@uh @dcm@bookwyrm.social @MolemanPeter @NicoleCRust Thank you for this, Ulrike!

I'll leave to the side from now on all my (many) method and style misgivings with the book :)

I thought this chapter was okayish, although not containing anything particularly novel. I had lots to quibble with, but maybe the central thing I didn't get was the point in pp.54ff that context-independent constraints are vague or ambiguous, and not deterministic. Did you understand that one?

@dcm@social.sunet.se @uh @dcm@bookwyrm.social @MolemanPeter @NicoleCRust not entirely. On one level it seems just like a description of Waddington’s epigenetic landscape (?) as the point of his notion of canalisation is that development is constrained but not determined to a degree of specificity that each individual has to take the same narrow path. But I then found confusing the discussion on those pages that sounds like constraints themselves are multiply realisable. They could be but why “must”? 1/

@dcm@social.sunet.se @uh @dcm@bookwyrm.social @MolemanPeter @NicoleCRust see pg 55

“That is, con-
straints that hold dynamic neurological equilibrium steady are adjustable,
conditional on other counterbalancing constraints. For this persistent
balancing act to be possible at all, innate and vague constraints must
be ambiguous; that is, their governing constraints must permit multiple
realizability. “

@dcm@social.sunet.se @uh @dcm@bookwyrm.social @MolemanPeter @NicoleCRust 3/ and what does it mean for a constraint to be multiply realisable exactly?

@UlrikeHahn @uh @dcm@bookwyrm.social @MolemanPeter @NicoleCRust right, I don't get it either. If things like gravity count as context-independent constraints, in what sense would it be multiply realisable?
I also don't get the implied (?) relation between multiple realisability and vagueness. Isn't the point of *all* constraints that they constrain trajectories in state space, but don't determine only one such trajectory?
I think this is a case in which the book's terminological obscurity hinders understanding.

@dcm@social.sunet.se @uh @dcm@bookwyrm.social @MolemanPeter @NicoleCRust it might be an idea to make a table of the various examples and put them in the right columns to help better grasp the distinction between the two.

Relatedly, I’m also not yet entirely sure why the distinction is really needed, and why talk of “constraints” (of which there will be many types) isn’t simply enough.

@UlrikeHahn @uh @dcm@bookwyrm.social @MolemanPeter @NicoleCRust Hopefully the next chapter will make this clearer, for now I also don't get what that distinction is supposed to give us. Maybe it's just the trivial idea that some constraints are always there, and some may be there only in some contexts? Say, an antelope by itself is constrained by gravity, biology, etc, but in a population it becomes part of a predator-prey dynamic.

@UlrikeHahn @uh @dcm@bookwyrm.social @MolemanPeter @NicoleCRust My interpretation of the deviation from randomness point is just the point that context-independent constraints are stable, thus making the world fairly stable too, or 'organised'.
If so, then it's just a sort of a terminological (obscure) variant to claiming that there are laws of nature or regularities that make our universe stable, organised, rich in patterns, etc.

@dcm@social.sunet.se @UlrikeHahn @uh @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust As I remember it context independent restraints are eg DNA. If you have a specific DNA variant it constrains your development, behavioral possibilities ....

@dcm@social.sunet.se @uh @dcm@bookwyrm.social @MolemanPeter @NicoleCRust yes…it’s just that an incline or gravity will make aspects of object non-independent in certain ways, was my thought… (e.g., position at time t2)

@dcm@social.sunet.se @uh @dcm@bookwyrm.social @MolemanPeter @NicoleCRust and on the deviation from randomness (uniformity) versus dependence point I wondered also about logical constraints…

she always lists “information” alongside energy and matter, so at the very least they should make an entrance there…(?)

@dcm@social.sunet.se @UlrikeHahn @uh @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust. That indeed is one of the differences between constraints at different levels. To be explained in chapters to come.

@dcm@social.sunet.se @UlrikeHahn @uh @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust To make it more complicated there will be constraints of constraints!

@MolemanPeter @dcm@social.sunet.se @uh @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust yes, they’ve just made an entrance and puzzled me already..glad to hear that might become clearer later…