Presently in its planning phase, the WICI's is an interdisciplinary effort, located at the University of Waterloo. According to the website, its goals are to
- Develop a common, transdisciplinary language and methodology and an integrated, coherent theory for the study and pedagogy of complex adaptive systems; and,
- Apply these tools to stimulate rapid and beneficial innovation that will increase the resilience of complex adaptive systems worldwide – including social, political, economic, and ecological systems – that are currently under threat.
So far, the activities consist of a seminar series, which, innovation etc, has the talks recorded and uploaded to Google videos. You find there, among others, Stuart Kauffman speaking on "The Evolution of Economic Wealth and Innovation," Thomas Homer-Dixon on "Ingenuity Theory: Adaptation Failure and Societal Crisis," and if you have been waiting for a summary of Lee Smolin's last year's q-fin paper, here's his talk on "Symmetries in Economic Models and their Consequences".
Unfortunately, they have forgotten about another complex system currently under threat, the academic system. Which plays a central role for my virtual institute, and that for a good reason.
Sergeants should not plan battles, nor generals lead them. Central administration of complex problems cannot succeed,
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/comprom.htm
Success requires idealistic planning at the top and situational execution at the bottom. Contemporary politics is a perfect parity inversion, with equally inverted results battlefield disaster, suburban mortgage default, and public school atrocities.
Wow, Fredericton, New Brunswick is on the list of Intelligent Communities communities again this year. I'm really pleased to see Canada keeping up.
ReplyDeleteThank goodness for RIM and The University of Waterloo for pushing so many resources into the physical sciences (shame UofT isn't as on board).
Proclaiming Stockholm the "top intelligent community" really drives home what an unbelievable mess the world is in. :(
ReplyDeleteInstitutes, Universities, centres, communities, think tanks, committees, Forums, political parties, governments, associations, organizations, Foundations, corporations...
ReplyDeleteWith so many people planning our future we really have nothing to worry about.
This is my favorite line from Bee's links:
ReplyDelete"widening gaps between rich and poor"
How are they going to do anything about that? How can they defeat human nature?
Bad men win when good men do nothing. Replace "men" with "persons" for the updated version, thanks mostly to Rutgers High Energy Physicist Dan Friedan's mother, Betty, and her book "The Feminine Mystique." That book was THE book of the 20th century, it changed everything, because it changed America, and the world apparently depends on America, too much.
"widening gaps between rich and poor"
Bad men win when good men do nothing. OK then, when has that ever NOT been so? When have the wealthiest people ever not run any culture? They don't care about "the people" unless its their fellows at their country club, and then all they care about is a competition between them about who has the most. If they have to squeeze the poor to make more then so be it. Then the poor suffer, and they buy less from the rich.
But the rich are ignorant, and barely notice until a great depression hits and it slowly dawns on them that they're not making as much money as they used to, because they themselves squeezed too much.
"Greed ... for the lack of a better word, is good."
... Gordon Gekko, in "Wall Street"
No it's not.
And so it goes, year after decade after generation after century.
It's all as a wavefunction if you'll pardon the analogy ... unpredictable yet endlessly repeated.
On the bright side, Richard Branson will be renting hotel rooms in orbit starting in 2012, for a mere $4,000,000 per three day stay ...
http://news.galacticsuiteprocess.com/
... and Mike Lazaridis financed Perimeter, so not all rich guys aren't shamelessly greedy.
I just wish they weren't such a small minority.
Speaking of complex adaptive systems, it would be highly appropriate if the Waterloo Institute for Complexity & Innovation devoted some time to the underlying problem driving many societal ills world wide - overpopulation.
ReplyDeleteThat constitutes an important challenge and a chance to do something meaningful for humanity and the whole planet. Education is the key ingredient of the effort.
Global warming is only one symptom, and far from the worst, of the "Population Bomb".
This should be #1 on humanity's "Things To Be Fixed" list.
RLO
www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
"Develop a common, transdisciplinary language and methodology and an integrated, coherent theory for the study and pedagogy of complex adaptive systems;"
ReplyDeleteI wish to announce the founding of a new Institute for the Study of Pretentious Gibberish. Several countries competed to host this prestigious Institute, which will attract outstandingly vapid interdisciplinary sociological bullshitters from all over the globe, if not elsewhere. But Canada won.
It appears to me that many who posted are quite jealous of yet another institute created in Waterloo.
ReplyDeleteKinda reminds me of, some 3 decades ago, the boneheads at the US agency DARPA created an 'institute' within UCLA (U Calif at LA) to study 'dynamically self-healing and adjusting intelligent computer network systems that can span the globe'.
Sounded like 'pretentious gibberish' BS to the smartest guys in academia at the time.
Then a strange thing happened at the institute, a single invention, relating to that most useless of academic pursuit in protocol theory. Which permit the final realization of that impossible 'pretentious' dream. Which is the Net of course. Which the LHC, that machine of physics frontier, cannot even begin to function without the seed of invention from that UCLA institute.
Which some are using now to criticize the same kind of endeavor.
I don't recall criticizers and armchair intellectuals have ever been worth mentioning in the history books of accomplishments.
Robert: For all I know overpopulation, as the trend is going, is a problem that has been vastly overestimated. Education is only one ingredient to drive the reproduction rate down, also important are good medical conditions (the higher the risk to lose a child, the more children people make). Jeffrey Sachs in his book Common Wealth explains all the factors very well, and while "Complexity and Innovation" can subsume pretty much every problem of mankind it doesn't sound to me like exactly in the target of the WICI. Best,
ReplyDeleteB.
Hi Taxpayer,
ReplyDeleteAt least Stockholm is intelligent enough to have a subway system. Best,
B.
Hi Steven,
ReplyDeleteThe widening of gaps between the rich and the poor is a consequence of a misunderstanding in the working of our economic system, and could very well be avoided with a more scientific approach, provided the political system accompanying the economic one is democratic (which, globally, it isn't). Best,
B.
Hi Bee,
ReplyDeleteInteresting to learn that many things you spoke of in the past are now being looked into seriously enough as to have formal programs of study focused around them. I certainly agree that a more scientific approach must be taken when it comes to the economy, governance and so on. However, I've found that before one can study a problem to find asolutions, the first thing that must be done is to define what would be considered as the objectives for such. What I’m really saying is when it comes to industry, commerce, education or government ,what can be cited as the clear objectives or goals of humanity, other then of course simple survival.
I would then ask that before we sit down to seriously consider methodologies and solution we must first state our goals and objectives. Personally I think the greatest trouble with our times stems more from the lack of universal and inspirational goals, rather then any serious lack of a means to achieve them. The world into which I was born was one in which human desire and ingenuity was not so much seen as focused on the simple accumulation of personal security or wealth, yet rather a time when humanity itself thought it was on the verge where it might achieve things to have us as a species able to transcend being defined as the others as simply struggling to survive.
That is simply put, I feel we are in such desperate times today bieng as all the world can see are its problems, to the point that it no longer has either the time, will or imagination for its dreams. I would contend as one seldom gets much further then where one is headed,thst perhaps first we should decide where that might be, while asking if this stands as being not just simply enough to have us both as individuals and as a species to to continue to survive, yet rather enough that we should want to.
Best,
Phil
Phil wrote: "Personally I think the greatest trouble with our times stems more from the lack of universal and inspirational goals, rather then any serious lack of a means to achieve them."
ReplyDeleteHasn't Stephen Hawking given us a clear goal: Get off this 8000 mile rock we're on or we're doomed? Between ESA, NASA, China, India, Japan and now Branson with his orbital hotels, we're getting there, but are we getting there quickly enough?
I propose a lunar colony, we have the engineering expertise to build one now, and that's before the recent discoveries of water and caves on the Moon.
Such an endeavor will be pricey, but it will be inspirational. It will require a ton of labor (full employment anyone?) which will in turn require better education which as Bee says is key to solving so many problems.
Someday perhaps, if not in our lifetime or soon thereafter, we may have a great-granddaughter who is born and lives her entire life on Luna. Given the lower gravity she may be taller than the Dutch! From there it's on to Mars, Mercury, the asteroid Belt, the gas giant moons, and the stars.
How can Quantum Gravity help? Transmutation. Once we know how matter and energy work on the smallest scales, Engineers should shortly thereafter learn how to turn Lunar titanium into any other form of matter we desire, and Newton's dream of Alchemy will finally be realized.
I hear you Bee re the spreading of Democracy, that's step one. Step two is education as you said, but somewhere along the line someone has to convince the Arms Merchants and Energy Companies to turn their swords into plowshares. That will be the tough one. One argument would be to bring the word "profit" into an argument. Their ears perk up at that word.
I propose a lunar colony, we have the engineering expertise to build one now
ReplyDeleteBreakthroughs needed to live on the Moon or whatever low gravity environment concerns adaptation of the human body to live in such conditions -- this is exceedingly more difficult than any engineering problem (which are already demanding).
Steven:How can Quantum Gravity help? Transmutation. Once we know how matter and energy work on the smallest scales, Engineers should shortly thereafter learn how to turn Lunar titanium into any other form of matter we desire, and Newton's dream of Alchemy will finally be realized.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately I am embroiled in United States sovereignty claim because of the flag planted on the moon and various mirrors for measure as claims to land.
Setting up the infrastructure like Christine said is first and foremost. An elementary consideration as to how we can support that community on the Moon and provide for manufacture and production is why my companies move to land claims of the Aristarchus Crater and Surrounding Region.
If different countries can challenge Canada's sovereignty of it's north, then I should have no problem contesting any rights to United States sovereignty on the moon.:)
If we as a global community dispense with such borders then as a community it then belongs to all people, not just "capitalistic control." I as a mining company will bequeath all my lands to such an endeavor.
Best,
Steven: I wasn't so much talking about the spreading of democracy as there being global democratic institutions.
ReplyDeleteBee,
ReplyDeleteKnowing whether the population explosion [which can be empirically documented, if one looks up pop. vs time] is a huge threat to the foreseeable future of humankind and other species, or something we can successfully deal with as we go along, is a matter of wisdom and judgement.
Alas, today we have an over-abundance of analytical expertise - witness the geniuses at work in the finance industry or in string theory endeavors. What we seem to be badly missing are wisdom and judgment, which are more weighted toward right hemispheric conceptual abilities.
Regarding the severity [or not] of the population problem, E.O. Wilson has an objective and candid review of the situation in "The Future Of Life" [esp. Ch. 2, "the Bottleneck". This is not a jeremiad. Wilson calmly describes the reality of the situation.
We can wake up from our ignorance and our delusions and our self-interests. Or we can suffer the consequences. Our choice.
Hoping for a new paradigm,
RLO
www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
ADDENDUM:
ReplyDeleteYou mention good medical care as a crucial factor in decreasing excessive birth rates.
Here is an excellent case in point. You are right, but why is medical care often so poor? It is because the whole economy of the area is poor. And that is largely because the inhabitatnts have overpopulated the territory and have started decimating the natural resources upon which they rely [whacking down all the trees for firewood is like eating all your seed stocks].
So: over-population leads to environmental problems, which lead to economic problems, which lead to poor medical care, which leads to over-population.
See how it works? See how to break the cycle?
And this applies not just in highly under-developed countries. With slightly modified inputs the same basic anaysis applies in the good ol' USA, where we have just passed the 300 milion mark, I believe.
Time for action, not just words,
Time for a new paradigm.
RLO
www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Hi Steven,
ReplyDeleteYou cite one goal as having ourselves going to live on other worlds, that indeed I hope is ultimately the destiny of human kind. However, I feel some of the immediate goals need to be a little more down to earth than this. The first thing I feel must be done is to have us all to stop looking at the world only in terms of its problems and rather having it looked upon as one presenting challenges and goals. The key ingredient is to have ourselves first and foremost to refuse to be motivated primarily by fear. This has occurred to me resultant of the observation I made in my last comment, being the world I was born into being one largely motivated by the thought that the world of future held almost boundless promise. Today that has totally shifted to have people think they live in a world whose future holds only danger and ultimate ruin.
If one turns on the news or has discussions with other people this is easily recognized, for most of what is talked about are the problems and how dangerous the world has become. Then if you look at those times beginning just more than a half century ago, you will find in reality there were not less problems or danger, yet they were not seen as such, but rather as challenges and goals.
For instance world hunger and poverty was not perceived so much as a danger to mankind, yet rather more of its embarrassment that should be eradicated as to show ourselves worthy to be considered as compassionate and intelligent creatures. War was considered in a similar way. What was held as being the primary solution to this was to endeavour to rid the world of ignorance in having more involved in the pursuit of and dissemination of knowledge. This knowledge however is not what most considers it as being today, which is thought simply as an assembly of facts, yet rather instilling people with what’s required to consider, work out, realize and discover things for themselves.
The bottom line here is a when facts are mistaken for knowledge, this can never result in attaining any true understanding. That being facts can be related to being simply doctrine or dogma and can be easily altered to fit the purposes of those who would find this as an advantage.
So for me the first thing that must be realized and decided upon as a primary goal in having all attain a promising future. is to once again find it necessary to have ignorance dispelled from the world and return to the pursuit and spreading of knowledge, as being our primary tool by which this will be accomplished. That is I firmly believe if this is taken seriously, welcomed and embraced as our primary focus, everything else by its very nature and utility, will have the rest then fall into place.
Best,
Phil
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@ Christine - I understand the medical challenges, but haven't I read somewhere that Biology and therefore Medicine is 200 years ahead of Physics? I think that's reasonable, thanks to Chemistry thanks to the Exclusion principle, thanks to Physics (Wolfgang Pauli). WE worry about what "spin" actually is, but they don't. Good enough for them it works. In any event, the medical problems in weightlessness are severe compared to the one-fourth Earth gravity on Luna, which is why I recommended Luna over an orbital space station. Also, Cosmic Rays are a big problem but the solution seems simple: go underground.
ReplyDelete@Robert L. Oldershaw - Yup overpopulation is a big problem, I thought it was so obvious I didn't state it but I'm glad you did. I read somewhere we'll top off at 12 billion then Sociological feedback will take over in the form of pestilence, pandemics, and wars; an obviously horrible situation and further incentive to get the job going sooner rather than later.
@Bee - What 'global democratic institutions' did you have in mind?
@ Plato - Already they're arguing about ownership of the moon's surface ?! Thanks for that, but I believe when the first Lunar tourists revisit Tranquility Base, they'll note Neil and Buzz's little joke. Attached to the base of the American flag's pole is a white index card with a finger pointing straight up at the flag and the words: "Finders keepers" :-)
@Phil - I hear and agree with everything you just wrote, you're a good thinking man (should we expect any less from a Platonist?) and the greatest gift a person can give another in my opinion is to make them think, and you've given us much in that regard.
ReplyDeleteSince you're in Manufacturing though, I think you know what Operations Research in Business is. For others too tied down to the Math and Physics equations, it basically means getting all the ducks in a row needed to make something happen CONCURRENTLY, not "first things first." If business didn't operate that way, the US Space Shuttle and the LHC would never have been built. There's more to business than Finance and Accounting; it can get quite Mathematical.
So I agree that education should be job one ... but along with other things, simultaneously.
The fear-mongering thing you mention is quite correct, so who is behind that? Dick Cheney on the right and Rahm Emanuel on the left? Damn politicians. We hate having to work with them but we can't get anything done unless they're on board. Classic screw-up in point: the SSC. Its managers realized what I'm talking about ... too late.
Regarding education, I can only work on where I'm at, America. I live in a country where youth know more about celebutantes' lives than the name of the US Vice-President, or the name of a single member of our Supreme court. Bono reminds us there is a continent 7 miles south of Gibraltar in desperate need of help. Madonna and Oprah Winfrey are building schools there. Is that enough?
America can't police the whole world, Phil, we have our hands full at the moment; but Somalia, Zimbabwe, Congo, North Korea, Haiti, and especially Sudan (in 2 places!) are hurting.
What can we do to help? Because before you can educate, you need an ordered society, and that seems to be where most taxpayers' dollars are going.
All,
ReplyDeleteAt the risk of belaboring the point, I will briefly restate my case and then move on.
The "Population Bomb" is, IMHO, the "Mother of all Crises".
If we do not address this problem quickly, effectively and honestly, then all the talk about saving the world from global warming, economic collapse, illness, and violence, or untestable post-modern landscape physics, for that matter, is just grand-standing in front of "causes de jour". None of it matters in the long run if the primary underlying problem is left untreated.
For our political, religious, commercial and scientific leaders to continue to ignore the Population Bomb is profoundly irrational and a gross dereliction of their duties.
Speak out!
Demand a new paradigm.
RLO
www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Steve,
ReplyDeleteRe QG: GIGO. If you want to "transmute" matter you need a powerful accelerator or a bomb or a star.
Trying to "transmute" matter with pipe dreams and Platonic equations is, and always will be, hermetic alchemy.
Sorry about that,
RLO
www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
The "Population Bomb" is, IMHO, the "Mother of all Crises".
ReplyDeleteConvince the Japanese to believe it.
Currently, and for the next few decades, their crisis is the under-population bomb.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Steven,
ReplyDeleteYes you are correct that manufacturing demonstrates process in many instances is as dependant on what takes place concurrently as incrementally within systems, which relates directly back to the focus of Bee’s subject, being the of study complexity and its applications. My central point however is to remind that as in manufacturing one cannot even begin to layout the process before one knows what it is your attempting to build. However, it could be said of course there is an exception to that if we consider evolution being the process. If one were to ask what the end product of evolution is, this isn’t so clear, as its objective is more to insure the continuance of process itself , rather than any single product it forms.
However, in having said that, It should also come to be better understood and accepted by all, that our species has come to a crucial juncture in this regard, as having us being the only creatures of our world, who not only are the first to understand it is a product of this process, yet have for sometime had a huge impact upon it. What however is even more important being we have come to the point where we ourselves are no longer simply aspects of change, yet rather agents and modellers of it. Many would argue it is not our role to intercede in nature’s course and yet that would only serve to deny what we’ve become and what we are resultantly capable of.
So we stand at an important crossroad, where we either choose to deny our nature, or rather expand and improve resultant of it. What has to be recognized it’s our ability to think, create and choose that has gotten us this far and as I see it leaves us no alternative other than to expand this capability further, as to understand we can’t limit ourselves to be simply at best only custodians of nature, yet rather have become ones inherently responsible to decide and direct its course.
The knowledge we will gain through studies such as Bee’s here highlighted endeavours are indeed vital, yet only so much in having us know what outcomes is resultant for any directed course of action. Yet before we continue the actual journey much further, we need first to decide where we want to be headed. This must be seen for what it is, as not simply a decision mandated merely out of necessity, as evolution normally is assigned as being, yet also a question of desire, which for up until now only was considered by many to be the privy and domain of god(s).
“For we are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins; starstuff pondering the stars; organizing assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we sprang.”
-Carl Sagan-Cosmos
Best,
Phil
Phil wrote:
ReplyDelete" ... before we continue the actual journey much further, we need to first to decide where we want to be headed."
I've already decided thanks to Hawking's wisdom: off the planet.
"This must be seen for what it is, as not simply a decision mandated merely out of necessity, as evolution is normally assigned as being,..."
Truly, it is not necessary to survive. Dead species have no worries.
" ... yet also a question of desire, which for up until now only was considered by many to be the privy and domain of god(s)."
I have the desire to survive, and by that I mean our species, particularly my children and their descendants, since I know as an individual my time is limited. I see no godlike-ness in survival, Phil, it's more of an instinct. Have you read "The Moral Animal" by Robert Wright? Lots of Darwin and E.O. Wilson, yummy.
You'll always get brownie points from me if you quote Sagan, God I love that man. If only he weren't a pothead he'd still be with us. He was apparently irreplaceable in the pantheon of science popularizers. From Gamow to Asimov to Sagan to ... who now? More like whom now: Greene and Kaku, two string theorists, but it should be Smolin and Woit. Oh, well.
@ Tkk - loved your post, to which I would add: America in the late 60's, when we had zero population growth. That should make Robert Oldershaw happy.
@ Robert Oldershaw - Transmutation will be quite possible ONCE we have a handle on what Quantum Gravity actually IS. Currently we don't know, we're in the early speculative decades. Might need 5 more decades, maybe 10, but the groundwork is being laid now.Then it won't be GIGO, but TIDO (Titanium in, Diamonds out), or better yet water out. Diamonds are a bit tough to drink.
Btw, how accepted by the community is your Fractal Cosmology stuff, and why does self-similarity end on the Galactic scale? What about the Universal scale with the filaments, nodes, and voids? Does FG explain them?
Hi Robert L. Oldershaw
ReplyDeleteI had referenced your site quite early in my explorations when I seen how one could correlate orbitals with cosmological events.
How one may feel about Hermetic Alchemy is how one might feel about seeing this correlation?:)
IN essence the human state is still a quandary of emotive substances while the intellect seeks to travel far from home.
This wood cut shows how the mind seeks the very small in the vary large and is a break through of sorts, much like yours is even though all do not feel that way.
Best,
The Flammarion woodcut.
ReplyDeleteFlammarion's caption translates to "A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet..."
The widely circulated woodcut of a man poking his head through the firmament of a flat Earth to view the mechanics of the spheres, executed in the style of the 16th century cannot be traced to an earlier source than Camille Flammarion's L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. 163) [38]. The woodcut illustrates the statement in the text that a medieval missionary claimed that "he reached the horizon where the Earth and the heavens met", an anecdote that may be traced back to Voltaire, but not to any known medieval source. In its original form, the woodcut included a decorative border that places it in the 19th century; in later publications, some claiming that the woodcut did, in fact, date to the 16th century, the border was removed. Flammarion, according to anecdotal evidence, had commissioned the woodcut himself. In any case, no source of the image earlier than Flammarion's book is known.
Hi Steven,
ReplyDeleteI see no godlike-ness in survival, Phil, it's more of an instinct. Have you read "The Moral Animal" by Robert Wright? Lots of Darwin and E.O. Wilson, yummy.
The central difference between considering ourselves as creatures of purpose, rather than products of simply directionless randomness, being the first suggests us having somehow acquired an innate wisdom as to be able to act responsibly, such as to assure our future; while the latter has us to assume that only providence, resultant of luck is solely responsible for what we are and will in future be able to become and achieve.
Thus the former recognizes our ability to choose and chart our destiny, while the latter has us only able to have faith that our future will remain as to demonstrate in our continuance to inexplicably able to defy the odds. So we have a choice between considering it important to expand the means that lend us the ability to decide our future or rather maintain our faith it will, despite ourselves, be a long and marvellous one. I find this to presenting as being a paradox, when considered within the modern perspective.
Not even nothing existed then. No air yet, nor a heaven. Who encased and kept it where? Was water in the darkness there? Neither deathlessness nor decay. No, nor the rhythm of night and day: The self-existent, with breath sans air: That, and that alone was there. Darkness was in darkness found. Like light-less water all around. One emerged, with nothing on. It was from heat that this was born. Into it, Desire, its way did find: The primordial seed born of mind. Sages know deep in the heart: What exists is kin to what does not. Across the void the cord was thrown, The place of every thing was known. Seed-sowers and powers now came by, Impulse below and force on high. Who really knows, and who can swear, How creation came, when or where! Even gods came after creation's day, Who really knows, who can truly say when and how did creation start? Did He do it? Or did He not? Only He, up there, knows, maybe; Or perhaps, not even He.
- Creation Hymn - Hindu Rig Veda (written at least five thousand hears before either Georges Lemaître, Carl Sagan, or Alan Guth)
Best,
Phil
Hi Phil,
ReplyDeleteI agree that before one can aim one has to define a goal. There are cases in which the way is the goal, but it's not always. And I would agree that this is a case where defining a goal would be beneficial, for it's a topic so vast one can easily get lost in websites featuring fashionable words.
There is however a practical hurdle which is that universities and non-profit organizations often shy away from clearly defining their goals for the risk of appearing opinionated or politically biased.
As I have said several times before, the problem comes from insufficiently distinguishing scientific theory from ideology. Unfortunately this has in the past not been done well, and still today it isn't done clearly even when possible (Listen to any politician. can you tell how much of what he says is backed up by research?) However, I think the solution can't be to avoid clear words on the risk of offending those who can't distinguish both. Best,
B.
Hi Robert,
ReplyDeleteWhat we seem to be badly missing are wisdom and judgment... We can wake up from our ignorance and our delusions and our self-interests. Or we can suffer the consequences. Our choice.
I agree with you, but how do you wake up people numbed down by scary stories of catastrophes and disasters in their press, people who proclaim they aren't interested in politics, base their decision on believe and fashion, and pray if they have a problem? Best,
B.
Hi Bee,
ReplyDeleteI have long been resided to the fact that politicians refrain from revealing their true position and thus I find it an insult to our intelligence they throw around words such as transparency as if they truly believed in such concepts. However, when it comes to academia to conduct itself the same I find this so counterproductive and hypocritical to be equivalent to blasphemy; as from where elese are we to seek some represention and representives of the truth.
Best,
Phil
Just a follow up note here for article referred earlier of Robertslinked from 2004
ReplyDeleteSometimes whether we like to think about it, or not, there is a "geometrical propensity" for how one can look at the basis of experience. A preferred psychological model or genus figure, Linde's mandalic flower map(E8) that implies a very micro-perspective in abstraction of the quantum world through it's degrees of freedom toward materialization. Of the person. Of experience.
This is what is fundamental about cosmological locations, Tegmark's universe, just as it is "isometrically with gravity" and planet formation?
So in this respect, a person begins looking and moves from a core abstract mapped position, then to characteristic political valuations about society.
It appears the nature of the person is becoming diversified in the perspective they garner about life from a very abstract position.
How common is this? I see many scientists moving beyond their trade. Ingenuity and Innovation?
Best,