Category: "Systems Thinking"
Recognition Comes Too Late
One thing that I used to dread when I was working was someone asking me "what do you do at work then"? I suspect that I must have written about this somewhere, but the answer "I do modelling" is perhaps the most accurate and yet least informative one that I could give. Suddenly "modelling" is becoming quite the in-thing.
Categories: Systems Thinking, Complexity, Decision Making, Cognition, Worldview, ----------
This Time It Wasn't a Butterfly
Its Chaos Theory time. No - not when everything goes awry - although given the situation in the world today that could well be true(-ish). I'm talking about the mathematical version of chaos - small changes in initial conditions make huge differences in outcomes - another subject that I have talked about often. Its most 'famous' instantiation is perhaps Lorenz's "Butterfly Effect" - but as the title says we cannot blame the butterfly this time - or perhaps, more correctly, it is likely that no butterfly was involved - we cannot be sure.
Categories: Systems Thinking, Complexity, Cognition, Worldview, ----------
Democracy Is Great...
...but flawed! After writing my previous post I had a bit of a "lightbulb moment" regarding the democratic system. I am not saying for one minute that I have in any way solved the problem - but perhaps my lightbulb will shed a little luminance on it.
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Complexity, Decision Making, Worldview, ----------
More Than Politics
Its almost a year since my last post - and slightly strange that the trigger should be (nearly) the same. There have been a number of things that, perhaps, could have been written about in that time - maybe a few that should have been - but my thoughts never got written down. This does not mean that there is only one thread going through my mind these days - although the fact that the previous post was on a very similar topic may make it look like that.
Categories: News, Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Complexity, Decision Making, Worldview, ----------
Usandthemism
Maybe its not a real word - but it is perhaps a description of a 'disease' that seems to be increasingly threatening our stability all around the world. This, perhaps, is nothing new - whether it was sectarianism in Ireland or racism in the USA or apartheid in South Africa or countless other instances throughout history the disease of usandthemism has never worked out well. Perhaps it is all in our imagination, but it seems to be thriving in the current climate with plenty of people/groups happy to open themselves up to infection.
Categories: News, Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Complexity, Worldview, ----------
From Little Acorns
It is only a few posts back that I asked (rather tongue-in-cheek) what was the purpose of spiders. Last night I watched a programme that - whilst not answering that question - did illuminate rather well the whole interconnectedness theme that permeates many of my posts in this blog. What is more, it also went beyond the focus that I tend to have - i.e. the way in which we are connected to others - to illustrate that this interconnectedness is really widespread across species.
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Complexity, Worldview, ----------
What Are Spiders For?
Can I just start this by saying that nowhere in this post will you find a definitive and precise answer to the question posed in the title. The poor spiders are chosen for investigation not because they are particularly relevant, nor because they have a great and mysterious purpose, but rather because there is one that has been web building outside our kitchen window for weeks and every time I do the washing up I am staring at it!!
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Complexity, ----------
Everyone Knows
I've said it before - and I will probably say it again - it is really good when you get unexpected confirmation of things that you have written. In my recent post Tell Me About It I tackled the ever more prevalent problem of what is known as the "illusion of explanatory depth" with regard to our knowledge.
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Complexity, Cognition, Worldview, ----------
Tell Me About It
One thing that has informed my worldview over recent years was the discovery that there exist a whole host of cognitive biases that cause us to mis-perceive everything we see, hear and think. In a previous post I linked to an article that listed no less than 58 of these - and I have a poster on my desk which lists 20. (note that these both originate from the same website)
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Complexity, Cognition, Worldview, ----------
Faking It
There is a bit of a furore about the perceived influence of so called fake news on the result of the US election. On the one hand this strikes me as extremely funny - on the other it is rather worrying (on a number of levels).
Categories: News, Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Knowledge Management, Complexity, Cognition, Worldview, ----------
