hidden

[gepr]

The best layman's example of what I mean by "hidden X" (where X means a category of things ... "states", "behaviors", "information", "spaces", etc.) relies on steganography (which SteveS mentions a lot). But in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind). But my own reliance on the *opacity* of the boundary prevents me from communicating my point clearly, especially re: some kind of holographic principle for modeling a person's internal world via their observable behavior.

So, even though I still think homomorphic encryption is an excellent analogy for the mind, a particular *type* of steganography is an actual example of (not a metaphor or analogy for) information hiding. Here are 2 concrete examples: 1) hiding one image "inside" [†] another image, and 2) hiding a QR code "inside" an image.

Here are eg links:
(1) https://towardsdatascience.com/steganography-hiding-an-image-inside-another-77ca66b2acb1
(2) https://projet.liris.cnrs.fr/imagine/pub/proceedings/ICPR-2016/media/files/0542.pdf

(1) and (2) are examples (again, NOT metaphor [‡]) of a type I've tried to call "thin models". Everything about the model is written right there on the surface of it ... plain as day. All you have to do is *read it correctly*. My canonical example is a typical (system of) ODE model. Barring something pathological like it being "stiff" or whatever and forcing a wise choice of integrator, a typical ODE model is very thin, everything you need to know is right there in front of you. Of course, the normal form of some expression can *hide* the intent of the modeler because the modeler will group terms (bounded by operators like + and *) mechanistically ... to communicate some sort of meta- or semantic information about the model's components. The normalized form can hide the modeler's intent through (e.g. algebric) transformations. But no information is actually lost ... that apparent lossage is just an artifact of the way the model is read ... just like in (1) and (2) above.

I hope that helps explain my (perhaps perverse, but I don't think so) use of the word "hidden". And I'm hoping that the 2 links will help with not-really-mathematical-though-it-may-look-mathematical understanding.

To get from this discussion to the one about scale, celery mechanisms, and telescopes, all you need is to imagine either (1) or (2) with your phone in between you and the image. Without the phone, with the phone, without the phone. The hop-distance (in transformations, here the main one being the phone) from your eyeball to the image *measures* the hiddenness of the hidden information. The embedded information is 1 hop away. Maybe you can imagine the hidden information is reversed so not only do you need the phone, but you need to look at your phone in the mirror. Then the hidden image would be 2 hops away, 2 transforms away. Etc.

If you've read this far, thanks. I value the opportunity to clarify the idea (even if I don't believe it).



[†] Please dampen your *trigger* on the word "inside". An example of what I mean, here, is something like a string of characters being "inside" a word ... e.g. the letter "i" is inside the word "sit". It's only "inside" if you process the string in a subset of ways. The same is true of both (1) and (2) above. If you reallyreallyreally can't dampen your trigger and are so impulsive that you simply can't think without arguing about the meaning of that one little word, then change the word "inside" to something like "side-by-side with" or "bracketed by" -- thx Jon -- or whatever you need to do to force yourself to grok the idea. To boot, with the QR code, example, it's arguable whether the QR code is inside the image or the image is inside the QR code ... just like if you read "sit" as {s}i{t}, then you could say "i" is outside but "s" and "t" are inside ... whatever.

[‡] Except in the sense of some kind of set closure or equivalence class where all the elements of the class are analogs for every other member of the class. Extensional equivalence via intensional metaphor?!? [ptouie] >8^D

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[thompnickson2]

Glen,

I wonder if this conversation is an example of itself.  I do not possess the knowledge, language, etc to understand what you are saying, here, hence it is "hidden".  A color blind person lacks the code to see the numeral hidden within the diagram.  Is this a fair oversimplification of the concept you are getting at?  

Mind you, I have much less of a problem with "hidden" than I do with "inside", which I think launches discussants into an endlessly useless confusion between the mind and the brain, the latter being uncontroversially enclosed within the skull, the latter being distributed across the environment and actions of the person whose mind it is.

Nick

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: Monday, May 18, 2020 1:16 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] hidden


The best layman's example of what I mean by "hidden X" (where X means a category of things ... "states", "behaviors", "information", "spaces", etc.) relies on steganography (which SteveS mentions a lot). But in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind). But my own reliance on the *opacity* of the boundary prevents me from communicating my point clearly, especially re: some kind of holographic principle for modeling a person's internal world via their observable behavior.

So, even though I still think homomorphic encryption is an excellent analogy for the mind, a particular *type* of steganography is an actual example of (not a metaphor or analogy for) information hiding. Here are 2 concrete examples: 1) hiding one image "inside" [†] another image, and 2) hiding a QR code "inside" an image.

Here are eg links:
(1) https://towardsdatascience.com/steganography-hiding-an-image-inside-another-77ca66b2acb1
(2) https://projet.liris.cnrs.fr/imagine/pub/proceedings/ICPR-2016/media/files/0542.pdf

(1) and (2) are examples (again, NOT metaphor [‡]) of a type I've tried to call "thin models". Everything about the model is written right there on the surface of it ... plain as day. All you have to do is *read it correctly*. My canonical example is a typical (system of) ODE model. Barring something pathological like it being "stiff" or whatever and forcing a wise choice of integrator, a typical ODE model is very thin, everything you need to know is right there in front of you. Of course, the normal form of some expression can *hide* the intent of the modeler because the modeler will group terms (bounded by operators like + and *) mechanistically ... to communicate some sort of meta- or semantic information about the model's components. The normalized form can hide the modeler's intent through (e.g. algebric) transformations. But no information is actually lost ... that apparent lossage is just an artifact of the way the model is read ... just like in (1) and (2) above.

I hope that helps explain my (perhaps perverse, but I don't think so) use of the word "hidden". And I'm hoping that the 2 links will help with not-really-mathematical-though-it-may-look-mathematical understanding.

To get from this discussion to the one about scale, celery mechanisms, and telescopes, all you need is to imagine either (1) or (2) with your phone in between you and the image. Without the phone, with the phone, without the phone. The hop-distance (in transformations, here the main one being the phone) from your eyeball to the image *measures* the hiddenness of the hidden information. The embedded information is 1 hop away. Maybe you can imagine the hidden information is reversed so not only do you need the phone, but you need to look at your phone in the mirror. Then the hidden image would be 2 hops away, 2 transforms away. Etc.

If you've read this far, thanks. I value the opportunity to clarify the idea (even if I don't believe it).



[†] Please dampen your *trigger* on the word "inside". An example of what I mean, here, is something like a string of characters being "inside" a word ... e.g. the letter "i" is inside the word "sit". It's only "inside" if you process the string in a subset of ways. The same is true of both (1) and (2) above. If you reallyreallyreally can't dampen your trigger and are so impulsive that you simply can't think without arguing about the meaning of that one little word, then change the word "inside" to something like "side-by-side with" or "bracketed by" -- thx Jon -- or whatever you need to do to force yourself to grok the idea. To boot, with the QR code, example, it's arguable whether the QR code is inside the image or the image is inside the QR code ... just like if you read "sit" as {s}i{t}, then you could say "i" is outside but "s" and "t" are inside ... whatever.

[‡] Except in the sense of some kind of set closure or equivalence class where all the elements of the class are analogs for every other member of the class. Extensional equivalence via intensional metaphor?!? [ptouie] >8^D

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

At least you admit the existence of a mind.

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:13 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen,

I wonder if this conversation is an example of itself.  I do not possess the knowledge, language, etc to understand what you are saying, here, hence it is "hidden".  A color blind person lacks the code to see the numeral hidden within the diagram.  Is this a fair oversimplification of the concept you are getting at? 

Mind you, I have much less of a problem with "hidden" than I do with "inside", which I think launches discussants into an endlessly useless confusion between the mind and the brain, the latter being uncontroversially enclosed within the skull, the latter being distributed across the environment and actions of the person whose mind it is.

Nick

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: Monday, May 18, 2020 1:16 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] hidden


The best layman's example of what I mean by "hidden X" (where X means a category of things ... "states", "behaviors", "information", "spaces", etc.) relies on steganography (which SteveS mentions a lot). But in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind). But my own reliance on the *opacity* of the boundary prevents me from communicating my point clearly, especially re: some kind of holographic principle for modeling a person's internal world via their observable behavior.

So, even though I still think homomorphic encryption is an excellent analogy for the mind, a particular *type* of steganography is an actual example of (not a metaphor or analogy for) information hiding. Here are 2 concrete examples: 1) hiding one image "inside" [†] another image, and 2) hiding a QR code "inside" an image.

Here are eg links:
(1) https://towardsdatascience.com/steganography-hiding-an-image-inside-another-77ca66b2acb1
(2) https://projet.liris.cnrs.fr/imagine/pub/proceedings/ICPR-2016/media/files/0542.pdf

(1) and (2) are examples (again, NOT metaphor [‡]) of a type I've tried to call "thin models". Everything about the model is written right there on the surface of it ... plain as day. All you have to do is *read it correctly*. My canonical example is a typical (system of) ODE model. Barring something pathological like it being "stiff" or whatever and forcing a wise choice of integrator, a typical ODE model is very thin, everything you need to know is right there in front of you. Of course, the normal form of some expression can *hide* the intent of the modeler because the modeler will group terms (bounded by operators like + and *) mechanistically ... to communicate some sort of meta- or semantic information about the model's components. The normalized form can hide the modeler's intent through (e.g. algebric) transformations. But no information is actually lost ... that apparent lossage is just an artifact of the way the model is read ... just like in (1) and (2) above.

I hope that helps explain my (perhaps perverse, but I don't think so) use of the word "hidden". And I'm hoping that the 2 links will help with not-really-mathematical-though-it-may-look-mathematical understanding.

To get from this discussion to the one about scale, celery mechanisms, and telescopes, all you need is to imagine either (1) or (2) with your phone in between you and the image. Without the phone, with the phone, without the phone. The hop-distance (in transformations, here the main one being the phone) from your eyeball to the image *measures* the hiddenness of the hidden information. The embedded information is 1 hop away. Maybe you can imagine the hidden information is reversed so not only do you need the phone, but you need to look at your phone in the mirror. Then the hidden image would be 2 hops away, 2 transforms away. Etc.

If you've read this far, thanks. I value the opportunity to clarify the idea (even if I don't believe it).



[†] Please dampen your *trigger* on the word "inside". An example of what I mean, here, is something like a string of characters being "inside" a word ... e.g. the letter "i" is inside the word "sit". It's only "inside" if you process the string in a subset of ways. The same is true of both (1) and (2) above. If you reallyreallyreally can't dampen your trigger and are so impulsive that you simply can't think without arguing about the meaning of that one little word, then change the word "inside" to something like "side-by-side with" or "bracketed by" -- thx Jon -- or whatever you need to do to force yourself to grok the idea. To boot, with the QR code, example, it's arguable whether the QR code is inside the image or the image is inside the QR code ... just like if you read "sit" as {s}i{t}, then you could say "i" is outside but "s" and "t" are inside ... whatever.

[‡] Except in the sense of some kind of set closure or equivalence class where all the elements of the class are analogs for every other member of the class. Extensional equivalence via intensional metaphor?!? [ptouie] >8^D

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[gepr]

Yes, those hidden colored numbers inside the diagram would count as an example as well. But it's not a *good* example because the hop distance between the eyeball and the diagram is 0 (where as the hop distance between the eyeball and the image containing the QR code is 1 (you need your phone or something between your eyeball and the image). In order for the color coded number example to extrapolate to the others, you have to go *inside* the eyeball (and/or inside the head) ... which I wanted to avoid doing.

Anyway, excellent! So now you understand what I mean when I say "internal states"! Yay!

On 5/18/20 2:13 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> I wonder if this conversation is an example of itself.  I do not possess the knowledge, language, etc to understand what you are saying, here, hence it is "hidden".  A color blind person lacks the code to see the numeral hidden within the diagram.  Is this a fair oversimplification of the concept you are getting at?  

--
☣ uǝlƃ

-- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
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[thompnickson2]

FRANK!  I have always admitted to the existence of the mind.  I just don’t think it’s what you think it is. 

 

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 Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 3:21 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

At least you admit the existence of a mind.

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:13 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen,

I wonder if this conversation is an example of itself.  I do not possess the knowledge, language, etc to understand what you are saying, here, hence it is "hidden".  A color blind person lacks the code to see the numeral hidden within the diagram.  Is this a fair oversimplification of the concept you are getting at? 

Mind you, I have much less of a problem with "hidden" than I do with "inside", which I think launches discussants into an endlessly useless confusion between the mind and the brain, the latter being uncontroversially enclosed within the skull, the latter being distributed across the environment and actions of the person whose mind it is.

Nick

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: Monday, May 18, 2020 1:16 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] hidden


The best layman's example of what I mean by "hidden X" (where X means a category of things ... "states", "behaviors", "information", "spaces", etc.) relies on steganography (which SteveS mentions a lot). But in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind). But my own reliance on the *opacity* of the boundary prevents me from communicating my point clearly, especially re: some kind of holographic principle for modeling a person's internal world via their observable behavior.

So, even though I still think homomorphic encryption is an excellent analogy for the mind, a particular *type* of steganography is an actual example of (not a metaphor or analogy for) information hiding. Here are 2 concrete examples: 1) hiding one image "inside" [†] another image, and 2) hiding a QR code "inside" an image.

Here are eg links:
(1) https://towardsdatascience.com/steganography-hiding-an-image-inside-another-77ca66b2acb1
(2) https://projet.liris.cnrs.fr/imagine/pub/proceedings/ICPR-2016/media/files/0542.pdf

(1) and (2) are examples (again, NOT metaphor [‡]) of a type I've tried to call "thin models". Everything about the model is written right there on the surface of it ... plain as day. All you have to do is *read it correctly*. My canonical example is a typical (system of) ODE model. Barring something pathological like it being "stiff" or whatever and forcing a wise choice of integrator, a typical ODE model is very thin, everything you need to know is right there in front of you. Of course, the normal form of some expression can *hide* the intent of the modeler because the modeler will group terms (bounded by operators like + and *) mechanistically ... to communicate some sort of meta- or semantic information about the model's components. The normalized form can hide the modeler's intent through (e.g. algebric) transformations. But no information is actually lost ... that apparent lossage is just an artifact of the way the model is read ... just like in (1) and (2) above.

I hope that helps explain my (perhaps perverse, but I don't think so) use of the word "hidden". And I'm hoping that the 2 links will help with not-really-mathematical-though-it-may-look-mathematical understanding.

To get from this discussion to the one about scale, celery mechanisms, and telescopes, all you need is to imagine either (1) or (2) with your phone in between you and the image. Without the phone, with the phone, without the phone. The hop-distance (in transformations, here the main one being the phone) from your eyeball to the image *measures* the hiddenness of the hidden information. The embedded information is 1 hop away. Maybe you can imagine the hidden information is reversed so not only do you need the phone, but you need to look at your phone in the mirror. Then the hidden image would be 2 hops away, 2 transforms away. Etc.

If you've read this far, thanks. I value the opportunity to clarify the idea (even if I don't believe it).



[†] Please dampen your *trigger* on the word "inside". An example of what I mean, here, is something like a string of characters being "inside" a word ... e.g. the letter "i" is inside the word "sit". It's only "inside" if you process the string in a subset of ways. The same is true of both (1) and (2) above. If you reallyreallyreally can't dampen your trigger and are so impulsive that you simply can't think without arguing about the meaning of that one little word, then change the word "inside" to something like "side-by-side with" or "bracketed by" -- thx Jon -- or whatever you need to do to force yourself to grok the idea. To boot, with the QR code, example, it's arguable whether the QR code is inside the image or the image is inside the QR code ... just like if you read "sit" as {s}i{t}, then you could say "i" is outside but "s" and "t" are inside ... whatever.

[‡] Except in the sense of some kind of set closure or equivalence class where all the elements of the class are analogs for every other member of the class. Extensional equivalence via intensional metaphor?!? [ptouie] >8^D

--
☣ uǝlƃ

-- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
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Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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--

Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Your saying that implies that you know what I mean.  QED

This is trolling.

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:29 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

FRANK!  I have always admitted to the existence of the mind.  I just don’t think it’s what you think it is. 

 

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 Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 3:21 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

At least you admit the existence of a mind.

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:13 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen,

I wonder if this conversation is an example of itself.  I do not possess the knowledge, language, etc to understand what you are saying, here, hence it is "hidden".  A color blind person lacks the code to see the numeral hidden within the diagram.  Is this a fair oversimplification of the concept you are getting at? 

Mind you, I have much less of a problem with "hidden" than I do with "inside", which I think launches discussants into an endlessly useless confusion between the mind and the brain, the latter being uncontroversially enclosed within the skull, the latter being distributed across the environment and actions of the person whose mind it is.

Nick

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: Monday, May 18, 2020 1:16 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] hidden


The best layman's example of what I mean by "hidden X" (where X means a category of things ... "states", "behaviors", "information", "spaces", etc.) relies on steganography (which SteveS mentions a lot). But in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind). But my own reliance on the *opacity* of the boundary prevents me from communicating my point clearly, especially re: some kind of holographic principle for modeling a person's internal world via their observable behavior.

So, even though I still think homomorphic encryption is an excellent analogy for the mind, a particular *type* of steganography is an actual example of (not a metaphor or analogy for) information hiding. Here are 2 concrete examples: 1) hiding one image "inside" [†] another image, and 2) hiding a QR code "inside" an image.

Here are eg links:
(1) https://towardsdatascience.com/steganography-hiding-an-image-inside-another-77ca66b2acb1
(2) https://projet.liris.cnrs.fr/imagine/pub/proceedings/ICPR-2016/media/files/0542.pdf

(1) and (2) are examples (again, NOT metaphor [‡]) of a type I've tried to call "thin models". Everything about the model is written right there on the surface of it ... plain as day. All you have to do is *read it correctly*. My canonical example is a typical (system of) ODE model. Barring something pathological like it being "stiff" or whatever and forcing a wise choice of integrator, a typical ODE model is very thin, everything you need to know is right there in front of you. Of course, the normal form of some expression can *hide* the intent of the modeler because the modeler will group terms (bounded by operators like + and *) mechanistically ... to communicate some sort of meta- or semantic information about the model's components. The normalized form can hide the modeler's intent through (e.g. algebric) transformations. But no information is actually lost ... that apparent lossage is just an artifact of the way the model is read ... just like in (1) and (2) above.

I hope that helps explain my (perhaps perverse, but I don't think so) use of the word "hidden". And I'm hoping that the 2 links will help with not-really-mathematical-though-it-may-look-mathematical understanding.

To get from this discussion to the one about scale, celery mechanisms, and telescopes, all you need is to imagine either (1) or (2) with your phone in between you and the image. Without the phone, with the phone, without the phone. The hop-distance (in transformations, here the main one being the phone) from your eyeball to the image *measures* the hiddenness of the hidden information. The embedded information is 1 hop away. Maybe you can imagine the hidden information is reversed so not only do you need the phone, but you need to look at your phone in the mirror. Then the hidden image would be 2 hops away, 2 transforms away. Etc.

If you've read this far, thanks. I value the opportunity to clarify the idea (even if I don't believe it).



[†] Please dampen your *trigger* on the word "inside". An example of what I mean, here, is something like a string of characters being "inside" a word ... e.g. the letter "i" is inside the word "sit". It's only "inside" if you process the string in a subset of ways. The same is true of both (1) and (2) above. If you reallyreallyreally can't dampen your trigger and are so impulsive that you simply can't think without arguing about the meaning of that one little word, then change the word "inside" to something like "side-by-side with" or "bracketed by" -- thx Jon -- or whatever you need to do to force yourself to grok the idea. To boot, with the QR code, example, it's arguable whether the QR code is inside the image or the image is inside the QR code ... just like if you read "sit" as {s}i{t}, then you could say "i" is outside but "s" and "t" are inside ... whatever.

[‡] Except in the sense of some kind of set closure or equivalence class where all the elements of the class are analogs for every other member of the class. Extensional equivalence via intensional metaphor?!? [ptouie] >8^D

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[thompnickson2]

So you are teasing me, a little bit, right?  I understand "internal" only if it contains no surplus beyond "hidden". I suppose that if you mean by inside only "a hidden subset of" then I have to go along with it.  But now I have to think about whether your meaning has anything to do with what Frank and others mean when they talk about privileged access to a causal subjective mind.

Nick

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: Monday, May 18, 2020 3:28 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

Yes, those hidden colored numbers inside the diagram would count as an example as well. But it's not a *good* example because the hop distance between the eyeball and the diagram is 0 (where as the hop distance between the eyeball and the image containing the QR code is 1 (you need your phone or something between your eyeball and the image). In order for the color coded number example to extrapolate to the others, you have to go *inside* the eyeball (and/or inside the head) ... which I wanted to avoid doing.

Anyway, excellent! So now you understand what I mean when I say "internal states"! Yay!

On 5/18/20 2:13 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> I wonder if this conversation is an example of itself.  I do not possess the knowledge, language, etc to understand what you are saying, here, hence it is "hidden".  A color blind person lacks the code to see the numeral hidden within the diagram.  Is this a fair oversimplification of the concept you are getting at?  

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[thompnickson2]

Sorry.  I don’t mean to troll.  I think you think your mind is a space to which you alone have access which controls your behavior, and which you uniquely control.  Is that wrong?  I think your mind is a complex property of the relation between your behavior and your circumstances, to which any patient observer, including yourself, may have access, and which is controlled by your  circumstances, including your history.  Hence, I think we both believe in the existence of mind but disagree on what a mind IS. 

 

How is this trolling? 

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 Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 3:31 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

Your saying that implies that you know what I mean.  QED

 

This is trolling.

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:29 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

FRANK!  I have always admitted to the existence of the mind.  I just don’t think it’s what you think it is. 

 

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 Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 3:21 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

At least you admit the existence of a mind.

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:13 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen,

I wonder if this conversation is an example of itself.  I do not possess the knowledge, language, etc to understand what you are saying, here, hence it is "hidden".  A color blind person lacks the code to see the numeral hidden within the diagram.  Is this a fair oversimplification of the concept you are getting at? 

Mind you, I have much less of a problem with "hidden" than I do with "inside", which I think launches discussants into an endlessly useless confusion between the mind and the brain, the latter being uncontroversially enclosed within the skull, the latter being distributed across the environment and actions of the person whose mind it is.

Nick

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: Monday, May 18, 2020 1:16 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] hidden


The best layman's example of what I mean by "hidden X" (where X means a category of things ... "states", "behaviors", "information", "spaces", etc.) relies on steganography (which SteveS mentions a lot). But in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind). But my own reliance on the *opacity* of the boundary prevents me from communicating my point clearly, especially re: some kind of holographic principle for modeling a person's internal world via their observable behavior.

So, even though I still think homomorphic encryption is an excellent analogy for the mind, a particular *type* of steganography is an actual example of (not a metaphor or analogy for) information hiding. Here are 2 concrete examples: 1) hiding one image "inside" [†] another image, and 2) hiding a QR code "inside" an image.

Here are eg links:
(1) https://towardsdatascience.com/steganography-hiding-an-image-inside-another-77ca66b2acb1
(2) https://projet.liris.cnrs.fr/imagine/pub/proceedings/ICPR-2016/media/files/0542.pdf

(1) and (2) are examples (again, NOT metaphor [‡]) of a type I've tried to call "thin models". Everything about the model is written right there on the surface of it ... plain as day. All you have to do is *read it correctly*. My canonical example is a typical (system of) ODE model. Barring something pathological like it being "stiff" or whatever and forcing a wise choice of integrator, a typical ODE model is very thin, everything you need to know is right there in front of you. Of course, the normal form of some expression can *hide* the intent of the modeler because the modeler will group terms (bounded by operators like + and *) mechanistically ... to communicate some sort of meta- or semantic information about the model's components. The normalized form can hide the modeler's intent through (e.g. algebric) transformations. But no information is actually lost ... that apparent lossage is just an artifact of the way the model is read ... just like in (1) and (2) above.

I hope that helps explain my (perhaps perverse, but I don't think so) use of the word "hidden". And I'm hoping that the 2 links will help with not-really-mathematical-though-it-may-look-mathematical understanding.

To get from this discussion to the one about scale, celery mechanisms, and telescopes, all you need is to imagine either (1) or (2) with your phone in between you and the image. Without the phone, with the phone, without the phone. The hop-distance (in transformations, here the main one being the phone) from your eyeball to the image *measures* the hiddenness of the hidden information. The embedded information is 1 hop away. Maybe you can imagine the hidden information is reversed so not only do you need the phone, but you need to look at your phone in the mirror. Then the hidden image would be 2 hops away, 2 transforms away. Etc.

If you've read this far, thanks. I value the opportunity to clarify the idea (even if I don't believe it).



[†] Please dampen your *trigger* on the word "inside". An example of what I mean, here, is something like a string of characters being "inside" a word ... e.g. the letter "i" is inside the word "sit". It's only "inside" if you process the string in a subset of ways. The same is true of both (1) and (2) above. If you reallyreallyreally can't dampen your trigger and are so impulsive that you simply can't think without arguing about the meaning of that one little word, then change the word "inside" to something like "side-by-side with" or "bracketed by" -- thx Jon -- or whatever you need to do to force yourself to grok the idea. To boot, with the QR code, example, it's arguable whether the QR code is inside the image or the image is inside the QR code ... just like if you read "sit" as {s}i{t}, then you could say "i" is outside but "s" and "t" are inside ... whatever.

[‡] Except in the sense of some kind of set closure or equivalence class where all the elements of the class are analogs for every other member of the class. Extensional equivalence via intensional metaphor?!? [ptouie] >8^D

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505 670-9918

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[gepr]

No teasing. Seriously. When you said "A color blind person lacks the code to see the numeral hidden within the diagram", explicitly using the phrase "within the diagram", that is exactly what I mean when I say "inside the diagram". "Within", "inside", and "on" are synonymous.

Please note that we're still talking in the CONTEXT of my re-statement of what you and EricC seem to believe. If/when that context changes, I'll try to let you know because the semantics of my language will change, no matter how hard I try to keep it fixed.

On 5/18/20 2:35 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> So you are teasing me, a little bit, right?  I understand "internal" only if it contains no surplus beyond "hidden". I suppose that if you mean by inside only "a hidden subset of" then I have to go along with it.  But now I have to think about whether your meaning has anything to do with what Frank and others mean when they talk about privileged access to a causal subjective mind.

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Not trolling but a sincere question, In my opinion.

When I was in elementary school my report cards always said something like.  "Frank demonstrates mastery of the material but he dreams too much.  Perhaps he will find fifth grade more challenging and interesting."  What I claim to have private access to is the content of those dreams, fantasies, memories, plans, etc which remain unexpressed through language to another person.   

Frank     

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:41 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Sorry.  I don’t mean to troll.  I think you think your mind is a space to which you alone have access which controls your behavior, and which you uniquely control.  Is that wrong?  I think your mind is a complex property of the relation between your behavior and your circumstances, to which any patient observer, including yourself, may have access, and which is controlled by your  circumstances, including your history.  Hence, I think we both believe in the existence of mind but disagree on what a mind IS. 

 

How is this trolling? 

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 Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 3:31 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

Your saying that implies that you know what I mean.  QED

 

This is trolling.

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:29 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

FRANK!  I have always admitted to the existence of the mind.  I just don’t think it’s what you think it is. 

 

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 Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 3:21 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

At least you admit the existence of a mind.

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:13 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen,

I wonder if this conversation is an example of itself.  I do not possess the knowledge, language, etc to understand what you are saying, here, hence it is "hidden".  A color blind person lacks the code to see the numeral hidden within the diagram.  Is this a fair oversimplification of the concept you are getting at? 

Mind you, I have much less of a problem with "hidden" than I do with "inside", which I think launches discussants into an endlessly useless confusion between the mind and the brain, the latter being uncontroversially enclosed within the skull, the latter being distributed across the environment and actions of the person whose mind it is.

Nick

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: Monday, May 18, 2020 1:16 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] hidden


The best layman's example of what I mean by "hidden X" (where X means a category of things ... "states", "behaviors", "information", "spaces", etc.) relies on steganography (which SteveS mentions a lot). But in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind). But my own reliance on the *opacity* of the boundary prevents me from communicating my point clearly, especially re: some kind of holographic principle for modeling a person's internal world via their observable behavior.

So, even though I still think homomorphic encryption is an excellent analogy for the mind, a particular *type* of steganography is an actual example of (not a metaphor or analogy for) information hiding. Here are 2 concrete examples: 1) hiding one image "inside" [†] another image, and 2) hiding a QR code "inside" an image.

Here are eg links:
(1) https://towardsdatascience.com/steganography-hiding-an-image-inside-another-77ca66b2acb1
(2) https://projet.liris.cnrs.fr/imagine/pub/proceedings/ICPR-2016/media/files/0542.pdf

(1) and (2) are examples (again, NOT metaphor [‡]) of a type I've tried to call "thin models". Everything about the model is written right there on the surface of it ... plain as day. All you have to do is *read it correctly*. My canonical example is a typical (system of) ODE model. Barring something pathological like it being "stiff" or whatever and forcing a wise choice of integrator, a typical ODE model is very thin, everything you need to know is right there in front of you. Of course, the normal form of some expression can *hide* the intent of the modeler because the modeler will group terms (bounded by operators like + and *) mechanistically ... to communicate some sort of meta- or semantic information about the model's components. The normalized form can hide the modeler's intent through (e.g. algebric) transformations. But no information is actually lost ... that apparent lossage is just an artifact of the way the model is read ... just like in (1) and (2) above.

I hope that helps explain my (perhaps perverse, but I don't think so) use of the word "hidden". And I'm hoping that the 2 links will help with not-really-mathematical-though-it-may-look-mathematical understanding.

To get from this discussion to the one about scale, celery mechanisms, and telescopes, all you need is to imagine either (1) or (2) with your phone in between you and the image. Without the phone, with the phone, without the phone. The hop-distance (in transformations, here the main one being the phone) from your eyeball to the image *measures* the hiddenness of the hidden information. The embedded information is 1 hop away. Maybe you can imagine the hidden information is reversed so not only do you need the phone, but you need to look at your phone in the mirror. Then the hidden image would be 2 hops away, 2 transforms away. Etc.

If you've read this far, thanks. I value the opportunity to clarify the idea (even if I don't believe it).



[†] Please dampen your *trigger* on the word "inside". An example of what I mean, here, is something like a string of characters being "inside" a word ... e.g. the letter "i" is inside the word "sit". It's only "inside" if you process the string in a subset of ways. The same is true of both (1) and (2) above. If you reallyreallyreally can't dampen your trigger and are so impulsive that you simply can't think without arguing about the meaning of that one little word, then change the word "inside" to something like "side-by-side with" or "bracketed by" -- thx Jon -- or whatever you need to do to force yourself to grok the idea. To boot, with the QR code, example, it's arguable whether the QR code is inside the image or the image is inside the QR code ... just like if you read "sit" as {s}i{t}, then you could say "i" is outside but "s" and "t" are inside ... whatever.

[‡] Except in the sense of some kind of set closure or equivalence class where all the elements of the class are analogs for every other member of the class. Extensional equivalence via intensional metaphor?!? [ptouie] >8^D

--
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505 670-9918

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505 670-9918

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[thompnickson2]

G

Ok, but in your metaphor, the image is not hidden BECAUSE it is inside.  As a color blind person, there is no BOUNDARY between me and the numeral.  Quite the opposite.  It is right there in front of me if only I had the key, knowledge, information, etc, to see it.  

N

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: Monday, May 18, 2020 3:45 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

No teasing. Seriously. When you said "A color blind person lacks the code to see the numeral hidden within the diagram", explicitly using the phrase "within the diagram", that is exactly what I mean when I say "inside the diagram". "Within", "inside", and "on" are synonymous.

Please note that we're still talking in the CONTEXT of my re-statement of what you and EricC seem to believe. If/when that context changes, I'll try to let you know because the semantics of my language will change, no matter how hard I try to keep it fixed.

On 5/18/20 2:35 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> So you are teasing me, a little bit, right?  I understand "internal" only if it contains no surplus beyond "hidden". I suppose that if you mean by inside only "a hidden subset of" then I have to go along with it.  But now I have to think about whether your meaning has anything to do with what Frank and others mean when they talk about privileged access to a causal subjective mind.

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[thompnickson2]

Allow me to stipulate that dreams are the hardest case for somebody of my persuasion, and let it go.  It’s too warm to argue rigorously.  I keep falling asleep between keystrokes. 

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 4:05 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

Not trolling but a sincere question, In my opinion.

 

When I was in elementary school my report cards always said something like.  "Frank demonstrates mastery of the material but he dreams too much.  Perhaps he will find fifth grade more challenging and interesting."  What I claim to have private access to is the content of those dreams, fantasies, memories, plans, etc which remain unexpressed through language to another person.   

 

Frank     

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:41 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Sorry.  I don’t mean to troll.  I think you think your mind is a space to which you alone have access which controls your behavior, and which you uniquely control.  Is that wrong?  I think your mind is a complex property of the relation between your behavior and your circumstances, to which any patient observer, including yourself, may have access, and which is controlled by your  circumstances, including your history.  Hence, I think we both believe in the existence of mind but disagree on what a mind IS. 

 

How is this trolling? 

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 Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 3:31 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

Your saying that implies that you know what I mean.  QED

 

This is trolling.

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:29 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

FRANK!  I have always admitted to the existence of the mind.  I just don’t think it’s what you think it is. 

 

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 Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 3:21 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

At least you admit the existence of a mind.

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:13 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen,

I wonder if this conversation is an example of itself.  I do not possess the knowledge, language, etc to understand what you are saying, here, hence it is "hidden".  A color blind person lacks the code to see the numeral hidden within the diagram.  Is this a fair oversimplification of the concept you are getting at? 

Mind you, I have much less of a problem with "hidden" than I do with "inside", which I think launches discussants into an endlessly useless confusion between the mind and the brain, the latter being uncontroversially enclosed within the skull, the latter being distributed across the environment and actions of the person whose mind it is.

Nick

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: Monday, May 18, 2020 1:16 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] hidden


The best layman's example of what I mean by "hidden X" (where X means a category of things ... "states", "behaviors", "information", "spaces", etc.) relies on steganography (which SteveS mentions a lot). But in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind). But my own reliance on the *opacity* of the boundary prevents me from communicating my point clearly, especially re: some kind of holographic principle for modeling a person's internal world via their observable behavior.

So, even though I still think homomorphic encryption is an excellent analogy for the mind, a particular *type* of steganography is an actual example of (not a metaphor or analogy for) information hiding. Here are 2 concrete examples: 1) hiding one image "inside" [†] another image, and 2) hiding a QR code "inside" an image.

Here are eg links:
(1) https://towardsdatascience.com/steganography-hiding-an-image-inside-another-77ca66b2acb1
(2) https://projet.liris.cnrs.fr/imagine/pub/proceedings/ICPR-2016/media/files/0542.pdf

(1) and (2) are examples (again, NOT metaphor [‡]) of a type I've tried to call "thin models". Everything about the model is written right there on the surface of it ... plain as day. All you have to do is *read it correctly*. My canonical example is a typical (system of) ODE model. Barring something pathological like it being "stiff" or whatever and forcing a wise choice of integrator, a typical ODE model is very thin, everything you need to know is right there in front of you. Of course, the normal form of some expression can *hide* the intent of the modeler because the modeler will group terms (bounded by operators like + and *) mechanistically ... to communicate some sort of meta- or semantic information about the model's components. The normalized form can hide the modeler's intent through (e.g. algebric) transformations. But no information is actually lost ... that apparent lossage is just an artifact of the way the model is read ... just like in (1) and (2) above.

I hope that helps explain my (perhaps perverse, but I don't think so) use of the word "hidden". And I'm hoping that the 2 links will help with not-really-mathematical-though-it-may-look-mathematical understanding.

To get from this discussion to the one about scale, celery mechanisms, and telescopes, all you need is to imagine either (1) or (2) with your phone in between you and the image. Without the phone, with the phone, without the phone. The hop-distance (in transformations, here the main one being the phone) from your eyeball to the image *measures* the hiddenness of the hidden information. The embedded information is 1 hop away. Maybe you can imagine the hidden information is reversed so not only do you need the phone, but you need to look at your phone in the mirror. Then the hidden image would be 2 hops away, 2 transforms away. Etc.

If you've read this far, thanks. I value the opportunity to clarify the idea (even if I don't believe it).



[†] Please dampen your *trigger* on the word "inside". An example of what I mean, here, is something like a string of characters being "inside" a word ... e.g. the letter "i" is inside the word "sit". It's only "inside" if you process the string in a subset of ways. The same is true of both (1) and (2) above. If you reallyreallyreally can't dampen your trigger and are so impulsive that you simply can't think without arguing about the meaning of that one little word, then change the word "inside" to something like "side-by-side with" or "bracketed by" -- thx Jon -- or whatever you need to do to force yourself to grok the idea. To boot, with the QR code, example, it's arguable whether the QR code is inside the image or the image is inside the QR code ... just like if you read "sit" as {s}i{t}, then you could say "i" is outside but "s" and "t" are inside ... whatever.

[‡] Except in the sense of some kind of set closure or equivalence class where all the elements of the class are analogs for every other member of the class. Extensional equivalence via intensional metaphor?!? [ptouie] >8^D

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Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918

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[gepr]

I don't know what you mean by "my metaphor". In both cases, the colored number diagram and the diagram within a diagram (steganography), it's all right there in front of you if only you had the key to see it.

The "key" is the algorithm by which you transform the data that's there. There is no boundary, only the transformation. ... like reordering the words in a word puzzle. E.g. Slate Star Codex *hides* the name Scott Alexander. There's no boundary there. But there is a transformation that needs to be made to see the hidden info.

On 5/18/20 3:14 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Ok, but in your metaphor, the image is not hidden BECAUSE it is inside.  As a color blind person, there is no BOUNDARY between me and the numeral.  Quite the opposite.  It is right there in front of me if only I had the key, knowledge, information, etc, to see it.  

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[jon zingale]

Frank, Glen, Nick,

Glen writes:

`... in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response

to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I

think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind).`

Fully homomorphic encryption† was also the metaphor I originally

had in mind. In an effort to not complicate matters, I decided to focus

on the idea of public key encryption more generally. Thank you, Glen

for taking it the rest of the way. Because Glen, Nick and I appear to

differ on Frank's mind only in that we disagree about the way that

Frank's mind is public, I will attempt to switch sides and argue for

why his mind may be private.

Firstly, while we may only need to know some combination of

transformations which will allow us to know his mind, it may

be the case that those transformations are not accessible to

us. As an example and in analogy to computation, it may be the

case that we are not the kind of machines which can recognize

the language produced by a mind. While we as observers are

able to finite automata our way along observations of Frank,

his mind is producing context-free sentences, say. I don't

entirely buy this argument, but it also may be defendable.

As another example/analogy, we may be attempting to solve

a problem analogous to those geometric problems of Greek

antiquity††. It may take a psychological analog to Galois theory

before we understand exactly why we can't know Frank's mind.

Secondly, it may be that the encryption metaphor should

actually be something closer to hashing. A friend of mine

once said that rememberings were morphisms between

forgettings. We are often ok with the idea that memory is

lossy, but why not thoughts themselves? Perhaps, at least

with regard to what we can observer of Frank, every time

Frank thinks of a covariant tensor he is reconstituting

something fundamentally different. The remembering is

always between different forgettings.

Ok, I am not sure I could necessarily defend these thoughts.

Further, I am not sure they are necessarily helpful to our

conversation. It seemed a good idea to try.

On the topic of steganography, I wanted to mention the

book Steganographia. I had originally read about it in some

part of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and it has since

found a place in my heart. The book, originally written in

1499, is perhaps the oldest text on the subject of cryptography.

What is amazing about the book is that it is an example of

itself (nod to Nick). The plaintext content of the book is

on the subject of magic, but for a reader clever enough to

find the deciphering key the book is about cryptography.

I had found a copy from the 1700's in the rare books library

at the University of Texas some years ago. The content was

doubly hidden from me as I neither had the deciphering

key nor can I read Latin ;)

Jon

†: If any members of the group would like to form a reading

group around Craig Gentry's thesis on FHE, I would gladly

participate.

†† While it turned out that the Greek's assumptions about

the power of a compass and straightedge were incorrect,

work beginning with Margherita Beloch (and culminating

with the Huzita-Hatori axioms) show that origami would

have been a more powerful choice!

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Forget covariant tensors (again).  There was a beautiful, talented girl in my sixth grade class.  She could dance ballet, draw striking pictures, etc.  I thought of her occasionally over the decades.  When Google search became available I discovered that she was married to a celebrity.

When you say that my inner life isn't private, Nick, do you mean you could figure out her name given what I've just written?  As I think of her face, can you "see" it well enough to recognize her photo?

I just don't understand what you mean when you question that I have a private inner life.

Frank

On Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:47 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank, Glen, Nick,

Glen writes:

`... in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response

to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I

think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind).`

Fully homomorphic encryption† was also the metaphor I originally

had in mind. In an effort to not complicate matters, I decided to focus

on the idea of public key encryption more generally. Thank you, Glen

for taking it the rest of the way. Because Glen, Nick and I appear to

differ on Frank's mind only in that we disagree about the way that

Frank's mind is public, I will attempt to switch sides and argue for

why his mind may be private.

Firstly, while we may only need to know some combination of

transformations which will allow us to know his mind, it may

be the case that those transformations are not accessible to

us. As an example and in analogy to computation, it may be the

case that we are not the kind of machines which can recognize

the language produced by a mind. While we as observers are

able to finite automata our way along observations of Frank,

his mind is producing context-free sentences, say. I don't

entirely buy this argument, but it also may be defendable.

As another example/analogy, we may be attempting to solve

a problem analogous to those geometric problems of Greek

antiquity††. It may take a psychological analog to Galois theory

before we understand exactly why we can't know Frank's mind.

Secondly, it may be that the encryption metaphor should

actually be something closer to hashing. A friend of mine

once said that rememberings were morphisms between

forgettings. We are often ok with the idea that memory is

lossy, but why not thoughts themselves? Perhaps, at least

with regard to what we can observer of Frank, every time

Frank thinks of a covariant tensor he is reconstituting

something fundamentally different. The remembering is

always between different forgettings.

Ok, I am not sure I could necessarily defend these thoughts.

Further, I am not sure they are necessarily helpful to our

conversation. It seemed a good idea to try.

On the topic of steganography, I wanted to mention the

book Steganographia. I had originally read about it in some

part of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and it has since

found a place in my heart. The book, originally written in

1499, is perhaps the oldest text on the subject of cryptography.

What is amazing about the book is that it is an example of

itself (nod to Nick). The plaintext content of the book is

on the subject of magic, but for a reader clever enough to

find the deciphering key the book is about cryptography.

I had found a copy from the 1700's in the rare books library

at the University of Texas some years ago. The content was

doubly hidden from me as I neither had the deciphering

key nor can I read Latin ;)

Jon

†: If any members of the group would like to form a reading

group around Craig Gentry's thesis on FHE, I would gladly

participate.

†† While it turned out that the Greek's assumptions about

the power of a compass and straightedge were incorrect,

work beginning with Margherita Beloch (and culminating

with the Huzita-Hatori axioms) show that origami would

have been a more powerful choice!

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[thompnickson2]

Frank,

There are many things that you have experienced that I have not, and vv, but no value is added by calling these “inner.”  I can sort of go along with Glen’s gloss on “inside”, but when you metamorphose it to “inner”, I get antsy. 

 

But I think we have tilled this ground for all it is worth, for the moment. 

 

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 Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 8:02 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

Forget covariant tensors (again).  There was a beautiful, talented girl in my sixth grade class.  She could dance ballet, draw striking pictures, etc.  I thought of her occasionally over the decades.  When Google search became available I discovered that she was married to a celebrity.

 

When you say that my inner life isn't private, Nick, do you mean you could figure out her name given what I've just written?  As I think of her face, can you "see" it well enough to recognize her photo?

 

I just don't understand what you mean when you question that I have a private inner life.

 

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:47 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank, Glen, Nick,

 

Glen writes:

`... in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response

to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I

think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind).`

 

Fully homomorphic encryption† was also the metaphor I originally

had in mind. In an effort to not complicate matters, I decided to focus

on the idea of public key encryption more generally. Thank you, Glen

for taking it the rest of the way. Because Glen, Nick and I appear to

differ on Frank's mind only in that we disagree about the way that

Frank's mind is public, I will attempt to switch sides and argue for

why his mind may be private.

 

Firstly, while we may only need to know some combination of

transformations which will allow us to know his mind, it may

be the case that those transformations are not accessible to

us. As an example and in analogy to computation, it may be the

case that we are not the kind of machines which can recognize

the language produced by a mind. While we as observers are

able to finite automata our way along observations of Frank,

his mind is producing context-free sentences, say. I don't

entirely buy this argument, but it also may be defendable.

As another example/analogy, we may be attempting to solve

a problem analogous to those geometric problems of Greek

antiquity††. It may take a psychological analog to Galois theory

before we understand exactly why we can't know Frank's mind.

 

Secondly, it may be that the encryption metaphor should

actually be something closer to hashing. A friend of mine

once said that rememberings were morphisms between

forgettings. We are often ok with the idea that memory is

lossy, but why not thoughts themselves? Perhaps, at least

with regard to what we can observer of Frank, every time

Frank thinks of a covariant tensor he is reconstituting

something fundamentally different. The remembering is

always between different forgettings.

 

Ok, I am not sure I could necessarily defend these thoughts.

Further, I am not sure they are necessarily helpful to our

conversation. It seemed a good idea to try.

 

On the topic of steganography, I wanted to mention the

book Steganographia. I had originally read about it in some

part of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and it has since

found a place in my heart. The book, originally written in

1499, is perhaps the oldest text on the subject of cryptography.

What is amazing about the book is that it is an example of

itself (nod to Nick). The plaintext content of the book is

on the subject of magic, but for a reader clever enough to

find the deciphering key the book is about cryptography.

I had found a copy from the 1700's in the rare books library

at the University of Texas some years ago. The content was

doubly hidden from me as I neither had the deciphering

key nor can I read Latin ;)

 

Jon

 

†: If any members of the group would like to form a reading

group around Craig Gentry's thesis on FHE, I would gladly

participate.

†† While it turned out that the Greek's assumptions about

the power of a compass and straightedge were incorrect,

work beginning with Margherita Beloch (and culminating

with the Huzita-Hatori axioms) show that origami would

have been a more powerful choice!

-- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Then quit saying I don't have an  inner life.  The inner expeeiences are the memories I have in the present and at various times in the past and the wondering about whatever became of her (and others).

On Mon, May 18, 2020, 8:48 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank,

There are many things that you have experienced that I have not, and vv, but no value is added by calling these “inner.”  I can sort of go along with Glen’s gloss on “inside”, but when you metamorphose it to “inner”, I get antsy. 

 

But I think we have tilled this ground for all it is worth, for the moment. 

 

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 Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 8:02 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

Forget covariant tensors (again).  There was a beautiful, talented girl in my sixth grade class.  She could dance ballet, draw striking pictures, etc.  I thought of her occasionally over the decades.  When Google search became available I discovered that she was married to a celebrity.

 

When you say that my inner life isn't private, Nick, do you mean you could figure out her name given what I've just written?  As I think of her face, can you "see" it well enough to recognize her photo?

 

I just don't understand what you mean when you question that I have a private inner life.

 

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:47 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank, Glen, Nick,

 

Glen writes:

`... in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response

to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I

think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind).`

 

Fully homomorphic encryption† was also the metaphor I originally

had in mind. In an effort to not complicate matters, I decided to focus

on the idea of public key encryption more generally. Thank you, Glen

for taking it the rest of the way. Because Glen, Nick and I appear to

differ on Frank's mind only in that we disagree about the way that

Frank's mind is public, I will attempt to switch sides and argue for

why his mind may be private.

 

Firstly, while we may only need to know some combination of

transformations which will allow us to know his mind, it may

be the case that those transformations are not accessible to

us. As an example and in analogy to computation, it may be the

case that we are not the kind of machines which can recognize

the language produced by a mind. While we as observers are

able to finite automata our way along observations of Frank,

his mind is producing context-free sentences, say. I don't

entirely buy this argument, but it also may be defendable.

As another example/analogy, we may be attempting to solve

a problem analogous to those geometric problems of Greek

antiquity††. It may take a psychological analog to Galois theory

before we understand exactly why we can't know Frank's mind.

 

Secondly, it may be that the encryption metaphor should

actually be something closer to hashing. A friend of mine

once said that rememberings were morphisms between

forgettings. We are often ok with the idea that memory is

lossy, but why not thoughts themselves? Perhaps, at least

with regard to what we can observer of Frank, every time

Frank thinks of a covariant tensor he is reconstituting

something fundamentally different. The remembering is

always between different forgettings.

 

Ok, I am not sure I could necessarily defend these thoughts.

Further, I am not sure they are necessarily helpful to our

conversation. It seemed a good idea to try.

 

On the topic of steganography, I wanted to mention the

book Steganographia. I had originally read about it in some

part of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and it has since

found a place in my heart. The book, originally written in

1499, is perhaps the oldest text on the subject of cryptography.

What is amazing about the book is that it is an example of

itself (nod to Nick). The plaintext content of the book is

on the subject of magic, but for a reader clever enough to

find the deciphering key the book is about cryptography.

I had found a copy from the 1700's in the rare books library

at the University of Texas some years ago. The content was

doubly hidden from me as I neither had the deciphering

key nor can I read Latin ;)

 

Jon

 

†: If any members of the group would like to form a reading

group around Craig Gentry's thesis on FHE, I would gladly

participate.

†† While it turned out that the Greek's assumptions about

the power of a compass and straightedge were incorrect,

work beginning with Margherita Beloch (and culminating

with the Huzita-Hatori axioms) show that origami would

have been a more powerful choice!

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[thompnickson2]

You have a life for which, at the moment, only you hold the key.   That’s the furthest I am prepared to go.

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 9:13 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

Then quit saying I don't have an  inner life.  The inner expeeiences are the memories I have in the present and at various times in the past and the wondering about whatever became of her (and others).

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020, 8:48 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank,

There are many things that you have experienced that I have not, and vv, but no value is added by calling these “inner.”  I can sort of go along with Glen’s gloss on “inside”, but when you metamorphose it to “inner”, I get antsy. 

 

But I think we have tilled this ground for all it is worth, for the moment. 

 

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 Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 8:02 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

Forget covariant tensors (again).  There was a beautiful, talented girl in my sixth grade class.  She could dance ballet, draw striking pictures, etc.  I thought of her occasionally over the decades.  When Google search became available I discovered that she was married to a celebrity.

 

When you say that my inner life isn't private, Nick, do you mean you could figure out her name given what I've just written?  As I think of her face, can you "see" it well enough to recognize her photo?

 

I just don't understand what you mean when you question that I have a private inner life.

 

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:47 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank, Glen, Nick,

 

Glen writes:

`... in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response

to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I

think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind).`

 

Fully homomorphic encryption† was also the metaphor I originally

had in mind. In an effort to not complicate matters, I decided to focus

on the idea of public key encryption more generally. Thank you, Glen

for taking it the rest of the way. Because Glen, Nick and I appear to

differ on Frank's mind only in that we disagree about the way that

Frank's mind is public, I will attempt to switch sides and argue for

why his mind may be private.

 

Firstly, while we may only need to know some combination of

transformations which will allow us to know his mind, it may

be the case that those transformations are not accessible to

us. As an example and in analogy to computation, it may be the

case that we are not the kind of machines which can recognize

the language produced by a mind. While we as observers are

able to finite automata our way along observations of Frank,

his mind is producing context-free sentences, say. I don't

entirely buy this argument, but it also may be defendable.

As another example/analogy, we may be attempting to solve

a problem analogous to those geometric problems of Greek

antiquity††. It may take a psychological analog to Galois theory

before we understand exactly why we can't know Frank's mind.

 

Secondly, it may be that the encryption metaphor should

actually be something closer to hashing. A friend of mine

once said that rememberings were morphisms between

forgettings. We are often ok with the idea that memory is

lossy, but why not thoughts themselves? Perhaps, at least

with regard to what we can observer of Frank, every time

Frank thinks of a covariant tensor he is reconstituting

something fundamentally different. The remembering is

always between different forgettings.

 

Ok, I am not sure I could necessarily defend these thoughts.

Further, I am not sure they are necessarily helpful to our

conversation. It seemed a good idea to try.

 

On the topic of steganography, I wanted to mention the

book Steganographia. I had originally read about it in some

part of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and it has since

found a place in my heart. The book, originally written in

1499, is perhaps the oldest text on the subject of cryptography.

What is amazing about the book is that it is an example of

itself (nod to Nick). The plaintext content of the book is

on the subject of magic, but for a reader clever enough to

find the deciphering key the book is about cryptography.

I had found a copy from the 1700's in the rare books library

at the University of Texas some years ago. The content was

doubly hidden from me as I neither had the deciphering

key nor can I read Latin ;)

 

Jon

 

†: If any members of the group would like to form a reading

group around Craig Gentry's thesis on FHE, I would gladly

participate.

†† While it turned out that the Greek's assumptions about

the power of a compass and straightedge were incorrect,

work beginning with Margherita Beloch (and culminating

with the Huzita-Hatori axioms) show that origami would

have been a more powerful choice!

-- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
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[Frank Wimberly-2]

That helps.  Thank you.

On Mon, May 18, 2020, 9:15 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

You have a life for which, at the moment, only you hold the key.   That’s the furthest I am prepared to go.

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 9:13 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

Then quit saying I don't have an  inner life.  The inner expeeiences are the memories I have in the present and at various times in the past and the wondering about whatever became of her (and others).

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020, 8:48 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank,

There are many things that you have experienced that I have not, and vv, but no value is added by calling these “inner.”  I can sort of go along with Glen’s gloss on “inside”, but when you metamorphose it to “inner”, I get antsy. 

 

But I think we have tilled this ground for all it is worth, for the moment. 

 

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 Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 8:02 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

Forget covariant tensors (again).  There was a beautiful, talented girl in my sixth grade class.  She could dance ballet, draw striking pictures, etc.  I thought of her occasionally over the decades.  When Google search became available I discovered that she was married to a celebrity.

 

When you say that my inner life isn't private, Nick, do you mean you could figure out her name given what I've just written?  As I think of her face, can you "see" it well enough to recognize her photo?

 

I just don't understand what you mean when you question that I have a private inner life.

 

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:47 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank, Glen, Nick,

 

Glen writes:

`... in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response

to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I

think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind).`

 

Fully homomorphic encryption† was also the metaphor I originally

had in mind. In an effort to not complicate matters, I decided to focus

on the idea of public key encryption more generally. Thank you, Glen

for taking it the rest of the way. Because Glen, Nick and I appear to

differ on Frank's mind only in that we disagree about the way that

Frank's mind is public, I will attempt to switch sides and argue for

why his mind may be private.

 

Firstly, while we may only need to know some combination of

transformations which will allow us to know his mind, it may

be the case that those transformations are not accessible to

us. As an example and in analogy to computation, it may be the

case that we are not the kind of machines which can recognize

the language produced by a mind. While we as observers are

able to finite automata our way along observations of Frank,

his mind is producing context-free sentences, say. I don't

entirely buy this argument, but it also may be defendable.

As another example/analogy, we may be attempting to solve

a problem analogous to those geometric problems of Greek

antiquity††. It may take a psychological analog to Galois theory

before we understand exactly why we can't know Frank's mind.

 

Secondly, it may be that the encryption metaphor should

actually be something closer to hashing. A friend of mine

once said that rememberings were morphisms between

forgettings. We are often ok with the idea that memory is

lossy, but why not thoughts themselves? Perhaps, at least

with regard to what we can observer of Frank, every time

Frank thinks of a covariant tensor he is reconstituting

something fundamentally different. The remembering is

always between different forgettings.

 

Ok, I am not sure I could necessarily defend these thoughts.

Further, I am not sure they are necessarily helpful to our

conversation. It seemed a good idea to try.

 

On the topic of steganography, I wanted to mention the

book Steganographia. I had originally read about it in some

part of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and it has since

found a place in my heart. The book, originally written in

1499, is perhaps the oldest text on the subject of cryptography.

What is amazing about the book is that it is an example of

itself (nod to Nick). The plaintext content of the book is

on the subject of magic, but for a reader clever enough to

find the deciphering key the book is about cryptography.

I had found a copy from the 1700's in the rare books library

at the University of Texas some years ago. The content was

doubly hidden from me as I neither had the deciphering

key nor can I read Latin ;)

 

Jon

 

†: If any members of the group would like to form a reading

group around Craig Gentry's thesis on FHE, I would gladly

participate.

†† While it turned out that the Greek's assumptions about

the power of a compass and straightedge were incorrect,

work beginning with Margherita Beloch (and culminating

with the Huzita-Hatori axioms) show that origami would

have been a more powerful choice!

-- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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[David Eric Smith]

As I read this,I am reminded of the 20th century (seems to long ago), in which the high-energy physicists dug a social pit for themselves, from which the ones they offended do not want ever to let them escape.

Keyword is Reductionism.  The narrative went something like this (HEP = High Energy Physicist; ROS = anyone from the Rest of Science)

HEP: In principle, whatever you care about is a result of interaction of our building blocks.

ROS: Well, okay, but your saying that hasn’t addressed basically anything in what we wanted to understand from what we do.

HEP: Whatever you wanted to understand was just a problem of assembly.

ROS: “Just assembly” has its own rules which are not already expressed in the rules by which you characterize your building blocks (Of course, the objection was never made with such circumspection, but usually in less clear terms.)

HEP: Well, in principle we understand all that.

ROS: Then In Practice, say something we find useful or interesting.

HEP: In Principle we understand all that.

ROS: You are a robot.

And in that way, “reductionist” got entrenched as a synonym for “philistine” who thinks there isn’t anything left to explain beyond a few descriptions of building blocks.  Not only did it lead to a lot of unproductive fighting, it also made it much harder for those who had useful points of view on what reductionism is, or isn’t, to relate its contributions to all the other work that involves understanding of new explanatory primitives.

The behaviorists sound _so_ much like the reductionists sounded, and it is not for me to say whether they want to sound that way or not.  They are so hell-bent on not giving an inch to the spiritualists (a worthy position IMO) that they sound like they are claiming a scope of knowledge including all the things about which they don’t have anything particularly satisfying to say.  They are sure, in the end, They Know what science will consist of, at least In Principle.  They may actually be right on parts of that, but to assert that your system of understanding will, you are confident, subsume all the future problems about which, for the present, you are unable to say anything actually elucidating, is of questionable utility.  It’s fine to believe that, but if it does no work for you, it is not easily distinguishable from a not-even-wrong claim.  At the most benign, it substitutes putting a lot of energy into defending the turf (of what? of “materialism”? or is that now such an overused term that we would like something fresh to characterize the non-spiritualist, non-vitalist position?), instead of engaging with where the other person wants the discussion to be, which is to say “Hey, there is some distinct cognitive or experiential primitive here, which I don’t know how to characterize in a satisfying way; would you like to help me think about it?” 

My own expectation is that the kinds of primitives that people are after will have a certain character of irreducibility about them, and that is what makes them both interesting and hard to drag out into clarity.  And be careful: when I say “irreducibility” I use the word advisedly, and by analogies to cases where it does very good work.  In group theory, we are very interested in distinctions between irreducible and reducible representations.  Tononi’s construction — whatever its other virtues or defects — is essentially a measure of the irreducibility in some information-transmission measure.  Even prime numbers have a specific kind of irreducibility that makes their status not decidable with less than exhaustive search.  The image I want to take from those examples is the same kind of “irreducibility” of patterns that the ROS character above was referring to when he said there are aspects of the patterns that come out at higher order that require their own system, which is its own kind of thing that occupies science in addition to the system that characterizes the building blocks and the local rules for their combination.  All the systems that characterize all the irreducible patterns are compatible with the building blocks, but precisely because each of them captures something different, the system for the building blocks doesn’t extract any of them _in its particularity_, and it is getting at that particularity that the whole rest of science is occupied with.

(Btw, the rabid Darwinists do the same thing.  That is what enables Richard Dawkins to take what would otherwise be completely reasonable positions, and turn them into an overall offensive posture.  And the character of the deflection is the same.  If Darwinism contains everything, then it isn’t doing the work for you of extracting some further, particular thing.)

Sorry for the meta-commentary on conversation analysis (or opinionizing).  I don’t have anything useful or clarifying to say about inner experience either, except to vote that it seems a fine term from which to begin an interesting investigation.

Eric

On May 19, 2020, at 12:15 PM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]> wrote:

You have a life for which, at the moment, only you hold the key.   That’s the furthest I am prepared to go. 

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 9:13 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

Then quit saying I don't have an  inner life.  The inner expeeiences are the memories I have in the present and at various times in the past and the wondering about whatever became of her (and others).

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020, 8:48 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank,

There are many things that you have experienced that I have not, and vv, but no value is added by calling these “inner.”  I can sort of go along with Glen’s gloss on “inside”, but when you metamorphose it to “inner”, I get antsy.  

 

But I think we have tilled this ground for all it is worth, for the moment.  

 

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 Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 8:02 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hidden

 

Forget covariant tensors (again).  There was a beautiful, talented girl in my sixth grade class.  She could dance ballet, draw striking pictures, etc.  I thought of her occasionally over the decades.  When Google search became available I discovered that she was married to a celebrity.

 

When you say that my inner life isn't private, Nick, do you mean you could figure out her name given what I've just written?  As I think of her face, can you "see" it well enough to recognize her photo?

 

I just don't understand what you mean when you question that I have a private inner life.

 

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:47 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank, Glen, Nick,

 

Glen writes:

`... in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response

to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I

think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind).`

 

Fully homomorphic encryption† was also the metaphor I originally

had in mind. In an effort to not complicate matters, I decided to focus

on the idea of public key encryption more generally. Thank you, Glen

for taking it the rest of the way. Because Glen, Nick and I appear to

differ on Frank's mind only in that we disagree about the way that

Frank's mind is public, I will attempt to switch sides and argue for

why his mind may be private.

 

Firstly, while we may only need to know some combination of

transformations which will allow us to know his mind, it may

be the case that those transformations are not accessible to

us. As an example and in analogy to computation, it may be the

case that we are not the kind of machines which can recognize

the language produced by a mind. While we as observers are

able to finite automata our way along observations of Frank,

his mind is producing context-free sentences, say. I don't

entirely buy this argument, but it also may be defendable.

As another example/analogy, we may be attempting to solve

a problem analogous to those geometric problems of Greek

antiquity††. It may take a psychological analog to Galois theory

before we understand exactly why we can't know Frank's mind.

 

Secondly, it may be that the encryption metaphor should

actually be something closer to hashing. A friend of mine

once said that rememberings were morphisms between

forgettings. We are often ok with the idea that memory is

lossy, but why not thoughts themselves? Perhaps, at least

with regard to what we can observer of Frank, every time

Frank thinks of a covariant tensor he is reconstituting

something fundamentally different. The remembering is

always between different forgettings.

 

Ok, I am not sure I could necessarily defend these thoughts.

Further, I am not sure they are necessarily helpful to our

conversation. It seemed a good idea to try.

 

On the topic of steganography, I wanted to mention the

book Steganographia. I had originally read about it in some

part of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and it has since

found a place in my heart. The book, originally written in

1499, is perhaps the oldest text on the subject of cryptography.

What is amazing about the book is that it is an example of

itself (nod to Nick). The plaintext content of the book is

on the subject of magic, but for a reader clever enough to

find the deciphering key the book is about cryptography.

I had found a copy from the 1700's in the rare books library

at the University of Texas some years ago. The content was

doubly hidden from me as I neither had the deciphering

key nor can I read Latin ;)

 

Jon

 

†: If any members of the group would like to form a reading

group around Craig Gentry's thesis on FHE, I would gladly

participate.

†† While it turned out that the Greek's assumptions about

the power of a compass and straightedge were incorrect,

work beginning with Margherita Beloch (and culminating

with the Huzita-Hatori axioms) show that origami would

have been a more powerful choice!

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