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Talib

Registered: 06/10/13
Posts: 195
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Apophenia, Paradox, & You 1
#18480822 - 06/27/13 06:12 PM (10 years, 7 months ago) |
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Something puzzles me occasionally.
Apophenia is "seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data."
Can data ever be random or meaningless?
This seems to be a paradox given that to define and characterize something as random or 'meaningless' - we must first apply a set of criteria as to what constitutes non-randomness and true meaning, and to then perceive the "random" data as lacking that quality. Thus, all the randomness & the Lewis Carrol gibberish has a unique pattern/phenotype/characteristic of appearing, well, random... this itself being a type of pattern.
Other than Brownian motion and some chaos math, what else in nature can be said to be truly random and meaningless? It all appears quite orderly, hence the entire presumptions of our sciences.
-------------------- A mind to make metaphor
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hTx
(:



Registered: 03/27/13
Posts: 5,724
Loc: Space-time
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Re: Apophenia, Paradox, & You [Re: Talib] 1
#18480888 - 06/27/13 06:26 PM (10 years, 7 months ago) |
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Apophenia seems to be founded in a materialistic nihilist philosophy which sought to disprove Carl Jungs theories on synchronicity.
-------------------- zen by age ten times six hundred lifetimes Light up the darkness.
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Talib

Registered: 06/10/13
Posts: 195
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Re: Apophenia, Paradox, & You [Re: hTx]
#18480915 - 06/27/13 06:33 PM (10 years, 7 months ago) |
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Interesting.
Also at the juxtaposition of this is Benoit Mandelbrot, the brilliant man who developed fractal mathematics.
He took the apparently "random" (aka, Brownian) behavior of nature, such as the rugged curves in mountains, cloud formations, shorelines, etc. and showed them to be orderly.
He turned what he called 'roughness' into beautiful patterns.
It just seems like "randomness" may be a fanciful, linguistic, ideological construct. What is random? I'm genuinely curious. In order to even say something is random, you must have a static, predefined definition in your head for what is "random" - this itself being a pattern.
-------------------- A mind to make metaphor
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teknix
πβπ
’ππ
π°π‘ πΌπ⨻



Registered: 09/16/08
Posts: 11,953
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Re: Apophenia, Paradox, & You [Re: Talib]
#18480927 - 06/27/13 06:34 PM (10 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Talib said: Something puzzles me occasionally.
Apophenia is "seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data."
Can data ever be random or meaningless?
This seems to be a paradox given that to define and characterize something as random or 'meaningless' - we must first apply a set of criteria as to what constitutes non-randomness and true meaning, and to then perceive the "random" data as lacking that quality. Thus, all the randomness & the Lewis Carrol gibberish has a unique pattern/phenotype/characteristic of appearing, well, random... this itself being a type of pattern.
Other than Brownian motion and some chaos math, what else in nature can be said to be truly random and meaningless? It all appears quite orderly, hence the entire presumptions of our sciences.

There are multiple possibilities and hard to necessarily say either way, A calico cat is a good example if you want to research about it's genes and gametes, and the random interaction of X chromosomes . . .
This is a statistical method I know of used to determine randomness:
Quote:
The Poisson distribution applies when: (1) the event is something that can be counted in whole numbers; (2) occurrences are independent, so that one occurrence neither diminishes nor increases the chance of another; (3) the average frequency of occurrence for the time period in question is known; and (4) it is possible to count how many events have occurred, such as the number of times a firefly lights up in my garden in a given 5 seconds, some evening, but meaningless to ask how many such events have not occurred. This last point sums up the contrast with the Binomial situation, where the probability of each of two mutually exclusive events (p and q) is known. The Poisson Distribution, so to speak, is the Binomial Distribution Without Q. In those circumstances, and they are surprisingly common, the Poisson Distribution gives the expected frequency profile for events. It may be used in reverse, to test whether a given data set was generated by a random process. If the data fit the Poisson Expectation closely, then there is no strong reason to believe that something other than random occurrence is at work. On the other hand, if the data are lumpy, we look for what might be causing the lump. http://www.umass.edu/wsp/statistics/lessons/poisson/
If you think it's flawed then I'd like to know on what grounds.
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Talib

Registered: 06/10/13
Posts: 195
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Re: Apophenia, Paradox, & You [Re: Talib]
#18480950 - 06/27/13 06:39 PM (10 years, 7 months ago) |
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In the true style of synchronicity, before I even read your post, htx, about synchronicity I just experienced one:
I was reading about Mandelbrot and fractals, and realized the book I am reading now by Nassim Taleb, is just a recapitulation of Mandelbrot, particularly Taleb's ideas about anti-fragility, adjacent possibles, and black swans.
Soon after I thought this, I read on the same page:
"Lebanese author and professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb states that Mandelbrot "had perhaps more cumulative influence than any other single scientist in history, with the only close second, Isaac Newton." Taleb adds, "He was the only teacher I ever had, the only person for whom I have had intellectual respect. But there was something else that made him magnetic: he was a raconteur with a profound sense of historical context...."
Of course, then I return to this thread to see your post about synchronicity.
-------------------- A mind to make metaphor
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Talib

Registered: 06/10/13
Posts: 195
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Re: Apophenia, Paradox, & You [Re: teknix]
#18480970 - 06/27/13 06:43 PM (10 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
teknix said: The Poisson distribution:
If you think it's flawed then I'd like to know on what grounds.
I don't know enough about statistics to make any real judgment or criticism of this.
-------------------- A mind to make metaphor
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Talib

Registered: 06/10/13
Posts: 195
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Re: Apophenia, Paradox, & You [Re: Talib]
#18481007 - 06/27/13 06:50 PM (10 years, 7 months ago) |
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Ah ha. I see now.
My critique is this: it's a probabilistic distribution calculator. Meaning, it functions by measuring events which preceded and looking for patterns. This seems to express the degree to which something is consistent (or behaves around an average), rather than expressing how random something is. Just because it doesn't display a degree of predictability of occurrence, doesn't make it random... merely unknown or immeasurable. Similarly, coastlines, clouds, and mountains seemed random until Mandelbrot came along.
This helped me understand.
From Investopedia (link):
Definition of 'Poisson Distribution' A statistical distribution showing the frequency probability of specific events when the average probability of a single occurrence is known. The Poisson distribution is a discrete function.
Investopedia explains 'Poisson Distribution' For example, if the average number of people that rent movies on a friday night at a single video store location is 400, a Poisson distribution can answer such questions as, "What is the probability that more than 600 people will rent movies?" Therefore, application of the Poisson distribution enables managers to introduce optimal scheduling systems. One of the most famous historical practical uses of the Poisson distribution was estimating the annual number of Prussian cavalry soldiers killed due to horse-kicks. Other modern examples include estimating the number of car crashes in a city of a given size; in physiology, this distribution is often used to calculate the probabilistic frequencies of different types of neurotransmitter secretions.
-------------------- A mind to make metaphor
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