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Few of you ...

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Nick Thompson

Re: Few of you ...

David,

Is there such a thing as a fuzzy algorithm? I would think that was a contradiction in terms.

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 Prof David West
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 10:29 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Few of you ...

"any military must operate on algorithms" (Nick)

Not really true. and there is a huge spectrum of "algorithm-ness" as a function of military branch, activity, rank, etc.

A navy vessel is a machine and operates on algorithms. Humans within that machine must be constrained to be as machine-like and algorithm governed as possible else the underlying machine falters. Same this is true of the quasi-military astronauts in the space station.

In the army, soldiers are trained in principles until they become second nature and their subsequent behavior is, if successful, decidedly non-algorithmic (instead it is complex / emergent). "Plans are always the first casualty of war." Plans = algorithms. Read General McChrystal's book, Team of Teams, to get what I am saying.

A fighter pilot 'practices algorithmically' but does not fight that way. Commercial pilots fly algorithmically — is what makes the job so damn boring — but Schulenberger (tenth anniversary today) did not land in the Hudson according to some algorithm.

BTW, software developers are supposed to ply their trade rationally (i.e. algorithmically) but David Parnas once wrote an excellent paper, "The Rational Design Process: how and why to fake it," that put the lie to the ideal.

davew

On Mon, Jan 14, 2019, at 11:48 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Thanks for answering, Frank.

As the old song goes, “Then you’re much older than I-yai!”

Do you also remember when “They waltzed to a Souza Band”

My wasn’t that music grand!

Oh, it was more than the pomp Wouk bristled at. It was the removal of discretion, as well. The American military is perhaps better than most in that regard, but any military has to operate on algorithms, and nobody likes to be a node in an algorithm. So, I guess my thesis was that in the second world war we got a double and conflicting lesson: how effective an algorithmic system can be AND how demeaning it can be to be part of one. Two solutions present themselves: 1. Hire mercenaries and 2. Automate. Of course we have done both.

An officer of your dad’s rank, of course, was an exception and even within that giant system he made big decisions daily, decisions that affected the lives of thousands of people. There is a scene in that same book where an officer is required to make one of those decisions between surely killing 50 strangers or threatening the life of 150 you know that utilitarians are fond of posing. It’s a harrowing scene.

I wonder what the relation is between a distaste for government and service as an enlisted soldier. That’s not a rhetorical question. I do wonder. I am thinking there is a high correlation between states with high military participation and states with anti-government politics. When a conservative thinks of “government” is he more likely to think of the military?

Nick

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

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2019 10:01 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Few of you ...

I read the book but I don't remember that paragraph. As you know, dad was a Naval Officer who achieved respectable rank. I was fascinated by it but he felt that all the pomp and ceremony was BS. If computers are today's sailors, something is lost and something gained.

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

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

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

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Mon, Jan 14, 2019, 9:53 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email] wrote:
, I imagine, are old enough to remember this:

“The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you are not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and economies and common-sense changes that your native intelligence suggests to you are mistakes. Learn to quash them. Constantly ask yourself, "How would I do this if I were a fool?" Throttle down your mind to a crawl. Then you will never go wrong.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
It seems right that the computer was invented by a democratic society after the largest successful naval campaign in the history of the universe. The navy was a giant algorithm. Computers are the conscripted sailors of our generation.

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

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by gepr

If you were really antisocial, you wouldn't care how you seem. It seems to me this is more a tactic for executing conversations rather than a necessity. One could merely inhibit the self in various ways topic by topic. As for alcohol, it actually becomes easier for me to do this, as my inner nihilist comes out who doesn't feel the need to reconcile the every single thing my nutcase discussant has to say.

On 1/15/19, 11:39 AM, "Friam on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣" <[hidden email] on behalf of [hidden email]> wrote:

There's another, more subtle, reason to adopt roles. To have a fully Socratic conversation, you have to commit to an extra extent to play along with things your authentic, fully complex, individual self may not agree with. The most well-known role is Devil's Advocate. But there are many others. If I don't adopt the role, I end up just sitting there listening politely ... which people have told me seems "aloof" or "stand-off-ish".

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Prof David West

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

There are definitely fuzzy algorithms, just as there is fuzzy logic.

Our CS colleagues could better explain.

davew

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019, at 11:53 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

David,

Is there such a thing as a fuzzy algorithm? I would think that was a contradiction in terms.

N

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 Prof David West
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 10:29 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Few of you ...

"any military must operate on algorithms" (Nick)

Not really true. and there is a huge spectrum of "algorithm-ness" as a function of military branch, activity, rank, etc.

A navy vessel is a machine and operates on algorithms. Humans within that machine must be constrained to be as machine-like and algorithm governed as possible else the underlying machine falters. Same this is true of the quasi-military astronauts in the space station.

In the army, soldiers are trained in principles until they become second nature and their subsequent behavior is, if successful, decidedly non-algorithmic (instead it is complex / emergent). "Plans are always the first casualty of war." Plans = algorithms. Read General McChrystal's book, Team of Teams, to get what I am saying.

A fighter pilot 'practices algorithmically' but does not fight that way. Commercial pilots fly algorithmically — is what makes the job so damn boring — but Schulenberger (tenth anniversary today) did not land in the Hudson according to some algorithm.

BTW, software developers are supposed to ply their trade rationally (i.e. algorithmically) but David Parnas once wrote an excellent paper, "The Rational Design Process: how and why to fake it," that put the lie to the ideal.

davew

On Mon, Jan 14, 2019, at 11:48 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Thanks for answering, Frank.

As the old song goes, “Then you’re much older than I-yai!”

Do you also remember when “They waltzed to a Souza Band”

My wasn’t that music grand!

Oh, it was more than the pomp Wouk bristled at. It was the removal of discretion, as well. The American military is perhaps better than most in that regard, but any military has to operate on algorithms, and nobody likes to be a node in an algorithm. So, I guess my thesis was that in the second world war we got a double and conflicting lesson: how effective an algorithmic system can be AND how demeaning it can be to be part of one. Two solutions present themselves: 1. Hire mercenaries and 2. Automate. Of course we have done both.

An officer of your dad’s rank, of course, was an exception and even within that giant system he made big decisions daily, decisions that affected the lives of thousands of people. There is a scene in that same book where an officer is required to make one of those decisions between surely killing 50 strangers or threatening the life of 150 you know that utilitarians are fond of posing. It’s a harrowing scene.

I wonder what the relation is between a distaste for government and service as an enlisted soldier. That’s not a rhetorical question. I do wonder. I am thinking there is a high correlation between states with high military participation and states with anti-government politics. When a conservative thinks of “government” is he more likely to think of the military?

Nick

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

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2019 10:01 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Few of you ...

I read the book but I don't remember that paragraph. As you know, dad was a Naval Officer who achieved respectable rank. I was fascinated by it but he felt that all the pomp and ceremony was BS. If computers are today's sailors, something is lost and something gained.

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

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

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

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Mon, Jan 14, 2019, 9:53 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email] wrote:

, I imagine, are old enough to remember this:

“The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you are not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and economies and common-sense changes that your native intelligence suggests to you are mistakes. Learn to quash them. Constantly ask yourself, "How would I do this if I were a fool?" Throttle down your mind to a crawl. Then you will never go wrong.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
It seems right that the computer was invented by a democratic society after the largest successful naval campaign in the history of the universe. The navy was a giant algorithm. Computers are the conscripted sailors of our generation.

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

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

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Nick Thompson

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by gepr

Cf, Games People Play.

Another blast from the past. I think what Glen identifies here may be “pastimes” which are relatively innocent versions of games. Unfortunately, Berne thinks that all people are essentially vicious, which means that although the book is written in a chipper, upbeat tone, it’s vision is pretty dark.

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 u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 11:19 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Few of you ...

So, while reading the wikipedia article, an old saw of mine re-emerges. They talk about these sorts of things as "fluid" or context dependent. Yet they never (given my dilettante attention) talk about transients, transition times, half-life, periodicity, etc. How long does it take to self-stereotype? How many smacks does it take to snap out of it?

The reason I ask is because, recognizing my (OK, fine!) asociality, I almost always adopt a role in any given social context. It's a purposeful adoption and I've gotten quite good at it, I think. Either there is no "me" to deindividuate *or* theories like self-categorization are brain farts of the imagination and have no real bearing on actual life. (And there can be no in between! .... just kidding, of course. I'm drawing the distinction for rhetorical purposes.)

The interesting thing is that I can don and doff these roles almost instantaneously. Talk to one guy at the party and play the role of Programmer. He goes off for a beer and talk to another person and play the role of Occult Scholar. (My favorite story is when Jon Parsons ejaculated into a velvet box to summon his red-headed homunculus that was later stolen from him by L. Ron Hubbard.) Then she goes off when the host announces margaritas and launch into Cancer Survivor mode with someone else. It's truly a breath of fresh air when I run across someone else who is willing to swap roles several times through a single conversation.

I sincerely pity the person who finds themselves playing one or a small cluster of roles for all or most of their contexts, assuming such people exist.

On 1/15/19 9:50 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> I witness otherwise intelligent people act that way when they don’t need to. I’d like to think that if enough people smacked them in the head they would stop it.

> From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Nick Thompson

> <[hidden email]>

> Date: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 at 10:15 AM

> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Few of you ...

> Interesting article. Referenced within it is a long Wikipedia article on self-categorization theory<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-categorization_theory>, which is, by the way, just a stunning example of abduction.

☣ uǝlƃ

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gepr

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Hm. Maybe you're right. Maybe I've been *told* I'm anti-social and simply been a victim of those over-socialized people who don't show much depth in social contexts. Regardless, the topical question I raised still stands: For those poor sailors who *feel* demeaned by the algorithmic context, how *quickly* can/do they transition into and out of the modes?

Dave raised this question implicitly by arguing that there are at least 2 modes: training as a cog in the machine but performing as a dynamic individual. The question is how often, how fast, etc these mode-switches happen.

On 1/15/19 11:09 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> If you were really antisocial, you wouldn't care how you seem. It seems to me this is more a tactic for executing conversations rather than a necessity. One could merely inhibit the self in various ways topic by topic. As for alcohol, it actually becomes easier for me to do this, as my inner nihilist comes out who doesn't feel the need to reconcile the every single thing my nutcase discussant has to say.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Nick Thompson

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Marcus,

Would you be happier if we called them "attractors". Surely you, stalwart
individualist that you are, would agree that there is something out there
that "attracts you" to certain lines of behavior in social situations?

Or perhaps not?

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 Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 11:27 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Few of you ...

Glen writes:

< It's truly a breath of fresh air when I run across someone else who is
willing to swap roles several times through a single conversation. >

Why do there have to be roles and not just topics?

Marcus

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Steve Smith

Re: Few of you ...

I appreciate the introduction of "roles" and "topics" and "attractors" here. I would say that *I* experience all three slightly differently:

Roles: This subdivides into (roughly?) 3 modes

Roles I was born/raised into... Son, brother, classmate, boyfriend, husband, father. These were handed to me by the culture I "became me" in. I may have been mildly more self-aware and some might say cynical in my living/experiencing/elaborating these roles.
Roles I adopted more consciously... Friend, Student, Employee/Subordinate, Researcher, Technologist, Businessman, etc. These roles are modeled after the ones I saw, but I believe my engagement with them exceeded some threshold of self-awareness to become self-intention. Each of these roles might have supspecie.
Roles such as I think Glen refers to, roles adopted in a very transient mode... understanding I'm doing so for a specific purpose in a specific context for (nominally) a very limited time.... fellow traveler, cynic, seducer, authoritarian, submissive, pleader, demander, ranter, raver, etc...

Topics: I believe these are orthogonal to Roles and I can approach any topic from the point of view of one of the roles, or perhaps vice-versa. Topics generally subdivide as follows for me:

Personal. Things that have an immediate and *personal* meaning to me. These are mostly about self-image, psychological and emotional states, physical states, immediate intimate relations, etc.
Public. These things tend to fall into the arena of (possibly well informed) opinions such as politics, religion, aesthetic preferences, etc.
Technical. These things generally fall in to the categories of Science or Technology... things which can be studied and much derived from "first principles". These things (in principle) can be tested in something like an objective mode. The "soft sciences" are getting "harder" all the time as they take on more mathematical rigor, as we live and study them longer we have more formal models for them, as we discover/develop new measurement technologies which were presumed to be out of reach in the past (e.g. fMRI, crypto, big-data analysis, etc.)

Attractors: I take these to be the psychosocial context in which I discover these roles (and role-topic pairs?) and my relation to them. The larger culture is where these attractors (in particular the born/raised roles (1)) exist. Type 2 Roles are usually more context specific, based in some subculture experience and therefore the attractors are more dependent on the sub-context. Type 3 Roles seem to have the most restrictive attractors, depending more on my own psychosocial context than perhaps the others, or maybe more to the point, those contexts are more idiosyncratic to me. They are more likely to be adopted transiently and therefore have less investment and equally I feel the "attractors" are more sweeping... there is a lot more "acting as if" or "fake it til you make it" for me in this domain. I might enter a conversation for example, not intending to be a cynic, but quickly find myself drawn into it by my conversant's adopting a Pollyanna role, for example.

- Steve

On 1/15/19 12:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Marcus, 

Would you be happier if we called them "attractors".   Surely you, stalwart
individualist that you are, would agree that there is something out there
that "attracts you" to certain lines of behavior in social situations? 

Or perhaps not? 

Nick 

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


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 11:27 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Few of you ...

Glen writes:

< It's truly a breath of fresh air when I run across someone else who is
willing to swap roles several times through a single conversation. >
 
Why do there have to be roles and not just topics?

Marcus
  

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Barry MacKichan

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by Edward Angel

Funny, I was going to mention this (the hybrid car, not the interview)
as well.

Jonathan Wouk is Victor’s son, and was in my class at Harvard (1965).
We were both active in the Harvard Outing Club (hiking, spelunking in
NY, Virginia and W. Virginia, climbing in the Presidential Range in NH
on semester breaks), and Jon was one of the two classmates with me when
we canoed from Reindeer Lake in northern Saskatechewan to Eskimo Point,
in what is now Nunavut (was the Northwest Territory of Keewatin).

In one of those accidental meetings that you would think had zero
probability, in 2005 I ran into Jon and his mother and two men who were
very much older having breakfast in Manhattan. I kind of get the
impression that at least one of them was Victor or Herman. They are the
ones who finally told me, 40 years after the fact, that my parents and
the Wouks had hired a bush pilot to fly over our route to check on us.
Apparently he found us, but we never saw him. My parents never let on
that they had been part of it.

--Barry

On 15 Jan 2019, at 3:33, Edward Angel wrote:

> Herman Wouk’s brother Victor is credited with being the inventor of
> the hybrid car. He interviewed me for Caltech when I was a senior in
> high school.
>
> Ed
>
> ____________

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Nick Thompson

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

I like the taxonomy. What do you suppose would be the chi-squared probability of your occupying the various cells. For me, I find that I avoid playing “Expert” in the topic of “evolution of communication” because the expectations are high and I always disappoint them. Best to play Expert when the topic is something I know nothing about.

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 Steven A Smith
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 1:13 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Few of you ...

I appreciate the introduction of "roles" and "topics" and "attractors" here. I would say that *I* experience all three slightly differently:

Roles: This subdivides into (roughly?) 3 modes

Roles I was born/raised into... Son, brother, classmate, boyfriend, husband, father. These were handed to me by the culture I "became me" in. I may have been mildly more self-aware and some might say cynical in my living/experiencing/elaborating these roles.
Roles I adopted more consciously... Friend, Student, Employee/Subordinate, Researcher, Technologist, Businessman, etc. These roles are modeled after the ones I saw, but I believe my engagement with them exceeded some threshold of self-awareness to become self-intention. Each of these roles might have supspecie.
Roles such as I think Glen refers to, roles adopted in a very transient mode... understanding I'm doing so for a specific purpose in a specific context for (nominally) a very limited time.... fellow traveler, cynic, seducer, authoritarian, submissive, pleader, demander, ranter, raver, etc...

Topics: I believe these are orthogonal to Roles and I can approach any topic from the point of view of one of the roles, or perhaps vice-versa. Topics generally subdivide as follows for me:

Personal. Things that have an immediate and *personal* meaning to me. These are mostly about self-image, psychological and emotional states, physical states, immediate intimate relations, etc.
Public. These things tend to fall into the arena of (possibly well informed) opinions such as politics, religion, aesthetic preferences, etc.
Technical. These things generally fall in to the categories of Science or Technology... things which can be studied and much derived from "first principles". These things (in principle) can be tested in something like an objective mode. The "soft sciences" are getting "harder" all the time as they take on more mathematical rigor, as we live and study them longer we have more formal models for them, as we discover/develop new measurement technologies which were presumed to be out of reach in the past (e.g. fMRI, crypto, big-data analysis, etc.)

- Steve

On 1/15/19 12:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Marcus,

Would you be happier if we called them "attractors".   Surely you, stalwart

individualist that you are, would agree that there is something out there

that "attracts you" to certain lines of behavior in social situations?

Or perhaps not?

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

-----Original Message-----

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels

Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 11:27 AM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Few of you ...

Glen writes:

< It's truly a breath of fresh air when I run across someone else who is

willing to swap roles several times through a single conversation. >

Why do there have to be roles and not just topics?

Marcus

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gepr

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

That's an interesting idea. I don't think that's what I'm describing, though. I'm simply describing my coping strategy for coerced social interaction, mostly with strangers. If I meet the same person more than 2 or 3 times, a real relationship develops and I don't play the roles anymore.

On 1/15/19 11:16 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Cf, Games People Play <http://www.ericberne.com/games-people-play/good-games/> .
>
> Another blast from the past. I think what Glen identifies here may be “pastimes <http://www.ericberne.com/games-people-play/good-games/> ” which are relatively innocent versions of games. Unfortunately, Berne thinks that all people are essentially vicious, which means that although the book is written in a chipper, upbeat tone, it’s vision is pretty dark.

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Steve Smith

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by Barry MacKichan

Barry -

Fascinating anecdote!... pretty studly, canoeing (open canoe?) in that
country anytime of year. I don't think "normal" kids do that kind of
stuff anymore!

- Steve

On 1/15/19 2:07 PM, Barry MacKichan wrote:

> Funny, I was going to mention this (the hybrid car, not the interview)
> as well.
>
> Jonathan Wouk is Victor’s son, and was in my class at Harvard (1965).
> We were both active in the Harvard Outing Club (hiking, spelunking in
> NY, Virginia and W. Virginia, climbing in the Presidential Range in NH
> on semester breaks), and Jon was one of the two classmates with me
> when we canoed from Reindeer Lake in northern Saskatechewan to Eskimo
> Point, in what is now Nunavut (was the Northwest Territory of Keewatin).
>
> In one of those accidental meetings that you would think had zero
> probability, in 2005 I ran into Jon and his mother and two men who
> were very much older having breakfast in Manhattan. I kind of get the
> impression that at least one of them was Victor or Herman. They are
> the ones who finally told me, 40 years after the fact, that my parents
> and the Wouks had hired a bush pilot to fly over our route to check on
> us. Apparently he found us, but we never saw him. My parents never let
> on that they had been part of it.
>
> --Barry
>
>
> On 15 Jan 2019, at 3:33, Edward Angel wrote:
>
>> Herman Wouk’s brother Victor is credited with being the inventor of
>> the hybrid car. He interviewed me for Caltech when I was a senior in
>> high school.
>>
>> Ed
>>
>> ____________
>
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Steve Smith

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

I think it would be more appropriate to apply a fuzzy set membership, though probability works as well. The semantics are different even if the maths are the same.

On 1/15/19 3:22 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

S.

I like the taxonomy. What do you suppose would be the chi-squared probability of your occupying the various cells. For me, I find that I avoid playing “Expert” in the topic of “evolution of communication” because the expectations are high and I always disappoint them. Best to play Expert when the topic is something I know nothing about.

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 Steven A Smith
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 1:13 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Few of you ...

I appreciate the introduction of "roles" and "topics" and "attractors" here.    I would say that *I* experience all three slightly differently:

Roles: This subdivides into (roughly?) 3 modes

Roles I was born/raised into... Son, brother, classmate, boyfriend, husband, father.   These were handed to me by the culture I "became me" in. I may have been mildly more self-aware and some might say cynical in my living/experiencing/elaborating these roles.

Roles I adopted more consciously... Friend, Student, Employee/Subordinate, Researcher, Technologist, Businessman, etc.   These roles are modeled after the ones I saw, but I believe my engagement with them exceeded some threshold of self-awareness to become self-intention.   Each of these roles might have supspecie.

Roles such as I think Glen refers to, roles adopted in a very transient mode... understanding I'm doing so for a specific purpose in a specific context for (nominally) a very limited time.... fellow traveler, cynic, seducer, authoritarian, submissive, pleader, demander, ranter, raver, etc...

Topics: I believe these are orthogonal to Roles and I can approach any topic from the point of view of one of the roles, or perhaps vice-versa. Topics generally subdivide as follows for me:

Personal. Things that have an immediate and *personal* meaning to me. These are mostly about self-image, psychological and emotional states, physical states, immediate intimate relations, etc.

Public.   These things tend to fall into the arena of (possibly well informed) opinions such as politics, religion, aesthetic preferences, etc.

Technical. These things generally fall in to the categories of Science or Technology... things which can be studied and much derived from "first principles". These things (in principle) can be tested in something like an objective mode. The "soft sciences" are getting "harder" all the time as they take on more mathematical rigor, as we live and study them longer we have more formal models for them, as we discover/develop new measurement technologies which were presumed to be out of reach in the past (e.g. fMRI, crypto, big-data analysis, etc.)

Attractors: I take these to be the psychosocial context in which I discover these roles (and role-topic pairs?) and my relation to them.   The larger culture is where these attractors (in particular the born/raised roles (1)) exist.   Type 2 Roles are usually more context specific, based in some subculture experience and therefore the attractors are more dependent on the sub-context. Type 3 Roles seem to have the most restrictive attractors, depending more on my own psychosocial context than perhaps the others, or maybe more to the point, those contexts are more idiosyncratic to me. They are more likely to be adopted transiently and therefore have less investment and equally I feel the "attractors" are more sweeping... there is a lot more "acting as if" or "fake it til you make it" for me in this domain.   I might enter a conversation for example, not intending to be a cynic, but quickly find myself drawn into it by my conversant's adopting a Pollyanna role, for example.

- Steve

On 1/15/19 12:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
Marcus, 
 
Would you be happier if we called them "attractors".   Surely you, stalwart
individualist that you are, would agree that there is something out there
that "attracts you" to certain lines of behavior in social situations? 
 
Or perhaps not? 
 
Nick 
 
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 11:27 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Few of you ...
 
Glen writes:
 
< It's truly a breath of fresh air when I run across someone else who is
willing to swap roles several times through a single conversation. >
 
Why do there have to be roles and not just topics?
 
Marcus
  
 
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gepr

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

There's something nagging at me. But I can't quite figure out what it is. On the one hand, you say "The larger culture is where these attractors ... exist." Yet you seem to allow for (these or other) attractors to exist at a finer layer, within you or in a very proximate locale near you with a medium layer at "subculture" and a fine layer at "idiosyncratic to me".

I tend to think of attractors as forcing structures ... an overwhelming congealing of *all* the dimensions and factors so that the finer layers have no freedoms/choice but to go with the flow ... kinda like a tiny piece of space junk being trapped in the Sun's gravitational field. Sure, at the coarser layers, things like planets, comets, other stars, etc. are kinda-sorta coerced into a way of behaving. But the more asymmetric the relationship, the more "forced" the finer grain components will be.

So, to [mis]extrapolate all the way to social systems, a rally participant may not have much choice but to feel the adrenaline rush of chanting "Lock Him Up!". But where is the attractor in such a conception? At the social layer? At the physiochemical layer inside the individual participant? At *all* layers, a kind of cross-trophic, multi-scale forcing structure? Can there be a stable thing at a coarse grain without there also being a stable thing at the fine grain? Or does "attractor" somehow imply a "thin", reductive system, where, if it's in an attractor, all granularities exhibit stable or [quasi]periodic behavior?

To be clearer, this question is fundamentally related to the rhythm and periodicity question I raised before. In order to call it an attractor, some parts/representations of it must be invariant or in some steady state while other parts of it swirl around in [quasi]periodicity. It also relates nicely to my question about Dave's Indra's Net and where/how/if there exist individuals and what are they? As well as the inter-individual algorithmicity of the lower ranks of the Navy and the intra-individual algorithmicity of the higher ranks?

FWIW, I often do get "caught up" in a given transient role. It's happened a lot here in PDX because so many of the hipster liberals I end up talking to are so damned sure of themselves. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0520-3 It happened quite a bit in Santa Fe, as well, though. I feel *forced* to adopt and maintain a role simply because those around me are so convicted by their perspective that any evidence that I'm actually skeptical of my own role's viewpoint is interpreted as evidence that I (secretly) agree with their viewpoint ... yet another artificial bifurcation (P v ¬P). In the company of people who deftly don and doff roles (not topics), there's no forcing structure, no need to clamp more firmly to a particular role, because the discussants are flexible, if not natively pluralist.

On 1/15/19 12:13 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> Attractors: I take these to be the psychosocial context in which I discover these roles (and role-topic pairs?) and my relation to them. The larger culture is where these attractors (in particular the born/raised roles (1)) exist. Type 2 Roles are usually more context specific, based in some subculture experience and therefore the attractors are more dependent on the sub-context. Type 3 Roles seem to have the most restrictive attractors, depending more on my own psychosocial context than perhaps the others, or maybe more to the point, those contexts are more idiosyncratic to me. They are more likely to be adopted transiently and therefore have less investment and equally I feel the "attractors" are more sweeping... there is a lot more "acting as if" or "fake it til you make it" for me in this domain. I might enter a conversation for example, not intending to be a cynic, but quickly find myself drawn into it by my conversant's adopting a Pollyanna role, for example.

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Few of you ...

Glen writes:

< So, to [mis]extrapolate all the way to social systems, a rally participant may not have much choice but to feel the adrenaline rush of chanting "Lock Him Up!". But where is the attractor in such a conception? >

Some people participate in intramural sports or sing in a choir. Such participation isn't about being the best at the sport, or aspiring to be the most talented musician. As far as I can tell, they just like performing with other people. It is about experience and participation. It is an excuse to get together. It is about being around people they recognize as similar to them. (I feel like Commander Data observing the behavior of humans here..)

Marcus

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gepr

Re: Few of you ...

That's fine. But it doesn't directly address the point. Is experience-being-with-other-people really an "attractor" in the sense we usually use that term? I don't think so. I think the normal (complexity fanboi) sense of "attractor" is at least somewhat reductionist/thin/flat and not commensurate with phrases like "experience being with other people".

If we simply decided these things are not attractors, then I think my problem dissolves.

On 1/16/19 2:45 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Some people participate in intramural sports or sing in a choir. Such participation isn't about being the best at the sport, or aspiring to be the most talented musician. As far as I can tell, they just like performing with other people. It is about experience and participation. It is an excuse to get together. It is about being around people they recognize as similar to them. (I feel like Commander Data observing the behavior of humans here..)

--
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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Few of you ...

I think of the "experience being with other people" as sort of like how my herding dog follows me from room to room. There's a knob in her head that is set to keep a visual distance with her people. It's what she expects and it comes from her breed. It's not the result of a dynamical system that occurs has occurred on the timescale of her life. It is a reductionist/thin/flat explanation for the dog and the basketball player and the choir singer.

On 1/16/19, 3:56 PM, "uǝlƃ ☣" <[hidden email]> wrote:

That's fine. But it doesn't directly address the point. Is experience-being-with-other-people really an "attractor" in the sense we usually use that term? I don't think so. I think the normal (complexity fanboi) sense of "attractor" is at least somewhat reductionist/thin/flat and not commensurate with phrases like "experience being with other people".

If we simply decided these things are not attractors, then I think my problem dissolves.

On 1/16/19 2:45 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Some people participate in intramural sports or sing in a choir. Such participation isn't about being the best at the sport, or aspiring to be the most talented musician. As far as I can tell, they just like performing with other people. It is about experience and participation. It is an excuse to get together. It is about being around people they recognize as similar to them. (I feel like Commander Data observing the behavior of humans here..)

--
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Steve Smith

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by gepr

I don't know if this helps but these group-experiences seem to me to have the feature of phase-lock, canalization, and entrainment.

I recently *re*watched a surreal dystopian scandinavian film "The Bothersome Man" where the protaganist finds himself (after a suicide/attempt) delivered to a city/job/context where everyone is functioning in a *nearly* normal way, but in every case, it feels as if they are following templates/scripts rather than exploring a complex phase space with interesting attractors.

Maybe you had to be there, but I feel like this movie exposed precisely what we are talking about here through presenting it's complement.

- Steve

Den brysomme mannen:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808185/

https://tubitv.com/movies/456289/the_bothersome_man

On 1/16/19 3:56 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

That's fine.  But it doesn't directly address the point.  Is experience-being-with-other-people really an "attractor" in the sense we usually use that term?  I don't think so.  I think the normal (complexity fanboi) sense of "attractor" is at least somewhat reductionist/thin/flat and not commensurate with phrases like "experience being with other people".

If we simply decided these things are not attractors, then I think my problem dissolves.

On 1/16/19 2:45 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Some people participate in intramural sports or sing in a choir.    Such participation isn't about being the best at the sport, or aspiring to be the most talented musician.  As far as I can tell, they just like performing with other people.   It is about experience and participation.  It is an excuse to get together.   It is about being around people they recognize as similar to them.   (I feel like Commander Data observing the behavior of humans here..)

Steve Smith

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

I appreciate the point:

It's not the result of a dynamical system that occurs has occurred on the timescale of her life.

There may be psychochemical dynamical systems inside her body involved
in maintaining "sight of you" and there likely *were* complex feedback
loops in the intentional breeding of her ancestors as well as the
natural selection environments that lead her first ancestor (whatever
that is) to be chosen as "good stock to start a herding breed from".

On 1/16/19 4:07 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> I think of the "experience being with other people" as sort of like how my herding dog follows me from room to room. There's a knob in her head that is set to keep a visual distance with her people. It's what she expects and it comes from her breed. It's not the result of a dynamical system that occurs has occurred on the timescale of her life. It is a reductionist/thin/flat explanation for the dog and the basketball player and the choir singer.
>
> On 1/16/19, 3:56 PM, "uǝlƃ ☣" <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> That's fine. But it doesn't directly address the point. Is experience-being-with-other-people really an "attractor" in the sense we usually use that term? I don't think so. I think the normal (complexity fanboi) sense of "attractor" is at least somewhat reductionist/thin/flat and not commensurate with phrases like "experience being with other people".
>
> If we simply decided these things are not attractors, then I think my problem dissolves.
>
> On 1/16/19 2:45 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > Some people participate in intramural sports or sing in a choir. Such participation isn't about being the best at the sport, or aspiring to be the most talented musician. As far as I can tell, they just like performing with other people. It is about experience and participation. It is an excuse to get together. It is about being around people they recognize as similar to them. (I feel like Commander Data observing the behavior of humans here..)
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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gepr

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Well, someone could suggest that the bred-in knob is the stable feature in a larger evolutionary/ecological system in which the breed and individual organism are finer grained components entrained by the larger dynamic. So by slicing out the organism's timescale from the evolutionary timescale, we're *not* being reductionist. We're (somehow) allowing a logical layer of abstraction between the two granularities ... as if we could EVER talk about the organism without also talking about its evolutionary context.

On 1/16/19 3:07 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I think of the "experience being with other people" as sort of like how my herding dog follows me from room to room. There's a knob in her head that is set to keep a visual distance with her people. It's what she expects and it comes from her breed. It's not the result of a dynamical system that occurs has occurred on the timescale of her life. It is a reductionist/thin/flat explanation for the dog and the basketball player and the choir singer.

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Steve Smith

Re: Few of you ...

In reply to this post by gepr

> There's something nagging at me.

Not surprising, this was pretty "off the cuff" but I'll try to either
defend/modify/retract as appropriate.

> But I can't quite figure out what it is. On the one hand, you say "The larger culture is where these attractors ... exist." Yet you seem to allow for (these or other) attractors to exist at a finer layer, within you or in a very proximate locale near you with a medium layer at "subculture" and a fine layer at "idiosyncratic to me".
>
> I tend to think of attractors as forcing structures ... an overwhelming congealing of *all* the dimensions and factors so that the finer layers have no freedoms/choice but to go with the flow ... kinda like a tiny piece of space junk being trapped in the Sun's gravitational field. Sure, at the coarser layers, things like planets, comets, other stars, etc. are kinda-sorta coerced into a way of behaving. But the more asymmetric the relationship, the more "forced" the finer grain components will be.
>
> So, to [mis]extrapolate all the way to social systems, a rally participant may not have much choice but to feel the adrenaline rush of chanting "Lock Him Up!". But where is the attractor in such a conception? At the social layer? At the physiochemical layer inside the individual participant? At *all* layers, a kind of cross-trophic, multi-scale forcing structure?
Yes, I think so (cross-trophic, multi-scale). In your example, the
pysiochemical system of the individuals involved, up to and including
some extrema such as some folks failing to get "wound up" because they
are just that chill (or on quaaludes?) while others get wound up but in
the opposite chirality, shutting down the folks around them doing the
"lock it up!" chant.
> Can there be a stable thing at a coarse grain without there also being a stable thing at the fine grain? Or does "attractor" somehow imply a "thin", reductive system, where, if it's in an attractor, all granularities exhibit stable or [quasi]periodic behavior?
I'm still struggling with "thin" here (and above).
>
> To be clearer, this question is fundamentally related to the rhythm and periodicity question I raised before. In order to call it an attractor, some parts/representations of it must be invariant or in some steady state while other parts of it swirl around in [quasi]periodicity.

I'm not sure if it reduces to precisely this simplicity but this is
certainly an example.   I don't know if there is good language (or what
it is) to discuss this structure.   Wolfram's classic categorization of
CA from I-II-III-IV is related I think? I was disturbed when that came
out by the simple fact that type I-III were the "uninteresting ones" and
IV was "all the rest".

I have to admit, in my loose analogical use of attractor (Nick's term,
my interpretation?) I think mostly in terms of a small "trajectory"
within a more complex attractor.   For example, walking down the street,
I hear the chant and am either drawn to or away from the rally/mob. As
I'm drawn *to* the mob, there are myriad near-parallel trajectories in
my geographic (the precise route I take from point A to point B) as well
as the psychochemical response and lots of ancillary activities from
firing up my video recorder on my phone (or livestream) to
texting/calling someone(s) to join (or avoid) the crowd, etc.   All
these are *loosely* constrained by some high-dimensional
characterization of *me* in relation to *these kinds of scenarios*.
Minor deviations in my psychochemistry (hunger, emotional state,
boredom/curiosity, etc.) can have large results (in one case I turn
around and walk away, in another case I rush to the front lines,
chanting louder than anyone else, and in yet another I fire up my Muscle
Car and plow it through the mob).

> It also relates nicely to my question about Dave's Indra's Net and where/how/if there exist individuals and what are they? As well as the inter-individual algorithmicity of the lower ranks of the Navy and the intra-individual algorithmicity of the higher ranks?
I'd like to participate in this discussion if it gets traction. I
haven't studied the Indra's Net stuff closely enough to throw down yet.
On one extreme it seems way too loosely metaphorical to say much about,
and on the other end, I suspect there may be a lot to discuss/refine.
I'm not sure what you mean by intra/inter individuality in the
lower/higher ranks...
> FWIW, I often do get "caught up" in a given transient role. It's happened a lot here in PDX because so many of the hipster liberals I end up talking to are so damned sure of themselves. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0520-3 It happened quite a bit in Santa Fe, as well, though. I feel *forced* to adopt and maintain a role simply because those around me are so convicted by their perspective that any evidence that I'm actually skeptical of my own role's viewpoint is interpreted as evidence that I (secretly) agree with their viewpoint ... yet another artificial bifurcation (P v ¬P). In the company of people who deftly don and doff roles (not topics), there's no forcing structure, no need to clamp more firmly to a particular role, because the discussants are flexible, if not natively pluralist.
I"m familiar with the experience... I find that I sometimes leave a
gathering (en vivo or en vitro) in search of a different milieu where I
can take a different "role" as you put it.   It is almost as if I need
to get the taste (in all sensory/emotional dimensions) out of my
"mouth".   Like you (and sometimes *with you*) I enjoy sparring with
someone who mid-battle tosses me their spear and gestures for me to hand
over my broadaxe so we can continue the contest with different
rules/perspectives on each of us. Neither of us is interested in the
evident goal of the battle (to win) but rather in exploring the
"battlespace" implied by the weapons, the ground, the nature of the
individuals engaged.

I feel like my answers are even more ill-thought-out than the original
throwdown that brought your questions, but I'm on my way out the door
and thought it better to get this off than leave it to be deleted later
and never sent.

- Steve

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