A brief note today, about something to look into more. Could the energy consumption of a civilization be a measure of its complexity? If so, we could easily say that our civilization is becoming more and more complex - since we are consuming more energy all the time. There is something intriguing about this measure… Continue reading Energy and complexity (Philosophy of Complexity II)
Category: In English
Progress and complexity (Philosophy of Complexity I)
I have heard it said, and have argued myself, that complexity is increasing in our societies, and that evolution leads to increasing complexity. I have also known that this is an imprecise statement that needs some examination - or a lot of examination - in order to understand exactly how it can be corroborated or… Continue reading Progress and complexity (Philosophy of Complexity I)
A good, but skeptical, note on Sandboxes
The idea of regulatory sandboxes is getting more traction as the legislator is trying to grapple with regulating new technology while still allowing it to develop in unexpected ways. These sandboxes present a number of problems (i.a. how do you graduate from them?), but are worth thinking about. This is a useful piece with criticism… Continue reading A good, but skeptical, note on Sandboxes
What a year it has been
As I return to this notebook, or collection of musings, I find that everything has changed. Not in the dramatic way of everything has changed but in the rather more subtle way of everything has changed. A shift in the way we see ourselves and the societies we are in. The day before yesterday I… Continue reading What a year it has been
The epistemology of fake news
Doubt comes too cheap. The idea that you are allowed to suspend belief and doubt anything without an effort or valid reason is key to understanding the challenge to our democratic discourse. When you doubt something you should really have to show why you doubt it, and not just why you believe something.
Hartmunt Rosa and the acceleration of our lives (Rosa I)
Hartmunt Rosa has observed, in numerous essays and texts, that it is useful to analyze our age with a mental model built around acceleration. He finds that we accelerate along three different axes — technological, social and subjective — and that this acceleration has profound impact on the way we can live our lives. It is, for example, hardly… Continue reading Hartmunt Rosa and the acceleration of our lives (Rosa I)
Models of speech (Fake News Notes XI)
One thing that has been occupying me recently is the question of what speech is for. In some senses this is a heretical question - many would probably argue that speech is an inalienable right, and so it really does not have to be for anything at all. I find that unconvincing, especially in a… Continue reading Models of speech (Fake News Notes XI)
Jottings III: the problem with propositions
In a previous post we discussed computational vs "biological thinking" and the question of why we assume that chunking the world in a specific way is automatically right. The outcome was that it is not obvious why the sentence (i) Linda is a bank teller and a feminist should always be analysed as containing two… Continue reading Jottings III: the problem with propositions
Jottings II: Style of play, style of thought – human knowledge as a collection of local maxima
Pursuant to the last note, it is interesting to ask the following question: if human discovery of a game space like the one in go centers around what could be a local maxima, and computers can help us find other maxima and so play in an "alien" way -- i.e. a way that is not… Continue reading Jottings II: Style of play, style of thought – human knowledge as a collection of local maxima
Jottings I: What does style of play tell us?
If we examine the space of all possible chess games we should be able to map out all games a really played look at how they are distributed in the game space (what are the dimensions of a game space, though?). It is possible that these games cluster in different ways and we could then… Continue reading Jottings I: What does style of play tell us?