On old question
Locked
 
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This might qualify:
Bravemind: Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy http://ict.usc.edu/prototypes/pts/ Of course, you'll probably go all sophist on my and claim that the 2 experiences (of the original traumatic experience and the simulation) are separate and unique. But ... well... sophistry and all. 8^) On 10/24/18 3:21 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > So: What is it exactly for an experience to "pass as reality". -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ 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
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Glen,
Interesting website ... . But the question can't be answered by pointing at something. I meant to ask the question, "What are the properties of something you would call real?" Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of u?l? ? Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2018 4:24 PM To: FriAM <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] On old question This might qualify: Bravemind: Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy http://ict.usc.edu/prototypes/pts/ Of course, you'll probably go all sophist on my and claim that the 2 experiences (of the original traumatic experience and the simulation) are separate and unique. But ... well... sophistry and all. 8^) On 10/24/18 3:21 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > So: What is it exactly for an experience to "pass as reality". -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ 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 |
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On the contrary, the question can ONLY be answered by pointing at something. Your abstracted, essentialist, linguistic tendencies will fail us every time. I think I've mentioned Luc Steels' language games before. And you seem to be fond of semiotics. So why isn't the question best answered by pointing?
Playing along though, if the experience evoked by a model is good enough to trigger a similar enough physiological response to that evoked by reality, then the model passes for reality. I.e. if the effect is the same, then the cause is equivalent. On October 24, 2018 8:08:01 PM PDT, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote: >Glen, > >Interesting website ... . But the question can't be answered by >pointing at something. I meant to ask the question, "What are the >properties of something you would call real?" > >Nick -- 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
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I would like to introduce a bit of a zig or zag into the conversation by bringing up something a bit far afield and then relating it back to the thread.
In a direct message to Nick I mentioned that I was doing a workshop (January, in Amsterdam, at Domain-Driven Design Europe) on ‘Natural System Design’. Being the prolific author he is, he directed me to several papers of his on the same subject. Of course we are using the same phrase in quite different ways. My use derives from software development and the first business computer LEO, (Lyons Electronic Office), was built by J. Lyons and Company in 1951. The same team built the hardware, programmed system software, and programmed a set of applications that included: payroll, order entry, inventory control, production scheduling, etc. A number of assumptions made at that time have shaped Comp Sci and Soft Eng ever since: e.g., programming is all about the machine – taking a complete, consistent, and unambiguous set of requirements and then programming to satisfy them — totally isolating the programmer from the domain: and second, assuming that there is no difference between ‘application’ programming and ‘system’ programming; which is to deny any qualitative or substantive difference between a ‘natural’ domain like a business or business process and an ‘artificial’ domain like a network router and protocol. Carnegie-Mellon had a contract a while back from DoD to study Ultra-Large Scale systems – which coincidently are also Complex Adaptive systems. That study quite firmly said that the precepts, principles, tools, and models of Software Engineering would not be applicable to this type of system. The premise of my workshop is to provide an alternative approach, and set of concepts and techniques, for designing and deploying software/information artifacts that enhance naturally occurring systems like businesses, cities, ecologies, etc. What Nick wrote and referred me to could provide a lot of interesting and important ideas about “design-in-nature” that I can use in a biomimetic fashion to enhance my work on “design-with-nature.” Which brings us back into the thread and a comment I made previously about the ‘alchemical’ or ‘alchemical wanna be’ status of most of what we know about biological and cultural ‘living systems’. And, why I, and it seems others on the list, are tantalized but disappointed by folk like Rosen. davew On Thu, Oct 25, 2018, at 12:03 AM, glen wrote: > On the contrary, the question can ONLY be answered by pointing at > something. Your abstracted, essentialist, linguistic tendencies will > fail us every time. I think I've mentioned Luc Steels' language games > before. And you seem to be fond of semiotics. So why isn't the question > best answered by pointing? > > Playing along though, if the experience evoked by a model is good enough > to trigger a similar enough physiological response to that evoked by > reality, then the model passes for reality. I.e. if the effect is the > same, then the cause is equivalent. > > > On October 24, 2018 8:08:01 PM PDT, Nick Thompson > <[hidden email]> wrote: > >Glen, > > > >Interesting website ... . But the question can't be answered by > >pointing at something. I meant to ask the question, "What are the > >properties of something you would call real?" > > > >Nick > -- > 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 |
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Hi, David, Serendipity! Your letter struck me like a thunderbolt, because I had dedicated the morning to carefully rereading Rosen's first chapter. And for the first time, I think I got it! Rosen doesn't put it that way, but I think I want to say that his chapter is all about the distinction between “materialism” -- the belief that all that is consists of matter ==> and its relations <== and “mechanism”, the belief that the nature of parts tells you everything you need to know about the wholes those parts compose. We need a science of biology that is materialistic but NOT mechanistic. Now, if ever there was an idea that would fit with you, I would think this would be it. CS, it seems to me, is all about cutting loose the program … the relations … from the machine. That is explains why Rosen and others are so hard on the Turing MACHINE metaphor. They think that metaphor traps us in a focus on parts, rather than relations. A program need not be faithful to the machine on which it runs if it encodes the relations that need to be achieved. To answer the question What is Life? we have so many more tools than we did when Rosen wrote. The evo-devo literature is full of examples of what I guess I would call organizational serendipity. The most inspiring example, to me, is the current explanation for the origin of life. The way the question has always been posed to me before is how did life arise spontaneously from parts. But if life is an organization of things from another organization, the question becomes, “What kind of an organization could scaffold the organization we call life. Enter the white smokers with their rich source of energetic chemicals and their intricate cellular structure. So, life is the inadvertent consequence of one kind of organization coming into contact with another kind of parts in such a way that the native possibilities for the parts to work together are scaffolded by the organization. I am not at all sure where this leaves us with “natural programming.” As you point out, my concept of natural may be complete at odds with yours. Mine grows out of the following analogy: Artificial selection : natural selection : : artificial design : natural design. If artificial design – the appropriateness of a domestic species to the needs of the breeder -- is what is explained by artificial selection, what is explained by natural selection? What precisely is natural design? In the absence of a God to tell us what s/he wants, how do we read off of nature itself the demands to which her/his creatures are adapted? But serendipity by definition is a violation of design. The serendipitous structure is one that makes something happen without being designed to do so. Translating that into the CP domain, your problem is to write a program that somehow promotes serendipity given that the serendipity involves, inherently, a discontinuity between what you seek and what are likely to find. If I, in my enthusiasm, have run all over your nice clean though with my muddy feet, please forgive me. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- I would like to introduce a bit of a zig or zag into the conversation by bringing up something a bit far afield and then relating it back to the thread. In a direct message to Nick I mentioned that I was doing a workshop (January, in Amsterdam, at Domain-Driven Design Europe) on ‘Natural System Design’. Being the prolific author he is, he directed me to several papers of his on the same subject. Of course we are using the same phrase in quite different ways. My use derives from software development and the first business computer LEO, (Lyons Electronic Office), was built by J. Lyons and Company in 1951. The same team built the hardware, programmed system software, and programmed a set of applications that included: payroll, order entry, inventory control, production scheduling, etc. A number of assumptions made at that time have shaped Comp Sci and Soft Eng ever since: e.g., programming is all about the machine – taking a complete, consistent, and unambiguous set of requirements and then programming to satisfy them — totally isolating the programmer from the domain: and second, assuming that there is no difference between ‘application’ programming and ‘system’ programming; which is to deny any qualitative or substantive difference between a ‘natural’ domain like a business or business process and an ‘artificial’ domain like a network router and protocol. Carnegie-Mellon had a contract a while back from DoD to study Ultra-Large Scale systems – which coincidently are also Complex Adaptive systems. That study quite firmly said that the precepts, principles, tools, and models of Software Engineering would not be applicable to this type of system. The premise of my workshop is to provide an alternative approach, and set of concepts and techniques, for designing and deploying software/information artifacts that enhance naturally occurring systems like businesses, cities, ecologies, etc. What Nick wrote and referred me to could provide a lot of interesting and important ideas about “design-in-nature” that I can use in a biomimetic fashion to enhance my work on “design-with-nature.” Which brings us back into the thread and a comment I made previously about the ‘alchemical’ or ‘alchemical wanna be’ status of most of what we know about biological and cultural ‘living systems’. And, why I, and it seems others on the list, are tantalized but disappointed by folk like Rosen. davew On Thu, Oct 25, 2018, at 12:03 AM, glen wrote: > On the contrary, the question can ONLY be answered by pointing at > something. Your abstracted, essentialist, linguistic tendencies will > fail us every time. I think I've mentioned Luc Steels' language games > before. And you seem to be fond of semiotics. So why isn't the > question best answered by pointing? > > Playing along though, if the experience evoked by a model is good > enough to trigger a similar enough physiological response to that > evoked by reality, then the model passes for reality. I.e. if the > effect is the same, then the cause is equivalent. > > > On October 24, 2018 8:08:01 PM PDT, Nick Thompson > <[hidden email]> wrote: > >Glen, > > > >Interesting website ... . But the question can't be answered by > >pointing at something. I meant to ask the question, "What are the > >properties of something you would call real?" > > > >Nick > -- > 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 ============================================================ 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 |
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Hi Nick,
I'm thinking I should look at a newer book by Rosen and see if it seems. better than "Life Itself". Do you think that the book you ordered (I'm not certain what it was) would be good? Or, alternatively, what is the best recent book by Rosen?
--John From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Nick Thompson <[hidden email]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2018 3:38:32 PM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Subject: Re: [FRIAM] On old question Thanks, Marcus,
I ordered the book. Time I revived old memory traces.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of
Marcus Daniels
Nick,
It sounds like you are describing mutual information. This is ancient, but a nice overview of related topics:
https://www.amazon.com/Information-Theory-Qualitative-Quantitative-Applications/dp/0803921322
Marcus
From:
Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Nick Thompson <[hidden email]>
Dear Roger, and anybody else who wants to play,
While waiting for my paper, Signs and Designs, to be rejected, I have gone back to thinking about an old project, whose working title has been “A Sign Language.” And this has led me back to Robert Rosen, whose Life Itself I bought almost 9 years ago and it has remained almost pristine, ever since. In the chapter I am now looking at, Rosen is talking about “organization.” Now, I have been thinking about organization ever since I read C. Ray Carpenter’s early work on primate groups back in the late 50’s. It seemed to me at the time, and it seems to me reasonable now, to define the organization of a set of entities as related in some way to the degree to which one can predict the behavior of one entity from knowledge about another. Now the relationship is not straightforward, because neither total unpredictability (every monkey behaves exactly the same as every other monkey in every situation) nor total unpredictability (no monkey behaves like any other monkey in ANY situation) smacks of great organization. The highest levels organization, speaking inexpertly and intuitively, seem to correspond to intermediate levels of predictability, where there were several classes of individuals within a group and within class predictability was strong but cross-class predictability was weak. On my account, the highest levels of organization involve hierarchies of predictability. Thus honey bees and ants are more organized than starling flocks, say.
This is where the matter stood at the point that I came to Santa Fe and started interacting with you guys 14 years ago. You-all introduced me to a totally different notion of organization based – shudder – on the second law. But I have never been able to deploy your concept with any assurance. So, for instance, when I shake the salad dressing, I feel like I am disorganizing it, and when it reasserts itself into layers, I feel like it ought to be called more organized. But I have a feeling that you are going to tell me that the reverse is true. That, given the molecules of fat and water/acid, that the layered state is the less organized state.
Now this confusion of mine takes on importance when I try to read Rosen. He defines a function as the difference that occurs when one removes a component of a system. I can see no reason why the oil or the water in my salad dressing cannot be thought of components of a system and if, for instance, I were to siphon out the water from the bottom of my layered salad dressing, I could claim that the function of the water had been to hold the water up. This seems a rather lame notion of function.
Some of you who have been on this list forever will remember that I raised the same kind of worry almost a decade back when I noticed the drainage of water from a basin was actually slowed by the formation of a vortex. This seemed to dispel any notion that vortices are structures whose function is to efficiently dispel a gradient. It also violated my intuition from traffic flows, where I imagine that rigid rules of priority would facilitate the flow of people crossing bridges to escape Zozobra.
It’s quite possible that my confusions in this matter are of no great general applicability, in which case, I look forward to being ignored.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
============================================================ 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 |
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
“But serendipity by definition is a violation of design. The serendipitous structure is one that makes something happen without being designed to do so. Translating that into the CP domain, your problem is to
write a program that somehow promotes serendipity given that the serendipity involves, inherently, a discontinuity between what you seek and what are likely to find. “ In vivo, there’s the need to ensure an energy source. In silico, costs can take the form of regularization terms to drive down complexity. For example, a mechanism that can be described by a tree with 100 nodes might cost 10 times more than one with 10 nodes. Sometimes complexity is justified, sometimes it just slows down the (virtual) creature. Marcus ============================================================ 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 |
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
> I am not at all sure where this leaves us with “natural programming.” As you point out, my concept of natural may be complete at odds with yours. Mine grows out of the following analogy: Artificial selection : natural selection : : artificial design : natural design. If artificial design – the appropriateness of a domestic species to the needs of the breeder -- is what is explained by artificial selection, what is explained by natural selection? What precisely is natural design? In the absence of a God to tell us what s/he wants, how do we read off of nature itself the demands to which her/his creatures are adapted?
In reading Dave’s note it seemed to me that his distinction of natural from artificial was much like the one meant by Simon in Sciences of the Artificial, somewhat like — with respect to any particular discussion frame — some things can be “organic” in the sense of inherited by that conversation, while others are “built” within the frame of the conversation. https://www.amazon.co.jp/Sciences-Artificial-MIT-Press/dp/0262691914 ============================================================ 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 |
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In reply to this post by John Kennison
The book I ordered that was recommended by Marcus was on information theory as a mode of analysis for social sciences. So, I don’t think it’s particularly relevant to Rosen. But we’ll see. It should be here by Monday. I will let you know. Rosen died in 1998. Life Itself seems to have been his last monograph, and it presents itself as a summary of his previous work. There are several posthumous publications, but these seem mostly to be republications of the works on which LI was based. So, LI might be your best shot. Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison Hi Nick, I'm thinking I should look at a newer book by Rosen and see if it seems. better than "Life Itself". Do you think that the book you ordered (I'm not certain what it was) would be good? Or, alternatively, what is the best recent book by Rosen? --John From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> Thanks, Marcus, I ordered the book. Time I revived old memory traces. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels Nick, It sounds like you are describing mutual information. This is ancient, but a nice overview of related topics: https://www.amazon.com/Information-Theory-Qualitative-Quantitative-Applications/dp/0803921322 Marcus From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> Dear Roger, and anybody else who wants to play, While waiting for my paper, Signs and Designs, to be rejected, I have gone back to thinking about an old project, whose working title has been “A Sign Language.” And this has led me back to Robert Rosen, whose Life Itself I bought almost 9 years ago and it has remained almost pristine, ever since. In the chapter I am now looking at, Rosen is talking about “organization.” Now, I have been thinking about organization ever since I read C. Ray Carpenter’s early work on primate groups back in the late 50’s. It seemed to me at the time, and it seems to me reasonable now, to define the organization of a set of entities as related in some way to the degree to which one can predict the behavior of one entity from knowledge about another. Now the relationship is not straightforward, because neither total unpredictability (every monkey behaves exactly the same as every other monkey in every situation) nor total unpredictability (no monkey behaves like any other monkey in ANY situation) smacks of great organization. The highest levels organization, speaking inexpertly and intuitively, seem to correspond to intermediate levels of predictability, where there were several classes of individuals within a group and within class predictability was strong but cross-class predictability was weak. On my account, the highest levels of organization involve hierarchies of predictability. Thus honey bees and ants are more organized than starling flocks, say. This is where the matter stood at the point that I came to Santa Fe and started interacting with you guys 14 years ago. You-all introduced me to a totally different notion of organization based – shudder – on the second law. But I have never been able to deploy your concept with any assurance. So, for instance, when I shake the salad dressing, I feel like I am disorganizing it, and when it reasserts itself into layers, I feel like it ought to be called more organized. But I have a feeling that you are going to tell me that the reverse is true. That, given the molecules of fat and water/acid, that the layered state is the less organized state. Now this confusion of mine takes on importance when I try to read Rosen. He defines a function as the difference that occurs when one removes a component of a system. I can see no reason why the oil or the water in my salad dressing cannot be thought of components of a system and if, for instance, I were to siphon out the water from the bottom of my layered salad dressing, I could claim that the function of the water had been to hold the water up. This seems a rather lame notion of function. Some of you who have been on this list forever will remember that I raised the same kind of worry almost a decade back when I noticed the drainage of water from a basin was actually slowed by the formation of a vortex. This seemed to dispel any notion that vortices are structures whose function is to efficiently dispel a gradient. It also violated my intuition from traffic flows, where I imagine that rigid rules of priority would facilitate the flow of people crossing bridges to escape Zozobra. It’s quite possible that my confusions in this matter are of no great general applicability, in which case, I look forward to being ignored. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ ============================================================ 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 |
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In reply to this post by David Eric Smith
Thanks, Eric, Interesting. When I saw your message, I was excited because I thought you might comment on the role of serendipity in evolution. There are three ideas rattling around in my head right now chafing against one another: Serendipity, Spandrel, and Scaffolding. All of which seem to describe ways in which one form of organization can affect a subsequent one. Any thoughts? I will not say more lest I overly … um … structure your response. Nick Scaffolding. Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- > I am not at all sure where this leaves us with “natural programming.” As you point out, my concept of natural may be complete at odds with yours. Mine grows out of the following analogy: Artificial selection : natural selection : : artificial design : natural design. If artificial design – the appropriateness of a domestic species to the needs of the breeder -- is what is explained by artificial selection, what is explained by natural selection? What precisely is natural design? In the absence of a God to tell us what s/he wants, how do we read off of nature itself the demands to which her/his creatures are adapted? In reading Dave’s note it seemed to me that his distinction of natural from artificial was much like the one meant by Simon in Sciences of the Artificial, somewhat like — with respect to any particular discussion frame — some things can be “organic” in the sense of inherited by that conversation, while others are “built” within the frame of the conversation. https://www.amazon.co.jp/Sciences-Artificial-MIT-Press/dp/0262691914 ============================================================ 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 |
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Hi Nick,
Thank you for this. There have been many things crossing my mind in reading the exchanges on the thread, but I have been run ragged on a trip and am behind on things due, so I gave up intenting to engage. There was one thing in one of the very earliest posts that seemed relevant to topics raised. I forget who exactly related the definition (by Rosen) of function as defined in terms of the difference in a system’s structure or dynamics (or something) with vs. without a particular component. This seems to me like a general approach to a definition that could be formalized in many ways depending on what “laws of the universe” your system obeys, and what you want to highlight. In the world of game theory (which allows one to strip out many specifications and work with only a few distinctions), something that seems to me like one such formalization is the Shapley value in the context of coalitional-form solution concepts (also termed “cooperative game theory”, but I avoid that term because people who don’t work in the area often think “cooperative” means something different than this usage intends): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapley_value Martin Shubik used to prefer to call this just “the Value”, since he and Shapley were working together at the time, and the Value was the basis for a measure of an agent’s power in a system known as the Shapley-Shubik power index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapley%E2%80%93Shubik_power_index I don’t know if this is interesting or makes a contribution to the discussion you want to pursue, but in case so…. The concepts you mention also make sense together to me, though I probably think of Serendipity in its common-language sense and do not know how it is used as a term of art, Spandrel I am fairly familiar with as established by the Gould paper, and Scaffolding is again a term I could see using in many ways. The way you used it in your description of Origin of Life is quite close to one usage that I also like. I know this doesn’t add anything to what you have already said. I will continue to follow, and if I think I can say anything small and specific, will try. Best, Eric > On Oct 26, 2018, at 11:35 AM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote: > > Thanks, Eric, > > Interesting. > > When I saw your message, I was excited because I thought you might comment on the role of serendipity in evolution. There are three ideas rattling around in my head right now chafing against one another: Serendipity, Spandrel, andScaffolding. All of which seem to describe ways in which one form of organization can affect a subsequent one. Any thoughts? > > I will not say more lest I overly … um … structure your response. > > Nick > > Scaffolding. > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > Clark University > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith > Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2018 5:30 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] On old question > > > I am not at all sure where this leaves us with “natural programming.” As you point out, my concept of natural may be complete at odds with yours. Mine grows out of the following analogy: Artificial selection : natural selection : : artificial design : natural design. If artificial design – the appropriateness of a domestic species to the needs of the breeder -- is what is explained by artificial selection, what is explained by natural selection? What precisely is natural design? In the absence of a God to tell us what s/he wants, how do we read off of nature itself the demands to which her/his creatures are adapted? > > In reading Dave’s note it seemed to me that his distinction of natural from artificial was much like the one meant by Simon in Sciences of the Artificial, somewhat like — with respect to any particular discussion frame — some things can be “organic” in the sense of inherited by that conversation, while others are “built” within the frame of the conversation. > > https://www.amazon.co.jp/Sciences-Artificial-MIT-Press/dp/0262691914 > > > > ============================================================ > 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 ============================================================ 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 |
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
I think you have the "materialist but not mechanist" gist right. But it's worth a warning that Rosen's definition of mechanism isn't what most people mean by that word. And it's his hijacking of the word into jargon that caused so many, for so long, to accuse him of vitalism. Most people include all 4 causes in and around their use of "mechanism". Dictionaries even list the arrangements and how the parts fit together as part of the mechanism. (Side plug: My colleagues have published a paper calling for a classification of "mechanistic models", if anyone's interested: https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.04909)
What Rosen's done is jargonalize "mechanism" to mean only the most ... deductive, for a lack of a better word ... causal flow, chopping out the rest of what normal people include. To his credit, the important part of what he ablated comes down to impredicative definitions -- where the construction/counting of one component is defined in terms of another component. Constructively, such loopy definitions *can* result in deadlock. But classically, they're not really a problem at all. Higher order and non-classical logics are well-studied and not as pathological as Rosen seems to think. So he seems to have attributed more power to this criticism of formal systems than is warranted. And given that it's a fundamental part of his framework, it calls the entire thing into question. Whatever, though. Reframing these questions in the way he did is useful because it targets an audience that doesn't spend much time on them. But be skeptical of his hype. Formal systems aren't as limited as he claims. And we had these tools, for the most part, while Rosen was writing. My *hack* opinion is that the problem, as always, was one part a) the lack of cross-domain pollination and the other part b) Rosen's belief that he was the only one having these thoughts. It's kindasorta ironic that he latched onto category theory, which was/is an attempt to unify disparate bodies of math. And FWIW, your "scaffolding" sounds a lot like "bootstrapping" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_(compilers)> to me. On 10/25/18 2:55 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Serendipity! Your letter struck me like a thunderbolt, because I had dedicated the morning to carefully rereading Rosen's first chapter. And for the first time, I think I got it! Rosen doesn't put it that way, but I think I want to say that his chapter is all about the distinction between “materialism” -- the belief that all that is consists of matter ==> and its relations <== and “mechanism”, the belief that the nature of parts tells you everything you need to know about the wholes those parts compose. We need a science of biology that is materialistic but NOT mechanistic. > > [...] > > To answer the question What is Life? we have so many more tools than we did when Rosen wrote. The evo-devo literature is full of examples of what I guess I would call organizational serendipity. The most inspiring example, to me, is the current explanation for the origin of life. The way the question has always been posed to me before is how did life arise spontaneously from parts. But if life is an organization of things from another organization, the question becomes, “What kind of an organization could scaffold the organization we call life. Enter the white smokers with their rich source of energetic chemicals and their intricate cellular structure. So, life is the inadvertent consequence of one kind of organization coming into contact with another kind of parts in such a way that the native possibilities for the parts to work together are scaffolded by the organization. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ 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
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Glen writes:
And FWIW, your "scaffolding" sounds a lot like "bootstrapping" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_(compilers)> to me. It sounds to me like the modularity and re-use of neural nets that Roger directed us to. Marcus ============================================================ 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 |
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Hm. I'm probably a victim of my own skimming. Allowing metaphor to run rampant ... The scaffolding Nick linked to is definitely *supervised* in what seems a fairly biased (maybe in a good way) constraint system. Granted, the DGI stuff seems very constrained, too. But within the constraints, it seems unsupervised. Perhaps the difference lies only in whatever dynamism/reactivity the constraints have?
On 10/26/18 11:07 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Glen writes: > > And FWIW, your "scaffolding" sounds a lot like "bootstrapping" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_(compilers)> to me. > > It sounds to me like the modularity and re-use of neural nets that Roger directed us to. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ 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
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It seems like teleology has been introduced by the word
scaffolding. I'm not sure how that is useful unless it is just an observation that there are components that tend to be introduced earlier in the development of an organism. ============================================================ 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 |
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Well, to be fair, Nick launched the thread with the meaning of "function" that includes teleology. And Rosen's whole shtick is an attempt to address what it means to leave purpose out of science. But Rosen's formulation of anticipation does identify the temporal part of construction. And he does it in a cool way by talking about how a system can "model" it's goal state ... so that vision of the goal state kindasorta simulates reverse causation where the (expectation of the) future guides the past.
I don't think that scaffolding relates to anticipation if it's created and maintained by *others*. Anticipation is a kind of self-scaffolding, maybe. On 10/26/18 11:27 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > It seems like teleology has been introduced by the word /scaffolding/. I'm not sure how that is useful unless it is just an observation that there are components that tend to be introduced earlier in the development of an organism. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ 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
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Call me old-fashioned. I don't think it means anything to claim understanding of a system unless one can take it apart and put it back together; it is what
design requires. There are a lot of systems one can’t understand at that level, either because they don’t yield to reduction or because one is either not allowed or equipped to take a wrench to them. With those systems, one can only play prediction
games and ideas about function are just stories people tell themselves to keep from going mad!
On 10/26/18, 1:03 PM, "Friam on behalf of uǝlƃ
☣" <[hidden email] on behalf of [hidden email]> wrote: Well, to be fair, Nick launched the thread with the meaning of "function" that includes teleology. And Rosen's whole shtick is an attempt to address what it means to leave purpose out of science. But Rosen's formulation of anticipation
does identify the temporal part of construction. And he does it in a cool way by talking about how a system can "model" it's goal state ... so that vision of the goal state kindasorta simulates reverse causation where the (expectation of the) future guides
the past. I don't think that scaffolding relates to anticipation if it's created and maintained by *others*. Anticipation is a kind of self-scaffolding, maybe. On 10/26/18 11:27 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > It seems like teleology has been introduced by the word /scaffolding/. I'm not sure how that is useful unless it is just an observation that there are components that tend to be introduced earlier in the development of an organism. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ 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 |
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I agree. Purpose imputation is fideistic. >8^D
On October 26, 2018 12:24:39 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote: >Call me old-fashioned. I don't think it means anything to claim >understanding of a system unless one can take it apart and put it back >together; it is what design requires. There are a lot of systems one >can’t understand at that level, either because they don’t yield to >reduction or because one is either not allowed or equipped to take a >wrench to them. With those systems, one can only play prediction >games and ideas about function are just stories people tell themselves >to keep from going mad! > > > >On 10/26/18, 1:03 PM, "Friam on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣" ><[hidden email] on behalf of [hidden email]> wrote: > > > >Well, to be fair, Nick launched the thread with the meaning of >"function" that includes teleology. And Rosen's whole shtick is an >attempt to address what it means to leave purpose out of science. But >Rosen's formulation of anticipation does identify the temporal part of >construction. And he does it in a cool way by talking about how a >system can "model" it's goal state ... so that vision of the goal state >kindasorta simulates reverse causation where the (expectation of the) >future guides the past. > > > >I don't think that scaffolding relates to anticipation if it's created >and maintained by *others*. Anticipation is a kind of >self-scaffolding, maybe. > > > > On 10/26/18 11:27 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > >> It seems like teleology has been introduced by the word >/scaffolding/. I'm not sure how that is useful unless it is just an >observation that there are components that tend to be introduced >earlier in the development of an organism. > > > > > > -- > > ☣ uǝlƃ > > > > ============================================================ > > 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 ============================================================ 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
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