Posted by
Nick Thompson on
Sep 18, 2019; 12:27am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Re-Rant-tp7593549p7593581.html
Steve Smith,
I am now completely tangled in my own threads here. Can you provide a translation?
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:
[hidden email]] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2019 7:41 PM
To: FriAM <
[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Re Rant
Now that I've finally had a chance to read the entry Roger posted, I have an opinion. (Ha! As if I would ever *not* have an opinion....)
On 9/14/19 7:56 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Frank has been unfairly accused. His was an Anti-Rant Quip.
>
> The material Roger cites doesn’t obviously relate (for me) to Frank’s and my standing argument about the efficacy of inner life. But its themes, continuity and anti-determinism, are Peirceian themes. And my respect for Roger is such that I know that he don’t never say somethin’ for nothin’. So, can somebody explicate? Perhaps even Roger?
> On 9/13/19 9:19 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:>> Rant??
>> I am a proponent, in human affairs, of both/and rather than either/or propositions. In math I use the law of the excluded middle, however.
First) Both Nick's and Frank's reaction to Roger's classification of Frank's post as a "rant" are "so meta" -- said in the voice of a 20-something hipster. Rants can be both good and bad, subtle and over the top. Reacting as if Roger said anything accusatory is, I think, an example of artificial discretization, over and above what's present in the original discussion. 8^)
On 9/13/19 11:49 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> “dichotomania: the compulsion to replace quantities with dichotomies (‘black-and-white thinking’), even when such dichotomization is unnecessary and misleading for inference.”
>
> Floating point and multi-precision numbers are used all the time on base 2 digital computers.
Second) Yeah, but it's important to remember that these are approximations to the (ideal) numbers. If an artificial discretization is used to facilitate the resolution/granularity of the lens, then that's where I part ways with the blog entry. I'd argue such artificial discretization isn't inappropriate at all. This is the problem I have with Lee's definition of computation. Free variables can be bound with schema, themselves having free variables, not merely with primitive values. So, *sure* floating point numbers are only approximations... but it's good enough for now ... or even for anything we'd ever need, anyway.
The real trick is *why* we artificial discretizers can't fluidly switch back and forth between thinking of bindings as definite or indefinite?
--
☣ uǝlƃ
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe
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