[FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

Tue Dec 1 16:01:05 EST 2020

Oh, thank you steve.  I was afraid it might be a bad dream. 

Sometimes I think your mom knew my mom.  

I like how you write, Steve.  I wish I could find you a good agent. 

N

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 11:30 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

Nick -

I should not be old enough to remember this, yet my mother exposed me to it way too young... it was most likely post 3rd or 4th grade summer when she felt I needed to fill my days with something besides wandering the hills with my dog, climbing trees and watching clouds "rotate" into my 3dimensional world, becoming familiar things like bunnies and faces.   She assigned me to read one short bit of literature each day and write a short poem (one step below a limerick)...  I remember reading a few pages a day of "archy and mehitabel" and being deeply puzzled by everything from the concept of a cockroach typing (I had not seen a cockroach by that time in my life) to his highly stylized diction and imagery.   It probably bled into my "poetry" assignments.   I found the whole text disturbing, knowing that adults actually found such nonsense interesting?

I find your stuck double-u key to add a nice "signature" to your writing... and references various issues of "coding" and redundancy and compression.   I doubt there are many if any examples where the leaving out the W is in any way ambiguous to those of us who have the context.  I wonder what Google Doc's OCR would make of it if you printed it out, scanned it in, and gave it a chance to "guess" what you meant?

I own a classic (40s?) typewriter which I was told (by the woman at the garage sale) that it belonged to her father who was widowed in his 40s about the time she was coming of age.  (it was of the generation of typewriters which had no '1' key, leaving it to the typist to use the lower case 'l' instead.)  He was already (going?) blind at the time, and ended up living with her as she raised her own (young) family.  A remote family friend and he apparently developed a romantic but strictly epistolary relationship.   To facilitate it, she bought his "ladyfriend" a braille typewriter and him the one I bought from her.   They apparently exchanged "love letters" (weekly?) for a couple of decades until his lady friend passed away (in their 70s?).   The lady friend's family sent boxes of his letters to her after he died, but kept the braille typewriter.  She still had the bundles of both of their letters that she wanted to find an archive to accept, but had not yet.   She showed me some of his letters where his fingers had strayed from "home" so that some of the letters were "off by one"...  I didn't look closely, because it did read as pseudo-gibberish, but it was likely one row-above because there were numerals interspersed in the gibberish passages.  I tried typing with my eyes closed a few times just to see how it felt and what came from it.   I found that the offset from the space-bar was a dead-giveaway for me when I was "off-home" by a row rather than off-by a column.   I think I was too self-conscious/aware as I did it to be "natural" in my mistakes.   I haven't tried typing on the typewriter for over a decade, the ribbon is way too dry at this point, I am sure, to do more than leave faint impressions/marks.  I suppose the braille version would not suffer from this!   I have a few sheets of braille from a manual which I sometimes like to run my fingers over and imagine what it is like to "read" this way...   it triggers some interesting synaesthesia but I nave no sense of being able to "read" it...  I'm sure it requires the same deliberate "bootstrapping" that sight reading alphabetic (or any other form) of visual text requires.

Keep on typing!   Maybe you can switch out your broken W for "yet another" key?   

- Sieve

Russell, et. Al.

Are any of you old enough to remember Archie and Mahitabel.  A tale of a love-lorn cockroach ho could only type one key at a time by leaping on it.  Hence no upper case. 

It was a rip on e. e. cummings,  a famous poet of the time  ith the same bad habit.  My family ent nuts about it in the 40’s.  It contains meters and rhymes only a cockroach could rite.  

That’s all I remember.  I said I as raised in a literary family, I never said I as literate.  Let me tell you, life ithout a double-u key truly sucks.  

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> . 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam  <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Russell Standish
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 10:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group  <mailto:friam at redfish.com> <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

Was your laptop recycled from the White House perchance?

 <https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121980&page=1> https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121980&page=1

On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 09:47:22PM -0600,  <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:

> Hmm! I don't think I (or glen) have to be a creationist.  Only a "start-in-the-middle-ist".  I am not interested in the "first structure".  Let's figure out hoW all the others Work and then We'll Worry about the first one.  (sorry, my doubleU key is effed up and Lenovo is back ordered on keyboards.  Does anybody kno a Lenovo executive I could have slaughtered.  )  The interest in the first of anything is just creationism set loose from the constraints of religion.  

> n

> Nicholas Thompson

> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University 

>  <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com  <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

>  

> 

> 

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Friam < <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels

> Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 7:36 PM

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

> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

> 

> How about Try random stuff and possibly reproduce?   It is starting to sound like you are a creationist. 

> 

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Friam < <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ???

> Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 4:45 PM

> To:  <mailto:friam at redfish.com> friam at redfish.com

> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

> 

> The AI has to have something to *do*. That mechanism amounts to a theory. If the AI looks for patterns in digits, then "look for patterns in the digits" is a type of theory. If the AI tries to copy a set of encrypted digits, then "decrypt and copy the digits" is the theory.

> 

> I would further argue that the AI cannot exist, the recipe/algorithm can't exist, without some schematic definition of the things it'll operate on and for tests of a successful operation. So, it would make sense to claim that all 3 are required for there to be a theory. I'm not making that strong of a claim. I'm only trying to back up Nick on his claim that there must be some sort of prior theory for any of it to "work" ... however "work" might be understood.

> 

> On 11/30/20 4:35 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> > The one is the AI or the rat and its related gene sequence?  Or you need all three?   I claim that the last two are not a theory, and that an AI could do that data mining.

> > 

> > -----Original Message-----

> > From: Friam < <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ???

> > Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 4:29 PM

> > To:  <mailto:friam at redfish.com> friam at redfish.com

> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

> > 

> > Well, that *system*, {one, person, genetic sequence} contains an endogenous theory (or a set of possible theories). If you slice out the {one} doing the operating, then you lose the theory.

> > 

> > On 11/30/20 4:22 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> >> So if one is given a person (or a rat) and a genetic sequence that animal amounts to an endogenous theory?  

> >>

> >> -----Original Message-----

> >> From: Friam < <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ???

> >> Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 4:14 PM

> >> To:  <mailto:friam at redfish.com> friam at redfish.com

> >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

> >>

> >> Well, sure. But just because the theory is endogenous, doesn't imply that theory does not *exist*, nor that it's not *prior* to the launch. So, even in that case, Nick's correct that the theory (or a spanning kernel of it) exists before-hand.

> >>

> >> On 11/30/20 4:06 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> >>> Once one figures out how the monitor reacts then one can see how certain registers change as a result of changes in instruction sequences.     The relationship of a perturbation to an outcome is simple, learnable and relatively unambiguous for a typical microprocessor.    Assembly of subroutines follow the same principles.  (One can observe a stack with enough experimentation.)    The language is learned (not given) and the axioms implied by the structure of the machine.  The goal of copying is sort of beside the point. 

> >>>

> >>> -----Original Message-----

> >>> From: Friam < <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ???

> >>> Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 3:51 PM

> >>> To:  <mailto:friam at redfish.com> friam at redfish.com

> >>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

> >>>

> >>> But if we use the word "theory" in its minimal sense of "a language and a set of axioms", then your "to be copied so that it does the same thing" *is* a theory, albeit a different theory (or containing theory) for one that would treat the [un]copyable application over and above the act of copying. What would be interesting would be the *number* and diversity of theories validatable/executable against any given set of tokens.

> >>>

> >>> On 11/30/20 3:33 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> >>>> I spent a fair amount of my youth disassembling boot procedures of various copy protection schemes.   There one is given a list of numbers that bootstrap an operating system and an application.  A small portion of that list of numbers is relevant to preventing that list of numbers from being copied from one media to another.   It wasn’t really necessary to have a theory of the application, generally, to understand how to change the numbers to make that list copyable.   If one had no theory of a computer instruction set or of an operating system, but was just given a disk and the goal of copying it to get the computer to do the same thing when the copied disk was put in to the disk drive instead of the original disk, it is possible to learn everything that is needed to learn which numbers to change.   No oscilloscope needed, no theory of solid state physics, etc.  Ok, maybe one reference manual.   Biology is the same, but without a concise reference manual.

> >>>>

> >>>>  

> >>>>

> >>>> *From:* Friam < <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of 

> >>>>  <mailto:*thompnickson2 at gmail.com> *thompnickson2 at gmail.com

> >>>> *Sent:* Monday, November 30, 2020 1:25 PM

> >>>> *To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' 

> >>>> < <mailto:friam at redfish.com> friam at redfish.com>

> >>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

> >>>>

> >>>>  

> >>>>

> >>>> All,

> >>>>

> >>>>  

> >>>>

> >>>> I feel like this relates to a discussion held during Nerd Hour at the end of last Friday’s vfriam.  I was arguing  that given, say, a string of numbers, and no information external to that string, that no AI could detect “order” unless it already possessed a theory of what order is.  I found the discussion distressing because I thought the point was trivial but all the smart people in the conversation were arguing against me.

> > 

> > --

> > ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

> > 

> > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn

> > GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe 

> >  <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

> > archives:  <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> > FRIAM-COMIC  <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

> > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn

> > GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe 

> >  <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

> > archives:  <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> > FRIAM-COMIC  <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

> > 

> 

> --

> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

> 

> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe  <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

> archives:  <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> FRIAM-COMIC  <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe  <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

> archives:  <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> FRIAM-COMIC  <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

> 

> 

> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

> un/subscribe  <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

> archives:  <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> FRIAM-COMIC  <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

-- 

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

Dr Russell Standish                    Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)

Principal, High Performance Coders      <mailto:hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au> hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au

                       <http://www.hpcoders.com.au> http://www.hpcoders.com.au

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

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe  <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives:  <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC  <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20201201/6dc32d41/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 68919 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20201201/6dc32d41/attachment-0001.png>