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are we how we behave?

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gepr

Re: are we how we behave?

OK. I'm down with taking on risk for (whatever) reason. But the question in this thread is about whether or not one knows the type of risk prior to choosing it. Classifying risk is exactly the problem of classifying problems. If you don't understand the type of risk you're taking on, then are you (actually) taking on risk? Or are you just a moron walking around in a space you don't understand? And is there a difference? Maybe we're all morons walking around in spaces we don't understand. I'm also down with that conclusion.

On 3/7/19 2:49 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> What crime? I'm actually advocating purposeful collectivism. Taking on risk -- walking away from the campfire -- for the sake of increasing entropy. A few of the attached Borg meet their end in doing so.

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Steve Smith

Homo Hiveus

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Marcus -

> If person with skill 1 delegates to individuals with distinct skills 2 and 3 and person with skill 3 delegates to individuals with skills 4 and 5 the kind of overlap of the kind you mention still can occur. If developing any these skills takes decades, why is it important that everyone have some practical understanding of the other skills? More importantly, why should we ever want to decrease the total number of skills? So that we can `relate' to one another and keep the peace (be luddites)?

I think that can (and does) work already. We are already becoming a
eusocial species in many ways.   I am (instinctually/habitually?)
distrustful of hive-like contexts/behaviour (for myself).   That is
likely a product of my ego's desire to remain a distinct individual with
(inter)dependencies on others and/or any system kept to a minimum, so as
not to threaten said ego (as formed).

It is interesting to note that even *bees* who we tend to hold as the
archetypal form of eusocial creature, apparently are only about 30% (by
number) eusocial and the remaining 70% operate as individuals. I
remember as a child being told that "some bees are rogue bees and do not
live in a hive" which suggested that they had left their hive to live on
their own. As it turns out, those bees were the "native" or "wild" bees
which were simply not of the same species as the European Honeybee...
the one we have elevated, husbanded, and celebrated. In retrospect, I
do not believe there were any beekeepers in my remote region, yet there
were plenty of bees going about their business collecting nectar and
distributing pollen for the donors. I also assumed that *bumblebees*
always lived as individuals because I never saw (or heard of) their
hives, nor knew anyone who "kept" bumblebees for honey/wax.    It seems
that what I know of as a bumblebee is likely to be a member of a tiny
(by bee standards) colony of perhaps 200 and most likely the hive is
underground in a natural cavity or one created/abandoned by other
burrowing creatures.

I should also acknowledge that my own model of the "renaissance human"
or "polymath" is a caricature developed/formed/held by the cultural
embedding of our (sometimes) hyper-individualistic Western/Frontier culture.

I will withdraw to the position that *diversity* is what is worth
maximizing or at least conserving and that diversity can be within an
individual, distributed across a community, a species, and all of life
or existence.   My ego was simply formed in a context where diversity of
the "individual" organism was held high.   It is reflected in my choice
of living rurally (most of my life) and being somewhat uncomfortable
within any overly organized matrix (large institution, city, etc.).    I
know others for whom this is acutely uncomfortable and instead seek
their complexity within a group (tribal?) or built environment (city) or
cultural (regionalist/globalist/culturalist).   In the abstract, it
would seem to be nothing more than a question of the distribution of
entropy and optimization of structure and information/energy flows
through a "system".   As often is the case in such questions, the
scoping of our observation might be the key... individual, family,
tribe, city, nation, species, etc?

Homo Hiveus would seem to have emerged in the last 10,000 and would
appear to dominate our actual behaviour and context even if not in the
imaginations of those of us who continue to identify as homo sapiens or
homo faber or homo ???

- Steve

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

Prof David West

Re: Homo Hiveus

I am constantly amazed, entertained, informed, and enriched by the divergent discussions on any given thread in the FRIAM list. At the same time, there are instances where something of great personal interest gets lost. Such is the case with the notion of "modern polymath." Just to see if there is any interest in pursuing specifics of this concept, I offer the following.

I have been told that Leibniz was the last true polymath — knew "everything there was to know." Obviously not true in any literal sense, but likely mostly true in the sense that he had some depth of knowledge in every subject taught at a typical university of his day. But, as several people have pointed out it would be impossible, today, for any single individual to be a true polymath.

So what might a "modern polymath" actually be? My idiosyncratic understanding begins a thousand years ago when I was in 2nd grade and reading A.E. van Vogt's SF novel, "Voyage of the Space Beagle." The hero of the book was a "Nexialist," a new profession and someone who could solve (most often existential for the space ship) problems that the various specialists (physicists, chemists, psychologists, ...) could not.

Fast forward a bit and another SF novel, "Rite of Passage," by Alexi Panshin wherein two more new professions were described: "ordinologist," someone who knew everything there was to know in a particular domain, had it all sorted, organized, and thoroughly indexed; and a "synthesist" who could wander from one ordinologists domain to another and note that this idea or concept or practice would be really useful in this other domain.

A final SF novel, "Polymath," by John Brunner added the notion that a polymath was someone with 'sufficient' knowledge to "make the right decision with imperfect and incomplete information."

A final root was James Burke's TV series, "Connections."

From these roots, the ideal that an individual possess an integrated body of knowledge, transcending traditional specialization silos, that enabled informed and useful communication and exchange of understanding across those same specializations. The key term here is "integrated" something that is impossible to achieve in a modern educational system, even in the most ardent 'liberal arts' institution.

A practical influence on the modern polymath idea comes from Business, the Applied Arts (especially architecture, graphical, and product design), and to a far lesser extent, software development. In all cases it is noted that most work product comes from teams, not individuals. And a real problem with teams is the fact that they are comprised of silo-ed specialists.

Even if there were a specific profession like Nexialism, putting such an individual on each team to facilitate cross-disciplinary communication would not be very effective. Instead it is essential that each member of the team possess sufficiently wide, and integrated, knowledge that they can follow (to a significant extent, but not completely) the contributions of others outside of their own narrow specialization. Everyone needs the ability to recognize how ideas or concepts in other domains might serve as metaphors for solving problems or gaining insights into their own domain.

The production of such individuals, who were also tier one software developers, was the goal of the program at Highlands.

davew

On Fri, Mar 8, 2019, at 9:31 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

> Marcus -
>
> > If person with skill 1 delegates to individuals with distinct skills 2 and 3 and person with skill 3 delegates to individuals with skills 4 and 5 the kind of overlap of the kind you mention still can occur. If developing any these skills takes decades, why is it important that everyone have some practical understanding of the other skills? More importantly, why should we ever want to decrease the total number of skills? So that we can `relate' to one another and keep the peace (be luddites)?
>
> I think that can (and does) work already. We are already becoming a
> eusocial species in many ways.   I am (instinctually/habitually?)
> distrustful of hive-like contexts/behaviour (for myself).   That is
> likely a product of my ego's desire to remain a distinct individual with
> (inter)dependencies on others and/or any system kept to a minimum, so as
> not to threaten said ego (as formed).
>
> It is interesting to note that even *bees* who we tend to hold as the
> archetypal form of eusocial creature, apparently are only about 30% (by
> number) eusocial and the remaining 70% operate as individuals. I
> remember as a child being told that "some bees are rogue bees and do not
> live in a hive" which suggested that they had left their hive to live on
> their own. As it turns out, those bees were the "native" or "wild" bees
> which were simply not of the same species as the European Honeybee...
> the one we have elevated, husbanded, and celebrated. In retrospect, I
> do not believe there were any beekeepers in my remote region, yet there
> were plenty of bees going about their business collecting nectar and
> distributing pollen for the donors. I also assumed that *bumblebees*
> always lived as individuals because I never saw (or heard of) their
> hives, nor knew anyone who "kept" bumblebees for honey/wax.    It seems
> that what I know of as a bumblebee is likely to be a member of a tiny
> (by bee standards) colony of perhaps 200 and most likely the hive is
> underground in a natural cavity or one created/abandoned by other
> burrowing creatures.
>
> I should also acknowledge that my own model of the "renaissance human"
> or "polymath" is a caricature developed/formed/held by the cultural
> embedding of our (sometimes) hyper-individualistic Western/Frontier culture.
>
> I will withdraw to the position that *diversity* is what is worth
> maximizing or at least conserving and that diversity can be within an
> individual, distributed across a community, a species, and all of life
> or existence.   My ego was simply formed in a context where diversity of
> the "individual" organism was held high.   It is reflected in my choice
> of living rurally (most of my life) and being somewhat uncomfortable
> within any overly organized matrix (large institution, city, etc.).    I
> know others for whom this is acutely uncomfortable and instead seek
> their complexity within a group (tribal?) or built environment (city) or
> cultural (regionalist/globalist/culturalist).   In the abstract, it
> would seem to be nothing more than a question of the distribution of
> entropy and optimization of structure and information/energy flows
> through a "system".   As often is the case in such questions, the
> scoping of our observation might be the key... individual, family,
> tribe, city, nation, species, etc?
>
> Homo Hiveus would seem to have emerged in the last 10,000 and would
> appear to dominate our actual behaviour and context even if not in the
> imaginations of those of us who continue to identify as homo sapiens or
> homo faber or homo ???
>
> - Steve
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> 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

Re: Homo Hiveus

Dave -

I am sympathetic with your disappointment when tangential topics are risen in a thread but then lost or dropped. This is what fresh threads are made of? Owen used to harp on blatant threadbending, which is rampant here, but rather than our having collectively improved ourselves, I think we mostly have just worn him down. I used to try harder to coin a new thread or "subthread" with the form "XXX: was YYY" but I'm not sure that helped either. In any case, I welcome this bend in the Homo Hiveus thread, derived from the previous one. I think we are in fact talking about Homo this-n-that here or to be recursive Homo Humanis (man the human).

I have been told that Leibniz was the last true polymath — knew "everything there was to know." Obviously not true in any literal sense, but likely mostly true in the sense that he had some depth of knowledge in every subject taught at a typical university of his day. But, as several people have pointed out it would be impossible, today, for any single individual to be a true polymath.

I think of the ideal of "knowing everything there is to know" somewhat differently than that of being a polymath or a renaissance man or in the vein of my homo hiveus, homo universalis.

When I was first working as a systems engineer (software/hardware) I believed I knew computers from Schroedinger's equation up through solid state physics through logic gates and VLSI technology and principles of OSs and Compilers to algorithms and (pre OO, but implicit OO?) software/systems design. Of course, that knowledge, in retrospect looks like a thin film of swiss cheese or maybe a sierpinski gasket, defined more by it's *holes* than it's substance.

In studying (mildly) this idea I found the Wikipedia entry on Renaissance Man to defer to Renaissance Humanism, described thus:

Renaissance humanism was a response to the utilitarian approach and what came to be depicted as the "narrow pedantry" associated with medieval scholasticism.^[2] Humanists sought to create a Citizenry able to speak and write with eloquence and clarity and thus capable of engaging in the civic life of their communities and persuading others to virtuous and prudent actions. This was to be accomplished through the study of the studia humanitatis, today known as the humanities: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy.

My experience at Los Alamos was that folks trained in the hard sciences often aspired to have broad knowledge and capabilities. Some merely *affected* such breadth but in such a rich environment, this often did not stand. At dinner parties, it was not uncommon to hear someone trying to bluff their way through some topic they *aspired* to be experts on, only to be confronted with the fact that someone within earshot was likely *one of* the world-class experts on the topic. I was humbled by this many times.

<tangential anecdote> The most acute being when I was fresh to LANL and attending the first Evolution, Games, and Learning Workshop formal dinner at Los Brazos (now Gabriels).

I was standing in line for the buffet and asked by a shorter elderly gentleman with a pink face and wispy white locks of hair, lots of silver and turquoise (as did his wife), "what do you do?" or similar? I (only) had a BS in Physics/Math and lots of CS courses and had come to work on the Proton Storage Ring but was quite proud of the practical knowledge I was gaining at this (then) cutting-edge experimental physics facility. After blathering on for 10 minutes about everything I knew about elementary particle physics (not that much really, just enough to be semi-competent at my job), I asked him what he did, and he said he was "a university professor" and then I asked him what he taught and he replied "Physics" but then added that he mostly did research. I asked him his name, hoping I might be familiar with some of his publications. It was Murray Gell-Mann... who from my point of view *was* not only *all of elementary particle physics* but also *most of* String Theory and Quantum Chromodynamics at the time. </anecdote>

So what might a "modern polymath" actually be? My idiosyncratic understanding begins a thousand years ago when I was in 2nd grade and reading A.E. van Vogt's SF novel, "Voyage of the Space Beagle." The hero of the book was a "Nexialist," a new profession and someone who could solve (most often existential for the space ship) problems that the various specialists (physicists, chemists, psychologists, ...) could not.

Fast forward a bit and another SF novel, "Rite of Passage," by Alexi Panshin wherein two more new professions were described: "ordinologist," someone who knew everything there was to know in a particular domain, had it all sorted, organized, and thoroughly indexed; and a "synthesist" who could wander from one ordinologists domain to another and note that this idea or concept or practice would be really useful in this other domain.

A final SF novel, "Polymath," by John Brunner added the notion that a polymath was someone with 'sufficient' knowledge to "make the right decision with imperfect and incomplete information."

A final root was James Burke's TV series, "Connections."

The genre of science fiction certainly has it's share of examples of the "Competent Man" character-trope along with his cousin "Jack of all Trades". Such characters are particularly handy as protagonists, antagonists, and supporting characters in Post Apocalyptic Dystopias as well as the frontierish Space Opera. I can acknowledge that my own aspirations to be broadly capable and well rounded is probably as rooted in reading to much Science Fiction as a kid as having grown up in rural contexts where many modern services either hadn't penetrated to our locale, or were prohibitively expensive. Folks "had to make do", and they did.

<tangent> As an early flight enthusiast, I was totally enthralled by the idea that the first commercially viable airplanes (first 20-30 years?) were designed somewhat differently than the automobile. Firstly, a failure during flight (or worse takeoff/landing) had higher consequences, leading to more robust materials, design, and redundancy (dual magnetos/plugs, etc.) but secondly since the average biplane of the time was likely to be put to use away from modern conveniences... In particular a "barnstormer" pilot or "areal explorer" had to understand not only how to operate the plane, but also meteorology, navigation and enough mechanical understanding to obtain "local help". Competency (and tools/materials) in Blacksmithing, Cobblering, and Sail/Tarp making would go a long way and were still widely found in the countryside of any (semi?) developed country. My first (only) airplane was a 1947 Luscombe Silvaire (two-place taildragger with a 60hp engine) and was the last commercial airplane to have a fabric wing. The frame/fuselage was aluminum which was already a very well understood industrial material but there were *many* issues with understanding whether the airframe was "aging" well (corrosion and fatigue). It was anecdotally described to me that the "classic" wood/fabric airframes were *much* easier to inspect (and repair). </tangent>

BTW... I'm a fan of Brunner and Van Vogt. In spite of their work having become painfully dated (esp VV), they both addressed some very interesting and broadly important issues in their work. "Nexialist" and "Ordinologist" are new terms to me... but nicely apt to this conversation.

From these roots, the ideal that an individual possess an integrated body of knowledge, transcending traditional specialization silos, that enabled informed and useful communication and exchange of understanding across those same specializations. The key term here is "integrated" something that is impossible to achieve in a modern educational system, even in the most ardent 'liberal arts' institution.

A practical influence on the modern polymath idea comes from Business, the Applied Arts (especially architecture, graphical, and product design), and to a far lesser extent, software development. In all cases it is noted that most work product comes from teams, not individuals. And a real problem with teams is the fact that they are comprised of silo-ed specialists.

Even if there were a specific profession like Nexialism, putting such an individual on each team to facilitate cross-disciplinary communication would not be very effective. Instead it is essential that each member of the team possess sufficiently wide, and integrated, knowledge that they can follow (to a significant extent, but not completely) the contributions of others outside of their own narrow specialization. Everyone needs the ability to recognize how ideas or concepts in other domains might serve as metaphors for solving problems or gaining insights into their own domain.

I can attest from my own experience that teams *do* benefit well from having at least one "synthesist" and in fact often was promoted myself to "lead" a team simply because I demonstrated that quality, when in fact the team might have been better served by someone with better organizational skills and patience for bureaucracy, leaving me to my own strength of wandering between subprojects, asking the right questions and sometime offering useful "outsider" solutions. By the time I was done with working on teams that I didn't form, I realized that I should *never* accept a leadership role unless there was a *stronger* synthesist already on the team. While I *could* provide that role to some extent as manager, the other tasks involved usually undermined that role.

The production of such individuals, who were also tier one software developers, was the goal of the program at Highlands.

I'm not a big sports fan, but from my layman's perspective, a good systems/software team is a bit more like a baseball team than some of the other team sports. A good management team is a bit like the pitcher/catcher team who hopefully keep the rest of the team from having to exercise their "defensive skills". Each team member needs to have very solid abilities at throwing and catching, but it is the hitting and running that "scores the points". Your program at Highlands might have been more like a farm-team in some ways, providing good, well rounded experiences to prepare them for entering the 'big show" as tier one developers?

- Steve

lrudolph

excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

Steve writes in relevant part:

> My position is that I favor each and every one of us taking whatever
> responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of
> capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and "managing" it to
> the best of our ability.

The quotation marks around the phrase 'convex hull' and the word
'managing' presumably signal that they are being used non-literally, and
(I guess) metaphorically. I would particularly like Steve, if he is
willing, to delve into the intended metaphor in the first case. On the
one hand, lots of my work uses more or less geometry; on the other, in
lots of my other work I use metaphor; and I even think and write about
metaphor. So it's likely that I'm taking the metaphor more seriously than
intended.

With that disclaimer: in the technical contexts I'm familiar with, to pass
from something X to the convex hull of X has the effect of (1) 'filling in
holes in X', in a well-defined manner that is (2) as economical as
possible and (3) (therefore) unique. Which (if any) of those properties
are reflected, and how, in the case that X is our
"capability/knowledge/intuition"? ... I could ramble on a lot more but
will start with that.

============================================================
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: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Lee,

Just to bend the thread a bit further, is "excess meaning" a term of art for
you? It seems very close to the term "surplus meaning" which was used in a
famous article assigned to all Psychology graduate students in the sixties
on the distinction between hypothetical constructs and intervening
variables. Wondering if your term has the same meaning and if it has a
life somewhere.

As to the convex hull I went from there to the overturned boat in NCIS and
thence to "manifold" which, when the term is deployed by mathematicians I
always think of a shroud, like a blanket dropped over some lumpy thing to
contain it, roughly. Which, now that I mention it, makes me want to explain
wtf you mathematicians mean when you use the word manifold.

If that's not a thoroughly bent thread I don't know what is.

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 7:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Steve writes in relevant part:

> My position is that I favor each and every one of us taking whatever
> responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of
> capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and "managing" it
> to the best of our ability.

The quotation marks around the phrase 'convex hull' and the word 'managing'
presumably signal that they are being used non-literally, and (I guess)
metaphorically. I would particularly like Steve, if he is willing, to delve
into the intended metaphor in the first case. On the one hand, lots of my
work uses more or less geometry; on the other, in lots of my other work I
use metaphor; and I even think and write about metaphor. So it's likely
that I'm taking the metaphor more seriously than intended.

With that disclaimer: in the technical contexts I'm familiar with, to pass
from something X to the convex hull of X has the effect of (1) 'filling in
holes in X', in a well-defined manner that is (2) as economical as possible
and (3) (therefore) unique. Which (if any) of those properties are
reflected, and how, in the case that X is our
"capability/knowledge/intuition"? ... I could ramble on a lot more but will
start with that.

============================================================
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: Homo Hiveus

In reply to this post by Prof David West

Dave,

Hmmmm! I think everybody who comes to friam aspires in his (or her) own way to be a synthesist. People who don't just wouldn't come. The coffee's just not that great. I think the people are good at it must be good at metaphor. There may be an overwhelming number of facts to be learned, and even theories about those facts, but I suspect that the number of metaphors is quite finite. Once you know what metaphor you're in, it's relatively easy to learn what facts you need to stay in the discussion.

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 Prof David West
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2019 10:41 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Homo Hiveus

I am constantly amazed, entertained, informed, and enriched by the divergent discussions on any given thread in the FRIAM list. At the same time, there are instances where something of great personal interest gets lost. Such is the case with the notion of "modern polymath." Just to see if there is any interest in pursuing specifics of this concept, I offer the following.

I have been told that Leibniz was the last true polymath — knew "everything there was to know." Obviously not true in any literal sense, but likely mostly true in the sense that he had some depth of knowledge in every subject taught at a typical university of his day. But, as several people have pointed out it would be impossible, today, for any single individual to be a true polymath.

So what might a "modern polymath" actually be? My idiosyncratic understanding begins a thousand years ago when I was in 2nd grade and reading A.E. van Vogt's SF novel, "Voyage of the Space Beagle." The hero of the book was a "Nexialist," a new profession and someone who could solve (most often existential for the space ship) problems that the various specialists (physicists, chemists, psychologists, ...) could not.

Fast forward a bit and another SF novel, "Rite of Passage," by Alexi Panshin wherein two more new professions were described: "ordinologist," someone who knew everything there was to know in a particular domain, had it all sorted, organized, and thoroughly indexed; and a "synthesist" who could wander from one ordinologists domain to another and note that this idea or concept or practice would be really useful in this other domain.

A final SF novel, "Polymath," by John Brunner added the notion that a polymath was someone with 'sufficient' knowledge to "make the right decision with imperfect and incomplete information."

A final root was James Burke's TV series, "Connections."

From these roots, the ideal that an individual possess an integrated body of knowledge, transcending traditional specialization silos, that enabled informed and useful communication and exchange of understanding across those same specializations. The key term here is "integrated" something that is impossible to achieve in a modern educational system, even in the most ardent 'liberal arts' institution.

A practical influence on the modern polymath idea comes from Business, the Applied Arts (especially architecture, graphical, and product design), and to a far lesser extent, software development. In all cases it is noted that most work product comes from teams, not individuals. And a real problem with teams is the fact that they are comprised of silo-ed specialists.

Even if there were a specific profession like Nexialism, putting such an individual on each team to facilitate cross-disciplinary communication would not be very effective. Instead it is essential that each member of the team possess sufficiently wide, and integrated, knowledge that they can follow (to a significant extent, but not completely) the contributions of others outside of their own narrow specialization. Everyone needs the ability to recognize how ideas or concepts in other domains might serve as metaphors for solving problems or gaining insights into their own domain.

The production of such individuals, who were also tier one software developers, was the goal of the program at Highlands.

davew

On Fri, Mar 8, 2019, at 9:31 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

> Marcus -
>
> > If person with skill 1 delegates to individuals with distinct skills 2 and 3 and person with skill 3 delegates to individuals with skills 4 and 5 the kind of overlap of the kind you mention still can occur. If developing any these skills takes decades, why is it important that everyone have some practical understanding of the other skills? More importantly, why should we ever want to decrease the total number of skills? So that we can `relate' to one another and keep the peace (be luddites)?
>
> I think that can (and does) work already. We are already becoming a
> eusocial species in many ways. I am (instinctually/habitually?)
> distrustful of hive-like contexts/behaviour (for myself). That is
> likely a product of my ego's desire to remain a distinct individual
> with (inter)dependencies on others and/or any system kept to a
> minimum, so as not to threaten said ego (as formed).
>
> It is interesting to note that even *bees* who we tend to hold as the
> archetypal form of eusocial creature, apparently are only about 30%
> (by
> number) eusocial and the remaining 70% operate as individuals. I
> remember as a child being told that "some bees are rogue bees and do
> not live in a hive" which suggested that they had left their hive to
> live on their own. As it turns out, those bees were the "native" or
> "wild" bees which were simply not of the same species as the European Honeybee...
> the one we have elevated, husbanded, and celebrated. In retrospect, I
> do not believe there were any beekeepers in my remote region, yet
> there were plenty of bees going about their business collecting nectar
> and distributing pollen for the donors. I also assumed that
> *bumblebees* always lived as individuals because I never saw (or heard
> of) their hives, nor knew anyone who "kept" bumblebees for honey/wax.
> It seems that what I know of as a bumblebee is likely to be a member
> of a tiny (by bee standards) colony of perhaps 200 and most likely the
> hive is underground in a natural cavity or one created/abandoned by
> other burrowing creatures.
>
> I should also acknowledge that my own model of the "renaissance human"
> or "polymath" is a caricature developed/formed/held by the cultural
> embedding of our (sometimes) hyper-individualistic Western/Frontier culture.
>
> I will withdraw to the position that *diversity* is what is worth
> maximizing or at least conserving and that diversity can be within an
> individual, distributed across a community, a species, and all of life
> or existence. My ego was simply formed in a context where diversity
> of the "individual" organism was held high. It is reflected in my
> choice of living rurally (most of my life) and being somewhat
> uncomfortable within any overly organized matrix (large institution,
> city, etc.). I know others for whom this is acutely uncomfortable
> and instead seek their complexity within a group (tribal?) or built
> environment (city) or cultural (regionalist/globalist/culturalist).
> In the abstract, it would seem to be nothing more than a question of
> the distribution of entropy and optimization of structure and
> information/energy flows through a "system". As often is the case in
> such questions, the scoping of our observation might be the key...
> individual, family, tribe, city, nation, species, etc?
>
> Homo Hiveus would seem to have emerged in the last 10,000 and would
> appear to dominate our actual behaviour and context even if not in the
> imaginations of those of us who continue to identify as homo sapiens
> or homo faber or homo ???
>
> - Steve
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> 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
>

============================================================
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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/
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============================================================
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

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Succinctly, and I may leave something out, a manifold is a topological space for which there is a homeomorphism between every open set and an open set in Rn for some n. More concretely, lines and surfaces are manifolds but things get complicated in higher dimensions. That probably doesn't help.

-----------------------------------
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, Mar 8, 2019, 8:27 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Lee,

Just to bend the thread a bit further, is "excess meaning" a term of art for
you? It seems very close to the term "surplus meaning" which was used in a
famous article assigned to all Psychology graduate students in the sixties
on the distinction between hypothetical constructs and intervening
variables. Wondering if your term has the same meaning and if it has a
life somewhere.

As to the convex hull I went from there to the overturned boat in NCIS and
thence to "manifold" which, when the term is deployed by mathematicians I
always think of a shroud, like a blanket dropped over some lumpy thing to
contain it, roughly. Which, now that I mention it, makes me want to explain
wtf you mathematicians mean when you use the word manifold.

If that's not a thoroughly bent thread I don't know what is.

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 7:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Steve writes in relevant part:

> My position is that I favor each and every one of us taking whatever
> responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of
> capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and "managing" it
> to the best of our ability.

The quotation marks around the phrase 'convex hull' and the word 'managing'
presumably signal that they are being used non-literally, and (I guess)
metaphorically. I would particularly like Steve, if he is willing, to delve
into the intended metaphor in the first case. On the one hand, lots of my
work uses more or less geometry; on the other, in lots of my other work I
use metaphor; and I even think and write about metaphor. So it's likely
that I'm taking the metaphor more seriously than intended.

With that disclaimer: in the technical contexts I'm familiar with, to pass
from something X to the convex hull of X has the effect of (1) 'filling in
holes in X', in a well-defined manner that is (2) as economical as possible
and (3) (therefore) unique. Which (if any) of those properties are
reflected, and how, in the case that X is our
"capability/knowledge/intuition"? ... I could ramble on a lot more but will
start with that.

============================================================
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: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

I am sure it helps a lot of people; just not me.

I need a metaphor.

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 8:43 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

On Fri, Mar 8, 2019, 8:27 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Lee,

Just to bend the thread a bit further, is "excess meaning" a term of art for
you? It seems very close to the term "surplus meaning" which was used in a
famous article assigned to all Psychology graduate students in the sixties
on the distinction between hypothetical constructs and intervening
variables. Wondering if your term has the same meaning and if it has a
life somewhere.

As to the convex hull I went from there to the overturned boat in NCIS and
thence to "manifold" which, when the term is deployed by mathematicians I
always think of a shroud, like a blanket dropped over some lumpy thing to
contain it, roughly. Which, now that I mention it, makes me want to explain
wtf you mathematicians mean when you use the word manifold.

If that's not a thoroughly bent thread I don't know what is.

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 7:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Steve writes in relevant part:

> My position is that I favor each and every one of us taking whatever
> responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of
> capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and "managing" it
> to the best of our ability.

The quotation marks around the phrase 'convex hull' and the word 'managing'
presumably signal that they are being used non-literally, and (I guess)
metaphorically. I would particularly like Steve, if he is willing, to delve
into the intended metaphor in the first case. On the one hand, lots of my
work uses more or less geometry; on the other, in lots of my other work I
use metaphor; and I even think and write about metaphor. So it's likely
that I'm taking the metaphor more seriously than intended.

With that disclaimer: in the technical contexts I'm familiar with, to pass
from something X to the convex hull of X has the effect of (1) 'filling in
holes in X', in a well-defined manner that is (2) as economical as possible
and (3) (therefore) unique. Which (if any) of those properties are
reflected, and how, in the case that X is our
"capability/knowledge/intuition"? ... I could ramble on a lot more but will
start with that.

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

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

It's something you can move around on in a continuous way?

On Fri, Mar 8, 2019, 8:52 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

I am sure it helps a lot of people; just not me.

I need a metaphor.

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 8:43 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Succinctly, and I may leave something out, a manifold is a topological space for which there is a homeomorphism between every open set and an open set in Rn for some n. More concretely, lines and surfaces are manifolds but things get complicated in higher dimensions. That probably doesn't help.
-----------------------------------
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, Mar 8, 2019, 8:27 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
Lee,

Just to bend the thread a bit further, is "excess meaning" a term of art for
you? It seems very close to the term "surplus meaning" which was used in a
famous article assigned to all Psychology graduate students in the sixties
on the distinction between hypothetical constructs and intervening
variables. Wondering if your term has the same meaning and if it has a
life somewhere.

As to the convex hull I went from there to the overturned boat in NCIS and
thence to "manifold" which, when the term is deployed by mathematicians I
always think of a shroud, like a blanket dropped over some lumpy thing to
contain it, roughly. Which, now that I mention it, makes me want to explain
wtf you mathematicians mean when you use the word manifold.

If that's not a thoroughly bent thread I don't know what is.

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 7:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Steve writes in relevant part:

> My position is that I favor each and every one of us taking whatever
> responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of
> capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and "managing" it
> to the best of our ability.

The quotation marks around the phrase 'convex hull' and the word 'managing'
presumably signal that they are being used non-literally, and (I guess)
metaphorically. I would particularly like Steve, if he is willing, to delve
into the intended metaphor in the first case. On the one hand, lots of my
work uses more or less geometry; on the other, in lots of my other work I
use metaphor; and I even think and write about metaphor. So it's likely
that I'm taking the metaphor more seriously than intended.

With that disclaimer: in the technical contexts I'm familiar with, to pass
from something X to the convex hull of X has the effect of (1) 'filling in
holes in X', in a well-defined manner that is (2) as economical as possible
and (3) (therefore) unique. Which (if any) of those properties are
reflected, and how, in the case that X is our
"capability/knowledge/intuition"? ... I could ramble on a lot more but will
start with that.

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

Re: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

In reply to this post by lrudolph

Lee -

Steve writes in relevant part:

My position is that I favor each and every one of us taking whatever
responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of
capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and "managing" it to
the best of our ability.

The quotation marks around the phrase 'convex hull' and the word
'managing' presumably signal that they are being used non-literally, and
(I guess) metaphorically.

Thanks for asking (I think).

I was responding to Roger's use of the term which I took to mean specifically the geometric "surface" known as a Pareto Frontier which is essentially a (hyper)surface (line in 2D) which describes (geometrically a containing space of) the collection of optimal solutions in a high-dimensional trade space. It *is* equivalent to the Convex Hull problem in geometry, but carries an implication for multi-objective optimization.

  I would particularly like Steve, if he is
willing, to delve into the intended metaphor in the first case.  On the
one hand, lots of my work uses more or less geometry; on the other, in
lots of my other work I use metaphor; and I even think and write about
metaphor.  So it's likely that I'm taking the metaphor more seriously than
intended.

I do believe that studying the Wikipedia articles linked above will lead to a detailed explication of what I was referring to.

I will also accept responsibility for my irresponsible use of ' " ' marks. For me, it is often a shorthand for indicating that the term within the quotes is a "reserved term" (Reserved Term) from some Specialized Lexicon which I trust the reader is either familiar with or (with my hint) recognizes as being a term with specific, intentional and likely obscure (to the casual reader) but non-trivial meaning. In other words, I'm trying to indicate that it is a very specifically Loaded Word (or phrase).

With that disclaimer: in the technical contexts I'm familiar with, to pass
from something X to the convex hull of X has the effect of (1) 'filling in
holes in X', in a well-defined manner that is (2) as economical as
possible and (3) (therefore) unique. Which (if any) of those properties
are reflected, and how, in the case that X is our
"capability/knowledge/intuition"?  ... I could ramble on a lot more but
will start with that.

And I believe this does align with Convex Hull as used above... the specific relevance to multi-objective optimization would require reference to Pareto Frontier"or Pareto Surface which (as Wikipedia elaborates well) originated in economic theory but is relevant to any multi-objective optimization problem.

It could be noted that I had to go back and edit out yet more egregious uses of ' " ' in this text, using Capitalized Italics in it's place. I don't know if that is ideal, but generally that would be my preferred typographical indication of a Reserved Term from a Specialized Lexicon. I will try to be more consistent in the future, and am open to being schooled on a more proper typographical (within the realm of text consisting of the basic roman alphabet and italics/bold formatting) indication.

Orthogonal to my orthographic transgressions, I admit also to playing fast and loose WITH metaphor, sometimes being whimsical about it, other times using it in a very intentional and specific way as rigid (in some cases) as a (complex) formal analogy.

I would claim (following Lakoff and Nunez in _Where Mathematics Comes From_ ) that all metaphors ultimately ground in human sensations provided by our embodiment. I also work on the operational assumption the our primary mode of understanding is via (conceptual) metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson _Metaphors we Live by_)... metaphor stacked on top of metaphor which is grounded in our embodied sensuality. Near the bottom of that stack we often find metaphorical Source Domains (or our Image Donor) from geometry.

In closing, to try to tie these two points together, my Reserved Terms, formerly (sloppily) indicated by "scare quotes" (Scare Quotes?) may be from a Specialized Lexicon derived from a specific (common or obscure) Metaphorical Source Domain.

I believe that it is *more common* in Internet Culture to reserve Scare Quotes for sarcasm or derision, but I may not have that quite right?

- Steve

PS. I am given to bracketing words I intend to be read as *emboldened* with '*'s which seem to often be rendered exactly that way. I use preceding/following '_' underscore marks to indicate _Underlined Text_ which does NOT seem to be rendered that way often. And I am erratic in my use of *bold* and CAPS for simple emphasis. Also open to some improved/alternative conventions and promise to *TRY* to be more consistent.

Steve Smith

Re: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

Frank/Nick -

It's something you can move around on in a continuous way?

elaborating slightly at the risk of obscuring or confounding:

"a closed (hyper)surface you can move around on in a continuous way"

I don't know if closed and continuous are redundant in this case, but for Nick's edification, the point to "closed" is that as one "wanders about" on the surface, one needn't worry about "falling through a hole".

(didn't I just promise to be more careful with my orthography? Why DO I feel the need to quote these phrases? In the first two cases, I'm quoting Franks words, but what is the nature of my added phrase "falling through a hole"? It is not Falling Through a Hole, I don't think? Perhaps the Target Domain then is from the metaphor of a physical surface a human might actually wander about upon and then fall through a hole if he missteps?)

Examples of 2D manifolds embedded in 3D spaces include spheres, donuts, and double rubber-ring-toys your dogs tug at with one another. A Klein bottle is also a 2D manifold, but it must be embedded in R4 (3D depictions include self-intersecting surfaces which is misleading if illustrative).

The point (of course) of adding "hyper" is to remind Nick that a manifold needn't be restricted to 2 or even 3 dimensions, even though visualizing those is fruitless. For more intuition on the topic, I refer Nick to E.A. Abbot's _Flatland, a Romance of Many Dimensions_ (1884). A. Square (the protagonist) struggles with similar questions, but only in 2D, giving us some sympathy (and sense of mostly undeserved superiority?)

-Steve

-----------------------------------
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, Mar 8, 2019, 8:52 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

I am sure it helps a lot of people; just not me.

I need a metaphor.

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 8:43 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Succinctly, and I may leave something out, a manifold is a topological space for which there is a homeomorphism between every open set and an open set in Rn for some n. More concretely, lines and surfaces are manifolds but things get complicated in higher dimensions. That probably doesn't help.

-----------------------------------
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, Mar 8, 2019, 8:27 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Lee,

Just to bend the thread a bit further, is "excess meaning" a term of art for
you? It seems very close to the term "surplus meaning" which was used in a
famous article assigned to all Psychology graduate students in the sixties
on the distinction between hypothetical constructs and intervening
variables. Wondering if your term has the same meaning and if it has a
life somewhere.

As to the convex hull I went from there to the overturned boat in NCIS and
thence to "manifold" which, when the term is deployed by mathematicians I
always think of a shroud, like a blanket dropped over some lumpy thing to
contain it, roughly. Which, now that I mention it, makes me want to explain
wtf you mathematicians mean when you use the word manifold.

If that's not a thoroughly bent thread I don't know what is.

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 7:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Steve writes in relevant part:

> My position is that I favor each and every one of us taking whatever
> responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of
> capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and "managing" it
> to the best of our ability.

The quotation marks around the phrase 'convex hull' and the word 'managing'
presumably signal that they are being used non-literally, and (I guess)
metaphorically. I would particularly like Steve, if he is willing, to delve
into the intended metaphor in the first case. On the one hand, lots of my
work uses more or less geometry; on the other, in lots of my other work I
use metaphor; and I even think and write about metaphor. So it's likely
that I'm taking the metaphor more seriously than intended.

With that disclaimer: in the technical contexts I'm familiar with, to pass
from something X to the convex hull of X has the effect of (1) 'filling in
holes in X', in a well-defined manner that is (2) as economical as possible
and (3) (therefore) unique. Which (if any) of those properties are
reflected, and how, in the case that X is our
"capability/knowledge/intuition"? ... I could ramble on a lot more but will
start with that.

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

============================================================
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: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

So a shroud is a manifold but not all manifolds are shrouds?

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 8:54 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

It's something you can move around on in a continuous way?

On Fri, Mar 8, 2019, 8:52 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

I am sure it helps a lot of people; just not me.

I need a metaphor.

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 8:43 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Succinctly, and I may leave something out, a manifold is a topological space for which there is a homeomorphism between every open set and an open set in Rn for some n. More concretely, lines and surfaces are manifolds but things get complicated in higher dimensions. That probably doesn't help.
-----------------------------------
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, Mar 8, 2019, 8:27 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
Lee,

Just to bend the thread a bit further, is "excess meaning" a term of art for
you? It seems very close to the term "surplus meaning" which was used in a
famous article assigned to all Psychology graduate students in the sixties
on the distinction between hypothetical constructs and intervening
variables. Wondering if your term has the same meaning and if it has a
life somewhere.

As to the convex hull I went from there to the overturned boat in NCIS and
thence to "manifold" which, when the term is deployed by mathematicians I
always think of a shroud, like a blanket dropped over some lumpy thing to
contain it, roughly. Which, now that I mention it, makes me want to explain
wtf you mathematicians mean when you use the word manifold.

If that's not a thoroughly bent thread I don't know what is.

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 7:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Steve writes in relevant part:

> My position is that I favor each and every one of us taking whatever
> responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of
> capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and "managing" it
> to the best of our ability.

The quotation marks around the phrase 'convex hull' and the word 'managing'
presumably signal that they are being used non-literally, and (I guess)
metaphorically. I would particularly like Steve, if he is willing, to delve
into the intended metaphor in the first case. On the one hand, lots of my
work uses more or less geometry; on the other, in lots of my other work I
use metaphor; and I even think and write about metaphor. So it's likely
that I'm taking the metaphor more seriously than intended.

With that disclaimer: in the technical contexts I'm familiar with, to pass
from something X to the convex hull of X has the effect of (1) 'filling in
holes in X', in a well-defined manner that is (2) as economical as possible
and (3) (therefore) unique. Which (if any) of those properties are
reflected, and how, in the case that X is our
"capability/knowledge/intuition"? ... I could ramble on a lot more but will
start with that.

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

============================================================
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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/
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============================================================
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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/
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lrudolph

Re: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Nick et al., "surplus meaning" was the term I was misremembering.

Further replies to Nick's further questions later.

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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Frank Wimberly-2

Re: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

I personally don't relate tangible, physical objects to mathematical ones because you get into Hywel(RIP) territory. "If you measure it carefully enough it's not a right triangle. There are no right triangles".

On Sat, Mar 9, 2019, 12:07 AM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

So a shroud is a manifold but not all manifolds are shrouds?

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 Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2019 8:54 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

It's something you can move around on in a continuous way?
-----------------------------------
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, Mar 8, 2019, 8:52 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
I am sure it helps a lot of people; just not me.

I need a metaphor.

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 8:43 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Succinctly, and I may leave something out, a manifold is a topological space for which there is a homeomorphism between every open set and an open set in Rn for some n. More concretely, lines and surfaces are manifolds but things get complicated in higher dimensions. That probably doesn't help.
-----------------------------------
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, Mar 8, 2019, 8:27 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
Lee,

Just to bend the thread a bit further, is "excess meaning" a term of art for
you? It seems very close to the term "surplus meaning" which was used in a
famous article assigned to all Psychology graduate students in the sixties
on the distinction between hypothetical constructs and intervening
variables. Wondering if your term has the same meaning and if it has a
life somewhere.

As to the convex hull I went from there to the overturned boat in NCIS and
thence to "manifold" which, when the term is deployed by mathematicians I
always think of a shroud, like a blanket dropped over some lumpy thing to
contain it, roughly. Which, now that I mention it, makes me want to explain
wtf you mathematicians mean when you use the word manifold.

If that's not a thoroughly bent thread I don't know what is.

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 7:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Steve writes in relevant part:

> My position is that I favor each and every one of us taking whatever
> responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of
> capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and "managing" it
> to the best of our ability.

The quotation marks around the phrase 'convex hull' and the word 'managing'
presumably signal that they are being used non-literally, and (I guess)
metaphorically. I would particularly like Steve, if he is willing, to delve
into the intended metaphor in the first case. On the one hand, lots of my
work uses more or less geometry; on the other, in lots of my other work I
use metaphor; and I even think and write about metaphor. So it's likely
that I'm taking the metaphor more seriously than intended.

With that disclaimer: in the technical contexts I'm familiar with, to pass
from something X to the convex hull of X has the effect of (1) 'filling in
holes in X', in a well-defined manner that is (2) as economical as possible
and (3) (therefore) unique. Which (if any) of those properties are
reflected, and how, in the case that X is our
"capability/knowledge/intuition"? ... I could ramble on a lot more but will
start with that.

============================================================
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
============================================================
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: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

Oh do it, Steve.

Forward me that ugly description of the manifold of an internal combustion engine.

Pleeeeeese!

Nick

PS –One of the things I notice that I don’t share with you guys is a history of reading Science Fiction. I read Etoin Shurdlu when I was about 15, Metamorphosis (Kofka) when I was about 17, and Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery when I was in my 20’s and that’s about it.

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 08, 2019 10:33 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Frank/Nick -

It's something you can move around on in a continuous way?

elaborating slightly at the risk of obscuring or confounding:

"a closed (hyper)surface you can move around on in a continuous way"

-Steve

-----------------------------------
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, Mar 8, 2019, 8:52 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
I am sure it helps a lot of people; just not me.

I need a metaphor.

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 8:43 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Succinctly, and I may leave something out, a manifold is a topological space for which there is a homeomorphism between every open set and an open set in Rn for some n. More concretely, lines and surfaces are manifolds but things get complicated in higher dimensions. That probably doesn't help.
-----------------------------------
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, Mar 8, 2019, 8:27 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
Lee,

Just to bend the thread a bit further, is "excess meaning" a term of art for
you? It seems very close to the term "surplus meaning" which was used in a
famous article assigned to all Psychology graduate students in the sixties
on the distinction between hypothetical constructs and intervening
variables. Wondering if your term has the same meaning and if it has a
life somewhere.

As to the convex hull I went from there to the overturned boat in NCIS and
thence to "manifold" which, when the term is deployed by mathematicians I
always think of a shroud, like a blanket dropped over some lumpy thing to
contain it, roughly. Which, now that I mention it, makes me want to explain
wtf you mathematicians mean when you use the word manifold.

If that's not a thoroughly bent thread I don't know what is.

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: Friday, March 08, 2019 7:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Steve writes in relevant part:

> My position is that I favor each and every one of us taking whatever
> responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of
> capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and "managing" it
> to the best of our ability.

The quotation marks around the phrase 'convex hull' and the word 'managing'
presumably signal that they are being used non-literally, and (I guess)
metaphorically. I would particularly like Steve, if he is willing, to delve
into the intended metaphor in the first case. On the one hand, lots of my
work uses more or less geometry; on the other, in lots of my other work I
use metaphor; and I even think and write about metaphor. So it's likely
that I'm taking the metaphor more seriously than intended.

With that disclaimer: in the technical contexts I'm familiar with, to pass
from something X to the convex hull of X has the effect of (1) 'filling in
holes in X', in a well-defined manner that is (2) as economical as possible
and (3) (therefore) unique. Which (if any) of those properties are
reflected, and how, in the case that X is our
"capability/knowledge/intuition"? ... I could ramble on a lot more but will
start with that.

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

Steve Smith

Re: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

PS –One of the things I notice that I don’t share with you guys is a history of reading Science Fiction. I read Etoin Shurdlu when I was about 15, Metamorphosis (Kofka) when I was about 17, and Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery when I was in my 20’s and that’s about it.

I don't know how strong of a correlation reading (early or otherwise) of Speculative Fiction (of which Scientific Romance (Verne, et al), Scientifiction, Science Fiction and Fantasy are the more extreme forms?) is with various choices of technical/scientific profession/avocation, but anecdotally it seems *very* strong.

I only know of "etoian shrdlu" as something of the typesetting equivalent of "qwerty" on the conventional typewriter keyboard, or Terry Winograd's AI he named SHRDLU. My previous partner had a large collection of lead type and a small collection of the Linotype brass "masters" used for the purpose, and they were arranged by letter-frequency which is what "etoianshrdlu" reflected whenever that convention was set.

My internet friend Wikipedia shared a number of possibilities with me however, and I'm wondering if you read the SF Fanzine by that name or the "Black Hole Travel Agency" novels penned under the penname Etoian Shrdlu?

I can imagine how Kafka and Jackson's _The Lottery_ might put you off speculative fiction! I was introduced through Jack London's (singular?) tale about past-life regression with his protagonist under psychoanalysis (hypnosis?) remembering his life as a "Cave Man" for the entertainment of his Analyst (and the reader). Not very Sci Fi, but fascinating to an 8 year old considering the endless possibilities implied by such a concept as past-lives. The Tom Swift books my mother found for me, gave me a sense of the fantastical facilitated by technology and science and convolved with the empowerment of a young man who couldn't qualify for a drivers license cavorting around the world with a friend or to in his father's various creations like Atomic Submarines. Burroughs and Verne were shelved in the same section of the tiny bookmobile that served our community, and the rest is history.

I would claim (for myself) however that the biggest influence on me was not to feed my appetite for the endless possibilities of experience offered up by scientific knowledge and technological capability, but the *social* (and political?) alternatives offered to me in that format. Ursula LeGuin offered me an image of what it might be to live as an ambisexual (on a planet faraway and a time long ago with a species otherwise quite alien or not) in her _Left Hand of Darkness_ while the likes of Robert Heinlein offered me ideas like "grokking" and "plural marriages" and so forth. While most Space Opera was not particularly enlightened or progressive in it's tropes and characters and themes, the remainder of SciFi was as likely to be as not.

My appetite for Speculative Fiction didn't blunt my appetite for more conventional/celebrated literature. I feel it gave me a broader ability to read critically writers like Proust, or Borges, or Marquez to name a few.

- Steve

Steve Smith

Re: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

Nor this one either...
> Frank -
>> I am under the influence of a couple of powerful pain drugs and I can
>> barely walk. So I may not be making sense.
> I don't know what you mean by this, do you have a formula for it?
>
> - Steve
>

============================================================
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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: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

Steve, ‘n all,

Just to be cranky, I want to remind everybody that ALL language use, except perhaps tautological expressions, is metaphorical. So then, the question is not, “Is this a metaphor”, but what kind of a metaphor is it and is it pernicious. 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. 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. 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 And that idea is patently false. Genes do not make choices, 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.

Dave West, I expect you to support me in this.

Nick

PS – Is anybody on this list (among the handful that have gotten this far in this post) familiar with the work of Douglas Walton? He seems perhaps to have written a lot about misunderstandings in AI systems … i.e., how does Siri know what we mean? 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.

-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 Steven A Smith
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2019 10:03 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Lee -

Steve writes in relevant part:

My position is that I favor each and every one of us taking whatever

responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of

capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and "managing" it to

the best of our ability.

The quotation marks around the phrase 'convex hull' and the word

'managing' presumably signal that they are being used non-literally, and

(I guess) metaphorically.

Thanks for asking (I think).

  I would particularly like Steve, if he is

willing, to delve into the intended metaphor in the first case.  On the

one hand, lots of my work uses more or less geometry; on the other, in

lots of my other work I use metaphor; and I even think and write about

metaphor.  So it's likely that I'm taking the metaphor more seriously than

intended.

I do believe that studying the Wikipedia articles linked above will lead to a detailed explication of what I was referring to.

With that disclaimer: in the technical contexts I'm familiar with, to pass

from something X to the convex hull of X has the effect of (1) 'filling in

holes in X', in a well-defined manner that is (2) as economical as

possible and (3) (therefore) unique. Which (if any) of those properties

are reflected, and how, in the case that X is our

"capability/knowledge/intuition"?  ... I could ramble on a lot more but

will start with that.

I believe that it is *more common* in Internet Culture to reserve Scare Quotes for sarcasm or derision, but I may not have that quite right?

- Steve

Prof David West

Re: excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Dave West supports Nick.

Two proper nouns and such a rich metaphor.

davew

On Thu, Mar 28, 2019, at 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. So then, the question is not, “Is this a metaphor”, but what kind of a metaphor is it and is it pernicious. 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. 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. 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 And that idea is patently false. Genes do not make choices, 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.

Dave West, I expect you to support me in this.

Nick

PS – Is anybody on this list (among the handful that have gotten this far in this post) familiar with the work of Douglas Walton? He seems perhaps to have written a lot about misunderstandings in AI systems … i.e., how does Siri know what we mean? 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.
-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 Steven A Smith
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2019 10:03 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

Lee -
Steve writes in relevant part:
 
My position is that I favor each and every one of us taking whatever
responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of
capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and "managing" it to
the best of our ability.
 
The quotation marks around the phrase 'convex hull' and the word
'managing' presumably signal that they are being used non-literally, and
(I guess) metaphorically.
Thanks for asking (I think).
I was responding to Roger's use of the term which I took to mean specifically the geometric "surface" known as a Pareto Frontier which is essentially a (hyper)surface (line in 2D) which describes (geometrically a containing space of) the collection of optimal solutions in a high-dimensional trade space. It *is* equivalent to the Convex Hull problem in geometry, but carries an implication for multi-objective optimization.
  I would particularly like Steve, if he is
willing, to delve into the intended metaphor in the first case.  On the
one hand, lots of my work uses more or less geometry; on the other, in
lots of my other work I use metaphor; and I even think and write about
metaphor.  So it's likely that I'm taking the metaphor more seriously than
intended.
I do believe that studying the Wikipedia articles linked above will lead to a detailed explication of what I was referring to.
I will also accept responsibility for my irresponsible use of ' " ' marks. For me, it is often a shorthand for indicating that the term within the quotes is a "reserved term" (Reserved Term) from some Specialized Lexicon which I trust the reader is either familiar with or (with my hint) recognizes as being a term with specific, intentional and likely obscure (to the casual reader) but non-trivial meaning. In other words, I'm trying to indicate that it is a very specifically Loaded Word (or phrase).
With that disclaimer: in the technical contexts I'm familiar with, to pass
from something X to the convex hull of X has the effect of (1) 'filling in
holes in X', in a well-defined manner that is (2) as economical as
possible and (3) (therefore) unique. Which (if any) of those properties
are reflected, and how, in the case that X is our
"capability/knowledge/intuition"?  ... I could ramble on a lot more but
will start with that.
And I believe this does align with Convex Hull as used above... the specific relevance to multi-objective optimization would require reference to Pareto Frontier"or Pareto Surface which (as Wikipedia elaborates well) originated in economic theory but is relevant to any multi-objective optimization problem.
It could be noted that I had to go back and edit out yet more egregious uses of ' " ' in this text, using Capitalized Italics in it's place. I don't know if that is ideal, but generally that would be my preferred typographical indication of a Reserved Term from a Specialized Lexicon. I will try to be more consistent in the future, and am open to being schooled on a more proper typographical (within the realm of text consisting of the basic roman alphabet and italics/bold formatting) indication.
Orthogonal to my orthographic transgressions, I admit also to playing fast and loose WITH metaphor, sometimes being whimsical about it, other times using it in a very intentional and specific way as rigid (in some cases) as a (complex) formal analogy.
I would claim (following Lakoff and Nunez in _Where Mathematics Comes From_ ) that all metaphors ultimately ground in human sensations provided by our embodiment. I also work on the operational assumption the our primary mode of understanding is via (conceptual) metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson _Metaphors we Live by_)... metaphor stacked on top of metaphor which is grounded in our embodied sensuality. Near the bottom of that stack we often find metaphorical Source Domains (or our Image Donor) from geometry.
In closing, to try to tie these two points together, my Reserved Terms, formerly (sloppily) indicated by "scare quotes" (Scare Quotes?) may be from a Specialized Lexicon derived from a specific (common or obscure) Metaphorical Source Domain.
I believe that it is *more common* in Internet Culture to reserve Scare Quotes for sarcasm or derision, but I may not have that quite right?
- Steve
PS. I am given to bracketing words I intend to be read as *emboldened* with '*'s which seem to often be rendered exactly that way. I use preceding/following '_' underscore marks to indicate _Underlined Text_ which does NOT seem to be rendered that way often.   And I am erratic in my use of *bold* and CAPS for simple emphasis. Also open to some improved/alternative conventions and promise to *TRY* to be more consistent.
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