[FRIAM] aversive learning

Wed Sep 1 20:54:24 EDT 2021

If done carefully, this could be a good conversation to have.

The trick will be to clear the underbrush of obvious stuff and not go endlessly in circles on that, in the hope of getting to something non-obvious.

There is various obvious stuff about solitons (including some storms), roles of boundaries, and the use of statistical definitions of individuality instead of naive matter-bounding definitions.  I have some extended sections on that kind of thing, to clear underbrush that is a needless mess in biology, in the book with Harold.  Like many other things, I put it there as the one place I knew it would be safe from ever being seen by anybody.  So far that has worked well.  Other authors, who have been engaged in endless bickering for saying similar things in journal articles, have had to shoulder all that traffic while I have been left in peace to try to get on to something new.

But let me reiterate to try to keep Nick at bay: I am a polysemist.  The fact that a word gets used for several things does not lead me to think that they are the same or that it is merely a metaphor with one being primary and the others derivative.  I am not saying anybody else has to hold that view, only giving notice that I do.

Case in point (as setup):  The back-and-forth on where the term “to have” came from now has me interested in that.  The exchange with EricC pushed me off a foolish position I had been holding, and in that way cleared underbrush, but didn’t yet get to anything original (at least not contributed by me).

Other inputs: 

— I am unlikely to believe any path in this conversation that believes itself to be either top-down or bottom-up.  I think Glen’s oft-advocated middle-out is the only way to hope to have an insightful line of questioning.

— Not having anything better to refer to, I like Gian-Carlo Rota’s notion (yes, Husser’s, or Heidegger’s, but the only version I have read directly is from Rota’s exposition) of “the unthematized” from phenomenology.  Wherever these terms and their scopes come from, it seems to be there.  Again I reiterate, for lack of having something better.

— I know, from listening to them (but not committing to following them for 50 years, which I know is the minimal price of admission) that the Buddhists believe they have the Whole Story on this, and that it is much better than Rota’s “unthematized”.  But I have no way to know if that is the case, or if they just feel better believing it is.

— This is why I like very widely cross-linguistic evidence bases, and I tend to dislike the thesaurus-type analytical reasoning of senses and subsenses of meanings, which strikes me as useful within small bounds, but largely having the error that analytical philosophers seem to me to make, of believing one can argue from syntax to truth.  If one can get parallel emergences of polysemies from many distantly-related branches (preferably whole-world, if one had the databases), that seems more likely to be informative on the experience of being human and the character of living.

— It does seem a bit suspicious to me that Buddhism is a canon.  Any other commentary on living seems to change as the conditions of living change.  So I have little resonance with bronze-age stories that murder is less of an offense against The Lord than eating shellfish, and I resonate much more easily with Irish folk tales for children than I do with many of their African counterparts.  I also find what counts as argument by Plato interesting but completely mystifying.  Of course the Buddhists would answer that their great eternity of reality was never perturbed by the ripples on a pond the life course of this planet, so why shouldn’t some Indians and Tibetans have come to discover the whole thing and final word in a few thousand years at a particular era in human history.  To me that position is tautological, and asserted by many religions, so I don’t see how to say anything useful to engage with it.  Happily, they have no reason to care what I think, about that or anything else, so they can go on living in peace and doing what they want.

To end, because I need to go to a meeting: I don’t think the use of “individual” in psychology is super-close to the notion of being individuated as a cell, organism, soliton, hurricane, etc.  There can be some simple stuff to look for as overlaps, but I feel like the low-hanging fruit in that is all underbrush, which any college undergrad does staying up too late in gab sessions because doing your classwork is too tedious.  It would be good to somehow see that we can recognize what much of that is, agree that the obvious things aren’t too controversial or very informative, and try to get past them.  I know with certainty I will be proved wrong in believing that is possible. 

But, still the topic is a good one,

Eric

> On Sep 2, 2021, at 9:19 AM, Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> 
> A deep dive into the theory of reincarnation, Vedic version, reveals that the individual IS " simply a node in a system of interacting forces." The material aspect of that node, the incarnation, acts as a kind of inertial persistence - the forces repeat, moment to moment' the highly similar body with accompanying mental illusions of self. When the material body decomposes, the forces that gave rise to it do not and, with some degree of probability, give rise to a variant of the same entity at some point in the future. That second 'individual' is, to some statistical degree, the same individual previously incarnated but definitely not a clone — hence re-incarnation.
> 
> But ultimately, all are nodes in systems of interacting forces.
> 
> davew
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 1, 2021, at 4:09 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> EricS asked:
>>  
>> What am I but an individual?
>>  
>> Could you simply be a unique node in a system of interacting forces? 
>>  
>> I have long wanted to write an essay as a psychologist to a meteorology journal entitled “Should we name storms?
>>  
>> The first part of the essay argues that we shouldn’t name them because storms, unlike humans, are not proper individuals.  Ie the forces that move them are not the forces that define them.
>>  
>> The second part argues that we should name them because humans are, in fact,, like storms, each one defined by the particular forces that act upon it. 
>>  
>> Nick
>>  
>> Nick Thompson
>> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,6K-BylMLdNxb8DSP6nGmKKFojRxz62aTnShv8kLA9iqONITOdc8zXEfRa8StAS6sZvQo7tW_JrNr3-_NekQxdY_cqVT0UFgMwmYcmaenj-o,&typo=1&ancr_add=1>
>>  
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
>> Sent: Wednesday, September 1, 2021 5:58 PM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] aversive learning
>> 
>>  
>>  
>> > On Sep 1, 2021, at 11:41 PM, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
>> >
>> > I was made to take piano lessons for five years.  I did minimal practice, but still hated it and the idea of it.  I can’t do it all now, and don’t wish I could.   Don’t tell me what is important.  I will prioritize what I want.
>>  
>> I am imagining I see a through-line here, for several threads.
>>  
>> We take individuality for granted; after all, what else can I be but an individual?  (The Buddhists will get all energized that that view is what is sending the world to hell.)
>>  
>> But being an individual isn’t easy.  One can’t do it passively.  One has to constantly fight off the world’s encroachment to be an individual.  Hence elbowing for space, just to elbow for space, is probably innate.
>>  
>> There is a line, I think somewhere in Bible/Job/ that I have always liked and used, even though the book as a whole isn’t gripping to me, like something from an alien species, and could sort-of be about making almost-any point.  It was:
>>  
>> “Why dost thou kick against the pricks?”
>>  
>> I remember I was all in a prowl over getting an idiot-review of a paper, and in the mood that that puts me in, that I am eager to meet the reviewer with an A-10.  I wandered into the SFI kitchen to encounter Walter Fontana, always for me a comforting presence that the world would continue to have at least one interesting person in it, no matter what else happened.  I was unloading on him, because the only time I am funny is when I am really annoyed, and I don’t want all that to be lost, like Rutger Hauer says, “like tears, in rain” with nobody to enjoy it.  About 2 minutes in, I had Walter laughing out loud, and the culmination of my relation to reviewers was:
>>  
>> Why dost thou kick against the pricks?  Because they piss me off!
>>  
>> But back to the point: do we learn anything about the nature of individuality?
>>  
>> Eric
>>  
>> > That said, a vaccine is passive and takes no attention.
>> >
>> >> On Sep 1, 2021, at 7:29 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> 
>> >> UK judge orders rightwing extremist to read classic literature or
>> >> face prison
>> >> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.theguardian.c <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.theguardian.c>
>> >> om%2fpolitics%2f2021%2fsep%2f01%2fjudge-orders-rightwing-extremist-to
>> >> -read-classic-literature-or-face-prison&c=E,1,M9NK9YVSpDUE3ATp1xxsWZ6
>> >> 6fJfv7F41fZ3yhs00aXqlOlf6_8OBrRKThjnj4inZPPTHFPQ7WNCTHfJ5cMMP63OghVQR
>> >> 2wAsowx7Pdk58b0,&typo=1
>> >>
>> >> I know several liberals who agree with the righties that vaccine and mask mandates are bad, though not for the same reasons. Righties yap about fascism and limits to their "freedom". But the liberals talk about how mandates just push the righties further into their foxholes, preventing collegial conversation.
>> >>
>> >> So the story above is an interesting situation in similar style. Renee', to this day, hates Shakespeare because she was forced to memorize Romeo and Juliet as a kid. Of course, she doesn't hate Shakespeare, because she hasn't read much Shakespeare. She just *thinks* she hates it because of this "mandate" she suffered under. This court mandated "literature therapy" being imposed on this kid could work, if he can read it sympathetically. But if he can't, if he simply reads it "syntactically", what will he learn?
>> >>
>> >> BC Smith, in his book "The Promise of AI", channels Steels & Brooks [ψ] in writing:
>> >>
>> >> "What does all this mean in the case of AIs and computer systems generally? Perhaps at least this: that it is hard to see how synthetic systems could be trained in the ways of judgment except by gradually, incrementally, and systematically enmeshed in normative practices that engage with the world and that involve thick engagement with teachers ('elders'), who can steadily develop and inculcate not just 'moral sensibility' but also intellectual appreciation of intentional commitment to the world."
>> >>
>> >> If we think of this kid, Ben John, as an AI, what will he learn by mandating he read Dickens? Similarly, what are the mandate protesters learning from our mandates? Stupidity should be painful. And the court's reaction to this kid's stupidity, the pain of reading Pride and Prejudice, should teach that kid something. But which is the more dangerous stupidity? Which stupidity runs the risk of a more catastrophic outcome? Avoiding the vaccine? Or mandating vaccination?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> [ψ]
>> >> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fdoi.org%2f10.4324 <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fdoi.org%2f10.4324>
>> >> %2f9781351001885&c=E,1,kUEPqU5HqAHoV8Du4pwpdvHxqK_cJ1fOdlepXjYSapoLr0
>> >> ahTnkT06xd9Ll5tgJAyZ0h6glDWPK6a_eBJPD9GwxJm6FJFc-LbP5e9rdDCai8Wg,,&ty
>> >> po=1
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>> >>
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