Re: [FRIAM] Emergence: The No-Stats All-Star

Some memes and social rituals can behave like group genes - for example the ten commandments of the bible, or religions in general. They use groups as throw-away vehicles to lever themselves into the next generation. The founder of the Christian religion said "For where two or three are gathered

Re: [FRIAM] Emergence: The No-Stats All-Star

If you have never been to a chicken breeding facility, you should make it a point to do so. It will graphically illustrate for you a new depth in man's inhumanity to other living beings. On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 8:07 PM, Nicholas Thompson < nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > Russ, > > For yea

Re: [FRIAM] Emergence: The No-Stats All-Star

Russ, I think I may disagree that there are no "group genes". Well, unless one defines gene in such a limited way that there are no genes at all. Please http://www.behavior.org/journals_BP/2000/thompson.pdf. I apologize for its size., which is stupid and unnecessary, and all my fault. The

Re: [FRIAM] Emergence: The No-Stats All-Star

Nick, I don't think we have an issue. "No group genes" means that there are groups aren't biological entities in the sense that they have biological genes. Goups work because the genes of the individuals lead to effective group behavior. Those genes could be called group genes, but they are really

Re: [FRIAM] Stevey's Blog Rants: Rhino on Rails

Looking forward to it. Do you have a schedule yet? -tj On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 8:57 PM, Prof David West wrote: > > Tom and Nick, > > The GLASS workshop is the first of many - some will be shorter in > duration, but all will be workshops where you have the opportunity to > learn and immediately

Re: [FRIAM] Stevey's Blog Rants: Rhino on Rails

I'm with Nick. Why? We have to separate understanding *architecture* from implementation. Architectural studies look at the system from a 50,000 foot view, so that the student can understand how the whole system works. Implementation studies look at how a practitioner would, on the job,

Re: [FRIAM] Stevey's Blog Rants: Rhino on Rails

Tom and Nick, The GLASS workshop is the first of many - some will be shorter in duration, but all will be workshops where you have the opportunity to learn and immediately apply your knowledge to real software, not canned examples that some instructor wrote. Future offerings are dependent, to a

Re: [FRIAM] Emergence: The No-Stats All-Star

Thanks Nick. I know (and love) the story. Here's my blog post about it. It shows that a pen of chickens is an entity. -- Russ On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 7:07 PM, Nicholas Thompson < nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > Russ, > > For years, c

Re: [FRIAM] Emergence: The No-Stats All-Star

Russ, For years, chicken breeders selected their chickens at the individual level, even though they were placing them in close quarters in crates of nine chickens. Chickens had to be debeaked and they were constantly pulling dead chickens out of the pens. . So, one day, a couple of poultry

Re: [FRIAM] Stevey's Blog Rants: Rhino on Rails

And I, too, would pay to attend such a workshop. -tj On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Nick Frost wrote: > On Feb 15, 2009, at 4:52 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote: > > That's a hard google: GLASS = Gemstone Linux Apache Seaside Smalltalk = >> http://seaside.gemstone.com which didn't appear on the fi

Re: [FRIAM] Stevey's Blog Rants: Rhino on Rails

On Feb 15, 2009, at 4:52 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote: That's a hard google: GLASS = Gemstone Linux Apache Seaside Smalltalk = http://seaside.gemstone.com which didn't appear on the first page of any search until I knew to include gemstone in the search terms. Why for desktop applications?

Re: [FRIAM] Stevey's Blog Rants: Rhino on Rails

On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Prof David West wrote: > > > Re: programming languages - antipathy to C++ > > Few questions seem to drive passions more than language choice - The reason for this is that people who program are woefully ignorant or misinformed about the majority of programming la

Re: [FRIAM] The reductionist blind spot

On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 02:36:21PM +0100, Jochen Fromm wrote: > Hi, > > Russell Standish was right, the definitions in the wiki contradict the > definitions of Mark A. Bedau. They are more like Chalmers, and less like > Bedau. Obviously I have not read Bedau carefully enough. I know the paper > fro

[FRIAM] Emergence: The No-Stats All-Star

After sending the previous message I started reading this (long) article: The No-Stats All-Star - NYTimes.com. Here's a key paragraph. The five players on any basketball team are far more than the sum of their par

Re: [FRIAM] The reductionist blind spot

In Bedau's framework, strong emergence basically means something like "a miracle happened." Vitalism is a good example of strong emergence. Vitalism is the position that life has some additional (vital) property that cannot be derived from nor understood in terms of the underlying phyics and chemis

Re: [FRIAM] The reductionist blind spot

Hi, Russell Standish was right, the definitions in the wiki contradict the definitions of Mark A. Bedau. They are more like Chalmers, and less like Bedau. Obviously I have not read Bedau carefully enough. I know the paper from Alex Ryan, but I haven't read it carefully enough, either.. I found it