[FRIAM] Somethint to talk about tomorrow

[Owen Densmore]

Is there any way we could pass around pdf's or just text papers we  
share with each other?  I no longer have MS Office available, nor  
does anyone in my household, and I would like to avoid getting it.  I  
think I got the right stuff via textedit, I attach the pdf, but I'm  
not sure I got it all.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Doc5.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 49276 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20070609/3b22d42d/attachment.pdf 
-------------- next part --------------


     -- Owen


On Jun 7, 2007, at 11:35 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

> All,
>
> Every once in a while, I run into a passage so sharp and well  
> written that it rattles my whole world. The passage is from
>
> Bendor and Swistak (1998) 'Evolutionary Equilibria:  
> CharacterizationTheorems and their Implications', Theory and  
> Decision, 45, 99-159.  ( from pages 113-116]
>
>
>
> For anybody doing game theory modelling it's a must read.  It also  
> demonstrates (once again) the dangers of intentional-mentalistic   
> theoretical terms (in this case, "strategy") in modelling  
> exercises.  The profound point for me is that selection for a  
> behavior performed under a particular set of circumstances is NOT  
> selection for a strategy, unless another strategy exists in the  
> population that does not perform that behavior under those  
> circumstances.  (Following the model of words like "isozyme", let  
> us say that two strategies that produce the same behaviors under a  
> given set of circumstances as "isoethic" (from ethology).  and say  
> that the same two strategies may be "alloethic" under a different  
> set of circumstances. )  Selection cannot occur between two  
> strategies UNLESS they are alloethic.   Whether two strategies are  
> allo- or iso-ethic is not solely a propery of them or even  of the  
> relation between them but a property of the relation between them  
> in relation to what other strategies are within the population!   
> The thing about this way of thinking that makes my palms sweat is  
> suddently makes Waddington's concept of Genetic Assimilation  
> totally transparent.  Before the heat shock procedure, there was  
> isoethic variation in wing-formation genes; in the context of heat  
> shock, this variation became alloethic, and could be selected.
>
> ANYWAY.  Dont read thompson, read the damn passage.
>
> NIck
> <Doc5.doc>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org