[FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 45, Issue 18

[Nicholas Thompson]

Thanks, Phil, 

there is no kindness that one academic can give another that is greater
than a reading of his work.  

I think in the New Academia, professors will be given tenure for reading. 
Any fool can write. 

 I have responded off line. 

Nick 


> [Original Message]
> From: <friam-request at redfish.com>
> To: <friam at redfish.com>
> Date: 3/25/2007 11:02:54 AM
> Subject: Friam Digest, Vol 45, Issue 18
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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Re: Emergence blindness as an Adaptive Trait (Phil Henshaw)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:29:05 -0400
> From: "Phil Henshaw" <sy at synapse9.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Emergence blindness as an Adaptive Trait
> To: <nickthompson at earthlink.net>,	"'The Friday Morning Applied
> 	Complexity Coffee Group'" <friam at redfish.com>
> Message-ID: <000501c76e74$98917640$2f01a8c0 at SavyII>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Thanks Nick, a rather accurate depiction I think.   But as the complaint
> displays, the fact that some individuals can see the perceptual problem,
> that people are more or less blind to emergence for some deep reason,
> does not in itself generate a solution, like learning how to see.
> That's what puzzles me about why absolutely no one asks me about my
> rigorous scientific method of identifying emergent systems as
> individuals and closely watching their evolving structures .   Yea,
> well, it involves a slightly different set of questions.   What would
> you expect!     
>  
> Learning questions is messier than learning answers perhaps.   What I do
> is start by picking questions according to whether they can be answered.
> That's just more productive.   Asking when where and how the animation
> of local events begins and ends is one of them.  That turns out to be
> emergence, and I think all the disciplinary models fit as
> interpretations of that from different perspectives.   
>  
>
> Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 680 Ft. Washington Ave 
> NY NY 10040                       
> tel: 212-795-4844                 
> e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com          
> explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/>     
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: friam-bounces at redfish.com [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On
> Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson
> Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 12:39 AM
> To: Friam at redfish.com
> Subject: [FRIAM] Emergence blindness as an Adaptive Trait
>
>
>
>
>
> All, particularly those in the Home Church. 
>  
> On Wednesday, we got into it about emergence and so I thought I would
> offer the attached file  from a few years back, when the Bush
> administration was still an ugly rumor. 
>  
> .  Here is the abstract, in case you aren't awash in free time. 
>  
> Nick 
>
>  
>
> ABSTRACT. We [me and two reluctant colleagues] hypothesize that, because
> human minds are ill prepared by natural selection to perceive emergence,
> the achievements of groups that arise from their good functioning as
> groups easily goes unnoticed. This perceptual flaw has been an obstacle
> for developmental science, as  it has been  for biologists who want to
> look at the productivity of groups as opposed to the productivity of the
> individuals that make them up.  Humans tend either (1) to attribute the
> non-additive productivity of the group to one of its members, investing
> him or her with special powers of ?leadership?, or (2 ) to invent an
> additional supernatural member of the group -- a spirit or god -- to
> account for its hyper-productivity.   Either method of resolving the
> cognitive problem posed by emergence is likely to make the group?s
> individuals more readily subject to the demands of group members who
> appear to embody or speak for the source of this hyper-productivity.
> Thus, selection at the group level will favor such cognitive
> misattributions because they make groups more coherent and enhance their
> emergent qualities.  
>
>  
>
>  
>  
>  
>  
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University
> (nthompson at clarku.edu)
> Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)
>  
>  
>
>
>
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> End of Friam Digest, Vol 45, Issue 18
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