Something I have noticed over the last few years of my journey through complexity theory and cognitive, cultural and communications systems is that knowing how (or even why) a something happens is not always of any particular use beyond pure intellectual fascination. Another way of saying this is that the world we inhabit optimally self-propagates […]
On yesterday’s visit to garner some domestic logistics I found myself drawn, as is quite natural for me, to a local bookstore. Rapidly yet calmly and with apposite politeness I navigated my way to the psychology and philosophy section, just next to popular science and astronomy. I tend to treat the pages of these books […]
Agreed, on learning to learn. Recursive utility. On the (later) observations of the benefits to that learning process of competitive socioeconomic systems, as mentioned, I partially agree. A degree of competition is healthy but, invoking a general principle of recursive utility again, when competitive adversarialism becomes a goal and an end in itself – as […]
Opposites are bound, entangled in ways our minds can never truly or unambiguously distinguish. This is why we make many of the mistakes we all do – again and again. The mind just exists and knows no true difference or polarity and failing to recognise our own essential wisdom, we all too easily fall into […]
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” – Stephen Hawking …and yet, how often is ignorance really little more than the illusion of knowledge? We can quite easily observe (very many) belief systems masquerading as factual, informed knowledge in all spheres of human life. Scientific knowledge is a […]
…and in knowing, in that endlessly self-inflected and hyper-inflating abstract space of iteratively refined and asymptotically unresolvable logical evolution that knowing, intelligence and material complexity are all aspects or dimensions and vectors of – we surely embody whatever plausible unifying and Universal principle exists as would ever be sufficient to generate this Cosmos, this life, […]
Some truths of inner self dawn upon us all a little later than they should. It was just a couple of years ago now that I found myself sitting in a meeting of technical professionals discussing some lofty software vision or planned improvement for the forever leaking bucket of logical or administrative and bureaucratic extensibility; […]
The most beautiful people and cultures exist far beyond any simple experience of desire for material acquisition or cosmetic attractiveness; it is a little melancholy that an implicit loveliness that comes with knowledge and wisdom is hardly the most celebrated property of any human being in a world (like this) that endures endless tides of […]
Ignorance (as a choice) of course comes with its own price tag, usually measured in surprise and complete nonplussed naivete as to the causes and consequences of thoughts, actions and statements as facts in the world; ironically by this complete (and more often wilful) stupidity, to unwittingly recreate the preconditions for most of this human […]
The language with which we speak and embellish our world with meanings is also the primary method and tool by which we obscure this world and each other from successful comprehension or communication and understanding or compassion and peace. This is irreducible. The more we structure systems of belief as knowledge, the more we obscure […]
We filter our unbounded mind through the grammatical constraints and conventional structures of language and communication but fail to notice that the one thing that language does most effectively is to reproduce itself. When this self-replication, itself the natural heir of all complex systems, acquires sufficient sophistication it abstracts itself away from us and rather […]
I recently received several boxes of books that had once belonged to my father. He died around 10 years ago now and these books seem to be the last traces of his life left to touch my world in any material manner. I had the strangest sensation and revelation as I stood there and stared, […]
