Wot's New, Doc? Plenty, Bugsy
Locked
 
|
The above question can be answered at some level for the Bugs Bunnys of the world! And the answer is: Yes, indeed, plenty. Here is a little story anent our marvellous aptitude for development with time. The original discus, as used in the first Greek Olympics, was quite clever, and actually went further than anyone could throw a sphere. Its range was about 65 m, still close to the modern Olympic record. In 1961, as a low speed aerodynamicist at Caltech, I worked with some characters from Whammo on a funny looking plastic dish, that we called Frisbee and guessed we might sell a few 1000. We were off by a few million on that market prediction! The latest disc variant, called Aerobie, holds the record range of more than 300 m, as listed in Guinness. It is appealing to note that this is comfortably the furthest any object has evah been thrown by the hand of Man! We are now working on improving this. There are a few factors: air density: unchangeable, gyroscopic precession: invariant, at least according to Newton, human musculature:slowly improving: and disc design: improving by leaps and bounds. I am familiar with this since I have been involved in this stuff for 40 years, and have been invited to give a paper next Summer at an International Symposium in Vienna on my latest efforts on disc design and flight dynamics prediction. So I see lotsa new things, Bugs. And they do not reside in verbiage, but, in this case, in an axisymmetric plastic disc that you can pick up in your hands, hurl and see with your own eyes whether it is any better! Not "Words, words, words," as my Lord Hamlet complained! But reality - if that means anything! Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Wot's New, Doc? Plenty, Bugsy
|
|
Is this new?
“Let’s say the market needs a new bath toy. The typical approach is to
look at form, function and the market. But here, we’re leading with the
material, and if the material doesn’t do exactly what we need we can go
back to the chemists. Essentially, we’re trying to bring material
science into the discussion.” This can pave the way toward our using
more healthful products, made from renewable and/or recyclable resources. -- Russ A On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 1:07 PM, <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Wot's New, Doc? Plenty, Bugsy
|
|
In reply to this post by plissaman
Peter,
What can I say? Words is what I do. I have been doing words professionally for more than 40 years. I certainly don't hold that words are the only thing to do, but, I do hold that there is some value in close attention to how words are used, particularly their often demonstrated capacity to lead scientists down blind alleys. I assume, intellectual communist that I am, that we will make the best progress if each contributes according to his skills and we all take according to our ignorances.
I am still struck by the manner in which we in FRIAM fly by one another in our discussions. Other emergence seminar participants may have a different experience, but I think that some of that is getting sorted out between us, so we are starting to understand one another a bit better. Despite our best efforts, I still think Crutchfield, for instance, is ambiguous. Note for instance how the different respondents to my question understood him. So, I still think there is value in trying to wring a text for all its value, and I am continuing to try to do that with the Crutchfield text.
All the best,
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([hidden email])
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa fe]
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Wot's New, Doc? Plenty, Bugsy
|
Administrator
|
On Nov 2, 2009, at 5:54 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> <snip> > Despite our best efforts, I still think Crutchfield, for instance, > is ambiguous. Nonsense! > Note for instance how the different respondents to my question > understood him. Then consider the fault theirs. Anyone who really wants to reduce the ambiguity has but to read Ref[1] or any of Crutchfield/Shalizi papers on the topic. Shalizi's thesis for example. -- Owen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Wot's New, Doc? Plenty, Bugsy
|
|
Thus spake Owen Densmore circa 09-11-03 09:02 AM:
> On Nov 2, 2009, at 5:54 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > >> <snip> >> Despite our best efforts, I still think Crutchfield, for instance, is >> ambiguous. > > Nonsense! Cool! This will be an easy challenge. All I need to do is find a _single_ statement of his that's even a little bit ambiguous and I win. ;-) >> Note for instance how the different respondents to my question >> understood him. > > Then consider the fault theirs. Of course the fault is the receiver's. That's the definition of "ambiguous"! Sorry... I couldn't resist. "Ambiguous" means "multi-valued". If the reader is the co-domain and the author is the domain, then it is entirely up to the reader to determine whether or not Crutchfield's expressions have more than one value in the reader's mind. > Anyone who really wants to reduce the ambiguity has but to read Ref[1] > or any of Crutchfield/Shalizi papers on the topic. Shalizi's thesis for > example. Uh-oh... Now you're saying _reduce_ the ambiguity, which is different from denying the claim that there is NO ambiguity... Curses, foiled again. [grin] " ... innovation is associated with a change in model class. One would expect this change to correspond to an increase in computational sophistication of the model class, but it need not be. Roughly, innovation is the computational equivalent of speciation ? recall that the partial ordering of a computational hierarchy indicates that there is no single way ?up? in general. In concrete terms, innovation is the improvement in an agent?s notion of environmental (causal) state." We have the first inklings of the fundamental ambiguity within the above quote... what with the denial that innovation go "upward" and the immediate requirement for "improvement". If that ain't equivocation, I don't know what is. Moving on. It's not clear whether Crutchfield proposes that hopping from infinite descriptions to finite descriptions is the only categorization of models he uses to define innovation. On the one hand, he says things like: "At each level in a hierarchy there are a number of elements that can be identified, such as the following." And this is an indicator that he might be willing to spread his definition of innovation over categorizations other than whether they can finitely represent something that other classes can only represent infinitely. But everything he talks about with any unambiguous specificity is based on the epsilon machines and finite representations. (Note that the class boundaries he cites: "... from determinism to indeterminism, from finitary support to finitary measure, from predictability to chaos, from undifferentiated patterns to domains and particles, and from observed states to hidden internal states" were all crossed in the service of finite representations... So, even though they may be considered innovative by Crutchfield even if the infinite-finite boundary were NOT crossed, it is not explicitly stated in this paper.) That's ambiguity. Does innovation _require_ a move from a class of models where a data stream is infinitely represented to a class of models where it is finitely represented? Or could we, perhaps, develop some other computational mechanics and categorize models based on some other property? And then still label class hopping as innovation? So, we can see that even down there at the core of the rhetoric in these two papers, there are fundamental ambiguities. We, as the co-domains for the paper, are at liberty to interpret him in many different ways. Of course, we're always able to add more detail to the rhetoric, perhaps even asking Jim himself some direct questions. And those additions to the rhetoric may well disambiguate it. But Nick's original assertion wasn't really about Crutchfield the person, it was about the original paper we read and it even extends to this other cited paper. P.s. Note that it's not bad to be ambiguous. Ambiguity is the spice of life! In fact, some people even think it's necessary for life. ;-) -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
| Free forum by Nabble | Edit this page |