words RE: words
Locked
 
|
No, not really. From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> To the outside observer, a ping pong game has emerged. ----------------------------------- On Tue, May 7, 2019, 1:38 PM uǝlƃ
☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
|
In reply to this post by gepr
Sorry. I guess I am either trying to precise what you have said or urge you to tell how it is that you have NOT said that.
I can stop. 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, May 07, 2019 1:38 PM To: FriAM <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] words RE: words No. Again, I would never say that. Why are you interacting this way? What are you trying to achieve by attributing things to me that I didn't write? On 5/7/19 12:36 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > "Emergence is in the eye of the beholder." G. Ropella, 2019 -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
|
In reply to this post by gepr
Oh, Gosh! I AM sorry! Please all disregard my attempts to aphorize Glen. Not lies, of course, unless I can lie while believing what I say. But clearly not productive.
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, May 07, 2019 1:48 PM To: FriAM <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] words RE: words Ping-Pong is a symmetric game. Bullshit is asymmetric. It's easier for Nick to lie about what I've said than it is for me to combat those lies. On 5/7/19 12:43 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote: > To the outside observer, a ping pong game has emerged. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
No, it's OK. I just don't understand.
To be clear, I kinda like Dan Dennett's concept of "intrinsic emergence". I may not remember it well. But it goes something like this: emergence exists when the higher level language is more computationally expressive than the lower level language. I only kinda like it because I would prefer something like: emergence exists when the post-map language has a different expressibility than the pre-map language. By removing "level", referring to the gen-phen map directly, and not requiring the containership of more or less expressibility, it seems more palatable to me. But I don't know if my re-phrasing even makes sense. On 5/7/19 1:39 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Sorry. I guess I am either trying to precise what you have said or urge you to tell how it is that you have NOT said that. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
|
|
|
In reply to this post by gepr
No, please. Not trolling. I HATE trolling. I thought Glen and I were getting some work done, and I thought by distilling how I heard him, I would get either agreement or pushback. But not anger. No. Never anger. Again, I apologize. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm To me it looks like trolling Glen -Jochen -------- Original message -------- From: uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> Date: 5/7/19 21:38 (GMT+01:00) To: FriAM <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] words RE: words No. Again, I would never say that. Why are you interacting this way? What are you trying to achieve by attributing things to me that I didn't write? ============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
|
In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
Sorry, Marcus, do I misunderstand? Or did I misunderstand Frank? A pingpong game is not a proper emergent? Cf tennis and chess: To call a social interaction a dance is to stress the peraction of social agents. When agents peract, they act through or by means of one another. Each has a state of affairs toward which his or her behavior is directed, and that state of affairs requires certain actions on the part of the social partner. The behavior of each actor is therefore directed toward using the other as a tool to produce a particular desirable result. The dialectic between their peractions is the dance. From an observer’s standpoint, the best dances, like the best chess games and the best tennis matches, are those in which neither peractant entirely gets his or her own way. Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels No, not really. From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> To the outside observer, a ping pong game has emerged. ----------------------------------- On Tue, May 7, 2019, 1:38 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
|
No, I meant that Glen is right and you are wrong, in spite of the superficial transactional evidence back and forth. Actual quotation marks, and you can’t see why is he annoyed? From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> Sorry, Marcus, do I misunderstand? Or did I misunderstand Frank?
A pingpong game is not a proper emergent?
Cf tennis and chess: To call a social interaction a dance is to stress the
peraction
of social agents. When agents peract, they act
through
or by means of
one another. Each has a state of affairs toward which his or her behavior is directed, and that state of affairs requires certain actions on the part of the social partner. The behavior of each actor is therefore directed toward using the other as a tool to produce a particular desirable result. The dialectic between their peractions
is
the dance. From an observer’s standpoint, the best dances, like the best chess games and the best tennis matches, are those in which neither peractant entirely gets his or her own way. Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of
Marcus Daniels No, not really. From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> To the outside observer, a ping pong game has emerged. ----------------------------------- On Tue, May 7, 2019, 1:38 PM uǝlƃ
☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
|
In reply to this post by gepr
Ugh! I looked it up. It's not Dennett's. It's Crutchfield's. [†] And it's not his definition of intrinsic emergence. [‡] It's his "operational definition of emergence" and, quoting now:
"A process undergoes emergence if at some time the architecture of information processing has changed in such a way that a distinct and more powerful level of intrinsic computation has appeared that was not present in earlier conditions." From Crutchfield's "Is Anything Ever New?" in "Emergence" Bedau and Humphreys eds. [†] Oh the irony of complaining about misattribution and then to go misattributing. 8^) [‡] But, Crutchfield's defn of intrinsic emergence *does* get at a point I think is critical. Again quoting: "In the emergence of coordinated behavior, though, there is a closure in which the patterns that emerge are important _within_ the system." (emphasis in the original) On 5/7/19 1:44 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote: > No, it's OK. I just don't understand. > > To be clear, I kinda like Dan Dennett's concept of "intrinsic emergence". I may not remember it well. But it goes something like this: emergence exists when the higher level language is more computationally expressive than the lower level language. > > I only kinda like it because I would prefer something like: emergence exists when the post-map language has a different expressibility than the pre-map language. By removing "level", referring to the gen-phen map directly, and not requiring the containership of more or less expressibility, it seems more palatable to me. But I don't know if my re-phrasing even makes sense. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
|
|
|
Glen,
In that same volume is my favorite definition of emergence: When the properties of the whole are dependent upon the order or arrangement of the ingredients. So a cake is an emergent, a bowl of oatmeal is not. I think that's Wimsatt. 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, May 07, 2019 3:53 PM To: FriAM <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] words RE: words Ugh! I looked it up. It's not Dennett's. It's Crutchfield's. [†] And it's not his definition of intrinsic emergence. [‡] It's his "operational definition of emergence" and, quoting now: "A process undergoes emergence if at some time the architecture of information processing has changed in such a way that a distinct and more powerful level of intrinsic computation has appeared that was not present in earlier conditions." From Crutchfield's "Is Anything Ever New?" in "Emergence" Bedau and Humphreys eds. [†] Oh the irony of complaining about misattribution and then to go misattributing. 8^) [‡] But, Crutchfield's defn of intrinsic emergence *does* get at a point I think is critical. Again quoting: "In the emergence of coordinated behavior, though, there is a closure in which the patterns that emerge are important _within_ the system." (emphasis in the original) On 5/7/19 1:44 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote: > No, it's OK. I just don't understand. > > To be clear, I kinda like Dan Dennett's concept of "intrinsic emergence". I may not remember it well. But it goes something like this: emergence exists when the higher level language is more computationally expressive than the lower level language. > > I only kinda like it because I would prefer something like: emergence exists when the post-map language has a different expressibility than the pre-map language. By removing "level", referring to the gen-phen map directly, and not requiring the containership of more or less expressibility, it seems more palatable to me. But I don't know if my re-phrasing even makes sense. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
|
Yeah, that definition is useless to me, unfortunately. It's definitions like that which force me to *avoid* the word "emergence" as much as possible.
On 5/7/19 4:39 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > In that same volume is my favorite definition of emergence: When the properties of the whole are dependent upon the order or arrangement of the ingredients. So a cake is an emergent, a bowl of oatmeal is not. I think that's Wimsatt. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
|
|
|
In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
Marcus, Of course I see [now] why he was annoyed. And I apologized. And I won’t do it again. And I have tried to explain (and I think Glen has more or less accepted) that my intent was not aggressive. Not sure how that relates to the question I asked you. Are games instances in good standing of emergent phenomena? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels No, I meant that Glen is right and you are wrong, in spite of the superficial transactional evidence back and forth. Actual quotation marks, and you can’t see why is he annoyed? From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> Sorry, Marcus, do I misunderstand? Or did I misunderstand Frank? A pingpong game is not a proper emergent? Cf tennis and chess: To call a social interaction a dance is to stress the peraction of social agents. When agents peract, they act through or by means of one another. Each has a state of affairs toward which his or her behavior is directed, and that state of affairs requires certain actions on the part of the social partner. The behavior of each actor is therefore directed toward using the other as a tool to produce a particular desirable result. The dialectic between their peractions is the dance. From an observer’s standpoint, the best dances, like the best chess games and the best tennis matches, are those in which neither peractant entirely gets his or her own way. Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels No, not really. From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> To the outside observer, a ping pong game has emerged. ----------------------------------- On Tue, May 7, 2019, 1:38 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
|
Emergent: hexagonality of snowflakes. Can we predict that from water vapor and cold? ----------------------------------- Frank Wimberly My memoir: https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly My scientific publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 Phone (505) 670-9918 On Tue, May 7, 2019, 5:58 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
|
Hi, Frank, No. I suppose not. Here’s where we need Hywel. Could we predict it from the shape of the water molecule? In general, I wish to avoid psychologizing concepts like “emergence”. I don’t want them to be dependent on anybody’s knowledge, or lack thereof. So, I don’t want to think (I may have to, eventually) that emergence is based on our ability to predict, because, then truly, “Knowedge Extinguishes Emergence.” 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 Frank Wimberly Emergent: hexagonality of snowflakes. Can we predict that from water vapor and cold? ----------------------------------- On Tue, May 7, 2019, 5:58 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
|
I thought that was one of the requirements for emergence in one of the papers in the volume. But that was a long time ago and maybe I remember incorrectly. If it is then it raises all kinds of problems about how hard the computation has to be to qualify as emergence. Frank On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 7:46 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
-- Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 505 670-9918 ============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
|
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Nick writes: “Not sure how that relates to the question I asked you. Are games instances in good standing of emergent phenomena?” Not sure why you would think I’m obligated to play any particular rules (of a game). “From an observer’s standpoint, the best dances, like the best chess games and the best tennis matches, are those in which neither peractant entirely gets his or her own way.” How about, like not at all? :-) Marcus ============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
|
In reply to this post by gepr
> I only kinda like it because I would prefer something like: emergence
> exists when the post-map language has a different expressibility than the > pre-map language. Surely not *simply* "different"? If the post-map language has strictly less expressibility than the pre-map language, does "emergence exist"? Well, maybe. What if (the extreme case) it has NO expressibility? Either of those would fit under that other proposed description, "phase transition", but (to me) the informal notion of "emergence" just can't include the extreme case, and probably shouldn't include the "strictly less" case (but maybe I could be argued out of that "shouldn't"). ============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
|
Yeah, you're right. Degenerate cases would violate the intuition. But that happens everywhere we're forced to develop coherent and complete definitions. The empty set is a good example. A set with nothing in it? Pffft. So, I'd be OK with the extreme case where the generators were expressive and the phenomena could express only the empty proposition. But in order to talk about the complexity of such a map, we'd have to have a *constructive* definition of that map. (Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn8XFiAwLkM)
As for removing the ordering at all (allowing the phenomena to be more or less expressive than the generators), without allowing that, I'm hard pressed to handle cases like Russell mentioned, where sets of explicit primitives are represented by an algorithmic compression, especially if we allow evolutionary algorithms (or eg swarm optimization or ANNs) to "discover" those compressions ... and especially as Marcus points out if some of those compressions are inscrutably opaque. I mean, it's reasonable to allow that maps like AxAxA → BxB can be complex maps, right? On 5/8/19 5:21 AM, [hidden email] wrote: > Surely not *simply* "different"? If the post-map language has strictly > less expressibility than the pre-map language, does "emergence exist"? > Well, maybe. What if (the extreme case) it has NO expressibility? > > Either of those would fit under that other proposed description, "phase > transition", but (to me) the informal notion of "emergence" just can't > include the extreme case, and probably shouldn't include the "strictly > less" case (but maybe I could be argued out of that "shouldn't"). ============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
|
|
|
In reply to this post by lrudolph
Lee, I am perfectly happy that an argument cannot embrace every extreme case. Reductio ad absurdum has never seemed to me a conclusive form of argument. I looked up "phase transition", which one wise source defined as "a transition ... in phase." Wikipedia was a little wiser. During a phase transition of a given medium, certain properties of the medium change, often discontinuously, as a result of the change of external conditions, such as temperature, pressure, or others. Or perhaps more broadly: a situation in which small changes in an independent variable make a tremendous difference in dependent ones; Or: small changes at one level of organization produce a reorganization at the next, higher, level. If so, there are some wonderful descriptions of phase transitions in Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs, which documents how skillful organizers catalyze violence in football mobs. But these definitions seem also to be perfectly applicable to “emergence”. In other words, “phase transition” is another name for the phenomenon we call “emergence.” But to say that emergence and phase transitions are the same thing does not tell us why they occur? So, we come back to the question, is “emergence” “merely” a psychological phenomenon, a situation in which human expectations are violated, in which case emergence can be eliminated by understanding. Or is it more than that? Here’s an example. As you bring the temperature of water down from 40 degrees, at 37 degrees F, the density curve reverses and water starts become less dense. It still pours like water. It’s still wet like water. Not until a few degrees cooler does it begin to congeal. Now, where is the phase transition, here? Or are there two. Now the person who asked me, essentially, to explain why I need an explanation for “phase changes” in cellular automata, or anything else, asked a fair question. Why the hell shouldn’t water increase decrease in density in both directions from 37 degrees F? Water can do whatever the hell it wants, right? My desire to call that an “emergent” is just another name for the failure of my imagination, and doesn’t refer to anything inherently physical. I hate that conclusion, but I keep being forced back to it. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- > I only kinda like it because I would prefer something like: emergence > exists when the post-map language has a different expressibility than > the pre-map language. Surely not *simply* "different"? If the post-map language has strictly less expressibility than the pre-map language, does "emergence exist"? Well, maybe. What if (the extreme case) it has NO expressibility? Either of those would fit under that other proposed description, "phase transition", but (to me) the informal notion of "emergence" just can't include the extreme case, and probably shouldn't include the "strictly less" case (but maybe I could be argued out of that "shouldn't"). ============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
|
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
I am going to plug into this conversation at a posting from Nick, and attempt to pose an answer to his question about why "we" 'cannot' or 'refuse to' offer a modicum of enlightenment. I would hope that others shred, or improve, my argument, but only Nick can say if it approximates an answer for him. Begin with computational science (Ramon Lull via Leibniz) which is a science of an abstraction. Fast forward to computer science, which is also predominately about computational mathematics, still an abstraction. Turing adds yet another aspect, but still abstract. Parallel efforts to embody the abstract begin with Descartes, Napier, et. al. and proceed via Babbage to von Neumann to your multi-core smart phone. Combined, the abstract and the physical define a very interesting, realm — a space for exploration and experimentation. Alas, this realm is absolutely Artificial. [Even efforts to graft biological cells onto chips or DNA-based computation are still artificial, and little more than alternative embodiment mechanisms.] We are able to perform wondrous things, more than Horatio could imagine, in this artificial realm. But do those accomplishments tell us anything about "Reality?" if we can effect 'artificial emergence', 'artificial intelligence', 'artificial life', or, eventually, 'artificial consciousness', does that tell us anything about emergence, intelligence, life, or consciousness outside of the artificial realm in which we work our wonders? In the case of mathematicians, as Frank has pointed out, the answer is, "who cares?" I suspect the same is true of most computational and computer scientists. I would cite, as partial evidence, the disdain expressed in CS departments at research institutions like UNM for things that smack of "applied;" like operating systems, databases, software engineering, and, heaven forbid, user experience design. But suppose someone did care. A huge obstacle stands in the way. The artificial, the abstract, is never more than, can never be more than, an approximation of "Reality." If the 'answers' one seeks is in the space between the approximate and the actual, then the answer would be no. Even metaphor fails us. We might posit that the 'emergence of a glider gun' in Conway's game can be used as a metaphor for understanding some of the elementary structural-couplings posited by Maturana and Varela. But, neither side of the metaphor offers any useful referents that we can seek analogs of on the other side of the metaphor, and therefore is is of not more use than "love is a rose." So Nick, "we" "cannot." But I suspect that is unsatisfactory. davew On Tue, May 7, 2019, at 12:28 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
|
|
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Nick thinks:
> As I think Lee would say (dammit, Lee, where are you?), don't ask a fish > about water; he knows nothing of it. I would not say that; I have always thought it was a particularly silly thing to say. Since there are approximately 30 more messages to work through, I won't expand on why I think it's silly unless necessary, and in any case later. (But I was quite serious in my earlier four-term analogy to the effect that "water" is to "fish" as whatever it was--emergence?--is to whatever they were--coders?) ============================================================ 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 archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
| Free forum by Nabble | Edit this page |