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Topic: virus: example (Read 894 times) |
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hkhenson@rogers...
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virus: example
« on: 2005-03-04 20:10:56 » |
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At 08:48 PM 03/04/05 -0700, global_hijack wrote:
snip
I used to use an impedance matching analogy to illustrate this point, but
in the information age . . . .
The communications from this party have had in common conveying virtually
no information to the list members.
This is a symptom of a lack of shared common concepts. One could say that
language is fairly compressed and in order to understand it, you have to be
able to decompress the word stream.
If there is not much shared knowledge, then there are severe problems in
communications, in fact it often fails to achieve the goal of transferring
memes.
In a lot of ways, the readiness of a mind to accepting new memes depends on
the previous population of memes already there.
Ordinary education is about building up layer after layer of memes
(concepts). It is, for example, extremely difficult to understand
arguments from evolutionary psychology without a substantial background in
evolutionary theory, inclusive fitness, etc.
Math provides many examples. For example, e exp i(pi) = -1.
That's a trivial lemma when you get to it. The foundation, however, took
565 pages in my advanced math for engineers book.
Keith Henson
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deadletter-j
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How many Engstrom's does it take?
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Re: virus: example
« Reply #1 on: 2005-04-04 21:42:13 » |
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I'm not certain I completely understood you, Keith - it was a little
incomprehensible. The picture I paint in my head is that I fear that
maybe that's how I come across!
Oh, I hope not. Do you feel that I am really not conveying any
information? Or how about 'no content' - it's hard sometimes to find
metaphor for discussing information _about_ information.
I am agreeing with you 100% in regards to having language be fairly
compressed, and in order to understand it, we must have 'frames' in
order to recompress.
Here's another direction, however: I'm thinking that a group of people
having a conversation about X, compress their understanding of X to the
point that they all can refer back to the memory in order to discuss
it. Therefore, if we want them to have a memory of a meme in order to
be able to refer back to it later, it will be good to layer in a meme,
interweaving into a conversation, with regular stops for <information
without content> - jokes, social niceties, etc.
In regards to your lemma - that may actually be a nifty little bit of
math that I was looking for! I kid you not! I was trying to find a way
to express 0 to infinity as a set of gradations in degrees or radians.
0 to oo = pi on an exponential scale in the math I am trying to do, and
here's a bit of math that seems to match up! What kind of engineering
is the book doing?
Also, consider this: foreign language learning is often a case of
getting the students to shut up and be exposed to enough of the foreign
language that they begin to zazz it together with their own knowledge
and understanding. The more interlocking information they begin to
realize they have access to, the more powerful the synthesis moment.
Thanks!
:-b
On Mar 4, 2005, at 5:10 PM, Keith Henson wrote:
> At 08:48 PM 03/04/05 -0700, global_hijack wrote:
>
> snip
>
> I used to use an impedance matching analogy to illustrate this point,
> but in the information age . . . .
>
> The communications from this party have had in common conveying
> virtually no information to the list members.
>
> This is a symptom of a lack of shared common concepts. One could say
> that language is fairly compressed and in order to understand it, you
> have to be able to decompress the word stream.
>
> If there is not much shared knowledge, then there are severe problems
> in communications, in fact it often fails to achieve the goal of
> transferring memes.
>
> In a lot of ways, the readiness of a mind to accepting new memes
> depends on the previous population of memes already there.
>
> Ordinary education is about building up layer after layer of memes
> (concepts). It is, for example, extremely difficult to understand
> arguments from evolutionary psychology without a substantial
> background in evolutionary theory, inclusive fitness, etc.
>
> Math provides many examples. For example, e exp i(pi) = -1.
>
> That's a trivial lemma when you get to it. The foundation, however,
> took 565 pages in my advanced math for engineers book.
>
> Keith Henson
>
> ---
> To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to
> <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
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Hijacking everything ever knew about anything.
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hkhenson@rogers...
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Re: virus: example
« Reply #2 on: 2005-03-05 01:07:21 » |
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At 06:42 PM 04/04/05 -0700, you wrote:
>I'm not certain I completely understood you, Keith - it was a little
>incomprehensible. The picture I paint in my head is that I fear that maybe
>that's how I come across!
You are getting the picture.
>Oh, I hope not. Do you feel that I am really not conveying any
>information? Or how about 'no content' - it's hard sometimes to find
>metaphor for discussing information _about_ information.
You don't really need metaphor. There is a *deep* understanding of the
relation of information to entropy among many of the people on this
list. You can start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_E._Shannon
Or try Google
Results 1 - 10 of about 70,100 for "Claude Shannon".
CLAUDE SHANNON
Claude Shannon. Introduction. Claude Elwood Shannon is considered as the
founding father of electronic communications age. He is an ...
www.nyu.edu/pages/linguistics/courses/v610003/shan.html - 14k - Cached -
Similar pages
Bell Labs: Claude Shannon, Father of Information Theory, Dies at ...
... 26, 2001) -- Claude Elwood Shannon, the mathematician who laid the
foundation of
modern information theory while working at Bell Labs in the 1940s, died on ...
www.bell-labs.com/news/2001/february/26/1.html - 19k - Cached - Similar pages
>I am agreeing with you 100% in regards to having language be fairly
>compressed, and in order to understand it, we must have 'frames' in order
>to recompress.
Did you mean "decompress"? It is not clear.
And what context are you using the term "frames"? The word has several
rather tightly defined meanings. For example, Results 1 - 10 of about
11,600 for "Marvin Minsky" frames.
Minsky, Marvin -- Encyclopædia Britannica
... Marvin Minsky born August 9, 1927, New York, New York, US ... In 1975
Minsky
developed the concept of “frames” to identify precisely the general ...
www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9344569 - Similar pages
Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind - Minsky, Marvin
... involving ‘frames’ that inherit their variable assignments from previously
defined frames, to account for many cognitive phenomena. ...
www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/minsky.html - 5k - 3 Apr 2005 -
Cached - Similar pages
Marvin Minsky.
Marvin Minsky - unfairly criticised for optimism? ... Minsky’s solution is
frames (often compared with Roger Schank’s similar strategy of scripts). ...
www.consciousentities.com/minsky.htm - 15k - Cached - Similar pages
>Here's another direction, however: I'm thinking that a group of people
>having a conversation about X, compress their understanding of X to the
>point that they all can refer back to the memory in order to discuss it.
>Therefore, if we want them to have a memory of a meme in order to be able
>to refer back to it later, it will be good to layer in a meme,
>interweaving into a conversation, with regular stops for <information
>without content> - jokes, social niceties, etc.
Replace "meme" with cookie in the above. It will make as much or as little
sense.
>In regards to your lemma -
Far from being *mine.* That's Euler's formula. The derivation is a
Macllaurin series which is a special kind of Taylor series. It has been a
*long* time since I took the courses so I can only guess, but I think you
might get to this near the end of the second or third semester of
calculus. (Anyone taken math courses more recently than the 60s?)
>that may actually be a nifty little bit of math that I was looking for! I
>kid you not! I was trying to find a way to express 0 to infinity as a set
>of gradations in degrees or radians. 0 to oo = pi on an exponential scale
>in the math I am trying to do, and here's a bit of math that seems to
>match up! What kind of engineering is the book doing?
Math at this level and well beyond is used in all engineering fields.
>Also, consider this: foreign language learning is often a case of getting
>the students to shut up and be exposed to enough of the foreign language
>that they begin to zazz it together with their own knowledge and
>understanding. The more interlocking information they begin to realize
>they have access to, the more powerful the synthesis moment.
It is obvious you don't have much technical background. Most of the people
on a list like this are happy to answer well framed questions, but we can't
give you the background on line you need to communicate in a "place" like
the virus list.
We can suggest what courses you need to take and what essential articles
and books you need to read to come up to speed. It would be useful if you
want such advice for you to say where you are in math and what of the core
material (such as _Selfish Gene_, Evolution of Cooperation_, etc) you have
read.
Best wishes,
Keith Henson
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DrSebby
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Re: virus: example
« Reply #3 on: 2005-04-05 04:42:40 » |
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...this might help: i agree with many of Keiths points...now let me focus
on this one paragraph of yours below. (the foreign language 'absorption')
...you often make statements like this one and then proceed to follow it up
with ambiguous albeit unique combinations of words and the
"paraphrased-to-the-nth-degree-ideas". the problem is that the initial
portion of your house of cards (such as the one below) contains so many
points and counterpoints, fallacies, possibilities and so forth such that
it's hard to make heads or tails of it.
...i hate to make too much of an anecdotal situation but this paragraph on
foreign language is pretty much rubbish unless you are an infant or lack the
capacity to read and write. this absorption/osmosis theory would take
sooooo much more time than studying with a book, that it would be nearly
impossible to find someone willing to tutor them. so any thoughts or ideas
following this comment and using it as a foundation are seriously
compromised....thus leading people to curtail the reading of the remainder
of said post.
DrSebby.
"Courage...and shuffle the cards".
>Also, consider this: foreign language learning is often a case of getting
>the students to shut up and be exposed to enough of the foreign language
>that they begin to zazz it together with their own knowledge and
>understanding. The more interlocking information they begin to realize they
>have access to, the more powerful the synthesis moment.
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"courage and shuffle the cards..."
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rhinoceros
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My point is ...
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Re:virus: example
« Reply #4 on: 2005-04-05 08:43:09 » |
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[hkhenson]
The communications from this party have had in common conveying virtually
no information to the list members.
This is a symptom of a lack of shared common concepts. One could say that
language is fairly compressed and in order to understand it, you have to be
able to decompress the word stream.
If there is not much shared knowledge, then there are severe problems in
communications, in fact it often fails to achieve the goal of transferring
memes.
In a lot of ways, the readiness of a mind to accepting new memes depends on
the previous population of memes already there.
Ordinary education is about building up layer after layer of memes
(concepts). It is, for example, extremely difficult to understand
arguments from evolutionary psychology without a substantial background in
evolutionary theory, inclusive fitness, etc.
[rhinoceros]
Very interesting. Perhaps this notion can be improved with a bit of tweaking.
1. When we deal with engineering concepts, this "decompression" of transmitted information is actually a kind of decoding where lots of information are already contained in the decoding key (education).
2. When we deal with non-engineering concepts, the decoding key often contains cultural or emotional concepts drawn from personal stories, which may vary. In such cases, the road from transmitted information to content does not always lead to common ground. What happens then? I can see two main cases where this scheme do not work in the same way as in engineering.
a) The message does not make sense - The transmitted information never acquires content. Then we shrug.
b) The transmitted information does acquire content if it can be mapped in any coherent way in the receiver's memeplex. It may well be misunderstood, leading to a mutant meme. Coherence with the receiver's memeplex is the important part here, even it is a coherence different from the transmitter's. Sadly, in some cases the communication will be a failure as far as the transmitter is concerned.
Fortunately we have a large enough body of common concepts to make these cases exceptional, either as a results of our common genetic make up or as a result of cultural interactions. So, when we play our Wittgensteinian language games, we can pick the right decoder for the task most of the time.
PS: hkh, your message appeared in my mailbox dated March 5 instead of April 5, and was burried among the old ones. You may want to correct your PC clock just in case you miss important appointments.
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hkhenson@rogers...
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Re:virus: example
« Reply #5 on: 2005-04-05 10:18:29 » |
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At 06:43 AM 05/04/05 -0600, "rhinoceros" wrote:
>[hkhenson]
>The communications from this party have had in common conveying virtually
>no information to the list members.
>
>This is a symptom of a lack of shared common concepts. One could say that
>language is fairly compressed and in order to understand it, you have to be
>able to decompress the word stream.
>
>If there is not much shared knowledge, then there are severe problems in
>communications, in fact it often fails to achieve the goal of transferring
>memes.
>
>In a lot of ways, the readiness of a mind to accepting new memes depends on
>the previous population of memes already there.
>
>Ordinary education is about building up layer after layer of memes
>(concepts). It is, for example, extremely difficult to understand
>arguments from evolutionary psychology without a substantial background in
>evolutionary theory, inclusive fitness, etc.
>
>
>[rhinoceros]
>Very interesting. Perhaps this notion can be improved with a bit of tweaking.
>
>1. When we deal with engineering concepts, this "decompression" of
>transmitted information is actually a kind of decoding where lots of
>information are already contained in the decoding key (education).
>
>2. When we deal with non-engineering concepts, the decoding key often
>contains cultural or emotional concepts drawn from personal stories, which
>may vary. In such cases, the road from transmitted information to content
>does not always lead to common ground. What happens then? I can see two
>main cases where this scheme do not work in the same way as in engineering.
I don't see that much difference in classes of concepts. If someone does
not know the rules of some sport, the plot of a story, or saturation in
magnetic cores it is going to be equally difficult for the recipient to get
a meme involving these chunks of knowledge.
>a) The message does not make sense - The transmitted information never
>acquires content. Then we shrug.
>
>b) The transmitted information does acquire content if it can be mapped in
>any coherent way in the receiver's memeplex. It may well be misunderstood,
>leading to a mutant meme. Coherence with the receiver's memeplex is the
>important part here, even it is a coherence different from the
>transmitter's. Sadly, in some cases the communication will be a failure as
>far as the transmitter is concerned.
A classic example is mistranslations. For example, "The vodka's ok, but
the meat's rotten," for "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
>Fortunately we have a large enough body of common concepts to make these
>cases exceptional, either as a results of our common genetic make up or as
>a result of cultural interactions. So, when we play our Wittgensteinian
>language games, we can pick the right decoder for the task most of the time.
I don't think the cases are exceptional, more the rule of the day when you
get away from common every day concepts. In spite of the fact it killed
300k people recently, how many of the survivors would understand plate
tectonics if you tried to explain it to them?
There is a *huge* problem in this area and it may be growing worse rather
than better. Consider the US and evolution. Evolution is *the*
fundamental key for understanding anything in biology. A substantial
fraction of the school age population in the US is getting no exposure to
evolution at all. How do you explain memes to such people?
>PS: hkh, your message appeared in my mailbox dated March 5 instead of
>April 5, and was burried among the old ones. You may want to correct your
>PC clock just in case you miss important appointments.
Thanks. I already noticed. This box has two OS on it, they each moved the
clock forward an hour. When this was corrected, the date got set back a
month accidentally.
Keith Henson
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Mermaid
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Bite me!
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Re: virus: example
« Reply #6 on: 2005-04-05 17:51:34 » |
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Quote from: hkhenson@rogers.com on 2005-03-05 01:07:21
It is obvious you don't have much technical background. Most of the people
on a list like this are happy to answer well framed questions, but we can't
give you the background on line you need to communicate in a "place" like
the virus list.
We can suggest what courses you need to take and what essential articles
and books you need to read to come up to speed. It would be useful if you
want such advice for you to say where you are in math and what of the core
material (such as _Selfish Gene_, Evolution of Cooperation_, etc) you have
read. |
And may I suggest that you pull the plug from your arse and release some of that hot air?
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