[FRIAM] IS: Does Complexity have a circularity problem WAS: Any non-biological complex systems?

Thu Jun 8 00:06:47 EDT 2017

Glen,

If you want to see how NPD is amenable to type 2 treatment see "Analysis of
the Self" by Kohut. I dare you.

Frank

Frank Wimberly
Phone (505) 670-9918

On Jun 7, 2017 9:51 PM, "Nick Thompson" <nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
>
>
> Here is Glen's thoughtful post of January 20, reborn. To be honest, I
> don’t understand it.  Not a bit.  I am hoping that perhaps one or more of
> the rest of you can help me get it.  Let’s start with one baby step.  What
> is meant by LAYER in this text? The possible meanings open to me are, (1) a
> kind of hen; (2) a stratum in a substance; or (3) a level in a hierarchical
> descriptive scheme.  So, “genus” is a level as is “battalion”. Are any of
> these meanings relevant to Glen’s post?
>
>
>
> Please help me out here.  Intuition tells me that there is gold, here, but
> I just don’t have the tools to mine it out.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Excellent!  Thanks, Eric (and everyone -- I'm enjoying this).  So, here's
> my, in class, answer to Nick's quiz:
>
>
>
> nick> What is the difference between a circular explanation and a
> recursive one.  What is the key dimension that determines whether an
> explanation is viciously circular?   Is the virtuus dormitiva viciously
> circular? Why?  Why not?
>
>
>
> *Recursive explanations contain layers of reasoning (e.g. mechanism vs
> phenomenon) whereas circular ones are flat.* [bolding by NST]  Vicious
> circularity simply means "has only 1 layer".  (I disagree with this
> idea.[*])  The virtus dormitiva has multiple (abstraction of language)
> layers and, by the single-layer defn of "vicious" is not vicious.
>
>
>
> Now, on to N[arcissitic]P[ersonality]D[isorder], I think we have 2 types
> of recursion: 1) communicative, as Frank (probably) tried to point out to
> me before, and 2) phenomenological.  When we land in an attractor like
> "something is wrong with Trump", we're still within a single layer of
> reasoning (intuition, emotion, systemic gestalt, whatever).  If we have a
> tacit feeling for NPD, we can stay within that single layer and simply
> assign a token to it: NPD.  But if we're at all reductionist, we'll look
> for ways to break that layer into parts.  Parts don't necessarily imply
> crossing layers.  E.g. a meaningful picture can be cut into curvy pieces
> without claiming the images on the pieces also have meaning.  So 1) we can
> simply name various (same layer) phenomena that hook together like jigsaw
> pieces to comprise NPD. Or 2) we can assert that personality traits are
> layered so that the lower/inner turtles _construct_ the higher/outer
> turtles.
>
>
>
> What Frank says below is of type (1).  What Jochen (and others) have
> talked about before (childhood experiences, etc.) is more like type (2).
> The question arises of whether the layering of symbolic compression
> (renaming sets of same-layer attributes) is merely type (1) or does it
> become type (2).  To me, mere _renaming_ doesn't cut it.  There must be a
> somewhat objectively defined difference, a name-independent difference.
> So, if we changed all the words we use (don't use "narcissism",
> "personality", "disorder", "emptiness", etc. ... use booga1, booga2,
> booga3, etc.), would we _still_ see a cross-trophic effect?  Note that
> mathematics has elicited lots of such demonstrations of irreducible
> layering ... e.g. various no-go theorems.  But those are syntactic
> _demonstrations_ ... without the vagaries introduced by natural language
> and scientific grounding.  To assert that problems like natural selection
> vs. adaptation or the diagnosis of NPD also demonstrate such cross-trophic
> properties would _require_ complete formalization into math.  Wolpert did
> this (I think) to some extent.  But I doubt it's been done in evolutionary
> theory and I'm fairly confident it hasn't been done in psychiatry.  (I
> admit my ignorance, of course... doubt is a good mistress but a bad master.)
>
>
>
> More importantly, though, I personally don't believe a recursive cycle is
> _any_ different from a flat cycle.  Who was it that said all deductive
> inference is tautology?  I have it in a book somewhere, cited by John
> Woods.  Unless there is some significantly different chunk of reasoning
> somewhere in one of the layers, all the layers perfectly _reduce_ to a
> single layer.
>
>
>
> Hence, my answer to Nick's quiz (at the pub after class) is that _all_
> cycles are "vicious" (if vicious means single layer), but if we take my
> concept of "vicious", then only those cycles that _hide_ behind (false)
> layers are vicious.
>
>
>
>
>
> [*] I think a cycle is vicious iff it causes problems.  Tautologies don't
> cause problems.  They don't solve them.  But they don't cause them either.
> So a vicious cycle must have more than 1 layer.
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ?
> Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2017 4:57 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] IS: Does Complexity have a circularity problem WAS:
> Any non-biological complex systems?
>
>
>
> +1
>
>
>
> Having been called a "troll" for most of my adult life, I'd love to hear
> why Owen lobs the insult.
>
>
>
>
>
> On 06/07/2017 01:54 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>
> > Owen,
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > I don’t understand this comment.  Who’s a troll?  Are you trolling,
> here?  Is this irony?  I don’t follow.
>
> >
>
> > [...]
>
> >
>
> > From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com
> <friam-bounces at redfish.com>] On Behalf Of Owen
>
> > Densmore
>
> > Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2017 4:40 PM
>
> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>
> > <friam at redfish.com>
>
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] IS: Does Complexity have a circularity problem WAS:
> Any non-biological complex systems?
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > Troll
>
>
>
> --
>
> ☣ glen
>
>
>
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