[FRIAM] Thuram still happening?

Thu Feb 16 04:21:16 EST 2023

DISCUSS: If we were Martians sent to earth to study animal life EXCLUSIVE
OF human life, would we ever have come up with the idea of categories?
What is there that animals do that demands us to invent categories to
explain their behavior?  Could we build a theory of animal life based
solely on associations among experiences... their experiences, not ours.

n

On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 6:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Sorry, Dave.  Will miss you.  You have been my most faithful recent
> companion in my quest for windmills to topple. As for your double take, I
> probably used the wrong initials. I was thinking about the AI thing which,
> I gather, Bing is now employing to get us all advice on how to cure our
> lumbago, without ever having to bother with that nasty Mayo Clinic website.
>
>
> I see why you want to substitute “cloud” for my link metaphor. It’s easier
> to think of clouds probabilistically.  Clouds are awfully passive
> entities to serve in the way I need them to.  Clouds are not, in the
> first instance, things but visualizations of things. (They can themselves
> become things, but Idon’t think you have anticipated that metaphoric
> implication.)   my ”links” are more deterministic than your clouds. I
> admit that “probabilistic link” is a hard image to think, and therefore not
> a very evocative metaphor. How about ”woodland path”  Woodland pathways
> provide a more dynamic image than “links”.  Started by a rabbit, adopted
> by a coyote, exploited by a deer, blundered into by a cow, woodland
> pathways flourish or fail by use and by the attractiveness of the nodes
> where they converge or cross.  Each use favors future use and nodes become
> prominent not only for their inherent attractiveness but because they are
> on the way to.  attractive nodes.  Thus Sublette KS is a well traveled node
> not only because of the tourist attraction of visiting the place where the
> 1917-18  ("spanish") flu got its start, but also because it happens to be
> on the shortest route from NYC to LA.  .
>
>
>
>  in thinking about this, we should focus on the animal case.  Humans are
> too complicated to be interesting. Also, I think we should focus on animals
> in currently living in their "environment of evolutionary adaptiveness."
>
>
>
> I wish we could entice Glen, and Mike, and Stephen to drop in on us
> around 11 tomorrow,if only to show your faces. The node is
> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Prof David West
> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 15, 2023 1:24 PM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Thuram still happening?
>
>
>
> I will be traveling to Wisconsin tomorrow and miss Thuram.
>
>
>
> 2-cents: a word cloud might be a more useful metaphor than a semantic net,
> just because of the formalisms employed in the latter. True a cloud lacks
> explicit links, but such might be lightly sprinkled therein.
>
>
>
> Did a huge double take at the last word in Nick's post. CBT, in one of the
> communities I associate with, has a far different meaning than, I think,
> Nick intended. And I would be 'they' used it first.
>
>
>
> davew
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2023, at 11:19 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>
> FWiW, I willmake every effort to arrive fed to Thuam by 10.30 Mountain.  I
> want to hear the experts among you hold forth on WTF a cateogory actually
> IS.  I am thinking (duh) that a category is a more or less diffuse node in
> a network of associations (signs, if you must).  Hence they constitute a
> vast table of what goes with what, what is predictable from what, etc.
> This accommodates “family resemblance”  quite nicely.  Do I think animals
> have categories, in this sense, ABSOLUTELY EFFING YES. Does this make me a
> (shudder) nominalist?  I hope not.
>
> Words…nouns in particular… confuse this category business.  Words place
> constraints on how vague these nodes can be.   They impose on the network
> constraints to which it is ill suited.  True, the more my associations with
> “horse” line up with your associations with “horse”, the more true the
> horse seems.  Following Peirce, I would say that where our nodes
> increasingly correspond with increasing shared experience, we have evidence
> ot the (ultimate) truth of the nodes, their “reality” in Peirce’s terms.
> Here is where I am striving to hang on to Peirce’s realism.
>
> The reason I want the geeks to participate tomorrow is that I keep
> thinking of a semantic webby thing that Steve devised for the Institute
> about a decade ago.   Now a semantic web would be a kind of metaphor for an
> associative web; don’t associate with other words in exactly the same
> manner in which experiences associate with other experiences.  Still, I
> think the metaphor is interesting.  Also, I am kind of re-interested in my
> “authorial voice”, how much it operates like cbt.
>
>
>
> Rushing,
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 15, 2023 10:29 AM
>
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Thuram still happening?
>
>
>
> Well shoot..... that would do it.... Thank you!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 12:28 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Today is Wednesday, isn't it?
>
> ---
>
> Frank C. Wimberly
>
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
>
>
> 505 670-9918
>
> Santa Fe, NM
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2023, 10:19 AM Eric Charles <
> eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Are the Thursday online meetings still happening? I missed a few weeks due
> to work piling up meetings on, but I'm trying to log in now, and it looks
> like the meeting hasn't started.
>
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