[FRIAM] Why depth/thickness matters

[Vladimyr Burachynsky]

I am an iconoclast as a consequence of trying to use statistical modelling during earlier stages of my life. zThese statistical models were generally very poor when applied to field work in animal distributions until someone accepted that truth and started admitting "clumpiness in distributions".

Then after a time in engineering studying simulations of material behaviour and failure I realized that the models we were using were based on unreal assumptions again.

In FEM studies we used convenient algorithms to model stress distribution across discreet very small elements based on older concepts and only approximated reality
to various levels. These approximations were often mistakenly assumed to constitute a "reality" by novices. In part because no engineer was prepared for Quantum Mechanics. They still used Hooke's laws where ever possible. 

Representation is simply a tool to facilitate exploration of Dynamical systems. Representation should always be prepared to adapt when needed. Like sharpening a steel blade every so often.
The iconoclast in me loves sharp tools and every Monday morning I instructed my team to clear their benches and methodically sharpen tools.
Just because you sharpened a tool on Monday don't expect it to be sharp on Thursday unless it was idle.
Eventually all knives wear down and need to be replaced. Representation is only an ideal target used only as long as it is functional.
I do not dispute the value of good representational models but accept that they may not always be appropriate.

I look to biology and its solutions as having a temporal legacy far back in time but even evolution fails occasionally. Death seems the reward for guessing wrong.

Biology does seem to be a cheapskate recycling shitty solutions very often and does not seem to care about occasional extinctions. 

As long as the advocates of representational models acknowledge their place in the real world we can tolerate each other.
vib 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: February-15-17 1:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Why depth/thickness matters

On 02/14/2017 09:51 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Thanks for the reorientation! If you want to discuss complexity, I think an interesting question regarding perception-action systems is how much of the complexity has to be inside the organism, and how much of it can be encapsulated in the larger organism-environment system. The more the complexit is spread across the system, the more the organism can get by with much less "mental" complexity that it might originally seem. That tension is at the heart of Gibson vs. traditional theories, though, of course, Gibson described the tension in different terms.

Yes, and that's exactly what the Hoffman article is about, too, with their exploration of simpler or more complex environments.  Your criticism of their (rather common) concept that seeing more takes more energy also exists in the "fly ball" and locomotive examples.  And the well-kept or poorly-kept radio metaphor simply raises the spectre of "adaptation" and the target of selection pressures.

In other words, the boundary between the organism, the environment, and the organizational relationship between them is nowhere near as crisp as we assume.  It's that assumption that is the target of Hoffman's (anti-realism) project.

And that brings me back to my original point about loopiness.  We not only have the problem of distributing the logic beetween organism and environment.  We also have the problem of how to grade/categorize the spectrum _between_ the two.  E.g. to what extent is, say, a pair of eyeglasses a part of the organism?  E.g. to what extent is the eye's cornea part of the environment?

Computations over the organism strike me as one layer.  Computations over an objectively extant landscape are another layer, perhaps of similar complexity than those over the organism.  Computations over both are another layer.  Computations over a collection of organisms, with a purely co-constructed "environment", is another.  Computations over all 4 (each organism, extant environment, organism-extant-env couplings, multiple organisms in extant environment) is yet another layer.  Loops within loops.

> However, that doesn't necessarily speak to our ability to jettison "representation" and replace it with dynamic-systems accounts more generally.  
> [...]
> So, to recap: The questions for the list are 1) Where will we look for the complexity in question? In the organism, in the environment, or in the system that includes both? 2) Once we have a decent account of that complexity, is anything added by inserting representation-talk in the middle of it?

It's not clear to me why you focused on a juxtaposition of representation vs. dynamical systems.  It sounds a lot like Marcus' argument in the loopiness thread.  You seem to be arguing that we can "flatten" the system to a dynamical systems account, with some exogenous accuracy and precision or error.  (By "exogenous", I mean typical sources like however we measure it or purely mechanical noise caused by a kind of "simple" uncertainty ... things like how well a nut fits a bolt, etc.)

By arguing that some types of loops within loops are only amenable to lossy compression, I'm asserting that _some_ of the loss is due to non-isomorphic mappings across boundaries.  The interfaces between actors are somehow smaller than what's on either side of the interfaces.  (Hence my comments about the holographic principle.)  In that sense, the question isn't merely about _where_ the complexity is (organism, environment, both), but also to what extent that complexity would be invariant if it were a) moved or b) modeled by something on the other side of a (smaller, lossy) interface.

This raises questions like: to what extent do organisms model their environment or vice versa?  Or to what extent are co-constructed scientific theories validated?  How to falsify them?  Etc.

--
☣ glen

============================================================
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