Clipmarks | abailart's 'complexity' clips

The Psychology of Conservatism

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 09:47:41 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: But of course, 'liberalism' is a mental illness.

We are talking about someone full of fear, with a poor sense of self, and a lack of mental dexterity. I always tell my students that tolerance of ambiguity is one especially excellent mark of psychological maturity. It isn’t a black and white world. According to the research, conservatives possess precisely the opposite: an intolerance of ambiguity and an inability to deal with complexity.

A meta-analysis culled from 88 samples in 12 countries

revealed that “several psychological variables predicted political conservatism.”

Death anxiety, system instability, dogmatism/intolerance of ambiguity, closed-mindedness, low tolerance of uncertainty, high needs for order, structure, and closure, low integrative complexity, fear of threat and loss, and low self-esteem. The researchers conclude, a little chillingly, that “the core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and a justification of inequality

Tags: humour

Messy Truth about Georgia

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:39:14 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Article deals with US foreign policy. What's horribly remarkable about this human tragedy is how utterly predictable have been many responses by those unwilling (or unable?) to consider the situation in its full historical complexity.

Clip Source: www.spiked-online.com

It is remarkable how quickly other people’s bloody tragedies can be transformed into simple morality tales by Western observers sitting in cushioned, air-conditioned offices.

The problem with this fairytale script that is being cut-and-pasted on to the horrendous massacres of people in South Ossetia and Georgia is that it is almost entirely wrong.

As one columnist says, ‘The history behind Georgia’s “frozen conflicts” is long and complex… but complexity is no excuse for abdicating moral judgement in situations of this importance.’

In short? Don’t let the facts – pesky complexity – get in the way of a good morality tale. People in South Ossetia and Georgia have suffered the double horror of being attacked, maimed and killed in a conflict unleashed by new post-Cold War instabilities, and then being marshalled like political ghosts in a morality tale that is likely to make things worse.

Tags: georgia

Playing With Complexity

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 07:35:56 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: leapfrog.nl

Playing With Complexity

In brief, in the presentation I argue two things: one — that the more sophisticated applications of interactive data visualization resemble games and toys in many ways, and two — that game design can contribute to the solutions to several design issues I have detected in the field of data visualization.

Below are the notes for the talk, slightly edited, and with references included. The full deck of slides, which includes credits for all the images used, is up on SlideShare.

In my work I focus on three areas: mobility, social interactions, and play.

My talk is roughly divided in three parts. First, I will briefly describe what I think data visualization is. Next, I will look at some applications beyond the very obvious. Third and last, I will discuss some design issues involved with data visualization. For each of these issues, I will show how game design can contribute.

Tags: visualization, data visualization, game, games, interaction, complexity, design, information design

Biocultural Evolution in the 21st Century: The Evolutionary Role of Religion

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:17:45 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes
clipper's remarks:

My outline introduces the concept of biocultural evolution, particularly with reference to the Twentieth Century and the prospects for the Twenty-First Century. I then explore the concept of complex distributed systems to characterize all highly creative processes in both culture and nature. Subsequently, I turn to the problem of complexity horizons and the challenge that these present for traditional moral reflections. Humans are then characterized as a Lamarckian wild card in epic of evolution. I close by discussing the evolutionary role of religion.

See source for the full paper:
http://metanexus.net/magazine/ArticleDetail/tabid/68/id/8779/Default.aspx

Clip Source: metanexus.net

Biocultural Evolution in the 21st Century: The Evolutionary Role of Religion

By William Grassie

human evolution bypasses genetics and allows for intentional culturally-acquired adaptations and their cultural transmission between generations in a Lamarckian evolutionary pattern. As humans are about to embark upon large-scale genetic engineering of other species and ourselves, even as we have already engaged in large-scale environmental engineering, our biocultural evolution becomes literal and directed Lamarckism. This new pattern of evolution now dominates all life on Earth and places the values and intentions of humans as the driving force in the future evolution of the planet.

Tags: k21st, religion, biology, culture, evolution, technology, transhumanism, future, humanity

New Research On Octopuses Sheds Light On Memory

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:39:13 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: It is not completely understood how these two systems are interconnected, if at all. However, the organization in the octopus demonstrates a sophistication that was not described yet in other animals. In the octopus, the short-term and long-term systems are working in parallel, but not independently. This is so because the long-term memory area -- in addition to its capacity to store long-term memories -- also regulates the rate at which the short-term memory system acquires short-term memories. This regulatory mechanism is probably useful in cases where faster learning is significant for the octopus' survival in emergency or risky situations.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Research on octopuses has shed new light on how our brains store and recall memory,

Why octopuses?

Octopuses and other related creatures, known as cephalopods, are considered to be the most intelligent invertebrates because they have relatively large brains and they can be trained for various learning and memory tasks, says Dr. Hochner.

Their behavior repertoire and learning and memory abilities are even comparable in their complexity to those of advanced vertebrates. However, they are still invertebrate mollusks with brains that contain a much fewer number of nerve cells and much simpler anatomical organization than that of vertebrate brains. This unique constellation was utilized to tackle one of the most interesting questions in modern neuroscience, which is how the brain stores and recalls memories

Tags: octopuse, memory

6 iconoclastic discoveries about the brain

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:02:06 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: let go of the dogma

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

Neuroscience, like all other branches of science, is fraught with dogmatic ideas about its subject matter. A number of principles have emerged, principles that have been regarded as fundamental to our understanding of brain function.

But the human brain is an organ of bewildering complexity - it is often referred to as the most complex object in the known universe - which doesn't give up its secrets easily. After 100 years of scientific investigation, we still know very little about it.

Dogma 1:

The adult human brain is not plastic.

Dogma 2: The adult human brain cannot regenerate

Dogma 3:

Neurons are the functional elements of the nervous system

Dogma 4:

Neurotransmitters are released from the nerve terminal

Dogma 5:

Neurons are binary switches.

Dogma 6:

Neurons communicate with each other by propagating action potentials

Tags: brain, discoveries, neuroscience, clipversity

A good stab at dealing with the problem of evil

Sat, 24 May 2008 00:06:27 GMT

clipped by: jimbo1000
clipper's remarks: I am at present writing a summary of my credo to my grandson. In it I address the problem of evil when considering the existence of God. This blog is good on this subject.

Clip Source: estecantor.blogspot.com

He was known as a kind of an “out of the box” thinker. This was right after the great tragedy of the Tsunami title waves in Indonesia, and I posed this question to him:

“How do you reconcile the reality of that scale of devastation with the idea of a loving God?” He said, “God gives the plates of the earth’s crust the freedom to be plates of the earth’s crust. They then do what plates of the earth’s crust do.” He challenged me to imagine a world in which creation did not have this freedom. We would have an utterly ordered world with no death, never any chaos, no wildness- no wilderness.”

In the book of Job God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind. He speaks of the glories of creation; the unfathomable complexity and power of that God-made creation, and man’s arrogance in thinking he can comprehend or control it.

Genomic Architecture

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 09:11:15 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: futurefeeder.com

Genomic architecture is based on the manipulation of the architectural genome. Like its biological counterpart, this genome is universal and encompasses all architecture — past, present and future. At its root, this genome is defined by a unified morphological genome, a universal code for all morphologies — natural, human-made and artificial. Morphogenomics, a possible new science, deals with morphological informatics. It includes mapping the morphological genome as a basis for generative morphologies that underlie the shaping of architectural space and structure. Once mapped, the morphological genome will need to be layered with other genomes (also requiring mapping) to cover different aspects of architecture: physical (e.g. materials, construction technologies), sensorial, cognitive and behavioral.

“artificial architecture” (used in the same sense as “artificial intelligence” and “artificial life”), a world of complexity evolving in parallel with the natural world.

Tags: architecture, core-complex, complexity, genomic architecture

Simple Artificial Cell Created From Scratch To Study Cell Complexity

Sat, 17 May 2008 10:38:07 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

A team of Penn State researchers has developed a simple artificial cell with which to investigate the organization and function of two of the most basic cell components: the cell membrane and the cytoplasm--the gelatinous fluid that surrounds the structures in living cells. The work could lead to the creation of new drugs that take advantage of properties of cell organization to prevent the development of diseases.

"Many scientists are trying to understand cells by turning off genes, one at a time, and are observing the effects on cell function, but we're doing the opposite," said Associate Professor of Chemistry Christine D. Keating, who led the research. "We're starting from scratch, adding in components to find out what is needed to simulate the most basic cell functions.

This new structure exhibited the type of complexity that the team had been looking for; it exhibited polarity. "Polarity is critical to development,"

Tags: biology, cell biology

Are Individuals like Molecules in a Social Matrix?

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:23:40 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/complexity/models/antcolonies/page2.html

takes you to a fun interactive model with an ant coloby; you control variables. Clear accompanying text for explanation and discussion.

Clip Source: www.sciencedirect.com

striking structures (e.g. nest architecture, trail networks) of insect societies may seem familiar to many of us, the understanding of pattern formation still constitutes a challenging problem. Over the last two decades, self-organization has dramatically changed our view on how collective decision-making and structures may emerge out of a population of ant workers having each their own individuality as well as a limited access to information. A variety of collective behaviour spontaneously outcome from multiple interactions between nestmates, even when there is no directing influence imposed by an external template, a pacemaker or a leader. By focussing this review on foraging structures, we show that ant societies display some properties which are usually considered in physico-chemical systems, as typical signatures of self-organization

parsimony and simplicity of behavioural rules at the individual level

efficient processing of information, energy and matter within the whole colony.

Tags: complexity theory, emergence, insect behaviour

Complexity Theory and Depression

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 11:12:43 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: web.ukonline.co.uk

Psychiatry constructs depression within the supposedly meaning-free paradigm of 'objective knowledge'. Depression is therefore said to be a wholly valueless experience, a 'disease'. This is part of a wider prejudice lying deep in the roots of the new global 'technoculture', a prejudice that sees all painful or undesired experience, even including death, as unnecessary evils which we will (hopefully) eventually eliminate by continually improving our understanding of ourselves and the universe we live in. Civilization - as a rational utopia - is thus identified with the power to have everything the way we want it. This is what Illich meant when he spoke of the 'anaesthetic society' - a society that uses pharmaceutical technology to blank out experiences that it does not value.

The model of depression that is outlined in the following article is constructed within the paradigm of Self-Organization, and is therefore a theory based on the new sciences of complexity.

Tags: complexity, depression, ideology, cognition

Evolution Beyond Darwin — Way Beyond

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:06:53 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.wired.com

Highly complex honeybee communities are one example of phenomena that some scientists think can't be explained by the mainstream theory of evolution alone, but instead by a theory of self-organization.
Courtesy AlainB/Flickr

Nearly 150 years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, evolution has been widely accepted by scientists -- and, except for a few religious dogmatic types, the public -- as the blueprint for the engine of life.

But not every scientist thinks that evolution as it's now understood and applied is complete. They want to scale it up to the level of populations, even whole ecosystems. Moreover, they say evolution is intertwined with other dynamics that science is just starting to understand.

"The process of evolution is fundamental to the universe. Biology is the most obvious manifestation of it," said Carl Woese, a legendary microbiologist and one of the first proponents of this newly revised evolutionary framework.

Tags: complexity, evolution, darwin

Hypothosis gains validity from objections.

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:04:02 GMT

clipped by: graphictruth
clipper's remarks: Do extremism and an unconditional adherence to religious dogma result from a failure of a portion of the frontal lobe to fully develop or, if fully developed, to activate? Studies suggest that faithful adherence to a single reasoning strategy on tests such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test means that parts of the frontal lobes are inactive, have failed to fully develop, or have even been damaged. Thus, unqualified disdain for divergent beliefs,for personal interpretation, and for creative theories like Darwin’s theory of evolution, may indeed have, at least a partial, biological explanation: a reduced utilization of that section of the brain which has played such a vital role in humanity’s creative advances—the frontal lobes. By unconditionally obeying religious tenets—or any dogma—some people may be relying on the phylo-genetically older, more posterior portions of the brain that store knowledge and enable consistent or stable behaviors and, unknowingly, circumventing the portion whi

Clip Source: www.tikkun.org

The evolving and growing complexity of the human brain allowed our ancestors the ability to question, wonder, and consider new possibilities—to be creative. Life altering advances were the result. Is unconditional adherence to dogma (whether religious or secular) at odds with this evolved capability and our full potential as creative beings?

Adherence begets consistency or stability; questioning, searching, and discovering innovative alternatives, which is creativity, leads to change.

The implication that adherence behavior could involve a more primitive or phylogenetically older portion of the brain should not be an altogether startling notion. After all, given the most basic understanding, we would expect that early humans eventually became unstuck from various conditions because of an increasingly evolved reasoning power. Our capacity for creativity expanded and so we conceived of new and often better ways to do things.

Tags: bizarre, mental health, fundimentalism, religion, conservatives

Confessions of a Lonely Schizoid

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 11:40:59 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: <<<Yes, in my burrow, in my solitary thoughts, I dream my dreams. But they are the dreams of "the undeveloped heart." I dwell in my burrow with a gallery of images, the images of a plethora of people: the monstrous and the good -- some unbelievably good. They remain phantoms, however. I lack the ability to care enough about another person; I suffer from a deficiency of the capacity for love, joy, and empathy to occupy myself with real people. The passageways of my burrow are redolent of indifference: the benign but vaguely repellent odor of emotional emptiness.>>>

Clip Source: garfreed.blogspot.com

I am lost to the world with which I used to waste so much time; it has heard nothing from me for so long that it may very well believe that I am dead (or at least petrified)! It is of no consequence to me whether it thinks me dead; I cannot deny it, for I really am dead to the world. I am dead to the world's tumult, and I rest in a quiet realm! I live alone in my one-room apartment, in my imaginary friendships and in my letters! That is, when I'm not otherwise occupied with my daily workout regimen in the exercise room of my apartment building.

I live out my days tunneling, tunneling through my thoughts to ever greater depths -- like Kafka's mole-rat digging into the earth below, creating a labyrinthine burrow of seemingly infinite complexity that is safe from the encroachment of others.

I live in

fear as deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that I am worthy of life; since everyone around me denies it as I deny it to myself; which makes all love, all trust, all joy impossible.

Tags: schizoid, loneliness, love

Complex Minds

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:42:05 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: highcognitive.squarespace.com

"Complexity refers to the extent to which an individual or organization differentiates and integrates an event. Differentiation is the number of distinctions or separate elements (i.e., factors, variables) into which an event is analyzed. Integration refers to the connections or relationships among these elements.

"Persons who are high in cognitive complexity are able to analyze (i.e., differentiate) a situation into many constituent elements, and then explore connections and potential relationships among the elements; they are multidimensional in their thinking. Complexity theory assumes that the more an event can be differentiated and the parts considered in novel relationships, the more refined the response and successful the solution. "

"Complex people tend to be more open to new information, rely on their own integrative efforts than new information, seek more novel information, search across more categories of information, and are less externally information bound.

Tags: complex minds, cognitive complexity