[FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language
Steven A Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Fri Jun 9 01:08:52 EDT 2017
Nick -
I share your concern about the current place of political (and generally
public?) discourse. I am heartened by the work of Krista Tippet and her
many interviewees in what she calls "The Civil Conversation Project
<http://www.civilconversationsproject.org/>" with a psuedo abstract of:
/Speaking together differently in order to live together
differently. /
/The Civil Conversations Project seeks to renew common life in a
fractured and tender world. We are a conversation-based,
virtues-based resource towards hospitable, trustworthy relationship
with and across difference. We honor the power of asking better
questions, model reframed approaches to entrenched debates, and
insist that the ruptures above the radar do not tell the whole story
of our time. We aspire to amplify and cross-pollinate the generative
new realities that are also being woven, one word and one life at a
time./
This plug aside, I understand your interest in mind or concept mapping
software to help identify and perhaps illuminate for others differences
in language and maybe more fundamentally, values? I'm curious how you
feel about the use of the term "mind" in this case rather than
"concept"? It seems like with your background (evolutionary psychology?)
that you would find THOSE terms to have very specific meaning and while
"mind mapping" is catchy and colloquial, do you *really* think such
tools actually map anything significant about the mind? As Glen
suggested, perhaps this kind of hair-splitting is what pollutes threads
to the point they die? If you think so, feel free to ignore the
question and proceed. I think *I* am OK to make the translation on the
fly if I need to.
In any case, if sfX were still standing, or if you were in SFe right
now, I'd offer to join you in an interactive session of this kind at
SimTable with a projector and mouse and maybe a few other locals to
shout out directions at whomever was "driving" in the moment. I believe
it might be at least interesting if not actually more productive than
the kinds of banter we have all exchanged here on the topic(s).
Maybe when you return from the swamp?
- Steve
On 6/8/17 7:05 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>
> Hi, everybody,
>
> If only because of my despair concerning the current state of our
> national political discourse, mind mapping tools are of great interest
> to me. Some of us briefly considered using such tools to moderate
> conversation between people who disagree. Would such a tool help to
> determine whether you-all are using complexity terms in roughly the
> same way or whether, in the interest of keeping the conversation
> going, you are letting slide fundamental differences in what you take
> complexity to be?
>
> In any case, don’t let this thread die.
>
> 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 *Tom Johnson
> *Sent:* Thursday, June 08, 2017 7:18 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language
>
> Steve:
>
> I think the mind mapping developer you are thinking of is Ron Newman
> -- ron.newman at gmail.com <mailto:ron.newman at gmail.com>
>
> TJ
>
>
>
> ============================================
> Tom Johnson
> Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
> 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
> Society of Professional Journalists <http://www.spj.org>
> *Check out It's The People's Data
> <https://www.facebook.com/pages/Its-The-Peoples-Data/1599854626919671>*
>
> http://www.jtjohnson.com <http://www.jtjohnson.com/> tom at jtjohnson.com
> <mailto:tom at jtjohnson.com>
> ============================================
>
> 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
> 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
>
> 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?
>
>
>
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>
>
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> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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