Re: [FRIAM] Downward causation

Nick, you must have known you would eventually provoke me: -Correlation is not causation Sometimes you can infer a causal direction from observational data. Interested readers can see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5340263/ By my former colleagues Scheines and Ramsey. -Hume After wr

Re: [FRIAM] Cargo Cult

Steve, For somebody who knows as little about physics as I do, I probably spend too much time being grumpy about Feynman. Is quoting Feynman on Cargo Cults in Programming an example of itself? CF Magritte Ce n’est pas une pipe.

Re: [FRIAM] Downward causation

Thanks, Roger. I LIKE it. When people say, “Correlation is not causation” they are living in a momentary illusion that they know what causation is. AT the very least, causation consists of the results of some number of experiments in which the second correlate is denied by a failure to p

Re: [FRIAM] Downward causation

Nick -- Sure, bean plants growing in time lapse is an excellent example of coarse graining. And you can imagine an animator making a cartoon of the same time lapse, in fact, I remember a classic cartoon doing this, even to the point of giving the plant hands to reach with and a face. While the v

[FRIAM] Cargo Cult

Marcus - Cargo cult programming is like the link below, starting at 4:20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZAPwfrtAFY&feature=youtu.be That is, not just imperfect, but worse than nothing. An aphorism by a former LANL Colleague:     "sometimes the most you can do is nothing" I think that wa

Re: [FRIAM] Grad Student Tax

^ And The "tax cut" Raegonomics silly nonsense is as some gamers say "just a fail idea". As you know that failed horribly for FDR (who genuinely thought it'd work.) then failed for Nixon, Raegon, Both Bushes... GEE WHAT"LL HAPPEN THIS TIME? It is probably litterally insanity. If Insanity is "Doing

[FRIAM] Cargo Cult

Nick - Yes!  Thanks for putting this on the table...  your calling this out made me aware that I was almost assuredly introduced to the concept in Feynman's "Joking" memoir.  At the time, I remember feeling vaguely (condescendingly) superior to the subjects of the anecdote. Our current popul

Re: [FRIAM] Downward causation

Ahh! Thanks Roger. That blows some life into it for me. Is watching a bean plant grow in time lapse an example of coarse-graining? So let’s imagine we are watching such an image and we notice that the plant “reaches for the sun”. (I.e., we move the light around and the plant follows it as i

Re: [FRIAM] Grad Student Tax

This is straightforward, Owen, Just keep in mind that _everything_ is done with one motive: to get points with the Mob, so that they will keep you installed to give money to the oligarchs. They have no other agenda, and don’t care about anything else. All the rest is just part of the public s

[FRIAM] Grad Student Tax

I was surprised to find out that the "tax cuts" actually impose increased taxes in important sectors. Grad students? Yup. Melanie Mitchell retweeted this: https://twitter.com/ChrisMarsicano/status/931953249091022848 It's so weird. Traveling here in europe where schools are affordable, & health

Re: [FRIAM] Downward causation

I looked at the abstract and thought, of course, if you "coarse grain" the visual field, then you synthesize objects out of groups of pixels that cohere together in time and space. In time you might even come to blame the imputed objects for their presumed effects in the world. Perhaps it's an il