The sixth in a series of excerpts from Minds, Models and Milieux: Commemorating the Centennial of the Birth of Herbert Simon. Mark Pingle Introduction Our collective rationality became more bounded on February 9, 2001. Herbert Simon emphasized we humans are cognitively constrained, and those constraints impact our decisions. Yet, Herbert Simon’s mind was less constrained than most of…
If your taste falls within the Creedence–Little Feat–Lil’ Band O’ Gold-ZZ Top–Gatemouth Brown–The Band realm with a dash of Zappa and Black Sabbath (and much more besides), all wrapped up in a highly delectable super gritty melodious acid driving funk groove — then you won’t be disappointed with Deltaphonic’s album Texas, Texas. They defy dumb…
Catastrophe then—yes, I am sure of it—whether it has happened or not; whether by war, bomb, fire, or just decline and fall. Most people will die or exist as the living dead. Everything will go back to the desert. ***** Can good come from evil? Have you ever considered the possibility that one might undertake…
Frank Zappafree speechmusic
The first in a series of abstracts from this special Human-Human Stigmergy issue. First up is Francis Heylighen. The concept of stigmergy was proposed by the French entomologist Pierre-Paul Grassé (Grassé, 1959) to describe a mechanism of coordination used by insects. The principle is that work performed by an agent leaves a trace in the environment…
This is my favorite version of Berg’s challenging masterpiece, here played by Gidon Kramer and conducted by the late Colin Davis. alban bergClassical musiccolin davisgidon kremerTo the Memory of an Angel
Friedrich Hayek and Michael Polanyi corresponded with each other for the best part of thirty years. They had shared interests that included science, social science, economics, epistemology, history of ideas and political philosophy. Studying their correspondence and related writings, this article shows that Hayek and Polanyi were committed Liberals but with different understandings of liberty,…
It was not yet common, in that illustrious college, that seminary of the learned, that ornament of knowledge for the metropolis—it was not yet common, I was saying, to teach modern philosophy there in all its aspects; its lecture halls still resonated with the ergos of Aristotle. There you could still hear debates over the…
Nicholas Christakis (yes, the very same that had been in the news recently, unfortunately caught in the midst of campus fuckwittery) explains how face-to-face social networks and their structures influence behaviors and phenomena in human society and the natural living world. (H/T to Guy Theraulaz). NPR/TED Video/Audio. collective behaviorcommunicationcontagiondistributed cognitionemergent orderExtended MindgeneticsNetwork ScienceNicholas ChristakisSocial networkSwarm behavior
This great talent born on this day. The Telegraph obit (Stones photograph dates incorrect)/The Guardian obit bobby womackfunkgospelmusicrhythm and bluessoul
manwithoutqualities 