I’m part of the X/Twitter “Community Note” community – I think I’ve mentioned it’s becoming a bit of a farce – a 3-way battle between factions with “No Note Needed” (NNN) as part of the faction naturally siding with the original poster. Net result is effectively random / binary / populist outcomes – so I don’t waste too much time on it these days, like all good ideas, being gamed degenerately , BUT …
One set of such recent battles obviously involves the utterly crass utterances of Musk. His defenders say – but it’s just his opinion, NNN, he has rights, Freeze Peach, etc.
What these people miss, like the off-the-spectrum-autistic Musk himself, is that truth is made of a lot more than (objective) facts. Dialectic – logical objective argument – is only a formalised sub-set of rhetoric, good or bad. A bad idea with a simple message and powerful reach can be much more dangerous & degenerate, than any factual inaccuracy. #Dysmemics #PartOfTheProblem
Yeah, yeah, I know that particular fire in the embedded image, has no direct relation to Musk (Trusk-minus-Trump) or Tesla, but it serves here to illustrate that Trusk is, as they say, “a dumpster fire”. (It is, of course, nevertheless very deeply relevant in a complex systems view.)
I mentioned Dave Snowden in conversation in the bar last night and someone responded:
“You’re a big fan of his, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
And I realise it’s quite important to say that, because I keep referring to our “ongoing dialogue” in various posts here at Psybertron or on LinkedIn, which might make it look like I’m obsessed by some disagreement with him, but nothing could be further from the truth. Less damned by faint praise than praised by faint damnation, I sincerely hope. So let me put that right.
In later years of my own systems architecting career, when so many management teams have thought they needed to get to grips with “agile transformation” or whatever latest idea / fashion / fad in practice, the question of getting in an independent / external consultant to help has often come up. My record would show my only recommendations in that time have been Dave Snowden (and sometimes Johnnie Moore) – not that anyone has ever taken my advice on that π Sadly, management consulting choices have become ever more orthodox and formulaic – becoming #PartOfTheProblem in my terms – “no-one ever got fired” for hiring something recognisably big, blue and square (which is ironic given the origins of Dave’s Cynefinbusiness and his variation on the ubiquitous 2×2 grid).
We have no conflict of interest. He’s “doing” nothing wrong IMHO and indeed our agendas are quite independent. Whilst also being a prolific and thoughtful writer Dave’s focus is a business – Cynefin is bigger than a one man show – a business that delivers and gets stuff done. I have massive overlapping areas of interest in terms of real-world content and processes, but my focus is firmly in the direction of more abstract / philosophical frameworks for understanding of that same scope.
Explicitly, as per our latest LinkedIn exchange yesterday and today, I’m curious and Dave, being busy with his valuable consulting time, has no obligation to humour my curiosity. We’re both imperfect humans with good appreciation of our individual strengths and weaknesses (and objectives). I’m simply curious why, given very little to disagree about in approach to our complex systems space, Dave hangs on so tightly to the word “science”?
… Strangely after sharing this post I saw a version of Dave’s Cynefin Framework that rang bells:
There are many versions, where exactly what is emphasised in each quadrant has evolved in use, although (a) the Simple > Complicated > Complex > Chaotic labels are pretty stable, and (b) some versions also emphasise that these are not flat quadrants of the ubiquitous BCG 2×2 Grid by making the disconnect between Chaotic and Simple more obvious, in a different / overlapping plane, and the “aporetic” grey zone in the middle.
But what I like about this 2007 version are those little tetrahedra symbols which, to me, illustrate the essence of the different contexts in terms of the nature of the relationships between the current subject in focus (the yellow node) and the other parts of the problem (the black nodes). Which is ironic because Dave considers them confusing or misleading and has dropped using them in recent years. Anyway, the encoding is in the solid or dotted clarity of the relations:
Simple is – simple enough that functional relations to the subject are well enough understood causally, that the relations between the other things don’t matter enough to worry about how well they’re defined.
Complicated is – where all the relations matter, but they’re well enough defined and understood, that the primary issue is just that taking them all into account is complicated (but nevertheless tractable).
Complex is – there are plenty of causally well-understood and defined functional relations but that many of the relations relevant to the subject are also emergent and not directly causal or reductively deterministic.
Chaotic is – where few if any relations are well enough understood to be treated as directly causal and almost all relations are emergent at multiple levels.
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Post Post Notes: Could be so many….
Dave’s “dialogue” continues with many, on LinkedIn and with Cynefin writings and events. We discover he does have Christian religious affiliations, and he frames one series of regular events as “retreats” – in the wilds of Wales …
Shared on X/Twitter (8 June 2025):
QUOTE
ππ²π§πππ’π§ ππ¨ ππ¨π«ππ‘ ππ¦ππ«π’ππ ππππ«πππ – 2025. We are organising a retreat, the theme is βWhat does it mean to be human?β We were inspired by our Snowdonia retreat earlier in the year, where this question arose repeatedly. In this new age of machine learning, βthinkingβ, and algorithms, what do we know about uniquely human forms of creativity?
The retreats are special to us at #Cynefin, offering a more in-depth setting to meet with network members and discuss research ideas and offerings from around the world. We hope to welcome you there.
UNQUOTE
What does it mean to be human? Agreed, this is a core “meaningful” question – for Cybernetics / Systems Thinking about real world complexity and our place in that ecosystem, individually and collectively. Any ontology of the world, needs an epistemology of meaning in the world. All good, but yet again just increases my curiosity that he clings so tightly to “science” and decries attempts by me and others to suggest there’s “more than science” that matters here?
I do have a comprehensive metaphysics which supports an epistemological ontology, as well as moral philosophy, but we’ll save that for another day. If people insist on ignoring even the possibility of epistemologies – stuff worth knowing – beyond science, I’d be wasting my breath π Do not pass go.
Watched a 2001 film tonight on Netflix that I’d never heard of until it popped-up. Starring Jack Nicholson and an “ensemble” cast of Hollywood’s great and good – Harry Dean Stanton, Helen Mirren, Micky Rourke, Vanessa Redgrave. Sean Penn as producer and director with music by Hans Zimmer. What’s not to like?
But I didn’t know any of that, other than the Jack Nicholson lead role, until I selected it. The reason it caught my eye as I scrolled over available recommendations was that I noticed The Pledge (the film) was based-on a book by Swiss-German author Friedrich DΓΌrrenmatt.
DΓΌrrenmatt is an exception to my pre-2001 experience of barely ever reading anything other than technical, popular science or news material, before I became a born-again devourer of fiction, classical and philosophical. DΓΌrrenmatt’s “Die Physiker” (The Physicists) was a set text drama when I did Germanic Studies as a minority subject along with my Aeronautical Engineering degree major way back in 1974-77. The play was mixed in with other German language, culture and history syllabus, but it (and the tutor, now I think of her) made an impression that obviously stuck with me. Shortly after I embarked on this Psybertron research and writing project in 2001 (9/11) I picked-up and re-read Die Physiker in early 2002. it was relevant to my agenda for the obvious science vs morals content. And I’ve probably reviewed and mentioned it again another 10 times on my travels. It didn’t occur to me that DΓΌrrenmatt had written anything more that had made it into English translation, and I’d never looked.
Die Physiker is a fictional drama based on patients known as Newton, Einstein and MΓΆbius in a private mental institution / sanitorium, the first two because they are presumably schizophrenic patients with imagined identities. The third is presumed feigning his madness in order to lock himself away with the maddening guilt of physics having enabled the atomic bomb, with the realised ambiguity that he is in fact being locked in a secure institution by society for that same reason. (The sanitorium being called Les Cerisiers always put me in mind of Chekhov. Some big names played the main roles in an RSC 1963 production of the 1962 translation of the 1961 original.)
The Pledge (the book) is a quite different earlier work originally published in 1958 and first translated in 1959. The 2001 film screenplay is an adaptation, transposed from Switzerland to northern Nevada (rural small-towns around Reno NV). Very Scandi-noir watching it in 2025 and very evocative of Fargo ND given the harsh winters and the Scandinavian character names. As the Wikipedia notes suggest the detective – Jack Nicholson a “three-time loser with women” – does in effect solve the crime he has pledged justice for the victim’s family, despite the crime happening on the day of his retirement party. But his eventual failure to actually achieve the denouement, identify and bring the serial criminal to justice, is really just a series of bad choices and accidental events both relevant and incidental. Eventually after suffering ongoing accusations of madness in his obsession with keeping his promise, he really is driven mad by his failure. A requiem (in 1958) for the detective stories that are so common place today that involve elaborately constructed “whodunnit” ambiguity and mis-direction of multiple suspects and motives, etc. Gruesome the crimes and creepy the detective’s association with the actual and potential victims, relatives and witnesses, despite never doubting his sincere intentions – you must know you look madly obsessive and appear creepy even though we know you’re not – but a very well done psychological drama. Recommended.
The whole Islamophobia / anti-Semitism debacle – is definitively racismeither / both ways. Race itself is biologically ill-defined as a concept but it is nevertheless real. In same way Islam-ism / Juda-ism obviously have a social / intellectual angle around the religion itself vs freedoms of belief and religion and the cultural inheritance of societal values, most interactions and responses are bio-socio-physical. Racism and nationalism / national-identity especially when the topic is acts of violence and war. “Semites” of course are / were an Arab ethnic tribal name anyway, before being conveniently used to tag Judaism in recent decades.
It’s obviously compounded when the nation-states – like Iran & Afghanistan – involve non-Secular / Theocratic governments or other states harbour other deeper long-standing conflicts. Not just freedoms of belief and religion impinging upon the rights and freedoms of others, but imposition of one set of values and beliefs by physical means. Ironically, Israel the refuge of Zionism, and neighbouring Lebanon, has one of the most secular, liberal and tolerant cultures in honouring freedom of alternative religious belief (and practice).
Another issue on the other side is expectations about punishment, sanctions and sentencing when laws against violence are applied. The other side of that coin being merely the practical limitations, incentives and priorities of legally enforcing such measures. Complex to say the least and never entirely rational / objective / scientific. (eg Anyone who keeps their nose-clean during incarceration rightly expects to serve only a portion of their sentence. Prisons would be ungovernable otherwise.)
Obviously these are all topical again thanks to fuckwits – autistic simpletons – like Musk wading in on the UK “Grooming Gang” scandals (and New Year’s terrorist atrocities) – without the slightest hint of understanding any such complexity, nor even any signs caring about fellow humanity. Competitive tweeting / retweeting / disagreeing & community-noting binarily for or against either or both simplistic positions – “virtue-signalling” or indeed populist voting on such a basis – is purely degenerative. Worsening rather than solving any of any number of entangled issues. #PartOfTheProblem
If civilised intelligent people – especially those that claim to be on the side of free-thought and rationality in opposition to religious dogmatism and bigotry (and violence, against especially women) cannot see the need nor make the effort to disentangle the complexity of issues before rejecting or supporting any position, then there is no hope. With the impending imposition of “Trusk”, on UK, European and Middle-East politics as well as the US, it looks like this incoherent degeneracy is about to define 2025. Such incoherence can’t end well.
