Posted in Culture, Epidemiology, Happiness, Interventions, Invisible Etiology, Self-Fullfilling Prophecy, Society, tagged Culture, Epidemiology, Happiness, Interventions, Invisible Etiology, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Society on July 25, 2009| 1 Comment »
From Monday’s Washington Post:
The District, New York and Los Angeles are on track for fewer killings this year than in any other year in at least four decades. Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis and other cities are also seeing notable reductions in homicides.
Full article is here, in which more sensible police approaches are given credit for the decline.
Posted in Causality, Culture, Interventions, Media, Politics, Scarcity / Abundance, tagged Conservation, Indigineous Peoples on May 5, 2009| 3 Comments »
From the “nothing is quite so simple” department, a Boston Globe article this week points out a hidden legacy of the conservation movement: The expulsion of native peoples from their land.
Posted in Culture, Psychology, Science, tagged Culture, Psychology, Science on April 23, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Many users, and friends of users of marijuana report experiencing a “contact high.” That is, they purport to experience some of the effects of marijuana simply by being in contact with or around those using marijuana. Virtually all users wrongly attribute this experience to the inhalation of second hand smoke. This is unlikely for a number of reasons. Since exhaled smoke is virtually devoid of psychoactive substances and is widely dispersed in the surrounding air, it is not possible for one to inhale even a small fraction of a working dose. Additionally, many, including noted pharmacologist and psychedelic researcher Alexander Shulgin, report similar experiences involving drugs that are not inhaled, indicating that these effects are due to different biological processes.
Posted in Alternative Institutions, Cooperation, Crowdsourcing, Culture, Invisible Etiology, Language, Society, tagged Alternative Institutions, Cooperation, Crowdsourcing, Culture, Invisible Etiology, Language, Society on March 24, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Tribes are hot.
Kevin has referred more than once to the famous Dunbar number for limits on optimal human tribe size.
One of my favorite books recently is Seth Godin’s book on leadership, called — you guessed it — Tribes.
Yesterday I heard a great talk by David Logan, co-author of Tribal Leadership.
Posted in Culture, Government, Poverty, Society, tagged Culture, Government, Poverty, Society on March 10, 2009| 1 Comment »
As you’ve probably figured out by now, I prefer to base decisions on statistically significant evidence. However, in order to gather such evidence, you must have hypotheses in the form of testable models. If the models you try to test are divorced from reality on the ground, your results will be useless no matter how statistically significant.
Therefore, if you’re interested in issues of poverty and race in the US, here are two ethnographies you should read. Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh and Cop in the Hood by Peter Moskos. As sociology PhD candidates, both went out and actually became actors in poor black neighborhoods. Venkatesh hung out with a crack gang in a Chicago housing project and Moskos became a police officer in Baltimore’s roughest neighborhood.
Posted in Alternative Institutions, Cognition, Culture, Evolution, Psychology, Technology, tagged Alternative Institutions, Cognition, Culture, Evolution, Psychology, Technology on February 24, 2009| 3 Comments »
In this Times Online article, two psychologists and an author weigh in with their view of Twitter users as narcissistic and infantile:
The clinical psychologist Oliver James has his reservations. “Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It’s a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity.”
“We are the most narcissistic age ever,” agrees Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research based at the University of Sussex. “Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won’t cure it.”
For Alain de Botton, author of Status Anxiety and the forthcoming The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Twitter represents “a way of making sure you are permanently connected to somebody and somebody is permanently connected to you, proving that you are alive. It’s like when a parent goes into a child’s room to check the child is still breathing. It is a giant baby monitor.”
Posted in Cognition, Cooperation, Culture, Politics, Psychology, TED, tagged Cognition, Cooperation, Culture, Politics, Psychology, TED on January 8, 2009| Leave a Comment »
As we approach the inauguration of a new leader who trying to be truly post-partisan, I think Jonathan Haidt’s TED brilliant talk is apropos:
Posted in Culture, Health, Homelessness, Interventions, Scarcity / Abundance, Society, tagged Culture, Health, Homelessness, Interventions, Scarcity / Abundance, Society on December 25, 2008| 1 Comment »
Posted in Culture, Language, Media, Superorganism, tagged Culture, Language, Media, Superorganism on December 13, 2008| 1 Comment »
We are living in a time wherein the sound bite is the modal and most influential form of public discourse. Which is unfortunate because of its unidirectional, one-to-many nature. I’m happy to report though that I see the signs of a return to more meaningful conversation in the form of online video.
(more…)
Posted in Agency, Causality, Competition, Cooperation, Culture, Emergence, Epistemology, Evolution, Language, Levels, Models, tagged Agency, Causality, Competition, Cooperation, Culture. Emergence, Epistemology, Evolution, Language, Levels, Models on July 22, 2008| 1 Comment »
I figured it was time for a reset and so the following is a summary of much of the foundational posting that I’ve done on this blog so far. As always, a work in progress, subject to refinement and learning…
Posted in Agency, Culture, Memes, Socio-technical systems, Technology, TED, tagged Agency, Culture, Memes, Socio-technical systems, Technology, TED on June 4, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Apropos of Kevin’s post yesterday on the “Singularity“, we need to be taking more seriously cultural agency (which includes technological and socio-technological agency):
Posted in Culture, Education, Government, Media, Society, tagged Culture, Education, Government, Media, Society on May 1, 2008| 2 Comments »
I have talked about some of the dangerous aspects of main stream media in the past. Recently I was reading The Black Swan, in which the author argues that watching TV news, listening to news on the radio, and even reading newspapers actually makes you less informed (and dangerously so) than if you were to tune out completely.
Posted in Culture, TED, tagged Culture, TED on April 11, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Culture, Media, TED, tagged Culture, Media, TED on April 3, 2008| 1 Comment »
Some people would say “Best” and “Powerpoint Presentation” are oxymoronic in combination. But I disagree. Powerpoint and its digital slideshow ilk (e.g. Keynote) are a relatively new medium, and it is the job of the slideshow creator and the presenter to make the presentation kick ass. Al Gore proved this point with his slideshow that was so compelling that it was turned into an Oscar-winning movie. One could argue that his was more about the presenter than the slideshow, but there are examples of amazing stand-alone slideshows, like this one:
Posted in Alternative Institutions, Culture, Philanthropy, tagged Alternative Institutions, Culture, Philanthropy on April 5, 2007| 6 Comments »
What I mean by “the New Philanthropy” is the cultural change afoot that is leading more and more of us to believe and act on the belief that we can make a big impact, in our lifetime, with or without large amounts of capital. The New Philanthropy has three classes of people.
Independently Wealthy
John Wood is a model example of someone who had accumulated massive resources and lived a full and busy life, but had some experiences that shifted his perspective to the point where he could no longer continue on his previous path. In the old days, independently wealthy philanthropists like Rockefeller saw their role as to “make as much money as possible, and then use it wisely to improve the lot of mankind.” John Wood and his ilk believe “what kind of man am I if I don’t go face this challenge directly”, and to their peers who say they are crazy or having a midlife crisis they respond “wouldn’t it be a crisis to not follow my heart… at age 35, I’m too young to not do that”. (more…)
Posted in Alternative Institutions, Culture, Philanthropy, tagged Alternative Institutions, Culture, Philanthropy on April 4, 2007| 2 Comments »
…but weak, indecisive and utterly incapable of true world leadership
read the article | digg the article
Posted in Agency, Culture, Emergence, Levels, tagged Agency, Culture, Emergence, Levels on March 11, 2007| 5 Comments »
Talking about culture from a complex systems standpoint requires a bit of inductive leap of faith as follows. If you buy the argument that agents emerge from agents (and interactions thereof) at lower levels, then it is clear that there is some level of agency above individual humans.* What we call this level varies according to who is telling the story and what the thrust of their thesis is: population, culture, society, memetics, economy, zeitgeist, etc. The reality is that all of these levels (and more) co-exist, and we are talking about interlocking systems at varying “partial levels” with dynamic, and only loosely constrained, information flow. Nonetheless, there are common elements and properties that we can discuss that are at the very least distinct from the realm of an isolated individual human being.
Emergent Tweets | Brad on Equity Micro-Investing |
 | rafefurst on Equity Micro-Investing |
 | Alex Golubev on Is Money an Emergent Phen… |
| Alex Golubev on Is Money an Emergent Phen… |
 | kevindick on Is Money an Emergent Phen… |
| Alex Golubev on Is Money an Emergent Phen… |
 | George on Is Money an Emergent Phen… |
| kevindick on Is Money an Emergent Phen… |
| Brad on Equity Micro-Investing |
| Alex Golubev on Is Money an Emergent Phen… |
The Emergent Fool 
Response to “Thoughts on Ants, Altruism and the Future of Humanity”
Posted in Blog Comment, Cooperation, Culture, Emergence, Levels, Singularity, Society, tagged Blog Comment, Cooperation, Culture, Emergence, Levels, Singularity, Society on July 21, 2008| 2 Comments »
[ This is an edited version of a blog comment on Brandon Kein’s Wired Science post here ]
The question of whether we will “break through” to a superorganism or collapse through any number of spiraling cascades or catastrophic events is the subject of Ervin Laszlo’s book, The Chaos Point, which I highly recommend. In it, he gives a sweeping view of the complex evolutionary dynamic (focusing on human society), and makes a solid argument that we are at an inflection point in history right now, similar to the “saltation” that begat multicellularity.
(more…)
Read Full Post »