[FRIAM] What is FRIAM and is it still alive

[Marcus Daniels]

It’s why languages like Lean 4 are popular now for AI:  Make the AI prove correctness.    It may fail, but then one knows not to use that code. 

 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Gillian Densmore
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2026 3:35 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is FRIAM and is it still alive

 

vibe coding is as gamers used to say for l4m3rz: did ya' ebay yourself: subtle logic problems or even just not real coode with a tone of emoji's slips in. 

_worse_is when its tokens or something happens it's not quite true hallucination, but pretty close, or just wrong. A minor example: I know a little about Kava. and depending chatgpt temperature rating the answers can be: sort of right. or just wrong and occasional dangerous. For example I'm almost 50 and that's about when it's a little dicy in the us to have kava without getting boring rambling:its because it inclue arial bits and leaves stuff that isn't all that great anyway and super hard on your liver. Well Sometimes chagpt says that is fine. (oops)That is a problem for coding. The code (to me) might look good: but Steve or Josh might look and  be horrified at: anything from not well formatted to logic bombs or national obfuscation etc.  that's why asking ChatGPT to code for you is bad. and it's called "vibecoding" 

Just imagine me navely thinking i'm helping because I found a bug in cool_code_here.  and I go oh hey I kind of reconise this problem then ask clause or grok etc. and--what happens if: to me, it looks like a reasonable patch or whatever: but to someone who actually Knows that programing language: it's just terrible. that's the huge problem with vibecoded stuff getting into the wild.

 

 

On Wed, Aug 12, 2026 at 4:26 PM Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net <mailto:owen at backspaces.net> > wrote:

I just did the same stunt with chatgpt. It's output was:

 

This site is a public web archive of the FRIAM email discussion list. It displays messages grouped into conversational threads, with links to older posts.

The community appears to be centered around Santa Fe and brings together people interested in science, technology, mathematics, philosophy, and complex systems. Recent discussions include:

*	Artificial intelligence, cognitive offloading, semantic networks, and “vibe coding”
*	Software development, Linux, and technical troubleshooting
*	Mathematics and research, including solutions to \(A^4+B^4+C^4=D^4\)
*	Philosophy, agency, reasoning, and scientific criticism
*	Synthetic life, geology, archaeology, electric vehicles, and space exploration
*	Local Santa Fe meetups, especially gatherings at St. John’s or nearby cafés
*	Community announcements, obituaries, shared articles, and informal conversation

The tone is eclectic and conversational: serious technical or philosophical debate sits alongside local coordination, jokes, provocative subject lines, and requests for help. A relatively small group of recurring contributors produces much of the activity, often through long reply chains.

In short, it’s less a conventional informational website than a browsable record of an active intellectual community’s mailing-list conversations.

 

 

On Wed, Aug 12, 2026 at 3:41 PM Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net <mailto:owen at backspaces.net> > wrote:

I just looked at our archive here: 

https://www.mail-archive.com/friam@redfish.com/index.html

I then used the chrome claude extension and asked a simple prompt:

give me a summary of this site

It came up with:

 

This page is the Mail Archive's index for the FRIAM mailing list (friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> ), archived at mail-archive.com <http://mail-archive.com> .

FRIAM stands for "Friday Applications in Complexity," a long-running discussion group/mailing list associated with people connected to the Santa Fe Institute and Santa Fe, New Mexico complexity science community. The archive displays messages organized by thread, showing a chronological/threaded index of email conversations rather than any original content of its own.

Looking at the thread titles, the list is an informal, freewheeling discussion forum where members debate a wide mix of topics: philosophy of mind (e.g. "phil zombies," "group agency"), math puzzles (several threads on the equation A⁴+B⁴+C⁴=D⁴), AI and technology commentary ("vibe coding," "AI Slop," "cognitive offloading"), software/Linux questions, local Santa Fe meetup logistics (coffee shop and venue announcements like "St John's" or "New Santa Fe Baking"), obituaries and memorials for community members, and general banter among a recurring group of participants such as glen, Marcus Daniels, Steve Smith, Tom Johnson, Frank Wimberly, and others.

In short, it's a public email archive of a niche, long-running community mailing list mixing casual meetup coordination with intellectual discussion on complexity science, AI, math, and philosophy.

Kinda fun sicking AI on our past.

 

    -- Owen

 

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