Friam

What is an object?

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Prof David West

Re: What is an object?

Perhaps one could argue that the studiously acquired lens that allows one to think about the detailed mechanisms of a computer program is not helpful, nor anywhere close to correct and is not an efficient way to reason about the world outside the computer?

On Thu, Jul 19, 2018, at 1:22 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

I accept there are some default lenses, but of course one develops more specific and different lenses to see the world too.   I’m arguing that the default lens is not helpful as well as not anywhere close to correct.   It is not an efficient way to reason about the detailed mechanisms of a computer program.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Nick Thompson <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Thursday, July 19, 2018 at 1:05 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

Marcus,

But it’s models all the way down, right?

Furthermore, even for a dualist, your “biology” is the lens through which you see the world. So, the idea that there is a world out there against which we can measure our representations of It is just silly, right? All we have is representations of representations.

That is what OOO seems to challenge, but I am hoping to save that conversation for when we can read Harmon together. Right now I am just trying to get a grip on what you mean by coop.

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 Marcus Daniels
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 10:49 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

Nick,

If I were programming in Cello, then actual constraints of biology would influence me.   If I were programming an agent simulation for a system biology modeling project, what I understood about biology would go into that.
But not all kinds of programming would be influenced by biology.   Programming language features for typing or genericity are precise mathematical instruments that are best to understand on their own, without any vague or grandiose metaphors.
Also, I would discriminate between programming and computation.   There are many kinds of computation that would be interesting to consider separate from programming.   (Although `programming’ to me already has a broader meaning than it does for some.)

Marcus

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Nick Thompson <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Thursday, July 19, 2018 at 8:32 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

Well, it goes without saying, doesn’t it, that it’s your current IDEAS of biology that influence your programming, not biology itself, right? And your biologiized ideas of programming then influence your notion of the cell. We never really know clouds themselves. So to speak.

N

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

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 10:01 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

"Like with the Great Man Theory, the actual causes of any phenomena in a complex and complicated system like Xerox Parc (embedded in culture, society, psychology, physiology, biology, chemistry, etc.) are multifarious and occult."

Assuming there even was a Great Idea to go with a Great Man. For starters..

https://medium.com/@cscalfani/goodbye-object-oriented-programming-a59cda4c0e53
http://www.stlport.org/resources/StepanovUSA.html
http://wiki.c2.com/?ArgumentsAgainstOop
https://content.pivotal.io/blog/all-evidence-points-to-oop-being-bullshit

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of glen <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 7:22:17 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

Of course it's reasonable for you to dissent! But over and above the most important example Marcus raises of biology (because *everything* is biology 8^), even your historical account is a litany of WHAT, not WHY.

Sure it may seem like you're examining the why of these artifacts. But you're not. Why questions are always metaphysical. What you're actually doing in your list and analysis of past events is inferring the WHY from the WHAT. And your inferences, no matter how good you are at inferring, will always just be your best guess at WHY.

Like with the Great Man Theory, the actual causes of any phenomena in a complex and complicated system like Xerox Parc (embedded in culture, society, psychology, physiology, biology, chemistry, etc.) are multifarious and occult. No oversimplified *narrative* like yours will fully circumscribe those causes. To think otherwise is to fool oneself into false belief ... a kind of faith-based world view.

On July 19, 2018 3:01:57 AM PDT, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
>"The IDEA of Smalltalk derived from the IDEA of Simula; the philosophy
>and ideas of Englebart, Bush, Sutherland; the metaphor of cellular
>biology, and undoubtedly more. Alan Kay coalesced those influences and
>led the team that implemented the team that actually created the
>language at Xerox PARC."
>
>For example, I don't see analogs of cytokines, hormones, or
>neurotransmitters in Smalltalk or any computing systems today.    The
>closest that comes to mind are functional reactive programming systems,
>e.g. game platforms tied to a physics engine.
>The idea that top-down intent matters is preposterous if the motivation
>is biology, a massively-parallel bottom-up phenomena that involves
>physical stuff.

--
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

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: What is an object?

“Perhaps one could argue that the studiously acquired lens that allows one to think about the detailed mechanisms of a computer program is not helpful, nor anywhere close to correct and is not an efficient way to reason about the world outside the computer?”

In that case, one can combine a lens that informs how to construct computer programs with another lens that captures domain requirements and that enables experimentation using a more convenient language.

This goes by names like application, simulation, library, or embedded domain specific language (EDSL).

Some examples:

https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/

http://www.gromacs.org/

http://halide-lang.org/

https://people.csail.mit.edu/yuantang/pochoir.html

https://github.com/RuleWorld/bionetgen

https://archives.haskell.org/projects.haskell.org/diagrams/

Nick Thompson

Re: What is an object?

In reply to this post by Prof David West

Dave,

I was just making the banal philosophical point that the validator of our senses can only be our senses. So a hunch “about the world” is nothing more than a hunch about future experiences of the world. As Harmon would say, we can never touch the noumenal.

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 Prof David West
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 4:36 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

On Thu, Jul 19, 2018, at 1:22 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

I accept there are some default lenses, but of course one develops more specific and different lenses to see the world too.   I’m arguing that the default lens is not helpful as well as not anywhere close to correct.   It is not an efficient way to reason about the detailed mechanisms of a computer program.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Nick Thompson <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Thursday, July 19, 2018 at 1:05 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

Marcus,

But it’s models all the way down, right?

Furthermore, even for a dualist, your “biology” is the lens through which you see the world. So, the idea that there is a world out there against which we can measure our representations of It is just silly, right? All we have is representations of representations.

That is what OOO seems to challenge, but I am hoping to save that conversation for when we can read Harmon together. Right now I am just trying to get a grip on what you mean by coop.

N

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

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 10:49 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

Nick,

If I were programming in Cello, then actual constraints of biology would influence me.   If I were programming an agent simulation for a system biology modeling project, what I understood about biology would go into that.
But not all kinds of programming would be influenced by biology.   Programming language features for typing or genericity are precise mathematical instruments that are best to understand on their own, without any vague or grandiose metaphors.
Also, I would discriminate between programming and computation.   There are many kinds of computation that would be interesting to consider separate from programming.   (Although `programming’ to me already has a broader meaning than it does for some.)

Marcus

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Nick Thompson <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Thursday, July 19, 2018 at 8:32 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

Well, it goes without saying, doesn’t it, that it’s your current IDEAS of biology that influence your programming, not biology itself, right? And your biologiized ideas of programming then influence your notion of the cell. We never really know clouds themselves. So to speak.

N

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

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 10:01 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

"Like with the Great Man Theory, the actual causes of any phenomena in a complex and complicated system like Xerox Parc (embedded in culture, society, psychology, physiology, biology, chemistry, etc.) are multifarious and occult."

Assuming there even was a Great Idea to go with a Great Man. For starters..

https://medium.com/@cscalfani/goodbye-object-oriented-programming-a59cda4c0e53
http://www.stlport.org/resources/StepanovUSA.html
http://wiki.c2.com/?ArgumentsAgainstOop
https://content.pivotal.io/blog/all-evidence-points-to-oop-being-bullshit

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of glen <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 7:22:17 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

Of course it's reasonable for you to dissent! But over and above the most important example Marcus raises of biology (because *everything* is biology 8^), even your historical account is a litany of WHAT, not WHY.

Sure it may seem like you're examining the why of these artifacts. But you're not. Why questions are always metaphysical. What you're actually doing in your list and analysis of past events is inferring the WHY from the WHAT. And your inferences, no matter how good you are at inferring, will always just be your best guess at WHY.

Like with the Great Man Theory, the actual causes of any phenomena in a complex and complicated system like Xerox Parc (embedded in culture, society, psychology, physiology, biology, chemistry, etc.) are multifarious and occult. No oversimplified *narrative* like yours will fully circumscribe those causes. To think otherwise is to fool oneself into false belief ... a kind of faith-based world view.

On July 19, 2018 3:01:57 AM PDT, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
>"The IDEA of Smalltalk derived from the IDEA of Simula; the philosophy
>and ideas of Englebart, Bush, Sutherland; the metaphor of cellular
>biology, and undoubtedly more. Alan Kay coalesced those influences and
>led the team that implemented the team that actually created the
>language at Xerox PARC."
>
>For example, I don't see analogs of cytokines, hormones, or
>neurotransmitters in Smalltalk or any computing systems today.    The
>closest that comes to mind are functional reactive programming systems,
>e.g. game platforms tied to a physics engine.
>The idea that top-down intent matters is preposterous if the motivation
>is biology, a massively-parallel bottom-up phenomena that involves
>physical stuff.

--
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

gepr

Re: What is an object?

"the validator of our senses can only be our senses" waaay oversimplifies the set of experiences. If there were only 1 type of experience, then you'd be right. But there are (at least) many types of experience. And 1 experience of one type can "validate" a different experience of an entirely different type.

Not only can this happen in *sequence* as you assume. But it can also happen in parallel. My hand can feel the elephant's trunk at the exact same time my eyes can see the elephant. It's not clear to me what you gain through such (over-)simplification.

On 07/19/2018 02:17 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> I was just making the banal philosophical point that the validator of our senses can only be our senses. So a hunch “about the world” is nothing more than a hunch about future experiences of the world. As Harmon would say, we can never touch the noumenal.

--
☣ 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

David Eric Smith

Re: What is an object?

> On Jul 19, 2018, at 5:26 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> "the validator of our senses can only be our senses" waaay oversimplifies the set of experiences. If there were only 1 type of experience, then you'd be right. But there are (at least) many types of experience. And 1 experience of one type can "validate" a different experience of an entirely different type.
>
> Not only can this happen in *sequence* as you assume. But it can also happen in parallel. My hand can feel the elephant's trunk at the exact same time my eyes can see the elephant. It's not clear to me what you gain through such (over-)simplification.

Yes, I was going to say something similar, and couldn’t figure out how to say it so that it would be constructive rather than sounding like I was trying to pick a fight (which I assure you, I never am; enough fights pick me already which I wish to get out of).

So many of these statements read, to me, as if they are asserting that the structures of sense-data are some kind of self-evident bottleneck, or conversely, that they are privileged in some correspondingly self-evident way. I get this impression from reading Russell’s emphasis on the role of sense data, in either Problems of Philosophy or History of Western Philosophy (I forget which now).

My sense data deliver essentially nothing direct about colliding black holes, or colliding neutron stars, or rotating black hole accretion disks' emitting gamma rays and ultra-high-energy neutrinos. (More specifically, they deliver essentially nothing direct about whatever makes these phenomena their particular selves, different from all the other phenomena that they are not.) Anything I or anyone else knows about those subjects and phenomena is distilled from unbelievably elaborate prosthetic systems, which appeal, not so much to any particular sensory event, as to the ability to coreograph such events in ways that are selective of certain kinds of patterns. And then there is the whole edifice of logic, math, and language to organize it all and make it navigable. What comes out of all that, however, is a formal model of an external universe that is as worthy of trust as anything my mind is capable of holding.

That to say, I guess, that from a few bricks, the number of different kinds of houses that can be built combinatorially is far greater than the count of the types of bricks. So the limits on what patterns can be apprehended seems to be very obscurely related to the limits of senses.

At least to me.

Eric

>
>
> On 07/19/2018 02:17 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> I was just making the banal philosophical point that the validator of our senses can only be our senses. So a hunch “about the world” is nothing more than a hunch about future experiences of the world. As Harmon would say, we can never touch the noumenal.
>
> --
> ☣ 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

Nick Thompson

Re: What is an object?

Thanks, Eric, for responding.

Life, here, is very complicated, right at the moment, but I wanted to answer one of your comments, strait-away.

Not only can this happen in *sequence* as you assume. But it can also happen in parallel. My hand can feel the elephant's trunk at the exact same time my eyes can see the elephant. It's not clear to me what you gain through such (over-)simplification

What I gain from the over simplification is humbleness, the same humbleness that is so eloquently expressed in you extended passage. At the risk of irritating Glen (which I truly strive not to do; I have supped too often at his table), the Real can only consist of the validation of some expectation of experience arising from an earlier experience. I once tried to rescue a litter of wild kittens. I kept stepping on them because they never learned to watch my EYES. They were too focused on my feet to figure out what was going to happen next. I might respond to your critique by conceding that the sequence of experiences is more like a braid than a thread, but I think it is a sequence. But past, present, and future are of course themselves experiences, and it is an accomplishment, not God given, to distinguish between or our present experiences, our memories and our expectations for the future.

I hope to get another crack at your email before I go to bed tonight.

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 Eric Smith
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 5:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

> On Jul 19, 2018, at 5:26 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

> "the validator of our senses can only be our senses" waaay oversimplifies the set of experiences. If there were only 1 type of experience, then you'd be right. But there are (at least) many types of experience. And 1 experience of one type can "validate" a different experience of an entirely different type.

> Not only can this happen in *sequence* as you assume. But it can also happen in parallel. My hand can feel the elephant's trunk at the exact same time my eyes can see the elephant. It's not clear to me what you gain through such (over-)simplification.

Yes, I was going to say something similar, and couldn’t figure out how to say it so that it would be constructive rather than sounding like I was trying to pick a fight (which I assure you, I never am; enough fights pick me already which I wish to get out of).

So many of these statements read, to me, as if they are asserting that the structures of sense-data are some kind of self-evident bottleneck, or conversely, that they are privileged in some correspondingly self-evident way. I get this impression from reading Russell’s emphasis on the role of sense data, in either Problems of Philosophy or History of Western Philosophy (I forget which now).

My sense data deliver essentially nothing direct about colliding black holes, or colliding neutron stars, or rotating black hole accretion disks' emitting gamma rays and ultra-high-energy neutrinos. (More specifically, they deliver essentially nothing direct about whatever makes these phenomena their particular selves, different from all the other phenomena that they are not.) Anything I or anyone else knows about those subjects and phenomena is distilled from unbelievably elaborate prosthetic systems, which appeal, not so much to any particular sensory event, as to the ability to coreograph such events in ways that are selective of certain kinds of patterns. And then there is the whole edifice of logic, math, and language to organize it all and make it navigable. What comes out of all that, however, is a formal model of an external universe that is as worthy of trust as anything my mind is capable of holding.

That to say, I guess, that from a few bricks, the number of different kinds of houses that can be built combinatorially is far greater than the count of the types of bricks. So the limits on what patterns can be apprehended seems to be very obscurely related to the limits of senses.

At least to me.

Eric

> On 07/19/2018 02:17 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

>> I was just making the banal philosophical point that the validator of our senses can only be our senses. So a hunch “about the world” is nothing more than a hunch about future experiences of the world. As Harmon would say, we can never touch the noumenal.

> --

> ☣ 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

David Eric Smith

Re: What is an object?

Thanks Nick,

Life, here, is very complicated, right at the moment, but I wanted to answer one of your comments, strait-away.

Not only can this happen in *sequence* as you assume. But it can also happen in parallel. My hand can feel the elephant's trunk at the exact same time my eyes can see the elephant. It's not clear to me what you gain through such (over-)simplification

This was actually Glen’s comment, which gave me the courage to pick up the topic in the paragraph I added. But all good to pick up this thread wherever is productive.

All best,

Eric

What I gain from the over simplification is humbleness, the same humbleness that is so eloquently expressed in you extended passage. At the risk of irritating Glen (which I truly strive not to do; I have supped too often at his table), the Real can only consist of the validation of some expectation of experience arising from an earlier experience. I once tried to rescue a litter of wild kittens. I kept stepping on them because they never learned to watch my EYES. They were too focused on my feet to figure out what was going to happen next. I might respond to your critique by conceding that the sequence of experiences is more like a braid than a thread, but I think it is a sequence. But past, present, and future are of course themselves experiences, and it is an accomplishment, not God given, to distinguish between or our present experiences, our memories and our expectations for the future.

I hope to get another crack at your email before I go to bed tonight.

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 5:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

> On Jul 19, 2018, at 5:26 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> "the validator of our senses can only be our senses" waaay oversimplifies the set of experiences. If there were only 1 type of experience, then you'd be right. But there are (at least) many types of experience. And 1 experience of one type can "validate" a different experience of an entirely different type.
>
> Not only can this happen in *sequence* as you assume. But it can also happen in parallel. My hand can feel the elephant's trunk at the exact same time my eyes can see the elephant. It's not clear to me what you gain through such (over-)simplification.

Yes, I was going to say something similar, and couldn’t figure out how to say it so that it would be constructive rather than sounding like I was trying to pick a fight (which I assure you, I never am; enough fights pick me already which I wish to get out of).

So many of these statements read, to me, as if they are asserting that the structures of sense-data are some kind of self-evident bottleneck, or conversely, that they are privileged in some correspondingly self-evident way. I get this impression from reading Russell’s emphasis on the role of sense data, in either Problems of Philosophy or History of Western Philosophy (I forget which now).

My sense data deliver essentially nothing direct about colliding black holes, or colliding neutron stars, or rotating black hole accretion disks' emitting gamma rays and ultra-high-energy neutrinos. (More specifically, they deliver essentially nothing direct about whatever makes these phenomena their particular selves, different from all the other phenomena that they are not.) Anything I or anyone else knows about those subjects and phenomena is distilled from unbelievably elaborate prosthetic systems, which appeal, not so much to any particular sensory event, as to the ability to coreograph such events in ways that are selective of certain kinds of patterns. And then there is the whole edifice of logic, math, and language to organize it all and make it navigable. What comes out of all that, however, is a formal model of an external universe that is as worthy of trust as anything my mind is capable of holding.

That to say, I guess, that from a few bricks, the number of different kinds of houses that can be built combinatorially is far greater than the count of the types of bricks. So the limits on what patterns can be apprehended seems to be very obscurely related to the limits of senses.

At least to me.

Eric

>
>
> On 07/19/2018 02:17 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> I was just making the banal philosophical point that the validator of our senses can only be our senses. So a hunch “about the world” is nothing more than a hunch about future experiences of the world. As Harmon would say, we can never touch the noumenal.
>
> --
> ☣ 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
============================================================
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

Russell Standish-2

Re: What is an object?

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 02:01:07PM +0000, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> "Like with the Great Man Theory, the actual causes of any phenomena in a complex and complicated system like Xerox Parc (embedded in culture, society, psychology, physiology, biology, chemistry, etc.) are multifarious and occult."
>
>
> Assuming there even was a Great Idea to go with a Great Man. For starters..
>
>
> https://medium.com/@cscalfani/goodbye-object-oriented-programming-a59cda4c0e53
>
> http://www.stlport.org/resources/StepanovUSA.html
>
> http://wiki.c2.com/?ArgumentsAgainstOop
> https://content.pivotal.io/blog/all-evidence-points-to-oop-being-bullshit
>
>

All these seem to be arguments against what I call OO purism. An OO
purist tends to see things in terms of UML diagrams, and a 1-1
relationship between the UML diagram and the code. This leads to
limited flexibility (ie code fragility), and to be quite frank, at
times confusing code.

For me the techniques of OOP (by which I mean attaching methods to a
collection of data, and only that) are simply tools in a
toolbox, amongst many others.

Inheritance is great for code reusability, composition much
less so (requiring much more error prone plumbing code). The isa
versus hasa distinction needn't apply, but can be useful for rasoning
or modelling, but not always.

(Dynamic) Polymorphism can be useful for
containers of similarly behaving things that have distinctly different
data structures. I tend to use generic programming and duck typing
otherwise.

Encapsulation is extremely important to maintain invariants
- where the state of two fields depend on each other, they should be
encapsulated to prevent their values getting out of sync. Otherwise,
it is generally more useful to expose members directly as public (a
bit more thought is required with APIs, of course). And don't get me
started on getters/setters. If an attribute has both a getter and
setter (particularly trivial ones), it is a code smell that it really
should be a public attribute. I have seen encapsulation taken to such
extremes that code becomes difficult to understand and debug.

And as for patterns, I have sympathy for the person who said that
patterns make up for deficiencies in a language. The classic example
might be the Singleton pattern making up for an absence of global
variables in Java. I haven't read the GoF book, but have seen some
disasterous applications of patterns to code, that obscure and
complexify things unnecessarily. Nevertheless, I do use some patterns
(that I don't believe are in the GoF book), particularly for
multithreading (cf active object), or my favourite the lazy
instantiator:

inline Foo& foo()
{
static Foo f;
return f;
}

This pattern (which is actually a kind of Singleton) is required to
get around C++'s link time ordering problem. You must make sure foo()
is called at least once before any multithreading is started though,
perhaps by setting a static variable in the main.cc file, otherwise
you end up with a race condition.

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellow [hidden email]
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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gepr

Re: What is an object?

In reply to this post by David Eric Smith

Congrats on explicitly broaching Complexity without the obligatory buzzword! 8^) But you've raised an important point about the inaccessibility of the noumenal that also includes a practical programming paradigm: "aspect-orientation". I've tried to combine AoP principles with Ziegler's "facets" to realize a kind of aspect-oriented modeling. I don't really market my methods. But it works for me.

The point is to admit what B.C. Smith calls "the ontological wall", yet still try to formalize every perspective/approach you can toward that thing you can't fully reach, to circumscribe it as completely as you can. That includes both primitive measurements (like direct sensation) and derived measures, i.e. measures of measures. And you can play "mind games" by swapping in and out various different logics (including both axioms in a single logic or entirely different logics) to extrapolate beyond the ontological wall, to explore alternative metaphysics and select against those that everyone dislikes. (We do this practically with multi-paradigm modeling, i.e. multiple implementations of the same interface using, say, rules-based vs. continuum -- ODE/PDE -- solvers.)

The question raised in the first Open-Ended Evolution (OEE1) meeting was whether such *layering* (different types of houses with the same bricks -- regular tilings -- and/or different types of houses with different bricks -- e.g. Penrose Tiling) increases or decreases the systemic degrees of freedom. ?? At the meeting, there were plenty of people on both sides. And I haven't followed any attempts to follow up and *prove* it one way or the other. So, it would be very cool to hear any opinions on it or whether the question's been settled.

On 07/19/2018 02:38 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
> That to say, I guess, that from a few bricks, the number of different kinds of houses that can be built combinatorially is far greater than the count of the types of bricks. So the limits on what patterns can be apprehended seems to be very obscurely related to the limits of senses.

--
∄ uǝʃƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Gillian Densmore

Re: What is an object?

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Someone needs to make the joke:

Nick you see an object are things. Tires coins. that strange drink some lady at TraderJoes had tap, Some things like this type of joke is called a silly (polite) or smartass (30+) answers

Thank you thank! I'll be at the Cabana of Humor all week :P

On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 5:42 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thanks, Eric, for responding.

Life, here, is very complicated, right at the moment, but I wanted to answer one of your comments, strait-away.

Not only can this happen in *sequence* as you assume. But it can also happen in parallel. My hand can feel the elephant's trunk at the exact same time my eyes can see the elephant. It's not clear to me what you gain through such (over-)simplification

What I gain from the over simplification is humbleness, the same humbleness that is so eloquently expressed in you extended passage. At the risk of irritating Glen (which I truly strive not to do; I have supped too often at his table), the Real can only consist of the validation of some expectation of experience arising from an earlier experience. I once tried to rescue a litter of wild kittens. I kept stepping on them because they never learned to watch my EYES. They were too focused on my feet to figure out what was going to happen next. I might respond to your critique by conceding that the sequence of experiences is more like a braid than a thread, but I think it is a sequence. But past, present, and future are of course themselves experiences, and it is an accomplishment, not God given, to distinguish between or our present experiences, our memories and our expectations for the future.

I hope to get another crack at your email before I go to bed tonight.

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 Eric Smith
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 5:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

> On Jul 19, 2018, at 5:26 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> "the validator of our senses can only be our senses" waaay oversimplifies the set of experiences. If there were only 1 type of experience, then you'd be right. But there are (at least) many types of experience. And 1 experience of one type can "validate" a different experience of an entirely different type.
>
> Not only can this happen in *sequence* as you assume. But it can also happen in parallel. My hand can feel the elephant's trunk at the exact same time my eyes can see the elephant. It's not clear to me what you gain through such (over-)simplification.

Yes, I was going to say something similar, and couldn’t figure out how to say it so that it would be constructive rather than sounding like I was trying to pick a fight (which I assure you, I never am; enough fights pick me already which I wish to get out of).

So many of these statements read, to me, as if they are asserting that the structures of sense-data are some kind of self-evident bottleneck, or conversely, that they are privileged in some correspondingly self-evident way. I get this impression from reading Russell’s emphasis on the role of sense data, in either Problems of Philosophy or History of Western Philosophy (I forget which now).

My sense data deliver essentially nothing direct about colliding black holes, or colliding neutron stars, or rotating black hole accretion disks' emitting gamma rays and ultra-high-energy neutrinos. (More specifically, they deliver essentially nothing direct about whatever makes these phenomena their particular selves, different from all the other phenomena that they are not.) Anything I or anyone else knows about those subjects and phenomena is distilled from unbelievably elaborate prosthetic systems, which appeal, not so much to any particular sensory event, as to the ability to coreograph such events in ways that are selective of certain kinds of patterns. And then there is the whole edifice of logic, math, and language to organize it all and make it navigable. What comes out of all that, however, is a formal model of an external universe that is as worthy of trust as anything my mind is capable of holding.

That to say, I guess, that from a few bricks, the number of different kinds of houses that can be built combinatorially is far greater than the count of the types of bricks. So the limits on what patterns can be apprehended seems to be very obscurely related to the limits of senses.

At least to me.

Eric

>
>
> On 07/19/2018 02:17 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> I was just making the banal philosophical point that the validator of our senses can only be our senses. So a hunch “about the world” is nothing more than a hunch about future experiences of the world. As Harmon would say, we can never touch the noumenal.
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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