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Rushdie’s been touring the media shows trailing his latest book “Knife” recounting the story of and recovery from the disfiguring stabbing attempt on his life in New York back in August 2022. I would at some point get round to reading it, when my writing priorities are behind me, I’ve read and reviewed most of … Continue reading “Salman Rushdie’s “Knife” and Pirsig’s “Quality””

I keep noticing and thought I’d share that several things (meaninglessly) coincided in 1991. Robert Pirsig published his second book “Lila” in 1991 Dan Dennett published his “Consciousness Explained” in 1991 I completed and was awarded my Masters Degree in 1991 None of us knew each other’s work then, and there’s been huge convergence of … Continue reading “1991 and all that”

Ben Taylor responded to a challenge from Katrin Shaw on LinkedIn, and I’m taking it up, and taking a lead, from his response. Suffering? No, I certainly don’t lie awake worrying about widespread suffering, unfairness and inequality in the world – a question as old as philosophy and theology, and I’m certainly fortunate not to … Continue reading “What Keeps Me Awake At Night?”

I almost said great loss to the intellectual world – but his intellect is indeed a loss to the whole world. I last communicated with Dan only three weeks ago, about the fact he was planning to be attending this year’s “How The Light Gets In” only by telepresence. For various multiple conference priority reasons, … Continue reading “A Great Loss to the World – #RIPDanDennett”

Psybertron blog action has retreated to book / thesis drafting behind the scenes, as most of my life is taken over by planning for two summer events – the International Society for Systems Sciences (ISS) and the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) conferences in Washington DC in early June, and the Robert Pirsig 50th anniversary … Continue reading “A Mouthful of Unsalted Soup”

Anil Seth’s Faraday Lecture has generated a fair bit of chat. I was initially a bit too unimpressed, not enough originality – probably turned off previously by his use of “hallucination”. In fact he is synthesising many of the same sources I am. Nothing new under the sun again. ===== Mystery – zzz. Lost under … Continue reading “Seth is OK”

I have so many notes, I’m not quite sure how much I’m going to write up Charles Foster ‘s Annual Mike Jackson lecture at Hull University on Tuesday 19th March “What is a Human?”. Suffice to say its scope was unsettlingly beyond expectations for our systems studies context. Excellent none-the-less. So I will, as usual, … Continue reading “A Mouse is Edgier than a Musk Ox”

I mentioned in my first ever paper about my interest in Pirsig in 2005, that I owned the same Honda Superhawk model as Robert Pirsig did on his 1968 “Zen Ride” – mine was the CB72 his was the CB77, but they are mechanically identical in all respects other than the cylinder bore which made … Continue reading “A Badly Maintained Honda CB72/77”