Re: FW: Fractal discussion Landscape-bird songs

Posted by Robert Wall on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/FW-Fractal-discussion-Landscape-bird-songs-tp7589163p7589246.html

No.  My bad Glen.  I guess I have buttons I didn't think I had ... Thanks for the follow-up explanation. Much appreciated. 

My objective, to be sure, was not seeking agreement, except on the general concept of "being in the zone." It was they only way to be sure we could start on the same page ... a meeting of the minds, as it were. Remember I came late to the thread. I kept digging for a root, but the hole was just getting deeper and deeper.  Then it seemed that someone was filling the hole with me in it. 😊

Iconoclast, I am not.  Not smart enough. Maybe why I drag guys like Csikszentmihalyi to the party. But, as I think Vladimyr was saying, I could have been taking Csikszentmihalyi's idea further than even he intended it to be taken ... to the level of a society as a whole.  Even in wonder, it may have just been too far too early. But well intended, as it has been, for me, a search for a plausible approach at normalizing a society to where it stops presenting us all with one unsolved existential threat after another. So it has been a personal mission to understand this.  A hobby of sorts. In this thread, I started with and concluded that I didn't think it was possible to do what I was suggesting. Still, sometimes we learn about an issue by throwing hypothetical solutions at it from every corner of thought. Knowing why something isn't or may not be possible is still insight ... even though it may sound like nonsense. 😊

So what's next to try on this quest? Complexity science? 😎  Certainly, zeitgeists can be seen as emergent phenomena. Problem?  Is emergent behavior even controllable? 

Context switch: To understand bird evolution you are going to have to go back pretty far.  There is strong evidence that they are first cousins to the dinosaurs. Landscapes and climates (conditionals) have changed drastically since the Mesozoic Era. But has bird song reflected this?  It would be interesting to contemplate how the first birds sounded compared to birds of our day.  We seem to know how many of them looked.  Could their sound be detected in a way similar to the way linguist try to piece back the evolution of human language, back to its origins? And I don't know how they do this reliably. 

Fractals being patterns that are repeated in patterns at all levels of scale (and tempo) seem to suggest a building up of complexity from very simple rules like with cellular automata. Bird songs have grammar--rules, that need to be learned from generation to generation. Variations could creep in just from the variations that occur in the parents, just like with human genetics. Speciation (morphological differences) makes not only a new bird but likely a new bird song from different vocal engines.  Bird songs of all types have been crudely reproduced with cellular automata. I dunno.  I am not really addressing the question which I think is how to determine if bird song patterns are spatially correlated, but maybe it's a start ... tip-toe .. tip-toe ...

Cheers

On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 8:29 AM, ┣glen┫ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Oops.  I'm sorry if I've offended you.  I am contrarian and tend to seek out areas of disagreement, rather than agreement.

On 02/24/2017 07:14 PM, Robert Wall wrote:
> The "as if" was the key.  The "as if" alludes to the behavioral manifestation. Yes?

Yes, of course.  However, this is the subject of the conversation.  If we allow the "as if" to work its magic on us, we can be tricked into taking the illusion seriously.  So, by calling out the nonsensical materials surrounding the "as if", I'm trying to avoid that.

> I notice that you seem to use the words "useless" and  "nonsense" [usually with the adjective /utter /] a lot when you post replies.

Yes, you're right.  And I apologize if my usage is inferred to mean something more than it is.  What I mean by "useless" is that I have no use for it.  I can't formulate a use case.  What I mean by "nonsense" is that it makes no sense to me.  I should pepper my replies with more social salve like "to me" and "in my opinion".  It's difficult, though, because that overhead interferes with the actual content.  But please don't think my attribution of "useless" and "nonsense" imply that I haven't read or tried to make use/sense of that content.  My colleagues constantly mention work like that of Csikszentmihalyi and I've studied what I can to extract elements I can use, often to no avail.

I'm certain my failure is due to my own shortcomings.  But it is true.  I have too much difficulty applying tools that rely fundamentally on thoughts/minds/ideas/etc across tasks and domains.

> In a strange way, though, throughout this whole thread, you actually make my point.  Thanks!  Language can be a problem.  Symbolic reference. Imprecision. But the bottom-line is that I feel you really didn't (even try to) understand anything I said, and, apparently, I don't really understand anything you have said in as much as I have tried.  And I am not sure it is because of the imprecision of language, though. It is something else that leads you to just find disagreement.  As often said, it is much easier to sound smart by tearing something down than to constructively build on something. Maybe that applies here.  Not sure. Hope not.

I don't intend to tear anything down and am under no illusions regarding my own lack of intelligence.  I'm a solid C student and am always outmatched by my friends and colleagues.  (That's from a lesson my dad taught me long ago.  If you want to improve your game, choose opponents that are better than you are.  So I make every attempt to hang out with people far smarter than I am.  That they tolerate my idiocy is evidence of their kindness.)

But the point, here, is that you offered a solution to the problem I posed.  And I believe your solution to be inadequate.  So, I'm simply trying to point out that it is inadequate and why/how it is inadequate. ... namely that your concept of optimal or efficient embedding in an environment is too reliant on the vague concept of mind/thought.

If birdsong retains its temporal fractality despite the bird being embedded in a non-fractal environment, then we should look elsewhere ... somewhere other than the birds' minds.  Vladimyr's argument posted last night may demonstrate that I'm wrong, though.  I don't know, yet.

--
␦glen?

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