chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

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chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

gepr
E.g.

Motor Imagery of Speech: The Involvement of Primary Motor Cortex in Manual and Articulatory Motor Imagery
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6579859/

> The results have implications for models of mental imagery of simple articulatory gestures, in that no evidence is found for somatotopic activation of lip muscles in sub-phonemic contexts during motor imagery of such tasks, suggesting that motor simulation of relatively simple actions does not involve M1.

Observation-execution matching and action inhibition in human primary motor cortex during viewing of speech-related lip movements or listening to speech
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393211001801?via%3Dihub

> The MEP findings support the notion that observation-execution matching is an operating process in the putative human MNS that might have been fundamental for evolution of language. Furthermore, the SICI findings provide evidence that inhibitory mechanisms are recruited to prevent unwanted overt motor activation during action observation.

On 6/7/20 3:31 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> What's interesting to me is the extent to which one *simulates* actual talking when sitting quietly formulating thoughts. It's often less about *what* you want to say and more about how you want to say it to this audience. When Bob and I are talking, it feels like I have little simulations running inside me like Could I say it this way? Could I say it that way? Will that work with Bob? Etc. [†]
>
> And if I'm right that I'm *simulating* talking as I prepare to talk, then the only distinguishable difference is which motor functions are engaged when simulating vs actually talking. (Note I'm not suggesting all internal dynamics are equivalent to talking. Only that the difference between thinking "I have a cat" and saying "I have a cat" is vanishingly small, or at least not as large/distinct most people think it is.)
>
> [†] This is one of the reasons people who never pause to let others think and simply fill all the silence with jabber irritate me. Give me a little time to run some simulations, here!

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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

Marcus G. Daniels
Incidentally, I think these asynchronous communications are not speech.  They are another kind of encoding and decoding system.   There is often ambiguity in terminology to be reconciled, and wider and narrower search that can be conducted to do that reconciliation, but that is not what I would call empathy.   Empathy is about anticipation and resonance of feelings.   I think in written communication correspondents should be expected to manage their feelings because they have a good opportunity to do so.

On 6/8/20, 5:57 AM, "Friam on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣" <[hidden email] on behalf of [hidden email]> wrote:

    E.g.

    Motor Imagery of Speech: The Involvement of Primary Motor Cortex in Manual and Articulatory Motor Imagery
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6579859/

    > The results have implications for models of mental imagery of simple articulatory gestures, in that no evidence is found for somatotopic activation of lip muscles in sub-phonemic contexts during motor imagery of such tasks, suggesting that motor simulation of relatively simple actions does not involve M1.

    Observation-execution matching and action inhibition in human primary motor cortex during viewing of speech-related lip movements or listening to speech
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393211001801?via%3Dihub

    > The MEP findings support the notion that observation-execution matching is an operating process in the putative human MNS that might have been fundamental for evolution of language. Furthermore, the SICI findings provide evidence that inhibitory mechanisms are recruited to prevent unwanted overt motor activation during action observation.

    On 6/7/20 3:31 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
    > What's interesting to me is the extent to which one *simulates* actual talking when sitting quietly formulating thoughts. It's often less about *what* you want to say and more about how you want to say it to this audience. When Bob and I are talking, it feels like I have little simulations running inside me like Could I say it this way? Could I say it that way? Will that work with Bob? Etc. [†]
    >
    > And if I'm right that I'm *simulating* talking as I prepare to talk, then the only distinguishable difference is which motor functions are engaged when simulating vs actually talking. (Note I'm not suggesting all internal dynamics are equivalent to talking. Only that the difference between thinking "I have a cat" and saying "I have a cat" is vanishingly small, or at least not as large/distinct most people think it is.)
    >
    > [†] This is one of the reasons people who never pause to let others think and simply fill all the silence with jabber irritate me. Give me a little time to run some simulations, here!

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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

gepr
Hm. That sounds like a distinction in kind that's more likely a distinction in degree. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for episodic perspectives. I can read a post at 03:00 and read it in one way, with whatever that perspective might be. Then read it again after a workout, 3 cups of coffee, and a hot shower, and read it in an entirely different way. But I could also listen to a readout of it while working out. And if it's long enough, the perspective I have when I read the 1st part could be entirely different from the perspective I had when I finished.

I don't see any reason why the pseudo-synchronous meatspace conversations [†] are anything other than compact versions of the asynchronous post-response format.  Some of us may be more or less capable of near-real-time empathy than others. That doesn't mean near-real-time is fundamentally different from asynchronous.

And just like with NOT moving one's lips while reading relies on inhibitory signals, empathy relies on inhibitory suppression of one's *own* impulses. (It also relies on positive activation of those impulses. But the positive is usually given primacy when talking about things like empathy. My point is that it's a balance between the two.)

[†] "pseudo" because the stimulus-response is not instantaneous. There's a non-zero transient even in the fastest person.

On 6/8/20 7:20 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Incidentally, I think these asynchronous communications are not speech.  They are another kind of encoding and decoding system.   There is often ambiguity in terminology to be reconciled, and wider and narrower search that can be conducted to do that reconciliation, but that is not what I would call empathy.   Empathy is about anticipation and resonance of feelings.   I think in written communication correspondents should be expected to manage their feelings because they have a good opportunity to do so.

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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

Marcus G. Daniels
Glen writes:

< I don't see any reason why the pseudo-synchronous meatspace conversations [†] are anything other than compact versions of the asynchronous post-response format.  Some of us may be more or less capable of near-real-time empathy than others. That doesn't mean near-real-time is fundamentally different from asynchronous. >

You remarked that punching was also a form of manipulation.  I would say empathy is too.   It is a mode of operation that prioritizes accommodation of a different kind of signal set.   Many of those signals are not directly available in written form.   Some writers will hide those signals others will try to encode them.   Empathy is one mode of interaction to facilitate intimate or candid communication.  If that's not the goal, then it is the wrong tool.

I suppose compactness or sparsity gets at it.  I was thinking of a recurrent graph that had direct connections between layers vs. a graph with connections that skipped between layers.  Short term memory limitations cause meatspace conversations to be more locally dense.   A whiteboard can make them a little less compact.  

Marcus

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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

gepr
Ah! I misunderstood your sentence "Empathy is about anticipation and resonance of feelings" to mean that empathy was internal. What you're saying is the *expression* of empathy is more warranted in near real time than it is in asynchronous comm. And I appreciate a generalization to scoping and locally dense.

I still disagree, I think. When I (glibly) equate gum flapping with talking, I'm trying to say that any talking, including writing a journal that only 1 person will read a thousand years from now *and* intimate conversations where you can smell another person's breath, is largely a performative act, not an attempt to communicate. Or the use of it as communication is delusional. You talk, I talk, we all talk. Then we go about whatever other activity we're headed to. The extent to which your talk modifies my future activity is not well-understandable by the semantics of the words used in the talking. It is more well-understood in terms of the motions made while talking (and the sympathetic reactions those motions caused in my physiology).

For that reason, things like emoticons, bracketed comments like [sigh], attempts to write like it sounds (like "sheeeit, I ain't seen no rats 'round here"), etc. are all attempts to *perform* such that the audience can "get in the mood". There's no emphasis on fidelity. The audience's obtained mood need not be similar to the author's implied mood. I use "obtained" rather than "inferred" because I want to de-emphasize rational inference ... something you're emphasizing when you talk about the whiteboard.

Some expressions of empathy are manipulative, sure. But some are performative. And they need not be identical (nor disjoint).

On 6/8/20 7:58 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> You remarked that punching was also a form of manipulation.  I would say empathy is too.   It is a mode of operation that prioritizes accommodation of a different kind of signal set.   Many of those signals are not directly available in written form.   Some writers will hide those signals others will try to encode them.   Empathy is one mode of interaction to facilitate intimate or candid communication.  If that's not the goal, then it is the wrong tool.
>
> I suppose compactness or sparsity gets at it.  I was thinking of a recurrent graph that had direct connections between layers vs. a graph with connections that skipped between layers.  Short term memory limitations cause meatspace conversations to be more locally dense.   A whiteboard can make them a little less compact.  


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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

Prof David West
In reply to this post by gepr
The following comment is a reaction to something said earlier about speaker--respondent connection ( or my misreading thereof) and what glen and marcus are speaking about now (or my misreading thereof).

It seems that there must be a whole, call it a Story, that aggregates and integrates parts,  or Discrete Messages (DM). A DM is always a dyad - the expression plus the response. Both expressions and responses can be composites, including tone, subtext, empathic projection, etc.

Background for this comment is the work of Keith Basso and Native American stories.  The "meaning" the "purpose" the "communicative value" of these stories eluded scholars for decades. The reason, Basso asserts, is that scholars were working with transcripts of the stories that included only that which the narrator spoke, omitting the responses of the audience sprinkled throughout the narration.

Audience responses had a profound effect on the telling of the story, guiding the narrator in different directions, even to alternative endings for the story. Basso argues that the immediate needs of the community were reflected in the responses, guiding the story in directions such that the telling of the story in that place and time for that audience achieved a desired goal, e.g. motivating the community towards some action, increasing communal solidarity, providing assurance in a moment of adversity, etc.

Others have extended Basso's work with different communities, especially African American sermons, Pentacostal services, even Snake Handler cults in the Appalachians.

To me this suggests that the speech act is, in itself, nothing more than 'gum-flapping' but when a collection of 'flaps' are inter-connected / integrated into a conversation, or, more accurately, a story; the story  has an emergent property of "meaning."

'Flaps' have no "meaning." Stories do.

davew


On Mon, Jun 8, 2020, at 8:36 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> Hm. That sounds like a distinction in kind that's more likely a
> distinction in degree. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for episodic
> perspectives. I can read a post at 03:00 and read it in one way, with
> whatever that perspective might be. Then read it again after a workout,
> 3 cups of coffee, and a hot shower, and read it in an entirely
> different way. But I could also listen to a readout of it while working
> out. And if it's long enough, the perspective I have when I read the
> 1st part could be entirely different from the perspective I had when I
> finished.
>
> I don't see any reason why the pseudo-synchronous meatspace
> conversations [†] are anything other than compact versions of the
> asynchronous post-response format.  Some of us may be more or less
> capable of near-real-time empathy than others. That doesn't mean
> near-real-time is fundamentally different from asynchronous.
>
> And just like with NOT moving one's lips while reading relies on
> inhibitory signals, empathy relies on inhibitory suppression of one's
> *own* impulses. (It also relies on positive activation of those
> impulses. But the positive is usually given primacy when talking about
> things like empathy. My point is that it's a balance between the two.)
>
> [†] "pseudo" because the stimulus-response is not instantaneous.
> There's a non-zero transient even in the fastest person.
>
> On 6/8/20 7:20 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > Incidentally, I think these asynchronous communications are not speech.  They are another kind of encoding and decoding system.   There is often ambiguity in terminology to be reconciled, and wider and narrower search that can be conducted to do that reconciliation, but that is not what I would call empathy.   Empathy is about anticipation and resonance of feelings.   I think in written communication correspondents should be expected to manage their feelings because they have a good opportunity to do so.
>
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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

Marcus G. Daniels
Dave writes:

< Audience responses had a profound effect on the telling of the story, guiding the narrator in different directions, even to alternative endings for the story. Basso argues that the immediate needs of the community were reflected in the responses, guiding the story in directions such that the telling of the story in that place and time for that audience achieved a desired goal, e.g. motivating the community towards some action, increasing communal solidarity, providing assurance in a moment of adversity, etc. >

Glen and I had a colleague once that never created slide decks.   He said he wanted to see where the audience went and he couldn't do that with a static deck.   He would use transparencies and a felt-tip pen.   And here I thought he was just too lazy to make one.   There is just no substitute for a total lack of preparation.   :-)

Marcus

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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

gepr
Ha! Yes. And I remember one episode where he *dropped* his HUGE folder of transparencies and they spread out magnificently all over the (wooden) stage floor ... literally minutes before the talk was supposed to start. It seemed like the audience loved the resulting presentation after "shuffling" the slides.

On 6/8/20 8:55 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Glen and I had a colleague once that never created slide decks.   He said he wanted to see where the audience went and he couldn't do that with a static deck.   He would use transparencies and a felt-tip pen.   And here I thought he was just too lazy to make one.   There is just no substitute for a total lack of preparation.   :-)


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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

Steve Smith
In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
Yet another thread where I have to clamp down hard (or loosen up and try
to empathize with 12 or more distinctly different members of the
"audience" here) to avoid what Glen has referred to as my tendency
toward "dookey in the fan".   What apparently looks like an
undisciplined free-associative "flying off in all directions at once"
*feels like* a natural response to such a fertile and fecund environment
as the extended collective this mail list taps into.   Put that in your
empathy pipe and smoke it! (metaphorically).   This post (upon
re-reading) feels more self-referential than most... but that could be
an ill/delusion?

Dave's post and Marcus' response here makes me think of the Aboriginal
Songlines which are the collective knowledge of a people spread over an
entire continent with a diversity of spoken languages (and none written)
of the geography or probably more relevant
spiritual/social/bio-geography of that continent.   It was (is?)
maintained in the strong sense, by world of mouth reciting of a "song"
which must adapt to changing conditions.  If a landmark tree dies or a
river changes course, the song will change with those who are reciting
it as they are simultaneously using it for "wayfinding".   Naturally no
individual holds every songline in their repertoire, and at any given
moment there is a plethora of variations of any given songline. 
Songlines can be split and joined just as journeys across a landscape
can be.   They *attempt* to be a useful map/model of the real world.  
They are a serialization of experience.    I suppose that if two or more
individuals are present while a "songline" is being taught (say to a
young person), their versions of the songline may differ.   They may
have learned it differently and they may have also experienced it
differently.  I don't know if it is "allowed" to try to teach a songline
to another if you have not "used" it at least once, to avoid
transcription errors.

Practical knowledge about the world (Oral traditions, etc.) seems to fit
this model, if not quite as obviously formally.   The childrens rhyme
"ring around the rosey" is reputed to carry some practical knowledge
about the plague.   Presumably if it had remained a "live" story, it
might have morphed and adjusted enough to have been helpful to parents
and children around smallpox or measles in the 20th century?

Scientific training has a strong parallel?   Classroom study being  a
bit like learning to recite a songline, and lab work a bit like "walking
the talk" and new discoveries ranging from correcting a misphrase or
accomodating a nuanced change in the environment or adding a side-jaunt
up a different canyon to a never-before (or not in this songline)
explicated bit of territory?

And THIS song(line) I am reciting here seems to be like a deliberate
"cross-fertilizatoin of songlines".   And isn't that what we do here a
LOT?   Or is it (as Jon recently implied?) just a lot of Bombast?

what a tangled web of dookey...

 - Steve

On 6/8/20 9:55 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> Dave writes:
>
> < Audience responses had a profound effect on the telling of the story, guiding the narrator in different directions, even to alternative endings for the story. Basso argues that the immediate needs of the community were reflected in the responses, guiding the story in directions such that the telling of the story in that place and time for that audience achieved a desired goal, e.g. motivating the community towards some action, increasing communal solidarity, providing assurance in a moment of adversity, etc. >
>
> Glen and I had a colleague once that never created slide decks.   He said he wanted to see where the audience went and he couldn't do that with a static deck.   He would use transparencies and a felt-tip pen.   And here I thought he was just too lazy to make one.   There is just no substitute for a total lack of preparation.   :-)
>
> Marcus
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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

gepr
No, I reject both your and Dave's concepts (for the sake of argument). In both the story-conception and the songline-recitation, there's a sense that there's something underlying the actual stuff ... some idea(s) that drive, guide, cause, modify, the things ... some *coherence* that can be well-inferred. In Dave's conception, the collapse integrates/coheres into an ephemeral story. In the classroom, there's a sense of "training", "indoctrination", "learning", etc. This is what I mean when I say people *reify* their thoughts.

I *imagine* there are pathological, accidentally accreted "trajectories" that are not even identifiable as trajectories (or meshes, or lineage trees, etc.). They're simply an accidental mish-mash of junk from which no sense can be inferred.

Now, it would be a spectrum, of course. Stigmergy is a word we use to describe the mostly accidental coming together of some accreted thing into perceivable patterns like a cityscape. Jon's idea of the Equisite Corpse is another. But if we allow a spectrum, then we should allow both extremes, which would include collections of speech acts that don't ever cohere.

Your example of scientific training does evoke, however, scientific *practice*, which I think lands more toward the incoherent side of the spectrum. That it's less coherent than philosophers of science try to make it seem is a frequent topic.

On 6/8/20 9:26 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Scientific training has a strong parallel?   Classroom study being  a
> bit like learning to recite a songline, and lab work a bit like "walking
> the talk" and new discoveries ranging from correcting a misphrase or
> accomodating a nuanced change in the environment or adding a side-jaunt
> up a different canyon to a never-before (or not in this songline)
> explicated bit of territory?

On 6/8/20 8:36 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> To me this suggests that the speech act is, in itself, nothing more than 'gum-flapping' but when a collection of 'flaps' are inter-connected / integrated into a conversation, or, more accurately, a story; the story  has an emergent property of "meaning."
>
> 'Flaps' have no "meaning." Stories do.


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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

Steve Smith
Glen -

Without trying to convince you of anything, but trying to practice
(learn) empathic listening, and surely coming up far short of a steelman
of your position:

You seem to be saying that (in my example) what I have applied the terms
"songline" to are (might be?) (only/mostly?) someone's reification of
some thoughts they had?  I *do* understand that the (dead white guy/gal
- Boas, Benedict, Mead, et alia) field of Western Anthropology might
well impose onto the Cosmology of a population such as the "first
peoples" who lived on the continent we call "Australia", our *own*
projection of what they are about with what we have com eot "reify"?
under the title of  "songline" or "dream track".   In fact, I am given
to understand that within that cosmology, these "lines" are the tracks
of creator-beings within the Dreamtime, all of which is perhaps too
foreign for me to do more than recite these terms about.

But that leaves the question of whether what *they* (if there is even a
they-there?) use their version of these terms for something that is
"simply a mish-mash of junk from which no sense can be inferred?".   I
realize you were using that phrase to describe an extrema of a spectrum,
and perhaps were not even thinking of the specific example I put
forward.  (trying to take any idea that I'm throwing up a strawman here).

I don't know if it helps to try to address (so we can factor it out?)
this Western/Anthropological *interpretation/projection* from the
*aggregation/abstaction* of trying to treat a people as presumably
diverse as the entire (pre-colonial?) population of the continenet we
call Australia, as a single culture.   We have acknowledged something
*like* 250 distinct languages (pre-colonization) but also
imagine/pretend that their collective spirituality/mythology/culture was
significantly more homogenous than that encountered, for example, in the
Americas with a vaguely-parallel timeline (first "discovered" just over
100 years later).

You acknowledge Stigmergy and (thereby?) allude to spontaneous order and
further afield perhaps spandrels and exaptation.    Just to be clear,
I'm not *trying* to "throw dookey in the fan" here (aka "generate
thread-splatter"), but looking for an arc/trajectory/envelope in it that
makes sense to me.  

What you say about "Scientific Practice" sounds to me like you are
saying the "object" we point at is more like an ephemeral cloud (from
another thread) whose boundaries are not what we think they are.  That
is "porous", possibly "fractalish", and not so much objectish, or easily
pointed at except as a distribution, or maybe an envelope (bounding
volume?) in higher dimensional space?

Maybe this is another example of how "communication is an illusion"...
but Frank's recent cartoon of communication that I took to be a stylized
form of projection -> serialization -> transition -> deserializatoin ->
reprojection, seems relevant.

chicken-egg::gumflap::threadsplatter ?

- Steve

On 6/8/20 1:00 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> No, I reject both your and Dave's concepts (for the sake of argument). In both the story-conception and the songline-recitation, there's a sense that there's something underlying the actual stuff ... some idea(s) that drive, guide, cause, modify, the things ... some *coherence* that can be well-inferred. In Dave's conception, the collapse integrates/coheres into an ephemeral story. In the classroom, there's a sense of "training", "indoctrination", "learning", etc. This is what I mean when I say people *reify* their thoughts.
>
> I *imagine* there are pathological, accidentally accreted "trajectories" that are not even identifiable as trajectories (or meshes, or lineage trees, etc.). They're simply an accidental mish-mash of junk from which no sense can be inferred.
>
> Now, it would be a spectrum, of course. Stigmergy is a word we use to describe the mostly accidental coming together of some accreted thing into perceivable patterns like a cityscape. Jon's idea of the Equisite Corpse is another. But if we allow a spectrum, then we should allow both extremes, which would include collections of speech acts that don't ever cohere.
>
> Your example of scientific training does evoke, however, scientific *practice*, which I think lands more toward the incoherent side of the spectrum. That it's less coherent than philosophers of science try to make it seem is a frequent topic.
>
> On 6/8/20 9:26 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
>> Scientific training has a strong parallel?   Classroom study being  a
>> bit like learning to recite a songline, and lab work a bit like "walking
>> the talk" and new discoveries ranging from correcting a misphrase or
>> accomodating a nuanced change in the environment or adding a side-jaunt
>> up a different canyon to a never-before (or not in this songline)
>> explicated bit of territory?
> On 6/8/20 8:36 AM, Prof David West wrote:
>> To me this suggests that the speech act is, in itself, nothing more than 'gum-flapping' but when a collection of 'flaps' are inter-connected / integrated into a conversation, or, more accurately, a story; the story  has an emergent property of "meaning."
>>
>> 'Flaps' have no "meaning." Stories do.
>


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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

gepr
I definitely do not mean to say that songlines are some *one's* (i.e. that of one person) reified thoughts. They are either some kind of 1) aggregation of reified thoughts or a 2) reification of aggregate thoughts. Likely both. Where (1) collections of people get together and argue about their various delusions, much like we do here. And where (2) people like anthropologists or whoever collect songs/documents and try to find, classify, and name trends/cultures in whatever thoughts their subjects might have had. In both cases, the thoughts are not real. But the artifacts (including things like the hyoid bone) are real. I'd include the Jungian archetypes, here. They're fictional patterns we infer from real stuff. Even the languages are not real. But the consistent noises, mouth shapes, written documents, audio recordings, etc. are real. What we call a language is simply a pattern exhibited by those real things. E.g. the dictionary doesn't define words; people's *usage* of words defines the words. The dictionary is just a historical trace.

Re: scientific practice -- What's real are the beakers, machines, solutions, animals, pieces of paper with text, etc. But the ideals around which we normally think those artifacts are organized are not real. They're convenient fictions that help us regularize and control the artifacts (artifacts like young grad students or morons who refuse to wear masks in pandemics).

So, to reiterate, the *stories* are not real. The little machines, devices, and people are real. And any meaning we might attribute to the story is simply a reflection of the patterns we infer from the artifacts. The only reason stories have meaning to us is because *we* inferred them. It's the Ouroboros. Infer¹ pattern X. Infer¹ pattern Y. Infer² similarities in patterns X and Y and voilà you're conspiracy theory must be true!

On 6/8/20 1:32 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

> You seem to be saying that (in my example) what I have applied the terms
> "songline" to are (might be?) (only/mostly?) someone's reification of
> some thoughts they had?  I *do* understand that the (dead white guy/gal
> - Boas, Benedict, Mead, et alia) field of Western Anthropology might
> well impose onto the Cosmology of a population such as the "first
> peoples" who lived on the continent we call "Australia", our *own*
> projection of what they are about with what we have com eot "reify"?
> under the title of  "songline" or "dream track".   In fact, I am given
> to understand that within that cosmology, these "lines" are the tracks
> of creator-beings within the Dreamtime, all of which is perhaps too
> foreign for me to do more than recite these terms about.
>
> But that leaves the question of whether what *they* (if there is even a
> they-there?) use their version of these terms for something that is
> "simply a mish-mash of junk from which no sense can be inferred?".   I
> realize you were using that phrase to describe an extrema of a spectrum,
> and perhaps were not even thinking of the specific example I put
> forward.  (trying to take any idea that I'm throwing up a strawman here).
>
> I don't know if it helps to try to address (so we can factor it out?)
> this Western/Anthropological *interpretation/projection* from the
> *aggregation/abstaction* of trying to treat a people as presumably
> diverse as the entire (pre-colonial?) population of the continenet we
> call Australia, as a single culture.   We have acknowledged something
> *like* 250 distinct languages (pre-colonization) but also
> imagine/pretend that their collective spirituality/mythology/culture was
> significantly more homogenous than that encountered, for example, in the
> Americas with a vaguely-parallel timeline (first "discovered" just over
> 100 years later).
>
> You acknowledge Stigmergy and (thereby?) allude to spontaneous order and
> further afield perhaps spandrels and exaptation.    Just to be clear,
> I'm not *trying* to "throw dookey in the fan" here (aka "generate
> thread-splatter"), but looking for an arc/trajectory/envelope in it that
> makes sense to me.  
>
> What you say about "Scientific Practice" sounds to me like you are
> saying the "object" we point at is more like an ephemeral cloud (from
> another thread) whose boundaries are not what we think they are.  That
> is "porous", possibly "fractalish", and not so much objectish, or easily
> pointed at except as a distribution, or maybe an envelope (bounding
> volume?) in higher dimensional space?
>
> Maybe this is another example of how "communication is an illusion"...
> but Frank's recent cartoon of communication that I took to be a stylized
> form of projection -> serialization -> transition -> deserializatoin ->
> reprojection, seems relevant.


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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

gepr
Damn it! Why do my fingers confuse your with you're? I know the difference. Why don't my fingers know the difference? Stupid fingers. On the other hand, "You *are* a conspiracy theory come true" is apt. ... So maybe my fingers are smarter than I am!

On 6/9/20 7:43 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> and voilà you're conspiracy theory must be true!

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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

jon zingale
In reply to this post by gepr
Glen,

It seems to me that you are arguing for a kind of strict materialism.
To what ends is defining *the real* important to you?

Jon



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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

gepr
I'd like to be able to talk coherently about results like below ... to be able to criticize them, explore their implications, etc. The medium-larger context is in Nick's "paradox" that the pleasure of developing an exposition (or piece of art, or anything) is lessened if nobody will experience the resulting object. An even larger context is SteveS's sporadic reference to mostly-cadence-oriented poetry, where pleasure is derived from aspects *other* than the ideas evoked by its semantics ... like why would anyone ever enjoy scat singing? [†] ... and why do I like word-less music so much more than music with lyrics? It's also related to Marcus' questioning why face-to-face is important to some people. And my own: what's with the silly virtual backgrounds? Who cares if my video is on or not? And why?

I'm not hung up on the word "real", either. I could use "tacit", or "primary", or "first articles", or "things with which one directly, physically, interacts with no fascist semantic context". Or something like that. Watching someone's lips move is real. Listening to what they're saying is not. It's artificial. That's the best I can do.



Motor Imagery of Speech: The Involvement of Primary Motor Cortex in Manual and Articulatory Motor Imagery
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6579859/

> The results have implications for models of mental imagery of simple articulatory gestures, in that no evidence is found for somatotopic activation of lip muscles in sub-phonemic contexts during motor imagery of such tasks, suggesting that motor simulation of relatively simple actions does not involve M1.

Observation-execution matching and action inhibition in human primary motor cortex during viewing of speech-related lip movements or listening to speech
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393211001801?via%3Dihub

> The MEP findings support the notion that observation-execution matching is an operating process in the putative human MNS that might have been fundamental for evolution of language. Furthermore, the SICI findings provide evidence that inhibitory mechanisms are recruited to prevent unwanted overt motor activation during action observation.


[†] Best scat artist of all time: https://youtu.be/ubauFpvtBeA

On 6/9/20 9:04 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> It seems to me that you are arguing for a kind of strict materialism.
> To what ends is defining *the real* important to you?


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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

jon zingale
Cool, that gives me some idea. Yeah, Mike Patton is amazing.
I saw him on tour with Mr. Bungle in 1999, ridiculous. They
covered the Dead Kennedy's "Drug Me" as an encore.



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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

Steve Smith
In reply to this post by jon zingale

Glen -

It seems to me that when CHON molecules chain up and become lipids, proteins, sugars etc.   and those in turn self-organize into macromolecules of various kinds including membranes, vesicles, microtubules, then organelles, cells, organs, organisms...   

I am not sure if by your logic/language that none of those "patterns" upon which we impose "language" or "stories" to describe their (seemingly?) pervasive patterning, are real?   Or going down from the atomic elements of C, H, O, N that even those exist because apparently/assuredly they are somehow composed of protons, neutrons, electrons... then below that quarks or quantum-gravity loops or 9D strings or ...

Again, I'm not trying to corner you or argue for a particular perspective, just trying to observe, and learn from your Cook Ding technique. 

If I were to try to *argue* against what I think you are saying, I would try to say that these higher level patterns (e.g. songlines) are emergent and therefore as "real" as atomic elements, organic molecules, macromolecules... on up?   Seeking a monomolecular occams razor.

- Steve


Glen,

It seems to me that you are arguing for a kind of strict materialism.
To what ends is defining *the real* important to you?

Jon



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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

gepr
Well, to an extent, we can assert that molecular interactions and sub-visible processes are real as long as we *admit* that our assertions are, at least in part, unverifiable, since we cannot experience them directly. Any experience we might have of molecules would be mediated by our reified thoughts, our models. But as long as you have things like hands, skin, and touch receptors, you can directly experience a rock you pick up. So, sure, you can have the same *thick* modeling structure surrounding pebbles on the beach as you have surrounding molecules. But with pebbles on the beach you have something *more*, direct experience.

In that sense, I'd counter your argument and say emergent phenomena are very indirect as compared to pebbles on the beach. Whether they (emergent phenomena) are more indirect than molecules or not is irrelevant. Again, I want to talk about jaws flapping and lips moving. Not hoity-toity things like molecules or quantum superposition. I know you will resist that. But at least I can keep repeating it and hope that you might one day talk about:

Motor Imagery of Speech: The Involvement of Primary Motor Cortex in Manual and Articulatory Motor Imagery
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6579859/

Observation-execution matching and action inhibition in human primary motor cortex during viewing of speech-related lip movements or listening to speech
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393211001801?via%3Dihub



On 6/9/20 10:13 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> It seems to me that when CHON molecules chain up and become lipids, proteins, sugars etc.   and those in turn self-organize into macromolecules of various kinds including membranes, vesicles, microtubules, then organelles, cells, organs, organisms...   
>
> I am not sure if by your logic/language that none of those "patterns" upon which we impose "language" or "stories" to describe their (seemingly?) pervasive patterning, are real?   Or going down from the atomic elements of C, H, O, N that even those exist because apparently/assuredly they are somehow composed of protons, neutrons, electrons... then below that quarks or quantum-gravity loops or 9D strings or ...
>
> Again, I'm not trying to corner you or argue for a particular perspective, just trying to observe, and learn from your Cook Ding <https://navigatingthezhuangzi.weebly.com/cook-ding-cuts-up-an-ox.html> technique. 
>
> If I were to try to *argue* against what I think you are saying, I would try to say that these higher level patterns (e.g. songlines) are emergent and therefore as "real" as atomic elements, organic molecules, macromolecules... on up?   Seeking a monomolecular occams razor.
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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

Steve Smith
Glen-

Trying to practice empathic listening *and* response, I left unsent a
response (several paragraphs) to the fragment of the conversation that
seemed to be about "what means direct-experience" or my preferred term
"direct apprehension".   While it feels like an important
distinction/discussion to me, I accept that this is NOT what you want to
talk about and it would be self-indulgent of me to continue to
re-inforce that thread-splinter (alliterates with splatter).

>  Again, I want to talk about jaws flapping and lips moving. Not hoity-toity things like molecules or quantum superposition. I know you will resist that. But at least I can keep repeating it and hope that you might one day talk about:
So:
> Motor Imagery of Speech: The Involvement of Primary Motor Cortex in Manual and Articulatory Motor Imagery
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6579859/
>
> Observation-execution matching and action inhibition in human primary motor cortex during viewing of speech-related lip movements or listening to speech
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393211001801?via%3Dihub

I also find this fascinating.   Unfortunately I've not kept up with this
work... it was very central-to but-unattainable-for the kind of work I
aspired to do while at LANL with access to the funds and equipment to
build high-fidelity (by those standards) synthetic sensoria.  We did NOT
have access to fMRI's and similar... the closest to it I got was with my
(on my own time mostly) work with the UNM HPC/Arts-Lab and the MInd
Institute.  Human-Subjects testing is hard enough in academia, but
adding the (very appropriate) layers that come with being at  Lab that
works with nuclear materials was overwhelmingly hard.   The theoretical
physics division had some plays in that area but they were somewhat
distant from the weapons-physics programs that funded the high-end VR
systems we were developing.

Observing the neural processing (in)directly of *lip-reading* would be a
very specific application of something that was *just* becoming possible
via fMRI and other things "back in the day".   The role of "Mirror
Neurons" in non-verbal communication between individuals was
fascinating, but as-yet understudied.   Your two articles *do* make me
want to go learn what has happened in those areas... from what I read
here, there must be a great deal more understood and *measureable* than
10-15 years ago.

I will happily ( I think ) sit back and listen to you and others reveal
more about this work and it's implications, though I am sure I will be
tempted to chime in looking for implications and applications to a
broader experience than lip-reading.   Such as posture/gesture
recognition human-and-machine. 

Just as hoity-toity-bait I'll throw in the word "Labanotation" and stand
back and try to listen.

- Steve




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Re: chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

thompnickson2
In reply to this post by gepr
Hi, glen,

I hear your plea to address those articles, but life got a bit complex this week and I have been able to follow the discussion closely.  I did take a quick look at the two articles.  I certainly am not in a position to Steelman them.  The more I take to heart your notion of Steelmanning, the less I have to say, because I cannot oppose an argument until I put it its very best form.  

Now, my method has always been to pick what seems to be the best “system” and try to extend as far as I can into the territory where it is most absurd. Thus I have drifted over the years from a quasi-Skinnerian behaviorism, through a kind of hierarchical materialism, to Peirce’s experience monism.  But, I think that your steelman approach requires me to come in from the other side.  This, you have heard me do, from time to time, as when I talk about writing as listening to dictation.  So let’s try to go with that a bit.  

Under that notion, consciousness is at least dual: ie, there is a speaker and a listener and the former has influence over the latter and vv.  The writer talks back to the dictator, refusing sometimes to write what is dictated.  And once one admits of two agents of the mind, it becomes really easy to imagine others, so mental life becomes rather like reading last week’s FRIAM posts.    So, under that theory, when I say “I think”, I am like the public relations representative for large complex organization, the Kelley Conway of the mind.  Or like the writer of a Preface for a collection of Friam papers.  

So, your papers give credence in that view because, while there may be many voices “inside” “the head”, there can only be one that gets control of the focal apparatus, and that must require a lot of inhibition to keep us from blithering, even more than we do. And the battle for who gets the microphone must be constant and vicious.  

That, FWLIW,  is all I got today.

Nick
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/



From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 11:14 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

Glen -
It seems to me that when CHON molecules chain up and become lipids, proteins, sugars etc.   and those in turn self-organize into macromolecules of various kinds including membranes, vesicles, microtubules, then organelles, cells, organs, organisms...    
I am not sure if by your logic/language that none of those "patterns" upon which we impose "language" or "stories" to describe their (seemingly?) pervasive patterning, are real?   Or going down from the atomic elements of C, H, O, N that even those exist because apparently/assuredly they are somehow composed of protons, neutrons, electrons... then below that quarks or quantum-gravity loops or 9D strings or ...
Again, I'm not trying to corner you or argue for a particular perspective, just trying to observe, and learn from your Cook Ding technique.  
If I were to try to *argue* against what I think you are saying, I would try to say that these higher level patterns (e.g. songlines) are emergent and therefore as "real" as atomic elements, organic molecules, macromolecules... on up?   Seeking a monomolecular occams razor.
- Steve

Glen,

It seems to me that you are arguing for a kind of strict materialism.
To what ends is defining *the real* important to you?

Jon



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Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 12:00 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] chicken-egg::gumflap-talk

Well, to an extent, we can assert that molecular interactions and sub-visible processes are real as long as we *admit* that our assertions are, at least in part, unverifiable, since we cannot experience them directly. Any experience we might have of molecules would be mediated by our reified thoughts, our models. But as long as you have things like hands, skin, and touch receptors, you can directly experience a rock you pick up. So, sure, you can have the same *thick* modeling structure surrounding pebbles on the beach as you have surrounding molecules. But with pebbles on the beach you have something *more*, direct experience.

In that sense, I'd counter your argument and say emergent phenomena are very indirect as compared to pebbles on the beach. Whether they (emergent phenomena) are more indirect than molecules or not is irrelevant. Again, I want to talk about jaws flapping and lips moving. Not hoity-toity things like molecules or quantum superposition. I know you will resist that. But at least I can keep repeating it and hope that you might one day talk about:

Motor Imagery of Speech: The Involvement of Primary Motor Cortex in Manual and Articulatory Motor Imagery https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6579859/

Observation-execution matching and action inhibition in human primary motor cortex during viewing of speech-related lip movements or listening to speech https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393211001801?via%3Dihub



On 6/9/20 10:13 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> It seems to me that when CHON molecules chain up and become lipids,
> proteins, sugars etc.   and those in turn self-organize into macromolecules of various kinds including membranes, vesicles, microtubules, then organelles, cells, organs, organisms...
>
> I am not sure if by your logic/language that none of those "patterns" upon which we impose "language" or "stories" to describe their (seemingly?) pervasive patterning, are real?   Or going down from the atomic elements of C, H, O, N that even those exist because apparently/assuredly they are somehow composed of protons, neutrons, electrons... then below that quarks or quantum-gravity loops or 9D strings or ...
>
> Again, I'm not trying to corner you or argue for a particular
> perspective, just trying to observe, and learn from your Cook Ding <https://navigatingthezhuangzi.weebly.com/cook-ding-cuts-up-an-ox.html> technique.
>
> If I were to try to *argue* against what I think you are saying, I would try to say that these higher level patterns (e.g. songlines) are emergent and therefore as "real" as atomic elements, organic molecules, macromolecules... on up?   Seeking a monomolecular occams razor.
--
☣ uǝlƃ

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