quote:

We’ve also pointed out the difference between science maps and knowledge maps. The maps presented here are not knowledge maps. There is no attempt to answer basic questions of ontology, or to make sure there is a direct and unambiguous correspondence between the phenomena (science) and the classification system. Rather, we address a cartographic question—how one might partition science into a small number of like-sized groups and which groups are adjacent. The fact that these adjacency relationships have not changed dramatically since 1939 is quite remarkable.

We would also like to point out that while this study has produced a consensus map of science, it is not a convergent map of science. There is a substantial difference between
the two.

Eripsa posted:

Network theory isn't just graph theory; it is more like category theory. Category theory is also a branch of mathematics, but it is used to unify mathematics and appears regularly in discussions in the foundations of mathematics.

quote:

I take Baez's work on network theory to show how category theory unifies not just mathematics but all the special sciences.

Eripsa posted:

Did you even read the paper? http://sci.slis.indiana.edu/klavans_2009_JASIST_60_455.pdf

edit: I mean, obviously you didn't read the paper.

edit 2: VVV you didn't either. The circle of science is a consensus map, not the results of any particular framing.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

For the gazillionth time, nobody is convinced by an argument that hinges on us a. reading some paper on mises.organswersingenesis.orgarXiv or whatnot, and then b. coming to the same conclusions. Your argument needs to be convincing at least on a superficial level before you can expect people to bother reading any further.

Cefte posted:

Possibly the best response I could have gotten from you for that question.

Do you think that the pruning performed on the 20 source maps had any effect on the consensus map? Are you advancing the position that a choice of 'at least half' for consensus edges was not an arbitrary choice by the designers? Could you explain, more explicitly, why you attempted to dismiss the idea of sensitivity to pruning when the abstract of the paper so explicitly highlights it?

Could you answer the questions I asked?

Doctor Spaceman posted:

I skimmed over that paper and like a lot of the stuff he cites it seemed perfectly reasonable, just not necessarily relevant to the grandiose statements being made.

quote:

I don't think it matters so much how you measure the thing; any form of measurement with sufficient feedback will give us some measure of control. The question isn't about which is the "true" value, the question is about which kind of controls do we want.

Eripsa posted:

Yeah no grandoise statements being made here.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.0340

Eripsa posted:

Yeah no grandoise statements being made here.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.0340

Obdicut posted:

Measurement, one of the absolutely most fundamental questions/problems/aspects, whatever you want to call it, just doesn't matter that much. Why? Because any form of measurement with 'sufficient feedback' (argle-bargle unexplained term with hand-wavey lovely subjectiveness in it) will give us 'some measure' (more hand-wave ridiculousness) control (another undefined term).

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Holy poo poo highly abstract maths can be a generalisation of slightly less abstract maths

The grandiose bit is when you take that and try to apply it outside of fields that are already standing firmly on a foundation of abstract algebra.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

As I said before, there is a fundamental thing lacking in all of these. In computing that's I/O, timing, etc; in Physics it's:


Measurement is connection to reality. Reality is boring and full of these icky people with opinions, and failures of everything he tries to do. Eww. Better stick to the parts that do not interface with reality too much. Safer that way.

Eripsa posted:

The only area I've claimed it applies outside of discussions from Baez and Bechtel is to social networking. Baez applies it specifically to economics (and a ton of other domains) here: http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/network-theory-part-29/

John Baez posted:

I’m suspicious of any attempt to make economics seem like physics. Unlike elementary particles or rocks, people don’t seem to be very well modelled by simple differential equations. However, some economists have used the above analogy to model economic systems. And I can’t help but find that interesting—even if intellectually dubious when taken too seriously.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Yeah, he does

Eripsa posted:

No one has provided any other interpretation of Baez's "network theory" in this thread.

Eripsa posted:

If Baez isn't doing what I think he's doing, then what the hell is he doing?

Eripsa posted:

So I'm suggesting we make rank and order explicit and give everyone DBZ goggles so they can tell everyone's power level. But not just as an absolute value: I'm suggesting that "power level" is a community-relative thing, and that estimations of power level must be indexed to community and scale for it to have the proper organizing consequences. Okay, so let's say we build such a thing, and now everyone uses them to organize.

fade5 posted:

Oh come on you know there's only one proper response to that:


No wait, there is another one:


I'm going to be (slightly) serious and note that you're literally saying "my idea is to take a completely made up an object from an anime series, create it, and use it in the real world".

How do you plan to do this, where will you get the money/time/manpower to do so, why would you want to do so, how do know it's even possible to make the DBZ scouter real (and no, Google Glass does not count as a scouter, no matter how much you want it to) and finally, are you aware of just how loving dumb "give everyone DBZ goggles so they can tell everyone's power level" sounds?

Eripsa posted:

Eripsa posted:

And we can also treat that consensus structure as itself an object of inquiry. In what sense is that a good consensus? Should we act to move or improve where the center lies? If I were making a claim to objectivity these questions would be settled in advance, but as Obdicut rightly points out these things change over time; the consensus of science today is not where it was 200 years ago, and is not where it will be 200 years from now. And we are not powerless in the passage of this time; ee can use our models of how it has changed over that time to anticipate and direct its trajectory forward. Which, again, is the whole point of network theory. Making these networks explicit not only explains how they work but also presents opportunities to control their behavior and direct them towards whatever ends we might have.

Cefte posted:

Are you holding back a network theory central limit theorem? Because in terms of academic contribution to the world, I'm pretty sure that would dwarf any social network you can imagine, let alone design.

Who What Now posted:

^^^^^^^^^^
"This beatdown is a circular network!"

loving that was beautiful.
_________________
Does anyone else remember near the end of the Strangecoin thread when Eripsa tried to write fiction? And he wrote a short "story" about some kids sneaking into their mom's room to use her Scouter and when they put it on their friend had a spirit dragon in his aura because of his karate class?

Eripsa's was dead serious about it too. That's how he wants the world to operate.

quote:

Although it was literally over in a flash, those 500ms were enough time for Jack and Matt to begin issuing a behavioral response: averting their eyes and the beginnings of a laugh. Brian also issued a behavioral response in his amygdala, experiencing a heightened sense of anxiety, making his eyes grow wide and his palms start to sweat.

Cefte posted:

This rather long post doesn't address two fundamental underlying issues.

The first is why when the issue of pruning of network graphs was raised, you tried to dismiss it by tell me I hadn't read the paper, then when I quoted the abstract explicitly describing the pruning involved, you suddenly decided that pruning was very interesting and a good question, but one you'd previously considered.

The contrast between the two posts is really jarring.

The reason I asked you if you'd actually produced a network diagram yourself is because once you try, it becomes incredibly obvious that the network you get can be massaged to fit almost any structure you want, by arbitrary data selection and pruning. It's a cliche in the branch of biological sciences that I work that network diagrams are designed to obscure the absence of expertise in multivariate statistics. That's a preconception that's eerily prescient, given your explicit preference for network diagrams in place of scary math.

You spent an awful lot of words to say not very much - I'm selecting pretty much at random from what you posted:

One possibility I take from reading this is that you've derived some sort of central limit theorem for network analysis, so you think that sticking together enough arbitrary networks you'll approach some sort of normal distribution that will approach a mean network singularity to inform us of... something. I'm not in any way a network expert, but that's the sort of thing that I think would fit really well in an actual paper, because it would be a proof, not a narrative, and a really interesting one, given my very limited understanding of modern statistics.

The other option is that you're either missing or sidestepping the point. I'm not arguing that the consensus network in that paper is five percent off, or that it should somehow be eternal and unchanging (that proposition, that you seem to be attributing to me, is so facile as to be an obvious distraction). I'm pointing out that unlike means, the production of network diagrams is at a fundamental level arbitrary and subjective and - as the paper you cited explicitly states - small variations in the arbitrary choices made by the designer produce large changes in the resulting end-product. These aren't properties that are conducive to any sort of quantitative understanding - you need to generate n networks for every dichotomized point along every arbitrary variable induced.

There will come a point where people start to think wistfully of bar charts.

Are you holding back a network theory central limit theorem? Because in terms of academic contribution to the world, I'm pretty sure that would dwarf any social network you can imagine, let alone design.

Who What Now posted:

Christ that was even worse than I remembered. He even describes the goggles as being incredibly uncomfortable.

Caros posted:

PRIVATE/MINOR
NO TRADES AVAILABLE

quote:

"Move it, scrub, we're using the computer."

"What? No you're not, Mom said I can play on it until she comes back from work."

"Mom's not here dumbass." Matt pushed Brian off his chair and into the floor, and then pulled the chair out and gestured with a flourish. "Your table awaits, sir."

Jack jumped into the chair, dug around in his pockets for a small thumb drive, and pushed it into the computer, which made a satisfying THONK-THONK sound in response.

quote:

"What's that?" Brian asked, picking himself off the floor.

"It's a botnet," Jack replied with a grin.

"Jack's a hacker," Matt told Brian matter-of-factly.

"You better not break the computer or I'm telling Mom."

"We're not going to break the computer you dweeb. We're going to make you rich." Jack clicked around for a bit and was soon staring at a command line. "What's his account number?"

quote:

Matt pulled a wad of paper from his pocket: account statements from last season's audits, recently procured from his parent's office down the hall. Matt read a long string of letters and numbers off the paper, which Jack entered into the computer. After three tries and several more protests from Matt, Jack finally got the program running. On the screen, his blinking cursor had been replaced by a short list of labels followed by a set of numbers, some of which were static and others of which were changing:

quote:

"What is that?" Matt asked again.

"He said its a botnet, dumbass. It's like stealing."

"It isn't like stealing," Jack quickly replied. "It's just whipping. It goes away in like half a second."

"What goes away?"

"All the money we're making for you, kid."

"What do you mean, money?"

quote:

"Money, Brian. Strange. Don't you know anything? See, I told you my brother was a dweeb."

"You know what Strangecoin is, don't you Brian?" Jack asked earnestly, happy for the chance to show off his knowledge to another rapt audience.

"You mean the viewers?"

"Yeah, that's what the viewers are for. poo poo, we need those to watch it happen." Jack swiveled towards Matt. "Do you have any lying around?"

"Sure we do, they're in the office," Matt said, and ran off down the hall.

"So you know how the viewers lets you see how people glow? All the colors and shapes?"

quote:

"Yeah, my mom lets me look through ours all the time. She says it's like a game that grown ups play, but it seems boring to me. It's like watching the weather channel. Besides, me and all my friends glow white in the viewers because we're not old enough. Matt too. So I don't see any point."

Matt returned with three small black headsets that looked like high end swimming goggles, with elastic straps and completely black lenses with many sharp edges. "Put them on anyway, dumbass." The boys all donned the headsets, and a low hum filled the room as the viewers turned on and the images came into focus. After a few seconds warming up, the boys were greeted with a more or less identical perspective on the room to the one they enjoyed unmediated just moments earlier.

But there were differences that made their perspective unmistakably distinct. For one thing, the edges of the visual field seemed to curve away like a fisheye lens. Everything had the almost uncomfortably crisp color of HD video, the sort of color that is absent from the grimey dullness of the real world on all but a few days in spring. When the viewer first starts up and the image loads, a flurry of white outlines trace out the edges of each object in the visual field, indicating that the set's native object recognition has successfully identified the object and cross-referenced its various functions. There is a slight greying of objects whose specific identities were not known exactly, like the few books on the shelf in the background whose spines are too thin and distant for the onboard cameras to discern-- the viewer is pretty sure it's a book, but which book it can't yet tell, and will have to wait for the opportunity for a closer look. As the viewer's perspective on the world adjusts there are occasional flashes of white outline, as if the viewer is cheering at another successfully recognized object. The results of these miniature celebrations are tiny digital artifacts that sometimes surround objects between image refreshes, just barely perceptible evidence of the computer algorithms at work in the construction of the image.

quote:

The most salient feature of the viewers is the way it presents other humans who happen to be standing in the visual field. Through the viewer, all three boys were replaced by avatars of their exact shapes and proportions, but skinned with an animated texture that looked like the glowing surface of a writhing white hot star. The avatars has edges that indicated clothing but did not otherwise appear to be clothed or to have any specific anatomical features-- except for facial features, configured to closely resemble the person being viewed and move as the person talked and looked around. So these avatars looked like the people you expect to see, and you have no trouble identifying people by their avatar. Even still, a viewer of this scene would appear as if three glowing white ghost children were standing around a computer desk. If viewing weren't such a mundane experience it would have been a shocking thing to witness.

quote:

Underneath both Matt and Brian's avatar was a warning label in large red letters:

PRIVATE/MINOR
NO TRADES AVAILABLE

But underneath Jack's avatar was a yellow label reading:

PROBATIONARY
SOME TRADES AVAILABLE

quote:

Neither Matt nor Brian knew what that meant, and were embarassed to ask. But before they could Jack interrupted:

"It's almost time! Look! Look!" Jack looked back and forth from the timer to Brian. The timer hit 0, and the computer issued a beep. 20ms after the beep, exactly the round trip lag between Jack's botnet and Brian's account, Brian's avatar suddenly grew several orders of magnitude in brightness and intensity: still white, but now blindingly so. For almost exactly 500ms, or the average response time for the network to identify and revert whipping attacks, Brian's avatar continued to glow at this new intensity, and then returned to its previous rate nearly identical with the other boys. Although it was literally over in a flash, those 500ms were enough time for Jack and Matt to begin issuing a behavioral response: averting their eyes and the beginnings of a laugh. Brian also issued a behavioral response in his amygdala, experiencing a heightened sense of anxiety, making his eyes grow wide and his palms start to sweat.

quote:

And then it was over. The two older boys burst out laughing, while Brian continued to look down at his glowing body in nervous fear. "What did you guys do? What just happened?"

Jack looked at the screen between howls. "Well, Brian, for almost half a second the world thought you were making 4000 bucks a second. For just a moment you were the richest person in the world."

"That was stupid." Brian said.

"That was awesome." Matt said. "How did you do that?"

quote:

"I used a botnet. I set up a bunch of fake accounts that keep trading coin among themselves in a circle to ramp up their coin velocity. You can make as much money as you want in a botnet like this, just by trading around coins. You have to do it slowly and randomly so the computer believes its real for long enough to do something with it. What's why they call it whipping, because it looks like you can keep making more coin just by stirring the network, but you're really just whipping in air and not adding any substance. It's not real money because there's no real people to actually trade anything. And its not stealing because you aren't taking anything from anyone. We're just playing with bots, it's no big deal. After a few minutes of whipping I told it to transfer to your account, and when it did it made you glow really bright in the viewer. But then the network managers caught it and reverted the transfer and shut the botnet down and everything returned to normal. I can start up another one real quick if you want to see it again. You can do it a few times with minor accounts before anyone gets suspicious."

quote:

"How did they know it wasn't real?"

"Something about how the pattern of activity in the botnet doesn't fit the expected patterns of natural organization. I don't know all the details. I just know this script was released on the 2600 forums this morning and its supposed to be the only one that can still get past the Strangecoin network defenses, at least for half a second. The website is filled with people trying to use it to scam people, but as far as I can tell the only thing you can do with it is flash someone's viewer avatar like we did to Brian. It goes away too fast to do anything useful or really convince anyone you have more money than you do. I saw one guy with a set-up that created a bunch of botnets so that when one shut down the next started up. He kept flashing for almost 2 full seconds until the network shut down his account for suspicious activity. But even that didn't really work because it flickered. A real aura doesn't flicker."

quote:

"So big deal. So you flashed me, I don't see what's so funny about it. My mom's avatar is way cooler than that, it has this big black snake on the back because she trains at Cobra Kai." Brian reached up to pull off his headset, but Jake stopped him.

"You want to see something really awesome? I learned how to jailbreak my account and start my probationary period early. So I'm already trading real coins on the network. Check this out," Jake said. He entered a new number at the prompt to start another timer, this one shorter than before, and then turned around to present the left shoulder of his avatar to the other boys.

quote:

Although most of Jake's avatar was a writhing, milky white almost as pure as theirs, on Jake's left shoulder sat a dark green smudge that looked rather like someone stepped in the poo poo of a sick dog. Jake displayed the mark proudly to the others. "That's the 2600 official green avatar. I've gotten enough upvotes on the forum that they just gave me this. Watch."

The timer hit zero and the computer beeped again. Jakes avatar just barely perceptibly flashed for 500ms and then dimmed again. But smudge on Jake's left shoulder swirled and appeared to grow out from his body, coming to take on the shape and dimensions of a small yellow capacitor protruding from a green silicon board. After a few seconds the image sank back into the white background of his avatar skin, and the capacitor and board returned to the proportions of smudged dogshit.

"If I keep writing for the hacker forums, I'll eventually get a whole circuit board on my back."

"That's so cool."

"A black cobra is way cooler than a computer," Brian said, and ripped his headset off.

quote:

"Harry, can I have a word with you in my office?"

"Sure. Is everything okay, Lisa?"

"Well to be honest no, Harry, things aren't okay. You've been coupled with our organization for over three years, but I think your relationship with this company has run its course. I'm afraid I'll be terminating this transaction, effective immediately. I'm letting you go, Harry."

"I... I don't understand. What did I do wrong?"

"You're drawing pictures of naked children, Harry."

"I'm driving traffic to the site, Lisa. Isn't that what you hired me to do?"

"We hired you to illustrate an interactive website on fire safety for children ages four to seven. And until about two months ago you were doing just fine. But then there was that meeting in February where you went on about how the heat from the fires would make the kids look uncomfortable if they were fully clothed. And then the theme of your drawings started following a clear pattern: Fire Safety in the Pool, Fire Safety in the Shower, Fire Safety in the Closet with your Uncle. I mean, these don't even make sense. But your most recent series, Fire Safety and Cock Rings... it just goes too far."

"15 million visits this week already, Lisa. And it's Wednesday."

"It's wrong, Harry."

"I can't believe this. You said I've been here three years, but you aren't counting the three years before that when I was struggling out of college and this place noticed me and started endorsing my work around the web. It was that early exposure that helped me to develop my craft into the polished work I'm producing for you today. Those endorsements let me prove that I could attract an audience with my illustrations, and that's precisely why you eventually offered me the coupled position I have now."

"Harry, your 'polished work' is totally inappropriate. I mean, look at this one. Peeing on things is not an example of fire safety!"

"I... seriously? You don't like it? Not even Flamey?"

"Flamey the anthropomorphic flame? The one that tells kids to pee on him and he'll stop being scary? No, it's disturbing to the point that I've reported you to the authorities for investigation."

"Wow. Okay. But what about the traffic? 15 million hits is nothing to snark at."

"Yeah, but 90% of those are sham accounts with no connections at all, or botnets whose activity will all get reverted in the next system audit. It's worthless traffic. Our primary audience are children. Which means families. And that's network gold."

"1.5 million hits is nothing to snark at."

"Well... true. And some of those hits are surprisingly well-connected. But our business is in providing safety information to children. We're not pornographers. Your recent illustrations have attracted the kind of attention that is hurting our reputation among our target audience. We're receiving far more coins than we were anticipating, but everyone will see in the audit that it's coming from dirty sources. Spending it would mean spreading that dirty money around our friends at the library and in the elementary schools and fire stations and other organizations we've coupled with. Exploiting the attention of pedophile networks risks losing our transactions with our primary coupling partners. In the interest of preserving those relations, we're starting a process of inhibition to return most of the coins we acquired over the last few months to TUA. Also, you're fired."

"Well, poo poo. Fired. I don't know what I'm going to do; two-thirds of my income and about a quarter of my expenses are the result of my coupling with this business. Losing this job throws my whole financial situation out of whack."

"I'm sorry Harry. I wish there was something more I could do."

"If the rest of my network remains stable I have about a month before my account bottoms out, so hopefully I can put something together with the network I have left. Until then, I've recently received a lot of, well not job offers exactly but requests for illustration work. Hopefully freelancing will hold me over until something better comes along for me to couple to. Maybe I can get a few supporters so that each illustration I sell earns me more income"

"Good luck out there. The pedophile networks are dangerous and aren't most stable source of income."

"True, Lisa. Thankfully we live in the utopian future where enlightened democratic principles ensure that communities of shared interest can gather to trade illustrations of of naked children without living in fear of the tyrannical oppression of a majority who finds our aesthetic tastes offensive. I can trust that a thorough and lawful investigation by the authorities will conclude that I've not and have no plans to put any children in danger, and will therefore be exonerated of any accusations you've made."

"Either way, Harry, I have developed so much confidence in the smooth functioning of our leaderless, self-organized utopian future society that I didn't hesitate to report you to the authorities. If there was trouble I trust that they'd find it, and if not I trust that you'd be treated humanely and respectfully to continue pursuing your hobbies as you see fit. Although I personally find your interests reprehensible, the structure of our social organization allows me to sublimate that emotion into the formally straightforward and symbolically meaningful economic activity of decoupling our activity from yours. Completing the transaction expresses my repulsion well enough that I can continue to treat you civilly, without resorting to witch hunts or violence."

"You said it, Lis. And I can trust that the system will continue to support my transactions even after losing a major source of employment, because my economic situation is supported in multiple ways, and improving that situation is simply a matter of finding others who are interested in my work. Which for me isn't a problem because apparently there's a lot of interest in pictures of kids loving. If there wasn't and I don't find a job, TUA ensures that I can still trade for goods, although without a support network it will be difficult to trade anything of much value. But that's okay because we live in a post-scarcity world where food is freely available and I can easily print any material object I need, so even without employment of any sort I will want for nothing except to occupy my boredom. I leave you now to go shade in the testicles of a young boy, since I have customers waiting."

"Hail Satan."

"Hail Satan."

Caros posted:

One more for nostalgia.

I really wish I'd saved the copy of that gif that just gets larger and larger.

Kalman posted:

Wait, Eripsa wrote that? I assumed someone else did to mock him.

I feel justified in having called him a supporter of child pornographers.

quote:

Pedantic moral of the story using simple bullet points

- You couple to the people you want to succeed along with you. They share your fate; they're people you trust to perform well. They are your self-selected caste.
- You endorse someone to help them succeed by gaining exposure (opening doors that are otherwise unavailable).
- You support someone to amplify the successes you already perceive them to have.
- You inhibit to correct mistakes of various sorts that might arise.
- All the balancing acts are performed by TUA.
- Networks > coin
- The Randian-esque speeches at the end about our utopian future is meant as sarcastically. Pigs will always be scum. Death is certain.
- If you actually bite the "but they're illustrations!" troll bait you are a moron.

To address GulMadred explicitly, hopefully the above story suggests at least some answers to your questions. It's pretty thoroughly attention economic. The system is "objective" in the sense of trading coin, but "subjective" in the sense that the implication of network effects vary from person to person. Harry has reasons to be attracted to the attention of the pedophiles, and Lisa doesn't, and so even though its a large volume of attention they react to it differently. So even though everything is quantified and objective, the system is still subjective in the sense of the network analysis, which is what matters anyway. Also, the above story suggests something like regular audits to find the cheaters and assess the network structure. I've suggested this earlier, than Strangecoin world will have economic reports that are mostly about the organizational structure of the economy and not just the performance of its parts. So it's right to point out that Strangecoin specifies the structure of the network and provides some details of its behavior, but full analysis of the network would take some additional nontrivial work to make explicit.

I have another short dialog in mind for dealing with the potential issue of ring structures, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. <3

Kalman posted:

So we can keep kids from trading, but not known child pornography producers and consumers.

Eripsa's fiction shows where his priorities are.

(Also, I forget what Baez's crackpot scale awarded for relying on fiction but I think it was on the order of 50 points. I wonder what the bonus for having written the fiction in the first place should be.)

Caros posted:

Yeah, the fact that Eripsa envisioned a network that could block people based on age but couldn't stop the spread of child pornography is... well its just special.

Republican Vampire posted:

Well, to be fair, Eripsa did say earlier ITT that he doesn't have any interest in/understanding of fiction and that the only reason that he'd ever write fiction is to try and build a world/display his ideas in a hypothetical situation.

I'm pretty sure he's legitimately autistic.

Kalman posted:

(Also, I forget what Baez's crackpot scale awarded for relying on fiction but I think it was on the order of 50 points. I wonder what the bonus for having written the fiction in the first place should be.)

Republican Vampire posted:

I'm pretty sure he's legitimately autistic.