Nick -
I'm sorry to break into your travel plans/recovery with my (ab)use of
language.
Unfortunately I do not remember any such admonishment in the past but am
happy to take it in the moment. I can tell that this is one of your
hot-buttons... maybe right up there with dangling participles or
conflation of "it's" and "its" or "there", "they're" and "their"?
I agree that "inform" is a much too fancy word for the simple act of
"shaping". As a sometimes poet, I am quite happy to use the simplest or
most apt word in a given situation.
That said, I suppose I will *try* to defend my use of the word "inform"
in this context. My working definition of "inform" in this context is
"to provide qualitatively unspecified input to".
Going mildly against Glen's gripe with vagueness, I would claim that
"inform" is more apt than "shape" in this case and chosen partly FOR
it's vagueness. I tend to reserve "shape" for geometric and
topological structures. While weather (in this case) has geometric
structures, it is highly dynamic by nature... I am not sure that you
would say that the complex feedback control system in an internal
combustion engine "shapes" the dynamical characteristics of said engine,
though perhaps one could say they "shape" the torque and power curves
(the curves, not the dynamics themselves)?
I'm mostly happy with restricting the use of "inform" to systems which
provide "information"... in this case, the biological entities
implicated in "shaping" the weather system being information inputs to
the weather system?
In a simple algorithmic formulation, I suppose what I intended by
"inform" was "to provide inputs relevant to" without specifying the
types of inputs. In this case, mostly adjustments to opacity, heat
absorption/radiation/dispersion, and humidity.
I will concede that "inform" is a bit vague and high-faluting but won't
as easily concede that "to shape" would be any more appropriate.
Perhaps we could find a yet better term?
"the implication that the complexity of weather systems was more
than incidentally dependent on the biological systems that */might
shape/*them"
doesn't really do it for me either? Do you not agree that "shape" has
strong geometric (or possibly topological) connotations which are at
best coincidental to the subject of weather?
Grrr,
- Steve
On 5/25/17 9:08 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
Steve,
I have just arrived in MA in the Mosquito Infested Swamp and opened
your message. Now I realize that this message is part of a high
minded correspondence on profound matters, and that you have EVERY
reason to have forgotten yourself. But STILL I want to remind you
that you promised me years ago NEVER AGAIN to use the word "inform"
where the word "shape" would do as well or better. Now, having said
this, it is now my duty to crawl backwards through this high-minded
correspondence and try to ACTUALLY have something USEFUL to say about
it. You would think that you high-minded folks at FRIAM would at
least give an old guy a few days to TRAVEL.
"Inform" indeed! Soon you'll be informing putty. With what
information will you provide that putty, as you are “informing” it. I
informed the putty with my finger so that it lay smoothly against the
window pane. I informed my friend that it was time to leave for the
Friam meeting; he was like putty in my hands.
Grrr
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steve
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2017 2:27 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?
And I agree completely with the idea of zooming in (enough) to be at
least hunting subSnarks on a domain composed almost entirely of
Snarks... ((Or Snarkbait?)
Beating the dead snark, I was mildly perturbed by the implication that
the complexity of weather systems was more than incidentally dependent
on the biological systems that */might inform/*them (transpiration
from forest or savannah, light absorption by algae, methane from
cattle and termites, etc)
Sent from my iPhone
> On May 25, 2017, at 1:39 PM, glen ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com
<mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
> I agree completely. But if we look carefully at Russ' question:
>
>> On 05/24/2017 11:00 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
>> Can we think of anything that is non-biological, non-human, and not
a biological or human artifact that would qualify as an agent based
system?
>
> And we consider the previous comments about biology creeping into
(even!) weather patterns and climate, and whether complexity is
invariant through the reduction to physics ... and we can even extend
that to something like Smolin's fecund universe, etc ad forever, it
becomes clear that we're hunting the snark. And I suppose the wisdom
of traditions like Buddhism and such, as well as the
falsification/selection approach of critical rationalism, _strongly_
suggest to us what Harley Davidson tells us on a regular basis: The
journey is the destination.
>
> So, rather than talk about the elusive snark, why not talk explicitly
> about the journey ... the workflow, the tools, the thing(s) right in
> front of our face/hands? E.g. topological insulators don't look at
> all plectic to me. So, I'd be very interested to hear why y'all think
> they are. (By using "plectic", I'm admitting that I don't understand
> quantum physics; so sure, they're mysterious... but how are they
> complex in the way we're using the term, here?)
>
> But I'm more interested in well-defined concepts of agents than I im
in well-defined concepts of complex systems. So, what type of agents
are we talking about? Kauffman's "thermodynamic agents"? Zero
intelligence agents? BDI-capable agents? Etc. These concrete
details would put us squarely inside the journey and outside the
destination.
>
>
>> On 05/25/2017 12:21 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> MY point (at least, not trying to speak for others) was/is that
"interesting", "life", and "complexity" might very well be highly
superposed or even "conjugated" (to introduce an extremely overloaded
technical term).
>>
>> I suppose to disambiguate, I believe that "Life" is a subset of
"Complex Systems" and life in the larger sense of ALife is a larger
subset of complex systems, though probably still a *proper* subset?
The outer bounds of he vagueness of "Life" convolved with the inner
bounds of vagueness of Complex Systems might allow them to become
identical? The question of "Interesting" seems to be sharpened (or is
it dulled?) by the subjectivity of the term... I suppose
"interesting" is usually defined by being simultaneously "familiar
enough to be relevant" and "unfamiliar enough to be novel". Since we
are LIfe ourselves, it seems likely that we find *life itself* at
least relevant and as we expand the definition of Life it becomes more
novel and interesting, up to embracing all of "complexity"... to the
extent that the Alife movement expanded the consideration from
biological life to proto-life and quasi-life, I'm tempted to claim
that *they* would include *all* of complex systems...
>> admitting that the specific boundaries of all the above *are* vague.
>>
>> To re-iterate, I think there IS good evidence to consider "complex
systems" and "life" as highly related and it seems obvious that they
would be "interesting", though I suppose there should be things
outside of that domain which are also obviously "interesting". Agency
is another hairball to sort through and I won't attempt much except
that in MY definition of Life, "Agency" is one of the qualities of
proto-life. To that extent, it would seem that complex systems
composed *of* entities with agency are as likely as any "biological
system" to exhibit complexity, etc.
>>
>> As for "Russ clarifying his question", I think this can be a
rhetorical device? It has always seemed to me that Science really
degenerates to "asking the right question" where when properly
formulated, the "answer becomes obvious"... in some sense, I think
THIS is what passes for elegance, the holy grail of scientific theory?
>
>
> --
> ☣ glen
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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