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Re Rant

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Nick Thompson

Re Rant

Frank has been unfairly accused. His was an Anti-Rant Quip.

The material Roger cites doesn’t obviously relate (for me) to Frank’s and my standing argument about the efficacy of inner life. But its themes, continuity and anti-determinism, are Peirceian themes. And my respect for Roger is such that I know that he don’t never say somethin’ for nothin’. So, can somebody explicate? Perhaps even Roger?

NIck

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2019 12:20 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] a problem in how we think, not just in how we act

Rant??

I am a proponent, in human affairs, of both/and rather than either/or propositions. In math I use the law of the excluded middle, however.

Frank

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 10:08 PM Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

It's funny that this should show up twice on my desktop the same day as Frank's rant.

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/09/13/deterministic-thinking-dichotomania

-- rec --

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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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gepr

Re: Re Rant

Now that I've finally had a chance to read the entry Roger posted, I have an opinion. (Ha! As if I would ever *not* have an opinion....)

On 9/14/19 7:56 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Frank has been unfairly accused. His was an Anti-Rant Quip.
>
> The material Roger cites doesn’t obviously relate (for me) to Frank’s and my standing argument about the efficacy of inner life. But its themes, continuity and anti-determinism, are Peirceian themes. And my respect for Roger is such that I know that he don’t never say somethin’ for nothin’. So, can somebody explicate? Perhaps even Roger?

> On 9/13/19 9:19 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:>> Rant??
>> I am a proponent, in human affairs, of both/and rather than either/or propositions. In math I use the law of the excluded middle, however.

First) Both Nick's and Frank's reaction to Roger's classification of Frank's post as a "rant" are "so meta" -- said in the voice of a 20-something hipster. Rants can be both good and bad, subtle and over the top. Reacting as if Roger said anything accusatory is, I think, an example of artificial discretization, over and above what's present in the original discussion. 8^)

On 9/13/19 11:49 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> “dichotomania: the compulsion to replace quantities with dichotomies (‘black-and-white thinking’), even when such dichotomization is unnecessary and misleading for inference.”
>
> Floating point and multi-precision numbers are used all the time on base 2 digital computers.

Second) Yeah, but it's important to remember that these are approximations to the (ideal) numbers. If an artificial discretization is used to facilitate the resolution/granularity of the lens, then that's where I part ways with the blog entry. I'd argue such artificial discretization isn't inappropriate at all. This is the problem I have with Lee's definition of computation. Free variables can be bound with schema, themselves having free variables, not merely with primitive values. So, *sure* floating point numbers are only approximations... but it's good enough for now ... or even for anything we'd ever need, anyway.

The real trick is *why* we artificial discretizers can't fluidly switch back and forth between thinking of bindings as definite or indefinite?

--
☣ 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

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Nick Thompson

Re: Re Rant

Steve Smith,

I am now completely tangled in my own threads here. Can you provide a translation?

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: Tuesday, September 17, 2019 7:41 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Re Rant

Now that I've finally had a chance to read the entry Roger posted, I have an opinion. (Ha! As if I would ever *not* have an opinion....)

On 9/14/19 7:56 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Frank has been unfairly accused. His was an Anti-Rant Quip.
>
> The material Roger cites doesn’t obviously relate (for me) to Frank’s and my standing argument about the efficacy of inner life. But its themes, continuity and anti-determinism, are Peirceian themes. And my respect for Roger is such that I know that he don’t never say somethin’ for nothin’. So, can somebody explicate? Perhaps even Roger?

> On 9/13/19 9:19 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:>> Rant??
>> I am a proponent, in human affairs, of both/and rather than either/or propositions. In math I use the law of the excluded middle, however.

First) Both Nick's and Frank's reaction to Roger's classification of Frank's post as a "rant" are "so meta" -- said in the voice of a 20-something hipster. Rants can be both good and bad, subtle and over the top. Reacting as if Roger said anything accusatory is, I think, an example of artificial discretization, over and above what's present in the original discussion. 8^)

On 9/13/19 11:49 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> “dichotomania: the compulsion to replace quantities with dichotomies (‘black-and-white thinking’), even when such dichotomization is unnecessary and misleading for inference.”
>
> Floating point and multi-precision numbers are used all the time on base 2 digital computers.

Second) Yeah, but it's important to remember that these are approximations to the (ideal) numbers. If an artificial discretization is used to facilitate the resolution/granularity of the lens, then that's where I part ways with the blog entry. I'd argue such artificial discretization isn't inappropriate at all. This is the problem I have with Lee's definition of computation. Free variables can be bound with schema, themselves having free variables, not merely with primitive values. So, *sure* floating point numbers are only approximations... but it's good enough for now ... or even for anything we'd ever need, anyway.

The real trick is *why* we artificial discretizers can't fluidly switch back and forth between thinking of bindings as definite or indefinite?

--
☣ 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

Roger Critchlow-2

Re: Re Rant

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Sorry, I've been overwhelmed with household tasks lately.

I guess I was mostly entranced by the title of the blog post, baldly asserting that thinking leads to actions. Does an unexamined inner life lead to bad science? Gelman is working hard to come up with a generous explanation for why social scientists do so much crappy science and get all defensive when called on it. Now Nick admits that rooting out the biases that lead scientists into errors and failures to acknowledge errors is a good thing, and he fails to rise to the bait dangled by the title. So maybe talking as if inner life precedes public actions, like talking as if electrons had desires which were satisfied when chemical bonds were formed, isn't entirely forbidden.

And I didn't mean to disparage Frank's dialogue, but just calling it a post seemed weak. It reminded me of Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, but it needs more chapters.

-- rec --

On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 8:57 AM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank has been unfairly accused. His was an Anti-Rant Quip.

The material Roger cites doesn’t obviously relate (for me) to Frank’s and my standing argument about the efficacy of inner life. But its themes, continuity and anti-determinism, are Peirceian themes. And my respect for Roger is such that I know that he don’t never say somethin’ for nothin’. So, can somebody explicate? Perhaps even Roger?

NIck

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

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2019 12:20 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] a problem in how we think, not just in how we act

Rant??

I am a proponent, in human affairs, of both/and rather than either/or propositions. In math I use the law of the excluded middle, however.

Frank
-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 10:08 PM Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:
It's funny that this should show up twice on my desktop the same day as Frank's rant.

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/09/13/deterministic-thinking-dichotomania

-- rec --

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