What, Why & How do we Know ?
[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 … Continue reading “Information Ontology of Mind and Body”
Richard Emerson invited me onto his podcast earlier in the week. We’ve met Richard here before on Psybertron, his personal “Renaissance” book and his “Ancient Worlds” project discovering – rediscovering – the value in ancient wisdom, with Dante’s “cosmology” being the poster boy. Apart from having a shortlist of topics before we started – and … Continue reading “Rebalancing the Future”
Just place-holders for pieces – or indeed whole comms campaigns (?) – that need to be created: Most generally because there are enormous persistent misunderstandings within science & technology and with public understanding of it, and specifically (topically given Musk!) with socially degenerate aspects of ubiquitous social media. In no particular order, they’re all connected … Continue reading “Three Essays on Brains & Minds”
Subir Sarkar was interviewed by Sabine Hossenfelder last month, but I didn’t capture the link then: Interesting content in the “Einstein was right when he said he was wrong” domain when it comes to the cosmological constant. Pointing to to some radically “new” ideas being needed to fix anomalies in physics. (That’s new as in … Continue reading “Subir Sarkar”
A quickie to capture this link: Very impressed watching this recorded Web3 Foundation talk by Michael Zargham. He’s a name I came across from making contact with the “Active Inference Lab”. I already know Anatoly Levenchuck and Karl Friston on the AIL Advisory Board and discovered that Zargham is another board member. (I’m intending to … Continue reading “Michael Zargham on Cybernetic Infrastructure”
The feeling of the brain being actively engaged with too many thoughts, to properly address any new issue, never mind any of the existing issues, is a common feeling – for me anyway. Once you have several mental balls in the air that are connected to some strategy to get something delivered productively, it’s impossible … Continue reading “Mental Switching Costs”
I mentioned in my review of Anatoly Levenchuk’s “Systems Thinking 2020” having some subsequent dialogue about common ground in other areas of the Psybertron agenda. A significant overlap is the work of Karl Friston (Free Energy Principle / Markov Blankets / Emergent Organism / Active Inference) in my reading of Mark Solms, and in Levenchuk’s … Continue reading “The Emperor’s New Markov-Blankets?”
Definition as a Coffin? “Hold your definition” is a plea by philosopher Daniel Dennett, often cited here on Psybertron, when dealing patiently with his scientific friends. Any discourse that starts with apparently clear definitions, manipulated solely by logic, is inherently limited by the fit between the history of those definitions and future of reality. At … Continue reading ““Definition as a Coffin” – Cybernetics to Systems Thinking”
Just completed Chapters 7, 8 & 9 of the Hidden Spring, having been looking forward to 7 when I finished 6, here. Wow, this is good stuff from Solms. The contents / subjects … Free Energy Principle – Homeostasis, “self-evidencing” in self-organising systems, statistical thermodynamics, entropy and information, efficiency. Markov-blankets between self-organised layers, two-way / … Continue reading “Before Returning to the Cortex”
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”