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Learning – as in getting oneself educated for your purpose, as opposed to
Learning – as in assimilation a piece of information – receiving communication.
Part of education / learning confusion apparent within and between learning organisation approaches in business organisations in general, and those “educational” organisations whose “customers” are learning. Some references suggested by Sylvia from IAG / CFL / LLL perspective.
Bill Lucas – CEO of Campaign for Learning, Author of Your Brain – A User’s Guide.
Dr Peter Honey – Learning styles guru. Own .com web-site organisation
Guy Claxton – Author of Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind. Some interesting East / West stuff in here, like “The best thinking takes place below the level of consciousness”, and a focus on subjects that might be seen as “airy-fairy or unscientific”. Evocative of Michael Kinsey’s “The tortoises will win the dot.com race”.

Quote from Ev (talking about Blogger Pro natch)
It’s a testament that people will pay for web services that are important to them or make their lives easier.

Virtual Mobs, Terrorists For Troop, Police Training
From UniSci via Jorn
Importance of subjective content in simulations.
QUOTE
There’s a growing realization that more realistic training simulations lead to higher levels of skill attainment for trainees, but current training games are more concerned with eye-catching graphics than with modeling real human behavior,” said Silverman, professor of systems engineering and computer and information science at Penn. “Our goal is to build in factors like fatigue, stress, personal values, emotion and cultural influences.”

Silverman’s crowd-modeling work will offer detail to the level of single provocateurs within a crowd, taking into account, for instance, young agitators’ frequent desire to assert themselves, dominate conflicts and avenge wrongs.

The simulation can model terrorist behavior based upon observations of extremists’ sense of commitment, feelings of competence and need to right perceived injustices.
UNQUOTE
Mob Violence ? Funny, sounds like a day at the office !

Wow, is it really two weeks since I last posted.
Actually I’ve been ill with a heavy cold, and have done very little apart from read.
Finished Heisenberg, Physics and Philosphy – good read
Started Poincare Writings, ed SJ Gould – not so promising
Started Melville, Moby Dick – excellent read so far.

Spotted this interesting BMJ link from Jorn
About drug companies talking up “illness” to boost drug demand.
From my perspective this is “spinning” information.

Computing is Too Complex
Article from InfoWorld (via Leon) about CTO’s in business finding that the complexity of computer applications is becoming or has become a problem in itself. (See Manifesto)

Binary or Tertiary views ? – Let’s do the Hokey-Cokey.
How many things do you divide something else into. Are you a
2×2 Person – BCG Grids, Yes&No, Black&White, we need a decision, binary chopper.
3×3 Person – three layer architectures, with three layers in each layer, onion-skins ad-infinitum.
Is there such a thing as an NxM Person ?

If you have a “bag” of say 20-ish issues, which are to some extent different or independant, but somehow inter-related, how many boxes do you draw before you allocate pigeon-holes ? This is more to do with pragmatic span of managability, and immediately perceived purpose, than anything fundamental about the classification of the issues themselves. (see TQM / brainstorming / facilitation techniques and bases of various approaches.)

Also a matter of geometric perspective / topology, a 2×2 grid is typically a tertiary decision tool. 2 different no-brainers, bottom-left and top-right, plus a set of problems top-left and bottom-right. In, Out and Shake-it-all-about.

Is there something better than “binary” classification. Is quantum computing part of the answer ?

I’m listed on the Internet Research Register

Trending propensity – assumption at current subjective scale that observable variations or changes reflect underlying trends or simple patterns. Compare chaotic fractal complexity, scalability, and “catastrophic” local instabilities and also anthropocentric views of genetic success in Steven Jay Gould – Life’s Grandeur. A rationalisation of the observable on the current level ? Cf Post-modernism and Lila – many independant levels on orthogonal axes – hold that thought.

Bayesian Methods – International Society for Bayesian Analysis.
After the Rev. Thomas Bayes.

Jules Henri Poincare – everybody’s hero (as I said earlier) in fundamental thinking behind complex behaviours. (Google#Poincare gets 1000’s of hits.)

Fusion Anomaly
Interesting web-site (design-wise). Picked-up on Google search for synchronicity, and found whole lot of quantum mechanics, memetics and chaos to boot. Worth a browse if only for inspiration. Catchphrase – “You are what you cache”

Synchronicity, Jung and I Ching – start a new thread.
I Ching Edition & translation by Hellmut Wilhelm & Carey Baynes.
On-line copy of the Foreword to I Ching by Carl Gustav Jung.
Synchronicity – the principle of Meaningful Coincidences. This is a somewhat mystic / psychobabble source, but a readable summary of Jung and Synchronicity, and relationship to “new physics” of the early 20th century.
Chris Lofting’s web-site on Meaning from a Semiotic Perspective also includes Jungian Typology and the I Ching as applied to psychometric profiling (a la Myers-Briggs) etc.

Meanwhile picked-up the Synergetics thread, prompted by Brian Josephson
Hermann Haken at Stuttgart Uni
Bob Ulanowicz at Chesapeake Bio Lab

Spooky synchronicity developing between non-locality, paranormal, quantum computing & information. Stapp and Josephson would clearly appear to be onto something.

Catch 22 or The Ultimate Cop-Out ?
I am clearly proceeding in an unashamedly unscientific way.
Effectively, I already know I am right and am seeking not so much supporting evidence, as meaningful, useful, implementable ways of expressing what is needed. I’d like to think I’d notice if I came across significant counter evidence. What was that about western arrogance ? I have to say, however, that every experience (new or existing) re-inforces the central hypothesis, neatly summarised in the Nonaka / Chun Wei Choo quotation below. Interestingly, even staunch defenders of the scientific method, and the preservation of doubt (such as Feynman), leave us the escape route that such method is not necessarily applicable to human / social sciences (sic). Knowledge Modelling appears to be one such subjective subject. Ethnographic / behavioural studies are much closer to the truth. (Walsham / Myers et al.)