Friam

Re: Friam Digest, Vol 189, Issue 40

Classic

List

Threaded

11 messages Options

jon zingale

Re: Friam Digest, Vol 189, Issue 40

Adjacent possibles are neighborhoods in a comonad.

On Sun, Mar 31, 2019 at 11:05 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Send Friam mailing list submissions to
[hidden email]

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
[hidden email]

You can reach the person managing the list at
[hidden email]

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Friam digest..."
Today's Topics:

1. Re: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)
(Merle Lefkoff)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]>
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Cc:
Bcc:
Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2019 11:05:35 -0600
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)
Nick, yes, we're very worried about the new "hard border" emerging between N. Ireland and the Republic. Another stupid consequence of Brexit. The Good Friday Agreement has always been fragile.

We're having a meeting soon in Santa Fe about the adjacent possible, and attached is what Stu Kauffman and I wrote about the intention of the meeting. I combine Western and Native science because some of our international Indigenous network has expressed interest in being included in the meeting. Steve Guerin can tell you more about the adjacent possible.

On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 9:24 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
M

Alright, then. What IS the adjacent possible?

N

PS – Given your work with the Irish Peace Process, this Dog’s Brexit t must be driving you nuts. Have you heard the Donald Tusk quote about “the special place in Hell that awaits those who floated Brexit without a trace of a plan” . Nothing more than that. Just that.

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2019 1:35 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

N.

No.

On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 1:30 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
M.,

Is that like “nudge”?

N.

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2019 1:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

For whatever it's worth, Nick, I'm now using this thread in the work we're doing on the adjacent possible.

On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 9:29 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
Steve,

We were doing SO WELL until we got to … oh, see my “HORSEFEATHERS!” below.

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 9:39 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

On 3/28/19 1:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
Steve, ‘n all,

Just to be cranky, I want to remind everybody that ALL language use, except perhaps tautological expressions, is metaphorical.
I ascribe to this idea as well, following Lakoff and Johnson in their 1980 _Metaphors we Live by_ .
So then, the question is not, “Is this a metaphor”, but what kind of a metaphor is it and is it pernicious.
I believe that ultimately conceptual metaphor is no more nor less than the intuitive application of a model, and as is often mentioned "all models are wrong, some are useful".    You use the term pernicious which suggests *harmful*, I presume either intentionally so or more from sloppiness or ignorance.
My own view is that in any “tense” conversation – one in which the parties feel the words really matter – it behooves a metaphor-user to define the limits of the metaphor.
I agree that "tense" conversations are different than "casual" ones if that is your distinction. Unfortunately, outside of Science/Engineering contexts, I find that "tense" conversations are at their root political or at least rhetorical.   One or both sides are really *serious* about being believed.   If not believed in fact ("I believe what you just said") then in principle ("I believe that you believe what you just said").
I think that political/rhetorical dialog would *benefit* by careful disclosure of all metaphors being used, but one mode of such dialog is for one or both sides to attempt to interject equivocal meanings... to use a term (or in this case set of terms belonging to a metaphorical domain) to weave an *apparently* logical argument, which is only superficially logical but falls apart when the "correct" meaning of the term(s) are applied.
So, for instance, much mischief has arisen in evolutionary biology from a failure of theorists to define the limits of their use of such metaphors as “natural selection” and “ adaptation”. When limits are defined, the surplus meaning of a metaphor is separated into two parts, initially, that which the metaphor-user embraces and that which s/he disclaims. The embraced part goes on to become the positive heuristic of the metaphor, the “wet edge” along which science develops.
From this line of discussion, I take you to be on the branch of the fault-tree I implied above as a Scientific dialog where *both* sides of the discussion are honestly trying to come to mutual understanding and perhaps advance understanding by combining differing perspectives on the same phenomena.
The disclaimed part, must be further divided into that which was legitimately [logically] disclaimed and that which was disclaimed fraudulently. For instance, when sociobiologists use the notion of selfish gene, they may legitimately disclaim the idea that genes consciously choose between self-regarding and other-regarding options, but they cannot legitimately disclaim the idea that a gene has the power to make any choice but the self-regarding one.
When Dawkins coined "Selfish Gene", I felt that the *value* of the metaphor invoked was in the challenge it presents:
And that idea is patently false. Genes do not make choices
Patently Genes do not make choices in the sense that we usually mean "make choices", yet the strong implication is that the phenomena functions *as if* they do, in "all other ways".   There may be (useful) hairsplitting between "all other ways" and "many other ways" which is an important aspect of analogical thinking.
, they ARE choices and the choice is made at the level of the phenotype or at the level of the population, depending on how one thinks about the matter. So the metaphor ‘selfish gene’ is pernicious in evolutionary biology, because it creates confusion on the very point that it purports to clarify – the level at which differential replication operates to generate long term phenotypic change in a population.
I would challenge this as I think my verbage above outlines.   I do not believe that the metaphor *purports* to clarify what you say it does.
[NST==> HORSEFEATHERS! One or two generations of sociobiologists were directed away from group level explanations by this pernicious metaphor. <==nst]
It *strives* to provide a cognitive shortcut and to establish a fairly strong metaphor which deserves careful dissection to understand the particulars of the *target domain*.   An important question in the target domain becomes "why does the shortcut of thinking of genes as selfish actually have some level of accuracy as a description of the phenomena when in fact the mechanisms involved do not support that directly?"
[NST==>I don’t think it does. I think it’s a subtle and largely successful attempt to import Spenserian ideology in to evolutionary biology. <==nst]
For all I know, EB has entirely debunked the concept and there is NO utility in the idea of a "selfish gene"...
Bruce Sherwood likes to make the point that the analogy of hydraulic systems for DC circuits is misleading.   I forget the specifics of where he shows that the analogy breaks down, but it is well below (or above?) the level of "normal" DC circuit understanding and manipulation.   For the kinds of problems I work with using DC circuits, a "battery" is a "tank of water at some height", the Voltage out of the battery is the water Pressure, the amount of Current is the Volume of water, a Diode is a one-way valve, a resistor is any hydraulic element which conserves water but reduces pressure through what is nominally friction, etc.    As you point out, there is plenty of "excess meaning" around hydraulics as source domain, and "insufficient meaning" around DC circuits as target domain, and if one is to use the analogy effectively one must either understand those over/under mappings, or be operating within only the smaller apt-portion of the domains.   For example, I don't know what the equivalent of an anti-hammer stub (probably a little like a capacitor in parallel?) is but that is no longer describing a simple DC circuit.
[NST==>I think I am back to heartily agreeing. <==nst]
A farmer buying his first tractor may try to understand it using the source domain of "draft animal" and can't go particularly wrong by doing things like "giving it a rest off and on to let it cool down", "planning to feed it well before expecting it to work", "putting it away, out of the elements when not in use", etc. your "excess meaning" would seem to be things like the farmer going out and trying to top off the fuel every day even when he was not using the tractor, or maybe taking it out for a spin every day to keep it exercised and accustomed to being driven.   The farmer *might* understand "changing the oil" and "cleaning the plugs" and "adjusting the points" vaguely like "deworming" and "cleaning the hooves" but the analogy is pretty wide of the mark beyond the simple idea that "things need attending to".
[NST==>OoooooH. I like the above! May I plaigiarise it some day? Do you by any chance know Epamanondas from your childhood. Very politically incorrect, now, I fear, but endlessly instructive on the perils of over using metaphors. <==nst]

PS – Is anybody on this list (among the handful that have gotten this far in this post) familiar with the work of Douglas Walton?
I just took a look and his work does sound interesting (and relevant).
He seems perhaps to have written a lot about misunderstandings in AI systems … i.e., how does Siri know what we mean?
By AI, it seems you mean (the subset of) Natural Language Understanding?
I am also reminded by reading the Wikipedia article on his work that I haven't responded to Glen's question about the "theorem dependency project".
I came to this work through my interest in abduction, which may be described as the process by which we identify (ascribe meaning to?) experiences. Walton seems to suggest that you-guys are way ahead of the rest of us on the process of meaning ascription, and we all should go to school with you. Please tell me where and when you offer the class.
I assume the "you-guys" referred to here are the hard core CS/Modeling folks (e.g. Glen, Marcus, Dave, ...). I do think that the challenges of "explaining things to a machine" do require some rigor, as does formal mathematics and systems like the aforementioned "theorem dependency project".
- Steve
PS. It has been noted that my long-winded explanation of my (poorly adhered to) typographical conventions for around "reserved terms" and the like was perhaps defensive. I didn't mean to sound defensive, I just wanted to be more precise and complete to (possibly) reduce misunderstandings.   I don't imagine many read the entireity of my missives, but as often as not, when people do read and respond, I sense that some of my conventions are not recognized.
============================================================
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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merle.lelfkoff2
twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
============================================================
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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merle.lelfkoff2
twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
============================================================
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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merle.lelfkoff2
twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
_______________________________________________
Friam mailing list
[hidden email]
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Merle Lefkoff-2

Re: Friam Digest, Vol 189, Issue 40

Zingale must be a mathematician. An equation that captures the theory of the adjacent possible is available.

On Sun, Mar 31, 2019 at 11:14 AM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Adjacent possibles are neighborhoods in a comonad.

On Sun, Mar 31, 2019 at 11:05 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:
Send Friam mailing list submissions to
[hidden email]

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
[hidden email]

You can reach the person managing the list at
[hidden email]

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Friam digest..."
Today's Topics:

1. Re: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)
(Merle Lefkoff)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]>
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Cc:
Bcc:
Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2019 11:05:35 -0600
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)
Nick, yes, we're very worried about the new "hard border" emerging between N. Ireland and the Republic. Another stupid consequence of Brexit. The Good Friday Agreement has always been fragile.

We're having a meeting soon in Santa Fe about the adjacent possible, and attached is what Stu Kauffman and I wrote about the intention of the meeting. I combine Western and Native science because some of our international Indigenous network has expressed interest in being included in the meeting. Steve Guerin can tell you more about the adjacent possible.

On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 9:24 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
M

Alright, then. What IS the adjacent possible?

N

PS – Given your work with the Irish Peace Process, this Dog’s Brexit t must be driving you nuts. Have you heard the Donald Tusk quote about “the special place in Hell that awaits those who floated Brexit without a trace of a plan” . Nothing more than that. Just that.

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2019 1:35 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

N.

No.

On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 1:30 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
M.,

Is that like “nudge”?

N.

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2019 1:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

For whatever it's worth, Nick, I'm now using this thread in the work we're doing on the adjacent possible.

On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 9:29 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
Steve,

We were doing SO WELL until we got to … oh, see my “HORSEFEATHERS!” below.

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 9:39 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

On 3/28/19 1:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
Steve, ‘n all,

Just to be cranky, I want to remind everybody that ALL language use, except perhaps tautological expressions, is metaphorical.
I ascribe to this idea as well, following Lakoff and Johnson in their 1980 _Metaphors we Live by_ .
So then, the question is not, “Is this a metaphor”, but what kind of a metaphor is it and is it pernicious.
I believe that ultimately conceptual metaphor is no more nor less than the intuitive application of a model, and as is often mentioned "all models are wrong, some are useful".    You use the term pernicious which suggests *harmful*, I presume either intentionally so or more from sloppiness or ignorance.
My own view is that in any “tense” conversation – one in which the parties feel the words really matter – it behooves a metaphor-user to define the limits of the metaphor.
I agree that "tense" conversations are different than "casual" ones if that is your distinction. Unfortunately, outside of Science/Engineering contexts, I find that "tense" conversations are at their root political or at least rhetorical.   One or both sides are really *serious* about being believed.   If not believed in fact ("I believe what you just said") then in principle ("I believe that you believe what you just said").
I think that political/rhetorical dialog would *benefit* by careful disclosure of all metaphors being used, but one mode of such dialog is for one or both sides to attempt to interject equivocal meanings... to use a term (or in this case set of terms belonging to a metaphorical domain) to weave an *apparently* logical argument, which is only superficially logical but falls apart when the "correct" meaning of the term(s) are applied.
So, for instance, much mischief has arisen in evolutionary biology from a failure of theorists to define the limits of their use of such metaphors as “natural selection” and “ adaptation”. When limits are defined, the surplus meaning of a metaphor is separated into two parts, initially, that which the metaphor-user embraces and that which s/he disclaims. The embraced part goes on to become the positive heuristic of the metaphor, the “wet edge” along which science develops.
From this line of discussion, I take you to be on the branch of the fault-tree I implied above as a Scientific dialog where *both* sides of the discussion are honestly trying to come to mutual understanding and perhaps advance understanding by combining differing perspectives on the same phenomena.
The disclaimed part, must be further divided into that which was legitimately [logically] disclaimed and that which was disclaimed fraudulently. For instance, when sociobiologists use the notion of selfish gene, they may legitimately disclaim the idea that genes consciously choose between self-regarding and other-regarding options, but they cannot legitimately disclaim the idea that a gene has the power to make any choice but the self-regarding one.
When Dawkins coined "Selfish Gene", I felt that the *value* of the metaphor invoked was in the challenge it presents:
And that idea is patently false. Genes do not make choices
Patently Genes do not make choices in the sense that we usually mean "make choices", yet the strong implication is that the phenomena functions *as if* they do, in "all other ways".   There may be (useful) hairsplitting between "all other ways" and "many other ways" which is an important aspect of analogical thinking.
, they ARE choices and the choice is made at the level of the phenotype or at the level of the population, depending on how one thinks about the matter. So the metaphor ‘selfish gene’ is pernicious in evolutionary biology, because it creates confusion on the very point that it purports to clarify – the level at which differential replication operates to generate long term phenotypic change in a population.
I would challenge this as I think my verbage above outlines.   I do not believe that the metaphor *purports* to clarify what you say it does.
[NST==> HORSEFEATHERS! One or two generations of sociobiologists were directed away from group level explanations by this pernicious metaphor. <==nst]
It *strives* to provide a cognitive shortcut and to establish a fairly strong metaphor which deserves careful dissection to understand the particulars of the *target domain*.   An important question in the target domain becomes "why does the shortcut of thinking of genes as selfish actually have some level of accuracy as a description of the phenomena when in fact the mechanisms involved do not support that directly?"
[NST==>I don’t think it does. I think it’s a subtle and largely successful attempt to import Spenserian ideology in to evolutionary biology. <==nst]
For all I know, EB has entirely debunked the concept and there is NO utility in the idea of a "selfish gene"...
Bruce Sherwood likes to make the point that the analogy of hydraulic systems for DC circuits is misleading.   I forget the specifics of where he shows that the analogy breaks down, but it is well below (or above?) the level of "normal" DC circuit understanding and manipulation.   For the kinds of problems I work with using DC circuits, a "battery" is a "tank of water at some height", the Voltage out of the battery is the water Pressure, the amount of Current is the Volume of water, a Diode is a one-way valve, a resistor is any hydraulic element which conserves water but reduces pressure through what is nominally friction, etc.    As you point out, there is plenty of "excess meaning" around hydraulics as source domain, and "insufficient meaning" around DC circuits as target domain, and if one is to use the analogy effectively one must either understand those over/under mappings, or be operating within only the smaller apt-portion of the domains.   For example, I don't know what the equivalent of an anti-hammer stub (probably a little like a capacitor in parallel?) is but that is no longer describing a simple DC circuit.
[NST==>I think I am back to heartily agreeing. <==nst]
A farmer buying his first tractor may try to understand it using the source domain of "draft animal" and can't go particularly wrong by doing things like "giving it a rest off and on to let it cool down", "planning to feed it well before expecting it to work", "putting it away, out of the elements when not in use", etc. your "excess meaning" would seem to be things like the farmer going out and trying to top off the fuel every day even when he was not using the tractor, or maybe taking it out for a spin every day to keep it exercised and accustomed to being driven.   The farmer *might* understand "changing the oil" and "cleaning the plugs" and "adjusting the points" vaguely like "deworming" and "cleaning the hooves" but the analogy is pretty wide of the mark beyond the simple idea that "things need attending to".
[NST==>OoooooH. I like the above! May I plaigiarise it some day? Do you by any chance know Epamanondas from your childhood. Very politically incorrect, now, I fear, but endlessly instructive on the perils of over using metaphors. <==nst]

PS – Is anybody on this list (among the handful that have gotten this far in this post) familiar with the work of Douglas Walton?
I just took a look and his work does sound interesting (and relevant).
He seems perhaps to have written a lot about misunderstandings in AI systems … i.e., how does Siri know what we mean?
By AI, it seems you mean (the subset of) Natural Language Understanding?
I am also reminded by reading the Wikipedia article on his work that I haven't responded to Glen's question about the "theorem dependency project".
I came to this work through my interest in abduction, which may be described as the process by which we identify (ascribe meaning to?) experiences. Walton seems to suggest that you-guys are way ahead of the rest of us on the process of meaning ascription, and we all should go to school with you. Please tell me where and when you offer the class.
I assume the "you-guys" referred to here are the hard core CS/Modeling folks (e.g. Glen, Marcus, Dave, ...). I do think that the challenges of "explaining things to a machine" do require some rigor, as does formal mathematics and systems like the aforementioned "theorem dependency project".
- Steve
PS. It has been noted that my long-winded explanation of my (poorly adhered to) typographical conventions for around "reserved terms" and the like was perhaps defensive. I didn't mean to sound defensive, I just wanted to be more precise and complete to (possibly) reduce misunderstandings.   I don't imagine many read the entireity of my missives, but as often as not, when people do read and respond, I sense that some of my conventions are not recognized.
============================================================
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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merle.lelfkoff2
twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
============================================================
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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merle.lelfkoff2
twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
============================================================
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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merle.lelfkoff2
twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
_______________________________________________
Friam mailing list
[hidden email]
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff

lrudolph

Re: Friam Digest, Vol 189, Issue 40

In reply to this post by jon zingale

> Adjacent possibles are neighborhoods in a comonad.

You're just trying to get a rise out of Nick, right?

============================================================
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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

lrudolph

Re: Friam Digest, Vol 189, Issue 40

In reply to this post by Merle Lefkoff-2

> An equation that captures the theory of
> the adjacent possible is available.

I have recently been reminded that Quine, in "On What There Is", posed the
question (presumably rhetorical and/or tendentious; my reminder came in
the form of just the following sentence with attribution but no other
context, and I haven't yet been moved to actually look up that context)
"How many possible men are there in that doorway?" However many there
are, I presume some are more adjacent than others. Perhaps Quine's
question should be revived to be about possible girls-next-door.

============================================================
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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Merle Lefkoff-2

Re: Friam Digest, Vol 189, Issue 40

"girls" are usually more adjacent than men.

On Sun, Mar 31, 2019 at 1:13 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

> An equation that captures the theory of
> the adjacent possible is available.

I have recently been reminded that Quine, in "On What There Is", posed the
question (presumably rhetorical and/or tendentious; my reminder came in
the form of just the following sentence with attribution but no other
context, and I haven't yet been moved to actually look up that context)
"How many possible men are there in that doorway?" However many there
are, I presume some are more adjacent than others. Perhaps Quine's
question should be revived to be about possible girls-next-door.

============================================================
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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff

Nick Thompson

Re: Friam Digest, Vol 189, Issue 40

In reply to this post by lrudolph

While we are all flinging around jargon and links, am I so wrong to say that “nudges” are a way of moving to the adjacent possible?

Speakingof the non-adjacent impossible, I woke up the other morning with a fantasy of being in some sort large community meeting, and standing up and asking the question:

"Why èexactlyç is it that everybody shouldn't have the same annual income?"

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 [hidden email]
Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2019 1:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 189, Issue 40

> Adjacent possibles are neighborhoods in a comonad.

You're just trying to get a rise out of Nick, right?

============================================================

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

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Steve Smith

Income Equality

On 3/31/19 11:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Speakingof the non-adjacent impossible, I woke up the other morning with a fantasy of being in some sort large community meeting, and standing up and asking the question:

"Why èexactlyç is it that everybody shouldn't have the same annual income?"

Try it and you will get a very quick and probably series of blunt answers.

I've had my version of that fantasy and the next step in it is to find the person in the room with the lowest income (the shabby homeless person lurking in the back is a good start) (or just arbitrarily pick some one standing next to you) and offer to "average incomes" with them. Repeat. Not everyone will participate, maybe only those with "similar" incomes will share, but the exercise would be useful, even with Monopoly Money.

Ultimately this can become a "sorting exercise". It would be much easier to "share" what you have with someone just a little less well off than you. As a bottom up exercise, (least wealthy shares with next least, repeat) it might work well until you hit the big disparity gaps... The billionaires won't want to share with the millionaires nor they with the upper-middle-class but there might be a trickle-up effect that relieved a LOT in the meantime. Just sayin'.

I am in the midst (literally today) of a complex of "pay it forward" exercises with friends, organizations and acquaintances who either are, or support folks living in or near homelessness. A little bit of $$, Time, Attention goes a *LONG* way with these folks. I'm not averaging my income with them, but in the spirit of religious tithing, I probably do give order 10% of my income and time to these kinds of exercises and *I* believe that provides a several X leverage factor for what I do give. It can be tedious, it can feel risky, it can be disappointing sometimes, but it feels a lot more connected than writing a check to one of the big charities. I AM a fan of some of those (many not), so don't want to dissuade that kind of giving, just encourage more personal, local, engaged "sharing".

-Socialist Steve

gepr

Re: Income Equality

Steve points to a pragmatic way to find the answer to a permutation of the question. But it's interesting to me to try to answer the question as written: Why ... should NOT ...? If I reformulate it, we may lose the original intent, but arrive at a clearer question:

Why _should_ everyone's annual income be different? ... or at least independent?

I think the answer boils down to identity, selfhood, and membership. As long as we define ourselves in terms of money, jobs, careers, hobbies, family, ... what type of bicycle we ride, etc., then our incomes should, as a moral imperative, be commensurately unique as those other attributes. As such categories fuzzify and disappear, then we'll be closer to homogenous incomes. Artificially homogenized incomes, in the presence of fully diverse things like assets or hobbies, will only lead to dissonance.

Putting the question back in context, is homogenized annual income "one reaction step away" from our current state? No way.

On 4/1/19 8:17 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

>
> On 3/31/19 11:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>>
>> "Why exactly is it that everybody shouldn't have the same annual income?"
>>
> Try it and you will get a very quick and probably series of blunt answers.
>
> I've had my version of that fantasy and the next step in it is to find the person in the room with the lowest income (the shabby homeless person lurking in the back is a good start) (or just arbitrarily pick some one standing next to you) and offer to "average incomes" with them.    Repeat.   Not everyone will participate, maybe only those with "similar" incomes will share, but the exercise would be useful, even with Monopoly Money.
>
> Ultimately this can become a "sorting exercise".   It would be much easier to "share" what you have with someone just a little less well off than you.    As a bottom up exercise, (least wealthy shares with next least, repeat) it might work well until you hit the big disparity gaps... The billionaires won't want to share with the millionaires nor they with the upper-middle-class but there might be a trickle-up effect that relieved a LOT in the meantime.   Just sayin'.
>
> I am in the midst (literally today) of a complex of "pay it forward" exercises with friends, organizations and acquaintances who either are, or support folks living in or near homelessness.   A little bit of $$, Time, Attention goes a *LONG* way with these folks.   I'm not averaging my income with them, but in the spirit of religious tithing, I probably do give order 10% of my income and time to these kinds of exercises and *I* believe that provides a several X leverage factor for what I do give.   It can be tedious, it can feel risky, it can be disappointing sometimes, but it feels a lot more connected than writing a check to one of the big charities. I AM a fan of some of those (many not), so don't want to dissuade that kind of giving, just encourage more personal, local, engaged "sharing".

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Nick Thompson

Re: Income Equality

All,

Look. Let's assume that competing is what we humans do. So, we have to afford ways for them to compete. But, if we are humanists, it is obvious that those domains of competition should not include essentials to human life. Those should be equal. Relentlessly equal, to the point that nobody can compute on them no matter how hard they try. We need excess income police patrolling the streets, day and night. So, I got my basic income, my basic healthcare, how I do compete? By doing better with that basic resource than you do. We both have a basic housing allowance. My house has a cupula on it. So THERE! Since we cannot increase our consumption by earning more income, the only way to show off is by conserving resources in all domains other than the Domain of Display. Huge benefit for the environment. Uh-oh! What if the Domain of Display becomes Passenger Pigeon feathers. Hmmm! Back to the old drawing board.

N

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: Monday, April 01, 2019 12:01 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Income Equality

Steve points to a pragmatic way to find the answer to a permutation of the question. But it's interesting to me to try to answer the question as written: Why ... should NOT ...? If I reformulate it, we may lose the original intent, but arrive at a clearer question:

Why _should_ everyone's annual income be different? ... or at least independent?

I think the answer boils down to identity, selfhood, and membership. As long as we define ourselves in terms of money, jobs, careers, hobbies, family, ... what type of bicycle we ride, etc., then our incomes should, as a moral imperative, be commensurately unique as those other attributes. As such categories fuzzify and disappear, then we'll be closer to homogenous incomes. Artificially homogenized incomes, in the presence of fully diverse things like assets or hobbies, will only lead to dissonance.

Putting the question back in context, is homogenized annual income "one reaction step away" from our current state? No way.

On 4/1/19 8:17 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

>
> On 3/31/19 11:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>>
>> "Why exactly is it that everybody shouldn't have the same annual income?"
>>
> Try it and you will get a very quick and probably series of blunt answers.
>
> I've had my version of that fantasy and the next step in it is to find
> the person in the room with the lowest income (the shabby homeless person lurking in the back is a good start) (or just arbitrarily pick some one standing next to you) and offer to "average incomes" with them. Repeat. Not everyone will participate, maybe only those with "similar" incomes will share, but the exercise would be useful, even with Monopoly Money.
>
> Ultimately this can become a "sorting exercise". It would be much easier to "share" what you have with someone just a little less well off than you. As a bottom up exercise, (least wealthy shares with next least, repeat) it might work well until you hit the big disparity gaps... The billionaires won't want to share with the millionaires nor they with the upper-middle-class but there might be a trickle-up effect that relieved a LOT in the meantime. Just sayin'.
>
> I am in the midst (literally today) of a complex of "pay it forward" exercises with friends, organizations and acquaintances who either are, or support folks living in or near homelessness. A little bit of $$, Time, Attention goes a *LONG* way with these folks. I'm not averaging my income with them, but in the spirit of religious tithing, I probably do give order 10% of my income and time to these kinds of exercises and *I* believe that provides a several X leverage factor for what I do give. It can be tedious, it can feel risky, it can be disappointing sometimes, but it feels a lot more connected than writing a check to one of the big charities. I AM a fan of some of those (many not), so don't want to dissuade that kind of giving, just encourage more personal, local, engaged "sharing".

--
☣ 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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Gary Schiltz-4

Re: Income Equality

Hey Nick, what species of hominid do you think would go for that? I'm thinking maybe bonobos, but Homo sapiens' certainly doesn't seem to be headed that way. It would be nice in a utopian sort of way, but doesn't seem too likely.

On Mon, Apr 1, 2019 at 5:03 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

All,

Look. Let's assume that competing is what we humans do. So, we have to afford ways for them to compete. But, if we are humanists, it is obvious that those domains of competition should not include essentials to human life. Those should be equal. Relentlessly equal, to the point that nobody can compute on them no matter how hard they try. We need excess income police patrolling the streets, day and night. So, I got my basic income, my basic healthcare, how I do compete? By doing better with that basic resource than you do. We both have a basic housing allowance. My house has a cupula on it. So THERE! Since we cannot increase our consumption by earning more income, the only way to show off is by conserving resources in all domains other than the Domain of Display. Huge benefit for the environment. Uh-oh! What if the Domain of Display becomes Passenger Pigeon feathers. Hmmm! Back to the old drawing board.

N

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: Monday, April 01, 2019 12:01 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Income Equality

Steve points to a pragmatic way to find the answer to a permutation of the question. But it's interesting to me to try to answer the question as written: Why ... should NOT ...? If I reformulate it, we may lose the original intent, but arrive at a clearer question:

Why _should_ everyone's annual income be different? ... or at least independent?

I think the answer boils down to identity, selfhood, and membership. As long as we define ourselves in terms of money, jobs, careers, hobbies, family, ... what type of bicycle we ride, etc., then our incomes should, as a moral imperative, be commensurately unique as those other attributes. As such categories fuzzify and disappear, then we'll be closer to homogenous incomes. Artificially homogenized incomes, in the presence of fully diverse things like assets or hobbies, will only lead to dissonance.

Putting the question back in context, is homogenized annual income "one reaction step away" from our current state? No way.

On 4/1/19 8:17 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>
> On 3/31/19 11:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>>
>> "Why exactly is it that everybody shouldn't have the same annual income?"
>>
> Try it and you will get a very quick and probably series of blunt answers.
>
> I've had my version of that fantasy and the next step in it is to find
> the person in the room with the lowest income (the shabby homeless person lurking in the back is a good start) (or just arbitrarily pick some one standing next to you) and offer to "average incomes" with them. Repeat. Not everyone will participate, maybe only those with "similar" incomes will share, but the exercise would be useful, even with Monopoly Money.
>
> Ultimately this can become a "sorting exercise". It would be much easier to "share" what you have with someone just a little less well off than you. As a bottom up exercise, (least wealthy shares with next least, repeat) it might work well until you hit the big disparity gaps... The billionaires won't want to share with the millionaires nor they with the upper-middle-class but there might be a trickle-up effect that relieved a LOT in the meantime. Just sayin'.
>
> I am in the midst (literally today) of a complex of "pay it forward" exercises with friends, organizations and acquaintances who either are, or support folks living in or near homelessness. A little bit of $$, Time, Attention goes a *LONG* way with these folks. I'm not averaging my income with them, but in the spirit of religious tithing, I probably do give order 10% of my income and time to these kinds of exercises and *I* believe that provides a several X leverage factor for what I do give. It can be tedious, it can feel risky, it can be disappointing sometimes, but it feels a lot more connected than writing a check to one of the big charities. I AM a fan of some of those (many not), so don't want to dissuade that kind of giving, just encourage more personal, local, engaged "sharing".

--
☣ 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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Nick Thompson

Re: Income Equality

Gary,

Yes. Of course. That’s right. But then, what exactly ARE we headed for. Designed, as we were, as a species on the brink of extinction, how do we handle success?

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz
Sent: Monday, April 01, 2019 4:31 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Income Equality

On Mon, Apr 1, 2019 at 5:03 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

All,

Look. Let's assume that competing is what we humans do. So, we have to afford ways for them to compete. But, if we are humanists, it is obvious that those domains of competition should not include essentials to human life. Those should be equal. Relentlessly equal, to the point that nobody can compute on them no matter how hard they try. We need excess income police patrolling the streets, day and night. So, I got my basic income, my basic healthcare, how I do compete? By doing better with that basic resource than you do. We both have a basic housing allowance. My house has a cupula on it. So THERE! Since we cannot increase our consumption by earning more income, the only way to show off is by conserving resources in all domains other than the Domain of Display. Huge benefit for the environment. Uh-oh! What if the Domain of Display becomes Passenger Pigeon feathers. Hmmm! Back to the old drawing board.

N

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: Monday, April 01, 2019 12:01 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Income Equality

Steve points to a pragmatic way to find the answer to a permutation of the question. But it's interesting to me to try to answer the question as written: Why ... should NOT ...? If I reformulate it, we may lose the original intent, but arrive at a clearer question:

Why _should_ everyone's annual income be different? ... or at least independent?

I think the answer boils down to identity, selfhood, and membership. As long as we define ourselves in terms of money, jobs, careers, hobbies, family, ... what type of bicycle we ride, etc., then our incomes should, as a moral imperative, be commensurately unique as those other attributes. As such categories fuzzify and disappear, then we'll be closer to homogenous incomes. Artificially homogenized incomes, in the presence of fully diverse things like assets or hobbies, will only lead to dissonance.

Putting the question back in context, is homogenized annual income "one reaction step away" from our current state? No way.

On 4/1/19 8:17 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

>
> On 3/31/19 11:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>>
>> "Why exactly is it that everybody shouldn't have the same annual income?"
>>
> Try it and you will get a very quick and probably series of blunt answers.
>
> I've had my version of that fantasy and the next step in it is to find
> the person in the room with the lowest income (the shabby homeless person lurking in the back is a good start) (or just arbitrarily pick some one standing next to you) and offer to "average incomes" with them. Repeat. Not everyone will participate, maybe only those with "similar" incomes will share, but the exercise would be useful, even with Monopoly Money.
>
> Ultimately this can become a "sorting exercise". It would be much easier to "share" what you have with someone just a little less well off than you. As a bottom up exercise, (least wealthy shares with next least, repeat) it might work well until you hit the big disparity gaps... The billionaires won't want to share with the millionaires nor they with the upper-middle-class but there might be a trickle-up effect that relieved a LOT in the meantime. Just sayin'.
>
> I am in the midst (literally today) of a complex of "pay it forward" exercises with friends, organizations and acquaintances who either are, or support folks living in or near homelessness. A little bit of $$, Time, Attention goes a *LONG* way with these folks. I'm not averaging my income with them, but in the spirit of religious tithing, I probably do give order 10% of my income and time to these kinds of exercises and *I* believe that provides a several X leverage factor for what I do give. It can be tedious, it can feel risky, it can be disappointing sometimes, but it feels a lot more connected than writing a check to one of the big charities. I AM a fan of some of those (many not), so don't want to dissuade that kind of giving, just encourage more personal, local, engaged "sharing".

--
☣ 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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove