New ways of understanding the world

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 12:13 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

Map Nick's list of numbers to a spatiotemporal snapshot of the physical world. The dog and the human have both learned how to learn about it. Whether it took 1 year, 8000 years, or 2.7 billion years sort of doesn’t matter in the argument except that the new AI needs enough time to perform experiments to learn the consequences and meaning of different patterns of numbers. If the list of numbers describes every possible action that the AI could take and how that particular path would be recorded, then any given experiment could in principle be encapsulated in a single set of numbers; it is just a matter of what cells in the hyperspace the AI decides to look at.

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

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???

Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 9:54 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

Well, as I've tried to make clear, machines can *accrete* their machinery. I think this is essentially arguing for "genetic memory", the idea that there's a balance between scales of learning rates. What your dog learns after its birth is different from what it "knew" at its birth. I'm fine with tossing the word "theory" for this accreted build-up of inferences/outcomes/state. But it's as good a word as any other.

I suspect that there are some animals, like humans, born with FPGA-like learning structures so that their machinery accretes more after birth than other animals. And that there are some animals born with more of that machinery already built-in. And it's not a simple topic. Things like retractable claws are peculiar machinery that kindasorta *requires* one to think in terms of clawing, whereas our more rounded fingernails facilitate both clawing and, say, unscrewing flat head screws.

But this accreted machinery is *there*, no matter how much we want to argue where it came from. And it will be there for any given AI as well. Call it whatever you feel comfortable with.

On 12/1/20 9:39 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> Dogs and humans share 84% of their DNA, so that almost sounds plausible on the face of it. However, humans have about 16 billion neurons in the cerebral cortex but the whole human genome is only about 3 billion base pairs, and only about 30 million of it codes for proteins. This seems to me to say that learning is more important than inheritance of "theories" if you must insist on using that word.

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thompnickson2

Re: New ways of understanding the world

In reply to this post by gepr

So, except with respect to my longing for convergence, we agree. See larding below :

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 1:21 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

But you said "we may hope to discover and agree upon fundamental principles underlying all logics". I was simply checking that and saying I neither hope for that, nor believe it possible.[NST===>I both hope for it and believe it is ultimately possible. Most of all, I believe that that faith is essential inquiry. This is here e disagree? <===nst]

And the important part of what I expressed was that logic does NOT depend on what we're talking about. It is referent-independent. No semiotic object is necessary. Only the sign and the interpretant are necessary. The object ... the "checkin with the world" is necessary for reason, but not logic. And reason relies on logic, but is not limited to it.
[NST===>Oh, gosh, I guess we do disagree here, too. But I think you disagree with yourself. If all logics are relative as applied, what could they possibly be relative TO other than content?? <===nst]

And a third point is that it is NOT subject to any kind of in the long run convergence. Logics are games. They are set up and played and none of them will ever go away. You or I may get bored of one or the other. But they'll all still have their place.
[NST===>And what exactly is their place?<===nst]

Did you answer my question about birth order? I am preparing an ad hominem argument I and I need some data.

[NST===>Nick<===nst]

On 12/1/20 11:08 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> But Glen, I am an anti-foundationalist, too. I never asserted that
> logic was the foundation of anything. It is subject to the same pragmaticist [/sensu Peirceae/] evaluations that are the fate of any conception. It, like everything else, is the result of accumulations of pattern in experience. It is a midden, not a foundation.

> On 12/1/20 9:15 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
>> I stipulate that there are many logics. Certainly as many logics as there are maths. So, what is true of all “logics”? A logic is a proposed set of principles of right thinking. Thinking is “right” when it leads to expectations that prove out in the long run. What thinking is “right” depends on what one is thinking about. Some logic’s are more basic, more universal than others. In the very long run, we may hope to discover and agree upon fundamental principles underlying all logics, a logic of logics, if you ill. But for the foreseeable future what argument is logical will depend on what we are talking about.

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Prof David West

Re: New ways of understanding the world

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Nick,

You are summarily restating the position of the paper you are co-authoring. You may recall that I was a bit critical of that position in my comments on that paper. I remain so.

davew

On Tue, Dec 1, 2020, at 9:54 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

M.

Every description engages a theory. It’s theories all the way down.

N.
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 8:17 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

Glen writes:

<1) there are different ways to try random,
2) there are different stuffs to be tried, and
3) there are different ways to reproduce.>

It seems to me the taxa of life are a description not a theory.

Marcus

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of ⛧ glen <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 2:34 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

1) there are different ways to try random,
2) there are different stuffs to be tried, and
3) there are different ways to reproduce.

The particular, concrete ways used to do 1, 2, & 3 constitute the theory.

On November 30, 2020 5:36:23 PM PST, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
>How about Try random stuff and possibly reproduce?

--
glen ⛧

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Prof David West

Re: New ways of understanding the world

In reply to this post by gepr

Nah,

"dogs understand the world in a similar way to other dogs" because they resonate with the same morphogentic field. That field is generated by dogs doing doggy stuff, but it is outside the dog, not inside like like doggy-machinery/doggy theory.

:)

davew

On Tue, Dec 1, 2020, at 10:06 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

> Sorry. That wasn't my intention. Humans and dogs are nothing but
> machines (for this thread anyway). The point I'm trying to make is that
> the machinery inside your dog *is* a theory. The reason your dog
> understands the world in a similar way to other dogs is because dogs
> have similar machinery, similar theories. The difference between humans
> and dogs is that they have different machinery, different theories. The
> difference between an AI and a human is ... wait for it ... different
> theories. 8^D
>
> On 12/1/20 9:00 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > You seem to be implying that humans are somehow different than machines. That they have something like Chomsky's language acquisition device which is novel in ways that humans don't understand well enough to implement. My dog learns all sorts of conditional probabilities. For example, she knows she can paw on the garage door in the evening and find me on that conveyor belt machine thing. She knows or at least reacts to a correlation between me grabbing my wallet and driving to the dog park. She knows that food is available immediately after that trip. These networks of relations are the sort of structures that were learned in my copy deprotection example. Just deeper networks with somewhat more precise perceptual cues. I'm pretty sure my dog has no time or interest in theory. There are balls to chase, and delivery people to scare off. I would even say my dog performs experiments when she slams a toy down in front of me to see if it is a good time to play.
>
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gepr

Re: New ways of understanding the world

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Right. So we disagree in 3 points: convergence, need for a referent, and foundations. And I answered your sibling question a long time ago. But the answer is irrelevant. So I choose not to answer it again. >8^D

The 3 points of disagreement:

1) Ignore convergence.
2) need for a referent:

· You say logical argument depends on what's being talked about.
· I say logical argument depends only on the logic used.

3) foundations:

· You: the faith in logical unification/foundation is essential inquiry.
· Me: logics are gaming structures to be assumed and abandoned at will.

Re (2), I am NOT saying logics are "relative as applied". Logics are independent of their application. *Reason* (or whatever other word you choose for standard thinking and navigating the world) includes the application of logic, the assignment of meaning to various logical symbols.

On 12/1/20 11:33 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

> So, except with respect to my longing for convergence, we agree. See larding below :
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
> Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 1:21 PM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world
>
> But you said "we may hope to discover and agree upon fundamental principles underlying all logics". I was simply checking that and saying I neither hope for that, nor believe it possible.[NST===>I both hope for it and believe it is ultimately possible. Most of all, I believe that that faith is essential inquiry. This is here e disagree? <===nst]
>
> And the important part of what I expressed was that logic does NOT depend on what we're talking about. It is referent-independent. No semiotic object is necessary. Only the sign and the interpretant are necessary. The object ... the "checkin with the world" is necessary for reason, but not logic. And reason relies on logic, but is not limited to it.
> [NST===>Oh, gosh, I guess we do disagree here, too. But I think you disagree with yourself. If all logics are relative as applied, what could they possibly be relative TO other than content?? <===nst]
>
> And a third point is that it is NOT subject to any kind of in the long run convergence. Logics are games. They are set up and played and none of them will ever go away. You or I may get bored of one or the other. But they'll all still have their place.
> [NST===>And what exactly is their place?<===nst]
>
> Did you answer my question about birth order? I am preparing an ad hominem argument I and I need some data.

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Steve Smith

Re: New ways of understanding the world

In reply to this post by gepr

I knew it... it is just Core Wars all the way down!
> Right. Except that these little machines are not merely learning a static string. They're *writing* to the string at the same time they're reading it.
>
> On 12/1/20 10:12 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> Map Nick's list of numbers to a spatiotemporal snapshot of the physical world. The dog and the human have both learned how to learn about it. Whether it took 1 year, 8000 years, or 2.7 billion years sort of doesn’t matter in the argument except that the new AI needs enough time to perform experiments to learn the consequences and meaning of different patterns of numbers. If the list of numbers describes every possible action that the AI could take and how that particular path would be recorded, then any given experiment could in principle be encapsulated in a single set of numbers; it is just a matter of what cells in the hyperspace the AI decides to look at.

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Prof David West

Re: New ways of understanding the world

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Nick,

Everything I do in software is grounded in personification / anthropomorphization of objects - small bits of software. I would contend that this is the best way to understand and design such software. So I see no reason to avoid personification of AI software and would, in fact, argue that current approaches to designing an AI will fail precisely because they do not take that perspective.

davew

On Tue, Dec 1, 2020, at 12:16 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

“AI needs enough time to perform experiments to learn the consequences and meaning of different patterns of numbers”

Abused metaphor alert !!!!! Haven’t you “personalized” AI? It would seem to me that the one thing you are NOT allowed to do with AI is personalize it.

N
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 12:13 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

Map Nick's list of numbers to a spatiotemporal snapshot of the physical world. The dog and the human have both learned how to learn about it. Whether it took 1 year, 8000 years, or 2.7 billion years sort of doesn’t matter in the argument except that the new AI needs enough time to perform experiments to learn the consequences and meaning of different patterns of numbers.   If the list of numbers describes every possible action that the AI could take and how that particular path would be recorded, then any given experiment could in principle be encapsulated in a single set of numbers; it is just a matter of what cells in the hyperspace the AI decides to look at.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 9:54 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

Well, as I've tried to make clear, machines can *accrete* their machinery. I think this is essentially arguing for "genetic memory", the idea that there's a balance between scales of learning rates. What your dog learns after its birth is different from what it "knew" at its birth. I'm fine with tossing the word "theory" for this accreted build-up of inferences/outcomes/state. But it's as good a word as any other.

I suspect that there are some animals, like humans, born with FPGA-like learning structures so that their machinery accretes more after birth than other animals. And that there are some animals born with more of that machinery already built-in. And it's not a simple topic. Things like retractable claws are peculiar machinery that kindasorta *requires* one to think in terms of clawing, whereas our more rounded fingernails facilitate both clawing and, say, unscrewing flat head screws.

But this accreted machinery is *there*, no matter how much we want to argue where it came from. And it will be there for any given AI as well. Call it whatever you feel comfortable with.

On 12/1/20 9:39 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Dogs and humans share 84% of their DNA, so that almost sounds plausible on the face of it. However, humans have about 16 billion neurons in the cerebral cortex but the whole human genome is only about 3 billion base pairs, and only about 30 million of it codes for proteins.   This seems to me to say that learning is more important than inheritance of "theories" if you must insist on using that word.

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: New ways of understanding the world

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

I find it unfortunate that operating systems dating back to SYSV and BSD conceived of compiled programs that could not self-modify. Restrictions like that tend to limit how people think about software. I've always liked syntax-free languages like Lisp because code is just stuff to be chopped out from one place and inserted some other place like any other sort of data. All this presentation stuff for human programmers seems so banal.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 11:57 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

I knew it... it is just Core Wars all the way down!
> Right. Except that these little machines are not merely learning a static string. They're *writing* to the string at the same time they're reading it.
>
> On 12/1/20 10:12 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> Map Nick's list of numbers to a spatiotemporal snapshot of the physical world. The dog and the human have both learned how to learn about it. Whether it took 1 year, 8000 years, or 2.7 billion years sort of doesn’t matter in the argument except that the new AI needs enough time to perform experiments to learn the consequences and meaning of different patterns of numbers. If the list of numbers describes every possible action that the AI could take and how that particular path would be recorded, then any given experiment could in principle be encapsulated in a single set of numbers; it is just a matter of what cells in the hyperspace the AI decides to look at.

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thompnickson2

Re: New ways of understanding the world

In reply to this post by gepr

Ad hominem comments:

Ok, in the absence of good data, I will assume that I am correct. You are the older brother two younger siblings; I am the younger brother to two older siblings. My psychology is to be constantly catching up; your psychology is to be constantly trying to stay ahead. Normally that goes on until the older sibling dies and the younger sibling gets to catch up by saying something wise at the memorial service. Unfortunately, I am at least twenty years older than you, so I am doomed never to catchup. I am Sisiphus, perpetually rolling my damned stone up your damned hill. But I love you anyway.

Substantive comments in larding below.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 1:54 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

Right. So we disagree in 3 points: convergence,

need for a referent, and foundations. And I answered your sibling question a long time ago. But the answer is irrelevant. So I choose not to answer it again. >8^D

The 3 points of disagreement:

1) Ignore convergence.

[NST===> Then why are we bothering to argue. It creates a tension in me that we disagree; I infer that no such tension is felt by you. I revert to my ad hominem argument above. <===nst]

2) need for a referent:

· You say logical argument depends on what's being talked about.

· I say logical argument depends only on the logic used.

[NST===>I am not (today) making a claim that logic depends on content; I am only making the claim that logic grows out of experience in much the same way that truths do and that, therefore, logic arises from content, and is, usually, related to it.<===nst]

3) foundations:

· You: the faith in logical unification/foundation is essential [NST===>to<===nst] inquiry.

· Me: logics are gaming structures to be assumed and abandoned at will.

Re (2), I am NOT saying logics are "relative as applied". Logics are independent of their application. *Reason* (or whatever other word you choose for standard thinking and navigating the world) includes the application of logic, the assignment of meaning to various logical symbols.

[NST===>I guess we do disagree, then. You believe that logics are pulled out of our … um…; I believe that they arise from the trod down midden of experience. They are proposals about how truth is to be found. I am therefore not a foundationalist. <===nst]

[NST===>I return to my ad hominem argument. I am seeking to agree; you are happier when you disagree. B.I.L.Y.A. <===nst]

On 12/1/20 11:33 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

> So, except with respect to my longing for convergence, we agree. See larding below :

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???

> Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 1:21 PM

> To: [hidden email]

> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

> But you said "we may hope to discover and agree upon fundamental principles underlying all logics". I was simply checking that and saying I neither hope for that, nor believe it possible.[NST===>I both hope for it and believe it is ultimately possible. Most of all, I believe that that faith is essential inquiry. This is here e disagree? <===nst]

> And the important part of what I expressed was that logic does NOT depend on what we're talking about. It is referent-independent. No semiotic object is necessary. Only the sign and the interpretant are necessary. The object ... the "checkin with the world" is necessary for reason, but not logic. And reason relies on logic, but is not limited to it.

> [NST===>Oh, gosh, I guess we do disagree here, too. But I think you

> disagree with yourself. If all logics are relative as applied, what

> could they possibly be relative TO other than content?? <===nst]

> And a third point is that it is NOT subject to any kind of in the long run convergence. Logics are games. They are set up and played and none of them will ever go away. You or I may get bored of one or the other. But they'll all still have their place.

> [NST===>And what exactly is their place?<===nst]

> Did you answer my question about birth order? I am preparing an ad hominem argument I and I need some data.

↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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thompnickson2

Re: New ways of understanding the world

In reply to this post by Prof David West

If you are saying that the more AI acts like a person, the more People will believe they understand it, I totally agree. Whether they believe truthfully is a whole ‘nother that matter. If ever there were a cradle for manipulation, AI is it.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

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

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 2:01 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

Nick,

davew

On Tue, Dec 1, 2020, at 12:16 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

“AI needs enough time to perform experiments to learn the consequences and meaning of different patterns of numbers”

Abused metaphor alert !!!!! Haven’t you “personalized” AI? It would seem to me that the one thing you are NOT allowed to do with AI is personalize it.

N
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 12:13 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

Map Nick's list of numbers to a spatiotemporal snapshot of the physical world. The dog and the human have both learned how to learn about it. Whether it took 1 year, 8000 years, or 2.7 billion years sort of doesn’t matter in the argument except that the new AI needs enough time to perform experiments to learn the consequences and meaning of different patterns of numbers.   If the list of numbers describes every possible action that the AI could take and how that particular path would be recorded, then any given experiment could in principle be encapsulated in a single set of numbers; it is just a matter of what cells in the hyperspace the AI decides to look at.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 9:54 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

Well, as I've tried to make clear, machines can *accrete* their machinery. I think this is essentially arguing for "genetic memory", the idea that there's a balance between scales of learning rates. What your dog learns after its birth is different from what it "knew" at its birth. I'm fine with tossing the word "theory" for this accreted build-up of inferences/outcomes/state. But it's as good a word as any other.

I suspect that there are some animals, like humans, born with FPGA-like learning structures so that their machinery accretes more after birth than other animals. And that there are some animals born with more of that machinery already built-in. And it's not a simple topic. Things like retractable claws are peculiar machinery that kindasorta *requires* one to think in terms of clawing, whereas our more rounded fingernails facilitate both clawing and, say, unscrewing flat head screws.

But this accreted machinery is *there*, no matter how much we want to argue where it came from. And it will be there for any given AI as well. Call it whatever you feel comfortable with.

On 12/1/20 9:39 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Dogs and humans share 84% of their DNA, so that almost sounds plausible on the face of it. However, humans have about 16 billion neurons in the cerebral cortex but the whole human genome is only about 3 billion base pairs, and only about 30 million of it codes for proteins.   This seems to me to say that learning is more important than inheritance of "theories" if you must insist on using that word.

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thompnickson2

Re: New ways of understanding the world

In reply to this post by gepr

Jon,

Does "encoded a theory" get me off my own hook?

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 10:59 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

That sounds like a fairly standard way of distinguishing between intuitiionist and classical conceptions. For me, the problem boils down to whether or not you allow for *actual* infinities or only possible infinities. If you take a doing like "choose a token, apply unary_1 to it, then apply binary_1 to the original token and the output of unary_1", the result will be a theorem. And there's no, in principle, distinction between the doing and the theorem. But if you then say, "do that forever". Then the result isn't really a theorem because there's really no result. You'd have to add something else ... like a convergence operator. But convergence is persnickety. A better operator would be a similarity/distance operator.

Marcus' "try random stuff, possibly reproduce" allows for options in "reproduce" of strong or weak similarity. (Obviously, for copying a software app, you need pretty strong similarity, but perhaps not when you have complex gen-phen maps.) So it seems reasonable to include similarity operators, but not convergence operators. Then instead of "do that forever", you have "do that until similarity_1 < ε". Even if similarity_1 is NOT monotonic, you can stop when you find a procedure that's close enough to a copy to halt. And that feels like a theorem to me.

Of course, there's no reason those derived theorems have to already be present at the very start of the process. The machine can have a "priming" period where it has to "prove" a bunch of theorems that will *eventually* detect the "order". So Nick's "already possessed" is technically wrong, which is what Marcus points out. But, in some sense, those provable theorems are *already* expressible in the prior language. So Nick is spiritually right.

But re: self discovery as corollary to world discovery -- It seems like Wolpert's paper argues against that: https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.1362 The idea that there can only be a single strong inference device in the world implies an asymmetry between world and self discovery. But I can't really pretend to grok the contents of that paper. Maybe someone else here can?

On 12/1/20 8:09 AM, jon zingale wrote:
> It is a little strange to read "possessed a theory" from Nick because
> he staunchly avoids language like "has consciousness". That said, I
> read him here as saying that discovery of the self is a corollary to
> discovery of the world. From my own perspective, theories are derived
> from (founded upon?) doings, but are not the same thing as doings.
> Tryings are perhaps more subtle, they evoke for me something like
> proto-theorems or lemmas. -- 2₵

> On 11/30/20 1:24 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
>> I was arguing that given, say, a string of numbers, and no information external to that string, that no AI could detect “order” unless it already possessed a theory of what order is. I found the discussion distressing because I thought the point was trivial but all the smart people in the conversation were arguing against me.

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thompnickson2

Re: New ways of understanding the world

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

Oh, thank you steve. I was afraid it might be a bad dream.

Sometimes I think your mom knew my mom.

I like how you write, Steve. I wish I could find you a good agent.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

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

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 11:30 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

Nick -

I should not be old enough to remember this, yet my mother exposed me to it way too young... it was most likely post 3rd or 4th grade summer when she felt I needed to fill my days with something besides wandering the hills with my dog, climbing trees and watching clouds "rotate" into my 3dimensional world, becoming familiar things like bunnies and faces. She assigned me to read one short bit of literature each day and write a short poem (one step below a limerick)... I remember reading a few pages a day of "archy and mehitabel" and being deeply puzzled by everything from the concept of a cockroach typing (I had not seen a cockroach by that time in my life) to his highly stylized diction and imagery. It probably bled into my "poetry" assignments. I found the whole text disturbing, knowing that adults actually found such nonsense interesting?

I find your stuck double-u key to add a nice "signature" to your writing... and references various issues of "coding" and redundancy and compression. I doubt there are many if any examples where the leaving out the W is in any way ambiguous to those of us who have the context. I wonder what Google Doc's OCR would make of it if you printed it out, scanned it in, and gave it a chance to "guess" what you meant?

I own a classic (40s?) typewriter which I was told (by the woman at the garage sale) that it belonged to her father who was widowed in his 40s about the time she was coming of age. (it was of the generation of typewriters which had no '1' key, leaving it to the typist to use the lower case 'l' instead.) He was already (going?) blind at the time, and ended up living with her as she raised her own (young) family. A remote family friend and he apparently developed a romantic but strictly epistolary relationship. To facilitate it, she bought his "ladyfriend" a braille typewriter and him the one I bought from her. They apparently exchanged "love letters" (weekly?) for a couple of decades until his lady friend passed away (in their 70s?). The lady friend's family sent boxes of his letters to her after he died, but kept the braille typewriter. She still had the bundles of both of their letters that she wanted to find an archive to accept, but had not yet. She showed me some of his letters where his fingers had strayed from "home" so that some of the letters were "off by one"... I didn't look closely, because it did read as pseudo-gibberish, but it was likely one row-above because there were numerals interspersed in the gibberish passages. I tried typing with my eyes closed a few times just to see how it felt and what came from it. I found that the offset from the space-bar was a dead-giveaway for me when I was "off-home" by a row rather than off-by a column. I think I was too self-conscious/aware as I did it to be "natural" in my mistakes. I haven't tried typing on the typewriter for over a decade, the ribbon is way too dry at this point, I am sure, to do more than leave faint impressions/marks. I suppose the braille version would not suffer from this! I have a few sheets of braille from a manual which I sometimes like to run my fingers over and imagine what it is like to "read" this way... it triggers some interesting synaesthesia but I nave no sense of being able to "read" it... I'm sure it requires the same deliberate "bootstrapping" that sight reading alphabetic (or any other form) of visual text requires.

Keep on typing! Maybe you can switch out your broken W for "yet another" key?

- Sieve

Russell, et. Al.

Are any of you old enough to remember Archie and Mahitabel. A tale of a love-lorn cockroach ho could only type one key at a time by leaping on it. Hence no upper case.

It was a rip on e. e. cummings, a famous poet of the time ith the same bad habit. My family ent nuts about it in the 40’s. It contains meters and rhymes only a cockroach could rite.

That’s all I remember. I said I as raised in a literary family, I never said I as literate. Let me tell you, life ithout a double-u key truly sucks.

Nick
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email].
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Russell Standish
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 10:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

Was your laptop recycled from the White House perchance?

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121980&page=1

On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 09:47:22PM -0600, [hidden email] wrote:
> Hmm! I don't think I (or glen) have to be a creationist. Only a "start-in-the-middle-ist". I am not interested in the "first structure". Let's figure out hoW all the others Work and then We'll Worry about the first one. (sorry, my doubleU key is effed up and Lenovo is back ordered on keyboards. Does anybody kno a Lenovo executive I could have slaughtered. ) The interest in the first of anything is just creationism set loose from the constraints of religion.
> n
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University
> [hidden email] https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
> Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 7:36 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world
>
> How about Try random stuff and possibly reproduce?   It is starting to sound like you are a creationist.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
> Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 4:45 PM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world
>
> The AI has to have something to *do*. That mechanism amounts to a theory. If the AI looks for patterns in digits, then "look for patterns in the digits" is a type of theory. If the AI tries to copy a set of encrypted digits, then "decrypt and copy the digits" is the theory.
>
> I would further argue that the AI cannot exist, the recipe/algorithm can't exist, without some schematic definition of the things it'll operate on and for tests of a successful operation. So, it would make sense to claim that all 3 are required for there to be a theory. I'm not making that strong of a claim. I'm only trying to back up Nick on his claim that there must be some sort of prior theory for any of it to "work" ... however "work" might be understood.
>
> On 11/30/20 4:35 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > The one is the AI or the rat and its related gene sequence? Or you need all three?   I claim that the last two are not a theory, and that an AI could do that data mining.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
> > Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 4:29 PM
> > To: [hidden email]
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world
> >
> > Well, that *system*, {one, person, genetic sequence} contains an endogenous theory (or a set of possible theories). If you slice out the {one} doing the operating, then you lose the theory.
> >
> > On 11/30/20 4:22 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> >> So if one is given a person (or a rat) and a genetic sequence that animal amounts to an endogenous theory?
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
> >> Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 4:14 PM
> >> To: [hidden email]
> >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world
> >>
> >> Well, sure. But just because the theory is endogenous, doesn't imply that theory does not *exist*, nor that it's not *prior* to the launch. So, even in that case, Nick's correct that the theory (or a spanning kernel of it) exists before-hand.
> >>
> >> On 11/30/20 4:06 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> >>> Once one figures out how the monitor reacts then one can see how certain registers change as a result of changes in instruction sequences.     The relationship of a perturbation to an outcome is simple, learnable and relatively unambiguous for a typical microprocessor.    Assembly of subroutines follow the same principles. (One can observe a stack with enough experimentation.)    The language is learned (not given) and the axioms implied by the structure of the machine. The goal of copying is sort of beside the point.
> >>>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
> >>> Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 3:51 PM
> >>> To: [hidden email]
> >>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world
> >>>
> >>> But if we use the word "theory" in its minimal sense of "a language and a set of axioms", then your "to be copied so that it does the same thing" *is* a theory, albeit a different theory (or containing theory) for one that would treat the [un]copyable application over and above the act of copying. What would be interesting would be the *number* and diversity of theories validatable/executable against any given set of tokens.
> >>>
> >>> On 11/30/20 3:33 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> >>>> I spent a fair amount of my youth disassembling boot procedures of various copy protection schemes.   There one is given a list of numbers that bootstrap an operating system and an application. A small portion of that list of numbers is relevant to preventing that list of numbers from being copied from one media to another.   It wasn’t really necessary to have a theory of the application, generally, to understand how to change the numbers to make that list copyable.   If one had no theory of a computer instruction set or of an operating system, but was just given a disk and the goal of copying it to get the computer to do the same thing when the copied disk was put in to the disk drive instead of the original disk, it is possible to learn everything that is needed to learn which numbers to change.   No oscilloscope needed, no theory of solid state physics, etc. Ok, maybe one reference manual.   Biology is the same, but without a concise reference manual.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> *From:* Friam <[hidden email]> *On Behalf Of
> >>>> [hidden email]
> >>>> *Sent:* Monday, November 30, 2020 1:25 PM
> >>>> *To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
> >>>> <[hidden email]>
> >>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> All,
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> I feel like this relates to a discussion held during Nerd Hour at the end of last Friday’s vfriam. I was arguing that given, say, a string of numbers, and no information external to that string, that no AI could detect “order” unless it already possessed a theory of what order is. I found the discussion distressing because I thought the point was trivial but all the smart people in the conversation were arguing against me.
> >
> > --
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--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish                    Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders     [hidden email]
                      http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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gepr

Re: New ways of understanding the world

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

[sigh] I was adopted. My older sister was also adopted. I have no younger siblings that I know of, though they may exist.

And I'm not contrarian because I want to "stay ahead". I'm contrarian because too many people around me are too satisfied to sit on the haunches of their preconceptions without trying to think of *other* ways to think.

Why bother to argue if there is no convergence? Because exercising my ability to think in OTHER WAYS feels good. I enjoy arguing not because arguing is enjoyable, but arguing forces me to think in ways I don't normally think.

I do not believe logics are arbitrary. Traditional logic does arise from language and semantics. But modern logic has broken free and is more syntactic. Technology and progress are good things. And some of the non-arbitrary logics actually match human reasoning better than others. But the logic doesn't *need* the human reasoning. The human reasoning needs the logic.

And the very definition of a foundationalist is that something like truth is the foundation of logic. You seem to have it flipped. You seem to be saying that a foundationalist believes logic is the foundation of truth or somesuch. I thought foundationalist meant a) a foundation for all logics can be found and b) that foundation may be tied to something else ... like reality ... or convergence.

And to reiterate, I'm not happy or happier when I disagree. But I am *productive* when there is someone present with whom I disagree. If everyone around me agrees with me, I am useless, get bored and move on.

On 12/1/20 12:27 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

> Ad hominem comments:
>
>
>
> Ok, in the absence of good data, I will assume that I am correct. You are the older brother two younger siblings; I am the younger brother to two older siblings. My psychology is to be constantly catching up; your psychology is to be constantly trying to stay ahead. Normally that goes on until the older sibling dies and the younger sibling gets to catch up by saying something wise at the memorial service. Unfortunately, I am at least twenty years older than you, so I am doomed never to catchup. I am Sisiphus, perpetually rolling my damned stone up your damned hill. But I love you anyway.
>
> */[NST===> Then /*why are we bothering to argue. It creates a tension in me that we disagree; I infer that no such tension is felt by you. I revert to my ad hominem argument above. */<===nst] /*
>
> */[NST===>I am not (today) making a claim that logic depends on content; I am only making the claim that logic gro/**/ws out of experience in much the same way that truths do and that, therefore, logic arises from content, and is, usually, related to it.<===nst] /*
>
> */[NST===>I guess /**/we do disagree, then. You believe that logics are pulled out of our … um…; I believe that they arise from the trod down midden of experience. They are proposals about how truth is to be found. I am therefore not a foundationalist./* */<===nst] /*
>
>
>
> */[NST===>I return to my ad hominem argument. I am seeking to agree; you are happier /**/when you disagree. B.I.L.Y.A. /* */<===nst] /*

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

thompnickson2

Re: New ways of understanding the world

Glen,

Sorry to put you through all that. I now remember that I was totally wrong. I guess it just goes to show that I am such younger sibling that I can turn anybody into an older brother.

You went on to write:

And the very definition of a foundationalist is that something like truth is the foundation of logic. You seem to have it flipped. You seem to be saying that a foundationalist believes logic is the foundation of truth or somesuch. I thought foundationalist meant a) a foundation for all logics can be found and b) that foundation may be tied to something else ... like reality ... or convergence.

Here would be a good place for us to remember that I am not a philosopher, and so should not be talking at all. However, having cast care to the wind, I now assert that foundationalism is the belief that we can trace all right thought back to a few postulates from which all truths arise by deduction. This leads to a fascination with paradoxes, upon which any system may founder. It also leads in biology to a fascination with firsts, the first life, the first consciousness, etc. I don’t think either of us are foundationalists.

I don’t quite know how arguing could force you to think if disagreement does not produce a tension of some sort. Why wouldn’t I just go on believing the silly things I believe no matter what somebody else says. Oooops!

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 3:05 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

[sigh] I was adopted. My older sister was also adopted. I have no younger siblings that I know of, though they may exist.

And I'm not contrarian because I want to "stay ahead". I'm contrarian because too many people around me are too satisfied to sit on the haunches of their preconceptions without trying to think of *other* ways to think.

Why bother to argue if there is no convergence? Because exercising my ability to think in OTHER WAYS feels good. I enjoy arguing not because arguing is enjoyable, but arguing forces me to think in ways I don't normally think.

I do not believe logics are arbitrary. Traditional logic does arise from language and semantics. But modern logic has broken free and is more syntactic. Technology and progress are good things. And some of the non-arbitrary logics actually match human reasoning better than others. But the logic doesn't *need* the human reasoning. The human reasoning needs the logic.

And to reiterate, I'm not happy or happier when I disagree. But I am *productive* when there is someone present with whom I disagree. If everyone around me agrees with me, I am useless, get bored and move on.

On 12/1/20 12:27 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

> Ad hominem comments:

> Ok, in the absence of good data, I will assume that I am correct. You are the older brother two younger siblings; I am the younger brother to two older siblings. My psychology is to be constantly catching up; your psychology is to be constantly trying to stay ahead. Normally that goes on until the older sibling dies and the younger sibling gets to catch up by saying something wise at the memorial service. Unfortunately, I am at least twenty years older than you, so I am doomed never to catchup. I am Sisiphus, perpetually rolling my damned stone up your damned hill. But I love you anyway.

> */[NST===> Then /*why are we bothering to argue. It creates a tension

> in me that we disagree; I infer that no such tension is felt by you.

> I revert to my ad hominem argument above. */<===nst] /*

> */[NST===>I am not (today) making a claim that logic depends on

> content; I am only making the claim that logic gro/**/ws out of

> experience in much the same way that truths do and that, therefore,

> logic arises from content, and is, usually, related to it.<===nst] /*

> */[NST===>I guess /**/we do disagree, then. You believe that logics

> are pulled out of our … um…; I believe that they arise from the trod

> down midden of experience. They are proposals about how truth is to

> be found. I am therefore not a foundationalist./* */<===nst] /*

> */[NST===>I return to my ad hominem argument. I am seeking to agree;

> you are happier /**/when you disagree. B.I.L.Y.A. /* */<===nst] /*

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Steve Smith

Re: New ways of understanding the world

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Nick -

Oh, thank you steve. I was afraid it might be a bad dream.

Sometimes I think your mom knew my mom.

I like how you write, Steve. I wish I could find you a good agent.

thanks for the kind words. it definitely felt like a bad dream to a 10 year old!

A good agent/editor would be key if I had any such aspirations. I am definitely an ama-tuer and would probably fail miserably if I tried to write for any more specific purpose than you find here. My technical proposals and the like may be a testimony to how much better I write when I have only my own self-imposed goals and constraints!

Mary is a published poet and when she moved here 3 years ago had the body of a memoir which she completed and I became her first reader... she writes well... but even after hiring a "coach" does not have a submittable manuscript. She acknowledges that she may have written her memoir more as therapy than as something worthy of sharing widely.

My mother was raised by older parents... her father's first wife died in the 1918 influenza and she had 5 older siblings (3 of them half's), her mother was abandoned with two young boys by her own first husband who was never seen again. Her mother died when she was about 21... and while they lived rural (Kentucky subsistence farmers), her city-aunt, married to an MD took my mom in during her elementary school years (age 6-12, depth of the Depression). They offered her the kind of poverty-of-spirit that only the most strict (if of modest financial means) Scottish Methodists could conjure (budgeting one square of toilet paper per event when she was allowed a full-page from Sears&Roebuck at home?). Her aunt (and the MD husband) were also older... having just shipped their own young-adults out of the house when they moved her in. So my mom may well have been raised by parents who were your grandparents age. My mother is turning 91 next week. She is in an assisted living in Tucson which manages COVID well but not perfectly... she voted for Trump, twice... her TV is stuck on Fox News... she used to be very progressive (by my expectations/standards), all I can think is that she (and my dad who passed nearly 10 years ago now) simply "got old" and let fear take over from compassion. I am thankful she made me read/write (and 'rithmatic and geography) above and beyond what the public schools offered... she was also a self-taught landscape painter... I found her *first* oil painting when we cleaned out the house after my father's death... it was (literally) a paint-by-number ( I can still smell the linseed-oil as the paint dried/cured over weeks before she moved on to acrylics). She eventually found watercolors and a hand/eye/voice in that medium that transcended the literal/representational style her paint-by-number beginnings gave her.

- Steve

Eric Charles-2

Re: New ways of understanding the world

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Coming very late to the party... like all the things we talk about here "foundationalist" can have many meanings. I would assert that the most basic meaning is that you believe there is some firm starting point for our thought that could be found.

I am tempted to add "and you think we would be better off if we could find it", however, I think most anti-foundationalists would agree with that part to. That is, most anti-foundationalists would agree that if a firm foundation was out there to be found, then we would be better off if we could find it. The difference is that the anti-foundationalist doesn't think the firm starting point can be found, and therefore sees searching for it as a fools errand.

The metaphor of a "firm foundation" is about being able to build without worry that the floor will collapse underneath you. It is about thinking that there is something you can put at the base of your thinking that will itself never be in danger of needing revision, even if the structures you build on top prove to be unstable. The clearest example of such an effort is Descarte's argument that you can doubt everything except that when-you-are-doubting-you-are-doubting. Did that turn out to be firm? Not as much as Descarte had hoped, but the hope itself is clear.

At any rate, you could presumably try to be a foundationalist with any type of thing serving as the foundation (e.g., logic, metaphysics, epistemology, truth, experience, metaphor, triads, turtles, etc.).