Bill @wjbeaver@qoto.org
- Science Blog
- https://wjbeaver.wixsite.com/mysite
Just another blind guy thinking about the elephant
Joined Nov 2022
#originoflife #informationtheory #ComplexSystems #CollectiveBehavior #evolutionarydynamics #biogels #informationtheory #philosophy #philosophyofscience #philosophyofmaths
#qotojournal
Occationally I run into a paper that links ideas together to form new associations and opens up new levels of inquirey. As a bonus it introduces an exciting technology which I may of heard about before but never realized the usefulness. My interests are running more and more into the general theme of complexity more specifically to the information structure of complexity. I have been influenced greatly by the work of Dr Sarah Imari Walker at ASU. What does this have to do with chairs? Stay tuned, I will end this thread with a written article.
St Clair, James J. H., Zackory T. Burns, Elaine M. Bettaney, Michael B. Morrissey, Brian Otis, Thomas B. Ryder, Robert C. Fleischer, Richard James, and Christian Rutz. “Experimental Resource Pulses Influence Social-Network Dynamics and the Potential for Information Flow in Tool-Using Crows.” Nature Communications 6, no. 1 (November 3, 2015): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8197.
#originoflife #informationtheory #ComplexSystems #CollectiveBehavior #evolutionarydynamics #biogels #informationtheory #philosophy #philosophyofscience #philosophyofmaths
#qotojournal
A chair is what is called an embodied artifact, an extention of the human body. The idea of a chair is a design, a set of instructions, and a period of training and experience, partly held in human memory, partly offloaded to other storage. Animals create and use artifacts/tools also. How are the ideas of these artifacts stored by animals?
Smardzewski, Jerzy. “Antropotechnical Aspects of Furniture Design.” Drvna Industrija 60, no. 1 (2009): 73.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Bill
boosted
From my favorite passage of #Shakespeare - I heard Harriet Walter read it the day of Trump’s inaugural:
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, not that the elements
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But charter’d unto them? What would you think
To be us’d thus? This is the strangers’ case
And this your mountainish inhumanity.
#GodIsLove #Matthew25 #WilliamShakespeare #coloradosprings #clubq
Bill
boosted
What happened in #ColoradoSprings at #ClubQ is a feature....NOT a bug of the GOP strategy.
They flooded the streets with guns.
Then they radicalize their cult followers.
Then they demonize minorities, women, LGBTQ+ community, especially trans kids/families & drag queens, teachers, POC, immigrants, liberals, Democrats, school boards, election workers...you name it...any and all political enemies.
Pizzagate worked. Now they have expanded.
What happened last night is a feature of their strategy...not a bug.
We need to change our strategy/rhetoric accordingly.
They aren't just "at fault" tangentially. Warning them is a waste of time.
They are inciting the violence!
They carefully cultivated it!
Bill
boosted
Violence
#ColoradoSprings: HUGE #evangelical population, HUGE #military population, LONG history of #violence against #queer people, #abortion providers, etc. Stop saying it’s “senseless.” It’s a function of a particular place and kinds of people and easy access to instruments of mass murder.
#Twitter
#TwitterMigration
#twitterdown
#twitterexodus
#twitterrefugees
A recent Salon article lists 5 potential problems during a mass migration from Twitter to Mastodon:
Despite the silly headline (we would hope it doesn't become a new Twitter) would anyone be interested in commenting on any or all of these 5?
" 1. ... finding a server to join on Mastodon can be hard, especially when a flood of people trying to find servers leads to the creation of waitlists, and the rules and values of the people running a server aren't always easy to find.
2. ... there are significant financial and technical challenges with maintaining servers that grow with the number of members and their activity. After the honeymoon is over, Mastodon users should be prepared for membership fees, NPR-style fundraising campaigns or podcast-style promotional ads to cover server hosting costs that can go into the hundreds of dollars per month per server.
3. ... despite calls for newspapers, universities and governments to host their own servers, there are complicated legal and professional questions that could severely limit public institutions' abilities to moderate their "dorms" effectively. Professional societies with their own methods of verification and established codes of conduct and ethics may be better equipped to host and moderate Mastodon servers than other types of institutions.
4. ... the current "nuclear option" of servers entirely cutting ties with other servers leaves little room for repairing relations and reengagement. Once the tie between two servers is severed, it would be difficult to renew it. This situation could drive destabilizing user migrations and reinforce polarizing echo chambers.
5. ... there are tensions between longtime Mastodon users and newcomers around content warnings, hashtags, post visibility, accessibility and tone that are different from what was popular on Twitter."
#originoflife #informationtheory #ComplexSystems #CollectiveBehavior #evolutionarydynamics #biogels #informationtheory #philosophy #philosophyofscience #philosophyofmaths
#qotojournal
Things made by humans are called artifacts. Artifacts can be generalized to anything made by a biological population. An ants nest or a beehive or a termite mound is an artifact made by populations of ant, bee or termite colonies. The space of artifacts is part of what Dawkins called the extended phenotype or Lewontin saw as the various feedback loops of adaptation between the environment and a biological population.
The term tool has many different definitions but all tools are artifacts. A chair by most definitions is not a tool but it is definitely an artifact and part of the human extended phenotype. Only humans are known to make tools to make tools.
Chairs have a history, purpose (to sit on,) and a life span. Chairs are replicated (built) and then selected (bought.)
What is the information content of a chair?
Bill
boosted
I capitalize on this perfect summary from @ricard_sole to spend a few words about the paper, which has been funny and difficult to write, at the same time.
A short trip through emergence follows.
Paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2020.0410
1/ https://twitter.com/ricard_sole/status/1528746220205789186
#ComplexSystems #Emergence #ComplexNetworks #SelfOrganization #CollectiveBehavior #StatisticalPhysics
#originoflife #informationtheory #ComplexSystems #CollectiveBehavior #evolutionarydynamics #biogels #informationtheory #philosophy #philosophyofscience #philosophyofmaths
Do selfish designs compete to see what chairs get replicated?
#originoflife #informationtheory #ComplexSystems #CollectiveBehavior #evolutionarydynamics #biogels #informationtheory #philosophy #philosophyofscience #philosophyofmaths
A chair is something made by humans (or their machines) that humans sit on.
Chairs seem to have started out as ways for elites to rise above their lesser, as a signifier of hierarchy.
https://chairinstitute.com/history-of-the-chair/
Is a chair an artifact or a tool? Is there a difference?
- Science Blog
- https://wjbeaver.wixsite.com/mysite
Just another blind guy thinking about the elephant
Joined Nov 2022
