Category: Social-Technical
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Kindness in Short Supply: Evidence for Inadequate Prosocial Input
The social context we live in, has some complex, but important characteristics, and our well-being depends on the feedback we get. In the article Kindness in short supply: Evidence for inadequate prosocial input by Jennifer E.Abel, Preeti Vani, Nicole Abi-Esber, Hayley Blunden, Juliana Schroeder, the importance of kind feedback support is expressed. In summary: In…
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It all comes together in a perfect storm :: “Keep it Simple”
Three different levels of information processing show a remarkable alignment. They all are guided by similar principles, which do map and overlap.Let me briefly summarize them: First:Active Inference , a sentient behaviour theory, builds on the free energy principle. FEP implies a coupling between the internal and external states of a system that is symmetric:…
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Conscious Body (&Mind) A lecture given by Deric
Derics Brownds published a summary of a recent lecture on his website The start of the lecture is setting a very important message I’ve learned about work that has shown, in just the past 10-15 years, that much of what we thought we knew about how our minds work isn’t quite right, our commonsense notions,…
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Samenwerken als Ecosysteem
De omschrijving ecosysteem voor een samenwerking kan misleidend zijn. De verschillende activiteiten die de deelnemers dienen uitvoeren, bestaat uit een stroom van informatie, beslissingen, acties, risico, voordelen en waarde, die bij een ecosysteem begrensd of toegeëigend kan worden aan ‘het ecosysteem’. (Zie hierbij ook het concept van FEP). Indien de vermelde stromen in essentie ruimer…
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Samenwerking en Ecosystemen
Deze aanpak van de meeste contracten bestaat uit het uitbesteden van opdrachten zonder bijzondere aandacht aan gestructureerd overlegorganen voor gemeenschappelijke beslissingen. Deze werkwijze is terug te voeren op een inzicht in de geschiedenis van “Near-Decomposability”.Herbert Simon is een van de iconen van Near-Composability, een beheer- en bestuur methodologie, die grondig uitgewerkt is een veelvoud management-methodes.…
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Long live the Queen (he/his)
The red queen is well knwon, and drives our current economic thinking (too much). I’ve already mentioned the fact of a long history of this theory of ‘Red Queen’ among evolutionary disciplines. There are alternatives, like ‘niche construct’ or ‘White Queen’ , more related to ideas like “commons“, based on ‘survival of the fittest’, in stead of ‘.. of…
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Nice TED speech on capital psycho pathology
I’ve been pointed to the great lecture Jon Ronson delivered at TED2012: “Strange answers to the psychopath test” It becomes very interesting and maybe even somewhat scary from minute 9. Some parts o the transcripts to get the idea: capitalism at its most ruthless rewards psychopathic behavior — the lack of empathy, the glibness, cunning, manipulative. So, here’s…
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The Learning Power of Listening
Sensemaking is related to the mapping and understanding of entangled complex situations and deciding upon the first best move. This all is best observed through stories and story-telling analysis, like the Cynefin Sensemaker. Oxfam just relesed a great guide “The Learning Power of Listening Practical guidance for using SenseMaker“, showing their use of the method…
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Policy making and governance of complex projects
A very interesting use of this sensemaking appporach towards the governance and policymaking is suggested by a great inspiring work towards the policy making and governance of complex projects is the recent publication from JRC Knowledge For Policy: Supporting policy with scientific evidence Competences for policymaking, Competence frameworks for policymakers and researchers working on public policy. I appreciate the competence…
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Supporting sensemaking and decisions with scientific evidence
If you have the opportunity to work on a complex problem, including change at the technical, organizational and governance/policy level of a rather complicated environment, you can considered to be lucky to start with the insights from the Cynefin farmework, developed by Dave Snowden. Recent evolution of this framework include “Entanglement“, liminality and the great…
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Enhancing human agency through redress in Artificial Intelligence Systems
[…] automation of workflows enabled by AI systems could even go as far as to challenge individual agency, autonomy and active mediation. It is paramount to not only scientifically but also empirically assess new ways to enable active human agency. In terms of policy, […] users lack the means and tools to exercise this agency in the…
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future of work & self-determination theory
Self-determination theory has shaped our understanding of what optimizes workermotivation by providing insights into how work context influences basic psychological needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness. As technological innovations change the nature of work, self-determination theory can provide insight into how the resulting uncertainty and interdependence might influence worker motivation, performance and well-being. The Review…
walterstiers
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Modeling the Predictive Social Mind
The social mind is tailored to the problem of predicting the mental states and actions of other people. However, social cognition researchers have only scratched the surface of the predictive social mind. We discuss here a new framework for explaining how people organize social knowledge and use it for social prediction. Specifically, we propose a…
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Design, Agency and Pragmatic Imagination
The books “Pragmatic Imagination” and “Design Unbound” from Ann Pandleton-Jullian and JSB ( John Seely Brown) explore to a great detail the need for new creative “imagination” into a practical form. The reasoning builds on the ideas of entanglement, expressed in my previous entry. A great lecture from 2015 is availavle on the video-section of…
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Enlightement or Entanglement?
Two great articles build on this idea of the need to get more attention to the connections and relations in between, compared to the specialised detailed view, or to have the multidisciplenary view of entanglement, compared to tradition we learned rom the enlightement. In the 2020 article “Wisdom of stakeholder crowds in complex social–ecological systems“,…
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Digital Twins: Societies are not machines, & optimization is a too narrow approach
I already did mention the importance of VVUQ when considering operational digital twins. More elaborated is the work from teh ETH Zurich team (Dirk Helbing & Javier Argota Sánchez-Vaquerizo), Digital Twins: Potentials, Limitations, and Ethical Issues. Rather than aiming for perfect digital twins, a predictable future, and total control, one should use computer simulation technology…
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Collective Intelligence & information pooling or aggregation
The review article on “Information aggregation and collective intelligence beyond the wisdom of crowds” describes how collective decision-making is a robust behavioural feature of groups for humans and other gregarious animals. Pooling individual information is also fundamental for modern societies, in which digital technologies have exponentially increased the interdependence of individual group members. Cognitive and…
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A radical realignment between grown and built environments
Neri Oxman is an American–Israeli architect and designer known for pioneering the field of Material Ecology. Formerly a tenured professor at MIT, founder and director of The Mediated Matter Group; she now runs her own lab, called Oxman, in Manhattan. She discussed her manifesto and accompanying film Nature x Humanity in a live interview. “How might we leverage design…
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Avoiding “Fake News” – also at old age – not as hard as one might think.
Ryan C. Moore & Jeffrey T. Hancock just published “A digital media literacy intervention for older adults improves resilience to fake news”. This article gives promising news on the awareness and actions one can to avoid fake news and misconceptions. The intervention was a 1-hour, self-directed series of interactive modules designed to teach concepts and…
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Your spatial navigation ability links with the entropy of your city street networks
I already mentioned the importance of space-time decisions, Individual differences in information seeking, the importance of anology (for AI), The importance of spatial thinking and the Active Inference principle (the brain is an “inference engine” that seeks to minimize “prediction error.”) It all comes togethers in a great article in Nature: “Entropy of city street…
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Beware of the lens you apply on gender
Inspired by Deric’s MindBlog entry of today, I like to make a reference to a avorite quote (also on my home-page): If the map doesn’t agree with the ground the map is wrong” Gordon LivingstonToo Soon Old, Too Late Smart The manly art of self-promotion – or maybe the female alternative, is building a map and…
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Education shapes the structure of semantic memory and impacts creative thinking
Quotes from some a recent article, presenting intersting insights on semantic memory and creative thinking. “Education is central to the acquisition of knowledge, such as when children learn new concepts. It is unknown, however, whether educational differences impact not only what concepts children learn, but how those concepts come to be represented in semantic memory—a…
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Bullshit Jobs – Will it change after the pandemics?
I finished reading the great work of David Graeber: Bullshit Jobs, and especially liked the list of five types of entirely pointless jobs: I does not take a lot of intellectual power to connect all five to the pure essence of what I call “the information lens“, blocking the insight from the reality, or the…
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Have farmers had enough of experts?
A great review on one of the most complex issues in sustainable soil management. Farmers placed most trust in other farmers to learn about new soil practices and were less trusting of traditional ‘experts’, particularly agricultural researchers from academic and government institutions, who they believed were not empathetic towards farmers’ needs. In addition to a perceived…
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