[FRIAM] The epiphenomenality relation

Mon Nov 29 15:33:14 EST 2021

R squared tells you the percentage of the variance of a variable
predictable by another.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 12:23 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree. I use the distinction (artificial vs natural) as a rhetorical
> crutch. What we *should* do, what I've asked Nick to do, is talk about how
> we *measure* outcomes, how they *scale*. If we run something like a
> principal component analysis on all the outcomes and let the data tell us
> which parts are primary and which parts secondary, then we don't need the
> artifical vs natural distinction (or the epi- vs phenomena distinction) at
> all. This outcome's salience is 0.00001, that outcome's salience is 10000.0.
>
>
>
> This is the kind of work that Frank has done.  We will hear from him
> momentarily, I assume.  As I understand it, such work can rank the efficacy
> of a cause for each of its effects.  But it does not tell you to care only
> about the most effected effects.  That is something you are doing. That’s
> your frame.  My frame, as a development/evolutionist blah blah tells me to
> privilege effects that feed back on causes because these are the only kinds
> of effects that in time can shape the development of a biological of
> technological artifact.  So loopy effects are “primary” to me.  Perhaps I
> should use your word “salient”, in this case.  Yes, I think that would be
> better.
>
>
>
> N
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
> Sent: Monday, November 29, 2021 11:19 AM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The epiphenomenality relation
>
>
>
> I agree. I use the distinction (artificial vs natural) as a rhetorical
> crutch. What we *should* do, what I've asked Nick to do, is talk about how
> we *measure* outcomes, how they *scale*. If we run something like a
> principal component analysis on all the outcomes and let the data tell us
> which parts are primary and which parts secondary, then we don't need the
> artifical vs natural distinction (or the epi- vs phenomena distinction) at
> all. This outcome's salience is 0.00001, that outcome's salience is
> 10000.0.
>
>
>
> Of course, if you change the measure, you get a different distribution.
> But if we don't talk, at all, about the measure(s) being used for the
> classification, then we're just talking nonsense.
>
>
>
> I don't like the following words. But the distinction between
> [un]supervised learning is similar. Except there, I tend to argue that
> there is no such thing as unsupervised learning. The very choice of any
> family of models biases the eventual model you select.
>
>
>
> On 11/29/21 9:10 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> > I'm not clear on where/why one draws the line between artificial and
> natural.   Artificial things have resulted from natural processes.  These
> higher-order and relatively sharp fitness landscapes have mesas we call
> features.   They usually don't involve people dying or failing to
> reproduce, but they do involve organized behavior by humans stopping, e.g.
> companies that go bankrupt.    A continuous integration system running
> regression tests seems to have some properties of selection.
>
> >
>
> > -----Original Message-----
>
> > From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of ? glen
>
> > Sent: Monday, November 29, 2021 6:14 AM
>
> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
>
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The epiphenomenality relation
>
> >
>
> > Right. Agnostic discovery of the artifacts resulting from an artificial
> machine comes much closer to what happens in natural systems, yes. Those
> artifacts would only be considered secondary or side-effects IF the
> exploration were NOT agnostic, motivated. You can only separate the
> artifacts into primary vs secondary IF you had a purpose in the assembly.
> No purpose, no distinction of primary vs secondary.
>
> >
>
> > But what you can do is measure the impact of all the resulting
> artifacts, on some scale, and order them that way, a distribution of
> primacy. Outcome O1 might be Y times more impactful, downstream than
> outcome O2. If THAT were what we meant by "secondary" effect, then it would
> be less laden with intention.
>
> >
>
> > But that's not what Nick seems to be doing. By insisting that some
> effects are, by definition, secondary and others primary, he's asserting an
> intention/purpose to the assembly.
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > On November 28, 2021 9:40:42 PM PST, Marcus Daniels <
> marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
>
> >> An ab initio simulation of a biochemical system would have a foundation
> of some human-engineered code and the atomic model simulated might have
> some simplifying assumptions.    The low energy configurations and dynamics
> are discovered, not engineered.  Yet it is all reproducible on a digital
> computer with precise causality and in some cases has shown fidelity with
> physical experiments.
>
> >>
>
> >>> On Nov 28, 2021, at 9:14 PM, ⛧ glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>>
>
> >>> This sounds like impredicativity, which can be a problem in parallel
> computation (resulting in deadlock or race). Unimplemented math has no
> problem with it, though. And I'm guessing that some of the higher order
> proof assistants find ways around it. A definitional loop seems distinct
> from iteration. So, no; I don't see a problem with iteration in digital
> computation. I simply don't think the intelligent design we do when
> programming is analogous to biological evolution. The former clearly has
> side effects (epiphenomena). I argue the latter does not.
>
> >>>
>
> >>>> On November 28, 2021 5:40:31 PM PST, Marcus Daniels <
> marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
>
> >>>> Glen had said something a while ago implying that (that trivial
> meaning for) loops were somehow more challenging for digital computers.
> I didn’t get it.
>
> >>>>
>
>
>
> --
>
> "Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."
>
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
>
>
>
>
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