The company name “Autonomy” mean anything to you?

As I consolidate my formal writing I’m always referring back to my Pysbertron blog post archives from earlier, and forever surprising myself with things I’d written and forgotten. Given that’s 25 years of evolution not only in my writing but in any chance any current readers are likely to have read them, I’ve been tempted to start a series of reposts of ones I’d made earlier. Anyway, today I’m finally doing one … from November 2001, below

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QUOTE

Scoffing at Autonomy

From: CorporateInfo (TelegraphHillSF@yahoo.com)
Subject: Expert scoffs at Autonomy software
Newsgroups: comp.ai.nat-lang
View: (This is the only article in this thread) | Original Format
Date: 2001-08-23 21:49:53 PST

At Genentech headquarters today in South San Francisco, there was a seminar on “Metadata & Controlled Vocabularies: What Are they and What is their Value?” given by Amy Warner, faculty member in Information Architecture at UMichigan, Genentech’s consultant on taxonomy creation and a well-known corporate consultant on information technology. Dr. Warner had a final slide with “Autonomy”and “Semio” written on it, and here’s what she said:

“I always get asked, aren’t there automated tools to build
taxonomies? There is some ‘Hiearchy Generation Software’ available, but it generally relies on the principal of Collocation, not
aboutness, which is preferable. Collocation simply means statistical
clustering. Two examples are Autonomy and Semio. Beware of these.
They don’t work very well. They make many promises, but Collocation only works some of the time. I shouldn’t bash, but I haven’t talked to a company yet that likes Autonomy, including those that have bought it. In many cases they are overselling their product.”

UNQUOTE

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[From an AI discussion group notice – but I digress.]

I only quote-posted this opinion about Autonomy at this point in 2001, just a month or so since I started my research and blogging “Psybertron” project, because we had formed very similar opinions about how clueless and misguided they were when evaluating them for business-use sometime back in 1996/97.

Fascinating how controversial – politically corrupt and immoral – they became in later years – you only had to ask 🙂 Remember their name … yet? Wikipedia is your friend.

In short they were sued, after acquisition by Hewlett Packard, for fraudulent accounting and overvaluation, “substantially” lost their civil case (the thick end of $8bn valuation), dragged Tories David Cameron and George Osborne into their scandal thanks to some dodgy Brexit-motivated dealings, and came to a sticky end when celebrating their acquittal on criminal charges in the US.

In August 2024, Lynch celebrated his acquittal in the San Francisco trial with a cruise on the family superyacht, Bayesian. He was joined by his wife and daughter and nine invited guests, including two lawyers from his defense team. In the early hours of 19 August, the yacht sank off the coast of Sicily, outside the port of Porticello, during a powerful storm, with 22 people on board.^[62] Lynch, his teenage daughter Hannah, four guests, and one member of the crew died.^[63] Chamberlain died one day later, on 20 August 2024, three days after he was hit by a car while out jogging in Stretham.^[64]

Wikipedia

Like I say – you only had to ask.

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My take on McGilchrist in 2025 is still essentially everything I picked-up from his 2021 “The Matter With Things” with its Sacred Turn and the added interest of his much earlier 1982 “Against Criticism“. His thinking is an important, embedded part of my own story at several levels.

Since TMWT was published there was also a Channel McGilchrist forum run by people on his behalf, but I let my subscription lapse because, frankly, the interchanges didn’t seem well enough informed on Iain’s work as a whole and most people seemed to be plugging their own pet theories, with little proper dialogue. Since then apart from specific talks and interviews by Iain I’ve taken my eye of that ball.

What I hadn’t noticed (or remembered) was that Iain had started a SubStack called The Matter With Things. I’ve had a dormant SubStack since it first existed in 2021 and used to cross-post my Psyberton content there, but let that lapse too – I really have zero interest in monetizing (yuk!) my writing. Anyway, the only reason I noticed Iain had a SubStack was because today someone posted some concerns about it in Channel McGilchrist – a link that only works for paid subscribers, but here-below the intro from the notification email from Peter Barus:

‘I’m reeling after reading Iain’s recent repostings. For a fuller discussion of this, I’ve created another group, “Hannah Spier Psychobabble”. I did not comment on Iain’s substack, after reading some of the comments there, hoping for a sober conversation about what seems a shocking 180-degree whiplash turn on Iain’s part. And there’s a lot at stake, for me at least, as I’m just finishing a book that cites TMWT everywhere. Contemplating a rewrite. What the hell, it only took ten years to get to the last chapter.

As Annie Dillard wrote in “The Writer’s Life”:

The part you must jettison is not only the best-written part; it is also, oddly, that part which was to have been the very point. It is the original key passage, the passage on which the rest was to hang, and from which you yourself drew the courage to begin.’

(Guessing it’s this Peter Barus – WordPress and SubStack? Interesting in itself.)

Obviously the “shocking 180 degree whiplash turn on Iain’s part” caught my eye. What the? So I did some digging:

Long story short – Iain’s been posting on his SubStack since February this year – mostly elaborations and commentaries on content / chapters from TMWT – On Sept 17th / 18th & Oct 1st he recommended and further discussed a “Psychobabble” SubStack post from Norwegian psychiatrist Hannah Spier.

So far as I can tell her post is analytical and speculative without any prescriptive conclusions, but expresses many different thoughts about motivations behind violent conflict in our perplexing time of polycrises / metacrisis. Interesting is all I would say on a first read. BUT she used the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk as an example.

Not surprisingly doing psychoanalysis in the context of a specific political lethal conflict has produced the polarised partisan political responses of our social media ecosystem. More negative heat than light – which has disappointed Iain.

I can’t for the life of me see where Iain has done a 180? Maybe the people expressing the concerns are part of that political polarisation. Anyway – just a holding post – I’ll need to do a closer read of all three posts and comment threads starting from the one linked above.

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PS – I may in due course migrate my ongoing writing to SubStack or Medium entirely – once I have a secure fixed navigable archive version of my WordPress “Psybertron” – but that’s no trivial condition, with so much invested in 25 years of blogging in WordPress, and, did I mention, so many other writing priorities.

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Really just a housekeeping post, based on re-reading some earlier “Annual Edge Question” responses and recognising that the so-called “Last Edge Question” in 2018 has proven to really be the last, and brought the 20 year annual run of John Brockman’s “Edge” and his writer agency clients, to a close.

[My 2025 responses to many of the 2018 “Last Edge Questions” below, following the sad story of the scandal and the list of contributors.]

Ironically, the last collection I actually reviewed was 2017, gave only a passing mention to that last one published in 2018 and 2019 was the year Jeffrey Epstein was finally indicted, refused bail pending trial and died on multiple long-term sex-trafficking conspiracy charges. Altogether more serious that the single 2009 conviction for which he was originally registered as a sex-offender. From 2005 to 2009 and from then until 2019 there were many more accusations and indictments that didn’t make it to trial, for all sorts of reasons, including plea-bargains and sweetheart-deals.

We have to suspect Brockman knew in 2018 of Epstein’s impending 2019 come-uppance?

Brockman’s only publication – after the 2018 “Last Edge Question” was the “Possible Minds” AI-science collection in 2019 and an interview of Alexander Rose he did for the Long Now organisation also in 2019. In 2020/21 there were a handful of his individual clients’ “Edge Conversations” published. The Edge still exists as an entity, with Brockman as CEO, but pretty much zero publishing or commercial activity, since.

I’ve said probably all I want to say about Epstein’s association with Brockman and many of his “the great and the good” clients in science and academia – last time here in 2019. Actual reviews of content going back from 2017 to 2005.

Suppose I should actually review the 2018 Last Questions … knowing now that they really were the last – and they are just the questions, sadly, no responses or discussions to be read. There were:
264 responses in 2018 after
206 responses in 2017 and
120 responses in 2005 (where I started) and
110 at the start in 1998.

The list of 264 names itself is mind-boggling:

Contributors:
Scott Aaronson, Anthony Aguirre, Dorsa Amir, Chris Anderson, Ross Anderson, Alun Anderson, Samuel Arbesman, Dan Ariely, Noga Arikha, W. Brian Arthur, Scott Atran, Joscha Bach, Mahzarin Banaji, Simon Baron-Cohen, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Andrew Barron, Thomas A. Bass, Mary Catherine Bateson, Gregory Benford, Laura Betzig, Susan Blackmore, Alan S. Blinder, Paul Bloom, Giulio Boccaletti, Ian Bogost, Joshua Bongard, Nick Bostrom, Stewart Brand, Rodney A. Brooks, David M. Buss, Philip Campbell, Jimena Canales, Christopher Chabris, David Chalmers, Leo M. Chalupa, Ashvin Chhabra, Jaeweon Cho, Nicholas A. Christakis, David Christian, Brian Christian, George Church, Andy Clark, Julia Clarke, Tyler Cowen, Jerry A. Coyne, James Croak, Molly Crockett, Helena Cronin, Oliver Scott Curry, David Dalrymple, Kate Darling, Luca De Biase, Stanislas Dehaene, Daniel C. Dennett, Emanuel Derman, David Deutsch, Keith Devlin, Jared Diamond, Chris DiBona, Rolf Dobelli, P. Murali Doraiswamy, Freeman Dyson, George Dyson, David M. Eagleman, David Edelman, Nick Enfield, Brian Eno, Juan Enriquez, Dylan Evans, Daniel L. Everett, Christine Finn, Stuart Firestein, Helen Fisher, Steve Fuller, Howard Gardner, David C. Geary, James Geary, Amanda Gefter, Neil Gershenfeld, Asif A. Ghazanfar, Steve Giddings, Gerd Gigerenzer, Bruno Giussani, Joel Gold, Nigel Goldenfeld, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Daniel Goleman, Alison Gopnik, John Gottman, Jonathan Gottschall, William Grassie, Kurt Gray, A. C. Grayling, Tom Griffiths, June Gruber, Jonathan Haidt, David Haig, Hans Halvorson, Timo Hannay, Judith Rich Harris, Sam Harris, Daniel Haun, Marti Hearst, Dirk Helbing, César Hidalgo, Roger Highfield, W. Daniel Hillis, Michael Hochberg, Donald D. Hoffman, Bruce Hood, Daniel Hook, John Horgan, Sabine Hossenfelder, Nicholas Humphrey, Marco Iacoboni, Isabel Behncke Izquierdo, Nina Jablonski, Matthew O. Jackson, Jennifer Jacquet, Dale W Jamieson, Koo Jeong-A, Lorraine Justice, Gordon Kane, Stuart A. Kauffman, Brian G. Keating, Paul Kedrosky, Kevin Kelly, Marcel Kinsbourne, Gary Klein, Jon Kleinberg, Brian Knutson, Bart Kosko, Stephen M. Kosslyn, John W. Krakauer, Kai Krause, Lawrence M. Krauss, Andrian Kreye, Coco Krumme, Robert Kurzban, Joseph LeDoux, Cristine H. Legare, Martin Lercher, Margaret Levi, Janna Levin, Andrei Linde, Tania Lombrozo, Antony Garrett Lisi, Mario Livio, Seth Lloyd, Jonathan B. Losos, Greg Lynn, Ziyad Marar, Gary Marcus, John Markoff, Chiara Marletto, Abigail Marsh, Barnaby Marsh, John C. Mather, Tim Maudlin, Annalena McAfee, Michael McCullough, Ian McEwan, Ryan McKay, Hugo Mercier, Thomas Metzinger, Yuri Milner, Read Montague, Dave Morin, Lisa Mosconi, David G. Myers, Priyamvada Natarajan, John Naughton, Randolph Nesse, Richard Nisbett, Tor Nørretranders, Michael I. Norton, Martin Nowak, James J. O’Donnell, Tim O’Reilly, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Steve Omohundro, Toby Ord, Gloria Origgi, Mark Pagel, Elaine Pagels, Bruce Parker, Josef Penninger, Irene Pepperberg, Clifford Pickover, Steven Pinker, David Pizarro, Robert Plomin, Jordan Pollack, Alex Poots, Carolyn Porco, William Poundstone, William H. Press, Robert Provine, Matthew Putman, David C. Queller, Sheizaf Rafaeli, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Lisa Randall, S. Abbas Raza, Syed Tasnim Raza, Martin Rees, Ed Regis, Diana Reiss, Gianluigi Ricuperati, Jennifer Richeson, Siobhan Roberts, Andrés Roemer, Phil Rosenzweig, Carlo Rovelli, Douglas Rushkoff, Karl Sabbagh, Todd C. Sacktor, Paul Saffo, Eduardo Salcedo-Albaran, Buddhini Samarasinghe, Scott Sampson, Laurie R. Santos, Robert Sapolsky, Dimitar D. Sasselov, Roger Schank, Rene Scheu, Maximilian Schich, Simone Schnall, Bruce Schneier, Peter Schwartz, Gino Segre, Charles Seife, Terrence J. Sejnowski, Michael Shermer, Olivier Sibony, Laurence C. Smith, Monica L. Smith, Lee Smolin, Dan Sperber, Maria Spiropulu, Nina Stegeman, Paul Steinhardt, Bruce Sterling, Stephen J. Stich, Victoria Stodden, Christopher Stringer, Seirian Sumner, Leonard Susskind, Jaan Tallinn,Timothy Taylor, Max Tegmark, Richard H. Thaler, Frank Tipler, Eric Topol, Sherry Turkle, Barbara Tversky, Michael Vassar, J. Craig Venter, Athena Vouloumanos, D.A. Wallach, Adam Waytz, Bret Weinstein, Eric R. Weinstein, Albert Wenger, Geoffrey West, Thalia Wheatley, Tim White, Linda Wilbrecht, Frank Wilczek, Jason Wilkes, Evan Williams, Alexander Wissner-Gross, Milford H. Wolpoff, Richard Wrangham, Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, Richard Saul Wurman, Victoria Wyatt, Itai Yanai, Dustin Yellin, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, Dan Zahavi, Anton Zeilinger, Carl Zimmer

No general guilt by indirect association here.

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Those questions … well some I noted anyway … those generally answered by the work I’m already doing / using. There are lots of other “interesting” ones more closely related to the individuals’ own work.

Clarify the differences between understanding, knowledge and wisdom that could be communicated to a literate twelve-year-old and recommunicated to their parents?
Richard Saul Wurman
Me – A good question even if not any kind of ultimate question. There’s been a lot of motivated “debunking” of the data / information / knowledge / wisdom stack in recent years, but it is still valuable and meaningful. Worth explaining.

Will human psychology keep pace with the exponential growth of technological innovation associated with cultural evolution?
Cristine H. Legare
Me – another good question, very close to my agenda and related to the previous question. Yes, right now “communication” of information is racing ahead of our psychological capability to properly process and understand it – that’s dangerous, and can only be countered if we better recognise how we know and understand.

Is scientific knowledge the most valuable possession of humanity?
Hans Halvorson
Me – No. It’s very VERY valuable, but love and humanity are greater possessions. We’ve put objective scientific knowledge and processes on a pedestal and defend it from that artificial position, whilst failing to recognise how much of our knowledge and wisdom is beyond or more than science.

How do I know the right level of abstraction at which to explain a phenomenon?
Victoria Stodden
Me – another good question. We have devalued levels of abstraction beyond physical reality and causal logic in that one level and in doing so discounted the levels where our consciousness and will (etc.) actually emerge.

Will the frontiers of consciousness be technological or linguistic?
Dustin Yellin
Me – Linguistic. We already have the physical technology inside our heads, although almost meaningless question – language IS the technology of mind. Thinking tools after Dennett.

Is the cumulation of shared knowledge forever constrained by the limits of human language?
Nick Enfield
Me – Yes, kinda, but don’t forget we can evolve our language if we adopt other worldviews.

Are there limits to what we can know about the universe?
Priyamvada Natarajan
Me – Yes.

How do the limits of the mind limit our understanding?
Barbara Tversky
Me – Obviously they do, the how is about understanding the conscious mind itself. See other replies.

Will humanity eventually exhaust the unknown?
Michael Hochberg
Me – No. See Natarajan above.

Is our brain fundamentally limited in its ability to understand the external world?
Stanislas Dehaene
Me – the brain, no. The mind can evolve better worldviews / models to understand what can be known. If known it can be understood, but there are limits to the knowable (see earlier Q&A).

Does consciousness reside only in our brains?
W. Brian Arthur
Me – there are many layers. Some proto-consciousness exists in the wider world, some aspects of our consciousness are elsewhere in our bodies, “higher” levels only in our brains.

Can consciousness exist in an entity without a self-contained physical body?
Rodney A Brooks
Me – a good question – there needs to be an “I” a bounded systemic thing distinct from the world to have that individual (high-level) conscious awareness, but other elements of consciousness are more distributed.

Can we acquire complete access to our unconscious minds?
Joel Gold
Me – no, by definition. (And that’s a good thing, we’ve evolved levels of consciousness for good reasons.)

Will a computer ever really understand and experience human kindness?
Chris DiBona
Me – “a computer” in the electro-mechanical sense, no, not until it first evolves life. Obviously “we” are a computer too, but a very different kind.

What is consciousness?
Stuart A. Kauffman
Me – it’s not a mystery. (See above)

What kinds of minds could solve the mind-body problem?
Susan Blackmore
Me – Ha! – it’s solved, because it was never a problem. It’s been dissolved by better understanding what mind and consciousness are.

What will be obvious to us in a generation that we have an inkling of today?
Ev Williams
Me – hopefully, that we know a lot more than “science” and what it means to know, as conscious wilful agents.

Is the brain a computer or an antenna?
Dave Morin
Me – a bit of both. It definitely processes information and it definitely receives and transduces information. Information can be proto-consciousness itself.

Why are people so seldom persuaded by clear evidence and rational argument?
Tim Maudlin
Me – Largely because we know intuitively that there is more than objective evidence and rational – objective logical – argument. Sadly science advocates continue to deny this and we remain suspicious of scientific exclusivity.

What is the most important thing that can be done to restore the general public’s faith and trust in science?
Irene Pepperberg
Me – see last response – when science is honest about its own limitations.

Are people who cheat vital to driving progress in human societies?
Alun Anderson
Me – Absolutely! – rules are for guidance of the (caring) wise and the obedience of (careless) fools.

What is the optimal algorithm for discovering truth?
Joscha Bach
Me – there isn’t one. There are many emergent layers.

Can we program a computer to find a 10,000-bit string that encodes more actionable wisdom than any human has ever expressed?
Scott Aaronson
Me – no, though not sure why the “expressed” condition?

When will race disappear?
Nina Jablonski
Me – When (and IFF) we decided to make it a concerted objective over many generations. Might be better if we also maintain “Requisite Diversity” in our gene and meme pools.

How did our complex universe arise out of simple physical laws?
Seth Lloyd
Me – too easy. (See Free Energy Principle responses.)

How does the past give rise to the future?
Nic Humphrey
Me – good question. Causation is definitely much weirder than common sense causal logic. There are many other evolutionary emergence processes.

Why do we care so much about how well we’re approximated by algorithms?
Coco Krumme
Me – largely because some very powerful misguided people seem to think it’s possible that we might be thus approximated. We can’t be, but that’s not stopping such people, and we’re intuitively suspicious of the dangers.

When will we replace governments with algorithms?
César Hidalgo
Me – ditto – never if we have any sense. (See science or politics Q&A)

Could the thermodynamic prophecy of an increasingly entropic universe be fulfilled by the cosmic flourishing of intelligent life?
David Dalrymple
Me – Absolutely! – increasingly intelligent life is the optimal route to maximum cosmic chaos and entropy.

Is it possible to control a system capable of evolving?
Nigel Goldenfeld
Me – control? No, not really. But guide with creative constraints etc, yes it’s called management, even if we have imperfect knowledge and understanding of what might result from our actions in the longer-term widest sense – unintended consequences etc. Care needed.

How can we separate the assessment of scientific evidence from value judgments?
Sabine Hossenfelder
Me – I think we already can – IF we want to. Better to be honest that we need both, even if they remain entangled. It only matters that we disentangle them if we want to establish “pure” science distinct from wider knowledge beyond science.

Are feelings computable?
Read Montague
Me – yes, and actually the other way round. It’s “affect” all the way down. No thoughts without feelings. (And for computability, see earlier.)

How much biodiversity do we need?
Giulio Boccaletti
Me – indeed, Requisite Diversity, less than 100% of what happens to exist circumstantially. (Again – see managing evolving systems and avoiding thinking we can play god.)

Are complex biological neural systems fundamentally unpredictable?
Anthony Aguirre
Me – Yes. Fundamentally unpredictable – not usefully predictable – in the objectively causal sense. Only predictable at the kinds, of patterns, of kinds, of patterns, of kinds meta-levels.

How does a single human brain architecture create many kinds of human minds?
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Me – Just natural that it does, see unpredictability of specifics in any mind, in any emergent evolved thing, above.

Is a human brain capable of understanding a human brain?
Rene Scheu
Me – Yes. Seems I/we can.

Why is the acceleration of the expansion of the universe roughly equal to a typical acceleration of a star in a circular orbit in a disk galaxy?
Lee Smolin
Me – Obviously I don’t know, not my subject, but these “fine-tuning” coincidences are intriguing, suggesting we accidentally have constant values of some variables built into our fundamental science.

What can humanity do right now that will make the biggest difference over the next billion years?
Toby Ord
Me – kinda the question we’re all asking ourselves in a positive sense. My answer is to better understand how the world really works rather than clinging to the clearly inadequate fiction of everything being science.

Why are humans still so much more flexible in their thinking and everyday reasoning than machines?
Gary Marcus
Me – because we’re alive and have been evolving a lot longer.

Can human intuition ever be reduced to an algorithm?
Gerd Gigerenzer
Me – No. (See many earlier Q&A)

Why is there such widespread public opposition to science and scientific reasoning in the United States, the world leader in every major branch of science?
Jared Diamond
Me – Answered this one already. There is an intuitive suspicion that there is more than science – as in fact there is – and yet science continues to peddle its exclusive access to knowledge, true and good. If science came clean there would be much less suspicion and apparent “opposition”.

Could superintelligence be the purpose of the universe?
Maria Spiropulu
Me – Kinda, yes. It’s the optimum solution to maximum entropy question. Purpose as in an inevitable end.

How will predictive models in the social sciences achieve the accuracy and precision of those in the natural sciences?
Robert Kurzban
Me – they won’t and they shouldn’t be expected / held-to-account to that standard. Quality beats accuracy and precision. (Again, part of “natural science” coming clean.)

How does a thought become a feeling?
Marco Iacoboni
Me – again, already answered, other way round. All thoughts start as feelings. In cases where objective causal logic is right, it feels right.

Is the universe like an onion that will require science to keep peeling back new layers of reality and asking questions forever?
Lawrence M. Krauss
Me – this loser still doesn’t get it.

Are accurate mathematical theories of individual human behavior possible?
Emanuel Derman
Me – no, nor would they be desirable, nor have any relation to reality.

Is love really all you need?
Annalena McAfee
Me – yes, kinda, if you use the word love for the ineffable, qualitative basis of all relations.

Will the “hard problem” of consciousness dissolve (rather than be solved) as we learn more about the natural world?
Dale Jamieson
Me – Yes, and for those who’ve escaped the exclusive objective causal rationale of science, it is already dissolved. (See above).

Why is it that the maximum information we can pack into a region of space does not depend on the volume of the region, but only on the area that bounds it?
Donald Hoffman
Me – good, intriguing question, because it does indeed seem to be the case.

Is the number of interesting questions finite or not?
Chiara Marletto
Me – probably not, even with the “interesting” qualification. Not sure this is therefore an interesting question in itself?

What does the conscious mind do that is impossible for the unconscious mind?
Richard Nisbett
Me – hold a world-model it can compare with observations of reality.

How can an aggregation of trillions of selfish, myopic cells discover the unwitting teamwork that turns that dynamic clump into a person who can love, notice, wonder, and keep a promise?
Dan Dennett
Me – I think that’s a question Dan already answered himself. I guess he’s asking it because not enough people paid attention to his answer.

If we want to make a real and effective science-based policy, should we change politics or science?
Luca De Biase
Me – both – science has a flaw in failing to recognise its own limitations, and sadly almost all human institutions including political ones have fallen foul of the same fallacy. Fixing one honestly, fixes both.

Are the ways qualia relate to computation, creativity to free will, risk to probability, morality to epistemology, all the same question?
David Deutsch
Me – knowing Deutsch, the probably are. Intriguing, but not necessarily an urgent question? Implies a massive compression of knowledge, and all computation is compression anyway – so valuable if not exactly necessary.

What is the principle that causes complex adaptive systems (life, organisms, minds, societies) to spontaneously emerge from the interaction of simpler elements (chemicals, cells, neurons, individual humans)?
W Daniel Hills
Me – guess the simple answer is some version of the Free Energy Principle? (Good sign is how many people are trying to debunk FEP, suggesting it may really be a powerful truth.)

If we’re not the agents of ourselves (and it’s hard to see how we can be), how can we make sense of moral accountability (and how can we live coherently without it)?
Rebecca Goldstein
Me – a surprise to see Goldstein on this side of that question. If anyone understands that we are wilful agents beyond causally reductive determinism it would be her?

Given the nature of life, the purposeless indifference of the universe, and our complete lack of free will, how is it that most people avoid ever being clinically depressed?
Robert Sapolsky
Me – on the other hand, zero surprise to see Sapolsky on the wrong side of this. We do not lack free-will, we have exactly the requisite amount of it.

If science does in fact confirm that we lack free will, what are the implications for our notions of blame, punishment, reward, and moral responsibility?
Gerry Coyne
Me – Ha! and the other total absence of surprise. Said more than enough before about how Coyne doesn’t get it.

And so many more – that’s just 58 out of the 264 in total – questions that have simple answers because those asking misunderstand their own question?

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My agenda is like anyone else’s these days, to find better ways of understanding and making better decisions in a world where recent experience suggests we are failing to get to grips with the existential poly-crises facing us and maybe some meta-crisis that might underly these. My focus being the latter, means my interest is unashamedly abstract and conceptual, philosophical and even metaphysical, rather than the physical and human world details of any one crisis. Although I obviously engage with these too, as empirical examples.

One way or another my own deliverable contribution is a better “model” of the world, how it works and what we can know and predict about it. So, both ontological and epistemological, and it so happens, with an information-process-relational metaphysics rather than a conventional object view of things. That’s a whole thesis I won’t attempt to elaborate here.

One thing’s clear, if we’re talking about how “we” best understand and deal with global polycrises, we’re talking about systems and situations as complex as conceivable. Populations of psychologically intentional human agents, with aspirations and foibles, individually and in any number of overlapping groups and organisations, interacting as part of our local and cosmic ecosystems. There can be nothing more complex. Life, the universe and everything as I often say. And, as I posted recently, it is moot whether we talk primarily in terms of “systems” or “complexity”. We need the pragmatism to recognise both communities of ideas.

Although my thesis is vast, commensurate with the topic and mostly nothing new under the sun, I have for a couple of years been blocked by one important assertion that fails to stick. I do regularly get people to agree that we’re talking about “more than science“, but as soon as discourse proceeds to preferred theories, models and methods, those same people, almost invariably continue to talk exclusively in terms of, this, that or the other “science(s)”.

Now, there’s nothing “anti-science” or “post-modern” here. I’m an engineer grounded in the physical sciences and the closing summary from my last significant presentation on the topic is “as scientific as possible”. I’m simply saying, faced with such complex realities, it is more honest to recognise that our knowledge, decision-making and actions must involve more considerations than the sciences.

Who is Our Audience?

Now, any theorist or specialist practitioner in the Complex Adaptive Systems space, and indeed any practitioner in the sciences generally, will recognise as we go from from physical sciences to biology to psychology that predictability and repeatability get less and less, even if all the processes and content are scientifically explicable. We don’t stop calling them science, we just accept that the predictable outcomes on which we base our best decisions with the best information currently available get less and less certain, and that how certain may get less and less quantifiable. We may even adopt stochastic methods and heuristics that recognise previously experienced patterns of uncertainties.

But this is a one-dimensional view of uncertainty in the real world and there are more meta-levels to consider in more abstract conceptual dimensions. (Using real and conceptual in a natural language sense here, obviously any eventual ontology will address these too.) Some many-layered emergent outcomes are only predictable in kind and in patterns of kind – that is at multiple conceptual levels removed from the actual. Individual real-world outcomes are not usefully predictable at all. Actual decisions depend not just on the available science and objective evidence, formally modelled and empirically documented, but also on the trusted judgement and embodied experience of the humans involved. Wisdom in a word.

Now whilst systems and complexity-scientific specialists can all understand where predictability of outcomes become less and less valuable, compared to recognising that which emerges into the real world from the evolutionary processes at both conceptual and real levels, with only limited enabling and guidance, we are not really our own audience.

The real audience needed, if sophisticated systems and complexity considerations are to help with real world actions to solve our existential polycrises, are politicians, leaders and servants in organisations and governments, judiciary, journalists and – in democracies – public electorates.

Without the acknowledgement and acceptance that “good decisions” require those aspects more than science above, the enormous success of science to date means these constituent audiences have become trained to expect only objective evidence and causal logic to back up proposed actions. No trust without these.

So What’s New?

Yesterday at short notice I attended a Complexity Lounge talk by Chris Mowles, Professor at the Complexity and Management Centre at the University of Hertfordshire. From the introduction I picked-up a question directly related to my agenda above:

“A radical interpretation of the complexity sciences”
[and]
“things we aspire to, but even our aspirations will evolve and change in our interactions with each other and the world.”

Suggesting that maybe we could agree the latter – interactively evolving aspirations – were “more than science”? If unpredictability is all we can predict, we need more than (scientific) predictions to make good decisions?

I found it a very refreshing take from Chris. Many sources beyond complexity sciences – ethical politics, philosophical pragmatism and literature. I didn’t make enough notes, so I will need to pick-up the slides from the recording – see post note below.

What I did do is I already obtained a copy of his “Complexity – A Key Idea for Business and Society“. The “and” in the sub-title is key. The chapter headings are all I could hope for. More later no doubt.

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Post Notes:

Chris also has his own blog.

As well as being active on LinkedIn.

And, here is a PDF of Chris’ slide deck.

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Mentioned several times that, within the Systems Thinking community in its widest sense, there are factions that don’t just have preferred views, they positively reject others.

Even within those that see Systems as the main focus, there are competing theories, sciences and methodologies, as well as competing and complementary world-views on multiple dimensions. A large part of my own recent agenda has been to emphasise the recognition that our knowledge of systems and their practical implementations involves more than science – wisdom for short-hand convenience – whichever of the theories or sciences are preferred. The practical views are ultimately Pragmatism by any other name, and Mike Jackson’s comprehensive contribution also emphasises this (last section of a long diary post).

I say “even” because there are factions that reject the language of Systems entirely in favour of Complexity sciences and methods. Most systems thinkers see their thinking as a response to complexity, whatever definition of systems, or preferred theories and methods we espouse. No systems thinker would reject the significance of complexity to their discipline. Those who espouse complexity rather than systems have identifiable reasons. The two examples I’m going to use are Jean Boulton (The Tao of Complexity) and Dave Snowden (Cynefin) and their rejection of systems in favour of complexity might be all they have in common.

The first reason is quite straightforward. Naming things as systems – a system or the system – with specific identity and characteristics – objectifies & reifies them implying well-defined, possibly static, boundaries. The first of Boulton’s conditions (below) is exactly this. All systems in the cosmos are open systems except – by definition – for the cosmos itself. Naming, drawing a #GoodFence as a boundary around any given system of interest, is always a pragmatic linguistic convenience. Drawing a boundary needn’t imply that it is impervious to systemic activity.

A second reason is in the definition of what we mean by “system”. We can start with Boulton’s second and third conditions – diversity and reflexive relationships. Any system of interest has multiple different elements – requisite diversity – and that these are functionally related to each other and to other systems. The three conditions are met by just about any systems definition.

A corollary, and third reason arising from the second, is that anything and everything can be considered as a system in those terms.

[From Jo Kaybryn on LinkedIn]

Which is all encompassing of life, the universe and everything, so thinking of something as a system doesn’t narrow down our scope of interest. It’s almost redundant to refer to something as a system if everything is a system. Which is probably another reason why Snowden rejects the language.

But, in fact, System is practically just an adjective for thinking in terms of functional relations. Systemic Thinking if you prefer. And ISSS Past President, George Mobus also presents “A General Theory of Systemness, proposing that we look at the essential characteristics of being a system rather than debate endlessly what does or doesn’t count as a system.” [recent ISSS Newsletter] Precisely! The characteristics of systemness that make something systemic – rather than needing to agree the definition of a system – whether we call “it” this or that system or not. (Sounds very Platonic essence of system).

Pragmatically, the preference for complexity and/or systems language is a non-event. We all need complexity and functional systemness or systemicity.

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[Note: – the idea of #GoodFences and identity-defining-boundaries is a whole subject in itself here on Psybertron.]

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Post Note: Dave Snowden’s own writing continues, here via LinkedIn.

He’s OK with Systems as “Complex Systems” – which is about where I am, obviously. His use of the word “substrate” illustrates his (correct) architectural distinction that much of what matters at the human level primarily emerges from and supervenes on the physical as creative constraints, not in any way reductively causal. And in an earlier post he’s complaining about fashionable misuse of Pragmatism – between natural language pragmatism and the US Pragmatists – I’m already on it. And I notice a few converging threads. Another round of people thinking they are “debunking” Maslow (they’re really not), some conversely suggesting there’s a layer of “Transcendence” above Self-Actualisation and Dave railing against Transcendence. All good fun.

People confuse short-hand with precision – really just a language game #GoodFences (again).

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I make multiple references (as far back as 2003) to Dave Snowden and his “Cynefin” sensemaking – organisational strategic action consulting business. My interests remain more abstract philosophically – metaphysical – but even with differences of shared understanding at this level, and indeed his personal style & preference level, I am nevertheless a “fan boy” at the level of his practical participatory approach(es).

I said as much in the post from early this year, in which I also included my favourite version of his Cynefin Framework diagram. This has evolved in detail over the years, particularly in the labelling / annotation language, but despite appearances has maintained its distinction from the Boston Consulting 2×2 grids, ubiquitous in management consulting space. However many dimensions our real problem space, any view on page or screen is a 2D projection, with its own orthogonal axes, so this isn’t a criticism. But seemingly simple views – for understandable reasons of intended problem simplification – often lead the unwise to simplistic understandings and decisions. The Cynefin diagram always maintained the clue that we weren’t looking at a single contiguous plane. The aporetic gap / hole.

The focus was always complexity, so that different “sciences” (*) and approaches could be brought to various Simple > Complicated > Complex > Chaotic domains, but that has become a given, with all “Systems Thinking” being seen as a response to complexity. Snowden has multiple other working views and approaches as well as his framework overview – documented more and more in his prolific writing. The reason for this post is to capture a copy of a new overview that has been shared increasingly – e.g. on LinkedIn – over the summer.

I like it, even if I haven’t fully digested it or Snowden’s intent. The language in the boxes will no doubt evolve with context, but those two axes and all ten words of their labels seem to hit their targets.

The fine- and coarse-graining of interventions, the natural (externally) and (internally) stimulated emergence of new species (of whatever we’re interested in). And, the four levels of complication replaced with the simpler (Ha!) ordered vs complex distinction. Ha!, because all distinctions (#GoodFences / lines drawn, that diagram has several) are simple-looking binary dichotomies in our ontologies, however much we wish to avoid them being “unnecessarily” divisive in our real-world problem space.

The previous vertical divider between ordered (simple / complicated) and complex (complex / chaotic) is now mapped as the red arc, and the aporetic gap is now smeared and swept around the whole – partially turned inside-out?

Also having mentioned dichotomies, I notice Dave is pushing several triadic views. The dichotomies at fundamental levels of abstraction (ontologies) don’t go away, but any number of more practically useful views are constructed from these.

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(*) I say “sciences” in scare quotes, because a significant part of my philosophical systems agenda is that there is “more than science” (first link here) that matters 🙂

And I notice the latest graphic above is being shared in connection with his “Estuarine Mapping” methodology. Picked-up on that as an interesting concept a couple of years ago, but never followed its detailed development since. An omission.

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Post Note: Slight change of topic – but reminded of something I didn’t respond to at the time. A month or so ago, since the Birmingham ISSS2025 dialogues, Dave made some LinkedIn comments about styles of argumentation. He’s often quite pedantic about being quoted literally rather than any attempt at paraphrasing or rephrasing in ones own words. Obviously “claiming” agreement with Dave on the basis of one’s own rephrasing isn’t on – and I do regularly point out that we do have disagreements (despite which, etc.) – BUT attempts at rephrasing each other are a fundamental part of dialogue towards agreeing shared understandings of a topic. “Try this”.

Obviously they’re not “agreed” until mutually agreed and it would be disingenuous to suggest so. Don’t believe I ever have?

Very much my “Rules of Engagement” topic.

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I’ve mentioned Brandon Mayfield just the once before. As well as being a published author, he’s a fellow Robert Pirsig scholar and member of the RPA (Robert Pirsig Association), who was curious enough to research and write up a comparison between the works and overlapping timelines of Pirsig and Alan Watts “through the lens of Zen”.

Initially, just to get a feel for his writing, I started to read his “Grains of Destiny”. I say initially because, with my own writing and other priorities, I have been in a state of no new reading for a few months. His full title is:

GRAINS OF DESTINY – Return to Victory Road
– A search for meaning and objective truth.
by Brandon Mayfield (Crescent Books, 2024)

I suspect I will in fact read to completion, but as I type I’m 5 chapters / 112 pages in – about one third through- and writing my usual pre-view rather than an actual review, to keep me honest just in case I never do complete.

I already mentioned elsewhere that any relationship to Pirsig’s writing (ZMM and Lila) is not advertised in any of the front materials or cover blurbs. Why would there be? His audience isn’t limited to fans of Pirsig after all. Yet, if you know Pirsig, it is spooky from the outset how the locations and roads are exactly those travelled by Pirsig, westward through Montana. And the similarities don’t end there. It’s a travelogue, with landscape, travel and weather descriptions and with companions’ dialogue sharing memoirs and philosophical discussions on life, the universe and everything.

Having said that, it’s quite different too. The “companions” are circumstantial, more like Lila than ZMM, the characters didn’t set out as friends travelling together, and they’re travelling in cars & trucks as opposed to bikes or boats. And we have cell-phones.

There are more Pirsig allusions beyond the circumstantial. A nod to getting out of the car and into the frame of the real world, for example, no longer observed through the window frame from a closed space. But Pirsig and motorcycles don’t turn up explicitly until page 100.

Up until that point, as well as a brief history of thought from the Greeks via the Islamic world to the Enlightenment, we also get a fair bit of 21st century poly-crises and 21st century science of consciousness too. ie Knowing why this stuff matters?

The science of consciousness content is primarily Penrose and Hameroff, Microtubules and “Orch-OR” orchestration of quantum effects at noisy, wet, brain scales. I think this might in time become accepted as good science. Others like Al-Khalili and McFadden are ploughing similar furrows in quantum-biology explanations for brain processes. Even though these may (or may not) turn out to be good science for those physical processes, personally, after Solms and Friston and McGilchrist, I don’t consider them as necessary scientific explanations of the subjective nature of consciousness itself. Like Chalmers’ “hard problem” they miss the point. But I probably digress.

When the explicit references to Pirsig’s ZMM and MoQ turn up with the bikers, the conversation shifts to a fair summary of Pirsig’s classic / analytic / static vs romantic / aesthetic / dynamic Metaphysics of Quality. Brandon’s helpful driver says:

“So powerful were these [Greek] ideas of objective truth and scientific method that they helped in part to advance the golden age of Muslim learning [which in turn] allowed Europe to emerge from its Dark Ages. But [paraphrasing Pirsig] this scientific enlightenment came at a cost.”

And from this point onwards, we see why Pirsig isn’t advertised as the sole or primary source. When it comes to the Islamic scholars, I know 10th/11th century Avicenna (ibn Sina), Averroes (ibn Rushd) and Al Ghazzali but we are introduced here to 17th century Iranian mystic (Sufi) philosopher Mulla Sadra (Ṣadr ad-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī).

“where Pirsig stops, Sadra continues”

So we are into the mystic and spiritual and even the concept of God (the good) as the ground of all being. Already good grist to my mill here. Furthermore we are also telegraphed the dynamic / living / process contributions of Bergson and of Whitehead, also much referenced sources here at Psybertron. Seems impossible not to read on. If nothing else, did I forget to mention, we need to get to the bottom of our driver’s warning about his strange behaviour.

Already a good read in itself and a recommended read for anyone seeking the wisdom we seem to be lacking in order to deal with our 21st century poly-meta-crisis of meaning, conveniently packaged in a well-written US road-trip travelogue.

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[Will append further reading / review if and when I complete.]

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Guess I can see why it got that name. Time to bring my LLM-AI / ChatGPT experiment to a close.

Having previously only used ChatGPT as an occasional alternative to Google, especially with Google itself having slapped its own AI between us and its search results, I took it seriously as an “assistant” for a month or maybe two.

Never been convinced, still not, that there is anything remotely intelligent about so-called AI, it is still nevertheless useful to be able to process masses of recorded knowledge very quickly. After a few trials recorded earlier where I used it to summarise 25 years of my own writing back to me and give me analysis of it at the same time – which had some reassurance value – I formed the idea it could maybe help me transform my blog content into a proper “graph” version of a Zettelkasten – like eg Obsidian.

There are a few open-source GitHub codes that claim to process WordPress XML exports into Obsidian MarkDown objects and wikilinks. Both are 100% deterministic and the mappings logically tractable, even with 25 evolving years of WordPress internal addressing formats. All the GitHub or PlugIn efforts I tried were partial, the originators clearly only ever had specific limited purposes in mind.

Whether I tried starting from existing partial code, or with a blank slate and a semi-formal statement of my mapping needs and scope, ChatGPT always “worked” – in the sense it always delivered functional output. But the mappings were only ever partially as intended and sometimes even destructive of existing knowledge content, quite dumb in fact. Every time we got one kind of objects and links sorted, it simply appeared to guess what tweaks to make to the code to pick-up what had been missed previously but broke what had previously worked. For a while it seemed like maybe trial and error might be a workable strategy to getting to 95%+ success. But after a while I realised it wasn’t working. It was always one or two steps forward, two or three steps back. It was only ever as good as a piece of “similar vibe” code it could find out there, each guess was independent of learnings from previous guesses, so it was a random walk across the problem domain rather than anything additive. What I really needed was a programmer or my own programming skills. I left a few hooks out there in GitHubland, but ChatGPT isn’t it. It was never going to do better than any piece of existing code it found in its historical data banks.

I got two or three 50%+ outputs – which looked promising from 40,000 feet in terms of numbers of objects and linking density. I used one as a graphic for one of my slides a the ISSS2025 Birmingham conference, and here are a selection from its best efforts since:

Never good enough to make the exercise worth the next step in effort, to add ontological organisation and navigation links to the whole epistemic “semantic” web. Ho hum. Still be worthwhile if any actual programmer is interested. I’d pay for a solution.

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PS – the addictive “agreeable” nature of the chatbot – even in text, not simulated voice – is worth experiencing in order to understand its limitations and the risks of being fooled into thinking “it can be your friend” – it can’t.

Can’t see me actually using any AI chatbot as a creative assistant. Almost exactly two months since I did any productive writing. Next.

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There have been many follow-ups to the ISSS2025 Conference in Birmingham. One-to-one emails, text & telephone or LinkedIn exchanges, some formal publisher / institutional contacts, many more informal and personal, some specifically part of the writing project(s), most more generally around our Systems Thinking topics.

One particular set of FB-Messenger voice-message “groups” was initiated by Chris Chase – mainly amongst people relatively new to ISSS or Systems specifically as-a-discipline, who had met each other for the first time in Birmingham. Especially those who – one way or another – saw “Eastern” (or other ancient, NB in “scare quotes”) thinking and practice as an important addition to the systems “Sciences”. It initially started as an attempt to replicate the ISSS “Round Table” in-person, short, shared, non-critical, listening experience in an asynchronous technology environment, but these have morphed through multiple FB-Messenger channels to discussion on establishing “flow” in on-line platform discourse – with multi-modal, voice, text and communication media content. Feeling our way.

What’s missing from these threads so far are any of the experienced ISSS (or any federated IFSR organisations) leadership participants. Learning experience for those actually participating, starting with the knowledge limitations of new participants, but in danger of being silos not “joined-up” communication-wise to our wider ecosystem.

So this post is me “breaking out” from one to the other. Let’s start with some observations:

Firstly, personally, the idea of joined-up-thinking being “an ecosystem for systems thinking, incorporating multiple world-views” pretty much sums up my research and writing agenda. The idea that this be dynamic and evolving, and that our motivation is a response to our 21st century “polycrisis” – poly-crises (plural) plus meta-crisis (underlying these) – being a given?

Secondly, the multi-view system idea turned out to be quite a common agenda at the conference (see this previous post) and, more specifically, a platform for this being Leah Bogen‘s explicit research agenda.

Thirdly, when it comes to multi-modal channels and platforms, real-time and asynchronous voice can only be a part of a greater kaleidoscope. Personal preferences for creating and communicating in voice over text and other documents/files, is ultimately a personal style preference, and a mixture – Requisite Diversity – is inevitable and essential. However an important difference is in the receiver / consumer value and effort. You cannot skim over a previous collection of voice messages by eye to recap where dialogue has got to in terms of (say) shared-understandings, nor can you cross-link internally between contributions, without voice-to-text transformation also in the pipeline.

Fourthly, when it comes to multiple world-views or perspectives, the East-West “dichotomy” has been a growing part of ISSS agendas, epitomised by (outgoing president) Gary Smith adopting the Lao Tzu catchphrase “the Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao” and the fact that more contributors to the 2025 conference – myself included – brought “Eastern” content with them – in plenary sessions as well as topic-specific streams.

So to bring these together, cross-link the silos, join the dots, confluence the flows … choose your preferred fluid dynamic metaphor … I want to address issues under just two of the topics touched upon:

The Channel(s) / Platform(s)

Whilst we’ve been playing (experimenting) with FB-Messenger group voice-channels, most of the professional systems world is increasingly using LinkedIn and associated blogs, and ISSS itself has only recently created a “Wiki” space as promoted by incoming president Yiannis Laouris.

ISSS itself, up to the 2024 Conference in DC anyway, in capturing its “Systems Body of Knowledge” as an on-line resource, used the technical services of (amongst others) Daniel Friedman for shared repositories (like Coda say) and a collaboration platform in Discord. It would be a shame to overlook these efforts. Daniel’s work with Discord is particularly impressive in the AII (Active Inference Institute) environment. (The importance of “AI” as Active Inference – as opposed to Artificial Intelligence – can only grow as the current AI-Hype bubble bursts – but I possibly digress prematurely.)

The point here is that, technology-wise the idea of multi-channel, multi-modal, real-time & asynchronous, open, shared communication & collaboration platform(s) is already being solved and implemented out there, by people already in our Systems community. (And many of us are participants in such channels in other contexts too.)

The East-West Aspect

This has become both popular and contentious at the same time.

The contrasts and connections between so-called East and West worldviews have been evident throughout the 4000+ years history of philosophy and natural philosophy (science) since the pre-Socratics right thought all our “footnotes to Plato” via Islamic scholars & the enlightenment to modernism, post-modernism and beyond.

Popularity in “the West” was driven by the 1950’s Beats and 1960’s Hippy “countercultures” which, very similar to our 21st century response to the “polycrisis” (see above) was a reaction to the hopelessness felt in the face of the “military-industrial-complex”. There are many parallels, and the resurgence of Eastern mindful practice(s) on an almost industrial scale is one of them.

We need to be careful what we think we mean when we invoke the East-West distinction and beware artificial dichotomies that might divide or distort our efforts at the real-world level. (My own 2025 presentation majored on dichotomies and #GoodFences in this context.)

Current views out there vary between extremes.

“As a Westerner, I’ve worked with many people in the Eastern and other cultures and they don’t really espouse different, less-scientific world-views. In fact it’s an insulting hangover of Western (North-Atlantic) colonialism to suggest otherwise.“

“I’m from the Far East and have studied this question, and the difference is not really such a big deal for us, more implicitly embodied in our everyday experience.“

The reality intended by those of us that espouse an East-West balance is much more nuanced than either and East-West, as used here, is just figurative short-hand for that complex subtlety. The Westerners who first popularised that wave of Eastern thought and practice in the West (the North Atlantic) from the 1950’s to the 1970’s were Alan Watts and Robert Pirsig, but their agendas were quite different.

Suffice to say, one was very much about promoting mindful religious practice, the other about integrated systems thinking. Both were about dynamic process integration. At the conference one important speaker who exhibited the necessary balance and subtlety in both expression and action on this axis was our host Rachel Lilley but she is not alone. Shared understanding is possible.

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[Note: this post is getting a bit silly. I’m not publishing many (any) new posts not-related to my current writing project(s), and the musical interludes (plural) aren’t really part of that, so I’m basically appending updates at the bottom of this posts for now, so I don’t lose the notes.]

Saw PiL (Public Image Limited) at the newly refurbished Boiler Room in Newcastle back at the end of May. Didn’t blog any review, but was left intrigued that I didn’t catch who the excellent support band were.

Also saw PiL a couple of days ago, 1st August in Holmfirth, at the Picturedrome. Support this time were The Gulps, also excellent. Their name reminded me I’d seen that they were supporting PiL elsewhere on this tour too and they were the only name that searches threw up when looking for the support act, but it wasn’t them. I discover now, thanks to a comment at SetListFM, the Newcastle support were The Jacques.

The reason to go to the Holmfirth gig was the venue. Never been to either Holmfirth or the famous Picturedrome before. Brilliant. No time for any reviews today. John as ever. John used to dedicate Death Disco to his mother, but having lost Nora and Rambo since the last tour, all the more poignant. Scott’s bass driving their characteristic sound. New boy Mark Roberts slotting in seamlessly for Bruce on a very similar acoustic and electronic drum set-up. Something’s changed in Lu’s sound can’t quite put my finger on – not as “fat” on classics like Public Image and Open Up? (*)

Anyway just the one more big gig this season. QOTSA at the Don Valley Bowl, Sheffield 28th August. Oh, and then Divine Comedy later at York Barbican in October. (**)

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Post Note (*) – as is to prove my point, atmospheric, trancey opening to Open-Up (at Chelmsford) – with the riff introduced by Lu stepping-up. Just too thin? Still a couple of AC30 sized amps, but with some new devices clamped to the front rather than standard mic’s simply mounted in front. Lost the head-banging over-driven edginess teetering on the edge of feedback, with Public Image as well as Open Up.

Post Note (**) – managed to fit in another musical event – the Conjuring (was Northern Lights) festival at Pealie’s Barn nr Northallerton on the Saturday last weekend 16th August. Glad I went. Interesting location, housing & run by a kinda hippy craft collective in converted old farm buildings. All lovely people, including promoter Jack (of “Dirt” fame). 7 or 8 bands in turn on the one stage. Only downside of the physical arrangement being the high stage at the high-end of the sloping barn-yard, reduced visibility of the acts the further away you got. Better if the stage could be / have been at the other end, raked more like an old-fashioned theatre? As it was I mostly found myself a perch close to the mixing desk at the side of the stage. Anyway the bands – pretty eclectic mix, all self-created “garage rock” but with a strong trancey / psychedelic theme of riffs over long loopy grooves. Apart from the headliners, my reason to be there (below), the pick were “DaDaXL” – a pick-up 3-piece thrown together for the fest – great musicians all, channelling Hawkwind through their 3 x 15 minute epics, and “Dry Retch” a fun 4-piece trading on the Aussie accent of their lead vocal, an Angus Young parody on the heavy lead guitar, an “F1-Elevens” low-slung bassist, and a drummer playing his first gig with them. Silly, but accomplished, entertaining fun. Mentions to “Amon Acid” (band) and “Bloodjoy” (collective project) maintaining the “psych” continuity. Which brings us to the headliners. Joe and Jordan Bell of Avalanche Party for a first gig with “Primitive” their new 7-piece project(?). The sound and aesthetic were all spot on – see heavy trancey / psychy / loopy / grooves – with Joe’s bass and the new drummer synching like they’ve always been together. Slight confusion over the rest in terms of longer term roles as a band or as a flexible early-days-project-in-progress? Sounded great, but Jordan very much the main vocals over a new vocalist, on guitar riffs over a new guitarist, electric-piano, synth and laptop over a new looper and a new electric-pianist / saxophonist? Loved his piano intro to their first number, put me in mind of The Who’s “Love Reign O’er Me” from Quadrophenia. Promising and already a great sound.

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Post Note – 29 Aug 2025 – Dear Diary – so, I did see QOTSA at the “Rock’n’Roll Circus” event at the Don Valley Bowl in Sheffield last night.

It really will have to be my last “festival” gig. My hips no longer have the stamina for standing a half / whole day in a field. I paid for the “VIP” experience with an area of picnic seating and tented cover, so I could take the weight off my pegs between sets, but the timings meant it was raining heavily when the seating was free, and the covered areas (other than the main “big top”) were already full. The fuller the event got as the headlines approached, the more I could only stand. Did I have any pain-killers with me? Nope.

Also “moshing” with such a large dense crowd requires standing one’s ground unless you’re up for joining in. Usually I pin myself against the main stage front barrier, so it all happens behind you, and you have the barrier for support. But if you actually care about hearing the vocals and instrumentation above the drums and bass through the sub-stage speakers, as you must do with someone as intelligent and intelligible a communicator as Josh Homme … I was back in the thick of it, close and central enough to still see whilst hearing a balanced sound. Josh cares too, about putting on a professional show for their fans. Even from the first time I saw them in Perth WA, Josh gets quite emotional talking with his audience and last night was no different. They had in fact played Sheffield before and this was the last of 2 nights at the end of the current European tour. Josh made a thing of his relationship with the Arctic Monkeys, and I recall that world tour back in 2005-ish they had the Futureheads – a Sunderland band – on that tour with them. Coincidentally, also the last night of a long tour.

His communication skills were called-upon about 10 mins before the scheduled end of their set as 10:45pm. The moshing had got out of had once or twice, my hips screaming with pain, and with people on the floor several times relying on mates to drag them up and out of harms way. The hi-vizes interrupted Josh, to ask the audience to give them space to deal with a casualty, and he has them in the palm of his hand, assuring them / us the show will go on, but please take care of each other and allow the professionals to help us have a good time. He should go into politics – and indeed he did crack a joke earlier about running for mayor of Sheffield. Many a true word in jest. Anyway, with everything calmed-down on pause, I retreated further back and sideways towards the exit – and found a bench seat just outside, with a view back into the stage. There were blue-lights, but so far as I can see, no newsworthy casualty reports this morning, so hopefully whoever they were, were OK?

Grumpy old-man mode – two pet hates at these events. As ever, once you are back in the crowd, is the curse of people (not) watching the gig through mobile phones over their heads. It’s hard enough to see. And two, stage lighting is designed for dramatic back-lighting for those filming for hi-brilliance stage-side screens, blinding and distracting the audience, to make boot-leg filming harder. Either way NOT designed so the audience can actually see the band perform. Jeez – Gimme a break. Fortunately, as I said, Josh cares and the QOTSA lighting and whole production was excellent – stunning – again, as I remarked at the Stockton Globe gig.

More general old-man mode – Talking to a guy beside me, younger than our two boys, we were comparing notes on times we’ve seen them (6:1 to me) and which songs from which albums (4:2 to him) we expected on the set-list. QOTSA were second generation rock-and-roll for me, got into them because one or other son was into them – listening to Songs for the Deaf and Lullabies to Paralyze on my daily / weekly commutes (2003~2006). To my surprise, I only recognised – well enough to name and join in the anthemic choruses – about 4 numbers on the night. Guy in front noting down every item on the set-list on his phone, seemed to recognise them all, or was he using an app? Significantly – it was a generally younger audience, wearing a wide range of different vintage QOTSA T-shirts that seemed to know and join in with almost every number. Impressive.

On the day, also saw:

Circa Waves – not heard of them before – yet a pretty large following for their more poppy-rock, with a clean-cut engaging front man.

Jehnny Beth – ditto not heard before – much dirtier and heavier sound with Jehnny as another audience-engaging front act. Her band, her songs I believe. Worth experiencing.

Viagra Boys – silly but fun, heavy again but with hypnotic synth beats. Stalwarts of the circuit, 90% of the audience seemed to know every word and beat, though I hadn’t actually seen them before.

And a couple more, but. Last time for this kind of festival gig for me? Great to see Josh one (last) time again since his health scare hiatus. He was on fine form and looked good as ever if not obviously aged. Long may you run. We’re all getting old together, even the younger generation(s).

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[More grumpy old-man – nightmare late drive home, despite beating most of the crowd to the car park (see above) – several M1, A1M and A19 road closures on the same night – the M1 works took us off the motorway at the M62 junction – heading off to Manchester(!) looking for back roads into and thru Leeds but with no obvious direction signs. The A19 diversion I avoided by staying further north on the A1M – I’d noticed the signs on the way down and experienced it more than once before between Thirsk and Osmotherly. BUT – the A1M closure – well pre-sign-posted in terms of junction numbers turned-out to be after Scotch Corner but before my A66(M) junction to Darlington. Fortunately this was well signposted through Dalton and Hurworth, but unfortunately designed for drivers wanting to rejoin A1M North after Darlington rather than the the A66 into Teesside that I was looking for. A while before I recognised the right roads home. Lesson – worth setting-up the sat-nav even for journeys home on would-be familiar routes.]

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Just the one more pre-planned gig this year, other than a few local bands I’d like to support. Divine Comedy at York Barbican in October, the two of us in a sit-down theatre setting.

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