complexitystudies

metaphysics, philosophy, and a vision of the future

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Entries from February 2007

Repentance of a relativist: Bruno Latour recalls

February 27th, 2007 · No Comments

I have lead many a discussion with constructivists - who deny that such a concept as “truth” exists. I understand and respect their motivation - a distrust of proclaimed truth, which is the hallmark of ideology.
I always say that truth in science is something different: while ideologists posit the truth (they already “have” it) [...]

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Tags: philosophy of science

Visualization Methods

February 27th, 2007 · No Comments

Making sense of data requires visualization methods - here is an ingenious overview:
A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

Technorati Tags: complexity, statistics

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Tags: complexity · statistics

Star Wars: Force Unleashed Tech Demo

February 26th, 2007 · No Comments

Watch this video, it is truly stunning: although I do feel very sorry for the Stormtroopers (being a devout Imperial ).
GameDrift - Technology and Gaming Combined - Previews - Star Wars: Force Unleashed - AI Tech Demo
Star Wars: Force Unleashed - AI Tech Demo

Technorati Tags: artificial intelligence, entertainment

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Tags: artificial intelligence

Rational Thinking

February 23rd, 2007 · No Comments

Here some more links devoted to rational thinking, which I found on the site mentioned in the previous post and which are simply excellent:
Chance Welcome Page
Fallacy Files
Argument Mapping Tutorials

Technorati Tags: bias, cognitive science, rationality, statistics

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Tags: bias · cognitive science · rationality · statistics

Teaching critical thinking

February 22nd, 2007 · No Comments

One of the most important skills today is critical thinking. We live in an information overflow society - the problem is not information access, but information filtering, and yes, even drawing conclusions contrary to the information being presented (because it is false/dumbed down/rests on false assumptions etc etc).
I recently read a good paper by [...]

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Tags: cognitive science · rationality

Useless Arithmetic

February 22nd, 2007 · No Comments

A new book has come out which casts into serious doubt some of the models which have influenced policy-makers so far. This further convinces me that it is time to lay a serious philosophy of science foundation for modelling; especially the semantics of models, which have not yet received due attention (interpretation is more of [...]

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Tags: complexity

Buckminster Fuller

February 18th, 2007 · No Comments

Buckminster Fuller seems to have been a very remarkable person, so I would like to introduce him here on my blog. I like his word creations (text from Wikipedia, retrieved 18 Feb 2007):
Use of language and neologisms
Buckminster Fuller spoke and wrote in a unique style and thought it crucial to describe the world as accurately [...]

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Tags: complexity

The Monolaw

February 17th, 2007 · 2 Comments

Much has been written on ethics in philosophy and elsewhere, but in fact it all boils down to this in the end:
“How can morality be defined?” This is one of the ageless questions, asked by man. It is a question that has been answered from almost the moment it was asked. The problem is that [...]

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Tags: ethics · philosophy

Introduction to Complexity Concepts

February 16th, 2007 · No Comments

This is a very nice paper, especially well suited for a first introduction:
Heylighen F. (2001): “The Science of Self-organization and Adaptivity”, in: L. D. Kiel, (ed.) Knowledge Management, Organizational Intelligence and Learning, and Complexity, in: The Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems ((EOLSS), (Eolss Publishers, Oxford)
@INCOLLECTION {Heylighen2001,
title = {The science of self-organization and adaptivity},
author = {Heylighen, [...]

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Tags: complexity · phd

The History of Complexity Science

February 16th, 2007 · No Comments

I’m starting a new category: paper of the week. Here, I want to introduce papers important to complexity science and my research, together with related weblinks. Please note that paper of the week means neither at minimum nor at maximum a paper a week, it’s just more of a moniker with a hint to the [...]

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Tags: complexity · phd