[FRIAM] The Joy of Anthropology
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Wed May 12 11:20:48 EDT 2021
DaveW-
Very well articulated from start to finish Dave.
I bailed after my first Anthro class, either because of some bad
chemistry with the prof, or a need by *many* profs to "haze" aspiring
students. In my case, it was because the class (and prof) was
structured around regurgitating rendered factoids from the text. I'm no
worse at rote memorization (more aptly, I was then) than the next yokel,
but that was not my interest. My interest was in seeking the patterns
which you speak of. This lead me to the harder sciences where there
was a more structured/predictable extant suite of patterns (e.g.
Periodic Table, Newton's Laws, E&M, Relativity, (even) QM) but I had a
hint then that I was wading past a rich and fecund pattern-space seeking
a place where the views felt more spacious (like mucking through an
estuary, across foothills to begin climbing to higher reaches).
Your and my shared fascination with Metaphor (though in somewhat
different modes I think) and Christopher Alexander's Pattern and Form
Languages grew out of my latent interest in all that which cannot be
easily/well reduced the way the laws of mechanics seem to yield.
I enjoyed a limited friendship with Edward (Ned) Hall during my 30's and
his last years (80s). The relevance of his work to contemporary and
first world cultures (everyday to my experience) was fascinating to me
because I didn't need a university host or big grants to travel to other
places to do primary observation. I could indulge in my own
observations and studies the same way I can throw pebbles off of a cliff
or into a pond and observe the cascade of behaviours. FriAM is an
Anthropological/Ethnographic hotbed.
I never knew Mike Agar well, but his Ethnographer's ear and voice was
always inspirational to me.
I could rattle on about the value and role of Metaphor, Anecdote,
Narrative in Science (Narrating Complexity, Stepney et al) and Model
Theory, but it would just be more rattling.
Carry On!
- Steve
On 5/12/21 7:46 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> I find anthropology to be fascinating because it is complex,
> interpretative, dynamic, highly contextual, and, ultimately anecdotal.
> "The ways of humans" are not reducible to formulae, rules, laws, or
> algorithms. There are 'patterns' and it is possible to establish
> cultural 'norms' to which — always with exceptions — individual
> behavior conforms.
>
> "Thinking Anthropologically" means constantly juggling hundreds of
> variables, trying to find the "familiar in the strange" and the
> "strange in the familiar" and, at best, discovering that your
> "understanding" is just a "thick description."
>
> In contrast, from my point of view, science cherry picks the easy
> shit; that which is reducible to answers, laws, principles, and
> algorithms. Make no mistake, I love science, but only at the fringes
> where it remains "metaphor and story and philosophy."
>
> It is difficult to introduce anthropological ideas, like the three
> categories of reciprocity, into discussions on this list. Readers come
> up with questions, framed with too much specificity to be easily
> answered — like glen's question of transitivity in balanced reciprocity.
>
> The answers to such questions are almost always: yes ....but ....
>
> When Jesus (supposedly) said, "if you do it to the least among you you
> have done it to me," that is transitive as I understand glen was asking.
>
> "Balanced" is highly contextualized. For example the group of workers
> that had lunch together every Friday. Restaurants varied in price,
> everyone ordered what they wished, and the check was always evenly
> split. At the end of a year of study, the anthropologist observing the
> group added up the numbers. The total spent by the group and the
> amounts spent by each individual. Individual expenditures were within
> ten-cents of the amount calculated by dividing total expenditure by
> number of people in the group.
>
> A Bill Mauldin cartoon: two GIs in WWII are talking and one says to
> the other, "I want to thank you for saving my life today, here's my
> last pair of dry socks."
>
> Both cases exhibit balanced reciprocity.
>
> Most examples of general reciprocity are situated in small, tight,
> groups like a family and few point a path to a "scaled application."
> Bot others, like Pieters, "pay it forward" or numerous instances of
> altruism benefiting large, "anonymous," groups contain no obvious
> constraints on scale.
>
> Anyway - just something I wanted to share.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Wed, May 12, 2021, at 1:46 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
>> I just want to share two stories with you regarding reciprocity.
>>
>> 1 Years ago I had to be in Miami for a couple of months for business
>> and my family joined me. My one son was ill and got treatment at the
>> Jackson Memorial Hospital. There was one nurse in particular that
>> went not the extra mile but million miles to help us with everything
>> that she possibly could. When it was time for us to return home we
>> obviously wanted to express our gratitude. Her reply was to request
>> us to do to others what she has done to us.
>>
>> 2 The deputy chief justice of South Africa Raymond Zondo had a
>> similar experience in his life. His family was very poor and a local
>> businessman helped so that he could study law. After completed his
>> studies he wanted to repay the businessman, but in Zondo's own words:
>> “When I asked him what arrangements we could make so I repay him, he
>> said don’t worry. Do to others what I have done to you. I thought
>> that was very important and in my own small way I try to do that,”
>> said the judge.
>> Taken from https://www.goodthingsguy.com/people/judge-raymond-zondo/
>> <https://www.goodthingsguy.com/people/judge-raymond-zondo/>
>>
>> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 23:56, Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com
>> <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Lazily composing at least two upshots of this conversation (and
>> the smart-contract parallel one):
>>
>> 1) I think Russ brought up what *I* thought was implicit in
>> Reciprocity (though I understand why it is not since I borrowed
>> my use of the term from gift economies, not adhering to the
>> (obvious) mathematical meaning that most here would jump to):
>> My intended connotation of Reciprocity included both "spirit of
>> generosity and gratitude", so it is excellent that those were
>> called out as possibly essential (or at least efficient?) in
>> improving the state of our relations.
>>
>> 2) Glen opened the question of "transitivity" which I think you
>> (Jon) are addressing here with good motivation. In my
>> smart-contract considerations, the point would be that the values
>> one attached to "raw value" (money/crypto¢) in their transactions
>> would propogate through. For example, food stamps cannot
>> (directly) be redeemed for non-food items (specifically alcohol,
>> tobacco, pet food, sunglasses) and if I paid a 500% surcharge on
>> the few gallons of petrol I run through my Extended Range EV as a
>> way to decline to participate in A) blood for oil wars and B)
>> clubbing baby seals in the arctic, those crypto¢ would *avoid*
>> the pockets of the warmongers and seal-clubbers and settle in the
>> pockets of those who went to the effort to get their oil without
>> that. Of course, just like there can be black/grey markets in
>> food stamps "hey buddy, I'll give ya $.50 on the dollar for those
>> food stamps!", there would surely appear
>> money-changers/launderers who would *try* to cross-connect the
>> drinking water with the black water for their own profits. In
>> principle, pervasive use of smart contracts *could* make that
>> vanishingly harder and harder with adoption.
>>
>> 3) I knew "at least" would come in handy. My intuitive
>> conception of Reciprocity is that it is as much about back as
>> forward propogation. SteveG will love the opportunity for a
>> Dual Field encoding I think. By taking Renee to dinner for
>> Mother's Day, he not only acts as a proxy for her own children in
>> some sense, I would like to believe he did it *because* Renee's
>> motherhood has already been her gift to him... whatever benefits
>> he gets from a step-role, from Renee being a better partner
>> having raised children, etc. and that dinner is to honor and
>> reciprocate for something he has *already received* from her (see
>> 1 above, "gratitude").
>>
>> The spectral graph and circuit analysis Jon points to may well be
>> useful/important for measurement/analysis of how well a system is
>> working. Ideally the implementation is entirely local in the
>> sense of agents on networks of transactions.
>>
>> Smart contracts are an implementation of distributed computation
>> where computation (complex decision making) is deferred to the
>> last (or most appropriate) place in the network. For example,
>> the fueling depot that accepts my anti-war/anti-ANWR crypto¢ for
>> petrol passes it to his wholesale source which passes it through
>> the "circuit".... the gas pump owner doesn't need to know (or
>> share or even have an opinion on) what "values" are embedded in
>> my crypto¢, he simply takes his "service cut" on the transaction
>> as does each other middleman right up to the guy gently scooping
>> teaspoons of bubbling crude out of an artesian well to run
>> through his handmade still. His still produces no better (maybe
>> worse) heptane/octane than BP or ARCO but he *still* gets paid
>> (ultimately by me) for so gently milking the dino juice from the
>> earth for me.
>>
>> - Steve
>>
>> On 5/11/21 3:21 PM, jon zingale wrote:
>>> I have failed to follow this discussion very closely. That said,
>>> to what extent could frameworks like those that underlie spring
>>> rank <https://github.com/cdebacco/SpringRank> or gauge-theoretic
>>> price as curvature <https://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.3043.pdf> give
>>> reasonable characterizations of reciprocity over circuits? To
>>> what extent does Levine's
>>> <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002251938090288X>
>>> (painfully straightforward) solving for eigenstates?
>>>
>>> * Apologies for any paywalls, I am often stymied to find better
>>> access.
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Sent from the Friam mailing list archive
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>>>
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