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random v stochastic v indeterminate

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Nick Thompson

random v stochastic v indeterminate

Hi everybody,

Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog.

I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours.

First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it’s last value. So the next step in a random walk is “random” but the current value (it’s present position on a surface, say) is “the result of a stochastic process.” From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can’t tell if I am correct or not.

Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this “evolution” of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself.

So what kind of “evolution” are you guys talking about?

Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here.

nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

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Gillian Densmore

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

Ah, good to see you nick.

How fairs you?

On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi everybody,

Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog.

I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours.

First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it’s last value. So the next step in a random walk is “random” but the current value (it’s present position on a surface, say) is “the result of a stochastic process.” From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can’t tell if I am correct or not.

Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this “evolution” of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself.

So what kind of “evolution” are you guys talking about?

Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here.

nick

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

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

Jenny Quillien

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

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.

Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly relevant to Nick's e-mail.

Jenny Quillien

On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Hi everybody,

Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog.

I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours.

First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it’s last value. So the next step in a random walk is “random” but the current value (it’s present position on a surface, say) is “the result of a stochastic process.” From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can’t tell if I am correct or not.

Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this “evolution” of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself.

So what kind of “evolution” are you guys talking about?

Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here.

nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
============================================================
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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

gepr

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Maybe you're looking for the term "Markovian"? http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MarkovProcess.html

On 08/09/2017 07:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value
> was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it's last value. So the
> next step in a random walk is "random" but the current value (it's present
> position on a surface, say) is "the result of a stochastic process." From
> your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can't tell if
> I am correct or not.

--
☣ glen

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

Grant Holland

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Nick,

Re: your queston about stochastic processes....

Yes, your specific description "AND its last value" is what most uses of "stochastic process" imply. But, technically all that is required to be a "stochastic process" is that each next step in the process is unpredictable, whether or not the outcome of one step influences the outcome of the next. An example of this is the process of flipping a coin several times in a row. Generally, we assume that the outcomes of two adjacent flips are stochastically (or statistically) independent, and that there is no influence between the steps. So, the steps of an independent stochastic process are not dependent on their previous steps.

On the other hand, selecting dinner tonight probably depends on what you had last night, because you would get bored with posole too many nights in a row. And maybe your memory goes back more than just one night, and your selection of dinner tonite is affected by what you had for 2 or more nites before. If your memory goes back only one night, then your "dinner selection process" is a kind of stochastic process called a "Markov process". Markov processes limit their "memory" to just one step. (That keeps the math simpler.)

In any event, stochastic processes whose steps depend on the outcomes of previous steps are "less random" than those that don't, because the earlier steps "give you extra information" that help you narrow down the options and to better predict the future steps - some more than others. So, LEARNING can occur inside of these dependent stochastic processes.

In fact, the mathematics of information theory is all about taking advantage of these dependent (or "conditional") stochastic processes to hopefully predict the outcomes of future steps. The whole thing is based on conditional probability. Info theory uses formulas with names such as joint entropy, conditional entropy, mutual information and entropy rate. These formulas can measure how much stochastic dependency is at work in a particular process - i.e how predictable it is. Entropy rate in particular works with conditional stochastic processes and tries to use that "extra information" provided by stochastic dependencies to predict future outcomes.

Re: your "evolution" question... I have been speaking of biological evolution.

HTH

Grant

On 8/9/17 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Hi everybody,

Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog.

I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours.

First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it’s last value. So the next step in a random walk is “random” but the current value (it’s present position on a surface, say) is “the result of a stochastic process.” From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can’t tell if I am correct or not.

Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this “evolution” of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself.

So what kind of “evolution” are you guys talking about?

Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here.

nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
============================================================
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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Steve Smith

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

In reply to this post by Jenny Quillien

Jenny -

What a powerful quote:

Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them.

In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free Markets may well be restricted to the "innovation phase" of development. Once something becomes a (relative) commodity, it seems it might be counter-productive to continue the illusion of competitive development. At best it is wasteful and even harmful, and at worst it leads to an elevation of "innovation" to marketing and salesmanship. This is why we have so many near-identical products on the market being pushed on us through the hype of greed and fear when the "generic" or "store brand" version is equal or (even) superior (certainly in price, but also possibly in quality... lacking the colorants and odorants and other embellishments required to differentiate one product from the other?).

- Steve

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.

Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly relevant to Nick's e-mail.

Jenny Quillien

On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
Hi everybody,

Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog.

I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours.

First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it’s last value. So the next step in a random walk is “random” but the current value (it’s present position on a surface, say) is “the result of a stochastic process.” From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can’t tell if I am correct or not.

Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this “evolution” of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself.

So what kind of “evolution” are you guys talking about?

Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here.

nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
============================================================
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
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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Jenny Quillien

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

Totally agree.

Maybe a few of us can read the Wagener book (apparently he shows up at the Santa Fe institute from time to time as an external something or other) and see what we can do with the ideas. I'll be in Amsterdam but can follow e-mail threads to skype. Jenny

On 8/9/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

Jenny -

What a powerful quote:

Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them.

In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free Markets may well be restricted to the "innovation phase" of development. Once something becomes a (relative) commodity, it seems it might be counter-productive to continue the illusion of competitive development. At best it is wasteful and even harmful, and at worst it leads to an elevation of "innovation" to marketing and salesmanship. This is why we have so many near-identical products on the market being pushed on us through the hype of greed and fear when the "generic" or "store brand" version is equal or (even) superior (certainly in price, but also possibly in quality... lacking the colorants and odorants and other embellishments required to differentiate one product from the other?).

- Steve

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.

Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly relevant to Nick's e-mail.

Jenny Quillien

On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
Hi everybody,

Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog.

I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours.

First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it’s last value. So the next step in a random walk is “random” but the current value (it’s present position on a surface, say) is “the result of a stochastic process.” From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can’t tell if I am correct or not.

Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this “evolution” of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself.

So what kind of “evolution” are you guys talking about?

Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here.

nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
============================================================
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
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
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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

The random + current thing sounds like a Markov process. If the next value is independent of the current value then it's random. If it depends on the current value and no previous values it's Markov of order 1. If it depends only on the current value and the one before and none before that, order 2. Etc. Or something like that. I'm rusty.

Frank

Frank Wimberly
Phone (505) 670-9918

On Aug 9, 2017 8:48 AM, "Nick Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi everybody,

Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog.

I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours.

First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it’s last value. So the next step in a random walk is “random” but the current value (it’s present position on a surface, say) is “the result of a stochastic process.” From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can’t tell if I am correct or not.

Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this “evolution” of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself.

So what kind of “evolution” are you guys talking about?

Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here.

nick

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

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

Grant Holland

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

Steve,

According to Jacques Monod, chance mutations are the only form of innovation in living systems.

On p. 112 of his book "Chance and Necessity" he says "...since they [chance mutations] constitute the only possible source of modifications in the genetic text,...it necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. [Emphasis is his.]

Geneticist Monod was a winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology.

Grant

On 8/9/17 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

Jenny -

What a powerful quote:

Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them.

In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free Markets may well be restricted to the "innovation phase" of development. Once something becomes a (relative) commodity, it seems it might be counter-productive to continue the illusion of competitive development. At best it is wasteful and even harmful, and at worst it leads to an elevation of "innovation" to marketing and salesmanship. This is why we have so many near-identical products on the market being pushed on us through the hype of greed and fear when the "generic" or "store brand" version is equal or (even) superior (certainly in price, but also possibly in quality... lacking the colorants and odorants and other embellishments required to differentiate one product from the other?).

- Steve

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.

Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly relevant to Nick's e-mail.

Jenny Quillien

On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
Hi everybody,

Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog.

I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours.

First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it’s last value. So the next step in a random walk is “random” but the current value (it’s present position on a surface, say) is “the result of a stochastic process.” From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can’t tell if I am correct or not.

Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this “evolution” of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself.

So what kind of “evolution” are you guys talking about?

Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here.

nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
============================================================
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
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
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
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

gepr

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

I think Wagner and Monod agree, actually. If I extrapolate what Jenny said Wagner said, *mutation's* randomness is a statement of ignorance, presumably about where innovation comes from in biological evolution. So, both Monod and Wagner would say innovation comes from mutation.

On 08/09/2017 10:22 AM, Grant Holland wrote:
> According to Jacques Monod, chance mutations are the /only /form of innovation in living systems.
>
> On p. 112 of his book "Chance and Necessity" he says "...since they [chance mutations] constitute the /only/ possible source of modifications in the genetic text,...it necessarily follows that chance /alone/ is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. [Emphasis is his.]

> On 8/9/17 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>>
>> Jenny -
>>
>> What a powerful quote:
>>
>> /Natural selection can //preserve//innovations, but it cannot
>> create them./

>> 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.

--
☣ glen

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

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Nick Thompson

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

In reply to this post by gepr

Thanks, Glen,

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 glen ?
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 11:48 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Maybe you're looking for the term "Markovian"? http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MarkovProcess.html

On 08/09/2017 07:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose
> value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it's last
> value. So the next step in a random walk is "random" but the current
> value (it's present position on a surface, say) is "the result of a
> stochastic process." From your responses, and from a short rummage in
> Wikipedia, I still can't tell if I am correct or not.

--
☣ glen

============================================================
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
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
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Nick Thompson

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

In reply to this post by Jenny Quillien

Steve,

What’s powerful about it?

What is presented to the world by the epigenetic system is not mutations but “hypotheses” about ways to live. And presumably epigenetic systems are shaped by natural selection to produce more or less plausible hypotheses. The randomness is largely notional. I still think you guys are more captured by your model of evolution than by the actual facts of it.

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 Jenny Quillien
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 12:21 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Totally agree.

On 8/9/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

Jenny -
What a powerful quote:
Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them.
In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free Markets may well be restricted to the "innovation phase" of development. Once something becomes a (relative) commodity, it seems it might be counter-productive to continue the illusion of competitive development. At best it is wasteful and even harmful, and at worst it leads to an elevation of "innovation" to marketing and salesmanship. This is why we have so many near-identical products on the market being pushed on us through the hype of greed and fear when the "generic" or "store brand" version is equal or (even) superior (certainly in price, but also possibly in quality... lacking the colorants and odorants and other embellishments required to differentiate one product from the other?).

- Steve
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.
Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly relevant to Nick's e-mail.
Jenny Quillien

On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
Hi everybody,

Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog.

I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours.

First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it’s last value. So the next step in a random walk is “random” but the current value (it’s present position on a surface, say) is “the result of a stochastic process.” From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can’t tell if I am correct or not.

Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this “evolution” of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself.

So what kind of “evolution” are you guys talking about?

Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here.

nick

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

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

Some of us tend to care more about applied power more than the explanatory power. Also as Frank suggested there are practical limits to the size of genomes that can be simulated. I could imagine epigenetic / regulatory analogs being beneficial though.

Marcus

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 9, 2017, at 12:58 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Steve,

What’s powerful about it?

What is presented to the world by the epigenetic system is not mutations but “hypotheses” about ways to live. And presumably epigenetic systems are shaped by natural selection to produce more or less plausible hypotheses. The randomness is largely notional. I still think you guys are more captured by your model of evolution than by the actual facts of it.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Jenny Quillien
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 12:21 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Totally agree.

Maybe a few of us can read the Wagener book (apparently he shows up at the Santa Fe institute from time to time as an external something or other) and see what we can do with the ideas. I'll be in Amsterdam but can follow e-mail threads to skype. Jenny

On 8/9/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
Jenny -

What a powerful quote:

Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them.

In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free Markets may well be restricted to the "innovation phase" of development. Once something becomes a (relative) commodity, it seems it might be counter-productive to continue the illusion of competitive development. At best it is wasteful and even harmful, and at worst it leads to an elevation of "innovation" to marketing and salesmanship. This is why we have so many near-identical products on the market being pushed on us through the hype of greed and fear when the "generic" or "store brand" version is equal or (even) superior (certainly in price, but also possibly in quality... lacking the colorants and odorants and other embellishments required to differentiate one product from the other?).

- Steve

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.

Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly relevant to Nick's e-mail.

Jenny Quillien

On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
Hi everybody,

Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog.

I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours.

First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it’s last value. So the next step in a random walk is “random” but the current value (it’s present position on a surface, say) is “the result of a stochastic process.” From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can’t tell if I am correct or not.

Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this “evolution” of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself.

So what kind of “evolution” are you guys talking about?

Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here.

nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
============================================================
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
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Steve Smith

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Nick -

I am very glad to note that you are recovering and your scrappiness is properly returning!

What’s powerful about it?

Nothing more than it is such a succinct statement negating the popular fallacious apprehension of the mechanism of evolution, suggesting that there is a causal link between "selection" and "innovation"... the innovation step is in the mutation, but as the quote states clearly, said *innovation* is *preserved* (selected for) by the natural selection mechanism. I think I held this misapprehension for the longest time, in the same way I *still* think of the Sun orbiting around the earth when I have plenty of reason to believe it is the other way around.

What is presented to the world by the epigenetic system is not mutations but “hypotheses” about ways to live. And presumably epigenetic systems are shaped by natural selection to produce more or less plausible hypotheses.

And what is the "hypothesis generator" in epigenetics? Is it stochastic or deterministic? (and what examples of epigenetics are you thinking of?) Is "plausable" the term you want, or is it more "utilitarian"?

The randomness is largely notional.

I do think that "random" is a very loosey-goosey concept (like so many we call out on this list), but whether the variation is produced by random processes, pseudo-random processes, or merely processes with appropriately broad distribution functions,

I still think you guys are more captured by your model of evolution than by the actual facts of it.

I think we (collectively) are guilty of this all of the time, though in the spirit of "all models are wrong, some are useful" I'm not even sure I know what a "model-free" fact might be? Facts (to me) imply measurements (qualitative, quantitative) which imply a object of said measurement which in turn implies a model. There was a time, I believe when people felt they held "facts" about "the viscosity of the aether" and the "density of phlogiston". When those models were superseded, those "facts" took on entirely new implications and meaning.

- Steve

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Jenny Quillien
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 12:21 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Totally agree.

Maybe a few of us can read the Wagener book (apparently he shows up at the Santa Fe institute from time to time as an external something or other) and see what we can do with the ideas. I'll be in Amsterdam but can follow e-mail threads to skype. Jenny

On 8/9/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
Jenny -

What a powerful quote:

Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them.

In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free Markets may well be restricted to the "innovation phase" of development. Once something becomes a (relative) commodity, it seems it might be counter-productive to continue the illusion of competitive development. At best it is wasteful and even harmful, and at worst it leads to an elevation of "innovation" to marketing and salesmanship. This is why we have so many near-identical products on the market being pushed on us through the hype of greed and fear when the "generic" or "store brand" version is equal or (even) superior (certainly in price, but also possibly in quality... lacking the colorants and odorants and other embellishments required to differentiate one product from the other?).

- Steve

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.

Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly relevant to Nick's e-mail.

Jenny Quillien

On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
Hi everybody,

Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog.

I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours.

First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it’s last value. So the next step in a random walk is “random” but the current value (it’s present position on a surface, say) is “the result of a stochastic process.” From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can’t tell if I am correct or not.

Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this “evolution” of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself.

So what kind of “evolution” are you guys talking about?

Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here.

nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Nick Thompson

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

Steve,

Please see “larding” below. Thank you, as always, for your generosity of spirit.

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 Steven A Smith
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 11:01 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Nick -

I am very glad to note that you are recovering and your scrappiness is properly returning!

[NST==>The best cardio rehab is for you-guys to keep annoying me. Thanks for that. <==nst]

What’s powerful about it?

[NST==>Wait a minute! What is the misapprehension of which you speak? Can you put it explicitly. And, when you say that mutations are “random”, what precisely do you mean. Unpredictable? Clearly false. We know quite a lot, I think, about where DNA is vulnerable, and where mutations are likely to occur. <==nst]

I think I held this misapprehension for the longest time, in the same way I *still* think of the Sun orbiting around the earth when I have plenty of reason to believe it is the other way around.

What is presented to the world by the epigenetic system is not mutations but “hypotheses” about ways to live. And presumably epigenetic systems are shaped by natural selection to produce more or less plausible hypotheses.

[NST==>What exactly do we imagine a “mutation” to be …nothing more or less than a change in one or more letters of the code, or the surprising change in the morphology or behavior of the creature that results? The epigenetic system has to “make” something of the code change. There are gene editing mechanisms and error correction mechanisms, and switches, on and off. Drop one letter of the code and the organism cannot make melanin; but a lot of work has to be done to turn that mishap into a “white bear.” <==nst]

The randomness is largely notional.

[NST==>did you complete that thought? I am eager to know where you were going with that sentence.<==nst]

I still think you guys are more captured by your model of evolution than by the actual facts of it.

I think we (collectively) are guilty of this all of the time, though in the spirit of "all models are wrong, some are useful" I'm not even sure I know what a "model-free" fact might be?

[NST==>Oh, no, Steve. WAY too broad a brush. The problem is that you in danger of using the same model to explicate your understanding of the phenomenon of evolution as you later use to explain how evolution came about. <==nst]

Facts (to me) imply measurements (qualitative, quantitative) which imply a object of said measurement which in turn implies a model. There was a time, I believe when people felt they held "facts" about "the viscosity of the aether" and the "density of phlogiston". When those models were superseded, those "facts" took on entirely new implications and meaning.

- Steve

Nick

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

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Jenny Quillien
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 12:21 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Totally agree.
Maybe a few of us can read the Wagener book (apparently he shows up at the Santa Fe institute from time to time as an external something or other) and see what we can do with the ideas. I'll be in Amsterdam but can follow e-mail threads to skype. Jenny

On 8/9/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
Jenny -
What a powerful quote:
Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them.
In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free Markets may well be restricted to the "innovation phase" of development. Once something becomes a (relative) commodity, it seems it might be counter-productive to continue the illusion of competitive development. At best it is wasteful and even harmful, and at worst it leads to an elevation of "innovation" to marketing and salesmanship. This is why we have so many near-identical products on the market being pushed on us through the hype of greed and fear when the "generic" or "store brand" version is equal or (even) superior (certainly in price, but also possibly in quality... lacking the colorants and odorants and other embellishments required to differentiate one product from the other?).

- Steve
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.
Dave West turned me onto the book and has promised a discussion about how it is relevant to 'evolution' in software. It is certainly relevant to Nick's e-mail.
Jenny Quillien

On 8/9/2017 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
Hi everybody,

Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog.

I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours.

First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it’s last value. So the next step in a random walk is “random” but the current value (it’s present position on a surface, say) is “the result of a stochastic process.” From your responses, and from a short rummage in Wikipedia, I still can’t tell if I am correct or not.

Now remember, you guys, my standard critique of your discourse is that you confuse your models with the facts of nature. What is this “evolution” of which you speak? Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you are speaking of the messy biological process of which we are all a result: -- The alteration of the design of taxa over time. Hard to see any way in which that actual process is evidently random. We have to dig deep into the theory that EXPLAINS evolution to find anything that corresponds to the vernacular notion of randomness. There is constraint and predictability all over the place in the evolution I know. Even mutations are predictable. In other words, the randomness of evolution is a creation of your imaginations concerning the phenomenon, not an essential feature of the phenomenon, itself.

So what kind of “evolution” are you guys talking about?

Yes, and forgive me for trolling, a bit. I am trying to wake myself up, here.

nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
============================================================
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
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Steve Smith

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

Nick -

I am very glad to note that you are recovering and your scrappiness is properly returning!

[NST==>The best cardio rehab is for you-guys to keep annoying me. Thanks for that. <==nst]

You might check with your cardiologist on this one, I'm not sure a rise in BP is the same as exercise-stimulated increased heart rate, but in any case, I'm glad we can be of service!

What’s powerful about it?

Nothing more than it is such a succinct statement negating the popular fallacious apprehension of the mechanism of evolution, suggesting that there is a causal link between "selection" and "innovation"... the innovation step is in the mutation, but as the quote states clearly, said *innovation* is *preserved* (selected for) by the natural selection mechanism.

[NST==>Wait a minute! What is the misapprehension of which you speak? Can you put it explicitly.

The misapprehension of which I speak is that natural selection *alone* gives rise to innovation. Without mutation, all that is achieved by natural selection is a reduction of diversity in the genotype/phenotype toward some "optimum" for the selection criteria, or more likely a "wandering" around geno/pheno space as the selection pressures "wander". I believe that this is the mechanism behind what is known as "island dwarfism". There is no *innovation*, merely selection for a feature within the phenotypic distribution (body size) already in the population.

I was NOT suggesting that YOU hold this misapprehension, just chiming in on the point made by Jenny with her original quote.

And, when you say that mutations are “random”, what precisely do you mean.

I don't know that *I* have said that mutations are "random". I agree that "random" is notional. But I think of a signal as being "random" if the receiver has no model to correlate it's structure. A highly organized but encrypted message is "random" if you don't have the key to decode it. Cosmic radiation knocking holes in your genome is "random" for all practical purposes, even if it is highly correlated with solar and magnetosphere activity.

Unpredictable? Clearly false. We know quite a lot, I think, about where DNA is vulnerable, and where mutations are likely to occur.

A "random" selection can still have a statistical distribution. When rolling pairs of dice, there is only one way to get a value of 2, (both dies == 1), 2 ways to get a value of 3 (1,2 and 2,1) and 3 ways to get a value of 4 (1,3 and 3,1 and 2,2), etc. this distribution is defined by simple combinatorics, but any given sample is still "random". Referencing above, in principle every specific set of dice are less than perfect and every dice-thrower might have some "handedness" which *might* lend a tiny bias to the distribution (e.g. LOADED dice). The resulting sequences are still random, just biased in an unexpected way. Flipping a coin is the same (unless it is two-headed of course!).

I don't think that the DNA (or intermediate RNA?) is more vulnerable in some regions (or among some sequences) than others to say, "cosmic radiation" but I will accept that perhaps when the many potential causes of mutation and the various mechanism for detection/repair are taken into account, some parts of the sequence are more susceptible to "effective" mutation? And of course, at the phenotypic level, what is "effective" is what the natural selection component is all about.

I will pause beating this horse for a moment but will try to respond to the remainder of your response separately (perhaps even completing the thought you thought I failed to complete?)

- Steve

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Nick Thompson

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

Steve,

Thanks for staying with me on this.

To be honest, I have never encountered anybody who believed that natural selection alone is capable of producing evolution, unless it was somebody who includes some variation-generating mechanism within the notion of natural selection. I have encountered people who think that natural selection is not NECESSARY to evolution, attributing most change to random walks of various sorts. I have never understood those folks, but they have had their day.

The heresy I am trying to expunge is that in which evolution is understood as “a delta-q in the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium”, which amounts to saying, natural selects whatever nature selects and whatever nature selects is evolution. Darwin would have been baffled by such a formulation.

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 Steven A Smith
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 1:56 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Nick -

I am very glad to note that you are recovering and your scrappiness is properly returning!
[NST==>The best cardio rehab is for you-guys to keep annoying me. Thanks for that. <==nst]

You might check with your cardiologist on this one, I'm not sure a rise in BP is the same as exercise-stimulated increased heart rate, but in any case, I'm glad we can be of service!

What’s powerful about it?
Nothing more than it is such a succinct statement negating the popular fallacious apprehension of the mechanism of evolution, suggesting that there is a causal link between "selection" and "innovation"... the innovation step is in the mutation, but as the quote states clearly, said *innovation* is *preserved* (selected for) by the natural selection mechanism.
[NST==>Wait a minute! What is the misapprehension of which you speak? Can you put it explicitly.

And, when you say that mutations are “random”, what precisely do you mean.

Unpredictable? Clearly false. We know quite a lot, I think, about where DNA is vulnerable, and where mutations are likely to occur.

Prof David West

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

Jenny mentioned Arrival of the Fittest. I will condense a set of notes that I am sending Jenny about the book and will post the condensed version to the list. I think it could resolve a lot of this 'random' issue.

davew

On Fri, Aug 11, 2017, at 12:18 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Steve,

Thanks for staying with me on this.

To be honest, I have never encountered anybody who believed that natural selection alone is capable of producing evolution, unless it was somebody who includes some variation-generating mechanism within the notion of natural selection. I have encountered people who think that natural selection is not NECESSARY to evolution, attributing most change to random walks of various sorts.   I have never understood those folks, but they have had their day.

The heresy I am trying to expunge is that in which evolution is understood as “a delta-q in the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium”, which amounts to saying, natural selects whatever nature selects and whatever nature selects is evolution. Darwin would have been baffled by such a formulation.

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 Steven A Smith
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 1:56 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Nick -
I am very glad to note that you are recovering and your scrappiness is properly returning!
[NST==>The best cardio rehab is for you-guys to keep annoying me. Thanks for that. <==nst]

You might check with your cardiologist on this one, I'm not sure a rise in BP is the same as exercise-stimulated increased heart rate, but in any case, I'm glad we can be of service!

What’s powerful about it?
Nothing more than it is such a succinct statement negating the popular fallacious apprehension of the mechanism of evolution, suggesting that there is a causal link between "selection" and "innovation"...   the innovation step is in the mutation, but as the quote states clearly, said *innovation* is *preserved* (selected for) by the natural selection mechanism.
[NST==>Wait a minute! What is the misapprehension of which you speak?   Can you put it explicitly.

The misapprehension of which I speak is that natural selection *alone* gives rise to innovation. Without mutation, all that is achieved by natural selection is a reduction of diversity in the genotype/phenotype toward some "optimum" for the selection criteria, or more likely a "wandering" around geno/pheno space as the selection pressures "wander".   I believe that this is the mechanism behind what is known as "island dwarfism".   There is no *innovation*, merely selection for a feature within the phenotypic distribution (body size) already in the population.

I was NOT suggesting that YOU hold this misapprehension, just chiming in on the point made by Jenny with her original quote.
And, when you say that mutations are “random”, what precisely do you mean.

I don't know that *I* have said that mutations are "random".    I agree that "random" is notional. But I think of a signal as being "random" if the receiver has no model to correlate it's structure.   A highly organized but encrypted message is "random" if you don't have the key to decode it.   Cosmic radiation knocking holes in your genome is "random" for all practical purposes, even if it is highly correlated with solar and magnetosphere activity.
Unpredictable? Clearly false. We know quite a lot, I think, about where DNA is vulnerable, and where mutations are likely to occur.

A "random" selection can still have a statistical distribution.   When rolling pairs of dice, there is only one way to get a value of 2, (both dies == 1), 2 ways to get a value of 3 (1,2 and 2,1) and 3 ways to get a value of 4 (1,3 and 3,1 and 2,2), etc.   this distribution is defined by simple combinatorics, but any given sample is still "random".   Referencing above, in principle every specific set of dice are less than perfect and every dice-thrower might have some "handedness" which *might* lend a tiny bias to the distribution (e.g. LOADED dice).   The resulting sequences are still random, just biased in an unexpected way.   Flipping a coin is the same (unless it is two-headed of course!).

I don't think that the DNA (or intermediate RNA?) is more vulnerable in some regions (or among some sequences) than others to say, "cosmic radiation" but I will accept that perhaps when the many potential causes of mutation and the various mechanism for detection/repair are taken into account, some parts of the sequence are more susceptible to "effective" mutation?   And of course, at the phenotypic level, what is "effective" is what the natural selection component is all about.

I will pause beating this horse for a moment but will try to respond to the remainder of your response separately (perhaps even completing the thought you thought I failed to complete?)

- Steve

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Steve Smith

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Nick -

... continued

What is presented to the world by the epigenetic system is not mutations but “hypotheses” about ways to live. And presumably epigenetic systems are shaped by natural selection to produce more or less plausible hypotheses.

And what is the "hypothesis generator" in epigenetics? Is it stochastic or deterministic? (and what examples of epigenetics are you thinking of?) Is "plausable" the term you want, or is it more "utilitarian"?

[NST==>What exactly do we imagine a “mutation” to be …nothing more or less than a change in one or more letters of the code, or the surprising change in the morphology or behavior of the creature that results? The epigenetic system has to “make” something of the code change. There are gene editing mechanisms and error correction mechanisms, and switches, on and off. Drop one letter of the code and the organism cannot make melanin; but a lot of work has to be done to turn that mishap into a “white bear.” <==nst]

Yes, a "mutation" to the genome is a change in one or more letters of the code. A "mutation" in the metabolic processes implied by said genetic sequence (a changed protein, a modified level of production of an unmodified protein or set of same, etc.) and ultimately in the mature phenotype (if the precursors to this are viable enough for a mature specimen to arrive?) and beyond that the larger social unit (herd/pack/tribe) that might benefit or suffer from the behaviour of the individual experiencing the mutation. Add individuals with a mutation in their bone-production that causes extremely large cross-section bones and thick crania into the Vikings and you get (what has been hypothesized to be) Berserker warriors who drop into a blind rage when their blood pressure rises in response to threat. As long as they are pointing *toward* the enemy when that happens, it is (maybe) highly functional for the group to have you around?

The randomness is largely notional.

I do think that "random" is a very loosey-goosey concept (like so many we call out on this list), but whether the variation is produced by random processes, pseudo-random processes, or merely processes with appropriately broad distribution functions,

the point is that the variation is not correlated with the selection process in any significant way. I think THAT is what *I* mean by random.

[NST==>did you complete that thought? I am eager to know where you were going with that sentence.<==nst]

I'm acknowledging that "random" is at least relative in most cases. If we go down to the quantum level, it takes on a more meaningful meaning but I would claim one that requires much more sophisticated discussion to penetrate. I would claim that this is the kind of "random" that Penrose postulates is necessary for (and explains) consciousness.

I still think you guys are more captured by your model of evolution than by the actual facts of it.

I think we (collectively) are guilty of this all of the time, though in the spirit of "all models are wrong, some are useful" I'm not even sure I know what a "model-free" fact might be?

[NST==>Oh, no, Steve. WAY too broad a brush. The problem is that you in danger of using the same model to explicate your understanding of the phenomenon of evolution as you later use to explain how evolution came about. <==nst]

BTW, I think you are conflating my words with those of the larger group. I don't think I've ever tried to even suggest "how evolution came about", because that description doesn't even make sense to me... evolution "just is" .

I'm looking forward to Dave West's condensed summary of "Arrival of the Fittest".

- Steve

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

Re: random v stochastic v indeterminate

Steve,

Thanks for allowing me to sling irresponsible insults at you with impunity. It has been VERY helpful to my recovery. You might consider opening a clinic.

I considered calling “quantum randomness” “notional”, but I wasn’t sure WTF I meant by that. There’s a dimension here I am groping to express. Quantum randomness and natural selection and gene are way out on that dimension as things we believe in the concreteness of, yet they are far from our concrete experience. We experience them as foundations of our thought, yet we never see them. I guess the best I can say at this point is that something about that makes me uneasy.

I want to push back on “evolution just is”. Evolution is a way, and not other ways. Evolution is more directly presented to experience than is natural selection. Natural selection is the very abstract idea that resolves problems and paradoxes raised in Darwin’s imagination by his “experience” of evolution. Just as “gene” is a “pseudo-concrete” idea that resolves paradoxes and problems raised in Mendel’s pea-patch.

I too am awaiting Dave’s summary. I have ordered the book from the library. I wish I were there to take Dave’s course. I am hoping that it will the beginning of a great new career for him and he will decide to stay in Santa fe.

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 Steven A Smith
Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2017 12:05 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Nick -

... continued

What is presented to the world by the epigenetic system is not mutations but “hypotheses” about ways to live. And presumably epigenetic systems are shaped by natural selection to produce more or less plausible hypotheses.
And what is the "hypothesis generator" in epigenetics? Is it stochastic or deterministic? (and what examples of epigenetics are you thinking of?) Is "plausable" the term you want, or is it more "utilitarian"?
[NST==>What exactly do we imagine a “mutation” to be …nothing more or less than a change in one or more letters of the code, or the surprising change in the morphology or behavior of the creature that results? The epigenetic system has to “make” something of the code change. There are gene editing mechanisms and error correction mechanisms, and switches, on and off. Drop one letter of the code and the organism cannot make melanin; but a lot of work has to be done to turn that mishap into a “white bear.” <==nst]

The randomness is largely notional.
I do think that "random" is a very loosey-goosey concept (like so many we call out on this list), but whether the variation is produced by random processes, pseudo-random processes, or merely processes with appropriately broad distribution functions,

the point is that the variation is not correlated with the selection process in any significant way. I think THAT is what *I* mean by random.

[NST==>did you complete that thought? I am eager to know where you were going with that sentence.<==nst]

I still think you guys are more captured by your model of evolution than by the actual facts of it.
I think we (collectively) are guilty of this all of the time, though in the spirit of "all models are wrong, some are useful" I'm not even sure I know what a "model-free" fact might be?
[NST==>Oh, no, Steve. WAY too broad a brush. The problem is that you in danger of using the same model to explicate your understanding of the phenomenon of evolution as you later use to explain how evolution came about. <==nst]

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