[FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Thu Oct 29 17:07:26 EDT 2020

I agree with everything said in there email focusing on:

And I also think you are right that the namers meant the names to carry
weight.  (Though I also think most thought is a bit hurried and careless,
and gives itself more credit than is earned.)

However, as I am fond of saying: *It's worse than that.*

They aren't just picking the names to carry weight, the are picking the
names exactly to try to gain traction off of how sexy it sounds, even when
they know they know that they would deny all the sexy implications if
pressed. And it doesn't bother them that anyone hearing the term will think
the phenomenon is sexier than it actually is, because that is a feature,
not a bug.

There is a reason Dawkins titled his book "The Selfish Gene" rather than
"Things that stay around are things that stayed around."

There is a reason people called it "superstring theory" instead of
"High-dimensional math you will never understand and which we might never
be able to test."

It wasn't JUST about verbal expedience or rushed thinking. If you wanted
expedience you would just label it Theory Option 78, or TO78 if you wanted
it even shorter. You could do that, sure, but it would never get you a
mention on Freakonomics radio.

On Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 1:32 PM David Eric Smith <desmith at santafe.edu> wrote:

> I’m actually quite on board with your wish to make these questions more
> interesting than they may have started out, Nick.
>
> And I also think you are right that the namers meant the names to carry
> weight.  (Though I also think most thought is a bit hurried and careless,
> and gives itself more credit than is earned.)
>
> The interesting struggle will be that the original calculation was in a
> way rather small, compared to the metaphor that many hope can be spun from
> it.
>
> Or perhaps said another way, maybe many of these things that have weight
> to compel as we experience them in life, are pointers to little mechanics
> below the surface that, in its own terms, is a small thing.
>
> I know that in each paper I write, I imagine getting at a big idea, and
> realize that the most I have done is a small calculation.  So there is a
> foot in each boat….
>
> Best,
>
> Eric
>
>
> On Oct 29, 2020, at 1:20 PM, <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> <
> thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Sorry everybody.  I seem to be out of my depth in  many pools at once.
>
> I really like Eric’s analysis.
>
> I still want to protest abit.  I think the dynamic relation between the
> physical concept  and the physicist’s humanistic metaphor is much more
> interesting than this analysis would suggest.  Physicists use those
> metaphors for a reasons, cognitive and communicatory.  And humanists are
> right to explore their implications.  Otherwise, it would be fair for the
> humanist to turn to the physicist and say, “Shut up and calculate.”
>
> The paradox of development (AKA epigenisis) is that there are all sorts of
> futures that can be known pretty precisely about a developing individual
> yet they are totally unknown to the individual that is developing.  It has
> to do with our discussion of inten*S*ion, a few months back.
>
> It may also be time for one of you to be delegated to “elder” me, in the
> quaker tradition.  “Now, Nick, ….”
>
> N .
>
> N
>
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,8pikIqjsWmNuBHfzE3VVLQF4_vkvnGX1oPfmWg4qJVbO9ts2bygQUBET758DUPmA4dH0McR2MMXhK_cL-slNT6tfSaWx6GP41uIIowPT-1XJk62VKA,,&typo=1>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *David Eric Smith
> *Sent:* Thursday, October 29, 2020 10:00 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
>
> I want to somehow say sigh and sigh on this thread.
>
> It comes somehow straight out of Monty Python (Blessed are the
> cheesemakers….)
>
> 1. Some physicists figure out how to do a calculation, showing that some
> parts can go dynamically into an organized state, appealing to a
> combination of their own shapes and laws of large numbers for events that
> happen, and they don’t need to have the organized form imposed by any
> outside boundary conditions beyond the very low-level rules for how the
> events are sampled.  They already knew this happens in equilibrium, because
> that is how anything freezes.  But here they are seeing it in a dynamical
> context, where the ordered form happens to be more ordered than the states
> they could produce from somehow-similar components in equilibrium.
>
> 2. Physicsts, like everyone, are usually impatient and don’t want to have
> to recite the whole operational meaning of something every time they want
> to refer to it in the course of saying something else.
>
> 3. So the physicists come up with a tag.  It should be sort of evocative,
> sort of catchy, and easy to remember.  Aha!  “Self-organization”, to keep
> in mind that the organization is resulting from low-level local features,
> and not from the boundary conditions imposed on the system beyond that
> local stuff.
>
> 4. Nick encounters the term.  It happens to contain two words about which
> he cares very very much, so to him they are not mere hackage generated by
> some physicists, but freighted with meaning.
>
> 5. Nick starts a thread: Which self?  Is it the same self before and
> after?  Is “organized” here a transitive or an intransitive verb?  If
> transitive, what is the object?  Can the same referent be both object and
> subject of a transitive verb?  Does that make the verb reflexive?  What are
> the implications for monists?  For dualists?
>
> 6. Friam is willing to engage.
>
> 7.  I write a long tedious email, trying to remind the humanists that the
> most important character trait of physicists is impatience.
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
> On Oct 29, 2020, at 10:03 AM, Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
> wrote:
>
> Nick,
>
> *" I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self
> that is*
> *assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled."*
>
> By what definition? Your monist view that the self lacks ontological
> status in the first place?
>
> davew
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, at 5:48 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> > Jon,
> >
> > Is a steam governor a case of downward causation?
> >
> > This question will reveal, no doubt, that I don't understand  your
> previous
> > answer, but perhaps others will explain it to me.
> >
> > I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self
> that is
> > assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled.
> >
> > Perhaps I am getting tangled up in words again.
> >
> > n
> >
> > Nicholas Thompson
> > Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> > Clark University
> > ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
> > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,aryOhfVU48KQtN6xZTrA9DuKF6rEe-ZppSYOdQn_1Py6Cpgt586u2buLg3DjT-c0qFESZFBn3sJm21uO2hXWV9yFGAeZn5lBmiyLY_mGvBNki6JGqZr5Vawr0Cc,&typo=1>
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of jon zingale
> > Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 2:01 PM
> > To: friam at redfish.com
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats
> >
> > Nick,
> >
> > Let's say I have a language designed to work with sticks, where for
> > instance, it makes sense to name certain relations *Triangle*.
> Additionally,
> > let's assume that the language is detailed enough to include less obvious
> > relations such as those which relate sticks to trees to soil and water.
> > Would it be cheap to narrowly define *downward causation* as the
> > manipulation of the world in accordance with this language to produce new
> > sticks?
> >
> > Consider as another example when one manipulates charge in bulk using
> analog
> > filters. Here, a circuit designer may not need to know about spin or
> > superposition or a lot of other details about the universe. In fact, the
> > designer may not know how to write a "mid-frequency ranged filter" if
> they
> > were only given a quantum mechanical view of the world. They may,
> however,
> > know how to build such a filter if they are given appropriately shaped
> > conductive surfaces and coils.
> >
> > My apologies in advance if this characterization (that of reducing
> *downward
> > causation* to manipulation of a domain-specific language) is horribly
> > flawed, but I spent this much time writing a response. So, there.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
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> >
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