models, reality, etc.

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models, reality, etc.

Prof David West
This popped up elsewhere and I thought the FRIAM group might find it interesting. I had not heard of "statistical equivalence" before. The GIF recalled to mind previous conversations about Reality (which is "real:" the dots, the triangles, the squares, ...?); models; interpretations (ala Copenhagen); even Nick's Natural Design.

davew

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Re: models, reality, etc.

Nick Thompson

Wow.  It's all those things at once! 

 

REALLY?!!!!!

 

What a great example!

 

Let me try and put it into words.  The nominalist would like to say “There is no real pattern there, it just depends on how you want to look at it.”  The realist would like to say, “Nonsense.  The patterns appear when you take into account the point of view of the observer.  Anybody who cares to take that point of view, adopt that procedure, etc., will see each pattern.  They are real patterns.” 

 

How do you understand it, Dave?

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2019 11:53 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] models, reality, etc.

 

This popped up elsewhere and I thought the FRIAM group might find it interesting. I had not heard of "statistical equivalence" before. The GIF recalled to mind previous conversations about Reality (which is "real:" the dots, the triangles, the squares, ...?); models; interpretations (ala Copenhagen); even Nick's Natural Design.

 

davew


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Re: models, reality, etc.

Marcus G. Daniels
In reply to this post by Prof David West
Entanglement is probabilistic:  Look for a dot at some location, if you see one, then there's a probability of seeing another dot at another location, and a different probability if you don't.  

On 1/12/19, 11:53 AM, "Friam on behalf of Prof David West" <[hidden email] on behalf of [hidden email]> wrote:

    This popped up elsewhere and I thought the FRIAM group might find it interesting. I had not heard of "statistical equivalence" before. The GIF recalled to mind previous conversations about Reality (which is "real:" the dots, the triangles, the squares, ...?); models; interpretations (ala Copenhagen); even Nick's Natural Design.
   
    davew
   

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Re: models, reality, etc.

Prof David West
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Given an "experiencer":

- what is directly "experienced" is apparently randomly moving dots.

- what is "interpreted" from that experience (a kind of meta-experience) are 'triangles', 'squares', 'stars', and 'prisms'.

- every experiencer's behavior will be grounded on the interpretations, not the 'raw data'. In an important way this makes the patterns 'more real' than the data.

- if two independent experiencers could occupy the exact same observational point, they might experience the same interpretations. Open question because they could not occupy the same observational point at the same time.

- if we could devise a 'language' that would allow us to say that, "my equilateral triangles are identical to your slightly isosceles triangles plus Factor X," we could say that we are seeing the same patterns / making the same interpretations.

- are triangles, squares, stars, and prisms, the only possible interpretations/experiences? if so why? One possibility is anthropomorphic in nature - they are the only possible patterns that an observer configured as a human being can see. This answer would seem to weaken the case for the 'reality' of the patterns vis-a-vis the reality of the dots. Two, the patterns are akin to Platonic 'ideals', in which case they are real, but in a sense that forces a kind of dualism.

- how valid is the statement, "every experiencer's behavior will be grounded on the interpretations, not the 'raw data'." I would argue for validity, which raises some real problems when you are dealing with 12 trillion dots instead of twelve. I would seem to mandate the construction of "models" based on some set of "primitive" interpretations/patterns. It would seem that some kind of constraints are necessary to build 'orderly' models. If so, then the constraints are interpretations (meta-expriences) in the same fashion as for the "primitives" and raise the same kind of questions — are the 'structures' constraining the models the only possible ones?

- of course, a good Buddhist epistemologist  would argue that you can transcend the "patterns" and behave in accordance with the 'raw data' but few on this list will be interested in that.

just a start ...

davew



On Sat, Jan 12, 2019, at 12:23 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Wow.  It's all those things at once! 

 

REALLY?!!!!!

 

What a great example!

 

Let me try and put it into words.  The nominalist would like to say “There is no real pattern there, it just depends on how you want to look at it.”  The realist would like to say, “Nonsense.  The patterns appear when you take into account the point of view of the observer.  Anybody who cares to take that point of view, adopt that procedure, etc., will see each pattern.  They are real patterns.” 

 

How do you understand it, Dave?

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2019 11:53 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] models, reality, etc.

 

This popped up elsewhere and I thought the FRIAM group might find it interesting. I had not heard of "statistical equivalence" before. The GIF recalled to mind previous conversations about Reality (which is "real:" the dots, the triangles, the squares, ...?); models; interpretations (ala Copenhagen); even Nick's Natural Design.

 

davew

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove


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Re: models, reality, etc.

David Eric Smith
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
A person who works in data compression, randomness, or statistical mechanics might try to frame a description that is as operational and contains as much structural resolution in it as possible, by drawing language from the sectors of behavior and observation that are as robustly disambiguatable among people as possible.

Main originators Kolmogorov (minimum sufficient statistics), Rissanen (minimum description length).  It would be about ensembles of the possible, the role of the actualized within that ensemble, and whether the actual can be partly identified by recognizing smaller ensembles in which it is typical, rather than starting with larger ensembles in which it is atypical by some criterion.  A description might run something like this:

1. The way the graphic is presented to the viewer (dots moving almost in lines on a deliberately blank and flat page) — taking into account that it was designed by people to make a point when viewed by people — suggests an ensemble in which the dots could be positioned anywhere (formalized in some model of randomness) and could over time trace any trajectory of their joint motion defined by nearly linear (inertial-looking) intervals with certain occasional nearly-angular reflections.

2. It happens that the actual trajectory of positions does not have nearly so much freedom.  It can be defined by maintaining four equilateral triangles the centroids of which are positioned on a rotating square, and the orientations of which rotate at a particular rate relative to the rotation rate of the square.  I don’t see right away whether there is some important relation between the two rotation rates re. tracing out the prism, or whether any ratio of the two rotation rates in some interval would produce a prism with the same topological properties and only different relative areas of the internal triangular panels.  (I suspect the latter, and also that if I weren’t so lazy, that would be easy to prove.)  It would be a little more interesting if some relative rotation rates produce “the most random-looking” motions of the dots, and in that way some combinations are special for their ability to fool the viewer by mimicking the usual computational models of random-ideal-gases-in-boxes.

3.  The specification of any trajectory within an ensemble of possible motions constrained as in point 2 is vastly shorter, involving only positions and sizes of four triangles, and two rotation rates, than the specification of a particular trajectory within an ensemble that allows any “random” trajectories in the collection suggested in point 1.  Although several different-looking patterns can be drawn on the resulting dots (only triangles, only squares, or only the prism), these patterns do not have fully independent information.  Each is a _function_ (mathematical sense) of the minimal information set identifying the trajectory, meaning that it adds no new information to what is already in that minimal set.  The fact that, if we draw triangles, we have four of them in a square, whereas if we draw squares, we have three of them on an equilateral, is a visual illustration that the same constraints are being expressed in either rendering.

My above list did not use the word “real”.  The operational description contained no role for an “observer”; it consists of defined relations of smaller ensembles within larger ones.  To the extent that there was any “observer” in the language, that was in the framing narrative that defends our choice to introduce ensemble 1 as an a priori model, based on claims of how people set up optical illusions and games to illustrate things to other people.  Whether or not that framing narrative is correct has no bearing on whether the ensembles _can_ be defined, or on our ability to state true propositions about relations between the sub-ensemble 2, the prior ensemble 1, and the specificity of the actual trajectory within either of them.  The various information measures in the ensembles do not depend on whether we choose to draw lines in the graphic to express different variable values in rendering the trajectory; that choice governs the interface between the properties of the ensemble and the consumption propensities of people looking at computer graphics, and could be considered to occupy a conversation in cognition and neuroscience.


I just got out of a starting conversational exchange with a philosopher of science who writes about emergence, and it has the same unhappy and inter-human fraught tenor as my above paragraphs.  Apologies for that.  I try to understand what ontologists believe their language carries, which is not carried in the more nuts-and-bolts language that they generally know but don’t think needs to be part of the discussion.  If we believed ourselves to be discussing the structure, oddities, and hazards of human perspective-taking, I could see their language as having descriptive value in that realm, but I think they believe it is not “only” that, but actually not that “at all”.  I think they are saying they are saying something else.  

I suppose what I am supposed to do is not worry about whether there are operational, structured languages enabling us to see clearly and speak systematically about what the dots might do versus what they do, and rather view the whole exercise as a metaphor whose elements are meant to stand in for some other relations in the ways we try to use conversation or choreographed behavior to arrive at something with reliability properties beyond those of our shifting and ephemeral perceptive gestalts.  Or maybe not that at all, and something completely different was supposed to be the point….

Eric



> On Jan 13, 2019, at 4:23 AM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Wow.  It's all those things at once!  
>  
> REALLY?!!!!!
>  
> What a great example!
>  
> Let me try and put it into words.  The nominalist would like to say “There is no real pattern there, it just depends on how you want to look at it.”  The realist would like to say, “Nonsense.  The patterns appear when you take into account the point of view of the observer.  Anybody who cares to take that point of view, adopt that procedure, etc., will see each pattern.  They are real patterns.”  
>  
> How do you understand it, Dave?
>  
> Nick
>  
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>  
>  
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Prof David West
> Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2019 11:53 AM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: [FRIAM] models, reality, etc.
>  
> This popped up elsewhere and I thought the FRIAM group might find it interesting. I had not heard of "statistical equivalence" before. The GIF recalled to mind previous conversations about Reality (which is "real:" the dots, the triangles, the squares, ...?); models; interpretations (ala Copenhagen); even Nick's Natural Design.
>  
> davew
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove


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Re: models, reality, etc.

Jochen Fromm-5
In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
Some say entanglement is related to spacetime itself. There was a Quanta magazine article about it recently.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/time-entanglement-raises-quantum-mysteries-20160119/

-Jochen


Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------
From: Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]>
Date: 1/12/19 20:42 (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] models, reality, etc.

Entanglement is probabilistic:  Look for a dot at some location, if you see one, then there's a probability of seeing another dot at another location, and a different probability if you don't. 

On 1/12/19, 11:53 AM, "Friam on behalf of Prof David West" <[hidden email] on behalf of [hidden email]> wrote:

    This popped up elsewhere and I thought the FRIAM group might find it interesting. I had not heard of "statistical equivalence" before. The GIF recalled to mind previous conversations about Reality (which is "real:" the dots, the triangles, the squares, ...?); models; interpretations (ala Copenhagen); even Nick's Natural Design.
   
    davew
   

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: models, reality, etc.

Barry MacKichan
In reply to this post by Prof David West
I don’t have any time to pursue it, but I bet there would be something
interesting if you look at the various groups corresponding to the
symmetries, and their relations (direct product??). Is something like
that involved in the “elsewhere” where this popped up?

--Barry


On 12 Jan 2019, at 13:53, Prof David West wrote:

> This popped up elsewhere and I thought the FRIAM group might find it
> interesting. I had not heard of "statistical equivalence" before. The
> GIF recalled to mind previous conversations about Reality (which is
> "real:" the dots, the triangles, the squares, ...?); models;
> interpretations (ala Copenhagen); even Nick's Natural Design.
>

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Re: models, reality, etc.

Eric Charles-2
In reply to this post by Prof David West
Dave asked how valid it was to claim "every experiencer's behavior will be grounded on the interpretations, not the 'raw data'."

I think the answer has to be: Centuries of effort to try to nail that down how we "interpret" "raw data" can only be resolved by recognizing that whatever we mean by "raw data" is, at best,  what is seen from an additional point of view,  which we have no a priori reason to privilege in the way that terminology intends. 
(William James waves from the corner of the room. )




On Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 3:13 PM Prof David West <[hidden email] wrote:
Given an "experiencer":

- what is directly "experienced" is apparently randomly moving dots.

- what is "interpreted" from that experience (a kind of meta-experience) are 'triangles', 'squares', 'stars', and 'prisms'.

- every experiencer's behavior will be grounded on the interpretations, not the 'raw data'. In an important way this makes the patterns 'more real' than the data.

- if two independent experiencers could occupy the exact same observational point, they might experience the same interpretations. Open question because they could not occupy the same observational point at the same time.

- if we could devise a 'language' that would allow us to say that, "my equilateral triangles are identical to your slightly isosceles triangles plus Factor X," we could say that we are seeing the same patterns / making the same interpretations.

- are triangles, squares, stars, and prisms, the only possible interpretations/experiences? if so why? One possibility is anthropomorphic in nature - they are the only possible patterns that an observer configured as a human being can see. This answer would seem to weaken the case for the 'reality' of the patterns vis-a-vis the reality of the dots. Two, the patterns are akin to Platonic 'ideals', in which case they are real, but in a sense that forces a kind of dualism.

- how valid is the statement, "every experiencer's behavior will be grounded on the interpretations, not the 'raw data'." I would argue for validity, which raises some real problems when you are dealing with 12 trillion dots instead of twelve. I would seem to mandate the construction of "models" based on some set of "primitive" interpretations/patterns. It would seem that some kind of constraints are necessary to build 'orderly' models. If so, then the constraints are interpretations (meta-expriences) in the same fashion as for the "primitives" and raise the same kind of questions — are the 'structures' constraining the models the only possible ones?

- of course, a good Buddhist epistemologist  would argue that you can transcend the "patterns" and behave in accordance with the 'raw data' but few on this list will be interested in that.

just a start ...

davew



On Sat, Jan 12, 2019, at 12:23 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Wow.  It's all those things at once! 

 

REALLY?!!!!!

 

What a great example!

 

Let me try and put it into words.  The nominalist would like to say “There is no real pattern there, it just depends on how you want to look at it.”  The realist would like to say, “Nonsense.  The patterns appear when you take into account the point of view of the observer.  Anybody who cares to take that point of view, adopt that procedure, etc., will see each pattern.  They are real patterns.” 

 

How do you understand it, Dave?

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2019 11:53 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] models, reality, etc.

 

This popped up elsewhere and I thought the FRIAM group might find it interesting. I had not heard of "statistical equivalence" before. The GIF recalled to mind previous conversations about Reality (which is "real:" the dots, the triangles, the squares, ...?); models; interpretations (ala Copenhagen); even Nick's Natural Design.

 

davew

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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============================================================
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