Money is a tool, not an end in itself and the sooner we recognise this, the happier we will all be. We assert intrinsic value to things which possess no ultimate value beyond that which they acquire in the process of asserting it. Beyond this superficially stultifying tautological bootstrap of monetary self-significance, a sufficiently mature […]
Tag: uncertainty
Self-identity is a complex fiction.
Self-identity is little more than a complex fiction. Attempt to suspend your disbelief or any moral affront you might at first experience when engaging such a thought as that the foundation upon which you build a world of meaning and purpose is utterly and ultimately insubstantial. In fact, the vigorous spectrum of discomfort and aggression […]
Reality
Finding myself endlessly questioning the reality of all that with which I am presented, two things become clear. First, that which is true can often appear as a lie but in most cases a lie will assert infallible truth and this is in itself a key differentiator and indicator of that which can or should […]
Meaning is a Function of Probability
All meaning is a function of probability, of uncertainty or ambiguity and ignorance. As an adaptive or transient property of words, we can infer that not only is any particular or specific meaning not itself of the words to which we assert it belongs, but that meaning is an inverse property of all those other […]
In his classic Tao Te Ching (The Way of Life), Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu characterises the utility of what does not exist as being of profound importance. While there exist complex senses in which this illustrates a powerful gradient of logical thought, the fact is – and contrary to pretty much every single ideological position or […]
Incomplete Sketches of Mental Life
Our mental images are the incomplete sketches upon which we build a whole world and in their useful ambiguity and uncertainty we cultivate our freedom to grow.
Context: Would you trust an AI Operative in the field? This (quote from the above article) is an assessment of limitations in current AI: “…tend to respond well to what they’ve been trained to detect, but responses can become erratic when confronted with unexpected circumstances…” is in fact, and perhaps not coincidentally, an operational and […]
Decision-making: Ego is the Blind-spot
The single biggest barrier to good decision making is believing that the complexity of our world can be captured in singular lists or taxonomies which are easily communicated and become objects of salience in a landscape of information over-abundance to minds which are struggling to cope with all the noise. There is no one solution, […]
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 […]
No One Knows China
Context: Nobody Knows Anything About China It is of the nature of a science or an art of existential introspection (not to mention institutional knowledge) to seek the least-incorrect and lowest-energy, succinct model of an Object or Entity. The curiously mischievous enigma of such a psychologically-reflexive aspiration towards ordered pattern as #truth or fact – […]
No one is in control of life anywhere near so much as we might choose to believe. At some level we all know this but we also rarely choose to acknowledge it; it frightens us. Our endless fascination with pattern and order, with declarations of certainty and knowledge – these are at least in part […]
Conspiracy theories are interesting, if for the most part demonstrably false. In the integrated information environment we live in, conspiracies are the little sisters of fake news but it is all on a colourful spectrum from plausible fiction to complete and utter bullshit.