Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Practopoiesis (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Move to draft space, Draft:Practopoiesis. Consensus, to the extent we have any, is that this isn't ready for article space in this form or with that title, but that editorial solutions might exist, such as repurposing this as a biography of the proponent, or merging content into related articles. This needs additional expert discussion.  Sandstein  10:53, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Practopoiesis
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

The only source cited is one of the main authors of the article itself. No evidence of significance of this term. Previously deleted for precisely the same problems. Guy (Help!) 23:04, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete and Userfy - There are some references out there, such as this, this, this (although you have to buy he abstract), this (although this organization seems to be somehow affiliated with the creator of this concept), and this. News returned 3 other sources, but they were all by the creator of this concept, Danko Nikolic. Not quite notable enough yet.  Onel 5969  TT me 02:40, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * User:Onel5969, the 2010 IEET link you gave was 'incorrect'... but not your fault... after fighting with their terrible IEET website (which has also totally confused scholar.google.com methinks is worth noting), it turns out that the first actual coverage of practopoiesis by IEET was in September 2014 (not 2010 nor 2015 as the search engines sometimes imply), an hour-long interview of Danko Nikolić by the IEET staffer named Nikola Danaylov, who seems to be a reasonably-legit blogger-journalist-person, and unrelated to aka independent of Danko Nikolić. Later circa July 2015, the same Danko Nikolić began writing guest-posts on the IEET website (3 articles plus 2 videos so far), but Danko Nikolić is not listed as a staffer.  I don't know whether the Institute_for_Ethics_and_Emerging_Technologies counts as a WP:RS-publisher in this case -- the Danaylov piece was posted in the IEET.org website and not in their edgy-but-peer-reviewed Journal of Evolution and Technology -- or for that matter whether Danaylov is famous enough as a blogger to be an exception to WP:BLOGS (he was called the 'Larry King of the singularity' by some prof once).  But IEET is independent, definitely.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 13:25, 1 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment might be worth moving contents to a subsection of a newly-created BLP-article called Draft:Danko Nikolić. Author has some not too shabby cite-counts, and has published in several of the List_of_biology_journals bluelinks.
 * _61 cites, 2006. #6/6, neuronal synchronization (Biederlack Castelo-Branco Neuenschwander Wheeler Singer Nikolic) Neuron_(journal)
 * _55 cites, 2007. #1/3, synaesthetic experience (Nikolic Lichti Singer) Psychological Science
 * 115 cites, 2007. #3/6, neural substrates (Mayer Bittner Nikolic Bledowski Goebel Linden) Neuroimage
 * 669 cites, 2007. #2/3, The gamma cycle (Fries Nikolic Singer). Trends in Neurosciences
 * _60 cites, 2008. #4/4, joint-spike events (Pipa Wheeler Singer Nikolić) Journal of Computational Neuroscience
 * 211 cites, 2008. #4/4, neuronal synchrony (Yu Huang Singer Nikolić) Cerebral_Cortex_(journal)
 * 307 cites, 2008. #3/4, synchrony in cortical networks (Uhlhaas Haenschel Nikolić Singer) Schizophrenia Bulletin
 * _62 cites, 2009. #1/4, primary visual cortex (Nikolić Häusler Singer Maass) PLoS Biology
 * 328 cites, 2009. #6/7, Neural synchrony (Uhlhaas Pipa Lima Melloni Neuenschwander Nikolić ...) Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience
 * _68 cites, 2010. #7/7, Neuronal avalanches in vivo (Hahn Petermann Havenith Yu Singer Plenz Nikolić) Journal of Neurophysiology
 * _43 cites, 2011. #6/6, Synchrony, neurons (Havenith Yu Biederlack Chen Singer Nikolić) Journal of Neuroscience
 * _64 cites, 2011. #5/6, cortical activity (Yu Yang Nakahara Santos Nikolić Plenz). Journal of Neuroscience


 * Alternatively, could merge into the downward causation parent-topic (that one has more refs -- but overall has similar WP:OWN issues to this Practopoiesis article under discussion -- prolly AfD'ing sequentially one at a time is best for the peace of mind of all concerned since merges can be accomplished in the interim). Double-merging both the Practopoiesis and the DownwardCausation articles into some grandparent-article, which I assume(?) might be neural synchronization from the cite-list above, might be WP:UNDUE or might be WP:NOTEWORTHY, not sure about that idea -- perhaps they fit better at computational neuroscience?
 * Alternatively-alternatively, perhaps side-merge the Practopoiesis and the DownwardCausation articles, intto a new subsection of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research home-facility of the research-group? This school-article needs significant help at the moment (tagged for adding refs and details and COI), so as a bonus, that would get somebody knowledgeable about the facility involved on that article's talkpage, where perhaps User:Dankonikolic will shift from WP:SPIP to school-pride?  75.108.94.227 (talk) 17:02, 20 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Repurpose to a draft article on the author, as proposed above. A merge into the institute where the work was done is undue weight, unless we expand that article to include every ever done there. A merge into the computation neuroscience article is also excessive weight at this point, unless we include every hypothesis there that has ever been published.  DGG ( talk ) 23:19, 20 September 2015 (UTC).
 * Redirect to Downward causation, which was what I did when I created this iteration of the article, to address the problem of various redlinks to the topic. It has since had a bunch of content added from IP editors and from the originator of the idea. A sentence or two explaining the term maybe could be added to the Downward causation article, but I don't see that it is a sufficiently well-established concept to merit an article of its own. DaveApter (talk) 08:57, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

User:Dankonikolic, as you noted in your comment at the first AfD of practopoiesis, the way that wikipedia justifies a dedicated-standalone-article about the topic of practopoiesis (or any other topic) is usually based on WP:42 aka "lots of other people independent from the topic publishing stuff about the topic in some reasonable amount of depth". Practopoiesis has some sources, but there are concerns that WP:PSCOI ... which I will note is *extremely* distinct from everyday-english-usage of the phrase 'conflict of interest' but that the wiki-jargon-definitions cannot much be helped ... makes several of the sources in the practopoiesis article right now, less-than-fully-independent. That doesn't mean such less-than-fully-independent sources cannot be USED in the article, it just means they don't count as fully towards demonstrating wiki-notability aka WP:N (again: little relation to real-world-notability) and passing WP:42. So to get to brass tacks, here is specifically what I ask, here at this AfD, which is a decision about whether to:
 * I know I don't have much say in the destiny of the article, so I will not make any suggestions. It will be how you collectively decide. I would just like to provide a few technical facts in order to help the decision. i) Although much of my work is on neural synchronization, practopoiesis does not have a direct link to that topic. It would be a mistake to merge those. ii) Similarly, Downward Causation has nothing directly related to neural synchronization either. iii) Also, it would not make sense to add practopoiesis to Max Planck page exactly for the reasons that DGG stated. iv) I am not affiliated with ieet.org. It just happened so that their editor(s) like practopoiesis. v) Finally, I would like to state that, if I can, I'd be glad to help any solution that you come up with (and doesn't involve complete deletion of the contents of practopoiesis from Wikipedia) if such help is asked for and somehow magically does not put me in COI. Thank you all for your time and effort. (Danko (talk) 13:10, 22 September 2015 (UTC))
 * Well, if you need to be asked, I'm asking. :-)      Please make concrete suggestions, and please help us organize these concepts 'properly'.  Suggestions on talkpages and AfD discussions and other non-mainspace pages are always okay, generally speaking, as long as the potential-COI is stated up-front -- you won't get magically into COI-territory, unless you start inserting stuff yourself into mainspace, which gives the appearance of SEO for your name and/or your institution and/or your inventions.  Suggestions are fine, the more concrete the better.  There are two problems to be solved here at AfD:  first of all, these are hard concepts to understand ('practopoiesis' is a neologism compared to 'color' or even to 'qualia'), and thus it isn't easy for non-experts to figure out WHERE the topic best fits into the encyclopedia.  Second of all, WP:SOURCES always help...
 * (1) 'delete'-and-userfy practopoiesis as WP:NotJustYet, which in fact would be a *move* of ALL the material currently at practopoiesis to a new non-search-engine-visible location at Draft:Practopoiesis (*later* after some improvements in sourcing and/or body-prose, to be moved back to practopoiesis the original location, or perhaps merged into Downward_causation, or whatever makes most sense at that future time)
 * (2) 'delete'-and-bangmerge practopoiesis as WP:FAILN, which in fact would again be a *move* of SOME material currently at practopoiesis to a new subsection of an existing article
 * (3) bangkeep practopoiesis as actually passing WP:42, which is possible iff enough 100%-independent multi-paragraph-in-depth WP:SOURCES specifically about practopoiesis exist.

The *best* way that you can help... which will help improve wikipedia regardless of whether outcome userfy#1/bangmerge#2/bangkeep#3 ends up happening... is to dig up some WP:SOURCES which are written by authors besides yourself (ideally ones not from Max Planck but this is just optimality), in some kind of wiki-reliable publication (see typical list at WP:SOURCES and WP:SCHOLARSHIP) which specifically devote multiple paragraphs to discussing the concept of practopoiesis-by-that-name (ideally in the piece-title but this is again not really required).

If there are enough such sources, then bangkeep#3 is the likely result; if there are not, then bangmerge is the likely result. Therefore, the *next* best thing you can help us with, is by giving us the correct ontological position, of the practopoiesis concept. For instance, the correct ontological position of the technical topic Appaloosa (the horse breed) is something like this: physical thing > animal > mammal > horse > breed > domesticated > Appaloosa. This is just a very-rough example to give you an idea what I'm asking for, don't feel constrained to follow my not-very-optimal example pattern, just give us the *right* ontological parent for practopoiesis-the-encyclopedic-concept.

Also, in addition to a nice aristotelian chain starting at animal/mineral/vegetable/intangible, and ending up with the parent-of-practopoiesis followed by the-concept-of-practopoiesis, please also explain the "siblings" of practopoiesis. In the horse example, it would be wrong to up-merge Appaloosa into the Tennessee_Walking_Horse article, because they are both different domesticated horse-breeds (aka sibling-relationship not parent-child). In particular, is downward causation the parent, or sibling, or cousin, of practopoiesis?

Finally, besides the parents (most likely bangmerge-target) and siblings (most likely incorrect targets), what are the uncles and aunts (again these are close-but-no-banana incorrrect bangmerge-targets), and grandparents (ditto), of practopoiesis, in terms of what the likely readership of the article would expect to be the case? That is how the bangmerge (if we end up doing that), ought to be decided, methinks -- on the conceptual organization of topics, that the interested readership will find most logical.
 * In a nutshell, please tell us what the correct conceptual-parent of the practopoiesis-concept, actually is. Because quite frankly, I don't understand the concept, I've only just heard of it, and briefly skimmed the article.  My quick-skim suggestion of bangmerging into downward causation was based purely on edit-history, maybe ideasthesia is a better ontological parent?  Or maybe synesthesia but that is probably a great-grandparent.  But I'd really prefer that *you* tell us, rather than me guesstimating.  ;-)
 * My other concrete suggestions, for side-merging to a BLP-article about the initiator of the practopoiesis-neologism, or even to the University-article (aka the "corporation" that sponsored the "manufacturing" of the "product" called practopoiesisTM) should be considered half-assed fallback measures, which are only necessary iff we cannot figure out the proper conceptual-parent-article. Those non-ontological bangmerge options could still occur, of course, and in cases where WP:UNDUE or other such issues play a role, are not uncommon compromise-measures.  But as DGG points out, there is definitely a question of WP:UNDUE for the institute, and there is a pragmatic difficulty that we do not currently have an article Danko Nikolić where we could create the new subsection Danko Nikolić.
 * Anyways, please User:dankonikolic, although it is very wiki-honourable of you to be willing to stand back, and let your fellow wikipedians pull the wiki-trigger on this AfD decision, I do ask that you please lend us a helping hand, in the form of concrete suggestions of what the Best Thing To Do would actually be... especially if you see, that we are about to pull the wiki-trigger, and blast a hole in our collective wiki-foot. :-)    Please feel free to leave a note on my user_talk, if what I'm asking is unclear, or if you have questions generally speaking about all this stuff.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 12:34, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- Sam Sailor Talk! 13:50, 24 September 2015 (UTC) Dear 75.108.94.227, DGG and others, thank you very much for taking your time and effort to figure out the best way for practopoiesis becoming a part of Wikipedia. I will try to answer your questions in order to help. Practopoiesis is an interdisciplinary theory and is an overarching theory in the same time. This means that it is related to a number of topics with often otherwise may not seem closely related. I will specify more in a moment. But first let me explain that practpoiesis is a new theory and thus, does not have many citations yet. Existing publications have been mentioned here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Citations:practopoiesis. I suspect that this may not be deemed as sufficient. There are works by other people going on (which I know from private communication) but it will take a while until this is published. Therefore, I realize that practopoiesis likely does not have yet the notability level required for having its own page. Nevertheless, according to notability criteria of Wikipedia it has sufficient importance to be mentioned in other pages (such as, for example Downward Causation). I have read and understood those policies only recently.
 * Comment2, there is some usertalk conversation going on, about what ought to happen here. Would ask that this remain un-closed, as there is activity going on elsewheres, which may bring us closer to achieving clear consensus here at AfD once some traction is achieved (the contributors that know the most about this topic-area are not yet WP:ADDICTED and constantly checking their usertalk pages is the basic bottleneck right now :-)      75.108.94.227 (talk) 22:20, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Now, I understand that 75.108.94.227 asks a correct question. Where can we put it, then? Being interdisciplinary and overarching, one could put it at several places, but in the same time none of these places would be exactly perfect. So, lets start with the ontological position of practopoiesis. I think that it is something like this:

explanations of the world > theories about mind > biological theories about mind > biological theories about mind that have new implications also for understanding life > [the same as above] + implications for philosophy of mind > practopoiesis

Examples of the existing pages in Wikipeda to which practopoiesis would logically fit are (i.e., the parents of practopoiesis could be):


 * Theory of evolution. Theory of evolution is a special case of practopoeisis. A number of principles of practopoiesis are generalizations of the principles of evolution. Also, practopoieis adds to it by explaining for example, why Lamarkian evolution cannot work even in principle.


 * Mind. Practopoiesis has been developed primarily as a theory of how mind comes out of the brain. Hence, I hope that one day it will form a prominent part of the Wikipedia entry on mind.


 * Brain. Being a theory of mind, practopoiesis is also a theory of the brain. Its main empirical predictions concern the brain.


 * Cybernetics. Practopoiesis is theoretically founded in two theorems of cybernetics. So, it is basically, an expansion of cybernetic theory.


 * adaptive system. The main explanatory tool of practpoiesis is a generalization of the process of adaptation. When the principles of adaptation are generalized enough, the same principles can be used for evolution, learning, thinking, behaving etc. Moreover, practopoiesis explains the interactions among those different levels.


 * Philosophy of mind Practopoiesis offers a completely novel approach to begin addressing various problems with which philosophy of mind is concerned.

As you can see, it is quite an overarching theory. For any of the above it would make sense to introduce practopoiesis.

In addition to those "big" topics, which could in principle claim Practopoiesis in the future as being an important theory for them (I am completely aware that if this ever happens, it will take years), there is a number of other entries in Wikipedia for which practopoiesis has implications but it would not make sense that they primarily introduce practopoiesis. Rather, practopoiesis is broader than this particular topic. In those practopoiesis could be mentioned, as it adds something relevant, but they should not be the primary Wikipedia source of information on pracopoiesis. They should be siblings and cousins. One of those is:

Downward causation The only reason practopoiesis made it to this entry, was the enthusiasm of one Wikipedia editors who happened to be interested in both topics and asked me to write about it.

And the others are:

Artificial intelligence, Consciousness, Homeostasis, Complex system, Abductive reasoning, Intelligence, Situated cognition, Esthesic and poietic, Adaptive behavior, Biological neural network, Allopoiesis, Poiesis, Sensitization, Allostasis, Embodied cognitive science, Variety (cybernetics), Good regulator, Externalism, Neurocybernetics, Embodied cognition, Wisconsin car sorting test, Semantics,

... and there is more.

Some of the above already have links to practopoiesis, or had them but were meanwhile deleted by editors.

Uncles and aunts of practopoiesis would be (i.e., those that are partly in both of the two categories discussed above):
 * Autopoiesis (a part of cybernetics and in the same time a part of theory of biology and life)
 * Reinforcement learning (a part of AI theory and in the same time a part of brain theory)
 * Neural adaptation (a set of empirically established brain phenomena)
 * Embodied embedded cognition (a part of philosophy of mind)

Finally, there are of course several other theories about brain, mind, life, AI that are in a way cousins to practopoiesis but are cousins that compete. This is because different theories make often different explanations and hence, different predictions. An examples of those is Connectionism and there are others.

Finally, let me state that ideasthesia is not a close cousin of practopoiesis. The two are only relatively distant cousins. Closer cousins that the two share are semantics and consciousness. So, it would not make sense that the page on ideasthesia introduces practopoiesis.
 * Comment, I hope that I have answered all of the questions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dankonikolic (talk • contribs) 10:39, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hello User:Dankonikolic, thanks much. We are getting closer to figuring this out.  I have replied over on usertalk, to your message above, and will summarize back here on this AfD, when we achieve some conclusions there.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 23:47, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 07:39, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Behavioural science-related deletion discussions. North America1000 07:40, 2 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment3. Okay, after discussion with User:Dankonikolic, it looks like an appropriate merge-target for this borderline-wiki-notable practopoiesis material is in one of the biology-related articles.  The other main options were in the philosophy-of-mind articles, and in the cybernetics (systems theory) articles, both of which are tightly-related conceptually.  So here are my three amateur-attempts at placing practopoiesis into a leaf-article parent:
 * Biology: Embodied cognitive science > Sensitization > Allostasis > practopoiesis
 * Systems-theory: Cybernetics > if-not-Neurocybernetics-then-what-subfield-of-cybernetics-goes-here? > Variety (cybernetics) > Good regulator > Heterostasis_(cybernetics)  > practopoiesis
 * Philosophy-of-mind: Situated cognition > Reinforcement learning > Embodied cognition > Embodied embedded cognition > Autopoiesis > practopoiesis
 * User:Dankonikolic may wish to comment here again, on whether Allostasis is the most appropriate new subsection for the material at practopoiesis to be bangmerged into, or if another leaf-article is a better fit. Also, ping User:Northamerica1000, is there a way to alert the WP:WikiProject_Neuroscience folks in a neutral fashion, please?  That's closer to practopoiesis than "behavioral science" per se.  I would do it myself, but they are not listed at the WP:DS page, and I wasn't sure if that meant that notifying that wikiproject about AfD stuff was taboo, or just that they have never bothered to list themselves, or what exactly.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 21:28, 6 October 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.