Culture, Communication, Complexity.

Tag: cognitive load

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

Conflict: Metaphysics of Non-Closure

Post author By G
Post date Jan 11, 2026
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Conflict and competitive adversarialism are not necessarily moral failures or aberrations. They are contingent, historically acquired, culturally entrained mechanisms by which complex cognitive, cultural, and communicative systems reliably differentiate, learn, and reproduce themselves over time. These mechanisms arise because complexity does not form around completeness, nor does it arise from closure, certainty, or final resolution. […]

Tags abstraction and control, adaptive coherence, adaptive-systems, ambiguity tolerance, attention economy, authoritarian dynamics, boundary formation, cognitive load, collective psychology, collective sensemaking, communicative systems, complex systems, conflict escalation, conflict resolution, conflict theory, control theory, cultural evolution, cultural pathology, cybernetics, decision-making under uncertainty, difference and opposition, dissociation, emergence, entropy and order, Epistemology, ethics of conflict, feedback instability, feedback loops, gender and control, governance systems, governance under complexity, historical contingency, identity formation, ideological rigidity, information ecology, institutional failure, language and power, logic and limits, manosphere, masculinity and power, media systems, metaphysics of non-closure, moral psychology, neural entrainment, non-closure dynamics, non-orientable systems, non-violence theory, orbit dynamics, peace theory, peacebuilding, phase lag, phase space, philosophy of conflict, philosophy of logic, physics metaphors in philosophy, political psychology, political systems analysis, populism, post-conflict systems, power relations, psychological insecurity, resilience theory, second-order cybernetics, self and other, semantics and meaning, signal delay, social cohesion, social systems, steering systems, steering under uncertainty, strategic complexity, structural incompleteness, structural violence, systemic continuity, systemic risk, systems collapse, systems theory, technological mediation, thermodynamics of social systems, topology and geometry, uncertainty, Undecidability, war and peace, z-plane analysis