Zen Driving Technique

Blogged earlier about Gimbo driving over the second Severn river crossing “in a zen-like state”. Robbie just reminded me that DNA’s Holistic Detective Dirk Gently used the Zen driving technique – following the driver in front on the assumption that he knew where he was going and that it was probably a place worth going to. (The catch being that if there is no one in front you must apply the rule to the person behind ?)

That Baloney Generator

That Baloney Generator – This was one of the items I also picked out in my review of Pinker. This link is to Searchlight an interesting Blog by cmac (?) at Chicago Uni. (Recently recommended list includes Lila !) David Gurteen also commented on the baloney generator. In Pinker’s words [Quote] The conscious mind — the self or soul — is a spin doctor, not the commander in chief.[Unquote]

Avoiding the Charybdis of Scientific Fundamentalism

Avoiding the Charybdis of Scientific Fundamentalism – A paper from Dr James Willis given to an audience of medical practitioners last year. Those of you following my blog will notice I’m working my way through James’ work and find that he voices the need to avoid the extremes of scientific fundamentalism as he calls it (hyper-rationalism as I’ve said) with a passion and humour born of hard-bitten experience. In our context here – don’t ever assume knowledge can be represented by some fixed ontology backed with numbers. (I’ve just obtained another of his books, Friend’s in Low Places.)

Where Has Quantum Computing Got To ?

I last rounded up on this stuff back here. And just before this I linked to the abstracts from Quantum Mind 2003 held in Tuscon, Arizona in March this year.

The original BCS Cybernetics Group stuff I linked to earlier is being taken forward in the CASYS’03 conference in Liege, Belgium in August under the title “The Universe, The Nothing That Is”. Sounds like the BCS emphasis is on Information Processing (QIP) in the sense of how the mind actually works, as opposed to the David Deutsch / Oxford-led commercial QuBit quest for creating computing devices based on Quantum effects, though this too seems to have expanded again in collaboration with Cambridge.

The title of one paper from John Wood (?) includes the words Quantum, Synergy and Quality – could that be quality in the monist Pirsig MOQ sense ?

BlogTalk

BlogTalk – Looks like a great time was had by all – so disappointed I couldn’t be there – maybe next time ? All these people (and more) conspicuous in photographic evidence and in copious postings from the event and in reflective post-event blogs.

Matt Mower
Paulo Valdemarin
Lilia Efimova
Dan Gillmor
Haiko Hebig
Heiko Hebig
Jorg Kantel
Thomas Burg
Seb Fiedler
Martin Roell
Ton Zijlstra
David Weinberger
Phil Wolff
Oliver Wrede
And many more ….