Friam

observability and randomness

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gepr

observability and randomness

I'm satisfied that river deltas are unrelated to the mechanism I proposed (LOUMFW). Since this is an entirely different subject, I've changed the title (and "pulled a Jon" by starting a new thread while quoting from an old thread 8^).

You mention the no onto mappings result from Lawvere. It seems to me that the lexicon of control theory might better get at the point. Observability is broken down into several sub-types, some of which are more natural to me (and simulation), like reachability and constructability. Gisin's yapping about far away digits *becoming* more definite or *changing* disposition connotes evolution, whereas the language in Lawvere connote static maps (albeit, maybe, with pathological shapes, bulbous regions that may only be reachable by wiggling one's way through little wormhole constrictions or somesuch). At least they connote that to me with tiny exposure to category theory and relatively larger exposure to control theory. My only point is maybe look to that body of work for something about observability's relationship to randomness?

On 6/23/20 6:30 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:

> For instance, in computational theory, recognition of a language by a
> machine offers a means of computing statements in the language. Machines
> are ordered by their capacity, and eventually, even Turing machines are
> limited to what they /can know/. In the section of Gisin's paper entitled
> "/Non-deterministic Classical Physics/", Gisin relies on a result from
> symbolic dynamics that I am continuing to work through. Effectively,
> the result can be summarized as saying that limited observability of
> chaotic dynamics /entails/ randomness[‡].
> [...]
> [‡] The clearest source I have for this at present is article 5, section 3
> of Conceptual Mathematics by Lawvere and Schanuel. If anyone on the
> list has further expertise or reference for this concept, your input will be appreciated.

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

jon zingale

Re: observability and randomness

Gisin's yapping is yapping about sequences, as are morphisms into Lawvere's
(Y^Nat, β) object. The onto-property of morphisms from X gives the tipping
point where all sequences from the perspective of Y are covered even though
X may be doing more. That Lawvere is constructing his objects in a category
of dynamical systems, he is talking about evolution of state. One of the
best treatments of control theory from a categorical perspective is in Arbib
and Manes. There, they construct observability and realizability via
free/co-free dynamics and highlight the connection the two concepts share
via duality. Similar to the point I was making about Markov being a matter
of perspective (model), while dynamics are not static in one frame they are
in another. I hope that I am not being too obvious while missing your point.
There are graph-theoretic interpretations of randomness as complete graphs,
where everything is connected to everything. One interpretation is that any
structure imaginable arises as a sub-object. Another, perhaps by assigning
non-zero transition probabilities to all the edges, would be that any state
is reachable from any other. I am not sure I am responding appropriately to
your post.

Could you tell me more about the lack of relation between river deltas and
the proposed mechanism? I remember you calling the theory LOUMFW, but I am
not sure if it is an acronym or what.

Glen says: "and "pulled a Jon" by starting a new thread while quoting from
an old thread 8^)."

Huh, it's kinda nice to have something named after me.

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gepr

Re: observability and randomness

OK. Sorry. I should have assumed you'd already thought it through.

On 6/24/20 8:55 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:

> Gisin's yapping is yapping about sequences, as are morphisms into Lawvere's
> (Y^Nat, β) object. The onto-property of morphisms from X gives the tipping
> point where all sequences from the perspective of Y are covered even though
> X may be doing more. That Lawvere is constructing his objects in a category
> of dynamical systems, he is talking about evolution of state. One of the
> best treatments of control theory from a categorical perspective is in Arbib
> and Manes. There, they construct observability and realizability via
> free/co-free dynamics and highlight the connection the two concepts share
> via duality. Similar to the point I was making about Markov being a matter
> of perspective (model), while dynamics are not static in one frame they are
> in another. I hope that I am not being too obvious while missing your point.
> There are graph-theoretic interpretations of randomness as complete graphs,
> where everything is connected to everything. One interpretation is that any
> structure imaginable arises as a sub-object. Another, perhaps by assigning
> non-zero transition probabilities to all the edges, would be that any state
> is reachable from any other. I am not sure I am responding appropriately to
> your post.

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

gepr

Re: observability and randomness

In reply to this post by jon zingale

I feel like you've asked me to prove a negative with your Eliza-like "Can you tell me more about ...?" 8^D But because I have no choice but to be the dork that I am, I also have no choice about whether to have the conversation. [sigh]

Maybe it was influenced by this article:

Rationalization is rational
Cushman 2020
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/rationalization-is-rational/2A13B99ED09BD802C0924D3681FEC55B

Or not. I read like 10 things at a time, abandon some, follow through on others, etc. This one was printed out sitting next to the toilet. In any case, it states the point well with this paragraph: "In sum, rationalization approximates a form of rational inference and thus can be understood as a variety of IRL at Marr’s computational level – its function is to extract useful information from observed actions. This does not imply, however, that rationalization always involves Bayesian inference at a mechanistic level. In some cases, it may, but in other cases relatively simple cognitive processes, akin to those identified by Heider and Festinger, may approximate the rational inferences described above."

Even allowing the idea that *some* mechanisms we might say look like "free will" might be fully low-order Markovian, there are (likely) *some* other mechanisms that would not fit that bill. This wouldn't be important if I thought that set of other mechanisms was *small* in comparison to the "rational" mechanisms. But because I think people who prioritize for thought/beliefs/desires and such ... interiority, I guess, are delusional, my intuition is that those other mechanisms are more prevalent than the "rational" ones. To be as clear as possible, I think rationality is very rare, if it exists at all. And that argues against (low order) Markovity.

And on that note, I'd LOVE it if someone knew of a thorough criticism of this result:

THE EFFECT OF SEVERITY OF INITIATION ON LIKING FOR A GROUP
Aaronson & Mills 1959
http://faculty.uncfsu.edu/tvancantfort/Syllabi/Gresearch/Readings/A_Aronson.pdf

I debated changing the subject to indicate a tangent from observability. But I would lump an [un]willingness to give up *sunk costs* (e.g. severity of initiation/hazing) as a kind of truncation error. So, it may still be on topic.

On 6/24/20 8:55 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> Could you tell me more about the lack of relation between river deltas and
> the proposed mechanism? I remember you calling the theory LOUMFW, but I am
> not sure if it is an acronym or what.

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Frank Wimberly-2

Re: observability and randomness

As a defense mechanism rationalization is primarily characteristic of adolescence. "I know we're not supposed to climb up here but I don't see how it will hurt anything." But without explicit language (until confronted).

If you want a reference, Glen, see Karen Horney "Neurosis and Human Growth".

Frank

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On Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 3:33 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

I feel like you've asked me to prove a negative with your Eliza-like "Can you tell me more about ...?" 8^D But because I have no choice but to be the dork that I am, I also have no choice about whether to have the conversation. [sigh]

Maybe it was influenced by this article:

Rationalization is rational
Cushman 2020
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/rationalization-is-rational/2A13B99ED09BD802C0924D3681FEC55B

Or not. I read like 10 things at a time, abandon some, follow through on others, etc. This one was printed out sitting next to the toilet. In any case, it states the point well with this paragraph: "In sum, rationalization approximates a form of rational inference and thus can be understood as a variety of IRL at Marr’s computational level – its function is to extract useful information from observed actions. This does not imply, however, that rationalization always involves Bayesian inference at a mechanistic level. In some cases, it may, but in other cases relatively simple cognitive processes, akin to those identified by Heider and Festinger, may approximate the rational inferences described above."

Even allowing the idea that *some* mechanisms we might say look like "free will" might be fully low-order Markovian, there are (likely) *some* other mechanisms that would not fit that bill. This wouldn't be important if I thought that set of other mechanisms was *small* in comparison to the "rational" mechanisms. But because I think people who prioritize for thought/beliefs/desires and such ... interiority, I guess, are delusional, my intuition is that those other mechanisms are more prevalent than the "rational" ones. To be as clear as possible, I think rationality is very rare, if it exists at all. And that argues against (low order) Markovity.

And on that note, I'd LOVE it if someone knew of a thorough criticism of this result:

THE EFFECT OF SEVERITY OF INITIATION ON LIKING FOR A GROUP
Aaronson & Mills 1959
http://faculty.uncfsu.edu/tvancantfort/Syllabi/Gresearch/Readings/A_Aronson.pdf

I debated changing the subject to indicate a tangent from observability. But I would lump an [un]willingness to give up *sunk costs* (e.g. severity of initiation/hazing) as a kind of truncation error. So, it may still be on topic.

On 6/24/20 8:55 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> Could you tell me more about the lack of relation between river deltas and
> the proposed mechanism? I remember you calling the theory LOUMFW, but I am
> not sure if it is an acronym or what.

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gepr

Re: observability and randomness

Why always with the books? Papers! I want papers! Besides, does Horney's book criticize Aronson and Mills? I suspect not. It would suck to read a whole book thinking you recommended it for that reason and realizing you recommended it for some other bizarre reason unknown to me.

On 6/29/20 2:50 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> As a defense mechanism rationalization is primarily characteristic of adolescence. "I know we're not supposed to climb up here but I don't see how it will hurt anything." But without explicit language (until confronted).
>
> If you want a reference, Glen, see Karen Horney "Neurosis and Human Growth".

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: observability and randomness

That's funny, Glen. Karen Horney probably died before those men were born. I'm sure you will say that you want current research not ancient wisdom. I have no ulterior motive. Just look up "rationalization" in the index.

'Rationalization may be defined as self- deception by reasoning.' ... Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth

---
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140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 4:13 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Why always with the books? Papers! I want papers! Besides, does Horney's book criticize Aronson and Mills? I suspect not. It would suck to read a whole book thinking you recommended it for that reason and realizing you recommended it for some other bizarre reason unknown to me.

On 6/29/20 2:50 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> As a defense mechanism rationalization is primarily characteristic of adolescence. "I know we're not supposed to climb up here but I don't see how it will hurt anything." But without explicit language (until confronted).
>
> If you want a reference, Glen, see Karen Horney "Neurosis and Human Growth".

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: observability and randomness

In reply to this post by gepr

What's the quote of the quote by Freeman Dyson, "Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books"?
I think you must be resisting the reality of becoming old. Books, man!

Marcus

On 6/29/20, 3:13 PM, "Friam on behalf of ∄ uǝlƃ" <[hidden email] on behalf of [hidden email]> wrote:

Why always with the books? Papers! I want papers! Besides, does Horney's book criticize Aronson and Mills? I suspect not. It would suck to read a whole book thinking you recommended it for that reason and realizing you recommended it for some other bizarre reason unknown to me.

On 6/29/20 2:50 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> As a defense mechanism rationalization is primarily characteristic of adolescence. "I know we're not supposed to climb up here but I don't see how it will hurt anything." But without explicit language (until confronted).
>
> If you want a reference, Glen, see Karen Horney "Neurosis and Human Growth".

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gepr

Re: observability and randomness

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

I don't care about rationalization without a (computational) mechanism. I do care about Aronson and Mills' result. Sorry for not being clear. I won't read Horney's book.

On 6/29/20 3:21 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> That's funny, Glen. Karen Horney probably died before those men were born. I'm sure you will say that you want current research not ancient wisdom. I have no ulterior motive. Just look up "rationalization" in the index.
>
> 'Rationalization may be defined as self- deception by reasoning.' ... Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

gepr

Re: observability and randomness

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Ha! Nah. Books are for people who can't handle peer review ... or ... what's the aphorism? I would have written a shorter letter if I'd had the time? ... something like that. Books are for people who can't think clear enough to keep the verbiage down.

On 6/29/20 3:24 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> What's the quote of the quote by Freeman Dyson, "Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books"?
> I think you must be resisting the reality of becoming old. Books, man!

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David Eric Smith

Re: observability and randomness

Hey!

> On Jun 30, 2020, at 7:38 AM, ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Ha! Nah. Books are for people who can't handle peer review

We got peer reviewed, by five people. One of the reviews was 35 pages long. The editor said he had never received anything like it. Parts of it were so useful we used them to rewrite the preface.

> ... or ... what's the aphorism? I would have written a shorter letter if I'd had the time? ... something like that. Books are for people who can't think clear enough to keep the verbiage down.
>
> On 6/29/20 3:24 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> What's the quote of the quote by Freeman Dyson, "Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books"?
>> I think you must be resisting the reality of becoming old. Books, man!
>
>
> --
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>
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gepr

Re: observability and randomness

Ha! "Present company excluded" obviously. 8^D I used to be careful to apply that caveat when I went around willy-nilly insulting whole swaths of people. Marcus is right; I am getting old and going down denying it all the way.

Do you think you were *lucky* to get such constructive feedback? Or did you, perhaps, recommend people to review it, knowing they would be knowledgeable and interested?

On 6/29/20 3:40 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:

> Hey!
>
>> On Jun 30, 2020, at 7:38 AM, ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> Ha! Nah. Books are for people who can't handle peer review
>
> We got peer reviewed, by five people. One of the reviews was 35 pages long. The editor said he had never received anything like it. Parts of it were so useful we used them to rewrite the preface.
>
>
>> ... or ... what's the aphorism? I would have written a shorter letter if I'd had the time? ... something like that. Books are for people who can't think clear enough to keep the verbiage down.
>>

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

thompnickson2

Re: observability and randomness

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

Reasoning from your conclusion? Casuistry?

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, June 29, 2020 4:21 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] observability and randomness

'Rationalization may be defined as self- deception by reasoning.' ... Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 4:13 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Why always with the books? Papers! I want papers! Besides, does Horney's book criticize Aronson and Mills? I suspect not. It would suck to read a whole book thinking you recommended it for that reason and realizing you recommended it for some other bizarre reason unknown to me.

On 6/29/20 2:50 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> As a defense mechanism rationalization is primarily characteristic of adolescence. "I know we're not supposed to climb up here but I don't see how it will hurt anything." But without explicit language (until confronted).
>
> If you want a reference, Glen, see Karen Horney "Neurosis and Human Growth".

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Roger Critchlow-2

Re: observability and randomness

Okay, so we touch on "free will" as the buttress of personal moral responsibility, but how about the opposite side of the coin, as in I chose to keep those millions in the hedge fund, therefore I deserve all the returns that my investment earned, no one else can have any of it, it's mine! And if great-great-great-grand-dad earned all of his in the slave trade, so what, that was perfectly respectable business back then, no blot on the wealth he left us from the lives it destroyed. So the doctrine of free will simultaneously punishes the poor and rewards the rich for making equally no-brainer decisions, that's just the way the world is.

This came up in recent reviews of Maria Konnikova's new book, The Biggest Bluff, which is largely a meditation on Chance and Necessity, to recall another best-seller. Her description of how to be a high stakes poker player sounds a lot like Glen's construction on how free will might work, hours spent watching video of other high stakes players, disciplining oneself to not take credit for the strokes of luck that fall your way, nor to take the blame for the strokes that fall the other way. Riding the edge of what you can effect, learning to discriminate, disdaining to be distracted by that which you cannot control.

Are poker games deterministic? Can you learn to play better poker?

-- rec --

David Eric Smith

Re: observability and randomness

In reply to this post by gepr

Yes Glen,

Wonderful way to put the question.

We did recommend people (at least some of the 5 came from our list; perhaps not all of them, and there are 3 whom I couldn’t immediately identify by style). I warned the publisher that they were people we knew, but told him I believed we were acting in good faith in choosing them because we knew them to care about the subject and expected that they would be both critical and constructive as they saw serving it. The place we were lucky is in having a community in which such people are even possible.

One of the publisher’s comments (I said “editor” before, but should have said “publisher”) was that he had never witnessed a reviewer willing to put so much effort into making someone else’s product better. This was a guy for whom our book was one of his last projects before retiring from a decades-long highly productive career. And that was entirely in character for this reviewer, whom I have seen to do that repeatedly. I offered him to be credited when we used his clearer and more economical framing to rewrite the preface (to your point about reducing verbiage), and he said there wasn’t a need to do that; if we included him in the ordinary list of acknowledged people that would be plenty.

There is a profound point in your exchange with Frank, though, on how much of Bacon we want to keep, and where we want to deviate from him. My gripe about papers — which I try to put in immoderate terms for the same reasons you do — is that they are a product of the MTV generation. Anything that doesn’t fit into the 1/3-second attention frame is excluded. My great distress is that, whereas I once read a fair amount of book-length material, now I nearly never read books, and can barely keep up with papers, not by choice but just by being perpetually cornered. I understand that there are others, currently including probably most very-successful researchers, for whom papers are the vastly preferred medium, even if they have the choice.

The place it touches Bacon is that, if facts really were self-interpreting, then it would never be correct to say that the whole is more or less than the sum of the parts. There would only be parts, and whoever can eat the most parts wins. That way of putting it of course munges many things that are not equivalent, such as the role of interpretation, versus just searching, selecting and sorting: the latter kinds of things Leslie Valiant calls out in his distinction between merely “learning” and “teaching” (both meant to be computer science concepts). The idea of intellectual independence in science, which I hear you defending in many of your diatribes, is that we mostly want to stay close to Bacon, because we can re-triangulate on the lower-level observations and both save time and claw free of errors imposed by selectors, sorters, or interpreters, in various ways.

Whereas for me, there are very few new facts I have to offer, and much of what I do offer that people sometimes consider beneficial is carried in the selection, assembly, and ordering of facts in what I think make a more likely preponderence-of-evidence story. It is miserable, in that kind of writing, to decide whether one has ever contributed _anything at all_. The people who reject my papers are comfortable saying “no” and not wasting a lot of time to decide it. And yet for me as a consumer of other people’s work, it is almost the entire difference between feeling lost and feeling oriented. The authors who can present an extended construction and make good choices of selection and ordering along its length save me an enormous time wandering aimlessly, to arrive at what would have been substantively the same choices as theirs. Much of my effort goes into building the equivalent in the places where there don’t seem to be any such good writers working, and inevitably that is much of what I have available to offer for print.

As on so many other threads, I can’t escape coming back to the question what kind of truth-concept builds out of the various parts.

Best,

Eric

> On Jun 30, 2020, at 7:56 AM, ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Ha! "Present company excluded" obviously. 8^D I used to be careful to apply that caveat when I went around willy-nilly insulting whole swaths of people. Marcus is right; I am getting old and going down denying it all the way.
>
> Do you think you were *lucky* to get such constructive feedback? Or did you, perhaps, recommend people to review it, knowing they would be knowledgeable and interested?
>
> On 6/29/20 3:40 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
>> Hey!
>>
>>> On Jun 30, 2020, at 7:38 AM, ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Ha! Nah. Books are for people who can't handle peer review
>>
>> We got peer reviewed, by five people. One of the reviews was 35 pages long. The editor said he had never received anything like it. Parts of it were so useful we used them to rewrite the preface.
>>
>>
>>> ... or ... what's the aphorism? I would have written a shorter letter if I'd had the time? ... something like that. Books are for people who can't think clear enough to keep the verbiage down.
>>>
>
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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: observability and randomness

In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2

Roger writes:

< Okay, so we touch on "free will" as the buttress of personal moral responsibility, but how about the opposite side of the coin, as in I chose to keep those millions in the hedge fund, therefore I deserve all the returns that my investment earned, no one else can have any of it, it's mine! >

Yep, it all comes crashing down together!

Marcus

gepr

Re: observability and randomness

In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2

You're argument took a very cool turn from the distribution of inheritance actions to the distribution of cards and (conditional) distributions of playing the hand. I think you're right to call out the collective/systemic landscape vs. the individual's wiggle inside it (if that wiggle exists at all).

At the last Zoom meeting, I argued that one can't (credibly) be proud of something one had no hand in. E.g. being proud of your eye color or something John Locke or Thomas Paine said umpteen million years ago. Someone interrupted another discussant later to shout out "What about being ashamed? Can you be ashamed of something you had no hand in?" I didn't answer because he was interrupting someone else. But my answer is "Yes", you can be ashamed of something you had no hand in. The reason I answer that way is because shame (and yes SteveS, guilt too) are triggers for improvement, change, evolution. Pride is inherently conservative, whereas shame is inherently progressive. Pride is backward looking and shame is forward looking.

So, as long as we're assuming there is *some* tiny bit of wiggle we might have some control over, the direction of the arrow of time matters. And that's what allows one to argue for actions like reparations as well as adjusting one's behavior over *iterated* poker games. As I argued with Jon, the iteration (and approximating similarity measures for successive conditions) matters. Whatever little wiggle there is *might* need iteration to build up, in contrast to a typical sense of "free will" where people think they have huge, game-changing options at every instant.

On 6/29/20 5:53 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> Okay, so we touch on "free will" as the buttress of personal moral responsibility, but how about the opposite side of the coin, as in I chose to keep those millions in the hedge fund, therefore I deserve all the returns that my investment earned, no one else can have any of it, it's mine! And if great-great-great-grand-dad earned all of his in the slave trade, so what, that was perfectly respectable business back then, no blot on the wealth he left us from the lives it destroyed. So the doctrine of free will simultaneously punishes the poor and rewards the rich for making equally no-brainer decisions, that's just the way the world is.
>
> This came up in recent reviews of Maria Konnikova's new book, The Biggest Bluff, which is largely a meditation on Chance and Necessity, to recall another best-seller. Her description of how to be a high stakes poker player sounds a lot like Glen's construction on how free will might work, hours spent watching video of other high stakes players, disciplining oneself to not take credit for the strokes of luck that fall your way, nor to take the blame for the strokes that fall the other way. Riding the edge of what you can effect, learning to discriminate, disdaining to be distracted by that which you cannot control.
>
> Are poker games deterministic? Can you learn to play better poker?

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gepr

Re: observability and randomness

In reply to this post by David Eric Smith

I have such trouble slicing out content of your posts. Pfft. They hang together too well. The story of the productive reviewer is well-taken. My own story was with an anonymous reviewer who *seriously* trashed one of our papers. The secret was that this reviewer thought almost exactly like me. Every criticism they raised was something I'd raised with my team at some earlier point, only to be kneaded into submission for the morale of the team. So the reviewer did me a great favor. I didn't get the paper rewritten into a form that would satisfy either of us. But we addressed all their points well enough to satisfy the reviewer (or so they just gave up because we were so willing to make changes even if we didn't do it "right" 8^). But this was just a paper. I can't even imagine the amount of work it would take to write a (credibly sourced) book. I've started one with a set of essays, only to leave them languishing in some dark corner of the cloud.

I have to take issue with your inference that I argue for intellectual independence. I strongly believe whatever it is that goes on inside people's bodies is *private*. But it is also completely dependent on whatever signals have impinged on them over their lifetime. The structure/meaning of whatever's inside may not map at all to the structure inside someone else. But that structure is a slavish representation of the events that built that person. So, I can't argue for independence. But I can argue for pluralism because the *only* way to get to where we are is to do it all over again, in every detail of every ontogenic event. Any shortcuts/metaphors one makes between one part and another will be ignorant abstractions that humiliate the things being mapped.

Regardless, I think you're right to call that dependence on ontogeny (of the collective as well as the individual) "Baconian" because staying close to the data, close to the evidence, in an intimate and intertwined relationship with the world is the only way we could ever map our structures, find common ground. The common ground comes only through rapid, regular, check-ins with a world we're both intimate with.

And this is one reason I like papers better than books (and criticism better than praise). Books are abstracted from the intimate world relationship in 2 ways: 1) they don't age well and 2) they're not (usually) peer/critically reviewed. (BTW, I'm not including "panning" or the sneerclub's disdain for this or that idiom or subculture. That's not what I mean by "critical", if it wasn't obvious.) Papers maintain a participative intimacy with the world that books can't. Books are for ideologues who want to retreat from the world ... argue with tame versions of themselves.

But, having said all that, I do see how your compositions of naturfacts (things you didn't invent yourself) tell an ontogenic story about the historical trace of signals that impinged upon you! And I do find that to be much less abstracting/humiliating than typical books. I haven't seen your book, yet. But my guess is it tells a more interactive story than something like Horney's book for 2 reasons: 1) Horney's book is fairly old by now and I would have a hard time hunting for the evidence I'd need to evaluate any claims she made and 2) my truck with biology, physics, and math, while impoverished compared to most of the people on this list, is much better than with psychodynamics.

As for the truth-concept being built? I remain skeptical. The only truth there can be will resist any abstraction or separation into a *concept*. The only way to stick to, to follow with an epsilon delay, a coherent truth is an intimate relationship with the world.

On 6/29/20 5:58 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:

> We did recommend people (at least some of the 5 came from our list; perhaps not all of them, and there are 3 whom I couldn’t immediately identify by style). I warned the publisher that they were people we knew, but told him I believed we were acting in good faith in choosing them because we knew them to care about the subject and expected that they would be both critical and constructive as they saw serving it. The place we were lucky is in having a community in which such people are even possible.
>
> One of the publisher’s comments (I said “editor” before, but should have said “publisher”) was that he had never witnessed a reviewer willing to put so much effort into making someone else’s product better. This was a guy for whom our book was one of his last projects before retiring from a decades-long highly productive career. And that was entirely in character for this reviewer, whom I have seen to do that repeatedly. I offered him to be credited when we used his clearer and more economical framing to rewrite the preface (to your point about reducing verbiage), and he said there wasn’t a need to do that; if we included him in the ordinary list of acknowledged people that would be plenty.
>
> There is a profound point in your exchange with Frank, though, on how much of Bacon we want to keep, and where we want to deviate from him. My gripe about papers — which I try to put in immoderate terms for the same reasons you do — is that they are a product of the MTV generation. Anything that doesn’t fit into the 1/3-second attention frame is excluded. My great distress is that, whereas I once read a fair amount of book-length material, now I nearly never read books, and can barely keep up with papers, not by choice but just by being perpetually cornered. I understand that there are others, currently including probably most very-successful researchers, for whom papers are the vastly preferred medium, even if they have the choice.
>
> The place it touches Bacon is that, if facts really were self-interpreting, then it would never be correct to say that the whole is more or less than the sum of the parts. There would only be parts, and whoever can eat the most parts wins. That way of putting it of course munges many things that are not equivalent, such as the role of interpretation, versus just searching, selecting and sorting: the latter kinds of things Leslie Valiant calls out in his distinction between merely “learning” and “teaching” (both meant to be computer science concepts). The idea of intellectual independence in science, which I hear you defending in many of your diatribes, is that we mostly want to stay close to Bacon, because we can re-triangulate on the lower-level observations and both save time and claw free of errors imposed by selectors, sorters, or interpreters, in various ways.
>
> Whereas for me, there are very few new facts I have to offer, and much of what I do offer that people sometimes consider beneficial is carried in the selection, assembly, and ordering of facts in what I think make a more likely preponderence-of-evidence story. It is miserable, in that kind of writing, to decide whether one has ever contributed _anything at all_. The people who reject my papers are comfortable saying “no” and not wasting a lot of time to decide it. And yet for me as a consumer of other people’s work, it is almost the entire difference between feeling lost and feeling oriented. The authors who can present an extended construction and make good choices of selection and ordering along its length save me an enormous time wandering aimlessly, to arrive at what would have been substantively the same choices as theirs. Much of my effort goes into building the equivalent in the places where there don’t seem to be any such good writers working, and inevitably that is much of what I have available to offer for print.
>
> As on so many other threads, I can’t escape coming back to the question what kind of truth-concept builds out of the various parts.

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gepr

Re: observability and randomness

OK. I bit the bullet and bought a copy after having it in my Goodreads wishlist for awhile. I was interested to find that you're an *illustrator*! >8^D

https://bookshop.org/books/the-origin-and-nature-of-life-on-earth/9781107121881
"Eric Smith prides himself on being an adaptable, versatile, and reliable illustrator who is skilled at working with both digital and traditional media. His design background and creative aptitude enables him to produce work to fit a variety of illustrations."

I sent a note to bookshop.org pointing to your SFI page. We wouldn't want to confuse the FBI when they Google you for rabble-rousing.

On 6/30/20 8:29 AM, ∄ uǝlƃ wrote:
> I haven't seen your book, yet. But my guess is it tells a more interactive story than something like Horney's book for 2 reasons: 1) Horney's book is fairly old by now and I would have a hard time hunting for the evidence I'd need to evaluate any claims she made and 2) my truck with biology, physics, and math, while impoverished compared to most of the people on this list, is much better than with psychodynamics.

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: observability and randomness

I remember many years ago when Eric was apparently prodded for some bio, he produced something including a terrifying claim like "Eric Smith is a generalist." I was very pleased to read this, but I got the distinct impression he was spoken to about how to one should present themselves in order to appear distinguished. This is even better!

On 6/30/20, 9:43 AM, "Friam on behalf of ∄ uǝlƃ" <[hidden email] on behalf of [hidden email]> wrote:

OK. I bit the bullet and bought a copy after having it in my Goodreads wishlist for awhile. I was interested to find that you're an *illustrator*! >8^D

https://bookshop.org/books/the-origin-and-nature-of-life-on-earth/9781107121881
"Eric Smith prides himself on being an adaptable, versatile, and reliable illustrator who is skilled at working with both digital and traditional media. His design background and creative aptitude enables him to produce work to fit a variety of illustrations."

I sent a note to bookshop.org pointing to your SFI page. We wouldn't want to confuse the FBI when they Google you for rabble-rousing.

On 6/30/20 8:29 AM, ∄ uǝlƃ wrote:
> I haven't seen your book, yet. But my guess is it tells a more interactive story than something like Horney's book for 2 reasons: 1) Horney's book is fairly old by now and I would have a hard time hunting for the evidence I'd need to evaluate any claims she made and 2) my truck with biology, physics, and math, while impoverished compared to most of the people on this list, is much better than with psychodynamics.

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