[FRIAM] On old question

Thu Oct 25 21:58:26 EDT 2018

The book I ordered that was recommended by Marcus was on information theory
as a mode of analysis for social sciences.  So, I don't think it's
particularly relevant to Rosen.  But we'll see.  It should be here by
Monday.  I will let you know. 

Rosen died in 1998.  Life Itself seems to have been his last monograph, and
it presents itself as a summary of his previous work.  There are several
posthumous publications, but these seem mostly to be republications of the
works on which LI was based.  So, LI might be your best shot.  

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2018 4:13 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] On old question

Hi Nick,

I'm thinking I should look at a newer book by Rosen and see if it seems.
better than "Life Itself". Do you think that the book you ordered (I'm not
certain what it was) would be good? Or, alternatively, what is the best
recent book by Rosen?

--John   

  _____  

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> >
on behalf of Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net
<mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net> >
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2018 3:38:32 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] On old question 

Thanks, Marcus, 

I ordered the book.  Time I revived old memory traces.  

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2018 12:56 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <Friam at redfish.com
<mailto:Friam at redfish.com> >; Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org
<mailto:rec at elf.org> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] On old question

Nick,

It sounds like you are describing mutual information.  This is ancient, but
a nice overview of related topics:

https://www.amazon.com/Information-Theory-Qualitative-Quantitative-Applicati
ons/dp/0803921322

Marcus

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> >
on behalf of Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net
<mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net> >
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<Friam at redfish.com <mailto:Friam at redfish.com> >
Date: Wednesday, October 24, 2018 at 12:22 AM
To: Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org <mailto:rec at elf.org> >, Friam
<Friam at redfish.com <mailto:Friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: [FRIAM] On old question

Dear Roger, and anybody else who wants to play, 

While waiting for my paper, Signs and Designs, to be rejected, I have gone
back to thinking about an old project, whose working title has been "A Sign
Language."  And this has led me back to Robert Rosen, whose Life Itself I
bought almost 9 years ago and it has remained almost pristine, ever since.
In the chapter I am now looking at, Rosen is talking about "organization."
Now, I have been thinking about organization ever since I read C. Ray
Carpenter's early work on primate groups back in the late 50's.  It seemed
to me at the time, and it seems to me reasonable now, to define the
organization of a set of entities as related in some way to the degree to
which one can predict the behavior of one entity from knowledge about
another.  Now the relationship is not straightforward, because neither total
unpredictability (every monkey behaves exactly the same as every other
monkey in every situation) nor total unpredictability (no monkey behaves
like any other monkey in ANY situation) smacks of great organization.  The
highest levels organization, speaking inexpertly and intuitively, seem to
correspond to intermediate levels of predictability, where there were
several classes of individuals within a group and within class
predictability was strong but cross-class predictability was weak.  On my
account, the highest levels of organization involve hierarchies of
predictability.  Thus honey bees and ants are more organized than starling
flocks, say.  

This is where the matter stood at the point that I came to Santa Fe and
started interacting with you guys 14 years ago.  You-all introduced me to a
totally different notion of organization based - shudder - on the second
law.  But I have never been able to deploy your concept with any assurance.
So, for instance, when I shake the salad dressing, I feel like I am
disorganizing it, and when it reasserts itself into layers, I feel like it
ought to be called more organized.  But I have a feeling that you are going
to tell me that the reverse is true.  That, given the molecules of fat and
water/acid, that the layered state is the less organized state.  

Now this confusion of mine takes on importance when I try to read Rosen.  He
defines a function as the difference that occurs when one removes a
component of a system.  I can see no reason why the oil or the water in my
salad dressing cannot be thought of components of a system and if, for
instance, I were to siphon out the water from the bottom of my layered salad
dressing, I could claim that the function of the water had been to hold the
water up.  This seems a rather lame notion of function.  

Some of you who have been on this list forever will remember that I raised
the same kind of worry almost a decade back when I noticed the drainage of
water from a basin was actually slowed by the formation of a vortex.  This
seemed to dispel any notion that vortices are structures whose function is
to efficiently dispel a gradient.  It also violated my intuition from
traffic flows, where I imagine that rigid rules of priority would facilitate
the flow of people crossing bridges to escape Zozobra.  

It's quite possible that my confusions in this matter are of no great
general applicability, in which case, I look forward to being ignored.  

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

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