[FRIAM] Few of you ...

[Steven A Smith]

> There's something nagging at me. 

Not surprising, this was pretty "off the cuff" but I'll try to either
defend/modify/retract as appropriate.

>  But I can't quite figure out what it is.  On the one hand, you say "The larger culture is where these attractors ... exist."  Yet you seem to allow for (these or other) attractors to exist at a finer layer, within you or in a very proximate locale near you with a medium layer at "subculture" and a fine layer at "idiosyncratic to me".
>
> I tend to think of attractors as forcing structures ... an overwhelming congealing of *all* the dimensions and factors so that the finer layers have no freedoms/choice but to go with the flow ... kinda like a tiny piece of space junk being trapped in the Sun's gravitational field.  Sure, at the coarser layers, things like planets, comets, other stars, etc. are kinda-sorta coerced into a way of behaving.  But the more asymmetric the relationship, the more "forced" the finer grain components will be.
>
> So, to [mis]extrapolate all the way to social systems, a rally participant may not have much choice but to feel the adrenaline rush of chanting "Lock Him Up!".  But where is the attractor in such a conception?  At the social layer?  At the physiochemical layer inside the individual participant?  At *all* layers, a kind of cross-trophic, multi-scale forcing structure? 
Yes, I think so (cross-trophic, multi-scale).  In your example, the
pysiochemical system of the individuals involved, up to and including
some extrema such as some folks failing to get "wound up" because they
are just that chill (or on quaaludes?) while others get wound up but in
the opposite chirality, shutting down the folks around them doing the
"lock it up!" chant.  
>  Can there be a stable thing at a coarse grain without there also being a stable thing at the fine grain?  Or does "attractor" somehow imply a "thin", reductive system, where, if it's in an attractor, all granularities exhibit stable or [quasi]periodic behavior?
I'm still struggling with "thin" here (and above).  
>
> To be clearer, this question is fundamentally related to the rhythm and periodicity question I raised before.  In order to call it an attractor, some parts/representations of it must be invariant or in some steady state while other parts of it swirl around in [quasi]periodicity.

I'm not sure if it reduces to precisely this simplicity but this is
certainly an example.   I don't know if there is good language (or what
it is) to discuss this structure.   Wolfram's classic categorization of
CA from I-II-III-IV is related I think?  I was disturbed when that came
out by the simple fact that type I-III were the "uninteresting ones" and
IV was "all the rest".  

I have to admit, in my loose analogical use of attractor (Nick's term,
my interpretation?) I think mostly in terms of a small "trajectory"
within a more complex attractor.   For example, walking down the street,
I hear the chant and am either drawn to or away from the rally/mob.  As
I'm drawn *to* the mob, there are myriad near-parallel trajectories in
my geographic (the precise route I take from point A to point B) as well
as the psychochemical response and lots of ancillary activities from
firing up my video recorder on my phone (or livestream) to
texting/calling someone(s) to join (or avoid) the crowd, etc.   All
these are *loosely* constrained by some high-dimensional
characterization of *me* in relation to *these kinds of scenarios*. 
Minor deviations in my psychochemistry (hunger, emotional state,
boredom/curiosity, etc.) can have large results (in one case I turn
around and walk away, in another case I rush to the front lines,
chanting louder than anyone else, and in yet another I fire up my Muscle
Car and plow it through the mob).

>   It also relates nicely to my question about Dave's Indra's Net and where/how/if there exist individuals and what are they?  As well as the inter-individual algorithmicity of the lower ranks of the Navy and the intra-individual algorithmicity of the higher ranks?
I'd like to participate in this discussion if it gets traction.  I
haven't studied the Indra's Net stuff closely enough to throw down yet. 
On one extreme it seems way too loosely metaphorical to say much about,
and on the other end, I suspect there may be a lot to discuss/refine.  
I'm not sure what you mean by intra/inter individuality in the
lower/higher ranks...
> FWIW, I often do get "caught up" in a given transient role.  It's happened a lot here in PDX because so many of the hipster liberals I end up talking to are so damned sure of themselves.  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0520-3  It happened quite a bit in Santa Fe, as well, though.  I feel *forced* to adopt and maintain a role simply because those around me are so convicted by their perspective that any evidence that I'm actually skeptical of my own role's viewpoint is interpreted as evidence that I (secretly) agree with their viewpoint ... yet another artificial bifurcation (P v ¬P).  In the company of people who deftly don and doff roles (not topics), there's no forcing structure, no need to clamp more firmly to a particular role, because the discussants are flexible, if not natively pluralist.
I"m familiar with the experience...  I find that I sometimes leave a
gathering (en vivo or en vitro) in search of a different milieu where I
can take a different "role" as you put it.   It is almost as if I need
to get the taste (in all sensory/emotional dimensions) out of my
"mouth".   Like you (and sometimes *with you*) I enjoy sparring with
someone who mid-battle tosses me their spear and gestures for me to hand
over my broadaxe so we can continue the contest with different
rules/perspectives on each of us.  Neither of us is interested in the
evident goal of the battle (to win) but rather in exploring the
"battlespace" implied by the weapons, the ground, the nature of the
individuals engaged.


I feel like my answers are even more ill-thought-out than the original
throwdown that brought your questions, but I'm on my way out the door
and thought it better to get this off than leave it to be deleted later
and never sent.

- Steve