[FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Marcus, 

 can't claim to understand you fully, here, but your use of the word, sovereignty, made me think you might have something to contribute to a quandary I found myself in recently.  I was on a zoom with a bunch of people.  First they talked about emergence, and I figured I understand that.  Wimsatt: a property is emergent if it is a property of a whole that depends on the order or arrangement of the parts.  So, the ability of sticks to bear weight depends  on their arrangement as triangles.   So far, so good.  But then the began to talk about "downward" causation, and I realized that I did not know, nor have I ever known, what people mean by "downward" causation.  Do you have some simple models of it in mind that even I could understand? 

Nick 
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 9:17 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Using statistical mechanics to inspire a stable and universal functional form that evolves in time is one way to make a model of social systems.   But even with that for model of the physical world, there are many possible models for control systems that could layer on top of it.   If there are no shared concept types in these different models, there's nothing to do but go back to simulating the physics to determine what could happen next.   Simulating these physics takes energy that is of no discernable value to users of any one model so at some point there will be conflict over that energy.    The Libertarian claims that there is something in common between the users of these models, but it is nothing more than story that serves her purposes.   There is no reason not to violate her sovereignty if the reward/risk is acceptable.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of ? glen
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 7:18 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Well, sure. But the assumptions and simplifications are piling up fast. With anarcho-capitalism, I was trying to suggest a governing system that relies on as few assumptions as possible. And my sense is that social democracy relies on more assumptions (like the existence of stable functional forms).

On September 14, 2020 6:13:33 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
>It depends whether you think of "static" as some circumscribed state or 
>"static" as a fixed functional form.  (The latter still allowing for a
>dynamical system.)   The appropriation/application of the notion of a
>"phase transition" would probably argue for the fixed functional form 
>on the basis of physics.

--
glen ⛧

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