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WAS Friday Fodder IS NOW: dangly bits

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thompnickson2

WAS Friday Fodder IS NOW: dangly bits

“Tangential” would seem to understate the case. Please reply here if you want to talk about Arnold’s dangly bitsl Please please do not gum up a perfectly good conversation about spandrels.

Thanks,

Nick

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

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

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2021 11:09 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Friday Fodder

Bit of a tangent, but...

Consider Arnold in the role of Terminator. He managed to convey a lot of menace and dominance simply from size and overall shape; never once brandishing his penis to intimidate anyone.

Having recently watched the theatrical release of Terminator, I was surprised to find that in addition to the numerous ass shots I knew were there, there is full frontal of Arnold early in the film. The dangly bits are enshadowed, but not really hidden. Happens as he's walking through a park towards 3 "punks", leading up to the iconic "Your clothes, give them to me." line.

On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 11:12 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Because I left before it ended, I have no idea how the spandrel discussion ended. Nick requested an explanation/elaboration/justification for my continued skepticism/resistance (other than being willfully obstinate for no reason) to the notion of spandrel. Hence the following — elaborated beyond the specific question of spandrel as fodder for continuing discussion next Friday.

1- I am convinced that evolutionary biologists are secretly required to read Rudyard Kipling as prerequisite to the granting of a Ph.D.. Because, every story about the evolution of a specific feature — Friday it was the pseudo-penis of female hyenas — sounds like, and is as convincing as, one of Kipling's Just So stories. [Yes, trolling.]

2- Pseudo-penis as spandrel:
   a- Testosterone flooded female hyenas are selected because aggressive females have survival value in matriarchal hyena society. This really seems, to me, to pose a chicken-egg problem: matriarchy or female bullies first?
   b- Testosterone flooding creates a space — a spandrel — a space that is then "decorated." One example of 'decoration' is the pseudo-penis.
   c- by what mechanism does the decoration come about? Nick said it was a direct result of testosterone flooding, that "all" such results would appear, that none of them was independently 'selected for." This is a specific area where I fail to understand what Nick is saying and need correction. If I heard correctly that all effects of testosterone flooding would appear — Nick emphatically said "all" and "will" in his explanation — then:
    -- we should not only see a clitoris run amok, but also beards, rock hard pecs instead of pillow-breasts, 20-inch biceps, denser bones, and overall greater muscle mass.
    -- the "purpose" of the pseudo-penis is aggression display and reproductive-act dominance. But, of all the results of testosterone flooding that "will" result, a big penis seems the least useful for that purpose. Muscles and size would seem more than sufficient. Consider Arnold in the role of Terminator. He managed to convey a lot of menace and dominance simply from size and overall shape; never once brandishing his penis to intimidate anyone. (And if we assume he was as liberal a user of steroids in his body-building career as many of his colleagues, his penis would not have scared a squirrel.)
    -- Why so baroque a decoration?
    -- Why did testosterone cause the clitoris to merge with the urethra and the vagina? Did these not exist as separate organs in predecessor species to the hyena? How is that even possible? is the pseudo-penis not a clitoris-urethra-vagina at all but some kind of evolution of an avian cloaca?
    -- This specific decoration seems to have anti-survival consequences (most firstborn hyenas are also stillborn) and yet this decoration seems immune to selection. Or maybe not, we have yet to see what might succeed hyenas a few million years from now.

3- More general issue: whole-part evolution. Jon seemed to understand what I was trying to say last Friday on this matter.
   a- Consider the peregrine falcon. Some of the traits/features that make it a formidable predator: very lightweight bones coupled with overdeveloped muscles which contribute to its ability to withstand G forces and make 200 mile per hour dives (and withstand the shock of kinetic energy when it hits its prey); razor sharp talons; notched beak to sever spinal columns; full-color binocular vision with resolution that allows seeing a pigeon at distances greater than a mile; nictating membrane to protect from wind force during dives; and ability to see into the ultra-violet spectrum.
   b- If I understand Darwin (a huge if): each of these features is the result of a sequence of selected/preserved minute changes in single molecules: e.g. keratin, opsins, crystallins. Each of these molecules are expressed as a sequence of amino acid 'letters', 20 in number. If the string of letters were 100 characters in length (crystallins and opsins are much longer) then the odds of any given string are 20 to the 100 power. By comparison, the number of hydrogen atoms in the universe is estimated to be 10 to the 90th power.
   c- If evolution proceeded with one amino acid letter pairing with a second, getting selected, then pairing with a third, etc., each addition being one of 20 equally probable options; then, coming up with the string that expresses, precisely, as the falcon's beak is fantastically improbable (winning the lottery every year since the Big Bang).
   d- This brings in the question of time. Has there been sufficient time for a process of random change / selection to allow the formation of such a string. This was a huge issue for Darwin because the prevailing scientific estimate of the age of the Earth was twenty-million years. [Lord Kelvin using the equations of thermodynamics.] This was not nearly enough time for Darwin's evolution and he was "greatly troubled by it." Rutherford, using radioactive decay equations, "saved" Darwin by extending the age of the Earth to 4.5 billion years.
   e- Kind-of. If evolution literally proceeds one amino acid letter at a time to assemble a specific string that has a probability of existing of 1 / 20 to the hundredth power (or more) — there is insufficient time since the Big Bang for that string to emerge via chance.
   f- it seems as if some kind of short-cut is essential. Suppose you have parallel/simultaneous evolution of 'sub-strings' and then 'main-line' evolution proceeds upon combinations (wholes) of these strings, Then, it is quite likely that 4.5 billion years provides sufficient time. This, it seems to me, suggests that evolution deals with an aggregate, a whole; not individual amino acids one-by-one, or even sub-strings one-by-one.
   g- Which circles back to the falcon. If each of the mentioned traits/features evolved independently and sequentially then we run out of time again. If each of the traits/features evolved independently then there seems to be a macro-problem of how they 'just happened' to occur simultaneously and apparently 'in concert'.

So my conclusion, apparently wrong because it disagrees with the experts in the group, is that evolution must proceed whole-organism to whole-organism and not, feature-trait by feature-trait the way that it is presented.

This also means, that individual feature-traits — as marvelous as the the falcon's eye or as silly as the pseudo-penis — cannot, and should not be "explained" independently. To do so is to focus on the 'noise' and not the 'signal'. Such efforts are the product of 19th century thinking and unworthy of complexity scientists like yourselves.

davew

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gepr

Re: WAS Friday Fodder IS NOW: dangly bits

Oooooooh! A refusal to eat one's own dog food <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food>. That's a heinous crime!

A complete conversation about spandrels must include thread bending.

On 3/23/21 10:17 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> “Tangential” would seem to understate the case. Please reply here if you want to talk about Arnold’s dangly bitsl Please please do not gum up a perfectly good conversation about spandrels.

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: WAS Friday Fodder IS NOW: dangly bits

I've had several experiences in the working world where people do seem to give special status to the original post. In the politically correct view, the original post is one where we can reflect on its wisdom (and sometimes apply thumbs-up or smiley-face emoticons) but it is awkward and frowned upon to question any premises in the referenced article! To me it all seems like a coercive way to control conversations.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2021 10:28 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] WAS Friday Fodder IS NOW: dangly bits

Oooooooh! A refusal to eat one's own dog food <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food>. That's a heinous crime!

A complete conversation about spandrels must include thread bending.

On 3/23/21 10:17 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> “Tangential” would seem to understate the case. Please reply here
> if you want to talk about Arnold’s dangly bitsl Please please do not gum up a perfectly good conversation about spandrels.

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gepr

Re: WAS Friday Fodder IS NOW: dangly bits

Well, to be fair, construction is more difficult than destruction (though perhaps not more difficult than de-construction). So if an OP submits a construct, especially one that's easy to tear down in a disrespectful way, it's competent practice to be gentle and precise when making one's incisions.

But what I see, mostly, is people who simply want to talk and enjoy the sounds of their own voice, their own subject, their own universe of discourse [⛧], which always nudges a good faith critic back onto their heels. So, competent criticism in wild and woolly fora like this one often comes in the form of blunt rejection of OP premises.

[⛧] Tu quoque warning! Just because I'm a hypocrite doesn't mean I'm wrong.

On 3/23/21 10:45 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> I've had several experiences in the working world where people do seem to give special status to the original post. In the politically correct view, the original post is one where we can reflect on its wisdom (and sometimes apply thumbs-up or smiley-face emoticons) but it is awkward and frowned upon to question any premises in the referenced article! To me it all seems like a coercive way to control conversations.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
> Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2021 10:28 AM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] WAS Friday Fodder IS NOW: dangly bits
>
> Oooooooh! A refusal to eat one's own dog food <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food>. That's a heinous crime!
>
> A complete conversation about spandrels must include thread bending.
>
> On 3/23/21 10:17 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
>> “Tangential” would seem to understate the case. Please reply here
>> if you want to talk about Arnold’s dangly bitsl Please please do not gum up a perfectly good conversation about spandrels.

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: WAS Friday Fodder IS NOW: dangly bits

Oh, I was thinking of people that just forward some other document, presumably one they agree with. Then they are startled when it gets deconstructed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2021 11:16 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] WAS Friday Fodder IS NOW: dangly bits

Well, to be fair, construction is more difficult than destruction (though perhaps not more difficult than de-construction). So if an OP submits a construct, especially one that's easy to tear down in a disrespectful way, it's competent practice to be gentle and precise when making one's incisions.

But what I see, mostly, is people who simply want to talk and enjoy the sounds of their own voice, their own subject, their own universe of discourse [⛧], which always nudges a good faith critic back onto their heels. So, competent criticism in wild and woolly fora like this one often comes in the form of blunt rejection of OP premises.

[⛧] Tu quoque warning! Just because I'm a hypocrite doesn't mean I'm wrong.

On 3/23/21 10:45 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

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gepr

Re: WAS Friday Fodder IS NOW: dangly bits

Ah, yes. Hyper-text. I feel the same way about name-dropping. I've long wanted (not badly enough) to generate a name-dropping chatbot like the pseudo-profundity one ... or the Chomskybot. It would have a list of names including more obscure but important thinkers like Harold Garfinkel and Ramon Llull, the more obscure the better. Then you'd splice together nearly random sentences with their names in parentheses or noisifying clauses of run-on sentences. And it would be even cooler to put the links to their wikipedia pages in there in the hopes that an unsuspecting reader would click there, see it's real and be forever tricked into thinking the random nonsense was sensical.

On 3/23/21 11:27 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Oh, I was thinking of people that just forward some other document, presumably one they agree with. Then they are startled when it gets deconstructed.

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Steve Smith

Re: WAS Friday Fodder IS NOW: dangly bits

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

“Tangential” would seem to understate the case. Please reply here if you want to talk about Arnold’s dangly bitsl Please please do not gum up a perfectly good conversation about spandrels.

Thanks,

Nick

a1dc6b05992d78388f3e8d23cb7aeac2--byzantine-architecture-romanesque-architecture.jpg

In the case of the "ultimate spandrel", the working-parts of the pendentive dome ARE the "dangly bits".

Once you take away *everything else but* the Spandrels, what do you have? Whether their origin followed the traditional "just so" story or my own contrived one (mesolithic stacking of triangular liths by lith-worshipers), you have to admit that the "spandrels" are doing all the heavy lifting in the structure, even if you insist that what is being "utilized" is the negative spaces of the arches and the zenith-dome.

I in the theme of DaveW's observations about whole-part evolution tension, I am reminded of Glen's recent snark: "there IS no individual". There is no whole, there are no parts, it's self-organized systems (relations), all the way down?

As much as we seem to love to hate Stephen Wolfram, I think that is what he's talking about in his "New Kind of Science: Consciousness Edition"

What Is Consciousness?--Visual Summary—click to enlarge

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/03/what-is-consciousness-some-new-perspectives-from-our-physics-project/

I think I "bent" EricC's bend of Nick's thread just a bit?...

The Gordian knot of high school reform | The Thomas B.
Fordham Institute

Ramble,

- Steve

gepr

Re: WAS Friday Fodder IS NOW: dangly bits

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/snark

On 3/23/21 1:39 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> I in the theme of DaveW's observations about whole-part evolution tension, I am reminded of Glen's recent snark: "there IS no individual". There is no whole, there are no parts, it's self-organized systems (relations), all the way down?

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Steve Smith

Re: WAS Friday Fodder IS NOW: dangly bits

> "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/snark
Inconceivable!
>
> On 3/23/21 1:39 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
>> I in the theme of DaveW's observations about whole-part evolution tension, I am reminded of Glen's recent snark: "there IS no individual". There is no whole, there are no parts, it's self-organized systems (relations), all the way down?
>

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