[FRIAM] Wittgenstein

I have put the following material in an email message because is suspect it would fascinate some of you., and given that you are mostly people with real jobs and given that the information comes from the guts of a 700 page book, I suspect that many of you would be unlikely to stumble on it on y

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Nick, Leave us not conflate clarity, concision and expressiveness. One may make tradeoffs, for example one may choose one computer language for its large number of libraries and ability to say a great many things in many ways, at the expense of concision and clarity. As to envy, I think ther

[FRIAM] the purpose of science

Observing how the present diverges from the past should be useful, both for becoming better able to control or capitalize on how nature works, but also for better controlling ourselves to stop repeating past choices that would be in error. I'm trying to share something of my experience and veri

Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute

Just a quick "Thanks" to Glen, Matthew, and Doug for the great pointers. -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Nick: I'm a bit confused about what you'd like from this. Paragraph 1: The observation that there may be Math-envy amongst programmers. Paragraph 2: A reference to the prior threads on the philosophy of math along with a correct observations on silos .. or possibly a depth/ breadth contrast.

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Sorry, that was Boston Dynamics. My bad. > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kenneth Lloyd > Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 5:15 PM > To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a m

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Russell, You are absolutely right. BioDynamic's Big Dog learned to walk over uneven ground using evolutionary neural networks. So are ANN's math? Well, yes (my answer) and no. Actually, it depends on your concept of math - which I sense is rather rigidly defined within this discussion. ANN's c

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Russell Standish wrote: > Actually a robot would probably do it the same way we do - trial and > error with some kind of feedback loop. > Excuse a side remark on ABM toolkit stuff. I hadn't played with Breve (http://breve.sf.net) until recently. Some relevant features: 1) 3d with collision

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Thus spake Robert Holmes circa 10/01/2008 12:44 PM: > Hmmm not sure about that Glen. Seems to me that your "formalism" can be > pretty freely applied. So give me a specific example - when I'm coding > Python what is the specific formalism that I am using? Please feel free to > use equations. I

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Actually a robot would probably do it the same way we do - trial and error with some kind of feedback loop. Solving differential equations tends not to work too well in controlling robots. But is the feedback loop used by the robot maths? The computer code is, the formal structure of the loop is,

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Thus spake Russ Abbott circa 10/01/2008 12:23 PM: > I would liken a syntax error to tripping while going after a ball. Neither > is really what we are talking about. It's the semantics of the intended > action if actually carried out. No? I disagree. Tripping on approach is not a syntax error;

Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute ( Re Democrap is wusnt us )

Actually there is a version of truth in the democrap diatribe but not where the article points The Glass Siegel act forbade most of the business activities that are the root of many of todays financial issues outside of the modeling muckup. The man who was instrumental in getting Glass Siegle

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Robert Holmes wrote: > Is programming a mathematical formalism? No. I know that when I'm > cranking out Python scripts I am not doing any math. Is computer > science a mathematical formalism? Yes. When I'm trying to work out > whether my algorithm scales as N**2 or N.log.N, I'm doing math. A com

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Thus spake Glen... > > Just to be clear, programming is the _act_ of constructing a program. > As an act, it is not a formalism. However, the program produced is a > construct within a particular formalism. To boot, that formalism is a > mathematical formalism. > Hmmm not sure about that Gle

Re: [FRIAM] Slashdot | Stallman Says Cloud Computing Is a Trap

On projects - Especially all the google apps are great at solving the dilemma - " You cannot manage what you do not measure and you cannot measure what you do not see " but what happens when it sees something the client does not like ? We are using several of the toolsets from the google worl

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

I would liken a syntax error to tripping while going after a ball. Neither is really what we are talking about. It's the semantics of the intended action if actually carried out. No? -- Russ On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 12:05 PM, glen e. p. ropella <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > Thus spake Russ Abbott

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Thus spake Russ Abbott circa 10/01/2008 11:56 AM: > Is catching/throwing a ball math? A robot would do these things using math. > But we don't, and we don't prove the result. We just check out the result > against reality. So why call it math? I would not call that math. > Or if you wouldn't cal

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Is catching/throwing a ball math? A robot would do these things using math. But we don't, and we don't prove the result. We just check out the result against reality. So why call it math? Or if you wouldn't call it math, how does it differ from writing a program, which also produces a result/produ

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Thus spake Robert Holmes circa 10/01/2008 11:29 AM: > Is programming a mathematical formalism? No. I know that when I'm cranking > out Python scripts I am not doing any math. Just to be clear, programming is the _act_ of constructing a program. As an act, it is not a formalism. However, the progr

Re: [FRIAM] Vote Obama or McCain: Global Electoral College | The Economist

WOW trust the Brits that means Bob Mugabe from Zimbabwe will be a dead cert for our next president ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ Owen Densmore wrote: Kinda nifty: http://www.economist.com/vote2008/ .. a world wide vote, even using an

Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute & Rosen

Peter, But wasn't Ken's plea for complex stochastic models?? The problem is that the physical system has emergent processes and is not either a linear, non-linear or stochastic projection of the past, either simple or complex. It's not a projection of the past at all. It's a divergence from an

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Nick, Is programming a mathematical formalism? No. I know that when I'm cranking out Python scripts I am not doing any math. Is computer science a mathematical formalism? Yes. When I'm trying to work out whether my algorithm scales as N**2 or N.log.N, I'm doing math. For an enlightening (and more

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Excellent points -- although they sidestep Nick's issue -- which I take to be that some software people (although not you or I) wish that software were as apparently definitive as mathematics. Mathematics has an aura of certainly -- even the certainty about uncertainty seems certain. Software is j

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Or to paraphrase, if I may Nick, "Simple clear math has no environment. Math with an environment is no longer simple and clear". Phil > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson > Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 1:01 PM > To:

Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute

Thus spake peter circa 10/01/2008 10:15 AM: > but god love them I guess fiction is more comfortable and no one on our > side of the table is telling them the REAL truth Careful, there. You're on the cusp of committing a perfect solution fallacy. The beauty of reality is that we cannot ever know

Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute - and the fix

Oh yes... how the fix for the need for a "Goldilocks" magic in setting the price for unmarketable assets. It's very simple. Just use your best realistic guess. You don't worry about putting the tax payer on the hook by including the provision that the costs of stabilizing a system brought down

Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute - and the fix

Another way to say why there is a phase transition to instability there is that it is inherent in pushing learning tasks to exceed their response times. Becoming incoherent in response is a kind of system failure that leads to systems to collapse for any critical part. That is part of that learni

Re: [FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 10/01/2008 10:01 AM: > Ever since I first came to Santa Fe, and joined the extensive computation > culture here, I felt I have detected in the software people here something > equivalent to the physics- envy that we psychologists are prone to: let's > call it mat

Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute

I see it as Doug sees it. This week's Economist has the most incoherent leader I have ever seen in twenty years of reading that journal. I'm not an economist, but I do know my way around my mother tongue, and in essence they're saying, "Don't cap executive salaries because this is our best

Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute

Right on Ken Thats the major issue --- we inside of the industry understand that the non dynamic non world related models are SIMULATIONS but to most people these are wizard visions of actuality and bluntly our marketing to them fudges this whenever a contract or money comes up. For example:

Re: [FRIAM] Economic Disequilibrium or How Complexity Science nearly killed America ( Glens Question ) Whodunnit

Sure I will dig out some names but to simplify step 1 - Anyone who has QUANT or Financial Engineer or Financial Data Engineer ( They used to quantify now they just design and operate the Complexity models ) on their business card and works at Lehman Brothers / AIG or Fannie Duo / WAMU etc Mor

[FRIAM] Is programming a mathematical formalism

Ever since I first came to Santa Fe, and joined the extensive computation culture here, I felt I have detected in the software people here something equivalent to the physics- envy that we psychologists are prone to: let's call it math-envy. Math-Envy seems to be that while programming is subject

Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute

Mathew: The Time article I referred to had nothing to do with modeling; it described the reality of how the money was lost. *Follow the money. Average Joes and Janes are not the holders of the other side of complicated, over-the-counter derivatives contracts. Rather, hedge funds are the main hold

Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute

Doug, I think it's a poor move to use a model--did the Officers use a model for their article in Time?--to fix blame with such confidence especially when the thing to blame is a vague collective identity. Granted, sometimes it seems that such fixing is needed because we need to reaffirm our own gro

Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute

Excellent article! As complexity wonks, most of us understand that static models are woefully incomplete, and that dynamical systems modeling is one of the precursors to understanding complexity. This implies the study of systems at some distance from equilibrium. Hopefully, we can encourage pe

[FRIAM] false dichotomy (was Re: Economic Disequilibrium ...)

Thus spake Owen Densmore circa 10/01/2008 06:04 AM: > On Oct 1, 2008, at 1:02 AM, Robert Holmes wrote: >> Can't be complexity scientists - the math is too hard. Show your >> average >> ABMer a partial differential equation and he'd run a mile. >> Robert > > I have to agree. The pendulum really

Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute

On another mailing list that I frequent, there is a small core of Republicans who *insist* that is was the DemoCRAPS[sic] who caused our current economic crisis. I sent the following message to them yesterday, after finding the nice, short informative article in Time (link below). I find that it

Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute

from Rob Axtell: http://krasnow.blogspot.com/2008/09/goldilocks-on-wall-street.html#links On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 8:29 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/opinion/01buchanan.html?_r=3&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin > > -- > glen e

[FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/opinion/01buchanan.html?_r=3&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:3

Re: [FRIAM] Economic Disequilibrium or How Complexity Sciencenearly killed America

Kenneth Lloyd wrote: > If people will "run a mile" > to avoid something that presents a little difficulty - or that doesn't > pre-exist in their toolbox of universal knowledge - then complex systems > will forever remain out of reach. > He's lost it. Now he's making derogatory remarks about run

Re: [FRIAM] Vote Obama or McCain: Global Electoral College | TheEconomist

Is this a Godwin's law violation? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law Frankly, I don't think 1948 would have been a good election year for Hitler, being 3 years dead and all that. -- rec -- On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 8:49 AM, Kenneth Lloyd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > If the whole world cou

Re: [FRIAM] Vote Obama or McCain: Global Electoral College | TheEconomist

If the whole world could have voted 60 years ago, Hitler would have been Chancellor of England. > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore > Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2008 10:14 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Co

[FRIAM] then... how DO you tell the difference?

One of the cool things about ordinary differential equations is that if you found one in nature, and all you had was a very very short segment, you could still theoretically obtain the entire future and past behavior of the curve from it.There are lots of events in nature something like that,

Re: [FRIAM] Economic Disequilibrium or How Complexity Sciencenearly killed America

Owen, Complexity science (the study of objective complexity) is only complex (subjectively complex) if you don't understand how it works. There are a series of mappings from natural language, through graphical language, to mathematical languages that help folks understand how complexity works. Bu

Re: [FRIAM] Economic Disequilibrium or How Complexity Science nearly killed America

On Oct 1, 2008, at 1:02 AM, Robert Holmes wrote: > Can't be complexity scientists - the math is too hard. Show your > average > ABMer a partial differential equation and he'd run a mile. > Robert I have to agree. The pendulum really needs to swing back again. The lack of formalism within the

Re: [FRIAM] Economic Disequilibrium or How Complexity Science nearly killed America

Can't be complexity scientists - the math is too hard. Show your average ABMer a partial differential equation and he'd run a mile. Robert On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 9:49 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > PS did anyone answer Pete's question as to the identity of the creators of > the financial marke