[FRIAM] The epiphenomenality relation
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Fri Dec 3 10:22:06 EST 2021
EricC -
I think your points, especially about the limits of models, are spot
on. The "utility" caveat in the "models" assertion *does* capture what
makes a "model right as a model", what makes a model "right" in your
sense is it's utility.
The extra level of indirection explicated in your observation that we
are not (only) modeling the artifact but the designer/maker of the
artifact is also useful.
As I am wont to do, I have a couple of my own anecdotal experiences to
share:
1. I muck around with (repair or modify) most everything I use in my
life. It is a habit that serves me well sometimes but not
always... I *implicitly* have a model of what these artifacts were
designed to do, though sometimes I discover I'm simply "using them
wrong" when I think they are malfunctioning or are "poorly
designed". I rarely *personally* try to figure out what the
designer was intending explicitly (read the manual, research the
product domain literature? bah!) but when I *do*, I bump up against
the limits we are discussing regularly. Even when it is documented
explicitly what is intended, I am left with puzzles posed *by* the
artifact and it's functioning at my hand. Since a lot of the tech
I muck with is vintage (right now, a 1979 Homelite chainsaw) there
is a lot of practice/lore available on the internet up to and
including other owners of the same/similar model with oodles more
experience than I have. I have yet to encounter someone who
actually designed 2 stroke engines of that vintage, but a lot of the
old timers who were in the business of selling/repairing them IN
1979 have good insights.
2. I have been mucking around in the literature of pre/a-historic human
cultures of late. The archaelogical/anthropologicl literature is
*fraught* with "wrong" and "sometimes useful" models of these humans
and with yet another level of indirection, "cultures" based on the
artifacts that survived these millenia.
To support your basic point: "but we can try!", We DO try and while it
is limited in the limit, it is not entirely fruitless. My myriad
home(stead) systems work (to some degree) as designed or re-designed
under my mucking hamfists, and I believe that up to herky-jerky
progress, we DO approach a higher and higher fidelity understanding of
long-dead people and cultures. In particular, my interest has been in
the *differences* between the other near-modern hominids (e.g.
Neanderthal/Devosinian) apparent long-term stability compared to Homo
Sapien's ability to modify our environment leading to a very abrupt and
brief spike (the Anthropocene) in the geological record which will
someday (if there is anyone to inspect it).
- Steve
> Hmm..... not sure where to go with Glen & Steve's responses.....
>
> "we can't reverse engineer a builder's intention from the artifact."
>
> Well.... but we can attempt to... with the same limitations as
> attempts to understand anything else. Like, if all we do is go around
> slinging Descarte-styled "Yeah, but are you SURE!" after literally
> every statement anyone ever makes, that might be a good hobby, but it
> doesn't really get you anywhere. We can certainly use systematic ways
> to probe the systems based on various hypotheses, and thereby increase
> our confidence.... just like trying to figure out anything else in the
> world.
>
> "All models are wrong (though some may be useful)."
>
> That's just a weird linguistic game, right? A model is a model, not
> the thing being modeled. True enough, and worth reminding people of
> every so often. But that doesn't mean it is "wrong" as a model. A
> model is RIGHT if it accurately captures the INTENDED aspects of the
> target phenomenon... because that's what being a good model entails.
>
> So, we COULD, potentially, accurately know a builder's intentions
> after sufficient examination of an artifact or set of artifacts. Also,
> we could be wrong. And our internal model of the builder isn't
> actually the builder, but that doesn't necessarily mean our model is
> wrong, as a model.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 2, 2021 at 11:21 AM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>
> EricC/Glen -
>
>
>> I'm glad we agree. I made the same points here:
>>
>> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2021-November/090981.html
>> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2021-November/090983.html
>>
>> To reiterate, we can't reverse engineer a builder's intention from the artifact.
> We can't mind read (even our own).
>> To go even further, we can't even do a *complete* job of characterizing the aspects of a thing, the aspects of environments, or the relations between them.
> All models are wrong (though some may be useful).
>> Parallax is needed across all scales and in both directions. Polyphenism is parallax on the thing. Robustness is parallax on the environment. And counterfactuals are parallax on their coupling.
>
> All systems (existing within the same light-cone) are "nearly
> decomposable" ?
>
> Herb Simon Sez: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1909285
>
>> One of the attractive qualities of modal realism is that it addresses both consistency (through concrete possible worlds) and completeness (through counterpart theory) in positing and testing various models. The problem becomes one of discovering which world you inhabit *from the data*, not from whatever abstracted models you may prefer.
>
> Lewis's Modal Realism
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism> is a new one on me,
> but very interesting framing. Only skimming the Wikipedia
> Article on the topic leaves me with only enough information to be
> dangerous... so I am refraining from rattling on about all of my
> reactions to it's implications (for me) and in particular some of
> the objections listed there to his theory. From this thin
> introduction I think I find Yagasawa's extension of possible
> worlds being distributed on a modal dimension rather than isolated
> space-time structures (yet) more compelling/useful?
>
> And what would Candide
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman> have to say about this?
>
>
>
>> On 12/1/21 6:35 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
>>> Me -> We've imputed in all cases. Certainly we can assume artificial systems were designed for a purpose, but we still don't know what that purpose is without imputing a model onto that system. And, in both cases, we could proceed to experiment with the system, in order to test the predictions of the imputed model and increase our confidence that we have imputed correctly. The ability to do these things does not distinguish between the two types of system. There are long and respected scientific traditions using experimental methods to gain confidence in our understanding of why certain systems were favored by natural selection, i.e., to determine the manner in which they help the organism better fit its environment.
>>>
>>> Me -> Well.... it might be reification in some sense, but that term usually implies inaccuracy, which we cannot know in this case without experimentation. Even with a system we designed ourselves, where we might have a lot of insight into why we designed the system the way we did, we certainly don't have perfect knowledge. All we have there is a model of our own behavior to impute off of. Once again, this doesn't clearly differentiate the two situations. In all of these situations it is a mistake to uncritically reify our initial intuitions about the system's purpose.
>
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