Dear Glen Ropella, I wish I had you in tow at cocktail parties, I would pay to watch you argue in public! What a hoot, it is like attending a Go tournament and having the crap beat out of you with a style never seen before. I once got beat so bad I laughed for weeks ( actually I still laugh 25 years later).
Now personally I have often noticed that when engineering solutions to a problem are required that I find discussion particularly frustrating. My solution over the decades was to just build the damn thing and get it running. After hearing how it was impossible, I would start the device or run a simulation. However it only convinced about half the members of the audience, the remaining half persisted in repeating the same mantra. This reticence to believe the evidence before their senses always ticked me off and certainly I was not amused and did not hide my contempt. Some will believe others simply refuse. It is not simply language in this case. There is a twisted belief that the symbolic statements uttered have more validity than the underlying concepts. This seems to get into the realm of semiotics and I am just a dummy on such issues. But these intransigent beliefs about meaning seem to condemn the owner to disregard reality. Such a behavior seems absolutely contrary to any evolutionary model. This makes me very curious indeed. Being a bit of a dummy, I used to play cards on weekends to pay for tuition, I learned a lot observing the strange decisions players made about the wagers before them. It struck me that all decisions are moderated not by reason but by the momentary emotion dominant at that instant. A puff of smoke in the eyes could make an individual switch from a good choice to a bad choice. A buxom waitress could disturb choices. There was apparently no method to weigh choices based on risk or returns. The choice appeared to be made after an emotional reward had already been obtained. If a choice makes one feel good then the individual will make that choice in real life and damn the consequences. If emotions vary through a period of time the quality of decisions also varies accordingly. Many individuals are satisfied with their choice in spite of the wreckage at their feet. Conformal behavior seems to fit the example, where the choice to conform is the reward while the consequences are denied or are considered irrelevant. I don't ask people what they were thinking anymore simply to avoid bad or degenerate arguments. My interest in Agents is in part about getting agents to vary the quality of their decisions randomly or periodically. Hence my interest in stupid agents. I suspect ( well more than suspect )that I personally have been victimized by my own inherent stupid choices after a long life of tinkering with machines and loose women. If we are all victims of flawed cognition then what do we do to protect ourselves if even the brightest of us can not be trusted at critical moments? As I got older I thought perhaps my judgment might improve but clearly that was a vain notion and I still enjoy argument and women. Age does not appear to lead to wisdom. Perhaps the flaw is deeper than language mismatch, perhaps there is no reconciliation for an emotional biological entity and an abstract intellectual fabrication or construct . I am just a dumb card counter, but maybe the intellect is simply a delusion of a cunning mind. Knowing ahead of time I was going to be beaten in a game of Black Jack did not make me feel much better about the loss of coin. Looking at gambling addicts it always struck me as interesting how they persisted playing even though the house was crooked. I have doubts that decisions are actually based on monetary issues. The language trap might just be a symptom of a much deeper problem. The lower intellect may not have an identity or self awareness and the concept of self is constructed at a higher level based on language itself. Perhaps the structure of the language/beliefs is the structure of the self identity. Back to agents, could an agent fabricate a belief system? Flawed or otherwise... Would self awareness reside in the collection of disparate belief systems? Is it conceivable that the self is nothing more than the struggle between flawed belief systems in constant conflict? Perhaps the Self is nothing more than the noise above a battlefield? As a footnote, the arguments about Language you mentioned, how do I find them? Please excuse my manner, I get a little carried away with a good old fashioned discussion, it makes me nostalgic for bad hamburgers and insipid coffee at the campus dungeon. Vlad. Dr.Vladimyr Ivan Burachynsky Ph.D.(Civil Eng.), M.Sc.(Mech.Eng.), M.Sc.(Biology) 120-1053 Beaverhill Blvd. Winnipeg, Manitoba CANADA R2J 3R2 (204) 2548321 Phone/Fax [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella Sent: March 22, 2010 1:20 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] (advice needed!) Thus spake Vladimyr Ivan Burachynsky circa 10-03-22 10:43 AM: > I opened a lid and are you the surprise in side? > Language issues are extremely complex and I am not sure which position you > take, In fact I suspect you do not subscribe to either. I'm just an Eddington style typewriter. I read a bunch of stuff. It percolates around randomly. Then I spew it back out without really knowing anything about what I'm saying. [grin] And in the great tradition of psychological reflexion, I assume everyone else is the same. > I always suspected my father was slightly mad when he would begin laughing > at something someone said, He explained that it sounded like something > obscene in Finnish or Yiddish. Exactly! Those interested in language mismatch claim that lots of "interestingness" seems to come from language mismatches, including lots of humor. > I agree with your comments but unfortunately we often have to make choices > between two bad options since there is nothing better. If we recognize the > language trap how do we escape? I tend to keep reminding myself that my grasp of reality is very tenuous regardless of my (frequent) sporadic descents into the conviction that I have a very good understanding of it. By continually reminding myself, I find that almost every time I remind myself while stuck in that conviction, the conviction is a direct result of being ensconced in a particular language. As I age, however, I'm finding my own reminders more and more difficult to maintain. So, I sporadically start arguments with people like those on this list and enlist them to help me remind myself. (Yes, that's totally selfish ... But you'll rarely find me arguing that altruism is natural. ;-) I confess, though, that these constant reminders make me a jack of many trades, master of none. And that can be a very bad thing. Luckily, I'm a simulant and my job requires that I be that way. > Creating a new language such as mathematics did not solve our difficulties > if anything it helped illuminate the issues. Yes! I firmly agree with that! Math is a language for disambiguation. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
