[FRIAM] Formalizing the concept of design

Sun Oct 28 02:32:56 EDT 2018

Dear Frank, Jon, Eric, and anybody else,

OK.  Let me be blunt.  I wish that the mathematically inclined among you would help me.  As I have told you all before, my brother was a mathematician and I got one of his two math genes, which was enough to give me vague mathematical intuitions but not enough that I could actually make good on more than a few of them.  I have long been carrying around in my head the notion of “design arrays" which I have offered as a kind of universal way of looking at such troublesome concepts as adaptation, motivation, communication, learning, development, etc., where our explanatory concepts seem to be fatally entangled with our descriptive ones.  A design co-array is a co-listing of circumstances and adaptive techniques, with all the pairings leading to a common outcome.

I guess I am wondering, Is this way of thinking about telic phenomena a mathematical way?  It seems to me to relate to the idea of mapping.  The motivated animal maps his behavior onto his circumstances and thence, convergently, onto outcomes.  But I am also wondering, aside from making my deceased big brother proud, is there any benefit to formalizing it.  It is my understanding of mathematics that the benefit of formalization is the capacity to be led, through the formalization to some unexpected prediction concerning the phenomenon.  It’s hard for me to see what benefits such a formalization would provide. 

To make it as easy for you to think about this problem, I have ocr-ed its most lucid and concise description among my papers, cleaned it up, and attached it above.  

I am eager for anybody’s thoughts. 

Nick   

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly

Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2018 5:24 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Open Letter, draft #2

Well, I'm not a sequential machine although my wife has her doubts.

Thanks for the algebraic geometry suggestions.  Jon Zingale and I will try to master the subject.  Others may join us on Saturday mornings if they wish.

Frank

-----------------------------------

Frank Wimberly

My memoir:

https://wacsequentisl mww.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 5:16 PM John Kennison <JKennison at clarku.edu> wrote:

Hi Frank,

I didn't realize it was supposed to be a joke --it seemed like a relevant example. I'm not an algebraic geometer but:

 . . . there is a historical survey in https://www.ime.usp.br/~pleite/pub/artigos/abhyankar/abhyankar.pdf

Historical Ramblings in Algebraic Geometry and Related Algebra

www.ime.usp.br

Historical Ramblings in Algebraic Geometry and Related Algebra Author(s): Shreeram S. Abhyankar Source: The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 83, No. 6 (Jun. - Jul ...

If you read that you can tell if you like Ahbyankar's style. He wrote a more thorough survey in 295 pages called "Algebraic Geometry for Scientists and Engineers'' (including computer scientists. 

--John

________________________________________

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>

Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2018 5:53:53 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Open Letter, draft #2 

Sorry, John.  It was a weak attempt to be humorous. 

Also, I mistyped.  I meant "algebraic geometry" when I was asking for a book recommendation.

Frank

-----------------------------------

Frank Wimberly

My memoir:

https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 12:56 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:

John writes:

“Is there something that animals, or more particularly humans, can do which we can prove cannot be duplicated by a sequential machine?”

A sequential computer program could simply be a loop that sampled random numbers and indexed into the address space of the computer program itself (not its memory).   One could make a specialized computer using a FPGA that even had an instruction to do that random dispatching.   To counter the arguments of Penrose, one could do the same using quantum states.

https://www.springer.com/us/book/9781402078941

There are all kinds of physical processes that are simulated on classical supercomputers, of course.

Marcus

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