Tag Archives: Singularity

Measuring our way into meaninglessness, stagnation and crisis

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Crisis, future, human capital, innovation, problem solving, science

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I posit excessive measurement is the culprit behind the world’s biggest problems, as well as the likely initiator of its future crises. It is the largest hidden systemic risk to our future livelihood. Our obsession with quantity is the very incarnation of the materialistic credo, a worldview focusing on physical resources and antagonist to a knowledge economy.

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On why the pursuit of truth is an asymptotic affair

21 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by in complexity, knowledge, learning, paradox, philosophy, society

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Roger Martin’s “knowledge funnel” is a very useful model for understanding the human pursuit of knowledge. Man contemplates a new mystery using intuition to infer causality, by trial and error arrives at an inexact approach that somehow seems to tame the new mystery before finally framing the new phenomenon with the objective precision of a rigorous formula. This is the process by which the vast unknown is distilled into bits of knowledge that our puny minds can manipulate.

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Self-awareness: a phenomenon exclusive to the natural world?

13 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by in human capital, learning, science, society, technology

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Self-awareness, key to intentionality, meaning and purpose, may be restricted to the natural world. In social theory, reflexivity refers to a circular relationship between cause and effect in human systems. The latest in complexity and cognitive science – themselves related disciplines – appears to confirm this assertion by social scientists. By the simple act of perception humans can alter the reality they attempt to observe, and in that sense reality and sentient man can be said to intertwine. Out of this inference an emergent phenomenon we call the future limps forward.

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