[FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language
Steven A Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Thu Jun 8 18:35:24 EDT 2017
Yes, I suppose that one could say that Nick is the best kind of Troll
here... I always appreciate his (deliberately) naive questions and hair
splitting even when it IS the hair on my own chinny chin chin!
On 6/8/17 4:08 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> No, my troll comment was meant for Nick's OP. Not in an unkind way,
> but ...
>
> On Thu, Jun 8, 2017 at 4:05 PM, Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com
> <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:
>
> Glen -
>
> I have found concept mapping tools to be helpful in this context,
> but usually in live-brainstorming sessions... with one (or more)
> operators clicking and typing and dragging and connecting while
> others chatter out loud, then shifting the mouse/keyboard(s) to
> another(s).
>
> I know we have a mind-mapping ( I prefer concept-mapping) tool
> developer on the list... I'm blanking his name, though I know he
> has been active off and on! I hope he catches this and pitches
> in. I believe he was heading toward web-enabled, simultaneous
> editing capabilities. I did some tests and provided some
> feedback on an early version a few years ago..
>
> My only significant experience in this is with CMAPtools and a few
> others driven by various project-lead's preferences, but never
> really adopted by myself.
>
> I was in the process of developing some more formal tools with UNM
> for the NSF a few years ago, based on formalisms being developed
> by Tim Goldsmith (dept. Psychology) at UNM. The presumption WAS
> (IS) that we all have reserved lexicons and for a collaborative
> group to develop a common one, there has to be a lot of discussion
> and negotiation. Our example was a group of climate change
> scientists who (un)surprisingly used identical terms in very
> similar contexts with very different intentions and meanings in
> some cases. It isn't too surprising when you realize that an
> ocean scientist and an atmospheric scientist are very interested
> in many of the same physical properties, but with different
> emphasis and within different regimes. Pressure, density,
> humidity, salinity, vorticity all seem to have pretty clear
> meanings to any scientist using them, but the relative importance
> and interaction between them has different implications for each
> group.
>
> Needless to say, we didn't finish the tools before the funding ran
> out. This is now nearly 8 years old work... the ideas area still
> valid but without a patron and without SME's to "test on" it is
> hard to push such tools forward. My part included building the
> equivalent of what you call "mind maps" from the differing lexical
> elements, floating in N-space and "morphing" from each individual
> (or subgroup's) perspective to some kind of common perspective...
> with the intention of helping each individual or subgroup
> appreciate the *different* perspective of the others.
>
> This is modestly related to my work in "faceted ontologies" (also
> currently not under active development) where "multiple lexicons"
> is replaced by "multiple ontologies" or in both cases, the
> superposition of multiple lexicons/ontologies.
>
> I haven't worked with Joslyn since that 2007? paper... but we
> *tried* a joint project with PNNL/NREL a couple of years ago, but
> it failed due to inter-laboratory politics I think. He's an
> equally brilliant/oblique character as you... take that for what
> it is worth!
>
> I liked Frank's double-dog-dare to you. I think that is one of
> the good things you bring out in this list, all kinds of others'
> feistiness! It was also good that you could both call it for what
> it was. It makes me want to read Kohut... I have special reasons
> for trying to apprehend alternate self-psychology models right
> now, though from your's and Frank's apparent
> avoidance(/dismissal?) of Kahut and my immediate phonetic
> slip-slide to Camus, I'm a little leery.
>
> On 6/8/17 2:33 PM, glen ☣ wrote:
>
> We quickly polluted that thread, too. But it drives home the
> point that an email list is _not_ a (good) collaborative
> production tool.
>
> Aha! I haven't heard from Cliff since my work for the
> PSL<https://www.psl.nmsu.edu/>. He supposedly works up at
> PNNL. Thanks for that article.
>
> Yes, I took Owen to be calling Russ' post a trolling post.
> But "troll" is like "complex", meaningless out of context.
>
> I'm completely baffled why "layer" isn't understood ... makes
> me think I must be wrong in some deep way. But for whatever
> it's worth, I believe I understand and _agree_ with Nick's
> circularity criticism of mechanistic explanations for
> complexity, mostly because of a publication I'm helping
> develop that tries to classify several different senses of the
> word "mechanistic". The 1st attempt was rejected by the
> journal, though. 8^( But repeating Nick's point back in my own
> words obviously won't help, here.
>
> Yes, I'm willing to help cobble together these posts into a
> document. But, clearly, I can't be any kind of primary. If
> y'all don't even understand what I mean by the word "layer",
> then whatever I composed would be alien to the other
> participants. One idea might be to use a "mind mapping" tool
> and fill in the bubbles with verbatim snippets of people's
> posts ... that might help avoid the bias introduced by the
> secretary.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept-_and_mind-mapping_software
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept-_and_mind-mapping_software>
> I also don't care that much about the meaning of "complex".
> So, my only motivation for helping is because y'all tolerate
> my idiocy.
>
>
> On 06/08/2017 12:52 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>
> I admit to being over my depth, at least in attention, if
> not in ability to parse out your dense text, and more to
> the point, the entire thread(s) which gives me more
> sympathy with Nick who would like a tool to help organize,
> neaten up, trim, etc. these very complex ( in the more
> common meaning of the term) discussions. My experience
> with you is that you always say what you mean and mean
> what you say, so I don't doubt that there is gold in that
> mine... just my ability to float the overburden and other
> minerals away with Philosopher's Mercury (PhHg) in a
> timely manner.
>
> I DO think Nick is asking for help from the rest of us in
> said parsing... to begin, I can parse HIS first
> definition of "layer" is as a "laying hen"... a chicken
> (or duck?) who is actively laying eggs. A total
> red-herring to mix metaphors here on a forum facilitated
> by another kind of RedFish altogether... a "fish of a
> different color" as it were, to keep up with the metaphor
> (aphorism?) mixology.
>
> I DON'T think Owen was referring to you when he said:
> "troll", I think he was being ironical by suggesting Russ
> himself was being a troll. But I could be wrong. Owen
> may not even remember to whom his bell "trolled" in that
> moment? In any case, I don't find your
> contribution/interaction here to be particularly
> troll-like. Yes, you can be deliberately provocative, but
> more in the sense of Socrates who got colored as a
> "gadfly" (before there were trolls in the lexicon?). Stay
> away from the Hemlock, OK?
>
> I'm trying to sort this (simple?) question of the meaning
> (connotations) of layering you use, as I have my own
> reserved use of the term in "complex, layered metaphors"
> or alternately "layered, complex metaphors"... but that is
> *mostly* an aside. I believe your onion analogy is
> Nick's "stratum" but I *think* with the added concept that
> each "direction" (theta/phi from onion-center) as a
> different "dimension". Your subsequent text suggests a
> high-dimensional venn diagram. My own work in
> visualization of Partially Ordered Sets (in the Gene
> Ontology) may begin to address some of this, but I suspect
> not.
>
> https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4935.pdf
> <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4935.pdf>
>
> I may continue to dig into this minefield of rich ore and
> interesting veins, but it has gotten beyond (even) me as a
> multiple attender who thrives on this kind of complexity
> (with limits apparently!).
>
> I think I heard you suggest that YOU would volunteer to
> pull in the various drawstrings on this multidimensional
> bag forming of a half-dozen or more branching threads...
> I'll see if I can find that and ask some more pointed
> questions that might help that happen?
>
> I truly appreciate Nick's role (as another Socrates?)
> teasing at our language to try to get it more plain or
> perhaps more specific or perhaps more concise? Is there
> some kind of conservation law in these dimensions?
>
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> 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
> <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com>
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> by Dr. Strangelove
>
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> 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/20170608/b85c5c63/attachment.html>
More information about the Friam
mailing list