[FRIAM] the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

[┣glen┫]

Excellent! Thanks for providing some concrete context.  I now realize you are focusing on a describable subset of the amorphous cloud of the word "model".  Progress in the argument is impossible without that.  And I'll try to avoid the endless caveats, qualifiers, and prefixes for the ambiguous term by using what i've argued elsewhere (in the papers I've helped publish) are standard English words, namely "analog" and "measure".

When you talk about the analogs you made out of basswood, these are fundamentally different from whatever cluster of concepts we might arbitrarily carve out of your nervous system and call a "mental model".  I argue that this "mental model" is a figment of your imagination.  What is real is the analog (starting with a block of wood) and your sensorimotor manifold driven by your nervous system.  That entire collection, system, including the block of wood, the knives, sandpaper, etc. includes little, tiny measures.  These are quite distinguishable from your "Lufkin tape measure", which is, itself much more than a measure (or not really a measure at all).  That "Lufkin tape measure" is an analog.  The way you measure things with it is by analogy.  You take the analog and set it alongside another (non-mental, concrete) object.  That analogical reasoning process is what we call "taking a measurement".

You do the exact same thing when you pick the block of wood up into your hand.  You "get a feeling for" the block of wood by analogy with your hand (and the distance between your eyeballs, etc).  That act: picking up, holding, turning over, the block of wood _is_ measuring.  You're "taking measure" of the block (and the rest of the context, including the tools you will choose).  And the measures involved are analogical reasoning/comparisons between parts of your body and the thing being measured.

We call both measures and analogs "models" in our sloppy language.  But it should be clear that measures are much more primitive and fundamental than the overwhelming majority of other things we call "model".  Similarly, analogs are often called "concrete models", like your basswood boat or Redfish's sand table.  Sure, we _could_ call these "concrete models".  But why would we unless we were trapped in a word salad tossing argument with a bunch of philosophers?  We have other words that are more specific and useful like "analog".  And when we compare and contrast our analogs with their referents, then we are _measuring_ the less familiar via the more familiar.


On 04/21/2017 06:40 PM, Vladimyr wrote:
> Glen, making you nauseous was not my intention.
> So some models use Rigid Metrics
> others seem to be    Pattern Comparisons
> and then there are   Neural Models
> 
> I have  been labouring for some time on another which was once thought by myself to be
> a machine motion algorithm but when graphically displayed looked extraordinarily like a sea creature.
> So some appeared to have petal structures so I applied some desperate measures and named them in my mind
> as belonging to a class of creatures having a integer number of petals.0.. 48 before the computer balked in protest.
> These were in every case peculiar rectangular matrices, having some properties of networks. So applying colors only
> to edges produced some spectacular transformations not imagined in 2D spreadsheets.
> I constructed a hallucination and named it a Mental Model. By Jacking it up to 4D since now it grows, these phantoms
> plague my sleep and friendships. I am converting them to 3D .obj files and intend to print one when it is not writhing before my eyes.
> 
> The printer imposes dimensions for the first time due to the containment box, design envelope. This is a trivial Scaling Problem, so it seems.
> 
> Once many years ago I designed boats and started with Half Models in basswood. Then lifted (lofted) the lines to paper so it would
> fit in my shop and out the doors. So those models existed in my mind before any sawdust fell to the floor.
> I tried to teach this approach with mixed success. Students thought I had plans secreted away, I did read many but rarely used them.
> 
> I think the act of carving the little half models was a procedure familiar to sculptors Where the artist's intentions shape the medium and 
> he is guided by heuristics back checking reality with mental imagery until satisfied. Much later does the Lufkin tape Measure show up.   
> In my case a  Digital Caliper. Indeed I cheated often, first surface mirrors and black glue lines that served as grid lines and more.
> 
> But measurement was not as important as students imagined. It was my assumption it would fall into place of its own accord.
> Scale and proportion might be aesthetics but seem very powerful early on.
> 
> My daughter hated writing because she obsessed over page margins and font sizes and type.
> I suggested blank paper and a pencil and was accused of being insensitive.
> My own son always wanted to build things but I always demanded a sketch first, he never complied so he now sells things made by others.
> 
> By the time I finished a little wooden half model of a boat the bulk of design work was over and only then did my crew go to work.
> So where was the Model that drove all this effort,,,
> 
> I gather you are suggesting that we get used to specifying the type of Model with a prefix, not a bad idea, just imagine the chaos if we only
> used the term Ball to describe all sports.

-- 
␦glen?