[FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Wed Aug 9 14:58:08 EDT 2017

Steve, 

What's powerful about it?  

What is presented to the world by the epigenetic system is not mutations but
"hypotheses" about ways to live.  And presumably epigenetic systems are
shaped by natural selection to produce  more or less plausible hypotheses.
The randomness is largely notional.   I still think you guys are more
captured by your model of evolution than by the actual facts of it. 

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Jenny Quillien
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 12:21 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Totally agree. 

Maybe a few of us can read the Wagener book (apparently he  shows up at the
Santa Fe institute from time to time as an external something or other) and
see what we can do with the ideas.  I'll be in Amsterdam but can follow
e-mail threads to skype.   Jenny

On 8/9/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

Jenny -

What a powerful quote:

Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them.

In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets and
Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free Markets may
well be restricted to the "innovation phase" of development.  Once something
becomes a (relative) commodity, it seems it might be counter-productive to
continue the illusion of competitive development.  At best it is wasteful
and even harmful, and at worst it leads to an elevation of "innovation" to
marketing and salesmanship.  This is why we have so many near-identical
products on the market being pushed on us through the hype of greed and fear
when the "generic" or "store brand" version is equal or (even) superior
(certainly in price, but also possibly in quality... lacking the colorants
and odorants and other embellishments required to differentiate one product
from the other?).

- Steve

On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote:

An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: how nature
innovates by Andreas Wagner.

>From the Preface:  the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but
this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it
cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just
another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations-
some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that accelerate life's
ability to innovate, its innovability. 

Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about how it
is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly relevant to Nick's
e-mail.

Jenny Quillien

On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Hi everybody, 

Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog. 

I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. 

First.  I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value
was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it's last value.  So the
next step in a random walk is "random" but the current value (it's present
position on a surface, say) is "the result of a stochastic process."  From
your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can't tell if
I am correct or not.  

Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you
confuse your models with the facts of nature.  What is this "evolution" of
which you speak?  Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are
speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: --
The alteration of the design of taxa over time.   Hard to see any way in
which that actual process is evidently random.  We have to dig deep into the
theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the
vernacular notion of randomness.  There is constraint and predictability all
over the place in the evolution I know.  Even mutations are predictable.  In
other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations
concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon,
itself. 

So what kind of "evolution" are you guys talking about?

Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit.  I am trying to wake myself up,
here. 

nick  

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
<http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/> 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20170809/ef390d88/attachment-0001.html>