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I think that conflates the communicat-or with the communication medium. My question to Dave about the need for "individual" in his version of individualism was intended to sideload this point. To what extent is a person simply a *vehicle* for innovations to bubble up through? We spend all this faith-based energy believing that individuals have thoughts and intentions, when perhaps we're merely *tools*. Dawkins, I think, proposed that we're just the hosts for our genotype. Same idea.
To posit that Trump is a "good XYZ" is tantamount to saying he has thoughts and intentions at all. I agree that he probably does. But it seems to me his thoughts and intentions are all about *spectacle*. He's willing to trade any postulate for its opposite *if* such a trade will attract more eyeballs to him. Saying that's communication is like saying the TV, itself, programs the shows it plays for you. At best, the TV constrains or filters the shows (e.g. full screen format vs. wide screen format). We don't confuse the TV with a TV show and we shouldn't take Trump for a communicator. He has no idea what it is he's communicating. Nirvana said it best: He's the one, who likes All our pretty songs, and he Likes to sing along, and he Likes to shoot his gun, but he Don't know what it means Don't know what it means On 1/11/19 12:56 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Something along these lines, with the help of higher density of Trump voters in states favored with electoral density. And Trump himself is somewhere towards the right side of the red distribution. Thus he a good communicator because the messages that need to be conveyed to this audience have to be simple. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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In reply to this post by gepr
Glen -
> Anyway, if my speculation is close, then Trump doesn't intend or WANT to communicate or persuade, only to perform. I do believe that this describes his intentions (as best I can tell from outside and far away). I think he believes that he *is* persuasive just by his presence/nature and that there is no need to communicate anything excepting his authority. To quote a couple of Austrian bodybuilders "hear me now and believe me later" seems to be his style? > And the tight weave thing was definitely a compliment, and very much on the topic of speaking with language that hangs together and can communicate/persuade, even if *you* don't intend or want to. 8^) While I know this was tongue ^ in cheek ) , I think this type of forum and the personal style of each of us as "communicators" is very interesting. On the surface, I would claim that *of course I want to communicate!*. I'm not always interested in "persuading" because I feel that my "audience" (the subset of the forum that hears me now, whether they believe me later or not) is capable of coming to their own conclusions and rightly so. In fact, I would say "persuasive" modes interfere with "communication". For the most part, I don't think anyone here is significantly motivated to "persuade". There are other motivations than simple communication and persuasion practiced here, including "to entertain", "to ask for help", "to offer support/perspective", and "to express/vent". By and large, this is a very civil and knowledgeable online community. The biggest challenges I recognize for us are: A) too few active voices (~dozen?); B) too little diversity (voices mostly white males over 50?); C) not enough explicit Complexity Science discussion. I can't say how much I appreciate it when a new or infrequent voice (Jackie Kazil most recently) speaks up... our raucous discussions often seem to continue on over these new/unique voices and I wish we were better at including/encouraging them without being awkward about it (like this very sentence?). Since I tend to be pretty herky-jerky in my posting (especially of late), I feel a little conspicuous when I go on a riff of posts/responses like this current one. I do trust that many here have me in their TL;DR filter (explicit or implicit) already so I'm at worst a minor nuisance to them. For what it is worth, most of the time I'm silent, I've possibly composed as many as several replies each day but never sent because I was either interrupted and when I came back to them, just didn't feel the urge to complete them, or my self-consciousness over not wanting to add noise over signal overwhelms my need to compulsively express my opinion on just about everything posited here. - Steve > > On 1/11/19 11:43 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: >> As a compulsive intuitive modeler of "everything" as a network/field dual, all this resonates well. I also like your characterization as "gooey colloid" and was reminded of JJ Thompson's Plum-Pudding model of atoms. >> >> I also like your action/consideration dual to rights/responsibilities... sort of a verb/noun or active/passive duality? >> >> Regarding the use of the term "effectivity". I long ago began to rephrase statements using "good" with similar statements being "effective". e.g. "Science is good at X" with "Science is effective for addressing the topic/problem/question of X". The key point is to replace an absolute value judgement with a more contextualized and relative one. >> >> If Trump claimed "A Physical Barrier like a Concrete Wall or a Beautifully Artistic Steel Slatted Fence is particularly effective in helping personnel in charge of maintaining border security stop the casual crossing of the border without appropriate inspection of cargo and entry documents" rather than the variety of simpleton dumbass claims he *does make*, he would A) put most people to sleep; B) be part of a constructive conversation toward improving the effectiveness of our southern national border. >> >> - Steve >> >> PS. Thanks for the (underhanded?) complement on my "tight weave". I started to claim that I don't *intend* to make the discourse more difficult to analyze, then I realized, that I probably DO intend to prevent the context of any given conversation from being trivialized or made degenerate for the sake of clarity over meaning. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2
Jon, I wrote this immediately but forgot to send it. I have to say, the idea of a squandered metaphor really grabbed me. I may have squandered some metaphors, in my own time. A metaphor is definitely something that can be used prematurely or other than for its highest and best use. I am not sure what monads and monism have to do with each other, other than that they share a linguistic root. Honest. I have trouble seeing the connection. As I understand it, “monism” is a philosophical position that asserts that there is only one kind of stuff. There are materialist monists, idealist monists, and neutral monists. My “experience monism” (which I attribute to Peirce) is meant to be a form of neutral monism. It makes no claim, takes no interest in, any claim that “experience” is either “in the mind” or “of the world”. Experience just is. Experiences represent only other experiences. I don’t have much of a grip on MonADism. As I understand monads, they are irreduceable “atoms” of existence. They have no innards. Now I suppose [he said, thinking aloud] that I might believe that everything that is consists of irreduceable particles of unchanging properties … and that would be a monist monadism. I am still tantalized by the thought that “you-guys” know something that arises from the depth of your practice that could be put into words for a person like me. I have written a little on metaphors in science, published less. But what I have learned suggests that the more specific and the less handwavey a metaphor is, the more “juice” it has. In that connection, I was sorry we didn’t pursue further John Balwit’s example of Goedel, Escher, and Bach, as a book that points into the heart of computation by describing three different practices that are peripheral to it and inviting the reader to get a feel for what they have in common. I hope some folks follow up on your suggestion. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Jon Zingale [mailto:[hidden email]] Marcus, There is almost something ironic about mentioning monads in a discussion which continues to skirt relationships between monist and dualist perspectives. Unlike Leibniz's notion of monad (classic monism), the 'functional programming' notion of monad is necessarily steeped in dualism (thanks category theory). While it is amusing that these categorical structures have found a home in the tool sets of functional programmers (thanks Moggi), it is the case that they are often misrepresented in the poetry of armchair philosophers across the internet: Q: How is a monad like Vegas? A: What happens in a monad stays in a monad. In an effort to avoid a continuous stream of squandered metaphors and endless meandering I wish to see this metaphor spelled out further. In your example, what would the multiplication for the monad be? If it is fair to say that this is a monad, in what sense are the units and multiplication natural? Lastly, what are the categories (objects and morphisms)? As far as characterizing subjectivity and degrees of failure, would it perhaps be more fair to suggest a comonadic model? Jonathan Zingale ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by gepr
>We spend all this faith-based energy believing that individuals
> have thoughts and intentions, when perhaps we're merely *tools*. Cf. Fort's maxim, "A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time." ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Nick writes, in relevant part:
> I am not sure what monads and monism have to do with each other, other > than that they share a linguistic root. Honest. I have trouble seeing > the connection. ... > I don't have much of a grip on MonADism. As I understand monads, they > are irreduceable "atoms" of existence. They have no innards. The "monads" of category theory did not arise under that name, and they absolutely have "innards". Why Saunders MacLane renamed them (as I just learned by checking Wikipedia) that is probably known to many, but not to me; as an instance of the "working mathematician" to whom his book "Categories for the Working Mathematician" was purportedly addressed (J. Frank Adams has a reference in one of his books to "Categories for the Idle Mathematician"), I have a long experience of observing category theorists' whimsy (e.g., Peter Freyd's "kittygory" for a "small category", Peter Johnstone's "pointless topology", etc., etc.), and I suspect that MacLane was mostly indulging in that rather than riffing on antique philosophy. Certainly the word is short and snappy, and that's sufficient to explain why it caught on. To the extent that it can be useful and accurate to describe some bit of mathematics (or a name for that bit of mathematics) by applying to it the term "metaphor" borrowed from rhetoric, it will almost always be MORE useful and MORE accurate (if harder for Nick to deal with) to apply to it another term borrowed from rhetoric, "conceit". Consulting Wikipedia, I find that "modern literary criticism", damn its collective eyes, has redefined that good old word for its own malign ends. What *I* mean by it is (I find by consulting the rather pre-modern Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics) a generalization away from literature of the "metaphysical conceit" (as contrasted with the "Petrarchian conceit"; and named for the Metaphysical Poets, not for William James's coterie): "An intricate [...] metaphor [...] in which the [...] qualities or functions of the described entity are presented by means of a vehicle which shares no physical features with the entity" (of course the "physical features" business is not part of *my* meaning). That is, a conceit is a metaphor that pays serious attention to the multi-level *structures* and *functions* involved on both sides of the trope. A simple metaphor need have no innards; a conceit can be jam-packed with them, but not arbitrarily jam-packed. (The part of the preceding sentence before the semi-colon is itself a pretty simple metaphor. The part after the semi-colon at least tends towards conceit. If I started to distinguish different kinds and functions of innards that bodies can have--bones, muscles, vital and less-vital organs, etc.--and likewise to distinguish different substructures that metaphors can have, along with functions that they perform in the service of metaphorical communication, and THEN set up a correspondence between the bodily innards and the metaphorical substructures that "respected" their respective functions...that would be a conceit. Which I don't intend to work on any further at the moment.) The category-theorists among us may think I'm describing morphisms etc. etc. If they do, then they're committing metaphor (or thinking that I am). If they go further, and try to make sense about rhetorical activities by applying category theory, then they're committing conceit. Enough for now. Lee ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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Thanks, Lee, for "conceit". If it means what it says it means to anybody but you, I may have to reconsider my decade long use of term, metaphor. Do I find myself in a rats' nest of category theorists? I had always thought that category was a rather outré field, that mathematicians were a little embarrassed to be interested in. An now suddenly they are as think on the ground as rabbits. Help me understand the teams, here, the … um … categories. N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- Nick writes, in relevant part: > I am not sure what monads and monism have to do with each other, other > than that they share a linguistic root. Honest. I have trouble > seeing the connection. ... > I don't have much of a grip on MonADism. As I understand monads, they > are irreduceable "atoms" of existence. They have no innards. The "monads" of category theory did not arise under that name, and they absolutely have "innards". Why Saunders MacLane renamed them (as I just learned by checking Wikipedia) that is probably known to many, but not to me; as an instance of the "working mathematician" to whom his book "Categories for the Working Mathematician" was purportedly addressed (J. Frank Adams has a reference in one of his books to "Categories for the Idle Mathematician"), I have a long experience of observing category theorists' whimsy (e.g., Peter Freyd's "kittygory" for a "small category", Peter Johnstone's "pointless topology", etc., etc.), and I suspect that MacLane was mostly indulging in that rather than riffing on antique philosophy. Certainly the word is short and snappy, and that's sufficient to explain why it caught on. To the extent that it can be useful and accurate to describe some bit of mathematics (or a name for that bit of mathematics) by applying to it the term "metaphor" borrowed from rhetoric, it will almost always be MORE useful and MORE accurate (if harder for Nick to deal with) to apply to it another term borrowed from rhetoric, "conceit". Consulting Wikipedia, I find that "modern literary criticism", damn its collective eyes, has redefined that good old word for its own malign ends. What *I* mean by it is (I find by consulting the rather pre-modern Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics) a generalization away from literature of the "metaphysical conceit" (as contrasted with the "Petrarchian conceit"; and named for the Metaphysical Poets, not for William James's coterie): "An intricate [...] metaphor [...] in which the [...] qualities or functions of the described entity are presented by means of a vehicle which shares no physical features with the entity" (of course the "physical features" business is not part of *my* meaning). That is, a conceit is a metaphor that pays serious attention to the multi-level *structures* and *functions* involved on both sides of the trope. A simple metaphor need have no innards; a conceit can be jam-packed with them, but not arbitrarily jam-packed. (The part of the preceding sentence before the semi-colon is itself a pretty simple metaphor. The part after the semi-colon at least tends towards conceit. If I started to distinguish different kinds and functions of innards that bodies can have--bones, muscles, vital and less-vital organs, etc.--and likewise to distinguish different substructures that metaphors can have, along with functions that they perform in the service of metaphorical communication, and THEN set up a correspondence between the bodily innards and the metaphorical substructures that "respected" their respective functions...that would be a conceit. Which I don't intend to work on any further at the moment.) The category-theorists among us may think I'm describing morphisms etc. etc. If they do, then they're committing metaphor (or thinking that I am). If they go further, and try to make sense about rhetorical activities by applying category theory, then they're committing conceit. Enough for now. Lee ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by Steve Smith
Steven,
Fall of 1968, I abandoned physics and adopted Asian Philosophy (first semester at Macalester College). Since then, every spare moment, and many not so spare, was dedicated to learning and practicing. My vocation, quite by accident, was always programming/software/IT but everything in that realm is intensely informed by the philosophy.
Like you, I have been totally underwhelmed by Alexander's Pattern language stuff and especially its adoption in the software community. I am really enamored with his early writing on "non self conscious process," "fit" as a design principle; "unfolding," "Timeless Way of Building," and a lot, but not all, of Nature of Order.
Given your career, "centered on the problem of how to help
humans be more effective/efficient through the leverage/mediation of
computers" really interests me. Englebart's paper on Augmenting Human Intelligence (circa 1965) was truly inspirational but I admit ignorance about how or if it had much impact. Nothing I have read in the area of UI / UX has seemed to have that kind of focus. Perhaps you could share some insights / references from your work?
davew
On Fri, Jan 11, 2019, at 1:03 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by gepr
Glen,
I want to respond to this but my knowledge of graphs is laughable, so please be patient. When I attempt to visualize a graph to use as a metaphor for explaining my notions of individualism — the image in my mind is of Indra's Net ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra%27s_net ) which itself is a metaphor. As a node in that net I have at my disposal the entirety of the net. [There are some interesting convolutions that get from 'refelcting' to 'containing'.] As a node with the ability to "act" (i.e. exhibit behavior) I cannot avoid "acting/behaving." This is not a "right" to act it is a "responsibility" to act (Don't ask from whence this responsibility came to be assigned to me) and, to "act responsibly." "Responsible Action" is one that is fully informed, that takes into account all available input; which in the case of a gem in Indra's Net, means the entire universe. Only possible for those who are enlightened. When I state that I am an individual, I am asserting a degree of autonomy along with an obligation to act responsibly. To act responsibly each action must be conscious, deliberative, and fully informed. As a 'gem' in Indra's Net, I have the potential to be absolutely informed and my humanity is determined by the extent to which I avail myself of that potential. The possibility of and the means of achieving things like group structures, cultures, social compacts, governments, etc. from a presumption of individualism as depicted above it an entirely different realm to explore. All of the above feels at least orthogonal to, if not contradictory, of your graph explanation. But please explain why and how I might be wrong. davew On Fri, Jan 11, 2019, at 8:20 AM, ∄ uǝʃƃ wrote: > Apologies for not snipping more of the below. I try to only include the > relevant bits. But Steve is particularly good at tight weaves. > > I'll (inappropriately, I'm sure) name Dave's conception of individualism > as "networked extensive individualism" (NEI). Networked to address what > I infer from the word "absolute". And the graph is either undirected or > the edges are bidirectional. Extensive because there's some sense that > the attributes of the nodes extend out along the edges to other nodes. > If we allow for different types of edges, then each sub-graph (following > only the edges associated with 1 attribute) might have a larger or > smaller extent/size. Again, "absolute" would play, here. > > So, if that sort of name is OK, then I have to ask why use the word > "individual" at all? It sounds very much more like "fabric" or > "population" ... perhaps even "gooey colloid". What does the individual > comprise that is not out in the larger network? > > My *guess* is that my intuition tells me there's a natural asymmetry > between actions and considerations (a more neutral way of saying > "rights" and "responsibilities"). An individual can be a towering > intellect or a complete moron and both might be capable of making a > great cup of tea. So, when we package up, as a kind of shorthand a sub- > graph into an "individual", we're trying to create some sort of > equivalence between action and consideration. If you act without > thinking things through, then we blame you. If your actions (even > accidentally as I think Scott Adams' prediction Trump would win was an > accident) imply to us that you're some mysterious, deep oracle (e.g. > Richard Feynman), then credit you. > > But this is a false equivalence. A specific form of this is the Great > Man theory, where people like Einstein or whoever are "10-100 times more > effective than average". If we *parse* "effective" well, then it's > true. But we're in danger of assuming that efficacy in action is > somehow directly related to "deep thought" or "intelligence" or > whatever. > > I hope that makes sense. > > On 1/10/19 4:19 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > > On 1/10/19 2:26 PM, Prof David West wrote: > >> Second, Individualism. The list recently struggled with the idea of labeling (categorizing) people and my response to your question and observations about individualism will echo some of the labeling conversation. > >> > >> I will resist being labeled an "individualist" because every characterization I have seen on this list is grounded, in one way or another, on "individual rights." I do not believe that indivdiual's have "rights," even the inalienable ones, that are not derived entirely from "individual responsibility." > > I think I share some analog to your rights/responsibility duality. But I also think they are part of a social construct/contract. "Rights" and "Responsibilities" only make sense to me in the context of some group. I think in most cultures *many* of the rights and responsibilities of the "individual" are so implicit in the culture that we don't think much about them until we get around to conjuring up a constitutional governance document or facing a judge in a courtroom. > >> > >> I am ultimately and absolutely responsible for, not only myself, but, labeling again, all sentient life. While this seems absurd on its face, it is directly analogous to the Bodhisattva. (A goal, not an achievement!) > > Why draw the boundary around sentient life? Why not include *all consciousness* or *all life* and then extend that to *all patterns of matter and energy*? I'm not asking this challengingly... I'm suggesting that in the same way expanding past "me" to "my family" to "my tribe" to "my nation" to "my race" to "my species" to "my genus" or "family" or "order" or even "kingdom" makes some real sense. > >> Corollaries follow: 1) absolute responsibility also means absolute accountability, including if a mistake is made ("do the crime, do the time"); > > I think the question of "accountability" vs vaguely related concepts like "retribution", "revenge", "rehabilitation", "recovery", even "return to grace" is important but probably worth deferring here. > >> 2) a critical dimension of responsibility is acquiring the kind of 'omniscience' that assures non-attachment; > > These are somewhat the opposite of "Willful Ignorance", methinks? > >> 3) every act (behavior) I exhibit is both informed and intentional; > > > > In some limit, yes. But along a spectrum it would seem. Until one has achieved said "Omniscient Non-attached Enlightenment" there is room for weakly informed and therefore mis-applied intentions. The truck-driver hurtling toward the minivan loaded with a model family (including a couple of cute dogs) may well have been swerving to avoid a deer when his poor information lead him to believe that he could do so without crossing lanes, jumping a barrier, and flying headlong into said family (in this version, the truck-driver is neither a sex offender nor substance abuser and the brakes may or may not work but in either case aren't being effective enough to avoid the inevitable fiery collision). > > > > And then we have the concept of "willful ignorance". Are you perhaps suggesting that every act/behaviour has a component of willful ignorance? > > > > > >> and 4) the necessary assumption that everyone else is an "individualist" of this same stripe. > > We can assume that every one else is the same animal, whether they know it or not. Harping on my willful ignorance, we could accuse those who don't know it of extreme ignorance with or without extreme willfulness. > >> In the above I am an admitted fundamentalist fanatic. However, the culture I grew up in, both secular and religious, strongly echoes these ideas. Growing up, I was exposed, pretty much constantly, to the "Paradise Built in Hell" kind of individual, group, and social behavior. (Obviously, that was not the only thing to which I was exposed.) > > > > I think I was as well, though some reflection exposes various pockets of hypocrisy that I was unprepared to recognize at the time. I think something actually *changed* during my generation, where *willful ignorance* (still harping) replaced engaged responsibility. > > > > This is a lot of what I am curious about... what that equation is, how it is balanced and how we got from there to here (or even whether here and there are anything but the same thing?). > > > >> A Geography professor at Macalester College sparked a lifelong interest in Utopian communities. In addition to the physical environment,I was interested in the 'mental' environment of values, principles of social organization, etc.. I have found a lot of other 'echoes' of my concept of individualism in those that managed to survive multiple generations (a rarity). > > > > Intentional Communities (almost by definition Utopian?) have been around for a very long time and often fail within a generation, sometimes under the weight of their own extremism, sometimes under the weight of "backlash" from trying to overconstrain human instinctual drives (e.g. all the things that the 10 Commandments feels compelled to be explicit about). > > > > Complexicists might prefer Utopian societies exhibit Utopian qualities through emergent properties. Jenny Quillien's writeup on her trip to Bhutan exposed a partial example of this (perhaps). > > > >> > >> Hope this was on point to what you asked about. > > > > I think more to the point is to stimulate some off-axis discussion which perhaps provides a little parallax relief from the familiar left/right debates (rants) that we (not just this group, but society at large) seem to lock into. I sense that your own experiences and unique path through life leads you to a similarly unique perspective. The topic of categorization recently seems mostly to be an issue I think Glen calls "over-quantization" or perhaps it is "premature-quantization"? This is also why I harp on breaking the RNC/DNC stranglehold on election (including debate) processes... I want to be making my own choices in a much higher-dimensional space... even if I might be resigned to the hazards of representative gov't (as opposed to the hazards of a direct democracy). > > > -- > ∄ uǝʃƃ > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Motives - Was Abduction
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Some counter examples:
1) You do not have the potential to fully informed. The governments of China or Iran would never give you access to their classified data, for example. Heck, the US government probably wouldn't either with all your discussion of psychedelics and what not! 2) You cannot assert autonomy. You are a part of a physical, economic, and social fabric that is largely out of your control. Further, you are a biological system that follows the laws of physics. What you are at t+1 comes from what you were at time t and you are entangled in everything, much of which is outside of the membrane that can be called `you'. 3) There does not exist the technology yet to change your own DNA (in predictable and reliable ways) or to direct edit neural constructs, or to extend neural constructs with open-ended compute resources. Even if you were fully informed you couldn't do anything with much of the information you would have access to, because it is just to complicated to understand or to use for predictions. Even if this were possible, the agents with the most compute and the best models will win and that too will be a historical accident. In summary, your life means nothing and neither does mine. Have fun, Marcus On 1/12/19, 2:28 PM, "Friam on behalf of Prof David West" <[hidden email] on behalf of [hidden email]> wrote: "Responsible Action" is one that is fully informed, that takes into account all available input; which in the case of a gem in Indra's Net, means the entire universe. Only possible for those who are enlightened. When I state that I am an individual, I am asserting a degree of autonomy along with an obligation to act responsibly. To act responsibly each action must be conscious, deliberative, and fully informed. As a 'gem' in Indra's Net, I have the potential to be absolutely informed and my humanity is determined by the extent to which I avail myself of that potential. The possibility of and the means of achieving things like group structures, cultures, social compacts, governments, etc. from a presumption of individualism as depicted above it an entirely different realm to explore. All of the above feels at least orthogonal to, if not contradictory, of your graph explanation. But please explain why and how I might be wrong. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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W.r.t. Indra's Net, I can understand Hofstadter's description in Gödel, Escher, Bach only because he asserts Indra's Net can be modeled with "augmented transition networks" (ATNs). ATNs have some of the properties we've talked about on the list (e.g. in the context of Rosen) like reflectivity - one node "modeling" another node, modeling the original node, etc. - and closures - the network being invoked fully parameterized with all variables bound so that action is always possible.
Having said that, my purpose was to try to repeat back to you what I heard, albeit in fewer words and my own words. Obviously I didn't do that for (at least) leaving out at least this percolation and bounce-back waviness aspect Hofstadter mentions (and that might map to your rights/responsibilities unification). So, rather than putting too much weight on my words "networked" and "extensive", I can change the model from an abstract graph to, say, a set of balls with springs between them. So the movement of any ball could (potentially) make another ball wobble anywhere in the net and you could have waves and deformations of any "lattice-like" complexity. But even that metaphor fails because, in my rendition I infer from you, the edges/springs are manifold. So, any notion of locality, a node and it's 1-hop neighbors is no more "real" or a higher priority than, say, a node and another one 1000 hops away. I imagine a *set* of different graphs with different types of springs connecting different types of nodes and sub-graphs. And this moves on to Marcus' comment. Indra's Net is inadequate for a well-formed *model*. There's something (vague) about it that won't submit to approximation. Perhaps this is where Rosen can be invoked in his "no largest model" conception of complexity. But everything we do as unenlightened *individuals* is make models of the world. As Walt Whitman might inject, we can create many models, some of which contradict others. Our beaten horse can be quantum mechanics and gravity, both are accurate, yet contradict one another. So, something *like* Indra's Net, yet more well-formed is required if we're going to handle cases like private information (governments or perfect encryption), the heterarchical gooey colloid of physiochemically driven thinking meat (e.g. humans), etc. So, how am I doing? Does this new description *still* seem orthogonal or contradictory to what you're saying? On 1/12/19 2:07 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Some counter examples: > > 1) You do not have the potential to fully informed. The governments of China or Iran would never give you access to their classified data, for example. Heck, the US government probably wouldn't either with all your discussion of psychedelics and what not! > > 2) You cannot assert autonomy. You are a part of a physical, economic, and social fabric that is largely out of your control. > Further, you are a biological system that follows the laws of physics. What you are at t+1 comes from what you were at time t and you are entangled in everything, much of which is outside of the membrane that can be called `you'. > > 3) There does not exist the technology yet to change your own DNA (in predictable and reliable ways) or to direct edit neural constructs, or to extend neural constructs with open-ended compute resources. Even if you were fully informed you couldn't do anything with much of the information you would have access to, because it is just to complicated to understand or to use for predictions. Even if this were possible, the agents with the most compute and the best models will win and that too will be a historical accident. > > In summary, your life means nothing and neither does mine. > > Have fun, > > Marcus > > On 1/12/19, 2:28 PM, "Friam on behalf of Prof David West" <[hidden email] on behalf of [hidden email]> wrote: > > "Responsible Action" is one that is fully informed, that takes into account all available input; which in the case of a gem in Indra's Net, means the entire universe. Only possible for those who are enlightened. > > When I state that I am an individual, I am asserting a degree of autonomy along with an obligation to act responsibly. To act responsibly each action must be conscious, deliberative, and fully informed. As a 'gem' in Indra's Net, I have the potential to be absolutely informed and my humanity is determined by the extent to which I avail myself of that potential. > > The possibility of and the means of achieving things like group structures, cultures, social compacts, governments, etc. from a presumption of individualism as depicted above it an entirely different realm to explore. > > All of the above feels at least orthogonal to, if not contradictory, of your graph explanation. But please explain why and how I might be wrong. -- ∄ uǝʃƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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