Jumping To Conclusions
In the last few days I have seen two really good examples in social media of people bringing their own biases to discussions and replying to what they thought was written rather than what was actually written. In both cases it made them look just a bit foolish.
Categories: Philosophical, Cognition, Worldview, ----------
Are We Less Smart Than We Think We Are?
I am often intrigued by the type of post that appear on Social Media that 'shout' "only the smartest can get this right" or "only people with high intelligence can do this". My gut feel is that these were simply 'click-bait' - trying to draw you in with the promise of proving that you are 'better' than many.
Categories: Fun, Learning, Decision Making, Cognition, ----------
Does Reality Matter?
One recurrent theme of my blog entries is the difficulty we each experience separating reality from fiction. I don't mean that we are consciously deluding ourselves - although I expect that we all do that from time to time - rather that we simply lose track of what is real as against what is "made up".
Categories: Philosophical, 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, ----------
The "System" Is Showing Its Limits
It is somewhat ironic that having been in the USA at the time of the EU referendum and, therefore, fielding questions from many Americans about "why" the vote went the way it did I should this morning wake to the news that they now have their very own version of the same type of result. The similarities between the build ups to the two elections and the way in which it eventually played out are eerily similar - albeit driven by two completely different agendas.
Categories: Systems Thinking, Complexity, Decision Making, Worldview, ----------
On This Day
Claudius met an untimely end; The whirlpool galaxy is discovered; The cornerstone of the "White House" is laid; The Greenwich meridian is set as 0 degrees; Paddington Bear makes his debut. The advent of the world wide web - and specifically wikipedia - enables us to get details of what happened "on this day" in history.
Unexpected Links
A "like" by one of my LInkedIn connections highlighted an "interesting" coming together of an assortment of things that (probably) is only "interesting" (or perhaps significant) to me. The reason that it has made its way into the blog is not so much because of the article itself but because it is such a good illustration of things "coming together" in a specific way, for a specific person.
Grey Areas Everywhere
In two posts last month around the time of the Olympic Games I wrote about the difficulties that are presented when it is necessary to impose some set of rules and regulations to prevent 'cheating' - specifically with regard to so-called "performance enhancement".
Categories: Philosophical, Sport, Complexity, Worldview, ----------
A Bit of Speculation
My eye was caught by an article on the BBC website - as much as by the fact that it seemed to be reporting "old news" as by the headline itself. However, having navigated to the page I discovered that it was, indeed, a good piece - if slightly spoiled by being rather one-sided.
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Complexity, Worldview, Books, ----------
A Lesson Learned (on being stuck)
I've started on my newest online creation - partially inspired by the making memories series of posts here - to create a bit of a "life history" - a treasure trove of memories (probably real and imagined if you have read some of my previous writing on the subject) - a pot-pourri of little highlights (and possibly some lowlights) of my life.
Categories: Welcome, Philosophical, Cognition, Worldview, Books, ----------
