[FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

Thu Oct 29 18:38:31 EDT 2020

I learned about all those symmetry groups a couple of years ago (When was
it Jon?) and I remember almost nothing.  But I can state the Heine-Borel
theorem, Stokes' theorem and others in complex analysis and algebra that I
learned about 55 years ago.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:16 PM David Eric Smith <desmith at santafe.edu> wrote:

> 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>
> 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.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>> >
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