[FRIAM] idle questions while in self-quarantine

[Merle Lefkoff]

Steve and Dave

Having interacted and participated in earlier versions of Tyringham back in
the 70's (when I was a mere child)--memorable gatherings at Hazel
Henderson's place in Princeton, and later Lindisfarne meetings--I decided
that nothing much was going to happen after these exciting meetings because
they lacked diversity, except in the cognitive sense.  The continuing
journey decades later still seems to be lacking the "requisite variety"
necessary to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

On the other hand, the work still raises some interesting questions, eh?
Stay well, Dave.

On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 1:03 PM Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

> Dave -
>
> Your list of idle questions represents *quite a span*.
>
> And I thought *I* was prone to flying off (thinking about and sharing)
> in all directions at once!
>
> There is at least one "great american novel" in there... and maybe a few
> alternate histories or closer to Gibson's recent pair (Peripheral and
> Agency) "multiversal future histories".
>
> I just got off the horn (yesterday, and what precisely is the referent
> to a skype window as "a horn"???  nautical from 17-19c ?) with Jenny so
> new you were on your way back to the USSofA (you don't know how lucky
> you are boys!) with the interesting parallax between a village-burb of
> Amsterdam and a bunker (erh... basement) in the canyon country of Utah...
>
> Great span of questions by the way, AND concisely stated.  Grist for my
> mill, or is it stones in my craw?
>
> - Steve
>
> On 3/30/20 12:22 PM, Prof David West wrote:
> > After two weeks in isolation in Holland, I returned to the U.S. Friday
> for two more weeks of isolation on the mountain in Utah. Because of
> possible exposure while traveling will get tested tomorrow or Wednesday -
> give the bug a chance to become detectable. Still convinced there is far
> less to fear from the disease than from civil unrest and/or loss of liberty.
> >
> > In the absence of external stimuli, lots of questions on different
> subjects came to the fore along with the impulse to inflict them on the
> group, perhaps as a bit of distraction from more serious matters.
> >
> > Covid related:
> > 1. Given patient zero as a Pangolin seller/buyer/consumer and
> Pangolin-zero, what conditions must be satisfied to ensure a
> species-to-species jump?
> >   a- mutation in the virus in Pangolin-zero?
> >   b- mutation in patient-zero that made him uniquely susceptible?
> >   c- first time a Pangolin sneezed in the face of a human, or first time
> a human licked Pangolin scales?
> >
> > 2- Numbers I would like to see:
> >   a. total tested - TT
> >   b. percent of TT that were positive TP or negative TN
> >   c. percent of TT that are one-percenters
> >   d. percent of TT that are in top 20th percentile in terms of money,
> power (e.g. politicians), fame (e.g. entertainers, athletes)
> >   e. percent of TT that are front-line personnel
> >   f. percent of TT that are "middle class"
> >   g. percent of TT that are poor
> >   h. percent of TT that are illegal, homeless, etc.
> >   i. percent of TP that were asymptomatic
> >   j. percent of TP that required little or no treatment
> >   k. percent of TP that could be treated with OTC or off-label meds
> >   l. percent of TP that required outpatient treatment  plus emerging
> medication
> >   m. percent of TP that required hospitalization and serious treatment,
> e.g. ventilators
> >   n. percent of TP that died - by age and degree of underlying causes
> >   o. transmissions per infected TPI
> >   p. percent of TPI to others within one-degree of distance (e.g.
> family, close friends)
> >   q. percent of TPI to others within two-degrees of distance (e.g.
> classmates, spring breakers, neighbors)
> >   r. percent of TPI to others within three-degrees of distance (e.g.
> supermarkets, fellow train commuters)
> >   s. percent of TPI to others within four-degrees of distance (strangers
> in the casino, at the concert, at restaurants)
> >
> > Philosophy of Science
> > 1. Lee Smolin talks about a schism with regard the nature of science
> grounded in a disagreement about the nature of Reality — realists and
> anti-realists.
> > 2. Realists assert that there is a natural world existing independently
> of our minds and properties of that that Reality can be comprehended  and
> described. Anti-Realists would deny one or both of those assertions.
> > 3. Most scientists are Realists, excepting the case of quantum
> mechanics, where anti-realists dominate.
> > 4. Some Anti-Realists assert that properties ascribed to elementary
> particles are created by our interactions with them and exist only at the
> time of measurement.
> > 5. Other Anti-Realists assert that science as a whole does not deal in
> or talk about the nature of Reality, but only about our knowledge of that
> world; e.g. quantum epistemology.
> > 6. Operationalists are agnostic about Reality and just want to calculate.
> > 7. I assume that Peirce would be an anti-Realist. Would he be a quantum
> epistemologist? Or, some other variant of the categories Smolin describes?
> Or, something totally different? Of course Peirce could not be a quantum
> epistemologist, per se, but he does seem to assert a similar anti-Realist
> position with regard macro-phenomenon where most scientists are Realists.
> >
> > Cosmology:
> > 1. why geocentric expansion - why is everything moving away from us?
> > 2. why can we not detect where we are going? what direction are we
> expanding into?
> >
> > Quantum Physics
> > 1. both pilot-wave and many-worlds interpretations lead to a need for
> either many worlds or ghost waves to deal with superposition "residue" once
> an observation has been made and a particle at a specific place exists.
> Wheeler's, It from Bit, interpretation bases everything on information.
> > 2. What if the many worlds / ghost waves were simply erased when a
> measurement was made and the wave collapsed to a particle. We know that
> erasure costs energy. So observation would consume some tiny bit of energy
> from the Universe and increase the mass of the Universe by the mass of the
> particle.
> > 3. Would this lead to a change, over eons of time of course, in the
> Hubble constant because there was more mass to slow down expansion and less
> energy to fuel it?
> > 4. Could this change account for the problems people have coming up with
> a consistent measure of the Hubble constant.
> >
> > Off-the-Wall
> > 1. Vedic physics posited five elements — the same four that Aristotle
> asserted much later, i.e. air, earth, fire and water plus consciousness.
> > 2. Would it be possible to do some kind of parallel evolution of physics
> from Aristotle to Einstein using the Vedic five elements instead of
> Aristotle's four. What might that physics look like, what would the
> consciousness factor look like, how would a value/variable/constant for it
> look like in equations? E.g. E+consc = MC squared?
> > 3. is there a way to map consciousness to information and via that path
> come to an account for Dark Energy, Dark Matter?
> >
> > Incipient Nonsense
> > 1. Assume pervasive consciousness in matter, ala Vedic cosmology; is
> "consciousness" translate/equate in some fashion to observation? One way to
> think of observation is simply awareness/being conscious of.
> > 2. If so, can the consciousness of elementary/quantum particles be
> summed when those particles become parts of an aggregate structure?
> > 3. Is there a threshold, like the formation of an atom, or a molecule,
> where the sum of consciousness ensures that every particle participating is
> "observed" by consciousness if not by a physicist or instrument.
> > 4. Could this account for the fact that macro phenomenon like
> physicists, cats, and instruments cannot participate in superposition?
> >
> > A Galaxy Far Far Away
> > 1. Assuming the Vedic-Quantum-Consciousness stuff, could we calculate
> the amount of consciousness-observations necessary to yield the macro
> structure of Universe?
> > 2. If you could obtain such a number, could you somehow differentiate,
> and measure, the amount of consciousness-observation available from the
> non-sentient mass of the universe and that of sentient-observation
> contribution?
> > 3. If yes, could you then take the amount of sentient-observation
> required, deduct some amount contributed by human-sentient-observation and
> any leftover would indicate the number of non-human sentient observers must
> be lurking around?
> >
> > And Nick, no these are not the result of drugs, just my overactive
> imagination and the fact that I read four different books on quantum
> physics, Jung's Red Book, and DMT Dialogues the past week.
> >
> > davew
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
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> >
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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>


-- 
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
merlelefkoff at gmail.com <merlelefoff at gmail.com>
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
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