Purposes and goals of mindfucks

[Thurnez Isa]

Selection is more in tune with subtraction as Kai said... the driving force is extinction

plus...
YOULL BE SAYING HOLY FUCK BALLS EVERYTIME
/
/

[Triple Zero]

I probably have a different idea of Emergence than KE Peters. maybe mine's wrong though.

to me, Emergence is exactly that thing that makes the whole more than the sum. you can't really grasp it, because it's more obvious than common sense, it's just the way things work.

Like what Douglas Adams once said "That which survives, survives."

Emergence is a tautology.

And the whole mutation/selection feedback loop is just one example of it happening. (Maybe a pretty important one, though)

Emergence doesn't actively cause the mutation/selection feedback loop to happen (it does that by itself, after all it's a feedback loop), but if you were to ask, why does this feedback loop even exist? Why is it that order and disorder have the tendency to separate themselves out of chaos? The answer is Emergence.

It is for me anything that, just for the reason that smaller parts or gears work and interact the way they do, creates a "ghost", a structure in the larger system that cannot be expressed in terms that make sense to these smaller gears.

And in that view, mutation and selection are sort of on the same level for me. They are more like a between step from bio/chemical matter to a symbolic level where mutation and selection happens, and on top of that you have all this beautiful creativity and novelty.
And the whole stack, but maybe especially the top, is "powered by" Emergence.

maybe it's because you're biologist, in my studies of Machine Learning I found that different sciences have very different ways of thinking (maybe especially biologists vs computer scientists :-P), but when simulating evolutionary algorithms on the computer, the bio/chemical level is (of course/usually) skipped and the mutation/selection level is just a question of a few lines of code.
viewed in that way, the mutation/selection thing is just yet another gear, yet another step to facilitate Emergence happening. and in computers, we can skip the lower level steps, but still you cannot force Emergence, all you can do is to create circumstances upon which it will act. (though of course the same circumstances will produce the same results, but it is trial and error a lot of it).

I dunno if this helps explain anything, Kai

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Selection makes more sense to me as promotion, rather than subtraction. It doesn't destroy variation in the same sense that Emergence creates it.

Actually, yes, it exactly does. Selection refers to the unsuccessful variations dying off.

[Thurnez Isa]

Selection makes more sense to me as promotion, rather than subtraction. It doesn't destroy variation in the same sense that Emergence creates it.

Actually, yes, it exactly does. Selection refers to the unsuccessful variations dying off.

YOU DARE QUESTION HIS SCIENTIFIC EXPERTISE!!

HIS WRATH.... WHAT ABOUT HIS WRATH?

[Kai]

Selection makes more sense to me as promotion, rather than subtraction. It doesn't destroy variation in the same sense that Emergence creates it.

Go back up and read my summary of Darwin's Natural Selection. Selection is removal, deletion. The reason you can separate species and they don't all look like some blob with blending variation in between is because of extinction. The intermediate varities are lost, extinct or absorbed. That variation no longer exists. Lineages go exinct and the remaining lineages are more easily defined through the spaces left.

Edit: the best way I can think to visualize it is like this bush, with many many branches, very thick in some places, very thin in others. The branches are not all the same length, most are dead at the tips stopping far from the crown. The uncountable number of branches, thats Emergence. The similarly uncountable number of dead stems with the few that slip through still green, thats Selection.

[Kai]

I dunno if this helps explain anything, Kai

I'll read through it in the morning. My third circuit is shot when I get tired. Thanks for answering in any case.

[Captain Utopia]

Edit: the best way I can think to visualize it is like this bush, with many many branches, very thick in some places, very thin in others. The branches are not all the same length, most are dead at the tips stopping far from the crown. The uncountable number of branches, thats Emergence. The similarly uncountable number of dead stems with the few that slip through still green, thats Selection.

That actually makes a lot of sense - thanks.

[Captain Utopia]

Selection makes more sense to me as promotion, rather than subtraction. It doesn't destroy variation in the same sense that Emergence creates it.

Actually, yes, it exactly does. Selection refers to the unsuccessful variations dying off.

YOU DARE QUESTION HIS SCIENTIFIC EXPERTISE!!

HIS WRATH.... WHAT ABOUT HIS WRATH?

Actually, I think I've been quite open about my lack of expertise and how much reading/research I haven't done. But I can state my premises, flimsy as they are, and I am happy to admit when I find out I am wrong.

I mean, don't let that get in the way of a good joke or anything, but if you think you can humiliate me.. then you're gonna have to come up with something better than my emo-wank songs I posted links to a few posts back mixing failed relationships with bubblegum metaphysics. I play guitar with all the finesse of a coma patient reacting spasmodically to a cattleprod, and I can't even reach half the notes. You know, it's like I just don't care about all the scars scorn brings.

[Kai]

I probably have a different idea of Emergence than KE Peters. maybe mine's wrong though.

to me, Emergence is exactly that thing that makes the whole more than the sum. you can't really grasp it, because it's more obvious than common sense, it's just the way things work.

That's why I usually refer to Emergence as a metaforce. Its not real in the sense that Electromagnetism is real. Its an afterforce (or beyond force, depending on how you think of it), that exists only by its effects. The effects are real but Emergence itself is a nebulous metaforce, a map, a concept.

Like what Douglas Adams once said "That which survives, survives."

Put a different way, "nature's creed is 'whatever works'". Put yet another way, what is here is fit, because if it /wasn't/ fit, it wouldn't be here.

Emergence is a tautology.

I actually would say that Emergence plus Selection is a tautology, but since you are posing Selection as an aspect of Emergence, I'll give you that.

And the whole mutation/selection feedback loop is just one example of it happening. (Maybe a pretty important one, though)

Please give other examples.

Emergence doesn't actively cause the mutation/selection feedback loop to happen (it does that by itself, after all it's a feedback loop), but if you were to ask, why does this feedback loop even exist? Why is it that order and disorder have the tendency to separate themselves out of chaos? The answer is Emergence.

Emergence leads to Emergence. Heh, there is no First Cause. Emergence is the Cause of Emergence.

I just said it, I've actually said it before, but it's damn hard for me to wrap my head around the above. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by " order and disorder have the tendency to separate themselves out of chaos".

It is for me anything that, just for the reason that smaller parts or gears work and interact the way they do, creates a "ghost", a structure in the larger system that cannot be expressed in terms that make sense to these smaller gears.

This ghost is what I call an "emergent system". I think we mean the same thing.

And in that view, mutation and selection are sort of on the same level for me. They are more like a between step from bio/chemical matter to a symbolic level where mutation and selection happens, and on top of that you have all this beautiful creativity and novelty.
And the whole stack, but maybe especially the top, is "powered by" Emergence.

So, you are saying that Mutation (emergence of creativity and novelity) and Selection (culling/discontinuing some of that variation while other variation continues) are all aspects of the inbetween step, the step of Emergence between emergence systems (or ghosts, as you called them).

maybe it's because you're biologist, in my studies of Machine Learning I found that different sciences have very different ways of thinking (maybe especially biologists vs computer scientists :-P), but when simulating evolutionary algorithms on the computer, the bio/chemical level is (of course/usually) skipped and the mutation/selection level is just a question of a few lines of code.
viewed in that way, the mutation/selection thing is just yet another gear, yet another step to facilitate Emergence happening. and in computers, we can skip the lower level steps, but still you cannot force Emergence, all you can do is to create circumstances upon which it will act. (though of course the same circumstances will produce the same results, but it is trial and error a lot of it).

Yes, a computer is somewhat simpler in that respect. It can produce novelity from a combination of on and off switches on a silicon surface. However, it can't self activate. Biochemistry provides for self activation and teleos. But yes, I agree you can't force Emergence (as Emergence is creativity and you can't force creativity), you can only provide conditions from which it can act. In many cases, these conditions are simply placing many similar bits together in close proximity and constant interaction. These really are the only requirements of basic emergence systems. A) close proximity (as close as needed) B)of similar bits (units, parts, whatever; they need to be similar to facilitate C) Constant interaction. If these things aren't satisfied, Emergence can't work. If the parts are too far apart, they can't interact with each other, and if they are too dissimilar, the interactions won't fall into any ordered network. And if the interactions won't happen at all, then how can Emergence work? You look at some things, and there seems to be no real emergence system that can come out of it (like inert gases, for example) but then you talk about water, a dipolar molecule that forms weak hydrogen bonds all over the place, and you get fluid dynamics and surface tension and all sorts of emergent properties.

I dunno if this helps explain anything, Kai

I understood it a helluva lot better than I did last night. Thanks

[Captain Utopia]

You don't know what you're talking about. LMNO knows what he's talking about when it comes to quantum mechanics. He's covered many topics including the double slit experiment in this forum. All you have to do is use the search engine.

I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing my ability to find it since I don't know exactly what I'm looking for.

USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION AVAILABLE IN THIS VERY FORUM, AT THE TOP-RIGHT OF EVERY PAGE, THIS ONE INCLUDED.

I was saying that I did, but that out of all the responses returned, none of them seemed relevant and I gave up after looking at a dozen or so results. For example "lmno double slit" returns only this post.

If we take our ancestors, as the original poster did, as a barometer of what we should consider "valid choices" then please explain to me how the reference to the amount of genetic material we share is an irrelevant point. Putting aside my mistake with ancestry/cousins - the DNA is the agent of replication, not the host.

1) why should we take from our ancestors "valid choices"?

I don't think we should. It was the person I was responding to who claimed that. Same way that an individual should feel no obligation to serve societies wishes, a person should feel no obligation to serve the "wishes" of their DNA.

My thrust was more memetic than genetic: People used to do X, and they got away with it.  You're biologically equipped similarly to them, so you might get away with it, too.  Nobody can compel you to take good advice, or to tell good advice from bad.  I was suggesting the keeping of tradition (in so many words) as a way to survive.  It's everyone's choice as to whether or not they want to survive that way.

So.. not forgetting how to talk once you've learned how to shout? Or walk once you learn how to run? I'd go one step further and suggest that if our predecessors had failed in that message then we wouldn't be here to debate whether they had.

2) Its not irrelevant. You just shouldn't talk about it because the sort of shit you were saying is why people are damn confused in the first place, and its honestly up to biologists (like me) and other scientists (like Thurnez the paleontologist) to try to sort the public out. Hearing the "we came from chimpanzees" line for the 1000 time just about boils my gray matter. So please, just don't talk about it. Read, learn, don't talk till you actually know what you are talking about.

How do I know when I actually know what I'm talking about? I'm not trying to play word games because, the chimpanzee slip aside, I think I do know what I'm talking about. Or rather - I'm not a biologist, and I don't know nearly as much as you about the details and how those details impact the whole, but I think I know pretty much as much I'm going to need to know.

Well, maybe you've been playing them with yourself so long that you have to try to not play word games.

It's entirely possible. For the last five years I have been devoid of almost any form of external intellectual interaction. Not having anyone call you on your bullshit is not as pleasant as it sounds, and coming face-to-face with my delusions is somewhat blissful.

I noticed many very close by usages of the word "model" in the same, shortish paragraph.  I hypothesize that you're experiencing things (possibly weird or annoying to yourself), that you could talk about at much greater length.  Otherwise, it looks increasingly like you're just a schmuck with some pet phrases.

Well put it this way. I think a lot of the shit-flinging in my direction is a natural/predictable response to my braindead introduction thread and my asinine tone as my ego became increasingly invested in not backing down. I'm still vulnerable to that, which is why I changed my signature to remind me.

But I also think I've learned enough in the last week, such that I could pull a 'sheered volva', and come back in a new guise and seek humble goals of interaction with my reputation a clean slate. However, I think that would be doing us all a disservice - I didn't earn this new sense of humility, it's a gift the community has given to me and I'm not going to just throw that away.

[LMNO]

To be honest, you're taking it quite well.  I might regret saying this, but stick around for a while.


Also, the thread you may be looking for could be this one: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=21476.0

[Captain Utopia]

Apologies for the newbie question, but what is the difference between Discord and Emergence? Or is it an apples/oranges thing?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Selection makes more sense to me as promotion, rather than subtraction. It doesn't destroy variation in the same sense that Emergence creates it.

Actually, yes, it exactly does. Selection refers to the unsuccessful variations dying off.

YOU DARE QUESTION HIS SCIENTIFIC EXPERTISE!!

HIS WRATH.... WHAT ABOUT HIS WRATH?

It bothers me when people make unequivocal statements about easily-verifiable things without first doing any research to make sure they are actually right.

[LMNO]

Apologies for the newbie question, but what is the difference between Discord and Emergence? Or is it an apples/oranges thing?

Discord, or Discordia?

[Triple Zero]

Apologies for the newbie question, but what is the difference between Discord and Emergence? Or is it an apples/oranges thing?

Discord, or Discordia?

Surely, you mean orange or Orangina?