Week of 23 Aug 2021

# 26 Aug 2021
### Writing
- 📅Respond to [[Tinkering and uncertainty at different levels — email thread]]
- 📅[[We need to disentangle technology from tech]]

### Important
- 📅Update [[Top of mind]]
- 📅Moving forward on [[Casey Handmer]] workshop
- 📅Moving forward on [[Michael Filler]] one pager
- 📅Moving forward on Telerobotics workshop
- 📅Moving forward on Artificial ribosome workshop
- 📅Figure out Boston confvergence 

### Comms
- [[Alex Lavin conversation 26 Aug 2021]]
- [[Ryan Orbuch conversation 26 Aug 2021]]
- [[Michael Retchin conversation 26 Aug 2021]]
- [[Sam Wurzel conversation 26 August 2021]]

### Focuses
	* Really be more aggressive about comms
	* Food
		* Don’t feel overfull before bed
		* Cut off food >= 2 hr before bedtime (for sleep)
	- [x] Reading
		- [x] 30 solid minutes before bed of a real piece of work
		- [x] Need to actually prioritize reading?
	- [x] Gym time = Anki Time



[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/26_Aug_2021)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/26_Aug_2021)




Tinkering and uncertainty at different levels — email thread

28 Aug 2021

Theory can cut down on the exploration space for tinkering

26 Aug 2021

27 Aug 2021

# Tinkering and uncertainty at different levels — email thread
- “Nestedness” is key to evolution — which is another trial and error process
- Nestedness allows one part of the system to fail without affecting the whole thing
- Nestedness is related to but not the same as modularity (modularity doesn’t have the property that a module can fail, only that it can be replaced)
- Non-teleological trial-and-error process
	- No fully articulated end state
- Four ways of knowing
	- Observation
	- Deduction
	- Induction
	- Trial-and-error
- Properties of T&E
	- Related to observation but not passive
	- Usually a process
- The point is then to outline the basics of T&E 
	- (Simon called it generate and test, but this really elides a lot of important stuff like 
	- how do you generate? 
	- how do you rank which things to test first?
	-  how parallel should you go?
	-  when should you iterate vs stop the process? 
	- what is the feedback from the testing to the generation? 
	- does a test change the landscape such that future tests will have different results? etc.) 
	- And then, finally, to talk about adapting this to innovation.
- Mechanisms of science

### Responses
- Trial and error is actually a combination of induction, observation, and (manipulation? Affordance finding? Actuation?)
- Trial and error process = manipulation observation induction repeat
- Taxonomized the mechanisms of science?
- I think you’re correct that there are four ways of knowing, but I don’t think trial-and-error is the right fourth way, because it actually includes some of the others. I feel like personal experience is actually legitimate evidence on what T&E entails and in (a lot of? too much?) experience with trial and error in physical, digital, and human systems, it goes like:
- Use induction or deduction to suggest a way to act on the system (I’m going to ignore the base case — maybe it’s just true randomness)
- Act on the system
- Observe the results of acting on the system
- Either incorporate the observation into your deductive model or build on it with a deductive process to  suggest a new way to act on the system
 This is the T&E “process” you allude to below and I would argue that T&E is *only* a process. What we need is a word for knowing by having acted on a system — the “finger knowledge” of a craftsperson. I tried out “actuation” “testing” “feels” “affordance-understanding” but I think the correct word is “intuition.” A master woodworker intuits which tool to pick up for the task not because he thinks “ah yes, creating this shape in this wood needs this tool” he just intuits it, an experienced physicist intuits that a theory is BS not because she thinks “ah yes this violates theorems x, y, z”   (though she can quickly think of those) but because her gut screams against it, having worked with those theorems for decades.

Human system differ significantly from evolution. One hot take is that it has a lot to do with how “next steps” in a closed loop are generated. In evolution it is purely stochastic, in human systems it’s not (though this starts to touch on philosophy — free will and all). But I think that actually matters because in extremely high dimensional spaces, if you make a huge random jump your chance of hitting a viable spot is effectively zero given the lifetime of the universe. 

This may also have to do with the distinction that [[Brian Arthur]] makes between [[Combinatorial evolution and Darwinian evolution are different]]

#### Published
#### Authors
- [[Jason Crawford]]
- [[Jerry Neumann]]
#### Link
### Related
- [[Jerry Neumann posits that there are four ways of knowing]]
- [[There are model-based and model free ways of knowing]]
- [[There are several ways to taxonomize ways of knowing]]
- [[Group-based and individual-based knowledge seems to be different]]
- [[Trial and error requires a feedback loop]]
- [[Tinkering and uncertainty at different levels — email thread]]

[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Tinkering_and_uncertainty_at_different_levels_—_email_thread)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Tinkering_and_uncertainty_at_different_levels_—_email_thread)






24 Aug 2021

25 Aug 2021

About these notes

# Top of mind
(Updated 26 Nov 2022) 

The intention of this page is to serve the function of  [a /now page](http://nownownow.com/about)  - shamelessly stealing the idea of a notes-based now page from the indomitable Andy Matuschak.

Most of my time is spent building the new [new institution](spec.tech) I outlined [in the piece I wrote on building a private ARPA-riff.](https://benjaminreinhardt.com/parpa). (More details soon!)

This entails:
- Finding [potential program managers](https://benjaminreinhardt.com/parpa#its_possible_to_find_people_who_are_both_willing_and_capable_to_be_program_managers) and working with them on the fist steps of [[§Program Design]].
- Working on our first two programs. Specifically [[Nanomodular Electronics]] and [[Molecular Additive Manufacturing core]]
- Finding the money to fund these things. 

The nature of trying to create the organization still raises a number of research-y questions: [[Top of Mind Questions]]

And of course, I can’t help occasionally durdling around with some other ideas:
- [[In Defense of Academia]]
- [[Research is not a commodity]]
- [[We have no good metrics for successful research]]
- [[Directly acknowledging alignment and misalignment can be powerful]]
- [[Periodic table of research organizations OR Innovation Engineering]]
- Recording an occasional [Idea Machines Podcast](ideamachinespodcast.com)as a way to talk to fascinating people and share it with the world.

On the physical front, I’m pretty plateaued on climbing :-/ I’m not quite sure how to break through it — probably need to get a coach. 



[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Top_of_mind)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Top_of_mind)




Training Plan

# Week of 23 Aug 2021
### Focuses
	* Really be more aggressive about comms
	- Getting people to do things
	* Food
		* Don’t feel overfull before bed
		* Cut off food >= 2 hr before bedtime (for sleep)
	- Reading
		- 30 solid minutes before bed of a real piece of work
		- Need to actually prioritize reading?
	- Gym time is Anki time

### Writing
<tbd>

### MUST HAPPEN
(Just Monday, eating in from last week)
- [x] Send in  [[Pieces of the Action Forward]]
- [x] Survival and Flourishing Fund Application

Rest of week
- Moving forward on [[Casey Handmer]] workshop
- Moving forward on [[Michael Filler]] one pager
- Moving forward on Telerobotics workshop
- Moving forward on Artificial ribosome workshop
- Figure out Boston confvergence 
- [x] 📅📅 Email Tim about [[PARPAs for-profit entity should be an LLC]]
- Figure out someone besides [[Ilan Gur]] for board
	- SO THAT we can kick off non profit incorporation
	- SO THAT we can apply to survival and flourishing by [[Aug 23]]

### Nice to Happen
- Edit podcasts
	- [[Brian Arthur podcast 4 Aug 2021]]
	- [[Stephen Dean podcast 20 Aug 2021]]
- Poke at academic affiliations

### Days
- [[23 Aug 2021]]
- [[24 Aug 2021]]
- [[25 Aug 2021]]
- [[26 Aug 2021]]
- [[27 Aug 2021]]
- [[28 Aug 2021]]

[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Week_of_23_Aug_2021)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Week_of_23_Aug_2021)






Benʼs working notes

26 Aug 2021

Writing

Important

Comms

Focuses

Links to this note