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<p>This list/thread(s) has been so prolific and pithy of late, I can
hardly begin to respond to one thing before another (dozen shiny
objects) catches my eye.<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">☣ ƃlǝu (reads like "blau"?) thus
wroteth:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:5933f092-a51a-a72d-1c21-7289c75b800b@gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Now Marcus is just being sadistic. >8^D
My own guess at a summary of Eric's stance is that where we see qualities, we can, at will, invert the vision and see quantities. Fontana is a great source for distinguishing construction from evolution. But for me, BC Smith [†] is better for maintaining an agnostic flippability (Necker cube) between objects vs fields, nodes vs edges, nouns vs verbs.</pre>
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<p>Guerin and I spend more than a little time bantering around the
head and shoulders (I can't resist trolling <i><font size="+1">uǝlƃ
<font size="+2">☣</font></font></i><i><b> </b></i>with
various (in)apt(ept) and mixed/mangled metaphors at every turn
here) what he refers to as (his?) dual-field theory. This
duality (if you are willing to call the things you flip) seems
pervasive. It is in fact the vernacular foreground/background I
think, only moreso? We tend to struggle with the agent-field
(turtle-patch in his netlogo vernacular) or perhaps graph/field,
projector-camera, or discrete/continuous aspects. And I have to
ask (@Stephen) <tongue-in-cheek> "is it Turtles or is it
Patches all the way down?" And why the preference for down... why
not up?</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:5933f092-a51a-a72d-1c21-7289c75b800b@gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap=""> The conflation Nick began with between expected value (an algorithmic reduction from a distribution to a singular thing/object) and a *quality* ... a qualitative feature of the world, parsed (registered in BC Smith's domain) from the ambience of the world is not inherently a bad thing. That conflation is not inherently bad because they're similar. They're both transformations from a field to a thing. The key is to be able to flip it back again, from a thing to a field.</pre>
</blockquote>
To crispify the fuzzy and fuzzify the crisp? Sounds downright
quantum wave-function collapse? How in the world did something like
THAT get into language? Did I impute that?<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:5933f092-a51a-a72d-1c21-7289c75b800b@gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">It is our nature as pattern-recognizers to parse the ambience into things ... at least that *was* our nature before the modern math/physics *field* techniques began to seep into our intuition.</pre>
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And I wonder at *when* that started. It seems as if aether and
phlogisten were proto-field-like-things... a struggle of the
post/meta-alchemist to remain in a familar domain of "stuffness"
whilst the abstractions of "fields" were starting to have more
traction (what how can an idea have "traction", what is it a
tractor?) ?<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:5933f092-a51a-a72d-1c21-7289c75b800b@gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap=""> Some of us who deal with fields/ambience/distributions all the time have begun to relax the harsh and immediate parsing. Engineers tend to simply be a bit lazy about it.</pre>
</blockquote>
Or self-proclaimedly *pragmatic* about it (engineers)?<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:5933f092-a51a-a72d-1c21-7289c75b800b@gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap=""> The parsing happens, but they talk of approximations and epsilon as it goes to ∞ or 0. Mathematicians talk of duals, congruence, bisimulation, isomorphism, comutation, etc.</pre>
</blockquote>
Nick loves it when you talk dirty. (many of us do).<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:5933f092-a51a-a72d-1c21-7289c75b800b@gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">But I think it can all be adequately understood in terms of qualities vs quantities. Qualities like "wetness" are precisely the same as things like "frozen pond". Quantities like 32°F are precisely the same as processes like "if I walk on that, I'll slip and fall".</pre>
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I don't know if they are precisely the same... there is a dualism
(in language?) like your former noun/verb. We *can* verbize any
noun it seems. There is the quantification of a quality (how "wet"
is the frozen pond?) and a domain-specific judgement about it ("is
it slippery?"), which I contend is not "precisely the same", as the
context for each is different. 32°F is not "precisely the same as"
0°C, at least in it's context? 0°C and 100°C were *defined* in the
context of (pure) water's freezing/boiling (under standard
atmospheric pressure) points. But °F are only deferential to water
in the sense that they require only 2-3 digits to cover the range of
water's phase-changes? °K is less deferential to water, and if not
not entirely out of the context of all matter, at least not
registered to any particular element (what does °K imply for
condensed matter or gluons?).<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:5933f092-a51a-a72d-1c21-7289c75b800b@gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap=""> The language each of us uses to grok this stuff is a choice. </pre>
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A choice (partly) made by our parents, our teachers, our embedded
context. It has been said (at least in inherited disease) that "it
is important to choose our parents well". We all got to be the way
we are *somehow*, though I still cling (myself) to the illusion of
free-will (perhaps a precondition to imagining there is a self, a
"here here"?)<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:5933f092-a51a-a72d-1c21-7289c75b800b@gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Eric provided a nice swath across several domains. Maybe too many. We're faced with the tyranny of choice. I'd treat it like a cafeteria. Pull the thread you understand best.</pre>
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Or get out your darning egg and needle and try to weave them back
into the stocking, lest your toes or heel or knee pokes through?
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:5933f092-a51a-a72d-1c21-7289c75b800b@gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
Bah! 316 words ... close enough, I say!</pre>
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From whence (or wherest?) did you get your 300 word target? And
mightest-not a syllable-weighted count be better? (preferring short
words?). Or would that be too antidisestablishmentarian?<br>
<p>- Snarf<br>
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