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Guided Apophenia

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Steve Smith

Guided Apophenia

wicked good (but frightening) analysis of QAnon

https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5

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gepr

Re: Guided Apophenia

That article was so painful to read! It's a good 'theory': basically that the Q character is an explicit, funded campaign. But we'd need a little evidence, which the author doesn't provide. So, it looks to me like they're looping it around. A conspiracy theory about a conspiracy theory. A 2nd order conspiracy!

The sprinkle of scientific articles was a nice touch ... adds that slight hint of authority ... "You can read those papers yourself. Do your own research!" And the explicit title "Curiouser Institute" provides more evidence that Rabbit Rabbit (the author) *intended* the post to present a 2nd order conspiracy theory ... you know, Lewis Carroll being Lewis Carroll and all (Oh wait! Lewis Carroll WASN'T Lewis Carroll! ... And he was [rumored to be -ed] a pedophile! Damn you Q! He's probably a Democrat and a close friend of Hillary. [he died 50 years before she was born -ed] Now I have to scour all related material for goat heads and pentagrams.).

And my (apophenia-justified) conspiracy theory about Rabbit Rabbit's intentions produces a 3rd order conspiracy! It's turtles all the way down.

But, of course, my eyeballs popped out at the reference to Resnick's book, which hearkens back to my post on 11/2 about the role of ad hominem in critical thinking <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ad-hominem-as-critical-thinking-tt7599336.html>, which is very questionable simply because *I* posted it. 8^D I have trustworthy evidence I'm featured prominently at the top of many a killfile.

This examination of vote counts and Benford's law is related: https://youtu.be/etx0k1nLn78. Funny patterns in data are merely abductive triggers, not evidence. It strikes me that the overwhelming majority of investigative journalism is simply methodical ad hominem, as in Rabbit Rabbit's piece, "Follow the money. Don’t let them fool you. This goes all the way to the top." Perhaps we can suggest Rabbit Rabbit's apophenic "evidence" that Q is a moderately funded campaign to Pro Publica?

On November 11, 2020 6:46:28 PM PST, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
>wicked good (but frightening) analysis of QAnon
>
>https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Steve Smith

Re: Guided Apophenia

Yes, it was all very meta-meta and as you say rabbit-turtles all the way
down the turtle hole... I found the self-exemplary style effective in a
disturbing way. I don't know if that is what you meant by "hard to
read"... keeping track of the extra levels of indirection (with the risk
of infinite recursion)?

I was left also with the paradox parallel to "good guys with guns" of
wondering at the idea that anyone can (and many do) engage in guided
aphophenia, and in fact that seems to be the basis of all (effective)
rhetorical discourse?   Who do we become if we begin to deliberately
manipulate the belief systems of others "for their own good".   Is
politics anything else but that?   But I can't help wanting to make it
my next mini-career... to set up mini whirlwinds of anti-cyclonic
conspiracies to collide with the cyclonic ones being spun by the likes
of Q (individual or collective).

Your reference to the little evidence, etc. leads me to another new word
I encountered: "Aeteology" in the tongue-in-cheek usage of your own
oft-lobbed "just so stories".   Is there any difference between a "just
so story" and "a conspiracy?".   Intent? Consequence?
Convergence/Divergence?

On 11/12/20 7:27 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

> That article was so painful to read! It's a good 'theory': basically that the Q character is an explicit, funded campaign. But we'd need a little evidence, which the author doesn't provide. So, it looks to me like they're looping it around. A conspiracy theory about a conspiracy theory. A 2nd order conspiracy!
>
> The sprinkle of scientific articles was a nice touch ... adds that slight hint of authority ... "You can read those papers yourself. Do your own research!" And the explicit title "Curiouser Institute" provides more evidence that Rabbit Rabbit (the author) *intended* the post to present a 2nd order conspiracy theory ... you know, Lewis Carroll being Lewis Carroll and all (Oh wait! Lewis Carroll WASN'T Lewis Carroll! ... And he was [rumored to be -ed] a pedophile! Damn you Q! He's probably a Democrat and a close friend of Hillary. [he died 50 years before she was born -ed] Now I have to scour all related material for goat heads and pentagrams.).
>
> And my (apophenia-justified) conspiracy theory about Rabbit Rabbit's intentions produces a 3rd order conspiracy! It's turtles all the way down.
>
> But, of course, my eyeballs popped out at the reference to Resnick's book, which hearkens back to my post on 11/2 about the role of ad hominem in critical thinking <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ad-hominem-as-critical-thinking-tt7599336.html>, which is very questionable simply because *I* posted it. 8^D I have trustworthy evidence I'm featured prominently at the top of many a killfile.
>
> This examination of vote counts and Benford's law is related: https://youtu.be/etx0k1nLn78. Funny patterns in data are merely abductive triggers, not evidence. It strikes me that the overwhelming majority of investigative journalism is simply methodical ad hominem, as in Rabbit Rabbit's piece, "Follow the money. Don’t let them fool you. This goes all the way to the top." Perhaps we can suggest Rabbit Rabbit's apophenic "evidence" that Q is a moderately funded campaign to Pro Publica?
>
> On November 11, 2020 6:46:28 PM PST, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> wicked good (but frightening) analysis of QAnon
>>
>> https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> 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
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>

gepr

Re: Guided Apophenia

Excellent question! My obviously non-compelling contributions to the recent AI-polling thread <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/How-soon-until-AI-takes-over-polling-tp7599471p7599481.html> were intended to evoke ideas like those expressed here:

A Question of Responsibility by John Collins
https://www.academia.edu/177687/A_Question_of_Responsibility

E.g. "Chomsky’s general point in this passage, I take it, is that the empirical coverage of any theoretical discourse can be rendered as a commitment to a set of the relevant entities ([...]). Such ontological commitment to the sets of the relevant entities, however, is not required for the explanatory goals of the given sciences, unless, of course, the science is a branch of mathematics that is concerned with large sets and their properties, and there the identity of the entities is irrelevant."

If we imagine the output of an ML inducer as a just-so-story (similar to Kepler's laws) and an identified mechanism (similar to Newton's laws), it argues for something like inference to the best explanation. Sloppy IttBE can easily lead to "conspiracy theory". But well-done IttBE is simply good science. The *difference* lies in the well-done. Enter orgs like Pro Publica, contrasted with your crazy Aunt poking around Facebook.

I *think* EricC was trying to make a point like this in his last response in the deductive fidelity thread. I still owe a response to that. But the idea that believable rhetoric needs something like *coherence* ... not as formal or strong as consistency, but something like it. And the point I made in my 2nd AI-polling post is that it not only matters that your argument hang together. The mechanics of the logic matter. It's the *method* that makes the difference.

On 11/12/20 8:44 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Your reference to the little evidence, etc. leads me to another new word
> I encountered: "Aeteology" in the tongue-in-cheek usage of your own
> oft-lobbed "just so stories". Is there any difference between a "just
> so story" and "a conspiracy?". Intent? Consequence?
> Convergence/Divergence?

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Steve Smith

Re: Guided Apophenia

Continuing on the arc, I stumbled over this paper ( a more scholarly, less PopSci) on meta-issues of the "Extended Mind Hypothesis"

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-015-0799-9

This is relevant for multiple reasons but the most obvious to me in the moment is the ideas SteveG has promoted around Collective Intelligence and in some ways the "Extended Phenotype" (in Dawkin's sense), the built environment, and direly the latest application of Kauffman's Adjacent Possible to the exponentially growing (in complexity if not material resource) technosphere (on top of/adjacent to the noosphere on top of the biosphere on top of the hydro-cryo-atmo-geosphere). It is a "technicolor goo" parallel to the "grey goo" scenario.

My application domain(s) include the realm of distributed collaboration (nominally scientific) and of "becoming collectively intelligent" in the sense of the distributed camera systems (and beyond) in-process at SimTable.

Your response below is well received and nicely arcs/ties back to the other threads we are all weaving here in our collective co-evolution of ideas. This is my response to Nick's desire to capture all of this and reshape (back-propogate/re-project?) it into scholarly papers. I sense that such a goal is an OldSkool impulse which I do not mean as dismissive, but possibly mutually exclusive to the process we are collectively engaged in here (what I think of as the Buddhist (westernized version) concept of dependent co-arising). FriAM, for better and worse, is a "Living Batch", a symbiotic colony of organisms....

<not> Mumble/Ramble,

- Steve

On 11/12/20 10:14 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

A Question of Responsibility by John Collins
https://www.academia.edu/177687/A_Question_of_Responsibility

E.g. "Chomsky’s general point in this passage, I take it, is that the empirical coverage of any theoretical discourse can be rendered as a commitment to a set of the relevant entities ([...]). Such ontological commitment to the sets of the relevant entities, however, is not required for the explanatory goals of the given sciences, unless, of course, the science is a branch of mathematics that is concerned with large sets and their properties, and there the identity of the entities is irrelevant."

If we imagine the output of an ML inducer as a just-so-story (similar to Kepler's laws) and an identified mechanism (similar to Newton's laws), it argues for something like inference to the best explanation. Sloppy IttBE can easily lead to "conspiracy theory". But well-done IttBE is simply good science. The *difference* lies in the well-done. Enter orgs like Pro Publica, contrasted with your crazy Aunt poking around Facebook.

I *think* EricC was trying to make a point like this in his last response in the deductive fidelity thread. I still owe a response to that. But the idea that believable rhetoric needs something like *coherence* ... not as formal or strong as consistency, but something like it. And the point I made in my 2nd AI-polling post is that it not only matters that your argument hang together. The mechanics of the logic matter. It's the *method* that makes the difference.

On 11/12/20 8:44 AM, Steve Smith wrote:

Your reference to the little evidence, etc. leads me to another new word
I encountered: "Aeteology" in the tongue-in-cheek usage of your own
oft-lobbed "just so stories".   Is there any difference between a "just
so story" and "a conspiracy?".   Intent?  Consequence? 
Convergence/Divergence?

thompnickson2

Re: Guided Apophenia

SteveS wrote,

FriAM, for better and worse, is a "Living Batch", a symbiotic colony of organisms....

So, I guess it’s up to me to eat all the academic cake myself. Would that I were able! As Eric will point out, I can’t even eat my own slice.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2020 11:48 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Guided Apophenia

Continuing on the arc, I stumbled over this paper ( a more scholarly, less PopSci) on meta-issues of the "Extended Mind Hypothesis"

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-015-0799-9

<not> Mumble/Ramble,

- Steve

On 11/12/20 10:14 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

Excellent question! My obviously non-compelling contributions to the recent AI-polling thread <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/How-soon-until-AI-takes-over-polling-tp7599471p7599481.html> were intended to evoke ideas like those expressed here:

A Question of Responsibility by John Collins

https://www.academia.edu/177687/A_Question_of_Responsibility

E.g. "Chomsky’s general point in this passage, I take it, is that the empirical coverage of any theoretical discourse can be rendered as a commitment to a set of the relevant entities ([...]). Such ontological commitment to the sets of the relevant entities, however, is not required for the explanatory goals of the given sciences, unless, of course, the science is a branch of mathematics that is concerned with large sets and their properties, and there the identity of the entities is irrelevant."

If we imagine the output of an ML inducer as a just-so-story (similar to Kepler's laws) and an identified mechanism (similar to Newton's laws), it argues for something like inference to the best explanation. Sloppy IttBE can easily lead to "conspiracy theory". But well-done IttBE is simply good science. The *difference* lies in the well-done. Enter orgs like Pro Publica, contrasted with your crazy Aunt poking around Facebook.

I *think* EricC was trying to make a point like this in his last response in the deductive fidelity thread. I still owe a response to that. But the idea that believable rhetoric needs something like *coherence* ... not as formal or strong as consistency, but something like it. And the point I made in my 2nd AI-polling post is that it not only matters that your argument hang together. The mechanics of the logic matter. It's the *method* that makes the difference.

On 11/12/20 8:44 AM, Steve Smith wrote:

Your reference to the little evidence, etc. leads me to another new word

I encountered: "Aeteology" in the tongue-in-cheek usage of your own

oft-lobbed "just so stories".   Is there any difference between a "just

so story" and "a conspiracy?".   Intent?  Consequence?

Convergence/Divergence?

gepr

Re: Guided Apophenia

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

The weak vs strong versions of constitutive seems useful. Thanks! It targets my sense of mechanism nicely in the vaguely stated soft requirement for effective procedures: "In principle, it can be done by a human without any aids except writing materials." <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_method> Generalizing that is difficult. I forget where I read it, but the analogy between doing math in your head versus on paper is useful for pointing it out. For me, the steps I use in my head are different from the ones I use on paper. But that makes them constitutive_w, I guess. By contrast, I'm completely incapable of, say, installing a kitchen faucet "in my head". I have to make a billion trips out to the garage to grab a tool I didn't realize I needed. Etc. Having the faucet (or an exploded diagram) in front of me is necessary, constitutive_s.

I'm wondering if it also impacts my assertion that the fundamental grievance the Trumpers hold is a reactionary stance against our progressive loss of individuality. In response to John's idea that a coming Civil War doesn't make sense unless there is a grievance on at least one side. My (tentative) answer is that we're becoming a biofilm (not really collective intelligence, but similar). The so far non-violent but still revolutionary overthrowing of the mostly white, mostly male, elite [⛧] is getting more intense. In a vacuum, it would NOT have to escalate to Frantz Fannon style requirement for blood flowing in the streets. But the elites' reaction to that figurative overthrowing (e.g. cancel culture, PC, diversity training, etc.) is intensifying, which positively reinforces the intensity of the overthrowing. It seems totally reasonable that this could escalate out of control and into widespread violence, if not Civil War.

The reaction of the Trumpers is constitutive_s of the overthrowing. And the left overthrowing is constitutive_s of the Trumpers' reactionary stance. Renee' and I discussed the idea that maybe it's a Good Thing Gorsuch and ACB are now on the court, to dampen any progress made if both the Executive and Legislative branches went D. Dampers on either side of the grievance-tuple might prevent the speculative Civil War (even though we may all die in the fires of climate change). And, of course, caveat the whole setup by remembering how incompetent I am at any of this, history, economics, social interaction, etc.

[⛧] Yes, I'm aware how wrong it sounds to refer to lower middle class Trumpers as "elites". It's a statement of these times.

On 11/12/20 9:48 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Continuing on the arc, I stumbled over this paper ( a more scholarly, less PopSci) on meta-issues of the "Extended Mind Hypothesis"
>
> https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-015-0799-9
>
> This is relevant for multiple reasons but the most obvious to me in the moment is the ideas SteveG has promoted around Collective Intelligence and in some ways the "Extended Phenotype" (in Dawkin's sense), the built environment, and direly the latest application of Kauffman's Adjacent Possible to the exponentially growing (in complexity if not material resource) technosphere (on top of/adjacent to the noosphere on top of the biosphere on top of the hydro-cryo-atmo-geosphere). It is a "technicolor goo" parallel to the "grey goo" scenario.
>
> My application domain(s) include the realm of distributed collaboration (nominally scientific) and of "becoming collectively intelligent" in the sense of the distributed camera systems (and beyond) in-process at SimTable.
>
> Your response below is well received and nicely arcs/ties back to the other threads we are all weaving here in our collective co-evolution of ideas. This is my response to Nick's desire to capture all of this and reshape (back-propogate/re-project?) it into scholarly papers. I sense that such a goal is an OldSkool impulse which I do not mean as dismissive, but possibly mutually exclusive to the process we are collectively engaged in here (what I think of as the Buddhist (westernized version) concept of dependent co-arising). FriAM, for better and worse, is a "Living Batch", a symbiotic colony of organisms....

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen