words RE: words

[lrudolph]

> Emergent: hexagonality of snowflakes.  Can we predict that from water
> vapor and cold?

And something about (maybe just the existence of) nuclei?

But predicting the hexagonality doesn't seem (to me) nearly enough to
predict the (not always, but very often) near-symmetry well past the level
of merely dihedral.



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[Nick Thompson]

Ok, so, Lee.  I keep getting my ears boxed for misinterpreting people. So.
If my understanding of your metaphor is wrong, what is yours?  

And to your earlier post, is emergence (or phase change) anything more than
the failure of induction?  If I asked Conway or Wolfram why does this thing,
which has been doing X for generations suddenly do Y, what would be their
answer?  If I rig a bomb with a clock so that it goes off on the ten
thousandth "tick", have I created an emergent phenomenon?  I think not, but
why not?  

But answer the first question, first.  I really want to know what you meant
by your analogical aphorism.

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
[hidden email]
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2019 3:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] words RE: words

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?)


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[Eric Charles-2]

" because, then truly, “Knowedge Extinguishes Emergence.”  

On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 9:46 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

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
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2019 7:26 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] words RE: words

 

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 [phone]

 

On Tue, May 7, 2019, 5:58 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

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

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2019 2:59 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] words RE: words

 

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]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 at 2:53 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] words RE: words

 

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

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

 

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2019 2:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] words RE: words

 

No, not really.  

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 at 1:43 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] words RE: words

 

To the outside observer, a ping pong game has emerged.

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Tue, May 7, 2019, 1:38 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

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

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[Steve Smith]

<advertisement>

I've been hosting my colleagues (Matt and Janire, who some may remember from SFx) from Wales/Spain this last week.   Janire is doing a book signing at PhotoEye Gallery this afternoon at 4PM for her book on Ed Grothus and the Black Hole - "Atomic Ed" .

https://calendar.sfreporter.com/cal/1628254

https://www.photoeye.com/bookstore/citation.cfm?Catalog=DT496

</advertisement>

The relevance to this braided thread is that I've been following the discussion(s) here but have not had an opportunity to engage with them until now while instead engaging in a lot of across-the-pond/across-a-generation parallax discussions woven around the theme of recognizing/weaving narratives with non-linguistic tools (immersive photography/videography/VR/etc.).

Looking for something entirely different, I tripped over the following article on the topic of Narrative and Complexity Science:

    https://woods.stanford.edu/news/stranger-fiction

With a quote from James Holland Jones:

Jones: The human brain evolved to learn from stories. Stories encode the fundamental information that people need to know about the worlds – physical, biological, social – in which they live. We retain and retrieve information better when it is given in narrative form. I think that written fiction provides powerful tools for modeling complex systems, not that different from what we use in studying them in science. When you tweak some element in a complex system, there will be both cascading and ramifying consequences.

I think this theme ties in with Nick's fascination with the "magic" he attributes to programmers (in general, or just those modeling complex systems?) and "emergence".   I would claim that writing narrative (or even more acutely so, poetry) is an even more magical act.  

When I think of the brevity of forms such as flash-fiction (dribble, drabble, twittiture, etc.) or a Haiku (5/7/5) or Zen Koan, I am reminded of the (useful) ambiguity in mathematics/physics/information-theory  regarding data-compression, entropy, and cryptography.     I am also reminded of the varied and recent use of the term "compression" here.

A superficial analysis of what makes these forms work suggests that skillful use of allusion is one key.   This appears to me to be sort of a bootstrap or meta-cryptography technique.   By pointing broadly toward (alluding) a large existing body of cultural understanding, a sort of code-book is invoked such that each line or even word taps into entire complex backstories. 

Consider Hemingway's famous 6 word short-story:

    "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

or Masahide's famous line:
    Barn's burnt down --
    now
    I can see the moon.

Mumble,

 - Steve

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[Nick Thompson]

Steve,

 

Due to a couple of sabbaticals, I had a few of those cross-pond, cross-generational conversations.  Nothing better.  Carry on, lad!

 

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, May 11, 2019 8:49 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] Words RE: Words - Narrative Bending - Emergence, oh my!

 

<advertisement>

I've been hosting my colleagues (Matt and Janire, who some may remember from SFx) from Wales/Spain this last week.   Janire is doing a book signing at PhotoEye Gallery this afternoon at 4PM for her book on Ed Grothus and the Black Hole - "Atomic Ed" .

https://calendar.sfreporter.com/cal/1628254

https://www.photoeye.com/bookstore/citation.cfm?Catalog=DT496

</advertisement>

The relevance to this braided thread is that I've been following the discussion(s) here but have not had an opportunity to engage with them until now while instead engaging in a lot of across-the-pond/across-a-generation parallax discussions woven around the theme of recognizing/weaving narratives with non-linguistic tools (immersive photography/videography/VR/etc.).

Looking for something entirely different, I tripped over the following article on the topic of Narrative and Complexity Science:

    https://woods.stanford.edu/news/stranger-fiction

With a quote from James Holland Jones:

Jones: The human brain evolved to learn from stories. Stories encode the fundamental information that people need to know about the worlds – physical, biological, social – in which they live. We retain and retrieve information better when it is given in narrative form. I think that written fiction provides powerful tools for modeling complex systems, not that different from what we use in studying them in science. When you tweak some element in a complex system, there will be both cascading and ramifying consequences.

I think this theme ties in with Nick's fascination with the "magic" he attributes to programmers (in general, or just those modeling complex systems?) and "emergence".   I would claim that writing narrative (or even more acutely so, poetry) is an even more magical act.  

When I think of the brevity of forms such as flash-fiction (dribble, drabble, twittiture, etc.) or a Haiku (5/7/5) or Zen Koan, I am reminded of the (useful) ambiguity in mathematics/physics/information-theory  regarding data-compression, entropy, and cryptography.     I am also reminded of the varied and recent use of the term "compression" here.

A superficial analysis of what makes these forms work suggests that skillful use of allusion is one key.   This appears to me to be sort of a bootstrap or meta-cryptography technique.   By pointing broadly toward (alluding) a large existing body of cultural understanding, a sort of code-book is invoked such that each line or even word taps into entire complex backstories. 

Consider Hemingway's famous 6 word short-story:

    "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

or Masahide's famous line:
    Barn's burnt down --
    now
    I can see the moon.

 

Mumble,

 - Steve

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