Free Will in the Atlantic

[Jochen Fromm-5]

Indeed. Not as the proverb says "where there is a will there is a way" (in German we say "wo ein Wille ist, ist auch ein Weg") but "where there are ways, there must be a will to decide which one to take". A good summary of Bruce Waller's definition of free will: the ability to generate a wide range of options for ourselves, and to decide among them without external constraint.

-J.

-------- Original message --------

From: jon zingale <[hidden email]>

Date: 4/2/21 19:13 (GMT+01:00)

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

Where there are ways there is will.



--
Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[Pieter Steenekamp]

I agree fully. If something is inscrutable it might exhibit free will. But what happens in our brains is certainly scrutable. Maybe not yet with current technology, but how can it be inscrutable in principle? In principle we know that neurons are firing and communicate with other neurons using synapse. Just look how far deep learning has come. Okay, not yet compared to the human brain, but progress is made almost by the day. Like the example I mentioned above, AlphGo that came up with creative moves that stunned all Go experts. My point is that deep learning was inspired by the structure of the brain and is showing behavior similar to the brain's. Using David Deutsch's ideas as in Beginning of Infinity that science makes progress by good explanations. The explanation that the brain is  scrutable meets Deutsch's criteria for a good explanation. What's the alternative? That there is some sort of ghost giving us free will? No, that's not a good explanation.

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 21:53, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

In what acceptable scenario is the behavior not describable in principle?    The scenario that comes to mind is in the non-science magical thinking scenario.
I doubt that Tesla navigation systems are written in a purely functional language, but surely there is more to this condition than whether I have access to that source code and can send you the million lines in purely functional form?  If something is inscrutable, it might exhibit free will?

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 12:26 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

I would say no if you can provide me the function.



--
Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[Marcus G. Daniels]

I once wrote an agent model of some of my colleagues.  It was a minor catharsis.   If I were to write one for agents that have first names that start with the letter “S”, I’d have a predicate that waited for a long thread to evolve, and then summarized them with a few tangential snarkier-than-thou remarks.    It would be a better accomplishment to learn the deterministic agent behavior with a hidden markov model, maybe.  Authorship comes with the ability to embellish, which is maybe one appeal of ABMs.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:05 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Dave West wrote:

Pieter quoted: "the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat".

 

But we do have the ability, and can "will" our heart to beat in a particular way.

 

Not only that, we (at least some individuals in the world) can control pretty much every aspect of our "autonomous nervous system." I learned how to generate alpha waves in my brain while awake and talking. Researchers recently conducted cogent conversations with individuals in the middle of lucid dreams. Then there is all the "bio-feedback" data and practices. Hundreds of similar examples could be cited.

 

Just because we don't, as a general rule, does not mean we cannot.

 

Not saying anything in this post is an argument for free will — just that the quoted argument against free will is fatally flawed.

nahhh...   it just looks like you (and the Swamis) can modify your autonomic functions and your brain waves...  the fact is, given who you/they are in those circumstances, you *had* to, you couldn't have chosen to do otherwise!   In fact you can't help but *believe* you had free will and exercised it, just like *I* who am sure you *don't* have free will have no choice but to believe *that*.    Anything else is *inconceivable* ! ("there's that word again" -Inigio Martinez)

Or at least *that* is what I choose to believe today.  I wonder if I will have a choice about what I feel about all this today?  Or after some more limp-noodle-beatings of the topic here?

Arg,

 - Smarg

PS... Don't free Willy in the Atlantic, his entire pod is in the Pacific.   Was that a Trump-administration rule, that unaccompanied minor Orcas stuck in Seaworld can only be released in an ocean other than that of their origin!  Happy onecet of April!

 

davewest

 

 

 

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

From a strict scientific perspective I accept that we don't have free will. I don't argue that we have free will. I accept, and I quote from the article quoted above:

"the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat". But...

 

From how humans perceive our own actions, I assert that we do have free will of "some sorts''. Similar to some computer programs that also have free will of "some sorts". We all agree that AlphGo who beat Lee Sedol in Go does not have free will, it did exactly what the computer code instructed it to do, but it came up with creative play that the human programmers did not even know about. This is in my view also "some sorts" of free will.

 

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 14:15, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Was it only 150 years ago when Charles Darwin first published 'On the Origin of Species' ? It feels longer. Interesting story from Stephen Cave

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

 

-J.

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[jon zingale]

Along similar lines as DaveW, I make no case for *free will*. I wish to point
out where metaphysical appeals are introduced in the process of establishing
determinism. It appears to me that ours is one where we need to wait for the
future to happen before we can account for it. Whenever we guess correctly,
we are impressed or amazed by the accuracy of the prediction. The universe
hasn't unfolded and so we create models that, rather than *anticipating* the
arrival of *novel* phenomenal differences, perpetually update priors post hoc.

Objects, themselves, are defined by what one can think to do with them. As
the universe unfolds, all objects are rewritten. A trained model may be
determined, but whether training itself is determined is what is at stake. A
metaphysical assumption is made when we posit the existence of a global
state of affairs, one that we know we cannot know. The *in principle*
brackets the undecidability associated with determining the actual function,
while still not providing a satisfactory mechanism accounting for the
changes we must introduce to the determination of said function. Faith in
the existence of such a function is a fine metaphysical belief.



--
Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[Marcus G. Daniels]

The "in principle" is really a social qualifier.   What it would look like to meaningful talk about or analyze free will?   In absence of an agreement about acceptable metaphysics, concepts like punishment lack any substance.  It is just stuff people with power do to people with less power.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 2:00 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

Along similar lines as DaveW, I make no case for *free will*. I wish to point out where metaphysical appeals are introduced in the process of establishing determinism. It appears to me that ours is one where we need to wait for the future to happen before we can account for it. Whenever we guess correctly, we are impressed or amazed by the accuracy of the prediction. The universe hasn't unfolded and so we create models that, rather than *anticipating* the arrival of phenomenal differences, perpetually update priors post hoc.

Objects, themselves, are defined by what one can think to do with them. As the universe unfolds, all objects are rewritten. A trained model may be determined, but whether training itself is determined is what is at stake. A metaphysical assumption is made when we posit the existence of a global state of affairs, one that we know we cannot know. The *in principle* brackets the undecidability associated with determining the actual function, while still not providing a satisfactory mechanism accounting for the changes we must introduce to the determination of said function. Faith in the existence of such a function is a fine metaphysical belief.



--
Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Are there experiments one could conduct to say whether a metaphysics was plausible or not?  If nothing is falsifiable, then we are again in the realm of faith.

If one starts out selecting a metaphysics to justify some action or belief, this is also not helpful to clear communication or analysis.   

We can select rules of the game that are the least controversial with the most empirical evidence supporting them.   This is not a failure of imagination, this is fair play.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:25 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

 

I agree fully. If something is inscrutable it might exhibit free will. But what happens in our brains is certainly scrutable. Maybe not yet with current technology, but how can it be inscrutable in principle? In principle we know that neurons are firing and communicate with other neurons using synapse. Just look how far deep learning has come. Okay, not yet compared to the human brain, but progress is made almost by the day. Like the example I mentioned above, AlphGo that came up with creative moves that stunned all Go experts. My point is that deep learning was inspired by the structure of the brain and is showing behavior similar to the brain's. Using David Deutsch's ideas as in Beginning of Infinity that science makes progress by good explanations. The explanation that the brain is  scrutable meets Deutsch's criteria for a good explanation. What's the alternative? That there is some sort of ghost giving us free will? No, that's not a good explanation.

 

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 21:53, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

In what acceptable scenario is the behavior not describable in principle?    The scenario that comes to mind is in the non-science magical thinking scenario.
I doubt that Tesla navigation systems are written in a purely functional language, but surely there is more to this condition than whether I have access to that source code and can send you the million lines in purely functional form?  If something is inscrutable, it might exhibit free will?

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 12:26 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

I would say no if you can provide me the function.



--
Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[jon zingale]

Discussions of *free will and determinism* almost always appear to me as
latent discussions about metaphysics. In the thread up to now, there have
emerged several different perspectives and so we are confronted by the
question of what it is each of us wants from and for such concepts. Each
want just as distinct and varied as the perspectives themselves. Pushing
against, moving with, and generally sensing for the differences provides
an opportunity for production and meaning.

Concepts, like free will or determinism, are sensory organs attuned to
problems. From my perspective, many problems are like mountains, to be
experienced and not necessarily solved.

Lately, for me, *will* designates something about one's unique trajectory
through the world, that which continues to differentiate one from another,
an affirmation through difference. For others, *will* designates *choice*.
Each claim to a concept is an invitation to another's struggle.

This week, my struggle is with a problem in data compression, namely,
find a function that efficiently computes the Kolmogorov complexity for
a given string. In theory, there is for any finite string (possibly the
history of our world) a machine (but really a family, germ?) that can
efficiently produce it. The problem of writing a general function that
finds said program (as you know) is hard. In the theoretical limit, I
should *expect* my problem to coincide with Shannon entropy. In practice,
the internal structure of the string matters and we settle for performing
compression with algorithms whose behavior ought to match the expected
theoretical limits. Still, given an arbitrary string generated by an
unknown source, I can only hope to guess the next digit. If our problem
is one where we ask about the emergence of new kinds, I suspect that
determinism is not likely to be a reliable organ.



--
Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[Marcus G. Daniels]

< Lately, for me, *will* designates something about one's unique trajectory through the world, that which continues to differentiate one from another, an affirmation through difference. For others, *will* designates *choice*.
Each claim to a concept is an invitation to another's struggle.  >

Ok, "will" is the means to penetrate noise and distraction, to not experience additional unwanted entanglement with the environment.  

< This week, my struggle is with a problem in data compression, namely, find a function that efficiently computes the Kolmogorov complexity for a given string. In theory, there is for any finite string (possibly the history of our world) a machine (but really a family, germ?) that can efficiently produce it. The problem of writing a general function that finds said program (as you know) is hard. In the theoretical limit, I should *expect* my problem to coincide with Shannon entropy. In practice, the internal structure of the string matters and we settle for performing compression with algorithms whose behavior ought to match the expected theoretical limits. Still, given an arbitrary string generated by an unknown source, I can only hope to guess the next digit. If our problem is one where we ask about the emergence of new kinds, I suspect that determinism is not likely to be a reliable organ.>

How can the internal structure of the string matter but not be revealing about the source, or vice versa?   The string has auto-mutual information or not?  If there are infinitely many potential generating functions, and there is no way to ascertain the probability of which one is mostly likely so far, then it seems any character is equally likely?
I claim in the free will case that all generating functions are not as likely.  

Marcus


- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[Steve Smith]

 Marcus wrote:

I once wrote an agent model of some of my colleagues.  It was a minor catharsis.   If I were to write one for agents that have first names that start with the letter “S”, I’d have a predicate that waited for a long thread to evolve, and then summarized them with a few tangential snarkier-than-thou remarks.    It would be a better accomplishment to learn the deterministic agent behavior with a hidden markov model, maybe.  Authorship comes with the ability to embellish, which is maybe one appeal of ABMs.

So... "snarkier than thou" isn't the FriAM objective function?   I'm sure I get a double-dose from having both first and last name beginning with 'S'.  I should probably try reading with a different lens...

To be fair (to me, because, who else?) I wrote that one much earlier in the thread than it appeared.   I am fairly busy on Fridays which is one of the reasons I don't weigh in often on vFriam...  but whilst in the spirit of April 1, I couldn't help misreading the original subject line.   I might have taken the extra moment to trace the whole thread that followed, but I suppose I imagined everyone likely to weigh in on the thread was on vFriam beating the horse of free will with their gumflaps rather than their touchtyping.  My bad.

I *will* claim the title "more tangential than though" and maybe even "TL;DR-er than though", and as evidenced here "more self-explanatory than though".

Your ABMs could be rather revealing and perhaps therefore entertaining...

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:05 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Dave West wrote:

Pieter quoted: "the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat".

 

But we do have the ability, and can "will" our heart to beat in a particular way.

 

Not only that, we (at least some individuals in the world) can control pretty much every aspect of our "autonomous nervous system." I learned how to generate alpha waves in my brain while awake and talking. Researchers recently conducted cogent conversations with individuals in the middle of lucid dreams. Then there is all the "bio-feedback" data and practices. Hundreds of similar examples could be cited.

 

Just because we don't, as a general rule, does not mean we cannot.

 

Not saying anything in this post is an argument for free will — just that the quoted argument against free will is fatally flawed.

nahhh...   it just looks like you (and the Swamis) can modify your autonomic functions and your brain waves...  the fact is, given who you/they are in those circumstances, you *had* to, you couldn't have chosen to do otherwise!   In fact you can't help but *believe* you had free will and exercised it, just like *I* who am sure you *don't* have free will have no choice but to believe *that*.    Anything else is *inconceivable* ! ("there's that word again" -Inigio Martinez)

Or at least *that* is what I choose to believe today.  I wonder if I will have a choice about what I feel about all this today?  Or after some more limp-noodle-beatings of the topic here?

Arg,

 - Smarg

PS... Don't free Willy in the Atlantic, his entire pod is in the Pacific.   Was that a Trump-administration rule, that unaccompanied minor Orcas stuck in Seaworld can only be released in an ocean other than that of their origin!  Happy onecet of April!

 

davewest

 

 

 

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

From a strict scientific perspective I accept that we don't have free will. I don't argue that we have free will. I accept, and I quote from the article quoted above:

"the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat". But...

 

From how humans perceive our own actions, I assert that we do have free will of "some sorts''. Similar to some computer programs that also have free will of "some sorts". We all agree that AlphGo who beat Lee Sedol in Go does not have free will, it did exactly what the computer code instructed it to do, but it came up with creative play that the human programmers did not even know about. This is in my view also "some sorts" of free will.

 

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 14:15, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Was it only 150 years ago when Charles Darwin first published 'On the Origin of Species' ? It feels longer. Interesting story from Stephen Cave

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

 

-J.

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Part of the model would involve finding seasonality like that.   A difficult part would be building the NLP capability to generate plausible sentences from each agent type.   However, there’s a big archive to draw upon if one were to take a statistical inference approach.  General dispositions would be pretty easy, I think.   At least they are obvious to me.    Also noteworthy is that there are classes of subconversations that I think just has to do with demographics.  For example, remember the late XYZ.

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.  I wonder if he’d settle for a finite state machine?    If it all worked out, though, I’d have to find a replacement  procrastination activity.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 9:23 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

 Marcus wrote:

I once wrote an agent model of some of my colleagues.  It was a minor catharsis.   If I were to write one for agents that have first names that start with the letter “S”, I’d have a predicate that waited for a long thread to evolve, and then summarized them with a few tangential snarkier-than-thou remarks.    It would be a better accomplishment to learn the deterministic agent behavior with a hidden markov model, maybe.  Authorship comes with the ability to embellish, which is maybe one appeal of ABMs.

 

So... "snarkier than thou" isn't the FriAM objective function?   I'm sure I get a double-dose from having both first and last name beginning with 'S'.  I should probably try reading with a different lens...

To be fair (to me, because, who else?) I wrote that one much earlier in the thread than it appeared.   I am fairly busy on Fridays which is one of the reasons I don't weigh in often on vFriam...  but whilst in the spirit of April 1, I couldn't help misreading the original subject line.   I might have taken the extra moment to trace the whole thread that followed, but I suppose I imagined everyone likely to weigh in on the thread was on vFriam beating the horse of free will with their gumflaps rather than their touchtyping.  My bad.

I *will* claim the title "more tangential than though" and maybe even "TL;DR-er than though", and as evidenced here "more self-explanatory than though".

Your ABMs could be rather revealing and perhaps therefore entertaining...

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:05 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Dave West wrote:

Pieter quoted: "the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat".

 

But we do have the ability, and can "will" our heart to beat in a particular way.

 

Not only that, we (at least some individuals in the world) can control pretty much every aspect of our "autonomous nervous system." I learned how to generate alpha waves in my brain while awake and talking. Researchers recently conducted cogent conversations with individuals in the middle of lucid dreams. Then there is all the "bio-feedback" data and practices. Hundreds of similar examples could be cited.

 

Just because we don't, as a general rule, does not mean we cannot.

 

Not saying anything in this post is an argument for free will — just that the quoted argument against free will is fatally flawed.

nahhh...   it just looks like you (and the Swamis) can modify your autonomic functions and your brain waves...  the fact is, given who you/they are in those circumstances, you *had* to, you couldn't have chosen to do otherwise!   In fact you can't help but *believe* you had free will and exercised it, just like *I* who am sure you *don't* have free will have no choice but to believe *that*.    Anything else is *inconceivable* ! ("there's that word again" -Inigio Martinez)

Or at least *that* is what I choose to believe today.  I wonder if I will have a choice about what I feel about all this today?  Or after some more limp-noodle-beatings of the topic here?

Arg,

 - Smarg

PS... Don't free Willy in the Atlantic, his entire pod is in the Pacific.   Was that a Trump-administration rule, that unaccompanied minor Orcas stuck in Seaworld can only be released in an ocean other than that of their origin!  Happy onecet of April!

 

davewest

 

 

 

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

From a strict scientific perspective I accept that we don't have free will. I don't argue that we have free will. I accept, and I quote from the article quoted above:

"the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat". But...

 

From how humans perceive our own actions, I assert that we do have free will of "some sorts''. Similar to some computer programs that also have free will of "some sorts". We all agree that AlphGo who beat Lee Sedol in Go does not have free will, it did exactly what the computer code instructed it to do, but it came up with creative play that the human programmers did not even know about. This is in my view also "some sorts" of free will.

 

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 14:15, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Was it only 150 years ago when Charles Darwin first published 'On the Origin of Species' ? It feels longer. Interesting story from Stephen Cave

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

 

-J.

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[Steve Smith]

<grin> I do think a finite state machine that could generate credible FriAM posts would be fun thing.  Maybe even extrapolate to "new" members whose style represents caricatures of existing ones, or hybrids between...   Or, as Glen is apt to reference, various Homunculi of each of us.   I also think Glen has claimed that  he did build (or just train up) some kind of existing babble-generator on his own text for his own entertainment.   Hmmmm....

I think *I* could entertain myself (read procrastinate) with  collection of such bots as well as I can with the (presumably meat) folks here.   If you DO create such a machine, you could probably get Guerin to change *my* subscription to a parallel list that nobody here has to read, and I could just go on lampooning the various cryptonymic agents proxying for each member.   To continue the cult-film referencing, I might slip into a Jim Carey movie and enjoy the Eternal Sunshine experience!

I particularly liked the conceit in the Spike Jonze flick HER where a simulacrum of Alan Watts shows up in the milieu to carry the copies/instances/facets/homunculii of "HER" herself to evolve beyond the human-condition and ultimately leave HER human companion(s) behind to reconnect with one another.  

= Steve

On 4/3/21 11:33 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Part of the model would involve finding seasonality like that.   A difficult part would be building the NLP capability to generate plausible sentences from each agent type.   However, there’s a big archive to draw upon if one were to take a statistical inference approach.  General dispositions would be pretty easy, I think.   At least they are obvious to me.    Also noteworthy is that there are classes of subconversations that I think just has to do with demographics.  For example, remember the late XYZ.

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.  I wonder if he’d settle for a finite state machine?    If it all worked out, though, I’d have to find a replacement  procrastination activity.

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 9:23 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

 Marcus wrote:

I once wrote an agent model of some of my colleagues.  It was a minor catharsis.   If I were to write one for agents that have first names that start with the letter “S”, I’d have a predicate that waited for a long thread to evolve, and then summarized them with a few tangential snarkier-than-thou remarks.    It would be a better accomplishment to learn the deterministic agent behavior with a hidden markov model, maybe.  Authorship comes with the ability to embellish, which is maybe one appeal of ABMs.

 

So... "snarkier than thou" isn't the FriAM objective function?   I'm sure I get a double-dose from having both first and last name beginning with 'S'.  I should probably try reading with a different lens...

To be fair (to me, because, who else?) I wrote that one much earlier in the thread than it appeared.   I am fairly busy on Fridays which is one of the reasons I don't weigh in often on vFriam...  but whilst in the spirit of April 1, I couldn't help misreading the original subject line.   I might have taken the extra moment to trace the whole thread that followed, but I suppose I imagined everyone likely to weigh in on the thread was on vFriam beating the horse of free will with their gumflaps rather than their touchtyping.  My bad.

I *will* claim the title "more tangential than though" and maybe even "TL;DR-er than though", and as evidenced here "more self-explanatory than though".

Your ABMs could be rather revealing and perhaps therefore entertaining...

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:05 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Dave West wrote:

Pieter quoted: "the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat".

 

But we do have the ability, and can "will" our heart to beat in a particular way.

 

Not only that, we (at least some individuals in the world) can control pretty much every aspect of our "autonomous nervous system." I learned how to generate alpha waves in my brain while awake and talking. Researchers recently conducted cogent conversations with individuals in the middle of lucid dreams. Then there is all the "bio-feedback" data and practices. Hundreds of similar examples could be cited.

 

Just because we don't, as a general rule, does not mean we cannot.

 

Not saying anything in this post is an argument for free will — just that the quoted argument against free will is fatally flawed.

nahhh...   it just looks like you (and the Swamis) can modify your autonomic functions and your brain waves...  the fact is, given who you/they are in those circumstances, you *had* to, you couldn't have chosen to do otherwise!   In fact you can't help but *believe* you had free will and exercised it, just like *I* who am sure you *don't* have free will have no choice but to believe *that*.    Anything else is *inconceivable* ! ("there's that word again" -Inigio Martinez)

Or at least *that* is what I choose to believe today.  I wonder if I will have a choice about what I feel about all this today?  Or after some more limp-noodle-beatings of the topic here?

Arg,

 - Smarg

PS... Don't free Willy in the Atlantic, his entire pod is in the Pacific.   Was that a Trump-administration rule, that unaccompanied minor Orcas stuck in Seaworld can only be released in an ocean other than that of their origin!  Happy onecet of April!

 

davewest

 

 

 

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

From a strict scientific perspective I accept that we don't have free will. I don't argue that we have free will. I accept, and I quote from the article quoted above:

"the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat". But...

 

From how humans perceive our own actions, I assert that we do have free will of "some sorts''. Similar to some computer programs that also have free will of "some sorts". We all agree that AlphGo who beat Lee Sedol in Go does not have free will, it did exactly what the computer code instructed it to do, but it came up with creative play that the human programmers did not even know about. This is in my view also "some sorts" of free will.

 

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 14:15, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Was it only 150 years ago when Charles Darwin first published 'On the Origin of Species' ? It feels longer. Interesting story from Stephen Cave

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

 

-J.

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[thompnickson2]

Marcus hath wroth:

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.

 

Nick doth reply:

 

Well, I have already gotten two publications out of writing to this list (in part).  It’s a case of little red hen syndrome. Or perhaps the reverse: you all helped me and I still I ate all the bread. 

 

Nick

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 11:33 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Part of the model would involve finding seasonality like that.   A difficult part would be building the NLP capability to generate plausible sentences from each agent type.   However, there’s a big archive to draw upon if one were to take a statistical inference approach.  General dispositions would be pretty easy, I think.   At least they are obvious to me.    Also noteworthy is that there are classes of subconversations that I think just has to do with demographics.  For example, remember the late XYZ.

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.  I wonder if he’d settle for a finite state machine?    If it all worked out, though, I’d have to find a replacement  procrastination activity.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 9:23 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

 Marcus wrote:

I once wrote an agent model of some of my colleagues.  It was a minor catharsis.   If I were to write one for agents that have first names that start with the letter “S”, I’d have a predicate that waited for a long thread to evolve, and then summarized them with a few tangential snarkier-than-thou remarks.    It would be a better accomplishment to learn the deterministic agent behavior with a hidden markov model, maybe.  Authorship comes with the ability to embellish, which is maybe one appeal of ABMs.

 

So... "snarkier than thou" isn't the FriAM objective function?   I'm sure I get a double-dose from having both first and last name beginning with 'S'.  I should probably try reading with a different lens...

To be fair (to me, because, who else?) I wrote that one much earlier in the thread than it appeared.   I am fairly busy on Fridays which is one of the reasons I don't weigh in often on vFriam...  but whilst in the spirit of April 1, I couldn't help misreading the original subject line.   I might have taken the extra moment to trace the whole thread that followed, but I suppose I imagined everyone likely to weigh in on the thread was on vFriam beating the horse of free will with their gumflaps rather than their touchtyping.  My bad.

I *will* claim the title "more tangential than though" and maybe even "TL;DR-er than though", and as evidenced here "more self-explanatory than though".

Your ABMs could be rather revealing and perhaps therefore entertaining...

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:05 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Dave West wrote:

Pieter quoted: "the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat".

 

But we do have the ability, and can "will" our heart to beat in a particular way.

 

Not only that, we (at least some individuals in the world) can control pretty much every aspect of our "autonomous nervous system." I learned how to generate alpha waves in my brain while awake and talking. Researchers recently conducted cogent conversations with individuals in the middle of lucid dreams. Then there is all the "bio-feedback" data and practices. Hundreds of similar examples could be cited.

 

Just because we don't, as a general rule, does not mean we cannot.

 

Not saying anything in this post is an argument for free will — just that the quoted argument against free will is fatally flawed.

nahhh...   it just looks like you (and the Swamis) can modify your autonomic functions and your brain waves...  the fact is, given who you/they are in those circumstances, you *had* to, you couldn't have chosen to do otherwise!   In fact you can't help but *believe* you had free will and exercised it, just like *I* who am sure you *don't* have free will have no choice but to believe *that*.    Anything else is *inconceivable* ! ("there's that word again" -Inigio Martinez)

Or at least *that* is what I choose to believe today.  I wonder if I will have a choice about what I feel about all this today?  Or after some more limp-noodle-beatings of the topic here?

Arg,

 - Smarg

PS... Don't free Willy in the Atlantic, his entire pod is in the Pacific.   Was that a Trump-administration rule, that unaccompanied minor Orcas stuck in Seaworld can only be released in an ocean other than that of their origin!  Happy onecet of April!

 

davewest

 

 

 

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

From a strict scientific perspective I accept that we don't have free will. I don't argue that we have free will. I accept, and I quote from the article quoted above:

"the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat". But...

 

From how humans perceive our own actions, I assert that we do have free will of "some sorts''. Similar to some computer programs that also have free will of "some sorts". We all agree that AlphGo who beat Lee Sedol in Go does not have free will, it did exactly what the computer code instructed it to do, but it came up with creative play that the human programmers did not even know about. This is in my view also "some sorts" of free will.

 

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 14:15, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Was it only 150 years ago when Charles Darwin first published 'On the Origin of Species' ? It feels longer. Interesting story from Stephen Cave

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

 

-J.

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[Jochen Fromm-5]

The fable of the little red hen is unknown here in Germany, but everyone knows the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm. There is a fairy tale named "Mother Hulda" (Frau Holle) which is a parable that hard work is rewarded and laziness is punished. These fairy tales are similar to the parables in the Bible. 

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

-J.

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/4/21 05:32 (GMT+01:00)

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

Marcus hath wroth:

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.

 

Nick doth reply:

 

Well, I have already gotten two publications out of writing to this list (in part).  It’s a case of little red hen syndrome. Or perhaps the reverse: you all helped me and I still I ate all the bread. 

 

Nick

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 11:33 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Part of the model would involve finding seasonality like that.   A difficult part would be building the NLP capability to generate plausible sentences from each agent type.   However, there’s a big archive to draw upon if one were to take a statistical inference approach.  General dispositions would be pretty easy, I think.   At least they are obvious to me.    Also noteworthy is that there are classes of subconversations that I think just has to do with demographics.  For example, remember the late XYZ.

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.  I wonder if he’d settle for a finite state machine?    If it all worked out, though, I’d have to find a replacement  procrastination activity.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 9:23 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

 Marcus wrote:

I once wrote an agent model of some of my colleagues.  It was a minor catharsis.   If I were to write one for agents that have first names that start with the letter “S”, I’d have a predicate that waited for a long thread to evolve, and then summarized them with a few tangential snarkier-than-thou remarks.    It would be a better accomplishment to learn the deterministic agent behavior with a hidden markov model, maybe.  Authorship comes with the ability to embellish, which is maybe one appeal of ABMs.

 

So... "snarkier than thou" isn't the FriAM objective function?   I'm sure I get a double-dose from having both first and last name beginning with 'S'.  I should probably try reading with a different lens...

To be fair (to me, because, who else?) I wrote that one much earlier in the thread than it appeared.   I am fairly busy on Fridays which is one of the reasons I don't weigh in often on vFriam...  but whilst in the spirit of April 1, I couldn't help misreading the original subject line.   I might have taken the extra moment to trace the whole thread that followed, but I suppose I imagined everyone likely to weigh in on the thread was on vFriam beating the horse of free will with their gumflaps rather than their touchtyping.  My bad.

I *will* claim the title "more tangential than though" and maybe even "TL;DR-er than though", and as evidenced here "more self-explanatory than though".

Your ABMs could be rather revealing and perhaps therefore entertaining...

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:05 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Dave West wrote:

Pieter quoted: "the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat".

 

But we do have the ability, and can "will" our heart to beat in a particular way.

 

Not only that, we (at least some individuals in the world) can control pretty much every aspect of our "autonomous nervous system." I learned how to generate alpha waves in my brain while awake and talking. Researchers recently conducted cogent conversations with individuals in the middle of lucid dreams. Then there is all the "bio-feedback" data and practices. Hundreds of similar examples could be cited.

 

Just because we don't, as a general rule, does not mean we cannot.

 

Not saying anything in this post is an argument for free will — just that the quoted argument against free will is fatally flawed.

nahhh...   it just looks like you (and the Swamis) can modify your autonomic functions and your brain waves...  the fact is, given who you/they are in those circumstances, you *had* to, you couldn't have chosen to do otherwise!   In fact you can't help but *believe* you had free will and exercised it, just like *I* who am sure you *don't* have free will have no choice but to believe *that*.    Anything else is *inconceivable* ! ("there's that word again" -Inigio Martinez)

Or at least *that* is what I choose to believe today.  I wonder if I will have a choice about what I feel about all this today?  Or after some more limp-noodle-beatings of the topic here?

Arg,

 - Smarg

PS... Don't free Willy in the Atlantic, his entire pod is in the Pacific.   Was that a Trump-administration rule, that unaccompanied minor Orcas stuck in Seaworld can only be released in an ocean other than that of their origin!  Happy onecet of April!

 

davewest

 

 

 

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

From a strict scientific perspective I accept that we don't have free will. I don't argue that we have free will. I accept, and I quote from the article quoted above:

"the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat". But...

 

From how humans perceive our own actions, I assert that we do have free will of "some sorts''. Similar to some computer programs that also have free will of "some sorts". We all agree that AlphGo who beat Lee Sedol in Go does not have free will, it did exactly what the computer code instructed it to do, but it came up with creative play that the human programmers did not even know about. This is in my view also "some sorts" of free will.

 

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 14:15, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Was it only 150 years ago when Charles Darwin first published 'On the Origin of Species' ? It feels longer. Interesting story from Stephen Cave

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

 

-J.

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Or perhaps it is a case of different values.   That others don’t see the need or benefit in polluting the world with more publications that will never be read and serve no real purpose. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of [hidden email]
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 8:31 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Marcus hath wroth:

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.

 

Nick doth reply:

 

Well, I have already gotten two publications out of writing to this list (in part).  It’s a case of little red hen syndrome. Or perhaps the reverse: you all helped me and I still I ate all the bread. 

 

Nick

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 11:33 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Part of the model would involve finding seasonality like that.   A difficult part would be building the NLP capability to generate plausible sentences from each agent type.   However, there’s a big archive to draw upon if one were to take a statistical inference approach.  General dispositions would be pretty easy, I think.   At least they are obvious to me.    Also noteworthy is that there are classes of subconversations that I think just has to do with demographics.  For example, remember the late XYZ.

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.  I wonder if he’d settle for a finite state machine?    If it all worked out, though, I’d have to find a replacement  procrastination activity.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 9:23 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

 Marcus wrote:

I once wrote an agent model of some of my colleagues.  It was a minor catharsis.   If I were to write one for agents that have first names that start with the letter “S”, I’d have a predicate that waited for a long thread to evolve, and then summarized them with a few tangential snarkier-than-thou remarks.    It would be a better accomplishment to learn the deterministic agent behavior with a hidden markov model, maybe.  Authorship comes with the ability to embellish, which is maybe one appeal of ABMs.

 

So... "snarkier than thou" isn't the FriAM objective function?   I'm sure I get a double-dose from having both first and last name beginning with 'S'.  I should probably try reading with a different lens...

To be fair (to me, because, who else?) I wrote that one much earlier in the thread than it appeared.   I am fairly busy on Fridays which is one of the reasons I don't weigh in often on vFriam...  but whilst in the spirit of April 1, I couldn't help misreading the original subject line.   I might have taken the extra moment to trace the whole thread that followed, but I suppose I imagined everyone likely to weigh in on the thread was on vFriam beating the horse of free will with their gumflaps rather than their touchtyping.  My bad.

I *will* claim the title "more tangential than though" and maybe even "TL;DR-er than though", and as evidenced here "more self-explanatory than though".

Your ABMs could be rather revealing and perhaps therefore entertaining...

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:05 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Dave West wrote:

Pieter quoted: "the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat".

 

But we do have the ability, and can "will" our heart to beat in a particular way.

 

Not only that, we (at least some individuals in the world) can control pretty much every aspect of our "autonomous nervous system." I learned how to generate alpha waves in my brain while awake and talking. Researchers recently conducted cogent conversations with individuals in the middle of lucid dreams. Then there is all the "bio-feedback" data and practices. Hundreds of similar examples could be cited.

 

Just because we don't, as a general rule, does not mean we cannot.

 

Not saying anything in this post is an argument for free will — just that the quoted argument against free will is fatally flawed.

nahhh...   it just looks like you (and the Swamis) can modify your autonomic functions and your brain waves...  the fact is, given who you/they are in those circumstances, you *had* to, you couldn't have chosen to do otherwise!   In fact you can't help but *believe* you had free will and exercised it, just like *I* who am sure you *don't* have free will have no choice but to believe *that*.    Anything else is *inconceivable* ! ("there's that word again" -Inigio Martinez)

Or at least *that* is what I choose to believe today.  I wonder if I will have a choice about what I feel about all this today?  Or after some more limp-noodle-beatings of the topic here?

Arg,

 - Smarg

PS... Don't free Willy in the Atlantic, his entire pod is in the Pacific.   Was that a Trump-administration rule, that unaccompanied minor Orcas stuck in Seaworld can only be released in an ocean other than that of their origin!  Happy onecet of April!

 

davewest

 

 

 

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

From a strict scientific perspective I accept that we don't have free will. I don't argue that we have free will. I accept, and I quote from the article quoted above:

"the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat". But...

 

From how humans perceive our own actions, I assert that we do have free will of "some sorts''. Similar to some computer programs that also have free will of "some sorts". We all agree that AlphGo who beat Lee Sedol in Go does not have free will, it did exactly what the computer code instructed it to do, but it came up with creative play that the human programmers did not even know about. This is in my view also "some sorts" of free will.

 

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 14:15, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Was it only 150 years ago when Charles Darwin first published 'On the Origin of Species' ? It feels longer. Interesting story from Stephen Cave

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

 

-J.

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

 

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[Steve Smith]

Jochen -

I grew up on Grimm (and Aesop, and Uncle Remus, and Kipling(thus all my "just so" stories)?)  how ffffFFing GRIM! They were.   A good counterpoint to the Little Red Hen/Frau Holle (Calvinist?) parables might be the "Ant and the Cicada"  at least in the 18c French Version, where there is no judgement held (necessarily) against the Grasshopper by the Ant...  allowing room for diversity of values and differing objects of value (the Ant valuing the Cicada/Grasshopper's music and exchanging his *hoard* of foodstuff in exchange for comraderie and entertainment).   Some (Calvinists?  Libertarians) would perhaps consider this translation an "apologistic" version, "letting the lazy/stuid Cicada off too easy".   What WOULD Ayn Rand say?

- SS

The fable of the little red hen is unknown here in Germany, but everyone knows the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm. There is a fairy tale named "Mother Hulda" (Frau Holle) which is a parable that hard work is rewarded and laziness is punished. These fairy tales are similar to the parables in the Bible. 

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

-J.

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/4/21 05:32 (GMT+01:00)

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

Marcus hath wroth:

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.

 

Nick doth reply:

 

Well, I have already gotten two publications out of writing to this list (in part).  It’s a case of little red hen syndrome. Or perhaps the reverse: you all helped me and I still I ate all the bread. 

 

Nick

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 11:33 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Part of the model would involve finding seasonality like that.   A difficult part would be building the NLP capability to generate plausible sentences from each agent type.   However, there’s a big archive to draw upon if one were to take a statistical inference approach.  General dispositions would be pretty easy, I think.   At least they are obvious to me.    Also noteworthy is that there are classes of subconversations that I think just has to do with demographics.  For example, remember the late XYZ.

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.  I wonder if he’d settle for a finite state machine?    If it all worked out, though, I’d have to find a replacement  procrastination activity.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 9:23 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

 Marcus wrote:

I once wrote an agent model of some of my colleagues.  It was a minor catharsis.   If I were to write one for agents that have first names that start with the letter “S”, I’d have a predicate that waited for a long thread to evolve, and then summarized them with a few tangential snarkier-than-thou remarks.    It would be a better accomplishment to learn the deterministic agent behavior with a hidden markov model, maybe.  Authorship comes with the ability to embellish, which is maybe one appeal of ABMs.

 

So... "snarkier than thou" isn't the FriAM objective function?   I'm sure I get a double-dose from having both first and last name beginning with 'S'.  I should probably try reading with a different lens...

To be fair (to me, because, who else?) I wrote that one much earlier in the thread than it appeared.   I am fairly busy on Fridays which is one of the reasons I don't weigh in often on vFriam...  but whilst in the spirit of April 1, I couldn't help misreading the original subject line.   I might have taken the extra moment to trace the whole thread that followed, but I suppose I imagined everyone likely to weigh in on the thread was on vFriam beating the horse of free will with their gumflaps rather than their touchtyping.  My bad.

I *will* claim the title "more tangential than though" and maybe even "TL;DR-er than though", and as evidenced here "more self-explanatory than though".

Your ABMs could be rather revealing and perhaps therefore entertaining...

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:05 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Dave West wrote:

Pieter quoted: "the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat".

 

But we do have the ability, and can "will" our heart to beat in a particular way.

 

Not only that, we (at least some individuals in the world) can control pretty much every aspect of our "autonomous nervous system." I learned how to generate alpha waves in my brain while awake and talking. Researchers recently conducted cogent conversations with individuals in the middle of lucid dreams. Then there is all the "bio-feedback" data and practices. Hundreds of similar examples could be cited.

 

Just because we don't, as a general rule, does not mean we cannot.

 

Not saying anything in this post is an argument for free will — just that the quoted argument against free will is fatally flawed.

nahhh...   it just looks like you (and the Swamis) can modify your autonomic functions and your brain waves...  the fact is, given who you/they are in those circumstances, you *had* to, you couldn't have chosen to do otherwise!   In fact you can't help but *believe* you had free will and exercised it, just like *I* who am sure you *don't* have free will have no choice but to believe *that*.    Anything else is *inconceivable* ! ("there's that word again" -Inigio Martinez)

Or at least *that* is what I choose to believe today.  I wonder if I will have a choice about what I feel about all this today?  Or after some more limp-noodle-beatings of the topic here?

Arg,

 - Smarg

PS... Don't free Willy in the Atlantic, his entire pod is in the Pacific.   Was that a Trump-administration rule, that unaccompanied minor Orcas stuck in Seaworld can only be released in an ocean other than that of their origin!  Happy onecet of April!

 

davewest

 

 

 

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

From a strict scientific perspective I accept that we don't have free will. I don't argue that we have free will. I accept, and I quote from the article quoted above:

"the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat". But...

 

From how humans perceive our own actions, I assert that we do have free will of "some sorts''. Similar to some computer programs that also have free will of "some sorts". We all agree that AlphGo who beat Lee Sedol in Go does not have free will, it did exactly what the computer code instructed it to do, but it came up with creative play that the human programmers did not even know about. This is in my view also "some sorts" of free will.

 

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 14:15, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Was it only 150 years ago when Charles Darwin first published 'On the Origin of Species' ? It feels longer. Interesting story from Stephen Cave

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

 

-J.

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[Marcus G. Daniels]

I suppose I shouldn’t pick on academics.   Patents are worse.    With a patent, one prevents innovation by others and delays implementation by the “owner” whereby she loses the incentive to flesh out the details that are invariably absent in the disclosure.   The point of liberalism is to enable the cicada to keep singing, because singing is a high-order behavior and grubbing around for food is a low-order behavior.   The ant has tunnel vision and is merely surviving, taking up space for no reason other than to survive.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Sunday, April 4, 2021 10:44 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Jochen -

I grew up on Grimm (and Aesop, and Uncle Remus, and Kipling(thus all my "just so" stories)?)  how ffffFFing GRIM! They were.   A good counterpoint to the Little Red Hen/Frau Holle (Calvinist?) parables might be the "Ant and the Cicada"  at least in the 18c French Version, where there is no judgement held (necessarily) against the Grasshopper by the Ant...  allowing room for diversity of values and differing objects of value (the Ant valuing the Cicada/Grasshopper's music and exchanging his *hoard* of foodstuff in exchange for comraderie and entertainment).   Some (Calvinists?  Libertarians) would perhaps consider this translation an "apologistic" version, "letting the lazy/stuid Cicada off too easy".   What WOULD Ayn Rand say?

- SS

The fable of the little red hen is unknown here in Germany, but everyone knows the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm. There is a fairy tale named "Mother Hulda" (Frau Holle) which is a parable that hard work is rewarded and laziness is punished. These fairy tales are similar to the parables in the Bible. 

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

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/4/21 05:32 (GMT+01:00)

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Marcus hath wroth:

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.

 

Nick doth reply:

 

Well, I have already gotten two publications out of writing to this list (in part).  It’s a case of little red hen syndrome. Or perhaps the reverse: you all helped me and I still I ate all the bread. 

 

Nick

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 11:33 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Part of the model would involve finding seasonality like that.   A difficult part would be building the NLP capability to generate plausible sentences from each agent type.   However, there’s a big archive to draw upon if one were to take a statistical inference approach.  General dispositions would be pretty easy, I think.   At least they are obvious to me.    Also noteworthy is that there are classes of subconversations that I think just has to do with demographics.  For example, remember the late XYZ.

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.  I wonder if he’d settle for a finite state machine?    If it all worked out, though, I’d have to find a replacement  procrastination activity.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 9:23 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

 Marcus wrote:

I once wrote an agent model of some of my colleagues.  It was a minor catharsis.   If I were to write one for agents that have first names that start with the letter “S”, I’d have a predicate that waited for a long thread to evolve, and then summarized them with a few tangential snarkier-than-thou remarks.    It would be a better accomplishment to learn the deterministic agent behavior with a hidden markov model, maybe.  Authorship comes with the ability to embellish, which is maybe one appeal of ABMs.

 

So... "snarkier than thou" isn't the FriAM objective function?   I'm sure I get a double-dose from having both first and last name beginning with 'S'.  I should probably try reading with a different lens...

To be fair (to me, because, who else?) I wrote that one much earlier in the thread than it appeared.   I am fairly busy on Fridays which is one of the reasons I don't weigh in often on vFriam...  but whilst in the spirit of April 1, I couldn't help misreading the original subject line.   I might have taken the extra moment to trace the whole thread that followed, but I suppose I imagined everyone likely to weigh in on the thread was on vFriam beating the horse of free will with their gumflaps rather than their touchtyping.  My bad.

I *will* claim the title "more tangential than though" and maybe even "TL;DR-er than though", and as evidenced here "more self-explanatory than though".

Your ABMs could be rather revealing and perhaps therefore entertaining...

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:05 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Dave West wrote:

Pieter quoted: "the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat".

 

But we do have the ability, and can "will" our heart to beat in a particular way.

 

Not only that, we (at least some individuals in the world) can control pretty much every aspect of our "autonomous nervous system." I learned how to generate alpha waves in my brain while awake and talking. Researchers recently conducted cogent conversations with individuals in the middle of lucid dreams. Then there is all the "bio-feedback" data and practices. Hundreds of similar examples could be cited.

 

Just because we don't, as a general rule, does not mean we cannot.

 

Not saying anything in this post is an argument for free will — just that the quoted argument against free will is fatally flawed.

nahhh...   it just looks like you (and the Swamis) can modify your autonomic functions and your brain waves...  the fact is, given who you/they are in those circumstances, you *had* to, you couldn't have chosen to do otherwise!   In fact you can't help but *believe* you had free will and exercised it, just like *I* who am sure you *don't* have free will have no choice but to believe *that*.    Anything else is *inconceivable* ! ("there's that word again" -Inigio Martinez)

Or at least *that* is what I choose to believe today.  I wonder if I will have a choice about what I feel about all this today?  Or after some more limp-noodle-beatings of the topic here?

Arg,

 - Smarg

PS... Don't free Willy in the Atlantic, his entire pod is in the Pacific.   Was that a Trump-administration rule, that unaccompanied minor Orcas stuck in Seaworld can only be released in an ocean other than that of their origin!  Happy onecet of April!

 

davewest

 

 

 

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

From a strict scientific perspective I accept that we don't have free will. I don't argue that we have free will. I accept, and I quote from the article quoted above:

"the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat". But...

 

From how humans perceive our own actions, I assert that we do have free will of "some sorts''. Similar to some computer programs that also have free will of "some sorts". We all agree that AlphGo who beat Lee Sedol in Go does not have free will, it did exactly what the computer code instructed it to do, but it came up with creative play that the human programmers did not even know about. This is in my view also "some sorts" of free will.

 

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 14:15, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Was it only 150 years ago when Charles Darwin first published 'On the Origin of Species' ? It feels longer. Interesting story from Stephen Cave

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

 

-J.

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

 

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Perhaps it isn’t obvious what I’m driving at.   My claim is that the currencies used by different cohorts (academics, tech) are not necessarily aligned with innovation or progress.   I know several academics that have eagerly sought research topics that were not open to a large community, simply because it would make it easier to crank out similar papers and pad out their publication record, while funneling a stream of relevant citations back to them.    And I know people who plainly, even proudly, work “performance metrics” like half-baked patent applications or mentorships where they invent busywork for junior employees that also need to seek out mentors.   This is not the earnest hard work of the ant.   This is gaming the system via social mechanisms.  It is just a bunch of performative junk that distracts from research or from engineering things that actually work.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Sunday, April 4, 2021 11:16 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

I suppose I shouldn’t pick on academics.   Patents are worse.    With a patent, one prevents innovation by others and delays implementation by the “owner” whereby she loses the incentive to flesh out the details that are invariably absent in the disclosure.   The point of liberalism is to enable the cicada to keep singing, because singing is a high-order behavior and grubbing around for food is a low-order behavior.   The ant has tunnel vision and is merely surviving, taking up space for no reason other than to survive.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Sunday, April 4, 2021 10:44 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Jochen -

I grew up on Grimm (and Aesop, and Uncle Remus, and Kipling(thus all my "just so" stories)?)  how ffffFFing GRIM! They were.   A good counterpoint to the Little Red Hen/Frau Holle (Calvinist?) parables might be the "Ant and the Cicada"  at least in the 18c French Version, where there is no judgement held (necessarily) against the Grasshopper by the Ant...  allowing room for diversity of values and differing objects of value (the Ant valuing the Cicada/Grasshopper's music and exchanging his *hoard* of foodstuff in exchange for comraderie and entertainment).   Some (Calvinists?  Libertarians) would perhaps consider this translation an "apologistic" version, "letting the lazy/stuid Cicada off too easy".   What WOULD Ayn Rand say?

- SS

The fable of the little red hen is unknown here in Germany, but everyone knows the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm. There is a fairy tale named "Mother Hulda" (Frau Holle) which is a parable that hard work is rewarded and laziness is punished. These fairy tales are similar to the parables in the Bible. 

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

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/4/21 05:32 (GMT+01:00)

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Marcus hath wroth:

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.

 

Nick doth reply:

 

Well, I have already gotten two publications out of writing to this list (in part).  It’s a case of little red hen syndrome. Or perhaps the reverse: you all helped me and I still I ate all the bread. 

 

Nick

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 11:33 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Part of the model would involve finding seasonality like that.   A difficult part would be building the NLP capability to generate plausible sentences from each agent type.   However, there’s a big archive to draw upon if one were to take a statistical inference approach.  General dispositions would be pretty easy, I think.   At least they are obvious to me.    Also noteworthy is that there are classes of subconversations that I think just has to do with demographics.  For example, remember the late XYZ.

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.  I wonder if he’d settle for a finite state machine?    If it all worked out, though, I’d have to find a replacement  procrastination activity.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 9:23 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

 Marcus wrote:

I once wrote an agent model of some of my colleagues.  It was a minor catharsis.   If I were to write one for agents that have first names that start with the letter “S”, I’d have a predicate that waited for a long thread to evolve, and then summarized them with a few tangential snarkier-than-thou remarks.    It would be a better accomplishment to learn the deterministic agent behavior with a hidden markov model, maybe.  Authorship comes with the ability to embellish, which is maybe one appeal of ABMs.

 

So... "snarkier than thou" isn't the FriAM objective function?   I'm sure I get a double-dose from having both first and last name beginning with 'S'.  I should probably try reading with a different lens...

To be fair (to me, because, who else?) I wrote that one much earlier in the thread than it appeared.   I am fairly busy on Fridays which is one of the reasons I don't weigh in often on vFriam...  but whilst in the spirit of April 1, I couldn't help misreading the original subject line.   I might have taken the extra moment to trace the whole thread that followed, but I suppose I imagined everyone likely to weigh in on the thread was on vFriam beating the horse of free will with their gumflaps rather than their touchtyping.  My bad.

I *will* claim the title "more tangential than though" and maybe even "TL;DR-er than though", and as evidenced here "more self-explanatory than though".

Your ABMs could be rather revealing and perhaps therefore entertaining...

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:05 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Dave West wrote:

Pieter quoted: "the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat".

 

But we do have the ability, and can "will" our heart to beat in a particular way.

 

Not only that, we (at least some individuals in the world) can control pretty much every aspect of our "autonomous nervous system." I learned how to generate alpha waves in my brain while awake and talking. Researchers recently conducted cogent conversations with individuals in the middle of lucid dreams. Then there is all the "bio-feedback" data and practices. Hundreds of similar examples could be cited.

 

Just because we don't, as a general rule, does not mean we cannot.

 

Not saying anything in this post is an argument for free will — just that the quoted argument against free will is fatally flawed.

nahhh...   it just looks like you (and the Swamis) can modify your autonomic functions and your brain waves...  the fact is, given who you/they are in those circumstances, you *had* to, you couldn't have chosen to do otherwise!   In fact you can't help but *believe* you had free will and exercised it, just like *I* who am sure you *don't* have free will have no choice but to believe *that*.    Anything else is *inconceivable* ! ("there's that word again" -Inigio Martinez)

Or at least *that* is what I choose to believe today.  I wonder if I will have a choice about what I feel about all this today?  Or after some more limp-noodle-beatings of the topic here?

Arg,

 - Smarg

PS... Don't free Willy in the Atlantic, his entire pod is in the Pacific.   Was that a Trump-administration rule, that unaccompanied minor Orcas stuck in Seaworld can only be released in an ocean other than that of their origin!  Happy onecet of April!

 

davewest

 

 

 

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

From a strict scientific perspective I accept that we don't have free will. I don't argue that we have free will. I accept, and I quote from the article quoted above:

"the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat". But...

 

From how humans perceive our own actions, I assert that we do have free will of "some sorts''. Similar to some computer programs that also have free will of "some sorts". We all agree that AlphGo who beat Lee Sedol in Go does not have free will, it did exactly what the computer code instructed it to do, but it came up with creative play that the human programmers did not even know about. This is in my view also "some sorts" of free will.

 

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 14:15, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Was it only 150 years ago when Charles Darwin first published 'On the Origin of Species' ? It feels longer. Interesting story from Stephen Cave

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

 

-J.

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

 

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[Steve Smith]

On 4/4/21 12:16 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

I suppose I shouldn’t pick on academics.   Patents are worse.    With a patent, one prevents innovation by others and delays implementation by the “owner” whereby she loses the incentive to flesh out the details that are invariably absent in the disclosure.   The point of liberalism is to enable the cicada to keep singing, because singing is a high-order behavior and grubbing around for food is a low-order behavior.   The ant has tunnel vision and is merely surviving, taking up space for no reason other than to survive.

My post-LANL career includes to spectacular face-plants involving someone else's "Patent Bull$hite".   In both cases, "camera arrays", one freeform (nominally planar) and the other spherical (nominally inter-pupillary-distance-separated-eyes) which IMO were *full* of technical holes and incompletenesses.   I got sucked in over the spirit of the technology and what it *could* be.   It took me order years to discover (in each case) that the economic drivers behind it all had no interest in honestly advancing the technology beyond the conceptual basis of the patents which were circa 1995 and whose earliest precedents were as early as 1930 and by some stretch going all the way back to the Greeks or at least Da Vinci.   I lent them whatever credibility I had (or could be imputed by my own background, if not my actual skillset) and helped them defend their patents (one was going up against Disney who was "infringing") and helped them idea-monger their way into getting bought out by a bigger fish who got gobbled by a yet-bigger fish, leaving me with unpaid invoices standing in line behind a long line of similar folks.    My bad for being a dumb business person.  Yet, I also saw the folly and the inevitibality of *Intellectual Property* in our world.    I don't know if the myriad white papers and opinions I wrote for them hold under the NDAs I signed since in most cases I never received (anywhere near) the full remuneration that was implied (but silly me, not expressly stated in the NDAs as full contracts).  

I would claim *virtually everything* I was doing with/for them and even aspiring to do has been deprecated by advancements and can *now* find academic papers from that era demonstrating that I was far from the only one who understood the full (humbly, "broader") implications of the technology and in fact, many exploited it (in a non-commercial way) in exactly the ways I was trying to help my commercial patent-holders exploit.  It was their "close to the vest" stylization  that kept them from moving forward smartly and "striking while the iron was hot"...  so I don't really feel sorry for them missing their boat, nor me either.   I just wish I'd jumped in and started swimming confidently at the time, I might have something more than old man stories and just so stories and anecdotes for furlongs to offer for the experience.   On the other hand, I would have just managed to help "pave over the planet faster"..  who knew that my own (business) incompetence would turn out to be my greatest (human) asset?

BTW... the grapes were sour (Aesop reference).

- Souze

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Sunday, April 4, 2021 10:44 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Jochen -

I grew up on Grimm (and Aesop, and Uncle Remus, and Kipling(thus all my "just so" stories)?)  how ffffFFing GRIM! They were.   A good counterpoint to the Little Red Hen/Frau Holle (Calvinist?) parables might be the "Ant and the Cicada"  at least in the 18c French Version, where there is no judgement held (necessarily) against the Grasshopper by the Ant...  allowing room for diversity of values and differing objects of value (the Ant valuing the Cicada/Grasshopper's music and exchanging his *hoard* of foodstuff in exchange for comraderie and entertainment).   Some (Calvinists?  Libertarians) would perhaps consider this translation an "apologistic" version, "letting the lazy/stuid Cicada off too easy".   What WOULD Ayn Rand say?

- SS

The fable of the little red hen is unknown here in Germany, but everyone knows the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm. There is a fairy tale named "Mother Hulda" (Frau Holle) which is a parable that hard work is rewarded and laziness is punished. These fairy tales are similar to the parables in the Bible. 

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

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/4/21 05:32 (GMT+01:00)

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Marcus hath wroth:

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.

 

Nick doth reply:

 

Well, I have already gotten two publications out of writing to this list (in part).  It’s a case of little red hen syndrome. Or perhaps the reverse: you all helped me and I still I ate all the bread. 

 

Nick

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 11:33 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Part of the model would involve finding seasonality like that.   A difficult part would be building the NLP capability to generate plausible sentences from each agent type.   However, there’s a big archive to draw upon if one were to take a statistical inference approach.  General dispositions would be pretty easy, I think.   At least they are obvious to me.    Also noteworthy is that there are classes of subconversations that I think just has to do with demographics.  For example, remember the late XYZ.

 

I know Nick once dreamed of publications out of FRIAM.  I wonder if he’d settle for a finite state machine?    If it all worked out, though, I’d have to find a replacement  procrastination activity.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, April 3, 2021 9:23 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

 Marcus wrote:

I once wrote an agent model of some of my colleagues.  It was a minor catharsis.   If I were to write one for agents that have first names that start with the letter “S”, I’d have a predicate that waited for a long thread to evolve, and then summarized them with a few tangential snarkier-than-thou remarks.    It would be a better accomplishment to learn the deterministic agent behavior with a hidden markov model, maybe.  Authorship comes with the ability to embellish, which is maybe one appeal of ABMs.

 

So... "snarkier than thou" isn't the FriAM objective function?   I'm sure I get a double-dose from having both first and last name beginning with 'S'.  I should probably try reading with a different lens...

To be fair (to me, because, who else?) I wrote that one much earlier in the thread than it appeared.   I am fairly busy on Fridays which is one of the reasons I don't weigh in often on vFriam...  but whilst in the spirit of April 1, I couldn't help misreading the original subject line.   I might have taken the extra moment to trace the whole thread that followed, but I suppose I imagined everyone likely to weigh in on the thread was on vFriam beating the horse of free will with their gumflaps rather than their touchtyping.  My bad.

I *will* claim the title "more tangential than though" and maybe even "TL;DR-er than though", and as evidenced here "more self-explanatory than though".

Your ABMs could be rather revealing and perhaps therefore entertaining...

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:05 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

 

Dave West wrote:

Pieter quoted: "the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat".

 

But we do have the ability, and can "will" our heart to beat in a particular way.

 

Not only that, we (at least some individuals in the world) can control pretty much every aspect of our "autonomous nervous system." I learned how to generate alpha waves in my brain while awake and talking. Researchers recently conducted cogent conversations with individuals in the middle of lucid dreams. Then there is all the "bio-feedback" data and practices. Hundreds of similar examples could be cited.

 

Just because we don't, as a general rule, does not mean we cannot.

 

Not saying anything in this post is an argument for free will — just that the quoted argument against free will is fatally flawed.

nahhh...   it just looks like you (and the Swamis) can modify your autonomic functions and your brain waves...  the fact is, given who you/they are in those circumstances, you *had* to, you couldn't have chosen to do otherwise!   In fact you can't help but *believe* you had free will and exercised it, just like *I* who am sure you *don't* have free will have no choice but to believe *that*.    Anything else is *inconceivable* ! ("there's that word again" -Inigio Martinez)

Or at least *that* is what I choose to believe today.  I wonder if I will have a choice about what I feel about all this today?  Or after some more limp-noodle-beatings of the topic here?

Arg,

 - Smarg

PS... Don't free Willy in the Atlantic, his entire pod is in the Pacific.   Was that a Trump-administration rule, that unaccompanied minor Orcas stuck in Seaworld can only be released in an ocean other than that of their origin!  Happy onecet of April!

 

davewest

 

 

 

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

From a strict scientific perspective I accept that we don't have free will. I don't argue that we have free will. I accept, and I quote from the article quoted above:

"the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat". But...

 

From how humans perceive our own actions, I assert that we do have free will of "some sorts''. Similar to some computer programs that also have free will of "some sorts". We all agree that AlphGo who beat Lee Sedol in Go does not have free will, it did exactly what the computer code instructed it to do, but it came up with creative play that the human programmers did not even know about. This is in my view also "some sorts" of free will.

 

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 14:15, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Was it only 150 years ago when Charles Darwin first published 'On the Origin of Species' ? It feels longer. Interesting story from Stephen Cave

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

 

-J.

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

 

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[gepr]

On the Turing Completeness of Modern Neural Network Architectures
https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.03429

I'm going to try to fold the 2 sub-threads of scrutability and metaphysics together. It seems like universal computation is a relatively noncontroversial metaphysical commitment. At first, given the above paper on demonstrating the universality of the Transformer under bounded memory, I intended to post that there's nothing inscrutable about the architecture of self-attention loops. If by "inscrutable", we mean *invulnerable* to scrutiny, then architectures like GPT3 are certainly not inscrutable. But we have to acknowledge that explainable/interpretable AI is a serious domain.

Anyway, the metaphysical commitments seep in at Church-Turing, I think. It's easy to lob accusations at, say, Roger Penrose for making a speculative argument that humans may be able to do things computers can't do. But I see both sides as making *useful* metaphysical commitments. One side has faith that our current formal systems will eventually reason over biological structures like the brain as *well* as they can reason over artifacts like the Transformer. The other side has faith that biological structures lie outside the formal systems we currently have available.

The important thing is to see the 2 as working on the same problem, the instantiation of formal systems that can (or can't) be shown to do the same work as the things we see in the world. A corollary is that those of us who skip to their faithful end and don't do the work (or show their work) it takes to get there are *not* working on the same problem. Progress doesn't require agnosticism. But those who lob their faith-based claims over the wall and wash their hands as if the work's all been done are either merely distractions or debilitating lesions that need to be scraped away so healthy tissue can replace them.

Instantiating artifacts that exhibit the markers for an interoceptive sense of agency ("free will") is obviously difficult. And to write it off one way or the other isn't helpful. I don't claim to understand the paper [⛧]. But to me, in my ignorant skimming, the most interesting part of Pérez et al is the requirement for hard over soft attention. Their argument about the irrationality of various soft attention functions is straightforward ... I suppose ... to people smarter than me. But using hard attention implies something like selection, choice, scoping, distinction, ... differences in kind/category ... even if it may be done in a covering/enumerative way. That "choosing" reminds me of the axiom of choice and the law of the excluded middle, which are crucial distinctions for the formal systems one might use to model thought. It also rings a little bell in my head about the specialness of biology. Our "averaging" methods work in an 80/20 way in medicine. But as far as those methods have taken us, we still don't have solid theories for precision medicine. And these persnickety little constructs in the formal system (which may or may not have analogs in the - ultimate - referent system) are deep in the weeds compared to glossing concepts like Bayesianism.


[⛧] And I can't figure out if it's been published or peer reviewed anywhere. I don't think so, which means it could be flawed. But it's less important to me whether their argument is ultimately valid than it is to trace the character, style, tools of the argument.


On April 2, 2021 2:51:08 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

>Are there experiments one could conduct to say whether a metaphysics
>was plausible or not?  If nothing is falsifiable, then we are again in
>the realm of faith.
>If one starts out selecting a metaphysics to justify some action or
>belief, this is also not helpful to clear communication or analysis.
>We can select rules of the game that are the least controversial with
>the most empirical evidence supporting them.   This is not a failure of
>imagination, this is fair play.
>
>From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
>Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:25 PM
>To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
><[hidden email]>
>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic
>
>I agree fully. If something is inscrutable it might exhibit free will.
>But what happens in our brains is certainly scrutable. Maybe not yet
>with current technology, but how can it be inscrutable in principle? In
>principle we know that neurons are firing and communicate with other
>neurons using synapse. Just look how far deep learning has come. Okay,
>not yet compared to the human brain, but progress is made almost by the
>day. Like the example I mentioned above, AlphGo that came up with
>creative moves that stunned all Go experts. My point is that deep
>learning was inspired by the structure of the brain and is showing
>behavior similar to the brain's. Using David Deutsch's ideas as in
>Beginning of Infinity that science makes progress by good explanations.
>The explanation that the brain is  scrutable meets Deutsch's criteria
>for a good explanation. What's the alternative? That there is some sort
>of ghost giving us free will? No, that's not a good explanation.
>
>On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 21:53, Marcus Daniels
><[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
>In what acceptable scenario is the behavior not describable in
>principle?    The scenario that comes to mind is in the non-science
>magical thinking scenario.
>I doubt that Tesla navigation systems are written in a purely
>functional language, but surely there is more to this condition than
>whether I have access to that source code and can send you the million
>lines in purely functional form?  If something is inscrutable, it might
>exhibit free will?
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Friam
><[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> On Behalf
>Of jon zingale
>Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 12:26 PM
>To: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic
>
>I would say no if you can provide me the function.
>

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

[gepr]

Yep. I used MegaHAL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaHAL
And I used a blurb from it on the back cover of the book I "wrote" with this: https://thatsmathematics.com/mathgen/

I showed you that book when you visited one time. FWIW, I also generated MegaHAL databases for several of the most frequent posters to FriAM. But I figured it would be disrespectful and ethically problematic to post any of the output from those.

Unfortunately, I lost all those databases at some point. I'm just not as rigorous as I used to be. They're probably in my safe on one of the disks. But who knows? And it's irrelevant anyway. What's more relevant are the conversing chatbots we wrote for an art instillation in Norway. They were trained up as different personalities working in a mill, designed to both have conversations with each other *and* answer questions from visiting children. That was a fun project.

On 4/3/21 6:44 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> I also think Glen has claimed that  he did build (or just train up) some kind of existing babble-generator on his own text for his own entertainment.

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/