Friday, December 10, 2021

Richard Feynman, Alan Lightman, Owen Gingerich


[framework]

     “… you have to be in some framework that you allow something to be true. …”;──Richard Feynman, http://lesswrong.com/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_why_questions/

   “Things, that by virtue of their explanation, appear to ‘belong’ to something else (as a ‘necessary’ conceptual framework) can - in this way - successfully disappear from our view.”; until a new framework is put together and represented, the information are not even perceived to be facts. They are invisible.*3M8   


     Alan Lightman and Owen Gingerich, 1991 Science 
     article, “When Do Anomalies Begin?” wrote:    
      “certain scientific anomalies are recognized 
       only after they are given compelling explanations 
       within a new conceptual framework. Before 
       this recognition, the peculiar facts 
       are taken as givens or are ignored in the 
       old framework.” 
     In other words, the real anormalies ... are 
     at first not even perceived as anomalies. 
     They are invisible.  
            ── Kevin Kelly, 1994,  
               from the book, Out of Control, 
               p.381, filename: ooc-mf.pdf       


   “Things, that by virtue of their chance position, appear to ‘belong’ to something else (as a ‘necessary’ component) can - in this way - successfully disappear from our view, even though they are lying completely exposed.”, p.xxx, “Laws of seeing” by Wolfgang Metzger, 1936, translated into English, by Spillmann, Lehar, Stromeyer, and Wertheimer, published by MIT Press (October, 2006). 
   ____________________________________
*3M8
     •   Things - that naturally appear to ‘belong together’ with something else - can disappear from our view. 

     •   Things, that by virtue of their chance position, naturally appear to ‘belong together’ with something else can - in this way - successfully disappear from our view.  

   “Things, that by virtue of their chance position, appear to ‘belong’ to something else (as a ‘necessary’ component) can - in this way - successfully disappear from our view.” 

   “Things, that by virtue of their chance position, appear to ‘belong’ to something else (as a ‘necessary’ component) can - in this way - successfully disappear from our view, even though they are lying completely exposed.”, p.xxx, “Laws of seeing” by Wolfgang Metzger, 1936, translated into English, by Spillmann, Lehar, Stromeyer, and Wertheimer, published by MIT Press (October, 2006). 
   
   Original quote <verbatim>: “Things that by virtue of their chance position appear to ‘belong’ to something else as a ‘necessary’ component can in this way successfully disappear from our view, even though they are lying completely exposed.”, p.xxx, “Laws of seeing” by Wolfgang Metzger, 1936, translated into English, by Spillmann, Lehar, Stromeyer, and Wertheimer, published by MIT Press (October, 2006). 


Metzger's challenge: 

   “It is precisely that which naturally ‘belongs together’ that get organized together. And what belongs together is that which ‘fits’ together, that is, that which together results in a well-organized, unitary structure. Things that by virtue of their chance position appear  to ‘belong’ to something else as a ‘necessary’ component can in this way successfully disappear from our view, even though they are lying completely exposed. You can make a nice party game out of ‘openly hiding’ erasers, pencils and other things up to the size of a walking stick according to this law.”, 
    p.361, 2007 • volume 3 • no 1-2 • xxx-xxx, Advances in Cognitive Psychology,  Book Review, “Laws of seeing” by Wolfgang Metzger, 1936, translated into English, by Spillmann, Lehar, Stromeyer, and Wertheimer, published by MIT Press (October, 2006)., Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Adam Reeves, Dept. of Psychology, Northeastern University, 360 Huntingdon Ave., Boston MA 02115, USA., http://www.ac-psych.org  
   ____________________________________
Laws of Seeing
Wolfgang Metzger
Translated by Lothar Spillmann

http://www.lothar-spillmann.de/Lothar_Spillmann/Curriculum_Vitae_files/flyer.pdf

This classic work in vision science, written by a leading figure in Germany’s Gestalt movement in psychology and first published in 1936, addresses topics that remain of major interest to vision researchers today. Wolfgang Metzger’s main argument, drawn from Gestalt theory, is that the objects we perceive in visual experience are not the  objects themselves but perceptual effigies of those objects constructed by our brain according to natural rules. Gestalt concepts are currently being increasingly integrated into mainstream neuroscience by researchers proposing network processing beyond the classical receptive field. Metzger’s discussion of such topics as ambiguous figures, hidden forms, camouflage, shadows and depth, and three-dimensional representations in paintings will interest anyone working in the field of vision and perception, including psychologists, biologists, neurophysiologists, and researchers in computational vision — and artists, designers, and philosophers. Each chapter is accompanied by compelling visual demonstrations of the phenomena described; the book includes 194 illustrations, drawn from visual science, art, and everyday experience, that invite readers to verify Metzger’s observations for themselves. Today’s researchers may find themselves pondering the intriguing question of what effect Metzger’s theories might have had on vision research if Laws of Seeing and its treasure trove of perceptual

Wolfgang Metzger (1899-1979) was a central figure in the Gestalt movement within psychology in Germany. He was Director of the Psychological Institute at the University of Münster.
   ____________________________________

        ::  This TEXT  :: 

      “Things, that by virtue of their explanation, appear 
       to ‘belong’ to something else (as a ‘necessary’ conceptual 
       framework) can - in this way - successfully disappear 
       from our view.”; until a new framework is put together 
       and represented, the information are not even perceived to 
       be facts. They are invisible.*3M8   

        ::  shared its existence and ancestry with  ::  
         
Metzger's challenge: 

   “It is precisely that which naturally ‘belongs together’ that get organized together. And what belongs together is that which ‘fits’ together, that is, that which together results in a well-organized, unitary structure. Things that by virtue of their chance position appear  to ‘belong’ to something else as a ‘necessary’ component can in this way successfully disappear from our view, even though they are lying completely exposed. You can make a nice party game out of ‘openly hiding’ erasers, pencils and other things up to the size of a walking stick according to this law.”, 
    p.361, 2007 • volume 3 • no 1-2 • xxx-xxx, Advances in Cognitive Psychology,  Book Review, “Laws of seeing” by Wolfgang Metzger, 1936, translated into English, by Spillmann, Lehar, Stromeyer, and Wertheimer, published by MIT Press (October, 2006)., Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Adam Reeves, Dept. of Psychology, Northeastern University, 360 Huntingdon Ave., Boston MA 02115, USA., http://www.ac-psych.org  

        ::  and  :: 

     Alan Lightman and Owen Gingerich, 1991 Science 
     article, “When Do Anomalies Begin?” wrote:    
      “certain scientific anomalies are recognized 
       only after they are given compelling explanations 
       within a new conceptual framework. Before 
       this recognition, the peculiar facts 
       are taken as givens or are ignored in the 
       old framework.” 
     In other words, the real anormalies ... are 
     at first not even perceived as anomalies. 
     They are invisible.  
            ── Kevin Kelly, 1994,  
               from the book, Out of Control, 
               p.381, filename: ooc-mf.pdf       

        If explanation can cause things to disappear, then a different explanation can cause things to re-appear.  Using a well crafted explanation, we can create an effect in the mind to make the invisible, visible.  
        “...; sometimes, we must believe before we can see.”, p.9, Charles Perrow, Normal accidents : living with high-risk technologies, 1999.     

p.9
In complex industrial, space, and military systems, the normal accident generally (not always) means that the interactions are not only unexpected, but are  incomprehensible  for some critical period of time. In part this is because in these human-machine systems the interactions literally cannot be seen.  In part it is because, even if they are seen, they are not believed.  As we shall find out and as Robert Jervis and Karl Weick have noted,3 seeing is not necessarily believing; sometimes, we must believe before we can see. 
   3. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton university press, 1976); and Karl Wieck, “Educational Organizations as Loosely Coupled Systems”, Administrative Science Quarterly 21:1 (March, 1976): 1-19. 
   ____________________________________
      hidden assumption(s) 


    “As was highlighted before, an application makes 
          assumptions (sometimes hidden assumptions) 
      about the environment and we should not expect 
         the application to work in environments for 
              which its assumptions are not valid.”;
                          ── Eliyahu Goldratt, p.18, 
                Standing on the shoulders of Giants:
 Production concepts versus production applications: 
               The Hitachi Tool Engineering Example,
                            By Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt;
  filename: Standing-on-the-Shoulders-of-Giants.pdf
               copyright © Eliyahu M. Goldratt 2006  


   “As was highlighted before, [visual center] makes 
          assumptions (sometimes hidden assumptions) 
      about the environment and we should not expect 
     the [visual center] to work in environments for 
              which its assumptions are not valid.”;

We should not expect the visual center to work in a new environment or a new situation that has not been evolutionary experienced before.  For example, as far as we know, humans are unable to visually see below the infrared spectrum and beyond the ultraviolet.  The sensory organ that is used for the detection of infrared heat is our skin.  

We should not expect the [sensory organs, the accompanying nervous system, and the neurological primate brain] to work in a new environment or a new situation that has not been evolutionary experienced before.  For example, as far as we know, humans are animals, mammals, that have evolved over millions and millions of years in an environment, a life supporting system, on Earth.  Sailors and ship builders intuitively know this.  Submariners and underwater ships builders know this even more.  This is also the reason why space simulation and training is done underwater.  Most surface of Earth is covered in water, not in land.  However, humans live and is dependent on land, its geographical ecosystem, the water, and the sea.  
   ____________________________________
Michael Lewis, The undoing project, 2017                                    [ ] 

p.153
Avishai Margalit
“I'm waiting in this corridor,” said Margalit. “And Amos comes to me, agitated, really. He started by dragging me into a room. He said, You won't believe what happened to me. He tells me that he had given this talk and Danny had said, Brilliant talk, but I don't believe a word of it. Something was really bothering him, and so I pressed him. He said, ‘It cannot be that judgement does not connect with perception. Thinking is not a separate act.’”

p.153 
He said, ‘It cannot be that judgement does not connect with perception. Thinking is not a separate act.’ 

p.343
People didn't choose between things, they chose between descriptions of things. 

  p.343
  “choice architecture”
  The decisions people made were driven by the way they were presented. People didn't simply know what they wanted; they took cues from their environment. They constructed their preferences. And they followed paths of least resistance, even when they paid a heavy price for it. 

   (Michael Lewis, The undoing project, 2017, p.153, p.343 )
   ____________________________________
     That selection process is perception.  “I am a very big believer”, Hofstadter told me, “that the core processes of cognition are very, very tightly related to perception.”
            ── Kevin Kelly, 1994, 
               from the book, Out of Control,
               p.18, filename: ooc-mf.pdf  

Kevin Kelly, out of control, 1994                                           [ ]
p.18
   “Memory”, says cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, “is highly reconstructive. Retrieval from memory involves selecting out of a vast field of things what's important and what is not important, emphasizing the important stuff, downplaying the unimportant.” That selection process is perception. “I am a very big believer”, Hofstadter told me, “that the core processes of cognition are very, very tightly related to perception.” 

   (Kevin Kelly, out of control, 1994, filename: ooc-mf.pdf  )
   ____________________________________

Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on happiness, 2006                                [ ]

p.85
But in 1781 a reclusive German professor named Immanuel Kant broke loose, knocked over the screen in the corner of the room, and exposed the brain as a humbug of the highest order.  Kant's new theory of  idealism  claimed that our perceptions are not the result of a physiological process by which our eyes somehow transmit an image of the world into our brains, but rather, they are the result of a psychological process that combines what our eyes see with what we already think, feel, know, want, and believe, and then used this combination of sensory information and preexisting knowledge to construct our perception of reality. 

p.85
“The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing”, Kant wrote. “Only through their union can knowledge arise.”16

p.85
Kant argued that a person's perception of a floating head is constructed from the person's knowledge of a floating head, memory of floating heads, belief in floating heads, need for floating heads, and sometimes──but not always──from the actual presence of a floating head itself.  Perceptions are portraits, not photographs, and their form reveals the artist's hand every bit as much as it reflects the things portrayed. 

   (Stumbling on happiness / by Daniel Gilbert.--1st ed., 1. happiness., BF575.H27G55   2016, 158--dc22, 2016, )
   ____________________________________

Ha-Joon Chang, Economics : the user's guide, 2014

first published 2014
this paperback edition published 2015 

p.238
; this is known as the reference group.  We actually don't really care that much how well people who do not belong to our own reference groups are doing.* 

p.153
Sometimes in the 1930s,
the office of the Gosplan, the central planning authority of the USSR
Interview for the post of the chief statistician

The first candidate is asked by the interview board, ‘What is 2 + 2, comrade?’
He answers: ‘5’. 
‘Comrade, we very much appreciate your revolutionary enthusiasm, but this job needs someone who can count.’  The first candidate is politely dismissed. 

The second candidate was asked, ‘Comrade, What is 2 + 2?’
He answer: ‘3’. 
‘Arrest that man! We cannot tolerate this kind of counter-revolutionary propaganda, under-reporting our achievements!’  The second candidate is dragged out of the room by the guards. 

The third candidate was asked the same question, ‘Comrade, What is 2 + 2?’
He answer: ‘Of course, it is 4’. 
A member of the board gives him a lecture on the limitation of bourgeois science, fixated on formal logic.  The third candidate is politely dismissed. 

The fourth candidate was asked the same question, ‘Comrade, What is 2 + 2?’
He answer: ‘How many do you want it to be?’
The fourth candidate is hired. 

Ha-Joon Chang, Economics : the user's guide, 2014
   ____________________________________
   ____________________________________

Sebastian Mallaby., More money than god : hedge funds and the making of a new elite, 2010.
   
 • modeling of abnormal distributions was a problem largely unsolved in mathematics., pp.104-105
 • Even in the early 1960s, a maverick mathematician named Benoit Mandelbrot argued that the tails of the distribution might be fatter than the normal bell curve assumed; and Eugene Fama, the father of efficient-market theory, who got to know Mandelbrot at the time, conducted tests on stock-price changes that confirmed Mandelbrot's assertion., pp.104-105
 • The trouble with [Benoit] Mandelbrot's insight was that it was too awkward to live with; it rendered the statistical tools of financial economics useless, since the modeling of abnormal distributions was a problem largely unsolved in mathematics., pp.104-105 
 • the ... hypothesis did not apply to moments of crisis., p.106

pp.104-105
The efficient-market hypothesis had always been based on a precarious assumption:  the price changes conformed to a “normal” probability distribution ── the one represented  by the familiar bell curve, in which numbers at and near the median crop up frequently while numbers in the tails distribution are rare to the point of vanishing.  Even in the early 1960s, a maverick mathematician named Benoit Mandelbrot argued that the tails of the distribution might be fatter than the normal bell curve assumed; and Eugene Fama, the father of efficient-market theory, who got to know Mandelbrot at the time, conducted tests on stock-price changes that confirmed Mandelbrot's assertion.  If price changes had been normally distributed, jumps greater than five standard deviations should have shown up in daily price data about once every 7,000 years.  Instead, they cropped up about once every three to four years. 
   Having made this discovery, Fama and his colleagues buried it.  The trouble with Mandelbrot's insight was that it was too awkward to live with; it rendered the statistical tools of financial economics useless, since the modeling of abnormal distributions was a problem largely unsolved in mathematics.
p.105
Paul Cootner, complained that “Mandelbrot, like Prime Minister Churchill before him, promises us not utopia but blood, sweat, toil and tears. If he is right, almost all of our statistical tools are obsolete ── least squares, spectral analysis, workable maximum-likelihood solutions, all our established sample theory, closed distribution functions. Almost without exception, past econometric work is meaningless.”66  
p.105
To prevent itself from toppling into this intellectual abyss, the economics profession kept its eyes trained the other way, especially since the mathematics of normal distributions was generating stunning breakthroughs.  
p.105
In 1973 a trio of economists produced a revolutionary method for valuing options, and a thrilling new financial industry was born.  Mandelbrot's objections were brushed off. 

p.105
   The crash of 1987 forced the economics profession to reexamine that assertion. 

p.105
To put that probability into perspective, it meant that an event such as the crash would not be anticipated to occur even if the stock market were to remain open for twenty billion years, the upper end of the expected duration of the universe, 

p.106
   As well as challenging the statistical foundation of financial economists' thinking, Black Monday forced a reconsideration of their institutional assumptions. 

p.106
In the chaos of the market meltdown, brokers' phone lines were jammed with calls from panicking sellers; it was hard to get through and place an order. 

p.106
And, most important, the sheer weight of selling made it too risky to go against the trend.  When the whole world is selling, it doesn't matter whether sophisticated hedge funds believe that prices have fallen too far.  Buying is crazy. 
   At a minimum, it seemed, the efficient-market hypothesis did not apply to moments of crisis. 

pp.106-107
But the crash raised a further question too:  If markets were efficient, why had the equity bubble inflated in the first place?  Again, the answer seemed to lie partly in the institutional obstacles faced by speculators.  In the summer of 1987, investors could see plainly that stocks were selling for higher multiples of corporate earnings than they had historically; but if the market was determined to value them that way, it would cost money to buck it. 

   (More money than god : hedge funds and the making of a new elite / Sebastian Mallaby.,  1. hedge funds., 2. investment advisors.,  HG4530.M249  2010, 332.64'524──dc22, 2010, )
   ____________________________________

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modeling of abnormal distributions

   • modeling of abnormal distributions was a problem largely unsolved in mathematics., pp.104-105, Sebastian Mallaby., More money than god ...