[FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate
Steven A Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Wed Aug 9 23:00:57 EDT 2017
Nick -
I am very glad to note that you are recovering and your scrappiness is
properly returning!
>
> What’s powerful about it?
>
Nothing more than it is such a succinct statement negating the popular
fallacious apprehension of the mechanism of evolution, suggesting that
there is a causal link between "selection" and "innovation"... the
innovation step is in the mutation, but as the quote states clearly,
said *innovation* is *preserved* (selected for) by the natural selection
mechanism. I think I held this misapprehension for the longest time,
in the same way I *still* think of the Sun orbiting around the earth
when I have plenty of reason to believe it is the other way around.
>
> 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.
>
And what is the "hypothesis generator" in epigenetics? Is it stochastic
or deterministic? (and what examples of epigenetics are you thinking
of?) Is "plausable" the term you want, or is it more "utilitarian"?
>
> The randomness is largely notional.
>
I do think that "random" is a very loosey-goosey concept (like so many
we call out on this list), but whether the variation is produced by
random processes, pseudo-random processes, or merely processes with
appropriately broad distribution functions,
>
> I still think you guys are more captured by your model of evolution
> than by the actual facts of it.
>
I think we (collectively) are guilty of this all of the time, though in
the spirit of "all models are wrong, some are useful" I'm not even sure
I know what a "model-free" fact might be? Facts (to me) imply
measurements (qualitative, quantitative) which imply a object of said
measurement which in turn implies a model. There was a time, I believe
when people felt they held "facts" about "the viscosity of the aether"
and the "density of phlogiston". When those models were superseded,
those "facts" took on entirely new implications and meaning.
- Steve
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
> <http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/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/>
>
>
>
>
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