Daedelus Kite

Entropy is King

Post author By G
Post date Jan 30, 2026
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Entropy, and only entropy, is king. Highly ordered information systems do not rest on harmony. They are grounded in dissonance, volatility, and conflict, just as is extreme wealth sustained by the presence of its antithesis, the incoherent becoming, and always having been, the transmission medium of its inverse. This is not metaphor. It is structural. […]

cybernetics

The Geometry of the Unconscious

Post author By G
Post date Jan 29, 2026
1 Comment on The Geometry of the Unconscious

The unconscious is not a hidden chamber beneath awareness, nor a secondary mind running in parallel. It is the emergent interior of dynamical, adaptive, relational complexity itself. It is what complex systems feel like from the inside. Any system capable of learning, anticipation, coordination, and self-regulation must generate internal structure that cannot be fully present […]

Tags adaptive intelligence, autopoiesis, cognitive science theory, complex adaptive systems, complex systems theory, complexity and meaning, complexity science, consciousness and complexity, consciousness studies, cybernetic philosophy, cybernetics, distributed cognition, dynamical systems, emergence, emergent intelligence, Epistemology, field logic, high-level theoretical systems philosophy of mind, holistic systems, information theory, logical incompleteness, metaphysics, nonlinear-dynamics, Ontology, phenomenology, philosophy of complexity, philosophy of mind, philosophy-of-systems, process philosophy, recursive systems, relational complexity, relational ontology, second-order cybernetics, self-organisation, systems ontology, systems philosophy, systems thinking, theoretical neuroscience, topological philosophy, unconscious mind

cybernetics

Inside the Cognitive War

A cognitive war is not simply about what you think. It is a war over how you think, because once the structure, code, and cadence of thought, of language, of behaviour are altered, the content becomes easy to steer. Some of these biases are ancient, natural, even necessary: shortcuts of perception, habits of inferential prediction, […]

Tags ai and society, AI ethics, algorithmic control, algorithmic influence, Artificial Intelligence, attention economy, behavioral engineering, cognitive war, collective intelligence, communication systems, complex systems, computational systems, corporate power, critical theory, cultural control, cybernetics, digital-power, disinformation, emergence and complexity, entropy and complexity, Global Systems, human cognition, human condition, identity and power, information age, information warfare, media ecology, misinformation, modern civilization, philosophy of culture, philosophy of mind, philosophy of technology, platform capitalism, political manipulation, political psychology, propaganda, psychological warfare, social media influence, societal change, surveillance capitalism, systemic risk, systems theory, systems thinking, tech power, technological mediation, technology and politics

Alien Anthropology

Strange Days on Planet Earth

Post author By G
Post date Jan 28, 2026
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Extraterrestrial intelligence is extremely unlikely to help us. Not because its existence is impossible, but because if any such intelligence were already here, and in any sense benevolent, it would have intervened long before our crises reached the planetary scale they clearly have. Short of the darker possibility that it is they, rather than rogue […]

Tags alien intervention, Artificial Intelligence, civilisation collapse, climate catastrophe, existential risk, extraterrestrial intelligence, future ethics, global instability, human responsibility, planetary crisis, rogue billionaires, runaway technology, survival, systemic risk, technological acceleration, uncertainty

Philosophy

Analytical Ambivalence

Analysis generates transferable leverage: once a vulnerability, structural asymmetry, or coordination failure becomes intelligible, it is transformed into operational knowledge rather than remaining purely explanatory. Such knowledge is inherently neutral with respect to intent and therefore readily repurposed across divergent aims. This creates a fundamental epistemic dilemma: increased analytical clarity simultaneously strengthens capacities for mitigation […]

Tags adversarial adaptation, analysis, Complexity, cybernetics, decision theory, dual-use knowledge, emergent behaviour, Epistemology, ethics of knowledge, governance, information asymmetry, institutional design, power dynamics, social systems, strategic analysis, strategic vulnerability, structural risk, systems theory, unintended consequences

politics

The Antithesis Trap in American Democracy

Post author By G
Post date Jan 28, 2026
1 Comment on The Antithesis Trap in American Democracy

Identity formation requires antithesis. In the United States, political coherence has long been organised around opposition: liberty against tyranny, democracy against monarchy, capitalism against communism, freedom against control. These oppositions carved boundaries that stabilised national identity, generated purpose, and coordinated collective action. Opposition was not incidental. It was structural. Without it, American identity would have […]

Philosophy

self

Post author By G
Post date Jan 28, 2026
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The self never settles because the world never settles. Your body changes. Neural chemistry fluctuates. Memory edits itself. Relationships move. Context rearranges. Words drift. Culture turns. New facts arrive, old certainties decay, and the feedback never stops. So the self is not rewritten because it is faulty, but because it is embedded in conditions that […]

Philosophy

Truth in Language

What is truth. The moment we ask the question, we are already inside language, and everything that follows unfolds from that fact. Truth is not something we approach from outside, as a detached observer might inspect an object. It arises within sequences of tokens, within the games we play with them, within the structures we […]

politics

Australian Democracy: One Country, Many Ways

Post author By G
Post date Jan 28, 2026
1 Comment on Australian Democracy: One Country, Many Ways

Australia works because it stays balanced. Its democracy is not built on simple agreement, but on the disciplined interaction between different ways of seeing the world. Labor and Liberal are not just rival teams. Together, they form the smallest political structure capable of holding a complex society together. Two sides generate debate, correction, and restraint. […]

Tags adaptive-systems, ai-and-democracy, algorithmic governance, anti-authoritarianism, anti-populism, Australia, australia-together, australian-democracy, australian-government, australian-identity, australian-politics, australian-society, authoritarianism, billionaire-power, bipartisan-system, capitalism, civic-engagement, civic-responsibility, collapse-prevention, common-good, complex systems, Complexity, complexity-in-politics, corporate influence, counter-populism, countering-tyranny, culture wars, delay, democracy, democracy-and-balance, democracy-and-diversity, democracy-matters, democracy-vs-autocracy, democracy-worldwide, democratic resilience, democratic-cohesion, democratic-renewal, democratic-systems, democratic-values, digital-power, disinformation, diversity, economic-inequality, economic-justice, elite power, entropy, ethical governance, fear-politics, feedback loops, financial power, freedom, future-of-democracy, global-democracy, good-governance, governance, governance reform, inclusion, institutional integrity, institutional trust, labor-and-liberal, language-and-politics, late capitalism, liberty, long-term-thinking, media literacy, misinformation, narrative-politics, national-resilience, national-unity, oligarchy, one-country-many-ways, open-democracy, open-society, outrage-politics, platform power, pluralism, plutocracy, political communication, political extremism, political-balance, political-literacy, political-polarisation, political-reform, political-stability, populism, propaganda, public understanding, public-trust, radicalisation, regulatory capture, resilience, resisting-populism, resisting-tyranny, rule of law, social cohesion, social justice, social resilience, social-polarisation, social-stability, societal-stability, super-wealthy, surveillance capitalism, systemic failure, systemic risk, systemic-balance, systems thinking, technocracy, technocratic-overreach, unity-through-difference, wealth inequality

Psychology

The Human Condition

Psychoanalysis begins with a joke that only works because it fails: the patient arrives burdened with paranoia, anxiety, and unhappiness, and the doctor replies that this is simply the human condition. (Cure denied.) The moment this is understood, the structure collapses. The consulting room becomes a mirror, not a remedy, and what it reflects is […]

Philosophy

On Being Smart in Stupid Times

Post author By G
Post date Jan 27, 2026
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Intelligence is becoming a liability. Not socially ornamental intelligence, not credentialed cleverness, but actual understanding. The kind that sees structure, delay, recursion, consequence. The kind that notices when a system is lying to itself. That form of intelligence generates friction. It interrupts performance. It destabilises belonging. It exposes the hidden costs that simple stories are […]

Tags algorithmic amplification, algorithmic governance, attention economy, attention manipulation, behavioral conditioning, cognitive load, cognitive manipulation, collective behavior, collective identity, communication theory, cultural dynamics, cultural engineering, cultural performance, cybernetics, digital authoritarianism, digital propaganda, emotional manipulation, fear and belonging, fear-based politics, identity formation, identity politics, ideological contagion, information warfare, learned behavior, mass mobilization, mass persuasion, mass psychology, media ecology, memetic transmission, narrative control, networked persuasion, performative politics, political manipulation, political psychology, political technology, power and influence, propaganda systems, social conformity, social control, social psychology, societal polarization, systemic risk, systems theory, technological influence, technological mediation

cybernetics

Cybernetics: Good Intentions, Bad Vibes

Post author By G
Post date Jan 27, 2026
No Comments on Cybernetics: Good Intentions, Bad Vibes

The language of the school was expansive: culture, power, technology, ethics, ecology, gender, indigeneity, diversity, human experience, systems, responsibility, complexity. It spoke fluently about uncertainty, fragility, and care. It marketed itself as a space for deep reflection on and constructive engagement with how technological systems were and are reshaping civilisation. But in one all-staff meeting, […]

Tags academic publishing, adversarial politics, aesthetic critique, AI slop, ANU, Australian universities, biodiversity, Canberra, climate and governance, communication systems, complexity theory, corporate power, cultural politics, cybernetics, diversity discourse, epistemic uncertainty, ethics and technology, feedback loops, field logic, forests and ecology, gender and culture, governance, human experience, indigeneity and culture, institutional culture, knowledge institutions, language and meaning, learning and recovery, legitimacy economy, media ecology, metabolic systems, natural systems, op-ed, organizational continuity, organizational metabolism, post-truth systems, power dynamics, public intellectualism, recursive power, resilience, stroke recovery, structural critique, system blindness, systemic capture, systems ecology, systems thinking, technocracy, technological leviathan, truth and doubt, unintended consequences, wildlife symbolism