Nick, A naive definition of a compiler is that it's a computer program that translates languages like Fortran, Java etc. to machine language which computers can execute.
Frank --- Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, Santa Fe, NM 87505 505 670-9918 Santa Fe, NM On Sun, Oct 3, 2021, 10:41 AM Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com> wrote: > A compiler is a stack of technologies to prepare a computer program to run > on a computer. For the purposes of this discussion, we are talking about > a few of the top layers that do parsing and semantic analysis. These > steps ensure that the program is well-formed relative to a predefined > syntactic prescription and self-consistent in its use of types. Part of > the program provided by the user, or inherited by the user, could be type > definitions of what is meant by a velocity or a momentum. Depending on > the language and the programmer, these could be derived as a part of the > program (e.g. limit as a variable goes to some value or extreme), or they > could just be a set of free variables coupled to some methods that act on > them. Most working programmers aren’t familiar with programming on types, > but there are tools today to do it. A compiler for a programming language > with an advanced type system can essentially reject loose talk, but also > give powerful tools for automated reasoning about consistency. Getting > past this merciless editor gives one confidence, or even a certification, > that one is not being self-contradictory. > > > > *From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> *On Behalf Of * > thompnicks...@gmail.com > *Sent:* Sunday, October 3, 2021 9:09 AM > *To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' < > friam@redfish.com> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Newborn Heart Rate > > > > Marcus, Frank, etc., > > > > I guess I need to know, functionally speaking, what a compiler is. Peirce > had a job as a computer. He had time to be a philosopher because he was > such a facile computer that he could do the job in a fraction of the time > he was paid to do it. If he had been hired as a compiler, what would his > job have been? What input does a compiler take in; what output does it > produce. Is there any ressemblence between a compiler and a Chinese room? > > > > I grant you that this is an asymmetrical situation: it is a heluva lot > easier to ask questions than to answer them. But do what you can for me. > > > > My intuition is that Frank’s example probably captures the essence of a > category error more faithfully than any of the linguistic examples I could > come up with. > > > > n > > > > Nick Thompson > > thompnicks...@gmail.com > > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ > > > > *From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Marcus Daniels > *Sent:* Sunday, October 3, 2021 11:58 AM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam@redfish.com> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Newborn Heart Rate > > > > In some languages one can also track dependencies and enforce constraints > on values. Suppose one generates an iterator object from a list to > traverse a list. Obviously, that iterator depends on what is in the list. > Applying it to another list is misuse. (For concreteness, suppose the > iterator is an integer offset and the list is an address.) Ideally, > tracking the provenance of that iterator is a job a compiler can do for the > programmer. Another example would be a function that only accepted > primes. In that case the compiler’s job is to enforce that no one can call > that function through arguments that could be multiplied. > > > > On Oct 3, 2021, at 8:11 AM, Frank Wimberly <wimber...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Category errors, an opinion. > > > > In computer programming there are type errors. For example, in a strongly > typed language it is an error to say real A := 2*3.75 > > This is because the machine code for integer multiplication is entirely > different from that for floating point multiplication. In a more forgiving > language the compiler will cast 2 as 2.0 and do the obvious thing. As I > understand it a category error is a type error in natural language. Most > people ignore them outside of tight, logical discourse I think analogous to > the behavior of forgiving compilers. > > > > It's been 50 years since I studied compiler theory but I'm sure someone > will correct my errors. > > > > Frank > > > > > > --- > Frank C. Wimberly > 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, > Santa Fe, NM 87505 > > 505 670-9918 > Santa Fe, NM > > > > On Sun, Oct 3, 2021, 4:37 AM David Eric Smith <desm...@santafe.edu> wrote: > > Second note; apologies for two postings, because I forgot to include > something: > > > > In that last reply I meant to mention that there is no shame (though I > believe there is error) in committing to Zeno beyond necessity. One > travels in illustrious company. > > > > I have wanted to write a semi-opinion piece entitled “In Price of Process; > In Praise of Hypergraphs”, with a nod to Tanizaki, and may even do it > someday. > > > > The idea being that, while the Classical Mechanics got past Zeno’s rules > of argument with Hamiltonian mechanics formulated on phase space, the > thermodynamicists in a sense never did. Evidence: Prigogine got a Nobel > for trying to derive rules of dynamics from properties of an entropy of > states. That, of course, is not possible in general just by > dimension-counting. The whole aching frustration of a real > non-equilibrium thermodynamics has been to try to get the GD physicists to > give up Zeno in the way they think about entropies for questions of > process. The same is true for the geneticists and their “units of > selection” addiction. There is clearly a big domain in which we have all > the tools to do at least both of these, and I am sure a good deal more > beyond (a domain in which the process space can have its important > parameters captured in hypergraphs), so there is no reason we can’t all > just start doing it now. But thermo is committed to its ways of 70 years > ago, with de Groot and Mazur, or maybe even 90 years ago, stopping at the > innovations seen by Lars Onsager but then not really built upon much > further. And population genetics to what was brought down from the > mountain on stone tables by Fisher, likewise in 1930. > > > > So the idea that, where we have clear, useful, and trustworthy tools to > get past Zeno, we really should _just do it_, is still quite fresh, as I > see it. > > > > Eric > > > > > > > > On Oct 3, 2021, at 12:09 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: > > > > EricS, > > > > Thanks, as always, for your response. Everything you say here is > interesting and relevant except perhaps where you represent me as an otiose > idiot. That makes me want to defend my post, rather than absorb your > excellent response. > > > > Before I stifle my stupid defensive impulse, allow me to ask you a few > questions. Is not an inquiry into the relation between levels of > organization of interest? Are you entirely comfortable with the way that > people talk about interlevel causation? Is it of any interest to you that > the three inference engines of a syllogism, all bridge different levels of > organization? Are not probability theory and calculus both conceptual > bridges across levels organization? Granting, ex hypothesi, that those > bridges are virtuous, does not their success have some implications for > other ways in which we bridge levels of organization, as, say, > brain/behavior reflections, or the relation between behavior acts and > behavior motivations? Is metaphor thinking a way of crossing directly from > one particular to another without crossing any such bridges? Is metaphor > how we really think and is, therefore, logical analysis a poor proxy for > virtuous thought. > > > > Thinking as an experience monist, everything that is is experience and all > experiences are of other experiences. So, levels of organization are > experiences that have to be assembled out of other experiences. Many MANY > years ago when I was working on Brown Thrasher song we tried to automate > the classification of the units of the song. The birds can sing for hours > and rarely repeat themselves, but when they do, they do so very precisely. > So they aren’t just improvising. To this day I don’t think anybody has > figured out what they are doing. When I quit, it wasn’t even clear we > were parsing the stream of sound into the right units! > > > > The stream of experience is like that. The structures of The World that > Frank talks about are all structures of experience, validatable only by > subsequent experiences. We animals are not truth seekers, we are > consequence anticipators, and if there is any truth or reality, it must be > in the power those experiences we experience as true or real to anticipate > future experiences. How does the stream of experience come to be > organized? > > > > These are the kinds of questions I am pursuing, here, and, lacking > graduate students, a laboratory, work study students, courses to teach, > colleagues to interact with, here is really the only place I can pursue > them. If the assumptions I bring to bear that cause me ask these > questions are too naïve, onerous, or outlandish to entertain, then for > god’s sake don’t try to shoulder them. You have done me many kindnesses > in the past and you can walk away from my confusions any moment without any > debts whatsoever. The same is true, of course, of Jon, EricC, Glen or any > of the kind folk who have helped me think over these years. > > > > Anyway, thanks for your very relevant comments. I shall study them > carefully tomorrow when I get up. > > > > All the best, > > > > Nick > > > > > > > > Nick Thompson > > thompnicks...@gmail.com > > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ > <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,FlKil6Oo-OcZgl78FjunjqYCa03v-EeN8BN8CwdDyjLHD_jatCwLzinRfqOjRK1t-unkmR727-kN4rAlm7dj8TLyUUpgoZZ9C6yLfABMPDC4&typo=1> > > > > *From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *David Eric Smith > *Sent:* Saturday, October 2, 2021 9:47 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam@redfish.com> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Newborn Heart Rate > > > > I feel in this, Frank, like your comments will fall on deaf ears, for an > interesting reason. The thing you summarize for Nick is precisely the > thing he wants to object to. > > > > It seems to me that Nick believes that Zeno’s arrow paradox, > > https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/ > > or something close to it, defines in some Platonic way the “right rules of > thought”. Whatever Zeno’s rules of argument make ill-defined, we should > somehow believe isn’t really properly conceived, and _cannot be_. > > > > If I were to tell Nick (replace “momentum” where he has “acceleration” in > the sentences below), that in 1833, Hamilton took us beyond all the things > Zeno can’t do, by writing the states of objects in a 2-coordinate space, > where one coordinate is position and the other is momentum, and the two > coordinates are _independent of one another_, and in some important sense > _symmetric_ and _peer_ attributes of the object, I would not be addressing > his objection to calculus (which does define these things in limits as you > say below), but I would be arguing that physics may suggest the > limit-definition from calculus is not the most fundamental one. If I were > then to tell Nick that the duality between being at a place (all position) > and being in a state of motion (all momentum) became in quantum mechanics > the duality between standing and traveling waves, and that we understand > their independence and peer status even more thoroughly in quantum > mechanics than in Hamilton’s classical mechanics, I would still not be > addressing the unquiet about calculus, but would perhaps be asserting that > physical reality is even further from needing its in-the-limit definitions. > > > > But the part of this that is interesting (to me) is: why is this > Nick-as-I-perceive-him (which the real Nick may or may not be) convinced > that Zeno’s rules of argument are somehow the defined “right rules of > thought”? Why is anyone convinced that he knows ahead of time what rules > are the right rules of thought for anything? Why are we not somehow always > aware that all these words and rules come up together somehow as parts of a > mutually-interdependent system, really “pulled up by their own bootstraps” > in a much more perfect way than the way that metaphor is used for the > startup of an operating system in a computer? And if we were thus aware of > the somehow out-of-nowhere character of the bootstrapped systems within > which all the terms and rules take their meaning, how would it then change > the way we think about choosing which one to use? The Platonists in their > own words b believe that truth somehow comes to them through the divine > channel of thought from a reality beyond experience. I think they are more > fond (in the original sense of “crazy”) of their own preconceived notions > than they are of the complexity of experience, and mistake their > preconceived notions for a more ultimate and perfect, but in any case > preferable “reality”. If we get out of that habit, how does our style of > argument for what constitutes right thought change? > > > > Neither here nor there to this thread, I did want to mention some weeks > ago that I really liked Glen’s formulation of The Will to Simulation. I > think Nietzsche would have appreciated its irreverence, though he would > have been too vain and obstreperous to contribute anything to it. > > > > Eric > > > > p.s. On the above, I could have stayed with Nick’s original query about > acceleration, and gone to physics. I could have spoken of his very > physical self, standing here on the surface of the Earth, and accelerated > away from the world-line of an inertial observer in general relativity by > the fact that the Earth is in the way of his free fall. The gravity that > he feels in the seat of his pants is the acceleration that is a property of > his state. But it was simpler to refer to momentum and to go back to > Hamiltonian mechanics, which has an additional century behind it, and which > really marked the turn away from Zeno and a definition of velocities in > terms of derivatives by Lagrange, and toward a recognition of momentum as > an inherent property. If one can see that clearly and with familiarity, it > is then a straightforward next step to say that Mach’s principle just said > “if frame-independence applies to velocity, then why not also to rotational > velocity, and what then do we do about acceleration”, and you get the case > from general relativity. > > > > On Oct 1, 2021, at 10:00 PM, Frank Wimberly <wimber...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Nick, i hope this helps. Given a fair die that hasn't been thrown the > probability that it will come up 2 (or any of the other particular values) > on the next throw is 1/6 by definition of fair. Given that it has been > thrown and ceterus paribus the a posteriori probability that it shows 2 > given that it does is 1.0. In that case the probabilities of each of the > other values is 0.0. > > > > The acceleration of an object with constant velocity is 0.0. If the > velocity is changing the acceleration is the instantaneous change in > velocity the knowledge of which is limited by the ability to measure that. > The acceleration of an object whose velocity is described by a closed form > mathematical function is the derivative of that function as we learned in > calculus. The derivative is defined by limits. This is theoretical and > approximates what happens in the physical world. > > > > Questions and comments are welcome. > > > > Frank > > > > > > --- > Frank C. Wimberly > 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, > Santa Fe, NM 87505 > > 505 670-9918 > Santa Fe, NM > > > > On Fri, Oct 1, 2021, 7:21 PM <thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I thought the conversation about probability, category errors, and > crossing boundaries between levels of organization was interesting and I > was sorry I had to leave it. I want to say that to speak a die as having > a probability of 1/6 of coming up 6 on a single throw is a category error > because it is not a property that can be displayed on a single throw. It’s > the same worry that I have often deployed about the calculus. If we take > the idea of a category error seriously, then acceleration is just not the > sort of thing an object can have at an instant. But just as clearly as > this argument is too strong – lots of very nice longstanding bridges have > been built with the calculus – so the argument is also too strong with > respect to probability – lots of nice atom bombs have been built with > probability theory … or something. > > > > I care about this because my standard account of such concepts as > “wanting” is that they are properties of the population of responses to an > object, not properties of any one of those responses. We encounter the > same problem with anecdotes and newspaper photographs designed to > illustrate some general fact. If the generally fact is that “very few of > the immigrants at the southern border are well treated” a single photograph > looking peaked or hungry is irrelevant. Equally irrelevant would be a > picture of a bright eyed kid sitting in the lap of a border patrol officer > eating a hot-fudge sundae. > > > > This makes me wonder about one of the foundations of psychological > research, the statistics of inference, which I think Peirce invented. Let > a coin be thrown 10 times and each time come up heads. What I think Peirce > would have me conclude is that that coin is unlikely to be drawn from a > population of fair throws of a fair coin. But, of coure, what we are > likely to conclude is that “this coin is not fair.” But that could be as > misguided, couldn’t it, as concluding that the kid in the lap of the border > patrol officers is being mistreated. > > > > I apologize, once more, for sharing my comfusions with you. > > > > n > > > > Nick Thompson > > thompnicks...@gmail.com > > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ > <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,QU0qVpqNOoJiPM24Dv11INL-P7InBOIA4z4LOnpttneeWXYwPuFzZKWaVU3KPxC8ObCG7JECy2fbQeuL-V9-2OsvQN3I7mXpu9mzsoPaIE0,&typo=1> > > > > *From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly > *Sent:* Friday, October 1, 2021 6:46 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam@redfish.com> > *Subject:* [FRIAM] Newborn Heart Rate > > > > > https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/61/1/119 > <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fpediatrics.aappublications.org%2fcontent%2f61%2f1%2f119&c=E,1,uD1tIhc7c-0wZqgMnI5_Ki1-cJ9QDa1EyaSQIuM5xQO8giKGtKM8z1rtfEnJ33KUkPyECbG92OSX1Pt-uIL6rgVLiylCxIbiMASMUnV7SEjwSw,,&typo=1> > > > > This is for those who attended this morning's vFriam meeting. I was > Schachter's colleague, among a couple of others. > > > > > > --- > Frank C. 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