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Vladimyr Burachynsky

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

Glen,

Your models are so sophisticated that I barely grasp their intricacies.
I only offered a suggestion that could possibly reduce your work load.
In my opinion you ascribe overly complex behavior to very dumb characters.

At the most primitive level living organisms are predominantly selfish and have little time for
the needs of others. Such brutally simplistic organism should be easier to model than the tax-collector on the road to Damascus.

The Bull_frog is a simple enough creature that never considers consequences. As a child I ate fried frog legs exploring the local forests as well as nuts and berries. The compulsion to attack was easily manipulated to my benefit.

Many other creatures also exhibit this type of simple forcing function. I suppose sex is also a simple drive as well. Some creatures are more advanced and will look about before accepting apparently unguarded sustenance. Trap wary animals. Some creatures become trap happy over time.

The majority of man kind seems appears little more advanced than beasts. Even someone as notorious as Bernie Madoff can be characterized as a simple creature taking advantage of an opportunity. The type of crime is determined by environment of the occupant. So transfer Madoff to a gulag and the crime might change but not the offender's basic motives (which were ever self interest)

Now take the Bull Frog and increase the population density and what happens... They eat eachother. They will never develop a society. The experiment will always fail.

However if the experiment used a Madoff you will get a different result Madoffs care what observers see and will not dine in the open. In a manner like tiger beetle larvae that lurk in loose
sand and wait for footsteps overhead before striking and dining. Considering how predatory they are they live in high densities but never form societies.
Evolution must find a method to mitigate the savagery of predators before experimenting with socialization. My hunch is neonatany and gullibility. The longer infant dependency , the longer the effects of gullibility. The greater the opportunity for the Madaff's to harvest the herds. So Madoff's start like everyone else but then they revert to something older . They apparently can catalyze the same transformation in their living victims.

So my impression is that all human beings can revert to lower states throughout life. They just need the correct motivation.

I used to play a few video games a while back and detected code flaws that emulated the behavior of Bull-Frogs and they already exist to ease your efforts. A gullible human being has little chance of survival without parents. But if the parents are themselves gullible then the kid will have a tough time. So perhaps parenthood triggers extreme caution specifically to protect their gullible infants.

I prefer to think in small steps before building large structures.

Parenthood may be the first step toward building a simple commons or society, the nest area.
vib

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: April-17-17 1:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

Interesting. So, just to repeat back, to see if I understand. Steve wondered if there were (a good) model of the evolution of individuals in political state space. I responded that there are lots of (bad) models. But the more important point is _why_ model that evolution (including models of the individuals)? Steve responded that such models might help first comprehend, then manipulate. Then I responded that to make such comprehension and manpulation ethical, the models and manipulations must be transparent.

With this post, you're suggesting a specific mechanism of one such model, I presume because you think this mechanism will make the model better ... more comprehensive. And that mechanism is:

• 2 behavior modes, the choice of which depends on whether an agent senses its being watched • part of the "while they're watching" mode is to construct and express a complicated mapping between the two modes • that mapping must hide the modality of the behaviors, perhaps only to a 1st order analysis • that mapping relies on a set of symbols that are ambiguous (multiple meanings)

Then you go a couple of steps further and suggest that, given some objective towards which the collective works, such mappings make reaching the objective more difficult, inefficient, or completely impossible. Without the mappings, the objective is more easily reached.

Is my repitition adequate? Or did I miss an important part of your suggestion?

On 04/14/2017 04:36 PM, Vladimyr wrote:

> Create Agents that only behave honestly when they think they are under observation.
> When they think they have been detected they will weave a
> rationalization out of standard clichés, that appears as if they were honest but mistaken due to ambiguity of language. This prevents honest agents from figuring out what happened.
> Such an agent should cause untold chaos when slipped into any honest collective.
>
> Over time the collective should disintegrate or be perverted...
> If you can create chaos with only the one kind of pervert imagine if half the population were perverted away from honesty.
>
> No real need to immerse yourself in a transparent cloak, just sit back and watch.
>
> vib
> Good luck.
> Then add violent reprisals and you are back to classic game theory... tit for tat.
>
> These perverts might actually be attempting to evolve into true social parasites. Like Staphylinid beetles in an ant colony.

--
☣ glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

gepr

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

OK. Sorry. I mistook your message as suggesting an additional mechanism, rather than a plea for simpler models. In general, I agree that simpler models should be falsified before adding mechanisms like the modal one you suggested. But, as is obvious with the special sciences like biology, parsimony can be as much a bane as a boon. To unjustifiably impute simplicity can defeat the search for solutions.

On 04/17/2017 04:41 PM, Vladimyr wrote:

> Your models are so sophisticated that I barely grasp their intricacies.
> I only offered a suggestion that could possibly reduce your work load.
> In my opinion you ascribe overly complex behavior to very dumb characters.
>
> At the most primitive level living organisms are predominantly selfish and have little time for
> the needs of others. Such brutally simplistic organism should be easier to model than the tax-collector on the road to Damascus.
>
> The Bull_frog is a simple enough creature that never considers consequences. As a child I ate fried frog legs exploring the local forests as well as nuts and berries. The compulsion to attack was easily manipulated to my benefit.
>
> Many other creatures also exhibit this type of simple forcing function. I suppose sex is also a simple drive as well. Some creatures are more advanced and will look about before accepting apparently unguarded sustenance. Trap wary animals. Some creatures become trap happy over time.
>
> The majority of man kind seems appears little more advanced than beasts. Even someone as notorious as Bernie Madoff can be characterized as a simple creature taking advantage of an opportunity. The type of crime is determined by environment of the occupant. So transfer Madoff to a gulag and the crime might change but not the offender's basic motives (which were ever self interest)
>
> Now take the Bull Frog and increase the population density and what happens... They eat eachother. They will never develop a society. The experiment will always fail.
>
> However if the experiment used a Madoff you will get a different result Madoffs care what observers see and will not dine in the open. In a manner like tiger beetle larvae that lurk in loose
> sand and wait for footsteps overhead before striking and dining. Considering how predatory they are they live in high densities but never form societies.
> Evolution must find a method to mitigate the savagery of predators before experimenting with socialization. My hunch is neonatany and gullibility. The longer infant dependency , the longer the effects of gullibility. The greater the opportunity for the Madaff's to harvest the herds. So Madoff's start like everyone else but then they revert to something older . They apparently can catalyze the same transformation in their living victims.
>
> So my impression is that all human beings can revert to lower states throughout life. They just need the correct motivation.
>
> I used to play a few video games a while back and detected code flaws that emulated the behavior of Bull-Frogs and they already exist to ease your efforts. A gullible human being has little chance of survival without parents. But if the parents are themselves gullible then the kid will have a tough time. So perhaps parenthood triggers extreme caution specifically to protect their gullible infants.
>
> I prefer to think in small steps before building large structures.
>
> Parenthood may be the first step toward building a simple commons or society, the nest area.

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Vladimyr Burachynsky

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

Glen,

impute? or impune

I had a reputation once... for building complex structures. No matter what the object it started with
much simpler components and complex emerged from many iterations. In my mind iterations only baffle
the audience.

Evolution is operating like a skinflint or miser rarely inventing something totally new. At least since cyanobacteria figured
out oxygen usefulness.

the rogue actor may be the primitive type, the opportunist. The honest resident of the commons is a defective rogue hampered by
social morality or gullibility. A lesser creature , a domestic entity. However he does have one advantage , he can learn how to protect himself if he elects to make an effort. Extract simple parameters from to rogue and amplify only those while muting others
and you may find they act in a different manner as another species. Yet they both contain the same code managed slightly differently. I recently wrote some code using Growth Factors that produced dramatically different Object appearance and behavior.

But then they are unlike your creatures.

I use simple functions currently linear and trig since I wish to examine them minutely. By keeping them simple they emulate genetic regulators.

From what Owen and you seem to be doing , I find it very intriguing and should like to follow.

When you think you are stuck have a drink and revisit your assumptions.

My hunch is that human society has evolved in a haphazard manner till now and things will
get better or worse again. Oh well my stay, is expected to be short.
vib

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: April-18-17 10:58 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

OK. Sorry. I mistook your message as suggesting an additional mechanism, rather than a plea for simpler models. In general, I agree that simpler models should be falsified before adding mechanisms like the modal one you suggested. But, as is obvious with the special sciences like biology, parsimony can be as much a bane as a boon. To unjustifiably impute simplicity can defeat the search for solutions.

On 04/17/2017 04:41 PM, Vladimyr wrote:

> Your models are so sophisticated that I barely grasp their intricacies.
> I only offered a suggestion that could possibly reduce your work load.
> In my opinion you ascribe overly complex behavior to very dumb characters.
>
> At the most primitive level living organisms are predominantly selfish
> and have little time for the needs of others. Such brutally simplistic organism should be easier to model than the tax-collector on the road to Damascus.
>
> The Bull_frog is a simple enough creature that never considers consequences. As a child I ate fried frog legs exploring the local forests as well as nuts and berries. The compulsion to attack was easily manipulated to my benefit.
>
> Many other creatures also exhibit this type of simple forcing function. I suppose sex is also a simple drive as well. Some creatures are more advanced and will look about before accepting apparently unguarded sustenance. Trap wary animals. Some creatures become trap happy over time.
>
> The majority of man kind seems appears little more advanced than
> beasts. Even someone as notorious as Bernie Madoff can be
> characterized as a simple creature taking advantage of an opportunity.
> The type of crime is determined by environment of the occupant. So
> transfer Madoff to a gulag and the crime might change but not the
> offender's basic motives (which were ever self interest)
>
> Now take the Bull Frog and increase the population density and what happens... They eat eachother. They will never develop a society. The experiment will always fail.
>
> However if the experiment used a Madoff you will get a different
> result Madoffs care what observers see and will not dine in the open. In a manner like tiger beetle larvae that lurk in loose sand and wait for footsteps overhead before striking and dining. Considering how predatory they are they live in high densities but never form societies.
> Evolution must find a method to mitigate the savagery of predators before experimenting with socialization. My hunch is neonatany and gullibility. The longer infant dependency , the longer the effects of gullibility. The greater the opportunity for the Madaff's to harvest the herds. So Madoff's start like everyone else but then they revert to something older . They apparently can catalyze the same transformation in their living victims.
>
> So my impression is that all human beings can revert to lower states throughout life. They just need the correct motivation.
>
> I used to play a few video games a while back and detected code flaws that emulated the behavior of Bull-Frogs and they already exist to ease your efforts. A gullible human being has little chance of survival without parents. But if the parents are themselves gullible then the kid will have a tough time. So perhaps parenthood triggers extreme caution specifically to protect their gullible infants.
>
> I prefer to think in small steps before building large structures.
>
> Parenthood may be the first step toward building a simple commons or society, the nest area.

gepr

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

On 04/18/2017 06:54 PM, Vladimyr wrote:
> Evolution is operating like a skinflint or miser rarely inventing something totally new. At least since cyanobacteria figured out oxygen usefulness.

Ahh, but whether that's true or false hinges on the inherent ambiguity in the word "new". So, I posit you are neither right nor wrong.

> The honest resident of the commons is a defective rogue hampered by social morality or gullibility. A lesser creature , a domestic entity. However he does have one advantage , he can learn how to protect himself if he elects to make an effort. Extract simple parameters from to rogue and amplify only those while muting others and you may find they act in a different manner as another species. Yet they both contain the same code managed slightly differently. I recently wrote some code using Growth Factors that produced dramatically different Object appearance and behavior.

Hm. Before, you stated that a single bimodal agent (one that only behaves honestly when they think they're being observed) could cause chaos in an honest collective. That implies a fairly straightforward toy model+experiment, wherein we can look for complex maps from simple mechanisms to complicated phenomena.

But now, you're suggesting something much closer to my (conceptual) model of organisms: that we're _all_ hypocrites, we're all both hampered by morality or gullibility _and_ free to commit any crime then lie about it, to varying degrees and over various periods. In such a model, the most important factors are the _measures_, not necessarily any mechanisms or any putative (objective) phenomena that might be measured.

The collection of measures, is itself complex and multiscale. Each component (from the tiniest "atom" to the largest sub-collection) has its own set of measures. E.g. cells, organs, individuals, groups, states, nations, corporations all sense and respond to their environment. To focus, as you have on the single-scale, measure-dependent concepts like honesty, morality, gullibility, etc. is to over-emphasize one small set of measures to the detriment of all the other measures and their scopes.

Regardless, though, it's from this measure-dominant understanding of the world that I poked Steve about determining the _purpose_ of modeling evolution through politics-space prior to entertaining any models at all. It's a direct result of a V&V-dominant approach to modeling. First determine the purpose. Next determine the measures. Then, and only then consider the amorphous milieu of possible mechanisms behind the ontological wall. This results-driven method seemed very strange to the laity prior to the development of test-driven software development. But it's been a mainstay in engineering for maybe 70 years, now.

> But then they are unlike your creatures. I use simple functions currently linear and trig since I wish to examine them minutely. By keeping them simple they emulate genetic regulators.

I don't see my creatures (cells and organs, these days) as very different from what you're describing. While it's true that I tend to use discrete mappings, they are almost always hybrids (discretized continuous and discrete event) over mixed state spaces (anything from analytical to enumerative types). Dealing with those mixed state spaces means that complications appear early on, I suspect much earlier than complications that come with what I call "flat" or "thin" models, where all the state spaces _reduce_ to a common, well-defined state space (like ℝ⁴). Because those complications arise early in the workflow, that means my "creatures" and the models they compose will almost always be simpler than those used in, say, physics-based models. In fact, it's this over-simplification that allows us to model with these ill-defined creatures and systems at all.

So, my creatures are probably simpler than yours. And I would posit they are very similar to yours. Of course, the systems they compose are axiomatic, where, because you can rely on a huge body of well-developed (if not well-founded!) analytical math, it's probable your _methods_, your workflows, are very unlike mine.

--
☣ glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Vladimyr Burachynsky

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

Glen and the gang,

"measure-dependent concepts like honesty, morality, gullibility, etc. is to over-emphasize one small set of measures to the detriment of all the other measures and their scopes."

I don't know of any measuring device that operates in these realms. But in general a domestic animal may have the same genetic code as the parent stock but negative influence can shut off
large chunks of code without actually deleting it through methylation or something more subtle. This may appear as a dramatic alteration as in the case of Foxes and Dogs.

Resurrecting extinct animals from DNA is problematic knowing some genes that are present may have been switched off. In general most vertebrates are functionally conservative.
Knowing that we still find great variety.

You will find unexpected results even if you reduce your effort. After that you could investigate more elaborate constructs even including entirely new abilities never imagined.
So you may be able to solve the measurement problem. Most vertebrates are very sensitive to anything looking like eyes in the vision field.

Lower animals already contain the necessary equipment and oxytocin seems to be one moderator hormone.

Entirely new genetic material regularly comes from viruses but often kills before being accepted. If accepted it is usually hobbled or deactivated, or domesticated.

"I don't see my creatures (cells and organs, these days) as very different from what you're describing. While it's true that I tend to use discrete mappings, they are almost always hybrids (discretized continuous and discrete event) over mixed state spaces (anything from analytical to enumerative types). Dealing with those mixed state spaces means that complications appear early on, I suspect much earlier than complications that come with what I call "flat" or "thin" models, where all the state spaces _reduce_ to a common, well-defined state space (like ℝ⁴). Because those complications arise early in the workflow, that means my "creatures" and the models they compose will almost always be simpler than those used in, say, physics-based models. In fact, it's this over-simplification that allows us to model with these ill-defined creatures and systems at all."

I have yet to introduce complete engineering functionality. The spring and ball models never struck me as particularly sophisticated. Though they did require large hard drives and fast cpu's, but now they are readily available.

You might be able to help with one of my issues,... How to make one object talk to another digitally. I get the collision problem from engineering but not the long range sensing...

vib

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: April-19-17 4:22 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

On 04/18/2017 06:54 PM, Vladimyr wrote:
> Evolution is operating like a skinflint or miser rarely inventing something totally new. At least since cyanobacteria figured out oxygen usefulness.

Ahh, but whether that's true or false hinges on the inherent ambiguity in the word "new". So, I posit you are neither right nor wrong.

> The honest resident of the commons is a defective rogue hampered by social morality or gullibility. A lesser creature , a domestic entity. However he does have one advantage , he can learn how to protect himself if he elects to make an effort. Extract simple parameters from to rogue and amplify only those while muting others and you may find they act in a different manner as another species. Yet they both contain the same code managed slightly differently. I recently wrote some code using Growth Factors that produced dramatically different Object appearance and behavior.

Hm. Before, you stated that a single bimodal agent (one that only behaves honestly when they think they're being observed) could cause chaos in an honest collective. That implies a fairly straightforward toy model+experiment, wherein we can look for complex maps from simple mechanisms to complicated phenomena.

But now, you're suggesting something much closer to my (conceptual) model of organisms: that we're _all_ hypocrites, we're all both hampered by morality or gullibility _and_ free to commit any crime then lie about it, to varying degrees and over various periods. In such a model, the most important factors are the _measures_, not necessarily any mechanisms or any putative (objective) phenomena that might be measured.

The collection of measures, is itself complex and multiscale. Each component (from the tiniest "atom" to the largest sub-collection) has its own set of measures. E.g. cells, organs, individuals, groups, states, nations, corporations all sense and respond to their environment. To focus, as you have on the single-scale, measure-dependent concepts like honesty, morality, gullibility, etc. is to over-emphasize one small set of measures to the detriment of all the other measures and their scopes.

Regardless, though, it's from this measure-dominant understanding of the world that I poked Steve about determining the _purpose_ of modeling evolution through politics-space prior to entertaining any models at all. It's a direct result of a V&V-dominant approach to modeling. First determine the purpose. Next determine the measures. Then, and only then consider the amorphous milieu of possible mechanisms behind the ontological wall. This results-driven method seemed very strange to the laity prior to the development of test-driven software development. But it's been a mainstay in engineering for maybe 70 years, now.

> But then they are unlike your creatures. I use simple functions currently linear and trig since I wish to examine them minutely. By keeping them simple they emulate genetic regulators.

I don't see my creatures (cells and organs, these days) as very different from what you're describing. While it's true that I tend to use discrete mappings, they are almost always hybrids (discretized continuous and discrete event) over mixed state spaces (anything from analytical to enumerative types). Dealing with those mixed state spaces means that complications appear early on, I suspect much earlier than complications that come with what I call "flat" or "thin" models, where all the state spaces _reduce_ to a common, well-defined state space (like ℝ⁴). Because those complications arise early in the workflow, that means my "creatures" and the models they compose will almost always be simpler than those used in, say, physics-based models. In fact, it's this over-simplification that allows us to model with these ill-defined creatures and systems at all.

So, my creatures are probably simpler than yours. And I would posit they are very similar to yours. Of course, the systems they compose are axiomatic, where, because you can rely on a huge body of well-developed (if not well-founded!) analytical math, it's probable your _methods_, your workflows, are very unlike mine.

--
☣ glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

gepr

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

On 04/19/2017 04:10 PM, Vladimyr wrote:
> I don't know of any measuring device that operates in these realms.

Exactly. If you don't know how to measure it, then you don't know how to model it.

> You might be able to help with one of my issues,... How to make one object talk to another digitally. I get the collision problem from engineering but not the long range sensing...

No, my robotics skills are extremely limited. Sorry.

--
☣ glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Vladimyr Burachynsky

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

"If you don't know how to measure it, then you don't know how to model it."

That statement has the feel of circularity about it.
It may be quite correct in some cases but it completely fails when a simple predator
models the terrain in its brain without a Lufkin tape measure.

Mental models seem to overcome this shortcoming using memory and position location
with no self-awareness of the procedures.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170420141753.htm
methylation and memory

You may be arguing yourself into a corner.
But then I might be arguing myself through a door-way.
Pattern comparisons...

vib

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: April-19-17 6:38 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

On 04/19/2017 04:10 PM, Vladimyr wrote:
> I don't know of any measuring device that operates in these realms.

Exactly. If you don't know how to measure it, then you don't know how to model it.

> You might be able to help with one of my issues,... How to make one object talk to another digitally. I get the collision problem from engineering but not the long range sensing...

No, my robotics skills are extremely limited. Sorry.

--
☣ glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

gepr

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

On 04/20/2017 09:45 PM, Vladimyr wrote:
> "If you don't know how to measure it, then you don't know how to model it."
>
> That statement has the feel of circularity about it.
> It may be quite correct in some cases but it completely fails when a simple predator
> models the terrain in its brain without a Lufkin tape measure.

Yes, that's very astute. It does feel circular, doesn't it? But as we've discussed ad nauseum, that doesn't mean it's wrong. And it does _not_ fail in the context of a predator "modeling" terrain. What fails is the reliance on the ambiguity of the much abused word, "model".

--
☣ glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Vladimyr Burachynsky

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

Glen, making you nauseous was not my intention.
So some models use Rigid Metrics
others seem to be Pattern Comparisons
and then there are Neural Models

I have been labouring for some time on another which was once thought by myself to be
a machine motion algorithm but when graphically displayed looked extraordinarily like a sea creature.
So some appeared to have petal structures so I applied some desperate measures and named them in my mind
as belonging to a class of creatures having a integer number of petals.0.. 48 before the computer balked in protest.
These were in every case peculiar rectangular matrices, having some properties of networks. So applying colors only
to edges produced some spectacular transformations not imagined in 2D spreadsheets.
I constructed a hallucination and named it a Mental Model. By Jacking it up to 4D since now it grows, these phantoms
plague my sleep and friendships. I am converting them to 3D .obj files and intend to print one when it is not writhing before my eyes.

The printer imposes dimensions for the first time due to the containment box, design envelope. This is a trivial Scaling Problem, so it seems.

Once many years ago I designed boats and started with Half Models in basswood. Then lifted (lofted) the lines to paper so it would
fit in my shop and out the doors. So those models existed in my mind before any sawdust fell to the floor.
I tried to teach this approach with mixed success. Students thought I had plans secreted away, I did read many but rarely used them.

I think the act of carving the little half models was a procedure familiar to sculptors Where the artist's intentions shape the medium and
he is guided by heuristics back checking reality with mental imagery until satisfied. Much later does the Lufkin tape Measure show up.
In my case a Digital Caliper. Indeed I cheated often, first surface mirrors and black glue lines that served as grid lines and more.

But measurement was not as important as students imagined. It was my assumption it would fall into place of its own accord.
Scale and proportion might be aesthetics but seem very powerful early on.

My daughter hated writing because she obsessed over page margins and font sizes and type.
I suggested blank paper and a pencil and was accused of being insensitive.
My own son always wanted to build things but I always demanded a sketch first, he never complied so he now sells things made by others.

By the time I finished a little wooden half model of a boat the bulk of design work was over and only then did my crew go to work.
So where was the Model that drove all this effort,,,

I gather you are suggesting that we get used to specifying the type of Model with a prefix, not a bad idea, just imagine the chaos if we only
used the term Ball to describe all sports.
vib

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: April-21-17 1:00 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

On 04/20/2017 09:45 PM, Vladimyr wrote:
> "If you don't know how to measure it, then you don't know how to model it."
>
> That statement has the feel of circularity about it.
> It may be quite correct in some cases but it completely fails when a
> simple predator models the terrain in its brain without a Lufkin tape measure.

Yes, that's very astute. It does feel circular, doesn't it? But as we've discussed ad nauseum, that doesn't mean it's wrong. And it does _not_ fail in the context of a predator "modeling" terrain. What fails is the reliance on the ambiguity of the much abused word, "model".

--
☣ glen

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gepr

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

Excellent! Thanks for providing some concrete context. I now realize you are focusing on a describable subset of the amorphous cloud of the word "model". Progress in the argument is impossible without that. And I'll try to avoid the endless caveats, qualifiers, and prefixes for the ambiguous term by using what i've argued elsewhere (in the papers I've helped publish) are standard English words, namely "analog" and "measure".

When you talk about the analogs you made out of basswood, these are fundamentally different from whatever cluster of concepts we might arbitrarily carve out of your nervous system and call a "mental model". I argue that this "mental model" is a figment of your imagination. What is real is the analog (starting with a block of wood) and your sensorimotor manifold driven by your nervous system. That entire collection, system, including the block of wood, the knives, sandpaper, etc. includes little, tiny measures. These are quite distinguishable from your "Lufkin tape measure", which is, itself much more than a measure (or not really a measure at all). That "Lufkin tape measure" is an analog. The way you measure things with it is by analogy. You take the analog and set it alongside another (non-mental, concrete) object. That analogical reasoning process is what we call "taking a measurement".

You do the exact same thing when you pick the block of wood up into your hand. You "get a feeling for" the block of wood by analogy with your hand (and the distance between your eyeballs, etc). That act: picking up, holding, turning over, the block of wood _is_ measuring. You're "taking measure" of the block (and the rest of the context, including the tools you will choose). And the measures involved are analogical reasoning/comparisons between parts of your body and the thing being measured.

We call both measures and analogs "models" in our sloppy language. But it should be clear that measures are much more primitive and fundamental than the overwhelming majority of other things we call "model". Similarly, analogs are often called "concrete models", like your basswood boat or Redfish's sand table. Sure, we _could_ call these "concrete models". But why would we unless we were trapped in a word salad tossing argument with a bunch of philosophers? We have other words that are more specific and useful like "analog". And when we compare and contrast our analogs with their referents, then we are _measuring_ the less familiar via the more familiar.

On 04/21/2017 06:40 PM, Vladimyr wrote:

> Glen, making you nauseous was not my intention.
> So some models use Rigid Metrics
> others seem to be Pattern Comparisons
> and then there are Neural Models
>
> I have been labouring for some time on another which was once thought by myself to be
> a machine motion algorithm but when graphically displayed looked extraordinarily like a sea creature.
> So some appeared to have petal structures so I applied some desperate measures and named them in my mind
> as belonging to a class of creatures having a integer number of petals.0.. 48 before the computer balked in protest.
> These were in every case peculiar rectangular matrices, having some properties of networks. So applying colors only
> to edges produced some spectacular transformations not imagined in 2D spreadsheets.
> I constructed a hallucination and named it a Mental Model. By Jacking it up to 4D since now it grows, these phantoms
> plague my sleep and friendships. I am converting them to 3D .obj files and intend to print one when it is not writhing before my eyes.
>
> The printer imposes dimensions for the first time due to the containment box, design envelope. This is a trivial Scaling Problem, so it seems.
>
> Once many years ago I designed boats and started with Half Models in basswood. Then lifted (lofted) the lines to paper so it would
> fit in my shop and out the doors. So those models existed in my mind before any sawdust fell to the floor.
> I tried to teach this approach with mixed success. Students thought I had plans secreted away, I did read many but rarely used them.
>
> I think the act of carving the little half models was a procedure familiar to sculptors Where the artist's intentions shape the medium and
> he is guided by heuristics back checking reality with mental imagery until satisfied. Much later does the Lufkin tape Measure show up.
> In my case a Digital Caliper. Indeed I cheated often, first surface mirrors and black glue lines that served as grid lines and more.
>
> But measurement was not as important as students imagined. It was my assumption it would fall into place of its own accord.
> Scale and proportion might be aesthetics but seem very powerful early on.
>
> My daughter hated writing because she obsessed over page margins and font sizes and type.
> I suggested blank paper and a pencil and was accused of being insensitive.
> My own son always wanted to build things but I always demanded a sketch first, he never complied so he now sells things made by others.
>
> By the time I finished a little wooden half model of a boat the bulk of design work was over and only then did my crew go to work.
> So where was the Model that drove all this effort,,,
>
> I gather you are suggesting that we get used to specifying the type of Model with a prefix, not a bad idea, just imagine the chaos if we only
> used the term Ball to describe all sports.

--
␦glen?

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Frank Wimberly-2

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

"I argue that this mental model is a figment of your imagination..."

In other words, a mental model.

Frank

Frank Wimberly
Phone (505) 670-9918

On Apr 22, 2017 9:48 AM, "┣glen┫" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Excellent! Thanks for providing some concrete context. I now realize you are focusing on a describable subset of the amorphous cloud of the word "model". Progress in the argument is impossible without that. And I'll try to avoid the endless caveats, qualifiers, and prefixes for the ambiguous term by using what i've argued elsewhere (in the papers I've helped publish) are standard English words, namely "analog" and "measure".

When you talk about the analogs you made out of basswood, these are fundamentally different from whatever cluster of concepts we might arbitrarily carve out of your nervous system and call a "mental model". I argue that this "mental model" is a figment of your imagination. What is real is the analog (starting with a block of wood) and your sensorimotor manifold driven by your nervous system. That entire collection, system, including the block of wood, the knives, sandpaper, etc. includes little, tiny measures. These are quite distinguishable from your "Lufkin tape measure", which is, itself much more than a measure (or not really a measure at all). That "Lufkin tape measure" is an analog. The way you measure things with it is by analogy. You take the analog and set it alongside another (non-mental, concrete) object. That analogical reasoning process is what we call "taking a measurement".

You do the exact same thing when you pick the block of wood up into your hand. You "get a feeling for" the block of wood by analogy with your hand (and the distance between your eyeballs, etc). That act: picking up, holding, turning over, the block of wood _is_ measuring. You're "taking measure" of the block (and the rest of the context, including the tools you will choose). And the measures involved are analogical reasoning/comparisons between parts of your body and the thing being measured.

We call both measures and analogs "models" in our sloppy language. But it should be clear that measures are much more primitive and fundamental than the overwhelming majority of other things we call "model". Similarly, analogs are often called "concrete models", like your basswood boat or Redfish's sand table. Sure, we _could_ call these "concrete models". But why would we unless we were trapped in a word salad tossing argument with a bunch of philosophers? We have other words that are more specific and useful like "analog". And when we compare and contrast our analogs with their referents, then we are _measuring_ the less familiar via the more familiar.

On 04/21/2017 06:40 PM, Vladimyr wrote:
> Glen, making you nauseous was not my intention.
> So some models use Rigid Metrics
> others seem to be Pattern Comparisons
> and then there are Neural Models
>
> I have been labouring for some time on another which was once thought by myself to be
> a machine motion algorithm but when graphically displayed looked extraordinarily like a sea creature.
> So some appeared to have petal structures so I applied some desperate measures and named them in my mind
> as belonging to a class of creatures having a integer number of petals.0.. 48 before the computer balked in protest.
> These were in every case peculiar rectangular matrices, having some properties of networks. So applying colors only
> to edges produced some spectacular transformations not imagined in 2D spreadsheets.
> I constructed a hallucination and named it a Mental Model. By Jacking it up to 4D since now it grows, these phantoms
> plague my sleep and friendships. I am converting them to 3D .obj files and intend to print one when it is not writhing before my eyes.
>
> The printer imposes dimensions for the first time due to the containment box, design envelope. This is a trivial Scaling Problem, so it seems.
>
> Once many years ago I designed boats and started with Half Models in basswood. Then lifted (lofted) the lines to paper so it would
> fit in my shop and out the doors. So those models existed in my mind before any sawdust fell to the floor.
> I tried to teach this approach with mixed success. Students thought I had plans secreted away, I did read many but rarely used them.
>
> I think the act of carving the little half models was a procedure familiar to sculptors Where the artist's intentions shape the medium and
> he is guided by heuristics back checking reality with mental imagery until satisfied. Much later does the Lufkin tape Measure show up.
> In my case a Digital Caliper. Indeed I cheated often, first surface mirrors and black glue lines that served as grid lines and more.
>
> But measurement was not as important as students imagined. It was my assumption it would fall into place of its own accord.
> Scale and proportion might be aesthetics but seem very powerful early on.
>
> My daughter hated writing because she obsessed over page margins and font sizes and type.
> I suggested blank paper and a pencil and was accused of being insensitive.
> My own son always wanted to build things but I always demanded a sketch first, he never complied so he now sells things made by others.
>
> By the time I finished a little wooden half model of a boat the bulk of design work was over and only then did my crew go to work.
> So where was the Model that drove all this effort,,,
>
> I gather you are suggesting that we get used to specifying the type of Model with a prefix, not a bad idea, just imagine the chaos if we only
> used the term Ball to describe all sports.

--
␦glen?

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gepr

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

On 04/22/2017 11:44 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> "I argue that this mental model is a figment of your imagination..."
>
> In other words, a mental model.

Heh, no. Despite being a huge term that covers almost everything under the sun, "model" _does_ at least require a referent. A purely imaginary construct has no referent. It is purely imaginary. So not just any old brain fart can be called a "mental model". And whatever you and Vladimyr mean by "mental models" are pure imaginary brain farts with no referent. I.e. they don't exist. Anyone who uses the phrase "mental model" has zero idea what they're talking about, because they're talking nonsense. >8^D

I do grudgingly tolerate "conceptual model", FWIW, only because I believe we can/might eventually find neural correlates of concepts, like when, say, one's pupils dilate in response to an attractive person. A conceptual model would then be a system of physiological activity that _maps_ to some phenomena in the outside world. But, it's important that if there's no _map_ to the outside world, then it can't be a model. I.e. no measure, no model.

--
☣ glen

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Frank Wimberly-2

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

I have a "mental map" of the streets of Santa Fe. I can plan a route to the dump, or even alternative routes, which I can then successfully follow. Model or figment?

I'm sure you've heard many times that all models are wrong; some are useful.

Frank

Frank Wimberly
Phone (505) 670-9918

On Apr 22, 2017 5:01 PM, "glen ☣" <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 04/22/2017 11:44 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> "I argue that this mental model is a figment of your imagination..."
>
> In other words, a mental model.

Heh, no. Despite being a huge term that covers almost everything under the sun, "model" _does_ at least require a referent. A purely imaginary construct has no referent. It is purely imaginary. So not just any old brain fart can be called a "mental model". And whatever you and Vladimyr mean by "mental models" are pure imaginary brain farts with no referent. I.e. they don't exist. Anyone who uses the phrase "mental model" has zero idea what they're talking about, because they're talking nonsense. >8^D

I do grudgingly tolerate "conceptual model", FWIW, only because I believe we can/might eventually find neural correlates of concepts, like when, say, one's pupils dilate in response to an attractive person. A conceptual model would then be a system of physiological activity that _maps_ to some phenomena in the outside world. But, it's important that if there's no _map_ to the outside world, then it can't be a model. I.e. no measure, no model.

--
☣ glen

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Vladimyr Burachynsky

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

Glen,

My “imaginary brain farts” became tangible through effort. I have no doubt about their validity but some were clearly stupid.

However loosely I used the term model without prefixes these imaginary procedures are not without dependencies, or referents.

But this can only arise in a mind that notices some functionality of materials and procedures.

I once constructed an Aramid/ Graphite operating table to be positioned within an MRI device.

Apparently at the time no such artifact existed on the planet. But it was needed.

If referents can be regarded as Real yet have no substance where does that leave us.

The table transported children in and out of the MRI as neurosurgeons considered their next cut

into the open skull of unconscious children to manipulate the source of “Brain Farts”. There is no need to use

provocative language, unless one cherishes verbal one-up-man- ship.

These “referents” can be as elusive and wispy as dreams. However when coupled to a brain with a will and talent, things will go Bang.

I acknowledge that I did such things by fortune of having had a generous education and some few talents.

My neighbor, a perfectly Normal Forensic Accountant, could not, but he liked to watch things happen.

Your arguments take me aback, so watch what the economists call modelling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05S1tAPoRzY

You will no doubt consider this a case in point… but there exists a dividing line between rigorous and whimsical mental models

that the term “conceptual” does little to illuminate.

The spectacle of early flying machines usually makes us wonder what was he thinking…

Even once these mad men constructed the contraptions it became obvious that not all ideas are equal.

vib

what makes some better and others worse? Utility…Profit…Pride…

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: April-22-17 6:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

I have a "mental map" of the streets of Santa Fe. I can plan a route to the dump, or even alternative routes, which I can then successfully follow. Model or figment?

I'm sure you've heard many times that all models are wrong; some are useful.

Frank

Frank Wimberly
Phone (505) 670-9918

On Apr 22, 2017 5:01 PM, "glen ☣" <[hidden email]> wrote:

gepr

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

On 04/22/2017 04:41 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> I have a "mental map" of the streets of Santa Fe. I can plan a route to the dump, or even alternative routes, which I can then successfully follow. Model or figment?

If you believe that "mental map" is _purely_ mental, then it's a figment. Perhaps you are capable of defining "mental" in such a way that it's a useful word. But my guess is that you can't. ... because nobody can. The word "mental" is useless. It may have been useful in the past, of course. So, perhaps if we were talking about, eg, what a 19th century philosopher or historian meant by the term, then it would be useful. But today, with all we know about the brain, the words "mental" and "mind" raise more questions than they answer.

Now, if you said you have a conceptual map, where the various concepts inside your body relate to each other in an equivalent way to how actual streets in Santa Fe relate to each other, then yes it's a model. But calling it a "mental model" destroys your point, defeats your purpose. It forces me to ask "What do you really, specifically, mean by 'mental'?"

--
␦glen?

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

gepr

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

In reply to this post by Vladimyr Burachynsky

I've made this same point 10s of times and I've clearly failed. I'll try one last time and then take my failure with me.

When you assert that there's a dividing line between rigorous and whimsical mental models, what are you saying? It makes no sense to me, whatsoever. Rigor means something like detailed, accurate, complete, etc. Even whimsical implies something active, real, behavioral, physical. In other words, neither word belongs next to "mental". When you string together mutually contradictory words like "rigorous mental model" or "whimsical mental model", your contradiction prevents a predictable inference.

At least the word "concept" allows one to talk coherently about the abstraction process (abstraction from the environment in which the brain is embedded). It preserves something about the origins of the things, the concepts. When you talk of "mental models", then you're left talking about things like "mental constructs" or whatever functional unit of mind you have to carve out, register, as it were. What in the heck is a "mental construct"? Where did it come from? What's the difference between a mental construct and, say, a physical construct? What _is_ a "mental model"? How does it differ from any other "mental" thing? Is there a difference between a "mental foot" and a "mental book"? What if my "mental books" are peach colored clumps of "mental flesh" with 10 "mental toes"? It's ridiculous. Contrast that with the terms "conceptual foot" or "conceptual book".

So, in the end, I simply disagree. The term "conceptual" does much to illuminate.

On 04/22/2017 08:35 PM, Vladimyr wrote:
> there exists a dividing line between rigorous and whimsical mental models
>
> that the term “conceptual” does little to illuminate.

--
␦glen?

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

Heh, it amuses and frustrates me the pressure to publish when one could instead do something useful like develop and share code. Those "mental models" scribbled down on paper obviously have less value than tools to solve the general problem (i.e. working through all the boring but necessary cases to make it all computable), both as formalisms and from a utilitarian point of view. Nonetheless, I hear all the time from theory types that they "have it in their head and just have to write it down". Some of them I believe. Others are just involved in collective performance art in the hopes of pushing their citation count higher. Hmm, I seem to be down on academics today.
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Frank Wimberly-2

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

In reply to this post by gepr

So it's easy to substitute the word 'conceptual' for the word 'mental' whenever I talk to you (or Nick).

I'm curious. My qualifying exam in real analysis consisted of 10 questions (stimuli, inputs?) like "State and prove the Heine-Borel Theorem". The successful response was a written version of a valid proof. I hadn't memorized the proofs but I had memorized conceptualizations of them. How does that fit? Would the referents be the proofs in the text or as presented in class?

I passed.

Frank

Frank Wimberly
Phone (505) 670-9918

On Apr 23, 2017 10:00 AM, "┣glen┫" <[hidden email]> wrote:

I've made this same point 10s of times and I've clearly failed. I'll try one last time and then take my failure with me.

When you assert that there's a dividing line between rigorous and whimsical mental models, what are you saying? It makes no sense to me, whatsoever. Rigor means something like detailed, accurate, complete, etc. Even whimsical implies something active, real, behavioral, physical. In other words, neither word belongs next to "mental". When you string together mutually contradictory words like "rigorous mental model" or "whimsical mental model", your contradiction prevents a predictable inference.

At least the word "concept" allows one to talk coherently about the abstraction process (abstraction from the environment in which the brain is embedded). It preserves something about the origins of the things, the concepts. When you talk of "mental models", then you're left talking about things like "mental constructs" or whatever functional unit of mind you have to carve out, register, as it were. What in the heck is a "mental construct"? Where did it come from? What's the difference between a mental construct and, say, a physical construct? What _is_ a "mental model"? How does it differ from any other "mental" thing? Is there a difference between a "mental foot" and a "mental book"? What if my "mental books" are peach colored clumps of "mental flesh" with 10 "mental toes"? It's ridiculous. Contrast that with the terms "conceptual foot" or "conceptual book".

So, in the end, I simply disagree. The term "conceptual" does much to illuminate.

On 04/22/2017 08:35 PM, Vladimyr wrote:
> there exists a dividing line between rigorous and whimsical mental models
>
> that the term “conceptual” does little to illuminate.

--
␦glen?

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Nick Thompson

Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

Hi, Frank,

Heluva Question, there!

Allow me to skip to what seems to be the core question you are asking:

“Nick: What is it that you Peirceian’s think I am doing when I think I am modeling stuff in my head.”

Gilbert Ryle put this in an even more succinct manner.

What is Le Penseur doing?

Now, you of all people, Frank, know how troubling this question is to a behaviorist, particularly one who denies to himself the notion of “unobservable” behavior. It is the kind of question which has sent me to Peirce, who initially dissappointed me by writing:

The truth, however, appears to be that all deductive reasoning…involves an element of observation; namely, deduction consists in contructing an icon or diagram the relations of whose parts shall present a complete analogy with those of the parts of the obect of reasoning, of experimenting upon this image in the imagination, and of observing the result so as to discover unnoticed and hidden relations among the parts.

Now this is dissappointing to me because at first blush, it appears to be a stalwart defense of the notion of “Mental Models”, which so captivated the field of Cognitive Psychology and which, as you know, I deplore. In fact, so far as I know, it may be the first INVENTION of that notion, in which case, Peirce, not Tolman, would have to be acknowledged as the Father of Cognitive Psychology.

So, either I have to abandon Peirce, or understand him in another way. The problem is that I take Peirce to be a neutral monist. To be a monist is to believe that there is only one kind of stuff in the world. Now, Idealists and Materialists are both monists of a type, bur I think they are kidding themselves; neither position survives without the implication of the other. Indeed, for a any monist to name his “stuff” is really inconsistent because in naming it, he implies the possibility of its absense, and that is to step on the slippery slope of dualism. But to go through the next 100 words using the word stuff, two or three times in a sentence, abhors me, so I am going to give this stuff an name: “experience” stuff. This experience stuff is not experience of anything else but of other experience. We begin, thus, by saying that there is a stream of experience in time and that all experience is of other experiences. In short, we begin in the middle and we regard as silly, a question like, “What was was the FIRST experience of?”

So we start by assuming that experience is random. In such a case, no patterns will appear in it, or, at the very list no such patterns will endure. If patterns do emerge, however, it would make a lot of sense to mark them and behave in accordance with them. We note that some things stick with us when we leave a room and they become “self”; others come and go even when we are stationary, and these become “other”. Some are accompanied by immediate suceeding experiences, and these we call objective; others lead to expectations that are not confirmed, and these we call “dreams.” Etc. Some objective experiences are immediately confirmed by all of our senses, and these we call “direct”; other experiences are confirmed only by longer chains of experiences, and these we call indirect or abstract. The blow of a hammer upon a thumb is of the first sort, the collision of two electrons is of the second.

All behavior, from a monist perspective, consists in experiences of relations between an experience of “seeing” and an experience of “doing”. When those two experiences are close together in time we experrience a reflex; when they are more distant in time, we experience a response; and when they occur at a still greater distance in time, we experience a deliberate action. So the difference between your hitting your thumb with a hammer and yelling “Ouch” and you hitting your thumb for the ninth time and reaching for a pair of pliers to hold the next nail, is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind.

In short, the mystery of the mind, about which we often talk, is really a confusion that arises because we so unreasonably priviledge things that happen half a second apart of being related to one another. So, looking at Le Penseur and asking, what is he doing?, is like looking at a very highspeed photograph of a moving train and demanding to know how fast it is moving on the basis a single instantaneous image. The only proper answer is, “We don’t know yet! “

Thanks for the question,

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2017 11:32 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

So it's easy to substitute the word 'conceptual' for the word 'mental' whenever I talk to you (or Nick).

I passed.

Frank

Frank Wimberly
Phone (505) 670-9918

On Apr 23, 2017 10:00 AM, "┣glen┫" <[hidden email]> wrote:

I've made this same point 10s of times and I've clearly failed. I'll try one last time and then take my failure with me.

When you assert that there's a dividing line between rigorous and whimsical mental models, what are you saying? It makes no sense to me, whatsoever. Rigor means something like detailed, accurate, complete, etc. Even whimsical implies something active, real, behavioral, physical. In other words, neither word belongs next to "mental". When you string together mutually contradictory words like "rigorous mental model" or "whimsical mental model", your contradiction prevents a predictable inference.

At least the word "concept" allows one to talk coherently about the abstraction process (abstraction from the environment in which the brain is embedded). It preserves something about the origins of the things, the concepts. When you talk of "mental models", then you're left talking about things like "mental constructs" or whatever functional unit of mind you have to carve out, register, as it were. What in the heck is a "mental construct"? Where did it come from? What's the difference between a mental construct and, say, a physical construct? What _is_ a "mental model"? How does it differ from any other "mental" thing? Is there a difference between a "mental foot" and a "mental book"? What if my "mental books" are peach colored clumps of "mental flesh" with 10 "mental toes"? It's ridiculous. Contrast that with the terms "conceptual foot" or "conceptual book".

So, in the end, I simply disagree. The term "conceptual" does much to illuminate.

On 04/22/2017 08:35 PM, Vladimyr wrote:
> there exists a dividing line between rigorous and whimsical mental models
>
> that the term “conceptual” does little to illuminate.

--
␦glen?

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Re: the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

Although I really like and agree with Nick's answer, his is a little dense. So I'll try for something more pedestrian.

Your math concepts are the result of many iterations between the measurement of marks on paper and the evolving concepts in your physiology. From your first sight of some math markings on paper or a chalkboard, you took measure of those markings and the words spoken or written by teachers or in books. You eventually made good use of your generic computer and abstracted out the core concepts, the patterns of glucose consumption, that allow you to recapitulate the markings, even if the language or other parts of the context has changed.

As such, the concepts and the marks on the paper are mutually referent. Without the markings, your concepts are ungrounded, meaningless. Without the patterns of glucose consumption, the markings are ungrounded, meaningless.

On April 23, 2017 10:32:13 AM PDT, Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

>So it's easy to substitute the word 'conceptual' for the word 'mental'
>whenever I talk to you (or Nick).
>
>I'm curious. My qualifying exam in real analysis consisted of 10
>questions
>(stimuli, inputs?) like "State and prove the Heine-Borel Theorem". The
>successful response was a written version of a valid proof. I hadn't
>memorized the proofs but I had memorized conceptualizations of them.
>How
>does that fit? Would the referents be the proofs in the text or as
>presented in class?
>
>I passed.
>
>Frank
>
>Frank Wimberly
>Phone (505) 670-9918
>
>On Apr 23, 2017 10:00 AM, "┣glen┫" <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>>
>> I've made this same point 10s of times and I've clearly failed. I'll
>try
>> one last time and then take my failure with me.
>>
>> When you assert that there's a dividing line between rigorous and
>> whimsical mental models, what are you saying? It makes no sense to
>me,
>> whatsoever. Rigor means something like detailed, accurate, complete,
>etc.
>> Even whimsical implies something active, real, behavioral, physical.
>In
>> other words, neither word belongs next to "mental". When you string
>> together mutually contradictory words like "rigorous mental model" or
>> "whimsical mental model", your contradiction prevents a predictable
>> inference.
>>
>> At least the word "concept" allows one to talk coherently about the
>> abstraction process (abstraction from the environment in which the
>brain is
>> embedded). It preserves something about the origins of the things,
>the
>> concepts. When you talk of "mental models", then you're left talking
>about
>> things like "mental constructs" or whatever functional unit of mind
>you
>> have to carve out, register, as it were. What in the heck is a
>"mental
>> construct"? Where did it come from? What's the difference between a
>> mental construct and, say, a physical construct? What _is_ a "mental
>> model"? How does it differ from any other "mental" thing? Is there
>a
>> difference between a "mental foot" and a "mental book"? What if my
>"mental
>> books" are peach colored clumps of "mental flesh" with 10 "mental
>toes"?
>> It's ridiculous. Contrast that with the terms "conceptual foot" or
>> "conceptual book".
>>
>> So, in the end, I simply disagree. The term "conceptual" does much
>to
>> illuminate.
>>
>>
>> On 04/22/2017 08:35 PM, Vladimyr wrote:
>> > there exists a dividing line between rigorous and whimsical mental
>models
>> >
>> > that the term “conceptual” does little to illuminate.
>>
>> --
>> ␦glen?
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

--
⛧glen⛧

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

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