Drones to detect wildfires

[Steve Smith]

I think you might be correct Pieter... that attitudes are changing "fast".   I also sympathize with your references to "woke" culture somehow being it's own toxicity.  I'm a big fan of multicultural (including gender/gender-identity, etc) diversity and believe that our modern global transportation and communications technologies (mostly about 100 years old) has exposed us to much more diversity than ever before and it has been hard to take in.  "Wokeness" IMO is a reaction to the fear and intolerences that are a reaction to having to take in more and more and more diversity of human identity and nature than ever before.

I have told bits of my own story.  I was rarely overtly usurious (by my own standards) in my youth (with some notable exceptions), but as I experienced more and became more and more of a systems thinker in general and as complex systems science matured in front of me, I became more and more aware that a breakneck forward pell mell tumble of "human progress" seems to inevitably lead to unintended consequences of greater and greater magnitude.   As our leverage grows geometrically/exponentially, so do the consequences, compounded by mass transportation of materials and energy such that *we* don't experience the consequences of our excesses personally.   Somebody somewhere else lives downstream/wind from the source of externalized costs and a PR firm sits in the middle "messaging" whatever hints of those consequences get back to the *consumers* sucking those goods and services through those long pipes.

I know I often (always?) vilify "human progress" as if it were fundamentally evil.   What I am really railing against is the (deliberate) conflation between the betterment of circumstances for any individual, group, or expanse of humanity and the exploitation and abuse of the remainder of the world (non-human, non-first-world, non-middle-upper class, etc.).  

I am glad you called out the 163k year old "modern human" artifacts and made the point (I think) that there is something fundamental in our nature/circumstances that has lead us to be an "invasive species" no matter where we have immigrated.  I know many feel that this kind of acknowledgement (I'm thinking Proud Boys and similar) is some kind of "self-hatred", that we should revel in our ability to "pave the planet" and "dominate the other", etc.   I have heard that the theory that the post-pleistocene megafauna collapse throughout the northern hemisphere (Eurasia and America) as (modern) humans arrived is maybe not as cut and dried an example of our direct or even first-order indirect arrival (that we neither killed them all nor did we out-compete them) but there is a strong correlation there, as there is with the end of the Neanderthal who apparently had lived in what appears to be homeostasis with the ecological niche they found/created when *they* arrived in Europe.  This is all pop-science anecdotal confirmation-bias talk.  

Someone who has honestly studied these overlapping domains may be able to poke holes in the details but maybe not in the general gist of my speculation that (modern) humans are very much "invasive species", not only opportunistic in slipping into every niche we find, but wedging them open wider to make them more comfortable for ourselves.  From a strict Darwinian fitness perspective, this seems like a "very good thing".  

It may be nostalgic of me to think that humans would be healthier and happier in a healthy biosphere rich in diversity of plants and  creatures that were here when we arrived.   The Post/Trans humanists, the progress-at-any-cost, the let's terraform Mars (and the Asteriod belt and Venus and the moons and rings of the gas giants), the radical technophiles *may be right* that our insanely clever minds and extended phenotype of an industrial economy (on bio-nano-macro-engineering) can outrun the biosphere collapsing behind us in the wake of our "progress".   We (sort of) have so far...  the lifespans (and quality of life) dips each technological leap forward has offered us (agrarian monocropping gave us ubiquitous calories but reduced nutrition, the early coal-fueled industrial era gave us quality consumer products and particulate-filled smog-encrusted cities in Europe), modern industry (better living through chemistry) gave us modern miracle products and Superfund sites up and down the east coast and rust belt.  

To the extent that we don't acknowledge the extent of the potential consequences of our actions (exported to someone else's backyard, the third world, the oceans the atmosphere, the polar caps, our children's futures) I don't see *how* we can sustain the rate of exploitation we are clearly capable of.   Climate Scientists (except for a few fringe ringers from industry) agree that we are well on our way to some huge (and potentially devastating) effects, yet I'd claim that easily half of the first world doesn't believe (or care?) about this likelihood and the bulk of the third world either doesn't even know what that means or feels entirely helpless to do anything but hunker down and hope the disruption in weather patterns actually improves their regional conditions rather than forcing them to become refugees to hostile first world countries.  

Deferring to your and Marcus' and other's optimism that we can and will outrun the consequences (or perhaps Marcus' fatalism that we as a species are "long of tooth" and perhaps deserve to bring the house down on our own heads?), I can *hope* that we will find a phase change in the collective imaginarium around "human progress" not requiring that we continue to radically aberrate the current homeostasis of the biosphere.  I also believe that mother Gaia is a complex adaptive system of which we (and all our radical cleverness and extreme technical leverage) is just a part of and in a few centuries may well be settling back into a "new normal" where any remaining humans are either encysted in bubbles to protect ourselves from this "new normal" (and it from us!) or we will have "cooled our jets" enough that the "new normal" is close enough to what we (and other extant life forms) have evolved under to survive *without* hyper-technology to mediate for us.

<rant off>

- Steve

On 5/26/21 1:00 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

I don't question the historical link between human progress and hurting the environment. Within walking distance from where I live there is a cave where archaeologists led by Curtis Marean found evidence of modern humans that lived 162 000 years ago. Curtis opines that since then modern humans behaved like an invasive species, causing serious harm to the environment wherever they went. My point is that there is evidence that this human progress/harming the environment link has been happening ever since modern humans set their feet on mother earth and it's still happening. 

But my subjective observation is that the attitude of pedal-to-the-medal, drill-baby-drill, burn baby burn, gangway, don't look down (or back)! is changing and it's changing very fast. Maybe I'm wrong, but if I compare the attitude of people when I was young to now, I observe a big difference. There is now a very widespread concern for the environment that was absent when I was young.  I salute the environmental activists, they have done a great job and are still doing a great job in changing the moral values of society to be against hurting the environment.

Personally I am both enthusiastically for human progress and totally against hurting the environment. 

I have open questions:
1. Admitting that progress hurt the environment in the past, is there reason to believe that it's impossible to have future progress without hurting the environment?
2. Provided it's possible without hurting the environment, is there anything wrong with human progress?   

On Wed, 26 May 2021 at 03:45, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

As Stephen already knows well, *these* were in all of the lookout towers before modern tech finally meant humans didn't need to man them 24/7 during fire season.   A precision, calibrated "lazy susan" with a map and a "protractor" for measuring altitude angle to a fire.  The Simtable work Stephen describes is a highly efficient and accurate replacement for this art/skill (and beyond), even before the citizen-mobile cameras are integrated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Fire_Finder

   I knew quite a few permanent and short term (usually college summer students) fire lookouts in my time.   The permanent folks got to know their territory like the back of their hands, as well as the other lookouts and the local fire crews.   My dad had a fire-radio in our dining room that ran 24/7 during fire season as well.   It would have been fascinating if it hadn't been so "normal" at the time.

I very much appreciate Stephen's Schtick about fires (and other natural threats/disasters) being much more frightening/threatening when you don't know where they are and what they are doing, and that good (collective) awareness is the first step toward "managing" not only the wildfires themselves, but the people and property they threaten.  

The same thing goes for "managing" nature in a broader sense.  The more we know what is actually happening in the short and long term, the better chance we have of doing something clever, or ... wait for it...  maybe even "wise"?   What Merle and I are vying for is an appreciation that this ~10,000 year old experiment of humans manipulating the biosphere with significant (and exponentially growing?) leverage has not gone well (for the biosphere).  While First World peoples, especially in the 1% (or even 50%) wealth category, it all might seem plenty peachy, but if you ask the myriad folks (and non-human folks) that are enduring the unintended (usually) consequences of our arrogant mucking about, they might not be so proud of what we have done. 

When the chickens (refugees) come home to roost (Europe dealing with those displaced by climate change and war throughout north Africa and the Middle east, the US dealing with Central American refugees, etc ad nauseum) some of us struggle to figure out how to accommodate them without giving up "too much" while others simply identify them as a dangerous, foreign, plague to be repelled or exterminated.   Whether the former OR the latter is even possible is up in the air, but in the meantime, we continue to either stick with "business as usual" or "rush forward to the next grande technological (and highly profitable for *someone*) fix without honestly considering the meta-problem of whether we really *learn* anything from our mistakes (experiments) except how to be more efficient at executing the narrow goals we set for ourselves.   Optimization run amok?  

I shouldn't be so negative... I know *many* people are honestly trying to expand their awareness to include that which they were not previously aware of, not just double down on being more effective at whatever they set out to be effective at earlier in life (as individuals or as cultures).

I accept (reluctantly) the truism that "the only way out is through".   There is huge momentum in the human project, or more to the point, the Homo Faber project.  Man the Maker.   Sapiens means knowledgeable or wise,  I do believe we've done a fair job of  living up to the former, I think the latter is very much a work in progress.  

Meanwhile, pedal-to-the-medal, drill-baby-drill, burn baby burn, gangway, don't look down (or back)!

On 5/25/21 12:22 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote:

 I don't think drones aren't an efficient choice for detection. Stationary PTZ cameras on ridgetops and citizen phone camera reporting along with 911 calls are soon enough. Where drones are valuable preliminary mapping to fill in gaps of existing camera viewsheds to get an early sizeup.

We are working with www.alertwildfire.org to calibrate their 1000 cameras on the ridgetops in the 5 western states of CA, OR, WA, ID and NV. Our bit is solving for camera pose based on observations of stars to solve for the 9 degrees of freedom of a camera (x, y, z, yaw, pitch, roll, horiz field of view, vert field of view and lens distortion)

You can see a map of the cameras that we have robotic control of hear with historical imagery:
    http://www.alertwildfire.org/tahoe/index.html?camera=Axis-SodaRidge1&v=7a7f1c3

Once a camera is calibrated each pixel maps to a lat/long if it intersects the terrain or triangulating 3D points with multiple cameras for sky-based features. 

You can see how we detect locations of fire starts after lightning strikes on the LNU Complex last summer in Sonama here:
    https://youtu.be/oVAwvs4k1n0

All compute and modeling/sim is in the browser with the camera projections using WebGL and rendering to 3D terrain.

And how we track perimeters on this example Adams Fire here:
    https://youtu.be/lP7-UhZQ4IY

And here is some live AI looking for smoke in Sonoma that we then map:
   https://fire.aiir.ai/sonoma

We can also calibrate ad hoc imagery coming from citizens based on common features in already calibrated images or by geopoints or the stars. Here's an example on the Maria Fire where we took imagery from Twitter from a private pilot and a second imager from citizen near the freeway.
   https://youtu.be/aJpgDzFhXng

_______________________________________________________________________
[hidden email]

CEO, Simtable  http://www.simtable.com

1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505

office: [phone] mobile: [phone]

twitter: @simtable

zoom.simtable.com

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 11:54 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.

It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad range of methodologies from various disciplines, such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, systems biology, membrane science, biophysics, chemical and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, control engineering and evolutionary biology.

Due to more powerful genetic engineering capabilities and decreased DNA synthesis and sequencing costs, the field of synthetic biology is rapidly growing. In 2016, more than 350 companies across 40 countries were actively engaged in synthetic biology applications; all these companies had an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion in the global market.^[1]

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 19:49, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, I don't understand your term "synthetic biology."

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:24 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Steve writes:

< Deferring to your and Marcus' and other's optimism that we can and will outrun the consequences (or perhaps Marcus' fatalism that we as a species are "long of tooth" and perhaps deserve to bring the house down on our own heads?), I can *hope* that we will find a phase change in the collective imaginarium around "human progress" not requiring that we continue to radically aberrate the current homeostasis of the biosphere. >

I was thinking of the possibility that some aspects of human intelligence would transform into a new physical form and be able to use less or different kinds of energy, tolerate different temperatures and/or more radiation, etc.   I don’t even see that as fatalism.    How or if that will happen, I have no idea.   Genetic engineering, neural linkage technologies, wafer scale machine learning systems?  Actually calling me fatalist or nihilist is fine, just don’t call me an optimist!  :-)

Marcus

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[gepr]

CONTENTS DELETED

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

To clarify, by "remediate" I mean that some consequences are created (e.g. a pandemic, harm to the biosphere), and then there is a problem to solve.    Pfizer is a remediator.  
Ford is a potential remediator with the F-150 lightening, solar panel manufacturers are remediators, Impossible Burger is a remediator, etc.  Yes, I recognize some will debate whether some of these are really remediators.   Nothing short of sitting around watching fungus grow will satisfy these people.    

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2021 8:52 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

Nah, Dave's right in suggesting not only that *any* attempt to corral all the variables will, practically, amount to cherry-picking a subset of variables. (That feels almost like a mathematical theorem to me.) So we, literally, cannot remediate our worst impulses, much less make it profitable to do so. We *can*, I think, bias how we screw things up, though ... just nudge the trajectory slightly this way or that way. But even so, the objection stands that we don't know enough about the processes to predict the horizons toward which to bias. The only solution would be a constellation of high frequency, high dimensional, monitoring *adversarial* processes that run alongside each and every implementation plan.

On 5/26/21 8:07 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> If the earth becomes unhabitable without changing how we live is that a problem?
>
> Maybe this “harm” is just what it takes to motivate action.   Like it
> took COVID to bring mRNA vaccines to the forefront.
>
> A minority of people sitting around a campfire isn’t going to change
> the global outcome, if the pattern above is how human cognition works on average.
>
> The procedure then is that 1) the majority really screw things up, and 2) science comes to rescue to sort their mess out.   It only makes sense to arrange that #2 be very profitable.   If anything, remediation of our worst impulses isn’t profitable enough.
>
>  
>
> *From:* Friam <[hidden email]> *On Behalf Of *Prof David
> West
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 26, 2021 7:36 AM
> *To:* [hidden email]
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires
>
>  
>
> The problem is the term " progress."
>
>  
>
> First, progress implies a goal state,as in progress towards what?
>
>  
>
> The second is teasing out a thread, a sequence of a single factor in a
> complex data set, and deciding that an increase in the measured value
> of that factor is what defines progress. [The term progress itself
> biases against looking for a decrease in some measured factor.]
>
>  
>
> For example: We could look at human beings in the U.S. from 1776 to today as a sequence of states. We could then look at the state and pick a variable that changes  — increases  — in each successive state. If the variable we pick is 'average lifespan' then we might be tempted to say that we have progressed. But if we picked the variable 'average BMI index' then it becomes problematic as to whether or not we can claim massive obesity is "progress."
>
>  
>
> A third issue is obtaining any kind of consensus as to which variables we should pick to measure progress. Kilotons of nuclear arsenals? Petabytes of video on Pornhub? Tons of food waste from restaurants per day? Average wheat yield in Kansas per year? Number of pure electric cars per capita?
>
>  
>
> davew
>
>  
>
>  
>
> On Wed, May 26, 2021, at 1:00 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
>
>  […]
>     I have open questions:
>
>     1. Admitting that progress hurt the environment in the past, is there reason to believe that it's impossible to have future progress without hurting the environment?
>
>     2. Provided it's possible without hurting the environment, is
> there anything wrong with human progress?

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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[Steve Smith]

Marcus -

< Deferring to your and Marcus' and other's optimism that we can and will outrun the consequences (or perhaps Marcus' fatalism that we as a species are "long of tooth" and perhaps deserve to bring the house down on our own heads?), I can *hope* that we will find a phase change in the collective imaginarium around "human progress" not requiring that we continue to radically aberrate the current homeostasis of the biosphere. >

I was thinking of the possibility that some aspects of human intelligence would transform into a new physical form and be able to use less or different kinds of energy, tolerate different temperatures and/or more radiation, etc.   I don’t even see that as fatalism.    How or if that will happen, I have no idea.   Genetic engineering, neural linkage technologies, wafer scale machine learning systems?  Actually calling me fatalist or nihilist is fine, just don’t call me an optimist!  :-)

<grin> I'm sure any optmism I ascribe to you is my own projection!

Your SciFiEsque potential trajectories are well within my own projected imaginarium,  but they do fall on an extrema of my fatalistic-optimistic axis.  I may well live to be 160, but the last half of that may also be inside a space-suit, more likely hanging on a hook in a warehouse (e.g. MatrixEsque) than flitting between asteroids or bounding around the surface of a MarsScape en-process of TerraForming.   In any case, I'll probably still be ranting to whatever FriAM becomes in that context, my vestigal/atrophied/ghost fingers twitching as my Neuralink interface transmutes my touchtyping. 

My consumer-grade HMD is already good enough quality to make watching fungus grow quite captivating.  I'm waiting for eye-tracking...  

For the moment I'll shift back to the bird-TV that is my picture window where the hummers are swarming the cane-sugar-water (from the Phillipines?) like giant mosquitos, and the tanagers and migrating orioles are having their way with the the blemished oranges I got from Mexico (by way of my local produce) and the jays are happily gathering the peanuts (from Georgia?) to stash for next winter (unless too much fungus grows on them in the meantime).

- Steve

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[gepr]

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[Pieter Steenekamp]

I just want to go back to Dave's question to define "progress". I think the United Nations' list of Sustainable Development Goal targets and indicators could be a starting point. From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sustainable_Development_Goal_targets_and_indicators 

• • 2.1Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
  • 2.2Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
  • 2.3Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
  • 2.4Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
  • 2.5Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
  • 2.6Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
  • 2.7Goal 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
  • 2.8Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
  • 2.9Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
  • 2.10Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries
  • 2.11Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
  • 2.12Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
  • 2.13Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts ^{[n 10]}
  • 2.14Goal 14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
  • 2.15Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
  • 2.16Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
  • 2.17Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

On Wed, 26 May 2021 at 20:23, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yeah, OK. I agree. As with the FinTech payment plan band-aid I posted, our nudges can, at least, demonstrate some good faith attempts to "do good". But I'd like it better if we were more aggressive in our attempts ... aim high so that when you inevitably fail, you'll end up slightly higher than you would've if you'd aimed low. But I doubt focusing on profitability is the way to aim high. The space of profitable enterprises is *heavily* biased to the low hanging fruit. As Eric pointed out awhile back, the majority of high impact innovation is launched via non-profit efforts. In that perspective, profit limits high impact innovation by diverting resources to low impact innovation.

On 5/26/21 8:59 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> To clarify, by "remediate" I mean that some consequences are created (e.g. a pandemic, harm to the biosphere), and then there is a problem to solve.    Pfizer is a remediator. 
> Ford is a potential remediator with the F-150 lightening, solar panel manufacturers are remediators, Impossible Burger is a remediator, etc.  Yes, I recognize some will debate whether some of these are really remediators.   Nothing short of sitting around watching fungus grow will satisfy these people.     

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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[Steve Smith]

In most of the trajectories through the postCapitalistic subset of my
imaginarium, maximizing profit or even gross production is eschewed in
deference to satisficing the commodity stocks (including liquid
currency) required to support the flows we might consider necessary and
good.  

I agree with the sentiments specifically spun on the list that "none of
us are smart enough to figure all this out ahead of time".  Kurt Godel
warned us about that already.  I am not a proponent of an engineered
econo-socio-political system, but I *am* a proponent of setting high
level ideals to strive for (e.g. a humanist, biospherist, terran,
Sol-system, Milky-way Galaxy-ist value system) and doing enough
measurement and modeling to monitor how well we are doing and if we need
to "nudge" the knobs on our models.  Engineering IS a part of our
evolving nature, I can't change that.  What does it mean to obtain
enough collective coherence on those values, the models that represent
them and the data to gather?   I'm not sure...  I think the "culture
wars" right now are a part of that and maybe it never will be anything
but cacophanous dissonance.  

Technological Innovation is sure to be part of our future (short of a
stone-age collapse), I just hope those of us who have a stake in how
that unfolds include some humanist (etc.) perspective rather than
letting the neoDarwinian stylization of manic hypercapitalism continue
to be the dominant driver in *what* and *how* we innovate.

On 5/26/21 12:23 PM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

> Yeah, OK. I agree. As with the FinTech payment plan band-aid I posted, our nudges can, at least, demonstrate some good faith attempts to "do good". But I'd like it better if we were more aggressive in our attempts ... aim high so that when you inevitably fail, you'll end up slightly higher than you would've if you'd aimed low. But I doubt focusing on profitability is the way to aim high. The space of profitable enterprises is *heavily* biased to the low hanging fruit. As Eric pointed out awhile back, the majority of high impact innovation is launched via non-profit efforts. In that perspective, profit limits high impact innovation by diverting resources to low impact innovation.
>
> On 5/26/21 8:59 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> To clarify, by "remediate" I mean that some consequences are created (e.g. a pandemic, harm to the biosphere), and then there is a problem to solve.    Pfizer is a remediator.  
>> Ford is a potential remediator with the F-150 lightening, solar panel manufacturers are remediators, Impossible Burger is a remediator, etc.  Yes, I recognize some will debate whether some of these are really remediators.   Nothing short of sitting around watching fungus grow will satisfy these people.    




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[Merle Lefkoff-2]

Stephen, I am SO GLAD you jumped in on this, because you're right!  Thanks for bringing me up to date.

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 12:23 PM Stephen Guerin <[hidden email]> wrote:

 I don't think drones aren't an efficient choice for detection. Stationary PTZ cameras on ridgetops and citizen phone camera reporting along with 911 calls are soon enough. Where drones are valuable preliminary mapping to fill in gaps of existing camera viewsheds to get an early sizeup.

We are working with www.alertwildfire.org to calibrate their 1000 cameras on the ridgetops in the 5 western states of CA, OR, WA, ID and NV. Our bit is solving for camera pose based on observations of stars to solve for the 9 degrees of freedom of a camera (x, y, z, yaw, pitch, roll, horiz field of view, vert field of view and lens distortion)

You can see a map of the cameras that we have robotic control of hear with historical imagery:
    http://www.alertwildfire.org/tahoe/index.html?camera=Axis-SodaRidge1&v=7a7f1c3

Once a camera is calibrated each pixel maps to a lat/long if it intersects the terrain or triangulating 3D points with multiple cameras for sky-based features. 

You can see how we detect locations of fire starts after lightning strikes on the LNU Complex last summer in Sonama here:
    https://youtu.be/oVAwvs4k1n0

All compute and modeling/sim is in the browser with the camera projections using WebGL and rendering to 3D terrain.

And how we track perimeters on this example Adams Fire here:
    https://youtu.be/lP7-UhZQ4IY

And here is some live AI looking for smoke in Sonoma that we then map:
   https://fire.aiir.ai/sonoma

We can also calibrate ad hoc imagery coming from citizens based on common features in already calibrated images or by geopoints or the stars. Here's an example on the Maria Fire where we took imagery from Twitter from a private pilot and a second imager from citizen near the freeway.
   https://youtu.be/aJpgDzFhXng

_______________________________________________________________________
[hidden email]

CEO, Simtable  http://www.simtable.com

1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505

office: [phone] mobile: [phone]

twitter: @simtable

zoom.simtable.com

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 11:54 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.

It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad range of methodologies from various disciplines, such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, systems biology, membrane science, biophysics, chemical and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, control engineering and evolutionary biology.

Due to more powerful genetic engineering capabilities and decreased DNA synthesis and sequencing costs, the field of synthetic biology is rapidly growing. In 2016, more than 350 companies across 40 countries were actively engaged in synthetic biology applications; all these companies had an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion in the global market.^[1]

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 19:49, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, I don't understand your term "synthetic biology."

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:24 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

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[Prof David West]

I believe Merle recommended this book to the list sometime back, but Steve's comments suggest no one took her up on the recommendation. The book: Stanley, Kenneth O. and Joel Lehman, Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned", the myth of the objective. (Objective in the sense of goal.)

The book argues that "setting high level ideals" (objectives) and "doing enough measurement and modeling to monitor how well we are doing" pretty much assures failure.

I missed Merle's post recommending the book, but it came to my attention via Richard Gabriel and is being used in some research with Jenny Quillien (FRIAM and onetime Mother Church attendee) in the area of evolution as well as planning. The book's author's are AI professionals and researchers as is Gabriel, so out work might have some applicability to computing as well.

davew

On Wed, May 26, 2021, at 2:18 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

> In most of the trajectories through the postCapitalistic subset of my

> imaginarium, maximizing profit or even gross production is eschewed in

> deference to satisficing the commodity stocks (including liquid

> currency) required to support the flows we might consider necessary and

> good.  

> 

> I agree with the sentiments specifically spun on the list that "none of

> us are smart enough to figure all this out ahead of time".  Kurt Godel

> warned us about that already.  I am not a proponent of an engineered

> econo-socio-political system, but I *am* a proponent of setting high

> level ideals to strive for (e.g. a humanist, biospherist, terran,

> Sol-system, Milky-way Galaxy-ist value system) and doing enough

> measurement and modeling to monitor how well we are doing and if we need

> to "nudge" the knobs on our models.  Engineering IS a part of our

> evolving nature, I can't change that.  What does it mean to obtain

> enough collective coherence on those values, the models that represent

> them and the data to gather?   I'm not sure...  I think the "culture

> wars" right now are a part of that and maybe it never will be anything

> but cacophanous dissonance.  

> 

> Technological Innovation is sure to be part of our future (short of a

> stone-age collapse), I just hope those of us who have a stake in how

> that unfolds include some humanist (etc.) perspective rather than

> letting the neoDarwinian stylization of manic hypercapitalism continue

> to be the dominant driver in *what* and *how* we innovate.

> 

> On 5/26/21 12:23 PM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

> 

> > Yeah, OK. I agree. As with the FinTech payment plan band-aid I posted, our nudges can, at least, demonstrate some good faith attempts to "do good". But I'd like it better if we were more aggressive in our attempts ... aim high so that when you inevitably fail, you'll end up slightly higher than you would've if you'd aimed low. But I doubt focusing on profitability is the way to aim high. The space of profitable enterprises is *heavily* biased to the low hanging fruit. As Eric pointed out awhile back, the majority of high impact innovation is launched via non-profit efforts. In that perspective, profit limits high impact innovation by diverting resources to low impact innovation.

> >

> > On 5/26/21 8:59 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> >> To clarify, by "remediate" I mean that some consequences are created (e.g. a pandemic, harm to the biosphere), and then there is a problem to solve.    Pfizer is a remediator.  

> >> Ford is a potential remediator with the F-150 lightening, solar panel manufacturers are remediators, Impossible Burger is a remediator, etc.  Yes, I recognize some will debate whether some of these are really remediators.   Nothing short of sitting around watching fungus grow will satisfy these people.     

> 

> 

> 

> 

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> 

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[gepr]

CONTENTS DELETED

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[Prof David West]

I must agree and disagree.

Yes, my statement was an oversimplification, but not a caricature.

The caveat I should have included concerns the "distance" from where we are at the moment and the point at which the objective would be achieved.

I stand by my assertion that for objectives like the UN goals shared by Pieter and the less specific objectives in Steve's post, failure is assuredly more likely than success — based on the arguments presented in the book.

davew


On Thu, May 27, 2021, at 8:52 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

> We have to be careful not to Jump the Shark. The book doesn't make the
> argument you caricature, here. There's absolutely nothing wrong with
> objectives and measurement, in general. What the book targets are
> *rigid* objectives and tight *controls*. If you've been paying
> attention to FriAM's recent threads, you'll see conversations about
> side-effects ([cough] "epiphenomena") as compared to purposeful
> objectives. You'll see long windy threads about the existence (and
> definition of) free will, where the very concept of
> intention/objectives/agency falls apart completely.
>
> Nobody on this list has forgotten Stanley's point. The question is one
> of degree, not kind. How draconian *should* an error-correction
> controller be? How does one set [multi-]objectives so as to balance
> exploration and exploitation of the artifacts produced along the way?
>
> So, no. You're simply wrong on that point. Setting ambitious objectives
> and *monitoring* progression closely does not assure failure. It's
> *rigid* objectives and tight *control* that assures failure (or, more
> accurately, fragility -- "failure" is the wrong word for what's meant
> here).
>
> On 5/26/21 7:32 PM, Prof David West wrote:
> > The book argues that /"setting high level ideals" /(objectives) and /"doing enough measurement and modeling to monitor how well we are doing" /pretty much assures failure.
> >
>
> --
> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
>
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[Pieter Steenekamp]

First, I really like the book about objectives. 
Let me give an example of this principle in action. One of South Africa's successful business people Koos Bekker, used this management style when he was running a very old legacy media company Naspers. He would appoint competent people that managed the not even day-to-day but quarter-to-quarter affairs of the company. He would then travel the world and seek ideas and opportunities. At one stage he "disappeared " for about a year and people speculated that he retired. Regularly he would come back and present a new idea and the board always accepted and implemented his ideas. Naspers is one of the very few legacy media companies that not only made it through the introduction of the internet era but grew spectacularly. During his tenure, the market capitalization of Naspers grew from about $1.2 billion to $45 billion.

Second I would like to backtrack on my answer with all the objectives to Dave. In hindsight I see I missed Dave's point that one has to be careful in just promoting "progress", it's clearly not always in humanities interest. I think it was Peter Thiel who said he thought we were going to get flying cars, but what did we get? 132 characters.

So let me withdraw my answer to Dave and replace it by simply saying: point taken.

On Thu, 27 May 2021 at 17:46, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[hidden email]> wrote:

OK. I agree that failure on every one of those objectives is assured. But the issue is less about setting the objective and measuring the outcomes than it is about *harvesting* one's failures. Everyone (with any sense) knows we'll fail on the overwhelming majority of those very ambitious objectives. But the point of such objectives is not to succeed perfectly, as if we're some GA satisfying a singular exogenous objective function. Their purpose is an ethical one.

After Pieter's post, it rekindled my desire for a "dashboard" presenting measures for each [sub]objective. But, going back to your original, correct, objection, non-planned-for measures/effects would not be included, biasing our understanding of the progression. Each measure becomes nothing more than a bell on a slot machine, injecting a little dopamine.

That's what the Pinkers and Shermers of the world seem like to me. Slot machine players looking for that dopamine ... like Musk launching a stupid car up into space. They're sooooo similar to the junkies I used to clean up after in the park behind our old house.

On 5/27/21 8:10 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> I must agree and disagree.
>
> Yes, my statement was an oversimplification, but not a caricature.
>
> The caveat I should have included concerns the "distance" from where we are at the moment and the point at which the objective would be achieved.
>
> I stand by my assertion that for objectives like the UN goals shared by Pieter and the less specific objectives in Steve's post, failure is assuredly more likely than success — based on the arguments presented in the book.

--
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[Prof David West]

Agreed.  The book uses the notion of steppingstones, An objective that requires traversal of multiple intermediary stepping stones is essentially unattainable. But if you do something it creates new stepping stones that lead who knows where, but you "harvest those" and use them as the basis for just one more step, somewhere, you may very well end up at a place worth getting to; it will be a surprise and almost certainly not where you thought you were going.

davew

On Thu, May 27, 2021, at 9:38 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

> OK. I agree that failure on every one of those objectives is assured.
> But the issue is less about setting the objective and measuring the
> outcomes than it is about *harvesting* one's failures. Everyone (with
> any sense) knows we'll fail on the overwhelming majority of those very
> ambitious objectives. But the point of such objectives is not to
> succeed perfectly, as if we're some GA satisfying a singular exogenous
> objective function. Their purpose is an ethical one.
>
> After Pieter's post, it rekindled my desire for a "dashboard"
> presenting measures for each [sub]objective. But, going back to your
> original, correct, objection, non-planned-for measures/effects would
> not be included, biasing our understanding of the progression. Each
> measure becomes nothing more than a bell on a slot machine, injecting a
> little dopamine.
>
> That's what the Pinkers and Shermers of the world seem like to me. Slot
> machine players looking for that dopamine ... like Musk launching a
> stupid car up into space. They're sooooo similar to the junkies I used
> to clean up after in the park behind our old house.
>
> On 5/27/21 8:10 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> > I must agree and disagree.
> >
> > Yes, my statement was an oversimplification, but not a caricature.
> >
> > The caveat I should have included concerns the "distance" from where we are at the moment and the point at which the objective would be achieved.
> >
> > I stand by my assertion that for objectives like the UN goals shared by Pieter and the less specific objectives in Steve's post, failure is assuredly more likely than success — based on the arguments presented in the book.
>
> --
> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
>
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[Steve Smith]

The most fundamental problem with the general idea of setting objectives and then using any number of clever methods to converge on those objectives is that *at best* they are only as good as the objectives themselves.   The point being made here, of reducing the granularity to a pieceweiz, forward chaining is well motivated IMO, as it seems the "best we know how to do".

In the spirit of "exaptation", and "life is what happens while you are making other plans",  the point of picking an objective and searching for it on an exotic, high dimensional (even fractal) landscape is to provide a heuristic for *exploring* the parts of the landscape you can't even imagine much less predict exists.   I would compare it more to "creative wandering" than "active seeking", though I think the two can be compatible.

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

    ― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

On 5/27/21 3:21 PM, Prof David West wrote:

Agreed.  The book uses the notion of steppingstones, An objective that requires traversal of multiple intermediary stepping stones is essentially unattainable. But if you do something it creates new stepping stones that lead who knows where, but you "harvest those" and use them as the basis for just one more step, somewhere, you may very well end up at a place worth getting to; it will be a surprise and almost certainly not where you thought you were going.

davew

On Thu, May 27, 2021, at 9:38 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

OK. I agree that failure on every one of those objectives is assured. 
But the issue is less about setting the objective and measuring the 
outcomes than it is about *harvesting* one's failures. Everyone (with 
any sense) knows we'll fail on the overwhelming majority of those very 
ambitious objectives. But the point of such objectives is not to 
succeed perfectly, as if we're some GA satisfying a singular exogenous 
objective function. Their purpose is an ethical one.

After Pieter's post, it rekindled my desire for a "dashboard" 
presenting measures for each [sub]objective. But, going back to your 
original, correct, objection, non-planned-for measures/effects would 
not be included, biasing our understanding of the progression. Each 
measure becomes nothing more than a bell on a slot machine, injecting a 
little dopamine.

That's what the Pinkers and Shermers of the world seem like to me. Slot 
machine players looking for that dopamine ... like Musk launching a 
stupid car up into space. They're sooooo similar to the junkies I used 
to clean up after in the park behind our old house.

On 5/27/21 8:10 AM, Prof David West wrote:

I must agree and disagree.

Yes, my statement was an oversimplification, but not a caricature. 

The caveat I should have included concerns the "distance" from where we are at the moment and the point at which the objective would be achieved.

I stand by my assertion that for objectives like the UN goals shared by Pieter and the less specific objectives in Steve's post, failure is assuredly more likely than success — based on the arguments presented in the book.

-- 
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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[thompnickson2]

Steve,

 

“Noodling”

 

Nick

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2021 1:07 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

The most fundamental problem with the general idea of setting objectives and then using any number of clever methods to converge on those objectives is that *at best* they are only as good as the objectives themselves.   The point being made here, of reducing the granularity to a pieceweiz, forward chaining is well motivated IMO, as it seems the "best we know how to do".

In the spirit of "exaptation", and "life is what happens while you are making other plans",  the point of picking an objective and searching for it on an exotic, high dimensional (even fractal) landscape is to provide a heuristic for *exploring* the parts of the landscape you can't even imagine much less predict exists.   I would compare it more to "creative wandering" than "active seeking", though I think the two can be compatible.

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

    ― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

On 5/27/21 3:21 PM, Prof David West wrote:

Agreed.  The book uses the notion of steppingstones, An objective that requires traversal of multiple intermediary stepping stones is essentially unattainable. But if you do something it creates new stepping stones that lead who knows where, but you "harvest those" and use them as the basis for just one more step, somewhere, you may very well end up at a place worth getting to; it will be a surprise and almost certainly not where you thought you were going.

davew

On Thu, May 27, 2021, at 9:38 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

OK. I agree that failure on every one of those objectives is assured. 

But the issue is less about setting the objective and measuring the 

outcomes than it is about *harvesting* one's failures. Everyone (with 

any sense) knows we'll fail on the overwhelming majority of those very 

ambitious objectives. But the point of such objectives is not to 

succeed perfectly, as if we're some GA satisfying a singular exogenous 

objective function. Their purpose is an ethical one.

After Pieter's post, it rekindled my desire for a "dashboard" 

presenting measures for each [sub]objective. But, going back to your 

original, correct, objection, non-planned-for measures/effects would 

not be included, biasing our understanding of the progression. Each 

measure becomes nothing more than a bell on a slot machine, injecting a 

little dopamine.

That's what the Pinkers and Shermers of the world seem like to me. Slot 

machine players looking for that dopamine ... like Musk launching a 

stupid car up into space. They're sooooo similar to the junkies I used 

to clean up after in the park behind our old house.

On 5/27/21 8:10 AM, Prof David West wrote:

I must agree and disagree.

Yes, my statement was an oversimplification, but not a caricature. 

The caveat I should have included concerns the "distance" from where we are at the moment and the point at which the objective would be achieved.

I stand by my assertion that for objectives like the UN goals shared by Pieter and the less specific objectives in Steve's post, failure is assuredly more likely than success — based on the arguments presented in the book.

-- 

↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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[gepr]

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Emergency responders have hard constraints.   Dozers and crews need to be moved into place.  Aircraft need fuel and access to water or fire retardant.    Crew need meals and can only function and survive within certain temperature ranges.   The objectives themselves have a political dimension:  Save multi-million dollar properties vs. public forests vs. native lands.   In this sense the objectives are fuzzy and the whole firefighting effort itself depends on a significant extent to predicting weather conditions accurately.  Some of those weather conditions are even created by a fire.  

One can cast the constraints as coarse energy levels, but that may wash out the ill-defined objective entirely.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
Sent: Tuesday, June 1, 2021 10:20 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] heuristics for fuzzy objectives (was Re: Drones to detect wildfires)

Another context in which a *softening* of objectives, or perhaps multi-objective orientation, might help:

Safety Third
https://www.jems.com/operations/safety-is-third-not-first-and-we-all-know-it-should-be/

This context does a better job of highlighting the point that objective-less wandering is *not* unequivocally better than [multi-]objective optimization. Of course, Stanley glosses this in his comments about "modest" objectives. Perhaps we could reframe the idea that an emergency responder's desire to both help someone and not be injured in the process is a "modest" [set of] objective[s]? But it should be easy to see why that's dodgy rhetoric. Staying alive while helping people is "modest"? Really?

The "safety first" mantra is not, unlike the strawman set forth in this article, a hard *ordering* of priorities. The mantra is an attempt to get the individual to think dynamically, adaptively. We know your dopamine-fueled risk-taking personality will *cause* you to leap into the fray before engaging your conscious mind. So our (perhaps flawed) attempt, here, is to encourage you to keep your conscious mind engaged and *balance* all the rational priorities you know apply.

Stanley's rhetoric was hyperbolic if applied literally, especially to situations in the middle of the spectrum between "modest" and "ambitious". But given the uphill battle, it was useful hyperbole. It was a great shock-jock technique. An "analog" to clickbait. Hook 'em quick. But 5-6 years after peak rhetoric, we should be able to couch it in a reasonable spectrum. Heuristics for when to formulate and solve for crisp objectives versus when to *play* versus a mix of both seem more interesting at this point.


On 5/28/21 10:06 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> The most fundamental problem with the general idea of setting objectives and then using any number of clever methods to converge on those objectives is that *at best* they are only as good as the objectives themselves.   The point being made here, of reducing the granularity to a pieceweiz, forward chaining is well motivated IMO, as it seems the "best we know how to do".
>
> In the spirit of "exaptation", and "life is what happens while you are making other plans",  the point of picking an objective and searching for it on an exotic, high dimensional (even fractal) landscape is to provide a heuristic for *exploring* the parts of the landscape you can't even imagine much less predict exists.   I would compare it more to "creative wandering" than "active seeking", though I think the two can be compatible.
>
>     /“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the
> journey that matters, in the end.”///
>
>         ― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
> <https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/817527>

--
☤>$ uǝlƃ

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[gepr]

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