Psybertron’s Manifesto

This page retains links to the origins of this blogging project back in 2001, and is organized in three parts:

  • Who is Psybertron?
  • What is Psybertron’s Worldview generally?
  • What is Psybertron’s Agenda specifically?

WHO?

Psybertron’s profile and contact details here.

WORLDVIEW?

Generally, what is Psybertron’s personal worldview:

From a Christian / Anglican cultural tradition but have always been an atheist. In these days of “new-atheism” I’ve had to refine what I mean by being an atheist.

  • I’m not agnostic – too important a question.
  • I’m not anti-theist – theology is an important aspect of metaphysics, and anyway, theists are human too.
  • I’m a non-theist – the world as I see it doesn’t need a personal, omniscient, omnipotent, causal agent of a god to explain how it works.

Educated in science & technology, I’m an engineer – so scientific principles founded in physics are pretty fundamental to that. But engineering (using ingenuity to make things happen) is about people and human nature too, and applies all the way from individual decision-making, through all levels of human group activity up to the highest levels of governance. I was first introduced to humanism in the early 1980′s, and have considered myself a humanist ever since, though it never needed to be a public issue until the recent rise of the new-atheism vs religious-fundamentalism wars.

I’m against religious fundamentalism, because I’m against fundamentalism of any kind, including scientific (scientistic) fundamentalism. I don’t define myself by what I’m against, I define myself by what I’m for.

So, more specific than mere “tolerance” is respect for fellow humans and the cosmos around us. Mockery and insults are not a general human right, other than by exception, from a self-evident starting position of respect and mutual understanding or a self-evident role as court-jester. Critical thinking doesn’t mean all debate and argument should be based on disagreement. Science demands that error is discovered and communicated without bias, but not all human activity is scientific. Totally free communication is not always best, and war, even metaphorical verbal warfare, is rarely the whole answer.

Balanced concensus building is at least as important as fault-finding or winning any argument.

AGENDA?

Specifically, what is the Psybertron Agenda?

In summary: Real human enterprises succeed or fail through subjective, chaotic and seemingly irrational behaviour. Management gurus have been emphasising this whilst proclaiming revolution, paradigm shifts and the like, ever since management mistook itself for a science. Enterprise information models, which continue to rely solely on positivist objective rationale and logic of mis-applied science, conspire to misinform – “cut their own throats with the Catch-22 of Occam’s razor”. What pragmatic models can accommodate the evolutionary psychology needed to recognise the true value of knowledge in organisations and society generally, without succumbing to the traps of deterministic causation or the dubious traits of “evopsych” ? (See also footnote on every page.)

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