query and observation

[Prof David West]

Hello All,

Traffic on the FRIAM list seems to have ground to a halt, from my reception point in Amsterdam - i.e. I have seen nothing for some time. Not in spam filter, so question is has the list trickled to a stop or just not making it across the Atlantic.?

Observation: an interesting coincidence arising from reading a new book, The Case Against Reality, How evolution hid the truth from our eyes, by Donald D. Hoffman, professor of cognitive science at UC Irvine. Main thesis is that what we perceive is but a constructed, via evolution,  "interface" and not a veridical perception of "Reality."

Not a new idea but the evolution / survival / fittest being the ones that see the optimal interface instead of what is behind the interface is interesting.

Coincidence comes from simultaneously rereading Heidegger and Gadamer, and even some Peirce,  and seeing apparent parallels between "interface,: "interpretation," and "experience."  Feels like a lot of Nick's Monism convictions might be illuminated by looking at these works in juxtaposition.

dave west

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Frank Wimberly-2]

Dave,

The Friam list remains as you can see but is sort of a trickle.  I posted a couple of items about the Cooper/Colbert interview and something I can't remember but they weren't up to the high intellectual standard which engages you, Glen, Marcus, Nick, et al.  Glen did comment insightfully.  Nick will be back in Santa Fe soon; maybe the change in location will stimulate him.

Frank

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:42 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello All,

Traffic on the FRIAM list seems to have ground to a halt, from my reception point in Amsterdam - i.e. I have seen nothing for some time. Not in spam filter, so question is has the list trickled to a stop or just not making it across the Atlantic.?

Observation: an interesting coincidence arising from reading a new book, The Case Against Reality, How evolution hid the truth from our eyes, by Donald D. Hoffman, professor of cognitive science at UC Irvine. Main thesis is that what we perceive is but a constructed, via evolution,  "interface" and not a veridical perception of "Reality."

Not a new idea but the evolution / survival / fittest being the ones that see the optimal interface instead of what is behind the interface is interesting.

Coincidence comes from simultaneously rereading Heidegger and Gadamer, and even some Peirce,  and seeing apparent parallels between "interface,: "interpretation," and "experience."  Feels like a lot of Nick's Monism convictions might be illuminated by looking at these works in juxtaposition.

dave west

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Nick Thompson]

Frank, Dave,

 

Well I AM tied up with relocation issues, so haven’t been paying close attention, but …

 

I just did a search in my inbox and there is nothing from FRIAM from 24 August on. 

 

I have always understood that the Friam-Owner. is like the wine pourer at a classical “symposium”,  more or less watering the wine to maintain the flow and quality of the conversation.  He won’t admit to it of course, but every once in a while He “shuts me off” from friam when He thinks I have become too … agitated?  I assume He is also gently modulating your contributions in the same way, as a beneficent god should.  I don’t know how He gets the time to do it, but nothing else could possibly explain the fact that sometimes our emails just go missing for a while.  So, I didn’t get alarmed when I stopped receiving FRIAM correspondence in late August.  I just assumed that the All Powerful Friam-Owner was giving me a rest. 

 

Thank you APF-O.  We love you and worship you. 

 

Nick

 

Ps.  Let me know if you don’t get this message.  (};-\)

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2019 8:02 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] query and observation

 

Dave,

 

The Friam list remains as you can see but is sort of a trickle.  I posted a couple of items about the Cooper/Colbert interview and something I can't remember but they weren't up to the high intellectual standard which engages you, Glen, Marcus, Nick, et al.  Glen did comment insightfully.  Nick will be back in Santa Fe soon; maybe the change in location will stimulate him.

 

Frank

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:42 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello All,

Traffic on the FRIAM list seems to have ground to a halt, from my reception point in Amsterdam - i.e. I have seen nothing for some time. Not in spam filter, so question is has the list trickled to a stop or just not making it across the Atlantic.?

Observation: an interesting coincidence arising from reading a new book, The Case Against Reality, How evolution hid the truth from our eyes, by Donald D. Hoffman, professor of cognitive science at UC Irvine. Main thesis is that what we perceive is but a constructed, via evolution,  "interface" and not a veridical perception of "Reality."

Not a new idea but the evolution / survival / fittest being the ones that see the optimal interface instead of what is behind the interface is interesting.

Coincidence comes from simultaneously rereading Heidegger and Gadamer, and even some Peirce,  and seeing apparent parallels between "interface,: "interpretation," and "experience."  Feels like a lot of Nick's Monism convictions might be illuminated by looking at these works in juxtaposition.

dave west

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Gary Schiltz-4]

FRIAM is such a strange beast. At times full of philosophical discourse that flies far above my head, other times full of irreverent inanities that defy categorization, and occasionally even with something to do with complexity. And then the periodic deafening silence that makes me realize just how much I would miss it if it were to go away. Long live FRIAM.

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 10:45 AM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank, Dave,

 

Well I AM tied up with relocation issues, so haven’t been paying close attention, but …

 

I just did a search in my inbox and there is nothing from FRIAM from 24 August on. 

 

I have always understood that the Friam-Owner. is like the wine pourer at a classical “symposium”,  more or less watering the wine to maintain the flow and quality of the conversation.  He won’t admit to it of course, but every once in a while He “shuts me off” from friam when He thinks I have become too … agitated?  I assume He is also gently modulating your contributions in the same way, as a beneficent god should.  I don’t know how He gets the time to do it, but nothing else could possibly explain the fact that sometimes our emails just go missing for a while.  So, I didn’t get alarmed when I stopped receiving FRIAM correspondence in late August.  I just assumed that the All Powerful Friam-Owner was giving me a rest. 

 

Thank you APF-O.  We love you and worship you. 

 

Nick

 

Ps.  Let me know if you don’t get this message.  (};-\)

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2019 8:02 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] query and observation

 

Dave,

 

The Friam list remains as you can see but is sort of a trickle.  I posted a couple of items about the Cooper/Colbert interview and something I can't remember but they weren't up to the high intellectual standard which engages you, Glen, Marcus, Nick, et al.  Glen did comment insightfully.  Nick will be back in Santa Fe soon; maybe the change in location will stimulate him.

 

Frank

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:42 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello All,

Traffic on the FRIAM list seems to have ground to a halt, from my reception point in Amsterdam - i.e. I have seen nothing for some time. Not in spam filter, so question is has the list trickled to a stop or just not making it across the Atlantic.?

Observation: an interesting coincidence arising from reading a new book, The Case Against Reality, How evolution hid the truth from our eyes, by Donald D. Hoffman, professor of cognitive science at UC Irvine. Main thesis is that what we perceive is but a constructed, via evolution,  "interface" and not a veridical perception of "Reality."

Not a new idea but the evolution / survival / fittest being the ones that see the optimal interface instead of what is behind the interface is interesting.

Coincidence comes from simultaneously rereading Heidegger and Gadamer, and even some Peirce,  and seeing apparent parallels between "interface,: "interpretation," and "experience."  Feels like a lot of Nick's Monism convictions might be illuminated by looking at these works in juxtaposition.

dave west

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Barry MacKichan]

FYI: My sister-in-law did not get this message. (Just trying to help )
--Barry

On 12 Sep 2019, at 11:45, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Ps.  Let me know if you don’t get this message.  (};-\\)
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Steve Smith]

Dave -

I had noticed a slowdown a while back, but being on the road for 3 weeks
myself, I haven't contributed or really noticed the grinding halt until
now as you call it out.  By coincidence I had dinner and beers with Glen
along the way, and I'm pretty sure he has brought Hoffman's work up here
a few times?

I met Hoffman in 2005 where he gave his spiel to a fairly small crowd of
(mostly) English Majors at the Anneberg School at USC.  I was
participating in a workshop with (mostly) Journalists trying to make
sense of how to use new media to try to explicate the previously
inexpicable.   It was an eclectic and (mostly) young and robust crowd of
very bright people thinking deep and wide about social issues all the
way down to "what it means to be human".   I was trying to bring my own
take on what a tree-map (our own variant known as a bubble-tree)
extruded in 3D to try to apprehend the news cycle/milieu in it's whole.

Hoffman made a good effort to explain his concept with the sophisticated
but not particularly natural-science or hard-philosophy centered
crowd.   He swayed me for the most part, but I had to remind myself that
even though I *beleive* in a heliocentric world-view I still *apprehend*
the sun and moon (and less obvoiusly) the stars rising in the east and
setting in the west, more better (superficially) fitting an
earth-centric model.   So while I think Hoffman might be dead on, I
still hold a bit of "so what?" and "what does it help me do?".   I'd be
interested if you have your own take on this?   Ignoring whether you
believe him to be technically/philosophically "correct", can you say
what you think might be "of use" to take away from it?

I will admit that my question implies some kind of incrementalism...
that the "use" might only become evident through a radical
acceptance/adoption of his (non?) world-view, not through my relatively
"thin" intellectual acknowledgement (thinner by quite a bit than my
acceptance of heliocentricity BTW).

On 9/12/19 12:41 AM, Prof David West wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> Traffic on the FRIAM list seems to have ground to a halt, from my reception point in Amsterdam - i.e. I have seen nothing for some time. Not in spam filter, so question is has the list trickled to a stop or just not making it across the Atlantic.?
>
> Observation: an interesting coincidence arising from reading a new book, The Case Against Reality, How evolution hid the truth from our eyes, by Donald D. Hoffman, professor of cognitive science at UC Irvine. Main thesis is that what we perceive is but a constructed, via evolution,  "interface" and not a veridical perception of "Reality."
>
> Not a new idea but the evolution / survival / fittest being the ones that see the optimal interface instead of what is behind the interface is interesting.
>
> Coincidence comes from simultaneously rereading Heidegger and Gadamer, and even some Peirce,  and seeing apparent parallels between "interface,: "interpretation," and "experience."  Feels like a lot of Nick's Monism convictions might be illuminated by looking at these works in juxtaposition.
>
> dave west
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Steve Smith]

We love our "flocking" models but FRIAM is less of a 'birds-of-a-feather'  group than something much harder to similize.  It feels to me that some of our conversations are a bit flocky or schooly (rarely herdy) but others are more geophysical like flares or eruptions...  a good schoolyard "pileon" occasionally happens as well... and then there are... as we are now contemplating, the long dark-tea-times of our collective-soul.

On 9/12/19 10:04 AM, Gary Schiltz wrote:

FRIAM is such a strange beast. At times full of philosophical discourse that flies far above my head, other times full of irreverent inanities that defy categorization, and occasionally even with something to do with complexity. And then the periodic deafening silence that makes me realize just how much I would miss it if it were to go away. Long live FRIAM.

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 10:45 AM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank, Dave,

 

Well I AM tied up with relocation issues, so haven’t been paying close attention, but …

 

I just did a search in my inbox and there is nothing from FRIAM from 24 August on. 

 

I have always understood that the Friam-Owner. is like the wine pourer at a classical “symposium”,  more or less watering the wine to maintain the flow and quality of the conversation.  He won’t admit to it of course, but every once in a while He “shuts me off” from friam when He thinks I have become too … agitated?  I assume He is also gently modulating your contributions in the same way, as a beneficent god should.  I don’t know how He gets the time to do it, but nothing else could possibly explain the fact that sometimes our emails just go missing for a while.  So, I didn’t get alarmed when I stopped receiving FRIAM correspondence in late August.  I just assumed that the All Powerful Friam-Owner was giving me a rest. 

 

Thank you APF-O.  We love you and worship you. 

 

Nick

 

Ps.  Let me know if you don’t get this message.  (};-\)

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2019 8:02 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] query and observation

 

Dave,

 

The Friam list remains as you can see but is sort of a trickle.  I posted a couple of items about the Cooper/Colbert interview and something I can't remember but they weren't up to the high intellectual standard which engages you, Glen, Marcus, Nick, et al.  Glen did comment insightfully.  Nick will be back in Santa Fe soon; maybe the change in location will stimulate him.

 

Frank

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:42 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello All,

Traffic on the FRIAM list seems to have ground to a halt, from my reception point in Amsterdam - i.e. I have seen nothing for some time. Not in spam filter, so question is has the list trickled to a stop or just not making it across the Atlantic.?

Observation: an interesting coincidence arising from reading a new book, The Case Against Reality, How evolution hid the truth from our eyes, by Donald D. Hoffman, professor of cognitive science at UC Irvine. Main thesis is that what we perceive is but a constructed, via evolution,  "interface" and not a veridical perception of "Reality."

Not a new idea but the evolution / survival / fittest being the ones that see the optimal interface instead of what is behind the interface is interesting.

Coincidence comes from simultaneously rereading Heidegger and Gadamer, and even some Peirce,  and seeing apparent parallels between "interface,: "interpretation," and "experience."  Feels like a lot of Nick's Monism convictions might be illuminated by looking at these works in juxtaposition.

dave west

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Frank Wimberly-2]

Straw man:

Nick:  People don't think, they only behave.

Frank:  You reached that conclusion by thinking.

Nick:  You presume to have observed my reaching the conclusion.

Frank:  I am certain your mind works like mine.

Nick:  How could you know that?  You are a Cartesian.

Frank:  And proud of it.

Nick:  People don't feel; they infer their feelings from their behavior.  They recognize hunger from eating or food seeking behavior.

Frank:  I know I'm hungry from feeling hungry.  I could feel hungry while totally still, with no observable behavior.

Nick:  No because...

Etc., etc....

No resolution to date.

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:17 PM Steven A Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

We love our "flocking" models but FRIAM is less of a 'birds-of-a-feather'  group than something much harder to similize.  It feels to me that some of our conversations are a bit flocky or schooly (rarely herdy) but others are more geophysical like flares or eruptions...  a good schoolyard "pileon" occasionally happens as well... and then there are... as we are now contemplating, the long dark-tea-times of our collective-soul.

On 9/12/19 10:04 AM, Gary Schiltz wrote:

FRIAM is such a strange beast. At times full of philosophical discourse that flies far above my head, other times full of irreverent inanities that defy categorization, and occasionally even with something to do with complexity. And then the periodic deafening silence that makes me realize just how much I would miss it if it were to go away. Long live FRIAM.

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 10:45 AM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank, Dave,

 

Well I AM tied up with relocation issues, so haven’t been paying close attention, but …

 

I just did a search in my inbox and there is nothing from FRIAM from 24 August on. 

 

I have always understood that the Friam-Owner. is like the wine pourer at a classical “symposium”,  more or less watering the wine to maintain the flow and quality of the conversation.  He won’t admit to it of course, but every once in a while He “shuts me off” from friam when He thinks I have become too … agitated?  I assume He is also gently modulating your contributions in the same way, as a beneficent god should.  I don’t know how He gets the time to do it, but nothing else could possibly explain the fact that sometimes our emails just go missing for a while.  So, I didn’t get alarmed when I stopped receiving FRIAM correspondence in late August.  I just assumed that the All Powerful Friam-Owner was giving me a rest. 

 

Thank you APF-O.  We love you and worship you. 

 

Nick

 

Ps.  Let me know if you don’t get this message.  (};-\)

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2019 8:02 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] query and observation

 

Dave,

 

The Friam list remains as you can see but is sort of a trickle.  I posted a couple of items about the Cooper/Colbert interview and something I can't remember but they weren't up to the high intellectual standard which engages you, Glen, Marcus, Nick, et al.  Glen did comment insightfully.  Nick will be back in Santa Fe soon; maybe the change in location will stimulate him.

 

Frank

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:42 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello All,

Traffic on the FRIAM list seems to have ground to a halt, from my reception point in Amsterdam - i.e. I have seen nothing for some time. Not in spam filter, so question is has the list trickled to a stop or just not making it across the Atlantic.?

Observation: an interesting coincidence arising from reading a new book, The Case Against Reality, How evolution hid the truth from our eyes, by Donald D. Hoffman, professor of cognitive science at UC Irvine. Main thesis is that what we perceive is but a constructed, via evolution,  "interface" and not a veridical perception of "Reality."

Not a new idea but the evolution / survival / fittest being the ones that see the optimal interface instead of what is behind the interface is interesting.

Coincidence comes from simultaneously rereading Heidegger and Gadamer, and even some Peirce,  and seeing apparent parallels between "interface,: "interpretation," and "experience."  Feels like a lot of Nick's Monism convictions might be illuminated by looking at these works in juxtaposition.

dave west

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[gepr]

The best answer to "so what?" comes in Hoffman's paper:

  Natural selection and veridical perceptions
  http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/PerceptualEvolution.pdf

from the abstract:
> We find that veridical perceptions can be driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies that are tuned to utility rather than objective reality.This suggests that natural selection need not favor veridical perceptions, and that the effects of selection on sensory perception deserve further study.

I haven't seen the book Dave mentions. But I suspect whatever it says cites these *games*. It's basically antithetic to the idea that the truth will win out over time/evolution. I.e. trust in the progress of metaphysical ideas is misplaced.

Coincidentally, I found this article interesting:

  Anti-Realist Pluralism: a New Approach to Folk Metaethics
  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13164-019-00447-8

> Abstract
>
> Many metaethicists agree that as ordinary people experience morality as a realm of objective truths, we have a prima facie reason to believe that it actually is such a realm. Recently, worries have been raised about the validity of the extant psychological research on this argument’s empirical hypothesis. Our aim is to advance this research, taking these worries into account. First, we propose a new experimental design for measuring folk intuitions about moral objectivity that may serve as an inspiration for future studies. Then we report and discuss the results of a survey that was based on this design. In our study, most of our participants denied the existence of objective truths about most or all moral issues. In particular, many of them had the intuition that whether moral sentences are true depends both on their own moral beliefs and on the dominant moral beliefs within their culture (“anti-realist pluralism”). This finding suggests that the realist presumptive argument may have to be rejected and that instead anti-realism may have a presumption in its favor.



On 9/12/19 10:59 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> By coincidence I had dinner and beers with Glen
> along the way, and I'm pretty sure he has brought Hoffman's work up here
> a few times?
> [...]   So while I think Hoffman might be dead on, I
> still hold a bit of "so what?" and "what does it help me do?".

--
☣ uǝlƃ
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Nick Thompson]

So, you are late meeting the train to Albuquerque.  As you drive into the station, you see a train sitting at the platform, absolutely motionless.  You rush up to the conductor and demand to know, “Is this train going to Albuquerque?”  “No!” the Frank, conductor replies.  As you can plainly see, it is sitting here not going anywhere.”  Confused, you rush down to the other end of the car where there is another conductor, Nick and you ask the same question. “Yes,” Nick replies.  “Given what this train has been doing all day and how it is standing in the station, and the time of day, there is every reason to believe that this train is going to Albuquerque.  C’mon aboard!”  “Shouldn’t I ask the engineer first?” you ask.  “Well, you might.  He has a lot of experience with this train.  But the answer is so obvious that he might pull your leg, and you’ld miss the train.  Are you getting on, or not?.

 

Nick

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2019 5:59 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] query and observation

 

Straw man:

 

Nick:  People don't think, they only behave.

 

Frank:  You reached that conclusion by thinking.

 

Nick:  You presume to have observed my reaching the conclusion.

 

Frank:  I am certain your mind works like mine.

 

Nick:  How could you know that?  You are a Cartesian.

 

Frank:  And proud of it.

 

Nick:  People don't feel; they infer their feelings from their behavior.  They recognize hunger from eating or food seeking behavior.

 

Frank:  I know I'm hungry from feeling hungry.  I could feel hungry while totally still, with no observable behavior.

 

Nick:  No because...

 

Etc., etc....

 

No resolution to date.

 

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:17 PM Steven A Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

We love our "flocking" models but FRIAM is less of a 'birds-of-a-feather'  group than something much harder to similize.  It feels to me that some of our conversations are a bit flocky or schooly (rarely herdy) but others are more geophysical like flares or eruptions...  a good schoolyard "pileon" occasionally happens as well... and then there are... as we are now contemplating, the long dark-tea-times of our collective-soul.

On 9/12/19 10:04 AM, Gary Schiltz wrote:

FRIAM is such a strange beast. At times full of philosophical discourse that flies far above my head, other times full of irreverent inanities that defy categorization, and occasionally even with something to do with complexity. And then the periodic deafening silence that makes me realize just how much I would miss it if it were to go away. Long live FRIAM.

 

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 10:45 AM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank, Dave,

 

Well I AM tied up with relocation issues, so haven’t been paying close attention, but …

 

I just did a search in my inbox and there is nothing from FRIAM from 24 August on. 

 

I have always understood that the Friam-Owner. is like the wine pourer at a classical “symposium”,  more or less watering the wine to maintain the flow and quality of the conversation.  He won’t admit to it of course, but every once in a while He “shuts me off” from friam when He thinks I have become too … agitated?  I assume He is also gently modulating your contributions in the same way, as a beneficent god should.  I don’t know how He gets the time to do it, but nothing else could possibly explain the fact that sometimes our emails just go missing for a while.  So, I didn’t get alarmed when I stopped receiving FRIAM correspondence in late August.  I just assumed that the All Powerful Friam-Owner was giving me a rest. 

 

Thank you APF-O.  We love you and worship you. 

 

Nick

 

Ps.  Let me know if you don’t get this message.  (};-\)

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2019 8:02 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] query and observation

 

Dave,

 

The Friam list remains as you can see but is sort of a trickle.  I posted a couple of items about the Cooper/Colbert interview and something I can't remember but they weren't up to the high intellectual standard which engages you, Glen, Marcus, Nick, et al.  Glen did comment insightfully.  Nick will be back in Santa Fe soon; maybe the change in location will stimulate him.

 

Frank

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:42 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello All,

Traffic on the FRIAM list seems to have ground to a halt, from my reception point in Amsterdam - i.e. I have seen nothing for some time. Not in spam filter, so question is has the list trickled to a stop or just not making it across the Atlantic.?

Observation: an interesting coincidence arising from reading a new book, The Case Against Reality, How evolution hid the truth from our eyes, by Donald D. Hoffman, professor of cognitive science at UC Irvine. Main thesis is that what we perceive is but a constructed, via evolution,  "interface" and not a veridical perception of "Reality."

Not a new idea but the evolution / survival / fittest being the ones that see the optimal interface instead of what is behind the interface is interesting.

Coincidence comes from simultaneously rereading Heidegger and Gadamer, and even some Peirce,  and seeing apparent parallels between "interface,: "interpretation," and "experience."  Feels like a lot of Nick's Monism convictions might be illuminated by looking at these works in juxtaposition.

dave west

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Nick Thompson]

Glen,

In haste:  "what is the validator of a veridical perception?"

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2019 6:25 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] query and observation

The best answer to "so what?" comes in Hoffman's paper:

  Natural selection and veridical perceptions
  http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/PerceptualEvolution.pdf

from the abstract:
> We find that veridical perceptions can be driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies that are tuned to utility rather than objective reality.This suggests that natural selection need not favor veridical perceptions, and that the effects of selection on sensory perception deserve further study.

I haven't seen the book Dave mentions. But I suspect whatever it says cites these *games*. It's basically antithetic to the idea that the truth will win out over time/evolution. I.e. trust in the progress of metaphysical ideas is misplaced.

Coincidentally, I found this article interesting:

  Anti-Realist Pluralism: a New Approach to Folk Metaethics
  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13164-019-00447-8

> Abstract
>
> Many metaethicists agree that as ordinary people experience morality as a realm of objective truths, we have a prima facie reason to believe that it actually is such a realm. Recently, worries have been raised about the validity of the extant psychological research on this argument’s empirical hypothesis. Our aim is to advance this research, taking these worries into account. First, we propose a new experimental design for measuring folk intuitions about moral objectivity that may serve as an inspiration for future studies. Then we report and discuss the results of a survey that was based on this design. In our study, most of our participants denied the existence of objective truths about most or all moral issues. In particular, many of them had the intuition that whether moral sentences are true depends both on their own moral beliefs and on the dominant moral beliefs within their culture (“anti-realist pluralism”). This finding suggests that the realist presumptive argument may have to be rejected and that instead anti-realism may have a presumption in its favor.



On 9/12/19 10:59 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> By coincidence I had dinner and beers with Glen along the way, and I'm
> pretty sure he has brought Hoffman's work up here a few times?
> [...]   So while I think Hoffman might be dead on, I still hold a bit
> of "so what?" and "what does it help me do?".

--
☣ uǝlƃ
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[gepr]

Again from the paper:
> The *simple* strategy, which is a critical realist strategy, observes only one resource per territory, say food. If the quantity of that resource is above a threshold, it sees ‘‘green,’’ otherwise its sees ‘‘red.’’ If there is only one green territory, the agent chooses that territory. If there is more than one green territory, the agent chooses among them at random. If there are only red territories, it again chooses at random.>
> The *truth* strategy, which is a naive realist strategy, sees the exact quantity of each resource in each territory, and chooses the best available territory.



On 9/12/19 3:49 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> In haste:  "what is the validator of a veridical perception?"

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Steve Smith]

On 9/12/19 4:24 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> The best answer to "so what?" comes in Hoffman's paper:

Glen -

I may be missing your point badly, but your response lead me to flip my
thinking inside out and ask myself just what I mean by "so what" and
realized that *might* be the central point to Hoffman's argument.

My "so what?" perhaps illuminates Hoffman's argument:   The utility of
my perception of the sun and moon as orbiting the earth (or actually
more typically of them arcing across the surface of  one or more fixed
domes) is higher in most contexts than perceiving them as being involved
in a much more abstract (albeit elegantly simpler?) relationship
formulized by GmM/r^2.   This "utility landscape" IS the fitness
landscape for evolution.    Obviously there must be "gateways" (passes,
tunnels, etc.) from the portion of this landscape we live in everyday to
the ones say where we are trying to predict uncommon astronomical
observations (e.g.  eclipses).

I didn't mean to suggest that I didn't think the work was important or
interesting or fundamental, only that I don't see how it changes how I
live my everyday life for the most part.   I am *literally* trying to
invert my metaperceptions to see how I could be directly aware that my
perceptions are an interface, not a direct response to reality... all
easy to do intellectually (once some thought has been put into it) but
not so easy to apprehend even indirectly?

- Steve

>
>   Natural selection and veridical perceptions
>   http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/PerceptualEvolution.pdf
>
> from the abstract:
>> We find that veridical perceptions can be driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies that are tuned to utility rather than objective reality.This suggests that natural selection need not favor veridical perceptions, and that the effects of selection on sensory perception deserve further study.
> I haven't seen the book Dave mentions. But I suspect whatever it says cites these *games*. It's basically antithetic to the idea that the truth will win out over time/evolution. I.e. trust in the progress of metaphysical ideas is misplaced.
>
> Coincidentally, I found this article interesting:
>
>   Anti-Realist Pluralism: a New Approach to Folk Metaethics
>   https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13164-019-00447-8
>
>> Abstract
>>
>> Many metaethicists agree that as ordinary people experience morality as a realm of objective truths, we have a prima facie reason to believe that it actually is such a realm. Recently, worries have been raised about the validity of the extant psychological research on this argument’s empirical hypothesis. Our aim is to advance this research, taking these worries into account. First, we propose a new experimental design for measuring folk intuitions about moral objectivity that may serve as an inspiration for future studies. Then we report and discuss the results of a survey that was based on this design. In our study, most of our participants denied the existence of objective truths about most or all moral issues. In particular, many of them had the intuition that whether moral sentences are true depends both on their own moral beliefs and on the dominant moral beliefs within their culture (“anti-realist pluralism”). This finding suggests that the realist presumptive argument may have to be rejected and that instead anti-realism may have a presumption in its favor.
>
>
> On 9/12/19 10:59 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> By coincidence I had dinner and beers with Glen
>> along the way, and I'm pretty sure he has brought Hoffman's work up here
>> a few times?
>> [...]   So while I think Hoffman might be dead on, I
>> still hold a bit of "so what?" and "what does it help me do?".

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[gepr]

Heh, I doubt you're missing my point. And please don't mistake my defense/explanation of Hoffman as advocacy. I think it's interesting. But he relies too much, IMO, on idealized modeling. So, I don't think the interface idea is really all that important. But it is interesting.

To me, though, the way the interface idea directly impacts my day-to-day actions is in facilitating my (already present) doubt about any metaphysical claims. When some arbitrary person tells me *why* they made some decision like accepting a job offer or whatever, Hoffman's idea helps me understand their rationale. E.g. in the *simple* strategy, where an agent makes their decision on the green/red heuristic, if that agent *talks* in terms of green and red, then my judgment of them is positive. If, however, that agent hand-waves themselves into metaphysical hooha about why they made their decision, then my judgment is negative.

Practically, we could talk about that the "singularity" is fideistic. Or we could talk about Renee's son's belief in "the principle of attraction". Or from cognitive behavior therapy, concepts like "catastrophizing" are understandable in these terms. When a 15 year old exclaims that "My parents will kill me" it's an exclamation that's not very easy to understand for someone whose actually had someone try to kill them. But if we understand the boundaries and extent of the control surface one has access to, it makes the exclamation more understandable.

I've mentioned this in the context of "code switching". The ability to put oneself in the shoes of another depends, fundamentally, on how/whether you can doff or don their "interface". More speculatively, I've had a lot of trouble sympathizing with the idiots who voted for Trump. But I can divide any 2 Trump supporters into those who *refuse* to make "metaphysical" statements and those who adhere closely to "what I thought at the time".

To me, the hygienic examples of heliocentrism etc. are impoverished. The usefulness is more about how/when to recognize when someone's "blowing smoke" or being authentic in describing their inner life. It's possible the reason some of us might have trouble seeing how the idea would matter is because *some* of us already doubt much/most of what  people, including our selves, say. And that we don't need the interface idea to be so doubtful? 8^)

On 9/12/19 5:38 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:

> I may be missing your point badly, but your response lead me to flip my
> thinking inside out and ask myself just what I mean by "so what" and
> realized that *might* be the central point to Hoffman's argument.
>
> My "so what?" perhaps illuminates Hoffman's argument:   The utility of
> my perception of the sun and moon as orbiting the earth (or actually
> more typically of them arcing across the surface of  one or more fixed
> domes) is higher in most contexts than perceiving them as being involved
> in a much more abstract (albeit elegantly simpler?) relationship
> formulized by GmM/r^2.   This "utility landscape" IS the fitness
> landscape for evolution.    Obviously there must be "gateways" (passes,
> tunnels, etc.) from the portion of this landscape we live in everyday to
> the ones say where we are trying to predict uncommon astronomical
> observations (e.g.  eclipses).
>
> I didn't mean to suggest that I didn't think the work was important or
> interesting or fundamental, only that I don't see how it changes how I
> live my everyday life for the most part.   I am *literally* trying to
> invert my metaperceptions to see how I could be directly aware that my
> perceptions are an interface, not a direct response to reality... all
> easy to do intellectually (once some thought has been put into it) but
> not so easy to apprehend even indirectly?

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Elizabeth Cates]

I have been working hard to finally take a vacation. Too much focus on how to regulate bitcoin and I am exhausted. 

Anyway, first stop St Petersburg! And when I finally got a moment to check on what was percolating, there was nothing. I was frankly alarmed at the lack of traffic. We need more caffeine -- coffee, tea, or chocolate to fuel our thoughts.

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 1:59 PM Steven A Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dave -

I had noticed a slowdown a while back, but being on the road for 3 weeks
myself, I haven't contributed or really noticed the grinding halt until
now as you call it out.  By coincidence I had dinner and beers with Glen
along the way, and I'm pretty sure he has brought Hoffman's work up here
a few times?

I met Hoffman in 2005 where he gave his spiel to a fairly small crowd of
(mostly) English Majors at the Anneberg School at USC.  I was
participating in a workshop with (mostly) Journalists trying to make
sense of how to use new media to try to explicate the previously
inexpicable.   It was an eclectic and (mostly) young and robust crowd of
very bright people thinking deep and wide about social issues all the
way down to "what it means to be human".   I was trying to bring my own
take on what a tree-map (our own variant known as a bubble-tree)
extruded in 3D to try to apprehend the news cycle/milieu in it's whole.

Hoffman made a good effort to explain his concept with the sophisticated
but not particularly natural-science or hard-philosophy centered
crowd.   He swayed me for the most part, but I had to remind myself that
even though I *beleive* in a heliocentric world-view I still *apprehend*
the sun and moon (and less obvoiusly) the stars rising in the east and
setting in the west, more better (superficially) fitting an
earth-centric model.   So while I think Hoffman might be dead on, I
still hold a bit of "so what?" and "what does it help me do?".   I'd be
interested if you have your own take on this?   Ignoring whether you
believe him to be technically/philosophically "correct", can you say
what you think might be "of use" to take away from it?

I will admit that my question implies some kind of incrementalism...
that the "use" might only become evident through a radical
acceptance/adoption of his (non?) world-view, not through my relatively
"thin" intellectual acknowledgement (thinner by quite a bit than my
acceptance of heliocentricity BTW).

On 9/12/19 12:41 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> Traffic on the FRIAM list seems to have ground to a halt, from my reception point in Amsterdam - i.e. I have seen nothing for some time. Not in spam filter, so question is has the list trickled to a stop or just not making it across the Atlantic.?
>
> Observation: an interesting coincidence arising from reading a new book, The Case Against Reality, How evolution hid the truth from our eyes, by Donald D. Hoffman, professor of cognitive science at UC Irvine. Main thesis is that what we perceive is but a constructed, via evolution,  "interface" and not a veridical perception of "Reality."
>
> Not a new idea but the evolution / survival / fittest being the ones that see the optimal interface instead of what is behind the interface is interesting.
>
> Coincidence comes from simultaneously rereading Heidegger and Gadamer, and even some Peirce,  and seeing apparent parallels between "interface,: "interpretation," and "experience."  Feels like a lot of Nick's Monism convictions might be illuminated by looking at these works in juxtaposition.
>
> dave west
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Marcus G. Daniels]

One application distributed ledger systems have for currency is precisely as mechanism to bypass regulation.

A common reason for the bypass is crime.   Another reason is as an organizational tool against those in power who abuse it.   It doesn’t take a lot of imagination these days to see that the distinction can be a matter of definition.

 

I’ve been watching the Netflix series Better than Us which is a Russian Sci-fi series in the spirit of Westworld.   I think it is great that Netflix funds a variety of internationally-produced series.    And I think it is cool that someone in Argentina has hacked my Netflix account.   I have stumbled across new content that way!   It is more interesting than the jerk in Texas that called me twice today to tell me my social security number had been compromised.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Elizabeth Cates <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Thursday, September 12, 2019 at 9:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Thx for the traffic

 

I have been working hard to finally take a vacation. Too much focus on how to regulate bitcoin and I am exhausted. 

 

Anyway, first stop St Petersburg! And when I finally got a moment to check on what was percolating, there was nothing. I was frankly alarmed at the lack of traffic. We need more caffeine -- coffee, tea, or chocolate to fuel our thoughts.

 

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 1:59 PM Steven A Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dave -

I had noticed a slowdown a while back, but being on the road for 3 weeks
myself, I haven't contributed or really noticed the grinding halt until
now as you call it out.  By coincidence I had dinner and beers with Glen
along the way, and I'm pretty sure he has brought Hoffman's work up here
a few times?

I met Hoffman in 2005 where he gave his spiel to a fairly small crowd of
(mostly) English Majors at the Anneberg School at USC.  I was
participating in a workshop with (mostly) Journalists trying to make
sense of how to use new media to try to explicate the previously
inexpicable.   It was an eclectic and (mostly) young and robust crowd of
very bright people thinking deep and wide about social issues all the
way down to "what it means to be human".   I was trying to bring my own
take on what a tree-map (our own variant known as a bubble-tree)
extruded in 3D to try to apprehend the news cycle/milieu in it's whole.

Hoffman made a good effort to explain his concept with the sophisticated
but not particularly natural-science or hard-philosophy centered
crowd.   He swayed me for the most part, but I had to remind myself that
even though I *beleive* in a heliocentric world-view I still *apprehend*
the sun and moon (and less obvoiusly) the stars rising in the east and
setting in the west, more better (superficially) fitting an
earth-centric model.   So while I think Hoffman might be dead on, I
still hold a bit of "so what?" and "what does it help me do?".   I'd be
interested if you have your own take on this?   Ignoring whether you
believe him to be technically/philosophically "correct", can you say
what you think might be "of use" to take away from it?

I will admit that my question implies some kind of incrementalism...
that the "use" might only become evident through a radical
acceptance/adoption of his (non?) world-view, not through my relatively
"thin" intellectual acknowledgement (thinner by quite a bit than my
acceptance of heliocentricity BTW).

On 9/12/19 12:41 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> Traffic on the FRIAM list seems to have ground to a halt, from my reception point in Amsterdam - i.e. I have seen nothing for some time. Not in spam filter, so question is has the list trickled to a stop or just not making it across the Atlantic.?
>
> Observation: an interesting coincidence arising from reading a new book, The Case Against Reality, How evolution hid the truth from our eyes, by Donald D. Hoffman, professor of cognitive science at UC Irvine. Main thesis is that what we perceive is but a constructed, via evolution,  "interface" and not a veridical perception of "Reality."
>
> Not a new idea but the evolution / survival / fittest being the ones that see the optimal interface instead of what is behind the interface is interesting.
>
> Coincidence comes from simultaneously rereading Heidegger and Gadamer, and even some Peirce,  and seeing apparent parallels between "interface,: "interpretation," and "experience."  Feels like a lot of Nick's Monism convictions might be illuminated by looking at these works in juxtaposition.
>
> dave west
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Prof David West]

this is the FRIAM I knew and loved,


As one of the deluded ones claiming direct, non intermediated, perception of that which is behind Hoffman's interface, his arguments are not surprising. Blaming the existence of the interface on evolution was kind of new and interesting.

It is the juxtaposition, entirely coincidental, of Hoffman with Heidegger, Gadamer, and the whole hermeneutic school of philosophy that caused the greatest amount of thinking. Although not a hermeneuticist per se, Peirce seems to be at minimum, a fellow traveler.

The claim by Hoffman, and all the physicists he cites, that the only thing we can know is the interface and whatever is behind that interface is not what everyone thinks it is, i.e. Objective Reality˛— seems to parallel the hermeneutic position that all we can know is the interpretation and whatever is behind the interpretation is not what every thinks it is, i.e. Truth.

Nick's monism seems. to me, to be similar with Behavior more or less the same thing as Interface or Interpretation.

Hoffman's argument that, because we are all humanoids and share the same spot in the evolutionary sequence, we share a common, mostly,  Interface made me think immediately of Rupert Sheldrake and morphogenetic fields.

It is not the book, in itself, it is the connections that are fascinating.

davew



On Fri, Sep 13, 2019, at 4:05 AM, glen∈ℂ wrote:

> Heh, I doubt you're missing my point. And please don't mistake my
> defense/explanation of Hoffman as advocacy. I think it's interesting.
> But he relies too much, IMO, on idealized modeling. So, I don't think
> the interface idea is really all that important. But it is interesting.
>
> To me, though, the way the interface idea directly impacts my
> day-to-day actions is in facilitating my (already present) doubt about
> any metaphysical claims. When some arbitrary person tells me *why* they
> made some decision like accepting a job offer or whatever, Hoffman's
> idea helps me understand their rationale. E.g. in the *simple*
> strategy, where an agent makes their decision on the green/red
> heuristic, if that agent *talks* in terms of green and red, then my
> judgment of them is positive. If, however, that agent hand-waves
> themselves into metaphysical hooha about why they made their decision,
> then my judgment is negative.
>
> Practically, we could talk about that the "singularity" is fideistic.
> Or we could talk about Renee's son's belief in "the principle of
> attraction". Or from cognitive behavior therapy, concepts like
> "catastrophizing" are understandable in these terms. When a 15 year old
> exclaims that "My parents will kill me" it's an exclamation that's not
> very easy to understand for someone whose actually had someone try to
> kill them. But if we understand the boundaries and extent of the
> control surface one has access to, it makes the exclamation more
> understandable.
>
> I've mentioned this in the context of "code switching". The ability to
> put oneself in the shoes of another depends, fundamentally, on
> how/whether you can doff or don their "interface". More speculatively,
> I've had a lot of trouble sympathizing with the idiots who voted for
> Trump. But I can divide any 2 Trump supporters into those who *refuse*
> to make "metaphysical" statements and those who adhere closely to "what
> I thought at the time".
>
> To me, the hygienic examples of heliocentrism etc. are impoverished.
> The usefulness is more about how/when to recognize when someone's
> "blowing smoke" or being authentic in describing their inner life. It's
> possible the reason some of us might have trouble seeing how the idea
> would matter is because *some* of us already doubt much/most of what  
> people, including our selves, say. And that we don't need the interface
> idea to be so doubtful? 8^)
>
> On 9/12/19 5:38 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> > I may be missing your point badly, but your response lead me to flip my
> > thinking inside out and ask myself just what I mean by "so what" and
> > realized that *might* be the central point to Hoffman's argument.
> >
> > My "so what?" perhaps illuminates Hoffman's argument:   The utility of
> > my perception of the sun and moon as orbiting the earth (or actually
> > more typically of them arcing across the surface of  one or more fixed
> > domes) is higher in most contexts than perceiving them as being involved
> > in a much more abstract (albeit elegantly simpler?) relationship
> > formulized by GmM/r^2.   This "utility landscape" IS the fitness
> > landscape for evolution.    Obviously there must be "gateways" (passes,
> > tunnels, etc.) from the portion of this landscape we live in everyday to
> > the ones say where we are trying to predict uncommon astronomical
> > observations (e.g.  eclipses).
> >
> > I didn't mean to suggest that I didn't think the work was important or
> > interesting or fundamental, only that I don't see how it changes how I
> > live my everyday life for the most part.   I am *literally* trying to
> > invert my metaperceptions to see how I could be directly aware that my
> > perceptions are an interface, not a direct response to reality... all
> > easy to do intellectually (once some thought has been put into it) but
> > not so easy to apprehend even indirectly?
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Nick Thompson]

Dave,

 

Please see larding below!

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2019 5:12 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] query and observation

 

this is the FRIAM I knew and loved,

[NST==>Your use of the past tense makes me nervous.  When ARE you coming back? <==nst]

 

 

As one of the deluded ones claiming direct, non intermediated, perception of that which is behind Hoffman's interface, his arguments are not surprising. Blaming the existence of the interface on evolution was kind of new and interesting.

[NST==>I am too demented right now to give this the consideration it deserves, but you, Dave, have always been generous about my dementias, so I am going to allow myself to continue, here. I just want to know, though, how you tell the difference between your direct knowledge, and the other kind.  Does direct knowledge come with little “d” icons attached?  So, not only do you have direct knowledge but you also have direct knowledge that that knowledge is direct, and direct knowledge that your knowledge of that knowledge is direct and ….ad finitum.  Just checking.  <==nst]

 

It is the juxtaposition, entirely coincidental, of Hoffman with Heidegger, Gadamer, and the whole hermeneutic school of philosophy that caused the greatest amount of thinking. Although not a hermeneuticist per se, Peirce seems to be at minimum, a fellow traveler.

[NST==>Yes, I agree.  Although, in my present demented state, I wouldn’t know a Gadamer if it bit me on my ankle. <==nst]

 

The claim by Hoffman, and all the physicists he cites, that the only thing we can know is the interface and whatever is behind that interface is not what everyone thinks it is, i.e. Objective Reality˛— seems to parallel the hermeneutic position that all we can know is the interpretation and whatever is behind the interpretation is not what every thinks it is, i.e. Truth.

[NST==>You dualists offer us a false choice.  Either we must assert a truth beyond experience, or deny any truth at all.  By why not a truth IN experience.  Truth is a [mathematical] property of experience.  That upon which human experience converges.  Truth is just what keeps banging us on the head as we grope around in the dark.  <==nst]

 

Nick's monism seems. to me, to be similar with Behavior more or less the same thing as Interface or Interpretation.

[NST==>Well, yes, but with Peirce’s pragmatic[ist] notion of truth.  Some methodological behaviorists [Watson] were proper dualists, asserting only that talk of events beyond experience was scientifically nugatory.  Philosophical behaviorists  [Wittgenstein??] assert that talk of events beyond experience is MEANINGLESS.  <==nst]

 

Hoffman's argument that, because we are all humanoids and share the same spot in the evolutionary sequence, we share a common, mostly,  Interface made me think immediately of Rupert Sheldrake and morphogenetic fields.

[NST==>I can’t call up Sheldrake at the moment, but if you are talking about the manner in which development channels us into common paths, the fact that even though there is tremendous randomness in epigenetic processes, yet we all end up looking [pretty much] the same, then, yes, I think the metaphor is excellent.  <==nst]

 

It is not the book, in itself, it is the connections that are fascinating.

 

davew

 

 

 

On Fri, Sep 13, 2019, at 4:05 AM, glen∈ℂ wrote:

> Heh, I doubt you're missing my point. And please don't mistake my

> defense/explanation of Hoffman as advocacy. I think it's interesting.

> But he relies too much, IMO, on idealized modeling. So, I don't think

> the interface idea is really all that important. But it is interesting.

>

> To me, though, the way the interface idea directly impacts my

> day-to-day actions is in facilitating my (already present) doubt about

> any metaphysical claims. When some arbitrary person tells me *why*

> they made some decision like accepting a job offer or whatever,

> Hoffman's idea helps me understand their rationale. E.g. in the

> *simple* strategy, where an agent makes their decision on the

> green/red heuristic, if that agent *talks* in terms of green and red,

> then my judgment of them is positive. If, however, that agent

> hand-waves themselves into metaphysical hooha about why they made

> their decision, then my judgment is negative.

>

> Practically, we could talk about that the "singularity" is fideistic.

> Or we could talk about Renee's son's belief in "the principle of

> attraction". Or from cognitive behavior therapy, concepts like

> "catastrophizing" are understandable in these terms. When a 15 year

> old exclaims that "My parents will kill me" it's an exclamation that's

> not very easy to understand for someone whose actually had someone try

> to kill them. But if we understand the boundaries and extent of the

> control surface one has access to, it makes the exclamation more

> understandable.

>

> I've mentioned this in the context of "code switching". The ability to

> put oneself in the shoes of another depends, fundamentally, on

> how/whether you can doff or don their "interface". More speculatively,

> I've had a lot of trouble sympathizing with the idiots who voted for

> Trump. But I can divide any 2 Trump supporters into those who *refuse*

> to make "metaphysical" statements and those who adhere closely to

> "what I thought at the time".

>

> To me, the hygienic examples of heliocentrism etc. are impoverished.

> The usefulness is more about how/when to recognize when someone's

> "blowing smoke" or being authentic in describing their inner life.

> It's possible the reason some of us might have trouble seeing how the

> idea would matter is because *some* of us already doubt much/most of

> what people, including our selves, say. And that we don't need the

> interface idea to be so doubtful? 8^)

>

> On 9/12/19 5:38 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:

> > I may be missing your point badly, but your response lead me to flip

> > my thinking inside out and ask myself just what I mean by "so what"

> > and realized that *might* be the central point to Hoffman's argument.

> >

> > My "so what?" perhaps illuminates Hoffman's argument:   The utility

> > of my perception of the sun and moon as orbiting the earth (or

> > actually more typically of them arcing across the surface of  one or

> > more fixed

> > domes) is higher in most contexts than perceiving them as being

> > involved in a much more abstract (albeit elegantly simpler?)

> > relationship formulized by GmM/r^2.   This "utility landscape" IS

> > the fitness landscape for evolution.    Obviously there must be

> > "gateways" (passes, tunnels, etc.) from the portion of this

> > landscape we live in everyday to the ones say where we are trying to

> > predict uncommon astronomical observations (e.g.  eclipses).

> >

> > I didn't mean to suggest that I didn't think the work was important

> > or interesting or fundamental, only that I don't see how it changes

> > how I live my everyday life for the most part.   I am *literally*

> > trying to invert my metaperceptions to see how I could be directly

> > aware that my perceptions are an interface, not a direct response to

> > reality... all easy to do intellectually (once some thought has been

> > put into it) but not so easy to apprehend even indirectly?

>

> ============================================================

> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe

> at St. John's College to unsubscribe

> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

> 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Steve Smith]

On 9/13/19 12:19 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

One application distributed ledger systems have for currency is precisely as mechanism to bypass regulation.

A common reason for the bypass is crime.   Another reason is as an organizational tool against those in power who abuse it.   It doesn’t take a lot of imagination these days to see that the distinction can be a matter of definition.

My freedom fighter is your terrorist.  Vice Versa.

I've noodled a bit on how distributed ledger systems might play in the question of a post-democratic/post-free-market socioeconomy might look like.

It seems like such things might address some of the more acute and obvious problems in our current vision (much less implementation) of democratic self-governance and free market exchange of goods and services.   A currency that has both taxation and interest built into it?  A tamper-proof, low-friction method for "the people" to express their will?

This doesn't necessarily address some of the more insidious meta-problems... just trimming off the more egregious tools for gaming the economic and the political systems we live amongst.

- Steve

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Steve Smith]

Dave -

Your invocation of Sheldrake/Morphenetic Fields was a nice surprise.   I think you are on to something with that connection and I would suggest that Hoffman's work does support Sheldrake in a distant/qualitative way without endorsing his specifics.   

I am also reminded of a Science Fiction novel by David Brin, "The Practice Effect" which has been discussed here before (someone corrected/reminded me of the proper source last time I mentioned it at least).   Morphogenetics seems about as believeable as "the Practice Effect" as presented.    I *would* be interested in more elaboration by yourself and others on how you see Hoffman and Sheldrake living on the same continuum and the landscape between them.

- Steve

On 9/13/19 8:51 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Dave,

 

Please see larding below!

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2019 5:12 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] query and observation

 

this is the FRIAM I knew and loved,

[NST==>Your use of the past tense makes me nervous.  When ARE you coming back? <==nst]

 

 

As one of the deluded ones claiming direct, non intermediated, perception of that which is behind Hoffman's interface, his arguments are not surprising. Blaming the existence of the interface on evolution was kind of new and interesting.

[NST==>I am too demented right now to give this the consideration it deserves, but you, Dave, have always been generous about my dementias, so I am going to allow myself to continue, here. I just want to know, though, how you tell the difference between your direct knowledge, and the other kind.  Does direct knowledge come with little “d” icons attached?  So, not only do you have direct knowledge but you also have direct knowledge that that knowledge is direct, and direct knowledge that your knowledge of that knowledge is direct and ….ad finitum.  Just checking.  <==nst]

 

It is the juxtaposition, entirely coincidental, of Hoffman with Heidegger, Gadamer, and the whole hermeneutic school of philosophy that caused the greatest amount of thinking. Although not a hermeneuticist per se, Peirce seems to be at minimum, a fellow traveler.

[NST==>Yes, I agree.  Although, in my present demented state, I wouldn’t know a Gadamer if it bit me on my ankle. <==nst]

 

The claim by Hoffman, and all the physicists he cites, that the only thing we can know is the interface and whatever is behind that interface is not what everyone thinks it is, i.e. Objective Reality˛— seems to parallel the hermeneutic position that all we can know is the interpretation and whatever is behind the interpretation is not what every thinks it is, i.e. Truth.

[NST==>You dualists offer us a false choice.  Either we must assert a truth beyond experience, or deny any truth at all.  By why not a truth IN experience.  Truth is a [mathematical] property of experience.  That upon which human experience converges.  Truth is just what keeps banging us on the head as we grope around in the dark.  <==nst]

 

Nick's monism seems. to me, to be similar with Behavior more or less the same thing as Interface or Interpretation.

[NST==>Well, yes, but with Peirce’s pragmatic[ist] notion of truth.  Some methodological behaviorists [Watson] were proper dualists, asserting only that talk of events beyond experience was scientifically nugatory.  Philosophical behaviorists  [Wittgenstein??] assert that talk of events beyond experience is MEANINGLESS.  <==nst]

 

Hoffman's argument that, because we are all humanoids and share the same spot in the evolutionary sequence, we share a common, mostly,  Interface made me think immediately of Rupert Sheldrake and morphogenetic fields.

[NST==>I can’t call up Sheldrake at the moment, but if you are talking about the manner in which development channels us into common paths, the fact that even though there is tremendous randomness in epigenetic processes, yet we all end up looking [pretty much] the same, then, yes, I think the metaphor is excellent.  <==nst]

 

It is not the book, in itself, it is the connections that are fascinating.

 

davew

 

 

 

On Fri, Sep 13, 2019, at 4:05 AM, glen∈ℂ wrote:

> Heh, I doubt you're missing my point. And please don't mistake my

> defense/explanation of Hoffman as advocacy. I think it's interesting.

> But he relies too much, IMO, on idealized modeling. So, I don't think

> the interface idea is really all that important. But it is interesting.

>

> To me, though, the way the interface idea directly impacts my

> day-to-day actions is in facilitating my (already present) doubt about

> any metaphysical claims. When some arbitrary person tells me *why*

> they made some decision like accepting a job offer or whatever,

> Hoffman's idea helps me understand their rationale. E.g. in the

> *simple* strategy, where an agent makes their decision on the

> green/red heuristic, if that agent *talks* in terms of green and red,

> then my judgment of them is positive. If, however, that agent

> hand-waves themselves into metaphysical hooha about why they made

> their decision, then my judgment is negative.

>

> Practically, we could talk about that the "singularity" is fideistic.

> Or we could talk about Renee's son's belief in "the principle of

> attraction". Or from cognitive behavior therapy, concepts like

> "catastrophizing" are understandable in these terms. When a 15 year

> old exclaims that "My parents will kill me" it's an exclamation that's

> not very easy to understand for someone whose actually had someone try

> to kill them. But if we understand the boundaries and extent of the

> control surface one has access to, it makes the exclamation more

> understandable.

>

> I've mentioned this in the context of "code switching". The ability to

> put oneself in the shoes of another depends, fundamentally, on

> how/whether you can doff or don their "interface". More speculatively,

> I've had a lot of trouble sympathizing with the idiots who voted for

> Trump. But I can divide any 2 Trump supporters into those who *refuse*

> to make "metaphysical" statements and those who adhere closely to

> "what I thought at the time".

>

> To me, the hygienic examples of heliocentrism etc. are impoverished.

> The usefulness is more about how/when to recognize when someone's

> "blowing smoke" or being authentic in describing their inner life.

> It's possible the reason some of us might have trouble seeing how the

> idea would matter is because *some* of us already doubt much/most of

> what people, including our selves, say. And that we don't need the

> interface idea to be so doubtful? 8^)

>

> On 9/12/19 5:38 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:

> > I may be missing your point badly, but your response lead me to flip

> > my thinking inside out and ask myself just what I mean by "so what"

> > and realized that *might* be the central point to Hoffman's argument.

> >

> > My "so what?" perhaps illuminates Hoffman's argument:   The utility

> > of my perception of the sun and moon as orbiting the earth (or

> > actually more typically of them arcing across the surface of  one or

> > more fixed

> > domes) is higher in most contexts than perceiving them as being

> > involved in a much more abstract (albeit elegantly simpler?)

> > relationship formulized by GmM/r^2.   This "utility landscape" IS

> > the fitness landscape for evolution.    Obviously there must be

> > "gateways" (passes, tunnels, etc.) from the portion of this

> > landscape we live in everyday to the ones say where we are trying to

> > predict uncommon astronomical observations (e.g.  eclipses).

> >

> > I didn't mean to suggest that I didn't think the work was important

> > or interesting or fundamental, only that I don't see how it changes

> > how I live my everyday life for the most part.   I am *literally*

> > trying to invert my metaperceptions to see how I could be directly

> > aware that my perceptions are an interface, not a direct response to

> > reality... all easy to do intellectually (once some thought has been

> > put into it) but not so easy to apprehend even indirectly?

>

> ============================================================

> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe

> at St. John's College to unsubscribe

> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

> 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove