[FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

Sun Apr 26 20:08:14 EDT 2020

Thanks, Frank.  That means a lot to me.  N

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2020 5:57 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

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 <mailto: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 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto: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 <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Cc: gepr at tempusdictum.com <mailto:gepr at tempusdictum.com> ; stephen.guerin at redfish.com <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto:friam at redfish.com> > 

Cc: gepr at tempusdictum.com <mailto:gepr at tempusdictum.com> , stephen.guerin at redfish.com <mailto: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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