[FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Thu Oct 29 18:16:28 EDT 2020

Yeah, on one hand (they are) guilty as charged.

On the other hand, nah, only mathematicians name things in gzip so that the names are maximally compressed.  (By which I mean, referring to every theorem by the name of whoever proved it, so you have not a clue what it is about.)  I wish I could bring to mind some lines in textbooks from my freshman or sophomore algebra classes, where at the end of a long and completely uninterpretable sentence, the author wrapped with “to which we apply a theorem of Darbou.”  My friends and I, all getting bombed out of existence by the course, hit that line and shook our heads in unison.  Laughing in the way that late at night ends up in crying.  While I can’t remember what the rest of the topic was, I can still summon the feeling of hopelessness as if it were yesterday.  (It may have been yesterday; what was I trying to read that day?….)

In that respect, I am fine with “flavor SU(3) and color SU(3)”, and do not have trouble remembering which is which.

Also, surely superstrings aren’t as cynical and  Machiavellian as you suggest, right?  There was a symmetry that was encompassing enough that it applied in parallel across all the other symmetries known at the time, and so they called it supersymmetry.  In a Germanic language that doesn’t seem evil.  When applied to gravity it wound up as super-gravity (not that it was better).  I guess, like teenagers say when explaining to their parents, one thing led to another, and now I really need to get to a clinic.

I do wish you had been Dawkins’s publisher, though.  _That_ would have been a title.

EricS

> On Oct 29, 2020, at 5:07 PM, Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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 <mailto: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 <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>> <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto: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 intenSion, 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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> On Behalf Of jon zingale
>>> > Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 2:01 PM
>>> > To: friam at redfish.com <mailto: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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