How in trying to “save the environment” most people choose symbolic energy savings, instead of responding to what “the experts” point to as having real effects, is the theme of the NY times blog “Dot Earth” post Misperceived Paths to Energy Savings.

It’s sadly also “the experts” themselves who are the very worst offenders, in truth, constantly recommending energy savings for their business value, but by making energy use more profitable also stimulate the economy to use more. I occasionally try to get Andy Revkin, the author of the blog, to question his own assumptions… Continue reading Misperceived Paths to Energy Savings →

My friend George posted a good article on modeling the approaching decline of energy returns on energy invested in the earth (EROI), and I mentioned “the Catch”.

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One of the difficulties with complex theoretical models is that they all need to assume the parts are following rules.

How economies work, of course, is with ”animate learning-bots” (that’s “us”), all exploring the world and discovering new relationships all the time. That’s why I tend to take the limiting conditions nature displays as a guide, based on her own synthesis of the whole process (like the switch from multiplying to diminishing returns on the success of the search for stuff). Continue reading “The Catch”, why you read nature’s models →

A friend in an environmental discussion group proposed his favorite list of hopeful, but quite unproven technology solutions for the energy crisis, making the usual false assumption that the problem is a lack of energy resources. That causes the further error of not considering what consequences the solution would have… if it worked.

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All,
There’s a rather interesting “Catch 22” in trusting hopeful but unproven technological fixes. They raise a promise you can’t check out the consequences of. The usual hidden consequence is the problem. Even if they work wonderfully to solve the problem they are targeted to solve, then they expand the economy and multiply all our other problems… Continue reading “Fixes” that look great and fail better. →

I was pointed to Michael Herman’s Open Space World, and his introduction to his Open Space group learning methods. We exchanged a couple emails and it occurred to me there’s a simple way to combine his and my learning process models, his using the four organizational dimensions of purposes, actions, stories & structures and mine as the dimension of natural progress in time. Continue reading Group learning – marking evolutionary time →

Geo Mobus’ post on his blog “Question Everything”, on “Where is the Economy Going” left little to question but that the choices for the physical economic system we’ve called home for a couple centuries is either down or faster down.

It does seem true enough, comparing the beliefs that led us to our present global impasse, and deep denial of how different the present physical world really is from those beliefs. But there are also other questions. This is a response to the ideas of “GaryA” and “Florifulgurator” yesterday, about other things to do than cling to our dead end. Continue reading Immersing ourselves in nature’s intelligence? →

I had pointed my friend Steve Kurtz to my physics theorem, the Law of Continuity, showing why the conservation of energy implies physical systems need a “little push” from other events on a smaller scales of organization to begin or end. His good question gave me an opportunity to explain that, and a bit more of what the theorem is really about. He replied “Excellent explanation. Thanks”

His first comment was:

“I’m not up on the math. But a seed contains stored, embodied solar sourced energy. So I don’t see any mystery there. The mystery (to me) is the life propulsion…the apparent will to live and expand niches, and replicate.  Continue reading Seed events, the dyad powering butterfly effects →

There’s been a fascinating discussion on the Monbiot Discussions of the Biblical model of nature as controlled by an authoritarian master, given to humans for us to “be fruitful and multiply” our “dominion” over and “domesticate” (both English words from the same Latin and older roots), and so treat as part of our household and subject our ever increasing control. … I liked this reply I made to Lila on the subject.

Lila,
But isn’t the biblical admonition precisely to treat the world as our servant, and to “domesticate” everything as fast as humanly possible, AS IF following an instruction from a profit maximizing ruler (calling himself God) speaking to his domestics? The mystery is why we believed it in the first place and clung to it for thousands of years…, given how completely that story contradicts the visible evidence that nature works by things taking care of themselves and finding ways to complement and fit together.

The emotional problem humans have is what’s hard to peg down, whether it’s just being so easily seduced by self-importance or what. The clear evidence is that we DO define economic stability as our economy’s rate of exponential expansion, and are all admonished to follow the Biblical model in fact, and be good domestics serving those in power by becoming ever more productive in advancing their aim of taking every more control of everything in sight, and get showered with gifts for it.

That we don’t see where those growing gifts come from (AND even most “greens” are really not curious about the fairly easily traced connections) is the puzzle. The only satisfying explanation I’ve come to is that consciousness presents our cultural roles AS reality, and we fail to recognize that consciousness is actually a cultural reconstruction of what our senses tell us, following our culture’s traditional models.

It does seem to fit, doesn’t it? That our cultural ideal is still to behave like the domestics of some dead kings from impossibly long ago.. to get showered with approval from all around.

phil

In comments on a discussion of “economics as if people and the earth mattered” in a NEF blog post Clever thinking about how we think, Dave Chester offered a concise statement on the scinetific method of reasoning, concluding:

The most famous saying which fails this test is “I think therefore I Exist” (Descarte). Better to claim that because I exist I can think.

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Yes, the phrase attributed to Descarte seems to omit whether the word “think” is referring to the physical processes of thought, or the logic. Those certainly exist in rather different senses at least, since the physical process doesn’t work by logic and the logic can’t work anything unless the person uses the physical processes at their mind’s disposal. Continue reading Mind body problem revisited… →

There’s been a lively exchange on GRIST around “Who’s to blame for the Gulf oil gusher?”

MimiK on 10 JUN 2010 8:59AM said:

EVERYONE: This whole issue, and ALL the comments, are all stuck on the same problem: the gap between what we THINK about what we are doing what we are actually DOING.

There is a LOT of theory from a lot of corners, from Buddhism to cognitive brain science to social psychology and more, that each in their own way come to the same conclusion: Human beings have enormous difficulty seeing clearly and truthfully how we are actually acting in life.

We do three things — all of us, every human brain — that make us all LOUSY at the “blame game.” First, we all have a blind spot in the brain that does not see how we are actually acting. Second, there is a gap between what we say about how we are acting and how we are acting — a tendency to believe our own press rather than look clearly and bravely at what we are actually doing. Third, the human brain always UNDER estimates how tragic something is.

So, if you’re going to play the blame game, play it with awareness of our common human brain handicaps: blindspot to how we are actually acting; gap between our words and our actual actions; and chronic underestimation of tragedy. …. Take it from there, people.

I replied:

MimiK,  There’s another dimension to our common cognitive blind spots that helps too. That’s the observable gap between the systems of our thinking and the systems of the physical world…

Consciousness tends to equate reality with the systems of our thinking and so greatly over simplifies and looses track of what the natural systems “explained” may be doing. I’ve written a few things on it from a natural science of systems view, as an inherent hazard of explanation. Once we have explanations for something we tend to think of the natural world as if operating BY our explanations. Of course, it never did or will, so we need to think of explanation as just a coping strategy and remain open to the real mysteries of any subject addressed.

I also approach that by having a list of natural processes that seem to have constant explanation, but usually represent complex systems that are in the process of becoming something else. Basically it’s the four types of accumulative growth systems, recognized from their characteristic feedbacks, (++, -+, +-, –) = (¸¸.•´ ¯ `•.¸¸). They may look regular but indicate complex processes that are turning into something else.

fyi: more at www.synapse9.com or “What Wandering minds need to know” or “Models Learning Change”