A key problem: information and communication systems autonomously self-replicate by optimally-concise pattern encoding methods as an extended consequence of the orientation towards low-energy states. No surprise there, perhaps, for anyone versed in complexity theory but the problem is not necessarily the intractable antitheses by binary poles in this endless partisan argument so much as the […]
Tag: Complexity
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Philosophy of War
Wilfrid Sellars characterised the aim of philosophy “(…) abstractly formulated, (…) to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term”. The foundational discontinuity of history and in our current Global “civilisation” (such as it is) that leads us into endlessly futile internecine […]
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Authoritarian Oscillations
I am endlessly fascinated by the many ways that these systems of knowledge and information or culture and political momentum tend towards similar, recurring self-organisational and behavioural patterns. Much is (rightly) made of a contemporary, pronounced turn towards populism and authoritarianism. A suggestion for interpretation which does not seek to directly engage any specific instance […]
The world must be considered as a single, unified or gestalt and autonomously self-propagating information and energy-processing (i.e. complex, computational) system if it is ever to be successfully negotiated or shaped. Conflict, competition, socioeconomic or geostrategic dissonance and entropy adopt unexpected forms when viewed from Global Systems perspectives. Complex adaptive systems (such as is this […]
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Is Feudalism Inevitable?
As with any other cyclic return – including conflict, revolution and large-scale systemic collapse – a holistic and complex systems analysis suggests a few salient points. Feudal systems of warring tribes return again and again (wearing different uniforms and wielding new vocabularies or other socioeconomic and technological accessories) because they are the optimally-concise self-organisational method […]
There is always a choice. No matter what we do, there is always a choice. It is in general a wonderful thing to be able to choose and even when we do not necessarily possess (or need) any control over the spectrum and menu of choices available, it remains a fact that we would rather […]
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Technology Copies Itself Through Us
What I find unrelentingly entertaining about the technologically-mediated collective and aspirationally-individuated self-definitions of our historical moment is not that we (all, and each in our own ways) seek to create and sustain these distributed and functionally differential or dissociative Others of self-representation that we endlessly cultivate. What is more interesting is that we rarely notice, […]
Technology is always and already the cognitive hyper-extension of our minds and the many ways in which we may choose (or be chosen) to see ourselves through the diverse manifestations of this technology constitute the complex forms of introspective life that we (perhaps inadvertently) inhabit. The material extension and concrete presence of technology masks it’s […]
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Einstein’s Time ran out…
Einstein couldn’t quite close the loop on his unified field theory. One reading of a hybrid montage of Algorithmic Information Theory, Kolmogorov Complexity and the (Incompleteness) consequences of logical self-containment in any self-describing system suggests that we may end up with more attractive offices (or desktops) and blackboards but that we, too, will all end […]
Uncertainty is an indirect measure of the sum-over-all combinatorial possibilities of any definable (or intelligible) systems state space. The combinatorial possibilities of any non-trivially sophisticated – i.e. complex – state space are larger than any definition (or empirically-derived knowledge) of that same complex entity. Complete descriptions are impossible for the same essential reason that mathematical […]
In what ways does regulation, interdiction, surveillance and retrospective analysis or definition actually and inadvertently (re)produce the problems it seeks to diminish? Distinctions between legal and illegal are clearly and self-evidently important but in terms of comprehensive analysis and aspirations towards effective problem resolution they may also be a foundational misdirection. It is becoming clear […]
The return of the Wicked Problem. The problem of antibiotic resistance characterises a key symmetry of “wickedness” in any problem-space. That is, the activities, responses, interdictions and behaviours that might solve the problem are also those inadvertently exacerbate it. It is an endemic property of complex systems to seek optimal patterns of self-propagation. What at […]
Daedelus Kite 