random v stochastic v indeterminate

[Marcus G. Daniels]

< And the third quote about clicktivism is just (apt) snark.  But there's a big difference between "chasing them away with sticks" and "holding the line".  The former is bad.  The latter is good.  >

Hold the line, but if violence is used to break it, adopt a liberal definition of self-defense.   I would have some concern of the tendency of a stick to fragment and not deliver enough energy.

Marcus
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[gepr]

Body armor is necessary.  My motorcycle jacket has nearly invisible pads for the elbows, shoulders, and back.  Augment that with some shin and arm guards and you'd be surprised at how much easier it is to defend yourself and others.  But the most important gear is your mouth guard.  Those chants are stupid anyway. >8^D

On 08/17/2017 12:36 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Hold the line, but if violence is used to break it, adopt a liberal definition of self-defense.   I would have some concern of the tendency of a stick to fragment and not deliver enough energy.


--
gⅼеɳ

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Think combining Charlottesville and Kent State..  Not pleasant to think about but is it completely preposterous?  I don't think so.  
Yes, every stylish urban pastor these days has a Kevlar robe!  

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of g???
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2017 1:52 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

Body armor is necessary.  My motorcycle jacket has nearly invisible pads for the elbows, shoulders, and back.  Augment that with some shin and arm guards and you'd be surprised at how much easier it is to defend yourself and others.  But the most important gear is your mouth guard.  Those chants are stupid anyway. >8^D

On 08/17/2017 12:36 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Hold the line, but if violence is used to break it, adopt a liberal definition of self-defense.   I would have some concern of the tendency of a stick to fragment and not deliver enough energy.


--
gⅼеɳ

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[gepr]

Yeah, bullets are another matter entirely.  It's easy to be "pure defense" with sticks and such.  Self-defense in the context of bullets is one of incoherent, asymmetric, or preemptive.  People who tell me they have a gun for self-defense risk a confrontation.  Guns are purely offensive.  They are nothing but murder weapons ... unless you're good enough to hit the other guys bullet with your bullet!  So, when someone says guns are for self-defense, what they really mean is they intend to murder people if they feel threatened.

On 08/17/2017 01:02 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Think combining Charlottesville and Kent State..  Not pleasant to think about but is it completely preposterous?  I don't think so.  
> Yes, every stylish urban pastor these days has a Kevlar robe!  


--
gⅼеɳ

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Thus  tasers..  couple a set of them with a Prius's battery so that reload is not a problem.  
Then some body armor for the Prius.    On the high end, a Tesla Model S could just turn targets into smoke if need be.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of g???
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2017 2:25 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

Yeah, bullets are another matter entirely.  It's easy to be "pure defense" with sticks and such.  Self-defense in the context of bullets is one of incoherent, asymmetric, or preemptive.  People who tell me they have a gun for self-defense risk a confrontation.  Guns are purely offensive.  They are nothing but murder weapons ... unless you're good enough to hit the other guys bullet with your bullet!  So, when someone says guns are for self-defense, what they really mean is they intend to murder people if they feel threatened.

On 08/17/2017 01:02 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Think combining Charlottesville and Kent State..  Not pleasant to think about but is it completely preposterous?  I don't think so.  
> Yes, every stylish urban pastor these days has a Kevlar robe!  


--
gⅼеɳ

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[gepr]

I'm not so sure.  If I had a pistol and were inclined to use it, my inclination would only go *up* if you tased the guy next to me ... or even looked like you were going to do so.  I think tasers might increase everyone's chances of being wounded or killed, rather than decreasing it.  My guess is it's flat-out better to let them beat on you than to take any offensive path at all.

On 08/17/2017 01:34 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Thus  tasers..  couple a set of them with a Prius's battery so that reload is not a problem.  
> Then some body armor for the Prius.    On the high end, a Tesla Model S could just turn targets into smoke if need be.


--
gⅼеɳ

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Gah.  Add more technology:  Persistence airborne surveillance of the event to estimate nearby risks and advise participants.  
Make an app for that.    And above all be sneaky about actions on the ground.   Anyway, I see your point.


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of g???
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2017 3:24 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

I'm not so sure.  If I had a pistol and were inclined to use it, my inclination would only go *up* if you tased the guy next to me ... or even looked like you were going to do so.  I think tasers might increase everyone's chances of being wounded or killed, rather than decreasing it.  My guess is it's flat-out better to let them beat on you than to take any offensive path at all.

On 08/17/2017 01:34 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Thus  tasers..  couple a set of them with a Prius's battery so that reload is not a problem.  
> Then some body armor for the Prius.    On the high end, a Tesla Model S could just turn targets into smoke if need be.


--
gⅼеɳ

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[Roger Critchlow-2]

I think a ballistic vest would work as well as motorcycle gear for center of mass defense.  Dress it up for cos play and you'll have the replacement for pro wrestling and other prize fighting entertainments.

By the way, are we taking down the nascent alt-right-web yet?   They're going to reinvent the internet to route around the censorship, and I think this is going to be the first real cyber war.

And perhaps that's what we need, institutionalized cyber gang warfare.  As the Pallio tamed the neighborhood gang conflict in Siena into twice yearly anything goes horse races, take all this must do the right/wrong/good/evil/offensive thing energy and turn it into e-riots, or irl riots with cos play armor.

-- rec --

On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 5:23 PM, gⅼеɳ <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'm not so sure.  If I had a pistol and were inclined to use it, my inclination would only go *up* if you tased the guy next to me ... or even looked like you were going to do so.  I think tasers might increase everyone's chances of being wounded or killed, rather than decreasing it.  My guess is it's flat-out better to let them beat on you than to take any offensive path at all.

On 08/17/2017 01:34 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Thus  tasers..  couple a set of them with a Prius's battery so that reload is not a problem.
> Then some body armor for the Prius.    On the high end, a Tesla Model S could just turn targets into smoke if need be.

--
gⅼеɳ

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[gepr]

The Future Primaeval is still up: http://thefutureprimaeval.net/this-is-the-future-primaeval/
NrX sites are mostly still up: http://neoreaction.net/ http://hestiasociety.org/

More Right is gone.  Mike Anissimov's Twitter account is gone.

Moldbug's garbage is still up:
http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/moldbugs-gentle-introduction/
http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/

It seems to me that the neo-nazis and "ethnic nationalists" are easy enough to recognize as silly idealists.  But the NrX guys pack more of a punch.  Their ideas are a bit like the insidious Sam Harris, who slathers his right wing ideas in a tasty sauce of rationalism.  But I don't know if the right answer is to take out their platforms.  It seems to me humiliation and humor are the right paths.  (cf. Harris' interaction with Chomsky)


On 08/17/2017 03:29 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:

> I think a ballistic vest would work as well as motorcycle gear for center
> of mass defense.  Dress it up for cos play and you'll have the replacement
> for pro wrestling and other prize fighting entertainments.
>
> By the way, are we taking down the nascent alt-right-web yet?   They're
> going to reinvent the internet to route around the censorship, and I think
> this is going to be the first real cyber war.
>
> And perhaps that's what we need, institutionalized cyber gang warfare.  As
> the Pallio tamed the neighborhood gang conflict in Siena into twice yearly
> anything goes horse races, take all this must do the
> right/wrong/good/evil/offensive thing energy and turn it into e-riots, or
> irl riots with cos play armor.

--
gⅼеɳ

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Roger writes:

"And perhaps that's what we need, institutionalized cyber gang warfare."

I suppose one could target OSI layer 4 and below, but that amounts to various kinds of denial of service.  Crude.

On the other hand, high-level attacks are forms of what Glen said -- "humiliation and humor" amount to sophisticated trolling.  That requires a sustained effort by people that can afford to take the time and are reasonably good at modeling and manipulating people.   Labor intensive and expensive.

I would like to see some robust automated control systems.  To do that it is necessary to pressure Facebook and Twitter to participate.

I believe they are working on it and talking about reliable third parties to judge content.    I imagine natural language systems that detect well-known lies as instances of entries in a credible fact-checkers database.   Such systems would also be useful to tag jihadists and other people that are coming undone.  Of course, even if these systems exist and work perfectly, one has to assume that the audience doesn't want to be lied to.   So it is is, in the end, really cyber warfare.  Might makes right.   

Marcus

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2017 4:29:38 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

 

I think a ballistic vest would work as well as motorcycle gear for center of mass defense.  Dress it up for cos play and you'll have the replacement for pro wrestling and other prize fighting entertainments.

By the way, are we taking down the nascent alt-right-web yet?   They're going to reinvent the internet to route around the censorship, and I think this is going to be the first real cyber war.

And perhaps that's what we need, institutionalized cyber gang warfare.  As the Pallio tamed the neighborhood gang conflict in Siena into twice yearly anything goes horse races, take all this must do the right/wrong/good/evil/offensive thing energy and turn it into e-riots, or irl riots with cos play armor.

-- rec --

On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 5:23 PM, gⅼеɳ <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'm not so sure.  If I had a pistol and were inclined to use it, my inclination would only go *up* if you tased the guy next to me ... or even looked like you were going to do so.  I think tasers might increase everyone's chances of being wounded or killed, rather than decreasing it.  My guess is it's flat-out better to let them beat on you than to take any offensive path at all.

On 08/17/2017 01:34 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Thus  tasers..  couple a set of them with a Prius's battery so that reload is not a problem.
> Then some body armor for the Prius.    On the high end, a Tesla Model S could just turn targets into smoke if need be.

--
gⅼеɳ

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[gepr]

Perhaps there is some hope.  See this orthodox nationalist's whining:

  http://www.rusjournal.org/the-orthodox-nationalist-podcast/

But it sounds like he's been replaced by a kinder-gentler version? I haven't heard of Nathaniel Kapner.  It's interesting how the tangled knot of fuzz that was NrX evolved into alt-right and is, now, gradually being taken over by the neo-[nazi|confederate] morons.  Perhaps this Kapner is evidence of the same in the orthodox nationalists.  I felt the same way when I watched the Libertarians completely devolve from talking about Hayek and Friedman and morph into garden variety right wingers. [sigh]

But the more (and more often) we can root out the pseudo-scholars and replace them with those less linguistically endowed, the easier it will be for the laity to see how impoverished their ideas are.

On 08/17/2017 04:01 PM, gⅼеɳ wrote:

> The Future Primaeval is still up: http://thefutureprimaeval.net/this-is-the-future-primaeval/
> NrX sites are mostly still up: http://neoreaction.net/ http://hestiasociety.org/
>
> More Right is gone.  Mike Anissimov's Twitter account is gone.
>
> Moldbug's garbage is still up:
> http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/moldbugs-gentle-introduction/
> http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/
>
> It seems to me that the neo-nazis and "ethnic nationalists" are easy enough to recognize as silly idealists.  But the NrX guys pack more of a punch.  Their ideas are a bit like the insidious Sam Harris, who slathers his right wing ideas in a tasty sauce of rationalism.  But I don't know if the right answer is to take out their platforms.  It seems to me humiliation and humor are the right paths.  (cf. Harris' interaction with Chomsky)

--
gⅼеɳ

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[Eric Charles-2]

Sorry to pull at a still thread, but I find this claim fascinating.
"Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them."

Would we say the same of artificial selection? I'm pretty sure we would normally claim that artificial selection has lead to all sorts of innovations. Maybe I'm thinking of "innovations" more broadly than is intended?!? Aren't the baring and tail-wagging, multi-colored, short-snouted, cuddly foxes an example of innovation? (For those who don't know, it takes a pretty short number of generations to turn wild foxes into reasonable approximations of domestic dogs, and all you have to do is select against aggression towards humans.)

I know what the quote is trying to get at, but I'm not sure it holds up in the wider context of things-that-cause biological innovation.

Best,

Eric

On Sun, Aug 13, 2017 at 5:12 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

"To explain why I hate it so much, we can try to think deeply about the nazi that killed the antifa yesterday in Charlottesville and Trump's response to it (blaming all sides)."

This side must have been terribly menacing to a man in a > 300 HP car.  Not only do words have meaning, but even perceptions.  The memes are unbound or at least differently bound.

So any fitness function that involves them cannot be compared.

Marcus

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of ┣glen┫ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2017 10:28 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

 

I absolutely loathe the meme metaphor.  I don't usually agree with Nick's distinction between metaphor and analogy.  8^)  But here, I claim the meme isn't *anything* like a gene... or more clearly, there is no idea/thought construct that is anything like a gene.

To explain why I hate it so much, we can try to think deeply about the nazi that killed the antifa yesterday in Charlottesville and Trump's response to it (blaming all sides).  To be clear, anyone who continues defending their vote for Trump at this point should be held accountable for their idiotic choice.  But the Trump defender will say something like "Trump's not a racist or a nazi, even if some of his followers are."  And, "yes I support Trump.  But I'm not a nazi."  Pffft.  It flat out does not matter.  There is no analog for mutation or crossover that we can use to map Trump to his nazis.  The gooey milieu that flows from someone like Trump, whose life of privilege has severely decoupled him from reality, to the nazis, whose fear and hatred has severely decoupled them from reality, ... that gooey ball of ill-formed ideology can't be coupled to reality.  That's the problem with metaphor, ideology, and fantasy.  To make reductive attempts to model such fantasy with analogies to real things (like genes) is to conflate fantasy with reality.

To be as clear as I can, ideas can only track back to mechanisms when they sync up with reality.  That's why (observational) science is so successful.  There are (basically) 2 ways ideas can interact with reality: 1) methodologically and 2) neural correlates.  If a ball of ideas includes (in its not biological evolution) a method for regularly testing itself against reality, then it's possible to analogize between that ball of ideas and reality.  Neither Trump, nor his nazis include that.  So, the only remaining map we can draw from the ideas to reality is any neural correlates we can find.  And until we have those, mapping the ideas to genes dooms us to faulty (at best) or delusional (at worst) inferences.

Now, everyone I know who uses the words "meme" and "memetics" is relatively scientifically literate.  So, memetics *seems* plausible because it's only used by relatively clear thinkers about relatively reality-touching balls of ideas.  But I would bet money that memetics will fail miserably if we try to use it to explain or model fantasy-dominated people like Trump and his supporters.



On 08/12/2017 12:10 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> In the socio/political/religious/economic realm it seems that multiple simultaneous mutations are more obvious to observe.   I think we see humans mis-copy their memetic code (misinterpret their holy scriptures, or their parents or masters teachings, etc.) very often and sometimes in several dimensions at once. Perhaps the "robustness" of the underlying unit (a human being) allows for such wild mutations (highly antisocial behaviour by most measures) in a single copy, is what allows for what seems like some fairly fast memetic evolution at the social level?
>
> i'm probably reaching here, but in this petri dish that is the USA with Trump or the first world with Trump, et al, or even the globally connected (bits, atoms, virus particles, memes, oh my!) first, second and third world there is likely to be some relatively unprecedented mutations recognized and even selected for.  Some could say that Donald Trump represents a half-dozen (or more) mutations in the socio/economic/political code and yet HE WAS SELECTED FOR and is almost surely malignant and seems to be metastasizing (other populist whitelash fascist movements around the first world).  The question in this metaphor might be whether the body (humankind) has the ability to fight back against this? It fits my Candide/Pollyanna idea that times such as these are good times to focus significant resources on simply "tending your own garden".    The world will have a better chance of fighting off this malignancy if it maintains it's overall health (social, economic, spiritual)
> otherwise.   We can't let this malignancy weaken our immune system any more than it already has.

--
␦glen?
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[Nick Thompson]

Eric,

 

I have been trying to get somebody to tussle with me over this claim since it was first made. 

 

I think it’s nonsense, but I am not sure.

 

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 Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 8:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

 

Sorry to pull at a still thread, but I find this claim fascinating.
"Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them."

Would we say the same of artificial selection? I'm pretty sure we would normally claim that artificial selection has lead to all sorts of innovations. Maybe I'm thinking of "innovations" more broadly than is intended?!? Aren't the baring and tail-wagging, multi-colored, short-snouted, cuddly foxes an example of innovation? (For those who don't know, it takes a pretty short number of generations to turn wild foxes into reasonable approximations of domestic dogs, and all you have to do is select against aggression towards humans.)

I know what the quote is trying to get at, but I'm not sure it holds up in the wider context of things-that-cause biological innovation.

Best,

Eric

 

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician

U.S. Marine Corps

 

On Sun, Aug 13, 2017 at 5:12 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

"To explain why I hate it so much, we can try to think deeply about the nazi that killed the antifa yesterday in Charlottesville and Trump's response to it (blaming all sides)."

 

This side must have been terribly menacing to a man in a > 300 HP car.  Not only do words have meaning, but even perceptions.  The memes are unbound or at least differently bound.

So any fitness function that involves them cannot be compared.

 

Marcus

 

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of ┣glen┫ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2017 10:28 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

 

I absolutely loathe the meme metaphor.  I don't usually agree with Nick's distinction between metaphor and analogy.  8^)  But here, I claim the meme isn't *anything* like a gene... or more clearly, there is no idea/thought construct that is anything like a gene.

To explain why I hate it so much, we can try to think deeply about the nazi that killed the antifa yesterday in Charlottesville and Trump's response to it (blaming all sides).  To be clear, anyone who continues defending their vote for Trump at this point should be held accountable for their idiotic choice.  But the Trump defender will say something like "Trump's not a racist or a nazi, even if some of his followers are."  And, "yes I support Trump.  But I'm not a nazi."  Pffft.  It flat out does not matter.  There is no analog for mutation or crossover that we can use to map Trump to his nazis.  The gooey milieu that flows from someone like Trump, whose life of privilege has severely decoupled him from reality, to the nazis, whose fear and hatred has severely decoupled them from reality, ... that gooey ball of ill-formed ideology can't be coupled to reality.  That's the problem with metaphor, ideology, and fantasy.  To make reductive attempts to model such fantasy with analogies to real things (like genes) is to conflate fantasy with reality.

To be as clear as I can, ideas can only track back to mechanisms when they sync up with reality.  That's why (observational) science is so successful.  There are (basically) 2 ways ideas can interact with reality: 1) methodologically and 2) neural correlates.  If a ball of ideas includes (in its not biological evolution) a method for regularly testing itself against reality, then it's possible to analogize between that ball of ideas and reality.  Neither Trump, nor his nazis include that.  So, the only remaining map we can draw from the ideas to reality is any neural correlates we can find.  And until we have those, mapping the ideas to genes dooms us to faulty (at best) or delusional (at worst) inferences.

Now, everyone I know who uses the words "meme" and "memetics" is relatively scientifically literate.  So, memetics *seems* plausible because it's only used by relatively clear thinkers about relatively reality-touching balls of ideas.  But I would bet money that memetics will fail miserably if we try to use it to explain or model fantasy-dominated people like Trump and his supporters.



On 08/12/2017 12:10 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> In the socio/political/religious/economic realm it seems that multiple simultaneous mutations are more obvious to observe.   I think we see humans mis-copy their memetic code (misinterpret their holy scriptures, or their parents or masters teachings, etc.) very often and sometimes in several dimensions at once. Perhaps the "robustness" of the underlying unit (a human being) allows for such wild mutations (highly antisocial behaviour by most measures) in a single copy, is what allows for what seems like some fairly fast memetic evolution at the social level?
>
> i'm probably reaching here, but in this petri dish that is the USA with Trump or the first world with Trump, et al, or even the globally connected (bits, atoms, virus particles, memes, oh my!) first, second and third world there is likely to be some relatively unprecedented mutations recognized and even selected for.  Some could say that Donald Trump represents a half-dozen (or more) mutations in the socio/economic/political code and yet HE WAS SELECTED FOR and is almost surely malignant and seems to be metastasizing (other populist whitelash fascist movements around the first world).  The question in this metaphor might be whether the body (humankind) has the ability to fight back against this? It fits my Candide/Pollyanna idea that times such as these are good times to focus significant resources on simply "tending your own garden".    The world will have a better chance of fighting off this malignancy if it maintains it's overall health (social, economic, spiritual)
> otherwise.   We can't let this malignancy weaken our immune system any more than it already has.

--
␦glen?
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[gepr]

Well, Dave promised to give us a gist of Wagner.  And Grant has chimed in regarding the stochasticity of crossover, which provoked an inadequate response from Nick, if I remember correctly.  Since you're actively reading Wagner now, Nick, perhaps you could give us a summary of what he might have meant by Jenny's quote?  Repeated here for convenience:

On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote:
>
> An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: how nature innovates by Andreas Wagner.
>
> From the Preface:  the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability.
>




On 08/22/2017 08:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> I have been trying to get somebody to tussle with me over this claim since it was first made.
> I think it’s nonsense, but I am not sure.
>
> *From:*Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 8:11 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate
>
>  
>
> Sorry to pull at a still thread, but I find this claim fascinating.
> "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them."
>
> Would we say the same of artificial selection? I'm pretty sure we would normally claim that artificial selection has lead to all sorts of innovations. Maybe I'm thinking of "innovations" more broadly than is intended?!? Aren't the baring and tail-wagging, multi-colored, short-snouted, cuddly foxes an example of innovation? (For those who don't know, it takes a pretty short number of generations to turn wild foxes into reasonable approximations of domestic dogs, and all you have to do is select against aggression towards humans.)
>
> I know what the quote is trying to get at, but I'm not sure it holds up in the wider context of things-that-cause biological innovation.

--
gⅼеɳ

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[Nick Thompson]

Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome offers up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living.  The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd.

"inadequate," my tush.  (};-)]

N



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 g???
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 12:11 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate


Well, Dave promised to give us a gist of Wagner.  And Grant has chimed in regarding the stochasticity of crossover, which provoked an inadequate response from Nick, if I remember correctly.  Since you're actively reading Wagner now, Nick, perhaps you could give us a summary of what he might have meant by Jenny's quote?  Repeated here for convenience:

On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote:
>
> An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: how nature innovates by Andreas Wagner.
>
> From the Preface:  the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability.
>




On 08/22/2017 08:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> I have been trying to get somebody to tussle with me over this claim since it was first made.
> I think it’s nonsense, but I am not sure.
>
> *From:*Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] *On Behalf Of *Eric
> Charles
> *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 8:11 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <[hidden email]>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate
>
>  
>
> Sorry to pull at a still thread, but I find this claim fascinating.
> "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them."
>
> Would we say the same of artificial selection? I'm pretty sure we
> would normally claim that artificial selection has lead to all sorts
> of innovations. Maybe I'm thinking of "innovations" more broadly than
> is intended?!? Aren't the baring and tail-wagging, multi-colored,
> short-snouted, cuddly foxes an example of innovation? (For those who
> don't know, it takes a pretty short number of generations to turn wild
> foxes into reasonable approximations of domestic dogs, and all you
> have to do is select against aggression towards humans.)
>
> I know what the quote is trying to get at, but I'm not sure it holds up in the wider context of things-that-cause biological innovation.

--
gⅼеɳ

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[gepr]

Heh, so you *agree* with Wagner that natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them?

On 08/22/2017 11:21 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome offers up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living.  The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd.

--
gⅼеɳ

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[Nick Thompson]

Well, I am not sure the weight of Wagner's presentation supports that conclusion.

N

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 g???
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 2:28 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Heh, so you *agree* with Wagner that natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them?

On 08/22/2017 11:21 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome offers up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living.  The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd.

--
gⅼеɳ

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[Robert Wall]

Nick,

"Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them."  and  "The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd."

Not trying to get into a tussle with you, 😊 but Jeremy England would tend to agree with you, as would I.  According to this analysis (Nautilus 2016) concerning the Hox gene circuit, there doesn't seem to be enough time for randomness (i.e., blindly groping) to be explanatory. The numbers tend to say this would be absurd. 

Take, for example, the discovery within the field of evolutionary developmental biology that the different body plans of many complex organisms, including us, arise not from different genes but from different networks of gene interaction and expression in the same basic circuit, called the Hox gene circuit. To get from a snake to a human, you don’t need a bunch of completely different genes, but just a different pattern of wiring in essentially the same kind of Hox gene circuit. For these two vertebrates there are around 40 genes in the circuit. If you take account of the different ways that these genes might regulate one another (for example, by activation or suppression), you find that the number of possible circuits is more than 10700. That’s a lot, lot more than the number of fundamental particles in the observable universe. What, then, are the chances of evolution finding its way blindly to the viable “snake” or “human” traits (or phenotypes) for the Hox gene circuit? How on earth did evolution manage to rewire the Hox network of a Cambrian fish to create us?

​...​

​

You could go from one sequence to another with the same shape (and thus much the same function) via a succession of small changes to the sequence, as if proceeding through a rail network station by station. Such changes are called neutral mutations, because they are neither adaptively beneficial nor detrimental. (In fact even if mutations are not strictly neutral but slightly decrease fitness, as many do, they can persist for a long time in a population as if they were quasi-neutral.)

Here is a new explanation for the rest of us -- Wired: CONTROVERSIAL NEW THEORY SUGGESTS LIFE WASN'T A FLUKE OF BIOLOGY—IT WAS PHYSICS [7-30-2017].

... and here -- Scientific America: A New Physics Theory of Life [2014], where the same science author writes about this when the idea was first proposed by England in his 2013 paper. 

A physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like physical properties

Perhaps very much prematurely, England is being touted as the new Darwin.  His theory, however, does not replace natural selection but provides a deeper expanation for "fitness." 

In an hour-long lecture that I listened to recently, England admits that we cannot really attribute any of this to randomness ... we don't really know precisely what that is. What it seems to come down to, though, are--as you say--the "best" hypotheses for the seemingly improbable (considering the Second Law of Thermodynamics) building of new structures in a prevailing heat bath that dissipate the most Gibbs free energy. Erwin Schrödinger noted something similar in his 1944 essay What is Life. 

If I understand this, what creates these "fit" structures is this tendency for all matter, not just living matter, (i.e., arrangements of atoms or molecules) to self-organize into new organizations--your hypotheses--that maximize the dissipation of free energy. It is indeed the evolving, prevailing environment that provides the opportunities for various, different "hypotheses" to arise at different times in geological history. So, in a sense, you can say that natural selection creates and preserves innovations if you see it as an interactive process as both Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead both did at the beginning of the twentieth century. 

From the same Scientific American article, this is notable: 

Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and function in living things, many of the researchers said. “Natural selection doesn’t explain certain characteristics,” said Ard Louis, a biophysicist at Oxford University, in an email. These characteristics include a heritable change to gene expression called methylation, increases in complexity in the absence of natural selection, and certain molecular changes Louis has recently studied.

 

If [Jeremy] England’s approach stands up to more testing, it could further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation for every adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of dissipation-driven organization. They might find, for example, that “the reason that an organism shows characteristic X rather than Y may not be because X is more fit than Y, but because physical constraints make it easier for X to evolve than for Y to evolve,” Louis said.

For students and practitioners of complexity science, this seems more than just interesting.  

Hope this adds something to this interesting thread.  It got my attention.

Cheers,

Robert

On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 12:21 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome offers up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living.  The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd.

"inadequate," my tush.  (};-)]

N



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 g???
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 12:11 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate


Well, Dave promised to give us a gist of Wagner.  And Grant has chimed in regarding the stochasticity of crossover, which provoked an inadequate response from Nick, if I remember correctly.  Since you're actively reading Wagner now, Nick, perhaps you could give us a summary of what he might have meant by Jenny's quote?  Repeated here for convenience:

On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote:
>
> An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: how nature innovates by Andreas Wagner.
>
> From the Preface:  the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability.
>




On 08/22/2017 08:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> I have been trying to get somebody to tussle with me over this claim since it was first made.
> I think it’s nonsense, but I am not sure.
>
> *From:*Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] *On Behalf Of *Eric
> Charles
> *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 8:11 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <[hidden email]>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate
>
>
>
> Sorry to pull at a still thread, but I find this claim fascinating.
> "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them."
>
> Would we say the same of artificial selection? I'm pretty sure we
> would normally claim that artificial selection has lead to all sorts
> of innovations. Maybe I'm thinking of "innovations" more broadly than
> is intended?!? Aren't the baring and tail-wagging, multi-colored,
> short-snouted, cuddly foxes an example of innovation? (For those who
> don't know, it takes a pretty short number of generations to turn wild
> foxes into reasonable approximations of domestic dogs, and all you
> have to do is select against aggression towards humans.)
>
> I know what the quote is trying to get at, but I'm not sure it holds up in the wider context of things-that-cause biological innovation.

--
gⅼеɳ

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[Eric Charles-2]

Incidentally, the life-increases-entropy hypothesis.... I first stumbled upon an excellent statement of that in Comparative Psychology: A Handbook (1998). It was by Rod Swenson, who has some other interesting statements on the topic on Research Gate, including one connecting the idea with perception-action systems.

It is definitely insightful in some ways, and I remember being quite impressed. However, as I see it pop up more, I start to remember that it's been a while since most Western intellectuals expected life to be an exception to the laws of physics, so I'm not sure it's too terribly interesting to note that life conforms to them. 

On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 7:05 PM, Robert Wall <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick,

"Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them."  and  "The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd."

Not trying to get into a tussle with you, 😊 but Jeremy England would tend to agree with you, as would I.  According to this analysis (Nautilus 2016) concerning the Hox gene circuit, there doesn't seem to be enough time for randomness (i.e., blindly groping) to be explanatory. The numbers tend to say this would be absurd. 

Take, for example, the discovery within the field of evolutionary developmental biology that the different body plans of many complex organisms, including us, arise not from different genes but from different networks of gene interaction and expression in the same basic circuit, called the Hox gene circuit. To get from a snake to a human, you don’t need a bunch of completely different genes, but just a different pattern of wiring in essentially the same kind of Hox gene circuit. For these two vertebrates there are around 40 genes in the circuit. If you take account of the different ways that these genes might regulate one another (for example, by activation or suppression), you find that the number of possible circuits is more than 10700. That’s a lot, lot more than the number of fundamental particles in the observable universe. What, then, are the chances of evolution finding its way blindly to the viable “snake” or “human” traits (or phenotypes) for the Hox gene circuit? How on earth did evolution manage to rewire the Hox network of a Cambrian fish to create us?

​...​

​

You could go from one sequence to another with the same shape (and thus much the same function) via a succession of small changes to the sequence, as if proceeding through a rail network station by station. Such changes are called neutral mutations, because they are neither adaptively beneficial nor detrimental. (In fact even if mutations are not strictly neutral but slightly decrease fitness, as many do, they can persist for a long time in a population as if they were quasi-neutral.)

Here is a new explanation for the rest of us -- Wired: CONTROVERSIAL NEW THEORY SUGGESTS LIFE WASN'T A FLUKE OF BIOLOGY—IT WAS PHYSICS [7-30-2017].

... and here -- Scientific America: A New Physics Theory of Life [2014], where the same science author writes about this when the idea was first proposed by England in his 2013 paper. 

A physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like physical properties

Perhaps very much prematurely, England is being touted as the new Darwin.  His theory, however, does not replace natural selection but provides a deeper expanation for "fitness." 

In an hour-long lecture that I listened to recently, England admits that we cannot really attribute any of this to randomness ... we don't really know precisely what that is. What it seems to come down to, though, are--as you say--the "best" hypotheses for the seemingly improbable (considering the Second Law of Thermodynamics) building of new structures in a prevailing heat bath that dissipate the most Gibbs free energy. Erwin Schrödinger noted something similar in his 1944 essay What is Life. 

If I understand this, what creates these "fit" structures is this tendency for all matter, not just living matter, (i.e., arrangements of atoms or molecules) to self-organize into new organizations--your hypotheses--that maximize the dissipation of free energy. It is indeed the evolving, prevailing environment that provides the opportunities for various, different "hypotheses" to arise at different times in geological history. So, in a sense, you can say that natural selection creates and preserves innovations if you see it as an interactive process as both Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead both did at the beginning of the twentieth century. 

From the same Scientific American article, this is notable: 

Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and function in living things, many of the researchers said. “Natural selection doesn’t explain certain characteristics,” said Ard Louis, a biophysicist at Oxford University, in an email. These characteristics include a heritable change to gene expression called methylation, increases in complexity in the absence of natural selection, and certain molecular changes Louis has recently studied.

 

If [Jeremy] England’s approach stands up to more testing, it could further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation for every adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of dissipation-driven organization. They might find, for example, that “the reason that an organism shows characteristic X rather than Y may not be because X is more fit than Y, but because physical constraints make it easier for X to evolve than for Y to evolve,” Louis said.

For students and practitioners of complexity science, this seems more than just interesting.  

Hope this adds something to this interesting thread.  It got my attention.

Cheers,

Robert

On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 12:21 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome offers up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living.  The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd.

"inadequate," my tush.  (};-)]

N



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 g???
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 12:11 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate


Well, Dave promised to give us a gist of Wagner.  And Grant has chimed in regarding the stochasticity of crossover, which provoked an inadequate response from Nick, if I remember correctly.  Since you're actively reading Wagner now, Nick, perhaps you could give us a summary of what he might have meant by Jenny's quote?  Repeated here for convenience:

On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote:
>
> An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest: how nature innovates by Andreas Wagner.
>
> From the Preface:  the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability.
>




On 08/22/2017 08:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> I have been trying to get somebody to tussle with me over this claim since it was first made.
> I think it’s nonsense, but I am not sure.
>
> *From:*Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] *On Behalf Of *Eric
> Charles
> *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 8:11 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <[hidden email]>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate
>
>
>
> Sorry to pull at a still thread, but I find this claim fascinating.
> "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them."
>
> Would we say the same of artificial selection? I'm pretty sure we
> would normally claim that artificial selection has lead to all sorts
> of innovations. Maybe I'm thinking of "innovations" more broadly than
> is intended?!? Aren't the baring and tail-wagging, multi-colored,
> short-snouted, cuddly foxes an example of innovation? (For those who
> don't know, it takes a pretty short number of generations to turn wild
> foxes into reasonable approximations of domestic dogs, and all you
> have to do is select against aggression towards humans.)
>
> I know what the quote is trying to get at, but I'm not sure it holds up in the wider context of things-that-cause biological innovation.

--
gⅼеɳ

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[gepr]

But none of this seems to indicate that *selection* or survival to mating age *creates* the new attribute. Survival to mating age only preserves whatever phenotype was constructed by the genes and ontogeny. Whether you call genes and ontogeny random or not is irrelevant. We could easily call it 'ignorance'... i.e. ignorance constructs the phenotype, then the environment decides its fecundity.

On August 22, 2017 5:25:27 PM PDT, Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:

>Incidentally, the life-increases-entropy hypothesis.... I first
>stumbled
>upon an excellent statement of that in Comparative Psychology: A
>Handbook
><https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/comparative-psychology-gary-greenberg/1112415063>(1998).
>It was by Rod Swenson, who has some other interesting statements on the
>topic on Research Gate
><https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2118010758_ROD_SWENSON>,
>including one connecting the idea with perception-action systems.
>
>It is definitely insightful in some ways, and I remember being quite
>impressed. However, as I see it pop up more, I start to remember that
>it's
>been a while since most Western intellectuals expected life to be an
>exception to the laws of physics, so I'm not sure it's too terribly
>interesting to note that life conforms to them.
>
>
>-----------
>Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
>Supervisory Survey Statistician
>U.S. Marine Corps
><[hidden email]>
>
>On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 7:05 PM, Robert Wall <[hidden email]>
>wrote:
>
>> Nick,
>>
>> "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create
>them."
>>  and  "The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space
>is
>> absurd."
>>
>> Not trying to get into a tussle with you, 😊 but Jeremy England
>> <http://web.mit.edu/physics/people/faculty/england_jeremy.html> would
>> tend to agree with you, as would I.  According to this analysis
>(*Nautilus
>> *2016) concerning the Hox gene circuit
>>
><http://nautil.us/issue/41/selection/the-strange-inevitability-of-evolution-rp>,
>> there doesn't seem to be enough time for randomness (i.e., blindly
>groping)
>> to be explanatory. The numbers tend to say this *would *be absurd.
>>
>> Take, for example, the discovery within the field of evolutionary
>>> developmental biology that the different body plans of many complex
>>> organisms, including us, arise not from different genes but from
>different
>>> networks of gene interaction and expression in the same basic
>circuit,
>>> called the Hox gene circuit. To get from a snake to a human, you
>don’t
>>> need a bunch of completely different genes, but just a different
>pattern of
>>> wiring in essentially the same kind of Hox gene circuit. For these
>two
>>> vertebrates there are around 40 genes in the circuit. If you take
>account
>>> of the different ways that these genes might regulate one another
>(for
>>> example, by activation or suppression), you find that the number of
>>> possible circuits is more than 10700. That’s a lot, lot more than
>the
>>> number of fundamental particles in the observable universe. What,
>then, are
>>> the chances of evolution finding its way blindly to the viable
>“snake” or
>>> “human” traits (or phenotypes) for the Hox gene circuit? How on
>earth did
>>> evolution manage to rewire the Hox network of a Cambrian fish to
>create us?
>>
>>
>> ​...​
>>
>> ​
>>
>> You could go from one sequence to another with the same shape (and
>thus
>>> much the same function) via a succession of small changes to the
>sequence,
>>> as if proceeding through a rail network station by station. Such
>changes
>>> are called neutral mutations, because they are neither adaptively
>>> beneficial nor detrimental. (In fact even if mutations are not
>strictly
>>> neutral but slightly decrease fitness, as many do, they can persist
>for a
>>> long time in a population as if they were quasi-neutral.)
>>
>>
>> Here is a new explanation *for the rest of us* -- *Wired*:
>CONTROVERSIAL
>> NEW THEORY SUGGESTS LIFE WASN'T A FLUKE OF BIOLOGY—IT WAS PHYSICS
>>
><https://www.wired.com/story/controversial-new-theory-suggests-life-wasnt-a-fluke-of-biologyit-was-physics/>
>> [7-30-2017].
>>
>> ... and here -- *Scientific America*: A New Physics Theory of Life
>>
><https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-physics-theory-of-life/>
>> [2014], where the same science author writes about this when the idea
>was
>> first proposed by England in his 2013 paper
>> <http://www.englandlab.com/uploads/7/8/0/3/7803054/2013jcpsrep.pdf>.
>>
>>
>> A physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists
>because
>> the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like
>physical
>> properties
>>
>>
>> Perhaps very much prematurely, England is being touted as the new
>Darwin.
>> His theory, however, does not replace natural selection but provides
>a
>> deeper expanation for "fitness."
>>
>> In an hour-long lecture that I listened to
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91D5UAz-f4> recently, England
>admits
>> that we cannot really attribute any of this to randomness ... we
>don't
>> really know precisely what that is. What it seems to come down to,
>though,
>> are--as you say--the "best" hypotheses for the seemingly improbable
>> (considering the Second Law of Thermodynamics) building of new
>structures
>> in a prevailing heat bath that dissipate the most Gibbs free energy.
>Erwin
>> Schrödinger noted something similar in his 1944 essay *What is Life*.
>>
>> If I understand this, what creates these "fit" structures is this
>> tendency for all matter, not just living matter, (i.e., arrangements
>of
>> atoms or molecules) to self-organize into new organizations--your
>> *hypotheses*--that maximize the dissipation of free energy. It is
>indeed
>> the evolving, prevailing environment that provides the opportunities
>for
>> various, different "hypotheses" to arise at different times in
>geological
>> history. So, in a sense, you *can *say that natural selection
>*creates
>> and preserves* innovations if you see it as an interactive process as
>> both Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead both did at the
>beginning of
>> the twentieth century.
>>
>> From the same *Scientific American* article, this is notable:
>>
>> Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give
>>> researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and
>>> function in living things, many of the researchers said. “Natural
>selection
>>> doesn’t explain certain characteristics,” said Ard Louis, a
>biophysicist at
>>> Oxford University, in an email. These characteristics include a
>heritable
>>> change to gene expression called methylation, increases in
>complexity in
>>> the absence of natural selection, and certain molecular changes
>Louis has
>>> recently studied.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> If [*Jeremy*] England’s approach stands up to more testing, it could
>>> further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation for
>every
>>> adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of
>>> dissipation-driven organization. They might find, for example, that
>“the
>>> reason that an organism shows characteristic X rather than Y may not
>be
>>> because X is more fit than Y, but because physical constraints make
>it
>>> easier for X to evolve than for Y to evolve,” Louis said.
>>
>>
>> For students and practitioners of complexity science, this seems more
>than
>> just interesting.
>>
>> Hope this adds something to this interesting thread.  It got my
>attention.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Robert
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 12:21 PM, Nick Thompson <
>> [hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>>> Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome
>offers
>>> up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living.  The idea
>of
>>> evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd.
>>>
>>> "inadequate," my tush.  (};-)]
>>>
>>> N
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 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 g???
>>> Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 12:11 PM
>>> To: [hidden email]
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, Dave promised to give us a gist of Wagner.  And Grant has
>chimed in
>>> regarding the stochasticity of crossover, which provoked an
>inadequate
>>> response from Nick, if I remember correctly.  Since you're actively
>reading
>>> Wagner now, Nick, perhaps you could give us a summary of what he
>might have
>>> meant by Jenny's quote?  Repeated here for convenience:
>>>
>>> On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote:
>>> >
>>> > An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest:
>how
>>> nature innovates by Andreas Wagner.
>>> >
>>> > From the Preface:  the power of natural selection is beyond
>dispute,
>>> but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve
>innovations, but
>>> it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them
>random is
>>> just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any
>>> innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles
>that
>>> accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innov

--
⛧glen⛧

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