[FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

Sun Apr 26 19:57:27 EDT 2020

Good work, Nick.  Another example of how both-and is better than either-or.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 4:47 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yikes.  I forgot to attach the attachment.
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Jochen Fromm
> *Sent:* Sunday, April 26, 2020 4:13 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Cc:* gepr at tempusdictum.com; stephen.guerin at redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve
>
>
>
> Hi Nick,
>
>
>
> have you thought about turning your ideas about the hard problem of
> consciousness into an article or book? 10 years ago you had this nice idea
> of a cross section of reality, a unique slice of the same world that is
> responsible for our subjective experience. Our discussion in 2010 inspired
> me to write these blog posts (which nobody except Glen read):
>
>
> http://blog.cas-group.net/2010/11/the-solution-to-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/
>
> http://blog.cas-group.net/2011/11/path-dependent-subjective-experience/
>
> http://blog.cas-group.net/2013/06/solving_the_problem_of_subjectivity/
>
>
>
> I believe this approach is a good explanation for the hard problem. It is
> what Hollywood has been doing for the last 100 years: showing us what it is
> like to be someone else. In this sense Hollywood has solved the biggest
> problem of philosophy. As I said the biggest secrets are often hidden in
> plain sight.
>
>
>
> -J.
>
>
>
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
>
> From: thompnickson2 at gmail.com
>
> Date: 4/26/20 23:05 (GMT+01:00)
>
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <
> friam at redfish.com>
>
> Cc: gepr at tempusdictum.com, stephen.guerin at redfish.com
>
> Subject: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve
>
>
>
> Hi, everybody,
>
>
>
> I am striving mightily to get my brain out of the corvid19 cesspit, and
> Stephen and Glen have been helping me, in part by talking about an old
> wrangle that Stephen and I have shared over the role of selection (if any)
> in evolution.   In these arguments, I have always felt that Stephen has
> strived to maneuver me into the sights of his largest gun, but, whenever he
> fires it, the shells seem to go whizzing by me as if fired at somebody else
> entirely.   So this letter is written primarily to Glen and Steve, but I
> post it here because I think some few of you (Dave?) may have something to
> say about what I say, here.
>
>
>
> I have often said that FRIAM saved my intellectual bacon.  I say this
> because when I came to Santa Fe in 2006, it was to help my wife help my son
> and his wife raise my infant grandchildren  -- clearly not a full time
> job.  I justified the venture to my provost with vague hope that I would
> attach myself either to the evolutionary psychology group at UNM or to the
> Santa Fe Institute or both.  In fact, neither panned out.
>
>
>
> And thus, cast loose in Santa Fe, I fell into the arms of Stephen, Carl,
> and Owen, and …   FRIAM.  The attached abstract of  piece I never wrote
> (because I never could dragoon Gillian Barker into writing for me) reveals
> the state of my mind at the time.  I was clearly already teetering between
> selectionist and systemist thinking.  It had dawned on me during my
> previous sabbatical down the corridor from Lyn Margulis that any theory of
> natural selection required *as a precondition* additivity of variance,
> and nothing that we had learned about epigenesis in the previous gave us
> much hope that additivity of variance was a likely condition of
> inheritance.  So, if additivity of variance was not an obvious consequence
> of epigenetic relations, it must somehow be an achievement of them.  Two
> possibilities occurred to me at the time: one is that genetic mechanisms
> were themselves selected for “fairness” – a selectionist explanation; or,
> that fairness somehow fell out of the underlying chemical and biological
> structures – a systemist explanation.
>
>
>
> This is already enough biography to choke a horse, so I shall wrap up,
> here.  Suffice it to say that, when Stephen showed me Wolfram’s book I was
> stunned.  Here was a demonstration of how simple rules could generate
> complex structures without any nudges from any selection mechanism.  Could
> additivity of variance and, therefore, natural selection, itself “fall out”
> of chemical and energetic relations.  Could systems coddle natural
> selection the way rear flank downdrafts coddle a tornado.   Could we have
> natural selection for free.
>
>
>
> Only in my late 60’s at the time, I harbored the illusion that I myself
> could be come a master of the art of computation.  Alas, that ship had
> sailed.  So, now you see me.  “I yam what I yam,” as Popeye used  to say.
> But one thing I yam NOT is the ferocious adherent to genic selection theory
> that Stephen needs me to be if I am going to be felled by his biggest gun.
>
>
>
> And now I have to cook dinner for my 13 and 17 year old grandchildren.
> The oldest is learning rendering from Stephen.  Life will go on!
>
>
>
> Ever grateful for your assistance,
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...
> .... . ...
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