RE: Ray Parks and Ecological Psychology

[Nick Thompson]

Ray,

I was intrigued by the connection between your post and Ecological
Psychology.  I would love to hear more about that.

Also, I thought you might be the appropriate person to which to confess the
following sin:

In the wikipedia entry on ontology I took out a short paragraph on the
ontology of J.J.Gibson.  I expected to be ... educated ... from all sides
by Gibsonians

not a peep.  I wrote a long comment justifying my change.  Funny how a sin
is just no fun if nobody notices.

Nick



Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[hidden email]
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
 [hidden email]

> [Original Message]
> From: <[hidden email]>
> To: <[hidden email]>
> Date: 12/23/2004 9:00:21 AM
> Subject: Friam Digest, Vol 18, Issue 22
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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Re: Research on weakest points in hierarchical networks
>       (Raymond C. Parks)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 17:28:35 -0700
> From: "Raymond C. Parks" <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Research on weakest points in hierarchical
> networks
> To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group"
> <[hidden email]>
> Cc: "Berg, Michael J" <[hidden email]>
> Message-ID: <[hidden email]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
> Stephen Guerin wrote:
>
> > Partially related is the research from 4 or 5 years ago on percolation

and
> > robustness in Small World and Scale Free networks which I'm sure you
guys

> > are aware of and probably contributed to.
>
>    I am aware of it, but I did not contribute to that work.  However,
> these networks aren't really either Small World or Scale Free.  They are
> clearly hierarchical even though some communication is via other
> networks that are Small World.
>
> > I haven't seen anything more specific to attacking the data content in
> > hierarchical networks. Though, empirically, it would be pretty
> > straightforward to write a model and sweep the parameter space to

quickly
> > test your intuitions of intermediate node vulnerabilities.
>
>    What would you use to write such a model?  I'm not in the modeling
> business, normally, but I could be if necessary.
>
> > BTW, from you description, I'm a little unclear why a command or control
> > node (top of the hierarchy) wouldn't be a more vulnerable target than an
> > intermediate node. Wouldn't a modification of data at the source have
the
> > greatest impact? Or in other words, a source node by definition has the
> > smallest distance to the information source. I must be missing a key
idea in
> > the model description. It may be that you're talking about something
> > different than a command and control network and more of a
> > "Perceiving/Acting" network where information integration is happening
in
> > the intermediate nodes. Perceiving/Acting networks isn't a standard
term for

> > graph theory; I'm applying it from the Ecological Psychology literature.
>
>    You've hit the nail on the head with your last suggestion.  We are
> looking at networks that transform the data during its move from the
> command or control nodes out to the leaf nodes.  The data is changed
> from generalities to specifics.  The intermediate nodes modify commands
> enough that an attack on the command or control nodes is watered down by
> the intermediate transformations.  Conversely, the leaf nodes only have
> a very small part of the total data picture.  They transmit information
> up the hierarchy and the intermediate nodes consolidate, aggregate, and
> create new data from what the leaf nodes transmit.  An attack on a leaf
> node is able to affect the world of that leaf node.  In a few rare
> cases, the data from the leaf node may make it to the command or control
> node level without change and thus affect decisions made at that level.
>   However, in the majority of cases, the data transformation is
> sufficient that a data attack is hidden in the background by the time
> data makes it to the command or control nodes.
>
>    Thanks for the pointer.  I will set our reference librarian searching
> for Perceiving/Acting networks in the Ecological Psychology literature.
>
> --
> Ray Parks                   [hidden email]
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