[FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Glen,

Well, the plane falls apart if one approaches 740 from either direction (and the plane has not been suitably designed) right?  It may be a continuum for some aircraft frames, but for others, it's quite another story.  Or am I just wrong about this?  

If one is touring in Northern New Mexico and decides to drive directly from Ghost Ranch to Taos one crosses, about 20 miles out, a glorious, mostly flat, high plain that appears to slope ever-so-gently up to the ragged, snow-covered crags of the Sangres.  You think:  Oh boy!  This is a piece of cake!  I will be there for tea and back in Santa Fe for dinner.  About ten miles closer the mountains one suddenly encounters the Rio Grand Gorge, barely a mile wide but 700 feet deep, which, depending on which road you are on, either passes under your wheels in 50 seconds or so, or requires 40 minutes or so of negotiating trick switchbacks to get beyond.  This example is only to emphasize the point that edginess is entirely observer dependent.  

Would I learn more about geology by driving over the bridge, carefully negotiating the switchbacks, or by driving off the cliff at 60 mph?

Clearly the last alternative sucks.  I can see some argument for negotiating the switchbacks, but if I was in a hurry to get to Taos, I would take the bridge. 

Seeing this metaphor written out, I now see that it's stupid.  But it's colorful, right? Makes some of you home-sick.  It stays.  

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen?C
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 8:44 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

Re: your example, no. (600,1000) is a continuum, which means the conditions at 740 will be *a lot* like those at 640, 840, etc. [†] "Edge" isn't really jargon. As to how one knows where the edges are, there's only one answer, and that is to go over it. Until you *fall* off the edge, you won't really know that you've reached it ... same way you find the edge of a table, by panning your eyes from the surface to beyond the surface. Similarly, if you *don't* find the edge, you'll never really know how *big* the domain is ... or what that other domain on the other side of the edge is like.

In the case of the experiences we're talking about, here, nootropics -- basically performance enhancing drugs -- are distinguishable from psychedelics. Large doses of psychedelics are at or beyond most people's "edge", whereas a nootropic simply makes you feel a little more competent. So, micro-dosing would *not* be exploring the edge cases. But the kind of experiences Dave's talking about are.


[†] Of course, there are all sorts of different kinds of spaces. Continuum is just one kind. And, of course, there's dimensionality, where 1 dimension might have an edge, but another doesn't (e.g. walking near a cliff, with an edge in the up-down but no edge in the side-to-side). And, of course, there's got to be some "invariant" that provides the *operative* (operational) definition of the domain. In your example, speed isn't actually the important factor. It might be something like vibration, harmonics, turbulence, or whatever that makes the plane unstable at some particular speed. In my example, it's not speed but acceleration that defines the domain. But you don't really need all this sophistry to understand what "edge" means.

On 2/23/20 4:37 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> What, a priori, constitutes an "edge".  How do we know where "edges" are?
> To take an absurd example, imagine that we had a way of flying an 
> airplane above 1,000 mph and below 600 mph without ever passing 
> through 740 mph.  So, somebody says, "We've never tried 740; let's try 
> that!"  Would that be an edge?  So, "edginess" is defined only by 
> paucity of data?  Or is there something else to it?

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