If we examine the space of all possible chess games we should be able to nap out all games a really played look at how they are distributed in the game space (what are the dimensions of a game space, though?). It is possible that these games cluster in different ways and we could then…
Authority currencies and rugged landscapes of truth (Fake News Notes #9)
One model for thinking about the issue of misinformation is to say that we are navigating a flat information desert, where there is no topology of truth available. Now hills of fact, no valleys of misinformation. Our challenge is to figure out a good way to add a third dimension, or more than one single…
Innovation III: What is the price of a kilo of ocean plastic?
A thought experiment. What would happen if we crowdsourced a price – not just a sum – per kilo of ocean plastic retrieved? This would require solving a few interesting problems along the way but would not be impossible. First, we would need to develop a means to crowdsourced prices rather than sums. What we…
Future of work – second take
When we speak about the future of work we often do this: we assume that there will be a labor market much like today, and that there will be jobs like the ones we have today, but that they will just be different jobs. It is as if we think we are moving from wanting…
Innovation and evolution I: Speciation rates and innovation rates
As we explore analogies between innovation and evolution, there are some concepts that present intriguing questions. The idea of a speciation rate is one of these concepts and it allows us to ask questions about the pace of innovation in new ways. Are speciation rates constant or rugged? That is: should we expect bursts of…
There are no singular facts (Questions II)
There is more to explore here, and more thoughts to test. Let’s talk more about knowledge, and take two really simples examples. We believe we know the following. (i) The earth is round. (ii) Gravity is 9.8 G Our model here is one of knowledge as a set of propositions that can be justified and…
Socratic epistemology, Hintikka, questions and the end of propositional logic (Questions I)
The question of what knowledge is can be understood in different ways. One way to understand it is to focus on what it means to know something. The majority view here is that knowledge is about propositions that we can examine from different perspectives. Examples would include things like: The earth is round. Gravity is…
Weil’s paradox: intention and speech (Fake News Notes #8)
Simone Weil, in her curious book Need for Roots, notes the following on the necessity for freedom of opinion: […] it would be desirable to create an absolutely free reserve in the field of publication, but in such a way as for it to be understood that the works found therein did not pledge their…
Lessons from Lucy Kellaway
I have been following, with increasing interest, Lucy Kellaway’s second career as a teacher, and the movement she has started around a second career aimed at giving back. It makes a lot of sense. In her latest column she muses on what happens with status as you change from high-power jobs to become a teacher,…
What is your cathedral?
Time is a funny thing, and the perspectives that you can get if you shift time around are extraordinarily valuable. Take a simple example: not long ago it was common to engage in building things that would take more than one generation to finish – giant houses, cathedrals and organizations. Today we barely engage in…
Books: Semiosis by Sue Burke
Just finished this excellent and surprising science fiction book. It explores several different themes – our ability to start anew on a new planet, our inherent nature, our relationship to nature and plants (!) and the growing suspicion that we are always doing someone else’s bidding. It is also beautifully written, with living characters and…
Computational vs Biological Thinking (Man / Machine XII)
Our study of thinking has so far been characterised by a need to formalize thinking. Ever since Boole’s “Laws of Thought” the underlying assumption and metaphor for thinking has been mathematical or physical – even mechanical and always binary. Logic has been elevated to the position of pure thought, and we have even succumbed to thinking that is…