[FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake

Wed Sep 18 20:33:42 EDT 2019

Pay it forward, bet on the loonie.

-- rec --

On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 2:23 PM Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> Roger,
>
>
>
> That was exactly my point.  That’s what makes it “altruistic” in some
> sense to be a looney- croney, i.e.,, to be somebody who invests in a single
> looney.  Unless all looney-cronies take out a common insurance policy, most
> are going to lose.  Yet, it is the loonies that explore new spaces, and
> thus, with their individual sacrifices, benefit the whole.  So you don’t
> need to be dubious, any more.
>
>
>
> 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 *Roger
> Critchlow
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 18, 2019 2:03 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake
>
>
>
> Read a blog post at https://stratechery.com/2019/day-two-to-one-day/ yesterday
> which was examining Amazon's balance of harvesting (twiddling the search
> engine to maximize Amazon's profits) versus investing (putting up $800
> million to achieve single day deliveries) against the stated Bezos
> principles of how Amazon should work.  That's the same exploit/explore
> tradeoff that reinforcement learning tries to automate, it's the decision
> between optimizing the bottom line or attempting to grow the area of the
> plane that the bottom line rests upon, it's searching where the light is
> good versus exploring the shadows, wandering around with your favorite
> hammer looking for nail-like problems versus browsing a yard sale and
> finding a new tool.
>
>
>
> Nick's assertion that investing in fringes never pays off on average seems
> highly suspect.  Much of what we take for granted in our world was so far
> on the fringe that it didn't even exist in 1819.  So, no, for an individual
> making investment decisions being a looney-croney rarely pays off, but for
> the economy as a whole the loonies have run the table time and time again.
>
>
>
> -- rec --
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 11:21 AM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
> wrote:
>
> I wouldn’t invest it in research, I’d invest it in development and then
> hire a team that understood research.   There is $5k spent per person (all
> persons) by venture capital in San Francisco alone.   That’s not like the ~
> $500k per person at a DOE government lab, but the total amount in the
> region is about like the combined DOE and NSF budgets, of which only a
> fraction goes to research anyway.
>
>
>
> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Nick Thompson <
> nickthompson at earthlink.net>
> *Reply-To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Date: *Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 9:07 AM
> *To: *'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake
>
>
>
> Steve,
>
>
>
> If you had money to invest on research, and were hoping to make 5 percent
> on your money, would you give it to an nsf vetted project, or to a random
> project?  The former, surely.  Yet, if everybody invests that way, all the
> money ends up being piled up in the middle and nothing novel is ever
> tried.  We need the loonies, and we need some crazy people who have faith
> in loonies.  They are the equivalent to “sports” in a breeding program.
> Without loonies and their cronies, there is no variation for selection to
> work on.  Unfortunately, most people who bet on loonies loose.  Yes, a few
> win big, but most lose.  So, on average, it doesn’t pay to be a
> loonie-croney.  That’s the paradox.  This leads me to the conclusion that
> madness is a form of altruism.
>
>
>
> 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 *Steven A
> Smith
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 18, 2019 11:35 AM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake
>
>
>
> Dave -
>
>
>
> It seems like the ideas that seem to capture my imagination - Sheldrake,
> quantum consciousness among them - tend to be labeled as "pseudo." This is
> annoying, first because my hermeneutical hackles bristle whenever anyone
> tries to  assert their interpretation as privileged over someone else's;
> and because there seem to be so many cross-connections that afford all
> within the net to gain plausibility simply from being in the net.
>
>
>
> Thanks for making this point and sharing this predilection.   I find a
> duality in this experience myself which can be a challenge to manage.  I
> deeply share your suspicion/resentment of "privileged interpretation".   I
> also am deeply suspicious of persuasive modes of communication (NLP as an
> extreme example, bad but conventional rhetoric second to that).  I have
> been a direct "victim" of this in my life from time to time, but more
> chronically I have *observed* others being persuaded to believe things for
> which there is either shaky evidence or which is highly contradicted by the
> evidence available.   My judgement of this can sound or feel like my own
> positioning with "privileged interpretation" which is what makes
> manipulative rhetoric so insidious.   I agree that all that is labeled
> "pseudo" is not false or flimsy, or is only *contingently* so.
>
> On the other hand, one of the common tools I've seen in this type of
> manipulative rhetoric is to *claim* that dismissal by the mainstream is
> nearly "proof" of truthiness.  For example, Climate Denial, AntiVax,
> ChemTrails, UFOlogy, etc.  seem to hold up as their prime (or at least
> significant) evidence the simple fact that the "mainstream" or the
> "establishment" dismisses them.   The apparent bias of many to believe
> anything wrapped up in the trappings of a "conspiracy".
>
> On the other other hand, new or changing or revolutionary paradigms in
> knowledge are *naturally* strongly or fundamentally counter to the
> common/standard "truth".   Copernicus and Galileo and their move from
> geocentric to heliocentric astronomical models.
>
> You use the phrase "capture my imagination" which I find *also* holds a
> dualism for me.   On the one hand, I believe that intuition is a critical
> element in my own understanding and knowledge of the world.  On the other,
> I find that my "imagination" is vulnerable to "whimsy" and a carefully
> constructed "whimsy" can be as compelling in it's own way as the biases of
> "conspiracy".   The carrot to go with the stick.
>
> Being trained formally in Science and Mathematics, I have a deep respect
> for the methods and sensibilities of those domains.   Working in "Big
> Science" among a broad cross-cutting set of disciplines (27 years at LANL)
> also gave me a deep suspicion of "received wisdom".   While the largest
> portion of the work I observed stood on it's own merits, the largest
> portion of the *funding* for the work seemed to follow the biases of
> "privileged interpretation" and "received wisdom".   I also felt that
> *publication* of scientific work went through a similar but not as extreme
> biased filter.   Peer review and reproduction of results are central to
> scientific progress, so this can be problematic. On the other, other, other
> hand, irresponsible publication of "hooey" without proper peer review seems
> somewhat pervasive and corrupts the process in it's own insidious way.
>
> <ramble off>
>
> - Steve
>
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> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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