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<font face="garamond, times new roman, serif">Jon/Glen (et alia) -</font><br>
<font face="garamond, times new roman, serif"></font>
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cite="mid:CAH5Jek3jWwvfqhWqmkD2HHSn8LEFSsZsDCW6xJ5zzsa9DSWPfQ@mail.gmail.com">
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><font
face="garamond, times new roman, serif">I very much agree
that questions of a <i>formality-informality</i> spectrum
will weave</font></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><font
face="garamond, times new roman, serif">itself throughout <i>the
work</i>. It seems to me that the informality ought to
provide a</font></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><font
face="garamond, times new roman, serif"><i>place</i> for
birds to make a nest, a <i>bellybutton</i> for lint to
collect, and a <i>place</i> for</font></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><font
face="garamond, times new roman, serif">rust to never sleep.
To my mind, it is not necessarily the formality that chokes<br>
development. Rather, I think of formality purely as
description and one among<br>
many valid and possibly incongruous descriptions. </font></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p><font face="garamond, times new roman, serif">I am brought to
think of mechanical tolerancing in juxtaposition to precise
machining. The latter yields better performance (e.g. in a
high performance internal combustion engine) initially but the
former provides for better interchangeability of parts,
especially for example, replacing worn parts along the way, and
as I understand the principle, better performance (including
reduced further wear) than putting in a "perfect as when new"
part which would at least *accelerate* wear and *reduce*
performance (think of replacing one ring or one main bearing in
an engine after the rest had "worn in significantly")</font></p>
<p><font face="garamond, times new roman, serif">As I understand it,
traditional gunsmiths and early ICE mechanics had to *add* wear
to a replacement part to match (not always in an obvious way)
the wear amongst the existing parts.<br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="garamond, times new roman, serif">In this *analogy*,
a formal description of a system is like the precision machined
parts which all function together well on assembly and all wear
in together in-balance; a *less* formal description might be
like a machined part with deliberate tolerance built in which
does not require as much "wear in" to reach a dynamic balance
and when a replacement (unworn) part is introduced the whole
system is more able to accept it in with it's pre-created
"slop". I am suggesting that a more informal (is
formal->informal a spectrum or a step-function?) description
of a system leaves room for the "moving parts" to operate even
if they do so sloppily where if you "tightened up" those
elements with (overly in this context) formalisms they would
bind against one another? Can an informal system be a
precursor to a formal system? Or must a formal system be
constructed by composing *smaller* formal components? Some of
the early attempts at powered, manned flight seemed to fail
because of their lack of precision while the Wright Bros
succeeded *because* they composed a series of more
precise/formal elements?<br>
</font></p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAH5Jek3jWwvfqhWqmkD2HHSn8LEFSsZsDCW6xJ5zzsa9DSWPfQ@mail.gmail.com">
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><font
face="garamond, times new roman, serif">Here is a place that
I would<br>
again emphasize Rota's take on eidetic variation. For Rota,
the eidetic<br>
variation includes all of the counterfactuals,
contradictions, and messiness<br>
that we develop/uncover as we vary in our minds an object of
interest. It is<br>
not necessary that we cut away<i> babies from bath waters</i>,
but rather recognize<br>
that the concepts are complex. I believe that the
development of a concept can<br>
especially choke when we fail to recognize that a concepts
formal description<br>
has a <i>combinatorial explosion</i>. </font></div>
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</blockquote>
<font face="garamond, times new roman, serif">Following my line of
thinking above, the contemporary penchant for developing
software/systems as "soft assemblages" of existing allows for what
seems like this "combinatorial explosion" what with "soft
assemblage" leaving the "slop" to allow the components to work
together in spite of not being designed to (humans in the loop
often make up for the slop?). It also limits the combinatorics
somewhat by allowing/selecting for larger components. Bolting a
grappling hook onto an offroad vehicle with acrylic
window-coverings and sheet steel-armor on the sides to make a
storm-chaser vehicle (with only hundreds of variants) rather than
building one of 10,000 variations from wheels, engines, nuts,
bolts, etc. Spot welders and epoxy glue and self-tapping screws
and duct tape and bailing wire and bungee cords make for "soft
assemblage" .</font><br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAH5Jek3jWwvfqhWqmkD2HHSn8LEFSsZsDCW6xJ5zzsa9DSWPfQ@mail.gmail.com">
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><font
face="garamond, times new roman, serif">A good example is a
way the concept of random<br>
number can be used, ironically enough, <i>informally</i> to
mean a number I can name.</font></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><font
face="garamond, times new roman, serif"><br>
When in a conversation the concept of the random number is
invoked, it evokes for<br>
me a complex. I can sense within a <i>single complex: </i>frequentist
randomness </font><span
style="font-family:garamond,"times new
roman",serif">and Chaitin</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><span
style="font-family:garamond,"times new
roman",serif">randomness and even an</span><span
style="font-family:garamond,"times new
roman",serif"> ephemeral feeling/non-symbolic
experience. </span><span
style="font-family:garamond,"times new
roman",serif">Comparison of</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><span
style="font-family:garamond,"times new
roman",serif">these </span><span
style="font-family:garamond,"times new
roman",serif">complexes with others provides the
opportunity for new pivots </span><span
style="font-family:garamond,"times new
roman",serif">and jumping-off</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><span
style="font-family:garamond,"times new
roman",serif">points, for the serendipity of missed
connections and false juxtapositions. There was</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><span
style="font-family:garamond,"times new
roman",serif">something of this in my experience
listening to the podcasters. At times I thought</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><span
style="font-family:garamond,"times new
roman",serif">that one had completely missed the
other's <i>point</i>, but really <i>I had missed the point</i>,</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><font
face="garamond, times new roman, serif">namely that the
discussion was <i>not about a point</i>. They were in play,
constructing</font></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><font
face="garamond, times new roman, serif">common </font><span
style="font-family:garamond,"times new
roman",serif">complexes and variations which they could
share.</span></div>
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</blockquote>
I like this apprehension, which also evokes in me a sense of
abstract classes in OO... the creation and manipulation of a
meta-thing that captures the essence(s) of the myriad things that
can be made more concrete and/or instantiated from the abstraction.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAH5Jek3jWwvfqhWqmkD2HHSn8LEFSsZsDCW6xJ5zzsa9DSWPfQ@mail.gmail.com">
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><font
face="garamond, times new roman, serif">When I compare or
attempt to describe my sense of this in terms of varieties<br>
and free module constructions, I am not saying that concepts
<i>are</i> these things.<br>
I am appealing to varieties (say) in terms of its <i>conceptual</i>
content. If we found<br>
that the language was flexible enough to do calculations,
well that would be a</font></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:small;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><font
face="garamond, times new roman, serif">pleasant </font><span
style="font-family:garamond,"times new
roman",serif">though unintentional corollary.</span></div>
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Interesting. I'll have to listen more (and more carefully) as this
unfolds.<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>- Steve<br>
</p>
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