[FRIAM] Judea Pearl: Book of Why

Sun Apr 19 16:08:58 EDT 2020

> Not directly relevant, but another good sci-fi about genetics — Daniel
> Suarez' Change Agent.
>
> davew

Thanks...

I read that earlier this year in response to your general reference to
Suarez (starting with Delta-V?) and my body and soul *still* ache from
the memories!

and Marcus... yes, GATTACA didn't (apparently) anticipate CRISPR

Trans/Posthumanist Utopias have a strong flavor of  Dystopia for me...  

Eloi & Morlocks

>
>
> On Sun, Apr 19, 2020, at 10:41 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>>
>> Marcus -
>>
>>
>>
>> I believe that Andrew Niccol DID imagine something like that:
>>
>>
>> I wish I had a pithy preamble for this dystopian BioPunk reference,
>> but perhaps it speaks for itself?
>>
>>
>>     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca
>>
>>
>> - Steve
>>
>>> Steve writes:
>>>
>>> < The whole world is responding to what is *roughly* the same virus
>>> with *roughly* what is the same human phenotype/metabolism in a
>>> myriad of *roughly* the same modes of human organization. >
>>>
>>> There are hundreds of common HLA alleles across humans.   In a
>>> diverse country like the US, with hundreds of thousands of positive
>>> cases and tens of thousands of deaths the hundreds of alleles would
>>> be well sampled.   Too bad our medical surveillance is so bad, and
>>> made worse by the moron.  Imagine if everyone had full genome
>>> sequencing and every viral sample was deep sequenced. 
>>>
>>> Marcus
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com>
>>> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Steven A Smith
>>> <sasmyth at swcp.com> <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com>
>>> *Sent:* Sunday, April 19, 2020 10:11 AM
>>> *To:* friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>
>>> <friam at redfish.com> <mailto:friam at redfish.com>
>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Judea Pearl: Book of Why
>>>  
>>>
>>>> One way to address the N/A issue is to repeatedly perturb the real-world system so as to elicit those correlations.  When that is practical.. 
>>>
>>> We are, in a time of real-world system perturbation, right now.  The
>>> whole world is responding to what is *roughly* the same virus with
>>> *roughly* what is the same human phenotype/metabolism in a myriad of
>>> *roughly* the same modes of human organization.   This IS a testbed
>>> of human (-system?) response to a widespread, somewhat invisible
>>> threat.   From Wuhan to Singapore to Italy to Iran to Sweden to
>>> Germany to NYC to WA State to the Navajo Nation to Florida's
>>> beaches, this IS a huge coupled systems dynamics/agent-model
>>> executed in real-time by real-people with real casualties and real
>>> consequences.  
>>>
>>> We are, to varying degrees (collectively) recording the results of
>>> these "experiments" and if we are lucky (or smart, or both) we will
>>> do some post-game analysis intended to understand more-better how
>>> best to (self-)organize around a (nearly) existential world-scale
>>> threat.   And to the extent this is a game that will never end, we
>>> have to begin the analysis while we cope with it's consequences.  
>>> Feels a bit like the models pof Physics Interreality.
>>>
>>>     https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.75.057201
>>> <https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.75.057201>
>>>
>>> Hanging too aggressive of a model on this (or collecting the data 
>>> against too premature of a model) will reduce the utility of such
>>> data gathering and analysis.   Whatever the dual of overfitting a
>>> model is?  Overmodeling?  Premature Modeling?
>>>
>>> What I'm looking (askance) to(ward) Pearl for is a better way of
>>> rapidly constructing, maintaining, revising as generic of a model as
>>> possible in response to "this moment".   Four months ago we should
>>> have been interested in models of how one limits a virus such as
>>> COVID19 getting a foothold in this country.   One month ago we
>>> should have been interested in how one limits COVID19 (with new
>>> understanding of it's virility, it's fatality, it's symptoms, it's
>>> mode of spread) once it HAS a foothold,  now we are faced with
>>> trying to understand how to cope with it once it is pervasive in our
>>> population whilst continuing/returning to "business as usual" and in
>>> another thread, I'm encouraging that we "try to
>>> plan/consider/think-about" what we want to do with this somewhat
>>> "blank slate" (our ass?) we are having  handed to us.  
>>>
>>> And how to think about this without premature modeling... what I
>>> think I was railing (whining/pushing-back) about with Dave on the
>>> Bellamyist thread earlier this morning.
>>>
>>> - Steve
>>>
>>>>> On Apr 19, 2020, at 8:33 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Well, the argument I often end up making is that you can do a kind of face validation with the fake data. Show it to someone who's used to dealing with that sort of data and if the fake data looks a lot like the data they normally deal with, then maybe more data-taking isn't necessary. If it looks fake to the "expert", then more data-taking is definitely needed.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 4/19/20 8:29 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>>>>> I have a hard time with this as a way to extend data.   If it is high-dimensional it will be under-sampled.  Seems better to me to  measure or simulate more so that the joint distribution can be realistic.  And if you can do that there is no reason to infer the joint distribution because you *have* it. 
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Apr 19, 2020, at 8:18 AM, Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> <mailto:wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Going back and forth:  If you infer the causal graph from observational data you can use that graph to simulate data with the same joint distribution as the original data.
>>>>>>>
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> ☣ uǝlƃ
>>>>>
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