Abduction

[Prof David West]

Nick,

Before the conversation forks towards duality, a minor comment about heterarchy in a human organizational context.

Hunter-gatherer tribes were organized as heterarchies: egalitarian with no formal, persistent organization. Instead organization, including leadership, ranking, and roles was situational. A structure emerged in response to environmental stimuli: e.g. 1) a bumper crop of pinon, then A was in charge, men assumed portions of "women's work" and women organized, usually by age and agility, into teams that maximized ability to harvest; or 2) encroaching tribe bent on stealing pinon, B is in charge, men grab their arrows and spears, women form second line of defense with younger women surrounding older ones.

There has been a growing interest in business management with regard organizational structures that can be rapidly reorganized in response to change and the demand for innovation. The term most often encountered in this regard is "wirearchy" — essentially a large dynamic network where connections (e.g. client -server, leader-follower, decision maker-decision implementer) among nodes shift and different nodes are more or less connected vis-a-vis other nodes over time. An interesting corollary of this kind of organization is that the majority of the "system intelligence" is shifted to the edge-node mandating empowered employees.

davew


On Thu, Jan 3, 2019, at 2:14 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> I just gave you an example. But it's weird because nobody ever responds
> to my mentions of eyeball saccade.  You also didn't respond to my scalar
> multiplied by a matrix analogy (an analogy because I was talking about
> comprehensions, which matrices are not, technically).  So, rather than
> give you more examples, I'll treat you like an atheist treats
> Christians.  What sort of example would make sense to you?
>
> I have no idea why you used the word "duality".  The ways of organizing
> things (heter- vs. hier-) would only produce a duality if the different
> ways of organizing were *functionally* equivalent.  My attempt to change
> language from "level" to either "layer" or "order" is an implicit
> assertion that heterarchies are functionally *different* from
> hierarchies.  (To be more specific, hierarchical systems are less
> expressive.)  So, a duality might be achievable between 2 differently
> arranged heterarchies, but not between a hier- and a heter-.
>
> By choosing 2 things of (we assume) the exact same type like Siamese
> twins, you provide a set that probably does not require a heterarchy to
> organize.  Fraternal twins would be a better choice because while they
> are both of the same kinship, their *genes* differ significantly.  Genes
> are of a lower/quicker order than kinship.  But typical understanding of
> kinship operates over BOTH the high level (who's your daddy) and low
> level (what color eyes does your daddy have).  While you *can* construct
> a hierarchy to handle that situation.  There may be some situations
> (e.g. recessive genes, step-parents, etc.) that the hierarchy can't
> express but the heterarchy can.
>
> Note that "order" doesn't technically require heterarchy, either,
> really.  Technically, an ordering like we have in 1st to 2nd order logic
> is still a hierarchy, just with mixed operators.  You'd only *need* a
> heterarchy when there are external (to a given hierarchy) objects/
> relations that need to be accounted for.  But I suggest the social
> kinship, biological kinship, and genotype system does approach that
> need, where even if you can formulate the social as a hierarchy and the
> biological as a hierarchy, the mixing of the two different hierarchies
> requires a heterarchy.
>
> I hope this is not a conversation stopper.  That's not my intent.  But
> based on my failures, here, I'm clearly very bad at this.
>
>
> On 1/3/19 12:38 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > Ok.   Good.  I like this.  Stick with me here.
> >
> >  
> >
> > Keeping your language as citizen-y as possible, please talk to me about "heterarchy".  Being of great age, I learned the song, I'm my own GrandPa <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYlJH81dSiw>  in my youth.  I assume that’s an example of heterarchy.  But I bet you have better examples.  But perhaps even more important, where does the concept stand in your approach to things?  I stipulate that every duality asserted is like Siamese twins separated.  A lot of blood is inevitably spilled.  But no thought can possibly be achieved without that sort of blood-letting.  I think I am going to argue that to the extent that the idea of heterarchy might give one a better way to separate the babies it should be entertained;  but if it is a way of stopping the conversation how best the babies might be separated, then it should not.  
>
>
> --
> ☣ 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

============================================================
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

[Marcus G. Daniels]

"There has been a growing interest in business management with regard organizational structures that can be rapidly reorganized in response to change and the demand for innovation. The term most often encountered in this regard is "wirearchy" — essentially a large dynamic network where connections (e.g. client -server, leader-follower, decision maker-decision implementer) among nodes shift and different nodes are more or less connected vis-a-vis other nodes over time. An interesting corollary of this kind of organization is that the majority of the "system intelligence" is shifted to the edge-node mandating empowered employees."

client-server, leader-follower, and decision maker-decision implementer are hierarchical control words.   Otherwise there can be frustration situations where different bosses give contradictory guidance to the same employee.  There cannot be insubordination in this kind of structure.

Marcus   

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Prof David West <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, January 3, 2019 3:40:42 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

Nick,

Before the conversation forks towards duality, a minor comment about heterarchy in a human organizational context.

Hunter-gatherer tribes were organized as heterarchies: egalitarian with no formal, persistent organization. Instead organization, including leadership, ranking, and roles was situational. A structure emerged in response to environmental stimuli: e.g. 1) a bumper crop of pinon, then A was in charge, men assumed portions of "women's work" and women organized, usually by age and agility, into teams that maximized ability to harvest; or 2) encroaching tribe bent on stealing pinon, B is in charge, men grab their arrows and spears, women form second line of defense with younger women surrounding older ones.

There has been a growing interest in business management with regard organizational structures that can be rapidly reorganized in response to change and the demand for innovation. The term most often encountered in this regard is "wirearchy" — essentially a large dynamic network where connections (e.g. client -server, leader-follower, decision maker-decision implementer) among nodes shift and different nodes are more or less connected vis-a-vis other nodes over time. An interesting corollary of this kind of organization is that the majority of the "system intelligence" is shifted to the edge-node mandating empowered employees.

davew


On Thu, Jan 3, 2019, at 2:14 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> I just gave you an example. But it's weird because nobody ever responds
> to my mentions of eyeball saccade.  You also didn't respond to my scalar
> multiplied by a matrix analogy (an analogy because I was talking about
> comprehensions, which matrices are not, technically).  So, rather than
> give you more examples, I'll treat you like an atheist treats
> Christians.  What sort of example would make sense to you?
>
> I have no idea why you used the word "duality".  The ways of organizing
> things (heter- vs. hier-) would only produce a duality if the different
> ways of organizing were *functionally* equivalent.  My attempt to change
> language from "level" to either "layer" or "order" is an implicit
> assertion that heterarchies are functionally *different* from
> hierarchies.  (To be more specific, hierarchical systems are less
> expressive.)  So, a duality might be achievable between 2 differently
> arranged heterarchies, but not between a hier- and a heter-.
>
> By choosing 2 things of (we assume) the exact same type like Siamese
> twins, you provide a set that probably does not require a heterarchy to
> organize.  Fraternal twins would be a better choice because while they
> are both of the same kinship, their *genes* differ significantly.  Genes
> are of a lower/quicker order than kinship.  But typical understanding of
> kinship operates over BOTH the high level (who's your daddy) and low
> level (what color eyes does your daddy have).  While you *can* construct
> a hierarchy to handle that situation.  There may be some situations
> (e.g. recessive genes, step-parents, etc.) that the hierarchy can't
> express but the heterarchy can.
>
> Note that "order" doesn't technically require heterarchy, either,
> really.  Technically, an ordering like we have in 1st to 2nd order logic
> is still a hierarchy, just with mixed operators.  You'd only *need* a
> heterarchy when there are external (to a given hierarchy) objects/
> relations that need to be accounted for.  But I suggest the social
> kinship, biological kinship, and genotype system does approach that
> need, where even if you can formulate the social as a hierarchy and the
> biological as a hierarchy, the mixing of the two different hierarchies
> requires a heterarchy.
>
> I hope this is not a conversation stopper.  That's not my intent.  But
> based on my failures, here, I'm clearly very bad at this.
>
>
> On 1/3/19 12:38 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > Ok.   Good.  I like this.  Stick with me here.
> >
> > 
> >
> > Keeping your language as citizen-y as possible, please talk to me about "heterarchy".  Being of great age, I learned the song, I'm my own GrandPa <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYlJH81dSiw>  in my youth.  I assume that’s an example of heterarchy.  But I bet you have better examples.  But perhaps even more important, where does the concept stand in your approach to things?  I stipulate that every duality asserted is like Siamese twins separated.  A lot of blood is inevitably spilled.  But no thought can possibly be achieved without that sort of blood-letting.  I think I am going to argue that to the extent that the idea of heterarchy might give one a better way to separate the babies it should be entertained;  but if it is a way of stopping the conversation how best the babies might be separated, then it should not. 
>
>
> --
> ☣ 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

============================================================
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

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Like the air traffic control example.   Need more situations in which respect of peers and a shared ethic is more important than what a manager thinks.   Effectively manipulating (e.g. sucking-up) to a manager is a different skill as is detecting when manipulation is being attempted.   The very presence of a manager tends to undermine the development of a group ethic in my experience.  On the other hand, some people just can’t function without a mommy or daddy around.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Prof David West <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Friday, January 4, 2019 at 8:20 AM
To: "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

Yeah, the vocabulary is difficult as too many terms are borrowed from old contexts and forced into service in the new.

 

For two weeks a year, Oshkosh Wisconsin is the world's business airport (takeoffs and landings). There is no positive control like all other airports, i.e. the controllers in the tower do not track and direct traffic. Instead, everyone communicates on an open channel, stating their location and intent. Everyone else  listens and adjusts their own flying accordingly. Local, to a specific airspace, coordinators 'emerge' and temporarily offer meta-comments on the same frequency in order to identify and resolve potential conflicts that might not be immediately noted among the pilots in that airspace. At other times volunteers in the tower offer meta- or meta-meta comments as well. In all cases, except imminent collision or similar, communication consists only of information - no orders, commands, control.

 

A business wirearchy is supposed to operate in a similar fashion. Companies attempting to do this (mostly in Europe) can be found at 10,000 employee level of scale, though most are 100-700 employees.

 

davew

 

 

 

On Fri, Jan 4, 2019, at 7:08 AM, David West wrote:

Yeah, the vocabulary is difficult as too many terms are borrowed from old contexts and forced into service in the new.

 

For two weeks a year, Oshkosh Wisconsin is the world's business airport (takeoffs and landings). There is no positive control like all other airports, i.e. the controllers in the tower do not track and direct traffic. Instead, everyone communicates on an open channel, stating their location and intent. Everyone else  listens and adjusts their own flying accordingly. Local, to a specific airspace, coordinators 'emerge' and temporarily offer meta-comments on the same frequency in order to identify and resolve potential conflicts that might not be immediately noted among the pilots in that airspace. At other times volunteers in the tower offer meta- or meta-meta comments as well. In all cases, except imminent collision or similar, communication consists only of information - no orders, commands, control.

 

A business wirearchy is supposed to operate in a similar fashion. Companies attempting to do this (mostly in Europe) can be found at 10,000 employee level of scale, though most are 100-700 employees.

 

davew

 

 

On Thu, Jan 3, 2019, at 4:46 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

"There has been a growing interest in business management with regard organizational structures that can be rapidly reorganized in response to change and the demand for innovation. The term most often encountered in this regard is "wirearchy" — essentially a large dynamic network where connections (e.g. client -server, leader-follower, decision maker-decision implementer) among nodes shift and different nodes are more or less connected vis-a-vis other nodes over time. An interesting corollary of this kind of organization is that the majority of the "system intelligence" is shifted to the edge-node mandating empowered employees."

 

client-server, leader-follower, and decision maker-decision implementer are hierarchical control words.   Otherwise there can be frustration situations where different bosses give contradictory guidance to the same employee.  There cannot be insubordination in this kind of structure.

 

Marcus   

---

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Prof David West <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, January 3, 2019 3:40:42 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

 

Nick,

Before the conversation forks towards duality, a minor comment about heterarchy in a human organizational context.

Hunter-gatherer tribes were organized as heterarchies: egalitarian with no formal, persistent organization. Instead organization, including leadership, ranking, and roles was situational. A structure emerged in response to environmental stimuli: e.g. 1) a bumper crop of pinon, then A was in charge, men assumed portions of "women's work" and women organized, usually by age and agility, into teams that maximized ability to harvest; or 2) encroaching tribe bent on stealing pinon, B is in charge, men grab their arrows and spears, women form second line of defense with younger women surrounding older ones.

There has been a growing interest in business management with regard organizational structures that can be rapidly reorganized in response to change and the demand for innovation. The term most often encountered in this regard is "wirearchy" — essentially a large dynamic network where connections (e.g. client -server, leader-follower, decision maker-decision implementer) among nodes shift and different nodes are more or less connected vis-a-vis other nodes over time. An interesting corollary of this kind of organization is that the majority of the "system intelligence" is shifted to the edge-node mandating empowered employees.

davew


On Thu, Jan 3, 2019, at 2:14 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> I just gave you an example. But it's weird because nobody ever responds
> to my mentions of eyeball saccade.  You also didn't respond to my scalar
> multiplied by a matrix analogy (an analogy because I was talking about
> comprehensions, which matrices are not, technically).  So, rather than
> give you more examples, I'll treat you like an atheist treats
> Christians.  What sort of example would make sense to you?
>
> I have no idea why you used the word "duality".  The ways of organizing
> things (heter- vs. hier-) would only produce a duality if the different
> ways of organizing were *functionally* equivalent.  My attempt to change
> language from "level" to either "layer" or "order" is an implicit
> assertion that heterarchies are functionally *different* from
> hierarchies.  (To be more specific, hierarchical systems are less
> expressive.)  So, a duality might be achievable between 2 differently
> arranged heterarchies, but not between a hier- and a heter-.
>
> By choosing 2 things of (we assume) the exact same type like Siamese
> twins, you provide a set that probably does not require a heterarchy to
> organize.  Fraternal twins would be a better choice because while they
> are both of the same kinship, their *genes* differ significantly.  Genes
> are of a lower/quicker order than kinship.  But typical understanding of
> kinship operates over BOTH the high level (who's your daddy) and low
> level (what color eyes does your daddy have).  While you *can* construct
> a hierarchy to handle that situation.  There may be some situations
> (e.g. recessive genes, step-parents, etc.) that the hierarchy can't
> express but the heterarchy can.
>
> Note that "order" doesn't technically require heterarchy, either,
> really.  Technically, an ordering like we have in 1st to 2nd order logic
> is still a hierarchy, just with mixed operators.  You'd only *need* a
> heterarchy when there are external (to a given hierarchy) objects/
> relations that need to be accounted for.  But I suggest the social
> kinship, biological kinship, and genotype system does approach that
> need, where even if you can formulate the social as a hierarchy and the
> biological as a hierarchy, the mixing of the two different hierarchies
> requires a heterarchy.
>
> I hope this is not a conversation stopper.  That's not my intent.  But
> based on my failures, here, I'm clearly very bad at this.
>
>
> On 1/3/19 12:38 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > Ok.   Good.  I like this.  Stick with me here.
> >
> > 
> >
> > Keeping your language as citizen-y as possible, please talk to me about "heterarchy".  Being of great age, I learned the song, I'm my own GrandPa <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYlJH81dSiw>  in my youth.  I assume that’s an example of heterarchy.  But I bet you have better examples.  But perhaps even more important, where does the concept stand in your approach to things?  I stipulate that every duality asserted is like Siamese twins separated.  A lot of blood is inevitably spilled.  But no thought can possibly be achieved without that sort of blood-letting.  I think I am going to argue that to the extent that the idea of heterarchy might give one a better way to separate the babies it should be entertained;  but if it is a way of stopping the conversation how best the babies might be separated, then it should not. 
>
>
> --
> ☣ 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

============================================================
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

 

 

============================================================
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

[Marcus G. Daniels]

I find the whole Agile thing ludicrous.   People that like it border on OCD.   

What I have seen is something else:  The people that experience freedom from management develop deeper intuition about the problem domain and simply work on something more important.    This is completely unacceptable to management, and they panic, re-imposing their stupid processes.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Prof David West <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Friday, January 4, 2019 at 8:52 AM
To: "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

Perhaps a good example of failure might help.

 

When Kent Beck first proposed Extreme Programming, his vision was akin to a heterarchic community that included clients/users and every variety of developer - Whole Team. The teams were to be self-organizing and self managing. Teams had coaches who were expressly forbidding to be managers / lead programmers / "bosses" in any sense — they were supposed to sources of meta-information about the team's activities, facilitators of coordination arising from team interactions, and a hard barrier between the team and "management."

 

In exchange for 'freedom from management' individuals and teams promised continual improvement (knowledge and both hard and soft skills).

 

Everything fell apart and "Agile" failed (technically is still failing every day) because developers did not keep their continual improvement promise; and managers reimposed their control via end runs that mandated Scrum and Lean as integral elements.

 

davew

 

 

 

On Fri, Jan 4, 2019, at 8:38 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Like the air traffic control example.   Need more situations in which respect of peers and a shared ethic is more important than what a manager thinks.   Effectively manipulating (e.g. sucking-up) to a manager is a different skill as is detecting when manipulation is being attempted.   The very presence of a manager tends to undermine the development of a group ethic in my experience.  On the other hand, some people just can’t function without a mommy or daddy around.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Prof David West <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Friday, January 4, 2019 at 8:20 AM
To: "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

Yeah, the vocabulary is difficult as too many terms are borrowed from old contexts and forced into service in the new.

 

For two weeks a year, Oshkosh Wisconsin is the world's business airport (takeoffs and landings). There is no positive control like all other airports, i.e. the controllers in the tower do not track and direct traffic. Instead, everyone communicates on an open channel, stating their location and intent. Everyone else  listens and adjusts their own flying accordingly. Local, to a specific airspace, coordinators 'emerge' and temporarily offer meta-comments on the same frequency in order to identify and resolve potential conflicts that might not be immediately noted among the pilots in that airspace. At other times volunteers in the tower offer meta- or meta-meta comments as well. In all cases, except imminent collision or similar, communication consists only of information - no orders, commands, control.

 

A business wirearchy is supposed to operate in a similar fashion. Companies attempting to do this (mostly in Europe) can be found at 10,000 employee level of scale, though most are 100-700 employees.

 

davew

 

 

 

On Fri, Jan 4, 2019, at 7:08 AM, David West wrote:

Yeah, the vocabulary is difficult as too many terms are borrowed from old contexts and forced into service in the new.

 

For two weeks a year, Oshkosh Wisconsin is the world's business airport (takeoffs and landings). There is no positive control like all other airports, i.e. the controllers in the tower do not track and direct traffic. Instead, everyone communicates on an open channel, stating their location and intent. Everyone else  listens and adjusts their own flying accordingly. Local, to a specific airspace, coordinators 'emerge' and temporarily offer meta-comments on the same frequency in order to identify and resolve potential conflicts that might not be immediately noted among the pilots in that airspace. At other times volunteers in the tower offer meta- or meta-meta comments as well. In all cases, except imminent collision or similar, communication consists only of information - no orders, commands, control.

 

A business wirearchy is supposed to operate in a similar fashion. Companies attempting to do this (mostly in Europe) can be found at 10,000 employee level of scale, though most are 100-700 employees.

 

davew

 

 

On Thu, Jan 3, 2019, at 4:46 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

"There has been a growing interest in business management with regard organizational structures that can be rapidly reorganized in response to change and the demand for innovation. The term most often encountered in this regard is "wirearchy" — essentially a large dynamic network where connections (e.g. client -server, leader-follower, decision maker-decision implementer) among nodes shift and different nodes are more or less connected vis-a-vis other nodes over time. An interesting corollary of this kind of organization is that the majority of the "system intelligence" is shifted to the edge-node mandating empowered employees."

 

client-server, leader-follower, and decision maker-decision implementer are hierarchical control words.   Otherwise there can be frustration situations where different bosses give contradictory guidance to the same employee.  There cannot be insubordination in this kind of structure.

 

Marcus   

---

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Prof David West <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, January 3, 2019 3:40:42 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

 

Nick,

Before the conversation forks towards duality, a minor comment about heterarchy in a human organizational context.

Hunter-gatherer tribes were organized as heterarchies: egalitarian with no formal, persistent organization. Instead organization, including leadership, ranking, and roles was situational. A structure emerged in response to environmental stimuli: e.g. 1) a bumper crop of pinon, then A was in charge, men assumed portions of "women's work" and women organized, usually by age and agility, into teams that maximized ability to harvest; or 2) encroaching tribe bent on stealing pinon, B is in charge, men grab their arrows and spears, women form second line of defense with younger women surrounding older ones.

There has been a growing interest in business management with regard organizational structures that can be rapidly reorganized in response to change and the demand for innovation. The term most often encountered in this regard is "wirearchy" — essentially a large dynamic network where connections (e.g. client -server, leader-follower, decision maker-decision implementer) among nodes shift and different nodes are more or less connected vis-a-vis other nodes over time. An interesting corollary of this kind of organization is that the majority of the "system intelligence" is shifted to the edge-node mandating empowered employees.

davew


On Thu, Jan 3, 2019, at 2:14 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> I just gave you an example. But it's weird because nobody ever responds
> to my mentions of eyeball saccade.  You also didn't respond to my scalar
> multiplied by a matrix analogy (an analogy because I was talking about
> comprehensions, which matrices are not, technically).  So, rather than
> give you more examples, I'll treat you like an atheist treats
> Christians.  What sort of example would make sense to you?
>
> I have no idea why you used the word "duality".  The ways of organizing
> things (heter- vs. hier-) would only produce a duality if the different
> ways of organizing were *functionally* equivalent.  My attempt to change
> language from "level" to either "layer" or "order" is an implicit
> assertion that heterarchies are functionally *different* from
> hierarchies.  (To be more specific, hierarchical systems are less
> expressive.)  So, a duality might be achievable between 2 differently
> arranged heterarchies, but not between a hier- and a heter-.
>
> By choosing 2 things of (we assume) the exact same type like Siamese
> twins, you provide a set that probably does not require a heterarchy to
> organize.  Fraternal twins would be a better choice because while they
> are both of the same kinship, their *genes* differ significantly.  Genes
> are of a lower/quicker order than kinship.  But typical understanding of
> kinship operates over BOTH the high level (who's your daddy) and low
> level (what color eyes does your daddy have).  While you *can* construct
> a hierarchy to handle that situation.  There may be some situations
> (e.g. recessive genes, step-parents, etc.) that the hierarchy can't
> express but the heterarchy can.
>
> Note that "order" doesn't technically require heterarchy, either,
> really.  Technically, an ordering like we have in 1st to 2nd order logic
> is still a hierarchy, just with mixed operators.  You'd only *need* a
> heterarchy when there are external (to a given hierarchy) objects/
> relations that need to be accounted for.  But I suggest the social
> kinship, biological kinship, and genotype system does approach that
> need, where even if you can formulate the social as a hierarchy and the
> biological as a hierarchy, the mixing of the two different hierarchies
> requires a heterarchy.
>
> I hope this is not a conversation stopper.  That's not my intent.  But
> based on my failures, here, I'm clearly very bad at this.
>
>
> On 1/3/19 12:38 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > Ok.   Good.  I like this.  Stick with me here.
> >
> > 
> >
> > Keeping your language as citizen-y as possible, please talk to me about "heterarchy".  Being of great age, I learned the song, I'm my own GrandPa <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYlJH81dSiw>  in my youth.  I assume that’s an example of heterarchy.  But I bet you have better examples.  But perhaps even more important, where does the concept stand in your approach to things?  I stipulate that every duality asserted is like Siamese twins separated.  A lot of blood is inevitably spilled.  But no thought can possibly be achieved without that sort of blood-letting.  I think I am going to argue that to the extent that the idea of heterarchy might give one a better way to separate the babies it should be entertained;  but if it is a way of stopping the conversation how best the babies might be separated, then it should not. 
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> ============================================================
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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Since I’ve waded in this far, I’ll finish the thought.

 

The underlying problem that Agile tries to address is that new/young people hired-on to a software development project just want to do a job.   They want to get promoted and they want to make more money.   They want to believe their careers will move forward.   A manager can possibly do that for them, and help them navigate a complex (software) ecosystem as they begin.   

 

So if I see a team with a median age of say, 30, many if not most of them are not prepared risk their welfare to approach their work in a way that might be contrary to what their manager or their manager’s manager had in mind.   If they are told to be a certain sort of finite state machine following Agile process that will `free’ them, they will sign right up for that!    Actually a lot of the middle age workers will too, because if they are not already managers they may feel defeated and will at least want to appear to be compliant.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Friday, January 4, 2019 at 8:58 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

I find the whole Agile thing ludicrous.   People that like it border on OCD.   

What I have seen is something else:  The people that experience freedom from management develop deeper intuition about the problem domain and simply work on something more important.    This is completely unacceptable to management, and they panic, re-imposing their stupid processes.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Prof David West <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Friday, January 4, 2019 at 8:52 AM
To: "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

Perhaps a good example of failure might help.

 

When Kent Beck first proposed Extreme Programming, his vision was akin to a heterarchic community that included clients/users and every variety of developer - Whole Team. The teams were to be self-organizing and self managing. Teams had coaches who were expressly forbidding to be managers / lead programmers / "bosses" in any sense — they were supposed to sources of meta-information about the team's activities, facilitators of coordination arising from team interactions, and a hard barrier between the team and "management."

 

In exchange for 'freedom from management' individuals and teams promised continual improvement (knowledge and both hard and soft skills).

 

Everything fell apart and "Agile" failed (technically is still failing every day) because developers did not keep their continual improvement promise; and managers reimposed their control via end runs that mandated Scrum and Lean as integral elements.

 

davew

 

 

 

On Fri, Jan 4, 2019, at 8:38 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Like the air traffic control example.   Need more situations in which respect of peers and a shared ethic is more important than what a manager thinks.   Effectively manipulating (e.g. sucking-up) to a manager is a different skill as is detecting when manipulation is being attempted.   The very presence of a manager tends to undermine the development of a group ethic in my experience.  On the other hand, some people just can’t function without a mommy or daddy around.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Prof David West <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Friday, January 4, 2019 at 8:20 AM
To: "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

Yeah, the vocabulary is difficult as too many terms are borrowed from old contexts and forced into service in the new.

 

For two weeks a year, Oshkosh Wisconsin is the world's business airport (takeoffs and landings). There is no positive control like all other airports, i.e. the controllers in the tower do not track and direct traffic. Instead, everyone communicates on an open channel, stating their location and intent. Everyone else  listens and adjusts their own flying accordingly. Local, to a specific airspace, coordinators 'emerge' and temporarily offer meta-comments on the same frequency in order to identify and resolve potential conflicts that might not be immediately noted among the pilots in that airspace. At other times volunteers in the tower offer meta- or meta-meta comments as well. In all cases, except imminent collision or similar, communication consists only of information - no orders, commands, control.

 

A business wirearchy is supposed to operate in a similar fashion. Companies attempting to do this (mostly in Europe) can be found at 10,000 employee level of scale, though most are 100-700 employees.

 

davew

 

 

 

On Fri, Jan 4, 2019, at 7:08 AM, David West wrote:

Yeah, the vocabulary is difficult as too many terms are borrowed from old contexts and forced into service in the new.

 

For two weeks a year, Oshkosh Wisconsin is the world's business airport (takeoffs and landings). There is no positive control like all other airports, i.e. the controllers in the tower do not track and direct traffic. Instead, everyone communicates on an open channel, stating their location and intent. Everyone else  listens and adjusts their own flying accordingly. Local, to a specific airspace, coordinators 'emerge' and temporarily offer meta-comments on the same frequency in order to identify and resolve potential conflicts that might not be immediately noted among the pilots in that airspace. At other times volunteers in the tower offer meta- or meta-meta comments as well. In all cases, except imminent collision or similar, communication consists only of information - no orders, commands, control.

 

A business wirearchy is supposed to operate in a similar fashion. Companies attempting to do this (mostly in Europe) can be found at 10,000 employee level of scale, though most are 100-700 employees.

 

davew

 

 

On Thu, Jan 3, 2019, at 4:46 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

"There has been a growing interest in business management with regard organizational structures that can be rapidly reorganized in response to change and the demand for innovation. The term most often encountered in this regard is "wirearchy" — essentially a large dynamic network where connections (e.g. client -server, leader-follower, decision maker-decision implementer) among nodes shift and different nodes are more or less connected vis-a-vis other nodes over time. An interesting corollary of this kind of organization is that the majority of the "system intelligence" is shifted to the edge-node mandating empowered employees."

 

client-server, leader-follower, and decision maker-decision implementer are hierarchical control words.   Otherwise there can be frustration situations where different bosses give contradictory guidance to the same employee.  There cannot be insubordination in this kind of structure.

 

Marcus   

---

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Prof David West <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, January 3, 2019 3:40:42 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

 

Nick,

Before the conversation forks towards duality, a minor comment about heterarchy in a human organizational context.

Hunter-gatherer tribes were organized as heterarchies: egalitarian with no formal, persistent organization. Instead organization, including leadership, ranking, and roles was situational. A structure emerged in response to environmental stimuli: e.g. 1) a bumper crop of pinon, then A was in charge, men assumed portions of "women's work" and women organized, usually by age and agility, into teams that maximized ability to harvest; or 2) encroaching tribe bent on stealing pinon, B is in charge, men grab their arrows and spears, women form second line of defense with younger women surrounding older ones.

There has been a growing interest in business management with regard organizational structures that can be rapidly reorganized in response to change and the demand for innovation. The term most often encountered in this regard is "wirearchy" — essentially a large dynamic network where connections (e.g. client -server, leader-follower, decision maker-decision implementer) among nodes shift and different nodes are more or less connected vis-a-vis other nodes over time. An interesting corollary of this kind of organization is that the majority of the "system intelligence" is shifted to the edge-node mandating empowered employees.

davew


On Thu, Jan 3, 2019, at 2:14 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> I just gave you an example. But it's weird because nobody ever responds
> to my mentions of eyeball saccade.  You also didn't respond to my scalar
> multiplied by a matrix analogy (an analogy because I was talking about
> comprehensions, which matrices are not, technically).  So, rather than
> give you more examples, I'll treat you like an atheist treats
> Christians.  What sort of example would make sense to you?
>
> I have no idea why you used the word "duality".  The ways of organizing
> things (heter- vs. hier-) would only produce a duality if the different
> ways of organizing were *functionally* equivalent.  My attempt to change
> language from "level" to either "layer" or "order" is an implicit
> assertion that heterarchies are functionally *different* from
> hierarchies.  (To be more specific, hierarchical systems are less
> expressive.)  So, a duality might be achievable between 2 differently
> arranged heterarchies, but not between a hier- and a heter-.
>
> By choosing 2 things of (we assume) the exact same type like Siamese
> twins, you provide a set that probably does not require a heterarchy to
> organize.  Fraternal twins would be a better choice because while they
> are both of the same kinship, their *genes* differ significantly.  Genes
> are of a lower/quicker order than kinship.  But typical understanding of
> kinship operates over BOTH the high level (who's your daddy) and low
> level (what color eyes does your daddy have).  While you *can* construct
> a hierarchy to handle that situation.  There may be some situations
> (e.g. recessive genes, step-parents, etc.) that the hierarchy can't
> express but the heterarchy can.
>
> Note that "order" doesn't technically require heterarchy, either,
> really.  Technically, an ordering like we have in 1st to 2nd order logic
> is still a hierarchy, just with mixed operators.  You'd only *need* a
> heterarchy when there are external (to a given hierarchy) objects/
> relations that need to be accounted for.  But I suggest the social
> kinship, biological kinship, and genotype system does approach that
> need, where even if you can formulate the social as a hierarchy and the
> biological as a hierarchy, the mixing of the two different hierarchies
> requires a heterarchy.
>
> I hope this is not a conversation stopper.  That's not my intent.  But
> based on my failures, here, I'm clearly very bad at this.
>
>
> On 1/3/19 12:38 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > Ok.   Good.  I like this.  Stick with me here.
> >
> > 
> >
> > Keeping your language as citizen-y as possible, please talk to me about "heterarchy".  Being of great age, I learned the song, I'm my own GrandPa <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYlJH81dSiw>  in my youth.  I assume that’s an example of heterarchy.  But I bet you have better examples.  But perhaps even more important, where does the concept stand in your approach to things?  I stipulate that every duality asserted is like Siamese twins separated.  A lot of blood is inevitably spilled.  But no thought can possibly be achieved without that sort of blood-letting.  I think I am going to argue that to the extent that the idea of heterarchy might give one a better way to separate the babies it should be entertained;  but if it is a way of stopping the conversation how best the babies might be separated, then it should not. 
>
>
> --
> ☣ 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

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[Eric Charles-2]

Glen said: " I would claim motives are a higher order behavior, but NOT (solely) at a higher level of organization.  I.e. motives consist of BOTH low level behaviors like eyeball saccades AND high level behaviors like how one feels about another person." And then a bit later Glen complained (rightly) that no one had followed up on his examples. I will attempt to fill that gap!

I suspect the first issue is here is what we call "higher level." Sometimes, when people reference "higher level behavior", they are envisioning something like a "ladder of life" with simpler beings lower down and more complex beings higher up. In that context, something like a saccade is low on the scale, because many "lower beings" do it, and throwing a baseball might be higher on the scale, because only a few non-human species are capable of such a thing. Based on how the above quote is phrased,  I believe that is what Glen very-understandably thinks Nick is be talking about.  However, Nick is invoking something else entirely, something like "levels of analysis" talk, in which meaningful "higher" things exist in the relations between lower-level things.

The most common context in which people are exposed to this is in biology class, where we are told that at some level there are cells, and that many cells of similar type make tissue, tissue combines into organs, organs into organ systems, and systems into organisms. In some obvious sense, cells "make up" organs, but also one would not really come to understand organs by virtue of individually examining cells. There is something "higher-level" going on, something about the organization of the cells that we consider important, and worth talking about and studying in its own right, which is why organ-talk and organ-level science are things. 

When Nick says that " Motives ARE behavior.  Just at a higher level of organization.", he means "higher level" in that sense. We see that someone is motivated towards a certain goal when we witness them varying their behavior across circumstances in order to achieve that goal. If we want to measure how motivated someone is, we change the circumstances so that they are no longer directed at (what we assume to be) their goal, and then measure the strength of their effort to "return to course." That line of thought can be elaborated extensively, with other examples brought in from both scientific efforts and mundane life, and what you end up with is the conclusion that: Motives are an identifiable type of pattern that can exist between behavior and circumstances, specifically a pattern in which behavior changes such that the acts in question continue to be directed towards producing a particular outcome.

Let us say that saccades (Glen's example) are relatively random (within a certain range of eye rotation), but that we notice Glen's saccades occur slightly more often towards the location of an attractive woman located 5 degrees to the right of and 5 degrees up from the person he is talking to. From this, we may suspect Glen is motivated to look at the woman, but we must admit is quite possible that his eyes always saccade in that fashion, as we have never measured Glen's saccades before. Or maybe the bias is unusual, but is explained by an unrelated factor, such a slightly lighter bulb illuminating that part of the background. All fine and good, a hypothesis, but no way to test it. However, suppose that the woman starts moves around the room, and we notice that Glen's saccades, while still containing a fair amount of randomness, consistently bias towards the direction of the woman, wherever she happens to be. And let us also assume that Glen's position shifts in a wide variety of ways throughout the conversation, with the only notable consistency being that they position his head such that it reduces the size of the saccades necessary to bring the woman closer to the periphery of his vision. We might, from that, conclude/abduct/declare/assert that Glen "is motivated" to look at the woman. Let's say that Glen likes red heads in low cut dresses, and when this particular red-head--in-a-low-cut-dress leaves the room, the described pattern falls apart for a few minutes, but then re-appears, directed towards an auburn-haired woman with a slightly-less-but-still-distinctly-low-cut dress. We have become firmer in our conclusion/abduction about Glen's motives.

(Note that whether or not saccades work that way isn't the issue, the issue is that if they DID work that way, we would likely agree on the conclusion made.)

On Thu, Jan 3, 2019 at 1:59 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Heh, there you go again, rejecting the heterarchy! >8^D

I would claim motives are a higher order behavior, but NOT (solely) at a higher level of organization.  I.e. motives consist of BOTH low level behaviors like eyeball saccades AND high level behaviors like how one feels about another person.

On 1/3/19 10:55 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Motives ARE behavior.  Just at a higher level of organization. 


--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[David Eric Smith]

Nick, hi,

I am about to drop permanently off this thread, because the inanity (that could be a typo for insanity) of my year is about to begin, and all time will be lost.  But let me try to clarify one thing before leaving.  I mean this as an acknowledgment of the respect due to people who are willing to do work I am not doing.  (Larding below, only at one place.)

On Jan 1, 2019, at 5:46 AM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dear Erics, C. and S., 

 

I got lost for a moment, here, but now am caught up.  I hope. 

 

Eric Charles is correct.

 

Eric Smith’s first sentence is about as unvarnished statement of pragmatism as one can imagine.  

 

The role of “reality” in those constructions is often an uninterpreted shorthand for the fact that I am willing to act without too much doubt in certain ways, using my attention and worry on other things than second-guessing that action. 

 

But then there is again, that plaintive lament, that hapless dream of a warrantee for a permanent, unshakeable belief in a reality not only undoubted but forever beyond the reach of doubt:

 

.  I don’t even try to lift that placeholder term to something that could carry philosophical weight."

But this is nonsense!  In the first place, because you misrepresent yourself.  As a scientist put your philosophical weight on the scientific method every day.  In the second place, because you, as a human being, have no where else to put it! Unless, of course, you put it in God. 

I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I think it gives credit for two things, when only one is actually true.

I’m a decoherent-histories kind of guy:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1106.0767

https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9407040

Like the rest of the classical variables in the universe, every time I pass from one moment to the next, I am in some state, or I undergo some particular transformation event.  In doing so, I forever cut off infinitely many whole trees of possible futures, and open up some particular tree of possible futures.  In a very empiricist sense, I would say this is the lowest sense of “making a choice”, though the term admits many higher-level senses that this lowest sense does not try to capture.

The trajectory of my existence is thus dense with choices in this low-level, kinematic sense.  I don’t consider that observation itself to entail the existence of a philosophy (or should I say a Philosophy).  It is just a consequence of the rules of existing.  I would have a philosophy if I had _reasons_ to make particular choices that were known to be consistent in some interesting way, and if my choices were really intentionally guided by those reasons.  

Two things I know I do have are inertia (lowest level) and habit (a bit more dynamical; kind of like the counterpart to inertia for events as opposed to just states, raising Zeno’s mathematics of positions to Hamilton’s mathematics of positions and momenta).  To the extent that either my state that inertially persists, or my habits that show pattern, are outcomes of my past, it could be said that they are particular responses to the problem of induction over futures.  There is, we believe, no unique solution to the problem of induction, but by existing I am forced instant by instant to act as if I were choosing some such solution.  In some very low-level empiricist kind of way, one could call that a “folk philosophy”.  However, I suspect that philosophers would like to think they try for something a little higher in the Chomsky hierarchy of computational power.

Yes, of course I have broad patterns of behavior that mimic some aspects of scientific work, both in my work and in the rest of life.  So maybe my folk philosophy is a little richer than accidental.  But compared to the density of events of choosing, I think it is still pretty thin (my habit is to say “measure zero” relative to the events of decoherence blink by blink), but I would want to be cautious before calling it a deeply-considered philosophy.

Maybe, as in economics there are “positive” and “normative” theories — where the “positive” aim for a description of pattern and function in whatever has been happening, while “normative” is willing to give some confidence to counterfactuals and make claims about what “should” happen — there are positive and normative senses of philosophical weight in the pattern of one’s choices (?).  If you like that distinction, then yes, I will grant that I have a positive philosophy of some small subset of my choices, and a slightly-reasoned normative one (about the depth that can be communicated in email missives), but much less than a fully normative Philosophy.

All best for better luck in 2019 than we seem to have had in ending 2018.

Eric

Now, No-one will ever deny me the pleasures of talking to God, or imagining heaven, on the slim premise that I happen to be a lifelong atheist.  If I want to get up each morning and thank God for the day, I will do so because it makes me feel good, and makes me a better person.  And I might even abduce from that fact, that God exists.  But I would do so wrongly because I have much better explanations for that experience.  (It’s a plain psychological fact that expressing gratitude makes people feel good; expressing bitterness makes them feel lousy.  Darwinian Group selection explanation to follow, if needed.)  

As I listen to people talk at Friam, I sense that most of us have a hankering after God.  It expresses itself in many ways, some subtle.  One of the subtle ways is in the idea of a truth beyond experience.  But whenever people start to import that thought back into their science, they begin to talk non-sense.  Literally:  NON  SENSE, right?  Outside the senses and their elaborations in thought.  

Once long ago, I had the daughter of a Famous Person as a freshman in a Writing-Across-The-Curriculum class.  The students got to write on any subject they chose, and my role was as facilitator, not as an expert.  She announced in class one day that she wanted to write about her voices.  Now, even though I have always been an experimental psychologist, I did go to school with a lot of clinicians, and I did think I knew that Hearing Voices Is A Bad Sign.   So, first I tried to gently steer her away from that topic, and when she resisted firmly, I went to see one of the clinicians in my department, a man named Mort, to get advice on what to do.  He looked at me in that way shrinks look at a client on the first visit and asked, “And what do you WANT to do, Nicholas.”  

After resisting the impulse to crush his head with the snow globe on his desk, I only said, “Mort.  Cut that crap out!  You know as well as I do that hearing voices is a sign of serious mental illness and that I have an obligation to do something, and certainly not to encourage it.”

He replied: “No.  I don’t know that!  I do know that people whose voices tell them to do bad things often end up in trouble.  We don’t hear from the people whose voices tell them to do good things.  Do her voices tell her to do bad things. “

“No.  On the contrary!  They say things like, “Atta Girl!  Keep up the good work!”  Or, “Take it easy!  You have time.”

“Sounds like good advice to me.  Leave the poor girl alone.”  

So I left her alone.  In the end she wrote a paper about something else, got a good grade, and went on to graduate in 4 years. 

So.  In conclusion, Brethren and Sisteren: Cultivate your illusions, but no matter how functional they may prove to be, never, never confuse them with reality. 

Thus Spake Father Thompson

Happy New Year

 

N

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2018 9:33 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

"The role of “reality” in those constructions is often an uninterpreted shorthand for the fact that I am willing to act without too much doubt in certain ways, using my attention and worry on other things than second-guessing that action.  I don’t even try to lift that placeholder term to something that could carry philosophical weight."

Wait! Slow down! Why not see what happens when we ask that to carry philosophical weight?

 

What would get you to change your habits? Presumably a failure of the "act without too much doubt" plan to work out as desired would eventually get you to change how you act,  right?

 

What if you saw others acting without doubt in the same way,  and they got screwed as a result? Would that cause some doubt?

 

If we follow this train if thought long enough,  do we eventually end up realizing it isn't just about what works for me-in-this-moment. Rather we end up with something like: "Real" is how we awkwardly try to refer to the those things we think will hold up over the long run of lots off people acting without doubting it. 

 

Now THAT sounds like it might be able carry some weight AND be true to your intuition.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 7:43 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email] wrote:

Hi, Everybody, 

 

I have been writing this email for most of the last week.

 

While I am loath to argue with Frank on matters of logic and mathematics, I think his solution violates Peirce’s project by making our understanding of truth dependent on our understanding of Real, rather than, as Peirce would have it, the other way around.   So Frank is surely correct on his own terms, but not Peircean, if you see what I mean.  

 

So, let me take a step back.  Here is Thompson’s History of Modern Philosophy.  Once upon a time there was God.  All-seeing, all-knowing God.  What God  saw was Real and the Real was real whether or not anything, anybody, other than God could see it.  Then God died.  “Sad”, as Trump would say.  But still there was Descartes’s (pronounced “day cart sez”) brain in a vat.  Everything that we experience could be like phantom limb experiences.  Phantom legs, phantom hands, phantom, sounds, phantom sights, phantom me, phantom you, phantom thoughts, phantom WORLD.  So, here we sit, you and I, two brains in two vats, side by side.  The devil tickles your nerves and you see something you call, “horse”.  So your motor nerves are excited and you stimulate my auditory nerves with “horse”.   Now unless the Devil happens to simulate my nerves with exactly the same pattern as he stimulated yours before you said “horse”, there is no possible way we could know if we are talking about the same thing.  And remember, that’s the thing about The Devil (as we have recently learned), he has no commitment to the Truth.  (Notice how in this story God dies, yet the devil lives on; interesting; very sad) .  

 

Ok.  What to do?  Well, we could admit that we are screwed and define truth as that which is beyond all experience.  But this is nonsense, right?  If truth is beyond all experience, how do we come to be talking about it.  If Truth is that which we cannot talk about, then and any statement that we make about it is necessarily untrue.  What to do?  Well, we could sneak a little God back in.  We could talk about true intuitions that come from the spirit world, etc.  Many people talk like that.  Sometimes,  I think of some of you talk like that, tho I won’t name names.  For me, that’s not a starter.  

 

So, Truth must be defined in terms of experience.  Some kinds of experiences are more enduring than others.  They are the sorts of experiences that repeat themselves day after day.  They are the sorts of experiences that when you tell them to other person, that person says, “Oh yeah, that happened to me.”  More formally, they are the sort of experiences that survive experiments, both formal experiments and the little day to day experiments we try on the world around us.  Does the computer run on battery even when it is plugged in? Run the battery down to zero, plug it in, and the computer won’t start right away. Hmmm. Seems like.  Does my love still love me?  Oh, I will come home from a business trip a day early and see if her eyes light up.  Or perhaps if a foreign car is parked in the driveway and the lights are out.  Love, power supplies, it’s all the same.  It’s T.O.T.E, all the way down.  The most enduring experiences are those generated by communities of inquiry, working at the same questions through rigorous experimentation and debate and concerning themselves with abstract realities, force, momentum, lithium, etc.  After all, look at how the 19^th Century produced the periodic table!  Let’s define Truth as the asymptote of that convergence.  Truth is where the community of inquiry will converge in the very long run.  And real objects can be something like, anything that is taken for granted by a true proposition.   The existence of unicorns is definitely NOT taken for granted by the proposition, “No Unicorn Exists”, so that let’s us out of that box.  

 

Now nothing about this implies that there is a truth concerning all matters.  Peirce’s notion of truth is ultimately statistical and based on the central limit theorem.  He cheerfully admits that the world we live in is essentially random.  However, if some things are not random, if there is systematic pattern in our experience with regard to some things (such as, say, saber-toothed tigers) then it would be extraordinarily useful to know it, and the cognitive systems around today would tend to be those that had not been eaten by tigers, right?  

 

Ach! You protest!  What kind of a lilly-livered reality is this?! We can never know for sure whether some particular string of experiences is real or not, whether it will endure to the endtimes, or whatever!  Yup.  That’s right.  The day you decide the stock is a good bet is the day it may fall 20 percent.  That’s pragmatism for you.  We start in the middle, there are no firm foundations, and everything is fallible.  But what pragmatism tells you is what Darwinian experience tells you:  you bet your life everyday, and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.  Those that bet right tend to be the ones who are here to tell the story.  And science is privileged because, on the whole, over the long run, it has proved itself to be the best at making those sorts of bets. 

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, December 24, 2018 6:29 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

Wouldn't it make more sense to say real things are subjects of true propositions of the form "x is real".

 

I suspect that either begs the question or becomes a tautology.  Compare: Wouldn't it make more sense to say green things are subjects of true propositions of the form "x is green".

 

Though it seems convoluted,  I think "Unicorns are not real" is best understood as the assertion "Beliefs about unicorns are not true", which unpacks to something like: "Beliefs about the category 'unicorns' will not converge," which itself means,  "if a community was to investigate claims about unicorns,  they would not evidence support of those claims over the long haul." 

 

For that to work,  we can't allow "nonexist" to be "a property." That is,  we have to distinguish ideas about unicorns from ideas about not-unicorns. 

 

 

 

On Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 11:06 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email] wrote:

Thanks, Frank.  I thought at first that was a cheat, but it seems to work, actually.  It makes The Real dependent on The True, which is how Peirce thinks it should be.  

 

I guess that’s why they paid you the big bucis. 

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2018 5:10 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

Wouldn't it make more sense to say real things are subjects of true propositions of the form "x is real".

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 4:57 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email] wrote:

Thanks, Eric, 

 

I think you have everything right here, and it is very well laid out.  Thank you. 

 

One point that nobody seems to quite want to help me get a grip on is the grammar of the two terms.  True seems to apply only to propositions, while real only to nouns.  Now the way we get around that is by saying that the real things are the objects of true proposition.  But that leads to what I call the unicorn problem.  “Unicorns don’t exist” is a true proposition that does not, however, make “unicorns” real.  

 

This seems like the kind of problem a sophomore might go crazy ab0ut in an introductory philosophy course, so I am a bit embarrassed to be raising it.  For my philosophical mentors, it is beneath their contempt.  

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2018 4:02 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

I think Peirce is getting at something a bit different. When Peirce is on good behavior, he is laying out The World According to The Scientist. When a Scientist says that some claim is "true" she means that future studies will continue to support the claim. Perhaps even a bit more than that, as she means all investigations that could be made into the claim would support the claim, whether they happen or not. Peirce also tells us that "real" is our funny way of talking about the object of a true belief. If "I believe X" is a statement about a true belief, then future investigations will not reveal anything contradicting X, and... as a simple matter of definition... X is real. 

 

When Peirce is first getting started, he seems to think that you could work that logic through with just about any claim (and either find confirmation or not). Did my aunt Myrtle screw up the salad dressing recipe back on June 1st, 1972? Maybe we could descend upon that question using the scientific method and figure it out! Why rule out that future generations could find a method to perform the necessary studies?

 

However, at some later point, I think Peirce really starts to get deeper into his notion of the communal activity of science, as embodied by his beloved early chemists. Did the honorable Mr. Durston really succeed in isolating oxygen that one winter day, by exposing water to electricity under such and such circumstances? Isn't that the thing Scientists argue over? Well, it might be the type of thing people argue over, but is has little to do with the doing of science. Individual events are simply not the type of thing that scientists actually converge to agreement about using the scientific method; the type of thing they converge upon is an agreement over whether or not the described procedures contain some crucial aspect that would be necessary to claim the described result. "Water" as an abstraction of sorts, under certain abstract circumstances, with an abstracted amount of electricity applied, will produce some (abstract) result. And by "abstract" I mean "not particular".  Scientists aren't arguing over whether some exact flow of electrons, applied in this exact way, will turn this exact bit of water into some exact bit of gas. They want to know if a flow of electrons with some properties, applied in a principled fashion, will turn water-in-general into some predictable amount of gas-with-particular-properties. We can tell this when things go wrong: Were it found that some bit of water worked in a unique seeming way, the scientists would descend upon it with experimental methods until they found something about the water that allowed them to make an abstract claim regarding water of such-and-such type.   

 

I suspect most on this list would agree, at least roughly, with what is written above. 

 

Now, however, we must work our way backwards: 

*  The types of beliefs about which a community of Scientists coverage upon are abstractions, 

*  the scientists converge upon those beliefs because the evidence bears them out, 

*  that the evidence bears out an idea is what we mean when we claim the object of an idea is real. 

*  Thus, at least for The Scientist, the only things that are "real" are abstractions. 

 

In the very, very long run of intellectual activity, the ideas that are stable are ideas about abstractions, which means that the object of those ideas, the abstractions themselves, must be "real." 

 

(I feel like that was starting to get repetitive. I'll stop.) 

 

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician

U.S. Marine Corps

 

 

On Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 3:38 PM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick,

 

Alas, I was not present to hear the inchoate discussion. Please allow me to do some deconstruction and speculation on what you might be asking about.

 

Imagine a vertical line and assume, metaphorically, that this is a 'membrane' consisting of tiny devices that emit signals (electrical impulses) into that which we presume to be 'inside that membrane'. I am trying to abstract the common sense notion of an individual's 5 senses generating signals that go to the brain — without making too many assumptions about the signal generators and or the recipient of same.

 

We tend to assume that the signal generators are not just randomly sending off signals. Instead we assume that somewhere on the left side of the line is a source of stimuli, each of which triggers a discrete signal generator which we rename as a sensor.

 

First question: do you assume / assert / argue that the "source" of each stimulus (e.g. the Sun) and the means of conveying the stimulus (e.g. a Photon) are "Real?"

 

Signals are generated at the membrane and sent off somewhere towards the right. 

 

Second question: do you assume a receiver of those signals, e.g. a 'brain-body', and do you assume / argue / assert that the receiving entity is "Real."

 

If a signal is received by a brain-body and it reacts, e.g. a muscle contraction; there are least two possible assumptions you can make:

 

   -  some sort of 'hard wiring' exists that routes the signal to a set of muscle cells which contract; and nothing has happened except the completion of a circuit. Or,

   -  the signal is "interpreted" in some fashion and the response to it is at least quasi-voluntary. (Yogis and fakirs have demonstrated that very little of what most of us would assume to be involuntary reactions, are, in fact, beyond conscious control.)

 

Third question: are both the 'interpretation' and the 'response' Real things?

 

Depending on your answers, we might have a model of interacting "Real" things: Source, Stimulus, Membrane, Signal, Interpretation, and Response. Or, you might still wish to assert that all of these are "abstractions," but if so, I really do not understand at all what you would mean by the term.

 

But, you are an amenable chap and might assent to considering these things "Real" in some sense, so we can proceed.

 

The next step would be to question the existence of some entity receiving the signals, effecting the interpretation, and instigating the response. Let's call it a Mind or Consciousness. [Please keep the frustrated screaming to a minimum.]

 

It seems to me that this step is necessary, as it is only "inside" the mind that we encounter abstractions. The abstractions might be unvoiced behaviors — interpretations of an aggregate of stimuli as a "pattern" with a reflexive response, both of which were non-consciously learned, e.g. 'flight or fight'.  Or, they might be basic naming; simple assertions using the verb to-be; or complicated and convoluted constructs resulting from judicious, or egregious, application of induction, deduction, and abduction.

 

Fourth question: are these in-the-mind abstractions "Real?"

 

At the core, your question seems to be an ontological / metaphysical one. Are there two kinds of Thing: Real and Abstract? If so what criteria is used to define membership in the two sets? It seems like your anti-dualism is leading you to assert that there are not two sets, but one and that membership in that set is defined by some criteria/characteristic of 'abstract-ness'.

 

Please correct my failings at discerning the true nature of your question.

 

dave west

 

 

On Thu, Dec 20, 2018, at 10:00 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Hi, Everybody,

 

Yes.  St. Johns Coffee Shop WILL be open this Friday.  And then, not again until the 3^rd of January.  I am hoping Frank will have some ideas for what we do on the Friday between the two holidays. 

 

Attached please find the copy of an article you helped me write.  Thanks to all of you who listened patiently and probed insistently as I worked though the issues of this piece.

 

I need help with another article I am working with.  Last week I found myself making, and defending against your uproarious laughter, the proposition that all real things are abstract.  Some of you were prepared to declare the opposite, No real things are abstract.  However, it was late in the morning and the argument never developed. 

 

I would argue the point in the following way:  Let us say that we go along with your objections and agree that “you can never step in the same river twice.”  This is to say, that what we call “The River” changes every time we step in it.  Wouldn’t it follow that any conversation we might have about The River is precluded?  We could not argue, for instance, about whether the river is so deep that we cannot cross o’er because there is no abstract fact, “The River” that connects my crossing with yours. 

 

Let’s say, then, that you agree with me that implicit in our discussions of the river is the abstract conception of The River.  But, you object, that we assume it, does not make it true.  Fair enough.  But why then, do we engage in the measurement of anything? 

 

I realize this is not everybody’s cup of tea for a conversation, but I wanted to put it on the table.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

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[Nick Thompson]

Eric,

 

I do hope you relent on your new year’s resolution to avoid FRIAM.  Yours is one of the voices that makes it thrive. 

 

I do regret the … um .. strength of my last post, it’s … um …er….arrogance?  I did rather want to resist you adding your considerable authority to any notion that there is any truth outside enduring patterns of human experience.  But I should do that with the strength of my logic, not the force of my opprobrium. 

 

Do stay in touch as much as you can, where ever you are. 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2019 3:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

Nick, hi,

 

I am about to drop permanently off this thread, because the inanity (that could be a typo for insanity) of my year is about to begin, and all time will be lost.  But let me try to clarify one thing before leaving.  I mean this as an acknowledgment of the respect due to people who are willing to do work I am not doing.  (Larding below, only at one place.)

On Jan 1, 2019, at 5:46 AM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

 

Dear Erics, C. and S., 

 

I got lost for a moment, here, but now am caught up.  I hope. 

 

Eric Charles is correct.

 

Eric Smith’s first sentence is about as unvarnished statement of pragmatism as one can imagine.  

 

The role of “reality” in those constructions is often an uninterpreted shorthand for the fact that I am willing to act without too much doubt in certain ways, using my attention and worry on other things than second-guessing that action. 

 

But then there is again, that plaintive lament, that hapless dream of a warrantee for a permanent, unshakeable belief in a reality not only undoubted but forever beyond the reach of doubt:

 

.  I don’t even try to lift that placeholder term to something that could carry philosophical weight."

But this is nonsense!  In the first place, because you misrepresent yourself.  As a scientist put your philosophical weight on the scientific method every day.  In the second place, because you, as a human being, have no where else to put it! Unless, of course, you put it in God. 

I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I think it gives credit for two things, when only one is actually true.

 

I’m a decoherent-histories kind of guy:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1106.0767

https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9407040

Like the rest of the classical variables in the universe, every time I pass from one moment to the next, I am in some state, or I undergo some particular transformation event.  In doing so, I forever cut off infinitely many whole trees of possible futures, and open up some particular tree of possible futures.  In a very empiricist sense, I would say this is the lowest sense of “making a choice”, though the term admits many higher-level senses that this lowest sense does not try to capture.

 

The trajectory of my existence is thus dense with choices in this low-level, kinematic sense.  I don’t consider that observation itself to entail the existence of a philosophy (or should I say a Philosophy).  It is just a consequence of the rules of existing.  I would have a philosophy if I had _reasons_ to make particular choices that were known to be consistent in some interesting way, and if my choices were really intentionally guided by those reasons.  

 

Two things I know I do have are inertia (lowest level) and habit (a bit more dynamical; kind of like the counterpart to inertia for events as opposed to just states, raising Zeno’s mathematics of positions to Hamilton’s mathematics of positions and momenta).  To the extent that either my state that inertially persists, or my habits that show pattern, are outcomes of my past, it could be said that they are particular responses to the problem of induction over futures.  There is, we believe, no unique solution to the problem of induction, but by existing I am forced instant by instant to act as if I were choosing some such solution.  In some very low-level empiricist kind of way, one could call that a “folk philosophy”.  However, I suspect that philosophers would like to think they try for something a little higher in the Chomsky hierarchy of computational power.

 

Yes, of course I have broad patterns of behavior that mimic some aspects of scientific work, both in my work and in the rest of life.  So maybe my folk philosophy is a little richer than accidental.  But compared to the density of events of choosing, I think it is still pretty thin (my habit is to say “measure zero” relative to the events of decoherence blink by blink), but I would want to be cautious before calling it a deeply-considered philosophy.

 

Maybe, as in economics there are “positive” and “normative” theories — where the “positive” aim for a description of pattern and function in whatever has been happening, while “normative” is willing to give some confidence to counterfactuals and make claims about what “should” happen — there are positive and normative senses of philosophical weight in the pattern of one’s choices (?).  If you like that distinction, then yes, I will grant that I have a positive philosophy of some small subset of my choices, and a slightly-reasoned normative one (about the depth that can be communicated in email missives), but much less than a fully normative Philosophy.

 

All best for better luck in 2019 than we seem to have had in ending 2018.

 

Eric

 

 

 

 

Now, No-one will ever deny me the pleasures of talking to God, or imagining heaven, on the slim premise that I happen to be a lifelong atheist.  If I want to get up each morning and thank God for the day, I will do so because it makes me feel good, and makes me a better person.  And I might even abduce from that fact, that God exists.  But I would do so wrongly because I have much better explanations for that experience.  (It’s a plain psychological fact that expressing gratitude makes people feel good; expressing bitterness makes them feel lousy.  Darwinian Group selection explanation to follow, if needed.)  

As I listen to people talk at Friam, I sense that most of us have a hankering after God.  It expresses itself in many ways, some subtle.  One of the subtle ways is in the idea of a truth beyond experience.  But whenever people start to import that thought back into their science, they begin to talk non-sense.  Literally:  NON  SENSE, right?  Outside the senses and their elaborations in thought.  

Once long ago, I had the daughter of a Famous Person as a freshman in a Writing-Across-The-Curriculum class.  The students got to write on any subject they chose, and my role was as facilitator, not as an expert.  She announced in class one day that she wanted to write about her voices.  Now, even though I have always been an experimental psychologist, I did go to school with a lot of clinicians, and I did think I knew that Hearing Voices Is A Bad Sign.   So, first I tried to gently steer her away from that topic, and when she resisted firmly, I went to see one of the clinicians in my department, a man named Mort, to get advice on what to do.  He looked at me in that way shrinks look at a client on the first visit and asked, “And what do you WANT to do, Nicholas.”  

After resisting the impulse to crush his head with the snow globe on his desk, I only said, “Mort.  Cut that crap out!  You know as well as I do that hearing voices is a sign of serious mental illness and that I have an obligation to do something, and certainly not to encourage it.”

He replied: “No.  I don’t know that!  I do know that people whose voices tell them to do bad things often end up in trouble.  We don’t hear from the people whose voices tell them to do good things.  Do her voices tell her to do bad things. “

“No.  On the contrary!  They say things like, “Atta Girl!  Keep up the good work!”  Or, “Take it easy!  You have time.”

“Sounds like good advice to me.  Leave the poor girl alone.”  

So I left her alone.  In the end she wrote a paper about something else, got a good grade, and went on to graduate in 4 years. 

So.  In conclusion, Brethren and Sisteren: Cultivate your illusions, but no matter how functional they may prove to be, never, never confuse them with reality. 

Thus Spake Father Thompson

Happy New Year

 

N

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2018 9:33 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

"The role of “reality” in those constructions is often an uninterpreted shorthand for the fact that I am willing to act without too much doubt in certain ways, using my attention and worry on other things than second-guessing that action.  I don’t even try to lift that placeholder term to something that could carry philosophical weight."

Wait! Slow down! Why not see what happens when we ask that to carry philosophical weight?

 

What would get you to change your habits? Presumably a failure of the "act without too much doubt" plan to work out as desired would eventually get you to change how you act,  right?

 

What if you saw others acting without doubt in the same way,  and they got screwed as a result? Would that cause some doubt?

 

If we follow this train if thought long enough,  do we eventually end up realizing it isn't just about what works for me-in-this-moment. Rather we end up with something like: "Real" is how we awkwardly try to refer to the those things we think will hold up over the long run of lots off people acting without doubting it. 

 

Now THAT sounds like it might be able carry some weight AND be true to your intuition.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 7:43 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email] wrote:

Hi, Everybody, 

 

I have been writing this email for most of the last week.

 

While I am loath to argue with Frank on matters of logic and mathematics, I think his solution violates Peirce’s project by making our understanding of truth dependent on our understanding of Real, rather than, as Peirce would have it, the other way around.   So Frank is surely correct on his own terms, but not Peircean, if you see what I mean.  

 

So, let me take a step back.  Here is Thompson’s History of Modern Philosophy.  Once upon a time there was God.  All-seeing, all-knowing God.  What God  saw was Real and the Real was real whether or not anything, anybody, other than God could see it.  Then God died.  “Sad”, as Trump would say.  But still there was Descartes’s (pronounced “day cart sez”) brain in a vat.  Everything that we experience could be like phantom limb experiences.  Phantom legs, phantom hands, phantom, sounds, phantom sights, phantom me, phantom you, phantom thoughts, phantom WORLD.  So, here we sit, you and I, two brains in two vats, side by side.  The devil tickles your nerves and you see something you call, “horse”.  So your motor nerves are excited and you stimulate my auditory nerves with “horse”.   Now unless the Devil happens to simulate my nerves with exactly the same pattern as he stimulated yours before you said “horse”, there is no possible way we could know if we are talking about the same thing.  And remember, that’s the thing about The Devil (as we have recently learned), he has no commitment to the Truth.  (Notice how in this story God dies, yet the devil lives on; interesting; very sad) .  

 

Ok.  What to do?  Well, we could admit that we are screwed and define truth as that which is beyond all experience.  But this is nonsense, right?  If truth is beyond all experience, how do we come to be talking about it.  If Truth is that which we cannot talk about, then and any statement that we make about it is necessarily untrue.  What to do?  Well, we could sneak a little God back in.  We could talk about true intuitions that come from the spirit world, etc.  Many people talk like that.  Sometimes,  I think of some of you talk like that, tho I won’t name names.  For me, that’s not a starter.  

 

So, Truth must be defined in terms of experience.  Some kinds of experiences are more enduring than others.  They are the sorts of experiences that repeat themselves day after day.  They are the sorts of experiences that when you tell them to other person, that person says, “Oh yeah, that happened to me.”  More formally, they are the sort of experiences that survive experiments, both formal experiments and the little day to day experiments we try on the world around us.  Does the computer run on battery even when it is plugged in? Run the battery down to zero, plug it in, and the computer won’t start right away. Hmmm. Seems like.  Does my love still love me?  Oh, I will come home from a business trip a day early and see if her eyes light up.  Or perhaps if a foreign car is parked in the driveway and the lights are out.  Love, power supplies, it’s all the same.  It’s T.O.T.E, all the way down.  The most enduring experiences are those generated by communities of inquiry, working at the same questions through rigorous experimentation and debate and concerning themselves with abstract realities, force, momentum, lithium, etc.  After all, look at how the 19^th Century produced the periodic table!  Let’s define Truth as the asymptote of that convergence.  Truth is where the community of inquiry will converge in the very long run.  And real objects can be something like, anything that is taken for granted by a true proposition.   The existence of unicorns is definitely NOT taken for granted by the proposition, “No Unicorn Exists”, so that let’s us out of that box.  

 

Now nothing about this implies that there is a truth concerning all matters.  Peirce’s notion of truth is ultimately statistical and based on the central limit theorem.  He cheerfully admits that the world we live in is essentially random.  However, if some things are not random, if there is systematic pattern in our experience with regard to some things (such as, say, saber-toothed tigers) then it would be extraordinarily useful to know it, and the cognitive systems around today would tend to be those that had not been eaten by tigers, right?  

 

Ach! You protest!  What kind of a lilly-livered reality is this?! We can never know for sure whether some particular string of experiences is real or not, whether it will endure to the endtimes, or whatever!  Yup.  That’s right.  The day you decide the stock is a good bet is the day it may fall 20 percent.  That’s pragmatism for you.  We start in the middle, there are no firm foundations, and everything is fallible.  But what pragmatism tells you is what Darwinian experience tells you:  you bet your life everyday, and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.  Those that bet right tend to be the ones who are here to tell the story.  And science is privileged because, on the whole, over the long run, it has proved itself to be the best at making those sorts of bets. 

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, December 24, 2018 6:29 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

Wouldn't it make more sense to say real things are subjects of true propositions of the form "x is real".

 

I suspect that either begs the question or becomes a tautology.  Compare: Wouldn't it make more sense to say green things are subjects of true propositions of the form "x is green".

 

Though it seems convoluted,  I think "Unicorns are not real" is best understood as the assertion "Beliefs about unicorns are not true", which unpacks to something like: "Beliefs about the category 'unicorns' will not converge," which itself means,  "if a community was to investigate claims about unicorns,  they would not evidence support of those claims over the long haul." 

 

For that to work,  we can't allow "nonexist" to be "a property." That is,  we have to distinguish ideas about unicorns from ideas about not-unicorns. 

 

 

 

On Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 11:06 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email] wrote:

Thanks, Frank.  I thought at first that was a cheat, but it seems to work, actually.  It makes The Real dependent on The True, which is how Peirce thinks it should be.  

 

I guess that’s why they paid you the big bucis. 

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2018 5:10 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

Wouldn't it make more sense to say real things are subjects of true propositions of the form "x is real".

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 4:57 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email] wrote:

Thanks, Eric, 

 

I think you have everything right here, and it is very well laid out.  Thank you. 

 

One point that nobody seems to quite want to help me get a grip on is the grammar of the two terms.  True seems to apply only to propositions, while real only to nouns.  Now the way we get around that is by saying that the real things are the objects of true proposition.  But that leads to what I call the unicorn problem.  “Unicorns don’t exist” is a true proposition that does not, however, make “unicorns” real.  

 

This seems like the kind of problem a sophomore might go crazy ab0ut in an introductory philosophy course, so I am a bit embarrassed to be raising it.  For my philosophical mentors, it is beneath their contempt.  

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2018 4:02 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

I think Peirce is getting at something a bit different. When Peirce is on good behavior, he is laying out The World According to The Scientist. When a Scientist says that some claim is "true" she means that future studies will continue to support the claim. Perhaps even a bit more than that, as she means all investigations that could be made into the claim would support the claim, whether they happen or not. Peirce also tells us that "real" is our funny way of talking about the object of a true belief. If "I believe X" is a statement about a true belief, then future investigations will not reveal anything contradicting X, and... as a simple matter of definition... X is real. 

 

When Peirce is first getting started, he seems to think that you could work that logic through with just about any claim (and either find confirmation or not). Did my aunt Myrtle screw up the salad dressing recipe back on June 1st, 1972? Maybe we could descend upon that question using the scientific method and figure it out! Why rule out that future generations could find a method to perform the necessary studies?

 

However, at some later point, I think Peirce really starts to get deeper into his notion of the communal activity of science, as embodied by his beloved early chemists. Did the honorable Mr. Durston really succeed in isolating oxygen that one winter day, by exposing water to electricity under such and such circumstances? Isn't that the thing Scientists argue over? Well, it might be the type of thing people argue over, but is has little to do with the doing of science. Individual events are simply not the type of thing that scientists actually converge to agreement about using the scientific method; the type of thing they converge upon is an agreement over whether or not the described procedures contain some crucial aspect that would be necessary to claim the described result. "Water" as an abstraction of sorts, under certain abstract circumstances, with an abstracted amount of electricity applied, will produce some (abstract) result. And by "abstract" I mean "not particular".  Scientists aren't arguing over whether some exact flow of electrons, applied in this exact way, will turn this exact bit of water into some exact bit of gas. They want to know if a flow of electrons with some properties, applied in a principled fashion, will turn water-in-general into some predictable amount of gas-with-particular-properties. We can tell this when things go wrong: Were it found that some bit of water worked in a unique seeming way, the scientists would descend upon it with experimental methods until they found something about the water that allowed them to make an abstract claim regarding water of such-and-such type.   

 

I suspect most on this list would agree, at least roughly, with what is written above. 

 

Now, however, we must work our way backwards: 

*  The types of beliefs about which a community of Scientists coverage upon are abstractions, 

*  the scientists converge upon those beliefs because the evidence bears them out, 

*  that the evidence bears out an idea is what we mean when we claim the object of an idea is real. 

*  Thus, at least for The Scientist, the only things that are "real" are abstractions. 

 

In the very, very long run of intellectual activity, the ideas that are stable are ideas about abstractions, which means that the object of those ideas, the abstractions themselves, must be "real." 

 

(I feel like that was starting to get repetitive. I'll stop.) 

 

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician

U.S. Marine Corps

 

 

On Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 3:38 PM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick,

 

Alas, I was not present to hear the inchoate discussion. Please allow me to do some deconstruction and speculation on what you might be asking about.

 

Imagine a vertical line and assume, metaphorically, that this is a 'membrane' consisting of tiny devices that emit signals (electrical impulses) into that which we presume to be 'inside that membrane'. I am trying to abstract the common sense notion of an individual's 5 senses generating signals that go to the brain — without making too many assumptions about the signal generators and or the recipient of same.

 

We tend to assume that the signal generators are not just randomly sending off signals. Instead we assume that somewhere on the left side of the line is a source of stimuli, each of which triggers a discrete signal generator which we rename as a sensor.

 

First question: do you assume / assert / argue that the "source" of each stimulus (e.g. the Sun) and the means of conveying the stimulus (e.g. a Photon) are "Real?"

 

Signals are generated at the membrane and sent off somewhere towards the right. 

 

Second question: do you assume a receiver of those signals, e.g. a 'brain-body', and do you assume / argue / assert that the receiving entity is "Real."

 

If a signal is received by a brain-body and it reacts, e.g. a muscle contraction; there are least two possible assumptions you can make:

 

   -  some sort of 'hard wiring' exists that routes the signal to a set of muscle cells which contract; and nothing has happened except the completion of a circuit. Or,

   -  the signal is "interpreted" in some fashion and the response to it is at least quasi-voluntary. (Yogis and fakirs have demonstrated that very little of what most of us would assume to be involuntary reactions, are, in fact, beyond conscious control.)

 

Third question: are both the 'interpretation' and the 'response' Real things?

 

Depending on your answers, we might have a model of interacting "Real" things: Source, Stimulus, Membrane, Signal, Interpretation, and Response. Or, you might still wish to assert that all of these are "abstractions," but if so, I really do not understand at all what you would mean by the term.

 

But, you are an amenable chap and might assent to considering these things "Real" in some sense, so we can proceed.

 

The next step would be to question the existence of some entity receiving the signals, effecting the interpretation, and instigating the response. Let's call it a Mind or Consciousness. [Please keep the frustrated screaming to a minimum.]

 

It seems to me that this step is necessary, as it is only "inside" the mind that we encounter abstractions. The abstractions might be unvoiced behaviors — interpretations of an aggregate of stimuli as a "pattern" with a reflexive response, both of which were non-consciously learned, e.g. 'flight or fight'.  Or, they might be basic naming; simple assertions using the verb to-be; or complicated and convoluted constructs resulting from judicious, or egregious, application of induction, deduction, and abduction.

 

Fourth question: are these in-the-mind abstractions "Real?"

 

At the core, your question seems to be an ontological / metaphysical one. Are there two kinds of Thing: Real and Abstract? If so what criteria is used to define membership in the two sets? It seems like your anti-dualism is leading you to assert that there are not two sets, but one and that membership in that set is defined by some criteria/characteristic of 'abstract-ness'.

 

Please correct my failings at discerning the true nature of your question.

 

dave west

 

 

On Thu, Dec 20, 2018, at 10:00 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Hi, Everybody,

 

Yes.  St. Johns Coffee Shop WILL be open this Friday.  And then, not again until the 3^rd of January.  I am hoping Frank will have some ideas for what we do on the Friday between the two holidays. 

 

Attached please find the copy of an article you helped me write.  Thanks to all of you who listened patiently and probed insistently as I worked though the issues of this piece.

 

I need help with another article I am working with.  Last week I found myself making, and defending against your uproarious laughter, the proposition that all real things are abstract.  Some of you were prepared to declare the opposite, No real things are abstract.  However, it was late in the morning and the argument never developed. 

 

I would argue the point in the following way:  Let us say that we go along with your objections and agree that “you can never step in the same river twice.”  This is to say, that what we call “The River” changes every time we step in it.  Wouldn’t it follow that any conversation we might have about The River is precluded?  We could not argue, for instance, about whether the river is so deep that we cannot cross o’er because there is no abstract fact, “The River” that connects my crossing with yours. 

 

Let’s say, then, that you agree with me that implicit in our discussions of the river is the abstract conception of The River.  But, you object, that we assume it, does not make it true.  Fair enough.  But why then, do we engage in the measurement of anything? 

 

I realize this is not everybody’s cup of tea for a conversation, but I wanted to put it on the table.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

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[Nick Thompson]

Whew, Eric, that’s quite a hypothetical!!!!!  Will poor Glen every be allowed to go to a party again?

 

But you are exactly right that that is the sense in which I wanted to use the term.

 

Nick  

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2019 3:05 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

 

Glen said: " I would claim motives are a higher order behavior, but NOT (solely) at a higher level of organization.  I.e. motives consist of BOTH low level behaviors like eyeball saccades AND high level behaviors like how one feels about another person." And then a bit later Glen complained (rightly) that no one had followed up on his examples. I will attempt to fill that gap!

 

I suspect the first issue is here is what we call "higher level." Sometimes, when people reference "higher level behavior", they are envisioning something like a "ladder of life" with simpler beings lower down and more complex beings higher up. In that context, something like a saccade is low on the scale, because many "lower beings" do it, and throwing a baseball might be higher on the scale, because only a few non-human species are capable of such a thing. Based on how the above quote is phrased,  I believe that is what Glen very-understandably thinks Nick is be talking about.  However, Nick is invoking something else entirely, something like "levels of analysis" talk, in which meaningful "higher" things exist in the relations between lower-level things.

 

The most common context in which people are exposed to this is in biology class, where we are told that at some level there are cells, and that many cells of similar type make tissue, tissue combines into organs, organs into organ systems, and systems into organisms. In some obvious sense, cells "make up" organs, but also one would not really come to understand organs by virtue of individually examining cells. There is something "higher-level" going on, something about the organization of the cells that we consider important, and worth talking about and studying in its own right, which is why organ-talk and organ-level science are things. 

 

When Nick says that " Motives ARE behavior.  Just at a higher level of organization.", he means "higher level" in that sense. We see that someone is motivated towards a certain goal when we witness them varying their behavior across circumstances in order to achieve that goal. If we want to measure how motivated someone is, we change the circumstances so that they are no longer directed at (what we assume to be) their goal, and then measure the strength of their effort to "return to course." That line of thought can be elaborated extensively, with other examples brought in from both scientific efforts and mundane life, and what you end up with is the conclusion that: Motives are an identifiable type of pattern that can exist between behavior and circumstances, specifically a pattern in which behavior changes such that the acts in question continue to be directed towards producing a particular outcome.

 

Let us say that saccades (Glen's example) are relatively random (within a certain range of eye rotation), but that we notice Glen's saccades occur slightly more often towards the location of an attractive woman located 5 degrees to the right of and 5 degrees up from the person he is talking to. From this, we may suspect Glen is motivated to look at the woman, but we must admit is quite possible that his eyes always saccade in that fashion, as we have never measured Glen's saccades before. Or maybe the bias is unusual, but is explained by an unrelated factor, such a slightly lighter bulb illuminating that part of the background. All fine and good, a hypothesis, but no way to test it. However, suppose that the woman starts moves around the room, and we notice that Glen's saccades, while still containing a fair amount of randomness, consistently bias towards the direction of the woman, wherever she happens to be. And let us also assume that Glen's position shifts in a wide variety of ways throughout the conversation, with the only notable consistency being that they position his head such that it reduces the size of the saccades necessary to bring the woman closer to the periphery of his vision. We might, from that, conclude/abduct/declare/assert that Glen "is motivated" to look at the woman. Let's say that Glen likes red heads in low cut dresses, and when this particular red-head--in-a-low-cut-dress leaves the room, the described pattern falls apart for a few minutes, but then re-appears, directed towards an auburn-haired woman with a slightly-less-but-still-distinctly-low-cut dress. We have become firmer in our conclusion/abduction about Glen's motives.

 

(Note that whether or not saccades work that way isn't the issue, the issue is that if they DID work that way, we would likely agree on the conclusion made.)

 

Note that as far as the scientific assessment of motivation is concerned "asking Glen" need never comes into it! What Glen self-reports his motives to be isn't relevant. Glen's self-report can understood, at best, as an effort to describe the higher-order patterning of his own behavior in exactly same way we have been describing it, i.e., in verbally "illuminating" what the variations in his behavior are directed at. But that is at best. Depending on who he is around, Glen almost certainly has an even-higher-order patterning of behavior designed to misrepresent his actual motivation in the course of a conversation, "No, of course not honey! Who is this asshole anyway? I've been shifting around because my hip has been acting up, that's all." And Glen would likely engage that higher system whether or not he had any awareness that doing so was deceptive, because our social-interaction systems are very strongly entrenched.

 

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician

U.S. Marine Corps

 

 

On Thu, Jan 3, 2019 at 1:59 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Heh, there you go again, rejecting the heterarchy! >8^D

I would claim motives are a higher order behavior, but NOT (solely) at a higher level of organization.  I.e. motives consist of BOTH low level behaviors like eyeball saccades AND high level behaviors like how one feels about another person.

On 1/3/19 10:55 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Motives ARE behavior.  Just at a higher level of organization. 


--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[gepr]

Unfortunately, that is the sense in which I thought you were using the term. Have I been strawmanned? 8^)

The packaging of a scalar vs the packaging of a matrix are "levels of analysis", if there ever was such a thing. 8^) To use Eric(C)'s words the organization of a set of numbers into a matrix isn't in the scalars of which it's composed.

My example was that higher-organized things like feeling hungry mix directly with lower-organized things like eyeball jittering. The organization of the low level stuff (e.g. tissues) isn't hygenically separated from the organization of the chemicals into a cell. I.e. tissue isn't strictly made up of cells, and cells aren't strictly made up of complex molecules, etc. Tissue is a cross-level operator. Tissue is made of molecules as well as cells (as well as other mixed-level things like lumens).

Hence, it's a fiction (oversimplification) to say that tissue is an organization of cells. Your hierarchy is fictitious (though perhaps useful for an entry into some subject matter).

On January 5, 2019 2:49:16 PM PST, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
>
>But you are exactly right that that is the sense in which I wanted to
>use the term.
>
>
>
>
>
>From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric
>Charles
>Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2019 3:05 PM
>To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
><[hidden email]>
>Subject: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction
>
>
>
>Glen said: " I would claim motives are a higher order behavior, but NOT
>(solely) at a higher level of organization.  I.e. motives consist of
>BOTH low level behaviors like eyeball saccades AND high level behaviors
>like how one feels about another person." And then a bit later Glen
>complained (rightly) that no one had followed up on his examples. I
>will attempt to fill that gap!
>
>
>
>I suspect the first issue is here is what we call "higher level."
>Sometimes, when people reference "higher level behavior", they are
>envisioning something like a "ladder of life" with simpler beings lower
>down and more complex beings higher up. In that context, something like
>a saccade is low on the scale, because many "lower beings" do it, and
>throwing a baseball might be higher on the scale, because only a few
>non-human species are capable of such a thing. Based on how the above
>quote is phrased,  I believe that is what Glen very-understandably
>thinks Nick is be talking about.  However, Nick is invoking something
>else entirely, something like "levels of analysis" talk, in which
>meaningful "higher" things exist in the relations between lower-level
>things.
>
>
>
>The most common context in which people are exposed to this is in
>biology class, where we are told that at some level there are cells,
>and that many cells of similar type make tissue, tissue combines into
>organs, organs into organ systems, and systems into organisms. In some
>obvious sense, cells "make up" organs, but also one would not really
>come to understand organs by virtue of individually examining cells.
>There is something "higher-level" going on, something about the
>organization of the cells that we consider important, and worth talking
>about and studying in its own right, which is why organ-talk and
>organ-level science are things.  
>
>
>
>When Nick says that " Motives ARE behavior.  Just at a higher level of
>organization.", he means "higher level" in that sense. We see that
>someone is motivated towards a certain goal when we witness them
>varying their behavior across circumstances in order to achieve that
>goal. If we want to measure how motivated someone is, we change the
>circumstances so that they are no longer directed at (what we assume to
>be) their goal, and then measure the strength of their effort to
>"return to course." That line of thought can be elaborated extensively,
>with other examples brought in from both scientific efforts and mundane
>life, and what you end up with is the conclusion that: Motives are an
>identifiable type of pattern that can exist between behavior and
>circumstances, specifically a pattern in which behavior changes such
>that the acts in question continue to be directed towards producing a
>particular outcome.

--
glen

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[Nick Thompson]

Glen,

Hum Bah Bug,

In the first instance, to a pragmatist, any statement that X is Thus, is
incomplete.  So that statement, X is hierarchically organized, is just an
incomplete statement.  So an argument about whether anything IS JUST
hierarchically organized is a silly argument.  What is not a silly argument
is that X is hierarchically organized for some purpose of from point of
view, P.  So all attributions are three0valued, sign, object, interpretant.
Is this relativism?  No, not in the ordinary sense.  Because the pragmatist
asserts that if you stand next to me, you will see what I see.  Or, to put
it less metaphorically, if you do the experiment you will get the result.
So, if you take Eric or I to be saying that anything is one hundred present
hierarchically organized all the time and in all respects, you take us
wrong.  

But I love you like a brother

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2019 4:47 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Unfortunately, that is the sense in which I thought you were using the term.
Have I been strawmanned? 8^)

The packaging of a scalar vs the packaging of a matrix are "levels of
analysis", if there ever was such a thing. 8^) To use Eric(C)'s words the
organization of a set of numbers into a matrix isn't in the scalars of which
it's composed.

My example was that higher-organized things like feeling hungry mix directly
with lower-organized things like eyeball jittering. The organization of the
low level stuff (e.g. tissues) isn't hygenically separated from the
organization of the chemicals into a cell. I.e. tissue isn't strictly made
up of cells, and cells aren't strictly made up of complex molecules, etc.
Tissue is a cross-level operator. Tissue is made of molecules as well as
cells (as well as other mixed-level things like lumens).

Hence, it's a fiction (oversimplification) to say that tissue is an
organization of cells. Your hierarchy is fictitious (though perhaps useful
for an entry into some subject matter).

On January 5, 2019 2:49:16 PM PST, Nick Thompson
<[hidden email]> wrote:

>
>
>But you are exactly right that that is the sense in which I wanted to
>use the term.
>
>
>
>
>
>From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric
>Charles
>Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2019 3:05 PM
>To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
><[hidden email]>
>Subject: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction
>
>
>
>Glen said: " I would claim motives are a higher order behavior, but NOT
>(solely) at a higher level of organization.  I.e. motives consist of
>BOTH low level behaviors like eyeball saccades AND high level behaviors
>like how one feels about another person." And then a bit later Glen
>complained (rightly) that no one had followed up on his examples. I
>will attempt to fill that gap!
>
>
>
>I suspect the first issue is here is what we call "higher level."
>Sometimes, when people reference "higher level behavior", they are
>envisioning something like a "ladder of life" with simpler beings lower
>down and more complex beings higher up. In that context, something like
>a saccade is low on the scale, because many "lower beings" do it, and
>throwing a baseball might be higher on the scale, because only a few
>non-human species are capable of such a thing. Based on how the above
>quote is phrased,  I believe that is what Glen very-understandably
>thinks Nick is be talking about.  However, Nick is invoking something
>else entirely, something like "levels of analysis" talk, in which
>meaningful "higher" things exist in the relations between lower-level
>things.
>
>
>
>The most common context in which people are exposed to this is in
>biology class, where we are told that at some level there are cells,
>and that many cells of similar type make tissue, tissue combines into
>organs, organs into organ systems, and systems into organisms. In some
>obvious sense, cells "make up" organs, but also one would not really
>come to understand organs by virtue of individually examining cells.
>There is something "higher-level" going on, something about the
>organization of the cells that we consider important, and worth talking
>about and studying in its own right, which is why organ-talk and
>organ-level science are things.
>
>
>
>When Nick says that " Motives ARE behavior.  Just at a higher level of
>organization.", he means "higher level" in that sense. We see that
>someone is motivated towards a certain goal when we witness them
>varying their behavior across circumstances in order to achieve that
>goal. If we want to measure how motivated someone is, we change the
>circumstances so that they are no longer directed at (what we assume to
>be) their goal, and then measure the strength of their effort to
>"return to course." That line of thought can be elaborated extensively,
>with other examples brought in from both scientific efforts and mundane
>life, and what you end up with is the conclusion that: Motives are an
>identifiable type of pattern that can exist between behavior and
>circumstances, specifically a pattern in which behavior changes such
>that the acts in question continue to be directed towards producing a
>particular outcome.

--
glen

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[Russell Standish-2]

On Fri, Jan 04, 2019 at 04:16:48PM +0000, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> Since I’ve waded in this far, I’ll finish the thought.
>
>  
>
> The underlying problem that Agile tries to address is that new/young people
> hired-on to a software development project just want to do a job.   They want
> to get promoted and they want to make more money.   They want to believe their
> careers will move forward.   A manager can possibly do that for them, and help
> them navigate a complex (software) ecosystem as they begin.  
>

Having worked for a number of teams using various shades of "agile",
for me agile means one thing only: getting working pieces of software
in front of the stakeholders (clients, users, paymasters) as quickly
and as often as possible. The concept of "minimum viable product" is
useful here. That allows for lots of mid-course corrections, or
abandoning features that the customer won't end up needing before a
lot of development time has been sunk developing it.

All the rest - scrums, kanban, feature promotions, code review, TDD,
extreme programming, burndown charts etc. - are just tools that may or
may not work in any specific situation.


Cheers
--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish                    Phone [phone] (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellow        [hidden email]
Economics, Kingston University         http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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[gepr]

OK.  I'm sorry if I've pushed too hard.  But if what you say, here, can imply that motives are NOT just behaviors at a higher level of organization, then perhaps that's progress.

Because it seems to have traction, I'll stick with the tissue, cell, molecule set.  The reason I suggested you replace your "higher level" hierarchy with words describing a heterarchy, is because we (none of us) can pinpoint the tissue organizing logic [†].  While it's a useful fiction to suggest that tissue is cells organized at a higher level, we can *just as well* say tissue is organized by cellular behavior collectively.

So, in one hierarchy, we have {tissue <- cell <- molecules}.  But in another hierarchy, we have {cell <- tissue, cell <- molecules}.  If you set your email client to monospace:

   tissue
     |
   cells
     |
 molecules

versus:

     cells
     |  |
tissue  molecules

One of the definitions of "heterarchy" is that the components can be organized in multiple ways.  So, again, I apologize if my attempts are irritating.  But it *really* would help dorks like me parse what you're saying if you used words that allowed for more complete statements.  I've tried to suggest "layer" and "order" as a replacement for "level".  Some suggestions for replacing your statement about motives might be:

  Motives ARE behaviors, just dynamically mixed by the organism.
  Motives ARE behaviors, just organized to cohere.
  Motives ARE behaviors, just a heterarchy re-organizable to approach a goal.

I'd claim that each of those is more accurate and complete than "organized at a higher level".  To boot, they give your audience a much *better* hint at your "if you stand next to me, you will see what I see."  That's because each one of my rewordings directly implies an organizing agency.  Your "organized at a higher level" can be taken to be an ontological assertion ... that this hierarchy is ensconced in the universe and would be a feature of, say, silicon based life on Alpha Centauri.

All it takes is to stop relying on this higher- and lower-level fiction.


[†] Is it in the cells?  Is it in the genes? Is it an attractor that might obtain even if the cells were zero-intelligence agents?  I would argue that "it" is distributed across the whole set of components and relations ... further arguing that it's a heterarchy. But all we need to do for this discussion is admit that we don't really know and use words that give a more complete indication *that* we don't really know and need to study it further.


On 1/6/19 4:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> In the first instance, to a pragmatist, any statement that X is Thus, is
> incomplete.  So that statement, X is hierarchically organized, is just an
> incomplete statement.  So an argument about whether anything IS JUST
> hierarchically organized is a silly argument.  What is not a silly argument
> is that X is hierarchically organized for some purpose of from point of
> view, P.  So all attributions are three0valued, sign, object, interpretant.
> Is this relativism?  No, not in the ordinary sense.  Because the pragmatist
> asserts that if you stand next to me, you will see what I see.  Or, to put
> it less metaphorically, if you do the experiment you will get the result.
> So, if you take Eric or I to be saying that anything is one hundred present
> hierarchically organized all the time and in all respects, you take us
> wrong.  

--
∄ uǝʃƃ

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

For a classic example of layers or levels and their interactions see

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Hearsay-I-Speech-Understanding-System%3A-An-of-Reddy-Erman/04ffb20cbfa502d3d2611dcfe027cfa94b45a629

On Mon, Jan 7, 2019, 7:02 AM ∄ uǝʃƃ <[hidden email] wrote:

OK.  I'm sorry if I've pushed too hard.  But if what you say, here, can imply that motives are NOT just behaviors at a higher level of organization, then perhaps that's progress.

Because it seems to have traction, I'll stick with the tissue, cell, molecule set.  The reason I suggested you replace your "higher level" hierarchy with words describing a heterarchy, is because we (none of us) can pinpoint the tissue organizing logic [†].  While it's a useful fiction to suggest that tissue is cells organized at a higher level, we can *just as well* say tissue is organized by cellular behavior collectively.

So, in one hierarchy, we have {tissue <- cell <- molecules}.  But in another hierarchy, we have {cell <- tissue, cell <- molecules}.  If you set your email client to monospace:

   tissue
     |
   cells
     |
 molecules

versus:

     cells
     |  |
tissue  molecules

One of the definitions of "heterarchy" is that the components can be organized in multiple ways.  So, again, I apologize if my attempts are irritating.  But it *really* would help dorks like me parse what you're saying if you used words that allowed for more complete statements.  I've tried to suggest "layer" and "order" as a replacement for "level".  Some suggestions for replacing your statement about motives might be:

  Motives ARE behaviors, just dynamically mixed by the organism.
  Motives ARE behaviors, just organized to cohere.
  Motives ARE behaviors, just a heterarchy re-organizable to approach a goal.

I'd claim that each of those is more accurate and complete than "organized at a higher level".  To boot, they give your audience a much *better* hint at your "if you stand next to me, you will see what I see."  That's because each one of my rewordings directly implies an organizing agency.  Your "organized at a higher level" can be taken to be an ontological assertion ... that this hierarchy is ensconced in the universe and would be a feature of, say, silicon based life on Alpha Centauri.

All it takes is to stop relying on this higher- and lower-level fiction.


[†] Is it in the cells?  Is it in the genes? Is it an attractor that might obtain even if the cells were zero-intelligence agents?  I would argue that "it" is distributed across the whole set of components and relations ... further arguing that it's a heterarchy. But all we need to do for this discussion is admit that we don't really know and use words that give a more complete indication *that* we don't really know and need to study it further.


On 1/6/19 4:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> In the first instance, to a pragmatist, any statement that X is Thus, is
> incomplete.  So that statement, X is hierarchically organized, is just an
> incomplete statement.  So an argument about whether anything IS JUST
> hierarchically organized is a silly argument.  What is not a silly argument
> is that X is hierarchically organized for some purpose of from point of
> view, P.  So all attributions are three0valued, sign, object, interpretant.
> Is this relativism?  No, not in the ordinary sense.  Because the pragmatist
> asserts that if you stand next to me, you will see what I see.  Or, to put
> it less metaphorically, if you do the experiment you will get the result.
> So, if you take Eric or I to be saying that anything is one hundred present
> hierarchically organized all the time and in all respects, you take us
> wrong.   

--
∄ uǝʃƃ

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[Nick Thompson]

Frank,

 

I can’t get in to see that paper!  Did you? 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2019 8:02 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

 

For a classic example of layers or levels and their interactions see

 

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Hearsay-I-Speech-Understanding-System%3A-An-of-Reddy-Erman/04ffb20cbfa502d3d2611dcfe027cfa94b45a629

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Mon, Jan 7, 2019, 7:02 AM ∄ uǝʃƃ <[hidden email] wrote:

OK.  I'm sorry if I've pushed too hard.  But if what you say, here, can imply that motives are NOT just behaviors at a higher level of organization, then perhaps that's progress.

Because it seems to have traction, I'll stick with the tissue, cell, molecule set.  The reason I suggested you replace your "higher level" hierarchy with words describing a heterarchy, is because we (none of us) can pinpoint the tissue organizing logic [†].  While it's a useful fiction to suggest that tissue is cells organized at a higher level, we can *just as well* say tissue is organized by cellular behavior collectively.

So, in one hierarchy, we have {tissue <- cell <- molecules}.  But in another hierarchy, we have {cell <- tissue, cell <- molecules}.  If you set your email client to monospace:

   tissue
     |
   cells
     |
 molecules

versus:

     cells
     |  |
tissue  molecules

One of the definitions of "heterarchy" is that the components can be organized in multiple ways.  So, again, I apologize if my attempts are irritating.  But it *really* would help dorks like me parse what you're saying if you used words that allowed for more complete statements.  I've tried to suggest "layer" and "order" as a replacement for "level".  Some suggestions for replacing your statement about motives might be:

  Motives ARE behaviors, just dynamically mixed by the organism.
  Motives ARE behaviors, just organized to cohere.
  Motives ARE behaviors, just a heterarchy re-organizable to approach a goal.

I'd claim that each of those is more accurate and complete than "organized at a higher level".  To boot, they give your audience a much *better* hint at your "if you stand next to me, you will see what I see."  That's because each one of my rewordings directly implies an organizing agency.  Your "organized at a higher level" can be taken to be an ontological assertion ... that this hierarchy is ensconced in the universe and would be a feature of, say, silicon based life on Alpha Centauri.

All it takes is to stop relying on this higher- and lower-level fiction.


[†] Is it in the cells?  Is it in the genes? Is it an attractor that might obtain even if the cells were zero-intelligence agents?  I would argue that "it" is distributed across the whole set of components and relations ... further arguing that it's a heterarchy. But all we need to do for this discussion is admit that we don't really know and use words that give a more complete indication *that* we don't really know and need to study it further.


On 1/6/19 4:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> In the first instance, to a pragmatist, any statement that X is Thus, is
> incomplete.  So that statement, X is hierarchically organized, is just an
> incomplete statement.  So an argument about whether anything IS JUST
> hierarchically organized is a silly argument.  What is not a silly argument
> is that X is hierarchically organized for some purpose of from point of
> view, P.  So all attributions are three0valued, sign, object, interpretant.
> Is this relativism?  No, not in the ordinary sense.  Because the pragmatist
> asserts that if you stand next to me, you will see what I see.  Or, to put
> it less metaphorically, if you do the experiment you will get the result.
> So, if you take Eric or I to be saying that anything is one hundred present
> hierarchically organized all the time and in all respects, you take us
> wrong.   

--
∄ uǝʃƃ

============================================================
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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Nick et al

Try this link

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230875978_The_Hearsay_II_Speech_Understanding_System

Frank

On Mon, Jan 7, 2019, 9:44 AM Nick Thompson <[hidden email] wrote:

Frank,

 

I can’t get in to see that paper!  Did you? 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2019 8:02 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

 

For a classic example of layers or levels and their interactions see

 

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Hearsay-I-Speech-Understanding-System%3A-An-of-Reddy-Erman/04ffb20cbfa502d3d2611dcfe027cfa94b45a629

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Mon, Jan 7, 2019, 7:02 AM ∄ uǝʃƃ <[hidden email] wrote:

OK.  I'm sorry if I've pushed too hard.  But if what you say, here, can imply that motives are NOT just behaviors at a higher level of organization, then perhaps that's progress.

Because it seems to have traction, I'll stick with the tissue, cell, molecule set.  The reason I suggested you replace your "higher level" hierarchy with words describing a heterarchy, is because we (none of us) can pinpoint the tissue organizing logic [†].  While it's a useful fiction to suggest that tissue is cells organized at a higher level, we can *just as well* say tissue is organized by cellular behavior collectively.

So, in one hierarchy, we have {tissue <- cell <- molecules}.  But in another hierarchy, we have {cell <- tissue, cell <- molecules}.  If you set your email client to monospace:

   tissue
     |
   cells
     |
 molecules

versus:

     cells
     |  |
tissue  molecules

One of the definitions of "heterarchy" is that the components can be organized in multiple ways.  So, again, I apologize if my attempts are irritating.  But it *really* would help dorks like me parse what you're saying if you used words that allowed for more complete statements.  I've tried to suggest "layer" and "order" as a replacement for "level".  Some suggestions for replacing your statement about motives might be:

  Motives ARE behaviors, just dynamically mixed by the organism.
  Motives ARE behaviors, just organized to cohere.
  Motives ARE behaviors, just a heterarchy re-organizable to approach a goal.

I'd claim that each of those is more accurate and complete than "organized at a higher level".  To boot, they give your audience a much *better* hint at your "if you stand next to me, you will see what I see."  That's because each one of my rewordings directly implies an organizing agency.  Your "organized at a higher level" can be taken to be an ontological assertion ... that this hierarchy is ensconced in the universe and would be a feature of, say, silicon based life on Alpha Centauri.

All it takes is to stop relying on this higher- and lower-level fiction.


[†] Is it in the cells?  Is it in the genes? Is it an attractor that might obtain even if the cells were zero-intelligence agents?  I would argue that "it" is distributed across the whole set of components and relations ... further arguing that it's a heterarchy. But all we need to do for this discussion is admit that we don't really know and use words that give a more complete indication *that* we don't really know and need to study it further.


On 1/6/19 4:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> In the first instance, to a pragmatist, any statement that X is Thus, is
> incomplete.  So that statement, X is hierarchically organized, is just an
> incomplete statement.  So an argument about whether anything IS JUST
> hierarchically organized is a silly argument.  What is not a silly argument
> is that X is hierarchically organized for some purpose of from point of
> view, P.  So all attributions are three0valued, sign, object, interpretant.
> Is this relativism?  No, not in the ordinary sense.  Because the pragmatist
> asserts that if you stand next to me, you will see what I see.  Or, to put
> it less metaphorically, if you do the experiment you will get the result.
> So, if you take Eric or I to be saying that anything is one hundred present
> hierarchically organized all the time and in all respects, you take us
> wrong.   

--
∄ uǝʃƃ

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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[Eric Charles-2]

Glen,

Thanks for the clarification. I intentionally said  Nick was invoking something like "levels of analysis" talk, because I thought I recalled Nick telling me at some point that he didn't like that way of thinking, and I'm surprised he hasn't disavowed me more completely on it. All metaphors are imperfect, and, acknowledging that, I still like that way of talking a lot. While you are quite right that tissue isn't literally JUST an arrangement of cells, it is pretty fair to say tissue is an bunch of cells arranged-in-a-structured-fashion and interconnected by various inter-cellular structures.... organs are a bunch of tissues arranged-in-a-structured-fashion and interconnected by various inter-tissue structures, etc. 

At any rate... trying to follow your lead, and translate your preferred sentence structure to be more like what (I assert) Nick is thinking:

Motives ARE a particular type of pattern in a behavior-by-environment matrix. 

As a "point of view" based Realism, which Nick has been trying to emphasize, it is true that there are many ways the behavior-by-environment matrix can be constructed and arranged. Some of those ways will reveal the relevant pattern in some instances, others will not. The particular pattern is one in which the behavior vary across circumstances so as to stay directed towards the production of a particular outcome. This sounds very similar to "One of the definitions of "heterarchy" is that the components can be organized in multiple ways" but if I understood the prior discussion of "heterarchy", I take it that concept is about a flexibility in control/leadership, whereas no control is implied here (control being a different pattern in a different matrix). The cause of the pattern is a different matter entirely from the existence of the pattern - which is expressly part of the point of Nick's way of approaching it, i.e.,that a "motive" must be identifiable independent of a particular cause. 

 

On Mon, Jan 7, 2019 at 9:02 AM ∄ uǝʃƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

OK.  I'm sorry if I've pushed too hard.  But if what you say, here, can imply that motives are NOT just behaviors at a higher level of organization, then perhaps that's progress.

Because it seems to have traction, I'll stick with the tissue, cell, molecule set.  The reason I suggested you replace your "higher level" hierarchy with words describing a heterarchy, is because we (none of us) can pinpoint the tissue organizing logic [†].  While it's a useful fiction to suggest that tissue is cells organized at a higher level, we can *just as well* say tissue is organized by cellular behavior collectively.

So, in one hierarchy, we have {tissue <- cell <- molecules}.  But in another hierarchy, we have {cell <- tissue, cell <- molecules}.  If you set your email client to monospace:

   tissue
     |
   cells
     |
 molecules

versus:

     cells
     |  |
tissue  molecules

One of the definitions of "heterarchy" is that the components can be organized in multiple ways.  So, again, I apologize if my attempts are irritating.  But it *really* would help dorks like me parse what you're saying if you used words that allowed for more complete statements.  I've tried to suggest "layer" and "order" as a replacement for "level".  Some suggestions for replacing your statement about motives might be:

  Motives ARE behaviors, just dynamically mixed by the organism.
  Motives ARE behaviors, just organized to cohere.
  Motives ARE behaviors, just a heterarchy re-organizable to approach a goal.

I'd claim that each of those is more accurate and complete than "organized at a higher level".  To boot, they give your audience a much *better* hint at your "if you stand next to me, you will see what I see."  That's because each one of my rewordings directly implies an organizing agency.  Your "organized at a higher level" can be taken to be an ontological assertion ... that this hierarchy is ensconced in the universe and would be a feature of, say, silicon based life on Alpha Centauri.

All it takes is to stop relying on this higher- and lower-level fiction.


[†] Is it in the cells?  Is it in the genes? Is it an attractor that might obtain even if the cells were zero-intelligence agents?  I would argue that "it" is distributed across the whole set of components and relations ... further arguing that it's a heterarchy. But all we need to do for this discussion is admit that we don't really know and use words that give a more complete indication *that* we don't really know and need to study it further.


On 1/6/19 4:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> In the first instance, to a pragmatist, any statement that X is Thus, is
> incomplete.  So that statement, X is hierarchically organized, is just an
> incomplete statement.  So an argument about whether anything IS JUST
> hierarchically organized is a silly argument.  What is not a silly argument
> is that X is hierarchically organized for some purpose of from point of
> view, P.  So all attributions are three0valued, sign, object, interpretant.
> Is this relativism?  No, not in the ordinary sense.  Because the pragmatist
> asserts that if you stand next to me, you will see what I see.  Or, to put
> it less metaphorically, if you do the experiment you will get the result.
> So, if you take Eric or I to be saying that anything is one hundred present
> hierarchically organized all the time and in all respects, you take us
> wrong.   

--
∄ uǝʃƃ

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[gepr]

Excellent!  I like everything you've said below.  In fact, were we able to clearly talk about heterarchies as explicitly externalizing controls, where hierarchies leave the source(s) of control ambiguous, then we'd map nicely back to Marcus' example of "serializing" a recursive function into a tree walkable by a single control pointer.  And we'd also be able to discuss Rosen's conception of separating a closure of agency from (an openness to) the other types of cause (material, formal, and final).

The concept of a heterarchy facilitates the discussion of systemic behaviors like motive as separable into sets of distinct causes and structures in a way the concept of hierarchy does not.

On 1/7/19 6:12 PM, Eric Charles wrote:

> Thanks for the clarification. I intentionally said  Nick was invoking
> *something
> like "levels of analysis" talk, *because I thought I recalled Nick telling
> me at some point that he didn't like that way of thinking, and I'm
> surprised he hasn't disavowed me more completely on it. All metaphors are
> imperfect, and, acknowledging that, I still like that way of talking a lot.
> While you are quite right that tissue isn't literally JUST an arrangement
> of cells, it *is *pretty fair to say tissue is an bunch of cells
> arranged-in-a-structured-fashion and interconnected by various
> inter-cellular structures.... organs are a bunch of tissues
> arranged-in-a-structured-fashion and interconnected by various inter-tissue
> structures, etc.
>
> At any rate... trying to follow your lead, and translate your preferred
> sentence structure to be more like what (I assert) Nick is thinking:
>
> Motives ARE a particular type of pattern in a behavior-by-environment
> matrix.
>
> As a "point of view" based Realism, which Nick has been trying to
> emphasize, it is true that there are many ways the behavior-by-environment
> matrix can be constructed and arranged. Some of those ways will reveal the
> relevant pattern in some instances, others will not. The particular pattern
> is one in which the behavior vary across circumstances so as to stay
> directed towards the production of a particular outcome. This sounds very
> similar to "One of the definitions of "heterarchy" is that the components
> can be organized in multiple ways" but if I understood the prior discussion
> of "heterarchy", I take it that concept is about a flexibility in
> control/leadership, whereas no control is implied here (control being a
> different pattern in a different matrix). The cause of the pattern is a
> different matter entirely from the existence of the pattern - which is
> expressly part of the point of Nick's way of approaching it, i.e.,that a
> "motive" must be identifiable independent of a particular cause.

--
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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Glen writes:
[..] then we'd map nicely back to Marcus' example of "serializing" a recursive function into a tree walkable by a single control pointer [..]

Maybe this wasn't the direction you were going, but I was thinking of the distinction between reducible vs. non-reducible loops.  Where one (a compiler) can collapse cycles into single nodes.   One could assert that certain programs could only be written using a GOTO spaghetti style but I don't think many people would believe that.  

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/dragon/w06/lectures/dfa3.pdf

Marcus

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[gepr]

Yes, it *sounds* like that's where I'd like to go with the conversation.  The original post Nick made was about propagating meaning through a nesting (objects, statements about objects, statements about statements about objects, ...) as well as openness to material flow (river vs. the components of the river) while holding an attribute/pattern invariant.

The extent to which a binding ("d" in the slides, measured attributes/patterns in Nick's setup) can be reasoned over depends fundamentally on the reasoning graph used.  A generalization (or abstraction?) can only hold if the path from it's original binding to the block where you want to use it is "followable" in some sense.

I don't quite understand the reducibility being discussed in the slides, though.  So, I'm unable to map the idea of "invariance of an abstraction" onto reducibility of the loops in those graphs.  I'm also not clear on which direction we really want to go, FROM the concrete fact (d) TO the abstraction (block(s) of logic) *or* in reverse, FROM the abstraction TO the fact.

The extra sauce you add that some (loopy?) programs might only implementable with GOTO applies directly to the discussion of control vs. composition hierarchies.  My favorite example right now is the seratonin produced by gut microbes, which finds its way to the brain.  While it's convenient to suggest the brain (organ) is composed of brain tissues matrixed by inter-brain-tissue components like neuron-released seratonin, where in that hierarchy do we force-fit the gut?!?  8^)  It's like some sort of undeniable interrupt semaphore from outer space ... messages from the Dog Star.


On 1/8/19 7:57 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Maybe this wasn't the direction you were going, but I was thinking of the distinction between reducible vs. non-reducible loops.  Where one (a compiler) can collapse cycles into single nodes.   One could assert that certain programs could only be written using a GOTO spaghetti style but I don't think many people would believe that.  
>
> http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/dragon/w06/lectures/dfa3.pdf


--
∄ uǝʃƃ

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