Re: [FRIAM] Don’t Look, Don’t Read: Governme nt Warns Its Workers Away From WikiLeaks Documents
The thing that upsets me about Wikileaks is the conflation between whistle blowing and advocating transparency. Whistle blowing is a rule of law action intended to bring to light _illegal_ or unethical activities. Although there's usually a strong correlation, whistle blowing is orthogonal to transparency. For this reason alone, I think Wikileaks is a confused organization, which makes them untrustworthy. They are mixing up their ideology. But, having said that, I enthusiastically support them in their genuine whistle blowing role, when that's actually the role they play. I'm largely neutral on the release of the cables. And I definitely don't support the way they edited and promoted the collateral murder video. And it's fine to advocate for transparency when its other people's secrets under consideration. Jochen's comment is spot on in this respect. As usual, anyone who actually thinks about things will avoid coming down in black-and-white manner with them or against them. As for Amazon, they are behaving the same way ATT, Verizon, et al did with the NSA eavesdropping scandal. (I specifically contracted with Qwest when we moved.) If you're happy with tight cooperation between the government and corporations, then use ATT. If not, then don't. But be ready to confront the contradiction at some point. (I love it when I hear my lefty iPhone wielding friends bitching about the loss of privacy and rising corporate personhood.) But they're a for-profit corporation and, in this country, if they can do something and get away with it, well, that's just the way this country works. The same is true with Paypal, Visa, and MasterCard. We don't have a choice. We'll keep paying ATT, Amazon, and Paypal because we're cheap, lazy rubes who value convenience over values. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective
Jochen Fromm wrote circa 10-12-07 01:41 PM: Now if a state has state secrets, is this fundamentally different from privacy issues for the individual (only for the state)? Should a state in a democracy have any real secrets at all? And if the state has the right to prevent invasion of privacy, shouldn't the individual have the same right, too? I don't think so. I think the whole corporations are people concept is flawed. And the state is just another form of corporation, at least it usually seems that way. I also don't think it has much to do with the political system (democracy or not). I think there's a fundamental difference between an organism, like a human, and a collection of organisms. I suppose the interesting cases are things like lichen, biofilms, aspen groves, etc. As with the backscatter machines and tsa pat-downs, Wikileaks' actions will be beneficial as a foil for how we feel about these issues. It is clearly evil what Wikileaks has done recently, they went to far this time. But too much censorship and secrecy is not a good idea, either (as the top secret america investigation from the Washington Post showed). What do you think? As a whistle-blower organization, they went too far. As far as I know, no illegal or unethical activity was exposed by the cables. It's like the paparazzi for diplomats. But as a foreign transparency advocate, they did the right thing. They did not commit any crimes and they published, as journalists, what they thought the (global) public ought to know. Even exposing potential targets for attack is no worse than, for example, me posting the results of running nmap on Owen's machine, or white hat hackers blogging about Microsoft vulnerabilities. The enemy is the secrecy, not the facts. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Support Wikileaks
Alfredo Covaleda wrote circa 10-12-09 01:18 PM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY7p9I7wWh0 Nice! You gotta love Blue Öyster Cult. I figured I'd check out the anonops #OperationPayback IRC channel just to get a feel for it. Man, that place is hoppin. I didn't learn anything, though. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective
Vladimyr Ivan Burachynsky wrote circa 10-12-08 10:29 AM: It seems conclusive to me that most conspiracy theories can be attributed to Gross Stupidity and the Secrecy imparts an air of reasoning where none exists. ( We refuse to believe some affairs are complete and utter nonsense, hence all the sightings of Jesus in concrete stains. Our brains impart patterns where none exists) How much effort is expended to reveal that some agency was incompetent or stupid (Air India, Lockerbie Bombing). Although this perspective on 6 sigma thoughts (e.g. conspiracy theories) is reasonable and practical, it's also dangerous. We, as a population depend fundamentally on the thinkers in the tails of the distributions. Those people do the due diligence none of us practical, reasonable people are willing to do. Sure, it's true that most of what those (us) wackos spend their (our) time on ends up being rat holes and dead ends. But the benefit is worth the cost. Without wackos like Penrose speculating about quantum decoherence in the brain or astrobiologists _wanting_ to demonstrate the functional equivalence of chemical constituents in compounds like DNA, we'd be lost. Our progress, if we made any at all, would be made by blunt thinkers whose best contributions enslave us to machines like assembly lines or standard accounting practices. Even more to your overall point, the wackos, albeit in the tails of some distributions, can be thought of as the _most_ human, the grounding points for other distributions. What's more human than the plight of a paranoid schizophrenic? What's more human than strapping on a diaper so you can make good time stalking the object of your affection? _These_ are the people who save us from becoming _objects_. They must be cherished and treasured for their humanity. Don't be too hard on the wackos. And don't resist becoming a wacko yourself. Let your freak flag fly, man. ;-) -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] We asked Bruce Sterling for his take on Wikileaks.
The Blast Shack (via Nelson, via mariuswatz) http://www.webstock.org.nz/blog/2010/the-blast-shack/ -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Wikileaks Mirror Taken Down: Host Buckles Under Demands from Upstream Provider | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Douglas Roberts wrote circa 01/03/2011 08:00 PM: Fuck 'em. There are 1,426 other mirrors, plus uncounted stealth mirrors out there ready to go live if needed. That misses the point, though. It's not about Wikileaks. It's about the (some particular, not all) corporations and the systemic culture of fear. It's about SiteGround and SoftLayer and their choosing to shut down a customer just because they can ... or because they fear the consequences of [gasp] siding with their customer. The same thing happened with ATT et al regarding the warrant-less wire tapping thing. The customers of the big corporations have their privacy violated; then those same customers roll right over and buy a bunch of ATT locked iPhones! That'll sure discourage ATT's bad behavior, eh? That's the point. Paying attention to who exhibits good behavior and who exhibits bad behavior (especially when aliases abound and actors are embedded in layer upon layer of obfuscating shells) takes more effort than simply mirroring some one-off set of documents. We have to reward good behavior and avoid or penalize bad behavior. It's important to at least _identify_ SiteGround and SoftLayer as the bad guys, along with Amazon, Paypal, Visa, MasterCard, etc. I'm almost free of Paypal. I still have to use Amazon for work; but I no longer buy anything personal through them. I haven't found a way to rid myself of Visa and MasterCard; but I'm trying. On the one hand, such constraints limit me in what seem to be important ways. E.g. Not buying MP3s from Amazon means I may have to buy actual CDs, with a bunch of wasteful one-use plastic and the costs of shipping (not just my out of pocket but also the carbon footprint of shipping from, say, Europe). Or, e.g., not using Dropbox, because it relies on Amazon, may force me to maintain my rsync-over-ssh nightmare. [grin] But I'd rather make my life more interesting or simple, than reward people for their bad behavior. I am currently looking for a new (cheaper) VPS provider. And I now know I will _not_ use SiteGround or SoftLayer. On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 7:25 PM, Glen Ropella G1 g...@tempusdictum.com mailto:g...@tempusdictum.com wrote: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/weakest-links-host-buckles-when-upstream-provider -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Wikileaks Mirror Taken Down: Host Buckles Under Demands from Upstream Provider | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Steve Smith wrote circa 11-01-04 11:31 PM: I think maybe we are roughly on the same page. Mostly, yes. However, I didn't intend to focus on the reward/punish aspect. Sorry for the distraction. My primary point is about identification. What anyone does with the data gained by paying attention is their business. Indeed, what anyone regards as good and bad behavior is their business. I'm certain that many of my friends think SiteGround and SoftLayer made Good decisions. I disagree; regardless, it's important to draw attention to their decisions so that those attending can judge for themselves. Those who fail to pay attention fail in their duty to themselves and their network. To be clear, I'm positing that the _cause_ of the systemic problem is lack of attention. So, calling out good and bad behavior and naming good and bad actors is not just a good start and it's not treating the symptom rather than the cause. Calling it out is treating the cause. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Wikileaks Mirror Taken Down: Host Buckles Under Demands from Upstream Provider | Electronic Frontier Foundation
I found this documentary interesting: Ethos http://www.ethosthemovie.com/ Hosted by twice Oscar nominated actor and activist Woody Harrelson, Ethos lifts the lid on a Pandora's box of systemic issues that guarantee failure in almost every aspect of our lives; from the environment to democracy and our own personal liberty: From terrifying conflicts of interests in politics to unregulated corporate power, to a media in the hands of massive conglomerates, and a military industrial complex that virtually owns our representatives. With interviews from some of todays leading thinkers and source material from the finest documentary film makers of our times Ethos examines and unravels these complex relationships, and offers a solution, a simple but powerful way for you to change this system! In the end, they propose the same solution we're talking about, here: know what you're buying when you spend money. Where does the money go after you hand it over to Amazon, Apple, Wal-Mart, or to your county for property taxes? Or, worse yet, how much of it does Visa or Paypal shave off through their privileged positions as the man in the middle? Steve Smith wrote circa 11-01-05 01:58 PM: I'm with you on the awareness angle... I appreciate your clarification about reward/punish, it is key, and helps illuminate what I was niggling at. Too often, in our drive to reward/punish, we occlude the rest of our awareness, we seek someone to blame or credit to the point of ignoring the field of play they are in, the other actors right in line behind/next-to them... rotating through a series of whipping boys to take our wrath rather than seeing the obvious causes and then, often even when we see through to the first layer of causes, we stop there and don't recognize how those are often merely symptoms of deeper causes. You also make the point that many would consider the choices being made by the bad actors as being good choices and therefore identifying them as good actors. All this leads to polarization and divisions that are perhaps unproductive... I am surrounded by judgements by my friends and colleagues which I must hold in suspension to avoid this polarization. I happen to like a lot about the implications of the activities of the WikiLeaks but don't necessarily demonize those who find themselves unable to support them. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Fwd: Wuala for Android
Yay, Wuala http://www.wuala.com/en now has an Android app! No more turning on an SSHD or USB Mass Storage then copying files manually for later perusal! Of course, it downloads it from the Wuala cloud on the fly; so, it still won't help me when I sit down to read a PDF on the mountain. Original Message Subject: Wuala for Android Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 19:18:17 +0200 From: newslet...@email.wuala.com Reply-To: newslet...@wuala.com To: g...@ropella.name We are delighted to announce the release of Wuala for Android! View and browse your files on the go. Study a document, enjoy a photo slideshow or listen to music - with Wuala for Android your files are always with you. Upload. Upload any file from your phone straight to your Wuala account. The file is encrypted on your phone before it is uploaded. Data encryption. All files are encrypted and decrypted directly on your phone. Your password never leaves your device, so that not even we as the provider can access your files. This clearly distinguishes us from other online storage services and apps. Get the app now - available for free in the Android Market: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.wuala.android FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Android: Root It? Or are there phones that come unlocked/jailbroken?
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 06/07/2011 12:59 PM: If by enslaved to a corporate cabal you mean that I use my cell phone mostly as a phone, No, it really has nothing to do with _how_ you use any given device. It's more about what you're paying for. Did you pay for an actual _thing_ or did you pay for a key to a door or facility, someone else's property? The whole SaaS paradigm is reprehensible to a given degree. You buy a phone and you really don't own anything. What you've bought is really a fake, kinda startup fee.[*] If you stop paying the monthly fee, that initial $100 or $150 is lost in the wind. If they were more honest about it, they'd treat these devices like the cable companies or ISPs treat their modems. You either buy the thing outright (and admit that it'll be largely useless when you quit) or you lease it during the time you use their service. Personally, I have trouble imagining why anyone would want to do otherwise. The complaints of people who have to 'go through the trouble' to jailbreak iPhones, for example, strike me as silly. If you don't like what the iPhone is, why did you buy one? It's like someone who buys a new house and then complains it is not laid out the way they want, and then complains about how hard it was to redo the floor plan: You know there were other houses, right? You know it was a perfectly functional house already, right? I suppose there are two ways to think about this. (There are 2 types of people in the world: 1) those who divide the people in the world into 2 types and 2) those who don't.) 1) There are those of us who find satisfaction in _doing_ rather than having, and 2) There are those of us who enjoy nesting, i.e. surrounding ourselves with our own accomplishments. (1) and (2) are, by no means, disjoint. When I look at my phone, I see things that I've achieved (on the shoulders of giants, of course). That's satisfying to some extent. Similarly, when the phone behaves in some way that I didn't expect, it is relatively trivial for me to figure out why it behaved that way and why I expected something different. Had I not rooted it and replaced the OS, this would not be the case. The former is a result of (2) and the latter is a result of (1). If you think either (1) or (2) are silly, then we are at a rhetorical impasse. ;-) What boggles my mind are the tech-savvy people who seem to blank out on some things. Like a programmer who can't change their own oil. Or a mechanic who is baffled by computers. By saying it boggles me, I'm not implying that they are _silly_, or wrong, or whatever. It just confuses me. It seems that you either want to know how things work, or you don't. It is _so_ EASY to root and replace the OS on Android phones that I can't imagine any tech savvy person with disposable income _not_ doing so. [*] There's also a kind of consumerist, disposable culture, influence at work, here. If you don't/can't root and replace the OS on your cell phone, then that phone is a lot like a Bic lighter or disposable razor. Your supposed to use it once, then throw it into some landfill because it's become useless. Now, I'm no tree-hugging liberal. But it seems to me that this disposable computer culture lacks an ability to account for its externalities. I should be able to use my phone for many years. And if, in order to do that, I have to maintain the OS _myself_, then I should be allowed to do so. I used my G1 long past the point where T-Mobile was pushing updates only because I used CyanogenMod. And when I finally found the $$ to buy a new phone, I passed that old G1 on to a less fortunate, but more geeky, friend who is still using it. I can say the same about many of the desk- and lap-tops around my house. And when they are finally of no use to me, I give them to FreeGeek.org, who refurbishes them and gives them to people who don't have computers. It just seems reasonable to me; but perhaps I've drunk too much Kool Aid? -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Android: Root It? Or are there phones that come unlocked/jailbroken?
Russ Abbott wrote at 06/07/2011 04:11 PM: often really like having a gadget that just works--and I don't have to think about it. In fact, that should be one of the selling points of the iPhone and iPad. My complaint about them is that they don't live up to that promise. I understand. To me this is the greatest confidence scheme we've ever experienced. Technology (tools) does not solve problems, regardless of how often or how vehemently the tool producers claim they do. Tools don't solve problems. Tool users solve problems. So, it's a shock when we snap out of it and realize that we've been conned. Anyone who promises that a given tool or device that just works is selling snake oil and ocean front property in Nevada. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Lessig OccupyBoston
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote circa 11-10-11 10:35 AM: If you want to hurt the evil corporations with their super-rich owners... stop giving them your money. Technologically, I thought some of the most interesting things about the Arab spring were all the creative ways protesters circumvented popular, corporate-run communication channels (in their case because the government shut down access). Surely it would be possible to do the same here if people really wanted to make a principled stand. And on that note, I've finally dumped my Mastercard for Discover in protest of MC's refusal to allow payments to Wikileaks. I've switched from T-Mobile to Cricket in the wake of T-Mobile's agreeing to be acquired by ATT. I'm moving my personal funds out of all banks and into credit unions, getting rid of my Visa debit card in the process. Etc. [sigh] I'm convinced my actions will have zero effect. I'm trading one brand for another in most cases. The point being that it's very difficult to take a principled stand. Anecdote: Awhile back, Renee' discovered she liked organic milk better than ... what? ... regular milk? pesticide-, hormone-laden, produce from exploited, tortured animals? Anyway, I also have a friend who is convinced raw milk is much more healthy. So, I'd been thinking about milk for awhile. (which is a bit gross for me... milk is just nasty, almost as bad as mushrooms.) In order to help her make her decisions and try to figure out why some milk tastes better and lasts longer in the fridge, I began trying to figure out where the actual milk comes from for any given brand. Of course, organic milk isn't any better than any other type of milk because the label organic has been taken over by shadowy networks of multinational corporations with armies of marketing, scitech, and legal operatives ensconced in every institution. (Although this site helps: http://www.cornucopia.org/dairysurvey/index.html) I have similar anecdotes about ground beef, pre- and post-manufactured sheds, portable radar speed signs, and commercial real estate. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Syncing between devices...why? [was Android Choice]
Not only do I have different uses for different devices, like you I also have different uses for multiple instances of the same device, and multiple uses for the same instance of a device! My current experiment consists of 3 Google+ identities: 1) work, 2) personal, 3) brewing. Google's stupid real name policy makes it interesting because I get people who intend to follow my work personality will put my brewing personality in their circles. Then I'll follow them back with my work personality. The experiment is a partial success. I'm getting better at switching my phone's personality to match what I'm doing at the time. It's long baffled me why people use their personal e-mails for business comm (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_e-mail_controversy) or work e-mails for personal business. I screw up once in awhile and do that by accident, but by and large, my person is split. I'm thinking about trying to get 3 Google Voice numbers for my 3 personalities, though I don't know if they'd like that. Having said all that, I do find it very tempting to treat the phone the same way I treat my computers. Namely, it would be nice to have different logins for different purposes on the phone just like I do for my computers. But I'm certainly _not_ tempted to use my AppleTV like my Mini, my phone like my playstation, or my server like my laptop. [grin] ERIC P. CHARLES wrote circa 11-11-01 11:05 AM: To deviate a touch, and head a bit back towards a past thread... how many of us are there left who use their different devices for different purposes? I like that my computer at work has totally different bookmarks than my laptop, which has totally different bookmarks than my cell phone... because I use them for different things. Sometimes I even have my laptop sitting out next to my desktop at work so that I can do different tasks on a computer that I have set up to do those tasks. I would think having all my digital devices that much alike (the same programs, the same features, the same settings, etc., etc., etc.) would make you wonder why you have so many devices. Any thoughts from the other side of the (digital) ecological divide? -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Google Music - Product Update
Russell Standish wrote circa 11-11-17 12:59 PM: I suspect there might be quite a few others like me :) Yep. I have gone one step further, though. I now try to buy all my music sans plastic (i.e. online). But I relish the diversity between my collections on various devices. I make some sullen attempts to sync my phone and laptops with my server. But I'm inconsistent. And I make no serious attempts to acquire all the music I listen to on myspace, last.fm, pandora, or anywhere else. I'm not a musician, but I pretend to understand a little of how many of them seem to feel. With the ability to construct a fresh experience anywhere you go, the robotic automation of studio recorded music pales a little bit. It took me awhile after puberty to really appreciate music as a contextual whole experience rather than scripted emotion.[1][2] When I finally did grok it, I began to appreciate all sorts of things I didn't even perceive before. Even bad music, if I'm there while it's being constructed, seems quite fulfilling. The diversity in my collections across devices feels like a shadowy reminder of that understanding. [1] I remember an event right out of college. I used to frequent the bars in Dallas and Houston that allowed open jams ... anyone with an instrument was welcome to walk on stage and play with whoever was up there already. That's where I fell in love with the blues ... or what I called the blues, anyway. I mistakenly told a coworker that I liked the blues. When he came to my apt for a party one time, he accused me: I thought you liked the blues?!? after looking through my LPs. I said, Yeah, but only live. He scoffed and dropped the subject. [2] I've recently gotten into lots of noise performances. It's hard to describe. But for me, it's a bit like a good book or riding a motorcycle. There are windows (100 pages, but still far from the end, into a good book, or from [2,8] hours on the bike) wherein you're sense of context is transformed, made expansive in some weird way. Noise bands do that to me (at least the good ones do). But I've tried listening to pre-recorded noise. It just ain't the same... it has an antiseptic feel... all tin-ny, weak, and unidimensional. Much of that is the attention most noise geeks pay to the venue and pa system, I'm sure. If they had a good production engineer and I used headphones, it might be better. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Google Music - Product Update
q...@aol.com wrote circa 11-11-17 06:07 PM: You do mean tinny, as opposed to woody, right? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gwXJsWHupgfeature=youtube_gdata_player Ha! Recidivist. I hadn't seen that before. Thanks. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Disenfranchised? Americans Elect?
Steve Smith wrote circa 12-01-09 01:51 PM: Isn't this what Americans Elect (among other things) trying to address? After the initial flurry of discussion about this group, I've seen nothing else here. I was disturbed by certain things about them but as an alternative mechanism, maybe they are worth more attention? I still get e-mails from them asking for money. I've answered 223 of their stupidly dichotomous questions and voted on 20 of them. I've seen nothing from them but solicitations for money. I won't give them any money. I have way too many established charities knocking. At this point, I'm inclined to write them off. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] parislemon • Why I Hate Android
Owen Densmore wrote circa 12-01-10 10:48 AM: We have had several phone chats. I kept finding Android a bit difficult to deal with, mainly because of the new trinity: Phone Makers, Cellular Carriers, and Mobile OSs. I found the evil trios not providing what I wanted and kept thinking I was being painted into a corner. This post discusses part of the problem. No, its not an iPhone vs Android rant, but interesting history on Android and its loss of control. http://parislemon.com/post/15604811641/why-i-hate-android I suppose I'm just dense and should keep my mouth shut. But my very density prevents me from keeping my mouth shut. ;-) Precisely what control does an android user _not_ have? I seem to have control over every aspect of my android device (Droid 2 Global), including which carrier I use. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Poll: Obama leads all GOP candidates in head-to-head contests
Steve Smith wrote at 03/14/2012 12:34 PM: I'm not sure Statistics are Lies is precisely accurate. I think Statistics are incomplete and Statistics are skewed come closer but *even* more to the point, I think, is Statistics are used to lie. I can't resist. ;-) The noun lie is interesting. It's not like, say, hammer ... or rock ... well, unless you're a fan of intelligent design, that is. A lie is a thing that one might find lying [ahem] around on the ground. But somehow we can know just by looking at the lie, the purpose to which the lie was put. A lie is more like a hammer than a rock, of course. Those of us with hands (or with the neural structures that allow us to imagine hands) can accurately infer the purpose to which a hammer was put. The set of observers capable of accurately inferring the purpose of a hammer is quite small, but still seems large enough to those of us in the set. It's not so easy with rock. Was it designed to filter water? ... or to execute people who break your laws? -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Disenfranchised? Americans Elect?
I'm still waiting for them to say something interesting. I'm watching some candidates. I won't commit to sending them my social security number and birth date until I have evidence that they're credible. FYI, I enjoy this website re: americans elect: http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/category/americanselect/ Steve Smith wrote at 03/14/2012 03:08 PM: What is everyone (else's) current take on the Americans Elect at this point? I just took the time to (re)sign up and go through about 100 questions and then looked at the draft candidates and at the questions being put forth for debate by the candidates somewhere down the line. Overall I was much more impressed with the situation than I was in the past. The debate questions being put forward were hampered in quality by the source... the unwashed masses are going to come up with a lot of whackadoodle things, or if not whackadoodle ideas, whackadoodle expressions of perfectly good ideas. I tried voting on about 100 of the questions (some of the most popular, but mostly the most recent. It wasn't clear I was helping... I'm hoping the questions get rendered down more (but also well) as many questions were variations on each other. I wouldn't worry about their bad questions or money requests. Just ignore those until they are fixed and vote in the primary :P Greg Sonnenfeld “The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.” On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 3:17 PM, gleng...@ropella.name wrote: Steve Smith wrote circa 12-01-09 01:51 PM: Isn't this what Americans Elect (among other things) trying to address? After the initial flurry of discussion about this group, I've seen nothing else here. I was disturbed by certain things about them but as an alternative mechanism, maybe they are worth more attention? I still get e-mails from them asking for money. I've answered 223 of their stupidly dichotomous questions and voted on 20 of them. I've seen nothing from them but solicitations for money. I won't give them any money. I have way too many established charities knocking. At this point, I'm inclined to write them off. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Disenfranchised? Americans Elect?
I don't think it would help me. An e-mail directly to me might make me feel like one of the cool kids. But my main concern is the sense that Americans Elect is a corporation, not a democratic process. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for corporations to the right purpose and context. But AECorp seems a bit shadowy to me. If I were pressed to be concrete about my feelings, I'd have to say that it's just too difficult to investigate the clique members involved. And when I do find some new piece of data about them, it's nefarious ... like the identities of the largest funders and the evolution from Unity08. I just don't get the feeling AECorp has my best interests in mind. Not that that's a big deal. The Demopublicans don't have my best interests in mind, either. But at least they admit that they're political parties, whose sole purpose is to help politicians get (and stay) elected as long as they tow the party line. That seems more authentic than a shadowy corporation that claims it's not a party, funded mostly in secret by long-term behind-the-scenes political players. These data should be prominent on their website, not hidden in PDFs I have to hunt for. And even if they privately sent _me_ all that data and it was all above board, I would still wonder why it wasn't on the website so anyone could see it immediately. Gillian Densmore wrote at 03/15/2012 06:42 PM: That might help. I know I used to get emails from them mostly about what to make there logo to look like. Part of the problem at least on my end is lac of transperency and comunication. Maybe I needed to somehow know I needed to watch the forums or something. Even then discus ala FRIAM would(V) helped at least in my case. On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 7:02 PM, Greg Sonnenfeld gsonn...@gmail.com mailto:gsonn...@gmail.com wrote: If you want I could ask the regional coordinator to give you guys an e-mail so you could discuss your concerns. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Disenfranchised? Americans Elect?
Owen Densmore wrote at 03/18/2012 12:02 PM: Larry Lessig apparently has two interesting views on AE 1 - Anonymous contributions: He's not bothered by them, mainly because not even the AE candidates will know who they are, thus not having power over the candidate. Re: Lessig's anonymity argument. I found this comment interesting: http://www.johnlumea.com/2012/03/the-shadow-super-pac-of-centrism.html But, for some observers, it is not down at the granular, personal level of quid pro quo that the opportunity and the risk for corruption is most evident at Americans Elect. Rather, it is up at the systemic, process level — the level that, in order to see what's going on, requires a wider-angle lens that Lessig seems unwilling to use. As I see it, this is the same extent of the disagreement between Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News and Wikileaks. They're both on the same side, but Aftergood is willing to accept a little secrecy (or bureaucratic viscosity in the flow of information) in the name of rationality whereas Wikileaks identifies secrecy itself as part of the problem. I happen to come down on the open side in both arguments. I.e. I don't buy Lessig's argument at all. There is only anonymity for the individuals, not for the _corporation_ we call Americans Elect (which has an executive team and a board of directors with powers beyond those of the delegates). In more positive news: https://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2012/03/gao_expands.html A classified GAO review of FBI counterterrorism programs has been completed, and a GAO investigation of the role of contractors in intelligence is in progress. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] online privacy (again)
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 04/02/2012 12:08 PM: What is there to resist? What would such resistance accomplish? Your options are to not care and go about your business as before, to learn to talk in some sophisticated code, or to stop using the square. What else is there? There are at least 2 other resistance routes ... possibly more. 1) Use tools like the internet _more_ ... as much as you can, and 2) Press for _laws_ that prevent asymmetries and the enforcement of those laws on asymmetric agents (like Presidents who commit crimes but bet -- and usually win -- that they'll never be prosecuted). (1) contributes to security through obscurity. The more normal people use the media for normal activities, the more difficult it will be to de-anonymize (make personal) any subset of transactions. And while security through obscurity is terrible when used in isolation, it can help. [*] (2) The prevalence for openness we see in our youth is _not_ identical to apathy about who's snooping. The openness is, I think, a lack of wisdom about how asymmetric relationships can become. The problems don't lie in people _knowing_ that I have cats and what they look like. The problem lies in nefarious or all-powerful agents knowing that I have cats and what they look like. Any federal agency (by the very definition of federal) sets up an asymmetric relation from the start. And _that's_ bad. Asymmetry always leads to abuse, unless it is well regulated. So, definitely don't just get used to it. Push for research into where anonymity fosters or hinders human rights. Push for open government. Guilt trip your friends into setting up and using GPG, Tor, BitTorrent, Etc. Use the internet for buying groceries and talking to grandma as well as downloading music and looking up bomb recipes. Etc. Do anything _but_ give up and get used to whatever bad situation you're in. [*] Using the commons for things other than specific suspicious activity is what the Occupy movement is all about. If we only encrypt our _important_ e-mails, then the NSA knows _exactly_ which e-mails to attack. It's so obvious I'm totally confused why more people don't support Occupy. We should not only protest in the commons ... we should also play chess there ... drink beer there ... play football there ... etc. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] definitions will be the death of us (was: So, *Are* We Alone?)
Sarbajit Roy wrote at 04/06/2012 06:36 AM: I would treat induction/deduction/abduction in an alternate formal manner. http://psivision.objectis.net/DeductionAbductionInduction Thread successfully hijacked! ;-) I think it's hilarious how we all want to _fix_ the semantic map and that we fail to tolerate others' maps. I also think Nick, Doug, and Bruce (and everyone else) are and will always be using different definitions of the word induction. And I actually think that's a _good_ thing. Ambiguity is good. N-ary relations are good. Why are so many of us so _proud_ that we are not dazzled by what others think? What's wrong with basking in the idiocy, mediocrity, and brilliance of the world around us? Where lies this impetus to either retreat into little holes of cynicism or forcibly _remake_ reality to match our fantasies? Let's take this back to Doug's original offending question: whether a two-fold increase in intelligence would lead to a reduction in religious belief. Moron that I am, I am fascinated and dazzled by tales of magic, extra terrestrial life, personal transformation, and mythology[*]. I.e. the thoughts of others. These thoughts breathe life into what can become a debilitating existence of fact-checking and pompous denigration of others' semantic maps. So, if I were to draw lines (which I won't lest I contradict myself ;-), then you should count me on the side of the morons who prefer to be less intelligent and continually bedazzled by the thoughts of others. [*] Though I am thoroughly tired of vampires at this point. [sigh] I used to love a good vampire story. I'm not sure what happened. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] This Internet provider pledges to put your privacy first. Always.
Given some of the conversations we've had here, I thought this might be interesting to some: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57412225-281/this-internet-provider-pledges-to-put-your-privacy-first-always/ -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: Old Folks Only: Medicare Plan F
We have a patient/physician co-op, here. It was apparently modeled off the one in Houston, TX. http://www.ppcpdxcoop.org/ The general site is here: http://www.patientphysiciancoop.com/ My worry is that we have so few MDs on the list here in PDX. There seem to be a lot more in Houston. I am extremely skeptical of alternative medicines. But if enough people use them _and_ we collect enough data, it should provide higher quality than allopathic clinical trials. So, I encourage all of _you_ to use alternative medicine. I'll wait for the data. ;-) Parks, Raymond wrote at 04/23/2012 02:15 PM: There was a doctor in NYC who tried to set up a business model where his patients paid him $70 per month (he calculated that amount based on office overhead and his income) and they had the right to visit him X number of times per month. The various one-payer systems (Medicare, insurance) called in the insurance regulators, claiming that he was operating as an insurance company. I have friend who recently retired from being an Ob/Gyn. He worked in ABQ but followed his wife to Winslow. There he worked for what his patients could give him - many times including livestock (mostly chickens). He told me that he made more money through that informal system than he made here through the whole office/insurance/hospital privileges/etc. system. [...] On Apr 23, 2012, at 2:53 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: My fantasy is that we all get together to form a Dr/patients association and conspire against the insurance companies. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] re alternative medicine
Are there any sources for data that you recommend? Keep in mind that I'm used to biological data. I don't think my mind is closed to other types of data. But I would expect something like blind experiments and statistically significant populations. Etc. Feel free to tell me to RTFM. 8^) I just figured you might be able to suggest a few sources off the top of your head. peggy miller wrote at 04/25/2012 09:26 AM: Speaking in defense of some alternatives, and as a Chinese/Ayurvedic Medicinal Herbalist, I so far in my practice am finding it to be highly useful as a medical alternative for everything from congestion to insomnia, tremors, memory loss, bowel problems, diabetic problems, fatigue, arthritis, nerve issues. I have yet to have a client with seizures, but it is supposed to help many cases of that nature. The research and validation on both Chinese and Ayurvedic Medicine goes back millenium, with many cases. But I, being somewhat skeptical, continue to be surprised by how useful it is as I practice it with clients. I urge you all to try a local Chinese/Ayurvedic Medicinal Herbalist. You may find it surprising. Peggy M. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] re alternative medicine
Thanks very much! Sarbajit Roy wrote at 04/25/2012 06:24 PM: Insofar as Ayurvedic medicines go, these would be good starting points. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1297513/ http://www.ccimindia.org/ Informally, Ayurvedic (herbal) medicine works for low level (common) ailments but perhaps not at the efficiency / success levels of allopathic systems. They are best viewed as complementary traditional treatments to allopathy with reduced/lower side effects (for example treatments of the common cough / cold) . siddharth wrote at 04/26/2012 03:46 AM: Perhaps this is of some use - http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/Using_Alternative_Therapies_JaLow.html *Using Alternative Therapies: A Qualitative Analysis by Jacqueline Low (Repost)* Publisher: Canadian Scholars Press (May 1, 2004) | ISBN: 1551302640 | Pages: 200 | PDF | 1.78 MB This book provides a distinctive sociological inquiry into the perspectives and social issues surrounding the use of alternative therapies. Dr. Low presents the experiences of twenty-one Canadians who use alternative approaches to health care. Her study foregrounds the lay perspective by using a symbolic interactionist approach, which emphasises individuals' own understanding of reality as a basis for their actions. Dr. Low analyses how and why the participants in the study came to use alternative therapies; the ideologies informing the models of health and healing they espouse; the impact these beliefs have on them, and the implications of their experiences for Canadian health care policy. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] PRES12_WTA Prospectus - The University of Iowa
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 07/11/2012 09:41 PM: Why not say some simple and straightforward things about what you actually accomplished? Well, for what (little) it's worth, they did send me this: http://content.wuala.com/contents/gepr/public/obama-biden-wallet-posterized-scaled.png -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist
It always surprises me the extent to which people (yes! people in general) over-simplify complex things. One of my pet peeves is the conviction that religion is identical with belief or doctrine. Most religion is an individualized convolution of belief and practice. It's not merely belief and it's not merely practice. The extent to which any individual's religion is belief vs. practice varies dramatically. So, to people like Doug, I can justifiably counter that religion is not (merely) reducible to belief or faith. And we know he already knows this by his statement that Islam was tightly woven into the fabric of western Libya. Yet, he contradicts himself almost immediately and claims that religion (yes, all religion, everywhere and everyone) requires faith. Which is it? Can religion be woven deeply into one's actions? Or not? And if not, then how deeply can a religion be woven into the actions of animals? What is the most habitual, instinctively, epigenetic(?) action into which religion can be woven? The answer is simple: some of us weave thought into our actions more than others. Some religious people hold faith more central to their religion and some hold practice as more central. I posit that those scientists who self identify as religious hold doctrine as _less_ central to their religion than practice. Interacting with the real world probably takes precedence over navel-gazing. I.e. Hanging out with their group singing songs and eating cookies is more important than the definition of God. (I'd contrast this with, say, mathematicians who self identify as religious. ;-) Anyway, this is why I chose to quote Nick's comment. ;-) Faith is just an idea ... a thought. To claim that faith always lies somewhere down there is to claim that our universe is somehow _rooted_ in or at least heavily dependent on thought. I disagree completely. I believe in zombies. I believe animals exist who either have no thoughts or in whom thought is purely epiphenomenal. These animals do not require faith at any layer. Nicholas Thompson wrote at 09/14/2012 11:31 AM: But the problem here is not faith, itself, which always lies somewhere down there amongst the turtles, but the rapidity to which a shallow thinker appeals to it. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist
Nicholas Thompson wrote at 09/14/2012 12:18 PM: gepr wrote: It always surprises me the extent to which people (yes! people in general) over-simplify complex things. One of my pet peeves is the conviction that religion is identical with belief or doctrine. [NST ==] one'mans oversimplification is another's clarification. Exactly! Such is the plight of people who believe thought plays a role in action. Those of us who never think, only act don't have that problem. There are no (accurate) compressions or models that do a good enough job of looking ahead. (Can you tell I make my living building simulations? ;-) Most religion is an individualized convolution of belief and practice. It's not merely belief and it's not merely practice. The extent to which any individual's religion is belief vs. practice varies dramatically. [NST ==] Well, I really don't distinguish between belief and practice. If I believe that my child will die if and only if it is God's will AND I believe that it is a sin to oppose god's will, then I will not give my child anti-biotics. If I give my child antibiotics, I don't believe that. Beliefs are what we act on. No, we act on the previous state of our bodies and the rules that govern the transition from one state to another ... no thoughts or beliefs are required, only memory. If you do not give your child antibiotics, it is because your history pre-programmed you to not do that and vice versa. So, to people like Doug, I can justifiably counter that religion is not (merely) reducible to belief or faith. And we know he already knows this by his statement that Islam was tightly woven into the fabric of western Libya. Yet, he contradicts himself almost immediately and claims that religion (yes, all religion, everywhere and everyone) requires faith. Which is it? Can religion be woven deeply into one's actions? Or not? And if not, then how deeply can a religion be woven into the actions of animals? What is the most habitual, instinctively, epigenetic(?) action into which religion can be woven? [NST ==] Is it possible Doug and I agree on something? That the distinction between belief and action is ill drawn? If so, we'd all agree that the distinction is ill-drawn. But we'd probably disagree on where it should properly be drawn. ;-) I posit that those scientists who self identify as religious hold doctrine as _less_ central to their religion than practice. Interacting with the real world probably takes precedence over navel-gazing. [NST ==] I see, Glen, that you want to perjoratize one kind of intellectual behavior and prioritize another, but why? On what grounds. If navels is what I want to learn about, some navel gazing might be really useful. Well, the real reason I chose to pejoratize (?) what I did is to make the argument interesting. I have faith that Doug believes he is not a zombie. Yet he argues in one context that he is a zombie and in another context that he is not a zombie. You are consistent in your denial of the existence of zombies, yet you argue vociferously in defense of behaviorism. (Not that there's a contradiction there ... but it is curious.) As for the type of intellectual behavior the generalized scientist holds dear and distinguishing it from religious doctrine, I really don't intend to draw that distinction. I am equally against both. (Yet, magically, I will defend the idea that philosophy is useful! So, I am not free of my own contradictions.) Anyway, this is why I chose to quote Nick's comment. ;-) Faith is just an idea ... a thought. To claim that faith always lies somewhere down there is to claim that our universe is somehow _rooted_ in or at least heavily dependent on thought. I disagree completely. I believe in zombies. I believe animals exist who either have no thoughts or in whom thought is purely epiphenomenal. These animals do not require faith at any layer. [NST ==] Ok. Our horns are nicely locked here, let's push a bit and see where we get. That on a moonless night I reach out for my glasses on the bedstand is evidence for my belief that that the glasses are on the bedstand? (for myself, I would put it even more strongly: that I reach out CONSTITUTES my belief that the glasses are on the bedstand. There is no separate idea followed by an act. If anything, the act creates the idea. I disagree. I believe you reach out for your glasses because the t-1 state of your body forces you to do so, not because your mind (whatever that is) holds a belief that they are there. Often, when I sleep in a strange place, I do things like reach out for my phone, or the door knob, or whatever without having thought about whether it's there at all. My body is just used to such motorized actions producing good result. I am open to the idea that the concept of a belief is a kind of short-cut or ideological compression of all the trillions of tiny actions my body will take
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist
Nicholas Thompson wrote at 09/14/2012 05:57 PM: I thought I believed that we we are ALL zombies. Maybe you do. I don't know. But I infer from your words in these e-mails that you believe beliefs are real things, are constituted by real things, result from and result in real things. Maybe I don't know what a zombie is. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/ (Yes, I have been _called_ a master of the non sequitur ... but that's not because I make unjustified inferences. It's because I don't take the time to show my work. ;-) -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/15/2012 07:51 AM: the next step in a discussion like this is for someone to ask you what evidence you have that any actual thing has more actor status than a thermostat. My evidence is, like *all* evidence, subject to interpretation. Unlike most people, I don't believe there are such things as facts. ;-) With that preamble, I'll set up my evidence. There seem to be unpredictable processes. Either they are actually unpredictable, or we're just not smart enough to predict them. If the former, we're talking Truth. If the latter, we're talking practicality. Some of these systems are chaotic, some are stochastic. Regardless, they are unpredictable. There are also some processes that are predictable. We can infer laws and then show that those systems (usually) follow them. These laws allow compressed models (analogs[*]) of the referent system, ways of describing those systems that are reasonably accurate. I'll call these systems compressible to indicate that there exists at least one [+] _accurate_ (enough) description of them that's shorter than a fully detailed description (i.e. the referent system itself). Zombies and tools are compressible. (You'll remember that I'm defining tool as an artifact whose purpose has been inscribed/imputed by an actor.) Actors are _incompressible_ in the sense that you can't define a short-cut law that accurately describes what how the system will evolve. We can call the incompressible part free will or general intelligence or soul or whatever we want to call it. That doesn't matter. But what's important is that you cannot get high confidence validation out of a model of such a system _unless_ you implement the incompressible part in all its gory detail. You have to execute it in order to know what it's going to do. (You might recognize this as the halting problem.) Now, what evidence do I have that incompressible systems exist? Well, there's plenty, from the radioactive decay of matter to meteorology. Whether you'd accept any of this evidence depends, I'd say, on whether you [dis]like my rhetoric. [*] All models, in order to do their work, need implementations. So I'm not really talking about the laws, per se. I'm talking about any machines you might use to implement the laws. E.g. not the equations, the computer and program used to implement the equations. E.g. not the indefinite equations in pencil, the definite equations without variables like x and y ... plus your fingers and such to push the pencil. [+] To be more correct, I'd have to say that actors are composite and have at least one component that is incompressible. So, while the whole actor may submit to a compression, at least part of her will not. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] One more, I'm afraid. Who started this, anyhow?
This also applies to trolls and bullying on the internet. The method Do not feed the trolls seems (to me) to fail most of the time. And I tend to believe it fails mostly because the definition of troll is ambiguous and vague. People abuse the term all the time. Most of the so-called trolls I've met are actually authentic contributors who simply don't know how to get along with the people/fora they contribute to. Those who perpetrate and tolerate the false positives have, to me, a weaker moral foundation than the troll. To boot, in the case of an actual troll, it's universally the yahoos who insist on yelling about the troll who are more at fault for the degradation in quality content than the troll. Bullying is similar. Those who bully are one bogey, but they're a well known one. Everyone's experienced bullying at some point, I think. But the people who _refuse_ to speak out against the bully are, again, on a weaker moral foundation than the bully. Hell, many bullies may not even know they're bullies and all they need to hear is back off from someone in the their clique. Douglas Roberts wrote at 09/15/2012 02:24 PM: Respecting a person's right to believe in a cause that clearly resonates is one thing. Tolerating irrational, abusive, and amoral actions performed in the name of those causes itself comprises an amoral act. Just because people have the right to believe in whatever value set appeals to them does not mean that they are not sometimes due criticism. To hide behind the veil of tolerance in the face of clearly amoral (or perhaps just plain stupid) behavior is to allow these anti-social behaviors to spread like the cancer they are. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Arlo Barnes wrote at 09/17/2012 04:03 PM: But what if the compressible class turns out to be the same as the uncompressible class? Well, even if that's true in principle, as long as there is a predicate to slice them all into two sets: 1) really really hard to compress vs. 2) pretty easy to compress, we still have a fundamental, practical, and measurable difference between say humans and thermostats, respectively. It seems the only way to tell is to test every possible case, as you say in your second paragraph. I don't think it's as much a matter of classifying every possible system into one or the other classes. I can see a nice ivory tower job (or perhaps an employee of the justice dept) for such a taxonomist. But most of us merely want to handle 80% of the cases well. It's OK if I can't determine which class Nick, Doug, or any one individual falls into or even if they spew disinformation to make me mis-classify them. As long as I can get most zombies and actors in the right class. What it comes down to, though, is that, again as you say, you are talking about knowledge, how people model the world. But do you [not] believe there is a world if there is nobody to model it? Let me rephrase it to avoid the whole conscious observer thing. Is there a super system if all sub-systems are compressible? Yes, absolutely. Just because there exists some part of the universe that can adequately model any given part of the universe does _not_ imply that the universe doesn't exist. The real problem we face if there are no incompressible sub-sytems is one of first cause or ad infinitum. If every detail out there is completely explainable from its initial conditions, then what was the cause of the initial conditions? (We'll find ourselves looking for the one true Actor in patterns in the cosmic background radiation!) But if we posit that, say, empty space is really a dense foam of incompressible systems, then all we need do is look for a way to scale up. COuld there not be the objective fact of physical laws, even if they are never articulated, or at least not correctly or fully? No, not the way I'm using the word law (and based on my own private definition of articulated ;-). An unimplemented law is a thought, which as I said a few posts ago, in this rhetoric anyway, is not real. It's a convenient fiction that helps some of our subsystems maintain control over other of our subsystems. But an implemented law (like a computer program and the machine that executes it) _is_ what's objective. Not only are implementations what is real, they are the _only_ thing that's real. (The word implementation is unfortunate because it implies the existence of an abstract thing that's being implemented. So I really shouldn't use that word ... I should use realization or somesuch that has a higher ontological status.) Note that I started this rhetorical position in response to Nick's assertion that there always exists faith at the bottom of any justification. In order to make my rhetoric interesting, I have to take a hard line and agree with Nick that things like beliefs are simply collections of actions. Hence, all things in the class containing beliefs (including laws) are not really things, at least not in and of themselves. In so doing, I accused Nick of having asserted that faith underlies all reality. I expected him to evolve during the course of the conversation to explain what actions constitute faith. If we got that far, then we'd have Nick's physical theory of everything! Those actions would be the (or at least a) fundamental constitutive component of all other things. As usual, the conversation hasn't gone the way I wanted. Dammit. 8D But I'll still hold my final trump card to my chest just in case it takes a turn back in my favor. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/18/2012 07:46 AM: Trying to be a sophisticated Nick: Faith doesn't underlies reality, but it underlies all experience. And by experience, I mean it underlies all the way you act and react towards reality. This doesn't give you a theory of everything, but it might give you a theory of everything psychological. I could tolerate that position. But I'm not going to. The whole question of ascribing the potentiality for sane actions to crazy people (be they Muslim or Atheist) hinges on the Cartesian partition. Nick (sophisticated or not) argues against the partition: mind is matter, no more no less. Hence, if faith underlies experience and experience is matter, then either we can separate experience from non-experience or all matter is experience. By accusing Nick of claiming that faith underlies all reality, I am pressing for _his_ technique for separating experience from everything else. Zombies are one rhetorical tool for doing that. -- To return to the zombies... the usual riddle of the Cartesian zombie goes something like this: 1. Imagine a Person who is trying to catch you, perhaps to eat you. You run through the woods, twisting and turning, but your adversary always changes to stay on your trail. Let us all agree from the beginning that said Person stays on your trail BECAUSE he intends to catch and eat you. 2. Now imagine a Zombie who is trying to catch you and eat you. The Zombie makes all the same alterations of course to stay on your trail that the Person would have made in the same situation. But now, let us all agree that the Zombie has no intention. 3. Insert mystery music here. Aha! How would you ever know the difference? If we can imagine a Zombie doing everything it can to stay on your trail, but without wanting to catch you, then we can never know anything about the mind of another. Because I thought of this mystery, I am really smart! But you'll have to take my word on it, because a Zombie could have said all the same things without any smarts. Ooooh, see, I made it a meta-mystery - super clever points achieved! -- Nick's assertion is to declare point 2 a blatant falsity. To be trying to catch you or to want to catch you, is nothing other than to be varying behavior so as to stay on your trail. That is, you can imagine a try-less and want-less thing coming towards you, for as long as you run in a straight line. As soon as you start turning, and the thing chasing you turns as a function of the changes in your trajectory, such that it is always moving to intersect you, then you are imagining that the thing is trying to catch you. I'm with you up to here. However, I do know someone who tailgates other drivers just out of habit ... as soon as you point out that she's following a person, she immediately changes lanes. Of course, I have no idea what that means. The creature believes that these alterations of its course will bring it closer to you (than if it didn't alter its course). You lost me here. The creature is tracking you. If belief is a collection of actions, then the creature does not YET _believe_ it's trying to catch you. It can't believe that until it actually does it ... wait for it ... because belief is action. Now, had you said that belief is a _memory_ of past action, then I might tolerate a claim that the creature believes it's tracking you. But that would mean that belief isn't a collection of actions. It's something else ... perhaps a type of action distinguishable from other types of action ... perhaps something called state, which is distinguishable from process? -- -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] One more, I'm afraid. Who started this, anyhow?
Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 09/17/2012 05:07 PM: In this way, tolerance can be mapped to organizational rules. If the abuse is described by shared rules there's a mechanism to stop the abuse. If it is not described by shared rules, the (silent) bullied individuals need to work to make their organization serve their needs better -- or be better at being invisible -- or change their philosophy. As usual, I'm compelled to disagree even though I agree with everything you said. ;-) Perhaps the bullied (or misidentified troll) serves a purpose to the group? And perhaps it's in both the group's and the victim's best interest to maintain the status quo. Hence, the bullied need to tolerate or even encourage the bullies to bully more. This might be a way to understand that strange desire on the part of some protesters to be pepper sprayed and roughed up by paramilitary riot police. What better way to stimulate the mirror neurons of your peers than to exacerbate the bullying? Go ahead. Taunt that cop! -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Arlo Barnes wrote at 09/18/2012 10:45 AM: It's something else ... perhaps a type of action distinguishable from other types of action ... perhaps something called state, which is distinguishable from process? Well, if we are being literalists, it could be construed as the chemical actions taking place in a brain, or perhaps electrical actions taking place microprocessor (depending on who we are talking about). Yep, any of those actions would be fine, I think. But in order for the zombie to have a belief about something that hasn't happened yet, we need some higher order structure, like memory. So, it's not merely chemical or electrical actions ... it's chemical or electrical actions grouped in a particular way, with particular, higher order properties. We could probably even get away with an artificial chemistry or physics, as long as we could synthesize something analogous to what we normally call belief or intention. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
: Forcing/convincing/training a person to raise a full cup of water to their mouth _generates_ the belief that full cups of water satisfy thirst., then we'd be getting somewhere. The forward map is always easier than the inverse map. Going from belief to the actions that generated it is a much harder problem and tends to lead us down philosophical rat holes. P.S. In the second note above, we could have gone straight to the belief that drinking would relieve thirst, but given our current example, it seemed better to get the word want involved. I don't want want to be involved. 8^) I'm trying to simplify the discussion down to an actionable point. Which is why I'll ask again: If faith is a collection of actions, what actions constitute faith? Is there a training program consisting of actions the person should execute that we can put a person through, by making them _do_ various things in a [non]ritualized way so that after the training, they will have faith? If so, what are those actions? -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Sarbajit Roy wrote at 09/19/2012 08:30 AM: I don't want want to be involved. 8^) I'm trying to simplify the discussion down to an actionable point. Which is why I'll ask again: If faith is a collection of actions, what actions constitute faith? Praxis ?. Heh, you didn't provide enough context for me to guess what you mean by that word. I'm looking for normal actions ... like go to the store or pick your nose or kneel in front of that plastic statue for 12 hours ... play with that snake ... eat this wafer ... stare at that table for 24 hours ... etc. We need a sequence of actions that might actually cause a person to have faith. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Thanks for the clarity on praxis. That word has too much baggage for me to be comfortable with it. Using it would beg people to talk about stuff unrelated to Nick's assertion. Sarbajit Roy wrote at 09/19/2012 10:46 AM: We need a sequence of actions that might actually cause a person to have faith. 2 examples. a) way cults work, and b) ways a magnet works. In a (religious) cult, the newbies are first encouraged to join in on simple actions like clapping. This is a psychological device to get them to participate and show that nobody objects to their actions. Then they are encouraged to sing a little bit .. moving onto dancing, chanting, praise be the lording or whatever Pick a magnet, any magnet. Pick a piece of unmagnetic iron. Gently stroke said magnet in the same direction repeatedly over said piece of iron. Note those little (Brainwashed) magnetic dipoles lining up just so ... That's how the faith model and Al-Qaeda works. Excellent! Both of these approach what is necessary for Nick to be able to reconcile the 2 assertions that faith underlies all justification and belief is action. They are incomplete in different ways: In (a), there is still a missing piece between the social comfort brought by the increasing participation in various activities versus some belief ascribed to the cult members. I would posit that a mole/infiltrator could participate in a cult quite a long time, dancing, changing, murdering starlets in their homes, etc. _without_ actually believing the doctrines of the cult (much like most Catholics I've met). So, what we need is an idea of how we get to belief from these actions. How do we distinguish lip service or facetious dancing and chanting from the chanting and dancing of the true believers? (b) is inadequate for a different reason, I think. The brainwashing of the molecules is a type of memory, which gets at the previous conversations. Is memory required for belief? I'd tentatively say yes. But I have yet to hear an answer from those who believe that belief is (reducible to) action. If their answer is no, then we'd have to begin discussing whether there is any temporal quality to belief at all. E.g. can one only believe what they're doing at any given instant and the concept of belief is incoherent for discussions of future and past? If their answer is yes, then we have to decide whether memory (of some type) is sufficient for belief. E.g. are there types of memory that do not amount to belief? Like if I know that some person thinks 1+1=3, I can remember that, suspend disbelief, and play along with that equation for awhile without believing it. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/19/2012 02:54 PM: But Glen, when you talk about the infiltrator, or the person paying lip-service, you are just appealing to a larger pattern of behavior. Aha!! Excellent! So, tell me how to classify the patterns so that one pattern is just lip service and the other is belief! If you do that, then we'll have our objective function. I can develop an algorithm for that and we'll be able to automatically distinguish zombies from actors. Then we can begin building machines that try to satisfy it. Agreeing with your assertion, faking belief looks different than belief... if you can see enough of the person's behavior and/or see a close enough level of detail. The former, again, sounds like memory. The latter is something else. It implies something about scale. We know actions are multi-scale (anatomy, physiology, chemistry, physics). Is there a cut-off below which we need not go? Genes? Chemicals? Or does the multiscalar requirements for measuring belief extend all the way down? a person who believes X and a person faking belief in X are distinguished by observing a wide variety of ways in which the people interact with the world. So, in addition to memory and crossing scales, the measures are also multivalent at any one instant or any one scale. Also, for the record, one of the problems with using moles is that it is very difficult to get people capable of participating in cultural practices of these sorts over extended periods without becoming believers. The practices become normal to you, the group becomes your group, and even if you can still turn them in/report on them/whatever you are supposed to do, you become sympathetic. Uh-oh. This makes it sound like not only is there a multi-scale problem, but there may also be a hybrid requirement. The mole either continuously transitions from non-belief to belief or there's a threshold. I.e. some parts of our classifying predicate will be continuous and some will be discrete. I have to admit, this seems like a really difficult multi-objective selection method. Building a machine that generates belief from a collection of mechanisms, thereby satisfying the criteria, will be exceedingly difficult, at least as difficult as artificial life and intelligence. But this is what we have to do if we're going to continue claiming that beliefs reduce to actions. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Sarbajit Roy wrote at 09/19/2012 08:21 PM: (aside) In addition to my faith hat, I also have a designer/manufacturer of programmable logic controller hat. I wish more people had those hats. I see lots of silly and useless hats ... I often feel like I live on the outskirts of a permanent fashion show. To design an artificial life form (android / zombie ...) capable of successfully passing among humans in a religious (faith) setting you would probably need tons of memory (or else some channeling reinforcement, probabilistic determinative etc. mechanism) and the ability to dynamically mimic emotions such as boredom, guilt, trust, sin, obedience, lip-service etc. The zombie wouldn't have to bring much knowledge or wisdom to this setting as the more brain dead it is the easier it is for to pass. The trouble is that concepts like knowledge and wisdom are no different from memory as far as I can tell. At least nobody's made the case that they're at all different. On the one hand, people will claim their ... phone ... is smart. Then right after that, they'll call it stupid. I've seen people do the same with their children, politicians, their cars, etc. When put on the spot, everyone cops out with the I can't define it. But I know it when I see it. To which I say: Pffft. 8^P -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
But, if this synthetic task is so difficult, what makes the reductionists believe they're right? If nobody can actually build a belief from a collection of actions, what trickiness or delusion allows them to confidently assert that beliefs are actions? What (premature?) conviction allows you to say that this task is no more difficult, in principle, than distinguishing chemical compounds? Even worse, if the research has NOT been done, then you're making this claim without any scientific evidence. I truly don't understand the conviction. It seems very much like an untested ideology. Re: Lee's book: There are lots of frameworks for dealing with hybrid systems. I'd be interested to see the new approach. ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/20/2012 05:31 AM: Yes, yes, yes! But, to stick with the analogy, it is not in-principle more difficult than distinguishing chemical compounds. Admittedly, Chemistry had quite a head start as a formal science. However, if psychologists had their heads out of the rears, and had put in as much effort over the last 100 years into classifying the ways people interact with the world as chemists had put into classifying the ways chemicals interact with the world, the question wouldn't seem so intimidating. We would have achieved, or be close to, whatever psychology's version of the periodic table is (which I know is itself continuously up for re-conceptualization, but the basic one is still incredibly helpful). As for your more specific question, it is pretty easy to tell believers from fakers... so long as we exclude faker-recursion. That is, it is possible for a human to be a believer faking being a non-believer, etc. If we stick to the original two-option case, it is pretty easy - I submit - because we do it all the time. Specifying exactly how we do it is tricky only because the research hasn't been done. Check out any Daily Show coverage of the presidential debates. One of the best bits so far is the Fox News commentator who, after Romney's speech goes on for quite a while about how great it is that there were so many details, how this will really connect with voters and answer their questions, etc. Then, immediately after Obama's speech he goes off about how the speech included a lot of details, and that is sure to alienate voters. If we only saw the first speech, we might think that the commentator believes details are good, or at least that he believes viewers want details. After seeing the clips next to each other, it is clear that he was merely faking that belief as part of a larger pattern serving some other purpose. What are the varieties of ways in which we make these distinctions? It is a tremendously complicated, but ultimately tractable question. Eric P.S. This problem is of particular interest to one of the topologists on the list - Lee Rudolph - who just had a book on the subject release. I haven't read it yet, but I know it is (among other things) an attempt to apply modern, non-statistical, mathematics to this problem. That would include math that can adequately deal with discrete and non-discrete aspects, etc., which you point out we would need. Lee, can you give a more skilled plug? -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Faith
Prof David West wrote at 09/20/2012 08:10 AM: The real interesting question to me - what is the boundary between a parents right to raise children in their faith and societies interest in establishing a threshold set of shared values and practices for acceptance into the society. It seems to me this is a question of population density. There's plenty of evidence that nests facilitate altruism (and socialism) and the lack of nests reinforces selfishness (and individualism). I can infer that the extent to which _I_ want to indoctrinate someone else's offspring is a function of the number and type of interactions I'll have with them (including whether I'll have to pay for the consequences of their actions like drinking 64 ounces of high fructose corn syrup or alcohol or bags of microwave popcorn per day). I currently live next door to a Catholic family much like the one in which I grew up. The dad does a lot of yelling and the children do a lot of crying and cowering. At one point, the teenage daughter was literally running in and out of the house trying to escape her dad who was chasing her (he's a bit fat and she's young and agile ;-). Our houses are quite close together, which is the only reason I noticed the ruckus. Had we lived back in our rent house on the river, with lots of space between us and our neighbors, this wouldn't have been an issue. Here's an honest and personal question to make the ethics concrete: Should I have intervened? -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Faith
The trouble is, as Eric has laid out nicely, one cannot infer the father's intentions from his actions. All I know is he was chasing her. I have no idea what he intended to do after he caught her or even if he really wanted to catch her ... or just chaser her around a bit to show her who's boss. Douglas Roberts wrote at 09/20/2012 10:06 AM: Depends: was he trying to force her into the Catholic lick the whipped cream off the priest's knees ritual? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2206008/Probe-launched-Polish-priest-gets-young-children-lick-whipped-cream-knee-creepy-school-initiation.html If so, then definitely yes. Otherwise, you should have simply, and quietly, have respected the family's faith. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith
It does seem that we've come to some agreement on the meaning of the word. It seems basically centered around Nick's original usage: faith is a kind of short circuit for justification. Steve's faith only short circuits a little bit, whereas his Faith short circuits a lot. The same could be said of Russ'. We could think of this in terms of compressibility where faith is less compressible than Faith. But I think Robert's point is somehow crucial because it gets at what I want. The idea that faith implies something about acting in the face of uncertainty. When we take something on [F|f]aith, we're implying that the truth or falsity of the thing we're taking on [f|F]aith has an impact on the outcome, whereas a mere belief can have no impact on outcome. This includes ends justified indeterminates like I'll kill you because I have faith that God wants me to kill you. Even though we may never determine the truth or falsity of their article of faith, if that person later came to believe the negation, guilt or repentance is the different consequence. This sounds like the beginning of a measure we might use to distinguish faith from other types of thoughts. Some thoughts might be no-ops whereas some have an effect. Even if we factor out all the subjectivity, intention, consciousness hoo-ha, we might be able to say something like: incompressible processes (all shortcuts that can be taken have been taken -- i.e. Faith) are less expressive (or flexible, or adaptable) than compressible processes. This might match up with other measures being used in neuroscience and/or psychology. We might also be able to apply some graph theory in the sense that some actions in a causal network will be more like cut points than others. If a graph has high connectivity, the uncertainty surrounding any given action matters much less than that surrounding something on the critical path. I know that, personally, I'd be much more likely to invoke and talk about faith when considering a cut-point action as opposed to one that had plenty of low-hanging fruit alternatives. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith
glen wrote at 09/24/2012 04:16 PM: We could think of this in terms of compressibility where faith is less compressible than Faith. Sorry. I meant the opposite: Faith is less compressible than faith. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith
Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM: But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part. The expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms of divine intervention. That's just a slight variation on what I laid out. The point being that whatever the article of faith is (a being, an attribute of the world, etc.), if it _matters_ to the conclusion whether or not that article is true/false or exists or whatever, _then_ belief in it is more likely to be called faith. That's because the word faith is used to call out or point out when someone is basing their position (or their actions), in part, on an unjustified assumption. I.e. faith is a label used to identify especially important components. Less important components can be negligible, ignored, or easily adopted by everyone involved. PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some liquids). R A compressible system can be (adequately) represented, mimicked, or replaced by a smaller system. Any (adequate) representation of an incompressible system will be just as large as the system itself. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] witness as intervention (was Faith)
Prof David West wrote at 09/22/2012 09:00 AM: On Thu, Sep 20, 2012, at 10:24 AM, glen wrote: Here's an honest and personal question to make the ethics concrete: Should I have intervened? clearly a tough question - given the state of society, the prevalence of guns and predisposition to use them, and the potential for alcohol or other substance abuse - not an easy decision. The official response is no, report it to someone who has the authority to intervene. I would have made my silent presence as witness obvious - but would not have actively intervened. FWIW, that's what I did. Since the old jalopy they keep covered in canvas is only ~ 10 ft from my side door, I'm fairly certain the daughter, who was hiding behind the piece of junk, saw me standing there with the door open. I have no idea if the dad saw me. I also used that trick with a kid who was shooting off bottle rockets in the field behind the house awhile back. (I say kid because he looks about 20 yrs old, but has a similarly young wife and a baby. Say what you will about hicks, at least we breed young before the probabilities for things like autism rise too high.) A beefy, bald, beer-bellied, yahoo elsewhere in the neighborhood began yelling about how this is his neighborhood and if they don't stop shooting fireworks, he was gonna come out there and break the kid's back. Yaddayaddayadda. So, I went and stood next to them without saying anything. They all gradually quieted down and dispersed. It's almost like the mere fact that there was another human (as opposed to a camera) witnessing their silliness was enough of an intervention to re-orient their behaviors. That goes _directly_ back to the point that population density is probably the critical variable in discussions of how others raise their kids. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] witness as intervention (was Faith)
Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 09/25/2012 12:51 PM: Consider a hypothetical female couple, well-paid, and taxpaying Stanford and MIT PhDs, who move out to the country and home school and telecommute. Those boys are forced to have girly hair and their moms vote for the communist party.. etc. Victims of that particular majority -- it has less to distract it, so some provincial meddling results. Precisely. The silent witness can be interpreted by the participants. My guess would be that this hypothetical couple would stand their ground on the one hand (toward the meddlers) and defend their decisions and behavior. And they'd likely, on the other hand, explain to their boys that they might be in the minority in that community and the boys should be prepared to recognize any sources of friction that may result. In my context, I would seriously _love_ for the macho dad next door to explain to me why he raises his children the way he does (something I never had explicitly laid out by my dad ... though I came to understand it anyway, I think -- whereas my sister still lives with that legacy on a daily basis). I'd also have _loved_ to see either party in the fireworks dispute to formally launch a duel of some kind to settle their differences. It could be anything from scouring the city ordinances to fisticuffs, for all I care. But this shamedly quieting down and wandering off thing struck me as evidence that both of them _knew_ they were behaving antisocially and came to regret it. Ultimately, the _nest_ comes down hard and ruthless on those living in it. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith
Douglas Roberts wrote at 09/26/2012 09:03 PM: dead gang members are far more productive members of society than live ones, I suspect. And here I was worried I wouldn't get enough _hate_ in my diet today. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] DEBATE about Religion and Atheism - modeling
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/27/2012 09:56 AM: *The extra adjective is there because this is irrelevant to the financially liberal position. I'm not so sure that it is irrelevant. I tend to view the merchant, who just wants to do business and doesn't care about your other social positions, as the very foundation of social liberalism. The best way to maintain a speaking relationship with someone you otherwise might hate is to continue doing business with them. That bottom line is very similar to the realists' ultimate Truth and provides a horizon for a continual moral compass. Ultimately, the ability to make a buck is a compression of all the other things that keep us alive ... food, shelter, procreation, etc. When doctrinal delusions like promises of 72 virgins, our own planets, or Star Trek social equality interfere with our ability to make a buck ... well _that's_ when all hell breaks loose and we riot in the streets. Financial liberalism is the _trunk_ and social liberalism is the leaves. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] DEBATE about Religion and Atheism - modeling
I agree that the compression is lossy. But it all depends on _what_ is lost. If the compression extracts the (an?) essence of basic human needs, then it's a good thing. It loses all the nonsense (e.g. delusional ideas of social equality kumbaya) and hones in on things like bread and water. I'm not sure the problems with it boil down nicely to a conflation of I owe you and You owe me. But they might. Some layers out, the problem I see with it is the difference between making a buck for basic needs vs. making bunches of bucks that will accrue to meet the basic needs of my descendants for millenia to come. I.e. the problems aren't with the compression so much as the misplaced value. And that point makes me think the problem is at a coarser layer than IOU vs YOM. Either of those notes seem benign. It's the lifetime of the note that is the problem. A good mnemonic for this is the word currency ... descended from current. I've often thought investments, assets, liabilities, etc. should be measured by a metric separate, orthogonal to the currency with which they were traded. I.e. perhaps we shouldn't be able to _own_ cash, at least not for very long. Most checks have a not valid after 90 days qualifier on them. That seems reasonable to me. As for your basic point, I agree completely that concrete exchanges, face 2 face, facilitate the exchange of intangibles, trust, understanding ... like boxers touching gloves before pounding each other into meat ... or an agreement not to shoot someone in the back ... nobility, honor, respect, etc. And the more abstract the currency, the less it facilitates this exchange of intangibles. Steve Smith wrote at 09/27/2012 10:55 AM: I agree that commerce (especially in it's larger sense, embracing community and barter and things other than bucks) can be a valuable ingredient in stable society... What I personally am most worried about is the implications of the (true, but maybe unfortunate?) statement to make a buck is a compression of I believe that our reduction of the value of *everything* to currency is a lossy compression, and that what is lost may not be missed until it is too late. My touchstone for this is the difference between a buck as an I Owe You vs a You Owe Me. I believe that currency started as a normalized form of I Owe You's but that somewhere soon after the formation of that device, it became conflated with You Owe Me's. This is a subtle but crucial difference. Whenever I might purchase something (good or service), I don't presume that I have a *right* to that good or service simply because I have the price of it in my wallet. I take the signs in many establishments as sacred: We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. This might be a thinly veiled reference to the racial/cultural prejudices of yesterday, or to the individualist shop owner's assertion of their right to not have to deal with jerks... but it is a reminder to ME that any transaction is *more* than the exchange of $$ value. I think this observation supports your point. When you buy or sell something from/to someone, you also exchange something else much less tangible... it can be a building of trust... of understanding even perhaps? In this model, $$ are the needle pulling very ephemeral threads which ultimately weave a fine and strong fabric of community. Or so I like to think. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith
Nice! That was, truly, a bizarre little screed. And although you don't get credit for writing any of it, there is plenty of value in the synthesis of others' ideas into something new. Congrats! Definitely worthy of your troll status. ;-) Douglas Roberts wrote at 09/27/2012 01:56 PM: It's a shame I stopped reading when I did on the wikipedia academic elitism link when I got to the nugget I was looking for, because *this* nugget is a real gem: Some observers argue that, while academicians often perceive themselves as members of an elite, their influence is mostly imaginary: Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy.[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_elitism#cite_note-2 Academic elitism suggests that in highly competitive academic environments only those individuals who have engaged in scholarshiphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarly_method are deemed to have anything worthwhile to say, or do. It suggests that individuals who have not engaged in such scholarship are crankshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_(person). Steven Zhang of the Cornell Daily Sunhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Daily_Sun has described the graduates of elite schools, especially those in the Ivy Leaguehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League, of having a smug sense of success because they believe gaining entrance into the Ivy League is an accomplishment unto itself.[*citation neededhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed *] -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] DEBATE about Religion and Atheism - modeling
Steve Smith wrote at 09/27/2012 12:55 PM: I don't find the golden rule (one variant of social equality?) exactly a delusional idea, though that is probably a thread unto itself. Well, it's on topic. The search for a biological mechanism for the golden rule seems to target the disagreement between religion and atheism. Personally, I think the golden rule is a largely useless abstraction. It lacks any operational detail. Sometimes I might well want to be punched in the face ... sometimes I don't. Sometimes I'd like Renee' to offer me some of her candy bar. Sometimes I don't. I'm currently ~20 lbs overweight. 8^) BTW, I'm not sure I think of this as a lossy compression as a dimension-reducing projection. Multiple transactions can be like multiple points of view projected from said high dimension, recovering some of what was lost (obscured) in any given transaction/POV. That's a great point. The compression algorithm is just as important as its inputs and outputs. In fact it is likely that I would not sell but gift such a precious nugget of protein/sustenance to the right member of a community as an ultimately selfish act. This is also an interesting point. The dichotomy between selfishness and altruism is false. I think it says something important when a gift giver (loudly) claims they don't want/expect anything in return. I like to play with people who fail to come to my parties after I sent them an invitation. They often will say things like Don't stop inviting me, which opens the door for Eris! My last victim, a neighbor, said something like I really wanted to come but blahblahblah. I responded: That's OK. We only invited you so that you wouldn't call the cops on us when we got too loud. I still don't know whether he knows I'm joking. If you have ever suffered the attentions (presence) of someone with too much money, you might not call the last one benign. There is nothing more offensive than someone whose spare change exceeds your net worth, tossing it around as if they can buy you, or your firstborn, or your soul with the flick of a pen... I don't find that offensive at all ... ignorant, yes, but not offensive. It is one of the worst things I find about first world tourists in third world countries, even without realizing it, dropping a months wages for someone in service class on a single meal for themselves. It is dehumanizing, even if it supports the tall pyramid of an extreme trickle-down economy. I guess I have to disagree there, too. I don't think that act, in isolation, is dehumanizing. I think it depends more on the cloud of attitude surrounding the act. If you treat the locals with respect, look them in the eye, engage their customs, listen when they talk, etc. ... i.e. treat them like humans, then it doesn't matter one whit how much you spend on your food. The trouble is that wealth engenders abstraction. So, the wealthy tend to view everyone around them as tools. to adding absolutely nothing to the economy except the management/manipulation/speculation of loans. I'm still torn on this. I do think financial instruments, in general, are good. I just can't predict which ones will yield good things versus bad things ... until _after_ we've used them and seen their effects. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] DEBATE about Religion and Atheism - modeling
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/27/2012 06:53 PM: Well... so much for discussing modeling... I don't get what you mean by that. In order to model, you have to have something to model. You suggested that agents subscribing to social liberalism had a particular justification problem (contradict their own doctrine - intra-agent contradiction - or tolerate doctrinal contradictions between agents). But you leaped from the realm of thought (hypocrisy/contradiction) to mechanism/ontology (tolerant society) without providing any _thing_ to model. There's no referent to which a model can refer. Or, even if there is one, it's too vague to grok. It's bad practice to reverse engineer a model from analytic methods like contradiction. A better route is the forward, synthetic, constructionist map from mechanism to phenomena. Once you have at least one forward map, you can begin serious work on the inverse map. I suggested a mechanism: currency and trade. From that referent you should be able to build a model mechanism from which consistent justification can emerge. Steve further suggested some nuance to the mechanism that may well add finer grained building blocks (IOU vs. YOM). And I then elaborated a bit on the objects being traded (distinguishing between necessary vs. luxury goods) and suggested that a model measure _other_ than the currency itself be used to observe the system. Steve also mentioned using a semi-closed agent so that its interface (trading) is a projection of a larger internal system (which would give it some hysteresis and perhaps lower its predictability without adding any stochasticity). Bruce, earlier, tossed in the option to measure the system as a network and, perhaps, a hint at a hypothesis that might be tested: agents primarily motivated to trade facilitate larger, more connected networks. Then you, David, and Carl began hashing out whether the model should be rule-based or not. I read Carl's comment as a suggestion that each agent could be rule-based, but use different rules, some of which might be reflective. I.e. one agent's rules might take expressions of other agents' rules as inputs ... i.e. meta-rules or rule operators. This seems like a very common casual modeling conversation, to me. What's questionable is whether the mechanism we've suggested so far will contribute to a debate about religion and atheism. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] DEBATE about Religion and Atheism - modeling
Sarbajit Roy wrote at 09/30/2012 10:28 AM: The Gita, however, (as I'm fairly sure the Old Testament does too) expresses that once a man's side is determined, he is obliged by DUTY to do what is right, even if it involves heinous killings on a massive scale or even the killing of his close relatives. DUTY is one of the core elements of Dharma (the way of righteousness). Of course DUTY cannot be taken in isolation, because the essence of the Gita is the continuous weighing of choices between the Dharmic Law (kill / harm nobody) versus the inferior Niti (Penal) Law (slay all offenders on sight). Gita 1:30, 2:31 etc. So DUTY would probably be compressible. I am an ant, so I'm duty bound to pick up every speck of sugar I can find and convey it back to the mother ship. Yep. I'm totally ignorant of Gita. But this one clause suggests to me that duty is compressible, by (my) definition: Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities ... Incompressible (components of) systems are initiators of cause rather than passive transmitters of cause. If a duty is defined by removing one's _self_ from the situation, detachment, then it's definitely not prima causa. But I wonder, also, about the Dharmic Law, which sound like _rules_ to me ... rules have an input and an output, mindlessly transmitting cause from the former to the latter. Is there any inherent be present, pay attention, be attached, be the change you want to see, take responsibility for your actions element to Dharmic Law? If not, then it, too, is compressible. To promote an agent to an actor, we have to make it a prima causa, give it the ability to _start_ a causal chain ... or at least affect someone else's chain in a way that couldn't happen were it not present. Note that an actor's influence on the propagation of events need not be unique. I.e. 2 different actors could produce the same result. But in order for it to actually be an actor rather than an agent, the result cannot be optimized out, so to speak. An actor can only be (perfectly) replaced by another actor ... though an agent can approximate/simulate an actor. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] DEBATE about Religion and Atheism - modeling
The only way I can imagine detachment being a form of attachment would be that both attachment and detachment are limited to _partial_ [de|at]tachment. I.e. non-attachment must be some sort of singularity approachable from either direction. http://www.wuala.com/gepr/public/singularity.svg/?mode=list But if that's the case, then we're guilty of equivocating on the word attachment. Perhaps replacing detachment with anti-attachment might prevent the equivocation. Prof David West wrote at 10/01/2012 04:21 PM: duty has almost nothing to do with the philosophical lesson of the story. Arjuna's dilemma is not between kill and not kill, or deciding between two contradictory laws - but between attached and non-attached action. Only the latter avoids the accrual of Karma (western spelling). Non-attachment is definitively not detachment (detachment is an instance of attachment). Non-attachment is acting with perfect knowledge that the action is the right action in that context, with context being the totality of the world. (A kind of omniscience, the possibility of which is for another time and place.) -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] attachment
Excellent! Thanks, Eric. Word games like these seem to me to be
semantic loops that can only be resolved by using a larger language.
There is no difference between detachment and non-attachment and
anyone who claims there is is playing games. That's OK. Games are fun.
But rather than go round and round trying to out-profound each other, I
need new words. Yours are a bit long, but they might work. ;-)
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 10/02/2012 06:58 AM:
Following his suggestion, it seems that you are using 'attachment' and
'detachment' as short hands for caring-about-maintaining-your-attachment and
caring-about-dissolving-your-attachment. Both are similar, in your view,
because they involve putting forth effort to regulate one's level of
attachment. The third option, which you are
calling 'non-attachment' is to not care / not put forth effort. This could
entail either being-neutral-to-your-level-of-attachment
or the even more extreme being-oblivious-to-your-level-of-attachment.
The former (neutral) option would allow for things like bemused
self-observations ('How odd that I seem to care about this cup. Oh well.'),
while the later (oblivious) option would not. Am I understanding you
correctly?
--
glen
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] The Two Party System
Owen Densmore wrote at 11/08/2012 08:36 AM: The 1 2 party systems are the only ones avoiding the pitfalls of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. http://www.udel.edu/johnmack/frec444/444voting.html 1. If and individual or group prefers A to B and B to C, then A is preferred to C (transitivity). 2. The preferences must be restricted to the complete set of options. 3. If each individual prefers A to B, then the group must also. 4. No individual's preferences can necessarily dictate group preferences. 5. The group's pairwise preference ordering is independent of irrelevant alternatives, i.e. determined solely by individual's pairwise preference orderings. I'm sure I'm being dense. But I don't see any need for rules 2, 3, or 5. And 1 is suspect, as well. So, I wouldn't accept this as an argument against 3 viable parties. Can each of these rules be defended? ... with any kind of evidence (as opposed to ideology)? So I wonder what's it like in a true multi-party system like most of Europe has? Is it effective? interesting? confusing? fun? Are the populations aware of Arrow? Does it avoid grid-lock? I've been told (sans evidence) that multi-party systems risk a situation where each party represents a geographical region. I can also _imagine_ that parties would form around single (or clusters of) issues. That sort of thing makes me think that there should be an upper limit on the number of parties. But what's the limit? And what's the limit a function of? Perhaps the limit could be a function of (clusters of) land area, population diversity, and issue diversity? For example, I'd love to have two axes, in the US: fiscal (conservative vs. liberal) and social (conservative vs. liberal). I can imagine this would nicely lead to a party limit of 9: 1. Fiscal Conservative (FC), Social Conservative (SC) 2. Fiscal Moderate (FM), SC 3. Fiscal Liberal (FL), SC 4. FC, Social Moderate (SM) 5. FM, SM 6. FL, SM 7. FC, Social Liberal (SL) 8. FM, SL 9. FL, SL If there's an upper limit, then there should probably be a lower limit. If the limits are based on clusters of region, demographic, and issue, then there can never really be a single party. Perhaps a utopian ideology would allow it, but no reality would. I can, however, imagine a large distance between the most important issue (say emergency preparedness or WAR!) and the rest of the issues. That scenario would allow a single axis with a party on each side and perhaps in the middle. That implies that 2 or 3 is the lower limit. Frankly, if someone started a moderate party, I might actually register as a member, something I've never done and will never do as long as there are only 2 nationally viable parties. One thing that would be interesting is if I were allowed to affiliate locally with 1 party but state-wide with another, and nationally with yet another. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] here we go
Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 01/15/2013 09:22 AM: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/01/14/gunsmiths-3d-print-high-capacity-ammo-clips-to-thwart-proposed-gun-laws/ Excellent! 3D printing allows me to imagine an explosion of persecution complex stick-boys shooting up public places. ;-) At least if you have to go to a gun show to get through the loopholes, you have to rub shoulders with large macho posers (often stinky with lots of body hair and sporting nazi paraphernalia) ... something beyond the capabilities of the pasty furtive bullying victims I've known. What's next? _Safe_ motorcycles? Technology ruins everything. -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] here we go
of grey goo. Kotler/Diamandis' Abundance tells a happier story. I want to believe it. I'm convinced that we cannot repress the advance of technology. I'm convinced that we cannot distinguish much less repress benign vs devastatingly destructive information. We've shown that few of us have the self-knowledge to self-regulate around this kind of power. Perhaps the examples of Nelson Mandela or Mohandas Ghandi indicate a possibility that we could. Guatama Buddha, Jesus Christ, and Muh.ammad ibn `Abd Alla-h (and countless others who did not make it above the fold, each brought us messages of peace and love, but for the most part, I'd say their teachings didn't take. I'm not waiting for another prophet to bring us the answer. I for one, keep waking from my pop-culture soaked, consumerist-driven dreams of comfort and entertainment to find my lead foot pressing heavily on the accelerator pedal, increasing my personal velocity even as my headlights (or is that my vision) get dimmer. I cannot restrict my questioning of technology to weapons. I cannot restrict the making of rules and their enforcement to my own worst fears. I cannot restrict some knowledge without risking restricting all. I know there to be people here who have grappled with this both on a personal level and within the scholastic or intellectual sphere. If this is not a supremely hard problem it is probably a supremely subtle one. Scissors, Paper, Stone. /screed -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] here we go
Douglas Roberts wrote at 01/15/2013 03:06 PM: I know any number of technophobes and technoklutzes. They are *always* in conflict with technology. Sometimes technology as simple as operating a cell phone. I refer to this as the Bart trait. I have an uncle named Bart. He's the most technologically-conflicted person I know. Unless it's his brother Dick. Seriously. Dick burned up two lawn mowers before discovering that they had oil. Which needed to be checked, and occasionally topped off. And calling Bart on his cell phone is a waste of button-pushing because he never remembers that cell phones need recharging. So, the question that arises is whether or not Bart or Dick have ever invented any tools of their own? Or are they always using tools invented by other people? I know lots of people who are entirely incompetent at using other people's tools, but fantastic at using their own. I also know some people who refuse to use a tool properly, but seem to be very efficient at achieving their objectives. -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] here we go
Douglas Roberts wrote at 01/15/2013 03:27 PM: Well, define tool. Dick is (or was) a theoretical astrophysicist, and Bart was a lawyer. But even the simplest little bit of technology would always stump either one of them. For the longest time I considered it to be a studied stupidity. I later came to believe that it was either genuine, or a deep intrinsic mental laziness. I define tool as an artifact (noun or verb, thing or process) with a pass-through purpose. For example, I have a coffee mug because I use it to drink coffee, not because I value it as an end in itself. I view processes like boiling water or programming the same way. I know some people program (or do math) simply as puzzles... because they enjoy doing that. I don't. So, to me, they are tools. One man's tool can be another's end. I suspect Dick had methods he invented for his astrophysics and Bart invented methods for ... billing people. 8^) And I suspect they were competent with those tools. But I also suspect those tools did not translate well to non-astrophysicists or non-lawyers ... or perhaps even very many astrophysicists or very many lawyers. -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] here we go
or legislate it for others, the nature of technology is no longer easy to control and in many cases, the *individual* is becoming capable of developing and executing amazing technological feats without the aid (permission) of society at large. As I said after #3 above, I disagree somewhat. The extent to which we have a choice in our toolmaking is debatable. I think Nick's been the champion of evidence showing that our feelings are are really the after effects of our behavior. Analogously, we can the same way about free will and the choices we actually have or don't have. To what extent do we really have a choice in which tools we develop? [*] The problems come when we have unrealistic impressions of ourselves. Most of the yahoos I met at the gun show two weekends ago _think_ guns are natural for them. But I think they're wrong. My guess is that a large percentage of those people are completely incompetent handling guns. -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] here we go
I applaud your attempt to expand out to the forest layer! But I still think you're being overly specific about our disagreement. My summary about dissimilarity as the common cause for the communication illusion and tool abuse failed to capture the core disagreement, I suppose. So, I'll try again, as brief as I'm capable of: Inter-individual variation causes everything we've talked about in this thread. Your acceptance of the singularity rhetoric places you in one bin (axiom of choice) whereas I'm in another bin. The same is true of gun control, 3D printers, and the eschatological thinking behind our fear of climate change (on the left) and the New World Order (in the whackjob bin). The same variation causes varying bins surrounding free will and which tools/traits each of us expresses. It all boils down to the history dependent, context controlled ontogeny of each individual. That's how it's been for the history of life on the planet and won't change any time soon. But what has changed is our density. We are flat out more likely to have most of our context controlled by others with the same physiology and morphology as our self. And that implies that we (all of us) are much much more alike today than we have ever been in our entire history. Our inter-individual variation is disappearing at an ever increasing rate. That means we're all much more likely to fall into some (illusory) gravity well, nearby in thought space. No matter how skeptical you might think you are, it's inevitable. You'll succumb to some cult-like group think. As I age, I like to think that old people, with longer hysterical processes, can better resist their local gravity wells. But the more one's _self_ is defined by thought and culture, the more likely they are to cross the event horizon and stop being capable of thinking differently. Only the lone wolves hiding in the forests have a chance of preserving our biological diversity. Steve Smith wrote at 01/16/2013 10:16 PM: Glen - I'll save you and the rest of the list my long-winded point by point response (written but ready for delete) and try to summarize instead: I understand now your connection between communication and tool (mis)use. I think we disagree on a couple of things but I am sympathetic with what I think you are reacting to here. I react to it with others myself: I honestly don't agree that we *are* our extended phenotype, but accept that you do. It is an important difference and may explain much of our other disagreements. I accept that we *might not* have as much choice as I suggest about the development and use of our tools, but I think our choice is maximized by seeking to exercise it, even if it is limited. We do disagree about the relative rates of change. Biological evolution (scaled at thousands of years) of humans may have kept pace with technological evolution right up to the neolithic. Sociological evolution (scaled at tens or hundreds of years) might have kept pace with technological evolution until the industrial or perhaps the computer revolution. I honestly believe that significant technological change is happening on the scale of years or less. I agree that our perception of both technological change and it's effects is *amplified* by how the very same technology has shrunk the world (through communication and transportation). I agree that we have fetishised tool acquisition and possession and that this does not equal facility much less mastery with the tools. But I claim this aggravates the situation, not alleviates it. I am sympathetic with the feeling that there are many Chicken Little's about shrieking the end of the world with the thinnest of evidence sometimes. I may sound like that to you. I'm trying to pitch my voice an octave below that, but I may be failing. I honestly believe that we have reached a scale of technology that risks self-extermination and that this is exacerbated by the introduction of new technology faster than we can come to sociological grips with it (much less biological adaptation). The stakes are high enough that I would prefer to err on the conservative side. I accept that you do not agree with me on this general point. I share your experience that many people who _think_ they are competent at handling dangerous things (such as guns) are not. Fixing that (acknowledging the incompetence and acting on it by forgoing the privilege or by becoming competent) is the only answer. Attempts at gun control seem to aggravate the problem. I believe Australia's success in this matter might be a reflection of their readiness as a culture to embrace the first solution. We seem to be some distance from that. -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy vs Open Public Data
Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 01/16/2013 07:17 PM: It should be public. But it is rude to press a person for personal facts they don't volunteer. If someone uses a source, whether it is convenient or inconvenient, public or something else, they they then have no business making you feel uncomfortable about information they acquired out-of-band. It's polite behavior. Nothing must change because of the Information Age, etc. The problem with this part of the discussion is that because of the Information Age, etc. (aka population density ;-), the composition of polite behavior changes rapidly within an individual's lifetime. Add to that the mobility of individuals, and there are multiple, perhaps competing understandings of what polite behavior is. -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: Privacy vs Open Public Data
Parks, Raymond wrote at 01/17/2013 10:19 AM: These are all proof that we lie frequently in order to grease the wheels of society. Isn't it something like a false distinction to call all this lying? After all, we have von Neumann's extrapolation of Tarski's (or perhaps Goedel's) work claiming that it's impossible to tell the whole truth. And we have non-well-founded set theory to tell us that it's problematic to tell nothing but the truth. Hence, if we follow your setup to its logical conclusion, then everyone is always lying. -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy vs Open Public Data
Parks, Raymond wrote at 01/17/2013 10:34 AM: Yes, we lie frequently. Yes, it is lying - we are either stating a falsehood or omitting the truth (the atheist example upthread). Human beings are social animals - we constantly try to manipulate our social situation for our personal optimum - it's built into us. Some of us are better at it than others. Some (Aspergers?) are downright incapable. OK. Well, if we're all always lying, then it seems like lying is a useless term. In order to make progress in the discussion, we'll have to come up with a taxonomy of qualifiers. We've covered white. It's ubiquitous, and hence also useless. What other types of lying are there? Specifically, which lies are indicators of legally relevant internal states like shame versus which lies are merely facilitators of the type of information control advocated by Eric and my lurker's use case? -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy vs Open Public Data
No, I asserted that if we follow Ray's claim to its logical conclusion, it means we are always lying. He responded Yes, but then went on to ignore the flaw in his argument. So, I'm reinforcing my point that his argument is flawed and he hasn't refuted it. That's not argumentative. It's good argumentation. ;-) Douglas Roberts wrote at 01/17/2013 10:46 AM: Even I can detect a willful argumentative bent here. Ray said, and I quote: Yes, we lie frequently. You said, OK. Well, if we're all always lying, [...] Now now, you know better... -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] here we go
control? I've seen lots of modern public intellectuals argue for and against free will and the gist of their arguments boil down to this point: how open is the world around us? You mentioned *age* and alluded to something like *wisdom*. As I [... great story structure snipped ...] Since then I have tried to dip my toes into the vortices of other's belief systems enough to get a strong feel of the currents without being swept away. [...] their arrogant self-centeredness. All this to say I resist your Axiom of Choice and seek to ride the ridges, swooping through the valleys with enough momentum to crest the next saddle or climb the next peak. As I get older, I have less energy for this, but feel I have more skill at it. Perhaps I will transcend into Nirvanic Wisdom when I can quantum tunnel between these basins at will... wallowing at the bottom of one well and then magically popping out near the bottom of another nearby but separate one. I will briefly match your story with one of my own, then jump to a conclusion. I used to do more tunneling than I do now. All growing up I maintained (almost disjoint) sets of acquaintances. In high school they had names: heads, jocks, brains, etc. Somehow, I managed to float easily between them, controlling information flow so that any antipathy one group had for another didn't bleed into an antipathy toward me personally. In elementary school and college, there were fewer names but sharper incisions. In elementary school, they were very temporary. In college, they were very long-lasting. E.g. if you collapsed into a Republican or perhaps a fan of Ayn Rand, you stayed there until long after college had ended. I maintained my cross-group faculties until long after college. I think it's what allowed me to successfully transition to the SFI from Lockheed Martin. Nowadays, however, I have grown impatient with entertaining others' stories and ideas. When/if I deign to argue with someone, my rhetoric is (seemingly) full of non sequiturs because I want to skip to the end ... and having made a lifetime out of arguing, I believe myself to be capable of predicting where an argument will end up. That impatience has seriously damaged some of the relationships I've had with people who _thought_ they liked me. 8^) But, in the end, I remember the quote from FDR (I think): I ask you to judge me by he enemies I have made. Anyway, because I am a professional simulant, I still have to maintain an ability to tunnel in and out of gravity wells. When I engage a new client and go through the requirements extraction process, my old facility with perspective hopping revives and I end up having fun. Conclusion of this silly missive: I'd like to be able to run some experiments like the following. Take all the guns from all the gun advocates and hand them to the gun controlists. Force them to use and abuse the guns for a significant amount of time. Then compare surveys taken before and after the experiment. A similar experiment with any given tool would be interesting. I know I'd like a few months to play with our army of drones in foreign countries, for example. -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy vs Open Public Data
Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 01/18/2013 08:47 AM: Politics tends to make cliques fragile because individual powerful people defect and one slightly weaker clique can quickly become a powerful clique. The rules they make to lend legitimacy to their endless conflicts can help the little guy! The more competing understandings there are, the less important it is for to conform to any one of them. Right. And that decrease in importance of conforming to any single concept of polite behavior, erodes the concept of polite behavior altogether. And that means polite behavior _must_ change because of the Information Age, etc. -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy vs Open Public Data
Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 01/18/2013 09:19 AM: Still, I think it is important to try to push any enduring group toward polite behavior, however short-lived. OK. But the deeper problem is the definition of politeness, especially as a vanishing point ideal. To stress the point, I could argue that, if the clique endures, then whatever behavior they engage in already defines politeness, regardless of how impolite their behavior may seem to an outsider. A personal example is all the touching, hugging, and pressing the flesh people seem to love. I had a boss for awhile that seemed to think it positive to pat his male employees on the back on a regular (like ... high frequency regular) basis. He's a good guy and I kinda like him otherwise. But that incessant touching was seriously irritating. Ugh. -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy vs Open Public Data
Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 01/18/2013 10:12 AM: I think there is a distinction. Organizations that seek to endure need to prevent bully cliques if for no other reason than so that their officials maintain their authority, e.g. The President needs to tell the Generals what to do, not the reverse. I think it's a scale-free thing. That means holding individual and emergent group behavior to some standard. People at all levels in the organization need to be able to agree that so-and-so went wacko and behaved inappropriately, that they don't need to tolerate it. Individuals can help this to happen just by acting consistently with the implicit standard, especially when it is in their interest to do so. Hm. So can we use practical jokes as an example? That domain should bring us back to Nick's original issue. Practical jokers are on the cusp between [im]polite behavior. If you're established as part of the clique (say in a cubicle dominated office), then it's considered polite to, say, smear another clique member's phone with vaseline. But it's considered impolite to do that to someone who's not in the clique, even _if_ that outsider might want to be in the clique. The practical joker clique can easily turn into a bully clique by recognizing the wants of the outsider and as they test her to see if she fits the predicate, if they determine she does not, they may play exceptionally cruel jokes on her in order to clarify her out-group status. But they will maintain that, had someone played those jokes on them, they would have taken it in stride because that's what they do to each other all the time. In an office setting, the boss has an obligation to set the standards for the practical joke boundaries. But by their very nature, the in-group practical jokers purposefully push those boundaries because that's what the clique is defined as ... that _is_ the predicate. The boss also has a competing constraint to encourage camaraderie. How do the in-group practical jokers define [im]polite? I submit that they must have at least 2 definitions of [im]polite, one for members and one for non-members. And they'll likely have a 3rd for the boss. -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy vs Open Public Data
Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 01/18/2013 10:47 AM: No argument really. Just that the definitions probably at least have some constraints -- and that if they aren't somehow reconcilable with the definitions of those in the out-group and the boss, then there may be trouble that damages the organization's productivity. Interesting. So, going back to embarrassing or implicating a victim by aggregating public data, the guide for when it's [not] OK to do that, might be related to this external set of constraints. By external, I mean external to members (open data advocates) and non-members (privacy advocates) of the clique, as well as an authority figure (prosecutors). While we often assume the prosecutors, or more generally the whole justice dept, are slaves of the law, they're actually not. LEOs bias the law by paying closer attention to various attributes. Hence, the law could be the external constraints you're proposing, right? But we'd need non-LEOs ... perhaps watchdogs ... to bridge the gap between the LEO bias and the constraints. If we went in this direction, it would provide an argument for placing legal restrictions on the aggregation of public data. I.e. it's not the vague notion of politeness that does it. It's the implicit status as watchdog, enforcer of the unenforced-due-to-bias parts of the standard, that does what we need. -- -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy vs Open Public Data
The interesting thing about making fun of people is the amount of peripheral or contextual information that's necessary. I'm not really a fan of Louis C.K. But if you watch his stand-up, you can see him say the nastiest things without it seeming so nasty. He says these things while smiling or laughing. Of course, he's not a wild-type subject because you know he's a comedian tuned to his audience. But I can also confess that my dad was a master at deadpan cruelty. Not only were we (his family, but mostly my mom) his victims, but I would watch him, in bars [*] and at the Wurstfest, shred someone completely without them having any clue what was happening. The smarter ones would notice that, while he was ribbing them, he would watch them extra closely. So, they learned to recognize when they were the butt of the joke by watching him as he told his story. At his funeral, they would wax poetic about the twinkle in his eye when he was telling a joke. Of course, this behavior tended to slough off the people who were just smart enough, yet just insecure enough to recognize when they were the butt of a joke, but not able to recognize it as a joke. That said, my dad was a bully of the first order. If you were too insecure to _take_ the joke, then you were a wimp and a coward. He used his abilities to engineer swaths of people so that they behaved as he wanted them to behave. And the ones that didn't play along were ridiculed and pushed out of the clique. Luckily, he couldn't do that to me. ;-) [*] I was practically reared in a bar called Lloyd's. Lloyd was a one-armed bartender who taught me how to open a beer with one hand at the age of about 8. Oh, and Lloyd had also had a laryngectomy and while not opening beers with his one arm, had to hold a wand to his throat in order to speak. Steve Smith wrote at 01/18/2013 11:43 AM: OK... so as an example of insider/outsider behaviour, my cartoons starring Doug are a form of ribbing that has the same quality as practical jokes. I feel I know Doug well enough on and off list to know what he would find rude or hurtful and what he would not, so I am comfortable poking a little fun at him. For example, I know that Doug's self identity includes that of being a Skeptic (Zhiangzi reference) and of being tenacious (as stated). I also know Stephen well enough to do this, but he wisely (or out of boredom with us!) stays out of the fray here, so he is relatively safe. I'm getting to know others well enough that I think I could parody some of you with impunity and possibly with appreciation by the recipients as well as the audience. Glen and I have not finished our back-n-forth about technology, but deep in that conversation is another subconversation about insider/outsider and language... -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy vs Open Public Data
Douglas Roberts wrote at 01/18/2013 02:34 PM: Well, (he said with a twinkle in his, yet hoping for a friendly riposte in return), that explains a lot. Ha! Were we in close proximity, I'd stick you in the chest with my rapier and call it a day. Alas, all I have are my ham-handed, context-free words. -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] here we go
Arlo Barnes wrote at 01/20/2013 12:11 PM: New: Is this the selfsame Axiom of Choice that enables Banach-Tarski if used? Yes, that's the way I intend to use it. -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy vs Open Public Data
Steve Smith wrote at 01/18/2013 08:27 PM: My presence at the bar was public data and I didn't do anything in particular to keep it private. Fortunately neither of my parents were drinkers (except at home in small quantities) and only a couple of times did it seem like I was close to getting busted. It was a large enough town or small enough city that such a thing could happen... and a good lesson in the issues of public/private. I've always found it a fun and interesting challenge when someone I know expresses too much knowledge about me. In most polite contexts, this doesn't seem to happen. Everyone is polite enough to let old people tell the same story over and over again, or avoid correcting a friend who remembers things wrong or embellishes for the purpose of the story. I can remember vividly when I first grokked that quote by Emerson: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. I was sitting at a crawfish boil at my uncle's house listening to two men (it's always men who do this, I think) discuss in very great detail what roads would take another guy to the beer store. This is in rural Texas and it's debatable whether there were multiple (practical) paths. They went on and on about the distance you had to go on any given road and what landmarks you had to watch for. For me, somewhere at age 12-14 at the time, it was like listening to them talk about baseball or football, which were the other useless subjects they talked for hours about. Amazingly, the guy tasked to make the beer run tolerated all this and showed no apprehension or anxiety whatsoever... perhaps because it's a family full of cajuns? Had it been me, I would have abandoned them and engaged in the search on my own within the first minute ... no wonder they never liked me. 8^) Anyway, my apathy toward that sort of thing changes if someone expresses detailed, true[*], _personal_ knowledge about me, even if it's just one on one conversation. In a friendly setting, it triggers a fugue-ish introspection. In a hostile setting, it triggers a kind of super-search to flesh out the knowledge graph around the factoid the bogey presented, still introspective, but not reflective. [*] Obviously, by true, I mean their account matches my own memory. If they're wrong, it triggers an entirely different set of behaviors. -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] Literate CoffeeScript
mar...@snoutfarm.com wrote at 02/25/2013 02:57 PM:
Nope. Monads are a purely functional construct. A elegant generalization,
Arrows, enable one to construct Unix-style pipelines, but with typed
contracts. That is, imagine having a command shell that rejected as bad
syntax pipelines where the data of the consumer and producer did not make
sense together.
You mean I wouldn't be allowed to listen to the smooth sounds of:
echo main(t){for(t=0;;t++)putchar(t*((t9|t13)25t6));} | gcc
-xc - ./a.out | aplay
--
== glen e. p. ropella
You gotta help me, help me to shake off
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Re: [FRIAM] The Professors' Big Stage
I only had 2 years of very large lectures freshman and sophomore years of college. My k12 and the rest of college consisted mostly of your (2), varying degrees of personal relationships with teachers. My (3) was limited because I'm a kook and don't play well with others. But the few peers I did interact with became lifelong teachers to me. I'm still friends with most of them. Frankly, I get very little out of lectures. If it's not interactive and exploratory, it's largely wasted on me. The only reason I survived my 1st two college years was because my high school classes covered much of that material and I was too chicken to try to test out of those classes. There was a horrifying bridge period the second half of my second year in college and much of my third year that tested my resolve. I did very poorly. Then it picked up quite a bit when I started taking classes where thought was valued over testing skills. Nicholas Thompson wrote at 03/07/2013 04:03 PM: I am curious to know what the folks on this list think an education consists in. For me, it consisted in (1) Many large lectures of which most were stultifying beyond belief, but of which a few were inspiring. (2)A few settings where I made direct contact with professors (or good TA;s) and was taught how to do stuff and my work was critiqued in meaningful ways. (3)Many, many interactions with very smart peers in which they taught me and I got to try my ideas out on them. Was your experience different from that? -- == glen e. p. ropella I came up from the ground, i came down from the sky, 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
Re: [FRIAM] Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
I'm very interested in the desire to and the frustration surrounding _not_ being able to figure Google out. I wonder if different people (people ensconced in other domains, other fora) feel this same desire/frustration around, say, Unilever or General Electric? I can certainly see it from a single tightly focused quantifiable predictibility measure ... like whether to buy a company's stock. But without that tight use case, and with a large multi-national beast with layers of varying liability, impact, presentation, etc., they strike me as complex beasts. Each aspect from which you measure them will present different, perhaps even incommensurate results. I know this was the case while I was working for Lockheed Martin. It was especially vivid to me since I was on loan to Vought systems at an old air base working on aircraft avionics, on loan from the missiles division, which recently bought Vought and which had been recently bought by Loral, which was soon to be bought by Lockheed Martin. I could no more imagine figuring Lockheed Martin out than I could imagine figuring out C. Elegans. Because of this, it strikes me that what you're expressing is some sort of deep seated pattern recognition bias towards centralized planning. You're looking for a homunculus inside a machine. And that leads me to my fundamental gripe with web services. The whole point of the open source movement was to put upstream causal power into the hands of more people, to make the producer-consumer relationship more symmetric. In web services, it seems like we, as consumers, _still_ want asymmetric producer-consumer relationships. GMail is a great example. I hate GMail simply because I can't download the software and run my _own_ GMail server on my own hardware ... similar to SparkleShare, Tor, Wordpress, Drupal, etc. If they allowed that, then I'd love GMail. And, if they did that, you wouldn't have to worry about Google abandoning it, as long as it had a sufficiently pure free agent following (like the role Debian plays for Linux). Why? Oh why? Do we insist on these soft paternalist producer-consumer relationships? What's the underlying cause for people to prefer the Raspberry Pie over Arduino? GMail over postfix? [sigh] Owen Densmore wrote at 03/14/2013 09:34 AM: Good by Google Reader (which I use a lot): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5371725 .. and a host of others in this year's Spring Cleaning http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.html I will give them this: they have an export stunt, and I apparently can move to others. I don't use the google front page they killed off, Yahoo instead. But seriously, does anyone have a crystal ball? I just can't figure Google out! - Are they consolidating? .. i.e. converting everything to G+? - What's next to go? .. Google Docs? It gets use by digerati, but few others. - Is GMail safe? .. It gets a lot of use, but its easy to scrape off the ads, so can't be a profit center. I'd certainly pay for many of google services .. although I doubt this would stop them from randomly killing off ones I care about. Is there some obvious trend, like I mentioned above, for example .. moving everything to G+? Damn! -- == glen e. p. ropella The dog is dead and the sacrifice is done 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
Re: [FRIAM] Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
is on the frustration at not being able to grok a sub-system and/or the desire to do so in the first place. Here, you seem to be talking about an absolute/ontological benefit or cost of various structures in the ecology. To me, there's only one reason for frustration and that is when I hit a blockage I don't want (or didn't expect) to hit. I wouldn't care if my home-made tires didn't work as well as tight tolerance, robot made tires. I still might make and use them. But I _would_ care if I couldn't find out how those robot made tires are made, even if just to satisfy my curiosity as to whether or not I should buy/steal my own robot ... or perhaps to be able to parse the gobbledygook coming out of the mouth of a professed tire robot maker. It's the lack of access that frustrates me, not the lack of any particular extant structure. Hence, i don't care if Google Reader exists. But I do care if I can't (pretend to) figure out how it works. gepr said: If they allowed that, then I'd love GMail. And, if they did that, you wouldn't have to worry about Google abandoning it, as long as it had a sufficiently pure free agent following (like the role Debian plays for Linux). I'm not sure *that* follows... I suspect they could *still* abandon it on a whim. Sorry. No, I did NOT mean to imply that if they distributed the GMail server software, they'd be less likely to abandon it. I meant to imply that I would care much less because I could either fork their code or use it to design my own based on what they did if they abandoned it. To me, this is what Debian does for us with Linux. It's a very good base distribution. IMO the very best rants do end in a [sigh]. As with Dennis Miller back in the day when he started with Don't let me get off on a rant here and ended with Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. OT: I used to love Dennis Miller. I'm not sure what happened, but all of a sudden, he started sounding like a right-wing wacko to me. -- == glen e. p. ropella I got an itch in my cosmic pocket and it won't go away, 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
Re: [FRIAM] Against Kierkegaard (was Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services)
Steve Smith wrote at 03/15/2013 09:47 AM: OK Glen... Looks like you've been called out, now we want to see YOUR version of this classic! Well, I don't know anything about classics, per se. But here's the distinction I'd make. The vector should be: from this -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC9SKjdoTXg to this -- http://youtu.be/BqzizzNkv-s -- == glen e. p. ropella This body of mine, man I don't wanna be destroyed 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] Killing vs. Letting Die (was Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services)
Arlo Barnes wrote at 03/14/2013 10:30 PM: Now, there are many things Google does that could be considered evil (or at least heading that way; all that foofaraw with Verizon?), but not providing service previously provided for free is not one of them. It is merely annoying, or at worst (if all your workflow is locked into the service) frustrating/infuriating. Back in college, I used to distract myself from homework by reading this http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/journals/journal/et.html. I don't know why. I must have gotten a good deal on the subscription. It was like television, I guess. I only remember 1 article from the whole stint, entitled something like On Killing and Letting Die. The idea was to draw a moral distinction (or not) between the two actions. After college, I ran across lots of busyness people who would claim that not acting is a decision just as much as acting in one way or another. My own conclusion was that killing someone and letting them die are essentially the same thing, morally speaking. Nowadays, I may be revising that, since I argued for pulling my dad from his machines and as I approach the age where I may want to off myself rather than slowly decay in bed. My point, here, is that Google may well be committing the moral equivalent of killing a project even though it seems like they're merely not providing a service. In any case, it was from this lack of a moral distinction between killing and letting die that I drew my own private (and much criticized by my friends) definition of evil - willful ignorance. I.e. only those who are unwilling to empathize, if not directly experience the effects of their actions could ever be called evil. That means literally any act anyone might do, regardless of how atrocious or pathological, could be non-evil as long as they work hard enough to understand what their victims will(are) experience(ing). Hence, Google could demonstrate that letting Google Reader die (by removing its life support) is not evil by showing us that it has some in-depth metrics for how it's absence will affect its users and the society in which they're embedded. -- == glen e. p. ropella Laid out in amber baby 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
Re: [FRIAM] The nature of Discussion Fora
Steve Smith wrote at 03/19/2013 03:08 PM: I'm still enjoying my illusion of free-will and get a little skitchy around overstated pre-determination (or a fully mechanistic model of the universe?). This is probably just a twitch itself? Well, the twitch ontology doesn't make any statements about free will or illusions or any of that. It only minimizes what would be inside an actor's boundary if such a boundary exists. That's why it will work for objectivists or constructivists. That minimal kernel is simply a source of energy, the impetus to move, say, do, act in whatever way your constraints allow you to. If you only have 1 DoF, then every twitch will place you on points in that dimension. If you have N DsoF, then you'll (eventually) end up sampling the space bounded by those constraints. So, there are no types of twitch, there is only twitch. That doesn't imply any sort of determinism. In fact, it might argue for nondeterminism. You have referred to yourself in the past as a simulant which I took to mean that you are a professional creator of simulations (simulation scientist?) despite the fact that it was too close to Replicant from Blade Runner and sounded more like you were claiming that you were just a somewhat modularized region in a giant simulation. I mean it in both senses, circularity, ambiguity. I am part of the simulations I help create. But I don't say it to distinguish me from anyone else. I actually think we're all simulants. The manifested effects of your twitch may seem to fall into an entirely different taxonomy (e.g. music or paper mache bagels with cream cheese), but it's still constructed and it's still _similar_ to something else. Hence everything we construct is a simulation of something. And everything we construct is a (complementary, reflective, inverted) simulation of ourselves, like a glove is a simulation of the hand. In some circles it is a truism the we are what we eat... which suggests that someone who eats simulations for a living is likely to become a simulation at least in their own mind. Or perhaps it is your twitch that you *are* a simulation scientist *because* you see the world as one grande simulation and the ones you create and execute are just modularized simulations within the simulation? Excellent! But, no. I'm the type of simulant I am because, for whatever ontogenic, hysterical constraints, the only/best thing I can manipulate is rhetoric (which includes deduction in the form of instructions for machines). That region of my constraint box was more open, perhaps more densely meshed than other regions. If my twitch had emerged in a baseball player's constraint box, then the simulations I'd be a part of would be much different. I am also not completely an illusion. Right. You're a wiggly twitch exploring your constraints. So say we all. -- == glen e. p. ropella If there's something left of my spirit 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
Re: [FRIAM] Twitches
Frank Wimberly wrote at 03/20/2013 02:59 PM: Did you ever read that novel, Glen? When I read your post about twitches I had the feeling it resonated with some memory. Then I realized what it was. Aha! Yes. I _loved_ that novel, even read it twice. I completely forgot about it. I forget when I read it, though. I still have my copy somewhere; perhaps there are notes or something that will remind me when I read it first. Thanks. -- == glen e. p. ropella Just one lick upon my thoughts 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
Re: [FRIAM] Twitches
glen wrote at 03/21/2013 06:36 AM: I forget when I read it, though. I still have my copy somewhere; perhaps there are notes or something that will remind me when I read it first. Thanks. Yep. Sure enough I have page 314 starred: We rode across Texas to Shreveport, Louisiana, where he left me to try for north Arkansas. I did not ask him if he had learned the truth in California. His face had learned it anyway, and wore the final wisdom under the left eye. The face knew that the twitch was the live thing. Was all. But, having left that otherwise unremarkable man, it occurred to me, as I reflected upon the thing which made him remarkable, that if the twitch was all, what was it that could know that the twitch was all? Did the leg of the dead frog in the laboratory know that the twitch was all when you put the electric current through it? Did the man's face know about the twitch, and how it was all? And if I was all twitch how did the twitch which was me know that the twitch was all? Ah, I decided, that is the mystery. That is the secret knowledge. That is what you have to go to Calfirnia to have a mystic vision to find out. That the twitch can know that the twitch is all. Then, having found that uot, in the mystic vision, you feel clean and free. You are at one with the Great Twitch. My copy seems to have been printed in 1982. And I don't think I started writing in the margins of books until my senior year in high school (1985). So, this would definitely be one of the, if not the, earliest influences for my awareness of the twitch ontology. -- == glen e. p. ropella They got the future precisely laid out as I need. 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
Re: [FRIAM] Twitches
Steve Smith wrote at 03/21/2013 10:24 AM: I'll see your King's Men and raise you aStone Junction http://books.google.com/books/about/Stone_Junction.html?id=woneSCNLbrYC by Jim Dodge Ordered! When Glen writes his great american novel (surely to be also an alchemical potboiler, a digital noir happening, an outlaw epic?) all his (published on paper or internet, indexed by Google) forgotten influences and sources will be exposed. His Twitch will be a folding of the origami paper, or perhaps a pull of the taffy. Unfortunately, I think the novel is dead as a format for story telling. It may return if peak oil or a zombie apocalypse obtains. But overall, I think it's efficacy is dwindling rapidly. I still like them because that's the way I was trained. But I find them increasingly difficult to read ... the surrounding people, devices, and non-fiction books with good indices draw my attention away from novels. I'll play a video game for 6 hours. But I won't read a novel for 6 hours. Even when I do manage to read for a long time, it sparks ideas that I have to write down or pause to look something up in another book. I am no longer linear ... or even first order continuous. -- == glen e. p. ropella The dog is dead and the sacrifice is done 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Victoria Hughes wrote at 03/26/2013 11:27 AM: 1. The discussion also references non-European, non-white-male models for awareness, reality, conceptual modeling, etc. 2. The discussion does not devolve into intellectual posturing. This reminded me of the Ulam quote: Talking about non-linear mathematics is like talking about non-elephant zoology. -- Stanislaw Ulam I willingly admit my ignorance. But honestly, is there _any_ philosophy that is not, ultimately, intellectual posturing? ;-) Or, further, is there any speech/verbiage whatsoever that is not, ultimately, intellectual posturing? I heard from somewhere a speculation that the emergence of human language replaced (to whatever extent) grooming. If that's at all true, then I suppose there is some speech ... pillow talk, platitudes, or perhaps lyricism/poetry that is as much about physics (soothing and communion) as it is about the ideal of communication or intellect. And I suppose one might believe (act as if) the expression of an ideal (an intellectual artifact) via words is somehow authentic as opposed to posturing. But, when I examine my own behavior in the light of what I observe from others and vice versa, it's quite difficult to distinguish between the former (authentic expression) and the latter (posturing). But, I also admit my gullibility and naivete. -- == glen e. p. ropella Like it's screwed itself in hell 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Victoria Hughes wrote at 03/26/2013 12:02 PM: I'm curious- how do you talk to your friends? Or your children, if you have any? Or those you want to teach you something? Great question! I'm often frustrated by my conversations with my friends. I usually feel like I'm offering alternative explanations for various things. They almost universally end up believing I'm contrarian or argumentative. It's unclear to me why they tolerate me. It usually goes something like this: Them: X happened. So to compensate, I will do Y. Me: But perhaps Z really happened and you only thought it was X. And if that's the case, then perhaps P is a better course of action. Them: No, there's no way that Z happened. It was definitely X. Me: There's a person/book/article/theory/... that Z can be mistaken for X or that X is a side effect of Z. Them: No way. I know the truth. I have access to reality. Me: OK. Then after I get home (it's usually a dinner party or somesuch), I find the person/book/article/... and e-mail it to them. In response I get nothing... not even the sound of crickets. 8^) That's how I usually talk to people, friends or not. I have no children, thank Cthulu. And I wish people would do the same with me. I.e. provide alternatives to whatever gravity well I'm stuck in. From my perspective, anything that is actually asking a question, and actually listening and considering the answer, and inquiring into it for new information, and then integrating new information to continue the dialogue, is not intellectual posturing. In any other conversation, I'd agree. But in this conversation, I'll propose the following. Competent posturing requires just as much asking, listening, consideration, and integration as does non-posturing. I say this from the perspective of fighting. A good fighter knows that the feint is a legitimate fighting move. Yes, you may have to unpack it's _role_ in the fight. But it's just as much a part of fighting as a straightforward attack or defense. The same could be said of, say, my cat's fur fluffing up and it turning sideways when a dog appears. Yes, it's posturing. But it's just as much a part of the interaction as the lightning fast pop to the snout. And remember, I offer this in the spirit of alternatives. I legitimately believe I'm offering you an alternative, albeit one you already know but may not have (yet) invoked in this conversation. Communication exists for many purposes. I believe that communication, of which sharing ideas and information is one category, is not a hierarchical system but a needs-based system. So by that definition, dialogue is always expressing something about the speaker, and her/his intentions towards the listener. And (in most cases other than for a didactic purpose) the purpose is the back and forth of the dialogue. Then what that reciprocity brings to the participants. Heh, now you're just pushing my buttons! I don't believe communication (as normally conceived) exists at all. The ideas in your head are forever and completely alien to my head. You may have a mechanism for faithfully translating your ideas into your action or inferring ideas from your perceptions. And I may have similarly faithful translators. But the similarity between your ideas and mine is zero, even if/when the similarity in our behaviors is quite high. But, that doesn't change your conclusion, which I agree with. Reciprocity is critical to the interaction. The difference is only that I believe in sharing actions. The ideas are not shared and largely useless. If there is no particular forward motion brought about by the dialogue - in the direction of the purpose for which the dialogue was established - than that is posturing. I'll offer another alternative. There is no forward. There is only movement, change. While we may share a behavior space, we probably don't share a vector, a line of progression, in that space. Hence, what you may see as posturing (or aimless wandering), I may legitimately feel to be progress ... even if it's postmodern gobbledygook. But there are a myriad of options for philosophical dialogue that do have functional growth / expansion / increased knowledge. I agree, except there is no such thing as knowledge in the idealistic, intellectual sense. There is only _competence_, the ability to perform, to achieve. And that includes the modification of what we _say_ and how we say it by saying things together. -- == glen e. p. ropella The ocean parts and the meteors come down 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Merle Lefkoff wrote at 03/26/2013 02:00 PM: Do you guys believe the metaphor of the Edge of Chaos is applicable here for promoting hope? I use it to say with a perfectly straight face: this is when change is most likely to happen. I'm not a big fan of the Edge of Chaos. It's attractive, I admit. But it seems to me that we pattern detectors do more imputing than detecting. Hence, the interestingness we see at the edge is just as false as the uninterestingness we see at either extreme. We could go back to Kauffman's paper, though, and talk about criticality and the indicators (if any) for a coming phase transition... perhaps a mixed state? What density/spread of 20-something activists does one need to induce a transition? -- == glen e. p. ropella Still so goddamn hungry 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
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Roger Critchlow wrote at 04/03/2013 11:04 AM: I think it's a form of rhetorical dyslexia -- what one thinks one is arguing is not the argument that others hear one making. I don't grok the map to dyslexia. But the disconnect between the thoughts of the sender and those of the receiver is quite clear ... the best evidence against psi ... or perhaps with a softening like the rare earth hypothesis, that psi is so rare it may as well not exist. -- == glen e. p. ropella I learned how to lie well and somebody blew up 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
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Barry MacKichan wrote at 04/04/2013 10:29 AM: I've heard it is very effective, but only for a time until the patient discovers it is a placebo. Call it the Lincoln effect (You can fool all of ….). A friend of mine announced that she's now getting acupuncture for her chronic back and neck pain. There's a zealot in our local CfI (http://www.centerforinquiry.net/) group who continuously and loudly shouts about acupuncture being as quackish as homeopathy. (Seriously... is there anything as quackish as homeopathy?) The tiny amount of time I've spent looking into acupuncture indicates that it's mostly nonsense with some slight possibility of truth in regard to certain _pressure_ points and nerve clusters. But nothing that an evidence-based masseuse couldn't achieve more effectively. But I kept my mouth shut and let her talk about how well it's worked so far. My dad also used acupuncture for a racquetball associated injury. He claimed it worked very well... [ahem] ... even better than his chiropractor. I didn't want to introduce any doubt that might interfere with her placebo effect. Interestingly, I was trying to apply the Golden Rule in a post-hoc analysis of my lack of action. Would I want someone to burst my placebo effect bubble? If so, when? Immediately? Or perhaps after some window of time as the placebo effect decays and it bumps up against the hard biophysical/physiological limits? -- == glen e. p. ropella I can't get no peace until I get into motion 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
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Ron Newman wrote at 04/04/2013 10:57 AM: But you're missing the point.: *something* is working for them if they believe it is, and is not for you or anyone who doesn't believe it is. The question is how does it work? No, that's not good enough, because it too easily leads back to premature assumptions. The question is: how can placebo be improved. Not set aside but improved. No, I'm not missing that point at all. The primary clinical problems are if, when, and how to _intervene_. This is the first question you should be asking. Even in a scientific context, the first question is about how to manipulate the system so that cause and effect can be teased out of the noise. The point is if, when, and how to manipulate. The question of improvement only comes after addressing the question of manipulation. -- == glen e. p. ropella I'm a king ?? 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
Re: [FRIAM] Woo
Steve Smith wrote at 04/04/2013 11:04 AM: They have something to talk about with like minded people and even professionals who will assure them that their symptoms are as real as the cures being offered. This seems spot on to me. In a similar vein, I know so many people who express their desire to take a class on X. My techie friends are always saying, things like that, with some variation like buy a book on X. Some of them even teach classes ... on photoshop, or micro$oft office, etc. I always ask them why they feel the need to take a class? Just jump in and start doing it. Why not just buy a guitar and start banging on it? Why do you feel the need to take a class? They always answer with weird (to me) justificationism and excuses. I'm not disciplined enough. I wouldn't know where to start. Etc. I don't have the energy. But my speculation is that there's a high correlation between the people who feel they need to take a class and the people who respond well to people in white jackets with name tags. -- == glen e. p. ropella Throw the switches, prime the charge, 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
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Roger Critchlow wrote at 04/04/2013 11:37 AM: you often see what you look for. I'll raise you and assert that you _always_ see what you look for ... which takes me back to Kauffman's paper and his failure to cite Robert Rosen's treatment of anticipatory systems (aka final cause). Our expectations are a kind of forcing structure or, at least, a box of constraints upon our dynamics. The fans of woo I _like_ tend to have big boxes within which they can wiggle a lot. They do not build prisons from their expectations. Many hard core materialists (e.g. the New Atheists) and many consipiracy nuts have such tightly wound expectations, such convictions, that they are no longer open enough to wiggle. -- == glen e. p. ropella I have gazed beyond today 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
Re: [FRIAM] Woo
Interesting. I suppose I'm guilty of dysrhetorica, here. My intention in describing my friend who is now receiving acupuncture was to orient the conversation towards _action_ and away from thoughts about Truth. I tend to try telling stories of my actual experience with actual people and events as a way of orienting the conversation away from ideology toward methodology. To me, this is in the same vein as Bruce's Feynman quote. Feynman suggests several experiments that might be performed, particular ways to intervene in the miracles to see if/whether their outcome can be manipulated. But my rhetoric bit me in the @ss. By using biased phrases like burst my placebo effect bubble, I defeated my own rhetorical purpose. What I should have said would be more like: Should I have intervened in my friend's therapy? If so, when? If so, how? For example, from my own tiny research, I also read what Ron's friend claimed, that acupuncture points are correlated with some neuronal structures. If the answer to when to intervene is immediately, then I should have immediately told my friend a) about my skepticism and b) of this confirmatory correlation between acupuncture points and neuronal maps. If the beneficial effect is psychosomatic, then telling her about the correlation would give her more power (even if insignificant) to improve whatever mechanism she's already using. And expressing my skepticism might give her reason to do more research on her own. It might also provide a thicker skin for future skeptics who may be less friendly than me. On the other hand, she may choose to hear my words in such a way as to limit or eliminate the beneficial effect. I don't really care whether acupuncture is _truly_ false, truly True, or anywhere in between. What I want to know is what I can _do_ to make me (and my friends) more likely to achieve my (their) objectives. I know intellectually, however, that I appreciate it when my friends provide alternatives to various modules in my world view. So, it's difficult and interesting to apply the Golden Rule to my actions with my friend. Did I keep my mouth shut because I somehow sensed she would be detrimentally affected by any action I might have taken? Or is it perhaps that even though I _think_ I like for my friends to treat my own views with skepticism, perhaps I really do _not_. I.e. I was obeying the Golden Rule and treating her as I (viscerally, not intellectually) want to be treated? Steve Smith wrote at 04/04/2013 11:49 AM: I think the distinction is about *confirmation bias*? If you assume that placebo effects are in some way *bad* and that we need to seek ways to predict their effect waning or seek to determine when and how to burst the placebo bubble most gently then that is what we will find... examples of where placebo effects diminish and local minima where bursting will do least harm. We won't find the cases where placebo is sufficient for relief/recovery nor will we find ways to *maximize* it's effects. Of course, the opposite is true. If we seek *only* to maximize placebo effects, we can easily fall into the trap of believing that placebo is always a good thing, etc. and overlook the larger context where it might not always be so (allowing gangrene to set in while rinsing the wound with holy water). There is no lack of work having been done clinically and scientifically around the placebo effect, though I'm sure it's application and refinement in more esoteric circumstances has no limit. I think the woo question is significantly about *human bias* in the scientific community. We *know* there is bias in the woo community but just repeatedly pointing that out is not the same as looking in a mirror for where the scientific community has conspired with itself to fashion and wear blinders. -- == glen e. p. ropella Robot Lords of Tokyo, SMILE TASTE KITTENS! 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
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Douglas Roberts wrote at 04/04/2013 04:21 PM: I personally find it disappointing that so many people are willing to adopt a belief set with no evidence, based solely on what someone said was The Truth. Yeah, but the real problem is equivocation around the word evidence. -- == glen e. p. ropella It's already in their eyes. 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
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Nicholas Thompson wrote at 04/04/2013 10:03 PM: Again, acting in my capacity as the Village Pragmatist, I would assert that science is the only procedure capable of producing lasting consensus. The other methods various forms of torture, mostly ... do not produce such enduring results. N While I agree with you in the abstract, it still doesn't address the meaning of scientific evidence. My assertion is that the variance exhibited by the many meanings of evidence within science is wide enough to cast doubt on the stability (or perhaps even coherence) of the term in science. And if that's the case, then claims for the superiority of scientific evidence over other meanings of evidence are suspicious claims ... deserving of at least as much skepticism as anecdotal evidence or even personal epiphany. Rather than assume an oversimplified projection onto a one dimensional partial order, perhaps there are as many different types of evidence as there are foci of attention, a multi-dimensional space, with an orthogonal partial ordering in each dimension. -- == glen e. p. ropella This body of mine, man I don't wanna turn android 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
