(no subject)

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 10:32 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "Brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are FRESH!"

Nick -

FYI, Mary just found 6 *brown* eggs in the (almost) closed off section of our coop intended to *become* the nesting boxes for our chickens... apparently they were able to "squeeze in" and lay their eggs. These our very first eggs from these hens... 6 eggs from 8 hens... possibly not all layed in the last 24 hours... but maybe. So in this case, brown eggs are *ultra* local and for sure, fresher than those even collected from the myriad egg-factories in NM. We had 3 this morning for breakfast and they were not just "fresh" but "rich" (they free range in our courtyard where along with eating any tender shoot that might to come up, they also get a lot of insects).

I still contend that what you are calling epiphenomena is primarily a reflection of our ignorance... correlations and causations which are secondary or tertiary or n-ary to what we are measuring or are focused on. I think the "epi" in epiphenoma is an artifact of the observer in a much stronger sense than a phenomenon of the system. I brought up *epi*systems before, mostly in the context of *engineered* systems. An electric starter motor on an automobile (or perhaps a "pony engine" on a Dozer or other giant yellow dirt-moving diesel-powered machine) is there for the epi-purpose of getting the main engine turning over to generate the necessary fuel-mixture-flow and compression to get it started. In principle (with a manual transmission and now clutch-lockout-switch) one can use their electric motor to move their vehicle. My parents, in fact did this once when I was very young with their VW pickup, moving over the crest of a hill so that they could coast it back into town to the VW mechanic that had just done service on it and caused some unexpected problem (my father was in no way a mechanic).

Or maybe I'm just not open-minded enough or reading this thread carefully enough

- Steve

On 8/17/20 9:23 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

Dave,

In all the years of dealing with you wizards, I have never heard of that taxonomy before. Can you direct me to a child-level introduction to it?

for those not familiar with computing, there are seven different types of "cohesion" and eight types of "coupling." Communicational coupling is one of the eight.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 7:59 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "Brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are FRESH!"

What prompted me to tell the story was another account of a convoluted and complicated reproductive cycle — the sheep tick nematode. It seems like a single, multi-step, process with each step highly cohesive and therefore appearing somewhat autonomous, but the sequence being, at minimum, communicationally coupled.

BTW — for those not familiar with computing, there are seven different types of "cohesion" and eight types of "coupling." Communicational coupling is one of the eight.

davew

On Mon, Aug 17, 2020, at 6:17 AM, David Eric Smith wrote:

Dave, hi,

Your description is very close to the original description by Conrad Waddington for the process he terms “canalization”.

I haven’t read a ton of this stuff, but I believe the first paper (also about birds, but this time ostriches), was:

author = "Waddington, C.~H.",

title = "Canalization of development and the inheritance of

acquired characters",

journal = "Nature",

volume = "150",

pages = "563--565",

year = "1942"

I expect, however, that Nick and EricC read all this stuff in the crib, because they have read and written a lot on evolution. But in any case, it gives a concrete point of departure.

Eric

On Aug 17, 2020, at 12:52 PM, Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Silly question / story – about doves not chickens.

I gave the dove, like all my creatures, a command to be fruitful and multiply. But I know my dove well, and both the he and she of dovedom tend to be a bit forgetful, even careless. It seemed to me that they would need some kind of reminder to sit on any eggs they produce but they seldom had access to an alarm clock or appointment book. Aha, said I, realizing a cute trick. A simple tweak of the hormonal system, a system that already has timing elements, will generate an itchy breast that can be soothed by sitting on the eggs. Of course, I will need to make sure an egg is sat upon and not a smooth river rock, and I want the itch to recede after an appropriate time interval, so I will have the dove secrete a substance that will bond with an element of the chemical structure on an egg shell and that reaction will require the necessary egg-sitting interval to complete and sooth the dove-breast until the hormonal system next secretes the substance.

One process, not two that are somehow related "epiphemomon-ologically." If this is my theory, might I, if I were an ethologist, construct an experiment to confirm/deny it?

I think this kind of approach to constructing/confirming a theory would end up making Occam happier than the approach discussed on the list and at last Friday's vFRIAM.

davew

On Sun, Aug 16, 2020, at 12:10 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Well, yes. But is that necessary to expose the fundamental problem? (Not a rhetorical question, I promise.) In my presentation of the problem I have tried to reduce it to “one level”, I.e, one color of spheres co=related to one size. Put in red (large) and yellow (small) spheres into the top and get small yellow spheres out the bottom. That there are four levels/sizes/colors is just gravy, isn’t it? Eye candy?

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly

Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 11:14 AM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "Brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are FRESH!"

So, your homework is to give a conditional independence relationship that describes the reality. Maybe level is the third variable.

---

Frank C. Wimberly

140 Calle Ojo Feliz,

Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918

Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 10:58 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

No. Sorry. The shape/size thing is a confusion that got introduced early in the discussion because Jon’s toy was different from Sober’s Toy. Jon’s toy sorted for shape; Sober’s for size. So, forget shape. We are just talking about size and color. (See attached illustration).

Now, imagine that we put a shroud around the toy so we cannot see into it. We put spheres, mixed by size and color into the top and shake it. (Remember that yellow balls are the smallest, green balls the next size up, etc.) Lo and behold, all the small yellow balls end up at the bottom. In the shrouded version, nothing tells us whether the machine is sorting for size and giving us color or sorting for color and giving us size, right? It’s the golden goose problem. Is the goose good at finding flecks of gold in the barnyard or does the goose contain a huge store of gold inside her. Statistically, it doesn’t make any difference, but if you are thinking of killing the goose for the gold, you better the hell know which kind of goose you got.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly

Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 10:28 AM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "Brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are FRESH!"

What it sounds like you're saying is color is independent of shape given size?

---

Frank C. Wimberly

140 Calle Ojo Feliz,

Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918

Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 9:56 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank

Doesn’t covariance beg the question of causality? Put another way, mathematics doesn’t care how the small spheres come to be yellow. Imagine an opaque “epiphenomenator” so far as the math is concerned it could as well be true that smallness is getting a free ride on yellowness as that yellowness is getting a free ride on smallness.

Thanks, again, for helping me think about this.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly

Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 7:51 AM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "Brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are FRESH!"

Good choice. Our statistical causal reasoning algorithms were based on conditional independence relations (is A independent of B given C) which are tested using covariance statistics.

---

Frank C. Wimberly

140 Calle Ojo Feliz,

Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918

Santa Fe, N

On Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 11:32 PM David Eric Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

“Covariance” is the term I see universally used in population genetics.

If one is disappointed at merely using the mathematical label for the only relation that ever appears in the mathematics, then the question arises what else one wants from a categorization, if the categorization will always be quarantined outside the math that carries the consequences.

We had this discussion for “interpretations of quantum mechanics”, and because Jon had some reasonable things to say about what one does want from such an interpretation, it seems appropriate to ask whether similar contributions should be sought here.

Eric

On Aug 16, 2020, at 2:23 PM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank,

Well, yes, precisely. And what would you call that relation? It’s a very common relation, but I don’t seem to have a very good name for it.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly

Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 10:29 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "Brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are FRESH!"

Nick,

The toy seems to me to illustrate that one variable can be causally related to another (selected) and correlated to a third which is not causally connected to the third.

Or something like that. Am I close?

Frank

---

Frank C. Wimberly

140 Calle Ojo Feliz,

Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918

Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 10:04 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi, Eric,

Nobody should treat my thoughts concerning epiphenomena, intension, extension, etc. as anything more than vaguely informed explorations. But you know that. I have struggled for years to understand what my colleagues mean by these terms and they constantly necker-cube for me, so to the extent that I cannot usually be relied to know what I am talking about, this is a particularly dangerous area for me. In particular, I don’t think Sober uses the term, “epiphenomenon”, in his book, so I would not like to have my understanding of the term scraped off on him. Calling it the device (see attachment) the Sober Epiphenomenator is probably all on me.

My colleagues have warned me away from poking at this dungheap, but I am fascinated by it. It just seems to me that underlying all this mess is a pretty simple idea, and I would like to clear it up, if only for myself. And it further seems to me that the Sober device, in its childlike simplity, might be a good place to start.

I look forward to considering your economic example to see if it fits the template, if there is a template.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith

Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 9:30 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "Brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are FRESH!"

It is so interesting that, just as in the earlier discussions of emergence and probably others, Nick uses the word “epiphenomenal” in ways it would never occur to me to use it, and as far as I can tell quite exclusive of the only way it did ever occur to me to use it. I guess DS Wilson (or Elliot Sober?) uses it the same way as Nick is using it, and I never looked up what was the canonical usage.

But anyway…

I had always used the term in reference to neoclassical economics (NE) and its treatment of preferences and institutions. I had always said that NE treated institutions as epiphenomena of preferences. By which I mean the following:

1. Even economists can’t simply pretend institutions don’t exist.

2. However, Arrow, Debreu, and McKenzie proved lovely existence theorems for optimal allocations from the competition of individual preferences, and the economists really really insist on remaining in the Garden of Eden of those existence proofs.

What to do?

3. Acknowledge that all these names and descriptions of institutions do really point at things-in-the-world, but declare that economically those things don’t actually do any work or mean anything. They are like constellations in the sky; patterns that can be seen from certain angles, as one looks at the _actual_ basis for economic behavior, which is individual preferences.

That was what I had thought was captured in the characterization “epiphenomenal”. But clearly I am using it as something of a gesture-word, and not something for which I am building a strict formal logic. It is more an attempt to explain the patterns of choices and work by a group of people, and to impute a state of mind to them to explain those choices.

The alternative to institutions as “epiphenomena” of preferences would be institutions that not only exist as patterns to be named, but as real things in the world that do essential work in determining what happens. They govern what actions are available to us, what knowledge we have to act on, what power or authority or roles, and on and on. They define signaling systems (monetary units and physical monies, ownership claims, etc.) and provide the channels on which the signals are transmitted (contract law, taxation, etc.), and thus are the framework to operationally coordinate pretty-much everything we think of as constituting economic life. Without them we would not have raw, competing complete preferences; we would largely cease to exist as economic agents.

The usage isn’t entirely unlike Nick’s semiotic/intensional-extensional contrasts, but it seems to differ in the sense that, when I say the NE guys treat institutions as epiphenomena of preferences, the work that they want done would be the same whether done by preferences or by institutions. So if they were to think of institutions as mattering, those would be contributing part of the mechanics of choice then not carried by preferences, whereas if they are epiphenomena they are like a kind of transparent window that preferences can be seen through, while the preferences carry all the weight. Kind of like the bulk magnetization in a ferromagnet is not a “different” thing that “supervenes” on all the microscopic magnetic moments and forces them into coordination: rather the bulk magnetization is nothing more than a summary statistic for the microscopic magnetizations, and really and truly _nothing_ more or less than the aggregate of them, and hence an epiphenomenon of them-all-taken-together. In contrast, all of Nick’s epiphenomena are actual, independent, real properties, and the discussion then branches off in a different direction of who or what does or doesn’t consider them consequential. That to me seems more of a contrast of salient vs. ancillary actual properties, rather than fundamental versus epi or purely apparitional phenomena.

But who knows. I guess it depends on what problem you want to solve, what count as useful categorizations.

Eric

On Aug 16, 2020, at 6:40 AM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]> wrote:

The quote in the subject line was (is?) a slogan that Massachusetts egg farmers offered in Massachusetts shoppers trying to get them to buy their eggs. It came with a ditty which, if you call me up, I will happily sing for you. The back story is that the factory egg producers in neighboring NY used chickens that produced white eggs. Like as not, if you were eating a white egg in MA you were eating an egg that had been shipped in from NY, hence longer in transit. So, if the campaign were successful, shoppers would seek out brown eggs because of their color. Brownness in eggs would be their cue for purchase. If the campaign worked, the freshness would become epiphenonmenal with respect to their selection criteria. From the point of view of Massachusetts egg-producers, the brownness of the eggs was epiphenomenal. All they cared about is whether the eggs sold in MA were from MA This would of course break down if NY farmers started using chickens that laid brown eggs or Massachusetts farmers started storing eggs before shipping them.

At Friday’s meeting, my mentors urged me to get off the “epiphenomenon” kick. I suppose I could instead use the language of semeiotics. [Pause for moaning in the distance.] In this case we could say that the producers were trying to make brownness a sign of value in eggs. This works for two quite distinct reasons: it works for the consumer because the brown is a sign of local and local is a sign of fresh; it works for the producers because brown is a sign of eggs that come from their farms.

Instead of semiotic language, we could use the language of intension and extension. [More anguished groans] The marketing campaign works because although the intensions of the choices of the two agents are different, these intensions are both part of the extension of brown eggs in Massachusetts.

Note also that the slogan is an example of powers and perils of abduction. The sloganeer first abduces that brown eggs are local and from that category (local eggs) deduces that the eggs are fresh. The two steps in the abduction/deduction process are

These eggs are brown; local eggs are brown; these eggs are local;

Local eggs are fresh; these [brown] eggs are local; these [brown] eggs are fresh.

The point (to me) is that there is a very simple thread underlying all of these ways of talking about natural selection phenomena. Could all this baroque verbiage be reduced to a simple formula?

Years ago I wrote a paper that reduced the terminology of bird song down to three operations and 5 levels of organization. In short, the paper showed that while scientists had been using several dozen terms, they had, along, only been talking about three different sorts of thing. That is the sort of reduction I would like to do on all this talk of epiphenomena, intension, extension, function, purpose, cue, side-effect, spandrel, exaptation, blah, blah-blah, and blah-blah-blah.

Thanks for allowing me to think in your space and on your time.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

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