privacy games
Locked
 
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So, to recap:
The "holographic" principle of [non]privacy: All valid questions about one's inner world can be properly asked as questions about one's interaction with the outer world. (Or for those triggered by "inside" and "outside": All valid questions about processes beyond a boundary can be properly asked as questions about the surface of the boundary.) 1st order privacy: There's a combinatorial explosion of possible ways to decode the surface. 2nd order privacy: The map from encoder to decoder is many-to-many. Feel free to continue to criticize [†] those. In the meantime, I'll just keep plugging along. >8^D My candidate for 3rd order privacy is *gaming*. We've (I think mostly SteveS, but Jon's mentioned "adversarial", too) talked about both instantaneous planned obfuscation of one's encoder choices in order to defeat the decoder choice(s). Lying, manipulation, plausible deniability (Trump's "perfect phone call"), etc. all fall into this category. I think more positive things like non-linear prose (I'm thinking Joyce or Moorcock, maybe) and poetry might qualify as well, depending on the author's intentions. But the critical distinction between 2nd order and 3rd is the purposeful gaming of the encode-decode map, not the mere accident that the map is many-to-many. We've even talked a little bit about non-instantaneous co-evolution, that the boundary is a dynamic thing and the encoders and decoders chosen can feed off one another, with both historicity and layering/depth. At the root, the 3rd order is about "agency" and perhaps "algorithmicity" (thanks to both Jon and Nick for helping isolate these). It's difficult to imagine a purely mechanical homunculus being a difficult adversary in a privacy game. Sure, computer chess (or Watson) can win well-formulated games because they have access to computational powers a human opponent doesn't have. But if we could (somehow) ensure symmetry between the opponents, I expect we'd lose any *nonrandom* outcomes to any games they constructed. A lurking lemma somewhere in here is the idea that if humans are, ultimately, mechanical, then any game devised/played by 2 identical humans would reduce to tic-tac-toe (or tit-for-tat IPD). But in any given practical, real, game we might find in the world we know, there seems to be something loopy therein ... some kind of meta-game, i.e. the game that includes [re]defining the game on top of playing the game. And *that's* the candidate for 3rd order privacy: meta-games, supergames, or hypergames. It's important to distinguish between well-founded and non-well-founded meta-games. But I wouldn't want to hinge the conception of this "holographic" principle on metaphysical choices of which axioms we should [not] include, even if it is tempting to distinguish Frank from EricC/Nick by their tendency to adopt one set of axioms over another. >8^D I think we can play meta-games regardless of whether our fundamental metaphysics is well-founded or not. So, to sum up: Even *if* all valid questions about one's inside can be properly formed as questions about the surface, when the inside and the outside are allowed to *game* each other, we can meet even stronger privacy criteria. [†] By "criticism", I mean the type of playing along, steelmanning, empathetic listening, constructive criticism to which I've tried to allude ... not sophist nit-picking about jargonal definitions of words, or appeals to authority requiring one first get a PhD in Peirce or the old dead phenomenologists, or pointing out that this principle is blatantly ridiculous in the first place. Etc. If I wanted peer-review, I wouldn't be posting this to a mailing list. -- ☣ uǝlƃ -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Glen - The "holographic" principle of [non]privacy: All valid questions about one's inner world can be properly asked as questions about one's interaction with the outer world. (Or for those triggered by "inside" and "outside": All valid questions about processes beyond a boundary can be properly asked as questions about the surface of the boundary.) 1st order privacy: There's a combinatorial explosion of possible ways to decode the surface. 2nd order privacy: The map from encoder to decoder is many-to-many. Feel free to continue to criticize [†] those. In the meantime, I'll just keep plugging along. >8^D My candidate for 3rd order privacy is *gaming*. Let me first acknowledge that previious my questions about the choice of "holographic principle" as a term were mostly a tangent. Your own criticism that (wide use of?) metaphor risks excess meaning was in evidence... I wanted to help *trim* that excess meaning while *possibly* teasing out the useful extrapolations/interpolations within the metaphorical source domain of holography as an art/science for the target domain of privacy. I'm pretty sure I can let that go here, though I *do* think there is inspiration to be found in holography for the purpose of obfuscation. But all that for another thread, if I can muster the focus to give you a proper steelmannable strawman to start with. I also want to acknowledge (and thank you for) the explication of the way you prefer to use the term criticism [†] in this context, I think it improves the quality of discourse here. On to the meat of the matter:
1st order) When we encounter a signal (use text stream as a
familiar example) we may or may not recognize that there is
obfuscated meaning in that stream. In the common example, of
course, the stream usually looks like pure gibberish... having an
*apparent* high entropy. Attempts to decode the stream usually
involve seeking transforms which yield a low entropy or high
information content. Ideally, yielding a very specific, highly
unambiguous text stream which is not only recognizeable to the
decoder but possibly directly meaningful. In the classic
imagined examples, we have spies and counter spies attempting to
pass messages and intercept/decode those messages, etc. This is
where the specific technical term Steganography takes on
interest and I think alludes to or defines your 3rd order? I'm
not trying to impute specific meaning that you didn't intend, just
looking to tease out the language you are seeking to use and align
it with existing lexicons which may or may not be fully apt for
what you are getting at. 2nd order) I am literally not clear on what the implications of many-to-many are here. 1st order... one-to-many would seem to imply that the *decoder* is searching through the space of possible decodings (combinatoric) for the presumed singular encoder, but it also implies that the *encoder* is choosing from a similarly large number of *encodings*. Perhaps you are alluding to the case where some encodings can be decoded by more than one decoder or in some cases, multiple encoders can be decoded by the same decoder? I'm not sure what you are getting at, though I *am* confident that you are getting at somethings specific that I'm simply missing (so far). 3rd order and beyond) I don't know the technical implications in
cryptography for iterated encodings by different means. My own
preferred examples have multiple encodings being very different in
quality... and in particular semantic and socio-cultural encodings
of a message as implied by your reference to Moorcock/Joyce and
poetry in general. FWIW, I would like to suggest that not all obfuscation is
adversarial in the strong sense. Dense as well as broadly
imagistic writing may be obfuscated to the casual reader for a
variety of reasons and in my experience good prose and poetry can
have many layers of meaning/implication. My own recent re-reading
of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a good example,
where I derived a very different message from that book than I did
when I read it at 20ish (whilst being deeply embedded in my own
brand of Motorcycle Cult(ure)). I'm not sure if Pirsig
necessarily considered all of the interpretations I might have
drawn at different times of my life with different experiences
under my belt, but in fact the message I received at 20ish still
seems valid and not a subset of the one received in my 60s? Is
this a tangent from your intended discussion? - Steve [†] By "criticism", I(glen) mean(s) the type of playing along, steelmanning, empathetic listening, constructive criticism to which I've (glen) tried to allude ... not sophist nit-picking about jargonal definitions of words, or appeals to authority... -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ |
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In reply to this post by gepr
See Larding, below. Nicholas Thompson Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ -----Original Message----- So, to recap: The "holographic" principle of [non]privacy: All valid questions about one's inner world can be properly asked as questions about one's interaction with the outer world. (Or for those triggered by "inside" and "outside": All valid questions about processes beyond a boundary can be properly asked as questions about the surface of the boundary.) [NST===>I absolutely, slavishly, toadally, agree. But like all metaphors, the metaphor of a hologram is intensional. So, the fact that Glen knows a heluva lot more about holograms than I do is really important here. I may not have a clue what I am toadally agreeing to. Thus, when working with metaphors, don’t we have to “specify them”, i.e., work out all those implications of the hologram that are part of its Extension that Glen Intends with his use of the metaphor. <===nst] 1st order privacy: There's a combinatorial explosion of possible ways to decode the surface. 2nd order privacy: The map from encoder to decoder is many-to-many. Feel free to continue to criticize [†] those. In the meantime, I'll just keep plugging along. >8^D My candidate for 3rd order privacy is *gaming*. We've (I think mostly SteveS, but Jon's mentioned "adversarial", too) talked about both instantaneous planned obfuscation of one's encoder choices in order to defeat the decoder choice(s). Lying, manipulation, plausible deniability (Trump's "perfect phone call"), etc. all fall into this category. I think more positive things like non-linear prose (I'm thinking Joyce or Moorcock, maybe) and poetry might qualify as well, depending on the author's intentions. But the critical distinction between 2nd order and 3rd is the purposeful gaming of the encode-decode map, not the mere accident that the map is many-to-many. We've even talked a little bit about non-instantaneous co-evolution, that the boundary is a dynamic thing and the encoders and decoders chosen can feed off one another, with both historicity and layering/depth. [NST===>Oh, yes. The boundary dance. So are there dynamic patterns of coder/decoder relation. By the way, there are two metaphors at work, here, now, the hologram and the coder/decoder relation, which we have now to specify the relation between. How does the code relation work with the hologram relation. <===nst] At the root, the 3rd order is about "agency" and perhaps "algorithmicity" (thanks to both Jon and Nick for helping isolate these). It's difficult to imagine a purely mechanical homunculus being a difficult adversary in a privacy game. Sure, computer chess (or Watson) can win well-formulated games because they have access to computational powers a human opponent doesn't have. But if we could (somehow) ensure symmetry between the opponents, I expect we'd lose any *nonrandom* outcomes to any games they constructed. A lurking lemma somewhere in here is the idea that if humans are, ultimately, mechanical, then any game devised/played by 2 identical humans would reduce to tic-tac-toe (or tit-for-tat IPD). [NST===>Ok, but now we have a third metaphor that needs to be specified, “mechanical”. What would be to say that a human is “ultimately mechanical” except to beg every question that we are asking here. <===nst] But in any given practical, real, game we might find in the world we know, there seems to be something loopy therein ... some kind of meta-game, i.e. the game that includes [re]defining the game on top of playing the game. And *that's* the candidate for 3rd order privacy: meta-games, supergames, or hypergames. It's important to distinguish between well-founded and non-well-founded meta-games. [NST===>A fourth metaphor creeping in, here: “game”. <===nst] But I wouldn't want to hinge the conception of this "holographic" principle on metaphysical choices of which axioms we should [not] include, even if it is tempting to distinguish Frank from EricC/Nick by their tendency to adopt one set of axioms over another. >8^D I think we can play meta-games regardless of whether our fundamental metaphysics is well-founded or not. So, to sum up: Even *if* all valid questions about one's inside can be properly formed as questions about the surface, when the inside and the outside are allowed to *game* each other, we can meet even stronger privacy criteria. [NST===>I am afraid by pointing to all the metaphors lurking here I will be understood as trolling (=?trawling), rather than, as I want to be understood, as highlighting some of the extraordinary richness of what Glen has written here. By the way, thanks to you all, I know the title of my next academic essay: The Intensionality of Models. Hmmm. Maybe I had better Google that, before I commit myself to it. In any case, I would greatly profit from being able to read a description of a archetypal hologram. I want to know, as precisely as possible, what Glen’s private understanding of a hologram is. <===nst] [†] By "criticism", I mean the type of playing along, steelmanning, empathetic listening, constructive criticism to which I've tried to allude ... not sophist nit-picking about jargonal definitions of words, or appeals to authority requiring one first get a PhD in Peirce or the old dead phenomenologists, or pointing out that this principle is blatantly ridiculous in the first place. Etc. If I wanted peer-review, I wouldn't be posting this to a mailing list. -- ☣ uǝlƃ -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ |
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Unfortunately, I don't register *any* metaphors, much less the 4 you register. So, I can't usefully respond to any of your registrations. But I can say that it would be a very bad mistake to think I'm talking about holograms when I say "holographic". By all means, learn the details of holography. But I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT HOLOGRAMS, not even metaphorically.
If I'm using a metaphor at all, then it is to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle On 5/26/20 8:46 AM, [hidden email] wrote: > */In any case, I would greatly profit from being able to read a description of a archetypal hologram. I want to know, as precisely as possible, what Glen’s private understanding of a hologram is. <===nst] /* -- ☣ uǝlƃ -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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In reply to this post by Steve Smith
On 5/26/20 8:22 AM, Steve Smith wrote: > 1st order) When we encounter a signal (use text stream as a familiar example) we may or may not recognize that there is obfuscated meaning in that stream. In the common example, of course, the stream usually looks like pure gibberish... having an *apparent* high entropy. Attempts to decode the stream usually involve seeking transforms which yield a low entropy or high information content. Ideally, yielding a very specific, highly unambiguous text stream which is not only recognizeable to the decoder but possibly directly meaningful. In the classic imagined examples, we have spies and counter spies attempting to pass messages and intercept/decode those messages, etc. This is where the specific technical term /Steganography/ takes on interest and I think alludes to or defines your 3rd order? I'm not trying to impute specific meaning that you didn't intend, just looking to tease out the language you are seeking to use and align it with existing lexicons which may > or may not be fully apt for what you are getting at. I don't quite understand how you're criticizing the 1st order idea. Is it only to say that I've mixed up my orders? ... that I'm confusing 1st with 3rd? If so, then yes, I probably am. The particular examples of steganography I identified were "hiding" a QR code in an image (or vice versa) and hiding 2 images inside 1. And I used these as a foil to talk about the combinatorial explosion. So, while steganography, in general, and even these 2 examples are *not* purely 1st order, they help (I think) highlight the 1-many mapping. The more strictly 1st order demonstration of the 1-many mapping was the string comprehension example. Sorry for the confusion. > 2nd order) I am literally not clear on what the implications of many-to-many are here. 1st order... one-to-many would seem to imply that the *decoder* is searching through the space of possible decodings (combinatoric) for the presumed singular encoder, but it also implies that the *encoder* is choosing from a similarly large number of *encodings*. Perhaps you are alluding to the case where some encodings can be decoded by more than one decoder or in some cases, multiple encoders can be decoded by the same decoder? I'm not sure what you are getting at, though I *am* confident that you are getting at somethings specific that I'm simply missing (so far). The most important point to 2nd order privacy is the ability to use composite *encoders* whose [quasi]independence/[quasi]orthogonality is conserved across the many-many mapping. If there's a pattern on the surface that has been generated by a composite encoder-plex (with invariant orthogonality across the map), then you can use *either* decoder1 or decoder2 and get an independent decoding, that stands on its own. This is akin to your idea that your 20-year-old decoding of Pirsig was/is still just as proper as your recent decoding. And 2nd order says it's *irrelevant* whether Pirsig did this intentionally or not. What's relevant is that the map is many-many ... i.e. allows for composite encoders with this invariant property across the encode-decode map. > 3rd order and beyond) I don't know the technical implications in cryptography for iterated encodings by different means. My own preferred examples have multiple encodings being very different in quality... and in particular semantic and socio-cultural encodings of a message as implied by your reference to Moorcock/Joyce and poetry in general. Excellent! Bring up "quality" is probably important, not least because that's the heart and soul of the hard problem ... the ultimate metaphysical assertion of privacy. But I do think this is beyond 3rd order. Maybe it's the 4th and final order. It introduces an additional boundary. And (hearkening back to your and Jon's suggestion that the maps have to be lossless and maybe invertible) we'll have to start talking about whether there is a closure of the spaces beyond the boundaries. But I feel like you've jumped ahead and your inclusion of "and beyond" is making us sloppy. > FWIW, I would like to suggest that not all obfuscation is adversarial in the strong sense. I agree completely. I tried to say that by mentioning positively intentioned meta-games. Another of my favorite novels is "The Magus" by John Fowles. But I think pretty much any mentor-mentee meta-game falls in the same category. -- ☣ uǝlƃ -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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In reply to this post by gepr
Thanks or the dope=slap.
Will learn the distinction. 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: Tuesday, May 26, 2020 10:00 AM To: FriAM <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] privacy games Unfortunately, I don't register *any* metaphors, much less the 4 you register. So, I can't usefully respond to any of your registrations. But I can say that it would be a very bad mistake to think I'm talking about holograms when I say "holographic". By all means, learn the details of holography. But I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT HOLOGRAMS, not even metaphorically. If I'm using a metaphor at all, then it is to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle On 5/26/20 8:46 AM, [hidden email] wrote: > */In any case, I would greatly profit from being able to read a > description of a archetypal hologram. I want to know, as precisely as > possible, what Glen’s private understanding of a hologram is. > <===nst] /* -- ☣ uǝlƃ -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ |
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In reply to this post by gepr
Glen, Steve, Nick, Like possibility and necessity are formal duals, born from an adjoint situation, I can suggest poetry versus deposition. The salient common feature is one of openness. When I speak poetically I am reaching, inviting interpretation, allowing for contradiction. When I am being deposed I aim for consistency, to fortify truths, and to establish clear boundaries. I mention these here in an attempt to provide a case study for our (presently) three orders of privacy. The degree to which individuals rely on poetry or deposition in their discourse provides for the individual's different strategic options. Lately I have been listening to the Red scare podcast. The two hosts keep themselves in a poetry domain much looser than I think I can maintain for any period of time. A side-effect of this looseness is that they can at times appear to be talking past each other, seemingly unphased by contradictory expressions, and yet are clearly developing a shared complex of understanding. For an empathetic observer, it is crucial to not adopt an extreme position with respect to the poetry-deposition scale. Either extreme leads to meaninglessness. In the former case everything becomes everything, in the latter only tautologies survive. Without needing to put things in terms of Alices and Bobs, we can focus on what it is to have interpersonal connectedness within our three orders of privacy. At times the two hosts are very explicit that being indirect is a valuable strategy in their personal dealings, one gets a strong sense of steganography. This steganography in-turn forms a basis for the ambiguity and deniability of a given interpretation (second-order privacy). Lastly, this second-order privacy (through indeterminacy and freedom from deposition) gives rise to a playground for expression and poetry. What seems interesting here is not the project of identifying encoders with their decoders, but rather the possibility of modeling conceptual play. Here I am thinking of concept in the sense of Carnap (again from the SEP article on intensional logic). Concepts there are functorial, they are seen as structural mappings that take states-of-affairs to objects of designation. Varying states-of-affairs over their objects of designation provides room for conceptual play, though at the expense of consistency. I have been trying to think about how to make this idea more precise over the last couple of days. I will continue too, but I wanted to be sure to add a log to our conversational fire. Another possibly interesting case study could be that of the trustafarian. In the trustafarian case we can identify gaming with dissimulation [1] (in the Baudrillard sense). Here, the obscurity is access to money and familial support. When we see a trustafarian on the street spanging or at a music festival rubbing petroli into dreaded hair locks, we are not seeing their rich LA power-lawyer fathers (anonymity). I leave the obvious cases of deniability and ambiguity as an exercise for the reader. Lastly, there is a gaming/dissimulation layer. This individual will continue to act as if they have nothing: spanging, sleeping on a dirty blanket, dumpster diving for food, etc... Jon [1] For Baudrillard, dissimulation is when one acts as if they do not have what in fact they do. See the 6th bullet point here. -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ |
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If I try to reword what I think you've said, I end up with something like: the mesh of designators can remain constant while the universe's goo it separates can be different. Similarly, the universe goo can remain constant while the mesh of designators varies. The image is that of playdo smashed through a plastic mold. In an ideal deposition, the goo would not be fluid. It would have structure. And, hence, some meshes would fit and other meshes demonstrably inconsistent. (Or vice versa, obviously.) In an extreme act of poetic license, both the mesh and the goo are so fluid when you press them together, you just get more goo.
Making the huge leap that this is somehow similar to what you have in mind, I'm left wondering how to map that onto the believability of my steel man. Feferman's schematic axiomatic systems come to mind (but probably only because I'm so ignorant of so much math). In such schema, some of the system (sentences) are bound and some are free. The hosts in your Red Scare podcast would, then, agree to some extent on some number of bound parts, some number of free parts, and then argue about some parts ... arguing about whether those parts are free or bound, and if bound, what values they take on. And if I make that leap, then I can see how it's directly relevant to privacy and empathetic listening. Even the most plastic thinker will have some few things they just cannot believe or suspend disbelief in/of, even for a little while. So, e.g. in the novel "Dies the Fire", Renee' loves it and totally buys into the idea that some types of "fire" don't work but other types still do. But a good friend of mine thinks the whole thing just stupid and couldn't even finish the 1st novel, thereby depriving himself of whatever *other* interesting little wiggly things the author might have to say. (I assume, anyway. I haven't read the books.) I don't have a comment, yet, on the trustafarian. But you did teach me "spanging". Ha! Cool word. On 5/26/20 10:42 AM, Jon Zingale wrote: > What seems interesting here is not the project of identifying > encoders with their decoders, but rather the possibility of > modeling conceptual play. Here I am thinking of concept in > the sense of Carnap <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-intensional/#ParIntLog> (again from the SEP article on intensional logic). > Concepts there are functorial, they are seen as structural mappings > that take states-of-affairs to objects of designation. Varying > states-of-affairs over their objects of designation provides > room for conceptual play, though at the expense of consistency. > I have been trying to think about how to make this idea more > precise over the last couple of days. I will continue too, but > I wanted to be sure to add a log to our conversational fire. > > Another possibly interesting case study could be that of the > trustafarian. In the trustafarian case we can identify gaming > with dissimulation [1] (in the Baudrillard sense). Here, the obscurity > is access to money and familial support. When we see a trustafarian > on the street spanging or at a music festival rubbing petroli into > dreaded hair locks, we are not seeing their rich LA power-lawyer > fathers (anonymity). I leave the obvious cases of deniability > and ambiguity as an exercise for the reader. Lastly, there is > a gaming/dissimulation layer. This individual will continue to > act as if they have nothing: spanging, sleeping on a dirty blanket, > dumpster diving for food, etc... -- ☣ uǝlƃ -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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In reply to this post by gepr
Glen, I am really enjoying steelmaning and getting steel-mansplained, so thank you for the discussion up to this point. For me the images are that of the constructions for free modules over a ring, dependent types, and algebraic varieties. In the first case, there is a natural interplay between the category of sets and the category of modules, equipped with a map describing inclusions of bases into the collection of vectors they span, and a map describing how to evaluate a vector in a context to return a single number. The thing I find relevant here is that while the evaluation function does much to found the module (a vector space say), the evaluation is not what is interesting about the module. What is interesting is that we have a playground to talk about dimension, to make metaphors about phenomenological experiences of space, and most importantly to play and entertain one another. The whole game comes to an end the minute we finally concatenate the evaluation function onto the end of our compositions. The entire notion of space collapses and we are left with a single number. To your comments on free/bound variables, I can interpret these bases as bindings for the underlying ring and the coefficients as representing free variables (do I have that right?). I don't have much to write that is specific to dependent types that would be all that different from the algebraic variety image, so let me jump next to there. Varieties are often described in terms of comprehension or inverse images. For instance in pseudo-Haskell I can write: conicVariety = [ (x,y,z) | (x,y,z) <- R3, x² + y² + z² == 1] Varieties as you can image get pretty nasty (singularities, cusps, etc..) This no doubt made the development of algebraic geometry much more treacherous than the study of manifolds, its tamer sibling. What is novel about the varieties like conicVariety above is that it can be understood in terms of sections. We can interpret the function above as asking for the collection of all triples which all map to 1, and when we do we have a fiber in hand. What is relevant here is the image that as we collapse states-of-affairs onto objects of designation, we get variety-like objects in the space of affairs. As conversants collaboratively build fibers over designations, they are constructing eidetic variations of concepts. Somehow in the sense of EricS, the collection of these variety-like concepts are personal and irreducible complexes of meaning. Jon ps. I will look up 'Dies the Fire' -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ |
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As with the physical entities described by the math in Baez's book, I feel that I have a leg up on understanding the math but not so much on the relationship to the described entities. It must be my aversion to the real world. --- Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, Santa Fe, NM 87505 505 670-9918 Santa Fe, NM On Tue, May 26, 2020, 8:21 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:
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In reply to this post by gepr
Glen, While walking to get a couple of bottles of wine today, I started thinking about collaborative games we play that rely on privacy by obscurity. The first image to pop into mind was the exquisite corpse. Somehow I think it might be fruitful to think about the role various orders of privacy play in even our well-defined games. Referring back to our discussion of GANs, I got to thinking about the role of privacy in producing more realistic images of cats than it seems possible with non-adversarial nets. Any thoughts? Jon -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ |
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Yes! Collaborative design (both of [un]intentional) could be contextualized with obscurity. (I think I've told the story of how my D&D group evolved into a collaborative fiction group after we all left home. We'd each take over authorship of each others' characters for a "letter" and send the whole packet down the line. Because each of us, as Dungeon Masters took various issues with players' silly characters, the collaborative fiction mode allowed us to do things like humiliate those characters when it was our turn to be author. Not quite the same as the blinding in the exquisite corpse, but a bit adversarial.) And although I'm blown away by the things we (well someone, not me) can achieve with GAN, it still feels stilted to me ... a bit like the exploitation pitfalls in evolutionary computing (EC, e.g. negative altitude) or overfitted models. It brings to mind /procedural generation <e.g. https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse>/ as well. What I think EricS's idea of a multi-method constructing structure brings to the table is that collaboration can take many forms. And it maybe *must* take multiple forms in order to "round out" the composite probability distribution(s). A GAN (or EC) still seems a bit "flat" or "thin" in it's schematic guiding of a trajectory through the possible-needed space ("space" isn't the right word for such a self-constructing, dynamic thing, obviously). A minimal set of structures ... a kind of spanning basis for the collection of constructing/correcting mechanisms would be an ideal goal. And generation (the "G", what I've called Twitch) and discrimination are only 2 of them. Discrimination, in particular, seems ripe for a finer-grained, composite, implementation ... maybe that's why GANs still seem "thin" to me. But "adversarial" is also over-simplified. E.g. in the exquisite corpse (and our bad faith collaborative fiction), any one player's intention is not *entirely* adversarial, only slightly so. In the end all the players *want* some mix of cooperation, competition, syndication, and a sense of "fair play" ... as well as the ability to "game"/"cheese" it in bad faith sometimes. Pixel-wasting story time: Renee' and I bought a truck on Monday. The finance people made a few errors during the transaction, but it was all resolved in seeming good faith. When I returned with my title for the trade-in, they pulled me aside and said they'd made another error in the contract and we needed to sign a new contract. Well, the new contract has me borrowing *more* money. I did a speedy ethical calculation deciding whether to "play hard ball" and argue that we had a contract and if they screwed themselves, too fscking bad. Nobody would fault me for that. But it's clear the dealership would get pinged by the umbrella (Ford) and whoever made the error would be pinged by their co-workers (maybe even docked pay -- they're not a commission dealership). And although the amount irritates me, it may well *hurt* whoever made the error. So my choice was a) play hard ball and stick to that (which they could also play hard ball on their side and since the relationship is asymmetric, they may well win) versus b) just signing the new contract and taking the hit "for the team". Since I'll be taking the truck into their service department as long as we live here, they're on my team in some sense. Essentially, I had the choice of adversary or in-group correcting collaborator. I chose the latter and gave them a bunch of sh¡t about how I didn't want to borrow that much and how my first big purchase here in WA (with a whopping sales tax -- I could have gone down to Oregon to do this) ... yadda yadda. These are *rich* collaborations that I'd like to see us constructively implement in our AI ... or better named ALife. On 5/26/20 8:51 PM, Jon Zingale wrote: > While walking to get a couple of bottles of wine today, I started thinking about > collaborative games we play that rely on /privacy by obscurity/. The first image to > pop into mind was the /exquisite corpse <https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-explaining-exquisite-corpse-surrealist-drawing-game-die>/. Somehow I think it might be fruitful > to think about the role various orders of privacy play in even our well-defined > games. Referring back to our discussion of GANs <https://towardsdatascience.com/using-artificial-intelligence-to-create-people-cars-and-cats-5117189d0625>, I got to thinking about the > role of privacy in producing more realistic images of cats than it seems possible > with non-adversarial nets. Any thoughts? -- ☣ uǝlƃ -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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In reply to this post by gepr
uǝlƃ ☣ -
Sorry... I probably misinterpreted what you mean by criticism (you were explicit about some of the things you didn't mean by "criticism"). My intention above was to try to (continue to) niggle out a more complete context for what you are proposing in your n-order idea of privacy. I *did* jump ahead in the next-to-last sentence reference to your 3rd order. I wasn't criticizing your reference to 1st order, just jumping ahead, not suggesting YOU should restructure.1st order) When we encounter a signal (use text stream as a familiar example) we may or may not recognize that there is obfuscated meaning in that stream. In the common example, of course, the stream usually looks like pure gibberish... having an *apparent* high entropy. Attempts to decode the stream usually involve seeking transforms which yield a low entropy or high information content. Ideally, yielding a very specific, highly unambiguous text stream which is not only recognizeable to the decoder but possibly directly meaningful. In the classic imagined examples, we have spies and counter spies attempting to pass messages and intercept/decode those messages, etc. This is where the specific technical term /Steganography/ takes on interest and I think alludes to or defines your 3rd order? I'm not trying to impute specific meaning that you didn't intend, just looking to tease out the language you are seeking to use and align it with existing lexicons which may or may not be fully apt for what you are getting at.I don't quite understand how you're criticizing the 1st order idea. Is it only to say that I've mixed up my orders? ... that I'm confusing 1st with 3rd? If so, then yes, I probably am. The particular examples of steganography I identified were "hiding" a QR code in an image (or vice versa) and hiding 2 images inside 1. And I used these as a foil to talk about the combinatorial explosion. So, while steganography, in general, and even these 2 examples are *not* purely 1st order, they help (I think) highlight the 1-many mapping. The more strictly 1st order demonstration of the 1-many mapping was the string comprehension example. Sorry for the confusion. I think I'm getting more of the gist. It seems to me that you could be talking about iterative or superposive compositing of multiple encoders? Iterative, however, would not allow for decoding by *either* but instead would require decoding by *both* (and in the correct order). Superposive would be more like encoding the signal with two distinct encoders and then combining (shuffling, concatenating, ???) the two resulting signals such that applying either of the decoders would yield a combination of signal and (apparent) noise. If the combining method were simple/obvious like concatenation then the decoded signal would be half signal and half-gibberish, otherwise, the combining method itself might stand in for it's own *encoding*, complicating things further. Once again, I'm not really criticizing your order-2 description but trying to reflect to you how I am (partially) understanding it, so you can set me straight on what you meant (not what I thought I heard?).2nd order) I am literally not clear on what the implications of many-to-many are here. 1st order... one-to-many would seem to imply that the *decoder* is searching through the space of possible decodings (combinatoric) for the presumed singular encoder, but it also implies that the *encoder* is choosing from a similarly large number of *encodings*. Perhaps you are alluding to the case where some encodings can be decoded by more than one decoder or in some cases, multiple encoders can be decoded by the same decoder? I'm not sure what you are getting at, though I *am* confident that you are getting at somethings specific that I'm simply missing (so far).The most important point to 2nd order privacy is the ability to use composite *encoders* whose [quasi]independence/[quasi]orthogonality is conserved across the many-many mapping. If there's a pattern on the surface that has been generated by a composite encoder-plex (with invariant orthogonality across the map), then you can use *either* decoder1 or decoder2 and get an independent decoding, that stands on its own. This is akin to your idea that your 20-year-old decoding of Pirsig was/is still just as proper as your recent decoding. And 2nd order says it's *irrelevant* whether Pirsig did this intentionally or not. What's relevant is that the map is many-many ... i.e. allows for composite encoders with this invariant property across the encode-decode map. With this example in hand, I'm trying to sort out my own question/observation above. In the case of Zen++ and Pirsig, I would say that his encoding method was in fact functionally very composable, probably hierarchical. Some of his narrative and imagery was targeted at "any human being", other parts of it were targeted more specifically at "those who have ridden and wrenched on motorcycles", and others on "people who have undergone significant psychological/emotional transformations/trauma", and some on "parents with a troubled teen", and some on "those who have studied western philosophy and it's implications on one's personal moral systems". (and many more?) to some extent, my primary decoder for him (40 and 0 years ago respectively) was "what of this sentence/paragraph/chapter do I understand implicitely and what to I need to delve deeper, contemplate, or pass off as a question for later scrutiny or to be forgotten mostly?" This unshuffling left me with the impressions that I was able to process intuitively/immediately (and for the most part unable to actually reflect on because they sortof went straight into my psyche), and those which I mulled as I read, or mulled with Mary after a reading, discussing some of the aspects, and those which I am still mulling or have forgotten. My first read through 40+ years ago had a lot more in the last category. As I reread what I write here, I wonder if this is a particularly bad example. To the extent that this fits what you are talking about, it is an extremely rich/layered/convoluted example. Interesting that Pirsig harps on his own definition of "quality" (not unlike Alexander's "Quality Without a Name") throughout. I'm not sure if you mean it in the same sense though?3rd order and beyond) I don't know the technical implications in cryptography for iterated encodings by different means. My own preferred examples have multiple encodings being very different in quality... and in particular semantic and socio-cultural encodings of a message as implied by your reference to Moorcock/Joyce and poetry in general.Excellent! Bring up "quality" is probably important, not least because that's the heart and soul of the hard problem ... the ultimate metaphysical assertion of privacy. But I do think this is beyond 3rd order. Maybe it's the 4th and final order. It introduces an additional boundary. And (hearkening back to your and Jon's suggestion that the maps have to be lossless and maybe invertible) we'll have to start talking about whether there is a closure of the spaces beyond the boundaries. But I feel like you've jumped ahead and your inclusion of "and beyond" is making us sloppy. I'm happy to let you manage the categories for the most part. This brings up a struggle I have that might be worth sharing in
this venue on the off-chance that others here struggle with the
same. When you first started using the term "straw man" or
"strawman" I took it to mean something modestly different than you
intended. I first encountered the idea of a "strawman" NOT as
something that an adversary would create as an easily taken apart
effigy for your real argument, but rather as an armature for
consensual building of an idea. More like a stick figure with
the general proportions of a final sculpture that 2 or more would
build together. I see your throwdown here of 1,2,3rd order privacies as *that kind of* strawman and the process for the rest of us being to offer adjustments/additions/modifications to it to try to shape it into a more elaborated "figure" that we might all come to share not only an understanding of, but a stake in. FWIW, I would like to suggest that not all obfuscation is adversarial in the strong sense.I agree completely. I tried to say that by mentioning positively intentioned meta-games. Another of my favorite novels is "The Magus" by John Fowles. But I think pretty much any mentor-mentee meta-game falls in the same category. I have read but not fully processed more of this thread and
appreciate the tack (if not tangent) it has taken toward
collaborative/co-evolving games with other's responses. Reading reviews of your book reference (Magus), I am reminded of
Jim Dodge's book "Stone Junction" which I also read twice (1990
and 2015) with less distance of understanding but definitely
*additional* if not significantly *different* decoders. I offer the following copy from the back cover for a hint of a taste: Editorial ReviewsFrom the Back CoverStone Junction is a wise and wildly
imaginative novel about Daniel Pearse, an orphaned child who is
taken under the wings of the AMO-Alliance of Magicians and
Outlaws. An assortment of sages sharpen Daniel's wide-eyed
outlook until he has the concentration of a card shark Zen
master, via apprenticeships in meditation, safecracking, poker,
and the art of walking through walls. The AMO know wizards are
made, not born, and this unconventional education sets Daniel on
the trail of a strange, six-pound diamond sphere, held by the
U.S. government in a New Mexico vault, rumored to be the
Philosopher's Stone or the Holy Grail.
Shadowing the slippery netherworlds of role-playing games like Magic or Dungeons & Dragons, Daniel's quest to retrieve the magic stone and discover who killed his mother becomes a bravura act of storytelling, both a free-spirited adventure and a parable about the powers within us all. "A post-psychedelic coming-of-age fable that's part Thomas Pynchon, part Tolkien, part Richard Brautigan, a story that owes as much to The Once and Future King as it does to Huckleberry Finn. Stone Junction is a rollicking, frequently surprising adventure-cum-fairy tale. It also has a sweetness about it and an indigenous American optimism, as if somewhere out there, beyond the shopping malls, Oz is waiting."-The New York Times Book Review "Reading Stone Junction is like being at a nonstop party in celebration of everything that matters."-Thomas Pynchon Jim Dodge is also the author of Fup and Not Fade Away.
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On 5/27/20 10:36 AM, Steve Smith wrote: > I think I'm getting more of the gist. It seems to me that you could be talking about iterative or superposive compositing of multiple encoders? Iterative, however, would not allow for decoding by *either* but instead would require decoding by *both* (and in the correct order). Superposive would be more like encoding the signal with two distinct encoders and then combining (shuffling, concatenating, ???) the two resulting signals such that applying either of the decoders would yield a combination of signal and (apparent) noise. If the combining method were simple/obvious like concatenation then the decoded signal would be half signal and half-gibberish, otherwise, the combining method itself might stand in for it's own *encoding*, complicating things further. Yes, in 2nd order, I'm suggesting parallel/orthogonal/side-by-side composition, not serial/recursive composition. But given the parallelism theorem (anything parallel can be simulated serially), I don't see any reason why the *sequential* [†] application couldn't produce the same result as simultaneous/side-by-side application. The data would have to be [quasi]independent for that to happen, though. > With this example in hand, I'm trying to sort out my own question/observation above. In the case of Zen++ and Pirsig, I would say that his encoding method was in fact functionally very composable, probably hierarchical. [...] As I reread what I write here, I wonder if this is a particularly bad example. To the extent that this fits what you are talking about, it is an extremely rich/layered/convoluted example. I don't think it's a bad example, at all. It's definitely a critical example which might be used to tear my whole structure down. So, that means it's a good one. But given Jon's digestion of EricS's contributions as *eidetic* (I suppose in the sense of fully-detailed, concrete, and vivid), it strikes me that Pirsig's presentation is inherently particular. So, I think it's more an example of 1st order privacy. I think 1st order is well-exemplified by R. Rosen's defn of complexity (no largest model), von Neumann's claim about Gödel's incompleteness (|descriptions| > |described|), etc. Pirsig is providing a vivid description of a *thing* and any (presumably finite) thing can yield infinite descriptions. > Interesting that Pirsig harps on his own definition of "quality" (not unlike Alexander's "Quality Without a Name") throughout. I'm not sure if you mean it in the same sense though? I'm not sure. It's been a long time since I looked at Pirsig. I was deflated by Lila. > This brings up a struggle I have that might be worth sharing in this venue on the off-chance that others here struggle with the same. When you first started using the term "straw man" or "strawman" I took it to mean something modestly different than you intended. I first encountered the idea of a "strawman" NOT as something that an adversary would create as an easily taken apart effigy for your real argument, but rather as an armature for consensual building of an idea. More like a stick figure with the general proportions of a final sculpture that 2 or more would build together. > > I see your throwdown here of 1,2,3rd order privacies as *that kind of* strawman and the process for the rest of us being to offer adjustments/additions/modifications to it to try to shape it into a more elaborated "figure" that we might all come to share not only an understanding of, but a stake in. I call those "skeletons" or "scaffolds", not "straw men". but you're right that I surreptitiously switched rhetorical modes. My 1st step was to steelman the EricC/Nick principle by yapping about the information content of a surface as a representation of what goes on beyond the surface. My 2nd step was to provide scaffolding for how we can demonstrate privacy *without* violating the steelmanned principle. The tack is to (somewhat constructively) show EricC/Nick that they should not argue against (weak forms of) privacy. > Reading reviews of your book reference (Magus), I am reminded of Jim Dodge's book "Stone Junction" which I also read twice (1990 and 2015) with less distance of understanding but definitely *additional* if not significantly *different* decoders. > > [...] > "A post-psychedelic coming-of-age fable [...] Now *that* catches my eyeballs. [†] I've never been entirely clear on sequential vs. serial. But I tend to think of serial as implying some kind of closure property ... things that went before are somehow similar to the things that come after. Sequential seems to me to be more about iterative application with fewer restrictions on what's produced. So, e.g. if the process is *open* (or the domain is the entire universe) the result of f() need not be similar the result of g(f()). So, serial would be more like recursion and sequential would be more like iteration (in general). But I'm happy to be corrected. -- ☣ uǝlƃ -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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