[FRIAM] better simulating actual FriAM

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

Right. I'm ignorant of Weismann's doctrine. But it does seem to imply purely bottom-up causation. We *could*, I suppose talk of hierarchical systems where the causal flow only went upward ... maybe a bit like the causal cone defined by the speed of light in space-time. Everything within the cone is "same layer causation" and cross-cone relations might be the only time you'd need large-scale, collective effects. [⛧]

The only way I can see to get any kind of downward causation in that case is through iteration, as I mentioned with the sticks (1st stick is completely free, 2nd stick is more constrained, ...). But you can remove time and replace it with some other requirement, like no/minimal space between tiles for sphere packing or, say, aperiodic tilings. In that case, it's not  only the tile shapes, but also *how many* of each shape you have that impinges on their (micro) placement. 



[⛧] This popped up this morning: https://uwaterloo.ca/astrophysics-centre/news/astrophysicists-release-largest-3d-map-universe-ever-created

On 7/20/20 10:07 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> Maybe I am misremembering (which clearly happens), but didn't the discussion
> of gen-phen-like maps arise in the context of goal-function distinctions? In
> this latter class, we included the thermostat system where constraining
> systems to Weismann's doctrine would not be meaningful. Clearly, in the
> goal-function system, an individual that changes the thermostat dial because
> they prefer the house to be at 60 degrees rather than 80 degrees (a
> variation on function) performs downwardly to affect the tolerance of the
> piece of metal or mercury switch (a variation on goal). Are we breaking the
> semantic game by now demanding that our admissable gen-phen-like maps
> preserve Weismann's doctrine? I understood Glen's evocation to not be so
> constrained.


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↙↙↙ uǝlƃ