Marinella posted regarding research on self-organization at NECSI (the New England Complex System’s Institute LinkedIn forum): “I’ve found this research really interesting, as it goes (finally!) against our deepest beliefs in human (in) ability to collaborate and be socially engaged without specific behavioral rules. People behave socially and ‘well’ even without rules Fundamentally people behave in … Continue reading Self-organization as “niche making”
There seems to be no news yet. The recent 40th anniversary meeting at the Smithsonian on the publication of “The Limits to Growth” and the clearly most urgent of our many dire environmental dilemmas of our time, with little exception, has gotten almost no attention in the mainstream popular or environmental press. So you’ll … Continue reading Approaching 30 days from the 40th Anniversary
The theme of the AAAS meetings next week in Vancouver is “Flattening the World: Building the Global Knowledge Society”. Reality math combines the information we do have, with what definably remains missing from our view. There’s a method of “reality math” that allows “whole system accounting“, to combine both what we know and what we … Continue reading Could “reality math” help the AAAS??
This is an exchange with Frits Smeets on Azimuth, John Baez’s wide ranging mathematical physics blog. The original topic is the 12/13/11 “What’s up with the solar transition“, and why isn’t it happening when seeming so “logical” to so many. See Also: SEA Energy Accounting: far more holes than cheese 3/9/12 – Self-organization as “niche … Continue reading Are the holes in your map helping you read the territory?
A response to today’s On The Media program (WNYC 2/4/11) on how social media is taking over our lives, pushed by perpetual growth driven giants like Google and Facebook, not to mention Apple. Great program today, important subject. Your conclusion that social media will now always be a global presence in our lives needs a … Continue reading Did we turn “Big Media” into “Big Brother” ?
From a Pharaoh hardening his heart to confused children refusing to budge… complexly organized systems pushed to their limits often display emergent rigidity. Things that develop their organization by new parts being added to existing ones, develop accumulative designs that become harder to change over time. It leads to organizational rigidity, that can either be seen as inhibiting change or enabling … Continue reading “Organizational Rigidity” as a natural limit of growth
How improving productivity always reliably made thing cheaper and easier to do, is ending. It naturally ends as any direction of progress does, if taken to its limit. Now we see our “productivities” coming into costly conflict with each other and the environment, making everything more costly and complicated, the exact opposite of what we … Continue reading Deep Change in Reality – Reversing Productivity of Productivity…
My response to George Mobus’ last reply to me, got a little long, so I only posted the first few paragraphs as a comment on his discussion of “The Goal – Episode I: The Basic Requirements” ++++++++++ Can we shut down the system for repairs? Well, shutting down the world for repairs would be conceptually … Continue reading Can we shut down the system for repairs?
What’s the cost of increasing investment when you’re already over-invested…?? Many organic and environmental systems display talents for taking care of themselves we could use, using internal steering to avoid approaching hazards and be responsive to change. In studying how they do it one comes across some wonderful new lines f practical of environmental systems … Continue reading Defining netGDP for steering a planet
There’s a now famous study of progress in human welfare, with a common glaring flaw. The flaw interestingly betrays how humans are dazzled by positive information, and quite forget what we’re looking at. Hans Rosling has traveled the world, presented at the TED talks many times and raised huge amounts of money for his work, based … Continue reading The telling mental gap at “Gapminder.org”