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refuting and making arguments

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refuting and making arguments

Nick Thompson
Owen,

Your site has lots of resources for designing programs that will  guide two
people of good will through a useful argument, if only by negative
examples.

N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[hidden email]
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
 [hidden email]


> [Original Message]
> From: <[hidden email]>
> To: <[hidden email]>
> Date: 11/10/2004 12:18:16 AM
> Subject: Friam Digest, Vol 17, Issue 11
>
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> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. del.icio.us/popular (Owen Densmore)
>    2. RE: Do computers "try"? (Nicholas Thompson)
>    3. Re:  Do computers "try"? (Nicholas Thompson)
>    4. Re: Do computers "try"? (Russell Standish)
>    5. exergy (Nicholas Thompson)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 20:35:47 -0700
> From: Owen Densmore <[hidden email]>
> Subject: [FRIAM] del.icio.us/popular
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Friam <[hidden email]>
> Message-ID: <[hidden email]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
> BTW: This site is a great aggregating of the blogsphere:
>    http://del.icio.us/popular/
> Its where I found the "fuck the south" reference.
>
> Owen
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 23:37:59 -0500
> From: "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]>
> Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Do computers "try"?
> To: "Robert Holmes" <[hidden email]>
> Cc: [hidden email]
> Message-ID: <[hidden email]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Robert,
>
> Sorry about the spamfascist.
>
> What this all suggests is that simulations are "models", which is not
surprising to me, but it seems to me that SOMEBODY has made a firm
distinction between simulations and models.  To me, a model is used anytime
somebody uses a familiar process or object as metaphor for another less
well understood process or object.   All good models are wrong in obvious
ways, not wrong in obvious ways, and possibly right in interesting ways,
which is the source of their heurism.  If one simulates the audience in a
crowded theatre just after the word "fire" is shouted as a set of agents
with very few rules, then the MODEL implies that human agents under that
circumstance are motivated by the same small number of rules.  Now as
heurism, this is fine.  As logic, it of course stinks, because it is an
example of affirming the consequent.... an infinity of mechanism could
after all arrive at this same result.  
>
> Where am I going here.  Oh.  It is to say that perhaps the question of
when is a simulation actually the thing simulated is the same as the
question when is the metaphor actually the same as the thing to which the
metaphor is made.  

>
> Hmmmm.  That didn't help much, did it.  
>
> Anyway, thanks for your comment.
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> Clark University
> [hidden email]
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
> [hidden email]
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Robert Holmes
> To: [hidden email];The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
Coffee Group
> Sent: 11/9/2004 4:22:54 PM
> Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Do computers "try"?
>
>
> Y'know this kind of reminds me of that Jorge Luis Borges story about the
'ideal' map that ends up being as big as the thing it is mapping (and still
isn't as good as the real thing). in the same way that 'good' cartography
is all about deciding what not to represent, 'good' simulation is all about
deciding what not to simulate. And if a simulation is always less than the
thing it simulates, that suggests it can't ever be the thing it simulates.

>
> Robert (or a reasonable simulacrum thereof)
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Nicholas Thompson [mailto:[hidden email]]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 1:32 PM
> To: Friam
> Subject: [FRIAM] Do computers "try"?
>
>
> All,
>
> I have talked to a couple of you about the ontological question of when
is a simulation the thing it simulates.  For instance, when does a system
cease to simulate motivation and actually become motivated?   I am
suspicious about the extension of intentional language to non-animate
systems, not because I am a vitalistic crypto-creationist, but because my
intuition tells me that inanimate systems do not usually  take the sorts of
actions that are required for the use of mentalistic predicates like
"motivated".   But talking to you folks is making me uneasy.  If you are
curious how I come by my quandary, please have a look at the article On the
Use of Mental Terms in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, which appears
at
>
>  http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/ 
>
> The closest I have ever come to conceding this sort of view is in a BBS
commentary entitled, "Why would we ever doubt that species were
intelligent?", which I will post later in the day.  I guess I am going to
have to argue that the definitional strictures for applying intelligence
are less stringent than those for motivation.  

>
> This could get ugly.
>
> Thanks everybody,
>
> Nick
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> Clark University
> [hidden email]
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
> [hidden email]
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 23:43:12 -0500
> From: "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re:  [Friam] Do computers "try"?
> To: "Frank Wimberly" <[hidden email]>
> Cc: Friam <[hidden email]>
> Message-ID: <[hidden email]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Frank,
>
> Your mention of a simulation of fire reminds me of the Fire Simulation
put on by a rock band in Rhode Island a year or so back which burned more
than a hundred people to death.  
>
> How about vaccines as simulations of viruses?  It seems to me the notion
of cue is lurking here.... the idea that the same proposed simulation could
be a simulation for some purposes and the real thing for others.  

>
> Interesting.  
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> Clark University
> [hidden email]
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
> [hidden email]
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Frank Wimberly
> To: [hidden email]
> Sent: 11/9/2004 4:22:43 PM
> Subject: Re: [Friam] Do computers "try"?
>
>
> Nick,
>
> This reminds me of an ongoing argument I used to have with Hans Moravec.
Starting in around 1980 we were both junior faculty members in the newly
founded Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.   He is now a
very senior faculty member there and I am in Santa Fe.
>
> Anyway, Hans and I used to argue about the limits of artificial
intelligence.  I said, among other things, that machines could not be
conscious.  Hans said that the Earth was going to be destroyed by an
asteroid, the sun going supernova, or some other catastrophe.  He said that
the sooner we downloaded our minds into machines and launched them into
outer space the better.  I said that you might be able to make a machine
that behaved like me to everyone else’s satisfaction but that I would be
gone.  Etc., etc.
>
> One of the places that this discussion led was to was my quoting Searles
or Dreyfus—I can’t remember which—to the effect that if someone writes a
computer program that simulates problem solving or artistic judgment or
whatever people say “It thinks!” but if someone writes a program that
simulates a fire, no one calls the fire department.  Hans said, “If the
fire simulation were detailed enough they might.  If a simulation has
enough detail, there’s no difference between it and what it’s simulating.”
That’s the first time I had ever heard that point of view.
>
> Frank
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly       140 Calle Ojo Feliz       Santa Fe, NM 87505
> Research Scientist, Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, University
of West Florida
> Phone:   505 995-8715 or 505 670-9918 (cell)
> [hidden email] or [hidden email]
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 15:55:00 +1100
> From: Russell Standish <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Do computers "try"?
> To: [hidden email], The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
> Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
> Message-ID: <[hidden email]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> The pointy edge of this debate concerns life. Since we don't really
> have a good definition of life, some artificial life researchers would
> say that their computational systems really are alive, and worthy of
> the tag "artificial life". Others would say that they are only a
> model, or a simulation of the real thing.
>
> To make things a little clearer, a Turing machine simulated on a
> computer, is still a real Turing machine. So is a cellular automata.
>
> Cheers
>
> On Tue, Nov 09, 2004 at 11:37:59PM -0500, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> >
> > Where am I going here.  Oh.  It is to say that perhaps the question of
when is a simulation actually the thing simulated is the same as the
question when is the metaphor actually the same as the thing to which the
metaphor is made.  

> >
> > Hmmmm.  That didn't help much, did it.  
> >
> > Anyway, thanks for your comment.
> >
> > Nick
> >
> > Nicholas S. Thompson
> > Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> > Clark University
> > [hidden email]
> > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
> > [hidden email]
> >
> >
>
> --
> *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
> is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
> virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
> email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
> may safely ignore this attachment.
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> A/Prof Russell Standish             Director
> High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119
(mobile)
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052                     Fax   9385 6965, 0425 253119 (")
> Australia             [hidden email]            
> Room 2075, Red Centre                  
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
>             International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02
>
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 00:17:48 -0500
> From: "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]>
> Subject: [FRIAM] exergy
> To: "Friam" <[hidden email]>
> Message-ID: <[hidden email]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> TWIMC,
>
> James Kay, the same author who spoke of organisms as devices "FOR"
dissipating energy, has written an idiot's guide to exergy (converse of
entropy), which, since I am an idiot, I appreciated very much.
>
> I am still trying to get my mind around the idea of a heat pump as a
device which uses a small quantity of high exergy energy to gather up a lot
of low exergy energy and use it to heat a house.  
>
> Something is gnawing at me here.  It seems to me that exergy is like
relativity in that its quantity is entirely dependent on point of view.  Or
something.

>
> Anyway, the url is http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/u/jjkay/pubs/exergy/
>
> Nick
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> Clark University
> [hidden email]
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
> [hidden email]
> -------------- next part --------------
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>
> ------------------------------
>
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> End of Friam Digest, Vol 17, Issue 11
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