From nickthompson at earthlink.net Tue Aug 1 08:55:54 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2017 08:55:54 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] For those of you, who like me, wish to engage in some wishful thinking right now. Message-ID: <011001d30ac5$83828340$8a8789c0$@earthlink.net> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/behold-the-trump-boomerang-effect/20 17/07/30/8534a696-73ac-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html?utm_term=.c25378d79 d9f &wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nickthompson at earthlink.net Tue Aug 1 10:00:41 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2017 10:00:41 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] Department of Wishful Thinking Message-ID: <012901d30ace$909c75f0$b1d561d0$@earthlink.net> Dear All, I went looking for possible sources of cheer today and found them in 3 quite different places. The first argues that trump is shaping anew left of center consensus. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/behold-the-trump-boomerang-effect/20 17/07/30/8534a696-73ac-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html?utm_term=.d8deb74e5 98b &wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1 The second Is a an indication that there are still a few adults in the white house. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/07/31/im-an-impea chment-lawyer-im-rooting-for-trumps-new-attorney-you-should-too/?tid=pm_opin ions_pop &utm_term=.75a8841957d8 The third is just wonderfully silly. Follow the twitter feed for maximum lift. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-mooch-is-gone-but-the-lyrics-liv e-on/2017/07/31/0215a832-7640-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html?utm_term=.73 4bd6e2da6c &wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1 Oh, Lordy, do I need "silly" right now! Nick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Tue Aug 1 12:04:08 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2017 10:04:08 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Department of Wishful Thinking In-Reply-To: <012901d30ace$909c75f0$b1d561d0$@earthlink.net> References: <012901d30ace$909c75f0$b1d561d0$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Silly you say! I agree and I for one don't like this weird adult stuff. It seems make you all grumbly and sulkyface . I don't hide prefering to laugh and be a silly lighthearted goofball. For some silly like I said on one of my twiiter acounts: What green idea. This might help get the goofy started. https://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/892166490228748288 Mrs Hucklebee Sanders being razed on TV...for wearing a giant greenscreen test sign. Just plain awsome yet silly: https://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/892166490228748288 On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 8:00 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Dear All, > > > > I went looking for possible sources of cheer today and found them in 3 > quite different places. > > > > The first argues that trump is shaping anew left of center consensus. > > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/behold-the-trump- > boomerang-effect/2017/07/30/8534a696-73ac-11e7-8839- > ec48ec4cae25_story.html?utm_term=.d8deb74e598b&wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1 > > > > > > The second Is a an indication that there are still a few adults in the > white house. > > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/ > 2017/07/31/im-an-impeachment-lawyer-im-rooting-for-trumps- > new-attorney-you-should-too/?tid=pm_opinions_pop&utm_term=.75a8841957d8 > > > > The third is just wonderfully silly. Follow the twitter feed for maximum > lift. > > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-mooch-is- > gone-but-the-lyrics-live-on/2017/07/31/0215a832-7640-11e7- > 8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html?utm_term=.734bd6e2da6c&wpisrc= > nl_opinions&wpmm=1 > > > > > > Oh, Lordy, do I need ?silly? right now! > > > > Nick > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Tue Aug 1 12:29:21 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2017 16:29:21 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] For those of you, who like me, wish to engage in some wishful thinking right now. In-Reply-To: <011001d30ac5$83828340$8a8789c0$@earthlink.net> References: <011001d30ac5$83828340$8a8789c0$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Nick, The best outcome I could see of all this would be if conservatives continue to fragment into irreconcilable parts, e.g. the feral blood and land patriarchs vs. the religious right vs. the oligarchy. If things went well, they might end-up hating each other more than they hate the left. Or maybe Trump will end-up as a sort of symbolic and powerless monarch. If the military ignored him over the transgendered ban, that could be a slippery slope (in a good way). Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Nick Thompson Sent: Tuesday, August 1, 2017 6:55:54 AM To: friam Subject: [FRIAM] For those of you, who like me, wish to engage in some wishful thinking right now. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/behold-the-trump-boomerang-effect/2017/07/30/8534a696-73ac-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html?utm_term=.c25378d79d9f&wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Tue Aug 1 12:30:21 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2017 10:30:21 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Department of Wishful Thinking In-Reply-To: <012901d30ace$909c75f0$b1d561d0$@earthlink.net> References: <012901d30ace$909c75f0$b1d561d0$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: GeeorgTekai/Sulu's twitter and facebook is full of funsies Other than a fun charector on OG StarTrek he's gone on to poke fun in awsome ways at some reely weird stuff that dun make sense. As to 45...well that's definatly NOT cheer. Though a silver lining is that around the 10th or so the white house quietly agreed 45 is not just what gamers call a troll but bonkers and are happily queitly taking over his job. Like Rep. Kamilla Harris (california) put it: That irtating set of rules we like to call the amendments, by laws, and commen sense. so As of around the 10th or so 45 has had some/many of his official powers taken away. The strange and hillarius thing? he has yet to notice....somehow...that'snot less said about 45. It's a iritating depressing subject. The sooner we move passed this weirdness the better. On a MUCH more awsome and cheerier note my Tweet to whitehouse may still be around and I was just being me and iritated with the weird place polotics is in. I found some of FDR's (famous and awsome one) his fireside style chats and pretty cool and uplifting talks especially when you lisent to them over fanfare to the common man. and in what ever space Twitter aloud send shortend Urls to the WhiteHouse (or likely staff ) just saying well I'll show an example it might cheer you up ^_^ For example: @WH "...to boldly go.." www.danaroc.com/guests_fdr_021609.html 1. 2. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/59/c4/1e/59c41ea3f4f5410c3a7618e171204568.jpg http://www.maniacworld.com/obama-spock-mashup.jpg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLMVB0B1_Ts 1. Hope that helps cheer you up Nick! On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 8:00 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Dear All, > > > > I went looking for possible sources of cheer today and found them in 3 > quite different places. > > > > The first argues that trump is shaping anew left of center consensus. > > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/behold-the-trump- > boomerang-effect/2017/07/30/8534a696-73ac-11e7-8839- > ec48ec4cae25_story.html?utm_term=.d8deb74e598b&wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1 > > > > > > The second Is a an indication that there are still a few adults in the > white house. > > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/ > 2017/07/31/im-an-impeachment-lawyer-im-rooting-for-trumps- > new-attorney-you-should-too/?tid=pm_opinions_pop&utm_term=.75a8841957d8 > > > > The third is just wonderfully silly. Follow the twitter feed for maximum > lift. > > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-mooch-is- > gone-but-the-lyrics-live-on/2017/07/31/0215a832-7640-11e7- > 8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html?utm_term=.734bd6e2da6c&wpisrc= > nl_opinions&wpmm=1 > > > > > > Oh, Lordy, do I need ?silly? right now! > > > > Nick > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Tue Aug 1 13:40:54 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2017 11:40:54 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Department of Wishful Thinking In-Reply-To: <012901d30ace$909c75f0$b1d561d0$@earthlink.net> References: <012901d30ace$909c75f0$b1d561d0$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Some of you might apreciat the humor of this site from the tittle alone what the fark this time? https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2017/07/31/day-193/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=daily_email thank you sulu for your wonderfully awsome and weird sense of humor. On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 8:00 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Dear All, > > > > I went looking for possible sources of cheer today and found them in 3 > quite different places. > > > > The first argues that trump is shaping anew left of center consensus. > > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/behold-the-trump- > boomerang-effect/2017/07/30/8534a696-73ac-11e7-8839- > ec48ec4cae25_story.html?utm_term=.d8deb74e598b&wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1 > > > > > > The second Is a an indication that there are still a few adults in the > white house. > > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/ > 2017/07/31/im-an-impeachment-lawyer-im-rooting-for-trumps- > new-attorney-you-should-too/?tid=pm_opinions_pop&utm_term=.75a8841957d8 > > > > The third is just wonderfully silly. Follow the twitter feed for maximum > lift. > > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-mooch-is- > gone-but-the-lyrics-live-on/2017/07/31/0215a832-7640-11e7- > 8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html?utm_term=.734bd6e2da6c&wpisrc= > nl_opinions&wpmm=1 > > > > > > Oh, Lordy, do I need ?silly? right now! > > > > Nick > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Tue Aug 1 20:00:38 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2017 18:00:38 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Since we all seem to need some cheer Message-ID: https://soundcloud.com/chinese-classical-music I found this the other day in a funk. It reminds me a bit of the good mojo I had in china town, and I jokingly blame my misguided yute playing computer games and watching a ton of kung fu flicks (Life is good!) Just plane fun and cheerful folk music and yar it so hits the spot with stir and comedy Nick if that doesn't help you cheer up..I..I may have to get extreme with my silly jokes. Then the Steves will join in and the puns get rolling (and bageling sometimes to) To get that started I found out why mydoctor has a herb garden with oregeno and thyme in it...she never has enough Time in the day. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nickthompson at earthlink.net Tue Aug 1 21:20:19 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2017 21:20:19 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] Since we all seem to need some cheer In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <004101d30b2d$8200ca00$86025e00$@earthlink.net> Gill, Do you know why marooned sailors don?t play cards? Because, The Lord Saith, ?No Whist for the Wrecked.? OK. NOW I think we should stop. There is a fine line between puns and naked aggression. We might get expunged from the list. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gillian Densmore Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2017 8:01 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] Since we all seem to need some cheer https://soundcloud.com/chinese-classical-music I found this the other day in a funk. It reminds me a bit of the good mojo I had in china town, and I jokingly blame my misguided yute playing computer games and watching a ton of kung fu flicks (Life is good!) Just plane fun and cheerful folk music and yar it so hits the spot with stir and comedy Nick if that doesn't help you cheer up..I..I may have to get extreme with my silly jokes. Then the Steves will join in and the puns get rolling (and bageling sometimes to) To get that started I found out why mydoctor has a herb garden with oregeno and thyme in it...she never has enough Time in the day. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rec at elf.org Wed Aug 2 09:50:25 2017 From: rec at elf.org (Roger Critchlow) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 09:50:25 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] geometries of neural net activations Message-ID: Hmm, meta analysis of FMRI result corpus: http://reliawire.com/brain-architecture-abstract-thought/ https://www.nature.com/articles/srep18112 -- rec -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Wed Aug 2 11:34:25 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 09:34:25 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Since we all seem to need some cheer In-Reply-To: <004101d30b2d$8200ca00$86025e00$@earthlink.net> References: <004101d30b2d$8200ca00$86025e00$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: My zombie friends reely know how to keep a foot in the door. On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 7:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Gill, > > > > Do you know why marooned sailors don?t play cards? > > > > Because, The Lord Saith, ?No Whist for the Wrecked.? > > > > OK. NOW I think we should stop. There is a fine line between puns and > naked aggression. We might get expunged from the list. > > > > Nick > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Gillian > Densmore > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 01, 2017 8:01 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam at redfish.com> > *Subject:* [FRIAM] Since we all seem to need some cheer > > > > https://soundcloud.com/chinese-classical-music > > > > > > I found this the other day in a funk. It reminds me a bit of the good mojo > I had in china town, and I jokingly blame my misguided yute playing > computer games and watching a ton of kung fu flicks > > (Life is good!) > > > > > > Just plane fun and cheerful folk music and yar it so hits the spot with > stir and comedy > > > > Nick if that doesn't help you cheer up..I..I may have to get extreme with > my silly jokes. Then the Steves will join in and the puns get rolling > > (and bageling sometimes to) > > > > To get that started I found out why mydoctor has a herb garden with > oregeno and thyme in it...she never has enough Time in the day. > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Wed Aug 2 18:03:43 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 16:03:43 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Legado de Nuevo Mexico In-Reply-To: <017201d3042e$ef2c9740$cd85c5c0$@gmail.com> References: <016001d2e8b7$0cd5e7d0$2681b770$@earthlink.net> <022801d2ec67$f7dd2e60$e7978b20$@earthlink.net> <001201d2ff75$1e568990$5b039cb0$@shaw.ca> <4ef026cf-0233-ad81-c080-99c5cfb1598e@gmail.com> <000601d30024$c0008ac0$4001a040$@shaw.ca> <000f01d300da$b7f40710$27dc1530$@shaw.ca> <017201d3042e$ef2c9740$cd85c5c0$@gmail.com> Message-ID: Frank and Congregation - I finally checked my USPS mail today and discovered that the copy of your memoir on your NM legacy had arrived from Amazon. Uncharacteristically I sat down over a long lunch of Huevos Rancheros (Xmas, over easy, extra garnish in place of rice/beans) and quaffed the entire book in a single sitting (with about 4 ice-tea chasers). I gave up looking for metaphors in your very matter-of-fact chronicle. As predicted, the metaphors I did find were precisely the conceptual ones which I believe all language is built upon (as per Lakoff/Johnson, et al)... not a bit of figurative language discovered! I definitely enjoyed the romp through your memory and the eclectic mix of your West/East coast life with your earliest/latest years in Nuevomexico among communities and relatives of Spanish, Mexican, and Native ancestry. As you know from some of our conversations, I was born/raised among communities where Natives and Spanish speakers were significant and sometimes dominant. I do not have my own blood roots in the southwest as you do, and being about 15 years your junior, my experiences were a little different, but not entirely. I prowled my rurality with both a spring-BB gun and an air rifle but graduated to archery over high-powered rifles in my teens, having noticed that I didn't really want to kill animals (or people). I am probably the only member of my grade school who doesn't still own/shoot guns for fun. I appreciated your observation about how multilinguals often reserve one language for one mode of interaction vs another. I was so drawn in by your history that I wanted more details and anecdotes. I'm sure the audience is small enough for this book and that one chronicling more of your technical education/interests/background would have a smaller audience, but I for one wanted to let you know I appreciated it. I saw your sales rank is around 227,000 when I *think* it was 660,000 when I ordered. This is something like a divide-by-zero situation I suspect? I will pass your book on to a very good friend of mine who is your contemporary (also 1943) born/raised in NM/TX panhandle, visiting Los Alamos summers where an uncle worked. He worked the switch yards on the railroads as a college student, had a classmate who "commuted" from school to vacations home "out west" by jumping boxcars. Getting pulled by a big Eastern University (MIT) and joining the workforce in the 60's as an "analyst" on big mainframes with degrees in math/architecture. He will definitely appreciate a number of your early experiences. Thanks for the book, - Steve From wimberly3 at gmail.com Wed Aug 2 18:31:35 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 16:31:35 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Legado de Nuevo Mexico In-Reply-To: References: <016001d2e8b7$0cd5e7d0$2681b770$@earthlink.net> <022801d2ec67$f7dd2e60$e7978b20$@earthlink.net> <001201d2ff75$1e568990$5b039cb0$@shaw.ca> <4ef026cf-0233-ad81-c080-99c5cfb1598e@gmail.com> <000601d30024$c0008ac0$4001a040$@shaw.ca> <000f01d300da$b7f40710$27dc1530$@shaw.ca> <017201d3042e$ef2c9740$cd85c5c0$@gmail.com> Message-ID: Al contrario Steve. A usted gracias! Once I said to Reuben Hersh that I was inhibited about writing to John Baez to ask questions about his book on mathematical physics (Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity). Reuben said that authors love to get comments and questions about their books. Now I understand. If you don't receive such communications you have a feeling that you have thrown a bottle containing a note into the ocean. Hence my feeling that I am the one who owes you thanks. As for metaphors, I did say that Norman Crider was like a fish out of water. But I guess that's a simile. I still do own firearms but I haven't fired them for decades except once when I shot a gopher with a .22 short from my study window. Anyone who has a garden around here will understand. It's interesting that you would have liked more anecdotes. I could have made the book twice as long but I thought that would make it boring and I was in a hurry for fear of becoming disabled before it was published. Irrational, I know. Thanks too for the plan to pass the book along to your friend. Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 2, 2017 4:04 PM, "Steven A Smith" wrote: Frank and Congregation - I finally checked my USPS mail today and discovered that the copy of your memoir on your NM legacy had arrived from Amazon. Uncharacteristically I sat down over a long lunch of Huevos Rancheros (Xmas, over easy, extra garnish in place of rice/beans) and quaffed the entire book in a single sitting (with about 4 ice-tea chasers). I gave up looking for metaphors in your very matter-of-fact chronicle. As predicted, the metaphors I did find were precisely the conceptual ones which I believe all language is built upon (as per Lakoff/Johnson, et al)... not a bit of figurative language discovered! I definitely enjoyed the romp through your memory and the eclectic mix of your West/East coast life with your earliest/latest years in Nuevomexico among communities and relatives of Spanish, Mexican, and Native ancestry. As you know from some of our conversations, I was born/raised among communities where Natives and Spanish speakers were significant and sometimes dominant. I do not have my own blood roots in the southwest as you do, and being about 15 years your junior, my experiences were a little different, but not entirely. I prowled my rurality with both a spring-BB gun and an air rifle but graduated to archery over high-powered rifles in my teens, having noticed that I didn't really want to kill animals (or people). I am probably the only member of my grade school who doesn't still own/shoot guns for fun. I appreciated your observation about how multilinguals often reserve one language for one mode of interaction vs another. I was so drawn in by your history that I wanted more details and anecdotes. I'm sure the audience is small enough for this book and that one chronicling more of your technical education/interests/background would have a smaller audience, but I for one wanted to let you know I appreciated it. I saw your sales rank is around 227,000 when I *think* it was 660,000 when I ordered. This is something like a divide-by-zero situation I suspect? I will pass your book on to a very good friend of mine who is your contemporary (also 1943) born/raised in NM/TX panhandle, visiting Los Alamos summers where an uncle worked. He worked the switch yards on the railroads as a college student, had a classmate who "commuted" from school to vacations home "out west" by jumping boxcars. Getting pulled by a big Eastern University (MIT) and joining the workforce in the 60's as an "analyst" on big mainframes with degrees in math/architecture. He will definitely appreciate a number of your early experiences. Thanks for the book, - Steve ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nickthompson at earthlink.net Wed Aug 2 18:50:26 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 18:50:26 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] Legado de Nuevo Mexico In-Reply-To: References: <016001d2e8b7$0cd5e7d0$2681b770$@earthlink.net> <022801d2ec67$f7dd2e60$e7978b20$@earthlink.net> <001201d2ff75$1e568990$5b039cb0$@shaw.ca> <4ef026cf-0233-ad81-c080-99c5cfb1598e@gmail.com> <000601d30024$c0008ac0$4001a040$@shaw.ca> <000f01d300da$b7f40710$27dc1530$@shaw.ca> <017201d3042e$ef2c9740$cd85c5c0$@gmail.com> Message-ID: <00c401d30be1$bbd65790$338306b0$@earthlink.net> There can always be a second edition. I wonder what would happen if you approached a publisher with what you have already and asked them if they would be interested in guiding you to publishing a longer (and more lucrative) second edition. Publishers (in the old days, anyway) love a bird in hand. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2017 6:32 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Legado de Nuevo Mexico Al contrario Steve. A usted gracias! Once I said to Reuben Hersh that I was inhibited about writing to John Baez to ask questions about his book on mathematical physics (Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity). Reuben said that authors love to get comments and questions about their books. Now I understand. If you don't receive such communications you have a feeling that you have thrown a bottle containing a note into the ocean. Hence my feeling that I am the one who owes you thanks. As for metaphors, I did say that Norman Crider was like a fish out of water. But I guess that's a simile. I still do own firearms but I haven't fired them for decades except once when I shot a gopher with a .22 short from my study window. Anyone who has a garden around here will understand. It's interesting that you would have liked more anecdotes. I could have made the book twice as long but I thought that would make it boring and I was in a hurry for fear of becoming disabled before it was published. Irrational, I know. Thanks too for the plan to pass the book along to your friend. Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 2, 2017 4:04 PM, "Steven A Smith" > wrote: Frank and Congregation - I finally checked my USPS mail today and discovered that the copy of your memoir on your NM legacy had arrived from Amazon. Uncharacteristically I sat down over a long lunch of Huevos Rancheros (Xmas, over easy, extra garnish in place of rice/beans) and quaffed the entire book in a single sitting (with about 4 ice-tea chasers). I gave up looking for metaphors in your very matter-of-fact chronicle. As predicted, the metaphors I did find were precisely the conceptual ones which I believe all language is built upon (as per Lakoff/Johnson, et al)... not a bit of figurative language discovered! I definitely enjoyed the romp through your memory and the eclectic mix of your West/East coast life with your earliest/latest years in Nuevomexico among communities and relatives of Spanish, Mexican, and Native ancestry. As you know from some of our conversations, I was born/raised among communities where Natives and Spanish speakers were significant and sometimes dominant. I do not have my own blood roots in the southwest as you do, and being about 15 years your junior, my experiences were a little different, but not entirely. I prowled my rurality with both a spring-BB gun and an air rifle but graduated to archery over high-powered rifles in my teens, having noticed that I didn't really want to kill animals (or people). I am probably the only member of my grade school who doesn't still own/shoot guns for fun. I appreciated your observation about how multilinguals often reserve one language for one mode of interaction vs another. I was so drawn in by your history that I wanted more details and anecdotes. I'm sure the audience is small enough for this book and that one chronicling more of your technical education/interests/background would have a smaller audience, but I for one wanted to let you know I appreciated it. I saw your sales rank is around 227,000 when I *think* it was 660,000 when I ordered. This is something like a divide-by-zero situation I suspect? I will pass your book on to a very good friend of mine who is your contemporary (also 1943) born/raised in NM/TX panhandle, visiting Los Alamos summers where an uncle worked. He worked the switch yards on the railroads as a college student, had a classmate who "commuted" from school to vacations home "out west" by jumping boxcars. Getting pulled by a big Eastern University (MIT) and joining the workforce in the 60's as an "analyst" on big mainframes with degrees in math/architecture. He will definitely appreciate a number of your early experiences. Thanks for the book, - Steve ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wimberly3 at gmail.com Wed Aug 2 19:11:59 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 17:11:59 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Legado de Nuevo Mexico In-Reply-To: <00c401d30be1$bbd65790$338306b0$@earthlink.net> References: <016001d2e8b7$0cd5e7d0$2681b770$@earthlink.net> <022801d2ec67$f7dd2e60$e7978b20$@earthlink.net> <001201d2ff75$1e568990$5b039cb0$@shaw.ca> <4ef026cf-0233-ad81-c080-99c5cfb1598e@gmail.com> <000601d30024$c0008ac0$4001a040$@shaw.ca> <000f01d300da$b7f40710$27dc1530$@shaw.ca> <017201d3042e$ef2c9740$cd85c5c0$@gmail.com> <00c401d30be1$bbd65790$338306b0$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Thanks for the advice, Nick. And fir the metaphor. I think I'll wait for more data about interest in my story. Feank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 2, 2017 4:50 PM, "Nick Thompson" wrote: > There can always be a second edition. I wonder what would happen if you > approached a publisher with what you have already and asked them if they > would be interested in guiding you to publishing a longer (and more > lucrative) second edition. Publishers (in the old days, anyway) love a > bird in hand. > > > > Nick > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Frank > Wimberly > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 02, 2017 6:32 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam at redfish.com> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Legado de Nuevo Mexico > > > > Al contrario Steve. A usted gracias! > > > > Once I said to Reuben Hersh that I was inhibited about writing to John > Baez to ask questions about his book on mathematical physics (Gauge Fields, > Knots and Gravity). Reuben said that authors love to get comments and > questions about their books. Now I understand. If you don't receive such > communications you have a feeling that you have thrown a bottle containing > a note into the ocean. Hence my feeling that I am the one who owes you > thanks. > > > > As for metaphors, I did say that Norman Crider was like a fish out of > water. But I guess that's a simile. > > > > I still do own firearms but I haven't fired them for decades except once > when I shot a gopher with a .22 short from my study window. Anyone who has > a garden around here will understand. > > > > It's interesting that you would have liked more anecdotes. I could have > made the book twice as long but I thought that would make it boring and I > was in a hurry for fear of becoming disabled before it was published. > Irrational, I know. > > > > Thanks too for the plan to pass the book along to your friend. > > > > Frank > > > > Frank Wimberly > Phone (505) 670-9918 > > > > > > On Aug 2, 2017 4:04 PM, "Steven A Smith" wrote: > > Frank and Congregation - > > I finally checked my USPS mail today and discovered that the copy of your > memoir on your NM legacy had arrived from Amazon. > > Uncharacteristically I sat down over a long lunch of Huevos Rancheros > (Xmas, over easy, extra garnish in place of rice/beans) and quaffed the > entire book in a single sitting (with about 4 ice-tea chasers). > > I gave up looking for metaphors in your very matter-of-fact chronicle. As > predicted, the metaphors I did find were precisely the conceptual ones > which I believe all language is built upon (as per Lakoff/Johnson, et > al)... not a bit of figurative language discovered! > > I definitely enjoyed the romp through your memory and the eclectic mix of > your West/East coast life with your earliest/latest years in Nuevomexico > among communities and relatives of Spanish, Mexican, and Native ancestry. > As you know from some of our conversations, I was born/raised among > communities where Natives and Spanish speakers were significant and > sometimes dominant. I do not have my own blood roots in the southwest as > you do, and being about 15 years your junior, my experiences were a little > different, but not entirely. I prowled my rurality with both a spring-BB > gun and an air rifle but graduated to archery over high-powered rifles in > my teens, having noticed that I didn't really want to kill animals (or > people). I am probably the only member of my grade school who doesn't > still own/shoot guns for fun. > > I appreciated your observation about how multilinguals often reserve one > language for one mode of interaction vs another. > > I was so drawn in by your history that I wanted more details and > anecdotes. I'm sure the audience is small enough for this book and that > one chronicling more of your technical education/interests/background would > have a smaller audience, but I for one wanted to let you know I appreciated > it. I saw your sales rank is around 227,000 when I *think* it was 660,000 > when I ordered. This is something like a divide-by-zero situation I > suspect? > > I will pass your book on to a very good friend of mine who is your > contemporary (also 1943) born/raised in NM/TX panhandle, visiting Los > Alamos summers where an uncle worked. He worked the switch yards on the > railroads as a college student, had a classmate who "commuted" from school > to vacations home "out west" by jumping boxcars. Getting pulled by a big > Eastern University (MIT) and joining the workforce in the 60's as an > "analyst" on big mainframes with degrees in math/architecture. He will > definitely appreciate a number of your early experiences. > > Thanks for the book, > > - Steve > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Wed Aug 2 19:52:47 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 17:52:47 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Legado de Nuevo Mexico In-Reply-To: References: <016001d2e8b7$0cd5e7d0$2681b770$@earthlink.net> <022801d2ec67$f7dd2e60$e7978b20$@earthlink.net> <001201d2ff75$1e568990$5b039cb0$@shaw.ca> <4ef026cf-0233-ad81-c080-99c5cfb1598e@gmail.com> <000601d30024$c0008ac0$4001a040$@shaw.ca> <000f01d300da$b7f40710$27dc1530$@shaw.ca> <017201d3042e$ef2c9740$cd85c5c0$@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4761391e-df9e-15ad-c1e9-f892dfa6d8f0@swcp.com> > It's interesting that you would have liked more anecdotes. I could > have made the book twice as long but I thought that would make it > boring and I was in a hurry for fear of becoming disabled before it > was published. Irrational, I know. Let's just say I was captivated, but I have a lot of natural resonance/affinity for your subject (general place-time). I admit that it WAS a treat to be able to take it all in one long gulp which was a close call.... I was done with my meal and on my 3rd ice-tea and ready to pack it in when I realized the remainder of the pages weren't all full (what with back-matter and all) and soldiered on to the end. I might even find this an excuse to make it to the weekly meeting of the congregation just to prise a few more anecdotes from you. > > Thanks too for the plan to pass the book along to your friend. I doubt it will inspire him to write his own but in it's own way is equally interesting (at least to me!). Your point about authors being interested in reader feedback reminds me of an open-ended conversation with our own Tim Taylor (aka Ramick) regarding the role of "audience" in poetry/writing. In my own experience the timesqew for regularly published writers seems to cause them some annoyance with fans. Unless they are on a riff of a 10 part Trilogy by the time I have read one of their works, it is likely they were done with it's creation years before... at best they were bouncing back and forth with Editor/Publisher for a year or more from their final draft and their final draft might have been a year or more past a "pretty good draft" and are NOW well into their next novel (or next dozenth short piece) so discussing the characters/setting/conceit of their LAST work (or something from a decade past) seems to be at least a mild annoyance to them. I have always been fascinated with Scientific/Technical people who became fiction authors, whether they write tech/sci fiction or not. One of my favorites is Robert Forward, and LANL has it's own contemporary Ian Tregellis to offer up in that category. - Steve -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wimberly3 at gmail.com Wed Aug 2 20:20:56 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 18:20:56 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Legado de Nuevo Mexico In-Reply-To: <4761391e-df9e-15ad-c1e9-f892dfa6d8f0@swcp.com> References: <016001d2e8b7$0cd5e7d0$2681b770$@earthlink.net> <022801d2ec67$f7dd2e60$e7978b20$@earthlink.net> <001201d2ff75$1e568990$5b039cb0$@shaw.ca> <4ef026cf-0233-ad81-c080-99c5cfb1598e@gmail.com> <000601d30024$c0008ac0$4001a040$@shaw.ca> <000f01d300da$b7f40710$27dc1530$@shaw.ca> <017201d3042e$ef2c9740$cd85c5c0$@gmail.com> <4761391e-df9e-15ad-c1e9-f892dfa6d8f0@swcp.com> Message-ID: I might even find this an excuse to make it to the weekly meeting of the congregation just to prise a few more anecdotes from you. Here's one that I could have put in the chapter "Summer of 1962". I may have mentioned this at the weekly meeting but you haven't been there for a long time. When my sister, her boyfriend and I were staying with my childless aunt and uncle for the summer, my aunt said, "Frank, can you go to the store and pick up a fifth of milk?". They bought much more liquor than milk. Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 2, 2017 5:53 PM, "Steven A Smith" wrote: > > It's interesting that you would have liked more anecdotes. I could have > made the book twice as long but I thought that would make it boring and I > was in a hurry for fear of becoming disabled before it was published. > Irrational, I know. > > Let's just say I was captivated, but I have a lot of natural > resonance/affinity for your subject (general place-time). > > I admit that it WAS a treat to be able to take it all in one long gulp > which was a close call.... I was done with my meal and on my 3rd ice-tea > and ready to pack it in when I realized the remainder of the pages weren't > all full (what with back-matter and all) and soldiered on to the end. > > I might even find this an excuse to make it to the weekly meeting of the > congregation just to prise a few more anecdotes from you. > > > Thanks too for the plan to pass the book along to your friend. > > I doubt it will inspire him to write his own but in it's own way is > equally interesting (at least to me!). > > Your point about authors being interested in reader feedback reminds me of > an open-ended conversation with our own Tim Taylor (aka Ramick) regarding > the role of "audience" in poetry/writing. > > In my own experience the timesqew for regularly published writers seems to > cause them some annoyance with fans. Unless they are on a riff of a 10 > part Trilogy by the time I have read one of their works, it is likely they > were done with it's creation years before... at best they were bouncing > back and forth with Editor/Publisher for a year or more from their final > draft and their final draft might have been a year or more past a "pretty > good draft" and are NOW well into their next novel (or next dozenth short > piece) so discussing the characters/setting/conceit of their LAST work (or > something from a decade past) seems to be at least a mild annoyance to them. > > I have always been fascinated with Scientific/Technical people who became > fiction authors, whether they write tech/sci fiction or not. One of my > favorites is Robert Forward, and LANL has it's own contemporary Ian > Tregellis > to > offer up in that category. > > - Steve > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From owen at backspaces.net Thu Aug 3 15:23:59 2017 From: owen at backspaces.net (Owen Densmore) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 13:23:59 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Trump Support Message-ID: The Economist sez: We asked YouGov, a pollster, to survey 1,500 Americans about Donald Trump and several national media outlets. When Republicans were asked whether they trusted Mr Trump more than the New York Times, Washington Post or CNN, 70% sided with the president each time. Republicans now loathe these outlets so much that nearly half would be glad to see unconstitutional means used to silence them, writes our data team https://goo.gl/Xmfqcr I've wanted to know if Trump voters hang onto him after all the harm he's done to them. Apparently they are like this tweet: [image: Inline image 1] -- Owen -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Snap.08.03.17-13.23.03.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 27570 bytes Desc: not available URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Thu Aug 3 15:44:17 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 13:44:17 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Trump Support In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Oh and as funny quirk: POTUS aproval now (roughly 20-25%) is about the same number that thought it was a good idea to (try to) fire BClinton for liking women and having a fight with Gangrich. The number of people that are asking Washington to do a Referendum and Special election (about 55-60%) Is the same number that called for Nixons resignation, asked if Raegan was sane: Source: George Takai's twitter feed. On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 1:23 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: > The Economist sez: > > We asked YouGov, a pollster, to survey 1,500 Americans about Donald Trump > and several national media outlets. When Republicans were asked whether > they trusted Mr Trump more than the New York Times, Washington Post or CNN, > 70% sided with the president each time. Republicans now loathe these > outlets so much that nearly half would be glad to see unconstitutional > means used to silence them, writes our data team > > > https://goo.gl/Xmfqcr > > > I've wanted to know if Trump voters hang onto him after all the harm he's > done to them. Apparently they are like this tweet: > [image: Inline image 1] > > -- Owen > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Snap.08.03.17-13.23.03.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 27570 bytes Desc: not available URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Thu Aug 3 15:54:05 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2xlbiDimKM=?=) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 12:54:05 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] Trump Support In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <71c2de42-cf35-7ce7-3e13-939519e2c2cf@gmail.com> I'm inclined to call that articlet "fake news". 8^) YouGov has a good rating with 538 (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/). But I can't help but wonder about the one-sidedness of the articlet. Why only include those 2 (or 7 ... or 8, or whatever it was) questions? Where's the fine-print link to the poll and its analysis? Maybe I missed it. Etc. Regardless, I have 2 reactions: 1) Excellent! The more the flat-earthers flock together and reinforce their batsh!t delusions, the more obvious it becomes to anyone how delusional they are. Maybe they'll even go all "Heaven's Gate" and suffocate themselves from all the methane[?]. 2) It's not so much self-defeating on the R's part as it is our (every one of us) inability to think about complex things. I posit the tendency to trust Trump will correlate with the tendency to prefer oversimplification. [?] But the same would apply to any chant you might hear at a liberal march/rally. Anyone who enjoys those stupid chants is enjoying oversimplification. [?] https://youtu.be/BPC7e8W8u18 [?] I feel the same way about "tl;dr" and people who overvalue the disgusting concept of 'pithyness' and/or sayings like "brevity is the soul of wit". No, it's an indicator of ADHD you aphorism-obsessed @#$%. >8^D On 08/03/2017 12:23 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: > The Economist sez: > > We asked YouGov, a pollster, to survey 1,500 Americans about Donald Trump > and several national media outlets. When Republicans were asked whether > they trusted Mr Trump more than the New York Times, Washington Post or CNN, > 70% sided with the president each time. Republicans now loathe these > outlets so much that nearly half would be glad to see unconstitutional > means used to silence them, writes our data team > > > https://goo.gl/Xmfqcr > > > I've wanted to know if Trump voters hang onto him after all the harm he's > done to them. Apparently they are like this tweet: > [image: Inline image 1] -- ? glen From wimberly3 at gmail.com Thu Aug 3 16:07:04 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 14:07:04 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Trump Support In-Reply-To: <71c2de42-cf35-7ce7-3e13-939519e2c2cf@gmail.com> References: <71c2de42-cf35-7ce7-3e13-939519e2c2cf@gmail.com> Message-ID: Nice to have you back, Glen. Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 3, 2017 1:54 PM, "glen ?" wrote: > > I'm inclined to call that articlet "fake news". 8^) YouGov has a good > rating with 538 (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/). > But I can't help but wonder about the one-sidedness of the articlet. Why > only include those 2 (or 7 ... or 8, or whatever it was) questions? > Where's the fine-print link to the poll and its analysis? Maybe I missed > it. Etc. > > Regardless, I have 2 reactions: 1) Excellent! The more the flat-earthers > flock together and reinforce their batsh!t delusions, the more obvious it > becomes to anyone how delusional they are. Maybe they'll even go all > "Heaven's Gate" and suffocate themselves from all the methane[?]. 2) It's > not so much self-defeating on the R's part as it is our (every one of us) > inability to think about complex things. I posit the tendency to trust > Trump will correlate with the tendency to prefer oversimplification. [?] > But the same would apply to any chant you might hear at a liberal > march/rally. Anyone who enjoys those stupid chants is enjoying > oversimplification. > > > > [?] https://youtu.be/BPC7e8W8u18 > [?] I feel the same way about "tl;dr" and people who overvalue the > disgusting concept of 'pithyness' and/or sayings like "brevity is the soul > of wit". No, it's an indicator of ADHD you aphorism-obsessed @#$%. >8^D > > On 08/03/2017 12:23 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: > > The Economist sez: > > > > We asked YouGov, a pollster, to survey 1,500 Americans about Donald Trump > > and several national media outlets. When Republicans were asked whether > > they trusted Mr Trump more than the New York Times, Washington Post or > CNN, > > 70% sided with the president each time. Republicans now loathe these > > outlets so much that nearly half would be glad to see unconstitutional > > means used to silence them, writes our data team > > > > > > https://goo.gl/Xmfqcr > > > > > > I've wanted to know if Trump voters hang onto him after all the harm he's > > done to them. Apparently they are like this tweet: > > [image: Inline image 1] > > > -- > ? glen > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Thu Aug 3 16:19:22 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 20:19:22 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] Trump Support In-Reply-To: <71c2de42-cf35-7ce7-3e13-939519e2c2cf@gmail.com> References: , <71c2de42-cf35-7ce7-3e13-939519e2c2cf@gmail.com> Message-ID: Glen writes: " I posit the tendency to trust Trump will correlate with the tendency to prefer oversimplification. [?] But the same would apply to any chant you might hear at a liberal march/rally. Anyone who enjoys those stupid chants is enjoying oversimplification." People talk about `playing by the rules' like it is a good thing. But is fulfillment of an old or obsolete social contract (get married, get a soul-destroying job, and make babies) really something to be honored? Some reason to lock-out cheaper or more-skilled workers in their favor? It seems to me little more than fear of failure, and an absence of curiosity. A bunch of people that take pride in their ability to truncate the world into a set of rules that can be conveyed by using a belt or a chant, and while intoxicated. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of glen ? Sent: Thursday, August 3, 2017 1:54:05 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Trump Support I'm inclined to call that articlet "fake news". 8^) YouGov has a good rating with 538 (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/). But I can't help but wonder about the one-sidedness of the articlet. Why only include those 2 (or 7 ... or 8, or whatever it was) questions? Where's the fine-print link to the poll and its analysis? Maybe I missed it. Etc. Regardless, I have 2 reactions: 1) Excellent! The more the flat-earthers flock together and reinforce their batsh!t delusions, the more obvious it becomes to anyone how delusional they are. Maybe they'll even go all "Heaven's Gate" and suffocate themselves from all the methane[?]. 2) It's not so much self-defeating on the R's part as it is our (every one of us) inability to think about complex things. I posit the tendency to trust Trump will correlate with the tendency to prefer oversimplification. [?] But the same would apply to any chant you might hear at a liberal march/rally. Anyone who enjoys those stupid chants is enjoying oversimplification. [?] https://youtu.be/BPC7e8W8u18 [?] I feel the same way about "tl;dr" and people who overvalue the disgusting concept of 'pithyness' and/or sayings like "brevity is the soul of wit". No, it's an indicator of ADHD you aphorism-obsessed @#$%. >8^D On 08/03/2017 12:23 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: > The Economist sez: > > We asked YouGov, a pollster, to survey 1,500 Americans about Donald Trump > and several national media outlets. When Republicans were asked whether > they trusted Mr Trump more than the New York Times, Washington Post or CNN, > 70% sided with the president each time. Republicans now loathe these > outlets so much that nearly half would be glad to see unconstitutional > means used to silence them, writes our data team > > > https://goo.gl/Xmfqcr > > > I've wanted to know if Trump voters hang onto him after all the harm he's > done to them. Apparently they are like this tweet: > [image: Inline image 1] -- ? glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Thu Aug 3 16:33:25 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 14:33:25 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Trump Support In-Reply-To: <71c2de42-cf35-7ce7-3e13-939519e2c2cf@gmail.com> References: <71c2de42-cf35-7ce7-3e13-939519e2c2cf@gmail.com> Message-ID: Except that despite Drumpf was batshit crazy in the 80s. He seems to have gone more batshit crazy with possible altimerz and dementia issues. My scary click this morning durrning routine taichI? He is mimicing others and parts of his sane(ER) self the same way Raegen did in the 80s. I hope we don't need a repeat of the weird polotics of then to see how this could play out. Let's put this into perspective: of the roughtly 60% or so that could vote 8 months ago. Only 15% a small very friegtened number of people looking around at clay colord humans going about their lives. Their reaction? Feer and terror and for what ever reasons not able to consider: those clay skined people are just going about their day to day lifes. Plus their's about 500 or so dicks in Washignton that have a very conservertive view the world. The rest of us see these people as just people. I clearly enjoy company of some of them otherwise I wouldn't enjoy beer with them and treet them as possible freends, One of those guys even helped fix my phone. For me the issue is simple: 45. Is fucking nuts. He was nuts in the 80's and gone even more bat fucking shit crazy somehow. Acording to tweats from Luan and Takei they recenlty added charges of espenage and attempted blackmail to the reasons for impeachment. (Aka went full nixon and Raegon on us) It's possible that might reason enough for congress to ask for his resignation. I have no idea what the rules say about that. Kamilla Harris and Maxine Waters have asked a few times to use Nixon as historical president for congress to ask that POTUS resign. Suposedly so did sanders. On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 1:54 PM, glen ? wrote: > > I'm inclined to call that articlet "fake news". 8^) YouGov has a good > rating with 538 (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/). > But I can't help but wonder about the one-sidedness of the articlet. Why > only include those 2 (or 7 ... or 8, or whatever it was) questions? > Where's the fine-print link to the poll and its analysis? Maybe I missed > it. Etc. > > Regardless, I have 2 reactions: 1) Excellent! The more the flat-earthers > flock together and reinforce their batsh!t delusions, the more obvious it > becomes to anyone how delusional they are. Maybe they'll even go all > "Heaven's Gate" and suffocate themselves from all the methane[?]. 2) It's > not so much self-defeating on the R's part as it is our (every one of us) > inability to think about complex things. I posit the tendency to trust > Trump will correlate with the tendency to prefer oversimplification. [?] > But the same would apply to any chant you might hear at a liberal > march/rally. Anyone who enjoys those stupid chants is enjoying > oversimplification. > > > > [?] https://youtu.be/BPC7e8W8u18 > [?] I feel the same way about "tl;dr" and people who overvalue the > disgusting concept of 'pithyness' and/or sayings like "brevity is the soul > of wit". No, it's an indicator of ADHD you aphorism-obsessed @#$%. >8^D > > On 08/03/2017 12:23 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: > > The Economist sez: > > > > We asked YouGov, a pollster, to survey 1,500 Americans about Donald Trump > > and several national media outlets. When Republicans were asked whether > > they trusted Mr Trump more than the New York Times, Washington Post or > CNN, > > 70% sided with the president each time. Republicans now loathe these > > outlets so much that nearly half would be glad to see unconstitutional > > means used to silence them, writes our data team > > > > > > https://goo.gl/Xmfqcr > > > > > > I've wanted to know if Trump voters hang onto him after all the harm he's > > done to them. Apparently they are like this tweet: > > [image: Inline image 1] > > > -- > ? glen > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Thu Aug 3 16:40:55 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 14:40:55 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Trump Support In-Reply-To: <71c2de42-cf35-7ce7-3e13-939519e2c2cf@gmail.com> References: <71c2de42-cf35-7ce7-3e13-939519e2c2cf@gmail.com> Message-ID: <6b98c646-680e-1271-f493-7b59780a751b@swcp.com> Glen - Thanks for your analysis. I suffer mightily on the axis of over-simplification to over-complication. I suffer it personally (making bad choices, mostly biased toward complification) and by proxy (suffering friends and colleagues who operate on some other region of that axes, often barely overlapping (in a fuzzy distribution kinda way)). Once Trump was in and his shenanigans started coming home to roost on all of us (including the joke about Trumpsters shoothing themselves in the dick because liberals hate it so much) I quit talking politics with my Trumpsketeer friends. Some of it is simple embarrassment for them. When Trump was all promises (threats) and no action and even when his actions hadn't produced (negative nor positive) results, I felt inclined to debate the issues with them if only a little. Now that the obvious (and not so obvious) results are starting to hit the floor (like the proverbial "other shoe" but from a millipede, not a biped), I guess I recognize that I would be throwing good energy after bad to do so. I DO occasionally debate (discuss?) with my friends/colleagues who I know not to be taken in in any way at all by the Donald and his Cronies, some of the unexpected consequences and some of the possible alternate paths to a brighter future that nobody in their right mind could have positioned us for as well as our Lunatic in Chief has. I used to think of Trump as "a loose cannon on deck" and while I was (mildly) happy to see *some* of the junk on deck cleared off by his wild careening, I was worried about him snapping the masts, destroying the wheelhouse, hulling and then knocking all the lifeboats overboard, etc. I still worry a bit about all of that, but am finding him to be a much "lighter weight" cannon than I feared. He seems completely incapable of picking a good enough strategy to get ANYTHING he seeks and he doesn't have the followthrough to actually cash in on his occasional (accidental/blundering?) successes. For example, does our Brinksman in Chief puffing his chest and waving his tiny fist at the Kleptocrat in Chief (Putin) and the WhackJob in Chief (Kim Jung Un) somehow set the stage for a global nuclear disarmament (or at least de-escalation)? We have been running on (n times over) MAD for many decades and we are finally faced with at least one MAD actor with nukes whose use of same would trigger not Mutual Destruction but Unilateral Destruction and Regional Disaster (wherever Kim Jung might hurl his one (or two) Nukes?) I'm pretty sure the Donald (with the support of the Joint Chiefs) wouldn't blink at the prospect of vaporizing the capitol and a few other choice locations with only the mildest concession for not immediately harming SoKo or Japanese or Chinese citizens. Kaesong and Sinuiju being likely exempt due to their proximity to these countries? Another example is his rabid "tear down ObamaCare" leading us toward a confrontation where Medicare-for-All or another version of Single-Payer health care becomes inevitable? And is his flat-earth Climate Denial scaring even those who believe in it but won't acknowledge it for their own personal/business greed interests? Might the torch for this movement move significantly out of Government hands? Will there be a huge backlash swing as soon as the Blue/Green folks can get control over the legislative branch again? Trump can cause a LOT of trouble in 4 years perhaps, but the backlash to his nonsense might very well recover greater than if he'd never mucked things up? Reminds me of the trick when arm-wrestling someone who is well matched, of "pretending" to give way just a tiny bit and being able to overcome the opponents dynamic strength more effectively than their static strength. It has been noted that the previous 8 years trained the Republicans to be entirely reactive and obstructionist, and are now having a huge problem doing anything actually constructive (especially while watching their own back from the Trumpster and company). I'm probably just singing my usual Pollyanna song here, but I guess I really like the tune! - Steve On 8/3/17 1:54 PM, glen ? wrote: > I'm inclined to call that articlet "fake news". 8^) YouGov has a good rating with 538 (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/). But I can't help but wonder about the one-sidedness of the articlet. Why only include those 2 (or 7 ... or 8, or whatever it was) questions? Where's the fine-print link to the poll and its analysis? Maybe I missed it. Etc. > > Regardless, I have 2 reactions: 1) Excellent! The more the flat-earthers flock together and reinforce their batsh!t delusions, the more obvious it becomes to anyone how delusional they are. Maybe they'll even go all "Heaven's Gate" and suffocate themselves from all the methane[?]. 2) It's not so much self-defeating on the R's part as it is our (every one of us) inability to think about complex things. I posit the tendency to trust Trump will correlate with the tendency to prefer oversimplification. [?] But the same would apply to any chant you might hear at a liberal march/rally. Anyone who enjoys those stupid chants is enjoying oversimplification. > > > > [?] https://youtu.be/BPC7e8W8u18 > [?] I feel the same way about "tl;dr" and people who overvalue the disgusting concept of 'pithyness' and/or sayings like "brevity is the soul of wit". No, it's an indicator of ADHD you aphorism-obsessed @#$%. >8^D > > On 08/03/2017 12:23 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: >> The Economist sez: >> >> We asked YouGov, a pollster, to survey 1,500 Americans about Donald Trump >> and several national media outlets. When Republicans were asked whether >> they trusted Mr Trump more than the New York Times, Washington Post or CNN, >> 70% sided with the president each time. Republicans now loathe these >> outlets so much that nearly half would be glad to see unconstitutional >> means used to silence them, writes our data team >> >> >> https://goo.gl/Xmfqcr >> >> >> I've wanted to know if Trump voters hang onto him after all the harm he's >> done to them. Apparently they are like this tweet: >> [image: Inline image 1] > From gepropella at gmail.com Thu Aug 3 17:48:42 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2xlbiDimKM=?=) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 14:48:42 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] Trump Support In-Reply-To: <71c2de42-cf35-7ce7-3e13-939519e2c2cf@gmail.com> References: <71c2de42-cf35-7ce7-3e13-939519e2c2cf@gmail.com> Message-ID: <70579992-828c-512e-0e77-b3bc88d73e9b@gmail.com> On 08/03/2017 01:07 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote: > Nice to have you back, Glen. Thanks! On 08/03/2017 01:19 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > People talk about `playing by the rules' like it is a good thing. But is fulfillment of an old or obsolete social contract (get married, get a soul-destroying job, and make babies) really something to be honored? Some reason to lock-out cheaper or more-skilled workers in their favor? It seems to me little more than fear of failure, and an absence of curiosity. A bunch of people that take pride in their ability to truncate the world into a set of rules that can be conveyed by using a belt or a chant, and while intoxicated. I agree completely. My Trump-loving, CEO-hating, corporation-fearing, Christ-loving, walking contradiction of a neighbor talked about how the "justice system has been destroyed", criminals get off, corrupt politicians get away with it, etc. I told him of my DUI arrest after I was diagnosed (and drank too much yapping with a friend about death) and the circumstances of it. My claim was that, back in Texas, when I was a kid, the cop would have locked up my motorcycle and driven me home ... probably to turn up the next morning to yell at me. But regardless of any sympathy the cop might have had for my circumstances, they're simply not allowed to do that sort of thing (at least not with ordinary people). They'd be fired or go to jail themselves (or think they would). After my neighbor finished his rant about the justice system, I told him that story and followed up with my rant about "jury of your peers" ... the gist being that context is king, details are important. And you want a) a good dialectic between the state and your lawyer and b) to be judged by those (morons) you live with. You want that. He then agreed and told a story about some conflicted feelings he had over a personally relevant murder trial. So, he ended up agreeing that, perhaps, the justice system isn't so broken after all. [sigh] Then I told him about a recent article that showed judges were more likely to grant probation if they had recently eaten and less likely if they were hungry. So, he, again, flipped and began ranting about how broken the justice system is. Anyhooo .... it devolved, as it always does, into him a) extolling his tendency to argue against deontological Christians who think their pet rule is in the bible and b) complaining about how Catholics and Muslims are too flexible in their interpretations of their respective rulesets ... despite his never having heard of Hadith or anything of the sort. Oh well. On 08/03/2017 01:33 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote: > For me the issue is simple: 45. Is fucking nuts. He was nuts in the 80's > and gone even more bat fucking shit crazy somehow. I'm not so sure. In my off moments, I can't help but think I'd end up in the same situation if, for whatever reason, the job landed in my lap. I feel the same way here on this list, surrounded by people way smarter than me ... especially when I say stupid things off the cuff, just like Trump. I can even empathize (by imputation) with some of what I think Trump meant when he said various things that seem stupid for a politician to say. I may be slightly more academic than Trump and try to speak more clearly and steadily. But you don't have to be crazy to be really really bad at something. He's incompetent and should never have been elected. To me, that's really the deepest, trustable, statement we can make. Personally, his election seems to me like more of the same: Rich people have the power ... and having money doesn't imply you're competent at anything. On 08/03/2017 01:40 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > Reminds me of the trick when arm-wrestling someone who is well matched, of "pretending" to give way just a tiny bit and being able to overcome the opponents dynamic strength more effectively than their static strength. I hope you're right. I even wrote a response to a post the other day reflecting that... basically, that Trump (and the racists, neo-reactionaries, sovereign citizens, etc.) are the resistance, not the liberals. If we empathize with the pathetic, frightened, little moron homunculi that drive all these people, imagine how you'd feel to look around and see all the progress we've made over the last 100, 1000, or 10k years. Really, the liberals are winning, thank Yog. -- ? glen From gil.densmore at gmail.com Fri Aug 4 16:37:14 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2017 14:37:14 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] For nick and Dad Message-ID: Since they've said needs some cheer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX1OZKKfHGg -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Sun Aug 6 12:28:18 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2017 10:28:18 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] just for fun Message-ID: https://www.antipodesmap.com/#about-antipodes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Sun Aug 6 17:44:38 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2017 15:44:38 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Fire neer santa fe? Message-ID: Their's smoke in the air and a burning smell. Any guesses to wich fire this might be? and is it anything to be concerned about yet? as of 1545/345PM local thin haze and a distinct smoke fire scent.. Their's a few places online that note the pueblos Friday/Saturday have a fire from lightning as well as a few fires outside of ABQ. I simply don't know if their's one closer to town. And as a last sensable follow ups everyone out their ok? if we know? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gary at naturesvisualarts.com Sun Aug 6 19:30:40 2017 From: gary at naturesvisualarts.com (Gary Schiltz) Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2017 18:30:40 -0500 Subject: [FRIAM] just for fun In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: That's really cool, Gillian. If you click on Santa Fe, you get a nice snarky response like one of the following for the Antipodes Location: You`re alone and the water is so cold. Incredible! There is no one around you, just fish. You`re in the water and all you need is a boat. Most likely the ocean. Watch out for sharks. So, if you decide to tunnel straight through the center of the earth, you might want to try making a little course correction somewhere. Fortunately for me, most of Ecuador's antipodes location is on the island of Sumatra, which happens to grow my favorite variety of coffee. On Sun, Aug 6, 2017 at 11:28 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote: > https://www.antipodesmap.com/#about-antipodes > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Sun Aug 6 20:05:27 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2017 18:05:27 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] just for fun In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <846a3b1a-9f7c-11cf-85d3-063149043868@swcp.com> So... *IF* you could bore a perfectly straight hole thorugh the earth to your precise antipodal location (probably having to put one hell of a "well casing" in, probably of neutronium to withstand the temperatures and turbulences of the core?) what would the "orbit" of a falling body be? Would a massive object (e.g. metal sphere) simply fall to the center and then by it's momentum "rise" until it reached it's apogee somewhat short of the antipodal end of the casing, slowed somewhat by the atmosphere? Is this a good problem for a second year differential calculus student? Or might there be some simplifying assumptions that could be made? My rough attempt to estimate the behaviour/trajectory: (spoiler?) The "boundary conditions" suggest that upon dropping the mass, gravity and air density would be very close to what we have at or just above the surface and the mass would achieve terminal velocity (122mph for a sky-belly-flopper, a bit more for a true sky-diver, and probably somewhat higher for an iron or steel sphere, for instance) long before air density nor the value of gravity changed appreciably. Near the core, the air density would approach zero (my assumption of a spherical earth and that the gravitational attraction of the mass "outside" the radius of the current location of the sphere summing to zero) it seems likely that terminal velocity would rise to some point, but it seems very difficult to estimate. Other assumptions include that the diameter of the sphere is small enough compared to the borehole that there would be no significant amount of compression of the column of air in front of the sphere, if it were a "tight fit" I suspect the ball would compress the column of air under it until that pressure's exerted force exceeded that of gravitational pull and would eventually "bounce" long before it got near the core. I also thought of coriolis forces, but then realized that the trajectory has only an R, no theta nor phi component, so in principle the sphere would not experience any coriolis force. (nod to Nick's Swirlies) On the other hand, since the sphere would nominally be in freefall, it's trajectory would be influenced by it's initial velocity (relative to the rotation of the earth), suggesting it would follow a spiral path toward the center of the earth, suggesting that if we wanted a "bullet-train" that went straight through the earth, we would need to give it a *spiral* core? Evacuating such a a tube would allow true orbital speeds. The precision required to "drop" a bullet-train car "through* the earth seems excruciatingly difficult (as would be coming up with methods for the coring and the lining) seems insurmountable... but some form of magnetic levitation type "correction" along the way would seem possible if not easy. I think tidal forces can safely be ignored? I fondly remember when I first heard about the Freeman Dyson's "Dyson Sphere" and then Niven's _Ringworld_ and his followon _Integral Trees_ and Bob Forward's _Rocheworld_, realizing that there were alternative physics/engineering regimes not that far from our current experience, yet quite counter-intuitive to us. 'nuff for now, - Steve On 8/6/17 5:30 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote: > That's really cool, Gillian. If you click on Santa Fe, you get a nice > snarky response like one of the following for the Antipodes Location: > > You`re alone and the water is so cold. > Incredible! There is no one around you, just fish. > You`re in the water and all you need is a boat. > Most likely the ocean. Watch out for sharks. > > So, if you decide to tunnel straight through the center of the earth, > you might want to try making a little course correction somewhere. > > Fortunately for me, most of Ecuador's antipodes location is on the > island of Sumatra, which happens to grow my favorite variety of coffee. > > On Sun, Aug 6, 2017 at 11:28 AM, Gillian Densmore > > wrote: > > https://www.antipodesmap.com/#about-antipodes > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > by Dr. Strangelove > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Sun Aug 6 20:30:09 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 00:30:09 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] just for fun In-Reply-To: <846a3b1a-9f7c-11cf-85d3-063149043868@swcp.com> References: , <846a3b1a-9f7c-11cf-85d3-063149043868@swcp.com> Message-ID: Shouldn't it be used for Hyperloop? Sent from my iPhone On Aug 6, 2017, at 6:05 PM, Steven A Smith > wrote: So... *IF* you could bore a perfectly straight hole thorugh the earth to your precise antipodal location (probably having to put one hell of a "well casing" in, probably of neutronium to withstand the temperatures and turbulences of the core?) what would the "orbit" of a falling body be? Would a massive object (e.g. metal sphere) simply fall to the center and then by it's momentum "rise" until it reached it's apogee somewhat short of the antipodal end of the casing, slowed somewhat by the atmosphere? Is this a good problem for a second year differential calculus student? Or might there be some simplifying assumptions that could be made? My rough attempt to estimate the behaviour/trajectory: (spoiler?) The "boundary conditions" suggest that upon dropping the mass, gravity and air density would be very close to what we have at or just above the surface and the mass would achieve terminal velocity (122mph for a sky-belly-flopper, a bit more for a true sky-diver, and probably somewhat higher for an iron or steel sphere, for instance) long before air density nor the value of gravity changed appreciably. Near the core, the air density would approach zero (my assumption of a spherical earth and that the gravitational attraction of the mass "outside" the radius of the current location of the sphere summing to zero) it seems likely that terminal velocity would rise to some point, but it seems very difficult to estimate. Other assumptions include that the diameter of the sphere is small enough compared to the borehole that there would be no significant amount of compression of the column of air in front of the sphere, if it were a "tight fit" I suspect the ball would compress the column of air under it until that pressure's exerted force exceeded that of gravitational pull and would eventually "bounce" long before it got near the core. I also thought of coriolis forces, but then realized that the trajectory has only an R, no theta nor phi component, so in principle the sphere would not experience any coriolis force. (nod to Nick's Swirlies) On the other hand, since the sphere would nominally be in freefall, it's trajectory would be influenced by it's initial velocity (relative to the rotation of the earth), suggesting it would follow a spiral path toward the center of the earth, suggesting that if we wanted a "bullet-train" that went straight through the earth, we would need to give it a *spiral* core? Evacuating such a a tube would allow true orbital speeds. The precision required to "drop" a bullet-train car "through* the earth seems excruciatingly difficult (as would be coming up with methods for the coring and the lining) seems insurmountable... but some form of magnetic levitation type "correction" along the way would seem possible if not easy. I think tidal forces can safely be ignored? I fondly remember when I first heard about the Freeman Dyson's "Dyson Sphere" and then Niven's _Ringworld_ and his followon _Integral Trees_ and Bob Forward's _Rocheworld_, realizing that there were alternative physics/engineering regimes not that far from our current experience, yet quite counter-intuitive to us. 'nuff for now, - Steve On 8/6/17 5:30 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote: That's really cool, Gillian. If you click on Santa Fe, you get a nice snarky response like one of the following for the Antipodes Location: You`re alone and the water is so cold. Incredible! There is no one around you, just fish. You`re in the water and all you need is a boat. Most likely the ocean. Watch out for sharks. So, if you decide to tunnel straight through the center of the earth, you might want to try making a little course correction somewhere. Fortunately for me, most of Ecuador's antipodes location is on the island of Sumatra, which happens to grow my favorite variety of coffee. On Sun, Aug 6, 2017 at 11:28 AM, Gillian Densmore > wrote: https://www.antipodesmap.com/#about-antipodes ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Mon Aug 7 00:35:10 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2017 22:35:10 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] just for fun In-Reply-To: References: <846a3b1a-9f7c-11cf-85d3-063149043868@swcp.com> Message-ID: Yes, I DO suppose this would be one (extreme) form of Hyperloop which just made me realize that my invocation of the inertial reference frame requiring these "straight tubes" to be spirals is equivalent to Coriolis... and in fact could probably be characterized as "geodesics" in a specific space-time geometry implied by the spin of the earth? I"m generally a neo-Luddite but that doesn't mean I'm not fascinated by these feats of engineering based in esoteric if not highly advanced science (simple orbital mechanics, mag-lev, evacuated tubes, etc.) It is entertaining (if not perhaps instructive) to refer back to some of Jules (and his son Michel) Verne's prognostications on the topic of large scale pneumatic transport. An Express of the Future , etc It also suggests that Shipping Containers of the future may be cylindrical rather than rectangular boxes? Or perhaps for backward compatibility there will be a business in making cylindrical shells that fit a container "just right" and a discount on items which can pack around them in the chord area surrounding? On 8/6/17 6:30 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Shouldn't it be used for Hyperloop? > > Sent from my iPhone > > On Aug 6, 2017, at 6:05 PM, Steven A Smith > wrote: > >> So... *IF* you could bore a perfectly straight hole thorugh the earth >> to your precise antipodal location (probably having to put one hell >> of a "well casing" in, probably of neutronium to withstand the >> temperatures and turbulences of the core?) what would the "orbit" of >> a falling body be? Would a massive object (e.g. metal sphere) simply >> fall to the center and then by it's momentum "rise" until it reached >> it's apogee somewhat short of the antipodal end of the casing, slowed >> somewhat by the atmosphere? >> >> Is this a good problem for a second year differential calculus >> student? Or might there be some simplifying assumptions that could >> be made? >> >> >> My rough attempt to estimate the behaviour/trajectory: (spoiler?) >> >> The "boundary conditions" suggest that upon dropping the mass, >> gravity and air density would be very close to what we have at or >> just above the surface and the mass would achieve terminal velocity >> (122mph for a sky-belly-flopper, a bit more for a true sky-diver, and >> probably somewhat higher for an iron or steel sphere, for instance) >> long before air density nor the value of gravity changed appreciably. >> >> Near the core, the air density would approach zero (my assumption of >> a spherical earth and that the gravitational attraction of the mass >> "outside" the radius of the current location of the sphere summing to >> zero) it seems likely that terminal velocity would rise to some >> point, but it seems very difficult to estimate. >> >> Other assumptions include that the diameter of the sphere is small >> enough compared to the borehole that there would be no significant >> amount of compression of the column of air in front of the sphere, if >> it were a "tight fit" I suspect the ball would compress the column of >> air under it until that pressure's exerted force exceeded that of >> gravitational pull and would eventually "bounce" long before it got >> near the core. >> >> I also thought of coriolis forces, but then realized that the >> trajectory has only an R, no theta nor phi component, so in principle >> the sphere would not experience any coriolis force. (nod to Nick's >> Swirlies) On the other hand, since the sphere would nominally be in >> freefall, it's trajectory would be influenced by it's initial >> velocity (relative to the rotation of the earth), suggesting it would >> follow a spiral path toward the center of the earth, suggesting that >> if we wanted a "bullet-train" that went straight through the earth, >> we would need to give it a *spiral* core? Evacuating such a a tube >> would allow true orbital speeds. The precision required to "drop" a >> bullet-train car "through* the earth seems excruciatingly difficult >> (as would be coming up with methods for the coring and the lining) >> seems insurmountable... but some form of magnetic levitation type >> "correction" along the way would seem possible if not easy. >> >> I think tidal forces can safely be ignored? >> >> I fondly remember when I first heard about the Freeman Dyson's "Dyson >> Sphere" and then Niven's _Ringworld_ and his followon _Integral >> Trees_ and Bob Forward's _Rocheworld_, realizing that there were >> alternative physics/engineering regimes not that far from our current >> experience, yet quite counter-intuitive to us. >> >> 'nuff for now, >> >> - Steve >> >> >> On 8/6/17 5:30 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote: >>> That's really cool, Gillian. If you click on Santa Fe, you get a >>> nice snarky response like one of the following for the Antipodes >>> Location: >>> >>> You`re alone and the water is so cold. >>> Incredible! There is no one around you, just fish. >>> You`re in the water and all you need is a boat. >>> Most likely the ocean. Watch out for sharks. >>> >>> So, if you decide to tunnel straight through the center of the >>> earth, you might want to try making a little course correction >>> somewhere. >>> >>> Fortunately for me, most of Ecuador's antipodes location is on the >>> island of Sumatra, which happens to grow my favorite variety of coffee. >>> >>> On Sun, Aug 6, 2017 at 11:28 AM, Gillian Densmore >>> > wrote: >>> >>> https://www.antipodesmap.com/#about-antipodes >>> >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> to unsubscribe >>> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> >>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >>> by Dr. Strangelove >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alfredo at covaleda.co Mon Aug 7 03:57:49 2017 From: alfredo at covaleda.co (=?UTF-8?Q?Alfredo_Covaleda_V=C3=A9lez?=) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 02:57:49 -0500 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Message-ID: Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Mon Aug 7 14:24:57 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2xlbiDimKM=?=) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 11:24:57 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the self Message-ID: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> So, I read this the other day: The Promise of LSD Microdoses and Other Psychedelic "Medicines" https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-promise-of-lsd-microdoses-and-other-psychedelic-medicines/ and was reminded of Frank's dare to read: The Analysis of the Self http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo8324792.html I subsequently forgot about it all. But then this popped up: The Dangerous Delusions of Richard Dawkins http://www.alternet.org/belief/dangerous-delusions-richard-dawkins and: Predictably, Salon publishes a new Dawkins hit piece, and it?s as dreadful as you?d expect https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/08/07/predictably-salon-publishes-a-new-dawkins-hit-piece-and-its-as-dreadful-as-youd-expect/ I still feel (over 2 decades after making a fool of myself during a lunch at the SFI) that the concept of "self" is the most abused concept of humanity's entire existence. Everyone uses it so often and in so many ways that it's pert near meaningless, to someone like me, anyway. What's amazing to me is that everyone can go along on their happy pretense that they've communicated something when they speak/write or hear/read the word. It reminded me again of the appeal (to me) of Hoffman's Interface Theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY Anyway, I have no point. Any comments/laughter are welcome. 8^) -- ? glen From gil.densmore at gmail.com Mon Aug 7 15:29:43 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 13:29:43 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] the self In-Reply-To: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> References: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> Message-ID: Lol I misread the title as promised stuff off the shelf On Aug 7, 2017 12:25 PM, "glen ?" wrote: > So, I read this the other day: > > The Promise of LSD Microdoses and Other Psychedelic "Medicines" > https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-promise-of-lsd- > microdoses-and-other-psychedelic-medicines/ > > and was reminded of Frank's dare to read: > > The Analysis of the Self > http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo8324792.html > > I subsequently forgot about it all. But then this popped up: > > The Dangerous Delusions of Richard Dawkins > http://www.alternet.org/belief/dangerous-delusions-richard-dawkins > > and: > > Predictably, Salon publishes a new Dawkins hit piece, and it?s as dreadful > as you?d expect > https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/08/07/ > predictably-salon-publishes-a-new-dawkins-hit-piece-and-its- > as-dreadful-as-youd-expect/ > > I still feel (over 2 decades after making a fool of myself during a lunch > at the SFI) that the concept of "self" is the most abused concept of > humanity's entire existence. Everyone uses it so often and in so many ways > that it's pert near meaningless, to someone like me, anyway. What's > amazing to me is that everyone can go along on their happy pretense that > they've communicated something when they speak/write or hear/read the > word. It reminded me again of the appeal (to me) of Hoffman's Interface > Theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY > > Anyway, I have no point. Any comments/laughter are welcome. 8^) > > -- > ? glen > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Mon Aug 7 16:15:13 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 14:15:13 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] the self In-Reply-To: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> References: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> Message-ID: <09c658e7-7c6d-bbdf-7a03-4a65f53826cc@swcp.com> On 8/7/17 12:24 PM, glen ? wrote: > So, I read this the other day: > > The Promise of LSD Microdoses and Other Psychedelic "Medicines" > https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-promise-of-lsd-microdoses-and-other-psychedelic-medicines/ > > and was reminded of Frank's dare to read: > > The Analysis of the Self > http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo8324792.html > > I subsequently forgot about it all. But then this popped up: > > The Dangerous Delusions of Richard Dawkins > http://www.alternet.org/belief/dangerous-delusions-richard-dawkins > > and: > > Predictably, Salon publishes a new Dawkins hit piece, and it?s as dreadful as you?d expect > https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/08/07/predictably-salon-publishes-a-new-dawkins-hit-piece-and-its-as-dreadful-as-youd-expect/ > > I still feel (over 2 decades after making a fool of myself during a lunch at the SFI) that the concept of "self" is the most abused concept of humanity's entire existence. Everyone uses it so often and in so many ways that it's pert near meaningless, to someone like me, anyway. What's amazing to me is that everyone can go along on their happy pretense that they've communicated something when they speak/write or hear/read the word. It reminded me again of the appeal (to me) of Hoffman's Interface Theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY > > Anyway, I have no point. Any comments/laughter are welcome. 8^) Bwa HAHAHAHAHAHA haaaa... /wondering if maybe I should have tried a *micro* rather than a *milli*dose of psychopharmacuties before reading this!// //(or maybe I should have calculated in the amount of mold-spore-dust I've been inhaling in my remodel/cleaning projects?)/ BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! ( Note from/to Self: "I think my grandiose self has taken possession of my expressive body!") Seriously (maybe?)... I wonder if in any of our long-winded, discursive, discussions about the meaning/use of words if we consider the value of something analogous to/ tolerancing /in engineering? It is common to use the /analogy/ (I've learned not to invoke the concept of metaphor too lightly in this group) of social /lubrication/, but I think that /tolerancing/ may have a similar/equal/greater role in allowing conversations to /clank forward/ toward some progress down /a line/ of thinking/consideration if not always all the way to a specific /destination/? I expect "/SELF"/ to be a very sloppy term with most people... and at best, highly varied in meaning amongst people for whom there is a special slot in their more rigorous professional lexicon. I suspect your question, as earnest as intended and as interesting as I find it will lead us down a /rabbit hole/ (metaphor in a literary allusion with allegorical implications?) here. I'm game for the /journey/, but rather than /jump the gun/ (Satan of metaphor, get thee behind me!) with too much of my own /clap-tripe/ (deliberate portmanteau malapropism intended). I'm hoping someone else will /bite/ on this topic before I /throw down/ with (more of) my own selve's nonsensery! - Steve -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Mon Aug 7 17:54:32 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 21:54:32 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the self In-Reply-To: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> References: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> Message-ID: Glen, In Smalltalk and Objective C "self" is an alias for any receiver object from the point of view of that object. E.g. if someone tells me to "jump" I can implement that by sending them a "howHigh" message, or I can send that message to my(self)! self is a handle to the stuff in me, especially the methods I implement. Different people have different stuff. Some folks mix-in methods they model in others and some do not. Others can't imagine doing mix-ins and only can get their head around inheritance. (Very tribal are they!) Some full stop when they see objects they don't understand. Others just send crap to each other all day. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of glen ? Sent: Monday, August 7, 2017 12:24:57 PM To: friam at redfish.com Subject: [FRIAM] the self So, I read this the other day: The Promise of LSD Microdoses and Other Psychedelic "Medicines" https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-promise-of-lsd-microdoses-and-other-psychedelic-medicines/ [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/blogs/cache/file/D97B3C3F-60D7-46B0-B8145A7209E77CF1.jpg?w=590&h=140&5143B4FE-1259-443A-83724BE6A85B2EBB] The Promise of LSD Microdoses and Other Psychedelic ... blogs.scientificamerican.com The Promise of LSD Microdoses and Other Psychedelic "Medicines" Psychiatrist John Halpern discusses the psychotherapeutic potential of peyote, ayahuasca, psilocybin ... and was reminded of Frank's dare to read: The Analysis of the Self http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo8324792.html [http://tmm.chicagodistributioncenter.com/IsbnImages/9780226450124.jpg] The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the ... press.uchicago.edu The book The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders, Heinz Kohut is published by University ... I subsequently forgot about it all. But then this popped up: The Dangerous Delusions of Richard Dawkins http://www.alternet.org/belief/dangerous-delusions-richard-dawkins [http://www.alternet.org/sites/default/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/shutterstock_160874303-edited.jpg?itok=hlCQ3cSC] The Dangerous Delusions of Richard Dawkins | Alternet www.alternet.org His rationalist crusade creates a false impression that the only alternative to religion is reductionist science. The recent cancellation of a book event with Richard ... and: Predictably, Salon publishes a new Dawkins hit piece, and it?s as dreadful as you?d expect https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/08/07/predictably-salon-publishes-a-new-dawkins-hit-piece-and-its-as-dreadful-as-youd-expect/ [https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/275a941f238847ec6ac2ac1812b88f9f?s=200&ts=1502142386] Predictably, Salon publishes a new Dawkins hit piece, and it?s as dreadful as you?d expect whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com Believe me, the last thing I want to do this morning is sit down and take apart another dumb article holding Richard Dawkins responsible for all the world?s wrongs. I saw this article a few ? I still feel (over 2 decades after making a fool of myself during a lunch at the SFI) that the concept of "self" is the most abused concept of humanity's entire existence. Everyone uses it so often and in so many ways that it's pert near meaningless, to someone like me, anyway. What's amazing to me is that everyone can go along on their happy pretense that they've communicated something when they speak/write or hear/read the word. It reminded me again of the appeal (to me) of Hoffman's Interface Theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY Do we see reality as it is? | Donald Hoffman www.youtube.com Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman is trying to answer a big question: Do we experience the world as it really is ... or as we need it to be? In this ever so slightly ... Anyway, I have no point. Any comments/laughter are welcome. 8^) -- ? glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com Friam Info Page - Redfish redfish.com FRIAM Group is an emergent organization of Complexity researchers and software developers in Santa Fe, New Mexico interested in Applied Complexity, Artificial Life ... FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove [http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7sGWLjbK7_I/WIkK7N6XteI/AAAAAAAAAQE/xVmyW4c_XVAuezfd9_8Vcqao5LUXeTG7ACK4B/s82/StrangeTrump.jpg] FRIAM: The Comic Edition friam-comic.blogspot.com We decided that lampooning FriAM was about as much fun as shooting fish in a barrel, and about as disrespectful (of the fish and the barrel)! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Mon Aug 7 18:17:02 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 22:17:02 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the self In-Reply-To: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> References: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> Message-ID: Am I the only one that notices that Slate and Salon are prone knee-jerk editorial responses to things? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of glen ? Sent: Monday, August 7, 2017 12:24:57 PM To: friam at redfish.com Subject: [FRIAM] the self So, I read this the other day: The Promise of LSD Microdoses and Other Psychedelic "Medicines" https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-promise-of-lsd-microdoses-and-other-psychedelic-medicines/ and was reminded of Frank's dare to read: The Analysis of the Self http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo8324792.html I subsequently forgot about it all. But then this popped up: The Dangerous Delusions of Richard Dawkins http://www.alternet.org/belief/dangerous-delusions-richard-dawkins and: Predictably, Salon publishes a new Dawkins hit piece, and it?s as dreadful as you?d expect https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/08/07/predictably-salon-publishes-a-new-dawkins-hit-piece-and-its-as-dreadful-as-youd-expect/ I still feel (over 2 decades after making a fool of myself during a lunch at the SFI) that the concept of "self" is the most abused concept of humanity's entire existence. Everyone uses it so often and in so many ways that it's pert near meaningless, to someone like me, anyway. What's amazing to me is that everyone can go along on their happy pretense that they've communicated something when they speak/write or hear/read the word. It reminded me again of the appeal (to me) of Hoffman's Interface Theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY Anyway, I have no point. Any comments/laughter are welcome. 8^) -- ? glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Mon Aug 7 19:54:23 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2xlbiDimKM=?=) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 16:54:23 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the self In-Reply-To: References: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> Message-ID: <2ad1b90a-8f5d-62f4-6028-5a6d91c705e8@gmail.com> All you've done is pass the buck from "self" to "me". And given the hijinks Roger pulled with Swarm, self might respond to "jump" one day, but throw an error the next ... just like, say, today I can throw a baseball with my right arm. But if I break that arm, tomorrow I might not be able to throw the base ball. So, who's "me" in this temporal game? The receiver of the signal or the arm that does the throwing? On 08/07/2017 02:54 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > In Smalltalk and Objective C "self" is an alias for any receiver object from the point of view of that object. > > E.g. if someone tells me to "jump" I can implement that by sending them a "howHigh" message, or I can send that message to my(self)! > > self is a handle to the stuff in me, especially the methods I implement. Different people have different stuff. > Some folks mix-in methods they model in others and some do not. Others can't imagine doing mix-ins and only can get their head around inheritance. (Very tribal are they!) > > Some full stop when they see objects they don't understand. Others just send crap to each other all day. -- ? glen From gepropella at gmail.com Mon Aug 7 20:04:49 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2xlbiDimKM=?=) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 17:04:49 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the self In-Reply-To: <09c658e7-7c6d-bbdf-7a03-4a65f53826cc@swcp.com> References: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> <09c658e7-7c6d-bbdf-7a03-4a65f53826cc@swcp.com> Message-ID: FWIW, B.C.Smith, that fount of wisdom, references "flex and slop" and cites Hume as inspiration for the idea. It's a tangle of reasoning that boils down (I think - this is my own nonsense, not Smith's) to the idea that there *must* be misunderstanding for communication to exist. (This is an extrapolation from his saying there must be ontological flex and slop for intentionality to exist.) Perfect information transmission would not be communication. So, if our tolerances are too demanding, then we define our _selves_ out of existence. But what happens on the other end is not similar. Too *much* wiggle room and we twitch/impute a meaning into place. You say "ooga booga" and I think "red barchetta". On 08/07/2017 01:15 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > I expect "/SELF"/ to be a very sloppy term with most people... and at best, highly varied in meaning amongst people for whom there is a special slot in their more rigorous professional lexicon. -- ? glen From marcus at snoutfarm.com Mon Aug 7 20:52:45 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 00:52:45 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the self In-Reply-To: <2ad1b90a-8f5d-62f4-6028-5a6d91c705e8@gmail.com> References: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> , <2ad1b90a-8f5d-62f4-6028-5a6d91c705e8@gmail.com> Message-ID: Glen wrote: "All you've done is pass the buck from "self" to "me". And given the hijinks Roger pulled with Swarm, self might respond to "jump" one day, but throw an error the next ... just like, say, today I can throw a baseball with my right arm. But if I break that arm, tomorrow I might not be able to throw the base ball. So, who's "me" in this temporal game? The receiver of the signal or the arm that does the throwing?" I claim a message send is analogous to an axon firing, where there is at least one target neuron for each receivable message. The whole graph and instantaneous charge state of the neurons and the musculature/skeleton/etc. attached to them is the `self'. The edges and effective edges in the graph (apparently) come and go depending on experience. In terms of comparing selves, I think one needs to look at the graphs in terms of the behaviors they exhibit and not their internal wiring. My wiring of yellow can be different from yours. Your perception of throwing a baseball will change with and without a broken arm, not just because the arm might not work, but also because the broken arm will lead to the motor system changing due to the lack of practice with throwing. Probably there are subgraphs that are more stable configurations than others. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of glen ? Sent: Monday, August 7, 2017 5:54:23 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the self All you've done is pass the buck from "self" to "me". And given the hijinks Roger pulled with Swarm, self might respond to "jump" one day, but throw an error the next ... just like, say, today I can throw a baseball with my right arm. But if I break that arm, tomorrow I might not be able to throw the base ball. So, who's "me" in this temporal game? The receiver of the signal or the arm that does the throwing? On 08/07/2017 02:54 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > In Smalltalk and Objective C "self" is an alias for any receiver object from the point of view of that object. > > E.g. if someone tells me to "jump" I can implement that by sending them a "howHigh" message, or I can send that message to my(self)! > > self is a handle to the stuff in me, especially the methods I implement. Different people have different stuff. > Some folks mix-in methods they model in others and some do not. Others can't imagine doing mix-ins and only can get their head around inheritance. (Very tribal are they!) > > Some full stop when they see objects they don't understand. Others just send crap to each other all day. -- ? glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tom at jtjohnson.com Mon Aug 7 20:56:54 2017 From: tom at jtjohnson.com (Tom Johnson) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 18:56:54 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: [NICAR-L] Machine learning in reporting example In-Reply-To: References: <80c1a7ab-1d2f-b5a5-d809-80a83908fd3a@peteraldhous.com> Message-ID: All: Perhaps some of you will be interested in these links describing how journalists -- well, at least ONE journalist -- used AI, and specifically the "Random Forest" algorithm, to uncover government agency surveillance activities at home and abroad. See especially the first and the last link. Any thoughts on other applications of this methodology? Tom ============================================ Tom Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) Society of Professional Journalists *Check out It's The People's Data * http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.com ============================================ On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 12:53 PM, Peter Aldhous wrote: > Hi all, > > Excuse the shameless self-promotion, but I thought some folks on the list > might be interested in this: using the random forest algorithm on > flight/aircraft data to identify potential spy planes. > > 1) https://www.buzzfeed.com/peteraldhous/hidden-spy-planes > > Here are the other two recent stories that it spawned: > > 2) https://www.buzzfeed.com/peteraldhous/us-marshals-spy-plane-over-mexico > > 3) https://www.buzzfeed.com/christianstork/spy-planes-over-american-cities > > And here are the methods/data/code: > > 4) https://buzzfeednews.github.io/2017-08-spy-plane-finder/ > > Thanks also to colleagues Christian Stork and Karla Zabludovsky for their > excellent reporting on these stories. > > Cheers, > > Peter > > -- > *Peter Aldhous*, PhD > Science journalist > cell: 415 503 7323 <(415)%20503-7323> > peter at peteraldhous.com > @paldhous > www.peteraldhous.com > ==================================================================== To > unsubscribe from NICAR-L, please send "unsubscribe NICAR-L" in the body of > an e-mail message to "listserv at lists.missouri.edu". Please e-mail > listmaster at ire.org if you need help or have questions. > ==================================================================== -- Jacqueline Kazil | @jackiekazil ==================================================================== To unsubscribe from NICAR-L, please send "unsubscribe NICAR-L" in the body of an e-mail message to "listserv at lists.missouri.edu". Please e-mail listmaster at ire.org if you need help or have questions. ==================================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Mon Aug 7 21:22:06 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 01:22:06 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: [NICAR-L] Machine learning in reporting example In-Reply-To: References: <80c1a7ab-1d2f-b5a5-d809-80a83908fd3a@peteraldhous.com> , Message-ID: Tom, The random forest method is kind of unsatisfying to me. It says that one can train many simple experts, trained on subsets of a dataset, to vote and thereby predict as well or better as one big integrated expert. One might hope this could be a mechanism of democracy... A property of recursive partitioning, that underlies random forests -- and which can work remarkably well by itself -- is that it commits each expert to a main effect, secondary effects, tertiary effects and so on. Some kinds of decision making don't have this structure, e.g. they could have non-linear composition of factors. But, if the random subsets they learn on happen to be representative of various sub-populations, that do each have simple hierarchical rules, then one could see how different rules per expert apply to, say, different voting communities. It would be like if one went to expert pollsters in every voting district who also happened to live there, and ask them each for a prediction Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Tom Johnson Sent: Monday, August 7, 2017 6:56:54 PM To: Friam at redfish. com Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: [NICAR-L] Machine learning in reporting example All: Perhaps some of you will be interested in these links describing how journalists -- well, at least ONE journalist -- used AI, and specifically the "Random Forest" algorithm, to uncover government agency surveillance activities at home and abroad. See especially the first and the last link. Any thoughts on other applications of this methodology? Tom ============================================ Tom Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) Society of Professional Journalists Check out It's The People's Data http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.com ============================================ On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 12:53 PM, Peter Aldhous > wrote: Hi all, Excuse the shameless self-promotion, but I thought some folks on the list might be interested in this: using the random forest algorithm on flight/aircraft data to identify potential spy planes. 1) https://www.buzzfeed.com/peteraldhous/hidden-spy-planes Here are the other two recent stories that it spawned: 2) https://www.buzzfeed.com/peteraldhous/us-marshals-spy-plane-over-mexico 3) https://www.buzzfeed.com/christianstork/spy-planes-over-american-cities And here are the methods/data/code: 4) https://buzzfeednews.github.io/2017-08-spy-plane-finder/ Thanks also to colleagues Christian Stork and Karla Zabludovsky for their excellent reporting on these stories. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Aldhous, PhD Science journalist cell: 415 503 7323 peter at peteraldhous.com @paldhous www.peteraldhous.com ==================================================================== To unsubscribe from NICAR-L, please send "unsubscribe NICAR-L" in the body of an e-mail message to "listserv at lists.missouri.edu". Please e-mail listmaster at ire.org if you need help or have questions. ==================================================================== -- Jacqueline Kazil | @jackiekazil ==================================================================== To unsubscribe from NICAR-L, please send "unsubscribe NICAR-L" in the body of an e-mail message to "listserv at lists.missouri.edu". Please e-mail listmaster at ire.org if you need help or have questions. ==================================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carl at plektyx.com Mon Aug 7 23:54:12 2017 From: carl at plektyx.com (Carl Tollander) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 21:54:12 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of "reining it in" are probably not going to fly. On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez wrote: > Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of the > future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. > > http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances- > de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Tue Aug 8 00:20:00 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 04:20:00 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: <97D0B0AD-2011-4DEC-AAD5-B7427BFE4FCF@snoutfarm.com> Here in the US there are many human animals to reign-in first. Sentients will need to stick together and accept the help they can get! Sent from my iPhone On Aug 7, 2017, at 9:54 PM, Carl Tollander > wrote: It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of "reining it in" are probably not going to fly. On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez > wrote: Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carl at plektyx.com Tue Aug 8 01:01:18 2017 From: carl at plektyx.com (Carl Tollander) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 23:01:18 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: <97D0B0AD-2011-4DEC-AAD5-B7427BFE4FCF@snoutfarm.com> References: <97D0B0AD-2011-4DEC-AAD5-B7427BFE4FCF@snoutfarm.com> Message-ID: The notion of AI's as necessarily sentient seems a bit of a jump. However, I see a difference between an AI augmented sentience (a la a spiffy AR) and a bunch of possibly sentient AI's flying in formation (a la a murder of crows or a pack of wolves). Going further out into Niel Stephenson's D.O.D.O. fictional world, all sentients might be flying in formation with different selves in adjacent possibility spaces (hi, Stu?), feeding off the information gradients. However, my original point was that people project their notion of self onto AI's, so narratives about self will predominate in any regulatory scheme. On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 10:20 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Here in the US there are many human animals to reign-in first. Sentients > will need to stick together and accept the help they can get! > > Sent from my iPhone > > On Aug 7, 2017, at 9:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: > > It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not entirely on > board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least insofar as it may apply > to themselves, so I suspect notions of "reining it in" are probably not > going to fly. > > > > > On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez < > alfredo at covaleda.co> wrote: > >> Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of the >> future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. >> >> http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/ >> peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grant.holland.sf at gmail.com Tue Aug 8 01:38:03 2017 From: grant.holland.sf at gmail.com (Grant Holland) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 23:38:03 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: That sounds right, Carl. Asimov's three "laws" of robotics are more like Asimov's three "wishes" for robotics. AI entities are already no longer servants. They have become machine learners. They have actually learned to project conditional probability. The cat is out of the barn. Or is it that the horse is out of the bag? Whatever. Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. Watch out. And we still must answer Stephen Hawking's burning question: Is intelligence a survivable trait? On 8/7/17 9:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: > It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not entirely > on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least insofar as it > may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of "reining it in" are > probably not going to fly. > > > > > On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez > > wrote: > > Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of > the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. > > http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > by Dr. Strangelove > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Tue Aug 8 04:42:41 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 08:42:41 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: Grant writes: "Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. Watch out." What is probability, physically? It could be an illusion and that there is no such thing as an independent observer. Even if that is true, sampling techniques are used in many machine learning algorithms -- it is not a question of if they work, it is an academic question of why they work. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Grant Holland Sent: Monday, August 7, 2017 11:38:03 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; Carl Tollander Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence That sounds right, Carl. Asimov's three "laws" of robotics are more like Asimov's three "wishes" for robotics. AI entities are already no longer servants. They have become machine learners. They have actually learned to project conditional probability. The cat is out of the barn. Or is it that the horse is out of the bag? Whatever. Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. Watch out. And we still must answer Stephen Hawking's burning question: Is intelligence a survivable trait? On 8/7/17 9:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of "reining it in" are probably not going to fly. On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez > wrote: Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grant.holland.sf at gmail.com Tue Aug 8 12:31:00 2017 From: grant.holland.sf at gmail.com (Grant Holland) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 10:31:00 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <34028bdd-b409-08f4-fb38-145e5a48b0aa@gmail.com> Marcus, Good points, all. I suggest you turn to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (the "usual interpretation") for musings on your very pertinent question about "Why probabilities in the physical world". Although, I'm sure you have already looked there. Of course, the Copenhagen guys (Heisenberg, Born, etc.) don't really try to answer your question either - opting instead to say that theirs is merely a theory, a model. And, of course, they are right. On the other hand, other physicists (i.e. de Broglie, Bohm, Einstein and others) have spent a century trying to defend causal determinism against the Copenhagen interpretation. These days the defenders of the faith have resorted to philosophy over this issue and are considering the "ontic" versus the "epistemic". And yet, Copenhagen is still referred to as "the usual interpretation", and when QM is taught today, I think, it is essentially Copenhagen or some derivative of it. Perhaps Bell's theorem has contributed to the longevity of the Copenhagen perspective. On 8/8/17 2:42 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > > Grant writes: > > > "Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are > stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, > like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case > of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over > that. Watch out." > > > What is probability, physically? It could be an illusion and that > there is no such thing as an independent observer. Even if that is > true, sampling techniques are used in many machine learning algorithms > -- it is not a question of if they work, it is an academic question of > why they work. > > > Marcus > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* Friam on behalf of Grant Holland > > *Sent:* Monday, August 7, 2017 11:38:03 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; Carl Tollander > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence > > That sounds right, Carl. Asimov's three "laws" of robotics are more > like Asimov's three "wishes" for robotics. AI entities are already no > longer servants. They have become machine learners. They have actually > learned to project conditional probability. The cat is out of the > barn. Or is it that the horse is out of the bag? > > Whatever. Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that > they are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. > You know, like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a > bad case of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly > get over that. Watch out. > > And we still must answer Stephen Hawking's burning question: Is > intelligence a survivable trait? > > > On 8/7/17 9:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: >> It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not >> entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least >> insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of >> "reining it in" are probably not going to fly. >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez >> > wrote: >> >> Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of >> the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. >> >> http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe >> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >> by Dr. Strangelove >> >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pamela at well.com Tue Aug 8 13:20:15 2017 From: pamela at well.com (Pamela McCorduck) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 10:20:15 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <32E16933-E8CF-4148-947C-17C0BC832168@well.com> Grant, does it really seem plausible to you that the thousands of crack researchers at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Google, MIT, Cal Berkeley, and other places have not seen this? And found remedies? Just for FRIAM?s information, John McCarthy used to call Asimov?s Three Laws Talmudic. Sorry I don?t know enough about the Talmud to agree or disagree. > On Aug 8, 2017, at 1:42 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > > Grant writes: > > "Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. Watch out." > > What is probability, physically? It could be an illusion and that there is no such thing as an independent observer. Even if that is true, sampling techniques are used in many machine learning algorithms -- it is not a question of if they work, it is an academic question of why they work. > > Marcus > From: Friam > on behalf of Grant Holland > > Sent: Monday, August 7, 2017 11:38:03 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; Carl Tollander > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence > > That sounds right, Carl. Asimov's three "laws" of robotics are more like Asimov's three "wishes" for robotics. AI entities are already no longer servants. They have become machine learners. They have actually learned to project conditional probability. The cat is out of the barn. Or is it that the horse is out of the bag? > Whatever. Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. Watch out. > And we still must answer Stephen Hawking's burning question: Is intelligence a survivable trait? > > On 8/7/17 9:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: >> It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of "reining it in" are probably not going to fly. >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez > wrote: >> Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. >> >> http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wimberly3 at gmail.com Tue Aug 8 13:56:29 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 11:56:29 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: <32E16933-E8CF-4148-947C-17C0BC832168@well.com> References: <32E16933-E8CF-4148-947C-17C0BC832168@well.com> Message-ID: Talmud: Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. Plus 10,000 other pages. Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 11:18 AM, "Pamela McCorduck" wrote: > Grant, does it really seem plausible to you that the thousands of crack > researchers at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Google, MIT, Cal Berkeley, and > other places have not seen this? And found remedies? > > Just for FRIAM?s information, John McCarthy used to call Asimov?s Three > Laws Talmudic. Sorry I don?t know enough about the Talmud to agree or > disagree. > > > > > On Aug 8, 2017, at 1:42 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > > Grant writes: > > "Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are > stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, like > in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of causal > determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. Watch out. > " > > What is probability, physically? It could be an illusion and that there > is no such thing as an independent observer. Even if that is true, > sampling techniques are used in many machine learning algorithms -- it is > not a question of if they work, it is an academic question of why they work. > > Marcus > ------------------------------ > *From:* Friam on behalf of Grant Holland < > grant.holland.sf at gmail.com> > *Sent:* Monday, August 7, 2017 11:38:03 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; Carl Tollander > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence > > That sounds right, Carl. Asimov's three "laws" of robotics are more like > Asimov's three "wishes" for robotics. AI entities are already no longer > servants. They have become machine learners. They have actually learned to > project conditional probability. The cat is out of the barn. Or is it that > the horse is out of the bag? > Whatever. Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they > are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, > like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of > causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. > Watch out. > And we still must answer Stephen Hawking's burning question: Is > intelligence a survivable trait? > > On 8/7/17 9:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: > > It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not entirely on > board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least insofar as it may apply > to themselves, so I suspect notions of "reining it in" are probably not > going to fly. > > > > > On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez < > alfredo at covaleda.co> wrote: > >> Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of the >> future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. >> >> http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/ >> peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grant.holland.sf at gmail.com Tue Aug 8 14:07:43 2017 From: grant.holland.sf at gmail.com (Grant Holland) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 12:07:43 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: <32E16933-E8CF-4148-947C-17C0BC832168@well.com> References: <32E16933-E8CF-4148-947C-17C0BC832168@well.com> Message-ID: Pamela, I expect that they have! And I certainly hope so. I simply have not found them yet after some earnest looking. Can you please send me some references?? Right now I suspect that the heart of machine learning has the pearl, and I'm just now turning there. And I'm optimistically suspicious that those entropic functionals that you find in information theory and that are built on top of conditional probability (relative entropy, mutual information, conditional entropy, entropy rate, etc.) hold promise...and that at the heart of machine learning they lay lurking - or could. Anyway, thx for the note; and /please/ send me any related referernces! Grant On 8/8/17 11:20 AM, Pamela McCorduck wrote: > Grant, does it really seem plausible to you that the thousands of > crack researchers at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Google, MIT, Cal > Berkeley, and other places have not seen this? And found remedies? > > Just for FRIAM?s information, John McCarthy used to call Asimov?s > Three Laws Talmudic. Sorry I don?t know enough about the Talmud to > agree or disagree. > > > > >> On Aug 8, 2017, at 1:42 AM, Marcus Daniels > > wrote: >> >> Grant writes: >> >> "Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are >> stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You >> know, like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a >> bad case of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly >> get over that. Watch out." >> >> What is probability, physically? It could be an illusion and that >> there is no such thing as an independent observer. Even if that is >> true, sampling techniques are used in many machine learning >> algorithms -- it is not a question of if they work, it is an academic >> question of why they work. >> >> Marcus >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> *From:*Friam > > on behalf of Grant Holland >> > >> *Sent:*Monday, August 7, 2017 11:38:03 PM >> *To:*The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; Carl Tollander >> *Subject:*Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence >> That sounds right, Carl. Asimov's three "laws" of robotics are more >> like Asimov's three "wishes" for robotics. AI entities are already no >> longer servants. They have become machine learners. They have >> actually learned to project conditional probability. The cat is out >> of the barn. Or is it that the horse is out of the bag? >> Whatever. Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that >> they are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. >> You know, like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with >> a bad case of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly >> shortly get over that. Watch out. >> And we still must answer Stephen Hawking's burning question: Is >> intelligence a survivable trait? >> >> On 8/7/17 9:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: >>> It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not >>> entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least >>> insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of >>> "reining it in" are probably not going to fly. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda >>> V?lez>wrote: >>> >>> Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of >>> the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. >>> >>> http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 >>> >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> to >>> unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> >>> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >>> by Dr. Strangelove >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Tue Aug 8 14:44:05 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2xlbiDimKM=?=) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 11:44:05 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. -- ? glen From nickthompson at earthlink.net Tue Aug 8 17:24:06 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 17:24:06 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <32E16933-E8CF-4148-947C-17C0BC832168@well.com> Message-ID: <017401d3108c$aaca5910$005f0b30$@earthlink.net> I LOVE this, Frank. How ever did you find it amongst the ten thousand pages!!!!???? Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. By the way. Now in my 80th year, I am officially against technology. I was OK with everything up through the word processor. (I hated carbons.) Everything after that, I could do without. Really! What has AI done for me lately? What was it Flaubert said about trains? Something like, they just made it possible for people to run around faster and faster and be stupid in more places. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2017 1:56 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Talmud: Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. Plus 10,000 other pages. Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 11:18 AM, "Pamela McCorduck" > wrote: Grant, does it really seem plausible to you that the thousands of crack researchers at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Google, MIT, Cal Berkeley, and other places have not seen this? And found remedies? Just for FRIAM?s information, John McCarthy used to call Asimov?s Three Laws Talmudic. Sorry I don?t know enough about the Talmud to agree or disagree. On Aug 8, 2017, at 1:42 AM, Marcus Daniels > wrote: Grant writes: "Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. Watch out." What is probability, physically? It could be an illusion and that there is no such thing as an independent observer. Even if that is true, sampling techniques are used in many machine learning algorithms -- it is not a question of if they work, it is an academic question of why they work. Marcus _____ From: Friam > on behalf of Grant Holland > Sent: Monday, August 7, 2017 11:38:03 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; Carl Tollander Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence That sounds right, Carl. Asimov's three "laws" of robotics are more like Asimov's three "wishes" for robotics. AI entities are already no longer servants. They have become machine learners. They have actually learned to project conditional probability. The cat is out of the barn. Or is it that the horse is out of the bag? Whatever. Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. Watch out. And we still must answer Stephen Hawking's burning question: Is intelligence a survivable trait? On 8/7/17 9:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of "reining it in" are probably not going to fly. On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez > wrote: Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wimberly3 at gmail.com Tue Aug 8 17:31:53 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 15:31:53 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: <017401d3108c$aaca5910$005f0b30$@earthlink.net> References: <32E16933-E8CF-4148-947C-17C0BC832168@well.com> <017401d3108c$aaca5910$005f0b30$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Nick, It's actually more like six thousand pages. However many pages thousands of rabbis can write in 600 years, more or less. Deborah found it and posted it on our refrigerator. I understand you are recovering space. Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 3:24 PM, "Nick Thompson" wrote: > I LOVE this, Frank. How ever did you find it amongst the ten thousand > pages!!!!???? > > > > *Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. > Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the > work, but neither are you free to abandon it.* > > > > By the way. Now in my 80th year, I am officially against technology. I > was OK with everything up through the word processor. (I hated carbons.) > Everything after that, I could do without. > > > > Really! What has AI done for me lately? > > > > What was it Flaubert said about trains? Something like, they just made > it possible for people to run around faster and faster and be stupid in > more places. > > > > Nick > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Frank > Wimberly > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 08, 2017 1:56 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam at redfish.com> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence > > > > Talmud: > > > > Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. > Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the > work, but neither are you free to abandon it. > > > > Plus 10,000 other pages. > > > > Frank Wimberly > Phone (505) 670-9918 > > > > On Aug 8, 2017 11:18 AM, "Pamela McCorduck" wrote: > > Grant, does it really seem plausible to you that the thousands of crack > researchers at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Google, MIT, Cal Berkeley, and > other places have not seen this? And found remedies? > > > > Just for FRIAM?s information, John McCarthy used to call Asimov?s Three > Laws Talmudic. Sorry I don?t know enough about the Talmud to agree or > disagree. > > > > > > > > > > On Aug 8, 2017, at 1:42 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > > > > Grant writes: > > > > "Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are > stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, like > in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of causal > determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. Watch out. > " > > > > What is probability, physically? It could be an illusion and that there > is no such thing as an independent observer. Even if that is true, > sampling techniques are used in many machine learning algorithms -- it is > not a question of if they work, it is an academic question of why they work. > > > > Marcus > ------------------------------ > > *From:* Friam on behalf of Grant Holland < > grant.holland.sf at gmail.com> > *Sent:* Monday, August 7, 2017 11:38:03 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; Carl Tollander > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence > > > > That sounds right, Carl. Asimov's three "laws" of robotics are more like > Asimov's three "wishes" for robotics. AI entities are already no longer > servants. They have become machine learners. They have actually learned to > project conditional probability. The cat is out of the barn. Or is it that > the horse is out of the bag? > > Whatever. Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they > are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, > like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of > causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. > Watch out. > > And we still must answer Stephen Hawking's burning question: Is > intelligence a survivable trait? > > > > On 8/7/17 9:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: > > It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not entirely on > board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least insofar as it may apply > to themselves, so I suspect notions of "reining it in" are probably not > going to fly. > > > > > > > > > > On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez < > alfredo at covaleda.co> wrote: > > Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of the > future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. > > > > http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances- > de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grant.holland.sf at gmail.com Tue Aug 8 18:51:18 2017 From: grant.holland.sf at gmail.com (Grant Holland) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 16:51:18 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> Message-ID: Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining! For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory. On the other hand... evolution /is/ stochastic. (You actually did not disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is "Chance and Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it for the second time. And that proved quite fruitful.) G. On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ? wrote: > I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. > > The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. > > There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. > > An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nickthompson at earthlink.net Tue Aug 8 19:28:30 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 19:28:30 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <32E16933-E8CF-4148-947C-17C0BC832168@well.com> <017401d3108c$aaca5910$005f0b30$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <018d01d3109e$0c1a3e40$244ebac0$@earthlink.net> f. ?space?? Or was that a correction error arising from trying to write ?apace?. n Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2017 5:32 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Nick, It's actually more like six thousand pages. However many pages thousands of rabbis can write in 600 years, more or less. Deborah found it and posted it on our refrigerator. I understand you are recovering space. Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 3:24 PM, "Nick Thompson" > wrote: I LOVE this, Frank. How ever did you find it amongst the ten thousand pages!!!!???? Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. By the way. Now in my 80th year, I am officially against technology. I was OK with everything up through the word processor. (I hated carbons.) Everything after that, I could do without. Really! What has AI done for me lately? What was it Flaubert said about trains? Something like, they just made it possible for people to run around faster and faster and be stupid in more places. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com ] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2017 1:56 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Talmud: Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. Plus 10,000 other pages. Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 11:18 AM, "Pamela McCorduck" > wrote: Grant, does it really seem plausible to you that the thousands of crack researchers at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Google, MIT, Cal Berkeley, and other places have not seen this? And found remedies? Just for FRIAM?s information, John McCarthy used to call Asimov?s Three Laws Talmudic. Sorry I don?t know enough about the Talmud to agree or disagree. On Aug 8, 2017, at 1:42 AM, Marcus Daniels > wrote: Grant writes: "Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. Watch out." What is probability, physically? It could be an illusion and that there is no such thing as an independent observer. Even if that is true, sampling techniques are used in many machine learning algorithms -- it is not a question of if they work, it is an academic question of why they work. Marcus _____ From: Friam > on behalf of Grant Holland > Sent: Monday, August 7, 2017 11:38:03 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; Carl Tollander Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence That sounds right, Carl. Asimov's three "laws" of robotics are more like Asimov's three "wishes" for robotics. AI entities are already no longer servants. They have become machine learners. They have actually learned to project conditional probability. The cat is out of the barn. Or is it that the horse is out of the bag? Whatever. Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. Watch out. And we still must answer Stephen Hawking's burning question: Is intelligence a survivable trait? On 8/7/17 9:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of "reining it in" are probably not going to fly. On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez > wrote: Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nickthompson at earthlink.net Tue Aug 8 19:31:12 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 19:31:12 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> Message-ID: <019201d3109e$6c6a4f60$453eee20$@earthlink.net> Grant, I think I know the answer to this question, but want to make sure: What is the difference beween calling a process ?stochastic?, ?indeterminate?, or ?random?? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Grant Holland Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2017 6:51 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group ; glen ? Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining! For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory. On the other hand... evolution is stochastic. (You actually did not disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is "Chance and Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it for the second time. And that proved quite fruitful.) G. On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ? wrote: I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Tue Aug 8 19:32:05 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 17:32:05 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> Message-ID: @Nick that's a fair question. On a pragmatic side not much...yet. However as I understand it (some) amount of AI was invaluable for making pretty gud guesses about frustrating issues: Like what the heck is going on with the weather. Robots and androids (so far) are better then humans at somethings....and pretty bad at others. Androids the R2-D2 kind. Basically computers speek computer better than people Computers can talk to computers reely reely fast and possibly understand each other better than humans do. For some (I think) reely awsome things they've done (so far): Dictation software basically asks your computer to guess what you're saying (AI) . Mine litterally tries to learn how make small improvements as I uses it and has gotten a lot better over time. Their's a video on youtube of some MIT guys that have a robot band playing disney inspired music. Those robots have tastes and stuff they like playing more than others. Some better than others. FWIW what I thought was too cool was some of stuff sounded reely good. Robots driving cars or helping people could rock. Or robots exploring awsome stuff that humans can't(yet) Though I haven't a clue how close any of that is yet. And you are right to be concerned ^_^ On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 4:51 PM, Grant Holland wrote: > Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are > ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining! > > For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory. > > On the other hand... evolution *is* stochastic. (You actually did not > disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was > another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is "Chance and > Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it for the second > time. And that proved quite fruitful.) > > G. > > On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ? wrote: > > I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. > > The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. > > There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. > > An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wimberly3 at gmail.com Tue Aug 8 19:32:11 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 17:32:11 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <32E16933-E8CF-4148-947C-17C0BC832168@well.com> <017401d3108c$aaca5910$005f0b30$@earthlink.net> <018d01d3109e$0c1a3e40$244ebac0$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: The latter. I'm about to turn off autocorrect. Ironic in the context of a discussion about the benefits and dangers out AI. Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 5:28 PM, "Nick Thompson" wrote: f. ?space?? Or was that a correction error arising from trying to write ?apace?. n Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly *Sent:* Tuesday, August 08, 2017 5:32 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Nick, It's actually more like six thousand pages. However many pages thousands of rabbis can write in 600 years, more or less. Deborah found it and posted it on our refrigerator. I understand you are recovering space. Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 3:24 PM, "Nick Thompson" wrote: I LOVE this, Frank. How ever did you find it amongst the ten thousand pages!!!!???? *Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.* By the way. Now in my 80th year, I am officially against technology. I was OK with everything up through the word processor. (I hated carbons.) Everything after that, I could do without. Really! What has AI done for me lately? What was it Flaubert said about trains? Something like, they just made it possible for people to run around faster and faster and be stupid in more places. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly *Sent:* Tuesday, August 08, 2017 1:56 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Talmud: Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. Plus 10,000 other pages. Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 11:18 AM, "Pamela McCorduck" wrote: Grant, does it really seem plausible to you that the thousands of crack researchers at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Google, MIT, Cal Berkeley, and other places have not seen this? And found remedies? Just for FRIAM?s information, John McCarthy used to call Asimov?s Three Laws Talmudic. Sorry I don?t know enough about the Talmud to agree or disagree. On Aug 8, 2017, at 1:42 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: Grant writes: "Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. Watch out. " What is probability, physically? It could be an illusion and that there is no such thing as an independent observer. Even if that is true, sampling techniques are used in many machine learning algorithms -- it is not a question of if they work, it is an academic question of why they work. Marcus ------------------------------ *From:* Friam on behalf of Grant Holland < grant.holland.sf at gmail.com> *Sent:* Monday, August 7, 2017 11:38:03 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; Carl Tollander *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence That sounds right, Carl. Asimov's three "laws" of robotics are more like Asimov's three "wishes" for robotics. AI entities are already no longer servants. They have become machine learners. They have actually learned to project conditional probability. The cat is out of the barn. Or is it that the horse is out of the bag? Whatever. Fortunately, the AI folks don't seem to see - yet - that they are stumbling all over the missing piece: stochastic adaptation. You know, like in evolution: chance mutations. AI is still down with a bad case of causal determinism. But I expect they will fairly shortly get over that. Watch out. And we still must answer Stephen Hawking's burning question: Is intelligence a survivable trait? On 8/7/17 9:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of "reining it in" are probably not going to fly. On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez wrote: Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances- de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Tue Aug 8 19:51:53 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2xlbiDimKM=?=) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 16:51:53 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the self In-Reply-To: References: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> <2ad1b90a-8f5d-62f4-6028-5a6d91c705e8@gmail.com> Message-ID: OK. This is better. But you seem to have defined "unit" or "coherence", rather than "self" ... I'm reminded of Simon's "near decomposability" in The Sciences of the Artificial. To promote a unit to a self, you're going to have to include some sort of loop, like propri- or inter-oception. And that raises the idea that some (exteroception) variables are unbound. If the "unit" has more unbound variables than bound ones and/or the loops see less weight/traffic than the unbound ones, then the "unit" isn't coherent ... not a unit. By that reasoning, we should be able to parse the unit into parts whose excision does not (appreciatively) affect the unit versus parts whose excision fundamentally changes it, including destroying it. I'd posit that a passable definition of "self" is the collection of parts that can't be excised without causing fundamental changes. So, the loss of things like hair, fingernails, skin cells, maybe teeth, maybe 1 kidney, 1/2 a liver, etc. preserve the unit. But even *that* definition is hopelessly flawed because it passes the buck to "fundamental changes". Is myself invariant across the loss of a tooth? What were we talking about? On 08/07/2017 05:52 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > I claim a message send is analogous to an axon firing, where there is at least one target neuron for each receivable message. The whole graph and instantaneous charge state of the neurons and the musculature/skeleton/etc. attached to them is the `self'. The edges and effective edges in the graph (apparently) come and go depending on experience. In terms of comparing selves, I think one needs to look at the graphs in terms of the behaviors they exhibit and not their internal wiring. My wiring of yellow can be different from yours. Your perception of throwing a baseball will change with and without a broken arm, not just because the arm might not work, but also because the broken arm will lead to the motor system changing due to the lack of practice with throwing. > > Probably there are subgraphs that are more stable configurations than others. -- ? glen From marcus at snoutfarm.com Tue Aug 8 20:43:40 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 00:43:40 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com>, Message-ID: Grant writes: "On the other hand... evolution is stochastic. (You actually did not disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was another one.) " I think of logic programming systems as a traditional tool of AI research (e.g. Prolog, now Curry, similar capabilities implemented in Lisp) from the age before the AI winter. These systems provide a very flexible way to pose constraint problems. But one problem is that breadth-first and depth-first search are just fast ways to find answers. Recent work seems to have shifted to SMT solvers and specialized constraint solving algorithms, but these have somewhat less expressiveness as programming languages. Meanwhile, machine learning has come on the scene in a big way and tasks traditionally associated with old-school AI, like natural language processing, are now matched or even dominated using neural nets (LSTM). I find the range of capabilities provided by groups like nlp.stanford.edu really impressive -- there examples of both approaches (logic programming and machine learning) and then don't need to be mutually exclusive. Quantum annealing is one area where the two may increasingly come together by using physical phenomena to accelerate the rate at which high dimensional discrete systems can be solved, without relying on fragile or domain-specific heuristics. I often use evolutionary algorithms for hard optimization problems. Genetic algorithms, for example, are robust to noise (or if you like ambiguity) in fitness functions, and they are trivial to parallelize. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Grant Holland Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 4:51:18 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining! For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory. On the other hand... evolution is stochastic. (You actually did not disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is "Chance and Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it for the second time. And that proved quite fruitful.) G. On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ? wrote: I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Tue Aug 8 21:06:12 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 01:06:12 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the self In-Reply-To: References: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> <2ad1b90a-8f5d-62f4-6028-5a6d91c705e8@gmail.com> , Message-ID: Glen writes: "I'd posit that a passable definition of "self" is the collection of parts that can't be excised without causing fundamental changes. So, the loss of things like hair, fingernails, skin cells, maybe teeth, maybe 1 kidney, 1/2 a liver, etc. preserve the unit." Gasp. Loss of _hair_? _Who_ would say such a thing? Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of glen ? Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 5:51:53 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the self OK. This is better. But you seem to have defined "unit" or "coherence", rather than "self" ... I'm reminded of Simon's "near decomposability" in The Sciences of the Artificial. To promote a unit to a self, you're going to have to include some sort of loop, like propri- or inter-oception. And that raises the idea that some (exteroception) variables are unbound. If the "unit" has more unbound variables than bound ones and/or the loops see less weight/traffic than the unbound ones, then the "unit" isn't coherent ... not a unit. By that reasoning, we should be able to parse the unit into parts whose excision does not (appreciatively) affect the unit versus parts whose excision fundamentally changes it, including destroying it. I'd posit that a passable definition of "self" is the collection of parts that can't be excised without causing fundamental changes. So, the loss of things like hair, fingernails, skin cells, maybe teeth, maybe 1 kidney, 1/2 a liver, etc. preserve the unit. But even *that* definition is hopelessly flawed because it passes the buck to "fundamental changes". Is myself invariant across the loss of a tooth? What were we talking about? On 08/07/2017 05:52 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > I claim a message send is analogous to an axon firing, where there is at least one target neuron for each receivable message. The whole graph and instantaneous charge state of the neurons and the musculature/skeleton/etc. attached to them is the `self'. The edges and effective edges in the graph (apparently) come and go depending on experience. In terms of comparing selves, I think one needs to look at the graphs in terms of the behaviors they exhibit and not their internal wiring. My wiring of yellow can be different from yours. Your perception of throwing a baseball will change with and without a broken arm, not just because the arm might not work, but also because the broken arm will lead to the motor system changing due to the lack of practice with throwing. > > Probably there are subgraphs that are more stable configurations than others. -- ? glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Tue Aug 8 21:20:28 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 01:20:28 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com>, , Message-ID: "But one problem is that breadth-first and depth-first search are just fast ways to find answers." Just _not_ -- general but not efficient. [My dog was demanding attention! ] ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Marcus Daniels Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 6:43:40 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Grant writes: "On the other hand... evolution is stochastic. (You actually did not disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was another one.) " I think of logic programming systems as a traditional tool of AI research (e.g. Prolog, now Curry, similar capabilities implemented in Lisp) from the age before the AI winter. These systems provide a very flexible way to pose constraint problems. But one problem is that breadth-first and depth-first search are just fast ways to find answers. Recent work seems to have shifted to SMT solvers and specialized constraint solving algorithms, but these have somewhat less expressiveness as programming languages. Meanwhile, machine learning has come on the scene in a big way and tasks traditionally associated with old-school AI, like natural language processing, are now matched or even dominated using neural nets (LSTM). I find the range of capabilities provided by groups like nlp.stanford.edu really impressive -- there examples of both approaches (logic programming and machine learning) and then don't need to be mutually exclusive. Quantum annealing is one area where the two may increasingly come together by using physical phenomena to accelerate the rate at which high dimensional discrete systems can be solved, without relying on fragile or domain-specific heuristics. I often use evolutionary algorithms for hard optimization problems. Genetic algorithms, for example, are robust to noise (or if you like ambiguity) in fitness functions, and they are trivial to parallelize. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Grant Holland Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 4:51:18 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining! For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory. On the other hand... evolution is stochastic. (You actually did not disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is "Chance and Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it for the second time. And that proved quite fruitful.) G. On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ? wrote: I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wimberly3 at gmail.com Tue Aug 8 21:57:06 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 19:57:06 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> Message-ID: Then there's best-first search, B*, C*, constraint-directed search, etc. And these are just classical search methods. Feank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 7:20 PM, "Marcus Daniels" wrote: > "But one problem is that breadth-first and depth-first search are just > fast ways to find answers." > > > Just _not_ -- general but not efficient. [My dog was demanding > attention! ] > ------------------------------ > *From:* Friam on behalf of Marcus Daniels < > marcus at snoutfarm.com> > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 8, 2017 6:43:40 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence > > > Grant writes: > > > "On the other hand... evolution *is* stochastic. (You actually did not > disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was > another one.) " > > > I think of logic programming systems as a traditional tool of AI research > (e.g. Prolog, now Curry, similar capabilities implemented in Lisp) from the > age before the AI winter. These systems provide a very flexible way to > pose constraint problems. But one problem is that breadth-first and > depth-first search are just fast ways to find answers. Recent work seems > to have shifted to SMT solvers and specialized constraint solving > algorithms, but these have somewhat less expressiveness as programming > languages. Meanwhile, machine learning has come on the scene in a big way > and tasks traditionally associated with old-school AI, like natural > language processing, are now matched or even dominated using neural nets > (LSTM). I find the range of capabilities provided by groups like > nlp.stanford.edu really impressive -- there examples of both approaches > (logic programming and machine learning) and then don't need to be mutually > exclusive. > > > Quantum annealing is one area where the two may increasingly come together > by using physical phenomena to accelerate the rate at which high > dimensional discrete systems can be solved, without relying on fragile or > domain-specific heuristics. > > > I often use evolutionary algorithms for hard optimization problems. > Genetic algorithms, for example, are robust to noise (or if you like > ambiguity) in fitness functions, and they are trivial to parallelize. > > > Marcus > ------------------------------ > *From:* Friam on behalf of Grant Holland < > grant.holland.sf at gmail.com> > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 8, 2017 4:51:18 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence > > > Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are > ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining! > > For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory. > > On the other hand... evolution *is* stochastic. (You actually did not > disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was > another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is "Chance and > Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it for the second > time. And that proved quite fruitful.) > > G. > > On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ? wrote: > > > I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. > > The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. > > There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. > > An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Wed Aug 9 00:11:32 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 04:11:32 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> , Message-ID: Frank writes: "Then there's best-first search, B*, C*, constraint-directed search, etc. And these are just classical search methods." Connecting this back to evolutionary / stochastic techniques, genetic programming is one way to get the best of both approaches, at least in principle. One can expose these human-designed algorithms as predefined library functions. Typically in genetic programming the vocabulary consists of simple routines (e.g. arithmetic), conditionals, and recursion. In practice, this kind of seeding of the solution space can collapse diversity. It is a drag to see tons of compute time spent on a million little refinements around an already good solution. (Yes, I know that solution!) More fun to see a set of clumsy solutions turn into to decent-performing but weird solutions. I find my attention is drawn to properties of sub-populations and how I can keep the historically good performers _out_. Not a pure GA, but a GA where communities also have fitness functions matching my heavy hand of justice.. (If I prove that conservatism just doesn't work, I'll be sure to pass it along.) Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Frank Wimberly Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 7:57:06 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Then there's best-first search, B*, C*, constraint-directed search, etc. And these are just classical search methods. Feank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 7:20 PM, "Marcus Daniels" > wrote: "But one problem is that breadth-first and depth-first search are just fast ways to find answers." Just _not_ -- general but not efficient. [My dog was demanding attention! ] ________________________________ From: Friam > on behalf of Marcus Daniels > Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 6:43:40 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Grant writes: "On the other hand... evolution is stochastic. (You actually did not disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was another one.) " I think of logic programming systems as a traditional tool of AI research (e.g. Prolog, now Curry, similar capabilities implemented in Lisp) from the age before the AI winter. These systems provide a very flexible way to pose constraint problems. But one problem is that breadth-first and depth-first search are just fast ways to find answers. Recent work seems to have shifted to SMT solvers and specialized constraint solving algorithms, but these have somewhat less expressiveness as programming languages. Meanwhile, machine learning has come on the scene in a big way and tasks traditionally associated with old-school AI, like natural language processing, are now matched or even dominated using neural nets (LSTM). I find the range of capabilities provided by groups like nlp.stanford.edu really impressive -- there examples of both approaches (logic programming and machine learning) and then don't need to be mutually exclusive. Quantum annealing is one area where the two may increasingly come together by using physical phenomena to accelerate the rate at which high dimensional discrete systems can be solved, without relying on fragile or domain-specific heuristics. I often use evolutionary algorithms for hard optimization problems. Genetic algorithms, for example, are robust to noise (or if you like ambiguity) in fitness functions, and they are trivial to parallelize. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam > on behalf of Grant Holland > Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 4:51:18 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining! For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory. On the other hand... evolution is stochastic. (You actually did not disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is "Chance and Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it for the second time. And that proved quite fruitful.) G. On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ? wrote: I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wimberly3 at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 00:15:05 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 22:15:05 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> Message-ID: My point was that depth-first and breadth-first can probably serve only as a straw-man (straw-men?). Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 10:11 PM, "Marcus Daniels" wrote: > Frank writes: > > > "Then there's best-first search, B*, C*, constraint-directed search, > etc. And these are just classical search methods." > > > Connecting this back to evolutionary / stochastic techniques, genetic > programming is one way to get the best of both approaches, at least in > principle. One can expose these human-designed algorithms as predefined > library functions. Typically in genetic programming the vocabulary > consists of simple routines (e.g. arithmetic), conditionals, and recursion. > > > In practice, this kind of seeding of the solution space can collapse > diversity. It is a drag to see tons of compute time spent on a million > little refinements around an already good solution. (Yes, I know that > solution!) More fun to see a set of clumsy solutions turn into to > decent-performing but weird solutions. I find my attention is drawn to > properties of sub-populations and how I can keep the historically good > performers _out_. Not a pure GA, but a GA where communities also have > fitness functions matching my heavy hand of justice.. (If I prove that > conservatism just doesn't work, I'll be sure to pass it along.) > > > Marcus > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* Friam on behalf of Frank Wimberly < > wimberly3 at gmail.com> > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 8, 2017 7:57:06 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence > > Then there's best-first search, B*, C*, constraint-directed search, etc. > And these are just classical search methods. > > Feank > > Frank Wimberly > Phone (505) 670-9918 > > On Aug 8, 2017 7:20 PM, "Marcus Daniels" wrote: > >> "But one problem is that breadth-first and depth-first search are just >> fast ways to find answers." >> >> >> Just _not_ -- general but not efficient. [My dog was demanding >> attention! ] >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* Friam on behalf of Marcus Daniels < >> marcus at snoutfarm.com> >> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 8, 2017 6:43:40 PM >> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? >> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence >> >> >> Grant writes: >> >> >> "On the other hand... evolution *is* stochastic. (You actually did not >> disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was >> another one.) " >> >> >> I think of logic programming systems as a traditional tool of AI research >> (e.g. Prolog, now Curry, similar capabilities implemented in Lisp) from the >> age before the AI winter. These systems provide a very flexible way to >> pose constraint problems. But one problem is that breadth-first and >> depth-first search are just fast ways to find answers. Recent work seems >> to have shifted to SMT solvers and specialized constraint solving >> algorithms, but these have somewhat less expressiveness as programming >> languages. Meanwhile, machine learning has come on the scene in a big way >> and tasks traditionally associated with old-school AI, like natural >> language processing, are now matched or even dominated using neural nets >> (LSTM). I find the range of capabilities provided by groups like >> nlp.stanford.edu really impressive -- there examples of both approaches >> (logic programming and machine learning) and then don't need to be mutually >> exclusive. >> >> >> Quantum annealing is one area where the two may increasingly come >> together by using physical phenomena to accelerate the rate at which high >> dimensional discrete systems can be solved, without relying on fragile or >> domain-specific heuristics. >> >> >> I often use evolutionary algorithms for hard optimization problems. >> Genetic algorithms, for example, are robust to noise (or if you like >> ambiguity) in fitness functions, and they are trivial to parallelize. >> >> >> Marcus >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* Friam on behalf of Grant Holland < >> grant.holland.sf at gmail.com> >> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 8, 2017 4:51:18 PM >> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? >> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence >> >> >> Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are >> ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining! >> >> For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory. >> >> On the other hand... evolution *is* stochastic. (You actually did not >> disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was >> another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is "Chance and >> Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it for the second >> time. And that proved quite fruitful.) >> >> G. >> >> On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ? wrote: >> >> >> I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. >> >> The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. >> >> There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. >> >> An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. >> >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Wed Aug 9 00:41:05 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 04:41:05 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> , Message-ID: Frank writes: "My point was that depth-first and breadth-first can probably serve only as a straw-man (straw-men?)." Unless there is a robust meta-rule (not heuristic) or single deterministic search algorithm to rule them all, then wouldn't those other suggestions also be straw-men too? If I knew that there were no noise and the domain was continuous and convex, then I wouldn't use a stochastic approach. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Frank Wimberly Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 10:15:05 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence My point was that depth-first and breadth-first can probably serve only as a straw-man (straw-men?). Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 10:11 PM, "Marcus Daniels" > wrote: Frank writes: "Then there's best-first search, B*, C*, constraint-directed search, etc. And these are just classical search methods." Connecting this back to evolutionary / stochastic techniques, genetic programming is one way to get the best of both approaches, at least in principle. One can expose these human-designed algorithms as predefined library functions. Typically in genetic programming the vocabulary consists of simple routines (e.g. arithmetic), conditionals, and recursion. In practice, this kind of seeding of the solution space can collapse diversity. It is a drag to see tons of compute time spent on a million little refinements around an already good solution. (Yes, I know that solution!) More fun to see a set of clumsy solutions turn into to decent-performing but weird solutions. I find my attention is drawn to properties of sub-populations and how I can keep the historically good performers _out_. Not a pure GA, but a GA where communities also have fitness functions matching my heavy hand of justice.. (If I prove that conservatism just doesn't work, I'll be sure to pass it along.) Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam > on behalf of Frank Wimberly > Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 7:57:06 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Then there's best-first search, B*, C*, constraint-directed search, etc. And these are just classical search methods. Feank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 7:20 PM, "Marcus Daniels" > wrote: "But one problem is that breadth-first and depth-first search are just fast ways to find answers." Just _not_ -- general but not efficient. [My dog was demanding attention! ] ________________________________ From: Friam > on behalf of Marcus Daniels > Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 6:43:40 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Grant writes: "On the other hand... evolution is stochastic. (You actually did not disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was another one.) " I think of logic programming systems as a traditional tool of AI research (e.g. Prolog, now Curry, similar capabilities implemented in Lisp) from the age before the AI winter. These systems provide a very flexible way to pose constraint problems. But one problem is that breadth-first and depth-first search are just fast ways to find answers. Recent work seems to have shifted to SMT solvers and specialized constraint solving algorithms, but these have somewhat less expressiveness as programming languages. Meanwhile, machine learning has come on the scene in a big way and tasks traditionally associated with old-school AI, like natural language processing, are now matched or even dominated using neural nets (LSTM). I find the range of capabilities provided by groups like nlp.stanford.edu really impressive -- there examples of both approaches (logic programming and machine learning) and then don't need to be mutually exclusive. Quantum annealing is one area where the two may increasingly come together by using physical phenomena to accelerate the rate at which high dimensional discrete systems can be solved, without relying on fragile or domain-specific heuristics. I often use evolutionary algorithms for hard optimization problems. Genetic algorithms, for example, are robust to noise (or if you like ambiguity) in fitness functions, and they are trivial to parallelize. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam > on behalf of Grant Holland > Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 4:51:18 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining! For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory. On the other hand... evolution is stochastic. (You actually did not disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is "Chance and Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it for the second time. And that proved quite fruitful.) G. On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ? wrote: I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grant.holland.sf at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 02:23:29 2017 From: grant.holland.sf at gmail.com (Grant Holland) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 00:23:29 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: <019201d3109e$6c6a4f60$453eee20$@earthlink.net> References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> <019201d3109e$6c6a4f60$453eee20$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Nick, In science, these three terms are generally interchangeable. Their common usage is that they all describe activities, or "events", that are "subject to chance". Such activities, events or processes that are described by these terms are governed by the laws of probability. They all describe activities, events, or "happenings" whose repetitions do not always produce the same outcomes even when given the same inputs every time (initial conditions). In other words, uncertainty is involved. However, like most words, these enjoy other usage, meanings, as well. For example "random" is sometimes used to mean "disorganized" or "lacking in specific pattern". This is a very different meaning than "activities that don't always produce the same outcome given the same inputs". Consider what a math formula for each of these tow meanings wold consist of. One of them would be based on probabilities; but the other would involve stationary relationships. On 8/8/17 5:31 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > > Grant, > > I think I know the answer to this question, but want to make sure: > > What is the difference beween calling a process ?stochastic?, > ?indeterminate?, or ?random?? > > Nick > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Grant > Holland > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 08, 2017 6:51 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > ; glen ? > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence > > Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are > ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining! > > For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory. > > On the other hand... evolution /is/ stochastic. (You actually did not > disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right > was another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is > "Chance and Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it > for the second time. And that proved quite fruitful.) > > G. > > On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ? wrote: > > I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. > > The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. > > There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. > > An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grant.holland.sf at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 02:40:48 2017 From: grant.holland.sf at gmail.com (Grant Holland) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 00:40:48 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> Message-ID: Marcus, Let me clarify what I meant by saying that evolution is stochastic.... By "evolution", I do not mean genetic algorithms. Genetic algorithms need not be, but can be, stochastic. Genetic algorithms are/adaptive; /but they need not be/stochastically /adaptive. On the other hand, biological evolution of life on earth is necessarily stochastically adaptive - due to chance mutations. As Jacques Monod points out in his book "Chance and Necessity", chance mutations are the /only/ natural mechanism by which new species are created. And it is completely subject to chance. Without this particular stochasticicty, there would only ever have been one species on earth, if that, and that species would now be long extinct because of its inability to adapt. On 8/8/17 6:43 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > > Grant writes: > > > "On the other hand... evolution /is/ stochastic. (You actually did not > disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right > was another one.) " > > > I think of logic programming systems as a traditional tool of AI > research (e.g. Prolog, now Curry, similar capabilities implemented in > Lisp) from the age before the AI winter. These systems provide a very > flexible way to pose constraint problems. But one problem is that > breadth-first and depth-first search are just fast ways to find > answers. Recent work seems to have shifted to SMT solvers and > specialized constraint solving algorithms, but these have somewhat > less expressiveness as programming languages. Meanwhile, machine > learning has come on the scene in a big way and tasks traditionally > associated with old-school AI, like natural language processing, are > now matched or even dominated using neural nets (LSTM). I find the > range of capabilities provided by groups like nlp.stanford.edu really > impressive -- there examples of both approaches (logic programming and > machine learning) and then don't need to be mutually exclusive. > > > Quantum annealing is one area where the two may increasingly come > together by using physical phenomena to accelerate the rate at which > high dimensional discrete systems can be solved, without relying on > fragile or domain-specific heuristics. > > > I often use evolutionary algorithms for hard optimization problems. > Genetic algorithms, for example, are robust to noise (or if you like > ambiguity) in fitness functions, and they are trivial to parallelize. > > > Marcus > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* Friam on behalf of Grant Holland > > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 8, 2017 4:51:18 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence > > Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are > ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining! > > For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory. > > On the other hand... evolution /is/ stochastic. (You actually did not > disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right > was another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is > "Chance and Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it > for the second time. And that proved quite fruitful.) > > G. > > > On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ? wrote: >> I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. >> >> The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. >> >> There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. >> >> An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. >> > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Wed Aug 9 04:08:22 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 08:08:22 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> , Message-ID: "Genetic algorithms need not be, but can be, stochastic. Genetic algorithms are adaptive; but they need not be stochastically adaptive" [..] "Without this particular stochasticicty, there would only ever have been one species on earth, if that, and that species would now be long extinct because of its inability to adapt." If an algorithm can result in there being one species it is not adaptive. I meant to imply a GA has a non-zero mutation rate (not just selection) and that mutation is random, without specifying particular distributional properties or distinguishing between pseudo-random and `truly' random. Marcus ________________________________ From: Grant Holland Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2017 12:40:48 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; Marcus Daniels; glen ? Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Marcus, Let me clarify what I meant by saying that evolution is stochastic.... By "evolution", I do not mean genetic algorithms. Genetic algorithms need not be, but can be, stochastic. Genetic algorithms are adaptive; but they need not be stochastically adaptive. On the other hand, biological evolution of life on earth is necessarily stochastically adaptive - due to chance mutations. As Jacques Monod points out in his book "Chance and Necessity", chance mutations are the only natural mechanism by which new species are created. And it is completely subject to chance. Without this particular stochasticicty, there would only ever have been one species on earth, if that, and that species would now be long extinct because of its inability to adapt. On 8/8/17 6:43 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: Grant writes: "On the other hand... evolution is stochastic. (You actually did not disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was another one.) " I think of logic programming systems as a traditional tool of AI research (e.g. Prolog, now Curry, similar capabilities implemented in Lisp) from the age before the AI winter. These systems provide a very flexible way to pose constraint problems. But one problem is that breadth-first and depth-first search are just fast ways to find answers. Recent work seems to have shifted to SMT solvers and specialized constraint solving algorithms, but these have somewhat less expressiveness as programming languages. Meanwhile, machine learning has come on the scene in a big way and tasks traditionally associated with old-school AI, like natural language processing, are now matched or even dominated using neural nets (LSTM). I find the range of capabilities provided by groups like nlp.stanford.edu really impressive -- there examples of both approaches (logic programming and machine learning) and then don't need to be mutually exclusive. Quantum annealing is one area where the two may increasingly come together by using physical phenomena to accelerate the rate at which high dimensional discrete systems can be solved, without relying on fragile or domain-specific heuristics. I often use evolutionary algorithms for hard optimization problems. Genetic algorithms, for example, are robust to noise (or if you like ambiguity) in fitness functions, and they are trivial to parallelize. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Grant Holland Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 4:51:18 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining! For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory. On the other hand... evolution is stochastic. (You actually did not disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is "Chance and Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it for the second time. And that proved quite fruitful.) G. On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ? wrote: I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 09:13:26 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2VwciDim6c=?=) Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2017 06:13:26 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the self In-Reply-To: References: <6767db63-ee2b-3c17-ecbf-25c02eed08a8@gmail.com> <2ad1b90a-8f5d-62f4-6028-5a6d91c705e8@gmail.com> , Message-ID: Ha! We bald people clearly have a stronger sense of self than hairy people. On August 8, 2017 6:06:12 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels wrote: >Gasp. Loss of _hair_? _Who_ would say such a thing? -- ?glen? From wimberly3 at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 09:35:01 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 07:35:01 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> Message-ID: Right. Then you use gradient ascent. But what if you are scheduling a job shop for throughput when there are thousands of variables most of which have discrete values? Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 10:41 PM, "Marcus Daniels" wrote: > Frank writes: > > > "My point was that depth-first and breadth-first can probably serve only > as a straw-man (straw-men?)." > > > Unless there is a robust meta-rule (not heuristic) or single deterministic > search algorithm to rule them all, then wouldn't those other suggestions > also be straw-men too? If I knew that there were no noise and the domain > was continuous and convex, then I wouldn't use a stochastic approach. > > > Marcus > ------------------------------ > *From:* Friam on behalf of Frank Wimberly < > wimberly3 at gmail.com> > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 8, 2017 10:15:05 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence > > My point was that depth-first and breadth-first can probably serve only as > a straw-man (straw-men?). > > Frank Wimberly > Phone (505) 670-9918 > > On Aug 8, 2017 10:11 PM, "Marcus Daniels" wrote: > >> Frank writes: >> >> >> "Then there's best-first search, B*, C*, constraint-directed search, >> etc. And these are just classical search methods." >> >> >> Connecting this back to evolutionary / stochastic techniques, genetic >> programming is one way to get the best of both approaches, at least in >> principle. One can expose these human-designed algorithms as predefined >> library functions. Typically in genetic programming the vocabulary >> consists of simple routines (e.g. arithmetic), conditionals, and recursion. >> >> >> In practice, this kind of seeding of the solution space can collapse >> diversity. It is a drag to see tons of compute time spent on a million >> little refinements around an already good solution. (Yes, I know that >> solution!) More fun to see a set of clumsy solutions turn into to >> decent-performing but weird solutions. I find my attention is drawn to >> properties of sub-populations and how I can keep the historically good >> performers _out_. Not a pure GA, but a GA where communities also have >> fitness functions matching my heavy hand of justice.. (If I prove that >> conservatism just doesn't work, I'll be sure to pass it along.) >> >> >> Marcus >> >> >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* Friam on behalf of Frank Wimberly < >> wimberly3 at gmail.com> >> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 8, 2017 7:57:06 PM >> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group >> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence >> >> Then there's best-first search, B*, C*, constraint-directed search, etc. >> And these are just classical search methods. >> >> Feank >> >> Frank Wimberly >> Phone (505) 670-9918 >> >> On Aug 8, 2017 7:20 PM, "Marcus Daniels" wrote: >> >>> "But one problem is that breadth-first and depth-first search are just >>> fast ways to find answers." >>> >>> >>> Just _not_ -- general but not efficient. [My dog was demanding >>> attention! ] >>> ------------------------------ >>> *From:* Friam on behalf of Marcus Daniels < >>> marcus at snoutfarm.com> >>> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 8, 2017 6:43:40 PM >>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? >>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence >>> >>> >>> Grant writes: >>> >>> >>> "On the other hand... evolution *is* stochastic. (You actually did not >>> disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was >>> another one.) " >>> >>> >>> I think of logic programming systems as a traditional tool of AI >>> research (e.g. Prolog, now Curry, similar capabilities implemented in Lisp) >>> from the age before the AI winter. These systems provide a very flexible >>> way to pose constraint problems. But one problem is that breadth-first and >>> depth-first search are just fast ways to find answers. Recent work seems >>> to have shifted to SMT solvers and specialized constraint solving >>> algorithms, but these have somewhat less expressiveness as programming >>> languages. Meanwhile, machine learning has come on the scene in a big way >>> and tasks traditionally associated with old-school AI, like natural >>> language processing, are now matched or even dominated using neural nets >>> (LSTM). I find the range of capabilities provided by groups like >>> nlp.stanford.edu really impressive -- there examples of both approaches >>> (logic programming and machine learning) and then don't need to be mutually >>> exclusive. >>> >>> >>> Quantum annealing is one area where the two may increasingly come >>> together by using physical phenomena to accelerate the rate at which high >>> dimensional discrete systems can be solved, without relying on fragile or >>> domain-specific heuristics. >>> >>> >>> I often use evolutionary algorithms for hard optimization problems. >>> Genetic algorithms, for example, are robust to noise (or if you like >>> ambiguity) in fitness functions, and they are trivial to parallelize. >>> >>> >>> Marcus >>> ------------------------------ >>> *From:* Friam on behalf of Grant Holland < >>> grant.holland.sf at gmail.com> >>> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 8, 2017 4:51:18 PM >>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? >>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence >>> >>> >>> Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are >>> ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining! >>> >>> For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory. >>> >>> On the other hand... evolution *is* stochastic. (You actually did not >>> disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was >>> another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is "Chance and >>> Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it for the second >>> time. And that proved quite fruitful.) >>> >>> G. >>> >>> On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ? wrote: >>> >>> >>> I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. >>> >>> The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. >>> >>> There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. >>> >>> An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >>> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Wed Aug 9 09:51:51 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 13:51:51 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> , Message-ID: "Right. Then you use gradient ascent. But what if you are scheduling a job shop for throughput when there are thousands of variables most of which have discrete values?" I'd try to code it up for a SMT solver like Z3, or look for a SMT solver that had theories that closely matched the domain of the job shop. Or try something like this on a D-Wave. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Frank Wimberly Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2017 7:35 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Right. Then you use gradient ascent. But what if you are scheduling a job shop for throughput when there are thousands of variables most of which have discrete values? Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 10:41 PM, "Marcus Daniels" > wrote: Frank writes: "My point was that depth-first and breadth-first can probably serve only as a straw-man (straw-men?)." Unless there is a robust meta-rule (not heuristic) or single deterministic search algorithm to rule them all, then wouldn't those other suggestions also be straw-men too? If I knew that there were no noise and the domain was continuous and convex, then I wouldn't use a stochastic approach. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam > on behalf of Frank Wimberly > Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 10:15:05 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence My point was that depth-first and breadth-first can probably serve only as a straw-man (straw-men?). Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 10:11 PM, "Marcus Daniels" > wrote: Frank writes: "Then there's best-first search, B*, C*, constraint-directed search, etc. And these are just classical search methods." Connecting this back to evolutionary / stochastic techniques, genetic programming is one way to get the best of both approaches, at least in principle. One can expose these human-designed algorithms as predefined library functions. Typically in genetic programming the vocabulary consists of simple routines (e.g. arithmetic), conditionals, and recursion. In practice, this kind of seeding of the solution space can collapse diversity. It is a drag to see tons of compute time spent on a million little refinements around an already good solution. (Yes, I know that solution!) More fun to see a set of clumsy solutions turn into to decent-performing but weird solutions. I find my attention is drawn to properties of sub-populations and how I can keep the historically good performers _out_. Not a pure GA, but a GA where communities also have fitness functions matching my heavy hand of justice.. (If I prove that conservatism just doesn't work, I'll be sure to pass it along.) Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam > on behalf of Frank Wimberly > Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 7:57:06 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Then there's best-first search, B*, C*, constraint-directed search, etc. And these are just classical search methods. Feank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 7:20 PM, "Marcus Daniels" > wrote: "But one problem is that breadth-first and depth-first search are just fast ways to find answers." Just _not_ -- general but not efficient. [My dog was demanding attention! ] ________________________________ From: Friam > on behalf of Marcus Daniels > Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 6:43:40 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Grant writes: "On the other hand... evolution is stochastic. (You actually did not disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was another one.) " I think of logic programming systems as a traditional tool of AI research (e.g. Prolog, now Curry, similar capabilities implemented in Lisp) from the age before the AI winter. These systems provide a very flexible way to pose constraint problems. But one problem is that breadth-first and depth-first search are just fast ways to find answers. Recent work seems to have shifted to SMT solvers and specialized constraint solving algorithms, but these have somewhat less expressiveness as programming languages. Meanwhile, machine learning has come on the scene in a big way and tasks traditionally associated with old-school AI, like natural language processing, are now matched or even dominated using neural nets (LSTM). I find the range of capabilities provided by groups like nlp.stanford.edu really impressive -- there examples of both approaches (logic programming and machine learning) and then don't need to be mutually exclusive. Quantum annealing is one area where the two may increasingly come together by using physical phenomena to accelerate the rate at which high dimensional discrete systems can be solved, without relying on fragile or domain-specific heuristics. I often use evolutionary algorithms for hard optimization problems. Genetic algorithms, for example, are robust to noise (or if you like ambiguity) in fitness functions, and they are trivial to parallelize. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam > on behalf of Grant Holland > Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 4:51:18 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; glen ? Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining! For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory. On the other hand... evolution is stochastic. (You actually did not disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is "Chance and Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it for the second time. And that proved quite fruitful.) G. On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ? wrote: I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object." Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception. The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than any of our rule sets. There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution, not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment. An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will *always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 09:56:03 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2VwciDim6c=?=) Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2017 06:56:03 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <48088bdd-d753-3c75-c160-2a89b067a6e0@gmail.com> <019201d3109e$6c6a4f60$453eee20$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <93327265-2C6B-4CAB-99BB-FB7E40B4CFDB@gmail.com> FWIW, I tend to use stochastic to mean a process with a collection of variables, some of which are (pseudo) randomly set and some of which are not. A "random process" would imply a process where either all the variables are random OR where the randomly set variables are dominant. A process can be stochastic even if the randomness has little effect. My use of indeterminate is ambiguous. In processes where we're ignorant of how a variable is set, those variables are indeterminate?. But I also use it to mean unset variables. E.g. a semaphore that's being polled for a value or state change. But as with stochasticity, a "don't care" variable can be indeterminate without making the whole process indeterminate. On August 8, 2017 11:23:29 PM PDT, Grant Holland wrote: >Nick, > >In science, these three terms are generally interchangeable. Their >common usage is that they all describe activities, or "events", that >are >"subject to chance". Such activities, events or processes that are >described by these terms are governed by the laws of probability. They >all describe activities, events, or "happenings" whose repetitions do >not always produce the same outcomes even when given the same inputs >every time (initial conditions). In other words, uncertainty is >involved. > >However, like most words, these enjoy other usage, meanings, as well. >For example "random" is sometimes used to mean "disorganized" or >"lacking in specific pattern". This is a very different meaning than >"activities that don't always produce the same outcome given the same >inputs". Consider what a math formula for each of these tow meanings >wold consist of. One of them would be based on probabilities; but the >other would involve stationary relationships. > >On 8/8/17 5:31 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: >> >> Grant, >> >> I think I know the answer to this question, but want to make sure: >> >> What is the difference beween calling a process ?stochastic?, >> ?indeterminate?, or ?random?? -- ?glen? From nickthompson at earthlink.net Wed Aug 9 10:47:37 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 10:47:37 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Message-ID: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> Hi everybody, Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog. I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it's last value. So the next step in a random walk is "random" but the current value (it's present position on a surface, say) is "the result of a stochastic process." From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can't tell if I am correct or not. Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this "evolution" of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself. So what kind of "evolution" are you guys talking about? Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here. nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 10:53:58 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 08:53:58 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Ah, good to see you nick. How fairs you? On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Hi everybody, > > > > Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog. > > > > I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. > > > > First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose > value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it?s last value. > So the next step in a random walk is ?random? but the current value (it?s > present position on a surface, say) is ?the result of a stochastic > process.? From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I > still can?t tell if I am correct or not. > > > > Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you > confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this ?evolution? of > which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are > speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- *The > alteration of the design of taxa over time*. Hard to see any way in > which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into > the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the > vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability > all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are > predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of > your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of > the phenomenon, itself. > > > > So what kind of ?evolution? are you guys talking about? > > > > Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, > here. > > > > nick > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jquillien at cybermesa.com Wed Aug 9 10:56:58 2017 From: jquillien at cybermesa.com (Jenny Quillien) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 08:56:58 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> An excellent foray into such a topic is /Arrival of the Fittest: how nature innovates/ by Andreas Wagner. From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability. Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly relevant to Nick's e-mail. Jenny Quillien On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > > Hi everybody, > > Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog. > > I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. > > First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose > value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it?s last > value. So the next step in a random walk is ?random? but the current > value (it?s present position on a surface, say) is ?the result of a > stochastic process.? From your responses, and from a short rummage in > Wikipedia, I still can?t tell if I am correct or not. > > Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that > you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this > ?evolution? of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will > assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we > are all a result: -- */The alteration of the design of taxa over > time/*. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is > evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS > evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion > of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the > place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In > other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your > imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of > the phenomenon, itself. > > So what kind of ?evolution? are you guys talking about? > > Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself > up, here. > > nick > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From profwest at fastmail.fm Wed Aug 9 11:05:16 2017 From: profwest at fastmail.fm (Prof David West) Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2017 09:05:16 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1502291116.2878369.1068139480.4CB278E7@webmail.messagingengine.com> For what its worth - I will be teaching a short class next month in Santa Fe, "Isaac Asimov and the Robots." Two points of coverage: 1) the robots themselves invent and follow a "Zeroth Law" that allows them to eliminate individual human beings with a result the exact opposite of Hawking et. al.'s fears that our creations will not love us; 2) how the actual evolution of robotics and AI (see Daniel Suarez'* Kill Decision* - autonomous swarming drones as tools of war and death to humans) diverged from the rosy naive 1950s view of the future that Asimov advanced. davew On Mon, Aug 7, 2017, at 09:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: > It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not entirely > on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least insofar as it > may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of "reining it in" are > probably not going to fly.> > > > > On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez > wrote:>> Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of the >> future? For sure not a human being in the way we know.>> >> http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158>> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From profwest at fastmail.fm Wed Aug 9 11:42:29 2017 From: profwest at fastmail.fm (Prof David West) Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2017 09:42:29 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] schadenfreude - a political rant Message-ID: <1502293349.2886850.1068153840.252D8CF3@webmail.messagingengine.com> After Trump won, something I had been telling people would happen since January last year, Nick constantly questioned me as to my schadenfreude-ic attitude - taking pleasure in the misery of all the astounded liberals. Watching Bill Maher with some friends - also hard core liberal democrats - I was struck by two things: 1), all the fury and ridicule heaped on Trump (deservedly so) is really nothing more than schadenfreude at the misery of Trump and his circle. Pleasurable perhaps, but just as pointless as my gloating after the election; 2) speaking purely tactically, the actions of the media and the liberal establishment in reaction to Trump is going to assure his re-election to a second term instead of prevent it. Nothing is being done at present to reduce his popularity among those that voted for him while simultaneously creating a platform for next time, " I tried to keep my promises to you, but those liberal and democratic SOB's didn't let me. Give me a real mandate and we will show them just how big a bunch of losers they really are." (More sophisticated than that, but that is the gist.) Russia will not save us. Nothing will be found except more nasty, vulgar, and immoral ? but absolutely legal ? behavior. At most, some peripherals who illegally exploited their association with the Trump campaign - e.g. Flynn - will suffer. Mobilizing bases, better candidates, etc. will not save us - it will merely increase the shouting the mutual animus and the polarization of our country. My friends and I engaged in heated discussion - mostly the same kind of "how can you," "my side is right," "Trump's supporters are morons but Democrat supporters are universally enlightened," etc. etc. that everyone is engaged in right now - before coming to a consensus. Government has become locked into ideas, philosophies, and programs that are grounded in, and straight jacketed by, things that worked in the 1940s (Democrats) and 1950s (Republicans). More of any of that cannot possible work or be useful today. The only answer is true innovation. Bringing innovation to government will not be easy. No institution is more adverse to change - except maybe academia. Built in barriers, e.g. procurement rules that guarantee only those who have proven they are huge, incompetent and with a history of expensive failures are even allowed to bid on government contracts, will make it near impossible. But, should we not be able to come up with original ideas along with strategies and tactics to leverage the Web and social media to make them possible? Would that not be an interesting and challenging, and worthwhile endeavor? davew From gepropella at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 11:48:20 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2xlbiDimKM=?=) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 08:48:20 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <9ce318a7-b02a-bbb3-b9f5-016968aee88e@gmail.com> Maybe you're looking for the term "Markovian"? http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MarkovProcess.html On 08/09/2017 07:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value > was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it's last value. So the > next step in a random walk is "random" but the current value (it's present > position on a surface, say) is "the result of a stochastic process." From > your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can't tell if > I am correct or not. -- ? glen From grant.holland.sf at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 11:56:29 2017 From: grant.holland.sf at gmail.com (Grant Holland) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 09:56:29 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Nick, Re: your queston about stochastic processes.... Yes, your specific description "AND its last value" is what most uses of "stochastic process" imply. But, technically all that is required to be a "stochastic process" is that each next step in the process is unpredictable, whether or not the outcome of one step influences the outcome of the next. An example of this is the process of flipping a coin several times in a row. Generally, we assume that the outcomes of two adjacent flips are stochastically (or statistically) independent, and that there is no influence between the steps. So, the steps of an independent stochastic process are not dependent on their previous steps. On the other hand, selecting dinner tonight probably depends on what you had last night, because you would get bored with posole too many nights in a row. And maybe your memory goes back more than just one night, and your selection of dinner tonite is affected by what you had for 2 or more nites before. If your memory goes back only one night, then your "dinner selection process" is a kind of stochastic process called a "Markov process". Markov processes limit their "memory" to just one step. (That keeps the math simpler.) In any event, stochastic processes whose steps depend on the outcomes of previous steps are "less random" than those that don't, because the earlier steps "give you extra information" that help you narrow down the options and to better predict the future steps - some more than others. So, LEARNING can occur inside of these dependent stochastic processes. In fact, the mathematics of information theory is all about taking advantage of these dependent (or "conditional") stochastic processes to hopefully predict the outcomes of future steps. The whole thing is based on conditional probability. Info theory uses formulas with names such as joint entropy, conditional entropy, mutual information and entropy rate. These formulas can measure /how much /stochastic dependency is at work in a particular process - i.e how predictable it is. Entropy rate in particular works with conditional stochastic processes and tries to use that "extra information" provided by stochastic dependencies to predict future outcomes. Re: your "evolution" question... I have been speaking of biological evolution. HTH Grant On 8/9/17 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > > Hi everybody, > > Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog. > > I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. > > First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose > value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it?s last > value. So the next step in a random walk is ?random? but the current > value (it?s present position on a surface, say) is ?the result of a > stochastic process.? From your responses, and from a short rummage in > Wikipedia, I still can?t tell if I am correct or not. > > Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that > you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this > ?evolution? of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will > assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we > are all a result: -- */The alteration of the design of taxa over > time/*. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is > evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS > evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion > of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the > place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In > other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your > imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of > the phenomenon, itself. > > So what kind of ?evolution? are you guys talking about? > > Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself > up, here. > > nick > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Wed Aug 9 11:57:03 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 09:57:03 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: <1502291116.2878369.1068139480.4CB278E7@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1502291116.2878369.1068139480.4CB278E7@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: Dave - Most excellent of you to do this, and what will be your venue for this class? Are you familiar with our own Jack Williamson 's vague parallel work in his "Humanoids" which began in 1947 with the Novelette: "With Folded Hands". I do not know if he ever acknowledged an influence in this work from Asimov's introduction to the "three laws" in 1941? He investigates the (unintended/unexpected catastrophic consequences of something like the three laws on humanity, having the human spirit "quelled" by being "niced" or "safed" near-to-death) He claims to have written this as a cathartic project to shake off the existential angst/depression he felt from the (ab)use of atomic weapons at the end of WWII. Jack was too old to serve in the military when the war broke out (he was 36?), but instead volunteered to work in the South Pacific as a civilian meteorologist. He had started his career in Science Fiction before the term was fully adopted (Scientific Romance and Scientifiction being precursors according to Jack) with the publication of a short story "Metal Man" In Hugo Gernsbach's /Amazing Stories /in 1928. Up until the end of WWII he claims to have been somewhat of a techno-utopianist, believing that advancing technology would (continue to ) simply advance the quality of life of human beings (somewhat?) monotonically. I hosted Jack at an evening talk at LANL/Bradbury Science Museum in 1998 during the Nebula Awards on the theme of how Science and Science Fiction inform one another. Jack was 90 that year and had over 90 published works at that time. His work was always somewhat in the vein of Space Opera and his characters were generally quite two dimensional and his gender politics typical of his generation of science fictioneers, yet he was still loved by his community. His use of this pulpy/pop medium as a way to investigate and discuss fundamental aspects of human nature and many of the social or even spiritual implications of the advance of technology was nevertheless quite inspired (IMO). He died in 2007 at the ripe young age of 98 and was still producing work nearly up to the day of his death. In 1998 when I first met him, the OED was creating an appendix/section of "neologisms from science fiction" and he was credited (informally?) with having the most entries in the not-yet-published project. His most famous throwdown in this category at the time was his "invention" of anti-matter, which he called "contra-terrene" or more colloquially "seetee" (a phoneticization of the contraction "CT")! He was also quite proud of being interrogated by the FBI during the Manhattan project for having written a story about Atomic Weapons... they wanted to assume he had access to a security leak until he showed them a 1932(?) short story on the same theme, making it clear that the ideas of nuclear fission (fusion even?) as a weapon were not new (to him anyway)... that apparently satisfied them and of course, he didn't appreciate the full import of their interrogation until after the war. Carry On! - Steve On 8/9/17 9:05 AM, Prof David West wrote: > For what its worth - I will be teaching a short class next month in > Santa Fe, "Isaac Asimov and the Robots." Two points of coverage: 1) > the robots themselves invent and follow a "Zeroth Law" that allows > them to eliminate individual human beings with a result the exact > opposite of Hawking et. al.'s fears that our creations will not love > us; 2) how the actual evolution of robotics and AI (see Daniel > Suarez'/Kill Decision/ - autonomous swarming drones as tools of war > and death to humans) diverged from the rosy naive 1950s view of the > future that Asimov advanced. > > davew > > > On Mon, Aug 7, 2017, at 09:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: >> It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not >> entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least >> insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of >> "reining it in" are probably not going to fly. >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez >> > wrote: >> >> Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of >> the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. >> >> http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe >> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >> by Dr. Strangelove >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Wed Aug 9 11:58:52 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 15:58:52 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] schadenfreude - a political rant In-Reply-To: <1502293349.2886850.1068153840.252D8CF3@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1502293349.2886850.1068153840.252D8CF3@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: Dave writes: "Watching Bill Maher with some friends - also hard core liberal democrats - I was struck by two things: 1), all the fury and ridicule heaped on Trump (deservedly so) is really nothing more than schadenfreude at the misery of Trump and his circle. Pleasurable perhaps, but just as pointless as my gloating after the election; 2) speaking purely tactically, the actions of the media and the liberal establishment in reaction to Trump is going to assure his re-election to a second term instead of prevent it." Michael Moore was on Steven Colbert a week or so ago and said various confrontational things about living in a country where Trump is president. Paraphrasing, that he wouldn't tolerate it, but that he also wouldn't move. (It was the kind of rhetoric he is known for.) But it sounded at first like a potential call for violence, but then he walked it back a bit. Even so, Colbert seemed uncomfortable. I must admit I am getting tired of people on the left who think their indignation matters for squat, and that the system of checks and balances will just fix this. It helps a little, though, I think that comedians and commentators keep pounding on the moron theme. It clearly worked with the White House because they started doing off-camera interviews. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Prof David West Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2017 9:42:29 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] schadenfreude - a political rant After Trump won, something I had been telling people would happen since January last year, Nick constantly questioned me as to my schadenfreude-ic attitude - taking pleasure in the misery of all the astounded liberals. Watching Bill Maher with some friends - also hard core liberal democrats - I was struck by two things: 1), all the fury and ridicule heaped on Trump (deservedly so) is really nothing more than schadenfreude at the misery of Trump and his circle. Pleasurable perhaps, but just as pointless as my gloating after the election; 2) speaking purely tactically, the actions of the media and the liberal establishment in reaction to Trump is going to assure his re-election to a second term instead of prevent it. Nothing is being done at present to reduce his popularity among those that voted for him while simultaneously creating a platform for next time, " I tried to keep my promises to you, but those liberal and democratic SOB's didn't let me. Give me a real mandate and we will show them just how big a bunch of losers they really are." (More sophisticated than that, but that is the gist.) Russia will not save us. Nothing will be found except more nasty, vulgar, and immoral ? but absolutely legal ? behavior. At most, some peripherals who illegally exploited their association with the Trump campaign - e.g. Flynn - will suffer. Mobilizing bases, better candidates, etc. will not save us - it will merely increase the shouting the mutual animus and the polarization of our country. My friends and I engaged in heated discussion - mostly the same kind of "how can you," "my side is right," "Trump's supporters are morons but Democrat supporters are universally enlightened," etc. etc. that everyone is engaged in right now - before coming to a consensus. Government has become locked into ideas, philosophies, and programs that are grounded in, and straight jacketed by, things that worked in the 1940s (Democrats) and 1950s (Republicans). More of any of that cannot possible work or be useful today. The only answer is true innovation. Bringing innovation to government will not be easy. No institution is more adverse to change - except maybe academia. Built in barriers, e.g. procurement rules that guarantee only those who have proven they are huge, incompetent and with a history of expensive failures are even allowed to bid on government contracts, will make it near impossible. But, should we not be able to come up with original ideas along with strategies and tactics to leverage the Web and social media to make them possible? Would that not be an interesting and challenging, and worthwhile endeavor? davew ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Wed Aug 9 12:01:52 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 10:01:52 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> Message-ID: <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> Jenny - What a powerful quote: /Natural selection can //preserve//innovations, but it cannot create them./ In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free Markets may well be restricted to the "innovation phase" of development. Once something becomes a (relative) commodity, it seems it might be counter-productive to continue the illusion of competitive development. At best it is wasteful and even harmful, and at worst it leads to an elevation of "innovation" to marketing and salesmanship. This is why we have so many near-identical products on the market being pushed on us through the hype of greed and fear when the "generic" or "store brand" version is equal or (even) superior (certainly in price, but also possibly in quality... lacking the colorants and odorants and other embellishments required to differentiate one product from the other?). - Steve On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: > > An excellent foray into such a topic is /Arrival of the Fittest: how > nature innovates/ by Andreas Wagner. > > From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, > but this power has limits. Natural selection can /preserve/ > innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that > creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance > about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for > natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its > innovability. > > Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about > how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly > relevant to Nick's e-mail. > > Jenny Quillien > > > On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: >> >> Hi everybody, >> >> Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog. >> >> I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. >> >> First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose >> value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it?s last >> value. So the next step in a random walk is ?random? but the current >> value (it?s present position on a surface, say) is ?the result of a >> stochastic process.? From your responses, and from a short rummage >> in Wikipedia, I still can?t tell if I am correct or not. >> >> Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is >> that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this >> ?evolution? of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will >> assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we >> are all a result: -- */The alteration of the design of taxa over >> time/*. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is >> evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS >> evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion >> of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the >> place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In >> other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your >> imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of >> the phenomenon, itself. >> >> So what kind of ?evolution? are you guys talking about? >> >> Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself >> up, here. >> >> nick >> >> Nicholas S. Thompson >> >> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology >> >> Clark University >> >> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ >> >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From profwest at fastmail.fm Wed Aug 9 12:06:44 2017 From: profwest at fastmail.fm (Prof David West) Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2017 10:06:44 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <1502291116.2878369.1068139480.4CB278E7@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <1502294804.2892606.1068222128.7ECF2D88@webmail.messagingengine.com> Steve, it is a Renesan course on Tue, September 7 and 14. I have read Jack Williamson, not all 90, and he would have been included in another course I proposed to Renesan on science fiction themes. Maybe in the future. davew On Wed, Aug 9, 2017, at 09:57 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > Dave - > Most excellent of you to do this, and what will be your venue for > this class?> Are you familiar with our own Jack Williamson[1]'s vague parallel work > in his "Humanoids" which began in 1947 with the Novelette: "With > Folded Hands". I do not know if he ever acknowledged an influence in > this work from Asimov's introduction to the "three laws" in 1941? He > investigates the (unintended/unexpected catastrophic consequences of > something like the three laws on humanity, having the human spirit > "quelled" by being "niced" or "safed" near-to-death)> He claims to have written this as a cathartic project to shake off > the existential angst/depression he felt from the (ab)use of atomic > weapons at the end of WWII. Jack was too old to serve in the military > when the war broke out (he was 36?), but instead volunteered to work > in the South Pacific as a civilian meteorologist. He had started his > career in Science Fiction before the term was fully adopted > (Scientific Romance and Scientifiction being precursors according to > Jack) with the publication of a short story "Metal Man" In Hugo > Gernsbach's *Amazing Stories *in 1928. Up until the end of WWII he > claims to have been somewhat of a techno-utopianist, believing that > advancing technology would (continue to ) simply advance the quality > of life of human beings (somewhat?) monotonically.> I hosted Jack at an evening talk at LANL/Bradbury Science Museum in > 1998 during the Nebula Awards on the theme of how Science and Science > Fiction inform one another. Jack was 90 that year and had over 90 > published works at that time. His work was always somewhat in the > vein of Space Opera and his characters were generally quite two > dimensional and his gender politics typical of his generation of > science fictioneers, yet he was still loved by his community. His use > of this pulpy/pop medium as a way to investigate and discuss > fundamental aspects of human nature and many of the social or even > spiritual implications of the advance of technology was nevertheless > quite inspired (IMO).> He died in 2007 at the ripe young age of 98 and was still producing > work nearly up to the day of his death. In 1998 when I first met him, > the OED was creating an appendix/section of "neologisms from science > fiction" and he was credited (informally?) with having the most > entries in the not-yet-published project. His most famous throwdown > in this category at the time was his "invention" of anti-matter, which > he called "contra-terrene" or more colloquially "seetee" (a > phoneticization of the contraction "CT")! He was also quite proud of > being interrogated by the FBI during the Manhattan project for having > written a story about Atomic Weapons... they wanted to assume he had > access to a security leak until he showed them a 1932(?) short story > on the same theme, making it clear that the ideas of nuclear fission > (fusion even?) as a weapon were not new (to him anyway)... that > apparently satisfied them and of course, he didn't appreciate the full > import of their interrogation until after the war.> Carry On! > - Steve > > On 8/9/17 9:05 AM, Prof David West wrote: >> For what its worth - I will be teaching a short class next month in >> Santa Fe, "Isaac Asimov and the Robots." Two points of coverage: 1) >> the robots themselves invent and follow a "Zeroth Law" that allows >> them to eliminate individual human beings with a result the exact >> opposite of Hawking et. al.'s fears that our creations will not love >> us; 2) how the actual evolution of robotics and AI (see Daniel >> Suarez'* Kill Decision* - autonomous swarming drones as tools of war >> and death to humans) diverged from the rosy naive 1950s view of the >> future that Asimov advanced.>> >> davew >> >> >> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017, at 09:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: >>> It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not >>> entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least >>> insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of >>> "reining it in" are probably not going to fly.>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez >>> wrote:>>>> Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of >>>> the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know.>>>> >>>> http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158>>>> >>>> ============================================================ >>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>>> to unsubscribe >>>> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com>>>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com>>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >> >> >> ============================================================ FRIAM >> ============================================================ Applied >> ============================================================ Complex- >> ============================================================ ity >> ============================================================ Group >> ============================================================ listserv >> ============================================================ Meets >> ============================================================ Fridays >> ============================================================ 9a-11:30 >> ============================================================ at cafe >> ============================================================ at St. >> ============================================================ John's >> ============================================================ College >> ============================================================ to unsu- >> ============================================================ bscribe >> ============================================================ http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> ============================================================ FRIAM- >> ============================================================ COMIC >> ============================================================ http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >> ============================================================ by Dr. >> ============================================================ Strange- >> ============================================================ love> > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove Links: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Williamson -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jquillien at cybermesa.com Wed Aug 9 12:20:54 2017 From: jquillien at cybermesa.com (Jenny Quillien) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 10:20:54 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> Message-ID: <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> Totally agree. Maybe a few of us can read the Wagener book (apparently he shows up at the Santa Fe institute from time to time as an external something or other) and see what we can do with the ideas. I'll be in Amsterdam but can follow e-mail threads to skype. Jenny On 8/9/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > > Jenny - > > What a powerful quote: > > /Natural selection can //preserve//innovations, but it cannot > create them./ > > In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets > and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free > Markets may well be restricted to the "innovation phase" of > development. Once something becomes a (relative) commodity, it seems > it might be counter-productive to continue the illusion of competitive > development. At best it is wasteful and even harmful, and at worst it > leads to an elevation of "innovation" to marketing and salesmanship. > This is why we have so many near-identical products on the market > being pushed on us through the hype of greed and fear when the > "generic" or "store brand" version is equal or (even) superior > (certainly in price, but also possibly in quality... lacking the > colorants and odorants and other embellishments required to > differentiate one product from the other?). > > - Steve > > On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: >> >> An excellent foray into such a topic is /Arrival of the Fittest: how >> nature innovates/ by Andreas Wagner. >> >> From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, >> but this power has limits. Natural selection can /preserve/ >> innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that >> creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance >> about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for >> natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its >> innovability. >> >> Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about >> how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly >> relevant to Nick's e-mail. >> >> Jenny Quillien >> >> >> On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: >>> >>> Hi everybody, >>> >>> Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical >>> fog. >>> >>> I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. >>> >>> First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one >>> whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it?s >>> last value. So the next step in a random walk is ?random? but the >>> current value (it?s present position on a surface, say) is ?the >>> result of a stochastic process.? From your responses, and from a >>> short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can?t tell if I am correct or not. >>> >>> Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is >>> that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this >>> ?evolution? of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I >>> will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of >>> which we are all a result: -- */The alteration of the design of taxa >>> over time/*. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is >>> evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS >>> evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion >>> of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the >>> place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In >>> other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your >>> imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of >>> the phenomenon, itself. >>> >>> So what kind of ?evolution? are you guys talking about? >>> >>> Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself >>> up, here. >>> >>> nick >>> >>> Nicholas S. Thompson >>> >>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology >>> >>> Clark University >>> >>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Wed Aug 9 12:45:35 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 10:45:35 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence In-Reply-To: <1502294804.2892606.1068222128.7ECF2D88@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1502291116.2878369.1068139480.4CB278E7@webmail.messagingengine.com> <1502294804.2892606.1068222128.7ECF2D88@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <212d1f91-ea2e-5c91-fe96-c5ee1f1daf29@swcp.com> thanks for the reference, I was not aware of the Renesan Institute before this, though I had heard somewhere about the first listed lecture/course/seminar on "the Trickster". I don't see your course in the lineup? I will be out of town on the 7th so I wouldn't try to attend anyway, but as always "good on ya" for your efforts to continue to spread the enlightenment. I've a friend who introduced me to Jack... he was in middle school in Portales when someone introduced him to "that old professor who writes Science Fiction" (then in his 50s?). They became fast friends despite the many decades between them, and my friend Joe even influenced several of Jack's titles, if not characters and narratives. He claims he helped Jack come up with the title "Terraforming Earth", although Joe's throwdown was "Terraforming Terra" which apparently Jack loved but his editor said "not enough people know what 'Terra' is". Oh well. In Jack's life story, his parents moved him from their hardscrabble farm near Bisbee AZ where he was born to a relative's more productive ranches in Mexico/TX but eventually eventually they migrated to NM in 1915 in a covered wagon. He has(d) stories! I have a copy of Jack's 2005 autobiography, "Wonder's Child" if perchance you would like to borrow it. The duality of Science/Fiction ( or more generally the interplay between the literal/actualized and the imagined is a fascinating study to me). This second wave of Scientific Romancing (after Verne, Swift, Burroughs, even London/Twain) was so smack-dab in the middle of the golden age of transportation and communication, into information processing that it deeply informs/reflects our contemporary psyche, even for those who think they don't like or care about Science Fiction. The more modern adoption of Science Fiction into mainstream cinema/TV has put titles/tropes like "the Matrix" and "BladeRunner", "Avatar" and "Dr. Who" squarely in the face (most literally) of the masses. I believe this is for the better and the worse. Like everything I suppose! Nothing Aristotelian about MY logic!? - Steve /"The best thing about being on the fence is that the view is better from up there"/ - R. Edward Lowe > Steve, it is a Renesan course on Tue, September 7 and 14. I have read > Jack Williamson, not all 90, and he would have been included in > another course I proposed to Renesan on science fiction themes. Maybe > in the future. > > davew > > > > On Wed, Aug 9, 2017, at 09:57 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: >> >> Dave - >> >> Most excellent of you to do this, and what will be your venue for >> this class? >> >> Are you familiar with our own Jack Williamson >> 's vague parallel work >> in his "Humanoids" which began in 1947 with the Novelette: "With >> Folded Hands". I do not know if he ever acknowledged an influence in >> this work from Asimov's introduction to the "three laws" in 1941? He >> investigates the (unintended/unexpected catastrophic consequences of >> something like the three laws on humanity, having the human spirit >> "quelled" by being "niced" or "safed" near-to-death) >> >> He claims to have written this as a cathartic project to shake off >> the existential angst/depression he felt from the (ab)use of atomic >> weapons at the end of WWII. Jack was too old to serve in the >> military when the war broke out (he was 36?), but instead volunteered >> to work in the South Pacific as a civilian meteorologist. He had >> started his career in Science Fiction before the term was fully >> adopted (Scientific Romance and Scientifiction being precursors >> according to Jack) with the publication of a short story "Metal Man" >> In Hugo Gernsbach's /Amazing Stories /in 1928. Up until the end of >> WWII he claims to have been somewhat of a techno-utopianist, >> believing that advancing technology would (continue to ) simply >> advance the quality of life of human beings (somewhat?) monotonically. >> >> I hosted Jack at an evening talk at LANL/Bradbury Science Museum in >> 1998 during the Nebula Awards on the theme of how Science and Science >> Fiction inform one another. Jack was 90 that year and had over 90 >> published works at that time. His work was always somewhat in the >> vein of Space Opera and his characters were generally quite two >> dimensional and his gender politics typical of his generation of >> science fictioneers, yet he was still loved by his community. His >> use of this pulpy/pop medium as a way to investigate and discuss >> fundamental aspects of human nature and many of the social or even >> spiritual implications of the advance of technology was nevertheless >> quite inspired (IMO). >> >> He died in 2007 at the ripe young age of 98 and was still producing >> work nearly up to the day of his death. In 1998 when I first met >> him, the OED was creating an appendix/section of "neologisms from >> science fiction" and he was credited (informally?) with having the >> most entries in the not-yet-published project. His most famous >> throwdown in this category at the time was his "invention" of >> anti-matter, which he called "contra-terrene" or more colloquially >> "seetee" (a phoneticization of the contraction "CT")! He was also >> quite proud of being interrogated by the FBI during the Manhattan >> project for having written a story about Atomic Weapons... they >> wanted to assume he had access to a security leak until he showed >> them a 1932(?) short story on the same theme, making it clear that >> the ideas of nuclear fission (fusion even?) as a weapon were not new >> (to him anyway)... that apparently satisfied them and of course, he >> didn't appreciate the full import of their interrogation until after >> the war. >> >> Carry On! >> >> - Steve >> >> >> On 8/9/17 9:05 AM, Prof David West wrote: >>> For what its worth - I will be teaching a short class next month in >>> Santa Fe, "Isaac Asimov and the Robots." Two points of coverage: 1) >>> the robots themselves invent and follow a "Zeroth Law" that allows >>> them to eliminate individual human beings with a result the exact >>> opposite of Hawking et. al.'s fears that our creations will not >>> love us; 2) how the actual evolution of robotics and AI (see Daniel >>> Suarez'/Kill Decision/ - autonomous swarming drones as tools of war >>> and death to humans) diverged from the rosy naive 1950s view of the >>> future that Asimov advanced. >>> >>> davew >>> >>> >>> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017, at 09:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: >>>> It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not >>>> entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least >>>> insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of >>>> "reining it in" are probably not going to fly. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda V?lez >>>> > wrote: >>>> >>>> Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being >>>> of the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know. >>>> >>>> http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158 >>>> >>>> >>>> ============================================================ >>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>>> to unsubscribe >>>> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>>> >>>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >>>> by Dr. Strangelove >>>> >>>> ============================================================ >>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >>> >>> >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wimberly3 at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 12:48:10 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 10:48:10 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: The random + current thing sounds like a Markov process. If the next value is independent of the current value then it's random. If it depends on the current value and no previous values it's Markov of order 1. If it depends only on the current value and the one before and none before that, order 2. Etc. Or something like that. I'm rusty. Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 9, 2017 8:48 AM, "Nick Thompson" wrote: > Hi everybody, > > > > Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog. > > > > I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. > > > > First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose > value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it?s last value. > So the next step in a random walk is ?random? but the current value (it?s > present position on a surface, say) is ?the result of a stochastic > process.? From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I > still can?t tell if I am correct or not. > > > > Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you > confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this ?evolution? of > which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are > speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- *The > alteration of the design of taxa over time*. Hard to see any way in > which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into > the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the > vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability > all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are > predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of > your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of > the phenomenon, itself. > > > > So what kind of ?evolution? are you guys talking about? > > > > Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, > here. > > > > nick > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grant.holland.sf at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 13:22:44 2017 From: grant.holland.sf at gmail.com (Grant Holland) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 11:22:44 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> Message-ID: Steve, According to Jacques Monod, chance mutations are the /only /form of innovation in living systems. On p. 112 of his book "Chance and Necessity" he says "...since they [chance mutations] constitute the /only/ possible source of modifications in the genetic text,...it necessarily follows that chance /alone/ is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. [Emphasis is his.] Geneticist Monod was a winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology. Grant On 8/9/17 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > > Jenny - > > What a powerful quote: > > /Natural selection can //preserve//innovations, but it cannot > create them./ > > In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets > and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free > Markets may well be restricted to the "innovation phase" of > development. Once something becomes a (relative) commodity, it seems > it might be counter-productive to continue the illusion of competitive > development. At best it is wasteful and even harmful, and at worst it > leads to an elevation of "innovation" to marketing and salesmanship. > This is why we have so many near-identical products on the market > being pushed on us through the hype of greed and fear when the > "generic" or "store brand" version is equal or (even) superior > (certainly in price, but also possibly in quality... lacking the > colorants and odorants and other embellishments required to > differentiate one product from the other?). > > - Steve > > On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: >> >> An excellent foray into such a topic is /Arrival of the Fittest: how >> nature innovates/ by Andreas Wagner. >> >> From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, >> but this power has limits. Natural selection can /preserve/ >> innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that >> creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance >> about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for >> natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its >> innovability. >> >> Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about >> how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly >> relevant to Nick's e-mail. >> >> Jenny Quillien >> >> >> On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: >>> >>> Hi everybody, >>> >>> Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical >>> fog. >>> >>> I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. >>> >>> First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one >>> whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it?s >>> last value. So the next step in a random walk is ?random? but the >>> current value (it?s present position on a surface, say) is ?the >>> result of a stochastic process.? From your responses, and from a >>> short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can?t tell if I am correct or not. >>> >>> Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is >>> that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this >>> ?evolution? of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I >>> will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of >>> which we are all a result: -- */The alteration of the design of taxa >>> over time/*. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is >>> evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS >>> evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion >>> of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the >>> place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In >>> other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your >>> imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of >>> the phenomenon, itself. >>> >>> So what kind of ?evolution? are you guys talking about? >>> >>> Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself >>> up, here. >>> >>> nick >>> >>> Nicholas S. Thompson >>> >>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology >>> >>> Clark University >>> >>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 13:26:50 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2xlbiDimKM=?=) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 10:26:50 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> Message-ID: I think Wagner and Monod agree, actually. If I extrapolate what Jenny said Wagner said, *mutation's* randomness is a statement of ignorance, presumably about where innovation comes from in biological evolution. So, both Monod and Wagner would say innovation comes from mutation. On 08/09/2017 10:22 AM, Grant Holland wrote: > According to Jacques Monod, chance mutations are the /only /form of innovation in living systems. > > On p. 112 of his book "Chance and Necessity" he says "...since they [chance mutations] constitute the /only/ possible source of modifications in the genetic text,...it necessarily follows that chance /alone/ is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. [Emphasis is his.] > On 8/9/17 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: >> >> Jenny - >> >> What a powerful quote: >> >> /Natural selection can //preserve//innovations, but it cannot >> create them./ >> On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: >>> >>> An excellent foray into such a topic is /Arrival of the Fittest: how nature innovates/ by Andreas Wagner. >>> >>> From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability. -- ? glen From gepropella at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 13:43:49 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2xlbiDimKM=?=) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 10:43:49 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] schadenfreude - a political rant In-Reply-To: References: <1502293349.2886850.1068153840.252D8CF3@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <7da44b37-54cd-3f04-7299-d57ec36f1aa3@gmail.com> On 08/09/2017 08:58 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > It helps a little, though, I think that comedians and commentators keep pounding on the moron theme. It clearly worked with the White House because they started doing off-camera interviews. I actually laughed out loud at this segment: https://youtu.be/jovN0MbKJUA?t=3m25s And I don't think it was shadenfreude. It was truly funny. I have no idea if I would have laughed if they'd said analogous things about me... but I think I would have. "Here's your desk. This is your extension number. Now clean out your desk." -- ? glen From nickthompson at earthlink.net Wed Aug 9 14:51:31 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 14:51:31 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <9ce318a7-b02a-bbb3-b9f5-016968aee88e@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <9ce318a7-b02a-bbb3-b9f5-016968aee88e@gmail.com> Message-ID: <000001d31140$84b770f0$8e2652d0$@earthlink.net> Thanks, Glen, Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ? Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 11:48 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Maybe you're looking for the term "Markovian"? http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MarkovProcess.html On 08/09/2017 07:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose > value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it's last > value. So the next step in a random walk is "random" but the current > value (it's present position on a surface, say) is "the result of a > stochastic process." From your responses, and from a short rummage in > Wikipedia, I still can't tell if I am correct or not. -- ? glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove From nickthompson at earthlink.net Wed Aug 9 14:58:08 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 14:58:08 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> Message-ID: <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> Steve, What's powerful about it? What is presented to the world by the epigenetic system is not mutations but "hypotheses" about ways to live. And presumably epigenetic systems are shaped by natural selection to produce more or less plausible hypotheses. The randomness is largely notional. I still think you guys are more captured by your model of evolution than by the actual facts of it. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Jenny Quillien Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 12:21 PM To: friam at redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Totally agree. Maybe a few of us can read the Wagener book (apparently he shows up at the Santa Fe institute from time to time as an external something or other) and see what we can do with the ideas. I'll be in Amsterdam but can follow e-mail threads to skype. Jenny On 8/9/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: Jenny - What a powerful quote: Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free Markets may well be restricted to the "innovation phase" of development. Once something becomes a (relative) commodity, it seems it might be counter-productive to continue the illusion of competitive development. At best it is wasteful and even harmful, and at worst it leads to an elevation of "innovation" to marketing and salesmanship. This is why we have so many near-identical products on the market being pushed on us through the hype of greed and fear when the "generic" or "store brand" version is equal or (even) superior (certainly in price, but also possibly in quality... lacking the colorants and odorants and other embellishments required to differentiate one product from the other?). - Steve On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: how nature innovates by Andreas Wagner. >From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability. Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly relevant to Nick's e-mail. Jenny Quillien On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: Hi everybody, Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog. I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it's last value. So the next step in a random walk is "random" but the current value (it's present position on a surface, say) is "the result of a stochastic process." From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can't tell if I am correct or not. Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this "evolution" of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself. So what kind of "evolution" are you guys talking about? Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here. nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jofr at cas-group.net Wed Aug 9 15:34:15 2017 From: jofr at cas-group.net (Jochen Fromm) Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2017 21:34:15 +0200 Subject: [FRIAM] The apocalypse Message-ID: What's the matter with your president? I am worried we are heading to the apocalypse. The "fire and fury" threat feels like the Cuban missile crisis or worse.http://blog.cas-group.net/2017/08/the-apocalypse/ And then there is the issue of global warming which the Trump administration ignores now. This is not just one apocalypse, it is two. -J. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Wed Aug 9 17:01:04 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 21:01:04 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com>, <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <74CA73C0-293C-4B64-8872-26492E11E24A@snoutfarm.com> Some of us tend to care more about applied power more than the explanatory power. Also as Frank suggested there are practical limits to the size of genomes that can be simulated. I could imagine epigenetic / regulatory analogs being beneficial though. Marcus Sent from my iPhone On Aug 9, 2017, at 12:58 PM, Nick Thompson > wrote: Steve, What?s powerful about it? What is presented to the world by the epigenetic system is not mutations but ?hypotheses? about ways to live. And presumably epigenetic systems are shaped by natural selection to produce more or less plausible hypotheses. The randomness is largely notional. I still think you guys are more captured by your model of evolution than by the actual facts of it. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Jenny Quillien Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 12:21 PM To: friam at redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Totally agree. Maybe a few of us can read the Wagener book (apparently he shows up at the Santa Fe institute from time to time as an external something or other) and see what we can do with the ideas. I'll be in Amsterdam but can follow e-mail threads to skype. Jenny On 8/9/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: Jenny - What a powerful quote: Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free Markets may well be restricted to the "innovation phase" of development. Once something becomes a (relative) commodity, it seems it might be counter-productive to continue the illusion of competitive development. At best it is wasteful and even harmful, and at worst it leads to an elevation of "innovation" to marketing and salesmanship. This is why we have so many near-identical products on the market being pushed on us through the hype of greed and fear when the "generic" or "store brand" version is equal or (even) superior (certainly in price, but also possibly in quality... lacking the colorants and odorants and other embellishments required to differentiate one product from the other?). - Steve On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: how nature innovates by Andreas Wagner. From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability. Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly relevant to Nick's e-mail. Jenny Quillien On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: Hi everybody, Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog. I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it?s last value. So the next step in a random walk is ?random? but the current value (it?s present position on a surface, say) is ?the result of a stochastic process.? From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can?t tell if I am correct or not. Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this ?evolution? of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself. So what kind of ?evolution? are you guys talking about? Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here. nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Wed Aug 9 17:15:53 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 21:15:53 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] The apocalypse In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Jochen, "What's the matter with your president?" And it is the west cost states at the most risk. States that voted for H! Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Jochen Fromm Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2017 1:34:15 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] The apocalypse What's the matter with your president? I am worried we are heading to the apocalypse. The "fire and fury" threat feels like the Cuban missile crisis or worse. http://blog.cas-group.net/2017/08/the-apocalypse/ And then there is the issue of global warming which the Trump administration ignores now. This is not just one apocalypse, it is two. -J. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From owen at backspaces.net Wed Aug 9 17:40:59 2017 From: owen at backspaces.net (Owen Densmore) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 15:40:59 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] What are the scenarios? Game theory? Message-ID: >From BBC a reasonable summary: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40879485 My question is simple: what *are* the alternatives? Is there an interesting game theoretic analysis? The toughest part is that South Korea is being held hostage. NK can devastate SK even if hit with a pre-emptive strike. As rash as Trump's bluster has been, the real question remains: what is the reasonable response to NK's threat. - Preemptive Strike? Likely a loser unless it is so massive as to obliterate every human in NK. SK would be seriously damaged in the aftermath. - Wait 'til NK strikes? Again, hardly reasonable. - Anti-missile defense? Possibly, but you just gotta miss one for apocalypse. And what do you do if you *do* succeed? SK is still hostage. - Tit for Tat? Well, only in the bluster game. Our threats will match yours & vice versa. Has anyone heard of an interesting strategy? -- Owen -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Wed Aug 9 17:47:02 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 21:47:02 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] What are the scenarios? Game theory? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Owen writes: "The toughest part is that South Korea is being held hostage. NK can devastate SK even if hit with a pre-emptive strike." How about Trump defines SK as an undesirable economic competitor to the U.S. that steals jobs, and cuts them loose. He has no doubt been briefed on the multi-lateral proliferation that would no doubt result, but it that assumes the message stays clear in his mind. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Owen Densmore Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2017 3:40:59 PM To: Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] What are the scenarios? Game theory? >From BBC a reasonable summary: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40879485 My question is simple: what *are* the alternatives? Is there an interesting game theoretic analysis? The toughest part is that South Korea is being held hostage. NK can devastate SK even if hit with a pre-emptive strike. As rash as Trump's bluster has been, the real question remains: what is the reasonable response to NK's threat. - Preemptive Strike? Likely a loser unless it is so massive as to obliterate every human in NK. SK would be seriously damaged in the aftermath. - Wait 'til NK strikes? Again, hardly reasonable. - Anti-missile defense? Possibly, but you just gotta miss one for apocalypse. And what do you do if you *do* succeed? SK is still hostage. - Tit for Tat? Well, only in the bluster game. Our threats will match yours & vice versa. Has anyone heard of an interesting strategy? -- Owen -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nickthompson at earthlink.net Wed Aug 9 18:05:26 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 18:05:26 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] The apocalypse In-Reply-To: <201708091534.1DFwKpmO3Nl34e0@mx-jacana.atl.sa.earthlink.net> References: <201708091534.1DFwKpmO3Nl34e0@mx-jacana.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <004001d3115b$9b54fa10$d1feee30$@earthlink.net> Jochen, He?s out of his friggin mind. There are those who feel that the risk arising from the stultification of our political system was so bad that it justified taking this sort of existential risk (Hey, Dave!), but I am not one of them. Small interesting things ARE starting to happen, (meetings amongst scared non-crazy people in congress) and I am grateful for those, but whether they will develop in time to rescue us, is by no means certain. People keep offering me as comfort the fact that the South Koreans aren?t worried ?. 30 million people on the edge of obliteration from conventional shells full of sarin. Why does that not comfort me? No, we are back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 3:34 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] The apocalypse What's the matter with your president? I am worried we are heading to the apocalypse. The "fire and fury" threat feels like the Cuban missile crisis or worse. http://blog.cas-group.net/2017/08/the-apocalypse/ And then there is the issue of global warming which the Trump administration ignores now. This is not just one apocalypse, it is two. -J. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gary at naturesvisualarts.com Wed Aug 9 19:05:13 2017 From: gary at naturesvisualarts.com (Gary Schiltz) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 18:05:13 -0500 Subject: [FRIAM] The apocalypse In-Reply-To: <004001d3115b$9b54fa10$d1feee30$@earthlink.net> References: <201708091534.1DFwKpmO3Nl34e0@mx-jacana.atl.sa.earthlink.net> <004001d3115b$9b54fa10$d1feee30$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: It's bad enough that he's "out of his friggin' mind", but a CNN piece today asks, "Could Congress stop Trump from bombing North Korea?" The reporter's conclusion is basically that no, it couldn't. I think we all should scared witless that Trump may well pull the trigger. My only hope is that enough high-level generals would risk court martial and refuse to follow his orders. If the USA did launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike, the consequences for S Korea (and Japan?) would be horrific. And then there is the question of what China and Russia would do in response. This is really, really serious crap. On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 5:05 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Jochen, > > > > He?s out of his friggin mind. There are those who feel that the risk > arising from the stultification of our political system was so bad that it > justified taking this sort of existential risk (Hey, Dave!), but I am not > one of them. Small interesting things ARE starting to happen, (meetings > amongst scared non-crazy people in congress) and I am grateful for those, > but whether they will develop in time to rescue us, is by no means > certain. > > > > > > People keep offering me as comfort the fact that the South Koreans aren?t > worried ?. 30 million people on the edge of obliteration from conventional > shells full of sarin. Why does that not comfort me? > > > > No, we are back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. > > > > Nick > > > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Jochen > Fromm > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 09, 2017 3:34 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam at redfish.com> > *Subject:* [FRIAM] The apocalypse > > > > What's the matter with your president? I am worried we are heading to the > apocalypse. The "fire and fury" threat feels like the Cuban missile crisis > or worse. > > http://blog.cas-group.net/2017/08/the-apocalypse/ > > > > And then there is the issue of global warming which the Trump > administration ignores now. This is not just one apocalypse, it is two. > > > > -J. > > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jofr at cas-group.net Wed Aug 9 22:04:52 2017 From: jofr at cas-group.net (Jochen Fromm) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 04:04:52 +0200 Subject: [FRIAM] The apocalypse Message-ID: I doubt that North Korea has the ability to hit a tiny island like Guam in the Pacific, but it can without doubt destroy the 9 million capital Seoul near the border with weapons bought from Russia or China.? The danger of a nuclear apocalypse is greatest when the world has forgotten how dangerous these weapons of mass destruction are. Even trying to model mutually assured destruction is useless with people like Kim Jong-Un and Trump. How can he brag on Twitter about nuclear weapons? WTF ? -J. null -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Wed Aug 9 23:00:57 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 21:00:57 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> Nick - I am very glad to note that you are recovering and your scrappiness is properly returning! > > What?s powerful about it? > Nothing more than it is such a succinct statement negating the popular fallacious apprehension of the mechanism of evolution, suggesting that there is a causal link between "selection" and "innovation"... the innovation step is in the mutation, but as the quote states clearly, said *innovation* is *preserved* (selected for) by the natural selection mechanism. I think I held this misapprehension for the longest time, in the same way I *still* think of the Sun orbiting around the earth when I have plenty of reason to believe it is the other way around. > > What is presented to the world by the epigenetic system is not > mutations but ?hypotheses? about ways to live. And presumably > epigenetic systems are shaped by natural selection to produce more or > less plausible hypotheses. > And what is the "hypothesis generator" in epigenetics? Is it stochastic or deterministic? (and what examples of epigenetics are you thinking of?) Is "plausable" the term you want, or is it more "utilitarian"? > > The randomness is largely notional. > I do think that "random" is a very loosey-goosey concept (like so many we call out on this list), but whether the variation is produced by random processes, pseudo-random processes, or merely processes with appropriately broad distribution functions, > > I still think you guys are more captured by your model of evolution > than by the actual facts of it. > I think we (collectively) are guilty of this all of the time, though in the spirit of "all models are wrong, some are useful" I'm not even sure I know what a "model-free" fact might be? Facts (to me) imply measurements (qualitative, quantitative) which imply a object of said measurement which in turn implies a model. There was a time, I believe when people felt they held "facts" about "the viscosity of the aether" and the "density of phlogiston". When those models were superseded, those "facts" took on entirely new implications and meaning. - Steve > > Nick > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Jenny > Quillien > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 09, 2017 12:21 PM > *To:* friam at redfish.com > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate > > Totally agree. > > Maybe a few of us can read the Wagener book (apparently he shows up at > the Santa Fe institute from time to time as an external something or > other) and see what we can do with the ideas. I'll be in Amsterdam > but can follow e-mail threads to skype. Jenny > > On 8/9/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > > Jenny - > > What a powerful quote: > > /Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot > create them./ > > In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free > Markets and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of > said Free Markets may well be restricted to the "innovation phase" > of development. Once something becomes a (relative) commodity, it > seems it might be counter-productive to continue the illusion of > competitive development. At best it is wasteful and even harmful, > and at worst it leads to an elevation of "innovation" to marketing > and salesmanship. This is why we have so many near-identical > products on the market being pushed on us through the hype of > greed and fear when the "generic" or "store brand" version is > equal or (even) superior (certainly in price, but also possibly in > quality... lacking the colorants and odorants and other > embellishments required to differentiate one product from the other?). > > - Steve > > On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: > > An excellent foray into such a topic is /Arrival of the > Fittest: how nature innovates/ by Andreas Wagner. > > From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond > dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can > /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling > the change that creates them random is just another way of > admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations- > some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that > accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability. > > Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a > discussion about how it is relevant to 'evolution' in > software. It is certainly relevant to Nick's e-mail. > > Jenny Quillien > > On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > > Hi everybody, > > Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from > post-surgical fog. > > I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up > yours. > > First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process > was one whose value was determined by two factors, a > random factor AND it?s last value. So the next step in a > random walk is ?random? but the current value (it?s > present position on a surface, say) is ?the result of a > stochastic process.? From your responses, and from a > short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can?t tell if I am > correct or not. > > Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your > discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts > of nature. What is this ?evolution? of which you speak? > Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are > speaking of the messy biological process of which we are > all a result: -- */The alteration of the design of taxa > over time/*. Hard to see any way in which that actual > process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the > theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that > corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There > is constraint and predictability all over the place in the > evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In > other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of > your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an > essential feature of the phenomenon, itself. > > So what kind of ?evolution? are you guys talking about? > > Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to > wake myself up, here. > > nick > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > > to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > > to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > > to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Wed Aug 9 23:34:56 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 21:34:56 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] The apocalypse In-Reply-To: References: <201708091534.1DFwKpmO3Nl34e0@mx-jacana.atl.sa.earthlink.net> <004001d3115b$9b54fa10$d1feee30$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <411b7792-6c23-5b8d-86b5-f6d6007e496c@swcp.com> I'm not following the public debate/discussion on this, but I think we discussed this here a few months ago? Even though I lived and worked in the belly of the (Nuclear Weapons Complex) beast for decades, I admit to not knowing with any degree of certainty how direct the "Launch Codes" and mechanisms in the various command centers (white house situation, Cheyenne Mtn, ???) or via the "Nuclear Football" are connected to the actual launching mechanisms. I understand that the Nuclear Football is carried by an aide-de-camp (who is this for Trump, someone different every day/week?) and can imagine that person wrestling it away from him when he is in a fit of pique, as might the Sec'y of Defense or one of the Joint Chiefs body-check him as he reaches for the "FIRE!" button (is there actually a lock-out switch or something involved?). According to Wikipedia, the President's identity must be verified (the purpose of the launch code?) which the Sec'y of Defense is burdened with authenticating? In principle, he does not have veto power, but in practice I like to visualize "Mad Dog" Madis decking "The Donald" when he tries to launch agains NK (or anyone), then politely reaching out to help him up off the floor and asking him "are you OK? are you having a siezure?" and then decking him again, eventually getting some help to haul him off to a hospital bed (with restraints) in a padded room in a coma. I also understand that every "launch site" implements a two-man rule for the actual mechanism for arming/launching which I believe means that at each launch site we have two more people with "practical" (if not legal) veto power. Meanwhile a (small) host of maintenance and operational staff in the subs/silos/bombers have some practical opportunity to at least disable (or fail to enable) the warheads or launch capabiities as well. With that model, I would say there are a "few" fuses in the circuit that *might* prevent an other-than-sane President from actually effectively launching any missiles. I'm waiting for the "Presidential Order" to come down directing that the launch mechanisms be connected directly to a twitter feed so that he can launch with nothing more than a clever hashtag "#nukemYooge @NK" or somesuch?! With the various leaky leaks and the leaking leakers who leak them afoot in spite of the AG's "don't do it!" admonition afoot, I would not be surprised if there aren't many Silo/Sub/Bomber operations people discussing among themselves in 2's and 3's or entire teams "what we do if he pulls the trigger??!!!" I think I'm more worried for Japan than SK or US protectorates or the US west coast... seems like an easier target might be Japan (Okinawa is fat, but there are several other US Military targets as well). If Putin was the friend Trump seems to want him to be, HE would take care of any retaliation for us I would think? Let one bully's bully-friend smack down the little bully-wanna-be for the first bully? Trump is a whackadoodle loose cannon, but Putin is more of a Junkyard Dog, probably more intimidating to Kim Jong-Un than the Donald is? But then that probably wouldn't play well with the third nuclear Super Power. It probably doesn't matter which side of the equator you live in in Ecuador, but "back in the day" nuclear winter (and less outrageous alternatives) models were more gentle in the southern Hemisphere. I hate to realize that I am even spending cycles thinking about this!?! - Steve On 8/9/17 5:05 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote: > It's bad enough that he's "out of his friggin' mind", but a CNN piece > today asks, "Could Congress stop Trump from bombing North Korea?" The > reporter's conclusion is basically that no, it couldn't. I think we > all should scared witless that Trump may well pull the trigger. My > only hope is that enough high-level generals would risk court martial > and refuse to follow his orders. If the USA did launch a pre-emptive > nuclear strike, the consequences for S Korea (and Japan?) would be > horrific. And then there is the question of what China and Russia > would do in response. This is really, really serious crap. > > On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 5:05 PM, Nick Thompson > > wrote: > > Jochen, > > He?s out of his friggin mind. There are those who feel that the > risk arising from the stultification of our political system was > so bad that it justified taking this sort of existential risk > (Hey, Dave!), but I am not one of them. Small interesting things > ARE starting to happen, (meetings amongst scared non-crazy people > in congress) and I am grateful for those, but whether they will > develop in time to rescue us, is by no means certain. > > People keep offering me as comfort the fact that the South Koreans > aren?t worried ?. 30 million people on the edge of obliteration > from conventional shells full of sarin. Why does that not comfort > me? > > No, we are back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. > > Nick > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com > ] *On Behalf Of *Jochen Fromm > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 09, 2017 3:34 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > > > *Subject:* [FRIAM] The apocalypse > > What's the matter with your president? I am worried we are heading > to the apocalypse. The "fire and fury" threat feels like the Cuban > missile crisis or worse. > > http://blog.cas-group.net/2017/08/the-apocalypse/ > > > And then there is the issue of global warming which the Trump > administration ignores now. This is not just one apocalypse, it is > two. > > -J. > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > by Dr. Strangelove > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 23:36:26 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 21:36:26 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] The apocalypse In-Reply-To: <598bbf54.ca0e6b0a.28656.e473SMTPIN_ADDED_MISSING@mx.google.com> References: <598bbf54.ca0e6b0a.28656.e473SMTPIN_ADDED_MISSING@mx.google.com> Message-ID: I (razzingly) suggest bad summer movies or that somehow all the Doom will some freeze in place at the same time. Perhaps we shall some how find a bunch of tribbles, zombies, a large rock in the sky, and dinso's all at the same time and that because of the Doom Metter the'll just stay their, thus no more doom can happen. On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 8:04 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > I doubt that North Korea has the ability to hit a tiny island like Guam in > the Pacific, but it can without doubt destroy the 9 million capital Seoul > near the border with weapons bought from Russia or China. > > The danger of a nuclear apocalypse is greatest when the world has > forgotten how dangerous these weapons of mass destruction are. Even trying > to model mutually assured destruction is useless with people like Kim > Jong-Un and Trump. How can he brag on Twitter about nuclear weapons? WTF ? > > -J. > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From owen at backspaces.net Thu Aug 10 12:26:46 2017 From: owen at backspaces.net (Owen Densmore) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 10:26:46 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] The apocalypse In-Reply-To: References: <598bbf54.ca0e6b0a.28656.e473SMTPIN_ADDED_MISSING@mx.google.com> Message-ID: OK, what's tit for tat with the North Korea Guam threat: President Trump seemed to draw a red line Tuesday when he warned North Korea that continued threats against the United States would be met with ?fire and fury like the world has never seen.? The next day, North Korea crossed it. Or at least it announced, in unusually specific terms, how it could. The country?s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday night issued a statement that said the North is ?seriously examining the plan for an enveloping strike at Guam through simultaneous fire of four Hwasong-12 intermediate-range strategic ballistic rockets in order to interdict the enemy forces on major military bases on Guam and to signal a crucial warning to the U.S.? The statement, citing the North?s Strategic Rocket Forces head General Kim Rak Gyom, added that the plan would be finished by mid-August before going to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for approval. ?Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work on him,? the general said, in apparent reference to Trump, whose ultimatum he described as a ?load of nonsense.? I suppose firing 4 rockets to land in NK waters? Or sending 4 drones to hover over NK? Shooting down the NK rockets would be risky, showing our hand as to effective antimissile capabilities. -- Owen https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/north-korea-answers-trumps-vague-threats-with-specific-ones/536433/ On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 9:36 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote: > I (razzingly) suggest bad summer movies or that somehow all the Doom will > some freeze in place at the same time. > Perhaps we shall some how find a bunch of tribbles, zombies, a large rock > in the sky, and dinso's all at the same time and that because of the Doom > Metter the'll just stay their, thus no more doom can happen. > > On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 8:04 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > >> I doubt that North Korea has the ability to hit a tiny island like Guam >> in the Pacific, but it can without doubt destroy the 9 million capital >> Seoul near the border with weapons bought from Russia or China. >> >> The danger of a nuclear apocalypse is greatest when the world has >> forgotten how dangerous these weapons of mass destruction are. Even trying >> to model mutually assured destruction is useless with people like Kim >> Jong-Un and Trump. How can he brag on Twitter about nuclear weapons? WTF ? >> >> -J. >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Thu Aug 10 14:03:24 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 18:03:24 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] The apocalypse In-Reply-To: References: <598bbf54.ca0e6b0a.28656.e473SMTPIN_ADDED_MISSING@mx.google.com> , Message-ID: "I suppose firing 4 rockets to land in NK waters? Or sending 4 drones to hover over NK? Shooting down the NK rockets would be risky, showing our hand as to effective antimissile capabilities." The best thing would be to have people in charge that don't freak out at the slightest provocation. "Third, we must enhance our antimissile systems and other defenses, and those of our allies, which need our reassurances more than ever." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/opinion/susan-rice-trump-north-korea.html ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Owen Densmore Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2017 10:26:46 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The apocalypse OK, what's tit for tat with the North Korea Guam threat: President Trump seemed to draw a red line Tuesday when he warned North Korea that continued threats against the United States would be met with ?fire and fury like the world has never seen.? The next day, North Korea crossed it. Or at least it announced, in unusually specific terms, how it could. The country?s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday night issued a statement that said the North is ?seriously examining the plan for an enveloping strike at Guam through simultaneous fire of four Hwasong-12 intermediate-range strategic ballistic rockets in order to interdict the enemy forces on major military bases on Guam and to signal a crucial warning to the U.S.? The statement, citing the North?s Strategic Rocket Forces head General Kim Rak Gyom, added that the plan would be finished by mid-August before going to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for approval. ?Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work on him,? the general said, in apparent reference to Trump, whose ultimatum he described as a ?load of nonsense.? I suppose firing 4 rockets to land in NK waters? Or sending 4 drones to hover over NK? Shooting down the NK rockets would be risky, showing our hand as to effective antimissile capabilities. -- Owen https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/north-korea-answers-trumps-vague-threats-with-specific-ones/536433/ On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 9:36 PM, Gillian Densmore > wrote: I (razzingly) suggest bad summer movies or that somehow all the Doom will some freeze in place at the same time. Perhaps we shall some how find a bunch of tribbles, zombies, a large rock in the sky, and dinso's all at the same time and that because of the Doom Metter the'll just stay their, thus no more doom can happen. On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 8:04 PM, Jochen Fromm > wrote: I doubt that North Korea has the ability to hit a tiny island like Guam in the Pacific, but it can without doubt destroy the 9 million capital Seoul near the border with weapons bought from Russia or China. The danger of a nuclear apocalypse is greatest when the world has forgotten how dangerous these weapons of mass destruction are. Even trying to model mutually assured destruction is useless with people like Kim Jong-Un and Trump. How can he brag on Twitter about nuclear weapons? WTF ? -J. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Thu Aug 10 14:52:21 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 12:52:21 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] The apocalypse In-Reply-To: References: <598bbf54.ca0e6b0a.28656.e473SMTPIN_ADDED_MISSING@mx.google.com> Message-ID: Budda nature, calm and a good ol' jedi about now Aka cooler heads tend to prevail and do some awsome stuf. On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 12:03 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > "I suppose firing 4 rockets to land in NK waters? Or sending 4 drones to > hover over NK? Shooting down the NK rockets would be risky, showing our > hand as to effective antimissile capabilities." > > > The best thing would be to have people in charge that don't freak out at > the slightest provocation. > > > "Third, we must enhance our antimissile systems and other defenses, and > those of our allies, which need our reassurances more than ever." > > > https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/opinion/susan-rice- > trump-north-korea.html > > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* Friam on behalf of Owen Densmore < > owen at backspaces.net> > *Sent:* Thursday, August 10, 2017 10:26:46 AM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] The apocalypse > > OK, what's tit for tat with the North Korea Guam threat: > > President Trump seemed to draw a red line Tuesday when he warned North > Korea that continued threats against the United States would be met with > ?fire and fury like the world has never seen.? The next day, North Korea > crossed it. > > Or at least it announced, in unusually specific terms, how it could. The > country?s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday night > issued a statement that said the North is ?seriously examining the plan for > an enveloping strike at Guam through simultaneous fire of four Hwasong-12 > intermediate-range strategic ballistic rockets in order to interdict the > enemy forces on major military bases on Guam and to signal a crucial > warning to the U.S.? The statement, citing the North?s Strategic Rocket > Forces head General Kim Rak Gyom, added that the plan would be finished by > mid-August before going to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for approval. > > ?Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only > absolute force can work on him,? the general said, in apparent reference to > Trump, whose ultimatum he described as a ?load of nonsense.? > > > I suppose firing 4 rockets to land in NK waters? Or sending 4 drones to > hover over NK? Shooting down the NK rockets would be risky, showing our > hand as to effective antimissile capabilities. > > -- Owen > > https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/ > north-korea-answers-trumps-vague-threats-with-specific-ones/536433/ > > > On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 9:36 PM, Gillian Densmore > wrote: > >> I (razzingly) suggest bad summer movies or that somehow all the Doom >> will some freeze in place at the same time. >> Perhaps we shall some how find a bunch of tribbles, zombies, a large rock >> in the sky, and dinso's all at the same time and that because of the Doom >> Metter the'll just stay their, thus no more doom can happen. >> >> On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 8:04 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: >> >>> I doubt that North Korea has the ability to hit a tiny island like Guam >>> in the Pacific, but it can without doubt destroy the 9 million capital >>> Seoul near the border with weapons bought from Russia or China. >>> >>> The danger of a nuclear apocalypse is greatest when the world has >>> forgotten how dangerous these weapons of mass destruction are. Even trying >>> to model mutually assured destruction is useless with people like Kim >>> Jong-Un and Trump. How can he brag on Twitter about nuclear weapons? WTF ? >>> >>> -J. >>> >>> >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >>> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From profwest at fastmail.fm Thu Aug 10 15:24:29 2017 From: profwest at fastmail.fm (Prof David West) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 13:24:29 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] The apocalypse In-Reply-To: References: <598bbf54.ca0e6b0a.28656.e473SMTPIN_ADDED_MISSING@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <1502393069.2411498.1069588016.1DD8C3FB@webmail.messagingengine.com> While undoubtedly fun, all the speculation (dare I say hysteria without sounding sexist?) about a Trump induced apocalypse is kind of far fetched. Too many intermediaries twixt mouth, button, and detonation. However, according to FEMA, the US Military, the Department of Energy, and the CIA there IS a 100% chance of an existential threat occurring within the next 10-20 years. Massive failure of the power grid.-- Iran, Russia, China, and probably North Korea already have malware embedded in the system.-- Major transformers have no backup (they cost 10-100 million dollars, take two years to build, and are almost all built in China)-- Deaths by day 5 of failure will reach the 100s of thousands, if not millions.-- By day ten, there will be no economy and no effectual government. -- One of the highest ranked scenarios for this to occur is North Korea detonating a ship born nuke off the coast of Southern California - the nuke tuned to generate a massive EMP. And, we know they have nukes small enough to fit in a freighter. They can do this. Guam is absurd at the present. Interestingly, none of the government agencies that are certain this event will occur within 20 years have any plans for how it will be dealt with! davew BTW, the grid has been a particular interest of mine since an acquaintance caused the first major US blackout, in the early 70s, by toppling a few towers in the pacific northwest with a few sticks of dynamite. On Thu, Aug 10, 2017, at 12:52 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote: > Budda nature, calm and a good ol' jedi about now > Aka cooler heads tend to prevail and do some awsome stuf. > > > On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 12:03 PM, Marcus Daniels > wrote:>> "I suppose firing 4 rockets to land in NK waters? Or sending 4 drones >> to hover over NK? Shooting down the NK rockets would be risky, >> showing our hand as to effective antimissile capabilities.">> >> The best thing would be to have people in charge that don't freak out >> at the slightest provocation.>> >> "Third, we must enhance our antimissile systems and other defenses, >> and those of our allies, which need our reassurances more than ever.">> >> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/opinion/susan-rice-trump-north-korea.html>> >> >> *From:* Friam on behalf of Owen Densmore >> *Sent:* Thursday, August 10, 2017 10:26:46 AM >> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* >> Re: [FRIAM] The apocalypse>> >> OK, what's tit for tat with the North Korea Guam threat: >> >>> President Trump seemed to draw a red line Tuesday when he warned >>> North Korea that continued threats against the United States would >>> be met with ?fire and fury like the world has never seen.? The next >>> day, North Korea crossed it.>>> >>> Or at least it announced, in unusually specific terms, how it could. >>> The country?s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on >>> Wednesday night issued a statement that said the North is ?seriously >>> examining the plan for an enveloping strike at Guam through >>> simultaneous fire of four Hwasong-12 intermediate-range strategic >>> ballistic rockets in order to interdict the enemy forces on major >>> military bases on Guam and to signal a crucial warning to the U.S.? >>> The statement, citing the North?s Strategic Rocket Forces head >>> General Kim Rak Gyom, added that the plan would be finished by mid- >>> August before going to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for approval.>>> >>> ?Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and >>> only absolute force can work on him,? the general said, in apparent >>> reference to Trump, whose ultimatum he described as a ?load of >>> nonsense.?>> >> I suppose firing 4 rockets to land in NK waters? Or sending 4 drones >> to hover over NK? Shooting down the NK rockets would be risky, >> showing our hand as to effective antimissile capabilities.>> >> -- Owen >> >> https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/north-korea-answers-trumps-vague-threats-with-specific-ones/536433/>> >> >> On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 9:36 PM, Gillian Densmore >> wrote:>> >>> I (razzingly) suggest bad summer movies or that somehow all the >>> Doom will some freeze in place at the same time.>>> Perhaps we shall some how find a bunch of tribbles, zombies, a large >>> rock in the sky, and dinso's all at the same time and that because >>> of the Doom Metter the'll just stay their, thus no more doom can >>> happen.>>> >>> On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 8:04 PM, Jochen Fromm >>> wrote:>>>> >>>> I doubt that North Korea has the ability to hit a tiny island like >>>> Guam in the Pacific, but it can without doubt destroy the 9 million >>>> capital Seoul near the border with weapons bought from Russia or >>>> China.>>>> >>>> The danger of a nuclear apocalypse is greatest when the world has >>>> forgotten how dangerous these weapons of mass destruction are. Even >>>> trying to model mutually assured destruction is useless with people >>>> like Kim Jong-Un and Trump. How can he brag on Twitter about >>>> nuclear weapons? WTF ?>>>> >>>> >>>> -J. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> ============================================================ >>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at >>>> cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe >>>> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC >>>> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove>>> >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> to unsubscribe >>> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com>>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From highlandwinds at gmail.com Thu Aug 10 15:29:00 2017 From: highlandwinds at gmail.com (HighlandWindsLLC Miller) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 13:29:00 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] artificial intelligence and 100 year evacuation Message-ID: Hi all, been reading your latest. Questions -- 1) artificial intelligence -- do you agree with Hawkings that if we really go forward on mega creating it that it will sort of take over and spin off in dangerous ways as he talked about in his May 3rd press briefing? 2) Korea nuclear war -- Somehow, I think we have to get Kim Jong-un to be at the table, to feel somehow a part of decisions. if we keep surrounding him with almost a bully mentality of bigs, like Putin and Trump, he appears to be ready to go ballistic. Didn't his father threaten to kill him as a child? The guy's been on the edge of death for so long he will leap into it without much provocation. So, I think we need to bring him to the table and hear him out a bit, somehow. and I agree with Gary that this is friggin serious stuff. 3) *Global warming/sealevels/overheating planet -- Top level of seriousness -- 100 year evacuation concept/time line tossed out by S. Hawkings, and Elon Musk now working to get to Mars. Any scientists yet focusing on subterranean living systems here? Huge tunnels/below earth/space type windows that can take mega heat/ ways to evacuate the excess methane from food animals and from humans/ biology issues??Thanks from Peggy Miller in Montana!* -- Miss Peggy Miller, owner: Highland Winds, LLC (Medicinal Herbs and Art) website: wix.com/peggymiller/highlandwinds; facebook link Medical Herbal Practice & shop: 1520 S. 7th St. W. (Just off Russell) Phone: 406-541-7577 Medical Herbal Consults and shop items: By appointment Tuesday - Friday, 11-5.. (If you need a somewhat earlier or later time, let me know.) *(General Reminder: many herbs shouldn't be used by those who are pregnant; ask about herbs & blends.)* (*If you no longer want emails from Highland Winds, click reply and ask for emails to stop.)* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Thu Aug 10 15:47:13 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 19:47:13 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] The apocalypse In-Reply-To: <1502393069.2411498.1069588016.1DD8C3FB@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <598bbf54.ca0e6b0a.28656.e473SMTPIN_ADDED_MISSING@mx.google.com> , <1502393069.2411498.1069588016.1DD8C3FB@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: "However, according to FEMA, the US Military, the Department of Energy, and the CIA there IS a 100% chance of an existential threat occurring within the next 10-20 years. Massive failure of the power grid." There are also risks due to inadequate monitoring of existing infrastructure, e.g. the kind of thing that happens when deregulation aims to maximize profits. Folks always like to focus on bad guy scenarios and not dangers due to environmental events, especially the variety humans cause. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Prof David West Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2017 1:24:29 PM To: friam at redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The apocalypse While undoubtedly fun, all the speculation (dare I say hysteria without sounding sexist?) about a Trump induced apocalypse is kind of far fetched. Too many intermediaries twixt mouth, button, and detonation. However, according to FEMA, the US Military, the Department of Energy, and the CIA there IS a 100% chance of an existential threat occurring within the next 10-20 years. Massive failure of the power grid. -- Iran, Russia, China, and probably North Korea already have malware embedded in the system. -- Major transformers have no backup (they cost 10-100 million dollars, take two years to build, and are almost all built in China) -- Deaths by day 5 of failure will reach the 100s of thousands, if not millions. -- By day ten, there will be no economy and no effectual government. -- One of the highest ranked scenarios for this to occur is North Korea detonating a ship born nuke off the coast of Southern California - the nuke tuned to generate a massive EMP. And, we know they have nukes small enough to fit in a freighter. They can do this. Guam is absurd at the present. Interestingly, none of the government agencies that are certain this event will occur within 20 years have any plans for how it will be dealt with! davew BTW, the grid has been a particular interest of mine since an acquaintance caused the first major US blackout, in the early 70s, by toppling a few towers in the pacific northwest with a few sticks of dynamite. On Thu, Aug 10, 2017, at 12:52 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote: Budda nature, calm and a good ol' jedi about now Aka cooler heads tend to prevail and do some awsome stuf. On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 12:03 PM, Marcus Daniels > wrote: "I suppose firing 4 rockets to land in NK waters? Or sending 4 drones to hover over NK? Shooting down the NK rockets would be risky, showing our hand as to effective antimissile capabilities." The best thing would be to have people in charge that don't freak out at the slightest provocation. "Third, we must enhance our antimissile systems and other defenses, and those of our allies, which need our reassurances more than ever." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/opinion/susan-rice-trump-north-korea.html ________________________________ From: Friam > on behalf of Owen Densmore > Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2017 10:26:46 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The apocalypse OK, what's tit for tat with the North Korea Guam threat: President Trump seemed to draw a red line Tuesday when he warned North Korea that continued threats against the United States would be met with ?fire and fury like the world has never seen.? The next day, North Korea crossed it. Or at least it announced, in unusually specific terms, how it could. The country?s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday night issued a statement that said the North is ?seriously examining the plan for an enveloping strike at Guam through simultaneous fire of four Hwasong-12 intermediate-range strategic ballistic rockets in order to interdict the enemy forces on major military bases on Guam and to signal a crucial warning to the U.S.? The statement, citing the North?s Strategic Rocket Forces head General Kim Rak Gyom, added that the plan would be finished by mid-August before going to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for approval. ?Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work on him,? the general said, in apparent reference to Trump, whose ultimatum he described as a ?load of nonsense.? I suppose firing 4 rockets to land in NK waters? Or sending 4 drones to hover over NK? Shooting down the NK rockets would be risky, showing our hand as to effective antimissile capabilities. -- Owen https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/north-korea-answers-trumps-vague-threats-with-specific-ones/536433/ On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 9:36 PM, Gillian Densmore > wrote: I (razzingly) suggest bad summer movies or that somehow all the Doom will some freeze in place at the same time. Perhaps we shall some how find a bunch of tribbles, zombies, a large rock in the sky, and dinso's all at the same time and that because of the Doom Metter the'll just stay their, thus no more doom can happen. On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 8:04 PM, Jochen Fromm > wrote: I doubt that North Korea has the ability to hit a tiny island like Guam in the Pacific, but it can without doubt destroy the 9 million capital Seoul near the border with weapons bought from Russia or China. The danger of a nuclear apocalypse is greatest when the world has forgotten how dangerous these weapons of mass destruction are. Even trying to model mutually assured destruction is useless with people like Kim Jong-Un and Trump. How can he brag on Twitter about nuclear weapons? WTF ? -J. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nickthompson at earthlink.net Thu Aug 10 18:25:54 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 18:25:54 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> Message-ID: <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> Steve, Please see "larding" below. Thank you, as always, for your generosity of spirit. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 11:01 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Nick - I am very glad to note that you are recovering and your scrappiness is properly returning! [NST==>The best cardio rehab is for you-guys to keep annoying me. Thanks for that. <==nst] What's powerful about it? Nothing more than it is such a succinct statement negating the popular fallacious apprehension of the mechanism of evolution, suggesting that there is a causal link between "selection" and "innovation"... the innovation step is in the mutation, but as the quote states clearly, said *innovation* is *preserved* (selected for) by the natural selection mechanism. [NST==>Wait a minute! What is the misapprehension of which you speak? Can you put it explicitly. And, when you say that mutations are "random", what precisely do you mean. Unpredictable? Clearly false. We know quite a lot, I think, about where DNA is vulnerable, and where mutations are likely to occur. <==nst] I think I held this misapprehension for the longest time, in the same way I *still* think of the Sun orbiting around the earth when I have plenty of reason to believe it is the other way around. What is presented to the world by the epigenetic system is not mutations but "hypotheses" about ways to live. And presumably epigenetic systems are shaped by natural selection to produce more or less plausible hypotheses. And what is the "hypothesis generator" in epigenetics? Is it stochastic or deterministic? (and what examples of epigenetics are you thinking of?) Is "plausable" the term you want, or is it more "utilitarian"? [NST==>What exactly do we imagine a "mutation" to be .nothing more or less than a change in one or more letters of the code, or the surprising change in the morphology or behavior of the creature that results? The epigenetic system has to "make" something of the code change. There are gene editing mechanisms and error correction mechanisms, and switches, on and off. Drop one letter of the code and the organism cannot make melanin; but a lot of work has to be done to turn that mishap into a "white bear." <==nst] The randomness is largely notional. I do think that "random" is a very loosey-goosey concept (like so many we call out on this list), but whether the variation is produced by random processes, pseudo-random processes, or merely processes with appropriately broad distribution functions, [NST==>did you complete that thought? I am eager to know where you were going with that sentence.<==nst] I still think you guys are more captured by your model of evolution than by the actual facts of it. I think we (collectively) are guilty of this all of the time, though in the spirit of "all models are wrong, some are useful" I'm not even sure I know what a "model-free" fact might be? [NST==>Oh, no, Steve. WAY too broad a brush. The problem is that you in danger of using the same model to explicate your understanding of the phenomenon of evolution as you later use to explain how evolution came about. <==nst] Facts (to me) imply measurements (qualitative, quantitative) which imply a object of said measurement which in turn implies a model. There was a time, I believe when people felt they held "facts" about "the viscosity of the aether" and the "density of phlogiston". When those models were superseded, those "facts" took on entirely new implications and meaning. - Steve Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Jenny Quillien Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 12:21 PM To: friam at redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Totally agree. Maybe a few of us can read the Wagener book (apparently he shows up at the Santa Fe institute from time to time as an external something or other) and see what we can do with the ideas. I'll be in Amsterdam but can follow e-mail threads to skype. Jenny On 8/9/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: Jenny - What a powerful quote: Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free Markets may well be restricted to the "innovation phase" of development. Once something becomes a (relative) commodity, it seems it might be counter-productive to continue the illusion of competitive development. At best it is wasteful and even harmful, and at worst it leads to an elevation of "innovation" to marketing and salesmanship. This is why we have so many near-identical products on the market being pushed on us through the hype of greed and fear when the "generic" or "store brand" version is equal or (even) superior (certainly in price, but also possibly in quality... lacking the colorants and odorants and other embellishments required to differentiate one product from the other?). - Steve On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: how nature innovates by Andreas Wagner. >From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability. Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly relevant to Nick's e-mail. Jenny Quillien On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: Hi everybody, Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog. I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it's last value. So the next step in a random walk is "random" but the current value (it's present position on a surface, say) is "the result of a stochastic process." From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can't tell if I am correct or not. Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this "evolution" of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself. So what kind of "evolution" are you guys talking about? Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here. nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From vburach at shaw.ca Thu Aug 10 18:59:24 2017 From: vburach at shaw.ca (Vladimyr) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 17:59:24 -0500 Subject: [FRIAM] What are the scenarios? Game theory? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00dd01d3122c$508dd610$f1a98230$@shaw.ca> The US can always do nothing considering its awesome power. Wiping out a nation or two seems would cause the greatest global shame for everyone. Should America use unimaginable power to subdue a noxious mosquito? The compulsion to use such power is frightening. North Korea has no forcing move to play, it does not have a Sente move.(from Go strategy) Only bluff? vib From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore Sent: August-09-17 4:41 PM To: Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] What are the scenarios? Game theory? >From BBC a reasonable summary: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40879485 My question is simple: what *are* the alternatives? Is there an interesting game theoretic analysis? The toughest part is that South Korea is being held hostage. NK can devastate SK even if hit with a pre-emptive strike. As rash as Trump's bluster has been, the real question remains: what is the reasonable response to NK's threat. - Preemptive Strike? Likely a loser unless it is so massive as to obliterate every human in NK. SK would be seriously damaged in the aftermath. - Wait 'til NK strikes? Again, hardly reasonable. - Anti-missile defense? Possibly, but you just gotta miss one for apocalypse. And what do you do if you *do* succeed? SK is still hostage. - Tit for Tat? Well, only in the bluster game. Our threats will match yours & vice versa. Has anyone heard of an interesting strategy? -- Owen -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From merlelefkoff at gmail.com Fri Aug 11 00:14:08 2017 From: merlelefkoff at gmail.com (Merle Lefkoff) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 21:14:08 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] What are the scenarios? Game theory? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Well, yes, Owen. I was contacted recently by a group of South and North Korean women who have been meeting secretly in the DMZ. The North Koreans sent their delegation. It's a really interesting group. And if you read Truthout today, a good strategy is emerging that involves re-starting the anti-nuke movement. Visit our web site: e-mergenow.org. On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 2:40 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: > From BBC a reasonable summary: > http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40879485 > > My question is simple: what *are* the alternatives? Is there an > interesting game theoretic analysis? > > The toughest part is that South Korea is being held hostage. NK can > devastate SK even if hit with a pre-emptive strike. > > As rash as Trump's bluster has been, the real question remains: what is > the reasonable response to NK's threat. > - Preemptive Strike? Likely a loser unless it is so massive as to > obliterate every human in NK. SK would be seriously damaged in the > aftermath. > - Wait 'til NK strikes? Again, hardly reasonable. > - Anti-missile defense? Possibly, but you just gotta miss one for > apocalypse. And what do you do if you *do* succeed? SK is still hostage. > - Tit for Tat? Well, only in the bluster game. Our threats will match > yours & vice versa. > > Has anyone heard of an interesting strategy? > > -- Owen > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -- Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy emergentdiplomacy.org Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA Visiting Professor in Integrative Peacebuilding Saint Paul University Ottawa, Ontario, Canada merlelefkoff at gmail.com mobile: (303) 859-5609 skype: merle.lelfkoff2 twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Fri Aug 11 11:16:00 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 09:16:00 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Solar Eclipse! Message-ID: Is New Mexico getting left out of the awsome that is the Eclips coming up? Or are the their places to to (try to) get to watch it? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Fri Aug 11 11:26:00 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 15:26:00 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] Solar Eclipse! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: There's an iPhone app for that, but here's a map. About 3/4 eclipse in Santa Fe. https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/NASA_map_508.pdf ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Gillian Densmore Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 9:16:00 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] Solar Eclipse! Is New Mexico getting left out of the awsome that is the Eclips coming up? Or are the their places to to (try to) get to watch it? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From owen at backspaces.net Fri Aug 11 12:19:05 2017 From: owen at backspaces.net (Owen Densmore) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 10:19:05 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] =?utf-8?q?Classes=2C_Complexity=2C_and_Functional_Program?= =?utf-8?b?bWluZyDigJMgS2VudCBDLiBEb2RkcyDigJMgTWVkaXVt?= Message-ID: ?I know, I know, functional programming is as fun as hitting your head with a brick. But this article does a nice job of showing how functional programming is very Self-like: ?? https://me ?? dium.com/@kentcdodds/classes-complexity-and-functional-programming-a8dd86903747 ?It's objects and functions all the way down, and for me the best is no `this`. It is a bit scary letting go of "central control" Classes provide, very human. I mean, who's *boss*? Do any of us *use* functional programming? -- Owen? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russ.abbott at gmail.com Fri Aug 11 12:28:59 2017 From: russ.abbott at gmail.com (Russ Abbott) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 16:28:59 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] =?utf-8?q?Classes=2C_Complexity=2C_and_Functional_Progra?= =?utf-8?q?mming_=E2=80=93_Kent_C=2E_Dodds_=E2=80=93_Medium?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Can't resist. I've been in love with functional programming for years. I teach an introductory Haskell class. My goal is to get students to think at a higher level that functional programming facilitates. P.S. The link in Owen's message wasn't created properly. Here's a correction: https://medium.com/@kentcdodds/classes-complexity-and-functional-programming-a8dd86903747 On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 9:19 AM Owen Densmore wrote: > ?I know, I know, functional programming is as fun as hitting your head > with a brick. > > But this article does a nice job of showing how functional programming is > very Self-like: > ?? > https://me > ?? > > dium.com/@kentcdodds/classes-complexity-and-functional-programming-a8dd86903747 > > ?It's objects and functions all the way down, and for me the best is no > `this`. > > It is a bit scary letting go of "central control" Classes provide, very > human. I mean, who's *boss*? > > Do any of us *use* functional programming? > > -- Owen? > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -- Russ Abbott Professor, Computer Science California State University, Los Angeles -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Fri Aug 11 12:30:39 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 16:30:39 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] =?utf-8?q?Classes=2C_Complexity=2C_and_Functional_Progra?= =?utf-8?q?mming_=E2=80=93_Kent_C=2E_Dodds_=E2=80=93_Medium?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "I know, I know, functional programming is as fun as hitting your head with a brick." It is fun! "It is a bit scary letting go of "central control" Classes provide, very human. I mean, who's *boss*?" The caller is the boss. With FP you know that arguments are all read-only. This gives you unambiguous dataflow and you know when parallelism can be done because the arguments just tell you. let c = f(a) ..can run at once with.. let d = g(a) ..but not with.. let e = h(a,c) Also "=" here isn't assignment, it is equality. If I have a project that isn't FP, I make it into an FP project because it is the right thing to do. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Owen Densmore Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 10:19:05 AM To: Wedtech; Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] Classes, Complexity, and Functional Programming ? Kent C. Dodds ? Medium ?I know, I know, functional programming is as fun as hitting your head with a brick. But this article does a nice job of showing how functional programming is very Self-like: ?? https://me ?? dium.com/@kentcdodds/classes-complexity-and-functional-programming-a8dd86903747 ?It's objects and functions all the way down, and for me the best is no `this`. It is a bit scary letting go of "central control" Classes provide, very human. I mean, who's *boss*? Do any of us *use* functional programming? -- Owen? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Fri Aug 11 12:50:30 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 16:50:30 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] =?utf-8?q?Classes=2C_Complexity=2C_and_Functional_Progra?= =?utf-8?q?mming_=E2=80=93_Kent_C=2E_Dodds_=E2=80=93_Medium?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: It is really not a big change from classes. If you already have objects, often all you have to change is that you return them. Object-oriented languages implicitly have the notion of the object as a first argument, so you've got a container to work with. The job of higher level code is to assemble and disassemble what is returned in a reasonable way. Perhaps it involves folds/reductions or perhaps it is just bigger containers. This gives a good (and, in FP, necessary) opportunity to think about how to manage dependencies. And yes, you have to start thinking in terms of `custody' of objects rather than `ownership'. One of the recent trends in web app development are `reactive' services. These ideas came from the FP community. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Owen Densmore Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 10:19:05 AM To: Wedtech; Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] Classes, Complexity, and Functional Programming ? Kent C. Dodds ? Medium ?I know, I know, functional programming is as fun as hitting your head with a brick. But this article does a nice job of showing how functional programming is very Self-like: ?? https://me ?? dium.com/@kentcdodds/classes-complexity-and-functional-programming-a8dd86903747 ?It's objects and functions all the way down, and for me the best is no `this`. It is a bit scary letting go of "central control" Classes provide, very human. I mean, who's *boss*? Do any of us *use* functional programming? -- Owen? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ballance at swcp.com Fri Aug 11 13:26:43 2017 From: ballance at swcp.com (Bob Ballance) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 11:26:43 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] =?utf-8?q?=5BWedTech=5D_Classes=2C_Complexity=2C_and_Fun?= =?utf-8?q?ctional_Programming_=E2=80=93_Kent_C=2E_Dodds_=E2=80=93_Medium?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1ABC9426-9F25-45F6-B7D1-FC187329D7CE@swcp.com> FWIW: I?ve been programming and teaching in R for quite a while, and have recently started working in Elixir (based on the Erlang virtual machine and process model) for web application development. The two languages have application spaces that are quite distinct. . . . Bob > On Aug 11, 2017, at 10:19 AM, Owen Densmore wrote: > > ?I know, I know, functional programming is as fun as hitting your head with a brick. > > But this article does a nice job of showing how functional programming is very Self-like: > ??https://me ??dium.com/@kentcdodds/classes-complexity-and-functional-programming-a8dd86903747 > > ?It's objects and functions all the way down, and for me the best is no `this`. > > It is a bit scary letting go of "central control" Classes provide, very human. I mean, who's *boss*? > > Do any of us *use* functional programming? > > -- Owen? > > _______________________________________________ > Wedtech mailing list > Wedtech at redfish.com > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/wedtech_redfish.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Fri Aug 11 13:56:25 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 11:56:25 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <0ea27822-84f1-af2a-2c67-87b6c75e898b@swcp.com> Nick - > > I am very glad to note that you are recovering and your scrappiness is > properly returning! > > */[NST==>The best cardio rehab is for you-guys to keep annoying me. > Thanks for that. <==nst] /* > You might check with your cardiologist on this one, I'm not sure a rise in BP is the same as exercise-stimulated increased heart rate, but in any case, I'm glad we can be of service! > > *//* > > > What?s powerful about it? > > Nothing more than it is such a succinct statement negating the popular > fallacious apprehension of the mechanism of evolution, suggesting that > there is a causal link between "selection" and "innovation"... the > innovation step is in the mutation, but as the quote states clearly, > said *innovation* is *preserved* (selected for) by the natural > selection mechanism. > > */[NST==>Wait a minute! What is the misapprehension of which you > speak? Can you put it explicitly. /* > The misapprehension of which I speak is that natural selection *alone* gives rise to innovation. Without mutation, all that is achieved by natural selection is a reduction of diversity in the genotype/phenotype toward some "optimum" for the selection criteria, or more likely a "wandering" around geno/pheno space as the selection pressures "wander". I believe that this is the mechanism behind what is known as "island dwarfism". There is no *innovation*, merely selection for a feature within the phenotypic distribution (body size) already in the population. I was NOT suggesting that YOU hold this misapprehension, just chiming in on the point made by Jenny with her original quote. > > */And, when you say that mutations are ?random?, what precisely do you > mean./* > I don't know that *I* have said that mutations are "random". I agree that "random" is notional. But I think of a signal as being "random" if the receiver has no model to correlate it's structure. A highly organized but encrypted message is "random" if you don't have the key to decode it. Cosmic radiation knocking holes in your genome is "random" for all practical purposes, even if it is highly correlated with solar and magnetosphere activity. > > */Unpredictable? Clearly false. We know quite a lot, I think, about > where DNA is vulnerable, and where mutations are likely to occur. /* > A "random" selection can still have a statistical distribution. When rolling pairs of dice, there is only one way to get a value of 2, (both dies == 1), 2 ways to get a value of 3 (1,2 and 2,1) and 3 ways to get a value of 4 (1,3 and 3,1 and 2,2), etc. this distribution is defined by simple combinatorics, but any given sample is still "random". Referencing above, in principle every specific set of dice are less than perfect and every dice-thrower might have some "handedness" which *might* lend a tiny bias to the distribution (e.g. LOADED dice). The resulting sequences are still random, just biased in an unexpected way. Flipping a coin is the same (unless it is two-headed of course!). I don't think that the DNA (or intermediate RNA?) is more vulnerable in some regions (or among some sequences) than others to say, "cosmic radiation" but I will accept that perhaps when the many potential causes of mutation and the various mechanism for detection/repair are taken into account, some parts of the sequence are more susceptible to "effective" mutation? And of course, at the phenotypic level, what is "effective" is what the natural selection component is all about. I will pause beating this horse for a moment but will try to respond to the remainder of your response separately (perhaps even completing the thought you thought I failed to complete?) - Steve -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nickthompson at earthlink.net Fri Aug 11 14:18:21 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 14:18:21 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <0ea27822-84f1-af2a-2c67-87b6c75e898b@swcp.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <0ea27822-84f1-af2a-2c67-87b6c75e898b@swcp.com> Message-ID: <008a01d312ce$37845a20$a68d0e60$@earthlink.net> Steve, Thanks for staying with me on this. To be honest, I have never encountered anybody who believed that natural selection alone is capable of producing evolution, unless it was somebody who includes some variation-generating mechanism within the notion of natural selection. I have encountered people who think that natural selection is not NECESSARY to evolution, attributing most change to random walks of various sorts. I have never understood those folks, but they have had their day. The heresy I am trying to expunge is that in which evolution is understood as "a delta-q in the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium", which amounts to saying, natural selects whatever nature selects and whatever nature selects is evolution. Darwin would have been baffled by such a formulation. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 1:56 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Nick - I am very glad to note that you are recovering and your scrappiness is properly returning! [NST==>The best cardio rehab is for you-guys to keep annoying me. Thanks for that. <==nst] You might check with your cardiologist on this one, I'm not sure a rise in BP is the same as exercise-stimulated increased heart rate, but in any case, I'm glad we can be of service! What's powerful about it? Nothing more than it is such a succinct statement negating the popular fallacious apprehension of the mechanism of evolution, suggesting that there is a causal link between "selection" and "innovation"... the innovation step is in the mutation, but as the quote states clearly, said *innovation* is *preserved* (selected for) by the natural selection mechanism. [NST==>Wait a minute! What is the misapprehension of which you speak? Can you put it explicitly. The misapprehension of which I speak is that natural selection *alone* gives rise to innovation. Without mutation, all that is achieved by natural selection is a reduction of diversity in the genotype/phenotype toward some "optimum" for the selection criteria, or more likely a "wandering" around geno/pheno space as the selection pressures "wander". I believe that this is the mechanism behind what is known as "island dwarfism". There is no *innovation*, merely selection for a feature within the phenotypic distribution (body size) already in the population. I was NOT suggesting that YOU hold this misapprehension, just chiming in on the point made by Jenny with her original quote. And, when you say that mutations are "random", what precisely do you mean. I don't know that *I* have said that mutations are "random". I agree that "random" is notional. But I think of a signal as being "random" if the receiver has no model to correlate it's structure. A highly organized but encrypted message is "random" if you don't have the key to decode it. Cosmic radiation knocking holes in your genome is "random" for all practical purposes, even if it is highly correlated with solar and magnetosphere activity. Unpredictable? Clearly false. We know quite a lot, I think, about where DNA is vulnerable, and where mutations are likely to occur. A "random" selection can still have a statistical distribution. When rolling pairs of dice, there is only one way to get a value of 2, (both dies == 1), 2 ways to get a value of 3 (1,2 and 2,1) and 3 ways to get a value of 4 (1,3 and 3,1 and 2,2), etc. this distribution is defined by simple combinatorics, but any given sample is still "random". Referencing above, in principle every specific set of dice are less than perfect and every dice-thrower might have some "handedness" which *might* lend a tiny bias to the distribution (e.g. LOADED dice). The resulting sequences are still random, just biased in an unexpected way. Flipping a coin is the same (unless it is two-headed of course!). I don't think that the DNA (or intermediate RNA?) is more vulnerable in some regions (or among some sequences) than others to say, "cosmic radiation" but I will accept that perhaps when the many potential causes of mutation and the various mechanism for detection/repair are taken into account, some parts of the sequence are more susceptible to "effective" mutation? And of course, at the phenotypic level, what is "effective" is what the natural selection component is all about. I will pause beating this horse for a moment but will try to respond to the remainder of your response separately (perhaps even completing the thought you thought I failed to complete?) - Steve -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From profwest at fastmail.fm Fri Aug 11 14:27:26 2017 From: profwest at fastmail.fm (Prof David West) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 12:27:26 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <008a01d312ce$37845a20$a68d0e60$@earthlink.net> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <0ea27822-84f1-af2a-2c67-87b6c75e898b@swcp.com> <008a01d312ce$37845a20$a68d0e60$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <1502476046.138214.1070661576.05FAE129@webmail.messagingengine.com> Jenny mentioned Arrival of the Fittest. I will condense a set of notes that I am sending Jenny about the book and will post the condensed version to the list. I think it could resolve a lot of this 'random' issue. davew On Fri, Aug 11, 2017, at 12:18 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Steve, > > Thanks for staying with me on this. > > To be honest, I have never encountered anybody who believed that > natural selection alone is capable of producing evolution, unless it > was somebody who includes some variation-generating mechanism within > the notion of natural selection. I have encountered people who think > that natural selection is not NECESSARY to evolution, attributing most > change to random walks of various sorts. I have never understood > those folks, but they have had their day.> > The heresy I am trying to expunge is that in which evolution is > understood as ?a delta-q in the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium?, which > amounts to saying, natural selects whatever nature selects and > whatever nature selects is evolution. Darwin would have been baffled > by such a formulation.> > Nick > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > Clark University > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Steven > A Smith *Sent:* Friday, August 11, 2017 1:56 PM *To:* The Friday > Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* > Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate> > Nick - >> I am very glad to note that you are recovering and your scrappiness >> is properly returning!>> **[NST==>The best cardio rehab is for you-guys to keep annoying me. >> Thanks for that. <==nst]**> You might check with your cardiologist on this one, I'm not sure a > rise in BP is the same as exercise-stimulated increased heart rate, > but in any case, I'm glad we can be of service!>> >> What?s powerful about it? >> Nothing more than it is such a succinct statement negating the >> popular fallacious apprehension of the mechanism of evolution, >> suggesting that there is a causal link between "selection" and >> "innovation"... the innovation step is in the mutation, but as the >> quote states clearly, said *innovation* is *preserved* (selected for) >> by the natural selection mechanism.>> **[NST==>Wait a minute! What is the misapprehension of which you >> speak? Can you put it explicitly. **> The misapprehension of which I speak is that natural selection *alone* > gives rise to innovation. Without mutation, all that is achieved by > natural selection is a reduction of diversity in the > genotype/phenotype toward some "optimum" for the selection criteria, > or more likely a "wandering" around geno/pheno space as the selection > pressures "wander". I believe that this is the mechanism behind what > is known as "island dwarfism". There is no *innovation*, merely > selection for a feature within the phenotypic distribution (body size) > already in the population. > > I was NOT suggesting that YOU hold this misapprehension, just chiming > in on the point made by Jenny with her original quote.>> **And, when you say that mutations are ?random?, what precisely do >> you mean.**> I don't know that *I* have said that mutations are "random". I > agree that "random" is notional. But I think of a signal as being > "random" if the receiver has no model to correlate it's structure. A > highly organized but encrypted message is "random" if you don't have > the key to decode it. Cosmic radiation knocking holes in your genome > is "random" for all practical purposes, even if it is highly > correlated with solar and magnetosphere activity.>> ** Unpredictable? Clearly false. We know quite a lot, I think, >> about where DNA is vulnerable, and where mutations are likely to >> occur. **> A "random" selection can still have a statistical distribution. When > rolling pairs of dice, there is only one way to get a value of 2, > (both dies == 1), 2 ways to get a value of 3 (1,2 and 2,1) and 3 ways > to get a value of 4 (1,3 and 3,1 and 2,2), etc. this distribution is > defined by simple combinatorics, but any given sample is still > "random". Referencing above, in principle every specific set of dice > are less than perfect and every dice-thrower might have some > "handedness" which *might* lend a tiny bias to the distribution (e.g. > LOADED dice). The resulting sequences are still random, just biased > in an unexpected way. Flipping a coin is the same (unless it is two- > headed of course!). > > I don't think that the DNA (or intermediate RNA?) is more vulnerable > in some regions (or among some sequences) than others to say, "cosmic > radiation" but I will accept that perhaps when the many potential > causes of mutation and the various mechanism for detection/repair are > taken into account, some parts of the sequence are more susceptible to > "effective" mutation? And of course, at the phenotypic level, what > is "effective" is what the natural selection component is all about. > > I will pause beating this horse for a moment but will try to respond > to the remainder of your response separately (perhaps even completing > the thought you thought I failed to complete?) > > - Steve> ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From owen at backspaces.net Fri Aug 11 16:02:05 2017 From: owen at backspaces.net (Owen Densmore) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 14:02:05 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] What are the scenarios? Game theory? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Merle: thanks! On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 10:14 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote: > Well, yes, Owen. I was contacted recently by a group of South and North > Korean women who have been meeting secretly in the DMZ. The North Koreans > sent their delegation. It's a really interesting group. And if you read > Truthout today, a good strategy is emerging that involves re-starting the > anti-nuke movement. Visit our web site: e-mergenow.org. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gary at naturesvisualarts.com Fri Aug 11 16:04:44 2017 From: gary at naturesvisualarts.com (Gary Schiltz) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 15:04:44 -0500 Subject: [FRIAM] =?utf-8?q?Classes=2C_Complexity=2C_and_Functional_Progra?= =?utf-8?q?mming_=E2=80=93_Kent_C=2E_Dodds_=E2=80=93_Medium?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Interesting timing. Although I don't do much software development these days, I've been fiddling around with Clojure off and on for the last few years. I conceptually like the ideas behind it, but it takes immutability to more of an extreme than I feel is necessary (e.g. unless you use its software transactional memory constructs, there is no way to re-bind a local variable). Also, the programming environment with the most advanced support for it is emacs, and I haven't drank enough koolaid to grok it fully. So, just last night I decided to download Racket (a scheme dialect with a nice simple IDE). So far, I have been having a blast with it. Part of the reason I downloaded it is that I wanted to run programs from the book "The Little Schemer", which among other things is a crash course on replacing iterating and mutating of data structures with purely functional recursive solutions. On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 11:19 AM, Owen Densmore wrote: > ?I know, I know, functional programming is as fun as hitting your head > with a brick. > > But this article does a nice job of showing how functional programming is > very Self-like: > ?? > https://me > ?? > dium.com/@kentcdodds/classes-complexity-and-functional- > programming-a8dd86903747 > > ?It's objects and functions all the way down, and for me the best is no > `this`. > > It is a bit scary letting go of "central control" Classes provide, very > human. I mean, who's *boss*? > > Do any of us *use* functional programming? > > -- Owen? > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Fri Aug 11 16:22:58 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 20:22:58 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] =?utf-8?q?Classes=2C_Complexity=2C_and_Functional_Progra?= =?utf-8?q?mming_=E2=80=93_Kent_C=2E_Dodds_=E2=80=93_Medium?= In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: "I conceptually like the ideas behind it, but it takes immutability to more of an extreme than I feel is necessary (e.g. unless you use its software transactional memory constructs, there is no way to re-bind a local variable)." In Haskell, if this is needed, one uses the State Monad. https://wiki.haskell.org/State_Monad ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Gary Schiltz Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 2:04:44 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Classes, Complexity, and Functional Programming ? Kent C. Dodds ? Medium Interesting timing. Although I don't do much software development these days, I've been fiddling around with Clojure off and on for the last few years. I conceptually like the ideas behind it, but it takes immutability to more of an extreme than I feel is necessary (e.g. unless you use its software transactional memory constructs, there is no way to re-bind a local variable). Also, the programming environment with the most advanced support for it is emacs, and I haven't drank enough koolaid to grok it fully. So, just last night I decided to download Racket (a scheme dialect with a nice simple IDE). So far, I have been having a blast with it. Part of the reason I downloaded it is that I wanted to run programs from the book "The Little Schemer", which among other things is a crash course on replacing iterating and mutating of data structures with purely functional recursive solutions. On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 11:19 AM, Owen Densmore > wrote: ?I know, I know, functional programming is as fun as hitting your head with a brick. But this article does a nice job of showing how functional programming is very Self-like: ?? https://me ?? dium.com/@kentcdodds/classes-complexity-and-functional-programming-a8dd86903747 ?It's objects and functions all the way down, and for me the best is no `this`. It is a bit scary letting go of "central control" Classes provide, very human. I mean, who's *boss*? Do any of us *use* functional programming? -- Owen? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tom at jtjohnson.com Fri Aug 11 20:30:27 2017 From: tom at jtjohnson.com (Tom Johnson) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 18:30:27 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] How 'Game of Thrones' is taking years off graying Santa Fe Message-ID: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-4780962/How-Game-Thrones-taking-years-graying-Santa-Fe.html ============================================ Tom Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) Society of Professional Journalists *Check out It's The People's Data * http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.com ============================================ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From owen at backspaces.net Fri Aug 11 23:42:15 2017 From: owen at backspaces.net (Owen Densmore) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 21:42:15 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] =?utf-8?q?Classes=2C_Complexity=2C_and_Functional_Progra?= =?utf-8?q?mming_=E2=80=93_Kent_C=2E_Dodds_=E2=80=93_Medium?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 10:30 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > "I know, I know, functional programming is as fun as hitting your head >> with a brick." > > It is fun! > ?That's great to hear, too much is NOT fun in programming!? > If I have a project that isn't FP, I make it into an FP project because it > is the right thing to do. > ?OK, so in the JavaScript world, how does one inch forward toward functional? I don't want to be so functional as some of the extremes. Curring all the way to one arg functions? The article says performance may be an issue. The chief appeal for me is the Self-like objects only, no classes. But the lack of centrality may just as hard to navigate as the over-tight, stateful class approach. -- Owen? On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 10:30 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > "I know, I know, functional programming is as fun as hitting your head > with a brick." > > > It is fun! > > > "It is a bit scary letting go of "central control" Classes provide, very > human. I mean, who's *boss*?" > > > The caller is the boss. With FP you know that arguments are all > read-only. > > This gives you unambiguous dataflow and you know when parallelism can be > done because the arguments just tell you. > > > let c = f(a) > > > ..can run at once with.. > > > let d = g(a) > > > ..but not with.. > > > let e = h(a,c) > > > Also "=" here isn't assignment, it is equality. > > > If I have a project that isn't FP, I make it into an FP project because it > is the right thing to do. > > > Marcus > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* Friam on behalf of Owen Densmore < > owen at backspaces.net> > *Sent:* Friday, August 11, 2017 10:19:05 AM > *To:* Wedtech; Complexity Coffee Group > *Subject:* [FRIAM] Classes, Complexity, and Functional Programming ? Kent > C. Dodds ? Medium > > ?I know, I know, functional programming is as fun as hitting your head > with a brick. > > But this article does a nice job of showing how functional programming is > very Self-like: > ?? > https://me > ?? > dium.com/@kentcdodds/classes-complexity-and-functional- > programming-a8dd86903747 > > ?It's objects and functions all the way down, and for me the best is no > `this`. > > It is a bit scary letting go of "central control" Classes provide, very > human. I mean, who's *boss*? > > Do any of us *use* functional programming? > > -- Owen? > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Sat Aug 12 00:05:24 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 22:05:24 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Nick - ... continued > > What is presented to the world by the epigenetic system is not > mutations but ?hypotheses? about ways to live. And presumably > epigenetic systems are shaped by natural selection to produce > more or less plausible hypotheses. > > And what is the "hypothesis generator" in epigenetics? Is it > stochastic or deterministic? (and what examples of epigenetics are you > thinking of?) Is "plausable" the term you want, or is it more > "utilitarian"? > > */[NST==>What exactly do we imagine a ?mutation? to be ?nothing more > or less than a change in one or more letters of the code, or the > surprising change in the morphology or behavior of the creature that > results? The epigenetic system has to ?make? something of the code > change. There are gene editing mechanisms and error correction > mechanisms, and switches, on and off. Drop one letter of the code and > the organism cannot make melanin; but a lot of work has to be done to > turn that mishap into a ?white bear.? <==nst] /* > Yes, a "mutation" to the genome is a change in one or more letters of the code. A "mutation" in the metabolic processes implied by said genetic sequence (a changed protein, a modified level of production of an unmodified protein or set of same, etc.) and ultimately in the mature phenotype (if the precursors to this are viable enough for a mature specimen to arrive?) and beyond that the larger social unit (herd/pack/tribe) that might benefit or suffer from the behaviour of the individual experiencing the mutation. Add individuals with a mutation in their bone-production that causes extremely large cross-section bones and thick crania into the Vikings and you get (what has been hypothesized to be) Berserker warriors who drop into a blind rage when their blood pressure rises in response to threat. As long as they are pointing *toward* the enemy when that happens, it is (maybe) highly functional for the group to have you around? > *//* > > The randomness is largely notional. > > I do think that "random" is a very loosey-goosey concept (like so many > we call out on this list), but whether the variation is produced by > random processes, pseudo-random processes, or merely processes with > appropriately broad distribution functions, > the point is that the variation is not correlated with the selection process in any significant way. I think THAT is what *I* mean by random. > > */[NST==>did you complete that thought? I am eager to know where you > were going with that sentence.<==nst] /* > > I'm acknowledging that "random" is at least relative in most cases. If we go down to the quantum level, it takes on a more meaningful meaning but I would claim one that requires much more sophisticated discussion to penetrate. I would claim that this is the kind of "random" that Penrose postulates is necessary for (and explains) consciousness. > I still think you guys are more captured by your model of > evolution than by the actual facts of it. > > I think we (collectively) are guilty of this all of the time, though > in the spirit of "all models are wrong, some are useful" I'm not even > sure I know what a "model-free" fact might be? > > */[NST==>Oh, no, Steve. WAY too broad a brush. The problem is that > you in danger of using the same model to explicate your understanding > of the phenomenon of evolution as you later use to explain how > evolution came about. <==nst] /* > BTW, I think you are conflating my words with those of the larger group. I don't think I've ever tried to even suggest "how evolution came about", because that description doesn't even make sense to me... evolution "just is" . I'm looking forward to Dave West's condensed summary of "Arrival of the Fittest". - Steve -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Sat Aug 12 01:05:06 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 05:05:06 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] =?utf-8?q?Classes=2C_Complexity=2C_and_Functional_Progra?= =?utf-8?q?mming_=E2=80=93_Kent_C=2E_Dodds_=E2=80=93_Medium?= In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: Owen writes: "OK, so in the JavaScript world, how does one inch forward toward functional? I don't want to be so functional as some of the extremes. Curring all the way to one arg functions?" I'm not sure what properties of JavaScript you care about. If it is just the operational part of being able to run in a web browser, there are languages like Fay (a subset of Haskell) that compile to JavaScript. FP is something you can do in incremental ways in many languages. Even though I use a mostly-FP style in R (or Common Lisp or Python or Julia or Fortran 2008), in my mind it is isn't _really_ FP unless there is strong typing and an mandatory requirement of purity. Currying, IMO, is something that is easier to use with languages that have strong typing and type inference because the transformations between function signatures is natural to inspect in those environments. (It is quite common in Haskell to get complex, even surprising types by automatic type inference.) Currying is nice, in contrast to closures, because it is deliberate and localized; one can capture a lot in lexical scope and a lambda may not be easy to convert into a non-anonymous function -- you may not be clear on what you are capturing in the closure and why. Also currying has a nice intuition of progressively reducing the degrees of freedom of a function as that information becomes available. The philosophy of languages like Haskell, F#, Mercury, etc. is to make working code more likely just by virtue of getting it past the compiler. Instead of dynamic typing, the compiler uses logical inference to figure out what types make sense when they are not provided. This gives the similar brevity as dynamic typing but with many more internal consistency checks. I write a lot of R, and for simple things dynamic typing is fine. But, as soon as I start using it for more complex things in a production context, any minor mistake can cost a lot of wasted CPU time. For me, there's a point at which I want the cognitive support that static typing affords. And of course static typing gives code generation more information to work with, which usually leads to faster code. Haskell (GHCI) still has a REPL interpreter-like interface, so it is not fair to say that experimentation is not possible as it is in JavaScript. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Owen Densmore Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 9:42:15 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Cc: Wedtech Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Classes, Complexity, and Functional Programming ? Kent C. Dodds ? Medium On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 10:30 AM, Marcus Daniels > wrote: "I know, I know, functional programming is as fun as hitting your head with a brick." It is fun! ?That's great to hear, too much is NOT fun in programming!? If I have a project that isn't FP, I make it into an FP project because it is the right thing to do. ?OK, so in the JavaScript world, how does one inch forward toward functional? I don't want to be so functional as some of the extremes. Curring all the way to one arg functions? The article says performance may be an issue. The chief appeal for me is the Self-like objects only, no classes. But the lack of centrality may just as hard to navigate as the over-tight, stateful class approach. -- Owen? On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 10:30 AM, Marcus Daniels > wrote: "I know, I know, functional programming is as fun as hitting your head with a brick." It is fun! "It is a bit scary letting go of "central control" Classes provide, very human. I mean, who's *boss*?" The caller is the boss. With FP you know that arguments are all read-only. This gives you unambiguous dataflow and you know when parallelism can be done because the arguments just tell you. let c = f(a) ..can run at once with.. let d = g(a) ..but not with.. let e = h(a,c) Also "=" here isn't assignment, it is equality. If I have a project that isn't FP, I make it into an FP project because it is the right thing to do. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam > on behalf of Owen Densmore > Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 10:19:05 AM To: Wedtech; Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] Classes, Complexity, and Functional Programming ? Kent C. Dodds ? Medium ?I know, I know, functional programming is as fun as hitting your head with a brick. But this article does a nice job of showing how functional programming is very Self-like: ?? https://me ?? dium.com/@kentcdodds/classes-complexity-and-functional-programming-a8dd86903747 ?It's objects and functions all the way down, and for me the best is no `this`. It is a bit scary letting go of "central control" Classes provide, very human. I mean, who's *boss*? Do any of us *use* functional programming? -- Owen? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nickthompson at earthlink.net Sat Aug 12 08:56:24 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 08:56:24 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <010301d3136a$6d3cd240$47b676c0$@earthlink.net> Steve, Thanks for allowing me to sling irresponsible insults at you with impunity. It has been VERY helpful to my recovery. You might consider opening a clinic. I considered calling "quantum randomness" "notional", but I wasn't sure WTF I meant by that. There's a dimension here I am groping to express. Quantum randomness and natural selection and gene are way out on that dimension as things we believe in the concreteness of, yet they are far from our concrete experience. We experience them as foundations of our thought, yet we never see them. I guess the best I can say at this point is that something about that makes me uneasy. I want to push back on "evolution just is". Evolution is a way, and not other ways. Evolution is more directly presented to experience than is natural selection. Natural selection is the very abstract idea that resolves problems and paradoxes raised in Darwin's imagination by his "experience" of evolution. Just as "gene" is a "pseudo-concrete" idea that resolves paradoxes and problems raised in Mendel's pea-patch. I too am awaiting Dave's summary. I have ordered the book from the library. I wish I were there to take Dave's course. I am hoping that it will the beginning of a great new career for him and he will decide to stay in Santa fe. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2017 12:05 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Nick - ... continued What is presented to the world by the epigenetic system is not mutations but "hypotheses" about ways to live. And presumably epigenetic systems are shaped by natural selection to produce more or less plausible hypotheses. And what is the "hypothesis generator" in epigenetics? Is it stochastic or deterministic? (and what examples of epigenetics are you thinking of?) Is "plausable" the term you want, or is it more "utilitarian"? [NST==>What exactly do we imagine a "mutation" to be .nothing more or less than a change in one or more letters of the code, or the surprising change in the morphology or behavior of the creature that results? The epigenetic system has to "make" something of the code change. There are gene editing mechanisms and error correction mechanisms, and switches, on and off. Drop one letter of the code and the organism cannot make melanin; but a lot of work has to be done to turn that mishap into a "white bear." <==nst] Yes, a "mutation" to the genome is a change in one or more letters of the code. A "mutation" in the metabolic processes implied by said genetic sequence (a changed protein, a modified level of production of an unmodified protein or set of same, etc.) and ultimately in the mature phenotype (if the precursors to this are viable enough for a mature specimen to arrive?) and beyond that the larger social unit (herd/pack/tribe) that might benefit or suffer from the behaviour of the individual experiencing the mutation. Add individuals with a mutation in their bone-production that causes extremely large cross-section bones and thick crania into the Vikings and you get (what has been hypothesized to be) Berserker warriors who drop into a blind rage when their blood pressure rises in response to threat. As long as they are pointing *toward* the enemy when that happens, it is (maybe) highly functional for the group to have you around? The randomness is largely notional. I do think that "random" is a very loosey-goosey concept (like so many we call out on this list), but whether the variation is produced by random processes, pseudo-random processes, or merely processes with appropriately broad distribution functions, the point is that the variation is not correlated with the selection process in any significant way. I think THAT is what *I* mean by random. [NST==>did you complete that thought? I am eager to know where you were going with that sentence.<==nst] I'm acknowledging that "random" is at least relative in most cases. If we go down to the quantum level, it takes on a more meaningful meaning but I would claim one that requires much more sophisticated discussion to penetrate. I would claim that this is the kind of "random" that Penrose postulates is necessary for (and explains) consciousness. I still think you guys are more captured by your model of evolution than by the actual facts of it. I think we (collectively) are guilty of this all of the time, though in the spirit of "all models are wrong, some are useful" I'm not even sure I know what a "model-free" fact might be? [NST==>Oh, no, Steve. WAY too broad a brush. The problem is that you in danger of using the same model to explicate your understanding of the phenomenon of evolution as you later use to explain how evolution came about. <==nst] BTW, I think you are conflating my words with those of the larger group. I don't think I've ever tried to even suggest "how evolution came about", because that description doesn't even make sense to me... evolution "just is" . I'm looking forward to Dave West's condensed summary of "Arrival of the Fittest". - Steve -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Sat Aug 12 09:46:45 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 07:46:45 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <010301d3136a$6d3cd240$47b676c0$@earthlink.net> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <010301d3136a$6d3cd240$47b676c0$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Nick - > > Thanks for allowing me to sling irresponsible insults at you with > impunity. It has been VERY helpful to my recovery. You might > consider opening a clinic. > One of my favorite authors, Chuck Palahnuik, wrote a protaganist who visits his mother in a dementia/alzheimer's ward every day where the other women there constantly mistake him for some male in their life who wronged them early in their lives. At first he argued with them and tried to convince them that he wasn't "THAT funny uncle", etc. Eventually he discovered it was easier for him to just give over to them and accept whatever identity they "needed" him to have and then began to embrace the roles they caste him into, acknowledging whatever perceived harm his character had leveled on them and then apologizing for that action profusely. It was cathartic for them and he realized he was making their day. Of course, he had to repeat it every visit "groundhog day" style. Palahnuik (who wrote Fight Club also) writes fascinatingly obtuse characters. > > I considered calling ?quantum randomness? ?notional?, but I wasn?t > sure WTF I meant by that. There?s a dimension here I am groping to > express. Quantum randomness and natural selection and gene are way > out on that dimension as things we believe in the concreteness of, yet > they are far from our concrete experience. We experience them as > foundations of our thought, yet we never see them. I guess the best I > can say at this point is that something about that makes me uneasy. > I share your uneasiness, but mine may penetrate deeper (shallower?) into the less esoteric models. I mentioned my own strong intuitive preference for a "flat earth" and "earth-centric" celestial system, even if my *intellect* believes it could recognize the anomalies those models exhibit and resolve "the facts" more better with the "new and improved" models. > > I want to push back on ?evolution just is?. Evolution is a way, and > not other ways. Evolution is more directly presented to experience > than is natural selection. Natural selection is the very abstract > idea that resolves problems and paradoxes raised in Darwin?s > imagination by his ?experience? of evolution. Just as ?gene? is a > ?pseudo-concrete? idea that resolves paradoxes and problems raised in > Mendel?s pea-patch. > I have to agree with this. I don't mean to say "I know without any doubt that evolution just is" but rather, "if evolution IS, then it JUST is", rather perhaps than "it's nature needs/affords to be belabored". Maybe a more fundamental article of faith than "natural selection" or "gene" or "metabolic pathway" are. I'm not sure evolution is directly observable, but the artifacts we find CAN perceive directly seem more directly mapped to it as a model than for example, "natural selection"? I suspect for another group of "true believers", THEIR fundamental models (e.g. omnipotent patriarchal creator/punisher/forgiver/mystery-maker) are just as fundamental? "God/Goddess just is"? > > I too am awaiting Dave?s summary. I have ordered the book from the > library. I wish I were there to take Dave?s course. > I imagine you to return to SFe in September each year, do I have my calendar wrong? - Steve -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Sat Aug 12 11:49:41 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?4pSjZ2xlbuKUqw==?=) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 08:49:41 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> This paragraph (for whatever reason) makes progress toward my counter-argument AGAINST both Monod-via-Grant and Wagner-via-Jenny. While it may be true that mutation is necessary for innovation, it's insufficient to claim that innovation comes only through mutation. Imagine two point mutations on different genes, in different individuals, neither of which (for now) produce a phenotype change (ala "neutral networks"). Then those individuals go on to reproduce for a few generations, passing along their respective mutations, never seeing a phenotypic change in their lineages. But them the two lineages mingle to produce an offspring with both mutations, where the 2 mutations together produce a phenotypic change. Can we truly say that the crossover had nothing to do with the "innovation" ... that it only preserved the innovation and the mutation caused it? A neutral mutation can't be considered an "innovation", right? On 08/11/2017 09:05 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > Yes, a "mutation" to the genome is a change in one or more letters of the code. A "mutation" in the metabolic processes implied by said genetic sequence (a changed protein, a modified level of production of an unmodified protein or set of same, etc.) and ultimately in the mature phenotype (if the precursors to this are viable enough for a mature specimen to arrive?) and beyond that the larger social unit (herd/pack/tribe) that might benefit or suffer from the behaviour of the individual experiencing the mutation. Add individuals with a mutation in their bone-production that causes extremely large cross-section bones and thick crania into the Vikings and you get (what has been hypothesized to be) Berserker warriors who drop into a blind rage when their blood pressure rises in response to threat. As long as they are pointing *toward* the enemy when that happens, it is (maybe) highly functional for the group to have you around? -- ?glen? From marcus at snoutfarm.com Sat Aug 12 12:07:16 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 16:07:16 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> , <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> Message-ID: Glen writes: "Can we truly say that the crossover had nothing to do with the "innovation" ... that it only preserved the innovation and the mutation caused it? A neutral mutation can't be considered an "innovation", right?" A function related by rotation might be a candidate for crossover. f(x,y,z,...) -> good f(y,z,x,...) -> good f(z,x,y,...) -> good f(x,z,y,...) -> bad Going through the combinations just by using mutation takes forever. But splicing at different points would help. One could imagine for motor functions these symmetry or shift detectors could be important. (Here it is just 1 dimensional.) Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of ?glen? Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2017 9:49:41 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate This paragraph (for whatever reason) makes progress toward my counter-argument AGAINST both Monod-via-Grant and Wagner-via-Jenny. While it may be true that mutation is necessary for innovation, it's insufficient to claim that innovation comes only through mutation. Imagine two point mutations on different genes, in different individuals, neither of which (for now) produce a phenotype change (ala "neutral networks"). Then those individuals go on to reproduce for a few generations, passing along their respective mutations, never seeing a phenotypic change in their lineages. But them the two lineages mingle to produce an offspring with both mutations, where the 2 mutations together produce a phenotypic change. Can we truly say that the crossover had nothing to do with the "innovation" ... that it only preserved the innovation and the mutation caused it? A neutral mutation can't be considered an "innovation", right? On 08/11/2017 09:05 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > Yes, a "mutation" to the genome is a change in one or more letters of the code. A "mutation" in the metabolic processes implied by said genetic sequence (a changed protein, a modified level of production of an unmodified protein or set of same, etc.) and ultimately in the mature phenotype (if the precursors to this are viable enough for a mature specimen to arrive?) and beyond that the larger social unit (herd/pack/tribe) that might benefit or suffer from the behaviour of the individual experiencing the mutation. Add individuals with a mutation in their bone-production that causes extremely large cross-section bones and thick crania into the Vikings and you get (what has been hypothesized to be) Berserker warriors who drop into a blind rage when their blood pressure rises in response to threat. As long as they are pointing *toward* the enemy when that happens, it is (maybe) highly functional for the group to have you around? -- ?glen? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Sat Aug 12 12:14:20 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?4pSjZ2xlbuKUqw==?=) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 09:14:20 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> Message-ID: Exactly. And even though we're conflating the model of evolution with the real thing, I find it difficult to believe the "space" operated on by evolution is entirely convex or even connected. So, (point) mutation alone may *never* reach some regions, regardless of infinite individuals, infinite generations, or infinite space and time. On 08/12/2017 09:07 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > "Can we truly say that the crossover had nothing to do with the "innovation" ... that it only preserved the innovation and the mutation caused it? A neutral mutation can't be considered an "innovation", right?" > > A function related by rotation might be a candidate for crossover. > > f(x,y,z,...) -> good > f(y,z,x,...) -> good > f(z,x,y,...) -> good > f(x,z,y,...) -> bad > > Going through the combinations just by using mutation takes forever. But splicing at different points would help. One could imagine for motor functions these symmetry or shift detectors could be important. (Here it is just 1 dimensional.) -- ?glen? From owen at backspaces.net Sat Aug 12 12:20:49 2017 From: owen at backspaces.net (Owen Densmore) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 10:20:49 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] =?utf-8?q?Classes=2C_Complexity=2C_and_Functional_Progra?= =?utf-8?q?mming_=E2=80=93_Kent_C=2E_Dodds_=E2=80=93_Medium?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Great info, thanks. A few constraints: - I've finally gotten back to Write & Run JavaScript, no transpiling. - My workflow also is simplified: only npm scripts possibly using a node script. - I run a local hot-loading node http server so Write & Run is automatic. All managed by a npm script. Why? The JS world went nuts for several years with transpiling, babel (for es6/future JS features), task managers, linters etc. It was arguably necessary for the times. I used CoffeeScript for a while mainly for safety and pythonic syntax. But my peers said "Oh, great, *another* thing to learn"! And they didn't. :) Things are now hugely better, with editors that are very IDE-ish and eslint built in, and the language is finally getting functional features like map, reduce, and so on. The for loop? It's dead Jim. Yay. So there is a return to sanity and a healing from JS "fatigue". Simple JS, no task managers, and simple commands for minifying, linting, conversion to node modules, and so on. Write & Run w/ chores as scripts. Within that world, currently, is a very strong movement toward FP. Hence the article starting this conversation. And my hope for incrementally converting to FP. -- Owen PS: My work is not very webby. Mainly a NetLogo lookalike for JS. No install, just start up a page. I render using webgl which oddly enough has a fairly nice language for the GPU, and Three.js eases much of the verbosity of the CPU side. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Sat Aug 12 12:23:16 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 16:23:16 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> , Message-ID: Glen writes: "I find it difficult to believe the "space" operated on by evolution is entirely convex or even connected." I've never tried this approach, but it seems plausible. The link may be pay-walled, but the gist is to evolve fancier operators using masking of the genome. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13369-015-1869-5 ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of ?glen? Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2017 10:14:20 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Exactly. And even though we're conflating the model of evolution with the real thing, I find it difficult to believe the "space" operated on by evolution is entirely convex or even connected. So, (point) mutation alone may *never* reach some regions, regardless of infinite individuals, infinite generations, or infinite space and time. On 08/12/2017 09:07 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > "Can we truly say that the crossover had nothing to do with the "innovation" ... that it only preserved the innovation and the mutation caused it? A neutral mutation can't be considered an "innovation", right?" > > A function related by rotation might be a candidate for crossover. > > f(x,y,z,...) -> good > f(y,z,x,...) -> good > f(z,x,y,...) -> good > f(x,z,y,...) -> bad > > Going through the combinations just by using mutation takes forever. But splicing at different points would help. One could imagine for motor functions these symmetry or shift detectors could be important. (Here it is just 1 dimensional.) -- ?glen? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grant.holland.sf at gmail.com Sat Aug 12 13:03:17 2017 From: grant.holland.sf at gmail.com (Grant Holland) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 11:03:17 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> Message-ID: Glen, Actually, I think you are probably right about crossovers! I can see how innovation can be attributed to them too. Thanks for pointing that out, Glen. (Had crossovers been discovered in '72 when Monod wrote his book?) But that is because crossovers, too, like mutations, are stochastic. Chance strikes again! That really is my larger point. Moreover, crossover and mutation events do not seem to be causally related. I suspect that one is not /caused by /the other. Their /relationship/ is also non-deterministic. In fact, one could probably use the functional named /conditional entropy /(from information theory) to calculate the /degree of uncertainty///around their chance relationship. (Or the functional /mutual information/ to measure their degree of determinism.) YES, chance and determinism come in degrees. That's what stochastic entropy is all about. It measures that degree. It measures where on a scale of chance-vs-determinism a particular situation (probability space) resides. Cheers, and thx for the insight. G. On 8/12/17 9:49 AM, ?glen? wrote: > This paragraph (for whatever reason) makes progress toward my counter-argument AGAINST both Monod-via-Grant and Wagner-via-Jenny. While it may be true that mutation is necessary for innovation, it's insufficient to claim that innovation comes only through mutation. Imagine two point mutations on different genes, in different individuals, neither of which (for now) produce a phenotype change (ala "neutral networks"). Then those individuals go on to reproduce for a few generations, passing along their respective mutations, never seeing a phenotypic change in their lineages. But them the two lineages mingle to produce an offspring with both mutations, where the 2 mutations together produce a phenotypic change. > > Can we truly say that the crossover had nothing to do with the "innovation" ... that it only preserved the innovation and the mutation caused it? A neutral mutation can't be considered an "innovation", right? > > > On 08/11/2017 09:05 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: >> Yes, a "mutation" to the genome is a change in one or more letters of the code. A "mutation" in the metabolic processes implied by said genetic sequence (a changed protein, a modified level of production of an unmodified protein or set of same, etc.) and ultimately in the mature phenotype (if the precursors to this are viable enough for a mature specimen to arrive?) and beyond that the larger social unit (herd/pack/tribe) that might benefit or suffer from the behaviour of the individual experiencing the mutation. Add individuals with a mutation in their bone-production that causes extremely large cross-section bones and thick crania into the Vikings and you get (what has been hypothesized to be) Berserker warriors who drop into a blind rage when their blood pressure rises in response to threat. As long as they are pointing *toward* the enemy when that happens, it is (maybe) highly functional for the group to have you around? > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jofr at cas-group.net Sat Aug 12 14:11:12 2017 From: jofr at cas-group.net (Jochen Fromm) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 20:11:12 +0200 Subject: [FRIAM] bit-player Message-ID: I've read on Twitter that Brian Hayes was in Santa Fe this week and visited the SFI. I suggested him to contact Owen if he is interested in taking part in a FRIAM meeting. Do you still meet on friday morning to discuss complex systems in one of the cozy and trendy Santa Fe cafes? Anyway, here is a link to his blog and his twitter profile, since he is always a source of inspiration:http://bit-player.orghttp://www.twitter.com/bit_player -J. Sent from my smartphone -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Sat Aug 12 14:55:01 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 12:55:01 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> Message-ID: <85e62dea-527c-a24a-a174-618c507abb8f@swcp.com> On 8/12/17 9:49 AM, ?glen? wrote: > This paragraph (for whatever reason) makes progress toward my counter-argument AGAINST both Monod-via-Grant and Wagner-via-Jenny. While it may be true that mutation is necessary for innovation, it's insufficient to claim that innovation comes only through mutation. Imagine two point mutations on different genes, in different individuals, neither of which (for now) produce a phenotype change (ala "neutral networks"). Then those individuals go on to reproduce for a few generations, passing along their respective mutations, never seeing a phenotypic change in their lineages. But them the two lineages mingle to produce an offspring with both mutations, where the 2 mutations together produce a phenotypic change. > > Can we truly say that the crossover had nothing to do with the "innovation" ... that it only preserved the innovation and the mutation caused it? A neutral mutation can't be considered an "innovation", right? Hmmm... I THINK what you are describing is a LATENT expression of a mutation? The fact that the mutation in each genome was "neutral" until it mixed or encountered the other, doesn't deny the mutation(s) nor does it negate the idea that it's expression and (recursive propogation through natural selection) preserved the innovation implied by the convolved pair of mutations? I think a similar, higher frequency example might include a single mutation which when mixed with some genomes is "neutral" or benign but when mixed with a particularly different one has selective (positive or negative) value? There may be something in there in the whole Malaria/SickleCell duality for example? Or maybe I'm mixing apples and pears. - Steve > > > On 08/11/2017 09:05 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: >> Yes, a "mutation" to the genome is a change in one or more letters of the code. A "mutation" in the metabolic processes implied by said genetic sequence (a changed protein, a modified level of production of an unmodified protein or set of same, etc.) and ultimately in the mature phenotype (if the precursors to this are viable enough for a mature specimen to arrive?) and beyond that the larger social unit (herd/pack/tribe) that might benefit or suffer from the behaviour of the individual experiencing the mutation. Add individuals with a mutation in their bone-production that causes extremely large cross-section bones and thick crania into the Vikings and you get (what has been hypothesized to be) Berserker warriors who drop into a blind rage when their blood pressure rises in response to threat. As long as they are pointing *toward* the enemy when that happens, it is (maybe) highly functional for the group to have you around? > From sasmyth at swcp.com Sat Aug 12 15:10:02 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 13:10:02 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> Message-ID: <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> your point about "point mutations" and non-connected spaces (not connected by point mutations anyway) is well taken and is what I think your last message that I was calling "latent" (expression) is about. From my daughter's sage anecdotal claims about Cancer, it seems that something like 7 independent cellular reproduction mechanisms have to fail or be jiggered for cancer to emerge in healthy cells. I don't know if that literally means 7 independent mutations must occur simultaneously or if more likely 7 have to "accumulate", which seems more likely, and follows (I think) your example. In the light of this discussion, I should probably ask her for a more thorough description of what she meant by all of that. In the socio/political/religious/economic realm it seems that multiple simultaneous mutations are more obvious to observe. I think we see humans mis-copy their memetic code (misinterpret their holy scriptures, or their parents or masters teachings, etc.) very often and sometimes in several dimensions at once. Perhaps the "robustness" of the underlying unit (a human being) allows for such wild mutations (highly antisocial behaviour by most measures) in a single copy, is what allows for what seems like some fairly fast memetic evolution at the social level? i'm probably reaching here, but in this petri dish that is the USA with Trump or the first world with Trump, et al, or even the globally connected (bits, atoms, virus particles, memes, oh my!) first, second and third world there is likely to be some relatively unprecedented mutations recognized and even selected for. Some could say that Donald Trump represents a half-dozen (or more) mutations in the socio/economic/political code and yet HE WAS SELECTED FOR and is almost surely malignant and seems to be metastasizing (other populist whitelash fascist movements around the first world). The question in this metaphor might be whether the body (humankind) has the ability to fight back against this? It fits my Candide/Pollyanna idea that times such as these are good times to focus significant resources on simply "tending your own garden". The world will have a better chance of fighting off this malignancy if it maintains it's overall health (social, economic, spiritual) otherwise. We can't let this malignancy weaken our immune system any more than it already has. buh, - Steve On 8/12/17 10:14 AM, ?glen? wrote: > Exactly. And even though we're conflating the model of evolution with the real thing, I find it difficult to believe the "space" operated on by evolution is entirely convex or even connected. So, (point) mutation alone may *never* reach some regions, regardless of infinite individuals, infinite generations, or infinite space and time. > > On 08/12/2017 09:07 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: >> "Can we truly say that the crossover had nothing to do with the "innovation" ... that it only preserved the innovation and the mutation caused it? A neutral mutation can't be considered an "innovation", right?" >> >> A function related by rotation might be a candidate for crossover. >> >> f(x,y,z,...) -> good >> f(y,z,x,...) -> good >> f(z,x,y,...) -> good >> f(x,z,y,...) -> bad >> >> Going through the combinations just by using mutation takes forever. But splicing at different points would help. One could imagine for motor functions these symmetry or shift detectors could be important. (Here it is just 1 dimensional.) From marcus at snoutfarm.com Sat Aug 12 15:26:07 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 19:26:07 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> , <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> Message-ID: Steve writes: "The question in this metaphor might be whether the body (humankind) has the ability to fight back against this? It fits my Candide/Pollyanna idea that times such as these are good times to focus significant resources on simply "tending your own garden". The world will have a better chance of fighting off this malignancy if it maintains it's overall health (social, economic, spiritual) otherwise. We can't let this malignancy weaken our immune system any more than it already has." I noticed a liberal neighbor of mine that used to drive an inconspicuous car now has a new Range Rover. I wonder if it was retail therapy, or maybe I was just projecting? Does that count as "tending your own garden"? While the storm passes she'll have a nice ride. Or maybe it won't pass and she just wants to be sure she can get around after public services collapse? Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Steven A Smith Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2017 1:10:02 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate your point about "point mutations" and non-connected spaces (not connected by point mutations anyway) is well taken and is what I think your last message that I was calling "latent" (expression) is about. From my daughter's sage anecdotal claims about Cancer, it seems that something like 7 independent cellular reproduction mechanisms have to fail or be jiggered for cancer to emerge in healthy cells. I don't know if that literally means 7 independent mutations must occur simultaneously or if more likely 7 have to "accumulate", which seems more likely, and follows (I think) your example. In the light of this discussion, I should probably ask her for a more thorough description of what she meant by all of that. In the socio/political/religious/economic realm it seems that multiple simultaneous mutations are more obvious to observe. I think we see humans mis-copy their memetic code (misinterpret their holy scriptures, or their parents or masters teachings, etc.) very often and sometimes in several dimensions at once. Perhaps the "robustness" of the underlying unit (a human being) allows for such wild mutations (highly antisocial behaviour by most measures) in a single copy, is what allows for what seems like some fairly fast memetic evolution at the social level? i'm probably reaching here, but in this petri dish that is the USA with Trump or the first world with Trump, et al, or even the globally connected (bits, atoms, virus particles, memes, oh my!) first, second and third world there is likely to be some relatively unprecedented mutations recognized and even selected for. Some could say that Donald Trump represents a half-dozen (or more) mutations in the socio/economic/political code and yet HE WAS SELECTED FOR and is almost surely malignant and seems to be metastasizing (other populist whitelash fascist movements around the first world). The question in this metaphor might be whether the body (humankind) has the ability to fight back against this? It fits my Candide/Pollyanna idea that times such as these are good times to focus significant resources on simply "tending your own garden". The world will have a better chance of fighting off this malignancy if it maintains it's overall health (social, economic, spiritual) otherwise. We can't let this malignancy weaken our immune system any more than it already has. buh, - Steve On 8/12/17 10:14 AM, ?glen? wrote: > Exactly. And even though we're conflating the model of evolution with the real thing, I find it difficult to believe the "space" operated on by evolution is entirely convex or even connected. So, (point) mutation alone may *never* reach some regions, regardless of infinite individuals, infinite generations, or infinite space and time. > > On 08/12/2017 09:07 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: >> "Can we truly say that the crossover had nothing to do with the "innovation" ... that it only preserved the innovation and the mutation caused it? A neutral mutation can't be considered an "innovation", right?" >> >> A function related by rotation might be a candidate for crossover. >> >> f(x,y,z,...) -> good >> f(y,z,x,...) -> good >> f(z,x,y,...) -> good >> f(x,z,y,...) -> bad >> >> Going through the combinations just by using mutation takes forever. But splicing at different points would help. One could imagine for motor functions these symmetry or shift detectors could be important. (Here it is just 1 dimensional.) ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nickthompson at earthlink.net Sat Aug 12 16:01:23 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 16:01:23 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> Message-ID: <017901d313a5$c63fd500$52bf7f00$@earthlink.net> Mendel discovered cross-overs. N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Grant Holland Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2017 1:03 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group ; ?glen? Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Glen, Actually, I think you are probably right about crossovers! I can see how innovation can be attributed to them too. Thanks for pointing that out, Glen. (Had crossovers been discovered in '72 when Monod wrote his book?) But that is because crossovers, too, like mutations, are stochastic. Chance strikes again! That really is my larger point. Moreover, crossover and mutation events do not seem to be causally related. I suspect that one is not caused by the other. Their relationship is also non-deterministic. In fact, one could probably use the functional named conditional entropy (from information theory) to calculate the degree of uncertainty around their chance relationship. (Or the functional mutual information to measure their degree of determinism.) YES, chance and determinism come in degrees. That's what stochastic entropy is all about. It measures that degree. It measures where on a scale of chance-vs-determinism a particular situation (probability space) resides. Cheers, and thx for the insight. G. On 8/12/17 9:49 AM, ?glen? wrote: This paragraph (for whatever reason) makes progress toward my counter-argument AGAINST both Monod-via-Grant and Wagner-via-Jenny. While it may be true that mutation is necessary for innovation, it's insufficient to claim that innovation comes only through mutation. Imagine two point mutations on different genes, in different individuals, neither of which (for now) produce a phenotype change (ala "neutral networks"). Then those individuals go on to reproduce for a few generations, passing along their respective mutations, never seeing a phenotypic change in their lineages. But them the two lineages mingle to produce an offspring with both mutations, where the 2 mutations together produce a phenotypic change. Can we truly say that the crossover had nothing to do with the "innovation" ... that it only preserved the innovation and the mutation caused it? A neutral mutation can't be considered an "innovation", right? On 08/11/2017 09:05 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: Yes, a "mutation" to the genome is a change in one or more letters of the code. A "mutation" in the metabolic processes implied by said genetic sequence (a changed protein, a modified level of production of an unmodified protein or set of same, etc.) and ultimately in the mature phenotype (if the precursors to this are viable enough for a mature specimen to arrive?) and beyond that the larger social unit (herd/pack/tribe) that might benefit or suffer from the behaviour of the individual experiencing the mutation. Add individuals with a mutation in their bone-production that causes extremely large cross-section bones and thick crania into the Vikings and you get (what has been hypothesized to be) Berserker warriors who drop into a blind rage when their blood pressure rises in response to threat. As long as they are pointing *toward* the enemy when that happens, it is (maybe) highly functional for the group to have you around? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carrera.fabio at gmail.com Sat Aug 12 19:10:39 2017 From: carrera.fabio at gmail.com (Fabio Carrera) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 17:10:39 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Looking for a home Message-ID: Dear all: Fabio here. I am in Santa Fe right now, but only until Tuesday. One of the reasons I am here is to find a home for my winter stay. I plan to be in Santa Fe from January 15, 2018 until April 15 (3 months). Do you know someone who may have a house for rent? If not, can you spread the word and let me know? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers! and THANKS! Fabio Fabio Carrera , Ph.D. Cell.: +1 508-615-5333 (USA) | +39 335 581-5292 (Italia) Skype: carrerawpi | Twitter | Facebook | Blog | My Homepage Dashboard | Venice Project Center | Venipedia | VPC | SFPC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Sun Aug 13 12:28:57 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?4pSjZ2xlbuKUqw==?=) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 09:28:57 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> Message-ID: <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> I absolutely loathe the meme metaphor. I don't usually agree with Nick's distinction between metaphor and analogy. 8^) But here, I claim the meme isn't *anything* like a gene... or more clearly, there is no idea/thought construct that is anything like a gene. To explain why I hate it so much, we can try to think deeply about the nazi that killed the antifa yesterday in Charlottesville and Trump's response to it (blaming all sides). To be clear, anyone who continues defending their vote for Trump at this point should be held accountable for their idiotic choice. But the Trump defender will say something like "Trump's not a racist or a nazi, even if some of his followers are." And, "yes I support Trump. But I'm not a nazi." Pffft. It flat out does not matter. There is no analog for mutation or crossover that we can use to map Trump to his nazis. The gooey milieu that flows from someone like Trump, whose life of privilege has severely decoupled him from reality, to the nazis, whose fear and hatred has severely decoupled them from reality, ... that gooey ball of ill-formed ideology can't be coupled to reality. That's the problem with metaphor, ideology, and fantasy. To make reductive attempts to model such fantasy with analogies to real things (like genes) is to conflate fantasy with reality. To be as clear as I can, ideas can only track back to mechanisms when they sync up with reality. That's why (observational) science is so successful. There are (basically) 2 ways ideas can interact with reality: 1) methodologically and 2) neural correlates. If a ball of ideas includes (in its not biological evolution) a method for regularly testing itself against reality, then it's possible to analogize between that ball of ideas and reality. Neither Trump, nor his nazis include that. So, the only remaining map we can draw from the ideas to reality is any neural correlates we can find. And until we have those, mapping the ideas to genes dooms us to faulty (at best) or delusional (at worst) inferences. Now, everyone I know who uses the words "meme" and "memetics" is relatively scientifically literate. So, memetics *seems* plausible because it's only used by relatively clear thinkers about relatively reality-touching balls of ideas. But I would bet money that memetics will fail miserably if we try to use it to explain or model fantasy-dominated people like Trump and his supporters. On 08/12/2017 12:10 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > In the socio/political/religious/economic realm it seems that multiple simultaneous mutations are more obvious to observe. I think we see humans mis-copy their memetic code (misinterpret their holy scriptures, or their parents or masters teachings, etc.) very often and sometimes in several dimensions at once. Perhaps the "robustness" of the underlying unit (a human being) allows for such wild mutations (highly antisocial behaviour by most measures) in a single copy, is what allows for what seems like some fairly fast memetic evolution at the social level? > > i'm probably reaching here, but in this petri dish that is the USA with Trump or the first world with Trump, et al, or even the globally connected (bits, atoms, virus particles, memes, oh my!) first, second and third world there is likely to be some relatively unprecedented mutations recognized and even selected for. Some could say that Donald Trump represents a half-dozen (or more) mutations in the socio/economic/political code and yet HE WAS SELECTED FOR and is almost surely malignant and seems to be metastasizing (other populist whitelash fascist movements around the first world). The question in this metaphor might be whether the body (humankind) has the ability to fight back against this? It fits my Candide/Pollyanna idea that times such as these are good times to focus significant resources on simply "tending your own garden". The world will have a better chance of fighting off this malignancy if it maintains it's overall health (social, economic, spiritual) > otherwise. We can't let this malignancy weaken our immune system any more than it already has. -- ?glen? From sasmyth at swcp.com Sun Aug 13 12:56:16 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 10:56:16 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> Message-ID: Glen - > I absolutely loathe the meme metaphor. I do agree that it has been overused and overpopularized. > I don't usually agree with Nick's distinction between metaphor and analogy. 8^) But here, I claim the meme isn't *anything* like a gene... or more clearly, there is no idea/thought construct that is anything like a gene. Is there an alternate way of thinking/talking about the *apparent* encoding of human/social/cultural artifacts in language units, including what appears to be something a lot like "mutation and drift" across this space? Or have I already (re)transgressed? - Steve From gepropella at gmail.com Sun Aug 13 14:17:53 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2VwciDim6c=?=) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 11:17:53 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> Message-ID: <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> Well like I said in response to Frank's suggestion about self psychology, I tend towards a Szaszian perspective on talk therapy and psychology. But even that constellation of ideas, I think, has more structural truth to it than memetics. Of course my ignorance may be getting in my way here. So I'm relatively open to being educated on any of these subjects. But there is a pretty high skeptical hurdle that I have to leap over in order for any such education to take root. On August 13, 2017 9:56:16 AM PDT, Steven A Smith wrote: >Is there an alternate way of thinking/talking about the *apparent* >encoding of human/social/cultural artifacts in language units, >including >what appears to be something a lot like "mutation and drift" across >this >space? > >Or have I already (re)transgressed? -- ?glen? From wimberly3 at gmail.com Sun Aug 13 14:22:21 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 12:22:21 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> Message-ID: You are a typical intellectualizing scientist, which isn't a bad thing to be. Frank p.s. Intellectualization is a defense which is not as debilitating as some others. Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 13, 2017 12:18 PM, "gepr ?" wrote: Well like I said in response to Frank's suggestion about self psychology, I tend towards a Szaszian perspective on talk therapy and psychology. But even that constellation of ideas, I think, has more structural truth to it than memetics. Of course my ignorance may be getting in my way here. So I'm relatively open to being educated on any of these subjects. But there is a pretty high skeptical hurdle that I have to leap over in order for any such education to take root. On August 13, 2017 9:56:16 AM PDT, Steven A Smith wrote: >Is there an alternate way of thinking/talking about the *apparent* >encoding of human/social/cultural artifacts in language units, >including >what appears to be something a lot like "mutation and drift" across >this >space? > >Or have I already (re)transgressed? -- ?glen? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Sun Aug 13 14:50:46 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2VwciDim6c=?=) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 11:50:46 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> Message-ID: <49288C4A-A0A4-4157-BAC2-A449EC40CD14@gmail.com> Ha! You see? That's not even wrong. 8^) But it's more plausible than asserting that my ideas are mutated and crossed over from ... yours ... or Szasz' ... or my mom's, for example. On August 13, 2017 11:22:21 AM PDT, Frank Wimberly wrote: >You are a typical intellectualizing scientist, which isn't a bad thing >to >be. > >Frank > >p.s. Intellectualization is a defense which is not as debilitating as >some >others. -- ?glen? From sasmyth at swcp.com Sun Aug 13 14:59:56 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 12:59:56 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Glen - I'm definitely not the one to educate you (or anyone) on this. Following your allusion to Szaszian anti-psychology, what I'm seeking is common ground on whether there is even a valid question which the ideas of cultural evolution and more pointedly, memetics purports to answer (or "structure usefully" perhaps in your terms?). I'm intuitive at my root, so if a set of heuristics, metaphors, rules-of-thumb, semi-formal analogies, notional models, seem to be failing in some significant way, I am happy to back off to a more fundamental level and seek fresh experiential bedrock to rebuild my house of cards upon. May I ask how you DO structure your thinking around the *apparent* (or is this an illusion) structured "progress" of human knowledge/behaviour/culture/society/civilization??? Naturally many see our current state on the brink of (apparently) climate disaster, collapse of capitalism, fizzling out of representative democracy, possibility of a (regional?) nuclear exchange, etc. as evidence that "we have not evolved!", but I would claim that is a gross misapprehension of the term "evolved". I'd say we HAVE evolved to the state we are in (collectively). For the sake of discussion, I'm happy to drop the attempt of the term "meme" to be a strong analogy to a "gene", but I'm guessing that is not enough to help you with the specifics of your skepticism? I'm poking AT the perimeters of your skepticism NOT to pry it off of you, but rather to understand if there is something specifically useful (to me) in that crust for my own skepticism (or even my pollyanna). - Sieve On 8/13/17 12:17 PM, gepr ? wrote: > Well like I said in response to Frank's suggestion about self psychology, I tend towards a Szaszian perspective on talk therapy and psychology. But even that constellation of ideas, I think, has more structural truth to it than memetics. > > Of course my ignorance may be getting in my way here. So I'm relatively open to being educated on any of these subjects. But there is a pretty high skeptical hurdle that I have to leap over in order for any such education to take root. > > > On August 13, 2017 9:56:16 AM PDT, Steven A Smith wrote: >> Is there an alternate way of thinking/talking about the *apparent* >> encoding of human/social/cultural artifacts in language units, >> including >> what appears to be something a lot like "mutation and drift" across >> this >> space? >> >> Or have I already (re)transgressed? From sasmyth at swcp.com Sun Aug 13 15:12:47 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 13:12:47 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <49288C4A-A0A4-4157-BAC2-A449EC40CD14@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <49288C4A-A0A4-4157-BAC2-A449EC40CD14@gmail.com> Message-ID: <7be66437-6dee-5a4d-ca97-5ddedebb075b@swcp.com> Glen - > Ha! You see? That's not even wrong. 8^) But it's more plausible than asserting that my ideas are mutated and crossed over from ... yours ... or Szasz' ... or my mom's, for example. What I'm trying to tickle apart here is what we do with the very idea that you might have a psuedo-Szaszian perspective on psychology or that you "are a Skeptic". forget "meme", let's try "pattern" on in *at least* a semi-formal sense like the Alexandrian idea of Pattern Languages? And what of "Alexandrian Patterns" ? Whether that is a "meme" or a "pattern" or just a "rose by any other name" is what I'm looking to get an alternative grasp of... If we admit patterns that can be copied, modified by intention or by ignorance or by chance, and can even be mixed with other patterns, then we have at least a partial registration in the target domain of biological evolution/genetics. I'm trying not to argue this from a perspective of persuading you, but rather on "helping" you deconstruct the general idea that biological evolution (based in Genetics) is in any way a model for social/cultural evolution. Or to deconstruct the more specifics of "memetics" and replace it with something more prosaic but useful perhaps? Or maybe I'm barking up the wrong three, maybe you are trying to tell me (as I think Szasz tries to tell us about mental illness) that there is no there there? neither here, nor there, - Steve > > On August 13, 2017 11:22:21 AM PDT, Frank Wimberly wrote: >> You are a typical intellectualizing scientist, which isn't a bad thing >> to >> be. >> >> Frank >> >> p.s. Intellectualization is a defense which is not as debilitating as >> some >> others. From marcus at snoutfarm.com Sun Aug 13 17:12:05 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 21:12:05 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com>, <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> Message-ID: "To explain why I hate it so much, we can try to think deeply about the nazi that killed the antifa yesterday in Charlottesville and Trump's response to it (blaming all sides)." This side must have been terribly menacing to a man in a > 300 HP car. Not only do words have meaning, but even perceptions. The memes are unbound or at least differently bound. So any fitness function that involves them cannot be compared. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of ?glen? Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2017 10:28 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate I absolutely loathe the meme metaphor. I don't usually agree with Nick's distinction between metaphor and analogy. 8^) But here, I claim the meme isn't *anything* like a gene... or more clearly, there is no idea/thought construct that is anything like a gene. To explain why I hate it so much, we can try to think deeply about the nazi that killed the antifa yesterday in Charlottesville and Trump's response to it (blaming all sides). To be clear, anyone who continues defending their vote for Trump at this point should be held accountable for their idiotic choice. But the Trump defender will say something like "Trump's not a racist or a nazi, even if some of his followers are." And, "yes I support Trump. But I'm not a nazi." Pffft. It flat out does not matter. There is no analog for mutation or crossover that we can use to map Trump to his nazis. The gooey milieu that flows from someone like Trump, whose life of privilege has severely decoupled him from reality, to the nazis, whose fear and hatred has severely decoupled them from reality, ... that gooey ball of ill-formed ideology can't be coupled to reality. That's the problem with metaphor, ideology, and fantasy. To make reductive attempts to model such fantasy with analogies to real things (like genes) is to conflate fantasy with reality. To be as clear as I can, ideas can only track back to mechanisms when they sync up with reality. That's why (observational) science is so successful. There are (basically) 2 ways ideas can interact with reality: 1) methodologically and 2) neural correlates. If a ball of ideas includes (in its not biological evolution) a method for regularly testing itself against reality, then it's possible to analogize between that ball of ideas and reality. Neither Trump, nor his nazis include that. So, the only remaining map we can draw from the ideas to reality is any neural correlates we can find. And until we have those, mapping the ideas to genes dooms us to faulty (at best) or delusional (at worst) inferences. Now, everyone I know who uses the words "meme" and "memetics" is relatively scientifically literate. So, memetics *seems* plausible because it's only used by relatively clear thinkers about relatively reality-touching balls of ideas. But I would bet money that memetics will fail miserably if we try to use it to explain or model fantasy-dominated people like Trump and his supporters. On 08/12/2017 12:10 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > In the socio/political/religious/economic realm it seems that multiple simultaneous mutations are more obvious to observe. I think we see humans mis-copy their memetic code (misinterpret their holy scriptures, or their parents or masters teachings, etc.) very often and sometimes in several dimensions at once. Perhaps the "robustness" of the underlying unit (a human being) allows for such wild mutations (highly antisocial behaviour by most measures) in a single copy, is what allows for what seems like some fairly fast memetic evolution at the social level? > > i'm probably reaching here, but in this petri dish that is the USA with Trump or the first world with Trump, et al, or even the globally connected (bits, atoms, virus particles, memes, oh my!) first, second and third world there is likely to be some relatively unprecedented mutations recognized and even selected for. Some could say that Donald Trump represents a half-dozen (or more) mutations in the socio/economic/political code and yet HE WAS SELECTED FOR and is almost surely malignant and seems to be metastasizing (other populist whitelash fascist movements around the first world). The question in this metaphor might be whether the body (humankind) has the ability to fight back against this? It fits my Candide/Pollyanna idea that times such as these are good times to focus significant resources on simply "tending your own garden". The world will have a better chance of fighting off this malignancy if it maintains it's overall health (social, economic, spiritual) > otherwise. We can't let this malignancy weaken our immune system any more than it already has. -- ?glen? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Sun Aug 13 18:34:03 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?4pSjZ2xlbuKUqw==?=) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 15:34:03 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> Message-ID: <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> I'm not a scholar, but I don't really think Szasz was anti-psychology, per se. He was a long-time member of the psychicatric association and all that jazz. But he pulled no punches when policing his community ... something we all should do more of ... moderate muslims bear the responsibility for allowing radicals to steal their religion just as much as intelligent Trump voters bear responsibility for the MAGA-morons ... just as I bear responsibility for what the Clinton team did to Sanders. So, when I say Szaszian, this is what I mean. I could tell more stories about my brushes with talk therapy. But I'd rather try to stay on topic: the structure and mechanisms by which ideas evolve (evolve as in "change over time", not genes and selection). I've said before on this list that I think the only reason we can communicate is because we share a common body structure (eyes, fingers, pancreas, etc.). The only reason I can communicate with my cat is because they also have hunger hormones and pain-mediating nerves. Etc. This implies (and I can directly assert) that ideas only evolve if/when bodies evolve. E.g. I think one of the reasons Hawking comes up with such fantastic alternative hypotheses for physical phenomena is *because* he once had a well functioning body and has seen those functions evolve and disappear. Another e.g. is that I can empathize with the scaredy-cat nazis because I, too, have a functioning fight or flight response. I was severely homophobic as a kid and up into college. And I've been conscious of how that irrational emotion has subsided over time. But I'd always had and tried to respect my gay friends throughout. I admitted that, and they treated me appropriately because, I was the one with the "illness", not them. So, if thoughts supervene on the body, then what changed in my body so that my homophobia subsided? Well, my hypothesis is mostly reinforcement and signals like oxytocin. The less I had bad feelings associated with the other homophobes in Texas (including my dad) and the more I studied, competed against, and partied with my gay friends, the more good feelings I began to associate with homosexuals. It took a really long time, which is one of my reasons for rejecting memetics. If ideas were real, then they could change instantaneously. But they're not. What's real are hormones and neurons. Does that help? On 08/13/2017 11:59 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > I'm definitely not the one to educate you (or anyone) on this. Following your allusion to Szaszian anti-psychology, what I'm seeking is common ground on whether there is even a valid question which the ideas of cultural evolution and more pointedly, memetics purports to answer (or "structure usefully" perhaps in your terms?). > > I'm intuitive at my root, so if a set of heuristics, metaphors, rules-of-thumb, semi-formal analogies, notional models, seem to be failing in some significant way, I am happy to back off to a more fundamental level and seek fresh experiential bedrock to rebuild my house of cards upon. > > May I ask how you DO structure your thinking around the *apparent* (or is this an illusion) structured "progress" of human knowledge/behaviour/culture/society/civilization??? Naturally many see our current state on the brink of (apparently) climate disaster, collapse of capitalism, fizzling out of representative democracy, possibility of a (regional?) nuclear exchange, etc. as evidence that "we have not evolved!", but I would claim that is a gross misapprehension of the term "evolved". I'd say we HAVE evolved to the state we are in (collectively). > > For the sake of discussion, I'm happy to drop the attempt of the term "meme" to be a strong analogy to a "gene", but I'm guessing that is not enough to help you with the specifics of your skepticism? I'm poking AT the perimeters of your skepticism NOT to pry it off of you, but rather to understand if there is something specifically useful (to me) in that crust for my own skepticism (or even my pollyanna). On 08/13/2017 12:12 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:> > > Glen - >> Ha! You see? That's not even wrong. 8^) But it's more plausible than asserting that my ideas are mutated and crossed over from ... yours ... or Szasz' ... or my mom's, for example. > What I'm trying to tickle apart here is what we do with the very idea that you might have a psuedo-Szaszian perspective on psychology or that you "are a Skeptic". > > forget "meme", let's try "pattern" on in *at least* a semi-formal sense like the Alexandrian idea of Pattern Languages? And what of "Alexandrian Patterns" ? Whether that is a "meme" or a "pattern" or just a "rose by any other name" is what I'm looking to get an alternative grasp of... > > If we admit patterns that can be copied, modified by intention or by ignorance or by chance, and can even be mixed with other patterns, then we have at least a partial registration in the target domain of biological evolution/genetics. > > I'm trying not to argue this from a perspective of persuading you, but rather on "helping" you deconstruct the general idea that biological evolution (based in Genetics) is in any way a model for social/cultural evolution. Or to deconstruct the more specifics of "memetics" and replace it with something more prosaic but useful perhaps? > > Or maybe I'm barking up the wrong three, maybe you are trying to tell me (as I think Szasz tries to tell us about mental illness) that there is no there there? -- ?glen? From marcus at snoutfarm.com Sun Aug 13 19:39:47 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 23:39:47 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> , <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> Message-ID: Glen writes: "It took a really long time, which is one of my reasons for rejecting memetics. If ideas were real, then they could change instantaneously." Every day I form hypotheses about how I think this or that experiment or code modification will go, and often I have to confront contrary evidence. I would say I have a pretty fast turnover of ideas. If I work with other people on these things, they will agree that some issues are settled, and other issues remain ambiguous. The language evolves with shared experience, and in such a way that feelings become less and less part of it. I don't think it has anything to do with when lunchtime is. Other people it is all about lunchtime, oxytocin and stuff like that. How are social issues any different? Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of ?glen? Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2017 4:34:03 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme I'm not a scholar, but I don't really think Szasz was anti-psychology, per se. He was a long-time member of the psychicatric association and all that jazz. But he pulled no punches when policing his community ... something we all should do more of ... moderate muslims bear the responsibility for allowing radicals to steal their religion just as much as intelligent Trump voters bear responsibility for the MAGA-morons ... just as I bear responsibility for what the Clinton team did to Sanders. So, when I say Szaszian, this is what I mean. I could tell more stories about my brushes with talk therapy. But I'd rather try to stay on topic: the structure and mechanisms by which ideas evolve (evolve as in "change over time", not genes and selection). I've said before on this list that I think the only reason we can communicate is because we share a common body structure (eyes, fingers, pancreas, etc.). The only reason I can communicate with my cat is because they also have hunger hormones and pain-mediating nerves. Etc. This implies (and I can directly assert) that ideas only evolve if/when bodies evolve. E.g. I think one of the reasons Hawking comes up with such fantastic alternative hypotheses for physical phenomena is *because* he once had a well functioning body and has seen those functions evolve and disappear. Another e.g. is that I can empathize with the scaredy-cat nazis because I, too, have a functioning fight or flight response. I was severely homophobic as a kid and up into college. And I've been conscious of how that irrational emotion has subsided over time. But I'd always had and tried to respect my gay friends throughout. I admitted that, and they treated me appropriately because, I was the one with the "illness", not them. So, if thoughts supervene on the body, then what changed in my body so that my homophobia subsided? Well, my hypothesis is mostly reinforcement and signals like oxytocin. The less I had bad feelings associated with the other homophobes in Texas (including my dad) and the more I studied, competed against, and partied with my gay friends, the more good feelings I began to associate with homosexuals. It took a really long time, which is one of my reasons for rejecting memetics. If ideas were real, then they could change instantaneously. But they're not. What's real are hormones and neurons. Does that help? On 08/13/2017 11:59 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > I'm definitely not the one to educate you (or anyone) on this. Following your allusion to Szaszian anti-psychology, what I'm seeking is common ground on whether there is even a valid question which the ideas of cultural evolution and more pointedly, memetics purports to answer (or "structure usefully" perhaps in your terms?). > > I'm intuitive at my root, so if a set of heuristics, metaphors, rules-of-thumb, semi-formal analogies, notional models, seem to be failing in some significant way, I am happy to back off to a more fundamental level and seek fresh experiential bedrock to rebuild my house of cards upon. > > May I ask how you DO structure your thinking around the *apparent* (or is this an illusion) structured "progress" of human knowledge/behaviour/culture/society/civilization??? Naturally many see our current state on the brink of (apparently) climate disaster, collapse of capitalism, fizzling out of representative democracy, possibility of a (regional?) nuclear exchange, etc. as evidence that "we have not evolved!", but I would claim that is a gross misapprehension of the term "evolved". I'd say we HAVE evolved to the state we are in (collectively). > > For the sake of discussion, I'm happy to drop the attempt of the term "meme" to be a strong analogy to a "gene", but I'm guessing that is not enough to help you with the specifics of your skepticism? I'm poking AT the perimeters of your skepticism NOT to pry it off of you, but rather to understand if there is something specifically useful (to me) in that crust for my own skepticism (or even my pollyanna). On 08/13/2017 12:12 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:> > > Glen - >> Ha! You see? That's not even wrong. 8^) But it's more plausible than asserting that my ideas are mutated and crossed over from ... yours ... or Szasz' ... or my mom's, for example. > What I'm trying to tickle apart here is what we do with the very idea that you might have a psuedo-Szaszian perspective on psychology or that you "are a Skeptic". > > forget "meme", let's try "pattern" on in *at least* a semi-formal sense like the Alexandrian idea of Pattern Languages? And what of "Alexandrian Patterns" ? Whether that is a "meme" or a "pattern" or just a "rose by any other name" is what I'm looking to get an alternative grasp of... > > If we admit patterns that can be copied, modified by intention or by ignorance or by chance, and can even be mixed with other patterns, then we have at least a partial registration in the target domain of biological evolution/genetics. > > I'm trying not to argue this from a perspective of persuading you, but rather on "helping" you deconstruct the general idea that biological evolution (based in Genetics) is in any way a model for social/cultural evolution. Or to deconstruct the more specifics of "memetics" and replace it with something more prosaic but useful perhaps? > > Or maybe I'm barking up the wrong three, maybe you are trying to tell me (as I think Szasz tries to tell us about mental illness) that there is no there there? -- ?glen? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Sun Aug 13 23:35:50 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2VwciDim6c=?=) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 20:35:50 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> , <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> Message-ID: <02EF9C47-53C8-4E8C-B6CA-D42F2DA6BABB@gmail.com> On August 13, 2017 4:39:47 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels wrote: > >Every day I form hypotheses about how I think this or that experiment >or code modification will go, and often I have to confront contrary >evidence. I would say I have a pretty fast turnover of ideas. I doubt that. My guess is that your ideas that you think are turning over fast have a long and deep history within you and you resurrect them sporadically and try to apply them to some current context. >If I work with other people on these things, they will agree that some >issues are settled, and other issues remain ambiguous. The language >evolves with shared experience, and in such a way that feelings become >less and less part of it. I don't think it has anything to do with >when lunchtime is. Other people it is all about lunchtime, oxytocin >and stuff like that. > > >How are social issues any different? They aren't any different. But I think your sense of fast turnover and munging of ideas is illusory. Those ideas you flip through were already there in some form and your trying them out against the (social) context. People who spend their lives building these ideas have a large rolodex to flip through, some of which other rolodex flippers will agree are or are not applicable in this or that type of context. Innovative ideas do emerge. But it's never fast. -- ?glen? From marcus at snoutfarm.com Mon Aug 14 02:02:21 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 06:02:21 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <02EF9C47-53C8-4E8C-B6CA-D42F2DA6BABB@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> , <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> , <02EF9C47-53C8-4E8C-B6CA-D42F2DA6BABB@gmail.com> Message-ID: Glen writes: "Innovative ideas do emerge. But it's never fast." Well, the context you provided was struggling with a phobia, or some entrenched belief. I don't really see why it is important if innovation is occurring or not. What difference does it make if any one example is discovered on the spot, or synthesized from several tactics found in the rolodex? Contrast to a person that is not growing such a rolodex over years or decades and is overwhelmed when they confront a different kind of situation. I posit that the (supposed) anomie, the opioid abuse, organized racism, Trump, etc. are all just indicators of populations that have low mental plasticity due to living in a stable, unchallenged, low-opportunity environment. The kind of environment that social conservatives create whenever given the opportunity -- like (sheesh) that it matters one iota the kind of sex one enjoys. But their problem is not a spiritual or existential crisis. Their desperation and rage just comes from a feeling that they can't confront, that they just don't have much to offer. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of gepr ? Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2017 9:35:50 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme On August 13, 2017 4:39:47 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels wrote: > >Every day I form hypotheses about how I think this or that experiment >or code modification will go, and often I have to confront contrary >evidence. I would say I have a pretty fast turnover of ideas. I doubt that. My guess is that your ideas that you think are turning over fast have a long and deep history within you and you resurrect them sporadically and try to apply them to some current context. >If I work with other people on these things, they will agree that some >issues are settled, and other issues remain ambiguous. The language >evolves with shared experience, and in such a way that feelings become >less and less part of it. I don't think it has anything to do with >when lunchtime is. Other people it is all about lunchtime, oxytocin >and stuff like that. > > >How are social issues any different? They aren't any different. But I think your sense of fast turnover and munging of ideas is illusory. Those ideas you flip through were already there in some form and your trying them out against the (social) context. People who spend their lives building these ideas have a large rolodex to flip through, some of which other rolodex flippers will agree are or are not applicable in this or that type of context. Innovative ideas do emerge. But it's never fast. -- ?glen? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com Friam Info Page - Redfish redfish.com FRIAM Group is an emergent organization of Complexity researchers and software developers in Santa Fe, New Mexico interested in Applied Complexity, Artificial Life ... FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove [http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7sGWLjbK7_I/WIkK7N6XteI/AAAAAAAAAQE/xVmyW4c_XVAuezfd9_8Vcqao5LUXeTG7ACK4B/s82/StrangeTrump.jpg] FRIAM: The Comic Edition friam-comic.blogspot.com We decided that lampooning FriAM was about as much fun as shooting fish in a barrel, and about as disrespectful (of the fish and the barrel)! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Mon Aug 14 02:38:07 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 06:38:07 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <02EF9C47-53C8-4E8C-B6CA-D42F2DA6BABB@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> , <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> , <02EF9C47-53C8-4E8C-B6CA-D42F2DA6BABB@gmail.com> Message-ID: "People who spend their lives building these ideas have a large rolodex to flip through, some of which other rolodex flippers will agree are or are not applicable in this or that type of context." Funny you use the example of cards in a rolodex: It makes me think of memes! I suspect neural correlates rapidly calibrate to networks with similar behavior & topology across individuals sharing a _grounded_ task, whether it is hunting a Buffalo or writing a song. But crazy ain't grounded, so distributing names for those networks to non-crazy people doesn't survive a fitness test. Crazy terms can only be up-voted in a crazy community. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of gepr ? Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2017 9:35:50 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme On August 13, 2017 4:39:47 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels wrote: > >Every day I form hypotheses about how I think this or that experiment >or code modification will go, and often I have to confront contrary >evidence. I would say I have a pretty fast turnover of ideas. I doubt that. My guess is that your ideas that you think are turning over fast have a long and deep history within you and you resurrect them sporadically and try to apply them to some current context. >If I work with other people on these things, they will agree that some >issues are settled, and other issues remain ambiguous. The language >evolves with shared experience, and in such a way that feelings become >less and less part of it. I don't think it has anything to do with >when lunchtime is. Other people it is all about lunchtime, oxytocin >and stuff like that. > > >How are social issues any different? They aren't any different. But I think your sense of fast turnover and munging of ideas is illusory. Those ideas you flip through were already there in some form and your trying them out against the (social) context. People who spend their lives building these ideas have a large rolodex to flip through, some of which other rolodex flippers will agree are or are not applicable in this or that type of context. Innovative ideas do emerge. But it's never fast. -- ?glen? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Mon Aug 14 11:18:36 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2VwciDim6c=?=) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 08:18:36 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <02EF9C47-53C8-4E8C-B6CA-D42F2DA6BABB@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4dc5bcae-640a-c7b6-9b75-f2550cf581ec@gmail.com> On August 13, 2017 11:38:07 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels wrote: > >I suspect neural correlates rapidly calibrate to networks with similar >behavior & topology across individuals sharing a _grounded_ task, >whether it is hunting a Buffalo or writing a song. But crazy ain't >grounded, so distributing names for those networks to non-crazy people >doesn't survive a fitness test. Crazy terms can only be up-voted in a >crazy community. I agree that the payload/content is obviously unhinged when viewed by a community with methods for regular grounding. But the crazy of Trumpians and the crazy of nazis do have a common ground: fear and doom. Such expression of doom, of the world going to hell, evokes that urgic fear in those around us that also have it, even if for other reasons (e.g. nuclear war or Satan's beast). That's what's syncing up, the underlying physiological and neurological patterns. On August 13, 2017 11:02:21 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels wrote: > >Well, the context you provided was struggling with a phobia, or some >entrenched belief. Yes. And I claim all thought is like that ... ie tightly coupled with the body, regardless of the scope or speed of the signaling mechanism. Obviously, fast signals (juxtacrine, synaptic and axonal) will play a different role from slow signals (hormonal). But both are at play in the construction and evolution of thoughts/ideas. >I don't really see why it is important if innovation is occurring or >not. What difference does it make if any one example is discovered on >the spot, or synthesized from several tactics found in the rolodex? >Contrast to a person that is not growing such a rolodex over years or >decades and is overwhelmed when they confront a different kind of >situation. We are all growing new structures constantly in response to the patterns impinging on us. Including novelty is important to my alternative to memetics, where one might be tempted to suggest (extrapolated from Monod-via-Grant or Wagner-via-Jenny) that new ideas come from point mutations on memes, which would be ridiculous. Any one person's rolodex of previously kneaded ideas will have a bias that reflects their subculture. The difference is that one model fits better than the other (memes), which is the topic of the larger conversation ... namely the weakness of the analogies between models of evolution to referents like thought or biology. >I posit that the (supposed) anomie, the opioid abuse, organized racism, >Trump, etc. are all just indicators of populations that have low mental >plasticity due to living in a stable, unchallenged, low-opportunity >environment. I agree completely. But it's important to see how memes provide a weak explanation of this, but reinforcement learning explains it pretty well. > But their problem is not a spiritual or existential crisis. Their > desperation and rage just comes from a feeling that they can't > confront, that they just don't have much to offer. I disagree with the last part. They feel they have a lot to offer if the elites would only listen. This lack of listening they feel is because they don't experience the neural-construct-evoking engagement they get when they hook up with others who have those same structures. Somehow, Al Gore's expressions of fear just don't evoke their fear and vice versa. But Trump's expressions of fear do "resonate" with them, for whatever reason. From marcus at snoutfarm.com Mon Aug 14 11:41:13 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 15:41:13 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <4dc5bcae-640a-c7b6-9b75-f2550cf581ec@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <02EF9C47-53C8-4E8C-B6CA-D42F2DA6BABB@gmail.com> , <4dc5bcae-640a-c7b6-9b75-f2550cf581ec@gmail.com> Message-ID: "We are all growing new structures constantly in response to the patterns impinging on us. Including novelty is important to my alternative to memetics, where one might be tempted to suggest (extrapolated from Monod-via-Grant or Wagner-via-Jenny) that new ideas come from point mutations on memes, which would be ridiculous. Any one person's rolodex of previously kneaded ideas will have a bias that reflects their subculture." If memory has a holographic property -- that there are many correlated memories with each memory -- then one could imagine that operators against this compressed representation could change dramatically just with a point mutation. A smell that triggers memory of a childhood event, a conflict with a lover, etc. The experience of seeing many things in a new light when a crucial fact arrives, etc. Now assuming this is not controversial, it is still not clear to what extent if this can be anything more than subjective. But, at least in principle there could be concepts shared by many parties that would display these characteristics, and would similarly evolve in important ways just from point mutations. The concepts or language connected to the concepts could impose many constraints on how frequently certain point mutations would get visited, e.g. the language could just prohibit them as nonsense. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of gepr ? Sent: Monday, August 14, 2017 9:18:36 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme On August 13, 2017 11:38:07 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels wrote: > >I suspect neural correlates rapidly calibrate to networks with similar >behavior & topology across individuals sharing a _grounded_ task, >whether it is hunting a Buffalo or writing a song. But crazy ain't >grounded, so distributing names for those networks to non-crazy people >doesn't survive a fitness test. Crazy terms can only be up-voted in a >crazy community. I agree that the payload/content is obviously unhinged when viewed by a community with methods for regular grounding. But the crazy of Trumpians and the crazy of nazis do have a common ground: fear and doom. Such expression of doom, of the world going to hell, evokes that urgic fear in those around us that also have it, even if for other reasons (e.g. nuclear war or Satan's beast). That's what's syncing up, the underlying physiological and neurological patterns. On August 13, 2017 11:02:21 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels wrote: > >Well, the context you provided was struggling with a phobia, or some >entrenched belief. Yes. And I claim all thought is like that ... ie tightly coupled with the body, regardless of the scope or speed of the signaling mechanism. Obviously, fast signals (juxtacrine, synaptic and axonal) will play a different role from slow signals (hormonal). But both are at play in the construction and evolution of thoughts/ideas. >I don't really see why it is important if innovation is occurring or >not. What difference does it make if any one example is discovered on >the spot, or synthesized from several tactics found in the rolodex? >Contrast to a person that is not growing such a rolodex over years or >decades and is overwhelmed when they confront a different kind of >situation. We are all growing new structures constantly in response to the patterns impinging on us. Including novelty is important to my alternative to memetics, where one might be tempted to suggest (extrapolated from Monod-via-Grant or Wagner-via-Jenny) that new ideas come from point mutations on memes, which would be ridiculous. Any one person's rolodex of previously kneaded ideas will have a bias that reflects their subculture. The difference is that one model fits better than the other (memes), which is the topic of the larger conversation ... namely the weakness of the analogies between models of evolution to referents like thought or biology. >I posit that the (supposed) anomie, the opioid abuse, organized racism, >Trump, etc. are all just indicators of populations that have low mental >plasticity due to living in a stable, unchallenged, low-opportunity >environment. I agree completely. But it's important to see how memes provide a weak explanation of this, but reinforcement learning explains it pretty well. > But their problem is not a spiritual or existential crisis. Their > desperation and rage just comes from a feeling that they can't > confront, that they just don't have much to offer. I disagree with the last part. They feel they have a lot to offer if the elites would only listen. This lack of listening they feel is because they don't experience the neural-construct-evoking engagement they get when they hook up with others who have those same structures. Somehow, Al Gore's expressions of fear just don't evoke their fear and vice versa. But Trump's expressions of fear do "resonate" with them, for whatever reason. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Mon Aug 14 12:25:19 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 09:25:19 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: Re: the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <40a15e2e-aad5-aa61-3bfa-2220937929ac@gmail.com> References: <40a15e2e-aad5-aa61-3bfa-2220937929ac@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1ee278be-7aeb-e863-d278-60d193078541@gmail.com> Oops. Accidentally sent this direct. -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 09:24:17 -0700 From: g??? To: Marcus Daniels Just to be clear, I don't disagree with some abstraction of "point mutations" on some thing other than a "meme", like a modal pattern of network activation. It's the analogy between ideas and genes, I object to. Where a fast mode switch (or any sync'ed evocation) is more than subjective lies in a shared, grouped, mode switch. Let's say 2 people each have networks with 2 attractors, with no objective mapping between the 2 people or the 4 attractors or the underlying biological structures. But if their mode switching is synchronized (P1.MA & P2.MB = P1.MB & P2.MA -- i.e. when person 1 enters mode A, person 2 enters mode B, and when person 1 enters mode B, person 2 enters mode A), then that synchrony is objective. When I say "nuclear war", Sally feels anxiety and when Sally says "malware in the power grid", I feel anxiety, then our our synchronous mode-switching is objective, regardless of the payload/content or the underlying feeling. It could also be "nuclear war" => Sally.hatred, "malware in the power grid" => Glen.anxiety. But this is where my requirement for both me and Sally to have common physiological structures (neocortex, fingers, knees, etc.). Having R2/D2 say "malware in the power grid" is not likely to give me any hint what R2/D2 might be thinking because its "physiology" doesn't mirror my own. This (objective) reflection is required for the illusion of communication to obtain. On 08/14/2017 08:41 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > If memory has a holographic property -- that there are many correlated memories with each memory -- then one could imagine that operators against this compressed representation could change dramatically just with a point mutation. A smell that triggers memory of a childhood event, a conflict with a lover, etc. The experience of seeing many things in a new light when a crucial fact arrives, etc. Now assuming this is not controversial, it is still not clear to what extent if this can be anything more than subjective. But, at least in principle there could be concepts shared by many parties that would display these characteristics, and would similarly evolve in important ways just from point mutations. The concepts or language connected to the concepts could impose many constraints on how frequently certain point mutations would get visited, e.g. the language could just prohibit them as nonsense. -- g??? From marcus at snoutfarm.com Mon Aug 14 12:40:51 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 16:40:51 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: Re: the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <1ee278be-7aeb-e863-d278-60d193078541@gmail.com> References: <40a15e2e-aad5-aa61-3bfa-2220937929ac@gmail.com>, <1ee278be-7aeb-e863-d278-60d193078541@gmail.com> Message-ID: < Having R2/D2 say "malware in the power grid" is not likely to give me any hint what R2/D2 might be thinking because its "physiology" doesn't mirror my own. This (objective) reflection is required for the illusion of communication to obtain. > I don't deny that communication could well have evolved through this correlated mode switching, but once it exists the difference between animals and, hopefully, modern humans is that we can inhibit or modulate these things. Actually I think my dog can even modulate them. The dog can learn rules and carry on without constantly looking at me to see if I am approving. If someone like Hillary acts more like R2/D2, that's fine. It is even good. She (the person in such a role) doesn't need to make me glow or buy me a beer. I can grasp she is self-interested and calculating. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of g??? Sent: Monday, August 14, 2017 10:25:19 AM To: friam at redfish.com Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: Re: the Skeptical Meme Oops. Accidentally sent this direct. -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 09:24:17 -0700 From: g??? To: Marcus Daniels Just to be clear, I don't disagree with some abstraction of "point mutations" on some thing other than a "meme", like a modal pattern of network activation. It's the analogy between ideas and genes, I object to. Where a fast mode switch (or any sync'ed evocation) is more than subjective lies in a shared, grouped, mode switch. Let's say 2 people each have networks with 2 attractors, with no objective mapping between the 2 people or the 4 attractors or the underlying biological structures. But if their mode switching is synchronized (P1.MA & P2.MB = P1.MB & P2.MA -- i.e. when person 1 enters mode A, person 2 enters mode B, and when person 1 enters mode B, person 2 enters mode A), then that synchrony is objective. When I say "nuclear war", Sally feels anxiety and when Sally says "malware in the power grid", I feel anxiety, then our our synchronous mode-switching is objective, regardless of the payload/content or the underlying feeling. It could also be "nuclear war" => Sally.hatred, "malware in the power grid" => Glen.anxiety. But this is where my requirement for both me and Sally to have common physiological structures (neocortex, fingers, knees, etc.). Having R2/D2 say "malware in the power grid" is not likely to give me any hint what R2/D2 might be thinking because its "physiology" doesn't mirror my own. This (objective) reflection is required for the illusion of communication to obtain. On 08/14/2017 08:41 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > If memory has a holographic property -- that there are many correlated memories with each memory -- then one could imagine that operators against this compressed representation could change dramatically just with a point mutation. A smell that triggers memory of a childhood event, a conflict with a lover, etc. The experience of seeing many things in a new light when a crucial fact arrives, etc. Now assuming this is not controversial, it is still not clear to what extent if this can be anything more than subjective. But, at least in principle there could be concepts shared by many parties that would display these characteristics, and would similarly evolve in important ways just from point mutations. The concepts or language connected to the concepts could impose many constraints on how frequently certain point mutations would get visited, e.g. the language could just prohibit them as nonsense. -- g??? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dale.schumacher at gmail.com Tue Aug 15 15:16:51 2017 From: dale.schumacher at gmail.com (Dale Schumacher) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 14:16:51 -0500 Subject: [FRIAM] =?utf-8?q?Classes=2C_Complexity=2C_and_Functional_Progra?= =?utf-8?q?mming_=E2=80=93_Kent_C=2E_Dodds_=E2=80=93_Medium?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: A while ago, I wrote up a few examples of functional and reactive (actor-based) techniques using JavaScript. Perhaps they will add something to this discussion. http://www.dalnefre.com/wp/2017/01/same-fringe-revisited/ On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 11:20 AM, Owen Densmore wrote: > Great info, thanks. > > A few constraints: > - I've finally gotten back to Write & Run JavaScript, no transpiling. > - My workflow also is simplified: only npm scripts possibly using a node > script. > - I run a local hot-loading node http server so Write & Run is automatic. > All managed by a npm script. > > Why? The JS world went nuts for several years with transpiling, babel (for > es6/future JS features), task managers, linters etc. It was arguably > necessary for the times. I used CoffeeScript for a while mainly for safety > and pythonic syntax. But my peers said "Oh, great, *another* thing to > learn"! And they didn't. :) > > Things are now hugely better, with editors that are very IDE-ish and > eslint built in, and the language is finally getting functional features > like map, reduce, and so on. The for loop? It's dead Jim. Yay. > > So there is a return to sanity and a healing from JS "fatigue". Simple JS, > no task managers, and simple commands for minifying, linting, conversion to > node modules, and so on. Write & Run w/ chores as scripts. > > Within that world, currently, is a very strong movement toward FP. Hence > the article starting this conversation. And my hope for incrementally > converting to FP. > > -- Owen > > PS: My work is not very webby. Mainly a NetLogo lookalike for JS. No > install, just start up a page. I render using webgl which oddly enough has > a fairly nice language for the GPU, and Three.js eases much of the > verbosity of the CPU side. > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From desmith at santafe.edu Wed Aug 16 08:56:23 2017 From: desmith at santafe.edu (Eric Smith) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 06:56:23 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <02EF9C47-53C8-4E8C-B6CA-D42F2DA6BABB@gma il.com> Message-ID: <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> > Their desperation and rage just comes from a feeling that they can't confront, that they just don't have much to offer. > > Marcus Reading this, I feel like you could found a new generation of something that is like existentialist philosophy but equally-well political theory. It is not so far from Nietzche?s notion that ?God is dead? creates a problem for people, and they will face a fork in the road in how they try to deal with it. Maybe even, considering the currents running through European and particularly German society at the time he was writing (and that he specifically wrote about), driven by concerns based on similar observations. It strikes me that this is an available point of view for almost any person. Granted, the distribution of rewards and frustrations differs from person to person and also from region to region, and that matters. But the black box (black hole?) of how minds form characters and orientations in response to streams of these things draws from an immense and to me-obscure range of inputs. Makes me wonder, Eric From marcus at snoutfarm.com Wed Aug 16 11:10:39 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 15:10:39 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <02EF9C47-53C8-4E8C-B6CA-D42F2DA6BABB@gma il.com> , <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> Message-ID: Eric writes: < It is not so far from Nietzche?s notion that ?God is dead? creates a problem for people, and they will face a fork in the road in how they try to deal with it. > Yeah, it is probably nothing new that is happening nor a new interpretation. Institutions of various kinds can give individuals a role to play and guidelines for conduct, but a highly interconnected population with a complex economy will stress these institutions and reveal their limitations. Meanwhile, only exceptional and delusional individuals can really make a convincing case (esp. to themselves) about their unique value either coupled-to or uncoupled-from from institutions. However, I fear the stakes are pretty high now -- the contagion of people going bonkers could be fast with social media. A healthy society is one where individuals can mature to the point they can begin to doubt the meaning in their own anxiety (whether by themselves, with their shrink or their spiritual authority) and make it to the next day. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Eric Smith Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2017 6:56:23 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme > Their desperation and rage just comes from a feeling that they can't confront, that they just don't have much to offer. > > Marcus Reading this, I feel like you could found a new generation of something that is like existentialist philosophy but equally-well political theory. It is not so far from Nietzche?s notion that ?God is dead? creates a problem for people, and they will face a fork in the road in how they try to deal with it. Maybe even, considering the currents running through European and particularly German society at the time he was writing (and that he specifically wrote about), driven by concerns based on similar observations. It strikes me that this is an available point of view for almost any person. Granted, the distribution of rewards and frustrations differs from person to person and also from region to region, and that matters. But the black box (black hole?) of how minds form characters and orientations in response to streams of these things draws from an immense and to me-obscure range of inputs. Makes me wonder, Eric ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Wed Aug 16 13:46:20 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 10:46:20 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <02EF9C47-53C8-4E8C-B6CA-D42F2DA6BABB@gma il.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> Message-ID: <7c03d9c6-b850-07f8-0c30-30e809d8551d@gmail.com> Nietzsche's complaining/rejoicing re: the loss of the Christian rule set isn't all that relevant, I don't think. Those Trumpians complaining about "political correctness" aren't complaining about the lack of a rule set, because there exists a new rule set. E.g. don't chant "Jews will not replace us" and expect to get away with it. Similarly, we can't really apply Nietzsche's observation that deontology is faulty to authoritarians anywhere. No, the desperation and rage Marcus points to is about a perceived change to the rules, from one broken rule set to another (equally broken) rule set. That's what makes it tricky for those of us who don't base our ethics on rules. When a Trumpian points out flaws in the lefty's rule set, we consequentialists have to agree with them... yeah, their rule set is faulty. They hear that part. But then the Trumpian fails to hear the qualifier: "Because ALL rule sets are faulty! Damnit." On 08/16/2017 08:10 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Yeah, it is probably nothing new that is happening nor a new interpretation. Institutions of various kinds can give individuals a role to play and guidelines for conduct, but a highly interconnected population with a complex economy will stress these institutions and reveal their limitations. Meanwhile, only exceptional and delusional individuals can really make a convincing case (esp. to themselves) about their unique value either coupled-to or uncoupled-from from institutions. However, I fear the stakes are pretty high now -- the contagion of people going bonkers could be fast with social media. A healthy society is one where individuals can mature to the point they can begin to doubt the meaning in their own anxiety (whether by themselves, with their shrink or their spiritual authority) and make it to the next day. > > Marcus > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 16, 2017 6:56:23 AM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme > > Reading this, I feel like you could found a new generation of something that is like existentialist philosophy but equally-well political theory. > > It is not so far from Nietzche?s notion that ?God is dead? creates a problem for people, and they will face a fork in the road in how they try to deal with it. Maybe even, considering the currents running through European and particularly German society at the time he was writing (and that he specifically wrote about), driven by concerns based on similar observations. > > It strikes me that this is an available point of view for almost any person. Granted, the distribution of rewards and frustrations differs from person to person and also from region to region, and that matters. But the black box (black hole?) of how minds form characters and orientations in response to streams of these things draws from an immense and to me-obscure range of inputs. > > Makes me wonder, > > Eric -- g??? From sasmyth at swcp.com Wed Aug 16 15:50:50 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 13:50:50 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <02EF9C47-53C8-4E8C-B6CA-D42F2DA6BABB@gma il.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> Message-ID: <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> Marcus/Eric - Great observations, both. I think this cuts to (part of) the heart of the matter. I just recently watched "Glass Castle" (current run at Violet Crown) with Woody Harrelson playing the role of a fairly intelligent (his daughter, the memoirist characterizes him as brilliant) but highly dysfunctional father of 4 who himself has (mostly/almost) escaped the small Appalachian coal-mining town he was raised in by an acutely abusive mother and an apathetic/dysfunctional father and greater community. The family lives a vagabond life with Harrelson's character (Rex) leading them on an alternatingly merry and curiosity-driven chase through skipping out on bill collectors and trying to find the "next big opportunity" and "escape the forces out to repress us!". It is (IMO) a great story of a nearly effective attempt (by the parents) to escape/transcend their own dysfunctional roots and the mostly effective experience of the children escaping their own (passed down a generation) from that half-functional platform. I also picked up (at a "tiny library" in a neighborhood) a copy JD Vance's "Hillbilly Legacy", a memoir written by a 31 year old Harvard educated lawyer, now living happily (and presumably functionally) in San Francisco with his wife and child(ren?), but still quite attached emotionally/romantically to his own roots in Appalachia (a small KY coal mining town) and the Rustbelt (Middletown OH, aka MiddleTucky) where all of his family and most of his childhood friends still live and vote for and continue to support Trump. The common thread is the abject hopelessness that surrounded the people locked into those environments by circumstance, including lack of perspective to "just leave". Vance credits his Grandparents who raised him most of his life for having had enough perspective to shield him from the worst of that and to encourage/help him "just leave". His chronicle (I also listened to an NPR book interview when it came out maybe a year ago) includes feeling that he had "done everything in his power to waste his life up until about 18 years old" and looking at his cohort and family, might use the term "but for the grace of God, there go I". My Pollyanna (a fairly significant player in my personal Pantheon of Personalities which helps me cope with the kinds of Cosmic Ennui and Existential Angst that comes with trying to be a thinking/caring person in these hyper-connected, seemingly chaotic times) has me looking for a "bright side" of all of this. I particularly want to call out the following quote from Marcus: /A healthy society is one where individuals can mature to the point they can begin to doubt the meaning in their own anxiety (whether by themselves, with their shrink or their spiritual authority) and make it to the next day. / and offer a rewording (my words are _underlined_) or expansion: "/whether with themselves, their shrink, their spiritual authority,/ _or their community of emergently self-enlightened people_" and "/and make it /_beyond_/the next day/ _and into a new era of contagious enlightened self-interest_" I hope that if we can ever get through this acutely dark/inverted time that we can follow some of the example of Nelson Mandela in his perspective and leadership out of the centuries long oppression of his people that was most recently exhibited as Apartheid. Obviously that moment was only a partial antidote, as too many of the original problems linger or arise again. But I *think* it was a better solution than to the similarly genocidal/punative response many of his people were calling for when the descendents of their Colonial Overlords finally fell. I heard recently a quote from Barbara Boxer as she left the political stage after many decades: "No victory is final" This underscores why we are dealing with the rise of white-supremacy/nazi/confederate/kkk, gender oppression, and many other battles presumed to have been won. This moment (in most places) is nothing like the conditions of the antebellum South, nor the era of Nazi/Fascist power in Europe, but there are clearly strong echoes. Such things *might* be suppressed temporarily by force, but ultimately those kinds of behaviours/activities dissipate through healing and enlightenment much more than regulation/punishment/suppression. my $.02, - Steve On 8/16/17 9:10 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > > Eric writes: > > > < It is not so far from Nietzche?s notion that ?God is dead? creates a > problem for people, and they will face a fork in the road in how they > try to deal with it. > > > > Yeah, it is probably nothing new that is happening nor a new > interpretation. Institutions of various kinds can give individuals a > role to play and guidelines for conduct, but a highly interconnected > population with a complex economy will stress these institutions and > reveal their limitations. Meanwhile, only exceptional and delusional > individuals can really make a convincing case (esp. to themselves) > about their unique value either coupled-to or uncoupled-from from > institutions. However, I fear the stakes are pretty high now -- the > contagion of people going bonkers could be fast with social media. A > healthy society is one where individuals can mature to the point they > can begin to doubt the meaning in their own anxiety (whether by > themselves, with their shrink or their spiritual authority) and make > it to the next day. > > > Marcus > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* Friam on behalf of Eric Smith > > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 16, 2017 6:56:23 AM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme > > > Their desperation and rage just comes from a feeling that they can't > confront, that they just don't have much to offer. > > > > Marcus > > Reading this, I feel like you could found a new generation of > something that is like existentialist philosophy but equally-well > political theory. > > It is not so far from Nietzche?s notion that ?God is dead? creates a > problem for people, and they will face a fork in the road in how they > try to deal with it. Maybe even, considering the currents running > through European and particularly German society at the time he was > writing (and that he specifically wrote about), driven by concerns > based on similar observations. > > It strikes me that this is an available point of view for almost any > person. Granted, the distribution of rewards and frustrations differs > from person to person and also from region to region, and that > matters. But the black box (black hole?) of how minds form characters > and orientations in response to streams of these things draws from an > immense and to me-obscure range of inputs. > > Makes me wonder, > > Eric > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Wed Aug 16 15:58:43 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 13:58:43 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <7c03d9c6-b850-07f8-0c30-30e809d8551d@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <02EF9C47-53C8-4E8C-B6CA-D42F2DA6BABB@gma il.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <7c03d9c6-b850-07f8-0c30-30e809d8551d@gmail.com> Message-ID: <046105bd-6c4b-e49e-af0a-31d4caef67cf@swcp.com> Glen - I am inclined to agree with you, but am left somewhat empty-handed with: "because ALL rule sets are faulty! Damnit." my instincts are with you on this, yet in some kind of Godelian (not Gordian) knot I find myself: A) questioning the "rule" you just stated. and B) finding myself conjuring (fuzzy?) rules to replace the crisp ones I resent/resist! Are Heuristics or Patterns also rules? Can we suppress any desire/need to have formal rules and not just discover (or never notice) that we have an implicit rule set embedded in our intuition from our genetic and cultural origins, informed at best by personal experiences? I'd like to imagine that we *can* transcend all rules (explicit/implicit, crisp/fuzzy, etc.) but am not quite sure what that would mean or why? - Steve On 8/16/17 11:46 AM, g??? wrote: > Nietzsche's complaining/rejoicing re: the loss of the Christian rule set isn't all that relevant, I don't think. Those Trumpians complaining about "political correctness" aren't complaining about the lack of a rule set, because there exists a new rule set. E.g. don't chant "Jews will not replace us" and expect to get away with it. Similarly, we can't really apply Nietzsche's observation that deontology is faulty to authoritarians anywhere. > > No, the desperation and rage Marcus points to is about a perceived change to the rules, from one broken rule set to another (equally broken) rule set. That's what makes it tricky for those of us who don't base our ethics on rules. When a Trumpian points out flaws in the lefty's rule set, we consequentialists have to agree with them... yeah, their rule set is faulty. They hear that part. But then the Trumpian fails to hear the qualifier: "Because ALL rule sets are faulty! Damnit." > > > On 08/16/2017 08:10 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: >> Yeah, it is probably nothing new that is happening nor a new interpretation. Institutions of various kinds can give individuals a role to play and guidelines for conduct, but a highly interconnected population with a complex economy will stress these institutions and reveal their limitations. Meanwhile, only exceptional and delusional individuals can really make a convincing case (esp. to themselves) about their unique value either coupled-to or uncoupled-from from institutions. However, I fear the stakes are pretty high now -- the contagion of people going bonkers could be fast with social media. A healthy society is one where individuals can mature to the point they can begin to doubt the meaning in their own anxiety (whether by themselves, with their shrink or their spiritual authority) and make it to the next day. >> >> Marcus >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 16, 2017 6:56:23 AM >> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group >> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme >> >> Reading this, I feel like you could found a new generation of something that is like existentialist philosophy but equally-well political theory. >> >> It is not so far from Nietzche?s notion that ?God is dead? creates a problem for people, and they will face a fork in the road in how they try to deal with it. Maybe even, considering the currents running through European and particularly German society at the time he was writing (and that he specifically wrote about), driven by concerns based on similar observations. >> >> It strikes me that this is an available point of view for almost any person. Granted, the distribution of rewards and frustrations differs from person to person and also from region to region, and that matters. But the black box (black hole?) of how minds form characters and orientations in response to streams of these things draws from an immense and to me-obscure range of inputs. >> >> Makes me wonder, >> >> Eric > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Wed Aug 16 17:59:37 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:59:37 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <046105bd-6c4b-e49e-af0a-31d4caef67cf@swcp.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <02EF9C47-53C8-4E8C-B6CA-D42F2DA6BABB@gma il.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <7c03d9c6-b850-07f8-0c30-30e809d8551d@gmail.com> <046105bd-6c4b-e49e-af0a-31d4caef67cf@swcp.com> Message-ID: <9b3bee0e-40dc-6d2c-4909-12612fc2cd15@gmail.com> Well, just because all rule sets are faulty doesn't mean some rule sets aren't better than others. (Need I repeat it? Surely not. ... All models ... yadda yadda.) And so your intuition is right, all rule sets are faulty, including the rule set of all rule sets. The lesson isn't to throw away rule sets or adopt the One Rule Set to Rule Them All and fuzzify it. The lesson is that something other than rules is needed to complement rule sets. And we already have that in our US justice system. The rule of law is fantastic, but it has to be tempered with context-satisficing things like democracy and trial by jury, institutionalized, bureaucratic methodology for periodically falsifying the rules against the highly contingent reality. Your "like to imagine that we can transcend all rules" is just more rule-following. There is no Ultimate Reality. There is no destination. There is only journey. But some journeys are more clearly self-defeating than others. On 08/16/2017 12:58 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > I am inclined to agree with you, but am left somewhat empty-handed with: > > "because ALL rule sets are faulty! Damnit." > > my instincts are with you on this, yet in some kind of Godelian (not Gordian) knot I find myself: > > A) questioning the "rule" you just stated. > > and > > B) finding myself conjuring (fuzzy?) rules to replace the crisp ones > I resent/resist! > > Are Heuristics or Patterns also rules? Can we suppress any desire/need to have formal rules and not just discover (or never notice) that we have an implicit rule set embedded in our intuition from our genetic and cultural origins, informed at best by personal experiences? > > I'd like to imagine that we *can* transcend all rules (explicit/implicit, crisp/fuzzy, etc.) but am not quite sure what that would mean or why? -- g??? From sasmyth at swcp.com Wed Aug 16 18:10:07 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 16:10:07 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <9b3bee0e-40dc-6d2c-4909-12612fc2cd15@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <02EF9C47-53C8-4E8C-B6CA-D42F2DA6BABB@gma il.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <7c03d9c6-b850-07f8-0c30-30e809d8551d@gmail.com> <046105bd-6c4b-e49e-af0a-31d4caef67cf@swcp.com> <9b3bee0e-40dc-6d2c-4909-12612fc2cd15@gmail.com> Message-ID: > Well, just because all rule sets are faulty doesn't mean some rule sets aren't better than others. (Need I repeat it? Surely not. ... All models ... yadda yadda.) And so your intuition is right, all rule sets are faulty, including the rule set of all rule sets. The lesson isn't to throw away rule sets or adopt the One Rule Set to Rule Them All and fuzzify it. The lesson is that something other than rules is needed to complement rule sets. And we already have that in our US justice system. > > The rule of law is fantastic, but it has to be tempered with context-satisficing things like democracy and trial by jury, institutionalized, bureaucratic methodology for periodically falsifying the rules against the highly contingent reality. > > Your "like to imagine that we can transcend all rules" is just more rule-following. There is no Ultimate Reality. There is no destination. There is only journey. But some journeys are more clearly self-defeating than others. Got it! (he says as he grinds dumbly and trudgingly around in a circle tracking his own footprints, not realizing that he's slowly turning to butter) From merlelefkoff at gmail.com Wed Aug 16 18:16:22 2017 From: merlelefkoff at gmail.com (Merle Lefkoff) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 15:16:22 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> Message-ID: Obama's tweet about the events in Charlottesville got the most "likes" of any tweet in twitter history. It is a quote from Nelson Mandela: "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion ? People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love ? For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite,? On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 12:50 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > Marcus/Eric - > > > Great observations, both. I think this cuts to (part of) the heart of > the matter. > > > I just recently watched "Glass Castle" (current run at Violet Crown) with > Woody Harrelson playing the role of a fairly intelligent (his daughter, the > memoirist characterizes him as brilliant) but highly dysfunctional father > of 4 who himself has (mostly/almost) escaped the small Appalachian > coal-mining town he was raised in by an acutely abusive mother and an > apathetic/dysfunctional father and greater community. The family lives a > vagabond life with Harrelson's character (Rex) leading them on an > alternatingly merry and curiosity-driven chase through skipping out on bill > collectors and trying to find the "next big opportunity" and "escape the > forces out to repress us!". It is (IMO) a great story of a nearly > effective attempt (by the parents) to escape/transcend their own > dysfunctional roots and the mostly effective experience of the children > escaping their own (passed down a generation) from that half-functional > platform. > > > I also picked up (at a "tiny library" in a neighborhood) a copy JD Vance's > "Hillbilly Legacy", a memoir written by a 31 year old Harvard educated > lawyer, now living happily (and presumably functionally) in San Francisco > with his wife and child(ren?), but still quite attached > emotionally/romantically to his own roots in Appalachia (a small KY coal > mining town) and the Rustbelt (Middletown OH, aka MiddleTucky) where all of > his family and most of his childhood friends still live and vote for and > continue to support Trump. > > > The common thread is the abject hopelessness that surrounded the people > locked into those environments by circumstance, including lack of > perspective to "just leave". Vance credits his Grandparents who raised > him most of his life for having had enough perspective to shield him from > the worst of that and to encourage/help him "just leave". His chronicle > (I also listened to an NPR book interview when it came out maybe a year > ago) includes feeling that he had "done everything in his power to waste > his life up until about 18 years old" and looking at his cohort and family, > might use the term "but for the grace of God, there go I". > > > My Pollyanna (a fairly significant player in my personal Pantheon of > Personalities which helps me cope with the kinds of Cosmic Ennui and > Existential Angst that comes with trying to be a thinking/caring person in > these hyper-connected, seemingly chaotic times) has me looking for a > "bright side" of all of this. > > I particularly want to call out the following quote from Marcus: > > *A healthy society is one where individuals can mature to the point they > can begin to doubt the meaning in their own anxiety (whether by themselves, > with their shrink or their spiritual authority) and make it to the next > day. * > > and offer a rewording (my words are *underlined*) or expansion: > > "*whether with themselves, their shrink, their spiritual authority,* *or > their community of emergently self-enlightened people*" > > and > > "*and make it **beyond** the next day* *and into a new era of > contagious enlightened self-interest*" > > I hope that if we can ever get through this acutely dark/inverted time > that we can follow some of the example of Nelson Mandela in his perspective > and leadership out of the centuries long oppression of his people that was > most recently exhibited as Apartheid. Obviously that moment was only a > partial antidote, as too many of the original problems linger or arise > again. But I *think* it was a better solution than to the similarly > genocidal/punative response many of his people were calling for when the > descendents of their Colonial Overlords finally fell. > > I heard recently a quote from Barbara Boxer as she left the political > stage after many decades: > "No victory is final" > > This underscores why we are dealing with the rise of white-supremacy/nazi/confederate/kkk, > gender oppression, and many other battles presumed to have been won. > This moment (in most places) is nothing like the conditions of the > antebellum South, nor the era of Nazi/Fascist power in Europe, but there > are clearly strong echoes. Such things *might* be suppressed temporarily > by force, but ultimately those kinds of behaviours/activities dissipate > through healing and enlightenment much more than regulation/punishment/ > suppression. > > my $.02, > - Steve > > On 8/16/17 9:10 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > > Eric writes: > > > < It is not so far from Nietzche?s notion that ?God is dead? creates a > problem for people, and they will face a fork in the road in how they try > to deal with it. > > > > Yeah, it is probably nothing new that is happening nor a new > interpretation. Institutions of various kinds can give individuals a > role to play and guidelines for conduct, but a highly interconnected > population with a complex economy will stress these institutions and reveal > their limitations. Meanwhile, only exceptional and delusional individuals > can really make a convincing case (esp. to themselves) about their unique > value either coupled-to or uncoupled-from from institutions. However, I > fear the stakes are pretty high now -- the contagion of people going > bonkers could be fast with social media. A healthy society is one where > individuals can mature to the point they can begin to doubt the meaning in > their own anxiety (whether by themselves, with their shrink or their > spiritual authority) and make it to the next day. > > > Marcus > ------------------------------ > *From:* Friam on > behalf of Eric Smith > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 16, 2017 6:56:23 AM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme > > > > Their desperation and rage just comes from a feeling that they can't > confront, that they just don't have much to offer. > > > > Marcus > > Reading this, I feel like you could found a new generation of something > that is like existentialist philosophy but equally-well political theory. > > It is not so far from Nietzche?s notion that ?God is dead? creates a > problem for people, and they will face a fork in the road in how they try > to deal with it. Maybe even, considering the currents running through > European and particularly German society at the time he was writing (and > that he specifically wrote about), driven by concerns based on similar > observations. > > It strikes me that this is an available point of view for almost any > person. Granted, the distribution of rewards and frustrations differs from > person to person and also from region to region, and that matters. But the > black box (black hole?) of how minds form characters and orientations in > response to streams of these things draws from an immense and to me-obscure > range of inputs. > > Makes me wonder, > > Eric > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -- Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy emergentdiplomacy.org Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA Visiting Professor in Integrative Peacebuilding Saint Paul University Ottawa, Ontario, Canada merlelefkoff at gmail.com mobile: (303) 859-5609 skype: merle.lelfkoff2 twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Wed Aug 16 19:30:52 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 17:30:52 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> Message-ID: <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Merle - Thanks for offering this up. My own maunderings about "what is in human nature" having me trust that we are still *mostly* the animals who gathered in groups of order Dunbar number (150?) who *mostly* loved one another and treated one another with respect and generosity (up to a myriad quirks of personality and a shared fate). On the other hand, while members of said community/group/tribe/pack/herd might extend some of that goodwill toward others they recognized as same/thePeople, they had good reason to be less generous/trusting toward others who were not so familiar, who spoke unrecognizeable languages, whose skin/hair/eye color or features were significantly different. I think these are very real evolutionarily adaptive roots of what we see as Xenophobia today. I don't describe this as a way of trying to normalize racist/ethnic bigotry, but rather to acknowledge that it has some instinctual roots that focus the "hateful/fearful teachings" that become institutionalized in subcultures and perhaps entire cultures. And it is this wholesale adoption by a group which ends up not only teaching, but maintaining the fear (and therefore hate?). I know your work is IN "peacebuilding". Does your model include an acceptance of these somewhat instinctual responses to "the Other" ? I was very pleased to see the speech by Heather's mother today which I thought held a very positive message in what must be a very tragic moment for her. - Steve On 8/16/17 4:16 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote: > Obama's tweet about the events in Charlottesville got the most "likes" > of any tweet in twitter history. It is a quote from Nelson Mandela: > "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his > skin or his background or his religion ? People must learn to hate, > and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love ? For love > comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite,? > > On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 12:50 PM, Steven A Smith > wrote: > > Marcus/Eric - > > > Great observations, both. I think this cuts to (part of) the > heart of the matter. > > > I just recently watched "Glass Castle" (current run at Violet > Crown) with Woody Harrelson playing the role of a fairly > intelligent (his daughter, the memoirist characterizes him as > brilliant) but highly dysfunctional father of 4 who himself has > (mostly/almost) escaped the small Appalachian coal-mining town he > was raised in by an acutely abusive mother and an > apathetic/dysfunctional father and greater community. The family > lives a vagabond life with Harrelson's character (Rex) leading > them on an alternatingly merry and curiosity-driven chase through > skipping out on bill collectors and trying to find the "next big > opportunity" and "escape the forces out to repress us!". It is > (IMO) a great story of a nearly effective attempt (by the parents) > to escape/transcend their own dysfunctional roots and the mostly > effective experience of the children escaping their own (passed > down a generation) from that half-functional platform. > > > I also picked up (at a "tiny library" in a neighborhood) a copy JD > Vance's "Hillbilly Legacy", a memoir written by a 31 year old > Harvard educated lawyer, now living happily (and presumably > functionally) in San Francisco with his wife and child(ren?), but > still quite attached emotionally/romantically to his own roots in > Appalachia (a small KY coal mining town) and the Rustbelt > (Middletown OH, aka MiddleTucky) where all of his family and most > of his childhood friends still live and vote for and continue to > support Trump. > > > The common thread is the abject hopelessness that surrounded the > people locked into those environments by circumstance, including > lack of perspective to "just leave". Vance credits his > Grandparents who raised him most of his life for having had enough > perspective to shield him from the worst of that and to > encourage/help him "just leave". His chronicle (I also listened > to an NPR book interview when it came out maybe a year ago) > includes feeling that he had "done everything in his power to > waste his life up until about 18 years old" and looking at his > cohort and family, might use the term "but for the grace of God, > there go I". > > > My Pollyanna (a fairly significant player in my personal Pantheon > of Personalities which helps me cope with the kinds of Cosmic > Ennui and Existential Angst that comes with trying to be a > thinking/caring person in these hyper-connected, seemingly chaotic > times) has me looking for a "bright side" of all of this. > > > I particularly want to call out the following quote from Marcus: > > /A healthy society is one where individuals can mature to the > point they can begin to doubt the meaning in their own > anxiety (whether by themselves, with their shrink or their > spiritual authority) and make it to the next day. / > > and offer a rewording (my words are _underlined_) or expansion: > > "/whether with themselves, their shrink, their spiritual > authority,/ _or their community of emergently self-enlightened > people_" > > and > > "/and make it /_beyond_/the next day/ _and into a new era of > contagious enlightened self-interest_" > > I hope that if we can ever get through this acutely dark/inverted > time that we can follow some of the example of Nelson Mandela in > his perspective and leadership out of the centuries long > oppression of his people that was most recently exhibited as > Apartheid. Obviously that moment was only a partial antidote, as > too many of the original problems linger or arise again. But I > *think* it was a better solution than to the similarly > genocidal/punative response many of his people were calling for > when the descendents of their Colonial Overlords finally fell. > > I heard recently a quote from Barbara Boxer as she left the > political stage after many decades: > "No victory is final" > > This underscores why we are dealing with the rise of > white-supremacy/nazi/confederate/kkk, gender oppression, and many > other battles presumed to have been won. This moment (in most > places) is nothing like the conditions of the antebellum South, > nor the era of Nazi/Fascist power in Europe, but there are clearly > strong echoes. Such things *might* be suppressed temporarily by > force, but ultimately those kinds of behaviours/activities > dissipate through healing and enlightenment much more than > regulation/punishment/suppression. > > my $.02, > - Steve > > On 8/16/17 9:10 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: >> >> Eric writes: >> >> >> < It is not so far from Nietzche?s notion that ?God is dead? >> creates a problem for people, and they will face a fork in the >> road in how they try to deal with it. > >> >> >> Yeah, it is probably nothing new that is happening nor a new >> interpretation. Institutions of various kinds can give >> individuals a role to play and guidelines for conduct, but a >> highly interconnected population with a complex economy will >> stress these institutions and reveal their limitations. >> Meanwhile, only exceptional and delusional individuals can really >> make a convincing case (esp. to themselves) about their unique >> value either coupled-to or uncoupled-from from institutions. >> However, I fear the stakes are pretty high now -- the contagion >> of people going bonkers could be fast with social media. A >> healthy society is one where individuals can mature to the point >> they can begin to doubt the meaning in their own anxiety (whether >> by themselves, with their shrink or their spiritual authority) >> and make it to the next day. >> >> >> Marcus >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> *From:* Friam >> on behalf of Eric Smith >> >> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 16, 2017 6:56:23 AM >> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group >> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme >> >> > Their desperation and rage just comes from a feeling that they >> can't confront, that they just don't have much to offer. >> > >> > Marcus >> >> Reading this, I feel like you could found a new generation of >> something that is like existentialist philosophy but equally-well >> political theory. >> >> It is not so far from Nietzche?s notion that ?God is dead? >> creates a problem for people, and they will face a fork in the >> road in how they try to deal with it. Maybe even, considering >> the currents running through European and particularly German >> society at the time he was writing (and that he specifically >> wrote about), driven by concerns based on similar observations. >> >> It strikes me that this is an available point of view for almost >> any person. Granted, the distribution of rewards and >> frustrations differs from person to person and also from region >> to region, and that matters. But the black box (black hole?) of >> how minds form characters and orientations in response to streams >> of these things draws from an immense and to me-obscure range of >> inputs. >> >> Makes me wonder, >> >> Eric >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe >> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >> by Dr. Strangelove >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> >> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > ============================================================ FRIAM > Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe > at St. John's College to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > by Dr. Strangelove > > -- > Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy > emergentdiplomacy.org > Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA > Visiting Professor in Integrative Peacebuilding > Saint Paul University > Ottawa, Ontario, Canada > merlelefkoff at gmail.com mobile: (303) > 859-5609 skype: merle.lelfkoff2 > twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Wed Aug 16 19:53:37 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 16:53:37 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: <6f4637c5-a689-7848-1eca-4b2f9e133590@gmail.com> FWIW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience#Genes_and_physiology > Openness to experience, like the other traits in the five factor model, is believed to have a genetic component. Identical twins (who have the same DNA) show similar scores on openness to experience, even when they have been adopted into different families and raised in very different environments.[44] One genetic study with 86 subjects found Openness to experience related to the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism associated with the serotonin transporter gene.[45] > > Higher levels of openness have been linked to activity in the ascending dopaminergic system and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Openness is the only personality trait that correlates with neuropsychological tests of dorsolateral prefrontal cortical function, supporting theoretical links among openness, cognitive functioning, and IQ.[46] > > 44. Jang, K. L., Livesly, W. J., & Vemon, P. A.; Livesley; Vernon (September 1996). "Heritability of the big five personality dimensions and their facets: A twin study". Journal of Personality. 64 (3): 577?592. PMID 8776880. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1996.tb00522.x. > 45. Scott F. Stoltenberg, Geoffrey R. Twitchell, Gregory L. Hanna, Edwin H. Cook, Hiram E. Fitzgerald, Robert A. Zucker, Karley Y. Little; Twitchell; Hanna; Cook; Fitzgerald; Zucker; Little (March 2002). "Serotonin transporter promoter polymorphism, peripheral indexes of serotonin function, and personality measures in families with alcoholism". American Journal of Medical Genetics. 114 (2): 230?234. PMID 11857587. doi:10.1002/ajmg.10187. > 46. Colin G. DeYoung, Jordan B. Peterson and Daniel M. Higgins (2005). "Sources of openness/intellect: cognitive and neuropsychological correlates of the fifth factor of personality". Journal of Personality. 73 (4): 825?858. PMID 15958136. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2005.00330.x. On 08/16/2017 04:30 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > On the other hand, while members of said community/group/tribe/pack/herd might extend some of that goodwill toward others they recognized as same/thePeople, they had good reason to be less generous/trusting toward others who were not so familiar, who spoke unrecognizeable languages, whose skin/hair/eye color or features were significantly different. I think these are very real evolutionarily adaptive roots of what we see as Xenophobia today. -- g??? From merlelefkoff at gmail.com Wed Aug 16 20:05:47 2017 From: merlelefkoff at gmail.com (Merle Lefkoff) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 17:05:47 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: Steve, I trust strongly the neuroscience that insists that our brains have not totally evolved past the point of reptilian behavior emerging from what I call the left-over parts of the brain. We seem to remain wired for kin and tribe, and perhaps our survival still depends to some extent on all the parts of our brain, old and new. We teach, however, that some form of contemplative practice holds the key to leaping over the barriers that keep us from loving one another. On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 4:30 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > Merle - > > Thanks for offering this up. My own maunderings about "what is in human > nature" having me trust that we are still *mostly* the animals who gathered > in groups of order Dunbar number (150?) who *mostly* loved one another and > treated one another with respect and generosity (up to a myriad quirks of > personality and a shared fate). > > On the other hand, while members of said community/group/tribe/pack/herd > might extend some of that goodwill toward others they recognized as > same/thePeople, they had good reason to be less generous/trusting toward > others who were not so familiar, who spoke unrecognizeable languages, whose > skin/hair/eye color or features were significantly different. I think > these are very real evolutionarily adaptive roots of what we see as > Xenophobia today. > > I don't describe this as a way of trying to normalize racist/ethnic > bigotry, but rather to acknowledge that it has some instinctual roots that > focus the "hateful/fearful teachings" that become institutionalized in > subcultures and perhaps entire cultures. And it is this wholesale > adoption by a group which ends up not only teaching, but maintaining the > fear (and therefore hate?). > > I know your work is IN "peacebuilding". Does your model include an > acceptance of these somewhat instinctual responses to "the Other" ? > > I was very pleased to see the speech by Heather's mother today which I > thought held a very positive message in what must be a very tragic moment > for her. > > - Steve > > On 8/16/17 4:16 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote: > > Obama's tweet about the events in Charlottesville got the most "likes" of > any tweet in twitter history. It is a quote from Nelson Mandela: "No > one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his > background or his religion ? People must learn to hate, and if they can > learn to hate, they can be taught to love ? For love comes more naturally > to the human heart than its opposite,? > > On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 12:50 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > >> Marcus/Eric - >> >> >> Great observations, both. I think this cuts to (part of) the heart of >> the matter. >> >> >> I just recently watched "Glass Castle" (current run at Violet Crown) with >> Woody Harrelson playing the role of a fairly intelligent (his daughter, the >> memoirist characterizes him as brilliant) but highly dysfunctional father >> of 4 who himself has (mostly/almost) escaped the small Appalachian >> coal-mining town he was raised in by an acutely abusive mother and an >> apathetic/dysfunctional father and greater community. The family lives a >> vagabond life with Harrelson's character (Rex) leading them on an >> alternatingly merry and curiosity-driven chase through skipping out on bill >> collectors and trying to find the "next big opportunity" and "escape the >> forces out to repress us!". It is (IMO) a great story of a nearly >> effective attempt (by the parents) to escape/transcend their own >> dysfunctional roots and the mostly effective experience of the children >> escaping their own (passed down a generation) from that half-functional >> platform. >> >> >> I also picked up (at a "tiny library" in a neighborhood) a copy JD >> Vance's "Hillbilly Legacy", a memoir written by a 31 year old Harvard >> educated lawyer, now living happily (and presumably functionally) in San >> Francisco with his wife and child(ren?), but still quite attached >> emotionally/romantically to his own roots in Appalachia (a small KY coal >> mining town) and the Rustbelt (Middletown OH, aka MiddleTucky) where all of >> his family and most of his childhood friends still live and vote for and >> continue to support Trump. >> >> >> The common thread is the abject hopelessness that surrounded the people >> locked into those environments by circumstance, including lack of >> perspective to "just leave". Vance credits his Grandparents who raised >> him most of his life for having had enough perspective to shield him from >> the worst of that and to encourage/help him "just leave". His chronicle >> (I also listened to an NPR book interview when it came out maybe a year >> ago) includes feeling that he had "done everything in his power to waste >> his life up until about 18 years old" and looking at his cohort and family, >> might use the term "but for the grace of God, there go I". >> >> >> My Pollyanna (a fairly significant player in my personal Pantheon of >> Personalities which helps me cope with the kinds of Cosmic Ennui and >> Existential Angst that comes with trying to be a thinking/caring person in >> these hyper-connected, seemingly chaotic times) has me looking for a >> "bright side" of all of this. >> >> I particularly want to call out the following quote from Marcus: >> >> *A healthy society is one where individuals can mature to the point they >> can begin to doubt the meaning in their own anxiety (whether by themselves, >> with their shrink or their spiritual authority) and make it to the next >> day. * >> >> and offer a rewording (my words are *underlined*) or expansion: >> >> "*whether with themselves, their shrink, their spiritual authority,* *or >> their community of emergently self-enlightened people*" >> >> and >> >> "*and make it **beyond** the next day* *and into a new era of >> contagious enlightened self-interest*" >> >> I hope that if we can ever get through this acutely dark/inverted time >> that we can follow some of the example of Nelson Mandela in his perspective >> and leadership out of the centuries long oppression of his people that was >> most recently exhibited as Apartheid. Obviously that moment was only a >> partial antidote, as too many of the original problems linger or arise >> again. But I *think* it was a better solution than to the similarly >> genocidal/punative response many of his people were calling for when the >> descendents of their Colonial Overlords finally fell. >> >> I heard recently a quote from Barbara Boxer as she left the political >> stage after many decades: >> "No victory is final" >> >> This underscores why we are dealing with the rise of >> white-supremacy/nazi/confederate/kkk, gender oppression, and many other >> battles presumed to have been won. This moment (in most places) is >> nothing like the conditions of the antebellum South, nor the era of >> Nazi/Fascist power in Europe, but there are clearly strong echoes. Such >> things *might* be suppressed temporarily by force, but ultimately those >> kinds of behaviours/activities dissipate through healing and enlightenment >> much more than regulation/punishment/suppression. >> >> my $.02, >> - Steve >> >> On 8/16/17 9:10 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: >> >> Eric writes: >> >> >> < It is not so far from Nietzche?s notion that ?God is dead? creates a >> problem for people, and they will face a fork in the road in how they try >> to deal with it. > >> >> >> Yeah, it is probably nothing new that is happening nor a new >> interpretation. Institutions of various kinds can give individuals a >> role to play and guidelines for conduct, but a highly interconnected >> population with a complex economy will stress these institutions and reveal >> their limitations. Meanwhile, only exceptional and delusional individuals >> can really make a convincing case (esp. to themselves) about their unique >> value either coupled-to or uncoupled-from from institutions. However, I >> fear the stakes are pretty high now -- the contagion of people going >> bonkers could be fast with social media. A healthy society is one where >> individuals can mature to the point they can begin to doubt the meaning in >> their own anxiety (whether by themselves, with their shrink or their >> spiritual authority) and make it to the next day. >> >> >> Marcus >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* Friam on >> behalf of Eric Smith >> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 16, 2017 6:56:23 AM >> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group >> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme >> >> >> > Their desperation and rage just comes from a feeling that they can't >> confront, that they just don't have much to offer. >> > >> > Marcus >> >> Reading this, I feel like you could found a new generation of something >> that is like existentialist philosophy but equally-well political theory. >> >> It is not so far from Nietzche?s notion that ?God is dead? creates a >> problem for people, and they will face a fork in the road in how they try >> to deal with it. Maybe even, considering the currents running through >> European and particularly German society at the time he was writing (and >> that he specifically wrote about), driven by concerns based on similar >> observations. >> >> It strikes me that this is an available point of view for almost any >> person. Granted, the distribution of rewards and frustrations differs from >> person to person and also from region to region, and that matters. But the >> black box (black hole?) of how minds form characters and orientations in >> response to streams of these things draws from an immense and to me-obscure >> range of inputs. >> >> Makes me wonder, >> >> Eric >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >> ============================================================ FRIAM >> Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. >> John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/lis >> tinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by >> Dr. Strangelove > > -- > Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy > emergentdiplomacy.org > Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA > Visiting Professor in Integrative Peacebuilding > Saint Paul University > Ottawa, Ontario, Canada > merlelefkoff at gmail.com mobile: (303) 859-5609 > skype: merle.lelfkoff2 > twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -- Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy emergentdiplomacy.org Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA Visiting Professor in Integrative Peacebuilding Saint Paul University Ottawa, Ontario, Canada merlelefkoff at gmail.com mobile: (303) 859-5609 skype: merle.lelfkoff2 twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rec at elf.org Wed Aug 16 21:49:09 2017 From: rec at elf.org (Roger Critchlow) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 21:49:09 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: The strangest thing I saw today was this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnXBeQwmmrc To be honest, he likes to be offensive. No deep roots of xenophobia, he's open to all kinds of offensiveness. -- rec -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Thu Aug 17 00:56:03 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 04:56:03 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> , Message-ID: https://buy.taser.com/taser-bolt/ Roger writes: < The strangest thing I saw today was this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnXBeQwmmrc > http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/08/what_the_alt_left_was_actually_doing_in_charlottesville.html Never thought I'd donate to a church or synagogue, but I wonder if a few of these would be tax deductible? Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Roger Critchlow Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2017 7:49 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme The strangest thing I saw today was this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnXBeQwmmrc To be honest, he likes to be offensive. No deep roots of xenophobia, he's open to all kinds of offensiveness. -- rec -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Thu Aug 17 12:10:11 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 10:10:11 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: Yeah their's some trolls that for what ever reason just like to troll. They are still trolls though. On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 7:49 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote: > The strangest thing I saw today was this video > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnXBeQwmmrc > > To be honest, he likes to be offensive. No deep roots of xenophobia, he's > open to all kinds of offensiveness. > > -- rec -- > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nickthompson at earthlink.net Thu Aug 17 12:19:41 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 12:19:41 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] Randomness and Andreas Wagner Message-ID: <00c601d31774$a1d7b570$e5872050$@earthlink.net> Dear All, For some reason, somebody was pressing on us the Andreas Wagner book. So now I have it and have scanned it, but I have forgotten why I am reading it. It seems a reasonably good summer of contemporary Epigenetics, on a par with Sean Carroll's work. It stresses the robustness of the epigenetic system, as it should. It supports rather than undermines the notion that randomness is a funny kind of concept to apply to genomic "innovation". Am I missing something? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From profwest at fastmail.fm Thu Aug 17 13:19:48 2017 From: profwest at fastmail.fm (Prof David West) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 11:19:48 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Randomness and Andreas Wagner In-Reply-To: <00c601d31774$a1d7b570$e5872050$@earthlink.net> References: <00c601d31774$a1d7b570$e5872050$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <1502990388.3642464.1076675712.1A2C8B1D@webmail.messagingengine.com> "it supports .... the notion that randomness is a funny kind of concept ... genomic innovation." But it is funny in a particular way: Nature can roll the dice all she wants, but the game is rigged - it is actually quite difficult not to "hit a winner" with any given roll of the dice. Were the game not rigged in this particular way truly random changes would have a near zero possibility that the 'innovation' would be viable. davew On Thu, Aug 17, 2017, at 10:19 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Dear All, > > For some reason, somebody was pressing on us the Andreas Wagner book. > So now I have it and have scanned it, but I have forgotten why I am > reading it. It seems a reasonably good summer of contemporary > Epigenetics, on a par with Sean Carroll?s work. It stresses the > robustness of the epigenetic system, as it should. It supports > rather than undermines the notion that randomness is a funny kind of > concept to apply to genomic ?innovation?.> > Am I missing something? > > Nick > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > Clark University > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Thu Aug 17 14:25:34 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 11:25:34 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: On 08/16/2017 09:56 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/08/what_the_alt_left_was_actually_doing_in_charlottesville.html I was intrigued by this tweet: https://twitter.com/veryapetv/status/898240260550909952 Here's the full text for the 1st quote: > Sir, -- Having experienced fascism in the flesh, as a citizen of a Nazi-occupied country, a member of the resistance and a concentration camp prisoner, I am profoundly dismayed by Kevin Myers's reflections on the happenings at TCD on the occasion of the David Irving debate. > > If fascism could be defeated in debate, I assure you that it would never have happened, neither in Germany, nor in Italy, nor anywhere else. Those who recognized its threat at that time and tried to stop it were, I assume, also called "a mob". Regrettably too many "fair-minded people" didn't either try, or want to stop it, and, as I witnessed myself during the war, accommodated themselves with it when it took over. > > The anti-fascism of some of these people germinated rather late, in fact only when they realized that the Third Reich had lost the war, the F?hrer was becoming an embarrassment and his system of government a liability. > > People who witnessed fascism at its height are dying out, but the ideology is still there, and its apologists are working hard at a comeback. Past experience should teach us that fascism must be stopped before it takes hold again of too many minds, and becomes useful once again to some powerful interests, as it happened in the thirties, or in Chile. I am one hundred per cent behind the students and staff at TCD, and congratulate them for showing the way. -- Yours, etc., F. L. Frison, 69 Newtown Avenue, Blackrock, Co Dublin. Here's the snopes entry on the 2nd quote (supposedly from Hitler): http://www.snopes.com/adolf-hitler-smashing-the-nucleus/ And the third quote about clicktivism is just (apt) snark. But there's a big difference between "chasing them away with sticks" and "holding the line". The former is bad. The latter is good. -- g??? From marcus at snoutfarm.com Thu Aug 17 15:36:46 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 19:36:46 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <86F1B9A1-35F6-4259-A238-15219C34B5C7@gmail.com> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: < And the third quote about clicktivism is just (apt) snark. But there's a big difference between "chasing them away with sticks" and "holding the line". The former is bad. The latter is good. > Hold the line, but if violence is used to break it, adopt a liberal definition of self-defense. I would have some concern of the tendency of a stick to fragment and not deliver enough energy. Marcus From gepropella at gmail.com Thu Aug 17 15:51:36 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 12:51:36 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: Body armor is necessary. My motorcycle jacket has nearly invisible pads for the elbows, shoulders, and back. Augment that with some shin and arm guards and you'd be surprised at how much easier it is to defend yourself and others. But the most important gear is your mouth guard. Those chants are stupid anyway. >8^D On 08/17/2017 12:36 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Hold the line, but if violence is used to break it, adopt a liberal definition of self-defense. I would have some concern of the tendency of a stick to fragment and not deliver enough energy. -- g??? From marcus at snoutfarm.com Thu Aug 17 16:02:57 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 20:02:57 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <494a2889-3c36-796a-da19-219bb2079c6f@gmail.com> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: Think combining Charlottesville and Kent State.. Not pleasant to think about but is it completely preposterous? I don't think so. Yes, every stylish urban pastor these days has a Kevlar robe! -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of g??? Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2017 1:52 PM To: friam at redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme Body armor is necessary. My motorcycle jacket has nearly invisible pads for the elbows, shoulders, and back. Augment that with some shin and arm guards and you'd be surprised at how much easier it is to defend yourself and others. But the most important gear is your mouth guard. Those chants are stupid anyway. >8^D On 08/17/2017 12:36 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Hold the line, but if violence is used to break it, adopt a liberal definition of self-defense. I would have some concern of the tendency of a stick to fragment and not deliver enough energy. -- g??? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove From gepropella at gmail.com Thu Aug 17 16:24:49 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 13:24:49 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: Yeah, bullets are another matter entirely. It's easy to be "pure defense" with sticks and such. Self-defense in the context of bullets is one of incoherent, asymmetric, or preemptive. People who tell me they have a gun for self-defense risk a confrontation. Guns are purely offensive. They are nothing but murder weapons ... unless you're good enough to hit the other guys bullet with your bullet! So, when someone says guns are for self-defense, what they really mean is they intend to murder people if they feel threatened. On 08/17/2017 01:02 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Think combining Charlottesville and Kent State.. Not pleasant to think about but is it completely preposterous? I don't think so. > Yes, every stylish urban pastor these days has a Kevlar robe! -- g??? From marcus at snoutfarm.com Thu Aug 17 16:34:34 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 20:34:34 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: Thus tasers.. couple a set of them with a Prius's battery so that reload is not a problem. Then some body armor for the Prius. On the high end, a Tesla Model S could just turn targets into smoke if need be. -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of g??? Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2017 2:25 PM To: friam at redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme Yeah, bullets are another matter entirely. It's easy to be "pure defense" with sticks and such. Self-defense in the context of bullets is one of incoherent, asymmetric, or preemptive. People who tell me they have a gun for self-defense risk a confrontation. Guns are purely offensive. They are nothing but murder weapons ... unless you're good enough to hit the other guys bullet with your bullet! So, when someone says guns are for self-defense, what they really mean is they intend to murder people if they feel threatened. On 08/17/2017 01:02 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Think combining Charlottesville and Kent State.. Not pleasant to think about but is it completely preposterous? I don't think so. > Yes, every stylish urban pastor these days has a Kevlar robe! -- g??? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove From gepropella at gmail.com Thu Aug 17 17:23:55 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 14:23:55 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: I'm not so sure. If I had a pistol and were inclined to use it, my inclination would only go *up* if you tased the guy next to me ... or even looked like you were going to do so. I think tasers might increase everyone's chances of being wounded or killed, rather than decreasing it. My guess is it's flat-out better to let them beat on you than to take any offensive path at all. On 08/17/2017 01:34 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Thus tasers.. couple a set of them with a Prius's battery so that reload is not a problem. > Then some body armor for the Prius. On the high end, a Tesla Model S could just turn targets into smoke if need be. -- g??? From marcus at snoutfarm.com Thu Aug 17 18:17:36 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 22:17:36 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: Gah. Add more technology: Persistence airborne surveillance of the event to estimate nearby risks and advise participants. Make an app for that. And above all be sneaky about actions on the ground. Anyway, I see your point. -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of g??? Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2017 3:24 PM To: friam at redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme I'm not so sure. If I had a pistol and were inclined to use it, my inclination would only go *up* if you tased the guy next to me ... or even looked like you were going to do so. I think tasers might increase everyone's chances of being wounded or killed, rather than decreasing it. My guess is it's flat-out better to let them beat on you than to take any offensive path at all. On 08/17/2017 01:34 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Thus tasers.. couple a set of them with a Prius's battery so that reload is not a problem. > Then some body armor for the Prius. On the high end, a Tesla Model S could just turn targets into smoke if need be. -- g??? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove From rec at elf.org Thu Aug 17 18:29:38 2017 From: rec at elf.org (Roger Critchlow) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 18:29:38 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: I think a ballistic vest would work as well as motorcycle gear for center of mass defense. Dress it up for cos play and you'll have the replacement for pro wrestling and other prize fighting entertainments. By the way, are we taking down the nascent alt-right-web yet? They're going to reinvent the internet to route around the censorship, and I think this is going to be the first real cyber war. And perhaps that's what we need, institutionalized cyber gang warfare. As the Pallio tamed the neighborhood gang conflict in Siena into twice yearly anything goes horse races, take all this must do the right/wrong/good/evil/offensive thing energy and turn it into e-riots, or irl riots with cos play armor. -- rec -- On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 5:23 PM, g??? wrote: > I'm not so sure. If I had a pistol and were inclined to use it, my > inclination would only go *up* if you tased the guy next to me ... or even > looked like you were going to do so. I think tasers might increase > everyone's chances of being wounded or killed, rather than decreasing it. > My guess is it's flat-out better to let them beat on you than to take any > offensive path at all. > > On 08/17/2017 01:34 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > > Thus tasers.. couple a set of them with a Prius's battery so that > reload is not a problem. > > Then some body armor for the Prius. On the high end, a Tesla Model S > could just turn targets into smoke if need be. > > > -- > g??? > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Thu Aug 17 19:01:45 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 16:01:45 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: The Future Primaeval is still up: http://thefutureprimaeval.net/this-is-the-future-primaeval/ NrX sites are mostly still up: http://neoreaction.net/ http://hestiasociety.org/ More Right is gone. Mike Anissimov's Twitter account is gone. Moldbug's garbage is still up: http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/moldbugs-gentle-introduction/ http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/ It seems to me that the neo-nazis and "ethnic nationalists" are easy enough to recognize as silly idealists. But the NrX guys pack more of a punch. Their ideas are a bit like the insidious Sam Harris, who slathers his right wing ideas in a tasty sauce of rationalism. But I don't know if the right answer is to take out their platforms. It seems to me humiliation and humor are the right paths. (cf. Harris' interaction with Chomsky) On 08/17/2017 03:29 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote: > I think a ballistic vest would work as well as motorcycle gear for center > of mass defense. Dress it up for cos play and you'll have the replacement > for pro wrestling and other prize fighting entertainments. > > By the way, are we taking down the nascent alt-right-web yet? They're > going to reinvent the internet to route around the censorship, and I think > this is going to be the first real cyber war. > > And perhaps that's what we need, institutionalized cyber gang warfare. As > the Pallio tamed the neighborhood gang conflict in Siena into twice yearly > anything goes horse races, take all this must do the > right/wrong/good/evil/offensive thing energy and turn it into e-riots, or > irl riots with cos play armor. -- g??? From marcus at snoutfarm.com Thu Aug 17 20:28:44 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 00:28:44 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <794CCD1B-56AC-4903-813C-2B4AAAFE2F76@santafe.edu> <5dd2b21c-1f64-6987-fb90-01849f48896d@swcp.com> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> , Message-ID: Roger writes: "And perhaps that's what we need, institutionalized cyber gang warfare." I suppose one could target OSI layer 4 and below, but that amounts to various kinds of denial of service. Crude. On the other hand, high-level attacks are forms of what Glen said -- "humiliation and humor" amount to sophisticated trolling. That requires a sustained effort by people that can afford to take the time and are reasonably good at modeling and manipulating people. Labor intensive and expensive. I would like to see some robust automated control systems. To do that it is necessary to pressure Facebook and Twitter to participate. I believe they are working on it and talking about reliable third parties to judge content. I imagine natural language systems that detect well-known lies as instances of entries in a credible fact-checkers database. Such systems would also be useful to tag jihadists and other people that are coming undone. Of course, even if these systems exist and work perfectly, one has to assume that the audience doesn't want to be lied to. So it is is, in the end, really cyber warfare. Might makes right. Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Roger Critchlow Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2017 4:29:38 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme I think a ballistic vest would work as well as motorcycle gear for center of mass defense. Dress it up for cos play and you'll have the replacement for pro wrestling and other prize fighting entertainments. By the way, are we taking down the nascent alt-right-web yet? They're going to reinvent the internet to route around the censorship, and I think this is going to be the first real cyber war. And perhaps that's what we need, institutionalized cyber gang warfare. As the Pallio tamed the neighborhood gang conflict in Siena into twice yearly anything goes horse races, take all this must do the right/wrong/good/evil/offensive thing energy and turn it into e-riots, or irl riots with cos play armor. -- rec -- On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 5:23 PM, g??? > wrote: I'm not so sure. If I had a pistol and were inclined to use it, my inclination would only go *up* if you tased the guy next to me ... or even looked like you were going to do so. I think tasers might increase everyone's chances of being wounded or killed, rather than decreasing it. My guess is it's flat-out better to let them beat on you than to take any offensive path at all. On 08/17/2017 01:34 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Thus tasers.. couple a set of them with a Prius's battery so that reload is not a problem. > Then some body armor for the Prius. On the high end, a Tesla Model S could just turn targets into smoke if need be. -- g??? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wimberly3 at gmail.com Fri Aug 18 10:56:17 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 08:56:17 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] SJ Coffee Shop Unavailable In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The floors are being cleaned and they say that will take 3-4 hours. I propose Saveur as an alternative. It's at the corner of Galisteo and Cerrillos, near the new courthouse. I'll try to get some tables put together. Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Fri Aug 18 12:11:46 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 10:11:46 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Stock Bubble Message-ID: With morbid fascination, I believe we are about to see the "Trump Bubble" in the stock market, driven by the promises of deregulation, collapse under the weight of the belligerent dysfunction of his administration and sycophants. I don't know how transparent the financial holdings of his fat supporters are, but if someone could observe them I suspect there is the beginning of rats fleeing a s(t)inking ship. The bubble collapse may or may not be more than a correction back to the levels leading up to the election last year, but I am expecting to hear a loud "whoof!" (more than a pop) as the market exhales all of the climate-denying, xenophobic, warmongering hot air that has been supporting it. Just Sayin' - Sieve PS. I scanned Glen's links to the various alt.right "intelligencia" blogs... fascinating but sad! From marcus at snoutfarm.com Fri Aug 18 12:16:04 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 16:16:04 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] Stock Bubble In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Last time there was a near government shutdown, I was buying short-sells on U.S. bonds as hedge. Under Obama, I lost money on that. But there they sit waiting to make their triumphant rebound! -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith Sent: Friday, August 18, 2017 10:12 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] Stock Bubble With morbid fascination, I believe we are about to see the "Trump Bubble" in the stock market, driven by the promises of deregulation, collapse under the weight of the belligerent dysfunction of his administration and sycophants. I don't know how transparent the financial holdings of his fat supporters are, but if someone could observe them I suspect there is the beginning of rats fleeing a s(t)inking ship. The bubble collapse may or may not be more than a correction back to the levels leading up to the election last year, but I am expecting to hear a loud "whoof!" (more than a pop) as the market exhales all of the climate-denying, xenophobic, warmongering hot air that has been supporting it. Just Sayin' - Sieve PS. I scanned Glen's links to the various alt.right "intelligencia" blogs... fascinating but sad! ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove From sasmyth at swcp.com Fri Aug 18 13:54:03 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 11:54:03 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump Message-ID: I haven't been willing to follow much if any of the twittering the Donald does, but with the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, folks calling for closing the @realdonaldtrump twitter account, it piqued my interest. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/08/17/now-you-can-see-what-donald-trump-sees-every-time-he-opens-twitter/?utm_term=.6d0cbe09518f The rising conflict between hate speech and free speech around this new White Supremacist eruption rallied around Trump's ascendency and implicit support is fascinating to me. Though as with all my greatest fascinations, it is unfortunately (yet another) morbid one. I discovered that the Washington Post has created a mirror of Trump's Feed titled @trumpsfeed as well as listing the 45 twitter accounts he is following in the order he subscribed to them. Unsurprisingly Ivanka is at the top of the list with Greta van Susteren and Bill O'Reilly not far behind. While I feel very nervous about Twitter shutting down theDonald's personal account so cavalierly, I can imagine how devastating it would be to his ego to not be able to blurt out his nonsense at all times of the day or night without benefit of counsel by his (admittedly highly flawed) inner circle/counsel. Moving the same blurts to @POTUS might be all it would achieve, which might enhance the absurdity yet more? It would seem much more entertaining if someone (other than Twitter Inc) managed to hack Twitter and mess with his feed. As blatantly as taking over @realDonaldTrump and turning it into a parody of him, and then signing him up for the address @fakeDonaldTrump. On that vector I discovered (unsurprisingly) that there IS an @fakeDonaldTrump (https://twitter.com/fakedonaldtrump ) which hasn't been utilized... created/joined apparently in 2008? The account has not tweeted and has only 125 followers, within whom I cannot find any particular pattern. Where are the Anonymous Hacktivists in all this? Their intentions often seem meritible but I can't tell how effective they have been in some of their campaigns. This is mildly surprising. Curiouser and Curiouser, - Sneeze -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Screen-Shot-2017-08-17-at-11.41.48-AM.png&w=1484 Type: image/jpeg Size: 111487 bytes Desc: not available URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Fri Aug 18 14:22:02 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 11:22:02 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <686d3ecb-0477-4504-602d-72c9649b185b@gmail.com> This is interesting if you type in "trump": https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/tweet_viz/tweet_app/ Here are some other tools: https://blog.bufferapp.com/free-twitter-tools It irritates me to no end when we call password guessing or phishing "hacking". The concept of hacking is rich and calling those banal techniques "hacking" does the concept an injustice. That password guessing stuff isn't even worthy of the word "cracking". Now, if someone pulled a man-in-the-middle and reconstructed the packets to find a password, *that* would be worthy. Get off my iLawn! On 08/18/2017 10:54 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > > I haven't been willing to follow much if any of the twittering the Donald does, > but with the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, folks calling for closing the > @realdonaldtrump twitter account, it piqued my interest. > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/08/17/now-you-can-see-what-donald-trump-sees-every-time-he-opens-twitter/?utm_term=.6d0cbe09518f > > The rising conflict between hate speech and free speech around this new White > Supremacist eruption rallied around Trump's ascendency and implicit support > is fascinating to me. Though as with all my greatest fascinations, it is unfortunately > (yet another) morbid one. > > I discovered that the Washington Post has created a mirror of Trump's Feed > titled @trumpsfeed as well as listing the 45 twitter accounts he is following in > the order he subscribed to them. Unsurprisingly Ivanka is at the top of the list > with Greta van Susteren and Bill O'Reilly not far behind. > > While I feel very nervous about Twitter shutting down theDonald's personal account > so cavalierly, I can imagine how devastating it would be to his ego to not be able to > blurt out his nonsense at all times of the day or night without benefit of counsel by > his (admittedly highly flawed) inner circle/counsel. Moving the same blurts to @POTUS > might be all it would achieve, which might enhance the absurdity yet more? > > It would seem much more entertaining if someone (other than Twitter Inc) managed > to hack Twitter and mess with his feed. As blatantly as taking over @realDonaldTrump > and turning it into a parody of him, and then signing him up for the address > @fakeDonaldTrump. > > On that vector I discovered (unsurprisingly) that there IS an @fakeDonaldTrump > (https://twitter.com/fakedonaldtrump ) which hasn't been utilized... created/joined > apparently in 2008? The account has not tweeted and has only 125 followers, within > whom I cannot find any particular pattern. > > Where are the Anonymous Hacktivists in all this? Their intentions often seem meritible > but I can't tell how effective they have been in some of their campaigns. This is mildly > surprising. -- g??? From marcus at snoutfarm.com Fri Aug 18 14:22:43 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 18:22:43 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ?While I feel very nervous about Twitter shutting down theDonald's personal account so cavalierly, I can imagine how devastating it would be to his ego to not be able to blurt out his nonsense at all times of the day or night without benefit of counsel by his (admittedly highly flawed) inner circle/counsel. Moving the same blurts to @POTUS might be all it would achieve, which might enhance the absurdity yet more?? While I like the idea of his continued self-sabotage, his pronouncements probably keep a part of the base stoked. If his accounts were to go away, those folks might not have the initiative to replace that outlet with another. And then they could get back to torturing animals or whatever it is they do all day. The ACLU new policy to not support armed groups seems like a good step. There are other groups like the SPLC that can tackle the haters. I hope that if his rhetoric continues this way, and he repeatedly violates their terms of services, that they do shut him down completely. He can go on Fox and Friends or something. Marcus -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Fri Aug 18 16:02:54 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 14:02:54 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Anonymous has been posting videos on youtube sugesting people put aside the petty bickering. Making sugestion what things people can do to empower themselves. Their current call to arms is about (weirdly) love and joy and getting rid of washinton as it currently is and try for something like a Sociliast Republic/Technorocracy. They're pretty tired of the sheer rage coming in and out of washington if the videos are anything to go by. On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 12:22 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > ?While I feel very nervous about Twitter shutting down theDonald's > personal account > so cavalierly, I can imagine how devastating it would be to his ego to not > be able to > blurt out his nonsense at all times of the day or night without benefit of > counsel by > his (admittedly highly flawed) inner circle/counsel. Moving the same > blurts to @POTUS > might be all it would achieve, which might enhance the absurdity yet more? > ? > > While I like the idea of his continued self-sabotage, his pronouncements > probably keep a part of the base stoked. > > If his accounts were to go away, those folks might not have the initiative > to replace that outlet with another. And then they could get back to > torturing animals or whatever it is they do all day. > > The ACLU new policy to not support armed groups seems like a good step. > There are other groups like the SPLC that can tackle the haters. I hope > that if his rhetoric continues this way, and he repeatedly violates their > terms of services, that they do shut him down completely. He can go on Fox > and Friends or something. > > Marcus > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Fri Aug 18 16:24:48 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 14:24:48 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump In-Reply-To: <686d3ecb-0477-4504-602d-72c9649b185b@gmail.com> References: <686d3ecb-0477-4504-602d-72c9649b185b@gmail.com> Message-ID: <2845804b-d8ba-e417-0acc-a59e99749d14@swcp.com> Glen - > This is interesting if you type in "trump": > https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/tweet_viz/tweet_app/ 15 minutes with this make me painfully aware of how much I'm not in tune with twitter culture... the tool seems pretty well made, but I found myself having a hard time drawing meaningful conclusions (aside from looking for confirmation bias artifacts to glom onto)... the drilldown I did do made me realize that the pleasant/unpleasant axis wasn't what I thought it would be. The system doesn't seem to take into account (double?) negatives? Someone railing positively about taking Trump down appears to contribute to the quad-chart plot in roughly the same way as one praising him. The tag clouds were in some way more interesting to me, but I'm not sure why. > > Here are some other tools: > https://blog.bufferapp.com/free-twitter-tools I tried to dig in a little but as I felt frustrated by the implied bias in the nature of the tools I realized the list was labeled as "for Marketing" which (with my own bias) seems to be what most social media tools exist for, to make us all in to better (more malleable?) consumers. > It irritates me to no end when we call password guessing or phishing "hacking". The concept of hacking is rich and calling those banal techniques "hacking" does the concept an injustice. That password guessing stuff isn't even worthy of the word "cracking". Now, if someone pulled a man-in-the-middle and reconstructed the packets to find a password, *that* would be worthy. I agree in principle, with your examples being at best, fairly lame "social hacks". I'm guessing that the amorphous mass of "Anonymous Hacktivists" are mostly very lame technically... but perhaps useful when recruited for DOS attacks by someone with a target and a voice. There must be a FEW heavy hitters self-identified with that crowd? It seems like the best thing anyone could do IF they guessed or phished passwords from the likes of DJT and his motley crue would be to publish them (not to abuse them, just to expose what kind of dumbass passwords they choose!?) > Get off my iLawn! From sasmyth at swcp.com Fri Aug 18 16:34:51 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 14:34:51 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2bc00a22-ea9f-36a9-db22-4c1c78bc8a6d@swcp.com> Marcus - > > > While I like the idea of his continued self-sabotage, his > pronouncements probably keep a part of the base stoked. > I do understand that and agree that this channel is a significantly powerful/focused one for his fringe/base. > > If his accounts were to go away, those folks might not have the > initiative to replace that outlet with another. > It does appear that his base(s) is (are) a mob in the sense that most of them provide the energy of their (self) righteous indignation and not much focus or initiative which then helps to leverage the effective power of a very few (pseudo?) charismatic self-appointed leaders. > > And then they could get back to torturing animals or whatever it is > they do all day. > Sadly this is one of my worries. To realize the number of people who rose up to support theDonald once he got some momentum, it makes me worry that we were (are) collectively more ill than I appreciated. One of the things I find hopeful about Trumps Ascendency is that all of this is out in the open and it can be addressed (to a minor degree) by those closest to these people. LIke the Fargo family. > > The ACLU new policy to not support armed groups seems like a good > step. There are other groups like the SPLC that can tackle the haters. > > I hope that if his rhetoric continues this way, and he repeatedly > violates their terms of services, that they do shut him down > completely. He can go on Fox and Friends or something. > I admit to not having a clue what is in the Twitter TOS, having signed up in a moment of curiosity/weakness nearly 8 years ago... I don't use it and for the most part serves me little if at all in any other way. It WOULD be interesting to see Twitter take Trump on head-on, I suspect it might be a significant breaking of a dam made of his audacity in the face of propriety. Give him credit or not, he's been willing to take on lots of groups/subcultures fairly head-on (and many more smarmily obliquely... like the LGBT/Latino/Black/??? communities) - Steve -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Fri Aug 18 16:46:58 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 14:46:58 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <908a9948-3cee-7d27-cf0f-5976c7207012@swcp.com> Gil - Thanks for the reference to Anonymous at YouTube. You can tell I'm an old fogey by my irritable reaction to the style of their videos. I felt like it was created by/for Max Headroom! I HAVE watched one or two before (over a year ago?) with the same reaction. I have a natural (Ithink) mixed reaction to their bluff/threats... what was that about contacting people in Lagos, Nigeria? I didn't think Anonymous were prone to threatening IRL violence, but rather stayed with what I think of as "targeted vandalism" in cyberspace? I'm also (still) confused about how there can ever be a single true voice for such a by-definition amorphous and distributed and ultimately defined only by self-definition group? Some aspects of their nature/behaviour feels a bit too much like the alt.right they are (in this moment) going up against. - Steve On 8/18/17 2:02 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote > Anonymous has been posting videos on youtube sugesting people put > aside the petty bickering. Making sugestion what things people can do > to empower themselves. Their current call to arms is about (weirdly) > love and joy and getting rid of washinton as it currently is and try > for something like a Sociliast Republic/Technorocracy. > They're pretty tired of the sheer rage coming in and out of washington > if the videos are anything to go by. > > > On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 12:22 PM, Marcus Daniels > wrote: > > ?While I feel very nervous about Twitter shutting down theDonald's > personal account > so cavalierly, I can imagine how devastating it would be to his > ego to not be able to > blurt out his nonsense at all times of the day or night without > benefit of counsel by > his (admittedly highly flawed) inner circle/counsel. Moving the > same blurts to @POTUS > might be all it would achieve, which might enhance the absurdity > yet more?? > > While I like the idea of his continued self-sabotage, his > pronouncements probably keep a part of the base stoked. > > If his accounts were to go away, those folks might not have the > initiative to replace that outlet with another. And then they > could get back to torturing animals or whatever it is they do all day. > > The ACLU new policy to not support armed groups seems like a good > step. There are other groups like the SPLC that can tackle the > haters. I hope that if his rhetoric continues this way, and he > repeatedly violates their terms of services, that they do shut him > down completely. He can go on Fox and Friends or something. > > Marcus > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > by Dr. Strangelove > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Fri Aug 18 17:04:22 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 21:04:22 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump In-Reply-To: <2bc00a22-ea9f-36a9-db22-4c1c78bc8a6d@swcp.com> References: <2bc00a22-ea9f-36a9-db22-4c1c78bc8a6d@swcp.com> Message-ID: Steve writes: < Give him credit or not, he's been willing to take on lots of groups/subcultures fairly head-on (and many more smarmily obliquely... like the LGBT/Latino/Black/??? communities) > Speaking as person who deals with things head-on more than it ever benefits me, I would say that my willingness to do that doesn't usually lead to anyone else being willing to do that. One might hope that by breaking the ice other people would stop the B.S. and get to the bottom of things. However, politicians (and many people) see any overt offering of information in social terms. They first ask, "How does this information create an opportunity or a risk for me?" Only secondarily do they examine the content of information and arguments. Thus, it is not a necessarily a good sign when someone that has to make people cooperate takes a direct approach. It may just show that they lack the memory and patience to turn over all the necessary rocks and think about how they relate before taking action. Marcus -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Fri Aug 18 18:59:11 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 15:59:11 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump In-Reply-To: <2845804b-d8ba-e417-0acc-a59e99749d14@swcp.com> References: <686d3ecb-0477-4504-602d-72c9649b185b@gmail.com> <2845804b-d8ba-e417-0acc-a59e99749d14@swcp.com> Message-ID: <3412b5f6-8f1b-df00-9be8-f55666b469b2@gmail.com> On 08/18/2017 01:24 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: >> https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/tweet_viz/tweet_app/ > 15 minutes with this make me painfully aware of how much I'm not in tune with twitter culture... the tool seems pretty well made, but I found myself having a hard time drawing meaningful conclusions (aside from looking for confirmation bias artifacts to glom onto)... the drilldown I did do made me realize that the pleasant/unpleasant axis wasn't what I thought it would be. The system doesn't seem to take into account (double?) negatives? Someone railing positively about taking Trump down appears to contribute to the quad-chart plot in roughly the same way as one praising him. Sentiment analysis is a strange thing. What's the "law"? ... Is it Poe's Law? Good satire is indistinguishable from authenticity? Or something like that. One can adopt a very positive *affect* about very negative things. Given your admission that you find morbid things fascinating, I thought replying with sentiment analysis would be appropriate. Personally, I find black humor is poised on a very thin edge, which makes those who are good at it geniuses. It's the same with sarcasm and snark. Pedestrian black humor is very irritating. But when it's done right, it carries just the right balance of poignancy and banality. In contrast, tag clouds are antiseptic and devoid of any humanity. >> Here are some other tools: >> https://blog.bufferapp.com/free-twitter-tools > I tried to dig in a little but as I felt frustrated by the implied bias in the nature of the tools I realized the list was labeled as "for Marketing" which (with my own bias) seems to be what most social media tools exist for, to make us all in to better (more malleable?) consumers. Ahhh. But "branding" is the Trumpian essence. Trump is nothing *but* a brand. And, as our psych friends keep telling us, his narcissistic tendencies reflect that. There is no "there" there. There is only posturing and marketing. So, what better to understand Trump, *but* tools for marketing? -- g??? From profwest at fastmail.fm Fri Aug 18 19:13:22 2017 From: profwest at fastmail.fm (Prof David West) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 17:13:22 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Stock Bubble In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1503098002.3761927.1078087672.0EA62D7A@webmail.messagingengine.com> I have several friends with tons of money (multi-millionaires, not billionaires) and they are all leaving stocks. Not because of Trump but because of the massive shift away from actively managed funds to passive ones and the overvaluation of price as a result. Bloomberg business just had a major article about this. I suspect that crony's are moving money the same way my friends are, and for the same reasons. Expect the big whoosh and then reasonably rapid recovery. And don't expect it to have any effect on Trump, the admin, or his followers. davew On Fri, Aug 18, 2017, at 10:11 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > With morbid fascination, I believe we are about to see the "Trump > Bubble" in the stock market, driven by the promises of deregulation, > collapse under the weight of the belligerent dysfunction of his > administration and sycophants. > > I don't know how transparent the financial holdings of his fat > supporters are, but if someone could observe them I suspect there is the > beginning of rats fleeing a s(t)inking ship. > > The bubble collapse may or may not be more than a correction back to the > levels leading up to the election last year, but I am expecting to hear > a loud "whoof!" (more than a pop) as the market exhales all of the > climate-denying, xenophobic, warmongering hot air that has been > supporting it. > > Just Sayin' > > - Sieve > > PS. I scanned Glen's links to the various alt.right "intelligencia" > blogs... fascinating but sad! > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove From sasmyth at swcp.com Fri Aug 18 20:57:45 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 18:57:45 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump In-Reply-To: <3412b5f6-8f1b-df00-9be8-f55666b469b2@gmail.com> References: <686d3ecb-0477-4504-602d-72c9649b185b@gmail.com> <2845804b-d8ba-e417-0acc-a59e99749d14@swcp.com> <3412b5f6-8f1b-df00-9be8-f55666b469b2@gmail.com> Message-ID: Well said (as usual). >Pedestrian black humor is very irritating. But when it's done right, it carries just the right balance of poignancy and >banality. In contrast, tag clouds are antiseptic and devoid of any humanity. > There is no "there" there. There is only posturing and marketing. So, > what better to understand Trump, *but* tools for marketing? From sasmyth at swcp.com Fri Aug 18 21:17:55 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 19:17:55 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Stock Bubble In-Reply-To: <1503098002.3761927.1078087672.0EA62D7A@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1503098002.3761927.1078087672.0EA62D7A@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: DaveW - > I have several friends with tons of money (multi-millionaires, not > billionaires) and they are all leaving stocks. Not because of Trump but > because of the massive shift away from actively managed funds to passive > ones and the overvaluation of price as a result. Bloomberg business just > had a major article about this. I suspect that crony's are moving money > the same way my friends are, and for the same reasons. Are you suggesting that there is no bubble driven by speculation (and the reality of) on the free-for-all Trump has promised big business, especially (overtly) extractive/polluting/usurious industries? > Expect the big whoosh and then reasonably rapid recovery. I do imagine there may be a rapid(ish) recovery if the nonsense in the government stabilizes. My Pollyanna has me believing that we are on a cusp and that many industries ARE shifting toward a more sustainable model and that these (e.g. renewable energy) will thrive in the vacuum left as some of the older, less sustainable ones (coal and other fossil-fuels) which are currently enjoying the (promise of?) deregulation implode. > And don't > expect it to have any effect on Trump, the admin, or his followers. I think a tumble in the market will undermine the belief that Trump somehow magically has improved our economy simply by being elected, it may motivate/allow many who have been enjoying the ride up to quit supporting him (even as passively as not rejecting/confronting his nonsense). Hope springs infernal! - Steve From sasmyth at swcp.com Fri Aug 18 21:20:17 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 19:20:17 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump In-Reply-To: References: <2bc00a22-ea9f-36a9-db22-4c1c78bc8a6d@swcp.com> Message-ID: Marcus - > Thus, it is not a necessarily a good sign when someone that has to > make people cooperate takes a direct approach. It may just show that > they lack the memory and patience to turn over all the necessary rocks > and think about how they relate before taking action. > Thus: *"< *Give him credit or not" I never have given him any credit for this feature, but I do believe many do, and I do understand that this is a powerful mode of being in (too) many people. It is the default *I* go to when *deeply* cornered, which suggests to me that our disaffected "populist" portion of his base were acting out of some kind of fear, ready to gulp down any Snake Oil offered up to allay the very fear said Snake Oil Purveyor was whipping up in the crowd. They should be choking on that Snake Oil anytime if they aren't already. As frightening as I find many of our current events, I pull out my Pollyanna persona to protect me from joining the mob (or the anti-mob) simply because I am too frightened to keep looking for better solutions. I had a much more Cynical persona that gave me relief from fear when I (first) voted for Reagan, then (second) saw the error of my ways and withdrew significantly from political interests for 20 years. I'm balancing this habit/nature to be stampeded by fear into acting foolishly against Edmund Burkes' admonition: /The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing./ It feels to me that more and more good men (and women) are doing *something* even in the face of bodily harm. I think that many of these people have thoughtfully turned over many rocks before acting. As tedious as that process can be and as much as it feels like it puts one at a disadvantage against those who have no trouble acting in a knee jerk fashion, I want to believe it is a more viable strategy in the long run. When the Trump Rally started in the markets (January?), I pulled way back mainly because I did not want to profit from his bad acting and those who are finding profit in his bad actions. I believe now that this bubble is ready to collapse and the vanguard of that collapse might be others who see the injustice in profiting from war, xenophobia, science-denial, etc. if not simply those with enough self-interest (enlightened or not) to flee before the ship sinks to a new bottom. It may still take impeachment proceedings or criminal charges to kick the stool out from under this propped up mess, but that will just make it fall harder. Hope springs infernal, - Steve -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Fri Aug 18 21:36:18 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 01:36:18 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump In-Reply-To: References: <686d3ecb-0477-4504-602d-72c9649b185b@gmail.com> <2845804b-d8ba-e417-0acc-a59e99749d14@swcp.com> <3412b5f6-8f1b-df00-9be8-f55666b469b2@gmail.com>, Message-ID: "When the Trump Rally started in the markets (January?)" a.k.a. the Obama trend.. [cid:71b6b327-44b6-481e-85c2-37d19013bd43] ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Steven A Smith Sent: Friday, August 18, 2017 6:57:45 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump Well said (as usual). >Pedestrian black humor is very irritating. But when it's done right, it carries just the right balance of poignancy and >banality. In contrast, tag clouds are antiseptic and devoid of any humanity. > There is no "there" there. There is only posturing and marketing. So, > what better to understand Trump, *but* tools for marketing? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: pastedImage.png Type: image/png Size: 18425 bytes Desc: pastedImage.png URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Fri Aug 18 23:50:59 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 21:50:59 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump In-Reply-To: References: <686d3ecb-0477-4504-602d-72c9649b185b@gmail.com> <2845804b-d8ba-e417-0acc-a59e99749d14@swcp.com> <3412b5f6-8f1b-df00-9be8-f55666b469b2@gmail.com> Message-ID: <6a48f027-43a2-e25e-7d8d-f2361fb3ddca@swcp.com> OK point taken. My hyperactive imagination again perhaps... The effect I'm seeing could be nothing more than a recovery from the election period uncertainty which seems to show in virtually every election cycle. And performance on Trump's watch (so far) is in the middle of the pack of the last 5 presidents: http://www.macrotrends.net/2481/stock-market-performance-by-president and this chart of the first 100 days puts him at 5th, well behind GW and Obama. Your chart starts with Obama's *second* term, not precisely apples and apples, though 09 was strikingly similar in spite of the 08 dump. On 8/18/17 7:36 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > > "When the Trump Rally started in the markets (January?)" > > > a.k.a. the Obama trend.. > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* Friam on behalf of Steven A Smith > > *Sent:* Friday, August 18, 2017 6:57:45 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump > Well said (as usual). > > >Pedestrian black humor is very irritating. But when it's done right, > it carries just the right balance of poignancy and > >banality. In contrast, tag clouds are antiseptic and devoid of any > humanity. > > There is no "there" there. There is only posturing and marketing. So, > > what better to understand Trump, *but* tools for marketing? > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: money-trump1st100-spchart-rev1.png Type: image/png Size: 178130 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 18425 bytes Desc: not available URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Sat Aug 19 17:39:11 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 15:39:11 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump In-Reply-To: <908a9948-3cee-7d27-cf0f-5976c7207012@swcp.com> References: <908a9948-3cee-7d27-cf0f-5976c7207012@swcp.com> Message-ID: No. I agree. The way the do their videos is...yeah Max Hedroom 20 minutes into future. CyberPunk meets MadMax. In a documentary about them they use a computer to read a script so as to protect the crew. I totally respect that. Part of that is because how they work is murky legal water. The other part was because a few of their opts went sideways such as calling out the ScienTologists for being a trolling cult...it went down hill pretty quickly. So now they (try to) stay more anonymous using stylised maxhedroomy videos with a computer reading text. One of there was on some extremist netoworking, and their leaders who they promissed to forward any and all info they could to the proper authortese. Now their taking on the extremists here. (some) of that info has lead banks, business etc to refuse to deel with those trolls. Their also taking down flags and statues of as Arnold Swartzinager put it "epicaly failed idiologies of xenophobia, rage, and hate." Theyre members have been replacing those symbols with goofy art, or cleaning the buildings and just removing the grafiti. On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 2:46 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > Gil - > > Thanks for the reference to Anonymous at YouTube. You can tell I'm an old > fogey by my irritable reaction to the style of their videos. I felt like > it was created by/for Max Headroom! > > I HAVE watched one or two before (over a year ago?) with the same > reaction. I have a natural (Ithink) mixed reaction to their > bluff/threats... what was that about contacting people in Lagos, Nigeria? > I didn't think Anonymous were prone to threatening IRL violence, but rather > stayed with what I think of as "targeted vandalism" in cyberspace? > > I'm also (still) confused about how there can ever be a single true voice > for such a by-definition amorphous and distributed and ultimately defined > only by self-definition group? Some aspects of their nature/behaviour > feels a bit too much like the alt.right they are (in this moment) going up > against. > > - Steve > On 8/18/17 2:02 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote > > Anonymous has been posting videos on youtube sugesting people put aside > the petty bickering. Making sugestion what things people can do to empower > themselves. Their current call to arms is about (weirdly) love and joy and > getting rid of washinton as it currently is and try for something like a > Sociliast Republic/Technorocracy. > They're pretty tired of the sheer rage coming in and out of washington if > the videos are anything to go by. > > > On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 12:22 PM, Marcus Daniels > wrote: > >> ?While I feel very nervous about Twitter shutting down theDonald's >> personal account >> so cavalierly, I can imagine how devastating it would be to his ego to >> not be able to >> blurt out his nonsense at all times of the day or night without benefit >> of counsel by >> his (admittedly highly flawed) inner circle/counsel. Moving the same >> blurts to @POTUS >> might be all it would achieve, which might enhance the absurdity yet more? >> ? >> >> While I like the idea of his continued self-sabotage, his pronouncements >> probably keep a part of the base stoked. >> >> If his accounts were to go away, those folks might not have the >> initiative to replace that outlet with another. And then they could get >> back to torturing animals or whatever it is they do all day. >> >> The ACLU new policy to not support armed groups seems like a good step. >> There are other groups like the SPLC that can tackle the haters. I hope >> that if his rhetoric continues this way, and he repeatedly violates their >> terms of services, that they do shut him down completely. He can go on Fox >> and Friends or something. >> >> Marcus >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tom at jtjohnson.com Sat Aug 19 17:57:05 2017 From: tom at jtjohnson.com (Tom Johnson) Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 15:57:05 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Walk, Don't Walk: Everyday Interactions with Self-Driving Cars Message-ID: Perhaps of interest. Lecture at S.A.R. *Thursday, September 14, 2017, 6:30?7:30 pm, Free for SAR members ? $10 for Not-Yet-Members* *Walk, Don't Walk: Everyday Interactions with Self-Driving Cars* *Melissa Cefkin* *Join anthropologist Melissa Cefkin to learn how what we are learning about the nature of roadway interactions and street life is helping shape the development of autonomous vehicles.* TJ ============================================ Tom Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) Society of Professional Journalists *Check out It's The People's Data * http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.com ============================================ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Sat Aug 19 18:19:30 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 16:19:30 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Walk, Don't Walk: Everyday Interactions with Self-Driving Cars In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Nice! I have this cool picture of robot (assisted?) cars being of great use for someone sick or the elderly. Maybie even festivies with mead or beer. On Sat, Aug 19, 2017 at 3:57 PM, Tom Johnson wrote: > Perhaps of interest. Lecture at S.A.R. > > *Thursday, September 14, 2017, 6:30?7:30 pm, Free for SAR members ? $10 > for Not-Yet-Members* > *Walk, Don't Walk: Everyday Interactions with Self-Driving Cars* > *Melissa Cefkin* > *Join anthropologist Melissa Cefkin to learn how what we are learning > about the nature of roadway interactions and street life is helping shape > the development of autonomous vehicles.* > > TJ > > ============================================ > Tom Johnson > Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA > 505.577.6482 <(505)%20577-6482>(c) > 505.473.9646 <(505)%20473-9646>(h) > Society of Professional Journalists > *Check out It's The People's Data > * > http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.com > ============================================ > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tom at jtjohnson.com Sat Aug 19 23:33:44 2017 From: tom at jtjohnson.com (Tom Johnson) Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 21:33:44 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Stock Bubble In-Reply-To: <1503098002.3761927.1078087672.0EA62D7A@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1503098002.3761927.1078087672.0EA62D7A@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: So you leave stocks to go where? 1.5% bonds? TJ ============================================ Tom Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) Society of Professional Journalists *Check out It's The People's Data * http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.com ============================================ On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 5:13 PM, Prof David West wrote: > I have several friends with tons of money (multi-millionaires, not > billionaires) and they are all leaving stocks. Not because of Trump but > because of the massive shift away from actively managed funds to passive > ones and the overvaluation of price as a result. Bloomberg business just > had a major article about this. I suspect that crony's are moving money > the same way my friends are, and for the same reasons. > > Expect the big whoosh and then reasonably rapid recovery. And don't > expect it to have any effect on Trump, the admin, or his followers. > > davew > > > On Fri, Aug 18, 2017, at 10:11 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > > With morbid fascination, I believe we are about to see the "Trump > > Bubble" in the stock market, driven by the promises of deregulation, > > collapse under the weight of the belligerent dysfunction of his > > administration and sycophants. > > > > I don't know how transparent the financial holdings of his fat > > supporters are, but if someone could observe them I suspect there is the > > beginning of rats fleeing a s(t)inking ship. > > > > The bubble collapse may or may not be more than a correction back to the > > levels leading up to the election last year, but I am expecting to hear > > a loud "whoof!" (more than a pop) as the market exhales all of the > > climate-denying, xenophobic, warmongering hot air that has been > > supporting it. > > > > Just Sayin' > > > > - Sieve > > > > PS. I scanned Glen's links to the various alt.right "intelligencia" > > blogs... fascinating but sad! > > > > > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Sun Aug 20 00:54:26 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 22:54:26 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Stock Bubble In-Reply-To: References: <1503098002.3761927.1078087672.0EA62D7A@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: > So you leave stocks to go where? 1.5% bonds? 1.5% will be a bargain when/if/as things go upside down (again). > > TJ > > > ============================================ > Tom Johnson > Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA > 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) > Society of Professional Journalists > *Check out It's The People's Data > * > http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.com > > ============================================ > > On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 5:13 PM, Prof David West > wrote: > > I have several friends with tons of money (multi-millionaires, not > billionaires) and they are all leaving stocks. Not because of > Trump but > because of the massive shift away from actively managed funds to > passive > ones and the overvaluation of price as a result. Bloomberg > business just > had a major article about this. I suspect that crony's are moving > money > the same way my friends are, and for the same reasons. > > Expect the big whoosh and then reasonably rapid recovery. And don't > expect it to have any effect on Trump, the admin, or his followers. > > davew > > > On Fri, Aug 18, 2017, at 10:11 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > > With morbid fascination, I believe we are about to see the "Trump > > Bubble" in the stock market, driven by the promises of deregulation, > > collapse under the weight of the belligerent dysfunction of his > > administration and sycophants. > > > > I don't know how transparent the financial holdings of his fat > > supporters are, but if someone could observe them I suspect > there is the > > beginning of rats fleeing a s(t)inking ship. > > > > The bubble collapse may or may not be more than a correction > back to the > > levels leading up to the election last year, but I am expecting > to hear > > a loud "whoof!" (more than a pop) as the market exhales all of the > > climate-denying, xenophobic, warmongering hot air that has been > > supporting it. > > > > Just Sayin' > > > > - Sieve > > > > PS. I scanned Glen's links to the various alt.right "intelligencia" > > blogs... fascinating but sad! > > > > > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > > to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > by Dr. Strangelove > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > by Dr. Strangelove > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 10:48:29 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 08:48:29 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] well..so much for watching the ecipse in person Message-ID: If this junk cloudy weather keeps up. Won't see a damn thing other thank depressing clouds and a reminder the roof is leaking....again. Oh clear skys they said....ahahahahahahahahahaha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 10:50:14 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?4pSjZ2xlbuKUqw==?=) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 07:50:14 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] well..so much for watching the ecipse in person In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yeah, but even with the clouds, it will still be cool to see the sky go dark in the middle of the day. On 08/21/2017 07:48 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote: > If this junk cloudy weather keeps up. Won't see a damn thing other thank > depressing clouds and a reminder the roof is leaking....again. Oh clear > skys they said....ahahahahahahahahahaha -- ?glen? From carl at plektyx.com Mon Aug 21 10:54:19 2017 From: carl at plektyx.com (Carl Tollander) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 08:54:19 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] well..so much for watching the ecipse in person In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "Ieyasu says 'wait' " On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 8:48 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote: > If this junk cloudy weather keeps up. Won't see a damn thing other thank > depressing clouds and a reminder the roof is leaking....again. Oh clear > skys they said....ahahahahahahahahahaha > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Mon Aug 21 11:20:04 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 09:20:04 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] well..so much for watching the ecipse in person In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: With or without the eclipse, we can still admire the fireflies as our lifeblood oozes into the ground! On 8/21/17 8:54 AM, Carl Tollander wrote: > "Ieyasu says 'wait' " > > > On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 8:48 AM, Gillian Densmore > > wrote: > > If this junk cloudy weather keeps up. Won't see a damn thing other > thank depressing clouds and a reminder the roof is > leaking....again. Oh clear skys they said....ahahahahahahahahahaha > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > by Dr. Strangelove > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wimberly3 at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 11:44:38 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 09:44:38 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] well..so much for watching the ecipse in person In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: With my five year-old grandson here I'm actually thankful. What happens when you tell a young boy not to look at the sun, he looks at the sun. Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 21, 2017 9:20 AM, "Steven A Smith" wrote: > With or without the eclipse, we can still admire the fireflies as our > lifeblood oozes into the ground! > > On 8/21/17 8:54 AM, Carl Tollander wrote: > > "Ieyasu says 'wait' " > > > On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 8:48 AM, Gillian Densmore > wrote: > >> If this junk cloudy weather keeps up. Won't see a damn thing other thank >> depressing clouds and a reminder the roof is leaking....again. Oh clear >> skys they said....ahahahahahahahahahaha >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 12:37:53 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 10:37:53 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] well..so much for watching the ecipse in person In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: And the messed up weather is still here. On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 9:44 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote: > With my five year-old grandson here I'm actually thankful. What happens > when you tell a young boy not to look at the sun, he looks at the sun. > > Frank > > Frank Wimberly > Phone (505) 670-9918 > > On Aug 21, 2017 9:20 AM, "Steven A Smith" wrote: > >> With or without the eclipse, we can still admire the fireflies as our >> lifeblood oozes into the ground! >> >> On 8/21/17 8:54 AM, Carl Tollander wrote: >> >> "Ieyasu says 'wait' " >> >> >> On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 8:48 AM, Gillian Densmore > > wrote: >> >>> If this junk cloudy weather keeps up. Won't see a damn thing other thank >>> depressing clouds and a reminder the roof is leaking....again. Oh clear >>> skys they said....ahahahahahahahahahaha >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >>> >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 12:59:17 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 10:59:17 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] What We should be seeing Message-ID: https://www.nasa.gov/eclipselive/#NASA+TV+Public+Channel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at snoutfarm.com Mon Aug 21 14:12:06 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 18:12:06 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] What We should be seeing In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: Here's the view from the Willamette valley in Oregon. (Third try for size restrictions.) ________________________________ From: Marcus Daniels Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 12:09:55 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What We should be seeing Here's the view from the Willamette valley in Oregon. ________________________________ From: Friam on behalf of Gillian Densmore Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 10:59:17 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] What We should be seeing https://www.nasa.gov/eclipselive/#NASA+TV+Public+Channel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: eclipse.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 685514 bytes Desc: eclipse.jpeg URL: From wimberly3 at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 14:14:30 2017 From: wimberly3 at gmail.com (Frank Wimberly) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 12:14:30 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] What We should be seeing In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: If you zoom in you can see relief on the edge of the moon. Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 21, 2017 12:12 PM, "Marcus Daniels" wrote: > Here's the view from the Willamette valley in Oregon. (Third try for size > restrictions.) > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* Marcus Daniels > *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 12:09:55 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] What We should be seeing > > > Here's the view from the Willamette valley in Oregon. > > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* Friam on behalf of Gillian Densmore < > gil.densmore at gmail.com> > *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 10:59:17 AM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > *Subject:* [FRIAM] What We should be seeing > > https://www.nasa.gov/eclipselive/#NASA+TV+Public+Channel > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 14:24:16 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 12:24:16 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] What We should be seeing In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: NASA rocks. On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 12:14 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote: > If you zoom in you can see relief on the edge of the moon. > > Frank Wimberly > Phone (505) 670-9918 > > On Aug 21, 2017 12:12 PM, "Marcus Daniels" wrote: > >> Here's the view from the Willamette valley in Oregon. (Third try for >> size restrictions.) >> >> >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* Marcus Daniels >> *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 12:09:55 PM >> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group >> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] What We should be seeing >> >> >> Here's the view from the Willamette valley in Oregon. >> >> >> >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* Friam on behalf of Gillian Densmore < >> gil.densmore at gmail.com> >> *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 10:59:17 AM >> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group >> *Subject:* [FRIAM] What We should be seeing >> >> https://www.nasa.gov/eclipselive/#NASA+TV+Public+Channel >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 15:02:35 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 13:02:35 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] What We should be seeing In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: As a quick follow up the weather FINALLY was clear enough to watch in person a minute or so of it. That was just awsome. When I saw it their was a pretty white flow around the shadow and kind of orang glow to another part of it. On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 12:14 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote: > If you zoom in you can see relief on the edge of the moon. > > Frank Wimberly > Phone (505) 670-9918 > > On Aug 21, 2017 12:12 PM, "Marcus Daniels" wrote: > >> Here's the view from the Willamette valley in Oregon. (Third try for >> size restrictions.) >> >> >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* Marcus Daniels >> *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 12:09:55 PM >> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group >> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] What We should be seeing >> >> >> Here's the view from the Willamette valley in Oregon. >> >> >> >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* Friam on behalf of Gillian Densmore < >> gil.densmore at gmail.com> >> *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 10:59:17 AM >> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group >> *Subject:* [FRIAM] What We should be seeing >> >> https://www.nasa.gov/eclipselive/#NASA+TV+Public+Channel >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 15:09:55 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 13:09:55 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] at the risk of spaming Elcips Q Message-ID: Are Ecipleses on North America really that rare? and What might have been the reason for the white/orange glow? (Was using glasses sold as 'eclipse glasses' have a mylar screen on them) the bottom part of the moon(?) had a reely pretty looking white folow while the right side had a pretty orange glow. (Trying to Re-Find my Buddha nature and find some silver lining to the days annoyances besides I'm curius) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 15:44:12 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 12:44:12 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <5ccf3e66-0544-32a8-467f-4475c730bd3d@swcp.com> Message-ID: Perhaps there is some hope. See this orthodox nationalist's whining: http://www.rusjournal.org/the-orthodox-nationalist-podcast/ But it sounds like he's been replaced by a kinder-gentler version? I haven't heard of Nathaniel Kapner. It's interesting how the tangled knot of fuzz that was NrX evolved into alt-right and is, now, gradually being taken over by the neo-[nazi|confederate] morons. Perhaps this Kapner is evidence of the same in the orthodox nationalists. I felt the same way when I watched the Libertarians completely devolve from talking about Hayek and Friedman and morph into garden variety right wingers. [sigh] But the more (and more often) we can root out the pseudo-scholars and replace them with those less linguistically endowed, the easier it will be for the laity to see how impoverished their ideas are. On 08/17/2017 04:01 PM, g??? wrote: > The Future Primaeval is still up: http://thefutureprimaeval.net/this-is-the-future-primaeval/ > NrX sites are mostly still up: http://neoreaction.net/ http://hestiasociety.org/ > > More Right is gone. Mike Anissimov's Twitter account is gone. > > Moldbug's garbage is still up: > http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/moldbugs-gentle-introduction/ > http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/ > > It seems to me that the neo-nazis and "ethnic nationalists" are easy enough to recognize as silly idealists. But the NrX guys pack more of a punch. Their ideas are a bit like the insidious Sam Harris, who slathers his right wing ideas in a tasty sauce of rationalism. But I don't know if the right answer is to take out their platforms. It seems to me humiliation and humor are the right paths. (cf. Harris' interaction with Chomsky) -- g??? From carl at plektyx.com Mon Aug 21 15:44:30 2017 From: carl at plektyx.com (Carl Tollander) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 13:44:30 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] well..so much for watching the ecipse in person In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Caught bit of it through some cloud gaps, but on the whole viewing conditions were less than ideal. On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 10:37 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote: > And the messed up weather is still here. > > On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 9:44 AM, Frank Wimberly > wrote: > >> With my five year-old grandson here I'm actually thankful. What happens >> when you tell a young boy not to look at the sun, he looks at the sun. >> >> Frank >> >> Frank Wimberly >> Phone (505) 670-9918 >> >> On Aug 21, 2017 9:20 AM, "Steven A Smith" wrote: >> >>> With or without the eclipse, we can still admire the fireflies as our >>> lifeblood oozes into the ground! >>> >>> On 8/21/17 8:54 AM, Carl Tollander wrote: >>> >>> "Ieyasu says 'wait' " >>> >>> >>> On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 8:48 AM, Gillian Densmore < >>> gil.densmore at gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> If this junk cloudy weather keeps up. Won't see a damn thing other >>>> thank depressing clouds and a reminder the roof is leaking....again. Oh >>>> clear skys they said....ahahahahahahahahahaha >>>> >>>> ============================================================ >>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >>> >>> >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >>> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 20:10:31 2017 From: eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com (Eric Charles) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 20:10:31 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> Message-ID: Sorry to pull at a still thread, but I find this claim fascinating. "Natural selection can *preserve* innovations, but it cannot create them." Would we say the same of artificial selection? I'm pretty sure we would normally claim that artificial selection has lead to all sorts of innovations. Maybe I'm thinking of "innovations" more broadly than is intended?!? Aren't the baring and tail-wagging, multi-colored, short-snouted, cuddly foxes an example of innovation? (For those who don't know, it takes a pretty short number of generations to turn wild foxes into reasonable approximations of domestic dogs, and all you have to do is select against aggression towards humans.) I know what the quote is trying to get at, but I'm not sure it holds up in the wider context of things-that-cause biological innovation. Best, Eric ----------- Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. Supervisory Survey Statistician U.S. Marine Corps On Sun, Aug 13, 2017 at 5:12 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > "To explain why I hate it so much, we can try to think deeply about the > nazi that killed the antifa yesterday in Charlottesville and Trump's > response to it (blaming all sides)." > > > This side > > must have been terribly menacing to a man in a > 300 HP car. Not only do > words have meaning, but even perceptions. The memes are unbound or at > least differently bound. > > So any fitness function that involves them cannot be compared. > > > Marcus > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* Friam on behalf of ?glen? < > gepropella at gmail.com> > *Sent:* Sunday, August 13, 2017 10:28 AM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate > > I absolutely loathe the meme metaphor. I don't usually agree with Nick's > distinction between metaphor and analogy. 8^) But here, I claim the meme > isn't *anything* like a gene... or more clearly, there is no idea/thought > construct that is anything like a gene. > > To explain why I hate it so much, we can try to think deeply about the > nazi that killed the antifa yesterday in Charlottesville and Trump's > response to it (blaming all sides). To be clear, anyone who continues > defending their vote for Trump at this point should be held accountable for > their idiotic choice. But the Trump defender will say something like > "Trump's not a racist or a nazi, even if some of his followers are." And, > "yes I support Trump. But I'm not a nazi." Pffft. It flat out does not > matter. There is no analog for mutation or crossover that we can use to > map Trump to his nazis. The gooey milieu that flows from someone like > Trump, whose life of privilege has severely decoupled him from reality, to > the nazis, whose fear and hatred has severely decoupled them from reality, > ... that gooey ball of ill-formed ideology can't be coupled to reality. > That's the problem with metaphor, ideology, and fantasy. To make reductive > attempts to model such fantasy with analogies to real things (like genes) > is to conflate fantasy with reality. > > To be as clear as I can, ideas can only track back to mechanisms when they > sync up with reality. That's why (observational) science is so > successful. There are (basically) 2 ways ideas can interact with reality: > 1) methodologically and 2) neural correlates. If a ball of ideas includes > (in its not biological evolution) a method for regularly testing itself > against reality, then it's possible to analogize between that ball of ideas > and reality. Neither Trump, nor his nazis include that. So, the only > remaining map we can draw from the ideas to reality is any neural > correlates we can find. And until we have those, mapping the ideas to > genes dooms us to faulty (at best) or delusional (at worst) inferences. > > Now, everyone I know who uses the words "meme" and "memetics" is > relatively scientifically literate. So, memetics *seems* plausible because > it's only used by relatively clear thinkers about relatively > reality-touching balls of ideas. But I would bet money that memetics will > fail miserably if we try to use it to explain or model fantasy-dominated > people like Trump and his supporters. > > > > On 08/12/2017 12:10 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > > In the socio/political/religious/economic realm it seems that multiple > simultaneous mutations are more obvious to observe. I think we see humans > mis-copy their memetic code (misinterpret their holy scriptures, or their > parents or masters teachings, etc.) very often and sometimes in several > dimensions at once. Perhaps the "robustness" of the underlying unit (a > human being) allows for such wild mutations (highly antisocial behaviour by > most measures) in a single copy, is what allows for what seems like some > fairly fast memetic evolution at the social level? > > > > i'm probably reaching here, but in this petri dish that is the USA with > Trump or the first world with Trump, et al, or even the globally connected > (bits, atoms, virus particles, memes, oh my!) first, second and third world > there is likely to be some relatively unprecedented mutations recognized > and even selected for. Some could say that Donald Trump represents a > half-dozen (or more) mutations in the socio/economic/political code and yet > HE WAS SELECTED FOR and is almost surely malignant and seems to be > metastasizing (other populist whitelash fascist movements around the first > world). The question in this metaphor might be whether the body > (humankind) has the ability to fight back against this? It fits my > Candide/Pollyanna idea that times such as these are good times to focus > significant resources on simply "tending your own garden". The world > will have a better chance of fighting off this malignancy if it maintains > it's overall health (social, economic, spiritual) > > otherwise. We can't let this malignancy weaken our immune system any > more than it already has. > > -- > ?glen? > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From merlelefkoff at gmail.com Tue Aug 22 10:50:59 2017 From: merlelefkoff at gmail.com (Merle Lefkoff) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 07:50:59 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] well..so much for watching the ecipse in person In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: You wouldn't have seen much, even if the clouds parted. I'm on my way back from Oregon and totality, which is 1,000,000 times darker than watching the eclipse at any percent of partial totality. Totality is simply a completely different experience. And yes, it was worth the trip! On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 7:50 AM, ?glen? wrote: > Yeah, but even with the clouds, it will still be cool to see the sky go > dark in the middle of the day. > > On 08/21/2017 07:48 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote: > > If this junk cloudy weather keeps up. Won't see a damn thing other thank > > depressing clouds and a reminder the roof is leaking....again. Oh clear > > skys they said....ahahahahahahahahahaha > > > -- > ?glen? > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -- Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy emergentdiplomacy.org Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA Visiting Professor in Integrative Peacebuilding Saint Paul University Ottawa, Ontario, Canada merlelefkoff at gmail.com mobile: (303) 859-5609 skype: merle.lelfkoff2 twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nickthompson at earthlink.net Tue Aug 22 11:10:28 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 11:10:28 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> Message-ID: <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> Eric, I have been trying to get somebody to tussle with me over this claim since it was first made. I think it?s nonsense, but I am not sure. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Eric Charles Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 8:11 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Sorry to pull at a still thread, but I find this claim fascinating. "Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them." Would we say the same of artificial selection? I'm pretty sure we would normally claim that artificial selection has lead to all sorts of innovations. Maybe I'm thinking of "innovations" more broadly than is intended?!? Aren't the baring and tail-wagging, multi-colored, short-snouted, cuddly foxes an example of innovation? (For those who don't know, it takes a pretty short number of generations to turn wild foxes into reasonable approximations of domestic dogs, and all you have to do is select against aggression towards humans.) I know what the quote is trying to get at, but I'm not sure it holds up in the wider context of things-that-cause biological innovation. Best, Eric ----------- Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. Supervisory Survey Statistician U.S. Marine Corps On Sun, Aug 13, 2017 at 5:12 PM, Marcus Daniels > wrote: "To explain why I hate it so much, we can try to think deeply about the nazi that killed the antifa yesterday in Charlottesville and Trump's response to it (blaming all sides)." This side must have been terribly menacing to a man in a > 300 HP car. Not only do words have meaning, but even perceptions. The memes are unbound or at least differently bound. So any fitness function that involves them cannot be compared. Marcus _____ From: Friam > on behalf of ?glen? > Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2017 10:28 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate I absolutely loathe the meme metaphor. I don't usually agree with Nick's distinction between metaphor and analogy. 8^) But here, I claim the meme isn't *anything* like a gene... or more clearly, there is no idea/thought construct that is anything like a gene. To explain why I hate it so much, we can try to think deeply about the nazi that killed the antifa yesterday in Charlottesville and Trump's response to it (blaming all sides). To be clear, anyone who continues defending their vote for Trump at this point should be held accountable for their idiotic choice. But the Trump defender will say something like "Trump's not a racist or a nazi, even if some of his followers are." And, "yes I support Trump. But I'm not a nazi." Pffft. It flat out does not matter. There is no analog for mutation or crossover that we can use to map Trump to his nazis. The gooey milieu that flows from someone like Trump, whose life of privilege has severely decoupled him from reality, to the nazis, whose fear and hatred has severely decoupled them from reality, ... that gooey ball of ill-formed ideology can't be coupled to reality. That's the problem with metaphor, ideology, and fantasy. To make reductive attempts to model such fantasy with analogies to real things (like genes) is to conflate fantasy with reality. To be as clear as I can, ideas can only track back to mechanisms when they sync up with reality. That's why (observational) science is so successful. There are (basically) 2 ways ideas can interact with reality: 1) methodologically and 2) neural correlates. If a ball of ideas includes (in its not biological evolution) a method for regularly testing itself against reality, then it's possible to analogize between that ball of ideas and reality. Neither Trump, nor his nazis include that. So, the only remaining map we can draw from the ideas to reality is any neural correlates we can find. And until we have those, mapping the ideas to genes dooms us to faulty (at best) or delusional (at worst) inferences. Now, everyone I know who uses the words "meme" and "memetics" is relatively scientifically literate. So, memetics *seems* plausible because it's only used by relatively clear thinkers about relatively reality-touching balls of ideas. But I would bet money that memetics will fail miserably if we try to use it to explain or model fantasy-dominated people like Trump and his supporters. On 08/12/2017 12:10 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > In the socio/political/religious/economic realm it seems that multiple simultaneous mutations are more obvious to observe. I think we see humans mis-copy their memetic code (misinterpret their holy scriptures, or their parents or masters teachings, etc.) very often and sometimes in several dimensions at once. Perhaps the "robustness" of the underlying unit (a human being) allows for such wild mutations (highly antisocial behaviour by most measures) in a single copy, is what allows for what seems like some fairly fast memetic evolution at the social level? > > i'm probably reaching here, but in this petri dish that is the USA with Trump or the first world with Trump, et al, or even the globally connected (bits, atoms, virus particles, memes, oh my!) first, second and third world there is likely to be some relatively unprecedented mutations recognized and even selected for. Some could say that Donald Trump represents a half-dozen (or more) mutations in the socio/economic/political code and yet HE WAS SELECTED FOR and is almost surely malignant and seems to be metastasizing (other populist whitelash fascist movements around the first world). The question in this metaphor might be whether the body (humankind) has the ability to fight back against this? It fits my Candide/Pollyanna idea that times such as these are good times to focus significant resources on simply "tending your own garden". The world will have a better chance of fighting off this malignancy if it maintains it's overall health (social, economic, spiritual) > otherwise. We can't let this malignancy weaken our immune system any more than it already has. -- ?glen? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Tue Aug 22 12:10:32 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 09:10:32 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Well, Dave promised to give us a gist of Wagner. And Grant has chimed in regarding the stochasticity of crossover, which provoked an inadequate response from Nick, if I remember correctly. Since you're actively reading Wagner now, Nick, perhaps you could give us a summary of what he might have meant by Jenny's quote? Repeated here for convenience: On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: > > An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: how nature innovates by Andreas Wagner. > > From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability. > On 08/22/2017 08:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > I have been trying to get somebody to tussle with me over this claim since it was first made. > I think it?s nonsense, but I am not sure. > > *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles > *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 8:11 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate > > > > Sorry to pull at a still thread, but I find this claim fascinating. > "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them." > > Would we say the same of artificial selection? I'm pretty sure we would normally claim that artificial selection has lead to all sorts of innovations. Maybe I'm thinking of "innovations" more broadly than is intended?!? Aren't the baring and tail-wagging, multi-colored, short-snouted, cuddly foxes an example of innovation? (For those who don't know, it takes a pretty short number of generations to turn wild foxes into reasonable approximations of domestic dogs, and all you have to do is select against aggression towards humans.) > > I know what the quote is trying to get at, but I'm not sure it holds up in the wider context of things-that-cause biological innovation. -- g??? From nickthompson at earthlink.net Tue Aug 22 14:21:55 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 14:21:55 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <019301d31b73$89a865a0$9cf930e0$@earthlink.net> Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome offers up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living. The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd. "inadequate," my tush. (};-)] N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of g??? Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 12:11 PM To: friam at redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Well, Dave promised to give us a gist of Wagner. And Grant has chimed in regarding the stochasticity of crossover, which provoked an inadequate response from Nick, if I remember correctly. Since you're actively reading Wagner now, Nick, perhaps you could give us a summary of what he might have meant by Jenny's quote? Repeated here for convenience: On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: > > An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: how nature innovates by Andreas Wagner. > > From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability. > On 08/22/2017 08:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > I have been trying to get somebody to tussle with me over this claim since it was first made. > I think it?s nonsense, but I am not sure. > > *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Eric > Charles > *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 8:11 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate > > > > Sorry to pull at a still thread, but I find this claim fascinating. > "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them." > > Would we say the same of artificial selection? I'm pretty sure we > would normally claim that artificial selection has lead to all sorts > of innovations. Maybe I'm thinking of "innovations" more broadly than > is intended?!? Aren't the baring and tail-wagging, multi-colored, > short-snouted, cuddly foxes an example of innovation? (For those who > don't know, it takes a pretty short number of generations to turn wild > foxes into reasonable approximations of domestic dogs, and all you > have to do is select against aggression towards humans.) > > I know what the quote is trying to get at, but I'm not sure it holds up in the wider context of things-that-cause biological innovation. -- g??? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove From gepropella at gmail.com Tue Aug 22 14:27:43 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 11:27:43 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <019301d31b73$89a865a0$9cf930e0$@earthlink.net> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> <019301d31b73$89a865a0$9cf930e0$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <9a40855e-abef-89ed-206e-93d048c46a33@gmail.com> Heh, so you *agree* with Wagner that natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them? On 08/22/2017 11:21 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome offers up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living. The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd. -- g??? From nickthompson at earthlink.net Tue Aug 22 14:49:19 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 14:49:19 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <9a40855e-abef-89ed-206e-93d048c46a33@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> <019301d31b73$89a865a0$9cf930e0$@earthlink.net> <9a40855e-abef-89ed-206e-93d048c46a 33@gmail.com> Message-ID: <019b01d31b77$5ef837a0$1ce8a6e0$@earthlink.net> Well, I am not sure the weight of Wagner's presentation supports that conclusion. N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of g??? Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 2:28 PM To: FriAM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Heh, so you *agree* with Wagner that natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them? On 08/22/2017 11:21 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome offers up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living. The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd. -- g??? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove From wallrobert7 at gmail.com Tue Aug 22 19:05:36 2017 From: wallrobert7 at gmail.com (Robert Wall) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 17:05:36 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <019301d31b73$89a865a0$9cf930e0$@earthlink.net> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> <019301d31b73$89a865a0$9cf930e0$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Nick, "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them." and "The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd." Not trying to get into a tussle with you, ? but Jeremy England would tend to agree with you, as would I. According to this analysis (*Nautilus *2016) concerning the Hox gene circuit , there doesn't seem to be enough time for randomness (i.e., blindly groping) to be explanatory. The numbers tend to say this *would *be absurd. Take, for example, the discovery within the field of evolutionary > developmental biology that the different body plans of many complex > organisms, including us, arise not from different genes but from different > networks of gene interaction and expression in the same basic circuit, > called the Hox gene circuit. To get from a snake to a human, you don?t > need a bunch of completely different genes, but just a different pattern of > wiring in essentially the same kind of Hox gene circuit. For these two > vertebrates there are around 40 genes in the circuit. If you take account > of the different ways that these genes might regulate one another (for > example, by activation or suppression), you find that the number of > possible circuits is more than 10700. That?s a lot, lot more than the > number of fundamental particles in the observable universe. What, then, are > the chances of evolution finding its way blindly to the viable ?snake? or > ?human? traits (or phenotypes) for the Hox gene circuit? How on earth did > evolution manage to rewire the Hox network of a Cambrian fish to create us? ?...? ? You could go from one sequence to another with the same shape (and thus > much the same function) via a succession of small changes to the sequence, > as if proceeding through a rail network station by station. Such changes > are called neutral mutations, because they are neither adaptively > beneficial nor detrimental. (In fact even if mutations are not strictly > neutral but slightly decrease fitness, as many do, they can persist for a > long time in a population as if they were quasi-neutral.) Here is a new explanation *for the rest of us* -- *Wired*: CONTROVERSIAL NEW THEORY SUGGESTS LIFE WASN'T A FLUKE OF BIOLOGY?IT WAS PHYSICS [7-30-2017]. ... and here -- *Scientific America*: A New Physics Theory of Life [2014], where the same science author writes about this when the idea was first proposed by England in his 2013 paper . A physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like physical properties Perhaps very much prematurely, England is being touted as the new Darwin. His theory, however, does not replace natural selection but provides a deeper expanation for "fitness." In an hour-long lecture that I listened to recently, England admits that we cannot really attribute any of this to randomness ... we don't really know precisely what that is. What it seems to come down to, though, are--as you say--the "best" hypotheses for the seemingly improbable (considering the Second Law of Thermodynamics) building of new structures in a prevailing heat bath that dissipate the most Gibbs free energy. Erwin Schr?dinger noted something similar in his 1944 essay *What is Life*. If I understand this, what creates these "fit" structures is this tendency for all matter, not just living matter, (i.e., arrangements of atoms or molecules) to self-organize into new organizations--your *hypotheses*--that maximize the dissipation of free energy. It is indeed the evolving, prevailing environment that provides the opportunities for various, different "hypotheses" to arise at different times in geological history. So, in a sense, you *can *say that natural selection *creates and preserves* innovations if you see it as an interactive process as both Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead both did at the beginning of the twentieth century. >From the same *Scientific American* article, this is notable: Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give > researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and > function in living things, many of the researchers said. ?Natural selection > doesn?t explain certain characteristics,? said Ard Louis, a biophysicist at > Oxford University, in an email. These characteristics include a heritable > change to gene expression called methylation, increases in complexity in > the absence of natural selection, and certain molecular changes Louis has > recently studied. > > If [*Jeremy*] England?s approach stands up to more testing, it could > further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation for every > adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of > dissipation-driven organization. They might find, for example, that ?the > reason that an organism shows characteristic X rather than Y may not be > because X is more fit than Y, but because physical constraints make it > easier for X to evolve than for Y to evolve,? Louis said. For students and practitioners of complexity science, this seems more than just interesting. Hope this adds something to this interesting thread. It got my attention. Cheers, Robert On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 12:21 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome offers > up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living. The idea of > evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd. > > "inadequate," my tush. (};-)] > > N > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > Clark University > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > -----Original Message----- > From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of g??? > Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 12:11 PM > To: friam at redfish.com > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate > > > Well, Dave promised to give us a gist of Wagner. And Grant has chimed in > regarding the stochasticity of crossover, which provoked an inadequate > response from Nick, if I remember correctly. Since you're actively reading > Wagner now, Nick, perhaps you could give us a summary of what he might have > meant by Jenny's quote? Repeated here for convenience: > > On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: > > > > An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: how > nature innovates by Andreas Wagner. > > > > From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but > this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it > cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just > another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations- > some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that accelerate life's > ability to innovate, its innovability. > > > > > > > On 08/22/2017 08:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > > I have been trying to get somebody to tussle with me over this claim > since it was first made. > > I think it?s nonsense, but I am not sure. > > > > *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Eric > > Charles > > *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 8:11 PM > > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > > > > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate > > > > > > > > Sorry to pull at a still thread, but I find this claim fascinating. > > "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create > them." > > > > Would we say the same of artificial selection? I'm pretty sure we > > would normally claim that artificial selection has lead to all sorts > > of innovations. Maybe I'm thinking of "innovations" more broadly than > > is intended?!? Aren't the baring and tail-wagging, multi-colored, > > short-snouted, cuddly foxes an example of innovation? (For those who > > don't know, it takes a pretty short number of generations to turn wild > > foxes into reasonable approximations of domestic dogs, and all you > > have to do is select against aggression towards humans.) > > > > I know what the quote is trying to get at, but I'm not sure it holds up > in the wider context of things-that-cause biological innovation. > > -- > g??? > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com Tue Aug 22 20:25:27 2017 From: eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com (Eric Charles) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 20:25:27 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> <019301d31b73$89a865a0$9cf930e0$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Incidentally, the life-increases-entropy hypothesis.... I first stumbled upon an excellent statement of that in Comparative Psychology: A Handbook (1998). It was by Rod Swenson, who has some other interesting statements on the topic on Research Gate , including one connecting the idea with perception-action systems. It is definitely insightful in some ways, and I remember being quite impressed. However, as I see it pop up more, I start to remember that it's been a while since most Western intellectuals expected life to be an exception to the laws of physics, so I'm not sure it's too terribly interesting to note that life conforms to them. ----------- Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. Supervisory Survey Statistician U.S. Marine Corps On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 7:05 PM, Robert Wall wrote: > Nick, > > "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them." > and "The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is > absurd." > > Not trying to get into a tussle with you, ? but Jeremy England > would > tend to agree with you, as would I. According to this analysis (*Nautilus > *2016) concerning the Hox gene circuit > , > there doesn't seem to be enough time for randomness (i.e., blindly groping) > to be explanatory. The numbers tend to say this *would *be absurd. > > Take, for example, the discovery within the field of evolutionary >> developmental biology that the different body plans of many complex >> organisms, including us, arise not from different genes but from different >> networks of gene interaction and expression in the same basic circuit, >> called the Hox gene circuit. To get from a snake to a human, you don?t >> need a bunch of completely different genes, but just a different pattern of >> wiring in essentially the same kind of Hox gene circuit. For these two >> vertebrates there are around 40 genes in the circuit. If you take account >> of the different ways that these genes might regulate one another (for >> example, by activation or suppression), you find that the number of >> possible circuits is more than 10700. That?s a lot, lot more than the >> number of fundamental particles in the observable universe. What, then, are >> the chances of evolution finding its way blindly to the viable ?snake? or >> ?human? traits (or phenotypes) for the Hox gene circuit? How on earth did >> evolution manage to rewire the Hox network of a Cambrian fish to create us? > > > ?...? > > ? > > You could go from one sequence to another with the same shape (and thus >> much the same function) via a succession of small changes to the sequence, >> as if proceeding through a rail network station by station. Such changes >> are called neutral mutations, because they are neither adaptively >> beneficial nor detrimental. (In fact even if mutations are not strictly >> neutral but slightly decrease fitness, as many do, they can persist for a >> long time in a population as if they were quasi-neutral.) > > > Here is a new explanation *for the rest of us* -- *Wired*: CONTROVERSIAL > NEW THEORY SUGGESTS LIFE WASN'T A FLUKE OF BIOLOGY?IT WAS PHYSICS > > [7-30-2017]. > > ... and here -- *Scientific America*: A New Physics Theory of Life > > [2014], where the same science author writes about this when the idea was > first proposed by England in his 2013 paper > . > > > A physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because > the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like physical > properties > > > Perhaps very much prematurely, England is being touted as the new Darwin. > His theory, however, does not replace natural selection but provides a > deeper expanation for "fitness." > > In an hour-long lecture that I listened to > recently, England admits > that we cannot really attribute any of this to randomness ... we don't > really know precisely what that is. What it seems to come down to, though, > are--as you say--the "best" hypotheses for the seemingly improbable > (considering the Second Law of Thermodynamics) building of new structures > in a prevailing heat bath that dissipate the most Gibbs free energy. Erwin > Schr?dinger noted something similar in his 1944 essay *What is Life*. > > If I understand this, what creates these "fit" structures is this > tendency for all matter, not just living matter, (i.e., arrangements of > atoms or molecules) to self-organize into new organizations--your > *hypotheses*--that maximize the dissipation of free energy. It is indeed > the evolving, prevailing environment that provides the opportunities for > various, different "hypotheses" to arise at different times in geological > history. So, in a sense, you *can *say that natural selection *creates > and preserves* innovations if you see it as an interactive process as > both Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead both did at the beginning of > the twentieth century. > > From the same *Scientific American* article, this is notable: > > Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give >> researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and >> function in living things, many of the researchers said. ?Natural selection >> doesn?t explain certain characteristics,? said Ard Louis, a biophysicist at >> Oxford University, in an email. These characteristics include a heritable >> change to gene expression called methylation, increases in complexity in >> the absence of natural selection, and certain molecular changes Louis has >> recently studied. > > > >> >> If [*Jeremy*] England?s approach stands up to more testing, it could >> further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation for every >> adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of >> dissipation-driven organization. They might find, for example, that ?the >> reason that an organism shows characteristic X rather than Y may not be >> because X is more fit than Y, but because physical constraints make it >> easier for X to evolve than for Y to evolve,? Louis said. > > > For students and practitioners of complexity science, this seems more than > just interesting. > > Hope this adds something to this interesting thread. It got my attention. > > Cheers, > > Robert > > > On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 12:21 PM, Nick Thompson < > nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote: > >> Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome offers >> up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living. The idea of >> evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd. >> >> "inadequate," my tush. (};-)] >> >> N >> >> >> >> Nicholas S. Thompson >> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology >> Clark University >> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of g??? >> Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 12:11 PM >> To: friam at redfish.com >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate >> >> >> Well, Dave promised to give us a gist of Wagner. And Grant has chimed in >> regarding the stochasticity of crossover, which provoked an inadequate >> response from Nick, if I remember correctly. Since you're actively reading >> Wagner now, Nick, perhaps you could give us a summary of what he might have >> meant by Jenny's quote? Repeated here for convenience: >> >> On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: >> > >> > An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: how >> nature innovates by Andreas Wagner. >> > >> > From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, >> but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve innovations, but >> it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is >> just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any >> innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that >> accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability. >> > >> >> >> >> >> On 08/22/2017 08:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: >> > I have been trying to get somebody to tussle with me over this claim >> since it was first made. >> > I think it?s nonsense, but I am not sure. >> > >> > *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Eric >> > Charles >> > *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 8:11 PM >> > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group >> > >> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate >> > >> > >> > >> > Sorry to pull at a still thread, but I find this claim fascinating. >> > "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create >> them." >> > >> > Would we say the same of artificial selection? I'm pretty sure we >> > would normally claim that artificial selection has lead to all sorts >> > of innovations. Maybe I'm thinking of "innovations" more broadly than >> > is intended?!? Aren't the baring and tail-wagging, multi-colored, >> > short-snouted, cuddly foxes an example of innovation? (For those who >> > don't know, it takes a pretty short number of generations to turn wild >> > foxes into reasonable approximations of domestic dogs, and all you >> > have to do is select against aggression towards humans.) >> > >> > I know what the quote is trying to get at, but I'm not sure it holds up >> in the wider context of things-that-cause biological innovation. >> >> -- >> g??? >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe >> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Tue Aug 22 21:34:09 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z2VwciDim6c=?=) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 18:34:09 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> <019301d31b73$89a865a0$9cf930e0$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <6E1C413B-64CA-4873-8983-8ABF8A2EF2DC@gmail.com> But none of this seems to indicate that *selection* or survival to mating age *creates* the new attribute. Survival to mating age only preserves whatever phenotype was constructed by the genes and ontogeny. Whether you call genes and ontogeny random or not is irrelevant. We could easily call it 'ignorance'... i.e. ignorance constructs the phenotype, then the environment decides its fecundity. On August 22, 2017 5:25:27 PM PDT, Eric Charles wrote: >Incidentally, the life-increases-entropy hypothesis.... I first >stumbled >upon an excellent statement of that in Comparative Psychology: A >Handbook >(1998). >It was by Rod Swenson, who has some other interesting statements on the >topic on Research Gate >, >including one connecting the idea with perception-action systems. > >It is definitely insightful in some ways, and I remember being quite >impressed. However, as I see it pop up more, I start to remember that >it's >been a while since most Western intellectuals expected life to be an >exception to the laws of physics, so I'm not sure it's too terribly >interesting to note that life conforms to them. > > >----------- >Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. >Supervisory Survey Statistician >U.S. Marine Corps > > >On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 7:05 PM, Robert Wall >wrote: > >> Nick, >> >> "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create >them." >> and "The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space >is >> absurd." >> >> Not trying to get into a tussle with you, ? but Jeremy England >> would >> tend to agree with you, as would I. According to this analysis >(*Nautilus >> *2016) concerning the Hox gene circuit >> >, >> there doesn't seem to be enough time for randomness (i.e., blindly >groping) >> to be explanatory. The numbers tend to say this *would *be absurd. >> >> Take, for example, the discovery within the field of evolutionary >>> developmental biology that the different body plans of many complex >>> organisms, including us, arise not from different genes but from >different >>> networks of gene interaction and expression in the same basic >circuit, >>> called the Hox gene circuit. To get from a snake to a human, you >don?t >>> need a bunch of completely different genes, but just a different >pattern of >>> wiring in essentially the same kind of Hox gene circuit. For these >two >>> vertebrates there are around 40 genes in the circuit. If you take >account >>> of the different ways that these genes might regulate one another >(for >>> example, by activation or suppression), you find that the number of >>> possible circuits is more than 10700. That?s a lot, lot more than >the >>> number of fundamental particles in the observable universe. What, >then, are >>> the chances of evolution finding its way blindly to the viable >?snake? or >>> ?human? traits (or phenotypes) for the Hox gene circuit? How on >earth did >>> evolution manage to rewire the Hox network of a Cambrian fish to >create us? >> >> >> ?...? >> >> ? >> >> You could go from one sequence to another with the same shape (and >thus >>> much the same function) via a succession of small changes to the >sequence, >>> as if proceeding through a rail network station by station. Such >changes >>> are called neutral mutations, because they are neither adaptively >>> beneficial nor detrimental. (In fact even if mutations are not >strictly >>> neutral but slightly decrease fitness, as many do, they can persist >for a >>> long time in a population as if they were quasi-neutral.) >> >> >> Here is a new explanation *for the rest of us* -- *Wired*: >CONTROVERSIAL >> NEW THEORY SUGGESTS LIFE WASN'T A FLUKE OF BIOLOGY?IT WAS PHYSICS >> > >> [7-30-2017]. >> >> ... and here -- *Scientific America*: A New Physics Theory of Life >> > >> [2014], where the same science author writes about this when the idea >was >> first proposed by England in his 2013 paper >> . >> >> >> A physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists >because >> the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like >physical >> properties >> >> >> Perhaps very much prematurely, England is being touted as the new >Darwin. >> His theory, however, does not replace natural selection but provides >a >> deeper expanation for "fitness." >> >> In an hour-long lecture that I listened to >> recently, England >admits >> that we cannot really attribute any of this to randomness ... we >don't >> really know precisely what that is. What it seems to come down to, >though, >> are--as you say--the "best" hypotheses for the seemingly improbable >> (considering the Second Law of Thermodynamics) building of new >structures >> in a prevailing heat bath that dissipate the most Gibbs free energy. >Erwin >> Schr?dinger noted something similar in his 1944 essay *What is Life*. >> >> If I understand this, what creates these "fit" structures is this >> tendency for all matter, not just living matter, (i.e., arrangements >of >> atoms or molecules) to self-organize into new organizations--your >> *hypotheses*--that maximize the dissipation of free energy. It is >indeed >> the evolving, prevailing environment that provides the opportunities >for >> various, different "hypotheses" to arise at different times in >geological >> history. So, in a sense, you *can *say that natural selection >*creates >> and preserves* innovations if you see it as an interactive process as >> both Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead both did at the >beginning of >> the twentieth century. >> >> From the same *Scientific American* article, this is notable: >> >> Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give >>> researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and >>> function in living things, many of the researchers said. ?Natural >selection >>> doesn?t explain certain characteristics,? said Ard Louis, a >biophysicist at >>> Oxford University, in an email. These characteristics include a >heritable >>> change to gene expression called methylation, increases in >complexity in >>> the absence of natural selection, and certain molecular changes >Louis has >>> recently studied. >> >> >> >>> >>> If [*Jeremy*] England?s approach stands up to more testing, it could >>> further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation for >every >>> adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of >>> dissipation-driven organization. They might find, for example, that >?the >>> reason that an organism shows characteristic X rather than Y may not >be >>> because X is more fit than Y, but because physical constraints make >it >>> easier for X to evolve than for Y to evolve,? Louis said. >> >> >> For students and practitioners of complexity science, this seems more >than >> just interesting. >> >> Hope this adds something to this interesting thread. It got my >attention. >> >> Cheers, >> >> Robert >> >> >> On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 12:21 PM, Nick Thompson < >> nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote: >> >>> Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome >offers >>> up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living. The idea >of >>> evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd. >>> >>> "inadequate," my tush. (};-)] >>> >>> N >>> >>> >>> >>> Nicholas S. Thompson >>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology >>> Clark University >>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of g??? >>> Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 12:11 PM >>> To: friam at redfish.com >>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate >>> >>> >>> Well, Dave promised to give us a gist of Wagner. And Grant has >chimed in >>> regarding the stochasticity of crossover, which provoked an >inadequate >>> response from Nick, if I remember correctly. Since you're actively >reading >>> Wagner now, Nick, perhaps you could give us a summary of what he >might have >>> meant by Jenny's quote? Repeated here for convenience: >>> >>> On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: >>> > >>> > An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: >how >>> nature innovates by Andreas Wagner. >>> > >>> > From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond >dispute, >>> but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve >innovations, but >>> it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them >random is >>> just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any >>> innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles >that >>> accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innov -- ?glen? From eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com Wed Aug 23 07:00:26 2017 From: eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com (Eric Charles) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 07:00:26 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <6E1C413B-64CA-4873-8983-8ABF8A2EF2DC@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> <019301d31b73$89a865a0$9cf930e0$@earthlink.net> <6E1C413B-64CA-4873-8983-8ABF8A2EF2DC@gmail.com> Message-ID: But in the artificial selection to Natural Selection metaphor, selection is selection to mate not selection to die. Surely selective breeding creates new phenotypic combinations all the time, even absent mutation. And that's not even getting into all the factors that can affect genetic expression, creating new phenotypes, absent a mutation. Again, going back to the domesticated Fox example, it all happened too quickly (for most scientists to believe that) mutation played a major role.... and yep the result counts as innovative.... right? On Aug 22, 2017 9:34 PM, "gepr ?" wrote: > But none of this seems to indicate that *selection* or survival to mating > age *creates* the new attribute. Survival to mating age only preserves > whatever phenotype was constructed by the genes and ontogeny. Whether you > call genes and ontogeny random or not is irrelevant. We could easily call > it 'ignorance'... i.e. ignorance constructs the phenotype, then the > environment decides its fecundity. > > On August 22, 2017 5:25:27 PM PDT, Eric Charles < > eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com> wrote: > >Incidentally, the life-increases-entropy hypothesis.... I first > >stumbled > >upon an excellent statement of that in Comparative Psychology: A > >Handbook > > gary-greenberg/1112415063>(1998). > >It was by Rod Swenson, who has some other interesting statements on the > >topic on Research Gate > > 2118010758_ROD_SWENSON>, > >including one connecting the idea with perception-action systems. > > > >It is definitely insightful in some ways, and I remember being quite > >impressed. However, as I see it pop up more, I start to remember that > >it's > >been a while since most Western intellectuals expected life to be an > >exception to the laws of physics, so I'm not sure it's too terribly > >interesting to note that life conforms to them. > > > > > >----------- > >Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. > >Supervisory Survey Statistician > >U.S. Marine Corps > > > > > >On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 7:05 PM, Robert Wall > >wrote: > > > >> Nick, > >> > >> "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create > >them." > >> and "The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space > >is > >> absurd." > >> > >> Not trying to get into a tussle with you, ? but Jeremy England > >> would > >> tend to agree with you, as would I. According to this analysis > >(*Nautilus > >> *2016) concerning the Hox gene circuit > >> > > inevitability-of-evolution-rp>, > >> there doesn't seem to be enough time for randomness (i.e., blindly > >groping) > >> to be explanatory. The numbers tend to say this *would *be absurd. > >> > >> Take, for example, the discovery within the field of evolutionary > >>> developmental biology that the different body plans of many complex > >>> organisms, including us, arise not from different genes but from > >different > >>> networks of gene interaction and expression in the same basic > >circuit, > >>> called the Hox gene circuit. To get from a snake to a human, you > >don?t > >>> need a bunch of completely different genes, but just a different > >pattern of > >>> wiring in essentially the same kind of Hox gene circuit. For these > >two > >>> vertebrates there are around 40 genes in the circuit. If you take > >account > >>> of the different ways that these genes might regulate one another > >(for > >>> example, by activation or suppression), you find that the number of > >>> possible circuits is more than 10700. That?s a lot, lot more than > >the > >>> number of fundamental particles in the observable universe. What, > >then, are > >>> the chances of evolution finding its way blindly to the viable > >?snake? or > >>> ?human? traits (or phenotypes) for the Hox gene circuit? How on > >earth did > >>> evolution manage to rewire the Hox network of a Cambrian fish to > >create us? > >> > >> > >> ?...? > >> > >> ? > >> > >> You could go from one sequence to another with the same shape (and > >thus > >>> much the same function) via a succession of small changes to the > >sequence, > >>> as if proceeding through a rail network station by station. Such > >changes > >>> are called neutral mutations, because they are neither adaptively > >>> beneficial nor detrimental. (In fact even if mutations are not > >strictly > >>> neutral but slightly decrease fitness, as many do, they can persist > >for a > >>> long time in a population as if they were quasi-neutral.) > >> > >> > >> Here is a new explanation *for the rest of us* -- *Wired*: > >CONTROVERSIAL > >> NEW THEORY SUGGESTS LIFE WASN'T A FLUKE OF BIOLOGY?IT WAS PHYSICS > >> > > suggests-life-wasnt-a-fluke-of-biologyit-was-physics/> > >> [7-30-2017]. > >> > >> ... and here -- *Scientific America*: A New Physics Theory of Life > >> > > > > >> [2014], where the same science author writes about this when the idea > >was > >> first proposed by England in his 2013 paper > >> . > >> > >> > >> A physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists > >because > >> the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like > >physical > >> properties > >> > >> > >> Perhaps very much prematurely, England is being touted as the new > >Darwin. > >> His theory, however, does not replace natural selection but provides > >a > >> deeper expanation for "fitness." > >> > >> In an hour-long lecture that I listened to > >> recently, England > >admits > >> that we cannot really attribute any of this to randomness ... we > >don't > >> really know precisely what that is. What it seems to come down to, > >though, > >> are--as you say--the "best" hypotheses for the seemingly improbable > >> (considering the Second Law of Thermodynamics) building of new > >structures > >> in a prevailing heat bath that dissipate the most Gibbs free energy. > >Erwin > >> Schr?dinger noted something similar in his 1944 essay *What is Life*. > >> > >> If I understand this, what creates these "fit" structures is this > >> tendency for all matter, not just living matter, (i.e., arrangements > >of > >> atoms or molecules) to self-organize into new organizations--your > >> *hypotheses*--that maximize the dissipation of free energy. It is > >indeed > >> the evolving, prevailing environment that provides the opportunities > >for > >> various, different "hypotheses" to arise at different times in > >geological > >> history. So, in a sense, you *can *say that natural selection > >*creates > >> and preserves* innovations if you see it as an interactive process as > >> both Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead both did at the > >beginning of > >> the twentieth century. > >> > >> From the same *Scientific American* article, this is notable: > >> > >> Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give > >>> researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and > >>> function in living things, many of the researchers said. ?Natural > >selection > >>> doesn?t explain certain characteristics,? said Ard Louis, a > >biophysicist at > >>> Oxford University, in an email. These characteristics include a > >heritable > >>> change to gene expression called methylation, increases in > >complexity in > >>> the absence of natural selection, and certain molecular changes > >Louis has > >>> recently studied. > >> > >> > >> > >>> > >>> If [*Jeremy*] England?s approach stands up to more testing, it could > >>> further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation for > >every > >>> adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of > >>> dissipation-driven organization. They might find, for example, that > >?the > >>> reason that an organism shows characteristic X rather than Y may not > >be > >>> because X is more fit than Y, but because physical constraints make > >it > >>> easier for X to evolve than for Y to evolve,? Louis said. > >> > >> > >> For students and practitioners of complexity science, this seems more > >than > >> just interesting. > >> > >> Hope this adds something to this interesting thread. It got my > >attention. > >> > >> Cheers, > >> > >> Robert > >> > >> > >> On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 12:21 PM, Nick Thompson < > >> nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote: > >> > >>> Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome > >offers > >>> up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living. The idea > >of > >>> evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd. > >>> > >>> "inadequate," my tush. (};-)] > >>> > >>> N > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Nicholas S. Thompson > >>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > >>> Clark University > >>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > >>> > >>> -----Original Message----- > >>> From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of g??? > >>> Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 12:11 PM > >>> To: friam at redfish.com > >>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate > >>> > >>> > >>> Well, Dave promised to give us a gist of Wagner. And Grant has > >chimed in > >>> regarding the stochasticity of crossover, which provoked an > >inadequate > >>> response from Nick, if I remember correctly. Since you're actively > >reading > >>> Wagner now, Nick, perhaps you could give us a summary of what he > >might have > >>> meant by Jenny's quote? Repeated here for convenience: > >>> > >>> On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: > >>> > > >>> > An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: > >how > >>> nature innovates by Andreas Wagner. > >>> > > >>> > From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond > >dispute, > >>> but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve > >innovations, but > >>> it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them > >random is > >>> just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any > >>> innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles > >that > >>> accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innov > > -- > ?glen? > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rec at elf.org Wed Aug 23 11:00:15 2017 From: rec at elf.org (Roger Critchlow) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 11:00:15 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <6E1C413B-64CA-4873-8983-8ABF8A2EF2DC@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> <019301d31b73$89a865a0$9cf930e0$@earthlink.net> <6E1C413B-64CA-4873-8983-8ABF8A2EF2DC@gmail.com> Message-ID: Gracious, I'm having fits trying to construct complete arguments this morning. The original Darwinian mechanics of natural selection was formulated in complete agnosticism about where the underlying variety came from. The variety existed, under the proposed mechanics it would be winnowed into more or less fit progeny, and somehow after the winnowing there would still be more variety for future rounds of winnowing. The Neo-Darwinian synthesis identified Mendelian genetics as the mechanism of inheritance without any idea of how it worked, either, and was limited to recombination of alleles for their mechanics of variety. That is a formidable source of variety given enough alleles on enough loci, and it's also a sustainable source of variety since unfit allelic combinations could still be preserved in the population in other combinations. So if genotype AB was fatal, A and B might still persist in the genotypes AC, BC, AD, BD, and so on. Then with the molecular biology of the gene we finally get a physical mechanism for inheritance and an embarrassment of riches for the origins of variety. We have, off the top of my head: - single base pair replication errors or point mutations; - insertions or deletions where the DNA being copied or the copy gets looped out; - cross overs where two homologous DNA strands swap ends (though we had microscopic evidence for crossing over before molecular biology); - chromosome duplications and losses; - copy error correction mechanismss; - mutators which increase copy errors; - viral sequences integrating into chromososmes - viral sequences disintegrating out of chromosomes - mobile elements jumping from location to location in chromosomes - extra chromosomal genetic materials - incorporation of other organisms as organelles - neutral networks of RNAs or proteins where the underlying function is preserved across nucleotide or peptide substitutions - differential expression under environmental variation DNA polymerase is a complex of proteins which synthesizes a new strand of DNA complementary in sequence to an existing strand. It takes single stranded DNA and makes it into double stranded DNA according to the base pairing rules. It's actually more complex than that, I believe it unwinds the existing double strand as goes, cutting a strand to release the torsion. There are thousands active in a human cell that is duplicating its DNA in preparation for cell division. Embryonic cell divisions take about 8 hours, DNA replication is happening at 2.08e5 nucleotides/second according to a google search. My source claims that: "DNA replication is accomplished with an average of only 1 error per billion (109) nucleotides. 38 190?39 " (Amusing to me, that 190? refers to a text book of Molecular Cell Biology by an author who was a scientific advisor to a company where I was a founding employee.) That error rate, whatever its exact magnitude and significant digits, that replication rate, the concentration of DNA polymerase in the embryonic cells, the rate of cell division, these are all subject to natural selection, as are the biosynthetic pathways that supply the raw materials for DNA replication. Right, construct complete arguments. The theory of natural selection does not explain the origin of variety, however it does depend on variety existing and continuing to exist. If natural selection led to runaway fixation of genotypes in a population, it would be game over. One would expect that the fingerprints of natural selection should be found everywhere that living organisms might modulate the origin and maintenance of variety in their populations. As for the origin of innovations, I'd say that's a value system which has nothing to do with natural selection, it's a moral aesthetics that has to do with measuring progress, curating shiny baubles from evolutionary history for the purposes of arguing with other curators of shiny baubles. (Oops, may have tarred more than necessary with that brush.) I would guess that most arguments against evolution having had time enough to get anywhere depend on an assumption of one ancestral genome diversifying by replication with point mutation. But natural selection might have begun curating a diversity of RNAs, peptides, and small molecule metabolites before the origin of life, and the original life may have incorporated a lot of existing pre-biotic variety. -- rec -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nickthompson at earthlink.net Wed Aug 23 11:44:50 2017 From: nickthompson at earthlink.net (Nick Thompson) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 11:44:50 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <96e3ef0d-237c-fa91-7346-09931255cfb8@cybermesa.com> <3fe29958-3009-04c4-b492-35e7e045615c@swcp.com> <483301d0-8e87-49c2-e871-0eb7ff4a4ef4@cybermesa.com> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> <019301d31b73$89a865a0$9cf930e0$@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <01fa01d31c26$c32f2c60$498d8520$@earthlink.net> Thanks, Robert, These are nifty. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Robert Wall Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 7:06 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Nick, "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them." and "The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd." Not trying to get into a tussle with you, ? but Jeremy England would tend to agree with you, as would I. According to this analysis ( Nautilus 2016) concerning the Hox gene circuit, there doesn't seem to be enough time for randomness (i.e., blindly groping) to be explanatory. The numbers tend to say this would be absurd. Take, for example, the discovery within the field of evolutionary developmental biology that the different body plans of many complex organisms, including us, arise not from different genes but from different networks of gene interaction and expression in the same basic circuit, called the Hox gene circuit. To get from a snake to a human, you don?t need a bunch of completely different genes, but just a different pattern of wiring in essentially the same kind of Hox gene circuit. For these two vertebrates there are around 40 genes in the circuit. If you take account of the different ways that these genes might regulate one another (for example, by activation or suppression), you find that the number of possible circuits is more than 10700. That?s a lot, lot more than the number of fundamental particles in the observable universe. What, then, are the chances of evolution finding its way blindly to the viable ?snake? or ?human? traits (or phenotypes) for the Hox gene circuit? How on earth did evolution manage to rewire the Hox network of a Cambrian fish to create us? ?...? ? You could go from one sequence to another with the same shape (and thus much the same function) via a succession of small changes to the sequence, as if proceeding through a rail network station by station. Such changes are called neutral mutations, because they are neither adaptively beneficial nor detrimental. (In fact even if mutations are not strictly neutral but slightly decrease fitness, as many do, they can persist for a long time in a population as if they were quasi-neutral.) Here is a new explanation for the rest of us -- Wired: CONTROVERSIAL NEW THEORY SUGGESTS LIFE WASN'T A FLUKE OF BIOLOGY?IT WAS PHYSICS [7-30-2017]. ... and here -- Scientific America: A New Physics Theory of Life [2014], where the same science author writes about this when the idea was first proposed by England in his 2013 paper . A physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like physical properties Perhaps very much prematurely, England is being touted as the new Darwin. His theory, however, does not replace natural selection but provides a deeper expanation for "fitness." In an hour-long lecture that I listened to recently, England admits that we cannot really attribute any of this to randomness ... we don't really know precisely what that is. What it seems to come down to, though, are--as you say--the "best" hypotheses for the seemingly improbable (considering the Second Law of Thermodynamics) building of new structures in a prevailing heat bath that dissipate the most Gibbs free energy. Erwin Schr?dinger noted something similar in his 1944 essay What is Life. If I understand this, what creates these "fit" structures is this tendency for all matter, not just living matter, (i.e., arrangements of atoms or molecules) to self-organize into new organizations--your hypotheses--that maximize the dissipation of free energy. It is indeed the evolving, prevailing environment that provides the opportunities for various, different "hypotheses" to arise at different times in geological history. So, in a sense, you can say that natural selection creates and preserves innovations if you see it as an interactive process as both Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead both did at the beginning of the twentieth century. >From the same Scientific American article, this is notable: Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and function in living things, many of the researchers said. ?Natural selection doesn?t explain certain characteristics,? said Ard Louis, a biophysicist at Oxford University, in an email. These characteristics include a heritable change to gene expression called methylation, increases in complexity in the absence of natural selection, and certain molecular changes Louis has recently studied. If [Jeremy] England?s approach stands up to more testing, it could further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation for every adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of dissipation-driven organization. They might find, for example, that ?the reason that an organism shows characteristic X rather than Y may not be because X is more fit than Y, but because physical constraints make it easier for X to evolve than for Y to evolve,? Louis said. For students and practitioners of complexity science, this seems more than just interesting. Hope this adds something to this interesting thread. It got my attention. Cheers, Robert On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 12:21 PM, Nick Thompson > wrote: Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome offers up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living. The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd. "inadequate," my tush. (};-)] N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com ] On Behalf Of g??? Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 12:11 PM To: friam at redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate Well, Dave promised to give us a gist of Wagner. And Grant has chimed in regarding the stochasticity of crossover, which provoked an inadequate response from Nick, if I remember correctly. Since you're actively reading Wagner now, Nick, perhaps you could give us a summary of what he might have meant by Jenny's quote? Repeated here for convenience: On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote: > > An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: how nature innovates by Andreas Wagner. > > From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability. > On 08/22/2017 08:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > I have been trying to get somebody to tussle with me over this claim since it was first made. > I think it?s nonsense, but I am not sure. > > *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com ] *On Behalf Of *Eric > Charles > *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 8:11 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > > > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate > > > > Sorry to pull at a still thread, but I find this claim fascinating. > "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them." > > Would we say the same of artificial selection? I'm pretty sure we > would normally claim that artificial selection has lead to all sorts > of innovations. Maybe I'm thinking of "innovations" more broadly than > is intended?!? Aren't the baring and tail-wagging, multi-colored, > short-snouted, cuddly foxes an example of innovation? (For those who > don't know, it takes a pretty short number of generations to turn wild > foxes into reasonable approximations of domestic dogs, and all you > have to do is select against aggression towards humans.) > > I know what the quote is trying to get at, but I'm not sure it holds up in the wider context of things-that-cause biological innovation. -- g??? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rec at elf.org Wed Aug 23 12:33:27 2017 From: rec at elf.org (Roger Critchlow) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 12:33:27 -0400 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <000101d31141$71e64860$55b2d920$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> <019301d31b73$89a865a0$9cf930e0$@earthlink.net> <6E1C413B-64CA-4873-8983-8ABF8A2EF2DC@gmail.com> Message-ID: Okay, that wasn't quite fair to Andreas Wagner. He's got aspects of neutral networks in his redundant gene networks, that is, if you duplicate all the genes that participate in a control system, then one set can evolve while the other set maintains the original function of the system. This is like Peter Shuster's work on neutral networks of RNA sequences which preserve the RNA secondary structure while evolving the primary sequence, or the parallel work on proteins evolving their primary sequence while retaining the 3d structure and function, both of which got mentioned in the Phillip Ball article that Robert linked. Which is hardly surprising given the time both spent at SFI. I think this also corresponds to Gerald Edelman's idea of biological degeneracy. In fact, the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degeneracy_(biology) makes Wagner's point about degeneracy and robustness without referring to Wagner as a source in the body of the article. Hmm, there is an A. Wagner in the footnotes, but he isn't listed as a known researcher on the topic in the article body. Wonder who's editing this article? This all reminds me of the underlying basis for the ensemble dynamics used by Folding at Home to combine multiple independent short random walks. I remember once tracking that to a paper from LANL witten in the 50's, but I can't find any trace of it. The gist was that starting multiple short random walks from a given starting point and appropriately combining results would allow you to bias the starting point for the next bundle of short random walks, and the net result would be a super-linear speedup over spending the same resources on one long random walk. So the equivalent evolutionary ratchet might be to duplicate the genetic basis for something, creating multiple starting points for random walks; allow each duplicate to evolve independently for some period, creating multiple random walks; select against multiple copies and harvest the survivors; rinse; and repeat. But rather than starting from a single genotype, which would be game over, you start from an existing diverse population. Might be done by cycles of resource abundance and starvation. -- rec -- On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 11:00 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote: > Gracious, I'm having fits trying to construct complete arguments this > morning. > > The original Darwinian mechanics of natural selection was formulated in > complete agnosticism about where the underlying variety came from. The > variety existed, under the proposed mechanics it would be winnowed into > more or less fit progeny, and somehow after the winnowing there would still > be more variety for future rounds of winnowing. The Neo-Darwinian > synthesis identified Mendelian genetics as the mechanism of inheritance > without any idea of how it worked, either, and was limited to recombination > of alleles for their mechanics of variety. That is a formidable source of > variety given enough alleles on enough loci, and it's also a sustainable > source of variety since unfit allelic combinations could still be preserved > in the population in other combinations. So if genotype AB was fatal, A > and B might still persist in the genotypes AC, BC, AD, BD, and so on. Then > with the molecular biology of the gene we finally get a physical mechanism > for inheritance and an embarrassment of riches for the origins of variety. > We have, off the top of my head: > > - single base pair replication errors or point mutations; > - insertions or deletions where the DNA being copied or the copy gets > looped out; > - cross overs where two homologous DNA strands swap ends (though we > had microscopic evidence for crossing over before molecular biology); > - chromosome duplications and losses; > - copy error correction mechanismss; > - mutators which increase copy errors; > - viral sequences integrating into chromososmes > - viral sequences disintegrating out of chromosomes > - mobile elements jumping from location to location in chromosomes > - extra chromosomal genetic materials > - incorporation of other organisms as organelles > - neutral networks of RNAs or proteins where the underlying function > is preserved across nucleotide or peptide substitutions > - differential expression under environmental variation > > DNA polymerase is a complex of proteins which synthesizes a new strand of > DNA complementary in sequence to an existing strand. It takes single > stranded DNA and makes it into double stranded DNA according to the base > pairing rules. It's actually more complex than that, I believe it unwinds > the existing double strand as goes, cutting a strand to release the > torsion. There are thousands active in a human cell that is duplicating > its DNA in preparation for cell division. Embryonic cell divisions take > about 8 hours, DNA replication is happening at 2.08e5 nucleotides/second > according to a google search. My source claims that: "DNA replication is > accomplished with an average of only 1 error per billion (109) > nucleotides.38 190?39 > " (Amusing to me, that > 190? refers to a text book of Molecular Cell Biology by an author who was a > scientific advisor to a company where I was a founding employee.) That > error rate, whatever its exact magnitude and significant digits, that > replication rate, the concentration of DNA polymerase in the embryonic > cells, the rate of cell division, these are all subject to natural > selection, as are the biosynthetic pathways that supply the raw materials > for DNA replication. > > Right, construct complete arguments. > > The theory of natural selection does not explain the origin of variety, > however it does depend on variety existing and continuing to exist. If > natural selection led to runaway fixation of genotypes in a population, it > would be game over. One would expect that the fingerprints of natural > selection should be found everywhere that living organisms might modulate > the origin and maintenance of variety in their populations. > > As for the origin of innovations, I'd say that's a value system which has > nothing to do with natural selection, it's a moral aesthetics that has to > do with measuring progress, curating shiny baubles from evolutionary > history for the purposes of arguing with other curators of shiny baubles. > (Oops, may have tarred more than necessary with that brush.) > > I would guess that most arguments against evolution having had time enough > to get anywhere depend on an assumption of one ancestral genome > diversifying by replication with point mutation. But natural selection > might have begun curating a diversity of RNAs, peptides, and small molecule > metabolites before the origin of life, and the original life may have > incorporated a lot of existing pre-biotic variety. > > -- rec -- > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sasmyth at swcp.com Wed Aug 23 14:10:49 2017 From: sasmyth at swcp.com (Steven A Smith) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 12:10:49 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] well..so much for watching the ecipse in person In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <23020450-2ad7-a469-4dc9-fa7549a73ab3@swcp.com> Merle - I was fascinated to see the road signs in Pojoaque and south of Santa Fe stating: "Emergency Stopping only: Turn on your headlights during the eclipse" about an hour before the beginning. I *KNEW* that our 80% (or less) eclipse was not going to darken the landscape anymore than cloud which the sky was already full of! I stopped at Santo Domingo to watch the moon take a bite out of the sun during the various brief moments when a tiny hole in the cloud would open over and over to let me see... My daughter who drove south of Portland (where she lives) and caught a GREAT constellation of 99% eclipse-ring shadows filtering through the leaves of a tree... it was beautiful! I hope you got some good photos as well as once (or twice) in a lifetime experience! - Steve On 8/22/17 8:50 AM, Merle Lefkoff wrote: > You wouldn't have seen much, even if the clouds parted. I'm on my way > back from Oregon and totality, which is 1,000,000 times darker than > watching the eclipse at any percent of partial totality. Totality is > simply a completely different experience. And yes, it was worth the trip! > > On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 7:50 AM, ?glen? > wrote: > > Yeah, but even with the clouds, it will still be cool to see the > sky go dark in the middle of the day. > > On 08/21/2017 07:48 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote: > > If this junk cloudy weather keeps up. Won't see a damn thing > other thank > > depressing clouds and a reminder the roof is leaking....again. > Oh clear > > skys they said....ahahahahahahahahahaha > > > -- > ?glen? > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > by Dr. Strangelove > > > > > -- > Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. > President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy > emergentdiplomacy.org > Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA > > Visiting Professor in Integrative Peacebuilding > Saint Paul University > Ottawa, Ontario, Canada > > merlelefkoff at gmail.com > mobile: (303) 859-5609 > skype: merle.lelfkoff2 > twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Wed Aug 23 14:32:05 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybM=?=) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 11:32:05 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <6E1C413B-64CA-4873-8983-8ABF8A2EF2DC@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <36d27fe1-69a2-1fa1-6602-1e243db93797@swcp.com> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> <019301d31b73$89a865a0$9cf930e0$@earthlink.net> <6E1C413B-64CA-4873-8983-8ABF8A2EF2DC@gmail.com> Message-ID: <9968afdc-6ac1-c045-983a-a3c49c797580@gmail.com> So, perhaps the problem lies in "innovation-as-organism" versus "innovation-as-lineage"? Selection clearly causes lineage (via synthesis/assemblage/construction), built from the building blocks of organisms that survive to reproduce. But selection clearly does not cause/construct those organisms. Yes, as Robert points out, selection guides or constrains which organisms can arise at any given point, based on the shape of the space that is the environment (aka fitness). But selection doesn't construct the organism. Other parts of the evolutionary conception do that (mutation, crossover, etc.). By that reasoning, both sides are right and (again): Brevity is the soul of stupidity. Selection does *and* does not create innovations. It does create (novel) lineages. But it does not create (novel) organisms. On 08/22/2017 06:34 PM, gepr ? wrote: > But none of this seems to indicate that *selection* or survival to mating age *creates* the new attribute. Survival to mating age only preserves whatever phenotype was constructed by the genes and ontogeny. Whether you call genes and ontogeny random or not is irrelevant. We could easily call it 'ignorance'... i.e. ignorance constructs the phenotype, then the environment decides its fecundity. >>> "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them." -- g??? From marcus at snoutfarm.com Wed Aug 23 23:25:34 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 03:25:34 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] @fakedonaldtrump In-Reply-To: References: <908a9948-3cee-7d27-cf0f-5976c7207012@swcp.com>, Message-ID: <29937658-3253-4D57-9689-F648366B785A@snoutfarm.com> https://www.gofundme.com/buytwitter On Aug 19, 2017, at 3:39 PM, Gillian Densmore > wrote: No. I agree. The way the do their videos is...yeah Max Hedroom 20 minutes into future. CyberPunk meets MadMax. In a documentary about them they use a computer to read a script so as to protect the crew. I totally respect that. Part of that is because how they work is murky legal water. The other part was because a few of their opts went sideways such as calling out the ScienTologists for being a trolling cult...it went down hill pretty quickly. So now they (try to) stay more anonymous using stylised maxhedroomy videos with a computer reading text. One of there was on some extremist netoworking, and their leaders who they promissed to forward any and all info they could to the proper authortese. Now their taking on the extremists here. (some) of that info has lead banks, business etc to refuse to deel with those trolls. Their also taking down flags and statues of as Arnold Swartzinager put it "epicaly failed idiologies of xenophobia, rage, and hate." Theyre members have been replacing those symbols with goofy art, or cleaning the buildings and just removing the grafiti. On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 2:46 PM, Steven A Smith > wrote: Gil - Thanks for the reference to Anonymous at YouTube. You can tell I'm an old fogey by my irritable reaction to the style of their videos. I felt like it was created by/for Max Headroom! I HAVE watched one or two before (over a year ago?) with the same reaction. I have a natural (Ithink) mixed reaction to their bluff/threats... what was that about contacting people in Lagos, Nigeria? I didn't think Anonymous were prone to threatening IRL violence, but rather stayed with what I think of as "targeted vandalism" in cyberspace? I'm also (still) confused about how there can ever be a single true voice for such a by-definition amorphous and distributed and ultimately defined only by self-definition group? Some aspects of their nature/behaviour feels a bit too much like the alt.right they are (in this moment) going up against. - Steve On 8/18/17 2:02 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote Anonymous has been posting videos on youtube sugesting people put aside the petty bickering. Making sugestion what things people can do to empower themselves. Their current call to arms is about (weirdly) love and joy and getting rid of washinton as it currently is and try for something like a Sociliast Republic/Technorocracy. They're pretty tired of the sheer rage coming in and out of washington if the videos are anything to go by. On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 12:22 PM, Marcus Daniels > wrote: ?While I feel very nervous about Twitter shutting down theDonald's personal account so cavalierly, I can imagine how devastating it would be to his ego to not be able to blurt out his nonsense at all times of the day or night without benefit of counsel by his (admittedly highly flawed) inner circle/counsel. Moving the same blurts to @POTUS might be all it would achieve, which might enhance the absurdity yet more?? While I like the idea of his continued self-sabotage, his pronouncements probably keep a part of the base stoked. If his accounts were to go away, those folks might not have the initiative to replace that outlet with another. And then they could get back to torturing animals or whatever it is they do all day. The ACLU new policy to not support armed groups seems like a good step. There are other groups like the SPLC that can tackle the haters. I hope that if his rhetoric continues this way, and he repeatedly violates their terms of services, that they do shut him down completely. He can go on Fox and Friends or something. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Thu Aug 24 20:27:11 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?4pSjZ2xlbuKUqw==?=) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 17:27:11 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate In-Reply-To: <9968afdc-6ac1-c045-983a-a3c49c797580@gmail.com> References: <021301d3111e$7ab59d10$7020d730$@earthlink.net> <003301d31227$a238c3d0$e6aa4b70$@earthlink.net> <5631ae7e-6831-aa24-aa0e-ea083911e1f0@gmail.com> <96bdcbbf-673f-8db1-85e7-29b31980c13f@swcp.com> <08b23201-ad78-6593-d721-701587cd26ab@gmail.com> <015d01d31b58$cda486a0$68ed93e0$@earthlink.net> <019301d31b73$89a865a0$9cf930e0$@earthlink.net> <6E1C413B-64CA-4873-8983-8ABF8A2EF2DC@gmail.com> <9968afdc-6ac1-c045-983a-a3c49c797580@gmail.com> Message-ID: <5ab3411e-add8-118d-e842-37eb66e6f119@gmail.com> I haven't been receiving posts... but perhaps it's just me. Roger sez: > The theory of natural selection does not explain the origin of variety, Exactly. And I think this is all Wagner's preface quote implies. And it's that which makes Nick's response inadequate. It should be fairly obvious that selection is separate from what's being selected, *except* in the constraining/guiding sense you mention below. > however it does depend on variety existing and continuing to exist. If > natural selection led to runaway fixation of genotypes in a population, it > would be game over. One would expect that the fingerprints of natural > selection should be found everywhere that living organisms might modulate > the origin and maintenance of variety in their populations. > > As for the origin of innovations, I'd say that's a value system which has > nothing to do with natural selection, it's a moral aesthetics that has to > do with measuring progress, curating shiny baubles from evolutionary > history for the purposes of arguing with other curators of shiny baubles. Heh, it's a nice juxtaposition for you to use the metaphor of natural selection's fingerprints, then balk at the metaphor of innovation. 8^) On 08/23/2017 11:32 AM, g??? wrote: > So, perhaps the problem lies in "innovation-as-organism" versus "innovation-as-lineage"? Selection clearly causes lineage (via synthesis/assemblage/construction), built from the building blocks of organisms that survive to reproduce. But selection clearly does not cause/construct those organisms. Yes, as Robert points out, selection guides or constrains which organisms can arise at any given point, based on the shape of the space that is the environment (aka fitness). But selection doesn't construct the organism. Other parts of the evolutionary conception do that (mutation, crossover, etc.). > > By that reasoning, both sides are right and (again): Brevity is the soul of stupidity. Selection does *and* does not create innovations. It does create (novel) lineages. But it does not create (novel) organisms. > > On 08/22/2017 06:34 PM, gepr ? wrote: >> But none of this seems to indicate that *selection* or survival to mating age *creates* the new attribute. Survival to mating age only preserves whatever phenotype was constructed by the genes and ontogeny. Whether you call genes and ontogeny random or not is irrelevant. We could easily call it 'ignorance'... i.e. ignorance constructs the phenotype, then the environment decides its fecundity. > >>>> "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them." > -- ?glen? From marcus at snoutfarm.com Mon Aug 28 14:19:59 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2017 18:19:59 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] never enough power laws! Message-ID: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/the-physicist-modeling-isis-and-the-alt-right/537699/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gepropella at gmail.com Mon Aug 28 17:25:15 2017 From: gepropella at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Z+KFvNC1ybMg4pij?=) Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2017 14:25:15 -0700 Subject: [FRIAM] never enough power laws! Message-ID: > Marcus Daniels marcus at snoutfarm.com, Mon Aug 28 14:19:59 EDT 2017: > > https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/the-physicist-modeling-isis-and-the-alt-right/537699/ Johnson says: "Which is interesting, because that means there?s probably more opportunity to persuade them away, for instance by trying to get into one of the groups that seem to be where they are heading and soften the message and deflect the person away. Now, that?s not my business; I do the science. But there are interesting possibilities that we hope might be looked into." I can't help but be put off by this assumption of objectivity. I think, as I age, I become more and more convicted by the idea that you can't study or understand anything without manipulating it. But maybe in Johnson's case, it's simply an extension of the idea that their model is "mechanistic" (differential equations of objects). It's natural for us to think of our mechanistic models as actual mechanisms ... It's a kind of crypto-induction. -- ? g??? From marcus at snoutfarm.com Tue Aug 29 18:13:24 2017 From: marcus at snoutfarm.com (Marcus Daniels) Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2017 22:13:24 +0000 Subject: [FRIAM] a few hundred billion here, a few there Message-ID: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/29/a-storm-made-in-washington-215549?lo=ap_a1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From owen at backspaces.net Thu Aug 31 12:32:23 2017 From: owen at backspaces.net (Owen Densmore) Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2017 10:32:23 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Quantum Theory Rebuilt From Simple Physical Principles | Quanta Magazine Message-ID: This is kinda interesting: ? ? https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-theory-rebuilt-from-simple-physical-principles-20170830/ ?Basically look at it like this: - Relativity: Is founded on a few simple physical principles ?like the limit on the speed of light. - Quantum Theory: Is founded on equations that match observation. Both make sense. But QT hasn't that satisfying basis that relativity has. Apparently a bunch of folks are trying to fix that. -- Owen -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From owen at backspaces.net Thu Aug 31 12:33:59 2017 From: owen at backspaces.net (Owen Densmore) Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2017 10:33:59 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Quantum Theory Rebuilt From Simple Physical Principles | Quanta Magazine In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Stephen will like this: Some researchers suspect that ultimately the axioms of a quantum reconstruction will be about information: what can and can?t be done with it. One such derivation of quantum theory based on axioms about information was proposed in 2010 by Chiribella, then working at the Perimeter Institute, and his collaborators Giacomo Mauro D?Ariano and Paolo Perinotti of the University of Pavia in Italy. ?Loosely speaking,? explained Jacques Pienaar, a theoretical physicist at the University of Vienna, ?their principles state that information should be localized in space and time, that systems should be able to encode information about each other, and that every process should in principle be reversible, so that information is conserved.? (In irreversible processes, by contrast, information is typically lost ? just as it is when you erase a file on your hard drive.) On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 10:32 AM, Owen Densmore wrote: > This is kinda interesting: > ? ? > https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-theory-rebuilt- > from-simple-physical-principles-20170830/ > > ?Basically look at it like this: > - Relativity: Is founded on a few simple physical principles ?like the > limit on the speed of light. > - Quantum Theory: Is founded on equations that match observation. > > Both make sense. But QT hasn't that satisfying basis that relativity has. > > Apparently a bunch of folks are trying to fix that. > > -- Owen > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil.densmore at gmail.com Thu Aug 31 17:03:45 2017 From: gil.densmore at gmail.com (Gillian Densmore) Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2017 15:03:45 -0600 Subject: [FRIAM] Quantum Theory Rebuilt From Simple Physical Principles | Quanta Magazine In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Mmm Neil DeGrasse Tysson, and Guy Consolmagno talked about quantum mechanics some on Nova (love watching that on youtube) (LOL I still don't get it and asked help understanding it many people): Basically the new guess is some how particles are actually just energy. That energy goes reely reely fast so fast in fact it seems (to people like me) that say a beer cup at second street is solid. so can hold beer, great hardy food etc. So what if (Elon Musk and Brian Green) Ask: their's smaller and smaller particles? are they connected somehow? and is it small and smaller untill you get to the qunatum (reel reely reeely small level) Like possibly smaller even than a quark small. I happily differ to others as to if Fermi lab has been able to figure out how likely that might be. Relativity is indeed very awsome ^_^ Einstein is awsome. I also LOVE reading Hawkings stuff. He's recently asking a simillar question to me: "Wait so were all made of star stuff and energy? How does that work" I don't know. I love that I don't. Isn't Quantum Energy guessing that at reely reely small levels what happens between kinds of particles? And did they figure out why this happens yet? http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/china-s-quantum-satellite-achieves-spooky-action-record-distance On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 10:33 AM, Owen Densmore wrote: > Stephen will like this: > > Some researchers suspect that ultimately the axioms of a quantum > reconstruction will be about information: what can and can?t be done with > it. One such derivation of quantum theory based on axioms about information > was proposed in 2010 by Chiribella, then working at the Perimeter > Institute, and his collaborators Giacomo Mauro D?Ariano and Paolo Perinotti > of the University of Pavia in Italy. ?Loosely speaking,? explained Jacques > Pienaar, a theoretical physicist at the University of Vienna, ?their > principles state that information should be localized in space and time, > that systems should be able to encode information about each other, and > that every process should in principle be reversible, so that information > is conserved.? (In irreversible processes, by contrast, information is > typically lost ? just as it is when you erase a file on your hard drive.) > > > On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 10:32 AM, Owen Densmore > wrote: > >> This is kinda interesting: >> ? ? >> https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-theory-rebuilt-from- >> simple-physical-principles-20170830/ >> >> ?Basically look at it like this: >> - Relativity: Is founded on a few simple physical principles ?like the >> limit on the speed of light. >> - Quantum Theory: Is founded on equations that match observation. >> >> Both make sense. But QT hasn't that satisfying basis that relativity has. >> >> Apparently a bunch of folks are trying to fix that. >> >> -- Owen >> >> > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: