What, Why & How do we Know ?
I gave a presentation to Teesside Skeptics in the Pub on 15 December 22 Diana had asked us a question – on the Facebook Group Page in November 22 – about “whether we identified as scientific sceptics, and what that meant to us?” Back in August 22 Humanists UK had asked us to say if … Continue reading “#GoodFences – Is Scientific Skepticism Enough?”
This is an enabling post, to continue a fascinating dialogue with Eddo, more about which later. But like so many dialogues there is an element of “rehearsal” of what it is we think we already know – and have shared understanding of – before getting to “the point”. As usual I’m just breaking our stream … Continue reading “Ways of Knowing Madness”
This is a 2023 Annotation of a 2005 paper prepared originally for the Liverpool Conference on Robert Pirsig and his Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ). The text is unchanged except for correcting a few obvious typos and formatting errors, and to keep me honest the original “It’s Evolutionary Psychology Stupid” remains here complete with old broken … Continue reading “Zero to Pirsig”
Watching a (very) long video interview of Ed Frenkel (author of Love and Math). Hat tip to @katoi for the recommendation. It’s 3 and 3/4 hours long and I’m barely 1/3 through, and it’s unlikely I’ll get to relisten or even complete it, but it is very good from Frenkel. Without taking detailed notes, there … Continue reading “Ed Frenkel – Maths and Reality”
I’m pretty critical / sceptical at current attempts at AI / AGI and the jargon around LLM’s (Large Language Models). So without any particular expertise in the current developments (GPT-4 et al) I needed to check out some details: They’re “Large” in so far as they (arbitrarily) have “Billions” of elements. They’re “Language” in so … Continue reading “LLM’s – Note to Self”
I saw the excellent Dave Snowden speaking at the Annual Mike Jackson lecture at Hull University yesterday evening. [Post Note: The recording now available here.] [Post Note: This post is the start of a conversation in that continues here and again here, in 2024] Excellent in every way – Dave’s presentation and his conversation with … Continue reading “Dave Snowden and Mike Jackson”
A thread starter: One recurring theme of mine is stuff that looks like conspiracy to conspiracy theorists – the coast guy, anyone – is a symptom of having no model or accepted language to account for a felt problem. With the received wisdom of western, objective (scientific) rationality in the dominant culture – feelings don’t … Continue reading “Received Wisdom”
Thinking about an upcoming dialogue, I thought I’d compose a brief outline of what I’m about in 2023. A conversation starter. I’m doing “Systems Thinking”. For 20+ years, I would have called it “Cybernetics” by which I mean the original sense of the term – how humans as living things decide and govern ourselves for … Continue reading “What Am I Thinking?”