from:"gⅼеɳ ☣"

The Future Primaeval is still up: 
http://thefutureprimaeval.net/this-is-the-future-primaeval/
NrX sites are mostly still up: http://neoreaction.net/ http://hestiasociety.org/

More Right is gone.  Mike Anissimov's Twitter account is gone.

Moldbug's garbage is still up:
http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/moldbugs-gentle-introduction/
http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/

It seems to me that the neo-nazis and "ethnic nationalists" are easy enough to 
recognize as silly idealists.  But the NrX guys pack more of a punch.  Their 
ideas are a bit like the insidious Sam Harris, who slathers his right wing 
ideas in a tasty sauce of rationalism.  But I don't know if the right answer is 
to take out their platforms.  It seems to me humiliation and humor are the 
right paths.  (cf. Harris' interaction with Chomsky)

On 08/17/2017 03:29 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> I think a ballistic vest would work as well as motorcycle gear for center
> of mass defense.  Dress it up for cos play and you'll have the replacement
> for pro wrestling and other prize fighting entertainments.
> 
> By the way, are we taking down the nascent alt-right-web yet?   They're
> going to reinvent the internet to route around the censorship, and I think
> this is going to be the first real cyber war.
> 
> And perhaps that's what we need, institutionalized cyber gang warfare.  As
> the Pallio tamed the neighborhood gang conflict in Siena into twice yearly
> anything goes horse races, take all this must do the
> right/wrong/good/evil/offensive thing energy and turn it into e-riots, or
> irl riots with cos play armor.

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Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

Yeah, bullets are another matter entirely.  It's easy to be "pure defense" with 
sticks and such.  Self-defense in the context of bullets is one of incoherent, 
asymmetric, or preemptive.  People who tell me they have a gun for self-defense 
risk a confrontation.  Guns are purely offensive.  They are nothing but murder 
weapons ... unless you're good enough to hit the other guys bullet with your 
bullet!  So, when someone says guns are for self-defense, what they really mean 
is they intend to murder people if they feel threatened.

On 08/17/2017 01:02 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Think combining Charlottesville and Kent State..  Not pleasant to think about 
> but is it completely preposterous?  I don't think so.  
> Yes, every stylish urban pastor these days has a Kevlar robe!  

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Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

2017-08-16 Thread gⅼеɳ

Nietzsche's complaining/rejoicing re: the loss of the Christian rule set isn't 
all that relevant, I don't think.  Those Trumpians complaining about "political 
correctness" aren't complaining about the lack of a rule set, because there 
exists a new rule set.  E.g. don't chant "Jews will not replace us" and expect 
to get away with it.  Similarly, we can't really apply Nietzsche's observation 
that deontology is faulty to authoritarians anywhere.

No, the desperation and rage Marcus points to is about a perceived change to 
the rules, from one broken rule set to another (equally broken) rule set.  
That's what makes it tricky for those of us who don't base our ethics on rules. 
 When a Trumpian points out flaws in the lefty's rule set, we consequentialists 
have to agree with them... yeah, their rule set is faulty.  They hear that 
part.  But then the Trumpian fails to hear the qualifier: "Because ALL rule 
sets are faulty! Damnit."

On 08/16/2017 08:10 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Yeah, it is probably nothing new that is happening nor a new interpretation.  
>  Institutions of various kinds can give individuals a role to play and 
> guidelines for conduct, but a highly interconnected population with a complex 
> economy will stress these institutions and reveal their limitations.   
> Meanwhile, only exceptional and delusional individuals can really make a 
> convincing case (esp. to themselves) about their unique value either 
> coupled-to or uncoupled-from from institutions.   However, I fear the stakes 
> are pretty high now -- the contagion of people going bonkers could be fast 
> with social media.   A healthy society is one where individuals can mature to 
> the point they can begin to doubt the meaning in their own anxiety (whether 
> by themselves, with their shrink or their spiritual authority) and make it to 
> the next day.
>  
> Marcus
> --
> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 16, 2017 6:56:23 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme
> 
> Reading this, I feel like you could found a new generation of something that 
> is like existentialist philosophy but equally-well political theory.
> 
> It is not so far from Nietzche’s notion that “God is dead” creates a problem 
> for people, and they will face a fork in the road in how they try to deal 
> with it.  Maybe even, considering the currents running through European and 
> particularly German society at the time he was writing (and that he 
> specifically wrote about), driven by concerns based on similar observations.
> 
> It strikes me that this is an available point of view for almost any person.  
> Granted, the distribution of rewards and frustrations differs from person to 
> person and also from region to region, and that matters.  But the black box 
> (black hole?) of how minds form characters and orientations in response to 
> streams of these things draws from an immense and to me-obscure range of 
> inputs.
> 
> Makes me wonder,
> 
> Eric

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Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

2017-08-16 Thread gⅼеɳ

FWIW:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience#Genes_and_physiology

> Openness to experience, like the other traits in the five factor model, is 
> believed to have a genetic component. Identical twins (who have the same DNA) 
> show similar scores on openness to experience, even when they have been 
> adopted into different families and raised in very different 
> environments.[44] One genetic study with 86 subjects found Openness to 
> experience related to the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism associated with the serotonin 
> transporter gene.[45]
> 
> Higher levels of openness have been linked to activity in the ascending 
> dopaminergic system and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Openness is the 
> only personality trait that correlates with neuropsychological tests of 
> dorsolateral prefrontal cortical function, supporting theoretical links among 
> openness, cognitive functioning, and IQ.[46]
> 
> 44. Jang, K. L., Livesly, W. J., & Vemon, P. A.; Livesley; Vernon (September 
> 1996). "Heritability of the big five personality dimensions and their facets: 
> A twin study". Journal of Personality. 64 (3): 577–592. PMID 8776880. 
> doi:10./j.1467-6494.1996.tb00522.x.
> 45. Scott F. Stoltenberg, Geoffrey R. Twitchell, Gregory L. Hanna, Edwin H. 
> Cook, Hiram E. Fitzgerald, Robert A. Zucker, Karley Y. Little; Twitchell; 
> Hanna; Cook; Fitzgerald; Zucker; Little (March 2002). "Serotonin transporter 
> promoter polymorphism, peripheral indexes of serotonin function, and 
> personality measures in families with alcoholism". American Journal of 
> Medical Genetics. 114 (2): 230–234. PMID 11857587. doi:10.1002/ajmg.10187.
> 46. Colin G. DeYoung, Jordan B. Peterson and Daniel M. Higgins (2005). 
> "Sources of openness/intellect: cognitive and neuropsychological correlates 
> of the fifth factor of personality". Journal of Personality. 73 (4): 825–858. 
> PMID 15958136. doi:10./j.1467-6494.2005.00330.x.


On 08/16/2017 04:30 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> On the other hand, while members of said community/group/tribe/pack/herd 
> might extend some of that goodwill toward others they recognized as 
> same/thePeople, they had good reason to be less generous/trusting toward 
> others who were not so familiar, who spoke unrecognizeable languages, whose 
> skin/hair/eye color or features were significantly different.   I think these 
> are very real evolutionarily adaptive roots of what we see as Xenophobia 
> today.

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Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

2017-08-16 Thread gⅼеɳ

Well, just because all rule sets are faulty doesn't mean some rule sets aren't 
better than others.  (Need I repeat it?  Surely not.  ... All models ... yadda 
yadda.)  And so your intuition is right, all rule sets are faulty, including 
the rule set of all rule sets.  The lesson isn't to throw away rule sets or 
adopt the One Rule Set to Rule Them All and fuzzify it.  The lesson is that 
something other than rules is needed to complement rule sets.  And we already 
have that in our US justice system.

The rule of law is fantastic, but it has to be tempered with 
context-satisficing things like democracy and trial by jury, institutionalized, 
bureaucratic methodology for periodically falsifying the rules against the 
highly contingent reality.

Your "like to imagine that we can transcend all rules" is just more 
rule-following.  There is no Ultimate Reality.  There is no destination.  There 
is only journey.  But some journeys are more clearly self-defeating than others.

On 08/16/2017 12:58 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I am inclined to agree with you, but am left somewhat empty-handed with:
> 
>"because ALL rule sets are faulty!  Damnit."
> 
> my instincts are with you on this, yet in some kind of Godelian (not Gordian) 
> knot I find myself:
> 
>A) questioning the "rule" you just stated.
> 
> and
> 
>B) finding myself conjuring (fuzzy?) rules to replace the crisp ones
>I resent/resist!
> 
> Are Heuristics or Patterns also rules?   Can we suppress any desire/need to 
> have formal rules and not just discover (or never notice) that we have an 
> implicit rule set embedded in our intuition from our genetic and cultural 
> origins, informed at best by personal experiences?
> 
> I'd like to imagine that we *can* transcend all rules (explicit/implicit, 
> crisp/fuzzy, etc.) but am not quite sure what that would mean or why?

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Re: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump

2017-08-18 Thread gⅼеɳ

On 08/18/2017 01:24 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/tweet_viz/tweet_app/
> 15 minutes with this make me painfully aware of how much I'm not in tune with 
> twitter culture... the tool seems pretty well made, but I found myself having 
>  a hard time drawing meaningful conclusions (aside from looking for 
> confirmation bias artifacts to glom onto)... the drilldown I did do made me 
> realize that the pleasant/unpleasant axis wasn't what I thought it would be.  
>  The system doesn't seem to take into account (double?) negatives?   Someone 
> railing positively about taking Trump down appears to contribute to the 
> quad-chart plot in roughly the same way as one praising him.

Sentiment analysis is a strange thing.  What's the "law"? ... Is it Poe's Law?  
Good satire is indistinguishable from authenticity?  Or something like that.  
One can adopt a very positive *affect* about very negative things.  Given your 
admission that you find morbid things fascinating, I thought replying with 
sentiment analysis would be appropriate.

Personally, I find black humor is poised on a very thin edge, which makes those 
who are good at it geniuses.  It's the same with sarcasm and snark.  Pedestrian 
black humor is very irritating.  But when it's done right, it carries just the 
right balance of poignancy and banality.  In contrast, tag clouds are 
antiseptic and devoid of any humanity.
>> Here are some other tools:
>> https://blog.bufferapp.com/free-twitter-tools
> I tried to dig in a little but as I felt frustrated by the implied bias in 
> the nature of the tools I realized the list was labeled as "for Marketing" 
> which (with my own bias) seems to be what most social media tools exist for, 
> to make us all in to better (more malleable?) consumers.

Ahhh.  But "branding" is the Trumpian essence.  Trump is nothing *but* a brand. 
 And, as our psych friends keep telling us, his narcissistic tendencies reflect 
that.  There is no "there" there.  There is only posturing and marketing.  So, 
what better to understand Trump, *but* tools for marketing?

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Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

2017-08-22 Thread gⅼеɳ

Heh, so you *agree* with Wagner that natural selection can preserve 
innovations, but it cannot create them?

On 08/22/2017 11:21 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome offers up 
> is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living.  The idea of 
> evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd. 

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Re: [FRIAM] Enlightened Self Interest: was Help for texas

2017-09-13 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

I found this essay interesting:

Why the Greatest Advocates of Nonviolence Didn't Condemn Anti-Racist,
Anti-Fascist Acts of Violence
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/41902-why-the-greatest-advocates-of-nonviolence-didn-t-condemn-anti-racist-anti-fascist-acts-of-violence

It loops back on our conversation about bringing tasers to protests as well as
my question to Merle about Hinduism vs. Buddhism and "Dharma himsa tathaiva
cha", or violence in the service of Dharma. Being of an "interactivist" bent,
I don't believe one can understand anything without manipulating it. The
objective observer is a convenient fiction. This came up quite a bit in
relation to the recent "March for Science". Should scientists really be
marching? What are they marching for? It's also relevant for politics, this
tendency for people to call themselves "apolitical" or to say they don't like
or pay attention to politics. Personally, I think everyone is political,
though they may lie to themselves and believe they're not. That's why I take
the opportunity, at every chance, to talk about both religion and politics ...
especially when someone proscribes it. I was playing horse shoes at the
neighborhood picnic with a stranger and I made some comment about our
Liar-in-Chief Trump. He said something like "Uh-oh, you just said something
political." So, I took the opportunity to tell him that I don't believe in
God, either. 8^) And he told me his wife is an atheist! It's rare a thing to
get a non-atheist to admit they're married to an atheist. The trick is to make
it clear that Everything is permitted. Do what thou wilt is the whole of the
Law. >8^D But don't complain when you get punched for, say, acting like a Nazi.

On 09/10/2017 01:26 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> As far as out driving our headlights, yes please. That's all there is, in
> the end: Figuring stuff out. Everything else is just marking time.

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Re: [FRIAM] The World Turned Upside Down (and what to do about it)

Roberts says: "The country is on the wrong track. (Everyone believes this one)."

This sentence and the parenthetical convinced me of what RussA's already said, 
that Roberts is too trapped by his fear-based conservatism to see the 
asymmetry.  What Roberts is saying is utter garbage.  Everyone?  Sheesh.  I see 
the likes of Musk or the Y-Combinator crowd yapping all day about all the good 
things we're doing (here and in plenty of other countries).  People as 
different as Hillary Clinton and Michael Shermer talk quite positively about 
our direction.  I could go on.  But the fundamental point is:

Conservatives are afraid.  _They_ think the country is on the wrong track.  
Other than Trump and the last dying gasps of the traits that got him elected, 
the rest of us believe the country was (and kinda still is) on a very good 
track!  To think otherwise is to be guilty of exactly what Roberts says is 
happening ... living in your own little bubble.

However, on the liberal side, we do have plenty of Chicken Little's.  Stop 
freaking out and keep up the good work.  Trump and his moron supporters are 
just one more problem we're working on.  Tomorrow will be more like Starfleet 
as long as we keep working at it.

On 09/13/2017 08:04 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> Medium, my current outlet of choice, has an interesting "story" (Medium deals 
> in Stories, not Tech nor Politics nor ...). It echos a lot of what we've been 
> dealing with.
> 
> https://medium.com/@russroberts/the-world-turned-upside-down-and-what-to-do-about-it-2dc27d1cf5f5
>  
> <https://medium.com/@russroberts/the-world-turned-upside-down-and-what-to-do-about-it-2dc27d1cf5f5>
> 
> Somewhat dark, but awfully close to home.

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Re: [FRIAM] The World Turned Upside Down (and what to do about it)

2017-09-15 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

But did the Mexican Repatriation also include things like rape, burning 
villages, and indiscriminant execution?  I can imagine it did, but would rather 
not believe it.

It's still so jarring to me, given the cultural appropriation of Buddhism in 
Western developed countries, to hear phrases like "nationalist Buddhists" and 
such.  With Israel, I grew up with the contradiction of the Jews I knew, who 
were entirely kind and intellectual, versus those confiscating land from Arabs. 
 So, I've been exposed to that dissonance all my life.  But my only exposure to 
Buddhism as a kid was through my CCD teacher, who probably had a *very* stilted 
understanding.

On 09/14/2017 06:31 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> Right here in River City (well, mostly California, but throughout the US) the 
> 1930's "Mexican Repatriation Act" deported on the order of 1-2M US Citizens 
> because of their ethnicity (along with a smaller number of non-Citizens more 
> recently immigrated from Mexico), qualifying for our modern definition of 
> "ethnic cleansing". 

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[FRIAM] "ecological"

2017-09-18 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

Classifying the evolutionary and ecological features of neoplasms
http://www.nature.com/nrc/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nrc.2017.69.html?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureRevCancer=true

Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing through other patterns
http://www.triarchypress.net/small-arcs.html

I have nothing interesting to say about these two things.  Maybe y'all do?

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Re: [FRIAM] "ecological"

2017-09-18 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

On 09/18/2017 10:31 AM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
> She's Gregory Bateson's daughter--and that should give you a clue as to the 
> depth and breadth of her investigation into systems theory.

Thanks.  It does not really give me a clue (my own inadequacies, of course).  
I'm wondering if there's a mystical homunculus underlying people's use of the 
word "ecological".  I plan to attend this:

Infusing Indigenous Wisdom
http://www.pulltogethernow.org/indexindex.php?option=com_content=article=7

(I may not make it because there are 2 ... count them TWO! ... Oktoberfests 
competing for my attention this weekend ... Hm, drink malty beer and listen to 
Polka or drink coffee and listen to Native Americans describe how they think 
our modern mechanical thinking is inadequate?)

But the gists of all 3 things seem to be of the same theme ... a theme I care 
about.  Systems theory (and complex systems, and a slew of proximal 
constellations of woo) smacks of something like vitalism or perhaps 
panpsychism.  My own homunculi brawl with each other on at least a weekly 
basis, mainly The Mechanist vs. The Mystic, but other humunculi jump into the 
fray on a regular basis.  I'm particularly fond of Spinoza's excursions around 
modality.

Speaking of which, does anyone have access to a copy of this article they'd be 
willing to share:

Monists & Nazis: a question of scientific responsibility
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.2307/3560820/abstract

I figure since we have some self-expressed monists, here, I might get lucky.

> 
> On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 11:11 AM, gⅼеɳ ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com 
> <mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> Classifying the evolutionary and ecological features of neoplasms
> 
> http://www.nature.com/nrc/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nrc.2017.69.html?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureRevCancer=true
> 
> Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing through other patterns
> http://www.triarchypress.net/small-arcs.html
> 
> I have nothing interesting to say about these two things.  Maybe y'all do?

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Re: [FRIAM] Maybe a new hardware approach to deal with AI developments

2017-09-19 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/16/technology/chips-off-the-old-block-computers-are-taking-design-cues-from-human-brains.html?emc=edit_th_20170917=todaysheadlines=58593627=


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Re: [FRIAM] Doxastic logic - Wikipedia

On 09/21/2017 04:50 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Well, answering in the sophistic manner, because logically speaking, acting 
> tentatively affirms tentativeness.  

You seem to forget that there are many types of logic, paraconsistent, 
defeasible, higher order, etc.

> Is it possible (can you give me an example) of a contradictory ACTION.

Yes, of course.  E.g. Since most of my actions involve very tight feedback 
loops, something like tossing a ball to a friend can be launched and then I can 
make attempts to abort it if, say, I notice the friend has looked away.  Since 
I would claim that all actions are actually temporally extended processes 
rather than quantum events, I would claim that MOST actions involve branches 
and many branches can be reached from other branches.  So, not only are they 
branched, but many of the branches don't "contradict" the other branches.

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Re: [FRIAM] Doxastic logic - Wikipedia

Excellent digestion!  I'll fully admit that my body has a kind of momentum.  
The running example is perfect.  For the 1st mile (for certain), every breath 
and every step seems equivalently doubted, ungainly, awkward.  As I literally 
force myself into the 2nd mile, I suspect my body changes.  I begin thinking 
about other things.  Some automatic part of me has begun to take control.  By 
the 4th mile, I am completely automatic.

That automation seems to be a forcing structure.  In contrast, when I'm doing 
calisthenics, I never achieve such automation.  At any given position or 
movement, any one of my multifarious weaknesses might cause me to fail.  My 
lower or upper back kinks or spasms, the cartiledge in my wrist will crumple, 
my epicondyl will sprain, etc.  I can get into a kind of "flow" or groove when 
doing it, so that my self dissolves or I begin thinking about other things.  
But here, unlike running, as soon as I begin thinking about my body again, that 
momentum evaporates and I, again, doubt every movement.

So, there are some types of activity that have more "convinced" regimes than 
other types of activity.  In my 4th mile of running, I am like Nick, convinced 
of some "belief", with no doubt.  But I never achieve that state in 
calisthenics.

On 09/21/2017 01:44 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
> Somehow I imagine that Nick means to say there are costly signals in this 
> game — that motor action is thicker than conversation or reflection.
> 
> If I am walking across a snowfield that I know to be filled with crevasses, 
> and I know I can’t tell which snow holds weight and which doesn’t, my 
> movement is really different than it is putting my feet on the floor beside 
> the bed in the morning.
> 
> To take a different example that is counterfactual but easier to use in 
> invoking the real physiological paralysis, if Thank God Ledge on halfdome 
> were not actually a solid ledge, but a fragile bridge, or if there had been a 
> rockfall that left part of it missing and I were blindfolded, or if I were a 
> prisoner of pirates blindfolded and made to walk the plank, my steps would 
> land differently than they do when I get out of bed in the morning.
> 
> There I didn’t say what anyone else would do in any circumstance, but did 
> claim that my own motions have different regimes that are viscerally _very_ 
> distinct.  I’m not sure I can think about whether I would fight for air when 
> being drowned.  It might be atavistic and beyond anything I normally refer to 
> as “thought”.  I certainly have had people claim to me that that is the case.
> 
> Those distinctions may occupy a different plane than the distinction between 
> reasonableness and dogmatism all in the world of conversation and the social 
> exchange.
> 
> But I should not speak for others.  Only for myself as a spectator.

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Re: [FRIAM] Doxastic logic - Wikipedia

If you, as a non-dualist, allow for tentative action, why not allow for 
tentative belief?

On 09/21/2017 02:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Peirce defined belief as that upon which we act and doubt as the absence of 
> belief.  It follows logically that anything we act on affirms some belief 
> and, therefore, at the moment of action, extinguishes all contrary beliefs.  
> If you follow me here, I may appear to win the argument, but only on 
> sophistic points.  

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Re: [FRIAM] Doxastic logic - Wikipedia

No regrets or apology are needed.  And even if we are about to "argue about 
words" ... I forget what famous dead white guy said that ... it's still useful 
to me.

You say: "if one acts in the assurance that some fact is the case, one cannot 
be said to really doubt it"  The answer is clarified by reading Marcus' post.  
If you act with assurance, then you're not open to changing your mind.  So, 
you've simply moved the goal posts or passed the buck.

I *never* act with assurance, as far as I can tell.  Every thing I do seems 
plagued with doubt.  I can force myself out of this state with some activities. 
 Running more than 3 miles does it.  Math sometimes does it.  Beer does it.  
Etc.  But for almost every other action, I do doubt it.  So, I don't think 
we're having the discussion James and Peirce might have.  I think we're talking 
about two different types of people, those with a tendency to believe their own 
beliefs and those who tend to disbelieve their own beliefs.

Maybe it's because people who act with assurance are just smarter than people 
like me?  I don't know.  It's important in this modern world, what with our 
affirmation bubbles, fake news, and whatnot.  What is it that makes people 
prefer to associate with people whose beliefs they share?  What makes some 
people prefer the company of people different from them?  Etc.

On 09/21/2017 01:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> I am afraid this discussion is about to dissolve into a quibble about the 
> meaning of the words "doubt" and "belief", but let's take it one more round.  
>   In my use of the words ... and I think Peirce's ... one can entertain a 
> doubt without "really" having one.  Knowledge of perception tells us that 
> every perceived "fact" is an inference subject to doubt and yet, if one acts 
> in the assurance that some fact is the case, one cannot be said to really 
> doubt it, can one?   It follows, then, that to the extent that we act on our 
> perceptions, we act without doubt on expectations that are doubtable.  
> 
> Eric Charles may be able to help me with this:  there is some debate between 
> William  James and Peirce about whether the man, being chased by the bear who 
> pauses at the edge of the chasm, and then leaps across it, doubted at the 
> moment of leaping that he could make the jump.  I think James says Yes and 
> Peirce says No.  If that is the argument we are having, then I am satisfied 
> we have wrung everything we can out of it.  
> 
> Anyway.  I regret being cranky, but I can't seem to stop.  Is that another 
> example of what we are talking about here?  

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Re: [FRIAM] The Atlantic article on "the illusion of reality"

Is this substantially different from modal realism? 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism

On 09/21/2017 03:54 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 10:44:51PM +, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>
>> Isn't it plausible that there are different psychological laws in
>> different bubbles of the multiverse?   

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[FRIAM] visualization of logic(s)

2017-09-22 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣


Given the discussion of logic(s), I imagine a visualization where we take a 
language, maybe ZFC, come up with a set of sentences, maybe 100 or so, and 
place them on a 2D grid, where each grid point shows their truth value.  So, 
you'd have a 10x10 grid of T's and F's based on how those sentences evaluated 
in ZFC.  You also include a button or something that allows you to modify the 
language in some way.  E.g. click on the button and it removes the axiom of 
regularity and you see the grid points change from T to F.  I suppose you could 
do this with a smattering of sentences from first- and (first- plus) 
second-order logic as well.  I suppose it would be critical which sentences you 
included in the grid and their relationship with the underlying language.  In 
addition to T and F, you might also have something like ∞ for undefined, 
undecidable, or nonsense.

What do you think?  Is this a silly idea?  Does something like it exist 
already?  Would it be interesting?  Useless?

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Re: [FRIAM] Maybe a new hardware approach to deal with AI developments

On 09/20/2017 10:08 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I think the spirit of the NY Times article, and current trends, is _not_ to 
> reify.

Right.  That's what I was saying. 8^)  But my guess is RussA isn't seeing this 
conversation.

> Graphics processors, tensor processors, FPGAs, spiking systems, quantum 
> annealers, etc. are by in large tackling machine learning, not engineered 
> intelligence (class AI) or even (necessarily) supervised learning.   We are 
> _blinded_ by what we think we know.  

And the further point is that general intelligence simply does. not. exist.  
Like the self, it's trickery... an ephemeral binding or syncopation of our 
various particular intelligences.  By this reasoning, one day, we'll simply 
wake up and notice that our car, with all it's little pieces of machine 
learning have resulted in accidentally/stigmergically engineered intelligence.

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Re: [FRIAM] Maybe a new hardware approach to deal with AI developments

On 09/20/2017 09:10 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Maybe, but if I could run 40 miles per hour 
> <https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2015/11/02/mark-wahlberg-six-billion-dollar-man-2017/75047226/>,
>  or began to develop an electric organ, I'm pretty sure I'd start to exercise 
> those capabilities.  And if she could jump 10 feet in the air instead of 4, 
> she'd soon be doing it.   [Hmm, maybe I should get a trampoline?]

Another good point.  But it's explained by imperfect and/or exploratory control 
over one's extensions.  I often meet people who see what I do to workout 
(including hanging upside down from a bar and some weird wrist-breaking 
exercises) and they respond like "Well, that's great but I would/could never do 
such a thing."  They have various reasons.  But when/if I get a chance to show 
them how to ease into weird things *safely*, they soon learn that, YES, their 
legs will bend that way, too.  They just have to *try*.  The same is true of my 
cats.  I'm constantly showing the unathletic pudgy one that she, too, can 
balance on that skinny limb like the others do naturally.

Some of us are just more exploratory with our extensions.  I suspect that's a 
"unit" of selection as well.

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Re: [FRIAM] Maybe a new hardware approach to deal with AI developments

On 09/19/2017 01:54 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> To the extent there is compression or partitioning/expansion of the I/O 
> relation might give a `story' with regard to what's out there.

Yes, that's a fantastic point ... a bit like the holographic principle, I 
suppose.

> How do progressively higher levels in a neural net selectively combine 
> signals into mappings?   My dog isn't going to tell me how she selects an 
> item to steal & march around with, but if I could probe neurons in her brain 
> I might find one that fires for large but lightweight soft things like 
> pillows, paper towels, and so on.

I agree.  But I think it's important to emphasize that those neurons are an 
integral part of the sensorimotor complex.  It's a bit of a false dichotomy to 
distinguish "thoughts" from teeth and tongue.

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Re: [FRIAM] The Atlantic article on "the illusion of reality"

Perhaps you aren't reading the other thread or that the mailing list is 
misbehaving again and you didn't receive my response to your reified ideas 
argument?  My counter argument was along the same lines as Hoffman's idea that 
the decoupling from the environment (through interfaces) can lead to (and even 
select for) *false* ideas.  So, the (again, very slight) flaw in your argument 
is that it's what you're calling the raw signals that are paramount ... and 
probably what's being selected for, not the concepts or the ability to form 
concepts.

Just to restate a little more clearly, what's being selected for are fingers, 
toes, proprioception, nociception, etc.  That's what provides meaning, not the 
(perhaps entirely false) thoughts we mistakenly reify and pretend to talk about.

On 09/19/2017 08:58 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> I'm disappointed. No one bothered to comment on or even notice my post on 
> this subject.  Here it is again.
> 
> An easy way to agree with Hoffman and not get bent out of shape is to 
> acknowledge that anything we think involves something being constructed in 
> our heads. That construction is an idea -- or an emotion, or whatever other 
> modes of awareness we have. That seems to me to be tautological: we can think 
> or feel, etc. nothing but our thoughts, feelings, etc. As I said that's a 
> tautology. After all, when we see something and say, that's a dog, we are 
> converting whatever raw signals we encounter into an image and a concept. We 
> aren't talking about the raw signals. It's impossible for us to be aware of 
> the impact of, say, every photon on our retinas. (I'm assuming it is 
> impossible. Perhaps some people can do something like it.) Also, I'm assuming 
> there is a world that includes photons that we encounter. 
> 
> So this position doesn't deny a world "out there." At the same time it 
> acknowledges that as living beings we have evolved means to make something 
> more useful to us than awareness of raw signals. After all, why have eyes if 
> all they do is give us the equivalent of a plane of pixels. That doesn't tell 
> us anything about friend/foe, nourishment/poison, etc. If our senses weren't 
> hooked up to internal processes that made something of them besides the raw 
> signals, evolution wouldn't have kept and perfected them. 
> 
> So the simple answer is that Hoffman is right that we don't see "the world as 
> it is" but that doesn't mean there isn't a world as it is.

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Re: [FRIAM] Maybe a new hardware approach to deal with AI developments

On 09/20/2017 08:44 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> What she prefers is constrained by her physical strength, and potential 
> skeletal and tissue vulnerabilities.

Right. But my argument (here... I'm not necessarily convicted to this) is that 
what she prefers is not *merely* constrained by the extensional parts of her 
self, but that her self is *defined* and determined by the extensional parts.  
I'm willing to admit some wiggle room, e.g. dreaming.  When my cats dream, 
their whiskers twitch, they chatter, and their claws go in and out.  If they 
didn't show that behavior, I'd have zero evidence that they dreamed at all.  
So, even dreams are defined and determined by their extensions.

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Re: [FRIAM] The Atlantic article on "the illusion of reality"

Fantastic!  That would make a good bumper sticker:

  Pareto Front Dempster-Shaffer
Fuzzy Belief Plausibility

I worry about too many glue words, with modified, implementing, and measures.  
Reminds me why I like Clutch:

> Ribonucleic acid freak out, the power of prayer.
> Long halls of science and all the lunatics committed there.
> Robot Lords of Tokyo, SMILE TASTE KITTENS!
> Did you not know that the royal hunting grounds are always forbidden?

On 09/20/2017 01:40 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> Having worked on problems roughly described as multivariate optimization 
> decision support, I'm thinking, a high dimensional Pareto Frontier with 
> modified Dempster-Shaffer methods implementing Fuzzy Belief and Plausability 
> measures.   It maps well onto consciousness as wave-function collapse (for 
> Quantum Consciousness Wonks) or at least (for CS majors) late binding.   For 
> English Majors, I refer you back to Douglas Adams who describes all of this 
> in very good, imagistic prose.

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Re: [FRIAM] The World Turned Upside Down (and what to do about it)

Well, Republicans aren't so bad.  It's the conservative wing of their party 
that's bad.  Similarly, Democrats aren't as bad as the Bernie-bros make them 
out.  It's the conservative wing of the Democrats that's bad.  So, to be clear, 
I like the majority of the Republicans I know.  And I like the majority of the 
Democrats I know.  Fortunately, my personality is such that thin-skinned people 
don't spend much time around me.  And most conservatives are very thin-skinned.

But I'm not merely talking about technology, though I think you're wrong about 
its influence.  Even if you're right, we still have plenty to be hopeful about: 
Obamacare, more experiments in UBI, people are living longer, murder is 
dropping, more people are recognizing their own implicit racism, our country's 
people are becoming a beautiful taupe color, I can go to pretty much any pub in 
Portland and listen to music with African or Middle Eastern influences, etc etc 
on and on.

The only thing you have to fear is fear, itself.

On 09/14/2017 12:57 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> Glen goes, "Other than Trump and the last dying gasps of the traits that got 
> him elected, the rest of us believe the country was (and kinda still is) on a 
> very good track!"
> 
> I wish I could be that optimistic. The Republicans have managed to get 
> control of the majority of state governments, which let them gerrymander the 
> districts in 2010. If they keep that control, they will continue with the 
> gerrymandering.  Between gerrymandering and the electoral college, it will be 
> tough to get them out of power.  Unfortunately, technology will not solve 
> global warming and the increased pollution Trump has unleashed. It won't 
> solve healthcare. It won't solve voter suppression. It won't solve troglodyte 
> courts.  It won't solve increasing inequality. No matter how good our 
> technology gets, we can't ignore the damage government can do when controlled 
> by the sort of people who have grabbed power -- and are doing their best to 
> arrange things so that they keep it.  I wish I could be more optimistic about 
> the future of the country, but I'm not.
> 
> I'll tell you one other thing I'm not proud of in myself. I've been so angry 
> at Republicans that I have had no sympathy for the people in Florida and 
> Texas. I even know that most of the people who are hurt the most are probably 
> Democrats. Still I can't seem to find any empathy for those states as such.

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Re: [FRIAM] The World Turned Upside Down (and what to do about it)

Cautionary tales are nothing to be afraid of.  I think this is something 
completely misunderstood by people who don't watch enough horror movies.  You 
don't watch The Walking Dead and think "Don't open that door!  Don't open the 
door"  You watch it and *know* that if you were there, you'd open the door, 
too.  The trick is how you would do it and what it means to do it.

On 09/14/2017 01:27 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
> Have any of you been watching the t.v. Hulu series of Margaret Atwood's "The 
> Handmaid's Tale"?  I read it three decades ago and it is spooking me out once 
> more because the understory is the normalization of a subversive societal 
> move toward a dystopian fascist state. It's promoted as science fiction, but 
> it's very real and beware-- incredibly hard to watch.  Women in the new 
> society, of course, get the worst of it.  Duh.

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Re: [FRIAM] Enlightened Self Interest: was Help for texas

2017-09-13 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

I suspect your questions are rhetorical.  But since I never tire of hearing my 
own voice...

On 09/13/2017 11:20 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Is  the concern among pacifists about the practical consequences of violence 
> or about the actual physical harm to another?   This article suggests to me 
> it is about the practical consequences.

The section about Gandhi was good.  If I understand correctly, Gandhi was very 
into engaging with reality, living closely in touch with his surroundings.  He 
was embedded.  And I think his position on ideology and abstract learning 
followed that bent (i.e. somewhat against it).  If that's true, then his 
non-violence would largely be one of practical consequences.  But my guess is 
there are plenty of ideologues involved with both sides.  And anyone who places 
ideas/thoughts above physical presence will be at risk of the idealization of 
"physical harm".  (Since we all continually suffer physical harm as soon as 
we're conceived, it seems silly to be anti- physical harm. ... perhaps this is 
why so many people love the idea of downloading their brain into a (pain-free) 
computer?)

> For example, I am against the death penalty, but I am not against the 
> permanent removal of some pathological individuals if it can be done without 
> a public representation of vengeance.If a child or a spouse is abused so 
> badly that they kill their parent/spouse, I'd say we should move on (if it is 
> discovered).   I claim this is not paradoxical.
I agree.  I'd go even further to claim that all organisms require damage.  Life 
is pain.  There are no highs without the lows.  Or the phrase my parents loved: 
This hurts me more than it hurts you.  Etc. with whatever favorite aphorism.  
"Far from equilibrium" has more meanings than we often give it.

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Re: [FRIAM] The World Turned Upside Down (and what to do about it)

Ha!  Perfectamundo! 

On 09/14/2017 10:16 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote:
> /*Illegitimi non carborundum*/ 

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Re: [FRIAM] The World Turned Upside Down (and what to do about it)

Nah.  I prefer the relatively common metaphor of the zombie as a typical 
shambling idiot who is dangerous precisely because he doesn't think and can 
infect you with his lack of thought.  Typical red state voters *are* the 
zombies.  The Walking Dead, as a TV show, is about how those of us who aren't 
brain dead a) handle the brain dead and b) how we deal with each other and our 
own despondency at being surrounded by brain dead citizens.  Will the 
progressives survive with their humanity intact?  Or will they be infected by 
fear and populism?

Renee' really likes Sense8.  But I'm more into Orphan Black and Mr. Robot.  I 
tried to get into The Man in the High Castle.  But it was just too visually 
dark and claustrophobic.  I plan to try again at some point, though.  The 
Handmaid's Tale is on the list.  I enjoyed the witch season of American Horror 
Story, but not the others.  I can't yet watch "Cult", which is supposed to be 
interesting.


On 09/14/2017 02:27 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> That Walking Dead stuff is for the red state audience.  

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Re: [FRIAM] The World Turned Upside Down (and what to do about it)

Nope.  However, it's important to realize that the metaphors of the shambling 
zombies (Romero's and The Walking Dead's) are substantively different from 
those metaphors of the fast-moving zombies, especially the ones that learn to 
think and can sometimes be cured (Helix, Resident Evil, Z, Game of Thrones, 
etc.).

On 09/14/2017 02:46 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> And here I thought the zombies were the brown-skinned immigrants coming to 
> take away the white people's jobs, destroy their culture, and steal their 
> statues.  What do I know!

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Re: [FRIAM] Doxastic logic - Wikipedia

2017-09-22 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

Ha!  Yeah, the conference I went to a few months ago was _ripe_ (no, not rife, 
RIPE) with this stuff ... mostly in the context of automatic cars.  I really 
appreciated one attendee trashing the Trolley Problem as so ideal as to be 
useless.  I heard an interview with the creator of Wolverine the other morning 
... something about him being one of the first anti-heroes to really make it.  
Good stories always have evil protagonists, like the Godfather.  Narcos is a 
good series.  But they demonize the leaders too much, I think ... just like our 
lefties demonize the banksters a little too much.

On 09/22/2017 09:14 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> In one universe there's brain damage, in another universe the old lady 
> doesn't know anything happened.   Little did you know that the old lady is 
> charge of a human trafficking operation and you `should' have just pointed 
> right at her. Hmm, maybe I'm not helping here?   :-)

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Re: [FRIAM] Doxastic logic - Wikipedia

2017-09-22 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

My answer to Roger's question is "both", FWIW.  But my concern seems slightly 
different from both Marcus' and Nick's answers.  I'm more concerned with the 
granularity of the updates/iota.  Nick's 70/30-clean/scramble is pretty fscking 
coarse.  As I said early on, my beliefs/skepticism is *never* that coarse.  
Marcus' set of equivalent solutions gets closer to what I care about... a kind 
of measure of how many options one has at any given *instant* in the action 
process.  And I also care about the boundary of that set.  Which course 
corrections can I make that still lead to a satisficing objective (like 
crashing my bike without brain damage), which lead to failure (brain damage), 
which lead to optimal outcome (dodging the left-turning old lady completely), 
etc.

I maintain that some of this complicated problem solving is conscious and some 
is subconscious (muscle memory as well as the lizard brain).  And I tend to 
believe that the spectrum between the two is fine-grained.  I.e. there is no 
disjoint, binary, distinction between "things I do with full belief" versus 
"things I (don't) do with full skepticism."

On 09/22/2017 08:26 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> So I leap across the chasm believing that I have a 70 percent chance of 
> making the jump but knowing that I have a 30 percent chance of not making it. 
>  I think James would argue that to the extent that one paid attention to the 
> 30 percent, it is actually increased.  I.E., if you jump ambivalently, you 
> are less likely to make the jump.  And that would be because an ambivalent 
> jump is functionally different from a confident one.  For instance, to the 
> extent that you prepare yourself to grab at the cliff as you miss,  you 
> ill-prepare yourself to make the jump cleanly.  

On 09/22/2017 08:31 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Underlying such a network is some generating process, and the belief is about 
> that ongoing process, as tabulated by joint and conditional probabilities.  
> Some of the imagined degrees of freedom may not be relevant in an applied 
> setting (e.g. pilot waves or a multiverse)  and are acceptable reasons for 
> having probabilities, but others can and should be explained by hidden or 
> external variables.   The more these variables are made explicit, the more 
> precise and falsifiable the predictions can be.   Ideally, one would have a 
> network of logical predicates that deterministically lead to one or a 
> degenerate set of equivalent solutions.  

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Re: [FRIAM] Doxastic logic - Wikipedia

Heh, I'm on the side of people who refuse to take aphorisms seriously, no 
matter who coins them, repeats them, etc.  Otto's reading Nietzsche is the 
perfect example.  Attempts to be pithy only appeal to sloppy thinkers.

I admit that inside jokes can be good and comforting, but ONLY when you're sure 
there is an "inside".  If you have any doubt about the in-group status of the 
group you find yourself with, then stay away from aphorisms and try to tell an 
authentic story.

On 09/21/2017 12:31 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> This baffled me as much as it interested me.  In the end, I wasn't sure whose 
> side you were on.  My problem may be that, being a Peircean, philosophy is 
> for me just an extension of the scientific method and philosophical knowledge 
> is just "meta-knowledge" gleaned from the same sources as scientific 
> knowledge.  Speaking as a sort-of ornithologist, I still think the metaphor 
> stinks. It still strikes me as one of those unthinking philosophical 
> platitudes trotted out by people without the knowledge of experience to think 
> philosophically.  Remember that guy Donald Griffin who thought he knew about 
> "mind" because he knew so much about bats and insects? 

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Doxastic logic - Wikipedia

It's strange.  You speak about the way _you_ think and behave as if that's the 
way _I_ think and behave.  Can we all say "vainglorously" together? 8^)

I can tell you unflinchingly and honestly that I DO doubt that the floor is 
still under my feet when I put my legs out of the bed in the morning.  If you 
don't doubt it, then you are governed by faith and convinced by things you 
believe.   Even IF you know precisely what Peirce WOULD say (which we can 
doubt), it still doesn't mean Peirce was right.  Yeah, it's likely he was way 
smarter than me.  But that doesn't mean he knows what I do and don't doubt.

I doubt nearly everything about myself on a continual basis.  I doubt my 
strength.  I doubt my intelligence.  I doubt every purchase I've ever made.  I 
doubt that Renee' will stay with me.  I doubt everything on a continual basis.  
So, you (or Peirce) are clearly flat-out wrong.  It seems very arrogant to 
stumble along thinking your expectations are somehow important enough to remain 
true.

On 09/21/2017 12:48 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Peirce would say, for the most part, we cannot live in doubt.  We cannot 
> doubt that the floor is still under our feet when we put our legs out of the 
> bed in the morning or that the visual field is whole, even though our eyes 
> tell us that there are two gian holes in it.  Every perception is doubtable 
> in the sense that Feynman so vaingloriously lays out here, yet for the most 
> part we live in a world of inferred expectations which are largely confirmed. 
>  Like the other Feynman quote, it is wise only when we stipulate what is 
> absurd about it and make something wise and noble of what is left.

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Re: [FRIAM] Doxastic logic - Wikipedia

A better Feynman quote that targets this issue is this one, I think from a BBC 
interview:

"When you doubt and ask, it gets a little harder to believe. I can live with 
doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to 
live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate 
answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about 
different things. I'm not absolutely sure of anything. And there are many 
things Ι don't know anything about. But Ι don't have to know an answer. I don't 
... Ι don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the unverse 
without having any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as Ι can tell, 
possibly. It doesn't frighten me."

He was talking in the context of religion, but I think it applies to every type 
of "knowledge", including the "thought manipulation" that is philosophy.  The 
point is not that "thought manipulation" can never be useful.  But that one can 
_justifiably_ take the position that philosophy should (moral imperative) be 
done in the _service_ of something else.

You cited Smullyan in the OP, which is relevant.  Many of Smullyan's 
publications are puzzles, games.  Some of us simply enjoy puzzles. (I don't.) 
But every puzzle is a math problem.  It's up to the puzzle solver to settle on 
why they're solving puzzles.  Are they doing it because it FEELS good?  Or are 
they doing it because either the solutions or the exercises facilitate some 
other objective?  Some puzzle solvers (e.g. video gamers) find themselves in a 
defensive position, trying to justify their fetish against the world around 
them.  The silly rancor many "practical" people aim at philosophers can make 
some of them defensive.  And it's a real shame that we shame philosophers for 
doing it just because they enjoy it.

But it moves from merely shameful to outright dangerous when a philosopher 
can't distinguish their own _why_.  Someone who does it because it's fun 
shouldn't waste any time yapping about how useful it is.  And someone who does 
it because it's useful shouldn't waste any time yapping about how fun it is.  
Get over it.  Be confident.  Engage your fetish and ignore the nay-sayers.

On 09/21/2017 09:53 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> Glen -
> 
> I share your use of the term "Science" as in being an activity (roughly) 
> defined by "the Scientific Method" just as I use the term "Art" as the 
> process rather than the product (aka "Artifact").
> 
> When I do anything vaguely (or presumptively) artistic, I think of my role as 
> that of an "Artifex" more than an "Artist" because I feel more emphasis on 
> the conception/making than on being tuned into or tied into a larger, higher 
> group/power which is how I read "Art and Artist".  I have a similar 
> ambivalence about "Scientist/Science".   Despite degrees in Math and Physics, 
> my practice has rarely involved actual Science (or more math than just really 
> fancy arithmetic), though I have worked with "real Scientists" and close to 
> "Scientific Progress" for most of my life.   I don't even think of my work as 
> having been that of an Engineer, but truly much closer to simply that of a 
> "Technologist".   And as everyone who has read my missives here can attest, 
> my throwdown as a "Philosopher" is equally detuned... but suspect myself to 
> oscillate wildly between the poles of "Philosopher" and "Philistine".   All 
> that rattled off, I truly value having enough understanding of all of these
> ideals to recognize the differences qualitatively, and to have mildly 
> informed opinions about the better and worser examples of each quantitatively.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Doxastic logic - Wikipedia

Bah!  Do you actually think Dyson's aphorism is in stark juxtaposition to 
Feynman's?  I thought, by including so much of what Feynman said, it would be 
less likely anyone would read it wrong.  But if you think Feynman was saying 
being vague is better than being wrong, you TOTALLY misunderstood what he was 
saying.

I'm reminded of Otto.  Are we seriously trading aphorisms?  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YKbYLb5GVc

On 09/21/2017 11:09 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> in stark juxtaposition, we have Freeman Dyson saying:
> 
> "it is better to be wrong than vague"
> 
> I think I know what he meant and generally support not getting frozen in 
> inaction or muddying/qualifying a statement to the point of losing meaning.

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Re: [FRIAM] Doxastic logic - Wikipedia

It's definitely sage.  But the sagacity doesn't hinge on the word "science", it 
hinges on the word _useful_.  Science is often thought to be a body of 
knowledge.  But there's a huge swath of people, me included, who think science 
is not knowledge, but a method/behavior for formulating and testing hypotheses. 
 It's not clear to me that Feynman actually said this.  But Feynman is a good 
candidate because he cared far more about what you _do_ than what you claim to 
_know_.

Philosophy (of anything) can be useful.  But to any working scientist, it is 
far less useful than, say, glass blowing, programming, or cell sorting.  And if 
you think distinguishing between the usefulness of beakers from the usefulness 
of ... oh, let's say Popper's 3 worlds, then your expression says more about 
you than it does about them.

On 09/20/2017 08:27 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> By the way, the Feynman quote is really dumb, and it’s annoying that people 
> keep trotting it out as if it was sage.  The reason birds can’t make use of 
> ornithology is they can’t read. Think how useful it would be for a cuckoo 
> host to be able to spend a few hours reading a text on egg identification.   
> Is the reason physicists can’t make use of philosophy of science that they 
> can’t think?  I doubt anyone who cites this “aphorism” would come to that 
> conclusion.  Bad metaphor. 

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] The Atlantic article on "the illusion of reality"

2017-09-19 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

On 09/18/2017 06:56 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/?utm_source=atlfb

We've discussed Hoffman's ideas before.  Lots of us played in that thread.  The 
FriAM archives are down, I think.  But here's the 1st post of the thread:

 Forwarded Message 
Subject: [FRIAM] Why depth/thickness matters
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2017 12:05:05 -0800
From: glen ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com>
To: friam@redfish.com

  Natural selection and veridical perceptions
  Justin T. Mark, Brian B. Marion, Donald D. Hoffman
  http://cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/PerceptualEvolution.pdf

> For the weak type, X ⊄ W in general, and g is a homomorphism. Perception need 
> not faithfully mirror any subset of reality, but relationships among 
> perceptions reflect relationships among aspects of reality. Thus, weak 
> critical realists can bias their perceptions based on utility, so long as 
> this homomorphism is maintained. 

To me, this evoked RRosen's "modeling relation", wherein he assumes the 
structure of inferential entailment must be similar to that of causal 
entailment (otherwise "there can be no science" -- Life Itself, pg. 58).

> For the interface (or desktop) strategy, in general X ⊄ W and g need not be a 
> homomorphism. 

This more closely resembles what I (contingently) believe to be true.  Hoffman 
goes on to define and play some games, the results of which (he thinks) show 
that the interface strategy, under evolution, can demonstrate how fake news 
might dominate.  But my interest lies more in the idea that one's internal 
structure does matter with respect to whether or not one's likely to _believe_ 
false statements.  And I'm arguing that flattening that internal structure in a 
kind of holographic principle simply doesn't work with this sort of machine.

An interesting potential contradiction in my own thought lies in:

1) I reject Rosen's assumption of the modeling relation (i.e. inference ≉ 
cause), and
2) I still think intra-individual circularity is necessary for biomimicry.

-- 
☣ gⅼеɳ

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Re: [FRIAM] Maybe a new hardware approach to deal with AI developments

And to go back to the topic, many have no idea how much their *thinking* does 
change with intense exercise or intense nutrition changes.  All this argues 
directly against RussA's argument of reified ideas.  And it relates back to the 
article Alfredo posted, too.  Our intelligence doesn't reside in our brains 
and, therefore, it's reasonable to think that an artificial intelligence's 
intelligence will not reside in some sort of CPU.

On 09/20/2017 09:33 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Yep, like the distinction between low calorie diets vs. intense exercise.   
> Putting aside draining effects of chemotherapy or other debilitating 
> illnesses some relatively healthy people just have no idea, and will never 
> have an idea, how dramatically their body and metabolism can change with 
> sustained exercise.   That is not a behavior they will ever really 
> investigate.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] AI and argument

Well, keeping people talking *can* be the problem.  And we don't really want to 
shut them up when they go off the rails.  Boring story: At a recent beer 
festival, a friend of mine was ranting about their neighbor and how _crazy_ she 
is, for any of a number of meanings of the word "crazy".  My friend has reached 
out to our government funded, volunteer-driven program: 
https://resolutionsnorthwest.org/community/neighborhood-mediation-2/.

During our conversation, however, me and my friend disagreed (fundamentally) on 
the differences between judges, arbitrators, mediators, and facilitators.  
During the exchange, my friend committed 
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority.  I tried to stop them by 
calling out the fallacy.  That didn't work.  They accused me of condescension. 
[sigh]  So, I asserted that I would counter-argue by *also* appealing to 
authority.  And it worked!  My friend acquiesced.  As usual, the meta-ness of 
the discussion (appealing to authority while arguing about methods of arguing) 
was lost on everyone.

On 10/03/2017 10:54 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Ha.  I can imagine putting candidates in booths.   The computer could parse 
> the outputs and decide whether to repeat them to the audience.  Bzzt.   
> Rhetoric.  Bzzt.   False statements.  Bzzt.  Ad hominem.    Bing.   Extended 
> neutral elaboration [by the computer].   Keeping people talking, that’s all 
> fine and good.   But how to shut them up with they go off the rails?
> 
>  
> 
> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Nick Thompson
> *Sent:* Tuesday, October 3, 2017 11:42 AM
> *To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <friam@redfish.com>
> *Cc:* 'Jon Zingale' <jonzing...@gmail.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] AI and argument
> 
> 
> The article relates to a project I dreamed of ... helping people who disagree 
> have a fair argument.  In my notion, a team of philosophy students, 
> masquerading as a program, directed discussants toward fair argument with a 
> view, perhaps, ultimately, in my dreams, teaching a program to step in for 
> the students. 

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] AI and argument

There is an "out there" reality.  But the map between it and me (or a bee or a 
tree) is plectic, with all that entails including far-from-equilibrium, 
polyphenism, robustness, sensitivity to initial conditions, multi-scale, etc.  
That implies that my understanding of what's out there can be stuck in only 1 
of many attractors for a very long time, perhaps from birth to death.

Further, because other humans have similar physiology to me, some, many, or all 
other humans can find themselves stuck in a stable attractor for a very long 
time, perhaps over an infinite number of generations.

Hence, if Peirce's definition of truth is that which endures indefinitely, then 
I disagree fundamentally.  I, you, and all of us, can easily persist in 
complete delusion forever.  The question becomes whether that delusion is 
satisficing.  Do we care that our sense of truth could switch from one 
attractor to another at any moment?  Is it OK that our models of reality aren't 
general enough to be full (or complete) models?  My guess is that most of us 
don't care and are happy to assume their concept of truth is actually true.

In this conception, (if you've characterized him right) Peirce would merely be 
another pluralist, admitting there can be many truths and I would be a monist, 
insisting there is only 1 truth, but many ways to interact with it.

On 10/04/2017 08:51 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> What, on your various accounts is the relationship between “logic”,  “right 
> thinking”, “right reasoning”, and “truth”?  As I understand Peirce, a true 
> opinion is one that is likely to endure indefinitely, unchallenged by any new 
> experiences, “right reasoning and thinking” are methods of inference that 
> lead (fallibly] to such true opinions, and logic is the distillation and 
> formalization of such methods of inference.  Peirce was the premier logician 
> of his time and the origin of much of our modern statistical method and 
> scientific logic.  Am I wrong about his views on right thinking and truth?  
> Or do you guys hold different views?   Is this just some sort of semantic 
> food fight that we can tidy up with a few quick definitions and move on?  Or 
> are we really arguing about something, here?   Am not interested in the fine 
> points of your thought, right now.  What is it that */you all agree/* on that 
> I don’t understand? 

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] AI and argument

I propose that any commonalities between experiences, are due to common 
physiology.  And that means that were I and a mouse to get together and define 
some scientific experiments we *both* could perform independently (say, jumping 
on a see-saw or pushing a kibble lever), then the mouse would have a 
fundamentally different experience than I would have.  If experience is somehow 
"truth", then there are 2 truths, mine and the mouse's.  That's pluralism.

On 10/04/2017 09:55 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Well, unless you understand Peirce as a fallibilist, I have described him 
> wrongly or you have misunderstood me.  To Peirce, there is only one kind of 
> stuff ... experience.  He would not understand what on earth you meant by 
> "out there", unless you were clear that you meant only that some experiences 
> have a character of "out there ness" which you are obligated to define.  
> Peirce starts with his pragmatic understanding of meaning as the conequences 
> of an conception to experience, and by experience he means scientific 
> experience ... almost "experiments".  He  deploys this pragmatic 
> understanding of meaning on the word truth and ends up with the truth as that 
> stable opinion toward which we all strive.  */But nothing in that definition 
> of truth implies necessarily that the truth is ever known.  Hence Peirce’s 
> fallibilism is at least as profound as your own.  /*Imagining that there is a 
> truth of the matter has the [pragmatic] effect of forcing us all into a 
> convergent discourse and
> this effect is for Peirce the central meaning of the word truth.  He has 
> great contempt for styles and fashions of criticism precisely because there 
> is no commitment to convergence in such discourses.  Screw pluralism.
> 
>  
> 
> I think you ARE a Peircean.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] on Feynman, again

2017-10-13 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

I think it's natural for someone struggling toward an objective to accept 
resources from wherever.  A useful example is the Templeton Foundation's 
funding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation  They fund 
some cool stuff, e.g. https://u.osu.edu/friedman.8/.  But the TF's religious 
bent is pretty worriesome.

Regardless, Robinson holds the same political positions as the Heartland 
Institute, as far as I can tell.  So, it's a good match in many ways.

Re: speculation -- It's an equivocation to claim that we're speculating on the 
effects of AGW.  I'm OK with that, of course, witness my argument with Nick 
about whether or not one can doubt (or need speculate on) the existence of the 
floor when you get out of bed. >8^D  But there is at least a spectrum of types 
of speculation.  I can speculate that a rock will fall to the ground when I let 
go and I can speculate the existence of white holes.  They're different types 
of speculation because they depend on your belief in induction and judgments 
about the strength of whatever evidence is provided.  My answer w.r.t. the 
effects of AGW is that our physical models are really all we have.  So, yeah, 
don't trust them implicitly.  But to ignore what those models predict would be 
to ignore all we have ... and that would be a bit silly.

On 10/13/2017 08:59 AM, cody dooderson wrote:
> Good Article. It portrays Robinson as a maverick but still a scientist who is 
> ultimately interested in the truth. I respect that. My question is how does 
> someone who respects truth get along with the Heartland institute, which I 
> have always thought of as a well funded machine for corporate propaganda?  I 
> mean, don't his views on nuclear energy stand to ruin the fossil fuel 
> industry that heavily funds it. He even acknowledges climate change but views 
> it as a good thing for humanity. Aren't we all just speculating on the 
> effects of anthropogenic climate change anyway. It's not like it's happened 
> before. 

>    The Grandfather Of Alt-Science
>    
> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-grandfather-of-alt-science/ 
> <https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-grandfather-of-alt-science/>

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[FRIAM] on Feynman, again

Since we recently went 'round about quoting and criticizing people who quote 
Feynman, I thought this would be interesting.

https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3488

> if you write, for example, that Richard Feynman was a self-aggrandizing 
> chauvinist showboater, then even if your remarks have a nonzero inner product 
> with the truth, you don’t thereby “transcend” Feynman and stand above him, in 
> the same way that set theory transcends and stands above arithmetic by 
> constructing a model for it.  Feynman’s achievements don’t thereby become 
> your achievements.


-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] on Feynman, again

I know.  I just thought it was an interesting post.  That we'd recently 
discussed Feynman was only a segue. I could also have used Russell as the 
segue, since Marcus quoted him in our thread.

The 1st part of Aaronson's post re: Gowers is more interesting than the later 
stuff.

On 10/12/2017 02:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> I took issue not with Feynman as a person ...

> https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3488
> 
>> if you write, for example, that Richard Feynman was a self-aggrandizing 
>> chauvinist showboater, then even if your remarks have a nonzero inner 
>> product with the truth, you don’t thereby “transcend” Feynman and stand 
>> above him, in the same way that set theory transcends and stands above 
>> arithmetic by constructing a model for it.  Feynman’s achievements don’t 
>> thereby become your achievements.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] on Feynman, again

Yep.  One of my homunculi does that to his brethren.  This came out today:

  The Grandfather Of Alt-Science
  https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-grandfather-of-alt-science/

Anyone whose spent any time in Oregon knows this whack job.  And my apex 
predator of the signaling world homunculus yells at me to hate him as the 
crackpot he clearly is, as well as his neolithic social postions.  But *most* 
of my other homunculi have immense respect for someone who hacks their own path 
through the thicket, going to bat for every wannabe crackpot or inventor who 
spends their spare time breathing solder smoke in the basement or suffers 
regular chemical burns because they care more about their objective than 
safety.  Yes, DIY biology is dangerous.  But hey, we can't all work in the 
belly of some bureaucratic leviathan.

On 10/12/2017 02:44 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> "Apex predator of the signaling world."  
> 
> Cute, know it well.
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of g??? ?
> Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2017 3:37 PM
> To: FriAM <friam@redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] on Feynman, again
> 
> I know.  I just thought it was an interesting post.  That we'd recently 
> discussed Feynman was only a segue. I could also have used Russell as the 
> segue, since Marcus quoted him in our thread.
> 
> The 1st part of Aaronson's post re: Gowers is more interesting than the later 
> stuff.
> 
> On 10/12/2017 02:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> I took issue not with Feynman as a person ...
> 
>> https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3488
>>
>>> if you write, for example, that Richard Feynman was a self-aggrandizing 
>>> chauvinist showboater, then even if your remarks have a nonzero inner 
>>> product with the truth, you don’t thereby “transcend” Feynman and stand 
>>> above him, in the same way that set theory transcends and stands above 
>>> arithmetic by constructing a model for it.  Feynman’s achievements don’t 
>>> thereby become your achievements.
> 
> 
> --
> ☣ gⅼеɳ
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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> 
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> 

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Re: [FRIAM] on Feynman, again

On 10/12/2017 03:25 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> 
>>   The Grandfather Of Alt-Science
>>   https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-grandfather-of-alt-science/
> 
> Like upsides to global warming, perhaps there are benefits to the 
> irrationality of scientists, like Robinson's and others'.
> It suggests that science is an activity or an algorithm, that can be 
> conducted in parallel with arbitrary if closely-held beliefs.  
> But I'm cynical.  I'm inclined to think the scientific method is just a 
> weapon in the hands of a sufficiently wacko person to pummel the world into a 
> form they think they can manage or profit from.   Better have more non-wacko 
> people with the same skills to balance things out.   Sure, there is herd 
> behavior in all kinds of people, even the science-policy elites in 
> Washington.   Is there some harm being done by them other than to direct 
> money in a worthy direction that happens not to be to him?   The contrarian 
> needs to be clever to navigate these things and do more than complain.

I agree for the most part, especially given the false reification surrounding 
the scientific method.  Woo peddlers and conspiracy theorists rely on the real 
hermeneutical depth of real science as cover for their rhetoric.  The real 
benefit of thinking seriously about Robinson (or other pseudoscience like 
acupuncture, or even things like informal fallacies) is as a foil for learning 
what *to* do, from examples of what *not* to do.  If the Robinsons of the world 
were earnest failures, they'd be wholesome contributors to science.  But 
because they're deluded, blind to their failures, it is difficult to learn from 
them.

This post makes the argument nicely:

  The Case for Contrarianism
  http://quillette.com/2017/10/10/the-case-for-contrarianism/

from the post:
> So even if Gilley’s paper does as little to support its conclusion as its 
> critics seem to think, it nonetheless might have provided a valuable service 
> to the anti-colonial literature, by making a case at all. That would provide 
> anti-colonial academics something to point to and say: “Here is the best case 
> for colonialism available. It’s very bad, and so it’s reasonable to conclude 
> that the case against colonialism is much stronger than the case for 
> colonialism.” This helps actually to buttress the field’s theoretical 
> foundations, especially as a pedagogical matter. Nor will it do for critics 
> to say simply that the paper could find a place in a discipline with 
> different foundations. If we hope to achieve with our intellectual inquiry 
> even roughly objective knowledge of reality, we must go beyond having a field 
> that assumes P and a field that assumes not-P – we must investigate whether 
> or not P is actually true.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Help for texas

2017-09-05 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

We lack infrastructure development across the board.  Renee' gave her house a 
"seismic upgrade" recently.  And although we had to get it *inspected* and get 
a permit, there is NO code for seismic upgrades.  The inspector just comes out, 
stares at it while rubbing their chin and calls it good.  When the 9.0 hits us, 
it'll be trivial to say it's our own fault for not preparing.

Similarly, Oregon is currently on fire, as is much of Washington and 
California.  The Eagle Creek Fire 
(https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets=default=%23eaglecreekfire=typd)
 was allegedly started by some teenagers tossing fireworks in the forest. 
[sigh]  But, systemically, I'm sure there's much more to be said about forest 
management.

Three cheers for less government!

On 09/05/2017 09:00 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Note the date on 
> this<https://www.propublica.org/article/hell-and-high-water-text> article.  
> And 
> this<https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/houston-spent-massively-on-new-stadiums-not-its-aging-dams-as-harvey-proved-that-was-a-very-bad-choice/2017/09/05/94d006de-923a-11e7-aace-04b862b2b3f3_story.html>
>  article makes me wonder..

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[FRIAM] universal logic

2017-09-26 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣


6th World Congress and School on Universal Logic
http://www.uni-log.org/start6.html

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[FRIAM] AI and argument

The computers being trained to beat you in an argument
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41010848

> At the University of Dundee we have recently even been using 2,000-year-old 
> theories of rhetoric as a way of spotting the structures of real-life 
> arguments.


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Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme


On 08/16/2017 09:56 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/08/what_the_alt_left_was_actually_doing_in_charlottesville.html

I was intrigued by this tweet:

  https://twitter.com/veryapetv/status/898240260550909952

Here's the full text for the 1st quote:

> Sir, -- Having experienced fascism in the flesh, as a citizen of a 
> Nazi-occupied country, a member of the resistance and a concentration camp 
> prisoner, I am profoundly dismayed by Kevin Myers's reflections on the 
> happenings at TCD on the occasion of the David Irving debate.
> 
> If fascism could be defeated in debate, I assure you that it would never have 
> happened, neither in Germany, nor in Italy, nor anywhere else.  Those who 
> recognized its threat at that time and tried to stop it were, I assume, also 
> called "a mob".  Regrettably too many "fair-minded people" didn't either try, 
> or want to stop it, and, as I witnessed myself during the war, accommodated 
> themselves with it when it took over.
> 
> The anti-fascism of some of these people germinated rather late, in fact only 
> when they realized that the Third Reich had lost the war, the Führer was 
> becoming an embarrassment and his system of government a liability.
> 
> People who witnessed fascism at its height are dying out, but the ideology is 
> still there, and its apologists are working hard at a comeback.  Past 
> experience should teach us that fascism must be stopped before it takes hold 
> again of too many minds, and becomes useful once again to some powerful 
> interests, as it happened in the thirties, or in Chile.  I am one hundred per 
> cent behind the students and staff at TCD, and congratulate them for showing 
> the way. -- Yours, etc., F. L. Frison, 69 Newtown Avenue, Blackrock, Co 
> Dublin.

Here's the snopes entry on the 2nd quote (supposedly from Hitler):

  http://www.snopes.com/adolf-hitler-smashing-the-nucleus/

And the third quote about clicktivism is just (apt) snark.  But there's a big 
difference between "chasing them away with sticks" and "holding the line".  The 
former is bad.  The latter is good.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

Body armor is necessary.  My motorcycle jacket has nearly invisible pads for 
the elbows, shoulders, and back.  Augment that with some shin and arm guards 
and you'd be surprised at how much easier it is to defend yourself and others.  
But the most important gear is your mouth guard.  Those chants are stupid 
anyway. >8^D

On 08/17/2017 12:36 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Hold the line, but if violence is used to break it, adopt a liberal 
> definition of self-defense.   I would have some concern of the tendency of a 
> stick to fragment and not deliver enough energy. 

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Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

2017-08-21 Thread gⅼеɳ

Perhaps there is some hope.  See this orthodox nationalist's whining:

  http://www.rusjournal.org/the-orthodox-nationalist-podcast/

But it sounds like he's been replaced by a kinder-gentler version? I haven't 
heard of Nathaniel Kapner.  It's interesting how the tangled knot of fuzz that 
was NrX evolved into alt-right and is, now, gradually being taken over by the 
neo-[nazi|confederate] morons.  Perhaps this Kapner is evidence of the same in 
the orthodox nationalists.  I felt the same way when I watched the Libertarians 
completely devolve from talking about Hayek and Friedman and morph into garden 
variety right wingers. [sigh]

But the more (and more often) we can root out the pseudo-scholars and replace 
them with those less linguistically endowed, the easier it will be for the 
laity to see how impoverished their ideas are.

On 08/17/2017 04:01 PM, gⅼеɳ wrote:
> The Future Primaeval is still up: 
> http://thefutureprimaeval.net/this-is-the-future-primaeval/
> NrX sites are mostly still up: http://neoreaction.net/ 
> http://hestiasociety.org/
> 
> More Right is gone.  Mike Anissimov's Twitter account is gone.
> 
> Moldbug's garbage is still up:
> http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/moldbugs-gentle-introduction/
> http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/
> 
> It seems to me that the neo-nazis and "ethnic nationalists" are easy enough 
> to recognize as silly idealists.  But the NrX guys pack more of a punch.  
> Their ideas are a bit like the insidious Sam Harris, who slathers his right 
> wing ideas in a tasty sauce of rationalism.  But I don't know if the right 
> answer is to take out their platforms.  It seems to me humiliation and humor 
> are the right paths.  (cf. Harris' interaction with Chomsky)

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] AI and argument

How can there be "convergent discourse" if there are no commonalities?

On 10/04/2017 11:56 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Peirce does not presume that there ARE any communalities.   He presumes only 
> that if there ARE any communalities, they are what truth would be.  

> On 10/04/2017 09:55 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> /*Imagining that there is a truth of the matter has the [pragmatic] effect 
>> of forcing us all into a convergent discourse and this effect is for Peirce 
>> the central meaning of the word truth.  He has great contempt for styles and 
>> fashions of criticism precisely because there is no commitment to 
>> convergence in such discourses.  Screw pluralism.

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Re: [FRIAM] AI and argument

Hm.  How about: Albert Einstein understands general relativity and has 
predicted the existence of gravitational waves.  Therefore, I claim we will 
find evidence for the existence of gravitational waves.

On 10/03/2017 05:02 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> So, for instance, lay out an argument for the principle below as an argument 
> that you would approve of.

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Re: [FRIAM] AI and argument

No, I think the fallacy is about transparency, for the most part.  Perhaps we 
could call it "appeal to an oracle" instead.  If you rely on an expert in 
building your argument, then presumably, if we tracked down that expert, she 
could delineate all the reasoning she used to arrive at her conclusion.  (Her 
conclusion being an axiom in your argument.)

If, however, you appeal to a non-expert in the subject and rely on her 
non-expert conclusion, then if you wanted to avoid the fallacy, you'd have to 
peel apart the non-expert's reasoning.  The non-expert's conclusion can't stand 
as an axiom.

This is, essentially, the argument for open-source.

On 10/03/2017 04:36 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Wait a minute, guys.  Isn't it difficult to have an argument for more than a
> few seconds without appealing to authority.   After all: where did you get
> that statistic?  Did you do the research yourself?  An argument of the
> following form is an explicit appeal to authority, yet it is not a fallacy,
> is it?  All statements by Donald Trump are true, Donald trump believes a
> great many immigrants are rapists and murderers, therefore a great many
> immigrants are rapists and murderers.  The argument valid but wrong, only
> because it starts from a false premise. 
> 
> So, if all arguments must eventually be based on premises derived from
> authorities, what separates appropriate and inappropriate appeals to
> authority?  In adequate citation?   

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Re: [FRIAM] AI and argument

Hm.  My example is simply an argument that I do NOT think succumbs to that 
fallacy.  Einstein is a reliable, but not completely unchallengeable, 
authority.  And if he is challenged, we can dig into the theory to find our own 
reasoning.

I'm curious if you believe all argument/reasoning can be *accurately* 
formalized?  Worse yet, do you believe that all argument can be reduced to 
deduction?

On 10/03/2017 05:13 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Aren't you missing a premise, if you are seeking a valid deductive argument?
> 
> What connects Albert's thought with your conclusion?

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Re: [FRIAM] AI and argument

Sheesh.  I suppose we'll continue to trade "pithy" little sentences without 
saying anything of substance.

So!  You're now contradicting your earlier statement and suggesting that Peirce 
*does* assume there are commonalities?

On 10/04/2017 12:48 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Turn that question around:  How can even have a discussion if we don't assume 
> that there is a truth of the matter?  "Truth" is what makes it possible to 
> have a discussion.
-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Chriopracter(sp) what takes insurances?

2017-10-11 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

I know this subject is controversial.  But it would be remiss not to point out 
that chiropracty may be pseudo-medicine.  But worse yet, it can be dangerous:

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/study-patients-should-be-warned-of-stroke-risk-before-chiropractic-neck-manipulation/
https://www.webmd.com/stroke/news/20140807/could-chiropractic-manipulation-of-your-neck-trigger-a-stroke#1

My personal experience with it was from back when I was a kid.  I was briefly 
(~10 minutes, maybe?) paralyzed from the waist down after an attempt to throw a 
kick in Tae Kwon Do.  The actual doctor (MD) diagnosed me with sacral 
lumbarization.  The medical choices were surgery or figure out how to live with 
it.  My parents took me to a chiropractor, who spouted all sorts of believable 
woo to us, provided some short-term relief in the form of endorphins from back 
popping, and thereby got me addicted to popping my back and neck.  I've had 
neck problems ever since.

To be clear, the chiropractor caused my neck problems.  (A good side-effect, 
though, was that I learned evidence-based physical therapy and exercises that 
have helped me cope with my spine problems for the rest of my life. ... silver 
lining, ya' know.)

Anyway, be careful.  Acupuncture is also placebo medicine.  But at least it's 
safe, unlike chiropracty.

On 10/10/2017 02:22 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote:
> Or is that assurances?
> Background Father had a few (many) heart palpy
> tations(AAH helping you're Tech Nech is getting *!&@!
> expensive!)  from   one that quoted me about 160 for the first visit and 50
> for each after.  Neighborly has been hit and mis on good recomendations. I
> simply don't know if that's typical or not.
> 
> I think we do agree it's worth wile asking around about recommendations and
> other opinions though.
> 
> So Here is me asking for second opinions:
> Hi all: Trying to manage 'Techneck' and TMJ.  basically looking for
> recommendations for one Insurance preferred.
> 
> What was your experience like?
> The ones what don't like insurancy what's a typical cost to get started?
> per visit.
> 
> Who do take insurance? If anyone knows? Did you have any luck? What other
> ways might help manage or fix TMJ and TechNech?
> Acupuncture School's been a great start.

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Re: [FRIAM] Chriopracter(sp) what takes insurances?

2017-10-11 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

I'm happy to say more off-list.  But just to finish out the thread.

Free advice is always worth what you pay, of course. 8^)  But I've mitigated 
nearly all of my spine problems by:

a) calisthenics, and
b) a standing desk (sitting will kill you!).

My calisthenics are a mix of martial arts, stretching, and "yoga-like stuff" 
(at least that's what friends who have some experience with yoga have told me). 
 I also do some posture exercises.  A search on youtube.com for posture, 
"forward hip", "forward head", etc. can yield productive results.  Just be 
skeptical with what you find.

One exercise that I've been doing since I started recovering from my childhood 
chiropractor/charlatan was an isometric exercise for my neck.  You stand 
straight with your hands against your head and push, first forward, then 
backward, then from each side.  Don't move, just push (not too hard) your head 
against your hand(s).  So, it's 4 positions.

1) two hand heels on your forehead and push forward with your neck muscles,
2) two hands clasped behind your head (not your neck!) and push backward,
3) right hand heel above your right ear, push rightward,
4) left hand heel above your left ear, push leftward.

Kinda like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kWF968uFXY  But I keep my 
neck straight and stand while I do it.  (Did I mention sitting will kill you?)

If you want professional advice for your neck, I'd go to a *sports* doctor.  
They have all sorts of experience with weird body mechanics problems.  There's 
also a nice build-up of evidence that yoga really works for spine problems ... 
though I have yet to try it.

None of this applies to TMJ, though.  I'm completely ignorant of it.

On 10/11/2017 10:48 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote:
> Oh thanks glen!
> THAT is very good to know. Purely For What it's worth the students I click
> with as much as possible avoid using vague langauge with helping manage the
> TMJ and cautionend me that chinese medicine his a little hit and mis for
> sniffing out the root what's causing TMJ. Basically the person I am pretty
> lucky to try is also studying to be a GP I simply don't know if that's a
> new thing to the SouthWest school or not he's the 3rd person their be into
> nutriction, health etc.
> 
> 
> Sufficed to say I was under the mis-impression that Chriopracties might be
> able to help.  thank Buddha for the caitonary tale.
> 
> 
> If Chriopracty(SP) is not a good idea after all.  Any idea where or to get
> help with from it? Just to keep the cards on the table: I tried PT several
> months ago for the TechNeck and some of the TMJ. It helped some but with
> only 5-6 essions it's hard to make solid progress.
> 
> What might be the next step then? BoddyWork specialist maybe? If their is
> such a thing?

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

Whew!  Fantastic thread!  I'm grateful to be able to witness it.

I'd like to point out that Peirce (and as Dave points out, many of us) are what 
I'd call "Grand Unified Modelers" (GUMmers): those who think there is, in R. 
Rosen's terms a "largest model" ... a penultimate language that if we could 
only learn and speak *that* language, what Nick's describing as Peirce's defn 
of "truth" would be accurate.

Solomon Feferman has worked on this problem and his (now old) initial 
submission is described here:

  Gödel, Nagel, minds and machines
  https://math.stanford.edu/~feferman/papers/godelnagel.pdf

It's probably important to read the whole thing.  But you could just jump to 
section "5. One way to straddle the mechanist and anti-mechanist positions."

It's also useful to note that Lee Rudolph submitted a relevant piece awhile 
back: "Logic in Modeling", wherein he cites Soare's definition of a 
"computation", which requires it be *definite* ... i.e. that all variables be 
bound, which would outlaw Feferman's "schematic axioms".  (... if I understand 
correctly ... I am not a logician, mathematician, or meta-mathematician... so 
your results may vary.)

Peirce's (and Nick's) insistence on the definiteness/fixedness of the 
universe's "formal system S", is what lies at the heart of the disagreement 
between Nick and Dave.  I think it's also important to point out that BOTH Nick 
and Dave COULD BE wrong.  Dave's idea that "mathematical logic" is impoverished 
may not be right if something like Feferman's solution could work.  And Nick's 
idea that convergence within the universe's formal system, S, implies truth may 
be wrong if something like the problem Feferman (and Dave) are trying to solve 
actually is the case.

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

Perfectly stated, Marcus!

It might also be useful to note that drugs like LSD, whether Dave meant them 
this way or not, are VERY good belief demolishers.  This is, I think, the heart 
of why psilocybin helps some terminally ill finish their lives in a happier 
state.  I also think it's why cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is more 
successful than most other talk therapies, because a crucial component is to 
challenge one's absolutist and/or apocalyptic language.  (I.e. they encourage 
you to replace "I can't stand it when" with "I have trouble when" ... etc.)

The benefit of (at least methodological) pluralism is, precisely, to help 
"crack the cosmic egg" we often find ourselves trapped in ... one that we've 
often built for ourselves, even.

On 10/17/2017 10:45 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I spent much time as young person hanging out in the university park blocks 
> going after the Christian apologists.  But they were the ones gas lighting 
> the passers-by.   Being an anti- gas lighter – a demolisher of belief -- is 
> not being a gas lighter.   The complement of the gas-lighted message and it 
> is a bigger, freer space, not a manipulation of innocents.

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

Excellent!  So, now, if we listen to Dave with some empathy, we can ask him if 
his "local truth" is similar to the naive realist's "with respect to what you 
or I think"?  Dave?

FWIW, I predict Dave will respond with something like the assertion that 
locality (scope) is set by the language.  And so, it's less about what one 
*thinks* and more about the platform/context/truth-preserving-machine in which 
the people find themselves squirming around.  If such truth-scope is defined in 
that way, then we're a lot closer to Peirce's concept of reality being whatever 
consequences our language *deduces* to ... whatever sentences are evaluated as 
true in that language.  And, here Dave and Peirce agree.  Change the language, 
and you change what evaluates to true in that language.

On 10/17/2017 11:41 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Taking up your challenge as penance:  A Naïve realist would, I suppose, say 
> that there is a real world out there that we have clues to.  Sometimes we get 
> it right; sometimes we get it wrong.  It's a dualist position because there 
> are two kinds of stuff in the world, the world stuff out there and the mind 
> stuff in here.  Truth can apply to both kinds of stuff.  I E, there is a 
> truth-of-the-matter with respect to what you think or what I think, as well 
> as a truth of the matter with respect to whether what we think is true of the 
> world. 

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

On 10/17/2017 10:50 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>  by asserting another definition of Truth, but so far nobody has done that. 

Heh, now you're playing a new game! 8^)  Plenty of us *have* provided other 
definitions of truth.  As in active listening exercises, perhaps you could make 
an attempt to describe a naive realist's definition of truth that differs from 
Peirce's?  Or perhaps you could describe Hoffman's interface perception theory 
(which I think is an alternative to what you're saying Peirce's is)?

-- 
☣ gⅼеɳ


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

Well, to be clear, I think the idea of your sensor-web-effector individuals 
squirming in a machine is perfectly consistent with Peirce's conception of 
reality.  The disconnect lies in the extent to which that machine (in which the 
sensor-web-effector individuals squirm) is "fixed once and for all", as 
Feferman puts it.  Peirce's conception of reality seems to rely on that 
fixation, that definiteness, the one, fixed, master structure in which we all 
swim.  Feferman's observation that working mathematicians are at once Platonic, 
yet don't limit themselves to any single formalism, seems to argue from your 
perspective: that reality is not fixed, definite, and if a sensor-web-effector 
individual becomes fixated AS IF the reality in which it swims were fixed, then 
that limited delusion is what it calls "truth" (a truth, the truth, etc.).  
Rosen would agree with you as well, by claiming that our mathematics, logic, 
and "inferential entailment" methods are impoverished when compared to reality 
("causal entailment").

But it's important to look at Peirce's synoptic understanding of logic and 
math.  A good example is his existential graphs, which encompassed more than 
first order logic, including higher-order and modal logic.  My guess is Peirce 
would readily entertain ideas like Feferman's schematic axiomatic systems as a 
way to enrich our logics so as to handle the dynamism of working 
mathematicians, and perhaps that pointed out by you or Rosen.

On 10/17/2017 01:18 PM, Prof David West wrote:
> Nothing about language or thought, but a hint of the truth-preserving
> machine in which people squirm that Glen described.

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

2017-10-19 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

But when you say "single entity", you're also implying a universe in which that 
single entity sits.  I think in one of your posts, you put off talking about 
where the inputs/outputs come from/go to.  We don't have to go all the way to 
multiple entities in order to continue the comparison of the 3 defns we have so 
far: 1) Nick's asymptote, 2) naive realist's "out there", and 3) your fatigue, 
lock, channelization.

We can go the route of comparing the sensor-web-effector's (SWE) structure as a 
*model* of the universe in which the entity sits, assuming there's only 1 SWE 
entity.

1) When the interactive/adaptive SWE settles on a stable pattern, that's true 
according to (1).
2) When the SWE's structure matches the universe's structure, that's true 
according to (2).
3) When the SWE's structure decouples from its universe in one of those 3 ways, 
that's a truth/failure according to (3).

If we can begin discussing in this way, we can address things like Marcus' 
recent post, and relations between (1), (2), and (3), as well as the 
distinction Frank raised awhile back about validity vs. soundness of a model 
(as well as all the other people/ideas we've mentioned).  I also think we can 
get to the ideas Steve wants to address without adding multiple SWEs.  At least 
in agent-based modeling, we distinguish one type of inter-agent communication 
as purely environment-mediated.  So, the model effectively reduces to only 1 
agent and its environment, regardless of the structure of that environment.

On 10/19/2017 11:34 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> Nick's definition arises at the level of a group, while mine is restricted to 
> the condition of a single entity.

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[FRIAM] Postmodernism for Rationalists

2017-11-17 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

HTML:
https://palegreendot.net/rrg_notes/2017/10/09/rrg-reading-notes.html
PDF:
https://palegreendot.net/assets/2017-10-09/postmodernism_for_rationalists.pdf

I appreciated these 2 slides:

> • Postmodernism at its best
> 
>   · Not dogmatic and ideological
>   · Focuses on human values
>   · Allows you to approach and understand other subjects and viewpoints
>   · Acknowledges that the territory might require multiple maps
> 
> • Postmodernism at its worst
> 
>   · Used to push shoddy political agendas
>   · Cargo cult ideology
>   · Used to rationalize and excuse asocial behavior
>   · Results in existential loneliness
> 


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Re: [FRIAM] Postmodernism for Rationalists

2017-11-20 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

FWIW, I view existentialism as a re-grounding of meaning, onto "what it's like" 
to be human (or any thinking thing).  Postmodernism is simply the realization 
that meaning *can* be re-grounded at will.  It focuses less on fixing/fixating 
on humans and more on our ability to change what we're fixated on.  It just so 
happens that humans are masters of re-grounding.  So, lots of postmodern stuff 
ends up being about humans and how/that they re-ground.

Read this way, existentialism is completely antithetic to postmodernism.

On 11/18/2017 07:53 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> And, what is the relation between PoMo and Existentialism?   I take 
> existentialism to be the doctrine that all meaning in life, if human life has 
> any meaning, is generated or asserted by the humans that live it.

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Re: [FRIAM] Postmodernism for Rationalists

2017-11-20 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

FWIW, I view existentialism as a re-grounding of meaning, onto "what it's like" 
to be human (or any thinking thing).  Postmodernism is simply the realization 
that meaning *can* be re-grounded at will.  It focuses less on fixing/fixating 
on humans and more on our ability to change what we're fixated on.  It just so 
happens that humans are masters of re-grounding.  So, lots of postmodern stuff 
ends up being about humans and how/that they re-ground.

Read this way, existentialism is completely antithetic to postmodernism.

On 11/18/2017 07:53 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> And, what is the relation between PoMo and Existentialism?   I take 
> existentialism to be the doctrine that all meaning in life, if human life has 
> any meaning, is generated or asserted by the humans that live it.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Postmodernism for Rationalists

2017-11-20 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

I don't know anyone who still claims to be (or think as) a postmodernist.  The 
temporal context implied by "post-" simply indicates a stage we've gone 
through, not a centralized, coherent way of thinking.  The transition referred 
to by "postmodern" simply indicates that we lost our *assumed*, fixed, 
foundation.  Modern had a firm, fixed footing.  We lost that and now we'll 
always be post modern.

Attempts to replace the previous (modern) footing with some new, unitary, 
coherent foundation have been successfully resisted.  But it seems to me like 
we're arriving at a constraint-based way of thinking.  Yes, *within* some set 
of constraints, there's plenty of semantic wiggle.  The constraints 
circumscribe a set of equivalent re-groundings.  But it's clearly nonsense to 
re-ground to something outside the constraints.  I.e. we're approaching 
something modelable by things like Kripke semantics.  Given a language, some 
things make sense and others don't.  Change languages and what makes (versus 
what doesn't make) sense changes.

If we get to the point in science where we can seriously talk about 
consciousness, then perhaps that will provide a new, fixed, grounding for 
meaning.  But until then, perhaps our best bet is to categorize types of 
language(s) and types of sentences in those languages to further constrain the 
wiggle room that postmodernism originally pointed out.

On 11/18/2017 10:15 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> PoMo seems "mature" enough now that it, itself is wanting to be received 
> seriously (trying to rationalize itself to rationalists?).   It's 
> (unfortunate) association with the Beat culture (my experience growing up was 
> that the Beats were mostly the over-30 dropout men who were trying to horn in 
> on the youth culture of the Hippies, especially (surprise!) the girls) and 
> aspects of the (subsequent) drop-out culture exemplified by the Merry 
> Pranksters.
> 
> But what comes after/follows-from PoMo?   Post-Postmodernism?  MetaModernism? 
>   A plenitude of *modernisms (as suggested by the PoMo aesthetic?)
> 
> From the Wikipedia Post Postmodernism entry:
> 
> /Salient features of postmodernism are normally thought to include the 
> ironic play with styles, citations and narrative levels,//^[6] 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-postmodernism#cite_note-6> //a 
> metaphysical skepticism or //nihilism 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism>//towards a “//grand narrative 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_narrative>//” of Western culture,//^[7] 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-postmodernism#cite_note-7> //a preference 
> for the virtual at the expense of the real (or more accurately, a fundamental 
> questioning of what 'the real' constitutes)//^[8] 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-postmodernism#cite_note-8> //and a 
> “waning of affect”//^[9] 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-postmodernism#cite_note-9> //on the part 
> of the subject, who is caught up in the free interplay of virtual, endlessly 
> reproducible signs inducing a state of consciousness similar to 
> schizophrenia./^/[10]
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-postmodernism#cite_note-10>/
> 
> All I know about PoPoMo I just read in Wikipedia (how non-PoMo of me?) but 
> recognize some of the ideas and names referenced there.   Eric Gan's 
> PostMillenialism struck me for it's dismissal (judgement?) of PoMo as 
> "victimary thinking"... a corollary of nihilism?   I don't really take Gan's 
> Generative Anthropology seriously (though it has interesting ideas) and DO 
> (against my personal convenience) believe in a postCapitalist/postDemocracy 
> (r)evolution on the cusp of happening (perhaps even in my lifetime?).
> 
> I also find something interesting in this description of metaModernism (same 
> source):
> 
> /As examples of the metamodern sensibility Vermeulen and van den Akker 
> cite the 'informed naivety', 'pragmatic idealism' and 'moderate fanaticism' 
> of the various cultural responses to, among others, climate change, the 
> financial crisis, and (geo)political instability./
> 
> /The prefix 'meta' here refers not to some reflective stance or repeated 
> rumination, but to Plato's //metaxy <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaxy>//, 
> which intends a movement between opposite poles as well as beyond.//^[25] 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-postmodernism#cite_note-25> /

-- 
☣ gⅼеɳ

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Re: [FRIAM] Downward Hicausation

2017-11-21 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

Also Known As: Beware equating experience with existence.

On 11/21/2017 02:00 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Beware the tendency to think that if you can't immediately measure something 
> then it doesn't exist.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Grad Students Would Be Hit By Massive Tax Hike Under House GOP Plan : NPR

2017-11-21 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

Hm.  I suppose I'm a fan of the *category*.  I was a "co-op" student in college 
and it did wonders for me.  But there was no agreement that I'd definitely take 
a job with them after graduation.  So, perhaps I got the better end of the 
deal.  It wouldn't have bothered me much to sell some of my future to my co-op 
employer, though, because I only co-op'ed at the 1 company.  A friend hopped 
companies a couple of times for his co-op terms and eventually went for a 
masters and got a job at a totally different company.

On 11/21/2017 02:17 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Oh boy, careful what you wish for:  Indentured Servitude.The legislative 
> things to do are to prevent just that.
> Bring back pensions and give an incentive to stay for five years.
> 
> https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/11/the-push-for-education-programs-that-pay-people-as-they-learn/546329/
> 
> Fadulu: Even though a company has invested in an apprentice, couldn't the 
> apprentice leave and go elsewhere for a job that pays better? It sounds risky 
> from a business perspective.
> 
> Campa-Najjar: There are certain agreements that could prevent that. Unions, 
> when they do apprenticeships, they just say, "If we train you, you have 
> committed to staying for five years."  It's almost like the military. ... 
> Maybe there's just [a need for] accountability on both sides [when it comes 
> to companies and their employees]. The employer and employee come into this 
> relationship where we're going to train you and you will work for us for the 
> next five years. We'll put you on this curriculum where every couple months 
> you get a promotion. ... So I think there are some things legislatively we 
> could do to make that happen.

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

2017-11-01 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

Thanks for posting your intro materials to purpose of the universe.  I haven't 
looked at them, yet, but will (probably next week).

But since I'm making a feeble attempt to review the "living systems as entropy 
maximizers" theme for another meeting, the below paragraph of yours tweaked me. 
 It strikes me that Smolin's "maximal variety" (e.g. [⛤]) conception meshes 
well with England's conception of physical (non-living) adaptation, as well as 
Constructor Theory's "any non-impossible recipe".  The first two (Smolin and 
England) seem to be intuitionistic in that they imply a recipe (follow the path 
with the most options), whereas Deutsch/Marletto are (perhaps) more classical 
(in logic/math terms) by allowing any recipe that doesn't contradict known 
constraints.

I *think* it's a mistake to read Smolin's conception as implied by the Marletto 
quote, which was about Bohm and Wigner.  I'm ignorant of what Bohm and Wigner 
actually suggested.  But Smolin seems to propose that things like stars exhibit 
(some) similar properties to living systems, especially in their ability to 
"maintain themselves as constant source of light and heat", despite the high 
entropy bath in which they sit.  So, when considering things like cosmological 
constants and how they seem "tuned for life" (e.g. [⛧]), it's important to 
avoid putting the cart before the horse.  It's not that the universe is 
tailored to produce life.  It's that the universe is what it is and life-like 
systems just happen to be a very likely outcome in this universe.

I'd *love* it if you (or anyone) would argue with me and help me refine my 
thinking or, better yet, change my mind and be able to explain how Smolin, 
England, and Deutsch/Marletto are fundamentally different!

[⛤] http://www.johnboccio.com/research/quantum/notes/150602938.pdf
[⛧] https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0702115.pdf

On 10/29/2017 12:57 PM, Robert Wall wrote:
> 
> In the context of *information *being another physically fundamental entity 
> in the universe along with *energy *and *matter*, I brought up David Deutsch 
> <https://www.edge.org/video/constructor-theory>'s Constructor Theory 
> <https://aeon.co/essays/how-constructor-theory-solves-the-riddle-of-life> at 
> the FRIAM as a very recent contender to build a new physics based on this 
> uber-reductionist viewpoint. I haven't heard much more progress on this over 
> the last two years and I think Deutsch is relying on his postdoctoral 
> research associate, Chiara Marletto, to bring this into the domain of 
> biology.  Constructor Theory is to address this conclusion: "The conclusion 
> that the laws of physics must be tailored to produce biological adaptations 
> is amazingly erroneous."  So this theory would indeed compete with Smolin's 
> Cosmological Natural Selection Theory.  But, Constructor Theory might be very 
> much in line with Jeremy England's Physics Theory of Life
> <https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-theory-of-life-20170726/>
>  (Note: this is from /QuantaMagazine/, which we also discussed) and, perhaps 
> with Nobel-Prize-winning physical chemist Ilya Prigogine views derived from 
> the Second Law of Thermodynamics and self-organizing dissipative structures.  
> Fun stuff to read about ...

-- 
☣ gⅼеɳ

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

2017-11-06 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

Excellent!  Yes, complement is a much more appropriate relation between the 
ideas than compete, I think.  Thanks.

On 11/06/2017 11:08 AM, Robert Wall wrote:
> 
> Actually, I think I said that Smolin's idea "competes" with Mareletto's.  
> That was sloppy; I meant that Smolin's theory can exist in the same space 
> with Constructor Theory as an explanatory system, but one that operates on 
> the macro scale (cosmological), especially with respect to initial conditions 
> (constraints) to our universe. Constructor Theory proposes a physical 
> universe at the microscale that could start here and unfold with new 
> constraints "evolving" from earlier ones.  I see the heavier elements (e.g., 
> carbon ... gold) being generated from later generation suns as a possible 
> example of this. England seems to take this history into the abiogenesis by 
> appealing to the idea of metabolic homeostasis with the production of 
> dissipative systems being a likely outcome in this universe. Anyway, I should 
> have used the term "complements" versus "competes." 

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

2017-11-06 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

Heh, I'm too dense to understand how Sabine's rant is relevant.  Are you 
suggesting that England, Smolin, and Marletto are tossing fiddled falsifiable 
noodles at the wall?  Or are you suggesting my hunt for similarities in the 3 
models is something like her Dawid fallacy (the light's better by the lamp 
post)?  Or, perhaps, are you suggesting that entropy maximization is an example 
of trying to characterize an entire space of possibilities and, hence, 
something Sabine would appreciate?

On 11/06/2017 08:54 AM, Carl Tollander wrote:
> Hey, don't hold back, Sabine.
> 
> http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2017/11/how-popper-killed-particle-physics.html?m=1
> 
> 
> On Nov 5, 2017 11:09, "┣glen┫" <geprope...@gmail.com 
> <mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> OK.  So, I  hear you saying (please correct me!) that you do see a 
> similarity in all 3 (England, Smolin, and Marletto) up to their attempts to 
> find a non-teleological explanation for the structures to which we tend to 
> ascribe teleology (teleonomic).  You're right that I agree up to that point.
> 
> But what I was looking for was a deeper similarity: the core concept of 
> all 3 is that the answer should be found by examining the space of possible 
> states surrounding any given system.  In 2 of them (England and Smolin), the 
> proposal is entropy maximization.  In the 3rd (Marletto), the proposal is 
> less constructive, but still focused on the circumscribed set of states or 
> distributions of those states.  In your prior post, you posited that Marletto 
> might be more closely aligned with England, but England *contra* Smolin.  My 
> response was that Smolin seems to be saying much the same thing as England.  
> So, if Marletto is consistent with England, then Marletto might also be 
> consistent with Smolin.  And my stronger assertion is that England does not 
> seem to contradict Smolin.
> 
> If, in Marletto, we set the "recipe" to entropy maximization, then all 3 
> seem quite consistent.  What am I missing?

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] death

Yes, you're right to classify the illusion of self along with Smith's 
preemptive registration, more insidious, I think, than premature registration.  
Identifying an object as atomic lies at the heart of a lot of our problems.  We 
could just as easily call it a discretization artifact.  Here, the "continuous 
fluid self" shines the light on the fact that discretization problems arise in 
both time and space.  Unless you're willing to admit that, for example, your 
ancestors from 10 generations ago and 10 generations hence are *also* part of 
your self, then you've got to discretize "self" in time.  And unless you're 
willing to allow some anonymous African or Alpha Centaurian to also be part of 
your self, then you've got to discretize in space.

Such discretization is a great method *if* you've got a well-formed set of use 
cases to engineer toward.  But most conversations where "self" is bandied about 
willy nilly, a) the use cases aren't particular cases, at all, they're more 
like usage patterns, if they're well-formed at all, and b) conversations tend 
to wander and "self" under one usage pattern is magically translated into 
another usage pattern, making the whole conversation into nonsense.

So, practicality demands we abandon the stupid word "self" entirely.  If you 
want to extend that practicality into your metaphysics, then so be it.  But the 
metaphysics is irrelevant because practically, there is no self.

On 10/30/2017 07:42 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I'm curious about your reference to "the temporally extended self".   If it 
> isn't *real* it certainly is a very strong illusion that my *instantaneous 
> self* often indulges in.   Flow states, peak awareness, enlightenment, etc.  
> all DO seem to point or trend toward "being in the instant"... but 
> nevertheless, there is also a persistent illusion of  a continuous fluid self 
> that IS temporally extended.   In fact, by the some measure, it would seem 
> that is the very definition of Objectness which I believe Selfness inherits 
> from.  Perhaps Brian Cantwell Smith has had something to say about all of 
> this?  It has been decades since I read him... maybe I can find my copy of 
> "Origin of Objects"?  Or maybe it is just a faulty memory of an illusory 
> temporally extended self?

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Re: [FRIAM] death

Heh, as long as you identify the particulars of the use case, then "both-and" 
is intuitive and correct.  But when someone makes an ambiguous statement with 
no particulars and makes no serious attempt to describe the context in which 
their statement is supposed to be understood, then it's definitely NOT 
"both-and".  Without the particulars, it becomes nonsense and one can only 
answer "Mu".

On 11/02/2017 11:47 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Another thing that helps me with Friam disagreements is to think in terms of 
> "both-and" rather than "either-or".  In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevya says to A, 
> "you're right".  B objects and Tevya says again, "You're right".  C says that 
> they can't both be right and Tevya says, "You're also right".

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] death

On 10/30/2017 08:34 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> Do humans become more specialized with age?  I propose that we go through 
> cycles of specialization/generalization.  Babies are optimized for two 
> things, ingesting and metabolizing nourishment (eliminating waste is a 
> sub-process this) and triggering adults to provide nourishment and protection 
> from predators and the elements.   As vertebrates go, we spend a LONG time in 
> this specialization (until weaned and diaper trained?).

Although this may sound like hair-splitting, I don't think it is.  I don't 
think babies are AT ALL specialized to ingesting, metabolism, and manipulation 
of their adults.  I think babies are maximally generalized.  They're not good 
at *any* particular thing.  Their feces isn't well processed.  They don't 
easily focus on things (faces being a well documented exception).  They can't 
really grasp things well.  Etc.  So, if they're specialized at anything, I'd 
say they're only specialists at specializing.  Why spend so long in that 
specializing phase?  (And why do we have babies that are so generalized and 
vulnerable?) Because the specialties they must learn are HARD to learn.

The semi-universality of the constructors that are humans is very difficult to 
wander into and navigate once almost-there.  When a kid finally *does* learn to 
do some particular thing, they milk it for all it's worth!  When you finally 
learn to manipulate your mom into feeding you, you'll do it as often as you can 
... because it feels good.  It doesn't just feel good to eat.  It also feels 
good to exercise your new specialty.

> As babies become ambulatory and then learn language, they become generalists. 
>   At some point in their growth into adults, they may at least dabble at 
> specialization... picking a sport or a topic of study to excel at.

Everything you say below the above (snipped) was way too focused on the 
(illusory) *mind* and *thought*.  Yes, you mention lots of specialties that 
involve motor skills and subsumption of conscious to unconscious tasks.  But 
you're talking/writing as if the mind controls the body, which is clearly not 
the case.  So my argument above, that babies are more general than toddlers are 
more general than teens are more general than adults allows a body-centric 
conception of specialization.  That mind-centric stuff is nonsense.

But that doesn't mean your main objection isn't valid.  Yes, we can, to greater 
or lesser extent, re-generalize, re-specialize, etc.  That's the essence of the 
claim that humans are the most universal of the animals as constructors.  Some 
ways this can happen are psychedelic drugs, meditation, new exercise regimens, 
as well as the typical (traumatic) events like divorce, losing a job, moving to 
a foreign land, significant illness, etc.

However, my claim would be that the universality is weakened as we age, not 
that we can't (somewhat) re-generalize at any point in our path to death, only 
that the extent to which we re-generalize lessens.

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Re: [FRIAM] death

Right.  Of course.  But it's very telling that you put the word *purpose* last. 
 It is that purpose that sets the entire context, including the appropriateness 
of any definition in the lexicon used while engaged in the project.  You seem 
to have ignored my point about use cases and how they set the tolerances on 
discretization error.

On 11/02/2017 10:21 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I am about to go to my boneyard and search for two specific concrete blocks 
> which I remember to have put there when I took the large woodstove out of my 
> sunroom, and trust they are still there (or wherever I actually put them) and 
> that when I find them and brush off any accumulated detritus and load them on 
> my garden cart, I can haul them back to my house where I will use them in the 
> same mode as I did last year, only in a different location.  This all depends 
> on a strong illusion of my "self", on the objectness of said blocks and 
> woodstove and garden cart, and a continuity of "self" roughly ranging back to 
> the time when I dismantled to the present as I plan and scheme to the future 
> when, in fact, I am pretty confident I will find the woodstove perched on top 
> of those very same blocks again.   Of course, I may change plans mid-course 
> if I find another set of blocks with more appropriate or promising qualities 
> for the purpose..

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Re: [FRIAM] death

I am (or thought I was) familiar with the idea.  But it should be clear that 
the wikipedia entry is GUILTY of the exact problem I'm trying to point out.  
So, it's not only not helpful, but perpetuates the problem.  Witness:

"Object constancy, similar to Jean Piaget's object permanence, describes the 
phase when the child understands that the mother has a separate identity and is 
truly a separate individual."

In other words, object constancy is precisely the false conclusion.  Perhaps 
there's other literature that talks specifically about how the *fiction* of 
object constancy affects/retards future development?  If you know of that 
literature, perhaps you could point to it?  Or, better yet, explain it in your 
own words ... which I enjoy more and find much more useful. 8^)

On 11/02/2017 10:32 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> You guys might be interested in the Psychoanalytic concept of object 
> constancy.
> 
> See
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mahler
> 
> Many philosophical discussions are explained by psychoanalysts in terms of 
> object constancy.  And the self is also an object Psychoanalytic speaking.  
> The old Chestnut about whether a tree falling in a forest makes a sound is an 
> example.

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Re: [FRIAM] death

Awesome!  I appreciate the link, though reading my DSM V entry on BPD muddies 
my water. 8^)  From your words and those of the link (Mahari), I can't help but 
think about patterns of sensory stimuli, as opposed to "objects", per se.  
While I completely reject the imputing of object-hood onto the repeating 
patterns, I do *not* reject the idea that those who have trouble inducing 
patterns from their experiences would have trouble developing appropriate to 
their environment.

In other words, I would reword what you say to something like "... when the 
familiar patterns of stimulus are not present."  I think it's useful to reword 
it that way because it would allow similar reactions to, e.g. a loved one's 
traumatic brain injury, where their personality changes in a fundamental way.  
Although not that similar, I'm reminded of Shannon Allen's testimony in the 
Bowe Bergdahl trial: 

> "Instead of being his wife, I‘m his caregiver," Reuters reported she 
> testified. "Which doesn’t mean I love him any less, but it’s a very different 
> dynamic. We can’t even hold hands anymore without me prying open his hand and 
> putting mine in."

If we could abandon or soften this silly atomicity fiction, we might get a 
better handle on subtle dynamics like that.

On 11/02/2017 11:16 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Hmm.  In my own words: perhaps you've known people who "fall to pieces" when 
> the object of their attachment isn't present.  This often causes that 
> "object" to flee.  Think of boy-girl relationships in adolescence which 
> sometimes are messed up because of the imprint of the past.
> 
> Frank
> 
> Frank Wimberly
> Phone (505) 670-9918
> 
> On Nov 2, 2017 12:09 PM, "Frank Wimberly" <wimber...@gmail.com 
> <mailto:wimber...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> Lack of object constancy after childhood is definitely considered to be 
> symptomatic.  If you don't believe something exists unless you are 
> experiencing it, including yourself, you will have a difficult time.
> 
> Here is a link:
> 
> 
> http://borderlinepersonality.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/06/lack-of-object.html
>  
> <http://borderlinepersonality.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/06/lack-of-object.html>

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Re: [FRIAM] KRACK

2017-10-20 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

Ah!  I see. So, the idea is that even if the router-managed network is 
compromised, if we always rely on device-to-device encryption/conflation, then 
it doesn't matter if the network is compromised.  Hm.  I'm not convinced.  It 
seems like there should be meta-data and packet envelope data that would still 
be useful to the red team.  Plus, I have no idea how my roku or playstation, 
both of which provide access to my credit card, authenticate.  I'd like to 
think they use end-to-end encryption.  But ...  And then there are things like 
my DLNA server.  I'd like to think that I've done everything correctly and a 
black hat couldn't hack my server from my playstation.  But ...  And, of 
course, I've configured Renee's Windows 10 machine so that it doesn't use the 
firewall while on the home network.  I suppose I should change that, too.  
[sigh]

If it weren't for that serial-killer-style van with the fake looking logo on 
the side, parked outside my house every month or so, I wouldn't worry so much. 
8^)

On 10/20/2017 04:11 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Add extra (vpn/tor) encryption where it matters [by using this device].

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Re: [FRIAM] KRACK

2017-10-20 Thread gⅼеɳ ☣

But if I understand correctly, my TV and printer will remain the weakest links, 
regardless.  And as long as those are present, whatever credentials my router 
requires are compromisable.  So, a possible solution is to use one subnet for 
the devices for which you don't have patches and a more trusted subnet for 
those that are patched.  ... perhaps even different routers.

On 10/20/2017 03:52 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> The recently discovered WPA2 weakness allows attackers to decrypt information 
> sent over WiFi that would otherwise be encrypted by your WiFi password.
> 
> Being that WPA2 is the most widely adopted wireless encryption protocol in 
> the world right now, the scope of this issue is enormous. This vulnerability 
> affects almost every device that has WiFi capability. Whether it’s a Smart 
> TV, IP camera, phone or computer, it’s safe to assume that it’s data can be 
> intercepted and/or altered by an attacker.
> 
> We’re currently preparing a software update for Flter that will eliminate any 
> risk of data intercept while being used as an access point or client 
> (repeater). Flter will automatically update when it’s connected to power and 
> internet.
> 
> Just keep in mind that even though Flter will be updated your other devices 
> might still be vulnerable to attack. You will want to make sure that you 
> update them as soon as a patch is released by their manufacturers.
> 
> While you’re waiting for software updates for your mobile devices and 
> computers we recommend using our VPN client while connected to WiFi. The 
> encrypted tunnel that the VPN creates when you connect prevents 
> Man-in-the-middle attacks. This is the sort of attack that the WPA2 
> vulnerability puts you at risk for.

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Re: [FRIAM] death

On 10/30/2017 12:01 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Odd that some conservatives give embedded worth to lives that have 
> demonstrated none yet (pro-lifers), and change the rules as life progresses.  
>  Why the act of faith in the first place?  Why no conservatives advocating 
> one-child-per-family, or income requirements for reproduction?

Our universality depends fundamentally on babies.  In order for progress to be 
made, the old farts, with all their outdated ideas, must die so the young turds 
can do things their way.  Sure, we want to keep the old farts around and 
exploit them as best we can.  But at some point, those fossilized thoughts need 
to be forgotten.  We need those babies.  Pro-lifers never seem to be reflective 
enough to make this sort of argument against abortion.  They're so strangled by 
 their individualism.

The trick is, as you point out, we don't need so many from the same gene 
pool(s)!  Again, perhaps my Bastard status biases me.  The (socialist?) idea 
that we all end up rearing the kids the breeders produce was built in from the 
start.  What we need are large incentives to steer the coming generations 
according to policy.  If we want more STEM, then encourage more STEM couples to 
have more babies.  Never mind the income requirements, split things like the 
SAT (or IQ) tests into variously weighted incentive programs.  If you (and your 
mate) score in the top quartile in analogical thinking, you get 7 baby 
vouchers.  Good math scores gets you 5 vouchers.  Good language scores get you 
3. 8^)  And vouchers are non-transferable and temporally limited.  If you have 
more than 7 babies, then you're on your own for the remainder.

Of course, it has to be incentive based, or we'll retread some of our past 
mistakes.

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Re: [FRIAM] death

Hm.  I suppose we could think of a UTM in the same way we think of an ANN.  A 
large enough ANN becomes a look up table.  A UTM could be conceived (simply?) 
as some sort of an index for all the algorithms (possible or real).  Rather 
than extending out in time (complicated, infinitely extensible tape), it's 
extended out in space and hierarchically in "orders".  (I feel sure this is 
someone else's idea, but have no idea where I got it ... sounds a bit like the 
parallel worlds interpretation of QM, though ... maybe Deutsch?)  Given a 
spatially extended UTM, (specific algorithm) death would *not* be necessary.  
But some conception of interruptibility  or parallelism seems necessary also.  
If a UTM couldn't stop, mid-algorithm, to work on some other problem, then 
perhaps death is still needed?

On 10/30/2017 01:32 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> My actual question is more like:   Is death universal or is a finite lifetime 
> just a sufficient solution found by evolution (and carbon-based life)?   Must 
> memories be purged for progress, or is it just that that they _can_ be 
> without particular harm to the species?
> 
> There was a piece on 60 minutes last night about Adolfo Kaminsky who forged 
> thousands of official documents to protect Jews in France.   His colleagues 
> reflected on their accomplishments and didn't reflect on danger in what they 
> were doing at the time, perhaps because they were so young.
> 
> It could be that the high-order aspects of wisdom are cognitively too costly 
> (operationally) at some point.   Diminishing returns on complexity.. Delays 
> on action are as dangerous as imprudent actions.

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Re: [FRIAM] death

Good question.  But I tend to think the problem is less about plasticity and 
more about specialization.  As we've seen, specialized (artificial) 
intelligence is relatively easy, compare termites to humans.  So-called general 
intelligence (or universal constructors) is much harder.  The distance between 
any old TM and a UTM seems quite large.

Whether, once specialized, an AI can generalize is an open question.  Will we 
*grow* general AI?  Or will we construct it from scratch to be general?

On 10/30/2017 01:12 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> But will this be true of AIs as well?   Assuming that this fossilization 
> occurs, is that a human idiosyncrasy that plasticity reduces?   Perhaps it 
> could be treated with drugs, electroshock therapy, stem cells, PTSD 
> medication, etc.?

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Re: [FRIAM] death

Molting is a fantastic metaphor.  But do we have any species to look to that 
molts for greater generality instead of greater specialty?  I suppose we could 
argue that some species jump from one specialty to another via molting.  But 
that passes the buck to some set of processes that hold the program for 
specialty selection.

On 10/30/2017 01:52 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> So maybe AIs will have molting stages? 

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Re: [FRIAM] death

I used to argue with my parents (a lot) about whether or not humans were 
different from animals, mostly because my mom claimed animals don't have souls. 
 She's right, of course, because nobody has souls. 8^) But I think what it, 
ultimately devolves to is that humans come very close to universal 
constructors.  With the reflective layers of brain and opposable thumbs, we can 
do almost anything ... with the right resources, right context, etc.

So, at least in these arguments, it boiled down less to inherent worth (like 
depth of development) and more to productivity, but not the narrow productivity 
of, say, termites or such, but a wide productivity.  To be sure, my mom was 
more into embedded worth, whereas my dad was more "what have you done for us 
lately".  It was a good mix, though, because recessive traits can, eventually, 
come in critically handy.  (Perhaps that Trump voter knows how to play guitar 
or refine gasoline?)

In this (Christian?) context, animals like pigs and dogs are more like tools or 
articles of comfort than anything that deserves the Respect we give to humans.  
It is and always has been a disgusting way to think, to me ... perhaps the best 
confirming evidence I was adopted and have none of their biology (barring some 
shared bacteria, I suppose).  Even if I take the arguments that, as earthly 
gods, we're obliged to be good "stewards" of the creatures we OWN, it's still 
repugnant.  I can't even claim to own the tree in our backyard, which the 
government would claim we own ... a tree that's prettier and way older than I 
am.

On 10/28/2017 04:13 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> One difference between flies and pigs and humans is progressively deeper 
> development of each, if for no other reason than lifespan.   Paradoxes there 
> too:   My fondness and loyalty to my 12 year old dog was deeper than it is 
> for many humans. (Fat chance I'd send a 75-year-old, racist, redneck, 
> Joe-the-Trump voter thousands of dollars for cancer treatment.)   If it is 
> depth of development that matters, then as a society we ought to invest more 
> in retired people as their uniqueness is deeper and also more fragile.    But 
> instead we celebrate births even thought infants are mere hardware that won't 
> have consciousness for months after birth.
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Re: [FRIAM] death