What, Why & How do we Know ?
… Who doesn’t work with his hands. He looks at you once, You know he understands. [Peter Gabriel – Lamb Lies Down …] Interesting to see “Shop Class as Soul Craft” by Matthew Crawford is making a buzz. The parallels to Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance are noted in reviews, but not apparently … Continue reading “Never trust a man …”
I keep pointing out that the World Wide Web model of information is enlightened enough to actually have trust at the top of the stack – ie however information is organized and presented on the web (or anywhere for that matter) it ultimately depends on trust in people in enforceable authority, even if the expert … Continue reading “More on Trust”
Well actually, no we don’t not without some reason to do so. Been through the cycle of debate with the family recently about business travel …. I’m in the oil, gas & energy business, I travel a lot, air-travel is very energy intensive, the global energy business is approaching crises in consumption and supply security, … Continue reading “In Communication of Information We Trust”
This is a version of my Rules of Engagement / Rules of Discourse page. Being updated to make it more explicitly obvious that these are also the rules of free-speech, more generally than lip-service to “freeze peach”. The mantra being parroted by followers of Elon Musk – topical in 2024 because he made it his … Continue reading “The Rules of Freeze Peach”
(Just a holding page for content starting Nov 2023 on establishing a properly skeptical freethought environment. Note a page, not a post, and no public link yet.) My (relevant) bio: Born 1956 / raised NE England – Cultural Christian (naïve atheist) from childhood. Humanist from age 22/23 (Humanist wedding aged 25 in 1981, etc.) 45+ … Continue reading “Freethought Project”
Agency is the subject of this talk by Kevin Mitchell (Trinity, Dublin) outlining the arguments in his upcoming book “Free Agents – How Evolution Gave Us Free Will” (Oct 4th) – already on order on my book list. Been following and plugging his thinking into mine for a couple of years now, since his previous … Continue reading “Kevin Mitchell’s Agency”
The Santiago Boys #EMFAMBE Audio documentary (9 hours!) about Stafford Beer’s “Cybersyn” project in Allende’s Chile by Evgeny Morozov(*1) – “new” undated. (Hat tip to Ben Taylor on Mastodon / Twitter / LinkedIn – and was reviewed last week 22 July 2023 by John Bartlett in the Grauniad.) Amidst all the left-right international and corporate power … Continue reading “Stafford Beer the Hippy?”
As well as his use of religious language throughout – bible, gospel, god(s) – we can forgive J R Patterson’s focus on long-distance motorcycling since, like Robert Pirsig, he too is a writer “with dirt under his fingernails”. In his latest piece, “The Biker’s Bible” published in New Humanist, he compares notes of his own … Continue reading “Quality on the Road Again”
[Work in Progress – Draft will be edited without notification.] [Feedback appreciated on the “See / Refs” – where more are needed? Meantime all those indicated will be elaborated and worked into the text. And obviously on the intelligibility of the text so far. Drafting arose out of the “Three Essays” post, particularly “Algorithms for Humans” and … Continue reading “The Information Ontology Metaphysics”
[Draft Holding Post – links being added.] Cybernetics, like anything else, evolves, so I’m never talking about specific systems theory(ies). I’ve described my own journey every which way through systems engineering to systems thinking under the cybernetic umbrella. I have a nothing new under the sun attitude to any topic, whereby changing language may change … Continue reading “General Systems Theory(ies)?”