Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit on NDT philosophy

 FWIW, behavioral scientists are integrally involved in traffic engineering, from perception time to semaphore and pavement marking efficacy to car following theory.  And here again, the energy of digestion going on in the guts of such scientists engaged in an afternoon conference session bears little on what is being considered.

HI

I think that one of the things going on here is that Energy in the scheme of things in terms of emotive repsonses is not that Causal. Hence we avoid making much of an issue of it.

Where the energy balance is really important is that it is a constraint or inhibitor on some modes. For example mammals can not be in SEEK mode all the time becuase energy is a constraint. The actual energy invovled internally for the emotion is tiny. The energy that the emotion controls can be huge.

 Engineers who work with computer languages (sort of a side thing with me) talk about abstraction. This is a useful concept with all systems both large and small. We don't continue to talk about or show the lower level stuff, to do so is to confuse.

This sort of gives the reason why http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction_(computer_science)

I think that because you don't seem to abstract a whole lot, it is pretty hard for an outsider such as myself to find common ground. You have to believe that in practice that if there is one person in a crowd of 100 in the dog world that will go out of his way to make another outsider feel welcome it is me. I am a good litmis test. I am the sort of person that can throw the hardest of trad trainers and the flakiest of flaky posiitve trainers togehter and have them laiughing with each other.

Traffic is an intersting concept. There is some pretty zany maths there. Some commentators talk about chaos theory with traffic. There are many other "natural" systems that act like traffic. What seems to fit is a series of very simple rules that when added together make a complex pattern. An example is a flock of bees. If we use the pronciple of abstraction, the flock of bees goal is to move from a to b to feed itself. It is in it's best interest to use the least energy and to have the minmum of communication between indidvidual bees. That situation is not the emotion of each bee, it is the desired result of the emotion.

Now here is another independent thinker who does some really great stuff and some awful stuff 

http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-304?firstview=1  It is intersting reading his view and expansion of aparent order from randomness. In many places he is quite orthodox actually. His greatest achievement is probably the invention of Mathematica which i use (and many other people doing Maths in the workplace) everyday. The point of it all is that it speeds up and makes available a huge body of Maths to people who may struggle with some of the concpets. It is stll a pretty nerdy tool though. "Real" engineers  like burl generally pefer Matlab which is another tool.

The exciting thing in all of this is that for decades, engineers were precluded from most of these discussions about behaviour and systems. It truely seemed like what biology people ahd to say and what we had to say were on different levels. Our view is different , but if we are careful with langauge we have an awful lot to offer in this discussion. I find the new view of Emotions very intersting. The concpets are right down my alley. If i put on my control systems hat, some of what wolfram has to say and what Panksepp has to say have some very interesting corrolaries.

I  use simulated nerual networks daily in my work. They are dammed interesting and for something that appears so simple have hugey complex outcomes.

That makes no sense. The digestive system is interested in molecules for their what? their shapes? But of course not for their energy. 

2.         Waste products are not statements of resolution – whatever that means. They do however carry chemical profiles which can be interpreted.and obviously the information carried by them conferred some evolutionary advantage.. like knowing when a female is in eustrus

Does the NDT religion forbid people from using Google Scholar?

1.  Say we live in Bizarro world and indeed “All animal behavior is a function of attraction”, this does not mean that behavior is a function of energy, nor does the first statement require us to involve ‘the principles of movement.’  Not only does Behan start of with a questionable premise but there is no connecting thread between the starting premise and the derivations.

While I think Millan is full of it, his use of ‘energy’ does not mean that Behan is right. When Behan writes ‘by definition’ he really means ‘by MY convoluted definition.’ And just to be clear, an electrician does not work with energy, he works with wires and circuits.  When I call my dog from 500m, he comes and it is does not cause an increase in energy. The opposite is true. He has to spend a considerable amount of energy to get to me.

4) Practically speaking… ironically he ignores the first word.

corgidog

you are merely saying that he is wrong, but you haven't demonstrated it. if you read the wikipedia page and a few others around the net on margulis, seems to be in line w/ the point kbehan was making. explain the two quotes i posted? why do you avoid saying anything specific? if you are deeply familiar with her work, i presume you are also able to articulate the argument she makes as well. otherwise, it's assumed that you're just a poor googler.

The onus is on you or Behan to provide the evidence.  He is making the claim, the burden of proof lies on him.  I know him to be a liar because noone with a marginal familiarity of with genetics would ever claims that ALL mutations are deleterious since we've known for several decades that this is not so.Like Behan, our inabilityto produce evidence is becoming legendary.

poodleOwned

 I might also add that the ORN  (Olefactory Receptor Nuerons) system of a dog can be kept alive outside of a dog for up to 24 hours. It just keeps on keeping on...

Now since this is seperate too and is molecular based (right molecue or particle causes neural signal, system actually conditons the signal so it is recognised by the brain..

Where does that leave us energy wise?

Actually, I too brought this up in Behan's own forum by mentioning Cell Culture, No one new what I mean, but once they firgured it out, I was  insulted and then Banned by Behan for bringing it up.

. "Real" engineers  like burl generally pefer Matlab which is another

hey!! I use mathematica for their bioinformatics package.and Maple and MatLab because I grew up with them.... Though for the price Maxima rocks.

Kevin Behan

That makes no sense. The digestive system is interested in molecules for their what? their shapes? But of course not for their energy. 

The digestive system is NOT interested in molecules. That is a Pathetic Fallacy   But yes, the shape of a molecule is a strong determinant,, something the makers of artifical sweetners and pharmaceutical companies  know very well.It has to do with cell receptors and other scientific things that you avoid.

 Fortunately, you can do most civil engineering with basic calculus at most, but I sure had to look at some scary math in the more theoretically oriented graduate courses I took.

 Now that I've seen the video I can't help but see the second lecturer's imitation of the affective state of an animal enraged, fangs bared and claws extended, every time I read your posts. But a little behavioral/emotional suggestion, to increase the effect, it would prove helpful to use the term liar a little less often.

It was a real pleasure to watch these presentations. I can now better see how wide the gap between our two ways of looking at behavior and so the need to interface in a way that bridges the gap since many find the concept of energy unapproachable. Actually my basic impression after listening to Panskepp's review of the history of the field is a fundamental camaraderie in what they both are saying, I think we're both fighting the same battle. I can also better appreciate that one might think I'm on the other side and that I am reiterating a kind of mechanical view of the animal, or what Panskepp (I think) refers to as "radical behaviorism" since I have been challenging their interpretation that higher mental processes are necessary to moderate these basic affective states.So I will keep on pushing, or better yet pulling, in the necessary words, metaphors, scientific findings to better explain what I'm trying to say. 
These are the questions that I don't feel their model of affective states address. 1) What is the nature of information? 2) How exactly does the individual core state make it feel connected to external objects? 3) The phenomenon of variability between individuals and species that is not random but organized and which returns us to the nature of information question. 4) Interestingly when these affective systems are not satisfied, they wind down and the animal desists, yet the nature of the dog reveals a deeper process by which the resistance to getting to an object of attraction can become an even stronger force of attraction. In other words there is a self-charging system at play which is what compels bird dogs to hunt all day, police dogs to fight and overcome a criminal and yet all the while compliant to handler direction and even a minimal force doctrine, herding dogs that don't kill the prey, as well as at the other end of the spectrum the tendency of dogs for OCD. Another example is the tendency of a dog to drop a toy into hard to reach places and then struggle to retrieve it, and then repeating the process as soon as it has the toy back. This self-charging system is not explained by an affective system or "mnemic residue" (which isn't to deny the existence and importance of these). I call this deeper mechanism Drive and I believe that an energy model is needed to explain this self-charging phenomena that doesn't tire or even require once the imprint is strong enough, tangible reinforcement.
This more basic system renders a different definition of emotion not as a self-contained system that facilitates a rudimentary kind of communication that nevertheless needs to be restrained by higher order processes, but as a universal system that makes the individual feel viscerally connected to its surroundings and which is a primordial source of communication that facilitates transcending the barriers erected by instincts and higher order mental processes (that can abstract a sense of self as separate from other selves as for example in a TOM).   
What I'm saying is actually simpler than what the lecturers are saying and I believe their research sits on top of what I'm talking about and are not in contradiction except over the nature of emotion and the network being the selective pressure, not survival and reproductive mandates. (These are lesser filters.)  I'm saying that the physical memories of warmth, flow, falling, physical motion and resistance to movement, weightlessness, compression and release, are triggered in the present moment and then attributed in the animal mind to external objects of attraction (because of a deeper mechanism) and therefore make communication possible, sometimes paradoxically and comically, with completely inanimate objects which the dog has become emotionally attracted to. This deeper system synchronizes the affective states so that two individuals will experience affective states that complement each other. It also provides a better explanation for "herd contagion" so that the overall resonant state of the herd is synonymous with the zebras' sense of its own body.

Once reconciled in this complementary arrangement, this then services a larger agenda, i.e. creating a networked intelligence. We can see the archetypal memory of this whenever any two people meet, invariably they talk about the weather as a means of emotionally syncing up, "Boy it's hot, cold, rainy, beautiful, etc. isn't it?) What we're actually asking is "Do you feel what I feel" and in terms of the easiest things to share, the basic energy states, hot, cold, light, heavy, emotional shorthand for the emotional thermodynamics, degree of weightedness, expansiveness etc.
The big point of distinction I would draw with Panskepp is that higher mental processes are not what modify these affective states to enable the higher social virtues. (The cortex may be necessary to execute this state of reconciliation so it can elaborate on a cultural platform, but as individuals become more mentally complex, they invariably lose social plasticity, they don't increase in their range.)

Rather, in an energy model, rage-of-the-heart, (i.e. courage), the emotional capacity to hold off an instinct or thought in deference to the feeling of potential energy, i.e. the feeling of syncing up with another being, is the source of the high social virtues and I believe, is the essence of inspiration itself. When circumstances allow for two animals to regress to their deepest physical memories so that they recapitulate the physical memory of weightlessness, they will always get along because they perceive the other being as being their "self."

Kevin Behan

So I will keep on pushing, or better yet pulling, in the necessary words, metaphors, scientific findings to better explain what I'm trying to say.

The problem is that you don't have any evidence, and you cannot traverse that vast chasm into credibility without evidence. Also, Pankseep does not distort, corrupt or misrepresent the work of other in order to push his agenda, though he has been accused by Blumberg (U Iowa) and Solokoff (Indiana U)of using value laden language in his defense.

Rather than focusing on metaphors, put your effort to learning about the ideas you rail against because in nearly every case you've misrepresented the facts.

Kevin Behan

3) The phenomenon of variability between individuals and species that is not random but organized and which returns us to the nature of information question.

You should expand on this, and please cite examples and references.[ie. not stuff you make up]

Kevin Behan

4) Interestingly when these affective systems are not satisfied, they wind down and the animal desists, yet the nature of the dog reveals a deeper process by which the resistance to getting to an object of attraction can become an even stronger force of attraction.

 Since I mentioned Blumberg and Solokof, it should be noted that they took Panksepp to task for making such assumption of affect in rat separtion cries.  As they showed, at least in the case they studied, they crying is just the sound the rat pup makes out of physiological necessity

Hard Heads and Open Minds: A Reply to Panksepp (2003)

http://www.psychology.uiowa.edu/Faculty/Blumberg/Reprints/HardHeads.pdf

 they write

"Specifically, this hypothesis states that perturbations of the cardiovascular system that reduce the return of venous blood to the heart elicit a maneuver (i.e., the abdominal compression reaction, or ACR) that serves to enhance
venous return. This reflexive response in turn results in the production
of sound. The concordance between physiological cause and physiological consequence is the cornerstone of our contention that the vocalization is an acoustic by-product and not primarily an act of communication."

I was wondering whether in US engineering circles 

Burl

the energy of digestion going on in the guts of such scientists engaged in an afternoon conference session bears little on what is being considered.

TheMilkyWay

hey!! I use mathematica for their bioinformatics package.and Maple and MatLab because I grew up with them.... Though for the price Maxima rocks.

Quite seriously we can model simple neural networks with Marthematica and also I have been playing with some "simple" predictive work based on emotional systems.  I have always had this idea that it would be nice if people learnt to stuff up their dog on a computer before working on the real one....

Love to work some more on this but we seem to be bogged down in a discussion...

Randomness is a great thing, and it helps explain many so called "non random" behaviours in the human eye. 

I sometimes use the Linux version of Maxima and have to put up with Matlab. It is a tool and you use what you have.. 

So if you really want to get down and dirty you might try this package for working with expected canine behaviour

http://media.wolfram.com/documents/NeuralNetworksDocumentation.pdf

Unfortunately we operate at a level of abstraction beneath this... so we have to make up our own little routines!!!!