaviors, we can liken those
vehicles with totally blackened windows that allow some of their drivers to
have their basic, innate rudeness travel with them with impunity and
anonymity.  [For anecdotal evidence of this psychological phenomenon see
for example this study at
http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/undergrad/ptacc/anonymity-driving-behavior.pptx
]

Back in February, the *New York Times* carried an article

titled
"Social Media: Destroyer or Creator."  In the article, Wael Ghonim--the one
who is credited with starting the Arab Spring by way of
Facebook--characterizes the aspect of having the ability on the Internet to
respond to thoughts with our baser instincts only a click away this way: "My
online world became a battleground filled with trolls, lies, hate speech."
 [See
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/opinion/social-media-destroyer-or-creator.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=0
]

As Ghonim reveals in a subsequent TED Talk
,
once the revolution spilled onto the streets, it turned from hopeful to
messy, then ugly and heartbreaking. And social media followed suit. What
was once a place for crowdsourcing, engaging and sharing became a polarized
battleground. Ghonim asks: What can we do about online behavior now? How
can we use the Internet and social media to create civility and reasoned
argument?  [See TED Talk at
https://www.ted.com/talks/wael_ghonim_let_s_design_social_media_that_drives_real_change#t-798505
]

Like Dave, I doubt that having the Government watching--they already do a
lot of this now--would have any effect on civil behavior anywhere because
mass surveillance by a government doesn't really exert any peer, parent, or
pal pressure.  Just strangers watching strangers doing ... and just my
$0.02.

Robert

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 3:25 PM, Prof David West 
wrote:

> Awareness of being observed by peers and your social group absolutely
> inhibits the expression of non-conforming behavior. Anyone who has lived
> in a small town  – where everybody knows everybody else and where
> individual behavior is observed by so many others who can report that
> behavior to parents or friends —knows the forces that inhibit
> non-conforming behavior.
>
> There are numerous anthropological case studies (e.g. the "sexual
> revolution" in the US brought about by the automobile, the breakdown of
> marriage patterns among the Sami due to the snowmobile) that show the
> relationship between anonymity and freedom to express non-conforming
> opinions and behaviors.
>
> The real question is whether or not mass surveillance by the government
> has the same effect. I would really doubt it - despite the Washington
> Post report. I would expect to see similar kinds of self-censorship
> among "friends" in social media, but not among "strangers" in that same
> context. In fact I would expect that "strangers" would exhibit extreme
> non-conforming, antisocial, behavior.
>
> davew
>
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2016, at 12:55 PM, glen wrote:
> > On 03/29/2016 11:05 AM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
> > > Thought you guys would be interested in this:
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/03/28/mass-surveillance-silences-minority-opinions-according-to-study/
> >
> > Is it right to say that mass surveillance _causes_ the silencing?  It
> > seems to me that our tendency to conform is the cause.  Then the cause[s]
> > of that tendency [is|are] probably occult, where some will yap about
> > things like group selection and others about ontogeny (education,
> > demographics, etc).  I assume that various generations vary in their
> > tendency to conform.  (We just watched Experimenter the other night:
> > http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3726704/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 , which suggests
> > it's robust across lots of conditions.)  So, perhaps the relationship
> > between (recognition of) mass surveillance and self-censorship is simply
> > a symptom of a deeper cause.
> >
> > --
> > ⇔ glen
> >
> > 
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] Undark: Why Science Journalism Matters

[Robert Wall]

Thanks, Tom.

Great article on the importance of science journalism!  But, what else
would you expect from Deborah Blum.

Also, a welcomed introduction to the UnDark digital publication. I have it
bookmarked.  Carl Zimmer, Rebecca Skloot, David Corcoran ... nothing but
good stuff.

Cheers,

Robert

On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 3:58 PM, Tom Johnson  wrote:

> FYI
>
> http://undark.org/article/undark-science-journalism-matters/
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Re: [FRIAM] Static Site Generator

[Robert Wall]

Hi Owen, et al.,

You might also try this nearly-free ($17)
<https://sites.fastspring.com/openwe/instant/kirby2-personal>,
well-supported <http://getkirby.com/support>, database-free CMS
<http://web.appstorm.net/reviews/web-dev/kirby-the-flat-file-cms-thatll-make-you-rethink-content-management/>
called Kirby <http://getkirby.com/>.  It is file-based and very easy to
implement just about anything you want to do on an individual personal
website. You can also experiment locally with Kirby (without a host) on
MAMP, XAMPP and PHP's built-in server for local installations.

Cheers,

Robert Wall

On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 1:57 PM, Owen Densmore <o...@backspaces.net> wrote:

> Are any of us using a static site generator? Here's a list:
> https://www.staticgen.com/
> ​Basically it gets rid of the need for a Content Management System,
> compiling the site from Markdown and html templates.
>
> I'm thinking of doing this, my old ISP died and it would be a good time
> for a change.
>
>-- Owen​
>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com